#rhetorical writing

[chimeramoth]

As I was falling asleep last night, I thought about something:

Whenever you use the wrong pronouns for someone, you are mis-pronoun-cing them.

I thought about what the effects of saying mispronouncing vs. misgendering would be when you are trying to correct them about something, and I think maybe using the term mispronouncing could be really effective.

The reason why is there are some people, despite all the historical and biological evidence we have, are never going to accept or logically understand the differences in sex and gender, and are never going to remove their framework of understanding their world from "manliness" and "womanhood." They will not budge that way, and because of learning behaviors to demean, belittle, and dehumanize things they do not understand, they will continue to do just those things when you bring up gender. It's a reactionary word now because of the virality of the internet and how internet cliques form.

But when you let someone know that they're mispronouncing something, they have a completely different reaction. Usually you will see them fluster up and ask, oh, well how do you pronounce it then? You see them open up to the idea of slightly changing their language, because they would not want to mispronounce something again in a more serious setting or a situation where they genuinely care about how they are perceived, such as like a public speech. In a public speech, you would probably feel more embarrassed for confidently mispronouncing a word and then trying to defend that that pronunciation is the truest and correct way that God intended, when the rest of the social group understands and communicates that word differently.

But people are less embarrassed when they have a loud, aggressive social group ready to defend them and argue day and night in their favor about gender, pronouns, and names uncommon to where they have been raised.

Conclusion? I think the ignorant and discriminating kinds of people are ready to ridicule you if you give them their buzz word. They're ready to just repeat hateful garbage that they got from someone else. But those kinds of people might feel a little more receptive to being corrected if they feel like they're being embarrassed. They may feel more embarrassed and un-confident if they feel like the rest of the social group has already accepted and moved on from the incorrect way of pronouncing something, and they do not want to be socially left behind speaking gibberish.

(This is not a call to action of any means, I'm not trying to get everyone to change the way they let someone else know that they used the wrong pronoun or gendered term for someone else. Just wanted to share an idea that maybe some people could use or try out if they'd like, and we could see how effective it may be.)

(I've also provided a could of examples below the cut if you'd like to see what I had pictured in mind.)

Example A:

"She is late to work. She is going to make the managers unhappy." "Actually, Shane is a he. As in, He is late to work. But I agree, the managers will be unhappy with him." "Um, she is clearly a girl. She doesn't have a deep voice and she has breasts." "Well sure that's what his voice sounds like and body looks like, but he is actually a guy. He gently corrected me about his gender. He told me." "Yeah well you can't just make up whatever gender you want. It's biological." "C'mon, don't be like that. Don't be misgendering people you don't know." "Misgendering? What are you, a snowflake?"

Example B:

"Ugh, Carly forgot to bring my book again. I'm never going to get my book back from her." "Carly? Do you mean Carl?" "Carl?" "Yeah, who wears the blue beanie?" "Yeah. She has my book about reptiles." "Nah man, you're mispronouncing it. His name is Carl." "Well she was introduced to me as Carly back in middle school." "Well, sure, but that's not the way we say it now. Everyone has been calling him Carl since we were like 17. Words and names can change." "Everyone has been calling her Carl?" "Yes. Him." "And you guys just call...him...that?" "Well yeah, why not? You know Jordan's name is actually like, Bartholomew or something, right?" "Oh right. I guess that's true." "And remember Miss Schaeffer? She's Mrs. Barry now. She got married last summer." "Ohh. Okay, I think I get it now. Anyways, Ive been wanting my book back..."

[holy--milk]

people be like "stop calling mxtx a genius, she's not even the best author in her particular niche",

and i'm like "but have you considered that i don't care if she's not objectively the best author as long as she's able to write characters and stories that make me go Insane for literal years?"

[facts-i-just-made-up]

What are some lesser known rhetorical devices that are surprisingly common in modern literature?

Syngunquity: Use of words you invent yourself. Example: "Syngunquity is the name for the use of words you invent yourself."

Deeznutcequence: Stating a similar sounding preface to an inevitable point. Example: “Have you ever seen an actual Deez?”

Noyomiiem: Reference to a popular internet fad to explain a situation. Example: “This is a man who is never gonna give you up or let you down.”

Just Fucking Lying: Popular in political discourse, you can actually just say shit that isn't true. Example: "Benedict Cumberbatch is not playing Khan."

