#not to say that there isn't some interesting discourse

[unfairunknown]

And somehow Rogue's super-hell fate isn't even the thing I was most sucker-punched in the gut about, in regards to going into these RTD2 seasons with good faith and being disappointed at nearly every turn. I have to get some DW thoughts out, I think. It's a long one, so I put under the cut. TL:DR is

Disappointed by RTD2 era DW which feels like I'm being gaslit by an entire IP.

Verada Sethu is an incredible talent, and if I had a nickel for every time a prominent long running sci Fi series show horned her character into terrible misogynistic tropes in 2025, I'd have two nickels....

Ncuti Gatwa was the bright light of the season. Beautiful, effervescent, charming, what a delight as the Doctor.

"The Story and the Engine" was the best of this run.

My knee-jerk reaction to Rose Noble, as a transgender person myself, was deep discomfort that never quite resolved....there's something slightly *off* with how I feel RTD presented her I never quite managed to land on, beyond that I think it was really problematic to insinuate that Donna absorbing feminine magic while she had a child in utero is why that child "became" a girl...but I have lost a lot of my tolerance for transgender "discourse" because of a lack of good faith critical thought and conversation...I don't even know what I'm saying besides, did other transgender people feel that way?

Also, while DW has always been campy, it's also often made some kind of social statement. And yet I feel this entire run lacked the fangs or impact of any true statement or positionality. A problem would be introduced, as of to say 'look how aware of the social contexts we are,' only to ignore or refuse to contend with what that issue actually means or would impact. Like Rogue's arc, for example.

The "problems" I think his character seems to address:

1. That the Doctor never says they love their companions to their faces. Heavily implied to mean romantic love (see the famous Ten/Rose sequence) but not always.

2. Having a canonically confirmed queer element to the Doctor. I.e. diversity/representation, etc.

But what the narrative actually DOES is more important, to me, than saying something exists on the page. "Look, we confirmed the doctor was queer by having him kiss Rogue and say he loves Belinda to her face!' yes, and that's nice, sure, in 2025, but here's why I have a problem with these things:

1. While the longing and angst is certainly an intentional element in storytelling, the let the Doctor tell their companions they love them thing, when juxtaposed with Thirteen's appearance and commentary regarding her romantic love for Yaz, which I think was pretty clearly stated "it would be you," but I digress...if the core of these longings is romantic queerness, then the Doctor saying he loves Belinda, whose own ending is so....awful, doesn't actually address what the desire for the 'I love you" commentary actually WAS. It's a bit like saying retroactively Dumbledore was gay the whole time...and like I do think it's important to show and express platonic love, but I think that message is lost by refusing to even acknowledge the lurking spectre of queer desire present since original DW. 15 talking about his love for any other companion, especially non romantic ones like Graham, could have assuaged me here.

2. Rogue. In a lot of ways the episode mirrored Ten's "The Girl in the Fireplace," which was also heavily implied romantic/sexual that ended without Ten getting his happily ever after, too.

Except in that case, his love interest went on to love a fulfilling happy life where she was the consort to a powerful man who she seemed to hold in high regard, even if she did have true feelings for the Doctor.

And Rogue...went to hell. He isn't dead, but he isn't coming back any time soon.

And I can't help but feel like the conservative issues I had with RTD1 era and Moffat era in general have been enhanced by Disney's corporate sanitization?

'look at all the diversity' but what does that actually MEAN? The beat episode of Ncuti's run WAS written and directed by the people whose story was being told, and you could tell! It was incredible! And it wasn't *trying* to make a point without understanding what it's core context is in the world of 2025.

Finally, I have all these feelings, and I am deeply upset by these seasons of a television show, because I want to belong to the IP's I love, I want them to cling to me, too. If I didn't love it, it wouldn't hurt.

poor rogue saved the world from compulsory heterosexuality and is still chilling in gay super hell (only other occupent: castiell)

[obi-troll-kenobi]

I can't take most tesblr discourse seriously. After all nothing changes the fact that you're yelling at a stupid Bethesda game.

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

Others have talked, very rightly, about Bells Hells having an extremely Us vs. Them style of morality and one thing I find interesting about all that is many of their most virulent (read: actively nasty towards other fans) defenders are also taking this stance. The party line has become that the segments of the fandom that are disappointed with how this campaign shook out have never been happy with anything Bells Hells did from the beginning and have been actively hating on people who do like it for just as long. Us, the beleaguered Campaign 3 lovers versus Them, the mean c3 haters (who are often characterized as being hung up on the Mighty Nein and simply mad Bells Hells aren't the Nein again).

What's been quite funny for me personally is that I have seen vague posts clearly targeted at myself giving me the above detailed characterization of the c3 hater when I: have never seen Campaign 2 (though I did watch Campaign 1 back in 2019), started watching live with the first EXU, got into the fandom (as a lurker) at the start of Campaign 3, didn't make any of my own posts about it until late 2022 and didn't start really posting in earnest until mid 2023. Practically none of the characteristics applied to the archetypal c3 hater certain fans have created actually apply to me, other than of course thinking Campaign 3 actually isn't very good. So it's been interesting to watch people draw lines in the sand and create an Us vs. Them narrative that I know isn't true based on existing as myself.

