#the discourse here is sometimes so well researched & so well written

[catofoldstones]

I am too dumb for the asoiaf tumblr fandom and I am too level-headed for the asoiaf reddit fandom, where do I go?

[goshdangronpa]

When I'm not writing Danganronpa fan fiction, I moonlight as a professional content/copywriter. All the fresh discourse about plagiarism is reminding me of some formative experiences in my work life, and certain people I've met ...

My first job was with a fast-paced marketing company. The in-house writing team maintained weekly blogs for a bunch of clients, and each writer had to write two 1000-word blog posts a day. That's tough, especially for someone who was still pretty fresh in the field. We were salaried rather than hourly (!), so there was no incentive to staying late ... but that also meant the company didn't have to fret about overtime pay, so we could stay late if we needed it. I'd regularly be the last one in the office, still pumping out words in the struggle to meet deadlines.

Much of my time was spent on research. I knew little about the subjects at hand, which were sometimes highly technical, so I couldn't just BS my way through assignments. I even requested and received permission to take one client's worker education course, just so I could know what the heck I was writing about. It didn't seem at all remarkable to me. It was a job. My job. Although I could've been better, or at least faster, I simply did what needed to be done.

I learned that others took a ... different approach.

One supervisor was on sabbatical for the first couple of months I worked there. I respected them as my superior. Then I was assigned to peer-edit one of their articles, something we did with everything we wrote. One uncited claim led me to Google ... where I found a nearly identical article already published. Supervisor did the ol' switcheroo of amending sentence structures and swapping words for poorly chosen synonyms. I brought it up with them, saying I wouldn't report the incident but urged them to not do that. I can't recall what happened next, other than not trusting Supervisor anymore.

After three months passed, I was up for employee review. The bosses liked what they've read - yay! And then they said, "Here's why we're not giving you a raise." My stomach dropped. Apparently, they checked how many articles everyone wrote. I was behind on a quota I knew nothing about. If I wanted more money, I should take a page from the writer in the lead. Champ had somehow written 60 articles in the past month. Amazing! My employer set a goal much humbler than what my work friend had surpassed. If Champ could do that much, surely I could do this little.

Reader, I did my best. I stayed at the office later and later, especially as the date of my next employee review drew near. Due to my salaried status, I wasn't even paid for that overtime, but I put in the time anyway. It was all for nothing. Just a week before the next meeting, where they would've decided whether I deserved a raise or not, they laid off virtually the entire writing department. Apparently, underpaying freelancers who don't get benefits was easier.

Only one person from the crew stayed. If it was gonna be anybody, it was golden goose Champ, who maintained their insane pace. I wished them well.

Anyone wanna guess the secret behind Champ's prodigious output? It's the same reason they got fired just a few weeks later.

The reveal was a betrayal. We were friends, Champ and I, getting each other through the grind of the content mill with sarcastic humor and deep conversations. They encouraged and motivated me to keep up, all the while hiding some dirty tricks that eventually helped them stay in the race while I spun out. I was shocked to discover that I had zero empathy for them. But they deserved none, the filthy plagiarist. Haven't spoken to them since finding out.

This may not be as sordid as everything H. Bomberguy discusses in his brilliant new video. My coworkers and I were literally anonymous, with no clout to speak of, let alone abuse. Our clients were small businesses with little platform, which is why they contracted a marketing agency in the first place. Still, it hurt the hell out of me, and I wasn't even the one being copied! Plagiarism is a curse word in my household, lowest of the low (without getting into, like, actual atrocity).

And you know what? Years later, what I wrote for that company still holds up in my eyes. Those old blog posts aren't exactly the Great American Novel, or even on par with what I'd write as I gained more experience, but I put the effort into writing high-quality and original stuff. I worked hard. I still work hard. As self-deprecating and even self-loathing as I can be, I'll always pride myself on this. May you writers out there be able to pride yourselves on this, too.

[moonlit-sunflower-books]

writing morally gray characters

[@/moonlit_sunflower_books on ig]

we all love a good morally gray character, from kaz brekker to helene aquila. but there are things that make them stand out and make the reader genuinely root for them, as well as ways to make them more realistic, that can really help when writing a morally gray character.

disclaimer: i’m not a professional, just a student who writes for fun, and anything written here is based on my personal experience and opinion. you should always do your own research as well, and i am open to respectful discourse!

give them boundaries

one of the most important aspects of any morally ambiguous character is that they aren't entirely unhinged. it's unlikely a character will be willing to murder someone they love, or that they would betray someone unless they are getting something in return. any character has their limits. the goal of your plot is to push them beyond that limit, break them, and force them to stitch themselves back together.

give them a moral compass

many people misunderstand "morally gray" and confuse it for "does whatever the hell they like". possibly because one of the first lines in six of crows is "kaz brekker didn't need a reason" and kaz is bookstagram's favourite example of a morally gray protagonist. but actually, everything that kaz does through the novels only proves that he always has reasons. for absolutely everything that he does.

the difference is that it's not for the Greater Good and Evil.

morally gray characters are often selfish, but will have their own idea of what is considered right and what is considered wrong. for example, helene aquila thinks that it is wrong to disobey one's country. that doesn't mean she thinks it's right to murder, it's just what is done. so she doesn't question it.

make them justify their own actions

any morally gray character should be sympathetic, and this is achieved by having them justify their actions.

<six of crows spoilers ahead> if we saw kaz rip out someone's eyeball or drop someone out of a lighthouse window into a harbour without context, we'd probably think of him as completely unhinged /hyp. but the reader justifies his actions in their mind because kaz's narration justifies the action to himself: he is getting vengeance for inej. <six of crows spoilers end>

essentially, the character's narration should justify their own actions. they murdered someone? it was for revenge. they stole something? they've been starving for weeks. they lost their temper? the blow-up is the culmination of decades of internalised anger. make sure that the reader sympathises with your character by justifying their actions.

don't make them dark haired and brooding

okay okay yes i am a simp for dark-haired morally gray white boys but you know what? sometimes it'd be refreshing to see someone else be morally gray!

give me a morally ambiguous black girl or mother figure or indian character. the world has enough kaz brekkers and severin montagnet-alaires and cardan greenbriars (although i will say that i love all three of them from the bottom of my heart)

but helene aquila was a very pleasant change from all of them!

show them being Good

there is a difference between "morally gray character" and "villain whose actions are justified by the fandom" *cough* the darkling *cough* and it's really important to show that a morally gray character can be objectively good - or at least have pure intentions

for example, jude duarte murders people - Bad. but then in the next chapter, she'll go and have a picnic with her sister or try to save a human girl trapped into slavery - Good.

a morally gray character is not a character who gets a redemption arc, but rather a character whose actions blur the line between good and evil. their character development will not necessarily be going from bad to good, but going from unhinged to self-aware or from revenge-driven to loving.

[bettsfic]

Hi betts! I hope you’re doing alright and that your semester is wrapping up smoothly. I have a question about genre, I guess? I’ll preface this with the fact that I am not a writer or lit person, but just an enthusiastic reader. But as I’ve been on Tumblr and TikTok (in this case BookTok), I’ve noticed that it’s a lot of the same kinds of books that people get obsessed over. Largely, SFF written by women and often in “new adult.” I’m thinking of V. E. Schwab, Leigh Bardugo, etc. I’ve read a number of these books and enjoyed some of them quite a lot, but they’ve never captivated me the way they do some. That’s fine, people have different tastes. But after being served yet another TikTok about this same category of book, I kinda realized that for some reason they just don’t feel that adult to me. Which is weird because they typically deal with very adult themes. Some are super sexual or violent and the like, but the way they’re written doesn’t feel mature to me. Even The Poppy Wars, which is very adult, falls into this category for me (I did enjoy this one, though). I’ve tried to interrogate this for bias, especially since I know a lot of people like them because they are written by women, (mostly) feature more diversity, and have large female audiences. But then I think about which books did feel adult, but fall in similar genres: N. K. Jesimin and Ursula Le Guin come to mind (even her youth fiction feels more adult to me). So I guess I’m curious what you feel makes a writing style more mature versus simply the content? Why is it that SFF, while often depicting adult events, doesn’t come across as mature? I guess my frustration is that it’s one of my favorite genres, but the recommendations I’m getting across many folks just...isn’t the SFF I want. How does one distinguish between these? Idk if I’ve expressed this well and I definitely am not trying to judge people. I’m just looking for a certain atmosphere in my reading that I find rarely.

i’m so excited i have an answer to this. so first i want to say, i experience this also and it’s why i struggle to get through a lot of books. it’s why i love the secret history but couldn’t get twenty pages into if we were villains, even though everyone told me they had a lot in common. even if the description of a book is compelling and the story is very much to my taste, and even if the writing is totally competent, i’ve found that sometimes there’s just something lacking that makes me set a book down and never pick it back up. 

i was thrilled to find there’s term for this: the implied author.

the implied author was coined by wayne c. booth in his book the rhetoric of fiction which, while dense, is a really fantastic read (if you’ve been keeping up with my newsletter you know how feral i am for this book). as a blanket definition, the implied author is the space that exists between the narrator and the writer. when you read something, you can’t make any factual conclusions about the writer (the author is dead and all that), but the narration often tips you off to the idea that the consciousness behind the writing is wiser and knows more than the narrator. 

that’s a very condensed version of booth’s definition, which takes up like 40 pages. here forward are some conclusions i’ve drawn based on it. 

when the space between the narrator and implied author is narrow, some of us as readers tend to get bored pretty quickly. it’s what you’re referring to as maturity. however, when that space is wide, when it’s clear that the implied author is much, much bigger than the narration, that’s when i’m willing to sink my teeth into something. the wider that distance, the more i’m happy to ignore things like syntactical clumsiness or poor grammar. i would follow a good implied author into hell. 

for example, i could write a story from the point of view of a violent abuser. if you were to read it, you wouldn’t be able to say for certain that i, the writer, was not a violent abuser also. but you would be able to tell via the implied author whether or not there is an awareness of the abuse, whether it’s being written with intentionality. not morality, mind you, but artistic purpose. 

the implied author has an idiosyncratic relationship to the reader. sometimes depending on the complexity of the work and the critical reading skills of the reader, the presence of the implied author can be invisible. this is the catalyst, imo, to a significant amount of the present morality discourse. many (if not all) purity officers and antis don’t have the reading skills to be able to see the implied author, or that the moral trespasses that occur in fiction are written intentionally and for a purpose. they believe that anything depicted in fiction is advocating for or promoting that which it’s depicting. 

lolita is kind of the ultimate classic example of the inability of some readers to see the implied author. nabokov even has a fictional preface from the pov of a scholar doing research, flat-out telling us that humbert is a bad guy and Do Not Trust Him. and yet, lolita has been misinterpreted and vilified for decades now.

in that same vein, the implied author is the reason that some stories put a bad taste in our mouths. it’s how we reach the conclusion that a story is racist or sexist or homophobic outside the literal depictions of racism, sexism, and homophobia. how can you witness racism taking place in a story and know that it’s speaking to the experience of racism and not advocating for racism? that’s the presence of the implied author. sometimes, though, you can’t tell. sometimes a writer tries to speak to the experience of something and fails at making clear their own awareness. or sometimes, they’re just not aware at all. 

in fanfiction, the implied author takes place, in part, in the tags. i remember stumbling upon a fic written by a purity officer which depicted an extremely unhealthy, non-negotiated power dynamic. and none of it was tagged. i had no evidence the author was aware that they were even writing something “problematic.” obviously i support their right to depict whatever kind of relationship they want for whatever reason they want, but i did find it a bit off-putting, that this person who was a known harasser in fandom had no seeming understanding that they were writing the very kind of fic they were rallying against.

but, you know, my hands aren’t clean either. until the MFA, i was a very poor reader. for example, in 2010 i read the hunger games for the first time. in 2020 i re-read the series on my kindle, where all my annotations from 2010 had been saved, and so i got to see all my glaring misinterpretations of the text. every time katniss has to get dolled up in the capitol and made beautiful, i left a note like “ugh,” because i thought all depictions of performative femininity were Bad. even though thg is a YA book and i was an honors student in college, i was still unable to see that katniss’s beautifying was commentary on consumerism. i was oblivious to collins’ implied author, the presence in the book that is shaking you by the shoulders and going, THIS IS WHAT’S WRONG WITH SOCIETY. 

but sometimes, like in your case, the opposite situation occurs: you the reader are wider than the implied author, and so some books have little to offer you in terms of depth or insight into the human experience. i don’t mean that to sound pretentious or anything; what i mean is, we all read at different skill levels and for different reasons, and we all get different things out of the stories we read. we’re all at different places in our reading lives, and we all have room to grow.

i hope i explained this clearly enough! hopefully one day i’ll be able to write a formal essay on this, because booth wrote about it in the 60s and a lot has happened in fiction since then. 

