#i WAS going to expand on that capitalism example

[kawamagi-crow]

Just saw someone i followed call that girl that explains everything in "girly terms" a "type of person that would claim to be feminist but also relcaim the word bimbo"

Do y'all know the amount of knowledge that takes to simplify complex politics indo metaphors that people can understand? y'all need to understand that not everyone can understand when you say complex shit, but they still deserve to understand the political climate we live in.

Like, girl, just bc it looks stupid to you doesn't mean its not spreading knowledge. not everyone has the political awareness y'all have, so if you went "Oh Capitalism is the opressive economical system that relies in exploration and separation of the workers from the means of production" not everyone would get it. She is explaining in terms that people that don't get it would get it.

Also not to mention the internalized misogyny some of y'all have in relation to hyperfeminine women, ive seen some of y'all say we need to "save women from the wave of hyperfemininity" and it sounds A LOT like what misogynistic men say about feminism.

Just bc a girl likes to "dress like a bimbo" doesn't make her less feminist, and newsflash, men don't like hyperfeminine women either, because guess what? they're regarded as sluts,bimbos and "dumb blondes". they don't dress for MEN, they dress for themselves, just like y'all do.

Liking to party, Having boyfriends and performing your femininity doesn't make you less feminist.

[calder]

Released in 2010, Obsidian Entertainment's Fallout: New Vegas actively concerns itself with the realities of gay existence, and is widely recognized as a noteworthy work of queer science fiction. New Vegas extensively examines social attitudes towards homosexuality among the game's major factions, and primarily conveys this lore through gay and bisexual characters describing their own experiences. It also allowed the player to mechanically set the Courier's sexual orientation. By taking both available perks, the player character can be bisexual. By choosing neither, the player can opt out of seeing flirtatious dialogue options.

Uniquely, Fallout: New Vegas explores homosexuality in the context of wasteland societies, and touches upon related issues. The core theme of New Vegas is that the desire to recreate the past is driven by irrational nostalgia, and any endeavor to manifest past glory is dangerous and doomed. The social issue of homophobia is used as a demonstrative example. The resurrection of corporate and military power structures presents new avenues for Old World problems such as institutional homophobia to reemerge. One of the many issues that divide the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion is the latter's open persecution of gay people. The NCR is described as tolerant and even accepting of same-sex relationships, though acceptance tends to fall off the further one moves away from the developed, urbanized core of New California. In recent years, the Republic's rapid economic transformation has led to an unforeseen erosion of the humanitarian ideals which it was founded to serve. In practice, to recreate America was to take on its shortcomings and its sins. As subsistence scavenging has dried up, the people of the NCR increasingly turn to wage labor, entrepreneurial venture, or military enlistment to keep their families fed. Meanwhile, their government enacts morally corrosive imperialism (narrative verbiage), their dominion expanding indefinitely as their infrastructure crumbles from within. This has led to a profit-based imperial monoculture which must conquer, consume, and coerce to perpetuate. As personal politics and service labor grow in importance, people find themselves more inclined to present as "normal" in the interest of financial stability and political expedience. A loading screen visualizes this culture of artificial social normalcy: the portrait of President Aradesh on the NCR 5$ bill neglects to depict his unibrow, earring, and facial scarification, overall portraying the once-chieftain so cleanly-cut as to be unrecognizable at first glance. He also appears to be wearing a collared shirt or suit as opposed to the robe he wore in Fallout.

In the Legion, Caesar has mandated that every legionnaire take a wife and produce children, citing high infant mortality rates and the constant need for soldiers, and going as far as instituting child quotas. He treats human beings as a resource to be exploited for war. Ostensibly in this aim homosexuality has been declared a capital offense punishable by death. Historically, routine demonstrations of violence towards women and gay people are a deliberate feature of fascist societies, the only logical cultural conclusion of a government devoted entirely to war and control. In Forlorn Hope letter 9, an NCR soldier wrote wrote the following to his boyfriend:

Dearest Andrew, Writing this seems pretty morbid, but tomorrow we march into the no man's land between our camp and Nelson, which is crawling with Legion. The Major insisted I write this damn "if you get this, I'm dead" letter so here it is. What a crock. I have the luck of the devil and your love on my side, so I'll be home soon. Keep the porch light on for me. We'll party in New Vegas when I get back. I love you. —Devin

Devin believed he would prevail over the Legion because his love would keep him safe. He was found dying or dead on the battlefield, the letter was found on his body. In a post-release patch, the injured soldiers were removed from the battlefield for performance reasons, and never re-implemented. Driven largely in reaction to the Legion's hyper-masculine posturing and misogyny, rumors persist across the Mojave that gay male relationships are not only common within the Legion, but condoned. These rumors are repeated commonly in NCR society. A closeted NCR Major mentions that the Legion is "a little more... forgiving" about close male "friendships," speaking in a hushed tone to avoid suspicion. At the same outpost, the player can encounter Cass, a bisexual civilian woman. She may flirt with a male Courier, who may imply they are gay, prompting her to imply gay men are more common in the Legion. Even as gay men fight and die in the name of love under his command, NCR General Oliver may remark to Courier Six at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam: "If you think after all that's happened, I'm going to grab my ankles and take it like the Legion..."

This writing pertains to institutionalized homophobia which manifests in practice though power structures and social interactions without being written into law. Simply put, in his derogatory remark, the general expresses to his army that military surrender is gay, much like their gay enemy. From the brevity and bluntness of this remark, it's clear that this sentiment is already well understood among his ranks. Logically, to project strength in the eyes of such a leader, one might also project homophobia by scrutinizing and harassing one's peers and subordinates. In this atmosphere, the expression of homophobia is not only normalized, but materially incentivized. For the ambitious, it becomes a tool, and a way of casting shame upon rivals. For the closeted, homophobia becomes a survival tactic, hoping to throw scrutiny off oneself. This is why Major Knight is immediately frightened when a male Courier flirts with him. He is so profoundly alienated that he romanticizes life as a gay man under the Legion. The Legion punish homosexuality with death, and yet Knight characterizes them as more "forgiving" than the NCR. Through these apparently disparate events, the audience can trace how a distorted perception of gay people emerges among insecure men in a military environment, and subsequently becomes ingrained in the corresponding civilian culture. At the 188 Trading Post, a lesbian from the Brotherhood of Steel named Veronica also wryly remarks that she believes legionaries have gay sex about as often as straight sex. She also notes that this only applies to men, as women have no rights whatsoever in Legion society. In this aside, she conveys a pre-existing frustration with lesbophobic social norms. Veronica also mentions that the people of her bunker would rather she remain on the surface. The Mojave Brotherhood of Steel has no official policy prohibiting homosexuality, but an implicit attitude among its dominant members that their limited numbers require everyone to have children to avoid extinction. Numerically, this may seem logical on the surface, given their reluctance to recruit outsiders. However, given their tiny population, this is an ineffective countermeasure, as they do not have nearly enough members to maintain genetic diversity for more than a few generations. This approach is not universally supported by all family units within the Brotherhood, but every individual is ultimately at the mercy of the elder. Veronica was in a lesbian relationship, but they were quietly separated by Elder Elijah, due to the dominant culture of enforcing heterosexual pairing among their population.

Caesar's law has not ended homosexuality within his domain. Despite the obvious risks, some legionaries have continued to pursue relationships behind closed doors, especially given their access to slaves. So long as members complete their societal obligations and fulfill the child quotas, they are able to pursue romance with other men in secret. Homosexual relationships in the faction are noted as being relatively equal compared to the average Legion husband and wife, in a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" sort of open secret policy. Gay legionaries must always make sure to keep their activities hidden. A centurion was once almost caught fraternizing with the teenage boy he had chosen to tend his tent. Despite previous "romantic" intentions, he quickly resolved to dispose of the slave to dispel suspicion. Had they been caught together, the centurion would have been charged with homosexuality and sentenced to death. This story is only known because the enslaved young man, Jimmy, managed to escape execution. Further illustrating the cruelty intrinsic to Legion governance, it's stated that homosexuality was the crime, and not the rape of a young slave; in fact, it seems Jimmy was forced to contribute to the child quota despite being a gay teenager, and the experience left him traumatized. He has resolved to never have sex with another woman, as the very notion triggers memories which fill him with disgust, and (in his own words) makes him feel like a slave all over again. The Strip is indifferent to gay people, viewing them as another opportunity to make caps. Both the Gomorrah and the Atomic Wrangler are interested in maximizing profits, and their prostitution services cater to clients regardless of their orientation. The openly gay Jimmy works at nearby Casa Madrid, but there is some tension among his peers due to his co-worker Maude's blatant homophobia. She supposes he's "okay, for one of those," and if propositioned by a female Courier, Maude will direct them to Sweetie for such "perverted" services. Pretty Sarah must regularly intervene to keep the peace among her staff.

The Followers of the Apocalypse, well-read punks who seek to embody healing through anarchistic values, are not concerned with gender. Most are openly and casually sexually active. Upon meeting Courier Six, Arcade Gannon offhandedly makes his gayness known, unprompted. The audience must face the fact that Arcade's apprehension of the Legion is far from abstract; under Legion law, he would be put to death. One possible ending gives further insight into Caesar's hypocrisy: should the player sell Arcade into slavery and leave Caesar alive, he will keep Arcade as a personal physician and philosophical advisor. They intellectually spar at length, and Caesar grows singularly fond of him. Accordingly, Arcade imitates the historic suicide of Cato the Younger by disemboweling himself. The Legion's remaining medics attempted to save his life, but none were Arcade's equal. Caesar understood his doctor's final gesture of contempt, and mourned him for months.