[loki-zen]

Can somebody explain to me what actual concrete implications arise from the question of "are trans women More Oppressed than other trans people?" (/gen)

Because we're sure spending a lot of energy on it and I'm not sure what the purpose of this is when it's obvious that a) all kinds of trans people are pretty damn oppressed and b) transphobia definitely manifests in different ways towards different groups (as well as, at the same time, manifesting in similar ways towards different groups), and it's clearly useful to be able to talk about that, and therefore unhelpful for the vocabulary people might use for it to be rendered unusable by becoming a shibboleth for talking about Who Has It Worse

[hazellvsq]

frank and piper are interesting counterpoint narratives to me. both of them have relatively mundane problems compared to the rest of the cast yet their parent's domains represent the heights of human passion as defined by the series, despite piper and frank both being (outwardly) dispassionate and (inwardly) mopey. the good end of these domains is love and protection (selfless), the bad end is heartbreak and bloodlust (selfish), which both of them try to resist. they both get claimed last out of their trios and had beforehand assumed that they were the children of someone else. both also experience perceived rejection from their mortal family directly before the series begins - both express anger and hurt at being "sent away". their rejection and unexpected claiming, back-to-back, results in discombobulation for them both, and feelings of humiliation brought on by both sets of parents.

they also both go through forced physical transformations by their parents to fit an ideal they don't want. all of the characters experience issues of identity and self-esteem but i think its the most pronounced with these two in the series. neither of them really knows who they are, and are pessimistic about their own capabilities. they are also counterpoints in that they feel disconnected from their own looks - both are very self-conscious people, but, based on how they're described by other characters, piper is probably the most beautiful member of the 7 and frank is probably the least. piper is frequently harassed and objectified, whereas frank is teased constantly about his looks. he neither feels as childish as his face is nor as grown as his body is, and he doesn't understand how to move through the world. both of which are common experiences throughout puberty - suddenly being treated differently on the basis of a body that's changing faster than you want or understand.

(discourse alert) i don't have a lot to add to the piper transformation discourse except that i do think its interesting that her blessing was temporary within the book and her love interest actually self-reflected on his reaction to it and realized that he should not have told her that she looked hot in that instance. rick did reverse frank's transformation five years later and i'm curious about his thought process about both writing it in the first place and in reversing it, and what feedback he received, if any. piper's transformation was a makeover whereas frank's was a puberty, which later rick walked back with "actually frank is still going through puberty". piper's was cheesy, sure, but frank's falls so flat bc that's just not how it works. its too much of a stretch. i don't even think it was in rick's og plan for frank, maybe he just watched captain america and was like "hell yeah i should do that" and flipped a coin between frank and leo, bc again frank was already initially described as physically grown in his debut book. and i can't even talk about hazel's reaction to to it bc its not real to me and i can't read suddenly. idk frank's plotline in general was too rushed in that book and he should have gotten another pov chapter set at least bc rick was trying to do too much too fast and relied on idiocy like the transformation to support it in the place of real character work when it wasn't even necessary for anything he accomplished in the book. he could've just walked around with better posture and achieved the same effect.

[cherrymoonvol6]

.

[casscainmainly]

Okay gonna analyse some common Duke beliefs just for quick and easy reference. Some of these are up to interpretation (as indicated), but these are some common things I see that aren't quite accurate to Duke as a character.

Claim: Duke started We Are Robin

True or false: False. Alfred started We Are Robin, and the entire core cast of We Are Robin was already there before Duke.

Claim: We Are Robin is a gang

True or false: kind of tricky? They're technically a gang in the most general sense of the word, but 'gang' has racial implications that I think people gloss over (We Are Robin is primarily composed of kids of colour). Movement is a much better term, and We Are Robin doesn't self-identify as a gang to my knowledge.

Claim: Duke led We Are Robin

True or false: tricky. While Robin War has him as the leader, for the majority of Duke's time in We Are Robin he does not give orders or act like a leader at all. We Are Robin generally doesn't have a leader. Duke certainly has leadership abilities, but WAR is not the best showcase of them. Up to personal interpretation though.

Claim: Duke is a Wayne

True or false: False. Duke is not adopted.

Claim: Duke is intimidated/scared of any Batfamily member

True or false: FALSE!!! There is unfortunately some horrible comic writing, but for the VAST MAJORITY of Duke's appearances he is not scared of any Batfam member. He's certainly not afraid of Damian, Jason, or Cass.

Claim: Duke can emit light

True or false: probably?? His powers are constantly in flux and he develops new abilities all the time, so who knows. But he is much more likely to use light to turn invisible/manipulate his perception of light than attack with them (for which he can use his shadow powers). Up to personal interpretation/fun headcanons.

Claim: Duke jumped out of a cop car

True or false: True, but it's a Tom King comic and he's written horribly in it. If you want another example of him not being the 'sane one', I recommend using the time he got shot by a bullet and thought about how baller it was.

Claim: Duke is new to the Batfamily and doesn't know their dynamics

True or false: Please stop 😭 It's been like a decade since his introduction there's no need to make him the clueless newbie. Also he's a fiercely intelligent detective who makes references to Jason's daddy issues, there's no way he's still in the dark about most of their relationships.

Claim: Duke tends to obey Bruce's orders

True or false: FALSE. Duke sneaks out even during his training days, and for the most part operates independently. He generally has a grudge against authority of all kinds.

Claim: Duke is very sunshine-y, bright, and optimistic

True or false: False. I get where this one is coming from (sunshine boy is cute I love it), but while his powers are light-based, his personality is not. He's pragmatic, rude, skeptical, and often disillusioned. He is an optimist in the sense that he believes in community and change, but he's nowhere near a bright, bubbly kid.

Claim: He's the normal one AND/OR he's just as crazy as the other bats

True or false: Both of these are somewhat false. Duke is not the normal/sane one, he's literally a vigilante how would that make sense. But he also thinks of himself as more normal than the others (at least at one point). Duke discourse should move on from this debate, both these statements obscure what makes Duke unique and interesting.

Claim: Duke designed his Signal outfit

True or false: False. This isn't really a belief I just see people assuming he designed it, he didn't though, Bruce gave it to him. There's no indication he had a hand in the design. Bruce actually gave him TWO designs, I think Bruce just loves giving him outfits tbh.

