#it's circular discourse anyway

[greensaplinggrace]

"the venn diagram of reylo and darklina shippers is a circle" fact actually a statistical error. the venn diagram of reylo and darklina shippers would actually be a sun, because I and over half of the darklina shippers I know that don't ship reylo would be jettisoning from the circle like sunbursts to continue on our own paths

#mayhaps it is not even a statistical error #mayhaps it is a logical fallacy #some may even call it.... circular reasoning #anyways no hate to op of that other post cause im just goofing lmfao #say stupid shit win stupid discourse #shadow and bone #grishaverse #sab #darklina #myramblings #anti darklina bs #fandomcourse #alksjdlfks i guess #sab discourse #just so people can blacklist lol #(also it technically isn't a statistical error OR circular reasoning. but it IS about five other fallacies lmfao)

[toytulini]

not that i want yall to do it to ppl i actually like, Id like yall to stop doing it altogether, but also,

can yall stop doing bullshit transmisogynistic smear and harassment campaigns against ppl i actively dislike and have blocked for other reasons that i refuse to get into in public, lest it spin out of control and turn into a harassment campaign? i am too fucking petty for this shit. if you dont like someone you dont need to make up lies about them and stir a whole shit pot about it, fucking grow up and block their ass and maybe blacklist their url if you cant keep them off your dash and stop making it everyone elses problem. christ alive.

#toy txt post #like i dont want to reblog this post pointing out its bullshit even tho it IS bullshit when im already trying not to platform her posts #bc i DO have legit beef with her but not anything i personally am going to start shit over cos i recognize thats not gonna go well and #its not worth it bc its bc of stupid circular neverending discourse anyway! its just annoying. sorry #stop doing this bc its transmisogynistic and awful and also bc im too much of a petty bitch for you to be acting like this #i am not noble and honorable. i am not the aclu. i do not want these ppls urls on my goddamn blog and its not for the dumbfuck bullshit #reasons you put in your callout post i luckily havent even seen but now its like. great. hope no one realizes ive got her blocked and #thinks its cos of that. it doesnt matter cos no one knows who you have blocked but i have blocked too many ppl for a variety of reasons #for yall to be making shit up. just shut the fuck up. christ

[hyperlexichypatia]

“Narcissistic abuse” is not a real thing.

I have repeatedly written on this page that there is no such thing as a neurodivergence, disability, illness, or mental condition that “causes” someone to be abusive, violent, bigoted, or otherwise harmful to others.

First of all, a “personality disorder” cannot, by definition, be a cause of someone’s behavior. The diagnosis of a “personality disorder” is a description of (real or perceived) observed behavior, and an assumption (accurate or inaccurate) about the emotional motivation for that behavior. It is circular and nonsensical to say that someone behaves a certain way “because of'' their “personality disorder” -- it would only be accurate to say that because the person behaves in a certain way, someone has classified them with that diagnosis. (I could point out that this labeling and categorization process occurs in the context of an oppressive, kyriarchical system which interprets marginalized people’s responses to oppression through a pathologizing lens, but that would be too big a topic shift for one post, and wouldn’t be that relevant to debunking the concept of “narcissistic abuse,” which is mostly applied to privileged people, anyway.)

Some people are self-centered. Some people are abusive. Some people behave in an abusive, self-centered way. None of these facts are in dispute. When we say “Narcissistic abuse is not a real thing,” we are not saying “Self-centered, abusive people are not real.” We are saying that being self-centered and abusive is not an intrinsic condition of the brain, a “disorder,” a disability, or “caused by” anything other than one’s own choices.

Why do people cling so fervently to the concept of “narcissistic abuse”? Why are people so insistent that there’s such a thing as a “brain disease” that can “cause” someone to be self-centered and abusive?

One reason might be that pathologization is used to convey intensity or extremity. In the popular conception of psychopathology, pathologized conditions are “extreme” versions of “normal” traits. In this framework, one might insist on pathologizing someone’s abusive, self-centered behavior as a way of conveying that the behavior is really, really, extremely abusive and self-centered, and differentiating it from allegedly “normal” abusiveness or self-centeredness.