[mooshfluff]

🌼agere journal prompts🌼

your agere journal can be whatever you make it, but i know that sometimes its hard to find good prompts! here are a few!

Basic Prompts:

Daily Diary- make your journal into a daily littol diary. write about your day and maybe draw a picture to go along with it!

About Me- write your name/nickname, your littol age range, and other fun things about yourself like your favorites! add a photo of yourself or draw one!

Rules- write your rules, self given or from your CG. so you remember them! rules should be consentual between Cg and baby, and ALWAYS SFW! if your CG gives you NFSW rules or you feel uncomfortable with any rules but they dont care, thats a red flag! 

Routine- write your morning, night and daily routine in your journal if you have one and need to remember it! i have mine written down cause i struggle to follow it if i cant see it.

Comic Artist- write cute mini comics about whatever you want!!

Wishlist- make checklists of things youd really like for birthdays, holidays and other occassions! check them off as you get them!

Baby Food- find and write recipes you enjoy and are easy for a baby to make!

Playlists- make a list of all your favorite music, anime, movies and other media for easy access!

Stuffie Intros- make an intro page for some of your favorite stuffies!!

All About ____- pick a topic and research it! write what you learned in the journal!

Favorites- write down all of your favorites! your favorite color, food, character, youtuber, etc!

Homeward- your pet is lost! write a story describing their adventure!! draw them as well!

Lost & Found- if you like to collect goblincore things, keep an inventory of them all! 

Drawing Prompts:

Create your dream nursery/playroom! draw a basic layout and write down any furniture and decor you want! what theme does it have? 

Draw your favorite scenery! make a forest, mountains, the ocean or the clouds!! add animals and plants and yourself if you want!

Make a Self Portrait!

make your own constellation! maybe write a story to go along with it!

create your own mythical creature! maybe its an undiscovered one? or just your favorite one, like dragons or unicorns! what color is it? 

Draw a treasure map! maybe hide a time capsule at the location!! if its fictional, whats it for?? are you a pirate? is it a fantasy map for a party of warriors??

Draw your dream outfit(s). maybe draw you in them! .0.

Create your own Planet!! whats its name? are there people or animals? what kind? are there unique plants?? draw yourself as an astronaut exploring this planet!

Draw yourself as a hero, or your pets as heroes!

Create Season/Animal or Holiday/Animal hybrids!

Design custom pacis youd like to have one day!

Doodle Page!!! leave a page just for cute little doodles!!

Create your own ponysona! what colors are they? are they an earth pony, pegasus or unicorn?? whats their special talent?? .o.

most of these are from my own journal. but Id like to thank other agere creators that post prompts that helped inspire this! be sure to look up the Hashtag (Agere Journal Prompts) to find more prompts from other lovely creators!! 

DNI: NSFW, Kink, DDLG/MDLB/ABDL/Varients/Supporters, MAP/NOMAP/Pedo/Supporters, “Trans” aged/racial/species/abled, trump supporters, ableist, racist, lgbtphobic, discourse, pro-ed/ana/mia/sh, Anti-vaxx, Flat Earther, & Autism Speaks supporters

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook thrives on criticism of "disinformation"

The mainstream critique of Facebook is surprisingly compatible with Facebook’s own narrative about its products. FB critics say that the company’s machine learning and data-gathering slides disinformation past users’ critical faculties, poisoning their minds.

Meanwhile, Facebook itself tells advertisers that it can use data and machine learning to slide past users’ critical faculties, convincing them to buy stuff.

In other words, the mainline of Facebook critics start from the presumption that FB is a really good product and that advertisers are definitely getting their money’s worth when they shower billions on the company.

Which is weird, because these same critics (rightfully) point out that Facebook lies all the time, about everything. It would be bizarre if the only time FB was telling the truth was when it was boasting about how valuable its ad-tech is.

Facebook has a conflicted relationship with this critique. I’m sure they’d rather not be characterized as a brainwashing system that turns good people into monsters, but not when the choice is between “brainwashers” and “con-artists selling garbage to credulous ad execs.”

As FB investor and board member Peter Thiel puts it: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.” In other words, the important word in “evil genius” is “genius,” not “evil.”

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1440312271511568393

The accord of tech critics and techbros gives rise to a curious hybrid, aptly named by Maria Farrell: the Prodigal Techbro.

A prodigal techbro is a self-styled wizard of machine-learning/surveillance mind control who has see the error of his ways.

https://crookedtimber.org/2020/09/23/story-ate-the-world-im-biting-back/

This high-tech sorcerer doesn’t disclaim his magical powers — rather, he pledges to use them for good, to fight the evil sorcerers who invented a mind-control ray to sell your nephew a fidget-spinner, then let Robert Mercer hijack it to turn your uncle into a Qanon racist.

There’s a great name for this critique, criticism that takes its subjects’ claims to genius at face value: criti-hype, coined by Lee Vinsel, describing a discourse that turns critics into “the professional concern trolls of technoculture.”

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

The thing is, Facebook really is terrible — but not because it uses machine learning to brainwash boomers into iodine-guzzling Qnuts. And likewise, there really is a problem with conspiratorial, racist, science-denying, epistemologically chaotic conspiratorialism.

Addressing that problem requires that we understand the direction of the causal arrow — that we understand whether Facebook is the cause or the effect of the crisis, and what role it plays.

“Facebook wizards turned boomers into orcs” is a comforting tale, in that it implies that we need merely to fix Facebook and the orcs will turn back into our cuddly grandparents and get their shots. The reality is a lot gnarlier and, sadly, less comforting.

There’s been a lot written about Facebook’s sell-job to advertisers, but less about the concern over “disinformation.” In a new, excellent longread for Harpers, Joe Bernstein makes the connection between the two:

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

Fundamentally: if we question whether Facebook ads work, we should also question whether the disinformation campaigns that run amok on the platform are any more effective.

Bernstein starts by reminding us of the ad industry’s one indisputable claim to persuasive powers: ad salespeople are really good at convincing ad buyers that ads work.

Think of department store magnate John Wanamaker’s lament that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Whoever convinced him that he was only wasting half his ad spend was a true virtuoso of the con.

As Tim Hwang documents brilliantly in his 2020 pamphlet “Subprime Attention Crisis,” ad-tech is even griftier than the traditional ad industry. Ad-tech companies charge advertisers for ads that are never served, or never rendered, or never seen.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

They rig ad auctions, fake their reach numbers, fake their conversions (they also lie to publishers about how much they’ve taken in for serving ads on their pages and short change them by millions).

Bernstein cites Hwang’s work, and says, essentially, shouldn’t this apply to “disinformation?”

If ads don’t work well, then maybe political ads don’t work well. And if regular ads are a swamp of fraudulently inflated reach numbers, wouldn’t that be true of political ads?

Bernstein talks about the history of ads as a political tool, starting with Eisenhower’s 1952 “Answers America” campaign, designed and executed at great expense by Madison Ave giants Ted Bates.

Hannah Arendt, whom no one can accuse of being soft on the consequences of propaganda, was skeptical of this kind of enterprise: “The psychological premise of human manipulability has become one of the chief wares that are sold on the market of common and learned opinion.”

The ad industry ran an ambitious campaign to give scientific credibility to its products. As Jacques Ellul wrote in 1962, propagandists were engaged in “the increasing attempt to control its use, measure its results, define its effects.”

Appropriating the jargon of behavioral scientists let ad execs “assert audiences, like workers in a Taylorized workplace, need not be persuaded through reason, but could be trained through repetition to adopt the new consumption habits desired by the sellers.” -Zoe Sherman

These “scientific ads” had their own criti-hype attackers, like Vance “Hidden Persuaders” Packard, who admitted that “researchers were sometimes prone to oversell themselves — or in a sense to exploit the exploiters.”

Packard cites Yale’s John Dollard, a scientific ad consultant, who accused his colleagues of promising advertisers “a mild form of omnipotence,” which was “well received.”

Today’s scientific persuaders aren’t in a much better place than Dollard or Packard. Despite all the talk of political disinformation’s reach, a 2017 study found “sharing articles from fake news domains was a rare activity” affecting <10% of users.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586

So, how harmful is this? One study estimates “if one fake news article were about as persuasive as one TV campaign ad, the fake news in our database would have changed vote shares by an amount on the order of hundredths of a percentage point.”

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211

Now, all that said, American politics certainly feel and act differently today than in years previous. The key question: “is social media creating new types of people, or simply revealing long-obscured types of people to a segment of the public unaccustomed to seeing them?”

After all, American politics has always had its “paranoid style,” and the American right has always had a sizable tendency towards unhinged conspiratorialism, from the John Birch Society to Goldwater Republicans.

Social media may not be making more of these yahoos, but rather, making them visible to the wider world, and to each other, allowing them to make common cause and mobilize their adherents (say, to carry tiki torches through Charlottesville in Nazi cosplay).

If that’s true, then elite calls to “fight disinformation” are unlikely to do much, except possibly inflaming things. If “disinformation” is really people finding each other (not infecting each other) labelling their posts as “disinformation” won’t change their minds.

Worse, plans like the Biden admin’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism lump 1/6 insurrectionists in with anti-pipeline activists, racial justice campaigners, and animal rights groups.

Whatever new powers we hand over to fight disinformation will be felt most by people without deep-pocketed backers who’ll foot the bill for crack lawyers.

Here’s the key to Bernstein’s argument: “One reason to grant Silicon Valley’s assumptions about our mechanistic persuadability is that it prevents us from thinking too hard about the role we play in taking up and believing the things we want to believe. It turns a huge question about the nature of democracy in the digital age — what if the people believe crazy things, and now everyone knows it? — into a technocratic negotiation between tech companies, media companies, think tanks, and universities.”

I want to “Yes, and” that.

My 2020 book How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism doesn’t dismiss the idea that conspiratorialism is on the rise, nor that tech companies are playing a key role in that rise — but without engaging in criti-hype.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

In my book, I propose that conspiratorialism isn’t a crisis of what people believe so much as how they arrive at their beliefs — it’s an “epistemological crisis.”

We live in a complex society plagued by high-stakes questions none of us can answer on our own.

Do vaccines work? Is oxycontin addictive? Should I wear a mask? Can we fight covid by sanitizing surfaces? Will distance ed make my kind an ignoramus? Should I fly in a 737 Max?

Even if you have the background to answer one of these questions, no one can answer all of them.

Instead, we have a process: neutral expert agencies use truth-seeking procedures to sort of competing claims, showing their work and recusing themselves when they have conflicts, and revising their conclusions in light of new evidence.

It’s pretty clear that this process is breaking down. As companies (led by the tech industry) merge with one another to form monopolies, they hijack their regulators and turn truth-seeking into an auction, where shareholder preferences trump evidence.

This perversion of truth has consequences — take the FDA’s willingness to accept the expensively manufactured evidence of Oxycontin’s safety, a corrupt act that kickstarted the opioid epidemic, which has killed 800,000 Americans to date.

If the best argument for vaccine safety and efficacy is “We used the same process and experts as pronounced judgement on Oxy” then it’s not unreasonable to be skeptical — especially if you’re still coping with the trauma of lost loved ones.

