2020 Writing Log, Part Seven

- I wrote a rough draft of Chapter 29 of Malice, but it still needs work. This is a short chapter in which Zelda makes a stupid and shitty decision. This decision ultimately has no consequences, as it's so obviously stupid and shitty that no one takes it seriously. Ironically, Zelda is actually correct in her reasoning, and all of the plot problems would be solved immediately if everyone acted on the decision she makes, but the point of this chapter is to demonstrate that Zelda is very smart but also emotionally damaged and a bit cruel. Interiority isn't always easy to write, but I'm doing my best.

- I also wrote a rough draft of Chapter 30, which I have informally titled "In which Ganondorf becomes a Haruki Murakami protagonist who makes delicious food and is then manipulated by his love interest into an intense sexual encounter." You can almost hear the jazz in the background. This chapter, which I have even more informally titled "Bickering and Dick Sucking," also needs a lot of editing. We are writing Classy Literature™ here folks.

- I got in touch with a few artists about possibly creating illustrations for this story. I told myself that I'm done with commissions, but apparently I care a lot about my writing projects. How cringe.

- I also got in touch with a webcomic artist about working with me on a short comic script that I wrote last summer and have recently revised and polished. They accepted the project! This means a lot to me, and I'm very excited. The artist has a gorgeous and unique visual style, a consistent portfolio, and a reasonable rate per page. It's also easy to communicate with them. Who knows how anything will turn out in this world, but it would be cool if this project were to lead to a solid working relationship.

- I started the first round of edits on the stories in It Never Happened. This week I worked on the first seven. I ended up surprising myself when I realized that some of these stories might actually be sort of good.

- I got started on a review of Chris Kohler's book on Final Fantasy V. It's a short book, and it's going to be a short review, but I want to get at least two or three paragraphs out there about why Kohler's book is Very Fucking Good for reasons that have very little to do with Final Fantasy.

In conclusion: I did a lot of work but don't yet have anything tangible to show for it, and lord if that isn't a mood.

Mildly Cursed Content

How the Furby went from adorable pet to cursed object
https://aux.avclub.com/how-the-furby-went-from-adorable-pet-to-cursed-object-1841816828

Artificial intelligence had been a source of experimentation, speculation, and science fiction since the 1950s, but the Furby represented one of the first attempts at domestic AI mass production. With built-in sensors and infrared detectors, the Furby could learn from and adapt to its environment, which allowed it to respond to shifting conditions. Hold it upside-down, and it would tell you, “I’m scared.” Pet its back, and it would say, “Me love you.” The Furby was meant to be an endearing foothold uniting man and evolving machine, and in some circles, that earnest adoration for the toy still exists today—for example, in a few very wholesome communities on Tumblr—but outside of that niche, the Furby’s cuteness has increasingly become cursed by a culture of techno-paranoia.

Today, as AI and evolutionary algorithms continue to become integrated into our day-to-day, the Furby remains an avatar for our fears of a technological takeover. People have responded with cursed Furby content online, which either involves mutilating the toys or refashioning them into entirely new beasts.

This is probably true of every internet subculture to a certain extent, but it's my personal opinion that the "Furby torture" people really need to find a new hobby. It's not that I object to the creation of cursed objects; rather, I think these people are putting a lot of time and energy into something that isn't that interesting - or even that transgressive, relatively speaking.

I've seen things during casual searches on Etsy that have made my skin crawl, and these cursed Furbies have nothing on the "action figure mods" and "haunted dolls" that people routinely create with a (seemingly?) complete absence of irony. This in turn makes me wonder how common and widespread knowledge of these subcultures is. Screencaps of these sorts of things turn up all the time on Reddit, so they're a part of my daily visual landscape, but is there perhaps a meaningful generational divide between "people who see Furby microwave videos as the shallow end of a very deep pool" and "people who don't know what Reddit is"?

The Gendered Stigma of Setting Boundaries

My philosophy in life is to be kind and polite to someone until they prove beyond a shadow of doubt that they’re not worth my time, at which point I stop interacting with them.

This is not like flicking off a switch. Obviously I try to use both words and social cues to suggest to someone that I’m having trouble with their behavior. I understand that it’s difficult for some people to pick up on things like this, so I try to be as open and literal as possible. I’m also willing to let small things slide and give people as many chances as they need as long as they’re not hurting anyone.

Sometimes it is like flicking off a switch, though. For example, late in 2018 I got a series of anonymous messages on Tumblr telling me I should get a lobotomy. I blocked the IP address, and I was very surprised when the account associated with that IP address turned out to belong to someone I was friendly with in grad school. This wasn’t entirely out of character for them, so I quietly blocked them on other social media platforms as well. I didn’t say anything to anyone, and I feel like I don’t owe anyone an explanation for this decision, which is entirely reasonable: If someone sends you multiple death threats, you block them.

I was recently reading about trauma responses, and I was surprised to find that “borderline personality disorder” is considered to be a common effect of having experienced trauma, especially in the way that trauma victims may tend to flip between treating someone nicely and then refusing to speak with them at all.

( Read more... )

I understand that “flipping between absolute good and absolute evil” can in fact be something that a person does, especially teenagers and other young people, who tend to experience emotions more strongly and without a broader experiential frame of reference – and especially young women, who are more likely to have their testimonies ignored and to be denied healthy outlets for their frustration. Still, this “symptom” seems more of a reflection of the tendency of authority figures to try to find fault with the victim of trauma instead of the perpetrator, as the victim is clearly upset and suffering while the person who caused the trauma in the first place is usually in a position of relative power and more seemingly “normal.”

It therefore doesn’t surprise me in the least that people diagnosed with “borderline personality disorder” are overwhelmingly female.

If nothing else, in the case of setting boundaries, I think it’s probably fair to acknowledge that it’s an obvious case of double standards when a man who sets boundaries by refusing to associate with offensive and disgusting people is lauded as having “strength of character,” while a woman who sets boundaries is diagnosed with “a personality disorder.”