#culture is literally just the format in which you live your life

[anqaspond]

its shocking how my stance that culture isnt an excuse for harm or oppression is so rare. like forgive me if i think racial grouping suited only to help me decide on whether or not a person can be reasonably abused is fucking stupid. forgive me if i think abuse isnt culture and you can still be connected to your culture without excusing abuse.

[huellitaa]

₊˚⊹♡ education is hot!

education is literally the most valuable thing in life. please please PLEASE take advantage of that. self concept is important, good looks are important, happiness is important, health is important, but without education we wouldn't even know what any of that even means. ♡

having knowledge makes you magnetic. when you're smart, people will look up to you. and if people look up to you, it means they think about you, they admire you, and you have an influence on them.

life is knowledge. the more you learn, the more you are. knowledge is the fundamental basics to life. nothing is the root of everything but we wouldn't even know what nothing is without education. we wouldn't have language, we wouldn't have concepts, we wouldn't have technology, we wouldn't have the screen you're reading this on. we wouldn't have tumblr 😨

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 1. noting down ur findings

the smartest people ALWAYS note down what they learn, whether it be big or small. if you have lots of knowledge and / or the memory capacity of a goldfish then naturally you may not always remember what you learn. keeping it noted down in any preferably easily accessible format of your choice is so helpful and a very smart choice if you want to be an Intellectual™. notebook, sketchbook, binder, google docs, notion pages, tumblr posts, notes app, anything you like !!!!! just keep it noted down !!!! ♡

──★ ˙ ̟🎀2. utilising ur resources!!!!

so many people i know and millions of people throughout the world suffer with a crippling addiction to their phones, but what are you actually doing on said phone? you spend ages on your phone, your tablet, your laptop, reading, writing, playing video games, and so on, but even then, are you genuinely learning? are you taking the time to absorb the knowledge placed before you or are you skimming through it all in a mindless cycle of media consumption?

think about how you can utilise the things around you to learn. for example, make all that time spent on your devices useful. research, study, learn in your free time. knowledge is abundance. you can use your local library, your local bookshops, ur school or ur college or ur workplace just to find out more about your surroundings and about the world. it is so much more valuable thank you'd think.

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 3. wisdom

wisdom is the highest form of knowledge. to learn is to live so living is the only way you're going to truly learn, if that makes sense. therefore, by using this direct method, you gain the highest manner of knowledge; wisdom. wisdom is not being book smart or knowing how to solve equations or write essays but wisdom is genuine, pure, raw, life experience and life lessons, which, surprise surprise, can only be gained through experience and living your life. go out, try things, get out of your comfort zone, get comfy being uncomfy. you got this. ♡

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 4. social interaction

"nerds dont know how to socialise!!!" okay so maybe i adhere to this stereotype sometimes but social interaction is, however unfortunate it may be, a key part of being intellectual and having genuine knowledge. going back to wisdom and learning through experience, speaking with and networking with and sparking connections with others is a vital way to be educated and informed and cultured along with enhancing your social skills, because we need to know how to interact with others, too. if we can't spread said knowledge through connections and socialising so it can be passed down for hundreds of thousands for years to come then there is no point in learning at all because it'll have no use in the long run.

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 5. media consumption

feed ur brain. i cannot stress this enough. read books, fiction or non fiction. i know you've heard this a million times but it's true. read just a random article of interest every day to get your brain working. learn a new word every day, read news reports, letters, interesting blogs, articles, websites, do puzzles, crosswords, wordsearches, memory games, listen to podcasts, audiobooks, watch documentaries, youtube videos, interviews, ted talks, video essays, EXERCISE UR BRAIN

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 6. insights, emotional intelligence and empathy

as i've said before, and i'll reiterate again, knowledge extends beyond simply having book smarts and knowing how to work with letters and numbers. the most powerful method of communication amongst humans is emotion, and being well versed in how to read, understand and communicate said language is only learnt through real life experience and observation of real life experiences where the use of emotional intelligence and empathy come into play. analyse these experiences and note down everything

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 7. question ur sources and BE BOLD

one thing i was taught ever since i was little is that when ur online you need to be veeeery careful with all the information you get fed because there are lots of people out there, esp on the internet, with lots of different intentions and lots of different facts, even if they have good intentions and don't mean to mislead you. always double check whatever ur told with someone you know or on another website or two or a physical yet reliable source if you have one to hand, and cite your own opinions too. you get to choose what does and doesn't get to enter your mind. your mind and your knowledge is yours entirely and only yours to be tampered with and adjusted in any way you'd like.

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 things 2 study and be generally educated on:

social etiquette and politeness

countries and their respective laws, cultures, landmarks etc.

history of your own family and ancestry

languages you're interested in and basic phrases in several languages

information about your dream and / or current career

finances and how to manage your money

business, networking and persuasion

pet psychology and how to take care of them

capital cities and basics about places around the world, esp if you plan on going travelling

something beautiful about knowledge is that you'll never run out of it and it can never be taken away from you. people can take anything from you, but never your intelligence. ♡

all my love! 💖✨💘💗🎀💓

[mymessyexpressions]

There has always been a lot of discourse around generational differences. Every year, especially this year, with everything happening in Palestine and in the US market, is this internet beef between the older generation and Gen Z that, at least to me, makes no sense.It is the ongoing cycle of older generations judging the younger and thinking themselves as superior.

The specific format that I am talking about comes in 2 forms.

1. Back in my day we did things like this and it worked out just fine. Why can't you pull yourself up by the boot straps and make it work like we did?

2. Fashion cycles/trends/"hacks" that older generations used and they are upset that they are being shared as "new" because they have been doing it for years. Another variation of this would be "fashion that was trendy when I was a kid is now something I am being made fun of for".

To address number 1, this mindset that we are the ones that need to stop making excuses and it's all within our realm of influence isn't very applicable anymore. The US ranks #23 in happiness, but if only the votes cast by people under 40 were used, the US would rank in the 60s. The reason for that is that life is extremely difficult for us right now.

Life for the older generations at our current age was very different. Start homes were accessible and not majority owned by corporation that's are renting them out. Salaries/pay covered their needs and had enough for savings. Minimum wage used to mean the lowest amount of money someone could make an hour that would let them live comfortably and safely; not the lowest amount a company deigns to give.

The only way to change these things is through the government. Which at the momment is focused on all the wrong things. They are focused on making sure they are profiting ad much as they can while securing future generational workers.

Now number 2, is just this hateful attitude towards younger people. Why are you hating on someone that is learning something new? We weren't around when you were a teenager and curling your hair with a straightener! We weren't born when you already knew all the tips and tricks to do your makeup! We weren't born when you had already learned and mastered these skills at our current age! Congratulations, you are experiencing the passage of time!

For the variation of this was inspired by a specific tiktok I watched ( ofc no hate to the creator ) where they were complaining about how when they were kids wearing tall/crew socks was "out" and ankle/socks that wouldn't peek over your shoes were "in". Nowadays, they are being judged by the younger generation for wearing ankle socks. The funniest part of this was that the comments were filled with "nobody says this to you" or "literally no one cares what you wear".

I have noticed the differences in generations in observing trends. Older generations will see the one trend and take it at face value; that's all there is, and that is all that the young people are into. ( for the sake of the argument, we aren't looking into sub cultures) Fashionable styles used to last centuries, and then decades. There was one staple mainstream style throughout the decade. Now we are seeing very short trend cycles as well as multiple mainstream fashion styles. Gen Z, if anything, is all about self expression however you see fit.

It makes no sense to me why we should be regarding the younger generation for struggling to thrive in a world that was destroyed by earlier generations. We are living in a place not made for us but for our capitalistic overlords. Even with Gen Alpha; it's not their fault. Parents, school, their environment, the government, and the world have failed them. They are a product of the earlier generations' bad influence or inaction. We need to step up to help those kids grow up into capable adults with critical thinking skills so they don't make the mistakes of the past. We need to stand up for ourselves so that the actions of those older than us do not destroy everything we hold of value.

[inutile-dilettante]

Dialogue 2:

Ordinary citizens, who live with their carsini souls, outside the rigour of scientific conversation and controlled dialogue, just as they are far from being in contact with biopsychosocial treatment pathways, have appropriated the theories of the masters of the golden souls, reproducing their words in a way that the colossus calls vulgar, references and expressions that are, references and expressions that are, in a veiled way, disseminated by the media and appear in the discourses of advertising and everyday life in general, becoming almost like a public domain, as if everyone could know exactly what these terms, concepts, ideas and premises mean, the excluded produce and reproduce what they say is the exclusive domain of the colossals. Useless dilettantism tells these media that these domains mean nothing and that it is therefore authentic to reproduce them by their own creative and dilettantish means. Because we've already tasted the product, as far as the colossals and their canons are concerned, and they have no flavour whatsoever, so do it.

Thus, A Useless Delitantist is in dialogue with a friend in a garden, Arabic style, on a beach, and it is this dialogue that speaks the lush:

"Your monograph and writing, Gabriel, is as deeply comprehensible as João do Rio's Portrait of Dorian Grey. Because you remind me that one way to train in erudition is just to read João do Rio's translations, mainly by Martin Claret. Or the aportuguised work that I found most difficult to read. Reading Don Quixote by Montecristo Editora is easier than reading João do Rio's translation by Martin Claret. Montecristo's book is available on the Skeelo platform for free, kid."

He took a moment to look at the beach from afar and then turned back to his friend with a questioning look on his face:

"Literate, erudite and poetic currents are only and exclusively concerned with tedious, monotonous activities, with extreme concern about whether or not they can keep the shit together, as well as loyalty, frankness, sincerity, eschewing the norms of gymnastic body style. These eight qualities are exclusive to the extremely literate, academic, poetic and erudite. I observe this because I'm a kind of sentinel".

He laughed as he finished speaking.

"In my work as a watchman, I observe gymnasts who seek extreme control of their bodies and judge their colleagues who are out of line with me, fat and psychotic with trembling bodies. Gymnasts work out so that their body equals or exceeds the capacity of the training machine, a delinquent like me, in contrast to this mechanisation of the body, uses the training machine to go according to the body, that is, not to force it, regardless of whether or not the coach says he can go beyond the machine."

He spoke as he gazed continuously at the fields of Gramado around him:

"For me, building the body is done in a natural way, without equating the organism with the machine, but making the machine work in the time of the organism, lungs work with the lung capacity and not work to the maximum of a tool. In other words, respecting their limits. Forcing an actor on stage to control his emotions like a button makes him a kind of oscillating robot, forcing a student to control information makes him a kind of cognitive algorithm, making an athlete like a machine makes him the training device itself? My group isn't interested in the mechanisms that make up today's world. What is most valuable to us is the new revelation of human relationships and the acceptance of organic capacity."

The fat man got up to buy an ice-cream, sat down and said:

"But much of what is done with Useless Delitantism starts from the school in which an Anglicanism is appropriated to say a method of validation and politics for the promotion of culture not legitimised in the historical-social process of/in the development of one or more ethnic groups. On the other hand, we are witnessing a massification of a common cultural formation, a culture that prepares itself to be literate, academic, erudite, mechanical, technicist, or to want to be, denying its own culture through the spin on the Baobab. Everyone forgets that in each culture there is, on the part of each subject who participates in it, a different announcer, a form that adapts to the way of being in a world of events that is increasingly complex and distant from human relationships, this is being delitantist."

Said the fat man who was now savouring a natural fruit ice cream, strawberry. I continue:

"Deize is not separated from David, the first says something about the subject within three cyclical processes for the transcendent instance, I say more, because it is where the subject making itself also makes the way of announcing itself in its culture. The second, on the other hand, says something about the eternal change of things, which justifies my focus on cyclical processes, since there is no fixation on a role for the stage, but a dialectic to always get there. I'm not going to explain it to you, Gabriel… Recreate what I'm saying, put it into your own words, and you'll understand".

He finished his ice-cream looking out over the green fields. The Dilettantist said:

"Today we see a scenario in which the central workforce sweeps ethnic minorities aside, along with the LGBT+ workforce. Including diversity is a word beyond the apparent whimsy of an optic and symbolic fantasy, which demands, through practical routes, not just including, but dismantling the normalised power hierarchy. People who are part of this hierarchy feel that their work is unquestionable and that their spaces are legitimate, which means that within the central labour force, people within the normative, white, hetero, gymnastic, Judeo-Christian patterns feel more confident about what they do and the spaces they occupy, as well as dominant over the latter, in other words, that they feel legitimate in excluding or sweeping to the ignored side. Or as happened to me inside the spinner gym, people who couldn't even see each other, but ignored me, refused to give instructions and advice so that I would give up the gymnastic ritual."

He laughed, gazing out over the beach. That's how Gabriel reflexively put it:

"It's not just out there that they'll be rooting for your worst, that you get lost, that you sink into drugs, that you kill yourself, that you have accidents. It's obviously also from within what we're taught to call family. It's not a good deed that will exclude various perverse discourses such as those listed here right now. And you, being as self-sufficient as I am, don't understand this little piece full of gerunds, which you don't even know what such a thing is. So who's in the shit now? Who can't understand a simple text written by me, the madman? You know, you'll never be able to understand them. These texts are for a class of useless Delitantists, and go read Lord Arthur Savile's plots to understand."

