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1And now, a selection of noteworthy quotes from Creator/LindsayEllis.
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4->So if you want to learn about screenwriting and screenplay structure [...] and if you're wondering why I'm taking the time to go through this, it's 'cause I'm trying to save you. Trying to save you from the student loans. Don't go to film school; watch internet videos.
5-->-- Creator/{{Lindsay|Ellis}} on the ThreeActStructure of ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}''
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9->Someone yesterday asked me on Website/{{Twitter}} if there were any "good times" with Channel Awesome, since there's a general thread of [[BrokenPedestal lamenting what was lost with many other creators]], & not with me. So I'm I'll share my perspective, & then I'm done talking about CA, bc I want to move ON.\
10So this should be a surprise to no one, but I was always uncomfortable with my position there. I was the only creator there whose sole raison d'etre was to exist as a {{distaff counterpart}} to someone else -- I was hired to fulfill an idea [[Creator/DougWalker someone else]] came up with. And given my (relative) youth and the condition of the economy at the time, I really truly never thought when I entered it that it would last as long as it did. The context here is that it was 2008 -- I had just gotten laid off from my job. The economy was imploding. I had just left NYC because I could no longer afford to live there and had moved back in with my parents. It was a desperate time to be a recent college grad. So with no other prospects, I submitted to the "Nostalgia Chick" contest in September of 2008, and won. I was promised money. In fairness to Michaud, he did eventually deliver on this for me (others, like WebVideo/MarzGurl, never saw any compensation for their early content). Thing is, around this time, I made another huge mistake (haha joke [haha... sort of a joke]) when I got accepted to USC. I say "huge mistake" because being young and dumb, I didn't realize that 7% interest rate on student loans was... a lot. And at MFA at the world's top film school (since usurped but it was rated #1 at the time!) takes super huge priority over internet videos, even if they paid okay. So there are no words for how hard I phoned it in back then. I just did not have the energy or brainspace to care. So another reason I am [[OldShame very #cringe about everything I produced back then]] [[CreatorsApathy is because I was doing the BAREST possible minimum]], and also being really unreliable scheduling-wise. TGWTG almost let me go several times -- I can't fault them for that.\
11In short, I was always uncomfortable aping Doug's style and being "the girl", and I didn't want to be there, but I needed the money. [[GrowingTheBeard I didn't start learning to be okay with it until I started doing essay-style videos about not-nostalgia]] ("[[TheSmurfettePrinciple Smurfette Principle]]", the Music/{{Kesha}} video). Of course there was some resistance to this transition, but eventually they stopped caring about me staying in my lane.\
12Now, to the original question: were their good times? TBH, when not with my own crew, they were few and far between. The first time I felt genuinely disrespected was ''WebVideo/{{Kickassia}}'' (I outlined why in [[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZFkR__B3Mk9EYQglvislMUx9HWvWhOaBP820UBa4dA/preview the Google doc]]) -- that was where I first realized that they were not interested in collaboration, even if it was with someone who knew more than they did about certain skills (in this case, film sets) All of the {{crossover}} sets were maddening to me (see again [[AntiIntellectualism the anti-intellectual streak]] that still suffuses the company). The thought was that this is just fun amateur hour! But you can't do that, especially on for-profit productions. [[TroubledProduction You can't go without production insurance or stunt people (if they are needed), or people will get hurt (they did.) You need producers to secure permits and hours (they didn't). You need to pay your crew (they didn't).]] I met people on those shoots I'm still good friends with, and I am grateful for that. But the shoots themselves? I was always miserable. And as evidenced by the wave of people speaking out, the Walkers did not consider us friends. There was always a divide there. The best time I had was in the 2011-2012 era when my NYC crew was fairly prolific and Website/ChezApocalypse was up and running -- and, aside from a few people I met through CA, that had nothing to do with CA. It was all downhill after that. And I know there was [[StylisticSuck some charm to the "amateur" aesthetic]] of the [[MilestoneCelebration anniversary films]], and that's what they wanted, I guess. But let me state that I do not now, nor did I ever, blast with that. I was embarrassed then to be a part of them, and I still am. ESPECIALLY ''WebVideo/ToBoldlyFlee''.\
13Oh, and I saw not one red penny from the ''Film/MoulinRouge'' review (but Doug and Music/{{Brent|alfloss}} made $$). Doug even crashed at my apartment for that, but I saw nothing for it. Doug wrote it, and [[MisBlamed I still have people assigning his opinions to me (boy do I not share them)]]. "So why did you do it?" Well, [[IWasYoungAndNeededTheMoney I needed to maintain my place on the site because I still depended on ad revenue back then]]. Everyone was going along with it, and few shared my reservations. Bad enough being the curmudgeon of the group -- you don't want to be OUT of the group, do you?\
14So tl;dr "were there good times you were wistful for?" For the most part, no. I was relieved to be gone from them, and I wish I'd done it sooner. But change is hard and scary, even for a wild libertine such as myself.\
15[[EndOfAnAge Now I promise to never, ever talk about Channel Awesome again.]]