Claim: Duke's parents are still under the Joker toxin

True or false: Technically false. His mom was healed in Urban Legends #19, but Duke's sporadic appearances mean this was never really followed up on. I have no clue what happened to Doug. Up to DC to SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!!!

Claim: Anything to do with his portrayal in WFA

True or false: False. Literally everything. (The only, and I do mean only, thing to take from WFA is his interactions with Damian)

Okay that's all, I hope that was helpful to anyone out there!!! There are tons of things here that are my interpretation only of course, the best way to get to know Duke is to read his comics. We Are Robin and DC Rise of the Power Company is waiting for you <3333.

[ms-demeanor]

Some people on the left are discussing whether the left is kind enough to me. Especially after the results of the election like lots of men of some demographics voting for Trump. Do you have any thoughts on that? Seems more about women should be nicer to men in some people’s opinions. And I am not sure about this discourse

i think that the social atomization that contributes to the radicalization of young men also contributes to, like, tradwifery and the radicalization of young women so I think that people are looking at a deep systemic issue with a shallow lens.

I don't think this is so much an issue of people being "nice" but of spaces making people feel *valued.*

The right-wing space full of toxic masculinity where people call disaffected young men "brother" isn't comforting just because people call you brother, it's because they're framing disaffected young men as valuable members of society who have been dismissed and degraded by the left. It tells them they're important and have worth and are necessary for the future of the world just because of who they are.

Of course they're getting called pussies and cucks and are being bullied in that space, but they're also being told that if they perform a certain standard of masculinity they are the future of their nation/race/species/family/etc. The toxicity of that space isn't something that makes them question their value, or whether or not they're a good person, or if they have something to offer the world. It is something they endure to prove that they are a member of the in-group, and that they belong, and that they do have value and are a good person.

So, there are people dunking on that post because it does kind of read like "i was almost eaten up by the alt right because women weren't nice enough to me" and to an extent i think that it was ungracefully worded. But i also think that it's addressing something that a lot of people feel in a lot of political spaces.

I do not think that whatever the hell we consider "the mainstream left" in America is particularly welcoming to anybody. I think that it very superficially values diversity while not actually valuing people. I think that it says "You are important! And that's why I need you to donate three dollars to my campaign to prevent the Republicans from harming [your identity group]! I am asking for your help as a senator, a mother, and a person who wants to defeat my opponent in two to four years."

I think that what a lot of people are looking for is not acceptance or niceness but is a community and i'm not at all surprised that people feel like they're not getting that from democrats/the mainstream left/whatever.

I mean. My real response to this is:

I don't think that the *actual* issue is that men don't feel welcomed by "the left," I definitely don't think the issue is women being insufficiently nice to men, I think the issue is that all of us are little cogs in a capitalist machine and actually there's very little out there that is saying to anyone "you are worth more than your productivity."

And it turns out that people will put up with huge amounts of abuse if the abuser makes them feel like they belong. People getting sucked into the alt-right pipeline because it is "nice" to them are exactly analogous to people who get sucked into cults because the cult provides community and affirmation and a sense of belonging.

Anyway, I am once again and as always begging people to put together or join any kind of at-least monthly meetup based on your specific interests. Start a radio club. Start a quilting circle. Put together a free store at the park once a month. Literally join a drum circle. Participate in a community garden. Start a walking club with your neighbors. Go to events at the library on weekends.

As a side note: there absolutely are lefty spaces that function by making people feel worthless or feel like bad people. They tend to have high turnover, short lifespans, and explosive fallout. These are shitty spaces and if your participation in a space is primarily motivated by some combination of guilt and self-flagellation, you should leave that space.

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[elizabethwydevilles]

One of my favourite elements is the potential relationship between Leia and Anakin, but it seems I'm very much in the minority in the fandom as it is now. The most popular theme is undoubtedly that Leia has zero interest in her bio parents and that Leia hates Anakin and good for her.

@batrachised has talked about why Leia bitterly hating Anakin jars uncomfortably with the movies message of 'hate leads to the darkside' so I'm not going to elaborate further on that, but I will say it's definitely something that current audiences struggle with. A lot of the ideas in Star Wars about hate and forgiveness do not sit comfortably alongside the current discourse in regards to resistance, etc. I sometimes feel this dissonance with what I believe at times, but these ideas are not subtle. You can see this tension when people are making posts about Leia disliking Padmé because she believed in Anakin (Leia doesn't seem to dislike Luke for the same though!) or people writing fic where Luke explains that he didn't actually forgive Anakin, et al.

Another issue of course is that people seem to feel that Leia coming to terms with Anakin as her bio father is somehow a rejection of Bail as her father (and Breha as her mother). Frankly this one annoys me because (talking in general, not in regards to Leia in particular) an adoptive/non-bio child being interested in their bio parent/s does not mean a rejection of the parents who raised them (and while this isn't applicable to Leia, it's not unheard of for an adoptive/non-bio child to have complicated feelings re: their adoption while still loving their adoptive parents). One of the things I really enjoyed in the OWK show was that Leia was interested in her biological parents and it was totally clear that she loved Bail and Breha as her parents. It really doesn't have to be an either/or situation.

The exception in the Anakin and Leia comparisons is, of course, when talking about Leia being angry. And she is angry at times! But she's also very kind. There's a real tendency to flatten Leia down to her spikiest moments and forget everything else that she is. I really would recommend this post from husborth about Leia and her characterisation, as it sits fairly closely to my own feelings re: Leia.

