#summary of a theory

[timeslipcamp]

thoughts on episode 18

boy howdy can i just say how nice it is to read this when it's coming out and not when i'm like. at work and actively in meetings lmao

anyways we made it!! the festival of stars is here!! i'm going to cry when i see lyca's little bun i can just feel it. live reading here we go!!

spoilers through ep 18

i'm screaming already everyone pray for my roommate who is asleep

UGH THE CARDS RIGHT WHEN I OPEN THE APP they're all so prettyyyyyy i love them oh it's just towa hi jin

rip bunny girl. i was so ready for a jumpscare there lmao

VAGASTROM CAMEO RIGHT OFF THE BAT hiiii alan. note to self: get the vagastrom kids to help build my ikea furniture. stop wait are you telling me alan just carries around chicken. in his pockets. for the cats. chicken??? just in. his pockets??? BE CAREFUL AROUND DARKWICK GOD ALL THE GHOULS KNOW NOT TO TRUST THEM UGHHHH alan i love you

oh wow i've been so busy rereading chapters i forgot we got diamonds for new ones lmao

BLACK MARKET CAT TREATS god i love this game

oh canceled last year you say? perhaps because of the clash or a murder mayhaps?? looks like they're going with the traditional 7/7 date, that's cool. SKY KING IS REAL?? PROTECTION? oh she's still got two months okay interesting good to know. so potentially two more inter house missions then before they switch it up for the plot.

YES GRILL THAT LITTLE BITCH MC GO GIRL exhausting every avenue my ass.

the vibe hahaha i bet he learned that from rui. PLEASE tell me lyca is going to say "oh, truth!" at some point too. LOVE that subaru is suspicious. get him on my investigation team!! "choose a weaver" bitch who else would towa EVER choose hahaha except haru subaru blushing!!!!

towa is so funny dude

lyca will you please just tell me about my scent :( is it the kyklos be honest

omg zenji hi!! i feel like that meme whenever i see him, he's so fun. god i'm typing too much already i gotta chill. THAT LITTLE PERSON lyca i love you so much. zenji's actually gonna make me cry and we're like five chapters in dude i can't do this

FENYANG okay had to pause the fun music to look that up. apparently it's not a sheep but a river valley region in china lol. earth spirits in game though!!! that live in burial jars, that's super cool. someone remind me to add that to my anomalies list later. towa's little giggle is so cute ugh. such a fantastic group of ghouls for this mission im so excited.

ZENJI YOUTUBE VIDEO LETS GO i love that hes the one who tells us these stories. this is such a fun way to do this. who do you think draws the pictures for him? THREE OUT OF TEN hahaha towa PLEASE

ooo a riddle, that's fun. towa saying another wish is crazy. i wonder how powerful the sky king is? is there a limit to the wishes he can grant? is it a monkey paw thing? oh okay got my answer right away lol. oblivion and immortality....interesting. she could wish for the memory of the kyklos to disappear into oblivion. YES lyca we are on the same page!!! god lyca is so smart THATS MY BOY

NEW TOWA NICKNAME LUPIN making a post RIGHT NOW so i do that tomorrow. i mean lupin obviously latin root lup--wolf. so. anyways! it's actually so funny that zenji can't clap and make sounds hahaha i love that. fun detail. towa and lyca are so funny this is so good. "i'm good at jumping over things" omg the fox is back lyca said its on SIGHT

sho in a track suit????? the sky king is blessing me already HELLOOOOOOO BABY!! he's worried about salmonella ilysm sho

AND RIGHT AFTER IS THE MAN BUN oh god okay okay okay okay okay okay okay i can be normal about this okay okay

everyone looks so good!!! ugh top tier outfit design as usual. hodge and podge!! my favs!!! i love that they fixed her outfit omg. this is so sweet dude. subaru saying "carefully worn" makes me feel like someone's gonna rip theirs lol. my money's on towa. oh i bet the lantern floating is going to look so pretty.

STUFF LMAO HAKU STOP oh my god zenji might accidentally get laid to rest?? hello???

"here chimi take my hand" dude where. your hand is INSIDE your sleeve. love you tho. oh nvm he did that on purpose hahaha. "today, the line between our world and other worlds like the spirit world becomes blurred in hotarubi." FASCINATING. wait students get spirited away?? lmaooo at least they come back weeks later?? this is so funny. no big deal. super chill.

sky king is a smash. i am not taking comments at this time.

towa and lyca not sitting is SO funny i love these dudes. "child of beast," lyca; "shade" subaru??; "miraculous one" towa; "cursed being" mc; HELLO?? SHADE?? unless he was referring to zenji but like. shade? hello? as in a spirit shade or a shady soul or WHAT? i mean i've seen some stories where shades are like, reflections of beings so maybe because of subaru's stigma? oh that's so interesting. super cool that his stigma didn't work on the scroll, love that. can't wait to see what these challenges are!!

HARU HEY BABE omg wait are they rainbow toffee apples??? the gay apples we get to level up?? no way hahaha. omg lyca paying for us ill cry rn. little robot gear dude??? how much you wanna bet gen or mio or whatever made that? clockwork anomaly is adorable and i love them. THEYRE FROM DIONYSIA!!! ITS MIOS LETS GOOOO

does towa not like it because it's mechanical? more points in my nature being theory basket. also instantly pacified by haru complimenting him. love them

oh i bet it's ultio that fucked up the dorm then lmao. no wonder it hasn't gotten fixed.

love that someone's sabotaging this though, that'll make it fun. ramen buddies!! hell YES they're hanging together!! detective reaching shinjo lyca PLEASE subaru using his stigma to find the winning ticket is SENDING ME. romeo is going to kill him hahaha ritsu is so funny dude. too bad he ditched his date for legal matters sorry ren :(

oh cool subaru's controlling his stigma more! love powers that are tied to emotional states. it makes sense then, that basically confirms why jin's is on the fritz. zenji's been so worried this whole episode stop that you're making ME worried.

close up on sho don't mind if i do! lyca is so excited omg look at him. i love this episode everyone is so cute. oh my god the heart attack i just had when i thought sho could see zenji hahaha my jaw DROPPED. sho being so confident we'll be around next year please ill CRY. im so obsessed with him. i keep thinking other ghouls are my favorite but then here he is still being AMAZING. ugh.

magpie building a bridge!! story reference!! wishes on bamboo!! aw towa wants to be a hero :') lyca wishing for nero ughhh. "i would never again make a wish upon something i can't see." uh oh zenji, demonic pact reference? oh elias makes the soda that's funny.

SUNS GONE CONFIRMATION FOR TOWA i love having obvious theories proven. boosts my ego. anyways i hope this place is a spirit road this is sick. is the voice repeating wishes or something? repeating her thoughts???

oh hey alan. HAHA WAIT HE TOLD SHO HE WAS LOST oh my god i love you alan never change. whats the vibe between alan and subaru why is it weird. ALLY?? DISSIDENTS HAHAHA i just choked on my snack. "i'll return the favor" oh i can't wait to see that come back around. bye alan love you. zenji calling him dashing is great, who wouldn't have a crush on alan?

WATERMELON EXORCISMS?

kaito and luca festival date!!! oh my god i am eating GOOD today!! omg luca and jiro being buddies mention, fav rarepair if imma be real. it's up there. THATS WHAT ROMI CALLS HIM oh no lyca is getting the bar boys nicknames for everyone this is so funny. "toadstool here!" kaito i love you dude

i love when they make subaru taller than the gen ed students. he's like 5' nothing in my head. damn lyca you're cool as hell. can we eat the watermelons after we exorcise them. asking for a friend. OH MY GOD WE CAN

is the sky king the cowherd do we need to find his weaver? why is my mans crying :(

SHAMEPLANT??? oh my god towa. power rangers!!! omg this is so funny.

SUBARU SNAPPING LETS GOOOO i just had goosebumps hoooly shit oh my god. dude the music going quiet too was CRAZY. oh my god. ohhh my god. towa's immediately like "yeah you should have said it louder actually. i recommend lightning." oh that mask sequence was so cool i watched it three times ngl

dude the way i just got so sad that the wish isn't getting granted even though i knew it wouldn't happen smh. give us the panel of towa and lyca hugging cowards. oh what was with the creepy music behind zenji at the end there? interesting.

i really feel like this episode could have benefitted from like, two more chapters at least to wrap everything up. still though, good story, and i'm super bummed we never found out why the sky king was crying. what did zenji mean about the original japanese?? literally gonna be scouring people's posts for that, i'll link it here when i find one.

ugh such a cute episode this was all so so so cute. good episode. VAGASTROM NEXT LETS GO BABY!! maybe we'll get some more lore. mc said two more months, so we'll see where in the time frame this next one is!! posts coming tomorrow on towa's nicknames for lyca and subaru and i'm sure i'll do a couple theory posts on the new info once i've slept

the most important part of this episode was lyca's bun thank you and goodnight it's almost 2 am hahaha

[weibun-art]

Chapters: 1/?

Fandom: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Leon S. Kennedy/Chris Redfield Characters: Leon S. Kennedy, Chris Redfield (Resident Evil), Jill Valentine, Original Characters Additional Tags: Undercover Missions, Missions, Kidnapping, Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Leon is a USSTRATCOM agent (pre re4), Hurt Leon S. Kennedy, Whump, Espionage, Infected Leon S. Kennedy, Infected Chris Redfield (Resident Evil), Dubious Consent, Minor Character Death, Interrogation, Violence, Head Injury

Summary:

Wanting for others isn't inherently destructive. Selflessness is just part of Leon's nature.

[calmlb]

what if i want to get you started on the symbolism of dazais coat

(the neurodivergency does not allow me to understand the symbolism of dazais coat.)

