#((and i'm not Better Than Them for having relatively normative identities))

[toskarin]

sorry to ask, but can you explain your last post to someone who knows nothing about the musician community youre talking about... it sounds like a really really good post if i just understood it better

this is another one of those posts where I'm transcribing a stream of consciousness, so I'll throw in a courtesy readmore

the musician community, as a whole, is much more segmented than the visual artist community

this leads to good and bad things, but generally it allows for more awareness of one's position and an acknowledgement that the needs of an underground folk artist are going to be different than the needs of a composer who receives a name credit. this means there is always going to be heavy pushback when someone tries to impose ethics downward

one element of this is the inward acknowledgement that the monolithic musician community isn't actually real in a way that isn't really mirrored in the visual artist community. besides making music and navigating the financial (and legal) landscape of that, there is very little that intrinsically unites musicians

this acknowledgement allows discussions about concerns among poorer musicians to exist without being completely shut down by someone who has different concerns, because they're not seen as the subject of the discussion unless they are respectfully contributing to it

one big reason for this being possible is that musicians are less respected than visual artists in the professional world

that might sound absurd if you only know of one landscape, but think of how many game (and movie, and tv, and etc. etc. etc.) franchises with identity-defining composers go on to swap out the composer at the first sign of a labour dispute, to very little protest as long as the quality of music isn't seen as dropping

hell, if someone else can copy your style satisfactorily, there's often no fuss at all! this leads to a pretty violent disillusionment with your place in the creative world

even beyond that, there exists an entire industry based around creating a parasitic body of IP landlordism for anyone whose music isn't attached to another product. the musician is, in a way that is deeply and thoroughly beaten into them, a labourer

the visual artist community (until recently) didn't tend to have this disillusionment, so it often follows the sway of its most popular and established members

in fact, the modern visual artist community as a broad cultural body is carved almost entirely from social media discussions that treat the community as one entity. accordingly, becoming established basically requires participation in this online entity

to further poison the well, the position of a visual artist is regularly talked about in spiritual terms rather than labour terms. there is something special that makes you a visual artist. it's the exact mentality that people rightfully made fun of in those ordinary people vs creative people comics. it's the unspoken cultural assumption that natural talent exists, even if most people would deny believing in it if put into explicit terms

while this does feel very good, it means that acknowledging labour-originated conflicts of interest is a bit rude

when a community unites itself around a spiritual core, it can't properly assert "your experiences are not applicable to what is being discussed and you should not be imposing yourself" because, by all metrics, an artist is a fundamentally unique demographic that can speak in all conversations about art

it's a warped form of anti-gatekeeping, a one-way gate through which you can strike down at other poor artists, but not up, enforced from below and framed as a desire for openness

the visual artist community's relative homogenisation of popular consensus is, on the whole, very very very bad for what it does to its norms. it hashes out and legislates within itself with an unspoken assumption that its most prolific members are simply further along the artist lifecycle, and therefore the most trustworthy

discussions with direct parallels ("is it okay to be obviously influenced by someone else's style?") come to much hazier conclusions which lean towards the opinions held by people with the most followers

most egregiously, this manifested in how visual artists react to piracy

the past ten years (in large part because of patreon making viable the paywalling of material behind a regular subscription) have been consumed by arguments about piracy that all seem to terminate in the assumption that piracy is theft, with little stratification of opinion between the hobbyist and professional scenes on this matter

this assumed spiritual core of the community is felt strongly in every conversation. look at the difference in attitudes around the distribution of cracked VSTs and the distribution of brush packs. hell, even on the corporate level, look at the difference in attitudes around pirating DAWs vs visual art programs

even when people are implying an approval of piracy, they find ways to frame it from a position of revenge on a company for something wrong it did, because they still need to conform to the community understanding of piracy as theft

individual visual artists can be (and often are!) more conscious of this stuff, but even then, people react with shock when these visual artists aren't horribly concerned about the possibility of their paywalled work existing on a torrent site

in a word, if you can see the ways these conversation spaces are different and similar, it's all so exhausting

[arowitharrows]

hello again, recent anon here! first of all, i wanted to thank you for your wonderful response. i did read the article you linked to, and i must say that i was certainly ignorant of the very serious ways, pertaining to medical/health care, that people are affected by hostility (and ignorance) towards asexuality. i would also like to put forth some context for my outlook on things, just in that i was raised in what i've been told was an unusual and very sheltered environment, so while as i've grown older there are some things i've realized on my own that i may see as the norm that many do not, and it's actually my own mistake. i am a bit surprised that i had never some across this information online before, but i suppose i may have overly cultivated my online experience to be rather narrow, so upon reading your response, i realized that this might be one of those things where i just hadn't come to the realization on my own, and I decided to discuss it with a much more worldly cousin of mine who i am close to, for a better perspective, and she told me that what you said is generally true, and that a majority of people really do just experience sexual and romantic attraction like, from the get go. it was a bit embarrassing to realize that, but it's probably for the better. while that certainly was not my main take away from reading what you said, i sort of feel like my bubble has been burst. like i was really naive about that sort of thing. since i'm hiding behind anon, i will say that i'm almost 24 and it's really surreal to learn, like what else do i not know? that's apparently common knowledge? at times like these i recall that my father always said, "a wise man knows that he knows not", and i feel a poignant sense of failure to keep that with me as he would have tried to impart. your point about the time and effort put into books/movies/etc with those sort of themes makes alot of sense that i never even considered. my thoughts on the matter only ever went as far as "well they do that to sell more things, but only certain types of people would buy that anyways". i see that my view on all this has been severely limited. I really appreciated your anecdotes about your own life experience, and the different perspective they contained. in my life, few people openly spoke of sexual matters, and certainly not at length, but i can definitely see how being in an environment of your peers that did could lead you to feel how you described. i've been a total dunce here, like this is a part of an overarching "different people have different lives" common sense sort of thing that's gone way over my head in a really messed up way. the only people i've spoken to at any great length in many years are my relatives, so my understanding of community in a general sense may be a bit warped there. besides, all that, i would also like to say that i had not even previously thought about the ways that considering any ace identity to be a reaction of any sort could overlap with rad fem politics, another great oversight on my part. it is obvious now that ignoring these issues and pushing them out of my mind when i hear about them is not a correct course of action. i wonder how much of this train-of-thought rant would be an issue if i had delved deeper into other people's lived experiences pertaining to these matters when i first learned they existed. i will 100% be taking your advice on listening to more people about this all, and plan to read more about it immediately. i'm sure, based off even just this one interaction, that i have much more to understand about these things than i ever could have guessed i didn't know. I may even seek out some videos on the subject online as well. (as a small note too, i would like to say to the singular commenter on the post that while i'm doubtful any such label could apply to myself, your suggestion is certainly something i will take under consideration.) So for now, i thank you again for your gracious and eloquent reply. I have found it to be quite enlightening, and I bid you a great new year!

