#to actually meaningfully discuss and argue about

[ilynpilled]

since we r doing this shit again my only thought about jaime redemption googoo gaga discourse, and it ofc still being a thing that exists in the year 2025, is that the possibility to make this discussion be meaningful and interesting to me at this point in time with an unfinished series and arc that was cut off where it was is damn near nonexistent. u guys turned the original question this story is dealing with of “can a person like jaime who had done these truly horrible and irreversible things ever be forgiven? is redemption possible?” into “will jaime be redeemed by george?” which is a different and frankly boring question with a straightforward answer that george already essentially disputed with “i am not intending to make that call for u.” it is already established by the author’s own words repeatedly that it is a story dealing with redemption and forgiveness, yet the discourse still seems to revolve around debating this for some reason (“is it a redemption arc or not?”). while george seemingly has his own perspective on the subject of redemption and forgiveness in general, he says that he does not intend to give a resounding and final answer to this question of “when, how, and why do we forgive people? what does it take to redeem us?” for u. in turn, it would be meaningful and fun to debate different subjective and coherent perspectives and conclusions in relation to how jaime dealt with the subject and whether he managed to meet your criteria once his story is finished, but trying to fervently argue and properly and conclusively grapple the original question of “is this enough to forgive this guy” right now is meaningless googoo gaga monkey doodoo for obvious reasons

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

i have asked this before on a different page and i CANNOT get an answer but can someone pls explain how porn addiction isn’t real??

like we had someone during sex ed in school bring it up as a topic and explain that (primarily a penis haver) you can train your brain to only be able to get hard/cum to porn and not be able to with a real person… and like sex addiction is real? but porn addiction is not? r there people just using “porn addiction” as a reason to ban porn all together and demonize it? like is that why?

i’m sorry if this comes across ignorant in any way. i am genuinely asking and open minded about this. if u take the time to answer thank you!! 🙏🏻

hi anon,

so it's actually helpful, and interesting, that you mention sex addiction, because that's also on pretty shaky ground as an actual thing that can be meaningfully diagnosed. which isn't to say that no one in the world exhibits maladaptive sexual behaviors, of course, but whether those behaviors can be accurately characterized as addictions is actively debated. in many cases what's casually described as "sex addiction" (which includes the use of pornography) would more accurately be classified as compulsive sexual behavior disorder, or CSBD, which has much more in common with obsessive compulsive disorder than addiction. to my knowledge, CSBD is rarely treated as a primary diagnoses, but rather part of a larger pattern of compulsive behavioral issues.

put this way: in many cases, saying that someone is a "sex addict" is sort of like saying someone with OCD is "addicted to washing their hands," in that it's misrepresenting a symptom as the primary issue and misunderstanding the cause of the behavior to boot.

now, talking about CSBD gives us a great segue into something that I think is really important when discussing the validity of porn addiction, which I'll lead into with this quote:

In their study, Grubbs, et al., analyzed data from about 15 different studies by varied researchers (and reviewed many more), comprising nearly 7,000 different participants. Studies were conducted in-person and online, in the United States and Europe. The team found that, first, religiousness was a strong, clear predictor of moral incongruence regarding porn use. This is important, as it indicates that we can and should use a person’s religiousness as an indicator of the likelihood of moral conflict over porn use. Not all people who are morally opposed to porn are religious, but it appears that religiosity captures the majority of people who feel this way. Given that the WHO and ICD-11 recommend an exclusion of moral conflict over sex from the diagnosis of Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder, this finding suggests that when diagnosing CSBD, a person’s religiousness is a critically important factor.

put more simply: high levels of religious guilt contribute to so much self-reported "porn addiction" that it can make it hard to figure out who's experiencing actual, verifiable compulsive behavioral issues.

this quote comes from an article called "Science Stopped Believing In Porn Addiction. You Should, Too," in which the author argues that porn addiction is essentially an outmoded understanding of problematic consumption of pornography that's failing to take into account other factors, in this case the moral incongruence or sense of conflict that many people feel about viewing pornography that causes them to feel shameful, dirty, or "out of control" when the use it. it can be read here:

porn addiction is problematic as a classification for other reasons as well; Dr. Devon price elaborates very neatly on many of them here:

again, I don't point out any of this to argue that no one ever has a relationship to sex or pornography that's detrimental to them and their ability to function, only that branding that as addiction is a.) inaccurate b.) unhelpful and c.) deeply loaded in a culture that so often stigmatizes addiction as a matter of weakness and poor character rather than recognizing it for what it actually is. many people grow up in a cultural context that profoundly stigmatizes sexuality, which makes a lot of people worry that they're aberrant and dangerous for doing anything that brings them sexual pleasure. trust me, my own inbox is a testament to that; I spend an enormous amount of time reassuring people that they're allowed to partake in utterly benign sexual behavior.

your example of people training themselves to only get off with porn is actually a great example here. the simple truth is that it's possible for people to train themselves into all kinds of sexual behaviors whether porn is involved or not, because if you only get off one way then your brain and body will simply learn to associate that particular type of stimuli with sexual pleasure and have a more difficult time with anything else.

people with clits who have spent a lot of time getting off by putting a vibrator smack on their clitoris benefit hugely from taking breaks and varying their masturbation style, especially since human partners are rarely able to provide the same type of stimuli as a toy. folks who are accustomed to only getting off in one position, whether it's on their back or humping a pillow or whatever else, can struggle with orgasming in other other position. people who have spent years masturbating before having partnered sex for the first time often find that it's a difficult adjustment—and I can attest to that one personally, because I had trouble for YEARS finishing with partners and almost always had to touch myself to make it happen. you can't even accuse porn of being responsible for that, because I've never particularly enjoyed watching porn and can probably count on one hand the number of times I've used it to get off.

to your final question about whether people are just claiming the existence of porn addiction as a reason to ban it—absolutely yes, many are. if you dig a little beneath the surface you'll find very quickly that many of the most vocal and well-funded anti-porn groups are run by deeply conservative religious groups and other far right wingnuts who stand to benefit tremendously if they can a.) ban porn and then b.) define "porn" as "anything that includes any kind of depiction of sexuality that I personally think is yucky." you see this deployed frequently with challenges to books in schools and libraries and subsequent book banning, which frequently target books about sex education, books featuring information about sexual abuse, and LGBTQ+ books of all stripes as "pornographic."

tl;dr I'm certainly not arguing that nobody on earth has a bad relationship with porn, but I do think the words we use to talk about that are important and porn addiction is a largely unhelpful way to do so.

[anistarrose]

random thought but I don't think Lup and Barry taking their sweet time to get together is necessarily inherently indicative of repressed feelings or emotional constipation. with respect to emotional constipation in particular, I don't think that's an inherently wrong or out-of-left-field interpretation — for example, it's certainly not out of character for Lup to have trouble vocalizing feelings to her loved ones, and this is by her own admission — but to me personally, I never really interpreted it as a major factor in the timeline of her relationship with Barry.

or maybe, it would be more accurate to say: specifically in canon, I don't think it's implied that some unhealthy denial of feelings, or lack of communication in a seriously unhealthy and repressed way, is a significant reason Lup and Barry take a long time to properly get together. I don't think it's implied that anything like that was a defining feature or otherwise major theme of their relationship, particularly their relationship between the development of mutual feelings and the "talk" at Legato. because seeing the way that Griffin's monologue talks about their relationship developing, during that period:

"This new love, it wasn’t their focus during the journey. Barry worked tirelessly to understand each world you traveled to, to understand the Hunger and figure out a way to defeat it. Lup grew furiously in arcane power, studying the mystical secrets of the planes, hoping to master whatever spell would break your team out of their desperate retreat. But there were moments between those studies, meals shared in secret, just the two of them under the guise of their work, sightseeing trips for two across these doomed worlds. (...) Looking back, this performance is where that love that Barry and Lup cultivated quietly and cautiously over the last half century truly bloomed."

first, Barry and Lup are depicted with very understandable reasons to prioritize other missions, and other personal growth. it's not impossible to read this as a sign of repression, and in fact, I'd be shocked if neither of them ever threw themself into their work as a maladaptive coping mechanism for something, relationship-related or not — but staying focused on matters of life, death, and the multiverse's continued existence hardly needs repression or emotional constipation as a motivation or impetus.

moreover, I would argue Griffin's monologue doesn't actually frame Lup and Barry's priorities here as an unhealthy work-life balance. Griffin, as narrator, doesn't take a morose or otherwise negative tone when he discusses Barry and Lup's studies — there's even this laugh in his voice as he describes Lup growing "furiously" in power, one that seems meant to lead the audience to a sense of joy and pride. and if Griffin meant to convey these priorities as unhealthy, I think he also would use much different language to describe the time Lup and Barry still spent together — but in fact, their budding relationship is not framed as an incompatibility with their work; it's framed as something that occurs alongside their work, and in addition to it.

