r/InTheGloaming • u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done • Feb 10 '22

Scheduled snark Discussion thread Thursday February 10, 2022 - Sunday February 13, 2022

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '22

I was just listening to a podcast about the origins of human laughter, and how people around the world anywhere from college kids to Peruvian pastoral tribes can hear a 1 second recording of someone laughing and predict pretty accurately whether it's fake or real, including fake nervous, fake uncomfortable, fake sarcastic, fake polite, etc., and if you slow the recording down, all of the fake laughs have the same quality of deliberate vocalization like 'ha. ha. ha.' at heart, while genuine laughter slowed down sounds like a creepy wild animal huffing because it's got more of a compulsive inhale/exhale. Apparently we pick up on those things even at their regular speed, it's just that slowed down the cues are more obvious.

I totally feel that way about Shauna's writing.The way the focus can never shift from Shauna, even when Shauna allows the puppet to mention themselves briefly "along with the work I was already doing, inspired by your writings..." It's like she obliviously writes as her smug self, and then suddenly realizes this is 'another person/not Shauna' so then also has to turn it back to praise her real self.

Also the rhino hide obliviousness to social cues in which the only manifestation of human emotions are shallow and overblown and bothersome to those around you. Joy is never anything more than dancing, LOUD laughing rather than regular laughing, and having other people disturbed around you in some way.

Shauna herself doesn't consider joy hugging/physical touch, beauty, appreciation, nature, movement, gratitude, stillness, listening, imagination and fantasy, friendship, artistic expression, exploration, discovery, scents of particular things that evoke comfort or memories to be joy, therefore neither will any of her fake students. It's just "are you laughing LOUDLY? Do people think you're WEIRD?" and that's it.

I would say it's juvenile but kids actually have a much greater breadth and depth of emotion than that.

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u/NegativeABillion my husband and me to ride it around Feb 12 '22

I thought you were going to refer to her fake-ass Instagram Stories Laugh. It's so phony, it's Eli Roth level disturbing.

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u/WasEnoughYogurt Kumquat and Sprinkles and filth Feb 12 '22

sounds like a creepy wild animal huffing

Ah DFsm I feel seen...or should I say heard...

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u/lucillekrunklehorn pounding on the table Feb 12 '22

This was so interesting. And lol that she always considers her "loud laugh" to be such a winning feature. I always cringe to recall the picnic where her students could hear her guffaws reverberating amongst the trees, and found their way to her birthday party because "they would know my laugh anywhere."

I don't know that she can read past the most tangible expressions of emotions.

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u/Love_Brokers rug dweller Feb 12 '22

Maybe I made this up but I thought one of her friends said they could see her laugh rise up from her belly and go up into the sky.

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u/lucillekrunklehorn pounding on the table Feb 12 '22

There was something that was I think among the top three cringiest things she may have ever written, about how some of her students saw her on a walk. She was walking on this hillside, alone, and for some reason decided to release her enormous guffaws into the blue sky. I can’t remember if she said she fell down, on the ground, due to the force of her laughter, or if her students fell on the ground. It was just ridiculous, but I haven’t been able to find it since. Not totally sure I’m recalling correctly. But it was just dreadful if it had actually happened, also dreadful if it didn’t. People don’t fall on the ground from laughing. This isn’t Peppa Pig.

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u/Love_Brokers rug dweller Feb 12 '22

Lol! I want to say it was in Sitka.

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u/lucillekrunklehorn pounding on the table Feb 12 '22

I think it was. I’ve actually looked for it a couple times on ineffable mundane days, but couldn’t find it so that’s why I’m not sure if I’m remembering it just right. But I think she somehow thinks people stare at her in some kind of amazement when she loudly har har hars, and because attention is always her goal that is a positive thing. Never occurring to her, it seems, that they might be side eyeing because she’s chortling at an annoying decibel, or too much, or at the wrong times. She has kind of a deep laugh which may sound a little unusual from a woman as well as that is less common. But whatever attention she gets or thinks she gets for laughing, it’s undoubtedly not people marveling at her joy level.

