#fundamentally their level of understanding comes from a different background

[wizard-mp4]

My favorite game at work is watching my coworkers doing my job for me after I already did it once

[writingwithcolor]

Not all Second-Language Speakers are Made Equal.

@waltzshouldbewriting asked:

Hello! I’m writing a story that features a character who’s first language is not English. He’s East African, specifically from Nairobi, Kenya, and is pretty fluent in English but it’s not his primary language, and he grew up speaking Swahili first. I’m struggling to figure out if it’s appropriate or in character to show him forgetting English words or grammar. From what I’ve researched, English is commonly spoken in Nairobi, but it wouldn’t be what was most spoken in his home. For context, this is an action/superhero type story, so he (and other characters) are often getting tired, stressed, and emotional. He also speaks more than two languages, so it makes sense to me that it would be easier to get confused, especially in a language that wasn’t his first. But I’m worried about ending up into stereotypes or tropes. For additional context: I’m monolingual, I’ve tried to learn a second language and it’s hard. A lot of how I’m approaching this comes from my own challenges correctly speaking my own, first and only language.

Diversity in Second-Language English

You seem to have an underlying assumption that second language acquisition happens the same for everyone. 

The way your character speaks English depends on so many unknown factors: 

Where does your story take place? You mention other characters; are they also Kenyan, or are they all from different countries?

Assuming the setting is not Kenya, is English the dominant language of your setting? 

How long has your character lived in Kenya vs. where he is now? 

What are his parents’ occupations? 

What level of schooling did he reach in Nairobi before emigrating? 

What type of school(s) did he go to, public or private? Private is more likely than you think. 

Did his schooling follow the national curriculum structure or a British one? Depends on school type and time period. 

Does he have familiarity with Kenyan English, or only the British English taught in school? 

Is this a contemporary setting with internet and social media?

I bring up this list not with the expectation that you should have had all of this in your ask, but to show you that second language acquisition of English, postcolonial global English acquisition in particular, is complex. 

My wording is also intentional: the way your character speaks English. To me, exploring how his background affects what his English specifically looks like is far more culturally interesting to me than deciding whether it makes him Good or Bad at the language. 

L2 Acquisition and Fluency

But let’s talk about fluency anyway: how expressive the individual is in this language, and adherence to fundamental structural rules of the language.

Fun fact: Japanese is my first language. The language I’m more fluent in today? English. Don’t assume that an ESL individual will be less fluent in English compared to their L1 counterparts on the basis that 1) it’s their second language, or 2) they don’t speak English at home. 

There’s even a word for this—circumstantial bilingualism, where a second language is acquired by necessity due to an individual’s environment. The mechanisms of learning and outcomes are completely different. 

You said you tried learning a second language and it was hard. You cannot compare circumstantial bilingualism to a monolingual speaker’s attempts to electively learn a second language. 

Motivations?

I understand that your motivation for giving this character difficulties with English is your own personal experience. However, there are completely different social factors at play.

The judgments made towards a native speaker forgetting words or using grammar differently are rooted in ableism and classism (that the speaker must be poor, uneducated, or unintelligent). That alone is a hefty subject to cover. And I trust you to be able to cover that!

But on top of that, for a second language speaker, it’s racism and xenophobia, which often lend themselves to their own ableist or classist assumptions (that those of the speaker’s race/ethnicity must be collectively unintelligent, that they are uneducated or low class due to the occupations where they could find work, or conversely that they are snobby and isolationist and can't be bothered to learn a new language). Intersections, intersections.

If you want to explore your experiences in your writing, give a monolingual English speaker in your cast a learning disability or some other difficulty learning language, whatever you most relate with. And sure, multilingual folks can occasionally forget words like anyone else does, or think of a word in one language and take a second to come up with it in the other language. But do not assume that multilinguals, immigrants, or multiethnic individuals inherently struggle with English or with multiple languages just because you do.

~ Rina

[feminist-space]

"Artists have finally had enough with Meta’s predatory AI policies, but Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain. An artist-run, anti-AI social platform, Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users within the last week, catapulting it to the top of the App Store charts.

Instagram is a necessity for many artists, who use the platform to promote their work and solicit paying clients. But Meta is using public posts to train its generative AI systems, and only European users can opt out, since they’re protected by GDPR laws. Generative AI has become so front-and-center on Meta’s apps that artists reached their breaking point.

“When you put [AI] so much in their face, and then give them the option to opt out, but then increase the friction to opt out… I think that increases their anger level — like, okay now I’ve really had enough,” Jingna Zhang, a renowned photographer and founder of Cara, told TechCrunch.

Cara, which has both a web and mobile app, is like a combination of Instagram and X, but built specifically for artists. On your profile, you can host a portfolio of work, but you can also post updates to your feed like any other microblogging site.

Zhang is perfectly positioned to helm an artist-centric social network, where they can post without the risk of becoming part of a training dataset for AI. Zhang has fought on behalf of artists, recently winning an appeal in a Luxembourg court over a painter who copied one of her photographs, which she shot for Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam.

“Using a different medium was irrelevant. My work being ‘available online’ was irrelevant. Consent was necessary,” Zhang wrote on X.

Zhang and three other artists are also suing Google for allegedly using their copyrighted work to train Imagen, an AI image generator. She’s also a plaintiff in a similar lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt and Runway AI.

“Words can’t describe how dehumanizing it is to see my name used 20,000+ times in MidJourney,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “My life’s work and who I am—reduced to meaningless fodder for a commercial image slot machine.”

Artists are so resistant to AI because the training data behind many of these image generators includes their work without their consent. These models amass such a large swath of artwork by scraping the internet for images, without regard for whether or not those images are copyrighted. It’s a slap in the face for artists – not only are their jobs endangered by AI, but that same AI is often powered by their work.

“When it comes to art, unfortunately, we just come from a fundamentally different perspective and point of view, because on the tech side, you have this strong history of open source, and people are just thinking like, well, you put it out there, so it’s for people to use,” Zhang said. “For artists, it’s a part of our selves and our identity. I would not want my best friend to make a manipulation of my work without asking me. There’s a nuance to how we see things, but I don’t think people understand that the art we do is not a product.”

This commitment to protecting artists from copyright infringement extends to Cara, which partners with the University of Chicago’s Glaze project. By using Glaze, artists who manually apply Glaze to their work on Cara have an added layer of protection against being scraped for AI.

Other projects have also stepped up to defend artists. Spawning AI, an artist-led company, has created an API that allows artists to remove their work from popular datasets. But that opt-out only works if the companies that use those datasets honor artists’ requests. So far, HuggingFace and Stability have agreed to respect Spawning’s Do Not Train registry, but artists’ work cannot be retroactively removed from models that have already been trained.

“I think there is this clash between backgrounds and expectations on what we put on the internet,” Zhang said. “For artists, we want to share our work with the world. We put it online, and we don’t charge people to view this piece of work, but it doesn’t mean that we give up our copyright, or any ownership of our work.”"

Read the rest of the article here:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/06/a-social-app-for-creatives-cara-grew-from-40k-to-650k-users-in-a-week-because-artists-are-fed-up-with-metas-ai-policies/

[justin-chapmanswers]

hi Justin! just want to say I ADORE ii and it's one of my favourite shows out there; actually inspired me to start my own!

which is a lame segue into my question- do you have any advice for someone wanting to make their own show?

That's so exciting!! Art makes art!

Oh golly uhhhh. There's so so much to say in so many different departments. So. I'll keep it broad and of course anyone can ask more specific questions haha.