and this approach Lup and Barry have to spending time with each other, growing closer? it's described as a love that they "cultivate, quietly and cautiously." it's very specifically active, not passive. they're not running away from each other — they're also not rushing ahead, they're still "cautious," but they're importantly choosing to spend time together. it's something that they mutually want. they are, by and large, for the majority of the time pre-relationship, not avoidant of each other. they are willing to act on their feelings, in a way that's short of entering a relationship — but acting on them, meaningfully, nonetheless.

and could poor communication play a role in this? of course. but what if the main, driving factors in the time they take to get together are actually just... both of them being comfortable taking a long time to get together? comfortable balancing the time they spend with each other with their research to stop the Hunger? comfortable, more comfortable than the alternative would make them, with cultivating their love slowly, not officially confessing or dating until they're ready?

after all, as Taako reminds Barry, and Barry presumably takes to heart — the whole crew, they have all the time in the world. Taako tells Barry that he and Lup don't have to panic, don't have to rush — so naturally, Barry and Lup use the time they have. and they're not necessarily champions of talking about their feelings, but taking their time isn't framed as inherently unhealthy, either. given that they're depicted as cautious, and as nervous — on the beach cycle, before getting Taako's advice, in Barry's case, and in Legato, right before the duet, in Lup's case? the ability to take as much time as they need might even be freeing to them.

anyways. I've enjoyed, and to some extent, even written fics and other fanworks where Lup and Barry's pining bleeds over into angst, brought about by an inability to talk about their emotions. again, I don't think that's inherently out of character. but part of the reason I don't think it's OOC is because — at least in non-AUs — there's 30 years between Lup and Barry's feelings becoming unambiguously mutual (the robot cycle, where Lup "knew"), and the two of them getting together (Legato).

30 years is enough time for a lot of variation, in relationships and in people. a lot of bumps that don't define the relationship in entirety, over all of that timespan.

so. I just don't think Lup and Barry spend those whole 30 years angsting because of miscommunication and emotional constipation, that's what I'm saying. all I'm saying, really. I took a truly ridiculous amount of time to say that, in hindsight. but I'll do anything for a reason to think about Blupjeans.

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

I was gonna rant about the election because it has stressed me off, but I have decided to edit draft posts and send them out. All of my other main social media accounts have been draining me ngl and I miss this acc. Anywho:

I have always argued that a lot of Feyre stans are essentially Rhys stans in disguise. Recently, I think I would like to amend this idea: I do think that Feyre stans earnestly like her as a character -- I just don't think they're honest about why.

I do recognize the possible rebuttals and/or contentions with this argument -- I'm always aware that if argued incorrectly, the argument can birth misogynistic and/or victim-blaming ideas.

But, I think it solves a lot of the issues I've observed when engaging in these conversations. Because, for the life of me, I couldn't quite reconcile people's almost-parasocial relationship with her character, while seemingly hating the discussions we have -- especially when we're arguing that she is a victim.

This leads into a bigger conversation about tropes in romance, especially, dark romance, but I think I actually think you all like Feyre just the way she is. And I do not mean this postively - I think a lot of you realize the direction of her character, and the love that is that is birthed from that: that she will always operate a palpable position. Feyre's character will never meaningfully challenge anything. Feyre will never have complicated conversations, and will never actually be treated as a complex, morally ambiguous character. I think a lot of people are quite comfortable with the deference she consistently shows Rhysand + the Inner Circle and always will. That is the appeal of Feyre's character - she will always play power, and will never have to deal with the complexities that come with it.

So when we have these discussions around Feyre as a political being - or as a individual person - the expectation is always that we shouldn't take Feyre that seriously as a political being. You all don't expect Feyre to actually have to operate as a character, moreso an extension of Rhysand. You don't expect us to even care to have the conversation - and when we do, we're dubbed 'too woke' or 'taking fairy smut too seriously'

So, when we question Feyre's decision as High Lady to lock Nesta up in the manor - we are never meant to look at the complexity of that. Of the parallels. Although Feyre in the text assumes the role of High Lady to lock Nesta within the HoW, we aren't ever supposed to judge that decision from a political, or even complex position. Although the decision to intervene with Nesta is tangibly justified by the text as a political decision. Even earlier moments in the series, such as Feyre's decision to manipulate the Spring Court, stealing the book from Summer, or her outburst at the HL meeting -- these are not moments we're earnestly supposed to look at as tactical, intentional moments to judge. We only suppose to look at the internal, emotional justifications, but never the implications of those actions. Because objectively, those are all political blunders, but we're always suppose to keep in mind that Feyre is never quite suppose to 'be the one in power.'

In short, I think a lot of people aren't honest about what makes Feyre a desirable character. I think a lot of people provide answers that they perceive to be good, but they don't earnestly believe that about her character. Because when we have these conversations, they never genuinely want to have the conversation about Feyre as a character - we're only suppose to think about the emotional, intrinsic reason, never the tangible consequences that result from the actions. To end, I always use Dany as an example bc...she's that girl -- but one of the things that did warm me up to Dany (asoiaf) was the fact that though she's a budding political genius, she often faces the consequences of her mistakes - she's always weighing her past experiences to inform new ones. She has to make a lot of complex decision - and sometimes they aren't good decisions even when she means well. Even when her intrinsic motivator is, for all intents and purposes, honorable. And so - when people exclaim they love Dany, they oftentimes have tangible reasons for why they believe she should be the queen. And when people don't like Dany - as a political being - they also have tangible reasons why they don't believe she should be queen. And that's okay, because that means that at the very least operates as a complex character. Because - Dany operates as a complex character - some people agree and sympathize with her decisions, while the people presumably on the receiving end of her decisions might not.

[ms-demeanor]

Nahhhh you lost me at the copyright bullshit. A machine created to brute force copy and learn from any and all art around it that then imitates the work of others, an algorithm that puts no effort of its own into work, is not remotely comparable to a human person who learns from others' art and puts work and effort into it. One is an algorithm made by highly paid dudebros to copy things en masse, another is the earnest work of one person.

I mean. You're fundamentally misunderstanding both the technology and my argument.

You're actually so wrong you're not even wrong. Let's break it down:

A machine created to brute force copy and (what does "brute force copy" mean? "Brute Force" has a specific meaning in discussions of tech and this isn't it) learn from any and all art around it that then imitates the work of others (there are limited models that are trained to imitate the work of specific artists and there are people generating prompts requesting things in the style of certain artists, but large models are absolutely not trained to imitate anything other than whatever most closely matches the prompt; I do think that models trained on a single artist are unethical and are a much better case of violating the principles of fair use however they are significantly transformative so even there the argument kind of falls apart), an algorithm that puts no effort of its own into work (of course this is not a fair argument to be having really because you're an asker and you can't argue or respond but buddy you have to define your terms. 'Effort' is an extremely malleable concept and art that takes effort is not significantly more art-y or valid than art that takes little or no effort like this is an extremely common argument in discussions of modern art - is Andy Warhol art, is Duchamps' readymades series art, art is a LOT more about context than effort and I'm not sure you're aware of the processing power used to generate AI art but there is "effort" of a sort there but also you are anthropomorphizing the model, the algorithm isn't generating "its own work"), is not remotely comparable to a human person who learns from others' art and puts work and effort into it. One is an algorithm (i mean it's slightly more complicated than that, we're discussing a wide variety of models here) made by highly paid dudebros (this completely ignores the open source work, the volunteer work, the work of anybody who is not a 'dudebro,' which is the most typically tumblr way of dismissing anything in tech as the creation of someone white, male, and wealthy which SUCH a shitty set of assumptions) to copy things en masse, another is the earnest work of one person.

Okay so the reasonable things I've pulled out of that to discuss are:

"A machine created to learn from any and all art around it is not remotely comparable to a human person who learns from others' art and puts work and effort into it. One is an algorithm made to copy things en masse, another is the earnest work of one person."

And in terms of who fair use applies to, no. You're wrong. For the purposes of copyright and fair use, a machine learning model and a person are identical. You can't exclude one without excluding the other. There isn't even a good way to meaningfully separate them if you consider artists who use AI in their process while not actually generating AI art.

I feel like I don't really have to make much of an argument here because the EFF has done it for me. The sections of that commentary from question 8 own are detailed explanations of why generative models should reasonably be recognized as protected by fair use when trained on data that is publicly available.

But also: your definition of "copying" is bad. You're wrong about what a copy is, or you're wrong about what generative image models do. I suspect that the latter is much closer to the truth, so I'd recommend reading up on generative image models some more - that EFF commentary has plenty of articles that would probably be helpful for you.

