I’ve been listening to The Martian on audiobook and I love it so much. It’s really a great exemplar of the “Man vs Nature” conflict structure that I learned about in elementary school.
Man vs Nature
Man vs Man
Man vs Society
Man vs Himself
Which, I think, is what the writer meant when he said he likes stories “without politics.” Because yes, I will forever clown on him for thinking that Star Trek, of all things, is “without politics” – the entire show is political storytelling overlaid onto Freudian and Jungian archetypes – but everyone is allowed to discover things they missed. Yes, even late in life. We’re allowed to not all have it figured out by Age Whatever.
But I think the appealing thing about Man vs Nature stories is that there’s no evil intent to contend with. All the other structures involve human motivations; but Nature has no motivation. It just is. We can either adapt around it, or perish. And that adaptation is what’s so satisfying to watch or read about.
Improvise, Adapt, Overcome. MacGyver. Odyssey of the Mind. Destination Imagination. Heck, even puns. The heights of human achievement come from using things in unexpected ways.
I do love the other story archetypes, don’t get me wrong. But right now? There’s something comforting in good old Nature trying to kill us.
Recently, one group of friends started talking about a YouTuber that another friend is a huge fan of, in very disparaging terms.
I asked about it, basically asking for receipts, and nobody provided them..
I’m not really a YouTube kind of person, but this contrast (between people whom I like and respect the opinions of) was too much for me to ignore, so I went and watched the YouTube video myself.
I should say that I really hate video as an information format. It’s long, you can’t really do much else while you’re absorbing it, you can’t easily skip around, you can’t copy paste quotes.
But I stuck it out, because I’m stubborn, and by this point I was INVESTED.
I should also say that normally, I am wary of the “both sides have valid points” rhetoric. It used to be true, or at least truer than today, but that was before people started telling us to inject bleach to cure diseases or what nonsense Tiktok trend is going on these days.
But I made an exception in this case, because both “sides” here are people I generally trust to be working in good faith. I don’t think any of them are acting disingenuously; I think all of them believe what they believe.
I watched the whole video over the course of a couple days.
The initial group of friends were saying that in it, Contrapoints was “defending” JK Rowling.
I watched the whole video, and I didn’t see any defense.
About a third of the way in, I messaged the group to say “hey, I didn’t see any of the stuff you guys are talking about so far in this video…am I watching the wrong video?”
Instead of sending me the Actual Bad Video, they doubled down. One person said “If your friends telling you this person is a Nazi and a transmedicalist isn’t enough for you to keep their voice out of your head, then I don’t know what to tell you.”
That comment made me see red. And after I calmed down a bit, I said, look. When two people I like and respect tell me opposite things, which one of them am I supposed to blindly trust?
And then I thought to myself: I *don’t* blindly trust. Or rather, I don’t do it as a matter of conscious policy. Sure, there are lots of things in life where I can’t be an expert, and I do have to trust other people. But “the contents of a goddamn YouTube video” is not one of them.
Yes, we trust. But we also verify. And it’s not anti-friendship, or anti-trust, to say “I’m going to watch this for myself.”
I’m a little worried that by phrasing things this way, I’ll give steam to some kind of “do your own research” alt-right pipeline. If my friends have actual concerns about this content creator, I expect they will continue to share them with me.
But so far I haven’t actually heard any real concerns; I’ve only heard single-word adjectives with no details and no receipts.
So I am cautiously proceeding, and looking at the primary sources myself. Because that’s what I do. “Citation needed” is just a way of life, I guess.
I’m starting the second Contrapoints JK Rowling video tonight. We’ll see if this one has the defending in it, I guess?
Coda: The day after I write this, I see the following from a friend of mine:
I know the original will probably get deleted, so I’m just going to paste this here.
The original context was a young woman asking for relationship advice when her boyfriend wanted to have sex and she wasn’t ready yet.
Assuming that you are in your early 20s (as listed in your other post)
If you want to remain a virgin and your boyfriend wants a relationship with sex, then you are not compatible, and yes the relationship will probably end.
> I kind of like being a virgin
> it’s not even like “oh I’ll be ready soon,” I genuinely don’t know when I’ll be ready
You may be asexual.
> how do you even know when you’re ready? it’s not something you can undo
There was a time I had never tried Thai food, and then I tried it and realised I liked it, so now I eat Thai food regularly. I don’t think about “who I was before I had Thai food”, it’s not like I lost anything by having a new experience.
But if you don’t want to have sex and you don’t think you ever want to have sex, you should tell prospective partners that you’re asexual. It means “I don’t want sex” vs “I just haven’t tried it yet.”
The Thai food metaphor, in particular, I find very apt. Sex isn’t particularly special; it can be risky; it can carry extra religious or cultural weight; but in the end, it’s just another experience, one that you are free to try or not try, as you wish.
I first read Mistborn almost 20 years ago, after enjoying Elantris a great deal…and I bounced off it HARD. It was such a grim dark world, Vin was insufferable and “not like the other girls” in my eyes, and I just was not here for it.
But this year, I decided I would give them another try; and I’m so glad I did.
Being immersed in the Cosmere means that I was spoiled for most of the major events of the second two books, but that’s okay. I can accept a few spoilers.
I would like to get a marewill flower tattoo, to go with my bannion flower. Perhaps I will have a whole bouquet of literary flowers someday.
I picked up this one at a Boozy Book Fair (the local independent bookstore made a deal with a local pub to host a book fair, and it was a smashing success). Took me a minute to read it, but I was enthralled. I love twists on fairy tales (although this one is unique enough that I’m not even sure that’s an accurate description), and I love stories with middle aged protagonists (I need to reread Paladin of Souls).
This year or late last, I read “There is no antimemetics division” by qntm. This is a delightfully bizarre story based on stories from the SCP wiki. I would like to read more novel-form-factor SCP stories.
It bears a certain similarity to Ruin, and I’ll say no more about that.
I’m just trying to write down the books I’ve been reading this year.
In January, I read Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik. I’m not Lithuanian, and I’m not Jewish, and I’m not as plugged in to my Eastern European heritage as I’d like to be…but this book felt like home. It’s hard to explain why.
The first time I read it, I was sad that Miriam/Wanda was not the ship.
The second time I read it, I was okay with how it turned out.
I would like to try krupnik. Apparently we call it boilo here?
Today at the Sakura Matsuri, I had an extremely amusing moment. Well, amusing to me, anyway.
We were at a booth that sold toy swords (either plastic or wall hangers – not sure which), and two young men (I would estimate early 20s) were there looking at the swords. I overheard one of them telling the other “This is called a katana. It’s what they used…” (I don’t remember the rest of the sentence). The second young man said “So is that what you would use in martial arts, then? Like to practice?”
The first young man floundered a bit, so naturally I decided to insert myself into their conversation and info dump a bit.
“Well, that depends on the martial art. For kendo, they use a sword made of bamboo slats, so you can hit each other without hurting too much. For iaido, they use a sword made of an aluminum zinc alloy, so it’s lightweight but not sharp. For batto-do or other cutting arts, they use a real sword made of steel. There are probably demos of that today or tomorrow!”
Young man #2 said “wow, you really know your stuff!” And I said “Yep!” and wandered off.
This is an example of how Not To Human. In general, this kind of behavior is not considered polite or appropriate. But I think in the specific context I was in, it was okay.
