#intra-activity

[russellmoreton]

The Scriptorium : Scale 1:15 UCA Farnham by Russell Moreton Via Flickr: russellmoreton.blogspot.com/

[theexhaustedqueer]

Guys, there’s a really obvious enemy here and— Oh! What a surprise!

It isn’t each other.

[serpentface]

FAMILY TITLES AMONG THE HILL TRIBES

(ft. various linguistic notes and tangents)

In-universe Brakul’s self-given title of ‘Red-Dog’ is Brakul 'ne-Dainh' in his native language (Bict-Urbinnas dialect of the Highland language group) and Brakul 'Chin-Reyla' in Wardi. Ne-Dainh/Chin-Reyla is not something he treats as or considers an actual surname or identity, just a self-styled nickname. He already has a title.

Family names/surnames are not a native practice among the Hill Tribes (though some clans or individual families have adopted this practice), and all traditionally use titles that designate immediate ancestry, clan and tribe. These full titles are officially given when one comes of age and are spoken aloud in ceremony (with the entire direct male and female lines listed by name, with most traditions expecting 12 generations of each being named).

The function is to cement one’s sense of place in the world, and their place in a direct ancestral line, which puts the person under the full watch and guidance of their ancestors. It's also a critical method of recording lineage- the long held practice of each person memorizing at least 24 total direct ancestors allows for very long, largely accurate records of family history to be kept, with some people able to trace their ancestry all the way back to initial settlement of the Highlands (or even beyond).

Brakul’s full title is:

“Brakul virsum Kuligan et Borunil an Briyonis ne-Taig an Bict-Urbinnas”

Which dead literally translates to “Brakul son of Kuligan and Borunil of the Foothills (of) Red-Cattle, of the North (Urbin/Erubin) River Valley” but has a much richer meaning in the original language.

"BRAKUL VIRSUM KULIGAN ET BORUNIL"

The actual meaning here is closer to ‘Brakul, son of Kuligan and his father’s fathers, and Borunil and her mother’s mothers’.

“Virsum” means ‘child (son/daughter) of’ (the gender is contextual), but implies the person’s status as a descendant of a full male and female line of ancestors. A different word is used if you’re just saying ‘I’m so and so’s son”. The title describes him as a son of his father Kuligan and of Kuligan’s male line, and of his mother Borunil and Borunil's female line.

All ancestors (within this particular system of kinship, divided into one direct male line from the father and one direct female line from the mother, and not including husbands from the female line or wives from the male line) are invoked and credited with the word ‘virsum’. Speaking it as part of the personal title is part of the routine and necessary honoring of one’s ancestors, who watch over their descendants from the afterlife and can temporarily return to the land to guide and protect (and sometimes punish, or teach sharp lessons to) the living.

"AN BRIYONIS NE-TAIG"

The actual meaning here would be understood as ‘clan/people of the foothills where cattle are lit red by the setting sun'.

‘Briyonis’ is the word for ‘foothill’, citing his clan’s specific location being the foothills that form the slopes of the north Urbin river valley. He is of a lesser clan within the powerful North Urbin River tribe. His clan benefits from close affiliation to their more powerful ruling clans located directly in the river valley, which grants them access to a greater variety of cultivated foods, but their actual position in the foothills still renders them predominantly reliant on cattle for subsistence. Clan names referencing cattle or horses are very common, given their frequent centrality to life.

The ‘ne-Taig’ literally means ‘red cattle’, but the ‘ne’ color word for red specifically invokes shades of red seen in and cast by a rising/setting sun. This red cast is culturally regarded as a unique beauty and evocative (and part of the name) of the solar god Hraighne. The foothills his clan is physically located on are a vantage point from which the western horizon is not fully obscured by mountains, and they experience very striking sunsets and are directly touched by the light. This is fairly unique to this location, and is invoked in the clan name and identity. ‘Ne-Taig’ here suggests a visual of grazing cattle illuminated red by the sun as it crosses the horizon.

‘Ne-Dainh’ carries the same implication, a dog illuminated red by setting sunlight. The Wardi language does not have a comparable word for a sunlit red and ‘Chin-Reyla’ really does just mean ‘(orangeish) red dog’ (‘reyla’ is specific to orangey-red colors, which is the closest match he could get. There’s no way to impart the meaning of ‘sunlit-red dog’ in Wardi that is non-clunky enough to be appropriate for a name).

"AN BICT-URBINNAS"

‘an Bict-Urbinnas’ is fairly simple, Bict means ‘north’, and 'Urbin' is the name of the specific river that stems from a northern and eastern tributary. This river has a very ancient name (or a derivative of one) that predates settlement by the Hill Tribes, and its exact meaning is lost.

The root -(n)nas designates a river valley, but has strong implications of being an esteemed and bountiful place, rather than solely a literal geographical descriptor (as the river valleys are centers of power and trade in the highlands). It may be a loanword from the Wardi language family, as its usage is VERY similar in form and function to the Wardi -(n)nos, which also suggests a place of esteem and bounty (more specifically having connotations of a kingdom).