[metanarrates]

omegaverse has such a fascinating set of assumptions by the people who consume it and specifically posit it as queer friendly because obviously the first question is queer friendly for who, and in what way? And the answer is almost always friendly for cis people, in a way that approaches gender from a cis perspective— I’ve read some/a lot omegaverse, depending on your definition of a lot, and it often ends up regurgitating the same structures of gendered oppression and bioessentialism that people who write omegaverse argue they are breaking away from. There’s a lot I find interesting about how omegaverse as a kink trope (and one whose origins are founded on junk science to begin with) Does end up exploring gender, but not in the way that its authors argue: the amount of fics that use he/him pronouns for an omega character (lol) but then always refer to said character as a wife/queen/etc., the burgeoning proliferation of omegaverse where someone’s status as an alpha or omega ends up confirming their sex (ie when I once say someone say “the brilliant idea that all omegas have pussies,” pardon the language) leading to a blurring of gender and sex where transness is ultimately unable to exist in any meaningful way (I say this as in: omegaverse in these cases often posits a world where there IS gender-related strife, but also one where the facets that determine gender are both immutable and never questioned, but never need to be), but the fantasy of something “transgressive” and yet familiar remains the main drawing point— your favorite yaoi can now have missionary sex with a pregnancy fantasy! There is also the fact that I’ve seen people often argue that omegaverse exists as a way for (cis) women to depict misogyny and oppression familiar to them in an environment that does not harm them, because now the oppression is targeted on lithe twinks, and I’m sure that’s, to an extent, true? But not to a meaningful extent, when the vast majority of omegaverse fic is porn and when it refuses to interrogate the aspects of the societies depicted that allow it to BE both escapism and exploration. I realize you did not .. like… ask for this essay in your inbox but it’s a topic I find super interesting as someone who is interested in fanfiction trends and also analysis of those trends. Haha

NO I LOVE THIS SHIT. everyone should come into my inbox forever critiquing different aspects of popular escapist fantasy because it's interesting to discuss! "fiction/fanfiction trends and analysis of those trends" is something I'm in discord servers discussing like 24/7 actually lmao

also fully agreed with what you said abt bioessentialism and transgressiveness. omegaverse is also Massively intersexist and relies a LOT on the supposed transgressiveness of bodies with both penises and vaginas in order to sell its fantasy. there's a lot of fetishization of nonstandard bodies wrapped up in there! and of course all held together with the idea that an omega body and an alpha body must exist in certain ways, and interact sexually in certain ways.

imo, it's a way to have the idea of trans, intersex, and gay people, but not actually think meaningfully about how they exist in relation to power structures. sure, everyone is gay, everyone has a body that would likely be considered intersex in our world, but in THAT world, that's just the norm, and a norm mandated by the laws of the universe at that. people are still functionally heterosexual and cisgender and perisex by the norms of the universe. is this progressive? is this really the sort of world that's safe for lgbt people to see themselves in?

i also hate the argument that it's progressive because cisgender women can process their own oppression. firstly, as you said, they don't challenge it generally, but displacing misogynist oppression onto fictional gay men is not progressive either! i have a friend who is a gnc trans gay man and we talk a lot about how fandom stuff, esp omegaverse, makes him feel alienated and fetishized by the same people who claim that it's inclusive of people like him. i think if you're writing fiction ABOUT gay men but not even attempting to consider whether that fiction is something gay men would like to read, you've gone wrong somewhere!

I will say, however, that I do think there are trans people who do like omegaverse. ive seen other nonbinary people call omegaverse "gendery!" but that doesn't mean that it IS doing anything with its gender stuff, or that it's genuinely transgressive. in my opinion, it just means that there are trans people who aren't processing that it's a fantasy of the same power structures that exist in the real world, just reinforced and with the targets shifted. and like... sure, it's nice to see yourself, or something like yourself, treated as the norm in a fictional universe. doesn't mean that it's actually good lol.

(note to all of this: I am a perisex nonbinary lesbian, and I don't feel I'm fully familiar with how this affects intersex people, or gay/trans men. if anybody thinks i'm off base, or even just wants to weigh in, they're welcome to! this is just stuff I've noticed from reading this kind of fanfiction.)

[bonni]

you said something about having issues with the op of the p.lace perspective? (censoring the word so it wont show up in tags if you dont want) could you elaborate? if not thats fine you do you

When I let this sit in my inbox for months 😵‍💫 anyway I think I said that as a disclaimer when recommending the essays bc I just don't agree with all of their opinions, back when they were active on Tumblr they used to get into discourse where they would clearly let their own personal trauma/issues affect their interpretation of the series (which I think we all do to an extent) specifically wrt how they felt about Touga's character. Their own projection onto Nanami as a survivor clearly impacted their ability to see Touga as both a perpetrator and a victim, and they didn't like when people talked about the aspects of Touga's character that were more nuanced/expressed any level of sympathy for him. at one point they got in hot water for calling Touga "arguably worse than Akio," which is just blatantly untrue, there's no real argument to be had there outside of their own projection.

I also think that tpp doesn't do the queer themes in the series justice. it's completely okay not to engage with certain themes in your own essays, especially if they're not as personal to you and you feel as though other people are more qualified to discuss them, but the one line at the beginning of the essay where the author says something like "people tend to see utena as a queer series and ignore the themes of incest" (true, valid complaint, very important) "but I would argue that it's actually a series about incest and the queer themes are secondary" (debatable and a vast oversimplification) always rubbed me the wrong way, and in fact I would argue that the queer themes and the handling of incest are inextricable due to the series' overarching criticism of the nuclear family model and the heteronormativity it entails.

tl;dr tpp is a great series of essays and a really good jumping-off point for discussing incest in Utena, the writer is clearly talented and well-informed on this topic due to their own personal life experience, however they also seem to be dealing with some of their own issues which impact which aspects of the series they're willing to meaningfully engage with. getting off Tumblr was probably the right move for them, mental-health wise.

[apas-95]

i know it makes you feel good to take cheap potshots at me by misinterpreting what i said, but obviously “trans woman” as a category has to mean *something*, the point isn’t to say “cis people can be trans” which is false by definition, the point is that that’s about as far as you can get in terms of defining transness (i.e. not cis) until being forced to either

A) leave it at “to be trans is to identify as trans” which is exactly what ur seemingly railing against

B) “to be trans is to be identified as trans” which immediately raises the question of who and where, are transmascs that get clocked as transwomen actually transwomen? are cis gays that get clocked as trans actually trans even if they dont identify that way

or

C) “to be trans is to have xyz characteristics” which raises the question of who defines said characteristics, is there a consistent social definition, etc that ultimately gets tangled up with B

with B and C you open yourself up to really unfavorable positions (e.g., the whole concept of truscum/transmedicalism hinges on C, to be trans is to have dysphoria and/or medically transition.)

I'm not rallying for or against any of these positions, because they are positions on an issue unrelated to what I'm arguing - that the definition of being trans is to have a specific social relationship towards the axis of transphobia. How exactly one comes to have that position is immaterial to that.

Really, the position being stated is just the direct logical corrolary to 'all trans people experience transphobia', a generally accepted and uncontroversial statement. If all trans people by definition experience transphobia (and all cis people do not), then, re-stating, being trans is a group defined by experiencing transphobia. The thing that makes someone experience transphobia is unrelated to this issue. It does not matter, to this definition, what the mechanism by which people do or do not experience transphobia is. I am making zero statement on what makes people trans, no prescription of how any individual trans person must feel or understand their own transness, only a description of what transness is, for those that possess it. Regardless of any individual conceptions towards their own trans existence, it is social fact that being trans is the state of experiencing transphobia (in whatever form that may come), because without transphobia, without the existence of gender assignment at birth, being trans ceases to be a meaningful concept - the exact same reason we understand that labelling historic persons as 'gay' or 'transgender' in contexts where those socio-historically-specific concepts can be applied. Should society move past gender assignment at birth, 'being trans' as a meaningful social characteristic would cease to exist, and though people could still identify with the historic concept, they would not meaningfully be trans people in the social sense as it applies in our, current, society.

Personally, my position on how people come to be trans, which I again must say, is unrelated to the discussion at hand, is functionally, yes, that 'identifiying as being trans makes you experience transphobia', which is to say closeted trans people still suffer from transphobia, that passing trans people still suffer from transphobia, etc. In more direct relation to the point actually being argued, is that 'misdirected' oppression categorically does not exist - that regardless of the specific form any instance of oppression takes, regardless of what the person enacting that oppression personally believes, it only exists as a certain type of oppression in as much as it is harmful towards a given group - someone yelling transmisognyistic insults at a transmasc person is not enacting transmisogyny against the transmasc person, they are enacting transphobia against them; while the people being harmed by the specifically-transmisogynistic element of these insults are trans women, the effect of verbally assaulting a transgender person is transphobic oppression, regardless of any opinion the person assaulting them had on the matter.