As Anna Merlan writes in her excellent Republic of Lies, conspiratorialism feeds on distrust and trauma, and we’ve got plenty of legitimate reasons to experience both.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

Tech was an early adopter of monopolistic tactics — the Apple ][+ went on sale the same year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail, and the industry’s growth tracked perfectly with the dismantling of antitrust enforcement over the past 40 years.

What’s more, while tech may not persuade people, it is indisputably good at finding them. If you’re an advertiser looking for people who recently looked at fridge reviews, tech finds them for you. If you’re a boomer looking for your old high school chums, it’ll do that too.

Seen in that light, “online radicalization” stops looking like the result of mind control, instead showing itself to be a kind of homecoming — finding the people who share your interests, a common online experience we can all relate to.

I found out about Bernstein’s article from the Techdirt podcast, where he had a fascinating discussion with host Mike Masnick.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210928/12593747652/techdirt-podcast-episode-299-misinformation-about-disinformation.shtml

Towards the end of that discussion, they talked about FB’s Project Amplify, in which the company tweaked its news algorithm to uprank positive stories about Facebook, including stories its own PR department wrote.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#zuckerveganism

Project Amplify is part of a larger, aggressive image-control effort by the company, which has included shuttering internal transparency portals, providing bad data to researchers, and suing independent auditors who tracked its promises.

I’d always assumed that this truth-suppression and wanton fraud was about hiding how bad the platform’s disinformation problem was.

But listening to Masnick and Bernstein, I suddenly realized there was another explanation.

Maybe Facebook’s aggressive suppression of accurate assessments of disinformation on its platform are driven by a desire to hide how expensive (and profitable) political advertising it depends on is pretty useless.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_(41793470192).jpg

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[lazaefair]

When we talk about the basics of body-based discourses in fandom, we’re talking generally about a few main things:

Black/brown characters written or drawn as significantly larger (height and muscle-wise) than their canon self and/or a white character or a light-skinned character of color

East Asian characters being written or drawn as smaller (sometimes more “feminine”) than Black/brown characters they may be paired with… as well as with white characters

How Black/brown characters are “gifted” with giant genitals. Primarily cis men, but in Omegaverse settings, Black/brown “alpha females” in some universes are similarly and dubiously “blessed”

[...]

Nothing we do exists in a vacuum. Not even want.

As Chong-Suk Han and Kyung-Hee Choi point out in “Very Few People Say “No Whites” Gay Men of Color and The Racial Politics of Desire”:

More importantly, imagining erotic worlds as independent social arenas rather than a part of a larger organized social system, leads one to believe that they are self-contained erotic marketplaces where those who possess valued traits are on equal footing, regardless of larger structural factors. Yet as Green (2011) also noted, sexual fields are not isolated arenas, but are embedded within a larger society whose values are reflected in what is considered desirable within a given sexual field. Likewise, Whittier and Simon (2001) argue, sexual desires are often influenced by larger social constructions of race, ethnicity, age and class. Given that sexual fields do not actually exist in a vacuum, these constructions of race, ethnicity, age and class are likely to transverse across different sexual fields.

In fandom and other “for fun” arenas, we’re told that there’s nothing serious about what we’re doing. We’re told that we’re just playing around and so writing a Black character as a big-dicked aggressor or drawing an East Asian character as a stereotype of erotic Orientalism is fine. Because it’s just fandom. It’s not serious. It doesn’t mean anything.

Except –

It does mean more than all of us tend to think.

People think of fandom, and what we create and consume in it, as fully separated from the rest of the real world.

Of course, what you’re into in fandom doesn’t have to mean it’s what you’re into in your real or offline life – and in most cases, fandom is fully a space for people to explore things they literally can’t engage with offline at any level and that’s not a bad thing at all. But we do bring our baggage into fandom with us and that means if we haven’t unlearned – or at least, started dealing with – baggage in the form of internalized bigotry we haven’t cast off… it’s coming right there with us to fandom.

Fandom should be a place where we just… do whatever. Where we’re sexy and can get off scot-free.

But as Han and Choi point out by referencing Green in their study: “sexual fields are not isolated arenas, but are embedded within a larger society whose values are reflected in what is considered desirable within a given sexual field.”

[...]

When we’re talking about creators messing up… here’s how that can look:

The main way that creators in fandom mess up, is in the way that we have lots of fanworks where a Black/brown character is somehow significantly larger than the non-Black person that is their partner in said fanworks… even when canon doesn’t match up.

[...]

In addition to this: Black/brown characters are often exclusively alphas in Omegaverse fiction (in and out of werewolf universes). They’re written as tops – the more service-y the better – who are rarely given emotional exploration the way other (often whiter) characters are. They don’t really get to have feelings… unless they’re about the non-Black POC or white character they’re about to plow like they’re a field in the Fertile Crescent.

[...]

Want to know how we can all do better?

Resources like Writing With Color do exist and while I’m reasonably sure most of their content is oriented around worksafe stuff, I’m sure they have advice for NSFW content! (They also have anon on so you can ask directly for help even if you’re feeling shy!)

Read romance writers by and about people of color. For example: if you’re going to write Black Panther fan fiction without writing anyone Black before… crack open Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals series because that franchise’s influence on her own work is very obvious.

Read erotica by and about people of color. There are so many series worth recommending, but Solace Ames’s books stuck with me for years and she’s a great starting point for writing fully fleshed out characters of color who are queer and messy on main.

Go through the books at WOC In Romance because the best way to get used to writing characters of color is to read books about them in general.

Do your own research into things like fetishization – outside of how some people redefine it in fandom. Look up sexual racism and see how it’s portrayed in media and how it plays out in the dating world – so you can understand what to avoid in your own work. Check out The Erotic Life of Racism!

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

Hi. You mentioned in your introduction that, out of BTS, you have a special interest in Jimin and Jungkook as artists and content creators. I don't know if you intend to critique their work through analysis of sign systems but that seems like a cool idea.

Roland Barthes himself never made any explicit statement about his own homosexuality in his work. In 'Incidents' he alludes to participating in gay erotic activity in Morocco. The obvious conclusions have been drawn by readers and scholars from this as well as biographical accounts. His work has at times been analyzed through lenses of textual suppression and the gay erotic. His own sexuality has been brought out when looking closer at the textuality of his writings.

Jimin and Jungkook have likewise never explicitly stated that they are partners or queer. A lot of people accept some of their art as showing familiar canonical codes and signs of gayness. This also extends to some of their actions and presentation. Where do you stand in regards to talking about that? Most of the discourse about this on tumblr is from bi, lesbian and straight cis women. There are instances of fetishization, exoticization and gatekeeping. It can be frustrating watching from the sidelines sometimes (I am a lurker who never commented despite reading Jikook blogs for years. Yup that's my life).

You have been reading Jikook blogs for a while, I assume. I am still not sure if discourse about undisclosed queer identities on the basis of spectator's feelings is ethical but I am not against it at all. What are your thoughts? Do you have a background in queer theory? If you isolate Jimin and Jungkook from the rest of BTS that becomes a queer reading of text, doesn't it?

Hello there! I assume you sent me 3 more anon asks, right? I tried to give an answer here that can maybe answer all your questions. If you also were the one who asked if I could have some cinema blog that you know of, the answer is no, I do not have one. Now, let's get to the main topic.

I have seen the discourse on Jikook blogs, I am fully aware of what is being written. Not only on tumblr, but on other platforms as well. Most of them are focusing on their relationship and the speculation surrounding it and few have written from an entertainment and media perspective without making definite assumptions about the nature of that relationship. Shippers, supporters or anything else for that matter, they have a place in the fandom discourse.

As to my own perspective, I do not talk about individuals and their personal lives, but I write about official content (that can be a vlive, the way they present themselves online, other media content such as GCF) and most importantly performances. Analyzing art is not speculating or definitely talking about the artist's identity. Since BTS in general, and Jungkook and Jimin in particular don't usually talk in depth about their concepts, the reasons behind it – we still don't know much about MMA Black Swan for that matter (all the background information that we would usually find if it were a film, theater play, performance of any kind), all I can possibly do is look at the performance and try to make sense of it. Sometimes the artist's identity is tied completely to the performance and sometimes it's not. In this case, there hasn't been anything explicitly said about it, so there's only one option left: audience reception through interpretation, which happens regardless if the artist offers his own key of interpretation.

You mentioned the ethical aspect, so in response to that all I can say is that a lot of discourse surrounding Jimin and Jungkook or them as a pair/unit (especially when it comes to art and media) is based on publicly released content which means their company and they themselves are ok with it.

Using queer theory to talk about K-Pop is not something unique and there are plenty of performances out there (not just what we see in regards to Jimin, Jungkook or BTS in general) that have been analyzed and talked about through that lens.

I recommend this article by Chuyun Oh and David C. Oh, Unmasking Queerness: Blurring and Solidifying Queer Lines through K-Pop Cross-Dressing and I will add two quotes that perfectly explain how/why queer theory is used and how it is a legitimate perspective that can be applied to certain K-Pop acts:

''Historically, performance has been a site for liminal actions that transgress pre-existing boundaries and social norms (Turner and Schechner). Performance can present queerness in between homosexuality and heterosexuality without specifically being marked as queer or homosexual. Focusing on liminal features of queerness decolonizes Asian queer aesthetics by unmasking Western-centered gay subjects. Queer is often understood as a Eurocentric concept with the implication that the non-West queer subject should follow Western models.''

''K-pop becomes a source of Asian queer aesthetics. SY and SJ’s ambivalent construction of homoerotic role-play signals that anyone can act like, feel, and be queer without the danger of directly being marked as “gay” or “homosexual.” Such ambiguity has potential to liberate individuals and to allow alternative sexual identities, moving away from stereotypes of homosexuality embedded in Western culture. A certain body that does not belong to existing categories produces “anxiety and fascination,” and challenges the homogenized classification of gender roles in society (Albrecht 706).''

There are many other articles on similar subjects, not just focused on art, but on queer Asian identities. People are researching these various topics and it's all out there for anyone who wants to read about it. All I can say is that it's important to inform ourselves of cultural context on all matters and leave the BTS bubble (not talking about you anon, since I don't know the extent of your knowledge) and see that Korean queer art/artists exist publicly and online and people are talking about it, including on tumblr. It just depends on where you're looking at.

[tundrainafrica]

i really thought hange was non-binary bc the one who said hanges gender was up for interpretation was kodansha us but isayama asked for gender neutral pronouns right?

here!

I’m gonna answer all of the gender asks in one go because for one, I don’t think I wanna flood my own feed and my own tumblr with the same arguments. 

I think a lot of the questions on Hange’s gender and the topic of  gender and sexuality overall are kinda intertwined and I feel like for anyone who actually reads my stuff, it’s better understood as one big wall of text. 

So I was wondering, is that song the absolute proof about hange's gender?

No. I think the interpretation of the song which people are using to prove that Hange’s nonbinary is very western centric. I actually did research around this song and knowing what I know about Japanese culture, I actually interpret the song as a way for Japanese people to break out from gender norms. 

For people who are not aware, Japan is incredibly strict with gender norms. The LGBTQ community is not as progressive as it is in Western countries (I mean gay marriage isn’t completely legalized yet). And just looking at it from the stand point of gender roles and gender expectations, despite the progressive thinking, there are a lot of things Japanese men and women have to conform to just to be respected in everyday society. Because in Japan, the community has always been more important than the individual and it’s honestly the same for most asian countries as well. 

A lot of the pressure of living in Japan, working with Japanese people is the pressure to conform and I’ve seen my friends do it through small things like getting bangs (because all Japanese women have bangs apparently), wearing make up when going out (because this is generally an accepted for all Japanese people) and always dressing your best because in that manner women are held to an incredibly high standard in Japan. And this goes similarly for men who are constantly pressured to be the breadwinner in the family. If your wife is making more than you, be ready to hear people talk. I know these expectations exist in a Western setting too but Japan is incredibly stiff as a society and this is one reason why, despite having numerous opportunities to moveto Japan myself, I am not at all entertaining that possibility. I have worked in a Japanese company and I hated it and moved to a western company right after six months. I have completely accepted the fact that there is no mobility career wise from a non-Japanese (and a woman at that) in Japanese society. 