(from the 'chuuyas not in the dark era' post)

NEURODIVERGENTS UNITE 🤝🏻

well i was actually referring to Chuuya’s coat in that post, but it’s relevant to both to them!

i’ve noticed a trend with harukawa & coats… when someone is where they’re supposed to be, they usually wear their coat properly (arms in the sleeves instead of it resting on their shoulders)

Dazai never wore the oversized, black coat that Mori gave him properly… as if to symbolize that he’d never belonged in the mafia. once he decided to try living in the light, he got his tan coat, which fits him perfectly :’)

beast Dazai does wear the black coat correctly, bc the mafia is where he chose to be in that universe

then we have Chuuya. he had his jacket in the sheep, but until sometime pre-dark era/post dragon head conflict, he didn’t have a coat— as if he was still trying to find his place in the mafia

i have a hc/theory according to my analysis that something happened post DHC that made skk much closer. if that’s true, it would make sense why we finally see Chuuya wearing a coat— & not only that, he has it halfway on

bc his partnership with Dazai solidified his place in the mafia, & assuming that Dazai would be there indefinitely, Chuuya was probably (subconsciously) starting to solidify the mafia as where he’s supposed to be

but then Dazai left. and the next time we see Chuuya, he’s still wearing his coat (he did decide that the mafia is his family, after all) but he’s not wearing it properly, it hangs off of his shoulders

this could symbolize that the mafia isn’t where Chuuya is meant to be— that maybe in the future, he’ll leave & find His Place (or perhaps he’ll wander & never find it)

only time will tell…

but that’s my version of The Coats Theory :’)

(ps: notice how Chuuya wears a jacket that fits him when he works with Dazai in the meursault arc… 👀 we’ll have to wait & see if this means anything)

honorable mention for Akutagawa who also properly wears his coat— symbolizing that the mafia is most likely where he’s supposed to be. however the fact that he’s no longer wearing his coat in chapter 120 (having gotten a new outfit) shows us that he’s having an important moment in his character arc :’)

[intersexbookclub]

A lot of thoughts about Cripping Intersex

On 2024-09-29 we met to talk about Chapters 0 and 7-9 of the 2022 book Cripping Intersex by Celeste Orr. This was a book that numerous people had requested we read, and we wound up with deeply mixed feelings about it. 😬

Overall reactions:

Michelle: I found the concept of “hauntology” incredibly compelling. I’m here for some shitposting. 🍵

Apollo: I loved the concept of compulsory dyadism. I found the downplaying of “perisex” as a term to be weird, and the lack of divulging intersex/disability status was weird. 

Elizabeth: the lack of diverging intersex/disability status wasn’t just weird, it was anathema to standpoint theory, and so every time Orr cited standpoint theorists, it made me seriously doubt Orr’s understanding of the theoretical basis that they actively chose to use 🧐. I was disappointed by this book. I agree with its central premise, so I should have been an easy sell. Instead I came out shaking, upset, feeling like Orr was a voyeur to our community, that Orr does not actually view intersex studies as a serious research area, that we’re just a theoretical fascination.

Remy: There were a lot of good points about how disability is socially constructed, but how Orr used “bodymind” detracted from their arguments for me. This book had a lot of uncomfortable conversations, some of them I was happy to read, some I need to come to terms with myself, while others I felt were treated a little too artificially equally such as the section with the phrase "the future is female" and the intersex community being involved in the queer community. 🤔

Bnuuy: it's really jarring how they approach the topic. There are a lot of pieces for a good theory here, but it’s kinda like Orr is just like the completely wrong person to go try to assemble them 🫤

As a collective, we generally were receptive (if not enthused!) about the central message that intersex benefits from disability studies/rights/justice perspectives, and that our community would benefit from more interaction with the disability studies/rights/justice communities! 💜

At the same time, we all agreed that Orr felt like a voyeur to our community. Rather than engaging with the intersex community, they seem to have a one-sided relationship where they read a bunch of things by intersex people but never actually conversed with intersex people. Whether Orr is intersex or not matters a whole lot less to us than whether Orr is actively participating in the community. 

We made a lot of (unflattering) comparisons of Orr’s book to Envisioning African Intersex by Swarr, an intersex studies book by a perisex author. The latter is a great example of how a perisex scholar can do right by the intersex community: Swarr is clear about being perisex, clearly lays out her motivation for writing the book (she saw medical photography of intersex people, thought it was fucked up, later became friends with intersex activist Sally Gross, and then wanted to honour Gross’ memory after Gross died tragically.) Swarr was clearly connected to multiple African intersex organizations and made an explicit, deliberate choice to publish her book as open access so that the work could actually be read by the African activists she has been working with. Swarr’s perisex status matters a lot less than the fact that Swarr writes in a way that demonstrates personal investment in advancing intersex rights/justice.

Orr may or may nor be intersex. We don’t know. We don’t really care, because Orr doesn’t demonstrate personal investment in the intersex rights/justice/studies communities. That’s what actually matters to us, and it's what a lot of this post is going to talk about.

Underneath the cut we're going to go into a lot more detail about the book. There were things we liked about the book, and want to be fair in our assessment. Some of the complaints we had about the book hinge on an understanding of sociological theory and academic practices, so we'll give some context on those issues.

What we liked

This book had a bunch of things going for it.

The one thing this book did better than Swarr was its use of hauntology. Swarr invokes hauntology in her book, but not nearly as effectively as Orr does. Orr gets a lot of effective mileage out of how the spectre of intersex haunts people’s bodies. Not just intersex people’s bodies, but also the bodies of pregnant people who are called upon to exorcise the spectre of intersex through selective abortion should a foetus be identified as possibly intersex.

The haunting metaphor rung true for talking about how we intersex people are haunted by past surgeries, forced treatments, medical trauma, and so on. Even when we’re “done” with receiving gender-altering “treatments” we live with their ghosts every day.

We liked the explicit connections that Orr drew between intersex and disability studies. Elizabeth in particular was warmed by the shoutout to how Garland-Thompson explicitly includes intersex in her disability studies work. We felt that Orr perhaps underestimates how receptive many intersex people would be to their central argument - Orr takes on a tone of “hey bear with my crazy radical argument” that we weren’t sure was really necessary.

Orr is not the first to make the argument that intersex organizing and scholarship would benefit from more alignment with the disability world. This gets into criticisms, but Orr isn’t the first to make this argument yet seems unaware of how regularly the argument comes up. Indeed there’s a whole chapter in Critical Intersex (2009) arguing that intersex is better off allying with the disability community than the queer community. It’s not hard to find intersex people on this very website arguing similar things. Intersex-support even has a whole section on it in their FAQ, though it does cite Orr (lol). Orr does at least seem aware of Koyama’s work making this argument.

We appreciated Orr calling out ableism in a lot of intersex organizing. When intersex people and organizations insist that intersex is NOT a disorder or disability, they conflate disorder and disability. This is an ableist conflation: disability activism tends to start from a place of resistance to the medical model of disability, whether it be by the social model or more recent ones like the political/relational model. 

Intersex activists insisting that intersex is “NOT a disability” reinforce the idea that disability is a negative, tragic thing. It’s the “I’m not like the other girls” rhetoric: putting down people who experience the same oppression you do in an effort to gain some credibility. It holds our movement back, because ableism is a very potent part of how we intersex people are oppressed. Orr does an effective job of laying this out, and we recommend reading the first chapter for this.

Orr coins a term, temporarily endosex, to talk about how people can learn at any age or time that they have had intersex traits all along. (Another way in which intersex can haunt!). For Elizabeth, the idea of temporarily perisex helped zer understand why perisex people can be *so* insistent in defining intersex as something visible at birth: because if intersex is something you can become at any age, this threatens perisex people with the possibility that they too could find themselves on the minority side of the tracks.

Other terms that Orr uses were big hits with the group. Elizabeth loved “curative violence” and ze expects to get future mileage out of the term. Ze also liked the framing of IGM as medical malpractice. Apollo praised “compulsory dyadism” as a concept. Remy shared that the cyborg stuff in the book gave them a lot to think about.

The book features a takedown of eugenicist rhetoric by a bioethicist by the name of Sparrow. We all agreed that Sparrow’s arguments sucked, were grossly eugenicist, and welcomed that Orr had put in the work to rebut his hateful messaging. Michelle praised how they invoked Sparrow’s lists of undesirables that Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis is supposed to prevent: for xem, it evoked monstrosity identification theory and ideas of the abject.

Elizabeth liked Orr’s argument that genital differences are a threat to the heterosexual (perisex) imagination: there’s so much porn out there that incorrectly presents intersex as “typical fully-developed penis plus typical fully-developed vagina” that really reflects how perisex people have a serious lack of imagination about genitals.

Fact Checking

There are a number of things that Orr says that we felt warrant an explicit fact check.

Orr presents the terms “perisex” and “endosex” as though they are contentious within the intersex community. They are not. The general consensus that one’s choice of perisex/endosex/dyadic is a question of personal preference and familiarity.

Orr clearly prefers the term dyadic, and makes a show of casting aspersions on “perisex” and “endosex”. They make it seem like their origins are disputed, and selectively cite Tumblr posts to make this argument. “Perisex” is actually the most common antonym to intersex on this very website, so it feels surreal that they're publishing the rare anti-“perisex” posts on this platform. Orr does correctly cite the Tumblr which coined “perisex”, the issue is they try to discredit it as a means to make it seem like this is not a term embraced by the intersex community.

Orr makes it seem like the origin of “endosex” is a suspicious mystery. It’s not. the term was first used in German in 2000 by Heike Bödeker. Bödeker is controversial for supporting autogynephilia 😬, but we've never seen anybody doubt Bödeker having mixed gonadal dysgenesis. 

Orr clearly prefers the term “dyadic” and makes zero attempt to source the term, and the most minimal attempt at covering its controversy. This term actually does come from outside the intersex community! The term came from gender studies, popularized by 1970s radfem Shulamith Firestone. And it’s controversial for more than just being a laundering of “sex binary”. 