New Vegas ventures further into themes of healing from the trauma of sexual violence, from the perspective of a lesbian character. Corporal Betsy, an NCR sharpshooter, is a rape survivor, and suffers with PTSD from the incident. Her unprocessed trauma has manifested as a maladaptive tendency to aggressively and explicitly proposition the women she encounters, in an effort to reassert a sense of control. This defensive hypersexual impulse has negatively impacted her ability to connect with other women. A male superior officer notes that her behavior is inappropriate for anyone of her stature, but abstains from disciplining her out of sincere concern for her mental health. The Courier can help her begin to recognize these problems, and convince her to seek treatment from Doctor Usanagi at the New Vegas medical clinic, which proves helpful to her as she processes and heals from her trauma.

In Old World Blues, the Think Tank are five floating brains in jars who express themselves by waving robotic arms bearing screens depicting facial features. Before the War, they were federal scientists who committed crimes against humanity in the name of weapons development. Each is stuck in some sort of neuro-bionic feedback loop which prevents them from moving forward with their projects, mentally binding them to their central laboratory. Walking through their homes at Higgs Village, it's clear each was deeply neurotic before they were transformed into floating brains. Now without bodies, they attempt to maintain the illusion that they are exempt from sexuality as purely mental beings, but each displays obvious interest in the human form. They have codified this shaming with the term "formography." Most of the men are obsessively defensive over their complete disinterest in penises, which they talk about constantly. However, the shameless Dr. Dala shows overwhelming interest in observing and recording any and all human functions. Already androgynous in her pre-War life, Dala has taken to self-identifying as a "gender neutral entity" (though she is not known to use they/them pronouns). Regardless of the Courier's gender, they may coquettishly scratch themselves, clear their throat, and stretch in front of Dala until her biomed gel decoagulates. Dr. 8 also responds positively to graphic masturbation advice from Couriers of either gender. The X-8 research facility is ostensibly a massive immersive shrine to Doctor Borous's hatred of Richie "Ball-Lover" Marcus, a long-dead child who bullied Borous centuries ago. He also clings to his resentment of one Betsy Bright, who refused to attend a dance with him, supposedly so she could "go smoke with RICHIE MARCUS." Clearly arrested in development, Borous has literally built a temple to the fantasy of torturing his adolescent romantic rival and feeding him to dogs. His frozen, static characterization of the jock Richie Marcus as a "pinko-commie" who "likes balls" reflects the shallowness, pettiness, and overall misanthropy underlying his patriotic identity. It remains apparent throughout Old World Blues that the Think Tank are all chronically sexually repressed, which is inseparable from the values of the violent and judgmental pre-War culture which created them. With time and isolation, this ingrained repression has manifested as various intense and deranged psychosexual behaviors, including rage-fueled homophobia, voyeurism, and the obsessive performance of puritanical pretense.

____

“Although I’ve been out for a very long time, I made a conscious effort to be out with relation to this project, as I wanted to be visible as a lesbian in the game industry. New Vegas itself is, I think, one of (if not the) best games out there in how we treat homosexuality – and all of that is very intentional.”

“If my work on FNV, if my being out has helped even one gay person, then I have succeeded.” — Tess “Obsidian’s Gay Cowgirl” Treadwell

____

written (with help from other editors) for fallout.fandom.com/wiki/LGBT_representation_in_the_Fallout_series criticism welcome

[mesetacadre]

Half-doubting if this anon was even a good idea to begin with but, am I a bad communist for being actively hostile against any form of authoritarian concentration of power?

I just don't think any single person could embody the revolution much less serve it on a system built entirely on personalism where we worship the leader instead of the workers themselves. The only role individual people should have on communism is that of thinkers and philosophers, not of absolute rulers.

This may be drawn from a personal bias though, my country was destroyed by a dictatorship that would have gladly shot me and hid my body for being a lesbian and I have developed animosity towards authoritarians that is perhaps unhealthy.

Where do we draw the line to avoid becoming a red painted tyranny? Or am I just not a good communist for my intransigence?

Thank you for your time

I'll break this down into two parts, authority and idolatry

Authority is a value-neutral, metaphysical concept. It is the use of some kind of force to impose a will on others. If you consider yourself a communist, then how do you intend to overthrow capitalism without exerting authority? Engels said it best: «A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all». We must come to terms with this, as revolutionary marxists. If we refuse the concept of authority all-together, then all that can happen is that authority is applied against our entire class, for the rest of time. I also live in a first-world country that used to have a fascist dictatorship, and the ~150,000 thousand killed for political reasons, 30,000 disappeared, 500,000 interned in concentration camps, more than 100,000 summary trials, tens of thousands of slaves and the thousands tortured up to the very end can speak to its destructiveness. But it wasn't as simple as "they used authority, therefore all authority (abstractly) is bad". Franco's dictatorship responded to a series of needs that the Spanish and European bourgeoisie had, by the time of their sponsored coup d'etat in 1936, Spain was at the forefront of organization of the working class in Europe, the communist party had hundreds of thousand members if you include their youth wing, and the biggest unions reached the millions, in a country of just under 25 million. Italy, Germany, Austria and Portugal found themselves in a similar resurgence when their fascists took power, in every case financed by their biggest capitalists, national and foreign.

The point I'm getting at is that, if you want to understand class society, you have to go beyond the black-and-white, metaphysical liberal philosophy. Violence can be exerted by multiple classes through their own class organizations, and the character, context and sense of that violence changes accordingly. I'm not saying that all violence committed by workers without exception is wholly good. I'm saying that the relationship each class has with class society modifies the very reasoning and effect of that violence. And no example of violence in history can be really described as senseless. My country's dictatorship did not kill, torture and repress that many people for no reason, the holocaust did not happen because Hitler was an evil entity, and the various proletarian states, past and present, have not exerted their authority senselessly.

In marxist theory there are two very important concepts: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (DotB), and the dictatorship of the proletariat (DotP). The DotB is a catch-all term for any state of any form that serves capitalist interests. This is useful because, whether it's a liberal democracy with a strong welfare system, or Pinochet's Chile, they both ultimately serve to protect and expand the interest of the capitalist class. Put another way, the capitalist economy sustains the state and other entities like the media, the military, the government (what we call the suprastructure), while the capitalist economy underneath it all (what we call the infrastructure) maintains its existence. It is a dictatorship because it is one class enacting their own will in their own interests. The DotP is the same concept, but turned on its head. After our class has taken power and has began to build socialism-communism, it is actively enacting their sole will in their own interests. Why would the formerly exploited listen to what their former exploiters want? The proletariat must be able to repress the extant capitalist elements within and the permanently hostile capitalist class without. Dwell on this for a moment. While a DotP fosters democratic mechanisms for its class, the social majority (as all DotP in history have done), it simultaneously exerts its authority on those extraneous to the working class. If you live in a capitalist state, the very same thing is happening, just reversed. The managers of capitalism, i.e. the representatives in liberal democracy, govern for the capitalist class, even representing various sections of that class, while simultaneously repressing or preventing any organization of the working class.

I did not mention Chile as an example for no reason beforehand. When the working class of Chile attempted to build socialism through non-violent means, after the election of Allende (there were many tendencies within Allende's party and among his entire support base but that's beyond this post), they were met with an intervention that did not have any qualms about using violence, kickstarting Pinochet's 17 year long dictatorship, backed by Chilean and USAmerican capitalists, atop the corpses of at least 40,000 executed and/or tortured. Look up the massacre of Estadio Nacional if you're interested, it's where Victor Jara was murdered.

"Authority" in DotP is never as widespread nor as violent, firstly because it doesn't aim to repress the social majority, but rather the small but resourceful capitalist class, and secondly because its "repression" more often than not manifests in our actual goals, which is to build a socialist economy, which would necessarily eliminate the social basis for a capitalist class to exist in the first place. In the USSR, for example, the rich landowner peasants disappeared first an foremost because the structure of land ownership was completely changed, eliminating the source of their power. Any instances of actual violence were mostly against saboteurs during collectivization or during the grain seizures to curb the mass starvation that happened in the cities during the civil war, since no grain made it there. Capitalist authority is meant to keep the mass of working people subservient and exploited, proletarian authority is meant to protect the project of socialism-communism against attacks. It has never been about killing all the rich people, it has been about abolishing the capitalist mode of production and building a new one, one which does not need the oppression of any kind of people to keep functioning.

I recommend the following books if you're interested in sources about "authority" and democracy in DotPs:

The Soviets Expected It, Anna Louise Strong (1941). It is focused on the USSR's lead-up to the fascist invasion, but it contains a few examples from ALS' own, unsupervised, experience with soviet democracy and the general attitude of working people

In North Korea: First Eyewitness Reports, Anna Louise Strong (1949). Same as the previous one, it has a few examples of ALS' unsupervised travels through North Korea before the Korean War that talk about how democracy was set up.

The Triumph of Evil, Austin Murphy (2002). I've said a lot how this author is very annoying about keeping to this useless good vs evil dichotomy when talking about socialism and capitalism, but apart from those sporadic remarks, it's incredibly well researched. It focuses on economic aspects, but chapters 1, 2, especially 3, and 7 all contain analyses on the actual mechanisms of authority that DotP use, taking East Germany as an example. Again though, the author is very annoying as soon as he begins to give his personal opinions on morality.

Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It, Bruni de la Motte and John Green (2015). Pretty self explanatory title, this one goes into more detail about the security apparatus of East Germany. I haven't read this one in full, but it has a dedicated chapter on democracy and the state security service.

Onto idolatry. I promise this part will be shorter.

