#general semantics

[argyrocratie]

“An example of the effect of indexing and dating, the main devices by which the structure of our language is made similar in structure to the world, may be seen by the reactions of a veteran from the Pacific Theater of War. This veteran was a student of Professor Elwood Murray at the University of Denver. I quote from the veteran’s report:

An example of pure identification comes out in the veteran’s dislike for rice. His first view of the enemy dead was that of a Jap soldier which was in the process of deterioration. The bag of rice the soldier had been carrying was torn open and grains of rice were scattered over the body mixed in with maggots. When the veteran, to this day, sees rice, the above described scene is vivid and he imagines grains of rice moving in his dish. To overcome this, he has eaten rice several times trying to remember the rice before him is not the same as that on the body. Though the food is not relished, he has succeeded in overcoming the vomiting reflex at the sight of rice (19, p. 262).

These mechanisms of evaluating or "perceiving" similarities and neglecting, or not being fully aware of, the differences are potentially present in every one of us, but usually not in such extreme degrees. This involves the lack of differentiation between the silent and verbal levels and nonawareness of our processes of abstracting. The different orders of abstractions are identified, an inference is evaluated as if it were a description, a description as if it were the nonverbal "object" our nervous system constructed, and an "object" as if it were the nonverbal, submicroscopic, dynamic process.”

- Alfred Korzybski, “The role of language in the perceptual processes” (1951)

[stxalq]

“Well, without indulging in chauvinism..." [the character / narrator then spends the next several hundred words skewering? damning with faint praise? that specific type of racial, patronizing chauvinism that believes only Western civilizations and Western languages were ever capable of scientific thought, artistic expression, and technological progress and all "lesser" cultures need only give up their traditions and abide by Western teachings to achieve greatness but maybe the answer is really a syncresis of what came before and that can include both native traditions and foreign insights]

[teledyn]

Korzybski referred to the calculus as "...the study of a continuous function by following its history by indefinitely small steps." Attendees are invited to find other words for "study", "continuous", "function", "following", "history", "indefinitely small", "steps", etc. Using these other words, they will be invited to create well formed sentences for all to hear. (Note: This is not a test. It will be introduced as an example of applying the method.)

[rottingraisins]

it kinda sucks that you hc a canonically pansexual character as gay (clef)

i deliberated not answering this one bc i dont rlly mean to get into representation discourse or w/e during pride month of all things but i think the sentiment behind it is very fair so i feel bad ignoring it.

firstly, i think it needs to be said that clefs "canon" romantic orientation is very much just, whatevers funniest or most poignant for what youre trying to do with him. i understand the sentiment, there are characters in scp who are queer in a very specific and straightforward way where i'd also be upset if people erased that about them, but clef is not that guy. he is probably the single most contradictory character across the entire wiki, and everyones got a bit of their own take on him.

secondly, to defend my own take a little, i don't even really see clef as strictly homoromantic. i think when applying queer labels to fictional characters one tends to kind of treat them as these ontological, prescriptive truths, rather than how labels are used in real life, by the individual themselves to approximate their lived experience.

what i'm trying to say is i don't think clef the character, at least the version of him i'm most fond of, the fifty something year old reformed casual homophobe from resurrection and co, really knows what the term "pansexual" means, or "mlm", or "demiromantic", which are other words i'd use to describe him if i were using the prescriptive approach.

i think clefs relationship to romance is deeply complicated and not something he spends a lot of time really thinking about, and in practice, despite the theroretical breadth of his capacity to be attracted to other people, he's really only attracted to men, which is to say one particular man who also just so happens to be dead, so there's no point in really dwelling on it.

[mantisgodsdomain]

Finally, we get the opportunity to put our Spy Cards worldbuilding in a work. Though there are many questions about such things as "regulation" "how these cards are printed" "who approves a single spy card", and so on, we are here to present a bold new take: this game is based like 60% on obscure roach memory-reading tech that got turned into a card game with absolutely No card-game-related intentions included in the original tech and most of the card vetting is just from the fact that there aren't too many card printers out there and most of them make cards that need to be translated from Roach.

Strictly speaking, as a card game, it is not a terribly good or well-balanced one. It's popular primarily because of a mix of the difficulty involved in getting the data for high-level cards, the fun of seeing the variety of monsters that can be brought to the table, and the incredible amounts of ham and drama that goes into specifically the professional scene.

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

I just ordered $100 worth of comics online

[quasieli]

[ID copied from alt text: A digital drawing of a portrait of the Bryn family, characters in my D&D campaign. The family is made up of parents Ferris (he/him) and Delia (she/her), tween daughter Nerisya (she/they), and twin babies Owyn and Aymen (both he/him). Delia and her three kids are sat together on a couch, with Delia holding the two swaddled babies, while Ferris is stood behind the others. Ferris is a young, muscular, pale complexion human man with light brown hair pulled up in a small ponytail, as well as a short chin beard. He is wearing ceremonial armor that is in shades of gold and brown, with an orange heart gem at the center of the chest plate, along with a dark teal half cape, and dark green pants. He is smiling as he looks forward.