Haetsynque: If you lack any talent to stay relevant in literature, you can stay famous by inciting hatred of innocent people and rallying useful bigots to your cause. Example: "J.K. Rowling."

Jhatchiipiti: Just have a computer write it for you. Example: "You can have a generative AI program write for you. Having programs writer for you is very programs and valuable, such as both writing, as well as having programming that writes is for you as well."

Hammocry: Hammocks are comfortable and while not traditionally considered a rhetorical device, they're much easier to sleep in. Example: "*zzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz*"

[chainmail-butch]

A Speech For the Colonist.

It is my opinion that communist movements within the US fail because they refuse to address decolonization.

It is my further opinion that the contradiction between colonizer and colonized supercedes the contradiction of class. The Native American Nations are colonized, Black people are colonized, Hispanic people are colonized. Colonization is the key to white supremacy and white supremacy is the key to class within the United States and Canada.

If you talk to most white communists about decolonization within the United States you'll get things like, "Well, decolonization will come with the revolution because we'll give the people the autonomy and resources they need to care for their communities." This is the exact same rhetoric that alienated black revolutionaries from the American Communist Party in the 60s. "Under communism every worker will have what he needs and be able to give according to his means, so we don't need to worry about race."

Comrade, we do. We do need to worry about race. We cannot simply wish a reality away because in our minds Everyone Will Be White in a communist society.

We need to acknowledge the fact that every single White Person within the United States, and the rest of the Americas for that matter, is a colonist. Our institutions are colonial. Our industry is colonial. Our cities are colonial. Our infrastructure is colonial. Our lawns are colonial. Every single aspect of our lives has its roots in colonization.

We still plunder the earth like we're sending silver and timber back to England and Spain.

By pretending that we are not colonists we make it impossible to address the ways in which we colonize. By ignoring the ways in which we colonize we fail to address the ways in which we are imperialist. By failing to address our imperialism we fail address capitalism.

We are colonists. Pretending that this isn't the case doesn't make it any less reality.

You'll acknowledge the fact that we live on stolen land but would you hand Seattle back to the Duwamish? Would you cede Delaware back to the Lenape? Would you take up arms, and then lay them down to a nation of people that are unlike you? Would you take up arms and lay them down again for a nation of people that you might not agree with politically? Have you confronted your fear that they would treat you just like we treat them?

For that matter, how have you addressed your conception of Black Nationalism? Any white communist will tell you that Nationalism as a concept is counter-revolutionary but how do you address the fact that there is an entire race of people who were ripped from their homes and forced to colonize another land? The solution certainly isn't Liberia, which is itself a colonial exercise.

How do you address the fact that any black person will tell you that a nation created for and by black americans would be a pretty good deal in their book? How do address the fact that our colonial nation isn't their nation and they know it? What do you do? Do you call them reactionary? Do you tell them that their desire for a home of their own is because we orphaned their ancestors and that they need to get over it?

Comrade, these are the questions you need to answer. You need to listen to the people we have colonized and you need to really observe our material conditions.

We live with the unique situation that, as a result of a vicious and often ignored genocide, the colonizers are the majority ethnic group within the colonized land. White people make up 57% of this country. And unlike other colonized regions, there's no France for us to return to. There's no England, there's no Belgium, there's no Netherlands, there's no Spain. The working class white is stuck here. It's up to us to address our own reality and to understand that, ultimately, no way and no how can we be the face of revolution within the united states.

No white led communist movement will prosper because, even now, we still have too much to lose. Our people will never start the fight as we are now. Understand that.

[rebelfell]

I watched this and immediately imagined Eddie as the roommate who’s agreed to make himself scarce and stay in his room for the night during your date (which is fine, you know, whatever, he totally doesn’t care if you’re having a date with someone that’s not him—because that would be so weird, he’s just your roommate, right?!).

But then at one point you come running into his room under some bullshit pretense and you’re like about to die from holding back laughter and he looks up at you like, what is happening???

And you can’t even say anything you’re trying so hard not to laugh out loud as you start letting out little stuttering farts. And now you’re both trying not to laugh and failing miserably.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you wail as you finish. “He got black beans on my burrito.”

And Eddie just rolls his eyes and shakes his head at this guy’s rookie mistake.

