Some Flavours From Home

Besides some home-made Penang Hokkien mee, relatives sent me three jars of home-made spice pastes last week. A cousin just started doing this on the side and is only making these pastes to order, so there's no big push to market.

But this was part of an unexpected but much-needed care package - that's what I'm calling it - as I've not been out to shop in two weeks while the second jab settles in, and the pastes added colour and flavour to my otherwise drab rice dishes that reminded me of mask-free days of yore.

You take it for granted that café or restaurant you found and whose dishes you like will be there forever - until they close down. I'm terrified of checking up on these. Who knows how many are still in business in the current situation?

...Ah, yes.

An aunt - said cousin's mom - offered me samples of the pastes through WhatsApp. These were supposed to be sold but she "belanja" me, she said. I took up the offer. If these are as good as the Hokkien mee, I'll be ordering more.

The noodles and pastes - two sambals and a ginger-scallion paste - arrived at the condo, Uber-ed to me by the cousin's husband. He arrived pretty late, so I could only figure out what to do with the pastes the next day.

I made a batch of rice with chicken stock, almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds in a saucepan, then mixed it with a beaten egg. I split the rice into two portions and mixed one sambal with each. I would do this with the ginger-scallion paste days later.

The versatile and familiar Sambal Hae Bi perhaps needs no introduction. The meaty sweetness of dried shrimp in chilli paste means extra protein is optional ... though this one could be a little spicier. The texture is a bit rough but it's a given, and the occasional crunch of shrimp shell feels kind of good.

The temptation to add extra sambal is strong after the first few bites. This contains shellfish, so those with allergies are cautioned. Several relatives on my dad's side developed allergies to shrimp, a future that might be on my cards. But until then, I'll be living it up.

The Sambal Bunga Kantan - torch ginger flower sambal - was new to me, though not necessarily novel. Others, I would learn, are making this. Mellow, floral, yet zesty, it made me think of all the Nyonya dishes I've seen in cookbooks.

The flavours also brought me back to my family dining table in Penang - specifically, to Mom's sambal-stuffed mackerel. The stuffing might be the same thing, albeit another recipe.

Again, I just want to pile this on, but keep in mind not to mix other stronger flavours that tend to overpower it. Let it be the star in a rice or pasta dish, or spread on bread or croissant. I can also see this going into a mackerel or used as a marinade.

I couldn't find many uses for the ginger-scallion paste, which also has garlic. I imagine it would go well with stir-fried vegetables, atop steamed white fish, chicken or pork, or mixed into congee. I was surprised to find that it gave my base rice a Hainanese note - like chicken rice.

An ex-colleague suggested marinating some chicken with it, plus some soya sauce, then steaming it. I suppose it could also be used as a composite ingredient, like the ginger-garlic paste that YouTube chef Sanjay Thumma often uses for his curries.

Looks like raw chicken is going into my shopping list for next week.

I don't dare eat this for dinner or use too much of it because ginger really gets your blood pumping - not good if you're winding down before bedtime. Also, this paste tends to brown while thawing and exposed to the air, so it's probably best to stir it into whatever you're cooking as soon as it's out of the jar.

Wonderful stuff, though the pastes harden when refrigerated - probably because of the oil. No preservatives means a shorter shelf life - up to three to four weeks if kept in a fridge, but at the rate I'm going the jars will be empty by then. At least that's better than having to throw out what's left that's gone bad.

It would be great if this venture can grow. With so much competition out there, however, it'll be quite a slog. But in this climate, we do what we can. I wish The Night Owls success.

Cooked Rice In A Saucepan

Twice. And it turned out okay.

What led me to my stove were a couple of clips of Puerto Rican streamers reacting not too favourably to Gordon Ramsay's "pegao-cooking" segment.

A rice dish made in a saucepan. No discernible difference
between what comes out of a rice-cooker.

What Puerto Ricans call pegao is the crust of crispy, brown-in-places rice at the bottom of a pot - probably a rare treat in some homes these days with the advent of modern cooking tools and techniques.

And if the crust resulted from, say, the cooking of claypot rice, fuiyoh. Crispy, fragrant caramelised flavourtown.

This substance is also familiar to other cultures where rice is a staple. The Vietnamese call it cơm cháy, Iranians have tahdig, in Japan it's okoge, nurungji in Korea, and in Indonesia and perhaps Malaysia it's called kerak nasi. The Chinese have guōbā, but the Cantonese call it faan jiu.

