#A Framework

[who-is-page]

"You can't have [experience] because you don't identify as [label]!!!" how do I explain to people that experiences exist outside of and prior to the formation of specific language to talk about them

"You can't have [experience] because you don't think of it through [framework/explanation/etc]!!!" how do I explain to people that experiences exist outside of and prior to any formal cosmology, hypotheses, or explanation assigned to them

[kinky-cas]

cas is doing courtly love nonsense because that’s the framework for romantic/erotic love thats most compatible with his ideas of how angels are supposed to be. meanwhile dean is like hey lancelot can you cool it with the noble knight shtick for 10 minutes and just answer your damn texts?

[loveless-arobee]

"There's no platonic explanation for this!" Correct. However, neither is there a romantic one.

Whatever these freaks have going on is entirely sexual.

[once-more-with-gravitas]

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[txttletale]

increasingly growing dissatisfied with the framework of tma/tme and more partial to to 'transfeminized' / '(currently) non-transfeminized'. specifically i think situating the focus of the term's analytical power on a certain relation to a system of power rather than an isolable trait locatable discretely within an individual has much more explanatory power and leads down more produtive theoretical avenues

[thestarmaker]

The goat is looking fucking ROUGH at this point

[the-barefoot-hatter]

Bonus:

[chronotopes]

in general it is a lot easier for people to surrender or mellow on a culture war opinion that they recognize to have no bearing on their life than it is to surrender a position of power or even recognize that a position of power exists. conservative joe agrees with you that gay people are human beings after your heartwarming conversation or whatever but what are his thoughts on his wife who has been doing all of the domestic labor in their relationship for ten years. you know.

[not-terezi-pyrope]

"Don't use terms that refer to specific mental illnesses as quirky personality trait metaphors or insults" is something I strongly agree with in every case, except probably the word "narcissist", which did not originally refer to a disorder but has been a descriptor meaning self-centered since the early 1800s, taken from the allegorical character from Greek myth.

It was only coined as a term for a psychiatric diagnosis in the late 1960s, in what was I think we can all agree an incredibly short-sighted and judgemental move typical of the field at the time, and the correct response should probably be to rename the personality disorder to something that isn't a long-established negative descriptor, rather than push to re-define the word to exclusively refer to the disorder (largely impossible, unless we want to collectively forget the several-millenia-old character of Narcissus, or pretend that he somehow has nothing to do with the word that clearly derives from him).

[agentoffangirling]

"Okay but aroace people can still date!" would you ship a lesbian with a man? I'm not talking about those weirdos who ignore everything canon, I'm talking about the vast majority of the fanbase. Do you think most of them would ship a gay man with a woman?

It's not just about the shipping, it's the fact that y'all will use every single loophole in existence to justify why an aroace character should be shipped. Can you literally respect one singular thing? GODDDD

[foxgirltail]

Genuinely, the reason why so many discussions about transgenderism end up the way they do (in addition to the overt transmisogyny) is a complete unwillingness to view gender (and sexuality) as political categories, instead viewing them exclusively through the lens of "personal identity"

"Why do people use agab/tma? Is not the point of being trans to escape the shackles of your agab?" I cannot stress this enough but I am not the one doing the shackling, society has invented the shackles and I am using language to describe them and how they affect me

In a hypothetical future situation where society is no longer (trans)misogynistic and the patriarchy has been fully dismantled, these terms will have no real use. But it's important to recognize what is current actual material reality and what is simply idealism and hypotheticals

I would love to live in a world where tma vs tme is not a meaningful distinction. But that world doesn't exist (and also you are not helping make it so it does), and so those terms remain useful

[mayasaura]

It kind of confuses me when I see people talking about cavaliers as if the Nine Houses have established and normalised some radical social role of human sacrifice. It really doesn't seem to me like the role of a cavalier is that simple. The only members of their society we've seen who weren't horrified by the idea were the Tridentarii.

