#'this is why we collaborate!'

[icryyoumercy]

i love when academics who are great in their very specific fields claim things that are so easily and simply disproven by even the most rudimentary understanding of a field that is, on the surface, completely unrelated to it

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[deiaiko]

Day 6: Promise/Hallucinate - Dialogue Only/Landscape centric

“Log 4: It took me a while to find this place. The entire area is called Hermit Valley, and it’s already pretty isolated on its own, but if you keep flying out there’s a little cliff ledge where you get the perfect view of the sunset. Isle is a bit too cloudy to get a good view of the sunrise, and in Prairie the sun is always high in the sky, so you don’t really get anything but bright blue. And most of Forest is just rain. But here the sky above the cloud layer is completely clear, and you can see the sun and…the silhouette of the meteor of the Cataclysm behind it. But I think you would’ve found this place beautiful. I know you always wanted to go out and see places like these. The ground is good for sliding, too. I’m not sure if it’s snow, exactly, but it’s something similar. I think it’d be fun if I was with you.”

[uncanny-tranny]

It's actually wild that "derivative" is used as a disparaging term for often small artists, when... almost every artist is derivative to some extent - even the most grandiose of authors, or the person who snatches the world and throws it into his canvas.

Deriving your art from the world you live in is just the name of the game. Now, it is true that you can do this seamlessly, and you can also do it in such a way that is "messy," but I find it odd that people think of deriving your art from a source is inherently negative. We all take inspiration from somewhere. We are not an island.

[leonstamatis]

also like. in general. there’s a lot of blaseball fic published in the time since s24 with <10 kudos. i bring that number up because i assume that means not many folks have seen them. it’s been pretty quiet on blao3 for a hot minute! so…

if you have any blb writers you have been fond of in your time as a fan, whether that was coronation or expansion or way back in discipline, check their ao3 profiles. chances are they’ve kept writing and there’s a lot more for you to read. the writers have never made a habit of stopping when the game does. branch out and explore the stories they’ve told, now that the sim won’t be giving us any more. and be sure to leave kudos and comment when you do!

[screambirdscreaming]

I used to like saying "gender is a social construct," but I stopped saying that because people didn't tend to react well - they thought that I was saying gender wasn't real, or didn't matter, or could be safely ignored without consequences. Which has always baffled me a bit as an interpretation, honestly, because many things are social constructs - like money, school, and the police - and they certainly have profound effects on your life whether or not you believe in them. And they sure don't go away if you ignore them.

Anyway. What I've taken to saying instead is, "gender is a cultural practice." This gives more of a sense of respect for the significance gender holds to many people. And it also opens the door to another couple layers of analysis.

Gender is cultural. It is not globally or historically homogeneous. It shifts over time, develops differently in different communities, and can be influenced by cross-cultural contact. Like many, many aspects of culture, the current status of gender is dramatically influenced by colonialism. Colonial gender norms are shaped by the hierarchical structure of imperialist society, and enforced onto colonized cultures as part of the project of imperial cultural hedgemony.

Gender is practiced. What constitutes a gender includes affects and behaviors, jobs or areas of work, skillsets, clothing, collective and individual practices of gender affiliation and affirmation. Any or all of these things, in any combination, depending on the gender, the culture, and the practitioner.

Gender encompasses shared cultural archetypes. These can include specific figures - gods and goddesses, mythic or fictional characters, etc - or they can be more abstract or general. The Wise Woman, Robin Hood, the Dyke, the Working Man, the Plucky Heroine, the Effete Gay Man, etc etc. The range of archetypes does not circumscribe a given gender, that is, they're not all there is to gender. But they provide frameworks and reference points by which people relate to gender. They may be guides for ways to inhabit or practice a gender. They may be stereotypes through which the gendered behavior of others is viewed.

Gender as a framework can be changed. Because it is created collectively, by shared acknowledgement and enforcement by members of society. Various movements have made significant shifts in how gender is structured at various times and places. The impact of these shifts has been widely variable - for example, depending on what city I'm in, even within my (fairly culturally homogeneous) home country, the way I am gendered and reacted to changes dramatically. Looping back to point one, we often speak of gender in very broad terms that obscure significant variability which exists on many scales.

Gender is structured recursively. This can be seen in the archetypes mentioned above, which range from extremely general (say, the Mother) to highly specific (the PTA Soccer Mom). Even people who claim to acknowledge only two genders will have many concepts of gendered-ways-of-being within each of them, which they may view and react to VERY differently.