16-->-- Creator/{{Lindsay|Ellis}}'s final words on her history with Website/ChannelAwesome
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20->If you discover that a brand or a company, like a bank or something, did something bad or unethical, it isn't surprising. People just kind of shrug and go "yep, that's how banks roll". And maybe you'll close your account and go to a different bank, but the reality is that probably don't care enough to even do that much, because [[CapitalismIsBad unethical multinational corporations doing terrible things to people in the name of profit is just, kind of, the world.]] [[AMillionIsAStatistic You don't have the brain space to care about all of them. We pay monopolistic cable companies for internet access, we have 401ks run by morally bankrupt hedge fund managers that we will never know, we still by iPhones, we still buy cheap clothes, while paying vague glib lip service to the knowledge that people are being exploited somewhere so we in America can boss Siri around. In some ways, we engage with a multitude of brands and corporations every day that someone, somewhere, is getting exploited by, often cruelly so.]] But media is different. {{Media}} is personal. Media is designed to [[{{Escapism}} provide an escape,]] [[EmotionalTorque to stir emotions, to inspire.]] The {{film}} industry is by no means the industry with the highest incidence of sexual harassment, but people care more about it when it gets exposed in the film industry, because the film industry creates media that hits emotional nerves. [[BrokenPedestal And then when we find out that something we loved was made by someone who said or did bad things, it's like betrayal.]] When people ask whether it's moral to [[DeathOfTheAuthor separate art from the artist]], or in this case, [[Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium product]] from [[Creator/WarnerBros the multinational conglomerate]], what they're really asking is: "How can I go back to consuming media like I did when I was a kid? When the most context I had or cared about was who the author of my favorite book was, or why I like this actor, or what Music/{{Kesha}}'s real name and birthday is." [[InnocenceLost But as an adult, you're expected to be an ethical consumer of media.]] And it's somewhat inevitable that some people resent that, because consuming media the way children do is comforting. Consuming media like ''Film/TheHobbit'' as an adult is complicated and in this day and age, [[GrowingUpSucks it's hard to do so innocently. And I totally understand wanting to return to that innocence, And I don't really have an argument against that worldview other than... that's adulthood.]]\
21Well, I'm back.
22-->The conclusion to Lindsay's [[TwoPartTrilogy three-part duology]] analysis on ''Film/TheHobbit''
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26->Aphrodite is beloved in pop culture more as a symbol or as an idea more than a character that does things. Two of the most famous pieces of {{art}} in UsefulNotes/{{Europe}}an history are of the goddess Venus: ''Art/VenusDeMilo'', thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch, and Botticelli's ''Art/{{The Birth Of Venus|Botticelli}}'' [[TheBurlesqueOfVenus which gets homaged in everything]] from Music/LadyGaga videos to Franchise/TheMuppets to Creator/AndyWarhol...
