#bad idea to get into discourse. especially religious discourse. on the internet

[queermarzipan]

sorry wait, what -- i--

there are no specific spiritual teachings about the bar to get into heaven or hell. other than "be a basically good person & apologise (confess) & do better when u get it wrong".

what doctrine were you raised in that cast absolute perfection as the bar to get into heaven?? i don't. that's.

...

The "obvious problems" with Heaven/Hell in Christianity that I was referencing was the. uh. the existence of eternal torture in the first place - because even the literal worst person ever does not, and cannot, "deserve" torture - and also the "eternal" bit of the "split humanity into two categories: good and evil". and also the splitting occurring in the first place. the problems with which i hope are obvious.

at no point in ANY of my experiences with christianity was it implied that I personally was in danger of going to hell - I was actually explicitly told not to worry about that because i would have to fuck up SUPER BAD for that to even come on the map of possibilities - & i'm so utterly and completely lost at trying to address whatever THE FUCK type of Christianity you experienced that says sinning at all makes you worthy of Hell?? it's. largely left up to the imagination of the parishioners, in my experience?? like i always thought it was the Super Evil people who were beyond salvaging into even vaguely good people. that's what i thought hell was for. the concepts of "we are all sinful" and "we are all worthy of hell just for existing" are so UTTERLY DIFFERENT that i don't know what to call whatever you were raised in except inherently abusive. And absolutely not indicative of the "core doctrine" of christianity as a whole.

like. how would it even work for the whole church to find comfort and joy in their belief - which is half of how religions endure, by the way; they feel good - if THAT was the belief? The concepts of "we are all sinful" and "eventually, we will all get into heaven" exist comfortably alongside each other in Christian doctrine. That would simply not be the case if what you are describing were as prevalent as you say it is.

#also maybe don't like christsplain people's own trauma back to them whatever your intentions it's super invalidating#and disrespectful#try asking questions and listening next time to the people who are living with religious trauma#see if we have a perspective that you might be missing

I explicitly avoided addressing your trauma, or any other person's religious trauma, in the original post. i am not debating you about the validity of your trauma. I agree fully and wholeheartedly with your original post and am here specifically and only because you kept saying that that messaging was an inherent component of christianity that you couldn't just cut out without turning it into another religion entirely. and THAT is just not true. I am well aware that the doctrine of sin in Christianity makes it very susceptible to the kind of "broken, undeserving, unworthy" messaging you just described, but that toes not mean that that messaging is necessary to the religion. It can absolutely be avoided or, better yet, actively countered, without challenging the core principles of xtianity whatsoever. I'm sorry your religious upbringing was abusive, but it doesn't mean mine was - and the fact that it wasn't doesn't disqualify me from having been raised christian. ffs

Look, we joke a lot, but really, "you were born evil, wretched, worse than the scum of the earth, and it took killing a god to make you salvageable, so now you'd better be grateful to that god and thank him 10,000 times a day for it and fill your thoughts with him 24/7 and abide by the letter of his every word, lest you suffer unimaginable torture for all of eternity" is a truly horrendous thing to believe about yourself and other people

[dandelionsdumal]

After all these years I still don't understand the negative image around atheism on the internet. I do get that to an extent the image of the reddit cringe atheist who hates god or something is a reaction to a real moment in youtube/reddit's communities, where ideas and political manifestations of atheism were kinda a topic for discussion but...

Like really, what are people really trying to say when they make fun of this old ass internet archetype? Do they find the position that religion is bad inherently cringe worthy? Do they assume some level of religious thinking is better than philosophical naturalism? Do they just think they have a more acceptable, enlightened form of atheism?

Either way it feels pretty void to conjure the image that harkens back to a period in the early 2000's internet culture where the discourse around religion was dominated by white men from the first world whose debunkings of christianity often came from a heteronormative perspective and from an essencialist analysis of religion and the reality we live in.

So that's why I ask: why does THAT needs to represent me as an atheist? Why does this negative image that doesn't even reflect my actual perspective on my animosity towards religion and faith.

At first I thought that maybe it's supposed to condemn people who "make hating god their whole personality" but that's both an extremely reductive approach to religion but also disregards the fact that there's more than one trajectory that results in one's rejection of faith.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I really hate the smugness agnostics and vaguely religious people come up with when it's time to rag on atheism. It's especially concerning at a time when religious groups in my homeland are some of the primary actors in politics that involve making people like me suffer immensely. Apparently I gotta respect religious notions despite them actively trying to exterminate me and the people I love.

[osmanthusoolong]

I’m not linking directly to the article about how “Puritanism took over online fandom — and then came for the rest of the internet”, because it’s very very stupid, though it’s easy to find, but my goodness, does it repeatedly touch on some genuine problems while getting the causes absolutely backassward and not realizing that the world in fact exists outside of fandom.

“Though this may sound like a niche fandom issue, this modern puritanism has spread far into the wider culture, intersecting with both a broader media illiteracy and a moral panic that crosses the political spectrum.”

Yeah, it’s almost like we’re living in a period of fascist backlash that’s been building for decades and is more or less mainstream in the overwhelmingly US-dominated spaces being discussed. Glad you noticed once it soaked into the Voltron shipping world.

“The Tumblr culture of the early 2010s rapidly shifted an entire generation of social media users toward the left. That shift started not on Tumblr, but on LiveJournal, thanks to a widespread, year-long conversation about racism in geek culture in 2009 that became known as RaceFail.”

Huh, yeah, I’m sure these cultural shifts came entirely from LJ and early tumblr, I really remember that well. I think there might have been some other stuff with like the stock market around then, maybe a couple of people got really mad about an election, something about wars and some financial street being occupied, but really, that was all LJ.

There’s an absolutely constant incredulity at the idea of fandom ship wars being a thing that people get worked up about, which like. That phenomenon is old enough to have grandkids, Lmao. (I am not a fandom person, but I am a person with a long interest in fandom and culture.) There’s a constant claim that people using leftist language as a means of attacking, bad-jacketing and kicking others out for personal reasons is a zoomer invention, which at least proves that the author hasn’t much knowledge of leftist history.

“It’s not a coincidence that anti-fandom discourse, which has single-handedly reframed decades of sex positivity in fandom, has also coincided with a broader crackdown on sex positivity across the internet.”

I don’t know how to tell you that fandom is actually not that important, and horrid infighting on a dying social media site that has never been profitable, is not actually shaping the world’s sexual politics. It is influenced by them. It’s not “coinciding”, it’s a “direct result of”.

“FOSTA seems to have weakened the natural resistance of fandom and internet culture at large to the US’s broader puritanical, anti-sex culture. The purity movement formally began in the ’90s within evangelical culture as a way of normalizing an abstinence-only approach to sex, especially among teens. In the modern era, the language of this movement has converged with that of trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who enact a regressive approach to sex and gender expression.”

You are literally acknowledging that this is a larger cultural thing and not a group of socially reactionary teenagers on tumblr dot com. There is also something about the use of a term referring to religious abuse that starts in early childhood being applied to even very terrible fandom politics? And yes, the terves have been the architects of the sex-negative movement since the 80s, of course their fingerprints are all over it, especially since they’ve been working openly with the Christian Right.

“One positive development is that Tumblr recently brought back, in a limited capacity, the ability to create NSFW content on the site. While this won’t restore the zany porn-for-all days of yesteryear, it might encourage the return of sex-positive communities to drown out the noisy, harassing fringe of haters.”

Yeah, that’s very optimistic of you.

“Then again, if anyone can creatively respond to a culture of increasingly absurd attacks on ingenuity and imagination, it’s an army of passionate deviants who’ve historically been vanguards of the weird, the queer, and the subversive. They’re sexual rebels and literary freedom fighters”

I thought they were silenced by accusations of Homestuck fandom, or have become sinister zoomers single-handedly shaping the culture war for the right?

There’s some good observations about the panopticon of social media, and ways that deeply unserious people weaponize political aesthetics, but it’s absolutely reversing cause and symptoms. Fandom is getting reactionary because everywhere is, if you think fandom is the source of all culture, grass-touching should be considered.

[hiiragi7]

as a trans person in a system who understands how the sysmed/transmed connection works (especially with the fact both are seen as a mental illness that needs to be eradicated and that is harmful to Vulnerable UWU Teenagers on the internet and people experiencing them are dangerous and people who use rare labels are faking and making "real systems/trans people look bad" and so on), i want to understand why you believe the trans comparison is bad. can you explain your perspective?

About the comparison between being trans and being a system generally, I feel it is repetitive and really just gets us nowhere. I also do not find the same systemic, legal, and social implications in syscourse as I do with trans identity. I also don't find the same risk of widespread and systemic violent physical/sexual abuse and death in syscourse regarding non-medical systems as I do with trans identity.

That does not mean that one is necessarily worse than the other or that one doesn't matter, but instead that they are different enough that to compare them feels like it disrespects nuance and the bigger picture of all of this.

Regarding the word sysmed - I think it's moreso just... Well, unhelpful?

I have less issues with the specific terminology or the roots of the word than others, I feel - I find it to be maybe poor taste at most, but I do not think it is transphobic.

My issue is moreso that I feel it no longer really has a consistent definition (I have seen it applied to anti-endo systems who are not necessarily sysmedical, and I have seen singlet syscringers called sysmeds even though they were 100% anti-plural/anti-system, including anti-CDD systems) and I feel that discussions where the word sysmed is used very quickly get muddied because I feel that in a discourse setting the word is very emotionally charged even if that isn't always the intention.

Many well-known syscourse figures most commonly labelled sysmeds do not even fall under the traditional definition of sysmed - They believe non-medical systems and endos exist, but have different ideas about how this should be approached community-wise.

In my experience being in these spaces, it feels like sysmed has, functionally, just become another synonym for anti-endo or even anti-system and isn't used with specifically the stance of "all systems must be medical" in mind.

For me, it's a lot easier just to use anti-endo if that is what I mean instead of using a word with so much controversy - Using that word means nobody will listen to what you are saying because it is such an emotionally charged word, and in my opinion that emotional charge does come from a reasonable place, which I will talk about in the next few paragraphs.

I honestly just don't find it helpful to draw comparisons between online discourse and those which have extremely severe external impacts regarding discrimination - Such as being trans.

I don't really know of any legal consequences for being specifically a non-medical system - Not for being perceived as mentally ill or laws regarding general religious practices and restrictions, but very specifically being a non-medical system.

Yet I do see this in the vast difference in treatment and resources for medical binary transgender people vs. non-dysphoric trans people as well as trans people that are not 100% binary.