They both stared reflectively at the beach in the distance. Then the fat man began to speak:

"I see, Costa. You know… My mum's a sweetheart when she's not a beast, I love her anyway. That's why I told her that the undignified situation she's going through today is the fault of her sisters and nephews who voted for Bolsonaro. Since she's so wonderful, she didn't recognise it, she kept repeating: "But how are they to blame?". Do you understand how family love in excess can really blind? The family doesn't have to be too high up, nor so much higher than ourselves, I believe."

The friend didn't understand the correlation, but being a Useless Dilettantist, one knows that articulating paragraphs and meanings is not a priority, so the Dilettantist continued:

"There are many things I don't understand, Gabriel. Just like you… Or Julia, who may not have responded to my feelings at university…".

They both laughed. He continued:

"Frankly… You know, I was reading about the utopia of communism and I realised that, in the transition from socialism to communism, there is the disappearance of the state which unleashes the prodigious development of the productive forces, I think it's in the sense of gigantic, the age of abundance, which from the way I write, some of you know which book and page it's about, well, such prodigious development would lead to this age of abundance, to the end of the division of labour into subordinate and superior tasks, to the absence of contrasts between town and country, industry and agriculture. I certainly recognise that the existence of the state brings with it all these contrasts and repulsive determinations in favour of the owners of capital, which with its end could lead to the transfalled context, I mean, [/written], but alongside this, I can't imagine a point that is that of prodigious development with the non-existence of classes, such a characteristic of this stage, its naive understanding of the age of abundance. I always endeavour to imagine a prodigious classless development that leads to the abundance of some, some era, eras…".

The Dilettantist laughed at himself. He returned to his serious tone and said as if surprised by something he had thought:

"But I understood something from Marx, dear Costa… That society is structured on two levels, the infrastructure and the political-ideological. What interests me most is the infrastructure, because there are two types of relationship there, that of nature and that of individuals to each other. And although both are in great decline today, a Useless Dilettante is always busy talking about the relationship between individuals who are increasingly distant due to technology and defence encounters with remote names. It's interesting how this relationship starts in industry and extends to the social environment, i.e. relationships with owners and non-owners are just as devastated as the relationship between non-owners and means and objects of labour or just as drastic as in the social environment. You only have to look at the new HR and be disappointed to find it robotised, as if this were a simple attempt to keep HR out of the hands of the worker who has a problem. It's like taking the glasses off someone who's having problems with their eyesight, Gabriel."

He looked wide-eyed, perplexed, and shook his head in the affirmative, repeating "it's" for a very long time, as if in astonishment. He said:

"The gymnastic society, or society of athletes, determines and reinforces who is not in the gymnastic mould. In this way, it contributes to the determination/conditioning of those who are muted, made invisible, inert, based on the type of body that the discriminated subject has, within this the ethnicity, the conduct, the expression that is or is not in contrast with the reference of gymnastic identity, which is the moral basis of the gymnast since the reinforced gymnastic movements of the notorious French gymnastic method of the 19th century."

He spoke again:

"It is the intellectuals who elaborate the hegemonic ideas that appear in the judgement of one or the other. And this all starts with the class system, which is the structure of the school that prepares its thinkers to be attracted to ally themselves with the prevailing values of the dominators. Meanwhile, in the dominated classes, deconsciousness grows more and more and leads to disorganisation, passivity and dependence, and even if there were a great rebellion, this dependence wouldn't be changed."

Arrotou continued:

"This is why there is a need for organic intellectuals, who emerge organically from their own ranks and counter the traditional intellectuals who generalise the values of the ruling classes. The purpose of the organic intellectual is to form, in his own logical way, the concept of the world of the dominated, which the traditional intellectual is incapable of thinking and doing."

He was reflective for a moment and said:

"I'm not just a dilettante Dadaist writer, because I didn't study to be a Portuguese language teacher, but a teacher of communication and expression. Because I see that educating, on the occasion of being a lyricist, is a political position and my position is against the linguistic prejudice that immobilises, makes impossible, silences through the exercise of both the alps trained in prescriptive grammar and the greatest sages in normative grammar. To hell with prescriptive grammar, express yourself!".

He quickly spoke again:

"Do you notice that I use the term lyricist as someone who has a degree in lyrics or who studies lyrics? I reveal that I know that in NORMA it means someone who writes lyrics or someone who draws lyrics, but for me the former is a lyricist and the latter a lyricist. See how the norm is a square thing? It has to spiral! It has to be more Dada. Like, that moustache isn't Monalisa's, but that moustache was put on Monalisa to give it its own meaning. So I cut out the word lyricist from her magazine page with its closed meaning and expanded its meaning into something else and something of my own, my collage page."

He continued:

"For me the social fact changes the meaning of the word as each social group constructs the meaning of their words at the time they speak them and in parallel to the time they have already been said. Language arises within a social factor and through it and all that language contains through it, yet it is independent of the individual, that is, it has a character of exteriority that defines the social factor in language that is notable for linguistic variations that depend on external conditions. In order to understand language, it is necessary to refer to diachrony and history. In the process of language, diachrony and synchrony are placed together, since the structure is constructed in the present time by past history and with history it is described."

He went on to say:

"There was a researcher called Bernstein, little noticed, he did a research on the real linguistic productions parallel to the social situations of the speakers and this was based on the observation where the literacy rate of working class children was different from that of wealthy class children and therefore there would be different linguistic productions and this is how he verified it. He thus postulated the restricted code and the elaborated code, concluding that learning and socialisation are marked by the family in which the child is raised and that it is the social structure that determines the type of code, along with linguistic behaviour. In this way, linguistic difference was discretised on the basis of social difference. Later, William Labov showed that instead of codes, the linguistic characteristics of these "polar classes" were styles. For me, a style is a decision. Those who follow a style follow it by choice, like the autonomy to choose which trousers to wear that day, but when you're working class you don't have much choice of clothes, so it's your purchasing power that makes your style, which serves as an anchor, and in these circumstances, of heteronomy, it's not really a style, but a social condition. It's for these reasons that I agree with Bernstein's code term for Brazil. I would only make a few changes, such as broadening it to class code aa, a, ab, b, bc, c, cd, d, de, e. But, obviously, a whole alphabet fits. Above all, I can say that linguistic diversity is conditioned by the socio-identity factors of the speaker, recipient and context."

Laughing, he seemed to lose his grip on reality, and began to say something completely unrelated to what he had said so far:

"My family and my mum always say that I'm clever, that I'm special, that I'm someone good, that I'm an angel, that I can achieve anything I want if I concentrate hard enough. Well, I don't think I'm anything like that. To tell you the truth, nothing too grandiose is how I feel. I appreciate what isn't regimented, prescriptive, standardised, mechanised, ceremonial, sanctified, intellectualised. I have an appreciation for madness, which is why I'm a dilettante in the style of Arthur Savile."

[gre7n]

Family

A local Imam said that God created all humans beginning with Adam and Eve and, therefore, all people are brothers and sisters. How do you respond to this view? Do you think it is helpful or good? If so, why? If not, why not?

(paragraph breaks are semi random btw, i had to do it for tumblr formatting and i didnt feel like trying to make them make sense xd)

When considering the question of this viewpoint of Adam and Eve, I think it is useful to break it down into the premise and conclusion. On one hand you have the premise: Adam and Eve are the first humans. This is an extremely bold claim from a scientific standpoint if your only idea was to claim that a man named Adam and a woman named Eve existed and that these events occurred. In terms of how knowledge is sorted in our modern times with thousands of years of experience, there’s simply not enough to give any hint of truth or relevance of these claims, and the discussions end up being based on emotional convictions rather than the hard scientific truth that is required for these very specific claims being made.

That being said, there does appear to be parallels to the overarching concepts of the theory of evolution. It can be said that, indeed, not just every human, but every animal and bacteria and fungi and species known to exist all comes from the same “source”. At some point a soup of primordial molecules started to replicate themselves and started to increase in complexity naturally and became the gateway point for the rest of our current understanding of existence to begin. This is when we reach the conclusion: all people are brothers and sisters. Now, in the literal sense, this appears to be true. But only understanding this idea through scientific and almost nihilistic means reduces the scope and weight of the idea to its most minute points. In functioning families, there is an acknowledgement that everyone is similar in an almost karmic sense that they all seem to exist in similar socioeconomic statuses, cultural interactions, literally born of the same people who transfer their ideals (or lack thereof) down. There is an acknowledgement that even if things aren’t perfect, you all at least understand each other. How could you not? You all endure hardships together, financial, physical, etc. You don’t have to speak a word in the best cases (the truth rests so clearly), but there is no shame in exclaiming out what is wrong either. This knowledge allows those inside the family to be the best suited to actually point out flaws and problems in each other.

But what happens when the bonds in a family break down? When you see the flaws, but have no ways to express what they are to those around you? What happens when those flaws actively make your life a living hell? Tortured physically, mentally, you name it. Kind of awkward to claim that decades of abuse was all for nothing, that at any point someone could choose to stop. At its best family is loving, but when ignored just like every other emotional problem, it leads to limitless pain. Entire philosophical views of the world built on pain and agony at the most personal level. All of these things are painful to talk about on a personal level, especially for those in the middle of said crises (which some last for decades and never end until death, but those problems can be transferred generationally anyway). We never truly escape it. This is the emotional baggage associated with family in our modern world, and especially in America. So, claiming that every person on this earth, every animal, every cell, perhaps even every atom is family means you have to contend with these exact thoughts and your relationship to everything. It's not just a claim but a way to engage with the world. It paints your view of everything. If you aren’t ready to deal with the consequences of being cosmically intertwined with every being we’ve ever known or could potentially even effect in any way through the butterfly effect, there is a great deal of pain that is waiting to be realized by an individual that has been placed upon others by no reason other than true ignorance. And really, what actually separates you and me? My DNA matches 98.8% of a chimpanzee. Imagine how much I share with you.

And how much we let less than 1% difference pollute our perceptions! There is a cosmic exclamation that when I feel pain, others can too. And it's just as real for them as it is for me. Our minds are extremely complex, and in that complexity, we can get wrapped up in stories. Stories of who we are as people, who the first humans were, which religion we follow of the ten options. But ultimately our true identities are so more magnificent than the one person we are. In just the same way you can look up and see that you are a part of the human family, you can look down and see that the billions of cells and bacteria make up the family that is you. They work together and allow something much greater than any one part to live its complex and independent life. Living proof that collectivism and autonomy are not mutually exclusive. Remember, bacteria and cells would eat each other in a completely hostile world. That is until one day a cell took another cell in, and instead of breaking it down, let it live there. It turned out this cell actually was quite good at converting food into energy, so much so that it was more efficient to let it live inside itself and allow it to replicate and exist together. The concept we call family is just the human interpretation of a process that has been going on for billions of years, but ultimately it's the same story. A country is its own organism, its own family. How long until we can exist as one? As one family, as one people. At the end of the day, which religion you follow, which version of history you tell, or what name you call the beauty of truth doesn’t matter. What matters is that you see life for what it is and love indiscriminately. That you look every person in the eye and see every part of yourself that exists inside of them. There is no ignoring the world we live in. Every experience, every thought, it all points here. Stories are what we tell each other to teach valuable lessons. No one is watching Star Wars and thinking “I can’t believe this all actually happened”. You walk away with a feeling that family can overcome even galactic sized evil forces. Why did the story of Luke and Darth Vader resonate so strongly with an entire world? It's just as religious a story as many actual religions tell. So, is it good? The answer is yes, if what is important is kept as the main focus, and if we allow new stories to be told that capture the beauty of the truth in even more detail and simplicity. We should pray for the day that we can join the entire world with one simple story. Easy to tell, easy to feel. But if it hasn’t yet with one story, we can no longer force it to. There will have to be a new story, inspired by those of the past, not throwing them away, but simply understanding them. Taking what worked, throwing away what didn’t. What else do we do with our thousands of years of history other than learn and grow? So long as there are problems, our work is not over. Never will we be able to be complacent in that which we tell ourselves until that day. Will that day ever truly come? Probably not, but at least in the meantime we can make things tangibly better. Better is all we can strive for.

[nullset2]

On Diversity in the Tech Industry

"Write every day", lest the thoughts consume you. When you write, you think. Even more: when you write, you're actually doing it to organize your mental cabinet, rather than for the benefit of other people (even though people will be reassured that they're on the right path once they find your footsteps on their journey). "Writing = thinking", my previous employer used to say all the time, which is a principle that I incredibly value even though there are a lot of other things about their culture that I don't appreciate.

Let me preface this by saying that the matter of diversity is an issue at large in the tech industry, and not something specific to any particular company or segment in it, and it's something that I think people are honestly, earnestly doing their best about, and there's a lot of people that I'm infinitely indebted to, powerful mentors in my way who have made me a better person. Even though sometimes the path to hell is paved with good intentions, I still abide by this paragraph. By and large, the industry is comprised of just good guys and gals and non-binary pals, you know what I mean?

