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A review by menaquinone
Ministry of Moral Panic by Amanda Lee Koe
5.0
Just gonna copypaste a livetweet of my train of thought while reading it
Overall
- Writing is very real - the authenticity and believability of the plots/characters renders the stories an unusually visceral quality
- Singaporean version of Jhumpa Lahiri stories. Maybe there’s another author with better fit to the writing style here but I’ve only (partially) read one other short story anthology. Which reminds me I should finish both interpreter and emperor of maladies once I clear my work-reading
Ling Ko Mui
- Reminiscence therapy
- Poetic plot but also believable on biological and historical fronts
- Would’ve could’ve should’ve
- I feel I’ve definitely read it somewhere before but can’t tell where
Carousel & Fort
- Don’t quite get it but maybe the vibe is understandable?
- The burning carousel continuing to spin is a larger form of a common physics mechanics demonstration using candles
- Why did the artist die? Don’t get it. Instant karma?
- Is it supposed to show the curator preferred destructive r/s?
Pawn
- The guy gets played?
- Huh
- Power dynamic in the relationship I guess
- Either promotes blackpilled worldview or ethology
- Reversed traditional gender roles
The King of Caldecott Hill
- Second story addressing a major outstanding neuroethics issue
- Second story with reversal of conventional gender roles
- A veiled commentary on gahmen? See: special mention of demographers in TV shows and polis interrogation
Every Park on This Island
- Hehehehaw Clementi Woods
- Reminds me of a couple I saw on CCL near one-north where the American dude tried proving he knew SG based on his 2 months here and his Singaporean partner tried proving she knew the US and A based on her exchange semester there. Also discomforting sociocultural power gradient that played out during their 30min convo. To be clear I am not a Weird MRT commuter, they were talking Very Loudly.
- Laughed when seeing the unit conversion to American units
- Seeing a veiled jibe at gahmen for the umpteenth time convinces me the NAC funders for this project had a hard time writing progress reports for their bosses
- The American rural-urban divide is indeed quite real. Joke about Car-Centric Infrastructure was hilarious
- Jokes about SG vs US and A have aged like wine
- East Coast Plan!
- This story reminds me of an insufferable postdoc I met who was from Singapore and instead of answering questions constructively or engaging in scientific discussion focused all topics of conversation around 3 things: (i) their Ivy League education (ii) how the sg education system is horrid and the us one is far superior (iii) how all social relations in sg (e.g. family, romantic, friends) suck and the American ones are better. Maybe it’s interesting in moderation. But these were genuinely the only things the person ever talked about. Anything else was met with “I don’t care” or “Boring”. Frankly that person was the most annoying other human being I have ever met and I have had an unironically blackpilled 4channer deskmate for a semester before
Two Ways to Do This Pt I
- MOM rules
- I am confused
- Will need to think about it
Love Is No Big Truth
- Gender roles and power dynamics in conservative asian patriarchy analysed through many facets of a marriage
- I’m beginning to realise a lot of the stories are centered around examining r/s or the institution of marriage in various permutations and combinations
- Loveless marriage? Idk. I thought I’ve seen enough examples to know
- Arranged marriage electric boogaloo?
- Scenes From A Marriage
- Collectivism vs Individualism
Two Ways to Do This Pt II
- I May Destroy You + Louis Sachar’s Holes?
Alice, You Must Be the Fulcrum of Your Own Universe
- The UK Embassy looks less imposing than the US one next to it somehow
- Oxbridge law hehehehaw. I wonder who in our batch will get in. I can think of 2 guys but idk
- Interesting that this is UK vs SG after the earlier story examined US vs SG
- “We let ourselves get into the habit of the grind, we let the grind wear us down”
- Manipulation. Mild signs of other things. Possible NPD?
- Osteosarcoma is actually more common in younger populations. Idk if this is supposed to be a plot point or I’m overreading this
- Hm. The ending. What _was_ the nature of their rs. Hm.
Fourteen Entries From the Diary of Maria Hertogh
- Idk how historically accurate the account is but it makes for good historical fiction regardless
- Interesting but feels a bit on the nose if the fiction wasn’t based in facts
- Is the America part true?
- Still amazed the NAC grant went through
Chick
- “She was also, normatively, a nerd, whatever we make of these terms within a crude, teenaged social prism in which we hope to see ourselves favourably reflected”
- “She and you were in an all girls’ school (the best one in town, too). Everyone who gets deposited in a single sex school is placed there by parents looking to delay sexual maturation and quash emotional distraction, confident as they are of the assumedly more conducive studying environment”
- Normal + Bell Jar?
Laundromat
- Social Commentary. But what is it about?
- “It was difficult for him to relate to people without abstraction”
- Ok so the laundromat owner is a signifier of gahmen
- “Life is a phenomenon”
- MC likes living vicariously because he’s scared of life?