In the end, I will always find the idea of Leia finding some way to come to terms with Anakin being her bio father, despite everything he has done to her and those around her, to be the more compelling story than Leia simply not being bothered by it. I don't want her to have the same relationship with Anakin as Luke has — that would be boring —, it doesn't mean that Anakin would be her 'dad', it's about exploring Leia's character and what confronting this knowledge and legacy could bring to her character.

Leia will always be Leia Organa — she's also part of the Skywalker Saga. Why is it wrong to explore her in the context of that complicated legacy that is so central to the films?

[imjunebitch]

hey chat, if you claim to be a progressive activist, and your willingness to show compassion and advocate only goes as far as your own identity, you are bad at activism!

to get this out of the way, i certainly don't consider myself an activist, im not even fully out of the closet, im slightly active in gsa, and I post discourse on tumblr occasionally, that does not make me an activist. a lot of queer people or otherwise marginalized people aren't, or can't be, or just don't want to be, and that's okay! most people shouldn't have to be, in my opinion! but i Poast as I do bc i try to be compassionate and when I see shit I Feel The Need To Address It.

look at all the damn TRFs on this site, essentially. You'll note some things about the group as a whole, and this is a generalization, which is a bad thing, i apologize and promise im not shit talking any of these associated groups, im gonna make a coherent point i prommy! but the vast majority of them are white, perisex, gender conforming, binary lesbian transfems. nothing wrong with that, that's cool! but you'll note that all they ever seem to advocate for is, well, white, perisex, gender conforming, binary lesbian transfems, and they continually shit on everyone else.

(although they might occasionally show some solidarity with nonbinary people. oh, but only "TMA" nonbinary people. grabbing them by their hands and explaining the existence of intersex people I stg, drop your fucking bigoted false dichotomy that inherently forces nonbinary people to reveal their assigned sex to you to even be respected by you and still defines them by that anyway. drop your system that treats intersex people like an unimportant afterthought. collateral damage in your shitty quest to have a short snappy acronym you can drag through the mud because you don't have the fucking guts to just say that you hate trans men with your whole pussy) ⬅️ period of foaming rage over now

so here's the problem. they want to be activists! they really do! but their interest in activism stops where they stop, and they have no interest in forming compassion, alliance, or any sort of bond with anyone outside of that group. and in all to many cases, they have real, actual ire against people not in their group. even groups that have so much in common with them! what else could aphobia in queer spaces be? or intersexism in trans and queer spaces? or racism among queer people, or transandrophobia among trans women and fems? what does all of this have in common? two things really.

it's so fucking stupid that trying to explain it to a friend who isn't online makes you feel like you're just rambling because it is genuinely so fucking stupid. all of you exclusionist assholes are so genuinely cartoonishly stupid and so completely blind to intersectionality and just fucking compassion as a concept that trying to explain your stances and how fucking MANY of you there somehow are makes ME look like I'm just rambling away. had to get that off my chest

they come from a fundamental unwillingness to engage with anything outside of whatever they have defined as the in-group.

it boggles my damn mind that a trans person could say intersexism and exorsexism aren't real, or that a queer person could shit on asexual and aromantic people, or that a transfem person could say that a transmasc person doesn't actually suffer from their own kind of oppression, or that so many white queers are so shitty towards poc queers. but all of this comes from people saying "i want progress, but i only want it for myself, and the groups I relate to and nobody else." tma/tme shit is this at its absolute clearest. let's impose a dichotomy of who is and is not oppressed, let's define "oppressed" as "suffers in a way similar to me" and now let's shit on everyone who isn't "oppressed." (which again is clearly just shorthand for transmasculine, about 70% of the time. work your fucking issues out, trans men and mascs are not the oppressor.)

but look guys. I can go outside. i can read the news. i can talk to and hang around with my friends and partners, and through doing all of this i can see that you're completely full of shit. i can see sexuality being forced on asexual people,listen to stories from ace and around people about being forced into relationships and see that clearly things aren't fucking sunshine and rainbows for ace people! i can see and hear how people dismiss or deride intersex people and see "huh looks like intersex people are made invisible and ignored or otherwise treated as if something is wrong with them, damn, wish we had a word for that, how does 'intersexism" sound?" i identified as nonbinary for a while so i fucking know firsthand how people, even sometimes other queer people, just treat you like your assigned sex, especially if you don't present as androgynous. i can go to queer events and see how fucking unwelcome poc queers are, and I can fucking hang out with my friends and my partners, the "TME queers" you fucking ASSHOLES love to shit all over and see, fucking firsthand, how they are treated. how trans men are simultaneously infantilized and treated like predators for existing, how gnc people are treated like they're subhuman or novelties, how all of us queer people threatened, and hurt, and beaten down by bigotry, transfem or not.

and then I get to come home, and i go online, and i see you fucking vultures tearing apart other marginalized groups. people like them. people i love. because I guess that's fucking easier isn't it. it's easier to blame your problems on a nonbinary teenager who uses pronouns you dislike and say that xe's the cause of your oppression, or to shit on a trans man who can't bind or cut his hair because his parents would kill him instead of actually doing something to help your own fucking community. fuck you.

help your fucking community, at least. if you can't even bring yourself to try to advocate for others, then damn, at least spend your time advocating for your own group and not contributing to the issues of another.

I'm tired, yanno.

[mareastrorum]

That last episode really wasn’t as interesting as the discourse suggests, and that’s pretty much the problem:

First, Ludinus’s fight was not of the caliber expected for a final boss fight, which (in combination with his staff) suggests that it won’t be the last time we’ll see him. The issue is that the audience is generally quite tired of Ludinus because (1) he has made far too many appearances for a villain with a single-minded goal, (2) his interactions with the PCs are uninteresting because his motivations don't resonate with them in agreement or opposition, and (3) Delilah did the whole “Cerberus Assembly wizard who refuses to stay dead” thing in this very campaign (plus it was far more thematically appropriate for a necromancer) and that takes the dramatic tension out of the possibility. No one cast member bears the blame for those 3 issues; Matt probably should have pivoted to give Ludinus additional motivations when the Hells had so consistently demonstrated an inability to commit to the gods question, and the players should have done something to build a sense of purpose in their group (which would be their reason to oppose the villain). Instead we're left with "this guy has rancid vibes, kill him and do what he wanted us to anyway."

