#I don't really have a particular cultural issue in mind

[a-space-for-mimi]

"The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." - Proverbs 18:17 ESV

[etirabys]

meandering post about reading Orson Scott Card again

I've been offline starting at 9pm every day (except once. I was drunk at karaoke and asked for anons at 8:30pm) for six weeks, with the result that in befuddled boredom two nights ago I picked up Orson Scott Card's Songmaster from the house bookshelf.

I read Ender's Game and three sequels when I was a teen thought the books were mid. Since those are OSC's best works I assumed he had nothing more interesting to offer me and didn't try more of him for fifteen years, but Songmaster was compelling enough that I immediately afterwards picked up The Memory of Earth, the first book of a pentalogy.

TMoE is extremely my jam: after humanity blows itself up on Earth, AIs monitor thriving human civilizations in the planets that survivors managed to escape to, and suppress any tech that enables large scale violence by exerting low key mind control via satellites. But forty million years pass, many of the satellites break down, and the AI needs help from humans to restore capabilities. Because as its control wanes, people are starting to e.g. conceive of airplanes or bombs again, and override the injunctions against entering military alliances more than two edges of connection away.

The AI is worshipped as a god all over the planet, but the fourteen year old protagonist that becomes one of the AI's agents tells the AI from the beginning that he'll break with it if its morality seems wrong to him. I like the fourteen year old – unlike Ender or Songmaster's protagonist (adult minds piloting ten year old bodies), he's a normal gifted kid who's unpopular 50% due to his ego and big mouth and 50% because he's socially inept and offends people even when he's trying to be nice.

Songmaster is also partly about a permanent solution to large-scale violence, albeit through one guy who establishes a monopoly on violence and sweeps in pax galactica. Both it and TMoE are preoccupied with the eradication of suffering from evil / human violence, which is closer to my resonant frequency than narratives about defeating particular people or ideologies. At the moment I can't think of any other book with such an insistent focus on the matter than T.H. White's The Once and Future King. It's hard to make a compelling story out of, and I don't think Songmaster really succeeds, but TMoE's premise is well suited to explore that. (I'm also enjoying the matriarchal culture where everyone is expected to have multiple serial-monogamous marriages.) After reading 70% of TMoE last night I wrote:

Usually when I read fiction there's a small part of me going, how can I use this as fodder for my own growth, how can I remix or improve or react against this, how do the author and I measure against each other? (If the quality and content are at an anti-sweet spot, the small part becomes quite large and I feel all teeth towards the author.) But on occasion I read something so close that the absence of that measuring-feeling is its own sensation – ego departs, or at least is split across two bodies. There's just amity and recognition

And it's pretty interesting to feel this way about Card for, well, the reasons.

(If you're familiar with Card drama none of the following will be new to you; I'm coming to it fresh so the rest of this post is me going "uh... wow")

I vaguely knew he was a homophobic Mormon who'd gotten into fights about gay stuff, but I couldn't tell from the Ender books I read. But in Songmaster his issues spring off the page in such a weird way. Every fifth Goodreads review of this book is "Card, u gay?" because, well,

(One review, possibly from a fellow Mormon, that went "Card, it's so sinful of you to be this gay in your novel". Why did he write this book that would predictably make everyone mad...)

it's full of gay male desire. The protagonist (Ansset) is approximately a castrato and characters notice him sexually a lot. The first and only time Ansset has sex it's with a Kinsey 4-5 male character he loves, who's married to a woman but has fallen in love with Ansset. It turns out the drugs Ansset took to prolong his singing career painfully and only-kinda-figuratively explode your balls when you have your first orgasm and you'll never feel sexual desire again. (You'd think his loving teachers would have warned him of that, but, whatever, they didn't.) The other guy is literally castrated in punishment for inadvertently torturing a highly valuable castrato. It's pretty bald: GAY SEX IS ALMOST IRRESISTIBLY TEMPTING BUT YOU SHOULDN'T DO IT.

(Sidenote: both Ansset and the guy's wife are very close and have a "there's enough love to go around" attitude about the gay sex initially, before they go "wait Josif is a SERIAL MONOGAMIST... he can only love one person at a time... the moment he had the gay sex his marriage was destroyed". It's funny in a mildly stupid way that Card would set up this parable of homosexuality destroying lives and a marriage but almost everyone involved is peacefully ready to sail into an open marriage. I guess it makes sense if you want to say very clearly that THE GAY PART IS THE BAD PART)

which is fascinating to me, because... why would you tell on yourself like that

(81k also told me secondhand of an essay? interview? where Card openly says "we have to stand against legalizing gay marriage because everyone will get gay married and society will collapse", so that's informing my read of Songmaster as well)

I am pretty dang open about my personal life online but if I had a lot of feelings I thought were disgusting and immoral I would not write a novel dripping with those feelings before pointedly castrating the leads for them. Especially if it wasn't relevant to the actually highbrow themes of (checks notes) winning over your adversaries with kindness and never relinquishing your monopoly on violence. I would be so so so so embarrassed to let this go to print, it's so psychologically transparent, what was he thinking

(Well, I assume he's a very different person with different social incentives. For all I know, people in his church went "hey Orson we read your book and it's clear that you're gay but signaling strongly that you won't give into the gay feelings, we're here for you, it was really brave of you to publish this".)

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading updates: august 2024

the good news is that I did a lot of reading this month, the bad news is that honestly? I think that my birthday month has had the biggest percentage of literary letdowns, duds, and outright bullshit than any other month of this year so far.

but at least there's plenty to talk about, so let's get going!

Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-Blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power (Devon Price, 2024) - uh oh gamers, we're starting on a doozy! I've enjoyed both of Price's previous books very much, but with Unlearning Shame I couldn't help but feel like I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I wasn't getting what I had signed on for. the issue, I think, could be corrected by an adjustment to the title, which seems to be promising a very broad tackling of the concept of shame and is therefore making some pretty big promises. in reality, the book is much more narrowly focused than that, interested primarily in the shame that arises in the activism-minded when they feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of awful things in the world and their perceived inability to do anything about it. fairly early on Price introduces an apparently relatable anecdote about himself and a friend having mutual breakdowns in a grocery store because they were both so paralyzed by the conundrum of trying to buy the most ethical groceries possible, and I realized this book was maybe not really for me or my particular experiences with shame. I think this book will be really helpful for a lot of people for sure, would love to pass it on to a lot of my freshmen, but overall it did not live up to the expectations I brought to the party.

A Separate Peace (John Knowles, 1959) - so I wanted to reread this because someone on here sent me an ask about, I don't know, my favorite required high school reading or whatever, and I said it was A Separate Peace but then I realized it's been over a decade since I read the book and I had to go see if it still actually held up. and god, does it EVER. this is such a brutal and heartbreaking novel, beginning in the last carefree summer that best friends and roommates Gene and Finny will experience before their final year at their boys' private school and their seemingly inevitable draft into WW2. although Gene is seethingly jealous of Finny's seemingly effortless charisma, popularity, confidence, and athletic prowess, the two boys are also inseparable - until a tragic injury changes the course of Finny's life forever. this book is a mess of unspoken pain, from the looming end of innocence on a global scale to the intimate ache of loving your best friend so, so much and having no healthy way to express it because you're a repressed little rich boy in the 1940s.

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea (Rita Chang-Eppig, 2023) - Chang-Eppig's debut novel follows the career of Chinese pirate Shek Yeung, also known as Zheng Yi Sao, immediately following the death of her husband, fearsome pirate Sheng Yi. you've probably seen a post or two about her floating around on this very hellsite, calling her a pirate queen and accompanied by this image:

Chang-Eppig isn't interested in portraying Shek Yeung as any kind of heroine or feminist icon; over and over again it's acknowledged that she's simply a woman who has survived massive hardships and will do whatever she needs to do to survive. manipulation? spying? extortion? torture? murder? you name it, she's done it, and she does not feel remorse. while the novel wasn't a knockout for me either in terms of plot or prose, it's nice to see an entry into the trend of "retelling" stories from history and mythology centered on women that isn't determined to justify every step a maligned woman ever made. Shek Yeung is what she is, and her story makes for a gritty, bloody adventure.

Victim (Andrew Boryga, 2024) - this book is pure sleazeball fun; if you've ever wondered what I consider a romp, this is it. Victim follows our manipulative king Javi Perez as he builds a writing career for himself by turning in one essay after another about racial discrimination that he never really experienced, inventing stories of hardship caused by racism and poverty from his college application essay to his school newspaper to the story that finally brings the whole lie crashing down when he stretches the truth too far. the novel is written like Javi's apology in the wake of getting #canceled, and while I do sometimes feel that this premise makes some of the writing seem a bit implausible (why would you admit that!!!) it's a fun setup for a scandal that would have been a bloodbath on the twitter of old. come get your mess!!!

Bad Girls (Camila Sosa Villada, trans. Kit Maude, 2022) - this is my first time reading Sosa Villada's work but OH BOY, do I need to seek out more. this is a skinty little novel following a dramatized account of the travesti (or transgender) women who live and sell sex in Córdoba, Argentina. the women build an unsteady but beautiful and magic-infused family under the protection of the ancient Auntie Encarna. the protagonist (who is named Camila Sosa Villada, no relation I'm sure) watches as her unconventional family grows, changes, and frays over time, struggling to find ways to stay afloat in a world that see them as disposable. Sosa Villada's turns of phrase are brilliant and searing, and she weaves fantastical elements so nimbly into her narrative that it's utterly believable to see women becoming animals and courting headless men in the streets of a modern city. strongly recommend for fans of Kai Cheng Thom's Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars.

Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism (Aileen Morteon-Robinson, 2000) - this book serves as a scathing literature review indicting Australia's white women anthropologists and feminist scholars for the ways in which they've dehumanized and discredited Aboriginal women, stripping them of the right to be authorities of their own experiences and barring them from a white-centered feminist movement. Moreton-Robinson's account is excellent, contrasting the wok of white women academics with the accounts of Aboriginal women to reveal exactly how massive the disparities in understanding are. as a USAmerican previously aware of Australia's colonial history but unfamiliar with the specifics, it was jarring to discover exactly how similar the mechanism of colonial violence are between my country and Australia, with countless genocidal parallels to be drawn. one particular highlight of the book comes via my purchase of a 20th anniversary edition, which includes a new post-script by Moreton-Robinson in which she dissects and responds to various criticisms of the book at its time of release, taking several critics to task for the belittling tone they used to describe her work and the tools white feminists use to absolve themselves of blame in the face of critique from women of color. fascinating and thorough articulation of Moreton-Robinson's point, and deservedly blistering. I love when academics call each other out by name.

The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance (Sabrina Strings, 2024) - so the thing about this book is that there are really good PARTS. Strings is still an excellent historical writer, and I found a lot to appreciate in, for instance, the segments on the history of Black American pimp culture and the analysis of Playboy and Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl. the more personal segments, where Strings contorts herself to fit her own failed relationships into the narrative she's building, are decidedly less consistent in their quality, with some feeling like they would have been better off staying between Strings and her therapist. there's a long and convoluted digression about Sex and the City, and a strange anecdote towards the end in which String recounts a phone call with a friend's college-aged son who, String believes, was masturbating during the call. a yucky experience, to be certain, but I'm not sure it justifies Strings filing a police report against the youth and his mother, who she accuses of having groomed her on the son's behalf. she also casually drops in the same chapter that she considers herself pansexual because she's attracted to trans men in addition to cis men? idk man!!! this book was so uneven that I found myself genuinely questioning whether Strings' first book, Fearing the Black Body, is actually as excellent as I remember it being. I'm pretty sure it is, but god it sucks to get shaken so hard that you have to wonder!

The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures (Phoebe Gloeckner, 2002) - another book that I had to read for class, years ago! I read Diary of a Teenage Girl in one of my gender and women's studies classes in my undergrad, for a class with a title along the lines of Girlhood Stories in Fiction and Film. Gloeckner's novel (though heavily informed by her own life, she insists that it's a work of fiction) sees its young protagonist, Minnie, navigating a great deal of sex, alcohol, drugs in 1970s San Francisco. I started thinking about the book because I was listening to a trio of episodes of You're Wrong About in which Carmen Maria Machado guests to talk about the pervasive sham that is Go Ask Alice (great series, check it out) and I started thinking about Diary, which is so much less preachy and didactic and is, you know, actually drawn from a real teenage girl's diary, unlike Go Ask Alice, and lacking Alice's preachy didacticism. as a diary based on a real diary this book is largely lacking in any particular plot (the most consistent through line is Minnie's ongoing and tumultuous sexual relationship with her mother's 35 year old boyfriend), but if that's not a turn off then you'll find yourself rooting for Minnie to find her way all the way to the uncertain but ultimately optimistic conclusion.

