#inhabiting personhood

[nonuggetshere]

GOING THROUGH OLD DMS WITH MY FRIEND ABOUT FAAF AU FROM ONE YEAR AGO AND OLD PK WAS. SO FUCKING BAD. OH MY GOD. SUCH A SCUMBAG

I changed his characterisation so it'd make more sense why Flower (PV) would want to reconnect with him after initially cutting contact and holy shit reading the old version I'm so glad I did

[primowishes]

//Meanwhile Ei will happily eat dessert until her teeth fall out and it's nbd to her because she can just replace the teeth because of the nature of the body they inhabit

[dateamonster]

honestly instead of writing off monsters like vampires (or just monsters that look more human in general) as being unscary/unsexy why dont you consider the implications of being a thing that can theoretically pass amongst human society but is forever set apart by a deeply inhuman violence a hunger that both elevates you to a position above them (the predator to their prey) and simultaneously debases you (your feral animalism to their sapient complete personhood) why dont you think about the constant control necessary to inhabit this in-between and the vulnerability of shedding that disguise even if only to feed or to kill why dont you contemplate the fear and eroticism of it all. bitch.

[specialagentartemis]

godddddd i have disliked becky chambers' work since long way to a small angry planet and I agree that that fish scene is SO much of what is wrong with contemporary SFF especially queer SFF. refreshing take, great review, thank you. would love to hear what authors or works you think of as the antidote to that sensibility.

The thing is, I enjoyed The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet when I first read it - it was a fun, light adventure, clearly a debut novel but I was excited to see where Chambers would go from there. And I actually really do think the sequel, A Closed and Common Orbit, was good! It did interesting things with AI personhood and identity.

... and then Chambers just kinda. Did not get better. She settled into a groove and has a set number of ideas that I feel like she hasn't broken out of, creatively. And they I M O kind of rest on an assumption that "human nature" = "how people act in suburban California."

As an antidote to that sensibility, I'd say... books where people have a real interrelationship with the land they inhabit, a sense of being present, and reciprocal obligations to that land; books that recognize that some things can never be taken back once done; books with well-drawn characters, where people have strong opinions deeply informed by their circumstances, that can't always be easily reconciled with others, and won't be brushed aside; books where these character choices matter, they impact each other, they cannot be easily gotten over, because people have obligations to each other and not-acting is a choice too.

And it's only fair that after all day of being a Hater I should rec some books I really did like.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - A man lives alone in an infinite House, over an equally infinite ocean. Captures the feeling that I think Monk & Robot was aiming for. Breathtaking beauty, wonder at the world, philosophy of truth, all that good stuff, and actually sticks the landing. The main character's love, attention, and care to his fantasy environment shows through in every page. (Fantasy, short novel)

Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie - An AI, the one fragment remaining of a destroyed imperial spaceship, is on a quest for revenge. Leckie gets cultural differences and multiculturalism, and conversely, what the imposition of a homogeneous culture in the name of unity means. (Space sci-fi, novel trilogy)

Machineries of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee - An army captain's insubordination is punished by giving her a near-impossible mission: to take down a rebelling, heretical sect holing up in a space fortress and defying imperial power. She gets a long dead brain-ghost of a notorious criminal downloaded into her head to help. Very, very good at making you feel like every doomed soldier was a person with a past, with a family, with feelings, with hopes and dreams and frustrations and favorites and preferences and reasons to live, right before they brutally die in a space war. Also very much about the imposition of homogeneity of culture as a force of imperialism. (Space sci-fi, novel trilogy)

The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed - Maya Andreyevna is a VR journalist in high-tech dystopian future Russia, and she decides to investigate the truth that the government doesn't want her to. She might die trying. It's fine. Also has digital brain-sharing, this time in a gay way. It's bleak. It's sad. It feels real. Not making a choice is a choice. Backing out is a choice. And choices have consequences. Choices reverberate through history. About responsibility. (Cyberpunk, novel)

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez - Nia Imani is a spaceship captain, a woman out of time, a woman running from her past, and accidentally adopts a boy who has a strange power that could change the galaxy. Spaceship crew-as-found-family in the most heartbreaking of ways. Also about choices, how the choices you make and refuse to make shape you and shape the world around you. How the world is always changing around you, how the world does not stay still when you're gone, and when you come back you're the same but the world has moved on around you. About how relationships aren't always forever, and that doesn't mean they weren't important. About responsibility to others. It's a slow, sad book and does not let anyone rest on their laurels, ever. There is no end of history here. Everything is always changing, on large scales and small, and leaving you behind. (Space sci-fi, novel)

Dungeon Meshi / Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui - A D&D style fantasy dungeon crawl that stops to think deeply about why there are so many dungeons full of monsters and treasure just hanging around. Here because it's an example of an author thinking through her worldbuilding a lot, and it mattering. Also because of the characters' respect for the animals they are are killing and eating, their lives and their place in the ecosystem, and the ways that humans both fuck up ecosystems with extraction and tourism, but also the ways that you can have reciprocal relationships of responsibility and care with the ecosystem you live in, even if it's considered a dangerous one. (Fantasy, manga series)

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang and How Long 'Til Black Future Month by N. K. Jemisin and Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel by Julian K. Jarboe - Short story anthologies that were SO good and SO weird and rewired the way I think. If you want the kind of stuff that is like, the opposite of easy-to-digest feel-good pap, these short stories will get into your brain and make you consider stuff and look at the world from new angles. Most of them aren't particularly upbeat, but there's a lot of variety in the moods.

"Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self," "Calf Cleaving in the Benthic Black," and "Termination Stories for the Cyberpunk Dystopia Protagonist" by Isabel J. Kim - Short stories, sci-fi mostly, that twist around in my head and make me think. Kim is very good at that. Also about choices and not-making-choices, about going and staying, about taking the easy route or the hard one, about controlling the narrative.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells - Security robot with guns in its arms hacks itself free from its oppressive company, mostly wants to half-ass its job but gets sucked into drama, intrigue, and caring against its better judgement. This is on here because 1) I love it 2) I feel like it does for me what cozy sff so frequently fails to do - it makes me feel seen and comforted. It's hopeful and compassionate and about personal growth and finding community and finding one's place in the world, without brushing aside all problems or acting like "everybody effortlessly just gets along" is a meaningful proposal. also 3) because it is one of the few times I have yet seen characters from a hippie, pacifistic, eco-friendly, welcoming, utopian society actually act like people. The humans from Preservation are friendly, helpful, and motivated by truth and justice and compassion, because they come from a friendly, just, compassionate society, and they still actually act like real human beings with different personalities and conflicting opinions and poor reactions to stress and anger and frustration and fear and the whole range of human emotions rather than bland niceness. Also 4) I love it (space sci-fi, novella series mostly)

[shallowseeker]

can’t put into words but when ppl assume cas is “just” a personality and not his body i feel weird about it…

like

it becomes his body the same way an organ donation becomes your organ. and i think dean gets that. “it’s not an it, it’s cas!”

in that season, cas is certainly feeling connected to his body, and dean actually knew that better than sam. cas said, “amara ripped lucifer from my body.”

i don’t think it’s as simple as disembodied personality inside a body.

if cas is “just” a personality inhabiting a vessel, you could argue we all are too, esp in SPN world…a soul can inhabit different bodies. how we interact with and relate to others is greatly affected by what kind of body we inhabit and when we happen to meet.

tldr; personhood is messy. and not totally sundered from the body you inhabit.

[tobiasdrake]

One of the problems with science fiction is that there is no secular term for the soul. It's a religious concept with no scientific basis, but artistically it conveys a very important idea that I think sometimes gets lost in sci-fi. It's a simple term for an important idea that gets rejected out-of-hand because it's a religious idea, but it actually matters a great deal for non-religious reasons.

In essence, soul is an easy shorthand for the breadth of one's inherent, individual being-ness. To avoid the kneejerk associations that sci-fi fans have to the word "soul", I tend to use "continuity of consciousness" to try and explain this idea. But a lot of times people still don't quite seem to grasp it.

In essence, there is a tendency in sci-fi to think of people externally. A person is their demonstrable factors. Their appearance, their personality, their memory, their experience, all things that can be interacted with or recreated through the magic of super-science.

If you clone Joe, then the result is Joe! We brought Joe back to life through cloning. Now Joe is here with us again. And if we clone Joe again, we get two Joes! Isn't that amazing? And they're both Joe!

But.

Like.

We don't think of people internally. Are they both Joe? Is either of them even Joe? Or are they brand new people saddled with Joe's memories and personality and history?

What happened to Joe? We're only thinking about Joe in terms of our perspective as people who are not Joe, but what was Joe's experience? Did he actually die, and then wake up in a new clone body? Is his continuity of consciousness preserved? Did he actually experience coming back to life? Or did Joe die, and now Joe is still just dead. And there's been a new consciousness created to inhabit the clone?

What does this experience look like from Joe's perspective? Not Clone Joe. Original Joe.

Severed from its religious meaning, this is what the soul is an artistic shorthand for. Joe's "soul" is a simple and easy way of conveying the question, what actually happened to the inherent consciousness/personhood/continuous thinking existence of the true Joe? Does the clone share the same "soul" or does it have a new "soul"? Do their consciousnesses continue from one to another or are their consciousnesses separate?

Even calling it "consciousness" doesn't fully convey this idea. Because they can have different answers for that. The clone may feel that their consciousness extends back throughout Joe's death and life, while the original Joe's consciousness nonetheless ended at death. There is no secular term for the inherent quality of a continuity of individually existing, in and of itself.

And because there's no secular term, we just don't think about it.

