ExtraPenguin

In an effort to actually get some wear out of my formalwear, I have decided to take up going to the ballet. Here are the first two.

Carmina Burana (Paris Ballet Theater, Choir & Orchestra of Budapest)
I caught a matinee (16:00) at the Palais de Congrès and was basically the only person who was dressed up at all :'D Ah well. (Achivement unlocked: overdressed at the opera ballet in Paris.)

I reserved the tickets knowing absolutely nothing about what I was getting into, beyond "high culture", so I the fact that it was a ballet was a, uh, surprise.

Anyway. I loved it! There were basically two prima ballerina roles, and the music was great. More ballet should have a choir on stage. The, idk, multimediality? of having a soloist singer sing an aria while the dancers danced a pas de deux or variation was cool. All the drama was on point. I think this is a good production, and they're touring in the rest of France + neighboring regions, so if you can, I rec going!

I also bought the programme and basically everyone named, from production to roles, is from East of the Iron Curtain. (The one exception, The Temptress, is from Italy.) It's noticeable in how the style of dance is much more Vaganova/Russian school, with open shoulders and an engaged back. The same corps is putting on a Swan Lake in March/April that I will catch.

Notre Dame de Paris (Paris Opera Ballet)
This one was at the Opéra Bastille, and people did dress up! (Not all tho; I spotted several people in jeans and t-shirts, puffer coats, or sweatpants. Also a random old lady told me I was truly magnificent.) Sartorial observations below.

This ballet didn't end up working for me. Some of it was synchronization issues (several in the corps de ballet, but also one in a pas de deux between Esmeralda and Quasimodo), some of it was the costuming (all the women were in microskirts and the styling made them look at most 15), but mostly it was I think the fact that it's a French production.

You see, the French style of ballet is all about clean lines, exact positions, control, #chic, #cleangirl. It is fundamentally incapable of adapting Notre Dame because it is fundamentally incapable of depicting horniness. Phoebus and Esmeralda both lost their shirts during a pas de deux and it was not horny, Frollo was just an evil sorcerer who had a stick up his ass in an unhorny way, the prostitutes were unhorny and so was Phoebus dancing with them. I have seen hornier Swan Lakes. Everyone needed to go on a vision quest to find their inner Odile. The Quasimodo & Esmeralda worked, because that's based on innocent sentiment, but the Phoebus/Esmeralda and Frollo -> Esmeralda didn't come across properly at all. Also Frollo came across as sympathetic (99% sure unintentionally) because there's something just that pathetic about having a dude solo dance one half of a pas de deux while two people are dancing the actual pas de deux.

Esmeralda, in a microskirt, being not at all seductive.

However, this does choreographically give the entire corps de ballet (in fact, everyone but Phoebus) some movement stuff to do that's usually reserved for jesters, so this is the production to put on when your corps de ballet has jester envy.

Not super impressed with the company, but I guess I'll catch at least Romeo and Juliet in Apr/May before giving up. Also kinda want to see La Bayadère in Jun/Jul because I've never seen that before.

anthropological observations on clothing
The average Frenchwoman is rail thin, but more of a pear/spoon type – not much beneath, but even less up top, if you will. As such, the "dressy" clothing seems to be elevated pant + elevated shirt + nice scarf. Any dresses are cut incredibly straight in the skirt, at max a very drapey A-line. The goal is to look ~effortlessly put together~, i.e. spend an hour of effort to look like you simply pulled out the first two items from your elegant, curated closet and put them on without thought.

(The person sitting next to me was wearing an actual nice dress with a pleated skirt. Then her similarly dressed friend turned up and turns out they're Russian.)

(By French standards, I am tallish with a broad ribcage. I also objectively have broad shoulders, and an amazingly athletic butt and thighs. There is no way I am able to give the same vibes as the locals lol. Anything I wear will look more playful, intentional, and/or dramatic.)

Iiii have decided to do another music meme, this time yoinked from shipperslist. IDK if anyone in particular cares, though, since my taste in music is comparatively out there to most of my circle. After all, I am a metalhead (see also: Finnish) and that's basically all I listen to. So have some newish music from the incredibly famous metal artist known as ... Lady Gaga.

a song you discovered this month
Lady Gaga - Disease


I think this is her best work yet! Previously I'd have said Judas, or Telephone, but this is catchier than both. (I ofc also like Born This Way, but it's a bit less dancily catchable. Applause isn't quite as catchy, but it's rhythmically v fun to dance to.) She's really good at catchy aaa-aaahhhs and oh god I have missed dance pop so much.