Well I am glad I could help a bit! The context of your upbringing makes sense and I'm certain you aren't the first or only person to go through such a "bubble bursting" process, it's a part of life and of opening yourself up to new perspectives. Also don't worry too much about the radfem train of thought thing, it is not a well known or discussed topic and I would not expect many people to be aware of it. I did not believe that that's where you were coming from, it just felt important to mention in that context.

I also wish you all the best in the new year, and thanks for listening and reaching out to learn more about the topic!

[memwazz]

SEVEN - Aloïs Marshall

- ROLE

Aloïs is the head of the 7th Division and a superhero himself. He's the secret identity of The Clockworker, as well as Ezra Marshall's twin brother.

As a leader, he plans the missions and gives most of the orders. He's responsible of the team cohesion and leads the group reunions.

- APPEARANCE

Species : surhuman

Age : 37

Height : 180 cm

COSTUME

Aloïs (right) in The Clockworker's costume with Ezra (left) as Queen Elizabeth.

Civilian Aloïs VS Superhero Aloïs

- ILLUSTRATIONS, COMICS, SHITPOST

- Illustrations :

Finish Line - Pockets - Bell Tower - Marshall Cats - Teenagers - Bodies - Sequin Dress - Clock Child - Friends - Pardon -

- Comics :

Broken - I'm Gay - Fine, Thanks ! -

- Shitpost :

Disney Princess Meme - Trauma Dump - Each Other's... - Bigots - Spoon - Mistake - Spectrum - Attractive -

- ABILITIES

Aloïs' super power makes him able to create portals to teleport on short distances. He can either move his whole body, specific parts of it, small objects or other people.

The maximal distance one of his portals reached was 1km, but it caused his body some damage.

Aside from his surhuman ability, Aloïs is a good fighter with a complete military training. He's however psychologically unable to use a gun because of a traumatic event.

- PERSONALITY

Aloïs usually appears at first as arrogant, authoritative and disagreeable. Being on the autism spectrum, he struggles with the social norm and emotions : he doesn't always understand how he feels and doesn't know how to express it properly. Most of the time, he will be quite unexpressive and distant.

As he can't understand how people work or think, he is terrible at showing empathy and support, even to his loved ones. The only thing he's worse at than feelings are jokes : Al doesn't have any sense of humor and doesn't even understand how it works, especially if it's second degree.

He's an organized person who always think calmly before acting, making him an efficient leader and fighter. Aloïs always makes sure to stay in control of the situation, else he quickly gets stressed. He hates being contradicted or "disobeyed" and will try to convince people to go his way even if it implies conflict or emotional harm. One of biggest flaw is telling everything going through his mind, hurting people and not understanding why it'd have been better to lie.

Just like during missions, Aloïs loves order in his personal life. He suffers from serious OCDs and is an hygiene freak. His house is always clean and every room is well organized. He likes to align and sort everything; changing his habits upsets him badly.

Because of his control obsession and his responsibilities as a leader, Aloïs is under constant pressure. He has untreated anxiety and always feel guilty when things go out of hand, thinking it's his fault if a mission fails or if anyone gets hurt.

Even if it doesn't show, Al cares about his teammates and relatives a lot. He never hesitates to put his life at risk to help or take care of them, and sometimes shows through acts the benevolence he doesn't manage to express with words.

His major qualities are his honesty, loyalty and integrity. Aloïs is unusually obsessed with law and morals : he tries to play by the rules even when his actions as a superhero are illegal, and would never hurt anyone willingly, even an enemy or a criminal. He thinks everybody deserves a second chance and that this world can be saved.

Aloïs is also known for his strong special interest on clocks. He's obsessed with and has an infinite knowledge on clocks and watchmaking, either in theory or practice. He himself crafts his own clocks (especially when he feels stressed and needs to lock himself in his room) and is quite skilled at it. His creations decorate the Division's headquarters and his bedroom; he's nonetheless very exigent and perfectionist and often thinks what he crafts is trash.

- BACKSTORY

Aloïs is the son of two NASA engineers and grew up with his twin brother Ezra. His father died from a heart attack when they were about 7 : his mother was pregnant and struggled to raise the kids, so she asked for her brother's help.

The uncle accepted to take care of the twins just to live rent free at Lola's house, but he actually hated and mistreated them when his sister was not around. Aloïs was oftenly insulted for being "stupid and weird" and sometimes physically brutalized when he talked back or made mistakes.

The abuse caused Aloïs a lot of stress and fear. The trauma added up to his autism and Aloïs quickly became socially inept. Primary and middle-school were a difficult period because the other kids bullied him and he was struggling to make friends. Fortunately, his relationship with his brother was fusional already and they were always together, supporting each other through the abuse.

Aged 12, Aloïs was locked in the school's restrooms by his bullies who urinated on him, stole his clothes and left him in poor condition in the toilet cabin. When Ezra finally found him out, they came home and their uncle was furious to see Aloïs was filthy; he broke him a rib trying to wash him with a pressure blaster.

Aloïs was left with severe physical and emotional traumas; after this event Lola noticed her brother was an abuser and he was sent to jail. His departured apeased the Marshalls' life a bit but Aloïs started showing signs of school refusal and couldn't study anymore. Because he was mad at his mother for not noticing what his uncle did, he decided to distance himself. He joined a military camp for teenagers so he would make sure to have a professional future despite his academic failure. At first, Aloïs was also bullied at the camp but he finally met his lifelong best friend Arthur who made his life better :

MILITARY FLASHBACK (12-17)

Aloïs had to leave the camp aged 17 to stay with his brother after their mother killed herself. The twins were emancipated when they turned 18 and started living on their own in the bell tower which became the Division's headquarters later. Aloïs attended school again in order to become a lawyer. Two years later, he joined Ezra and Leanor in the 7th Division and became The Clockworker.

