.

As someone who's college age: yeah, there's a TON of people my age who don't know how things work and don't try to learn. Can't unzip a zip file, want to know where to download anime but haven't tried looking it up, ask things on subreddits a Google search or quick search on the wiki would answer, ask questions answered in FAQs or by professors or in the syllabus, say they can't download and install a new browser or app or program because they don't know how and they never think to look up how to do so, go months without logging into their student email because no one explained to them how to do so and they never thought to ask anyone how to do it, go months without washing their laundry because they don't know how and they also don't know how to look up instructions on how to do it, don't know how to cook and can't Google a recipe so they throw things in a pan and pray it works out, don't understand how to back up files, don't know how to attach a pdf to an email to send to a professor, cannot manage to put stuff on a USB drive + go to the library + print it off of the library computer, etc.

I spent most of freshman year teaching people things. The year after, my patience got more frayed and "Google it" started coming out of my mouth a lot more. This last year I gave up and now if people fuck themselves over, that's their decision. I'm not going to stand there begging people to do basic things they should already know how to do.

It was really funny when someone from Career Services came to talk to us about resumes and said we didn't need to put down 'can use Microsoft Excel' on there because everyone knew that and all but three people said actually no, they didn't. People who are 40+ really think we're all good at tech by default, like we fall out of the womb clutching a little phone already making spreadsheets in Excel or coding computers or whatever.

Meanwhile in reality you see a ton of people posting on tumblr going, "How do I post fic on tumblr?" whose blogs proudly state that they're under 18. The thought that you could just type into a Word doc and then copy and paste onto here never hits. And it's not going to.

I hate to break it to millennials and older people but yeah, actually, my generation does in fact have morons. We're not a moron-free demographic. I'm pretty sure moron-free demographics don't exist, tbh.

--

It infuriates me that my father (in his 80s) is always saying to me that he needs to find a 12-year-old to explain his tech to him. I (40s) keep telling him it's more like a bell curve or something. We had a blip of people being taught in school or having their asses kicked about technology. But then it went away again.

I think we made computers and then phones much more accessible, which is great, but we forgot we still need to teach people things. I know not everyone got explicit instruction in school even in my era, but it seems like the US, at least, phased some of that out as we started assuming The Youth automatically knew it all.

That said... in my day, college freshmen were also terrible about doing their laundry, so some things never change.

The Boy and the Heron thoughts. Mahito's backstory is putting a lot of effort into saving his mother, only for it not to matter. Our protagonist spends the rest of the movie both in the real and fantasy worlds not really making any meaningful actions. This makes the movie kind of not feel like a movie to me. I think the point is very few of your own choices make a difference on a scale as wide as this story is considering. The scale is maybe the most chaotic 80 years of Japan's history.

The asteroid is said to hit right after the start of the meiji restoration. As I understand it, the meiji era was a fast shifting, quickly modernizing period, but still very empire-building and emperor-ruled. The meiji powers branded the restoration as a bloodless revolution with some diplomacy of european countries, but the meiji rise was dependent on a lot of specific things including earlier battles with the tokugawa shogunate. This seems to map onto Great Uncle's rule of the bird world: he claims it's best that someone (male) of his lineage take power and sustain it, but the real world workers die making the tower, and his insistence on bloodlessness gets several warawara eaten and pelicans burned. There's not a lot of clear symbolism in the movie, but a ruler building an empire off of the stone of tombs stands out. And then--it just ends. A european parakeet gets angry and slices the world's foundations. Everything falls apart based on a lot of random factors. It's been hard for me to decide its moral.

But I think there is no moral. The same way there is no moral when any military loses a war, the same way a civilian mother dying in a fire bomb has no moral, and maybe the same way Mahito hitting his head on the rock has no moral. Morality can be constructed after, but I posit the point of the fantasy is enough space and time to reflect on losses and loves, big and small. To mourn his mother, to fight for Natsuko, to humanize Kiriko. When Mahito gets summoned to the adventure, he leaves "How Do You Live?" open on his desk. The journey is what he has instead of a written life lesson. Mahito isn't entirely passive, and two of his most important choices are emotional ones: He rejects the perfection of his Great Uncle's plan, ultimately letting it go, and he chooses to remember everything slightly longer. This movie could be seen as a reckoning with the past. Whatever meaning you ever can find, two pieces are always necessary in any full processing of the past: letting go and hanging on.

any new Star Wars essays in the making, or are you moving on?

I don't know, honestly.

Part of it is "life gets in the way," I'm working a lot and so whatever time I have left is spent just messing around or meeting with my loved ones.

I've got a bunch of stuff in my drafts. I don't mind sharing it here, most recent to oldest:

Sort of a joke post of me pointing out how stressful being George Lucas' producer must've been, like this guy really DIDN'T WANT to write his fucking scripts, did he? Poor Rick McCallum. Abandoned because who gives a crap.

'Ask' reply on how EU-fueled fandom perception of the Jedi was flipped by the prequels.

'Ask' reply about the themes in Ahsoka and why the show doesn't know what it's about. Problem is, I go about it starting from the basics, so nobody's gonna sit through reading a tematic breakdown of the first Pirates of the Carribean movie, The Batman and the original six Star Wars films before I even get to the show at hand.

"Part II" post about what Ahsoka, Rebels and TCW get right about lightsaber duels, which the Prequels never did.

Quote collection & analysis on just how complex the Prequels were meant to be (in the late 80s, Lucas intimated that the Sequels were the story that was supposed to have gray morality, not the Prequels)

Quote collection on how the themes and principles of Star Wars align with Lucas' own opinions and philosophies.

Quote collection on Lucas defining Anakin's flaws.

Quote collection on Lucas talking about the fact that we need to be more proactive, which aligns with what Lumi points out sometimes about the Jedi: they should've been more politically engaged because we all should be.

