fozmeadows

[fozmeadows]

to quote the wisdom of hanlon's razor, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

The more you look into a lot of famous tumblr Kickstarter scams with your thirty-something brain the more it’s like. Man these weren’t even scams they were just incredibly poorly managed creative projects that fizzled out. This is a thing that literally happens all the time it’s just people outside the immediate team/investors aren’t usually paying attention to it. And also everyone involved is like 19 so they don’t know how a complex, multi-year creative project works.

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"They go to SEX CLUBS and pretend to be DOGS!"

Yeah well you go to church every Sunday and pretend to be a good person

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In a similar vein, the official Dilbert TV show ends with Dilbert getting pregnant and giving birth, so! Please do what you will with this information.

Arnold Schwarzenegger mpreg movie

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OP I need you to know that I read this without knowing the fandom context and so initially parsed this as a call-out post for anyone who dunks on the AI Is Sentient And Telling Me The Secrets Of The Universe people, which was briefly Very perplexing, not least because I thought Plan 99 was a typo'd reference to the cult schlock movie Plan 9 From Outer Space and was desperately trying to figure out what insane sci-fi film nerd to ChatGPT truther conspiracy theorist pipeline I'd stumbled upon - and then I got to the tags and was like, "Oh, it's Star Wars."

If you’re going to be confrontational and nasty to people for theorizing about Tech being alive, I WILL call you out on it. There has been so much outright bullying in this fandom since Plan 99, and I won’t let it go unchecked.

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This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

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Whenever I see decent religious folks dunking on the cruelty, hypocrisy and/or literal bad faith of their shitty brethren by pointing out, say, that X political belief is not actually supported by the Bible, or that Islam is more progressive than Christianity on Y issue, it provokes roughly the same emotion in me as when the Menswear Guy reads some alt-right bro to filth for his poor tailoring choices, ie: I appreciate the optics of a terrible person being dressed down by someone well-versed in the rules of their shared field, but this doesn't change the fact that both field and rules are, from my perspective, a bunch of made-up bullshit that we'd be better off without. Like, I understand the depth of history and cultural heritage being invoked, I know why people care, but it's ultimately like watching someone win at Calvinball. Left to my own devices, I no more care what a given religious text has to say about morality than I do about how many buttons a random man has on his suit jacket. But I'm forced to know about these things because other people not only care about them, but frequently behave like the most reprehensible motherfuckers on the face of planet Earth as a direct result. So when someone takes them to task in a way they might vaguely comprehend, using their own weapons against them, I applaud both effort and sentiment. But goddamn, I very much do resent being made to take these made-up shibboleths seriously.

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aaaaa look at these perfect boys!!

Cae & Vel - Commission

When I tell you I was so so so excited to get this commission from @poemsingreenink I am not exaggerating; A Strange and Stubborn Endurance is one of my favorite books, and it was a genuine joy to revisit my designs for these characters (and in a rare moment of peace too)

Commissions & Tip Jar

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No but this is one of those things that truly emphasizes the difference between how much we know about the world now versus how much we knew about it for the overwhelming majority of human history, because one upon a time, the cardinal directions relative to wherever you happened to be was really all most people had. There wasn't the world as we understand it now; there was the known world, because even when various peoples worked out that the planet was round, that still wasn't the same as knowing what all the contents were, or what might lie in the middle of a given ocean, or what was on the other side of that mountain range that was too dangerous to summit. Exonyms reflect the cardinal directions for the same reason why so many ancient old place names, once you dig through the layers of linguistic drift, are mostly just simple descriptors in whatever the oldest known language was: because the human experience was, for tens of thousands of years, intensely localised. Here was Hill, and there was River, and here was Desert, and there was Fort. The ancients weren't naming their local environment with the expectation that doing so would meaningfully differentiate, say, the local Mountain from that other Mountain two hundred miles away: they were naming it as a base function of communication, as a point of geographic reference to be understood by other members of the same community. It's only once human beings start moving around - not migrating, in the sense of leaving one place to find a new home, or trading, in the sense of forming relationships with the other people closest to you, but exploring, in the sense of deliberately trying to figure out what exists outside your immediate sphere and then reporting back on it - that this sort of linguistic differentiation starts to matter. "Those people to the east of us" works just fine as an exonym when you only know about your immediate neighbours or are content to lump everyone you imagine to exist in that direction under one umbrella, but once you've passed through that eastern territory and discovered that there's even more east with even more different people - once there's a need to distinguish between multiple groups - then you've got to broaden your terminology. Maybe you do that by borrowing someone else's exonym, because you ask "those people to the east of us" what they call their eastern neighbours, and so you take home a word that functionally also means "those people to the east" but in a slightly different language. Maybe you ask those people what they call themselves, and you get a word that translates to "the people," as so many ancient endonyms do. Or maybe you encounter those people with the aid of a third party, and you use their word, which means something like "the goat traders," because that's how the third group first encountered them. Or perhaps, as has happened more than once throughout history, you ask those new people "who are you?" or "what land is this?" in your own language, and mistake whatever confused reply they give in their language for the answer, even if what they actually said was "I don't understand you" or "welcome." But the point is, it's not a peculiarity of the human mind that makes us name things this way, as though we lack imagination. It's because the base purpose of naming has always been identification, and back when we first started attaching sounds to peoples and places, the frame of reference was local. Modern people, by contrast, in addition to understanding the exact size of our planet, are themselves the product of so many different linguistic and sociological shifts that, particularly in colonial settings, we view names primarily as aesthetic and titular, not as practical and descriptive, because we're sixteen layers removed from the point of origin: unless we look it up, they're just sounds to us now. And so we find the collective pattern of simple names funny, because we're seeing them in overview, and not as they were made.

