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staringdownabarrel · 2 years

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My other unpopular Star Trek opinion that nobody asked for is that I think Insurrection is a good movie, and the moral premise is pretty good.

I feel like a lot of people write it off because the Ba'ku planet "only" had 600 people on it, but that's the entire point. You're supposed to think about how many people it takes before it becomes wrong. Picard says it outright.

I don't really agree with the approach a lot of people have towards that issue, which seems to be that it only becomes wrong once you can no longer heard all those people onto a single starship. If you apply that logic, you're talking about an upper limit of something like 15,000-30,000 people at this point--Memory Alpha cites the upper evacuation limit for a Galaxy-class to be around 15,000, and no doubt a dedicated transport could carry more. I think it's an absolute thing. I think it'd be wrong to force even a single person to be moved from that planet if they didn't want to leave.

This is also the approach Picard takes in the movie, and it's actually pretty consistent with how he acted in TNG, too. One of Picard's defining attributes throughout TNG was that he tended to side with the individual over the state where possible. It's why he sided with Data over Starfleet in episodes like The Measure of a Man and The Offspring, for example, and why he eventually argued to allow the Native American colonists to remain in their village in Journey's End. Broadly speaking, his position is that people need protection from the state just as much as they need to be protected by the state.

I guess the obvious counter to this would be something like how Picard was initially going to follow orders and evacuate the Native American colony. And yes, this is true, albeit reluctantly. However, I feel like this experience in Journey's End may have informed his decision in Insurrection: that forcible relocations became a red line for him after that.

The other counter would be something like, "Sure, but the Prime Directive doesn't apply to the Ba'ku". After all, this is the point Admiral Dougherty brings up. I don't agree with this, either. The actual wording of the Prime Directive goes, "No starship may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society."

During the TNG era, this tended to be interpreted as an absolute thing. This is why Picard was able to basically tap out at the end of The Hunted with apparently no consequences to him: how the Angosian government handled its dispute with its veterans was part of the normal development of that society. It's also one of the reasons why the admiralty was hesitant to give Picard a fleet to blockade the Klingon-Romulan border in Redemption, Pt. II: a civil war over the succession of the Chancellor could have been a normal development in Klingon society, if it weren't for the Romulan interference.

Really, the only part of this where the waters get murky is that the Ba'ku aren't native to that particular planet. The thing is that after living there for 300 years, while they as a species might not be native to that planet, their culture effectively is. Even assuming there's a bit of leeway in that 300 years line--that it's based on a year for Ba'ku, which probably isn't exactly one Earth year, and that it's about 300 years and not exactly 300 years--that still means that the Ba'ku have been there for longer than the Federation has existed. Depending on the specifics of the maths involved, they may have even been there for longer than humans had warp drive.

The other thing to note here from a Prime Directive standpoint is that it's never actually stated what the Ba'ku's standing with their original home planet's government is. It's implied that there's no contact there and there hadn't been for a long, long time, but it's never stated what it was before that. It could be a general "not good", or it could be that the original species would be willing to reintegrate them into their culture--it's a blank spot.

Because of that, this is also a culture that had diverged from its host culture quite a while ago. While it might not have the long, several millennia old historical ties to a planet that the Federation is used to dealing with, there's still that deep cultural connection with that village.

I'm not really sure if I'd be completely willing to discount this as a Prime Directive issue on those grounds just due to how long they'd been there. Plus, given that the Son'a and the Ba'ku were the same species, this could be read as an internal conflict of the species, which would broadly fit with how the Prime Directive had been applied in other circumstances.

There is one other defense for removing the Ba'ku that I've traditionally seen, and that this was all happening during the Dominion War, therefore it's justified.

I don't really agree with this, either. This is a little too "the ends justify the means, especially in times of war" for my liking. I don't think it's right for the Federation to sacrifice the population of one planet that's neutral in the war, and more than likely hadn't even heard about it up until this point, just so a few thousand others might live.

I think it also assumes good faith on the part of the Son'a. This can't be assumed at that point, both due to how they'd concealed how they were the same species as the Ba'ku and how they saw the Dominion War as a sign of the Federation's growing weakness. It could be that once they'd developed the medicine, the Son'a would have turned around and said, "Thanks for that, see ya never", and then disappeared.

The other question about removing the Ba'ku in my mind is whether or not this counts as genocide. The current definition of genocide that the United Nations uses includes a provision about how deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. This tends to be an aspect that nobody really talks about, both due to how small the Ba'ku population is and how inflammatory the suggestion seems to be.

Given how the rings of Ba'ku increased the lifespan of those in the village by huge magnitudes, removing of them from the planet really would be doing that. While there were only 600 of them so it was only a very small cultural/ethnic group, that's still large enough for me to consider that this could actually count as a form of genocide in this context.

This is something that most likely occurred to Picard as well. Maybe there was a legal precedent for a culture so small in the Federation and maybe there wasn't, but if it were me, I don't know if I'd care if there was. It'd be something I'd want to stop.

Even putting aside the genocide question specifically and the moral dilemma more broadly, there's still a lot of things I like about this movie. I like how it's basically a two-part TNG episode with a much bigger budget. I like the designs of the new starships they introduce. I feel like there's a lot of stuff here that generally gets overlooked.

#star trek #tng #insurrection #star trek insurrection #star trek tng #the next generation #rant

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meichenxi · 3 years

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Ooh anything about linguistics and/or Chinese linguistics that interests you- what do you find most interesting?

Ooooo thank you! First let me apologise for the lack of rigour i.e. sources - I am ILL.

HMMMMM ok...let me talk a little bit about one thing I find fascinating - the idea of 'linguistic complexity'. It's an interesting topic that a) demonstrates the failures of linguistics that only takes Indo-European languages into account; b) demonstrates how a conflation of linguistic and moral judgements leads to absolute chaos; and c) proves that sometimes the purpose of all models and hypotheses is to be a useful aid in description, and not to be 100% accurate. Which means that multiple models can exist at the same time. Also, it shows just how cool Classical Chinese is.

I'm going to make this into two posts because I have been asked to wax lyrical on this stuff twice...this one will be a general overview of what linguistic complexity is and some of the issues around it, and the other post (@karolincki 's ask) will be an overview of these issues as pertaining to Modern and Classical Chinese.

Linguistic complexity: an introduction

What is linguistic complexity? Basically what it says on the tin: how 'simple' or 'complex' is one language in relation to another. If you automatically think that sounds dodgy - aren't all languages equally complex? what is a simple language? etc - just hold on. We'll get there.

A very important starting point: complexity here only refers to linguistic complexity. There are many ways to measure this, but broadly speaking it refers to the amount of stuff in a language a learner has to deal with. Are there genders? Well, that's more complex than not having any, because it's an extra thing to remember. Do you have to express whether the information you're conveying is something you personally experienced or hearsay? Again, more complex than not. Different tenses? Essentially, you can look at complexity like this: if you were describing this language or putting it into a computer program, what is the minimum length of description you would need? The longer the description, the more complex the language. In a standard understanding of complexity, a language like English is more complex than a language like Vietnamese (English has more tenses, moods, conjugations, irregularity...), and a language like Georgian is more complex than a language like English (Google a single verb table of Georgian and you will see what I mean).

(this will be long)

What complexity does not mean is anything to do with the cognitive abilities of the people who speak it. It doesn't mean that people who speak English are unable to conceive of the difference between a dual and a plural (2 apples and 3 apples), just because the language doesn't mark it. It doesn't mean people who speak Chinese are unable to conceive of the past conditional ('I should have gone...') just because they don't have a separate tense for it. It doesn't mean Italian speakers don't know whether they experienced the thing themselves, or heard about it from someone else, just because they don't have a set verb ending for it. All linguistic complexity means is what the language requires you to express.

I'm putting this out there very clearly because this sort of thinking is bound up in a lot of racist ideas and ideology. You'll have heard of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Unfortunately named, since they never really worked together, and Edward Sapir was actually a relatively cool dude for the time who argued against linguistic relativity - i.e. the language you speak determines how you think. Yes, in the 19th (and much of the 20th) century, when certain linguists referred to 'simple' and 'complex' languages that is what many of them meant: speakers of a simple language are 'simple', and a complex one are 'complex'. But there was a huge backlash against these racist ideas, and that backlash was hugely influential is shaping the direction of typology (the branch of linguistics which is broadly concerned with these sorts of questions). More on that later, but for now: please understand that when I say linguistic complexity, I am not implying a single thing about the people that speak it.

Back to complexity. Of course language, like any system, is made up of moving parts: you don't just need to consider how many parts it has, but also how interdependent they are, whether they interact with each other in a predictable way, how likely they are to change. You might also want to consider how easy the system is to learn for somebody who has never used it before. And then, of course, languages are more complex still because they are not machines, but ever-changing things: do you count a rule like the conditional inversion in English, which only applies to a total of three verbs? Is that less complex because fewer verbs use it - and therefore you need to think about it less - or does that make the system more complex because you need another, meta-rule to say when you need to use it and when not? What about irregularity? Is a language like English that doesn't have many rules but has a sizeable amount of 'irregular' verbs more or less complicated than a language like Swahili which has a lot more rules, but follows them assiduously? And what happens when some people use one rule and others don't - do you count those as the same language (lumping), which may render the grand overview less accurate, or do you count them as totally separate languages (splitting), in which case when do you stop?

Hmm. Complexity. Is. Complex.

Those are a lot of factors that need to be considered here. Even saying something is 'irregular' doesn't mean very much without further quantification. For example, if I say that the 'irregular' verb ring goes to ring, rang, rung in English, you can very easily find other verbs which conjugate similarly: sing, sang, sung etc. So is that really irregular? Or is it just another, less productive rule? But then if it's a rule, why do we say fling, flung, flung and not yesterday I flang the ball? What's going on???

And what about 'total' irregularity, so called 'suppletion', where (and this is a very scientific explanation) a random non-related word just seems to appear in a paradigm, like it's got lost on the way home? Like I go, I went; like to be, I am, he is, I were; like good, better, best. Ok, so is the irregularity in I go and I went somehow....more irregular than irregularity in I sing and I sang? Uhh. Ok. And then is the irregularity in bad, worse, worst somehow more irregular than better and best, because at least for better and best you can see the -er and -st endings?? Finally, what about a 'spoken' but very predictable irregularity, such as the way we have a reduced vowel in 'says'? Where do we count that? Is that more irregular, or less irregular? Is it maybe 33% irregular?

I think you get the point. And of course all of this becomes more complex when you start to consider the interaction of lots of different systems at once. What about tone? If you have regular tone like Chinese, most people would agree that it's more complex because it's an added thing. But tone probably only developed in part as a response to losing some really important sound contrasts that other languages have kept...and also there is no possibilities of 'irregularities' in tone the way there are in something like verb conjugation...you can't just have a random sixth tone. And then what about syntax? If you have lots of very complex word ordering rules, is that more or less complex than a language where you have to rely on the human being to use pragmatics to infer what the ever loving fuck is going on?

Yeah. This is sort of just one of those things where every year a new linguist comes up with a spicy new matrix to 'measure' complexity and then everyone shits on them in journals and then comes up with their own idea which is promptly shat on. I don't know either.

Ok, so how is this relevant to Chinese?

To answer that question we need to circle round a bit to the history of typology that I vaguely alluded to earlier. At various points - depending on how racist the linguist in question was - people in the 20th century were starting to realise that all of this stuff about 'complex language = complex civilisation / complex thought' wasn't quite as water-tight as they'd hoped. Perhaps it was their better judgement, but it's also likely to have been influenced by a lot of contact suddenly with Native American languages - many of which are vastly complex by literally any metric you could possibly imagine, but the people speaking them were not colonising other countries and building amphitheatres and all of those necessarily, comfortingly European ideas of 'civilisation'. This movement away from such racist ideology, even if it was fuelled in part by a different type of racism, meant that suddenly everyone was very wary about making statements about linguistic complexity at all. It smacked of all the things they were trying not to be associated with.

I'm going to quote some Edward Sapir here for no other reason than I think it's really unfortunate that he's most famous for something that has the potential for incredibly racist ideology that he literally never said:

'Intermingled with this scientific prejudice and largely anticipating it was another, a more human one. The vast majority of linguistic theorists themselves spoke languages of a certain type, of which the most fully developed varieties were the Latin and Greek that they had learned in their childhood. It was not difficult for them to be persuaded that these familiar languages represented the “highest” development that speech had yet attained and that all other types were but steps on the way to this beloved “inflective” type. Whatever conformed to the pattern of Sanskrit and Greek and Latin and German was accepted as expressive of the “highest,” whatever departed from it was frowned upon as a shortcoming or was at best an interesting aberration. Now any classification that starts with preconceived values or that works up to sentimental satisfactions is self-condemned as unscientific. A linguist that insists on talking about the Latin type of morphology as though it were necessarily the high-water mark of linguistic development is like the zoölogist that sees in the organic world a huge conspiracy to evolve the race-horse or the Jersey cow.'

People generally began to get the hang of it after this, and stepped away from linguistic classification at all. There was a broad consensus that that sort of thing was done with, a thing of the past. It's kind of funny, because of course people's unwillingness to look at the complexity of language because 'all people are the same' shows that they still think language and culture/cognition are intimately linked! It was done out of a desire to not be racist, but you can't even reach that conclusion unless you have a sneaky secret bit of bioessentialism going on in your sneaky little brain. Because if the complexity of language doesn't reflect the complexity of your thought, why would it matter whether some systems are bigger than others? That they had more parts?

It literally wouldn't matter at all..

So what happened next? Linguists started to revisit these old linguistic classifications and ideas of complexity, but in the hope of proving, instead, that actually all languages were equal. You can definitely see the theoretical aims here: not only is a good from an ideological point of view (again, if you still equate linguistic complexity to complexity of thought), but it's also quite handy if you believe that all human babies approach language learning with the same biological apparatus ('Universal Grammar', if you believe in that, and other cognitive principles). If all babies have the same built-in gear, you sort of want the task they are given to be of roughly the same magnitude. That's one of those things linguists like to call theoretically desirable - which just means it would be neat if it did.

We're getting to Chinese. I promise.

So how you could make systems so vastly different as English and Georgian and Chinese roughly the 'same' level of complexity? One answer is irregularity: languages with huuuuuge verb and noun declensions like Georgian tend to have very little irregularity, where languages with less extensive systems like English tend to keep it around for longer. There are lots of reasons for this I won't go into, but it's a general trend. Irregular systems are more work for the brain to remember, which, predictably, is more 'complex' for a learner to acquire. Compare a language like English and German: German may have more cases and declensions and rules, but once you learn them...that's it. Compare that to English, where you'll be learning phrasal verbs and prepositions as a second language learner until the day you die (and possibly beyond). It's a different type of 'complex', but it's still deserving of the title.

That obviously doesn't work for a language like Chinese. Chinese has no conjugations, and so can't possibly have any irregularity in the same way. But fear not: there are lots and lots and lots of ways in which languages often exhibit what might be called 'complexity tradeoffs': languages with complex tone, for example, almost always have simpler sound systems elsewhere, and many languages with complex case arrangements tend to have free word order. One thing is complex, another...simplex (a word unfortunately genuinely in use).

This seems nice. We like this. It means that the different parts of the same system may be differently sized, but the whole system in total is about the same as any of other language. There’s just one problem: this isn’t how languages seem to work.

For every example of a complexity trade-off you can find, there are other languages which don’t have any such ‘trade off’ at all. There are plenty of languages where grammar is complex and the sound system is complex; or languages like Icelandic and German where there are cases but fairly rigid and fixed word order; or other cases where there is a huge amount of irregularity but also crazy verb systems, and so on. A language like Abkhaz has supposedly 58 consonants in the literary dialect: but it also has insanely complicated grammar. No trade-off there. Finally, it has long been presumed that whilst verb morphology etc is simpler in languages like Chinese, syntax would be more complicated: recently, a number of studies have proved exactly the opposite. Both, in fact, are simpler.

In conclusion, where does this leave us? Whilst the idea behind complexity trade-offs is well-motivated but not totally sound, and whilst these do not always seem to be present in the way you might hope, what this does do is force us as linguists to question whether we have spent enough time considering the types of complexity that are present in languages like Chinese, and how we reconcile that with more ‘familiar’ complexity. It’s interesting to think about because it shows what happens when you fail to consider these things.

That’s all for the overview on linguistic complexity today!! I’ll talk specifically about complexity in Chinese in the next ask, because this is already very long. Be aware, I’m not going to give you any answers necessarily - these questions are way above my pay grade - but boy can I give you some thoughts.

#chinese #linguistics #langblr #lingblr #linguistic complexity #meichenxi manages #askies #oh my god I am so looking forward to writing the next one #it's so spicy #love remembering that I actually sometimes know things lmao #stop the false equivalence of Sapir = the Sapir-whorf hypothesis 2k21 #the dude was actually quite progressive for his time #sighhhhh *squints at actual linguistics* hope this doesn't awaken anything in me #like the desire to go and do a masters #I hope this makes sense and I hope no one yells at me #if you want any sources I'm happy to give I'm just lazy and ill #source = brain #no I really do have books I promise

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kinosternon · 2 years

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same person who asked abt ur opinion on the movie! i think you made good points; i again didnt actually watch it mostly bc idk how to access it so i cant really gauge the flow of it, for lack of a better word, but from the plot of it i felt like it was too many things pushed together. notably i feel like kinjou’s involvement was unecessary, i dont understand why theyd add another character to the ensemble in the movie closing off the series when we have SO many characters at play already.

i know albert and specifically haru and albert’s rivalry/rship drives a lot of the swimming plot but similarly to kinjou i dont think it was necessary to get into a whole other backstory and angst about another character to achieve the same themes message conclusion etc.

you’re right that expectations probably play a big role in how you receive the movie - personally i think more could have been done to actually tie off the major conflicts amongst characters, but i guess free! has always dealt with conflict through swimming so i cant actually complain. i do wish that we could have seen hiyori and ikuya’s rship (ie their conflicts and development) a little bit more bc thats one of the most unresolved plot points from past seasons imo.

anyway thank you for responding to my question! your insight was rlly interesting :)

These are very good points, honestly, and they reflect a lot of the more...unconventional storytelling decisions KyoAni made with Free! So I hope you're ready for another short essay about them :D

But I'd argue that the "let's add new characters instead of solving old problems" thing has been showing up from the beginning. Like, I agree it's weird! But they did it in season 2, with the addition of Sousuke, and again in s3 with Hiyori and Ikuya. (And as they're officially my favorite, I feel like I've somewhat lost the right to complain about it lmao)

And speaking more broadly...it's kind of like life, isn't it? Especially for young adults. The biggest problems are not easily solved (or even easily recognized), and new people keep coming into our lives, recontextualizing those old problems in new ways. That and the decision to build the story backwards as intensely as they did forwards were some pretty innovative-feeling storytelling choices, at least from my perspective.

