carareblogsthings

[carareblogsthings]

hi i'm really good at controlling my facial expression and keeping it pleasantly normal and mysterious. also one time i looked at someone and she got so startled she fell off a bridge. what was that about lmao

[carareblogsthings]

WIBTA for taking advantage of my boss’ possible manic episode?

I know this already sounds bad but hear me out.

So I (30M) am the sole employee of this guy (62M) who’s honestly just a miserable boss and an even more miserable person. It sucks so bad working for him—the pay is horrendous, he’s verbally abusive, and the working conditions are awful (in the winter I literally have to stay bundled up the whole work day because he refuses to put the heat on in the office). He wouldn’t even give me holidays off if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s basically nothing to do those days because everywhere else is closed. I’m almost positive he unironically thinks poor people should die if they can’t work. His nephew (aka his only living relative and just the nicest guy) came by yesterday to invite him to Christmas dinner and he told him he’d see him in hell.

I cannot stress this enough—it’s BAD. I’d quit, but it’s been hard finding a better job and I’ve got four kids at home, including one with special needs.

Anyway, so here’s where I’m wondering if I’d be the asshole. Today was Christmas Day and he showed up at my house out of nowhere (huge red flag, I know). At first I thought he’d forgotten I had the day off and he was here to chew me out, which was worrying enough, but then his whole demeanor changed and he was super happy and excited and talking about how he was going to raise my salary. He even mentioned possibly making me a partner in the firm.

Now if that was it, I’d feel a little weird about the suddenness of it but it’d be fine. I’m not going to complain about having more money to feed my family. But then he started talking about how he wanted to pay our mortgage off. He talked about wanting to pay for our son to get the very expensive medical care that’s probably going to save his life. He mentioned at one point that he was going to be donating a huge amount of money to charity too—I knew he was rich but it staggered me. All this from a guy who doesn’t (didn’t?) even want to turn on the heat or the lights because it costs too much money.

It was such a sudden and drastic change that happened very literally overnight and now I’m kind of concerned he’s having a manic episode or something. I really, really want to accept his sudden generosity (I probably will; my wife is all for it and thinks he owes it to us), and I would love to believe that he’s truly had a sudden change of heart (an actual Christmas miracle lol) but I’m just worried about the possible consequences of accepting huge financial gifts like this from someone who I believe might be experiencing some kind of break from reality. Even if there’s nothing legally wrong with it, I’m worried about the ethics of it.

TLDR, my asshole boss might be in the middle of a mental breakdown. WIBTA if I accepted his offer to pay off my mortgage and my son’s medical expenses?

[carareblogsthings]

it’s safe to say i think about this video at least four times a day, i can quote almost the whole thing from memory

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people who don't follow chess I promise this post is really funny

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[carareblogsthings]

never forget the universal rule of the order of things: People Will Not Read It

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We'll drink a cup of kindness yet, For auld lang syne

It's a Wonderful Life (1946) dir. Frank Capra

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weird unprompted opinion but i think out of all the storytelling mediums.....theatre best portrays loneliness

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Long-Tailed Tit/stjärtmes. Värmland, Sweden (December 17, 2016).

[carareblogsthings]

A lot of fiction these days reads as if—as I saw Peter Raleigh put it the other day, and as I’ve discussed it before—the author is trying to describe a video playing in their mind. Often there is little or no interiority. Scenes play out in “real time” without summary. First-person POV stories describe things the character can’t see, but a distant camera could. There’s an overemphasis on characters’ outfits and facial expressions, including my personal pet peeve: the “reaction shot round-up” in which we get a description of every character’s reaction to something as if a camera was cutting between sitcom actors.

When I talk with other creative writing professors, we all seem to agree that interiority is disappearing. Even in first-person POV stories, younger writers often skip describing their character’s hopes, dreams, fears, thoughts, memories, or reactions. This trend is hardly limited to young writers though. I was speaking to an editor yesterday who agreed interiority has largely vanished from commercial fiction, and I think you increasingly notice its absence even in works shelved as “literary fiction.” When interiority does appear on the page, it is often brief and redundant with the dialogue and action. All of this is a great shame. Interiority is perhaps the prime example of an advantage prose as a medium holds over other artforms.

fascinated by this article, "Turning Off the TV in Your Mind," about the influences of visual narratives on writing prose narratives. i def notice the two things i excerpted above in fanfic, which i guess makes even more sense as most of the fic i read is for tv and film. i will also be thinking about its discussion of time in prose - i think that's something i often struggle with and i will try to be more conscious of the differences between screen and page next time i'm writing.

[carareblogsthings]

I think its jack zipes who talks about the distinction betweem 'children's literature' [marketing term] and 'children's literature' [what children organically read], the latter category being largely impossible to qualify and taking in things like billboards, receipts in mom's purse, labels on clothes, tv subtitles, random page of book left on a low shelf, dropped post-it note, street signage, writing on a coin, etc.

as adults we ignore this latter category and buy into the marketing term so completely we forget that's all it is. the concept of books just for children (and later the emergence of YA) was always a profit-seeking endeavour, and it emerged from the idea that children needed restricted information diets and upright moral instruction. around the turn of the 20th century, people started gifting children (or their parents) religious texts, books of manners etc. which were not produced FOR children, but which were deemed especially suitable to improve them. this led to the establishment of 'children's books' as a discrete category in publishing (BECAUSE IT MADE MONEY), and for the rest of the century the idea of books as a morally superior medium for children hung around. books are better for you than comics, radio, tv, movies, etc. they improve your mind, they're like the vegetables in your media diet. it's so deeply ingrained as a cultural preconception that it feels almost sacrilegious to challenge it, but it is a completely arbitrary qualifier that arose from the desire to squeeze money from parents' desires to 'improve' their children.

[carareblogsthings]

"Some twelve thousand muskets were double-loaded, and half of those more than triple. One rifle even had twenty-three balls in the barrel — which is absurd. These soldiers had been thoroughly drilled by their officers. Muskets, they all knew, were designed to discharge one ball at a time. So what were they doing? Only much later did historians figure it out: loading a gun is the perfect excuse not to shoot it. And if it happened to be loaded already, well, you just loaded it again. And again.

— Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman

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You can explain yourself in the tags and in fact I hope you do.

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not allowed to say Harry Potter, but what was your book series obsession as a teen

mine was definitely Eragon

[carareblogsthings]

Personally I think that battle sims like showdown would still be a thing in the pokemon world. Cuz like picture this: you are ten years old and the only Pokémon you have access to is the elderly family Sunflora. You love Sunny to death but also literally every media you consume involves Pokémon battles and champions and cool ass fights. Sunny is too old to fight and your neighbor’s Gothita is too young. One day on the playground your friend tells you about this cool website that lets you battle pokemon on the computer. Later that night you boot up the family computer and instantly realize that this website lets you play as GROUDON (!!!!). There’s no going back from there.

[carareblogsthings]

I did this to help illustrate a point I'm making in a different post, but I feel it's relevant above and beyond that specific context.

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Great news! Belgium today becomes the first country in the world where sex workers can sign a legal employment contract and gain access to all employment-dependent social security (which includes saving for a pension, paid pregnancy leave, paid sick leave etc.). It gives sex workers more rights and makes them less dependent on the goodwill of their employer because they now have state protection through a legal contract.