“You know it’s only true love when you can fart in front of them,” he says, shooting you a wink that really should not make your heart flutter like it just did. You smirk back at him.

“Well, it’s a good thing you love me because I might be coming back here a lot.”

Then you’re gone as quickly as you had appeared. And it’s not until later, once your date has left and Eddie comes staggering out of his room, gasping for air and playing it up l like he’s been suffocating all night—that you realize the most fun you had tonight were the times you were in Eddie’s room.

But that’s totally normal…

Right?

[nocturnowlette]

It seems like one of the biggest and most common mental hangups I find in almost everyone is a failure to adapt to superseding concepts.

That's to say, sometimes, earlier on in life or in understanding of something, you will be told a simplified version of the truth, often a black and white silhouette of an idea. However, the more you learn, the more you're meant to find the shades, the blurriness, the nuances of everything. It seems like many people don't understand this, or more accurately, are never rewarded for doing this.

The issue seems to be that on a rhetorical level, the most easily transmissible ideas are those black and white statements, the ones that punch the best. Most people don't attempt to engage in concepts on a deeper level out of their own interest, so if all they are surrounded by is surface level statements, their understanding of the world will never advance beyond a surface level.

This is what happens with bigots when they are confronted with actually interacting with the people they choose to hate on a more personal level. To even speak to someone is to treat them in some way as a person, and so, while they almost never budge on anything that doesn't directly affect their life even after these sorts of learning experiences, they are forced to add shade on something they desperately want to be black and white. Obviously, many people's delusions win out even with direct contact, but still.

This also most certainly affects leftist spaces. It feels like there are two different kinds of leftist spaces, ones where the solution to differences is to put up harsh walls and outlines between everything and police those rules strictly, and the other where the solution is to let them intermix and talk it out. It's sadly difficult to simply cast away that first one, the silhouette, when it comes to politics, because even progressive groups need to consolidate together to push on a rhetorical level for cultural acceptance and systematic changes, but the internals cannot reflect this idea, because it simply isn't how anything should work. It's a defensive reaction to difference, drawing lines around yourself so everything makes clear and simple sense.

Absolutism is a philosophy for children, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It just means that we're meant to graduate from that eventually. Allow yourself to see the grey, and you might find that there's a beauty to the shading.

[lead-acetate]

Quin: *learns that Obi-Wan slept with Jango*

Quin:

Obi-Wan:

Quin: now? really?

Quin: what is it about Mandalorians?

Obi-Wan: fuck off, Quin

[fast forward to the point Quin realises re's in love with Fox]

Quin:

Obi-Wan:

Obi-Wan: so

Quin: *glares*

Obi-Wan: *crosses hir arms with self-satisfaction*

Obi-Wan: what is it about those Mandalorians, I wonder?

Quin: *flips hir off*

(this is actually a pretty accurate re-telling of young man came from hunting, come to think of it)

[dlartistanon]

I want to share some interesting discussion about Arturia (and Executor by extension), including some discussion about neurodivergency--a lot of this informs their characters and actions and shines better light on how it can reflect real life.

Also, here's her prequel comic which gives more context

The outcomes of her actions are not often good, but she's definitely not supposed to be evil/malicious/sadistic. She is ideologically driven and, because of her morality axis being different from most, genuinely believes what she's doing is good/correct. She has reason for what she does, such as being opposed to Laterano's limited empathy and discrimination, and what happened in her childhood.

It can be read as a commentary on how the vast majority would rather remain sheep to survive, then be true and (possibly) die.

Her motivation can be summed up as: she wants people to stop repressing themselves. Which theoretically sounds good on paper, but obviously impractical in practice. Sometimes honesty isn't the best policy.

Kriede's fate, his death, was out of his own real volition. What resulted in him wanting to save Ebenholz.

It's unconfirmed, but she may be a victim to her own Arts. She has no inhibitions about removing other people's inhibitions. Or she gaslights herself/disassociates when it comes to her mother's death. She was probably traumatized, but underreacted. To her, Mom dying and using her Arts on her mom are two separate things that have no causation.

She does not regret using her Arts on her mother. She does regret being unable to have helped her mother go further to achieve her dream before she died. Arturia considers it her own failure that Mom died before she reached self-actualization. At the core of it all, Arturia wants to see more people be like her mother, willing to act on what they truly want.