In conformity, hierarchies etc, Japan is its own monster. That’s why when songs like Jibunrashiku, Hitchcock (by Yorushika) or Shisoukan (by Yorushika) come out, for one it’s in Japanese so I wouldn’t approach the songs from an English and as a Japanese speaker and someone who is pretty familiar with Japanese culture, I can’t help interpret that song as a social commentary for the shitty parts of Japanese society and how they tend to shoot the concept of an ‘individual’ down. 

But does that mean I completely shoot down the idea that Hange is NB? 

NO. Yams said so himself, Hange’s gender is unknown. But at the same time, Yams recognizes the fact that in the anime and in the live action, Hange is a female. If Yams were that adamant to make Hange NB, I think he would have at least made more of an effort to police how she is depicted in the anime and in the live action. 

 His exact words were:　「ハンジは彼（彼女）みたいな、ちょっと浮世離れした、枠にとらわれない自由な感じで描きたかったんです。」If I roughly translated it to English, “I wanted to draw Hange as someone otherworldly, free from the confines of gender.”

Tbh, I wanted to avoid these gender asks altogether but I’ve seen the environment in twitter and the ways many people approach gender, particularly ‘nonbinary’ or genderfluid and it really just doesn’t sit well with me. For one, what’s up with all these rules on how to approach our nonbinary and LGBTQ friends? What’s up with all these accusations that if we don’t follow them to a T, then we’re suddenly transphobic or homophobic? 

The fact that we’re creating all these rules on how to go about her nonbinary gender for one, just defeats the whole purpose of Hange being a free bird in the first place who wouldn’t have cared and who wouldnt’ ever have been confined to gender in the first place. 

I mean the establishment of set rules and social norms on how to navigate gender, sex, sexuality and gender roles is the reason why we had heternormativity in the first place. And what I can see, yes, we did get progressive, we did start recognizing other genders, other ways of thinking but the danger in all this is that, we’re once again creating frameworks and norms about how people that identify as these genders are supposed to act. And this defeats the whole purpose of why we recognized concepts of other sexualities, other genders and breaks from gender roles in the first place. 

We wanted to show these people that their feelings are valid, that the way they’re navigating their relationships and their identities are valid and the heternormative society we’ve lived in that has been condemning for so long, was flawed, was wrong. 

But the thing is, with the establishment of all these social norms on how to navigate our relationships with LGBTQ people and how to navigate our own gender, sexuality, sex and role is just making us regress back to that shitty heteronormative society of a hundred years ago. Because suddenly, everyone is questioning once again ‘How am I supposed to be feeling if I’m nb?” “How am I supposed to be feeling if I’m trans?” “How am I supposed to be feeling if I’m LGBT?”  

And we’re creating these abstract ideas of how exactly, being genderfluid is supposed to feel like. Am I really supposed to be going by ‘they?’ Am I supposed to be uncomfortable with CIS pronouns?

And If I don’t go through this process… If I don’t feel this way then maybe I’m not NB? Maybe I’m not Trans? Maybe I’m not LGBT? And if I don’t conform to this clear cut idea of what NB is which people set up for me, god forbid I might just be transphobic or homophobic. 

And Here’s the thing, everyone’s journey to self discovery is unique and there is no exact way to go about your gender or identity. I find it terrifying actually that creating all these clear cut rules have built misconceptions in so many people already on what they are supposed to feel like when they decide to identify with a certain gender which is no different from long ago when people had to hide the fact that they liked people of the same gender because god forbid they might just be persecuted for being gay. 

Creating these frameworks, these incredibly strict rules on how someone is supposed to navigate relationships with LGBTs and their own personal identities is only making it all the more dangerous for people who are in the process of discovering themselves. 

Back in college, I used to accompany a friend to a clinic when he was starting HRT treatments and before he started them, he had to consult with a doctor and the consultation lasted months. Before all that, they gave him a checklist of ‘feelings,’ which if he does experience them, he checks it and if he does check enough of them and agrees with a huge chunk of them, then he might have gender dysphoria and maybe the HRT treatments and sex reassignment was for him. It was a hundred item checklist,  pages full of waivers, warnings and questions about his own experiences with his gender identity. And the fact that he had to consult for months after on that? There must be a reason. 

Maybe because the academe realizes, maybe because those adept on the field on gender realize that gender is too complex of a subject to have been boxed into these categories in the first place. 

And this whole discourse or I wouldn’t say discourse more of like, this ‘pushing of agendas’ as to say, ‘this is how being gender fluid or non binary is supposed to feel like’ this is how being transgender is supposed to feel like and if you don’t fit it to a T then you’re not transgender or you’re not nb. Or if you don’t fit it all, maybe you’re just transphobic is dangerous for many reasons. Either it gatekeeps people who want to explore their gender further. Or it forces people to have to conform to these and force themselves to ‘feel’ all of these things in the first place. 

And god, this is just the gender issue, I haven’t even explored the sexuality, gender roles or biological issue.  

i mean pronouns are important but they don’t really reflect someone’s gender??? like there’s people who use he/they, she/they or all pronouns(? they just don’t conform to gender binary ahaha

Given the environment on twitter and having witnessed the bullying first hand that came with one writer who is active on twitter using she/her pronouns for Hange, I feel like my own writing and my own POV on how I go about my writing and how I approach the gender of Hange (since I strictly use she/her) might just be a ticking time bomb and I might find myself at the end of whatever hate war or ‘education’ or as I like to just refer to as bullying, one day. 

I believe though I at least have enough knowledge and awareness of the LGBTQ situation and I think I did put a lot of thought already into this before I made my decision to use ‘she’ to refer to Hange.

(And tbh, you can be nonbinary and you can be female at the same time and I’ve written about that multiple times already BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT EVEN IN THE SAME CATEGORY. And creating this mutual exclusivity between being nonbinary and female just kinda invalidates a lot of those people who are still deciding where exactly they fall in this complex web of identity discovery)

As someone who generally mainly hangs out with LGBT people and i have been doing this since high school by the way, and as someone who has tried all the sexualities on the spectrum, I talked to my asexual friends about possibly being asexual, I have experimented with women and sometimes, I just had dry spells and it just so happened that in the end of all these, I fell in love with a guy but I really believe that gender is such a flexible thing and even though I am with aguy right now, I still simp over lesbians, gays, ciswomen, transgenders because simping isn’t about gender. 

And these set of rules on how to navigate genders is just invalidating the experiences of people who are flitting in between the two identities and it just hinders the process of self discovery for a lot of people. 

Anyway, the point is, there is only one statement I found fundamental when approaching my relationships with the LGBT community and my own perspective on my self identity. 

Recognition of someone’s feelings and their journey to a gender identity and the pronouns that come with it are important.

Then someone might go “THEN WHY DON’T YOU RESPECT HANGE’s NON BINARY PRONOUNS. Because just because someone is nonbinary doesn’t mean they automatically go for they. Just because someone is non-binary, doesn’t mean I have to use every single pronoun on the spectrum. The only one who can tell me what pronouns they want used on them is the person in question. 

(I actually read an argument somewhere that going for ‘they’ just because someone is NB is transphobic lmfao. Assuming someone’s pronouns is apparently transphobic too lmfao.)

AND HANGE IS FICTIONAL. And we will never hear about which pronoun she would have wanted in the first place and I think the great ‘nontransphobic’ in-between is just letting people interpret characters how they want to interpret characters in this fictional world (And Hange can be both interpreted as nb and female). It’s the policing which makes the whole process of self discovery, the process of navigating genders all the more difficult for a lot of people. 

And policing how exactly people should navigate gender and sexuality is just gatekeeping. Hange is everyone’s character. The only gender and sexuality identity people have complete jurisdiction on, is their own. And this policing of what exactly certain journeys to discovery are supposed to feel like is inherently harmful for those who are still in the process of deciding for themselves where they stand. 

And going back to what Yams said “I wanted to draw Hange as someone otherworldly, free from the confines of gender/sexuality/gender roles.” I agree with that. 

Because even though I do use ‘she’ with Hange, I do not firmly believe that Hange is a cisgender heterosexual female either. I just believe there are so many more layers to her whole identity and I believe similarly for every single person. Just concluding for one’s self that Hange is nonbinary with a very narrow minded view of what non binary just generally defeats the whole purpose of being ‘free from the confines of gender’ and hinders a lot of discourse and analysis on Hange’s identity over all.

I mean, I don’t know if people agree with this but in the decades I have spent with my close friends figuring out their gender identities, changing pronouns, transitioning, coming out to their parents, here is one thing I noticed. They weren’t asking for a celebration of their gender or sexuality, they weren’t asking for all these policing on how people should approach them. All they wanted was for their feelings to be validated, normalized as an everyday occurrence. I think the point of all these LGBTQ discourse (and by extension race and sex discourse) were all there to just make all these different identities normalized and to completely eradicate the concept of a negative bias or an other which was generally plaguing society for a long time. 

And as their friends, I have never approached them as this champion who would make sure EVERYONE RESPECTED THEM IN THAT WAY IN TWITTER THEY BELIEVE LGBTQ PEOPLE SHOULD BE RESPECTED. All these nonverbal rules I have set up for myself on how to go about being friends with them is because I wanted them to be happy and comfortable in their shoes. And what were the types of things they appreciated? Me hiding it from their parents until they were ready to come out, me helping make their relationship work with their partner, me respecting the pronouns they requested for themselves, me accompanying them to HRT when their parents refused. 

And you know what, that was only a facet of our friendships. My friends’ gender identities and sexualities never dominated discourse. None of them were the ‘token gay friend,’ the ‘token lesbian friend’ or the ‘token asexual friend’ or the ‘token NB friend.’ They were all people I genuinely care about who just happened to have fallen in love with someone of the same gender. They were just people who just happened to be uncomfortable with their original sex. But I would never just describe them as just that. My friend who just so happens to identify as assexual makes a great companion on a night out drinking. My friend who just so happens to be trasngender is really great with logistics and planning and was super helpful and I was eternally grateful when we worked together on that one project. My friend who just happens to be a lesbian has the cutest picture of her girlfreind on her phone screen. 

I will memorize their favorite orders, what makes them tick, what makes them such a great companion, their talents, capabilities more than I will remember their gender. And that’s the characetr song in question is called “Jibunrashiku” or in English “just like me.” Because in the end a strict society which creates all these maxims of what exactly people of a certain gender should act would of course birth songs like “Just like me” A society which puts so much emphasis on gender and sex  as an identity instead of other things like personality, preferences, skills etc. 

And I don’t know if it applies to everyone. But my friends appreciate it because this journey to whatever gender identity they chose wasn’t rooted in some sort of strict framework on how they should be treated according to twitter. It was rooted in their own experiences and how these experiences made them feel. 

Do they feel weird in a woman’s body? Do they just don’t feel any romantic attraction to the opposite gender?

Just treat them as how you would treat anyone else you respect. Just be a decent person. Just be a good friend.

Respect their requests for their own personal pronouns. If they need help, help them to the best of your abilities. 

And here’s the thing, the approach I use with navigating identities, sexuaities genders are rooted in one very simple concept which can be applied to the race discourse, the feminist discourse etc etc. 

Don’t be an ass. Respect people. Don’t reduce people to one facet of their identity. And by extension, when faced with such a dubious situation, think, discern for yourself what’s right or wrong. When there are people educating you, policing you on what is right or wrong, process that information objectively.  

All I have here right now is my own opinions on the gender discourse on Hange and my own opinions on the discourse overall. 

If you don’t agree with it, then have a nice day and I hope you find something else that will convince you to be more openminded but...

UTANG NA LOOB HUWAG LANG KAYO MAMBULLY NG TAO POTA. MAGHANAP NALANG KAYO NG IBANG PWEDENG GAWIN SA BUHAY MO. 

ANG DAMING NASASAKTAN ANG DAMING NATRATRAUMA ANG DAMING NAWAWALANG GANA MAGSULAT KASI DI KAYO NAG-IISIP. PURO TIRA LANG. 

Okay thank you for listening. Do what you want with the information up there but I have said my piece.