However, we live in incredibly bizarre times, and sometimes it gets the best of me and that's why I want to jot these things down.

The prevalence of technology and the quasi-autistic state of alienation it fosters is leading to this state of being where the Other is eradicated and the Self is regarded as the All there is to be.

How does this fit with the tech industry? Well, the spiel paraded by the activists in the regard of Diversity claims that "races and profiles have been systematically excluded off of certain echelons of society" like the tech industry. Thus, there's a mechanic of oppresion moving the threads of society like its puppetmaster, there's a glaring generational debt which should be reparated back as soon and as efficiently as possible, and therefore, affirmative action should be taken to get those profiles back into the tech industry. Affirmative action is, basically, to take it easy on the, supposedly oppressed types (it already feels horribly demeaning to me to write this) and to provide them with positive affirmations and validations. Thus, quotas of intersectional profiles, based off of criteria like race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, et. al., should be rigurously applied to hiring, delegation, assignment of responsibilities and formation of teams.

(Another disclaimer before we go on: there's a kernel of truth in this. Imagine that you were designing a website for a Muslim locale, and, lacking knowledge of the sensitivities there, you decided to put a picture of a big, fat, beefy burger with strips of chunky, crispy bacon on it. Egad, pork meat is haram there, but you never knew. If you had a muslim colleague, however, that kind of stuff would had popped up earlier. It does help to have multiple life experiences and sensitivities in your team in ways more succint than we realize. I am convinced of this being true.)

Now, carrying on, the problem is that, on paper, of course it's true. Everybody knows it to be true. That which fits the collective-unconscious pre-conception of a techie is good, and that which doesn't is to be eradicated and this has a racial skew. Work, dating, neighborhoods, HOAs, relationships... everything in the modern world is subjected to one or many heavy biases. I'm writing this essay in English for goodness' sake. The die have already been thrown centuries ago. The hands have been dealt and we're sort of trying to pull forward as-is, awkwardly as it is. The tech industry is vastly, grossly majoritarily Caucasian and Asian (and by this I also mean Indian), and those profiles form a techno-elite caste that mostly exclusively hangs out and disseminates information among itself. This technoelite caste is fast-tracked into colleges where there's literally classes where they teach them the very same problems that they get in technical interviews, which they get to learn and rehearse at leisure, ergo fastracking them into the industry too.

Now, the naive explanation to this would be to assume that the reason why this happens is merely racial, which is what those types posit, but I actually think that's a lie. Every good lie is partially true though. To assume that it is only racial disregards the matter of competence.

"Affirmative Action" or "Positive Discrimination" as I've heard it called, is the proposed solution to this problem. "So, there is a very obvious skew in the population --thus, what we're going to do is that we're going to strongly encourage you to hire and integrate people into the industry who don't fit this standard.". It's weird because in a way it feels as if the answer to racism is more racism, but I see what they're going for --a fair shot across the board. But when that fair shot seems to be predicated on you being given a crutch because apparently you have a historical handicap because of who you are... well, you can probably infer how that feels.

Yes, my parents got fucked by the machine, I lost a lot of prospects in my earlier life, and I was sort of assumed to be a loser, my parents giving up any hope for me after I failed to breed around 18 years of age. They sort of... never actually understood what I was up to, and they left me to my devices to commune with the 2001 space oddysey monolith. Everyone else also did. My high school friends sort of thought that I was some weirdo loser that was damned to irrelevancy, and when I developed techincal skills and I managed to come up in the world, everyone did a 180 on me and went "holy shit", and either started asking me for money, or cut off contact out of the shame they felt that someone like me was doing like I was (to this day, this process of alienation from my original kin continues to happen btw).

And all of that is because, again, of all of these preconceptions and mechanisms in place --so the Diversity argument does hold up again. I am not saying that the Diversity spiel is wrong. But the problem is that, again, every good lie is partially true. To be prioritized as a profile feels as demeaning as to be actually discriminated against on the same basis (to me, at least. I guess a lot of people are happy in their stations as long as they have a weekly pizza and Netflix to amuse themselves to death, but I personally go insane if I cannot produce anything new). It discounts my competence, right? It's a catch-22. Fucked if I do or if I don't. If I take the step and try to play in the big leagues, people are going to take the piss because I don't talk in Californian Fry and use the same dogwhistles that the techies use among themselves, but if I don't, then I get to stay in a ghetto and make nothing of my life.

I argue, my friends, that whoever is most competent rises in the hierarchy. As corrupt and dirty the hierarchy can be sometimes, this principle is something that I know to be true, and It's been taught to me by the power of the black star, and I feel it in my very bones, in my very marrow. But the problem is, if you come from a fucked up world, how can you effectively develop competence if everyone around you is constantly assuming that you're a loser? It's just horrid. It takes a ridiculous, massive, insane amount of effort that most people are not willing to undertake. I know I suck. I am not really anything when compared to the most competent people in the industry (you know who you are: if you're reading this, I'm sorry that things didn't work out, but maybe in better circumstances we'll do alright).

I fumble my way through things. Yet, I still get things right sometimes.

On a personal level, also: what happens when you decide to go for it, then, and break away from the expectation of your caste and class? It isolates you. It alienates you. It takes you away from your hive, like a bee, and made to wander. When a bee is taken away from its hive (I've been thinking a lot about bee symbolism lately), it will try to find and join other hives, if it can find any before it dies. It is literally a matter of chemistry at that point: if the bee has a compatible chemical signature, it will be accepted and taken in; if not, it will be expunged by the female bees of the hive. The hivemind is a powerful force.

It's even worse when half of the populace out there thinks you're part of a ploy to change the demographic distribution in a negative way, and thus you must be eradicated as soon as possible, but I am not going to go there right now. I'm just going to mention that some neighbors were very happy when a tree fell on my home a bit over a year ago.

What to do at this point? My friends, the answer resides in the Jungian archetype of the Fool. Even though some people would argue that the appereance of the Fool is a sign of the erosion of our societal bonds, the Universe has a soft spot for fools. Sometimes you have to do the most stupid fucking bullshit you can think of. A man has to be a bit stupid sometimes. Be a troublemaker. Be shameless. Dare. Of course, don't be an asshole, but put energy into it. Step into the abyss even if you get fucked by it --because that's where the great things happen. These days, sometimes I do things that I'm not even aware of, which make other people mad. I'm literally oblivious to them. All of a sudden, people react to them and they hurt me, projecting their shadows.

A friend (the only senior Mexican engineer I ever found at my previous employer, who was in a team where I actually performed pretty well once I had the advantage of, egad, lo and behold!, an actual mentor, mind you) told me once "well, at some point you just got to steal it", and then he grabbed an implementation of something off of github, and that's when it hit me. This is the archetype of the fool at play.

Still disgruntled by the whole affirmative action thing and the idea that the best way to integrate me into the industry is to give me a kindergarten gold star and a Chipotle gift card (... though I sure could go for some fucking Chipotle right now because I'm very hungry) every time I post a PR, I also have to offer that the only way forward is through, and that through is going to hurt. At some point, it's all become a function of sacrifice. You literally are going to have to burn the midnight oil many, many, many, many years, and you're going to get fucked by alarms at some point, and you're going to have to work out like mad and you're going to walk around with sore muscles every day. You're going to have to see many people rolling their eyes at you. You're going to have to put up with being laughed at.

Again, it's the appereance of the archetype of the fool.

Parentheses: I've found that being in good physical shape and literal fucking muscle memory and rote memorization (kata-style repetition of phrases) is actually better for developing skills in tech than actually having a degree from some 30 grand a semester school, so it literally means that you need to lock yourself in a house in the forest for three years and attend to a boxing gym like mad if you want to break through the current insane state of things.

At some point, I realized that no matter how much fucking adderall I'd take or how much I did, or how many hours I put at Amazon, I'd still be getting laughed at and punked on and tortured at the end of the day, and my friends, that's when the archetype of the fool, chthonically, rose from the depths of my soul, and it made me turn into something else. I sort of realized that if what I did didn't truly matter and people were going to throw shit at me no matter what, then I was truly free to pursue what I wanted. It unleashed this roaring energy that powers everything I do now.

It renders you alone, too, but (not being melodramatic here) at some point you sort of Accept your loneliness (not making it about me here, but you do really sort of Accept it). There's a part of me that thinks that this whole fetishism of the rugged individualist life that we're currently undergoing is vicious, sick and depraved, but it does feel better than the contrary. It still makes me unhappy, but the mature kind of unhappy, you know? Like there's an inner angel that sees everything through the eyes of the Logos, of eternity, inside me, and he's in command.

I've been reading "The Labyrinth of Solitude" by Octavio Paz and it's fantastic how he gets it all down perfectly. The Mexican is de-facto schizoid, an in-between worlds, a pariah that has to stick together to survive, a race whose divine Mother has abandoned it. It's better to be alone than to be in the company of Jezebels and Nimrods anyway. And things do actually change at some point. Nothing ever stays the same, you know, and there's a lot of people who really do care about you and who are fun to be around out there for you (as trite and platitudical as this sounds).

In the meantime: keep doing stupid shit. You'll be amazed at the results one day. Things are not going to change at large. Just do the most with the hands you've been given.

[chubsonthemoon]

DOVEEEEEEEE oh gosh THANK YOU SO MUCH. This is???? The kindest most flattering thing ever AHHH I am beside myself!!

the way art and creation is part of an ongoing conversation no matter where it's happening and the way that fandom in particular is so founded on that community and the creation of that conversation in real time for the love of it--YOU!!!! YOU GET ITTTTT oh gosh exactly what you said right here!! This is exactly what I set out to capture and I'm SO happy to hear you say that.

This part especially is making me tear up >>> hosting it in the same format as that used for the long-term version of that collaborative process in a volume like the Odyssey (the conversation between the storytellers and translators and academics and historians surrounding something like a Homeric epic) I ADORE how you say "long-term" here, because YES!!! That's what these books are made for, really (although the love they get now continues to astound and humble me!)--they're for the future, and your pointing it out here is so vindicating. It also reminds me of how we even got here--how the many pieces which now make up the Odyssey were orally transmitted before they were ever written down, and what it means to take those pieces and bind them. What it truly means to bind a story--anchoring it to not only a physical location, but also to a specific point in time. Beyond annotations in the margins (MARGINALIA MY BELOVED) and just straight-up tearing it apart and Frankensteining it to something else, the story is set. It's...like a congealing, of sorts, set in something not quite as permanent as stone, but still very difficult to change.

And now with Wings--what it means to bind fanfiction of it. I've heard modern media fandom described as modern folklore in our capitalist society (wrote a bit about it here in my reply to Heather!), and idk I just think it's kinda neat how unique (or perhaps not unique at all--perhaps only unique recently, with commercial book publishing in its current form) the fic writer-fandom relationship is. We're all just sitting around a virtual fire listening to each other tell stories, and like you said!!! It's ongoing, it's collaborative, it's yes and-ing each other to make new narratives.

Layli Long Soldier once came to my university to speak, and she said something I will never forget, about how orally transmitted histories and stories are just as reliably passed down and preserved as the written word. I don't know how true that is (and there's undoubtedly Very Heated Discussions going on about it in a room somewhere), but it still really got me thinking! About what we remember and what we tell others--human memory is fickle, but are we not containers of stories also, just as much as any codex or scroll or line of code on a screen? And beyond that, we have direct access to the means and medium of telling that story (I guess...our brains? Our mouths? Our hand motions? But then that is all influenced by language which is in turn influenced by culture and individual experience and AHHH--), and we can alter it at will in a way we just can't with something physical. When we tell a story, we're also physically anchoring the intangible to the tangible; we breathe life into it, literally. What never was, is not, and never shall be--and yet we somehow make it so!

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this--every book I bind, I think about what myself and other fanbinders doing--taking fics from the ether of the Internet and giving them a physical home in meatspace. (Reading and watching The Sandman has certainly lent a particular sadboi goth flavoring to the thought process XD) I'm three years into this fanbinding thing, and I don't have any plans of stopping. But I think even if I stop one day, I'll always be thinking, whenever I read a story, about possible methods to increase the chances a binding of it might live on, how to best represent this or that element of the story in a physical space, and with books like Wings--how to best represent a community at a certain point in time. Like, explicitly that community, with a focus on its members and their conversations, in addition to what one might be able to glean about that community from the story itself. Providing context--both for the story, and for the people surrounding the story (which are, perhaps, even the same story), if you will.

