I’ve switched from idealistic goals to realistic goals, but who knows when I may switch back? My brain is jumpy right now so I’m interested in seeing what road it’s going to traipse down. I don’t know any more than other people do, which is the exciting part. I can start with the intention to go in one direction, and then, a thousand words later, I’ve done a one-eighty without even knowing it.
I don’t have a problem with that. It’s how my brain works, and who am I to say no to that? It’s taken me many decades, but I’ve finally made my peace to how meandering (and verbose) my brain is. In my twenties, I used to be embarrassed by it. I would apologize that it took me so long to say anything, and my posts were legendary for their length. Now, I know it’s partly because of my neurospiciness that I can’t say anything in a brief manner.
It took me a long time to figure out it’s because I see things as a complete whole and not as their pieces or their parts. I had trouble in school when a teacher or a group wanted to focus on one topic without seeing the way other topics interacted with it. For example, I took a Feminism in Philosophy class in college. All of it was very tilted towards the Western world. I asked about how feminism differed in different countries/ethnicities/cultures, and my teacher said that she didn’t have time to talk about that.
I didn’t say anything, but in my mind, I was thinking, “You mean, you won’t make time for it.” Also, I was thinking, “Some of us don’t have the luxury to separate out issues like race and gender.”
This was before the days of nominal intersectionality, and it wasn’t even a glimmer of an idea in anyone’s mind. It was frustrating because it’s not like I coudl say, “Hey, let me put being Asian away and not be treated any differently because of it so I can focus on my gender” and have anyone take me seriously.
It was really frustrating to me, and the introduction of intesectionality didn’t really change anything because it was lip service more often than not. Also, no one cared about Asian people, anyway.
My point in mentioning that is my mentality is reflected in my writing. I can’t write about things in isolation because everything is connected in my mind. I found out this was a symptom of certain neurodivergent conditions. I can’t tell you what a relief it is that my mind is not broken–just wired differently. No, it doesn’t change the fact that I have to mask to be acceptable in normal people gatherings, but at least I know it’s not (completely) me.
Honestly, that’s the biggest relief whether I get an official diagnosis or not: knowing that, yes, my brain is different, but it’s not broken. Or not completely broken, anyway. And to find people who are just as weird as I am.
Back to my writing.
My characters are going to be complex, saddled with many issues, and be minorities in several different ways. See, that’s not me being ‘woke’–that’s me being me. Cishet white dudes sometimes complain about how DEI is ‘being shoved down their throats’ in a variety of pop culture mediums. Meaning, 1 out of 4 lead actors are NOT WHITE! Which is actually slightly down from the year before (roughly 4%), by the way. That’s just one stat in this study/report, and it’s a very depressing one.
I have a pretty simple rule these days–if a piece of media does not have any minorities in it from the start, I’m simply not interested. Oh, and I’m not counting het cis white women in this calculation.
Side note: Discrimination by race, gender, age, sexuality, etc., in the workplace is a no go. In someone’s personal life, though, I have no issue with deciding what pop culture you want to engage with (or who you want to date) by whatever criteria you want to use. Is it discrimination? Yes. But in the case of someone’s personal life, as long as they are not harming someone (and, no, turrning someone down for a date is not harming them) is not a problem.
When I was in college, I was having a discussion about books with a cishet white dude. I said that I did not read anything not written by an Asian woman. He said that was discrimination, and he had much indignation in his voice. I said, “Yep. And I bet you I have still read more dead white dudes than you have people of color.”
See, I was being generous by widening it from Asian women to people of color. And it still wouldn’t be close. Remember, this was pre 2000 by a decade. I would have bet every penny I had that I had read twice as many dead white dudes than he had people of color.
Let’s be real. Most white men aren’t going to read people of color, but if they begrudgingly did, it would be men of color. It’s a known truism that girls/women will watch/read/listen to media that is meant for boys, but not vice-versa. That’s the excuse given for not doing more girl/women-focused media, and it makes me tired.
It’s fucking 2025, and we’re going back in time?
This is my long-winded way of saying, yeah, I’m going to make my characters as complex and difficult as I am. This is one reason I haven’t read in quite some time. I just cannot get with what most people find compelling.
So, let me throw that on my list of goals for next year–finding media I resonate with. It’s probably going to be books because that’s my favorite medium. I may watch one movie. Let’s make that a goal. No TV shows, though. I just cannot with them. The last one I actually liked was….BoJack, and that was only the first season from about the third episode to just before the last episode. The last episode–no, I just looked it up. It’s the second-to-last episode of the second season. The second season was very uneven, and that episode just killed any interest I had in the series. Also, I was never happyy that Diane Nguyen was played by a non-Asian actor. That’s not the point of this post, but it’s also part of the point of this post.
I don’t know why I especially don’t like TV, but here is a list of shows that I watched at least one episode of and did not like: Lost, Seinfeld, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, West Wing, The Newsroom, and The Sopranos. Those are just off the top of my head, and my reaction ranged from ‘eh’ to ‘that’s fuckking awful’.
I’m done for now. More tomorrow.