#ideas I cannot articulate into an actual product

[multimix101]

Alright so I'm having a moment where I'm listening to music and imagining a music video - as one does -, and I have a cool idea for matching a clip of 'Family Line' to Chosen's story This'll essentially be me throwing ideas into the void while I have them - I can't animate for sh[beep]t so I can't make it myself ;v;

All that I did, I tried to undo it 'All that I did' shows a few instances of Chosen doing damage during the outernet rampages with Dark, and then 'I tried to undo it' shows the corresponding instances where he helped sticks instead - e.g., the first moment being him crushing Mitsi with a falling rock, and the second being him saving that stick from another rock while being chased in AvA 9

All of my pain and all your excuses This shows Chosen being tortured as Alan's slave

I was a kid, but I wasn't clueless 'I was a kid' is a wide shot of Chosen standing in the animator app, before zooming in to see him narrowing his eyes in resentment/anger on 'but I wasn't clueless'

(Someone who loves you wouldn't do this) Flashes between multiple moments where Chosen is being hurt - Dark making his virabots attempt to kill him, Dark killing the colour gang himself, Victim fighting him in the box and tying him up, and of course the slavery

All of my past, I tried to erase it This shows Chosen having a panic attack in the dark living room of the house shown in the Showdown, rubbing his hands over his head and trying to calm down

But now I see - would I even change it? On 'But now I see' Chosen is looking at the colour gang talking to/having fun with each other (over-the-shoulder shot where he's blurry and close to the camera while they're in focus and further away, facing us), and on 'would I even change it?' it's a medium close up shot of Chosen's troubled/thoughtful expression as he ponders that question ("they are so happy - if I had a chance to change the past and give Dark and I a better life, would I even do it anymore if it meant risking the kids' happiness?").

Might share a face and share a last name, but... This shows Victim and Chosen glaring at each other - taking turns for their expression to get more intense (you can... invision what I'm talking about- like, narrowing your eyes more or getting more disgusted- it's quite common in animatics). Chosen on 'Might share a face' and Victim on 'and share a last name, but...'

We are not the same The background simply fades into black as the only thing left on screen is a red, flickering piece of text displaying the lyric

...If you've read this entire rant - you are beautiful, here is a cookie :3

[visenyaism]

Do you think daemon actually wants the throne, and would steal it from rhaenyra given the chance, or is it just a product of the harrenhal/alys induced hallucinations?

oooo this is tricky. i’ve been saying since season one that daemon’s character seems to really center around the fact that daemon is desperately chasing…something. he cannot quite articulate what it is. but you see this overwhelming compulsive want without form control his entire life and never ever lead him to happiness.

He burns out of several small council jobs and is listless in the capital. he wants his brothers attention but can’t help himself from saying and doing things that he knows will get him banished. He wants his own life in pentos, but nope. he is miserable but does not want to go home. He is desperate to be respected as an adult but blows up whenever anyone criticizes him like one. wants to be an authority figure but hates responsibility.

I think in season one he takes more of the role of like an attack dog. He wants the warmest spot at his brother’s feet he does NOT want any other dogs in the kennel he wants all of his brother’s (and by extension rhaenyra’s) attention and he wants to be pointed at stuff and told and trusted to go be of service by enacting violence on others. but from what we’ve seen so far in season two, that doesn’t seem to be enough for him anymore. He’s still miserable.

All of this to say that i think that Daemon thinks he wants to be king, but that’s not what he actually wants, is it? in season one I think being the heir was a symbol of being his brothers favorite, and a stand-in for actually having his unconditional love and trust and that’s why he wanted it. In season two I think being the king is an idea he likes because:

1) he’s a misogynist who cannot be seen as subservient to rhaenyra because she’s a woman,

2) because post blood and cheese all of his relationships in his life are currently defined by the ways in which he has significantly let every one of his loved ones down in some way and no one can trust him to show up for them. he is now super lost and wants to be his own person but:

3) Being from the incest psychosexual enmeshment house has no idea how to do that. every single relationship he’s ever had with another person has been sexual, familial, or violent, sometimes all three. there is no self to be found in that abyss it all boundaries are obliterated. and clearly he equates being his own person with exacting power over others violently. Which is how he’s in his tyrannical Riverlands arc right now and demanding he be called king because he thinks that’s what they do.

This will not be enough for him either. I don’t think he will ever find it.

[sizzleissues]

Idk thinking about it maybe Adrien is not just totally blind to other peoples feelings for him but it’s again a product of the low self-esteem wherein he doesn’t think anyone would ever love him sincerely. His fans ‘love him’ but they love the image crafted by his father. His mother loved him but she was taken away from him. His father probably loves him but he definitely likes to give and take it away at a whim. So surely that ‘I love you’ was platonic, I am nothing to love and she definitely meant that in a friend way, because who even am I?

I think he’d easily twist every confession into something that fits the narrative he tells himself, and that he’d never want to make someone uncomfortable by misreading their intentions so he just doesn’t read them at all. Like marinette acts weird around me a lot, she does stuff I’ve seen people with crushes do but surely thats just the way marinette is and it isn’t my business to push myself on her in case she’s just awkward because I’m a drag of a person blah blah blah.