During a mission 10 years before the story, the heroes had to dismantle a branch of the mafia and met a teenager named Roxanne whose power was exploited to kill people. She was forced to fight them and inflicted Aloïs a chemical burn which scarred his face for life. After the team won the fight, Aloïs and Ezra decided to take the girl home and to raise her like a sister. She was very aggressive at first but finally softened thanks to their love and care. Their relationship is now strong and loving.

Aloïs officially became the head of the 7th Division instead of his brother when they were 29. After a mission turned into a tragedy because Ezra lead it while high on Xanax, he left his duties and Aloïs had to replace him. He's still the leader at the beginning of the story.

- PRIVATE LIFE

In his civil life, Aloïs works as a lawyer. He lives in the 7th Division's "headquarters", an old abandoned tower bell which used to be a military hide out.

Aside for watchmaking, his hobby is playing piano and he has a cat named Apo(llo 13).

Nicknames :

The Clockworker

Al

RELATIONSHIPS

EZRA

Ezra is Aloïs' twin and they are rarely seen without each other. They're extremely fusional and still live together even as adults.

Aloïs sometimes is a "big brother" to Ezra, taking care of and protecting him during his depressive episodes. This responsibility fits his control obsession; unfortunately, he can accidentally hurt him acting too stern or controlling.

Ezra himself caused his twin traumas with his depression and multiple suicide attempts. Aloïs can't live a day or night without thinking of how he could find his brother dead in the morning.

If Ez looks more fragile and dependent, Aloïs actually relies on his brother a lot. He's the only person who can calm his autistic meltdowns/shutdowns and reduce his anxiety. They sometimes sleep in each other's bed when they feel stressed, overwhelmed or have nightmares.

Despite their personalities being polar opposites, the Marshall twins share a lot of common interests such as superheroes stuff (including comics as well as real life missions), fighting or chess.

They couldn't stand being separated and need each other a lot. However, they don't show much signs of affection : Aloïs likes hugs but Ezra is contact phobic and both have difficulties telling each other "I love you".

In the Division, Elizabeth is The Clockworker's right hand and she advises him a lot when it comes to important decisions.

ARTHUR

Arthur is Aloïs' best friend he met in a military camp aged 13 (see : BACKSTORY - MILITARY FLASHBACK).

Just like Ezra, he's able to calm his anxiety a bit with his benevolence and tranquility. They see each other almost everyday; if they're not in a mission together, they'll be seen having coffee. Arthur and Aloïs could spend hours together not doing anything, just enjoying each other's company. Arthur's the only person Aloïs can talk with for hours without feeling awkward or socially overwhelmed. They both have a total trust in each other and a stable relationship.

ROXANNE

Aloïs sees Roxanne as his little sister. They met when the twins rescued her from the mafia during a mission. At the beginning, Roxanne was under Jon's orders and fought them, leaving Aloïs with the face burn he still has the scar from.

When they brought her home, Roxanne was at first very aggressive and tried to murder them several times. Love and care finally softened her and her relationship with the Marshalls is now quite fusional.

Despite his distant temper, he never hesitates showing Roxanne affection, often through physical contact such as hugs, headpats or forehead kisses. When Roxanne's having a panick attack or starts hurting herself, Aloïs is the only person who can comfort her. He usually plays piano to calm her then takes her in his arms until she's better.

They sometimes argue because Roxanne is stubborn and keeps putting her life at risk : Aloïs has to prevent her from engaging into suicide missions. Roxanne easily cries when he accidentally hurts her and Aloïs usually feels bad and apologizes shortly after.

Roxanne is one of the rare people who is always able to know how Aloïs feels even when he doesn't show emotions.

CAT

Cat has been Aloïs' love interest for 12 years. She's officially her girlfriend but their relationship is more complex than just "dating". They argue quite often due to Aloïs' lack of empathy and his inability to express feelings, but also because Cat is naturally invasive and doesn't know how to deal with neurodivergent people nor respect Aloïs' limits.

Aloïs doesn't properly understand how Cat works eventhough they've known each other for a long time; he's not used to interact with people outside the Division, especially people without traumas or disorders.

Aloïs often hurts her psychologically by accident and can't help reproducing the toxic reflexes he was taught with Cat. His control obsession and his brutal directness are a major problem in their relationship. They never work and broke up an incalculable number of times but always come back to each other because they're deeply in love. Both Cat and him suffer from the situation and wish they could and make efforts to fix things.

Because he's socially maladapted, Aloïs doesn't understand when Cat is flirting with or complimenting him, so he doesn't really knows if she still loves him or not.

Cat doesn't know about Aloïs' secret identity.

MYKO

Just like for Cat, Aloïs' relationship with Myko is a disaster. They're in permanent conflict because their respective personalities and neurodivergences don't match. They're not close at all in their private life and a huge part of their conversations revolve around work, are arguments, or both.

Aloïs thinks they're immature and careless; his control obsession also fears Myko's unpredictability. Since Myko is a free spirit who doesn't care much about rules, they often disobey Aloïs or just forget what the plan was, which leads at best to Aloïs getting angry, at worse to failed missions or injuries.

Therefore Aloïs considers Myko to be a threat for the team and suspends them whenever they break the rule, which makes Myko resentful and provocative towards their leader. These provocations annoy Aloïs and are responsible for a vicious circle.

Myko's hyperactivity, noisiness and extrovert personality also tire Aloïs' and trigger his hypersensitivity.

However, he never considered firing them from the team because Myko can be effective and Aloïs still likes them.

They both suffer from this conflictual relationship because they still see each other as team mates and friends. Aloïs always fixes Myko's mistakes, is upset when he accidentally offends them and would sacrifice his life for them without blinking.

Myko would do the same for him but neither of them manages to express it.

A big part of the conflict comes from an absence of communication.

GRACE

Aloïs cares about and values Grace a lot. Their relationship is mostly positive : he's the person who saved her from a suicide attempt 5 years before the story, therefore he oftenly checks if she's okay.

Grace's empathy and kindness make them quite the opposite emotionally but they still have agreeable conversations. Grace has perfectly understood Aloïs is not a talkative person and struggles with social interactions : she doesn't force him to communicate and Aloïs is grateful for it. He sometimes even comes to her when he's lost and needs to have his own feelings explained.

