#1) not quite as many as I thought. I think I was conflating ones I haven't done yet with ones I want to redo because they're horrible

[shortpplfedup]

Only Friends Character Rankings Episode 11

The end is nigh! Everybody takes a giant leap of faith in the mother of all transition eps, and we end on several cliffhangers of how those leaps will land Will Ray finally get his threesome? Will Nick agree to be Boston's boyfriend? Will Mew move in with Top? What is the actual factual deal with Boeing? WILL CHEUM GIVE BOSTON THE APOLOGY HE DESERVES? Last week y'all were split on who you were rooting for, with Boston and Boeing tied for your hearts. Here's the runners and riders this week.

🔺1. Nick (2)

I'm not sure I'm ready to be anyone's boyfriend.

So many boys to choose from, that's my baby. I chose Nick as my fighter from jump and that was so the right decision. Baby boy is beating them off with a stick, and committing to nothing and nobody in the process. He might be in love with Boston, but he's actually thinking about what 'in love' means to him, after the mess his 'love' caused. He likes Dan, but won't lead him on. Helping Boston with Atom let him see a version of his own feelings and actions that have made him a bit contemplative it feels like, and I'm curious to see what decisions he actually makes in the finale.

🔺2. Boston (3)

But you might be my exception.

Speaking of contemplation, Boston is definitely calibrating and rethinking some of his basic assumptions about life and people. Atom is an avatar of how and why Boston probably landed on his 'I HATE DRAMA' train, while Nick is an avatar of 'oh, I might have conflated people's feelings with 'drama' when they aren't quite the same thing'. He wants to maybe try monogamy, and you know what, that's his right, and he feels safe to try it with Nick. I have a lot of thoughts about how much Boston must trust Nick to take that leap, even on a short-term/trial basis, and I love the nuance in how this has been written.

🔺3. Yo (and Plug) (10)

I should protect my heart first, shouldn't I?

MOM AND COOL STEPDAD ARE BACK TOGETHER! This has been a very tight runner, but I love it. I love that Plug was able to take a deep breath and swallow his hurt over Yo wanting to protect herself. I love that Yo was able to step outside of herself and take a leap of faith that Plug does love her. Using Yo and Plug as a thematic reinforcer has been effective for me, and I hope we get to see them one last time in the finale.

🔺4. Top (8)

I'm gonna make you love me even more.

Force has been doing a thankless job incredibly well playing Top. When I tell y'all I know Tops, big dick swinging Big Men On Campus, Roc Nation Brunch types, successful on the outside but a total mess within, looking for a saviour, convinced that this One Thing or One Person, if they could just get them, it would mean that they're winners and not the losers they have nightmares about being...and Force is playing that so well. The other thing about these types is that the hole inside they're trying to fill is always an empty space, no matter who or what they try to stuff in there. There will always be a next thing that could save them. I've legit never seen this type portrayed this well on screen, and I look forward to seeing where he lands because he could literally go either way.

🔹5. Sand (5)

Well, someone who's completely my type dumped me for someone else.

YES SAND SPEND THAT MAN'S MONEY THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU ALL ALONG! If he's going to call you a whore whenever he gets mad at you, and you're gonna accept that and forgive him every time, at least reap some goddamn benefits. On the other side of things, we see that Sand's simpness is not confined to Ray; this is just what he's like when he falls for somebody. Boeing reappearing makes that clear. That man cheated and dumped him and he still can't send him packing when he turns up again. 'We can be friends' NO YOU FUCKING CAN'T GUY, THAT MUCH IS OBVIOUS.

🔹6. Mew (6)

You asked for a chance and I gave it to you.

As I said earlier this week, there's nothing wrong with Mew that couldn't be solved by giving him a pair of stilettos and a flogger, and I stand by that. Mew is struggling so hard with the feeling that he has somehow lost, and it's making him lowkey crazy. Top abasing himself and Mew getting to punish him would go a long way to making these two work, if that's what they want. Sometimes kink is 100% the answer to a complicated relationship, and these two are COMPLICATED. So much ego and image is wrapped up in these two's expectations of each other, they are never actually vulnerable, even when performing vulnerability. But one thing kink absolutely requires is vulnerability. I'm voting for Mew to realise his dom desires before the end.

🔹7. Ray (7)

If you say so, then I won't be jealous.

Ray makes a valiant attempt at proper boyfriendism this ep, and it's actually pretty effective...right up until he's faced with the prospect that Sand's squishy centre is more about who Sand is than it is about Ray being extra special somehow. Sand's mom told him: this is how he is with people he cares about. So when somebody Sand clearly cares/cared about, Boeing, shows up, Ray gets a front row seat and he doesn't like the view. How he handles what happens next is gonna tell us whether or not Ray has learned a goddamn thing.

🔻8. Boeing (1)

I just want to be with someone tonight.

There's a definite pattern to the rankings at this point, in that a character hitting the #1 is doomed to take a nosedive in the next ep, and Boeing is no exception. His game remains unclear at this point, but he does give the sense of having had plan A fail and moving on to plan B, taking a not-unrealistic leap of faith that Sand will allow him back into his life. This show has been pretty good about writing real people not cartoon villains, so I'm pretty sure Boeing's got his own human story animating his actions, and I'm curious to find out what it is.

🔺9. Atom (10)

He didn't do anything to me.

Well he apologised and told the truth in the end, even if he had to be threatened to do it, that counts for something...

🔻10. Cheum (9)

What did he do to you this time?

...but if she doesn't apologise for the fucked up things she said to Boston I'm gonna lose it I swear.

[witheredoffherwitch]

This is the anon who was talking about tropes and themes being able to be criticized when it comes to fanfiction. I’m not really sure what you’re not condoning tbh, I definitely don’t think any hate should be sent to people by any means but I do think it’s okay for readers to offer critical and not always positive feedback when it comes to different works. I think that can lead to many productive reflections and conversations among readers and writers and I personally do not see how this is the same as “hate” at all. Also do people actually believe Nettles/Daemon’s arc will be given to Aemond/Alys? I don’t see how that would be the case at all and that honestly seems absurd to be frank. Just seems like fans creating imaginary scenarios to get mad at. Their relationship is open to interpretation obviously but 1) Definitely don’t see Daeron OR Nettles being cut and 2) These are two very different dynamics and stories so I don’t see how those can be conflated…..

Hi nonnie,

I was 'not condoning' the previous anon post you referenced (where the individual reached out to some fanfic writers to express their disappointment about the misogynistic depiction of Alys in their fics). I am sorry - I probably should have made that more clear. I thought you were endorsing those said tactics of taking one's personal gripes with story arcs/tropes to the fanfic writers. My bad!

To your other point, I DON'T KNOW 😩😩

Every logical thought in my head says that Daeron and Nettles won't be cut from the show - it would such a glaring mistake on HBO's part. Moreover, we've had GRRM's own admission about Daeron's inclusion in season 2 -- and then there had been leaks floating around online about "dragonseeds" and an actress on set who looks just like the description of Nettles. So I don't know what to believe tbh.

The leakers are fairly reliable and my cynical ass won't allow a bout of reassurance even when they make little to no sense. BUT my last confession in your ask has now opened my inbox to few anons who have assured that these changes will not make sense narratively - and quite frankly, I AM GRATEFUL FOR THAT! 😣🤧

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: William Vex

Published: Apr 11, 2023

In a world of aggressive wars of territorial annexation by autocratic powers, pandemics, threats of nuclear annihilation, anthropogenic climate change, crimes against humanity, and widespread poverty and inequality, modern pundits and scholars in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States have devoted a remarkable amount of time and energy to issues of gender and sexual identity. For present purposes, I do not take issue with the geopolitical and moral prioritisation that such preoccupation would seem to imply, though one certainly could and perhaps should.

However, if we are to expend so much effort on this topic, we should at least be clear and rigorous in how we think about it. In what follows, I will avoid taking a position on exactly which approach to these issues—or which “answers” to the puzzles of gender identity—I find compelling. I will, however, try to spell out a typology of identity “paradigms,” each of which represents a competing way to think about what gender and sexual identity are, how they arise, and what their conceptual limitations and implications seem to be. This effort at conceptual clarification is intended to help us more intelligibly navigate a discourse environment that has in recent years become worryingly polarised, conceptually muddy, and more prone to vicious invective than open-mindedness, genuine toleration of divergent opinion, clarity, and honesty.

There are at least four basic ways of thinking about sex and gender. In practice, many people conflate these four paradigms, or draw upon them in undisciplined and confusing “mix-and-match” sorts of ways. But each is very different.

1. Traditional view

In this conception, “sex” is thought to result from human biology and occur in a bimodal (“male” versus “female”) distribution, except for very specific and extremely rare genetic and phenotypic anomalies. In this conception, “gender” isn’t quite the same thing as sex, since the roles, responsibilities, and privileges associated with being of one sex or the other are, at least to some extent, socially constructed and may therefore vary from one culture or context to the next. Nevertheless, gender identities and roles are assumed in some significant way to track biological sex and have some roots therein.

While there may be some flexibility associated with gender in terms of self-identity or in how one is treated by others, identity in terms of sex is treated as an objective fact dictated by the sexual dimorphism of the human species. And because this is considered an objective fact, if you deny it, you are seen as either a fool or a knave. (Specifically, this view sees you as a “denier,” whose unreasoned politics have turned you against what science has made abundantly clear.) In this view, an adult person with a penis and XY chromosomes who “presents” according to traditional stereotypes about gender attributes associated with being a woman, and uses “she/her” pronouns, remains a man in a frock, irrespective of his subjective self-identity, and even if people treat him as if he were a woman.

Of course, there is some conceptual and terminological fuzziness associated with the evolving contingencies of real-world usage, in comparison, say, to the (ostensibly) crisp and clear rigor of academic discourse. The terms “male” and “female” attempt to be scientific terms, applied to any sexually dimorphic species, and are associated with possessing the basic equipment related to the production of respective gametes. Nonetheless, the traditional view struggles, at least a bit, with the fact that Homo sapiens doesn’t always come in just two biological varieties.

The existence of genetic exceptions is sometimes rhetorically overplayed by opponents of the traditional view, for these anomalies are extremely rare, and arguably don’t disprove the basic contention of dimorphism. (Such anomalies also occasionally occur in other species, after all, without anyone finding dimorphism incoherent as a meaningful and scientifically useful organising concept for the biologist or naturalist. Nor does the existence of the very rare anomaly in any way imply that sexual phenotypes are evenly distributed by degrees along a continuum; they aren’t, for any species.) Still, this remains a point of contention.

The traditional view is complicated by the frequent use of other terms that sometimes confuse more than they illuminate. As applied to humans, the traditional view is usually comfortable substituting “man” and “woman” for “male” and “female,” respectively, but in practice these terms are more ambiguous. And most of the time, “man” and “woman” do seem to be less clunky ways to describe people who are male and female, respectively. Sometimes, however, the former terms are used in ways that carry connotations of gender identity and role, which can confuse things somewhat by conflating what should be kept separate if one can.

Phrases, for example, like “Be a man!” or “Man up!” convey something of society’s expectations about gender roles and gendered behaviours that do not necessarily map onto the facts and requirements of biology. This is a conceptual failing. (You presumably wouldn’t exhort someone to “Be a male!” because that’s not something one does, but rather something one just is or isn’t. By contrast, the terms “masculine” and “feminine” are clearly associated with specific gendered expectations about how it is that males and females should behave, and are thus less at risk of being confused with biological categories.)

Given the degree to which the traditional view depends upon the idea that biological sex exists to some degree prior to individual human or societal volition, moreover, this paradigm struggles to identify and explain the boundaries and relationships between biological “nature” and more “nurture”-type factors of social construction, individual choice, particularistic circumstances, and other such contingencies. It clearly feels that at least something is the result of “nature” and therefore inherent and objective, but it can be hard to identify precisely what.

It is well accepted, for example, that the differing sexes in non-human dimorphic species often show very pronounced, presumably evolved, behavioural divergences. (This is, one imagines, primarily a result of their dimorphic biology, since it is very hard to point to any meaningful quotient of potential social construction or conscious volition in all such divergently-behaving species.) Does this apply to humans at well? The traditional view tends to think that it does, since otherwise one would have to explain why humans are unique in the animal world in not having actual evolutionarily derived behaviors to accompany our sexually differing bodily morphologies.

But if there are indeed some behaviours, or at least behavioural tendencies, that result from evolution and biology, what are they? How much of what we take for granted in the world of human sexual and gendered behavior can be traced to “inherent” biology and how much to more contingent things? And even for what might be said to be “natural,” what is the moral and societal import, if any, of this naturalness from the perspective of ethics, politics, and social behavior? (It might be “natural,” for example, to want to take a cudgel to someone who has said something that infuriates you, but that doesn’t mean you should be permitted to do so!) Such questions have huge implications for our understanding of sexual and gender identity, of course. Yet our scientific understanding of evolution and biology and ourselves isn’t (yet) up to offering many compelling answers in the kind of detail likely to be very useful in the political and social arena.

There is nothing logically self-contradictory about invoking the authority of science to suggest the existence of sex- and gender-related inherencies that need (somehow!) to be taken into account in public policy and gender politics. When that science still has difficulty pointing to exactly what these inherencies are and what “proportion” of traditional gendered assumptions they do (or don’t) explain, however, it is not hard to see how the stage is set in today’s polarised environment for frustration, contestation, and the suspicion in some activist quarters that scientific objectivity might be providing unjustified cover for patriarchal traditionalism.

2. Social construction

Alternatively, one might hold that all aspects of sex- and gender-related identity are purely social constructions. This wouldn’t necessarily erase the facts of biology and science, but it would consign them to irrelevance for identity-constitution purposes. And indeed, the conception of social construction would be a powerful weapon against the traditional notion of sex and gender identities rooted in the undeniable objective facts of dimorphic human biology.

All that matters in this view is how society builds identities, and there aren’t really any inherent constraints upon how that identity can be constructed. If you adopt this approach, therefore, it might well be that either “people who menstruate” or “people with penises” could truly be either women or men, irrespective of those particular biological attributes. Such thinking could potentially also ground the legitimacy of the proliferating alphabet soup (e.g., LGBTQIA+) of various alternative sex- or gender-related identities that do not correspond to traditional dichotomies at all.

But there are limitations to this conception, for it is inherent in the idea of social construction that identity is, well, socially constructed. This precludes it from being individually constructed. If such identities are social constructs, the specific personal, subjective feelings of the individual are actually not terribly important. This isn’t to say that they are entirely irrelevant, but they only matter as one single input from one single member of the far larger group (society as a whole) that actually “makes” such decisions.

If you really take the idea of social construction seriously, therefore, a gender “transition” hasn’t actually occurred unless and until the broader society accepts that it has occurred. In this view, in other words, the aforementioned “man in a frock” can indeed truly be a woman, but only after, and as a result of, the broader society having accepted that this is the case. Until then, in terms of the social reality of the situation, it doesn’t particularly matter what the individual thinks or feels. By definition, you don’t get to “socially construct” something all by yourself.

3. Internal essentialism

A third view might posit that there is something inherent about sexual and gender identity—that it is a kind of internal essence that exists entirely independent of the particular, contingent biological facts of your existence. In this view, you could be truly a man or a woman (or conceivably something else) irrespective of what biology you happen to have.

This view has some strengths in today’s gender politics debates. It might, for example, provide an explanation for gender dysphoria and accommodate the idea that someone has been “born into the wrong body” in ways that support the use of surgical interventions to make the physical self correspond more closely to the “real” one determined by that internal essence.

This essentialist view also partakes of the compelling claim to objective fact, without any awkward need to depend upon constructivist social acceptance by third parties. If it is objectively true that you have such an essence, after all, I would presumably be quite wrong to deny it. It is intrinsic to the idea of objective facts that they can be claimed to trump contrary opinion, which delegitimises itself precisely to the degree that a fact in question is objectively clear.

