#on lying

[feralprodigy]

If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.

John Steinbeck's East of Eden on lying

[theflowersinyoureyes]

I never used to be angry. Now I feel it all the time, red hot bile acid in the back of my throat when I smile with my teeth, closing my eyes so you can’t tell when I lie.

[notsatyr]

some recent writing that I still like

I sort of forgot that I wrote the poem this belongs to, even though I only wrote it last month. Sometimes short term memory works in your favour!

[colloquialcolors]

trifold: a collection of liars

ie me doing more character study.

i have a soft spot for characters who lie. but not- not in the generic sense.

trifold is an exploration of that; of different ways that people are strong and honest and inherently dishonest at the same time.

There are characters who lean into the worst of what people see, do so by playing up the “im untrustworthy ;)” *wink* when people get hurt. there are people who lie because they like watching the chaos ensue  and they like fluffing themselves up.

these characters, characters like loki, who relish the chaos and the confusion of their lies, aren’t the kinds of characters I like to explore. Maybe that’s the point of trifold then. there are plenty of liars in media, but the ones I love are specific.

Eris is the liar I am most well acquainted with. Eris lies, but she mostly bluffs, works to make people see what they think they see. But eris doesn’t want to be seen as a silver tongued mastermind, eris wants to be the dope, the clueless, the harmless, the crass. she wants to be unseen; not invisible, just harmless. eris lies because she wants plausible deniability. its about covering her ass, about tucking herself into covers that no one cares to pick apart. its not about self gain. its about self protection.

Ava is a liar that I would like to be. Clean, controlled, smooth. She aims for perfect and hits it more often than not, but... sometimes she misses. She doesn’t lie, not in the generic sense, that would be immoral. Oh, but she’s got a killer poker face, oh, she’s got a killer sense of composure, oh, she knows how to pull herself together.

Ava is not untouchable. But she’s very, very good at seeming like it. Its not lying, exactly, right? just a little bit of bluffing, just some good old, smoothing over.

Smooth as butter, that Ava.

Kirin is the kind of liar that people don’t expect. She is sweet, she loves people, she believes in the best of them, she is generally, a good person, and she also doesn’t really have qualms about lying because sometimes that’s what people need. 

Kirin is a sweetheart with a good read on people and a good understanding of what people want, and don’t want to hear. Her morals regarding lying to people is less predicated on “lying is bad” and more “will hearing the truth help this person or not”. Kirin is a good, good person. But she’s is not necessarily an honest one.

So, I suppose, going off of this- trifold is really just an extension of “three liars walk into a bar....”

and then what?

[frakin-fantastic]

When your parents get upset when you lie to them, just remember that they lied to you for years about Santa Clause

[gloreus]

me: *furiously shaking orange juice bottle*

grandma: what are you doing?

me: trying to mix the juice with the pulp underneath

grandma: *leaves*

me: *whispery voice* and also champagne inside to make mimosa

[smartallick]

On Lying

On Lying by Curt Cloninger

"Materials aren’t even 'lying,' because that would imply that somehow they were aware of the truth"...

Cloninger's article reminded me much of the philosophy of Nietzsche, in that there is no absolute truth. How can one intentionally lie? One simply can't because that would imply there is a truth. Every artist should lie because everything is a lie in one way or another so why not embrace it. I thought the best metaphor he used, in summation, was that mentally ill people are not crazy and do not lie, it is just that their truth is different from ours. What a thought that is! I appreciated Cloninger's bluntness and irony (providing a free illegal pdf of his book) and his recognition that creativity is bullshit. Everyone is creative. The word creativity is a lie and a label. I ask myself everyday if becoming an Art major is a cop out to "normal" school, but then I remember  that what I accomplish with my art can be seen as bullshit, in that who does it truly benefit except nerds and myself, but it can also be seen as a means of theory and understanding culture. I get it. I get what Cloninger means and is disputing. I don't feel like any person at this school could completely agree with Cloninger and then that's why I remember I am an Art major. Did that make sense? Probably not. Oh well, it's all a lie anyway.

p.s. I used HTML in this very blog post! wow oh wow