’An’ literally means ‘of’, but in the specific sense of describing the place and identity of a collection of people. ‘an Bict Urbinnas’ would be understood in speech as ‘of the north Urbin River Valley (people)’. The clans historically settled in and around the valley of the North Urbin River form the totality of the Bict-Urbinnas tribe.

The ‘Urbin’ word predates the contemporary Wardi name ‘Erubin’ for the river, the latter of which invokes the semi-mythological founding figure Erub, who himself was of a Wardi tribe located downriver to the south of the Highlands. The real historically extant ‘Erub’ was most likely named Urub after the river, with his cited name shifting over the centuries in folklore, and the Wardi name for the river shifting with it.

‘Erubin’ as a corruption of ‘Urbin’ functions very well in Wardi language due to ‘-bi/bin’ denoting something as a ‘gift’, usually in a more metaphorical sense. ‘Erubin’ is understood as meaning ‘(The river that is) Erub’s gift’, and the Erubin/Urbin river is a key tributary to the much larger Black river, one of the key rivers that feeds the region's wetter and more fertile west. This 'gift' meaning also occurs in the name of the southeastern Imperial Wardi city-state Erubinnos, which is understood as meaning ’((The kingdom that is) Erub’s gift’. He is considered to have conquered and taken the land (from the core city's actual founders, the Wogan people) and established a kingdom there in the early days of warring Wardi tribal monarchies.

[drfaustus]

testing out a change of scenery for writing my seminar paper where i move from my desk to the floor

[oflgtfol]

is that guy legit confused by aros liking to fuck... is that legit the dumbass take i'm seeing here.. 😭

no it was lowkey like the alloarophobia and general sex negativity of like, oh sex without romance is selfish and bad, i can understand allo aces because sexless love is puuure uwu, but if you have sex without romantic attraction then youre just an heartless player 💅💅

they phrased it nicer than that, but the person was confused as to how “allo aro is a ‘justified’ orientation” because they knew someone they suspected was allo aro and didnt like them, for the above reasons (of which they were yknow, just Assuming). so basically their cutesy “confusion” about being allo aro was really just repackaged general intra community BS that makes me frustrated with a large portion of the ace community

[sparksandstarsandstories]

gonna complain about terfs for a minute so heads up

Complaining starts here

This is obviously not the biggest problem terfs cause but I hate having to personally verify every single note I get on any post I make about sapphic history

I love queer history! I want to learn it and share it! I want to learn and share my corners of it! But unless I explicitly say “this post is trans-inclusive” it’ll get swarmed by transphobes

And I guess I could add that to every post but it feels. Just. Trite and performative. Especially because in many cases the spaces I’m discussing were not as trans-inclusive as they should have been, and I don’t want to erase that. But a lengthy disclaimer with all of this is bulky and also feels performative.

It’s just so frustrating to have to tread on glass in spaces that are supposed to be safe because otherwise my words will get hijacked by the kind of people who look at historical transphobia and lateral violence within the queer community and say, “yes, the good old days, we should do more of that.”

Anyway I’m considering deleting every post I made while reading odd girls and twilight lovers but I also don’t want them to be completely out of my hands

Complaining ends

[sodomit]

TRANSUNITY

Transunity is a political theory that was actively talked about on Tumblr a couple of years ago, but has since fallen out of the public spotlight. And this is unfortunate, because it could have really improved a lot of the discourse around gender.

There exists a blog under that name ( @transunity ), but it has been inactive for a year. I am not affiliated with that blog anyhow, I never had any personal contacts with its mods, but I want to get their general ideas to circulate again, so I'm trying to bring this back up in a semi organized fashion. My take on transunity is just my take, if you're one of the original coiners, and you disagree, I encourage you to talk about it, because we still have much more in common with each other than different.

GENERAL VIEWS

I believe that one of the fundamental ideas more trans people need to understand is that we're all more or less in the same place in the eyes of the society (when other factors, such as ethnicity or disability, are considered). To be trans is to fail the gender role system, from the point of view of cis people we can no longer be proper men or women. All kinds of trans people regardless of identity are affected by misogyny and misandry (not a type of marginalization by itself, but turns into a vector of oppression when overlapping with a different marginalization), which forms the foundation of transmisogyny, transandrophobia, and exorsexism*. These types of bigotry are not exclusive and unique to specific gender identities either and may be applied to any trans person for as long as it's convenient to the oppressor.

Trans people do not have gendered power over each other, and intra community bigotry is better conceptualized as a form of lateral aggression.

Gender assignment and sex are never strictly binary (especially with inclusion of intersex people, who belong in gender conversations even if they don't identify as trans) and need to be understood as much more fluid and not strictly correlating with one's actual position in life.