I've written more in detail about this, but while personality worship is a problem, I don't agree that it leads to the problems you outline. It's undeniable that there have been elements of individual idolatry, but that's neither a reflection of actual power concentration or ever a substitution for the elevation of workers. Leadership in any communist party is always collective, and if it follows Leninist principles of organization even partially, then internal democracy is always guaranteed save for the most extreme of situations. Stalin might have been a popular figure, but the Central Committee he was a part of was not below him, and the periodical Congresses had more authority than the CC or any individual person. ALS mentions how, for example, the 1936 constitution was made. It was a wholly democratic process, more than a hundred thousand suggestions were all recieved and considered by the organs in charge. It was the most progressive constitution in its time, it guaranteed rights many of us still do not have. And that process supposedly happened while the "worship" of Stalin was in full force. Every position in DotPs has some mechanism of recall and accountability, everything is elected and ratified. Can you start a process of recall for any specific member of the state administration in your DotB? In one instance, as ALS says, in the region of Crimea up to half of the elected officials were all recalled in one year.

I keep using the USSR as an example because it's the system I'm most familiar with, but any other DotP you can think of has similar mechanisms and limitations to power. Once again, was there a certain amount of idolatry towards a few individuals? Yes. Was this a harmful vice which created unchecked concentration of power and undue oppression? Most certainly not. Besides this, we're materialists, and we understand that human psychology is largely molded by the underlying material conditions. Focusing on individuals when it comes to these sorts of things is almost inevitable for large groups of people because of how the exploitative economic conditions modify psychological tendencies. It is a remain of liberal ideology for the most part, and it should be fought against. But you can't expect millions of people to change how they view certain processes, changes like those take a lot of time, generations, and education.

I've spent essentially all of my political life within a party structure not very dissimilar from that of Cuba's, the USSR's, China's, the DPRK's, etc, and I can say with full confidence that it is the most democratic and simultaneously productive set of principles you can have in political activity. Compared to liberal democracy, and compared to horizontalist/non-centralized structures, even those employed by anarchists, which I have also experienced, it is still far more democratic and effective at taking into account all input without devolving into a glorified debate club.

I don't think you're a bad communist, having these doubts and talking to other people about it is a very good habit to have. If you still have doubts or want to keep talking about this, feel free to shoot me another ask or a private message :)

[writingwithcolor]

Conlanging Issues: A Compendium

NOTE: This question was submitted before the Nov 1, 2023 reopening and may not adhere to all rules and guidelines. The ask has been abridged for clarity. 

Most of my questions are about linguistics. […] One of the major locations in my story is a massive empire with cultural inspirations ranging from North Africa in the far south to Mongolia/Russia in the far north […] The middle region is where the capital is and is the main root of culture, from which Ive been taking inspiration from Southwest Asia […], but most notably southern regions of India. I've tried to stick to the way cities are named in Sanskrit-based languages but added the names of stars to the front (because the prevalent religion of this region worships the stars [...]). So Ive ended up with names like Pavoprayag, Alyanaga, Alkaiduru, Alcorpura, Cygnapete, etc. Is this a consistent naming system or should I alter it in some way? The empire itself is named the Arcana Empire since [...] each act of my story is named after a tarot card [...]. Another region in my story is based more on parts of South China and North Vietnam, so I've tried to stick to names with a Chinese origin for that. I understand the significance of family names in southwest [sic] Asia, so I wanted to double check [...]. They have only two short given names. Based on the birth order of the child, the first half of the name comes from the fathers family and the second half from the mothers family. It is seen as disrespectful not to use both names because using only one is seen as denouncing that side of your family. Thus I have names like Su Yin, Dai Jun, and Yi Wen for some of the characters from this region, and the city itself that they are from is named Bei Fen. On the other hand, Im having further trouble naming characters. […] Ive been trying to give my human characters names from real human cultures to distinguish them from the website-generated names of say, orcs, elves, dwarves, etc, but I think I should change many of the names Ive used to be more original and avoid fracturing real world cultures for the sake of my worldbuilding. […] Im still very weak in the linguistics area (even after four years of French, sigh) and am having trouble finding where to read about naming patterns so I can make new ones up. I read your naming guides but am still having trouble on where to start for specific languages. […] Im trying to look into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian specifically.

You're Going Too Broad

In my opinion, you’re casting too wide a net. You mentioned looking into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian to develop fantasy names. These languages are very different from one another, so unless you’re using them separately for very different parts of your world, it will be hard to draw inspiration from them in a way that makes sense. You’re taking on a huge amount of research in order to worldbuild cultures that span a massive geographical area (basically all of North Africa and Asia?) and have very little in common. Are you sure you want to take on that task?

I could see it being more manageable if most of your story is set in a small region of this world, which you will then research in depth to make sure you’re being as specific as possible.

Taking Persian as an example, you’ll have to decide whether you want to use Old Persian, Middle Persian, or Modern Persian. Each of these comes with a different alphabet and historical influences. They’re also associated with different periods of time and corresponding cultural and social markers. Once you’ve decided exactly when and where you want to start from, you can then expand the borders of your area of focus. For example, if you’ve decided to draw inspiration from Achaemenid Persia, you can then look at the languages that were spoken in the Achaemenid Empire. A quick Google search tells me that while Old Persian was the empire’s official language, they also used Aramaic, Akkadian, Median, Greek, and Elamite (among, I’m sure, many many others and many more regional variations). Further research into each of these will give you ethnic groups and bordering nations that you can draw more inspiration from to expand out your worldbuilding.

Don’t forget to make sure you’re staying within the same time period in order to keep things consistent. It’s a lot of work, and this is only for a small portion of the continent-spanning worldbuilding you’re trying to do.

You can get away with painting the rest of the continent in broad strokes without too much depth if the story doesn’t go there and you don’t have any main characters from those parts of the world. Otherwise, you’ll need to put this same level of detail into your worldbuilding for the area with Turkish-inspired names, and again for the area with Sanskrit-inspired names, and so on.

I know this isn’t what you were asking, but I honestly have a hard time helping you figure out where to start because your ask is so broad I don’t quite know where I would start myself. So, this is my advice: focus down on one region and time period and go from there. Feel free to write back once you’ve picked a narrower focus that we could help you with.

- Niki

So there’s logistical issues in regards to your naming system for southern China-coded regions. One issue is history: mainly on how there is not simply one language in China but multiple due to having a lot of ethnic groups and the size of China. South China in particular has different dialects and languages than the North as seen in this map of Chinese languages and dialects. There’s also how historically Mandarin was not the official language until 1913 in China and historical China saw vast changes in territory dependent on the dynasty. Before then, Mandarin was primarily a northern Chinese language based in Beijing while southern China had its own languages, dialects, and dynamics. Not to mention, historical China saw an evolution of language just like English has Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English. For instance, Vietnam was once part of China during the Tang Dynasty and at another point, it was not part of China.

-Mod Sci

If You’re Borrowing Whole Words or Elements, Research More

The other issue is inconsistency with the cultures you’re deriving this conlang from. In regards to “two given names,” the Chinese name I was given was one syllable and then I would have a last name that was also one syllable. There’s also how not every family is perfect. Not every marriage is sanctioned and some children may come from single parents. Some families may not cooperate with marriage and sometimes children may be abandoned with unknown parents. There does not seem to be contingencies for these names under this conlang system.

The main problem with conlangs is that one needs to truly understand the languages one is drawing from. Tolkein managed to create conlangs due to training in linguistics. Mandarin is already a difficult language with multiple tones, and trying to use it for conlangs without knowledge of how Mandarin works or a good foundation in linguistics is just a Sisyphean endeavor.

-Mod Sci

Four years of French wouldn’t have taught you about linguistics as a science or anything about the language families you’ve listed - Indo-Iranian, Sino-Tibetan, and Turkic, nor any Asian naming conventions. I agree with Niki that you need to narrow down your research.

Pur/pura means city in Sanskrit (ex: Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur). Prayag is a place where pilgrimages are done. Naga isn’t a place name in Sanskrit (google says it means snake), nagar is and it means town. X Nagar is a very common name for places (Ex: Rajinder Nagar). Many cities in Karnataka have names ending in uru (Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Tumakuru, etc) but the language of Karnataka is Kannada - a Dravidian language and completely different family from Sanskrit (Indo-Aryan). I’m not sure where “pete” came from. “Bad” and “vaal” are common suffixes for places too (Ex: Faisalabad, Allahabad). A disclaimer that I do not speak Sanskrit, I speak Punjabi, which is a descendant of Sanskrit and in the same linguistic family (Indo-Aryan languages).

- SK

Also, This Is Not…Really Conlanging.

Hi OP. Linguistics refers to the science of studying how languages work, not the discipline of learning languages. And nothing shows that gap more than how you have thus far approached constructing fictional languages and toponyms. 

The reason why Sci and SK have a lot to say about your place names is because they don't resonate—you have borrowed whole words into your toponyms (place names) from a variety of languages—without an accurate understanding of what these words mean, how they’re pronounced, where they’re derived from—and expected them to work together. I suggest you read the links below on why conlanging is not as simple as choosing some languages and mashing their IRL words together: 

Why Using Random Languages Wholesale in your Fantasy is a Bad Idea 

Pitfalls of Mashing Countries and Languages in Coding

In your city names, for example, you’re using star names from multiple languages that use different sets of sounds represented by different sets of historical spelling rules. “Cygn-” and “Arcana” stick out like a sore thumb—the fact that one “c” is /s/ and one is /k/ is an obvious flag that they are Latin-derived English borrowings. This is because spelling rules were created in Middle English to make sense of the mix of “c” pronunciations across words of Indo-European origin due to a historical split called the Centum-Satem division. This is a phenomenon that is very specific to our world history, and to the history of English at that. Ironically, in your attempt to avoid stock fantasy names (which also often fall into the Latin-derived English pit), you are taking the exact same approach to naming.

