Category: nonfiction

(Yet another little collection of tweets from awhile back, just so I can archive and mull over it again later.)

People who cleave to the belief that ‘immoral’ art/fiction can do mind-altering harm often use the same line of reasoning to conclude that consuming ‘moral’ art/fiction makes you a morally better or more empathetic person. It’s a seductively easy and romantic binary to agree with and one that is fundamentally wrong. There’s a lot of elements at play with buying into that idea; art & stories are so often peddled as ‘empathy machines’. Disgust and offense and generally feeling bad are easy to categorize as ‘immoral’ so I understand the inclination.

Continue reading “Art, Harm and Semiotics”

Did I forget I had this blog? Maybe. Am I tired of trying to find decent newsletter platforms that aren’t a pain to use and allow discussion but aren’t funding bigots? Yes. So I’m back to this ancient WordPress site, to hopefully renew its use within a regular writing practice. I write a lot for myself but it never enters a state where it’s polished enough to share which is why most of my thoughts go half-baked on Twitter. But I’d like to get back to trying to write essays and express myself on a critical and theoretical level again. For now, here’s some thoughts I want to revisit. (Yes, originally they were tweets. Baby steps.)

Continue reading “On Structure, Protagonists, and Conflict”