#mimzamine

[mimzalot]

pulls mic over. a flawed character being 'redeemed' by sacrificial death for a noble cause is military propaganda to me

[mimzalot]

after D&D sessions we have a designated ‘unpack time’ where we talk at length about each others’ creative choices and highlight our own favourite moments, which is an opportunity to draw attention to things we’re proud of for analysis. it’s a nice routine that encourages us to indulge this feeling in particular.

to the OP and all those that relate, I hope u carve out the time and find the people that will indulge in this with you! gush about your writing! and to anyone that’s ever been like ‘ah no one wants to hear my analysis’ you heard the post, writers wanna hear it! hope everyone finds a way to partake in their own ‘unpack time’ :’)

writing sucks because after i share what i wrote i wanna be like "hey did u notice this technique i used? did you notice the repetition here? let me write you an analysis on my own work."

[mimzalot]

I think a lot about how I might have started working out when I was younger if I knew it was more about 'being able to exist with less muscle pain and mobility issues in your 30s' rather that 'try and get skinny and be hot', right? because the latter is easily disputable, hugely subjective, and rooted in principles that we have to dismantle (diet culture, beauty standards)

I feel similarly about how a lot of people are talking about AI. there's a lot of posts rooted in ideals of art elitism that make it about 'looking stupid, art looks bad, writing sounds bad' that, to me, are often mindlessly rooted in subjective principles thus a lot less effective than just saying 'hey when you're in your mid-30s you're not going to have the mental agility to perform this skill without AI assistance'

in a similar way as I now wish I'd done more stretches when I was younger so I don't get back pain when I sit down for too long, I feel like there are going to be a lot of people that lose their mental agility, creative problem-solving abilities or any of the skills associated with creating as they get older because they've outsourced that task. like if you were automating a process within the work, sure, but if you're automating the thinking part? you don't think that's gonna have a long-term impact on your ability to function?

there's no shortcut for learning skills! there are only the muscles you train and the ones you don't, and if there's any wisdom I can offer from the post-30s club it's that you really, REALLY want to keep training those muscles - big juicy brain included

[mimzalot]

I know I joke all the time about 'if I'm late to an event it's because I'm decolonising' but in all seriousness, one of the first colonial stories about my people was about how the German businessmen wanted us to work the cacao plantations they were trying to build in Samoa but we were 'too lazy', so they brought over ""indentured servants"" to work instead.

the conclusion was thus 'Samoans are lazy with no sense for time', but obviously I look at that scenario and think 'my people didn't see the value in optimising labour to make European settlers wealthy; the existing methods had worked perfectly well to keep us fed'. in this you can literally see the direct link between punctuality and profit operating outside of common sense and, opposite that, how those values are connected to some of the biggest atrocities in history

so. yeah I'm gonna be ten minutes late

[mimzalot]

there's a recurring detail in a lot of current discussions about 'what's wrong with society' that I wanna boil down to this statement: a capitalistic, results-oriented society does not value the process, because the process takes time, and time is money.

this means that results take precedence over due process. but what's the purpose of due process? quality. integrity. effectiveness. sustainability. people need time to not only tangibly make things, but also to consider the work, improve and refine it. so where does that leave us?

let's think about fruit farming real quick. most people in a city district are never going to pick their own fruit, because we don't have access to that process or the skills necessary for it. but what happens when we are oblivious to the process? or, better yet, never consider that there is a process at all?

grocery companies are able to make money from us buying their fruit, but they're also able to save money by hiding the fruit labour process; are they exploiting the fruit-pickers? are they paying their farmers? how are these fruits made available to us in bulk, year round? how does climate affect this, or how are we impacting the planet? the necessary questions are hidden because analysing the process would reveal its flaws. criticising it would reveal solutions, and implementing those solutions would take time, thus cost money.

apply that same logic to smart phones and you find the Congo, cobalt mining, slave labour. apply that same logic to fast fashion and you find sweatshops, landfills and, again, slave labour.

hiding the process means hiding the 'why? how?' and dissuading people from 'why? how?' makes more complicit consumers.