Nobody calls it “ipso gender” anymore. It was coined as “ipso gender” but in actual usage has been “ipsogender” from basically as soon as the term was coined.

Orr uncritically repeats a quote which romanticizes home births in Black & Indigenous communities as that intersex-at-birth babies were accepted and cared for in a way that wouldn’t happen if the baby were born in hospital. This, sadly, is deserves scrutiny. We’re not saying it never happened: one can find stories supporting it. But the historical and sociological evidence show that infanticide of intersex infants has been widespread globally, and this includes traditional Black and Indigenous birth attendants. Collison (2018) as quoted in Swarr, reports that 88 of 90 traditional South African birth attendants they interviewed admitted to “getting rid” of a child if it was born intersex. That very story we just linked to about a Kenyan midwife saving intersex babies made the news because infanticide was the norm. In North America, some First Nations had similar traditions, e.g. the Navajo would leave intersex babies to die in arroyos, and the Halq’eméylem would leave them to die on a specific mountain. 😢

Michelle was visibly upset when talking about Orr’s  repeated comments which insinuate that LGBT marriage equality was an attempt to fit in + liberalism + conformity. In Michelle’s words: “AIDS activists did not watch their lovers die for you to say that marriage equality is conformist bullshit. As a [polyamorous] person who is not legally married to xer spouses, I really felt that one, and I was intensely angry about how Orr was dismissing those activist efforts and the importance of them.”

The Voyeuristic Vibes

The consensus in the group was that Orr’s writing came off as voyeuristic of the intersex community. There were several points in the book where Orr seemed strangely disconnected from the intersex community. Sometimes it was small things, like spelling ipsogender as “ipso gender”, or favouring the term “interphobia” when “intersexism” is actually more popular in the community (it also avoids the potential casual ableism of framing bigots as clinically insane! Which you’d think a crip theorist would be sensitive to…. 👀) 

Other times, it felt like a deeper, conceptual thing. For example, Orr’s top priority in future work was to apply their interpretation of intersex issues to critique how LGBT marriage equality was a homonormative, neoliberal, conformist movement. Not only was this viscerally upsetting to Michelle, for Elizabeth it was galling that this is what Orr seems to think intersex perspectives are good for: pushing down other queer groups. 😬 It added to the sense that Orr saw us as a nifty theoretical lens, and wasn’t particularly interested in advancing the intersex cause.

Another disconnection that was noted was in how Orr rebutted Sparrow’s claims that genital differences are disgusting and will not elicit sexual desire in others. Despite detailed rebuttals to other appalling comments from Sparrow, Orr does not bring up the intense fetishization of intersex genital differences which is uncomfortably familiar to all of us. Objectifying medical photography of intersex people with genital differences are shared widely and known to be used for sexual purposes.

Bnuuy was annoyed that Orr seemingly didn't try to talk to or otherwise get input/feedback from any disabled intersex people for their thesis, given that disabled intersex people are not actually that hard to find! (Indeed, four out of five of us are both intersex and disabled.) Given Orr’s emphasis on intersectionality, it’s notable that when they sought intersex texts to analyse, they focused on texts from nondisabled intersex folks.

Orr does not reveal if they are intersex nor if they are disabled. It sticks out. Whether they’re actually intersex or not isn't actually that important to us. We’ve previously read intersex studies works by perisex authors which we loved, and we believe strongly that it is possible for perisex authors to do right by the community if they take the time to engage WITH the community. (See Swarr as an exemplar!)

What we had major problem with is the faux “objective” tone that the book takes on. Orr seems to be trying to hide behind academic language, the “view from nowhere”, and an expensive paywall. This was noticeable to everybody. But Elizabeth, as the only academic in the call, came in with a lot more context as to why it felt gross.

The Misuse of Standpoint Theory

For Elizabeth, Orr's “view from nowhere” became egregious when Orr cites standpoint theorists like Donna Haraway, Nancy Hartstock, and Pat Hill Collins. In a surreal move, Orr explicitly points to Haraway’s famous paper “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”. This paper is an evisceration of the “view from nowhere”, “objective” approach to academic knowledge production. Every view is a view from somewhere, and pretending otherwise feeds into the history of how science has been violently used to gaslight and oppress minority groups.

In short, Haraway says:

Elizabeth explains that as result, feminist methodologies accept subjectivity as part of the process: the researcher is expected to articulate their own standpoint, to be transparent about their subjectivity rather than to hide it behind a pretense of “objectivity”. There’s an emphasis on reflexivity, the fancy word for when scholars reflect on how their own social position affects how they do their research.

Feminist disability studies and crip theory both build on feminist standpoint theory, and Orr claims to be using both. Both frameworks understand disability as socially constructed, and that this social construction is entwined with other social forces such as capitalism, sexism, racism, and so on. Feminist disability studies scholars like Wendell (who Orr cites) clearly position themselves and how their disability (or lack thereof) affects their research. 

Crip theory builds further on feminist disability studies, and acts to subvert ideas of ability. It began in the arts - cripping performance art by having wheelchair users perform as dancers, blind people doing photography, Deaf people making music, etc. It spread into other domains, such as crip technoscience. Crip theorists also inherit the tradition of reflexivity, whether it be Eli Claire writing about their personal experiences of disability or Sami Schalk talking about how being nondisabled affects her work as a disability studies scholar.

We provide all this exposition to emphasize how unusual it is that Orr provides absolutely zero information about their positionality nor their personal motivations to this research. 🧐 They provide zero reflexivity as to how their position may have affected their work. Yet their personal biases and subjectivity seemed obvious to us - we were all, in varying ways, set off by Orr trying to pass off subjective opinion as “correct”. As an example, we mentioned how Orr clearly prefers the term “dyadic” and manufactures controversy about the origins of “endosex” and “perisex”, while at the same time conveniently leaving out the unsavoury origins of the term “dyadic”. 

Elizabeth pointed out that the ironic thing is Orr didn’t even need to invoke standpoint theory to make the argument that intersex studies would benefit from a disability studies lens. Plenty of intersex and disability studies is done using different frameworks.

Indeed, Elizabeth was surprised that this kind of error made it through a PhD thesis defense. In the department where ze teaches, if a student displays a major misunderstanding about their chosen theoretical framework, the student would be asked to redo the relevant thesis checkpoints (e.g. candidacy paper, thesis proposal/defense) until they get it right.

Some background on academia

Elizabeth brought up a structural problem with the book: it looks like it had zero intersex studies scholars review it prior to publication. 💀

This book originated as a PhD dissertation, which anybody can read for free here. A typical PhD programme is structured as a master-apprentice model of education, where a PhD student apprentices to one (sometimes two) professors. These are known as thesis advisors. The culmination of the PhD is a thesis (aka dissertation), which presents original research done by the student. 

To graduate, the thesis needs to pass examination by a committee of professors. The committee acts as a secondary source of support to the student, providing guidance or perspectives to complement the advisors.

Elizabeth explained that when ze assembles a thesis committee for one of zer graduate students, the goal is to ensure any area that the student is venturing into has at least one committee member who is well versed in it. So, let’s say you propose you’re going to do a thesis on “intersex studies meets disability studies” but your thesis advisors are both gender studies people (as Orr’s were). Elizabeth would expect that Orr’s thesis committee would then include at least one disability studies scholar and at least one intersex studies scholar.

Instead, Orr’s thesis committee doesn’t have a single intersex studies scholar on it. Neither the book’s acknowledgements nor the thesis’ acknowledgments acknowledge any intersex studies scholars. Even though Orr is citing intersex studies scholars like Georgiann Davis, Morgan Holmes, and Cary Gabriel Costello, there's nothing to indicate that Orr has ever gotten feedback from any intersex people. This is HIGHLY unusual: normally, intersex studies books have acknowledgments which acknowledge several publicly intersex people, and often one or two intersex organizations. 

Research is a highly social activity: researchers are expected to go to conferences, to be in conversation with people working on similar topics. And Orr is clearly social about their research, acknowledging the feminist/gender studies communities they have been a part of. It just seems like intersex studies scholars weren’t a priority for Orr’s academic socializing. 🙃

Orr’s acknowledgments doesn’t even contain the word intersex, which is unprecedented in our collective experience of intersex non-fiction. This is why Elizabeth says that ze was left with the impression that Orr doesn’t think intersex studies is a serious field of research. It appears that Orr views intersex literature as something to be consumed for their benefit, and not a community worthy of participation and a bi-directional relationship.

Early in the book, Orr points to Lennard Davis’ work with the Deaf community on reframing Deaf activism away from the “we’re not disabled we’re a linguistic minority” rhetoric. It’s a great example of disability studies scholars having an impact. Thing is: Davis openly talks about how he grew up in a Deaf family that was part of the Deaf Community. While Davis is not little-d deaf, he took on the project as a member of the capital-D Deaf community. His writing (including book acknowledgments) reflect this.

Elizabeth also pointed out that there are scripts and precedent in academia for how to handle positionality and reflexivity when you’re questioning or closeted. If Orr were closeted or questioning, they would have an excellent way to talk discreetly about it through their very own concept of “temporarily endosex”: Orr could write they don’t know they’re not perisex, frame it around how few perisex people actually know they’re perisex, and retain plausible deniability. 

Other notes

Bnuuy was frustrated with the implication that disability studies is The Only Right Way to analyse intersex. It’s a useful lens for understanding intersex, but at times it felt like Orr was arguing it was the only appropriate lens rather than one of a collection of suitable lenses. Theories are analytic tools, and social phenomena are complex and fluid - it’s a matter of finding a suitable tool for a given research question, rather than there being One Correct Way to understand things. 