My go-to advice tends to be for creators to start as small as possible early on. Even if you aspire to create projects that are huge-in-scale down the line. So much about becoming a great artist involves moving through the stages of your art (whatever type it may be!) from start-to-finish, every step of the process, over and over and over again. So say in show creation, idk if you plan to be hands-on in every department or if you have a lot of help, but that could mean breaking down stories and outlining, writing, recording, constructing audio scenes and boarding, character and prop and background design, animating, music assembly, mixing, finalizing and editing, etc, over and over again. Obviously not every step may be involved in your project depending on what your goal is, but whatever it is that you do, do it sooooooooo many times.

While there's nothing inherently wrong with jumping in and making your first project something say, movie-length, or something immensely complex in scope, I do find it can, for many (not all) be limiting when it comes to learning a lot of fundamental building-blocks in craft. As well, I see a lot of people get lost in an overwhelming project, trying to focus on quality>quantity right out of the gate. But spending the majority of your time just on adding some extra polish as opposed to running through the whole process again and again can only do so much for you. Obviously, a mentality of quality>quantity is great once you have a strong baseline understanding of production. But again, I think it's a huge plus to work on shorts and teeny-projects to start.

Since the above is pretty dry, I'll add an additional fun one. I've found that a lot of newer artists will toss away the concepts that make them joyous in hopes that they can instead create something that fits an objective perception of "professional." Nothing wrong with that, but I strongly advise artists of all levels of experience to toss everything they've love about the world and other media into their work. Their favorite genres and tropes, the stupid inside jokes that make them light up with their friends that they can invite the audience in-on, adaptations of stories that have made them cry. Create the things YOU love to experience. It's fine to let go of what you think the audience wants. Cause that's not easily guessable. But what YOU enjoy is something certain to you. It's sorta like how they say, it's better to go to the gym and do an suboptimal-but-fun workout that keeps you coming every day than a perfect workout that leads you to quitting. Share your joy with the world, and someone will resonate!

Be silly, be cringe, have fun!

[max1461]

Here is an observation of common attitudes I see in tech-adjacent spaces (mostly online).

The thing about programming/tech is, at its base, it's historically and culturally contingent. There are of course many fundamental (physical and mathematical) limitations on what a computer can and cannot do, how fast it can do things, and so on. But at least as much of the modern tech landscape is the product of choices made by people about how these machines will work, choices that very much could have been made differently. And modern computing technology is a huge tower of these choices, each resting on and grappling with the ones below it. If you're, say, a web developer writing a web app, the sheer height of this tower of contingent human decisions that your work rests on is almost incomprehensible. And by and large, programmers know this.

I am not dispensing some secret wisdom that I think tech workers don't have. On the contrary, I think the vast contingency of it all is blindingly obvious to anyone who has tried to make a computer do anything. But tech is also, well, technical, and do you know what else is technical? Science. I think this has lead to a sort of cultural false affinity, where tech is perceived, both from within and without, as more similar to science than it is to the humanities. Certainly, there are certain kinds of intellectual labor that tech shares with the sciences. But there are also, as described above, certain kinds of intellectual labor that tech shares to a much greater degree with the humanities, namely (in the broadest terms): grappling with other people's choices.

From without, I think this misplaced affinity leads people to believe that technology is less contingent than it actually is. But I think this belief would be completely untenable from within; it just cannot contend with reality. I've never met a tech worker or enthusiast who seems to think this way. Rather, I feel there is a persistent perception among tech-inclined people that science is more contingent than it actually is. I don't think this misperception rises to the level of a belief, rather I think it is more of an intuition. I think tech people have very much trained themselves (rightly, in their native context) to look at complex systems and go "how could this be reworked, improved, done differently?" I think this impulse is very sensible in computing but very out of place in, say, biology. And I suppose my conjecture (this whole post is purely conjectural, based on a gut sense that might not be worth anything) is that this is one of the main reasons for the popularity of transhumanism in, you know, the Bay. And whatnot.

I'm not saying transhumanism is actually, physically impossible. Of course it's not! The technology will, I strongly suspect, exist some day. But if you're living in 2024, I think the engineering mindset is more-or-less unambiguously the wrong one to bring to biology, at least macrobiology. This post is not about the limits of what is physically possible, it's about the attitudes that I sometimes see tech people bring to other endeavors that I think sometimes lead them to fall on their face. If you come to biology thinking about it as this contingent thing that you must grapple with, as you grapple with a novel or a codebase or anything else made by humans, I think it will make you like biology less and understand it less well.

When I was younger and a lot more naive, as a young teenager who knew a little bit about programming and nothing about linguistics, I wanted to create a "logical language" that could replace natural languages (with all their irregularities and perceived inefficiencies) for the purpose of human communication. This is part of how I initially got into conlanging. Now, with an actual linguistics background, I view this as... again, perhaps not per se impossible, but extremely unlikely to work or even to be desirable to attempt in any foreseeable future, for a whole host of rather fundamental reasons. I don't feel that this desire can survive very well upon confrontation with what we actually know (and crucially also, what we don't know) about human language.

I mean, if you want to try, you can try. I won't stop you.

Anyway, I feel that holding onto this sort of mindset too intensely does not really permit engagement with nature and the sciences. It's the same way I think a lot of per se humanities people fudge engagement with the sciences, where they insist on mounting some kind of social critique even when it is not appropriate (to be clear, I think critique of scientific practices/institutions are sometimes appropriate, but I think people whose professional training gives them an instinct to critique often take it too far).

So like, I guess that's my thesis. Coding is a humanity in disguise, and I wish that people who are used to dealing with human-made things would adopt a more native scientific or naturalist mindset when dealing with science and nature.

[nenelonomh]

the feynman technique

the feynman technique is a method of learning/studying developed by noble prize winning physicist, richard feynman. it emphasises understanding over rote memorization and involves four key steps:

choose a concept pick a topic you want to understand and begin to study it. my topics typically come from my assignments or classes, but your topic can be any item you are interested in.

teach it to a child explain the topic in your own words, as if you were teaching it to a child or someone without background knowledge in the study area. you can present your topic to any younger siblings or pets. something me and one of my friends from school partake in is meeting up every now and then and presenting some knowledge to each other from our different subjects. this is basically us putting the feynman technique into action in an enjoyable way. you can also create a youtube video, or a blog post detailing your understanding of the topic.

identify gaps in your understanding reflect on the explanation and identify areas where you struggled to use simple language or had gaps in your understanding.

review and simplify go back to the source material to better understand the difficult parts, then simplify the explanation further.

this technique is effective because it forces you to actively engage with the material and ensure you truly understand it on a fundamental level. this technique is particularly useful when you need to: understand complex concepts, study efficiently, fill knowledge gaps and communicate ideas clearly. it's most effective when used in a focused study session, where you can dedicate time to actively engage with the material.