Gender is experienced as an external cultural force. It cannot be opted out of, any more than living in a society can be opted out of. Regardless of the internal experience of gender, the external experience is also present. Operating within the shared cultural understanding of gender, one can aim to express a certain practice of gender - to make legible to other people how it is you interface with gender. This is always somewhat of a two-way process of communication. Other people may or may not perceive what you're going for - and they may or may not respect it. They may try to bring your expressed gender into alignment with a gender they know, or they might parcel you off into your own little box.

Gender is normative. Within the structure of the "cultural mainstream," there are allowable ways to practice gender. Any gendered behavior is considered relative to these standards. What behavior is allowed, rewarded, punished, or shunned is determined relative to what is gender normative for your perceived gender. Failure to have a clearly perceivable gender is also, generally, punished. So is having a perceivable gender which is in itself not normative.

Gender is taught by a combination of narratives, punishments, and encouragements. This teaching process is directed most strongly towards children but continues throughout adulthood. Practice of normatively-gendered behaviors and alignment with 'appropriate' archetypes is affirmed, encouraged, and rewarded. Likewise 'other'- gendered behavior and affinity to archetypes is scolded, punished, or shunned. This teaching process is inherently coercive, as social acceptance/rejection is a powerful force. However it can't be likened to programming, everyone experiences and reacts to it differently. Also, this process teaches the cultural roles and practices of both (normative) genders, even as it attempts to force conformity to only one.

Gender regulates access to certain levers of social power. This one is complicated by the fact that access to levers of social power is also affected by *many* other things, most notably race, class, and citizenship. I am not going to attempt to describe this in any general terms, I'm not equipped for that. I'll give a few examples to explain what I'm talking about though. (1) In a social situation, a man is able to imply authority, which is implicitly backed by his ability to intimidate by yelling, looming, or threatening physical violence. How much authority he is perceived to have in response to this display is a function of his race and class. It is also modified by how strongly he appears to conform to a masculine ideal. Whether or not he will receive social backlash for this behavior (as a separate consideration to how effective it will be) is again a function of race/class/other forms of social standing. (2) In a social situation, a woman is able to invoke moral judgment, and attempt to modify the behavior of others by shame. The strength of her perceived moral authority depends not just on her conformity to ideal womanhood, but especially on if she can invoke certain archetypes - such as an Innocent, a Mother, or better yet a Grandmother. Whether her moral authority is considered a relevant consideration to influence the behavior of others (vs whether she will be belittled or ignored) strongly depends on her relative social standing to those she is addressing, on basis of gender/race/class/other.

[Again, these examples are *not* meant to be exhaustive, nor to pass judgment on employing any social power in any situation. Only to illustrate what "gendered access to social power" might mean. And to illustrate that types of power are not uniform and may play out according to complex factors.]

Gender is not based in physical traits, but physical traits are ascribed gendered value. Earlier, I described gender as practiced, citing almost entirely things a person can do or change. And I firmly believe this is the core of gender as it exists culturally - and not just aspirationally. After the moment when a gender is "assigned" based on infant physical characteristics, they are raised into that gender regardless of the physical traits they go on to develop (in most circumstances, and unless/until they denounce that gender.) The range of physical traits like height, facial shape, body hair, ability to put on muscle mass - is distributed so that there is complete overlap between the range of possible traits for people assigned male and people assigned female. Much is made of slight trends in things that are "more common" for one binary sex or the other, but it's statistically quite minor once you get over selection bias. However, these traits are ascribed gendered connotations, often extremely strongly so. As such, the experience of presented and perceived gender is strongly effected by physical traits. The practice of gender therefore naturally expands to include modification of physical traits. Meanwhile, the social movements to change how gender is constructed can include pushing to decrease or change the gendered association of physical traits - although this does not seem to consistently be a priority.

Gender roles are related to the hypothetical ability to bear children, but more obliquely than is often claimed. It is popular to say that the types of work considered feminine derive from things it is possible to do while pregnant or tending small children. However, research on the broader span of human history does not hold this up. It may be true of the cultures that gave immediate rise to the colonial gender roles we are familiar with - secondary to the fact that childcare was designated as women's work. (Which it does not have to be, even a nursing infant doesn't need to be with the person who feeds it 24 hours a day.) More directly, gender roles have been influenced by structures of social control aiming for reproductive control. In the direct precursors of colonial society, attempts to track paternal lineage led to extreme degrees of social control over women, which we still see reflected in normative gender today. Many struggles for women's liberation have attempted to push back these forms of social control. It is my firm opinion that any attempt to re-emphasize childbearing as a touchstone of womanhood is frankly sick. We are at a time where solidarity in struggle for gender liberation, and for reproductive rights, is crucial. We need to cast off shackles of control in both fights. Trying to tie childbearing back to womanhood hobbles both fights and demeans us all.