Why I approach Lucas as "word of god".

Personal life/joke-y post dating from the time of the WGA strike about how Jack Black's School of Rock lyrics "In his heart he knew, the artist must be true, but the legend of the rent was way past due!" applied to me. Abandoned because I didn't wanna bum everyone out.

Correcting the notion that Dark Times-era Jedi such as Kanan or Ezra or Ahsoka represent what Jedi were supposed to be.

A comprehensive end-all outlook on how Anakin's flaws all tie together. I've written this one twice and I don't know how to differentiate it from my other posts.

A secret "Part 3" to my TLJ Luke post, in which I point out that RJ's being too "indie", while being a strong point for a big chunk of the film, hampers the film's ability to make Luke feel as badass as he does on paper. I want to illustrate a storyboard for this one, but that takes time.

The evolution of Star Wars' approach to transmedia.

Debunking Star Wars myths: a (very) comprehensive outlook on children in the Jedi Order.

Problem is that only like 2/3rds of these are fully-written... and I still need to find the relevant clips, turn them into GIFs, etc etc.

There's many other interesting Asks in my inbox btw. But I'm already behind on all these, so I haven't begun to touch them.

Then there's the drawings.

I wanna draw a comic of the meeting between Yoda and Dooku in Dark Rendezvous. I wanna finish the comic fight between Maul and Ben. I wanna draw Mace, Shaak Ti, I've got a Luminara fan-art that was supposed to be ready for Jedi June 2022 and an Anakin drawing that looks weird. No time, nor am I skilled enough. (Like, I trace, that's what I do, it's not a secret I've said so before... but it takes me a long while to do so. I'm not fast at drawing, let alone coloring.) I could commission some of these, but there are obvious obstacles there.

There's fun tidbits I've discovered here and there but nobody will care about them and I usually try to not drown my blog with bs posts.

Then there's the bigger problem.

All the things I've listed above? I'm not 100% motivated to finish. But a lot of the new stuff I wanna write about is hella negative.

I had a lot of stuff I wanted to say about Ahsoka. But it wasn't all good. It was mostly me bitching, be it about the show or the fandom's reactions to it.

I've also got more stuff to say about Filoni's take on Star Wars, but I've talked about why it's inaccurate like 8 times already, and I don't actually dislike the guy, like there's plenty of things he knows and does that I think are awesome but also people won't stop putting him and his takes on a pedestal and--

oh shit, there's Acolyte too, I forgot about that, gray morality galore, here we come. But here too, like... I've talked a couple of times about why this entire gray morality thing is actually just the gen X-ers trying to make the prequels "cool" and "complex". but I've never explored properly, with quotes and research and shit. but i've talked about it so many times that at this point it'd end up like the Filoni rants, redundant. "we get it already." as if this show didn't have haters lined round the block for absolutely sexist reasons.

Don't get me started on the mountain of lies and/or idiocy that is the YouTuber Star Wars Theory.

And yet he said one thing a few months ago which struck a chord within me and it's the fact that Andor is awesome, excels on all levels because it's treated seriously, like a proper show, not a Disney Plus one... why wasn't Obi-Wan Kenobi? Why wasn't Book of Boba Fett? And I've already established multiple times that I enjoyed Kenobi (yes, including the Reva parts) and I've established that I know what they were going for in Fett and I've established that this is mainly a "Disney Plus didn't know how to structure a fucking show pre-WGA strike" issue more than anything else... but when I think about how these could've been treated instead? When I look at the characterizations and emotional stakes of like Fargo Season 5? It's infuriating. Because it's not bad (talking about Kenobi, BOBF is awful)... but it could've been EXCELLENT and instead it was just "okay" to "good".

I just miss live action lightsaber duels, man. Like, good ones.

and i dunno. maybe I should just let it rip on all this. "go off, king!"

but I think there's so much negativity re: Star Wars that adding my thoughts on these subjects, no matter how structured and reason, will just blend into a wave of needless, un-constructive hate.

maybe I should finish the writings in the drafts and just post them with no gifs, maybe just still images?

but doing any of that feels like a step back.

So that's where I'm at right now.

richard's relationship with money is so interesting to me despite/because of how vague and nonspecific it is in canon. which only makes sense because the show isn't interested in richard's backstory at ALL and, it being an audio medium, it can't exactly give many context clues like wardrobe/style or what his apartment/house looks like. but it's like......... he doesn't have interests, he dabbles in money-making activities. i am practically forced to assume that his mention of being good at pool also = a side hustle. his estranged dad up and left him a house and a paid ride to college. at this point he's way better off than he's ever been -- after 18 years of living with two separate conmen and a mother who doesn't care about him in mediocre apartments, he's suddenly on his own with his future out in front of him, and....... he STILL takes very risky grade-changing jobs for money? like he bypasses getting a regular college job and goes straight to petty crime? and apparently "far worse" crimes??? it's such an interesting balance between craving the security of Having Money and being pathologically unable to get it in a "normal" "safe" way. he doesn't even do anything with it in canon, he just GETS it. he isn't even buying lucy's drinks himself!!!! obviously even richard has bills to pay (which is. very funny to me. sorry that i think 19-year-old college era richard is the funniest person to ever exist, gremlin who's only ever lived in an apartment with his mother, sister, and mother's rotating cast of boyfriends, suddenly has a whole ass house dumped in his lap on his 18th birthday in exchange for his whole ass father's wholesale abandonment of him, has to figure out how to pay utility bills on his own, maybe thinks about getting a barista job or whatever kids did in the 80s, record shop clerk job?? and then nopes past it and picks "exploiting a child genius" as a career path instead. what a fucking legend. i also think he murdered people for money a couple times but that's just me) sorry i've lost the plot of this post thinking about campbell county community college computers richard. imagine being the people at the 5 Cs in charge of hiring STUDENT COUNSELORS and seeing richard maxwell strut into his interview and thinking "yes this 18-year-old suspiciously home-owning kid who talks like a john hughes movie antagonist and is currently his kid sister's very much illegal guardian is the perfect fit for our emotionally and socially fragile 11-year-old resident genius. what could go wrong" and then they have to pay for nicholas adamsworth's therapy sessions for the next 5 years because richard maxwell was what could go wrong. fuck. "waylaid in the windy city" maybe be my personal favorite richard but pre- and mid-"eugene's dilemma" richard is definitely the weirdest and funniest

Things to keep in mind when writing works set in other decades PART 2!