He likes her serene and peaceful personality.

Aloïs also is appreciative of the support she gives everyone in the team, his depressed and suicidal brother especially.

Nonetheless he is, like many other people, sometimes afraid of Grace's powers. He considers telepathy as a violation of his intimity and doesn't manage to trust Grace enough to make sure she won't read his mind without his consent.

ERWAN

Aloïs' relationship to Erwan is quite tense at the beginning. Since Erwan is mistaken for a criminal, Aloïs can't trust him and gets stressed when Erwan is forced to live with him at the headquarters. The presence of a new, unknown person home also triggers him. His hostility is such that he causes Erwan a panick attack after treating him with emotional brutality.

Moreover, what Erwan thinks and says about superheroes upsets Aloïs and triggers his lack of self-confidence, causing him to doubt and stress even more. Their animosity is reciprocate during the first arc but their relationship evolves later.

As Erwan finds faith in humanity and heroism again, Aloïs starts seeing him as a trustworthy, respectful and respectable person. Erwan's bravery and the altruism he will finally develop are something Aloïs appreciates.

On the other hand, Aloïs is the one to restore Erwan's hope with the strength of his convictions and his heroic actions. He will even grant him a place in the team in the end.

They don't consider as friends but both have respect for each other.

LOUISON

Since Louison is not a part of the Division, they don't interact a lot but their rare interactions are positive. Contrary to Erwan, Louison is someone who helps Aloïs with his low self-esteem. Being a huge fan of the 7th Division, Louison shows Aloïs his efforts are not vain and that people still believe in kindness and humanity.

Louison also is close to Roxanne and makes her happy, which is enough for Aloïs to appreciate her.

As a freelance superheroine, she sometimes helps the 7th Division and Aloïs helps her with her homeworks because they both studied law.

[queerloquial]

on the one hand i do like that tumblr's 'for you' page is inept enough that it mostly shows me the same posts over and over again, and often ones that i've already seen on my regular dash. good job not obsessively tracking my site usage, tho i Am kinda bored of reading the same posts for several weeks (please, i am not interested in post-death im0dna fluttering or all the key1eth c3 posts)

on the other hand, the times it deviates it shows me the Worst fuckin opinions and Will Not stop no matter how many times i hit the 'gtfo' button

[hungwy]

Thank you for answering my question. Regarding your reference to the Sapir Whorf hypothesis: Do you subscribe to the idea that learning a foreign language, whatever that language may be, gives one a unique insight into how the L1 speakers of that language think and view the world? I feel somewhat uneasy agreeing with that. As in: Of course learning any language implies studying and learning about its original people's cultural norms, history and values, but isn't that something that can also be done independently from language learning? What I'm trying to say is, I think the simple action of learning vocabulary, syntax, morphology and other rules of a language doesn't really help us see through the eyes of the people who speak it natively, and the parts of language learning that do help us do that, can also be done without learning the language (I.E. we can learn about the cultural referents and norms of the french or the chinese without actually studying french or mandarin or cantonese etc). Regarding "Authenticity" and Prescriptivism: My thoughts regarding the role of language preservation actually stem from an opposition to the notion of authenticity: Isn't the notion that a people would/should learn a language to be able to better understand the viewpoints of their elders and ancestors something of a quest for "Authenticity"? Coming from a position of skepticism towards linguistic relativity, what i can't help but see in language restoration efforts is the pursuit of authenticity in the name of tradition, as in "A proper X-ese person should speak the X-ese language, because that's what their predecessors did". I of course agree with the idea that people who don't live personally can only go so far as make hypotheses, but the reason for my doubts is that I see those parts of language preservation i'm skeptical of as something of a pidgeonholing mentality, an act of making people perform a time-consuming ritual of learning how to rapidly access vocabulary, syntax structures and schemata from their minds as sort of a performance of "proper belonging" to a people they already belong to. Sorry for burdening you with this big long answer, you don't need my permission but feel free to ignore it

I do believe languages give unique insights into their native speakers. There is a "weak" version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language influences -- and is influenced by—a variety of both overt and covert biases enacted by the population of speakers. This 'linguistic relativism' has a great deal of evidence and is, as far as I have read, accepted by every linguist. This weak version opposes the "strong" version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, linguistic determinism, where language DETERMINES thoughts/biases. Whorf's own evidence for this, shortly, kind of sucked.

But Whorf does have a point in that a language is in some ways its own experience. There is a distinctive quality to embodying that old perspective through speaking and hearing the heritage language, different from simply learning the facets of that perspective and the cultural-historical context it appear[s/ed] in. One can know a certain person founded an ethnic group, or that past people performed a specific ritual certain way at a certain time due to certain concerns, or even how to perform that ritual. This is different from participating in language. By speaking and listening one must interact with those views in mind, and one only gains this knowledge through performance. Participating in tradition is the goal here, rather than knowing of tradition.

Whether experiential and factual knowledge are equally valuable is an old and never-will-be-settled debate. But I do think language revitalization projects help participants see through the eyes of people who speak/spoke it by re-enacting (even reifying) the mode through which those biases are conveyed. I think the factual aspect of learning is a major facet of achieving a wholesome understanding of any worldview, but I'm trying to deny your claim and emphasize the fact that language is inexorable from that understanding.

I think it is both pigeonholing and reductive to group all revitalization projects as "getting proper X-ese people to speak proper X-ese, because that's what their predecessors did". Let's get an example, The Cherokee Revitalization Project:

"The results of the 2002 research survey funded by the United States Department of Health & Human Services Administration for Native Americans [found while] in 2000 there were an estimated 10,000 speakers of the Cherokee language in the state of Oklahoma, by 2002 the survey found no fluent speakers under the age of 40. Based on research of endangered languages, the Cherokee Nation estimated that the language would die out in one to two generations. The survey found, as one possible cause, that many elders resist speaking to their children and grandchildren in Cherokee in the belief that it will help them avoid the negative experiences of their own generation. Based on the results of the study, Principle Chief Smith declared a state of emergency and preservation of the Cherokee language became a top priority for the Cherokee Nation. Organizing a task force comprised of elders, educators and concerned citizens, the Cherokee Nation Language Department formulated a comprehensive language plan to preserve, protect and promote the Cherokee language."