Though most of these are a by-product of conventional rice-cooking, sometimes this scorched rice is deliberately created, as might be the case with cơm cháy, guōbā and nurungji.

But then comes this white dude with his idea of scorched rice: pressing cooked rice into a piping-hot frying pan and searing it until it's "crispy", melts butter down the sides of the pan to make it easier to come out, then taps it out onto a plate when it's done.

One of the streamers I linked noted that rather than pegao (a derivative of pegado or "stuck" in Spanish), what Ramsay had made more closely resembled arroz mamposteao. Given Ramsay's reputation, we can acknowledge that his version won't suck - far from it - but it's not what he said it was.

I can only assume that the making of bona fide pegao wasn't enough to showcase the Michelin-starred chef's moves, and he didn't get the memo about what he ended up cooking.

I guess what I'm trying to do here is burn away the shame from getting carried away by a comedian's indignant, low-brow one-note act. The guy is still harping on Jamie Oliver, recently over Thai green curry.

This time, I noticed the energy Oliver radiated in that segment, and others before. This is a bloke who has nothing left to prove, is SO DONE being judged, and is now winging it for all the joy in the world. "Not authentic"? Go elsewhere.

Doesn't look that nice now, but when mixed together...

So I cooked rice in a saucepan. Rice, almonds, cashews and sunflower seeds were followed by thawed-out mixed frozen veg and mashed tinned sardines when the rice looked half-cooked. A good thing about an electric stove is the built-in timer and off switch.

I was concerned that I'd screw up and burn the rice, as I can't remember doing this before. However, only several per cent of the rice was glued to the bottom, nicely dried but not too charred, because I turned down the heat earlier.

I had to keep an eye on the pan until it boiled. A rice cooker is not completely covered by design even if the lid is on, so that extra steam can escape, but it still doesn't prevent spills from boil-over starchy water.

Once the rice started boiling, I waited a bit before adding the rest of the ingredients. After that, I waited a bit longer before lowering the heat and letting it simmer and steam away.

The results didn't taste too different from how I normally cook rice these days: steaming it in a steel bowl propped up by a steaming rack and a bit submerged in boiling water inside a rice cooker. This was a tip from Twitter for single-portion rice cooking that emerged during the first MCO, and it has served me well since.

The next day, I repeated this with a tin of Yeo's beef curry and roughly diced carrot. The resulting "pegao" was spicy as well as savoury, albeit low in volume. In both cases, the flavour reminded me of rice crackers.

But oh, wow, getting it out of the pan was tough. I broke a spoon made of a rice husk compound - a good spoon! RIP - to extract the crust because I didn't want to scrape the bottom with a metal utensil. Considering that the pan is stainless steel, I probably shouldn't have been so delicate about it.

The aftermath of saucepanned rice #2, after the rice grains
were scraped off. Hard work, but worth it.

I have concerns over using a claypot on my glasstop ceramic stove, so for now this is a viable alternative when I'm in the mood for a one-pot meal, made in a pot.

Some would say that it won't be like how it's made in a claypot, but that's okay. With the pandemic changing our relationship with our kitchens (I love you, kitchen!) and our regard for hawker food and outside dining (OMG you're all heroes!), some things need to be re-evaluated.

Here Are Some Words

I had more to say in this post, but decided not to, lest I mention something that might be offensive or proven incorrect later. But that's just one of several fears I've borne since I began writing less.

Voltaire was believed to have said, "Perfect is the enemy of good". However, he was apparently quoting some Italian proverb and somewhere down the line it was mistranslated a bit. But its profundity has encouraged some writers to keep writing, internal - and external - editors be damned.

That has become a monumental feat for me because I had a job that demanded a certain degree of perfection in my writing and my current job compels me to demand the same in myself - still! - and in others. Vague briefs and bad writing habits of others complicate matters further. Unfair, but that's how it is.

I had been comfortable with how I wrote for a long time, and in the job where I was first called on to write, my flair and self-possessiveness were shattered. My words were not perfect. All their imperfections were pointed out to me, and in some cases I wasn't allowed to fix them the way I wanted to.

Perhaps it's why I've been subconsciously "counting my scars" now and then, while acquiring new ones.

Someone dragged me into the business of words when they entered my life, but they're gone now, leaving a gaping void I still struggle to fill today.