As for adding Kinjou and Albert, and HiyoIku development: (more spoilery stuff below)

Kinjou's arc really didn't make sense till this finale, even though it was really started off in the Road to the World movie (which was mostly a Dive to the Future rehash) where he randomly threatens Hiyori at the end. The setup seems to have started from (roughly) there, so this direction had to have been planned from at least that far back. (..."Road to the World" indeed. Huh.) And by the end, his role felt absolutely essential to me given the direction Haruka's arc went in.

Basically, Kaede acts as a really direct foil for Haruka's arc in the final film.

Most importantly, he has secondhand (but intense) familiarity with the risks Haruka seems to be taking for granted, and it's his choices more than anyone's that lead to Haruka making it to and winning the final race STRIKEalive and relatively unharmed.

Moreover, his relationship with swimming is so interesting to compare to Haruka's. It's not that Kaede was always a talented swimmer! He actually got started pretty late, and for reasons that didn't have to do with the water at all! Instead, it's implied that he started swimming seeking a place to belong, because he couldn't find one outside of it. And when he lost the person he was closest to and was rejected by Hiyori others, he became even more dedicated to swimming, seemingly at least a little out of spite.

This isn't Haruka's relationship with swimming at all! And yet, a lot of the underlying factors keeping them focused are similar—they're just more explicit in Kaede's case. (More than once in the film, via flashback, Kiyofumi tells him things like "swimming will become something that accepts you," which between that and his extremely ND vibes as a kid? Implies to me that he faced a lot of rejection growing up.) And yet he still is more aware than anyone else of the very real risks Haruka is taking, when the people around him are intentionally letting them slide.

Because—this is important—who else was going to tell Haruka to stop literally risking his life, just to win against Albert? Ryuuji tries, but ultimately, can only do so much. Almost everyone else looks up to Haruka too much to tell him to stop, and know him just well enough to believe that he wouldn't listen if they tried.

The only real options, to me, would've been Sousuke, Hiyori, Rin, or Makoto:

Sousuke does actually try in the movie, but he just isn't close enough to Haruka to be able to make much impact.

Hiyori already went through all this with Ikuya once, more or less, and deserves a break. Actually, I kind of wonder whether on a creative level Kaede was introduced as closest to him because he didn't really turn out to be dickish enough to get this job done.

Rin could've been quite interesting! And he seems relatively well-positioned to do this, especially with his very visible concern for Haruka throughout the movie. But even though he's finally making real steps to repair some of the interpersonal issues he's had with Haruka from the beginning...he's still really inspired by him and wants him to compete. Plus there's the problem that everyone who knows Haruka well comes up against—knowing how deep his passion goes, and not wanting to fight him on it.

Makoto...see, this would have been another place where the movie could've happened very differently, I feel. What if Ryuuji had pushed Makoto, not Rin, to try to reach Haruka? What if Haruka's well-being had ended up depending directly on Makoto finally managing to drill it into Haruka's head that he cares about him himself—not as an abnormal person and not as a prodigy? But instead, by this point Makoto's so worried about hurting Haruka's chances or their relationship (possibly remembering their s2 argument that was never fully resolved??) that he's actually more willing than Rin (or at least agrees first) to let Haruka keep hurting himself in the name of his dream.

(Actually, one weird dark-horse option would be Albert himself? But the timing doesn't really work on that.)

But with Ryuuji's tragic backstory (of Kiyofumi) already added in and everything, Kaede was really uniquely positioned to do the job he does regarding Haruka.

And speaking of Albert: I'd actually agree that a lot of his stuff felt shoehorned in, but I get why they did it—it adds an "international" level to the rivalries that's pretty necessary, given that the world championships are the final setting. Then as far as backstory goes, Free! has always been about coming to understand people's situations/perspectives better to overcome conflict with them. Haruka's journey with Albert (or vice-versa) is about him coming not to hate Albert's swimming, and showing Albert's issues to the audience helps make him relatable as that happens.

I enjoy that they tried to make a character like Albert work (even though his English lines made me cringe a little bit, especially this time around). I just...don't think they quite got there.

Then there's Hiyori and Ikuya. So. I say this with absolute love for them and their dynamic, but like—drama was never going to be the main fix for HiyoIku, because they're both predisposed to being dramatic in a way that is frankly part of the problem. Instead, Hiyori's development seems to come from both settling into a healthier role supporting Ikuya, and also learning to lighten up a bit and think about people other than him. Kaede plays a surprisingly important role here, as do Kisumi and Ikuya's friends. Even littler moments like his exposure to the disaster (at least on the surface) that Rin and Haruka's interactions often are probably had an impact. Ikuya's development, OTOH, mostly comes in the form of getting to know Rin and realizing that he isn't the only person in Haruka's orbit, while also making friends in general after years of acting like a loner. (Sousuke is a particularly good influence on both Hiyori and Ikuya, I think.)

So overall, getting away from the drama of everything after basically being the center of the drama for Dive to the Future is probably a welcome reprieve where they're concerned. And we did get to see them have a very pleasant convo pre-Ikuya's final race that hints that they're much better adjusted than they were, so for me it was an exercise in faith that they've worked on their shit more behind the scenes.

#free! the final stroke second part #free! spoilers #haruka nanase #kaede kinjou #albert volandel #hiyori toono #ikuya kirishima #sousuke yamazaki #if you're wondering if I'm aware of the irony in my position on HiyoIku drama: the answer is yes.#I am and I'm having a good time anyways (lol)#meta rant #disclaimer that I am not an expert and am just having fun here #after watching the movies a bunch to figure out what was happening #in conclusion though: it WAS a lot and there are SO MANY BOYS #thanks for coming to my ted talk lol

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historic-old-guard-lover · 4 years

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How many languages and which of them would the cast speak if we’re going to be completely historically accurate ?

This a great question that I can’t quite answer, but I spent six hours researching to give it a shot. I think that there’s a broad range of plausible languages and you’ve got leeway to choose how many. The first part is that different people have different affinities for languages. Some people can speak ten different languages fluently (or near-fluency), while others will struggle juggling three different ones in their brains. The range in the languages can affect this, too: it’s easy to mess up between similar languages. I personally have trouble speaking Spanish because in the middle of the sentence, I’ll drop a French word without even realizing it. The same thing doesn’t happen to me in other languages like German, though. By the same token as I’ve discussed before, similar languages are easier to learn. Going from English to Russian with the Cyrillic alphabet? More difficult than English to French, which makes up about a third of modern English. These are languages that are still in the same family (Proto-Indo-European, PIE), though, so it holds nothing to the difficulty of going from English to a language like Mandarin.

I’m breaking this answer into two parts: 1) how many?; 2) which ones? and I’m going to get carried away because I’m me so it’s below the break to spare you if this comes across your dash and you’re not a nerd...

PART 1: What’s a realistic number for them to speak?

I think that each member of the old guard probably has a certain number of languages which they’re comfortable with, a few more that they can understand/get by in, and a few that they may only know phrases from. The number of each isn’t the same for everyone. The average human being is able to speak ~1.5 languages. The most talented polyglots can speak upwards of 50 languages, maybe one guy even spoke 65 (mostly I want to mention he loved translating the phrase “kiss my ass”). This hyperpolyglot, Kreb aka “Kiss My Ass” Stan, had his brain dissected after his death and it showed a lot of “abnormalities”. That leads neuroscientists and me to believe that being able to study and learn 65 languages is either 1) a major skill that rewired his brain because he was flexing it so much; or 2) very abnormal and facilitated by his brain differences. Since their powers don’t make them stop being limited by the human brain (they can forget), I would say that it is unlikely that one of them is fluent/near fluent/comfortable in more than ~65 languages.

Getting past twelve languages is considered a feat, so I think only Andy, Quynh, Nicky, and Joe could be anywhere near the upper-bounds of languages. Remember, these hyperpolyglots spend their entire lives studying languages and often need refreshers. The members of the Old Guard don’t have the luxury of reading grammar books all day, and they also have to remember a bunch of combat training. You can argue that a lot of fighting is “muscle memory” aka located in the cerebellum and nowhere near language processing areas, but there’s still things like math, navigation, etc. that they need to remember. I doubt they have a list of their safe houses just lying around. The older members can speak more languages by virtue of being around longer and having that time to learn, but if we’re being realistic they should probably speak no more than ~45-55 languages comfortably. This doesn’t mean that they only *know* that many, but the other languages would be more like bad high school Spanish in America than able to wax poetic. Aside: that Joe is able to be poetic in what is AT LEAST his fourth or so language is very impressive and we should talk about that more.

How Many Each Member is Maximally Proficient In/Knowledgeable Of at the end of the film/Opening Fire comics run:

Lykon (comics): proficient in ~15, knowledgeable of ~30*

Lykon (movies): proficient in ~45, knowledgeable of ~80*

Andy: proficient in ~50, knowledgeable of ~100**

Quynh | Noriko: proficient in ~51, knowledgeable of ~90**

Joe: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Nicky: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Booker: proficient in ~10, knowledgeable of ~30

Nile: proficient in ~2 (maybe 3), knowledgeable of ~5

*In the comics, he is younger than Andy and Quynh and I assume he dies young. In the movie, it is strongly implied that he was the oldest. The reason why his numbers are not larger, however, is because at some point there were fewer languages as humanity had not dispersed as much as it eventually did. He’s also long before written language which facilitates learning for most people. RIP Lykon.

**I’m not saying that Quynh is smarter than Andy, just that she comes after written language and it should be slightly easier for her to pick things up. I’m giving Andy access to more languages, however, because PIE alone covers Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. More on this later.

PART 2: Which languages would each of them speak?

I’ve covered this question a little in a previous post that was broadly about proto-indo-european/Andy-centric (check it out if you want), but I’ll give a broader survey of each character here.

A Quick Aside on Lykon: We don’t know enough about this character, and the fact that the comics and movie diverge so sharply does not help at all. I’m going to headcannon that he was from Eastern Africa, where most archaeologists agree that modern humans first appeared in the Horn of Africa aka modern Ethiopia and Somolia and neighbors, and predates Andy by ~3,000 years. For future purposes below and assuming a birth date for Andy in the range ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE, this puts his birth at around ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE. This is wild speculation, however. Maybe the early immortals should be spaced by warfare types (Stone Age, Bronze, Iron, Steel?) or maybe they pop up once a cultural region reaches a certain historic point or maybe they just sorta pop up and then live for six or seven thousands years. I’m working off the last assumption because it’s the simplest. The only thing I’m certain of is that Greg Rucka probably didn’t sit down and think this pattern through. If I’m wrong, oh well. I’m mad at him for all his historical inaccuracies. With dating from ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE, I’m having trouble finding a name for the cultures that scientists/historians know were living there at the time. It’s probably because the region has been continually occupied since the first humans, which one can safely assume makes abandoned and undisturbed sites hard to fine.

A Quick Aside on Quynh | Noriko: I like the film better, so I’ll be working with Quynh. If there’s enough interest, I can add on Japanese for Noriko. I’m going to date Quynh to be ~1,500 years after Andy (maybe this should be the new date system, before Andy “BA” and after Andy “AA”). This puts her in the time range of ~3,500BCE - 2,500BCE which could place her in either the Đa Bút neolithic culture of modern-day Vietnam or the Phùng Nguyên bronze age culture of modern-day Vietnam. Those names are archaeological in nature, based on the location where sites have been found and dated to those ranges.

Other Origins: Because we have diverging cannons, I’m going to just state the backgrounds that I’ve assigned. Joe is from 1066CE with a background in the Arab-controlled Maghreb (more specifically, modern-day Tunisia and Northern Algeria). Nicky is from 1069CE with a background from the Italian maritime republic and city-state of Genoa. Booker is from 1770 southern France. Nile is from 1994 Chicago in the United States. Andy is from ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE in the Caucasus (modern-day Georgia and Azerbaijan) or the South Western Eurasian Steppes, probably the Shulaveri-Shomu culture assuming that location.

The first language everyone learned, their “mother tongue” or “native language” is one that they definitely speak. It’s the language that they think in and would be hard-pressed to lose. This even includes now-dead languages, because, again, it’s the one that they learned to think with. Of course, it is possible to lose a language when you have no one to speak it with if you wanted to do something tragic, but I think that these things are too deeply ingrained for it it to happen by accident.

What Each One’s First Language Would Be:

Nile: American English, possibly African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) at home

Booker: Provençal/Occitan, possibly “standard French” (school and other places outside the home)

Nicky: Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize

Joe: Tunisian Derja/Tunisian Arabic/Tunisian, and possibly one of the dialects of the native Zenati language group based on where more precisely you place him

Quynh: Proto-Viet–Muong (which isn’t well documented because it’s so old)

Andy: Proto-Indo-European (PIE), but if you’re curious the Classical Scythian Language for which she is probably named is only off by a factor of 10 (4000 vs 400 BCE) *cue distressed sighing*

Lykon: Proto-Cushitic (also suffering a lack of documentation from being old as heck)

Other than their first languages, what else they learn depends on where they go. People learned languages back then for the same reasons that they do today: to communicate (and to read, after the invention of writing).

Additional Confirmed or Likely Cannon Languages:

Nile: Spanish because of the American school system for sure. French is listed on the IG account, but she probably speaks only Spanish or French to a degree of fluency, definitely one better than the other. Very Basic Pashto, which we see her use some obviously-memorized phrases with in the film.

Booker: The IG promo things asserts that he knows (modern, standard) Italian and Greek. Why not? He also probably knows Spanish depending on where more specifically in southern France he is from. He’s probably also picked up on at least Very Basic Arabic from Joe and Nicky, but actually learning the language would take commitment from him. He also clearly speaks English.

Nicky: Other Italian dialects, and it would be fairly easy for him to have picked up modern Italian. He definitely reads Latin. If he was from a wealthy family, he probably also speaks Greek. If he was from a trading family, he probably speaks the trading pidgin of Sabir. The IG account confirms Arabic (vague, but okay I’ll be generous and say modern standard Arabic) and Romanche (they meant to write Romansh). I think Romansh is poorly chosen to characterize him in Northern Italy, but I’m feeling generous. He also clearly speaks English.

Joe: He definitely speaks standard Arabic to have been able to communicate with other Arabic-speakers in Jerusalem. Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize because of the love of his life, which also means he probably picked up modern Italian at some point. The IG account confirms Farsi (they call it “Persian” *cue screaming*), which works if he was a merchant who traveled far to eastward on the Silk Road...and if you go with the comic cannon makes more sense. I’m going to say that he speaks the Mediterranean trading pidgin Sabir because of his location in Tunisia. If he was from a wealthy merchant family and could afford schooling, he probably learned Greek and maybe also Latin. There’s a good chance that he knows conversational-levels of other native Zenati languages thanks to colonialism discouraging their usage. He also clearly speaks English.

Quynh: We don’t actually know if she speaks English, but it’s safe to assume she does speak at least some of it. She’s probably learned Vietnamese and Mường because of her mastery of their proto-language. Because I see her returning to modern-day Vietnam to fight the Chinese colonization, I think that she might know Cantonese or Mandarin. Based on her travels with Andy, I’d like to propose Greek, Latin, and Mongolian. I’m sure that Andy and her share a language, but who knows which one they were each speaking when they met!

Andy: The IG account says “all,” but I’ve discussed this elsewhere (*major eye rolling*). She almost certainly picked up Scythian and Greek based on her chosen name. Latin isn’t as likely as you’d think, but is possible. I’d like to think that she’s also partial to learning Russian (or some earlier form of the language), Mongolian, and Armenian. Based on her travels with Quynh, I imagine that she speaks Cantonese or Mandarin and Vietnamese or Mu’o’ng. There is some mystery language shared with Quynh, too. She also clearly speaks English.

Lykon: I really don’t know enough about him to hazard any guesses. He should share at least one language in common with Andy and Quynh. If his date of death is ~2,000- 1,000 BCE like I’m supposing, there’s a good chance that he only speaks one or two currently-named languages. Sorry, OP.