Here we see a language on the verge of death that has "proper" speakers capable of teaching the language in what I imagine would be an "authentic" way. The implicit argument for language revitalization here is that the language deserves to live and the people most connected to it want it to continue to live. It is a different perspective from "an act of making people perform a time-consuming ritual [...] as sort of a performance of 'proper belonging' to a people they already belong to." Which, if true anyway, what's the problem with affirming ones identity of belonging with a "time-consuming ritual"? Is it because the idea that governs what counts as a ritual of affirming a given identity—tradition, perhaps—is in some way unethical?

I think your skepticism about "language restoration efforts [in the name of tradition]" is skepticism about tradition as a whole. That's why I said you're more concerned with "how we as humans relate ourselves to the past". But to be honest I'm also not exactly sure of your wording since you said you are "coming from a position of skepticism towards linguistic relativity" and then say this supposed enforcement of authenticity is a pidgeon-holing mentality, so I'm just going to assume you mean you ARE a proponent of such relativity (against which the truth claims of authenticity is opposed). I can't really converse confidently about whether tradition is, at large, a concept we as humans should have, and what to do about that if we shouldn't. I read a paper for this ask (here) about the question of authenticity in anthropology and its an entertaining and thoughtful read. It relates the concept of authenticity to whether there is a subjective or objective truth, or something in the middle, the relation which makes sense: Authenticity is the deciding the "realness" of a given idea or practice and culture is to some degree the enforcement and reinforcement of that authenticity. To me this authenticity or realness is obviously culturally relative and thus the meaning or realness of a given authenticity can't be decided by someone outside that experience.

But returning to the main topic, learning the rules and parts of a language is, again, equivalent to learning facts. That's not what language revitalization is here for, and not what the participants and organizers want. They want to experience the language firsthand as it is performed and to mingle with that world of experience. This cannot be done simply with learning historical facts and theoretical processes. How they are allowed to prune the tree of authentic experience I don't really have the authority to comment on.

[uglyduchessrantsandcomments]

Teaching as a nonbinary person

So today I was rewatching an episode of Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, in which Geo Neptune, who is two-spirit, explained the traditional role of two-spirit people within Native American societies:

I think the only thing that I'll add, is that at one point, non-binary people were so integral to the cultures of indigenous people, because it was our responsibility to learn all of the gender norms and all of the gender roles and help the next generation of children learn them as well. While there were the hunters out hunting, and while gatherers were gathering, and while caretakers were caretaking, it was the two-spirits teaching all of the children how to do that. I mean, I really dream of a world were not only do non-binary people and two-spirit people not have to hide ourselves, but we are that much an integral part of our societies again.

This is, to me, such a beautiful way to find belonging and inclusion where you think you don't belong. I know many of us nonbinary or trans people, but also many POCs and people living with disabilities are tired of having to teach other people how to be better allies and about their identities. No one should be forced to do that, obviously. But teaching is my passion: I find purpose in it, and I strongly resonate with Geo Neptune's explanations and vision for nonbinary and two-spirit people's place in the world.

Many of us have grown experiencing life from more than just standpoint. I personally felt like I was experiencing the world from both a masculine and a feminine point of view. I grew up in both French and British culture, which you could say aren't that distant from one another. But at times, it made me feel excluded, because I could not understand how to fit into these very neat boxes. I was delighted to be mistaken for a boy, yet I sometimes desperately wanted to be seen as a girl. I was praised for speaking English better than my peers, but for several years, I still could not fully understand my own relatives when they spoke with an Irish accent. I can't even imagine what it's like for people who hail from cultures that are infinitely more distant from one another than French and British cultures.

And sometimes, I wanted to be just one of the two. I tried so hard to deny the fact that I was bisexual and nonbinary, which unfortunately led me to hurt people around me, something that I still grieve every day.

But living between two worlds also gave me incredible strength: the power of understanding. I know that things aren't always what they seem. That many concepts, even ones that we think are universal, are actually conditioned by a standpoint that usually hails from a specific timeframe, a specific place, a specific culture, and individual experience. And knowing and having experienced personally that makes me, I think, a better researcher and a better teacher.

I'm obviously not two-spirit, and I'm not Native American. But I found comfort in Geo Neptune's words. Being able to harness that incredible power of understanding and teaching my students to look from another standpoint, to push the boundaries of the neat little box that we've been told to think in, to have enough confidence to doubt what they've been told and express their own opinion, is a true, limitless source of joy.

Being true to myself and others in my relationship with my gender and seeing a student express their honest opinion and ask questions without fear of being told off is the same kind of joy. In those moments, I truly feel like I've found my place in the world and in society, which is creating an alternative path, creating an alternative space, in which stepping away from the norm is possible, and sharing that space with others, where they're allowed to grow and choose their path on their own terms.

[duckprintspress]

I'm confused about the scoring system. It was said on the website that people were scored (numerically) and yet someone with much higher scores than I got didn't get accepted nor was offered the mentoring/beta/get to know discord.

I can't help but feel there is an error here. Is there a way to explain this?

Hi anon!

So there are a few things going on here, and I’ll try to explain them all.

Thing the First:

The scores on the rubrics are raw scores. Once we really got down-and-dirty with rating things, and I did some data analysis, I discovered that some of our raters were being a bit more generous than others. By the time we were done with all the scoring, there was nearly a 2 point split between the most generous and least generous scorer, on average. This was clearly a fairness issue - if one writer got our three most generous raters, and a second writer got our three least generous raters, even if they submitted identical stories, the second writer would get a lower rating. Rather than leave things like that, I did some research on statistical models that would standardize our ratings.

Basically, with the help of an excel algorithm (the “STANDARDIZE” function), we calculated the average that each rater gave, and that rater’s deviation from the mean (standard deviation), and plugged that in to convert their ratings from the 0 to 20 scale to a different, standard scale - which ran roughly from -2.5 to positive 2.5. What the standardization really did was - for each rater, whatever score they personally gave on average was 0 (so, if rater one’s average score was a 15...that was standardized to zero. And if rater two’s average score was 10...that was also standardized to zero. So now instead of comparing apples to oranges, we were comparing apples to apples). Then, if they rated a fic 1 standard deviation above or below their average, that became a 1 or a -1. If they rated it 2 standard deviations above or below their average, that became a 2 or a -2. And so on. This ensured that all of the stories were rated on the same scale and everyone was treated equally - standardization of test scores erased the differences caused by some people rating more strictly.