(images are from pinterest)

[ragazza-paradiso]

okay, my personal thoughts on the jury vote/televote drama (as unbiased as possible):

i understand people’s disappointment when their favourite doesn’t win. i also understand how that disappointment can turn into frustration when it turns out that was the most popular entry with the general public, yet it didn’t result in victory.

for me, the presence of juries in the contest is non-negotiable. i think they help to recognise aspects of the songs that very often get overlooked by the viewing public - composition and vocal ability being the two most important. i think of estonia from this year, a song and performance that most definitely deserved the love they got from the juries to push them up the scoreboard. i think of albania 2018, switzerland 2021, portugal 2022 - all entries that deserved to be recognised, and were not given that by the televote.

all of that is not to say the jury is faultless. i agree with most, that the criteria the jury is told to judge upon should be modified/expanded. i think they should drop the focus on commercially successful songs to help level the playing field for songs in languages other than english (or popular languages like italian or spanish). they should also include people from more diverse musical backgrounds to appreciate alternative forms of music like rock, jazz, folk and music with ethnic elements etc. they could also make the juries larger (i think just doubling the size to 10 people would already make such a huge difference).

i think the biggest change the EBU needs to make regarding the juries is to be much more transparent. the general public has no idea why the juries exist, or what they are even judging on. each show the presenters should explain the criteria the juries judge on. because i’ve seen so many comments on social media over the past 12 hours which seem to fundamentally miss the fact that the juries judge based on criteria which is given to them by the EBU. they do not simply sit down and make a ranking of their favourite to least favourite.

the big point for me is that the jury vote is NOT supposed to be representative of the public vote. there would literally be no point to it if it were. therefore the jury having different scores, and ultimately a different winner than the televote, does not in itself mean that there is a problem with the juries. if you ask me, it means that the juries are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. they recognised the song which best fit the criteria they were asked to judge upon… tattoo.

and i would also add that tattoo was immensely popular with the public as well, it came second in the televote. and the juries placed televote winner cha cha cha in fourth position. so the argument that the juries are out of touch with the european public (at least when it comes to the top spots) just doesn’t add up.

since the juries were reintroduced in 2009 we’ve had 4 types of victories

• where the televote and jury vote agree on a winner (2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017)

• where the televote winner has won overall despite not winning the jury vote (2011, 2018, 2021, 2022)

• where the jury vote winner has won overall despite not winning the televote (2015, 2023)

• where the winning song has won neither the jury vote nor the televote (2016, 2019)

so, in the 14 contests with the 50/50 jury televote system, only twice has the jury overridden the televote to decide the winner. the televote has overridden the jury vote double as much. in fact, the majority of times (8 times, if you include the 4th category since on both those occasions the winner came 2nd with both televote and jury vote) both have agreed on the winner. overall, the televote has gotten their winner to win the overall contest 10 times out of the 14 contests since the reintroduction of the jury.

therefore i find the conclusion that the jury is tainting the results of the contests’ winners not based in reality.

now, all of that is simply the opinion of one girl who likes eurovision. you can take it or leave it. i don’t think this will change anyone’s mind if they are dead set on the juries needing to perish in hell fire to atone for their sins against euro pop music. but more so i wanted to explain my reasoning behind still valuing the juries as an important part of the contest.

and, two last very important notes:

• käärijä not winning the contest doesn’t mean that he’s lost. it doesn’t mean that you can’t go back and watch his performance a thousand times and revel in the joy it gives you. it will always be there. music is subjective, just because a certain song wins a certain contest doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the best. he has thousands more fans now and you can always support his future career.

• being disappointed with the results of the contest however does not give you the right to send abusive messages and hate towards other contestants. käärijä himself said after the final yesterday that he cannot complain about the rules and he was happy for loreen. this is the same guy who was so distraught when he received one hate comment that he deleted all his accounts on social media. he wouldn’t want anyone to be doing the same towards his fellow artists. the contest was about being united through music, and sending hate won’t change the results, and it won’t make you feel better either.

[end-otw-racism]

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Read our Call to Action first, then come here if you have additional questions!

Vote To End OTW Racism FAQ

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We feel the current Board of Directors has demonstrated little urgency on dealing with issues of racism on their platform. Additionally, over the course of the last few weeks, a variety of accounts have come forth showing fundamental, institutional and structural issues with OTW as it currently stands. With 4 of the 7 current board positions up for election, we feel that now is a key time to push for a board that is willing to address and tackle the issues OTW and AO3 are currently facing. 

Why are you encouraging donations to an org you are trying to change?

The only way to be able to vote is to donate. Like many nonprofits, OTW uses a membership fee to ensure that each member is a distinct individual with one vote. In order to do this, the OTW requires their supporters to make a minimum donation of $10 US. We do not feel that anyone should feel compelled to donate. However, there are many people who have already donated who may not know that donation entitles them to voting!

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Should we change the names of old fanworks for this action to Vote to End OTW Racism?

You don’t need to, but are welcome to change any and all fic titles to join in the action and our collection at any time. The primary goal of this action is to be a constant reminder to AO3 usership that it is voting season and they should vote if they can, which is why we’re focusing on name-changing new works between now and the end of elections – so that the reminder can be front and center regularly on various fandom and tag pages. (We can’t put a banner at the top of every AO3 page to encourage voting, so this is our next best tactic.)

General FAQ

Who are you people? Who's running this initiative?

Given that virulent harassment for speaking out about fandom racism is one of the things we're attempting to fight, it should be understandable that we don't want to make targets of ourselves by revealing our names/handles. We believe that our message and this movement is more important than our individual identities, and ask that you respect that by not engaging in baseless and inflammatory speculation.

The core organizers of this initial action are all longtime fans and users of AO3, including both people of color and white folks, who have been in fandom for decades. We are NOT "outsiders"! Our perspective and work on antiracism in fandom has also been developed in collaboration with a diverse range of fans older and younger than us, from many different fandoms and backgrounds. We are grateful for those connections, and are inspired by those who have been tirelessly fighting racism in fandom over time. We are all sick of seeing the same kinds of racism crop up in fanspaces year after year, in fandom after fandom. We want to see fandom's flagship project do something to make fandom more inclusive and safe for fans of color. We welcome participation and input from all fans who want to fight racism as we move forward. Fill out this form or contact our socials to get involved beyond this first action!

Are you pro-shippers or antis?

Neither. This is not about shipping discourse, it is about racism and harassment, full stop.

Is this about dark or "problematic" content?

Is this about policing kinks &/or queer content?

Is this about top/bottom discourse?

No. This is about racism and abuse/harassment. We are in favor of kinky, queer, and dark content (and many of us have created and enjoyed fanworks that falls under those umbrellas). If you consider extremely racist content to be a kink essential to your identity as a fan, then we can't help you.

Why aren't you focused on underage/incestuous/dark/etc content? Isn't that also a problem?

Bigotry is a different issue from content that fans may find uncomfortable or even triggering in other ways. Please don't derail this focused campaign by bringing other topics into the mix.

Is this about monetizing fanworks on AO3? Is this about making the AO3 palatable to advertisers?

No. We support AO3's rule against openly/directly monetizing fanworks hosted on its platform, and its commitment to being totally fan-funded and free from advertising revenue (and the fickle, proscriptive demands of outside interests like major corporations and other advertisers). Fanspace should be for fandom, not credit card companies or tech conglomerates to profit from.

What kind of work do you mean when you say "extremely racist and extremely abusive"?

We understand that people might be concerned that we're opening the door to broad censorship of work on AO3, but that's not our goal. Our concern is with racist fan works written for the purpose of making the fan site unwelcoming to fans of color. We haven't directly linked to current examples here because we don't want to invite harassment of individuals. However, we do hope that the OTW/AO3 takes a long hard look at their Terms of Service (TOS) and brings it in line with current/progressive antiracist content. Currently, AO3 only considers something harassment if it targets a specific individual - and even then, they have often refused to take action on harassment like authors using racial slurs in replies to comments, or tagging a scholar of color's full name in a fic to incite harassment of them for speaking out about racism. We believe that harassment against a racial/ethnic group should be considered harassment under AO3's TOS and Abuse policies. How AO3 handles offending works until these proposed changes would be up to AO3 to decide. Avenues for progress may involve discouraging such works, de-listing such works from search results, or prohibiting them all together, depending on severity. We are also in favor of the organization establishing reasonable guardrails or guidelines so that the new TOS/policies are less likely to be abused or otherwise used maliciously.

Who gets to decide what content is "extremely racist and extremely abusive"?