etymology reveals a fascinating glimpse into the way the human mind works. "Australia" is just latin for southern. "Asia" is probably assyrian for east. "Norway" oh you mean those fuckers up north? for millennia humanity has been naming places the equivalent of: *gestures* yeah thataway

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courtesy of our late beloved idiot orange cat, bb, aka bumblebee, aka bebo, I have the perfect image template for this:

BEHOLD A BLORBO

Holding my blorbo up by the scruff of his neck to show him to you

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To draw a very literal comparison: A major concern with rehabilitating people who've finished their jail terms is finding them jobs and somewhere to live, as many businesses and real estate offices won't hire or rent houses to people with a criminal conviction. And superficially, that's a comprehensible policy! Given the choice between housing/employing someone with a record and someone who doesn't, most places will choose the latter. But enforcing this position doesn't magically stop ex-cons from existing, and unless your position is that, regardless of the type or severity of the offence, they should all be in jail forever, then at some point, if you want them to even have a chance at rehabilitation, then they're going to need housing, and they're going to need jobs, and - ideally - someone to help them navigate those things, such that recidivism doesn't seem like their best option. Because that's what overwhelmingly happens when you make it difficult or impossible for ex-cons to legally work or find housing: they end up homeless, and they revert to crime, which decreases everyone's overall safety and quality of life. Are some criminals utterly unrepentant and/or incapable of turning their lives around? Yes. Can you always tell at a glance which ones they are? No. But even if you could, it's still better, at bare minimum, to have those people housed and guaranteed access to food and whatever medications they might need to function, particularly if you're then going to complain about crime and violence among the homeless population. Because the people in question don't just stop existing if you decide they don't merit aid.

This is by no means a perfect comparison, but the key point is this: even if you, personally, do not have the necessary bandwidth or inclination to attempt the rehabilitation of MAGA who are just now realizing they've been in a cult, that is still necessary work that someone should, ideally, be doing, if only to lower the chance of those people causing more harm in the future. Are some of them irredeemable? Absolutely. Are adults still responsible for their own bad choices? Yes. But we're a social species, rehabilitation of all kinds is hard work, and people in crisis do better with help. It might be grim, frustrating, thankless work, but so is public sanitation, and if nobody was willing to shovel shit, we'd all be neck-deep in typhoid.

'provide an understanding, affirming welcome to all the people crashing out of being fire-eating MAGA types over this Epstein stuff' is, tactically speaking, probably one of the more important organizing tasks in American politics right now.

Which makes me doubly glad I am neither a professional organizer nor American. But like, some of you guys probably do need to get to the grindstone on that.

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that anon seems to be going out of their way to misrepresent your words. it's almost interesting I guess, but. they seem less trustworthy than a broken clock.

do you at least find them a decent wall to bounce ideas off, or?

Honestly, I think this is more a case of me perennially embodying the classic xkcd strip. I'd probably be a happier, saner person if I was better at shutting up. And yet.

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There are a lot of marginalized groups of cis men. There are a lot of cis women who have more privelege than some cis men. There are a lot of groups of cis men that can have their male privelege stripped from them temporarily. Who face violence, discrimination, and danger in public based on their very real marginalization. That doesn't mean the patriarchy doesn't exist?? I'm sure Taylor swift has more privelege than your average Joe. Yeah, in some circumstances some trans men may be less priveleged than some trans women. Pack it up, everyone, there's no sexism and misogyny in trans spaces! Yay. Femininity and masculinity are equally as respected and trans women need to stop complaining about annnyyyy power dynamic. Since we're all marginalized, there's no need to worry about intersectionality.