WHAT WE NEED TO REDUCE

The following things should be discussed more critically:

- "Powerjacketing" - implying someone has gendered privilege as a means of delegitimizing their words, while in reality they do not have this privilege;

- Malgendering - forcing trans people to choose between being gendered correctly and speaking up about their mistreatment (e.g. questioning trans women's womanhood on the basis of them aggressively defending themselves or trans men's manhood on the basis of them asking for help) or implying there's something wrong with them in a way that reinforces gender stereotypes;

- Assuming that some trans people are exempt from some forms of oppression on the basis of gender assignment/sex (e.g. by calling all trans people who were assigned female "tme"** or claiming trans people who were assigned male are inherently incapable of understanding fear of sexual assault);

- Assuming that oppression of trans people is rooted in gender assignment/sex (such as, calling reproductive oppression "sex based oppression"***);

- Gatekeeping certain identities, such as "transmasc", "transbian", "femboy" as exclusive to any gender assignment/sex;

- Creating a duality out of "transsexual" and "cissexual", where not medically transitioning trans people are assumed to have some kind of a gendered privilege, or to not be trans in any meaningful material way. Various transmed ideas about dysphoria and transition go there too;

- Accusing trans people who take inspiration from each other of appropriation (trans headcanons, kinks, drag culture, etc).

SYMBOL

The following image is the official transunity symbol developed by the original transunity bloggers. Sorry about the glitch effect, I wasn't able to find one without it.

* Transmisogyny, transandrophobia, and exorsexism are not exclusive to specific identities, although they do primarily target traits associated with these identities. They can be conceptualized as bigotry and oppression towards people who are recognized as incorrectly entering respectively womanhood, manhood, and a status beyond gender binary (for the latter no normative form exists****). However, it's not wrong to use them to mean "oppression of trans women" and so forth, for as long as you're not claiming it's exclusive.

** Labels like "tma" and "tme" still may be used, but solely in a self assigned manner. I believe that an individual trans person is capable of evaluating whether they're affected by transmisogyny and in what way, and they should be trusted on this. However, no gender assignment and no current gender identity makes anyone inherently tme.

*** "Sex based oppression" instead of "reproductive oppression" reinforces the idea that people who share a specific body part (e.g. an uterus in context of conversations about abortion) are inherently of the same sex. This type of essentialism is desperately needed by terfs in this discussion, as they're trying to sell the ideas of "sex based oppression" and "sex based privilege" to people they want to recruit in their ideology. Invoking the idea of "sex" as something trans men and some nonbinary people are oppressed through is not the correct way to respond to people who say we don't experience any gendered violence besides "just transphobia", it has shitty implications and helps shitty people.

**** Lack of existence of normative nonbinary gender does not mean that these genders are not recognized by the society as a deviant, marginalized identity, and that binary people cannot be pushed into this zone.

[the-goldsmith]

You're absolutely right that making content out of spite is very much not a healthy mindset to have, and I appreciate that your original post was about encouraging creatives to do the things they want to do because they like them and not due to any outside pressure. I do think that's something that's always worth bringing up considering today's state of social media/fandom and how frustrating it can be.

Re: your other frustrations:

This now has much less to do with the original tweet and more my own personal projections/speculation.

I believe that while farcille is currently the top ship it will very likely soon be overtaken by an m/m ship, and its progression won't see the uptick that the m/m ships have seen.

The reason I feel this way is that dungeon meshi, before the anime came out, was a decently popular work among people who like yuri. This is obviously because it's easy to read farcille as romantic, and the story revolves in some way around them, so while Falin isn't actually around very often it makes for very good romantic subtext.

Now, unfortunately the number of people who like yuri is proportionally very small, they are used to not getting a lot of content, and are a fairly tightly-knit community. Meaning that once a New Lesbian Thing is discovered, most of the people who are likely to take an interest in it will do so right away. Additionally, himejoshi (getting tired of saying "people who like yuri" lol) are used to consuming manga over anime, since very few yuri anime adaptations get made.

So a good majority of people interested in farcille and willing to make content for it have likely already encountered it before the anime significantly heightened the manga's popularity, which is how we get farcille currently having the most fics out of any other ship on ao3.

Meanwhile, people who enjoy yaoi aren't exactly starved for content, so they can just organically come across new stories once they become popular.

This is all to say that I think farcille has already achieved somewhat close to peak popularity (proportionally to the size of the fandom), and while it will definitely get a bit of a boost once we get to the resurrection scene I don't think even that will be enough to garner much more attention.

On the other hand, labru/other m/m ships have only now started to get content because the larger animanga fandom has set its gaze on dunmeshi for the first time, and the larger animanga fandom tends to like yaoi.

So what I think will happen is that as the dunmeshi anime reaches the more interesting parts of the story and its popularity rises, the rate at which m/m content gets made will soon easily overtake the rate at which farcille content gets made, so the fact that it's still in the lead right now isn't necessarily reassuring. If anything, I'm so sure that this is what will happen that it only makes me dread the day it gets "dethroned" (dramatic choice of words but rest assured I'm not actually that invested in this situation).

As for the faults of the work itself, I agree that part of this phenomenon is to blame on the fact there's just not as many female characters, though one counterpoint I have is that the male characters who get the most spotlight in the story itself (Laios, Chilchuck, Senshi), don't exactly have "yaoiful" dynamics between them, and that's reflected on ao3. The two most popular yaoi ships are between Laios and a guy he has a very limited number of interactions with (significant interactions, but still), and two secondary characters who, again, have a few significant interactions but still not that many. Also, while every element in the story matters as it otherwise wouldn't have been included, these relationships are secondary aspects of the story. They inform the characters, but they're not necessarily integral.

Compare that to how farcille is very much a foundational aspect of the narrative, despite the fact that they also end up not getting to interact that often.