#asks #lovely anon #linguistics #neuroscience #the old guard #andromache the scythian #andy #quynh #noriko #lykon #yusuf al kaysani #joe #nicolo di genova #nicky #sebastien le livre #booker #nile freeman #nile

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yue-muffin · 2 years

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did i just watch a run of the hakone ekiden for five hours? yes. no, not straight through, i just tuned in here and there, and that was only day one of the race lol.

but i did a better job at keeping up with the pace of the commentators speaking than i thought i would. since there’s like. no crutch (eng subs) and it’s not like im devoting all my energy into understanding what’s being said, i actually picked up a lot and didn’t have a problem with their rapid pace (sports commentators are all alike in a way lol).

it’s. also was way more exciting than it has any right to be, considering you’re watching people run for five hours straight. but it was cool too because you get to see a good portion of japan along its coast from the heart of tokyo to hakone further south. they talk a little about the race’s history as well.

and this got long, so...

it also put into perspective how, even without technology, if you were really prepared back then, traveling that long of a distance (217 km, 134 mi) in a short amount of time to deliver messages or something did not necessarily take forever. thus, the rest stops/駅 along the way. as long as you had a few fresh runners (or horses) waiting at each one, you can indeed cover that distance in a day.

watching the real thing emphasized how much kazetsuyo is about the journey, not the goal. which sounds crazy, the whole show starts with haiji coercing everyone to join the track team to run in the hakone ekiden. but it’s not really about the race. it’s answering the question - why do you like running? more broadly, why does anyone devote themselves to a goal they’ve set? what motivates you, what drives your ability to pour that much of yourself into this task, which asks so much of you, and yet you don’t want to quit? running is a good vehicle to explore these questions, and also did double duty of really showing why the the ekiden matters to the japanese public so much people turn out on the streets in droves to watch a small moment of it as runners pass by.

there are lots of reasons explored - because you love the act itself, because it looks good on a resume, because your teammates need you, because self-improvement. this show argues that all the characters’ reasons were valid, and that’s reinforced by the fact they only have 10 members - the absolute minimum. they are all equally important. it doesn’t matter if kakeru is the fastest runner in the whole race if all nine of the others can’t run their part of the race. and therefore his reason for agreeing to run in it (bc he loves running, but he also needs to rediscover what running means to him) is as valid as any of the others.

i liked a moment at the end where haiji shows some self-awareness and apologizes for coercing them into this whole rigamarole, and prince tells him not to. that if one really truly didn’t want to be here, they would not be.

the only thing i had some issue with was the way certain aspects of injury were brought up. specifically, with haiji, they were never really clear on how he got an injury so bad he needed surgery. the flashbacks imply it wasn’t a freak accident, he pushed himself so hard he resented running in a way, and then got hurt and couldn’t run anymore. which is fine, but he was allowed to push himself so far that he needed surgery on his knee? and his father was the coach for crying out loud. i’m sure athletes push themselves too hard and get injured during practice, and high school kids especially can be stubborn. but like. if it wasn’t malicious, then it was just really dumb to let him ruin himself and a potential career at least through his university years.

it kind of emphasizes, though, just how different haiji is from his father. like father like son, he becomes a coach for his team and later makes it his profession. but his coaching and love of running doesn’t make his runners hate the sport and hurt themselves (in this fictional land where you can totally run hardcore after only a year of training lol), and his passion helps kakeru find his own meaning and what he loves about the sport again. and how? because he shows his team that he cares for their wellbeing. he’s such a mother hen, to the point he makes himself sick, but that’s why they love him.

however, that last leg of day one was truly terrifying. the mountains there are absolutely beautiful with their winding roads and villages/towns built around those roads, but RUNNING up that mountain? is another story lol.

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letterboxd · 3 years

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Careful How You Go.

Ella Kemp explores how film lovers can protect themselves from distressing subject matter while celebrating cinema at its most audacious.

Featuring Empire magazine editor Terri White, Test Pattern filmmaker Shatara Michelle Ford, writer and critic Jourdain Searles, publicist Courtney Mayhew, and curator, activist and producer Mia Bays of the Birds’ Eye View collective.

This story contains discussion of rape, sexual assault, abuse, self-harm, trauma and loss of life, as well as spoilers for ‘Promising Young Woman’ and ‘A Star is Born’.

We film lovers are blessed with a medium capable of excavating real-life emotion from something seemingly fictional. Yet, for all that film is—in the oft-quoted words of Roger Ebert—an “empathy machine”, it’s also capable of deeply hurting its audience when not wielded by its makers and promoters with appropriate care. Or, for that matter, when not approached by viewers with informed caution.

Whose job is it to let us know that we might be upset by what we see? With the coronavirus pandemic decimating the communal movie-going experience, the way we accommodate each viewer’s sensibilities is more crucial than ever—especially when so many of us are watching alone, at home, often unsupported.

In order to understand how we can champion a film’s content and take care of its audience, I approached women in several areas of the movie ecosystem. I wanted to know: how does a filmmaker approach the filming of a rape and its aftermath? How does a magazine editor navigate the celebration of a potentially triggering movie in one of the world’s biggest film publications? How does a freelance writer speak to her professional interests while preserving her personal integrity? How does a women’s film collective create a safe environment for an audience to process such a film? And, how does a publicist prepare journalists for careful reporting, when their job is to get eyeballs on screens in order to keep our favorite art form afloat?

The conversations reminded me that the answers are endlessly complex. The concerns over spoilers, the effectiveness of trigger warnings, the myriad ways in which art is crafted from trauma, and the fundamental question of whose stories these are to tell. These questions were valid decades ago, they will be for decades to come, and they feel especially urgent now, since a number of recent tales helmed by female and non-binary filmmakers depict violence and trauma involving women’s bodies in fearless, often challenging ways.

Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, in particular, has revived a vital conversation about content consideration, as victims and survivors of sexual assault record wildly different reactions to its astounding ending. Shatara Michelle Ford’s quietly tense debut, Test Pattern, brings Black survivors into the conversation. And the visceral, anti-wish-fulfillment horror Violation, coming soon from Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer, takes the rape-revenge genre up another notch.

These films come off the back of other recent survivor stories, such as Michaela Coel’s groundbreaking series I May Destroy You (which centers women’s friendship in a narrative move that, as Sarah Williams has eloquently outlined, happens too rarely in this field). Also: Kata Wéber and Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman, and the ongoing ugh-ness of The Handmaid’s Tale. And though this article is focused on plots centering women’s trauma, I acknowledge the myriad of stories that can be triggering in many ways for all manner of viewers. So whether you’ve watched one of these titles, or others like them, I hope you felt supported in the conversations to follow, and that you feel seen.

Weruche Opia and Michaela Coel in ‘I May Destroy You’.

* * *

Simply put, Promising Young Woman is a movie about a woman seeking revenge against predatory men. Except nothing about it is simple. Revenge movies have existed for aeons, and we’ve rooted for many promising young (mostly white) women before Carey Mulligan’s Cassie (recently: Jen in Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge, Noelle in Natalia Leite’s M.F.A.). But in Promising Young Woman, the victim is not alive to seek revenge, so it becomes Cassie’s single-minded crusade. Mercifully, we never see the gang-rape that sparks Cassie’s mission. But we do see a daring, fatal subversion of the notion of a happy ending—and this is what has audiences of Emerald Fennell’s jaw-dropping debut divided.

“For me, being a survivor, the point is to survive,” Jourdain Searles tells me. The New York-based critic, screenwriter, comedian—and host of Netflix’s new Black Film School series—says the presence of death in Promising Young Woman is the problem. “One of the first times I spoke openly about [my assault], I made the decision that I didn’t want to go to the police, and I got a lot of judgment for that,” she says. “So watching Promising Young Woman and seeing the police as the endgame is something I’ve always disagreed with. I left thinking, ‘How is this going to help?’”

“I feel like I’ve got two hats on,” says Terri White, the London-based editor-in chief of Empire magazine, and the author of a recently published memoir, Coming Undone. “One of which is me creating a magazine for a specific film-loving audience, and the other bit of me, which has written a book about trauma, specifically about violence perpetrated against the body. They’re not entirely siloed, but they are two distinct perspectives.”

White loved both Promising Young Woman and I May Destroy You, because they “explode the myth of resolution and redemption”. She calls the ending of Promising Young Woman “radical” in the way it speaks to the reality of what happens to so many women. “I was thinking about me and women like me, women who have endured violence and injury or trauma. Three women every week are still killed [in the UK] at the hands of an ex-partner, or somebody they know intimately, or a current partner. Statistically, any woman who goes for some kind of physical confrontation in [the way Cassie does] would end up dying.”

She adds: “I felt like the film was in service to both victims and survivors, and I use the word ‘victims’ deliberately. I call myself a victim because I think if you’ve endured either sexual violence or physical violence or both, a lot of empowering language, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t reflect the reality of being a victim or a survivor, whichever way you choose to call yourself.” This point has been one many have disagreed on. In a way, that makes sense—no victim or survivor can be expected to speak to anyone else’s experience but their own.

Carey Mulligan and Emerald Fennell on the set of ‘Promising Young Woman’.

Likewise, there is no right or wrong way to feel about this film, or any film. But a question that arises is, well, should everyone have to see a film to figure that out? And should victims and survivors of sexual violence watch this film? “I have definitely been picky about who I’ve recommended it to,” Courtney Mayhew says. “I don’t want to put a friend in harm’s way, even if that means they miss out on something awesome. It’s not worth it.”

Mayhew is a New Zealand-based international film publicist, and because of her country’s success in controlling Covid 19, she is one of the rare people able to experience Promising Young Woman in a sold-out cinema. “It was palpable. Everyone was so engaged and almost leaning forwards. There were a lot of laughs from women, but it was also a really challenging setting. A lot of people looking down, looking away, and there was a girl who was crying uncontrollably at the end.”

“Material can be very triggering,” White agrees. “It depends where people are personally in their journey. When I still had a lot of trauma I hadn’t worked through in my 20s, I found certain things very difficult to watch. Those things are a reality—but people can make their own decisions about the material they feel able to watch.”

It’s about warning, and preparation, more than total deprivation, then? “I believe in giving people information so they can make the best choice for themselves,” White says. “But I find it quite reductive, and infantilizing in some respects, to be told broadly, ‘Women who have experienced x shouldn’t watch this.’ That underestimates the resilience of some people, the thirst for more information and knowledge.” (This point is clearly made in this meticulous, awe-inspiring list by Jenn, who is on a journey to make sense of her trauma through analysis of rape-revenge films.) But clarity is crucial, particularly for those grappling with unresolved issues.

Searles agrees Promising Young Woman can be a difficult, even unpleasant watch, but still one with value. “As a survivor it did not make me feel good, but it gave me a window into the way other people might respond to your assault. A lot of the time [my friends] have reacted in ways I don’t understand, and the movie feels like it’s trying to make sense of an assault from the outside, and the complicated feelings a friend might have.”

Molly Parker and Vanessa Kirby in ‘Pieces of a Woman’.

* * *

A newborn dies. A character is brutally violated. A population is tortured. To be human is to bear witness to history, but it’s still painful when that history is yours, or something very close to it. “Some things are hard to watch because you relate to them,” Searles explains. “I find mother! hard to watch, and there’s no actual sexual assault. But I just think of sexual assault and trauma and domestic abuse, even though the film isn’t about that. The thing is, you could read an academic paper on patriarchy—you don’t need to watch it on a show [or in a film] if you don’t want to.”

White agrees: “I’ve never been able to watch Nil by Mouth, because I grew up in a house of domestic violence and I find physical violence against women on screen very hard to watch. But that doesn’t mean I think the film shouldn’t be shown—it should still exist, I’ve just made the choice not to watch it.” (Reader, since our conversation, she watched it. At 2:00am.)

“I know people who do not watch Promising Young Woman or The Handmaid’s Tale because they work for an NGO in which they see those things literally in front of their eyes,” Mayhew says. “It could be helpful for someone who isn’t aware [of those issues], but then what is the purpose of art? To educate? To entertain? For escapism? It’s probably all of those.”

Importantly, how much weight should an artist’s shoulders carry, when it comes to considering the audiences that will see their work? There’s a general agreement among my interviewees that, as White says, “filmmakers have to make the art that they believe in”. I don’t think any film lover would disagree, but, suggests Searles, “these films should be made with survivors in mind. That doesn’t mean they always have to be sensitive and sad and declawed. But there is a way to be provocative, while leaning into an emotional truth.”

Madeleine Sims-Fewer in ‘Violation’.

Violation, about which I’ll say little here since it is yet to screen at SXSW (ahead of its March 25 release on Shudder) is not at all declawed, and is certainly made with survivors in mind—in the sense that in life, unlike in movies, catharsis is very seldom possible no matter how far you go to find it. On Letterboxd, many of those who saw Violation at TIFF and Sundance speak of feeling represented by the rape-revenge plot, writing: “One of the most intentionally thought out and respectful of the genre… made by survivors for survivors” and “I feel seen and held”. (Also: “This movie is extremely hard to watch, completely on purpose.”)

“Art can do great service to people,” agrees White, “If, by consequence, there is great service for people who have been in that position, that’s a brilliant consequence. But I don’t believe filmmakers and artists should be told that they are responsible for certain things. There’s a line of responsibility in terms of being irresponsible, especially if your community is young, or traumatised.”

Her words call to mind Bradley Cooper’s reboot of A Star is Born, which many cinephiles knew to be a remake and therefore expected its plot twist, but young filmgoers, drawn by the presence of Lady Gaga, were shocked (and in some cases triggered) by a suicide scene. When it was released, Letterboxd saw many anguished reviews from younger members. In New Zealand, an explicit warning was added to the film’s classification by the country’s chief censor (who also created an entirely new ‘RP18’ classification for the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, which eventually had a graphic suicide scene edited out two years after first landing on the streaming service).

“There is a duty of care to audiences, and there is also a duty of care to artists and filmmakers,” says Mayhew. “There’s got to be some way of meeting in the middle.” The middle, perhaps, can be identified by the filmmaker’s objective. “It’s about feeling safe in the material,” says Mia Bays of the Birds’ Eye View film collective, which curates and markets films by women in order to effect industry change. “With material like this, it’s beholden on creatives to interrogate their own intentions.”

Filmmaker Shatara Michelle Ford is “forever interrogating” ideas of power. Their debut feature, Test Pattern, deftly examines the power differentials that inform the foundations of consent. “As an artist, human, and person who has experienced all sorts of boundary violation, assault and exploitation in their life, I spend quite a lot of time thinking about power… It is something I grapple with in my personal life, and when I arrive in any workplace, including a film set.”

In her review of Test Pattern for The Hollywood Reporter, Searles writes, “This is not a movie about sexual assault as an abstract concept; it’s a movie about the reality of a sexual assault survivor’s experience.” Crucially, in a history of films that deal largely with white women’s experiences, Test Pattern “is one of the few sexual-assault stories to center a Black woman, with her Blackness being central to her experience and the way she is treated by the people around her.”

Brittany S. Hall in ‘Test Pattern’.

* * *

Test Pattern follows the unfolding power imbalance between Renesha (Brittany S. Hall) and her devoted white boyfriend Evan (Will Brill), as he drives her from hospital to hospital in search of a rape kit, after her drink was spiked by a white man in a bar who then raped her. Where Promising Young Woman is a millennial-pink revenge fantasy of Insta-worthy proportions, Test Pattern feels all too real, and the cops don’t come off as well as they do in the former.

Ford does something very important for the audience: they begin the film just as the rape is about to occur. We do not see it at this point (we do not really ever see it), but we know that it happened, so there’s no chance that, somewhere deeper into the story, when we’re much more invested, we’ll be side-swiped by a sudden onslaught of sexual violence. In a way, it creates a safe space for our journey with Renesha.

It’s one of many thoughtful decisions made by Ford throughout the production process. “I’m in direct conversation with film and television that chooses to depict violence against women so casually,” Ford tells me. “I intentionally showed as little of Renesha’s rape as humanly possible. I also had an incredibly hard time being physically present for that scene, I should add. What I did shoot was ultimately guided by Renesha’s experience of it. Shoot only what she would remember. Show only what she would have been aware of.

“But I also made it clear that this was a violation of her autonomy, by allowing moments where we have an arm’s length point of view. I let the camera sit with the audience, as I’m also saying, as the filmmaker, this happened, and you saw enough of it to know. This, for me, is a larger commentary on how we treat victims of assault and rape. I do not believe for one goddamn minute that we need to see the actual, literal violence to know what happened. When we flagrantly replicate the violence in film and television, we are supporting the cultural norm of needing ‘all of the evidence’—whatever that means—to ‘believe women’.”

Ford’s intentional work in crafting the romance and unraveling of Test Pattern’s leading couple pays off on screen, but their stamp as an invested and careful director also shows in their work with Drew Fuller, the actor who played Mike, the rapist. “It’s a very difficult role, and I’m grateful to him for taking it so seriously. When discussing and rendering the practice and non-practice of consent intentionally, I found it helpful to give it a clear definition and provide conceptual insight.

“I sent Drew a few articles that I used as tools to create a baseline understanding when it comes to exploring consent and power on screen. At the top of that list was Lili Loofbourow’s piece, The female price of male pleasure and Zhana Vrangalova's Teen Vogue piece, Everything You Need to Know about Consent that You Never Learned in Sex Ed. The latter in my opinion is the linchpin. There’s also Jude Elison Sady Doyle’s piece about the whole Aziz Ansari thing, which is a great primer.”

Sidney Flanigan in ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’.

Even when a filmmaker has given Ford’s level of care and attention to their project, what happens when the business end of the industry gets involved in the art? As we well know, marketing is a film’s window dressing. It has one job: to get eyeballs into the cinema. It can’t know if every viewer should feel safe to enter.

It would be useful, with certain material, to know how we should watch, and with whom, and what might we need in the way of support coming out. Whose job is it to provide this? Beyond the crude tool of an MPAA rating (and that’s a whole sorry tale for another day), there are many creative precautions that can be taken across the industry to safeguard a filmgoer’s experience.

Mayhew, who often sees films at the earliest stages (sometimes before a final cut, sometimes immediately after), speaks to journalists in early screenings and ensures they have the tools to safely report on the topics raised. In New Zealand, reporters are encouraged to read through resources to help them guide their work. Mayhew’s teams would also ensure journalists would be given relevant hotline numbers, and would ask media outlets to include them in published stories.