People's despair are all worthy of being addressed and felt and released. That's extremely relevant to her worldview. It's what separates humans from animals acting on instinct. Arturia doesn't care for the Seaborn and thinks they are beneath notice. They are Nothing to her. You can be Good or Evil, but you must be human. Have human desires, because animalistic desire is boring. Human irrationality is what makes them beautiful to her.

People who say that Arturia caused everything to happen in Hortus de Escapismo ignore the fact that the overall situation had been deteriorating long before she set foot there. If anything, she may have just sped up the process of things that were going to happen anyway. Which is not the same as causing it. Looking at it from the perspective of the people living at the monastery, it's reasonable that there would be depressing thoughts floating around everywhere. But the Abbot tells Arturia that her music soothes the pain.

Laterano's response to the situation did nothing to alleviate the actual problem, the material conditions (ie no food). If Arturia's abilities worked the way some people think they do, everyone at the monastery would've been dead in a week or less.

If you're debating jumping off a cliff, then she isn't going to make you jump, nor will she influence you to jump. If someone is worried about Arturia's Arts affecting them, causing them to do bad things they otherwise wouldn't have, because of intrusive thoughts, then they shouldn't even be concerned. Because Arturia is not interested in that. Acting on intrusive thoughts is not what she looks for. It's more akin to helping someone dive deep into their subconscious to face the thing(s) they refuse to face. Some people choose to take this back up with them to the surface. People who contemplate doing bad things for brief moments normally don't have those kinds of thoughts sitting deep within their psyche to drag up.

Arturia obviously needs therapy, but the most important thing to her is whether you have the conviction to act on your desires. Let go and embrace how you truly feel. The extremities of pain and despair (and perhaps even happiness) are among what she values. A very complicated individual.

[basuralindo]

I really can't say enough how much I appreciate twst revealing Idia's chronically online behavior to actually be the result of Serious Trauma as well as a very real significant obstacle holding him back from just going out into the world and socializing.

Like, yeah, he could technically try harder, and with a combination of enough support patience and brute force (it's nrc after all) he does manage to do more and benefits from it, but it still shows without saying that trauma is genuinely disabling in so many ways, as well as representing how any other disability, physical or mental, which makes going out or interacting with other people in person difficult will leave people dependent on whatever alternatives are available, which is usually internet and fiction.

And yeah, his bullshit can be toxic, but mostly it's just irritating to people who have already stigmatized all of his attempts at experiencing and engaging with the world, which leads to him growing more isolated and unsociable as he's probably spent years in a spiral of shrinking social circles even online. And he's actually shown to be more empathetic and even emotionally intelligent than most of his peers, but actually expressing it appropriately is a challenge that he usually fails, due to lack of social skills, because he's never given the chance to form them.

idk where exactly I'm going with this now. It's just, twst's whole thing is not fixing issues, it's showing that they exist, and people live with them, and it's caused by damage outside of their control, and it's compounded and perpetuated by social stigmas and lack of empathy. And I think Idia's whole storyline is an excellent showcase of the difference between incel culture and people who have just been ousted from society by life circumstances.

[philosophybits]

Polemic, or the art of throwing eggs, is ... as highly skilled a job as, say, boxing... keep your face straight and throw them well! The difficulty is: not to make superfluous noises or gestures, which don’t harm the other man but only yourself.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Recollections of Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees, ed.

[biitchyberry]

how u gon write for the game and be like ‘no weird kinks’ like mamas. Have you not noticed what game youre playing

[revacholian-girl-utena]

This system does not require faith — only accordance.

Alt text: Screenshots from Revolutionary Girl Utena with overlaid text. 1: Dios on a white horse, standing up high on a broken bridge. Text: An innocence is infallible.

2: Dios and young Utena looking at young Anthy, suspended in the air on the swords of hate. Text: The decisions made by one are not decisions.

3: Anthy's silhouette against a pink background, pierced by many blades, hair flying. Text: They are inevitabilities —

4: Touga looking out the tower window at the stars. His shirt is open and he holds a potted cactus. Text: what would have happened anyway,

5: An apple with a slice cut out, pierced by many forks. Text: only accelerated.

6: B-ko the shadow girl in Prince costume, taking a heroic stance. Text: An Innocence is a continuous, compressed event, a sacred human being.