But I do. I think about this every time I'm presented with a clone or a time-travel duplicate or a parallel universe counterpart, and told by the story to treat them as if they were the same. If this character does not share continuity of the original's consciousness, then they are not the same. Even if all other features are identical.

And I don't know how to express that with words.

[its-leethee]

I've been reminiscing about my first watch through of The Dragon Prince. And, well, I love everything in the bakery scene in 1x01. For such a brief scene, it reveals a lot about Ezran and the culture in Katolis.

The scene opens with Ezran sneaking into the bakery through a grate in the floor, so now we know that the castle has passages in the walls (an important and plot-relevant secret we'll appreciate later) and that Ezran is free and adventurous enough to explore and exploit them.

The triangular-shaped jelly tarts that Ezran covets are recognizable as hamantashen, a traditional Jewish pastry. There are other examples of Jewish cultural practices revealed in the show later, but this is the first, and I admit I was pretty excited to see them.

We've already met King Harrow at this point, so we know that the royal family is Black and wears red clothing. Our suspicions about Ezran are confirmed when Barius greets him: "Prince Ezran," at which Ez immediately flinches. Barius' tone is not deferential in the least. Barius goes on to admonish Ezran for his attempted jelly tart heist, and with this exchange we're shown that while Ezran might enjoy a great measure of privilege and freedom, he's not spoiled. The baker's demeanor signals that the other castle inhabitants don't feel obligated to grovel to Ezran, or even humor his mischief.

Extra:

...as I was re-watching the scene to capture my favorite little exchange (the suffering parent in me laughed out loud here):

I remembered that we got an instance of the eye motif:

"...they're not for you! Or your little monster, Bait."

Personhood, and who deserves to be recognized as a person, is one of the principal themes explored in this show and here it is, presented in this scene as comic relief.

All of this packed into less than three minutes. I just love how this entire show scene's construction and execution are so clever and succinct.

[twilight-skies]

Welcome to the Game, Player.

Yeah I turned videogame and streamer logic into actual worldbuilding. Here are my headcanons for the Minecraft Multiverse :D

This is all geared towards, shall I say, “the stuff I personally know and care about” aka Hypixel, the lore connected to Hermitcraft & Company, and lore adjacent to the Dream SMP & Associated.

Players & Worlds:

Players will Spawn in singleplayer worlds when the World itself wills them to. They begin as an empty husk of a Default, and they build their personality through their following experiences and first memories. Sometimes they are found while New by other inhabitants; Villagers may take them in and give them shelter, while hostile creatures who perceive Players as enemies will attack on sight. A Player’s first instinct is to survive the night; if they are killed in their first day of life then the chance of getting to re-spawn are exponentially low, and overall their chances of it are faulty until they set-spawn at their first bed.

A Player is unique and easily identified by the two items they Spawn with on them: some sort of bag which is customized to their personality, and a gadget stored inside it. Their Inventory and their Interface. The former is a liminal space where Players can safely store things inside without carrying their weight or shape, while the latter is a device which acts as their communicator, announcement receiver, command station, and server database. They Spawn knowing how to use both, and the database comes loaded with an index public servers in the multiverse, but it is up to them to learn how to switch Worlds.

Often, their own personal singleplayer World that they Spawn into will become their primary homebase. Though, sometimes Players may abandon it once they travel to others, or they may unintentionally lose their way back to it. This creates nomad Players, who set up shop in other public or private multiplayer servers.

Hybrids:

All Player are spawned “Default”; they will either begin with an identical appearance to either Alex or Steve (see Origins). As Players progress in the Game and develop their own unique personhood, their physical body will evolve in tandem. Very quickly their body will shift and change to suit the individual, changing whatever it wills itself to; from color to shape of any bodypart, as well as melding their own psychologically. What they end up as is usually a combination of their personality and the environment they set themselves up in. Most become some sort of hybrid of a human and another mob species; the closest to Default (human) Players remain is if they imitate the Villagers they may live with.

Families:

It is possible for a New, much younger Player to be Spawned in an already-inhabited world; those are usually children who are taken in by the veteran adult Player. The rate of this type of Spawning on multiplayer worlds can be dictated by the Admin—the demigod-esque Player who holds control over the world for the rest of its Playerbase. There are some worlds that are Closed Servers but have been active for enough centuries that they have grown their own insular societies of Players who consistently raise families of New-Spawned children. These servers are often based around the concept of Factions and are ruled by their own geopolitical systems. Perhaps the most famous insular factions server was S.M.P. Earth, home to millions spread across strict yet changing national borders, before it became defunct (a multiplayer World who’s will for a Playerbase died out after it was previously inhabited by thousands, but was later abandoned and became lost to the multiverse).

Nevertheless, a vast majority of the Playerbase were Spawned as adults and made themselves either all alone or only with none-Player, World-bound inhabitants, collectively referred to as Non-Player-Characters.