Another, perhaps more insidious reason, is that classifying someone’s abusiveness as a “disorder” frames it as an intrinsic aspect of the person, rather than a choice they make. It codifies “just intrinsically a Bad Person” as a (pseudo)-scientific reality. If someone’s abusive or self-centered behavior is “caused” by their “brain disorder,” then they are an inherently unforgivable and irredeemable person. Sometimes, pathologizing people’s behavior is used as a reason to excuse them from blame or responsibility -- “They couldn’t help it, The Disorder made them do it.” But in the case of so-called “personality disorders,” the reasoning seems to be the opposite -- “The Disorder made them do it, so they’re Just Inherently That Way.” The line is drawn neatly between The Narcissist and The Innocent Victim. No one needs to examine the dynamic further when one party is an inherently evil Narcissist.

Additionally, the framing of abuse as caused by a “brain disorder” obscures the real cause of abuse, which is power. As long as people have power over other people, at least some of them will use that power abusively. Blaming abuse on “brain disorders” shifts discourse away from the abuser’s choices, the moral code that allowed them to make those choices, and the structure of society that gave them power to abuse someone else.

“Narcissistic abuse” isn’t a real thing. “Personality disorders” can’t “cause” behavior, abusive or otherwise. And if we really want to stop abuse, we have to dismantle social power structures, including the power structures of ableism, neurobigotry, and pathologization that classify some brain-types as “disordered.”

#neurodiversity #ableism #mad pride #disability rights #neurobigotry #psych abolition #anti psychiatry

[familyabolisher]

Hi, Ave! Loved your post about gendered socialization, though there was one part I didn't fully understand: "even in its most charitable form, it attempts to present a complete account of "womanhood" and account for transfemininity only after the fact via hamfisted exceptionalism, rather than beginning with transmisogyny as the lynchpin of gendering and developing itself from there."

Could you please explain how transmisogyny functions as the lynchpin of gendering? I've read a decent amount of trans feminism and Marxism but don't remember coming across this idea before.

so what i was describing in the first part of that sentence was a tendency to articulate a particular discourse of structural gendered violence & the oppression of women into which trans women/TMA people are then kind of axiomatically deposited; it is a kind of feminism which considers itself ‘inclusive’ of trans people on the surface but is still, in its essential apparatus, hung up on ‘men’ and ‘women’ as immutable categories, and thus finds itself kind of skirting around necessary questions of how transness problematises these essentialist understandings of patriarchy by, as i said, falling back on tautology and circular reasoning. the logic goes something like—women are oppressed; trans women are women; therefore trans women experience women’s oppression. but the first statement has under this discourse become a complete and comprehensive construct without accounting for transmisogyny in the first place. within that, there are (sometimes) some gestures made towards the specific subjective experience of being a trans woman, but it’s always, like … womanhood is a preconceived category into which trans women have then been discursively slotted, rather than figuring womanhood as a category within which trans women are an essential component. there’s this baseline reluctance to admit, i think, that cis women can be agentive within and beneficiaries of gendered violence, just as much as they can be subjugated by it.

anyway, what i meant in the second half is that i think this discourse has it the wrong way around. there is no womanhood without trans womanhood, is maybe the best way of putting it; the kind of abjection that transmisogyny enforces is an abjection necessary for cis womanhood and cis manhood to make sense of themselves. transfemininity comes to stand as like, the worst thing someone can possibly be and thus as a discursive space onto which the ultimate incoherence of gender and the violence of being a subject within it can be siloed off. for example, the sexual subjugation of cis women (cis women being raped, cis women coerced into marriage, coerced into having children, cis women being denied sexual autonomy) becomes coherent (bearable, arguably) to cis women through the sexual abjection of trans women (denied access to the socially elevated status of the childbearing wife in the nuclear family, afforded sexuality through peripheralised sexual relations like sex work, reifying heterosexuality by threatening it). similarly—and this one is pretty straightforward—cis masculinity is affirmed and bolstered through the abjection of femininity in those coercively regarded as ‘men.’ so basically, writing a script for gendered violence and then tautologically inserting trans women/TMA people into an already-finished product is a limited and incoherent understanding of how gendered violence actually works. others have explained this better than i could and if any of you can dig those posts out i will be v happy, but. i hope this goes some way towards explaining what i meant.