Gender is baked deeply enough into our culture that it is unlikely to ever go away. Many people feel strongly about the practice of gender, in one way or another, and would not want it to. However we have the power to change how gender is structured and enforced. We can push open the doors of what is allowable, and reduce the pain of social punishment and isolation. We can dismantle another of the tools of colonial hedgemony and social control. We can change the culture!

[thaumazomai]

happy new years eve! here is a snufkin

[sandcobangevent]

Will there be a discord server, for everyone taking part?

I personally won't be setting one up. The event already has space on each of the four Discord servers for Sherlock & Co that I know of:

Plus while I'm not going to stop you from sharing amongst yourselves, the idea is you and your partner work in secret without revealing what you're doing to the other participants. Then you submit and at the end everyone's works get revealed together!

Everyone will be working off the same prompt and it'll be interesting to see what everyone comes up with separate from each other!

[tetrix-anime]

Naze Boku no Sekai wo Daremo Oboeteinai no ka? (Why Does Nobody Remember Me in This World?) x Kimi to Boku no Saigo no Senjou, Aruiwa Sekai ga Hajimaru Seisen (Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World) x Kami wa Game ni Ueteiru. (Gods' Game We Play) Heroine Crossover Collaboration Visual

[discoknack]

I can imagine Soshiro going to pat Skully's head for some reason or another.

I also think Skully would greet their usual babysitter (besides their Mama, Kafka) as "Oki", short for Okonogi. I feel like I've heard that before.

And it might be cute if Soshiro at some point began to spot Captain Ashiro near a certain region of the base a little more often. Just enough to notice, but not enough to be suspicious.

One day he enters the surveillance room and Skully is humming and wiggling in their seat, doodling on some paper at their Oki's desk. Okonogi Konomi is supervising as usual: Her hands are clasped and her neck is craned to get a better look at the drawing, but she's otherwise just smiling and letting Skully do their thing.

She points at the paper and asks Skully a question. Okonogi always interacts with Skully in a sweet way. Aside from her initial fright at a Yoju up-close, Soshiro figures her scientific curiosity was piqued, and it's only natural for a human to treat a baby nicely. And Skully is such a sweetie, even as creepy a baby as they are. This time, though, Okonogi practically sings the question.

Skully's reply is short, so after, Soshiro casually asks, "Something good happen, Okonogi-chan?"

Skully reacts to Soshiro's presence, yipping "Papa!" and zipping out of the chair to run at him, page and crayon in hand. Meanwhile, Okonogi addresses him as Vice-Captain.

When Skully reaches Soshiro, Okonogi murmurs, as if keeping a secret, "I just saw something cute today."

Soshiro crouches to pat Skully's head, saying "Ah, little Kaiju~ You get bigger every day! What are we going to do with you?" which is, of course, an exaggeration.

Skully lifts themself on their toes to happily meet his hand in the greeting. But then Soshiro makes a slight face and rubs his fingers together. Something sticky or oily? He inspects his hand and notes a sweet smell, and the substance is clear and shiny.

He holds out his hand in front of Skully's face, curious. "What's this?"

Skully sniffs it, then happily hums in response to the scent. They look down at their paper with a kind of smile, their body wiggling, especially the tail, and something about their demeanor suggests they're blushing right through their face-plates. They croon a little when they say, "Pretty Ma-" but they stop, suddenly bewildered. "Ma?"

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT! Any thoughts on GRRM's (now deleted 👀) blog post about HOTD? Both in terms of content and authorial conduct?