Idk if I articulated that well but do you get the idea?? Even if you want someone to love you that way, if you do not know/like yourself you will reject the possibility someone does like you that way.

And Ladybug is delightfully unattainable so he can place her as the person whom he can imagine loving him because there’s no way LB would actually love him. Sure she’s his partner, their love is totally platonic and so he’s safe to love that way. The other side of his low-self esteem, the side that craves validation is shown here. As a civilian he cannot believe love can be given to him without price or cost and it’s probably something else, he’s mistaken. But the moment the love square reverses, he can’t see her attempts at wooing him as sincere. They’re a test or a joke, or an affect of the miraculous. Nope, she definitely doesn’t mean it. And adrienette only happens because he gathers a little self-esteem and he knows marinette likes him, it all comes to together for him finally, there’s too much evidence now and he likes himself enough to take a shot.

LIKE COME ON

Anyway I think that is interesting

[transmutationisms]

been thinking it for a while but it is both an interesting and frightening thing to see more and more people in their 20s who are usually self-professed hard-leftist progressives get more and more into emotionally-driven, kneejerk 'takes' about how everything new to them is bad and evil and 'this generation' (usually people younger than them who they seem to base all their opinions on from some teens dumb tiktoks they see) is stupid and doomed and the world/'our culture' is constantly degenerating, etc. many of the people who think of themselves as radical leftists are coming out with more and more barely-formed, incoherent and emotionally-driven reactionary ideas, and respond to any criticism of these ideas with defensive appeals to disgust or a general sense of 'everyone just knows this is bad!', bypassing needing to think over their own ideas or articulate the reasons they hold them entirely in favor of reactive outrage.

it feels to me like were watching in real-time how many of us will progressively turn into reactionary liberals or right-wingers - something many of these people have observed in older people, in their parents, but believe will simply not happen to them on account of having good intentions and progressive views, which they think means they dont need to watch themselves for impulsive, reactionary thinking, and even that their kneejerk reaction to anything is automatically the correct one because they themselves are already inherently good. of course it starts with generally inconsequential takes, its not like saying 'the tiles are ugly' automatically makes you a right-winger, but i reckon the festering of such modes of thinking shows the cracks in the foundation of many peoples professed political and social beliefs.

point being, i think there certainly are discussions to be had about the ways architecture - both as a tool that serves a material need and a form of art - changes, and what we may be losing to capitalist priorities on that front, but if the only argument people are making are "its ugly and degenerates our once beautiful culture" and their defense to anyone addressing how that sounds ends at "well its still ugly!", im thinking that kind of reactionary opinion-forming is going to seep into other, more important matters sooner than they may think. sorry for the long ask!

yeah i mean i definitely don't think this is a new problem or a generational one, it's just liberal idealism, but yes this is exactly why this type of aesthetic discourse irritates me so much lol. like i've said this before in regards to clothing but aesthetic signifiers gain their meaning in a social context and conditionally. if your analysis is "it's ugly and therefore bad" you're not only attenuating an actual read of what's being signified and why, you're also just veering directly into the most boring ass "everything is worse now and change threatens me" conservatism. the idea that ugliness and beauty are not transhistorical or transcendental truths should ideally be like, a starting point to both questioning other socially mediated constructs and to then moving toward a theory of asethetics as products of social discourses and economic conditions but instead people just cannot ever fucking resist yelling about how much beige or concrete or whatever the fuck is "soulless" or "lacks artistry" agabshxhsg it's so fucking cornball. get over yourself

[max1461]

Regarding the culture on here (and twitter) being overly concept-centric; people having a tendency to view particular things as being mere instantiations of concepts as opposed to concepts emerging from the particulars of life:

It's like, whether it's therapy jargon or Bayesian reasoning or Marxist analysis, people on here really seem to love analyzing everything through some kind of established frame. Often the frame is constantly rotating. When social justice was tumblr's épistémè it used to constantly pick up new frameworks, and still the rationalists are always picking up on some new framework (or rolling their own). There's always a new framework du jour.

Nobody just looks at shit and decides independently what they think of it. Nobody just has specific, isolated, personal opinions about this or that particular topic. It's all tied into some established body of theory. Or at least, when people do just look at shit and come to an independent opinion, they feel the need to articulate it in reference to some established body of theory.

I hate this! I can't express how wrong I think this is in terms of like, being a productive way to engage with the world. Like, this kind of social theorizing... whether Marxist, rationalist, or psychiatric... it should be secondary. It should be something you put in an essay or research paper, and not something you live your life by. Why? Well there are a lot of reasons. Models, even accurate models, are necessarily simplifications of reality. In your actual lived experience you have the kind of direct knowledge of a situation that makes this sort of theorizing superfluous. And more humanistically, subordinating the actuality of your life, your human interactions, etc. to like... static, lifeless ideas... it sucks! Why would you do this!

There are epistemic problems with social theorizing in general too, but that's not even the point, that's beside the point.

Before anyone is a proletarian, an autistic narcissist, a Bayesian agent... they are an individual, they are the person in front of me, right? Before any of my actions are elements of any system or pattern, they are my specific actions, taken in some moment to some specific end. All the concepts are secondary. The real world is actual.

Right? Right?

