dorotheian

[dorotheian]

I get real "I'm at soup" vibes from some media crit

[dorotheian]

Disaster “entertainment” can be a very loaded term, for very valid reasons. It is completely reasonable for people to find it distasteful that someone might be entertained by what are generally very horrific events. This is something I could do a much longer essay on, and probably will at some point, but I wanted to touch on some of the basics as I start this Patreon.

In my mind, I divide fictional disaster media up thusly:

Disaster Entertainment: fun, campy, a little (or a lot) on the nose, very over the top, not meant to be super realistic, but still digs into things like earthquakes and asteroids and volcanic eruptions. Think Sharknado, San Andreas, 2012, etc.

Disaster Fiction: can still be fun and campy and a little on the nose, but tries to ground itself more in realism. Think Twister, Dante’s Peak, Deep Impact, etc.

Disaster Realism: A story that, even if it deviates heavily from true events, is inspired by them and openly ties itself to them. Think The Impossible, Only the Brave, Titanic, etc.

When I am talking about disaster media, I am very careful about how I use these terms, due to the connotations of the word “entertainment” that are associated with fun. I don’t think all stories should have to entertain you in the sense of being fun, I think they should just have to keep you interested. Whether that interest comes from a place of fun, of general human curiosity about the dangerous aspects of life, or something else will vary vastly from person to person. But for the sake of clarity, and for keeping people from feeling like the pain of others is being used purely for entertainment, I do think it’s a distinction that is important when analyzing disaster media the way I do.

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[dorotheian]

I am not sure where my fascination with disasters came from, but I have had it for a long, long time. So much so that I very specifically remember being in Middle School and writing a short story about a tornado hitting our school and trapping all the students in the gym (but none of the teachers, of course, because what fun would it be if the teachers were around?). My poor teacher didn't quite know what to do with me when she tried to pair everyone up by genre to critique one another's stories, as no one else had written something remotely similar. It didn't matter though, I was hooked. That afternoon I was standing in my garage and thinking about how I wanted to grow up to be an author who wrote disaster stories, and I wanted to write one story about each kind of disaster.

After several years (and two agents) trying to get these books picked up traditionally with no luck, I've decided to just do it myself. And so, the Little Disaster Books collection has been born! When you pick up a Little Disaster Book, here's what you're going to get:

A short read. Each book is around 50,000-70,000 words. That's a bit longer than a novella, and shorter than most novels, because sometimes you just need a quick book, not a door-stopper.

Each book is a standalone. Because, again, sometimes you just need something quick that you don't have to invest in for a decade while you wait for each book to come out.

Lots of queer characters of all sorts. The disaster genre is, unfortunately, pretty notorious for either not having queer characters at all, or killing them off. Little Disaster Books will instead center them and their narratives. But, the stories won't be ABOUT queerness, they'll just have characters that are queer.

No quickie romance. There will be characters in relationships (I'm a sucker for books with couples that are already together at the start), and maybe the first blooms of a potential romance, but nobody is falling head over heels when they should be focused on survival.

No gore for gore's sake. Characters might get hurt, or even die, but these aren't horror books or slasher books or anything in that vein.

A realistic look at disaster. I'm not just obsessed with fictional disasters, I'm obsessed with the real ones too. I have spent a lot of time studying disasters, myths around disasters/disaster response, and the sociology of disasters. With Little Disaster Books I have worked very, very hard to make the books as realistic as possible when it comes to things like civilian responders, everyday heroes, and how disaster response tends to work. At the end of the day they are still fiction, but they're fiction heavily grounded in reality. No "everyone for themselves/we're all animals when the lights go out" nonsense here.

Full endings. There's a bit of a trend in survival thrillers for them to end right at the climax/moment of rescue, or within a few pages of it, even if things haven't been fully wrapped up. Little Disaster Books will all have more rounded endings that delve, at least a little bit, into the aftereffects of what the characters go through, because sometimes the after is the hardest part of all.

The first book in this collection, Lie Down in the Ashes, is launching on Kickstarter on Janaury 15th, 2025! Sign up to be notified on launch here. It is about a group of teens who get caught in the middle of a fast moving wildfire that one of them accidentally starts.

Sign up to be notified on launch here.

[dorotheian]

I am begging the FDA to require that companies CANNOT just put "spices" as an ingredient but have to label the spices.

"Spices" can mean "this has some oregano and black pepper in it" or it can mean "this has cumin cayenne and paprika and if you eat this you will be sick in bed in pain for a week" for me.