In many places, only dysphoric transgender people get help or official acknowledgement. You have to jump through many hoops to access treatment and that often involves documentation of "long-term, severe gender identity disorder/gender dysphoria".

Nonbinary people often have to "pick a side" in order to access hormone treatment, they still cannot pick "X" in many places as a gender marker legally, nonbinary people who do not medically transition go unacknowledged, so on.

There is also systemic erasure of these groups which transmeds feed into.

This is not, at all, to say that the issues of non-medical systems or endogenic systems are not important or that their issues are "lesser-than" or to play any kind of pain olympics (I do not believe there is any kind of "discrimination threshold" that necessarily needs to be met for it to matter) - Just that it feels like a different area of conversation which invites many messy implications.

Specifically, it is comparing a group of individuals who themselves have extremely high rates of identifying as transgender to their oppressors, and many of these systems themselves have been heavily and violently discriminated against for being transgender. So, yes, comparing them to a transphobic group such as transmeds is likely to shut down any conversation and potentially bring up very hurt feelings and memories of trauma.

And I am just... Not interested in doing that. I want to have discussions, not give someone an identity crisis or flashback.

I feel that when used publicly, the word sysmed is just used to villainize and seperate certain groups and concepts rather than as a genuine, good-faith communication tool - I cannot express the amount of times I have seen things such as fusion, the ToSD, parts language, dormancy, all language more traditionally associated with being a more medical-leaning system, called a "sysmed concept".

I find that unhelpful not only in general, but also as a pro-endo traumagenic DID system. I feel often I cannot describe how my system functions as a disordered system without adding many disclaimers about me speaking only on our personal experience because suspicion about us will be raised solely on the basis of being a medical system using medical language.

I have often found myself asked to censor discussion of my system's very natural functions or language for the comfort of others because it reminded them of sysmeds, and I have come across many people associating traumagenic inherently with sysmedical.

"Traumagenics are cool until they start being sysmeds."

"I wish traumagenics would just leave us endos alone."

"Most traumagenics are sysmeds."

So on.

When the phrase "sysmed" is associated with hatred, especially the level of hatred and violence transmeds perform, and when many people within the system community begin to call "sysmeds" a hate group, when the concept of being a system and medical becomes tied to connotations of such strong ideas about discourse and identity, well... It really is only the expected fallout of that to be that anyone who is a system and medical would be caught in the crossfire.

Long post, but that's my reasoning for not using it personally. I don't have strong enough feelings on its usage to actively strongly discourage others from using it completely, but to me, language is primarily a communication tool and if it is not helping me to communicate or get ideas across effectively then I don't really see a point in me using the word.

[whitehotharlots]

The point is control

Whenever we think or talk about censorship, we usually conceptualize it as certain types of speech being somehow disallowed: maybe (rarely) it's made formally illegal by the government, maybe it's banned in certain venues, maybe the FCC will fine you if you broadcast it, maybe your boss will fire you if she learns of it, maybe your friends will stop talking to you if they see what you've written, etc. etc. 

This understanding engenders a lot of mostly worthless discussion precisely because it's so broad. Pedants--usually arguing in favor of banning a certain work or idea--will often argue that speech protections only apply to direct, government bans. These bans, when they exist, are fairly narrow and apply only to those rare speech acts in which other people are put in danger by speech (yelling the N-word in a crowded theater, for example). This pedantry isn't correct even within its own terms, however, because plenty of people get in trouble for making threats. The FBI has an entire entrapment program dedicated to getting mentally ill muslims and rednecks to post stuff like "Death 2 the Super bowl!!" on twitter, arresting them, and the doing a press conference about how they heroically saved the world from terrorism. 

Another, more recent pedant's trend is claiming that, actually, you do have freedom of speech; you just don't have freedom from the consequences of speech. This logic is eerily dictatorial and ignores the entire purpose of speech protections. Like, even in the history's most repressive regimes, people still technically had freedom of speech but not from consequences. Those leftist kids who the nazis beheaded for speaking out against the war were, by this logic, merely being held accountable. 

The two conceptualizations of censorship I described above are, 99% of the time, deployed by people who are arguing in favor of a certain act of censorship but trying to exempt themselves from the moral implications of doing so. Censorship is rad when they get to do it, but they realize such a solipsism seems kinda icky so they need to explain how, actually, they're not censoring anybody, what they're doing is an act of righteous silencing that's a totally different matter. Maybe they associate censorship with groups they don't like, such as nazis or religious zealots. Maybe they have a vague dedication toward Enlightenment principles and don't want to be regarded as incurious dullards. Most typically, they're just afraid of the axe slicing both ways, and they want to make sure that the precedent they're establishing for others will not be applied to themselves.

Anyone who engages with this honestly for more than a few minutes will realize that censorship is much more complicated, especially in regards to its informal and social dimensions. We can all agree that society simply would not function if everyone said whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. You might think your boss is a moron or your wife's dress doesn't look flattering, but you realize that such tidbits are probably best kept to yourself. 

Again, this is a two-way proposition that everyone is seeking to balance. Do you really want people to verbalize every time they dislike or disagree with you? I sure as hell don't. And so, as part of a social compact, we learn to self-censor. Sometimes this is to the detriment of ourselves and our communities. Most often, however, it's just a price we have to pay in order to keep things from collapsing. 

But as systems, large and small, grow increasingly more insane and untenable, so do the comportment standards of speech. The disconnect between America's reality and the image Americans have of themselves has never been more plainly obvious, and so striving for situational equanimity is no longer good enough. We can't just pretend cops aren't racist and the economy isn't run by venal retards or that the government places any value on the life of its citizens. There's too much evidence that contradicts all that, and the evidence is too omnipresent. There's too many damn internet videos, and only so many of them can be cast as Russian disinformation. So, sadly, we must abandon our old ways of communicating and embrace instead systems that are even more unstable, repressive, and insane than the ones that were previously in place.

Until very, very recently, nuance and big-picture, balanced thinking were considered signs of seriousness, if not intelligence. Such considerations were always exploited by shitheads to obfuscate things that otherwise would have seemed much less ambiguous, yes, but this fact alone does not mitigate the potential value of such an approach to understanding the world--especially since the stuff that's been offered up to replace it is, by every worthwhile metric, even worse.

So let's not pretend I'm Malcolm Gladwell or some similarly slimy asshole seeking to "both sides" a clearcut moral issue. Let's pretend I am me. Flash back to about a year ago, when there was real, widespread, and sustained support for police reform. Remember that? Seems like forever ago, man, but it was just last year... anyhow, now, remember what happened? Direct, issues-focused attempts to reform policing were knocked down. Blotted out. Instead, we were told two things: 1) we had to repeat the slogan ABOLISH THE POLICE, and 2) we had to say it was actually very good and beautiful and nonviolent and valid when rioters burned down poor neighborhoods.

Now, in a relatively healthy discourse, it might have been possible for someone to say something like "while I agree that American policing is heavily violent and racist and requires substantial reforms, I worry that taking such an absolutist point of demanding abolition and cheering on the destruction of city blocks will be a political non-starter." This statement would have been, in retrospect, 100000000% correct. But could you have said it, in any worthwhile manner? If you had said something along those lines, what would the fallout had been? Would you have lost friends? Your job? Would you have suffered something more minor, like getting yelled at, told your opinion did not matter? Would your acquaintances still now--a year later, after their political project has failed beyond all dispute--would they still defame you in "whisper networks," never quite articulating your verbal sins but nonetheless informing others that you are a dangerous and bad person because one time you tried to tell them how utterly fucking self-destructive they were being? It is undeniably clear that last year's most-elevated voices were demanding not reform but catharsis. I hope they really had fun watching those immigrant-owned bodegas burn down, because that’s it, that will forever be remembered as the most palpable and consequential aspect of their shitty, selfish movement. We ain't reforming shit. Instead, we gave everyone who's already in power a blank check to fortify that power to a degree you and I cannot fully fathom.

But, oh, these people knew what they were doing. They were good little boys and girls. They have been rewarded with near-total control of the national discourse, and they are all either too guilt-ridden or too stupid to realize how badly they played into the hands of the structures they were supposedly trying to upend.

And so left-liberalism is now controlled by people whose worldview is equal parts superficial and incoherent. This was the only possible outcome that would have let the system continue to sustain itself in light of such immense evidence of its unsustainability without resulting in reform, so that's what has happened.

But... okay, let's take a step back. Let's focus on what I wanted to talk about when I started this.

I came across a post today from a young man who claimed that his high school English department head had been removed from his position and had his tenure revoked for refusing to remove three books from classrooms. This was, of course, fallout from the ongoing debate about Critical Race Theory. Two of those books were Marjane Satropi's Persepolis and, oh boy, The Diary of Anne Frank. Fuck. Jesus christ, fuck.

Now, here's the thing... When Persepolis was named, I assumed the bannors were anti-CRT. The graphic novel does not deal with racism all that much, at least not as its discussed contemporarily, but it centers an Iranian girl protagonist and maybe that upset Republican types. But Anne Frank? I'm sorry, but the most likely censors there are liberal identiarians who believe that teaching her diary amounts to centering the suffering of a white woman instead of talking about the One Real Racism, which must always be understood in an American context. The super woke cult group Black Hammer made waves recently with their #FuckAnneFrank campaign... you'd be hard pressed to find anyone associated with the GOP taking a firm stance against the diary since, oh, about 1975 or so.

So which side was it? That doesn't matter. What matters is, I cannot find out.

Now, pro-CRT people always accuse anti-CRT people of not knowing what CRT is, and then after making such accusations they always define CRT in a way that absolutely is not what CRT is. Pro-CRTers default to "they don't want  students to read about slavery or racism." This is absolutely not true, and absolutely not what actual CRT concerns itself with. Slavery and racism have been mainstays of American history curriucla since before I was born. Even people who barely paid attention in school would admit this, if there were any more desire for honesty in our discourse. 

My high school history teacher was a southern "lost causer" who took the south's side in the Civil War but nonetheless provided us with the most descriptive and unapologetic understandings of slavery's brutalities I had heard up until that point. He also unambiguously referred to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshmia and Nagasaki as "genocidal." Why? Because most people's politics are idiosyncratic, and because you cannot genuinely infer a person to believe one thing based on their opinion of another, tangentially related thing. The totality of human understanding used to be something open-minded people prided themselves on being aware of, believe it or not...

This is the problem with CRT. This is is the motivation behind the majority of people who wish to ban it. It’s not because they are necessarily racist themselves. It’s because they recognize, correctly, that the now-ascendant frames for understanding social issues boils everything down to a superficial patina that denies not only the realities of the systems they seek to upend but the very humanity of the people who exist within them. There is no humanity without depth and nuance and complexities and contradictions. When you argue otherwise, people will get mad and fight back. 