#ask #transmisogyny

[chasingfictions]

yellowjackets so circular narrative so ouroboros literally we start in the worst of it we start with pit girl we start with the depths of winter we start with the height of the cult and the peak of desolation and the show and the pilot in particular is defined by telling their story — we open on the interviews trying to narrativize them from the outside, we allie , the woman on the border, who was almost there, who is on the outside but the inside too by being the first blood of the show, before pit girl’s sacrifice in the story but not in the discourse. my personal belief also is that pit girl is right before rescue. if we assume they crash in may, 19 months on from that is december. easily as snowy and desolate as the opening shot. the cult is so established there, the rituals so strong and steady, they know what they are doing. the first winter was so hard but the second winter they understand. and there are so few of them left there. so I think that pit girl is the last death of the wilderness. I think we open with the last blood and then hear the words of the first blood. we close the episode with shauna, looking at her journals. her blood spattered journals. she is trying to narrativize. the first episode is a circle that spans from before the crash, the moment of the crash, just before rescue, and years later. the first episode contains the whole of their story up to that point. and it will always open on blood. they are stuck in a circle. it will always have happened like this. we keep telling the story anyway. we keep telling the story to see if it will ever be different, and it won’t, and we tell the story because we want to see how it will be the same, again and again and again.

#YELLOWJACKETS!!! ON SHOWTIME!!!!! #yellowjackets #yellowjackets meta

[fanfic-lover-girl]

How James Potter's character discourse could have been easily solved by JKR

Now, I love redemption arcs. While I would probably never get with a guy in real life who hurt me in the past, I love seeing how a guy can atone and build a loving relationship with a girl who was hurt by him in the past and how the girl came to forgive him. I love seeing male characters become better men. Bonus if the men had to grovel to prove themselves hah.

So in theory, I should like James Potter and Jily. However, I don't. I used to like James when I first got into HP but the fan discourse really soured me on him, especially the victim blaming and glorification of bullying. I also did not like how James' bad side was usually swept under the rug in the fics I read.

The main problem with James Potter is the show vs tell with his redemption. On screen/on page, we see his awful moments first-hand or see his problematic behaviour justified or downplayed by the narrative. However, we only hear about his good moments second-hand. That's why James discourse is circular and tiring.

To make it worse, we hear about his good moments in arguably not objective contexts. Of course, Remus and Sirius will big up their mate to his son when he expresses doubt. Of course, Minerva and Dumbledore will speak highly of someone from their own house who was a good athlete and headboy. Of course, people usually don't speak ill of the dead - especially loving parents who died as martyrs protecting their son. Of course Snape can't be trusted because he is a mean, nasty teacher. So when we hear these things about James, there's always that lingering doubt about whether the claims are completely true.

Moreover, Sirius and Remus never tell us how James redeemed himself. Just that he deflated his head...what the hell does that mean?? Did James apologize or express regret about hurting people? I need more details.

Another problem is that James died young so we never got to really see him as a mature adult. So to estimate his behaviour, we have to look at his friends (birds of a feather flock together) but Sirius and Remus are...questionable. Still love you Sirius! Best marauder hands down buddy! I love your family :)

So! How could JKR fix this if she wanted to? Simple. Have Sirius or Remus show Harry a pensive memory of James post SWM.

It always bothered me how little Harry seemed to care about his parents. Remus and Sirius were right there - why not ask about all the marauder adventures? Hagrid composed that album for him in book 1 from people who were supposedly friends with the Potters - why not reach out to them? Harry comes to you accusing James of tricking Lily into being with him...why not help him out by showing James as a good boyfriend and person? Why not show him a pensieve memory of how he proved himself to Lily? Or a memory of James being a just headboy? I would have loved to see some heartwarming James moments. It would not erase what he did to Snape but at least James would be better portrayed as a good person who just hated that nobody Slytherin out of immaturity.

Anyway, I think how James was written makes for a richer narrative but a lot could have been solved in fandom if JKR showed us some good James moments free of bias. James Potter is a character I am partially primed to like! I just needed to see how he changed. Being a good parent and husband is not enough. Evil characters can be good family men too so that means nothing. Jily is not good enough evidence that James was a changed man.

#james potter #harry potter critical #anti marauders fandom #james potter's redemption #james potter critical #harry potter series #anti james potter #sirius black #remus lupin #snape vs james discourse #part of me wants to like james #harry james potter #anti jily #not a serious analysis but just personal thoughts