ANYWAY. I won't have the answers today or possibly ever LOLL, but thank you so much for listening to my rambles and for this incredibly generous response. On a less armchair note: OMGGGG twinning Robert Fagles translation!!! I love hearing the stories of books and this is now one of my favorites--the lard ball has me CACKLING. And it such an honor to even be mentioned in the same sentence as a specialty edition of the LOTR, thank you so much, I am crying a little T_T

Thank you as well for pointing out all the little details you noticed--you have the keenest eye and are so generous and insightful in your analyses of not just my work, but the work of others in this incredible fandom!! I'm also so mf glad we get to chat about this kind of stuff--it's so uplifting, interesting as hell, and above all just plain pure fun :3

Thank you so, so much, friend!! It means the world <333

Last Binderary book is DONE!!!! This is the incredible Maybe sprout wings, by @moorishflower.

This post is going to be a doozy, so gonna just skip straight to the cut!

INTERIOR

INTRODUCTION

I really wanted to model this bind after my own copy of the Odyssey, (which is all highlighted and bookmarked and annotated to hell from my Great Text courses in undergrad ehe, so this bind was such a fun trip down memory lane!). But beyond just the cover/general aesthetic, I also wanted to give the book a similar feel to these kinds of editions of classics--there's usually an introduction, translation notes, and other supplementary materials, right? Like, a physical manifestation of the work of many, many people, all having conversations with one another across time and space.

So that's what I did! I wrote a short introduction (I will also probably post it to my AO3/my blog as well, in the name of preservation etc. etc.) and began reaching out to folks in the fandom who I knew had created art and meta for the fic. The result? 18k words of analysis, comments, and meta, and nearly twenty pages of art!

And this is what I love most about this bind, I think! This book is the work of several people--truly a collaborative work by the fandom--all of whom I will now be shamelessly calling out below :D

CHAPTER HEADER ART

First and foremost, this book would not be what it is without the gorgeous header art by @fancy-rock-dove! Thank you so much Dove for letting include your work, and for being so supportive and kind these past few weeks about this bind <3 You in particular have contributed so much to this book (which I will be getting more into in the next section ehe), and I'm so psyched I get to hold your art and words, too!

NOTES ON THE TEXT

This section was divided into four parts: Asks and Answers, Meta, Selected Comments, and Chapter Heading Art: Process

For Asks and Answers, I trawled Heather's blog for meta she had written in response to questions and other meta about the fic. Asks came from @fancy-rock-dove, @quillingwords, @kulapti, and myself! (I THINK I got all of them--tumblr's search function is finnicky even on its best days, so so sorry if I missed something T_T) I first got hooked into reading this fic because of one of these asks, so I'm very fond of this section in particular :D

For Meta, I included two wonderful essays written by @pastrypuppy (also known as @kulapti) about Hob as an author figure and the Disrupted Fisher King narrative in MSW. Her analyses were so fascinating and I just had to include them in the book! (And thank you as well for your permission, friend!) (also hello fellow Renegade comrade 🫡)

For Selected Comments, I owe everything to (once again :3) @fancy-rock-dove, whose insights are the epitome of transformative fandom at work. I'd look for their comments after I read every chapter to see what their takes were on this or that element of the story, and every single time I would go "!!!!! I didn't even realize!!!" or "OOOOOOOH I hadn't thought of that!!" It was like being in a lecture hall and always whipping your head around when one of your classmates raised their hand, because you knew they were going to say something fascinating that you hadn't considered before.

Aside from one of my own comments, Dove's comments make up the entirety of this section (for which I owe you my life--your long-form responses to fics are a gift to this world) but GOSH was it also so much fun going through the comments section while typesetting and seeing all the keyboard smashing, yelling, and crying from the other commenters. Communal nature of storytelling and ongoing meaning-making of fanfiction, babey!

And finally for Chapter Heading Art: Process: once again Dove coming in clutch with some wonderful insights into the design of each of the chapter heading art pieces! This kind of stuff is honestly my favorite: meta about art for a fic which is, in turn, a transformation of an existing story (not even to mention that The Sandman is its own kind of fanfiction of existing mythologies and histories)--I just!! Think it's all really, really neat :'D (for more coherent/polished thoughts on this pls see my introduction asjdfkls)

ART

The art gallery!!! A million thanks to @fishfingersandscarves, @honeyseller, @jazzpsych, @doctor-rainbowfoxey, and (HI AGAIN DOVE) @fancy-rock-dove for granting me permission to include all of your beautiful pieces!

As usual for artworks in my binds, I printed each piece out on specialty photo paper to really make the colors pop, then sewed each page separately to the text block! Behold, everyone's beautiful beautiful pieces!

The art gallery also satisfies the certain "oooh shiny" part of my brain that always activates when I see pictures in a book, so am also very fond of this section :3

CONSTRUCTION

And now on to the nitty gritty stuff! I used the German Bradel binding technique again, my second time using it. Even though it's more complicated than the case bind, I really love how it gives you the full board space for the cover designs (~it's free real estate~). Keep it a secret but I kiiiiiiind of made a small goof in the last few steps (I did the turn-ins a step too early and so had to paste an extra sheet of cardstock to secure the spine to the boards, whoopsie), but it's a pretty small difference, aesthetically speaking, so it wasn't the end of the world XD

Edges are once again fake gilded, but this time I tried something new with the colors! I did two layers of acrylic paint--one watered down shade of red for the base, then one metallic gold on top of that. I really like the red/gold effect! I'll have to keep experimenting with this kind of layering:

ALSO. Y'ALL! I think I'm finally getting the hang of endbands!!! Many thanks to the folks at Renegade who hosted all the endband workshops last month--I'm still working through them, but even the few sessions I've seen have been TREMENDOUSLY helpful. I learned that tension is Very Important, as well as thread thickness, so I tried doubling my thread and keeping a Very Close Eye on how I was holding the threads while doing the beads. And behold! I still have a ways to go (and one day I would LOVE to do the fancier designs), but I'm v happy with the progress I've made so far!

And finally the covers!! ARCHIVAL MOD PODGE MY BELOVED. I printed on the same matte presentation paper that I used for the art, then did several coats of archival matte mod podge + a pass of gloss mod podge over the title strip to make it ~shiny~. Then once those had dried and I'd adhered them to the boards, I sprayed two layers of matte clear acrylic sealer (also mod podge!) to finish it off. I had some issues with the paper tearing when I handled it before it was fully dry, but luckily the blemishes were small enough that it was easy to do spot corrections with my black acrylic paint. And now I know to be more patient next time LOL

(some non-photoshoot shots that show the shine a little better!)

FINAL THOUGHTS

I had a lot of thoughts while I was binding this book--about Sandman fandom, about Dreamling fandom, about the Odyssey, about storytelling, about fanbinding, about Binderary, about Renegade, about my friends--but really what came to mind the most was gratitude!

Simply put, I'm so grateful to everyone I've met both in this fandom and throughout the years I've been active online--this is SO fun, y'all. It's so much fun to love stories together--to talk about them, to write them, and of course to bind them! I hope I've adequately conveyed that gratitude.

But of course, this book would not exist without the wonderful words of @moorishflower. Heather, thank you so, SO much for sharing your stories, thoughts, and time with us--it is always a happier, better day when I get an email notif from you and when I see you on my dash. I love your work so much, and I'm so happy I finally get to put it on my shelf! So thank you so much again, for everything <3

and OKAY THAT'S IT FROM ME FOLKS!!!!! Binderary 2023 is officially a wrap! I had SUCH a blast--will probably write up a reflection post on it uhhhh after I take a very long nap ajslkdfjslk _(:3」∠)_

all my love! <3

[benwvatt]

Grey’s Anatomy Has a Toxic Workplace Problem in Season 18 - aka why everyone keeps bullying Meredith into staying in Seattle

(Why is no one talking about this???)

Read my grey’s anatomy meta on ao3! Same format but I would love hear your thoughts

I can’t believe my biggest gripe with Grey’s season 18 is… fair labor practices? I mean, it’s usually more soap-opera stuff. Dead fiances come to life, disappearing girlfriends, surprise pregnancies, etc. etc.

But I keep seeing the same subtle problems arise. I’m going to call this the Webber-Bailey-Fox problem, because it seems that the ‘leaders’ of Grey Sloan Memorial are the most egregious and at fault. In short, why on earth do Webber, Bailey, and Catherine act as if the entire fate of this hospital hinges upon Meredith? Why won’t they let her leave for Minnesota?

She’s a famous surgeon who works there, not a goddess. The hospital isn’t going to magically disappear into dust and shadows if she moves to another state with her kids. If other key characters who are part of the Grey’s universe (Cristina, Alex, Jackson, Arizona, April, Callie, etc.) are allowed to move away and find new jobs, why do her bosses keep guilt-tripping Meredith into staying?

In general I’d give Season 18 a B+. In general my rule about TV is ‘keep watching if you’re having fun. Quit if you’re not!’ and I enjoy spending each Friday morning watching last night’s episode of Grey’s. I thought that many parts of S18 (like the introduction of Kai! Or letting us explore Bailey’s burnout and Maggie’s marriage to Winston!) were handled delicately. But at the same time, Webber, Bailey, and Catherine 一 mostly Webber and Bailey, obviously, since they’re series regulars 一 are just being manipulative toward Meredith.

Again and again on Grey’s, we see management whining whenever people don’t agree with them. In season 2ish, when Bailey considered switching from general to pediatric surgery, Webber was consistently whiny and cruel to her. He acted like she was throwing her career down the drain for changing. Bailey also sort of did this when Jo switched to OBGYN, and when Ben decided to become a firefighter instead of continuing his residency.

The Grey’s timeline is a bit wonky since seasons 1-3 take place during intern year (which I assume is 12 months), but I’d wager Meredith’s literally been working at this hospital for 16 years, give or take. She had her children here. She lost her husband. She dated and re-realized what it means to find love after loss. Is it so wicked and awful that she might want to move to Mayo Clinic instead of growing old and (pardon my pun) grey in Seattle?

During all of season 18, Webber and Bailey are just awful to Meredith. They treat her like a traitor and whine that she isn’t being ‘loyal’ to the hospital where she grew up (reminder: Meredith literally grew up here. Ellis trained at Seattle Grace and there are flashbacks of Meredith as a 6-year-old walking the halls.) If it’s indeed true that Meredith has lived much of her entire life in this one building, why on earth do her bosses keep manipulating her into staying? This is a textbook hostile work environment and it’s so puzzling that no characters in the Grey’s universe are acknowledging it.

A workplace culture where your bosses call you ‘disloyal’ for wanting to submit your 2 weeks’ notice is… not good. No wonder Meredith wants to leave if Webber and Bailey, who are supposedly her old friends and mentors, are so willing to turn on a dime and snarl insults at her.

Don’t even get me started on this Accreditation Council Lady in the finale, who acts as if Meredith’s departure is a key reason why the hospital is unstable. Sure, I assume Mer is good at bringing in fundraising money and good PR (and I know Council Lady feels that she’s been lied to so she’s lashing out), but Mer’s just the chief of general surgery. There are plenty of good general surgeons who can take her place.

And I know, the show is called Grey’s, not Pierce’s or Shepherd’s Anatomy. We all know Meredith is important. But it feels cruel to tell Meredith that she matters so that we can guilt-trip her into staying at Grey Sloan instead of moving away. When does it end? Will Meredith be tied in one place and forced to work at the hospital forever just because they can’t afford to lose her? What kind of awful workplace is this, where you aren’t allowed to leave because people seem to need you too badly? It’s kind of like a desperate boyfriend or girlfriend who refuses to let you break up with them because “they’ll fall apart without you.”

This is an incredibly toxic position from Webber and Bailey, and it makes me dislike them. They’ve been written so oddly this season, acting as if they’re gods who are above criticism and flaw. Their inability to recognize their own flaws is actually the reason they keep hurting the people around them.

So the Minnesota plotline may have its flaws (I’ll get to that later! What on Earth does Mer actually do at Mayo?) but it’s Meredith’s right to leave if she wants to. It’s not like she’s signed some lifetime contract or a blood oath tying her to one place. She’s successful, she’s excited to travel and spend more time with Nick, and the city of Seattle is always going to be haunted in some part because of Derek’s death. Why shouldn’t she get to leave? Why are Webber, Bailey, and Catherine allowed to intimidate and jeer at Meredith? Why do they feel entitled to her time and work? It’s starting to feel like Bailey and Webber are just bad bosses. If you can’t handle the fact that your employees may get a better offer and leave you, you shouldn’t be an employer.

[maxwell-grant]

Excuse Me what is pulp and why is it importan?

Good question! And probably one I should have answered sooner. Time to put on the historian hat for this one.

"Pulp" is a term used mainly to describe forms of storytelling that sprang out or were dominant in 20th century cheap all-fiction American magazines from the 1900s to the 1950s. The pulp magazine began in 1896, when Frank Munsey's Argosy magazine, in order to cut costs, dropped the non-fiction articles and photographs and switched from glossy paper to the much less expensive wood pulp paper, hence the name. The pulp magazines would mainly take off as a distinct market and format in 1904, when Street & Smith learned that Popular Magazine, despite being marketed towards boys, was being consumed by men of all ages, so they increased page count and started putting popular authors on the issues.

