PUBLISHED IN FARRAGO
July 7th
Omg hi again!
What's New:
- Deltarune chapter 5 is so good guys. Like lowkey I've been getting nothing done I have played so much minecraft and factorio and danganronpa I have forgotten how to be productive.
- BUT BIG NEWS: I got published in Farrago (Unimelb's student magazine)! For the first time! It was a piece I wrote for class about like. A robot with schizophrenia I guess. Go give it a read please!
- here's also a new post on my website which is like a satire about being trans. Then there's this SECRET UNPUBLISHED STORY called The Glutton, The Werewolf. I'm keeping it off the website for now so I can have it in my pocket when I wanna submit to magazines and stuff but you're more than welcome to go read the draft version!
- 've been reading Terry Prachett's Pyramids and it's... not good. It's like based on ancient Egypt but it like does all the stereotypical jokes and also the only female character has two character traits: being stupid and being sexy. It has like no thematic depth and sure, he's writing satire, it shouldn't have depth, but like I'm being honest it doesn't really feel like satire. It feels genuine. I'm gonna hold out hopes for Guards! Guards! because everyone says its good but if I'm not impressed by it I'll probably give up on terry pratchett... I'm sorry man.
- I thought it would be fun to study high school biology so I read through the year 11 Jacaranda Textbook. I like having a little background knowledge on all sorts of things so I can actually engage in conversation about it and ALSO I am autistic as FUCK and so I made 200 flash cards of that thing. Sugoi!
- Hung out with some people I hadn't seen in years and their reactions were (in this order): "wow, you're so pretty!" and "wait, have I met you before." :) i was so hot they didn't remember me
What's In Da Works:
- No, for real, I am so locked out. I took drugs once and have been permanently locked out since. Really there's a lot I'm working on but not a lot I'm finishing.
- There's this short story I'm working on (It's a tragic romance about the perils of insecurity) that I'm really excited for but have been really slow at writing for. My writing group seems to like it so far so here's hoping?
- The video game I'm mentioned last time? Haven't touched it.
- I bought a drawing tablet off of a certain spider and have been playing around with it! It's a huge leap like getting your head in the space of drawing somewhere and seeing it come up elsewhere, and with much less tactile feedback and using a brush you're not familiar with but I hope to get the hang of it. Really I have so many artistic hobbies I don't think I'm ever gonna be really good at any one of them but if I can at least have fun learning them, I think that's all I need.
- Guys should I write a book. Legitimately I've been thinking about it I have a couple ideas in mind. One is this metanarrative which plays on the tropes of isekai but is told from the perspective of someone in the universe, and in the metanarrative their universe, and they themselves, are explicitly fictional and also its a yuri. My other ideas is to write a story about a girl with a cannibalism fetish. Isn't that metal as shit. Heck yeah. I dunno I've been wanting to write more character and plot based stories for a while---short fiction tends towards vignette---so maybe that's a plan later on?
- I've got a demo for one (1) track on the new album/EP. But besides that I've been pretty stuck for music making. I feel like I have forgotten everything about how to write a song.
Tangent Philosophical:
I have this theory I was thinking about today. Hear me out on it.
I think people understand eachother as archetypes. What I mean by this is that we don't just meet people and pick up on certain personality traits, we imagine these personality traits to belong to certain characters or narratives they live out, and so these personality traits work together with other traits to form an archetype. Really, an archetype is just a term for a pattern of personality traits, behaviours, memories, etc. Implications:
- You make assumptions about other people when you begin to place them in a particular archetype.
- While people can push at the edges of the bubble you place them in, they generally do not break the bubble. Their behaviour is contextualised and rationalised into their archetype and they can only mould the archetype very slowly.
- When people do pop the bubble, they spawn off a new archetype, defined ub contrast with the old one. Existing assumptions and narratives we have made about them still remain. This is how your worldview expands.
- Since archetypes are contextual, when you see people in difference circumstances, different lights, or different framings, you can place them in more than one archetype. This familiarity with the person grows not with how much time you have spent with them, but with how varied the circumstances you have seen them in are.
- Whenever you self-reflect, you do this to yourself. You place yourself into archetypes, and it can be a struggle because you are familiar with yourself in many varied circumstances and any one characterisation or narrative will be a simplification.
- While you can reflect on the archetypes you view yourself as having, you cannot control the narratives others place upon you. Your system of archetypes is not necessarily the same as theirs (although coming from the same culture, they will have similarites), and so you can't really consciously control how you are perceived, you just have to build yourself by habit into the kind of person who is perceived positively.
- Other people always seem more put together, since you see them in fewer circumstances, and without their internal thoughts, that you can fill in the blanks to place them in a limited number of archetypes and narratives.
- When we write fictional characters, despite how much depth we give them, they are similarly simplified, into being a specific thing with a specific story, and do not relate the complexities and absurdities of real life---most art is apollonian in this way. Even worse is that as an author, your characters rarely surprise you. Unlike real people, they do not pop their bubble or show themselves in a different light unless you make them.
In Conclusion:
Bye bye guys! Have a lovely July/August I hope the second half of the year is kind to you. Go read a book or something idk. You can reply to this email by the way. I don't think anyone stops you. But don't spam me. Please.