[chronotopes]

i do think "don't write about [x] unless you are part of [y] identity group" discourse gets stupid fast buuuut i think the sff writer's relentless fascination with producing Meaningful Resonant Allegory gets you into some thorny places. as someone who has been a star trek fan for like seven years and is now finding themself kind of unwillingly fascinated by pre-ot era star wars. SO much of the circular discourse in those fan communities can be traced back to an unwillingness to understand how inherently muddled and contradictory the inspirations for these canons are. cardassians in ds9 get read as nazi germany And the soviet union And the united states, among other things, by the audience because imagery and gets borrowed by writers evoking just about every piece of loaded imagery in 20th century history. and this kind of thing is doubly true for whatever the stupid fuck star wars has going on, especially regarding the jedi order and what that's a metaphor for. in some ways it's a tough balance to strike because if you write about any large-scale tragedy or injustice in a sff setting, you're going to draw on your own knowledge of history. however in the long term if you're going to say 'i'm basing this science fiction war on a real life war' you kind of have to commit to that metaphor on a really in-depth level. cause otherwise you can end up saying 'i'm going to make a war the center of our film trilogy and no before you ask i am not going to ever materially elaborate on what the war is really about or why it's happening. if it helps though the war is just like iraq and it's also just like vietnam and it's also –' anyway my tentative takeaway here is that if you're going to put a very obvious and deliberate geopolitical metaphor in your sff writing it had better be a) from a 'has read a multitude of sources about this conflict' type informed place and b) a consistent center point of your writing approach rather than something you pick up for Resonance Points and throw away and c) think hard about whether it imbues your greater narrative with fucked up implications about how you see the real life conflict you're drawing from.

#none of this is really new commentary i'm just thinking about how 20th century space war fiction sucks so bad even when i care about it #the clone wars is the most star trek-like star wars and ds9 is the most star wars-like star trek and together they live in my head rent fre #but not always in an aspirational manner #ds9 is better to be clear. significantly so. but it is not immune to muddled geopolitical metaphor disease

[catholicide]

i'm a reformed hater now, so as much as i'm skeptical of generative ai hysteria, i'm just as enthralled by the development of techniques to resist it (nightshade, glaze, etc). somewhere in between the pull towards and push against what is obstensibly a new medium, there's an opportunity to watch people feel their way through theories of art. i've really come to love this. i mean, it's a little arrogant and incurious (we're human, it's the internet lol), but even having the balls to just define art as one thing and not another thing, as if it's so easy, idk, it's just fun to watch. it says a lot about an individual's engagement with art, what they consider valuable about art.

anyways, that figure demonstrating uchicago's data poisoning tool is instantly so evocative for me. it brings to mind vandalized iterations of piss christ. incidental meditations on the opposing philosophies of art. i like it a lot, i like rotating it in my mind. stripping away the more circular, boring elements of ai art discourse, there's lots of room for your brain to play i think.

#etc

[disabledunitypunk]

Deleted the original because people were clowning on it, but reposting screenshots and turning off reblogs and comments.

Response:

My response:

Btw I am NOT low support needs. I am mid to high support needs due to both autism and my other disabilities. I can't do basic household tasks and struggle with basic hygiene tasks. Sometimes I happen to be able to read and write using academic language, but sometimes I can't even understand simple language, as I have fluctuating cognitive disabilities.

I will also say: stop misapproppriating social justice language. I have listened to people with ID. I do still disagree that a slur I was hurt by is not mine to reclaim. "Listen to the people most affected by this" is not a way to shut down anyone else affected by it. "You can't have an opinion about this because you don't have ID and you don't have ID so your opinion that people without ID can have an opinion is worthless" is fucking circular logic.

Privilege within marginalized communities is also not absolute. People treat privilege like race, anyone who has it in any way is as good as white or white passing and anyone who doesn't is a POC. It doesn't work that way with most other marginalized people. Privilege within communities doesn't translate outside of them. Abled people don't actually listen to me because I don't have an ID. I can sometimes mask and they still don't listen to me ABOUT neurodivergence.

Lateral ableism is still possible between ANY disabled people. I have been told what my experiences are, why they happened, been called low support needs (I am mid to high support needs, quite honestly I question whether not calling myself high support needs is internalized ableism or not).

They claimed that I'm blocking everyone with an ID that disagrees (ONE person - to my knowledge - with an ID, who does not speak for everyone with IDs, responded, the rest were all people WITHOUT IDs - just like a bunch of self-proclaimed TME people tagged the original post transmisogyny. Anyway, I already had that person blocked for a completely different reason, unrelated to disability at ALL. I only even saw it because someone else reblogged that addition.)

I have also been told how I use a slur that I explicitly previously stated I did not personally reclaim. Also, as someone with a cognitive disability (ID is specifically lifelong and has strict diagnostic criteria), I absolutely do have the right to reclaim it if it's about "low intellect", because while my IQ (a terrible measure of anything) is not low, my intellect itself varies MASSIVELY and sometimes I can't do what are at other times the most basic of tasks. Yeah, I have absolutely been called st*pid and similar for that.