There are conceptual limits to this idea as well, however. For a start, it raises all sorts of questions about what it means to hypothesise an inherent essence that is, by definition, entirely independent of the facts of biology and the contingent circumstances of birth, upbringing, and experience. On what basis, if not biology, could this essence be said to exist? Does one need to hypothesise a kind of “sexual soul” existing separately from the biological body?  

And by what means might such a soul-like thing affect that body, or matter to it at all? This is a “mind-body dualism” problem of the sort that Western philosophy has struggled with since at least Descartes. There is no sign of it being solved by those in the trans activism community who seem to believe in such an essentialist approach. (Nor, I might add, has Cartesian dualism fared well in philosophical circles. I wouldn’t consider such a position a terribly strong foundation to build upon these days.)

Another problem with the idea of an inherent essence that determines gender identity is the degree to which gender identity is itself strongly tied to cultural contingency. What does it mean to say that an essence is truly “inherent” in a soul-like way when it compels you to conform your behavior to the actual, contingent gender roles and expectations of a specific society (e.g., culturally-specific indicia of the social presentation appropriate for a “woman”)? An inherent inner essence driving gendered behaviors that vary by culture and geography, and over time, is a strange sort of thing indeed, verging on incoherence. How could a “self” that is, in Michael Sandel’s term, so clearly “situated” in real-world contingency truly be said to be inherent in a meaningful way?

Moreover, this view has difficulty with change. If you take essentialism seriously, for example, it can be challenging to explain changes in identity. Errors would not necessarily be a problem, for there is nothing self-contradictory about simply being mistaken about an objective fact, and this could explain some changes in any individual gender-identity trajectory. (“I was conditioned to believe I was a woman, but I was never comfortable with myself and now see that I was really a man all along.”)

Nonetheless, if you open the door to potential errors by admitting that one’s internal and essential identity is not always completely clear or obvious even to oneself, then it is at least possible that one could be conditioned or mistaken in essentially any given direction or respect. And this makes it harder for the trans activist community to rule out, a priori, the legitimacy of “de-transition,” or of contested “social contagion” theories of gender transition, under which enthusiasm for gender-switching may to some degree result from social-media influence and cultural pressure rather than from the compelling power of one’s true internal “self.” If you can be socially pressured to ignore or confuse your true nature in one direction, after all, why is it impossible to be pressured in the other direction?

The essentialist paradigm has even more problems with any suggestion that there is an element of choice in sex- or gender-related identity. Surely, if one’s identity is in these regards “baked in” to one’s self in ways more fundamental even than the biological realities of one’s existence, this is not terrain on which you can “reassign” yourself in any defensible way. You might choose to act differently, perhaps, but it is hard to see how that could possibly alter the intrinsic, soul-like essence upon which this paradigm is based. You can’t, in other words, intelligibly take the essentialist position and accept the malleability of identity at the same time.

4. Choice

The fourth fundamental conceptual model for how one might think about these sorts of identity is personal choice. There is a sort of libertarian logic to this approach, inasmuch as it leaves the determination of “what” one is to the individual. This conception is inherently much more flexible than the others, for it does not need to demonstrate the existence of any sort of objectively pre-social “fact” (e.g., in the form of biological identity or of some quasi-religiously postulated “sexual soul”) and it can also easily accommodate dynamics of change.

A downside of the “choice” paradigm, however, is that it is perhaps too flexible. Does this ability to assign oneself identity admit to any limits at all? Is there anything that one could not declare oneself to be? For example, might one at least conclude that you cannot legitimately declare yourself to be a man and a woman at the same time? Even if there is at least this limitation on one’s choice, however, wouldn’t ruling out such contradictions require the prior existence of some definitions or categories of identity real enough to allow us to understand whether or not there is a contradiction at all?

And if the definitions of various potential categories of identity are fundamentally no more than hostages to individual caprice, how is it meaningful to talk about such identities as important at all? It is hard to see how such airy fogginess could justify investing the kind of psychic and moral energy in gender issues that one sees in contemporary Western society, or justify prizing such self-identities over the presumably huge range of other potentially transitory and ephemeral ones that a human being could have at any given time. (Surely it must be presumed that gender issues are the focus of so much attention because they are deeply important? If that depth cannot be justified, we have all been wasting a great deal of time.)

Of the four basic paradigms, the “choice” approach is also arguably the most belligerent in what it demands of others. One of the benefits of an objective fact, after all, is that one can legitimately demand that others agree upon its existence. As noted earlier, if you reject something that is objectively true, you are either a fool or a knave. Even through a social constructivist prism, moreover, there is at least some degree of objectively defensible fact involved in the assignment of identity, for socially constructed things can be said to exist objectively, depending on whether or not the broader society accepts or does not accept a given proposition. With its infinitely malleable and subjective identities, however, the “choice” paradigm forfeits being able to point to anything external for validation. My identity is simply what I say it is, and that’s that.

Yet in this context, the “choice” paradigm does not posit merely that my true identity is whatever I feel it to be. These four competing approaches to gender and sexual identity are not codes of conduct or good manners regarding how politely to manage disagreements about the truth of such identity; they are ontological claims, about what the basis and nature of such identity actually is. So the “choice” paradigm is laissez-faire only with regard to my own individual feelings.

With regard to what other people are expected—and indeed required—to accept about my identity, it is totalitarian. I may be able to assign myself any identity I wish, but you must also be compelled to accept that whatever I have articulated is indeed what I truly am. For that matter, you are required to continue agreeing with me, whenever and however I change my self-description. For you to do otherwise would be to “erase” my identity, which in an age (and for a paradigm) of radical individuality is one of the worst sins imaginable.

This “choice” paradigm of identity, in other words, claims for any given identity the compelling character of an objective fact, in that it makes demands upon others that they accept that description of identity, on pain of being considered either a knave or a fool if they do not. But the “fact” it invokes isn’t objective but rather, by definition, a subjective claim. Indeed, it is a “fact” of identity that is impossible for anyone else to discern or substantiate except by some authoritative pronouncement from the individual feeling it. It is also one that is potentially changeable at an individual’s caprice. Nevertheless, despite the opacity and malleability of such a subjectively-chosen identity, it is quite essential to the paradigm that everyone be made at all times to agree with my description of it, whatever that may be.

Hence this paradigm’s intellectual totalitarianism. Rather than asking that others merely acknowledge the existence of an exogenous reality, this paradigm demands the right to exert real-time control over how others act, speak, and even think on the topic. And every single individual in society has the right to demand ongoing control over how every other person conceives of that individual. This seems rather a lot to ask.

Despite the “choice” paradigm’s ostensibly liberating focus upon individual choice, this approach might not in practice produce much in the way of real personal freedom. To the contrary, one’s own ability to choose an identity would be counterbalanced by perpetual enslavement to having always to accept and performatively validate everyone else’s conception of their own identity in every respect, on an ongoing basis, forever.

Where does this leave us?

Much of the contemporary rhetoric in the trans activist community is conceptually confused because it draws indiscriminately and in self-contradictory ways upon all three of the non-traditional conceptual paradigms outlined above. I would imagine that this is because activists understandably would like, if they can, to take advantage of the differing strengths of each of the three non-traditional paradigms.

To avoid the inconvenience of having to understand and account for the influence of biology, sexual and gender identity is described as being socially constructed.

To take advantage of the conceptual strength of an argument that demands fidelity to purportedly objective facts, the very objective truth of which permits you to depict any denier as either stupid or malevolent, one’s gender identity is held to exist inherently, independent of circumstance, volition, or even biology. Such identity simply “is” and must be acknowledged as a clear and incontestable reality.

To avoid gender roles being seen as a lifelong straightjacket and to free up some space for individual volition, it is also said that once you come to realise that your prior understanding of your own identity was wrong, or that you now simply feel differently about it, you should be free to choose another, and that this new identity must now be considered your true self.

Each of these assertions has a basis that is defensible at least on the terms of one or another of the non-traditional paradigms I have discussed. But the cost of them being employed so opportunistically and selectively is incoherence. Simply put, those assertions cannot all be true at the same time, and each tends to undermine the other.

If gender identity is socially constructed, for example, it is neither inherent nor something that you can decide to change all on your own. But if it is inherent, then it cannot be socially constructed, and one is basically substituting a purportedly objectively extant quasi-religious “sexual soul” for the purportedly objectively extant biological reality of sex, which also means you cannot really explain identity change. And if these matters really hinge only on the potentially contingent ephemera of personal choice, you diminish your ability to fight off the objective reality of science (because you are no longer invoking, against the traditional view, what claims to be a countervailing objective reality). At the same time, you risk having your whole schema collapse into a formlessly whimsical free-for-all in which it’s hard to see why these matters are important enough to justify our time and attention in the first place, especially in a world so full of dramatic, concrete, and definable wrongs in need of righting.

This leaves the Western policy, political, and ethical community in dire need of rigor and the associated intellectual honesty and civil tolerance needed to explore these issues with real seriousness. We must have the courage to interrogate their assumptions and abandon lines of thought that cannot be intelligibly defended.

[ Archive: https://archive.is/KwIH8 ]

[mbti-notes]

hi, i've been having some issues with Fi vs Fe, especially when I think of Aang in ATLA. I know he is typed as ENFP including by you. and i can understand the Ne dom view but the Fi is so confusing. I thought Fi was internal moral/values and doing what someone thinks is right according to themselves but in the show Aang kept saying stuff like 'the monks taught me revenge isnt good' etc. it always seems like his morals come from others in this way and not from himself? how does it work?

This confusion is common for newbies. It sounds like you're reciting a simplistic and stereotypical description of Fi that doesn't tell you anything about the many possible ways Fi develops in real people or how it actually operates in response to real world situations. There are several problems to address:

1) Applying imprecise and/or incorrect definitions: Fi is basically using your subjective feelings to make value judgments. That's all. It doesn't determine exactly what your moral beliefs will be or whether your moral belief system is valid. To understand how people come to adopt and justify their moral beliefs, you have to introduce the concept of moral development. Moral development and personality development are separate, though they have a complicated relationship.

In short, you're conflating cognitive functions and moral development because you haven't really understood what cognitive functions are and how to define them properly.

2) Not distinguishing well between cognition and behavior: How old is Aang? Physically and mentally, he's a preteen (10-12). Preteens do not have a well-developed auxiliary function, nor would they be very far along in their ego and moral development. He hasn't had the time and life experience required to develop a sophisticated awareness and nuanced understanding of his feeling life. Thus, with his "primitive" Fi, he only knows when things don't feel right, at best.

On top of immature Fi, a preteen isn't capable of refined moral reasoning, either. He doesn't yet possess the necessary intellectual tools for articulating his moral judgments and decisions. Thus, when pressed, what else can he do but call up some words from his mentors and teachers, as all children do at that stage of moral development? He's picking and choosing their moral arguments as necessary to help explain and justify his own strong but fledgling moral instincts.

Additionally, remember that people fall into inferior grip when they have too much difficulty coping with stress, and he was pretty much under constant pressure to carry out his mission efficiently. He's not repeating what authority figures taught him because he likes to and he takes personal pride in possessing authoritative knowledge (high Si). Rather, he's only doing it during times of moral confusion when he sees no other method of grounding himself (compensatory Si).

Grasping for scraps of old knowledge and/or remnants of one's old self when feeling lost is a sign of inferior Si and it happens when Ne doms are under stress. They easily get tangled up in trying to reconcile the disconnects between past, present, and future. Don't forget that his case is quite extreme because there is a gap of over a hundred years in his knowledge of the world.

In short, you're only looking at what he does (behavior), but you haven't understood WHY he's doing it (cognition). This is a common pitfall in type assessment. You need to understand The Why, otherwise, you run the risk of taking behavior at face value and then getting misled by crude stereotypes.

3) Not accounting for the whole functional stack: The reason he was frozen (in time) for so long was mainly because he was running from his responsibilities. If I recall correctly, this was a recurring theme and related to the developmental challenge he had to meet in order to grow and mature as a character.

Resisting duties and responsibilities aligns perfectly with the ENFP tendency to take dominant Ne to extremes and resist the call to develop auxiliary Fi in adolescence, eventually leading to Te loop and Si grip issues. Other functional stacks wouldn't fit as well. For example, if he was ESFJ, he would be taking Fe to extremes and have difficulty developing Si, eventually leading to Ne loop and Ti grip issues. Is there any evidence to support this reading? Not that I remember.

All of the functions of the stack have to fit properly. Are you using the evidence to discover the right stack, or are you trying to twist and force the evidence to fit the stack you want? Many people prefer to start with a hypothesis and then look for confirming evidence. The problem with this approach is that it tends to overlook better possibilities as well as important counter-evidence. My method of type assessment is more neutral in giving fair consideration to all 16 types at the start, then gradually narrowing it down through examining counter-evidence (see the Type Spotting Guide).

In short, you're trying to isolate and identify a particular function without taking into consideration its exact stack position, how it relates to the other functions in the stack, and how its expression is influenced by individual developmental factors.

[gothprentiss]

i don't think the question "if a story is good who cares if it's written by software instead of a human?!?!" is actually hard to answer because, like, "not me" or "me" are very easy answers, extremely available to all who behold said question. but like, if you're seriously making it a question of literary valuation-- YEAH it's a complex question!

beyond the fact that levels of human involvement will obviously differ across different text-generating machines, which makes it impossible to make that kind of binaristic "instead of a human" claim (which i think. a sci fi writer. should maybe have in their noggin). moving beyond that. at some point what you have to consider is that what we "come to art for" is dynamic rather than static. at another point you will have to consider that making meaning is quite a complex thing for a text to do. what if you redid the new criticism experiment of analyzing unattributed poems (by "good" and "bad" poets) with a human poem and a computer poem (all caveats about human involvement suspended)? what if you made meaning out of the computer poem? what if the meaning you made out of the human poem wasn't the meaning that the poet was trying to put into it? what then dude??? what if the postulation of human intent behind a text is precisely that illusory?

in some ways, this whole argument is just a new development in the ongoing fear of automation, rather than making life easier, making humans either obsolete or expendable in most of the organization of life & culture & the economy & so on. and i don't think it's unreasonable for artists to fear that an already saturated and unprofitable market will become even less profitable in a situation where bad-faith and aspiring artists alike can quickly and easily generate what they labor to achieve, e.g. how said sci fi novelist might insist on the importance of human involvement and perspective in creating a text; neither this kind of thought nor this kind of commitment are necessary* for an ai generated text (*though they might be present, in the same way that a human might write a morally bankrupt text). but the desire to create a hard line about art ('it's about other people's perspectives') doesn't meaningfully produce that hard line. at a certain point, this kind of technophobia is just conservatism rather than a meaningful theory of art and response.

i feel like this reflects what was, at the outset, a clearer argument-- 1) that's not art because a person didn't do it more or less by hand; 2) humans should not be displaced in their craft by computers, which will happen due to various different kinds of cost/benefit analysis-- getting lost in the desire to have a more transcendent claim (art is the product of the human mind). there are a lot of problems you can have with all of this, but at least the primary forms of this argument seemed more honest. the universal version of the argument, on the other hand, verges on the absurd. the binaristic notion of man vs computer makes it factually wrong in ways that are going to multiply as the possibilities for ai likewise proliferate; the idea that what we get out of a text or other work of art is, meaningfully, a clear relation to another person's mind is likewise pretty out of touch with reading as a practice. and it's like, you know, one of the cool things about art is that often your encounters with art (good, meaningful, bad, unenjoyable, etc.!) make you rethink what art can do and be. insisting that ai art has nothing to contribute is just closing yourself off to that. given that ai currently can and no doubt will make art which you could find good or enjoyable, this kind of falsifiable claim is also just stupid to make; the conflation of taste and pleasure with moral and political action effectively bottlenecks two broad streams, and many people will, at one point or another, hit that bottleneck and do some more complex political negotiating than you are. you don't find it good, they do; saying BAD louder doesn't overcome that fact. because it is, at the end of the day, a complex question, one which requires you to articulate a whole host of values. sorry that what a theory of taste and judgment asks of you takes more than 280 characters tho

[stewyhosseini-bf]

do u think it’s strange that there was almost no mention of kendalls drug addiction/him using in this season? we got that one line in the first episode which implies he might be clean? maybe? and its never brought up again. i just cant help but find it weird bc kendalls drug use and addiction was such a big part of his character and really used to reflect what hes going through. but then again this season wasn’t very long in-universe and he was focused on a lot of other things so maybe there wasnt any necessity for him to do drugs? i might have answered my own question.