prompts under the cut

a song you discovered this month
a song that makes you smile
a song that makes you cry
a song that you know all the lyrics of
a song that proves that you have good taste
a song title that is in all lowercase
a song title that is in all uppercase
an underrated song
a song that has three words
a song from your childhood
a song that reminds you of summertime
a song that you feel nostalgic to
the first song that plays on shuffle
a song that someone showed you
a song from a movie soundtrack
a song from a television soundtrack
a song about being 17
a song that reminds you of somebody
a song to drive to
a song with a number in the title
a song that you listen to at 3am in the morning
a song with a long title
a song with a color in the title
a song that gets stuck in your head
a song in a different language
a song that helps you fall asleep at night
a song that describes how you feel right now
a song that you used to hate but love today
a song that you downloaded
a song that you want to share

I've been feeling melancholy for – well. The calendar says it's almost December, the Christmas lights are up here, etc, but the weather says it's the start of October. And also, as it is still my first year in Paris, I have been basically sick nonstop. Last weekend I got the influenza or something.

Last year, I read a book that changed my life (or, at least, how I approach other people). The book's analysis of appreciation and how it is and isn't given thus lurks at the back of my mind; less "living rent-free" and more like a structural element.

My job is ... well. Theoretically, it's interesting. In practice, it feels like nothing I do matters – no-one admits to being in charge, the person I thought was my boss is too busy doing project administration paperwork to supervise me and has informed me that she's actually not my boss at all, I do not know who my boss is, and the piece of equipment I was promised would arrive in September has been delayed to February at best. I do not know who my boss is.

(Also this is not a job for a postdoc IMO? I really think they should've hired a PhD student instead, and only got a postdoc because they only have two years of funding...)

In short, the management is shit. I've tried giving feedback, but the problems with this group run deep, apparently, and also I'm not officially a part of the group. (The least wrong answer to "Where do you work?" is "It's complicated.") Like. It's one thing to be self-directed, but frankly, I feel self-employed, except with none of the good parts.

(Also Paris fucking sucks, y'all? Pollution so bad you can taste it, the sheer noise of the masses, all the grocery stores have more restrictive opening times than the fucking alcohol monopoly in Finland, and the locals are all "omg you live in the bad part of town???" my dude your entire fucking city is sketchy af! All of Paris is "the bad part of town"!)

Oh yeah and I've been suffering with bedbugs. I hired the pros the moment I found them, buuuuut I think they've been coming through the vents. I recently covered them with fabric (and duct tape), but ofc there's the residual population. I sleep with no skin uncovered so they cannot feed and multiply. I do a final sweep of visible surfaces before bed and exterminate all I can find. There are bloodstains on my ceiling and a hatred in my soul.

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

This is part II: Vids.


A:

B: Begin Again (Star Wars) – despite stiff competition, this represents a breakthrough in Technique (TM) and I had to share. Perhaps the letter with the highest average quality imo.

C: Children of the Sun (Guardian) – again, stiff competition, but my first event/exchange vid!

D: Die Like a God (Star Wars)

E:

F:

G:

H: Hope Never Dies (Guardian)

I: Is There Anybody Out There? – this one is full length, rather than a vexercise, and more recent

J:

K:

L: Leave This Place Alive

M: My Nemesis/My Only Friend – for all fans of Shen Wei and Ye Zun's relationship

N: Northwest Passage

O: Open up the Gates – yes, this is not actually the work title, simply the title of one of the vidlets, but tbh I really want to extend it into a full length one. I should get on that at some point this decade actually...

P: The Past Clings Tight

Q:

R: Reincarnation – again, some choice, but this vid is my magnum opus and I will be linking it until the heat death of the universe, sorry not sorry

S: Shadows Crawling – my very first full-length vid, so I gotta choose this one, despite, again, heavy competition

T: A Turn of the Wheel

U: Until Eternity

V:

W: Whips & Chains – I chose this one over the other Ws because let's face it, everyone likes Shen Wei suffering, and here it is eroticized!

X:

Y: You Know My Name

Z:

Total: 16/26, with 32 vids, not including the one multividder collab! (I'm also sitting on a few unpublished ones. One of the ones not for any event should knock out one of the unused letters once I, uh, figure out what to put in like the last missing 5 seconds.) A bit surprising that it's basically the same as my fanart, but I guess I just love the letter C for vids or something.

Looking at my music library, J is going to be hard (only 3 songs). Q expectedly only has one song, same for Z, and nothing for X save for one pinyin title which technically starts with 小, rather than a letter of the Latin alphabet. Plenty of stuff for AEFGKV, though!