So, if you and your friends are comparing rubrics (which you’re welcome to do!) and you noticed that some of you did better, numerically, but had different outcomes, that’s likely a factor - one of you may have had more generous or more strict readers.

(Here’s some more information on how Standardization, here’s the very basics...there are other forms of standardizing, such as fitting folks to a bell curve, or curving the entire score, but those were not suited to our needs)

Thing the Second:

The top 20 authors, statistically adjusted for fairness, were invited to contribute to Add Magic to Taste. As it turned out, these top 20 DID roughly correlate to our top 20 by raw scores; comparing the two rankings, there are only two people out of the top 20 who wouldn’t have made it based on raw scores but did when their scores were adjusted to be standardized against the same scale.

The next 20 authors (ranked 21 to 40, when statistically adjusted for fairness) were also invited to Discord, and we’ve also invited them to potentially be involved in a second anthology. Depending on how many of them say yes, we may be able to open that opportunity up a bit more, but we’re not sure yet. Two of these people, by raw score, would have made the top 20, and three of these people, by raw score, would not have made the top 40. However, again, when we standardized the data to reflect the differences in rater strictness, these were the results.

That leaves another 62 people, who had various ratings all below those top 40. Some of them had a raw score fairly similar to their standardized score...and some of them didn’t. For example - my wife was an applicant to this, and she gave me permission to use her numbers for this example. By raw average? My wife came in 49th. However, one of her raters was someone who USUALLY rated very high, and gave hers a (relatively, compared to that person’s usual hig haverage) low score - when that was adjusted statistically, it caused my wife’s fic to plummet to 64th, because even though the raw number itself wasn’t bad, it was statistically well outside the norm for that rater. So, believe me when I say - these standardizations can make a big difference. If you, or anyone reading this, would like, I’m willing to send you what your standardized scores were (while still maintaining reviewer anonymity). I was originally thinking of adding them to the rubrics but doing so would have been a lot of work, and so I passed - next time we do this, they’ll probably be on there.

Thing the Third:

Often, what separated a fic that succeeded from a fic that didn’t was the range of raters scores. For example, the fic that ended up with the highest rating (by both calculations) wasn’t anyone’s favorite fic - but all three readers thought it was solid, and that was enough. My personal favorite fic? Didn’t even hit the Top 20. What often happened was -

Top fics: either all three people liked it pretty well, or one to two people adored it and the other person or people liked it well enough.

Second tier fics: either all three people thought it was okay, or one person loved it and two people were fairly meh about it.

Middle-range fics: either all three people thought it was average, or one person loved it and two people didn’t like it, or two people thought it was pretty good but one person hated it.

Lower quartile fics: either all three people didn’t think the fic was “up to snuff,” or one or two readers really hated it while a third thought it was average.

This isn’t universal, of course - but a fic that had one really high rating could easily do worse than a fic that had three so-so ratings, because...that’s how averages work. And that’s also why we had three readers for each - to try to even out some of the differences that would arise if someone had an extreme reaction to a fic that others didn’t. Obviously, it’s not a flawless system - no system was flawless - but with the resources and manpower we had, we thought this was a fair way to handle things, and we truly did our best. As soon as we broke 20 applications, we were never going to be able to accept everyone, and so we strived to create a transparent system that treated all of our applicants equally.

Thing the Fourth:

Now, in addition to the “why might scores be higher/lower” aspect of your question, there’s the aspect of “getting the Discord invite.” Now, the top 40 folks got Discord invites automatically, and those offers were based solely on the rating they received.

The other Discord invites that we sent out were not based on ratings alone! Just like we had a “reader subjective feelings” category on the rubric, when we’d finished rating all the stories, we were left with a conundrum - all of us had fics we liked that didn’t make the top 40. Maybe it was that “one person love it and two people didn’t like it” permutations. Maybe it was that all of us thought it was “good” but not “great.” Maybe some aspect of the story caught our eye. Based on our reactions, and the fics we saw that we wished had made it, we selected people to get invites. Those Discord invites were sent out based solely on subjective criteria.

Yes, we worried about doing this. Yes, we went back and forth about doing it at all. But in the end, what we decided was - we didn’t want to give Discord invites to everyone, because there were plenty of people we didn’t think their writing was quite ready yet - mentoring is an intensive prospect, and one for which we won’t get paid up front and might possibly never get paid, and while this all looks wonderful from the outside please do remember that we’re running a business - one that I’ve been working my ass off on for more than four months and have yet to earn enough to draw a single paycheck. So inviting everyone was never in the cards. And on the other hand, if we chose to give invites to no one, that would mean potentially having some people that caught our eye “slip through the cracks.” What if they got too discouraged to reapply? What if we missed the chance to work with them, after they’d impressed us?

To use an analogy - we saw something in everyone who applied, but in some it was “this is an uncut diamond, and we aren’t in the position to take it from raw to finished,” and in others it was, “this is a diamond with a crack, or a flaw, or a rough spot...and we think if we put in the work, we can get it to perfection.” And our verdict on the uncut diamonds isn’t, “this is uncut and it will never be cut,” it’s, “all of these diamonds have spent years honing themselves and working hard to strive for flawlessness, and but some are clearly farther along that journey than others. Once these uncut diamonds have shaped more of their rough edges themselves, we hope they’ll come back when they are ALSO only one flaw from perfection, and work with us then!”

There was no way for us to win, and there was also no fair way to distribute invites based solely on the raw scores, or even based solely on standardized scores, because some of the scores were sometimes not reflective our actual opinions of the writing. For example - if someone wrote a grammatically perfect story, with a compelling use of language, but the plot and characters were inaccessible to us because it required fandom knowledge we didn’t have, that might have scored very poorly, but we have every reason to think that if they’d chosen a different work that was more accessible they’d have done much better. Or, as another example - if someone’s writing was really sloppy, because of a lack of editing or possibly because English isn’t their native language - but they have a skill for creating characters, or setting a scene, or had excellent pacing - then again, they could have ended up with a score that didn’t reflect the actual potential that we saw in their work - using our judgement and expertise.

