[dykealloy]

what are the rules for breakfast today?

[dramatic-dolphin]

and if i said nolan's odyssey starring no greek actors and with no recognizable aspects of greek culture or involvement by greeks, is the direct legacy of white supremacist colonialism that treated ancient greece as not just the pinnacle of ancient culture, but of an artificially created "european" culture, which white western europeans and their settler descendants, as the new pinnacle of culture, were the sole spiritual inheritors of.

[mortalityplays]

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[barbiehelmet]

the zendaya thing isnt even a new phenomenon by any means!! the article mentions margot robbie wearing the taj mahal diamond as well, and in addition to that i also want to remind people that diljit dosanjh's request to wear the patiala necklace for the 2025 met gala was denied by cartier because they said it was in a museum and could not be loaned. however they had no issues at all loaning it to emma chamberlain, a white woman, for the 2022 met gala, while they turned down the request of a punjabi man who wanted it to honor his heritage.

this behavior is nothing new. the global south and everything in it - the people, the culture, our heritage - is seen as nothing more than a decoration or commodity to colonizers. i don't even need to bring up the koh i noor or the entire british museum; these examples are recent and egregious enough on their own.

of course this is not to imply that any of the people involved here - zendaya, margot robbie, or emma chamberlain - had any sort of malicious intentions. but the ignorance is just as bad in my opinion. the ignorance is just as harmful, if not more. because it means we are not even an afterthought. it means that the real people and histories and heritages of the global south do not even register when these people are putting together looks for their movie premiers and met gala appearances. everything is just reduced down to a shiny piece of jewelry whose history they need not bother with. it's just a continued reminder of the way colonization affects us all even long after independence, of how barely-healed wounds keep being reopened even decades later. even now, we are being denied connections to our histories and heritages while they are freely being given out to those that have nothing to do with it and don't care for it. and i'm sick of it.

[heyfruitcake]

Now that everyone is discussing Nolan's Odyssey movie, I feel like it's a good time to let non-Italians know that the production dumped plastic props into the Italian sea. Weirdly enough I could not find any article in English about it but it's a fucking problem nonetheless.

I might translate this article later today. This one was the most complete one, even in Italian news it's not talked about that much.

L'Odissea di Nolan tra "scheletri spazzatura" e relitti: Arpa al lavoro in Sicilia, che succede

Non è la prima volta che la produzione solleva un vespaio in Sicilia. A Lipari una squadra di sub sarebbe però già impegnata a bonificare i

[ignitelimelight]

They dumped plastic skeletons in environmentally protected areas, against the literal contracts they had to sign to get the permits to film in environmentally protected areas. Like they not only did a bad ecological thing that freaked out some divers, they literally broke environmental protection laws and their contract with the Italian government

[fuckyeahdavidandyonatan]

They also filmed in illegally occupied territories in western sahara

'Cultural parasites': Calls for boycott of The Odyssey over filming in occupied Western Sahara

Sahrawi filmmakers criticise Christopher Nolan for complicity in Moroccan exploitation of Sahrawi land

[ryebreadgf]

zendaya wearing real 3000-year old ancient iranian earrings with no known track of provenance to the odyssey premiere. nasty work. even worse than the kim kardashian marilyn dress to me. they could have promoted modern greek jewelry designers but chose to do this instead. very tacky at best. especially in this geopolitical climate

[dapurinthos]

encyclopaedia iranica entry on 'ziwiye', covering the alleged discovery of the site and the subsequent plunder of it.

[gayvampyr]

it really pisses me off when adults sit there and drill it into kids’ heads that their youth is fleeting and tell them things like “enjoy your childhood while it lasts because this is the best it’s gonna get”. why are you telling children that adulthood is the worse thing they can experience? seriously what the fuck is wrong with you, why are you trying to make them feel like growing up is a fate worse than death? trying to convince them their life is over before it even begins? i’m tired of that shit. because tell my why my 12 year old cousin told me when she turns 30 she’ll be so depressed she’s just gonna cry all the time. what the fuck. kids don’t need to hear that their already stressful and overwhelming lives are never going to get better, that the abuse and lack of autonomy they face is apparently the highlight of their lives. they need to hear about adults who are happy to be alive and happy to have made it to their age. they need to know that growing up rules, it’s a gift and life does not have to suck for them, that they have a future that’s worth sticking around for. this rhetoric is so damaging mentally and i’m about to start hitting the adults who parrot it. i’m sorry you hate your life but you don’t get to dump your issues on these kids. don’t piss me off and leave these babies alone!

