Thorns

Because it's relevant to another conversation, and also something I find interesting in it's own right.

Note: This is largely about cis female characters being read as cis male characters in fictional settings where everyone is assumed to be both cis and binary gendered. I think a lot of the ways this issue is discussed erase or belittle trans people (eg I am not a fan of the phrase "man in a dress"), and I hope I haven't done that, I have used "genderswap" a few times because in these settings there are only two genders.

So. I would never describe a female identified person as "effectively male". There are very limited circumstances in which I might describe a female fictional character that way, and none come to mind. And I have seen way too many examples of fans of all genders dismissing female characters for either being "too much like men" or "too much the kind of character men like" (feminine, sexy etc), and in a way which implicitely erases the existence of real life women with similar traits, or at the very least is hurtful to female fans who identify with that female character. For this reason, the phrase "effectively male" or statements like it rub me the wrong way.

But there are many times when I would say about a female character that "they are equivalent to a male character in X respect" or "I felt about them the way I would feel about a male character doing those things", and I know that's all a lot of other people mean when they say a female character is "effectively male".
( Read more... )

Accidentally posted this over at alias_sqbr, after Chrome logged me out and then relogged me back into the wrong account. THANKS CHROME.

I'm not sure if I've talked about this before but: every time I encounter Magical Healing/Health machines in speculative fiction (eg the sarcophagi in Stargate, the med bay in Star Trek, the machine that turned Steve into Captain America) I think about how they decide what counts as an illness/injury, and how they decide what Ideal Healthy State to go for. The line between "sick" and "healthy" is to some extent socially mandated and arbitrary, and an optimally "healthy" human population requires variation amongst the individuals. To maximise everything is impossible. You have to make choices.
( Read more... )

Recently it's felt like I've totally lost the ability to express disagreement with people I like without utterly ruining that relationship. Part of that is to do with various things going on with my personal life/brain chemistry but I'm wondering how much of it is that a lot of these conversations have moved to tumblr.

Like...in my experience the best arguments happen when you can be open and understanding and try and see the other person's pov, engage with what they're actually saying instead of what you THINK they're saying, and not get all defensive and antagonistic.

But I'm too wordy for asks or replies (and those often get replied to publically anyway) and when I post a reblog I feel very aware that I am engaging not just with that person but with everyone who reads me, everyone following the post, and all of their followers (if they reblog my reply). And that awareness makes it SUPER HARD to be all the things I said in the paragraph above. Even if I trust that person to engage with me in an open and productive way, I don't trust all those other people, and so I put my guard up.

Does anyone else have this problem? And if so how do you deal with it?

Emailing them privately is an option when I have their email address, but it makes everything seem SUPER SERIOUS which puts me off. There's also writing out my argument in a text editor and dividing it up into as many asks as neccesary, I again feel weird about it but maybe it's a better approach. I like that reblogs can feel more like a casual discussion instead of a super serious "taking aside to express private disagreement" but it so easily goes from casual discussion to huge visible argument it seems not to be worth the risk for fraught topics.

"Don't argue with people on tumblr" is not a helpful aproach for me, I have recently tried arguing less but there are some opinions I find too upsetting to let slide and in my experience these unspoken arguments have a tendency to bubble up and explode if you ignore them. "Don't follow people with opinions you want to argue with" would mean cutting out a lot of people I mostly really like. And an echo chamber of people who all entirely agree with me is not entirely appealing. I really like being able to have productive discussions with people with different povs, and I know I used to be better at it.

Thinking about, I have taken the "just don't argue with people and unfollow anyone who makes that unbearable" approach to twitter, because expressing myself in 140 characters is just impossible. But I follow a very different group of people there, and barely post at all.

EDIT: Some interesting responses on tumblr...which of course I can't easily link to because tumblr but at worst you'll have to scroll down a little through that tag.

(going to post this on tumblr too, god help me, but point out that this post exists as a space for conversation for those who prefer it)

Playing Date Warp, a little indie scifi visual novel/dating sim that was on special recently. It's overall been more fun than I was expecting, even if the science makes NO SENSE and the art is middling to awful.

The first LI I tried is basically a human version of Cole from Dragon Age Inquisition: a younger innocent blonde dude who defines himself entirely by wanting to help others. I was worried when the PC said "But he's younger and prettier than me, is that weird?" but in the end it was a sweet little romance. (nb I would not have dated the ACTUAL Cole. ...I think)

The second was a slightly sleazy poly bisexual mad scientist who's a sweetie deep down. You flirt and talk a lot about science and then he asks if you want to have meaningless sex.
( Spoilers for what happens next )

One review praises the way it uses "she" as the universal pronoun then goes on to describe everyone as a "he".

Another is a list of squeeful things, including both the anti colonialist message and the fact that everyone drinks tea (except servants and anyone else the colonisers/upper class want to make feel like dirt, of course, but they don't count)

*closes the Ancillary Justice tag*

(I reviewed it on my other blog. Overall I quite liked it!)

If my (flawed and shallow) understanding of the history of novels (specifically scifi and YA), comics, and films is any guide, in 20 years:

Video games will be taken more seriously as an art.
There will be room in the marketplace for lots of healthy subgenres appealing to people from all walks of life.
There will still be heaps of cheesy AAA shooters because people like that sort of thing, but there'll also be cross pollination between genres to the betterment of all.
There will specifically be a thriving Indie Game subculture, Indie Game Makers who are taken seriously in mainstream culture and can make a comfortable living etc.
People will remember Gamergate, if they do at all, as a bunch of regressive moustache twirling Luddites who were too hidebound to accept progress and True Art etc.