This is not really a fact claim so much as an... emotional claim? I am claiming the correctness of some specific outlook or way of relating to the world, not some specific set of facts. And actually I think there's a lot of value in the concept-first way of relating. I certainly don't want to embody it, to me it seems awful, sterile, frightening and lonely. But some people don't feel that way, they love it, and that's great on its own, and beyond that: through their way of engaging with the world they clearly produce all sorts of concepts that I and others like me would never think to produce, and some of those concepts are bound to turn out to be nonsense but some will turn out to be worthwhile, and there you go. There is value in being a uh... a conceptualist, I'm going to call this worldsense "conceptualism". But I don't want to be one. Or be expected to act like one, as is the implicit expectation on here. I want to be an actualist. I am an actualist.

See look. Even here I'm framing things in terms of concepts. I'm behaving now as a conceptualist. I don't do this naturally. But it's impossible not to write for your audience. It's impossible not to speak to your audience. Some people can do it but not me. Speech, for me, inherently involves a model of the other, and I cannot speak but specifically to the other I model. And on here, the other is conceptualist, so I behave as a conceptualist.

[donnerpartyofone]

nothing to see here

I have to get over this crippling fear of being misunderstood that makes me angry, paranoid, anti-social, and sometimes even aggressive. It makes me say too much or too little. It makes me a worse writer.

I think that when most people complain about being misunderstood, they are talking about having a bad reputation, being slandered, or having no one who takes the time to get to know them. The latter thing correlates with a false equivalence between being understood and being liked, which is not a necessary product of understanding. Sometimes people also equate being understood with being correct--forgetting that someone can understand what you are saying and still disagree with it. Variations on all of those things have happened to me, just like anybody else, but my anxiety is really about people simply not comprehending the basic things that I am actually saying.

People in my life tell me that I'm very articulate, this is held to be my main quality I think, but that idea is contradicted by the frequency with which I go to great pains to explain something as specifically as possible, only to have people (often the same people who tell me I'm smart and well-spoken) completely misconstrue it, project their own baggage onto it, hold me responsible for assumptions about what I mean that are contradicted by what I just said, repeat back to me what I just said as if it were their own original idea, or even answer questions that I didn't actually ask. Mansplaining is alive and well in 2024 CE, perhaps especially among leftist men who believe they could never personally commit this crime, which presumption leaves them wide open to mansplaining all the time without thinking. But that's only a small part of the story of why so many people never seem to have the slightest idea of what I am saying to them, no matter how specific and detailed I try to be in my quest to say one thing clearly, while eliminating all over possible meanings.

I suppose it is terrifying to be misunderstood because it can make it so that you cannot control your circumstances. Advocating for yourself counts for nothing if people witlessly or willfully fail to understand your words. Language control is a major weapon of authority. I have been in corporate situations where my colleagues and I were prevented from resolving problems because upper management, who were tired of hearing about the problems, instituted language bans that prevented us from even discussing the problems clearly and effectively. I was once at an ayahuasca retreat (don't ask) where the shady organizers banned everyone from using the word "sick", which I guess was contrary to their whole healing ideology; so if you had to "get well" then you would "get well" into your bucket and an attendant would empty the bucket into the "wellness pit". One of the people I was with had grown up in an evangelical environment and went on to study religions and cults, and he pointed out that this form of language control is a classic red flag--and in particular if you are taking away a person's ability to make a critical distinction like the one between sickness and health, that can indicate a pretty dangerous situation. For another, even more obvious example, if you're in a relationship where someone is creating ambiguity around words like "yes" and "no", and inventing all kinds of subtext and context for your words, you're in trouble.

Of course, misunderstanding happens for all kinds of innocent reasons too. People don't listen that well, they don't read that well, they are just waiting for their turn to talk, they're angry and they don't think about what they're really hearing or saying, they are full of subconscious projections, they assume they know what you're talking about without reviewing your whole statement and then they just make their usual foregone conclusions. They have some narrative in mind, often a more optimistic one than whatever you are struggling to describe, and they'll contradict you with this attitude like they're doing you a big favor (like they're not kind of calling you a liar). It's incredibly frightening to be misunderstood. It's like one of those nightmares where you're running away in slow motion, or more aptly you try to scream but nothing comes out. I'm 100% sure this is why I'm so obsessed with language: I think that if I can just figure out how to say things that are always understood, then I will be able to save myself from danger.

But this fear makes me take things seriously when I shouldn't. The internet can help you find your people and it can show and teach you things you didn't know about before, but every time you say anything online, to friends or strangers, you create limitless opportunities to be misunderstood in ways that you have never dreamed possible. It is so hard for me not to correct people. I KNOW that it is not important for internet randos to understand me. I also KNOW that most people still won't understand me even if I correct them. But it is SO HARD not to say "That's not what I said" or "That's exactly what I already said" or "You're making an assumption that isn't based on anything and is also not true" or "I didn't ask" or "That's not even what I was talking about." I KNOW it doesn't matter, and that if I dig in with someone, I am likely to become MORE FRUSTRATED. But when I don't correct the person, this DANGER light goes on in my brain and all day long I have this anxious feeling like I forgot to do something important, like I left the oven on or something, and I had better go back and fix the problem OR ELSE. It's easy to decide intellectually that not everyone's opinions and perceptions matter, and it is obvious that misunderstanding is a common problem that you can never eliminate completely, so the only thing to do is ignore the situation and keep living your life. But if only ignoring the situation were not so emotionally loaded, it would be a lot easier to steer clear of making bad situations worse.