One and Done (Frederick Smith, 2024) - okay, so. this is a romance novel that I picked up because I saw a review talking about how it's an incredibly realistic depiction of working at a university. now that's obviously an insane thing to look for in a romance novel, but I like romances, ESPECIALLY gay romances, and I work at a university, so I figured sure, I'll bite. spoiler alert: it's not great. I posted some examples of the prose here, and even if the two protagonists talked like actual human beings it wouldn't make up for the stale-ass plot or devastating lack of chemistry they have going for them. more like One and Glad to Be Done With This Book That Isn't Very Good, am I right, ladies?

Seduced (Virginia Henley, 1994) - guys, I'm gonna be so fucking real with you. this is the most batshit novel I've ever read, period, let alone the most batshit romance novel. this book was the winner of a poll I ran on patreon last month in which my wicked patreonites got to nominate romance novels of their choosing for my next reading project and voted amongst themselves to crown a winner, and against all odds and my own light attempts to sway the voters, Seduced won it all. this book has everything: a historical setting, a bold young lady disguising herself as her own brother, wildly unchecked orientalism, a murderous cousin, high society scandal, and some of the most torturous sex scenes I've ever encountered in my life. truly this write-up cannot do justice to what I have experienced; I've already promised by patreonites that I'll have to do a little youtube live in order to fully express the extent of my dissatisfaction.

and that was the month of August, babey!!!

[holmsister]

Is Kabru a Twink? A possible answer from queer history

Abstract: ever since his introduction, discussion amongst Kabru scholars has been vivacious, sometimes to the point of some vitriol, on one particular specific point: does Kabru of Utaya fulfill the basic traits of a twink? There are points to be made on both sides of the issues. The solution proposed in this paper aims to be the compromise that might allow the scientific community to move on from this terminological impasse.

First of all, since this is a terminological discussion, let's start with a few definitions. What is a twink?

From Wikipedia, page "Twink (lgbt+ slang)" [retrieved 2024-06-12]:

Twink is gay slang for a man who is usually (but not always) in his late teens to twenties whose traits may include a slim to average physique, a youthful appearance, little or no body hair, and flamboyancy.[5][6][7] Twink is used both as a neutral descriptor, which can be compared with bear,[8] and as a pejorative.[5][9]

From Fandom LGBTQIA wiki, page "Twink" [retrieved 2024-06-12]:

Twink is a subcultural term referring to gay or bi men who defy traditional masculine roles, embracing traits that are generally seen as feminine.[1]

Twinks are typically associated with a few key tropes: general physical attractiveness, a slim build, and a youthful appearance that lacks facial hair and often body hair as well.[1] In his book Never Enough (2007), Joe McGinniss describes a court case in which twink was defined as "a gay slang term used to denote an attractive, boyish-looking gay man between the ages of 18 and 23, slender ectomorph and with little or no body hair, often blond, often but not necessarily Caucasian."

Now sadly we don't have the time to delve into the ways the term "twink" has sometimes be used to enforce ageism, racism and fatphobia in the LGBT+ community, since we are talking about, you know, a fictional character in a fantasy. We will refrain from judgement and just base ourself on these barebones definitions without further fleshing them out.

On the surface, Kabru fulfills many of the requirements for a twink. His build is slender (tho more on that later), he is in the age range (22, altho its worth noting age of majority in the dunmeshi world is 16).

Also, he has the baby face. Round cheeks, long lashes, big eyes... Like there's no way around it thats the kind of face some seme asshole would grab by the chin as they call him "pretty boy" in a bl manga. That's a face that gets men who have always considered themselves hetero to question a thing or two. That's a face that gets your landlord to make your laundry for free.

Kabru Schrödinger's twink paradox comes from the fact that as someone who practices swordfighting and wears an armour (a lighter one but still) and marches for days in the dungeon, he MUST be muscular. There is no way around this. And this goes against one of the basic tenets of twinkhood, which is Twinks MUST Be Lithe And Delicate.

To further this point, I will quote from this article from OUT magazine titled "Dear Internet: THIS is what the word 'twink' really means", dated 01 March 2024 [retrieved 2024-06-12]:

"But the things that tie all these definitions together include being gay, being thin, young-looking, little to no body hair and no facial hair, and attractive. So NO, 27-year-old with a ’70s mustache and buff arms full of the tattoos he’s gotten over his adult life is, you guessed it, NOT a twink..."

As you can see, emphasis is put on the lack of muscles. While Kabru has no facial hair, we can however substitute the tattoos for the many scars he has received in battle - his body looks much more like the body of a man who is weary with experience. Again, keeping in mind that the age of majority in dunmeshi for tallmen is 16 and Kabru is 22, we could argue that proportionally, at least culturally, Kabru leans towards being almost too old for a twink, too, and his scars can be symbolic of that in much the same way tattoos are.

Also, in both the definitions above a tendency towards feminine-coded behaviour is noted. In Kabru's case, while see him occasionally engaging in behaviour that might read as slightly feminine, we see him also assume very masculine roles both in his party and during battle. Its also worth noting that Kabru was raised by elves, a culture whose aesthetic standards lean heavily towards what reads as feminine to tallmen, and that Kabru himself is characterised as someone who heavily adapts his behaviour based on other's expectation - we can therefore argue that it is possible that what "effeminate" behaviour he engages in is actually a result of his upbringing, as well as a way to endear/ingratiate himself to those that he judges would respond better to such behaviour, rather than a matter of self-expression.

Now, i already hear the objections, so i will further elaborate on the muscle point. Having been killed and resuscitated so many times, Kabru has lost the soft layer of fat that makes Laios body so evidently strong, and it has probably even started to cut into his muscles. Also, differently from Laios' stout build, we see young teen Kabru in a few illustrations with Milsiril and he IS naturally lanky - even at his top weight its probably going to look more like an athletics/gymnastics body type than the wrestler/weightlifter type.

However, the muscles ARE there, and losing the layer of fat would make them even MORE visible. He is more likely to have defined cut abs than Laios, paradoxically. And again, if you look at the classic twink porn, the boys rarely have sixpacks or even visible arm muscles. They're bony.

Thankfully this is not the first time the lgbt+ community has been faced with this dilemma. Therefore, falling back on the wisdom of our elders, i propose: Kabru is a twunk.

Urban Dictionary, voice "twunk" [retrieved 2024-06-12]

Twunk

A term used amongst the LGBTQ community to describe males (typically gay) with the face of a twink (boyish-looking, pretty) but the body of a hunk (muscular, jocky).

Without the ambition of being definitive, my humble offering will hopefully offer Kabru scholars a chance to possibly reach a terminological consensus, therefore allowing us to move on from this topic without misunderstandings.

[superkooku]

Dionysus' iceberg

This post is what remains of an initially very long rant idea. That means there will probably be a part 2 😏.

Here's the reason for my title :

In theory, you can stop there since my meme pretty much summarizes my complaints. But since I like ranting, I'll continue 😈

The tip of the iceberg

When you think "Dionysus", which words come in mind first ?

Probably "wine", "party", "alcohol" "fun god".

These words are what most people remember about Dionysus. And yes, I'm not going to deny, they fit.

Unfortunately, my problem comes with the fact that 9.5 times out of 10, Dionysus' personality will exclusively revolve around these aspects.

Since the issue is about modern adaptations and perceptions, I'll use a modern term.

I'm sure most of you are familiar with flanderization, right ? If not, the link to TV Tropes' article on the subject is available.

Many adaptations fell into that trap for, I think, every single Olympian.

Hades, god of the dead, lord of the Underworld = Satan, evil death god, darkness and sorrow

Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty = Superficial bimbo who only cares about her pretty face

Zeus, king of the gods, lord of the sky and thunder = 100% pure God OR more recently : evil king god who constantly abuses women.

The gods are stripped of their complexity to fit simpler and more "digestible" characterizations. It doesn't help that the cultural context surrounding them is also taken away...

But this is about grape boi, right? Well, Dionysus is no exception to that rule. In fact, he might be one of the worst cases.

So far, he was never really portrayed in an "insulting" light, like Apollo in Lore Olympus or Hades in the Percy Jackson movie. Fortunately.

But, from all the popular adaptations I've seen, none of them manage to portray Dionysus ! None ! Does that make them automatically bad ? No, of course. It's just something I noticed.

God of war ? Doesn't appear, only mentioned

Disney ? Don't even try 🤣. Just a drunk goofball. Yes, that includes the fantasia segment and Hercules.

Lore Olympus? Well, he's a baby for 99.99999% of the time, so it doesn't count. But he's still a quiet little Gucci bag for Persephone.

Hades I ? Just a nice guy. But hey ! He can give us useful boons ! And I like his sass.

Maybe he'll do more in Hades II. They're usually more accurate than most, right ? Though that's not a very high bar. And they know about Zagreus ! Surely that's a good sign, right ?

Nevermind...

Here's what all these adaptations tell us :

Dionysus is the god of wine, feasts and parties

He's an Olympian

He likes to get drunk and party 🥳

And that's it.

Again, I'm not blaming anyone, but if the myths stopped with those three points, wouldn't everyone wonder why he's even an Olympian ? I sure did when I was a kid.

We have the god of thunder, the goddess of wisdom and war strategy, god of music/arts/medicine/100 other things, the god of the oceans ! Many cool gods !

And some drunk dude. He's not given any particular power, except the power to stay super passive no matter the stakes ! If the story revolves about epic godly fights (which is often the case), he's absolutely useless.

Heck, Hades II even actively depicts him as a pacifist who can't handle war. While he's not physically a weakling, he sure psychologically is.

Why is this a problem ?

I am not going to beat around the bush: this gives us a very incomplete and incorrect perception of the god.

Even the things that aren't forgotten about him (like his link to wine) aren't explored.

The thing with Hades II (that's the last time I'll mention it) is that it tries to deepen the flanderized version of Dionysus. He's not stupid, but afraid. He drinks to forget his issues.

While this characterization can be very interesting taken separately, we must remember that this isn't an OC, but an interpretation of a cultural figure.

It must be accurate ! While I can accept some liberties, I think that those should mostly be an extension of the original material, not a total deviation.

Dionysus isn't a scared little boi or a stupid drunkard you can manipulate. In fact, that's quite the opposite. And he's not afraid to get his hands dirty.

(even if the "dirt" in question is the blood of his enemies).

Under the surface

Though it's rather "stuff you can find on Wikipedia". Or by reading the myths.

More about it in part 2 of the rant...

It'll be about theater, madness, travels, link between mortality and immortality and... pirates turning into dolphins.

The actual interesting stuff about Dionysus.

Edits :

1. Thanks to @st4riel-the-w1tchling for clarifying the situation about Percy Jackson. I made my own research about BoZ. My opinion is basically still the same. Again, nothing terribly offensive, but nothing that interesting for Dionysus either.

2. I made part 2 a while ago, might as well add it here :

[absolutebl]

Industry question for you, please: Why is it that it seems that Thai BL in particular has some really systemic issues with writing endings? Screwed-up pacing/editing, out-of-character/illogical actions, not being very satisfying... it seems like a show avoiding that fate is more of an exception than the rule, unfortunately. Do a lot of them just... not write the ending ahead of time? 😅 That would make having these sort of wacked-up endings at least make some sense, but... really, it makes *no* sense to me that that would be the actual standard writing strategy-- I mean, for example, one of the best living novel authors I know of *always* has very satisfying endings, literally without fail (I have read everything he's written and been perfectly content with the ending of every one), and the reason for that is he purposefully always writes the endings of his books *first*, then works everything back up to that point. Similarly, some of the best TV shows I've seen (from any country-- and this does actually include some Thai ones, to be fair) were written either all in one go or at the *very* least with their endings obviously already very firmly in mind, regardless of if they were completely original or were adaptations of some other source material. So... why does this often seem to be such a difficulty for the writers of Thai BL? 😅 (Sorry if I sound a little salty here, but endings either make or break all fiction for me {novels, manga/manhwa, TV, movies, games, whatever}, and I've been getting burned what seems to be more and more often lately with shows being great for the vast majority of their runtime but then inexplicably totally botching the landing, seemingly out of nowhere-- so I'm a bit frustrated with that when it seems to be a really simply-solved problem {that, indeed, has already been solved by many others before}: JUST WRITE THE DAMN ENDING *FIRST* and then work up to it? 🙃😅)

Endings huh? You a romance reader by nature? (Wait, no, you said... HE. So... Sparks? Green?) Anygay, where was I?

But yeah, I get it. I've always fancied the dessert course the most, myself.

To answer your question, not sure. I'm assuming its a narrative expectation based in culture. Like Japan and their lanes, China and 6 act structure, or Korea's adoration of love triangles. And producing culture comes to film and storytelling with its own set narrative conceits, archetypes, and tropes and aren't proscriptive but are leaned on a lot. Much as they come to film with a certain style as well.