Like Niki said, your selections are far too broad to code under a single umbrella. Do you expect that whatever language that city name came from runs the full gamut of sound inventory & spelling variety that spans multiple continents and hundreds of languages? Because that’s not how languages work. (And yes, I mean hundreds. Indigenous languages and linguistic diversity are a thing. See Niki’s note about just the languages in Persia. And nation-states bulldozing over those languages and pretending it’s just one language is a thing. See Sci’s note about China.) I haven't even talked about the variation in morphology (how words are formed) or syntax (sentence structure).

Please just read or re-read my guide on “naming conlangs” in this post and start from there.

~ Rina

PSA ON CONLANGING AND FANTASY NAMES:

For fantasy language asks submitted after Nov 1, 2023, the asker must indicate that they have read Mod Rina’s conlanging posts linked in FAQ 2 (Guides and Posts by Topic) of the Masterpost under the question “How do I make a fictional language for my story?” While this is an older ask, we are posting it as an example to our followers.

Per our new rules, any questions that can be directly answered in or extrapolated from the FAQs, or questions that indicate that the relevant resources haven’t been read, will be deleted with a note in the Deletion Log explaining why.

As always, if this post was helpful or educational to you, please consider tipping the relevant mods: SK, Niki, Sci, and Rina.

Edited for terminology errors

[wyrmmaster]

Discussing Blue Archive Lore and going progressively insane has been an experience. The Mystics, for example:

Each academy has its thing, right. Abydos is ancient Egyptian pantheon, Trinity is Christianity (+English/Irish/Scottish myth), Gehenna are the 72 demons, Valkyrie and SRT are Norse, Hyakkiyako is Japanese myth, and so on. So it's easy to establish a framework: "They're representative of cultural figures from x place".

So:

You have the ones that are Obvious: Shiroko is Anubis, Hoshino is Horus, Mika is the Archangel Michael, Seia is Gabriel, Hina is Baal, Wakamo is Tamamo no Mae, Niya is Ootakemaru, Kazusa is Cath Palug, Ako is Astaroth, among others

Then you have the ones that are "Obvious" as in "probably": Serika as Bastet, Saori as Lucifer, Nonomi as Nephtys, Nagisa as Uriel, Suzumi as Sariel, Koharu as Metatron, Hasumi as Sandalphon, Hinata as Jegudiel, Kanna as Odin, Miyako as Mimir, and so on.

Now you start getting a little out there, as you have to expand your the concept of "figure from x place" to "the concept from x place".

Shit like "well, Rin's family name is Nanagami, "Seven Gods", she's currently the highest authority at least on paper, so what if she's The Seven Holy Names of God per Jewish faith? If we assume the GSC President was capital G monotheistic God it'd make even more sense" "What if she's the seven heavenly virtues instead?" "Also possible but I think it's the former".

Then you get to fucking Millenium.

"Yuuka's halo is a simple perfect circle that looks artificial. Her birthday is 3/14. She is insanely good at math. She's pi. Stop laughing. Look at her twintails. π. Come on, keep up."

"Rio is either the Theory of Relativity both as a relation to Himari's potential Quantum Theory of Light and as an important foundation of our concept of physics, which would fit with her being MIllenium's president OR as she's the President of Millenium and created the city of Eridu, she's supposed to be the Sumerian Deity Enki, God of creation, knowledge, and water and patron deity of the ancient city Eridu." "Maybe she's both." "SHE'S PROBABLY BOTH, THANKS."

"Himari could be the Quantum Theory of Light in relation to Rio - being a more modern and complete concept, or she could be Isaac Newton, who had a mild obsession in the paranormal, like her." "What if she's also got a Mesopotamian-" "It'd be Ishtar, both because of her antagonism towards Enki in some myth her interest in the stars and as a riff on her whole conceit about her beauty. Further backed up by Eimi being her assistant that handles all the physical work, making her the Bull of Heaven. Eimi even had horns in her concept art." "Someone just put forth Euler's Identity, because it's considered a representation of mathematical beauty, like a sonnet is for poetry."

"The Game Development Department are Eroge Company references. Yuzu is Yuzusoft, Aris is Alicesoft, and the Saiba twins are Cyberworks's Wendybell and Tinkerbell. We can maybe assume that's just what they are." "Oh, thank god something stupid to end this post on-" "Aris's whole universally loved hero thing with an almighty weapon integral in saving the world might make her Gilgamesh-" "FINE OUR DAUGHTER IS GILGAMESH."

[olderthannetfic]

Vomitous grammar anon here. It seems I angered quite a few people. I'd say I'm sorry for it, but I am not. It is, in fact, snobbery to call people stupid. Gotta love the guy trying to incorrectly correct me and the chap who insulted me while explaining how the word I used was right. A+ stuff guys. You sure showed me. The, 'It was just a joke,' backpedaling afterwards was super believable. Though why any of you would think I'd care if I wrote my ask in perfect grammar is beyond me. When I spoke of readability, I meant that in the bird's eye view way. My works are very easy to skim. Compared to, as an example, astolat's fics which are written in proper grammar. The fics are lovely. I'm a big fan, but if I try to multitask while reading them it's hard to find where I last left off. Those dense paragraphs and sameish sized sentences are a killer. They are sit down and read fics. My works can be read in thirty second bursts. Because I capitalize pronouns, short dialogue is never never lost even if I go, 'he said, and then he— (insert long action beat here.)' I can make each paragraph distinct by breaking them up or expanding them regardless of rules. Keeping unneeded fluff words out while not sacrificing any readability. I love my fics. I always hope I can find more stuff that's written like them. Cue people comparing my attention span to children, dogs, flies and other such unfavorable examples.

--

I'm dying.

I like astolat's fic, but it's bog standard plain genre fiction prose designed for maximum story transmitting and minimum faffing about with ~lyrical prose~. She's a lot better at it than most of us, but her writing is not especially dense.

Nonnie, I'm sorry, but this genuinely is a You Problem™.

[the-whispers-of-death]

hi, Ive been writing and want to post fics in the future and I saw your post about tagging fics correctly. I’m not super knowledgeable on that could you give some examples on how to correctly tag fics? and then especially with dark fics, smut, fluff etc. as well?? sorry if you’ve already posted something about it I couldn’t find it ☺️

I haven't really made a post on how to properly tag posts (I say posts instead of fics because I'm talking strictly about Tumblr writings and not Ao3 works) but I'll do it now!

(NOTE: This post became so long that I'm too lazy to go through fully and edit it. So beware of any typos.)

How to Properly Tag Your Posts:

So I'm assuming that you already know how to tag posts in general. There's a section at the bottom of the post where it says "add tags to help people find your post" and you can just add up to 30 tags.

It's recommended that you at least have five tags, as the first five (I believe it's five, I'm going based off of memory of me seeing that somewhere) are specifically used to push your post out into the Tumblr world for everyone to see. That's not to say you can't use more than five, it's just that five is like the minimum you should use if you want people to see your posts.

Onto how to properly tag your posts.

How To Properly Tag "x reader" Posts:

First, I will be talking about how to properly tag your posts using the example x reader posts (because this issue was the start of this entire thing).

If you're writing with a female reader in mind (ie you use she/her pronouns to refer to the Reader or you use feminine terms ((good girl, wife, girlfriend, waitress, queen))), you should tag your post as female reader. Now there's many different ways you can tag it as female reader:

fem!reader

fem reader

female!reader

female reader

f!reader

f reader

x fem!reader

x female reader

x f!reader

There's also tagging it as "(Character) x female reader" (any of the female reader variations listed above). "(Character)" is just used in place for the character in which the reader is romancing/in a romance with. Just input whatever character is being romanced and voilà!

For example, if you wrote a Simon "Ghost" Riley fic with a female reader, you can tag it: "simon ghost riley x female reader" or "simon ghost riley x fem!reader".

(NOTE: I believe the use of capitalization ((or lack thereof )) is key to posts being tagged correctly and showing up in that specific tag, simply because after posting, any tag that I've had something capitalized is lowercase when posted. I don't know if this truly makes a difference, but I try my best to just do lowercase when tagging anyways.)

Now for any other reader (male reader and gender neutral reader), the same thing applies but with those variation of male reader tags and gender neutral reader tags: male reader, mreader, m!reader, gender neutral reader, gnreader, gn!reader.

How to Properly Tag Dark Fic Posts:

Now tagging for dark fics! Here are the most common tags I see when seeing properly tagged dark fics. (Before I scroll.)

dark fic

darkfic

dead dove

dead dove do not eat

tw: (input whatever trigger here)

cw: (input whatever content warning here)

Not a lot, but again, I don't read a lot of dark fics. I'll expand on trigger warning (tw) and content warning (cw) tags because I know how I worded that might be confusing.

So for example, say you're writing something with stalking. You'd tag it as "tw: stalking" or "cw: stalking". So basically anything you feel like you need to warn readers ahead of time before they go further into the post, you tag it using trigger warning or content warning followed by that thing.

Also, I believe it's good to add content/trigger warnings onto the post itself as well as tagging it with the content/trigger warnings. Just so that those who like dark fics can see what is in the post instead of looking in the tags (if the post is very long and doesn't have a "read more" thing, then a reader will have to scroll all the way down just to see the tags).

How to Properly Tag Smut and Fluff:

And lastly, we'll be talking about to properly tag smut and fluff. (Because there's also a problem in the COD fandom where smut isn't properly tagged.)

When tagging a smutty fic, it's important to not only tag it as smut, but also to tag what you may see in the post. (Similar to dark fics, but you don't have to put tw/cw in the tag.)

Examples of this would be:

tw: smut (I know I said you don't have to put tw/cw, but I do this tag simply just to cover my bases)

smut

bottom reader

bottom male reader

top reader

top male reader

sub reader

sub male reader

dom reader

dom male reader

x bottom reader

x bottom male reader

x top reader

x top male reader

x sub reader

x sub male reader

x dom reader

x dom male reader

(input whatever is being done in the post ((ie: oral)))

I'm going to stop there, because if I continue, the list will be very long and I've covered the gist of it. (Hopefully).