Part 1—I touched on Tech

Part 2—Culture/Pop Culture

Culture

This part is a potential minefield, but it does bear commenting, so here goes.

Culture has shifted a lot between different decades. Especially the last fifty years.

A lot has happened in the past ten/fifteen years that would be unthinkable in the early 2000's, let alone the 70's, 80's, or 90's.

So, just keep in mind that we—as a society—are different now than we were then.

So, onto a less fraught topic: Pop Culture!

Make sure certain Pop culture things actually existed in whatever time your work is set.

E.G. social media (I consider this more pop culture than tech).

Prior to the late 00's, the only major "social media" was MySpace. Facebook wasn't a big thing until just before the 2010's, YouTube was brand new in 2004, our beloathed blue hellsite(affectionate) didn't exist until 2009, and Twitter(I will never call it anything else) 2013, and TikTok didn't spawn out of hell until 2016. Ergo, any works set before certain years should not have different combinations of these.

One should also check to see if certain books/movies/games/songs/tv shows were out too.

We fans can often know a lot about a LOT of things, and nothing is more jarring than seeing someone in a work set in the 2000's talk about watching a movie from years later.

Slang is something else to consider.

Unless it's part of a catchphrase or particular speech pattern, it can also be a bit jarring. That's why I often avoid using slang, when possible, because it is the quickest way to date a work.

This happened to the 2007 film Juno.

BONUS ROUND—Fashion!

Fashion is also part of pop culture and I gotta say, you really need to double check this too because it has fluctuated the most!

For example, with all the 80's nostalgia, I have to rain on parades because I've seen pictures of 80's fashion from family albums of the era, and the neon stuff they like to push as "totally 80's" was toward the END of the decade and overspilled onto the early 90's.

Again, Tl:Dr—Do the research if your work is set in our world, but not the current day, because it can really show in a bad way.

☕️ + the Scooby Doo fandom in general

Hmm okay so this is a very broad question to me and that really means it's going to recieve a broad answer, especially to me as "Scooby fandom" really has differing levels in my heart etc.

For example with my friends and the smallish community of fellow Scooby fans I've found here on tumblr (the Scooby Dootuals!!!) I really love and like! Everybody is so nice and it's cool that people have various levels of knowledge about different series and iterations. Like I really enjoy that on here Scooby fans (as in, like my friends and people who regularly post scooby) have such differing levels of experience with this huge huge franchise as it makes it so much more interesting. Like we have people out there who have seen almost every episode (or feels like it) and can seemingly remember the smallest of things from them, and then we have people who weren't into Scooby as a child but are exploring it now, and then we've got people (like me) who did like it as a child and kind of know a bit of everything, with huge areas of weakness in Scooby they haven't seen, (for me APNSD, anything more than the premise of 13 Ghosts, the 80s trio minus Boo Brothers, anything past s1 of bcsd, much of the 70s era movies, SD & SD, Guess Who, SDMI details, like the list goes on, people!!! I've only seen a Scooby series in order in its entirety one time in my life and that was SDMI age like 12) while also having a few areas with greater knowledge or familiarity and a few spots where they just know a ton/are constantly rewatching. (Me with Goes Hollywood for sure) anyways I don't really remember where I was going with this but uhhh I like that my buddies and whatnot all know different amounts with many being chill or knowing a little bit of everything so we can still like each others posts and talk about Scooby with there still always being so much more to discover <3. So like basically thoughts on the besties are that besties are cool

However I know anon that by sending this you likely mean "Scooby fandom" as in people outside of this insular little bubble so let's talk about that. I think I'm reluctant to really label this group "Scooby fandom" as for ME PERSONALLY fandom really means a kind of engagement with the work beyond what most general Scooby fans do. Like what I'm trying to say is that this group of "wider Scooby fandom" liked Scooby and watched it as a child and consider themselves a fan of Scooby but they aren't rotating Scooby characters like blorbos in their mind too much. Or if they are, it's generally in the creation of like dark!Scooby aus or the live action Scooby show pitches that blow up on here every time Scooby is a topic of general coversation. I guess for me personally the line between this "Scooby fandom" and my own little bubble of people I'm chill with gets drawn based on what fans want out of Scooby. Like do they love Scooby as it is, or do they want to change the audience to create a new Scooby for themselves. Hm, I'm not really phrasing this right. What I mean is like we're all Scooby fans. If you've ever liked Scooby, at any age, however long ago, you're a Scooby fan, I'm not trying to like, gatekeep Scooby fandom or whatever. I just think that differing groups of fans have different pictures in their head of both what Scooby Doo IS and what they want from it based on their familiarity with it and how long it's been since said fan has watched Scooby.

