deathlygristly

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"Maybe it’s because our political discourse swings between deranged and abhorrent on a daily basis and we would like to combat our feelings of powerlessness by insisting on moral simplicity in the stories we tell and receive. Or maybe it’s because many of the transgressions that flew under the radar in previous generations — acts of misogyny, racism and homophobia; abuses of power both macro and micro — are now being called out directly. We’re so intoxicated by openly naming these ills that we have begun operating under the misconception that to acknowledge each other’s complexity, in our communities as well as in our art, is to condone each other’s cruelties."

#special tagging

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the whole guilt-tripping language in posts about important topics paired with how I'm still getting bitches in my notes talking about why it's actually good to tell "bad" people to kill themselves continues to prove to me that a lot of people have absolutely no concept of social justice or activism outside of assuming the worst of and then viciously attacking strangers on the internet

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#the midnight studio

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I think the host of this podcast makes some decent points about Queen of Tears and its class issues.

I didn’t think about it much consciously while watching because I’ve seen the chaebol lead character trope so much now that it’s background noise. Same with orphans and single mothers - I’ve seen enough shows to get the Confucian family norms going on there.

I tried searching for neo-Confucian heteronormativity but it didn’t turn up much. I did find this paper about how Joseon’s neo-Confucianism still influences the politics and culture of both North and South Korea, and how it’s starting to change.

#queen of tears #kdrama #of course I am a Westerner #so i am limited #but I think it’s important to learn the culture and history if you’re going to watch the shows

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Yay it’s Monday!!! Pizza and Lovely Runner and Midnight Studio!!!

I was talking to the spousal person about how the real kdrama girlies had moved to Lovely Runner from Queen of Tears. I just looked it up to link it for anyone who wants to watch and it’s on Viki and it requires a subscription. So it is a higher barrier to entry than a show on Netflix.

But if you don’t already have a sub and you’re interested in Asian TV and movies, I think Viki is worth it. And their subtitles are much better than Netflix subtitles and they try to keep cultural nuances and explain cultural terms. Like we learned a lot from Viki translations and now we get all offended at Netflix’s Americanizations.

If you do want to check it out. It’s the first show in years that might make it into our top tier if it keeps up its current awesomeness.

#lovely runner #kdrama

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i love you air dried hair i love you no makeup i love you comfortable clothes made out of soft fabrics i love you short nails

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I found an example in this headline notification.

So I've seen a post floating around Tumblr that's clearly propaganda for not voting. It claims that you should not vote because we lost Roe V Wade under Biden.

Whoever made that post is either not American, American but didn't pay attention to the lessons about the three branches of government (legislative, judicial, and executive) in their social studies class, or American and they want Republicans to win.

They want you to feel moral outrage at the less completely unabashedly fascist party, to feel like voting for the less fascist party would be an affront to your group identity and the morals of your group. If you resist those feelings and you do a bit of research first before reblogging it, you will learn that the executive branch is not all powerful, that it was judges appointed by Trump who helped overturn Roe V Wade and that Biden did not have anything to do with it and the current executive branch had no power in that situation, that being a Supreme Court justice is a lifetime appointment, and that the judicial branch is not doing its job at all right now and it's been corrupted. Not voting for the less fascist party will not do anything to help this problem and will in fact make it worse, as the more fascist party will have more power the more they win and they will be able to corrupt more institutions.

I guess my point is maybe that Big Emotions are fine for your fandoms and your blorbos and your favorite fiction. But when it's real life and it has real consequences, maybe try to think through things past your first emotional reaction.

Going through the tags on my last reblog to find people to follow, and I'm scrolling down their blogs like yeah you seem cool, and then bam uncritically reblogged completely obvious propaganda about the Current Issue and/or performative moral outrage about it.

Maybe don't call out other people for their lack of media literacy and paying attention if you yourself believe anything you see online.

Anyway, tip on noticing and not falling for propaganda: posts online that are written to make you feel Big Emotions, particularly if those emotions are Moral Outrage At The Designated Other and Moral Pride In Your Tribe, are propaganda.

Generally the more emotional and less sourced something is, the more likely it's propaganda. The more keywords it has in it that are clearly meant to hit the moral emotions of certain groups, the more likely it's propaganda. The more outrage it's trying to engender, the more likely it's propaganda.

Basically if you see something online and it makes you want to do a performative post to show how Good and Pure and Correct you and your ingroup are and how Bad and Impure and Evil and Wrong the outgroup is and how Outraged you are at Them, it's propaganda.

It's the same tricks as the ones in posts older people share on Facebook. Just with different words and framing to appeal to your group identity and your moral instincts and your ideological assumptions instead of theirs.

#critical thinking #us politics #media literacy #tagging it because as scared as I am of strangers seeing it #I am writing it for strangers #because I'm pretty sure people who follow this blog already get it

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#I think we’ve dropped two shows over the nearly 5 years of watching #one because a lead actor got replaced #and the other was our blues #the first two episodes were not fun at all #kdrama

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Going through the tags on my last reblog to find people to follow, and I'm scrolling down their blogs like yeah you seem cool, and then bam uncritically reblogged completely obvious propaganda about the Current Issue and/or performative moral outrage about it.