Now, again, I recommend also labeling in the post what's going on in the post, just because I know from personal experience that I don't really check the tags (until I've hit something where I'm like "is this tagged correctly, because this post should fall under my tagging filter) and it's just so nice to know what type of reader (bottom/top or sub/bottom) the post is written for.

Now for fluff, it's easier because you can just tag it as "fluff" or "sfw". Not much needs to be done for tagging fluff. You can just tag it as fluff.

Some More Things of Note:

I have two more things to talk about. The first being the "read more" feature.

The "read more" feature can be put on your post when you start a new paragraph/start writing your post, as a whole set of options appear when you make a new paragraph/click on the "type here" when staring writing. (At least on web you can do that. On mobile, the read more feature is down at the bottom, right below where you can enter the tags.)

The "read more" symbol looks like this (and it's the same symbol on both mobile and web):

(Forgive my terrible screenshot abilities.)

Just click that symbol and it'll have a squiggly line with the words "keep reading" in between (and after posting it'll just appear as the words). The reason to use this post is when you have a very long post, as it will help others when they stumble upon your post while searching in a particular tag.

The last thing I wanted to talk about was the content label of post.

You find content label at the bottom right next to post (when you're on the web) or at the top right next to post when you click the meatball menu (when you're on mobile). The default is set to "For Everyone" but you can change it to mature (and select why it's mature, either for sexual themes, violence, or drug and alcohol addiction). Changing the content label of your post to mature can help give an extra security measure in addition to tagging your post.

So say you're writing a dark fic or smut, you can choose to change it to mature for violence (for a dark fic) or change it to mature for sexual themes (for smut). Just toggle on whichever you feel best fits the post and if the reader has that specific content hidden, it'll hide the post.

Anyways, that's all I can think of right now. I hope this post helped you!

(EDIT: I can't believe I wrote this post and forgot to talk about angst! Anyways, I hope whoever asked this is still reading this post, so they can know this answer.

So for angst, I'd follow the same steps for tagging dark fics with the tags being: tw: angst (again just to cover my bases), angst, and then input whatever tw/cw you want.

Again, I'd also label it on post that it has angst and then the content warnings for said angst.)

[dahliaslove]

Hi love!! I was wondering if you could write headcanon aboht snuggle and tickle fights with Stu macher, billy loomis, and Thomas Hewitt

HC’S: SNUGGLE / TICKLE FIGHTS WITH SLASHERS

⭑ authors note: i was a little confused on what a snuggle fight is but hopefully i did your request justice! also i added in billy lenz because i feel he’d be fun to have a tickle fight with

⭑ warnings: gender neutral reader, i don’t really capitalize a lot sorry, billy and stu get competitive with it, but that’s it i think

⭑ characters: thomas hewitt, billy loomis, stu macher, and billy lenz

THOMAS HEWITT

- i feel like you would have to be the one to initiate this because i doubt thomas has ever even had a tickle fight

- but that doesn’t mean he’s bad at it, i feel like this man would be a BEAST at tickle fights. why? well he has very big hands so he could probably cover a lot of area and he’s a gentle giant so he would never accidentally hurt you or go to far with it

- since he works so much i think the only time you'd really be able to fully enjoy this is if you're snuggling up before bed and you decide to tickle him. since he's not the most verbal, he probably would let out the most adorable surprised happy squeal if that makes sense?!

- he would probably let it go on for a little bit before getting his shit together and trying to pin your arms down so he can get you back. I know he’d be so gentle with it because he wouldn’t want to accidentally hurt you, but that would definitely just make it tickle so much more

- it wouldn’t take much begging for him to stop tickling you but as soon as he’s done he’s definitely pulling you back into his chest to cuddle you again <3

- and because i am so horrendously whipped for this man i will be expanding on how his cuddles feel !! Okay first off since he’s so broad (he’s 6’5 guys :0) i get the feeling that whenever he holds you it’s just the perfect amount of toasty and his body is so muscular in so many places but he’s soft where it counts (example: his stomach) so it’s just the most perfect cuddle session ever

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

BILLY LOOMIS

- billy gives off a vibe that makes me think he’s very ticklish, i’m not sure exactly what it is that makes me think that but i can feel it in my gut

- i feel like you would find this out on accident, maybe brushing against his side weirdly or just grabbing onto him weirdly, but he would be so embarrassed when you find out

- with that background knowledge in place, i feel like you would also have to be the one to initiate the tickle fight. and be prepared too because i know he’d go so far with it

- if he’d got the jump on you he’s gonna keep going until you’re begging and there’s tears in your eyes from laughing so much. But, if you’ve got him pinned down, he’s gonna try and put all his weight into getting away because this man is a CHUMP

- I feel like he’d be super competitive and try to get you back for it too. he’ll be popping out from behind corners to try and catch you off guard and every thing

- basically he’s a wimp when it comes to you getting him and probably plots weirdly specific revenge plans that he brings stu into for some reason??

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

STU MACHER

- he also gives off competitive vibes to be honest, i feel like he would chase you all around his house with a goofy grin trying to tickle you and he would probably really drag it out too (he pretends to be slower when he’s chasing after you)

- if you lock yourself in a bathroom or a random room to get away from him, he will wait out there and make himself some popcorn or something, there’s no escaping him unfortunately <;/3

- i know he’d try to get you to come out quicker by saying he’s not playing anymore or that he’s leaving, and if you fall for it he’s going to immediately tickle you until you can breathe

- if you try to get back at him, this man will use weird tactics to try and evade you and will try to get everyone in on it because he’s a weirdo who refuses to ‘lose’ what he calls ‘a very serious game’ (his words not yours)

- after he officially catches you for the last time he’s gonna collapse all his weight on you and just wrap around you like a koala, if you try to leave he’ll just hold on tighter until you give up and lay there with him

-and he will brag to anyone that he won after and that he’s the ‘champion’ because he is a smug bastard :/

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

BILLY LENZ

- he would most likely be the one to start it, because he’s just a silly guy looking for a fun way to make you laugh. he would go absolutely feral with it (when is he not feral though) and would just keep tickling you until you’re a laughing mess

- he will run at the speed of light after so be ready. if you wanna get him back you’re gonna have to really put work into chasing after him because he gives off the vibes of a fast runner to me.

- i know he would have the loudest laugh ever, like he would be cackling and squealing as you tickle him. he would also flop around like a fish out of water in an attempt to get away :>

- the only way to end it is for both of you guys to simultaneously give up and just collapse into each other, he would definitely pull you in close and just bury his head into your shoulder while he pants and giggles very loudly in your ear

- in conclusion he is a very silly guy who deserves to have a wholesome moment with his partner while running around the house and tickling each other!!

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

[echo-heo]

Hello! re-typing this because i'm too lazy to copy-paste from @epenethesis,

I spent a great deal of time learning about various scripts, however this has been to the detriment of my ability to create new original ones as they have been too closely associated with existing ones.

I heard from them you may have advice, and i thank you wether you do or do not as long as you answer.

Be well, internet stranger.

Hi! So to introduce myself briefly I do type design & calligraphy and something I do often is learn historic scripts and styles from manuscripts etc and thats how I get feels for things. I think if you learn more about different styles of the scripts and notice patterns it'd help u make more original looking scripts. In any case, here are some of my general advices on creating & learning scripts:

1. scripts have rhythm, visually and in stylus movement

Scripts tend to have repeated elements. strokes, joints, spacing, etc. For example, lowercase latin has vertical weight between the baseline and the x height, and this is its natural resting space. Occasionally letters have ascenders and descenders. horizontally, letters have semi-evenly spaced downstrokes (see letters like m and n) with the writing pattern of ↓→↓→ etc.

2. "Intermediate stage" does not exist.

Something that people do commonly while evolving a script is that they create intermediate stages that do not have patterns or rhythms, but these intermediate scripts should be on their own self contained systems

3. Scripts have multiple styles simultaneously that influence each other.

Scripts don't simply evolve linearly. Modern latin has so many styles and that is the case for most scripts. Modern Greek letterforms are a fusion of original Greek minuscule forms and forms evolved from uncial (sigma has both, with the final form deriving from uncial)

4. Consider the motion of the pen

Some nib shapes make it harder to draw strokes in certain directions, and in general strokes going from left to right and top to bottom are more common because generally it is easier to pull than push. some writing utensils allow you to write in any direction, and often from switching from the former systems to the latter, scripts gain seeminglt redundant and complex looking connective strokes. (think javanese and copperplate calligraphy) Limiting stroke directions also helps with consistent writing rhythm. (try drawing a square multiple times with one stroke in one direction, you will find that it is significantly harder to keep it square than breaking it up into multiple strokes) (Note: Contrary to popular belief writing on leaves isnt what makes indic scripts look loopy and geometric, it is the unfamiliarity with the various scripts by people who perpetuate this myth)

5. Different styles with different quirks may be used for different purposes

Short titles and signs may use bold and ornate styles (black letter, lombardic capitals, aksar mul, bold cleric script, kanteiryu, kufic) or archaic styles (roman capitals, seal script).

Formal body text may use either space-efficient blocky styles (black letter, uncial, cleric script, jain nagari style) or more balanced organic styles (humanist, regular script, etc).

Informal body text may use semicursive (italic, bâtarde, running script, etc) or cursive (grass script, etc)

6. Don't trust online sources on script evolution

study your manuscripts and form ur own perception of things cause so many people are Wrong on the internet

---

Now for a more practical example, this is how i made Ekavathian:

I came up with this asemic sketch, borrowing the rhythm from Javanese and the diagonals from Lontara.