Okay that's a really good question. So in terms of why they didn't bring it up again, I literally just listened to a podcast ep where Jesse essentially answered this exact question so I'll just write down his answer here real quick:

Podcast Host #1: I don't think I've ever seen an addict on television without relapse being part of the story.

Jesse Armstrong: Yeah, yeah, and it was part of our story, but I wasn't especially intrigued by that dynamic.

Podcast Host #2: Why did you do it if you weren't that intrigued by it?

JA: It just felt right. It's that episode in the desert, it came after episode 6 of the first season. And it just felt like he was in a tough place and so we did it cause it felt right. But the episode isn't really about that. I don't want to be glib about addiction, but I think it's quite heavily covered in the culture. It's well covered in the culture. We've got some stuff to say about power and also I guess about the way that money can insulate you from some of the worst things that can happen to you if you don't have money and find yourself addicted.

I don't necessarily think the show (or Jesse for that matter) is saying he didn't relapse, but that, as with many things in this show, they just don't bring it back up again because there's no plot-related reason to. Like you know how there's a lot of those jokes about how 'x was true, it just wasn't relevant to [characters]'s journey so we never saw it' - I feel like if there's any show that this joke really works well on it's Succession lmao. Stuff will come up and then be dropped quite easily again later on, and they're not necessarily trying to make a statement by doing that. So them not mentioning it doesn't imply anything about whether Kendall is using again, it really just tells you that whatever the case may be, it's not really relevant to the plot and/or doesn't reveal anything we don't already know about the character, so there's no reason to mention it.

With Kendall, drugs are also mostly brought up either by Logan or Kendall's siblings, to point out his 'weaknesses' (just revisited this post on how the show conflates Kendall's drug abuse, him performing in a business-sense and his sexuality). I don't think there was necessarily anything new to be said about that. Kendall's also flying pretty high for most of the season, and those topics and Kendall's drug use mostly comes up when he's depressed and more hopeless, which he simply didn't really have time to be, with everything that was going on this season and with how little time passed.

This doesn't mean, though, that I think they don't put thought into whether he is sober or not or don't put in certain 'clues' (for lack of a better word) that point to that. At the start of the season Kendall kind of implies that The Hundred is keeping him occupied enough to keep him from drugs ('I need something super fucking absorbing in my life', which tells me he is trying to stay away from drugs and is asking them straight up to tell him if it's not gonna be this, so he can look for a different substitute). And I'm pretty sure the drink he orders in 4x2 is non-alcoholic (though I could be wrong, I'm going off what I've seen others say here) but as the season progresses we do see him drink, like in Norway and then also at the Tailgate Party and in the finale. Whether that means that he's using drugs again as well, I don't know, but he's clearly not staying sober. We also know he uses drugs when he's under a lot of pressure to perform, in the business-sense, which he obviously is this season, so there is that as well

[texasdreamer01]

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My Top Posts in 2022:

Hi! You seem pretty interested in Chinese historical fashion (and more generally Central and East Asian fashion) so, if it's ok, I wanted to ask what your thoughts on the historical Hanbok-Hanfu disagreement are? Or do you not have an opinion (totally valid) on the arguments

Ooh, hm, I never expected to be asked a question like this - let me see if I can collect my thoughts.

While I'm not intensely familiar with all the nuances of the hanbok-hanfu argument, I do have a little more familiarity with such arguments in general, given that putting a name to a particular style of dress often carries the connotations of accompanying arguments such as lines of ethnicity, national borders, and linguistic variations. So even if one person might be arguing in good faith about solely the matter of "does this dress belong to that category of clothing", another might be arguing from a position of "do the people of X dress belong to the category of people with Y dress".

On a technical level, I do think that the construction of hanbok and hanfu are quite similar, though I don't know enough about their histories to argue whether that's a matter of practicality in clothing oneself - there's only so many ways to sew together a rectangle of fabric - or if either group has influenced each other's fashions, something which might be an indicator of shared political, religious, or cultural transmission.

Because of this, I hesitate to ascribe anything approaching sinicization to hanbok, but am also conflicted because at what point do humans upon settling "new" lands form "new" ethnicities? In such a way I feel like the hanbok-hanfu argument is - or at least has become - a proxy subject for deeper sociopolitical arguments, and if it was once academic speculation, it at the very least verges on stepping outside its original postulations.

Do I think hanbok are hanfu? No. Do I think hanfu represent a homogeneous ethnicity in China? Also no. Would conflating one with the other generate an accurate and/or precise assessment about a category of historical clothing? Probably not.

1 note - Posted October 22, 2022

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[12chumtoadsinatrenchcoat]

.

[asexual-means-no-attraction]

Random, but how do you make the distinction between sex repulsion and asexuality? Like, I get one is a sexuality and the other isnt, but in terms of how its expressed and experienced how are they distinct from each other? Asking cuz I’ve met people irl who’ve conflated low libido and repulsion with being asexual and it used to bug me but I felt awkward bringing it up cuz I didnt know them very well (friends of a sister)

It's not uncommon for things to be really similar but still distinct. This goes beyond your question about sex repulsion vs asexuality. There's a lot of things that fall into this confusion. So don't feel back about not being able to really figure it all out.

But a few differences I can think of:

1. One can theoretically be "fixed." If someone is sex repulsed and wants to change that, they can with therapy, strategy, and time (most of the time. Some causes of sex repulsion might not be able to changed). If they are chill with it, then they might not ever find a need to change that which is fine too. It's a matter of what they personally wanna do. But with asexuality, you cannot change that. It's a sexuality. You might realize you were wrong when you thought you were ace, but someone who asexual is and always has been asexual. No amount of therapy or time will change that.

2. Sex repulsion can occur within any sexuality. Everyone has limits to what they're ok with in any relationship. Some limits change with time, some stay the same. You can very much love your partner and be attracted to them while not enjoying the idea of sex. Because it's not specifically about your partner.

Think of touch aversion. People who don't like it when someone randomly touches them without permission, or someone who doesn't enjoy hugs. Some people just have a hard time being touched. They can still form meaningful relationships and they can still desire to be close to someone. They might even desire to b touched even if their body can't handle the sensation.

The same thing goes for sex repulsed individuals. They can still want that close relationship, they may or may not even want sex. They just can't handle certain sensations. They have a boundary. Sexuality isn't a boundary. It tells you who someone is and isn't attracted to. Sex repulsion just tells you about a specific boundary.

3. In a similar vein, sex repulsion is often a lot more private of a topic. Many people would be a lot more comfortable telling you their sexuality than whether or not they are sex repulsed. Can't speak for everyone, but in my experience those who are sex repulsed like to keep that information more private. Not to say people don't always keep their sexuality private, but often times I find one is more personal to someone than the other.

4. The cause is very very different. Most (not all) of those who have sex repulsion tend to have it due to mental illness, a medical condition, trauma, etc. Sometimes even multiple causes might tie into it. It's a lot more complex of an idea and so are the causes. Sexuality is significantly more simple and the cause being quite literally "they were born that way." Nothing can change your sexuality, but many things may change your opinions and comfort level on having sex.

If anyone else can think of things feel free to add on. But that's all I can think of right now.

But on a last note, a word of advice:

-its ok to stay silent. It's ok to be uncomfortable sometimes. Yes, it's important to speak up and help people understand concepts. But it's not a job and it's not something you should do every possible time the option arises. Pick and choose your chances. Talking to a sibling's friend that you barely know might not really go well. But talking one that you've met a few times might actually give some results.

-I always find offering to give information is the best strategy. "Would you like me to explain or no?" If they say no, leave it be. Often times they'll come back later asking for the information, and they'll be significantly more likely to listen at that point. I've done that many a times when explaining trans issues to people. Managed to get a whole group of guys from 'calling trans women it' to saying 'I don't get it, but I'm willing to respect it' by the end of one summer just by offering to give the information and waiting for them to come and ask for it.

-listen to your mood. If you're going to get annoyed or snippy at their confusion it's best you don't try to talk to someone in that moment. You have to go in willing to calmly nod at their confusion no matter how silly and dumb it might feel to you. No matter how much it feels like the just can't connect the dots that are right on front of them. You have to meet them with understanding and not make them feel stupid for not understanding something. People want to learn, they want to be better. And if you're not able to be the respectful person to help them in a current moment, then wait for another chance when you can. It's ok. We can't always be understanding.

[writingwithcolor]

Jurassic period alien interacting with key cultures and historical figures in Middle East & Asia throughout history

@ketchupmaster400​ said:

Hello, so my question is for a character I’ve been working on for quite a while but wasn’t sure about a few things. So basically at the beginning of the universe there was this for less being made up of dark matter and dark energy. Long story short it ends up on earth during the Jurassic Period. It has the ability to adapt and assimilate into other life animals except it’s hair is always black and it’s skin is always white and it’s eyes are always red. It lives like this going from animal to animal until it finally becomes human and gains true sentience and self awareness. As a human it lives within the Middle East and Asia wondering around trying to figure out its purpose and meaning. So what I initially wanted to do with it was have small interactions with the dark matter human and other native humans that kinda helped push humanity into the direction it is now. For example, Mehndhi came about when the dark matter human was drawing on their skin because it felt insecure about having such white skin compared to other people. And ancient Indians saw it and thought it was cool so they adopted it and developed it into Mehndi. Minor and small interactions though early history leading to grander events. Like they would be protecting Jerusalem and it’s people agains the Crusaders later on. I also had the idea of the the dark matter human later on interacting with the prophets Jesus Christ and Muhammad. With Jesus they couldn’t understand why he would sacrifice himself even though the people weren’t deserving. And then Jesus taught them that you have to put other before yourself and protecting people is life’s greatest reward. And then with the prophet Muhammad, I had the idea that their interaction was a simple conversation that mirrors the one he had with the angel Jibril, that lead to the principles of Islam. Now with these ideas I understand the great importance of how not to convey Islam and I’ve been doing reasearch, but I am white and I can understand how that may look trying to write about a different religion than my own. So I guess ultimate my question is, is this ok to do? Is it ok to have an alien creature interact with religious people and historical events as important as they were? Like I said I would try to be as accurate and as respectable as possible but I know that Islam can be a touchy subject and the last thing I would want is to disrespect anyone. The main reason I wanted the dark matter being in the Middle East was because I wanted to do something different because so much has been done with European and American stuff I wanted to explore the eastern side of the world because it’s very beau and very rich with so many cultures that I want to try and represent. I’m sorry for the long post but I wanted you guys to fully understand what my idea was. Thank you for your time and hope you stay safe.

Disclaimer:

The consensus from the moderators was that the proposed character and story is disrespectful from multiple cultural perspectives. However, we can’t ignore the reality that this is a commonly deployed trope in many popular science fiction/ thriller narratives. Stories that seek to take religious descriptions of events at face value from an areligious perspective particularly favor this approach. Thus, we have two responses:

Where we explain why we don’t believe this should be attempted.

Where we accept the possibility of our advice being ignored.

1) No - Why You Shouldn’t Do This:

Hi! I’ll give you the short answer first, and then the extended one.

Short answer: no, this is not okay.

Extended answer. I’ll divide it into three parts.

1) Prophet Muhammad as a character:

Almost every aspect of Islam, particularly Allah (and the Qur’an), the Prophet(s) and the companions at the time of Muhammad ﷺ, are strictly kept within the boundaries of real life/reality. I’ll assume this comes from a good place, and I can understand that from one side, but seriously, just avoid it. It is extremely disrespectful and something that is not even up to debate for Muslims to do, let alone for non-Muslims. Using Prophet Muhammad as a character will only bring you problems. There is no issue with mentioning the Prophet during his lifetime when talking about his attributes, personality, sayings or teachings, but in no way, we introduce fictional aspects in a domain that Muslims worked, and still work, hard to keep free from any doubtful event or incident. Let’s call it a closed period: we don’t add anything that was not actually there.

Reiterating then, don’t do this. There is a good reason why Muslims don’t have any pictures of Prophet Muhammad. We know nothing besides what history conveyed from him. 

After this being said, there is another factor you missed – Jesus is also an important figure in Islam and his story from the Islamic perspective differs (a lot) from that of the Christian perspective. And given what you said in your ask, you would be taking the Christian narrative of Jesus. If it was okay to use Prophet Muhammad as a character (reminder: it’s not) and you have had your dark matter human interacting with the biblical Jesus, it will result in a complete mess; you would be conflating two religions.

2) Crusaders and Jerusalem:

You said this dark matter human will be defending Jerusalem against the Crusaders. At first, there is really no problem with this. However, ask yourself: is this interaction a result of your character meeting with both Jesus and Prophet Muhammed? If yes, please refer to the previous point. If not, or even if you just want to maintain this part of the story, your dark matter human can interact with the important historical figures of the time. For example, if you want a Muslim in your story, you can use Salah-Ad-Din Al-Ayoubi (Saladin in the latinized version) that took back Jerusalem during the Third Crusade. Particularly, this crusade has plenty of potential characters. 

Also, featuring Muslim characters post Prophet Muhammad and his companions’ time, is completely fine, just do a thorough research.

 3) Middle Eastern/South Asian settings and Orientalism:

The last point I want to remark is with the setting you chose for your story. Many times, when we explore the SWANA or South Asian regions it’s done through an orientalist lens. Nobody is really safe from falling into orientalism, not even the people from those regions. My suggestion is educating yourself in what orientalism is and how it’s still prevalent in today’s narrative. Research orientalism in entertainment, history... and every other area you can think of. Edward Said coined this term for the first time in history, so he is a good start. There are multiple articles online that touch this subject too. For further information, I defer to middle eastern mods. 

- Asmaa

Racism and Pseudo-Archaeology:

A gigantic, unequivocal and absolute no to all of it, lmao. 

I will stick to the bit about the proposed origin of mehendi in your WIP, it’s the arc I feel I’m qualified to speak on, Asmaa has pretty much touched upon the religious and orientalism complications. 

Let me throw out one more word: pseudoarchaeology. That is, taking the cultural/spiritual/historical legacies of ancient civilizations, primarily when it involves people of colour, and crediting said legacies to be the handiwork of not just your average Outsider/White Saviour but aliens. I’ll need you to think carefully about this: why is it that in so much of media and literature pertaining to the so-called “conspiracy theories” dealing with any kind of extraterrestrial life, it’s always Non-Western civilizations like the Aztec, the ancient Egyptians, the Harappans etc who are targeted? Why is it that the achievements of the non West are so unbelievable that it’s more feasible to construct an idea of non-human, magical beings from another planet who just conveniently swooped in to build our monuments and teach us how to dress and what to believe in? If the answer makes you uncomfortable, it’s because it should: denying the Non-West agency of their own feats is not an innocent exercise in sci-fi worldbuilding, it comes loaded with implications of racial superiority and condescension towards the intellect and prowess of Non-European cultures. 

Now, turning to specifics:

Contrary to what Sarah J. Maas might believe- mehendi designs are neither mundane, purely aesthetic tattoos nor can they be co-opted by random Western fantasy characters. While henna has existed as an art form in various cultures, I’m limiting my answer to the Indian context, (specifying since you mention ancient India). Mehendi is considered one of the tenets of the Solah Shringar- sixteen ceremonial adornments for Hindu brides, one for each phase of the moon, as sanctioned by the Vedic texts. The shade of the mehendi is a signifier for the strength of the matrimonial bond: the darker the former, the stronger the latter. Each of the adornments carries significant cosmological/religious symbolism for Hindus. To put it bluntly, when you claim this to be an invention of the aliens, you are basically taking a very sacred cultural and artistic motif of our religion and going “Well actually….extraterrestrials taught them all this.”