Another option is to just stop saying things altogether, and this is actually an appealing possibility. Unfortunately it comes with just as much emotional difficulty as the fruitless struggle to make oneself understood.

[iztopher]

I keep seeing posts going around with the sentiment of "people need to learn to distinguish media they like from good media/media they don't like from bad media," and while I appreciate the sentiment and I'm sure I've reblogged them before, the more I think about them the more I think that's not actually a useful way to judge media. If you approach things that way and it works for you, that's genuinely great. But I don't find it a productive road to encourage other people on.

I'm one of those people who think good art and bad art don't really exist in any objective sense. I think creativity is way too subjective for that. I remember, when I was first starting to use the "just because I like it doesn't mean it's good" metric, saying about a piece of art, "my personal opinion is this, but objectively-"

The best friend I was having this conversation with cut me off. "You can't be objective about art," they pointed out. "That's still a personal opinion." Yeah, okay, fair enough.

You cannot actually fully separate your personal opinion of art from your thoughts on it. Deciding what "objectively" makes good media is still a biased exercise. Where did you learn what makes good media? Why do you agree with it? These ideas are still personal! So is deciding whose opinion you agree with. You are, on some level, making a choice to agree with your mom, or your best friend, or the critic you respect, when you think a movie is bad but they say it's good and you decide that means it actually was good, personal opinions aside.

Everybody's different, but I lived by "distinguish if art is good or if you just like it" for years. It didn't help me understand media analysis any better, as any of my friends who had to patiently explain the basics to me time and time again could tell you. It didn't help me be less judgmental of other people's tastes. It just made me more insecure about my own.

It does not feel good to love a piece of art deeply, to admire it and use it as inspiration in your own work, and feel the need to tell yourself, but this is objectively bad. It does not feel good to suffer through art you've seen loved and praised but don't personally enjoy and feel the need to constantly remind yourself, but this is objectively good. In my experience, it mostly just makes you doubt your own right to experience and share your own opinions on art.

I am personally sick of saying that art I hold close to my chest is actually bad, but that's okay, because I love it anyways. Especially when I can articulate the things I like about it! I would much rather say, "I've seen people criticize this game's level scaling for requiring too much grinding, but I like it because it gives me more time with the characters and helps me better immerse myself in the game's world."

If you genuinely love a piece of art and also genuinely think it's bad art, whatever that means to you, all power to you. But both of those are your personal opinions, and I think owning that is a way more productive way to approach media than pretending one is and the other is just objective reality.

[woodaba]

Travelling into Trover

The Magic Circle is a concept articulated by Johan Huizinga in the naive and racist Homo Ludens, and later codified by Salen and Zimmerman in the even more naive and utterly wrongheaded Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, which posits that the rules of a game create what is effectively a separate reality that exists within our own, one wherein the concerns and realities of our lives do not intrude, where the work envelops us in its entirety.

Like a lot of game theory that I've read, the Magic Circle is more of a wishful thought than something that is actually observable and true to the reality of the experience. Play does not exist as separate from reality, it is a product of it, just as we are. Game designers can't make a game wholly separate from the person they are, and the person they are cannot be separated from the circumstances that made them, and neither can players. You aren't entering another world when you read The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, you're just using an object to try to shut the world out. To put it simply, we've all got baggage, and we're carrying that shit everywhere with us, whether we want to admit it or not.

Which hasn't stopped us chasing the idea of the Magic Circle. The dream of a game we play becoming a world we inhabit has forever been intoxicating, from when tabletop wargame Chainmail transformed into role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, to the modern rhetoric of The Metaverse, there's an argument to be made that all of this speaks for us attempting to wish the Magic Circle into existence: to create a space we can truly escape into, where the failings of the physical no longer apply. And no vision is more intoxicating than VR.

The eternal non-starter, the future that is always coming but always failing to arrive, VR, in our modern conception of it, is something I have almost entirely experienced vicariously. I am poor, I have always been poor, and I have never been in a position where I am capable of dropping the absurd amounts of money these things routinely ask for in exchange for what is - still! - largely a method to play Beam Saber, VR Chat, and Half-Life Alyx. Like the Metaverse that attaches itself to VR for a shred of credibility, VR continues to insist that it is The Future from atop a house built on sand, sinking down below more and more with each year that passes where Half-Life: Alyx is still the only game that truly gets people talking about VR.

But perhaps this is unfair. I don't own one, after all: this is all the speculation of an outsider. So, let's pick another VR game, more of a median example of this sub-medium. Consider this mu report from observations of an expedition, undertaken by a braver explorer than I, into the Magic Circle as conceived by Justin Roiland: Trover Saves the Universe.

