literature & other stuff

has anybody heard of writing / knows anything about how to do it

friend sent me an Instagram reel yesterday with 1000s of likes that was basically like "pride and prejudice is timeless actually because it's about an autism4autism romance 🥰" and then the creator proceeded to cite moments in the book and film where Lizzie and Darcy are "socially awkward" and....listen. I'm far from an Austen scholar, but I have taught Austen novels as an educator and this kind of psycho-pop analysis that views characters as individuals with autonomy over their actions, rather than tools in a story written at a particular time to say something about that time, pisses me off more than I can say without sounding like an asshole. I'm sorry but Darcy isn't rude and awkward and even cruel to Lizzie because he has autism, he says and does those things because he's a wealthy upper class land owning man raised to see a middle class woman from a large family with no male heirs like Elizabeth as inherently beneath him which he expresses to her multiple times because it is socially acceptable for him to do so in a society where someone like him is privileged above almost all others. He is "socially awkward" around her because of misogyny and classism (PREJUDICE) and she is "socially awkward" around him because a woman of her standing at that time simply wouldn't have had much to do with the gentry but to actually push back against the shit that Darcy says would be social suicide for her whole family so she protests the only way she can which is refusing his advances (PRIDE). not to be the "context collapse is the death of media literacy" guy. But this is the problem with the kind of head empty, let people enjoy things, if I can't relate to it what's the point type crowd. Youse think you're being so quirky justifying incoherent and anachronistic interpretations with your rampant individualism, ensuring that other people never confront anything that challenges them in these stories like patriarchal misogyny and classism. Pride and Prejudice becomes an "autism4autism romance", completely undermining the historical context of its status as one of the great social satires about the class and gender politics that Austen so expertly observed around her. This attitude is why we have nonsensical historical dramas that actively hate history like fucking edgy bdsm "Wuthering Heights", Bridgerton, The Buccaneers, and even a 2025 Frankenstein movie where the monster is just misunderstood and does no wrong uwu etc. because individual relatability and catharsis is king over anything actually saying anything about anything now. Everything is relatable and nothing is meaningful.

can we appreciate how difficult it is to share writing. it asks of people the monumental task of taking the time and effort to read something, and then by nature anybody who does read it must spend more time looking over it than they might a drawing which makes it feel much more daunting to share in my opinion, and knowing somebody is becoming intimate with every little grammatical error and clumsy sentence structure your naked soul has to offer is still somehow preferable to being ignored, which tends to be the more likely outcome

i honestly stopped worrying about my writing being mistaken for AI because i honestly don’t think any program trained on the human conventions of the english language would actively choose the foul and grotesque deeds i force words to participate in on a regular basis

It is weirdly difficult to find good information on the day to day praxis of ancient Greek religion.

It's very easy to access things about the mythology, but difficult to find information on day, the context behind the average person's interaction with an oracle, or what exactly your household shrine meant.

The more I study historical theology the more interested I am in the individual context of things. Like what was it like to talk to an oracle on one particular day in ancient Greece? What sort of things were on your mind? What did you eat for breakfast?

you have to be very well read to hate properly. already be reading. expand your mind gain knowledge defend your position

is anyone else still karamazoving???