In terms of Ayurveda (Traditional holistic South Asian medicine)  , mehendi was used for its medicinal properties. It works as a cooling agent on the skin and helps to alleviate stress, particularly for the bride-to-be. Not really nice to think that aliens lent us the secrets of Ayurvedic science (pseudoarchaeology all over again). 

I’m just not feeling this arc at all. The closest possible alternative I could see to this is the ancient Indian characters incorporating some specific stylistic motifs in their mehendi in acknowledgement to this entity, in the same vein of characters incorporating motifs of tribute into their armour or house insignia, but even so, I’m not sure how well that would play out. If you do go ahead with this idea, I cannot affirm that it will not receive backlash.

-Mimi

These articles might help:

 Pseudoarchaeology and the Racism Behind Ancient Aliens

A History of Indian Henna (this studies mehendi origins mostly with reference to Mughal history)

Solah Shringar

2) Not Yes, But If Ignoring the Above:

I will be the dissenting voice of “Not No, But Here Are The Big Caveats.” Given that there is no way to make the story you want to tell palatable to certain interpretations of Islam and Christianity, here is my advice if the above arguments did not sufficiently deter you.

1. Admiration ≠ Research: It is not enough to just admire cultures for their richness and beauty. You need to actually do the research and learn about them to determine if the story you want to tell is a good fit for the values and principles these cultures prioritize. You need to understand the significance of historical figures and events to understand the issues with attributing the genesis of certain cultural accomplishments to an otherworldly influence. 1.

2. Give Less Offense When Possible and Think Empathetically: You should try to imagine the mindsets of those you will offend and think about to what degree you can soften or ameliorate certain aspects of your plot, the creature’s characteristics, and the creature’s interactions with historical figures to make your narrative more compatible. There is no point pretending that much of areligious science fiction is incompatible with monotheist, particularly non-henotheistic, religious interpretations as well as the cultural items and rituals derived from those religious interpretations. One can’t take “There is no god, just a lonely alien” and make that compatible with “There is god, and only in this particular circumstance.” Thus:

As stated above by Asmaa and Mimi, there is no escaping the reality the story you propose is offensive to some. Expect their outcry to be directed towards you. Can you tolerate that?

Think about how you would feel if someone made a story where key components of your interpretation of reality are singled out as false. How does this make you feel? Are you comfortable doing that to others?

3. Is Pseudoarchaeology Appropriate Here?: Mimi makes a good point about the racial biases of pseudoarchaeology. Pseudoarchaeology is a particular weakness of Western-centric atheist sci-fi. Your proposed story is the equivalent of a vaguely non-descript Maya/Aztec/Egyptian pyramid or Hindu/ Buddhist-esque statue being the source for a Resident Evil bio weapon/ Predator nest/ Assassin’s Creed Isu relic.

Is this how you wish to draw attention to these cultures you admire? While there is no denying their ubiquity in pop-culture, such plots trivialize broad swathes of non-white history and diminish the accomplishments of associated ethnic groups. The series listed above all lean heavily into these tropes either because the authors couldn’t bother to figure out something more creative or because they are intentionally telling a story the audience isn’t supposed to take seriously.*

More importantly, I detect a lot of sincerity in your ask, so I imagine such trivialization runs counter to your expressed desire to depict Eastern cultures in a positive and accurate manner.

4. Freedom to Write ≠ Freedom from Consequence: Once again, as a reminder, it’s not our job to reassure you as to whether or not what you are proposing is ok. Asmaa and Mimi have put a lot of effort into explaining who you will offend and why.  We are here to provide context, but the person who bears the ultimate responsibility for how you choose to shape this narrative, particularly if you share this story with a wide audience, is you. Speaking as one writer to another, I personally do not have a strong opinion one way or the other, but I think it is important to be face reality head-on.

- Marika.

* This is likely why the AC series always includes that disclaimer stating the games are a product of a multicultural, inter-religious team and why they undermine Western cultures and Western religious interpretations as often (if not moreso) than those for their non-Western counterparts.

Note: Most WWC asks see ~ 5 hours of work from moderators before they go live. Even then, this ask took an unusually long amount of time in terms of research, emotional labor and discussion. If you found this ask (and others) useful, please consider tipping the moderators (link here), Asmaa (coming eventually) and Mimi (here). I also like money - Marika.

[young-dumb-and-vaccinated]

The Cult Girl (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 1

This is my first time publishing any of my reader insert work so don’t be too hard on me. Y/N is a psych student that needs a favor and asks her therapist for help. Lmk if you want to see more.

It was an unmistakable conflict of interest, your relationship with Hannibal. He was your therapist, your mentor, your partner, and many years your senior to boot. You recognized this monumental power imbalance. You put on a façade of embarrassment for the people who expected it; people whose proclivities were done in the shadows and therefore easier to get away with. Why should you be expected to rationalize your loving, mutually beneficial relationship to a person who regularly cheats on her boyfriend?

You'd dated men your own age before, and without fail, you always found yourself waiting for them to grow up. Hannibal made you feel comfortable. Both emotionally and physically. You had a side of his bed and a spot in his arms to fall asleep in every night. Given the choice, you could truthfully say you'd never want to leave his arms.

Like many unlikely relationships, it didn’t start out in the most romantic of ways. Clutching your laptop under your raincoat, you hesitated knocking. Your therapist had, of course, seen you at your lowest points and was sworn to secrecy, but this was a low you didn’t want even him to see. Standing outside of his home, in the so-incredibly-not-business-hours dead of night with mascara running down your face. 

You finally worked up the nerve to knock, telling yourself that he was probably asleep and wouldn’t hear you. This rationalization fell apart when the interior light turned on and the door unlocked. Although you’d been seeing Dr. Lecter for quite a while, his presence never failed to intimidate you. Now it was even worse. His severe expression was fixated on you as he silently awaited an explanation. 

“Dr. Lecter...” You lowered your head and fumbled with your computer. You made a point to kiss your last shreds of dignity goodbye before you opened your mouth again. “...could I please borrow a book?” 

Dr. Lecter narrowed his eyes. “I take it by the hour, this is an urgent matter, Miss [L/N]?”

“My midterm. It’s due in...” You glanced at your watch. “Eight hours.” 

“Well you don’t have a moment to waste, now do you?” Dr. Lecter said, a slight upturn in his voice connoting amusement. “Come in. Let’s find you that book.” 

You felt your muscles relax as he stepped aside to let you in. The house was spacious. Much too large for one person. That was really the only thing you could bring yourself to notice before he shut the door behind you. 

“Now what is this all-important book of yours called?” He asked, pulling your raincoat from your shoulders like he always did. 

“It’s called Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.” You explained, tucking your computer under your arm. “By Robert Jay Lifton.” 

“You’re in luck, Miss [L/N].” His thin lips turned up into a smile. “I have a copy from my own years as a student.”

You breathed an audible sigh of relief. You tensed your muscles and held in your excitement at the prospect of something finally going according to plan, even if that plan was your third or fourth backup.

You followed him into his office, which reminded you more of Belle’s library than any workspace you’d ever encountered. He must have had thousands of books in this room alone.

“It’s a fascinating read, but not one you could finish in eight hours.” Dr. Lecter's voice echoed from somewhere in the office, getting lost in the books. “Even for the most ravenous of psychology students, of which I know you to be.” 

"Hardly." You muttered under your breath. "If that were the case, I wouldn't be begging for help at 2am before the final paper is due."

"Procrastination is only human, my dear." He assured you, his voice drawing closer. "It's common in those with deep-rooted insecurities about their competency."

"Now that sounds more like me." You joked, leaning back on your heels. "Should you really be trying to validate my bad habits? I feel like that's counterproductive."

"Scolding you would be more counterproductive." He corrected. "You've been scolded many times before and you continue your bad habits. Only when we get to the root of your behavior can you begin to reverse it."

He emerged from the bookshelves and handed you a beat-up copy of Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, which you graciously accepted. 

“Thank you so much, Dr. Lecter.” You said, placing your hand over your heart. "I owe you my life."

"I'd hardly equate your life to a used book, Miss [L/N]." Dr. Lecter said. "I feel like, as your therapist, we should talk about why you do."

You looked away, smiling sheepishly. "Maybe sometime in daylight. I've taken up enough of your time as it is. I'll get out of your hair now."

"It would take you more time to get back to your dorm that you could use writing." He said, matter-of-factually. "Write your paper in my office."

You looked at him in disbelief. Your judgment was clouded with energy drinks and desperation. So your usual self-sacrificing polite denial was steamrolled by a very enthusiastic acceptance. "I would be forever indebted to you, Dr. Lecter."

"Miss [L/N]," Dr. Lecter cut in. "You're a student, you need to study."

You didn’t really remember a lot of what happened after you wrapped your arms around his waist, too overwhelmed with gratitude to think if an embrace was even appropriate. It was the middle of the night, so you had an excuse if he shoved you off him. But surprisingly, he didn’t. 

You broke the embrace and gathered up your book and computer. “Seriously, I owe you big time for this. You’re really saving my life here.” 

“Go write your paper, [F/N].” He ordered. “We can discuss why you conflate your academics and your life during our next appointment. For now, make yourself at home.”

And that you did. Dr. Lecter retired back to bed and you spent a solid four hours typing away. An antique grandfather clock kept count for you. When you couldn’t keep your eyes open any longer, you sent the paper off to your professor, editing be damned. You let sleep compel you, comforted by the fact that you didn't have to think about your paper for at least another week before the grading period was over. 

Dr. Lecter’s desk was the most comfortable surface in the world to you that night, because you slept for six hours with only your arms as a pillow. It was the first rest your body had gotten in quite some time. You were gently coaxed awake by the smell of something delicious. 

You followed the smell into a kitchen that could rival those of Michelin-starred restaurants. Dr. Lecter was hard at work, cooking something that enticed your nose. He cracked an egg and looked up at you. “Good morning, Miss [L/N].”

“I’m sorry.” You said, shaking your head shamefully. 

“For?” He asked, fixing his attention back on his recipe.

“Falling asleep.” You dropped your shoulders.

“I told you to make yourself at home, did I not?” He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. This time, he sounded like he was actually going to scold you. “Tell me, do you sleep at your desk at home?” 

“I try not to.” You answer with a shrug. 

“But when you feel yourself falling asleep, you usually put yourself to bed, right?” He continued.

You started to feel a bit stupid. “...yeah.” 

He poked at some sausage links in a frying pan, letting out a sizzle. “You could have taken the couch.”

“I guess I was just too sleepy to think of that.” You explained, preparing to be psychoanalyzed no matter what you said.

“No, you were just too polite to push the imagined boundaries of my invitation.” He concluded, busying his hands with plating whatever it was he was making. His tone was comfortingly familiar. “Miss [L/N], don’t sacrifice your comfort for what you think I perceive to be rude. If I found you rude, you’d know it.”

"I'm sorry." You repeated.

"Don't apologize." He said, reaching for the pepper mill. "I know your anxiety disorder makes you feel like you are a burden. I assure you, you are not. I want you to know for next time that the couch is open. Or you could take the guest bedroom."

You stopped yourself before you could apologize again. You momentarily pondered what he had to say before uttering a quiet but convicted "Thank you."

"You're very welcome." Dr. Lecter slid a plate across the table in your direction. "Eat, my dear."

You didn't need to be told twice. You usually didn’t care for sausage, but reconsidered when you took a bite. The meat was so flavorful and rich, a little noise of delight escaped your lips.

Dr. Lecter smiled, your little moan sending his ego through the roof. “You like it?” 

“It’s delicious.” You put your fork down, your face flush with embarrassment. “Way better than the food at the dining hall.” 

“Miss [L/N],” Dr. Lecter began, putting an extra sausage link on your plate. “If you find yourself in need of psychology texts, I’d be happy to extend my invitation indefinitely.” 

You nearly choked on your eggs. “On god?” 

“Given that you arrive sometime before midnight and perhaps call ahead, yes.” He answered. “Your studies are your life and breath, after all. You would find yourself very accommodated to here.”

This time, you'd really take him up on his offer.

[eaglebearingmedjay34]

This is just a theory so take it with a grain of salt. I believe Luffy is an amalgamation of Tonatiuh aka the 5th Sun and Huitzilopochtli god of the Sun, War, and Willpower. The two gods were often conflated with one another as were quite a few other Aztec gods. I believe Oda has dropped hints here and there alluding this connection to Luffy. For example his primary colors of red/yellow he shares with Tonatiuh. He’s also known as the 5th Yonko (Emperor) and Emperors in Japanese culture are linked to the Sun. So in a way it’s like calling him the 5th Sun. 

I’ve see some fans wondering about rubber’s connection with the Sun and there is quite a connection if you look at the Mesoamerican ballgame. The game had many connotations and symbolisms surrounding it. One prominent symbolism is that ball represented the Sun in its battle with the stars & Moon. I don’t believe the giant Straw Hat belonged to a giant. Instead I believe it’s locked in a certain state or form which is a giant straw hat. Its original form is a solar disc/shield, but the WG wants to prevent that which is the reason its encased in ice. However, once it comes in contact with the Sun God it will revert to its original form. It is only one half of his weapons the other might be in the hands of a certain pirate.

Also, that big X across Luffy’s chest never seemed to cross my eye until now. I just thought it was a massive scar. However, a further look at it makes me think it’s connected to this symbol.

It’s known as Nahui Ollin and means 4-Movement. It’s heavily connected to Tonatiuh and represents the 5th Sun. It’s believed the end of the 5th Sun will end in earthquakes or one large one which will result in famine and darkness. Nahui Ollin has been used in social justice movements which definitely connects with Luffy who fights to help liberate others as he is known as the Warrior of Liberation.

Like I said I believe Luffy also has connections to another Sun God: Huitzilopochtli. 

I believe Oda has alluded to this a few times here and there.

1. The Left: Huitzilopochtli was known as the Left-Handed Hummingbird. The Aztecs believed the left represented the “South” and the right represented the “North. Huitzilopochtli represented the South. From the very beginning Shanks lost his left arm and specifically that one. It was his dominant hand, but he wagered it on the new era. Later on in Wano Kiku loses her left arm as well in the fight to liberate Wano from Kaido’s grasp. It’s been theorized there’s a strong connection to the Left throughout the story of One Piece. Also, members of the D. Clan as well as some other characters have a mark on their left side.  This very well could be the connection.

2. Color Blue: Remember Nightmare Luffy and his strength? Luffy was able to attain that form after absorbing all 100 Shadows when only a normal person could absorb 2-3. He was only able to accomplish this feat because of his incredible willpower. He had a thirst for battle though this could have been the shadows influencing him. It did seem rather odd that he turned blue so should he later turn out to be connected to this god then maybe it was just another foreshadowing all along?

3. War: Luffy has a love for battle and is a strategic genius. When it comes to everything else he’s an idiot, but place him in a fight and a whole other side of him comes out. He just has natural instincts for battle. While a few Aztec gods had their connections to war, Huitzilopochtli represented pretty much every aspect of it. However, he also represented the internal and emotional war within. Luffy has helped many of his comrades and friends overcome their own emotional battles such as Nami, Robin, Chopper, Hancock, etc. He seems to have a knack for liberating others from their emotional turmoil. Another possible connection perhaps?

4. Kuja/Snakes: Luffy has a connection with the Kuja Pirates and the Pirate Empress Boa Hancock. All of them use snakes as weapons and once again it’s something I never paid much attention to until now. Huitzilopochtli was known for wielding the Xiuhcoatl, a fire-breathing serpent that represented the rays of the Sun. He used it to kill his sister (Moon) and brothers (stars). Could Luffy very well get his own snake weapon? One of his G4 forms is called Snakeman. Who knows?