And this is the most bitter irony of this idiotic debate: it was never about not wanting to teach the sinful or embarrassing parts of our history. That was a different debate, one that was settled and won long ago. It is instead an immense, embarrassing overreach on behalf of people who have bullied their way to complete dominance of their spheres of influence within media and academe assuming they could do the same to everyone else. Some of its purveyors may have convinced themselves that getting students to admit complicity in privilege will prevent police shootings, sure. But I know these people. I’ve spoken to them at length. I’ve read their work. The vast, vast majority of them aren’t that stupid. The point is to exert control. The point is to make sure they stay in charge and that nothing changes. The point is failure. 

[randomnameless]

what annoys you the most with 3H? The fandom or the missed opportunities from the game?

Oh.

The fandom takes the first place, because while it was funny to craugh seeing those bad takes, 2 years after the release of the game those takes are still endorsed and built upon and it’s just impossible to discuss about FE16 without being sure that the person you’re talking to is talking about the game, or the redshit takes.

Still, I firmly believe fandom wouldn’t be that cesspool of incessant drama if the localised version (especially NoA?) didn’t take wild directions with the game. It’s incomprehensible how a game in its OG version can be saying green but the localised version everyone talks about “corrected” it to “blue”. 

Scripts are more or less the same, but the directions given to the VAs?

rant under the cut about directions, voice acting and people arbitrarly pushing an agenda despite the media they’re supposed to translate/bring to non-jp crowds.

I pointed it in an earlier post (or earlier posts?) but as a french person I grew up with the 4Kids dub, which was infamous for, uh, “translating” things for western audiences, even at the cost of coherency and let’s not even talk about the source material this thing doesn’t exist. Remember the Shadow Realm from YGO? .

I watched a short anime a few years ago about the anime industry (Shirobako?) and I remember a character trying to become hired as a voice actor/seiyuu - she had to learn and to feel the character - she has to know the character as much as the author who created them. 

A few years ago, I didn’t feel as if the dubbing cast worked on their characters as much as the OG!voice actors. For a recet exemples I was rewatching a certain anime with the fr dub - basically a former underling fights against his superior who became a traitor, and even if his superior doesn’t regret turning into a traitor and ultimately became a giant fly, the underling always respected his superior and treated him with proper forms of adress. In the “early 2010 dub” I watched yesterday? Yeah no, guy’s talking to him as if he is talking to his friend in a pub.

Even now, while the quality of the voice acting has improved (and I feel like people take their jobs way more seriously for the dubbing industry) - i was the first surprised with SoV’s VA - we have now directions. Because the manga/anime/game isn’t, uh, good enough or whatever, the dubbing team decides to go off and do its own thing, regardless of coherence or, worse, what was the intent/core of the og game.

I am playing MH:Rise, the game is set up in a more or less traditional “ninja” village, with a lot of old japanese (? feudal? idk) aesthetics. The devs said they wanted to return to the roots of the saga and based new monsters on Yokais, mythological monsters from the japanese folklore. When you meet a new giant monster to hunt, you have small cutscenes to introduce said monster sung with a Noh theater aesthetic (i just looked up on wikipedia i thought it was kabuki but kabuki isn’t the only form of theater whatever the more you know). 

NPCs in the MH series speak their own language, often called the MHese (a bit like the sim language). IDK if it is because this opus has a japanese aesthetic, but you can pick a jp voice acting instead of the MHese (same voice actors but talking in a different language). Or you can pick the US/ENG dub, with, I suppose, US VAs. I’m not complaing about the lack of FR dub, I’m rather happy with it tbf. But, for some reason, despite the aesthetic, the yokais, the pagodas in the background, the samurai flagship cat, the katanas and whatever, I thought the Noh style cutscenes weren’t going to change, or maybe someone would try to sing in English. But it isn’t the case, the US/ENG version of those cutscenes aren’t Noh style sung, they were completely revamped, so no traditionnal songs and instruments in the background, instead have a dude describing the monster you’re about to face in a cheap National Geographic imitation.

Why remove this? Was it because US!Capcom thought the western world wouldn’t understand the Noh references (but could still understand the general “aesthetic”, just, ban on the songs?) or some shit? They couldn’t remove the flagship cat’s samurai armor to swap it for a GI uniform, so they banned the Noh cutscenes? Why?

It is the same shit NoA pulled out with the Fates localisation, Suzukaze became Kaze because... reasons?

Maybe I’m biased because I’m french, and apparently Wonder France is one of the biggest consumer of anime/manga outside japan, but the mere idea that something can be changed because it’s not “western enough so the audience wouldn’t get it” pisses me to no end, and this is why, in the beginnings of Internet (YT videos with 4 parts, megaupload etc etc) everyone I knew who watched anime ditched everything dubbed to watch the very same episode but subbed (one of my friends even worked on her english with subs!).

Back to FE16 because this is your question and I ranted enough, I cannot stress it enough regarding Rhea, but while I do not doubt Cherami Leigh made a great effort and worked her best with the tools given to her (to this day I still cannot fathom how she managed to dub Mae and Rhea, they’re so different or not seiros is genki!rhea if only leigh was given that script) Leigh!Rhea isn’t Inoue!Rhea. NoA (I harp on NoA but I suppose NoA oversaw the dubbint process/effort, NoE is inexistent) had an agenda and a reading of Rhea that isn’t the same as NoJ.

“You worthless piece of garbage” doesn’t exist in the og!script - but more importantly, delivering this, Inoue!Rhea isn’t furious, she is upset and desperate. Leigh!Rhea is furious, Cherami Leigh does an admirable job at conveying NoA!Rhea’s fury - but this is not the same character NoJ wrote. If NoA gave the same directions NoJ gave Kikuko Inoue to Cherami Leigh, I’m pretty sure the “Rhea BaD” crowd, the eating babies takes and whatever shit redshit comes up everyday would be way reduced.

Maybe @nilsh13 has redshit take saved talking about this, but if we’re not talking about the same character, what kind of discussion can even happen? (I’m sure someone someday pulled the “well i played the localised game so i’m not talking about the og script with you but with the localised script” to defend some smelly take)

Missed opportunities can be fuel for fanfics.

Discourse based on fandom drama (at this point NoA itself is part of the fandom with their “religious extremis/zealot” take)? Nothing can salvage it. I genuinely like to talk about FE16 (especially lizards), but since every topic became a landmind because of the fandom drama, even making posts in good faith can be used as a fuel for drama, or completely diverted from their original goal to suit, again, some faction war between lizards and a certain someone.

Tl; dr : Fandom.

[t-n-c]

@rowans-random-blog

"(I'm reblogging on my discourse account I hope you don't mind, I've been TRYING to keep my main somewhat discourse free, plus I never know what my moots/followers are going thru and my bitchy ass might not be what they want to see that day akwkrhgbsja.)"

I don't mind at all, in fact you've actually inspired me to make my own discourse blog; I figured it would help me organize my blog a bit as well as make things more positive for my followers/mutuals--lord knows they deserve a break from near-constant my salt.

That being said, I hope you don't mind that put the rest of my response under a read more--it's probably going to get a bit ranty and I don't want to put more negativity onto my followers/mutuals than I already have--at least not before I put the finishing touches on my discourse blog.

Here we go

"Yeah, I'm very pro writers doing whatever they want in their writing, because fiction is fiction and all that, especially with the way the internet and censorship is going these days. That said I also enjoy complaining."

Same, tbh. I feel that writers should have the freedom to explore anything the want, but I still find it cathartic to vent about writing choices I feel are poorly thought out and/or amateurish--case in point, how the TDP team has depicted Aaravos so far.

"And I hate the way Aaravos is turning into sparkly elf Satan."

"It feels like they had an excellent opportunity to have a message about the way oppressed people are erased from history (literally, as Aaravos can't be read about), with the way Aaravos was hinted sympathetic towards humans and that humans were forcibly displaced from the ancestral homeland. My first assumption was that Aaravos was going to be built up as a smokescreen antagonist for the real antagonist. He was going to SEEM malevolent and creepy, but end up being not that bad; history was going to paint him as a devilish person, but in reality that reputation was going to be undeserved. The angelic imagery just served to enthuse me even more because I love love subversions of fallen angel/demonic types. (It's the religious trauma in me.)"

You and me both. Tbf, we're not at fault for feeling that--Aaron and Justin (though mainly Aaron) have been pretty insistent that he was "disliked but not necessarily bad" that he has a kind side, that sees himself as an advocate for humanity. They were also the ones who brought up how he can be seen as either Lucifer or Prometheus depending on one's point of view, so if they wanted the audience to see him only as a villain from the get-go, they shouldn't have adamant that he would be depicted with more complexity than that.

"Instead, he's just. Off putting. When you mix a lack of respect for bodily autonomy with a flirtatious and slimy personality and a lowkey forced pregnancy (I mean Viren was never actually pregnant but he did carry the caterpillar in his body for some time and had no idea it was going to turn into a child of his own blood so is there a difference. It also didn't look very comfortable coming OUT of his body) plot line you might naturally come to some terrible conclusions about the character."

My thoughts exactly. I might have felt differently if TDP didn't have a history of questionable writing choices and/or was intended for older audiences, but since it's neither of those things, I'm...concerned to say the least.

"And yet I'm still huffing the hopium because that huge ass mountain carving of Aaravos looks good and properly upset which implies SOMETHING bad happened to him at some point. I would also like to know why they went to the effort of making him impossible to read about, yet immortalized him with a statue."

I have a bit of hope as well--besides the statues in s5, there's info in the supplemental material/side stories that imply he has understandable reasons for the actions--so fingers crossed.

"I have soo many things left I could complain about but it would get off topic from aaravos' sensuality very quickly"

Feel free! There's a lot in this show that's worth venting over, so don't feel like you have to hold back if there's more you'd like to talk about.

"NOW if Aaravos turns out to be a cannibal??? All of this takes on a different angle that I would find much more interesting. I mean he'd definitely probably not be redeemable at that point but you know. "bbgirl u look like a snack" has a way different vibe when it literally means a snack cooked over the sunfire forge with bbq sauce and honey."

"I hope Aaravos is a cannibal" - Rowan, 2023

That could be an interesting turn and there's certainly a case to be made for it (iirc, there's is something about Startouch dragons devouring suns in one of the tie-in books and there's also that dark magic spell in s3 Aaravos used to try and help Viren gain Zym's power--"he swallows your heart, he swallows your mind, he swallows your power" has a completely different vibe if Aaravos practices cannibalism).