Ideally, the OTW will update their TOS and Abuse policies and procedures to define these terms, and they will ultimately determine how to implement these changes. We're not asking for them to hire a bunch of prudish strangers to comb through every work AO3 in order to mass-delete anything remotely objectionable, but for the OTW to implement common-sense measures to make the AO3 and the organization more inclusive. They've already committed to similar measures, so we're just asking for concrete action to back up their vague promises. This approach to racist harassment is in line with their existing policies that prohibit certain kinds of content, such as their policy on plagiarism that takes a case-by-case approach to determining what is and isn't plagiarism. We're just asking that they expand those policies and practices to include extreme forms of racism & harassment.

What do you mean by "off-site harassment"?

Answered here.

Do you want to remove content from the Archive?

Our primary goal is for the OTW to follow up on the promises it's already made to protect fans of color and other people who have been harassed, but in more concrete ways than they've done thus far. This does involve reviewing the TOS and Abuse policies and procedures to add protections for people facing racist harassment. Like with any other violation of the TOS, such as failure to use the archive warnings properly or plagiarism, this may result in creators receiving warnings about their works that are in violation of the new harassment policies. However, the end goal is not censorship, but an Archive that is more inclusive for fans of color and which minimizes harassment and abuse.

When do you expect AO3 to solve these problems?

We're hoping (in an ideal world) that they will respond within the recommended two-week timeframe of our action (which ends May 31st) by putting out a statement committing to our requests. We understand that a large organization like this run by volunteers needs time to actually implement those changes, but OTW has been working on these policies for three years already. With that pre-existing work, our demands can be feasibly implemented within six months to a year at the latest, and a commitment to change – and sharing a concrete, expedited timeline – can happen immediately. The exact timeline is up to the OTW, and we hope they will be fully transparent about both that and any delays they may encounter. We don't want this to be a rehash of their previous commitments, where they keep kicking the can down the road indefinitely: we want them to make a concrete plan and stick to their promises. The OTW has in fact acted quickly on policies when they feel urgency to do so - their implementation of a tag limit happened within months! - so we know it's possible. After the current action window closes, we'll still need your help to keep an eye on the org and make sure they fulfill their promises. Fill out this form if you're interested in helping long-term!

Why are you doing this? Why aren't you focusing on real racism in the real world?

Fandom racism is real racism. Fandom is not an utopian bubble insulated away from the real world – if we're not careful, we bring our parent cultures' biases and bigotries into this space, and fandom racism has a real impact on fans (who are real people). People of color, especially Black fans, have been harassed, doxxed, had their actual jobs threatened, and even reported to law enforcement for talking about these problems. Fans of color deserve for fandom to be just as safe and welcoming and inclusive for them as it is for white fans privileged enough to ignore these issues. And racism should be fought everywhere so it has no place to hide or fester - remember Gamergate and how the bigotry in that space metastasized into American politics? Don't let fandom have the same issues.

[edited 06-16-2023 for Action 2]

[novlr]

Hello! Do you have any advice for indecisiveness when creating characters? I don't have much trouble with creating conflict, but figuring out my characters is difficult. I'm working on a character-driven story, and I have an internal conflict, I'm just not sure how the story will manifest. The worst part is I can't even find advice online because all character advice is about character development, making your characters complex, etc.... My problem is I don't know what my character is doing. I'm talking about their occupation. Student? Corporate job? Architect? Artist? My conflict is good to go but now I'm stuck here...

As a writer, creating characters who are believable and relatable is one of the most crucial aspects of storytelling. However, many writers struggle with indecisiveness when it comes to creating their characters, especially when it comes to their occupations and how their stories will manifest.

You get to mould your characters into whatever form you like, but it’s easy to suffer from choice paralysis when you’re confronted with the entirety of human experience, both real and imagined. The good news is, if you already know your story conflict, then you can actually narrow down and be a bit more targeted in how you go about creating characters.

Start with the basics

When creating a character, it’s essential to start with the basics. This includes their name, age, gender, physical appearance, and personality traits. These fundamental elements will serve as the foundation for your character and help you build upon them as you develop their story. Come up with these by asking yourself a series of questions with your story conflict and theme firmly in your mind.

Name: Choose a name that fits your character’s personality and background. Consider their age, culture, and the time period in which your story takes place. And don’t be afraid to use a random name generator or even a placeholder—there’s always a chance to change your mind in the editing phases.

Age: Determine your character’s age by how it influences their behaviour, beliefs, and experiences. Would an older or a younger characters respond to their conflict differently? And which better suites the story you want to tell?

Gender: Decide on your character’s gender and how it shapes their identity and interactions with others. Will your story’s conflict play out differently if your character’s gender expression were reversed, or if they were non-binary?

Physical appearance: Describe your character’s physical features, such as their height, weight, hair colour, and any distinguishing characteristics. Unfortunately there’s no easy way to do that. You just have to use your imagination and commit.

Personality traits: Identify your character’s key personality traits, such as their strengths, weaknesses, fears, and desires. These should relate to your character’s goal and conflict in some way.

Explore their background

Once you have a basic understanding of your character, it’s time to delve into their background. This includes their family history, upbringing, education, and any significant life events that have shaped who they are. Their background can feed directly into the conflict, as it can be a great source of pressure for how your plot develops.

Family history: Explore your character’s relationships with their family members, or how not having a family unit around them affects them as a person. Consider how their family dynamics have influenced their beliefs, values, and behaviours and how this can feed into their internal and external conflicts.

Upbringing: Determine where your character grew up and how their environment has shaped their worldview. Did they have a happy childhood, or did they face challenges and adversity? Did this affect their career choices?

Education: Decide on your character’s level of education and how it has impacted their career opportunities and whether it feeds into their internal conflict.

Significant life events: Identify any pivotal moments in your character’s life that have had a lasting impact on their personality and behaviour. Do they have any direct or indirect relationship with your story’s conflict and theme?

Determine their occupation

One of the most challenging aspects of creating characters is deciding on their occupation. This is especially true for writers who are working on character-driven stories and have a clear internal conflict but are unsure how the story will take shape. So how can we make that easier?

Consider their skills and interests: What is your character naturally good at? What do they enjoy doing? Their occupation should align with their skills and interests.

Think about their personality: How does your character’s personality influence their career choices? Are they ambitious and driven, or are they more laid-back and content with a simple life?

Explore their background: How has your character’s upbringing and education influenced their career path? Did they follow in their family’s footsteps, or did they forge their own path? Did they overcome adversity to reach where they are now, or were they barred from certain opportunities because of an educational, physical, or social handicap?

Consider the story’s themes: How does your character’s occupation tie into the overall themes and message of your story? Can their job serve as a metaphor or symbol for something deeper?

Connect the dots

Once you have a clear understanding of your character’s basics, background, and occupation, it’s time to connect the dots and see how these elements influence their internal conflict and the conflict and theme of the overall story.

Identify the internal conflict: What is your character struggling with internally? Is it a moral dilemma, a personal struggle, or a conflict between their desires and responsibilities?

Explore how their background influences the conflict: How has your character’s upbringing, family history, and significant life events contributed to their internal conflict?

Consider how their occupation ties into the conflict: Does your character’s job create additional challenges or pressures that exacerbate their internal conflict?

Think about how the conflict will manifest in the story: How will your character’s internal struggle play out in the plot? Will they face external challenges that force them to confront their internal conflict?

In summary

Creating compelling characters is a crucial aspect of storytelling, but it can be challenging for writers who struggle with indecisiveness. By starting with the basics, exploring your character’s background, determining their occupation, and connecting the dots between these elements and both their internal and the story conflict, you’ll be well on your way to creating characters that will bring your stories to life.