“It’s not saying, ‘You have to do this’,” she explains, “It’s about first of all not knowing what the journalist has been through themselves, and second of all, [if] they are entertainment reporters who haven’t navigated speaking about sexual assault, you only hope it will be helpful going forward. It’s certainly not done to infantilize them, because they’re smart people. It’s a way to show some care and support.”

The idea of having appropriate resources to make people feel safe and encourage them to make their own decisions is a priority for Bays and Birds’ Eye View, as well. The London-based creative producer and cultural activist stresses the importance of sharing such a viewing experience. “It’s the job of cinemas, distributors and festivals to realize that it might not be something the filmmaker does, but as the people in control of the environment it’s our job to give extra resources to those who want it,” says Bays. “To give people a safe space to come down from the experience.”

Pre-pandemic, when Birds’ Eye View screened Kitty Green’s The Assistant, a sharp condemnation of workplace micro-aggressions seen through the eyes of one female assistant, they invited women who had worked for Harvey Weinstein. For a discussion after Eliza Hittman’s coming-of-ager Never Rarely Sometimes Always, abortion experts were able to share their knowledge. “It’s about making sure the audience knows you can say anything here, but that it’s safe,” Bays explains. “It’s kind of like group therapy—you don’t know people, so you’re not beholden to what they think about you. And in the cinema people aren’t looking at you. You’re speaking somewhat anonymously, so a lot of really important stuff can come out.”

The traditional movie-going experience, involving friends, crowds and cathartic, let-loose feelings, is still largely inaccessible at the time of writing. Over the past twelve months we’ve talked plenty about preserving the magic of the big screen experience, but it’s about so much more than the romanticism of an art form; it’s also about the safety that comes from a feeling of community when watching potentially upsetting movies.

“The going in and coming out parts of watching a film in the cinema are massively important, because it’s like coming out of the airlock and coming back to reality,” says Bays. “You can’t do that at home. Difficult material kind of stays with you.” During the pandemic, Birds’ Eye View has continued to provide the same wrap-around curatorial support for at-home viewers as they would at an in-person event. “If we’re picking a difficult film and asking people to watch it at home, we might suggest you watch it with a friend so you can speak about it afterwards,” Bays says.

Julia Garner in ‘The Assistant’.

But, then, how can we still find this sense of community without the physical closeness? “It’s no good waiting for [the internet] to become kind,” she says. “Create your own closed spaces. We do workshops and conversations exclusively for people who sign up to our newsletter. In real-life meetings you can go from hating something to hearing an eloquent presentation of another perspective and coming round to it, but you need the time and space to do that. This little amount of time gives you a move towards healing, even if it’s just licking some wounds that were opened on Twitter. But it could be much deeper, like being a survivor and feeling very conflicted about the film, which I do.”

Conflict is something that Searles, the film critic, knows about all too well in her work. “Since I started writing professionally, I almost feel like I’m known for writing about assault and rape at this point. I do write about it a lot, and as a survivor I continue to process it. I’ve been assaulted more than once so I have a lot to process, and so each time I’m writing about it I’m thinking about different aspects and remnants of those feelings. It can be very cathartic, but it’s a double-edged sword because sometimes I feel like I have an obligation to write about it too.”

There is also a constant act of self-preservation that comes with putting so much of yourself on the internet. “I often get messages from people thanking me for talking about these subjects with a deep understanding of what they mean,” Searles says. “I really appreciate that. I get negative messages about a lot of things, but not this one thing.”

Michaela Coel in ‘I May Destroy You’.

* * *

With such thoughtful approaches to heavy content, it feels like we’re a long way further down the road from blunt tools like content and trigger warnings. But do they still have their place? “It’s just never seemed appropriate to put trigger warnings on any of our reviews or features,” White explains. “We have a heavy male readership, still 70 percent male to 30 percent female. I’m conscious we’re talking to a lot of men who will often have experienced violence themselves, but we don’t put any warnings, because we are an adult magazine, and when we talk about violence in, say, an action film, or violence that is very heavily between men, we don’t caveat that at all.”

Bays, too, is sceptical of trigger warnings, explaining that “there’s not much evidence [they] actually work. A lot of psychologists expound on the fact that if people get stuck in their trauma, you can never really recover from PTSD if you don’t at some point face your trauma.” She adds: “I’m a survivor, and I found I May Destroy You deeply, profoundly triggering, but also cathartic. I think it’s more about how you talk about the work, rather than having a ‘NB: survivors of sexual abuse or assault shouldn’t see this’.”

“It’s important to give people a feel of what they’re in for,” argues Searles. “A lot of people who have dealt with suicide ideation would prefer that warning.” While some worry that a content warning is effectively a plot spoiler, Searles disagrees. “I don’t consider a content warning a spoiler. I just couldn’t imagine sitting down for a film, knowing there’s going to be a suicide, and letting it distract me from the film.” Still, she acknowledges the nuance. “I think using ‘self-harm’ might be better than just saying ‘suicide’.”

Mayhew shared insights on who actually decides which films on which platforms are preceded with warnings—turns out, it’s a bit messy. “The onus traditionally has fallen on governmental censorship when it comes to theatrical releases,” she explains. “But streamers can do what they want, they are not bound by those rules so they have to—as the distributors and broadcasters—take the government’s censors on board in terms of how they are going to navigate it.

“The consumer doesn’t know the difference,” she continues, “nor should they—so it means they can be watching The Crown on Netflix and get this trigger warning about bulimia, and go to the cinema the next day and not get it, and feel angry about it. So there’s the question of where is the responsibility of the distributor, and where is the responsibility of the audience member to actually find out for themselves.”

The warnings given to an audience member can also vary widely depending where they find themselves in the world, too. Promising Young Woman, for example, is rated M in Australia, R18 in New Zealand, and R in the United States. Meanwhile, the invaluable Common Sense Media recommends an age of fifteen years and upwards for the “dark, powerful, mature revenge comedy”. Mayhew says a publicist’s job is “to have your finger on the pulse” about these cultural differences. “You have to read the overall room, and when I say room I mean the culture as a whole, and you have to be constantly abreast of things across those different ages too.”

She adds: “This feeds into the importance of representation right at the top of those boardrooms and right down to the film sets. My job is to see all opinions, and I never will, especially because I am a white woman. I consider myself part of the LGBT community and sometimes I’ll bring that to a room that I think has been lacking in that area, when it comes to harmful stereotypes that can be propagated within films about LGBT people. But I can’t bring a Black person’s perspective, I cannot bring an Indigenous perspective. The more representation you have, the better your film is going to be, your campaign is going to be.”

Bays, who is also a filmmaker, agrees: representation is about information, and working with enough knowledge to make sure your film is being as faithful to your chosen communities as possible. “As a filmmaker, I’d feel ill-informed and misplaced if I was stumbling into an area of representation that I knew nothing about without finding some tools and collaborators who could bring deeper insight.”

Carey Mulligan and Bo Burnham in ‘Promising Young Woman’.

This is something Ford aimed for with Test Pattern’s choice of crew members, which had an effect not just on the end product, but on the entire production process. “I made sure that at the department head level, I was hiring people I was in community with and fully saw me as a person, and me them,” they say. “In some ways it made the experience more pleasurable.” That said, the shoot was still not without its incidents: “These were the types of things that in my experience often occur on a film set dominated by straight white men, that we're so accustomed to we sometimes don’t even notice it. I won’t go into it but what I will say is that it was not tolerated.”

Vital to the telling of the story were the lived experiences that Ford and their crew brought to set. “As it applies to the sensitive nature of this story, there were quite a few of us who have had our own experiences along the spectrum of assault, which means that we had to navigate our own internal re-processing of those experiences, which is hard to do when we’re constructing an experience of rape for a character.

“However, I think being able to share our own triggers and discomfort and context, when it came to Renesha’s experience, made the execution of it all the better. Again, it was a pleasure to be in community with such smart, talented and considerate women who each brought their own nuance to this film.”

* * *

Thinking about everything we’ve lived through by this point in 2021, and the heightened sensitivity and lowered mental health of film lovers worldwide, movies are carrying a pretty heavy burden right now: to, as Jane Fonda said at the Golden Globes, help us see through others’ eyes; also, to entertain or, at the very least, not upset us too much.

But to whom does film have a responsibility, really? Promising Young Woman’s writer-director Emerald Fennell, in an excellent interview with Vulture’s Angelica Jade Bastién, said that she was thinking of audiences when she crafted the upsetting conclusion.

What she was thinking was: a ‘happy’ ending for Cassie gets us no further forward as a society. Instead, Cassie’s shocking end “makes you feel a certain way, and it makes you want to talk about it. It makes you want to examine the film and the society that we live in. With a cathartic Hollywood ending, that’s not so much of a conversation, really. It’s a kind of empty catharsis.”

So let’s flip the question: what is our responsibility, as women and allies, towards celebrating audacious films about tricky subjects? The marvellous, avenging blockbusters that once sucked all the air out of film conversation are on pause, for now. Consider the space that this opens up for a different kind of approach to “must-see movies”. Spread the word about Test Pattern. Shout from the rooftops about It’s A Sin. Add Body of Water and Herself and Violation to your watchlists. And, make sure the right people are watching.

Brittany S. Hall and Will Brill in ‘Test Pattern’.

I asked my interviewees: if they could choose one type of person they think should see Promising Young Woman, who would it be? Ford has not seen Fennell’s film, but “it feels good to have my film contribute to a larger discourse that is ever shifting, ever adding nuance”. They are very clear on who can learn the most from their own movie.

“A white man is featured so prominently in Test Pattern as a statement about how white people and men have a habit of centering themselves in the stories of others, prioritizing their experience and neglecting to recognize those on the margins. If Evan is triggering, he should be. If your feelings about Evan vacillate, it is by design.

“‘Allies’ across the spectrum are in a complicated dance around doing the ‘right thing’ and ‘showing up’ for those they are ostensibly seeking to support,” Ford continues. “Their constant battle is to remember that they need to be centering the needs of those they were never conditioned to center. Tricky stuff. Mistakes will be made. Mistakes must be owned. Sometimes reconciliation is required.”

It is telling that similar thoughts emerged from my other interviewees regarding Promising Young Woman’s ideal audience, despite the fact that none of them was in conversation with the others for this story. For that reason, as we come to the end of this small contribution to a very large, ongoing conversation, I’ve left their words intact.

White: I think it’s a great film for men.

Searles: I feel like the movie is very much pointed at cisgender heterosexual men.

Mayhew: Men.

White: We’re always warned about the alpha male with a massive ego, but we’re not warned about the beta male who reads great books, listens to great records, has great film recommendations. But he probably slyly undermines you in a completely different way. Anybody can be a predator.

Searles: The actors chosen to play these misogynist, rape culture-perpetuating men are actors we think of as nice guys.

White: We are so much more tolerant of a man knocking the woman over the head, dragging her down an alley and raping her, because we understand that. But rape culture is made up of millions of small things that enable the people who do it. We are more likely to be attacked in our own homes by men we love than a stranger in the street.

Mayhew: The onus should not fall on women to call this out.

Searles: It’s not just creeps, like the ones you see usually in these movies. It’s guys like you. What are you going to do to make sure you’re not like this?

Related content

Sex Monsters, Rape Revenge and Trauma: a work-in-progress list

Rape and Revenge: a list of films that fall into, and play with, the genre

Unconsenting Media: a search engine for sexual violence in broadcasting

Follow Ella on Letterboxd

If you need help or to talk to someone about concerns raised for you in this story, please first know that you are not alone. These are just a few of the many organizations and resources available, and their websites include more information.

US: RAINN (hotline 0800 656 HOPE); LGBT National Help Center; Pathways to Safety; Time’s Up.

Canada: Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centers—contacts by province and territory

UK/Ireland: Mind; The Survivors Trust (hotline 08088 010818); Rape Crisis England and Wales

Europe: Rape Crisis Network Europe

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thejustmaiden · 4 years

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Heyo, fellow Inuyasha fans! Happy Friday! This particular blog will serve as a collection of random thoughts I’ve been mulling over lately. Hope you’ll consider giving it a read. By the way, it’ll specifically pertain to the Sessrin ship. If that’s not something that is of interest to you, then no need to read any further. Whatever happens, I wanted to get this out before the sequel. Alrighty, let’s go!

I’m not sure many of us realize just how much fiction sparks public dialogue and shapes culture. There have been countless studies and research done to prove it, therefore this really isn’t up for debate. What the real question here should be is have we taken the time to fully contemplate and assess just how much fictional experiences are able to change or influence our perspective on real, everyday life? The visual arts are just one of many evolutionary adaptations that serve to give us more insight into one another’s mind. If our outlook on fiction contrasts with said insight, then perhaps some re-evaluating is in order.

Powerful works of literature such as 1984 and the beloved Harry Potter series are just two examples. George Orwell’s book contributed strongly to how readers viewed government and politics during that time, and to this day it’s a book that resonates with many. As much as Harry Potter is cherished all across the world, there are religious and academic institutions that condemn it or have even gone so far as to ban it. I may not agree with the extreme measures taken, but it’s fascinating nonetheless to witness the extent to which fiction can move and mobilize people for a cause.

The takeaway is that indicating fiction doesn’t have the power to create change in our everyday lives is misleading to say the least. So how exactly then can fictional stories that are, after all, completely made up affect society in such profound ways? It all lies in the power of the psychology of fiction. According to cognitive psychologist and novelist, Keith Oatley, who’s been researching the psychological effects of fiction for over a decade, he states that engaging with stories about other people can improve empathy and theory of mind. When we identify with these characters’ struggles, we begin to share their frustration for societal problems that plague them. These types of stories tap into our emotions more so than- believe it or not- nonfiction, and thus their effects inspire us and even have the ability to alter our worldviews.

I’ll be returning to that specific topic a bit later, but moving on for now!

It’s safe to say that I speak on behalf of the majority of antis. That being said, I first want to add that we are aware that sessrin shippers claim to agree that there was nothing inherently romantic that took place between Rin and Sesshomaru during their travels together. The thing is we have trouble believing you guys when you time and time again provide contradictory statements to defend your stance.

Voicing things like, “all signs point to Rin” and “it’s been foreshadowed” sends the exact opposite message of what you supposedly stand for and, if anything, confirms that you’ve had romance on your mind long before it would’ve been acceptable to come out with openly. You can’t just go along with what we say when it’s convenient to your argument and then back it up later with “who else but Rin.” How can the relationship you’re imagining be so obvious if they didn’t hint at it for the whole duration of the original series like we agreed upon? Elaborate on how we could’ve possibly come to such wildly different conclusions when we started AND left off with the same views for and throughout the series.

On top of that, making the excuse that we don’t speak for adult!Rin and that she has the right to make her own decisions once she’s old enough is a weak defense. Firstly, because we haven’t even met her. Secondly, because it’s unfair of you to assert that you know what’s best for Rin and then say we’re not allowed to just because it doesn’t align with your beliefs. I get that you feel protective over her character, but do recall that this adult version of her none of us have actually met yet. We have no idea what kind of woman she’s become, what her dreams or aspirations may be, and whether she’s married or even wants to be. I’m not against the idea of her falling in love, I just don’t think it’ll be with Sesshomaru. I guess I’m also a fan of the idea of her following in Kaede’s footsteps, because if anyone can grow up to be an independent, trusted, and wise leader of the community like her it’s Rin.

To make matters worse, way too many of you continue to celebrate the drama cd and profess that it was sweet that Sesshomaru basically promised he’d wait for Rin all while somehow ignoring the glaring grooming implications. Why do you only see what you want to see and fail to acknowledge that actual child grooming scenarios do in fact play out like this in real life? A high percentage of people who have been victims of grooming can attest to this. If Sessrin does go canon, all the sequel succeeded in doing to avoid the direct correlation with grooming was skip over the more questionable and dodgy portions of it. Take out the time jump, however, and you no longer have a loophole to cover up the scary unmistakable truth, which is that Sessrin and grooming are essentially one in the same.

No one case is identical to another so please don’t come to me with your “but how is it grooming if Sesshomaru didn’t manipulate Rin” refutes. Nobody knows what the hell went on during those years between The Final Act and this upcoming sequel. Based on everything exhibited so far- that is if we decide to recognize the drama cd like so many of you choose to do- Sessrin’s dynamic is eerily reminiscent of real life child grooming. Why else do you think a lot of us fans have a huge problem with it? It’s triggering for a reason.

Let’s be honest, Sesshomaru’s supposed love confession could’ve just been the first of many gestures like it. Who really knows, right? According to you shippers, a major shift in their relationship took place sometime during this critical period none of us got to watch unfold. I’m sure you all have explored the various ways this would’ve gone down in fan fiction and through other creative means of expression. Not to spoil the fun, but all I can’t help but wonder about is just how many of those supposed “cute moments” would’ve been as creepy and cringey as that proposal. Hundreds of thousands (possibly millions?!) of fans would undoubtedly agree with me, too. It seems to me this ain’t due to a mere difference of opinion. Taste is one thing, ethics a whole other.

By the way, in case you didn’t know, groomers don’t necessarily need to plan out every single move in order for their behavior to constitute as grooming. What we should be paying attention to instead is the fact that Sesshomaru made a conscious decision to act on his own selfish desire for a young girl who couldn’t have possibly known in that moment the magnitude of what he was asking of her. Why is it that a vulnerable Rin is put in a position that forces her to be the one responsible for making such a big, life-changing decision for the both of them? Yes, Sesshomaru gave her the choice and, yes, she doesn’t have to make it till later, but why on Earth is he coming to her with this well before a child her age is ready and mature enough to handle it? Even if his intentions are good (broadly speaking of course), his what you shippers probably call “innocent acts” are incidentally coercing Rin into reciprocating his feelings. Whether he planned for that or not, he’s at fault. Period.