More tdp s5 spoilers under the cut

(TW: acts of coercion/violation will be mentioned)

With how imbalanced their relationship is and my prior concerns regarding Aaravos' history of coercive/violating behavior towards Viren, Sir Sparklepuff being established as Viren and Aaravos's child makes me reeeeeally uncomfortable.

[tog-resources-archive]

Hello fellow fan who has been here since the beginning! I come from the “other side” I suppose, in that I do think the top/bottom discourse is worth talking about. It has to do with the elephant in the room which I haven’t seen anyone touch on – self-identified top!joe fans (in contrast to simply fans who enjoy or prefer content where joe tops). I remember the original top/bottom discourse coming out of a more general conversation about trends in fic (1)

Thank you fan!anon for sending me such a long, detailed message! Never apologize for writing me an essay since I always seem to be writing essays for other people in return lol. Also sorry it took a while to get to! This required a bit of preparation. You’ve given me a lot to respond to. I’m going to be putting the entirety of the ask under the cut and the tl;dr because this one is very, verrrryyyy long. 

Tl;dr- fan!anon talks about the history of top/bottom discourse in TOG and the issues of racism in our fandom. My response: my own feelings on the history of the top/bottom discourse in TOG and the current state of it. General issues I’ve observed in this fandom and the current discourse. Also, we shouldn’t ignore fandom racism, but I don’t think we should be looking at it through the lens of top/bottom, AND I think we should be focusing on misogyny, homophobia, etc. in addition to racism. Not ignore one for the other. 

Bottom line though, don’t harrass people, block people if you need to, focus on what you love, support fan creation and let’s try to be a better fandom. 

Okay, time to dig in!

Hello fellow fan who has been here since the beginning! I come from the “other side” I suppose, in that I do think the top/bottom discourse is worth talking about. It has to do with the elephant in the room which I haven’t seen anyone touch on – self-identified top!joe fans (in contrast to simply fans who enjoy or prefer content where joe tops). I remember the original top/bottom discourse coming out of a more general conversation about trends in fic (1) wherein Joe was more violent, less empathetic, often not religious, more aggressive in sexual scenarios, and also most often topping. People asked the fandom in general to simply consider, if that is how they perceive Joe, to reflect for themselves about implicit biases that could be colouring that interpretation. The self-identified top!joes used that conversation as a starting point to argue that the above interpretation of Joe, (2) and writing/drawing Nicky as smaller, almost twink-like, demure, more feminine (or writing fic where he was de-aged) was justified by canon (if you recall the multi-day argument about the approximately 1 inch height difference between Marwan and Luca) and connecting those ideas to top!joe just “making more sense” to them. In the hands of a good writer (of which we are blessed to have many in this fandom!), which character tops in an explicit fic is of no consequence to me. (3) But the concept of top!joe has, in my mind, become so closely tied with those fans who, a) interpret these characters and actions in a way that seems influenced by racial stereotypes and tropes and b) use that characterization as “justification” for top!joe. All this when I thought we all agreed that position preference has nothing to do with personality? (4) If someone sees Joe as a very masculine, aggressive, dom-type character (which is a bit of a one-note characterization to start, but I digress), that shouldn’t be related to him being a “top”, correct? Yet that is the interpretation and connection that the top!joes themselves make. So that’s why to me, the top/bottom framework continues to have some value, eve though in an ideal world it wouldn’t: (5) because some fans connect what should be a neutral sexual position preference to an interpretation of Joe’s character, an interpretation which I think doesn’t do him justice. I understand if you don’t want to publish this but I’m hesitant to talk off anon due to how heated this whole conversation is. I also don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or make them feel bad about how they are participating in the fandom, but I do think self-reflection in terms of how we engage is valuable. (6) And just to fully reiterate in case it wasn’t clear, my above points are specifically referring to who I think of as “top!joe only” fans as opposed to fans who enjoy or prefer content in which joe tops – only the former of which I am wary of. Anyways, sorry for this long message, and I hope I've been able to explain my reasoning. If we continue to disagree, thanks for reading this anyways and continuing the dialogue. Thank you also for promoting femslash events and content! (7)

So....I did say in a previous post that I’m not a big fan of hearsay, and I’m sorry but… that’s kind of what you’ve given me. A lot of “this is what Top!Joe Only people have said” and “this is what the rest of the fandom has said back.” I have to ask, who are these “Top!Joe Only” people that are on the other side of this fandom war? Who are the people representing the “rest of the fandom”?  The only names I could really come up with myself are the Top!Joe Server mods as top!Joe only fans, and they haven’t exactly been active recently. Not to mention the Top!Joe server mod @karanoidandroid was the focus of the Art Theft and Bullying debacle a while back (here) which even if you disagree with her… that’s not the way you treat people. Full stop. 

But anyway, to break this down, you’ve said that top!joe only fans wanted to interpret Joe in a way that was “more violent, less empathetic, less religious, more sexually aggressive, and topping (most of the time)” and that Nicky is “smaller, more twink-like, more demure and feminine” and that the hardcore top!joe stans are using this interpretation as a reasoning for liking top!joe explicit fics (and for underage fic?)

Er, honestly, I’ll have to disregard the “less religious” comment in this one. Lucyclairedelune has talked about it very eloquently here. As for the rest, let’s say these opinions were expressed on tumblr in July, just when the fandom was getting started. However, after personally going through all the Explicit July fics, I gotta say, the overwhelming majority of writers are focused on romantic Malta sex vacations lol. 

From my personal observations (I started reading fic on ao3 in August), I’ve seen some stories that cater to very… specific tastes (mostly kinkmeme fics so I’m not going to touch that) and some that have…. been written in poor taste perhaps. But, honestly, the majority of fics (aka G, T, M rated) that I’ve seen? I would say that they were written with care and concern for the character’s portrayal. 

Now, some fans (usually older fans) are very focused on “your kink is not my kink” and other fans feel this is an inappropriate way to view “racist, homophobic, islamophobic, etc” fics. And I agree with that. If people are using kink to excuse racism, homophobia, islamophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, misogyny, etc, in fics: Fuck that. But I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding flying around when people react to ‘ykinmk”. This fandom likes to assume the worst of their fellow fans imo, and I honestly don’t think that when a person defends kink that they’re trying to defend racism. They’re trying to defend their kink community which, historically, has been attacked and misunderstood by the purity police. Look into the Livejournal, ffnet, and even the Tumblr purges if you don’t believe me. 

For the record, I don’t know anyone on tumblr personally. We’re all effectively strangers talking to each other on the internet, so I’m not going to make assumptions about people from stories they’ve posted on AO3 or the kinkmeme. If you want to talk about the issues those fics represent, that’s cool, but don’t harass people whose life stories you don’t know (and don’t vagueblog about them). (This is just a general statement, not saying this about you anon! I feel really strongly about this.)

Now you say, “some fans connect what should be a neutral sexual position preference to an interpretation of Joe’s character” and I hate to say it, but there are ALWAYS going to be some people who have awful opinions. Ones that are either truly terrible, or kind of in poor taste, or maybe you just don’t vibe with them. Personally, I don’t have enough time in the day to address every weird thing that a person spews on the internet. I won’t judge if you want to take them on, but, personally, I haven’t seen any recent militant top!joe only posts that are calling for racist portrayals. I see people referring to past conversations, for sure, but again, I can’t do anything with hearsay. 

And honestly, we keep bringing up the top/bottom discourse of early TOG fandom, and we’re just not the same fandom we were then. SO MANY people have left the fandom in that time-- a lot of big name (or simply well known) fans and a lot of MENA fans. Regardless of what “side” you’re on in this, we all lose by focusing on the positions, by dividing everyone by “top” or “bottom” or “switch” fans, and by bringing up what people said in July, or August, or September.  It’s exhausting, especially because I think a lot of people have done exactly what you said. Many authors HAVE self-reflected, they’ve thought about trends, the implications, and are contributing/interacting with the fandom as best as they can. Do I think we should stop focusing on self-reflection? That we should stop being careful about writing potentially damaging portrayals of our favorite characters? NO. Let’s keep at it! Let’s encourage others to do the same… but not with top/bottom discourse.

Let it be known that I don’t think racism is a topic we should disregard to focus on other things. Honestly, I would be happy if people gave some of the energy they have for “top/bottom” discourse to talk about the portrayal of Nile Freeman or Lykon or Copley or Quynh… the other POC representation in TOG that usually gets ignored. You may interpret this as me going “but what about??” and that’s fair. I just think that we talk about Joe ALL THE TIME in this fandom. There is an avalanche of conversation and content for this man (who I love, don’t get me wrong) and it just feels really disingenuous (to me) to talk ad nauseum about racist portrayals of Joe, but then to ignore Nile Freeman and wlw fics when Nile is the rare Black Female Action Protagonist and Andy/Quynh is an extremely rare interracial canon lesbian couple. And I’ve been trying to use my blog here to bring attention to this, think of me what you will because of that. (Again just a general statement anon! Not directed to you XD)

And from what I’ve seen in this fandom (and many others to be fair) is that we care about racism SO MUCH…but only when talking about how a man has sex.  It speaks of a lack of intersectional understanding of these topics, disregarding the misogyny that IS ALSO inherent in fandom, and disregarding the homophobia of overfocusing on the top/bottom dynamics. BUT I’m not asking you to ignore racism; all I’m asking is for you to focus on the other issues too. 

Bottom line though… the discourse is not what it once was.  A lot of people, on whatever side, have left the fandom, or have taken a break, or are vocally tired of “top/bottom” discourse. Personally, I think we should talk about racism… but not through the lens of explicit mlm fic sex positions. Let’s talk more about race, gender, sex and sexual orientation, but not in a way that divides the fandom, in a way that makes people sick of being here, in a way that kills our content creator’s passion. Honestly, I think it can be done! But only if we work toward that goal together. 

I would like to focus on encouraging events in our community, such as the ongoing Old Guard Big Bang 2021 event and the upcoming Femslash Fortnight Spring Solstice Edition event. If anyone is organizing other events, let me know and I’ll hype you up! But as for the rest, I’m tired, you’re tired, we’re all tired. Let’s try and work harder to be a kinder, more inclusive fandom in the future, for everyone’s sake. 

[bigskydreaming]

Okay but a question from Dumbass Station Population Me, what is actually the difference between being censured and censored?

The thing about censorship is it requires actual POWER behind it, that frankly, online discoursers just don’t have. On any side of any argument. Its institutional, its something that draws upon existing power bases to use that power to suppress actual ideas or speech with real consequences or even just the threat of very real consequences.