I'll give TStU this much: I actually like the idea of the central gameplay loop. It's a fairly rare example of "second-person" gameplay, wherein you control a character controlling Trover, and teleport to various points in the levels, from which you can observe Trover as he does the sub-Lego Game third person platforming action that this game is made up of. It felt, weirdly, like a more player-authored version of the fixed camera angles of Resident Evil et al, a language of cinematography that we unfortunately lost when it become expected that the player would take full control of the camera. I'd like to see another game explore this concept more, and more purposefully.

That's the end of my praise. You hardly need me to tell you this, but yes, Trover Saves the Universe is fucking terrible, in the same way Rick and Morty is, in the same way every Justin Roiland production is (though, subtracting Dan Harmon from the equation does remove the part of Rick and Morty that I find worst of all, that being its cloying and manipulative sentimental streak that never reads as sincere). It is a 4-hour session of the worst improv comedy class imaginable, tolerable only to baked teenage boys and those who share their disposition, made worse by adopting the exact same tenor, writing, and observations that every hack comedian who thinks they have a Wry Eye on Video Game Cliches deploys. All this game has as a selling point is Justin, and all Justin has is sub-Cake Is A Lie 2009 webcomic jokes processed through a work determined to explain every single joke at length, whilst engaging in gross-out humor that always finds a way to make fat women the butt of the joke, with increasing viciousness that is genuinely sickening.

Every moment of Trover Saves the Universe was excruciating. Sometimes it was excruciatingly annoying, sometimes it was excruciatingly dull, and sometimes was excruciatingly offensive, but it was always excruciating. If I was playing it, I would have turned it off and refunded it within minutes. If I was watching it, I would have found something else to watch within seconds.

But I didn't. I watched this for nearly 4 hours. I saw the whole thing, beginning to end. I sat there for every moment of the playthrough because I was with friends, and they were making me smile and laugh, because for whatever stupid absurd faux camaraderie it was, I wanted to be there for my friend until they ran over the finish line and could free themselves from this self-inflicted torment. Is that dumb? It sure sounds dumb, to read it written out like that. But it's true. And I'd do it again! But only if, like this time, I am allowed to break the Magic Circle, and bring with me myself, and everyone I carry with me, in my head and in my heart.

The Magic Circle does not posit the non-existence of the people I care about within it, but it does argue that they are ultimately supplicant to the rules the circle creates, that the game provides a wholly separate context for them to exist in. But if that was true, they wouldn't have made me laugh the way they did. They wouldn't have made me smile and roll my eyes and groan the way I did. Because they - and that - are the product of this world, not Trover's world.

Proponents of the Magic Circle will push back against the interpretation I've made of it, here, but I do think this kind of preclusive argument is where the fantasy The Magic Circle leads you: if the world is truly entirely separate, maintained until it is fractured by the breaking of it's rules, then the participants must also agree to cease the continuity of their lives, to suspend them, for the sake of the game. And I wouldn't want to do that, even if that were possible. None of Trover's jokes were funny, but I laughed anyway because my friends brought their worlds into this one.

VR is not the future that exists in the present, it's not the gateway to tomorrow. It's just a way to experience play, to engage with rules and visuals entwined together, like the unique gameplay loop of this game (which works perfectly well without VR but it is undoubtedly informed by VR). No matter what way we interface with them, nothing we can do will make Games into something that will let us escape reality. They are not other worlds, they are not places to become wholly different people separate from ourselves, they are not the means by which we can seal ourselves off from the stings of reality, as much as we might wish them to be. And that's for the best. Because if Trover Saves the Universe was a Magic Circle where I left everything behind at its door before entering, I would not be able to survive it. I did so because I brought people into it with me, people who I care immensely about, people that TStU, in however a slight and silly manner it may have been, let me see in new lights and appreciate in new ways. It wasn't a doorway to another dimension. It was a funhouse mirror. And when I laugh at a funhouse mirror, I'm not laughing at the material of the mirror itself. I'm laughing at the reflection of me and my friends in it, provided by the mirror's context.

Trover's Universe may not have all the pains the world inflicts on us in it, but it does not have anything inside it that I love. My universe does. And because of that, I'll never, ever let it go.

[ladygeeks]

Monkey Man is a marvelous showcase of all Dev Patel has to offer. Patel, who wrote, directed, produced, and stars in the movie, is all enthusiasm in a film that when it’s great, nails the references to Bollywood, Korean action films, Bruce Lee, and many others. When the movie delves into serious topics, however, Patel’s inexperience as a screenwriter seems to play against him in a script that falters when it comes to the political subtext.

I cannot pretend to be an expert when it comes to the subject. An extensive research spiral after the movie and general knowledge before does not make me one. There are certainly much more knowledgeable critics who can speak to what Patel was trying to convey. But even from my limited perspective, it’s clear that whatever Patel was trying to do…it did not land. The problem feels two-fold. It’s partly that there doesn’t seem to be a clear idea behind what Patel is trying to say. (Almost as if he or some part of the production process was afraid of actually articulating an idea). But it’s also that the script doesn’t seem to trust the viewers with the idea it’s trying to convey.

Continue Reading

[somethingspectral]

I'm reading On Virginity by Saint Gregory of Nyssa because one of my friends who just graduated forwarded it to me and, so far, I'm really enjoying it. He posits some points that, at first, render themselves paradoxical to one another, but ultimately that I think are very beautiful when you consider them together and not just as two separate ideas.