Servers:

While every Player spawns in a World of their own, Player society has built up networks of servers called Hubs. These are public communities where thousands of Players could convene for any reason, although the Admin teams of these Networks often fashioned their spaces into Minigame Hubs, centers of public competition, commerce and sport. The most well-known example of these Hubs is the influential Hypixel Network, while an outlier in these is the MCC Network, a hybrid of a closed server up until Championship Day once per year when the spectator arenas are open for public attendance of the games.

Origins:

No one knows where the legends came from, but it said that the first two Players were named Alex Mine and Steve Craft. It says that they each had their own Worlds, but Steve invented the first Interface and met Alex in her own world. It is unknown what happened to them, but it is often agreed that they died and the gods took their souls and scattered shards of them across all the Worlds. With each Player, they would spawn with perfect versions of Steve’s creations so that they could traverse Worlds and meet with each other. The next Players to have Spawned after Alex and Steve were named Sunny, Efe, Noor, Zuri, Ari, Makena, and Kai. Over thousands of following years, billions of Players spawned; each of their own beings being born out of tiny sparks of the first Players’ conjoined souls.

Death:

Admins hold power over the circumstances of death in their Worlds. By default, Worlds without Admins—such as singleplayer ones, or Worlds without anything but an Admin, such as Creative ones—or Worlds where the Admins haven’t changed it, are under Infinite re-spawn (at least once a Player solidifies their life via their first bed). However, some worlds can be set to Hardcore, where a Player only has one life and will die permanently, or some rare worlds may have a set amount of times a Player can re-spawn before perma-death; a count judged by the Admin.

Players do not age; they bare the appearance most fitting to their personality and their health on the inside is the same. Only in rare scenarios can Players become disabled via injury, usually if there is a glitch in their re-spawn or if they were hurt badly in their First Night (those who do suffer either of those, though, are expected to be given a high level of respect for managing to survive through it). All Players, such as all living beings in Minecraft, are functionally immortal until killed (N.P.C.s) or perma-killed (Players). No one knows what happens after death, but the transition of souls in governed by the Goddess of Death.

The most common belief is that a dead N.P.C.’s soul will reincarnate into a new Player, via their soul being combined with a shard of Alex and Steve, which may possibly influence what kind of hybrid the Player becomes. However, in the case of the deceased souls of Players, they are guided by Lady Death through the void until they, as a disembodied voice, latch onto a living Player they find fun or entertaining. This is how some Players gain Chats, ranging from a few voices to thousands of them. The living Player is the only one who can understand the voices, and they collectively manifest in a way often relevant to the Player’s own species, or possibly their relationship to the gods.

Deities:

There are many gods that preside over the Multiverse, but they are often grouped into:

The Prime, primordial deities who are the manifestations of natural things or abstract concepts, such as War, Nature, Death, Ocean, Chaos, Fortune, Competition, etc.

and The Presiders. It is said that these collectively are the patrons of Playerkind; the mysterious beings who created Alex and Steve as curious experiments after the Prime completed the initial building of the Worlds (initial, because the multiverse’s building is never complete. New additions to the Worlds are introduced often, courtesy of the Prime). They are the ones who scattered Steve and Alex’s souls to create the Playerbase, and they preside over the Players to this day.

However, the Presiders are split, due to their own past of Civil War—the inciters of which is unknown, but it is theorized that the break was due to a disagreement over their treatment of the Players.

Now, they are divided between two rival hiveminds, the Watchers and the Listeners. While Players call themselves by the name that the Prime use to refer to those who inhabit their Game, the Presiders collectively call them The Speakers, making them the last piece of their triumvirate.

One thing that all of the deities do, is find interest in certain Players. The Prime may choose champions; people they bless with their presence, who they speak to through a Chat, and who they recruit as their own voices amongst the Playerbase.

The Prime chooses champions, but Players cannot join their ranks as deities. However, the Presiders do not take champions; instead they can transform Players into their kin—whether willingly or not. They additionally hold the ability to choose one amongst their own to send down into the Game; in such a scenario the chosen Presider will become a Player while there, retaining their own power of Watching or Listening, but cut off from their kin until they return to the void.

tysm for reading :3

[ontoilogical]

on dame aylin (as the elusive other)

I haven't looked into a lot of what people are writing and meta commenting about Dame Aylin and Isobel Thorm, but in my personal quest to make the space in my head more entertaining, Isobel and Shadowheart have developed a tentative baseline voice I can recognize and imagine in situations. Dame Aylin, however, has not. Not yet. I want to slosh an idea or two around as to why that may be the case.

In the game, Dame Aylin is presented from many angles, depending on the character and their relationship with her, but a lot of the time her role is very othering. The othering doesn't come from the game writers' options of her – they wrote a wonderful, rich and layered character, gave her a three-arc questline that unfurls for the player like the most enticingly wrapped present, full of curiosities and surprises, and placed her so that you cannot avoid this gift even if you wanted to. And that's all without mentioning how her relationship with Isobel is the romance of the game, exceptional by any Faerûnian standards.