Second, the PCs’ decisions leading up to this point have annihilated any semblance of tragedy in the narrative. This isn’t a tragedy because that genre rests on eliciting a feeling that the characters deserved better, but the audience nevertheless understands why it turned out this way. That can arise from paying attention to institutional injustices, the allure of cycles of violence, or the development of tragic flaws (strengths causing a downfall). That isn't C3; this is a bunch of trite flaws (selfishness, short-sightedness, pettiness, favoritism, etc.) turning out to be flaws. It would have been amazing if this had been an example of hubris like we saw in EXU Calamity, but each of those main characters were bursting with pride in themselves, their city, and mortality, and while that hubris brought the Lord of the Hells back, they managed to prevent the worst case scenario using the exact same skills and resources. None of that is present here. Bell’s Hells are constantly trying to shift the captain’s hat to someone else, and their ship has been heading straight for rocks for the past 60 episodes. There was no intention to sail into the rocks. It wasn’t their strengths that led to Imogen accepting Predathos; it was the same indecisiveness that has plagued them the entire campaign. They had 118 episodes to build a proper tragedy, and instead we have a story that took hundreds of hours to say that unreliable people shouldn’t be relied upon. The result has been numerous posts hoping for the Hells to suffer all sorts of consequences (TPK, specific player deaths, refusal of aid from the gods) for failing to commit to a course of action. Why? Because then at least there would be some type of cathartic satisfaction that Fucking Around means they’re going to Find Out. It has nothing to do with imaginary people deserving a better ending and everything to do with feeling like this ending would have been more satisfying around episode 50.

These criticisms are not about facets within the story; it's not about whether X character was correct, whether Y fucked up, whether Z plan was the better choice. It's that sometimes people don't land their bit for improv shows, and that is disappointing after seeing skilled storytellers do so well with prior campaigns.

[centrally-unplanned]

There are two big "AI Art Discourse" events of note recently, which I thought were interesting: ACX's "AI Art Turing Test" and the new paper on "AI Poetry Beating Human Poetry". Both of these I think reveal the shape of "what is AI art for", and also say a lot about how these results were utilized in discourse.

To take the latter first, some academics quizzed people on some poetry and had these results:

We found that AI-generated poems were rated more favorably in qualities such as rhythm and beauty, and that this contributed to their mistaken identification as human-authored. Our findings suggest that participants employed shared yet flawed heuristics to differentiate AI from human poetry: the simplicity of AI-generated poems may be easier for non-experts to understand, leading them to prefer AI-generated poetry and misinterpret the complexity of human poems as incoherence generated by AI.

More human than human poems! This certainly seems impressive - and it is. You couldn't have gotten these results ~5 years ago. But that maybe doesn't mean as much as you might think? Because here is the opening half of the winning "Walt Whitman AI" Poem:

I hear the call of nature, the rustling of the trees, The whisper of the river, the buzzing of the bees, The chirping of the songbirds, and the howling of the wind, All woven into a symphony, that never seems to end. I feel the pulse of life, the beating of my heart, The rhythm of my breathing, the soul's eternal art, The passion of my being, that burns with fervent fire, The urge to live, to love, to strive, to reach up higher. I see the beauty all around, the glory of the earth, The majesty of mountains, the miracles of birth, The wonder of the cosmos, the mysteries of the stars, The poetry of existence, that echoes near and far

This fucking sucks. Straight up 2/10 poem. Did this bitch seriously establish the world's most predictable rhyme scheme only to try to rhyme wind with end? You had one job that you chose for yourself, and you screwed it up! This poem has been written a million times before, and says nothing - the Miley Cyrus lyrics of verse.

The reason this won is, yes, because AI tools have advanced heavily in the past few years. But it is also because it is being tested on a dead art. No one cares about poetry - certainly not the survey respondents:

We asked participants several questions to gauge their experience with poetry, including how much they like poetry, how frequently they read poetry, and their level of familiarity with their assigned poet. Overall, our participants reported a low level of experience with poetry: 90.4% of participants reported that they read poetry a few times per year or less, 55.8% described themselves as “not very familiar with poetry”, and 66.8% describe themselves as “not familiar at all” with their assigned poet. 

"Or less" is doing a LOT of work there; "yeah I read a few nonfiction books a year" oh sure, totally. 90% of these respondents haven't read a poem that wasn't displayed in the end credits of Minecraft since high school. No one does, poetry as a medium is essentially a relic. That isn't an insult to poets, by the way! There is no shame in being a niche. Not everyone can have the reach of hentai doujin artists; the community is small but they get a ton out of it. But you can't take the art of the community and expect that art to hit outside of it.

This survey didn't ask people to evaluate art; it asked people to evaluate their stereotypical impression of an art they don't care about. It was ~600 people hired off a website, they banged it out ASAP and moved on. This is not to invalidate the results; I am not actually claiming that "real" poets would have scored much better? Maybe, I don't know - that just isn't very relevant.