And the heroes of this new movement, and of the history as people remember it, will be white dudes. They'll make a movie starring John Scalzi as the Brave Male Feminist and Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkesian as the thankful oppressed victims. Brianna Wu will have a cameo played by Dakota Fanning.
There'll be Best MOGAI Games Of 2034 Humble Bundle or whatever, but the Indie Game Artform will for the most part still be a bunch of stories about grizzled white dudes, just...artistically written ones. Maybe some tragic lesbians every now and then, and the Great Classics as taught will include a careful tokenistic sprinkling of games about and by POC, disabled people etc.

Genres outside the Indie Game Artform will be looked down on as Not Real Art, and this condescension will as it happens fall most severely on any genres which just happen to be more popular with women (AAA action games will alosbe dismissed, and middle aged gamergaters will mutter about how they warned everyone this was going to happen and how AAA action games these days lack the masculine energy of the old days. Female fans of AAA action games will mutter someting quite different). Dating sims, for example, will continue to be as looked down on as romance novels.
Independent games which care more about representing neglected POVs and being entertaining than hitting the current Art buttons will be vaguely respected but not paid much attention.

And we'll all keep making and playing the games we like regardless.

(I do actually consider this to be a mostly much better situation than what we have now. But I had a Vision Of The Future and felt like sharing it. Also, yeah, massive generalisations etc, I hope my basic point comes across)

So I've been hoping someone with a decent understanding of history (and specifically early 20th century Asian history) would make this post for me, but noone has, so I'm going to do my best and apologise up front for my shallow understanding of history.

Anyway: A subtext which bugged me about Avatar: The Last Airbender which has just gotten worse in The Legend of Korra is the idea that there Rightful Heirs to Power, False Heirs, and Common People. It is Heirs who become world leaders and world changers, on behalf of the Common People who deserve love and compassion but who are cheerleaders at best and a mindless mob working for the False Heirs at worst. Anyone who is born Common and tries to become Important is doomed to become a False Heir. Children of False Heirs can become True Heirs.

( Major Spoilers )

Man I'm still never entirely sure what I think about ffa (fail_fandomanon) I've been thinking about it recently after a friend of mine had to leave because the incredibly nasty things people say there about a group she's in were bringing her down. I wish there was somewhere I could go for active fannish conversations that was less likely to randomly dissolve into intense ableism/transphobia/whatever and that didn't assume anyone there was, by definition, "anti-sj". (I mean I am against "sjw"s by the definition of "bully or abuser who uses social justice terminology". Because I'm against all bullies and abusers! But there are plenty of people there who are against any serious attempt at social change, and/or whose definition of sjw includes me and many of my friends)

It took me a long time to learn to recognise the difference between trolls who don't represent the average views at all and more mainstream opinions. It's not fair to hold up the worst of the group as representative of the whole, and there's a pretty wide range of opinions even once you exclude the outliers. But (a)Knowing someone's a troll doesn't always remove the sting of what they've said and (b)The mainstream opinions can still be pretty awful. And that's just on abstract topics, once they start talking about individual fans it can get nasty, hypocritical and just WRONG (the reactions to my own meta haven't been too meansprited, but they tended to miss the point or focus on trivialities. Which admitedly can in part be blamed on my own lack of clarity)

Urg, I'm tired, I'm not expressing this very well. Guess I'm not up to much beyond reading ffa and feeling weird about it :/

Let's see if I can remember what I wanted to say for any of them...

Jennifer Lawrence And The History Of Cool Girls. I had some further thoughts on tumblr (which I'd been pondering turning into a post here but tumblr got to me first) This ffa discussion of what people consider a feminist character touches on related points.

I've been thinking a lot about the moral obligations of adults towards the teenagers we encounter online, especially now I'm on tumblr which is FULL of teenagers. I deliberately seek out friends around my age and still have heaps of teen followers, some of them mutual because we genuinely have stuff in common.
How we were fooled into thinking sexual predators lurk everywhere argues that we need to look out and care for vulnerable teens more than worry about malicious adults (though that's important too) Here's a discussion on ffa of the issues around teens and adults and porn, something I don't have to worry about as much personally since everything I create tends to be at most PG rated anyway but still find disquieting, mostly when I encounter the porn my teen friends are into (I don't object to them being into it I JUST DON'T WANT TO KNOW). But that particular aspect aside I feel like...I have a responsibility to be a NON creepy adult rather than just avoiding younger people, or the only adults teenagers will meet are the creepy ones (and not just sexually creepy, they can take advantage emotionally or monetarily too)

Meditation Nation On the intense emotional upheaval meditiation can cause, and the difference between doing it for personal gain and religious insight.

Curbing Online Abuse Isn’t Impossible. Here’s Where We Start About constructing social networks that encourage good social norms.

The difference between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange

Inspiration Disinformation on the artists vs haters dichotomy.

Why Are Doctors Skeptical & Unhelpful about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

Why I no longer engage the “Are aces queer?” question The important thing is respect and inclusion in general, eg if people who didn't see aces as queer didn't THEN divide the world into "straight vs queer" instead of "straight, queer, or asexual" there'd be much less of a problem.

The People vs the Political Class The gap between politics and what the people (of Australia, and in general) actually want.