The way I see it there's comparatively a lot more meat on the farcille bone that will go largely unaddressed because fandom, as a rule, would rather focus on secondary dynamics so long as they involve men.

I don't want to make this a case of "my ship is better than yours" though, I really don't care about that, and I think I should add that a lot of my opinions on the matter are informed by similar dynamics in other fandoms and not dunmeshi's necessarily (the anime just came out so it's still a baby fandom in many ways), so this might actually play out differently from what I expect for all I know. Though I don't think it will, because so far it reads as another textbook case.

@the-goldsmith It is, though I didn't know it was a tweet until later, just that I saw people making posts about it in the tag.

And yeah, I don't really blame people for needing to vent about stuff, and I definitely think it's worth talking about fandom trends and how they can reflect misogyny, racism, etc. I do also think the form that this venting takes can slip into bullying sometimes, or just be more stressful than helpful for people involved.

The main reason I made that post was for writers and other fandom creative types. If writing from spite is a good motivator for someone then more power too them, but I'm intimately familiar with the feeling of wanting to "prove" something or change the tide of fandom by writing good enough or often enough about the thing I love. It is always an exhausting and demoralizing thought-spiral to get caught in for me, and truly I hope that the people frustrated by the ao3 stuff don't experience the same thing.

However, to soapbox a little... I also think the framing of the situation (in the original post/tweet/whatever) also is kind of disingenuous. Which isn't really the main point I was originally making but also I do find it frustrating. So I'm gonna talk a little about that too

THESE are the top relationship tags for dunmeshi on ao3:

Mar/Fal is still by far and away the most popular relationship. The reason there is more total M/M is because there are is a larger variety of M/M ships.

There are three major M/M pairings here with over 10 fics, as well as three categories of /Reader fics.

There is basically ONLY Mar/Fal for F/F content. Mar/Izu is the next closest, and most of those fics are pretty old, too. I don't think there will be a ton of focus on that category in the future, due to Izu's age and implied aroace orientation. Beyond that there are 4 Ki/Nam fics, as well as 2 Hien/Benchidori ones not in the screenshot.

And this also can be influenced by people not wanting to focus on female characters. Why isn't there more variety in pairs here? Well... to be honest, I think if we are going to talk about lack of content focused on women, we should also look at the source material.

Because like, don't get me wrong. I love dunmeshi. I think it does well by its female characters. But not THAT well. Marcille and Izutsumi are the only real main female characters. Even if we include Falin in this list, that's only three. Hell, let's even throw in Namari! Compared to Laios, Chilchuck, Senshi, Thistle, Kabru, Mithrun, and Shuro, that's barely over half as many major women as there are men in the story.

It's not an even playing field here, and I frankly think that sucks. I think it is a flaw of the story. And I don't think it gets talked about enough. If people are frustrated about misogyny, I wish they would dig into this too, and not just blame fans. And god, I know that gets touted a lot, the whole 'well it's not my fault that media focuses on men!' thing. I'm not saying that there's no biases in the fandom. But it is frustrating to see people talking about dunmeshi as if it's a super yuri/woman focused story when it just isn't. The lack of variety of female characters is the primary reason that total F/F content is less than M/M, and that problem DIRECTLY traces back to the canon.

[hadesoftheladies]

Opinion: We Need to Start Talking About Violent Feminist Activism Seriously

while i do not think that females are as violent or would be as violent as males without patriarchal obstruction, i think it's mostly the emasculation of women (female socialization) that leads to this demureness that perpetuates female subjugation. we often frame femininity as something that inhibits consciousness-raising, but it is actually far more frightening and deeper than that. femininity and its practices inhibit female self-worth which in turn causes women to devalue themselves. this is why women are not accustomed to fighting for themselves, like every other animal (male and female) on this earth. women are so used to "lying down and taking it" because it is something they are primed to do. the danger of femininity isn't just that it deforms our bodies or divides us from each other, it is that it physically and mentally disables our ability to fight back.

i have often neglected to mention alternative methods in my separatist posts, but separatism is not the only way we can enact large-scale societal transformation. it is the only nonviolent way.

the truth of the matter is, as much as we make jokes and fantasize about killing men, the reason most women and girls "behave" when it comes to men and men do not "behave" when it comes to women is because women simply aren't feared, despite the fact that we have the power to become a threat. even in feminist circles such as this, talk of women physically harming men is seen as taboo, as something that can be easily used against us. so we have to constantly disclose that we aren't serious. i think this is part of the problem.

the other word for fear is respect. men cannot respect or revere men they do not fear on some level. in a twisted way, in order for women to become human to men, we have to get scary. we have to hold real power over them and become intolerant to them.

this doesn't necessarily have to be done strictly in violent ways. resisting femininity can range from allowing ourselves to frown and even scowl in public, not being hospitable toward men, not complimenting, affirming, validating or cleaning up after them. but the point of combatting female socialization is resisting the role of women in patriarchal society: sexual object, or in other words, victim. it is the victimization of women that men find especially erotic. that's why consensual sex isn't enough for them. they are fuelled by female terror.