[1ddotdhq]

🙇🏼‍♀️Fri 6 Nov ‘20 🛹

Yesterday was the most absurd night I’ve seen on tumblr in the last five years. Just wanted to throw that out there. Between gay Supernatural news, Nevada going to bed again, and Putin possibly stepping down, we also got discourse™️ about Zayn and Gigi. Two women on twitter stepped forward and have claimed to have been sleeping with Zayn when he was with Gigi. The first woman says that when they were together in 2016 Zayn told her that Gigi was PR, and not an actual relationship, and that she called it off when she found Gigi's medication at Zayn's place. The second woman said that she saw Z from 2016 until February 2020 (and that yes, Gigi was pregnant at that time). She says she got him the custom Dusk ‘til Dawn skateboard that he later gave away in a fan event, and posted at the time about angrily entering the contest to try to get her unappreciated gift back. In another angry tweet (these women were spilling for a reason, they're mad as hell), she said the biggest lesson she’s learned this year is, “never let a boy with a girlfriend convince you into dyeing your hair because you’ll end up with damaged hair and he’ll still have a girlfriend”. Here’s hoping that she goes into 2021 without damaged hair and with someone that wouldn’t give away the gifts she gave them - everyone deserves that! The pair are mostly fighting with each other so more details for us popcorn munching bystanders are thin on the ground; for example neither gives a clue as to whether Gigi supposedly knew about them. Fan reaction is split between not believing the women, insulting the women, insulting Zayn, and insulting each other. I want to say it’s not my place to judge any of them, but I think that at this point I’m just screaming into a void, so I’ll say this: if you’re going to be cruel (especially if you're sexist/racist) about any of them in my notes, you’re going to be blocked.

Niall went live today with a special announcement: Ashe will be joining him LIVE on tomorrow’s show! That’s right: they flew her out to London two and a half weeks ago, had her quarantine, and will now have her perform exactly ONE SONG with Niall: Moral of the Story. Don’t get me wrong, I’m SUPER excited to see her, but uh...I have questions. Has she only flown in and quarantined for one song? Or will Niall do what Liam has been and use her as an opener, allowing her to play her set? I guess we’ll see tomorrow! The Independent reported that 90,000 tickets have already been sold for the concert, which is $1.8 million dollars towards paying Niall’s crew and the WeNeedCrew fund, which is amazing and will go a long way! We also got some instagram stories of him rehearsing, and he sounds great! I am getting more and more excited for this show as time goes on. Some set mock-up pictures of DWD were released, as well as some on site pictures of Jack and Alice’s house: it’s the Kaufmann house, which was made famous by Slim Aaron for his “poolside gossip” picture. It was put back on the market last month for $25 million, though I’m sure the price will only go up after this film premieres. 

Liam, who spoke in the interview that just came out yesterday about the futility of responding to the press and how it just stirs up more press about the same thing, responded to an article about him. The Sun drew on that same interview to report that Cheryl had told him to temporarily “take a break” from his son and insinuated that it was because of partying and addiction struggles, in a call back to their recent article about Liam's drinking (like literally calling back; they linked themselves as their source). Liam took to Instagram to say that the Sun had completely taken his remarks out of context, the context being that he said them in May, and that the thing that had separated him from his son was, “the worldwide pandemic, not because I had anything wrong with me”. He says he was “discussing not being able to see my child which is difficult for any parent. I wish sometimes these people would do the research and give the context instead of painting people a certain way for click bait”. I have no opinion (no thots empty head) other than that Liam was 100% right about one thing: there are now six more articles on this topic which would not have been written had he not said anything. 

And last night's memeing dredged up a lot of trips down tumblr memory lane, a regular retrospective of the last five years, and brought the uncomfortable emergence of a lot of locals posting about babygate ("haha next we'll find out that guy from 1D really wasn't the dad!" ha...ha...uhhh.) A good reminder of how many people are uninvested but still very much aware of the babygate rumors and of how major any kind of announcement or revelation would be, the absolute impossibility of just "ending it while no one is looking!" And in totally unrelated (and unwanted) news, Briana and Nick unshuttered their instagrams. "I'm back!" posts Briana. Ugh, read the room people: you are an unasked for cactus. That being said, please let's all take a deep breath and drink some water and get some sleep. It’s what I’ll be doing all weekend!

[arcticdementor]

The University of California system is getting rid of its SAT/ACT requirement. More will follow.

There’s a lot to say. First, we must distinguish between two types of tests, or really two types of testing. When people say “standardized tests,” they think of the SAT, but they also think of state-mandated exams (usually bought, at great taxpayer expense, from Pearson and other for-profit companies) that are designed to serve as assessments of public K-12 schools, of aggregates and averages of students. The SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, and similar tests are oriented towards individual ability or aptitude; they exist to show prerequisite skills to admissions officers. (And, in one of the most essential purposes of college admissions, to employers, who are restricted in the types of testing they can perform thanks to Griggs v Duke Power Co.) Sure, sometimes researchers will use SAT data to reflect on, for example, the fact that there’s no underlying educational justification for higher graduation rates1, but SATs are really about the individual. State K-12 testing is about cities and districts, and exists to provide (typically dubious) justification for changes to education policy2. SATs and similar help admissions officers sort students for spots in undergraduate and graduate programs. This post is about those predictive entrance tests like the SAT.

Liberals repeat several types of myths about the SAT/ACT with such utter confidence and repetition that they’ve become a kind of holy writ. But myths they are.

1. SATs/ACTs don’t predict college success. They do, indeed. This one is clung to so desperately by liberals that you’d think there was some sort of compelling empirical basis to believe this. There isn’t. There never has been. They’re making it up. They want it to be true, and so they believe it to be true.

…

2. The SATs only tell you how well a student takes the SAT. This is perhaps a corollary to 1., and is equally wrong. They tell us what they were designed to tell us: how well students are likely to perform in college. But the SATs tell us about much more than college success. Let me run this graphic again.

…

3. SATs just replicate the income distribution. No. Again, asserted with utter confidence by liberals despite overwhelming evidence that this is not true. I believe that this research represents the largest publicly-available sample of SAT scores and income information, with an n of almost 150,000, and the observed correlation between family income and SAT score is .25. This is not nothing. It is a meaningful predictor. But it means that the large majority of the variance in SAT scores is not explainable by income information. A correlation of .25 means that there are vast numbers of lower-income students outperforming higher-income students. Other analyses find similar correlations. If SAT critics wanted to say that “there is a relatively small but meaningful correlation between family income and SAT scores and we should talk about that,” fair game. But that’s not how they talk. The routinely make far stronger claims than that in an effort to dismiss these tests all together, such as here by Yale’s Paul Bloom. (Whose work I generally like.) It’s just not that hard to correlate two variables together, guys. I don’t know why you wouldn’t ever ask yourselves “is this thing I constantly assert as absolute fact actually true?” Well, maybe I do.

In general, progressive and left types routinely overstate the power of the relationship between family wealth and academic performance on all manner of educational outcomes. The political logic is obvious: if you generally want to redistribute money (as I do) then the claim that educational problems are really economic problems provides ammo for your position. But the fact that there is a generic socioeconomic effect does not mean that giving people money will improve their educational outcomes very much, particularly if richer people are actually mildly but consistently better at school than poorer for sorting reasons that are not the direct product of differences in income. That is, what correlation does exist between SES and academic indicators might simply be the metrics accurately measuring the constructs they were designed to measure.

And throwing money at our educational problems, while noble in intent, hasn’t worked. (People react violently to this, but for example poorer and Blacker public schools receive significantly higher per-pupil funding than richer and whiter schools, which should not be a surprise given that the policy apparatus has been shoveling money at the racial performance gap for 40 years.) All manner of major interventions in student socioeconomic status, including adoption into dramatically different home and family conditions, have failed to produce the benefits you’d expect if academic outcomes were a simple function of money. I believe in redistribution as a way to ameliorate the consequences of poor academic performance. There is no reason to think that redistribution will ameliorate poor academic performance itself.

5. SATs are easily gamed with expensive tutoring. They are not. This one is perhaps less empirically certain than the prior two and on which I’m most amenable to counterargument, but the preponderance of the evidence seems clear to me in saying that the benefits of tutoring/coaching for these tests are vastly overstated. Again, a simplistic proffered explanation for a troublesome set of facts that then implies simplistic solutions that would not work.

6. Going test optional increases racial diversity. This one, I think, must be called scientifically unsettled. However both Sweitzer, Blalock, and Sharma and Belasco, Rosinger, and Hearn find no appreciable increase in racial diversity after universities go test-optional. “Holistic” application criteria like admissions essays almost certainly benefit richer students anyway. What’s more, we have to ask ourselves what “diversity” really means in this context. Private colleges and universities keep the relevant data close to the vest, for obvious reasons, but it’s widely believed that many elite schools satisfy their internal diversity goals for Black students by aggressively pursuing wealthy Kenyan and Nigerian international students, whose parents have the means to be the kind of reliable donors that such schools rely on so heavily. I’m not aware of a really comprehensive study that examines this issue, and it would be hard to pull off, but the relevant question is “do various policies intended to improve diversity on campus actually increase the enrollment of American-born descendants of African slaves?” I can’t say, but you can guess where my suspicions lie.

…

All of that is prologue to the bigger point: the controversy over college entrance examinations stems not from the examinations themselves, but from the fact that they reveal profound differences in human capital that make progressives uncomfortable. The SATs don’t create inequality. They reveal inequality.

…

The racial achievement/performance gap is a curious thing even in the context of an American political discourse that seems to get more bizarre by the day. That the gap exists is, on balance, not controversial. Gaps in performance are observed on essentially every measured academic metric, though the size of the effects vary from context to context, and the general distribution is Asian American students at the top, white students next, then Hispanic, then Black. The Black-white gap in particular has shrunk from the era of (explicitly) segregated schools but progress has not been consistent or linear. Most people in academia and politics admit it exists: prominent Black politicians like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris reference it, every major think tank and foundation operating in the educational space identifies it as a major priority, and the NAACP used to address if often, though their Education and Education Strategy pages have recently disappeared so it’s hard to know where they stand now. These things are faddish but once upon a time every other dissertation written by someone getting a PhD in Education was about the gap. We can observe it even outside of reference to controversial tests, such as noting that the white high school graduation rate is 10% higher than that for Black students. The achievement gap is a thing.

And yet I also find a rapidly-congealing social prohibition against talking about these gaps in progressive spaces. If you refer to a racial achievement gap in a lot of liberal or left contexts now, you’ll find that people clam up fast and get visibly uncomfortable, even if you take pains to point out that an academic achievement gap does not imply an academic potential gap. People just don’t want to acknowledge that gaps exist at all; our racial discourse appears to have become such a blunt instrument that the acknowledgement of racial difference is controversial even when you preface discussion with the belief (that I hold) that the gap is the product of innumerable environmental and sociocultural factors rather than genetics or other inherent differences. Simply saying “Black students consistently score lower on tests like the SATs, have lower average GPAs, and have worse metrics on ancillary concerns like truancy” - again, Barack Obama’s position, Kamala Harris’s position, Cory Booker’s position - is enough for people to start launching into harangues about the inherent violence of those comparisons. People just do not want to talk about this stuff.

…

Those concerns with group differences, at least, have some sort of basic political logic and are amenable to complaints that they are the product of systemic inequality. (They are, but not the inequalities that people think, and again the SAT gap is a result of systemic inequality, not a cause of systemic inequality.) More disturbing to me is the rise of resistance within academia to the notion of inequalities between individuals. When I was in grad school more than a half-decade ago, I observed with some considerable unhappiness that it had become increasingly socially unacceptable to speak of some students as simply better students than others, as being more talented, harder working, or more prepared. All of this was seen as inegalitarian and, eventually, as “white supremacist” even if every student being compared in a given context was white. There were many instructors back then who bragged about giving all students As, etc., and I must assume this practice has only grown over time. In the humanities and social sciences especially there is a growing movement to reject assessment, including grading - the means through which we sort better students from worse - as the hand of illegitimate power that “does violence” to the students who voluntarily attend college.