7: Akio, dressed as End of the World, holds Utena, dressed as a rose bride. Text: It is an honor and a glory to live when one is in office.

8: Closeup on young Utena and Dios's feet, standing at the edge of a sheer drop. Text: YOU — Is one in office now?

9: A dark, empty stage with a rose design on the lowered curtain. Text: No.

10: Young Utena standing alone under a spotlight. She is staring at the spot where young Anthy disappeared. There are cracks in the wall resembling the shape of the swords coming out of Anthy's body. Text: We are alone.

[dragon-cookies]

Slightly related to my last point but not related enough to tack onto the same post

Why have we seen everything between aggressive "flirting" and on-screen sex between male characters yet Charlie and Vaggie haven't even kissed

[bettsfic]

goooood morning betts! do you have any advice for developing a better grasp of syntax and comfort with sentence complexity? like, REALLY long sentences. i admire the prose of writers that can enfold clause after clause without sounding structurally repetitive; one of my writing pet peeves is when the same sentence structures are used over and over. a lot of my own sentences tend to be shorter and "to the point", and i think getting better at longer ones would help my prose to be more flexible.

in very loose rhetorical terms, this is called hypotaxis (compared to parataxis). what i would do is pick up Lydia Davis's translation of Swann's Way (Proust), open it up to any random page, and pick a really long, meaty paragraph. read it. read it again. then transcribe it either by handwriting it or typing it out. give yourself the physical sensation of creating the sentences you admire most.

repeat with Woolf, Nabokov, Henry James. any book, any paragraph. you don't even have to read the whole book, in fact it's probably better if you don't, if you read it divorced of the tension of the plot.

i actually did this recently with a passage from The Ambassadors:

“What I hate is myself—when I think that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the lives of others, and that one isn’t happy even then. One does it to cheat one’s self and to stop one’s mouth—but that’s only at the best for a little. The wretched self is always there, always making one somehow a fresh anxiety. What it comes to is that it’s not, that it’s never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to take. The only safe thing is to give. It’s what plays you least false.” Interesting, touching, strikingly sincere as she let these things come from her, she yet puzzled and troubled him—so fine was the quaver of her quietness. He felt what he had felt before with her, that there was always more behind what she showed, and more and more again behind that. “You know so, at least,” she added, “where you are!” “You ought to know it indeed then; for isn’t what you’ve been giving exactly what has brought us together this way? You’ve been making, as I’ve so fully let you know I’ve felt,” Strether said, “the most precious present I’ve ever seen made, and if you can’t sit down peacefully on that performance you are, no doubt, born to torment yourself. But you ought,” he wound up, “to be easy.”

the first time i did an exercise like this was in a workshop with Claire Messud, who printed out a copy of a single paragraph of Sebald, from The Emigrants i think. and we spent an hour and a half dissecting it word by word. at the time i was irritated by it; i thought it was a pedantic exercise. but it wasn't. it helped me learn how to close read, and i've more or less made a career out of my ability to do that.

for those who don't subvocalize when they read, i think reading aloud is important so you can internalize the rhythm of sentences. if you do subvocalize (most of us who learned to read via phonetics subvocalize when we read, which means we "hear" the words in our heads; those who learned to read without phonetics or before phonetics had been introduced to them can just take the meaning of the words in mental silence), start snapping out the rhythm when you find a good phrase or clause. i mean physically snapping. using the above example, "interesting, touching, strikingly sincere" -- find the emphasis of each word: INteresting, TOUCHing, STRIKingly sinCERE. if you repeat it over and over, it starts to become a song. you can hear the drumbeat in it.

and then you have the alliteration of "quaver of her quietness" and "the most precious present." and the paratactic "that it's not, that it's never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to take." and then there's "the wretched self." i don't have a rhetorical device for why that's such a banger, it just is.

if you transcribe a couple hundred sentences that you really admire, then take the time to comb through them and pick out what's beautiful about them, your writing will definitely improve. it's worth it to develop the habit of close reading everything you find beautiful.

[vinegar-rights]

Youll be fine, oh, honey pie

Who could ever hurt you? Who could be so unkind?

[vitactree]

I wanted to share this article as soon as I read it. It just...strikes my soul. I don't feel like articulating my thoughts further. It's just a really good read, true, and I like it a lot.