No longer regret, I've made all the right choices

The artist is in the box, made up as a marionette and the viewer can use pulleys and switches to position the artist's limbs and to change the background and lighting of the box and can type a short prompt for the artist to repeat and act out verbatim.

The viewer has to drop a token (provided as part of the piece) into a coin slot and work a crank to complete the prompt. While the artist is acting out the prompt, the prompt is printed on a photo strip that includes a picture of the prompter (taken by a hidden webcam on the booth). One copy of the prompt and photo is spit out along with the cranked token (which has the phrase "it's what you make of it" and an image of a clown pressed into it) for the viewer to keep, one copy of the prompt and photo is spit out inside the booth where the artist can collect it after completing the prompt.

And they will walk away with their prompt attributed to them with their photo and a coin they used their energy to mint into a reminder that the art is what they made of it. And their creation is documented in the hands of the artist as well. What did they put into the world? What did they decide to say when they had a chance to say anything? What were they comfortable saying before they realized that someone would quote them on it? What did they make of it, and how would they feel if their photo was attached to their prompt in a book or video or somewhere that people might see it?

I'm so mad because students in Italy have been studying on Rosa Calzecchi Onesti's translation for decades!! Her translation is so well regarded it keeps being used in academia to this day and it's from the 60s!!! There have been dozens of other translations since then but we keep using that one !!!

(and also many other women published their translations both before and after her)

My wife pointed out to me the other day that apparently most people were literally only taught how to say Sorry and not how to Apologize or even that they are different things so here.

So I actually agree that canon can absolutely change details about the world for the sake of worldbuilding, but in this case she didn’t. It is explicit in the book that Montreal is just as hockey obsessed as it is in the real world. At the very beginning of heated rivalry, she talks about how Montreal fans loved the Voyageurs to the point of absurdity. They were the loudest fan base and the most enthusiastic fan base, to the point where it was hard for visiting teams to play against them. The fans travel to Ottawa to cheer on the Voyageurs because they’re such dedicated fans and they sell out the arena for the entire season in advance. They are described as the most legendary team in the NHL—all of which is just copying pretty directly from real life. Fuck, the Voyageurs is just the name of the Canadiens’ AHL affiliate team, which is why they had to change it for the show. She just sort of copied and pasted Montreal’s entire hockey culture.

She seems to have left all of Montreal’s queer culture on the table though.

Like. Seriously, someone correct me if there’s something I forgot, but I can’t remember it being in the books at all. And I’m kind of pissed at that exclusion, specifically because it’s implied that Montreal fans are a part of forcing Shane out.

I say implied because we get to see next to nothing about what happened to Shane that was so bad that it forced him off the team he loved. Almost the entirety of the aftermath happens from Ilya’s POV and he glazes over the it because he doesn’t give a shit about what Shane’s going through. He talks about how there’s a host of opinion pieces in the news the day after the game about how Shane tripped on purpose and goes off about how they’re insulting to him, actually, because what do you mean he needs Shane to throw the game to win. We know that the team and the media have a vitriolic reaction, and there’s a host of “angry tweets in the game’s wake. Of course when Troy Barrett suffers backlash we get to see the tweets and an in depth portrayal of how they affect him. But I think we can glean that there was not an outpouring of support from Montreal’s fan community considering whatever happens is so bad that Shane feels like he’ll never be comfortable representing that team again.

Again, I think that it’s fine to borrow from the real world but change real world details for the sake of world building. I do it myself. For example, the pride tape ban in snapping birch really happened, but it happened years later. I moved the timeline back but kept the real details, because it happened after the events of snapping birch and I wanted to talk about it.

I do have a rule though. And I don’t ascribe negative traits to real people, especially if they don’t have those negative traits in real life. I think it’s in really poor taste. Like. I don’t want to be like “here’s my obvious insert of John Doe, except for the purposes of this story, he just loves kicking fucking puppies.” Like. John Doe probably felt a little hurt by that.