Words wouldn't fit. Either I haven't written enough of them or it's the compulsion to harshly judge my output. Perhaps due to the nature of their departure, I've come to associate the whole business of writing with this person and have come to loathe it, to be as far away from it as possible.

Regardless, all this led me to distrust my words, and the ever-growing, ever-thickening pandemic fog is not helping.

The lockdowns have kept me away from my old haunts, stripping me of havens where the words can flow a little and depriving me of what little respite I have from my daily troubles.

Some of these factors are beyond my control. What I can do, however, is write. Even on days when I'm not called on to write, when the words don't flow or aren't right, or when I just feel like a pound of fried chicken skin slathered with cheese sauce, a bucket of mashed potatoes and a pile of coleslaw, the mind swarms with words, however chaotic or terrible they sound when put together.

So here I am, and here are some words.

Perfect may be the enemy of good, but I've been told a few times that what I've written is good. My scribbles have been published in newspapers in print and online, so they have to be of a certain standard.

Still, when I pound the keyboard, the desk, and ocassionally the wall in frustration when the words don't fit, all that seems insignificant.

Who the hell am I still trying to please?

What is shattered can never be put back perfectly together - some pieces shall remain missing, however minute. The Japanese practice of kintsugi supposedly illustrates that these gaps can be beautiful when filled with the right things. You probably can't eat out of that bowl again but damn, it looks good and broke the ice with your guests.

So here I am, and here are more words.

My ability to write doesn't have to win a prize or generate social media buzz. It just has to be good enough. Though time and heartache have distorted my Good Enough™ sense, pulling it back into shape shouldn't be too difficult.

Because every time I write, just write, I pound the keyboard, the desk, and ocassionally the wall with less and less frustration as I remember the original shape and feel of my wordsmithing. The journey back is hard but doable because the words still swarm in my head, trying to escape.

Bit by bit, I'll fill that void in me. I can't do a perfect job but hell, I'll do my best to make it interesting.

And instead of asking "Who the hell am I still trying to please?", someday I hope to ask, "Why the hell did it take me so long to figure it out?"

Counting Scars

I can't remember the first time I heard Hong Kong singer Sandy Lam's "Scars", though its melody still haunts the fringes of my mind. But weighed down by growing recent concerns, I looked it up again on YouTube.

A closer look at the lyrics showed me how much of an education I might have missed, and that I should pay more attention to what I listen to. And considering that the song was released in 1995, "late to the party" is an understatement.

Composed and lyricised by Jonathan Li Zongsheng, the song is sung from a woman's point of view and the first part is basically, "Girlfriend, it's freaking late at night. Who's got you up counting your scars, and why do you need a light to go to bed? If you won't dish, I won't prod."

That's not the end of the story, as she goes on (pardon the gaps in my translation skills):

It's just that right now you have to admit
At times love is like a void
And the relationship itself is a letdown
So don't blame it all on yourself as a woman

Does language also determine the degree of profundity in a song's lyrics?

If you love so deeply there will be no balance
Being trapped in a relationship tortures the soul
Love what you should love, hate what you should hate
Just don't exhaust yourself

Here comes the advice:

A woman's unique, natural naivete and tenderness
Is only for the one who truly loves you
So no matter how rough the future may be
He will always see it through with you

...and the caution:

Love may be a responsibility, but give it your best
Even if at times it's so beautiful, it doesn't last
Love is enchanting but it also wounds vSo if you're brave enough to love, be brave enough to part

There's nothing to unpack here, as the words speak for themselves, and so eloquently. Good advice for those in a relationship, regardless of gender.

Since revisiting this song though, the melody and the words trail me like ghosts. Have I been counting scars on some nights when I can't sleep?

The Nineties were another time, and I'd like to believe we're all braver and more open about our troubles. Nevertheless, some of us are sleeping less than we should these days and may not be up to the job of being a listening ear or a sturdy shoulder.

So take some time off to find and do what recharges you for what lie ahead, and avoid what causes you heartache and fury, like the news or social media right now.

Love what you should love, hate what you should hate
Just don't exhaust yourself

Sayonara, Chairman

On 1 July, Hololive virtual YouTuber Kiryu Coco graduated, i.e., retired. Fans and her fellow Hololive VTubers mourned. Tributes to her flooded cyberspace. More than 491,000 viewers watched her last "live" appearance on YouTube, perhaps the most ever so far for a Hololive virtual YouTuber in the platform's history.

"All this fuss over a cartoon girl?" Yes, if you've been living under a rock since the pandemic started.