The career soldier, who was born into the military class and trained for that role since birth, believes no necromancer should ever have to see their cavalier die. The other child soldier was killed while putting himself between his cavalier and danger. The heirophant of the Emperor's law who draws on his cavalier like a battery—a level of exploitation the other Houses condemn—turns against the will of his God when he witnesses the sacrifice expected for lyctorhood.

The deliberate sacrifice of a cavalier is not normalised. Not even in the front lines of their military. The role of a cavalier is exploitative, of course, and that's where the interesting part begins. Is it any more exploitative than a king whose knights are trained to die in battle? Than employees who are forced to work or starve? Than the existence of a noble class, or capitalism?

Human suffering exists in any society, and in most societies I know of, much of that suffering we inflict on one another through exploitation. The Nine Houses are not unique in this respect. I am very much in awe of the worldbuilding in this series, tho, that it has managed to defamiliarise human suffering and class dynamics as to show us their grotesquerie plainly without ever tipping over into anything as straight forward as direct allegory.

[thesaintofpatience]

for all the excellent meta going around about the nine houses and linguistics and cultural homogeneity and so on, I am still desperate for more wildly divergent linguistics between the Houses

holding out for fourth house rhyming slang and seventh house ironic double-verlan and ninth house sign language (for communicating via mute skeleton constructs across snow fields) and third house fan language and handkerchief codes

what slang terms do criminals use in the Dominicus system and where have they bled into common parlance? Likewise what Cohort slang has become commonplace in Second and Fourth that’s totally incomprehensible to the Sixth? What Latin phrases (“fiat lux!”) are a commonplace part of the Sixth vernacular, archaic but comprehensible to Eighth, mystifying to Third? Did Dulcie’s letters to Cam and Pal include glossaries and marginalia explaining synonyms and divergent definitions? Did they develop their own shared vernacular, tempering Sixth House academic prose with Seventh poetic styles, their own shared slang and inside jokes?

What John-isms are retained in the Fifth and Second House (I don’t even mean memes here I mean idioms like “dime a dozen” and “burning the midnight oil” and “snug as a bug in a rug” and “the ball’s in your court”) but not the others? Conversely, what new idioms and aphorisms confuse the hell out of John with each new Cohort intake? Has “needle in a haystack” been replaced with “hyoid in an ossuary” where hydroponic farming is the typical means of agriculture? Instead of “every cloud has a silver lining” is it “even rusty blades have an edge” where weather is no longer as notable an influence on day to day life?

Do they still give each other peace signs? Flip the bird? Stick two fingers up? Is crossing one’s fingers still a hope for good luck or a threat (indicating crossing swords)? Which Houses are known to talk with their hands (🤌)?

I could think about this all day but the main image I have is of Gideon doing this (👌- Ninth House sign language, emulates a skeleton’s eye socket: “I see you/acknowledged”) to, say, Babs (from Third where the same gesture, “the pinch”, emulates gathering of fabric and/or skin to test quality and fragility and is typically deemed a derogatory gesture) and starts an inter house diplomatic fracas

[tritoch]

the warrior of light as a game-breaking force of violence

there's a moment, relatively early in dawntrail, that establishes succinctly how out of place the warrior of light (as the savior of eorzea and main character of four successive final fantasy game plots) is in what is essentially the story of fresh new final fantasy protagonist wuk lamat. and it sets up quite nicely how the framework of fantasy video game conflict pulls the warrior of light forever towards violence as the expansion goes on.

spoilers through 7.0 follow

consider wuk lamat's kidnapping and rescue. bakool ja ja holds his blade to wuk lamat's throat, taunting you. his lackeys line up against your party in neat little ranks suspiciously reminiscent of a classic final fantasy encounter screen.

and it simply does not matter to the warrior of light. you stride right through their combat setup because you are beyond that by now. the warrior of light has absolutely no respect for the "we are about to do ATB combat" lineup. the camera even jumps the line for you in one continuous rotating shot, crossing the axis of action as though to emphasize through the disruption of visual convention how far outside the game's boundaries you are.