Let's swing to the AI Art Turing Test results to get more into why. Again, AI art is absolutely "art" in the sense that it is able to pass the test handily. You have to be head-in-the-sand at this point to think that AI can't make an impressionist painting a la the "most liked" art in this contest:

I have seen the "well real paintings have physicality this is a jpeg" discourse points and the cope couldn't be more real - 99% of art consumption in the modern world is digital or at least prints, let's get you back to bed grandma. But I did find it pretty funny that Scott noted this AI piece as one he particularly liked:

Because it is nonsensical, right? All that "faded paint", how was it originally painted - just bucket splashes of red and blue? What are those random doors, the random stairs going nowhere on the sides, the vague-nothings engravings? Scott just didn't care about that - he liked the vibe, right? Ancient ruins, epic scale. It isn't a coincidence that the Impressionist art did the best - current AI tools are always impressionist, they have an idea of the vibe and invent the details in between. In Impressionism that is the whole point.

Now the trap is to go "REAL artists can tell because of this or that" because idk, the tools might get better, they might fill in more and more details. The real revelation here is that you don't need the tools to get better - visual art isn't so different from poetry. Most people don't pay attention to it all that much. You see thousands, thousands of pieces of art a week; you probably don't even realize how many. Do you really care if the fading paint makes coherent sense on a billboard ad or a doctor's office wall painting? So much art that is made is "industrial" in this sense - it has no need to be good. Only good enough to fulfill its utilitarian role. In these fields AI absolutely is going to Take Your Jobs in some form, and already is (though imo not a ton of them). And it won't really bother most people. This can go pretty deep - I promise you people are "utilizing" AI porn right now. They are ~appreciating the details~ way more than is typical, the product is working.

All this works until it doesn't, though. When it is an art book by a favourite artist whose vision you want to pour over, learning that all the individual details were just made by AI completely defeats the purpose, right? Imagine reading a book of these poems. Outside of the novelty, "AI is the point" factor you would rather watch infomercials on repeat, I can't imagine a more pointless use of my time. "Reading arbitrary poems" is never fun, regardless of the quality of the poems. Most people don't care about poetry! The reason you care is that you care about the poet, and what they want to say. You read poetry with context, it being inserted with intent into the pages of a manga, at the end of a video game, because you like the artist and follow them on twitter. The quality of the prose isn't more important than that.

Which is a harsh limit for all of these kinds of tests. They essentially aren't testing art, right? You do not ever get paid twenty bucks to sit down and read a dozen poems and score them. That has no bearing on how you would actually ever learn to care about a poem. Which doesn't make AI art useless or anything, more that these tests will very quickly run into their limits of what they can meaningfully tell you. The actual bar is "creating something someone cares about". From that lens, I fully believe hybrid methods that privilege artistic intent are currently working and will improve. But I think for "solo" AI art getting that to work is going to be complicated.

[noaestheticacademic]

On the Identity of "Chat"

Like all the linguistics folks on Tumblr, I've been sent the "chat is a fourth person pronoun" post by a bunch of well-meaning people and and I've been thinking waaay too much about it. @hbmmaster made a wonderful post explaining exactly why "chat" ISN'T a fourth person pronoun, and after reading it I wanted to go a little deeper on what it might actually be doing linguistically, because it is a really interesting phenomenon. Here's a little proposal on what might be going on, with the caveat that it's not backed up by a sociolinguistic survey (which would be fun but more than I could throw together this morning).

On Pronouns

Studying linguistics has been really beneficial for me because understanding that language is constantly changing helped me to become comfortable with using they/them pronouns for myself. I've since done a decent amount of work with pronouns, and here are some basic ideas.

A basic substitution test shows that "chat" is not syntactically a pronoun: it can't be replaced with a pronoun in a sentence.

"Chat, what do we think about that?"

"He*, what do we think about that?" (* = ungrammatical, a native speaker of English would think it sounds wrong)

Linguists identify pronouns as bundles of features identifying the speaker, addressee, and/or someone outside the current discourse. So, a first person pronoun refers to the speaker, a second person pronoun refers to the addressee, and a third person pronoun refers to someone who is neither the speaker nor the addressee (but who is still known to the speaker and addressee). This configuration doesn't leave a lot of room for a "fourth" person. But the intuition people have that "chat" refers to something external to the discourse is worth exploring.

Hypothesis 1: Chat is a fourth-person pronoun.

We've knocked this one right out.

Hypothesis 2: Chat is an address term.

So what's an address term? These are words like "dude, bro, girl, sir" that we use to talk to people. In the original context where "chat" appears - streamers addressing their viewers - it is absolutely an address term. We can easily replace "chat" with any of these address terms in the example sentence above. It's clear that the speaker is referring to a specific group (viewers) who are observing and commenting on (but not fully participating in) the discourse of the stream. The distinction between OBSERVATION and PARTICIPATION is a secret tool that will come in handy later.

But when a student in a classroom says "wow chat, I hate this," is that student referring to their peers as a chat? In other words, is the student expecting any sort of participation or observation by the other students of their utterance? Could "chat" be replaced with "guys" in this instance and retain its nuance? My intuition as a zillenial (which could be way off, please drop your intuitions in the comments) is that the relationship between a streamer and chat is not exactly what the speaker in this case expects out of their peers. Which brings me to...

Hypothesis 3: chat is a stylistic index.

What's an index in linguistics? To put it very simply, it's anything that has acquired a social meaning based on the context in which it's said. In its original streaming context, it's an address term. But it can be used in contexts where there is not a chat, or even any group of people that could be abstracted into being a chat. Instead, people use this linguistic structure to explicitly mimic the style which streamers use.

And that much seems obvious, right? Of course people are mimicking streamers. It doesn't take a graduate degree to figure that out. What's interesting to me is why people choose to employ streaming language in certain scenarios. How is it different from the same sentence, minus the streamer style?

