Inch by Inchy
Made these about a month ago, figured other spoonies might want to use them
we were the liminal kids. alive before the internet, just long enough we remember when things really were different.
when i work in preschools, the hand signal kids make for phone is a flat palm, their fingers like brackets. i still make the pinky-and-thumb octave stretch when i "pick up" to respond to them.
the symbol to save a file is a floppy disc. the other day while cleaning out my parents' house, i found a collection of over a hundred CDs, my mom's handwriting on each of them. first day of kindergarten. playlist for beach trip '94. i don't have a device that can play any of these anymore - none of my electronics are compatible. there are pieces of my childhood buried under these, and i cannot access them. but they do exist, which feels special.
my siblings and i recently spent hours digitizing our family's photos as a present for my mom's birthday. there's a year where the pictures just. stop. cameras on phones got to be too good. it didn't make sense to keep getting them developed. and there are a quite a few years that are lost to us. when we were younger, mementos were lost to floods. and again, while i was in middle school, google drive wasn't "a thing". somewhere out there, there are lost memories on dead laptops. which is to say - i lost it to the flood twice, kind of.
when i teach undergrad, i always feel kind of slapped-in-the-face. they're over 18, and they don't remember a classroom without laptops. i remember when my school put in the first smartboard, and how it was a huge privilege. i used the word walkman once, and had to explain myself. we are only separated by a decade. it feels like we are separated by so much more than that.
and something about ... being half-in half-out of the world after. it marks you. i don't know why. but "real adults" see us as lost children, even though many of us are old enough to have a mortgage. my little sister grew up with more access to the internet than i did - and she's only got 4 years of difference. i know how to write cursive, and i actually think it's good practice for kids to learn too - it helps their motor development. but i also know they have to be able to touch-type way faster than was ever required from me.
in between, i guess. i still like to hand-write most things, even though typing is way faster and more accessible for me. i still wear a pj shirt from when i was like 18. i don't really understand how to operate my parents' smart tv. the other day when i got seriously injured, i used hey siri to call my brother. but if you asked me - honestly, i prefer calling to texting. a life in anachronisms. in being a little out-of-phase. never quite in synchronicity.
I imagine that the last generation to really feel this way, to really feel a before-and-after kind of world, was at the last turn of the century, which had 3 huge, life-changing inventions happen all at once.
In 1890, everybody rode horses, used candles to see at night, and communicated through letters.
By the 1920s (only 30 years later!), everybody had automobiles (or access to another form of 'self-driving' transportation like busses or trams) and nobody had horses. Nearly everyone had electricity in their houses. Nearly everyone had a telephone, or access to one.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine growing up, being taught by your parents all about how to ride horses and care for them and hitch them to a wagon, only to...not ever use that knowledge as an adult, because you have a car? Can you imagine learning how to make candles, finally getting good enough at it to be useful to your family as a teenager, only to flick a switch to turn on a light bulb as an adult?
I feel like that last huge change in technology is the same thing we are going through. I know how to read a paper map. I will never need to use this knowledge. But it's still in there; including the many patient hours my mother spent teaching me, and a lot of fond memories I have of her doing it. I know how to research a topic in a paper library, with actual books. Pretty sure I will never do that again. I memorize phone numbers, 'just in case'. In case what? The automobile (smartphone) gets un-invented? But I hold that knowledge in my head. It's there. It's part of me.
I wish I could speak to my great-great-grandmother, who had her first baby in 1900. To ask her, if what Millennials now are going through is what it was like for her Centennial generation. The absolute whiplash, from one way of life to another.
Kids born in 1890 knew how to make candles, and kids born in 1920 could not fathom why you would need to know this.
I’m imagining Jon and Thayet going, “The Immortals have returned! Quick, while everyone’s distracted! Establish a legal system!”
and it WORKS because the Immortals War is VERY DISTRACTING and it’s very easy to keep the people who are going to dig in their heels the most EXTREMELY BUSY with genuine important tasks that are coincidentally FAR FROM CORUS
Having just finished Lady Knight I'm reflecting on how fundamentally different Kel's story is from Daine and Alanna.
Alanna and Daine are both heavy on The Nonsense (to use @holy-muffins excellent phrase). You can roughly sum them up as The Beginning Of The Nonsense and The Nonsense Escalates. And both of them have these very specific backgrounds, and they have powers, and the gods are constantly bothering them (and this goes for Arram Draper too)... Kel is just Kel (except for the one head's up from the Chamber).
Like, you can roughly sum up Protector of the Small as Kel Goes to School and then Kel's First Job. She's an excellent knight, but just regular flavour excellent. The entirety of First Test and of Squire is just Kel's education with a few hiccups. The climax of both is just, a final exam. The big climax of Page culminates in A Courtroom Drama, in Squire. The big climax of Lady Knight Kel describes as the greatest disappointment of her life.
Its amazing. She's living her life in the aftermath of all the Nonsense, but that's just her life, she's grown up with it.
Okay but honestly fucking shit like this when they show Zuko’s scar side when talking about Sozin and then having the bar pass and have his non-scar side when Iroh says Roku is his great grandfather if EXACTLY the kind of shit that elevates this show to where really no other show has ever come and probably never will
But ALSO can we talk about the fact that every single shot of this conversation is framed so that we see Zuko through the bars but we always get a close-up of Iroh’s face with no bars in the frame because IROH ISN’T THE ONE IN A CAGE.
simply dont monday
simply don’t tuesday
simply don’t wednesday
Simply don’t thursday
How about we DONT Friday
babygirl your enormous eyebags and just barely noticeable tremor have captivated me