Sat on the far left of the couch is Nerisya, a young, thin, pale complexion Half Elf girl with bright red hair pulled up in high ponytails, each with a blue and gold crystal clip in them. She is wearing an orange dress with light blue accents and a pink flower necklace. She is smiling as she looks at her mom. Delia is a young, thin, pale complexion Elf woman with short bright red hair. She is wearing a brown and red dress, with her accessories all adorned with a similar light blue gem, excluding her wedding ring, which has an orange gem in a silver band. She is smiling as she looks towards the viewer. She is sat in three quarters profile, holding her swaddled sons close. Owyn and Aymen are twin pale complexion Half Elf babies with short red-brown hair. They are both resting with cute smiles on their faces. End description.]

Been thinking a lot about the family of one of my player's PC's and just thought itd be real cute to draw the happy family 💙🧡

[hajihiko]

you draw men exactly how i like them which is even more impressive since you aren’t into them? But like you nail exactly why i’m gay for them

I may not be physically attracted to men in general but I can cherish and appreciate them

[stanperformanceunit]

Okay a little bit of a rant, triggered by Revenge of Others : people need to stop seeing gay couples as BL. I've been seeing this comment about Wonseok and Sejin too much. They are not "BL", this is REPRESENTATION. Gay couples (and Sapphic too of course, anything) should exist in dramas, not just in BLs. Normalize having a gay couple in your het drama. I've seen people saying they would drop the drama because they are not into BLs. It's literally just any other couple. They are here for two minutes in the drama. Force people to see gay couples outside of BLs and GLs. Normalize it.

[meirimerens]

i know the Willow Mellow lore gets worse the longer you dig inside of it + it reflects even Worse on the writers when you put the actual words on her situation but let's not forget Darlings she is a child. she is 15 to 17yo depending on what piece of documentation we refer to, too young to consent to sex and therefore does not fit the category of "sex worker", and instead falls under the definitions of "sexually exploited youth", more specifically "sexually exploited child", as UNICEF, UNESCO, Convention for the Rights of the Child, [...] and general common sense all define "child" as "person under the age of 18".

she is the victim of kidnapping by her """adoptive father""" and of sexual exploitation by her (presumably adult) "clients" (as she does not appear to have a pimp, and is instead written saying she loves what she does and such giddy teehee fun. [powerful side-eye through someone in the writing team.] [she's not a Real Person I have to stress, so someone wrote her like this, wrote this kid like this.] [it is all part of a narrative in which she is struggling to shake off her "father's" exploitation, an inherently tragic one, but she still was written that way, and could have been written any other way, with any other "rebellious" act]). calling her a sex worker as a child who is basically the same age as P2 Capella or Grace is putting her in a Grown-Up category especially harmful considering we are supposed to read her as an indigenous girl, member of the Kin (even if her lore is Mysterious and Hazy) and indigenous women and girls are sexualized in racialized ways which often paint them as more ~~~naturally~~~ sexually liberated, or docile, or submissive, or [insert racist x sexist stereotype promoted by colonizers to excuse the mistreatment of indigenous women and girls].

tldr yes it's worse when you actually call her what she actually is, and worse tenfold when you read what the writers make her say about it [even as an inherently tragic situation that we can recognize and put words on (hence this post), she could have been written any other way, with any other rebellious act, but you know.] but you know x2 (SIDE-EYES SOMEONE ON THE WRITING TEAM VERY HARD TIL ME EYES POP OUT ME SKULL)

[capricorndevil15]

I know I can't possibly be the first person to say this, but "dating sim" is not a genre but a game mechanic. "Romance" is a genre, but a game could have romance and no dating sim elements. A game that is otherwise not romance-focused might have a dating sim component that a player can choose to engage with on certain playthroughs. I'm in favor of this philosophy, but also btw no amount of semantics is gonna make people who have no respect for dating sims start respecting them. Those guys are like whatever to me. You don't make games for people who hate playing them.

[magentagalaxies]

having a moment about my gender rn and i'm just like ugggggh @ my brain do we have to. like can we just not

[2hollis]

türkçe inanılmaz efficient bir dil olduğundan vesaire değil (at least not unique in that regard, speech aims to be effective throughout languages) ama bunu intuitively bilmek açıkçası crazy to me. ayrıca bu diagram ve benzerleri özelinde konuşuyorum tamamen summarized demonstration of suffixes and semantics olduğu için (aslında değil çünkü unorganized ve useless) ve kimse asla böyle bir construction kullanmadığı için de trivial and intimidating at once yani, educational değilsin. bunu native turkish speaker dışında birine gösterip learner'sa özellikle in awe ve therefore scared bir hale sokmak bana biraz disingenuous geliyor eğer böyle bir şey yapılıyorsa tabii

[mantisgodsdomain]

Occasionally we debate on illustrating random bits from our Discord PMs that we find really funny but then we remember that we're, like, the physical embodiment of the "ace that makes sex jokes" stereotype and phrases like "iterator dick discourse" would both be remarkably difficult to illustrate and probably require us drawing something at least somewhat NSFW (we do not particularly care to learn how to draw this)

[todayisafridaynight]

uhhh something something 'the only time a yakuza should laugh with his teeth is when he's with family or in trouble' something something arakawa gradually doing so more and more when hanging around jo something something Uh Oh™️