elilla&, autostopowiczka3d ago

*edit*: this thread cleaned up and edited:
https://wordsmith.social/overthinking-the-apocalypse/journaling-against-dracula

I have been thinking a lot about luddism lately, in part because social media addiction fits so nicely with the mental fatigue I was left with after the last bout of covid. and I have been thinking about things like:

- social media as a coping mechanism for loneliness, and ultimately for the existential question (screaming into the void et cetera)
- fragility of supply chains and electronica generally (cf. RAM/SSD shortage, Israel war oil issues)
- march of technofascism (ID checks, chat control, deanonymisation, "AI" everywhere, spyware is now normal, Anduril/Palantir merely smokescreens for an entire complicit sector, no cellphones without spyware etc.)
- trans people and immigrants being the scapegoats
- the defanging of anarchism as a movement, the incredible erasure of Rojava and Chiapas from international discourse paralleling only the erasure of anarchist Spain in throughouness
- we living in interesting times, history II: a new beginning, todo dia um novo 7×1, the surreality of fascism increasingly normalised without anybody taking on weapons
- reality fragmentation and narrative control through increasingly sophisticated tech means

and what that all adds up to me is "we should keep diaries". as in, on paper

Journaling against Dracula

Flower Diary: The lost diary of a young lady. Advanced magical theory mixes seamlessly with youthful ponderings. Been thinking a lot ab...

Overthinking the apocalypse
Show threadelilla&, autostopowiczka
yes, becoming a political prisoner for your diary is a very real possibility, but idgaf. I would much rather get arrested for doing something with a chance to help the world, than spend my time on the scene performing this rehashed role of "complacent masses who refused to pick up on guns as the nazis took power", which is a role that's boring, depressing, and doesn't go well with my outfits.
Mar 26 at 10:42amWeb
Show threadelilla&, autostopowiczka3d ago

I've toyed with the idea of journaling in a conscript (perhaps my own Vinescript) or even a full conlang, but in the end that's a deterrent to the important thing, viz. to write. Journaling is intimidating. I type at 100wpm, if you're used to computers, moving into longhand feels painful. But one thing that I learned from #bujo, and later longhand creative writing, and then working on my thesis on paper, is that the slowness is a feature. It changes how your mind works, your relationship to language and the text; compared to typing, handwriting increases focus, attention and retention. It does, however, takes time. When I wrote my Holocaust poem in a frenzy while travelling through Berlin, I basically spent my entire time hopping from café to station bench to café writing nonstop, revision after revision, trying to capture what I experienced at Platform 17.

Then again, typing also takes all day if you account for drifting into the Internet because you have a device in your pocket. And even if you don't, if you had a e-ink typewriter or some other toy—again, your relationship with the text is just different *by virtue of* the slowness. A bit like you're editing and writing at the same time. I don't think I would have been able to write "Two is for Joy" if I had composed it on a keyboard.

Show threadelilla&, autostopowiczka3d ago

This will be a very niche analogy but maybe someone of you have had the experience of playing NES/Famicom Castlevania after playing SotN or other titles of the Igavania era. Suddenly everything is so *sluggish*. Your Belmont marches forward without the slightest haste, steps slow and imperturbable like the march of inevitability. Your whip flickers back for a beat before going forward. The Belmont commit to every jump, you can't change in midair, whatever you decided to do you have to face the consequences. Hordes of the undead knock you back undignifiedly, not terrible bosses but random bats flying you off-platform with the slightest brush of their wings. Used to the backdashes and fluid double jumps of an Alucard, a Soma, you feel like, wow, this game sucks. But it *cannot* suck. There's no way that fucking Castlevania has bad controls, Castlevania III has such high ratings, Rondo of Blood, Chronicles have such a stellar reputation. You must be not getting it. So you persevere, and then, eventually, it clicks; you realise how *intentional* these old games are, every screen carefully laid out like a puzzle; here's your set set of verbs, here are the enemies, how do you get through? You jump and whip a bat, and you keep the action button down; the Belmont walks backwards, with slow dignity, calmly dodging by a few pixels the hitbox of a bone thrown by the skeleton on the platform above; you move forward, then back, following the skeleton's movements, waltzing your own 8-bit danse macabre to chiptune Bach; it all fits together perfectly, like the elaborate gears of a clock tower. The Belmont is exactly as fast as they need to be.

*That* is how writing longhand feels like when you're used to typing.

Show threadelilla&, autostopowiczka3d ago

Some time ago I was at a political conference travelling with a comrade, and a local comrade (a stranger to us) was kind enough to host us on her sofa. On the last day of the conference she wasn't at home so I decided to leave her a thank-you note, and I engaged my entire gender in it, writing a cute little letter with round letters and doodles and colourful pens, the works. This was the trip during which I had that misadventure where I forgot my bokutō at the top of a mountain at night and ended up climbing up and down twice, with just a tactical flashlight, futilely retracing my steps and failing to find the telltale iris-pattern sword bag anywhere, until I gave up and headed home and realised I hadn't forgot Álmdrósar at the top of the mountain, but rather on the sidewalk by a lamplight, after hiking down.

So I wrote a summary of the entire thing in few sentences, a bit shorter than the one above, and my comrade read my note and said like: kinda incredible how you manage to condense the entire thing in such a small space. Because to her I had told the entire adventure, much of it by dumbphone calls while it happened, with great granularity of detail; and looking at it, yeah, there is an artistry to it, to sketching just the power lines that convey the energy, the life of the subject you're portraying, with minimal hand movements. But I didn't even think of it, it just comes naturally when you're doing longhand. We had a conference to go, i couldn't sit there writing all morning.

*That* is what I think I should be doing in a paper journal. Leave a record of what it was like to be a lesbian immigrant when the nazis came back in the 2020s and nobody took the threat seriously; and maybe it will do to someone in the 2120s when nazis return again like fucking Castlevania Dracula the same role that Weimar-era lesbian magazines had for me, to show that I'm not crazy, or that I'm crazy but I'm not *wrong*, how surreal it is, that everybody keeps going to work like nothing is happening; and this future queer would learn, like I learned, that this entire thing is very precedented, and that it's up to us to risk our necks this time. To commit to the jump. Or maybe my diary will be destroyed, or more likely just quietly forgotten and buried in a dumpster to rot with me. But the act of having written a diary will surely do me good in some way. At least it's not social media.

Show threadelilla&, autostopowiczka3d ago
the above thread (on leaving physical records of our experiences as a form of antifascist resistance) in a more readable article form for sharing etc: Journaling Against Dracula
https://wordsmith.social/overthinking-the-apocalypse/journaling-against-dracula
Journaling against Dracula

Flower Diary: The lost diary of a young lady. Advanced magical theory mixes seamlessly with youthful ponderings. Been thinking a lot ab...

Overthinking the apocalypse
Show threadelilla&, autostopowiczka3d ago
this looks like a good way to combine longform journaling with the #bujo: https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/faq/long-form-journaling
How to Long-form Journal In Your Bullet Journal

Journaling can also be a great way for you to explore ideas. In this article, Ryder Carroll talks about long-form journaling as an alternative to keeping a diary.

Bullet Journal
Show threadThe Marvelous Mx Tellington3d ago
@elilla you might know it already but if you don't, I think you'd enjoy Before Gender by Eli Erlick. I'm currently listening to the audiobook, it's a collection of short biographies of trans people from 1850 to 1950.
Show threadbebatjof 🇵🇸3d ago
@elilla 🩷