Censureship, by contrast, is like, just being viewed negatively in the court of public opinion. Its people, as individuals or even in large groups, saying in response to things that are said or written or whatever, like....hey, we think what you said is dumb. We’re judging you super hard right now. Reap the social consequences of we, other members of society, pointing to what you just said and saying hey this is very dumb and you should feel bad. Loser.

Censorship doesn’t HAVE to just be a matter of legal power, like its not like only the government can actively censor people....like I said, its institutional, its systemic, so it can draw upon any institution....whether that’s religious and thus using the weight and social influence of religious institutions to silence people, or whether its something like white supremacy itself, racism as an institution....using the power and threat of retaliation from white supremacists who are INVESTED in maintaining their rhetoric against anyone trying to speak over it with like, actual logic.

The key difference though, is censorship HAS to come with actual consequences, or at least the potential for them.

Censureship, in contrast, doesn’t require any followup, it exists on its own merits as simply an opinion upon an opinion. Someone censuring you for something you said or did that they view negatively like....that’s all there is to it, there’s no And Then. The point of the censureship was to say “I heard what you had to say and in response I say hey that sucks and you should not say it.” The point of censorship is to say “I heard what you had to say and I am going to invest actual resources into silencing you so that no one else will hear what you have to say.”

A loooooooooooot of people in fandom cry censorship, when really all that was expressed was censureship. And ironically, this in itself is just censureship TRYING to be censorship, as its usually the last word in an argument as the people yelling most about censorship are the ones often trying to just flat out silence their opposition, while the people who were only interested in expressing censureship in the first place are often like yeah cool whatever, because.....follow-up engagement was never a necessity for saying what they wanted to say, which is “here is a thing that I personally think is bad.”

Always always ALWAYS in internet discourse, try to look past the buzzwords being thrown around and look at the argument taking place and figure out....which one is trying to raise points for consideration, even if those points are critical and negative....vs which one is trying to just end the conversation by any means necessary, without actually engaging with any discussion points. Its expansion of conversation/thought vs the shutting down of conversation/thought that’s usually the real indicator of which argument is TRULY the more progressive one, NOT just which one is most convincingly arguing “puritanical puritans are being puritanical and OPPRESSIVE again!”

Actual progressive arguments can stand up to criticism. They can look at what’s been raised as an issue, and either point to other things that the criticism might have failed to take into account and which changes the overall picture, or they can look at the criticism as an opportunity to improve upon what’s there, and incorporate it into what they do or argue in the future so it now contains additional insights/angles of thought that they previously did not arrive at on their own.

But yeah, lots of people online need to get that somebody saying your opinion sucks isn’t the thought police kicking down your door if you ever utter that foul thought again. Sometimes, its just someone saying hey I think your idea is bad.

Criticism is not consequence. It can LEAD to consequences, but it is not, in and of itself, a consequence that should be as feared as fandoms have made criticism out to be.

People need to start looking more critically at how any environment that claims to be socially progressive can do so while so often attempting to drown out or dismiss criticism....when criticism is like, the single most essential ingredient for progress in the history of humanity.

There’s way too many people, like, just fucking CONTENT with the idea that there’s nothing weird, or backwards, or REGRESSIVE about perpetuating the idea that the only valid criticism is of criticism itself. That the worst thing someone can do in fandom is tell another fan that they think something they said or wrote was toxic or racist or harmful or otherwise steeped in ideas that actively do and spread harm throughout society.

Like, there really are a ton of people who think “I should be able to say anything I want without consequence or restriction, no matter how negatively it might impact others, and nobody should be allowed to say or do anything negative in response, BECAUSE I HAVE THE RIGHT TO MY IDEAS, FREEDOM OF SPEECH, STOP OPPRESSING ME.”

Because its like, yeah, you do have that right....and every one around you has the right to also express their own idea, which is that yours sucks for whatever reason.

Quid pro shut the fuck up, y’know?

Its a two-way street but lots of people try to make it one way while using the boogeyman specter of censorship to shame people into not saying anything that might shame them instead, and the irony. It abounds.

Nobody is entitled to the freedom to act upon others without being acted upon in turn. You can speak your mind, sure, but you can also live with the consequences, especially when the only consequences are other people saying mmmm, didn’t love that.

The bottom line I wish for more fandoms to take away from these kinds of conversations is that if your convictions are truly solid, they can stand up to scrutiny and even criticism, with honesty, without trying to shy away from the things actually being said or claimed and just meeting them head on, looking at the convictions that are ‘under fire’ and examining whether or not the holes other people seem to see in them are truly there or not.

If your convictions AREN’T solid, and what people are saying IS drawing your attention to holes in them you didn’t see previously, and making your faith in the stability of that conviction waver......like, that’s a problem, but that’s a you problem. That was not a problem that was created by the criticism that exposed those flaws to you. The problem was those flaws or those holes in your convictions existing in the first place, as they were always going to be there then, whether they were pointed out by others or not.

Address THOSE, not the criticism that’s often no more than people just saying “hey, there’s a hole in that wall, sure hope someone shores that up with something actually solid before someone puts a little bit of pressure on it and the whole thing comes crumbling down instead.”

[gilmesc1]

Sacrificing my remaining braincells to the void

Ok friends, you requested it, you awaited it, I’ve cleaned out my ears to remove the melted remains of my brain, here we go, we’re doing this, tell my partner I love them. It’s time...for syscourse analysis.

So this is a very bare bones run through of syscourse, it’s as basic as it gets and if need be I’ll focus on components of it after I recover.

So, syscourse is literally the words system+discourse. Bet you guys never saw that coming. 20 seconds into this fucking mess and we already have a major plot twist. And I know what you guys are thinking. A bunch of traumatized people not getting along? Another plot twist!

Jesus I better tone down the sarcasm.

Anyways, what the fuck even has to happen to have syscourse, apparently two types of systems. Yes friends, two types of systems, and I’m not talking DID and OSDD (which are really quite similar).

Our players are traumagenic systems and endogenic systems. Traumagenic systems are systems that formed out of trauma, like DID and OSDD systems. Naturally this plunks me down in the traumagenic catagory, thanks to my big fucking mess of trauma. So we got that down, moving on to endogenic.

So an endogenic system is a system that supposedly split without trauma. No idea where the word endo comes from. Or like, what the fuck endo even means as a word like trauma. (Maybe I want to endo myself after reading a bunch of syscourse? Ok, ok that was bad.)

The biggest issue once you get down to it is who is the Real System tm, and do other systems belong in each other’s tags. This is the part where I’d smoothly bring you all to a good starting point, but *insert deity here* help me, there isn’t one.

Syscourse seems to be older than mankind itself mongrels, because I cannot find where it started and who the tags belonged to first. So for those of you who like to visualize, picture two dogs chasing each other’s tails, running in a circle, and that is syscourse.

So let’s break it down more. I, and I’m sure many others, flocked to tumblr to find others who experience what I do, that being traumagenic system stuff. Again, we have trauma that results in our system’s creation. And that’s all fine and good, sure not everyone gets along with each other but for the most part all us systems are vibing and sharing memes and posts.

Now like I said, to be an endogenic system you are a system without trauma, and to me this is a little confusing. Brains aren’t made to be multiple and I’m the clusterfuck I am because of trauma, but to just magically thanos snap a system into existence? That I have a harder time wrapping my mind around.

There are a lot of examples of endo systems, but the ones I’ll be looking at today are tulpas. What is a tulpa? Well at first I thought it was a ghost thingy that you get by thinking about it, (supernatural anyone?) but now that I look into it, it’s apparently a Tibetan religious practice.

So we have science vs spirituality. This spells disaster already for syscourse.

So to get a better idea of tulpas than I could give you, I’d recommend looking at tumblr posts on tulpas because I’m in sarcasm mode and not really in a position to educate about those. Long story short it’s a thought process where you can essentially create a second being that is similar to an alter, as it exists in a headspace and can switch in.

Now I said headspace and switch in on purpose, because that is where the issue lies. Endos and traumagenics fight about words like that, and who they belonged to first. Can an endo use the words system, fronting, ect when they are scientific words specifically for DID or OSDD, or can traumagenics use the word multiplicity when it supposedly came from tulpamancy?

Side note: Guys do not lecture me on words, I’m trying to give examples, sorry but I don’t have my words for traumagenics dictionary on me rn, that’s in my other hoodie.

The majority of day to day syscourse is endos and traumagenics “infiltrating” each other’s tags and safe spaces, and ruining everyone’s day. From what I have seen, many traumagenics do not want endos to interact with them, and personally I see a few good reasons for this.

1, mental illness is not a trend and DID and OSDD are very very rough to live with. With there currently being a lack of scientific evidence on the existence of tulpas, I understand how it can seem that some are cashing in on the “DID hype” and giving off this romanticized view of being a system.

2. People with DID might be looking for specific DID info, and having to strain through irrelevant topics to them might be heavily stressful.

3. We’re traumatized and random things can set us off. This is the internet and I think everyone is at least a little toxic, and both sides have said shit to each other, but when people get triggered its easy to lose control. Not an excuse, tis merely a fact.

I’ve seen endos post things like “all systems are valid” and it’s a nice sentiment, in my heart of hearts behind my black toxic drama loving one, I’d like it if systems could just get along, but on a topic as complex as mental illness I don’t think that’ll happen.

I’ve seen both sides say things that were really uncalled for, and there’s no right or wrong answer overall in a fight like this. Naturally I’m team traumagenic but as for whether or not I feel like endos are valid or not, jury’s still out on that.

Hear me out, I have heard the theory that endo systems can help deal with trauma despite not being formed by trauma, and I’ve met a few people irl and seen things that confused me. Maybe they were traumagenic systems who didn’t know their trauma, idk.

I really don’t want drama. I’m sure systems on both sides are good people but like I said, the internet is toxic. (btw I love you mutuals, you are all good people)

In my humble opinion syscourse is stupid. I think there definitely should be a discussion about endos and traumagenics, but like can we talk like adults and not be like “WE’RE ALL VALID UWUUUU” with a string of toxicity behind it.

That level of back and forth is dizzying and irritating, and quite honestly I don’t want to deal with it. This is me trying to be neutral and give an overview, but that’s hard as I am traumagenic myself, and I don’t really understand the other side.

That’s why I’m not going to say I reject endos. I need to figure out more for myself and since this does leak into my personal life i want to do it carefully. I’m open to polite discussions, but I really want to keep out of syscourse drama.

Another side note: Something I think that is especially stupid is the amount of outrage over users saying they dni with endos. It’s a choice for that person and it should be respected. Like how I have personal reasons for keeping discussion open, others have personal reason for closing it. That should be respected and not ranted about. There are thousands of tumblrs, find one that isn’t dni and leave those people alone.