…

Of course, that complicity in the neoliberal machine is not some recent injustice; it is the very reason that colleges and universities are funded by our society at all. If this trend continues, not just eliminating SAT requirements or increasingly refusing to hierarchize students with grades but in rejecting the entire sorting function of the university, academia will collapse. Wealthy parents aren’t paying Harvard to enrich their children in the humanistic sense. They’re paying Harvard to act as a marker of their child’s superiority in the labor market and the social hierarchy. Employers value college because it provides at least some meaningful information about who will succeed as a worker; remove that function and the financial justification for a hideously expensive system dies. I would love if education dropped its association with meritocracy, but that cannot occur within our current system. The professors who self-aggrandize through their rejection of their hierarchizing function, if successful, would cause the doom of the modern university. (These tenured radicals, of course, never are so moved by the inherent inequities of academia that they quit the profession.)

Today, it is somehow controversial to say “some people are smarter than others,” a reflection of one of the simple brute realities of human life and something that has been accepted as true for thousands of years.

Here is the essence of it: hierarchies of relative academic performance are remarkably stable throughout life, due to differences in inherent or intrinsic academic ability of whatever origin, and the SATs and similar mechanisms reveal those differences in a way that liberal America is increasingly unable to accept. This is the source of all of this angst, not the technical details of whether a test is fair or valid or just, but a liberal intelligentsia that is incapable of honestly confronting the fact that different human beings have fundamentally different intrinsic abilities. I believe in political equality, social equality, equality of rights, equality of dignity, equality of protection under the law. But the notion that all people are equally talented, in academics or anything else, is an absurdity, and as much as people will rush to deny intrinsic difference, I suspect that pretty much everybody knows that they are real. When you were a child you casually assumed that some of your classmates were naturally better at school than others, and you did because it was true.

This is the conversation that I tried, and failed, to force with my book: left-of-center political movements, from center-left to radically socialist, cannot achieve the goal of the greater good for everyone, including greater political and economic equality, while pretending that we believe in equality of human ability. The only way to intelligently address various social, economic, and political equalities related to differences in human potential is to acknowledge that those differences exist. The current rending of garments regarding inequalities within our education system has led to certifiably bizarre situations like the movement, currently gathering steam, to teach math as if it is as subjective as literature or art. But this won’t make Black kids or poor kids or girls or anyone else actually better at math. And if the universities really give up their function of creating an academic hierarchy for political reasons, employers will find new systems that do that, or a lot of people will get hired and quickly fired for not being competent. This is not an intelligent policy approach. Getting rid of the SATs won’t make unprepared kids prepared. It won’t make naturally untalented students naturally talented. It won’t make kids who aren’t smart into smart kids. All it will do is hide the reality of those unpleasant inequalities.

[gallavictorious]

i very much enjoyed your take about how mickey might have bottomed for other people than ian, because i personally find it very likely and it generally seems like an unpopular opinion. a lot of the time in fandom (not just this one) people seem to expect bottoming to be something super ~special~, and they tend to treat it like an act of indredible trust reserved for the love of your life, instead of a simple preference in bed. for some people it might be, i guess, but i've literally never met a bottom who feels that way. seems weird to me to expect mickey, of "liking what i like don't make me a bitch" fame, to be someone who thinks that. prison is different simply because in there he seems to see sex as a means of establishing dominance/power, not pleasure. idk that's just what makes sense to me

Hiya, nonnie!

I totally agree that the whole top/bottom discourse can get wildly out of hand (Johnlock shippers, I am looking at you), with all sorts of significance tied to who tops and who bottoms. It should be noted, however, that this doesn't just happen in fandom (even if it sometimes happens a lot in fandom) but that these discourses are prevalent in the ”real” world as well: there are all kinds of ideas floating around about what being a top or being a bottom says about you as a person and about your relationships. Rather than being construed as something that you do, it's often seen (primarily but not exclusively by straight people) as something that you are, and while I don't doubt that there are gay men who do identify strongly with being a top or a bottom, in my experience, as in yours, most don't particularly. It's one of many aspects of sex; it's a thing that you do; and one you might have a clear preference about, but you also might not. It isn't necessarily tied to trust, or at least not more so than any other sex act.

Disclaimer: I'm not actually a gay penis haver, I haven't done any extensive research on the topic, and I don't tend to discuss the details of my friends' sex life with them, so I don't know this. Anecdotal evidence, my dears. In general, however, I think it's a good practise to assume that what a person likes in bed doesn't necessarily say a lot about what sort of person they are, the same way having a certain type of food preference doesn't. (We're putting aside, for the moment, the fact that taste is often at least partially shaped by ones culture becuase I feel that will only muddy the waters on this particular topic.)

All that said – and this is where I suspect you'll stop enjoying my take; sorry about that, nonnie! – I think that for Mickey bottoming does have a lot to do about trust, at least initially. Not in the sense that it's something super special and precious that he wants to reserve for his one true love or anything like that, but in the sense that I believe that Mickey, as a result of the enviroment he grew up in, is very, very aware of the assumptions sometimes made about bottoms (usually by straight people). I've actually written halfway extensively about Mickey's relationship to his own sexuality before, so for a longer and even somewhat coherent explanation of my thougths on this, please check that out.

Here, let me just note that Mickey might well know that liking what he likes doesn't make him a bitch, but he's also highly cognizant of the fact that others might thinkit makes him a bitch, and he can't afford that (especially not in prison; I think his main motivation for fucking me there is mostly to just get off - and it's a good opportunity to actually do it with men without revealing himself as gay - rather than to establish dominance, but he exclusively tops because doing anything else would mark him as a bitch). Except with Ian he chooses to risk it, repeatedly, and I think that does signify a rather large amount of easy trust.

The thing is, though, that I think that after having what he had with Ian and living openly as a gay man, I think Mickey has come to a place of self-acceptance (and, significantly, to a place where the worst has already happened and he survived it) that allows him to truly not give a damn about what anybody but the people close to him assumes, which makes bottoming less of a trust thing and thus no longer something he only feels comfortable doing with Ian. (Which doesn't mean he's comfortable doing it with just anybody he's fucking; see Byron.) I have some thoughts about what this means for his stay in Mexico (LGTB+ unfriendly cartels and all), but I'll get back to that in response to another ask I got on this topic.

So yeah, I think that Mickey probably has bottomed for other people (and that this is a somewhat unpopular opinion in the fandom) but only after he had been in a proper and official relationship with Ian – and I do think that trust is a pretty important component of the whole thing in this particular case; not because bottoming is inherently something that requires extra special levels of trust, but because of Mickey's awareness of prevalent discourses surrounding it.

Finally, I want to note that we'll never know what Mickey did or didn't do before he hooked up with Ian, or what he did or didn't do while they were apart. We can argue one way or the other until the cows come home, and I think we can build a pretty strong case either way, but at the end of the day, it comes down to preferences and what we think makes for a more compelling interpreation. This is the one I vaguely favour (at this time, at least; I've been known to change my mind over time or if a more compelling theory is presented to me); if you prefer another, that's perfectly fine and reasonable. I'm very happy to discuss this and as always I'd love to hear other people's thoughts, but I'm not looking to get involved in any messy fights over it. (Not directed at you, btw, nonnie - loved the ask! Just a general PSA for others who might stumble across this!)

Oh, and other sweet nonnie who sent me an ask on this subject: I'll get back to you with a proper response within a few days! I've saved some thoughts especially for it, so while you already know that we don't fully agree on this, I hope you'll find it somewhat worthwhile. :)

[its-bound-to-get-loud]

Speculating about sexuality

It’s time to get a little controversial on this blog. Or at least talk about a controversial subject. I’ve recently seen some fandom discourse about this subject from multiple sources. A lot of people have the opinion that discussing a celebrity’s sexuality is a bad thing, something you shouldn’t do. I strongly disagree.

Full disclosure, I’m a Larrie. I’m a 1D fan who believes Harry and Louis are a couple. I’m also a 5SOS fan. Now I know many 5SOS fans seem to be wary of Larries in particular. I know some people have taken it too far sometimes. But also, it’s hard to compare Larry/1D to 5SOS in many ways, because Larry and 1D themselves have done a lot of things to encourage fans looking into things they normally might not. It feels to me as if 5SOS fans saw the things that happened in the 1D fandom, turned around and decided to do the exact opposite. This is a good thing in some ways, but it also leaves no room for critical thinking.

Now back to 5SOS. I’ve had a few conversations about this topic and what it comes down to is this. 5SOS are famous, they live a life that’s (partially) being seen by the public and the media. Now this will sound cold, but it’s a fact: 5SOS are a product. When we interact with them on social media, we interact with a product. In the end they want to keep selling their music to us. In order to do so, engaging with fans is part of their job. It doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy it, it doesn’t mean they’re not genuine. If you work in a supermarket part of your job may be stocking shelves. You have to do it because it’s your job, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it as well.

Part of the product that is 5SOS is their relationships. We see their girlfriends plastered over their social media, they mention them in interviews, etc. That’s not something they HAVE to do generally speaking. If we are to assume that (for argument’s sake) all 3 current 5SOS relationships are genuine, then they don’t have to show us their girlfriends if they don’t want to. This means they either choose to do so, because that’s what they want, or these girlfriends are being presented to us for a reason (PR, bearding, etc.). Which of these it is, is for you to decide. Both options make them become part of the product. We are allowed to question that product, since we are the ones consuming it. If the person in question has made comments that can be regarded as them hinting at not being straight they open the door even further. You cannot tell someone to come over and then slam the door in their face because they get too close.

If 5SOS want to they can keep their relationships private. Their social media profiles are not the same as ours. They are a representation of the product they are. A representation of their image. That’s why celebrities often have private profiles as well, where they can share private things that they don’t want to share with the public.

The 5SOS girlfriends themselves are a product as well. They all have careers that involve being in the public eye, they are just as well selling us a version of themselves. 2 public people dating does not mean we automatically HAVE to see that they are dating. Celebrities can keep things a secret or low-key if they want to. In fact, I’d dare to argue they have more tools to do so than you and I.  

You can look at it like this, if I’m buying a laptop I’m doing research online, I’ll check out reviews. I’ll ask questions at the store. I question the product before I buy it. That’s not that different from what we do as fans. Before we buy their music we question if this is a product we want to buy. Most of the time that’s an unconscious decision we make. Sometimes a product can becomes unsatisfactory after a while and we choose to move on from it. I know it sounds cold, but it’s not that different with celebrities. If 5SOS keep showing me their public girlfriends on their public social media, I get to question that. If I come to the conclusion that I think that what they are telling me is false. I get to discuss that. Being a fan does not equal always taking things at face value.

There’s also a double standard in this fandom. Some people are more than willing to yell about how problematic and toxic the girlfriends are in their opinion. Which means they are allowed to poke into (what they think is) a real relationship between 2 people. When Luke says Teeth is about Sierra, they question his words and don’t hesitate to say their relationship is toxic. But when it comes to sexuality suddenly that’s a no go. I am absolutely not a fan of the way some of the way girlfriends behave. As long as this happens in a fandom environment I am also fine with talking about that. But if you disapprove of one thing and then do something similar, maybe it’s time you start practicing what you preach or leave people to have their own opinions.

This doesn’t mean you should tell the guys directly that you think their relationship is not real or that you think they are not straight. You don’t harass their friends, their crew, and their family about this. Discussing a celebrity’s sexuality/relationship should stay limited to fandom spaces. With social media it’s a lot easier for celebrities to see what we say about them. Therefor I always suggest being mindful of what you say (they may be a product, but they are still people). Personally it’s why I enjoy Tumblr, because most celebrities don’t go on here and (most of the time) we can safely discuss things that are more difficult to discuss in a place like Twitter. I will say, just because we are questioning a product, it doesn’t mean we get to be rude in the process. You generally don’t go to the store and start yelling at the salesperson if you don’t agree with what they tell you.