Most popular letters: C (6), W (4), BRST (3 each). OVER ONE SIXTH of my vids have a title beginning with C! Does anyone else have such a skewed distribution of beginning letters of titles?

Not in any textbook, but I've so far noticed:

話す hanasu "to talk"
話し hanashi "conversation"

写す utsusu "to copy"
写し utsushi "copy"

写る utsuru "to be photographed, to be projected"
写り utsuri "image, projection"

So it seems that swapping the final -u to a -i turns the verb into a result-type noun. (The result of talking is a conversation, the result of copying is a copy, etc.) Japanese derivational morphology is incredibly well hidden by the fact they pasted Chinese characters all over their language – there's a few words I've spotted where multiple roots get the same kanji, and where one of the roots has its meanings split between two different kanji due to Chinese splitting the concept space differently – but it is there. And I will find it.

(quick phone ETA - wrt "root split between kanji" I mean frex
帰る kaeru "to return"
返す kaesu "to return (sth)"

Hi! This is my first festivids and I am very excited!

Music-wise, I like things with female vocalists that have both a melody and a (danceable) beat, especially

• dance pop (Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Britney Spears...)
• symphonic metal (Oryad, Pythia, Xandria...)
• power metal (Unleash the Archers, Battle Beast, Rexoria...)
• whatever Madder Mortem and Charlotte Wessels are doing currently (no idea how to subgenre categorize either of them)
• instrumentals in general

Music in languages other than English is welcome! I like knowing what they're singing about, so unless it's in English or Finnish, I'd like translated subtitles.

I generally don't vibe with folk, ballads, or rap.

In vids, I like women, women doing things, motion and motion matching, "thematic" vids/vids focusing on a theme, lyric matches, "danceability", humor/comedy, and weird/odd stuff. In general, if you're thinking "is this too bonkers for ExtraPenguin?" the answer is no.

I'm not too keen on diegetic audio, especially if it's on top of the lyrics.


Short films directed by 流云蕊 | Liu Yun Rui [UMBRELLA] [SAFETY]
Intro post by douqi, list of asian wlw short films (Ctrl+F for 流云蕊), bilibili, Douqi's YouTube for engsubbed versions (search for Liu Yun Rui).

*tosses spaghetti at wall* There's a lot potential here for a high concept frame story! Maybe it's, like, one of those rapid transmigration stories and the couple/protagonist (there are a bunch starring Sheng Wei and Ai Ye, and also Qi Xiaxia) has to solve the riddles three before acquiring a happy ending? Or they're somehow all in the same universe? Or simply a showcase of women overcoming obstacles and earning their happy endings together!

云泽传 | Legend of Yunze (TV) [SAFETY]
Carrd with links. Here I really love Jiang Zhaoyun and A-Ze's relationship! Also how Zhaoyun is a demon who's being good, even when everyone thinks demons are bound to be evil, and just that conflict/contrast going on.

双镜 | Couple of Mirrors (TV)
10×45 min, assassin lady trying to be a regular photographer × author lady in an abusive marriage. Yan Wei is my absolute blorbo and I'd love anything with her, whether her relationship with Xu Youyi or something thematic about how she's tried to escape her past but oops she still needs to pull out a gun, or her dealings with the justice system.

Oh and at some point I hallucinated a Yan Wei & Detective Jiang vid that had a song going "she's the one that got away / but maybe that's okay" and recontextualized it into a detective & criminal cat and mouse thing, so if that floats your boat, that as well!

华山论剑：东邪西毒 | Duel On Mount Hua: Eastern Heretic and Western Venom (TV 2025)
8×45 min. An adaptation of a standalone part of Legend of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong. I really like the action/fight scenes and would greatly enjoy just rolling around in them for the length of a vid. I really like Feng Heng, and also I think Ouyang Feng would make for a good comedy vid, with how he keeps getting into situations.

飞狐外传 | Side Story of Fox Volant (TV 2022)
40×45 min. An adaptation of Legend of the Flying Fox, one of Jin Yong's lesser known novels. Again, I really like how the action/fight scenes are choreographed! They're all unique and work in the environment very well. I would love something featuring/showcasing them. While the men's hairstyles are dire (Qing dynasty), the officials' hats are peak, so some sort of hat spotlight vid? Or something foregrounding the ever-present corruption. Or, like, a horse POV vid, since there are lots of horses present!

My blorbo here is Yuan Ziyi! I love how devoutly Buddhist she is. I also like Miao Renfeng. And all of the fight scenes.