Orr’s use of “bodymind” didn’t quite land. The term was created by Margaret Price to subvert the idea that body and mind are dichotomous: many disabilities cannot neatly fit into “mental” vs “physical”. It’s a term that’s had productive use in disability studies. But Orr’s use of it got a negative reaction. Remy pointed out it felt like it instead it actually reinforced the body-mind distinction. Intersex is, after all, a physical thing, and the idea of “brain intersex” is very poorly received by the intersex community - it’s seen as a way that perisex trans people appropriate intersex and/or live in denial about being perisex. It felt like Orr was using the word on autopilot rather than thinking about when and where it is actually subversive.

Bnuuy was concerned that Orr was reading OII Australia’s information on intersex in bad faith. Orr criticizes them for discursively distancing intersex from disability. Bnuuy points out that OII Australia is not writing for an academic (disability studies) scholarship. This is an advocacy organization speaking to a general audience that understands disability through the medical model. Bnuuy read the quotes from OII Australia as them just distancing themselves from a medicalized understanding of disability.

Elizabeth brought up that Orr’s manufactured controversy of “perisex” may have a classist element.  While endo- does make sense as an antonym to inter- if one has formal science background, the term peri- is not conventionally an antonym to inter-. Elizabeth has personally noticed a resistance from zer fellow academics to perisex on the grounds that it’s “using scientific terminology incorrectly”, and thinks that’s a classist take. 

Michelle brought up that “it also didn't sit great with me that they [Orr] were very condescending about Tumblr like, ‘aww, look at the baby activists trying to do a scholarship," whereas what I'd describe as ‘folk scholarship’ on Tumblr has been very valuable to me. It's not always correct and there can be misinformation, but it has worth.” Remy was unimpressed with how limited/selective Orr’s engagement seemed to be with intersex Tumblr, as well as Orr’s centrist take on “the future is female”.

Closing thoughts

This was a deeply imperfect piece of scholarship. Orr came across as disconnected from the intersex community, and uninterested in working with the community. The work still has some merits: Orr’s first chapter provides an incisive discussion of how ableism is detrimental to intersex advocacy and that trying to distance intersex from disability only adds to societal ableism. Ableism is a serious force in intersex discrimination and we’re stronger off understanding this and explicitly resisting it.

We hope that the stink of Orr’s voyeurism does not sully the important central message of their book. Work needs to be done to teach more intersex people about disability studies. Disability does not mean disorder. Disability does NOT mean medical problem. The disability rights and justice movements are FULL of disabled groups who, just like the intersex community, are actively seeking de-pathologization, bodily autonomy, patient-led care by respectful and well-informed physicians, and fighting neo-eugenics. We are in good company with groups like the Deaf, neurodiversity, and little people communities. 

[theangrycomet-art]

Sparks and Optics, What the heck do they have to do with an Alien Robot’s Health: A Minor Set of Headcannons on how Sparks work in TFA

A long winded and doodled brain worm that has been haunting yours truly because I got an ask about optic colors :)

This takes @paradimeart orbabies au/"how were more bots built without the allspark" headcannon/au into account so check that for some context on the exact details of Protorbs/Protomechs and the whole “Vector Sigma is now in charge of repopulating cybertron in place of the Allspark”

Alright, enough dilly dallying, let’s dive into this headcannon turned into a Chapter in a high school science textbook

First Off, Sparks

Each Cybertronian requires their spark to live, it powers their bodies and serves as a “soul”. Basic Transformers lore there.

Though with the whole Headmaster thing, there is evidence to argue that a transformer of any faction can theoretically survive being separated from their spark chamber for some time, as Bulkhead, Sentinel, and Starscream all were able to operate and function just as heads. I believe that there IS a time limit for this determined by how much power their heads can store. There is also the fact that some bots such as Blitzwing, Lugnut, and Wasp (and maybe Bumblebee- I don’t remember 100% for him) have more “modular “ frames that allow them to move their body parts independently when seperate d drone them. Both of which aspects are another interesting topic to explore but THAT’S a topic for a whole ‘nother post.

Transcript: The default color of a Cybertronian’s optic is determined on their spark. Pre-War, when customizations were more readily available, there were far more Optic Colors. This trend , however, has all but died in present day. End of Transcript.

As read on the tin, the optic color of a bot is shown to match the colors of the charged lining of the interior of a bot, blue for Autobots, red for Decepticons, purple in Wasp’s case. Given the the uniformity of eye colors in TFA, the inverse explanation I believe is that getting Optic Mods is considered a faux pas.

Between the strained resources from the war, Autobot propaganda, and the Decepticons’ limited access to such amenities, wasting materials on such minor modifications would not only seen as wasteful but highly suspicious. Those outliers with optic colors outside the typical hues of their faction likely face scrutiny from their peers on both sides.

But what is the difference between an autobots and a deceticon’s spark?

I believe that the critical difference is their ability to process and store energon.

Spark Anatomy

The spark is built into three major components, the shield dome, the outer core, and the inner core. Each is critical to maintaining a Cybertronian’s health and ensure their long lifetimes.

Transcript 1: a Healthy “Autobot-Typical” Spark. Shield Dome -serves as defense for the spark, EXTREMELY sensitive. Inner core: -extremely dense,innermost energon, made of multiple spheres contracted together, individual spheres CAN be removed. Outer core: -CRITICAL FOR SPARK STABILITY, keeps inner core safely in place.

Transcript 2: a Healthy “Decepticon-Typical” Spark. Shield Dome -serves as defense for the spark, EXTREMELY sensitive. Inner core: -larger energon deposits, tho (avg) the same amount, red tint indicates (here there are three upward facing arrows indicating “increased”) endurance. Outer Core: - more prone to breaking down but recovers quickly.

As shown above, the concentrations of energon that build up the inner cores of a transformers spark are significantly larger in Decepticons than in Autobots, allowing them to handle larger frames with ease, but also generate greater forces of strength without tiring themselves out as easily. It’s’ built for higher endurance and energy out body, which allows them to carry heavier duty tools (and weapons) naturally without easily exhausting themselves.

However, this comes at a cost, as the outer core, or this sparks “lining” is at a higher risk of warping or or worse damage.

Which leads us to OverCharged Sparks.

Overcharged Sparks

Overcharged sparks, or O.Sparks, have occurred for as long as the Allspark has been granting life, a minor glitch in the system. They are varied, but they’re all sparks who generate high maintenance cores with very limited outlets for the excess energy they generate. They come in two major types, depending on the source of their “overcharge”.

Transcript: Overcharged Sparks: Type 1. -sparks creation had too much energy output -> hence the name, excess charge cases the inner core to be over stimulated and lash out, bashing into the outer core, warping it, or worse tearing it.

Type 1 O.Sparks’ inner cores are permanently disrupted. They cannot stabilize nor can the individual energon spheres concentrate together on their own. There is very little treatment for grown frames with this condition, with protorbs/protomechs there is a limited window during which one can encourage the spark to concentrate its excess energy into developing an outlier. HOW one is supposed to go about this is completely unknown, and though Yoketron had some theoreys, his focus was more on making sure the protorbs/protomechs in his care survived into adulthood.

Due to this fact, there was an attempt made to force more outliers out of the latest batch of Protorbs by overstimulating their Sparks at creation. This experiment forced a generation of “experimental frames” to acquire with O.Sparks.

The experiment was a complete failure.

With 60% of the frames not surviving outside the proto-mold (so many little puddles of shiny melted baby goo to mop up), only half of the remaining batch not making it past the Protorb stage. Out of the surviving batch- a little more than a 200 grew to full maturity. With all that carnage, only 7% of the survivors developed any desirably outliers l.

The rest continue to suffer a lifetime of symptoms that few doctors could diagnose, much less treat with no gain. Most of these models aren’t expected to life so much as a fraction as the average expected lifespan for an autobot.

This was done without Yoketron’s knowledge, as he did not directly interact with the Vector Sigma when it was doing its thing and left the maintenance of VS to it’s keepers. But when he found exactly WHY so many of the children in his care kept suffering… let’s just say few have ever had the misfortune to see the cyber-ninja master terrifying fury. The already limited amount of outsiders allowed access to the “Daycare” went down to exactly 1 (and it certainly wasn’t Ultra Magnus or any of his lackeys) and the bots selected for “babysitting” were run over with a fine toothed comb.

After this, the Autobots focused on standardizing models. Two of the selected models were the smaller, more energy efficient, “scout” protoform model that Bumbleebee has and the sturdy, reliable truck model that Ratchet and Ironhide share.

Hence why there are so many younger bots share frame types.

The “Success” Stories

Despite the tragedy of the Council’s meddling, there are a few notable survivors success stories of the Outliers Experiment, some who even live with minimal symptoms and some desirable outliers.

Transcript: Notable Bots with O. Type 1 Sparks: Blurr. Blurr’s spark channeld his excess “charge” into his speed. Since his spark figured this out as a protomech & stableized some, his optics were able to settle closer to a healthy cyan.

Most well known amongst the Elite Guard would be Blurr, with his outlier being, of course, his speed. His spark used the excess charge to increase his processor efficiency and in turn encouraged charge release through movement. Holding still for extended periods of time is not an option, leading to limited and short recharges, which in turn lead to increase in irritability.

Transcript: Notable Bots with O. Type 1 Sparks: Bulkhead is an anomaly amongst the O!Sparks. His spark addressed his excess charge by enforcing his frame to a heavy duty build and "grow" until his frame could better handle it. He literally "broke the mold".

Bulkhead is the only bot with an O!Spark who's excess charge was directed to re-enforce his frame. According to his specs, he is supposed half his size (and a quarter of his weight). With this re-enforced frame, he is also the asymptomatic O!Spark.

Transcript 1: Moonracer is an atypical O!Spark. Her spark tuned her excess energy to a gravity manipulator. However her small frame still struggles to compensate for the remaining charge, resulting in her going into stasis at random.