Think about the "look" of Korean BL compared to the "look" of Taiwanese BL, for example. They have an entirely different flavor to them. Korean stuff is usually all bright and airy, lots of distance shots, super clean and uncluttered, filtered and filmy and atmospheric. Taiwanese stuff is much closer, more grainy, more bold with it's color choices and contrasts, kind-up n your face and gritty, a bit messy sometimes.

It's jarring to go from one to the other.

After watching nothing but Asian dramas for so long, I always find it jarring to go back to American shit. It feels over-acted and unsubtle and kind of brash. Over all "loud" and in my face. Jarring.

So when first encountering 4 or 6 act structure most westerners feel a little unmoored, it doesn't feel comfortable until you sink into it and leave 3 & 5 behind.

I'm mean I'm so used to K-dramas with that arbitrary year or more separation in the final episode I;m now shocked when it's not there.

I guess what I'm saying is maybe it's just a thing with Thailand, not to put that much truck in endings. The way (especially) romances do in the western world. There's a very fixed idea of what an HEA should look like in the west. Thailand may not share that idea.

I've not read the source books of any of these BLs, so I don't know if this is just their narrative style or not.

I mean there are some Thai BLs with good (if not great) endings, and plenty of Korean BLs with terrible middles, and far too many Taiwanese BLs with bad beginnings.

Ya just kinda get used to it, I guess.

15 Thai BLs with Good Endings

A Tale of Thousand Stars

Bad Buddy

Lovely Writer

2gether

Be My Favorite

Dark Blue Kiss (possibly my favorite on this list)

Destiny Seeker

Make a Wish

Naughty Babe

SOTUS

[flanaganfilm]

Good morning/ evening! My name’s Sam and I’m currently a film student hoping to get into freelance writing. I’ve got a couple questions if you don’t mind (hoping you haven’t already answered them and I just missed them).

When you first starting making your own films, did you have already have thick skin for any critics/ bad reviews? Or is that something you grew over time?

Also, for your production company, do you hire interns and PAs or do you prefer filmmakers with more experience?

Thank you!

To your first question, I do not have a thick skin in that area AT ALL and never have. I don't know many people who do.

I'm often approached by fans who will talk about what a project of mine means to them, or I find a review or think piece online where the author really connected with my work. I want to let that feedback in, because it's validating. But letting it in means letting ALL of it in, even the negative. I don't really get to pick and choose. Once I decided to let myself react emotionally to other people's feedback, those gates are open I've got to accept whatever comes through.

I take my work very seriously, and tend to pour my heart and soul into it. We make these things because we love them. It can literally take years of daily work to do. When people love it, it feels great. When people don't, it hurts. There's really no way around that.

Film criticism has, like a lot of things, devolved over time. I was a massive fan of Robert Ebert, who was thoughtful and sophisticated in his critiques (most of the time), and tried to approach each movie he watched on the film's own terms - from the perspective of "how successful was this at achieving what it set out to do?" I see a lot of criticisms today that don't do this, and instead are lamenting what a movie is or isn't, saying things like "I wish this was more..." or "This isn't good because I wanted it to be something else."

"I wanted a ________ and what I got instead was ______ so it sucks."

The other issue is that loud, sensationalized vitriol gets more clicks. Negative reviews, especially brutal and callous ones, get more attention than positive ones. I've gotten to know and befriend some professional critics over the years, who have all told me that the positive reviews don't generate the audience reaction quite like the negative ones. People enjoy watching things get beat up. We reward the wrong kind of discourse, and that isn't unique to film criticism - it's everywhere. That's just a symptom of our culture.

One of my great frustrations is how we assert our opinion as objective truth. There's nothing more dangerous than tweeting "I liked ______ movie!" The comments flood in about how you're wrong, how it sucks, blah blah blah. People think their own taste is somehow factual. If someone says "I had a fantastic steak dinner last night and I loved it," we don't say "you're wrong, steak sucks". We understand the concept of taste when it comes to other things we consume, but when it comes to entertainment each one of us thinks we're the ultimate authority.

For myself, my producer and my wife have long discouraged me from reading reviews. I still can't help it. It's not healthy though. I can scroll past a dozen positive ones, and they evaporate in my mind, but I read one scathing thing and it sticks with me for days. There is one particular review of MIDNIGHT MASS that is one of the most baffling and frustrating things I've ever read, as the author appears to have misunderstood just about every aspect of the series, and drawn the angriest, most misguided, most erroneous conclusions. I read it with my jaw on the ground... "but they're objectively wrong. That isn't what happens, and that isn't what the show is even about." But what can I do? Who am I to say their experience of the show is invalid? They feel how they feel, and that's fine. That's okay. It has to be.

So your skin doesn't get thicker, it is a bizarre emotional experience to put something personal out there into the world and see the gamut of reactions. But at a certain point you have to remind yourself that it's impossible to please everyone, and that these projects don't belong to the filmmaker - they belong to the audience, and each and every one of those experiences is unique and valid. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned, and perhaps the critique can help you grow as a filmmaker.

I have similar feelings when I see someone trashing someone else's work I happen to love - for example, I remain baffled by people who didn't like EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, but that doesn't mean anything. It didn't work for them, that's all. Nothing works for everyone.

I have found over the years that I respect and appreciate analyses and criticisms that take this more personal point of view, and talk about their own interaction with the work as opposed to just dismissing it outright. When someone says "this movie didn't work for me," or "I didn't connect with it," or "It just wasn't my cup of tea," I have a much easier time taking it seriously. It's changed how I talk about my own reactions to movies or shows that I didn't respond to. And I found that it's made it much easier for me to enjoy things even if they aren't quite for me. Instead of being reactive and saying "it sucks" or "I hate this," I've gotten better at realizing it's not a binary experience - I can look at what DOES work for me, and I can appreciate it, even while other elements might not.

It makes for a much more nuanced discussion, and helps me grow. Sometimes, though, it's just the wrong thing to watch on the wrong day, and that's fine too. Maybe that makes it a little easier. If I step out of something and just really don't enjoy it, it helps remind me that it's not personal. Clearly, other people DO enjoy these things, sometimes I'm very much in the minority. And when that happens, I can say "oh, it's not so bad if someone hates a movie I made, or a show, or whatever. Life's too short."

But I long ago decided I'd never say anything negative about someone else's work in public. I know too much about what it takes to make a movie, and I'm not a critic. I'm a filmmaker. This town is too small, and there is zero upside in dragging another filmmaker's efforts. On the rare occasions when I do see another filmmaker indulge in that behavior, it is always a terrible look. And it can have real-world consequences - there are a few filmmakers who I've seen publicly slag off other people's work, and I quietly decided never to hire them. Like I said, it's a small town... and most of us read what people say about our work.

We should get back to that work, remember how lucky we all are to do this for a living, and leave that kind of thing to the critics.

[mitigatedchaos]

The Low-Friction Moment

Post for September 16, 2024 ~4,000 words, 20 minutes

Tumblr user max1461 wrote:

I'm contemplating the tradwife shit again, I'm coining the term "bioconservative turn" for the present cultural moment (evidently the term bioconservatism is already in use for something else... perhaps "biotraditionalist turn" will do instead?). The tradwife shit, the raw diet caveman testosterone shit, the wombyn born wombyn shit, all of it. It's characterized by a couple of things I think:

If this is a real trend, where is it coming from? One theory someone could float would be that this isn't a unified, general trend, but rather a bunch of smaller trends resulting from responses to more specific issues. If it actually comes together, it's going to do so as a political coalition and will remain ideologically incoherent in practice.

I would like to propose a more general cause, or rather, a shared source of influence (not responsible for 100% of causal share): people are sick of computers.

More below the read-more.

Max continues (numbering mine)...

(1) An ever-present awareness (or pseudo-awareness) of biology, an interest in biological specifics such as testosterone levels, and an appeal to "biological essence" or "biological purpose" as a source of authority.

(2) A conservative, although not necessarily politically right-wing, outlook: "modernity is essentially flawed and we need to return to our roots in order to reconnect with what really matters".

(3) A particular focus on health as an ideal; per the above a sense that modernity is above all else unhealthy.

(4) A conceptual shift away from the mind and towards the body as the most central part of the human being, commensurately a great political concern with the nature of bodies, and an attribution of society's faults to the wrong-treatment or wrong-usage of bodies.

(5) A generally somewhat quietistic bent, although by no means apolitical. A focus on individual right behavior. Perhaps contrary to expectations, not necessarily characterized by eugenicism to any great extent.

Obviously these different components will be expressed to different degrees in different cases, but I think this circumscribes it pretty well.

I think this emerging perspective has a couple of distinct influences that are being syncretized to varying degrees. [...]

...and adds:

Please note that I am not here to argue some stupid shit, or to do base guilt-by-association of this or that ideology. I don't like this biotraditionalist turn very much, but the reasons I don't like it are thoughtful instead of vapid. I would be interested, though, to hear others' opinions on this trend, if they think it's a real thing and what they have observed about it, because I've been contemplating it a lot lately. At least, I'd like to hear from people with novel sociological observations or commentary to provide, rather than boring polemics.

a - The Axis

To the degree that this is a real thing, I suspect that this is about computers. Computers and virtual reality are low dimensionality, high disembodiment. Whether with video games or with social media (posts on a flat surface), it's possible to get completely absorbed in the virtual environment and forget one's physical body for a time - thus the overrepresentation of transgender individuals and furries online. (The pro-trans perspective would be that this relieves gender dysphoria, while the anti-trans perspective would be that this disembodiment creates transgenderism. One person reported doing hard math to distract from thinking about their body, so I'd lean towards the former explanation. I've discussed this matter previously in terms of the relative influence of movements.)

Transgenderism represents a weighting of the mind over the body. If the mind says 'M' and the body says 'F,' then 'M' is correct and 'F' is wrong.

Rationalism is partly about weighting the conscious mind over the subconscious mind and the instincts of the body. Transhumanism is about the use of the capital-forming power of the mind to replace the body (either by uploading the brain into a computer, or by replacing flesh and blood arms with cool robot arms).

It isn't surprising that we would see, in terms of one causal factor, the rise of rationalism, transgenderism, and transhumanism, during the 1990-2020 era, a time of profound and transformative change driven by rapidly-expanding computing power and rapidly-expanding accessibility of computers.

However, rationalists, transhumanists, and pre-normalization transgender individuals all tend to be the sorts of people who get their opinions by thinking about them individually, rather than socially.

b - The Problem 1

Computers, the Internet, and social media, especially the consolidation of social media into a small handful of sites, created a very low friction environment.

For the rationalists, or someone like me, this wasn't that much of an issue directly. I intuitively evaluate ideological systems for loops, and have a good feel for logical fallacies, so when someone tries to pose as higher status but makes a terrible argument, I feel pressured to contradict them rather than to obey them.

For people who primarily get their opinions socially, I think this has been a disaster.

As you may remember, my model of the Republicans is that they pick a guy and then they rally around him as their leader. In the 2000-2008 era, that was George Bush, which lead to a steadfast refusal to question the Iraq War, and likely contributed to the mishandling of the War in Afghanistan.

Now, The Guy is Trump. This represents a decline in the reliability of information about the details, but a correction on some of the fundamentals.

QAnon is pretty bad, epistemically. A loss of trust in institutions contributed, as did the lack of administrative political skill by Trump himself. He's also hardly a model of general epistemic virtue; his advantage is mostly not being invested in some of the bad choices the US political establishment made previously.

Did the reduction in friction contribute? I think so. Without a reduction in friction, we would expect QAnon to manifest in a dozen different conspiracy theories, rather than come together into one more unified whole.

(One of the chief problems for the red tribe is that they aren't a "complete ethnicity." They're largely a slice of the white American personality distribution. This limits the number and scale of their institutions, which reduces their ability to build an independent knowledge base using personnel aligned with their interests.)

Meanwhile, my model of Democrats is that they're more based on a perception of consensus. They are hierarchical, and they do value authority. Many conservative complaints about "unprincipled" progressive behavior are actually about progressive deference to tribal authority; the progressives involved assume that the authority "knows better" than they do, and so assume the right-wing criticism cannot be true (or is true but irrelevant).

The reduction in friction caused a two prong problem.

First, in an environment where information moves more slowly, it may be easier to build a consensus around truth, since truth is observable everywhere and remains fixed over time. (Yes, yes, specific artifacts and events, I know. But you get what I mean.) You can't be sure if the guy over at the other newspaper or other university would go with the same partisan message that you would, but if you try to keep your message relatively close to the truth, then the two messages won't be discordant. [1]

The system of blue checkmarks for institutional actors under pre-Musk Twitter enabled a rapid formation of consensus, without a need to coordinate indirectly using the truth instead of communicating directly.