5. Willpower: While Luffy has an amazing Devil Fruit his greatest power is his incredible and enduring willpower. He possesses Conqueror’s Haki and has learned how to utilize it with his attacks. By the end of the series he will probably have the strongest Conqueror’s Haki out of everyone. One aspect of Huitzilopochtli that often gets overlooked is that he represents willpower and the will to act. He is the willpower of the people and the will to act in a positive way of the Nahui Ollin belief.

Just want to end this by saying this is just a theory and should be taken with a grain of salt. I do read a lot about Mesoamerica and noticed quite a few connections, but that could just be my own perspective being influenced by what I’ve read. I’m going to hold onto it in the small chance I’m right, but it’s just a theory. Luffy may very well be a hodgepodge of mythical characters rolled up into one such as Hanuman, Wukong, Ra, Huitzilopochtli, etc? At the end of the day it’s whatever Oda wishes to right. I just wanted to get some of my personal thoughts out because it was driving me crazy.

[oumakokichi]

What are the differences between the original and localization?

Hmm, that’s a very simple question with a pretty lengthy answer! I did answer some similar questions in the past, but that was a long time ago, much closer to when the localization was first released. There are probably a lot of people whose main experience with the game has only been with the localization, and who don’t really know or remember those differences anymore.

For that reason, I’m going to go into kind of a “masterlist” of things that were changed in the localization in this post. This will be very long, but I really want to explain the whole story behind the localization and its differences from the original to people who might only be hearing about this for the first time. I’m going to cover full spoilers for the game obviously, so be careful when reading!

Also, please feel free to share this post around, as I think it contains a lot of information that might be interesting to people who’ve only experienced the localization!

Before I really get into it though, I want to stipulate that the differences I’m covering in this post are mostly going to be things that I believe could’ve been handled or translated better, not every single line that was changed verbatim in the game. This is because a localization’s purpose is incredibly different from a literal translation.

Where a literal translation seeks to keep as much of the original authorial intent as possible and has the leeway to explain various Japanese terms and cultural specifics to the readers in footnotes or a glossary, a localization is usually much more targeted towards a specific target audience, usually one more unfamiliar with Japanese culture or terminology. As a result, some things in a localization are occasionally changed to make them more understandable to a western audience.

So, for example, I’m not going to fault the localization for changing Monosuke’s extremely heavy Kansai accent in Japanese to a New York accent in the English dub. It’s much easier for western players to immediately grasp that, “hey, this guy has a very specific regional accent that the other characters don’t,” and it works really well as a rough equivalent. Similarly, localization changes like changing a line here or there about the sport of sumo to be about the Jets and the Patriots also helps get the point across to players quickly and easily without having to explain an unfamiliar sport to western players in-depth before they can get the joke.

That being said… there were some liberties taken with ndrv3’s translation which I don’t believe fulfill the point of a localization, and which changed certain deliveries or even perceptions about the characters in a way that I just don’t agree with.

Let me explain first how the localization team actually worked, to people who might be unfamiliar with the process. Ndrv3 had four separate translators working on the localization. When NISA first announced that the game was being localized, these four translators introduced themselves on reddit in an AMA, where they also mentioned that they were by and large dividing up the 16 main characters between themselves, with each translator specifically assigned to four characters.

Having more translators working on a game might sound like a good idea in theory, but it’s often not. The more translators assigned to a game, the harder it is to provide a consistent translation. Translation is messy work: often there are multiple ways to translate the same sentence, or even the same word between two different languages. If a translation has multiple translators, that means they need to be communicating constantly with one another and referencing each other’s work all the time in order to avoid mistranslations: it’s difficult work, but not impossible.

However… this didn’t happen with ndrv3’s translation team. It’s pretty clear they did not reference each other’s work or communicate very well, and the translation suffers for it. I’m not just guessing here, either; it’s a fact that various parts of the game have lines completely ruined by not looking at the context, or words translated two different ways almost back-to-back. I’ll provide specific examples of this later.

Many of the translators also picked which characters they wanted to translate on the basis of which were their favorites—which, again, isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but which does raise the risk of letting character bias influence your work. No work is inherently without bias; all translators have to look at their own biases and still attempt to translate fairly regardless. But because translators were assigned four characters each, this meant that while they might be really enthusiastic about translating for one character in particular, they were less enthusiastic for others. These biases do reflect in the work, and I will provide further examples as I make my list.

This system of delegation also leaves more questions than it answers. It becomes impossible to tell who translated certain parts of the game, particularly in areas where the narrator is unclear. For example, did Saihara’s translator translate Ouma’s motive video, as Saihara is the one watching it in chapter 6? Or did Ouma’s translator do it, since it’s his motive video? Who translated the parts we see at the beginning of certain chapters, where characters from the outside world make occasional comments? It’s really unclear, and I’m not even sure if the translators divvied up these parts amongst themselves or if only one person was supposed to handle them.

To put it simply, there were quite a lot of complications and worrying factors about the way the translation was divided by the team, and the communication (or lack thereof) between said translators. It’s impossible to really discuss the main problems that ndrv3’s localization has without making it clear why those problems happened, and I hope I’ve explained it well here.

With that out of the way, I’m finally going to cover the biggest differences between the original game and the localization, and why many of these changes were such a problem.

1.)    Gonta’s Entire Character

To this day, I still feel like this is probably the most egregious change of the entire localization. Gonta does not talk like a caveman in Japanese. He does not even have a particularly limited vocabularly. He talks like a fairly normal, very polite high school boy, and the only stipulation is that he’s not very familiar with electronics or technology due to his backstory of “growing up in the woods away from humans.”

Gonta does refer to himself in the third-person in Japanese, but I need to stress this: this is a perfectly normal thing to do in Japanese. Many people do it all the time, and it has no bearing on a person’s intelligence or ability to speak. In fact, both Tenko and Angie also refer to themselves in the third-person in the Japanese version of the game, yet mysteriously use first-person pronouns in the localization.

I wouldn’t be so opposed to this change if it weren’t for the fact that Gonta’s entire character arc revolves around being so much smarter than people (even himself!) give him credit for. He constantly downplays his own abilities and contributions to the group despite being fairly knowledgeable, not only about entomology but also about nature and astronomy. He has a fairly good understanding of spatial reasoning and is one of the first people to guess how Toujou’s trick with the rope and tire worked in chapter 2.

Chapter 4 of ndrv3 is so incredibly painful because it makes it clear that while Gonta was, absolutely, manipulated by Ouma into picking up the flashback light, he nonetheless made the decision to kill Miu of his own accord. He was even willing to try and kill everyone else by misleading them in the trial, because he thought it was more merciful than letting them see the outside world for themselves. These were choices that he made, confirmed when we see Gonta’s AI at the end of the trial speak for himself and acknowledge that yes, he really did think the outside world was worth killing people over.

Gonta is supposed to be somewhat naïve and trusting, not stupid. He believes himself to be an idiot, and other characters often talk down to him or don’t take him seriously, but at the end of the day he’s a human being just like the rest of them, and far, far smarter and more capable of making his own decisions than anyone thought him capable of.

Translating all of his speech to “caveman” or “Tarzan speech” really downplays his ability to make decisions for himself, and I think it’s a big part of why I’ve seen considerably more western fans insist that he didn’t know what he was doing than Japanese fans. I love Gonta quite a lot, but I can’t get over the localization essentially changing his character to make him seem more stupid, instead of translating what was actually there in order to more accurately reflect his character.

2.)    Added Some Slurs, Removed Others

It’s time to address the elephant in the room for people who don’t know: Momota is considerably homophobic and transphobic in the original Japanese version of the game. In chapter 2, he uses the word “okama” to refer to Korekiyo in an extremely derogatory fashion. This word has a history of both homophobic and transphobic sentiment in Japan, as it’s often used against flamboyant gay men and trans women, who are sadly and unfortunately conflated as being “the same thing” most of the time. To put it simply, the word has the equivalent of the weight of the t-slur and the f-slur in English rolled into one.

This isn’t the only instance of Momota being homophobic, sadly. In the salmon mode version of the game, should you choose the “let’s undress” option in the gym while with Momota, he has yet another line where he says, “You don’t swing that way, do you!?” to Saihara, using his most terrified and disgusted-looking sprite. This suggests to me that, yes, the homophobia was a deliberate choice in the Japanese version of the game, as Momota consistently reacts this way to even the idea of another guy showing romantic interest in him.

The English version more or less kept the salmon mode comment, but removed the use of the slur in chapter 2 entirely. Which I have… mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I am an LGBT person myself. I don’t want to read slurs if I can help it. On the other hand, I really don’t think the slur was removed out of consideration to the LGBT community so much as Momota’s translator really wanted to downplay any lines that could make his character come across in a more negative light.

This is backed up by the fact that both Miu and Ouma’s translators added slurs to the game that weren’t present in the original Japanese. Where Miu only ever refers to Gonta as “baka” (idiot) or occasionally, “ahou” (a slightly ruder word that still more or less equates to “moron”), her translator decided to add multiple instances of her using the r-slur to refer to Gonta specifically, and on one occasion, even the word “Mongoloid,” a deeply offensive and outdated term. Ouma’s translator similarly took lines where he was already speaking harshly of Miu and added multiple instances of words like “bitch” or “whore.”

To me, this suggests that the translators were completely free to choose how harsh or how likable they wanted their characters to come across. Momota’s translator omitting just the slur could maybe pass for a nice gesture, so people don’t have to read it and be uncomfortable—except, that’s not the only thing that was omitted. Instances of Momota being blatantly misogynistic or rude were also toned down to the point of covering up most of his flaws entirely. His use of “memeshii” against Hoshi (a word which means “cowardly” in Japanese with specifically feminine connotations, like the word “sissy” in English) is simply changed to “weak,” and when he calls Saihara’s trauma “kudaranai” (literally “worthless” or “bullshit”), this is changed to “trivial” in the localization.

Momota’s translator even went so far as to omit a line entirely from the chapter 2 trial, which I touched on in an earlier post. In the original version of the game, Ouma asks Momota dumbfounded if he’s really stupid enough to trust Maki without any proof and if he plans on risking everyone else’s lives in the trial if he turns out to be wrong. And Momota replies saying yes, absolutely, he’s totally willing to bet everyone’s lives on nothing more than a hunch because he thinks he’s going to be right no matter what.

This is a character flaw. It’s a huge, running theme with Momota’s character, and it’s brought up again in chapter 4 deliberately when Momota really does almost kill everyone in the trial because he refuses to believe that Ouma isn’t the culprit. But the localization simply omits it, leaving Momota to seem considerably less hard-headed and reckless in the English version of the game. If anyone wants proof that this line exists, it is still very much there in the Japanese dialogue, but it has no translation whatsoever. This goes beyond “translation decisions I don’t agree with”; omitting an entire line for a character simply because you want other people to like them more is just bad translation, period.

3.)    Angie’s Religion

In the original Japanese version of the game, neither Angie’s god nor her religion have any specific names. She refers to her god simply as “god” in the general sense, and clearly changes aspects of their persona and appearance based on who she’s trying to convince to join her cult. Everything about her is pretty clearly fictionalized, from her island to the religious practices her cult does.

Kodaka’s writing with regard to Angie is already a huge mess. It feeds into a lot of harmful stereotypes about “crazy, exotic brown women” and “bloodthirsty savages,” but at the very least it never correlated with a specific religion or location in the original version of the game.

This all changed when Angie’s translator, for whatever reason, decided to make Angie be Polynesian specifically and appropriate from the real religion of real indigenous peoples native to Polynesia. That’s right: Atua is a real god that has very real significance to tons of indigenous peoples.

In my opinion, this decision was incredibly disrespectful. It spreads incredible misinformation about a god that is still very much a part of tons of real-life people’s religion, and associates it with cults? Blood rituals? Human sacrifices? It’s a terrible localization decision that wasn’t necessary whatsoever and to be quite frank, it’s racist and insensitive.

As I said, the original game never exactly had the peak of “good writing decisions” when it came to Angie; there are still harmful stereotypes with her character, and she deserved to be written so much better. But associating her with a real group of indigenous people and equating a real god to some fictional deity that’s mostly treated as either a scary cult-ish boogeyman or the punchline to a joke is just… bad.

4.)    Ouma’s Motive Video

Some of the decisions taken with Ouma’s translation are… interesting, to say the least. In many ways, he feels like a completely different character between the two versions of the game. This is due not only to the translation, but also the voice direction and casting.

A lot of his lines are tweaked or changed entirely to make his character seem much louder, less serious, and less sincere than the original version of the game. Obviously, Ouma lies, a lot. That’s sort of the whole point of is character. But what I mean is that even lines in the original version of the game, where it was clear he was being truthful via softer delivery, trailing off the end of his sentences, and seeming overall hesitant about whether to divulge certain information or not are literally changed in the localization to him pretty much yelling at the top of his lungs, complete with tons of exclamation points on lines that originally ended with a question mark or ellipses.

Tonally, he just feels very different as a character. The “sowwy” speak, lines like “oopsie poopsie, I’m such a ditz!”—all of these things are taken to such ridiculous extremes that it feels a little hard to take him seriously. Even in the post-trial for chapter 4 when Ouma starts playing the villain after Gonta’s death, a moment which should have been completely serious and intense, the mood is kind of completely killed when the line is changed from him calling everyone a bunch of idiots to him calling everyone…. “stupidheads.” These changes don’t really seem thematically appropriate to me, but overall, they’re not damning.

What is damning, however, is the fact that Ouma’s motive video is completely mistranslated and provides a very poor picture of what his motivations and ideals were like. I still remember being shocked when I played the localization for the first time and discovered that they completely omitted a line stating that Ouma and DICE have a very specific taboo against murder.

Literally, this is one of the very first lines in the entire video. The Japanese version of the game makes it explicitly clear that DICE were forbidden to kill people, and that abiding by this rule was extremely important to them. By contrast, the localization simply makes a nod about him doing “petty nonviolent crimes and pranks,” without ever once mentioning anything at all about rules or taboos.

This feels especially egregious in the localization considering Saihara later uses Ouma’s motive video as evidence in the chapter 6 trial and states there that Ouma and DICE “had a rule against killing people,” despite the game… never actually telling you that. It not only skews the perception of Ouma’s character at a crucial moment, it also just straight-up lies to localization players and expects them to make leaps in logic without actually providing the facts. So it winds up sort of feeling like Saihara is just pulling these assumptions out of his ass more than anything else.

I actually still have my original translation of Ouma’s motive video here, if anyone would like to compare. Again, translation is a tricky line of work, and obviously not all translators are going to agree with one another. But I consider omitting lines entirely to be one of the worst things you can do in a translation, particularly in a mystery game where people are expected to solve said mysteries based on the information and facts provided to them.

5.)    Inconsistencies and Lack of Context

As I mentioned earlier, there are many instances of lines being completely mistranslated, or translated two different ways by multiple translators, or addressed to the wrong character. This is, as I stated, due to the way the translation work was divided by four separate people who appear to have not communicated with each other or cross-referenced each other’s work.

One of the clearest examples of this that I can think of off the top of my head is in chapter 3, where Ouma mentions “doing a little research” on the Caged Child ritual, and Maki in the very next line repeats him by saying… “study?”

On their own, removed from any context, these would both potentially be correct translations. However, it’s very clear that the translators just didn’t care to look at the context, or communicate with each other and share their work. The fact that characters aren’t even quoting each other properly in lines that are back-to-back is a pretty big oversight, and something that should have been accounted for knowing that four separate people were going to be translating various different characters.

This lack of context causes other, even more hilarious and blatantly wrong mistranslations. At the start of the chapter 3 trial, there is a line where Momota mentions that he couldn’t perform a thorough investigation on his own “because Monokuma disrupted him.” In the original, Ouma responds and tells Momota that he’s just using Monokuma as an excuse to cover for his own flaws. However, what we actually got in the localization was… this.