It was specifically the 1905 reprint of H.Rider Haggard's Ayesha that not only put Street & Smith on the map as rivals to Argosy, but also inspired other companies to start publishing in the pulp format. Pulps encompassed literally everything that the authors felt like publishing. Westerns, romance, horror, sci-fi, railroad stories, war stories, war aviation stories. Zeppelins had a short-lived subgenre. Celebrities got their own magazines, it was really any genre or format they could pull off, anything they could get away with.

Nowadays, although they came quite late in it's history, the American pulps are most famous for it's "hero pulps", characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage that are viewed as a formative influence on comic book superheroes. The pulp magazines in America lasted until the 1950s, when cumulative factors such as paper shortages, diminishing audience returns and the closing of it's biggest publishers led to it dying off, although in the decades since there's always been publishers calling their magazines pulp. That's the American pulp history.

But pulps are a phenomenon that spans the entire world and has a much bigger history to it, because pulps have become synonymous with cheap fiction magazines and those have a much bigger history. In America, before the pulps, you had the dime novels, the direct predecessors of the pulps, as well as the novelettes. England had it's penny dreadfuls and story papers, and continued publishing pulp-format magazines past the American 1950s, and that's how we got Elric of Melniboné. France and Russia arguably got to it first with it's 1800s coulporters, chapbooks and particularly the feuilletons which lasted all the way to the 20th century and created characters such as Arsene Lupin, Fantomas and The Phantom of the Opera. The Germans published pulp under the name hefteromane. Japan also published pulp magazines both original as well as imported, and the current "light-novel" phenomenon started off as an equivalent of pulp magazines (it's even on the Wikipedia page). China has wuxia, Brazil has cordel, Italy has gialli. There were Indian, Persian, Ethiopian, Canadian, Australian pulps and much more. Look anywhere in the world and you'll find examples of "pulp" happening again and again, under different circumstances and time periods.

Even if we stick to American fiction, it's impossible to state that all pulp heroes must come from the 1900s-1950s pulp magazines, because that forces us to exclude some of the most popular pulp heroes like Indiana Jones, Green Hornet, Rocketeer and The Phantom. Pulp may have once been a term meant to refer to pulp magazines exclusively, but it's morphed and lost structure and it's become the closest thing we have to a general umbrella term that allows us to try and consolidate these under a shared history. It's a lot, as you can see, and it's why several pulp historians that broaden their scope outside of 1930s American fiction have adopted Roland Barthes's definition of pulp as "A Metaphor With No Brakes In It", which is still the closest thing to a true working definition we have.

Why is it important? You tell me. I don't like to stake claims about stuff being "important", everyone's got their own priorities in life. Surely a lot of people would scoff at the idea of old populist fiction published in what was functionally equivalent to toilet paper having any sort of "importance". On the other hand, some people definitely want to talk big about the pulps as a cultural bedrock of fiction, something that's baked into the lifeblood of all fiction as we currently know it. Which it is, mind you, but I don't like to talk about pulp fiction's value being derived mainly from merely the things it inspired.

There is definitely a historical importance to be had in cataloguing them. According to the US's foremost pulp researcher Jess Nevins, 38% of all American pulps no longer exist, and 14% of all American pulps survive in less than five copies. Many libraries have very scant, if any, records on them, many collectors are hard to locate and are uncooperative when it comes to sharing information and letting outsiders view their collections. A lot of them are bound up in legal complications that prevents them from taking off in the public domain, and a lot of them ARE public domain but are completely inacessible as research material. And that's the American pulps, foreign pulps have fared far worse in posterity, with records inaccessible to people unfamiliar with the language or locations, many existing merely in mentions on decades-old records, and hundreds if not thousands of them being completely gone beyond recovery or recall.

Gone, dead, wasted, destroyed. They can't be found in barbershops or warehouse or bookstores, not even in antique stores. Hundreds, thousands of characters, stories and creators, gone. Time and posterity have crushed them to dust, forgotten and ignored by their successors. Unfettered by pretenses of respectability that repressed their glossier counterparts, in packages meant to be destroyed after reading, proudly announcing itself as trash. Things that should have never even lasted as long as they did have died many times now. It's heroes peripherical shapeshifters, nearly all of whom seem dead, quite dead, as dead as fictional characters can possibly be.

But they do not die forever. Many of them have, maybe most of them have, but many of them linger on.

"The strange red flickering of 1930’s fiction seems distant now.  You hold in your hand the product of a time too remote to recall, and feel a slow stir of wonder.  The smell of pulp pages, an illustration, an advertisement, these fragile things mark the slow hammering of time and display what it has done.  About you are today’s machines, today’s shadows.

Outside the window, leaves hang against the sky, as did leaves during the 1930’s.  The sound of voices are no different then than now.  You hold the magazine and feel something quite delicate slipping past. These solid forms surrounding you are all insubstantial. Time’s hammer will also pass across them, leaving little enough behind." - Spider, by Robert Sampson

Many of the things people call dead are just things that have been sleeping for a while or haven't had the chance to be born. Pulp fiction is dead on the page, inert, unless your imagination breathes live to it, and every now and then, one way or another, these characters dig themselves out of dustbins. Maybe it's a brief revival, maybe it's a successful reboot. Maybe they find publishers, or maybe the public domain allows them to find new life. Maybe new creators do interesting things with them, and maybe, just maybe, they live again because some won't shut up about them online. Some curious impulse led you to me, did it not? 

We all have our Frankensteins to obsess over, and these are some of mine. As someone who's lived a life perpetually restless over pursuit of knowledge, pulp has lured me like a moth to flame, because I literally never run out of things to discover within it, I never run out of possibilities. As the years pass and the public domain starts being more and more open to the public, more and more narrative real state is brought forth for writers and artists and creators to play around.

Pulp is the dark matter of fiction, the uncatalogued depths of the ocean, the darkest recesses of space. It's the box of your grandfather's belongings, the treasure you find in an attic, a body part sticking out from an old playground. It's the things that don't work, don't succeed, the things that don't fit, that are out of place. That shouldn't live and succeed, and did so anyway. The things that slither in the cracks, the shadows behind the curtain.

Aren't you interested in peering on what's behind the curtain?

The exquisite workmanship of the head, of a pre-pyramidal age, and the hieroglyphics, symbols of a language that was forgotten when Rome was young–these, Kane sensed, were additions as modern to the antiquity of the staff itself as would be English words carved on the stone monoliths of Stonehenge.

As for the cat-head–looking at it sometimes Kane had a peculiar feeling of alteration; a faint sensing that once the pommel of the staff was carved with a different design. The dust-ancient Egyptian who had carved the head of Bast had merely altered the original figure, and what that figure had been, Kane had never tried to guess.

A close scrutiny of the staff always aroused a disquieting and almost dizzy suggestion of abysses of eons, unprovocative to further speculation. - The Footfalls Within, by Robert E Howard, quoted by Stuart Hopen’s The Mythic American Culture

[streets-in-paradise]

Daredevil Headcanons: Matt, Foggy and Karen with an argentinian friend

Word Count: 1436. 

Relationships: Mostly platonical, but there are glimpses indicating that Matt has a crush on the reader. ( because I’m being blatantly self indulgent here and my love for Matt Murdock plays a role on that.)

Warnings: A shit ton of argentinian cultural references that I explained the best I could. 

Note: I’m rewatching the first season of Daredevil and all the scenes of talking in spanish derivated in me coming up with this. I’m from Argentina and I rarely see us being portrayed in any media piece where characters of latin american origin get to speak their language, so I’m giving this to myself as a treat. 

Everything in my blog is written on English, so i kept this little piece that way, but all the expressions in argentinian spanish ( that have accurate translations to english) were properly translated in brackets. Also, even when I wrote with a female reader in mind, this came up pretty gender neutral ( and I’m kinda proud for it)

Btw, this is my first headcanon post ever, I’m not completely used to the format. 

- You meet them when they saved your ass on a legal issue. 

- You lived most of your life in Argentina, inmigrated to the US alone and you were in a similar situation to Karen's in terms of connections. Like her regarding her moving to New York, you were there to begin a new life and you didn't have anyone else. 

- They were literal sunshines and you have stuck with them since then. 

- You connected with Karen and Matt first because, despite your english wasn't terrible, you were able to talk in spanish with them. 

- Argentinian slang was their nightmare and that didn't change much. There are so many words with ambivalent connotations! How can pendejo or boludo be neutral words in certain contexts? Why does most of the vocabulary sound insulting?

- Matt likes the accent and he is never afraid of pointing it out. 

- Foggy has asked you countless times to teach him how to dance tango. Mostly as a joke, but he really wanted to try. 

- You aren't good at it, but you tried a few clumsy moves with him just to mess around and it was hilarious. 

- You really can't dance tango, but you do great with cuarteto. You show him that instead and he instantly clicks with it. 

- I really think that Foggy would love cuarteto. It's easy to dance and very fun, fits his cheerful personality. 

- Introducing him to it would end up in you both shouting " RO - RO - RO - RODRIGO, CARAJO!!!" and cracking like fools at some point. 

- Which leads to the mandatory step of making him try Fernet. It is the most popular drink of Córdoba, the province from where cuarteto as a music genre comes from. 

- So you somehow get a bottle of Branca to share with everyone. 

- He tried a first sip of it pure, complained about it being too bitter and you were like " That's why we mix it with coke. " rushing to prepare everything correctly. 

- I feel that Karen would like it, for Matt it would be a bit meehh and Foggy would still find it too bitter, but tolerable.

- You did manage to make him like mate.

-  When you made them try it they were all weirded by the " ritual of coming together" aspect of how it is supposed to be consumed. Matt in particular was the most weirded by it. 

- Mate isn't individual, like coffee or tea mugs. They were supposed to drink it by sucking from the same straw-like thing, in rounds where it would circulate among them. You didn't knew that his enhanced senses would most likely make him feel the taste of everyone's lips. 

- When he asked to have it first you thought that he was just too curious about it, but it is an implícit rule of the mundane ritual that whoever prepares it should have the first one because it doesn't tend to taste as great. 

- " The first mate always tastes like crap, Matt. I have to make sure you will get to drink one of the good ones. " 

- He was the second person in the round, but didn't keep drinking afterwards. You thought that he didn't like it, but it wasn't about the taste of the drink itself. 

- You later noticed that, if you two were alone together and you happened to be drinking mate, he would have some with you. For some reason that you couldn't understand, he only accepted it from you alone. 

- Of course, it was because he didn't mind getting a taste of your lips with his drink. 

- Apart from drinks, you have also made them try some typical foods. All kinds of empanadas, desserts with dulce de leche and tons of other stuff that you gladly cooked for them. 

- Foggy loves alfajores, Karen developed a particular liking for your pasta frola and Matt just seemed to enjoy trying most of the things you would bring for them.

- But what you truly saw him loving the most was the Chocotorta that you made for his birthday. 

- You probably had to search for an american equivalent of cookie brand for the Chocolinas in the recipe, so you weren't sure if it was going to be a good translation of the most popular birthday cake in your country. 

- He loved it and you were so happy to see that he couldn't dissimulate how much, something hard to achieve because his taste was always the hardest to impress. 

- It was a hit, you ended up making two more on Foggy and Karen's birthdays. 

- Overally, they all tend to have fun with your cultural references once you explain. 

- You nicknamed Daredevil " El Caballero Rojo" (The Red Knight) after the character of" Titanes en el Ring", a very old but popular wrestling show.

- You don't even know that Matt is Daredevil yet, but you are singing to his face the character's song after coming up with the joke and he laughs just because of how much into it you are.

- Your swearing is unbelievable to them, you use unnecessary long phrases.

- You once called Fisk a “ reverendo hijo de mil putas” ( a stronger argentinian way to say son of a bitch) during a conversation you catched regarding him and you had to explain to Matt that you weren’t talking about a priest with that expression. It still didn’t make any sense to him. 

- Aggressive swearing in argentinian spanish may escape from you when you are just too angry and Foggy thinks that you are the funniest angry person. Even when he can’t understand you, the sound of your swearing is hilarious to him. 

- I almost forgot to mention that he is the first one willing to get into soccer for you. 

- He would watch the World Cup with you when you wouldn’t have anyone else joining to cheer for your country and he would get to hear you scream and swear a lot when watching matches together. 

- Because she has a better understanding of spanish, Karen would watch argentinian soap operas with you. 

- Particularly for the bizarre concepts the writers tend to come up with and the hilariously bad execution of those crazy ideas. 

- With the Media bombarding of Daredevil hate still fresh, you ended up showing her “ Padre Coraje” (Father Courage). It’s an early 2000’s soap opera about a guy who is a priest by day and a vigilante by night. (No kidding, this was a thing. The writers here are insane.) 

- Matt heard you talking about your watchings of the show a couple of times, laughing at how insanely bizarre it was, and he had to avoid chuckling way too much. 

- But the talk worked to get a glimpse of your opinions about vigilantes and the finding was pleasant for him. You were rather supportive of them and it was most likely that you were on board with Daredevil’s work. 

- Hearing you gave him a bit of hope. 