At this point, these anon replies are getting cartoonish. I have never said the patriarchy doesn't exist, or there's no sexism and misogyny in trans spaces, or that femininity and masculinity are equally respected, or that trans women can't complain about skewed power dynamics. All I have said, repeatedly, is that trans men do not universally have male privilege; that, when we do have it, we don't all possess it uniformly; and that it can be stripped from us - all statements with which you've seemingly just agreed! The only thing I'm pushing back on is the idea that male privilege is an inherent and immutable aspect of trans masculinity, such that it doesn't make sense to behave as though trans men, as a class, are systematically oppressing trans women.

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Hey Foz! I think I may have misgendered you maybe a month ago commenting on your post. I think I started following you when you were identifying as genderqueer and I didn’t know your pronouns (and admittedly didn’t look—that’s on me!). I just read your post that you use he/him now, so I’m sorry if I was mistaken!

It's no problem! I prefer he/him, but I also accept they/them, so there's been no misgendering :)

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The thing is though, trans men who dont pass, who are being mistaken for queer women, are still more safe in public than 99% of trans women. And i think its weird to measure all trans women only by the percent that hasn't realized they're women yet/aren't even gnc, while looking at trans men as gnc by default..... yes cis men have privelege over cis women, but trans women aren't cis men, and aren't treated like that, and vice versa. like when we say you have privilege over trans women were not saying you have the same male privelege as cis men. We're saying you're less likely to be violently attacked by them in public than we are. This is not to say you aren't experiencing violence, more violence than cis people. But I dont understand why you insist that trans men and trans women face no differences in the way they're treated. That trans men aren't taken more seriously. That trans women aren't met with disgust even in queer spaces, even by other trans people. That its impossible for you to wield social power over them.

I need to be extremely clear, here: your entire ask is addressing multiple claims that I simply have not made. Namely: - I've made zero reference to trans women who don't yet know they're women and who aren't gender nonconforming in their presentation, let alone used them as the yardstick against which I'm comparing trans men; - I haven't characterised trans men as being gender nonconforming by default; - I've not insisted that trans men and women face no differences in how they're treated - in fact, I've quite clearly said that we do; - I've never denied that trans women can be met with disgust in queer spaces, even by other trans people; and - I haven't said it's impossible for trans men to have social power over trans women - instead, I've affirmed, multiple times, that trans men can indeed be beneficiaries of male privilege. What I have said is that trans men do not universally have male privilege, even when we pass; that we can have it to varying degrees; that this privilege can sometimes be stripped from us; and that it's possible for some trans men to have less privilege in a given context than some trans women. I'm not saying we never have privilege, or that trans women are somehow more privileged than us. I'm literally just acknowledging that trans men have a plurality of experiences, and that how and when we pass - which we can't always control - frequently determines how we're treated. This should not be controversial! But for some reason, some of you are so profoundly invested in the idea of a simplistic, binary view of gender that you're treating the concept of privilege as a zero sum game, as though if any of us can be said to have attained it once, all of us must thereinafter have it always, forever, in all contexts. And that simply isn't how anything works. To which point: it's extremely telling that you've said trans men are "mistaken for," and thus treated like, "queer women," but that "trans women aren't cis men, and aren't treated like that." You're acknowledging that trans men can be seen as women, but refusing to acknowledge that trans women can be seen as men. Why? Because you're invested in the idea that being perceived as male only ever results in privilege, and that claim doesn't hold up if you admit that a non-zero portion of the violence directed at trans women stems directly from them being seen as (perverted, predatory, queer) men. And then, on top of this, you're claiming that being seen as queer women makes trans men "more safe in public" than trans women, as though being a queer woman in public is ever an implicitly safe thing to be? As though being seen as (unnatural, self-mutilating, freakish) women is not a significant source of the violence directed towards trans men? Is there any other context in which you'd describe being perceived as a queer woman in public as safe? For fuck's sake, this isn't a competition! There is more than enough bigotry and suffering to go around without trying to insist on some absolute, fixed Oppression Hierarchy where every single member of a given group ranks always and forever within a set tier.

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totally!!

(last anon with a swift clarification to what I said)- I mentioned that I feel sometimes like people feel that they have to offer a justification for focusing more on transfems' issues, specifically, and while I do think ideally we should all try to hear each other out w/o pushing anyone to the side, I also don't expect transfems, for instance, to prioritize non-transfem issues, per se. Much as I appreciate you sharing your experiences, I also welcome others to share theirs, bc that takes it out of the realm of theory (which is expansive indeed!) So my point there was, trans women don't have to justify the extent to which they expound upon their own experiences and perceptions- they can do that w/o permission from anyone else, nor on the basis of being arguably worse-off than trans men.

Perhaps that didn't need clarification but I felt it might be better just in case it sounded like I was assigning blame there. bye now!🌈😊

Clarification noted!