Seriously, this is an allergy issue and a huge oversight on the part of corporations.

Require detailed labeling of spices used in packaged foods NOW.

[dorotheian]

Having my interest piqued by fandom analysis, I often seem to join the fandom bandwagon at the exact moment (or a little while past it) that fandom drops the franchise like a hot potato: BBC Sherlock, Voltron, Hetalia… What can I say? I do enjoy the feast that was left behind. I was there for Winter Soldier though. ��

sorry but voltron legendary defender RULED this website for like two and a half years. you couldn’t go a day here without hearing about it. i devoted my precious high school years to its study and analysis. it was wildly popular, considered extraordinarily well-written for an animated children’s show, and revived voltron in pop culture and the public eye. and now it has been pulled from netflix (who PRODUCED IT) and the only official way to watch it is to pay for it on youtube or amazon. and that’s only the first six seasons. i’m so serious there is no legal way to watch seasons 7 and 8 of voltron. how did we even get here man

[dorotheian]

Boss is asleep, cannot stop me from frogposting

[dorotheian]

There’s certain hobbies and interests that aren’t inherently conservative or regressive but do attract a lot of people who are those things or worse and when you’re a progressive person involved in those hobbies hearing that someone else is interested in your hobby usually has to involve some “But are you normal about it?” conversations before you get too excited

[dorotheian]

PETER MORWOOD oh my godddddd i was trying to remember who the fuck it was with the good foccacia recipe and i was like. "he is friends with diane duane on tumblr and is also an author. i scrolled for ages looking and then god sick of it, opened the ask, and it popped right in. anyway thought it'd make you laugh to know that i remember peter morwood primarily through his foccacia recipe and being your tumblr buddy than for his life's works

(chortle) I suspect he won't think that's a hanging offense. (And tbh, most of his stuff isn't in print in North America at the moment. But we're working on that.)

Meanwhile, since Himself is presently asleep upstairs after a late night, here's the link to the recipe we've been using (it's on the Washington Post's recipe site). They in turn adapted theirs from one of the focaccia recipes here at the Bread In 5 website, which comes from the people who wrote Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day.

(In case it's paywalled, I'll cut-and-paste it under the cut...)

Ingredients

4 cups (500 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons (390 milliliters) lukewarm water

6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

1 tablespoon (11 grams) granulated sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons (4 to 5 grams) dried instant yeast (not rapid rise)

1 1/8 teaspoons (16 grams) fine salt

2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh rosemary (from 2 to 4 sprigs), divided

Coarse or flaky salt, for sprinkling

In a large (5- to 6-quart) bowl, use a wooden spoon to stir together the flour, water, 2 tablespoons of the oil, the sugar, yeast and fine salt until a rough dough forms. Transfer to a container with a lid, partially cover and let rest for about 2 hours on the counter. You can use the dough right away, or cover and refrigerate until needed; see Make ahead. (If you plan on refrigerating and have a lidded container large enough for mixing, you can assemble the dough in there and refrigerate it after the 2-hour rise on the counter. The dough is much easier to handle after being thoroughly chilled.)

Place a baking stone on the middle oven rack and preheat to 425 degrees. Pour 2 tablespoons of oil into a 9-inch cake pan and evenly coat the bottom of the pan.

Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough lightly with flour, then pull half of it off (about 1-pound/454-gram portion; the dusting makes this task easier, as the dough is sticky). Dust the half you are using with more flour and quickly shape it into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go.

Use your hands to flatten it into a 1/2-inch-thick round 6 to 7 inches in diameter. Place the dough top side down in the cake pan, moving it around a bit to coat with the oil. It will not fill to the edges of the pan. Turn the dough over, cover the pan with plastic wrap or a plate, and let the dough rest for 10 to 15 minutes.

Use your hands to gently push the dough to the edges of the cake pan. Sprinkle with half of the the rosemary and coarse or flaky salt, as needed.

Re-cover with plastic wrap or plate, and let the dough to rest and rise for 20 minutes.

Repeat with the second ball of dough, or store it to bake later.

Transfer the cake pan to the heated baking stone in the oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the focaccia crust is medium brown and feels dry and firm on the surface. The baking time will vary depending on the focaccia’s thickness. (If baking both loaves at once, switch them from left to right and rotate from front to back halfway through to ensure even baking.)

Use a rounded knife to loosen the loaf from the edges of the pan, then transfer the focaccia to a cutting board. Cut into wedges and serve warm, or allow to cool completely.