Remember, character creation is a process, and it’s okay to take your time and explore different options until you find what works best for your story. Don’t be afraid to experiment and make changes as you go along. With practice and persistence, you’ll become more confident in your ability to create compelling characters that resonate with readers

[entertext]

HGSN 21-1

Chapter (Japanese)

(Please hit the green thumbs up at the end of the chapter to show support)

Rough translation by me

P1

(sfx: cicada calls: kumazemi)

(sfx: cicada calls: higurashi)

P2

(txt: smaller grave marker labeled "Caw-tarou" in childish handwriting)

(txt: bread wrapper labeled "Cream pan")

Yoshiki: Sorry this is all there is

Yoshiki: As long as he's around, no one will hold a funeral for you...

P3

Yoshiki: But, if he's here, I can go without forgetting you, so I'm glad

Yoshiki: 'cause that's...what scares me...the most...

Hikaru: Whoa

Hikaru: So you were here? Brings me back...

Hikaru: We used to always play here back then right?

Hikaru: Ah, look at this

P4

(txt: "Start→" written in childish handwriting)

Hikaru: The Super Maruo stage I made. The one you played with your finger while making "pwing" noises and stuff.

Yoshiki: Yeah

Hikaru: ...

P5

Hikaru: Hey...what are the differences between me and Hikaru?

Yoshiki: You're completely different...

Yoshiki: He'd read the room more than you do, he was more mature...

Yoshiki: And he was harder to understand

Yoshiki: He was more of a rascal. He'd tell lies, and he could be pretty wily.

Yoshiki: And...

Yoshiki: he'll definitely never come back. So you're different.

Hikaru: ...

Hikaru: ...did you 'like' him?

P6

Yoshiki: ...why?

Hikaru: No...it's nothing, just...

Hikaru: 'cause

Hikaru: Before, you looked away after seeing my bare chest...

Hikaru: And like...

Hikaru: I was just wondering... why...

Yoshiki: ...I don't want to say

Hikaru: ...why?

P7

Yoshiki: ...Now, even if I look at your body, I don't feel anything in particular anymore

Yoshiki: ...And also...when it comes to these feelings

Yoshiki: I think its fine if you don't understand them

P8

Hikaru: ...what's with that?

Hikaru: ...It's true that they're...not something I have. Those feelings...

Hikaru: Compared to humans, on a fundamental level,

Hikaru: I'm totally different, I guess

Yoshiki: There are things we have that only we have

Yoshiki: Also...

Yoshiki: You don't need to turn into a human or anything

P9

Hikaru: Huh..?

Yoshiki: In fact, please don't ever become anything like a human

(sfx: grab)

Hikaru: Hey!

Hikaru: Sure...?

P10

Yoshiki: (He's a being different from us in every way)

Yoshiki: (There's no way we could come to terms with each other on every point)

Yoshiki (That said, given that he's here)

Yoshiki: (it still doesn't make it okay for him to kill people, but...)

Yoshiki: (Rather than forcing him to fit in with humans)

Yoshiki: (if there was a place where he could live as himself instead...)

P11

Yoshiki: (For that, I'd...)

Yoshiki: (give everything...)

(sfx: cicada calls: kumazemi)

(sfx: cicada calls: higurashi)

--

(sfx: marker on paper)

==

Next chapter: 2023/09/19

Twitter Extras (link):

'Hikaru's vocabulary is limited, so he'll say "like", but it differs from what humans mean by "like".

Why do dogs dig holes?

Why do cats sharpen their claws?

Just as humans can't understand these intrinsically, 'Hikaru's "like" may also not be understandable to humans.

==

T/N:

Regarding the cicada sounds in Japanese:

- Up until now, cicadas cries in HGSN have been represented with the sound "shawa shawa shawa"

- This is likely to represent the cry of the kumazemi (Cryptotympana facilis) which is very common in Western Japan and associated with summer: video sample

- In this chapter although there are still some "shawa shawa shawa" cries in the background, the largest cries are "kana kana kana" instead

- This is likely to represent the cry of the higurashi (Tanna japonensis) which is associated with late summer/autumn, and is thought to have a melancholy or lonely sound: video sample

By the way, in the final frame, we can see the word Nounuki partially obscured and the name Matsuyama, as well as an unfamiliar proper noun circled in the center. I expect next chapter to give more context and a full image for the chart in the final frame.

[neallo]

meronia containing multitudes!! would you say there are any core consistencies that you cant do without when writing or thinking about them or is everything changeable? for me I think it’s hard to imagine them not having an in some form or another but I’ve been trying to think of instances where it works when they weren’t thrown in the same pressure cooker together in one way or another even if that was somewhat later in life

hello!! this is an excellent question. let me try to opine on the matter. i will say right off the top of my head that the core appealing aspects of meronia to me are mutual obsession and deep connection / understanding of one another. even though there is also sometimes a lot of active misunderstanding / miscommunication getting in the way of that connection being fully realized. on the occasions i've tried to write AUs and they haven't worked for me, i've found that it's because one or both are absent or not obvious enough.

the pressure cooker (love this shorthand) is, i think, the quickest and most canon-adjacent pathway to developing and justifying this mutual obsession and deep understanding. i generally skew heavily towards writing canonverse (<- loosely-defined; i am including no-kira and L wins AUs in this, because they still grew up at Wammy's) because of this; i'm not much of an AU girlie in general, regardless of fandom, but i find it particularly tricky for meronia. translating that kind of connection without substantial shared experiences is challenging, and i think it's easiest for me to imagine their dynamic developing if those shared experiences occur earlier in life, though i agree that it can definitely work even if it's later, so long as it's Intense.

this being said, i can't say i have 100% stuck to The Pressure Cooker background, actually!! off the top of my head the only time i really plan to break from it is in 15 Totally Chill Ways to Flirt With Your Crush, which is a profoundly unserious college AU. because this is a sillier story, i'm not as concerned with justifying a mutual obsession-- in some ways it's more fun to me here that there really isn't a good justification for Mello to be down so bad. that being said, i would say this story sits at the limit of what i can really enjoy in terms of characterization; i consider it to be borderline OOC, if not fully OOC, but that's more feature than bug here.

trying to think what other non-negotiables there are for me. some level of care / tenderness from both sides is always essential, imo-- even if it's buried under bitterness and pain and spite, that needs to come through at least a little. i guess this is rooted in the idea of their connection being a core element of the ship, but i find their dynamic fundamentally distinct from, say, lawlight, whose most fraught dynamics involve Fucking Killing Eachother. like, L and Light have a deep connection, too, but it's very different imo. the power dynamic being complex / nuanced in some way or another also feels essential To Me. it can be extremely fun to have that balance be really uneven, but it can't be totally straightforward or i get terminally bored with the idea.

okay i think i actually just started listing pet peeves (<- had to delete a full paragraph lmao) so i'm gonna stop here. thank you sm for the ask, this was a really fun one to meditate on :3c

[agpenvs3000f24]

Blog Post 3: What role does “privilege” play in nature interpretation?

Nature interpretation is more than just educating people about the environment; it involves connecting diverse audiences to the natural world. Privilege plays a major role in shaping who gets access to these experiences and how we, as interpreters, communicate with our audiences. I view privilege as the advantages people may have due to factors like race, class economy, or education. These factors can influence who has more opportunities to experience nature and take on roles as interpreters. 

Privilege is often invisible, as described by Peggy McIntosh’s concept of the "invisible backpack." This backpack contains resources like education, economic stability, access to outdoor spaces, and even something as fundamental as time. When I think back to my experiences with canoe tripping, I realize that my ability to spend extended periods in the wilderness came from multiple aspects of privilege. I had access to the necessary equipment, the time away from other obligations, and many years of canoe-tripping experience to gain knowledge to navigate these environments. In addition, my supporting parents covered my camp costs. For others, these opportunities might not be as accessible. What was a chance for me to connect with nature could be a distant possibility for someone without the same resources.

