2 min read

Unrealistic reading goals + links

Unrealistic reading goals + links
Image description: Photo of me, a white person with short curly hair, looking worried. Next to me a cartoon picture of a pile of books with the text "Setting myself up to fail?!" overlaid. Blue background and light blue lines coming out from my head.

Welcome back to my newsletter! Today I have... another video for you.

Hopefully my next newsletter will include an article. I am working on one about balancing mental health care with staying engaged with the genocide in Gaza. I look forward to sharing it with you soon.

Here is my video:

Daniel Maté analysing and calling out Brené Brown's statement on what she calls "The Israel-Hamas war". The YouTube video is here. I found it very enlightening.

I laughed out loud in parts as he used comedy to get his point across but I also was able to understand a more radical perspective. (I am always interested in a more radical leftist perspective.)

Evelyn From The Internets explaining why influencers don't get political. YouTube video is here. (I think I may have linked to this video before but I really love it so am linking it again in case you missed it.)

Are you upset with your favourite content creator for not speaking up against genocide? Evelyn might be able to help you out here. As well as providing some insight into this question, this video helped me to re-examine my parasocial relationships, which is a helpful exercise for so many of us!

Harry Potter fanfic. You can read it here. (This is the only link from today not about settler-colonial violence. It is about a different sort of violence, just as insidious.)

I started reading Harry Potter when I was 11 years old, the same age Harry is at the start of the books. I was such a massive fan. Like so many fans, I was devastated when the creator outed herself as a massive TERF. I have heard her described as a fascist and I don't feel confident with that label but there is certainly evidence she is buddies with fascists, which is something most people try to avoid.

Since all that went down, any mention of Harry Potter makes me feel angry and betrayed. Since reading this fanfic, I feel a sense of resolution around those emotions.

The writing style of the fanfic closely matches that of the Harry Potter books, but the story is addressing the dangerous message that JK Rowling has now appeared to have dedicated her life to propagating. Exploring and exposing these violent ideas within the Harry Potter universe was a deeply healing experience to me.

The piece was written by Joshua Drummond, an Australian-New Zealander whose work I deeply enjoy and respect. He has a tongue-in-cheek newsletter about self-improvement and a more political but still funny newsletter about meta-analysis of news.

Until next time!

Emmeline

PS: I have now turned on comments on this newsletter. You just need to log in, which is relatively easy to do. I am still not sure how to install a "like" button but now I am thinking maybe I don't even want one? If you like this article and you feel the urge to click a like button in response, please comment instead! I would love to connect with you that way.

I miss the early blogging days of comment conversations, before social media dispersed our commenting conversations and everything devolved to people arguing on facebook based on reading headlines without even clicking through to the article.

Emmeline Tyler

Leftie feminist autistic who can't seem to turn her brain off.