labingi

In the mood for a little good news for a change? This video is a nice reminder that it's not bleak.

I really enjoyed Quality Culture's video on the movie, Atonement. Disclaimer: I have not seen the movie or read the book, so my thoughts purely based on this video.



I really appreciated the narrative the video highlights of moving from a univocal perspective to a dialogic perspective as a way of presenting human beings with sympathy and without judgment. I also understand there's ambiguity and irony in this, since the dialogism is entirely authored by one (problematized) voice. But I also appreciate ambiguity and irony, and overall, the story this video explores expresses why a dialogic approach to storytelling--and life, really--is so central to me.

I’ve been quiet about this season because I’ve really been enjoying it, and critique inspires more words than praise. I love Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor. As inherently tired as I am of contemporary, young, London woman companions, I really like Ruby, too, and I’m enjoying the stories themselves more than any season since the Tenth Doctor. But I do have a few thinky thoughts about the handling of race in the last two episodes: lots of praise, some frustration, and some hypothetical suggestions.

Spoilers below the cut( Read more... )

via spiralicious


What was the first anime you watched and/or manga you read?

First anime I was kind of aware of as foreign (to the US) was Ulysses 3000, but I probably saw some more Americanized anime stuff earlier. First manga was issue 4 of Nausicaa, which I picked up at a bookstore for some reason.

What is the last anime you watched and/or manga you read?

Oh boy, the last I clearly remember (both anime and manga) is Girls Last Tour.

What is your current favorite anime and/or manga?

NB: I’m interpreting “current” to mean “my current fav” not “my fav that is fairly current”: My consistent favorite manga is Trigun/Trigun Maximum, and probably always will be. Current favorite anime in the sense of the one that always jumps to the front of my mind when I think about what’s amazing is Akira.

Which anime and/or manga deserves a sequel?

Ergo Proxy. It ended right as the main setup narrative was about to start to pay off.

Which series do you wish you could watch or read for the first time all over again?( Read more... )

(If—based on my weird responses—anyone wants to rec me anything, please do!)

[EDIT: Skinintheway observes below that I likely misread the statement I'm responding to. I think she's right, and I'm going to keep the original post/thread below to show the whole thought progression.]

As I gear up to release Being Cut, my book on relationship cutoff, I want to discuss some interesting statements people shared with me, which did not end up in the book. I'll keep it all anonymous.

My interlocuter said,

I like thinking about the world where cutoff does not exist. In that it would have to be either no deep connections with others or every time we make a deep connection with another it is a lifetime commitment. Commitment is such a rare and honored thing in our culture. Would it mean less if there were no choice to cut off?

The first type of society (no deep connections) reminds me of Brave New World. Indeed, cutoff (ex. I'm going to ignore you, not return calls) is probably fairly rare there. And when it happens, it probably packs little punch. (And if it does pack a punch, one can always escape into through gram of soma.)

On the whole, though, I think this reasoning displays a fallacy of cutoff culture: all or nothing, lifetime deep commitment or 0 contact. I don’t advocate for a world without cutoff, but in such a world, there would be many ways to break or lessen deep commitments: divorce, breaking up with a partner, explicitly breaking off a friendship, ceasing to share personal information, emancipation from parents, moving away (literally or in terms of time/energy allocation), etc. I suppose not having the social option of cutoff implies some required commitment--ex. an expectation of gritting one's teeth and saying "hi" at a party--but I don't think that's the kind of "rare and honored" commitment the speaker means here.

I've been considering posting an open letter to the person who cut me off in 2014. I'll write more about that in the future, but for now, I sent a draft to my mother for her input, and I thought I'd share part of her response with some of my own thoughts.

My mom wrote:

You don’t need to seek anyone else’s input about this gesture towards communication (including mine). As you noted yourself, all your thinking and feeling is your own responsibility.

Looking at my own miscalculations over the years, I think I really do need to seek input. That's part of my being responsible.

I have suspected that [the person who cut you off] acted on poor advice from someone else when she rejected all communication with you.

I suspect this too.

But no one knows the “directing mind,” as Marcus [Aurelius]’s translator calls it, the way that one knows their own. (I have made my own misjudgements about my decisions, which reminds me that one can feel embarrassed or inadequate without feeling guilty.)

This last line I find absolutely fascinating. It makes me reflect that I very rarely feel embarrassed without feeling guilty. (I more often feel inadequate without feeling guilty.) But embarrassment and guilt are closely linked for me. For example, last term I felt embarrassed by some of my clumsy white teacher moves that failed to help one student trying to discuss racial justice; I also felt (mildly) guilty for it--only mildly because I knew I was really doing my 100% best, but still, well, chagrined. I will have to think more about this link and what it means in my life.