Moonracer, like Blurr, proved to be an outlier with her built in Gravitic Adjuster. However, like Blurr, her spark does not allow Moonracer to stay still for long periods of time. Her charge builds up and leads to forced reboots to re-stabilize her energy levels. (ie if she stops moving for too long than she passes out) While not the worst of the potential side effects, it has impeded her desire to be a pilot.

Transcript 2: Most Cybertronians with O!Sparks don't adapt to the excess charge. These unlucky frames life spans are much shorter due to their sparks literally burning out their frame. Their lives can be extended through extensive modding and in some cases a complete frame change but their symptoms will always remain.

Most of the survivors of the Outlier experiments do not make it to 10,000. In fact, their lucky to make it to 3,000.

Typical Side Effects for Type 1 Overcharged Sparks

Eye Rings/cracked optics

poor vision

insomnia

higher core temperature

joint stripping (can be treated with regular oiling)

chronic pain

slow self-repair nanite response (can be supplemented)

Type 2 O!Sparks

Transcrpit: Type 2 is the most common type of O!Spark, and is typically the result of severe physical trauma, whether from combat, medical procedures, just plain bad luck.

These are the result of an Outer Spark Core failure, damaging the inner core and resulting in instability. As such, Type 2 O.Sparks are rarely found in Decepticons.

Most importantly, they are Treatable.

There are 3 sub types; 2-a, 2-b, and 2-c.

Type 2-a

Type 2-a O!Sparks are typically the result of poor mental health.

Long-term emotional distress can cause the Outer Spark Core to breakdown and weaken, causing instability within the Innermost Spark Core.

The most obvious symptom is a yellow tint to the Optics. The stronger the yellow tones, the worse state the Inner Core is.

The spark must repair itself on its own but in order for that to occur the patient must address the root problem. Treatment focuses on restoring the Outer Core and minimizing stimulation of the Inner Core.

Though uncommon, many veterans of the great war have develop some degree of Type 2-a O!Sparks.

Side Effects

memory purges

poor recharge cycles

lethargy

limited EM Field extentsion

chronic fatigue

Type 2-B

Type 2-B is the result of the Spark Chamber being damaged, BUT the spark core remained intact.

Research in Type 2 Overcharged Sparks began anew when the ailing Ultra Magnus's spark stability was under question.

In his case, his Innermost Energon was severely destabilized within the InnerCore, but the cores themselves remained intact. Until the cores are stabilized and the Innermost Energon stabilized, it is best to keep the patient in a medically induced coma.

Often times the circumstances of this kind of spark damage are in an unsalvageable frame, so there is not much research in long-term treatment, but First Aid believes it to be curable with the right treatment. How much of that assessment is First Aid being overly optimistic and under a lot of pressure is left to be decided

Side Effects

Optic Cracking (permanent)

lethargy

limited EM Field extentsion

chronic fatigue

chronic pain (though this could be due to the frame damage associated with such injuries)

Type 2-C, a recent discovery

Type 2-c O!Sparks have only recently been reclassified as a separate subset with the Autobots Aerial project.

Not much is known about them, and with only 2 known surviving holders of 2-c sparks, the data pool is extremely limited.

Type 2-c damage seems to be the result of the spark overextending itself to it's breaking point. It is believed to occur during medical procedures or extreme physical trauma, or in the Jettwins cases, both. The running theory is that the sparks are so desperate to live they open themselves up to any possibility of survival.

As a result, Type 2-c sparks can be artificially stimulated into developing outliers.

Optic notes: a second pupil ring developed in the optics after the Spark is manually/medically stabilized, geometric cracks are develop. A case of nearsightedness has developed in one of the subjects though this has easily corrected with a visor.

Symptoms: None. Then again 2-C overcharged sparks typically result in short but extremely painful deaths.

Medical Notes: The Jettwins have shown none of the typical symptoms associated with Overcharged Sparks outside their optic color changing and their inner core scattering. This requires more research, but Wheeljack's running theory is that the decpeticon coding taught their sparks outer core to repair itself, and in the process somehow stabilized the center core.

Waiting for comparisons with Blurr's Spark (one of the only "stabilized" overcharged sparks known) for comparison.

COMMISSIONS OPEN

[intuitive-revelations]

Broke: The Reality War is going to canonise Rassilon's betrayal of Omega/Susan's "Other" origin/the Deca/[insert EU lore here].

Woke: The Reality War is going to canonise 1986 Make Your Own Adventure With Doctor Who gamebook "Race Against Time":

The First Rani investigated the world of antimatter as part of her general pursuit of scientific knowledge. When the Sixth Doctor investigated the Rani's laboratory on Pyro Shika, he became stuck in a cabinet which summoned his negative antimatter self from the antimatter universe. His human companion was able to correctly identify the true Doctor due to the negative version having a mirrored appearance. (PROSE: Race Against Time [+])

I'm only half-joking, tbh. It's honestly not bad canon-welding material for those of us wondering when exactly the Rani first became interested in finding Omega.

[the-fishh]

I really enjoy the implications that WD Gaster in Deltarune was a therapist before whatever "incident" instead of a scientist like in Undertale. Both being doctors of different kinds, It fits with the full 'similar but different' narrative where characters present in both Undertale and Deltarune have similar occupations to their counterparts.

Because going with the theory that Gaster is the entity behind each tree, you could make the assumption that the Chapter 4 egg room was a distorted memory of some kind.

We know Kris was kind of troubled as a kid. The receptionist recognises Kris when they enter and greets them by name both in the egg room AND in the real Hometown hospital.

In the egg room, the receptionist talks about the patients waiting for Kris, the people waiting being the man behind the tree and So-Sorry the mini-boss from Undertale. Afterwards the Receptionist asks who the patient was, even after previously implying it to be Kris. This is definitely confirmation that things are not as they seem.

(I want to try connect So-Sorry's appearance to the other theory that instead of Undertale's Goners and Amalgamations, Deltarune has missing people that I think are being sacrificed to sustain the distortion of Dess as the knight - But that's just a summary and would fit better in another post.)

Anyways, having Gaster study Psychology and Sociology would be a great fit for what little we know in theory about Deltarune's version of Gaster. Assuming he is also the entity that makes the first connection, making a person with hopes and dreams and personality would better suit a version of Gaster that studied Anthropology. On the flip side, creating the Core and Determination Extractor, Working on experiments and taking Photon Readings matches with the known fact that Undertale's Gaster studied the practical sciences as the Royal Scientist.

This would also maintain the connection between the Dreemurr family and Gaster before his disappearance as Kris' Art Therapist, likely disappearing slightly before Dess. I also think there is something to be made of the Chapter 3 egg room that takes place inside a green videogame setting. the area is called "MANCOUNTRY" by one of the photocopied and coloured in Rudinn's. It ties in with the whole Art thing for one, but it also is a direct parallel to how a Rudinn in Castletown will refer to it as "[Playername]town" connecting it all back to that meta-gaming experience that makes these mysteries and theory's so interesting.

So I think that's all I have gathered in my brain so far, but there are still many many questions. Was it the same incident or two separate paralleling incidents that happened to the Gaster's? Did the two Gaster's combine consciousnesses to create one super doctor with multiple scientific doctorate's full of knowledge of both Anthropology and the Engineering Sciences? Are Deltarune and Undertale Gaster connected in universe or just meant to serve as parallels to each others stories? NOBODY KNOWWWWSSSS!! Except maybe the Deltarune team. But sometimes writing a mystery is more fulfilling if you don't have the solution in mind while writing it.

[r0semultiverse]

How Homestuck Beyond Canon Candy Timeline has/will have parallels with Homestuck proper around and during the events of [S] Game Over

Jane Crocker heavily aligned/influenced by with Crocker Corp. Notice how her neck accessory looks very similar to the Crocker computer tiara. There's also the circuits surrounding the button, which are reminiscent of Crockertier Jane's visual mind control effect by The Condesce.

Jane also kind of looks like The Condesce with how she's silhouetted here.

The head of Crocker Corporation on a large Crocker space ship. A ship which I would like to point out looks eerily similar to the ship that The Condesce flies around in except the forks/sporks are facing the opposite direction and it's got black on it instead of mostly red.

Jake dying at the hands of Crocker influenced Jane and coming back to life parallels with this Jane coming close to killing Jake, but stopping right before death. Same green text too.

The cast of characters surrounding this time in the comic are also similar.

We also got the whole Crocker laser beam of death being hinted at which we've absolutely seen before.

I talked about this in one of my previous theories, Jake is getting a better grasp of his hope powers; so, I think we could see another hope explosion again in some capacity out of Jake's concern for Tavvy.

I could also totally see Jake being held hostage by one of the Crocker Clones A.K.A. the Brig Boys and Kanaya cutting them up with her chainsaw (hopefully avoiding Jake).

This is more of a little side detail, but Vriska is once again on the sidelines while this massive important fight takes place because she's trapped in her own personal Hell this time.

CHARACTER DEATH FLAGS - I don't know how to organize this post and there was a lot more potential evidence to this than I thought there was going into it.

Let me preface this with the fact that the existential split between Meat and Candy sometimes seems to try to course correct itself and much like certain peoples DNIs, it doesn't want any doubles. We see this with Dirk, Dave (he died even if he ascended to ultimate self afterwards), June/J/John, Terezi(seemingly), Meenah (her other self is in the black hole with Lord English so we can't necessarily confirm death but yknow), Aradia (is just Aradia), Gamzee, Calliope (that is a whole complex situation), and Rose (if her future sight is correct, but we'll get to that). Those are the only examples I can think of at this time, but it's absolutely a repeating pattern of the universe sort of course-correcting to have only one of each of our main characters exist at a time. This, at least in the cases of Dirk, Dave, & Rose seems to be related to the ascension to ultimate self, but we can't really say if that's why the other characters only get one existence at this time.

Karkat has has at least 2 deaths from around this time, one involving Crockertier Jane as well which could be a sign of things to come.

