i finished dark money, finally. it is about the koch brothers, largely, and makes a pretty compelling case that the libertarian-ish deregulation that's become the standard republican platform is the result of concentrated agitation by a small group of very rich people, who are primarily motivated by a desire not to pay taxes.
the book also argues implicitly that the fights over health care or say, equal marriage (this book was published in 2016 and really concerns the fights of the obama era) are, at least for these conservative architects, sort of a smokescreen. they have the policies they want and they invented an ideology to suit them, then marketed that.
w/books like this you have to be wary of likeโฆ the monarchist popular history press, that romanticize the lives of kings and conservative institutions. it's a real problem when you try to read about say, the romanovs.
unrelated to reading but just in terms of content consumed i'm working my way through the yale religious studies lecturesโ i'm about halfway through the old testament course. it's very good.
which raises the question: like, how did people come to the conclusion that it was a secret nazi work? did they actually come to that conclusion, or were they threatened by something else about the story that made them look for ways to tear the author down?
i'm sure different people had different reasonsโ and like, if someone linked you a story with the disclaimer, "hey, might this be written by a neo-nazi trying to infiltrate sff circles?" you might not actually read the story except to uncover the nazi beneath.
but yeah, i also think, while there might be some writers definitely might feel professionally threatened by a new trans writer in their space, it's also the case that book twitter seems to thrive on the callout/dogpile cycle
I also plurked about this when I read the article, that a lot of the cis writers were just trying to amplify voices!!! without knowing what was going on
some of the big names who were involved and boosting the accusations had not read the story and should have shown better judgement before directing their followers to attack it
anyway i read this right after watching the latest homestuck drama video and it struck me that the whatpumpkin people were also operating under the framework of "my feelings were hurt so i don't have to explain my actions and it's oppressive of you to ask me to try"
i guess there's a corollary hereโ "my feelings were hurt AND i am oppressed" โ the prohibition against "punching down" has been so ingrained that i think people don't question what power dynamics are actually at play
i think the story was also sort of seen as dangerous because it explores gender identity in a way that doesn't mesh with the current representation paradigm, that is to say, it's clearly a trans narrative, but not necessarily an affirming one.
but maybe i'm judging book twitter too harshly based on that "huck finn is racist" blow-up. a lot of the people involved in this particular saga seem to be from the old lj crowd.
thinking about it more it could just be a consequence of the fandomification of all media consumption, where most textual analysis is trained on shipping, character arcs, weird bits of worldbuilding minutiae and minor continuity errors, and finally, uncovering whether something in the text is problematic
now people are very mad at neon yang for trying to explain, when contacted by vanderwerff, why people might have had a bad reaction to the story/it's title?? which is fine, it's your right to be very mad, but people are acting like they were part of the attack mob when they weren't (they said they enjoyed the story)
it reminds me a lot of the tumblr anti mindset, which has always struck me as incredibly similar to terfs in terms of unflinching reactionary takes and dogpiling. i would agree that the 'literary analysis = fandom analysis' conflation definitely weakens ppl's ability to decipher texts wrt what something is saying
i do think the paranoid reading vs reparative reading outlined in emily's piece is useful and constructive to think about. idk. i'm not an overly critical reader by natureโ i mean that in the sense of "evaluative" not in the sense of "negative". but i'm trying to be more deliberate & thoughtful. these plurks help, honestly.
I love close reading and ig 'watsonian' analysis for lack of a better word but idk the way fandom goes about finding what is problematique has always bothered me. it's not very useful to pick apart a single work for 'problems' without putting it in the context of larger media trends imo!!!!!
the ignorance of media trends i think comes from the same place as like... begging Big Corp for representation while being super harsh on indie / marginalized creators. it's a poison feedback loop
meanwhile a few days ago i was randomly wanting to reread the magic of recluce, so i did that. i'm not sure why. it's not like i enjoyed it enough to track down the rest of the series. (though i think mostly because it seemed like if you read one you've read them all.)
Haha, I DID and IT GOT NOMINATED FOR A HARVEY, which is the only reason I found out. but the circumstances are a little different because he didnโt write the comic I appeared in... it was a collaboration. Sometimes he writes his own stuff and sometimes not.
His friend wrote it, and it has an ex-girlfriend character, but she isnโt handled with any hostility, or sexualized, or anything else that would have bothered me. sheโs kind of just a person whoโs there. Itโs super weird though.
I will say that the fact that my mom is a difficult person sometimes impacted how I handled breaking up with him. I didnโt want him to make a comic about her. Or me, but thatโs different (and not the same as him using my appearance as โthe exโ in a comic) and possibly unavoidable.
full disclosure i had both a samantha american girl doll and a canopy bed with ruffles as a small child, but the Hill House nap dresses are too much for me.
I do long to wear gunne sax dresses but I would worry about inflicting psychological damage if I made my kid match with me. I would worry they would come to resent the dresses
I donโt like the Hill House Nap Dress, although they have a few others that amuse me (I just really hate the stupid shoulder ruffles on the pinafore nap dress)
It was by Nostalgia Apparel or a similar brand, so that kind of crinkle rayon print thing. Basically like this except scoopneck, no lace trim/insets, higher back, patchwork, red/black/cream prints.
i remember reading that and thinking it was a strange choice to make out cottagecore is some new gen z thing when it's definitely been huge on tumblr then on twitter for years and years
maybe not the typical millenial story but definitely something that happens. i was also gonna say, there were influencers who made farm/ranch/pioneer living look attractive before "cottagecore" became a term
people were calling it cottagecore as a joke in like 2018 and then all of a sudden it became a very serious Aspirational Trend people were writing articles about bc it got big on tiktok ig
I think there was another with a closer focus on Katie Searle because I remember the thing about her partner dying a while before these articles were written, and I think she maybe wrote a first-person essay about it somewhere.
pinaforenap dress)