27-->-- '''Creator/LindsayEllis''', "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTcWJYUFsxg Loose Canon: Aphrodite]]"
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31->I think at the end of the day, your feelings are your feelings, and I wish people would own that. Feelings are not rational; you can rationalize them by having supporting evidence, but at the end of the day, if you had a criticism, it's probably because you had an [[AudienceReactions emotional reaction.]] Finding words and supporting evidence and being able to articulate ''why'' you felt that emotional reaction is kind of the best you can do, and I think the worst people can do is have an emotional reaction and not really explore it, not really put words to it, not really articulate ''why'' they feel the way they feel. [[TakeThat Either that, or just delude themselves, which is also a really popular thing to do these days]].
32-->-- Lindsay on the line between ConstructiveCriticism and pedantic nitpicking in her [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkfgB48jeZA 400k subscriber Q&A]]
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36->''Literature/TheFaultInOurStars'' is a 2012 novel written by Creator/JohnGreen, in which two children go to great lengths to find out what happens after the {{ambiguous ending}} of {{the protagonist}} Hazel's favorite book. The way they do this is to seek out the [[ReclusiveArtist notoriously reclusive author]], and find out from him. But the entire idea is flawed from the get-go -- not only does her hero let her down, she does not find her answer, because there is none, and that is a {{central theme}} of the text -- sometimes, there is no answer, the universe is chaotic, life is unpredictable, [[WeAllDieSomeday and you have no control of when you will die,]] and when you do die you will not know what becomes of your loved ones. In seeking out [[WordOfGod the authorial intent behind a work of fiction]], the two leads are trying to gain a sense of control in a chaotic universe, the sense that there is indeed an author of sorts to life, as they do not feel that they are the authors of their own stories, [[YouCantFightFate that they do not have control over their own fates.]] And indeed, they do not -- but in this case, [[ComingOfAgeStory letting go of that desire for a sense of control is a part of growing up,]] which ironically, [[YourDaysAreNumbered neither of these characters will get to do. They must mature into adults while never living to become adults.]] This is reflective not only of how we consume media and the way media can genuinely touch and inspire people, but also of a very understandable and human desire to transform that media. [[WishFulfillment Narratives give us control in a world that is genuinely chaotic and unpredictable.]] [[InDefenceOfStoryTelling We need narratives to make sense of the world we live in.]] [[ThisIsReality But that does not mean that we have control of the narrative.]] The {{character arc}}s of both Hazel and Augustus are defined by letting go of that desire for control of their own narratives, [[AnAesop and accepting that life... short though it is, just doesn't work that way, no matter how much they wish it did.]]\
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38''[[ParaText But]]'' [[{{Applicability}} that's just my reading.]]