- “Being able to be sad is a form of happiness too”
- MC is depressed, distracts from this by analysing items through a staunchly scientific lens to remove himself from it and lives vicariously to fill the void this leaves behind
Siren
- Hmm why the HCI x NYGH reference
- How did this ever make it past the censors
The Ballad of Arlene & Nelly
- I’m beginning to think the title was a joke aimed at *MDA letting the book get published
Overall
- Writing is very real - the authenticity and believability of the plots/characters renders the stories an unusually visceral quality
- Singaporean version of Jhumpa Lahiri stories. Maybe there’s another author with better fit to the writing style here but I’ve only (partially) read one other short story anthology. Which reminds me I should finish both interpreter and emperor of maladies once I clear my work-reading
Ling Ko Mui
- Reminiscence therapy
- Poetic plot but also believable on biological and historical fronts
- Would’ve could’ve should’ve
- I feel I’ve definitely read it somewhere before but can’t tell where
Carousel & Fort
- Don’t quite get it but maybe the vibe is understandable?
- The burning carousel continuing to spin is a larger form of a common physics mechanics demonstration using candles
- Why did the artist die? Don’t get it. Instant karma?
- Is it supposed to show the curator preferred destructive r/s?
Pawn
- The guy gets played?
- Huh
- Power dynamic in the relationship I guess
- Either promotes blackpilled worldview or ethology
- Reversed traditional gender roles
The King of Caldecott Hill
- Second story addressing a major outstanding neuroethics issue
- Second story with reversal of conventional gender roles
- A veiled commentary on gahmen? See: special mention of demographers in TV shows and polis interrogation
Every Park on This Island
- Hehehehaw Clementi Woods
- Reminds me of a couple I saw on CCL near one-north where the American dude tried proving he knew SG based on his 2 months here and his Singaporean partner tried proving she knew the US and A based on her exchange semester there. Also discomforting sociocultural power gradient that played out during their 30min convo. To be clear I am not a Weird MRT commuter, they were talking Very Loudly.
- Laughed when seeing the unit conversion to American units
- Seeing a veiled jibe at gahmen for the umpteenth time convinces me the NAC funders for this project had a hard time writing progress reports for their bosses
- The American rural-urban divide is indeed quite real. Joke about Car-Centric Infrastructure was hilarious
- Jokes about SG vs US and A have aged like wine
- East Coast Plan!
- This story reminds me of an insufferable postdoc I met who was from Singapore and instead of answering questions constructively or engaging in scientific discussion focused all topics of conversation around 3 things: (i) their Ivy League education (ii) how the sg education system is horrid and the us one is far superior (iii) how all social relations in sg (e.g. family, romantic, friends) suck and the American ones are better. Maybe it’s interesting in moderation. But these were genuinely the only things the person ever talked about. Anything else was met with “I don’t care” or “Boring”. Frankly that person was the most annoying other human being I have ever met and I have had an unironically blackpilled 4channer deskmate for a semester before
Two Ways to Do This Pt I
- MOM rules
- I am confused
- Will need to think about it
Love Is No Big Truth
- Gender roles and power dynamics in conservative asian patriarchy analysed through many facets of a marriage
- I’m beginning to realise a lot of the stories are centered around examining r/s or the institution of marriage in various permutations and combinations
- Loveless marriage? Idk. I thought I’ve seen enough examples to know
- Arranged marriage electric boogaloo?
- Scenes From A Marriage
- Collectivism vs Individualism
Two Ways to Do This Pt II
- I May Destroy You + Louis Sachar’s Holes?
Alice, You Must Be the Fulcrum of Your Own Universe
- The UK Embassy looks less imposing than the US one next to it somehow
- Oxbridge law hehehehaw. I wonder who in our batch will get in. I can think of 2 guys but idk
- Interesting that this is UK vs SG after the earlier story examined US vs SG
- “We let ourselves get into the habit of the grind, we let the grind wear us down”
- Manipulation. Mild signs of other things. Possible NPD?
- Osteosarcoma is actually more common in younger populations. Idk if this is supposed to be a plot point or I’m overreading this
- Hm. The ending. What _was_ the nature of their rs. Hm.
Fourteen Entries From the Diary of Maria Hertogh
- Idk how historically accurate the account is but it makes for good historical fiction regardless
- Interesting but feels a bit on the nose if the fiction wasn’t based in facts
- Is the America part true?
- Still amazed the NAC grant went through
Chick
- “She was also, normatively, a nerd, whatever we make of these terms within a crude, teenaged social prism in which we hope to see ourselves favourably reflected”
- “She and you were in an all girls’ school (the best one in town, too). Everyone who gets deposited in a single sex school is placed there by parents looking to delay sexual maturation and quash emotional distraction, confident as they are of the assumedly more conducive studying environment”
- Normal + Bell Jar?
Laundromat
- Social Commentary. But what is it about?
- “It was difficult for him to relate to people without abstraction”
- Ok so the laundromat owner is a signifier of gahmen
- “Life is a phenomenon”
- MC likes living vicariously because he’s scared of life?
- “Being able to be sad is a form of happiness too”
- MC is depressed, distracts from this by analysing items through a staunchly scientific lens to remove himself from it and lives vicariously to fill the void this leaves behind
Siren
- Hmm why the HCI x NYGH reference
- How did this ever make it past the censors
The Ballad of Arlene & Nelly
- I’m beginning to think the title was a joke aimed at *MDA letting the book get published