- I also think that Matt would like to hear from you about the catholic aspects of argentinian culture. After all, it is the birthplace of the current Pope. The stories of popular saints, La Virgen de Luján and all those sorts of things may be interesting to him. 

- Growing up in Argentina, it’s most likely that you went to a catholic school as a kid or teen. Even among parents that aren’t particularly religious, catholic schools are a very common choice for education because those are the most abundant private schools. The country has this very paradoxical tendency where the most prefered college education is on public universities,yet most parents of a very wide variety in terms of social status prefer to send their kids and teens to private schools. The thing is that catholic schools usually have their own chapels to perform masses between classes on important dates and every argentinian who went to one of those schools knows how damn catchy the songs of the school mass are. 

- And because you know of this, you started sharing with Matt all those cheerful christian songs that you have learned in school. 

- He loves to hear you sing for him and most of the time the songs get stuck in his head, you both can get silly about it if you catch him humming. 

- He wants to take you to the church of Father Lantom, hoping that he may convince you of joining the choir. 

- Because he just really loves your voice and thinks you would do great there, but also because he can’t wait to introduce you and get to find out his opinions of you. 

[anqaspond]

It's interesting how people use culture as a deflector when they're justifying certain practices across the world because it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of culture. There was a certain culture in 1950s America, but we aren't arguing that it shouldn't change to preserve the cultural sanctity of the US. That is quite literally the goal of conservatism. Cultures will and should change through time, and they don't have to be white-majority or western cultures to do that.

Most of the time, when people hear "culture", they think of the practical application by means of aesthetic values and rituals, i.e. Indian culture being chai, the architecture, Hinduism, that sort of thing - but culture is the format in which certain groups of people live their lives. Down to the way you greet people, the way you walk, the circumstances that are considered appropriate or inappropriate, what kinds of foods are considered breakfast foods or dinner foods, it is stitched in the fundamental ways you live your life, it's unavoidable. Sure, homophobia is within certain cultures, but just by virtue of them being spawned from cultural values doesn't tie them to their sanctity as well. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater; when I say I hate homophobia in this or that country, I'm not saying I hate the country itself or the culture it has, I'm saying I hate it's homophobia. I'm saying I want to be able to see it's people live with whatever identity they have comfortably and safely. That safety isn't white/western exclusive, you dingbats.

I'm finding that usually when people want to preserve "culture" to the point of finding discussions of bigotry within other cultures uncomfortable or controversial to discuss, it's because those cultures are flat to them. They aren't really formats people live their lives through, they're funny little stories for distant, not really real people, like background set lore. They aren't complex and practically applied to conscious people. They, subconsciously, are buying into the stereotyping and thought processes that outright racist people have. You are no different to a man that hates POC and thinks, for example, haha, brown people are so violent. They abuse their children. (Most of the time, mind you, those same racists do the same exact practices, just under different names.) The only thing you dislike is how cruel that sounds, you aren't digging into the meat of why it's structurally wrong and dehumanizing. You'll excuse it with a, "They do it because it's their culture! Their gods/elders/philosophies said this and that, and we aren't disrespecting their gods/elders/philosophies!" and then an actual brown person comes along, saying, Yeah I was abused, and I hated it, and it being ordained by those gods/elders/philosophies doesn't change the fact that it was abuse. and you see it as an attack on the same level of the racist. The crucial fact you're missing is that you're still stereotyping brown people. You're just flipping the attitude you take about it.

The way westerners live, they really don't register it as culture. Yes, Americans, your 9 to 5 is American culture. So is your breakfast. So is the way you speak to your parents. So are your social gatherings and your holidays. So is the way the older folks around you call you slurs and wish they could go back to the "good old days", and yes, you want a cultural change when you are being political, shaming that conservatism. It's in the name. They want to conserve. Conserve their culture. You aren't a "race traitor" or a "bigot" for wanting to change that and vying for your acceptance, and constantly insisting that I am for doing the same thing you are, the only difference being that I'm brown, is racist.

[downtonabbeyrevisited]

Season Two Episode Four

A 1918 timestamp ushers us into one of Downton’s more slow moving episodes where three parts painful banality has been mixed with one part life-or-death peril.

Providing more interesting political and cultural conflict than WW1 (at least at Downton) is Isobel’s ongoing grating at Cora’s very soul. Cora has had the temerity to ensure that the staff don’t collapse on their feet and has done something with the linen that I can’t quite fathom which, of course, Isobel takes as a slight upon her medical knowledge. Isobel makes the fatal error of calling Cora’s bluff threatening to ‘seek some other place’ if she is not appreciated at Downton. Major Clarkson also takes sides with Cora and Isobel now has no choice but to throw herself and her messiah complex upon the Red Cross in Northern France. I am sure they will be thrilled. 

With Isobel’s departure, Moseley and Mrs Bird find themselves at a loss having deep cleaned the house and moaned about their employer’s eating habits. Turns out that one thing they forgot to do was deploy any semblance of a security system as a random man with a drama school limp wanders into the house looking for food. In a manner that would make the current Conservative front bench recoil with horror, Mrs Bird starts up a soup kitchen out of her own (presumably rather small) pocket. In her latest attempt to not do her job, Mrs Patmore drags Daisy out for some fresh air and in the process uncovers this particular bit of well meaning but financially unsustainable charity. Mrs Patmore scales up the operation, creating a “special storage area” to squirrel away surplus from the army’s stock, which O’Brien conveniently overhears (but to be honest, it’s not that much of a coincidence. I imagine most of the kitchen heard it considering that Mrs Patmore practically yelled it). In an effort to try and inject a bit of actual drama into this episode, O’Brien reports this to Mrs Hughes but (un)fortunately, Mrs Hughes could not care less. But after watching the world’s most appalling secret handover of goods in the village, O’Brien rallies and this time is successful in bringing Cora to the nefariously compassionate Bird-Patmore coalition. To absolutely everyone’s surprise (viewers included) Cora orders food to be taken from the house stock rather than army and with all the over-confidence of a consultant sets about re-arranging tables and streamlining the workflow. 

Feeling much less charitable than Mrs Bird, Moseley heads to the Abbey and attempts to make himself indispensable and reach the dizzying heights of ‘Valet to the Earl of Grantham’. But not long after the peels of laughter that such a notion invites have died down, Bates returns and takes Mr Molesley’s shoehorn which one can’t help but think is emblematic of something. The return of Mr Bates is, naturally, a painfully protracted process that involves key protagonists not talking to each other, Thomas smoking on a wall, and the obligatory invocation of Kamal Pamuk. Robert invites Bates back to help him through the ‘veil of shadow’ and as such I was intrigued to learn that he is a World of Warcraft devotee. Bates reappearance downstairs also allows for the return of two other key Downton Abbey tropes: Anna and (John)Bates having a heart to heart under the cover of darkness, and Thomas and O’Brien’s irrational loathing/scapegoating of Britain’s most infuriatingly lovelorn character (outside of Thomas Thorne) to resume with aplomb. 

Less happy to be within the confines of the Abbey is Edith who continues to signal that all of this is really a bit beneath her (certain elements quite literally). Ever the teacher’s pet, Mr Molesley reports the sighting of an Officer by the maid’s staircase to Mrs Hughes who hears that there have been lots of rumours on the timeline tonight and comes out to say that she does not live in a sack. Unfortunately, Major Bryant does not live in one but definitely frequents one and, as such, it is of course Ethel is dismissed. As she rapidly packs all her belongings, Anna pleas to Mrs Hughes on her behalf confirming that she is indeed the friend we all want but probably don’t deserve. But Mrs Hughes can’t get rid of her that easily as Edith (and passenger) skulk back to liven up the end of the episode with news of an oncoming baby *Eastenders drums intensify*. 

Talking of undeserving relationships, Sybil and Branson receive more air-time than usual, providing the latter the opportunity to demonstrate that at times he really can be a muppet. And a slightly malevolent one at that. Sybil is firmly under the cosh this week with Violet making thinly veiled references to inappropriate alliances and Mary asking probing questions whilst she tries to get on with her job. Mary thinks that she has spotted her sister and Branson having some kind of romantic exchange but in reality, all that she has seen from afar is Branson telling Sybil that she is in love with him which when you think about it, is all kinds of awful and hardly the basis for a healthy relationship. After a long walk through the grounds where I am half expecting Branson to appear on a horse Willoughby-style, Sybil eventually caves and confesses to Mary that she doesn’t know if she likes Branson despite his eminently creepy voice over. Sybil then relays her sororal confidence and rather than taking this as an opportunity to ingratiate himself, Branson for whatever reason attempts to coerce Sybil into a relationship but not before he belittles her job. Sybil looks rightfully outraged as some equally emotionally manipulative strings wail in the background in an attempt to try and make us think that anything that has just happened was evenly slightly dreamy. 

Threaded through this glacially paced episode has been the looming threat of a both a concert and the death of Matthew and (to a much lesser extent because that is how class works) William. In an effort to break the monotony of walking around the exact same bit of French trench (see previous re-caps for further details), William and Matthew take to wandering across some largely unadulterated land and into the path of some nonchalant Germans. Daisy’s lack of (presumably fawning) letters from William starts off a chain of enquiry which confirms that the War Office has declared Matthew and William missing enabling Mary to once again deploy her signature move: weeping into her gloves. But only one hand this time because she needs to keep a bit of composure for the show must go on! Apparently. Following some abysmal piano playing (I grew up in an appallingly musical household and we all had to endure the torture of other people at the early stages of learning an instrument. It was of course blissful when we got good but, heck, I was thrown straight back to the horror of it all with that ‘accompaniment’ and had an odd sort of stress response which I won’t describe here), Mary and Edith do a rendition of If You Were the Only Girl (In the World) as everyone looks on stony-faced before participating in the millenia’s most morose sing-a-long. With a very good sense of drama, Matthew and (to a much lesser extent) William make their return. Matthew takes his place at Mary’s side and joins in the signing to what is now presumably quite a bewildered audience. Ah, Downton. 

Romantic declaration of the moment 

Violet raises reasonable concerns about Richard Carlisle but Mary is more interested in expanding her real estate portfolio and agrees to throw her lot in with a fiscal agreement disguised as a marriage. Upon his ‘miraculous’ return, Matthew gives the union his blessing on the condition that Richard remains deserving. Not that he ever really was. But the sentiment is what matters here and what is more loving* than putting another’s presumed happiness before your own.

*there are actually a lot of other more loving things but in the interest of formatting, we’re going to sweep those under a very large rug for now. 

Expressive eyebrow of the week 

Rather than training as a nurse or being actually pretty useful in a convalescent home, Mary’s contribution to the war effort is being amicable with Edith. Violet declares that she has now “seen everything” as the spirit of Mrs Adelman moves on. 

Wait, what? 

“I wish we had a man” Presented without comment 

“If I am not appreciated here, I will seek some other place” Yes. PLEASE. 

“What must he do to persuade you he is in love with Lavinia? Open his chest and carve her name on his heart” No, Mary. Matthew merely needs to carve her name with a compass on his forehead to prove that… 

“I hate the word ‘missing’. It leaves so much room for optimism.” Robert is a bit emotionally weird isn’t he? 

“We haven't kissed or anything. I don't think we've shaken hands. I'm not even sure if I like him like that. He says I do, but I'm still not sure.” And lo, another red flag is raised. But because Branson is Downton’s version of a Bolshevik, both Mary and Sybil view this not as a warning about the boy’s behaviour but rather a symbol of his political leanings and such signals are duly ignored.

“He always seems a romantic figure to me” Daisy Robinson writes fanfic. Pass it on. 

“Sometimes in war, one can make friendships that aren't quite…appropriate. And can be awkward, you know, later on. I mean, we've all done it.” Once again, Violet, tell us more! 

Bates says that he has returned to “Downton at war” which sounds like a lucrative exhibition name if I ever did hear one. 

Despite Mary’s most valiant efforts, no musical performance had ever gone out to such an impassive audience until Rosalind came along 

Matthew of course is used to a much better quality sing-, sorry, song-a-long 

[nat-20s]

Wonderful! Au Part 7! (also on ao3 here) another episode only installment, and obnoxiously fluffy! Have fun!

~*~

Martin, tired: Hello everybody! Welcome, or welcome back, to a very low energy episode. We have had, as the kids say, A Week Tm.

Jon, equally tired, but fond: Is that as the kids say?

Martin: I don't know, and perhaps worse, I don't really care. I guess I could ask Jeremiah next time he's over, but I'm not sure if that would actually help.

Jon: Shockingly, I don't think two year olds have their finger on the beating pulse of youth culture.

Martin: Hmm, maybe not. Speaking of Jeremiah, he's part of why the format of this episode is gonna be a bit different than our regular. On top of me dealing with a frankly obscene amount of inventory management, and Jon being swamped with grant writing-

Jon: I never want to look at proposal guidelines again-

Martin: we were on babysitting duty for our favourite neighborhood hellion-

Jon: Hey, Jeremiah is a very sweet kid! I know he's a toddler, but we shouldn't be slandering him anyway.