In nature interpretation, this matters because we often assume that everyone experiences the outdoors the same way. For example, I’ve had the privilege of growing up with access to canoe trips, fostering a deep connection to the wilderness. However, someone who has never been exposed to nature in this way, due to financial constraints or a lack of exposure to outdoor education, might not have had the same opportunity. As interpreters, it’s our responsibility to understand that our audience comes from various backgrounds, and our interpretations should reflect this diversity.

This extends to more than just material privilege. Educational privilege also plays a role. Education has greatly expanded my knowledge in the Marine and Freshwater biology program, offering me a deeper understanding of ecology, biology, chemistry, etc., and the complex dynamics in these courses. This academic foundation shapes how I perceive and communicate environmental issues. For instance, when I discuss the importance of protecting marine ecosystems from climate change, my insights are influenced by the complex knowledge I’ve gained through school. However, I also recognize that not everyone has access to this level of education. Understanding that my education is a privilege allows me to approach my interpretations with a focus on making them more inclusive and accessible to a broader audience, ensuring that complex issues are communicated in a way that everyone can grasp.

By acknowledging the layers of privilege that influence both the interpreter and the audience, we can create more meaningful and inclusive nature interpretation experiences. My experiences on canoe trips were transformative for me, but not everyone has access to such opportunities. As interpreters, we need to account for the diverse backgrounds and barriers that people may face. Understanding these differences helps us bridge the gap between our audience and the natural world, ensuring that everyone has the chance to connect with nature, regardless of the invisible backpacks they carry.

[bisexualamy]

I see people talk about fanfiction and novels being different mediums a lot, and while I don’t necessarily disagree, I don’t feel like I understand either. In your opinion, what makes them different mediums from each other? What decides that two things are separate mediums like in general? It’s totally cool if you don’t wanna answer this btw, I know it’s kind of a lot

No worries I think that's an interesting question! With any categories, the boundaries on this are going to be fuzzy, but the reason I believe they're different mediums is that fundamentally, on a metatextual level, the languages are different. What do I mean by this? Let's use film as an example, a medium that I'd argue is very obviously a different medium than novels, even if we may not be able to articulate all the reasons why.

What are some attributes of film that differentiate it from novels (another storytelling medium) or paintings (another visual medium)? Films and novels are both storytelling mediums, but films have visual and auditory components. They also mainly consist of storytelling through visual cues and dialogue. Exposition is given visually or in media res by characters speaking. In a novel, your omniscient narrator giving you a few paragraphs of background on your main characters is common, and so expected it probably flies over the reader's head. In a film, a narrator doing the exact same thing for all the main characters often comes off clumsy. It takes you out of the story in a film, where it doesn't in a novel.

Film is also a time-based medium. A film unfolds over time, and you cannot experience the entire film in one moment or glance. That's not true of a painting (at least traditionally). With a painting, you can view the whole painting in one look. Now, you can sit with a painting, pick out details, analyze the craft or ponder it for a long time and watch as new aspects jump out at you. Fundamentally, however, if you wanted to view a whole painting in one look, you can, and it would still make sense. You cannot do that with a film. On the other hand, a painting is typically not an auditory experience. To do so would be an experimental use of the form. In modern film-making, the exact opposite is true. Music, dialogue, and environmental sound, all of these things are essential to how a film tells a story. To not use them would be considered experimental or odd.

These are three different mediums with three different "languages" in how they interact with their audience. They may share parts of their languages, like I said above, but they don't speak the same language. What works well for one medium can come off clumsy or strange in another.

I believe fanfic and novels have sufficiently different languages that they should be considered different mediums. Both of them are short or long form written mediums telling some sort of story. But fanfic's relationship to its source material is such an inherent trait that novels do not have. The relationship doesn't have to be positive (it's often, in fact, argumentative or strained or dismissive), but the relationship exists. Even in AU fanfiction. Even in fics full of OCs.

In canon compliant and even canon divergent fics, this relationship is more obvious. These fics are both conversations with the source material as much as they are stories. They're playing in the author's sandbox, or they're wrecking their sandcastle and building something else. They're saying "I like/dislike what you did with this specific story, and I'm going to show you that by rewriting or expanding it." They take large aspects of the author's story whole cloth: the characters, the setting, the magic system, the tech, etc.

These fanfics often have little exposition at the top because they presume a familiarity with the characters, the world, or both. This alone makes them really different from novels. Creatively and seamlessly integrating exposition, immersing your audience in a new world and convincing them to stay, is a really important aspect of a novel that these fics don't have to contend with. This alone fundamentally changes how you'd structure a story.

For AU fics, both fics in AU settings and AU fics full of OCs, the above still applies. These fics are still a conversation with the source material. Something about the source material compelled an author to flip it and remix it and change it around. That conversation might be "in the source material, these characters suffered, and I don't want them to suffer any longer" or it could be "I felt the story had a vacancy that this OC fills" or it could be "if these characters had the time/awareness/ability to grow closer, they would've fallen in love." These are all direct commentaries on the original work.

An exercise that I believe illustrates this point the best is to try and adapt an AU fanfic to an original work. Try to file the serial numbers off. I've done this with some of my fic, and it just doesn't work. You don't realize how much you presume the audience knows until you have to cater to an audience who knows nothing of the source material. That hilarious joke you wrote? Turns out it's only funny because it's a nod to this character's original characterization. This awesome climatic plot point that ties the whole story together? Turns out in relies on a specific bit of lore, a quirk of the magic system, or an aspect of the character's past history or personality. Now that this is a novel, you have to back-fill all of that exposition. And you can try to do that, but watch how your story gets clunky and bloated. You will have to start viciously killing your darlings, as you realize that your favorite scene is beautiful in a fic, but sounds awkward and out of place in a novel. Soon, you're basically just rewriting the whole thing to fit a different medium.

Many fanfic writers are extremely talented. And much of that talent, that wit, that perfect line that you can't get out of your head, is integrally informed by your knowledge of the source material. The irony falls flat without having read the source books. The relationships suddenly feel shallow when you don't have seasons of backstory to deepen them. You do not realize how much of fanfic writing consists of this back and forth until you go looking for it.

And here's the thing: if your fanfic has a totally AU setting and it consists of completely original characters, I'd argue that's just a novel posted to AO3. If all you need to do is change the names to make it work, that's a novel. This is why Clueless is inspired by Jane Austen's Emma and not an AU fanfic of it. If you've never read Emma, if you went into Clueless not knowing that Emma was the inspiration for it, you'd perfectly understand the movie.

In fanfic, the source material is always present. It can be obviously present with canon compliant fic. It can be antagonistically present with canon divergent or AU fic. And it is still present, floating in the background, with totally AU fic. Ultimately, the changes a fanfic author makes to the source material are, themselves, as integral to the fanfic as the words on the page. It is a dialogue with the source material: what it did well, what it could've done better, what this author believes is the essence of the story, or the world pushed to its limit, that even though we're in space or in a coffee shop or 1920s New York, we're still, on some level talking about the source material.

This is an aspect of fanfic I love that novels do not have. Novels have a lot of other great stuff! I love novels! But while novels are often engaged in a dialogue with their present society or their predecessors in a genre, that conversation is much more nebulous than it is with fanfic. You can read Slaughterhouse-Five or Gravity's Rainbow, and while knowing their contexts helps you understand them on a deeper level, that is unnecessary to their enjoyment. They are fundamentally more standalone works than fanfic will ever be.

This is ultimately why I think comparing fanfic and novels is comparing apples to oranges. They're different mediums. They use different languages. They require different skills and they fill different artistic niches. You might as well be comparing a film to a painting just because they're both visual art.