These are, again, positions independent of what actually makes any individual come to be a member of a given group. They are a separate explanation of what being in that group means. They are positions about social groups, not about individuals.

[snowstories]

Something I don't see acknowledged directly very much when it comes to writing minority representation is this: you have to be okay with messing up.

A lot of the time when talking about writing representation, we talk about the importance of doing research, and rightfully so: research is, obviously, absolutely integral to writing good representation. But research has its limitations; when this is acknowledged, we talk about how important is it to find sensitivity readers and talk to actual people in the minority group you are writing about. Which is also true! This is good advice! The point of this post is not to counter or argue with this advice. The key aspects of writing representation are research, and listening to the people actually part of the minority group you are portraying. Ideally, everyone writing any minority has done extensive research and gotten sensitivity readers for their project.

In practice, however, it's more complicated than that. Research takes time and energy, and on top of that, requires learned skill to do properly. Chances are, you won't be able to find a person from the minority group you're representing to interview/talk to, and sensitivity readers might cost money that you don't have. Furthermore, not every writing project is created equal; a novel manuscript intended for professional publication is not the same as a fanfic one-shot, and while the first may justify (even require) years of research and paid sensitivity readers, the second doesn't.

And even if you think you're doing everything right, you might not be. As I said, research requires skill; it's very possible that you will be under the impression that you've researched thoroughly, only to realize that, actually, you were researching the wrong things in the wrong places and have based your writing on inaccurate and/or limited information. You might start a project on a time limit, thinking you can do the research, only to run out of time because you underestimated the amount of research after all. Your sensitivity readers are human, with opinions and biases and limitations in their life experiences; their feedback reflects the opinion of one person, and cannot be taken as the word of an all-seeing god. You might publish your story and realize that they had blind spots that affected the representation in your story, or that their opinions are not actually nearly as universal as you believed, and now a not-insignificant portion of the people you'd tried to portray is uncomfortable with your story.

The truth is, there is no magic cheatcode to doing representation well. Hell, there are a lot of ongoing debates on what it even means to do representation 'well', or what 'representation' even is; these are not stagnant, universal concepts. I'm not going to go further into that because I don't think it's particularly relevant to this post, but y'know, even if you DO actually manage to do everything perfectly, you won't please everyone. You have to be okay with that.

So, once you realize that despite your best intentions and efforts you are imperfect in ways you cannot meaningfully rectify, you can chose between two options: cut the representation entirely, or accept the possibility (or even the certainty) that you'll mess up.

This choice is going to be context dependent; I cannot make it for you, and there is probably not going to be an objectively correct answer. As a writer, you have to make choices, and as previously discussed, those will not please everyone.

But too often I see writers avoid writing minorities entirely because they're scared of messing up. They stick to very narrow minority groups (if they incorporate any at all), and abandon attempts at representation at the first real hurdles. They realize they messed up in previous attempts (either due to self reflection or outside criticism) and get so overwhelmed by guilt and panic that they avoid ever trying again. The possibility of messing up scares them so much that they convince themselves they're better off not trying at all.

I'm here to tell you: not only is it possible you'll mess up, you WILL mess up. If you commit to trying to write outside of your lived experience, you will mess up at some point. You'll write a scene on a farm that will have farmers laughing their asses off at the inaccuracies. You'll make confident statements about dinosaurs that will have paleontologists rant to anyone who'll listen. You'll write a trans character that will make trans people roll their eyes back into their heads.

The solution here is not to avoid writing about farms, dinosaurs, or trans people; the solution here is to do what you reasonably can to be accurate, and accept the flaws caused by ignorance. Make note of your mistakes and do better next time. If you avoid writing anything you're not absolutely 100% confident writing about, you won't get to write a whole lot, now will you?

Stop being scared of messing up and make your peace with it. You are not doing yourself or anyone else any favors by refusing to write outside of your own experience out of fear.

[decepti-thots]

I’m genuinely interested in what the difference between a visual novel let’s play and actually playing the game. I’m guessing it’s something about making your own choice in the moment rather than watching someone else make *their* choice, but I’d like to hear your thoughts if you’d be willing to share.

For those wondering, this is in relation to my tags on this post!

So the thing I'm discussing in the tags of that post is specifically games criticism and theory, which needs to be understood in the way you might understand "film criticism" or "literary theory", to be clear. We're discussing the kinds of analysis of games-as-texts, games-as-art, which you might see in academia and critical circles around literature or film.

So one of the things that comes up when starting to talk about games this way is: what's a video game 'text'? Think about it. Any game that allows any amount of choice, any, however small or inconsequential, is a game that you can start arguing about what its 'real text' is, if nothing else. Does a video game text constitute all possible permutations taken as a collective whole, all considered with equal weight? (If so, is any analysis of really complex games 'complete' if it does not take every possible tiny permutation into consideration? Do glitches count?) Does the text comprise one specific playthrough? If so, is every critic or analyst technically approaching different, if interrelated, 'texts'? Does it just comprise the stuff in the game program in the abstract, and if so what does the player have to do with it in that case? All sorts of weird shit comes to the forefront when you bring the whole idea of 'a text' into games, basically, because it's harder to intuitively understand the boundaries of most games compared to, say, a film.

This has been a thing folks argue about for as long as serious discussion of games has been a thing, which is to say, decades. Personally, I favour an approach put forward and codified by academic Brendan Keogh, who focuses on looking at games as primarily understood through a phenomenological framework. In his book A Play of Bodies, he describes his understanding of the video game 'text' as being located not in a single static 'place', so to speak, but the 'circuit' that is created by the interplay between the person physically playing the game and the game program itself, and how each responds to the other. The game isn't what's on the cartridge or what the player does, it's the way those two things combine to create meaning. A game's text is the way that players interact with what a game 'is', and so the text inherently includes the act of playing it.

This is true even in experiences with low or functionally no interactivity, I will add, because the experience of not 'acting' in a situation where interactivity could be present but isn't is fundamentally different to not interacting because the medium does not allow you to, even if it seems at first glance the same. You expect most games to be highly interactive, so sitting and not being able to interact with them produces a specific experience that is not necessarily present in mediums where non-interactivity is taken for granted.

Which brings us to Let's Plays; even a non-commentary uncut LP video of a completely linear game/VN is a meaningfully different text to watch someone else play as opposed to playing it yourself, because the text of a video game involves what you are doing with it as part of that imagined 'circuit', even if what you are doing is very little to nothing. A video you cannot interact much with and a video game you cannot interact much with are different experiences even where all other information is functionally identical; thus, an LP of a linear visual novel and the visual novel as played are two interconnected but distinct texts, and while the former is both interesting and a valid text in itself, they are not the same thing.

Most critics probably won't take this exact view, to be clear- as I said, arguments about what's a video game text anyway are extensive and different approaches favour different ideas! But basically all of them will have some element of this in it, that even 'low interactivity' games are fundamentally imparting some kind of artistic experience to a player by the fact that you are playing them in a medium that takes interactivity to be the default. The infamous game Mountain lets you "do" almost nothing, but that carries different meaning when playing a game than when watching a video, because you know that the reason you can't is not the medium, but the choice made by the dev(s). In this way, anyone insisting that watching a video of a game gives you the same story information as playing it and so can be used to identically analyse a game's text is... it's like saying I can do film analysis because I read a novelization. I can do an analysis of the novelization, and that's a worthwhile thing to do, probably. But it's not exactly the same as the film, because some amount of information is lost and/or changed in the transmission between mediums. Different folks may take stronger or weaker stances on how important this difference is and what a game's text is best defined as, but you won't find many who argue even very very linear games lose no information in the swap from game to video format, and the ones who do I think are. Wrong. LMAO.

[littleshopofhorrors-confessions]

Analyzing Arthur hate and taking on the perspective of an Arthur hater because I feel like it.

It’s because of how insignificant he actually is. (And because he’s meant to be hated, but I’ll discuss that later.) Everybody loves him but for what? He doesn’t have a song, he only has about four? Minutes of screentime. He doesn’t contribute meaningfully to the plot. He doesn’t have any interesting character traits, other than being very obviously masochistic. He’s just around for no reason. Another quirky white boy next to Orin. If you really think about it, those two aren’t that far off from each other. They’re both gag characters in a way.

