#obviously there are more issues with the crit side of the argument than just this

[ladyluscinia]

Ok, it's been hours, I've done a bunch of things, and I'm looping back to the Izzy Hands topic of the day because it turns out I do have something to say. So.

For anyone with a robust blocklist - short version: the "Izzy hates Stede for being a girly gay" vs "Izzy hates Stede for rich fuck crimes" is back. I will not be addressing this directly, because that's not what I care about today (and my stance is obvious lol). Instead, I want to elaborate on this short post since this particular debate is actually a really phenomenal example of what I'm trying to get at.

Because how do you insult a rich man?

I'm talking about a super straightforward, "I'm somehow in an elevator with Musk and I have one floor to say something mean to him" kind of insult? Or, to frame this correctly, how would you convey in a story someone insulting a rich man, so your audience can recognize quickly that A has a problem with B? Based on viral posts about Musk himself, some popular options are small dick, bastard, stupid, pig, rat, crybaby, toddler, unlikable, fragile ego, loser, etc. etc.

But like... What are those insults about?

See, insults are not neutral language (shocker). They're weighted with what our society sees as "bad", and rarely touch on what our society sees as "good". There's a million ways to call someone ugly (vs attractive), or weak and womanly (vs manly and respectable), or fat (vs strong and healthy), or unlikeable (vs socially accepted), or stupid and lazy (vs productive member of society)... I can go on for a while.

Being rich is one of those "good" things, so we straight up do not really have insults to say "you are bad for being rich and successful" (though we have plenty for "poor".). "Billionaire" might deserve to be a dirty word, but it's not. That's not how language works 🤷‍♀️ The closest is maybe "greedy" but that tends to quickly overlap with fat / lazy or comparing them to animals (i.e. subhuman). Or using wealth to imply a different failing - if he has to buy his friends it's because he's not charismatic, and that's the insult. Maybe in recent years bigotry has gone out of style enough that it can be a somewhat effective target, but even that's still context specific.

Insults are - at their core - about holding up some valued aspect of society and saying "you aren't doing this right". And a lot of those aspects are discriminatory on their face.

Pointing to a character insulting another character and saying you've found implicit internalized bigotry is some "fork spotted in kitchen" shit, especially about emasculating language. Men have spent all of human history coming up with ways to say they are better at being men than their rivals. From an audience perspective, the mere presence of a bias-informed insult (or a bunch of them) is realistically not going to convince everyone this character has an explicit bias being written into them, because they've gotten used to that going nowhere as a character trait.

Often, the asshole character is just being written as an asshole.

And to be clear, writers deal with this linguistic struggle. Sometimes they make up nonsense insults to try and create a culture that doesn't have our biases. They can use more direct examples and obvious slurs to denote the intended bigots, and conversely use more softened or otherwise defanged insults for the generic dicks. Insults like "bastard" are common as their moralizing is archaic. The insulted party & allies' reactions can cue you into how serious an insult is. And yeah, no shit it's all pretty subjective and individuals will disagree on reads, but it's still worth considering because while "being mean" is usually a character flaw, it's approached entirely differently than "being bigoted". Both of which are again different from "this work is reflecting the creators' bigotry." It's the same reason we need to be able to tell the difference between "justified killing" and "unjustified murder" in a story - it matters a lot in the storytelling.

Plus, fans who don't think about this are more likely to apply it by deciding the characters they like are lovable bastards 🥰 and the ones they don't like are undeniably bigots 🤬 and this is obviously, objectively true because don't you know "ponce" is a homophobic slur for men who aren't masculine enough?!? Clearly this is not about him being British upper class!

[lotrewrite]

8/12 Chat Recap

Only a week late, but here's the recap from last week's chat! Since it was a lot of positive commentary rather than suggestions, I've mostly copied and pasted the comments themselves, albeit with removing the names attached. So know that people really liked it :)

Question for the hivemind:

Intro:  we should probably make a standard for how we do the intro - both who it is, and WHAT it is (though obviously episodes will have variations). Thoughts?

General Comments: each and every single episode I read so far I was like OMG THIS IS MY FAVORITE EPISODE, and then i read the next one and was like NO WAIT THIS IS THE BEST ONE EVER and so on I want to give a shoutout to Stephanie Fisher for playing test audience! does anyone know who she is on tumblr? I want to, like, send her hugs; it's so nice to see someone who doesn't know what's going on comment everything is wonderful? *raises hand to say exactly that* i think overall there's less tweaking than I thought and also i'm super happy with the concrit i got one thing I'd like to say is that the style is largely consistent, except for a couple outliers each episode is legit good fanfic AND good TV i'm loving everything. it's not just better than the show, it's all really great on its own And I think we've managed to get consistent characterizations as a maybe off topic note, I'm super happy with the commenting because I actually felt super awkward about my episode, but having people comment how awesome it was helped so much with self esteem I'm super happy with the commenting because I actually felt super awkward about my episode, but having people comment how awesome it was helped so much like, people are so good at spotting things that don't make sense or that aren't consistent it was actually the first time i wasn't disheartened by getting crit, since it was actually really useful and pointed out valid stuff (btw I want official statistics of how many beers Mick drinks and how many people he headbutts) we have SO MANY awesome women btw are we sending the showrunners a link or sth? to show what you can do when you really care about the show and the fans? when we're done? I'm all for it

just something I forgot to mention earlier re: Stein and his perspective on changing time - he goes from ep 1 where he wants to change it for personal reasons and goes to this point where he's the opposite (which is the perspective I followed in ep7); I would blame that on episode 2, i.e. episode 1: let's change things, episode 2: I changed things, things went wrong, after that, he's all "we can't change things, look at how bad I screwed it up", as an echo to Sara's arc If we do a season 3 rewrite wishlist: go back to visit Ching and the Chinese pirates, a Nate cameo, Austria episode, French Rev episode, Israel episode

