I’m drafting in the CMS in the hope that not having a backup built-in via handwriting or on my PC will encourage concision. That’s not always my strong suit. The purpose of this place on the internet is for me to talk about movies, games, TV, books (fiction and non, including graphic novels and comics) at length at my discretion. This blog exists for me to discuss my ongoing cultivation of a critical attitude and identity, to discuss knowledge production and the commodification of the soul. Sometimes I will heavily edit pieces to be more in line with what a paying publication might like. Sometimes I will just allow a smattering of random thoughts to adhere or congeal into something hopefully legible. I am writing this in January 2024, as the month transitions from its middle to its late part. I am also amid transitions in my life, some of which just have to do with getting to know myself better. Fear of vulnerability has compromised my writing before, and I will struggle through that.
I’m both aware that no good writing comes without releasing something of yourself for judgment, and that the internet is no less a punitive and surveilling place than it was when I was younger. Arguably it’s even more that than it was before. This fills me with anxieties both perfectly logical and seemingly irrational. I’m not going to dig that out for you right now, but we will no doubt return to it. To courage and cowardice and expectations of one’s self and one’s community and one’s society. About the constant process of selling ourselves, about the further grinding of humanity into marketable, consumable bites.
This space, P.C. Vulpes, will undergo changes as I try to get my footing and figure out what I’m doing here besides jumping ship from Substack because of the whole Nazi thing (a bunch of writers asked “hey what’s up with all these Nazis you’re making money from and promoting?” and substack brass said “don’t worry, it’s cool, we don’t like Nazis but we’re not gonna make them go anywhere”) and because I feel like WordPress as a content management system doesn’t have the same expectations of using its users that Substack as a platform does (for instance, they aren’t trying to pivot to being a social media platform while refusing to do moderation), though I may be proven wrong about that yet. There are still many publications I respect there, and I’m not sure yet whether I’ll get rid of my Substack yet, but I’m leaning toward moving out and away.
I suppose one thing you should know about me, more than anything else, is that I think art and entertainment are important and the central purpose of this blog is for me to sketch out my thoughts on why that is and how it works. I don’t always want to care about these things, because our preconceptions about their triviality (or as I’ve so internalized it) makes me feel guilt as if I’m consumed by distraction while the world burns and collapses. But I’ve seen some journalists from Gaza that call themselves “storytellers” and I do think stories are important even if the concept of the importance of stories has been used to prop up bad art. For whatever it’s worth, I recognize that a genocide is ongoing in Gaza (alongside crimes against humanity in Sudan, unrest in Congo, and a war in Ukraine) among other serious issues that are worth your full attention. Anytime you spend here is a gift to me. I hope I make it worth your while. Sometimes I doubt the importance of art because the constraints and contrivances of what is valued widely (for instance, the box office, the metacritic score, a vaguely defined sense of “representation”) are not necessarily in line with what I find edifying, but besides that these data points can provide context, things don’t always stop mattering to you just because you realize other things have more dire or urgent consequences. I guess I say all that to say that from time to time I may just be talking about politics, but it will likely largely be in the context of writing about how art-media-entertainment-products reflect a sociopolitical environment.
Can you see it? Can you see me struggling with concision as my mind goes in a bunch of different directions? Maybe this will mostly be a place for rambling. But, in any case, it fills me with joy to write. I have a full-time job that pays me to live and I do work that I enjoy and value, and I am here writing because nothing else makes me feel the way writing does. It’s funny, with as much of it is done by typing on computers these days, that we call it writing. Be that as it may, here I am sharing it with you.
Welcome to what I am, for now, calling P.C. Vulpes.
pcvulpes 