To be clear, having ID does NOT make you incapable of being ableist to disabled/ND people without ID. An obvious example, ironically, would be calling someone a slur they didn't consent to, which is ableism no matter who does it. But microaggressions and erasing someone's actual lived experiences are still also ableist. Calling someone low support needs who explicitly considers themself mid to high support needs is ableist.

To address some other related comments people left on the OP: I am not one of the people that says no one can use the puzzle piece. I will not comment on reclaiming racial slurs because racism is a unique kind of bigotry that ableism and any other kind do not map to well. Again, I am not low support needs, the only thing I can do is SOMETIMES mask to some extent. I was diagnosed before levels, and masking can make me appear for short periods as level 1, with consequences. But I am MINIMALLY level 2 based on my actual abilities and support needs. I also, having decided I will actually reclaim it, do not use it as an insult, but in the sense of "I am deserving of decency and having my worth recognized regardless of my intellectual ability".

The solution to slur discourse is not actually "decide which identities are ontologically able to reclaim these, and police the shit out of anyone else who dares have an opinion on a word that's been weaponized against them. It's, let people reclaim whatever words they feel they have been significantly affected by (outside of racial/ethnic slurs). It's, kill the cop in your head and as long as someone is not insulting themself and only using slur on THEMSELF, assuming good faith.

(Yes, if they are using it as an insult as the person responding claimed, that is still ableism and should be called out by everyone.)

It's also NOT taking the word of exactly ONE person who is "allowed" to speak on the matter, and calling everyone who disagrees an ableist who is speaking over people with ID while also not having ID and ignoring that not everyone with ID even agrees. (Or tagging the post of an intersex transfemmasc as "transmisogyny" simply because she ... said that trans women can reclaim the f slur. -_-) Talk about tokenizing!

We already made a post making our stance on both slur discourse and blocking in general clear. But to clarify: any slur that hurts you that is not a racial or ethnic slur, YOU can decide if you can reclaim it. The r slur demonizes neurodivergence as a whole, not just ID, considering people saw me excelling in school and then used it about my social ineptitude. It is used to punish ANY noncomformity from neurotypical hegemony, regardless of type. They fully saw me as intelligent, and used it anyway because they didn't care, they just saw someone who was different.

Respecting and listening to does not mean deifying. It does not mean never disagreeing or listening to what someone says and then still making a different decision based on your own experiences. Especially given that my cognitive issues, when they manifest, do so almost exactly the same as ID, the only difference being that they are temporary.

Either it's about intellectual inability and so anyone with cognitive or intellectual disability can reclaim it, or it's not actually just about that and the people affected by it can reclaim it. Which is it? Because bigots don't use slurs based on the diagnosis you have on paper, which means reclamation isn't actually about identity but about who has been affected and hurt by it in their actual lives.

And since I've changed my mind on reclamation: Yeah, I'm a retard, so what? My lack of cognitive ability sometimes, my neurodivergence, none of it makes me any less worthy of respect or decency. It's not bad to be cognitively or intellectually disabled, that's not an insult, and I'll bite anyone who says otherwise.

Reblogs and comments are both turned off for now because quite honestly, after how people responded, I am not capable of dealing with that.

#unitypunk #ableism #slur discourse #r slur #f slur #d slur #neuropunk #autism #intellectual disability #neurodivergence

[sophieinwonderland]

oh my gosh how DARE an adult have a porn blog relating to systemhood? :O /sarcasm

its weird to see someone just send you a random anon ask about someone elses blog like... so what circular has a porn blog? why does that matter unless the blog has posted some interesting syscourse stuff lol

Yeah, it's really weird. LOL!

It's not like this is a puritan community, even if I try to keep my own blog relatively clean most of the time. (There have been what I view as necessary exceptions.)

I remember this happening last year, too. Only, it was anti-endos witch-hunting a prominent pro-endo system for having an 18+ blog.

And it's funny seeing that anon asking what syscourse is coming to, because I imagine they must have not been on Tumblr when syscourse overlapped with kink at pride discourse, anti-endos were demonizing a pro-endo for having a technically-SFW picture of a person in a dog mask on their 18+ blog that showed less skin than most people show at the Beach, and one anti-endo systems' little threatened to physically assault queer people at Pride showing kinks.

That certainly made for some very dramatic syscourse.