The othering, instead, comes from inside the story. The writers wrote a story where the main conflict for Dame Aylin is how much she is othered within the world she inhabits.

For Lorroakan and the adventurers that took on the bounty, she is a literal item, relic with a property, resource to harness for the problem they're trying to solve. For Ketheric, she is the unknown, the people that are unlike you, not a part of your group or tribe, infiltrating your territory, threatening your way of life and abducting your daughters. For the Sharrans, she was an obstacle, a test to pass or fail, a rite of passage. And although more implied than really explored, or just mentioned on the tail end of her story participation, to the mortals of the land she is a function – a vengeance paladin, a goddesses aspect, the will of Selûne, applied. Her status of exceptionality is even commented on by Isobel towards the end, when she says "She's singular among us all". Unlike anyone else.

I find my fun in discerning the many layers of a character's personhood, observing each one, naming them and seeing how they inform the character's actions, feelings, lowest and highest points, essence, that which we recognize as familiar, real, sympathetic. Dame Aylin is very rewarding in that regard, at the very least, to me.

...but even I may have fallen into the trap of latently believing Dame Aylin what she says about Dame Aylin. Because, as others before me have remarked, Dame Aylin also relegates Dame Aylin to a certain, narrow function. Her parting words for the player character essentially promise she will be another sword on the battlefield for their cause. And my rogue Dragonborn Tav is there like, staring in disbelief and deciding between the "can you fucking drop the formalities and tell me something silly about yourself, like whether you're, idk, physically capable of farting or burping or something", "do you think you can take Shadowheart with you I feel she likes you better", "do you ship CaitVi / are you excited for season 2 of Arcane" and "I want you to stay I'm not yet done with tanning my body under the Moonmaiden's glow" dialogue options.

To be clear, I do not believe her, but some strange, subconscious part of me may not allow me to disrespect Dame Aylin – when I open that sad notepad on my mobile phone – by being "she does this, but actually, it's a distraction from what's really going on deep inside her Aasimar soul", something that only Isobel gets to see, touch and feel. Isobel always understands, despite Aylin's deflections, even towards her (maybe, I haven't decided whether she does this or not). Isobel is patient and understanding about it, because that is her nature, but she'd be lying if she said it wasn't a little frustrating and trying at times. "Let me carry and care for you at least occasionally, my beloved. I witness your pain and it aches my heart when you try to shield me from it."

Hm.

I would also add that Aylin's charismatic presentation, language particularities and everything else make it potentially easy to set them as character points to check off, after which one may fall into a false sense of "there, I just wrote canon-accurate Dame Aylin". I mean, maybe you did, maybe I would, but... what about that Dame Aylin POV character exploration fic that doesn't feel like you're slapping "stoic character" tropes on her or keeping to the surface, but rather exploring what is distinctly and uniquely hers, beyond how strange she is against everyone else around her. I'm not saying anyone is doing this, but that this is how I feel whenever I try to write or imagine something that isn't a remix of the scenes and dialogues available in the game.

[godhasheardtruthfully]

A lot of people love to call individuals from the Torah / Bible / Quran trans but when a trans person is spiritual they’re treated like an alien.

It feels vindictive that you’d wanna use my gender to “piss Christians off” without considering that God loving trannys are real

& brave persecution from both the spiritual & queer communities we try to find family among from the disdain of wider society.

(it’s transphobic to level the breadth of our personhood &

weird you’d use our vulnerable existence to “stick it” to communities we also inhabit)

[daemon-in-my-head]

OK but actually, Bhaals/Durges plans aren't that stupid?

I mean, Bhaal doesn't care what happens to those souls. Murders empower him, so Durge killing everyone does work in his favour. Also lots of dead people would sway Myrkul towards him all while pissing off Bane which is always a W in Bhaals book.

But if everyone's dead what about Bhaals Power? Well dear reader, you're in luck because Scel confirms Durge gets to keep their consort. Bhaal does not want an apocalypse, he wants a world built to his liking. Aka; filled with Bhaalspawn brought to you by yours truly. An army of homemade homicidal maniacs essentially. The kind that goes backstabbing as a fun little hobby.

Now for Durge, it makes sense they comply too. Not only does Durge thrive for self-destruction and actively longs for their own obliteration, probably cuz of the whole child of murder bit, they also tried to keep someone save. From the god of murder. Who controls them. The easiest fucking way to do that is by ensuring their target of safekeeping has a purpose, and if there's only oh so many people alive every last soul becomes valuable. Durge can literally hold the world and Bhaals power hostage in that case. Also, once again, Bhaal kinda sorta controls Durge to a frightening degree. So if Durge wants to play it safe they need to comply until the scales are tipped in their favour.

It's a fucked up game of chicken between a God of death and his rebellious offspring. Also, they did want to kill Gorty last, so.... That's the perfect way yk. Incredibly fucked up and dehumanising, but actually not such a stupid plan.