Martin: One, we're not even using his real name, I don't think that counts as slander, and two, exactly, he's a toddler, he's by default a hellion.

Jon, teasing: This coming from the person that actually wants one?

Martin: I..look, if anything, the last few days have shown we should not be permanent parents.

Jon: But?

Martin:...There's no but.

Jon: I don't believe you! Are you lying for my benefit or the audience's? Because someone spent the last five days wearing one of the largest grins I've ever seen, exhausted as it may have been.

Martin: Okay! Fine, I admit, I liked having a kid around. I still think it would be a bad idea to do it full time, but I dunno. I wish we weren't both only children or something. We would make such good uncles.

Jon: Should I should have taken that teaching job after all?

Martin: Perhaps. After all,

Martin, singsong: An English teacher, is really someone!

Jon and Martin, singing together: If only you, had be-come one!

Jon: Honestly, though, I was considerably underqualified. I'm much more suited to my current job, even if it doesn't have quite the same impact on the "shaping of the next generation" or whatnot.

Martin: Wait, you actually care about qualifications now? When did that change?

Jon: This coming from Mister "master's degree in parapsychology"? And it was probably around the time that the world ended from taking on a workload I was ill-suited for.

Jon:...

Jon: Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Martin: Oh, of course. Definitely nothing literally apocalyptic in our pasts, no siree, nothing to see or speculate about or make weirdly involved forums for here. Uh, anyway, long introduction not so short: Both of us have been averaging about 4 hours of sleep, so any sort of actual research was not on the table.

Jon: If any of you are wondering why we didn't just say that we're both very much worn out and thus we'll be taking a week off, it's because we're both deeply, deeply stubborn.

Martin: It's one of our best shared qualities that has never caused any conflict between us, ever.

Jon: In fairness, sheer stubbornness does account for, what, 75% of the reason that either of us are still alive? And it hasn't caused a major conflict between us in a good three years.

Martin: That's true. We've become a deeply boring, relatively conflict free couple. Which fucking rules, by the way. To all the couples out there: I highly recommend being boring. It is so nice. We've gotten to go to the farmer's market so many times.

Jon: You do love the farmer's market. I would say that it's the access to fresh produce, but I think you just like the attention that one yarn seller gives you. Can't believe you would take advantage of a crush to get discounts on wool. How did I marry such an opportunist?

Martin: Ollie does not have a crush on me. They're just friendly to everyone.

Jon: Bullshit. I certainly never get an extra skein or stitch markers or delicate fabric cleaner tossed in my bag. Actually, I think I've been charged more for committing the crime of having married you before they could.

Martin: I'm..70% sure that's not true, but every sentence we speak, we stray further from even pretending to be on topic. So, to everybody listening, this is the itty bitty episode! Basically, we're only doing small wonders and user submissions. If you want details or backstory for things we like, too bad, come back next week. Jon, I believe you're first this week?

Jon: Oh, right. My first small wonder is cat names.

Martin: Delightful, but unsurprising. Though, I would've expected either more or less specificity. Why cat names as opposed to pet's names in general, or, like, military title names?

Jon: Well that's simple enough. I've simply never met a misnamed cat, even if the name itself wasn't to my personal tastes, and I think that speaks to the wonderful universality of cats.

Martin: This, of course, implies that you have met animals that were misnamed.

Jon: Oh, I have. I once met a papillion dog named Meatball.

Martin: Now I know you don't like food names in general for pets, but are you sure that Meatball didn't suit the dogs personality? I've known some "Meatballs" in my lifetime.

Jon, only half-mock offended: Of course it didn't fit, Martin. She was a lady. A nervous, jittery lady, but a lady nonetheless.

Martin, laughing: And what, you've never met a dignified cat with an undignified name, or vice versa? Would you be okay with our cat being named Meatball?

Jon: I would be upset if our cat was named Meatball, because we named her and we're above that sort of thing, but, technically speaking, she could have been Meatball in another lifetime and it wouldn't have been wrong. You see, all cats are a mix of both extremely austere and little baby idiot.

Martin: Oh, is that the scientific terminology?

Jon: It is. Now, while there's probably some amount of, er, normative determinism or confirmation bias or something that results in a cat with a more dignified name seeming to possess more of that austerity, as all cats have both, any name can, potentially, fit. Hence why it's wonderful.

Martin: I..accept your proposal for now, but I think more research needs to be done. Maybe we should visit the shelter this weekend and test your hypothesis.

Jon: Hmm. I think we may need to visit multiple shelters, actually. A large sample size is necessary for any sort of veracity, obviously.

Martin, imitating Jon tone: Obviously.

Jon: Glad you agree. What's your first small wonder?

Martin: Tofu!

Jon: I..didn't realize you liked that much?

Martin: Well, I don't get it very often since I know you can't stand the texture, even though it is not like 'worse scrambled eggs', and you're a horrible food thief-

Jon: Lies and slander. We readily share. If I'm a horrible food thief, you have committed the exact same, if not worse, crime as myself.

Martin: Well, we are thick as thieves.

Jon, groaning: You're thick as something alright

Martin: Rude! My beloved husband-

Jon: -uh huh-

Martin: whom I love and trust with my most tender of hearts-

Jon: -an oddly cannibalistic turn of phrase-

Martin, badly suppressing laughter: Oh, my god. I want a divorce, then I can put tofu in as many dishes as I like. I'll triple my protein intake.

Jon: It'd never go through. I'll burn the papers. No, wait, I'll burn down the legal offices where the papers are kept.

Martin: Hmm. While my experiences with it have been, uh, varied to say the least, I do have to admit that arson is one of the more attractive crimes of passion. I suppose I'll take you back.

Jon, flat: I'm so very grateful.

Jon, genuine: You do have yet to actually tell me why you think tofu is wonderful, love.

Martin: It's just a good food! It's neutral enough that you can toss it in pretty much anything with a sauce, you can bake it, you can fry it, whatever. Plus it's what? two? Three quid? I spent many years of my life living off the cheapest, saltiest approximation of noodles you could imagine, and half a pack of tofu, a little bit of sesame oil, and some green onions went a long way to both making it more filling and less sad. 

Martin: Plus, I feel like it often gets decried for being something it's not? It's so often viewed as a meat substitute or the vegan alternative option, and so when people try it, they often go in with a false preconceived notion of what it's going to be like, and then end up disappointed. They're all like, 'ugh, this doesn't taste like turkey!' and yeah, of course it doesn't. It's the oatmeal raisin cookie of the protein world, a perfectly good and tasty treat on its own, but if you want chocolate chip, it's not gonna work.

Jon: Martin you don't even like oatmeal raisin. I'm the only one that ever eats them out of the multipacks.

Martin: Well, yeah, but I don't like oatmeal raisin because of its flavor, not because I think it should be chocolate chip and fails. It illustrates my point. Also, just for balance, is your next small wonder oatmeal raisin cookies?

Jon: No, though, maybe one of these weeks. They are good. But no, um, my next small wonder is being married.

Martin, let out a high bark of a laugh: Being married is a small wonder?!

Jon: Small wonders doesn't mean a lack of importance! Or even significance in our lives. Half the time we even end up spending just as much time chattering on about them as the things we actually research. But, yes, I didn't feel like researching the concept of being married. For one, a lot of the history of it is depressing and patriarchal, and for two, it's not something I really feel any need to elaborate on. Being married. I very much enjoy it. I recommend it for anybody that's found someone that they want to marry, and who wants to marry them. I really recommend being married to Martin Blackwood, I think I would enjoy it significantly less if it was to anybody else, but one: we typically try to make the wonderful things in this show  applicable to more than just ourselves, and two: I got there first, so I believe the appropriate thing to say here would be; neener neener and/or everyone else can go suck it, Ollie.

Martin: Well...

Jon: Well, what?

Martin: Saying you got there first is technically not true-

Jon: What?!

Martin, laughing like a bastard: Sorry, sorry! Couldn't resist! Jon, you already know that you're my first real realationship, how would be married before fit that?

Jon: Hence my surprise at the notion! I cannot believe you! I give you my trust, my earnestness, and belief-

Martin [only laughs harder]

Jon: and you throw it in my face for a bit. I take back everything, being married is a nightmare, because sometimes your partner thinks he a fucking comedian and you just have to put up with him because you love him and want to live the rest of your life with him or some such nonsense. Not worth it, if you ask me. My turn to ask for the divorce.

Martin: Babe, hate to break it to you, but both of us are guilty of doing bits that the other doesn't like, it's an integral part of  a healthy marriage, and secondly, you knew who I was long before I proposed. You should've said no when you had the chance.

Jon: Hang on, you proposed?

Martin: Yeah? This isn't part of a bit, of course I proposed. I'm even pretty sure you were there. The whole visit back to Scotland trip? I finally made you a sweater and said it was because we would now be immune to the boyfriend curse?

Jon: No, no, I remember all that, but it wasn't the proposal. It was a reaffirmation of the proposal. We had already decided to get married.

Martin: Well, yeah,, I wasn't just gonna spring that on you, we had had conversations beforehand-

Jon:  No, I mean, I had already proposed. I asked you to marry me a good three years earlier, and you said yes, which is a proposal by any definition that I know.

Martin: Jon, love, darling, apple of my eye, fire of my soul, I mean this in the nicest way possible, what the everloving fuck are you talking about?

Jon: In the ambulance ride when we, uh, moved here. It was the thing I said to you the second I saw your eyes were open.

[An audible pause is left in the recording.]

Martin: That does not count.

Jon: How does it not count?! I asked you to marry me, you very emphatically said yes, that's the de facto definition of an accepted marriage proposal!

Martin: It doesn't count because you were half-delirious with blood-loss, and I had a traumatic brain injury that the hospital was very surprised I made a full recovery from. No court in the world would consider anything we said then more than pain driven ramblings, let alone, I dunno, contractually binding.

Jon: Well, I knew what I was saying well and clear. Just because it was desperate doesn't mean it wasn't sincere. I didn't realize that you weren't as cognizant when you accepted.

Martin, snorting: Yeah, didn't really need to be cognizant to say yes. I've wanted to marry you since the train ride to Scotland.

Jon: Wait, really? Martin, we hadn't even been on a date.

Martin: And yet we were on the lamb together, which I honestly think is more romantic than sitting in some restaurant somewhere trying to get through icebreakers. Also, back up, from your perspective we've been engaged since 2019? What did you think we were doing in the interim?

Jon: Uhh..

Martin: Yes?

Jon: There are people that have long engagement periods, and it's not exactly like we were in any sort of position to get married for awhile. Especially not that first year.

Martin: Okay? And?

Jon: And..I sort of thought you had changed your mind. For awhile. Was rather surprised that you kept living with me, considering that, on the worst nights, I was convinced you were going to storm off and leave me forever any minute now. Hence why your proposal was rather relieving.

Martin: Oh, Jon, love. That is so very ridiculous, and so very you, and so very close to many of my own fears and doubts. Do you have any idea how terrified I was to float the idea of marriage to you? Half the time I was convinced I was just meant to keep you company until you found someone better. And, Christ, we'd, from your perspective, been engaged the whole damn time. Fuck.

[Jon, after a beat, starts laughing. It has a slightly hysterical edge to it. Martin joins in. It takes a minute for the laughter to subside enough for them to speak again.]

Jon: I'm rapidly realizing that our entire romantic relationship would've been, if not more successful, a hell of a lot faster if we weren't both complete fools.

Martin: You're realizing that now? I think I've known that since the CV incident. I've definitely known it since the Lonely.

Jon, with a slightly tired chuckle:Yes, yes, something probably should've tipped me off earlier. Shockingly, observation of our own personal romantic trends is not always a strong suit of mine.

Jon: Anyway, please tell me you have another small wonder, this has gotten wildly of track.

Martin: Since we're talking about marriage anyway, I think my next small wonder is having a shared reference in your wedding vows. Our friends had "I have been, and always shall be, your friend" in theirs, and I made Jon cry with a slightly altered Lord of the Rings quote in ours.

Jon: First off, we were both openly weeping long before that point, secondly, I defy anybody to have been through half of what we have and then have the love of their life look them in the eyes and tell them "Leave you? I never intend to. I am going with you, if you climb to the moon" without at least tearing up.

Martin: There wasn't a dry eye in the audience, either. Granted, the audience was only 20 people, but that was also literally the only time I've seen Eloise show a strong emotion, so I'm pretty smug about it.

Martin, soft: I still feel exactly the same, you know. If you're climbing to the moon, I'll make sure the rope is strong enough for two.

Jon, soft: I know, love.

Jon: Though, to be fair, the moon is also significantly more pleasant than many places we've been.

Martin: God, I hate how much that's true. Look at this barren, oxygenless rock, at least it's not actively trying to kill us. Practically a honeymoon location.

[Martin sighs]

Martin: I am so tired. Let's do the user submissions then take a very long nap.

Jon: Please.

Martin: So, first submission is from Josie; They find it wonderful getting cards from their friends. They say they're lucky to have so much love in their life and have friends that care enough to send them things. That is wonderful Josie! We have a drawer in our house dedicated to every loving card we've ever received since the move, and they're always such a nice reminder of the people in our lives.