Anyway, yeah. My blog is mostly clean, but overall, I'm sex positive. And while their blog isn't an actual porn blog, I really wouldn't care if it was unless it was. 🤷‍♀️

#syscourse #pro endo #pro endogenic #sysblr #multiplicity

[rollercoasterwords]

ok! i'm actually gonna be grumpy for a second

this is gonna be me talking about the circular online discourse of "omg it SUCKS that mlm fics are so much more popular than wlw fics" specifically in the marauders fandom i do not know if it will be productive or insightful or if it will just be me being grumpy so. scroll if u want lol

anyway. i'm just! getting kinda frustrated at this point with the amount of people i see saying something like "guys...isn't it crazy how mlm fics are sooooo much more popular!! it's because of misyogyny!!" and then everyone just agreeing with them and like. that's it. internet echo chamber.

and it's like no okay i get it we need to have a conversation like it's important to start this conversation but we just. keep starting it. and starting it. and starting it. and it feels like it's not even a conversation at this point.

ok hang on i'm gonna try to organize my thoughts because i feel like there are...perhaps two main things that annoy me

there is no bad guy in this situation

one thing that frustrates me is this sort of weirdly....moralizing? ig? underlying tone to a lot of these posts. like, it sometimes feels like people are searching for someone to blame or get upset with, or some group of people to blame or get upset with. it's not just "oh misogyny is a reason behind this," it's "making a post about this issue and the way you respond to posts about this issue is an indicator of your personal moral fiber and also i now win good person points for saying this thing that many people have already said." maybe i'm being too harsh here because i DO think people deserve the benefit of the doubt and i'm sure that most of the people pointing out this issue have good intentions, i just...idk. sometimes it feels like virtue signaling more than anything.

and i think the reason it sometimes feels like virtue signaling to me is that there is no bad guy in this situation! there isn't anyone to "catch out" for the misogyny underlying this whole popularity disparity. if someone exclusively reads/writes mlm fic, that does not make them a bad person. is there perhaps some self-reflection to be done about why that is the only form of media content they consume? sure! but that's a call-in, not a call-out. y'know? idk maybe this is a whole other discussion but i already made a post about the reason i think mlm is so much more popular than wlw so i'm not gonna say it all again lol

2. the solution is actually right there. it's RIGHT there. this is a solvable thing

okay this is the thing that i think bothers me more and that contributes to those posts feeling like virtue-signaling more than anything. and that's that, at the end of the day, just saying "omg mlm fics are way more popular ugh misogyny" isn't!! that!! productive!!

like guys. this is fanfiction. this is literally fanfiction. if you truly view this as a really big issue, there are actually things you can do to fix it!! you can write wlw fics! you can read wlw fics! you can comment and kudos and recommend and send nice messages to people who write wlw fics! like this is actually a situation where you as an individual can actively do shit ??? and any of those things will be more productive than just saying over and over again that there's an issue.

like. imagine with me for a moment. picture me this. "oh man," internet user x says, "it really sucks that mlm fics are so much more popular than wlw fics! i want to see more wlw fics in this fandom space." internet user x wants to see wlw fics getting more attention, so internet user x goes and finds some wlw fics. internet user x reads them. internet user x recommends them to some friends. wow! internet user x has identified something they are unhappy with and has taken steps to change it! yay!

ok i know i'm getting sarcastic at this point i KNOW i told u guys i was gonna be grumpy. but like. the point stands (i think?). like first of all -- this is not a life or death issue; it's something that i would love to see actual conversations about, but at the end of the day this is all fanfiction and it's not that serious. but if it IS something that bothers you, actually reading and recommending wlw fics is just going to do so much more than making another post about how crazy it is that mlm fics get more attention. like. we get it. we have established that. let's either have an actual conversation about it or move on please.

"oh i would but i can't find any good wlw fics" dm me. i'll give u some. ok??? i have a whole post of recommendations. go look at that. jfc. if i could find them u can too!! it might take a little more work but again, if this is something you care so deeply about then like...work to find them. just!!! yeah. ok. i'm done now i think if i just keep going i'm gonna get mean which isn't fair bc like i said i think the people making these posts are well-intentioned. i am just! grumpy :)

#grumpy!!! #grumpy posting #posting on tumblr and being grumpy about it #idk sometimes u just need to rant on ur silly little tumblr blog #also this is not about any specific person this is just a trend i've noticed #like i said there's no bad guy nobody is in the wrong here #sometimes i just get annoyed at things on the internet and it's not because there's some big moral issue #it's just because i'm a hater at heart <3 #txt #ranting and raving