That’s one way the power imbalance works. A child wants nothing more than to please the adult they look up to and adore, because they’re impressionable like that. Maybe Rin processes this like she’ll want whatever he wants, so that’s what she trains herself to believe- either right then and there or over time. Plus, if you really think about it, why wouldn’t she trust him if in her eyes he’s been nothing but good to her and that’s all she’s ever really known? (Psst! Charm is integral to the manipulative nature of grooming so it’s deceiving AKA manipulation can come off as praise or flattery.) Bottom line is that Rin is too young to have to think about this kind of deep stuff at all, and Sesshomaru shouldn’t have taken advantage of the power he had/has over her to influence a decision she was by no means prepared to hear about much less decide on. Your headcanons seem to imply that she’ll eventually have to choose though, and Idk about you but I rather not push my own fantasy agenda onto a underage girl regardless of how much I want it. Idc if she’s fictional, it wouldn’t feel right so why would I want to see that? My principals couldn’t ever allow for it.

Even if it wasn’t an official proposal, per se, it’s still disturbing to me that so many of you find joy in the thought of a grown adult male essentially waiting for a young girl HE KNEW to become old enough before pursuing her. I know this drama cd ain’t technically canon, y'all, but since this is literally the only source we have that may foreshadow a potential Sessrin to come, and it’s referenced a lot, I figured it still should be called out for exactly what it is- Grooming: 101!!!!

Just as I demonstrated above, fiction has the ability to make even the most inappropriate and uncomfortable situations be viewed in a favorable light when you put the right spin on it. *cough* Lolicon culture, need I say more? *cough* Despite what you may believe, the strategies fiction utilizes to explain themes/concepts can genuinely lead to how we perceive them, and ultimately to how we come to make sense of a similar event presented to us in real life. Especially if we have no prior experience with any of it and have nothing to compare something to, these perceptions can be dangerous yet still persuasive to certain fans- young ones in particular. The more narrative consistency across stories and different mediums, the more likely they’ll influence social beliefs. Minors don’t possess the same capacity as adults to think critically about the content they consume, and if we aren’t more careful about what we put out there then all of us will continue to face serious repercussions.

This is precisely why it’s crucial we persist in our fight against the rabid phenomenon of glorifying young girls in every sexual context imaginable. Just look at what something as seemingly harmless as fiction has the power to do. The scope of fiction is broad and far-reaching, and it’s about time we stop denying that fact and actually do something about it if we have the means to.

The truth of the matter is that we’re in desperate need of proper education and training programs on this issue in our communities. Families need to ensure their children have access to the necessary resources, but it isn’t just on them. ALL of us gotta do our part and ALL of us should be up for the task. It takes a village, right? If we do not properly discuss and address child sexual abuse (CSA) with our children and in public forums, including the internet, then we’re ultimately accepting incidents of CSA should they arise. Consequently, that also translates to indirectly accepting that the predators among us stay untreated and/or unpunished. That’s how the generational and societal aspect of the abuse can continue, and we must do everything in our power to secure our children’s future. Yes, even when it comes to fiction.

If you still somehow don’t think the Sessrin pairing has anything to do with grooming, allow me to break this down for you one more time:

1. If some of your fellow sessrin shippers say that a relationship like this in real life is harmful, then that should be pretty telling in and of itself.

2. Piggybacking off #1: if your only defense to that is “well it’s just fiction,” then you should ask yourself why you can’t ever come up with better reasons. Same goes for history and culture, so please stop using those to justify this relationship. None of the above can or should be applied since it’s already been established that fiction pervades our lives and vice versa.

3. If fellow shippers who are victims of grooming say they are drawn to Sessrin because it allows them in a way to “take back control” from their abuser so that they can better cope with past traumas, then they’re inadvertently admitting that Sessrin does possess qualities associated with the past child sexual abuse they underwent. AKA Sessrin is relatable for its abusive dynamic.

I have to ask by the way, but why do you get so offended when we don’t support your ship anyway? Is it because we interpret it to be controversial and you don’t like your ship getting a bad rap? Is it because it would be insulting to admit that antis actually have a point in it being problematic and you rather double down instead? Or is it because you’re projecting yourself onto Rin and prefer to not go into detail about why that is? Maybe it’s too personal, or maybe it’s because deep down you’re ashamed. Of course that doesn’t mean you’re bad people, but suppressing these kind of negative emotions can’t be healthy for anyone. A little awareness and self-reflection on your part can benefit not just you but all of us in the long run. Cognitive dissonance can suck, but it’s also part of being human.

I recently came across a comment I’d like to share with you. Unfortunately, this is not the first time nor will it be the last I see the likes of it. Anyway, in it a fan stated how embarrassing it must be being an Anti in this fandom when an episode like “Forever with Lord Sesshomaru” exists. Guys, this shipper and all those who liked their post are showing their true colors. Perpetuating and/or anticipating these sexualized images of young girls is a grave issue in both our society and media alike. I think we can all agree on that, or at least I hope so. It’s remarks like these that prove we still got a long way to go in terms of progress, and if we ever hope to effectively reverse some of our backwards way of thinking. So serious question for ya in regard to this: Why is it too much to ask that grooming be portrayed for what it is? Grooming. To clarify, grooming is bad and needs to be painted in a bad light. It’s as simple as that. If only we could all acknowledge it for what it is, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.

Historical accuracy and cultural differences aside, it appears the crux of the matter between Sessrin shippers and Antis is our acceptance and/or denial of fiction’s influence on real life. If we can’t agree on this, then we’ll never agree on anything else. As mentioned earlier, there is more than enough evidence to support the idea that fiction impacts our lives in extraordinary ways. I, for one, believe in the transformative power of stories. I think they do more for us than many of us give them credit for and/or are inclined to admit.

This is partially why I believe that the majority of sessrin folk are missing the point most of the time. All they do is focus on insignificant and irrelevant information that accomplishes nothing but more gaslighting and strawmanning. Whether it be an intentional or unconscious decision, whatever we argue goes right over their head. All they do is throw around deflections and antagonizing remarks that serve no real purpose other than to make Antis out to be the unreasonable and irrational ones. Making connections between our own lives and our stories is a completely natural and normal occurrence. If those particular shippers insist on denying just how interconnected real life and fiction both are, what that tells me is they’re either out of touch with reality or deliberately choose to be.

Just to be clear, I am of the opinion that most if not all antis aren’t real life predators. If they say they aren’t, I honestly take their word for it. Speaking to Sessrin shipper directly: We know it’s not Sesshomaru you want to be but Rin. No, we’re not calling you pedophiles or groomers. None of us think you are using a fictional ship to attract underage fans to be the Rin in your life or anything of the sort. We are well aware that many of you are self-inserting yourself as Rin, so please don’t feel the need to tell us yourself because that would be stating the obvious.

I learned from a few of you since this sequel was announced that the Sessrin relationship isn’t just a ship but an opportunity for you to confront the person who used and abused you. So there’s two issues with this I’d like to raise. (Sorry if I’m repeating myself, but it’s urgent I stress this again!) This is what I have to say:

If fiction does not affect real life or have the ability to normalize anything as you claim to believe, then why does “fixing” what happened to you via your preferred choice of coping associated with these two characters in the first place? Why bring your past abuse into this at all if at the end of the day it’s “just fiction” and nothing more to you but a source of entertainment?

By confessing that you use Sessrin to cope with your past trauma, you therein reveal that Sessrin does in fact resemble an adult-child relationship with a grooming dynamic. So why then would you want other fans to be exposed to a pairing that brings to mind the very abuse you endured? We’re supposed to stop this toxic cycle- NOT find more ways to manifest and relive it, much less subject other fans to it.

You may think that Sessrin doesn’t fit the textbook definition of what child grooming is, but that’s not to say it doesn’t embody it or that it doesn’t at the very least have traces of it that stand out.

“Antis are miserable people who don’t know how to enjoy a good story. It’s just fiction, stop ruining it for other fans!”

Well, no, it’s not just fiction or just a story. Some of you evidently went and proved that yourself, and without my help, by revealing how you relate Sessrin to your own life and apply it to cope with past abuse. Past abuse or not, as far as I can tell we’re all equally invested in these characters. That speaks volumes and just goes to show that fiction touches our lives in long-lasting ways.

I have something I want to say concerning some of who believe that it’s inconsiderate of antis who have been victims of grooming or another form of child abuse to tell other victims who ship Sessrin how they should cope with their trauma. Now as much as I respect the various means victims discover to deal with their painful pasts, there’s always an appropriate time and a place for these things to occur. We must seek out better ways to safely cope with the abuse we lived through (if any) without running the risk of hurting and endangering others.

There are plenty of fans in other fandoms who don’t try to defend their ships going canon, because they’re able to recognize an unhealthy or toxic pairing when they see one and won’t try to justify it. A Sessrin romance simply does not belong on a show geared towards teens, and I really don’t need to go into detail about why we shouldn’t support it, at least canon-wise. Shipping Sessrin is your right, but if you don’t keep it to yourself and your corner of the fandom then you really shouldn’t be surprised by the opposition. All we ask is you respect that their specific dynamic falls under the category of child grooming (or very close) and should be treated as such in public. The world of fiction may be wider than the world we live in, but that doesn’t always mean “anything goes.” In the creative spaces our minds occupy we must still adhere to the same fundamental and moral guidelines we live by in life. There’s nothing wrong with exploring new terrains and experimenting with ideas, but we must also remember that our stories are all about communicating and connecting with people. So let’s please be more mindful of the sort of messages they’re sending.

Besides, this isn’t only about you and what makes you feel safe, it’s about all of us. I don’t know how much more I can stress that really. How can thoughts endanger our children, you ask? Well, it’s not like we’re suggesting that our thoughts can jump out of our tvs, materialize themselves, and place kids under mind control. The forces behind fiction are a lot more complex and nuanced than a “monkey see, monkey do” approach, so don’t waste any more time trying to describe that to us. You’re taking this argument in the wrong direction.

Take the “violent video games breed killers” theory. I’m afraid you’re misconstruing what we’re saying and then taking it quite too literally. Please stop twisting our words, because nobody on our side is saying that just because you play violent video games that you’ll become a violent person. The Sessrin equivalent of that would be if you ship them then you must be a pedophile or turning into one. *sigh* I know you guys are feeling attacked, but I’m afraid your defensive nature is keeping you from thinking straight. Clearly, there are always exceptions (I’d recommend reading up on the Slender Man case), but Antis aren’t saying you’re one of them.

You see, it’s not so much about the content as it is the notion of the content. Kids and teens who are playing these video games have been informed that killing is wrong, because they grew up learning that early on like the rest of us. No sane person would advocate for violence and nonsensical killing in real life. Since they fully understand the severity of the consequences of killing a person in real life, they are able make a clear distinction between the two. When it comes to killing there is hardly any ambiguity. Sadly, that is far from the truth when it comes to sexualizing girls. It should immediately be perceived as wrong leaving no room for interpretation, and yet here we are still putting up with these inaccurate and demeaning female representations.

Most children who have been groomed don’t realize it till years down the road. If they aren’t ever taught the telltale signs to properly labeling grooming situations, how do you expect them to make sense of and relate to a fictional version? Let’s think of about it from a child’s perspective. Yes, this includes teens who rely pretty heavily on adult guidance and the content we put out there for them. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment and picture that you’ve never had child grooming explained to you (because that’s just the reality for so many unfortunately). Wouldn’t you say it’s possible for them to deduce that what they see on their screens is how they come to discern something in real life, especially if they have little to no experience with it? Perceived realism is plausible, y'all.

What it comes down to in the end is that the ideas and emotions we cultivate behind these stories leave an impression on others. Impressions are capable of influencing the way we see the world, which in turn affects us and beyond just our imagination. The way I look at it, stories contribute to how and why we normalize certain beliefs and trends. If fiction reflects real life like most of us tend to agree, then wouldn’t you say Sessrin is a (in)direct result of this world’s tendency to place young girls in overly sexual or romantic environments? Where do you think fiction draws its inspiration from? Sure, some of it originates from our imagination, but most of what drives us to create these stories is the real world and the people who live in it.

Fiction is meant to mirror reality, but it’s ridiculous to suggest that it’s only a one-way street. That fiction in no way, shape, or form influences our reality? Or that it only works the other way around? With all due respect, that’s simply not true. No productive discourse can be had if we choose to ignore the truth and don’t come together (at least halfway) to tackle the real issues at hand.

Okay, I think I’ll leave it off there! Thanks so much for reading. I expect this to be my last blog on any topic regarding Inuyasha in the near future. As much as I’ve looked forward to answering all of your asks and writing all the blogs I have over these past almost 5 months, I think it’s best if I spend some time away for now. With the sequel fast approaching, I’m doing what I always do: hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. I’ve met some amazing people along the way, that’s for sure. And who knows, maybe you’ll see me active in the tags sooner than we think. Until then, it’s been an absolute pleasure! Enjoy the sequel, all of you. 💜

#inuyasha #hanyo no yashahime #anti sessrin #it's been real y'all #catch ya on the flipside #(which I hope is in a promising sequel 🤞)

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septembercfawkes · 4 years

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Tips on Writing a Great Short Story

Weeks ago I was asked to do an article on short stories, specifically. What makes a short story great? And how is it different from writing a novel?

To be honest, writing a novel and writing a short story are very similar in many ways, and most of the techniques I've written about on my blog apply: creating complex characters, writing great dialogue, utilizing subtext, including hooks . . .

Sure, there are some exceptions, as always. You can find famous short stories that don't really have complex characters, for example, but often such stories are really short stories--maybe by today's standard, considered flash fiction. Here is a famous flash fiction story:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn

Does that really tell us much about the complexity of the characters? Not really. But it does still have great subtext.

So keep in mind that there are always exceptions when it comes to writing, but they are just that, exceptions.

So let's got started.

Focus

One of the most important things about writing a short story is to keep it focused. Technically, novels should be focused too, but their focus has a broader range whereas short stories need to be narrower, like a flashlight beam compared to a laser beam. A common problem I've seen with newer writers is that they try to fit a novel-length concept into 50 pages. Problematic. Here are some ways to avoid that.

Limit Plotlines--In a novel, you will need a lot of plotlines to carry the story; if you don't have that, a novel will start to feel repetitious since it lacks variety for so many pages. But in a short story, you need to limit your plotlines. Many short stories really have one plotline, with two components working closely together: the outer journey and the inner journey. Think about the premise or main concept of your short story, and keep a laser-beam focus on that. Aim to go deep into the concept, not broad on the topic.

Limit Your Characters--In a short story, you'll usually focus largely on one main character and that character's arc. The more focal characters you include, the more length you typically add. Sure, you can write a story with more than one focal character--you might be able to get away with maybe two. If you have more than that though, usually the focal characters--while individuals--have the same goals and function as a unit. As opposed to most novels, where each focal (or viewpoint) character may have somewhat different goals and more of their own, individualized journeys. (Again, keep in mind that everything in this post is generally speaking).

A good word of advice that gets pushed around in the industry, related to character and plot, is that in a short story, you should specifically write about the most important event that happened in that character's life. I don't know that I agree with this 100%, but it's a good thing to keep in mind when evaluating plot and character. Capture the most important event, which naturally means that it will be an event that changed the character.

Laser-Beam the Theme--Unfortunately, people still talk and treat theme like it's this elusive animal--something wild and beautiful, but dangerous if caged. In reality, the more you understand about theme, the more intentional you can be about it. It's only dangerous when you try to tame it improperly, because you don't understand it. For a recap on how theme actually works, check out this post, "How to Write Your Story's Theme"

Themes are fantastic for focusing stories (and especially in short stories that may seem to lack a feeling of . . . cohesion). And because a lot of people don't understand how to do them, you can really stand out if you master the theme in your story. Theme is what makes a story feel timeless. It sticks with us after we are done, so we aren't left closing the book and thinking, Well that was entertaining, time to get back to normal life! If you read five excellent stories, but only one of them has a powerful theme that changed you, guess which one you will think about long, long after you've finished it?

In a novel, you have room to explore a theme topic rather broadly. Consider all the ways the theme topics of mercy and justice are illustrated and explored in Les Mis. In a novel, you can also explore how the theme topic interacts with other theme topics, societies, and ideologies. In a short story, you are going to be more laser-focused. Take the classic fable of The Tortoise and The Hare--it stays laser-focused on really one illustration of the theme. It doesn't go into, say how in some situations in the real world, getting a head start can have benefits. So focus in on a particular rendition or two (but probably no more than three) of your thematic statement.

Often the most famous and powerful short stories are so great because they say something profound in a small amount of space. In a way, it's similar to poetry. Professional poetry isn't actually about using beautiful words (which is what a lot of people who have never legit studied it seem to think)--it's about capturing specific, significant ideas, concepts, and images, in a brief space, for maximum impact. Great short stories function in similar ways, except you have more room to develop a powerful thematic thread. It can be hard to impact a reader in such a short space with the characters and plot, but you can really hit them in the feels with the theme.

Significant Stakes

Like a novel, you need to make sure what you write in a short story holds significance--maybe even more so, since you have fewer words. Theme, as we touched on, lends significance to a story, but, in general, you'll want to make sure that what's happening in the plot, concretely, is significant as well. Remember how I defined significance in my post on writing stakes (significance relates to stakes):

What makes something "significant"?

1 - It has important personal consequences, or

2 - It has far-reaching, broad consequences

In a short piece of fiction, my opinion is that you'll more likely be focusing more heavily on personal stakes/significance. Because it's a short length, it's difficult to properly and satisfyingly address very broad stakes/significance. Like anything, it has and can be done, but keep in mind that often in those cases, that means that, probably, the story opened with already rather broad stakes and a protagonist already involved in those--say the president of the United States. Unlike a novel, where you have hundreds of pages, it's difficult to really broaden the stakes in say 7k words and get the audience properly invested in the far-reaching consequences at the same time. Generally speaking.

So even if you are writing about the president making a key decision that will save people from the zombie apocalypse, in a short story, it will probably be more satisfying if it focused more on his personal stakes and experiences.

