TotD: Greeting Rituals of the Terminally Shy (Flash)

GREETING RITUALS OF THE TERMINALLY SHY

By Alexandra Erin

 

 

There is a peculiar kind of greeting that awkward, shy people who don’t know one another give to each other. It is not done intentionally, but incidentally, in that moment when we glance across the aisle or at the person sitting next to us to size them up, quickly and discreetly, to assess their threat level and determine what, if anything, is expected of us.

We know that like some strange quantum phenomenon, the act of looking at a stranger might change the situation, but forewarned is forearmed, so we take our chances. We are already rehearsing our lines and planning our exit strategy in our minds, trying to remember what feel in our face means a smile, in case we’re called on to assemble one at a moment’s notice.

Then we see the other person, looking at us in the same way, the same furtive glance, the same bright fear in their eyes, and for a brief moment we are like a single organism sharing one full-body slump of relief, and then we go back to our books or podcasts or just the worlds we keep inside our heads.

Internally, we sound the all clear. The doomsday clock rolls back another hour. We return to Defcon 5. Well, Defcon 4. Maybe 3. Eternal vigilance is the price we pay for… what, we’re not sure, exactly.

Someone probably knows, but we’re afraid to ask. We pay it, though. If we don’t, someone might come around asking why we haven’t.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

STATUS: Thursday, January 7th

Apparently I’ve got a lot to say these days, because once again I woke up and started writing a different blog post before I started my status post here. Just like yesterday, I flipped over here to write my status post before I finish posting the blog post.

I’ve been pondering what to do about status posts in 2015. One of the problems is that sometimes they’re formulaic and I need formula, but other times they’re formulaic and I’m saying the same nothing every day because I have committed myself to saying it, and it takes up time and attention that I could be spending saying something I want to say.

So I think what I’m going to do is, on days when I don’t wake up with something else to say, I’ll write a status post. The commitment is to blog every day (or every work day). If I’m not saying something sufficiently personal otherwise, I’ll make a status post to touch base and keep up the habit. If I am, I won’t necessarily force myself to make a status post. If I’ve got a blog post but there’s also status things to discuss, I’ll do both.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

No Comment

Today I made the decision to remove comments on my blog. It’s been a long time since I’ve had the spoons to deal with moderation, and the reality is that not moderating is not an option. Even if there weren’t people out there who are still very angry about some of the satirical posts and editorial stances I took in 2015, there’s spam.

I also increasingly find myself agreeing with the critiques of internet culture and (the sub-culture of internet celebrity) such as Tauriq Moosa, that open-ended “engagement” is not worth the price it extracts on the engaged. When I feel up for engagement and invigorated by engagement, I am active on multiple social media platforms. When I don’t, I’m not.

Having open comments on my blog is like leaving the door to my living room open so that anyone can wander in and talk not just to me but anyone I’m entertaining, whereas being on social media is more like me going out into the world to hang out with people.

There’s a meme that goes around in the circles that feel entitled to use my living room or your living room or anyone’s living room as their own personal symposium and lecture hall that this kind of move is anti-free speech, that it’s hypocritical for someone to say they’re interested in starting a conversation or having a dialogue if they do not allow comments. I can blow this out of the water in one easy step.

Actually, I already have.

See how I mentioned Tauriq Moosa’s commentary on internet engagement?

That’s me, responding to Tauriq Moosa’s commentary on internet engagement. No comment section necessary.

And then in the paragraph that starts “There’s a meme…”, I also responded to his critics.

And if any of them—or anyone else—wants to write a response to me, they have their own space to do it in. Oh, I probably won’t see it, but that’s okay. When people debate, they’re not trying to convince each other, but the audience. Formal debates don’t end when one party cedes the point to the other, thoroughly persuaded.

The thing is that even when comments at this blog at their best and I’m at my best, I don’t think having comments turned on here does a lot for me. Back in the glory days of Sad Puppies Review Books, I would make a thing and then spend all day refreshing, watching my site stats and reading the new comments, and responding to them. That’s positive engagement, but it didn’t really bring me anything more positive than a short-lived endorphin buzz. That’s not what I’m here for.

Once you reach a certain level of profile you can’t really have a comment section and not pay attention to it, but I don’t see the gains from paying attention to it as being worth it.  I mean, my goal includes writing things that people like, things that resonate with people, that make people laugh, that people enjoy. But that’s not money in the bank, and at the end of the day, it’s not even real, lasting satisfaction.

