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1. Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 23-Mar-2022 23:57:16 UTC Nate Cull

   • アズラ: 大キツネ

   @Azure

   Yep.

   My explanation is that Hollywood (and prestige TV) scriptwriters / directors are all people whose personal experience of logic, science and maths at school was of absolute soul-crushing torture, and so they honestly believe that the only people who could love STEM subjects must be tortured, soul-crushed people.

   It's not a charitable explanation, but it fits the observed facts.

   If true, this has very bad implications for American education and media.

   • アズラ: 大キツネ (azure@tailswish.industries)'s status on Thursday, 24-Mar-2022 00:20:26 UTC アズラ: 大キツネ

     in reply to
     @natecull You're right there.
     
     It's one reason why I prefer making the antagonist sympathetic and understandable to add complexity than making the protagonist nasty and borderline sociopathic.
     
     (That and the latter doesn't really add /complexity/ so much as just substitute an underdeveloped Hero for an underdeveloped Grimdark Antihero.)
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   • Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Mar-2022 00:20:27 UTC Nate Cull

     in reply to

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     @Azure

     Also the whole Hollywood formula thing of "there MUST ALWAYS be a clear Villain who can be blamed for everything that's gone wrong, and then physically humiliated / hurt / killed to achieve Closure for the hero's journey of self-discovery"

     that's got very bad implications for American politics and foreign policy and just general sense of self-identity and mission in the world, and continues to have bad effects.

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   • Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Mar-2022 00:23:55 UTC Nate Cull

     in reply to

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     @Azure

     The thjng about English that I didn't grasp is that it's a *social* game. There is zero connection between how good a piece of prose is, and how much society values it (and therefore teaches it).

     I think this became obvious to me very early on, that Composition was a game I could never win because it was social and therefore with undeclared, constantly changing rules all tied up with power and performance.

     But also pretty much all teaching is terrible.

   • アズラ: 大キツネ (azure@tailswish.industries)'s status on Thursday, 24-Mar-2022 00:23:55 UTC アズラ: 大キツネ

     in reply to

     @natecull I think there’s /some/ bits of goodness.

     Like I definitely think the composition teacher who told me to read my writing out loud and pay attention to how it flowed did me a hug favor. Before then I’d just write huge, page-long grammatically correct sentences jammed with parenthetical asides and independent clauses and…

     But my favorite quote on composition comes from C. S. Lewis:

     For in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you’re taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.

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   • Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Mar-2022 00:23:56 UTC Nate Cull

     in reply to

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     @Azure

     Same with athletics, and English composition. Pain, pain, suffering, pain.

     I love words and I love music and school made me feel I could never grasp, never "win" at those subjects.

     I don't naturally love athletics, but school sure made me hate moving my body much more than I would have naturally.

   • Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Mar-2022 00:23:58 UTC Nate Cull

     in reply to

     • アズラ: 大キツネ

     @Azure

     Haha I just started reading Lockhart's Lament (I think I may have read it before), finished the "musician's nightmare",

     and,

     I want to say that no, the author is way too optimistic, we absolutely DO teach music in this horrible stilted way, and that's why although I love music I am TERRIFIED of "doing anything musical" because I just hated, hated music class, I could NEVER get anything right, it was sheer pain and shame and failure from beginning to end.

   • keithzg (keithzg@fediverse.keithzg.ca)'s status on Thursday, 24-Mar-2022 00:27:15 UTC keithzg

     in reply to

     • アズラ: 大キツネ
     @natecull @Azure Reportedly the original showrunner of Picard wanted the shoe to largely just be Picard hanging out on the vineyard with old friends coming over for amiable visits, no big action or drama necessarily, and the production side of the equation went "ahahaha no, absolutely not"
     
     Or that is to say, a lot of Hollywood's inability to avoid the big deeply problematic ruts it always wallows in seems to be less on the creative side, and far more the moneymen.
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