Of course, as the title implies, it's about virginity. I think it would be really easy to read this through a modern or secular lens that rejects it as a product and producer of a "purity mindset" that's inherently repressive, but if you strip that away, his ideas are things of considerable philosophical and theological beauty.

He makes the point that Jesus Christ was brought to the world through virginity, and not wedlock, and that the station of virginity is a sign of God. Specifically, he writes,

I don't think I could articulate this exact point better myself without butchering it. Virginity, then, is a sign of God's presence, remaining in heaven, only lending itself to the salvation of man.

He continues to characterize virginity as "the better way" and the station as being a "special beauty," which modifies and makes his later points considerably more complex.

It seems, also, that St. Gregory himself was not a virgin (admittedly I haven't so much as gone on his Wikipedia, going into this pretty blind) because of the way he characterizes it. I think it also modifies the reading if you read it as someone who is lauding the blessing of virginity without actually holding that virtue himself.

The idea that "no one can climb up to that who has once planted his foot upon the secular life" is extremely compelling, and I think I'll want to meditate on that idea further past reading. Not necessarily because I disagree with it, but I think there's broader implications about "the secular life" outside of virginity and the ways we can or cannot come back from it, especially in the face of God's offer of salvation from secular evils. Anyway.

Then, in Chapter 3, he starts to talk about marriage and that's where he really starts cooking with gas. I think his description of the mission of marriage is extremely beautiful, especially "that sweet rivalry of each wishing to surpass the other in loving." He's so deeply eloquent I could cry. But his greatest emphasis is actually on the difficulty of marriage, rather than the beauty found in it.

It seems that he characterizes an envy for those who keep virginity not because of the difficulty of that "vocation" (if you will) but rather because it is somehow easier? His reasons are somewhat compelling to me: if you don't love someone who is mortal, you don't have to fear death, and you needn't even fear your own death because it is the means by which you'd actually be united with Christ, "the undying Bridegroom" in heaven. Which, holy shit? That's a perspective I've never considered before.

He also goes onto describe the terrible conditions that marriage offers ("adulteries, dissensions, and plots," as he calls them) that continue to compound and make marriage a very difficult choice, writing, "...so when you peruse the laws and read there the strange variety of crimes in marriage to which their penalties are attached, you will have a pretty accurate idea of its properties; for the law does not provide remedies for evils which do not exist, any more than a physician has a treatment for diseases which are never known."

Of course, St. Gregory offers that virginity is the solution to remove oneself from the possibility of falling victim to these evils. He treats virtue as a boundless resource that all can take from, as opposed to things like land, that must be divided between people.

(tbc)

[tenfluenza]

Just read your fyolai coffee shop au so i must ask. What does it feel like to be the funniest person in this fandom? First the fyozai menopause fic now this. You're hilarious and honest to god a genius

thank youuuu~

i actually meant to sit on the fic for a much longer time, but upon hearing that st.gogol's birthday was imminent, i must confess that i rushed writing it. i might rewrite some parts in the future (mostly adding stuff so the setting and pacing feels more complete), but until i get some ideas this is how it's staying.

i originally had some story beats written down over a brainstorm session in my discord server where i wanted to do coffeeshop au but more true to their current dynamic. i honest to god cannot see fyodor as a romantic guy, so i end up making him like the devil in all my fics. exploring nikolai was unexpectedly fun. i watched a lot of jreg videos to pinpoint what kind of vibe i wanted out of him and how i should unpack his inner thoughts. ironic mind games are the only way i can take my fyo ships

i havent been able to articulate my thoughts on nikolai directly, but something something he fights against his base moral values because theyre given to him by a sick moral society. in order to declare himself free he has to oppose his base morality and unpack the underlying values comprising that. something something he lashes out in the form of physical violence but also decays his own concepts of morality by doing so. so all in all his terrorism is pretty productive for self exploration. i.e., irony poisoning. you go glen coco!

the way i like writing fyodor is sort of as a passive observer to frantic people (this in itself can be a horrifying concept). he doesnt necessarily cause any chaos on his own, he's actually quite capable of following rules if he wants to. he's a man on his way and incidentally people experience chaos around him, and he just happens to be there to act as a beacon of devastating normality. the worst thing in turn to happen to those frantic personalities is to "normalize" all actions, becoming such a pillar of normalcy to the point of absurdity, where even murder can be shrugged off as long as the other is acting more crazy in comparison. (you're making such a big deal out of it, you're making yourself believe you did something wrong, are you sure im the wrong one if you're the one who's so worked up?) so, naturally, this kind of personality would be the kind that nikolai would love to use in order to escalate his own emotion and to contrast against his turbulence, while 22dazai i believe would feel an overwhelming sense of disgust and defensiveness against letting death and consequence become a norm. on the other hand, dark era dazai would probably relate a lot more to that dostoyevsky.

[ai4cf23]

mixed feelings (assignment 1)

When people think of writing, it doesn’t always occur to them that it can be a collaborative process. Why would it be? It’s an incredibly intimate art form that has no visual imagery beyond words on a page. The job of a writer is to evoke emotions through these words, to take ideas and somehow formulate them into a unique amalgamation that both encapsulates and explores the human psyche. So how, exactly, would someone (or something) fit into that?

