This Is Not A God-emperor.
This is not a god-emperor.
This is a god whose name is "Emperor."
Long-dead, he was the last ruler of a once-powerful empire whose cultural influence outlasted it.
Was he deified in his lifetime? We no longer know. But he is deified now.
While his memory lives on, his true name has been lost. At some point, the word "emperor" ceased to have meaning except when referring to him, therefore his name is now Emperor.
More Posts from Idrawtooslow and Others
There are books now that are specifically used as status symbols: people use them to appear to be the person they want others to see them as.
Consumer culture has the distressing effect of enhancing the human tendency to convince oneself that one liked something, for the sake of conformity and peace of mind. People tell themselves that they liked what they were told they should like.
Reviewers often wind up with extreme biases for and against certain types of works, for similar reasons to the above. It's also not too crazy to consider there may be some corruption in the literary review community.
Marketing is now a powerful discipline with cutting-edge psychology behind it. When used by trained professionals instead of incompetent corporate outcasts, it can essentially function as mind control, even for the well-informed.
Also, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."
TL; DR: Don't feel bad about hating something everyone else seemed to love. There are many reasons why terrible books can get good reviews. And your own opinion is still a valid opinion, even if it's contradictory.
the sense of horror when you finish a book that was Ass Bad and you go to see what fellow haters are saying but all the reviews say it is the best thing they've ever read. feel like i just saw my reflection in the mirror move all by itself or something
It's like Jim Woodring but quiet, and without the mental nausea. I love it all.
Well, folks, I'm starting to realize that maybe Bartleby the Scrivener might not have been the best role model for me to emulate...
I might actually use this one, someday.
A character with "true sight," or some kind of uncontrolled visionary episodes, isn't suffering from "misidentified psychosis," but is intuiting an extrapolated future based on the information they have.
They can predict the future, but it looks like insanity or a neurological condition. As they get older, more experienced, and better informed, their visions will get more accurate. Assuming they can survive that long.
Because even being right, or living in a culture that believes in oracles or prophecy, won't guarantee you get believed or respected. After all, humans are humans... or maybe I should say, people are people. If nobody wants to believe that something is a bad idea, they won't. If everyone wants to believe the army can brush the enemy aside without much trouble, they will despise you for harshing their vibe.
And don't think it will get better if you're right, or keep being right. They won't apologize to you, or change their attitude toward your prophecy (well, a small minority might). Most of them resent you for making them look bad, and will find a way to blame you for the very thing you warned them about.
What does the asker think "propaganda" means? That's the least weird explanation for this, is that they've never actually learned what propaganda means, but their childhood guess, that it means something like "antisemitism" or "Communism" or "dictatorship" slots in to what they hear people saying close enough that they never realize they're misunderstanding everything.
If the asker doesn't engage with politics or history or social justice much, there wouldn't even be much chance of anyone noticing, until they get confused enough to send this ask.
how are you people alive.
What if real life is the Eldritch Apocalypse, and we have all but forgotten earlier times, before The Planets Aligned, before we discovered Things Humanity Should Not Know, Dug Too Deep, and ruined our world by making it... this?
What if the true Eldritch Horror is... normativity? Conformity? Regimentation? Dullness of mind and experience?
What if we could remember what "whelming" felt like, or when cars still needed to be quarzyk-tested? What if squirrels reminded us of those times, because even though they used to also come in some of the colors that are now missing, they're pretty much the same, otherwise?
I have thousands of shitposts, rants, and essays sitting in notebooks, left over from decades of not using social media or having many friends. Hold on tight.
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