So, flat out - yes, there are inequalities in how the Discord invites were distributed to the 62 people who didn’t make the cut for either anthology. And yes, we agonized over whether to give them out at all. And no, I won’t swear that we always made the right choices - we were going by the one story submitted to us, and we had to use our best judgement based on what we were presented - what each applicant chose to submit. In the end, we invited the people who - regardless of their score - we personally thought were the closest to being sellable - in the sense of, “probably only missing one piece that would help with to get them from ‘didn’t make it’ to ‘now we’re talking.” And I truly, truly wish that we could have everyone. But if we spend all our time mentoring people, then we won’t have time for doing any of the other aspects of this business. We are not a writing school. We are a book publisher. This ISN’T just fandom, and I DO have to think about what is sellable and what isn’t, because in the end...I’m trying to make money, and pay my staff, and give our authors the highest royalties possible, and, and, and.

As a further note on this topic? We are still issuing new Discord invites, based on e-mail conversations we’re having with people. Several people who didn’t initially get those invites? Have now gotten them. It just depends on how people are responding to us, and the conversations we’re having, and lots of other factors.

And, as I tried to say in the post I put up earlier today about notifications: even the people who didn’t get invites have potential. Every single writer who applied has potential. All of you, even if you struggled with multiple areas, had some aspect in which you shined. In a perfect world, we would help you all. But this isn’t a perfect world, and I don’t have the hours in the day to bring up the people who aren’t already close, and I’m sorry about that. So, please, please - if you didn’t make it, don’t be discouraged, and don’t give up. You’re the only one who can tell your stories - if you don’t do it, no one else will. Find fandom friends who will give you honest critique. Learn to read your own writing with a critical eye. Track down stories that really speak to you, and read them like a writer - to see how the original writer put them together, and deliberately emulate what you thought worked. There are many, many ways to improve writing craft, and if ya’ll want to be published, either with us or with anyone, we strongly encourage you to examine whichever ones appeal to you and work for you.

There’s isn’t a single person who applied who couldn’t, one day, be published by Duck Prints Press.

We were never going to make everyone happy, however much we hate making people sad.

We did our best to make as many people as possible happy, while also doing what we feel to be best for Duck Prints Press.

If we hurt you - we’re sorry. We said in the application process that we’d be giving honest feedback, and we’ve never made a secret of the fact that this is a business and our goal is to publish books that sell - nor did we pretend that we’d be able to take more than 20, but we were so impressed by the quality of what we received that we did everything we could think of to open the doors to more folks, while still maintaining the core integrity of our business model. That means we have to narrow the pool; we can’t just take everyone, especially now, when we’re so small and new. Our desire to take as many people as possible is why anyone who wasn’t in the top 20 got an invite, and why we planned an entire second anthology on the fly, instead of no one below the top 20 getting anything except a rejection letter.

Now, as a final thing - it IS possible we made a mistake. We’ve spotted one big one already, and we’re working with that author to rectify the situation. If you truly believe we made a mistake, please e-mail us, and we can look into it. Our email is info @ duckprintspress dot com.

Sorry this got long - but I figured, if one person wondered this, others too, and as we have since day one - our goal is to be transparent, and so I thought it better to answer more thoroughly rather than less.

[whetstonefires]

asdfghjkl; I probably missed something so i'm sorry if this sounds dumb, but in your clone verse, why are the clones so afraid of meeting Damian, more than Batman? like is it just the whole "might try to kill us" thing like Damian's afraid of, or more of an existential crisis?

A (probably different) Anonymous said:

I may have missed something but in your Clone Damian's au, why are the clone so afraid of meeting Damian?            

In reference to this and this and this.

Sorry guys! Unless you’re one person who submitted twice assuming Tumblr ate the first one. In which case two people’s worth of sorry for just you. ;D

Thank you for the question. Took a while to answer. This is a really complex one and my computer keeps freezing or remotely updating when I’m about halfway through composing an explanation, so I have to start over. I’m backing up this one ffs.

So...first of all, you haven’t missed anything. It hasn’t been explained. I just said there were a lot of reasons and they unavoidably have a complicated one-sided relationship.

It’s mostly for emotional reasons that they’re focused on Damian. They have logical ones for wanting to plan their approach carefully if they have the option, and they are somewhat leery of him in terms of personal direct violence, but their kneejerk aversion to the point of steering away from a potential safe harbor/backup because they’re trying to put off a difficult confrontation is all interpersonal anxiety.

Nuhum (9) and Chihaarum (4) were banking on fleeing to Batman’s doorstep in high distress to get them in the door, because Talia liked to call Bruce sentimental and they figured even weirdo clone children can play on that, if they’re running from assassins. (Haftum thought this was a dumb idea. The others’ opinions of it varied.) But once they’d linked up with Tim, even those two admitted that the gain of having strategy help from someone who actually knew the parties involved was a better bet than ‘looking pathetic and hoping.’

As far as wanting to avoid Damian particularly...they’re his spares. One of their functions in existing at all has always been in case he needed emergency organ transplants.

In canon Talia replaced a bunch of his squishy organs and his spine on separate occasions before we found out she’d gotten into cloning him; it’s comic book medicine so the speedy recovery/lack of need for anti-rejection treatment doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but in context the meaning seems pretty clear.

There was more than one clone made, and at least one had been taken to pieces before Damian knew there were any at all.

The septuplets have an exaggerated expectation of Damian’s influence with Batman, but also he’s just been this figure in their lives as long as they can remember. He looms.

They ran because Talia had finally started coming to terms with his defection enough to start talking about selecting one of them to train up as a new heir/possibly his destined nemesis on her bad days; one of her hesitations was over whether defeating the other copies would actually prove the survivor was good enough to put up against the Real One(tm).

They know how he was brought up; they know almost nothing about Batman or why Damian chose to stay with him, and they’re cynical enough about Ra’s managerial approach to think it wouldn’t take much to make for a better offer than remaining an Heir of the House of al Ghul. So no, they don’t know he won’t try to kill them to assert his existence and/or supremacy, and they know he’s far more dangerous than they are, one for one.

This ‘verse assumes the League of Deadly Assassins is, primarily, a cult, and that like most cults a lot of the energy applied internally goes to making sure the members are primarily dependent on the organization, its norms, and its leader, for emotional validation etc. Damian and his clones all need support to deprogram, especially since they don’t have any pre-cult sense of reality to go back to; they however as mentioned in an earlier ask have very different needs, because Damian didn’t have brothers.