and I might not know much about fruit-picking, but I do know that a large reason why fruit is so much sweeter back home in the islands is because it isn't picked early with the expectation of being sold en masse. it has time to ripen on the trees.

which leads me back to the prompt that inspired this train of thought: devaluing of 'the process' and the companies that benefit from it.

especially lately it has been coming up when we discuss the impacts of AI. when people talk about chatgpt, the main productivity benefit they're talking about is that it takes away the chore of thinking. which, most severely, not only conceals the process but undermines the process of forming thoughts altogether.

and we've seen that echoed across the board, referred to as the 'attention span problem' or 'poor media literacy'. it's spoken about as if it's a natural aspect of technological advancement when we can clearly observe that it is designed - literally designed, by web-designers - to be beneficial to the wealthy.

the disregard for artistic process that fuels the AI art debate also speaks to the same results-oriented society - not just for the reasons related to the nature of humanity and making, expression, storytelling, but primarily the clear disregard for the rights of the artists whose work is being stolen. we're diminishing not only the creative process (of thinking, problem-solving, creating) but also of the artists themselves (workers rights, intellectual property).

even the tendency for hot takes, valuing a fully-formed 'correct' opinion over the task of processing, researching, discussing, making statements (even wrong ones!), being corrected, reforming the sentiment, reaching consensus - these stops-and-starts are an essential part of growth. botched conclusions are a natural result of learning to do anything. community makes time for learning and imperfection. industries do not have time to teach nor the desire to have faulty products.

(not to mention that the good/bad morality figure also feeds into this industrial mindset, because things that are categorical are also profitable and marketable. in fact binaries really benefit most business models, which is why a capitalistic society also doesn't have space for nuance whether in media or especially in gender. because how do you profit off a racist and patriarchal white/black man/woman straight/gay society when there are people transing their genders? with greater difficulty. who's got the time to learn a new pronoun? not me, not me...)

there's a reason why the arts are about analysing thoughts, and while it can run the risk of becoming results-irrelevant (circular philosophiising, education for the sake of elitism, results-irrelevant musing), it also aims to foster your ability to think.

(which is tied to why the supposedly 'masculine' disciplines of STEM don't value the arts. there's a link between what is seen as tangible and 'real', what is perceived as masculine, and what is considered profitable thus valuable in a colonial society. but even in science you can't (or shouldn't) pull a solution out of thin air; there's due process. unless you are, say, an idiot billionaire that can pay people to do the thinking for you while you take the mantle of genius. but I digress)

so what does that mean! for me, it means being aware of the process. it means making time to take my time, even as someone that struggles to sit still. it also means constantly reminding people to take breathers, to not let themselves become cogs in a machine, if not because it's bad for you, then out of sheer spite for the people that might profit from it. I encourage people to do art, or engage in creating, or at least observe the magic of creation in things they might do regularly.

a results-oriented society is one that is prepared to disregard humanity. it's rooted in slavery, so that's not a surprise. countering that, to me, is about seeing where I say things like "I don't have the time for that" and analysing whether it's true, or whether a business model would just like me to think that it's true.

probably the funniest way I could end this post is without a clear conclusion huh. yeah

[mimzalot]

psst, I play Willow in this show: shifter, artificer, emotionally constipated former-pirate with a heart of gold and -1 charisma. we four put a lot of love into the show so feel free to poke around our wiki or tune into our livestream tomorrow!

hi yes, i am still here. i never left. i was just very quiet.

anyway now that we're being chatty again, i can recommend that you check out the actual play dnd series i've been running for the past year: metanoia blues!