Jon: We should really organize that drawer, but, yes, agree with the sentiment. Even the cards from people that are no longer in our lives are lovely, I think. Those connections are very much meaningful for both of us, whether they're active or not.

Martin: That's very true.  Next submission is from Lys, who submits the sound of leaves crunching under your feet in the fall. Ah, that's a classic.

Jon: I just felt myself relax imagining it. I wish it was autumn.

Martin: Don't we all? Alright, for the last submissions, I'm grouping them together as they follow a similar theme. Jadwiga submits the feeling of waking up well into the morning with the sun shining through the window and your cat laying next to you, and Oran submits when a dog falls asleep with its head in your lap.

Jon: I can heartily recommend at least one of those, considering that's how we try to wake up most mornings. The Duchess is a dutiful darling girl who spends every night with us, and she's usually still there when us humans rise.

Martin: I bet you'll agree with the other when I finally convince you to get me a dog for my birthday.

Jon: It hasn't happened yet, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

Martin: But you don't even dislike dogs! You're just as happy to pet them when they pass by as I am.

Jon: Being fine with an animal isn't the same thing as wanting to adopt one for yourself! We don't even know if The Duchess would put up with a dog.

Martin: I bet she would. I bet we could get a big senior dog who's the calmest animal you've ever met with those soft eyes and a little grey on the muzzle and she would cuddle up in an instant. And we did say we should visit a shelter or three this weekend..

Jon: I think you're rather callously taking advantage of my exhausted state, but I suppose we can look. 

Martin: Hell fuckin yeah. So, I think that'll close out the episode, and as we always say at the end, uh, go take a nap and get a dog. Not necessarily in that order.

[danielsfilipinolitblog]

Week 2 Blog

Filipino American Lives

Yen Le Espiritu

Pages Read: 41-90

Word Count: 411

Summary:

Over this past week of my independent reading, I have learned about the lives of A.B. Santos, Juanita Santos, Ruth Abad, Connie Tirona, and Luz Latus. The formatting of this book seems to be a collection of memoirs or biographies of a Filipino or FIlipino American’s life in the United States of America. In each of the individual’s stories, they all describe their American experiences and how it impacted their lives and livelihoods. The topic of discrimination also plays a key role in the immigrants’ experiences. Most importantly, these past few passages have been focused on building community and discussing identity within a foreign place plagued with unfairness.

Critical Analysis:

Out of the five quotes I have chosen during this week’s reading, I find one quote by Luz Latus the most interesting. “But I think as you get older, your ethnicity becomes more important to you.” (89) I find this quote the most interesting because I completely agree with it. This quote especially applies to when you are not raised in your native country. As a child, you are unaware of things like culture or heritage. As a child you are easily influenced and molded by your environment and surroundings. As the quote suggests, you become more aware of your ethnicity as you get older, as you become aware of yourself. This quote applies to me and that is also one of the reasons I found this quote intriguing. 

Personal Response:

I loved this week’s reading for particularly one reason. That reason is my girl Connie Tirona. To be frank, Connie Tirona is such a boss. She did not let anything slide. Her ability to just stand up to anyone completely amazes me. Connie is never afraid to speak her mind, make a change, or stand up for herself and others. Everyone should be like Connie Tirona to be honest. She sticks to her beliefs without forcing them upon others, not even her own children. She respects those who have earned her respect and she treats those how they treat her. She literally made a whole group of military men at a base dispensary line up and apologize to her. She didn’t even want the apology; she just scolded and lectured them. She even made a hospital make a new policy regarding sensitivity training just because she complained to the head doctor, which she knew of course. An absolute beast. Those weren’t even half of the things she’s done.

[mirabilefuturum]

if you are a barry hbo fan / write fanfiction about noho hank, here’s some cultural food for thought

(buckle up, ahead lies homophobia and mentions of, well, sexual stuff without consent)

to give background to this, the russian vs chechen culture in the series is totally mixed up. you may or may not take the orthodox crosses on the “chechens” as seriously as I do, so let’s focus on something less controversial—the tattoos some of the mobsters show off, uncluding, but not limited by, hank himself. the thieves’ roses in sight don’t indicate whether or not he’s been in (russian) jail, like churches with domes would, but it’s an established fact that he and his mobsters belong to the russian criminal culture. by that I mean russia as a country, of which chechnya is a part btw, so it’s not a horrible stretch to look at them as one.

there’s something about this culture that may not be so obvious to civilians who have never known it exists. I’ve read barry fanfiction that recognises how homophobic russia, and especially chechnya, are, and I’m glad people know it’s not all fun and games over here. but the jail culture takes it to a whole next level. for religious homophobes, being gay/liking men may be anything from an abomination that needs to be “cured” to a crime punishable by death, and that’s no surprise, but it’s different within the criminal culture.

listen to this: for our lovely criminals, a man that has had sex with another man is unclean.

I don’t even think the english word conveys it. it doesn’t matter if the contact was consensual or not, after it the man is automatically less than human. not that you would expect all those criminals to respect human rights but the “unclean” man has rights no more. he can’t be touched, or you would be “stained” just as well. he can’t share utensils like forks and spoons with others because those items are “stained”. I’ve heard a very recent story where the criminals have found out one of the ex convicts from a certain jail is of the “unclean” ones—I’ve read it in a format close to a live discussion and those criminals have said, I shit you not, that by hiding the fact he’s “unclean” and staying in that jail like a “normal” one that man has made the whole jail “unclean”.

have you heard of how in some communities, women can’t enter a church when they’re on their period? that goes along the same lines of ritual/religious impurity with the exception that many impurities can be washed away. this—well. let’s say I haven’t heard of any ways to do so. it’s not that he should be immediately killed, there’s no such rule, but his life from that moment on is something you wouldn’t wish for yourself. he’s at the very bottom of the criminal social ladder, has no chances to climb it, has no friends and holds no respect, his place in the cell is next to the toilet (which is essentially a big bucket for everyone to use and stinks just the way you might imagine it would. why would criminals need running water and hygiene, right?).

it might seem like he’s of no use to his cellmates and will be shunned but here’s the worst part. it’s not quite true. yeah, no friends and no escape but know what a cellmate can do to him without becoming unclean?

fuck him.

because for some sick reason being the passive side takes your honour but being the active side doesn't.

this is exactly why I said this might be worse. when you get killed for being gay, it’s horrible but dying is a one time thing. please excuse the turn of the phrase but it could even be merciful. this—this could go on forever. I don’t think that for this jail culture it’s that bad to like men from inside your own head but the moment there’s intercourse involved, no matter consensual or not, it’s over for that hypothetical man. and to top this off the “procedure” of, well, making a cellmate “stained” like that is called lowering. this is literally the only meaning of that word if applied to a person.

and if you take this as the background of some fanfiction with a cute mobster who is secretly gay and has a clique of russian/chechen dickhead criminals, it goes immediately from “omg my friends would turn against me if they knew” to “I pose a threat to myself, my relatives and my criminal family at the same time.” remember the man who has “stained” the whole jail? that would be the scope of the disaster. a total dishonour to everyone he’s had business with.

it’s good for hank that he obviously doesn’t know that self esteem can be low but let’s just say this kind of culture background is something I don’t think any number of years in cali would erase.

no idea what to end this with except I don’t know how this fucking country still exists

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with bugs

bugs has 40 stories at Gossamer. They mostly focus on Mulder and Scully, but there are also some goodies featuring Reyes and Doggett. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her fics here before, including The Link. She also co-ran WhyIncision, a fun, smart X-Files mailing list that dissected fics like a book club. Big thanks to bugs for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Not really. While I was still in high school, I started watching the then 20 year old OG Star Trek and became a Trekkie of a sort. Starlog magazine, James Blish novels and the other novelizations, and while I was working as a library page, I found fanfiction one day among the periodicals.  Who knows how fanfiction ended up as part of a library's materials, but there it was, this tattered mimeographed collection. The fic that had the most impact on me was one where Nurse Chapel wrestled a giant alien snake to save Spock's life.

So when I got into XF, one of the first things I did was look for fanfic, knowing somewhere out there, Scully was wrestling a big snake for Mulder.

That experience showed me the power of fandom, that even without the internet, how the second generation of Trekkies joined the original group to advocate for the franchise to be revived. I remember sitting in the theater for that first awful Star Trek movie, choked up with what we'd done.

Tragic backstory way to say, no I'm not surprised that a well-produced show like XF would beget future generations of fans, and that they'd be chewing their way through the fanfic archives still being maintained.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

I'm so grateful to the fandom. Literally formed the life I have today through the confidence it gave me. Many of my friends to this day are 'pocket friends' from the various fandoms I've been in, and the longest friendships were formed in XF. I learned how to write, both technically and finding my voice. I learned how to think analytically, more than any college courses.

The two most important things I took away were, write for yourself first and always, and shit ain't that damn important. In the end, it's a TV show.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

YIKES.  I came in at the Fight the Future summer hiatus, so the waning days of ATXC, then we moved to mailing lists, right?  Yahoo Groups was in there somewhere. Finally message boards. Live Journal rose up at the end of the run which began to fragment the fandom even before the show ended, along with the migration off our individual websites to Archive of Our Own, fanfiction.net and such. We went from group discussion platforms to 'come look at my blog for my thoughts'. It was different and I didn't particularly like it, but in the end, when I came back to fandom for a new show....I had to get a Live Journal. That's the most interesting part of fandom, that a platform doesn't mold a fandom; we use the platform and when it's no longer useful to us, we abandon it en mass.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

I've touched on that a bit, but to elaborate, I'm glad I started in the XF fandom. It had such high standards and I hope that I maintain those standards for myself to this day. These days, I don't usually have a beta reader, but that took a couple hundred posted fics to get to that point.

Having seen the same exact flamewars and divides and squabbles over and over, seen how the taste of 'fame' can drive someone to be rather unpleasant, has given me a much more 'whatever' attitude. It's sort of comforting when joining a new fandom to know what's going to happen next in its natural progression.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

There's a meme "I have a type," and XF definitely had that type, but it just took me a while to get there. I was away at college then working on the road when the show started, and wasn't home on Friday nights most of the year. My mother has always been a big sci-fi fan, so she actually was watching before me. I don't like scary things, and would leave the room if it was on when I'd visit her. I was home for Christmas when Christmas Carol/Emily aired and I remember standing tentatively just inside the room so I could flee if necessary, and watched Scully go through the wringer, and ranting, "What the hell is this? Why are they putting that poor woman through this!?" I also saw how the show was doing the big ship tease, and I was like, uh, I don't have time for this. Even by my 20's, I'd been done wrong by so many shows that I'd become bitter. But the first film trailers suggested they were actually going from UST to RST, so I figured I could give 2 hours of my time for that.  And yeah...but I was hooked, and WENT TO BLOCKBUSTER AND RENTED THE VHS TAPES TO CATCH UP....this interview is making me feel very old.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I've always been a shipper and have no shame in that, as I think forming and maintaining a relationship is the most conflict-ridden enterprise humans can attempt, and thus is the most challenging thing to write about. Like many fanfic writers, I'd 'told stories in my head' ever since I can remember about the characters from books, shows and movies. It was just a matter of then writing it down for the first time.

After I was sucked into the show and it was still the summer hiatus, I got on my first computer, dialed up that screeching modem, and went on Netscape to search for that fanfic I knew had to be out there from my Trek experience a decade ago. Like many people, after inhaling much of the delicious fics out there, I decided I can do that. I'm someone who's very methodical on my approach to something new, so I studied what worked/what didn't, the expected formatting, got a sense of the culture I was entering, acquired a critical beta reader, so when I actually submitted the first chapter to AXTC, I was calm and confident.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I watch from the sidelines, with a vague little smile on my lips.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Yes, I have. Battlestar Galactica had a lot of Philes, but it was still a big step away from the very organized fandom in X-Files. Plus, with so many characters, there could be lots of little groups focused on their favorites. Same in the Downton Abbey fandom. Just a different dynamic.

On the other end of the spectrum, one of my most popular fics is in the Silence of the Lambs fandom which I've never been involved with any other fans or their fandom, if it exists. It just sits out there on fanfiction.net and chugs along with the reads. My current fandom is The Doctor Blake Mysteries which is tiny but mighty--the saying is, we're six people and a shoelace. It's shown me that it's not the size, not the 'fame' possible, but the passion that makes a fandom.

Sadly, at least at this time, I don't think there will ever be an experience like The X-Files heyday. It was such a golden moment of the rise of internet and home computer use by the general public, a large generation of educated women having the time to participate in fandom, and there wasn't the amount of 'noise' that is distracting us all now. I'm so glad that you're doing this exercise to record our thoughts. We've already lost so many of the OG folks. My first beta, Janet Caires-Lesgold; Trixie, way too young; Shari, also too young; Brandon D Ray, leaving his family too soon; and many more.

(Posted by Lilydale on March 9, 2021)