It was easy. It was cheap. It meant making fewer compromises with the interests or desires of the coalition. They could coordinate around whatever dumb message they wanted to, regardless of its relation to the truth.

Second, the people working inside the institutions were exposed to the low-friction environment. From the outside, they could be identified and targeted by activists, who would be able to call down large numbers of people on the institution. From the inside, their coalitional loyalty meant that many of them adopted the lower-epistemic-quality ideology. At the same time, there was a significant decline in employment in some knowledge-generating industries, like the newspaper industry. (It doesn't help that the positions are prestigious, even if they aren't the highest-paying.) This combination promoted ideological infighting, causing a misalignment of the broader institution with its mission.

Institutional missions can be used to build supermajority support, insulating institutions from politics. If an institution has 75% support, then an attack generally can't get a solid majority even from the party with the greatest opposition to it. If an institution falls to 50% support, then it can be dismantled or defunded for votes. Since in the two-party system, each party wins about half the time, that's a risky position to be in.

Other people don't think exactly the same way I do about this, but there are similarities in their perspective on this matter.

c - The Problem 2

Because developing true information is so difficult, it's also a fragile process, thus the replication crisis. Even a slight tampering with each node in the process will screw up the outcome.

Activists generally want to exclude results that are unfavorable to their causes, and include results that are favorable to their causes. (They would justify this from a moral perspective - "protecting the weak," for example.) Without error, this results in bias that leads to a distorted view once the information undergoes lossy compression. (Imagine a 500,000-word book reduced to a 500-word summary - all of the qualifiers and hedging will, by necessity, be trimmed out.) Error can introduce favorable-seeming information that is mostly or entirely false, causing a report to go from merely omitting unfavorable information, to being entirely fake.

The more complex and multi-stage the knowledge-generating process, the more information that will be lost across the whole process from activism. People have a limited amount of time and attention, so they'll typically only look at the output of the prior stage, and not account for drift from activism in stages before that. This can happen with multiple people, or just with one person working on a multi-stage process. With research, for example, deciding what question to research is an initial stage which can introduce bias even if every other step is followed meticulously. At the end stage, if the peer reviewers are all activists, they may decline to heavily investigate a paper if it seems favorable, even if the author made an error by accident. (The replication crisis suggests that peer review is having trouble even without activism.)

Above relatively small percentages of activism, activism + research will tend to reduce to activism, activism + journalism will tend to reduce to activism, and so on.

Suppose there is some industrial chemical, the usage of which will save 10,000 humans, but potentially kill 10 whales. If there is an activist who says whatever they think will help to save the whales, rather than what is true independent of saving the whales, then you can't ask them about the trade-offs. If they think telling you the chemical is super-lethal and will kill 10,000 whales will save the whales, then they'll tell you the chemical is super-lethal to whales. If they think telling you it won't save the humans will save the whales, then they'll tell you that it won't save the humans.

Estimates vary, but let's say that English has about 250,000 words. Each unique word can be encoded using 18 bits. This is all a very rough estimate.

At a low percent activism, we get...

[chemical][kill][ten][whale][save][ten][thousand][human]

This comes out to about 144 bits of information.

Words can be used to reduce the space of possibilities. For example, "ten" is used to exclude every number less than 10, and also every number greater than 10.

Because the activist is willing to say that the industrial chemical will kill 10 whales or 10,000 whales depending on what sounds more convincing, "ten" from the activist represents "ten or ten thousand." That is, it doesn't reduce the space of possibilities by as much.

One way we can think about this is that the vocabulary of political operatives in general is effectively reduced. In a standard binary encoding, with 18 bits you can write any number from 0 to 262,144. In the reduced vocabulary, any number 0 to 262,144 is only used to represent { "none," "one," "few," "many," "more than," "less than" }, a total of six options, which can be represented with 3 bits.

The correlation between the words and the state of the world is reduced. The words no longer divide the world into as many categories. Thus, the number of bits of actual information transmitted per symbol declines. [2]

At a high percentage of activism, any message that might possibly benefit whales rounds off to group affiliation.

[me][pro][whale]

This comes out to 54 bits.

In my opinion, the reduction in friction has shifted members of the left and liberal political coalition towards activism, and towards group affiliation messaging, and away from more costly truth-seeking and independent thought.

The overall complexity of the world-model has declined, and the amount of genuine information transmitted per word has declined as well. [3]

That is my personal assessment.

d - Things to Hide From - The Cyberspace Layer

One of the big differences between 2008 and 2024 is the proliferation of smartphones with cameras and internet access.

This has resulted in the presence of an ubiquitous "cyberspace layer" which spread across most of the planet. Anyone, anywhere, is now vulnerable to being recorded on video, and that video almost instantly getting delivered to people on the other side of the planet.

As I have noted before, with reports that satellite internet access will be extended to 5G smartphones, the cyberspace layer will soon extend to nearly the entire planet.

Did you know that major retailers are still selling disposable film cameras in physical stores, alongside record players? Some people are arguing that film grains are irregular enough, and screens are low-resolution enough, that photo-negatives can be used to prove a picture is relatively more 'real' rather than AI-generated, but I don't have enough knowledge to say whether that's true or reliable.

e - Places to Hide - Private Chatrooms

Although Discord is not truly private, because the platform operator has access to everything the users post, we still see a lot of discussion moving there. Why?

I think there are two big reasons. One, it allows tighter control of who enters a space. That cuts down on spam. Two, because it's not exposed to the public internet, it's less vulnerable to what political scientists call "norm entrepreneurs." (That would be the guy that's trying to raise his social status by coming up with new social rules which he enthusiastically attempts to punish you for not following.)

If someone tries to start a mob to punish you for not agreeing to "rewild" your cat, you can throw him out on his ass.

Overall, information moving from public forums to private chatrooms represents an increase in friction, including higher information acquisition costs. This will likely reduce the overall wealth of humanity and emphasize social connections over raw intellect.

f - Breaking it Down

Alright, so with that background, I'm going to break it down.

(1) An ever-present awareness (or pseudo-awareness) of biology, an interest in biological specifics such as testosterone levels, and an appeal to "biological essence" or "biological purpose" as a source of authority.

Loss of trust in left-leaning institutional authority, partly due to the institutions themselves, partly due to activists misrepresenting what institutions or research actually say, and partly due to the shift of the granola-eaters to the right due to progressive restrictions on granola-eater behavior.

Biology contains a huge amount of physically embodied information, gathered over many millions of years. In this vein, it isn't surprising to use it as a source of authority.

(2) A conservative, although not necessarily politically right-wing, outlook: "modernity is essentially flawed and we need to return to our roots in order to reconnect with what really matters".

Fertility is collapsing to below replacement in all industrialized countries. In some places, like South Korea, the situation has become quite dire. Something is wrong.

I think the cyberspace layer is also stressing people out. They can be socially ambushed by like 50,000 people at once, pretty much at random.

People move around a lot. They may not know as many people in person for the duration of their lives. Modernity itself depends on more distant, thinner, lower-dimensionality relations, including working with impersonal bureaucracies, which some people may find uncomfortable.

I think people would also be a lot more comfortable if the pace of change was about half of what it currently is. If feels like from the mid 20th century to today, each decade should "really" have taken about 20 years, to allow people to get comfortable with the technology before it changes again.

Overall, I think going faster has been worth it due to improved medical treatments, but I have to wonder what the alternative branch might look like given the rising youth suicide rate compared to the low of 2007.

(3) A particular focus on health as an ideal; per the above a sense that modernity is above all else unhealthy.

Health is a wellspring from which many other strengths, and even virtues, may flow. Health is quite core. In terms of the trade-off, it isn't just a matter of wealth or health - it's difficult to have wealth without health.

The genetics industry are beginning to cure the blind, but the price for their services range from the price of a house to a typical worker's total lifetime economic output. Wealth has only a limited ability to buy health.

Minus housing prices, people may be feeling wealthy enough that they'd like to trade some wealth for some health.

From the other direction, people have a great deal of difficulty assessing the health value of products. They depend on institutions to do that. If they lose faith in institutions, they'll want to fall back to something, and that leaves perceived biology, "traditionalism," and so on.

(4) A conceptual shift away from the mind and towards the body as the most central part of the human being, commensurately a great political concern with the nature of bodies, and an attribution of society's faults to the wrong-treatment or wrong-usage of bodies.

Yes, this could be a reaction to the relatively high emphasis on the mind associated with the computer era.

Additionally, because a body is a thick, heavy, and difficult-to-change matter of substance, there may be leverage in a politics rooted in bodies and in the interests of bodies.

However, concerns about contamination of bodies have been around for a long time. People have fretted about what they eat for as long as I have been alive. After all, food isn't just fuel, but also materials. How can you build well using poor-quality materials?

(5) A generally somewhat quietistic bent, although by no means apolitical. A focus on individual right behavior. Perhaps contrary to expectations, not necessarily characterized by eugenicism to any great extent.

In an environment in which collective action can produce larger societal gains, it makes more sense to engage in collective action.

In an environment in which larger political forces have become unresponsive to reality, it makes sense to reduce the scope of your behavior and investment to one in which you can still gain traction.

You can't control what the US government does, but a sound mind and a healthy body will help you in nearly all situations - and a healthy body contributes to a sound mind. Further, the relationships of a family, especially between parents and children, are also more likely to survive changes in the nature of the state or the economy, than forms of support that depend on the well-functioning of the state itself. (Of course, this may lead to opposition to families from political operatives.)

There is little point to pursuing eugenics in such a context. It's effectively a declaration of war on some fraction of the population, and if you don't devise sound general principles, it's also a declaration of war on yourself.

I would also little to propose a little inversion - the life one lives demonstrates the biology that one has. Therefore, to live well is proof that one is worthy, regardless of the specific fine-grained biological details.

g - Rejecting the Oppression Model of Disability

There's another aspect at work here, which is the progressive model of disability. Progressives argue that everyone is equally capable in order to argue that they are equally morally worthy. In the progressive model of disability, if someone is wheelchair-bound, the fact that they don't have the same mobility as someone who can use two legs is because something is wrong with society, not with the wheelchair-user's body.

Of course, the world doesn't work that way. The underlying physical reality of mountains is not socially constructed, and adding wheelchair access to a mountain takes additional labor, energy, and materials compared to leaving the mountain solely accessible by foot.

In the progressive model of disability, if the government refuse to build a wheelchair ramp to the top of a popular mountain, they are oppressing wheelchair users. Some of the ideology you have described may be based on rejecting this frame.

h - The New Classy

Personally, I think the vibes that you're picking up on are somewhat faint currently, but they are there.

I think we are going to see some rejection of electronics and computers by higher-class individuals, or individuals from the subset of society that will come to be perceived as higher class over time.

Probably around 2015, when the number of notifications on my smartphone began ticking up, to the point that I noticed I was ignoring text messages because I assumed they were social media or app messages, I began aggressively limiting notifications.

Later, I began experimenting with the idea of a "social media hiatus," usually for a week or two. I found that somewhat difficult to stick to, because I have a lot to say. On the other hand, those hiatuses were actually too short. I've now switched to a Monday queue, so that posts only go up one day of the week (unless the President gets shot or something).

That has been relatively successful. This corner of Tumblr is a medium-length discursive space, so it's usually fine if a post shows up five days later. I post probably half or even a third as much, but that's fine. I've found that I'm mostly able to stick to it, which is good.

On Twitter, I have long had notifications turned off for every account except those I follow. When I want to check for replies, I go read the with_replies tab of my own account, and scroll down as far as I want to check. I don't even know the replies exist until I check; as such, they weigh less heavily on my mind, being only "possible replies" rather than "known unanswered replies." Eventually threads fall below the distance I'm willing to scroll, and I never see another reply on them again.

More recently, I've been running an experiment of no computers and no TV for one day of the week. (Calling and texting are still allowed.) It's still too early to talk about the results, but one thing I noticed almost immediately is this kind of twitching reflex to check the Internet on my phone (or computer).

Taken together, this can be considered "taking control of one's attention environment."

This requires a certain amount of power, wealth, or time, and also a certain amount of willpower (although it's about managing limited willpower to greater effect). For example, one must be able to opt out of certain software if it's a low-return attention hog ("low [monetary|insight|relational|positive emotional] returns to attention"), which might not be feasible in certain industries or for certain workers.

Gambling is trashy. Alcohol is trashy. Drugs are trashy. Sex addiction is trashy. In the future, it is likely that electronic over-stimulation will be considered trashy. The meltdowns people have been having on Twitter over the past 10 years have been spectacular, to the point that they're eroding public trust in expertise itself. If you want to give off a serious (and not trashy) and timeless aura, you can't allow yourself to be deranged by Twitter, or by filter bubbles.