Rose's death flag is that she has literally foreseen her death in her future sight. She is thinking about Kanaya and Roxy in the same thought process while seeing her own death, feeling full of regret (even though she's trying to repress her own feelings) about her relationship to Roxy and Kanaya. Very similar to her being regretful as she was dying in Roxy's arms. I'm also guessing the bullet that hits her will be from Jake's gun, just throwing that out as a possibility.

ROSE: What... ROSE: Happened to me? ROXY: the witch got u ROXY: with her fork ROXY: but youre gonna be ok ROSE: Oh. ROSE: That's nice. ROSE: *Cough.* ROXY: maybe you uh ROXY: shouldnt try to talk now ROSE: You saved me, didn't you? ROXY: ... ROSE: Thanks. ROSE: But, ROSE: She's gone, isn't she. ROSE: For good, I mean. ROXY: ? ROSE: I saw her die. ROSE: And. ROSE: It's a shame how... ROSE: *Cough.* ROSE: A shame that I never even... ROSE: Got to tell her... ROSE: I loved her. ROXY: who?

ROSE: Kanaya. ROSE: But... ROSE: You too, mom.

Kanaya also has a death flag here in getting hit by The Condesce's laser beam of death, but it's more of a maybe given that we see Rose's future vision of Kanaya holding her body in her arms. Keep in mind though we also had this bit of dialogue about the reliability of future sight right before we saw that vision.

JADE: dont forget im more than a little versed in future sight myself ok JADE: i dont care how credible it seems, you cant depend on that information!

Jake and Jane are also on the chopping block potentially, but I can't think of a way at this time, unless Kanaya mistakes Jake for one of the clones amidst her rage and ends up cutting through him along with the Crocker clones. The one pictured below was done by Aranea who is out of the story. Maybe Meenah's trident hits Jake somehow or something, I don't know. We also have meat Jake and Jane who are doing more okay.

On top of the parallels to the doomed timeline that was [S] Game Over, we also had Vriska say that this reality was fake and didn't matter. I'm paraphrasing and I don't know if we'll get a doomed timeline situation yet with the 4 kids still in it, but I just thought the amount of parallels was interesting & worth pointing out.

I also wanted to get this out before the next update in case it's related to the flash animation and any of my predictions come true.

Alternatively I think the flash animation will be Ultimate Dirk kick starting his SBURB home brew session on Deltritus. He probably has all the tech and narrative powers to do it based on what we've seen, they just need a species they'll both be satisfied with as the players for the session.

[timeslipcamp]

thoughts on episode 15

this post will contain spoilers and rambles about how much i love rui read at your own risk

he's only at the beginning i know LET ME LIVE

loved the lil walk with rui. i love that dude i wish we could have seen him before he was cursed. the bittersweet "i used to do that all the time" when he was talking about researching his curse 😭 can we cure him too please

this was funny as hell no way does haku have dad energy, he has jealous energy

these two lines honestly just feed into my theory that it's a very understated staff vs ghouls atmosphere (not so understated i guess) and that haku is working for them. traitor 😔

RUI IS ONTO HIM. haku always just knows when to appear, huh? and this isn't the first time, we run into haku everywhere. why is he always out walking? what is he looking for? rui might know, he's in the shadows after all.

i am genuinely curious about the wisteria taking people though. why would they mention that? what does that have to do with anything? is it only certain people?

would love to know why subaru interrupted zenji like that, even mc noticed that was out of character for him. i get the feeling there's more to this place and subaru's past then he let on, but it could also have just been a throwaway red herring line to get us to be more suspicious of the subaru stuff that was going to be revealed later. but honestly my main concern is that zenji and jiro have not only never been to a museum, but they've never been to an amusement park 😭 let them have fun!!! let me take them out!!

haku being insistent on the folk tale channel is interesting, though i'm not sure if it was just to show character traits or if it's actually for the plot. sometimes dialogue is just dialogue, ya know? weird that haku had him record a folk tale so insistently and then never tell us which tale. sus 🤨

this chapter also seems to spend a lot more time on the interaction between the ghouls, which im not mad about. it's always fun to see how the writers balance the mission and also character development. love a good monster of the week show.

i fucking laughed out loud when subaru popped up that was genuinely the funniest thing this whole episode

also not to be such a haku stan when i'm very clearly team traitor!haku but

how come every time he looks at us it's so soft like man cmon please make it easier to hate you. stop being so nice

honestly the more this whole subaru thing goes on i really don't think he's suspicious so much as he's just so terrified of losing control that it's become an obsession.

my whole take on the subaru thing centers around anxiety and poor coping mechanisms. i'm hesitant to say it's ocd because of how mental illness is usually portrayed in horror media, but it definitely feels like the anxious spirals that kind of cycle on obsession. especially once it comes out about the scandal he was supposedly involved in. if you already have anxiety about how you're perceived and something like that happens on such a major scale that you have to step away from the public eye, (and especially after doing something like losing control) it's not a huge leap to think it'd almost become a trigger response. especially the cabbage on the burger part on the table--you see reactions like that all the time. i won't go into a full psychoanalysis, as i'm not a psychology expert, but that's how it reads to me. so far. he's still on my list lmao

also this campus interaction pointed out by @sane-tkdbblog is a lot more interesting now

regardless haku needs to shut up, there's way better ways to get people to stop with the self deprecation 😭 haku pls. still though it was interesting that haku thought it was serious enough that he asked us if we wanted to keep working with them. was it because the violence was that serious? was it a test to see our loyalties and where they lie? was it him being selfish? who knows with haku at this point

more fuel for my traitor!haku is being blackmailed theory. easiest way out is going along with it to save himself.

what i REALLY want to know more about is what zenji's referring to!! whose sos did he miss? is that what led to him dying?? zenji TELL ME

super dark story in this one as well, had my phone screen covered for the last few parts lmao. also INSANE ending, love a cliffhanger, but again i think subaru's probably just going ro try and do something else to gain control of a situation again. post incoming about the tree of severance

🌟10/10 for spooky ghosts

🌟10/10 for zenji's outfits (and everyone's really)

theory posts to make still: subaru's demon, further traitor theories, the defunct houses, tree of severance, and why i hate the teachers. also another one about taiga lmao

asks and dms are always open!

[daughter-heir]

ok to be honest the more I think about it I feel like the doorway isn’t going to happen for the finale. I think the doorway is too important and can’t be cut and I can’t see how it’s gonna happen in the Waste. I foresee some kind of fight between them (which is what we see in the trailer) at the fixed spot where Mo dies in her visions. Lanfear takes the Sakarnen maybe

Doorway to me makes more sense mid s4. Mo is beyond the fixed point in her visions and maybe in a future that was a lot less likely so she has less guidance. Doorway kind of works better in my opinion with minimal buildup to it so that the tackle feels kind random and is shocking like it is in the books (tbh can’t remember if we saw any of mo’s futures in the books? I just remember being shocked when it happened in the books)

I just can’t see them cutting the doorway of it all? And I think it would be so stupid to kill Moiraine permanently so I don’t think that’s happening. The only way I see it happening is if maybe a Gateway/crack in reality opens to Finnland during Mo and Lanfear’s fight? What are people’s thoughts on this?

[violentdelightshavevioletends]

Onyx Storm

— Ending Theory #1 —

MAJOR SPOILERS!!!

Question/Theory (1): There is a new Venin, who is it? I believe this to be Garrick Tavis because of the following:

"And now that my Sage has another sibling he can use against me...I'm screwed. I glance past Berwyn, past Sgaeyl and the venin, to my new brother and the unconscious dragon lying in the valley beyond the canyon, guarded by seven wyvern. How could he do this? Choose this after watching me stumble and fall over the last five months. How could he willingly walk the path l've fought like hell to leave? He's the last person I ever would have expected to turn, and yet here we are. I can't let Sgaeyl die. Can’t leave him to stumble down the same path I did." — Xaden Riorson, Chapter 65.

The 1st confirming of a “new Venin brother” passage which shows us that:

This is a male identifying character hence “he”.

The terminology is “new brother” meaning it is not someone such as Bodhi Durran, as in Chapter 58 —“Theophanie glances at Brennan, then Bodhi. "I didn't ask for either of you to attend." "I thought you requested brothers? Next time be more specific about who's invited," I suggest.” — he is already addressed as such.

Someone who has seen Xaden fighting not to channel because they know he is Venin (this limits us to a small group of people) & someone Xaden trusts (an even smaller group of people now) and who has been with them for the past 5 months (at the very least; presumably making it someone on the front lines and Quest Squad).

And someone Xaden “cannot leave” (like a best friend).

Adding onto it are these quotes from Imogen Cardulo & their chapters information as a whole, showing that:

"I notice the circles beneath his beautiful eyes, the unusual pallor of his complexion. He's exhausted, and for the first time in my life, I don't care that he's seeing me at my weakest, because he's right there, too. My chin tips in a nod. "All right." He moves quickly to the step beneath us, kicking something out of the way and gathering both of us into his arms. I lock mine around Quinn so she doesn't slip as we're lifted off the floor, and the landing beneath us loses its color. "Let's get you out of here." — Imogen Cardulo, Chapter 63.

Garrick is burnt out at best, and at worst already channeling (it is dark in the first scene; the circles beneath his eyes could have been Venin veins; while this is unlikely, as she does still call his eyes “beautiful”… Imogen is noted to struggle to meet anyone’s eyes in the following passages, so it’s possible she doesn’t note it while already in this state of shock).

There is also the possibility that “the landing beneath us loses its color” was not all due to other dark wielders; it may have already been Garrick as well.

Rebecca takes the seemingly unnecessary time to point out Garrick “kicking something out of the way” only she very rarely puts something pointless in her writing (& while I’m unsure of what it would mean, there is potential that it is hinting at something) & along the same note; the tense of Garrick’s phrasing is “you” not “us” (this may hint that he knows he will not be leaving this battle).