So many VTubers, so little headroom
Virtual YouTubers - or VTubers - aren't a new concept. The idea of an animated avatar stand-in as entertainment goes way back to the days of Max Headroom. With many countries locked down by COVID, more and more sought an escape through online video-streaming platforms.

This was perhaps the time many first encountered a world of online virtual entertainers.

Typically, a real person is behind each virtual avatar, manipulating it through motion tracking technology, like e-wayang kulit. Some movements can be programmed with software, like in videos where the VTuber dances. VTubers also entertain audiences with activities such as playing games, singing, and drawing, and even movie watch-alongs and chats with viewers.

Some virtual talents are independent, while some are part of agencies, with Hololive being the most well-known. Interactions such as collabs among talents within and outside their agencies can and do happen, subject to conditions. Being under an agency helps a great deal in terms of VTuber tech, sponsorships and branding, in lieu of a basic salary.

Income from VTubing generally comes from viewer donations, usually integrated into the streaming service. YouTube, for instance, introduced the superchat, where viewers pay to keep certain comments on screen longer than usual. Some VTubers show their appreciation by reading the names of superchatters after each segment.

Each avatar has its lore or background, which is revealed during their debut and expands over time. Eventually, boundaries between the avatar and the actor blur as their backgrounds meld and incorporates bits of the actor's daily life: family, school, work, and off-screen interactions with other VTubers, and the struggles faced in their VTubing careers.

All this creates a vibrant melting pot of inspiration as artists, musicians, video editors, and the like get in on the lore train with the fans, enriching it. The amount of VTuber-inspired output is growing, and in Japan the avatars are also featured on snacks, drinks, and on special occasions, billboard ads.

Well, this preamble went on longer than it should.

But what I'm saying here that VTubing has sort of bloomed as a form of entertainment, a career, and a PR strategy. You want facts and figures, go somewhere else. However, that brands such as Netflix and even Air Asia is riding the Vtubing surge, debuting their own VTubers as their corporate spokespeople, should be enough to shout that this trend won't be going away soon. Saturated, yes, but not going away. Is anyone aware that Malaysia has its own VTuber agency?

And among the figures driving this boom is a certain orange-haired half-dragon cartoon girl.


A virtual star was born...
Kiryu Coco debuted as a Hololive VTuber around December 2019 along with four other genmates, but she dropped into my YouTube recommendations near the end of the first MCO in Malaysia. She stood out even among her fellow VTubers, not just for her height and cup size. Who was this sassy bilingual lady with a distinctly American Southern drawl who uses "motherf—er" in her catchphrase?

At some point, however, she grew on viewers. With scores of clippers - people who subtitle and post segments of archived VTuber livestreams - that she and her fellow Hololivers spoke mainly Japanese was no barrier to getting to know her.

Coco's voice actress was born and raised American, which explains her accent. She apparently taught herself Japanese after playing a game from Sega's Yakuza series and has been living in Japan for some time after her family moved there for work.

Behind her raunchy, at times foul-mouthed on-screen persona, Coco is smart, forward-thinking, creative, sensitive, compassionate, and pretty selfless. She's helped several Hololivers through personal crises, provided tech support, and mulled the creation of a dorm-cum-office that's more conducive for Hololivers to stream and live in. All this, the lengths she goes to for each stream, and more contributed to her meteoric rise in popularity.

And it shows. Just check out these stats. This website, Playboard, only started tracking these figures early last year, but grossing nearly RM12.3 million in super chats from her debut up to her graduation is no mean feat. Coco's is currently listed as the most superchatted YouTube channel worldwide.

Even assuming that YouTube takes 30 per cent and Hololive, say, 40 per cent, her net earnings are still damn serious for someone who plays an exaggerated version of herself online. Small wonder millions are hopping onto this bandwagon. Well, I thought it was a big deal until I looked up some income tax rates.

Coco is also cited as the main reason Hololive English came about. Its members' popular YouTube channels reached the million-subscriber milestone less than a year after their debuts, and sitting at the top is shark girl Gawr Gura, with more than three million subscribers, beating that of the standard bearer of Japanese VTubing, Kizuna Ai.

She shows more of her caring, introspective side in her "Bar Coco" segments, where she plays the accomodating hostess of a virtual bar helping her guests (the audience) wind down after a long day, dispensing advice and telling jokes. She's done more, but repeating all that here is pointless.