In my own experience, I have found that sharing my writing is deeply terrifying. Coincidentally (and perhaps unfortunately), it is also very, very helpful—given the right group of people. A proper workshop can be extremely productive; having other writers read and give feedback on your work is probably one of the best things you can do for yourself. There are a few objective errors they might be able to catch: plot holes, grammatical mistakes, formatting issues. But the value in workshop lies mostly in the subjective interpretation of your work. Does it flow properly? Does the conclusion feel satisfying? Do you relate to the characters? Is the dialogue natural? What does natural dialogue even mean? Given that there’s no solid answer to any of these questions, I have doubts as to whether or not AI could be helpful in this way. If we take, for example, the concept of dialogue: it’s an active struggle for many to capture the “humanness” and verisimilitude of what good dialogue should be. If a real, living, breathing person cannot translate the very experience of conversation, then what hope does an AI have? I don’t say this merely out of skepticism either, because I’ve tried. Below is an example of a scene produced by ChatGPT after I provided it with the prompt: “can you write a scene between two characters arguing about where they should go for spring break?”

Despite its ability to produce…something, the dialogue itself is very cluttered. People don’t talk like this. For attempt no. 2, I ask it to make the dialogue more natural.

Still a no go. It interprets "natural" as more "colloquial", which, while true, doesn't work if it doesn't have an understanding of what colloquial speech entails.

“Sarah, Miami is so mainstream. I was thinking something more off the beaten path, like the Grand Canyon,” is giving sit-com. If ChatGPT were writing for a Disney channel show, then maybe this would be acceptable. But in a work of prose? No dice.

Okay. Let’s try something new. This time I ask if it can produce a work about adjusting to life in the city in the style of Lorie Moore’s How to Be a Writer, a notable and more importantly, distinct example of prose written in second person. Her writing is wonderfully whimsical and is not entirely linear. The first attachment below is an excerpt from Moore, followed by ChatGPT's output.

Here, it’s nailed the style…sort of. The basic structure is there. But the diction is slightly off and the prose is awkward in a way I can’t quite articulate. It doesn’t “flow.” It is also obsessively literal in a way that feels strangely shallow. No one thinks of the subway in a way that is nearly as romantic as "underground chariot." Some other parts have potential: the phrase "tetris-like living" is interesting, but it's still wordy and unrefined. What is most glaringly obvious, however, is that it lacks imagination. Could ChatGPT have come up with something as randomly clever as "a short story about an elderly man and woman who accidentally shot each other in the head, the result of an inexplicable malfunction of a shotgun which appears mysteriously in their living room one night"? Would it occur to an AI to call Mr. Killian pore-face?

Evidently ChatGPT is capable of mimicking specific works, but it doesn’t really know how to produce content of a certain caliber. While I don’t ever intend to use AI to actually write in my stead, this severely undercuts any hopes I had for it being helpful in a collaborative/workshop capacity. I admittedly have not plugged any of my own work into ChatGPT just because it feels…sacrilegious? In a way? It’s a little unsettling knowing that my writing could be used to train it.

However! Back to the point. Where does this lead us now?

For me, the question of AI in its current iteration (or, at least, the version of ChatGPT that I have access to) is whether or not it can learn how to think abstractly in the way that is required of objectively “good” writers. Although it can try to mimic specific writing styles, that doesn’t mean it can achieve the same quality of work or produce something that is artistically sound. I think AI has a long, long way to go before it can begin to replicate the humanity that is required of prose fiction. That being said, it also makes me deeply uncomfortable that AI could ever potentially reach that level of sophistication. Writing is ultimately a form meant to capture the human experience. If a machine can somehow learn to accomplish something similar, then what does that mean for us?

For reference, I’ve also attached an excerpt of my own writing about living life in the city, loosely inspired by How to Be a Writer (this is also why I plugged that specific prompt into ChatGPT). This was written half a year before its release.

[overfedvenison]

We need to bring back knowledge of logical fallacies such as "Reductio ad Hitlerum." ...Well, that might be a slightly different thing, as traditionally it's a more direct response to an argument by comparing it to fascism. But I'd still say it's the same thing in the end, here. It's still falling into a logical fallacy where it is saying a thing was used by fascism at some point, and implying it is therefore inherently tied to it, and that this is the primary reason it is bad.

But of course... Put simply, things don't have to be fascism to be bad. Things can instead be bad on their own merits. People forget that sometimes, I suppose.

I guess it's sorta like... Fascism is an ideology which is highly complex and has a lot of moving parts, such that it cannot be easily summarized as one thing or the other. It combines a lot of different ideas - The autocracy and nationalism are obvious. But from there it gets confusing. It was anti-capitalist and anti-communist both. It embraced new technology for the purpose of futurism and the radical reinvention of a state into a new era as a world power, at the same time as desiring a return to past glory and a resurrection of the heights of the roman empire (Up to bringing back public flogging.) It wanted the state to subsume the role of family and religion, at the same time as being incredibly socially conservative and concerned with degenerate influence and traditional gender roles. And so on, and so fourth.