And that's kind of wherein my frustration with "wider scooby fandom" lies. It's really in the fact that there's thousands upon thousands of these "sleeper fans" (which in my mind is really a better term for it) who awake when I or the popular culture mention Scooby, to share their opinions. And these opinions just frankly drive me up the wall. This is because when confronted with a real life Scooby fan (me) there's generally 3 things they want to talk about: 1) SDMI and how it's the greatest thing since sliced bread 2) Doesn't HBO Velma suck 3) (once they learn I like Scrappy) Scrappy hatred and copious references to his portrayal in the Gunn Movies. Plus MAYBE a bonus 4 of other miscellaneous takes that get on my nerves (stuff like Shaggy always smoking weed, Fred and Daphne splitting up together to have sex, just all sorts of things I do not for the life of me want to talk about).

So I guess my take on the wider scooby fandom is as follows: there are positives like some genuinely funny SD posts once a blue moon, or people to share things like concept art and leaks to much of the content canceled by HBO Max, but the vast vast majority of the time it kind of gets on my nerves because people always want to talk about the same few things (which I feel have been talked to death already or I highly disagree with OR BOTH) and it's just really tiring to deal with. Idk I don't think I'm going to go into it to much more here because this post isn't too coherent to begin with (I'm blaming it on like 70% of this being written before work this morning) but there's so many people out there who think so similarly about Scooby (and SO differently from how I think about it) that it feels like I'm getting talked over constantly whenever I have a discussion about Scooby with someone from this group. And that's just like not fun for me? It's just like for me, Scooby Doo is my number one thing. Like I'll be in different fandoms concurrently or whatever and I don't really read fic for scooby but I will for other stuff etc. But like scooby is always there for me like MY MAIN turned into a scooby doo blog like honestly while that's just not the case for some other people. It's very much a difference in the value and time put into the franchise, (which like you can just like things casually that's not a bad thing) it's just that it's frustrating for me talking to sleeper fans about Scooby because I get trapped (literally, like irl) in the exact same conversation that I don't even want to be having(!!!!!) pretty much all the time.

Old Song I Know

I consider the music playing in my car to be a critical part of the experience for my passengers when I’m driving for Uber/Lyft.

I’ve had thousands of people in my back seat, and trying to ensure that whatever song is playing when they get in my car appeals to them is no easy feat. Whether they are with me for 3 minutes or 2 and a half hours, I want that time to be as enjoyable as possible. Often a passenger is heading somewhere undesirable, like work, and other times they may just be having a bad day. If possible, I want to help them escape for a few moments.

The first couple of weeks I did Uber/Lyft, I didn’t have anything playing in my car. I was still navigating the whole process and I wasn’t sure what was normal or comfortable. In hindsight, the silence was probably pretty awkward for those early passengers. At some point, I began putting on a local radio station that played the most current and popular music. That was okay, but then I found that after a couple of years I was still listening to the same songs 9 or 10 times in a single day. More often than not, songs I hated. I decided there had to be a compromise to where I wasn’t spending my entire workday trapped in a car listening to what I considered to be insufferable music. I made a playlist of just the popular songs I didn’t hate and began using that. It worked for a while, but then I grew tired of it as well. Eventually, knowing that on some level 80’s music appeals to most people, I threw together a playlist of instantly recognizable and upbeat songs like “Take On Me” and “Beat It.” It proved to be a pretty successful move, and passengers would regularly hum or sing along to artists like Prince or Don Henley, while in-between rides I would serenade the empty space with The Outfield or Depeche Mode.

About a year ago, I started producing a 90’s themed podcast and YouTube channel. (the90sweekbyweek.com, thanks for asking!) While deep diving into the music of that era, which is far more representative of my formative years than the 80’s, I decided to switch to a 90’s Uber/Lyft playlist. As I watch people my age reminisce over a song or a moment they associate it with, I’m offered a sense of shared nostalgia. For instance, I had a passenger the other day talk about a tour they recently attended that included the band New Edition. While New Edition itself is more closely associated with the 80’s, they spawned several acts that are considered quintessential 90’s. In this case, the song “Poison” by Bel Biv Devoe had come on while they were in my car. “Poison,” by far, elicits some of the most positive reactions from my passengers. Rightfully so. I’ve heard it a thousand times in the past year and still haven’t gotten tired of it.

Selecting songs from the 90’s to put into a playlist for an extremely diverse group of random people is a lot harder than it may seem. Especially when you’re trying to find music that you yourself don’t hate or will get burned out on quickly. Obviously, if you’re trying to bring someone’s mood up or give them a positive experience, you can’t just go with what were considered the most popular songs of the 90’s. Many of them have inappropriate lyrics or intense musical arrangements, and others tend to be too mellow or melancholy. In addition, what I consider to be the best songs of the 90’s may not be the best choices for an Uber/Lyft ride. I long considered Pearl Jam’s song “Black” to be my favorite of any era. After years of playing it over and over, I’m not as high on it as I once was, but still consider it a vital part of any 90’s playlist I’m making for myself. Honestly, every song off the “Ten” album could go on a 90’s playlist and I’d consider it acceptable. Not a single song on that album, however, has made it on my Uber/Lyft 90’s playlist. I just don’t see them helping anyone’s mood for the amount of time I’m taking them wherever they are going. On the other hand, “Jump” by Kriss Kross or “Fantasy” by Mariah Carey have a pretty high success rate.

Sometimes, after I’ve listened to a song for the hundredth time, I start to question my decision to include it in the first place. And I’m not going to lie, “Ice Ice Baby” is still in rotation, but every time it comes on, I get a little embarrassed. God forbid that anyone who doesn’t know that I compiled a list of popular 90’s songs think that I just chose to listen to Vanilla Ice on my own accord. I’m not judging anyone that chooses to express their inner Rob Van Winkle on a regular basis, he’s just not real indicative of anything I choose to associate with. Another example of a song on my current 90’s Uber/Lyft playlist that I second guess is “So What’Cha Want” by the Beastie Boys. It’s one of my favorites on there, but with such a heavy beat and staticky vocals, I wonder if the appeal is broad enough for the myriad of people entering my car. Conversely, while it’s also currently in rotation, I fear that “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots has a tempo that is too slow to bring or keep people’s spirits up.