We felt that this was too visually cluttered, so I simplified the shapes and picked letters.

I iterated on it, writing text to see how it feels and making the letters feel more natural to write

I began working on the font, and I started with the square thing and expanded from there. I wanted it to have an indic pen angle with some stroke modulation

I settled on this for the stroke pattern. Feels natural for the kind of shapes i have.

This is my handwriting after making the font (brainstorming cursive idea) and its kinda funny how I got better at writing a completely made up script lol

In any case if you have questions about specific things ask me any time

[stellanix]

What is amatormativity? 😭

it's the idea that the desire for (monogamous, exclusive) romantic relationships is natural and universal, that everyone should pursue such relationships, and that such relationships are the most important kinds of relationships between people and should take priority over friendships and other non-romantic relationships

the term was coined by the philosopher elizabeth brake from the latin word "amatus", meaning "loved". she used it to describe the social pressure to prioritize marriage, and aromantics have expanded on the term to describe the ways romance holds a privileged position in society

examples of amatormativity could include things like a person becoming isolated because all their friends got into romantic relationships and don't prioritize spending time with them anymore, a person being shamed or mocked for being single, family members constantly asking "when are you gonna get a boyfriend/girlfriend? when are you gonna get married?", a person accusing their partner of cheating or not caring about them because they spend a lot of time with friends, laws and zoning codes against unmarried/unrelated people living together (yes these exist unfortunately), among a whole bunch of other stuff

i think it sucks that this concept isn't super well known even among the queer community, because it describes a very pervasive social norm that has deep ties to patriarchy, homophobia, traditional gender roles, and capitalism. i suppose it's not well known because it most acutely affects aromantic and polyamorous people, and a lot of other queer people are able to go about their day without questioning this norm

[irish-urn]

Hey, I just found out that there was a mini lfd fandom on here and I immediately binged all your fanfic! I've seen you mention stuff about the costume dept that worked on the show maybe playing into Dasey, could you maybe expand on that because I'd love to hear your thoughts. <3

HIIIII. Welcome to our little corner of the internet! We are indeed active and (if you're a dasey shipper), we even have a discord where we yammer at each other, so, uh let me know if you're interested in that so I can direct you to the appropriate inviting parties.

(also, if you ever wanna talk about my stories, I am a needy gremlin)

First of all, this is probably gonna be long because despite my English degree, I am a rambler of the highest order (you can tell because my fics are all suuuuuper long). Secondly, I don't have any screenshots to share, so I'll try to be as descriptive as possible, because I genuinely don't have the time to go back and get screenshots (sorry y'all). Thirdly, I AM still in the midst of re-watching the showing all the way through, so all my examples are gonna be from the first half -- BUT DON'T WORRY, I'LL KEEP NOTICING THEM AS I GO -- and fourthly: I wanna talk a little bit about WHY I notice costume choices.

So, I am not a fashion guru or someone who keeps up on trends BUT I am someone who was taught that, as a writer, showing is better than telling. How does a TV show or movie show us things about a character? Costumes are a major part; and I've watched enough behind-the-scenes and read some ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING costume meta from other fandoms, that I think it's fair to say that costumes are speaking VOLUMES. There are whole posts (from, again, other fandoms) on colour theory and I'll touch on that a fair bit; or we could simply talk about how well the clothes sit on the person probably says a lot about how they either view themselves OR want others to view them.

For instance: as a general rule, Casey's clothes are (1) far more form-fitting than Derek's; and (2) overall far more 'put together as a whole' than Derek's. Now, we can be cynical and attribute that to capitalism and sex selling (although Michael Seater is an attractive dude and I wouldn't have been put off by a shirt showing off his arms); OR we could look at it and say: What does this say about Casey and Derek?

Well, we COULD say that it means that Casey is far more comfortable with herself than Derek is. Derek's clothes are far looser, and he often wears layers (jackets over shirts or one shirt over another shirt). Now, partially this was the fashion of the time, but ignore that for a second: this means that Derek is HIDING parts of himself from the world. He's covering himself in literal and figurative layers so that people don't see him naked and vulnerable. Casey, for all that she's clumsy and a nerd and sees herself as not being popular, is also very clearly HERSELF. She loudly proclaims injustices; she runs for class president; she goes up against a bully to protect her stepbrother even though her boyfriend asks her not to... You see where I'm going with this? Derek pretends he doesn't have feelings and bottles them all inside, when we know from watching him in his private moments, that he actually has BIG feelings and a soft, gooey heart.

Take this one step further: what does this mean about how they want to be perceived by others: Casey wants people to believe that she has everything under control. Her hair is done (always way better than anything I did in high school), her outfits match, her nails are done: she might be a keener and a nerd, but she's an EFFECTIVE and PREPARED nerd. Maybe her personality is a turn-off for some, but she can still give a good first impression. Now, for Derek, let's spin back around to my first point: layers were in fashion in the mid-2000s. Derek dresses according to the current trends because he wants to be popular. He also has a certain reputation of being cool, calm, in control, not working too hard, being chill, everything's all good with the V-man. So he dresses 'casually', with his clothes often looking like he just pulled them on. No ironing for Derek!

Also, on another character note before we get into Dasey — Casey dresses very feminine. She wears a lot of skirts and dresses, and when she doesn't, her jeans are often low-rise (again, the style at that time) and her shirts are form-fitting but not too sexy. She's conservative, but still fun underneath the ironed clothes. Casey also wears layers, but those are a lot less noticeable than Derek's, and not quite as often -- that's because Casey is ALSO hiding things; our girl is big on denial. However, because she's our narrator, it's not something they like to draw attention to. She's supposed to be reliable.

(she's not a reliable narrator, fyi).

SO LET'S TALK ABOUT DASEY.

(if this isn't what you wanted, I'm so so sorry)

The first and most consistent impression we get of Derek and Casey is from the theme song and the Genora wedding pictures -- and their outfits demonstrate what I'm talking about above almost perfectly. Casey is wearing a pink dress, very feminine; Derek is wearing a black blazer and a blue dress shirt. (Casey wears a LOT of pink in the show, btw; just a comment on her character). This establishes their characters: see everything I said above -- Derek doesn't wear a tie because he's LOOSE, ya see? -- but also has them in opposite BUT COMPLIMENTARY colours. We see pink vs black and blue and think, Ah, okay, these two are opposites. They're probably gonna fight. And that's true! But they also look really good next to each other! Lots of people, for a good WOW factor, will match pink with black, or blues with pinks. Also to note: Derek's blue shirt is very bright -- it would be easy for them to have him all in dark colours to give us the impression that they are VERY opposite; but they don't. They give him a bright colour TO MATCH her bright colour.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

I've also been noticing things like Casey dressing very similarly to girls Derek declares as "hot" -- see Sandra in Marti the Monster -- and in Venturian Candidate, Derek imagines Casey as a sexy personal assistant. She also is a cheerleader at some point -- and we know that that would drive Derek insane.

Let's also take a moment and return to that pink dress Casey wore to Genora's wedding; when do we see it in the show? When she loans it to Vicki. What happens when Vicki is wearing that dress? Derek makes out with her.

THEY DID NOT HAVE TO DO THIS. Derek could have made out with Vicki when she was wearing ANYTHING else (like the black and white dress she originally has for the wedding and would be a way to show how DIFFERENT she really is from Casey). But they purposely point out that Vicki looks like Casey, Derek calls her a "total babe", and then when Casey very pointedly states aloud that she can loan Vicki a dress, the ONLY time we see Vicki wearing it is when her mouth is attached to Derek's.

FURTHERMORE: why does Casey insist they DRESS up for their presentation on Percy and Mary Shelley (who are married!!! who. are. MARRIED)??? Sometimes they have Derek and Casey wearing similar styles; I think there was an episode where they were both wearing stripes, but in different directions? But, still: there are HUNDREDS of shirts they could have chosen!!! But they keep finding ones that say: "See!! We're opposites, but connected!"

For a final note, I did find this image:

The famed "same difference" scene.

Please note that Derek and Casey are wearing green and purple respectively. Now, green and purple are considered complementary colours (gasp!), because they are on opposite sides of the colour wheel (gasp!!). But, depending on the shades of green and purple and how they're placed together, green and purple work really really well aesthetically. (Also, interestingly enough when I looked at colour theory, green is supposed to be a healing, stabilizing colour while purple is ambitious and creative. Not really important for this moment, but I think says volumes about the characters themselves.)

Also: they are both in a single layer. Derek has his sleeves rolled up -- actually showing skin!! He's being vulnerable purposely!! Casey has her hair tied back but it's falling out and around her face -- she's very casual and herself in this scene BUT ALSO this lets her hide behind some of her hair if she needs to. Metaphorically, she does. It's not a lot of hair, and Derek sees right through her, but it's enough of a barrier to make a point, and a few seconds after this image above, Derek backs off and retreats into himself.

I could go on, but this is long enough and I'm sure as I continue my (very slow) re-watch of the show, I'll find more things that make me scream. But yeah: the costume department knew what they were doing. There's a reason a lot of us ship Dasey.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 4, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 05, 2024

Long tonight, folks, but it’s been quite a day. And even still, I did not mention the day’s horrific shooting at a Georgia school.

Today, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a series of proposals to help entrepreneurs create small businesses. Like President Joe Biden, she and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, argue that small businesses and entrepreneurs are the “engines of our economy.” In a statement today, they noted that “small businesses employ half of all private-sector workers in America—creating 70 percent of net new jobs since 2019—and do trillions of dollars of business every year.”

The Biden administration has boasted of the record number of new businesses created since Biden and Harris took office. There have been 19 million new business applications in that time. Harris said she and Walz are setting a goal of 25 million new business applications in their first term. Their plan, they say, is to “kickstart…more young, small, and innovative firms.”