The cloneboys’ indoctrination went badly in large part because of their unclear status within the League. They got a blend of the lessons and ideology intended for the elites and that meant for the disposable foot soldiers, and the inconsistencies there, combined with having one another for support and reality checks (because a tendency to not see them as separate individuals meant a certain sloppiness about keeping them emotionally isolated from one another) allowed them a more realistic view of the League than Damian had even a few years older than they are. But they are still little kids, and it’s all they’ve known.

So Damian is just...an enormous figure for them. It’s like...idk...if Luke had known Anakin Skywalker was still alive and had gone bad, except Obi-Wan was 500% more a dick, and talked about Anakin around him constantly and sometimes called him by Anakin’s name by mistake. Probably it was a mistake. Who knows.

Except with somehow massively more identity issues involved, and Batman in place of the Emperor, leading to much more nuanced conversations because Bruce is just a more complex figure than Darth Sidious, especially from the respective perspectives of Talia and Obi-Wan.

And if Darth Maul kept popping in and out and annoying Obi-Wan by distracting, er, I guess Owen Lars, who is now Ra’s al Ghul, what have I done.

(Maul is Tim. Analogy-Luke has never seen Maul, but he has been complained to about him. Talia doesn’t actually have nearly Obi-Wan’s Maul issues with Tim. Should he be Dooku? Somehow not dead? And then...Dick is represented by Maul I guess? And...Jason is Ventress??? This has gotten way too complicated. In irrelevant directions. Please ignore this entire parenthetical.)

Also Leia is there. Leia represents Haftum. He gets a whole Skywalker twin to himself because he’s just so consistently pissed off.

Regardless of how badly I tormented it, I think that analogy did a much better job than any of the essays I previously attempted to convey their perspective with, so I’m letting it stand.

Except of course Damian isn’t their father, but they don’t know if he’d be willing to see them as brothers either, and they’re not all sure they want him to.

Meeting Damian is just a really alarming prospect for a lot of reasons, and they’d rather a) have time to plot how it goes and b) give as little impression of weakness to him as they can. So they would really rather not have him come to their rescue just now, if at all avoidable. Tim offered them options.

Although in reality saving them would probably have helped to put them in 13-year-old Damian’s relative good books, because one of the more heroic aspects of his character s a proprietary sort of protectiveness over small creatures he has chosen to defend. But they have no way of knowing that.

[hikariobsessions]

Your problem is that you're a western weeb trying to be or look japanese, that's why you can't stand westernized MC. Let me tell you that you'll never be japanese or even asian lol Not even when you worship japanese people. Also as an asian woman, I'm tired of weebs pretending there isn't anything wrong with asian cultures holding their women down, We can't say it as open as westerners But that doesn't make it non-existent. Stop talking about cultures you aren't a part of smh

Oh lord, I’ve been hit!! OMIGOD 🤣 

I have never broken down idiocy before but here goes~

“Also as an Asian woman, I’m tired of weebs pretending there isn’t anything wrong with Asian cultures holding their women down”

I seriously hope you’re not trying to generalize Asian culture as the fucking Patriarchy. Making bold claims such as “holding their women down” without even considering the decent men and women of said cultures and backgrounds who have been more than respectful towards women and men alike from all walks of life. Take for example this lovable fellow:

Hayao Miyazaki

When I watched Miyazaki, something changed. For the first time, I saw representations of girls and women that seemed real and attainable, yet mythic all the same. Here were female characters who were vulnerable and independent, who defied gender norms in the way they looked and behaved. - Gabrielle Bellot, The Atlantic

I’ve never once stated that “Asian culture” is perfect. Each culture has their own problems within each society – to the point where it becomes relative to their environment, family, governments, and identity. 

Cultures all have negative and positive aspects of it. They are all rooted in history, good and bad, and are multi-faceted and complex in many ways. BUT I’ll save the bother of explaining it to you, hun. 

‘Cause I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through, what exactly you’ve experienced, and why you feel so passionately.

But let’s not generalize these things yeah?

“Your problem is that you’re a western weeb trying to be or look Japanese, that’s why you can’t stand westernized MC”

Okay, you got me. Can anyone tell me, what in the actual fuck is a weeb? I’ve only been active on Tumblr for like 6 months now, and my lingo is seriously still sub par. 

As for the English MC, yes, I’ve been more than vocal about my distaste for her as a character as well as the writing. I can understand if people disagree and have their own reasons for liking her, and that’s fine. And there’s nothing wrong with that. 

I don’t expect everyone to agree with everything that I say. It’s just one opinion. And it’s honestly not so much her Westernization, but rather how rude and judgmental she can get. Again, that’s just me  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

But to take your butthurt out of proportion and to suddenly accuse people of being completely against Western culture and idolizing Asian culture, is beyond me. 

Westerners, or rather people in America, people in Western Europe, people from all around the world, produce their own amazing works of art, stories, and writing; and I respond in kind based on my own opinions as someone who appreciates and consumes cultural products left and right. 

Dickheads are also a common thing all around the world, but I digress.

Seriously though, I pity any company that can’t take any critical feedback on their work, but also, I pity them for the equally ignorant and rude people defending the hard work that they do and getting shit for something they don’t have control of. 

And on the basis of what exactly? A misinformed observation of the person you’re attacking? How’s that going for you BTW?

“Let me tell you that you’ll never be Japanese or even Asian lol Not even when you worship Japanese people.”

Ouch. Reality has never been this cruel.

OH, SHIT…It was supposed to be a fucking peace sign ✌🏼  You’re right, I am sooo not worthy of being Japanese. MY BAD. GOMEN. LET ME TAKE ANOTHER.

You see, I showed this to a friend, and he told me “well a peace sign is technically two fingers”…so…  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

See kids, this is why you don’t shy away from constructive feedback — Because more often than not, it leads to better results.

Asian enough for you, hun? Or are my eyes too big? Filipinos tend to be that way but I digress. Since you’re so smart, I probably don’t need to tell you where the Philippines is on the map

All-in-all, honey, let’s not forget that there is a big world outside of Tumblr and let’s certainly not forget how to act like decent human beings~

If you can’t be mature enough to be one of those people, you can always start by getting a life. That shouldn’t be too hard, right?

And yes, I can be “sassy” too.

And no. I seriously don’t have any goddamn chill when it comes to this. So, if my selfies don’t already tell you the entire story – it basically means