It's difficult to separate your affinity for certain songs and the memories you attach to them from the unknown experiences of others. Especially complete strangers. I’m constantly questioning and refining my 90’s playlist. Imagine you are getting in an Uber or Lyft, and the driver is playing 90’s music. If you are looking to be in a festive or positive mood, what songs would you want to hear? What songs would it be hard not to smile at or begin humming along to? Feel free to leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments and thanks in advance!

And now…a haiku:

though the songs differ

everyone has a soundtrack

if you will listen

“Where words fail, music speaks.” ~ Hans Christian Andersen

I spaced on sending this when you initially made the post, but if you were ever so inclined to make that full list of recommendations on metafiction/the liminal space of tangential genres, I would be very interested to see it! (the original list was 100% some of my favorite books/media)

Oh man I've been uh. bad at reading as regularly/much as I'd like for the past few years, something I'm attempting to remedy, and I've never been the biggest of film buffs, and as such that covers a lot of the high points.

(obligatory reminiscing): Truly the the most "not actually a real problem" tragedies of my life is that I was a teenager before the Goodreads era and so I was shaped, indelibly, by whatever Collected Science Fiction Anthologies of the Latter 20th Century my local library had circa 2004. As a result there's like a thousand 70s and 80s sci fi stories the titles of which I cannot remember but which are etched deep within the recesses of my brain. Occasionally I have enough details to go to some thread on the internet and say "pretty please can you find it," but often I don't. There's definitely one I'm thinking of in which a group of scientists keep doing an experiment to change the time line and they keep believing that it fails, but as a reader you clearly see the list of names and various details is changing. This is not super helpful to anyone other than to say "go read short speculative fiction." ANYWAY here's a few more.

On the topic of short fiction, Sword Stone Table is a collection of short stories inspired by Arthurian legend which I read last year, and not all of them worked but there were enough to make it worth it (and it's a quick read). Hilariously, the coffee shop AU was one of the more metafictional examples.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I don't remember this well but I own a copy and might re-read it; I distinctly recall purchasing it because she made a chapter in the form of a PowerPoint presentation and got interviewed by NPR about it since she could see how many people quit reading at that chapter thanks to eReader data, and I was like "sounds cool". I love when authors are hostile to their audience in a way that's good for them, and I remember enjoying that chapter very much.

I mean your bio quotes Calvino so I'm assuming you're good there but like...I have not read all their work, but I trust Calvino, Borges, Le Guin, and Susanna Clarke to always deliver.

Jules Feiffer's A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears; Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock (among other Diana Wynne Jones books); The Phantom Tollbooth; and the various works of Ellen Raskin (best known for The Westing Game but I read so many of her books) are middle-grade or YA but they are in fact a big reason why I eventually became a college student who would read House of Leaves and Calvino for fun and why I became an adult who devoured Piranesi in one sitting.

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

It's also been a hot minute since I read Possession by A. S. Byatt but I do remember loving it at the time.

For...the best I can put it is "popcorn reads?" low postmodernism? mass-market metafiction? Fun shit? Jasper Fforde is your guy.

Technically The Princess Bride is metafiction. Fun fact: a good friend of mine in college did not realize it was not legit a translation when he read the book. His undergrad thesis was in part about translation. We made fun of him for this.

David Mitchell's literary universe, notably Cloud Atlas. David Mitchell is a very good writer who does tend to have a pretty dark interpretation of our world's future and so I sort of fell off following his works because they were particularly depressing but like, that's a me problem because he's immensely talented. (note: did not see the film adaptation, cannot speak to that.)

I am also going to plug the Teixcalaan books (two so far, starting with A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine which is a bit of a stretch but I'm doing it anyway because I think it’s underappreciated (it occupies the same space in my mind tbh as Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota and to an extent Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire, both of which I’ve mentioned before, of an incredibly intelligent SF story with queer characters and relationships that was well received but just doesn't have the buzz of some other modern sf series). It’s not metafictional per se, but it does have an incredibly strong theme running through it of engaging with narrative and controlling it (honestly? Similar to Black Sails in that regard.) The Teixcalaan Empire is hyper-aware of language and legend, naming patterns are a number and a word, and the cool thing to do is write complex forms of poetry. The second book also has a character purchasing an indie comic and drawing all sorts of interesting comparisons to her ongoing situation... a little bit like Tales of the Black Freighter within Watchmen.

Run Lola Run/Lola Rennt (I watched it as a non-German speaker with subtitles and enjoyed it)

What do you think Terry's idea of "rock bottom" is? Like we know Dynatox was doing some shady deals, and Terry was paying people off to cover his tracks all willy nilly. But do we think he actually lost all of his money? Or was his version of rock bottom moving out of the Ennis house to a more "humble" appearing mansion?

---

I think his definition of rock bottom is the World changing.

The dissonance of values.

The depression that came with.

Now, stay with me on this one. Could be fakedeep, but I truly believe this:

No, I don't think Terry Silver was ever here struggling to pay bills, buy groceries on a discount and make rent like an average Joe Schmoe; that's not the type of struggle he meant, I feel. Don't figure this is something that ever happened to him. It's just not that realistic. 🤷‍♀️

Terry Silver's 'rock bottom' is more of the deeply existential sort.