Orin’s presence is largely comedic and campy, and you could say the same about Arthur. Perhaps that’s why so many people believe theyre perfect for each other. They both have a whole lot of nothing going on other than their sex appeal/sexual behavior, which is ironic considering Orin constantly objectifies and sexualizes Audrey, not realizing that at the end of the day HE is probably getting written being dicked down by Seymour on ao3, (Or Vice versa if you’re BOOOOOOORRRINNNGGG.)

If anything it actually looks like Arthur and Orin are both stuck in a narrative hellscape in which they’re both constantly boiled down to being very one dimensional. Orin just has a front, and behind it there’s nothing there. If you were to try to split canon Orin in half to try and find something, there would be nothing inside. He’s a dentist. All he is, all he ever will be. That’s really quite sad.

Arthur is even more empty than he is and I believe that’s why it’s actually good to hate him a little. If you don’t hate him (much like Orin) he loses all meaning including his comedic value. Sure, when you don’t hate him you may LAUGH during the scene when he’s in it, but after it, you’ll think about him and you will most likely find nothing. Hate is all Arthur has. You’re doing a great disservice to this man by not constantly rooting for his downfall. The same goes for Orin. Fulfill their purposes please.

Tldr; Arthur and Orin are two sides of the same coin and are equally as annoying. Although I’d argue Orin has more likability simply because he has more screen time and his presence is a lot more iconic.

---

[kiefbowl]

https://www.tumblr.com/imanes/181546472260/httpswwwtumblrcomdashboardblogluckystrabis?source=share

would you analyze this queen

>bc that one post about attachment to womanhood is still hurting people’s feelings, let’s keep talking about it.

There is a link they have at the top of this post that doesn't work for me, but otherwise I'm not sure what post they're talking about. So that might have some missing context. I also want to point out that you sent me a reblog of the op, and the reblog is dated 2018, so this is more than 5 years ago written.

>radical feminist notions of gender socialization correctly frame it as a traumatizing process.

Now there are two ways of interpreting this: 1. they are actually talking about radical feminists or 2. they are talking vaguely about the women online who may or may not call themselves either radical feminists, radfem, or terfs who might say any number of things.

Generally speaking, the idea that radical feminists talk explicitly about "gender socialization as a traumatizing process" is a little wonky. This isn't a tenet of radical feminism specifically as I understand it. Gender socialization has garnered a lot more discussion relatively recently in more explicit terms by public self identifying radical feminists because of the concerns of transgender ideas, sometimes even developing in response to ideas set forth by transgender activists. I don't think many radical feminists would hold tight to the idea that gender socialization is traumatic to men, since men are socialized to benefit from the sex hierarchy. If it's traumatic to anyone, it's women, though the idea that being socialized into womanhood is always and totally a traumatic experience just feels a little...rote. Not truly grasping the entirety of what socialization is. But to be clear, I don't think a lot of feminists go about making this point first and foremost, but rather talk about specific ways gender socialization is traumatic to women and girls (which is in service to argue the larger point that the sex hierarchy is real and that women are a marginalized class). I doubt op is truly interested in engaging with those ideas meaningfully, despite calling radical feminists "correct" about it.

The other interpretation is, well, "I read some tumblr posts that said this." I'm sure you have. Me, too. Some really intelligent women are on tumblr and they make a lot of intelligent posts about gender and gender socialization. I also know that when you have a little insular pocket online in any community, it's easy for those people to mimic what they say to each other unthinkingly. This is not a moral judgement on my part, and I don't think it's exclusive to feminists...it's inclusive to everybody (finally something that is!! the weak human psychology!! lol). My only point is, if you want to go find someone saying things that will make you mad, you can go do that online because you can find at least one person saying the exact thing you want them to say, so you can respond to it. It becomes an outrage machine, despite not really reflecting what a group truly believes, or what most people believe, or what is meaningfully understood. I only say this to suggest perhaps this post is one of those posts that is responding to a general sentiment they have vaguely seen and not meaningfully tried to understand and have reinforced by reading posts that are just sort of nothing burger but have the right words strung together in the precise way to make op cringe or whatever.

The point is, if you want to understand what someone is saying to truly understand it, you have to ask them. So if someone posts "gender socialization is traumatic" with not much else context, that's already such a vague sentiment it would behoove you to be intellectually curious enough to ask them "what do you mean? can you expand on this so I understand it?" And if you're someone who wants to be understood, it would behoooooove you to welcome the opportunity.

If you were to ask me if I think "gender socialization is traumatic" I would say "It depends on what you mean." So we're already hitting a wall to understanding each other. Anyway...

>a contradiction arises, in that case, when they assign positive moral traits to female socialization

This is another example where I'm not going to say this doesn't happen, but this is not an understanding within radical feminism. That doesn't mean a radical feminist couldn't believe this, it just means that the texts that support radical feminist ideas are not interested in sanctifying being a woman as some de facto morality. That is a ridiculous claim and proves that op is not interested in engaging with radical feminist texts as serious scholarly works. In defense of op, they are probably young and have never had their analytical skills challenged outside of, say, high school class. It does lead me to believe this person is responding only to vaguely feminist ideas they've seen in posts that have made them mad without trying to meaningfully understand them. So, +1 to me for guessing that :)

>(and femininity by extension)

Even more factually wrong than the statement above. op cannot understand when feminists discuss womanhood, that it is not an interchangeable word with femininity. Because in op's mind, femininity is innate, whether they realize they believe that or not is no matter.

>because, much like society in general, they believe that an ideally traumatized woman is able to access moral high grounds that other people cannot.

Truly offensive and in fact betrays that this is what op believes. op believes in a connection between morality and suffering. Why do I know that? Because they interpret this from ideas that have nothing to do with morality. If someone says "women are oppressed" they have not made a moral statement about women. If anything, they've made a moral statement about men. If you read "women are oppressed" and you read "women are moral" you have made that connection.

This is also a good time to point out that if this was something they were writing for school, they would need to then support their claim with sourced quotes. It's convenient that this is tumblr where they aren't compelled to do this. Who said this? When did they say this? How many of them said this? Did they say this explicitly? Are you extrapolating? What was the context? Where was it said?

But the true interesting part is "society in general." It's so fun to see in action MRA points infiltrating supposedly quote unquote liberal/leftist gender ideas...how does society in general demonstrate seeing the traumatized woman as the most moral person? Outside of your favorite genre tv scenes you're able to recontexualize to your heart's content. When a woman kills her abuser, how likely is she to serve more time than he would have if he had been sentenced to abusing her? QUICKLY!

>“i was socialized female” becomes an admission of guaranteed prosociality, a set of traits that are only ever harmful because they are at risk of exploitation via external forces.

Even if I didn't just argue that this point is moot because the previous points are not true or supported by evidence...hwuh?? What are they saying. Does this even follow from what they've said so far. "prosocial" is a word I had to look up, and it's a psychology word meaning "intended to help or benefit another person or group." They haven't talked about this at all. Also, prosociality is not really a form of the word, "prosocial behavior" is a phrase used.

So, to rephrase: "I was socialized female" becomes an acknowledgment (by feminists) that prosocial behavior is guaranteed, a set of traits that do not causes harm but are at risk of exploitation which would then cause the traits to be harmful [editor's note: to whom?].

Again...what? (I also cut the "via external forces" because how are you at risk of exploitation via internal forces lmao).

Even if I was to do a good faith read of this, it would be like "when feminists argue that women are socialized female, they are saying that women are socialized into prosocial behaviors." Which, yeah okay...but what of it? Prosocial behaviors are good therefore women are morally good because of femininity? This is just not a thing feminists really say.

>this is why many radical feminists view trans men as safer & more politically enlightened than trans women

The religiosity of op is apparent all the way through. The talk of morality, "politically enlightened"....etc etc. Feminists aren't really interested in who is more politically "enlightened." Trans men aren't included in feminism because of how safe they are or even how politically enlightened (whatever the fuck that means) they are...it's just that they're female. They could be the nastiest most awful person in the world and they're still included. Like come on now, did someone go to bible camp when they were younger? I think someone went to bible camp when they were younger. (It wasn't me)

>- because of their proximity (imagined or otherwise) to femaleness, to daintiness, to softness and benevolence.

boring sentence

>“male socialization” is synonymous with antisociality, and becomes lobbied at trans women as a whole when individual trans women do things that radical feminists deem “unwomanly,” from having controversial political opinions to committing violent crime.

Feminists don't care about womanly-ness. I know op thinks we do, and specifically "radical feminists" because that's who they said (I haff to laff), because they see the argument that feminists have that "woman are female, and women are socialized into femininity" as saying "women are feminine, which includes being female", but anyway...let's talk about how they include in "unwomanly" committing violent crimes???!!!???!! whuahauhahah???? Is it perhaps not more sane to think that women are concerned about violent crimes men commit because of the harm they cause not that they aren't feminine behaviors???? A deeply unserious post I am regretting writing 1K about it.

