Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station, where I’m currently writing this from, is impressive and clean and beautiful, with live jazz emanating from one corner, an excellent food court, and a comfortable lounge for ticketed passengers. It would remind me a lot of a European train station, if not for the fact of my train being delayed for an hour for no discernible reason. C’est la vie!
Speaking of Europe, I’ll be in the UK for a week-ish beginning in late February, doing lights and sound for the first bit of Britanick’s run at the Soho theater. If you’re in London or Brighton, come see it! (They are also doing other dates in other cities but I won’t be there, soz.)
Anyway, second week in a row putting this out! I’ve got a feature coming sometime in the next few weeks and am working on pitches in the meantime, but I think I can keep this up, so smash that subscribe if you want to stay tuned in:
This week in fandom
“New type of puriteen just dropped,” reads the caption in a tweet of a screenshot of a ridiculous Tumblr anon ask:
First of all, this is funny. Second of all, it’s kind of sad that so many people don’t realize that it’s obviously a strawman satire, and are taking it very seriously and getting all up in arms about it.
Poe’s law in action aside, a satirical take on the “puriteen” stereotype reveals a lot about how opponents of that Type Of Guy view their ideology. Many fandom people of a certain age and taste passionately want to believe in an enemy which stands against everything they believe in: against free speech within the bounds of fandom expression, the value of transformative storytelling, the power of eroticism circulating within a shared imagination.
Sure, there is a large (or just loud) group of people— “antis”—who perhaps are lacking in nuance in their stance against “problematic” tropes in fandom creative practice (and outside of or adjacent to it, as we see frequently in YA Book Twitter drama).
But it does mature adults a disservice to make up a type of guy to get mad at, especially when the issue is as thorny as this one, which combines content moderation, trigger warnings, literary morality, and sexual ethics into one bubbling stewpot of discourse. The idea of extending the “anti” caricature to be against all fanfiction in general is very telling: there is a perception of the entire subculture being under threat by semi-mythical moral crusaders so far gone that they view pleasure itself as dangerous.
It’s important to understand that real antis, insofar as they do exist, are also capable of feeling pleasure and enjoying participation in the subculture. They’re in fandom too! That’s what fandom is—a hobby based on passionate enjoyment. The danger comes, on both sides, when that passion begins to derive not from the cultural object itself and its creative circulation within the group, but from the feeling of pursuing justice against an imagined or constructed out-group, as encouraged or required by other members of the in-group.
This week in polar exploration
Today, January 20th, is Penguin Awareness Day! Are you aware of penguins? Please specifically be aware of these horrible cartoon penguins, drawn on chalkboards at Whitworth Hall in Manchester by Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton when they lectured there during the early 1900s:
The drawings, after being rescued from a dumpster, were rescued and conserved by the Scott Polar Research Institute in 2018. They’re not currently on display, which is a shame—I think they would make the perfect centerpiece for any exhibit about Scott and Shackleton. The knowledge that Shackleton lectured five years after Scott, and upon spotting Scott’s still-unerased, hallowed drawing must have felt the irrepressible urge to try and one-up his erstwhile commander, now rival, is exquisite—as is the clear result of utter failure, and his subsequent attempt to turn his embarrassment into comedy by scratching out the irreverent “THIS is a PENGUIN?” It’s honestly adorable, and also more revealing than you’d think about the relationship between the two legendary explorers.
Things I read this week that I liked
How boygenius Became the World’s Most Exciting Supergroup by Angie Martoccio
“You don’t hear enough about how people become successful and then happy,” she continues. “I’m able to hire my best friends to travel the world with me, and I don’t have any shitty people around anymore.”
That line, by the way, recalls the verse Bridgers contributed to “Ghost in the Machine,” a standout track on SZA’s S.O.S.: “You said all my friends are on my payroll/You’re not wrong, you’re an asshole.” Some fans theorized that bit was about Mescal, while I wondered if it was Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst, her bandmate in Better Oblivion Community Center, whom she is rumored to have also dated. Later, when I phone Bridgers and ask if that’s the case, she says, “I do not recall, as a politician would say.” She’s equally vague about the future of BOCC, saying, “I don’t know.”
This School Teaches People How To Poop Properly
In the sessions, both kids and parents are taught the biological basics of how and why food is digested — Taro Gomi’s illustrated book Everyone Poops is a core text — as well as proper bathroom practices. Instead of focusing on the occasional accidents, children receive praise when they’re able to independently recognize an urge to poop and are then able to complete the task on the toilet.
“The kids learn in the group about how to have calm, relaxed, comfortable bodies while sitting on the toilet,” explained Corvi, the program director. “And then they have their accidental success, where they have a poop in the toilet [at home], and then they learn, I can do this and it’s not so scary.”