39-->--- Lindsay [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGn9x4-Y_7A demonstrating]] DeathOfTheAuthor with her interpretation of ''Literature/TheFaultInOurStars''
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42->This was going to be a Website/YouTube video, but I just don’t have it in me to invite that kind of scrutiny, to be the last in the sick, sad line of YouTubers who get all weepy on camera and cry about how they just can’t do this anymore, boo hoo hoo. I had planned to move video content to Website/{{Nebula}}, but I realize now that doing that is just keeping wounds wide open. My life ended nine months ago -- what has been taking up bandwidth ever since then has been a ghost. It’s almost funny, how many people will insist that I have "lost nothing" (you know, because subscriber count is the only metric for success and cancel culture doesn't exist). One Website/YouTube channel chugging along on algorithmic inertia is not success -- it’s just an engine driving on fumes.\
43Many will say this is being melodramatic, that my live isn’t over, that there was absolutely nothing stopping me from brushing myself off, building back up goodwill and shutting up and playing the game. And I tried that; in a way I suppose it’s good that I did, because I needed to learn the hard way that that was never going to work. There is no un-fucking this. You can’t find the energy if there is nothing left to convert to it. You can’t be a better person if you are nothing but the hollow shell of one.\
442021 has been the worst year of my life. I am traumatized by it. To this day I still have people scolding me by how I handled it, that I should have handled it differently, that I should have “controlled” my “stans”, as if I had the capability to know what any of these people were even saying to strangers on Website/{{Twitter}} while I was shitting blood for weeks on end. The worst thing about this whole thing is that I can’t even admit this trauma because of all the rhetorical devices people have already come up with to dismiss it. That centering my own pain is evidence of “not listening” (does it occur to these people that you can listen, and disagree with other people’s conclusions?) That I’m weaponizing my “fragile white womanhood” or whatever to say that having thousands upon thousands of people who you have never met hate you and say whatever will get them the most updoots is traumatizing. That people I used to know would sit there and lie about me on Twitter dot com to the tune of thousands of retweets and tens of thousands of likes, and I just had to sit there and take it. My favorite are the people who dismiss any potential harm I might have incurred as justified because I am a “wealthy, white woman” (I am not wealthy), while these same people’s hearts positively bleed for Music/BritneySpears.\
45These people don’t see how similar these talking points are to [[GentleTouchVsFirmHand the same Boomer, bootstrap parenting style that I thought most of us had agreed was abusive -- that you need to toughen up]], accept your punishment, accept that even if the reaction was outsized that you did SOMETHING wrong, because where there’s smoke there’s fire. Grow a thicker skin. These same people who always crow about “believing victims” [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming telling victims of public dogpiles that they do not deserve to claim their trauma, let alone to process it, because they deserved it.]] There is no such thing as cancel culture. There is no incentive/reward structure in places like Twitter to call people out. There are no updoots/favs/follows/retweets for hotting a take on whomever is trending.\
46I reread the 2015 essay “[[https://thenewinquiry.com/hot-allostatic-load/ Hot Allostatic Load]]” for the first time in years last night, and I could not stop crying. Even reading some of these passages now, I can’t stop crying. This was written from the perspective of a trans femme and discusses some rhetorical devices used to demonize trans women specifically, which obviously does not apply to me, but some of it is spot on:\
47"One of the most common tools of exclusion is through mobbing, which is rarely talked about because unlike rape, murder, etc, it’s not easy to pin it on a single person (or scapegoat). Mobbing is emotional abuse practiced by a group of people, usually peers, over a period of time, through methods such as {{gaslighting}}, rumor-mongering, and ostracism. It’s most documented in workplace or academic environments (i.e. key points of capitalist tension) but is thoroughly institutionalized into feminist, queer, and radical spaces as well. Here is why it is horrible:\
481) It has an unusually strong power to damage the victim’s relationship to society, because it can’t be written off as an outlier, as some singular monster. It reveals a fundamental truth about people that makes it difficult to trust ever again. People become like aliens, like a pack of animals that can turn on you as soon as some mysterious pheromone shift marks you for death.\
492) The insidious nature of emotional abuse: How do you fight ostracism and rumors? They leave no bruises, they just starve you.\
503) Mobbing typically occurs in places where the victim is trapped by some need or obligation: work, school, circles of friends. This can prolong exposure to damaging extremes.\
51For these reasons, PTSD is an almost inevitable outcome of any protracted mobbing case."\