Exceptions to this would be a short story that is more focused on an intriguing idea or event or world, where the protagonist is what's called an "everyman" character, where it's the event and concept that is the real point. But today, in cases like that, I would say that the idea, event, or world must be quite exceptional to carry such weight. After all, the modern audience has consumed a lot of fantastical fiction already.

In broad stakes, because the audience doesn't have enough time to appreciate the build-up, they can't appreciate the outcome as much. They likely aren't as invested. In contrast, all of us are humans with relationships, personal hopes and fears, so we can become deeply invested in personal stakes much more quickly. The personal stakes, the inner journey, are what usually speak to our human experience.

However, with all this said, this is not to say you can't broaden stakes at all. All I'm saying is if you are relying on starting a short story with an ordinary, modern day and ending it with the entire world possibly being obliterated, and that's your main focus, it will be much harder to pull off, than a character with personal things at stake. But you can (and should) broaden smaller stakes to smaller degrees. And you can still broaden them quite a bit, but it will be more satisfying if you focus on the personal in those cases.

Wow, was that confusing? I hope not. Focus on going deep and personal more than broad and far-reaching.

Utilize Subtext

Subtext is vital for any good story (except, perhaps, stories for young children). But in short fiction (like poetry), it is particularly important, precisely because you are working with less space.

Subtext makes the story bigger than what's on the page. It also helps draw in the audience, inviting them to become a participator in the story. It can create a powerful impact, in less words. For an example, check back at that baby shoes flash fiction story. It says a lot, begs for interpretation, and has impact. Remember, one of the things that can make short stories memorable is how profound they can be in so little space.

But it's more than that. Unlike a novel, you won't have a lot of space in a short story for explanations. Sure, you should never have info-dumps, but in a novel, it's much easier to weave in information when you have more space to tell the story. In a short story, you need to explain and imply enough, and probably not much more than that.

For example, it's unlikely you will focus much on character backstories--unless, of course, the backstory directly affects what's unfolding (see my post on flashbacks), and that's the main plot of the story. But that doesn't mean you should scrap a sense of backstory completely, because we are still trying to give the impression that this world and its characters are real. So instead, you'll hint at the backstories through subtext.

In speculative fiction, something similar will happen with worldbuilding. Some elements don't merit much space, so you'll be using subtext, along with context, to help the audience understand enough. If the worldbuilding element is a main focus of the story, it will have more explanation. If it's more on the outskirts, it will have little. Use context and validation to limit confusion, and subtext to hint at a bigger world and deeper magic system.

In a novel, you may have more space to eventually bring more subtext content to the surface of the text to be explored and discussed. In a short piece of work, you will have less space and may never bring things to the surface--you need to let the reader get a sense or fill things in themselves, and be okay with that.

Generally, this means in short stories, the narrator will likely be doing less "hand-holding" of the audience, less guiding of the reader, and instead, leaving more room for them to come to their own conclusions.

Subtext also increases the story's re-read value, which may be particularly important to short fiction. Again, I'm relating this back to how poetry functions. It's short, but it's condensed. Poetry is meant to be read over and over again. Why? Because in good poetry, you will appreciate and understand it more each time. It has more in it, than the reader initially thought. Great subtext in stories creates a similar effect. Not only will most people not complain about reading "The Yellow Wallpaper" more than once, but by the end of the first reading, most people want to read it more than once, to see what other subtext they can pull out of it for new interpretations.

So in short fiction in particular, you need to rely and utilize subtext more.

Structure

An obvious way short stories are different from novels is in structure.

Or is it?

Novels are obviously longer, so they have longer and more complicated structures.

But really, when you look at the basics, the short story is usually rather similar, just a smaller scale.

In my post about scene vs. sequence vs. act, I showed how all of those segments actually have the same structure, and each one actually fits within a bigger structure:

And in reality, this shape permeates just about any small or large structure in anything (creatively) written successfully. It's like the equivalent of breaking down a number forever, into infinity: it's a whole story, it's an act, it's a sequence, it's a scene, it's a beat, it's a description. (More on that here.)

So yes, a short story works on a smaller scale, but it will, in some sense, almost always have this shape with these elements:

inciting incident

rising action (progressive complications)

climax

falling action/denouement

Decades ago, there was a school of thought that a great short story cuts off the beginning and the ending of the narrative and only gives the audience the middle, but really . . . on a smaller scale, the middle should still have this shape, if you are writing genre or commercial fiction. Think of it as the "Act II" in the plot image above. Sure, maybe there is more background (beginning) and more resolution (ending) in the big picture, but even the middle section should really still have an inciting incident, rising action, climax, and a falling action. So maybe it would be helpful for some to think of a short story as a single act, or a sequence.

In a sense, I personally believe you can really shrink down any "story structure" to the small scale. It's just that the inciting incident might happen in a single sentence, the pinch points in single paragraphs, The Ordeal in a page, etc. It's just a shorter space, with smaller and more simplistic things.

Of course, you will find stories that break the rule, but personally, I don't think you can go wrong with following this. And usually those that deviate and are well done are breaking the rule to good effect.

In some short stories, you can cut off the denouement. I've seen this done very well on a few occasions--great for short stories that are posing a thematic choice or decision to the audience, where perhaps the protagonist is an everyman character--but almost always, a story needs some denouement to be satisfying, even if it's only a few lines. While most people will tell you that the point of a denouement is to wrap up loose ends, I would strongly argue the true, structural purpose is to validate what has (or hasn't) changed in the story.

Bring Something New to the Table

As we've been talking about, with short stories, you need to impact the audience in less space. It's harder to do this if you aren't bringing anything original to the narrative. If it's just a repeat of what we've seen before, what's the point, really? And since it's a repeat, it won't hold as much power as our first experience with the subject. Instead, we'll be reminded of the first time we read a similar story, rather than just enjoying the story. I mean, I can't read a story about a protagonist discovering he's been dead the whole time without automatically thinking of The Sixth Sense and comparing it to that.

But if it's something fresh, it's like a whole new experience, or a playful twist on a familiar one.

Work to bring something new to the table.

Now, the original aspect doesn't have to be mind-blowing, so don't kill yourself trying to figure it out. When we say "original," we often think of the plot, premise, or overall concept, especially for speculative fiction. We might feel like we need to come up with something as original as Phillip Pullman who asked what it would be like if our souls lived outside our bodies. But originality can come from less obvious elements. An unexpected type of character thrown into a role we've seen a million times, for example. What if we made an old woman into a superhero instead? That brings something new to the table. It can sometimes just be a unique perspective or character voice that breathes fresh air into a tired trope. It might be an unexpected theme paired with a setup we've seen before.

People tend to think that originality means we must come up with something entirely new, but often it means we twist, turn, flip, combine what audiences are familiar with in new ways to make it fresh again, like I talked about when I did that post on obligatory scenes and conventions. Often what feels most original, is a familiar concept that has been pushed to an extreme, new direction, one we never imagined.

Navigating Slush Piles

Once you have your short story written, polished, and ready to go, you might think it's time to submit it for publication or a contest. Remember, about 80% - 90% of submissions get rejected in the first 1 - 5 pages. It sounds brutal to outsiders, but now that I've worked in the industry for this long, it makes sense; I can usually tell what level a writer is at within the first pages and most of them aren't writing at a professional level yet. That's okay, they just need to keep working at it. A professional is just someone who stuck with it.

There are a few things you should keep in mind though, to help you stand out. Follow the submission guidelines and make sure the manuscript is properly formatted. You'd be surprised how many submissions don't do those two things.

By the end of the first page, and especially by the end of the second page, we should have a clear sense of who the character is, when and where the story takes place, and a sense of the conflict. Maybe even a whiff of the theme topic as well. Sure, there are sometimes exceptions to that, but they are just that, exceptions. (Also, don't forget the main conflict may be the inner, personal journey in a short story, more so than the outer one).

If you want to read more about standing out in slush piles, I did a post about that here.

I hope this article is helpful to anyone wanting to writing better short stories.

#writing tips #writing tips and tricks #writeblr #short story #writing advice #writing help #writing reference #fanfic

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thefutureduchessmarie · 3 years

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there's a part in all or nothing that really stayed with me: when mourinho mentioned that some players have enough talent to rise to the top but sometimes they don't commit enough with their talent and don't go forward in their careers. this is dele summarized. i don't think he's exceptional but he's better than average. sadly he hasn't done anything in the past two seasons to deserve a place in the starting line up or a better european club.

Oh boy, when and how did my blog become the place to be to discuss Dele? Nothing against you, my dear, I know Im the one who reblogged a post about this yesterday. But I just wanna state that Im really not that invested or feel like I have much to add to the discussion. I didn't even finish watching All or Nothing (I should, tho because that was hilarious and highly entertaining).

Obviously once upon a time I followed Dele and Spurs really closely, so I still see a lot of him on my dash and have been more os less following his situation through my mutuals. When I saw that post yesterday, it was the first time I actually agreed with something on that matter, hence why I reblogged. Im also one of those bitches who’s incapable of not having an opinion on everything AND I do still have some leftover takes from when I did follow the guy, so...

Im just gonna say everything I think about this and then exclude myself from this narrative, ok? I agree with you, I think Dele is kind of stuck. He started out as this really talented teenager, but as he got older he failed to deliver the consistency and reliability that top clubs look for. If they want a player that has some explosions of talent and creativity and then drops, they’ll 100% go with a teenager and not a 24yo. And that might explain why top clubs aren't lining up to sign him, even tho it’s clear that he’s not a part of Spurs plan.

I also think that the doubts about his professionalism are not unfounded or a result of racism. On my last days of following Dele last year, I saw him get away with being drunk at a house party around the New Years/Boxing Day fixtures, where he failed to perform well and Spurs dropped a lot of important points (they could have risen to 2nd place, I think, if they had won all those matches). At some point he even brought Troy Parrot along. Now, as a more senior member of the squad, he should act as a good role model for the younger ones, not the other way around. Somehow the media didn’t catch on it, but to me that always felt very unprofessional and disrespectful towards the team. Also, if I saw it, who’s to say that someone at Spurs didnt see it too? Maybe that’s the beginning of his downfall with José. And Poch (who’s now seen by the fandom as the Dele Savior) questioned his lifestyle too, implying that maybe his constant injuries were a result of his choices...

Also, generally speaking, no player is universal. With the exception of maybe Messi and R*naldo, there’s no player that every single manager would want in their teams. So maybe Mourinho just doesn’t want Dele and that’s that. Like him or not, that’s his right as manager. Eric was all but finished with Poch and now he’s José’s darling, for example. It’s the most normal thing in football, and happens to hundreds of players every day. Maybe Dele will turn things around and live up to his potential if/when he changes clubs, maybe he wont. Ultimately I don’t really care, since Im not invested in his career. And broadly speaking I don’t think people outside of the fandom care that much either. The press tries to push a feud narrative from time to time, because Dele is still popular and it sells. But most pundits, commentators and fans I follow outside of tumblr aren’t too concerned tbh.

However, I understand why his fans would care. Seeing your fave go through something like this can be really frustrating. And obviously none of this means that people can’t like him. Ive loved my fair share of “problematic” players and will probably continue to do so. I just don’t think Dele is this poor victim who never did anything wrong and is now being punished by an evil man, that’s all.

Sorry this got so long. I just wanted to get it all off my chest so that I can drop this subject for good

#Consider this the final Dele post from someone who has 898 Dele posts on her archive #And who just cant shut up and be succinct in general 🤷‍♀️

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inside-aut-blog · 5 years

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A guide to writing touch-averse characters, by someone who can’t even pat the shoulder of their crying grandma*:

Initial questions:

Consider: Why is your character touch-averse? Is it because of sensory issues? (If so, is the character autistic? ADHD? Do they have fibro? Standalone SPD? A combination thereof? Something else?) Trauma? (If so, what’re the specifics?) Orientation? (If so, are they aromantic? Asexual? Dysphoric? A combination thereof? Something else?) Are they just kinda like that?

Consider: How does your character experience touch-aversion? That is, what’s it feel like to them? (Is it overwhelming? Does it physically hurt? Does it make them physically uncomfortable? Emotionally uncomfortable? Anxious? Panicked? Angry? Nauseous? A combination of these? Does it vary?) And to what extent? (A little? A moderate amount? A lot? Does the severity remain the same all through, or does it increase if the touch lingers, or decrease, or fluctuate? Is the effect immediate, or delayed? Does it vary?)

Consider: What are the nuances of their experience? For example, are some moments better or worse than others? (High-energy ones? Low-energy ones? Emotionally-charged ones? Others?) Are some kinds of touch better or worse than others? (Light? Firm? Unexpected? Forewarned? Brief? Prolonged? On their back? Hands? Chest? Arms? Shoulders? Knees? Neck? Other?) Is touch more or less bearable from certain people? (Children? Men? Women? Strangers? Friends? Very close friends? Family? Very close family? Pets? Partners? Doctors? Other?)

Consider: How do they approach their touch-aversion? For example, how do they usually feel about it? (Neutral? Negative? Positive? Other?) Are they able to set boundaries? (If so, do they? If so, do they enforce them?) How do they respond, in any case, if those boundaries are violated? (Do they freeze? Do they flinch? Do they jerk away? Do they shrug off the touch carefully? Do they keep still and bear it? Do they snap at the person? Do they speak calmly? Do they panic? Dissociate? Other?) How do they talk about it, if it all? (Neutrally? Negatively? Positively? Other?)

Consider: How do others approach their touch-aversion? For example, how do different people feel about it, if they’re aware of it? What assumptions do they make? How do they act on those assumptions, if at all? Do they respect your character’s boundaries? Do they try to desensitize your character? Do they want to?

Common pitfalls:

The character grows comfortable with touch; this correlates with a character arc that involves them growing kinder, warmer, more compassionate, or more “human”

Recommendation: Avoid.

(Seriously, avoid.)

Equates being touch-averse with being cruel, uncaring, and inhuman

Implies that it’s a character flaw to be outgrown or fixed

Implies it can and should be outgrown or fixed

As a concept, full of ableism. So much ableism

Inaccurate, hurtful on all counts

The character grows comfortable with touch from a specific person or group of people; this correlates with increased levels of closeness, trust, and/or emotional intimacy

Recommendation: Tread carefully.

Implies touch-aversion is something to be overcome or fixed with love

Risks supporting myth that it can always be overcome with enough love

Can imply that it must be overcome in order to have a healthy and/or emotionally fulfilling relationship

Inaccurate, potentially damaging on all counts

Someone is very physically affectionate with the character despite their obvious discomfort; this correlates with a narrative about the other caring for them very deeply and wanting to break down their emotional walls or otherwise help them

Recommendation: Tread very carefully.

Plays into the above issues

Depicts a violation of boundaries (no matter how benign the intentions)

Inaccurate, damaging

The character finally willingly submits to physical affection; this is portrayed as particularly heartwarming or a sign of growth

Recommendation: Tread carefully.

Can play into the above issues

Can be patronizing and/or infantilizing

Avoiding common pitfalls**:

The character grows comfortable with touch; this correlates with a character arc that involves them growing kinder, warmer, more compassionate, or more “human”

Option one: Just don’t do it.

Option two: No really, don’t do it.

Option three: I’m serious.

Option four: Don’t.

Secret option five: Do not!!

The character grows comfortable with touch from a specific person or group of people; this correlates with increased levels of closeness, trust, and/or emotional intimacy

Option one: Don’t do it

Option two: Include someone else who stays broadly touch-averse; portray their close relationships as equally healthy and emotionally fulfilling

Option three: Have the characters talk about boundaries; portray it as a process and focus on consent

Option four: Portray the increased comfort as non-absolute even within the relationship(s), even as emotional intimacy increases.

Secret bonus option five: Mix and match!!

Option one: Don’t do it

Option two: Have the narrative criticize the other character’s violation of their boundaries

Option three: Have the other character ask about boundaries first; portray it as a mutually-agreed-upon thing

Option four: Contrast it with other characters who respect their boundaries and are portrayed as better at connecting with and/or helping them

Secret option five: Mix and match!!

The character finally willingly submits to physical affection; this is portrayed as particularly heartwarming or a sign of growth

Option one: Don’t do it

Option two: Have other characters make it clear that they genuinely don’t have to do it; the impending affection is an offer, not a requirement

Option three: Have the character choose to initiate physical affection in a way that’s comfortable for them

Option four: Have the character accept a sign of affection that’s more comfortable for them than the ones previously attempted; portray it as a heartwarming sign of growth on the part of the other characters

Secret option five: Mix and match!!

My personal pet peeves:

Touch-averse character “slowly” grows more comfortable with touch with respect to a specific person; this process takes about a week. Maybe a month, tops

I’m sure it absolutely does work this way for some people!

But in my experience, it definitely does not.

For me, I’d need at least three months of knowing someone before I even thought about hugging them. Likely more (and an extenuating circumstance besides) to actually try

Touch-averse character finds themself utterly comfortable hugging someone they just met because they insta-click

See above

Touch-averse character is suddenly much more (or even completely) comfortable with physical contact the instant they become upset

Again I’m sure it probably does work this way for some people!

But for me, and I’m sure for many others as well, it actually if anything gets kinda worse?

Generally a bad time

Touch-averse character’s touch-aversion is played for laughs

I’m sure there’s a way to do it well, but usually it just comes off rude

Things I’d personally like to see more of:

Touch-averse characters that come with pre-established exceptions

These types of relationships are the most interesting to me. Got that implied pre-existing trust and closeness baked in there, real nice

Also, they feel less like a fixit narrative because we don’t see it happen and the character is still uncomfortable outside of the exception(s)

Touch-averse characters that don’t have any exceptions

Sometimes ppl just don’t have none and it’d be nice to see that u know

Touch-averse characters who are simultaneously touch-starved

I enjoy suffering

Also, it happens

Also also it makes for some nice internal conflict (and external, potentially)

Stories that in some fashion mention why they’re like that

Say the autism word. Say the trauma word. Say the asexual word. The aromantic word. The fibro word. The [insert other word]. Say it

(please. I am begging you.)

