Monstrous Productions

Hello folks! This week's episode will be coming out on Saturday instead of tomorrow. This week has been a little hectic for us so apologies for the short delay.

See yous Saturday! ✨🚀

Oh the tea and biscuit part is non-negotiable! Got to reward yourself with a little treat. Also you can combine it with another important thing - including breaks in your tick list, bonus points if you spend the whole break reading a book or doing something non-phone based! 🍵🍪

*quietly opens casting call up to anyone in the US, bc even though she might not be able to afford to travel someone to LA, she's still curious to see who all is out there*

Also interspersing very hard, intangible things (writing) with more tangible things (do the washing up). I count each step as a new tick - washed up, dried up, put things away is three whole ticks. Then I get a cup of tea and a biscuit as a reward for being productive.

For me the fix comes in dealing with that feeling of not actually doing anything. Making a very small, very manageable list of what I want to do for the day, and ticking it off as I go. "Write for ten minutes". I can do that. Oh did I manage to write for 20? What a successful person I am!!

A graphic with fairy lights, a teapot, flowers and a book. The text reads, "Cosy means comfort - but whose comfort, precisely?"

This week on the blog, I'm chewing over why I find it hard to get along with a lot of cosy fiction (hypocritical, I know!) and ask whose comfort is being centred in these kinds of stories.

Read it now on our Ko-Fi! ko-fi.com/post/Behind-...

wow we really are inventing the four humours for horror 😂 i suppose the final answer for a placement on the grid could be which imbalance is the final/most damning?

CASTING — ATYPICAL ARTISTS

I've been working on this idea, of a rock band in the 90s that exorcises ghosts with their music, since early 2023 and I've never wanted to make anything THIS badly.

and the first step is casting!!! if you're an actor who sings or a musician who acts, please audition! atypicalartists.co/casting

I've never seen advice from an actual disability charity/outreach org etc that said longer is better for alt text 😅

Also, a person using a screen reader doesn't want to sit and listen to a twenty minute long description! If your sighted audience would read your post in five seconds, let the rest of your audience have a similar experience.

yes I do the same! Or like, "The 'Is This A Butterfly' meme edited to read 'is this an alt text'. It gives the same amount of information and context as a sighted person would have - i.e. if they dont know the meme, they might not get it.

All the guidance I've seen has been for capturing the essence, not the detail. So, "Hero, a light-skinned person with dark curly hair and glasses. They are doing fingerguns at the camera." Not, "A photo of Hero, a person in a white tshirt, green corduroy trousers, hair parted on the left" etc

(but personally I would love to see The Thing in a Cotswolds holiday cottage)

Mr McDyre declines to comment at this time 😌

A bit of wetness doesnt make the whole thing wet. Alien is in the middle bc it has a bit of everything.

I think not everything fits into these categories! However your argument for the Dryness of The Wicker Man is very compelling, and I'm very happy to change my opinion accordingly.

Who knew this would be the topic to set AD Bluesky alight 😂

Acid is dry 😌 It may be liquid! ☝️ But it is dry.

Oh, OK, I didn't realise that! Thanks for explaining, that makes sense! I suppose that also means the auto-generated ones can have similar issues - if you'd muted Ryan Gosling for example.

Matthew is standing in the living room eating yoghurt going, "Waah, 'its cold outside, its cold outside' - so what?! What's that got to do with anything?!"

That's the best explanation, unfortunately. Always worth checking - I've personally never seen one I could use straight off the bat. It feels so performative to have a useless description instead of having none.

I'm not an expert by any means but my understanding is that alt text should be short, and should capture the main reasons you've chosen this image. The first example is technically accurate but unhelpful. I wrote, "Ryan Gosling looking affronted." Because his affrontedness is the point!

A screenshot of the alt text of a gif showing Ryan Gosling looking affronted. The alt text reads, "a man wearing sunglasses is smoking a cigarette in front of a shoe display".

A screenshot of the alt text for a gif of the Genie from Aladdin zipping his mouth closed. The alt text reads, "a close up of a cartoon character with braces on his teeth".

Just a reminder, since I've come across this twice today alone: check your alt text when posting gifs. I don't know if these are AI generated or what, but they're absolutely heinous and do not convey what these images actually are.

a close up of a cartoon character with braces on his teeth Alt: The genie from Aladdin zipping his mouth shut

I said nothing! (I do think it sounds pretty Warm tbh but would have to watch it to know for sure!)

What would you do if I told you that the frozen ocean.... is Dry...? The ocean they're trying to reach as they walk overland is wet but not capital-W Wet, since the full category is Wet Horror. Rather, their goal is Wet Salvation, which is an altogether different graph.

You are certainly not alone in having objections to this placement 😂 But for the sake of spousal solidarity, I can't agree, of course.

Precisely! He argues that the cold isnt what you're afraid of - its secondary to the heat of the Thing itself

a man wearing sunglasses is smoking a cigarette in front of a shoe display Alt: Ryan Gosling looks affronted

pointless?!

Matthew says: "It's humid - big pile of steaming flesh, sweating bodies, its hiding in the hot wet body. It gives me 'wet hot meat'. Disgusting! And nothing to do with the Arctic!"

Report back when they reach consensus!