![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
More saved comments:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marykaykare is fed up with the number of theists in the U.S. who wouldn't vote for an atheist. She linked to another blogger's post, and I wrote:
I understand your anger, but I'm also annoyed at the person you're linking to: his phrasing suggests that it would be okay that lots of people wouldn't vote for atheists if more of them distrusted homosexuals. Sure, he's got a cute lede, but it gets into "more oppressed than thou," a game that only the oppressors win. The problem isn't that more people distrust atheists than distrust queers; it's that they think either of those characteristics disqualifies me for public office.
I think I'm just being irritable here, but I know I won't find this one again.oursin pointed me to a long thread in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
academics_anon started by someone who objected to having to write papers about theories that zie found false or immoral (the terms shift some), with some odd assertions about anachronism. And I wrote:
To the extent that Freud's writing--or Locke's, or Aquinas's--is useful and valid, it isn't useful only when talking about people who had read the theory. The assertion that, say, Freud or Foucault are irrelevant to Beowulf because they wrote after the Beowulf poet implies that nothing in your religious beliefs is relevant to anyone who has not been taught those beliefs, or anyone who lived before your religion was founded. I don't know what religion you follow--though people here have been guessing--but I suspect that most Christians, Jews, or Muslims would call that idea nonsense if not heresy. (Yes, you can reasonably argue that people aren't responsible for following teachings they don't know about; arguing that G-d exists only for people who have heard of him, or that if we didn't teach children morality it would be acceptable for them to murder, is another matter entirely.)
callunav was talking about including bits of quotes in conversation, in places where someone else might not know she was quoting, because the reference or context is obvious to her, but the phrasing fits the conversation. She included the example "That's not my department," which in her mind connects strongly to Tom Lehrer's "Werner von Braun":
I occasionally will say things like "There's a bit in Le Guin where she says…" if I admire the phrasing, think it's relevant to the context, and don't want someone to think it's my own invention.
And if I realize someone is misunderstanding me because I've quoted something and expect it to carry context, but they don't recognize the quote, I'll try to go back and explain. [The explanation is more likely to be of what I meant than of "oh, that's a reference to $book."]
Other than that, all that comes to mind is that I said "in large friendly letters" by itself yesterday, knowingadrian_turtle would know what is described as being in that form, and that I'll quote Space Child's Mother Goose to cattitude.
serenejournal posted saying that someone else had suggested she was "too invested in presenting [her] life as easy," and I wrote:
There are things that are probably hard for everyone, but a lot of the difficult/easy dichotomy, I think, is that different things bother different people. Some of the rest is skills and temperament. For me, lifting weights is easier than wearing makeup; just looking around, I suspect that the reverse is true for many people. (More substantively, I keep seeing people say "of course poly is difficult. Relationships are difficult" and not really knowing how to say "well, not always. Sometimes both are easy." Which may just be that much of the work involved is stuff I enjoy doing, so it doesn't feel like hard work: metaphorically, I'm cooking rice or planting daffodils, not scrubbing floors.)
In a comment thread onozarque's journal:
Yes, online is different from in-person. But I'm not convinced that therefore online is inferior to in-person. For me, at least, a large part of what matters is that there be conversation. I can get to know someone quite well online, if we spend enough time talking (rather than, say, someone who just posts links, photos they've taken, or quizzes). I can also get to know someone quite well in person, if we have enough time to talk. But just being in the same physical space at the same event (whether it's a lecture course with 50 or 100 other students, or a concert) won't do it: I don't know someone else because they took the same class any more than I know someone because they listened to the same radio program or read the same book.
If I couldn't stand someone, either in person or online, I'd be wary of them, unless I could identify a reason for that distaste and believed that the reason shouldn't be important. (For example, I once decided not to take a class because I found the instructor's voice extremely disturbing. I assume I'd have found this even more problematic one-on-one, but I wouldn't have a problem interacting with her, or someone else whose voice bothered me that way [1], in text.) The closest I've come to the equivalent in text was someone who insists on always using an odd shorthand of "simplified" spellings, a mix of quasi-phonetic spellings [iffy at best in English, with so many different accents] and things like "b4" for "before".
If what a person was saying bothered me significantly either in person or in text, I think it would carry over to my interactions with them in the other medium. Someone who is rude and pushy in person is rude and pushy, even if that's less apparent on LJ or Usenet. Someone who likes to pick fights is a troll, even if they're leery of doing so when the person they aggravate is in the same room.
[1] This is the only case I can recall of my reacting that way, that strongly. It wasn't difficulty understanding, nor was it the content of what she was saying, which was pretty standard "here's what we'll be covering this semester"--I simply found it unpleasant to listen to her voice.
papersky has been talking about writing, and she used the term "jeopardy," which led to some discussion of why some of us find that term more useful than "conflict" for how a lot of plots work. I wrote the folloing as a "yes, and" to a comment by antonia_tiger:
Yes. Particularly the "man versus nature" (and note that it's rarely "people versus nature" or "protagonist versus nature") stuff: someone may think of himself as "conquering" the wilderness, but it's a very different situation and set of interactions than if he were to take an army and attempt to conquer a city. A hurricane can be jeopardy, even fatal, but it isn't trying to harm people: it gains nothing thereby, and is in no sense disappointed if nobody dies and there are no destructive floods.
For "conflict" to feel both accurate and useful as a distinction, there has to be volition on both (all) sides of the interaction. Danger can exist without volition. For that matter, worthwhile--and story-worthy--achievements can exist without either: consider the invention of the telephone. (Telephones have since been plot points in uncounted stories, and saved many lives and probably cost quite a few, but that came later.)