Additionally, if any endos do want to talk I’d prefer if you dm me, as I want to keep my blog traumagenic focused, both for my followers and for me, out of respect for those who don’t want any endogenic content and for me so i don’t wear out my three brain cells (I’m accepting name ideas for them)

To end this, I don’t want drama, nothing makes it easier for me to cave to my vices then drama, and syscourse is so freaking tiring that it would be like rolling around like sandpaper to get involved.

So there it is, my useless, sarcastic post on syscourse. Let’s see how many followers I lose, and if need be I can look into more stuff about syscourse since this is an overview.

Again this was supposed to be neutral and not necessarily all of my views, I’ll get more personal on it later maybe, but tbh I’m too fucking tired for that rn. Chronic illness, hell yeah.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed, I’m impressed I wrote it all, have a good day guys, I have to go to a party while feeling like my body is leading a rebellion.

I don’t even like people, why am I going XD

But hey shout out to social distancing, I’m using my personal space bubble and NO ONE can stop me.

Ok, time to give the braincells a rest. See you guys

[fdhfjdafdajfa]

Yeah could you talk more about what's going on in your country right now? >:0

I get trolled half to fuck every time I open my mouth on India (a lot of Indians on this site are wealthy upper caste Hindu dipshits) but basically.

1. The ruling party is straight up nazis. That’s not “as bad as nazis”, that’s “literally trace their ideological genealogy to the nazis and are emulating their example in an openly acknowledged fashion.”

2. Where the Nazis originated as an occultist group but downplayed this tendency publicly, the Indian ruling party traces its origin to a Hindu reconstructionist movement which started in the late 19th century with the work of Ram Mohan Roy, who started the Brahmo Samaj, a movement which cultivated a “Hindu” religious identity synthesised from various local traditions and old Sanskrit texts recently unearthed by European and American occultists and philologists.

3. The occultist group that turned into the early Nazi party sprang from the Theosophist movement in India, which was one of the aforementioned occultist groups. A major Theosophist figure, Annie Besant, rose to become the president of the Indian National Congress, from which eventually split the RSS, which is referred to sometimes as “India’s KKK.”

4. The history of violent and forceful conversions to Hinduism goes back to the Brahmo Samaj mentioned earlier, but the RSS was and remains an extremely violent hate group.

5. Its ideology was formulated by Sarvarkar, who openly admired the nazis, advocated the rape of Muslim women, and felt that the Holocaust model was one to emulate with India’s religious minorities.The reason I establish all of this is because I assume that you (+ other potential beneficiaries) have a pretty good idea of what a nazi is, so I want to use that as a starting point to understand who these people are and just how closely related it all is. There is a LOT else going on here with all this occultism in terms of its ideology. The main thing I want westerners to take away is that the sort of wiccan-neopagan villification of Christianity is not harmless over here but rather is taken extremely seriously and serves as a rationale for a brewing genocide.

6. The RSS gradually expanded into an incomprehensibly large network of puppet organisations, a great number of which are involved in doing public relations work for Hinduism in the west. Everything the west knows about Hinduism is because of the RSS.

7. Their growth went more or less completely unchecked for 50 years post-independence and culminated in the destruction of the famous Babri Masjid in Uttar Pradesh, in North India, by a mob of religious fanatics who marched to it from all over India intent on building a Ram Mandir over it – a sort of Hindu answer to the Vatican. This happened in 1992. Anti-Muslim pogroms have been a part of India since British times, but there were especially a lot of them in the early 90′s by hate groups emboldened by the demolition.

8. Another major pogrom was the one in Gujarat in 2002. Thousands of Muslims were killed, businesses torched, etc. Its architect was then-Chief Minister of the state, Narendra Modi.

9. The RSSBJP builds up an ABSOLUTELY ENORMOUS army of internet trolls. The average westerner was probably affected by this, because they actually became influential in building a lot of early American discourse on race in the mid-2000s and early 2010s. A lot of diaspora angst (mine included, back when I was a moron) was given voice by RSS ideology. Their ideas got big. In that period it was pretty much mandatory on India to spout off RSS bullshit constantly. They also have a lot to do with the current infrastructure of Facebook. If you watch the interview I just linked to, MOST Indian facebook pages are run by them, including seemingly innocuous things like groups for searching for roommates. Since they drive up the hits by joining their groups with their tens and hundreds of fake accounts, it’s a big part of Facebook’s business model. Word is they also share infrastructure with Russia, which I believe. 

10. In 2014, the RSS’s electoral wing, the BJP, wins the elections and appoints Narendra Modi as Prime Minister of all of India. They did this on the slogan of development.

11. Over the course of the 2014-2019 term, the development premise begins to ring exceptionally hollow, because not only do none of these development projects materialise, but they introduce several economic policies that seem to have no purpose whatsoever and are extremely destructive to the economy. One time they just cancelled a bunch of bank notes and made everyone cancel everything they were doing and wait in line to get them replaced and if they couldn’t do that their money just wouldn’t work anymore. Another time they introduced just this incredibly stupid tax scheme. Both moves were extremely unpopular.

12. Come the 2019 election, we learn that it doesn’t matter how batshit insane BJP’s economic policy is. BJP wins the election in a landslide, with a huge majority of the Hindu vote. In some areas this majority is enormous. In Delhi it’s 70%. In Bhopal – where the BJP’s candidate was Pragya Thakur, who was literally on trial for terrorism, that is, killing Muslims with bombs for political reasons in a coordinated manner with other actors – it was 86%.

13. It’s not just because there’s no opposition. It’s because the BJP is “teaching Muslims a lesson.” It’s literally just because Hindus have a visceral seething hatred for Muslims and for no other reason.

I wanna emphasise something here. In places like America, people self-segregate, regardless of race or any other factor, on the grounds of their political affiliation. For the most part, if you see a group of white people in America, they’re all hanging out together, it means they’re at least kind of on the same page politically – it means they all voted for Trump or they all hate him. Hindus do not do this. If you’re in Delhi and you see four Hindus hanging out on the street, 3 of them voted BJP. On tumblr we’re pretty good about understanding why members of minority groups tend to prefer the company of those who are neither in, nor sympathetic to, members of violent hate groups – you can see where this leaves Muslims. 

A German proverb is being revived in India, “if you see nine guys sitting at a table with a nazi, it’s a table with ten nazis”. I know the States have a problem with hyperbolic nazi comparisons but that’s not what’s happening here. These guys are just literal straight up nazis so it isn’t a comparison. In the two years I’ve been here, the Holocaust has gone from being something people pretend not to know about, to becoming a manifestly obvious precedent which is being followed. So trite it’s not worth bringing up. Why? How? 

Last year the state of Assam implemented the NRC, the National Register of Citizens. The point of this was to “identify illegal immigrants” allegedly from Bangladesh (a Muslim majority country). The actual point of this was apparent from the start.

This was during election season. A campaign promise.

The long and short of the NRC is that Muslims are being given the runaround and stripped of citizenship and thrown into camps. Like for real for real. So far this is only in the state of Assam, but the legal framework is being laid for its implementation in the entire country. It’s passed without much opposition or protest. 

Fear not, though, because:

tl;dr - India is stripping Muslims of citizenship and throwing them in “detention centres” and openly promising to wipe Muslims and Christians out of India by 2021 and this is passing without any opposition in india and without any attention from international media.

[buckskinblues]

A lot of the labels people have on here for communities based around thinking a particular thing are useless because they laser focus on one particular thing so the people using the label constantly fight among themselves and attach themselves so heavily to the slogan of their in group based around that one thing that that one thing morphs into something entirely different than it originally was. Don’t know if that’s coherent but basically trying to create and maintain a solid community around a label that only means you have an opinion on one very particular topic is doomed to fail, especially when having opinions opposite on other topics makes it difficult to impossible to get along with people even though you share one label/opinion otherwise because almost every user here is obsessed with finding people who think and believe exactly like them in order to maintain some false sense of ideological purity.

For example there are exclusionists who are tucutes, inclusionists who are transmeds, inclusionists who are anti-MOGAI/anti-NB, people who are pro-NB/pro-MOGAI who are against pan and other m-spec labels besides bi, and so on and so forth ad nauseam--the variety of opinions and beliefs is so diverse and divisive that trying to build a cohesive unit is literally impossible. Which is why a lot of people simple don’t use these silly labels because they’re essentially useless and past their infancy are bad ways to try to find like minded people. Even in fandom there’s antis, anti-antis, pro-shippers, etc. and all of that is layered over said LGBT discourse plus politics making it the most exhausting cesspool of “debate” and intellectual masturbation to the point you’d rather carve your guts out with a spoon because all this was supposed to be a fun gathering of people who like the same source material.

My point is that attaching yourself religiously to labels is a bad idea, especially when those labels are hyper specific and only identifiable to people who throw shit at each other in a very particular corner of the internet.

[pinelife3]

Whatever happened to Lainey Gossip?

Lainey Gossip was the smartest celebrity gossip site on the internet. I was an avid reader for most of my adult life. You may recall my April 2016 blog post about gossip and, in particular, blind items. Well, it’s been nearly a year since Lainey posted a blind item. In the site’s heyday (pre-2017), she posted a blind roughly once a month.

Beyond the drop-off in blind items, the site has decayed in a number of ways. It’s become smug and self-aggrandising. They rolled lifestyle content onto the main blog feed, so now I have to scroll past posts about, I kid you not, baby names. (Caring about baby names is so inherently stupid to me, I feel genuinely irritated just being exposed to that content. Just name your kid something out of the primary religious text for your culture/region/family. Adam can never go out of style.)

The main thing which has turned me off Lainey Gossip is the writers’ misapprehension that the site is some kind of arbiter on social justice issues. Every other day there is a post with some insufferable moralising about feminism, equality, systemic racism, Rowling’s transphobia etc. It’s not that these are bad takes - I actually agree with what they’re saying. But I don’t want to hear it on this site. I don’t refer to gossip writers for guidance on this. Lainey is not a political activist. The writers on the site are just regurgitating ideas and lessons they’ve learnt elsewhere. This post from June was the final straw for me. The relevant part of the post is Alia Shawkat’s apology for saying the n-word during an interview in 2016. The clip of her actually saying the n-word seems to have disappeared from the internet, but basically she was describing a time when she and some of her friends arrived in a very nice hotel and how she thought of the lyric: “Nigga, we made it" from the Drake song “We Made It”. 

Here’s Lainey’s analysis:

As people have pointed out on Twitter, 2016 isn’t that long ago. And Alia was in her 20s. Whether or not you decide to cancel her, as many are doing, is up to you. 