-

[1] This is a new bit of theory I've been waiting for the right opportunity to post.

[2] This is also one of the issues with using nothing but bombastic rhetoric.

[3] Same as [1].

[strwbmei]

Matchup Event

Matchup for: @demonlordlawliet

Matchups: Silver Wolf, Rita, Keqing

Contains: marking, biting, nipple play (Silver Wolf)

A/N: I love Silver Wolf so much! Writing for her is so fun

Ask: Hi Mei, this is the guy who usually asked how are you. Yeah feels a bit weird doing this unanonymous. I got some free time so i decided to participate in this. It can be any scenario or hcs whatever be easier for you (sfw and nsfw)

My personality: I'm usually quite and distant but i can be friendly and welcoming. I have my sly side sometime to time since i usually i'm a very reserved person. Like this account for example, i keep this hidden. Sometimes i have a bit of trust issues since i'm afraid of being betrayed. I do enjoy watching anime and occassionally playing games, i have times were i want to be alone so that i can reflect on things. I have this bad a habit of not being able to relax when i have soo much work and i can be a bit obsessive towards said work until i finished it. Sometimes i can be a bit impatient over work but i procrastanated a little to relax and calm down since i'm aware if my limits. I'm inexperienced in romantic things or relantionships in general, since i'm not really interested in having a partner yet. But if the right person comes along i'm willing to try it. I personally don't mind trying new things and i tried to be open minded since i enjoying learning new things and understanding other people's perspective. I'm currently on my fourth year of college trying to finish my social work degree as i find social work a fascinanted and insteresting since it studies social science.

Fandom: Any fandom you see fit (Genshin, Honkai, Hi3rd, Reverse 1999) I don't have any particular en mind as long as they are women since i'm straight

Silver Wolf

╰┈➤ SFW ;

: ̗̀➛ You're both interested in mostly the same things and have similar views towards the world, which is how you were able to get her to come out of her shell a little bit. It's hard to find someone to talk to games about in the Stellaron Hunters, after all.

: ̗̀➛ Silver Wolf finally feels like there's someone who can understand her! She really likes talking to you, and it shows. Everyone else can see how her eyes light up when she talks to you, and its certainly not because of the game she was rambling about. Kafka teases her about it sometimes, but she brushes it off. The two of you are just bros... right?

: ̗̀➛ You realize that you're actually pretty compatible, and Silver Wolf is the one to suggest that you just try things out. There's nothing to lose after all. You may have made a few moves in the past, but you're both inexperienced with romance so Silver Wolf just thinks of them as something that friends usually do from where you're from.

: ̗̀➛ She's the more relaxed one out of you two, so she balances your impatience with work. As she says, "you'll cross that bridge when you get there." Just indulge Silver Wolf with a few hours of gaming together—it's her way of trying to take your mind off of things. Plus, you get to spend quality time together which is always fun.

: ̗̀➛ Silver Wolf would be very curious about the place you came from, mostly the culture. What do the people there usually eat for breakfast? Are there any romantic traditions you want to try/follow? Things like that. She wants you to feel like you're at home when you're with her. Of course, if you don't want her to pry, she'll respect your wishes.

: ̗̀➛ Silver Wolf is very awkward when expressing affection so you'll have to be patient with her. For example, when she wants to spend time with you, she'll kind of just... hang around you and wait for you to ask her. Like a cat too prideful to ask for its owner's attention. She thinks having you with her can make anything and everything a lot less boring.

It's the weekend. You can hear the sound of light rain tapping against the windows, simulated by the courtesy of modern technology. You're sat on a couch. Your body sinks into the cushions perfectly, as if you were sitting on a fluffy cloud.

The monitor in front of you is playing a show you've been wanting to start for a long time now. The struggles from the past week seem to melt away as you enjoy the pleasant ambiance. This is truly the life. Everything is perfect in this particular moment.

Well, other than the fact that you can hear your girlfriend grumbling about a game and how her teammates are feeding the enemy team.

She's made your lap into a makeshift pillow without saying a word, her legs hanging off the arm of the couch as she chews on bubblegum.

"Wolfie," You call to her, earning a disapproving glare from the smaller woman as the bubblegum pops. Seems "Wolfie" isn't very fond of that nickname.

"...Do you want to watch with me?" You ask. She grunts in faux annoyance before setting her game down.

╰┈➤ NSFW ;

"As long as you don't call me "Wolfie" again."

: ̗̀➛ Silver Wolf loves it when you compliment her during sex, but like with most other things, she'll never show it. She has a stronger reaction when you call her cute, though, since she tries to deny it.

: ̗̀➛ She's the type to hide into the pillow as much as she can—she doesn't want you to see what kind of faces she's making, and it helps her muffle her whimpers and moans.

: ̗̀➛ Her back arch is crazy. Silver Wolf is surprisingly flexible for someone who does (mostly) nothing but sit in front of a computer screen all day.

: ̗̀➛ Also, her stomach area is particularly sensitive. Run your fingers over it, especially around the area where it's bulging from your cock, and she'll be clenching around you like crazy.

: ̗̀➛ Silver Wolf might leave marks on you in the heat of the moment, but she much prefers if you leave some on her instead. She'll grumble about it the morning after and pretend to be annoyed, though.

"Mmh... Just give me a moment," Silver Wolf says through deep breaths, her voice coming out whinier than she intended.

Could you blame her? It's hard to keep focus when she's on your lap, your fingers lightly twisting her nipples. "Don't mind me. Keep on playing."

Silver Wolf swears that she'll kill you if she ends up losing this match. You aren't usually so needy, but it didn't help that she spent more time in front of a screen than with you.

This wouldn't be a problem—it'd probably be a good opportunity for you to spend time together under normal circumstances. Except it's a single player game.

Silver Wolf's noises get more frequent and frustrated, before she finally lets out a grunt. You look over at the screen and see the word 'DEFEAT' written in a bold red.

"Oh." You didn't think that she'd lose. You were going a bit easy on her, in fact. A hint of guilt seeps into your heart when Silver Wolf looks back at you, cheeks flushed as she pouts.

You quickly apologize, offering to get her a glass of water or anything to make amends. You didn't expect what Silver Wolf said next, though.

"Hmph, if you really want to make it up to me... You can begin by finishing what you started."

Rita Rossweise

╰┈➤ SFW ;

: ̗̀➛ As you and many other people see it, you and Rita couldn't be more different. As Rita sees it, others just think of her too highly. Well, only because that was what she intended. Her elegance isn't innate, it's a technique. Its basic requirement is the restraint of emotions and everything about herself that she deems unnecessary.

: ̗̀➛ The feelings she had for you were complicated. She chose to call it envy. To Rita, you're the most perfect imperfection. A contradiction among contradictions that she couldn't help but become drawn to. She envies how free and true to yourself you seem to be all the time.

: ̗̀➛ When you start to get to know her, you realize that there's much more to her than what meets the eye. More to her than what she allows to meet the eye. You hated her practiced, almost permanent smile that reminded you of pleasantries and small talk. You wanted to see her genuinely smile.

: ̗̀➛It became your mission for a while, but it was... surprisingly easy. It doesn't take much to make Rita Rossweise smile. You realize its just that barely anyone cared to truly know her. It's a shame how much people are missing out. After all, there's no doubt Rita is the most beautiful when she's happy.

: ̗̀➛ Working for her is like 2nd nature—it helps her to relax. Rita knows that isn't the case for most people, though. As such, she helps you as much as she can and makes sure you're balancing your health and career/studies. She also tries to look for ways to make it more "fun" for you so that you don't stress yourself out as much.

: ̗̀➛ Rita is the best at giving massages! Her hands are magic. She should be charging for them, honestly, with how good they are. Somehow, Rita already knows which spots ache the most and just how to fix it even without you telling her. Once she's done, you'll feel that your body is lighter than it ever was before.

Rita muses, setting a cup of coffee along with a tray of snacks on your table. The familiar, comforting scent of your most favorite blend of coffee wafts through the air.

"Don't you think it's time for you to take a break, dear?"

Rita had memorized the way you liked your coffee like the back of her hand. "Thank you, Rita, but I'll finish the rest of this first." You give her the warmest smile you can manage before turning to face what you had been working on.

Rita sighs, a rare instance of her letting her emotions slip. "Love," She takes the pile of papers on your desk, straightening the stack out before placing them back.

"overworking yourself like this will only hinder your performance." Rita says, fully aware that you've probably had this same exact conversation multiple times before.

It's amazing how stubborn the both of you can be. You're determined to finish your work, and Rita is just as determined to get you to take a break for once.

However, the vixen has a fatal trick up her sleeve; one that has a 100% chance of working on you.

She gently places her hand atop yours, pressing a chaste kiss on your cheek before calling your name in the softest voice you've heard her use. "If you don't want to rest, would you at least join me in getting a breath of fresh air?"

Well... what's the harm, right?

╰┈➤ NSFW ;

: ̗̀➛ She's a very teasing power bottom most of the time. That said, Rita isn't the type to order you around. She's more keen on giving you hints/urging you towards a direction that'll have the both of you feeling good.

: ̗̀➛ Rita's moans are very pretty. They aren't the loudest, and she doesn't make much sound often, but they're breathy and drawn out.

: ̗̀➛ Rita is very adventurous when it comes to kinks. Of course, she'll only do it if you're also comfortable, but she'll never say no to something without at least trying it first.

: ̗̀➛ She's the type to wrap herself up in ribbons and give herself to you on special occasions such as Christmas Eve, your birthday, anniversaries, and Valentine's.

: ̗̀➛ The morning after, she'll be super cuddly and affectionate towards you. Of course, it's mainly because Rita loves you, but she also wants to leave the scent of her perfume all over you because she doesn't like sharing what's hers.

Sex with Rita feels... oddly prospective.

Or at least, that's what you realize when she's on your lap, kissing you languidly as you both work to remove the other's clothes.

Of course, you don't mean it in a negative way. You love Rita. You can't ask for more when she's been nothing but the perfect partner to you.

You think this because of how... prepared Rita always is for you. Her clothes are easy to remove, a condom in her pocket, and a pair of lacey lingerie hugging her figure beneath her everyday attire.

You push her gently onto the bed. Her hair is splayed beautifully on the sheets, as always. God, Rita looks ethereal. You'd ravish her and savor her taste for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if you could.

"Well? It's rude to keep a woman waiting." She teases.

Still, with the way her signature grin never falters, you can't help but wonder if it was really you in control all this time.

Keqing

╰┈➤ SFW ;

: ̗̀➛ You two did NOT have a positive first impression of each other. Mostly because you reminded Keqing of herself, and as a result, she ended up holding you to a higher standard. You thought she was bossy and hated you for no reason.

: ̗̀➛ It's only when you're forced to work together to organize this year's Lantern Rite that you see how much she cares for Liyue. Around the same time, Keqing also realizes how she's just pushing her expectations of herself onto you for stupid reasons and starts treating you better.

: ̗̀➛ By the end of everything, you're just so confused because like ??? why is she suddenly being so nice to you??? Not that you're complaining of course, but you definitely aren't used to it. You're more worried if anything. Did an adeptus curse her or something?

: ̗̀➛ Alas, after a few months of her being consistent, you don't think much of it anymore. Keqing realizes that you're actually a pretty chill guy and acknowledges her faults. She apologizes for letting her personal issues affect her job, too. Eventually, you gather the courage to ask her out and she accepts with her face as red as a tomato.

: ̗̀➛ You're both pretty bad at work life balance, but Keqing is way worse. You wonder how she's been surviving this long when the amount of jobs she's finished in the span of a few months is probably more than the amount of proper meals she's had in her whole life.

: ̗̀➛ You're both really into coffee, so trying out new blends together is your way of bonding. Maybe you'll even try brewing your own, if your free time allows it. Aside from the coffee itself, Keqing is also very fascinated by its history and the different methods people use to brew it. She thinks of it as an art, almost.

It's a beautiful day, and one more special than others.

You're going on a date with your girlfriend, Keqing. Some might say that it's not anything special with how long you've been together, but they have no idea how hard it is to arrange a date with your schedules.

The sun is shining perfectly bright, the air is cool, and the sky is the bluest you've seen it. Even nature agrees that Keqing needs to take a break and relax for once.

Judging by how enthusiastic and excited she's been about everything so far, you think you've been doing a good job with helping her unwind.

"Look, it's that new cafe!" Keqing remarks joyfully. She had been the one to help the owner take care of some contracts regarding the property, but this time, she's here as a customer.

Seeing the warm ambience and classy traditional decorations fill Keqing with a sense of pride. She helped in making the cafe a reality, after all. "Do you want to have lunch here?"