Other characters respecting the touch-averse ones’ boundaries

I am a simple person with simple desires

Stories with more than one touch-averse character

I am a simple person with slightly more complex desires,

Stories with touch-averse characters who stay touch-averse

I am a simple,,

In conclusion:

That is all I have

Please go forth into the world and make some sweet sweet touch-averse losers

Thank you for your time

Yes

*with the caveat that I am but one single person whose thoughts, opinions, and experiences are very very far from universal; also the caveat that I have admittedly never had occasion to try patting the shoulder of my crying grandma, but have certainly failed to so much as concernedly nudge numerous other weeping loved ones–but that’s less humorously phrased, so I give myself a pass on accuracy in favor of wittiness

**these are course not all of the possible pitfalls or even necessarily the most common or even necessarily the worst–and others might not label them pitfalls at all, which is fair as it’s certainly possible to include most of these very successfully–but they’re the ones that have historically bothered me the most, personally, individually, as an individual person, and so here they are; I hope they’re useful, enjoy

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scripttorture · 6 years

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Hello, I saw your response about conditioning through torture and how it does not work. I was wondering though, if a torture victim was rescued by someone and then kept in their care could they be conditioned by them while being taken care of? I'm working on a henchmen whose horribly dependant on the villain as he views her as his savior to the point of his own self destruction and I'm not sure if it would be a conditioned response or just a feeling of debt.

Theanswer to this depends on the sort of responses you’re talkingabout and I don’t think the wording is great-

Butit’s difficult to know what the ‘right’ terms are when mostexperts disagree. I respond very negatively to the term‘brainwashing’ because of cultural implications that go alongwith that word. However there aremental health professionals who use the term, even those who researchthings like cults.

They’reusing the term to refer to a very specific set of manipulativetechniques in a way they hope will appeal to and be understood by themainstream.

I’mrejecting the term because I think it ends up leaving people with avery skewed view of what’s possible and confusing people further.

AndI think ‘conditioned’ looks very much like a synonym for‘brainwashed’ in this context.

Theword implies a lack of agency or choice on the part of henchman. Andit’s impossible to take away someone’s ability to choose.

Avillain can take away their physical capacity to make a choice (acharacter with their hands tied behind their back can’t choose toshake someone’s hand). A villain can manipulate. A villain cancoerce, so that the choice a character makes isn’t a free choice. Acharacter with a gun to their head being told notto shake hands is likely to think that shaking hands isn’timportant enough to risk their life over. But the character stillchooses.

Thereare a couple of ways that you can make the relationship between thishenchman and the villain extremelyunhealthy, manipulative and coercive, while having him realisticallyview her positively. I get the impression you already know that noneof them involve violence.

Let’sstart by talking about ICURE.

ICUREis an acronym that covers a set of techniques which are scarilyeffective at manipulating people and coercing them into changingtheir beliefs. It stands for Isolate, Control information, introduceUncertainty, Repetition and Emotive responses.

Fromyour description there’s a lotof potential for all of those right at the start of this relationshipwhen the villain rescues the henchman. In fact in the environmentyou’ve suggested it might not even be entirely conscious on thevillain’s part.

Dependingon his injuries and the way medicine is practiced in this setting itmight be perfectly natural for the henchman to be isolated fromalmost everyone butthe villain while he recovers. And that could be a long period oftime- months or years with complex injuries.

Ithink complex injuries with a long healing time would fit really wellwith this scenario and could help make the relationship appear ‘good’from the point of view of the henchman and the villain. Somethinglike complex breaks in major bones, requiring physical assistance andthen possibly physiotherapy providing a ‘natural’ reason for thecharacters to spend a lot of time together and for the henchman to beisolated from others.

Duringthat time the villain has a massive amount of power over thehenchman. But it doesn’t need to be wielded in ways that seemobviously forceful.

Tellingsomeone you won’t let them contact their friends or family has avery different effect to telling a vulnerable character in this sortof position that it’s too dangerous to do so.

‘Ireally wish I could but then wemight be captured. Or they might be tortured too.’ This makes itsound as if the villain’s motive is primarily to protect thehenchman, rather than to isolate him, manipulate him and make himreliant on her. It encourages him to view his isolation positively,to agree to it for the greater good.

Andthe terrible thing is it’s not untrue. Part of the reason torturesurvivors are often ostracised by their communities is the fact thatpeople close to them could also be targeted. This happens especiallyoften with charity workers, politicians and activists.

Soit’s relatively easy for the villain to isolate the henchman inthis scenario.

Onceisolated the villain would need to carefully control the informationthe henchman has access to. Essentially the villain is making surethat the henchman only ever gets her side of the story.

Ina modern setting that could mean telling him that it’s ‘safer’if they can’t use the internet or phones. They can’t be traced orfollowed. This has the added bonus of reinforcing and repeating themessage that the henchman is only safe with the villain and thatshe’s trying to protect him.

Ina more historic setting it’s often part and parcel of isolationitself.

Whateverthe setting part of this means controlling who communicates with thehenchman and what they’re likely to say. The aim is to make surethat almost nothing contradicts the villain’s version of events.Anything that does is a rare blip.

The‘Uncertainty’ aspect of ICURE is probably more relevant if she’strying to get him to break with a group he was previously part of orcompromise on some of his values. It means exposing him to thingsthat are designed to make him question his membership of a group orthe values that group instils.

I’mtrying to think of a…less awful example of this for the purposes ofthis ask. Most of the things that spring to mind are part ofsustained campaigns of hate speech before and during genocides.

You…may or may not be aware of the current problems Muslims in China arefacing.Several years prior to this people in these states reported that thegovernment had started an information campaign against fasting. Thesesponsored messages were supposed to be ‘proving’ that fasting isdangerous and unhealthy.

Theaim in this case was to spread uncertainty about a practice that is acornerstone of Muslim peoples faith.

Howapplicable these tactics are to your story depends on the henchman’sbackground and how much he (broadly speaking) agreed with the villainbefore hand. She may not have try and make him feel uncertain if hedoesn’t have strong objections to what she does and alreadyfeels isolated from his previous community because he’s beentortured. His community’s ‘failure’ to rescue him may havealready created a lot of uncertainty about the place he used to holdin society and the people he used to be surrounded by.

Repetitionis pretty simple, we tend to see repeated points as more credibleeven when there isn’t data behind them. So long as the villain andthose around her are repeating the messages she wants the henchman tohear that will reinforce them.

Thefinal point involves trying to trigger intense emotional responsesaround both the things the villain wants the henchman to relate toand the things she wants him to abandon.

It’sframing things in ways that make logic go out the window and pushemotional buttons instead.

Takethe earlier example of isolating the henchman from friends and family‘for their safety’. If the henchman questions this a possible wayof using emotional responses would be to jump from something like-‘Well I understand your points but surely I could just tell themI’m still alive?’

Toresponses like- ‘God after every thing I’ve risked and sacrificedto keep you safe you want to put usin danger?’

‘Whydon’t you trust me?’

‘Fine.Get them killed. I’m just trying to look out for you.’

Notethat all of these responses derail the conversation. None of themaddress the actual point of the question, they just reframe theargument in a way that’s aiming to get a reaction, whilereinforcing the messages the villain is trying to send:

‘I’mthe only one who can take care of you.’

‘I’mthe only one protecting you.’

‘Youshould put your faith in me not other people.’

Andso forth.

Giventhe situation you’ve outlined it would be perfectly natural for thehenchman to feel indebted to the villain, even without any of thisbeing used to manipulate him.

Butindebtedness will only go so far. Depending on the characters and howmuch they have in common it could be more than enough for thescenario you want.

Butif you want to make their relationship more obviously unhealthy andcoercive, then introducing manipulative ICURE elements is a realisticway to do that while still having a character who is completelydevoted to the villain.

Hedoesn’t have to view her as the best or nicest person in the world(though that might help), he just needs to see her as better than hisalternatives options.

Ifyou have the henchman changing his views after torture then be sureto lay the ground work for that change. Show a natural progression,with doubts or a lack of deep thought about his opinions beforetorture. If you like show the villain manipulating those doubts laterin an attempt to reach an outcome that suits her.

Butthat might not be necessary. Think about whether the character reallyhad a strong belief against violence or loyalty to groups the villainis fighting before he was tortured.

ICUREdoesn’t create loyalty or affection, what it can create is relianceand (over long periods) shifts in views. It doesn’t ‘work’ overnight and it’s not completely reliable. But this kind ofmanipulation canresult in genuine cooperation while torture can’t.

Ithink you need to decide how healthy you want the relationshipbetween the henchman and the villain to be and howmanipulative/creepy you’re comfortable with writing it.

Buthopefully this post gives you enough information for you to choosewhat you’d like to do. :)

Edit: Just wanted to acknowledge that commenters are correct these tactics do get used in more conventional settings, sometimes with good intent. They are just a tool, a tool that’s often used to abuse. But that doesn’t mean there’s no possible ‘good’ use for ICURE or that political parties etc don’t attempt to use it to get votes or change policy.

Mustard gas was the first successful cancer treatment. Awful things can sometimes be put to good use.

Disclaimer

#tw torture #tw emotional abuse #manipulation #coercion #unhealthy relationships #ICURE #gotowhatsanapocalae

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dailynewswebsite · 3 years

Text

Trump’s lies about the election show how disinformation erodes democracy

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with reporters after collaborating in a video teleconference name with members of the army on Nov. 26, 2020, on the White Home in Washington. He reiterated his baseless claims throughout the information convention that the Nov. three election was 'rigged.' (AP Picture/Patrick Semansky)

Latest polls have discovered that 70 per cent of Republican supporters in the US imagine that President Donald Trump was defeated in an unfair or fraudulent election, echoing claims made by each international and home disinformation campaigns.

Quite a few authorized challenges by the Trump marketing campaign have been defeated in courts throughout the nation, and rumours about election fraud have been repeatedly debunked. That features by some journalists on Fox Information and Republican state officers, equivalent to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state. Nevertheless it’s apparently not sufficient for elections to be free from fraud — they have to be perceived as such.

Even after Joe Biden takes workplace, tens of millions of Republican supporters will proceed to imagine the election was illegitimate. This isn’t only a downside for a clean transition to a Biden administration. Reasonably, it’s the most recent symptom of a dysfunctional public sphere.

Democratic societies want to incorporate residents in political processes, incorporate high-quality data into decision-making and guarantee a baseline of mutual respect. Whereas any explicit political dialogue could fall in need of these beliefs, the system as a complete should promote these three primary democratic features.

The risks of disinformation

In our current article for Political Analysis Quarterly, we present how disinformation campaigns assault these features. Particular person situations of dangerous communication will be efficiently challenged, however their quantity and persistence, and their concerted assaults on establishments and norms that allow productive political discourse, counsel extra severe and lasting harm.

Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for Trump, speaks throughout a information convention in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 19, 2020, alleging a sequence of outlandish acts of electoral fraud. (AP Picture/Jacquelyn Martin)

Disinformation is communication that deliberately promotes misunderstanding, by means of lies, misrepresentations, misleading sourcing or different ways. Disinformation campaigns are organized efforts that use disinformation to attain political or financial goals.

Russia has been seen as the first supply of disinformation campaigns within the 2016 election, and Russia and different international states proceed to focus on the U.S., however American partisan elites and residents are primarily accountable for disinformation within the 2020 election.

Whereas disinformation campaigns could also be initiated by a small variety of individuals, they’ve a lot better influence when their claims are amplified by high-profile influencers and atypical members of the general public.

Three dangerous types of disinformation

We establish three types of disinformation that may contribute to long-lasting harms.

The primary is corrosive falsehood, which isn’t garden-variety mendacity a lot as an try to undermine establishments that sometimes present high-quality data or appropriate false beliefs, equivalent to skilled information media and authorities data businesses. Russian propagandists, conservative commentators and Trump have persistently attacked the credibility {of professional} journalists, accused information organizations of spreading “pretend information” and created precise pretend information organizations to push partisan messages.

On this April 2018 photograph, an viewers member holds a ‘pretend information’ signal throughout a Trump rally in Michigan. (AP Picture/Paul Sancya)

Social media platforms did little to push again in opposition to false data surrounding the 2016 election. They’ve tried to take action this yr, and in consequence they’ve come underneath assault.

Learn extra: How tech corporations have tried to cease disinformation and voter intimidation – and are available up brief

The repeated harms of corrosive falsehoods can culminate in what we seek advice from as “epistemic cynicism,” which could lead residents to mistrust correct sources of data, frequently dismiss claims as the results of partisan commitments, or stop to imagine in any shared actuality.

The second hurt is ethical denigration. Disinformation campaigns frequently make false or deceptive claims to vilify people or misrepresent their beliefs. As an example, Trump and his allies have spent months selling conspiracy theories about Joe Biden underneath the #BidenCrimeFamily hashtag — or intentional misspellings of the hashtag, as soon as social media firms started to attempt to sluggish the unfold of falsehoods.

Trump has tossed out quite a lot of disinformation all through his presidency and notably within the post-election interval as he tries to baselessly counsel the election he misplaced was rigged. (AP Picture/Alex Brandon)

Extra broadly, main Democrats have been portrayed as supporters of shadowy globalist cabals, violent antifa factions or child-trafficking and pedophilia rings. Such claims provoke antipathy and disgust, and if believed they justify a complete disregard for something the accused people say.

On-line campaigns of some of these ethical denigration contribute to what we name “techno-affective polarization.” Whereas partisans have turn out to be more and more hostile to their political opponents for a while, social media seem to amplify these tensions.

Even if Biden obtained extra votes in key states like Arizona and Georgia, in addition to within the nationwide fashionable vote, so-called Cease the Steal campaigns emerged on social media and in varied right-wing media retailers.

Trump supporters maintain indicators as they attend a ‘Cease The Steal’ rally on the Oregon State Capitol on Nov. 14, 2020, in Salem, Ore. (AP Picture/Paula Bronstein)

These disinformation campaigns mirror the identical rhetoric because the baseless #BidenCrimeFamily hashtags, wrongly implying that political opponents are so undesirable that they might solely win by dishonest, which they’re prepared to do as a result of they’re corrupt.

Pretend accounts, pretend voters

The third hurt is unjustified inclusion, when individuals with out rights to take part in a democratic course of achieve this on the expense of legit individuals.

Most clearly, international disinformation campaigns obtain this by utilizing pretend accounts or bots claiming to be Americans. Home and international agitators have additionally used pretend accounts to fake to be members of explicit teams, equivalent to antifa or Black Lives Matter activists, to misrepresent their views and widen societal divisions.

Unjustified inclusion typically results in unjustified exclusion, equivalent to when the voices of actual residents are drowned out, or when actual people are labelled as pretend. This, too, is a typical technique of disinformation campaigns.

There have additionally been widespread, false accusations that anti-racism protesters or victims of gun violence are literally paid actors, or that tens of millions of faux persons are voting by mail. Over time, such allegations can produce a state of affairs of pervasive inauthenticity, when individuals imagine that pretend or unlawful participation of their democracy is widespread.

A Trump supporter sprays a substance as he’s surrounded by anti-Trump demonstrators at a Cease the Steal march on Nov. 14, 2020, in Washington. (AP Picture/Jacquelyn Martin) (AP Picture/Jacquelyn Martin)

Whereas elections and the peaceable switch of energy are seen because the minimal circumstances for democracy, it’s changing into more and more clear {that a} wholesome, educated public sphere is definitely elementary to the correct functioning of elections.

If residents disbelieve the establishments that rely ballots and the organizations that precisely and credibly report on these outcomes, in the event that they see political opponents as unworthy of being heard, in the event that they dismiss the voices and votes of different residents as pretend or unlawful, then will probably be unattainable to agree on what a legit election appears like.

With out having the ability to speak to one another, who will get essentially the most votes could not matter.

Chris Tenove receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Analysis Council.

Spencer McKay receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Analysis Council of Canada.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/trumps-lies-about-the-election-show-how-disinformation-erodes-democracy/ via https://growthnews.in

#Growth News

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sol1056 · 7 years

Text

story structure and how doing it wrong can mess things up

This post, I’ll talk about story structure in general, with some examples. The follow--up post will talk about VLD S3/S4 story structure specifically.

I’ve mentioned the MICE quotient before (milieu, idea, character, element), but to recap: it’s a way to categorize the type of conflict or complication added to a story, so a writer can mentally track what questions the story is raising, and where/when to answer those.

A story fundamentally is a series of questions: “who are these people? why are they doing that? what will happen next?” If the writer doesn’t bother to answer to the reader’s satisfaction, the resolution will feel incomplete.

Broadly speaking, you can braid elements, or nest them. Braided elements are going to show up almost immediately in a story, often drive the entire plot, and should be wrapped up in the final resolution. In VLD, there seem to be two core and somewhat related elements: “can we become a team” and “can we defeat Zarkon”.

Note: these two questions are also co-throughlines, as the backbone of the story. A throughline is the one question or conflict that runs through the entire story, and when it’s resolved, the story ends. A throughline is not always obvious. For S1/S2, "defeat zarkon” is a consistent throughline, and every adventure in some way pushes forwards on that. If Zarkon died at end of S2, but Haggar or Lotor took over, we’d realize the actual throughline was probably more like “can we bring down the evil empire”, of which Zarkon was only one facet. So, the story continues. If Zarkon is defeated but the story continues, either we’re dealing with a sequel, or the longest epilogue ever.

Here’s a bit from a lecture by Mary Robinette Kowal, about nesting elements. She’s speaking of short stories here, so the duration is a scene or so. In a longer work, a nested element can last anywhere from a scene to almost the entire story.