I like feedback. At a certain level, I think I need feedback. But the way the web works now, those things can come to me from points further “downstream” (crossposts and the like), where they’re not happening on my turf and it’s easier to keep some emotional distance and perspective.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

The Question of the Doctor

You know that thing that stage magicians do where they wave a handkerchief or wand around or otherwise make a distracting flourish to point your eyes in one direction so that you aren’t paying attention to where the trick is really happening?

I feel like this is why Steven Moffat, more so than previous showrunners on Doctor Who, has directed so much attention to the idea of “Doctor who?” as an unanswerable question: in a vain attempt to stop us from asking “Doctor, how?” or “Doctor, why?”

Originally I was going to try to fit that sentiment into 140 characters so I could tweet it out into the nethersphere as a little bit of wit, but the more I think about it, the more I think about one of the annoying “Doctorisms” of the current era: the Doctor telling everyone in the room and audience what questions they should be thinking.

It’s a very stage magician-thing to do, and the 12th Doctor is very explicitly referred to as such a magician, though nothing in the series except that people keep referring to him as one really sells it. He does behave like a magician in one way, though: he very deliberately leads people in the direction he wants them to be thinking.

In “Under The Lake,” the question he tells you that you should be asking is what “the temple” means in the interstellar directions “The Dark, The Sword, The Forsaken, The Temple”.

Without the Doctor to tell you this, you might instead be wondering how aliens would know the three lights in Orion’s sword are supposed to be a sword when that’s earth mythology and they don’t even form a line when viewed from other angles, or you might be wondering how aliens are supposed to connect “the forsaken” to a single specific abandoned town or why they need directions to find the planet from which a radio signal is emanating in the first place.

Without the Doctor to tell you that your questions are boring and pointless and indicative of low inteligence unless they are the questions he wants you to ask, you might be wondering why the ghost of a character who died 150 years in the past doesn’t show up to haunt the present until we the audience see her die, even though someone else who died in the same era was the first ghost and even though the ghosts could totally have used her at the moment when every ghost we knew about was trapped.

In fairness to Moffat, Doctor Who is a fantasy series and there has never been an era when its science made sense, when it wasn’t powered by cardboard and whimsy, and when the story logic was tighter than a child’s puppet show. I know it’s not popular to acknowledge this and I’m sure that a lot of people who hate Moffat and were nodding along right up until this point stopped when they read that, because of course it wasn’t like that in whatever they regard as the golden age of Who.

But of course it was. It always has been. God willing, it always will be. We ignore these flaws when the show works for us, but wouldn’t recognize it without them. It’s all part of the charm.

But I said it’s part of the charm, and I mean every word of that phrase. It is only part of the charm. And if the rest of the charm isn’t there… well, you know what it’s like when something breaks and you step on a part of it. Not very charming, is it?

Steven Moffat doesn’t know how to charm us, not consciously, and doesn’t have any confidence in his ability to charm. When he tries to be charming, he comes off like his avatar from Coupling trying to be anything. Ditto when he tries to be clever. So he gives us stories wherein the characters tell us again and again how clever the twists are, what we should be paying attention to, what we should be questioning, what we should be leaving alone, and all this comes at the expense of making the episode fun enough for us to go along with it willingly.

It’s all supposed to be a neat magic trick, but he does it with all the deftness and subtlety of, well, Steve, and it ultimately just grates.

Full disclosure: I have only seen the first two stories of the most recent season. My impression so far is that it’s better than last season (which was possibly the low point for New Who, in a lot of ways). I think the show gains a lot from a multi-episode story format. That’s what’s ultimately worst about these failed flourishes: they’re so unnecessary.

Audiences are no longer invited to consider a viewpoint where the Doctor’s idea-powered magitech makes sense; we are berated and badgered and hectored and upbraided for not already being on board, we’re told we’re a bunch of slow-witted, unevolved ninnies for not already knowing the story’s going to go in the direction the writers have decided it must, and we are promised that if we are clever and wise (and worthy of being a companion like Clara), we will see the Doctor as the world’s greatest magician and regard every conclusion he forms as solid and unassailable, every word that comes out of his mouth as sparkling brilliance.

And why do we put up with this?

Of course, that’s the wrong question. The question we should be asking, the question that matters is “Doctor who?”

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.

TotD: Love Like (Poem)

Love like

hunger like

knives like

teeth like

pearls like

teardrops like

memories like

someone like

you.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.