in short, gyns, i'm saying the time has come when we should aim to put the fear of god in these bastards. the only way they will view rape as badly as they view cannibalism is if there is a constant looming threat of brutal social castration. they need to fear social punishment, which is difficult because half of society is made up of men that approve. so how can the other half, women, make it so that the other half are afraid to do so?

which brings us, ironically, back to separatism and also gender non-conformity. in order for women to reach a place where we can defend ourselves using violence and not get taken ten steps back for killing/maiming a rapist, pedo, abuser we need women to have access to ironclad female solidarity.

male solidarity is what keeps the status quo intact, and female solidarity is its only worthy counterpoint. the reason patriarchy is so strong is because of female solidarity with males rather than intra-community solidarity. this is the weak point of patriarchy, it's over-dependence on women on a cellular level. society as we know it, patriarchal or not, will fall to shit if women refused to participate in its core structures. literally the only reason children are still being born, raised and schooled in the face of men's destructiveness is because of women. men can destroy as much as they like and a society will still function for the most part because of the resilience of women. literally the biggest economic problems societies face come from male criminality whether from upper or lower class men. the only reason any of it still functions is because of women. women are the glue of the home themselves, the basic unit of society. take women away, and i promise there's nothing fucking left.

for this reason, the biggest de-radicalization tools patriarchy employs against female liberation are marriage/co-habitation with men, femininity and religion and i will get into the details why briefly:

-marriage/co-habitation often results in the woman's isolation from female community or larger society because the man strategically makes himself the central focus/recipient of her resources (health, attention, energy)

-femininity keeps women focused on male approval as a source of power, further encouraging female-female competition and destroying solidairty

-religion and romance are explicitly androcentric, focusing on framing men as the only possible givers of life, purpose, fulfillment and meaning to women while simultaneously demeaning, obscuring and devaluing the fact that women are oftentimes the primary sources of human life and love

now see that all three do three very important things for de-radicalization: they frame men as sources of life, meaning and vitality as opposed to a threat or disadvantage, isolates women from their true selves (devaluing their friendships, erasing their history and contributions, distorting their nature), and pits women against each other. to sum up, centering men and then erasing and isolating women from each other and themselves.

but we won't scare men by psyching ourselves out of what's going to be necessary to defend ourselves. in order for women to be mobilized to take power men have no authority to deny them, we have to cultivate strong, nearly unbreakable self-esteem. we need to esteem ourselves so highly that we never question whether or not we should feel entitled to a better life.

that's why refusing to emasculate yourself is the first step. decolonizing your mind of its male-centeredness and no longer seeing yourself as subordinate, inferior or less worthy to a life of freedom than him.

the second step after de-centering men within yourself is to quickly center women. that's where separatism comes in. not only does this also aid you in decolonizing the rest of your mind, but it gives you the courage to go for better rather than settle for what men say you deserve. seeing that actually, men aren't vital at all to a wonderful life. throwing yourself into female centricity and replacing male hegemony with female history, philosophy, culture, literature, all of it. but not just on a mental level, on an interpersonal and financial level as well. this boosts you economically and empowers you buy giving you that independence necessary to make demands.

then when it comes to the dire, when men retaliate as they are prone to do, you don't hesitate to punish them for it. you don't hesitate to make it cost them. whether that's in organized feminist cyber attacks (doxxing, phishing, DDos attacks, etc). you make them see themselves as potential victims. where what they do to others can also be done to them. where they fear being poisoned, disappearing, outed, isolated, killed.

this kind of organized self-defense will not happen without female solidarity. we already have examples of women coming together to beat abusive men up and get rid of the threats themselves when victims of male violence fear state retaliation too much to defend themselves. female solidarity can substitute for state neglect. it is the only thing that can. the king of the pride doesn't stand a chance against a pack of lionesses. and the state cannot punish all its women lest it destroy itself entirely. governments know that restricting women restricts their economy, so killing masses of women is just not feasible.

female solidarity is the missing piece, and that's what the status quo continually tries to dismantle. also, non-violence in the face of our oppression has never been a virtue. it is something the patriarchy has counted on.

the lie of femininity is that men will respect or care for us once they see how we suffer and how beautiful we are. we think they will set us apart as sacred if they are in love with us. but the truth is they will only respect us if they fear us.

anyways, i'm just thinking out loud here, and these are all generalizations. i'll need to make a whole other article where i break this down on an infrastructural level.

[lizardsfromspace]

What's the worst thing about fandom in the last 20 years, and what's the worst thing about fandom that's always been true of it?

The worst thing about fandom in the last 20 years has been the incentivizing of fandom-as-conflict: not merely as a field in broader culture wars but as the field for endless intra-group battles.

This manifests in many ways: as seven hour videos complaining about The Last Jedi, as Twitter backlash campaigns, but also as stans defending their faves from any and all criticism real or imagined, as the endless boom-and-backlash cycle to any fandom meme or joke you see on Reddit, and as the drive for people to look for evidence other people discussing a thing they like are hysterical illiterate dolts, before anything else.