To make this happen, they propose raising the deduction for startup expenses from its current level of $5,000 to $50,000, noting that the average amount a new business spends to get set up in its first year of operation is $40,000. They also propose funding a network of new and existing “federal, state, local, and private incubators and small business innovation hubs” that will make it easier for small business and local suppliers to get technical assistance, funding, customers, and so on. 

They also promised to make low-interest and no-interest loans available for small businesses, to protect and expand the support of the Affordable Care Act for small business owners, and to guarantee that one third of federal contract money will go to small businesses. They promise to make it easier for small businesses to file taxes, reduce excessive occupational licensing requirements, and urge state and local governments to cut the red tape of burdensome regulations by streamlining them across jurisdictions. 

Harris and Walz said they are committed to making the investments that will build the economy while also paying for them and reducing the deficit. “They also know,” their statement said, that “we need to support America as a locus of innovators, entrepreneurs, and workers coming together to create a better future.  

Harris calls this a New Way Forward, but it is curiously close to the old Republican reforms of the Progressive Era, when entrepreneurs joined forces with workers and farmers to demand access to capital and a fair economic playing field after decades in which a few wealthy industrialists stacked the system in their own favor. When we look at that era, as well as the New Deal reforms of the 1930s, we tend to emphasize reforms designed to benefit workers and farmers, but members of those groups always allied with entrepreneurs shut out of the system by wealthy industrialists. The demand for securities and exchange law in the 1930s, for example, did not come from western farmers, but from entrepreneurs who knew they could not break into the system if established businesses made up the rules amongst themselves.

Harris recalled that Republican reform impulse when she said we must make the tax system fairer. She called for rolling back Trump’s tax cuts and implementing common-sense tax reforms for corporations and the richest Americans. She calls for setting a minimum income tax for billionaires, the corporate tax rate to 28% (it was 35% before the Trump tax cuts), and quadrupling the tax on the stock buybacks that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans.

She emphasized that no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay more in taxes under her plans, and called for a tax rate of 28% on long-term capital gains for those who earn more than a million dollars a year. This is up from the current 20% rate, but less than the 39.6% rate Biden proposed in his 2025 budget. 

A Fox News Channel host applauded some of Harris’s ideas, saying, “When a political candidate comes up with what I think is a good idea, I have to call it a good idea. And a fifty thousand dollar…tax credit for startups or small businesses, coupled with less red tape, I’ve got to say, that is a good idea, regardless of her other tax ideas.” 

This was a nice endorsement of Harris’s policies, coming as it did after yesterday’s assessment by economists for the Goldman Sachs Group saying that the nation’s economic growth would take a hit if Trump wins, but will grow under a Harris presidency if she also has the support of a Democratic House and Senate.  

In her statement about economic policy, Harris called out Trump for supporting “himself and the biggest corporations” and noted that sixteen Nobel laureates have said that Trump’s policies would ignite inflation and trigger a recession by mid-2025. That recession, economists project, would cost more than 3 million jobs, explode the deficit, and raise costs. Harris pointed out that Project 2025 would cut funding for the Small Business Administration and make it harder for small businesses to get access to money. 

For his part, Trump has doubled down on the idea that the United States is a failing nation. For the past week he has been telling a story about a residential building in Colorado taken over by a gang from Venezuela. But it appears the story is entirely made up. Similarly, Trump on Friday said at a right-wing Moms for Liberty event that public schools in America kidnap children and operate on them to change their sex. This is bonkers, but it is bonkers in a way that deliberately demonizes Trump’s opponents.

Trump’s vision of the United States is one of darkness and carnage. As Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said today, “It is a deliberate effort by some people to make them believe that our political system is broken. To make them believe that things are pessimistic. My God, every time I hear Donald Trump give a speech, it’s like the next screenplay for Mad Max or something. They are rooting against America.”

That bleak version of the United States, it turns out, echoes the talking points Russian handlers gave to their operatives working in the U.S. in an effort “to steer the U.S. public opinion in the right direction.” The Russians directed their U.S. employees to emphasize the following “campaign topics”: “Encroaching universal poverty. Record inflation. Halting of economic growth. Unaffordable prices for food and essential goods”; “Risk of job loss for white Americans”; “Privileges for people of color, perverts, and disabled”; “Constant lies of the [Democratic] administration about the real situation in the country”; “Threat of crime coming from people of color and immigrants”; “Overspending on foreign policy and at the interests of white US citizens”; “Constant lies to the voters by [Democrats] in power.” 

The target audience of the campaign was “[Republican] voters,” [Trump] supporters, “Supporters of traditional family values,” and “White Americans, representing the lower-middle and middle class.” The focus was in particular on “[r]esidents of "swing states whose voting results impact the outcomes of the elections more than other states. 

This information came out today when the Departments of Justice, State, and the Treasury announced sanctions against 10 individuals and 2 entities, and criminal charges against two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, who allegedly funded a company in the U.S. to hire right-wing social media influencers to push Russian propaganda before the 2024 election. 

While the indictment does not name the Tennessee-based company the Russians funded, it appears to be Tenet Media, a company registered by Liam Donovan and Lauren Tam, who is associated with The Blaze and Turning Point USA, as well as RT. The two appear to be married. The indictment alleges that the company’s two founders knew they were working for the Russians, but suggests the six commentators—Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson, all staunch Trump supporters—did not know where their massive paychecks originated. After the story broke, five of the commentators denied any knowledge of the source of the company’s funding; some insisted their words were entirely their own. 

One of the videos the company pushed at the request of the Russians was what appears to have been right-wing host Tucker Carlson’s visit to a grocery store in Russia where he praised the low prices (which even the company’s founders thought “just feels like overt shilling”).

Separately, the Department of Justice seized 32 internet domains that “the Russian government and Russian sponsored actors” have used to influence the 2024 election. In a malign influence campaign called “Doppelganger,” these domains produced fake articles that appeared to be from major U.S. news sites, to which influencers and fake social media profiles on Facebook, X, Truth Social, and YouTube then drove traffic. 

Russian operatives called in bold type for Russia “to put a maximum effort to ensure that the [Republican] point of view (first and foremost, the opinion of [Trump] supporters) wins over the US public opinion. This includes provisions on peace in Ukraine in exchange for territories, the need to focus on the problems of the US economy, returning troops home from all over the world, etc.”

One of the documents produced in the affidavit justifying the seizure of the internet domains called for trying to stir up a conflict between the U.S. and Mexico in order to distract from the fact that the U.S. economy is “very healthy” under Biden.

Tonight, in an interview with Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, Trump appeared to think he is running against Joe Biden. An internal email leaked to the press from the Trump campaign showed managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles warning staff not to communicate with the press and suggested anyone doing so would be fired.

Today, Steph Curry of California’s Golden State Warriors basketball team and former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. “Endorsing Kamala Harris is important for me and my family,” Curry said. “Knowing Kamala and having been around her, I understand she's qualified for this job."

“There was never a doubt that the courageous Liz Cheney would endorse Vice President Harris,” conservative judge J. Michael Luttig wrote, “because  Liz Cheney stands for America.  She is the very embodiment of country over party and country over self.  And she fears no one—least of all the former president.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mesetacadre]

I would now like to deal with two extremes, two obsessions, on the question of workers' democracy that were to be noted in some of the discussion articles in Pravda.

The first extreme concerns the election principle. It manifests itself in some comrades wanting to have elections "throughout." Since we stand for the election principle, let us go the whole hog in electing! Party standing? What do we want that for? Elect whomever you please. That is a mistaken view, comrades. The Party will not accept it. Of course, we are not now at war; we are in a period of peaceful development. But we are now living under the NEP. Do not forget that, comrades. The Party began the purge not during, but after the war. Why? Because, during the war, fear of defeat drew the Party together into one whole, and some of the disruptive elements in the Party were compelled to keep to the general line of the Party, which was faced with the question of life or death. Now these bonds have fallen away, for we are not now at war; now we have the NEP, we have permitted a revival of capitalism, and the bourgeoisie is reviving. True, all this helps to purge the Party, to strengthen it; but on the other hand, we are being enveloped in a new atmosphere by the nascent and growing bourgeoisie, which is not very strong yet, but which has already succeeded in beating some of our co-operatives and trading organisations in internal trade. It was precisely after the introduction of the NEP that the Party began the purge and reduced its membership by half; it was precisely after the introduction of the NEP that the Party decided that, in order to protect our organisations from the contagion of the NEP, it was necessary, for example, to hinder the influx of non-proletarian elements into the Party, that it was necessary that Party officials should have a definite Party standing, and so forth. Was the Party right in taking these precautionary measures, which restricted "expanded" democracy? I think it was. That is why I think that we must have democracy, we must have the election principle, but the restrictive measures that were adopted by the Eleventh and Twelfth Congresses, at least the chief ones, must still remain in force.

The second extreme concerns the question of the limits of the discussion. This extreme manifests itself in some comrades demanding unlimited discussion; they think that the discussion of problems is the be all and end all of Party work and forget about the other aspect of Party work, namely, action, which calls for the implementation of the Party's decisions. At all events, this was the impression I gained from the short article by Radzin, who tried to substantiate the principle of unlimited discussion by a reference to Trotsky, who is alleged to have said that "the Party is a voluntary association of like-minded people." I searched for that sentence in Trotsky's works, but could not find it. Trotsky could scarcely have uttered it as a finished formula for the definition of the Party; and if he did utter it, he could scarcely have stopped there. The Party is not only an association of like-minded people; it is also an association of like-acting people, it is a militant association of like-acting people who are fighting on a common ideological basis (programme, tactics). I think that the reference to Trotsky is out of place, for I know Trotsky as one of the members of the Central Committee who most of all stress the active side of Party work. I think, therefore, that Radzin himself must bear responsibility for this definition. But what does this definition lead to? One of two possibilities: either that the Party will degenerate into a sect, into a philosophical school, for only in such narrow organisations is complete like-minded-ness possible; or that it will become a permanent debating society, eternally discussing and eternally arguing, until the point is reached where factions form and the Party is split. Our Party cannot accept either of these possibilities. This is why I think that the discussion of problems is needed, a discussion is needed, but limits must be set to such discussion in order to safeguard the Party, to safeguard this fighting unit of the proletariat, against degenerating into a debating society.