Disclosure: ...Noting here that not one of these I've made has ever reached the "allow to cool completely" stage. Something always seems to... happen to them first. (Like Peter. Or me. Or both of us at once.) :)

[dorotheian]

i’m very quickly getting sick of left leaning dudes being like “eh well getting rid of DEI isn’t really the worst thing he could do” like congratulations you dumb fucks you fell for the fascist propaganda

[dorotheian]

I wish it was easier to talk about mobile phone addiction without sounding like a boomer

[dorotheian]

It makes me sad how no one ever seems to mention how wild the crocodilian-line archosaurs were. Dinosaurs get all the attention when there was equally crazy shit happening on the other branch of the archosaur tree.

There was a whole linage of bipedal crocodylomorphs during the Triassic that were basically identical to theropod dinosaurs, so much so that a lot of them were initially classified as dinosaurs!

Just fucking look at them!

And these weren’t just little lizard guys, there were some big lads running around.

Not to mention the long-legged ones that galloped around on all fours like some kind of terrifying reptilian dogs.

These crazy crocodiles aren’t just from the Triassic, either; there was a galloping, hoofed crocodilian that lived during the Eocene and likely hunted horses. (They were smaller and not quite as fast as modern horses, but still)

But don’t worry, they weren’t all meat-eaters! There were vegetarian and omnivore crocodylomorphs too! Just look at this guy!

He was an ankylosaur before ankylosaurs were cool (or even existed).

[dorotheian]

[dorotheian]

every time you see a headline like this

I want you to remember these ones

[dorotheian]

Bothers me when I'm reading a fanfic and they make Doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy just like. A mean asshole? MY Doctor McCoy introduced Spock to baby talk. MY Doctor McCoy bounces on his toes and has a smile bright as the sun. MY Doctor McCoy knocked Kirk *and* Spock out with a hypo to sacrifice himself for them even though the aliens said he was almost for sure going to die, and the other two would probably live. MY Doctor McCoy was like, hey, sure Spock committed mutiny, but do we really gotta arrest him? Yeah he's grumpy sometimes, but have you considered the fact that he's stuck on a ship in Space with two assholes that literally never listen?

I just watched the Abraham Lincoln episode and I stg it's a miracle McCoy isn't actually a huge asshole, because wym "this planet WAS deadly but Abraham Lincoln says it's cool so we're going" "hey, don't do that, you could beam down into lava and literally DIE" "Ugh shut UP McCoy we're following Abraham Lincoln onto the Lava Planet That WAS ENTIRELY LAVA until two minutes ago" dude I'd be swinging at a mfer. Especially if I was their doctor knowing it was going to be my job to sew them back together. They're absolute menaces to him and he still loves them and is willing to die for them every other episode.

And I don't ever want to see another "ahh he hates Spock" when he so obviously does not. In the last episode, he wasn't even sure that Kirk and Janice had swapped bodies and yet again, he was ready to commit mutiny with Spock and Scotty (why does Spock love mutiny? 🤨) He does like to rib Spock and get reactions out of him, but Spock likes to do it to McCoy just as much. He's been around humans his ENTIRE life, his mom is a human, he's half human, "I have no idea what you mean, Doctor, I'm just a simple little logic machine," you cannot convince me it's not a game.

And every time I feel like McCoy is being hurtful for actually no reason, the next scene is Spock taking action because of whatever McCoy had said and allowing himself to tap into that human part of him. He has a way of speaking Spock. It's not always nice but it's a way that gets through. Do you think asking Spock to use his Vulcan powers to permanently alter his friend and captain's memory so he forgets his grief over this chick he fell desperately for and then also she died in the span of like four hours is a great idea? No, he'd probably have some moral or logical issues with that. but just speech at him about love and feelings and stuff, throw something in there about how great it'd be if he could just forget, and he'll do it himself.

ANOTHER THING. When he's an asshole, he apologizes. He's not an asshole often, but when he is, he apologizes. Leonard McCoy is a lot of things, but he's not really a dick.

I think he deserves to be represented for the guy he is. He has SO many nice and good moments, he's just subtle about them. Remember when Kirk was like, "Bones, why didn't you tell me she was blind?" And he was like, "Idk Jim maybe because that'd be rude? Have you considered it's not your business?" REAL. Honestly, real.