Nesting is when you introduce one of these [elements] for only a scene or two. If I have a character going on a quest -- an event -- then you get to the cave where they pass a challenge... for that one challenge, we do the idea, we resolve it, and we move on. That's nesting, but you do have to resolve it, at some point, or that's going to be a nagging thing in the back of the audience's head, if it's sufficiently interesting.

Sometimes you can get away with it, and it's just, why is that watermelon there? People who've seen Buckaroo Banzai, we're still wondering about that watermelon... there's one scene where they're walking through a big area and one character asks, 'why is that watermelon there?' and the other character says, 'I'll tell you later'. And they never do.

Behind the cut, I’ll go into more detail about what story structure looks like in terms of nested elements, how to deal with watermelons, why elements should be closed in the reverse order they were opened, and the problem with elements that are too obvious/easy to resolve.

weaving & nesting elements together

I mentioned in an earlier post that “there must be a path towards answering the idea [element] before the story can progress”. In episodic stories (think old-school sitcoms), MICE elements are open-and-close, much like the ‘pass this challenge’ example.

When every nested element is neatly closed off, you have a very static kind of story, one that’ll end up feeling like it’s just running in place, at best. Ask a question, get an answer; ask another question, get the next answer. The beauty of nested elements -- and where it can lend a dynamic element even to purely character-driven, quieter, stories -- is that the answer to one question is a new question.

That’s a serial approach to elements: the closing of one opens the next. Nesting, though, leaves the first question open, and creates a new one within it (ie, to resolve the quest, one must answer this challenge). You can’t resolve the first without addressing the next, and so on, and so on.

In VLD, S1E2 through about S1E6 are roughly episodic, and open/close on a variety of ideas: can they defeat this robeast, can they defeat this general, etc. For the story to ‘hang’ together, each of those sub-elements must conclude with something that pushes the story forward. At the same time, each must support the two main elements (”defeat the bad guy” and ”be a team”).

Here’s the sticky part in considering story-structure like this: if you do not resolve an element, then consider all succeeding elements as nested, and secondary to that open element. (It really is like html code; gotta close your tags in order of opening them.) By ‘resolve’ I mean, ‘answer all questions in the reverse order in which they were raised, within the course of that element’.

Frex, S2E3, a classic Idea episode: ‘who helped Shiro escape?’. We go to a new location (milieu), raise questions (idea), meet Ulaz (event). Then we have an idea, where the characters ask questions and get direct answers, open/close. Next, an event: fight the bad guy. In rapid succession we work backwards: bad guy element is closed in parallel with closing ‘meet Ulaz’, a short argument to close the ‘raise questions’ element, and departure. The resolution mostly answers ‘who helped’ -- we know some of the how and who, but not really the full why -- and that ‘why’ lingers for later development.

So that’s an example of how a minor detail raised in an open/close nested segment becomes the thread of following story elements. Now Shiro isn’t chasing after ‘how did I escape’ or ‘who helped me’ but ‘who is this organization and why did they get involved’.

On a small scale (like within a single scene), you can smash the closing points together. Strictly speaking, it should be ‘bad guy defeated’ and then ‘lose Ulaz’ but actual practice, it was more like ‘lose Ulaz’ leads to ‘bad guy defeated’. Two elements resolved each other, as it were.

The same is true of the BoM episode. We go to a new location (milieu), start dialogue with Blades (event), travel to second location (milieu), offer alliance (event), demand Keith’s knife (idea), put Keith through trials (character), end trials, resolve knife, agree to alliance, return, confirm dialogue, and depart.

But in the middle of that, the questions raised in the trial (and in the resolution of the knife) are bloody HUGE. It’s a watermelon times a hundred.

dealing with watermelons

The temptation is to do exactly what the writers have done: to just leave that question over there, unaddressed, for chapters (or episodes) on end.

Don’t do this. It’s supremely annoying to readers.

Readers want their questions answered, and if one is left hanging for too long, they’ll grow cranky and shut the book (or stop watching). They’re going to conclude that either you can’t (or won’t) answer the question, or they’re going to assume you didn’t even realize you needed to answer the question. If they decide the second, you might as well hang it up. It’s damn hard to come back from that.

It’s not hard to fix. Just give the readers an answer. Any answer. It doesn’t have to even be the right answer. Think of any good mystery, where details unravel and what looks one way changes shape from a different perspective. It’s okay to tell the readers, “oh, Shiro probably escaped on his own” and later tell them, “wait! actually, he had help, he just didn’t remember that because he was still fuzzy from whatever the scientists gave him!”

Since I did bring up the BoM episode, that makes a good case for where you can lampshade the hell out of things, as a way to quasi-resolve. Basically, you’re telling the reader, ehhh, that question isn’t really all that much of a bombshell, don’t worry about it. Jut skip the exposition, and just have another character raise the question. It doesn’t take a lot, and you slide right through the emotional beat, too:

*Keith and Shiro return with Kolivan and Antok* Kolivan: Princess Allura, it's good to see that the rumors are true. You're still alive after all these years. Allura: So is Zarkon. Can we consider you our ally in the fight against him? Kolivan: The blade of Marmora is with you, but-- Pidge: Keith, where did you get that sword? Keith: It's...It's my knife. Hunk: No, I'm pretty sure that's a lot bigger than a knife. Keith: Uh, yeah. It's... because apparently I'm... part-Galra. *everyone stares* Pidge: But I thought the Galra had never made it as far as Earth. Antok: Do you think all Galra were happy under Zarkon's reign? Over the decafeebs, some fought, and some were forced to flee, including our brethren. Pidge: But-- Kolivan: That discussion can wait. Princess, I've received word from our spy inside the Galran hierarchy. They have become aware of our presence, so the timetable for our plan has been moved up. Shiro: How soon do we need to begin? Kolivan: Now.

See, the hanging question was: how can Keith be part-Galra and have a Marmora blade, given he grew up on Earth? Don’t ignore that. Answer it: provide something reasonable, maybe a little pat. “Earth was a safe place to go for Galra who hated Zarkon, and sometimes that included a Blade, and by the way, it’s been 10,000 years,” implying that Keith’s blade could be hundreds of years old.

And then, to make sure you don’t give a chance for someone to poke further (like Pidge), you have a damn good reason for setting the conversation aside. Kolivan’s news about the spy does work; Kolivan’s not going to see it as a shocker that Keith has Galra ancestry, so it’s in-character for him to brush aside everyone’s shock. The watermelon is (supposedly) resolved, but it’s still there to revisit later.

close in the order you opened

In the continuation I’ll get into showing how ignoring this rule can really mess things up, but here I’ll just use one of my favorites:

boy fish meets girl fish boy fish loses girl fish girl fish dies going over hydraulic dam

Oh, wait, no, let’s do Wizard of Oz, instead, ‘cause it’s actually a beautifully nested story where each element leads into the next. It goes something roughly like this:

I hate this town -- character oh no tornado -- event how do I get home? -- idea I must go to Oz -- milieu how do I help these new friends -- idea the wizard gives me a challenge -- event I kill the witch /event the grateful wizard helps my friends /idea I return to where I started /milieu I learn my shoes take me home /idea I find my family is alright /event I realize home is best /character

As MRK likes to say, if Dorothy had arrived in Oz, and Glenda had said, “oh just put on these shoes and click your heels together!” we would’ve had a short story, not an entire book. Instead, Dorothy is told she has to see the wizard, which leads to meeting new friends, which helps her get to Oz, and so on.

Now, to thoroughly butcher the structure, let’s say that Dorothy kills the wicked witch, and spontaneously knows how to help her friends have a heart, brain, and courage, and how to get home. We’ve just resolved several nested elements... and the unclosed elements are now going to feel superfluous. Like, why even go back to the wizard, when she already has the answers she sought?

But the story spends chapters (alternately, easily half the movie) making a huge production out of ‘we have to see the wizard’. There’s even a song about and everything. Pages upon pages to build this up, including the arrival in Oz and the overwhelming experience of meeting an angry wizard. Resolving Dorothy’s questions several steps earlier would leave that entire build-up just hanging there, but addressing it is going to be a boring read. Yeah, okay, wizard, whatever, we could cover that in a paragraph. Why not just say goodbye to friends, click the heels, and be done?

throw out the easy elements

Let’s change out Dorothy’s shoes for something like, say, a map. She doesn’t open it. She just asks someone else, “how do I get home?” She goes through all those adventures, comes back to the start, and is told, “oh, you could just open that paper up, it’s a map to get home.”

If at least nine out of ten of you wouldn’t DNF right there after most of a book of Dorothy never even asking, gee, what does this map show?, I’ll eat my hat. It’s one thing to have the element-resolution lie in the very last thing the character tried, or (common in some genres) the character trying the one thing they’d been told through the entire story not to do (”don’t cross the streams”). But if it’s something that obvious, that instinctive -- “I wonder what the book says” -- that’s hinging a lot on the character being stupid.

There has to be a really good reason for a character to be unable to resolve an element on their own. It’s not just a matter of the element not having scale enough to drive a character into action (ie the tornado), but it also can’t be something the character could’ve just waited out. If the character acts because they think they’re about to be fired, you need to give them a really good reason they don’t, can’t or won’t just find another job. Readers are going to tell that you’re contriving an element (a “must save my job” idea) to push the story forward, and you created a plot hole at the same time.

Because nested elements each hinge upon the previous, if a precipitating element is in fact a plot hole, everything hanging from that element will fall right into that hole. Swallowed up in irrelevance, because the reader’s going to be saying: “they could’ve skipped all this by just posting their resume on LinkedIn.”

On top of that, it guts the story’s stakes -- why should readers care about a character who’s effectively making a mountain (the story) out of a molehill (the easily resolved element)?

#storytelling #writing #story structure #voltron legendary defender #analysis #sol thinks about stuff

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cassolotl · 7 years

Text

Gender and sex are [not] different

Content note: Article refers to transphobia, TERFs, sex essentialism.

I have recently seen nonbinary people, even high-profile nonbinary people like Asia Kate Dillon, saying that gender and sex are different. This is bothering me a lot, for reasons I’ve struggled to articulate, but I’m gonna try anyway damnit.

Disclaimer: This is just the way I see things. I’ll back up my assertions where I can, but please do understand that I am the internet equivalent of some dude you met in the pub last week.

AN OVERVIEW / SOME CONTEXT

Sex and gender are both social constructs, which basically means they’re ideas that humans created. A penis is just a penis, but only a human would say that a penis (or a person with a penis) is inherently male.

The definitions of sex and gender are broadly agreed to be subtly different: sex is purely anatomical, whereas gender is an experience, a combination of physical, behavioural and psychological things that no one is really able to pin down.

I live in the UK, and here there is no legal difference between sex and gender.

The “sex” marker on your birth certificate can be changed with a gender recognition certificate (hormones and surgery not compulsory), and birth certificates are not connected to medical records at all. Getting that sex marker changed is very difficult and expensive.

You can legally have a different gender or sex marker on all your state-issued IDs and at most it’ll cause some bureaucratic confusion.

You can put any title on any record and some people will probably frown at you if you put Mrs if you’re an unmarried person but those people are legally speaking in the wrong.

Basically anything is legal as long as you’re not doing it to deceive or commit fraud, and the Gender Recognition Panel is way outdated and about to be dismantled anyway.

To put it another way, what the UK calls “legal sex” is actually just legal gender, misnamed. Even the sex marker on medical records is a gender marker misnamed.

To add to the confusion, linguistically speaking sex and gender are generally described in the same way - because until very recently, English-speakers have largely been unable to change their bodies and therefore unable to change the way the world treats them. Words like “female” can describe someone’s body and/or someone’s gender, while also describing the reproductive capacity of non-human lifeforms, the shape of the connecting end of a computer cable...

Because of the body/mind distinction, people who say that only we can define our genders will often comfortably say that sex can be objectively determined by an educated professional.

Doctors generally agree that sex is defined by:

the number and type of sex chromosomes;

the type of gonads—ovaries or testicles;

the sex hormones;

the internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus in females); and

the external genitalia.

Since finding out someone’s sex chromosomes takes months and is very expensive and largely unnecessary for most people, unless your doctor has found a pressing reason to test your chromosomes (such as signs that you may be intersex and it may affect your physical health in some way), you do not know your own sex. Yes, you. You have, at least, a (probably but not necessarily accurate) guess based on the information you have unequivocal access to: external genitalia.

This blog post assumes that misgendering people is harmful. It may not harm everyone, but it harms enough people that it’s a good idea to behave in a way that prevents that harm.

SEX AND GENDER ARE THE SAME

1: Sex --> gender

The idea that gender is defined by sex is an obvious wrong thing, so it seems like a good place to start. That’s the idea that your gender comes from your body. If you were born with a penis and testicles, you are a man, whether you like it or not.

Who does it: Some people (eg: TERFs) say that hormones and surgery simply “mask” your “true” sex/gender, and you can’t change your chromosomes or the way you were born. Some people (eg: some outdated gender recognition systems) say that your body must be changed in order to change your gender.

Why it’s harmful: It sucks for trans people. Either you can never be correctly gendered by other people, even when you pass, or you can only be correctly gendered by other people once someone has inspected your genitals or judged your facial hair or whatever.

What to do instead: Don’t say that gender is irrevocably tied to one’s body. Support the idea that people know themselves better than anyone else can, and trust them when they tell you what their gender is.

2: Gender --> sex

Who does it: If you’re on Tumblr you’ve probably read blog posts that say things like “I am female, therefore my penis is female.” A lot of us feel this way about our own bodies, and taking ownership of the language used to describe your body is a very positive thing. In the UK it’s supported by the medical system, which lets you change the gender/sex marker on your medical records just by asking the receptionist.

Why it’s harmful: It’s not - unless you start to impose it on others. It’s not universal. Some of us strongly feel and identify with the sex of the body; for example, Asia Kate Dillon is nonbinary but strongly identifies their body as female.

And then there’s Big Freedia, who says she’s a man because she has a man’s body. Her name and pronouns and presentation, everything that we use as gender cues, are decidedly feminine - but she is very open about her body being male.

What to do instead: Don’t assume stuff about people’s bodies or the language they use to talk about their bodies based on their gender, pronouns, presentation, etc. Don’t say that in general, for example, a body is female if it belongs to a woman. Respect everyone’s right to bodily privacy. Support the idea that people know themselves better than anyone else can, and trust them when they tell you what their sex is. But like, don’t ask, okay? Don’t even hint. It is none of your business.

SEX AND GENDER ARE UNCONNECTED

This is the one that’s been bugging me lately.

Who does it: I’ve seen nonbinary people go out of their way to correct people who equate gender and sex (or man and male, woman and female), and in doing so they state that sex and gender are never connected.

And it’s understandable! The idea that someone can be born in the wrong body has been central to the campaign of visibility and understanding aimed at cisgender people for quite a long time now. It counters the idea above, that sex defines gender, that has been socially prevalent for basically all of living ciscentric memory. A lot of us probably learned about what being transgender is by hearing the idea that your mind can be one gender while your body is another, and said, “damn, that could explain a lot for me.”

Asia Kate Dillon takes this to an extreme. I mentioned above that their gender is nonbinary and their sex is female, but they have also stated that sex and gender are entirely unconnected, for everyone. They insist that male and female are words used to describe sex only, and that it harms them when trans women call themselves female. They said that sex is defined by those five characteristics I listed in the overview, and if any of those characteristics doesn’t match the others then your body stops being male or female at all; a person who’s had a hysterectomy can no longer be called female in terms of sex.

Why it’s harmful: When people say to a trans person, “well you might be a man but your body is not male,” they are implying that someone’s biology would be relevant to anyone but themself, the people they may be physically intimate with, and maybe their doctor. On this level alone it’s personally very intrusive, in a way that no cis person would have to tolerate.

On a practical level, it allows people to exclude trans people from gendered spaces in which they belong on the basis of aspects of their body that may never even be visible, because their body is somehow more relevant (to gendered spaces like toilets and changing rooms) than who they are, and cis people can’t possibly cope.

There are two common excuses for excluding trans people from these spaces.

Random cisgender humans will accidentally see a weird body and be needlessly alarmed or frightened. (Frankly, not our problem?)

Some people are incurably violent or harmful because of their bodies; even someone seeing their bodies may cause harm. (That’s, at very generous best, insulting. In reality, if you are perceived as a serious threat when you walk into a room you become a target.)

What to do instead: Don’t make sweeping statements like “trans people were born in the wrong body” or “gender and sex are different and unrelated.” Support and respect people when they tell you about their own experiences of their body and gender. Encourage cisgender people to take responsibility for their emotional issues, improve and increase resources for victims of sexual violence, advocate for partially gender-neutralising spaces, and welcome trans people into gendered spaces where possible - and it almost always is possible.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS

Always respect people’s right to bodily privacy. Always.

If you feel like your sex is defined by your gender then great but it’s not true for every trans and/or nonbinary person. Similarly, if you feel that your gender and sex are independent of each other then that’s fine but don’t impose that on other people.

Barring unusual phobias, there is no need to ever consider the impact of someone’s sex on you personally. Unless you’re a doctor or you’re about to have sex or something.

In reality, there is a relationship between one’s body and one’s gender for a lot of people, otherwise gender dysphoria wouldn’t be a thing. What the connection is we may never fully understand, but that doesn’t matter. There is a connection for many people and it feels different for everyone, and that needs to be acknowledged and respected. At the same time, for many people there is no apparent connection between their gender and their body, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be one or that deep down everyone else is just wrong about themselves.

Gender and sex are complex individually, and their relationship to each other is complex too. Trying to logic it and sort it into boxes and make a flow chart of it just isn’t going to work. We can stop trying to teach each other, and start supporting each other instead.

#original posts #my words #gender #trans #nonbinary

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