I know the tale and I know it too well...

Heartwarming story: Little girl doesn’t have to do anything to fund her dad’s surgery because his expenses are covered by his country’s universal healthcare.

Human determination: Man bikes 18 miles to work every morning because he wants to and not because he can’t afford a car and would be fired if he’s late.

Spirit of Brotherhood: Neighbors host housewarming party for elderly resident who doesn’t need help in paying rent because his pension is more than enough.

SO INSPIRING: Local middle school students bake dozens of cupcakes because their home economics class is doing a baking unit. Their school is fully funded with everything they need.

This feels like calibrating my normal detector

hey there welcome to superpower school, where we teach you to use your dangerous superpowers in a school-like environment. here's your syllabus. as you can see, this class will consistent entirely of occasional world building lectures of no use to anyone who has actually lived in this world for more than a day, and unsupervised practical assignments that place your life and the lives of everyone near you at risk. also we have a tournament arc in around 50 chapters that will inevitably be rife with cheating and will be infiltrated by people who actually for real want to kill you. grading will be on a curve.

oh god i just realized ive been posting on corporeal tumblr this whole time 🤦

Oh! I thought you just lost your login and decided to just stay on corporeal instead.

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my eternal personal bugbear about "authenticity" in specifically artwork is the central irony that a given piece will only be accepted and understood as suuuuper authentic and raw and real if it matches what the audience perceives as the artist's True Self. "authenticity" has a look, it has a style, it has a vocabulary, it has a hierarchy of materials and media, it should be folk craft or handmade over industrial or digital, it should be emotional and warm over detached and bitter, and obviously it should look pre-21st century because as we all know no one has ever existed honestly since the turn of the millennium and all Authentic Culture died to death badly in 1990. I've heard tons of artists in marginalized groups repeatedly get the feedback that they should make their art "more authentic" and more "reflective of their identities" by people who clearly just mean "make it look more like the stereotype I expect from you." it's a framework that relies on the idea that the only real representation of a culture or identity comes when you strip away all its interrelations with other groups, as though cross-cultural exchange and technological innovation aren't constants throughout human history.