Not for nothing Coco's epithet among fans and colleagues was kaichou or Chairman, a nod to her being a Yakuza fangirl and reflective of her growing influence within the global VTubing sphere.

But there were hard times. Because YouTube is Hololive's primary streaming platform, VTubers who cross the line become demonitised - no superchat or ad revenue - or even banned from streaming temporarily. Coco and several other Hololivers have been hit. And after she broadcasted YouTube stats that showed Taiwan as a country, Chinese nationalist fanatics coordinated a months-long harrassment campaign, spamming her chat window and those of other Hololivers in collaborative streams, to get the company to fire her.

Nevertheless, she persisted, so when she announced in June that she was graduating from Hololive, about one and a half years after her debut and at the peak of her career, everyone was shook. After all she had endured, after all the time and effort she invested, it had come to this?


...but went supernova
The harrassment was one factor, but as the date approached she revealed that she'd found herself descending an unhappy spiral over her streaming activities. Having some of her ideas for streaming and such shot down by management no doubt contributed to her slump. Her fans are understandably furious about the harrassment and the antis are a convenient sandbag. But Hololive appears to be an archetypal Japanese talent agency after all, and Coco's Western ways were never going to be welcome there. She's likely to have haters among Japanese viewers too, for not meeting expectations.

She has already influenced some Hololivers to swear in English and pick up the language to communicate with the wider Anglophone audience, affectionately referred to as "overseas bros". She played a role in getting Hololivers from various branches - Japan, Indonesia and the English-speaking group - to bond. Her presence was inducing changes to the company and probably the industry as a whole, which the conservative segment of Hololive's management probably could not adapt to, in less than two years!

But before management could decide, Coco apparently decided to graduate on her own, announcing the decision first to her colleagues, then to the world maybe several months later, after laying out a roadmap for her exit. Collabs, an original song, a group single with her fellow genmates, and a graduation stream were arranged. She even managed to interview Tanigo Motoaki, a.k.a. YAGOO, the CEO of Cover Corp, Hololive's parent company.

Towards the end, she gave it her all in her last livestreams, often exuding the strongest "whatcha gonna do, fire me?" vibes any outgoing employee has ever displayed.

A bunch of fans including music mixers and artists helped her put together a music video for her cover of "Fansa" ("Fanservice") in time for her graduation - and didn't bill her a yen. Elsewhere, fan tributes poured in: posts, tweets, videos, songs and art. Before and shortly after her exit, during collabs and streams, some Hololivers couldn't hold back tears at the thought of her departure.

Even after her graduation, unlike most idols, her name was not verboten. Coco is still referred to and brought up during livestream conversations by other Hololivers. Several of them even sang her apparently fan-made(!) original song online. Her Twitter account and YouTube channel remain, along with all the other clips of her made by clippers.

It's still cold comfort for fans, especially those who had just discovered her, only to learn that her time with us would be cut short. Many of us who needed an escape from the COVID-riddled reality tumbled into the VTuber rabbit hole, and Coco was among those who first pulled us in. And just when we needed her even more, she left us.


Towards a new sky
I broke down at one point after watching one too many tributes to her online. Tears shed not solely for a star that braved hardship and the ire of petty people only to be unjustly deprived of her chance to shine even brighter, but from everything else that led us to seek solace in her antics and those of other VTubers. The scene just isn't the same without Hololive's naga lucu.

Some have wondered if she would have been more at home with a Western Vtuber agency like, say, VShojo, whose talents tend to be as forward as she is. I don't think so. In VShojo, she would have been just "one of the girls". In Hololive? A more restrained, more wholesome and family-friendly arena? She glowed like a supernova, albeit too brightly and too hot in the end.

It's likely that despite her distinctive voice, as well as her identifying character and verbal tics (which have helped the curious discover her other online identity), Coco insisted on being herself in an alien sky because she knew how bright she'd shine there.

So we can perhaps be comforted by the fact that she'll find another sky to shine in, and that we haven't seen the last of her, assuming she managed to save whatever remained of her love of streaming and cheering up audiences.

Live strong, Chairman, wherever you may be.

Don't Mourn The Longform Review

A discussion in an online readers' group over someone lamenting the death of "traditional book reviews" and the rise of bookstagramming turned the old gears once more.

Such grist for the mill seems to frequently come out of the Indian subcontinent, which boasts a long and colourful history of publishing along with robust and riveting discourse.