[gaijin-fujin-resonance]

Eiam from Twitter has done a Colour Lyrics Video (they explained to me yesterday what this was - it comes from the K-pop vocal band tradition, where different colours indicate which member of a large group is singing lead.)

Seeing the lyrics visually helps me to understand them more clearly. (I have all kinds of auditory processing disorders and struggle to hear words even in my native language.)

It's interesting to me that so much of the discussion that I've seen has focused on the Raijin / Fujin aspect of the title. Maybe because the gods are so familiar in Japanese culture. And yet not on the RESONANCE part of the title. And I'm going to dig into the concept of RESONANCE with some hermeneutics here:

Seeing the lyrics drove the resonance theme home:

共振共鳴 kyoushin kyoumei

Repeating the word for emphasis. Resonate, oscillate - the video even has an oscilloscope in int (wow, I love oscilloscopes!) And @an-insignificant-flower pointed out the specific denotations of those words - they both mean "resonance" but "the former refers to physical vibrations, while the latter refers to sonority (sound)."

And at that point, it clicked. In Physics, there is no difference. Sound is vibration. That's why there is no sound in a vacuum. (In space, no one can hear you scream.)

Apart from the experimental radio station in London, Resonance speaks mostly to me of String Theory. The great atomic discoveries of the early 20th Century - Oppenheimer, atomic power, The Bomb - gave way to increasing weirdness as the scale of reality probed smaller. The fizzing probabilities of the quantum world - really, the only way to understand them was to conceive of them, mathematically and visually, as small pieces of string, vibrating very quickly.

At the subatomic level, there is no physical Matter as we know it. There is only Vibration. Resonance. Shimmering oscillating wibbling energy fields in ten-dimensional hyperspace.

In the cosmic hippie space age period of my extreme youth, this concept made its way into popular culture as "vibes". I think this way of speaking has recently made its way back into youth culture - "we vibe" or "we don't vibe" is a very good way of describing the mysterious chemistry of why one gets on with someone - or not.

Imai Hisashi is really into his physics. To me, one of the most interesting revelations of Imai being forced to do lots of interviews, is that 夢遊猫 SLEEP WALK (Sleepwalking Cat) is actually about Schrödinger's Cat.

One of the fundamental principles of contemporary physics is that due to these subatomic vibrations, the Universe itself resonates. The Universe has a sound. The Universe hums.

The Universe also hums, quite literally. If you tune an old-fashioned radio set to a dead space between stations, you can hear the background microwave radiation that is the residual afterglow of the Big Bang. Existence came into being with a BANG! A wave. A sound. And this idea echoes across many different religions:

The Christianity in which I was raised has a word spoken aloud creating the world: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Hinduism has Shiva, the Lord of the Dance, the beat of his drum and the rhythm of his footsteps forging the first sounds of creation - and destruction, because there is no creation without destruction. Life and Death, creation and destruction are so intimately intertwined you can never have one without the other.

Buck-Tick have played with Hindu Creation concepts before - most notably on Yume Miru Uchuu (Dreaming Universe). Taking the starting point of the great cosmic god Vishnu who dreams the Universe into being and flipping it so that it is the Cosmos itself that is dreaming...

But here, I think we see the starting point of where Imai's philosophy starts to diverge from Sakurai Atsushi's. To Sakurai, life is Dream. To Imai, life is Dance. Life, love, death, dance, all are tangled up and inseparable in Imai's cosmos.

Boys and girls, baby don’t cry, you know it's all okay Life is love and death, and so are we

DANCE　DANCE　HA! HA!　REMEMBER TO DIE

Isn't this what's going on with Boys don't cry / Girls fall in love?

In Sakurai's worldview, life was a dream. His metaphor for his own life, again and again, was a stage, wherein he played the clown. I don't know if this philosophy came to him via Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human) or Shakespeare (All the world's a stage / And all the men and women merely players) but in Sakurai's worldview, to survive is to escape into a performance, a dream in the dark.

Imai seems to be setting out his own worldview, which is slightly different from Sakurai's - life is a dance. The world is a dancefloor on which you beat out your own rhythm. Being a Brit of the Rave Generation, whose life was worked out on dirty dancefloors from the backrooms of Camden pubs to warehouses in NYC, from converted churches to space-age hamburger joints. this is a message that resonates with me intensely. Life is a dance.

You dream by yourself. And you can dance by yourself - but usually, you dance with your lover, you dance with your friends, you dance in the midst of a crowd, that special unique feeling that only a dancefloor can bring of being simultaneously alone and doing your own thing, while also moving in a great oscillating wave of humanity with all the other people on the same floor losing their minds to the same amazing music in a pulsing back-and-forth of bodies and beats. Dancing is social. Music is an organism created as a dance between performer and listener. Living is a dance.

This, to me, is Imai's message: to survive in this world, to survive being beaten by the rain (and I write this sitting in the teeth of Storm Bert battering the UK) - resonate! vibrate! oscillate! spin! Join in the great cosmic hum of the Universe and dance!

[mashounen1945]

The Sonic comics' ... everyone (haters, fans, the writer) disappoints the world once more

Hold on tight, people. It's Salty Mashounen Time (with an extra dose of clunky English, written by a momentarily cranky Spanish-speaker).

Here's my attempt at a TL;DR of what happened recently:

The people writing IDW's Sonic comic started doing a bit of "harmless" teasing for gay pairings widely supported by the fandom currently —namely SonicXShadow and WhisperXTangle—, both in the actual comic's pages and outside of them. In the comic itself, they drew a panel showing Whisper and Tangle together and holding hands with a background suspiciously similar to the lesbian pride flag; outside of the comic, in Ian Flynn's personal podcast BumbleKast, he and some friend of his had the idea of celebrating Pride Month by making some sort of 50% parody, 50% serious, 100% hypothetical (officially) "Sonadow Special" where they spent almost half an hour theorizing how a romantic relationship between Sonic and Shadow would probably go in an official Sonic story (they supposedly did it all as simple fans and nothing else, and neither SEGA nor Archie officially had anything to do with this).

Sadly, Sonic fans reacted with all the grace and elegance of English hooligans in the UEFA Euro 2020 final (that is, exactly as expected of them). The bigoted vocal minority (AKA the daily bread in Sonic comics discourse) started harassing Ian Flynn for this, as well as all the shippers of all the pairings that aren't either SonicXShadow or WhisperXTangle. To make matters worse, some fans who aren't bigots or even support one or both of these gay pairings also started harassing Ian Flynn, for various reasons: trying to force him to turn any of these pairings into canon; scolding him because he gave false hope to fans while knowing full well that SEGA would never allow any kind of romance between main and/or recurring minor characters (whether from the video games or from the comic's original cast) to take place in IDW-Sonic; scolding him for actually saying there was officially nothing romantic between Whisper and Tangle in the IDW comic and SonicXShadow wouldn't happen in canon; accusing him of bigotry because that friend starring as his co-host in the BumbleKast had allegedly made a few homophobic remarks at some point in the distant past...

Flynn responded to this whole mess and tried to clarify some things via the following Twitter thread:

I guess I can commend Ian Flynn for coming out and speaking to the fans like this. I'm still very critical of the story he's writing at IDW, and I still disagree at a fundamental level with his vision of the Sonic series and its cast, but he's a good person in the real world (at least as far as he lets the world know over the Internet); he's not a bigot like some Twitter users (of course) are saying, and out of everything he did as head writer of Sonic comics, considering the possibility of including queer characters and/or pairings is one of the very few aspects of his writing I don't have any problem with, and I can understand why it's so difficult for him to have a queer character/pairing materialize in the comic's story (now, if such thing is finally green-lit by both SEGA and IDW, I may have issues later with the idea's execution by Ian Flynn and co. in the story itself, since this already happened with some other good ideas Flynn came up with when he tried to actually put them on the panels of either IDW-Sonic or Archie-Sonic... but that's a different topic).