This is a much longer rant than I meant for it to be and somehow I still have more I could say so imma cut myself off right here ❤️ If you read all that, thanks, you're just as weird as I am, even if you don't agree with my lil character analysis. If you didn't read all that, then you're not reading this ✨️

[dorotheian]

Nyota Uhura by Jason Potretz

[dorotheian]

been seeing some responses to the many many lawsuits and other actions taken against trumpet and munkfruit that fall along the lines of "this isn't enough, it's already too late, you can't fight fascism with the law, we're all gonna die." i understand the fear, truly, but i'm curious as to your thoughts on it, as to me it seems like this sort of behavior/posting doesn't do much beyond embolden the narrative that everyone actually likes these bastards and they're too powerful to be stopped.

Welp. This is the kind of question that requires me to write a long and complex sociopolitical/critical/historical/Discourse-esque analysis that will take a while and which I am trying to do only selectively, but I'm at home on Saturday morning, I don't have anything else to do right now, and it does present me an opportunity to address some things I've been thinking about. So. We'll give it a shot.

The first thing that has struck me is that in a few short weeks, we're getting a sharp empirical disproving of two common online-leftist fallacies: one, the old "both parties are exactly the same" chestnut, and two, "the only resistance that matters is Violent Glorious Revolution" (which somehow and conveniently never happens). We had months and months of "Biden is just as bad as Trump!!!" being spread as gospel truth in online-leftist circles, and then when Harris took over, it switched just as seamlessly into "Harris is just as bad as [or even worse than] Trump!" Now, as I have said before, there were plenty of legitimate criticisms to make of Biden, particularly the Gaza policy (upon which Harris notably differed). But it's quite telling that the keyboard warriors who spent all of last year howling for The Righteous Punishment of Biden-Harris (regardless that the obvious ancillary consequence was letting Trump come to power) have either disappeared completely when it comes to dealing with the results of that rhetoric, or have switched to "everything is doomed so I guess we shouldn't bother anyway." Like. Trump is now proposing to fully ethnically cleanse Gaza and either blithely hand it over to Israel or build Jared Kushner Beachfront Resort Disneyworld, and what do we hear in protest? For the most part, crickets. These are not serious people. Their opposition is not morally consistent, and it only depends on how they can make themselves look good. I thought that Trump was somehow supposed to be magically better than Biden particularly on the Gaza issue, and that was why it was worth letting him get elected? Or something? Something!?!

I'm curious as to whether those people still legitimately think that Harris would have spent her first few weeks in office dismantling USAID, signing weekly anti-trans executive orders, unleashing ICE across the country and terrorizing immigrant communities, putting the Project 2025 guy in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, letting Elon Musk run rampant with Treasury data, nominating the likes of RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard to Cabinet posts, trying to freeze all federal funding, stripping DEI initiatives, dismantle the Department of Education -- etc. etc. The thing is, as ghoulish as it is, none of this is a surprise, because it is literally what Trump and his people spent the entire presidential campaign loudly, openly, and repeatedly promising to do. However awful they were and are, they were not remotely secret about their intentions. That information was out in the open every time they opened their mouths. But too many people didn't pay attention, rationalized it away, decided that "he won't actually do that" (despite the fact that he launched a literal violent coup attempt on the Capitol the last time he was in office), or just made up their minds that Trump Will Reduce Grocery Prices and refused to listen to any information that countered that view. What do we get now? Trump laughing off the grocery-prices issue and insisting that it's "not a priority" and Musk managing to claim that the real problem is government spending, not corporate greed. Again, this was completely predictable, because y'all got willingly suckered. It was not hard to see it coming.

That said: if the Glorious Online Leftist Revolution is still coming, and by some lights we might now legitimately need it, where the fuck is it? Are they still out there banging the drum against Trump and his "let's ethnically cleanse Gaza" policy and anything else that they insisted, they swore up and down, was functionally equivalent or possibly even marginally better than Biden-Harris getting another term? No. They're either dead silent, offering weak excuses, or completely giving into "we're doomed there's no point fighting back through weak shitlib institutions that are obviously terrible and will fail" blubbering that makes no fucking sense. One, because they move the goalposts so constantly that there's not even any attempt to reckon with the last effects of their damaging bullshit, and two? As I said, where's the fucking Revolution magically coming to save us and install a perfect leftist utopia (which is never how revolutions have ever worked) and sweep away Government Tyranny? Is that only for when a Democrat is in office and you can have confidence that the government is not going to come after you in the middle of the night for talking about it? Now that there's an actual fascist in power, it's somehow too hard to resist at all, even in small, institutional, and everyday ways that are often far more effective at practically confounding the bad stuff instead of empty and useless online echo chambers, so guess we should all just give up??!