A sort of dread you can't shake off or control. The same way many people miss the 2010's. Or the 90's. Or the 70's. Or whatever period in their life was meaningful, important or deeply impactful. This sense that time is ever changing and it cannot be stopped or contained; that maybe the best days of your life are already behind you and they're never coming back. The melancholy and fear that comes with it; this is, actually, a re-occurring theme for several characters in the show (Johnny Lawrence, anyone?) And we all know that if Terry loathes one thing it is not having control over things. Passage of time being chief among them. In his own words vaguely paraphrased; you can buy back everything but your youth...or something like that, don't quote me.

That's what Terry was plagued with when he told John he 'hit rock bottom'.

Sure, he lost an unimaginable sum of money due to various fiscal crashes and had, effectively, for a while, less zeroes attached to his already immense networth which he for sure could've considered a state of decline compared to what he used to have, living quite literally overlooking all of Los Angeles like a sort of self-proclaimed Emperor, but the fact that the morals and the ethics of 1970-80's America which birthed The Terry We Know became so very different at the turn of the millennia that he might've felt that the economic boom and the very values that underlined a prime in his life were now over and that he, along with them, would either change, shed skins, or be over as well was what led Terry to sense that he had to begin again, from rock bottom, reinventing himself.

It was an end of an era.

First thing he had to do, is change mansions.

He couldn't just live in an unsustainable concrete brutalist castle anymore without people rightfully considering him bad for it...or telling him he should house some homeless people in there since he clearly has ample space. He needed to make a shift to something acceptable. Something digestible. He needed to box himself in.

No, he couldn't just slam coke, be driven around in a Rolls Royce, drop around racial slurs, make a living off of literally polluting places, lounging naked in front of his elderly secretary in a hot tub without facing some serious allegations later and coming dangerously close to what would be considered grooming today either. Those days were over. The days in which Cobra Kai as an upper crust extracurricular boy's club was considered aspirational and cool leading to a post-millennial pipeline where most people would consider it a militant cult was the new norm. The days in which you could send your friend to an all-expense paid trip to Tahiti to be entertained by two masseuses without both you and your friend being promptly branded sex tourists were gone too.

Martial arts were at their height in the 60's-80's, but by the time we're reintroduced to Terry at his garden party, it's a relic of the past people laugh and cringe at at best and bring up as a quirky joke. Hey, even his ponytail would just promptly be laughed at because men's fashion changed too; what was badass then ain't so badass now.

Everything changed.

It's like everything that made Terry Terry was just...finished. Passe.

In a sense, Daniel Larusso's lines proved to be prophetic:

Terry Silver wasn't even a memory anymore.

Yuppie culture was dead and Terry Silver was so intrinsically tied to this culture that I do believe he suffered what we would consider a mental breakdown due to it, the same way I believe he was facing so many lawsuits, indictments, scandals and legal issues thanks to his accumulated less-than-stellar behaviors and dealings in the past few decades that he would either 'clean up' his act or suffer the consequences. Become one of those creepy Billionaires shunned from society entirely. It would be social suicide. And I do believe Terry Silver had many, many, many skeletons in his closet. So many in fact, that him going to therapy, letting go of narcotics, quitting smoking, presenting himself as mellow, not really talking about his time in Vietnam (whereas, in the 80's, he's out there, openly saluting John at an airport) and ultimately surrounding himself by a veneer of Liberal upper class 'acceptable rich diverse people' was legitimately needed to hide himself. Even the way he dressed was different; he appeared less like a Bond villain and more like an elegant, approachable old man on a sea-side porch, hair in his loose curls.

Presentation; it matters.

The man who knew how to dress up as 'poor' and even instructed his stylists to deliberately ruffle the collars of his 'working class attire' when tricking Daniel would understand this like an intricate science. Really, just think of celebrities in real life who were awful in the past and who tried to polish up their image with the advent of social media and the internet. Yeah. Just like that. That's exactly what happened to Terry Silver.

He was bad and he loved it, but he couldn't be bad anymore.

Everything that brought him joy was gone, a cancellable offense (for good reason too) something that would ruin his life and have him viewed in an unfavorable light and everything that was considered positive nowadays were things that didn't make him happy in the least bit. Not at all. He wasn't happy eating vegan screws in a vegetative, fake existence. He wasn't happy pretending therapy worked. He wasn't happy letting go of all the markers of insurmountable wealth to seem relatable; he earned that shit. He deserved to flaunt it! He wasn't happy discarding his vices. He wasn't happy dressing like a retired grandpa wearing khakis sadly counting lettuce leaves in his plate and in equal measure counting the days until he died as the last vestige of the 80's. He wasn't happy not mentioning Vietnam. Martial Arts. Cobra Kai. Not when that's his life. It is who he was. For better, or for worse. His rock bottom, was such, feeling he had to become a blank slate and start over in a great many ways; returning to everything he was was him recapturing the old glory days and having one last go at everything that ever sparked him joy. Better to burn out than fade away and all that jazz.

Heathers (1889)

my heathers obsession i think was what first got me into horror which quickly transformed into my gothic horror obsession so im honestly shocked i haven't made this earlier in the past 3 years.

Despite it being set in the 1980s, heathers literally has all of the gothic tropes and themes etc its so insane

Like!! The way the underlining theme is how young people's agency is repressed and how they aren't taken seriously and instead expected to obey their elders is literally the basis of Queen Victoria's beliefs. She and Reagan had SO MUCH IN COMMON. those facists are probaly fucking raw in the bottom layer of hell somewhere

ANYWAY the whole of the show/film really hits different if you think about it in the victorian era

I forgot to say: This version is absolutely set in England. Western society in America back then was more about themes of progress and such- although white people back their were just maintaining the same genocidal colonialist principals as the british (cuz they were), they thought they were being soooo cool and progressive which is thematically irrelevant to heathers

BACK TO THE TOPIC: in the musical most of the teen's emphasis in wanting to grow up. ie have autonomy vs Martha being accociated with childlike imagery- really emphasises the division between 'adults' and 'children' Victoria was so fond of