Also no "foreign" souls = no power for other gods. And if the world is inhabited by only Bhaalspawn who continue to murder each other + praise Bhaal its kinda a cheat code for him growing exponentially powerful. And depending on how many hoops ur thoughts jump thru; Bhaals Power = Durges Power. Especially in an embraced ending since Durge kind of surrenders their personhood and "humanity" to become closer to Bhaal.

[secularprolifeconspectus]

Hey I have an upcoming debate

Can you give me some GOOD scientifically backed arguments against abortion with sources?

Tysm <3

Here's one I wrote for PAAU.

All the sources should be hyperlinked.

My concern is that I don't know if by "scientifically-backed" you simply mean its evidentiary claims are verified, or if you're suggesting that science alone can answer whether elective induced abortion is ethical. Because it can't, and that's a common bad assumption I've seen both pro-choice and pro-life advocates make. You must ground your argument in philosophy.

That being said, science is on our side. The best repositories of research and data on abortion I can think of are The Abortion Debate Index by Secular Pro-Life and Charlotte Lozier Institute.

My blog is a resource for abortion-critical theory; if you read through it, you'll learn lots about what's wrong with feticide, but not necessarily why feticide is wrong. If you need more help explaining the latter, Equal Rights Institute is awesome.

And then there's the wonderful intersection of science and philosophy that biologist Maureen Condic inhabits; here's three (1, 2, 3) of my favorite articles by her. She can answer in-depth why life begins at fertilization; however, I find her explanation of personhood to have holes. Fortunately, I've got a masterpost of philosophers who have written excellent articles on that.

So just remember: it is foundational to any argument against feticide that we establish a shared understanding that embryos are distinct living human organisms. However, THAT IS NEVER THE END OF THE ARGUMENT. Just because a human is alive doesn't necessarily mean they're a person, and while the burden of proof does lie on the pro-abortionists to defend why prenates are the sole class exceptional to the rule that all humans are people, we must be prepared to explain how personhood begins at fertilization. That is ultimately the anti-abortion argument; it is necessary to defeat bad-faith arguments about bodily autonomy, and to make any credible argument that prenates have equal rights to protection and care. Our ethical authority depends on this.

And if you do need help with autonomy arguments, I've already responded to those here, here, and here. Hope that helps!

[windvexer]

hello Chicken, I have a question about servitors. To my understanding those are some sort of spirits inhabiting a physical object that might assist a practitioner in some way ? What I am not sure to understand when I hear or read about the subject is where does the spirit of the servitor come from ? Is it possible for the practitioner to « give birth » to a spirit ? I understand an already existing spirit « haunting » an object, but if a servitor is created I am not sure to understand if the servitor is an already existing spirit that get attached to a physical object or if it is some sort of agglomerate of energies coming from feeding and the practitioner own energy that is able to create an independent spirit for the servitor ? But then how to be sure the servitor is okay with helping the practitioner ?

Good morning!

My understanding of a servitor is that it is a type of artificial spirit, which may or may not be self-aware or sapient.

This sort of spirit does not need to inhabit a physical object.

IMO, servitors are generally understood to be intentionally constructed by a practitioner.

I believe it's very possible for a practitioner to create spirits, or energy imprints that behave as spirits.

So yes, I think the method of the practitioner feeding energy is what is typically done to create a servitor.

Whether or not servitors are truly self-realized beings or not is a point of contention. Generally speaking, the practitioner should be able to fully control this process. A servitor should not gain personhood and autonomy without the permission or will of the practitioner.

A practitioner probably ought to create a servitor that wants to do the jobs its given. But, a time may come when a servitor no longer finds its position suitable.

This may happen with all manner of magic - the container spell stops working, the working tool starts deadening acts of magic instead of improving them, etc.

In that case, a practitioner could find out if the servitor doesn't want to do its job by interacting with it and listening to it. Steps may be made accordingly.

[mr-president]

*Crashes into whatever space you are living in and plasters the hole with duct tape.

Tell me about your Marxist analysis on pokemon XD

:3

i live in a college dorm please pay for the wall or they’re gonna charge me $10000+ please please pls pl

anyway.

I’d like to first establish that the Pokémon in Pokémon XD are something akin the proletariat—the working/laboring class. Pokémon XD and Colosseum introduce the mechanic of “shadow Pokémon,” where Pokémon are literally manufactured in a factory that “closes their hearts,” turning them into nothing but mindless battle machines. Shadow Pokémon are aggressive, may attack opposing trainers, and hurt themselves in their rage.

This is all for a pokémon that is nothing but a mindless battle machine—it is literally separating pokémon from their labor. The Pokémon’s personhood (Pokemonhood?) is dismissed simply for the value they possess in exerting power. in addition to the fact that shadow Pokémon are both laborers and products that are sold and distributed, and this echoes how the labor of the proletariat are devalued, seen as “lessers” merely to be used. They are just as much products as they are the means of production.