I can’t fully account for it, but the phrase ‘Whether or not you decide to cancel her is up to you’ rubbed me the wrong way. Whether you decide to cast her into the fire for not correctly censoring herself when quoting a Drake song. Whether she is destroyed as a person forever. A worthless husk. Irredeemable. Whether her soul should be torn out and her body fed to crows. That’s up to you. The new god? It’s you, the reader of this gossip blog!

This was during the peak of the Black Lives Matter protests and discussion this year. So, in the second half of the article Lainey gets high on her own farts, like so:

While I have never used the n-word casually, and many of you may say the same, we do all engage with Black art, we do all borrow from it, consciously or unconsciously, in the ways we express ourselves, in the way I have expressed myself here, from fashion to language to GIFs. Think of how much cultural colloquial vocabulary comes from the Black community – recent examples include “lit”, “snatched”, “shady”, “flex”, “tea”, and phrasing that’s become commonplace and permanent in our language like “chill”, “dope”, “extra” – all of this comes from the creativity of Black minds. And they’re almost never credited for it.

So yes, of course, call out people like Alia for their irresponsible use of the most egregious words, but at the same time, let’s all consider how much we owe to the Black community for what they’ve given to us and for little we’ve given back in respect, appreciation, and credit. Because while the immediate urgency of Black Lives Matter is to prevent more senseless killings of Black people, the broader focus of BLM is Black dignity in all forms, and all of this is related. We can’t say that we honour Black humanity if we are erasing their contributions in all aspects of our lives.

Thanks Lainey. To be clear, I wouldn’t mind if this was the only time she’d shared an opinion like this - but this type of argument is repeated ad nauseaum across the site. She’s a therapist. She’s a civil rights activist. She knows what’s good for you. She speaks with great authority on how to solve racism. 

Fast forward a couple of weeks and Lainey is apologising for the hideous shit she used to write on her blog in the early 2000s where her takes were often racist, homophobic, and/or misogynistic. In her apology post, she wrote:

Many people object to cancel culture. My personal opinion on it is that while cancel culture is not always judiciously applied, it does have value. Sometimes people should be cancelled. And if you visit this website often, you might be thinking about whether or not to cancel me. That’s fair.

...I have been conditioned in white supremacy, and I have enabled white privilege, even as a person of colour myself, because we too, given that white supremacy is so dominant, can have bias... When I started this site back in 2003/2004, I wrote misogynist things and slut shaming things, and racist things. And as the site grew in popularity, it served as confirmation bias, that there was an appetite out there for this kind of content, and I wanted to keep delivering it. Over time, I learned and grew, along with many of you who have learned and grown. And through it all, I have talked about my progress, calling out my past mistakes and leaving much of that content on the site instead of deleting it. There are some things, though, that have been deleted because I was embarrassed and I didn’t want to be part of it and obviously didn’t want to perpetuate those thoughts. But in the process of doing that, I realised that that would be erasing history – and for marginalised people, their pain and trauma is constantly being erased and invalidated. My leaving it there to be eventually called out is nothing compared to their experience.

Many gossip blogs were like this in the nascent stage of online journalism. They called it snark - and it was very popular. I think in some ways this was to differentiate blogs from the content and coverage in traditional gossip mags. Most gossip magazines are toothless - because they want celebrity interviews and exclusives. But, in 2006, a website was never going to get an interview with anyone worth interviewing so why bother to be nice - especially because being cynical and mean was more entertaining for the average reader. A lot of the gossip coverage that occurred back then would never fly now: ridiculing Britney for shaving her head, fat shaming, cruel coverage of celebrity eating disorders, slut shaming. The edgelord humour of the early blogs was crushed beneath the wheels of progress.

I don’t care about what Lainey wrote in 2006 - I don’t think it’s nice, I don’t think it’s interesting or funny, I wouldn’t have chosen to read it. But it doesn’t change my view of the site as a whole. What it does do though, is highlight how hollow all the talk of respecting women, honouring Black culture, working to be better, being good allies, etc. is on this site. Because it’s not really about doing that shit - it’s about telling other people off for not doing it. Lainey has weaponised wokeness as her new snark. 

After the fall out around Lainey’s embarrassing old articles, a banner was added to all of the articles on the site which were published before 2013: 

She’s effectively disavowed half of the blog’s history. Lainey Gossip launched in 2004. Is it really fair to say that articles published in 2012 were posted during an early period of the site?

What is Lainey doing when she toys with Alia Shawkat’s fate like Anton Chigurh tossing a coin? She knows in her heart of hearts that she has also said things she regrets, also said unsavory things in public that she didn’t really mean. It’s so weird: can’t you see the parallels between yourself and her? Lainey is pretty clear in her apology that she’s acknowledging the problematic history of the blog because people were exposing her on social media. Were it not for this, she likely would have continued writing about problematic shit other people did 10 years ago without acknowledging that she is no better. 

Again, I want to be really clear: my issue isn’t with the articles she wrote in the early days of the site. It’s the weirdness around publicly criticising people when your own behaviour is comparably bad. What could you gain from doing that beyond reveling in the snark? Destroying someone else before the mob you helped create comes for you?

Let me remind you: THIS USED TO BE A GOSSIP BLOG with analysis of celebrity culture, movie deals, blind items, industry insider stories. Now it’s just been sucked into the culture war vortex. Ruined by the discourse. 

Gossip used to be talking about other people’s business: Speculating about which Victoria’s Secret model DiCaprio would pick up next. Investigating rumours that Jennifer Lawrence faked her tumble on the stairs at the Oscars. Analysing why a celebrity filed their divorce papers in California rather than Texas. Waiting to see which celebrity would be the first to wear Marchesa on a red carpet after the fall of Weinstein.

Gossip is a way of learning what is acceptable in society, a way of observing how others perceive and react to the decisions people make - and how behaviour which violates societal norms attracts backlash. It’s even more interesting when the subject of that gossip is rich and famous. Lainey Gossip is no longer turning out this kind of content - so where can we go for these insights?

The best barometer for conservative public opinion on celebrity movements and the related enforcement of societal norms is the The Daily Mail comments section. The Daily Mail itself seems like something of a journalistic agent of chaos: I would have assumed that they swung right, but they post pro-Trump articles and anti-Trump articles. They do not seem to have a dog in the fight: the world turns, empires rise and fall and The Daily Mail persists. 

In the ‘entertainment news’ articles on the site, no impassioned arguments are made, no particular analysis is shared: the journalists position themselves as impartial observers just reporting the facts. Occasionally a piece is clearly designed to bait the readers - for example, any time they mention the price of someone’s home in the headline... “Celebrity in $13 million mansion reminds fans to appreciate the small things” or that kind of crap. But the article itself is just a list of facts. No analysis, no reflection - just positioning. 

Also interesting to observe is that The Daily Mail comments section is typically quite harmonious. Readers generally have similar take-aways from articles and it’s very rare to see an argument break out in the comments section. It’s as if Daily Mail readers think with one mind:

Stay with wife many years? Very good. Society like this. Daily Mail readers approve.

Stay with wife many years and maybe wife is slightly overweight? Oh yes - this guy is the best. International hero. Daily Mail readers all agree: we love.

Stay with wife many years and then divorce her? Hmm let’s see how this situation develops before we judge...

Stay with wife many years and then divorce her to be with younger woman? You die now.

The Daily Mail comments section is a glance into the void. A pit of human misery where people say exactly what they think. No subtext. No analysis required. 

They like Pierce Brosnan because he is a straight-forward nice male celebrity and he has been with his wife for a long time - his wife is a little overweight so it makes readers feel good to imagine that he might not be repulsed by the average woman.

They do not like Emma Roberts because in 2013 she was arrested for beating her boyfriend in a hotel room. This was a long time ago and not many people think about it now. She has a successful career and is well liked on social media. But that’s because those youngsters forget. 

The Daily Mail comments section does not forget. Their memory is long and their pity is scarce. They are society’s hive mind. The majority. A snapshot of what 95% of the planet’s population would think on any given subject - which actually makes for very interesting reading.

Forget about Lainey Gossip, trawl The Daily Mail comments section with me.

[forsetti]

On a Post-Factual World: The Root of The Problem

“When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.”-Merlin in “Excalibur” There are so many things happening right now, it is difficult to get a good grasp on what the real problem is.  Yes, Trump is a problem but he didn't get to be president by accident.  Yes, the media is a problem but they didn't get to be this way overnight.  Yes, fake news is a problem but it didn't appear overnight.  Yes, undereducated voters are a problem but they didn't get this way by accident.  If you boil all of these problems down, you are left with a simple reduction-the death of truth.  Whatever was once commonly accepted as truth has been eliminated from public discourse.  Facts/truth have been replaced with feelings.  It doesn't matter if all the evidence says otherwise, how people “feel” about it has been given priority.  

As someone who has spent their life dedicated to knowing facts from the obscure and ridiculous to the highly specialized and esoteric, truth has always have always been a top priority.  When I was young, I rarely read non-fiction (the Nancy Drew series one of the exceptions.)  I read the encyclopedia and reference books.  I read them every night long past my bedtime.  If the internet and smartphones had existed back then, I probably would have only slept from exhaustion.  The motivating force behind this obsession with facts was I hated not knowing something.  If adults were talking about economics or a topic I didn't know anything about, it really bothered me.  If I saw a news report about a country in Africa, I wanted to know as much as I could about it so the report made sense and could be put in context.  I'm fairly confident that the reason I gravitated to studying philosophy was a search for deeper, more fundamental truths.  

This placement of truth at the top of my priorities caused problems here or there in classes, discussions, friendships...but for the most part, it has just been what it is.  This changed when I joined social media.  I didn't realize just how much I had subconsciously shielded myself from people who don't really care about the truth and surrounded myself with people who do until I joined Facebook. Suddenly, I was inundated with posts and comments that were not just devoid of truth, but easily disprovable.  This by itself wouldn't have been a problem if the person who posted something obviously untrue was open to being politely corrected.  For the most part, they aren't and they aren't because no matter what they may tell others or themselves, being right isn't a priority.  Thinking they are right, however, is.  This is the direct opposite of how I'm built.  This attitude of believing you are right being more important than actually being right is the root of the problem.  It is why fake news is able to get traction and have an impact.  It is why Donald Trump was able to draw large crowds during his campaign and eventually get elected.  It is in large part why the media has failed to live up to even the most basic of journalistic ethics.  It is why there are so many undereducated voters.  Facts don't matter.