People seem to think it’s disrespectful to say someone is gay. Why? Is there anything wrong with being gay? Absolutely not. We live in a society that’s very heteronormative, being straight is seen as the “default” sexuality. It should not be. If you’re going to argue that it’s disrespectful to say someone is gay, then please also don’t assume they are straight. You can have personal thoughts, sure. I have personal thoughts on the specific sexuality of the guys in 5SOS as well. But I keep in mind that my personal thoughts aren’t a fact. I could be wrong. So unless someone has specifically stated their sexuality it’s best to not assume anything and keep an open mind.

Then finally I want to briefly touch on a topic that goes hand in hand with what I’ve talked about: shipping. Some people have a problem with shipping when it comes to real people. For some people shipping is just enjoying the idea of 2 people together even if you think they aren’t. While other people truly believe in that relationship. There’s nothing wrong with any of that as long as it doesn’t become invasive. It all comes back to what I’ve said before. We are consuming a product. The relationships between the 5SOS guys are a huge part of that product. The chemistry between them is part of why we love them. I’m not saying they are pretending to like each other. I fully believe their chemistry is genuine, but it does help sell the product. It also means that sometimes the guys/their team plays into that chemistry to sell the product.

They guys should not have a problem with fans shipping them together, because it’s not up to them to decide that. They sell us their relationships, so we get to form opinions about that. If we stay in our own fandom space and do not become invasive by showing them or people around them fandom content (fics, headcanons, manips, etc.). Then they should not come into our spaces and invade stuff we enjoy in that space. I get super uncomfortable whenever I see celebrities reading fanfiction or being read fanfiction. Fanfiction about them is not for them. It’s made for fans to enjoy and they should stay away from that. I want to encourage you to go and read this answer* about shipping real people. Because sometimes other people’s words say it better than my own words ever could.

With that we have reached the end of this post. As usual I am always open to discuss this in an adult manner. If you feel like you have anything to add to this discussion, feel free to send me an ask/dm. Or reply to this post. If you like/agree with what I write I would love it if you reblogged this post. That’s the only way more people can see it. My blog is small, so reblogs are very much needed to keep the discussion going. Don’t think of coming in my inbox and yelling at me how everything I said is wrong and bad and awful, because it is only going to get you blocked. If you don’t agree, that’s fine, but I’m not going to tolerate any hate.

Finally, just because you are allowed to speculate and question whatever 5SOS or any other celebrity/influencer tells you, doesn’t mean you have to. If that’s not your cup of tea, then that is more than fine. The reason I wrote this post is because we need to stop making people who think critically about the things they are being told, feel guilty about what they do.

* Please note that the author of this post does not have anything to do with what has been written in this post. If you have a problem with anything in this post, please direct it to me and not them.

[qqueenofhades]

I really don’t want to start a discourse™, but I want you to know that I really appreciate how you write joe and Nicky in deo volente. So many of the fics I’ve read have placed yusef in the role of more sexually experienced and less devoted to god, while Nicky is depicted as an inexperienced and virginal priest/knight/monk and so forth and so on. Your narrative of joe out there rescuing people and being faithful, while Nicky looks back on his life of gambling and pleasures of the flesh ...(1/?)

Not to say that there’s anything wrong with either, obviously. I love guilty priest Nicky and repressed Nicky and p much every Nicky. But in the vast array of fics out there, it’s rare to see the opposite. Not that you’re working in a binary morally good/religious vs. not way. Your writing in the fic is really subtle and and your characterizations reveal a lot of depth. I just think it’s cool to see Nicky, average second son of a duke, drinking and gambling and feeling terribly guilty (2/?)

Guilty about the crusades and the fucking horror of crusade 1 without being excessively devout. Just an average dude. Not some paragon of virtue (btw, I’m on chapter 2 of the fic, so I don’t know how much your characterization changes moving forward. You have a lovely ability to combine your incredible knowledge of history, your beautiful writing, and these intimate details of the characters that make them fit— fit the canon and fit the history. (3/? Shit I’m sorry this had gotten way too long)

I enjoy the way you’ve really inserted us into the quotidian aspect of history. Aaaaaanyway— the discourse that I was afraid of: I think that a lot of fans of the movie that are generating fan content (tysfm to all of you beauties, btw 🙏🙏♥️) are westerners (which is a whole nother kettle of fish) and that carries a sort of ignorance about the Muslim world in the Middle Ages and this desire to simplify Europe as “Christian” “fighters for faith” etc. (4/? Fuuuuck. One(??) more)

And when we do that, we end up as characterizing the brown people as “not that”. The thing I love about this fandom is that people are definitely down on the crusades. I feel like all the fic I’ve read has been particularly negative about those wars, but the thing I love about your fic is that you don’t just say war is bad because people died and it was despicable and this pious white dude says so and this one brown person agrees. (5/6, I see the end in sight I swear it)

Instead you give us a larger cast of Muslims and Arabs and really flesh them out and give them opinions and different interpretations of faith, and I really appreciate that. The crusades were terrible, and we know this because these regular dudes who struggle with their different faiths and lives say so. And I just. I think that’s really great. Also, I fucking love yusef’s mom. I feel like more people would be accepting of the gift in this fashion and I think she’s lovely and (god damn it 6/7)

Aaaaaaaand. The bit where yusef returns and she’s already gone breaks my fucking heart. Also the moment where he’s like “I’m not sure about Abraham’s god, but my mothers god is worth my faith”?? Just really fucking great. So. Excellent fic. Excellent characters. Excellent not-being-accidentally-biased-towards-white-Christians. That is what I came here to say. Thank you so much for your amazing stories. I love them and I love history. Sorry about the rambling. idek how I wrote so much. (7/7)

Epilogue: tl;dr: you’re great.

Oh man! What a huge and thoughtful comment (which will in turn provoke a long-ass response from me, so…) I absolutely agree that no matter what fandom, I don’t do Discourse TM; I just sit in my bubble and stay in my lane and do my own thing and create content I enjoy. And I don’t even think this is that so much as just… general commentary on character and background? So obviously all of this should be read as my own personal experience and choices in writing DVLA, and that alone. I really appreciate you for saying that you love a wide range of fan creators/fanworks and you’re not placing one over another, you understand that fans have diverse ranges of backgrounds/experience with history and other cultures when they create content, and that’s not the same for everyone. So I just think that’s a great and respectful way to start things off.

First, as a professional historian who has written a literal PhD thesis on the crusades, I absolutely understand that many people (and regular fans) will not have the same privilege/education/perspective that I do, and that’s fine! They should not be expected to get multiple advanced degrees to enjoy a Netflix movie! But since I DO have that background, and since I’ve been working on the intellectual genealogy of the crusades (and the associated Christian/Muslim component, whether racially or religiously) since I was a master’s student, I have a lot of academic training and personal feelings that inform how I write these characters. Aside from my research on all this, my sister lives in an Islamic country and her boyfriend is a Muslim man; I’ve known a lot of Muslims and Middle Easterners; and especially with the current political climate of Islamophobia and the reckoning with racism whether in reality or fandom, I have been thinking about all this a lot, and my impact on such.

Basically: I love Nicky dearly, but I ADORE Joe, and as such, I’m protective of him and certainly very mindful of how I write him. Especially when the obvious default for westerners in general, fandom-related or otherwise, is to write what you are familiar with (i.e. the European Christian white character) and be either less comfortable or less confident or sometimes less thoughtful about his opposing number. I have at times tangentially stumbled across takes on Joe that turn me into the “eeeeeeeh” emoji or Dubious Chrissy Teigen, but I honestly couldn’t tell you anything else about them because I was like, “nope not for me” and went elsewhere rather than do Discourse (which is pretty much a waste of time everywhere and always makes people feel bad). This is why I’m always selective about my fan content, but especially so with this ship, because I have SO much field-specific knowledge that I just have to make what I like and which suits my personal tastes. So that is what I do.

Obviously, there’s a troublesome history with the trope of “sexually liberate brown person seduces virginal white character into a world of Fleshly Decadence,” whether from the medieval correlation of “sodomite” and “Saracen,” or the nineteenth-century Orientalist depictions of the East as a land variously childishly simplistic, societally backward, darkly mysterious and Exotic, or “decadent” (read: code for sexually unlike Western Europe, including the spectrum of queer acts). So when I was writing DVLA, I absolutely did not want to do that and it’s not to my taste, but I’m not going to whip out a red pen on someone else writing a story that broadly follows those parameters (because as I said, I stay in my lane and don’t see it anyway). Joe to me is just such an intensely complex and lovely Muslim character that that’s the only way I feel like I can honestly write him, and I absolutely love that about him. So yeah, any depiction of hypersexualizing him or making him only available for the sexual use and education of the white character(s) is just... mmm, not for me.

For example, I stressed over whether it was appropriate to move his origin from “somewhere in the Maghreb” to Cairo specifically, since Egypt, while it IS in North Africa, is not technically part of the Maghreb. I realize that Marwan Kenzari’s family is Tunisian and that’s probably why they chose it, to honor the actor’s heritage, but on the flip side… “al-Kaysani” is also a specifically Ismai’li Shia name (it’s the name of a branch of it) and the Fatimids (the ruling dynasty in Jerusalem at the time of the First Crusade) were well-known for being the only Ismai’li Shia caliphate. (This is why the Shi’ites still ancestrally dislike Saladin for overthrowing it in 1174, even if Saladin is a huge hero to the rest of the Islamic world.) Plus I really wanted to use medieval Cairo as Joe’s homeland, and it just made more sense for an Ismai’li Shia Fatimid from Cairo (i.e. the actual Muslim denomination and caliphate that controlled Jerusalem) to be defending the Holy City because it was personal for him, rather than a Sunni Zirid from Ifriqiya just kind of turning up there. Especially due to the intense fragmentation and disorganization in the Islamic world at the time of the First Crusade (which was a big part of the reason it succeeded) and since the Zirids were a breakaway group from the Fatimids and therefore not very likely to be militarily allied with them. As with my personal gripes about Nicky being a priest, I decided to make that change because I felt, as a historian, that it made more sense for the character. But I SUPER recognize it as my own choices and tweaks, and obviously I’m not about to complain at anyone for writing what’s in graphic novel/bonus content canon!

That ties, however, into the fact that Nicky has a clearly defined city/region of origin (Genoa, which has a distinct history, culture, and tradition of crusading) and Joe is just said to be from “the Maghreb” which…. is obviously huge. (I.e. anywhere in North Africa west of Egypt all the way to Morocco.) And this isn’t a fandom thing, but from the official creators/writers of the comics and the movie. And I’m over here like: okay, which country? Which city? Which denomination of Islam? You’ve given him a Shia name but then point him to an origin in Sunni Ifriqiya. If he’s from there, why has he gone thousands of miles to Jerusalem in the middle of a dangerous war to help his religious/political rivals defend their territory? Just because he’s nice? Because it was an accident? Why is his motivation or reason for being there any less defined or any less religious (inasmuch as DVLA Nicky’s motive for being on the First Crusade is religious at all, which is not very) than the white character’s? In a sense, the Christians are the ones who have to work a lot harder to justify their presence in the Middle East in the eleventh century at all: the First Crusade was a specifically military and offensive invasion launched at the direct behest of the leader of the Western Roman church (Pope Urban II.) So the idea that they’re “fighting for the faith” or defending it bravely is…

Eeeeh. (Insert Dubious Chrissy Teigen.)

But of course, nobody teaches medieval history to anyone in America (except for Bad Game of Thrones History Tee Em), and they sure as hell don’t teach about the crusades (except for the Religious Violence Bad highlight reel) so people don’t KNOW about these things, and I wish they DID know, and that’s why I’m over here trying to be an academic so I can help them LEARN it, and I get very passionate about it. So once again, I entirely don’t blame people who have acquired this distorted cultural impression of the crusades and don’t want to do a book’s worth of research to write a fic about a Netflix movie. I do hope that they take the initiative to learn more about it because they’re interested and want to know more, since by nature the pairing involves a lot of complex religious, racial, and cultural dynamics that need to be handled thoughtfully, even if you don’t know everything about it. So like, basically all I want is for the Muslim character(s) to be given the same level of respect, attention to detail, background story, family context, and religious diversity as any of the white characters, and Imma do it myself if I have to. Dammit.