My first reaction was some combination of sympathy and cringe. I can see where his frustrations would arise — especially if he's correct that Ryan Condal intended Helaena to kill herself "for no reason," although I doubt that's the whole story (most of the coming seasons haven't been written yet). GRRM was burned badly by the ending of GOT, which is why he's harping so much on the (to be honest, pretty minor) removal of a child who really has no role in the source material except to be the sacrificial lamb prompting Helaena's suicide. He can repeat the words "butterfly effect" until he's blue in the face, but that still won't actually make Maelor into a major character, and it still won't explain why changing Helaena's arc is necessarily a bad thing for the story the show's telling. Helaena in the books is a very happy person whose death by suicide would be uncharacteristic unless prompted by a slew of gruesome personal tragedies. Helaena in the show is much more melancholy and withdrawn, and the audience doesn't need to see (another) one of her children brutally slaughtered in order to believe that she might pull a Tommen, especially since we don't know what the HOTD team are actually planning for her. Getting pissy about cutting Maelor is like finding out someone's replaced all the furniture in your living room — while you watched — and complaining that the upholstery's the wrong color. My brother in Christ, it's a different chair.

Apart from that, I recently saw one blogger argue persuasively that the choice to eliminate Maelor was not just efficient, but a defensible and deliberate creative decision: whether George realizes it or not, removing Maelor puts Aegon in the same situation his father Viserys was before his marriage to Alicent, where his only choices of heir are his daughter (Rhaenyra/Jahaera) or his brother (Daemon/Aemond), the latter of whom has recently proved himself an untrustworthy and outright dangerous candidate (the King of the Stepstones arc in Daemon's case, and the assassination attempt from Aemond). This traps Aegon, because the only laws supporting him as king require that he pass over Jahaera and place his regicidal brother — who has already tried to kill him once, probably having realized this fact — directly in the line of succession. And I'm pretty sure the show is intentionally going for this, because they make a point of telling us that Aegon can't have more children, so unlike Viserys, he can't get out of this by having more sons. Is this necessarily more compelling than the Maelor/Helaena guilt storyline? No, but we don't know if that storyline would have been compelling either. The success or failure of a narrative decision is almost totally in the execution, and HOTD is, crucially, not finished executing yet.

Siloing the question of the post's merits, it's also incredibly unprofessional for one of the most successful authors in history to start publicly beating up on a writer's room that he's supposedly collaborating with. Like, frankly, I don't care what Ryan Condal said. I don't care if he said he was going to kill off half the cast in S3E1 and turn the show into an isekai about his self-insert avatar falling in love with Rhaenyra. You work that shit out in the writer's room, or, if need be, the negotiating table, and not by dumping on the guy's creative decisions on a platform where the core of the show's fanbase hangs on your every word (most of them in the hope that you've announced the completion of the book you're supposed to be writing). It's catty, it's spiteful, and, judging by the content of the post itself, grossly disproportionate to the scale of the creative conflict at play. If I were an industry creative, I would have serious reservations about working with Martin after this, and the level of poor behavior on display should be evident by the fact that any author whose IP wasn't making HBO a bajillion zillion dollars would have been rightfully shitcanned for doing something like this.

If I sound angry at him, I'm not; I think he's just an old guy who's been told by lots of people that he's good enough to be above the rules, and he's consequently forgotten some of the industry etiquette. I'm also, frankly, a little contemptuous, mostly because most creatives I know would give all the fingers of their writing-hand to have the opportunities that George does, and would conduct themselves with significantly more grace and generosity for their collaborators even if they did disagree on adaptational differences.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

you absolutely already know this, but i adore your work. i think it's hard to avoid the pressure of being surrounded by people we might consider "true artists," but the fact is that, frankly, everyone who makes art is an artist.

before this year, i hadn't drawn a complete piece in nearly three years. the line work i did produce felt abysmal and i was tempted to give up. then, i saw your comic and i thought, "wow, that's really cute, and it looks like a fun style to emulate."

i drew you, pondering me, eating grass. and it WAS fun. i forgot how fun it could be. i can draw lesbian horses, or pony!WWX throwing a chicken, or me eating grass. i can even make shitty memes! and all of it, no matter how good or how bad, is fun again.

you bring a lot of fun to people here. that's something equally as important as people who cultivate fancy line work or expert level digital painting. i'm sure that's something you know, but i hope it never hurts to hear it.

happy first season, friend! i can't wait to see the rest.

As a chronic perfectionist, it's been a long journey for me to accept that 'done is better than nothing' and that the worst critical voice is my own. Sure there's people who've gone to professional art schools, and those with a more than a decade of experience on me, but honestly? Would I tell a child their sonic drawing isn't art? Just because they have no 'experience' or 'technique'? Absolutely not. So I'm no longer saying my efforts should not count as art.