Some examples of bookstagramming provided include that of a graphic designer who offers minimal takes on books using emojis. At the end, the writer wonders whether Instagrammers can contend with privileged pedestals such as the New York Times bestseller list.

As expected, members of the online group commenting on the piece were put off by it. Someone pointed out the writer's choice of words, which I felt were polarising: the "new" ("short", "quick", "millennial" - ugh) versus the "old" ("stuffy", "hallowed", "needlessly long").

I also had to check the date: published 7 February 2021. Bookstagramming has been around before then. How long was this piece sitting in the writer's computer? Or has India finally woken up to the trend?

(Uh-oh. The writer majored in literature. Probably ego-searches on occasion. Better watch my step.)

Now, the piece makes some good points. For one, the ecosystem surrounding "traditional" book reviews has always been a rarefied circle jerk. Certain reviewers have a cosy relationship with the papers they write for, who in turn have connections to the big publishers and literary agents. These same people tend to end up in some book award panels too.

Even when the printing press was invented and the written word became more accessible, gatekeeping determined what gets and does not get published. Then and now, getting a byline in a paper is a big deal. While some have higher aspirations, middling critics like myself have more pragmatic goals: gaining free books, extra cash and writing cred.

But this cosy relationship narrowed the number of books that "matter", so the same authors and publishers tend to grab the headlines year after year. From their lofty lecterns under distinguished mastheads, marqueed reviewers sometimes take potshots at certain works, shielded from the anger and call-outs from readers.

Restaurant critic Pete Wells's takedown of Guy Fieri's American Kitchen and Bar in the New York Times was entertaining, but it was mean towards a guy who's a lot more than the hair, shades and loud shirts. (Okay, not a book review, but.) And what to say of Michiko Kakutani, who has been held in awe, dreaded and loathed for decades?

While the piece doesn't delve too deeply into the history of book reviewing to stick with the traditional-versus-Instagram tangent, the tone sounds off-putting. Was there a need to compare bookstagrammers with a controversial Indian author?

And if readers today are too "lazy" to even read captions on Instagram posts, perhaps it's because they feel that their limited time, squeezed out of a packed schedule weighed down by the stresses of modern life, is better spent elsewhere.

So what if "anyone" can influence what their peers read, especially with social reading platforms such as Goodreads? People in such circles tend to or would come to know one another, so they're comfortable with and confident in what they see there.

Also, people are more educated now. Technology is connecting people, granting them access to knowledge, and giving them a soapbox. Folks are finding their voices and skipping past the gates to be heard and read. Describing these newcomers in language that screams "hoi polloi" is tasteless and foolhardy; being picked apart alive by weaver ants seems more merciful.

Critics now are more exposed to the risks of being wrong or challenges posed by those who know more but aren't part of the nexus. So they better learn to tread lightly instead of longing, even briefly, for an imagined golden age when, presumably, it was fine to write with your head in the clouds - or up your ass.

But does that mean "traditionalists" and "purists" have to start bookstagramming to stay relevant? Whatever works, I guess. However, some rules - like ignore your personal feelings and biases, don't be too rough, and suchlike - can be set aside so you can get creative and interesting, but not mean and divisive.

Critics, for a start, should take to heart the monologue by Anton Ego, the food critic in the Disney production Ratatouille, which sums up the realities of criticism and is lent significant gravitas by the voice of the late Peter O'Toole.

But a larger pool of material means more to read and digest, which means gatekeepers are still relevant, perhaps more than ever. In George Orwell's "Confessions of a Book Reviewer", one line goes "Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are."

As someone with a professional relationship with books, I've found this to be true.

Orwell adds that a short pithy statement is the only criticism most books warrant, while a professional reviewer would only bother with a book if they were paid to review it. But:

...the public will not pay to read that kind of thing. Why should they? They want some kind of guide to the books they are asked to read, and they want some kind of evaluation. But as soon as values are mentioned, standards collapse. For if one says ... that King Lear is a good play and The Four Just Men is a good thriller, what meaning is there in the word 'good'?

So if a book isn't worth the time, maybe an emoji or a GIF meme will suffice - better than rendering superlatives hollow through overuse. Using cleavers on sparrows might grab more attention but it's wasteful and unnecessarily theatrical.

By now, I think there's enough space for criticism in many formats, of any length, and that space is still growing. A humongous marketplace of opinions should be celebrated and readers can take their pick in an environment where quality does shine.