[torstherapy]

[klapollo]

various tv, film, and theater producers for the last 50 years smacking themselves in the forehead like fuuuuck how can we make it easy to understand why carrie is alienated from her peers and callously bullied at school WITHOUT making her a hideous fatass like in the book

[strawberry-crocodile]

for real tho it feels exhausting that ive seen this whole "woman should be allowed to abstain from X beauty standard" -> "i perform X beauty standard, am i evil? do you think im evil? please forgive me i came up with a dozen excuses 🥺" since like 2015 (and i know its been going on longer than that) like girl thats not the poiiiiint

[strawberry-crocodile]

look me in the eyes. repeat after me. "i face societal pressure to perform this beauty standard. i should not face that pressure. i conform to this standard. i am rewarded for performing to this standard. i need to respect women who do not perform this standard. this is not about whether or not i am a sinner for wearing makeup."

[sparrowlark]

Tag yourself as this list of “bad art” features, according to a twitter fascist

[dragonheart2497]

“Never Forget” until the new target is those that they disagree with.

Edit: please watch this video essay by Jacob Geller. It speaks on really important points as to how “bad art” is a weapon of fascism and how it reflects the Degenerate Art Exhibition(s)

[shirleyjacksons]

sounds like ass 🩷 how much do you want to bet carrie won’t purposefully kill anyone in this version

[shirleyjacksons]

i hate this motherfucker so much oh my god. will this series finally be the wake up call for the horror community to stop sucking his dick

[miiilowo]

having feelings that contradict your morals is soooo fucking annnoooooyyyiiingggggg. can the emotions and logic department get on the same page im tired of having to like strangle myself into being a tolerable person

[trans4trains]

[ashlgcostumes]

I pull up my slide show. The first slide says “I do not want to financially support the Church of the Latter Day Saints in any way”. There are murmurs of agreement and approval from the room

Next slide. “Brandon Sanderson is a member of the LDS”. The muttering has changed tone

“It’s not a very big amount of money though.” Someone in the audience pipes up. “His cut is only a small fraction of the cost of the book, and then-“ my next slide shows an income breakdown, it is titled ‘a small fraction of $10,000,000 is still a big number’

I’m sweating. The following slides explain tithing rules. The vibe of the room has shifted. I start to doubt I’m getting out of here alive

[fuckblast]

[folkdances]

people on here make ocs and they're mostly men and they ship characters and they're always men and they have favourite characters and they're always men but sometimes they say the men are like women not trans ones though because that would be guh-ross and harsh the vibe of the #fandomspace and they write fanfiction about men and talk about how complicated and #deeplywritten their male favs are and they'll watch movies and tv shows with mostly male casts in every way that matters and not question it because well what do you want them to do about it and they don't even care that that's what they're doing to them it's pure coincidence they always like the male characters better it's pure chance that women are only interesting as yaoi cheerleaders and actually when they write female characters as yaoi cheerleaders they're doing them a favour because they were just so poorly written in the source material it's the charitable thing to do men men men men men men men and if you say anything about it well you're being a killjoy you're being no fun you're being homophobic you're being a misandrist god what is it about women right what is it about women always trying to ruin our fun? why do they care so much? they're just women. who wants to think about women at all.

[thathomestar]

yakuza 2 came out in 2008 in north america

[thathomestar]

reminder

[junglejim4322]

Unironically I think the early to mid 20s age group in America has unbelievably bad consent boundaries on all levels and so much language to defend it but this makes me sound like elon musk if I say it however the commonality of someone who will be like “I had 47 panic attacks and it’s your fault” if you tell them no is insane

[junglejim4322]

I rejected someone and got called “the scariest person I’ve ever met” with so much therapy speak interspersed like alright okay alright okay alright okay

[junglejim4322]

“You just say whatever you’re thinking and I don’t know how to handle it” was verbatim part of this conversation. Also everyone hates to see an autistic bitch

[transhumanisticpanspermia]

When I was in this age bracket, there was a huge emphasis on improving consent culture via graceful rejection, and it's gone by the wayside. Which sucks.

Twice in my youth (once in high school and once in college) I was in situations where I was asking someone out and I could tell they were calculating in their heads the risks of rejecting me, and both times I said, out loud, "you can say no, I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't prepared for either answer." And then they said no. This wasn't some spark of special wisdom I had - I knew to do it because feminist conversations among my age group brought it up regularly. This isn't happening nearly enough anymore.

More recently, I was really glad when we got to "rejection sensitive dysphoria" in my IOP program and it was one of those symptoms where the therapists really emphasized how it affects others. Because it does.

Being someone who cannot handle rejection makes you much more likely to violate boundaries, and yes, that includes sexual ones. Yes, you, reader who has never hurt a fly. If you don't want to stumble backwards into sexually assaulting someone, fix your RSD meltdowns. If you keep them up it's only a matter of time. Because if you're nice enough to interact with, but are known to have RSD meltdowns, guess what happens when your friends and acquaintances need to reject you?