I don’t even have words for how badly this line was butchered (though I could make several hilarious jokes about Monokuma “over-compensating”). Presumably, this happened because Ouma’s translator saw Ouma’s line without any of the lines before it or the context of what Momota was saying, had no clue who Ouma was actually supposed to be talking to, and just ad-libbed it however they could, even though it literally makes no sense and doesn’t even fit into the conversation.

There are other similar instances of this, too. For example, did you know that the scene after Saihara faints in chapter 2, just before he wakes up in Gonta’s lab, is actually supposed to have Ouma talking to him? The narrator is unnamed, but there are several lines just before Saihara wakes up where Ouma tells him “come on, you can’t die on me yet!” and keeps prodding him and poking him to wake up. This is never explicitly told to you from the text… but it becomes pretty obvious when you look at the context and see that a huge CG of Ouma looking over Saihara as he starts to wake up is the very next part of the scene.

In the localization, however, Saihara’s translator pretty clearly had no idea what was happening or who was supposed to be talking to him, because they translated those lines as Saihara talking to himself, even though the manner of speech and phrasing is clearly supposed to be Ouma instead.

I could go on and on listing other examples: Tsumugi makes a joke in the original about Miu being able to dish out dirty jokes but not being very good at hearing them herself, but it’s changed in the localization to Tsumugi saying “I’m not so good with that kind of stuff,” and a line where Momota protests against Maki choking Ouma because she’ll kill him if she keeps going is instead changed to him saying “you’ll get killed if you don’t stop!” In my opinion, the fact that this is a consistent problem throughout the whole game shows that the translators weren’t really communicating or working together at any point, and that it wasn’t simply a one-time mistake here or there.

6.)    Edited CGs and Plot Points

I have made an entirely separate post about this in the past, but at this point I don’t think anyone actually knows anymore: the localization actually edited in-game CGs and made some of them completely different from the Japanese version of the game. I’m not accusing them of “censorship” or anything like that, I mean quite literally that they altered and edited specific CGs to try and fix certain problems with them and only ended up making them worse in the process.

In chapter 5, Momota gets shot in the arm by Maki’s crossbow when trying to defend Ouma, and Ouma gets shot in the back shortly afterward when attempting to make a run for the Exisals. These injuries are relevant to how they died, but they’re not actually very visible in the CGs of Ouma and Momota shown later in the chapter 5 trial.

There are a whole bunch of inconsistencies with the CGs in chapter 5 in general: Momota gives Ouma his jacket to lie on under the press, but is magically still wearing it when he emerges from the Exisal himself at the end of the trial (I like to think he snuck back into the dorms Solid Snake style to get a new one from his room before joining the trial), the cap to the antidote is still on the bottle when Ouma pretends to drink it in front of Maki and Momota, etc. None of these things really deter from the plot though, and so I would say they’re fairly unimportant.

However, for some reason, NISA decided that “fixing” at least some of the CGs in the chapter 5 trial was necessary. They did this by adding bloodstains to Momota’s arm while he’s under the press, to better show his injury from the crossbow…. and in doing so, for some completely inexplicable reason, they changed the entire position of his arm. Here’s what I mean for comparison:

This is how Momota’s arm looked in the original CG from chapter 5, shown when the camcorder is provided as evidence that it’s “Ouma” under the press.

And this is how the localization edited it to look. I can understand and even sympathize with adding the bloodstains, but… changing the entire arm itself? Moving it to be sticking out from under the press? To put it nicely, this change doesn’t make any sense and actually makes it harder to understand Ouma and Momota’s plan.

The whole trick behind their plan was that nothing was supposed to stick out from under the press, other than Momota’s jacket. They waited until the instant when the press completely covered every part of Momota’s body, arms and all, and then performed the switch to mislead people. But the edited version of the CG in the localization just has Momota’s arm sticking completely out, hanging over the side, meaning it would’ve been impossible for the press to hide every part of it and the whole switch feels… well, stupid and impossibly easy to see through in the localized version.

Again, this shows a total disregard for presenting the facts as they actually appear and actually makes things more difficult for English players of the game, because they’re not being given accurate information. I really don’t understand why these changes were necessary, or why the bloodstains couldn’t have just been added without moving Momota’s entire arm.

7.)    In Conclusion

This has gotten extremely long (nearly 10 pages), so I want to wrap things up. I want to specify that my intention with this masterlist isn’t to insult or badmouth the translators who worked on this game. I’m sure they worked very hard, and I have no idea what time or budget constraints they were facing as they did so.

Being a translator is not easy, and typically translators are not very well-paid or recognized for their work. I have the utmost respect for other translators, and I know perfectly well just how difficult and taxing it can be.

I am making this list because these are simply changes which were very different from the original version of the game, and which I believe could have been handled better. Personally, I disagree with many of the choices the localization made, but that does not mean that they didn’t do a fantastic job in other places. I absolutely love whichever translator was responsible for coming up with catchphrases and nicknames throughout the game: little localization decisions like “cospox,” “flashback light,” “Insect Meet n’ Greet,” and “cosplaycat criminal” were all strokes of genius that I highly admire.

I only want to stress that the Japanese version of the game is very different. Making changes to the way a character is presented or portrayed means influencing how people are going to react to said character. Skewing the information and facts presented in trials in the game means changing people’s experience of the game, and giving them less facts to go off of. Equating fictional gods to real-life ones can cause real harm and influence perception of real indigenous peoples. These are all facts that need to be accounted for before deciding whether a certain change is necessary or not, in my opinion.

If you’ve read this far, thank you! Again, feel free to share this post around if you’d like, since this is probably the most comprehensively I’ve ever covered this topic.

[darkcircles4lyfe]

retrospective & predictions

Since we're on a hiatus week (between 320 and 321) I feel like waxing poetic about the depth and growth of bkdk for a bit. Especially because it seems like we’re right on the edge of their biggest development yet, I’m getting the urge to lay all my perspectives and insights I’ve picked up from others out on the table. This is ultimately only my subjective interpretation of subtextual material in canon, though. If you’ve never quite understood what people see in their dynamic and you’re actually open to hearing me out, maybe from this you can at least see where we’re coming from. And if you don’t like my takes after all, well, we’ll see who’s right in the coming chapters, won’t we? What I have to say can be taken platonically or romantically; I appreciate both. 

putting it under the cut, since it’ll be long:

At the risk of projecting, I want to start by examining a couple things based partly on personal experience.

From many different directions, I often hear people expressing that Deku’s persistent attachment and admiration for Bakugou is baffling at best. Despite the bullying, despite Bakugou’s loud, rude, and uncompromising personality, he still puts effort into their relationship and frequently describes him as amazing. It seems like Deku himself is aware of this as he’s said things along the lines of how he’s difficult, BUT... etc. Although I don’t think it’s exactly that Deku finds Bakugou’s personality hard to be around, but that he’s deliberately expressing patience for Bakugou’s emotional turmoil. 

I have to say I know what this sort of patience is like, as I went through it with someone I love. I only chose to put up with their behavior because I decided the possibility of what our relationship could be was worth it. I wasn’t blind or submissive to how they treated me, and I wasn’t coerced. I simply expressed myself and established my boundaries while still allowing them the opportunity to join me in my world once they got over their own hangups. And guess what? It worked out in the end. That doesn’t mean there aren’t circumstances where it’s better to cut ties, but I want to stress that true reconciliation is possible sometimes. I used to worry that other people around me thought I was delusional for seeking it, but what really helped was my therapist reminding me that I’m smart and strong. So I think Deku deserves to feel the same. In a way this is his whole mission in life, his approach to being a hero as well as his personal relationships.

Let me also be clear though that I don’t mean Deku is only tolerating Bakugou’s personality, his mannerisms, the parts of him that will likely never change. I’m drawing a line between those things and his emotional state (they so rarely align anyway, but I’ll get to that later). In fact, I think Bakugou’s general attitude is part of what Deku admires. This is gonna be hard to explain without inserting personal experience too, sorry. As a writer myself I’ve noticed I’m drawn to writing characters that are brazen and bold and don't mind telling people off. Really it’s because I operate in the world in the polar opposite way. I try not to draw attention to myself, I’m quiet, and I’m a people-pleaser. People who project confidence, especially in an impolite sort of way, fascinate me. It’s good to take cultural context into account, too: I've heard people who’d know better than me that part of the reason Bakugou is the most popular character in the Japanese fandom is likely because he contradicts a lot of their social norms. His disregard is refreshing and cathartic. I can speculate that Deku has a similar point of view based on what he thinks but does not admit about Bakugou being his image of victory and how this sometimes makes him mimic Bakugou’s speech and mannerisms: 

There’s also the bit in this fight where Deku realizes he's the only one able to receive Bakugou’s emotions. This is because he’s the most intimately familiar with him and his situation, but I think there’s another layer. Deku, as we know, has a self-sacrificing tendency, and in the current chapters we’re seeing the worst side of that. But let’s also not forget that to an extent, it can be a positive trait: resilience. When it comes to Bakugou, he has an almost comical ability to dodge the potential fallout of his outbursts. The example we all jump to (and fight about..) is how in ch1, apart from the initial shock of Bakugou suggesting he jump off the roof, the most he reacts is to criticize him for saying such a ridiculous thing. However, I think their interaction post- sludge villain is a lot more interesting:

Note two things: 1, in his head, Deku is practically making fun of how Bakugou’s acting as he stomps away without waiting for a reply. It doesn’t faze him. 2, Deku thinks, optimistically, that he can now focus on a different career choice. This is astonishing really. Up to this point, none of Bakugou’s attempts to put him down have worked; he just kept pursuing his dream. The only reason Deku concedes in this moment it because for the first time, he has been shown that he really couldn't do anything in a fight against a villain. All Might told him he couldn't be a hero (although he’s literally about to take that back in the next few pages lol) and the other heroes at the scene gave him a lecture about it too. It was those experiences, and not Bakugou’s words, that truly affected him. And when All Might tells Deku he can be a hero after all, it’s not thinking of Bakugou’s bullying that makes him sob and fall to his knees, it’s the memory of his own mom never telling him those words he so desperately needed to hear. Having spent most of their lives together, Deku must have been aware all this time that Baukgou was influenced by larger societal forces rather than a core judgement, so he didn’t take it personally. He separated the person from the action, and because he’s resilient and patient, he is thus equipped to handle Bakugou’s emotions. It’s a testament to his maturity and emotional intelligence, really. 

But I can almost hear some of you saying, “that doesn’t mean Deku should have to be the bigger person here!” Correct! Just because Deku is perfectly alright bearing all of that, doesn’t mean atonement-era Bakugou sees it this way. We can track his awareness of Deku’s care and selflessness as follows-

The bridge scene, when they’re little kids: Bakugou conflates Deku’s heroism with pity, and subsequently thinks Deku is looking down on him because Bakugou’s own insecurity makes him defensive.

The Sludge Villain, and also Deku vs. Kacchan Part 1: Bakugou witnesses first-hand how easily Deku jumps to risk his own life, but still thinks he’s being looked down on. 

The Sports Festival: Bakugou fights Uraraka and recognizes her endurance strategy and refusal to give up as very Deku-like. He’s half right. He thinks Deku advised her in the fight, when in reality she just mimicked Deku because she admired him. I want to draw attention to his very sober comment about her not being frail. It’s a great endearment of Uraraka’s character and Bakugou’s respect for her when others didn’t take “fighting a girl” seriously, but it also reflects on his opinion of Deku. Deku isn’t weak either. He never was.

Deku vs. Kacchan Part 2: Deku finally corrects him about the whole looking-down-on-him thing, and Bakugou is informed that Deku’s selflessness is in fact the reason All Might chose him. Since Bakugou had been in search of what he himself was “doing wrong” for All Might to favor Deku over him, he now has to reconcile the fact that selflessness is a heroic trait, and moreover something he lacks. This is also possibly the first time Bakugou is able to see his past actions toward Deku as bullying since he previously thought it was more mutual. Additionally, Bakugou can now link Deku’s selfless behavior to what he perceived as pity/contempt, and realize that Deku has been giving him A LOT of grace. Maybe too much. Maybe more than Bakugou deserves, and definitely more than Deku should have to. Holy heck- now Bakugou has to figure out how to live up to all the faith that’s been placed in him. 

Subtextually, we can see Bakugou’s feelings about atonement reflected in the Todoroki family:

1, Shouto is another example of Deku growing a friendship using his selflessness (since their fight in the sports festival) and their relationship is being acknowledged here where it hasn’t been in Bakugou’s situation. Perhaps Bakugou is wishing it could be so simple for him, to be able to thank him for being his friend like that. Deku saying the pleasure is all his also probably calls to mind how a mere apology from Bakugou would probably be dismissed because that’s just the kind of accommodating person Deku is. Bakugou has to operate more quietly in order to actually make up for their past. I personally don’t interpret this scene as Bakugou being jealous of Deku and Shouto’s friendship, exactly, just the lack of emotional baggage. Side note, Deku and Fuyumi are kinda similar in their desire to repair relationships. I like that she’s the one to give him some credit. 

2, With the common terminology, this can be interpreted as Bakugou receiving a model for atonement, one that is about action, and nothing to do with receiving favor or forgiveness. It’s a sense of duty. 

Many of the above sentiments are repeated in the flashback conversation between All Might and Bakugou right before Bakugou’s sacrifice. 

Bakugou acknowledges his bullying and that it happened because of his own insecurities, but aside from that, it’s interesting he neither confirms nor denies All Might’s suggestion that he’s trying to atone, or that Deku doesn’t see it that way. All Might is a bit of an unreliable mentor sometimes, but I don’t think he’s misreading here. Rather, Bakugou is displaying his tendency to hold back when talking about things that would make him really emotional. Besides, admitting to what he’s doing kind of defeats the purpose. He isn’t seeking acknowledgement. All Might has gotten to the crux of the issue here when pointing out that Deku doesn’t recognize the atonement, likely because Deku doesn't think Bakugou even needs to atone. Am I reading into it too much to say Bakugou looks wistful at this? It’s kinda frustrating sometimes trying to interpret Bakugou’s actions because he’s so paradoxical. Loud and in your face, but also extremely reserved. Sometimes I feel like I’m grasping at thin air, but hey, being hard to figure out is part of his intrigue as a character. The simplest way to look at him is to assume that unless he’s really showing vulnerability, he’s probably deflecting and hiding something.

Speaking of Bakugou’s tendency to to hold back emotional stuff, there’s his apparent lack of issue with Deku calling him Kacchan. Maybe to begin with, in his warped perception of things where he thought they hated each other, Bakugou saw it as Deku’s way of getting back at him for calling him “useless,” and didn't dare give any indication that it actually bothered him. However... consider how betrayed Bakugou has appeared when he was noticeably thinking Deku was looking down on him- the bridge scene, and the beginning of their first year at UA when he thought Deku was hiding a quirk all along. He looks shocked and hurt. That kind of emotion couldn’t be invoked by someone Bakugou didn’t actually care about his relationship with. “Kacchan” comes from a long time ago, before their relationship was strained, so it’s connotations are pure. Maybe somewhere deep down, Bakugou has always been hoping that Deku’s continued use of the nickname was not simply a matter of habit or teasing, but a vestige of friendship they’re both clinging to, and Bakugou himself was too afraid to admit to himself that he felt this way about it, so he mostly ignored it. (These are not original thoughts I am having here lol, this is a common interpretation. I’m just laying everything out like I said.) 

And now we turn to the current situation. Personally, I’ve been looking frantically back and forth between them wondering who’s going to break down first (Deku vs. Kacchan Part 3, this time it’s just a fight to get the other person to cry? ha.) Both have looked like they’re approaching a breaking point for some time. Also, I’ve addressed this before, but I think it’s significant that Bakugou is no longer wearing his mask with his hero costume, in contrast to Deku recently donning his own. It feels symbolic of Bakugou about to be upfront about how he feels.