There are a lot of culprits responsible for why facts don't matter.  First and foremost is everyone who either doesn't care enough about the truth to make it a high priority, those who are too lazy to find out, and those who are too arrogant and prideful to admit when they are wrong.  Rightwing talk radio, websites, and FOX News have led the charge against facts in order to push a conservative agenda that cannot hold up to the light of facts.  A mainstream media that has turned away from journalism in favor of clicks and ratings.  And, the democratization of information through the internet and social media. This combination has fostered and fueled the fall of truth and the rise of feelings on the importance hierarchy.  It has led to the death of expertise and the demise of knowledge. I really didn't get involved with social media on any meaningful level until 2008.  It didn't take long to see how facts don't matter to a whole lot of people.  By the time President Obama won the election, this anti-fact phenomenon was in full swing.  It was amazing to see people who I had known to be semi-serious, semi-rational people post, cite, and parrot blatant lies with fervor and zealotry.  If I tried to explain why/how what they said/posted wasn't true, but in fact, the opposite of truth they lashed out, doubled down on the lie, and/or quickly changed the subject, usually to a different lie.  It didn't matter how calmly I responded.  It didn't matter the depth and breadth of counter-evidence I presented.  They were not willing to even entertain the possibility they might be wrong.  They were right because they felt they were right and that was all that mattered. Facts were sent to the back of the bus and feelings were placed in the driver's seat. Coming from my background and where I place truth/facts on the hierarchy of importance, not only is this approach to reality completely backward, I have no idea how to react to and deal with it.  People who reverse the order of truth and feelings are speaking a foreign language that doesn't have any rules.  Emotions are easily manipulated, often wrong, unreliable...  I'd rather have Billy Joel behind the wheel after an all-night bender than someone's feelings.  At least I know Billy will sober up at some point and make a good decision, like marrying Christie Brinkley.  This is where someone tells me, “Yeah, but facts can be manipulated too.”  If a fact is manipulated, it is no longer a fact.  Facts matter.  They matter a lot and excuses to not accept them, to deny them don't fly with me. I could spend days writing out the things conservatives “feel” are true but aren't. -Obama wasn't born in America. -Climate change is a hoax. -The Affordable Care Act is a socialist takeover of health care. -Obama paid Iran $1.7 billion dollars. -Obama ordered the U.S. Armed Forces to take over Texas. -The unemployment numbers are rigged. -Obama isn't fighting ISIS. -Obama refuses to stand up for the police. -Obama went on an “Apology Tour” of the world. -Health insurance has gone up faster under ACA than it did before. -The deficit has risen the past eight years. -The mortgage crisis was caused by minority home buyers defaulting on their loans. -Hillary Clinton had __________ killed. -The Clintons made millions from their foundation. -Illegal immigration has increased under Obama. -13 million people voted illegally for Hillary. -Taxes when up under Obama for the lower and middle classes. -Tax cuts for the wealthy creates jobs. -Violent crime has gone up the past eight years. -The Affordable Care Act was passed with no Republican input. -Obama took more vacation days than any other president. -Obama signed more Executive Orders than any other president.

Every single one of these is a lie.  Not a difference of opinion.  A flat-out lie.  That a good chunk of conservatives choose to believe them or “feel” they are true doesn't make them any less of a lie. Truth/falsity is not dependent on how many people or how strongly they feel it.  

For me, the fundamental question is, “Why are so many conservatives so willing to adamantly believe things that are blatantly false?” This is the root of the problem.  This is why there is a massive cultural and political divide in this country.  This is why our government isn't working the way it should.  

There are a lot of reasons why people, especially conservatives are so willing to deny and ignore facts.  There is a direct relationship between conservatives willingness to place feelings above facts and their religious underpinnings.  Religion is all too often devoid of facts and most of the doctrine hinges on feelings-faith.  All the evidence showing the world was created billions of years ago doesn't mean a damn thing because of faith in an unscientific book written by unscientific people and translated by anti-science people.  Facts run counter to Western religions and they are a big reason most of them have and still are anti-science.  It is so much easier to rely on what someone else tells you than use your own brain.  It is so much easier to “feel” you are right than do the actual work necessary to be right.  It is so much easier to follow a script of what is true and what isn't than constantly be testing each one to see if they are or not.  Feelings being more important than facts is a direct byproduct of religious belief.

Another reason conservatives are more than willing to deny and ignore facts is because they've been told and firmly believe they are right.  They are “right” because they believe in the “right” God.  They are “right” because they are white.  They are “right” because they are male.  To believe you are right because you are a Republican is easy once you've bought into all these other justifications for believing you are right.  You are used to it.  Being right by default of some external criterion becomes second nature.  You're not right because of the time, energy, and work you put into something.  You are right because of your skin color, religious or political affiliation.  If you need reassurance about your being right, just ask your political or religious leader and they'll reaffirm it for you.  Since the facts don't line up and support a lot of their beliefs, they have to fall back on “feelings” as grounds for justification.   If this wasn't bad enough, in order to maintain their belief they are right, conservatives have taken things to a totally unethical and dangerous level.  As counter-evidence and information to their claims/beliefs have become readily available and easily accessible, conservatives have adopted what can only be called, “propaganda.”  Rightwing radio, FOX News, a lot of conservative websites...are nothing more than propaganda generating entities.  Their goal is two-fold: 1-Tell the “faithful” what they want to hear and believe; And, 2-Undermine people and entities who are telling the truth in order to destroy their credibility. This is the same tactics used by the tobacco companies when all the scientific studies showed a causal link between smoking and certain forms of cancer.  The tobacco industry came out with their own “scientific studies” that showed smoking was 100% safe and they put “doctors” in their advertising.  All of this was done intentionally in order to muddy the waters of what is factual and what isn't.  A lot of the very same people in charge of this propaganda campaign for the tobacco industry took their strategies and talents to the oil/gas industry and ginned up “counter evidence” against climate change.  There's no debate about climate change any more than there was about smoking's link to cancer but a lot of people “feel” there is because facts don't matter to them and they are willing to believe whatever supports their preconceptions.

Another tactic being used by conservatives to delegitimize facts is by not even allowing them to be written or talked about.  There have been numerous bills passed in state houses around the country by conservatives who have made it so terms like “climate change” cannot be used in any government report.  It doesn't matter who does the research or who writes or talks about the report, they are forbidden, by law, to use the words, “climate change” or “global warming.”  Apparently, if it can't be said, then it doesn't exist in the minds of conservatives.  This is the opposite of their belief about “radical Islamic terrorism,” which is by saying, is supposed to make the threat less greater, the fight against it more real, a legitimate strategy to defeat it.  This strategy of banning things that go against their ideology is not just confined to language.  Numbers are just as dangerous and are in need of banning for conservatives.  When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came out with reports showing the very negative impact the Republicans' plan for repealing the Affordable Care Act would have on the deficit, debt, and economy, the Republican-led House banned them from using the scoring method they have always used and demanded they use a new one called, “dynamic scoring.”  In a nutshell, dynamic scoring is mathematical wishing and pixie dust.  It is based on the unicorn belief that massive tax cuts for the wealthy plus a GDP growth of 5% a year will exist and this is the framework from which all scoring must be done.  When Jeb Bush promised he'd bring 4% annual GDP growth to the country if elected, he was rightly ridiculed.  When Bernie Sanders said he would bring 5% annual growth he was rightly mocked. The last time the U.S. had 5% GDP growth for a single year was 1984. The last time there were three out of five years with 5% GDP growth was the 50s before China emerged as an economic player when Europe and Japan were still rebuilding after WWII when the U.S. had little economic competition.  To believe we can create and sustain 5% annual growth is a complete fantasy.  To demand this fantasy be the basis for the CBO's analysis is dangerous.  Right now, if conservatives don't like the truth/facts, they deny they exist or demand they don't exist.  That is propaganda.

The entire Trump campaign and the first few days of his administration have been nothing but propaganda.  They have lied about so many things, it is impossible to keep track of them or respond because, by the time you do, they've told a half-dozen more.  They lie about easily disprovable things.  They lie with impunity and his supporters don't give a damn because the lies confirm their feelings. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer took to the podium to make sure the press knew that Trump's Inauguration was the best attended, ever.  When told this wasn't true, he went ballistic and reiterated it with all the fervor and passion one would expect from someone who was psychologically unhinged.  What he was saying and arguing for is blatantly and easily proved to be false, a lie. Just in case Spicer's adamant claims weren't enough, Trump's spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway went on “Meet The Press” and said Spicer was offering “alternative facts.”  Go ahead, let the sheer stupidity of this phrase sink in.  “Alternative facts.”  2+2=5, is an alternative fact.  The Civil War wasn't over slavery, is an alternative fact.  Obamacare increases the deficit/debt, is an alternative fact.  Guns in the house keep people safer, is an alternative fact.  I'm old enough to remember when alternative facts were called, “lies.”

The democratization of information has created the environment where people can push their own “truths.”  The media, whose responsibility is supposed to be to inform and educate the public, have failed and failed miserably to do their job.  They've largely stopped being journalists and become stenographers, and bad ones at that.  Time and time again journalists will say it isn't their job to point out the truth, but to report what was said.  This lazy and devoid of ethics stance has helped create an entire generation of people who don't trust the media and who spout false equivalencies about everything.  If the media wants to know why they are no longer trusted like they once where, they need look no further than their advocation of their responsibility to inform the public.  After the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, when Republicans in the Senate blocked gun purchase background check measures, almost every major media outlet's headlines were, “Senate Blocks_____________.” NO!!!  The Senate didn't.  Republicans in the Senate did.   This may seem like not a big deal but it is.  This kind of half-ass reporting done consistently over a long period of time gives people the impression that there are no differences between Republicans and Democrats and that government is the problem, not Republicans in government.  Instead of informing the public of how government works, the rules of the Senate, why a measure didn't get a hearing or a vote, too many in media have resorted to lazy reporting.  They do this, in large part because they are corporate owned, their priority is not informing but generating advertising dollars.  You don't do this by pointing out that the party half your viewers voted for is the problem and the main reason for their problems.  Doing their jobs properly might be good journalism, but its bad marketing and they are in the business of making money not informing the public.   This advocation by the media to do their job properly has left people to their own devices to become informed and we see how well that's turned out.  They may have access to the information, but there is too much information and they don't have the mental tools to properly sift through and analyze it.  Being overwhelmed and underprepared, people will almost always revert to what they already believe and what makes them feel good about themselves.  When this happens, truth is pushed aside for feelings.  When this happens, people are easily manipulated by demagogues and propaganda.  When this happens, an arrogant, narcissistic, petty man is elected to be president of the country that prides itself on exceptionalism. “The human mind is as naturally sensitive to arguments as the eye is to colors. (There may be some people who are argument-blind!) But the eye will not see if it is not kept open, and the mind will not follow an argument if it is not awake.” ― Mortimer J. Adler