Finally, it’s worth noting that in this passage Garrick has just lost another friend (another one of the rebellion) making him not only wracked with grief but even more desperate to save Imogen (as the last book showed that mixture is rather dangerous when it comes to creating Venin).

& as he next states: "It's still not enough." Garrick's head hangs as he stands. "I can't..." & the following:

"Where are you going?" I shout at Garrick's back. "I can't walk again. Even if I made it to Aretia, I'd never be strong enough to get back," he calls over his shoulder. "So, I'd better find some fucking way to do something."

He is going out alone, to find a way to do something, dare I say anything. That is the last known sighting of him.

Not to mention that Chradh has made 0 appearances (making it feasible for him to be the “unconscious dragon” in reference).

And that he is powerless at this point. Yet, he is also one of the few riders who could possibly get to Riorson in time (let alone be helpful in the following “mysterious” & presumably chaotic 12 hours that then follow).

In that, we can also presume a few things from Chapter 66:

"Official numbers are four riders, their dragons, and three elders murdered in the valley in what we're estimating is the last few hours," Weilsen says. "And we still have five riders missing—four now," he adds, looking at me. His mouth tenses. "But after that display, we all know Riorson did this. I bet the other three are already dead." — Weilson, Chapter 66.

While we do not know who the (now) four riders are (aside from obviously Xaden) it does show that it is primarily dragon riders that are missing (again upping the odds of one in three being Garrick).

“The last few hours” meaning this all occured after Violet “went missing” and the “new Venin brother” went with—well—whomever they went with… possibly making a bigger spectacle, then the one earlier (and being that one in reference instead).

Again, as stated; Garrick also has the powers thanks to his second signet (which was specifically introduced in this book) to assist in the spread of said “display” and desecrations all across the battlefield (even if they are most likely Xaden) he is the signet match for any and all… he and Xaden very well could’ve gone to find the other “traitors” using Garrick’s teleportation & Xaden’s inntinsic skills, thus seemingly killing the three “elders”.

Finally, these last portions to the point:

"Do you know where he is?" Brennan asks me softly once the other rider is fully out of earshot. "Riorson? You heard what Weilsen said. We have dead dragons and riders and missing eggs, and if you've seen Riorson, I need to know, Violet." "I..." Words fail me. Why can't I think? "I don't know." I raise my hands to my mouth, and a piece of parchment in my front pocket catches on my arm, then falls. Brennan catches it. "Cardulo?" He lifts his eyes to Imogen. "I haven't seen him since yesterday," she says, her voice low, almost monotone. "Lieutenant Tavis?" "Among the missing," Brennan answers gently, then glances my way and does a double take. "Holy shit, Violet." "What?" I lower my arms. Garrick is missing, too? Who else makes up the four riders Weilsen mentioned? "Your finger," Imogen says, then stares at the ground. — Chapter 66.

Imogen has not seen XADEN since yesterday, she does not specify upon Garrick. …If she had seen him, she would have good reason to keep it a secret (as if she already didn’t for Xaden alone; though she definitely would’ve been more inclined to help with his favor)… and while she does ask (which leads me to believe she does not know for certain) I think it is a pointed question not of “please let him be alive” and more of “please let me be wrong” with whatever she does know. & again this would add to her completely numb/in-shock heartbroken can’t-look-a-soul-in-the-eye nature here; as she loves Garrick! So, if he turned she would also be joining the “heartbroken wives” club (that I have a feeling Violet and Cat will be forming in the next book… along with the likely subsection of “dissapointed/disgruntled mothers” for Sgaeyl; cause hell hath no fury like a woman blessed by Dunne, and seeking revenge to rescue her lover from himself). And as we all obviously know Imogen does know something! (She didn’t have to look first to tell Violet to check her finger) like I said she can’t look her (or anyone) in the eyes (not until Violet asks that darn right single question “What did you do?”). And while Brennan doesn’t seem shocked to see her (Imogen) she very well may have been among the missing riders (seeing as Violet sneaking in to find her prior to Brennan seems unlikely & difficult under the current discourse).

*edit* as I’m re-reading this Chapter 11 prologue from Iron Flame felt enough like foreshadowing to add it onto here:

"Garrick has always been my best friend. His father was my father's aide, which in a way makes him my Dain, except trustworthy. After Liam, Bodhi was and still is the closest thing I have to a brother, perpetually tagging along a step behind. —Recovered Correspondence of Lieutenant Xaden Riorson to Cadet Violet Sorrengail"

[rumbleonthemill]

I'm watching Ethan's video about the dead internet theory, but there's more topics brought up, not just robots surrounding us.

this is the video.

he points out an important thing, which is that...it's pain to come online now. back then, we fled to the internet from the real world, to have some rest. now it's an endless circle, because both online and offline sucks.

if you're not surrounded by bot comments and spam, then you get endless hate and complaining. harassment, because you made a video, or an artwork. and people indeed don't make stuff only lead by passion. it's either for the likes, or for the money.

and what I also notice, is that they just stopped communicating altogether. people don't make friends anymore, unless they have advantage from it...

as for fandom stuff.

I've also come across some basic internet rules actually put into words, from the time of 2008, here.

I'm not sure how all of us knew these rules, but we knew them. already as kids. so this just proves that you definitely CAN learn and keep such rules, which are made FOR YOU. and today's people just...cannot keep the first one, which is "dislike, block"...

[snowysaur]

2024 year in review/art summary. i realized i never made these for 2021-23 either so here's all of them. i think i haven't been drawing as much these past few years, oh well support me on: patreon | kofi | redbubble

[intersexbookclub]

Part one of Swarr's Envisioning African Intersex (finally!)

In January and March 2024, we read the 2022 book Envisioning African Intersex by Amanda Lock Swarr, and it was a harrowing, nauseating, emotional experience, but some of the best writing on and about intersex issues that we've had in the book club even to date (note: this was written retrospectively in March-June 2025). The review will be divided in two parts, reflecting the two-part reading experience of the book. For Jan 26 2024, Michelle and Elizabeth were present. 

Content note: This book dealt extensively with colonial violence, physical personhood violations, sexual trauma visited upon black/African bodies, and similar and related topics. Please be prepared for discussion of racial violence and trauma, and intersections with debility, dehumanization, eugenics, and ableism.

Preliminary and retrospective thoughts:  The most outstanding thing about this particular book is that, in retrospect, it has become our gold standard for academic intersex writing. This might be a little surprising because it was written by a perisex individual, but Swarr clearly put in the effort to learn from and participate in the intersex community, and clearly articulates her motivations to write the book. It stands out as an instance of how to do positionality the right way.  For those who want to learn intersex issues, this is absolutely recommended as a starting point. It’s not an overly long book, and the prose is clear, legible, and sharp. It isn’t abstruse or jargon-laden, the way one might expect of an academic text. 

In fact, the burning anger and clear communication style of the book work in harmony. There is a clarity and simplicity to the style that makes it shockingly accessible to a lay person, or at least, to people outside the depths of the academic world – praise that cannot be offered to all of the academic nonfiction titles we’ve read so far. Another refreshing, sustaining element of the work was that despite the nauseating and troubling content, Swarr made sure to end every chapter on a happy, hopeful, or uplifting note, with examples of activist progress on intersex issues related to the topic of each chapter.

We are both white, and this was our first time learning about the racist history of how intersex was socially constructed. In brief: eugenicists believed that intersex (though they used the h-slur) was a property of “lesser” organisms. And because they were intent on “proving” the supposed inferiority of black bodies, this meant “proving” that intersex in humans was mostly seen in black people (and a rare and exceptional thing in the “superior” white race). Swarr demonstrates how this has had a major effect on how intersex is understood in society, from physicians’ reluctance to recognize common intersex variations as such (when white people have them), to how black athletes are singled out for sex verification testing.

Swarr’s incisive history lessons

In the introduction and first two chapters, Swarr lays out (with burning cold fury) the history of sexual exploitation and spectacle of African people, in the context of colonialism that dates all the way back to the European land grabs in Africa in the 1800s. And boy is there a lot of it. For example, the well-known case of Saartjie or Sarah Baartman, whose non-colonized name has been stolen by history. The “Hottentot Venus”’s sex differences were a subject of fascination and cruel spectacle by Europeans, and she was dehumanizingly exhibited across Europe. 

In the context of intersex history, differences, and activism, Baartman is an important figure, and unfortunately, a germinal one. 

Aggressive colonialist efforts attempted to demonstrate the perceived inferiority of black/African bodies and minds with scientific rationalizations. The racist idea that black/African people are hypersexual and animalistic, with poor self control, had to be validated in order to justify the chattel slavery trade and exploitation of the people and land. How better to do so than with the hot new trend of the era, evolutionary biology? 

(For more about Darwin’s feelings about race and eugenics, such as his dislike of both and hatred of slavery, consider this article or this article. It’s worth noting that Charles Darwin was disgusted by the eugenics and race science his cousin put forth.)

With seething fury and elegant readability, Swarr lays out the sexual investigations perpetrated against African bodies in search of physical sex differences that proved a “lesser” sophistication or development (compared to white bodies, of course). Intersex bodies or traits, and sex differences in general, became a fixation among white physicians. 

No Pictures, Please

Swarr here makes a bold choice that diverges from the common “blacked-out face, naked body” photographic norms frequently normalized by medical history texts. Instead of presenting photos, and implicitly validating the dehumanizing scrutiny of white medical gazes searching for visible differences, Swarr describes the photographs. 

This technique was revelatory, and took both of us aback in its efficacy. It felt punk rock, but in an academic way. It would have been so easy for Swarr to do what, say, Reis did in Bodies in Doubt, and include pictures and woodcuts of various people’s bodies, exposed for the reader to judge and scrutinize, and compare to perceived norms of white perisex bodies. Swarr’s refusal to be complicit in the chain of scrutiny and sensationalism hit us both like a truck, and would shape our perspective on previous academics as well as those to come. 