>the gender socialization model becomes a way to moralize sex assignment by prescriptively linking particular experiences of trauma to particular personality outcomes.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, it's a way to describe OPPRESSION BASED ON THE AXIS OF SEX!!!! AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MORALITY OF BEING BORN FEMALE!!!! TRAUMA IS A SIGN OF MISTREATMENT HELLO??????

Here's a fun tip when analyzing the work of someone: if they start talking about the moralizing within an argument that is not about morality, they are in fact the moralizing one and do not know what they're talking about. Go ahead and disregard whatever they're saying, they don't do their homework and will never seriously try to understand anyone without bringing up morality.

>it is no longer a theoretical framework meant to honestly and meticulously analyze how children become gendered subjects.

weird online speak, why do people talk like this. how "children become gendered subjects"....okay. Well they become gendered subjects, you weirdo, by gender socialization...they thing you pointed out "radical feminists" were correct about as being traumatic? also why meticulously. again the religiosity...we must suffer through the virtue of hard work by being meticulous. I would guess that when this was written op was 16 years old, had definitely been to bible camp once, and had their own laptop that their parents didn't monitor, and are deeply afraid of being a bad person more than anything in the world (but only as judged by their peers).

>it is now used to reproduce the very gender roles that proponents of the framework claim to be against.

10 second fart noise this conclusion is not supported by your own argument. In this essay, I will talk about how women are always nice and that means feminists think women are always good. In conclusion: feminists meanie weanie actually. Yeah okay buddy.

[onewomancitadel]

I had some lingering thoughts about a question I was asked the other day. I don't have any desire to indulge the humiliation fetishes of WK shippers any further, nor do I want to write their metas for them - I am being jocular here - and so this really has more to do with an overall trend of fandom analysis I have always taken umbrage with. I'm certainly not about to be expecting somebody to have read through my entire Reverse Ozlem tag but I think it's revealing that the broad reception of this theory (which has a silly name, in truth) is that it's just a pattern.

Most fandom analysis I've seen - from the lowliest depths of the R/WBY fandom, including what little Jungian analysis I've encountered - to the should-be-better-than-this heights of r/a.soiaf - has a perverse obsession with evidence read independently of thematic motivation, or, a story's meaning. And you might say this is silly, because evidence is the bedrock of argument, but the thing with textual analysis is that it services pluralities of meaning. It has lots of opportunities for meaning, that is, no matter how seriously (or not so seriously) you take authorial intention; a text is bigger than itself, it's an alchemical maelstrom. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. For the way the way online fandom functions, I think it's not really a good thing, because most of the time people are arguing around in circles. It's not like casual discussion or analysis you might have with friends IRL, it's rarely if ever academic - I think it brings out the worst in people a lot of the time. So be it.

And here you've really got two independent strands of analysis, one which is of a more classical literature analysis and one which is trying to predict the way a story is going. Once you bring in the attempt to try to figure out where something is going you are now working with an absence of information. This isn't the same thing as traditional literary analysis. I'm not professing to be a literature student (I actually have an unfair perception of the field because of attempts to apply its models to antiquity) but I do think this is a totally different thing. I really think you can only make accurate guesses about the direction a story is going - if we're trying to be serious and not just engage in casual entertainment - in trying to figure out what the thematic heart of the story is. With something like R/WBY there's also the fact that it consciously engages with the monomyth (by way of Joseph Campbell) and Jungian psychoanalysis (which underscores the monomyth) and so you actually have some sort of narrative structure at hand - including for the character's narrative roles, which is actually pretty unusual. I'm excluding allusions here because I think allusions are often explanatory post hoc, and because I think they're beholden to other things in the story - which, as I've exhausted, I think people tend to get caught up with the evidence in the allusions and don't stop to think about how they might actually be meaningfully figured into the story.

The issue here of course - that both simplifies and complicates things - is that Ozlem is actually pretty straightforward monomythically and Jungian wise - they're the cosmic egg which has broken (this is why the moon breaks) and it needs healing and to be made one thing again; they're the cosmic wound of the world; they're the anima and animus of humanity which needs reintegrating, in the way that the Faunus are humanity's Shadow; Ruby's Heroine's Journey is actually how this is all going to get resolved. So if we're looking at it through the perspective of the monomyth/Jung, the question of what needs to happen is pretty straightforward. But as evidenced in the narrative, the question of how to stop Salem is an open question, because she can't be killed. Most people take this at first glance and think of ways to try to kill her, or imprison her, or abandon her (alá Ironwood), but I think it's meaningful that trying to help her or work with her will be a major twist in the story. Anyway, it's getting away from me:

To return back to the original point I was trying to make, it's less about whether relationships in the story fit discrete Ozlem evidence or patterning - though that in itself is suggestive - but what those relationships would mean for Ozlem (or how they can set it up, or you know, induce feeling?), and what... any of it actually offers the story. That's it. It's actually remarkably straightforward, and I think the thing that bamboozles me about fandom discourse is that they're so interested in overcomplicating it, when it's not about self-insert power fantasy projection (which is just anti-narrative, and not even worth thinking about; it's fundamentally nihilistic).

And like... most of what I put forth is on the contingency that a) the monomyth and Jung is relevant, b) Ozlem will get some sort of meaningful redemption, c) it is actually possible to intelligibly predict the story and it's not beholden to commercial influence or writerly discord, and the story is actually finished, and d) it has sensible thematic goals. The lattermost point is relevant because I think R/WBY is very straightforward about what it's trying to be, and it baffles me that people actively ignore the dialogue, the material narrative, etc. to come to opposite conclusions about what it's trying to be, and I think it makes really good sense as a story, but I think it makes really good sense as a story if they can deliver on the Ozlem redemption. Lol. This is what I mean about working with the absence of information in an unfinished story: it is actually remarkably fraught.

So no, I don't think you can just point at something like 'Reverse A/rkos' as being a thing because it's not just an arbitrary pattern. A/rkos doesn't figure into the story that way cosmically. If there's anything that is precipitated by a teased and aborted romance with a would-be Fall Maiden, it involves the actual Fall Maiden of the story.

Despite how much I've tried to make myself clear under my Reverse Ozlem tag, I see how it can get away from people given these trends, but also because of the name - it only refers to Jaune/Cinder, but I'm talking about Ozlem redemption as a whole in this theory. The issue as well is that from a narrative perspective - as a writer - I would be more interested in how Ozlem bolsters my main relationships in the narrative, not the other way around. But as viewers, Ozlem is the narrative key. So I think they have to be very particular in seeding Jaune/Cinder through Ozlem, and I don't think it could be an accident. The question is whether that amounts to a romantic, redemptive resolution.

(Reverse Ozlem is just a descriptive name - lovers to enemies -> enemies to lovers - and so, in the context of the anonymous user's ask, actually... isn't relevant outside of Jaune/Cinder. As I've expounded exhaustively, the entire point is that Jaune/Cinder would be proof you can work back from that enmity and resolve it).

So, on that note, I think anything involving Ozlem redemption basically has to involve Jaune/Cinder, or I think it's going to be really muddled and confused, circuitous and thoughtless. Which I personally do not feel comfortable discounting, because I like being thorough. As you can tell.

As much as I might be interested in analysis, and despite it seemingly being at odds with narrative emotional engagement, I am interested in storytelling. It is incredibly sad to me that this often gets put to the wayside in exchange for a miserly obsession with 'evidence' abstracted from the actual feeling and thematic motivations of a story. What does any of it actually offer the story? What is the actual interesting thing that could happen?

[bugbastard]

This ended up significantly longer than I wanted. I cut out significant portions and it's *still* significantly longer than I intended. At time of writing this, I think I'm only 3/4 of the way through and I've already spent 3 hours on this. I'm not sure it's something you can meaningfully reply to, so I apologize in advance for metaphorically dropping this whole pile of shit on your doorstep.

The whole "natural logic" angle is something I used to swear by, and have since soured on as well, and not because my tastes have changed. Chasing rigor in fantasy fiction is ultimately what shifted my standards of rigor. I think we still agree on the most important thing, which is that un-earthly worldbuilding done without consideration often detracts rather than adds, so I'm sorta arguing in favour of something you're not trying to argue against, but I still think the "philosophical distinction" between our two perspectives are enough to warrant discussion. This is more summary of *my* perspective of a collection of related ideas than an argument against what I perceive *your* perspective to be pers se. I expect that whole sections of this are going to be fully orthogonal to your perspective and point.