I don't actually know what age ppl were considered adults but i think Martha would wear more childish clothes like this- exept she would absolutely wear white representing her innocence

In contrast, the other girls would wear women's clothes

Jason Dean's black trenchcoat translates really well to Victorian era fashion

Veronica's heatherified outfit would have a prominant bustle- a newer style

In contrast Heather Chandler would wear a more traditional longer gown- like how she represents the older more bougeoise regime of Queen Victoria according to JD which needs to be destroyed

Speaking of which there are SO MANY parallels to heathers and picnic at hanging rock- (which is set 11 years later but whatever) JD is the rock

I do think Chandler's general vibe of the 'blonde popular girl who's doomed by the narrative' whose idolised after her death is 100% from Miranda btw

but also her position in the narritive reminds me of Mrs Appleyard

I think to make Heathers more gothic there has to be more of a clock motif than there already is

Also i can't belive i forgot to say this but the ideas of Madness and depression and shit. i can't spend all day writing these but they're There.

The one problem i have here is that schools in Victorian england were ABSOLUTELY not as diverse as schools in 80s america ie. ppl of different genders/class would never go to the same place

Thoughts at 4pm...

I'm not going to point fingers at anyone, because their experience is super valid and understandable, but what they said brought up a lot of thoughts in my head that I just need to vent.

They mentioned the nostalgia of the 90s and that things were so much better then....

And I can't help but feel taken aback by that sentiment.

Let's just start with this:

This is a big part of how I remember the 90s. The violent crime and gangs were out of control on a level that makes me laugh at today's hysteria over crime rates.

Let's also talk about how this was when the likes of Rush Limbaugh and those types really got a foothold in society and started the tea party and militia movements because of stupid conspiracy shit about a new world order, clintons, and the UN.

There's a reason why grunge music took everyone by storm... people were really unhappy and this music spoke to them in a way that pop music and heavy/glam metal didn't. It wasn't focused on girls, parties, or happy.

On the foreign side, the fall of the berlin wall and the fall of the soviet union wasn't idyllic and peaceful. I remember spending a lot of time in Liberia, Haiti, and the former Yugoslavian countries like Kosovo.

This is really when the $'s in your pocket started to be worth less and less. Tuition started skyrocketing in the 80s and by the 90s you really started to feel it and it affected so many.

You had the early 90s recession too that affected so many, and the global destabilization of the asian markets. You had japan buying up a ton of US properties, so many jobs going overseas... it was a mess. For me the 90s are Rodney King riots, Columbine, the first WTC bombinb, Oklahoma City bombing, Waco, Ruby Ridge, and so much more. It was the birth of grunge, birth of the internet, the economic boom that only helped the top but hurt so many others, NAFTA, and more.

I don't look back on the 90s fondly.. it seemed like such a red flag of polarization, of animosity, of change towards hating. Violence towards each other seemed to know no bounds, and those who could control the narratives, pressed their thumbs on the scales toward whatever would earn them the most money and rile up the most hate.

I tend not to look at the past with happy nostalgia... be it the eras I lived (80s, 90s, 00's), or those I didn't (40's, 50's, 60's). You have to wear really strong blinders toward racism, hatred, poverty, and violence ... toward people who struggled and died... and I just can't.

like we seriously need to start talking about how much nostalgia is used as a tool for right-wing and reactionary politics. im not smart or well-read enough to make that point well myself. but are we not all seeing it? i definitely dont want to fall into the inverse fallacy of "everything is always getting more progressive and better with time" - but blanket generalizations of past eras as having better, more interesting people, "real" art, "important" politics and movements etc are always being professed by people espousing reactionary and regressive ideas, and because nostalgia is emotionally appealing (again - because reactionary politics function on emotions; on taking ones first, kneejerk, emotional reaction to something and immediately applying it as ones political and social beliefs without care for the facts or in direct opposition to them), it keeps working on people who sincerely believe theyre being enlightened leftists. but its especially pathetic, i think, when the people who keep talking about how it used to be sooo much better literally were not fucking there or at best were little children in the time theyre talking about. positing that actually all the good lgbt artists and activists were back in the 70s or 80s or 90s or whatever and now theres just boring gays who dont do anything of value is just "i was born in the wrong generation" but for lgbt politics, and it comes with all the problems that kind of thought entails. except its kinda worse when youre talking about lgbt rights instead of pop music, isnt it.

What kind of music do you typically listen to? Are there any musicians that have inspired or influenced your work in any way?

I pretty much answered this one here back at the end of 2023. For an update and more specific answer to your question about inspiration: lately, I've been trying to listen to at least period-specific music as I work on the Invisible College research and preparation, like Beethoven and Chopin paired with the Romantics, some Wagner with Shaw, Rachmaninov with Conrad, etc. I'll make an attempt at Schoenberg when I get to Beckett for the full Adorno trip. The algorithm has really been insisting on Sibelius lately, however, which I'm guessing Adorno would call fascist. (I never read Adorno's music criticism, though I studied—mainly visual art and literature—with one of its distinguished translators.) Also, speaking of fascism, even though I gave Dune: Part Two a bad review, I have been listening to that soundtrack for better or worse; this is a plebeian taste, I'm sure, or maybe "Reddit" or whatever other insult, but I like a lot of the ambient soundtrack music popular on YouTube: Zimmer, Einaudi, Richter, that style of material. For some reason, maybe also algorithmic, I lately went back to that electronica group I remembered from the '90s, VNV Nation, and was interested to see they had some new material; this has been a recent favorite, somewhat relatable lyrics if you ask me. Speaking of the '90s or even the '80s, I listened to a lot of music from that era when I was writing Major Arcana last year to create the appropriate late-20th-century Dark-Age-of-Comics mood, everything from Joy Division and The Smiths up through Portishead and Massive Attack and the like, and Americans, too, my melodramatic preference for Tori Amos and the Smashing Pumpkins being well-known to my regular readers, as well as "Malibu"-era Hole (even if she [allegedly] did kill Kurt, I like "Malibu" better than any of his stuff). That and some of the jazz favored by my character Ellen Chandler, especially Sketches of Spain and A Love Supreme, which are thematically crucial to the novel. What else? I'm excited for the apparent Joanna Newsom revival-comeback. She might be the most inspirational musical artist of my generation just by her example: create your own strange world, and listeners will come. (I wrote a little tribute to her on here a few years ago.) The aforementioned algorithm knows I compared Lana to Shakespeare 10 years ago—she had to forgive the rest of you for how you treated her; she didn't have to forgive me!—so I usually happily let it give me all the visionary "sad girls" past and present. But, and just in case this was a subtext of your question, there being so few ways nowadays to draw the line between macroculture and meso- and microcultures, I must halt at the frontier of Ms. Swift's empire.