"Hm, but cafes are better during the early hours... Plus, there's also the issue of the supply chain of..." She mumbles, calculating as ever. That won't do, she's supposed to be relaxing.

You reach out and squeeze her cheeks lightly. You remember ruffling her hair once in a similar situation, and Keqing looked like she was ready to burn you alive for ruining what she spent half an hour to style..

"Don't overthink it too much," you say with a smile before Keqing can complain about your sudden gesture. "We can always go to that seafood place. How do golden shrimp balls sound? My treat."

╰┈➤ NSFW ;

: ̗̀➛ Keqing will NEVER bring up the topic of sex. Of course, if you ask her, she'll talk big about how she's "made some people cum within a few minutes," but she isn't fooling anyone.

: ̗̀➛ It's clear that Keqing is a virgin. Not because others don't find her attractive, (it's quite the opposite actually,) but because they're too intimidated to approach her. A few of them tried to make a move, but Keqing either completely misread their intentions or shut them down immediately.

: ̗̀➛ Not to say that she isn't familiar with the concept of sex, though. Keqing isn't a kid anymore, but her knowledge only extends to what-goes-where and using protection. She does have some experience masturbating, but it's more of a way to de-stress rather than to pleasure herself.

: ̗̀➛ Overall, Keqing would be very shy and tsundere when it comes to the real thing, but she trusts you dearly and knows that she'll be in safe hands.

: ̗̀➛ She'll definitely become more daring and bratty as time goes on though, but don't take it personally. She's only rcting that way because she's become way more comfortable with you.

"Keqing," you call out, power walking to reach the woman in front of you. She won't even wait for you to catch up. Today marks the third day of Keqing ignoring you, even though you have no idea why.

She eats with you, but she gets up and leaves as soon as she's done with her food. She sleeps in the same bed, but she couldn't have felt more distant. To be frank, it's driving you insane how Keqing acts as if you're invisible.

But you know that you're her weakness. If there's one person in Teyvat that she'll listen to, it's you. You can feel Keqing's body heating up as you hug her from behind, telling her just how much you've been missing her. You plan on expressing that through your actions as well.

A few well chosen words and lingering touches, and Keqing is on your bed again. This time, though, she's actually talking to you as your tongue works to eat her out. Ironic.

"I'm sorry-" she gasps as the wet muscle dives even deeper into her folds. "I didn't mean to- ah!" You continue to lap at her fervently, prying her thighs apart as she instinctively tries to close them.

"I felt jealous, and I shouldn't have- nh..." Keqing moans, hand tugging gently on your scalp. "Shouldn't have blamed you for it..." She admits, voice trailing off from shame.

"You're the most beautiful and kind woman in Teyvat. How could I want someone else?" You detach yourself from her dripping cunt, and just before Keqing can complain, you flip her over and make her face the mirror.

"Eyes on me. I'll show you just how much I love you."

[lunar-years]

would love to hear your thoughts on the team bullying/forgiving jamie in s2, in particular what you disliked about it. imo i think sam’s treatment was harsh but not at all undeserved, while others like colin and isaac were a bit twisted considering they fully participated in the prick-ish behaviour in s1. and the whole led tasso bit was entertaining to watch, but it really reveals how problematic ted’s hands-off approach to conflict can be. to the point where ted refuses to refer jamie (and later on isaac) to speak with sharon, and never fully acknowledge’s each player’s feelings.

There was a really good meta I saw on this topic the other day that i cannot for the life of me find in my tags to link here. But yeah, there are definitely things I disliked about it! For me it's less about the players than about the leadership & Ted. I actually think the players reactions/responses mostly make sense. It's a bit weird, like you said, that EVERYONE suddenly hates him when half the team was literally participating in and/or endorsing him in season 1 (remember that episode where the team is split into two factions and one of them is Jamie's? lol. Like it wasn't even just Isaac and Colin participating in the behavior, it was half the team). However I can see that their opinion of Jamie might have changed given distance and their own growth.

Also, we don't really see any instances of Jamie publicly bashing his old team apart from singling out Ted and Roy, but apparently at one point he was off calling Colin a jaundiced warm to his hometown newspaper, so yeah I can see why that might've left a lingering bad taste in his mouth. Also the boys have gotten used to Richmond without him at that point, and it HAS been a much better environment, so I think it'd be easy to overlook that they were actually sort of starting to like him at the bonfire the night before he went back to Manchester (which was ultimately only just one night), in favor of focusing on all the times he was made the locker room worse. Also, there's probably a bit of misplacing their hatred for their past selves onto Jamie because it's easier to shift that blame around a bit than accept their own culpability in the bullying. Just like it's easier to blame relegation on Jamie, because he's there to blame, then on their own shortcomings in the game. Is it a bit unfair to Jamie? Sure. But it's realistic and I don't mind it.

Actually the only one I'm a bit ??? about is Dani, because he was absolutely getting along with Jamie in Two Aces even despite Jamie's prickish exterior. Dani hadn't even been around long enough to be negatively impacted by Jamie's effect on the locker room culture so? what gives? I also don't see him bandwagoning on just because everyone else hates him (which does make sense when jan does it hahah). So it's very weird to me that he holds as much of a grudge as everyone else, lol.

The biggest issue for me is (once again. woop.) Ted. Because he didn't want to get rid of Jamie in the first place. He was in fact IRATE when Jamie was sent away, and got into his first real argument with Rebecca over it, that's how upset he was. So why is he soo hesitant, suddenly, to let Jamie come back? His whole speech to Jamie at the Crown & Anchor makes me uncomfortable, because the whole "You burned a lot of bridges" thing doesn't even add up to the real reason Jamie was sent away and totally dismisses the progress he had already started to make before leaving. It seems to reiterate that Jamie was sent away because he'd been Bad and Done Something Wrong. Sent away after he'd in fact had a significant breakthrough with the team. No wonder Jamie is confused. Ted is crossing all kinds of wires and it's ??? Not to mention that he tells Sam Jamie isn't coming back, then brings Jamie back seemingly without even pulling Sam aside and explaining to him circumstances have changed, Jamie is coming back, and why. It's one thing to have told Sam and then change your mind. It's another thing for Sam to tell you he's upset at you for withholding information, explain that's not the case, then go and do the thing you JUST assured Sam you wouldn't: not consult the team re: Jamie. Idk, the whole thing rubs me the wrong way.

Ted having a conversation with the team beforehand, explaining why Jamie is coming back, would've already gone a long way to help Jamie, instead of just springing him on them and throwing him to the wolves. Led Tasso was typical hands-off Ted problem solving, and it's a funny comedy show bit but not exactly an appropriate workplace solution, is it? I might not mind it so much if it wasn't the start of a pattern of behavior where Jamie needs help, asks for help, and then is like...ignored or gone around or "acknowledged" and not helped. it happens with his return to the team, it happens with Roy refusing to coach him, it happens with fucking Zava. And it's extremely annoying that the team leadership fails him specifically again and again. ugh.

Re: Sharon/therapy and referring the boys, that one is soooo mixed up in ted's own mental health stuff I'm willing to give it a pass. of course Ted's not to going to refer players to see her when he doesn't see what she does as helpful and doesn't respect therapy as a possible tool/solution.

[thecaroliner]

NATLA: An Extremely Mediocre Mess

I spent the entire day watching Netflix's ATLA adaptation and oh boy was it...something.

I struggle sometimes with putting my full thoughts into words but here goes. No idea how long this will be.

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

I want to start out by getting a few things I thought were good or at least fine out of the way.

First off I wanna mention the acting (aside from Gran Gran) was fine. I think Gordon Cormier has a lot of potential and it really felt like sometimes he was being held back by the script and direction. Really hope this role opens up new doors for him in his acting career!

Not that I think ATLA needed more violence or anything, and initially I was against them adding more violence just to make it more "realistic", but I actually didn't mind it. It was way more gruesome than I thought it would be, both Sozin and Ozai literally set people on fire and burn them to a crisp. Kind of does help set in the actual horror of what they're doing. We even saw the same happen to Kya in a flashback. Again, this wasn't needed, but I didn't mind it.

The bending effects DID look a little better than in the trailers I thought. Firebending in particular I thought was decent, all the other elements were just okay, with waterbending I feel suffering the most from it. The rest of the CGI kind of sucked though which I'll get into later.

Having Gyatso be more of a presence I thought was nice, as I always felt like he could've been a little more to the front of Aang's mind in the original series than what he was. I honestly LOVE the idea of him hanging around in the Spirit World for Aang, as in the past I've thought of that idea and wished it had happened. Except....they just kind of throw this plotline away later for no reason. So that's great.

Lastly, it was neat to see Indian culture being represented in Omashu.

Now that that's out of the way....time to really dig in.

The series starts with the Air Nomad genocide, pretty brutal stuff but I don't have much to say about this aside from the moments with Gyatso being nice.

Aang can apparently just fly now, but he only really does it to show off in this first episode. Apparently it's because he's an Airbending prodigy, despite the fact that the ability to fly was established in LOK as being a very rare occurance that only comes after letting go of every earthly attachment. But sure, let's just have Aang fly now. Why even have his glider in the first place?

He gets frozen in pretty much the exact same way, which now leads us to the Southern Water Tribe, where Katara is practicing waterbending in secret in the abandoned Fire Nation ship. It's mentioned later that Sokka and Gran Gran forbid her from practicing bending in case the Fire Nation comes back and tries to kill her, which...sure, I guess.

They find Aang's iceberg, but since Sokka isn't sexist anymore, her anger at him isn't what opens the ice, it's her attempting to pull their canoe back to them and she accidentally splits the iceberg open.

Speaking of Sokka's sexism, remember when people were trying to say "Oh the show isn't getting rid of that arc, it's just updating it because a lot of moments in the original show were iffy!" Yeah, no, they got rid of that arc entirely. Which, honestly if they had just done that without making a big deal out of it in interviews wouldn't have been an issue. The issue is them trying to act as though the narrative of the show itself was sexist and not actively showing us that Sokka is in the wrong.

Anyways, Aang literally just falls out of the iceberg and it's lowkey funny cause he just slides out like he's going down a water slide.

They take him back to the village unconscious and once he wakes up, Gran Gran (who's acting was awful by the way. Not sure if it was the actress' fault or the direction, it really felt like the direction to me). She immediately recognizes Aang's tattoos and just tells him flatly that the Air Nomads are all dead. No compassion or anything. Oh, and she out of the blue begins narrating the original series' intro verbatim which was so out of place and funny. HEY REMEMBER THE OPENING FOR THE CARTOON?? THAT'S IN HERE TOO!!!!!

Weirdly enough....it almost felt like Sokka and Aang had more of a bond than Katara and Aang. Sokka was initially skeptical of Aang but then instantly wants to go save him and I swear they had more interactions than Aang did with Katara. The two of them don't even really feel like friends until the last two episodes or so.

Also, they go to the Southern Air Temple in the first episode where Katara doesn't calm Aang down from the Avatar State but rather a memory of Gyatso did. Okay....

Oh, this also had one more thing I liked, and it was Aang giving Gyatso a proper burial. I always assumed that happened at some point, whether during the series or sometime afterwards. Nice to see it here.

Okay, so my thoughts after this are just gonna skip around a bit because I was writing them down as I went. The first half the series really didn't have much egregiously wrong with it, it was mostly just mid.

It's mentioned briefly that...Aang's airbending went out of control sometimes? Like the reason he had to train with the monks was so that he would stop accidentally hurting his friends with airbending. Because why have the storyline of him accidentally hurt Katara with firebending when you could have this instead?

The like...purple and motion blur effects they used for the Spirit World scenes was such an eyestrain....

In the Spirit World, Kyoshi gives Aang a vision of the attack on the Northern Water Tribe. Before, Aang had no reason to even bother going here, because Katara is teaching herself waterbending (turns out Gran Gran had the waterbending scroll the whole time! But hid it from Katara til now). Aang also doesn't even attempt waterbending at all this season btw

The Gaang gets to Omashu, where they decide to combine The King of Omashu, Jet, The Northern Air Temple...and The Cave of Two Lovers. Despite this sounding clunky and weird, I think these storylines together actually did mesh well (except for the COTL, which OH BOY I WILL GET TO)

The idea here is that the Mechanist, whose name is now Sai (don't know if this was ever mentioned in any supplemental material or if it was just made up for this show) and Teo live here. Jet and the Freedom Fighters also live nearby, where they are trying to plant bombs around Omashu and make the Gaang think it's the Fire Nation.

One scene I wanna mention, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I SWEAR Sai said he needed to control the "attitude" of the hot air balloon...not "altitude."

Aang ends up getting captured by Bumi's generals, and he almost immediately figures out who Bumi is. Which...I cannot believe Aang named his son after THIS Bumi. He's kind of a huge asshole and is mad at Aang for abandoning them for the past century. Like you really had to make the character angry at him Bumi???