The question is, what is it going to take to get Deku to accept help? If you ask me, Deku has dug himself so deeply into the I’m-doing-this-for-everyone-else’s-safety-and-smiles hole, no common sense argument can possibly reach him. By the end of 320, Deku’s mask is off, and we can see how desperate he truly is. But he has not cried, yet. I predict we’re going to see a bit more of his defiance, this time on full display on his face as the remaining class members and his other friends take their turns. But then I think Bakugou has to be the one to break down so Deku can witness his actions having the opposite effect he intended. People have been pointing out that Deku is currently ignoring Bakugou, and oof, that’s gotta be intentional. Regardless of what Bakugou says, it’s going to be wrapped up not only in his understanding of Deku’s self-sacrifice, but also the betrayal Bakugou feels at being ignored/left behind that ironically echoes his previous perception of being looked down on, as well as a need to express how much he cares about Deku before it’s too late. He must show that the two of them are inseparable because they both act to save each other without thinking, and both feel like losing the other would be like dying themselves. All Might may have been right when he told them they could learn from each other after Deku vs. Kacchan Part 2, but he didn’t fully realize that idea by making sure they stuck by each other for support and balance. 

I can’t wait to see what it’ll be like when they do finally get to that point, totally in synch and in tune with each other. They’ll be a powerful force no one is quite prepared for. Who knows when that will be, or even which chapter will be their big showdown, but I know the day is coming.

To speculate even further, I think the 2nd user is going to be really important really soon. And no I don’t mean to suggest that the 2nd user is Bakugou. But I do think their resemblance is key. Okay this is gonna be convoluted...

See how 2nd is the only one still standing? I think that’s symbolic of him withholding his quirk. Deku may not even know what it is at this point, let alone have unlocked it. Given that 2nd approves of Deku’s strategy at this point, it seems odd for him to withhold his quirk based on lack of faith. I think if his quirk was something that would help Deku in combat, he would have shown it to him already like the others did. So what if those gauntlets of his are support items that are meant to make up for his lack of a combat-oriented quirk, rather than to augment it? Mind you, I still have no idea what his mysterious power might be, but I’m dead set on it not being explosion-y. Regardless, I think 2nd looking like Bakugou is more about aiding some grand visual parallel, so! You know how 2nd and 3rd were probably intending to do away with Yoichi but 2nd changed his mind as soon as they made eye contact? This is really a long shot, but I wonder if 2nd’s quirk has something to do with that exchange. Maybe it’s something psychological, or some 6th sense about people he meets. So... in that way 2nd’s quirk could play a role in bkdk reaching a deeper understanding? Idk! But it could be significant at least that 2nd left Yoichi’s question about why he reached out to him unanswered. 

One more thing- while I was gathering screenshots I found this. I think “you’re the last one I’m telling” might be foreshadowing for Bakugou revealing his hero name to Deku and it being a Big Deal:

As for other lingering threads in the overall plot right now, such as the UA traitor, Stain, whatever Tsuyu is apparently about to do, All Might’s car maybe in the background of the last page of 320... man I have no idea. All I know is there’s literally 320 chapters’ worth of build-up to this confrontation that can’t be interrupted. 

See you next week <3

[somanyerikas]

Nostalgia sells - or does it? About BBC’s rehiring of a previous showrunner for Doctor Who as a marketing strategy

All, right, this is the one where I deal with my issues about RTD’s rehiring from the standpoint of BBC’s business strategy . Brace for passive agression, swearwords, brief history of british television and numbers. So, so many numbers.

Allright, so I already wrote a post about my problem with RTD’s (re)hire from the creative standpoint (it’s here in case you’re interested), but hey, I can bitch about it all I want, but we all know what caused the BBC to make this decision, right? You’ve heard about it for sure. The Dropping Ratings. You’ve read about it on so many posts, lots of them probably oh-so-gladly conflating this fact with their own opinion about the deteriorating quality of the show. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to that.) So Obviously the execs at the Big BBC Quarters needed to do something about it, and what better way to go than rehire a guy who’s run at Doctor Who is a warm childhood memory for so many in it’s fanbase? After all, it’s what we’re seeing nowadays: from Star Wars return to wave of 80′s nostalgia to every old blockbuster star doing a comeback, there is but a single conclusion - nostalgia sells.

Or does it?

Part One: Moving with the change; or very much refusing to.

Let’s start this off with some facts about the ratings for Doctor Who. (Well, I warned you there’s gonna be numbers, didn’t I. Stick with me, I’m going somewhere with this I promise.) In it’s beginnings, in the sixties and seventies , the series flown high, averaging a viewership from 8 up to 10 million viewers per season. Collin Baker’s series 17 brought in a record of 11.21 milion viewer asses in front of a good ol’ TV screen, real champagne opener here. But, as it happens, things were downhill from here. During the eighties, the rating started dropping steadily, reaching an all-time low of 4.15 milion couch-warming bottoms in 1989, the last season of the classic era. 

Years passed, 16 of those years to be exact, and here comes our saviour RTD. Under his wings, the revived series premiered, bringing in over 10 milion viewers to the premiere episode of season 1, Rose. A viewership this high did not last for long, but still, RTD’s seasons averaged between 7 and 8 milion viewers per season, which seemed pretty respectable. But then, as the story likes to repeat itself, not unlike the bbc execs just did, along came the decline again. Ever since 2010, the ratings began steadily dropping again, from 7.95 in 2010 to 5.46 in 2017. Then DW experienced an unexpected peak in 2018 with the premiere of Jodie Whittaker’s first season, which averaged 7.96 viewing asses, but then continued the dropping trend on the next season, averaging 5.40 viewing butts.

So what went wrong?

You see, part of the reason that Doctor Who was bringing in such great viewership numbers in the 60′s and 70′s, was that, to put it simply, BBC did not have much competition. Or, to be exact, only had one competitor. ITV was literally founded in order to break BBC’s monopoly over British television. But in the 80′s, with the launch of Channel 4 and Sky, the british viewers had more and more options to choose from. So logically speaking, they no longer had to watch BBC’s programming just because there was nothing else on. There was more and more new programes to boredom-watch. And here’s something y’all need to know about the tv industry: the boredom-watchers, the casuals? That’s the most important demographic. As hard as it might be to swallow, us hardcore fans, forum dwellers and Ao3 gremlins, we’re not as big of a group as we’d like to think. Loving fans are important to the tv execs as providers of word-of-mouth advertisment, but the real numbers come from the casual, everyday viewer who will just put on the next episode cause the other one was kinda fun I guess. Or more fun than the other options, anyway.

And this is why, by the way, when someone is conflating low viewership with the show Dissapointing The Fans, they’re full of shit. I’m sorry, but we’re really not that much of a force here, definitely not enough to make such a big impact on the numbers. Another factor, that some of you probably noticed already, is that the numbers I’m quoting are from british tv only, while the online fandom is very much international, so our opinions matter even less to the british execs, I’m sorry again, hard pill to swallow I know, but true nonetheless.

But I digress. So, to sum up the previous paragraph, Doctor Who’s viewership decline in the 80′s was the effect of the changing landscape of the TV industry, with which the BBC struggled to come to terms with.

Sound familiar?

Let’s move on to the 2010′s, shall we?

2010 was is actually a good marker of a year to choose, because it marks one important thing that begun a big change in the industry. This was the year in which Netflix expanded their services overseas, from being a DVD rental company to providing VOD services. Over the next decade streaming services grew in importance, from being an add-on to your cable TV that you didn’t really want but they were throwing it in for cheap, to very much self-sustainable media services you might very well buy instead of buying the cable. And if you look at the numbers for Doctor Who viewership declining over the last 10 years, that’s precisely what’s been happening. It’s not that people don’t want to watch Doctor Who on tv, they don’t want to watch tv in general. Do you know what was the most popular channel in Britain this year? Can you guess? Fucking Netflix that’s what. It’s just slowly-yet-steadily ceasing to be the way we use home entertainment anymore. Again, not much to do with the audience approval, because for that matter, let’s see about the specific episodes that saw the spikes in viewership. 

Rose, which i mentioned at the start of it, was for the longest time the unquestionable queen when it comes to viewership, at 10.81 milion. The next episode, The End of the World, pulled in 7.97 - almost 3 millions worth of lost viewer-butts in one week? Is it because it was so much worse than it’s predecessor? No, it simply did not have the smell of Newness, the Event You Must See, and as such brought forth less of the casual viewers who were simply curious about The New Thing. The next season followed the similar formula, peaking at the premiere, when the marketing was at it’s strongest, going down during the season, sometimes rising slightly for the finale, sometimes not. The most popular episodes are, of course, the specials - yet again, the vibe of The Event To Be Seen worked here, but one more thing working to their advantage is they often aired in spaces between seasons, serving as both a long-waited Crumbs of Content for the fans, and the basically stand-alones for the casuals. Do you know what the single most watched episode of revived DW is? No, it’s not Tennant’s goodbye with the role (yeah I know, I thought it had to be that as well). It was Voyage of the Damned, between seasons 3 and 4. The perfect standalone for the casual watcher. And last but not least, you know one more special feature that brought, maybe not as much, but definitely more than expected? The 1996 movie Doctor Who, with 9.08 million. Again, a perfect standalone.

But the standalones aren’t the only way to grab the viewership. The currently-highest viewing non-special episode of DW? The Woman Who Fell to Earth, Jodie Whittaker’s introduction. In 2018 no less, in the year when the streaming was the ruler supreme, this episode brought a whooping 10.96 million buts to the good ol’ TV again. Let me reiterate: this episode brought in more viewers than Rose did in 2005, while having WAY more competition and way less favorable circumstances of release that RTD’s debiut did. Not only that, it managed to bring on some numbers for the entire season as well, not as good of course as the premiere (because again, the Event vibes faded), but still brought a better average than the last six seasons did. (Again, let me reiterate: more than the last SIX seasons. More viewership than any series since 2010, since the Streaming Wars.) So clearly, this must be the way, right? Catering to this Weird New Trend, that saw directors notice there do in fact exist other actors than white men, that surely brought in some profit, even Marvel does it now, right? Out with the old, in with the new!

Part 2 The Deceitful Charm of Nostalgia

Well, it turns out the whole Doing New Things deal didn’t work out that well after all, now did it? The second season penned by Chibbnal averaged 5.40 milion, that’s 2.5 million drop from the previous one! It must mean it didn’t work, right? Well, yes and no. As much as the refreshment of the formula as simple as Let’s Put A Woman In It absolutely worked for one season, it very visibly did not hold up for longer. An Event-Episode is something that can still happen on TV, Event-Series? That’s pretty much reserved for streaming now, if you think about it, and it’s honestly kind of a miracle that Series 11 did as well as it had. Two consecutive Event-Series on network tv? Flat out impossible. 

So how to make those ratings great again? How to get those butts in seats of the Good Ol’? Well, the execs of the BBC have a plan for that. They brought in a devouring beast, and it’s name is: Nostalgia.

Without a doubt, there is a number of people who feel nostalgic about RTD’s era of Doctor Who. It’s a lot of people’s fond childhood memory, or the series they started with, and judging by the numbers, there should be quite a lot of them. So the new plan, as it appears, is to get to those who maybe lost interest in the show and lure them with the promise of the thing That Is Totally Like The Thing You Used To Love, Remember? (This is why I don’t actually think that RTD will be allowed to do anything new and interesting, that’s not what they hired him for. And that’s why I think this is bad from the creative standpoint.) So there are two questions here: One, will the people be lured? And two, for how long?

Nostalgia as a marketing strategy is something that you’re probably sick of seeing already (I know I am). But it has very much been effective on many levels, especially the eighties-baiting, Stranger Things style, can bring a new IP up to relevance. But what about old IP’s that want to have a comeback? 

It’s kind of dificult to find another TV show that I could compare to Doctor Who. Most series that have been running for that long are mostly soap operas, that operate on slightly different rules, and are also targeted to a different audience. So as much as the movie series is still not exactly the best comparison, when I think about a big IP, campy sci-fi, family-oriented (at least in theory) on its path back to relevance, I think about Star Wars, obviously. The Force Awakens gambled on that nostalgic feeling and won big, but the next two movies, while still financially successful, were nowhere near the astounding success of the first one. And that’s because - you guessed it - it created the Event You Must See again, The Great Comeback, but merely two years later, the comeback became old news. So what we can gain from that is that nostalgia can create an Event as well as a new trend, if not better. But the question remains: how long will that last?

That is, after all, the main difference between a movie franchise and a TV series in the traditional, network TV sense of the word: movie franchise must bring in the viewership every year or two, and TV series must bring in viewers every week for at least two months. Is RTD’s Nostalgia Vibes enough to provide for that?

I’ll say this: I’m absolutely certain that the 60th anniversary will be very popular. I still don’t think it will break any records because, as I’ve been trying to explain for this whole post, it is not 2007 anymore no matter how much the tv execs would like it to be. But ironically, the almost-certain success of the special is the very thing that could undermine the effect of bringing their precious Nostagia Boi back onboard. Remember, the first Event Episode is The Big Oof. That’s the one that gets asses to the Good Ol’, if anything ever does. After the first big event one, that’s the point when things start going down. They’re wasting their Special Event Boi for something that already would be an event, dear fucking gods, I hate your plan and I would still execute it better. Either have RTD be the Anniversary Guy and then hire someone new, use that hype and keep it going, OR have RTD come in after the anniversary, then at least you get the Event Effect for the premiere of his first return season. Fukin’ amateurs.

But even if they did that, here’s the thing: do you think that the people who departed from the show years ago actually want to watch another three to five seasons of The RTD Show? I mean, I’m sure the thought warmed some hearts, for sure. A number of people will definitely gladly watch the anniversary, probably the first few episodes of the first return to the basics, but after that? In the world when, due to streaming, they have an easy way to revisit the actual thing they’re nostalgic towards? I honestly don’t think so. And you’re not really gonna get many new people by going back, if that nostalgia factor isn’t there. And then there’s casual viewers, the backbone, as we established. And here’s the thing: lots of those people don’t even know who the current showrunner is, cause they’re not Terminally Online like we are, and the second thing? Lots of those people ARE JUST NOT WATCHING NETWORK TV, IM SORRY GARRY. They’re just. They’re just not. I don’t know how to spell it out better. Even my mum has netflix now. Your biggest base is in another castle mate, gotta get moving and gotta get moving quick, cause here’s another thing: all the nostalgia in the world will not do SHIT for you if your target, people who were kids/teens when the RTD era was airing, PROBABLY DON’T EVEN HAVE A FUCKING TV ANYMORE CAUSE THEY MOVED OUT OF THEIR PARENTS FLAT AND LOTS OF YOUNG PEOPLE JUST DON’T BOTHER. Just. I’m sorry but you’re trying to resuscitate a decade-deceased corpse there buddy. It just won’t work. The times have changed and you gotta swim or drown, and it’s just not gonna be 2005 again, no matter how hard you pretend it is. It’s not your content it’s your business model. Just push more marketing for your iplayer or whatever, focus on streaming as your primary not your secondary cause that’s just what it is now, and maybe don’t rely on the viewer-counting systems of the yesteryear to evaluate your business. Or else you’re gonna get stuck sacrificing the creative growth of your show for a marketing strategy that probably won’t even fucking WORK.

There, I got it of my chest. Feel free to reblog, and also: you somehow got to the end of this, congrats! I’ll make numbers nerds out of y’all yet.

[gendercensus]

On plural inclusivity and "plural they"

In the Gender Census feedback box and elsewhere I have frequently been asked:

to make the annual Gender Census survey more inclusive of plural participants, and

to add "plural they" to the checkbox pronouns list alongside "singular they" in order to be inclusive of plural participants.

It's a rambling topic, so I'll address them in sections in that order.

~

INCLUSIVITY RE: PLURAL PARTICIPANTS

I've been inviting plural people to take part in a short survey about the Gender Census, asking questions that help me get a feel for the issues involved and asking about whether people feel included in the survey (and why or why not). At the time of writing there have been 139 responses, I will leave it open for ongoing feedback, and I'm unlikely to be publishing the spreadsheet of results in full because the responses are off-topic and very personal. However, I will refer to some individual responses as well as my personal experience discussing inclusion with plural systems.