Or, in other words: a lot of fandoms are full of assholes these days, whose main interaction with fandom is using it as a reason to be an asshole, and to defend being an asshole. The actual “fandom” part of fandom no longer really exists for them. The discourse more or less is their fandom; someone whose main fandom activity is sharing videos about how Steven Universe is a fascist (?) isn’t in the Steven Universe fandom, they’re in the videos about how Steven Universe is a fascist (?) fandom. I mean, the chief fandom for many people is their side in the fandom war. What type of fanfic you write is secondary to what your affiliations are vis-a-vis battles over fanfiction

(One trend I've noticed is people who aren't at the stage where they only talk about what they hate and not what they love, but are at the stage where they can only talk about what they love in relation to what they hate. "I love this movie...and it proves this other movie is bullshit made by a hack". No ability to say just "I love this movie", period, end of sentence. This is how like two-thirds of Film Twitter talks about film, the remainder are all the grindhouse people going "man you've GOT to see Wrong Turn 5")

Another one, that I think is related, is that fandom’s become...more transitory, maybe? There’s Big Fandoms that are inescapable and then everything else feels like it’s here for a weekend and then it’s gone. And we’ve always had fandoms that endure and fandoms that vanish quickly, when the show runs short or turns out to be bad/boring, but we did use to have a lot of enduring if small fandoms for Okay shows most people hadn’t heard of and now you don’t really. Or they burn themselves out fast.

So we’ve reached this stage where fandoms are either so big they have seven hour long discourse videos, or they’re a smattering of fanart over the course of two weeks last August. But that isn’t really the fault of fans so much as modern media release schedules.

A lot of fandom activities of old are just...impossible now, with many shows? The slow build of speculation and fan works and in-jokes and theorizing and analysis simply can’t exist in a world where the premiere comes out the same day as the finale, and you can’t talk about the finale because you have no way of knowing if the person you’re talking to binged it all in one weekend or is still on episode four. That was the kind of thing that sustained the fandom of something that wasn’t a big hit, or even something that was. My fave fandom experience ever was watching the online Lost fandom wildly theorizing for all six years of Lost, and we’d never get “and what if the Smoke Monster is a dinosaur but only the head?” under a Netflix release model. Now at a base level, we either have shows nobody can discuss because nobody’s sure who’s seen or what, or shows where everyone just discusses the finale right away, and where you get One Week of Show and then a massive hiatus, which either kills all momentum or...drives fandom in the direction of hyper-analyzing everything and fighting because, well, what else is there to do? And that plus the outrage cycles of social media plus the fact that “man who yells at Star Wars” is now a viable career choice result in, well. *gestures upwards* All that

(Really, shout out to Cartoon Network for engineering the Steven Universe fandom to Be Like That through their inscrutable strategy of dropping episodes during one random week every five months or whatever)

As for something that's always been with it...cliques and a certain fannish elitism, like, that sees engaging with media in a fandom sense as more creative or analytical or intelligent than your average person. You see it now in the form of, like, people holding up fanfic above published fiction as more representative or authentic (I’ve seen more than one post on here strongly implying queer rep doesn’t exist in mainstream non-fic storytelling???), or going “well, we think about shows, unlike those normies watching sports”. But that was probably way more pronounced a thing in the past, in the 40-50s sci-fi fans were calling non-fans "mundanes" and calling themselves "slans" as an in-group signifier (a reference to a book with superintelligent psychic mutants known as slans). Like at the very least we should be happy no one’s calling non-fans “muggles” anymore. In the evolution from “mundane” to “muggle” to “normie” normie’s probably the least bad one

[cure-icy-writes]

"Well, maybe you just have internalized ableism!" has started to become a very convenient thing for low-support disabled people to accuse high-support disable people of.

To break it down. Let's say Alice is a low-support disabled person. She has autism and ADHD, plus some comorbid gastrointestinal issues, and lacks fine motor control. Her activism focuses on combating infantilization, and proving that disabled people can be strong and capable and worthy.

And then there's Bob, who has high support needs. Bob is a full time wheelchair user who uses a hybrid manual/electric chair, needs an oxygen line, and has developed anxiety about leaving the house because his health could be seriously endangered if something goes wrong. Bob's not as involved in activism as Alice, but is more involved with the disabled community.

Now. Both of these people are shaped by their individual disabilities, right? And an abled onlooker would think, "Oh, Alice and Bob should be good friends!" But this isn't as easy as you'd think. And this is where the intra-community discourse comes in.

Alice is advocating that disabled people are strong and deserve a chance. But for Bob, the idea that he must be strong and inspirational is something that's been used to dehumanize him and disregard his boundaries. He's been pressured to just walk a few more steps, just push through, and while he's technically able to transfer himself independently, it's exhausting. What Bob wants isn't a chance to prove himself, but the grace to not need to prove himself.

So now, Alice is flustered and upset that her worldview has been disrupted. Bob, who was supposed to be a fellow disabled person and her ally, is disagreeing with her. From Alice's perspective, this sounds too much like what abled people have told her all her life, that she's incapable and little more than a child who can't be trusted with things like self-determination. This is when she pulls out her ace: internalized ableism. She says, "Bob has internalized ableism and is repeating the biases of abled people. He isn't one of us. He's not like me, so he has to be like them instead."