This all comes down to the indexicality, or social meaning, of streamer speak. This is where I ask you all to take over: what sorts of attitudes and qualities do you associate with that kind of person and that kind of speech? I think it has to do with (here it comes!) the PARTICIPANT/OBSERVER distinction. By framing speech as having observers, a speaker takes on the persona of someone who is observed - a self-styled celebrity. To use "chat" is to position oneself as a celebrity, and in some cases even to mock the notion of such a position. We can see a logical path from how streamers use "chat" as an address term to how it is co-opted to reference streamer culture and that celebrity/observer relationship in non-streaming mediated discourse. If we think about it that way, then it's easy to see why the "fourth person pronoun" post is so appealing. It highlights a discourse relationship that is being invoked wherein "chat" is not a group but a style.

[johanna-swann]

The thing is like. Even if you take Buck completely out of the equation Eddie's actions and decisions throughout season 7&8 were so shitty. A lot of fans seem to think of this as a "Team Eddie vs Team Buck" discourse or even a "Buddie vs Bucktommy" discourse, but tbh this isn't really about Buck at all.

Eddie started seeing Kim without telling her his true intentions. She probably thought she was just going on dates with this hot firefighter and didn't know her crush was already in a relationship or only interested in her because she looked like his dead wife.

While that was going on he also basically cheated on his girlfriend at the time. Eddie may not have had any romantic feelings for Kim (which I sort of doubt tbh due to the Shannon of it all), but he still met up with a woman and took her on date-like outings (romantic dinners and boat rides) and lied to Marisol about where he was going, who he was meeting and why.

Even when he finally came clean about the whole story to Kim he brought her into his house where there was a chance Kim and Christopher might run into each other - which they did eventually.

Then the whole mess with Chris leaving happened. Now, I personally wouldn't have let Chris leave in the first place, at least not to a city that's 800 miles away. Eddie's parents are retired, they could've stayed in LA (even in Eddie's house while Eddie crashes with Buck or Pepa) for a while. Or Chris could've stayed with Pepa or Buck.

But okay, I'm not Eddie, Eddie isn't me, he did let Chris go to Texas. I would've acted differently, but I'm also not judging this decision. Why didn't he go get Christopher after a few weeks though? Like, not to be insensitive, but what happened between Kim and Chris wasn't a huge new trauma, it more reactivated an old one. He came home and saw a woman who looked just like his mother in his living room. Of course that brought back old memories and old pain. But dare I say that also would've happened had they run into Kim at her shop? It was pure coincidence that only Eddie spotted her that day. It was still reckless of Eddie to risk bringing her around the house, but he probably could've cleared the whole thing up with Christopher a lot sooner had he just talked to him. Teenagers can be stubborn pricks, but sometimes having uncomfortable conversations with your child that they don't want to have is part of being a parent. It is still your duty to sit them down and tell them the things they need to know about the world and about life. Sometimes you need to apologise even when the other person isn't ready to accept the apology. In that situation Chris needed to know that Kim was just a friend Eddie met by accident, that the reason Eddie befriended her in the first place was because he also misses Shannon and that he's sorry he hurt Christopher.

Instead Eddie neglected his parenting duties for months, at least half a year. And I use the word neglect here on purpose. Eddie let his parents take Chris away, he let Christopher isolate himself from everything in LA, he took Chris out of his old school that they jumped through all kinds of bureaucratic hoops to get him into, he didn't visit his child for months and months (Bobby would've given him time off immediately had he asked and Chris is only 13, Eddie at least should've visited and tried to talk to his son in person at some point before the 6 months mark). Eddie is the grown-up, Eddie is the parent and he should've put his big boy pants on by the end of summer break at the very latest, gone to Texas, sat Christopher down, had an open conversation and taken that boy home in time for the new school year.

Eddie did not do that. Maybe because he was scared that he'd screw up again or that this wasn't fixable, maybe because he felt too guilty to see Chris in person yet, maybe because the thing with Kim rattled him so much he himself hadn't recovered by the end of summer. In which case he at the very least should've gone back to therapy. If you feel so scared or guilty or overwhelmed that you can't even vistit your child and have a conversation with him, then go to fucking therapy. Eddie didn't do that either. He just grew a mustache. I'm sure that helped.

Anyway. Eventually Eddie did decide to go get his son back. Several months too late imo, but ok, good for him. Why the fuck did Eddie buy a house in Texas for that? Does El Paso not have rentals? Was there no way he could've lived with a relative (like Isabel) while doing apartment hunting? He went there to get his son back, right? Eddie's best case scenario was to got to Texas, fix things with Christopher and then both of them go back to LA, right? That's why Buck didn't take over the lease entirely he just sublet, right? So why buy the murder shack? That's incredibly financially irresponsible for someone who had only just been scraping by in LA and expected to take back in his special needs kid soon. It's also not logical at all? Why buy a house in a city you're not sure you'll live in for more than a month or two? And tbh? Helena was not entirely wrong to worry about that house being safe for Christopher. Didn't the cupboard basically fall on Eddie when he tried to open it? Yes, Eddie did a lot of repairs around that house, but if I was Helena and if I had raised that kid for the past six months I also would've been protective.

Before he even moved to El Paso though Eddie tried to keep the move a secret from his colleagues. Again, why? Bobby was already Captain again, it's not like he would've kicked Eddie out of the 118 before he actually had a moving date. What did Eddie think was going to happen if he gave his colleagues a heads up about leaving the team soon(ish)? If I remember correctly he tried to keep it a secret right up until the last second. Does the LAFD not have rules about handing in your notice? Does Eddie not care that if he leaves suddenly from one day to the next Bobby will have to scrape by with a) an understaffed team, b) a temp that won't stick around or c) a permanent new member who he had to pick quickly without having time to consider more candidates? Does Eddie not think the 118 might need a bit of a warning before they're suddenly one team member short? That's kind of a dick move, but what makes it worse is that they're not just colleagues, they're supposed to be friends, family even. And he just. Doesn't tell them he is moving to Texas in two weeks? Wtf.

