kasin's korner

No? Just me?? Alriiiight

Beginning July 3, 2026, my dear friend and I are launching our first collaborative narrative project, planarposting.

And if the Bechdel test is a relatively old example, this is a phenomenon that keeps cropping up. "Some artifacts in museums were stolen or looted, with colonialism and racism providing a cover for acts that in other circumstances we'd easily recognize as criminal" has become "all museums are piles of loot and stealing from them is righteous even it it's to melt the artwork down and funnel the profits to organized crime." "Zoos sometimes abuse their animals and the goal should be to reintroduce specimens to the wild" has become "open all the cages and let the animals out (to spaces where they will almost certainly die/be killed to stop them killing people)". "Ethnic foods are sometimes treated as more palatable, and sold for more money, when they're marketed by white people" has become "people should only prepare and eat food from their own ethnicity". Again and again, it feels like these ideas that were meant to make us think, to pause a moment and notice the unspoken assumptions and elisions that exist in our world, have been turned into catchphrases that shut down thought. I think the reason that happens is that people enjoy the feeling of righteousness that comes from calling out institutions like museums or the film industry, but along the way you can become just as dogmatic and tunnel-visioned as the bodies you were calling out.

Things aren't black and white. Most of the world is in shades of grey. Examine it as such.

and is evidenced by the fact I'm telling you about this almost 30 years later, I have never forgotten that blank-looking shiny piece of plastic sitting next to a beautiful, ancient piece of paper that someone pressed words into with a machine and left for me to read, hundreds of years before I was born.