In concluding my report, I must warn you, comrades, against these two extremes. I think that if we reject both these extremes and honestly and resolutely steer the course towards internal Party democracy that the Central Committee set already in September of this year, we shall certainly achieve an improvement in our Party work.

The Party's Tasks. J. V. Stalin, 1923

[centrally-unplanned]

Somewhat unrelated (so in ask instead of additional reblog but) - have an opinion on the sentiment I see sometimes that the Warren people basically 'won the peace' in terms of getting all the day-to-day influential mid-level appointments post-inauguration?

Yeah, I have heard that, and I don't think it is crazy! Biden's admin is definitely more progressive than any admin so far (as much as one can say such a thing over time), and a lot of that reality is downstream of staffing picks like Lina Khan to the FTC. To get at the "implications" of this I definitely don't think the progressive faction were like suckers or anything, my point was that the parties work differently; this is the way someone like Warren exerted influence, and it was a win for that side.

To dig in more I think this was less political dealmaking than people make it out to be - Biden and his team authentically believed in a more active, aggressive place for the government in economic regulation & industrial policy. So while they were "Warren picks" it is more that Biden and Warren just agreed here, and these topics are low-level enough that Biden didn't have to worry about like optics and stuff, he could do what he wanted (relatively ofc) And hey, the entire electorate is just more "statist" in this regard, left and right, so the optics weren't even much of an issue.

The second point I would make is back to exactly that "squashing" of factions - the Warren Camp "winning the peace" is very explicitly on a relatively narrow range of economic regulatory issues. If you take the "racial justice" angle that Kamala was meant to appease, I think Biden has been perfectly fine on this topic, but a mainstream Dem; all of the causes of that movement have been virtually dropped at the federal level. They lost, and they lost big, as a political faction. Did Warren ever care about these issues? In my opinion, no, not really! She has always been an economic crusader. So while it isn't a ding on her specifically, for the Warren-equivalent on these kinds of issues, I don't think you can say they won the peace.

The third point I want to make is the limits of this kind of win - Lina Khan has not set herself up for a run for the Senate. Pete Buttegieg did, and he has done it being a centrist. Mid-level department appointees don't build political capital, they don't win races. They don't decide the future of the party, not directly at least. JD Vance has very, very good odds of being the President of the United States some day - a role that his own party has engineered to have expanding policy authority and growing immunity from checks and balances. What did Warren get? Policy for this 4 years, sure, that isn't small. But I think the current political climate, where the trendlines are imo starkly pivoting back to centrism, show the limits of that.

I'll also add a bit of a tangent point: has Lina Khan been good? Was student debt relief a good idea? Did Julie Siegel as Treasury Deputy Sec or Anne Reid as Deputy Chief of Staff at HHS really change the game? I don't think they were bad or anything, they have their wins (good action on drug prices for example). But I don't think the past four years have been transformational for anti-trust or financial regulation in the "actually making things better" department. This is more subjective of course, I obviously personally don't think Warren is right in her critique of the US economy. But my point is that if your influence is going to be through explicit policy and not sitting congressmen, then that policy being good and winning converts is crucial for it to have longevity. I don't know if that case has been won for Warren & co.

[twelvebooksstuff]

Some Jurassic Park Daily Reflection-ft Life Finds A Way

I know I’m a few days late to when this chapter was the assigned reading, but I’m still going to make a post about this specific part of the book. I want to highlight the quote in the post title “Life…Finds A Way”. This small phrase has essentially become the slogan of the whole entire franchise, and arguably taken on a life of its own (no pun intended). So I want to talk a bit about the scene where we are first introduced to it, before even the iconic scene in the first film, to when we see the equivalent of that scene in the book.

It’s part of a much larger spiel, which is pretty par for the course for Book!Ian Malcolm, who is prone to long diatribes, many paragraphs long, detailing his opinions on everything from fashion to capitalism to natural history and beyond.

Anyway, the scene where this spiel takes place is actually not the scene in the laboratory like in the film, but rather a scene with an injured stegosaurus (triceratops in the movie). Dr. Sattler and Dr. Grant are trying to help the vet Dr. Gerry Harding assist the dinosaur to recovery, and Tim, Lex, Ian, Ed Regis (a PR representative who was not in the film) and Donald Gennaro (the lawyer, who is essentially a different character in the books) are all crowding around, too. Lex gets board and tries to play catch with some of the adults-Gennaro agrees and has a sidebar conversation with Malcolm at the same time. During this conversation, Gennaro essentially says that he thinks Malcolm’s use of chaos theory is too broad (“is anything not predicted by your theory” he point blank asks). He is skeptical, but Malcolm is able to provided specific examples beyond “things are unpredictable”, which Malcolm is able to do, listing many specifics. When trying to explain his underlying perspective, we get the basis memorable monolouge from the film: “The history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way…I don’t mean to be philosophical, but there it is.”

What’s most interesting to me is that unlike the pristine lab setting where we get this in the film, Malcolm outside talking to his colleague who’s playing catch with a young kid. Not only does it seem less grandiose, in a way, but it seems to have a more practical application, too. Oftentimes, in the later films or even other media, this idea of “life finds a way” takes on this “humanity will survive” kind of context that feels totally applicable, but a bit disconnected from the film scene imo.

But in the book, the entire spiel is happening over a game of catch, a game that means a lot to Lex, who, not fully known to Ian and Gennaro at this point, is having a very rough time at home. She feels unheard and ignored by all the adults in her life, and excluded even by Tim at points. But in this moment, Gennaro takes the time to indulge her game, and as far as Malcolm’s concerned, the more people to hear him talk, the merrier. In the midst of this hectic tour of a prehistoric zoo, they have found a small moment to connect, to build bonds, to be a community, and that represents the survival of humanity and the human spirit to me in a very visceral way.

It makes all the “life finds a way” tied to humanity exclusively make even more sense, too. Because while Malcolm is talking about things on a grand history scale, he’s also doing so while participating in/witnessing this small human moment, and it’s kind of perfect, in a way.

Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts about this and wanted to share!

[kwyw]

I don’t get the concept here where this fandom thinks Taylor is not in charge of her own PR or why she is getting in her jet to fly to KC . She is rich beyond anyone’s dreams and ppl want to believe she is doing this for money?

Anon.

I don’t get the concept here where that fandom thinks Taylor is solely in charge of her own PR or why it’s news she is getting in her jet to fly to KC. She is rich beyond anyone’s dreams and people have to believe she’s a specific way that appeases them so she can make money and be successful.

If Taylor were solely in charge of her own PR, then why exactly does Tree Paine have a job? Public relations is literally the job of her publicist. Taylor is her boss, yes, but Tree is responsible for how she appeals and relates to the public.

We typically don’t exactly know why she is in her jet flying anywhere unless it’s for a tour stop because that’s already public knowledge. However, we can assume if it’s Florida, it’s to see her father. If it’s Nashville, it’s to see her mother or maybe even Abigail. If it’s New York or LA, she’s going to her own house or working. However, every time we’ve seen an article that she flew to KC, these websites by default attach it to Travis.

And we literally see an article every single time she goes to Kansas City. Every day there’s a new detail of this “relationship” we didn’t ask for.

That’s your first example of PR here.

I need you and others to grasp the concept that PR isn’t always based around money. PR is mainly for image reasons. If a celebrity has a scandal come about, you almost always see how People or ET for example will say they reached out to that celebrity’s team and they either didn’t respond or did not offer comment.

Travis JUST signed to CAA in May for off the field representation. He is building an expanded brand for when he retires from football. He’s 34. That’s “old” for his position in the NFL. So ask yourself—why does a 2 time Super Bowl champion (his last championship being won this past February)

Did you even watch Miss Americana? Where her Dad and another person on her team tried to gaslight her by using a potential decrease in ticket sales to stop her from talking about politics? Guess why—because PR has taught you that Taylor Swift™️ does not talk about politics.

PR taught you for 6 years that she was “extremely private” with Joe, but you always got an article before one of their projects released, right? Either the day of, or the day before Midnights was released, what picture just so happened to be released?

Taylor and Joe in NYC furniture shopping.

Remember how it was dead silent before CWF was released but a month or so before, engagement rumors popped up? Because PR had to make him seem interesting enough during his promo for the show.

Before the Reputation Tour arrived on Netflix—PR gave you pictures of Taylor and Joe with his friends in NYC on NYE.

PR is what got you the pictures of them on the balcony in Nashville before the rep tour started when paparazzi don’t camp in Nashville. Which you know because most country artists live in Nashville and you never see them unless they’re papped in LA or NYC.

PR relationships have always existed, but for some reason, y’all seem to think it’s beneath Taylor to engage in them.

So yes, she is “rich beyond anyone’s dreams”, but at what cost? Because PR is why y’all can’t fathom that she could possibly be queer—because to most people, she doesn’t “look” queer.

Not to mention, given all PR has taught us about her for the past 17 years, you have to question why this Travis situation is so odd and sloppy. No one really who Travis is outside of football—but now they know him as “Taylor Swift’s boyfriend” and now everyone wants to capitalize, right?

This 👆👆👆