And now Bob is incredibly upset. Who the hell is Alice to say this, huh? Alice is telling him the same thing that abled people have said to him his entire life, and then she has the gall to say he's the one who doesn't belong? Well, she's less disabled than him, so maybe Alice is the one who doesn't belong in the disabled community.

The truth is, Alice and Bob are just very different people with different needs. Both of them fall under the incredibly vast umbrella of disability, but it doesn't guarantee that they can relate to each other in most aspects. Alice and Bob are representative of a common schism in disabled communities, simplified for ease of understanding.

Maybe Alice and Bob could have been friends. Maybe they could have bonded-- both of them have anxiety, after all! Alice's anxiety stems from the ADHD causing her to forget things, while Bob's is for medical reasons. Alice feels like she can't talk to people about her gastrointestinal issues because they're gross, while Bob feels the same way about his struggles with hydration versus lack of accessible bathrooms causing him to get bladder infections. But both of them assumed the worst of each other.

[russellmoreton]

Collage : Impassive Results by Russell Moreton Via Flickr: russellmoreton.blogspot.com/

[scientia-rex]

Hallo!! I really appreciate your blog and how open and invested you are in wellbeing outside of medical fatphobia and other ways medicine as an institution can suck. It's also great to see a humanized side of working in medicine, so thank you for your openness :) You mentioned recently not prescribing bariatric surgery to patients except in rare, specific cases. If you have time and energy, would you be able to share a little more about what you think about bariatric surgery when those particular conditions aren't present? Also please feel free to ignore this ask if you're not up for it. Hope you have a great day! 🌸🌼🌺

When someone is fat to the point where they can't do daily activities of living like dressing themselves, walking, etc., then bariatric surgery probably has a place.

However, bariatric surgery has risks. Lots of them. To start with, there's the on-the-table risks. These are a lot lower than they used to be--anesthesia in this day and age is incredibly safe. Getting to bariatric surgery is challenging for most patients, as insurance in the US will typically only work with a few centers that have wrap-around teams including the surgeons but also other specialists, especially nutritionists. So lots of patients go to Mexico. I haven't had a single one of my own patients, since I started having my own patients four years ago, get from the phase of thinking about bariatic surgery to actually having it done in the US. I've had three patients go to Mexico and have it done. I will withhold judgment, because I haven't been to those centers, I don't know what those doctors and teams are like, but I do know the overall out of pocket cost for patients is about 5 grand, which is so much cheaper than it is in the US that it doesn't bear comparison.

Just-after-surgery risks include blood clots that can go to the lungs or the heart. There is always a risk of wound infection, which can be devastating. If a prolonged hospital stay is required, pneumonia is a significant risk.

Any time you have intra-abdominal surgery, your body develops scar tissue. Places where scar tissue fuses different structures together are called adhesions. Having a re-operation after that is more risky because of those adhesions. You are also at higher risk for intestinal obstruction, because your intestines can hang up on adhesion and twist so that they cut off their own blood supply. This is a surgical emergency. When bowel dies, it becomes leaky and lets dangerous intestinal bacteria into the otherwise sterile environment of the abdomen. That higher risk of intestinal obstruction never goes away.

People who have had bariatric surgery are also at risk for dumping syndrome. This is a condition where the small intestine becomes overly stimulated immediately after a meal, because the food is not moving smoothly through the stomach into the small intestine on the natural time scale. That stimulation leads to excessive insulin release in comparison to the amount of glucose absorbed, which can means hypoglycemia, which is life-threatening.

Rapid fat loss leads to significant amounts of excess skin. Many people who've had bariatric surgery go on to have skin removal surgery. This is actually a riskier surgery than the bariatric surgery itself, because you are tampering with the barrier between the inside of your body and the world outside it. And if it's done too early, you can end up needing your skin to stretch again, and having stretch marks in addition to the scars.

After bariatric surgery, you are also worse at absorbing good nutrients. You need lifetime monitoring for vitamin levels, including vitamin B12. If you don't have enough vitamin B12, your nerves start to die. This results in pain that starts in the feet, since the neurons running from the spinal cord to the big toes are the longest and therefore most susceptible in the body.

But perhaps the most upsetting aspect of bariatic surgery to me is that it is presented as a definitive solution.

Is it?

Not for 20-25% of people who have bariatic surgery, who struggle with significant weight regain.

So if the most extreme intervention we have--literally surgically altering your gut--isn't enough to make weight loss permanent, how is anything else going to do it?

You can be skinny. For a little while. But attempts to lose large amounts of weight, including surgically, have high failure rates. The 75% success rate for bariatic surgery is significantly higher than for any other method currently widely available, but the risks are also significantly higher. I don't think it's worthwhile for most patients, especially given how many patients are lied to by their doctors about how much their weight is likely contributing to their health problems. Most of my patients focus on their weight rather than activity levels, they beat themselves up about how they're not doing intense enough exercise but don't incorporate lower-impact exercises like swimming or walking, they try to eat less rather than eating a diet more rich in vegetables and fruits and lower in highly processed foods. You can do so much for yourself without ever framing it as being about weight.