Fuck. That.

This is also why we have to talk about the catastrophic lack of information literacy and critical thinking skills in young leftist spaces. A good example is the recent migration of TikTok users to the Chinese app RedNote. It was sweet for a little while as there was cultural exchange and friendship and memes. But then, predictably, it dove hard into "ah, once again The Evil US Government Has Lied To Us and there are no problems at all in China!" I have seen posts float by on my dash that unironically claim this is the case and China is truly great and Americans should want to move there and clearly all that business about authoritarian control and mass repression was just a ruse by, again, The Evil US Government. If you are so utterly devoid of basic information literacy and research abilities that your standard of proof for "is the Chinese government repressively authoritarian and totalitarian" is "a random Chinese person on an app in a country where the Internet is viciously controlled and voicing the slightest criticism can make you disappear told me that it isn't," then for Christ's fucking sake, you need help. For one, it wasn't just the US government saying this. It was, y'know, Chinese dissidents, the entire nation of Taiwan, historians, academics, researchers, the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang, etc etc. If your only standard for believing or supporting anything is "the opposite of what the US government thinks," then you are perfect targets for authoritarianism. Hey, a person living under an authoritarian regime who will punish them if they speak out against it told me everything was fine! Clearly there's nothing to worry about and we should want it here in America!

Come on. Come on.

This is also the case because uneducated young leftists like to unironically label themselves "communists" or "Marxist-Leninists" as if it's cool and hip and has never been involved in anything problematic in all of history, so anything that calls itself that must be supported. Shoutout to the idiot in my notes recently who reblogged a several-year-old post just to shout at me about how historical communists NEVER worked with or collaborated with fascists, because something something The Communists Were The Pure Shining Good Guys! (Uh, nobody tell them about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.) Clearly, the Chinese Communist Party is good and beneficial, end of story, no more criticism or caution needed! Obviously, yes, official American policy toward China has often been driven by basic Sinophobia, and the determination that nobody can change American hegemony or unipolarity or its ability to call the shots how it pleases. But if that is the literally only criteria you're using, then yeah. If you're so unaware that "the Chinese people are ordinary human beings" and "the Chinese government is repressive and authoritarian" are statements that can and in fact do coexist, then apparently you've missed the situation you're in right now, where "the American people are ordinary human beings" and "the American government is repressive and authoritarian" is also the case. Because online leftism is essentially devoid of a consistent moral principle and will just blithely switch up to support Bad Things as long as they're being done by governments with the correct ideological label, here we are.

Anyway. This is getting long, but the main takeaway is that the "all resistance against Trump is doomed and I guess we just gotta die :(" line is now, somehow, often coming from the same people who were constantly yelling that the only hope was a Glorious Revolution against Biden-Harris, and it is somehow even stupider. So you'll trumpet about Gloriously Overthrowing The Government all the day long as long as a Democrat is in office, but the instant a Republican gets in there instead and starts acting like an actual fascist, welp, time to just shut up and accept our doom and not even bother to struggle? Please tell me how any of that makes sense. Especially when actively confounding the Trump/Musk Axis of Evil is already working. There is also the fact that the establishment-media types are supporting this narrative for reasons of their own; witness the fact that the entire US corporate media is owned by oligarchs who hastened to bend the knee and pledge fealty to Trump 2.0. They obviously also have a reason for inculcating hopelessness in you, and that the only recourse is to shut up, accept it, and let them continue to rob you blind. Because American democracy will never matter as much as money, power, and control for the Billionaire Bros.

The point is: this is a bad-faith narrative on all sides. Whether it's coming from the online leftists in their latest head-spinningly hypocritical volte-face, the oligarch-owned corporate media that wants to feed you constant Bad News to keep you clicking and worried and distracted and unable to resist, the Trumpist power that wants people to quit making this pesky stink about all their authoritarian fascist adventures, or anyone else. There is nobody who has your best interests at heart if they are telling you that everything is doomed and the only thing to do is lie down and take it. There is no logical reason you should listen to them. Go forth and keep resisting, in whatever way presents itself. Those cumulative small actions are far more effective than any Splendid Revolution that never, ever materializes, while the people who preach it just sit back and whine about how things are so bad now so clearly they couldn't. Shut up.

It is always important. It always matters. It will make a difference.

Courage, etc.