There’s also the fact that shadow Pokémon aren’t created from conception however—they’re pokémon that were stolen from their trainers and turned into shadow Pokémon. So, in a sense, Pokemon XD comments how the modes of production require foul play in order to sustain constant productivity, and the proletariat are then manipulated and morphed by the bourgeoisie, stolen from their homes, and have the burden placed on their shoulders. Of course, I’m going very surface level with this analysis but you can read the stealing of Pokémon for shadow Pokémon production in other ways.

Anyway, what makes Pokémon XD, and the GameCube Pokémon games in general, different from most other Pokémon media is just how different the orre region is because orre is uniquely low-income.

This is more apparent in the first game, Pokémon Colosseum, where every location is rife with some level of crime and poverty. The buildings are often dated and worn down, there are no established roads between areas (you have to motorbike/scooter through barren desert), the land is so dry and barren that no wild Pokémon exist within the region, and—importantly—the people of orre are rude.

This is less apparent in XD because Michael is a literal child, but in Colosseum, a large portion of NPCs insult and belittle Wes or Rui. In a sense, Colosseum comments how people in poverty can’t afford to be “nice”—niceness itself is a luxury, and this is also highlighted in the high crime rate in Orre. Even Wes himself is a thief and probably murderer, even if the game never explicitly shows anyone dying.

But the brunt of Orre’s poverty however is how a massive global corporation such as Cipher can operate and fly under the radar in orre. Orre does not have the means nor power to stop Cipher from setting up their main base of operations there because unlike every other pokémon region, there is no established “league” or “government.”

So of course the people of Orre buy into Cipher’s plans and often propagate shadow Pokémon because there is nothing else they can do. It’s them versus this massive corporation that suddenly started taking over and buying up land and stealing their Pokémon if they don’t comply (they do this with Duking).

The inhabitants of Orre then too must operate within Cipher outside their own volition. It’s akin to how the bourgeois in the real world occupy low-income areas, buy out every other property, and eventually take over every aspect of a region. When more rural land owners don’t comply, the bourgeois will develop as close to their property as possible and drive them out of their conformity.

Even the location of Phenac City is a literal gentrified area, the only city in the deep desert that has water and literally housed the region head of a global organization. For what is the most “developed” modern city in the game (that isn’t built into a fucking tree), it makes sense that it would be run by Cipher in this way. It allows Cipher to operate on a level of plausible deniability—haven’t they brought this wonderful city to Orre? Haven’t they helped its people? Perhaps corporations can be good for “helping” people via charity.

All they gotta do is give a Pokémon or two (or steal a Pokémon or two) to Cipher and never say anything about their rulers.

This is the Orre region. It isn’t just one city taken over by a big bad—this is an entire Pokémon region and its main trade being completely at the mercy of a global corporation.

It’s important to note just how wealthy, then, Cipher is. Specifically, its CEO—Grandmaster Greevil. Also known as the wealthy philanthropist—Mr. Verich.

Michael meets Greevil as Mr. Verich, whose bodyguard saves him from a street thug. This is painted as an act of kindness or charity—like kissing a baby on camera—but this deed becomes much more insidious when it’s revealed that Mr. Verich manufactured the whole situation in the first place. That street thug attacked Michael because he wanted to show off a shadow Pokémon. Mr. Verich only saved Michael so that the presence of shadow Pokémon wouldn’t alert the public.

Billionaires perform acts of charity as a smokescreen for the actual harm they may cause, whilst endearing themselves to the public eye. For Greevil, saving Michael just so happened to coincide with his intended goal that doubled as a means to increase his public image.

Greevil is also very well liked by the people of Orre, especially in Gateon Port. The sailors at the diner all cheer his name because Mr. Verich will often pay for all of their tabs, letting them eat free for the day. The novelist, a friend of Michael’s, calls Mr. Verich interesting and intends to write a book idolizing the man’s good deeds and character. There’s an old woman who’s in love with Mr. Verich—people fucking love this guy for existing and being rich.

The bourgeois’ charity is not only celebrated but idolized—worshipped, but this “kindness” is merely an act to further their control. Mr. Verich isn’t merely doing this out of the kindness of his heart nor as a smokescreen for his more nefarious side—it’s so he can gain control over the only means of trade Orre has so that he may distribute shadow Pokémon globally more easily. The rich can not only “afford” niceness, but this niceness itself is a commodity that can be bought using wealth to gain more capital.

So in XD, Michael essentially acts as a “union man” by unionizing the pokémon in an act of ideological un-brainwashing via “purification”, which “opens the heart” of a shadow pokémon. The act of purification in XD is interesting because it emphasizes community between pokémon, synergizing their strengths and weaknesses into something impenetrable, and healing them from being mindless laborers for capitalism.