Episode 1: Nate is wonderful; he's a history nerd, he's well-meaning, he interacts well with the rest of the team; omg he hasn't met Len yet! like, if we weren't bringing in so many guest stars, we could have had him stay for the entire season and I wouldn't have a problem with it about ep1, did we ever resolve the issue of the nazis having the knowledge and the material to blow up NY? It was provided by Eobard. Is there anything stopping him from giving them more? The fact that he's a speedster with the attention span of a gerbil? yeah, I think the key thing is that he left no more Eobard, no more disruptions

Episode 2: before anything else, BAMBI WAS AMAZING. <3 BAMBI.  I think we all love Bambi. can we keep her on the Waverider next season? team mascot! i really thought those Ray scenes were so good. btw, I noticed over the course of the episodes that we have a really fantastic Ray arc going on, starting here. His emotional isolation and struggles with identity are just spot-on every episode. Like, I'm remembering why I actually liked Ray in season 1. Seeing Ray (rich white Christian privileged tech guy) have to deal with basically Mick's storyline is so much more emotionally satisfying.  It doesn't feel like punching down, you know? yes, Ray's isolated, but it's not because the other Legends are dicks. it's because he went through trauma and identity isuses What did people think of the Crusades arc in episode 2? So far so good :D I like the argument about faith vs logic

Episode 3: The JSA is awesome! god, yes. They have so much more character! I love Amaya and Rex' relationship. I was just about to say I actually ship it this time re Ray: him having pulled up pictures of the Bamibiraptor species because he misses Bambi? MY HEART GOD YES and THAT FIRST GLIMPSE OF LEN that was such a cool moment with Nate XD Nate and his grandfather was a fantastic moment.The Nate and his grandfather scene was ON POINT and also Nate's hemophilia was handled so much better too. like, I REALLY liked Nate by the time we were done with him Amaya was done really well, I think. it's kind of funny; we all, working mostly separately, gave Amaya a more coherent personality than the actual show did Amaya and Sara are awesome together too! Amaya and Sara had a real honest budding friendship everything made /sense/ and you even threw in a historical woman for us For a possible title: Heirlooms? Stein is on team "don't change things" in ep3 because of the consequences in ep2. Connection can be made clearer.

Episode 4: YOU MADE ME CRY. gooood title. very good title indeed! I thought maybe Sara was a bit very trusting of Eo in the bar scene, even though she knew there was an evil time traveler out there, but maybe she was a bit drunk? yeah, drunk and depressed was what I was going for

Episode 5: VIKINGS! YESSS! I LOVE IT SO MUCH all the viking myths being undercut, with Ray as the audience proxy! it worked so well! I knew from the moment Ray gave Mick the horned helmet Mick would headbutt someone with it XD I was so looking forward to it I really liked the Jax-Gunlod relationship in ep 5 – same - yeah, that felt really natural to me. JAX IS SO DAMN GOOD. they? actually seemed to like each other? Jax and Gunlod were so sweet - if we can revisit her too I would be delighed! also I CRIED THIS EPISODE TOO, the bonfire scene :) it was so well done; it was the send-off to Len we all deserved the singing magic was awesome oooooh, and Jax using the football terms!!! and Mick finding viking friends :D And Lisa! (Forever in the Lisa Snart fandom over here...) YES LISA IS SO AWESOME

Episode 6: speaking of awesome Lisa I thought the heist was basically perfect one comment, kickingshoes drew Dr Metcalf as a woman, but in the episode they seem to be a man LEN *heart breaks* that scene where Mick and Len are talking, and Mick is like he should've known he'd see Len since that's where Len belongs..............;_; the "it's where he belongs" scene was PERFECT That was the only crit I had, really - he shouldn't say he's alive so soon I loved the worldbuilding so much I also really liked the Sara-Amaya relationship, Yeah, I know we agreed to keep things ship-neutral for the most part, but I think if people are into Sara/Amaya they are going to be REALLY happy with this rewrite. XD also, it felt properly cyberpunk?? VERY AWESOME one last thing @ ep6: LOVE THE TITLE

Episode 7: my personal little wish is that maybe we could have a line of dialogue in episoed 7 where Amaya tells the Nerd Squad about time travel side effects and maybe mentions what happened to her? I liked that you added in the other supergirl folks, and you made mention of the green lanterns and Alex and Mick getting along! that was all so fun!! XD I think there's a few points that could use some more dialogue like, where it just says Felicity says X and Cisco feels Y i want to SEE those scenes I loved the Green Lantern nods! And I agree, putting into more of a script format would be good I think. oh, I loved Barry's "NOT AN URBAN LEGEND!" yelp for the dominators, their motivations kept changing! I think just stick to the first "they're evil expanders" yeah, keep it simple "Now we’ve got aliens, and time ships, and – uh, whatever you deal with, Oliver –” “Ninjas,” says Oliver, wearily. NEEDS TO BE ON A TSHIRT

Episode 8: I love Constantine And Zed!! ? I feel like once it'll be more fleshed out, it'll be easier to comment I did like Queen B's intro. I was really excited by the, kind of, cinematic image I got during the Queen B scene? Like, I think she has such a Look and is so powerful that we can really make her intro visually gorgeous, since this is supposed to be a visual medium