However, I can't help but feel jaded at him due to the very direct and reckless way he interacts with the fans. There are already arguments to be made for a content creator to maintain some healthy distance from their followers, but this especially applies to Ian Flynn: as someone who spent so much time dealing with the Sonic fandom while writing the comics (and even started his career as a Sonic fanfiction writer himself), he knows very well how neurotic Sonic fans (from any subset of fans) can get. There are also the added challenges that come with trying to introduce queer themes and also trying to get it right on the first try. The desperate thirst of the LGBTQ+ community for good representation in fiction is legendary (and justified since they're on the verge of genocide in the USA and the UK, which includes the very real fear of being not only physically wiped out but also wiped out from the collective memory of the peoples of their respective nations, the Alt-Right has already openly declared "culture war" on them), and on these issues, the old adage "don't make promises you can't keep" is more valid than ever: if you're not guaranteed that both your publishers and the IP owners will allow you to introduce queer themes into your story and also give you the freedom to deal with those themes as you see fit, you shouldn't even leave clues for the audience or put any hints or do any teasing, because the desperate LGBTQ+ audience is always going to take it as a sign that they finally have their representation secured, and then they'll get rightfully angry when that representation never happens or is insufficient or problematic.

All in all, engaging the fandom the way Flynn does is not only highly dangerous in multiple ways, but also some piss-poor PR on a similar level to what you'd normally expect from SEGA themselves. Now he regrets the fandom's reaction, and the fandom certainly sucks for doing crap like this, but to be fair, he should have seen it all coming.

And then there's the terrible long-term effect of this scandal. Due to this kind of reactions from bigoted vocal minorities in the Sonic fandom, the IDW comic had already become quite criticism-proof: any negative opinion is often labelled as "anti-SJW bullcrap" merely because the most vocal haters of Ian Flynn's Sonic stories used to be Alt-Right nutjobs, neck-bearded InCels living in their parents' basement and secretly (or not so secretly) lusting over female anthropomorphic animals, and reactionary conservatives absurdly nostalgic for Ken Penders. But now, IDW-Sonic will be seen more than ever as an unquestionable piece of top-class literature comparable to Sophocles's most iconic plays, thus worsening this "echo chamber" thing going on both among the fans and between them and the comic's writers.

I try not to believe in conspiracy theories, but a part of me is starting to think all of this was partially staged at least: perhaps Flynn realized the way he was writing the story for IDW-Sonic was alienating a lot of fans from multiple, pretty varied subsets, and now those fans could actually provide some reasonable arguments to back up their criticism rather than some predictable homophobic/misogynistic rant; maybe he genuinely thought IDW-Sonic is the best thing he ever wrote and even one of the best stories of its genre, so he just ignored all those readers he lost and focused on the readers he still has, or he agreed with some of that constructive criticism from disappointed fans and wanted to stop writing the comic like this (he does occasionally tone Sonic's "jerkiness" down for a few comic issues, before toning it back up for the next big crisis in the story) but SEGA had already grown fond of the "self-righteous asshole" Sonic, his hypocritical friends and the "bafflingly incompetent super-genius" Eggman created by Flynn for the IDW comic; in any case, Flynn could have amped up the "technically not official" gay innuendos in the actual comic and his podcast in order to get a reaction out of those few bigots in the fandom (and also to get a reaction out of hardcore shippers, who are another vocal minority of Sonic fans with their own issues), then let his readers' blind devotion and the Sonic fandom's paranoia do the rest, making any potential critic of IDW-Sonic be dismissed as either "pro-shipper obsession" or "just the same miserable crap as the Far-Right weirdos" or even both.

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PS:

If you still feel like going out on the Internet and calling into question any of Ian Flynn's or his crew's artistic/writing choices (either in their role as official Sonic content creators or in any other "informal" situation such as their podcasts, social media accounts and personal forums), feel free to do so (as long as you try to do constructive criticism and aren't bigoted or too disrespectful, of course) but forget about invoking "Sonic Team's original vision", or pointing out any difference between the IDW comic and other pieces of official Sonic content, or pointing out incongruences between the IDW comics and the videogames of whose stories it's supposed to be a continuation, or anything like that. Some purist fans like to imagine SEGA and Sonic Team are the guardians of good/accurate portrayals, but that's just not true and was probably never true: either they don't give a damn about how Sonic is portrayed in the West anymore, or they do care, but they totally allow and endorse —either by action or omission— the current Western Sonic content (along with this sort of comeback of the infamous planned differentiation between Japanese source material and localized Western versions), regardless of whether they do so by action or omission; for all intents and purposes, the "bastardized" Western version of Sonic, whether or not you like it more than Japanese "original" Sonic, is currently part of Sonic Team's artistic vision as much as the videogames made in Japan are (IIRC, I've already talked about this in a previous post shortly before the release of Sonic Frontiers).

In any case, most of the fandom was always wrong in one way or another about Ian Flynn and his dynamic with SEGA: contrary to what his fans may think, any flaws of the IDW comic ain't due to Flynn and his co-writers' creativity being held down by SEGA or its mandates, and contrary to what purist fans may think, he's not irreparably ruining Sonic forever (at least, not as far as SEGA and Sonic Team are concerned).

[madeline68]

Alternate History - Motherland: Fort Salem

What is the koinos kosmos (common world) and mutually assumed knowledge the series shares with viewers? 

Motherland: Fort Salem is a show in which the Salem Witch trials ended with a negotiation of peace in exchange for witches serving in the military, known as the Salem Accords. In the present, society is matriarchal, especially for witches, and witches are conscripted to serve in the military against supernatural terrorist threats and other witch armies. The series assumes viewers have some amount of knowledge about the Salem Witch trials. It also expects knowledge on the development of America and the military industrial complex. 

How does the series depict cultural hybridity through the alerted history’s role in reflecting and reshaping cultural assumptions? 

The show uses witches as an “other” in place of normal cultural differences. This can be seen through how they are shown as biologically different. Witches in this world have an extra set of vocal cords and different ear bones, which is what allows them to engage in magic. This highlights how, although they are human, they are still fundamentally different. 

How does the series depict the power of understanding world-creation? 

The choice to focus on the military-industrial complex reflects the creator’s ability to understand how our world, and alternate ones develop. An understanding of American history makes it clear that no one with the level of power witches have would be allowed to roam free. If they weren’t killed in the witch trials, they would have to either be in hiding or serving the country in some manner. This creates the central “villains” of the show, The Scree. The Scree are witch terrorists who use their ability to kill hundreds in attacks. This is specifically done in protest of the witch draft. Despite the ethical differences, there can be clear links drawn between the witch draft and the American military. Even though the military does not have a draft anymore, many people end up having to serve due to financial hardships, which is a focus of many military critiques.  

In what ways do formulations of the past, present, and future engage with prospective realities of what might have been and what might be in the series’ alerted history? 

In the show, magic is performed by singing, hence why the vocal and auditory parts of witches are different from regular humans. This engages with historical mythology of sirens and mermaids. It suggests that song is inherently dangerous, as it serves towards manipulation, particularly when it comes from something that looks human, but is not. In the same way, although witches are human, their internal body parts separate them. 

How do multiple realities or contemplations of multiple realities merge with questions of authenticity? 

The question of authenticity within Motherland is explained by the choice of characters. The three main characters each demonstrate a different perspective on the military draft on witches. Raelle is a reluctant enlistee whose mother was worked to death by the military. Abigail comes from a long line of military witches. Tally enlists because she believes it is her duty to. These three varying backgrounds fit with the various reasons people enlist in the army in our world.

@theuncannyprofessoro