So, um. Let's talk about the COTL plot now.

Katara and Sokka go to try and find Aang and find out that there's a series of elaborate tunnels underneath Omashu, where they run into the singing nomads. This was literally only a plotline so that they had an excuse to sing Secret Tunnel this season. They explain to the siblings the story of Oma and Shu (which is just verbatim from the original series), ending with "Love is brightest in the dark."

Remember that. They preface the storyline of the tunnels by explicitly telling Katara and Sokka about the two lovers. Very romantic.

Katara and Sokka quickly realize that the cave crystals glow in the dark and begin to follow the path. Love is brightest in the dark, right? Along they way they begin bickering because Katara feels like Sokka still sees and treats her like a child.

Eventually they get pursued by a badger mole who begins to chase them. They apologize to one another and hold hands as they think they're about to be killed but...the badger mole stops attacking.

Why does it stop attacking, you ask?

Because now apparently badger moles can feel human emotions. They don't like feeling people fight and want to feel the love between them instead.

I was LOSING IT at this part. "Love is brightest in the dark" was apparently metaphorical.

And don't get me wrong, I love seeing platonic and familial love portrayed in media...but like, to do this storyline...don't preface it with a romantic tale of two lovers????? It gives off a very unintentionally creepy vibe for the siblings. And I'm sure I don't have to explain why badger moles being able to sense love is just dumb as shit.

Moving on....Bumi is nice again. Yay.

They go to the town where Hei Bai is attacking and Aang somehow accidentally pulls Katara and Sokka into the spirit world with him because the writers also wanted to have The Swamp here. Oh, and the Koh storyline. He doesn't steal faces for showing emotion anymore either, he just captures people and eats them later and steals their faces then. Cool.

Oh, and Wan Shi Tong is there and he looks emaciated.

Katara relives the night her mom dies, while Sokka sees a mysterious looking fox in the forest. Initially I assumed this was one of Wan Shi Tong's knowledge seekers but oh no. Oh no, it is much, MUCH worse. We'll come back to it.

Aang manages to find Gyatso in the Spirit World, which again is an idea that I LOVE. Gyatso explains that after he died, he never moved on to the next cycle of enlightenment, instead choosing to stay in case Aang needed him. They have a really touching moment, and Aang promises to come find him again after he finds Katara and Sokka.........which we'll come back to.

The events of The Blue Spirit happen, not much to talk about here. Aang connects with Roku (apparently he can only connect with past Avatars at their respective shrines, btw) and finds out Roku stole a totem of The Mother of Faces from Koh and that's why Koh hates the Avatar. Why steal that totem?? Hell if I know. Roku's also a funny man now I guess.

Aang saves Katara and Sokka from being Koh food and all is well. Yay.

They finally get to the North and this is where the show really went from being mid to pure cringe for me.

The "women only learn healing" plot is still here. Katara is rightfully angry about it, but Aang's like "oh well maybe you should listen to them". Yes, really.

Here Aang is so worried about losing anyone else, which, obviously understandable. But he doesn't want Katara and Sokka, especially Katara, to fight AT ALL. Which I mean. OG Aang never once tried discouraging her from learning to fight. Obviously he loves her and does have concern for her safety a number of times throughout the show and comics, but he also knows she can kick ass and stand her ground on her own and never tries to stop her.

Katara fights Pakku, and despite literally the day before saying she still has a lot to learn and a long way to go, she's just instantly declared a master waterbender now!

And oh boy my friends, buckle in because now we're gonna talk about Yue.

First off...her wig looks BAD. Like I'm pretty certain I saw her real hair sticking through a few times. Why not just dye the actress' hair....even Shyamalan's Yue hairstyle looked better than this, and we all know what that looked like.

So right off the bat Sokka asks Katara if Yue is at all familiar. Katara says no but Sokka keeps pressing and eventually follows Yue, where we learn she's a waterbender? Okay, not like her being a waterbender or not has any affect whatsoever on the story, but sure. We also learn that she had previously been engaged to Hahn but broke it off because he "wasn't the boy of her dreams". Not sure why they bothered to write him in the first place.

So...Yue and Sokka begin talking, and Sokka finally realizes why she's familiar to him.

I genuinely had to pause the episode to laugh when this reveal happened.

YUE WAS THE FOX SPIRIT SOKKA SAW IN THE SPIRIT WORLD.

Yes, I'm being 100% serious. When Yue was healed by the moon spirit, she turned into Danny Phantom and can now just hop in and out of the Spirit World. As a fox for God knows what reason.

BTW, this has jack shit to do with anything overall. It adds nothing. It serves NO PURPOSE. Genuinely do not know what the hell they were trying to do with that.

Um, so yeah. Moving on.

Apparently in this version, Tui and La only become mortal fish once a year or something? On the night of the "ice moon". Your guess as to what on earth an ice moon is is as good as mine.

Zhao begins to lead an invasion on the north and Momo is killed in the crossfire.

Well, almost.

Again I just busted out laughing because Momo has served NO PURPOSE until now, he's just been there because he was in the og series. I'm sorry Momo, as much as I love you....why were you here.

To save a kid from being crushed by falling debris. He just pushes them out of the way and is crushed. The reason is just so that Yue can take him to the Oasis and use healing on him with the Spirit Water.

Katara and Zuko have their classic fight and Zuko says "Oh you've found a master haven't you?" To which Katara replies, "Yeah, me" because she's a master now after 2 days remember?

Koizilla happens...the tribe is saved...Yue makes her sacrifice. So now she can go be the moon instead of a fox I guess.

Also, I think Iroh killed Zhao, despite earlier in the series refusing to kill the Earth Kingdom soldier who captured him because "we've all seen enough death."

And then...Aang goes back to the Spirit World, to find that the little "house" Gyatso was in is empty now. Gyatso is just gone now, with no explanation, although he seemed to know when he met with Aang beforehand that he would be gone from the Spirit World next time Aang tried to find him. Great job, taking the only interesting storyline made up for this series and just throwing it out the window for no rhyme or reason!

Now lemme talk about Azula....

She's not even Azula anymore. She's really insecure and worried about pleasing her father. Because whenever I thought of Azula, I always thought "insecure!" Like I get what they were going for, Zhao says this honestly kinda raw line about Zuko merely being the fire to sharpen the iron that was Azula, but like....why did she have to be this insecure person now? Also why is she even an archer now? It again has nothing to do with anything

Mai and Ty Lee are there for also no reason at all other than to be like "HEY REMEMBER THESE TWO CHARACTERS FROM THE ORIGINAL SHOW?!" They just stand there and watch Azula train sometimes.

The show ends with a Fire Sage showing Ozai through their planetarium (which they have now I guess) that Sozin's Comet is returning "soon." Who knows when! Just soon!

Also, Kataang shippers do not get your hopes up. Not that I expected much Kataang here at all, but I swear they barely even feel like friends until the end. It almost seems like Katara is more interested in him than he is in her.

My expectations of this series were low from the beginning. When it was first announced this project was in development, I said it was unnecessary and couldn't improve upon the OG in any way...and I was right. Even as its own thing entirely divorced from the cartoon, it's just kind of bland and downright confusing at times.

Anyways, my fingers hurt now so I'm going to wrap this up. Apparently I've been typing for like 1.5 hr now lol

Watch the original series instead :)

[olderthannetfic]

I definitely think there are people who use those "diverse reading challenges" to show off, but I also think you can have a truly genuine desire to diversify your reading habits, and challenges can be a good way to incentive yourself to do that and keep track of it. And I'm not sure there's a go-to standard for who is "tryhard" beyond if they act cringey and show-offy about it on social media. I was going to say something like "do they genuinely seem like they're trying to branch out, or just reading the same things as they usually do but with a black lead" - but honestly, I want the people who are "just reading YA" or "just reading romance" or whatever to read more diversely, too. Like for romance readers specifically: Read more romance with COC or written by POC, read more M/M and/or F/F if you primarily read het, read more stuff written by people from outside of North America and Western Europe, etc. And if you primarily read serious "classic" literature, try reading one from Africa beyond the lit-class staples like Things Fall Apart rather than another white British author, just to give an example. I think everyone should do more of that. I think those can all come from a genuine desire to try new things, not just show off to your followers about how open-minded you are.

Actually, I think the big way to tell if someone's being "tryhard" is, yes, their reaction on social media, but particularly how they talk about the book when they're done. The one big Tell I see on Goodreads about people who want to be seen as "reading diversely" but don't really appreciate diversity is when they read a book about, say, Muslim characters and then leave a 2-star reviewing whining that they didn't like that the book expected them to know 101-level things about Islam like what Ramadan or the hajj is. (Or alternately, are mad that it DID explain that stuff "too much," oblivious to the fact that in Christian-majority cultures, that's a publisher expectation that you do that with any other religion, because of ignorant readers who will whine if you don't spend a paragraph teaching them what Ramadan is because apparently these supposed "diverse readers" can't be assed to learn literally anything about the best-known Muslim holiday.) I saw someone complain on Tumblr about Goodreads reviewers getting mad at all the "Jewish stuff they were expected to know" to read Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, and this person was like "I'm a goy and I understood all of it because it's stuff you would know just from having seen Fiddler on the Roof. If all the Judaism you need to know for a book is stuff that you can get from watching Fiddler on the Roof, then maybe the issue is not the book, it's you for not having such basic information about a major world religion and then reading a book about it."

Or as another example, when people complain about how the particular set of lingo this person who is oppressed in a way you are not used to describe their oppression is not the exact thing that Twitter discourse has told you is "correct" to use or that it is offensive. When they get mad that a book where a black person is talking about their life experience with police brutality has "too many descriptions of violence" and "I'm rating this lower because it might be triggering." (In general, when people seem to conflate "this triggered me" with the kind of "productive discomfort" that relatively privileged people NEED to confront in fiction about marginalizations they don't experience in order to grow as humans. But also it's just like... there are some topics where it would be doing readers a disservice not to describe them graphically. Not everything can be communicated in a way that would earn a G rating on AO3. That might mean the book is inaccessible to you, but that's on you to deal with, not on the author to censor themselves.) Or when they, as in the American Fiction example, expect it to fit some stereotypical ideas of "authenticity" and are mad that this POC or LGBTQ+ or disabled person's lives are more like their own rather than feeling like a museum exhibit about an exotic Other culture.

To me, "tryhard" is when you don't actually value diversity FOR diversity. If you're going to read diverse media, you can't get mad when it actually is diverse. If you want to read about stuff about/from other cultures and identities, then a) you need to be okay with being challenged, b) you need to not expect the author to hold your privileged hand all the time. You can look up unfamiliar words like "hajj" or "Purim." It's 2024. You have a tiny computer in your hand that is several times more powerful than the big computers that put astronauts on the moon. You can use it to go to Wikipedia when you see a word you don't understand, it's not that hard! Expecting authors from other cultures and identities to patiently explain every aspect of that to you like an elementary school teacher is the ultimate sign of entitlement and privilege, especially if you're reading, say, a book by a Congolese author about the Congo, not one that they wrote specifically for Western audiences!

When people make a big show of reading "diversely" but then seem to be upset that those books are actually, you know, DIVERSE, that's a big flashing sign that it's performative tryhard nonsense to me.

--

It's pretty sad when we'll go google some xianxia thing to watch The Untamed, but we can't manage to look at a ten thousand times more commonplace wikipedia article on a major world religion.