As I (Michelle) put it, expressing my understanding of Swarr’s stance, “I'm not going to put people's bodies on display because that is coherent with the thesis of this work in a very important way, and I refuse to exoticize or reveal and violate people's privacy in the same way as it has been violated for hundreds of years. You don't get to ogle.”

One of the other powerful effects of this technique was that Swarr effectively deconstructed the reflexive tendency to try and categorize exoticized, medicalized bodies. However, the throughline of abusive and dehumanizing actions by physicians and scientists from the nineteenth century to the present cannot be ignored. Swarr lays out how the pseudoscience of eugenics was just given an image makeover and turned into population genetics and especially evolutionary psychology – which is functionally as scientifically messy and unsound as eugenics, and has the same atrocious habit of using a conclusion to reverse-engineer the cause. Swarr shows the process concretely, such as through listing specific academic journals on eugenics that renamed themselves into population genetics or evolutionary psychology journals.

Prove the Expectation 

Returning to the previous mentions of eugenics and hypersexualization, the horrifying thing about the application of this particular fallacy is that it created a situation where sexual differences were expected among black/African bodies – and the expectation of higher than (white) average presentation of intersex traits. “Citation chain” analysis is a useful tool for analysing intersex history, as which debunked or fallacious information is repeated as factual just because it’s been referred to by other academic sources so many times. A strategy of definition, scrutiny, repetition, and legitimacy occurred over and over. 

The scrutiny of black bodies by white eugenicists was extensive and exhausting, down to things like measuring the widths of African assigned-female pelvic bones and comparing them to the pelvic bone widths of white/European women. Since there is a spread of variation between population members of cultural and ethnic groups, appropriately representative data about measuring bones would not, in fact, yield useful, determinative conclusions. Determining intersex status or ethnicity from pelvic measurements is on par with using the caliper measurements of skulls taken by physiognomists, trying to determine the content of a mind, personality, and history…from bumps on the skull. 

Swarr documents how repetition legitimizes: this spurious concept was repeated so often it became a scientifically expected fact. Even now, it’s somewhat difficult to obtain reliable data on the frequency of intersex traits among African and black populations, because of a kind of expectancy effect. The zombie statistics, as they’re referred to on the podcast Maintenance Phase, just keep coming back – even though by all rights, they should be dead and debunked. 

There were also cases where overtly false information or aberrant behaviour was cloaked in scientific inquiry, including potentially predatory behaviour on the part of some scientists, who were just way too interested in genital differences among people, and trying to see and observe them. There were also cases in which anthropologists either flat-out lied or treated false information as scientifically verified, which led to harrowing inaccuracies and scientific sensationalism. In one instance, a German trader was convinced that a particular Papua New Guinean person had intersex traits, and photographed them, and this was treated as being worthy of scientific validation – rather than, say, interrogating whether a random German demanding to photograph a person’s genitals was predatory or invasive. 

Yet another thing Swarr did was to critically review and contextualise the methodology of people like physician John Money, who is considered a prominent and seminal light in the field of surgical intercessions in intersex children – in a word, intersex genital mutilation, in many cases. Furthermore, calling out problems in the field of genetics was as courageous as it is necessary. For instance, Swarr uses the term “gender” to talk about sex traits in some cases, because sex is also an artificially constructed category, a decision Elizabeth applauded. It also means that gender should not and cannot be assumed from physical appearance – which is actually just correct and accurate, even though it’s not socially accepted widely yet.

Blackness and Intersex 

Elizabeth pointed out, “I just kept being disappointed by how people are turning off their brains at some of the most obviously false things,” and described an obviously false, but widely believed, descriptive statement about black women’s genitals. Another issue that became blatantly apparent was that cultural acceptance of gynecomastia was common among multiple African groups - and white racists couldn’t wrap their heads around it. We both expressed frustration and outrage at how obvious it was that these scientists were thinking with their horny goggles on rather than critical consideration. As I (Michelle) said, “this is like science dictated by fetishes.”

Some of these assertions about black bodies would have been anatomically unfeasible and unrealistic, yet were quoted by supposedly serious scientists with every pretention of scientific accuracy. For example, the idea that black women have labia that are so elongated they “hang down to the knees”. As I put it, “they were so disappointed that, God forbid, these African women had relatively normal genitals, but then they had to measure the crap out of them to justify any degree of difference.”

Swarr lays out an effective critique of the concept of “third gender”: it’s been used by anthropologists and biologists as a colonial “junk drawer into which a great [deal of] non-Western miscellany is carelessly dumped.” It includes concepts from all over the world and every historical period, without regard for consistency or coherency. It has no regard for how “woman” or “man” may have been understood in cultural context. It reinscribes a dual gender system (“two plus other”) while also exotifying and homogenizing non-Western cultures. Or as @taliabhattwrites has put it:

Given eugenicists’ goals to “prove” that intersex is more common among non-white populations, many so called “third genders” were described misleadingly with the h-slur to to help imply they were ore intersex than they actually were, and “third genders” that were primarily intersex (e.g. the guevedoches) have been relentlessly exotified and exceptionalized.

One thing which was slightly tricky to navigate and discuss in the text was the perspective on blackness versus Blackness; Swarr, coming from an African perspective, dislikes the capitalization of Blackness. This is not a universal preference, and Michelle is personally used to the capitalizing, as this is the norm in the world of Black diasporic literary fiction.

More about Colonialization and South Africa 

Swarr unflinchingly points out how white physicians in South Africa saw colonization as a positive thing, and themselves as active agents of it. We had an extensive discussion about how gynecologists and urologists can interpret and perform their jobs in a way that enforces and polices gender norms. As Michelle said, “I'm just sitting with that because gender police definitely reflects how I feel when I first got my PCOS diagnosis. I'm sorry ma'am, these testosterone levels are a little high. How fast were you going to that intersection? I remember that was the moment, especially when I asked, is this going to affect my fertility? That feeling of being defective and of my future like closing before me.”  After reading this book, the phrase “doctors are gender cops” made its way into our book club’s lexicon, and has stayed there ever since. 

Swarr is unflinching about discussing the problems with the term “diagnosis of sexual disorder” (DSD) and how stigmatizing the language is – the issue of DSD would reoccur in future works and discussions repeatedly. As well, the policing of which intersex variations are considered “actually intersex” is usually implemented by doctors, and has arguably been very destructive to the community. Who gets to be considered “intersex” by physicians? People with chromosomal differences? Genital differences? Hormonal differences? Those with a particular combination of all three? The implicit fear of physicians in potentially normalising intersex and sex variations becomes palpable when the actual delineation of sex differences is examined. To quote our discussion again, “Intersex is kind of the queerness that dare not speak its name, because it’s so medicalized.”

Intersex, Disability, Debility, and Prejudice

Swarr clearly does not see intersex people as broken in any way – just part of the range of variations among humanity (and non-human animals, of course). But as disabled people ourselves, we were both struck viscerally by Swarr’s implicit assertion that, in the same way that we say trans men are men, trans women are women, and nonbinary people are real – intersex is normal.  

In fact, Swarr was defiant in not specifically defining the limits of what and who is “actually intersex”, and focused on the oppression of intersex people, as Elizabeth said. “This is a rhetorical move that has been used in disability studies for decades, because of the controversy of how do you define disability? And the scholars were eventually like, fuck that, we're just going to study and focus on ableism instead.” 

We had a lively and emphatic discussion of agreement on the way the medical system fights porous definitions of gender and sex. Michelle expressed, “We see conservatism in medicine, because if you can alienate and exoticize African bodies and black bodies, and you can reinforce white norms, you can also reinforce gender norms. Men have this measurement, women have this measurement, and it's much easier to keep people in little boxes. And it's really interesting how gender and sex as hard divisions are self-perpetuating.”

Humans versus Animals

One dismaying thing we realised from the text was that there’s often a lot more joy and acceptance of non-human intersex variations. A bird or butterfly with bilateral gynandromorphism (i.e. plumage or wings that diverge from gender norms) is celebrated as a wonder of the world. Human beings who present with divergent secondary or primary sex characteristics are seen as requiring medical intervention – even when it’s entirely unnecessary. 

Swarr mentions briefly the history of the h-slur in biology. For millennia, this word meant intersex, and its use in biology to mean cosexual/dichogamous is surprisingly recent. In the early and mid-16th century, colonists started using the word to describe black people’s genitalia in the same texts where they also described black people as “like animals”. Only after this use was established, did 17th-century biologists start to take up the word to mean cosexual and dichogamous in nonhuman organisms.

We also discussed the differences in disability perception for animals, and Elizabeth pointed out the ways in which animals’ lives with disabilities are perceived as unworthy, unpleasant, or not worth enduring. 

Final thoughts  We have more to say about Swarr’s book, so stay tuned! It’s available as an open source work, meaning that it’s not paywalled. You can download the whole book at the link in the previous sentence!.

[themadmorrigan]

Man, you know what's never proved any point, or won any argument ever?

Google AI summaries. 🙄

[akkivee]

sorry if this comes off as a dumb question and/or sends you on an unnecessary side quest but ive kinda always wondered why in the hypmic universe everyone outside of bb has like the most kira kira ass kanji readings for their names 😭

y’know, i don’t think i’ve ever seen an interview about names in hypmic lol???? like i’ve seen bits and pieces of inspiration behind stuff but not why they’ve chosen to make the yamadas’ names easy to read and everyone else’s kira kira LOL

hypmic places meaning in the names they’ve chosen (eg aohitsugi 碧棺 has the coffin kanji, coffins are typically made of wood/metals, your hard cores aka mr. hardcore LOL) so i wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t spoken on in general as a thing to let fans think about themselves lol