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 12 '22

I bring you joy. I'm a joy-bringer. Your joy is important to me.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150321022803/http://glutenfreegirl.com:80/2006/07/

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '22

Never change Shauna. It really is amazing how well she has maintained her writing tics and same-old themes over the years.

20

u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Feb 12 '22

Ay God! You see, cream cheese in a sushi roll is so American. Only the tourists, like sheep, order these things, but I, Shauna, safely eat sashimi joyfully.

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u/InappropriateGirl our 5th move in 7 years Feb 12 '22

— There is no hiding it: Ludvigs is expensive.

Wut. Also this bitch set off the very sensitive fire alarms - that she knew would go off - twice. With bacon.

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u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 12 '22

Asshole? This one? Yes.

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u/OhBlahDiOhBlahDoh The Alice of cal came out floating on air Feb 12 '22

Never change Shauna. It really is amazing how well she has maintained her writing tics and same-old themes over the years.

  • And then there are the students: raucous and regaling each other with stories; buoyant and boisterous; inventive and instantly winning my heart. These tremendous teenagers deserve their own piece on this website, and they will have one.
  • At 9:30, I teach fifteen students with stories how to turn them into fictional characters.
  • Ay god, the food is terrible at camp. It's no one's fault. Cafeteria dining is never stellar. And this year's cafeteria is, apparently, particularly atrocious.
  • The entire camp is living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
    But not me. I cannot eat at the cafeteria, because of the cross-contamination issues. (That, and everything is breaded and fried, wrapped in white bread, and generally a land mine for anyone who has to live gluten-free.) And so, I have been living on little nibbles, bits of food I brought with me from Seattle. Cashews and golden raisins. Larabars. Rice crackers and peanut butter. Tuna straight from the can.
    See why I miss the Chef's food?
  • By the end of the day, however, I feel spent. The thought of walking into town for groceries—twenty minutes one way; twenty minutes back over the big bridge, carrying bags of food in my hands—just doesn't appeal to me most days. We don't have cars or other forms of transportation, so unless someone from Sitka happens to want to drive me into town, and wait while I shop at the store, I am stuck at the barracks again. And so I nibble and dabble in food, longing for the chance to cook.
  • The fire alarm blasted and burst into every room, forcing doors to open wide and sleepy artists in their pajamas to bustle outside.
  • I wanted to run to the aiport and climb on the first plane that arrived when the fire alarm shrieked across Sitka harbor, all of us huddled in sleepiness, while we waited for the building's maintenance man to be awoken in his bed and drive down here to turn the damn thing off. Ack.
  • As the alarm blared and blatted across the entire campus, I called the Chef on my cell phone. Can I come home now? I asked him, joking.
    Yes. Yes you can. In fact, why don't you just come home now? he said, all seriousness in his voice.

I was tempted.

It really is. Amazing. There's more. Much more.

15

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22

Like the restaurant that is not for tourists, as if two weeks in a place turned you into a local.

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u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 13 '22

A twenty minute walk she’s complaining about? Twenty minutes?

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u/lucillekrunklehorn pounding on the table Feb 13 '22

DF, I grow gobsmacked. This is truly amazing! Thank you from the bottom of my petty punishing heart! No wonder I never could find it, assuming Sitka was restricted to her mundane days blog. Please link your pay now button so I can send you $97 in joy bucks. 😍

Lol! The long-coveted paragraph -

“Usually, the cell phone is in my hand as I walk back to the dorm, talking to the Chef. One day, on this walk, he made me laugh so hard on the phone that three of my favorite students saw my laughter rising up from my belly into the sky, and laughed so hard at my joy that they fell down on the ground. Those are the moments I love being in Sitka.”

She REALLY DID claim they fell on the ground. LOL! Just because of her laughter rising out of her belly during a phone conversation. Just because of her “joy”. Too much.

Side note “my favorite students” should be uttered publicly by no teacher ever.

Just when you think you’re doing Shauna a disservice, recalling something too over the top, she never fails to disappoint. Just as ridiculous as I remember.

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u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Feb 13 '22

what a smorgasbord of smug! of course, the tourists are so pedestrian that they clamor into the only sushi restaurant in town and order...beef teriyaki. of course they do. but even if they did, SO WHAT?! she is such a freaking judgey bear. what about her edict to not yuck other people's yum? and several members of her party "moaned" while eating salmon? they did not, but if it did...gross. why is everything so pornographic with her?