Here's a graph based on the responses so far:

I'm asking for direct feedback about this issue because over the past few years plural folks have been one of the more consistently vocal groups in the feedback box of the survey and elsewhere, which would usually be fine, but I've been finding it very overwhelming and confusing. I think that's because the advice/demands/questions have been unusually inconsistent, often to the point of being in direct opposition to each other, and the result is that I have no idea what to do.

Before now, most plural people have understood that it's quite a nuanced issue. When asked I would explain that if they felt that filling it in once for the whole system made more sense they should do that, and if individual system members felt strongly that they should participate alone then they could do so.

This year it got to the point where I had to make a decision and write unambiguous, easy-to-follow guidance about how plural people should fill in the survey, because I had one system submitting dozens of responses and giving the exact same three points of feedback, paraphrased, over and over - making it look like many unconnected people felt strongly about these particular issues, when in reality it was all this one system. I decided that, to be as fair as possible, plural people should fill in the survey once per body.

When I posted about the "once per body" policy on social media I received very little direct feedback, which leaves me in the position of not knowing whether that's because I did it right and you have no complaints or because you've all jumped ship! The statistics and comments from the plural feedback survey are very helpful in this regard:

It seems that plural participants, on the whole, are fairly understanding about it all, often supportive, and are still able to participate. ("Unknown" and "no strong feelings" together are a much higher proportion than I expected.) Some positive feedback included appreciation for the ability to select as many gender identities and pronouns as one wants. Common arguments against the policy include feeling that system members are not treated as people in their own right, which is understandable; the Gender Census is designed to present practicable data about nonbinary people for use within a system that assigns one identity per body, socially and bureaucratically. A "once per body" policy makes sense when prioritising nonbinary people, but adds to the list of crap that only plural people have to struggle through when they're not the main focus of the research.

I was surprised that only a couple of people pointed out that some systems have amnesia between members, and so some systems may participate more than once per body unintentionally. (I understand that this is unavoidable, and I certainly wouldn't be upset about it. Sometimes non-plural people participate more than once by accident, too! On the scale we're talking about, I'm unlikely to even notice it happening.)

Back when I first started to get requests to make the Gender Census more plural-inclusive, my first move was to ask people what exactly they felt excluded by. Responses to this have been continuously nebulous, to the extent that I don't think I have ever made any design changes to the annual survey at all as a result. I also asked what they would do to improve the survey and help them to feel included, but this has yielded very few viable ideas for how to move forward, just because so many of the ideas that people suggest are mutually exclusive.

As an example, I spoke to one member of a system who expressed, understandably, that their experience of themselves as plural inextricably affected their experience of their gender(s), and after some discussion they concluded that the two were so intertwined that it made the most sense for it to be included in the identity question, e.g. a checkbox called "plural" alongside nonbinary, genderqueer, trans, etc. I explained that I don't arbitrarily add things to the checkbox list, but it would be counted if it was typed into a textbox underneath, and if it went over 1% I would consider adding it to the checkbox list. They became increasingly angry. The only way this situation would make sense for them moving forward was if I added "plural" as an identity checkbox option immediately. Conversely, just a couple of weeks previously I had spoken with a member of a system who was very vocally distressed at the idea of plurality being conflated with gender, and wanted to make sure that I never added "plural" as an identity checkbox option.

As another example, in the plural feedback survey when I asked people how they felt about the "once per body" policy, a member of one system was against it and said "it feels like this policy doesn’t recognize us as separate people", but a member of another system was in favour and said "we're encouraged by our therapist to think of ourselves as dissociated parts of a whole. So we're all one person, just not directly connected like a singlet [non-plural person] would be. From that perspective, it makes sense to keep us as one person in the gender census, no matter how many genders we have." It's not possible to reconcile these two perspectives.

From the very beginning up until now, the unifying theme for feedback from plural people and their allies is "please be more inclusive of plural people." That's a really good start! After that it becomes a plate of tangled spaghetti.

Here are some themes I've managed to tease out, and my thoughts.

"Each system's alter should be able to participate in the survey individually if they want to." Some systems have literally hundreds of alters, and several systems have acknowledged in the feedback survey that this is probably both impractical for many plural people and unfair on singlets.

"We're okay with taking part once for all of us in the system, but we're just checking all the boxes that apply to at least one of us, and some of those are explicitly disliked by at least one of us. This is uncomfortable." I think that's... probably okay, actually. Other subcategories of participants whose identities fluctuate that strongly (e.g. a genderfluid person who is sometimes very male and sometimes extremely not male) or whose pronouns are context-dependent are also in this predicament. Participants often express a desire to rank their identity terms by importance, accuracy, fluctuation or frequency. The survey aims to collect broad and fuzzy data about a very large group of people, to monitor trends and let people know what language we're comfortable with on the whole. This survey just isn't looking for that kind of nuance.

"We're okay with taking part in the survey once for everyone in the system, but there should be a way to separate out responses about different alters within that one response." It's literally impossible to program the survey to have infinite subsections for each alter, but if it were possible, what would I do with the data? I think the most likely approach would be combining into a list of identities etc. "per body". The participant would feel better for being able to enter different words for different alters, but it would be more work for them, and it would be more work for me to process responses from plural people just to have them be counted like those from non-plural people.

"There should be a 'plural' checkbox in the identity list so that we can express that our gender is influenced by our plurality." I consider adding terms to the identity checkbox list when they're typed into the textboxes by over 1% of participants. There are some situations where I'll make an exception to that rule, but it's unusual and this isn't one of them. Whether you enter a term using a checkbox or a textbox makes no difference to how well-represented you are in the results.

Maybe just a question that asks if you're plural, with a checkbox? What would this checkbox do? Plurality is beyond the scope of the survey, along with things like height and eye colour. It would allow curious people to analyse the responses using plurality as a variable, but I wouldn't include it in any analysis in an annual Gender Census report.

That last one is particularly interesting, because it's what I actually did in the supplementary survey. I wasn't 100% sure in advance whether or not I would need that information for the singular vs. plural they issue, so I included an "I am/we are plural" checkbox just to be on the safe side. As far as I could tell, the survey was no more or less materially inclusive than the annual Gender Census survey. There were a couple of interesting patterns to report in the statistics, but the main things I noticed were:

Feedback saying that the survey wasn't inclusive of plural people was non-existent.

Several people thanked me in the feedback box for making the survey plural-inclusive.

Several people promoted the survey on social media by using its plural-inclusivity as a selling point.

Again, the supplementary survey didn't take a different approach. There was no particular difference in language, there was no indication that whether or not you're plural would be integral to the reporting of the results or even used at all, the only difference was the existence of a checkbox that let participants declare their plurality.

That's all it took to cause a complete U-turn in feedback. A checkbox that doesn't relate to gender or connect to any of the other questions in any way, and isn't particularly statistically useful based on the supplementary survey. It doesn't make the survey more inclusive, it just acknowledges that some participants are plural, and gives them a way to declare it.

Whether or not participants are plural is beyond the scope of the Gender Census, which aims to collect broad data about how we as nonbinary and otherwise genderly-interesting people want the world to see and describe us. It just doesn't make sense to include questions about plurality in future surveys. But I'm honestly amazed and a little confused, because until the "once per body" policy was added it seems that there wasn't actually anything about the Gender Census that prevented plural people from participating, at least not more than anyone else whose genders change significantly over time.

~

SHOULD "PLURAL THEY" BE ADDED TO THE CHECKBOX PRONOUN LIST?

This is something that participants often ask me to do in order to make the survey more plural-inclusive, so I decided to seriously consider it.

The first draft of the supplementary survey asked over 1,000 participants about this issue, but I had to scrap those responses and then redesign and restart it because, even though dictionaries are fairly clear on what exactly "singular they" is, a lot of survey participants who are not dictionaries seemed to be in disagreement (or confusion) about what singular they and plural they actually are. I have been unable to find any academic or reference articles online using the phrase "plural they" at all.

Here are some of the things people have told me recently:

"Singular they" is when you use "they" with singular verbs, e.g. they is a teacher.

I can't say that I use "singular they" pronouns because I always say "they are". "They is" just sounds wrong to me.

"Plural they" is when you use "singular they" pronouns to refer to a system/someone who is plural.

"Singular they" and "plural they" are grammatically identical except for the name.

"Singular they" and "plural they" are functionally the same and should be combined into one option called "they" in the annual survey.

Let's start by stating what we do know for sure.

~

THEY VS. SINGULAR THEY

For the record, "singular they" is defined by its purpose and context, not the specific words used.

Wiktionary says:

they (third-person, nominative case, usually plural, sometimes singular, objective case them, possessive their, possessive noun theirs, reflexive themselves, or, singular, themself)

It then goes on to specify three use-cases:

third-person plural, referring to two or more people

third-person singular, referring to one person

"indefinite pronoun" - people; some people; people in general; someone, excluding the speaker. E.g. "they didn’t have computers in the old days."

So we've got "they" (groups), "singular they" (individuals), and "indefinite they" (an "other" that is ambiguous in number).

Again, I have never found anything academic or, er, dictionarical (lexicographical?) that calls any of the forms "plural they", so my first job is to find out whether what Gender Census participants are calling "plural they" is the same as what the dictionary just calls "they", which is defined as the set used to refer to two or more people. For the purposes of this article I will call it regular "they".

~

WHICH WORDS MAKE UP SINGULAR THEY?

Even though most dictionaries will state which words make up singular they, and it's usually they/them/their/theirs/themself, if you change individual words within the set or even around the set it is still called "singular they" if it is used to refer to only one person. This might happen due to regional or cultural variations. So whether you say "they is a writer" or "they are a writer", whether you say "themself" or "themselves", if you're talking about only one person, it's still singular they.

In the annual survey, singular they is consistently chosen in the checkbox pronoun options by the most participants, usually more than twice as popular as the next most popular option. (I use the dictionary-provided set, and I've checked it's still the most commonly used in several polls and surveys along the way.) In the annual survey, singular they is presented as:

singular they - they/them/their/theirs/themself (e.g. "they are a writer")

~

WHICH WORDS MAKE UP PLURAL THEY?

I had never heard of "plural they" before people started asking me to add it to the checkbox list in the feedback box of the annual Gender Census survey, but it seemed clear from the name that it is meant to be contrasted with singular they, and I wondered if perhaps everyone else had been calling regular "they" (for referring to two or more people) "plural they" this entire time and I just hadn't noticed.

It was specifically presented to me by participants as a pronoun that a plural system could claim, and that a plural system might prefer over singular they. This tallied with my initial assumption that "plural they" may just be regular "they" referring to groups, since a system is a body containing two or more distinct individuals, so if they wanted to be referred to as a group then singular they would be inappropriate and regular "they" would fit.

I went to the pronouns spreadsheet of the 2021 Gender Census, and took every pronoun set that was named and copied it into a new spreadsheet. I ran a query to list all sets that contained both the words "plural" and "they" in the name field. There were 71 results, out of ~44,500 total responses. I ran another query to find out what these people were entering in the reflexive field, and here's what I got:

themselves - 61 (85.9%)

theirselves - 3

them - 2

themself - 2

themself (plural) - 2

theirself - 1

So I think it's safe to say that the set that people are calling "plural they" uses "themselves" as the reflexive, which is consistent with dictionaries' reporting of regular "they".

I conclude that most people do mean regular "they" when they refer to "plural they". "Plural they" seems to be they/them when used to refer to two or more people, including the plural reflexive "themselves".

As in "singular they", if you change individual words within the set or even around the set it is still called regular "they" if it is used to refer to two or more people. This might happen due to regional or cultural variations. So whether you say "they is writers" or "they are writers", whether you say "themself" or "themselves", if you're talking about two or more people, it's still regular "they" (or plural they).

~

IS PLURAL THEY GETTING SMUSHED INTO ANOTHER PRONOUN/GROUP?

I recently explored the (apparently unintentional) overlap of Spivak (e/em) and Elverson (ey/em). In case you've not read it, here's a brief overview: I found that it might be that Elverson (not on the checkbox list) is many times more popular than Spivak (on the checkbox list), even though it isn't being written into the pronouns textboxes often enough for it to reach the 1% threshold. Since the two sets are identical except for that one letter in the subject form, it is very likely that many of the people who use Elverson (ey/em) pronouns are choosing the Spivak checkbox option in the annual survey because they don't realise the spelling is different, or they think that they are minor spelling variants of the same set. I concluded that in order to get a fair count of both sets I will need to list both in the checkbox options next year, even though Elverson hasn't been typed in by over 1% of participants yet.

It's possible that the same thing is happening with singular and plural they. I ran a couple of Twitter polls, asking people whose pronouns are they/them which set they prefer, and presented answers like this:

a) Singular they, referring to only 1 person: they are themSELF

b) Singular they, referring to only 1 person: they are themSELVES

c) Plural they, referring to 2+ people: they are themSELVES

Here's the results, with 927 usable responses:

The results of this poll are really useful, because it allowed people to choose between singular and plural they AND themself and themselves, in combination. We can see that of the people who call their pronouns "singular they" (referring to only one person), the majority prefer "themself" as the reflexive, but a respectable proportion prefer singular they with "themselves", even when presented with the option of "plural they" (referring to two or more people).

(I have a policy of providing the most popular word choices in checkboxes, so I will continue to provide a they/them checkbox option that says "singular they - they/them/their/theirs/themself", but since singular they is consistently the most popular pronoun this is something I like to keep checking in on.)

If we apply these proportions to the 2021 Gender Census responses and imagine that everyone whose pronouns are they/them chose "singular they - they/them/their/theirs/themself" regardless of how accurate that is, this would mean that 3.7% of all respondents would check a "plural they" box, which is well above the 1% threshold for adding something to the checkbox list. Why not add it to the list, the way I'll also be adding Elverson to the list? This graph may help:

I generally consider it unwise to make big decisions based on Twitter polls, because the sample is much smaller and more biased than a standalone survey. Twitter requires membership, Twitter membership is skewed younger, and younger members are more likely to use Twitter often and see polls when they appear.

However, even I can't deny that there is a very clear mandate here for Elverson to be added to the checkbox list. When given a straight choice between the Spivak, Elverson, both, and neither/something else, participants were over six times more likely to choose Elverson over Spivak. (For context, Spivak got 4.3% in the 2021 Gender Census as a checkbox option.) Even if this poll were somehow put to the entire Gender Census participant group, it's hard to imagine a scenario where the results shift enough that Elverson gets a lower percentage than Spivak.

4.7% of a smaller sample of younger Twitter members just isn't enough to push me to add something to the checkbox options. I really hope that everyone whose pronouns are "plural they" takes the time to type it into next year's survey as a pronoun distinct from "singular they", so that if they do end up being over 1% of participants I can add "plural they" to the checkbox options.

~

IN CONCLUSION

As far as I can tell, the Gender Census doesn't particularly exclude plural participants. Systems are still able to take part, so it is at least as inclusive as any other survey of a similar nature, maybe even more so thanks to the ability to choose multiple gender identities and pronouns "per body".

There isn't sufficient evidence to support adding "plural they" to the list of checkbox pronouns at this time, and systems can be represented in results by typing any plural-inclusive terms and pronouns that are not on checkbox lists into some of the many textboxes provided, as any other participant would be expected to do.

The "once per body" participation policy is uncomfortable for a significant number of plural people. However, due to the intensely varied experiences of plural people, any policy on that issue that I impose would make some plural people uncomfortable - and it turns out that I chose the "side" that plural people are more likely to agree with. The survey isn't intending to collect or convey the more nuanced information that plural people (and others) have said that they would like to provide.

A separate question that specifically asks participants whether they're plural makes systems feel seen and acknowledged, but is beyond the scope of the project and doesn't add value to the data or analysis.

So, I will not be making any changes to the Gender Census at this time, based on the information I've gathered so far. However, I welcome further feedback in the plural participants' feedback form, which will remain open, anonymous and private.

~

Edit: Follow-up.