[thatswhatsushesaid]

No but why would you want for people to INFECT AO3 with meta and discourse? 😭 99% of it will be about characters that not even its creator care about, just like mxtx does with her secondary characters and villains. Characters she prefers to kill or give them a lonely and dull life as a resolution, lol...... oh, that and people over analyzing relationships and reaching so they look romantic when they clearly aren't (because romantic love is the only kind of affection). Overly ooc fanfiction already do that, it should be enough.

so it took me a hot minute to figure out what it was I did to prompt an ask like this, but I did finally remember reblogging something recently where I included some tag commentary wistfully lamenting a meta library. I think I made some throw-away comment about using AO3 for that purpose, but I also said that I understood why the archive isn't used that way, so. calm down, anon lmfao

anyway, the reason I would like to see a repository for fandom meta (which is not the same as wanting another social media space for people to engage in more circular and/or bad faith arguments with each other) is because when we block people we don't agree with here on tumblr, we also end up blocking those people from seeing everything we've written about our shared fandom. which is probably fine for people who don't generate a bunch of meta or engage in detailed analysis of the text (or obviously to stop someone from being abusive towards you, that goes without saying). but if your whole thing is about writing thoughtful posts grounded in the text and sharing those thoughts with other people, and engaging in dialogue with people through answering asks/reblogging each other's thoughts, then blocking someone whose opinions you don't like just prevents them from reading your thoughts and potentially changing their opinions as a result. or maybe, while you'll never agree about character interpretation A, you actually do share a lot of the same thoughts around character interpretation B and could benefit from reading more of each other's opinions on that subject--but you'll never know, because you've got each other blocked.

and since I don't think most people are going to adopt my policy around not blocking on tumblr (and I don't expect them to, just ftr), I just think it would be a refreshing compromise to have a neutral non-tumblr space where we can post our polished thoughts about the text that everyone can read, even if we personally don't want to see each other's posts in the general tags on tumblr. if it had the same metadata functionality as AO3 (e.g., being able to sort by fandom, characters, ships, etc.), being able contribute to collections, make follow-up posts within a series--I dunno, man, I just think it would be neat!!

#asks answered #salty peak sect 🧂

[cubistemoji]

on utility

The first time I saw a piece of media described as having "utility" was in the manga "Ah and Um are all she says" by Kondou Shouma, about a mangaka and editor at an eromanga magazine. in that context "utility" specifically meant "can the straight male readers of our hentai magazine jerk off to this", and I was like "lol makes sense" and continued to read it because "Ah and Um" is a brilliant masterpiece (and also like, weirdly unhorny considering the subject matter? but like it WORKS, thank you @noisytenant for the rec!)

but the second time I saw this word in reference to comics was in the editorial guidelines for a publication I'm writing a review for, which, paraphrased, said something like "we're not concerned with the utility of a comic here, whether it made you feel good or whether it improves society by existing is outside our purview because we want to look at whether or not it's a Good Comic by itself"

and this surprised me because it never occurred to me that fiction making a reader Feel Things was a utilitarian function. like it obviously is when you put it like that, but it's not something I ever thought of before. things can manipulate their audience's emotions and get strong reactions out of them without being, like, good. I remember a friend of mine once described an anime as being engineered to make the viewer cry but without any deeper purpose behind it, and found it frustrating for that reason

anyway the reason I'm writing all this up now is I see people often discuss media in utilitarian terms (like the endlessly circular discourse of whether or not X Thing is Good Representation of Y) but that's not the only way to discuss media, and that's not the only way media should be discussed. it's important to think about the formal elements something is made up of. sure this character is Relatable, but how does this character serve the narrative they exist in?

#literary criticism #media criticism #utility

[girldraki]

anyway not to problematically compare queer discourse and syscurse but god do both trans and plural medicalists have a tendency to When All You Have Is A Hammer Conviction Your Experiences Are Defined By Suffering their arguments into exhausting circular logic that exist to fulfill their own theses even when the underlying logic this produces is Generally Bad (e.g. any experience that correlates with dissociation is intrinsically traumatic, euphoria itself is secretly proof of dysphoria). there is very little to be done about this because calling attention to rhetoric errors is stupid nerd bullshit but it’s driving us increasingly up the wall

#txt

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

I also don't think we need handwringing that women in positions need to be supported//

What’s the definition of handwringing? Women in positions of power need to be supported in order to create change. Supporting women leaders who can affect powerful positive change only helps women not in position of power. Change starts with leaders who listen to those doing the work. Agree to disagree.