Do you use or do anything special with your hair? I've noted a few different styles on you, you seem to have great control over styling it, do you make hairstyle changes depending on specific inspiration or photoshoot ideas?

yes typically i’ll change the style depending on whatever era or theme i’m channeling - i’ve been really into the 70s/80s again the past year so i’ve been growing out my hair and giving it more of a wave.

i’ve always been an avid hairdryer/round brush user for styling and i don’t really use any specific products besides heat protectants and the occasional hair spray or paste for light hold.

So I Finally Watched Goncharov (1973) - WHAT NOW?

First off, congratulations on breaking out the Laserdisc player. Or low-quality MP4 rip or whatever. I hope you enjoyed what is arguably one of the best (and low-key queerest) mafia thrillers of all time.

BUT RIGHT, what do you watch now that you’ve whetted your whistle for weird semi-gay mob violence? Well, here’s a list of eight recommendations (why 8? I couldn’t think of ten that were quite good enough, that’s why) to get you going.

8. AKAGI, 2015.

Underground gambling, incredible intensity, betting your own blood on mahjong... this one’s heavy on the gambling terminology, and can be a little hard to follow if you don’t know about the game, but it’s worth it.

7. UN ASONTO DE PLATA Y PLOMO, 1988

“An Affair of Silver and Lead” is one of the best proto-narcocorridas out there. A borderline rock opera (with a gloriously copyright-infringing soundtrack), Un Asonto took a look at Scarface and said “yeah, but what if we play how awesome being a gangster is straight?” Compared to Goncharov it’s devoid of nuance, but the cinematography and violence is beautiful, and the characters are brilliant. If you aren’t cheering after watching Fuego Caliente gets his ass handed to him by Diego De La Montoya, check your pulse.

6. WELCOME TO WABASH, 1992

Despite the small town Indiana setting, this gets very dark, very intense, and very weird very quickly. Interesting for many reasons, not the least of which is because it blew a hole in the “war on drugs” rhetoric of the era (one of many reasons it didn’t get a wide release). Wet Charlie’s story is a hell of a tearjerker, and the background “we can’t call it a romance but it’s totally a romance” between Jen and Big Linda is a remarkably heartwarming thread in a movie that ends with 80% of the cast dead.

(Jen and Big Linda survive. That’s not a spoiler, you find that out in the first scene, thank you nonlinear storytelling.)

5. BURIED IN MUD, BURIED IN BLOOD, 1960

If Goncharov had more beatniks... it wouldn’t be this, but it’d be kinda close. A knee-jerk gritty backhand-response to the stylish heist movies of the era, BIMBIB is a tale of desperate thieves trying to unload a stolen Renaissance painting before they get fingered - or worse, before the bill for everything they used to steal the painting comes due. Spoiler: SHIT GOES BAD QUICKLY. Might have been partial inspiration for Guy Ritchie’s later work. Fair warning: If you’re allergic to bongos, watch it with the subtitles on and sound off. And no, the title makes no sense, but the studio insisted on using it.

4. SHOOT THE SHAGGY DOG, 2002

A bargain-bin treasure, STSD was a direct to video release that should have at least gotten an arthouse release. Half the actors are wooden and overly stoic, the sets are obviously sub-zero-budget, the cinematography is a joke, but the plot will keep you on the edge of your seat, and the few good actors - notably Chaim Wallace’s turn as Frankie - have enough gravitas to pull the rest along. “Gang wars are always brutal, kid. When the other gang’s the police, that doesn’t change anything.” Goosebumps, every time.

3. THE GODFATHER, PART 2, 1974

I mean, if you’re gonna watch Goncharov, you might as well, right?

2. ÖFEKLI KAPLAN VE SONSUZ GüN, 1989

It’s TURKISH GONCHAROV! I’m not actually kidding. “The Furious Tiger and the Endless Day” started out as a remake of Goncharov, before the director took it hard in another direction. Hence why the Goncharov expy, Avci, dies halfway through the movie, and the equivalent of our favorite ice-pick wielding “little guy”, Demirci, is the one to tie up the loose ends with his own flavor of brutality. If you’re of a certain age, you might have seen part of it already - it got shared on Kazaa and Limewire a lot, usually with filenames that suggested it was porn. Not GOOD, but surreal as hell, especially if you’ve just watched the actual Goncharov.

1. FACE EATERS FROM DIMENSION X, 1990

Don’t let the B-movie title dissuade you. Once you get past the Troma-typical gorn and sex, you’re left with a remarkably tight crime story about warring families, the inevitable breakdown of diplomacy, and a stinging rebuke of the concept of the Nash Equilibrium. Also the titular Face Eaters are freaky as hell and I want one as a plush toy.