I'm gonna run through a couple short, fairly uncontroversial I think? Premises I slowly accepted that are a prerequisite for my perspective shift. They themselves *aren't* the shift though, so might seem a bit unrelated. If any don't make sense or you disagree, I can try and explain them in greater detail, but I accidentally found myself writing an essay about like 3 other only tangentially related topics.

If magic interfaces with physics, Occam's razor (which we presumably care about if we are aiming for "natural logic" in our worldbuilding) suggests physics and magic are generally deeply entwined. Magic *is* the physics of the world, at least in part.

The hard magic / soft magic distinction may sometimes be "logically reasoned vs not" from an author's perspective as usually conceived of, but it *isn't* that from a reader's perspective or an in-world perspective, by and large. The soft / hard SF distinction that it's modeled after doesn't presume that in-world the science is illogical, just that the author doesn't have to *know* how it works, and so doesn't *explain* it to the audience.

Ironically, real world physics is closer to soft magic than hard magic; we've been studying it for the entirety of human history and we *still* don't get it. Hard magic systems, in order to be something the audience can learn within the first act of a work and understand it's use throughout the rest often gravitate towards simplicity in ways that have a certain kind of artifice, or gamey-ness to it. This isn't bad, but it IS a tradeoff, and a distinct step away from "natural logic".

Now onto the actual thing. I remember reading a really irate tumblr comment from someone who'd read an interview with GRRM on ASOIF and was appalled that he said the wildly varying season length was due to magic. They called it a cop out, and said they wrote up their own "scientific" explanation via orbits. Leaving aside the fact that I'm not sure it's even possible to torture real world orbital mechanics into giving you both erratic seasonal lengths and consistently survivable seasonal temperature variation, if soft magic isn't "unscientific", then "magic did it" isn't necessarily a cop out if the evidence for the mechanism is there. And it is! Magic in ASOIF is unmistakably tied to temperature, the extremes of ice and fire, and there is NO other motif that dominates how magic is expressed to that degree. It's so very "natural" that these two things be tied, and rejecting that is ultimately a failure to engage with the text on a deep level. This is, unfortunately, a thing I often see in critiques of the lore of fantasy fiction. that the issue isn't the work, it's that the critic wants the fantasy novel to be a lore bible with action . . . And it isn't, it's a novel.

Now onto the question of "can you pause history while preserving natural logic" / "without fully occupying the mythic register". I'd argue yes, and trivially easy in all honestly. If magic is physics and physics is magic, and soft magic (the exact mechanics of which aren't explained to the reader) is at least as ""scientific"" or logical as hard magic, AND we accept that scientific and or logical is somewhat of a proxy for "natural logic", then essentially any coherent magical explanation will do.

"Fate" is enough, if boring, and thematically a bit troubling. Perhaps the jealous gods reach down and knock over any metaphorical tower of Babel or site of social / technological upheaval. "The Empire" could have a monopoly on powerful war magic possessed by a single person or bloodline such that even civil war isn't meaningfully possible. Fate could have intent, stopping the world from progressing because technological development in a world with magic invariably leads to apocalyptic wars. Hierarchy could have "weight" to it, settling in over generations, becoming harder and harder to oppose. The opposite could be true; those that rule could eventually become truly bound by the will of the people. These all have the potential for interesting themes and plots, and none of them definitely move the work into the mythic register, or much farther from "natural" logic than the inclusion of magic itself does. "Fantasy" that doesn't have even a toe in the un-real is historical fiction. Dipping further than that has as much potential to pull you closer to xenofiction as mythic register. It also therefore seems a bit self contradictory to present a dichotomy between mythic register and everything else, in which mythic register is a specific and intentional choice, and in which best practice for any work which isn't *perceived* as being intended as mythic is passively assumed to be minimizing deviation from "earthly" natural logic.

We also run into the issue that, even if the author may have a sufficient, non-copout magical explanation, delivering it is outside the scope of the narrative. What are the odds a 12th century peasant turned hero ends up in the circumstances to get a 12th century (aka likely only partly true anyway) explanation as to why it's been the 12th century for 8000 years? Unless the book is *about* that, or you're willing to have prologues or epilogues or interludes that are essentially OOC loredumps (which push you closer to the mythic register anyway), you'd have to bend over backwards to justify *why* the character is learning this so the audience can learn it in the course of your average fantasy novel. Hell, there's an argument to be made that if you're from a world of societal stasis, there'd be nothing to question about that. A world where humans have been around some 40k years and the rate of social and technological progress has been growing exponentially so we make twice the development in half the time -- hell we LIVE in that world and it sounds ridiculous. Why would characters in a world where that isn't the case think there's an explanation for it?

Now, most works of fantasy fiction that have incredibly long timescales aren't doing it for any deeper reason than "because other fantasy does it" + "because myths do it" = "because it evokes a feeling of mystical past". But, if we can come up with compelling explanations, and we can come up with explanations why we don't get those explanations, and we can still figure out what the author might be getting at thematically or evocatively by things like ultra long timescales, then there isn't inherently a problem with those timescales sans explanation. Even when unconsidered, sometimes it's just vestigial lore that neither ads nor subtracts, and at worst you're left with an odd head scratcher that leaves you feeling like you're waiting for the other shoe to fall -- there ought be an explanation for this odd choice, but there isn't one.

This is bad and to be avoided, but it's also something that *can't* be avoided. This is a place where I, long time worldbuilding fan, have slowly found myself at odds with my past self and many other worldbuilding fans. A finished book is of infinitely more value than a never finished worldbuilding document (assuming book is the end goal -- I love reading pure worldbuilding), and said worldbuilding document isn't something that can meaningfully be fully and unambiguously expressed within a book.

The bigger issue, when it comes to water tight worldbuilding, though, is that there are limits to the author's interests, limits to what an author knows, which are different from what an author *thinks* they know, practical limits to what the author can *come* to know, limits to what the *audience* knows, and limits to what the audience *thinks* they know.

Writing a water tight fantasy novel would require perfect knowledge of military tactics, politics and history as pertain to the time period, the history of arms, armour, and smithing and metallurgy as pertains to the time period, farming practices, economics, and trade as pertains to the time period, human psychology and biology, non human biology . . . And the list goes on and on. A good chunk of your readers will have more knowledge than you about a subject your work touches on, and you won't be able to preempt every valid criticism they have. Given the impossibility of the task, the fact that "watertight lore" seems to be increasingly considered a necessary benchmark for a good work of fantasy fiction feels ridiculous and almost "anti-human" to me.

But it gets worse, because the criticisms they have *aren't necessarily true*. As shown by that ASOIF commenter I mentioned above, both of us think we have enough of an understanding of orbital mechanics to reason about the relationship between orbit and seasons . . . But we don't agree with eachother. I'm pretty sure they're wrong, but I could be wrong, and fantasy orbital mechanics that one of us gives a pass to, the other would object to. Even if the author were right, they wouldn't be able to please both of us, and they wouldn't be able to convince either of us that we were wrong while the author was right.

So, fundamentally, even if the seeds of these "lore head scratchers" are found in the text, the *experience* of them is brought by the reader, and they won't be the same ones for every reader. It is a problem the author *can't* solve, and it is a problem the reader, in some sense, "causes", even if it's justified, so perhaps there is a degree to which the onus lies with the reader and not the writer.

Whenever you encounter a lore "head scratcher" you can both acknowledge the fact that this was probably an oversight on the part of the author, AND go through the process of "looking for setting-coherent explanations" followed by "looking for explanations why you don't receive those explanations" if the first one fails. There comes a point where passive suspension of disbelief isn't enough, and active suspension of disbelief via deeper engagement of the text, is what's necessary to meet a work where it's at. There are works you won't be able to do that for, and there are works that it isn't *worth* doing that for, but it's as often the case that that work, or that aspect of that work, wasn't a good fit for you as it is that the work was genuinely flawed.

The better a reader or writer I become, the fewer works I find that I don't have genuine and serious criticisms of, and at this point I'm not sure I can name a single work I remotely cared enough about to examine that I couldn't fairly nitpick.

That all being said, deeply considered lore that is *saying* something is almost always preferable to unconsidered lore that says nothing. But, there will always be unconsidered aspects of a work, and while the writer ought minimize them, it's only when *nothing* is deeply considered that it becomes an objective problem.

And finally, on the point that when an empire of the future takes up the mantle of an empire of old it is nonetheless a new empire, yes, but the nationalistic cultural narrative being woven by the new empire says otherwise, and there is a sense in which the whole point of fantasy fiction is to make the mythic and figurative into the literal. I'm not a fan of nationalistic cultural narratives as a general rule, and not only are they often problematic if left unconsidered but *boring* as well, so genuinely 0 for 2, but that only puts ancient empires in the same category as many other fantasy staples. Good kings. Evil foreigners. Righteous wars. Chosen Heroes and all other forms of "Self Made Great Men". Even the concept of abstract "Evil" divorced from deeper intentions and separate from specific actions. All of these are both problematic and boring if used without consideration, but all of them are also trivially easy to explain, so it's not that they're "un-natural" that's the issue. It's that they're boring and problematic if you're not trying to say something with them.