It also lacks a single, unifying theory in the way communism is about workers owning the means of production, or libertarianism being about a removal of government structures, or nobility being about the divine right of kings. This means it lacks a core which people can keep in their minds properly. All this has the unique effect of fascism being something everyone knows of and agrees is bad, but very few people actually understand or are able to properly identify or articulate... I think that's why you have all these particularly half-baked or ill-considered comparisons involving this topic in particular

That 'dehumanization is the weapon of the enemy' post is good, but goddamn that the addition of the "It's a tool of Fascism" image pisses me off.

EVERY political thinking, every religion, every thing can be used and was used and is used to justify dehumanization against people, not just Fascism.

"They're not people! They're Muslims!"

"They're not people! They're Russians!"

"They're not people! They're Jews!"

"They're not people! They're Catholics!"

"They're not people! They're Communists!"

"They're not people! They're homosexuals!"

Dehumanization can be, was and is the tool of every ideology, and that is where it's danger lies. And it displays the inherent hypocrisy and lack of critical thinking of Tumblr that people only think it's a trait of Fascism to do this.

[kidkintsugi]

project work got to the point where i feel like i do 75% of the work.

i stay at work the longest. my team mates either call in sick, leave early, work on personal projects or dont work at all. i stayed up until 3am this past week just to catch up and im still gonna have to do more.

now theyre telling me im overreacting and that its "not that much" and that i should "take a break". love the optimism but please you have no idea what youre talking about.

just now i was told to "take a break" and that ill "be of no use" once i get burnout. as if my productivity is the biggest thread when i actually do get burnout and not my (even more) rapidly declining mental state. im already reaching stages of semi verbal if that makes any sense: absolutely cannot articulate myself, words get stuck or dont make sense etc.

reminded me a lil too much about the fictional villains i like to project on so im gonna do what every respectable pathetic manchild would do: call in sick, work from home and make them realize how much theyre struggling without me.

if they dont struggle at all: its completely on me! my fault! shouldnt have underestimated them! but if they do? i hope they learn.

i hope you realize how fucking hard it is to feel left alone with a task meant for more than 1 person. i hope you feel as hopeless as i did just so you learn to do BETTER in the future. i hope you learn to plan ahead and prioritize tasks instead of getting angry at someone who isnt even responsible for your current workload. i know you would rather die than to admit your own mistakes but ill leave you helpless and exposed until you do.

fuck you. fuck you, fuck you. eat shit. dont EVER come to me telling me to take a break for quality time when all youve had was quality time while i was waiting for you to do your work. and ESPECIALLY dont come to me asking for help when i actually AM TAKING QUALITY TIME. if i get ANY messages about how youre expecing me to do ANYTHING im jumping ship.

[yutito]

okay so. this post is not meant to be antagonistic, it's not meant to call you a "bad person" if it applies to you. but since i got an ask about this recently & since ive gained a lot of followers from twitter and i realized people on there dont tend to have many productive conversations about this (perhaps because of the character limit discouraging well-articulated and elaborate discussions), i wanted to talk about it.

I actually DO need pansexual people and people who deem criticism of the label as panphobia to examine why they would rather identify with/defend a label that shows no substantial difference from bisexuality (which is brought up in posts about bisexual/pansexual solidarity), which also has a history of having its definition changed a multitude of times (and not one definition even being widely agreed on) due to either being transphobic or blatantly biphobic, than a label that has been around for ages and describes the same thing (bisexuality describing attraction regardless of/to all genders is an idea that has been around since at least the 90's; even explicitly written about in a magazine by bisexual people called "anything that moves").

there is no definition of pansexuality that justifies separating it from bisexuality. there are some pansexual people who view bisexuality as an umbrella term & pansexuality as something under that umbrella, however the vast majority (in my experience) do not.

the definition naming it as "inclusive of nonbinary people" is not a valid one, since the only thing it demonstrates is a critical lack of understanding of nonbinary identities — we are not a special third gender, we do not all present the same or even in a similar way. literally every sexuality includes us.

the definition naming it as inclusive of trans people AS A WHOLE is blatantly transphobic, as it delegates trans people to a third gender, which every other sexuality is not or cannot be attracted to, instead of the gender we actually ARE and identify with.

the definition of not seeing gender/feeling attraction regardless of gender is already included within bisexuality (yet again: anything that moves), and gender not playing a role in attraction to someone would not be enough of a difference to insist on two entirely different labels — we need the exact same resources and are attracted to the exact same people. the only thing it does is try to create an artificial difference between the labels, and between people within the community, and in turn paint bisexuals as caring about someone's body or gender more than their personality — elevating pansexuality and people who identify with it to a morally higher position in relation to bisexuality and people who identify with it, whether this is done intentionally or not.

yet again. i reiterate. i do not hate pan people, I’m not going to care less about pan people being in pain and in crisis, and I’m not going to cut people off or not befriend them in the first place because they identify as pan. they (and you, if you are pansexual and reading this) are part of my community. we have, if not the same, very similar experiences. I’m not telling you to stop identifying as pan right this second. In fact, I’m not even asking you to do that at ANY point — you can do what you want. I’m asking you to think about why you are uncomfortable with bisexuality/more comfortable with pansexuality, and to understand and acknowledge its flaws and the hurt it can, does and has caused to an entire community.