52The Isabel Fall case is almost a textbook example about how online mobbing harms people, and how the people who participate in these mobs never engage in any self-reflection — when some people read Fall’s “Helicopter Story” and questioned the trans bonafides of the author in early 2020, Twitter did what Twitter does and ruined Fall’s life, [[DeathOfAThousandCuts death by a million cuts]], no one single person even beginning to question whether they did anything wrong by jumping to the worst possible faith interpretation of both the text and the author. After a profile written by Creator/EmilyVanDerWerff was published late in 2021, were lessons learned about the way we use Internet mobs to tear down people we don’t know because of situations we don’t understand? No — one of Fall’s detractors, Neon Yang, became the new scapegoat du jour, using some of the exact same tactics used the prior year to attack Fall.\
53I’m not going to touch on Yang’s original comments about Fall or the pushback to them, but what was downright charming in its lack of self-awareness about that whole situation was the way people used Fall’s trauma to hurt Yang, the way they invoked Fall being checked into the hospital while Yang said whatever about Fall and “Helicopter Story”, all while having absolutely no idea what was going on in Yang’s private life. What’s particularly galling is how many people accused Yang of “Sending a trans person to the hospital with PTSD” while apparently being completely oblivious to the fact that they could be very well doing the same thing to Yang, a nonbinary trans person. There was no lesson learned on the nature of mindless dogpiling, just Twitter doing what Twitter does -- failing to examine systems of abuse while continuing to perpetuate them by laying into a new scapegoat.\
54Again, a quote from Hot Allostatic Load:\
55"Feminist/queer spaces are more willing to criticize people than abusive systems because they want to reserve the right to use those systems for their own purposes. At least attacking people can be politically viable, especially in a token system where you benefit directly by their absence, or where your status as a good feminist is dependent on constantly rooting out evil."\
56When the bounty system calls for the ears of evil people, well, most people have a fucking ear.\
57Something else that was also inevitable -- I was going to quit Website/YouTube. I knew I couldn’t do it forever, that I was running out of steam, that I was sick of the increasing dehumanization inherent, that I just didn’t have anything to say about movies anymore. The plan was always to end with Love Never Dies, since it seemed like the best place to end, with some semblance of energy rather than keeping on until I've withered away to nothing. What happened to me in March and April hastened it, but this was always inevitable.\
58My initial plan was to leave Website/YouTube for Nebula, but I realize now that this is only entrenching myself in a more intimate form of harm rather than the broad, buckshot kind that Website/YouTube invites. I won’t go into detail (not right now, anyway), but I can’t do video content for them either. I can’t make content period. I just can’t do this anymore. There is no healing as long as there is attachment to the thing that makes you suffer, and the thing in this case is being in the public eye at all.\
59What I wanted was to quietly disappear, but since this is a platform where people are paying me to make content, I feel like I have to make a statement. If it were just me by myself I would just sign off and say goodbye and that would be it, but I have a team who depends on my company for health insurance, and including dependents I supply full benefits for eight people, and here in the US employer-based insurance is often the only feasible option. Saying to everyone “sorry about your children, but they can’t have insurance anymore because Twitter makes me sad” just doesn’t seem like a fair deal (none of them incidentally know I’m posting this).\
60So the only thing I can do for now is keep this page active with the loose promise that someday I’ll figure out something in the future to make up for this, while asking you please stop messaging me apologizing for not being able to subscribe anymore. You don’t owe me anything. This Patreon is, like my own life and career, just running on fumes.\
61But all I know now is that being in the public eye at all is a losing game, and I regret all of it. I regret every time I’ve ever stood up for anyone -- it always backfires. I regret every time I pushed back against something unjust -- it was always just used to hurt me. I regret every time I ever stood up for myself -- I never did it “correctly.” I regret every time I showed any vulnerability -- just more ammunition to be used against me later. I regret every time I ever tried to play the game with peers and colleagues -- they will drop you the second you aren't popular on Twitter anymore. It’s all hollow and brittle, and if there is one thing I have learned this year it is how eminently expendable I am. The good, progressive cis, straight, wealthy white men keep on trucking and coming out on top because deep down, they know that the systems they profess to stand against ultimately exist to benefit them.\
62And to all the people telling me I need to grow a thicker skin or remove myself from the conversation altogether -- you are right. I don’t have it in me to do the former, so I shall do the latter.\
63Hope your new year is better than this.
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65-->--'''[[Literature/TheOnesWhoWalkAwayFromOmelas Walking away from Omelas]]'''

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