Maybe don't call out other people for their lack of media literacy and paying attention if you yourself believe anything you see online.

Anyway, tip on noticing and not falling for propaganda: posts online that are written to make you feel Big Emotions, particularly if those emotions are Moral Outrage At The Designated Other and Moral Pride In Your Tribe, are propaganda.

Generally the more emotional and less sourced something is, the more likely it's propaganda. The more keywords it has in it that are clearly meant to hit the moral emotions of certain groups, the more likely it's propaganda. The more outrage it's trying to engender, the more likely it's propaganda.

Basically if you see something online and it makes you want to do a performative post to show how Good and Pure and Correct you and your ingroup are and how Bad and Impure and Evil and Wrong the outgroup is and how Outraged you are at Them, it's propaganda.

It's the same tricks as the ones in posts older people share on Facebook. Just with different words and framing to appeal to your group identity and your moral instincts and your ideological assumptions instead of theirs.

#media literacy #media criticism #critical thinking

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Yeah, I was thinking about this when the hosts of a kdrama podcast I listened to dropped a drama because they didn't like what was going on with the male lead.

At first I thought maybe they were sliding too close to "anti" things, being like no all characters must be what I personally consider to be morally pure, but then I remembered one of the hosts saying that he's on at least three screens when they watch dramas. So it's probably more that they weren't paying enough attention to pick up on the nuance rather than an ideological refusal to see the nuance.

the problem isn't just that media literacy is slowly becoming a dying art. it's that people straight up do not pay attention when they watch tv/film anymore.

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#true

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Writing prologue and epilogues.

Is there a rule in writing about how long before or after the main plot of a story that the prologue and epilogue can take place?

For example, a prologue that takes place a month before the main plot of a fic, and an epilogue that takes place a decade after.

Thank you for your time.

Okay, listen here my anxious chilluns. The fun thing about writing (fic or original stuff or whatever) is that there are literally no rules. You can do absolutely whatever you want and which makes sense for your story. There is no omniscient Writers Regulation Authority walking around with a ruler and a clipboard and frowningly measuring your story to make sure it's up to code, and the self-appointed ones you occasionally meet on the internet are without exception total dicks. You do not have to worry about this. You can go forth, my butterfly. Go forth and spread your wings and do whatever the ding dong diddlyfuck you would like to do. BE FREE. BE FREEEEEEE.

#writing advice #writing #also kind of life advice

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I am reading the reblogs and tags on an older post that goes around the dash occasionally. It's about reading. I'm sure you've seen it - someone talks about Divergent books and 1984 and then someone reblogs it and calls 1984 rape apologism? Which is really weird?

The spousal person ordered a print of this Kate Beaton comic many years ago and he hung it up in the hallway and he told me to go look at it whenever I said my writing was bad:

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=44

The first two panels do a fairly decent job of explaining 1984. Which is just....a really simple book. It's like wow look fascism sucks! And that's it, pretty much. Like yeah, obviously you could write papers and essays and a thesis and probably do a whole body of academic work on the particulars of it, but really it's just that Orwell thought fascism sucked. Which it does, so I don't see the problem?

Anyway I am pretty sure a lot of the people on that post come from a very different society than I do, even though the education system they say they hate is the American one. Which, hey, our education is locally funded and controlled so maybe it's just that my working class southern Appalachian rural county schools were a lot better than their schools? Or is it maybe what I've suspected before, that I graduated before No Child Left Behind?

I can't recall my English teachers ever being authoritarian to the extent so many other people claim their English teachers were. Not that I can recall that much about English or school at all, really, but I think I would remember if they marched around all "No, your essay is WRONG and only MY opinion is right!!!" all the time.

But then it's true that I don't remember it that well because I just wrote essays the night before they were due or sometimes in the classes before English if it was a class later in the day, and then I got a good grade and nice comments on it and then I got on with my life. I don't think I ever invested nearly as much emotional energy and idea of my self-worth into English class as the people on that post did. Which maybe that's why they remember it so well? Certainly it's probably a large part of why they still have Big Emotions about it.

Anyway my point is that sometimes I read how people write about their own reading and I'm like oh. This is why I shouldn't care what people say about my work that much. I clearly did not write it for these people who experience the world and fiction and the written word in a way that I cannot imagine at all and that I would have never known existed as a possibility if I hadn't read their own words about it.

Like the version of the post that gets the most reblogs ends with an essay about how in the last few decades people have come to expect characters to be "relatable" and to be like them and to think and experience things the way they do? And there's all this self-identity and irrational and false beliefs about your own moral purity involved?

If you come to my work with that sort of thing in your heart you will bounce off of it, and I have finally come to understand that the bouncing off is for the best for both of us.

If you're new here and you haven't read my stuff yet, here's the pinned post with the directory on my Simblr: Story Index.

Anyway, gotta go to bed now. It's just....I don't think I ever realized just how differently people experience fiction and books and the written word from how I experience it before. Like in the tags someone said they expected 1984 to be more Hunger Games-esque? How is that person perceiving reality? I want to live inside their brain for a bit to learn.

#long post

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Gaze upon perfection in the shape of a cinnamon roll shake.

#food