#essays

[noodledesk]

i really liked this essay on why literary fiction is sounding so much Like That these days, especially work by asian american authors:

This entire process selects for homework-doers, personal entrepreneurs, and individualistic bureaucrats. It's why, like I said, the oracular outsiders, the Pauls of the world, who can't conform to society's expectations to check boxes and become legible to the powers that be, aren't in these programs and aren't getting the opportunities that are downstream of them. It's why you end up with tons of fiction about "my white boyfriend" and "everyone online is mad at me" or "anxious strivers in NYC" or "my annoying polycule." These are the obstacles this class encounters. You can't spend time, like Cormac McCarthy did, living in an unheated cabin in the Smokies, or embedding with the Mujahideen like William T. Vollman, or working as a psychotherapist like Olga Tokarczuk. You must move from strength to strength, always turning in your homework on time, and certainly never suffering a psychotic break.

-- Trip, Estragon News, The Oracular Outsiders and the Homework Doers

[typewriter-worries]

my favorite reads of 2025

The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

Extremely Online and Incredibly Tedious

Stop Calling My Daughter Pretty

Taylor Swift Is The 21st Century's Most Disorienting Pop Star

No Good Art Comes From Greed

AirPods Are a Tragedy

Only Fads: A Culture (and Economy) of Labubu

As a mother to teen daughters, I'm not that concerned about Sabrina Carpenter's influence (...but I am about Gracie Abrams)

Taylor Swift is not the English teacher she wants you to think she is

The Secret Society of Lightning Strike Survivors

Less TikTok, More Screaming

The era of QAnon capitalism

Puritanism took over online fandom — and then came for the rest of the internet

Scapegoating the Algorithm

You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism

How Wellness and Beauty Influencers Can Be Part of an Alt-Right Pipeline for Teen Girls

Ruins in Reverse

The “Disney adult” industrial complex

A lot of y'all aren't woke, just assholes

Comedy’s Safest Slur

ChatGPT Shaming Is Making Our Writing So Much Worse

AI Slop Recipes Are Taking Over the Internet — And Thanksgiving Dinner

Is The Love Song Dying?

Hot subpoena summer

The Old Guard That Never Was (And Why That’s a Good Thing)

[metamorphesque]

In Praise of Boredom, Joseph Brodsky

[luthienne]

Hanif Abdurraqib, In Defense of Despair

[semiplural]

Outside of situations where masking plurality is necessary (e.g. where someone may use known memory problems as an abuse tool), you probably need to mask yourselves less than you think.

Very, very few people will notice overt plurality without being directly told about it. The few that might notice tend to be plural themselves or have plural friends, and they tend to be safe to be spotted by anyway because they're familiar with plurality and how to handle it respectfully.

The average person doesn't have plurality on their radar in the first place. Heck, they barely know what DID is, assuming that they live somewhere it's a diagnosis option, and they've never heard of anything beyond that. Most people will see overt plurality and think "oh, they're moody, or genderfluid, or just use a lot of names, or do a lot of things, or..." if they notice anything different at all.

Seriously, people are oblivious. You can introduce yourself by three different names, have wildly different preferences and modes of expression, and even toss in an accent. The most you might get in response is "are you okay?" (to which the non-disclosure answer is something like "yeah, just feeling different today" or "yeah, I'm just like this sometimes, it's normal". They'll usually let it go if you don't make a fuss about it).

In any case, people are probably not looking for signs of plurality when talking to you- they're more focused on the conversation. The odds of them noticing something different in the first place and bringing it up are low. They have other things to talk about.

[mournfulroses]

Mary Oliver, from Long Life: Essays And Other Writings originally published in 2004

[shitpostingkats]

I absolutely adore the way MDZS treats and talks about the concept of revenge. It says "Yes, getting payback on the things that hurt you is actually a stellar concept. In a vacuum. However, there is no true and quantifiable way to actually equate one evil deed to another, making the entire quest for revenge pointless because you will have no way of knowing when justice was actually met." Xue Yang killed dozens and tormented Xiao Xingchen for years, all for the sake of a lost finger, and still ended up unsatisfied, and all our hero has to say is why didn't you just take his arm and call it a day. Jin Guangyao taking the very neat, methodical approach to eliminating everyone who ever wronged him but by the time he gets there he gets taken out by another revenge seeker before he can even bask in it. Jin Ling wanting so so bad to hate everyone involved in his parents deaths but finding himself utterly unable to because they're all just messed up people and now he has to live with the fact that he's an orphan and that's just that. Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian hiding their good deeds from each other because they know it will just complicate everything even more and further muddy who was the wronged party. That one cultivator who goes on a hate filled tirade talking about how he's going to avenge to death of his parents and Wei Wuxian just replying "My life already sucked so bad, what more do you want from me?"

You can never have revenge. The world is too big and messy and you'll never just get the pure, satisfying moment of feeling like all your problems are solved because you harmed someone else. Purely because by the time you get there some unseen factor will be added to the equation and it suddenly won't count.