Sorry if this seems rambly. I know I probably took a good few turns in this that felt obvious to me but might come off like irrelevant non sequiturs, or like I'm wasting a lot of time explaining things that are too obvious. I'm writing this very tired.

pro-tip: don't ever use the sentence "thousands of years" in your worldbuilding unless you really know what a thousand years is like

[tgirlranting]

okay so the thing about intersex folks wrt to "afab transfem" discourse is that its not actually about intersex folks. they get thrown in as a gotcha, used as a rhetorical device in a debate that often has nothing to do with them

because if youre arguing about the validity of "AFAB transfems" and you find yourself directly answering the question of "what about intersex trans people?" then you've already lost. intersex adds dimensions of nuance to the concept of assigned sex at birth, you cant just take "AFAB intersex" or "AMAB intersex" at face value.

for one thing, the relationship an intersex person has to their (C)ASAB cannot be immediately known without a lot more (highly personal) information. its because of this that the existence of intersex people makes for such a useful rhetorical device; there are hundreds of possible combinations of specific intersex condition, CASAB, and the relationship the person has to both of those things

so when I say CAFAB folks cant be transfem, and you say "but what about intersex people," the answer is, technically, yes, it's possible for an intersex person to be transfem, but that statement means nothing on its own. yes, its possible for a rectangle to be a square, but its not possible for every rectangle. youre eliminating a ton of nuance

the issue is that, while AFAB can be useful in the context of discussing trans issues specifically, its all but worthless when discussing intersex issues. so by directly answering the question, youve agreed to a nonsensical dialogue in the first place.

so, when someone says "what about intersex people?" what they really mean is "but what about someone who was coercively assigned female at birth, but has intersex traits that make them look like a man/have masculine genitals?" while that will obviously affect the way this hypothetical person moves through the world, you're still being reductive. and we're also now talking about something completely different than before. because from the get go we've both been arguing based on a shared set of assumptions and parameters ("can a (perisex) person who was assigned female and raised as a girl and treated like a woman and is seen as a woman and uses she/her pronouns call herself transfem?") that you have now thrown out entirely (the answer is no, btw).

is it inclusive to use AFAB in every situation? no, of course not. but the term, like any other, has contextual uses. when you say AFAB in the context of discussing someones access to transfem identity, we mean something different than when we say CAFAB in a discussion about intersexism. both uses are valid

obv any intersex person who desires it has a place in the broader trans community. but they are people with complex, nuanced identities and not rhetorical tools.

so, taking this all into account, how do intersex people fit into the "AFAB transfem" debate?

idk. shits complicated and im not a member of the intersex community. the real answer is that should be taken on a case by case basis and not prescribed via blanket statements from a place of ignorance.

however, i am a member of the transfem community, and there is a reason to gatekeep access to the labels of transfem/trans woman. transfems, while a diverse group, all have a shared struggle that deserves recognition and respect. we are not a costume you can pick out for #genderfuck aesthetic reasons. if your experience does not meaningfully align with ours, youre not one of us. thats all there is to it.

finally, actual intersex transfems do exist. maybe you should ask them what they think instead of postulating about how cis people, perisex or intersex, should be allowed to claim our identity

[allaboutmarketing4you]

Why Nike is Facing Its Worst Performance in Years

Nike once dominated the sneaker market, but is currently facing a rare decline in sales. As competitors have gained ground, will Nike be able to regain its status as the top dog in sportswear?

Video Source: Morning Brew

THE RATINGS GAME

" Nike’s stock sees biggest drop ever as some analysts question company’s leadership after downbeat forecast

‘Management credibility is severely challenged and potential for C-level regime change adds further uncertainty,’ Stifel analysts say

As shares of Nike Inc. ended Friday with their biggest drop ever following the sneaker maker’s pessimistic outlook a day earlier, Wall Street analysts were retrenching — with some even questioning the company’s management.

Nike shares NKE -0.32% finished the regular trading session 20% lower after the stock was hit with multiple downgrades from firms like Stifel, Morgan Stanley and UBS. The selloff marked Nike’s biggest one-day percentage decline on record.

Jim Duffy, an analyst at Stifel, said in a research note Thursday that Nike was asking investors to place their faith in newer, unproven sneaker and clothing styles amid wobbly demand — straining confidence in the company’s leadership in the process.

“Management credibility is severely challenged and potential for C-level regime change adds further uncertainty,” he wrote.

Nike plans to roll out an array of new products, and is trying to do so more quickly, to counteract reluctance from inflation-battered consumers. But over at UBS, analyst Jay Sole had his own reservations about the company, and cut his per-share profit estimates for its next three fiscal years.

“Our key conclusion is there will be no quick rebound for Nike’s earnings,” Sole said in a research note on Friday. “We believe Nike is embarking on what will be a multiyear reset of its business in order to return to healthy top-line growth rates.”

He added: “Our base case top-line forecast depends on Nike successfully developing new innovative products, but there is no guarantee this will happen.”

Speaking on a conference call to discuss Nike’s fourth-quarter results Thursday, Chief Executive John Donahoe said the company saw strong gains in performance products, although this was more than offset by declines in Nike’s lifestyle segment. Those declines, he added, had “a pronounced impact” on Nike’s digital results.

“These factors when combined with increased macro uncertainty and worsening foreign exchange have caused us to reduce our guidance for [fiscal-year] 2025,” Donahoe said.

“NKE’s 4Q24 print was very choppy, and the challenges facing the company are clearly more impactful than we (or management) expected,” wrote Wedbush analyst Tom Nikic in a note released Friday. “After the company missed Q4 sales and meaningfully cut FY25 guidance, shares are likely to open meaningfully lower on Friday.”

“We doubt many investors will view this as a ‘buy the pullback’ event, and we think NKE shares are headed for a stay in the proverbial penalty box until new product innovations actually start to manifest themselves and management regains investor trust,” Nikic said. “We remain at Outperform due to our expectation that NKE will eventually ‘figure it out,’ but our conviction in our thesis has certainly taken a hit.” Wedbush lowered its Nike price target to $97 from $115.

Analysts say that that Nike is entering a period of transition.

“FY25 will be a transitional year with significantly softer performance than we anticipated and what NKE planned 3 months ago,” wrote Raymond James analyst Rick B. Patel in a note released Friday. In particular, Patel cited weakness in lifestyle products, worsening global macro headwinds and a foreign-exchange hit.

“One could argue Nike kitchen-sinked FY25, but we don’t have confidence on upside to revenue (most critical factor) given increasingly tough macro,” Patel added, pointing to widespread reports of consumer softness from the likes of Levi Strauss & Co.

LEVI -0.68% , Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. WBA and General Mills Inc. GIS The analyst also cited unfavorable channel mix and China volatility. Raymond James downgraded Nike to market-perform from outperform.

KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Ashley Owens also expects fiscal-year 2025 to be a transition year for Nike as the company navigates the pullback of top franchises for life-cycle management, balances its wholesale and direct-to-consumer channels, kickstarts product-newness and innovation initiatives, and invests in brand marketing.

“We think the above dynamics coupled with a challenging macro will continue to pressure results for the next couple of quarters,” she said.

However, Owens noted Nike’s new “Speed Lane” priority to accelerate product creation and its goal of doubling the business contribution from new products by the end of fiscal 2025.

“Additionally, NKE noted headcount actions are complete, and looks to other areas for savings, planning to reallocate $1B to invest in consumer-facing activities in FY25 to help support top line,” the analyst added. “Though channel-mix shift and franchise [management] will challenge the next few quarters, we think balancing product offerings, channels, and price points could help NKE be more competitive [long term].”

KeyBanc Capital Markets maintained its sector-weight rating for Nike.

During the fourth-quarter conference call, Nike CEO Donahoe said that the company is harnessing Speed Lane and its Bowerman Footwear Lab to accelerate design, as well as digital tools to speed up development. The athletic-wear giant is also working with manufacturing partners to speed up product testing and production, he added, and has already accelerated half a dozen models through the new capability.

Of 40 analysts surveyed by FactSet, 22 have an overweight or buy rating, 15 have a hold rating and three have a sell rating on Nike.

Nike shares are down 30.6% in 2024 so far, compared with the S&P 500 index’s SPX 0.16% gain of 14.5%."

Article Source: marketwatch.com | By James Rogers and Bill Peters Last Updated: June 29, 2024

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