And if you've done that--if you're struggling with being so fat that you can't live your life--then sure. Talk to your doctor about a referral for bariatric surgery. But don't be shocked if the results are not what you were told to expect. Don't be surprised when you find that you actively resent the people who suddenly find you tolerable, even desirable, now that you're not so fat. Don't let them sell you bariatic surgery as a no-downside cure-all, because it most emphatically is not.

[funnier-as-a-system]

For post recognition 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

About inter-system dating and that singlet teacher saying its a bad idea -

For context two of our headmates are dating, and honestly I/we dont really know what that looks like aside from them, even when one of them is fronting. Its private, its not for the rest of us to know. So like, its a fact of our system but its also not something Im super knowledgeable about?

That being said. Singlets are encouraged to "take themselves on dates", go to restaurants and movies alone, to not wait for a partner to do nice things with in order to do nice things.

I assume for some systems, intra-system dating happens in the physical world, and from the outside thats literally no different from a singlet doing those "romantic" activities on their own.

Like. What harm can that possibly cause?? "Take yourself on a date but only if theres one of you in your body" is ridiculous.

It is ridiculous when you put it like that, haha! I think it comes from many singlets just not knowing how to respond to plurality, so they treat it with fear and derision, something "other" that must be "fixed" or at the very least "kept away from normal people". When you get into it, there's nothing especially wrong with intrasystem dating, and it's not all that different from the scenario you just described. We've had dates and hang-outs in the physical world like that, and they've been enjoyable events that have deepened our affection for and understanding of each other. I wish I could easily explain to singlets about how that's the opposite of unhealthy for a system.

[shinelikethunder]

people who think everything good about SPN was an accident, please consider that season 4 knew exactly what the fuck it was doing when it gave Karin Konoval - who played the mom in X-Files 4x02 "Home" - a cameo in the "feral incest children living in the walls" episode

people who think SPN always did those things on purpose, or worse, that every production choice carries deep inter- or intra-textual significance whose most esoteric pop-cultural associations can always be imported wholesale and ascribed to authorial intent... please consider that if season 11 had any idea what the fuck it was doing when it blithely used johnny mathis's "wonderful! wonderful!" as cheery background mood music in the banshee episode, everyone involved deserved to be sacked on the spot for narrative incompetence.

context: X-Files 4x02 "Home" is SPN founding daddy Kim Manners' single most infamous work (affectionate), and that song is so iconically and cursedly and memorably associated with it that it sets off kill bill sirens in the heads of people who've been scarred for life by that ep. and i simply think. that if the show did not mean to imply via soundtrack that something deeply deranged was afoot here. (which, in context, it clearly did not.) then someone in that decision-making chain should've fucking intervened and told the others that a solid chunk of their most dedicated, longstanding viewers would hear it - consciously or unconsciously - as a signal that an absolute doozy of another shoe was about to drop. and that this signal would look deliberate to anyone who'd consciously identified it.

like this is on the level of "you cannot innocently play bobby vinton's 1963 hit single 'blue velvet' over a close-up of a character's ear without making ~10% of your audience wonder when said ear is going to get cut off." except multiply that by "and if you are late season 2 of twin peaks and you were co-created by david lynch, even if he's not directly involved at this point and the show has gone to shit, that audience percentage will rise dramatically and it will be actively confusing to them if it turns out you're not implying something on purpose." just. absolute clown foolery.

anyway this, in a nutshell, is both The Maddening Duality Of Trying To Suss Out Creative Intentions Behind SPN and a fucking hilarious symptom of the show's descent into amnesiac apathy about its own past. is spn aware, in a doylist wink-nudge referential sense, of Our Guy's X-Files Ep That The Network Famously Refused To Ever Air Again? flamboyantly yes AND flamboyantly no, thanks for asking! enjoy your accidental jumpscare and deep sense of unease <3

[angryaromantics]

Friendly reminder that romance negativity isn't a real, societal issue, and conflating it with sex negativity is abhorrent. I get why people do this: we’ve linked the aro and ace labels in our minds. They are both labels that describe lacking something that most people view as intrinsic to personhood. There are people within both communities that show a heightened level of negativity toward this drive that they “lack.” So, if sex negativity is bad, romance negativity must be equally problematic in the same way, right?

Except sex negativity falls fully into purity culture and has a real-life impact on our lives. It’s given birth to poor sex education, restrictive dress codes in schools, atrocious reactions to SA survivors. The list goes on.

In contrast, romance negativity largely affects no one on a societal scale. In fact, romance culture often fits within the blueprint of purity culture, i.e. the expected life of marriage between a man and a woman who only have sex to reproduce. If anything, romance negativity is actively going against the general grain of what’s already acceptable to polite society. Not looking for your spouse, and living your life without the constraints of romance? Horrifying!

Equating these two things just doesn’t work. At all. When the negative of the one (sex negativity) works with the positive of the other (romance culture) to prop up the axis in which purity culture functions. I’m not saying romance negativity can’t be harmful in an intra-community sense, because I’m sure it is to some aromantic people. But, we’ve gotta stop confusing those community issues with the way society already functions, otherwise we’re going to start kicking down.

Honestly, another point those posts never touch on is where aro and ace people already sit on the political ladder – we flat-out don’t have enough power or standing to influence society or ever become oppressive. Like at all. So honestly, you could argue that it’s intra-community issues all the way down.