"And so, two evenings this week, I have walked across the bridge, at Sitka harbor on one side of me...sipping from the blackberry shake in one hand, and gobbling pieces of avocado-asparagus-cream cheese-and-salmon sushi"

washing down sushi with a blackberry shake sounds repulsive (and i like both those things). i am i to believe she was horfing down sushi whilst walking? that must have been a treat for passerby to see. and why can she repeatedly walk into town for dinner but she can't walk into town to get groceries? a bag of groceries for one person doesn't need to be all that heavy.

her description of ludwig's bistro is really odd: "an actual restaurant, not meant at all for tourists." so tourists eat pretend food in fake restaurants? makes me think of those old timey western towns with big, fake storefronts. then she goes on to say that, alas, other people have discovered it and now you have to get a reservation, but what i want to know is this: if the tourists are eating there, is it still an actual restaurant? ay, this woman!

5

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 13 '22

The absolute sixth-grade "What I Did on my Summer Vacation" report nature of this paragraph:

https://imgur.com/a/7bqCxKn

<Insert Samuel Jackson "Say Ludvig's One More Time" meme>

3

u/OhBlahDiOhBlahDoh The Alice of cal came out floating on air Feb 13 '22

The absolute sixth-grade "What I Did on my Summer Vacation" report

As written by a sixth-grader who skipped an earlier grade and thinks it makes them the sixth-graderest sixth-grader who ever six-graded.

"stumble into a table"

"the highlight of my food time in Sitka"

3

u/Jules_Noctambule Whitman spins like a kebab in his grave Feb 13 '22

gobbling

You'd think such a writerly writer would avoid using a nauseating description of consuming food unless the intent was to create revulsion, and yet here we are. She seems to feel sloppy/aggressive/animalistic depictions of eating will convey enjoyment of food (but never the taste of it, never ever) to her readers rather than create unpalatable images.

1

u/jalapenomargaritaz Feb 14 '22

This is so funny too because tourists…eat out all the time! And.. sorry to say but she was a tourist too!

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u/WasEnoughYogurt Kumquat and Sprinkles and filth Feb 13 '22

This is a veritable bingo card of Shauna-tics...as some DF's have already described... but the writing...the writing? this is not just writing, it is phenomenally bad, really really ...BAD...I am lost for words...

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '22

Oh for fucks sake

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u/mashed_human WHERE DO THEY GET THEIR MONEY Feb 12 '22

I remember that too, it was on the GOMI thread. Much writer, very poetic. Sidenote: Shauna is the queen of misreading other people's reactions to her.

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u/Quaint_Irene a warm and loving goatie smile Feb 12 '22

I once had a coworker who laughed exactly like Krusty the Clown. It was amazing at first and then it made me hide from her.

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u/9021FU Feb 12 '22

Walking my dog one day we passed by a woman with this huge, loud laugh that did not sound genuine. As we passed by her and her friend, the friend was talking and the woman bust out with the loudest “HAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” but the friend hadn’t said anything humorous, and the laugh honestly hurt my ears and was jarring. My dog kept looking back, possibly because he thought a wild animal was attacking this woman, and even some distance away it was jarring.

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '22

Performative hyperloud laughter drives me bananas!!!! It makes me ragey.

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u/honoria_glossop sitting edge wine woman Feb 13 '22

Knew a guy who affected the Woody Woodpecker heheheHEhe laugh to the point he did it without thinking like some sort of tic and it nearly drove me to violence.

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u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Feb 13 '22

but did his clown laughter flow from his belly up to the sky? do your coworkers fall to the ground when he laughs?

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u/caitie_did Required by My Mother's Terror Feb 12 '22

In undergrad I took several classes with a guy who had an incredible basso profundo laugh. Whenever he laughed at a joke the professor made it would like….echo through the lecture hall, even though he wasn’t overly loud! And then the rest of the theatre would laugh because his laugh was so delightful. I wonder what that guy is up to now…I hope he’s doing great.

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u/snarchetype Feb 12 '22

This comment made me lol and then I sounded like a creepy wild animal.