However, as long as "traditional" book reviews are still being written, the format will never die. Longform articles will always have a key role in some situations when an emoji or a hundred-word caption won't do.

With growing scrutiny and greater access to information, perhaps they will get better and become more deserving of those hallowed pedestals than before.

When The Water's No Longer Fine

Putting pen to paper - or keying things to screen - about the ongoing pandemic and its myriad of inconveniences is hard. Who wants to relive or read about that? No different from daily news reporting for the past year, chock-full of negativity and few bright spots.

Which reminded me of two negative encounters online that I thought I had laid to rest.

One was with a notorious personage who seemed to like nothing more than to brag of their love for literary fiction and the amount of which they've read - and picked fights with others in an online community about their reading choices and apparent lack of knowledge on books.

A few years ago, Personage praised me for something I wrote (forgot which one though) but later, in a comment to my blog that I deleted, harangued me for not knowing anything about Arabic literature, then accusing me of not being literary enough to talk about books. I chalked that up to "Personage being Personage" and brushed it off.

Only when I received news about Personage's terminal illness and passing did much of their behaviour make more sense.

Whether it was their condition or something else, they perhaps found solace for it in the online community and, over time, developed an idealised view of it. When the community failed them in any way, the reality of their situation crept through the crack in the rose-tinted bubble, sparking a backlash.

The quarrels Personage stirred were either attempts to stay inside that fracturing bubble, or cries for help. The people Personage sparred with or hurt might empathise now that the former is gone, but Personage will be known more for the rows and burning bridges.

I have less time and understanding for the guy who tried to interrogate me about a phrase in my Facebook post to a readers' group. I wasn't even talking about Nazis or Hitler, but a chapter in comedian Trevor Noah's book. The bit about Nazis and that there are worse out there was a throwaway remark, but to this guy it was important.

What this dude did, which I now recognise as textbook sealioning, was probably to get me riled up about the Nazi bit because he believes that no, nobody is worse than the Nazis and that I was talking out of my ass when I said that - yet he had no guts to tell me that to my face.

Even then, however, I smelled cari gaduh all over his all-too-polite queries. If Sealion wanted to school me, he could've beat me over the head with his own research and opinions. But assuming that he was genuinely interested in knowing who I thought were worse than Nazis, I don't owe him that either.

---

People run from trouble. When they can't run any more and they're deep in a rut, they find ways to escape, whether in themselves, safe spaces, or objects. Sweet treats. VTuber clips. Online communities.

But they're not the solution. And you will eventually be disappointed or desensitised.

Personage found comfort in what they believed were like-minded people of a similar calibre, but was quick to judge and condemn when they did not live up to their expectations, seeing gaps in knowledge or understanding as flaws or signs of deception.

So I'm not well acquainted with Arabic literature. That doesn't invalidate whatever else I say about literature in general, or books, writing and editing. It just means I need to brush up on the subject.

For the likes of Personage, however, it's a deal-breaker.

If you're in pain, piling on more hurt on yourself - or lashing out at people - is counterintuitive. But I guess when you're so used to the torment you don't feel the added weight. Nor are you inclined to empathise with others or interrogate your disappointment in them when they "fail" you.

Are they not good enough for you, or have you set the bar too high?

Sometimes, people get caught up in the spirit of things, they forget that these are people too. They have other commitments, issues, and boundaries. That's why administrators of Facebook groups, for instance, lay down rules. Without limits, people will go out of line. I have stepped over boundaries on occasion and the repercussions weren't nice.

No community owes you anything for your participation. Your contributions, however stellar, do not entitle you to more than what the community is willing to offer.

When you're triggered by what someone says, instead of pouncing on a perceived slight, maybe take a step back and ask why you're bothered by it. Was it aimed at you, or a mere shot in the dark that found its mark anyway? As one saying goes, "if you didn't eat those chillies, you won't feel the burn".

Every community has its bad apples. Sussing them out is important, but not as vital as laying out what you expect when you join a community and the lines you - and others - must never cross in your interactions. And don't expect too much from people, no matter how awesome they seem to you.

Eventually, any community will change. The goals may shift, or they may stagnate or turn into cesspits. Maybe the people there have changed, or you have. Maybe the things they share don't interest you any more.

The need to belong is strong in humans. However, one should keep in mind not to sacrifice your individuality and ability to change just to fit in, no matter how much you identify with a certain group.

If you don't feel like you belong, walk away. And leave the bridges alone.