Michael is uniquely free from capitalistic forces for two reasons 1) he’s a child and therefore able to “imagine a world without capitalism,” and 2) he kinda grew up in a commune. Like, if you think about it, the purification lab is a self-sustaining commune that supports its inhabitants and encourages gradual but effective scientific progression in the Purify Chamber. Michael is the “big Communism builder,” and the Purification Pokémon lab is the commune.

I think the difference in scientific progression of the Purification Lab compared to Cipher’s Shadow Pokémon Lab also needs to be stated:

The creation of XD001–Shadow Lugia—and the mass production of shadow pokémon also illustrates how science and scientific “progress” is largely determined by what the top 1% will put their money into. How streamlined scientific progress is for the Pokémon equivalent of mass bioweapons.

But, in the uniquely communist society that Michael grew up in, Pokemon XD reveals that communism is not a stalling of scientific progress but simply a change in the intentions of it. In a capitalistic society, science is driven by capital and the bourgeois. In a communist society, science is driven by a mutual interest in a common societal “good.”

tldr;

[eorzeashan]

still setting up my ffxiv sideblog but so excited for the new oc that's going to inhabit it. they're a full-time artist whose pictomancy abilities take as long as painting does in real life but fulfills all roles. they specifically try to smuggle out sharlayan art secrets in an effort to spread it across the realm. they specialize in ishgardian fantastic/religious art but were imprisoned for "heretical" symbolism when they made a triptych of the seven hells of eorzea. they were jailed next to Aymeric and freed when the WoL stormed the Vault; they grew enraptured after their first encounter with the warrior and spend the rest of their days after HW chasing the WoL's footsteps with the intent to capture their essence and personhood in art. their name is siegbert. their Echo lets them see every single unique WoL at once. they call WoL their muse, but end up running away whenever they're so much as approached. they're even elezen

[bestworstcase]

muttering about songs hours again

guide my way. “were you at least called a friend?”

friend:

but i found that humanity it came with sacrifice a pact to shield you from the wicked even if i can’t live for real it was worth it to know you

as always wrt penny this notion of ‘realness’ is not about transformation into flesh-and-blood but escape from the dehumanizing machine of the atlesian military: penny herself is the inevitable end result of the cynical atlesian devaluation and commodification of the human soul and her narrative struggle to ‘become real’ locates itself in the struggle to assert her agency and personhood outside of this system. anyway the point being,

atlas built a child-super-soldier to “save the world.” a savior. a weapon. not real. in v1 penny gives her handlers the slip and meets ruby, who calls her “friend”—v2 ruby learns she’s a robot, affirms her personhood (“you’ve got a soul, i can feel it”) in a way nobody has ever done before, and questions the destiny set out for her (“we’re in a time of peace!”)—v3 penny digests all of this and decides she’s not going back to atlas. not just that she doesn’t want to return, she actively devises a plan to stay at beacon.

she can’t because she’s killed to make a statement but she also can’t because she would never have been allowed to. atlas does not let her go. she’s brought back to life and made the ‘protector of mantle’ (a greater burden with less autonomy than she had before—no more free roaming). she tries to break free and the whole apparatus of the military pivots to dragging her back under control by force. a savior. a weapon. the only escape from this existence is to die; the hero is an object. the hero is not ‘real.’

(gestures at sacrifice. at divide. “you can’t have my life/i’m not your sacrifice.” “what if all the plans you made/were not worth the price they paid.” “sacrifice them for your needs.” gestures at time to say goodbye:

were we born to fight and die? sacrificed for one huge lie? are we heroes keeping peace or are we weapons pointed at the enemy so someone else can claim a victory?

no. you have sacrificed everyone else. as above, so below. penny is the sacrifice and she cannot be a person, can’t be ‘real,’ without also being subjected to horrific violence by those who view her as an object.)

“were you at least called a friend?”

<- this connects summer to penny in a very specific way. because while summer rose is flesh and blood… the first thing ozpin says to ruby is “you have silver eyes.” before huntsmen, before kingdoms, “it was said that those born with silver eyes were destined to lead the life of a warrior.” the silver-eyed warrior is not ‘real’ either. she is an object.

a savior. a weapon.

penny flouts orders by exploring in vale. ruby calls penny a “friend.” penny reveals herself to ruby as the not-real savior of the world. ruby affirmed that she is real and questions the idea that the world needs saving. penny decides not to return to atlas.

summer, the silver-eyed warrior, went rogue. she met salem. and she never came back.

were you at least called a friend?

gestures at rising:

stand firm outlast we won’t be beaten by the past one goal, one pact looking forward, never back

and so we must press on + summer would have pressed on. sacrifice: “the moon will sadly watch the roses die” + rising: “we’re looking to the sky/the light will guide us/the rose will grow to be a seed/from every life another leads” + friend: “even if i can’t/live for real/it was worth it to know you.” one goal, one pact + a pact to shield you from the wicked.

for summer rose, the person, to be free, summer rose, the hero, had to die. oh! who would inhabit/this bleak world alone?