As we all know, the ancient Greeks and Romans had a 7-day week, where they named the days Moonday, Marsday, Mercuryday, Jupiterday, Venusday, Saturnday, and Sunday. The Romance languages mostly preserve this (except they call Sunday Lordsday, dies Dominica), but turns out that the Germanic languages have the exact same paradigm (except for Saturday): Mániday, Týrsday, Óðinsday, Thorsday, Frīgsday, Washingday, Sonnaday. Máni is the personification of the Moon, Týr a god of combat (like Mars), Odin/Woden a psychopomp (like Mercury), Thor the god of thunder (like Jupiter), Frīg as Venus was known as Frīg's star, and the Sun is, well, the Sun. Though note that English has Saturday in a closer Romance loan, rather than a descendant of laugardagur (launderday?).

Anyway, that's neat, and you probably already knew that. However! I encountered the Japanese 月曜日, and saw the 月 and thought "Huh, Monday is Moonday in Japanese as well? What a coincidence."

Not a coincidence at all, actually! Turns out the Chinese discovered the planet-named 7-day week in the 4th century AD, whence it was transmitted to Japan before 1000 AD and used for astrological purposes before being promoted to the official week naming system as part of Westernization. Thus modern Japanese has 月曜日, 火曜日, 水曜日, 木曜日, 金曜日, 土曜日, 日曜日, where 月 and 日 are the Moon and the Sun, and the days between named for the planets, each of which is associated with a Chinese classical element: Mars with fire 火, Mercury with water 水, Jupiter with wood 木, Venus with gold 金, and Saturn with earth 土. Chinese has replaced them with numbered days, Week 1 Week 2 etc (though Sunday is still 周日), but in Japanese, they remain. So if you're ever going WTF at the Japanese (or Korean!) names of the week, just blame the Ancient Greeks!

So, for the third year in a row, I participated in battleshipex! I also volunteered for a mod team role and was the First Made (assistant captain/mod) of my team, Pear, with my friend Leaf captaining! I had an absolute blast playing, our team was amazingly positive and excited, and I completely outdid myself this year! I made so many things, and my team was so great! I love everyone in this bar!

(I wish I could say I looked forward to participating and modding next year, but unfortunately, things that happened in mod chat during and especially after the game really soured my experience, and I do not see myself going back next year. In the grand tradition of schisms, I plan on making my own instead with blackjack and hookers.)

2023 post, 2024 post

Here's everything I made in a chonky table:
( chonky table, more tables, most used tags )

July is half gone already, and just yesterday I got a flyer from the town hall about "summer events in [my locale]".

Me: But summer is almost over???

(But for real, people taking their summer vacations in August feels so wrong, like wishing someone Merry Christmas in February. Summer is over! Schools are starting! Except here they aren't. Also the sun has kept setting, so emotionally I've had a May that's three months long.)

Also I'm about to disappear into battleshipex for two-three weeks. Good luck everyone, have fun, sign-ups are over but you can still drop a prompt or twenty if you want.

I did, in fact, make a premiere for vidukon_cardiff! Despite moving internationally. (I have, alas, been kind of busy after it as well, and my commute is horrible by my standards now, but I'll make a post about my experience ... later this month!) Here's the vid:



I also spoke on the Premieres Timeline Show & Tell panel, hosted by marah_sarie! I revealed that, due to this whole "moving internationally" thing, I had not had the time to make a vid, and a week before the deadline, I was feeling a bit :( about it. I went through the short songs in my music library but wasn't feeling very inspired, so on the Sunday, I decided to give up and instead add song length information to my giant music spreadsheet. Then, when I got to B, I came across a song where I'd already had a concept for a Rey vid back in 2023 (back when all I knew of the OT and ST was through osmosis, lol) and, as I already had all the clips, I decided I'd be doing that. I've lost the planning post-it, but on Tuesday evening, I wrote down something roughly like this:

intro - Order 66
verse 1 - Rey alone on Jakku
bridge 1 - Rey in the outpost on Jakku
chorus 1 - Finn can't train her
verse 2 - Luke won't train her
bridge 2 - temptation of Kylo
chorus 2 - Kylo won't train her
instrumental - Leia dies on her
chorus 3 - Palpatine won'ẗ train her

( more talk, incl. on the miracle of clipping )

In retrospect, there are a few places where I would like to adjust the timing or add an extra clip to make the tempo of the edits better match the tempo of the music, but, well. I did accidentally play myself into making a vid album (Beyond the Black, self-titled album) so this can be the single version and the album version can be a bit tweaked.

(Also, the album includes a Game of Thrones fansong. halp wtf am I supposed to do with that)