I love my mom!

Happy Downfall of Sauron Day! In the LOTR-verse in my head, this is anniversary 44 if I do my math aright.

In universe I actually inhabit, I’m in the home stretch of completing my book on relationship cutoff, Being Cut. In honor of ramping up for publication, I’m going to use this DS Day post to address a question that comes up repeatedly in this book, the question of friendship. Warning for references to relationship cutoff. Also spoilers for LOTR.

We have a strong cultural belief that friend cutoff isn’t a big deal, because friendship isn’t a big deal. I can’t count the times I’ve heard variations of “What’s the big deal? Most friendships end,” “Friendship isn’t a commitment,” “Friendship isn’t a serious relationship,” “Friendship is just based on whether it’s working for each person.”

Some friendships are like that, yes. We often use the word to mean “person I share a hobby with” or “amicable coworker I don’t really talk to outside of work” or “kid I played with twenty years ago.” But my book focuses on serious relationships, and capital “F” Friendship is serious.

Whenever I hear friendship dismissed in this way, the first place my mind goes is The Lord of the Rings. That book understands Friendship. For example (note: I’m vacation without my LOTR so I’m going to para-quote from memory), as Merry remarks to Frodo, “You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin to the bitter end, but you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone and go off without a word. We’re your friends...” Two of them are his cousins, too, but they are with him because they’re his friends. When Frodo calls Sam, “friend of friends,” he’s talking about going off to die together.

Or consider when Frodo tells Faramir and crew that Boromir was his friend. Now, he’s with people who are not necessarily his allies and is having to be strategic in what he says, but there’s strategic and then there’s lying, and that is not a lie, even though his last experience of Boromir is being physically attacked by him. Our pop-psychology today would probably call that a toxic relationship and dismiss Boromir as a “garbage person” who deserves nothing but dismissal and avoidance. And Frodo is avoiding him, yes, but within a very particular context that Frodo, as Ringbearer, understands perfectly well. Boromir was still his friend, and had he lived, I do not doubt they would have fairly quickly mended their fences. That doesn’t mean that no scar would remain, but there’s a difference between a scarred relationship and a destroyed one. Their friendship was not and would not have been destroyed. That is what true friendship is.

I don’t say that no serious friendship should ever end, just as I’d never say that no couple should ever get divorced. I don’t mean cutoff is never the best answer. I do mean that real friendship matters, like marriage matters. It is committed and loyal and willing to endure some hard times. It is at least as selfless as it is selfish; it does not stop at a facile assessment of “what’s working,” and, as a concept, it deserves much better than our current society gives it.

Happy DS Day! May your friends stick to you through thick and thin.

Oh my goodness, one of my amazing students did a Gilgamesh-themed RPG MV for a class assignment ("Creative Project"), using her pets as the characters. She shared a video of it publicly to her YouTube channel, as well as sharing the class it was for, so I'm going to take the liberty of sharing it here.

I'll be teaching a workshop on fictional languages in worldbuilding for the Willamette Writers Hybrid Conference this August. Registration is now open and folks can learn more at Bit.ly/Wilwrite24. I've been there quite a few times now, as speaker and attendee, and it's good fun, good food, and lots of writing craft and publishing info.

Virtually all the commentary I see on this film says it’s amazing, and I agree it is in many ways, but I was frustrated by it more than I liked it. In the face of so many rave reviews, I want to talk about why. For context, I am a fan of the poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I’ve read it twice, I love it dearly, but I am by no means an expert on it, and I haven’t read it in quite a while. Nutshell: I think this movie used gorgeous aesthetics to tell a story far inferior (in all but one way) to the poem’s.

First some things this film executes perfectly: almost everything that has to do with the senses: the cinematography, the color scheme (which is almost a character itself), the music, the costumes. I did not love the CGI fox, but that’s probably just my anti-CGI bias. I am glad they went with practical effects for the Green Knight. Also points for capturing a real sense of late Roman Arthurian Britain: the bigness, the danger, the “wastelands,” the cold stone, the bad teeth, rapid aging (Arthur as Gawain’s uncle is probably only about forty, but he convincingly looks utterly exhausted and on the way out). I also think there’s a good balance of magic and gritty reality.

The acting and directing are universally excellent, and the dialogue is very well written on the level of diction: it does a nice job of sounding both archaic and casual-modern, giving a sense of culturally different people being their everyday selves—and I’m a tough critic in this area. The whole speech about “green” is wonderful. It also does good “representation...”

(spoilers for poem and movie below the cut)( Read more... )