At the end of the day, art is what we choose to make it. We have the power to create whatever we want. And we are going to use it to have fun! We never lost the love and fun for creation we all had as children, we just told ourselves it wasn't enough. But it really is B*)

[mad-hunts]

this is a very specific scenario, i know, but barton trauma-bonding with a hero and vice versa because they got stuck in the middle of the desert together due to the fact that they were both simultaneously betrayed / LEFT TO DIE there, but they managed to survive after they spent some time vehemently refusing to help each other in the beginning. though, they soon began to help each other (albeit reluctantly) because they realized that would be the ONLY way that they would survive this. and barton tries to kickstart their bastardization arc™ by telling the hero to kill the people who dumped them there. and this is because, in his mind, they don't deserve to live. then barton goes on to tell them that he's planning on killing the person who betrayed him so it's fineee if the hero does it,, because he ain't a snitch + won't tell anyone they killed anyone (,: now whether or not the hero actually starts their bastardization arc is up to them, of course, but if anyone is interested in a plot like this... HMU because i think this would be such an interesting dynamic to roleplay 👀

[dashiellqvverty]

MAE MARTIN??? noooooo

[ofekma]

"how can you be an animorphs fan and support Israel?"

I don't know, how CAN I be the fan of a book series talking about kids being forced to grow up too fast due to being a part of a war that has been going on for longer than they're alive, trying to defend their home against an invading force?

Seeing how this situation affects their mental state, world view and relationships with each other? Not being able to fully trust anyone else because they can turn out to secretly wish for your demise?

How can I be the fan of a series that mirrors the way I grew up, of feeling scared and lost and small but knowing that you have to keep going because there's no other way?

Knowing that the other side has people who are like you, who never really wanted to hurt anyone but are being forced to fight too, who were brainwashed from birth to not see people like you as people?

Knowing that innocents die in war, that cruel, messed up, unjust things happen in wars but not seeing another way forward?

Wanting to save your loved ones who are now being kept hostages?

YEAH I HAVE NO IDEA WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD I, AN ISRAELI PERSON, BE AN ANIMORPHS FAN?

[lizord-lord]

Being a fandom hater is one of the worst things you can do to your brain. I’m swearing off of rage.

Even if you don’t post about the things you dislike, the ships or characters or fanon trends, even if you just complain about them with your friends it HURTS YOU. Because one day you’ll be on the other end of it. You’ll like a fanon trend, you’ll see a post hating on your ship, and if you’ve trained yourself to see people who interpret characters in ways that you don’t or ship characters you can’t see together as wrong or stupid or lesser, now YOU’RE at the business end of your own sword. Worse, if your friends act the same way. You might start thinking they’d stop talking to you if they knew, like enjoying something that isn’t “approved” by the circle of peers is a sin that you will be cast out for committing.

And even if you don’t feel that way, who’s to say your friends don’t? Who’s to say there aren’t people in your circle ashamed of the things they like because they fear YOU won’t think they’re complex enough, or they stray too far from canon?

We all have the things we dislike. But it helps NO ONE to dwell on that negativity. If you see a lot of content for a ship you don’t like? Make content for a ship you DO! Instead of trying to balance the scales by taking away, balance them by CREATING, and don’t tear other people down to bring yourself up.

And that’s not even touching on the fact that people can like multiple headcanons. Multiple interpretations of a character, multiple ships, have multiple theories before even getting into people who write AUs! AUs that exist for the purpose of exploring alternate character dynamics, interpretations, and possibilities! People can like both complicated takes and simple ones! Things supported by canon and things they just play with for fun! Because that’s what fandom is for. FUN.

I won’t shame people for having fun anymore. Not even in the privacy of my own mind, because it’s just setting up landmines for me and the people I care about to step on later. To every person who enjoys fanon and popular interpretations and ships things with no canon basis YOU ARE SO BRAVE. You are having fun. You are not doing anything “wrong.”

There is no situation in which you liking a headcanon, a theory, or a character is hurting another real life human being. There are MANY situations in which expressing how much you DISLIKE a headcanon, theory, or character, DOES hurt other real life human beings. If you want to change your fandom, do so from a place of love for your favorite characters, excitement over your favorite tropes, joy over your favorite interpretations. The second you start being destructive instead of constructive, you have begun to weaken this collaborative space.

We are all playing with toys. The only wrong way to play with toys is to yank them out of other people’s hands.