A human enemy would want either to take something from the protagonist, or to harm the protagonist for some other reason: revenge can be a motive even if the antagonist gains neither safety, status, nor property thereby.
marykaykare is fed up with the number of theists in the U.S. who wouldn't vote for an atheist. She linked to another blogger's post, and I wrote:I understand your anger, but I'm also annoyed at the person you're linking to: his phrasing suggests that it would be okay that lots of people wouldn't vote for atheists if more of them distrusted homosexuals. Sure, he's got a cute lede, but it gets into "more oppressed than thou," a game that only the oppressors win. The problem isn't that more people distrust atheists than distrust queers; it's that they think either of those characteristics disqualifies me for public office.
I think I'm just being irritable here, but I know I won't find this one again.
oursin pointed me to a long thread in academics_anon started by someone who objected to having to write papers about theories that zie found false or immoral (the terms shift some), with some odd assertions about anachronism. And I wrote:To the extent that Freud's writing--or Locke's, or Aquinas's--is useful and valid, it isn't useful only when talking about people who had read the theory. The assertion that, say, Freud or Foucault are irrelevant to Beowulf because they wrote after the Beowulf poet implies that nothing in your religious beliefs is relevant to anyone who has not been taught those beliefs, or anyone who lived before your religion was founded. I don't know what religion you follow--though people here have been guessing--but I suspect that most Christians, Jews, or Muslims would call that idea nonsense if not heresy. (Yes, you can reasonably argue that people aren't responsible for following teachings they don't know about; arguing that G-d exists only for people who have heard of him, or that if we didn't teach children morality it would be acceptable for them to murder, is another matter entirely.)
callunav was talking about including bits of quotes in conversation, in places where someone else might not know she was quoting, because the reference or context is obvious to her, but the phrasing fits the conversation. She included the example "That's not my department," which in her mind connects strongly to Tom Lehrer's "Werner von Braun":I occasionally will say things like "There's a bit in Le Guin where she says…" if I admire the phrasing, think it's relevant to the context, and don't want someone to think it's my own invention.
And if I realize someone is misunderstanding me because I've quoted something and expect it to carry context, but they don't recognize the quote, I'll try to go back and explain. [The explanation is more likely to be of what I meant than of "oh, that's a reference to $book."]
Other than that, all that comes to mind is that I said "in large friendly letters" by itself yesterday, knowing
adrian_turtle would know what is described as being in that form, and that I'll quote Space Child's Mother Goose to cattitude.serenejournal posted saying that someone else had suggested she was "too invested in presenting [her] life as easy," and I wrote:There are things that are probably hard for everyone, but a lot of the difficult/easy dichotomy, I think, is that different things bother different people. Some of the rest is skills and temperament. For me, lifting weights is easier than wearing makeup; just looking around, I suspect that the reverse is true for many people. (More substantively, I keep seeing people say "of course poly is difficult. Relationships are difficult" and not really knowing how to say "well, not always. Sometimes both are easy." Which may just be that much of the work involved is stuff I enjoy doing, so it doesn't feel like hard work: metaphorically, I'm cooking rice or planting daffodils, not scrubbing floors.)
In a comment thread on
ozarque's journal:Yes, online is different from in-person. But I'm not convinced that therefore online is inferior to in-person. For me, at least, a large part of what matters is that there be conversation. I can get to know someone quite well online, if we spend enough time talking (rather than, say, someone who just posts links, photos they've taken, or quizzes). I can also get to know someone quite well in person, if we have enough time to talk. But just being in the same physical space at the same event (whether it's a lecture course with 50 or 100 other students, or a concert) won't do it: I don't know someone else because they took the same class any more than I know someone because they listened to the same radio program or read the same book.
If I couldn't stand someone, either in person or online, I'd be wary of them, unless I could identify a reason for that distaste and believed that the reason shouldn't be important. (For example, I once decided not to take a class because I found the instructor's voice extremely disturbing. I assume I'd have found this even more problematic one-on-one, but I wouldn't have a problem interacting with her, or someone else whose voice bothered me that way [1], in text.) The closest I've come to the equivalent in text was someone who insists on always using an odd shorthand of "simplified" spellings, a mix of quasi-phonetic spellings [iffy at best in English, with so many different accents] and things like "b4" for "before".
If what a person was saying bothered me significantly either in person or in text, I think it would carry over to my interactions with them in the other medium. Someone who is rude and pushy in person is rude and pushy, even if that's less apparent on LJ or Usenet. Someone who likes to pick fights is a troll, even if they're leery of doing so when the person they aggravate is in the same room.
[1] This is the only case I can recall of my reacting that way, that strongly. It wasn't difficulty understanding, nor was it the content of what she was saying, which was pretty standard "here's what we'll be covering this semester"--I simply found it unpleasant to listen to her voice.
papersky has been talking about writing, and she used the term "jeopardy," which led to some discussion of why some of us find that term more useful than "conflict" for how a lot of plots work. I wrote the folloing as a "yes, and" to a comment by antonia_tiger:Yes. Particularly the "man versus nature" (and note that it's rarely "people versus nature" or "protagonist versus nature") stuff: someone may think of himself as "conquering" the wilderness, but it's a very different situation and set of interactions than if he were to take an army and attempt to conquer a city. A hurricane can be jeopardy, even fatal, but it isn't trying to harm people: it gains nothing thereby, and is in no sense disappointed if nobody dies and there are no destructive floods.
For "conflict" to feel both accurate and useful as a distinction, there has to be volition on both (all) sides of the interaction. Danger can exist without volition. For that matter, worthwhile--and story-worthy--achievements can exist without either: consider the invention of the telephone. (Telephones have since been plot points in uncounted stories, and saved many lives and probably cost quite a few, but that came later.)
A human enemy would want either to take something from the protagonist, or to harm the protagonist for some other reason: revenge can be a motive even if the antagonist gains neither safety, status, nor property thereby.