[coffeebrownn]

ur winterfield art is so cute I love how you depict both of them💛do u have any winterfield headcanons you’d feel comfortable sharing?💛

WAAA THANK YOU SO MUCH!! GLAD YOU ENJOY THEM!! 😭😭

also, my time to shine,,, funnily i don't have much headcanon about them in terms of relationship(?) i have individual headcanon and then see how they interact 😭, but yea! here you go

chris only remember ethan's face in detail since his job is meeting new people and they come and go pretty quick, even someone who's close with chris, he only remember them on what qualities they stuck the most, claire with her red leather jacket, jill with her gruff voice, leon with his chicken handwriting, etc. So you can say that out of everyone, ethan for chris stuck out like a sore of thumb, and ethan finds it pretty comforting.

i picture them living in alaska with new identities, off from populated area but close enough to a major city if there's any emergency, so you can see both of them mellow out (took the a few years), still each of them wear a cap/scarf to cover their face partially.

all of them (chris, ethan, rose) takes medication daily. chris is getting old and have some issue with his mental problems. for both ethan and rose is mold related, ethan has additional medication for his mental health

chris mostly rest his eyes and never really go into deep sleep, so he could monitor ethan, but at the same time he's very self conscious on how loud he can snore. They have a guest room and sometimes chris sleeps there or the floor.

they have a "no shoe indoor" house because of chris, from his worldly travel, he finds it fascinating that some culture does this and thought that i'll bring everyone closer together, because of that they (chris,ethan, rose) does family activities together, naps on the floor, play. etc. But because of this they mop the floor weekly for hygiene and they wear slippers.

ethan still suffer from social anxiety even with extensive therapy and consultation (with or without chris), and because of that for the most part he stays at home since it's his "safe place" and chris knows this well. So, he prepared and got themselves a house with good enough backyard as chris doesn't want ethan to feel trapped inside, but ethan did muster up enough energy to leave the house sometime as he doesn't like the particular feeling of "burdening other due to my circumstances" and chris appreciates that ethan is taking small steps

a very boring, quiet couple, they just have a very mundane life, walks rose to kindergarten, walk to park, cook food, eat dinner together, laundry, read books, etc. i guess the boring part is they don't really bicker (argue yes, teasing also happens often), but their presences just lifts each other up. They don't need to reassure each other "i love you" that kind of sentences, they trust each other deeply and so much so that you thought that they can read each other's mind

they take turns dressing rose to kindergarten, but for the most part it's chris since he wakes up pretty early to work on the bakery, this also one of the reason why chris prepares breakfast and lunch for them.

some NSFW headcanon (nothing too spicy but PLEASE DNI IF YOU'RE UNDERAGE) (tldr; they don't really do it)

sex isn't their first priority/ comes to mind, they're both old, but for the most part chris just lets ethan do whatever (so bottom!chris), he's tired and he like to get pampered time to time.

and for the most part i can picture them to forget what they're doing and just side line to them mostly cuddle

[trillscienceofficer]

I feel like apart from what you said about B'elanna being interested in men only under some dubious consent scenario, whatever she had going in previously to Voyager and being in DQ was trying to be as normal as possible for her father's validation, whether she realized she was doing it or not. And besides, she only ever had a good relationship with people who didn't seem to ever be a possible partner for whatever reason. She's very lesbian coded to me for that.

(In reference to this post)

Man, you're so right. B'Elanna doing things with the perspective of pleasing (the imaginary perfect version that can do no wrong of) her father is a really good observation here. Her stint at Starfleet Academy comes to mind (John Torres was supposed to be a Starfleet officer, according to a deleted line from “Barge of the Dead”), but it's definitely not the only example of this tendency. So much of B'Elanna's life is conditioned by what she thinks he would do, even if I don't think she realizes it (she only starts having dreams of her childhood after discovering that she's pregnant etc); in a way B'Elanna has always been trying to recreate a version of her family where through her hard work and determination things won't end the way they did for her and her mother. I totally agree that her sticking with Tom for so long, despite his behavior and despite so many examples of their early attraction being due to alien crap and/or that declaration of love extracted in a near-death situation, is a symptom of that abandonment trauma as well. I think this is true even outside of a lesbian B'Elanna reading, but it certainly adds some weight to the argument as well. I mean, I know that "lesbian with daddy issues" (hate the term) is kind of a cliché but then again it's not like this was in any way intentional, and as I mentioned reading B'Elanna as a lesbian makes everything that happens to her on Voyager even more brutally heartwrenching.

And you're again right about her choice of potential partners, even the fact that she and Tom started flirting a little when they already disagreed on a lot... can be very easily read as 'I find this guy irritating so I must be secretly attracted to him' which, well. I know from personal experience it's one hell of a mind-trick for closeted lesbians. Her supposedly 'Klingon' attitude towards romance is very significant here imho. Why would B'Elanna lean into her Klingon cultural roots in just this one case, when more often than not she's ashamed of them (and I'm not saying this shame is 'good' by any means), if not because it gives her the perfect excuse to realign her feelings with heterosexual expectations?

Truly the more I look at it the more I can read reluctance and coercion and trauma in B'Elanna when it comes to her sexual relationship with men in general and Tom in particular. There's nothing intentional here of course (just the usual trouble Trek has with answering the question 'are women people?', compounded with and made worse by racism in B'Elanna's case) but the show lends itself well for a lesbian B'Elanna interpretation. And again, the thought that she might be a lesbian... makes all that happened to her on Voyager even more transparently horrifying.

[lemonhemlock]

so, i'm going through your anti team black tag and living my best life, but one post in particular that you made got me thinking.

“george made damn sure rhaenyra’s bloodline sat on the throne at the end bc, if the hightowers won, house targaryen would have been reformed, and he couldn’t kill them all off at the end of the main series”

i'm pretty sure this might've just been a joke, but it makes me curious. do you think something like a targaryen reformation would be possible, hypothetically speaking? i certainly wouldn't mind it in a "greens win" AU scenario, but that's just me. i wanna know if anyone else sees potential in this. 💚💚💚

Hello, yes, this was mostly a joke, as it happens. 😅 (anon is referring to this post) To introduce another lengthy parenthesis, I remember at the time that some of the reactions to that post were in the range for "why doesn't anyone understand that the Hightowers are also feudal lords vying for their own interests and not some great reformists out to save Westeros", which... Listen. 😄 To put equitably, this fandom has a considerable issue with knowing when to level criticism and when to just treat banter as lighthearted horsing around and not take it too seriously. Something which even I'm not exempt from, I don't think. 🤷‍♀️

So, in the interest of making a meme, that post was kind of half-true in that it simplified a more nuanced concept (that was never an avenue that the author decided to explore anyway) for the sake of humour. I have, in the past, detailed my thoughts on House Hightower and what I think is their role in the wider narrative. This is based on the information we have on them presently. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. Who knows, maybe Lord Leyton and Melara plan on blowing Oldtown up for shits and giggles. We don't have to guess everything correctly - another aspect this community struggles with in their fandom wars and obsession with having the most correct, morally pure take.

Regardless, yes, the Hightowers obviously are a privileged family at the top of the social food chain, benefitting from the exploitation awarded by feudalism - a political-economic system based on vast inequality. Therefore, any type of reform they might be willing to undertake will be limited and not really something that significantly changes the status-quo. Just like the beloved, fan-favourite, and mostly confirmed "winners" - the Starks. A third element that our fandom has trouble accepting is the concept of incremental change. I feel like it would basically be a truism to point out that incremental change has been the most reliable vector of socio-economic evolution throughout human history. So, bad news for them, I suppose, but any superficial study of history will reveal that feudalism hardly collapsed overnight. Which leads us back to the idea that any small change, no matter how limited, does matter in the long run, because, as time passes, it will be compounded with another small change and so on.

Anyway, coming back to the question. Would Targaryen reformation be possible? Certainly! GRRM could have made up any story he wanted. Anything is possible if you plan for it and it makes sense within your worldbuilding. As it stands, the Targaryens are foreigners with a questionable culture, hailing from a land that used to engage in practices that even the feudal Westerosi found backwards, distasteful, barbaric or immoral: slavery, human sacrifice, incest, great feats of violence such as pillaging and conquering neighbouring lands for the sake of feeding their population to their volcano gods etc. The Targaryens also have fire-breathing monsters that, while not exactly enough all the time to prevent any rebellions from happening, are weapons that no one else has access to and that can cause a great deal of damage that no one else can replicate.

So, in order to "reform" and integrate, they would need to renounce all that. They would need to do it the traditional way. They do some of the work, but never go all the way. They accept the main religion of the land, but they don't let go of inter-marrying, because they don't want to lose their access to dragons. There are attempts to integrate, but, by the time of the events of the main series, they have returned to incest. Funnily enough, Aegon V plays a role in both - he marries outside of the family and has no dragons left, but his succeeding son and daughter marry each other and, eventually, Aegon decides that bringing back dragons is not such a bad idea after all. I do think that the symbolic weight of Daenerys having both her parents and her grandparents as brother-sister sets is laying the "dragon blood" metaphor thick - and that it holds more magical weight than any mathematical calculation of her actual watered-down Targaryen DNA.

In any such scenario where GRRM decided to go down a Targaryen reformation path, IMO it would have been thematically-relevant to ease into it via a marriage alliance with one of the oldest families in Westeros - a well-respected, rich house that also has close links to both the only centre of higher education and the main religious organization in the land. Hence the meme. :) But it doesn't last and the Targaryens go back to their dastardly ways eventually, that's the point of them in the story, because the author chose it to be the point.

[thembolaura2]

Babel is a book that came highly recommend to me from people I trust, and honestly I can see why. On it's surface, it should've been something I was really into - a book about anti-imperialism set against the backdrop of the Opium Wars while also being about etymology and the inherent imperfections of translating between two languages. Hell it even quotes Frantz Fanon at one point.

And yet.

I've been thinking about it a lot recently, and I think I've come to some conclusions of the things about it that really rubbed me the wrong way - major spoilers for the whole book follow.

Fundamentally, it comes down to one word: class. I think RF Kuang has a massive blindspot around class and classism, and it seeped through in this book in a way that I found quite aggravating.

I'll start by saying that the only working class characters that I can remember are Professor Lovell's housekeeper Mrs Piper, and the northern strikers. And kind of Griffin.

Mrs Piper is basically shown as a stereotypical loving, kindly housekeeper. She's Scottish and makes scones for Robin! That's...about all there is to her character, aside from one particular thing that sticks out to me - there's a bit early on where Robin gets beaten by Lovell for hyperfocusing and missing the start of his lesson, and Mrs Piper gets judged (not by Robin mind, by the book) for not acknowledging anything was wrong:

Some other child suited to better, kinder treatment might have realised that such nonchalance on the part of adults like Mrs Piper [...] to a badly bruised eleven-year-old was frightfully wrong

Now ignoring that this is a book set in 1830s Britain where this would have been a common occurrance anyway (yes it still would've been wrong back then but given the cultural context I don't think there were many other children "suited to a better, kinder treatment"), what grates me about this is that there's absolutely no interrogation of why she might not want to speak out about it. Her job is as a housekeeper. Presumably she is reliant on this job to survive. If she spoke out about this, chances are she'd both lose this job and potentially any future housekeeping jobs. And like, it's not a huge thing, but it's an early sign that the approach to class is at best, lacking.

So then we come to the northern strikers. First introduced as a rowdy, scary crowd - fine, it's from Robin's perspective and he's had a very bourgeois, sheltered upbringing after being picked up by Professor Lovell. They come back later, now on Robin's side, to act as. Uh. A barricade. Only one of them, Abel Goodfellow (lol) is the only one who gets any particuar characterisation, the rest are just a faceless crowd of people who the book doesn't seem to have any real interest in. The only reason they exist is to give the Oxford students and professors an extra layer of protection so none of the actual characters are in any sort of risk for a few chapters.[1]

Which brings me to one of my biggest issues. This whole book has been leading up to this "revolution" - but the revolution is a bunch of academics hiding in the big Colonialism Tower, while a bunch of proles are the ones who actually put themselves at risk. They are basically treated as cannon fodder to protect the brave academics, but then end up getting cold feet when it seems like they might be in some actual danger.

What the fuck.

What puts an even bigger point on this is knowing, throughout the entire book, that RF Kuang herself went to Oxford and pulled from her experiences. While this makes her exploration of the racism in the upper echelons of British society very real and is a legitimately good critique, it also makes the way she approaches the working class in this book feel extremely patronising - made worse by my recent discovery of just how bourgeois the rest of her background is (she went to a Greenhill School where each year costs upwards of $30k, Georgetown University which has a dispropotionately high ratio of students from wealthy families, studied at both Oxbrige unis, and finally an Ivy League uni in Yale.)

And I get it, I'm white, that is absolutely a privilege I have that she does not. I would never deny that, and I never want to talk over people who have experienced racism. But also, class-based oppression is very fucking real. So to have a literal Oxbridge scholar write a book decrying British imperialism and colonialism, criticising Oxford for being a racist driver of these things, while simultaneously glorifying the glamourous aspects of the institution [2] and just glossing over the intensity of classism in British society is, quite frankly, fucking galling.

Oh also, if you want me to be sympathetic to a character, maybe don't make them the fucking prince to another empire??? Utterly bizarre choice.

[1] As an aside, this section is another good example of her blindness towards class:

Despite all expectations, Abel's supporters grew in number over the following days. The workmen strikers were better at getting the message out than any of Robin's pamphlets. They spoke the same lanugage, after all. The British could identify with Abel in a way they could not with foreign-born translators.

The implication I get from this is that because they're foreign academics, those stupid, racist proles ignored them, but like. There is a long, storied history of solidarity across racial lines among the British working classes - admittedly my knowledge of this history doesn't go back as far as when this would have been taking place, but either way, the fact it's not mentioned that the British working class would see them primarily as Oxford toffs just seems like such a weird thing to skip over.

[2] Honestly my issue with all the anachronistic things like the oysters isn't that it's anachonistic but that it comes across as bragging about all the special things she got to experience at Oxford