I don't think this is an agree to disagree situation anon - I think this is a fundamental political disagreement that really matters. I think there are

Change comes from many different historical forces - and the most relevant for those who want a better world is people recognising their common interests and organising collectively to make demands. Sometimes leaders who listen to those demands are part of the process that makes that demand concrete (although there's plenty of examples of change happening without leaders).

Let me tell you about Paula Bennett - a Māori woman who was a single mother at 17 and was on the DPB (NZ's welfare for single parents). She ended up becoming Minister of Welfare and while there she cut the allowance that had enabled her to study while she was a single mother. When other single mothers on benefits complained that they didn't have enough money to live on - she gave the press their personal details and history. After that she got a prestigious award for women who take leadership roles.

One fallacy that I find completely infuriating that seems to spread in common discourse because it's simple and seems like it makes sense - is that the idea that your subject position and your experience defines your beliefs and your actions. I hate this for many reasons (including how easy it is to refute), but the most important is that it denies people's agency. Women leaders can make life horrifically worse for other women - the choice to stand in solidarity with people who share your oppression isn't automatic - it's a choice we have to make. And often it's a choice that ends up being directly in opposition to the choices that enable you to take leadership roles.

There's another fallacy in here I think - which sees not middle ground between misogynist attacks and active support. I do think misogynist attacks on women in leadership position (even the most vile fuckwits whose graves I plan to piss on) have wider damage. And I oppose misogynist attacks against anyone. But you don't have to support people to oppose misogynist attacks against them.

Anyway - I disagree with you politically and I also think your claims are either circular (where you disqualify all the actual women leaders who actually did immeasurable harm against other women as some how not counting) or easily reutable.

#I really encourage people to take these questions very seriously #and don't pass on trite ideas that sound good #and have no connection with reality

[bigbloatedblueberry]

ACT 02 | ACCUSTOMED CONTRACTIONS WATER – A STEALTH ELEMENTARY ELEMENT OF ORLANDO’S CORPUS – FLOWINGLY ENTERS WITH SINGING TORCHED STRINGS

[singing torched steps approaching they just never stop someone, who cannot stand neither left nor right of air, shakes a musical main hand of the same to the again right side of the, from the public’s perspective, unseen part of the stage stillness follows how come? well, there cannot be real stillness anyway] LIGHT! [which one? well, of course the kind of azure that looks sometimes purple sometimes smaragd one you mean the one that feels vibrating? YES got it]

[commentator – sun // narrator – moon] A for sure not fixed new spot somewhere once near once far from AIR, still on the completely otherwise blackened stage of this meteoric parliamentary circularly spectacular kind of in between place got lighted! Color? An ivorian mixture of diverse azurenesses, the ones that although being truly and deeply blue, do sometimes pass like a kind of green redness – or other. Has the sound of forests flying freely on the perimeter. A persona stands there. Lighted yet in shadow. One cannot make out any specific facial features – the persona fashions constant motion. Well, never mind. According to one’s ears, the standing in standing persona seems ready and precisely not in need of a definition. One can say so according to the width of the personas’ fingers, always combined with the length of the all-around zigzag thrown but not landed songs. This is, after all, a well-known truth, a one, that can only itself be true in the case where an efficient troublemaker stands by a liquidly located revolutionary and an introvert expressionist weaving a passionate mind, like this not defined one, we all find ourselves today morning.

[water] In the first place, the boundaries set for us inevitably contract. [7] A linear questionary, being held by an analytical wanderer, might slip into a left-oriented clock of a supposed feeling. By doing so, against discourses that situate human cultures in pastoral fields, enclosed gardens or teeming cities, the blue humanities pose the sailor and the swimmer as representative figures, each differently threatened by and attuned to an inhospitable fluid environment. [8] An accustomed wrecker bumps into a circular missionary in between a specifically not traditional ancient dance of a designed thief against a solid seer. With a curious blend of naivety and cunning, the learned promoters of such movements always express the conviction that their claims are of an irrefutably scientific nature, while at the same time ignoring the questions raised by all such claims to scientific status, and especially the question of the justification for assigning priority to what is known or seen over what is lived. [9]

[commentator – sun // narrator – moon] Well, in that case, we can today morning also accept the fact that the question of the justification is indeed a matter of vertical perspective and, thus, urges as to further float with this spectacle. After all, the second of the 4 was just gifted to you, dear private public of this meteoric parliamentary circularly spectacular kind of in between place.