(I’m really excited to hear your thoughts on the second half of the fic, especially chapter 3 and chapter 6, but definitely all of it, since I think the characters they’re established as in the early part of the fic do remain true to themselves and both grow and struggle and go through a realistic journey with their faith over their very long lives, and it’s one of my favorite themes about DVLA.)

Anyway, about Nicky. I also made the specific choice to have him be an average guy, the ordinary second son of a nobleman who doesn’t really know what he’s doing with his life and isn’t the mouthpiece of Moral Virtue in the story, since as he himself realizes pretty quick, the crusades and especially the sack/massacre of Jerusalem are actually horrific. I’ve written in various posts about my nitpicking gripes with him being a priest, so he’s not, and as I said, I’m definitely avoiding any scenario where he has to Learn About The World from Joe. That is because I want to make the point that the people on the crusades were people, and they went for a lot of different reasons, not all of which were intense personal religious belief. The crusades were an institution and operated institutionally. Even on the First Crusade, where there were a lot of ordinary people who went because of sincere religious belief, there was the usual bad behavior by soldiers and secular noblemen and people who just went because it was the thing to do. James Brundage has an article about prostitution and miscegenation and other sexual activity on the First Crusade; even at the height of this first and holy expedition, it was happening. So Nicky obviously isn’t going to be the moral exemplar because a) the crusades are horrific, he himself realizes that, and b) it’s just as historically accurate that he wouldn’t be anyway. Since the idea is that medieval crusaders were all just zealots and ergo Not Like Us is dangerous, I didn’t want to do that either. If we think they all went because they were all personally fervent Catholics and thus clearly we couldn’t do the same, then we miss a lot of our own behavior and our parallel (and troubling) decisions, and yeah.

As well, I made a deliberate choice to have Nicky’s kindness (which I LOVE about him, it’s one of my favorite things, god how refreshing to have that be one of the central tenets of a male warrior character) not to be something that was just… always there and he was Meek and Good because a priest or whatever else. Especially as I’ve gotten older and we’ve all been living through these ridiculous hellyears (2020 is the worst, but it’s all been general shit for a while), I’ve thought more and more about how kindness is an active CHOICE and it’s as transgressive as anything else you can do and a whole lot more brave than just cynicism and nihilism and despair. As you’ll see in the second half of the fic, Nicky (and Joe) have been through some truly devastating things and it might be understandable if they gave into despair, but they DON’T. They choose to continue to be good people and to try and to actively BE kind, rather than it being some passive default setting. They struggle with it and it’s raw and painful and they’re not always saints, but they always come down on the side of wanting to keep doing what they’re doing, and I… have feelings about that.

Anyway, this is already SUPER long, so I’ll call it quits for now. But thank you so much for this, because I love these characters and I love the story I created for them in DVLA, since all this is personal to me in a lot of ways, and I’m so glad you picked up on that.

[thegrapeandthefig]

The Mushroom Discourse

This is what I get for having stupid questions. Before I jump into the clusterfuck this post is going to be, let me just explain how I got there in the first place: It's fall and mushrooms are just *everywhere* currently and it came to make me wonder about the phallic shape some of them have and how curious it was that this trait hadn't been used by the Ancients in some way.

And this simple observation led me down a deep rabbithole, because clearly no one gives a fuck about the history of mushrooms in the ancient world, but everybody cares about psychoactive shrooms. As a result of that, there's very little material about mushrooms in a typical ancient Greek's life, but A LOT of speculative material from a particular side of academia that is, for the most part, not really taken seriously by most scholars.

If this is so fringe, then why mention it at all? Well, because, like with other questionable content *cough cough Robert Graves cough*, I see it being taken by pagans as fact and not being critical about it. I could be writing an actual useful post but here I am, I guess.

The Shroom Theory

What I jokingly call the "shroom theory" refers to the idea held by a handful of scholars, that the secret of the Ancient Mysteries are psychoactive mushrooms.  Initially, what sparked the idea is an interpretation of the Pharsalos stele, sometimes called “The Exaltation of the Flower”, dated somewhere between 470 and 460 BC. 

When the stele was discovered in 1863, scholars have interpreted the two women as being Persephone and Demeter holding flowers (poppies or roses). Recently, the interpretation of those two women being Demeter and Persephone has been re-evalued and it's more likely that the stele represents mortal women, not goddesses.

In 1911, Rufus B. Richardson was the first to suggest that those looked like mushrooms, without making any further comment. It is only in 1955 that writer Robert Graves suggested the use of mushrooms for their entheogenic properties as part of the Eleusinian mysteries. As I've stated in a post earlier this week, Graves' hypothesis know little popularity amongst historians. For the most part, this trend checks out when looking at the scholars who did stand by this theory: ethnobotanist Terence McKenna, psychedelics researcher Giorgio Samorini, ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson, chemist Albert Hofmann... The only actual classicist still alive today to support this theory is Carl A. P. Ruck.

Carl Ruck: a look into the theories

In all honesty, the summary of the idea he shares with Wasson is basically, and I quote "entheogens were the origin of religion". I think it's important to point this out. Wasson and Ruck especially, do not just think that entheogens have something to do with greek Religion particularly, they think religious experience at its core was created from the hallucinogenic properties of mushrooms. And so, in Ruck's bibliography, you will see him go over the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Dionysiac Mysteries, Mithriasm, Renaissance art, and the fucking forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden because at this point why the fuck not, I guess. 

If there were any kind of credibility to his theories, it's definitely where he lost it. Even in his more recent articles, like the one from 2016, there are so many mistakes and jumps to conclusion that you do wonder if he wrote it high, because it sure looks like it. For example, when mentionning restina (the Greek wine with pine resin, that I have written about in the past), he completely fails to mention pine resin at all. Instead, the citation goes this way:

"Since the alcohol produced by natural fermentation is limited to around 13%, after which concentration the aqueous environment becomes too inhospitable for continued growth of the fermenting yeasts, the toxicity of the wine was due to these fortifying herbal additives. These included even deadly poisons like hemlock in sub-lethal dosages and venom milked from serpents. This tradition survives in the modern Greek folk wine of retsina and in the demotic naming of the drink not ‘wine’ ([w]oínos), but the ‘mix’ (krasi)."

That is an extremely misleading statement. Because Ruck fails at giving a proper description of what retsina is, you are led to believe retsina is composed of either a "fortifying herbal additive" or "deadly poisons". Except, retsina is no stronger than a regular wine, and pine resin isn't a dangerous substance.

This is a detail, but it shows how Ruck words his work in a way that voluntarily omits information to serve his argumentation.  To conclude this long rant, I will only add that his bibliography is also concerning, as he obviously doesn't have a lot of authors to choose from to support his theories, and so, he has the tendency to either cite himself, or himself and his co-authors.

Last words This is not to say that psychoactives do not or did not have any place in ancient societies, or even ancient religions. There might be a layer of truth somewhere in all this, but Ruck et al. go too far in their speculations. We simply do not have enough evidence to make claims of this nature. Don’t just believe them blindy. Keep in mind that I’ve summarized a lot, there’s much more that is just so far-fetched that it’s just ???

If you want to read Ruck’s works and judge for yourself: 

R. Gordon Wasson, S. Kramrish, J. Ott, C. A. P. Ruck, Persephone's Quest : Entheogens and the Origins of Religion, 1986

C. A. P Ruck,  Mushroom Sacraments in the Cults of Early Europe in: NeuroQuantology, 2016

[maddiviner]

Hey I saw your post about empaths and empathy. Do you have any ideas or advice for an empath who doesn't want to get sucked into that kind of mindset? Basically to be a better empath?

Hi, Nonny! Thanks for messaging me about this. I realize my posts about empaths and empathy have generated more than their fair share of discourse and controversy. 

I still stand by them, though, and am honestly glad someone else understood what I was trying to say! 

I also saw in the notes of those posts talking about how distasteful it is to reverse the situation and argue that the “empaths” online are the “real narcissists” in the situation. 

While, as I’ve noted, I don’t know a lot about Cluster B disorders, I tend to agree.  I’ve never liked the tendency to hurl diagnoses at internet strangers. It kind of just perpetuates the idea that mental illness is this bad, scary insult, and I don’t like that.

I’m going to do my best to give you useful advice as much as I possibly can.

Esoteric empathy isn’t the same as normal empathy. I consider esoteric empathy to be a heightened form of normal empathy. 

In this case, it’s heightened to the point where it can only be viewed as “esoteric” - in other words, it’s difficult to explain without supposing the existence of the arcane and the mystical.

Research different types of empathy. It’s not well-known, but empaths often have “specialties,” such as children, animals (that’s me), elders, or other categories of people. 

Are your empathic abilities heightened around a certain group? For me, as I said, it’s animals. 

I probably have normal compassion and empathy for everyone, as much as anyone does. But, my esoteric empathic abilities with animals far exceed the same capabilities with humans. 

It may be similar for you, and it is always good to learn more about yourself. Examine, and discover if your abilities increase with different groups of people.

Research various topics in psychology. If you learn about how the human mind works, you’ll be able to more effectively use your gifts to help others and yourself. 

For me, in particular, a lot of the cognitive behavior therapy workbooks were extremely useful for this. I was diagnosed with Bipolar I in 2007, and have undergone a lot of different types of therapy over the years. 

A lot of it ended up surprisingly helpful to my occult interests, and yes, empathic abilities. I also read some dialectical behavioral therapy workbooks too these days.

In my opinion, CBT helps empaths to have fuller, stronger relationships with the rest of the world, whereas DBT seems to help manage doubt and other issues within the self.

Learn to ground, center, and shield.

You’ve probably heard about this before!

Yeah  the whole “Just ground, center and shield!” thing is overdone in the esoteric community, with many people assuming it’ll solve all emotional and energetic problems.  

So no, it won’t solve everything, but it does help! 

Grounding, centering and shielding, if done right, will help an empath to be a stronger person. I recommend the exercises for this found in Keys to Perception, by Ivo Dominguez. Also, check out my Psychic Abilities Annotated Bibliography here for some good books about this.

Learn Your Shadow. Sometimes if you’re feeling a negative emotion, you need to process it rather than just push it away. 

That’s where shadow work comes in. It’s a messy process, unique to every person, and what works for me might not work for you and vice versa. Still, it’s a topic to explore in-depth. 

I’m currently putting a list of some good books on shadow work techniques, and will share it when I’m finished. Shadow work is not my area of expertise (is it anyone’s?) but I do find it beneficial nonetheless.

Give “Love and Light” a pass. I recommend avoiding esoteric sources on empathy which claim that the shadow must be avoided or is Satanic (I’ve heard both this week).

 Also, don’t trust people who tell you to suppress or ignore your negative emotions - psychology even tells you that’s a  bad idea.

Practices like shielding, etc, can help to insulate you a bit from your own emotional reaction to things. This doesn’t make shielding undesirable, but realize that shielding and warding constantly and too tightly just makes your energy and self-image rigid. 

The key to avoiding this is often to just give yourself permission to fully feel all your emotions, even if they’re not pleasant.

Consider reading about vampires. Here, I don’t mean either the mythical variety or the “negative, bad person” meaning of the term. Instead, I’m talking about psychic vampires (also called psy-vamps). 

This community sounds scary, but actually features some of the best energy workers I’ve ever met, many of whom have written detailed descriptions of their techniques. While she’s more than controversial, I recommend the works of Michelle Belanger.

Definitely hang out with other empaths and read their writings. I know that some of my earlier posts kind of implied the empath community as a whole isn’t so good. 

And yes, I do believe a cleaning-out would be good. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of good resources out there! In my experience, talking to other empaths one-on-one can be a great way to learn more. 

As to books, I recommend the works of Raven Digitalis, and others on that annobib I made. There’s probably a lot of newer books on this I haven’t read, too.

I hope this article was helpful. I definitely don’t claim myself as an expert on esoteric empathy, but this article describes what I’ve learned over time about it and my own gifts. 

I am sure others will reblog with more ideas and perspectives, which I’m looking forward to reading.