[mimzalot]

I think I should be able to use 'fuck my stupid baka life' in professional emails

[mimzalot]

media literacy is about listening to stories made by people and fandom is not-always-but-often about projecting self onto those stories and between the two, the 'representation' conversation, which started with good intentions but has found its teeth under the realities of capitalism - of commodifying identity, of categorising art-making - because yes, sure, now I am Represented (cheehoo!) by a Disney franchise (wuh oh) but, huh, I see myself more in Mirabelle than Moana if I had to choose, which I don't, and I won't, because I'm not a Buzzfeed quiz and none of this matters except for where my Identity becomes an advertising space - and, I guess, when I am in Fandom. but Fandom is its own beast, evolved to lurk in the underbelly of whatever they're too afraid to do on the big screen; back then it made sense that you would Project, there was nothing else there for you and I, so we carved out our own space, but they've put our kin in the studios, and they've turned Fandom into Customer, and the humble process of Receiving your artistic intent has been conflated with the business of projecting Self onto every glass surface, and you see it (like your reflection) everywhere: Rotten Tomatoes article written before the movie airs, every declaration that 'this art/character/song is only what I make of it', folks still demanding for 'death of the artist' when they can neither define 'art' nor 'death', etc, etc, etc, eugh, it's calling itself 'critique' when in fact it is the same self-centring algorithm that disconnects you from me and digs into our wallets rather than our hearts but Personified, ironically, because media! literacy! is! about! listening! and for that You must be Quiet!

[mimzalot]

what a day [nothing conceivably happened but i went on an adventure to hell in my brain]

[mimzalot]

just saw one piece smut on my feed and thought 'damn wish I were writing something about gay pirates' then had a dawning moment of self-reflection. I am writing about gay pirates. in fact that is all I'm writing right now. watch metanoia blues

[mimzalot]

Dredge is probably the most compelling video game experience I've had this year and yet my stream about it is like 80% jokes about toxic old man yaoi so it will never make it off my twitch channel. sorry. forget u read my post and play Dredge though

[mimzalot]

should have taken it more to heart when people called me funny bc I'm realising as I get older that lots of people think they're funny and aren't and it's pretty much the most insufferable thing to experience. there is so much humourlessness out in the wild. belated thanks

[mimzalot]

I'm so rarely a hater and I so infrequently want to share personal details with people that argue with me on the internet but I do kinda want to share my day-job with the people that used to get on my ass about FE discourse

"what would you know?" idk ask the senior diplomats I met with earlier in the week LMAOOO I was hired into my role because of my clear capacity for strategic thinking and cross-cultural communication WBU NERD? THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHTTT

[mimzalot]

accidentally used my inside voice on the outside today during family lunch. when I was told about a person at my mum's job that was being racist I skipped all the usual responses and said "hope he just dies" and I do think it's worth mentioning that no one disagreed

[mimzalot]

things I'm thinking about lately

coming from a collective culture that demands you conduct yourself with humility but also only acknowledges success through the perceptions of others; how that impacts those of us in the margins, on the fringes, overlooked or cast into the background for various reasons; where that intersects with gender, sexuality, income, etc

the above and how it applies to those of us operating in a white-western cultural system where 'if you want it done you do it yourself / if you want respect you must demand it yourself / if you want credit you must declare it of yourself' - all of which are varying levels of social faux pas and taboo, and accomplish the opposite in our cultures (see: 'fia palagi', or operating like a white person, disrupting village harmony, self-importance, overriding consensus)

the idea of Pacific culture valuing less what you perceive as being meaningful to do and more about what the village deems most important to do; the slow pace of requiring talanoa and approval; the statement 'who asked you to do that?' combined with the command of a village to 'do what you can to uphold us'

how elders become ill-equipped to manage and guide in a rapidly globalising context especially when carrying their own scars of colonisation; to be colonised and decolonised within the same generational bracket

the 'mental health' conversation being kind in essence but falling short when it comes to actual enactment; especially coming from cultures where existence is synonymous with service (and feeding into a larger systems where service is synonymous with capital, thus exploited) - e.g. when depression isn't just 'feeling sad' but 'I am unable to fulfill tasks to my community', and how this feeds into mental health crises across the Pacific, and where this aligns with whiteness (again, where conversations around mental health are guided by white people, statements like 'I need a mental health break from community work' do not and never will apply to people that innately live in a context that is communal - you can only take a break from serving the community if it is an optional quest from a baseline individualist culture)

and so on

[mimzalot]

gazing at this lovely comment we received yesterday after streaming our revised version of an ep of Metablues cries cries cries