Granted, Montreal fans aren’t a singular person who can get their feelings hurt. But I still think that having them be part of what forces out Shane for reasons related to his identity as a queer man was in really poor taste.

Like. We might not have queer rights if it wasn’t for the Montreal LGBTQ+ community.

In the 70s, the queer community in Montreal was targeted in a series of police raids and they rioted so goddamn hard that Quebec banned discrimination based on sexual orientation across the province just to get them to stop. In fucking 1977. It was the first major jurisdiction on the entire planet to legally protect sexual orientation, and it happened because of motherfucking Montreal. That city is one of the birthplaces of queer rights.

I’m going to be honest, coming into this fandom, I straight up thought that Montreal was kind of conservative and homophobic. That’s how the fandom treated it. I didn’t know anything about the city before I came into the fandom. The biggest basis I had was “pushed Shane out after he was outed.”

i truly believe (and had this feeling, although unnamed, when reading TLG in particular) that this villanification of the city AND CULTURE of Montréal comes from (maybeeee unconscious) anti-quebec sentiment.

as written above, Montréal is very (the most) gay and very (the most) hockey. the story is about a gay hockey player who is the face of Montreal hockey. if shane hollander was real, he would have his own statue around the centre bell before even retiring. why pretend he would get run out of the city by the media and the fans?

now, this is where i get a lil spicy

long story short, the rest of canada doesn't love the province of québec. we speak french, we are the epicenter of a lot of the recognizable canadian culture although we tried to leave the dominon twice, we were excluded from signing the last constitution, etc, etc. the rest of canada finds us, at best, kind of annoying. until the 70s, the city of Montréal was pretty segregated anglo/franco with the Main (boulevard Saint-Laurent) separating the city east (franco)/west (anglo).

btw, that's where the nickname for the actual Canadiens de Montréal, the Habs, comes from. it's short for habitants, which is what the anglos called the francos for a long time (inside and outside of québec). it was meant to convey the class diference between the groups.

to preserve and perpetuate language and tradition, québec as a whole, and Montréal as a metropolis, have tried to separate and distinguish themselves culturally from the rest of canada.

the rest of canada feels like we're excluding them (current policies do be problematic, but i'm not expanding on that, cause i don't have time to write a thesis on inter-provincial politics) because when they inevitably come to study, or work, or live in Montréal, we ask a pretense of conversational french. (...if you are a barista in the gayest city in the country, you should know what oatmilk sounds like in french).

so yeah, québécois, montrealites, we are considered the problematic child. the rest of canada often sees us as the heart of the division. we are seen as antagonistic, ungrateful, tax-monchers, etc, etc.

full spice, you may ignore these ramblings

i have had the chance to live in both Barcelona and Montréal for extended periods of time and have been immersed in both cultures (considered sub-cultures to a certain degree in the wider country's landscape).

in cities like Barcelona and Montréal (and in wider contextes like catalunya and québec), it is impossible to separate culture, and its expression, from language. what makes their cultures (queerness, lifestyle, work-life balance, civil/workers rights, diversity, festivals, business models, etc, etc.) so enticing is inseparable from their languages, it is because of their languages.

you cannot think that they are great cities to live in, or to work in, or to study in, without linking that special-ness to language. Montréal is special, fun, cool because it is francophone. Barcelona is special, fun, cool because it is catalan. to pretend to pertain to these cities because you happen to be from the same country they are in (which they have both tried to leave lol) is futile without actual immersion in the language and, thus, in the culture.

once you're in it, it's easy to note the disdain that the rest of the country has for these two cities, all the while trying so hard to use the positive aspects of their cultures (socially, but also in terms of working conditions and work culture) without actually doing anything to preserve it.

we strayed from the point, coming back around

so yeah, reading reid's depiction of Montréal's hockey culture in relation to her gay character, i cannot help but think that the violent inaccuracy is just... montréal/québec bashing lol

"why do the trills change appearance between tng and ds9?" Mistake in the logs