Anyway, he then arrives in El Paso and fair enough, he should get settled before he dives into the deep end. But even after weeks he still doesn't talk to Christopher about what happened. Instead he gets pissed that his parents got used to parenting Christopher in the 6 months when he didn't take care of his own kid. He could've had a calm conversation with his parents about how he is thankful for all they've done (and they have done a lot for Eddie and Chris here, beginning with getting on a plane in the middle of the night to fly halfway across the country because their grandson called them for help and ending with raising Chris for half a year because Eddie refused to get his ass to Texas sooner than that) and about how he understands that they got used to this new dynamic, but that he is still Christopher's father, that he has the last say when it comes to parenting decisions and that they have to keep him in the loop and include him more now that he's in Texas too.

Instead he stays completely quiet, lets his mom walk all over him without challenging her at all, then he follows his father to a chess tournament, leaves him there and blows up at his mom because Chris lied to her about liking chess. Yes, she pressured Christopher too much, but she really thought she was supporting Chris' talent and hobby here. This should've been a calm conversation between all three adults and maybe Christopher as well, not a pseudo-self-righteous revenge plot where Eddie got to play victim yet again. If you have a problem with a person you tell them calmly and figure out a solution, you don't hide that you have an issue with them, bottle it up, yell at them and don't even let them say their piece.

At the end of the season he decides on a whim to move back to LA, uprooting Christopher yet again and leaving behind a half renovated, half dump of a place that he owns now. We don't even know if he asked Christopher about moving back.

Did Eddie at any point think about anything or anyone except what he himself wanted or needed? He definitely didn't think about Marisol's feelings when he cheated on her. He didn't think about Kim's feelings when he led her on. He didn't think about fixing things with Christopher until he got scared he might lose Chris forever, it wasn't about Chris needing a dad or Chris needing to talk about his feelings or Chris seeming unhappy in Texas, it was all about Eddie. He didn't think about Bobby getting into trouble if Eddie up and left basically over night. He didn't seem at all thankful to his parents after they really stepped up for him and Chris (maybe they aren't perfect, but they did Eddie a huge favour and Christopher was mostly happy in El Paso). None of that had anything to do with Buck, it's just who Eddie is and of course that is also reflected in their friendship.

Up until season 6 it was less noticeable because the show was better at making Eddie seem relatable, but recently Eddie has been extremely self-centered and it's almost funny how Eddie keeps calling Buck out for exactly that even though it's Eddie who has been acting like this the entire time.

Eddie lands himself in jail? He gets angry at Buck for not being there to help him. Shannon wants to go to LA to take care of her dying mother? How can she even suggest that. Bobby won't let him back on the job because he doesn't seem ready? He yells at Bobby about killing his children. Eddie feels like a stranger in his son's life because he actually hasn't been in Chris' life for 6 months? Blame the Diaz parents.

Everything has to go according to Eddie's plan and when others don't play along then they're being selfish.

[literatemisfit]

Re: Talking about JKR on David's episode of "The Assembly"

I love how he immediately got emotional when talking about why standing up for trans rights was important to him. I often forget how emotionally tied he is to the cause, not only because of his own child being affected, but also because of his long-held core belief that members of the lgbtq are as valid and normal as any other (see: working with RTD, Phil Collinson, early interviews with Alan Carr and Graham Norton where there's playfulness around him being attractive to gay men etc.). And when people like JKR are somehow countering that as if it's normal to deny people's human rights to be who they are or love who they love and endangering all these people in his own life that he loves, of course he's tied to it, not only in terms of logic and reason and the injustice, but by emotion and worry and care for those other people.

But also, I love that when he starts talking about JKR (he also did this at a recent comic con), he starts by saying and acknowledging that she is a brilliant author who has created amazing stories and I find that so interesting because often, when people disagree with each other on huge core beliefs (esp on social media), they have to tear them down and jump to insults (fat-shaming t**mp, etc) which is not helpful to any kind of discourse. It will only add fuel to the fire for the other side to disagree with that kind of sentiment, having now fat-shamed other fat people - maybe who were on your side - and essentially saying that the reason you dislike him is because of his looks, and not his actions, which should be the focus. And I love that David takes the time to acknowledge that JKR did create great stories and that's not something he's taking away just because he can't understand her political/human rights worldview. He's not coming at it from a place of anger, emotion, telling her to fuck off and saying well her stories weren't even that good anyway - because that's not helpful, and it's not the POINT. The point is where the money is going - fueling anti-trans legislation. There isn't any of that pettiness or emotional language that a lot of people jump to in big heated emotional arguments, and for him to not give them the fodder for attacking him on an emotional argument because he does admit to the quality of her work WHILE ALSO absolutely countering her on human rights. I worry a bit that some fans WANT him to jump in and tear her down and go off on her as the father of a trans kid, but the truth of that is that it's not helpful. It's social media, it's tabloid BS that takes away from the POINT which is human lives are being aversely affected by right-wing politicians. He's not giving them that fodder because he's coming at it from a place of logic and reason, and not from a place of emotion, which is ironically what JKR is doing on twitter.

I love that, I love that it's a power move and a strength that he has as someone who is not on social media and who has the time and space (no pun intended) to breathe and think and react and answer truthfully and thoughtfully. I admire that in him because I think I also struggle to put the emotion away and not jump on someone and insult them, but to step back and take a deep breath and pinpoint what you actually disagree with someone on, and the rest of it isn't relevant because you CAN be the most amazing artist in the world, but that still doesn't mean you get to forge a movement against a marginalized community and say such backwards things about other people.