this is how far you are above the problems of dawntrail's first half. you cannot even be bound by the normal rules of cinematography and video game combat. everyone else here lined up for a good old-fashioned scrap and the warrior of light said haha nope actually. i'm going to stroll through here like a god of war astride this tiny battlefield. your henchmen cannot even raise a hand to me. i don't even have to engage in violence directly anymore. my mere presence is enough.

in fact, not only can bakool ja ja's henchmen not raise a hand to you, he's not even worthy of your direct intervention. he kidnaps wuk lamat and steals her keystones and frees valigarmanda and kidnaps hunmu rruk and none of it warrants the warrior of light so much as raising a finger. he's wuk lamat's recurring villain, that's not your problem. you're just here to take in the scenery.

zoraal ja spends his whole life aspiring to be thought of as his father's equal and a worthy successor to the dawnservant as the "resilient son." all it takes for gulool ja ja to acknowledge you as a warrior on his level is like a five minute sparring match. the acknowledgement from gulool ja ja that zoraal ja hungered for his whole life and would eventually go full cyborg supervillain to get via regicide is something the warrior of light receives casually in a throwaway line after their level 93 solo duty on the way to more important plot conversations.

it really seems for a second, in the first half of dawntrail, like you are strong enough and the problems simple enough for this to be a clean and easy adventure. bakool ja ja? power of friendship'd. mamook? successfully reintegrated, no worries about the crimes against humanity. rite of succession? handily won. nothing can stop you. even duty finder queue times have been conquered: you can do all your duties with trusts now.

all of which only makes it better when the second half has sphene ask you and wuk lamat directly: could your strength have been enough to save alexandria? could you have found a different way?

i know some people get very annoyed we don't intervene in the gulool ja ja fight. now personally i think if you see arthur and mordred squaring up it's rude to intervene, but beyond that, it simply wouldn't have mattered. by the time zoraal ja's forces arrived in tuliyollal, alexandria and tural were already on a collision course and doomed to conflict. your hands alone could never have averted this conflict. sphene was always bound to do what she did—and certainly a gulool ja ja without his reason would not be any more inclined to peace than wuk lamat and koana were.

there's a great little moment just before living memory where estinien, champion at reading the room, is like "okay so if thancred and i stay here that frees up you up, aibou, to do what you do best and save the world and have epic fights. woo!!!" and immediately afterwards you basically have to apologize to alisaie because part of the sort of unspoken premise of this whole trip in the first place was that you were, finally, not going to plunge into mortal peril to save the world. you were finally going to take it easy. you were finally done with that. and she has to sort of ruefully be like nah it's fine bro. i was trying to get you to take it easy and not do insane risky world-saving violence. but y'know these things (interdimensional invasions) happen.

by the time you reach the very last trial, all pretense that the warrior of light could have ever been beyond these problems has vanished. you were, very emphatically, not strong enough to hold onto all that was dear without sacrifice. gulool ja ja and otis and cahciua died. yyasulani was irreversibly changed, physically colonized and culturally decimated by another dimension. you systematically shut down each part of living memory, and all its friendly, charming, loving ghosts, with your own hands. with your own clicks.

not even the vaunted strength of the warrior of light is enough to overcome sphene's inexorable logic of conflict. and so, in the end, she plucks you out of the crowd and says, explicitly for reasons of your strength, that you are going to have to do a boss fight now. you are going to have to kill her and you are going to have to do it in a proper 8-on-1 trial, and she forces you to affirmatively state that you understand you're going to kill her.

did you think you were above it all? did you think you could get away from here with your weapon undrawn, with your hands clean? that for you and you alone the logic of conflict comes undone? wrong. wrong. wrong.

your strength cannot redeem you, says sphene. your friends cannot make these sacrifices for you. if you would play the hero then you must play the hero. no half-measures.

back to the duty finder with ye.

[jesncin]

Happy Pride! Now that Lunar Boy (our middle grade graphic novel) is out, we wanted to share our thought process behind queer vocabulary in media. The constant censorship, imposed western biases on queer culture, and what it means to introduce queer vocabulary to a young audience.

Check out Lunar Boy wherever american graphic novels are sold, or check it out at a library!