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communistkenobi · 1 day ago
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“transphobia hurts us all” is an analytical statement. It is making a claim about how a specific bigotry operates in the world, and its supposed analytical value is in revealing something about transphobia that appears on the surface to be counter-intuitive - “while you might think transphobia only hurts transgender people, that isn’t the case; it hurts cisgender people too.” The follow-up to this statement, sometimes implied and sometimes explicit, is a moral imperative - transphobia is a social ill that hurts us all, so we should seek to get rid of it.
This analytical-moral chain of logic isn’t unique to this statement; a lot of analyses of the social world come from a broader desire to “figure out what to do.” When we investigate a social phenomenon to uncover its inner workings, and in this investigation we identify the scope and impact of the harm it causes, we are in a better place to understand how to reduce harm in the world. Of particular interest in this investigation of transphobia is highlighting its illegitimacy - if transphobia also harms cisgender people, this is evidence of its illegitimacy as a social force in the world. We have uncovered some fundamental contradiction in the workings of bigotry, and this contradiction provides a rational ground for us to oppose it. Of course transphobia is irrational and must be opposed; it harms other groups of people who are not transgender.
This is also why people object to this statement on analytic grounds - disagreeing with the argument that transphobia hurts everyone is a critique of analysis. Importantly, it is not a dismissal of empirical evidence; we can see many direct real-world examples of cisgender people being targeted for transphobic abuse, such as cis people being attacked in bathrooms for “looking transgender.” A critique of the claim that transphobia hurts us all is a methodological critique, it is a critique of analytical framing; we are operating from the same set of social facts, but reaching different conclusions. The reason for this is because we are using different investigative and theoretical tools in our analysis. And these differences are not trivial; how we define the social phenomena under investigation directly informs how we understand the facts in front of us.
So first, we must settle the problem of definitions - what is transphobia? Simply defining it as a hatred of transgender people is insufficient for all parties. If it does indeed also hurt cis people, then this definition doesn’t do us much analytical good. Where do we go from here? Perhaps a better place to start is to investigate its origins - what assumptions does transphobia operate from? Where do those assumptions come from? This is where we start getting somewhere. Transphobia draws its core assumptions from cissexualism - the belief that there are two mutually-exclusive and irreconcilable sexes, sexes which are immutable and biologically hard-wired, meaning that it is a difference in human beings that exists independent of the social worlds that human beings build. This idea is bound up in many forms of power, one of which being patriarchy; yes indeed there are two sexes, and one of them is better than the other. And because sex is hard-wired, then patriarchy is likewise a simple fact of nature. These assumptions are also bound up in reproduction; one sex impregnates (this is the powerful sex) and one sex gets impregnated (this is the weak sex). These ideas and assumptions structure much of our social world, being embedded in many social, political, and economic institutions, from family to labour to dating to census records to political office, and so on. 
Transphobia is thus an output of these logics - if sex is biological, and sex determines your place in society, then attempting to change your sex means you are thwarting the natural hierarchy of human beings. You are either trying to rise above your station, or abandoning your post. Either option is grounds for punishment. Why would you go against nature? How dare you?
So, transphobia is a bigotry that comes from cissexualism. We could investigate further where cissexualism comes from (and indeed those investigations are taking place), but for our purposes we now have a much more analytically rich definition. Transphobia is a social technology of discipline; it performs a regulatory function for the continuation of cissexualism, much the same way that misogyny is a regulatory apparatus of patriarchy, and homophobia is a regulatory apparatus of heterosexuality. These bigotries perform a very ‘rational’ social function; they reproduce existing forms of power by policing their borders and brutalising anyone who does not behave in accordance with their logics.
We now return to the original question: does transphobia harm everyone? This question now feels methodologically inappropriate, because we are ignoring the role cissexualism plays in producing transphobia. This is as absurd as describing homophobia without mentioning heterosexuality. The question should instead be: does cissexualism harm everyone? The answer of course is yes - we can see how cissexualism produces the social conditions for people to assault someone in a public bathroom for “looking transgender,” for an adult to force a child to report what their genitals ‘really look like’ so they can continue playing soccer, and for a billionaire to spend the latter half of her life dumping money and resources into political legislation that makes it more difficult to, among other things, correct administrative mistakes on your birth certificate. 
But because we are now talking about cissexualism, it is much easier for us to see how its violence is differentially applied across groups. Cisgender people can point to their cisgenderism as grounds for being exempt from transphobia - “don’t target me, I haven’t done anything wrong! I’m following the rules!” Their societal position as cisgender allows them to argue that they are illegitimate targets, that they are being unfairly treated. This animated much of the surrounding discourse around Imane Khelif - I can’t believe JKR is targeting a real woman! Can’t you tell she’s biologically female? Here’s her birth certificate to prove it, and anyway, don’t you know it’s illegal to be transgender where she lives? 
This is a defence that transgender people cannot mount for ourselves - we are by definition fraudsters in the cissexual regime of gender, we are abandoning our stations, we are perverting nature. And in this difference we come to see that it is not transphobia that harms us all, but cissexualism; we are all subject to scrutiny under cissexual surveillance, but cis people can generally pass the test. Transgender people cannot. 
This distinction also has implications for the second sequence in this investigative chain: what do we do about transphobia? Again we see that this call to action is methodologically inappropriate - you cannot “deal with” transphobia in society while leaving the cissexualist structure that produces it intact, in the same way that getting rid of misogyny without first getting rid of patriarchy is impossible. You cannot get rid of an output without destroying the machine that produces those outputs. This is also where many cis people, even those who count themselves as trans allies, become uncomfortable; abandoning the idea of a metaphysical property of being, hard-encoded into their DNA, means abandoning a whole host of other ideas about identity, about social organisation, about institutional operations. Even minor reformist calls by transgender people, such as removing sex markers on birth certificates (which determine your ability to access all kinds of administrative and civil services), is met with intense hostility by cissexuals - how will we run our hospitals, how will we raise our children, how will we track population data, how will we do anything without sex markers? You people are insane! Look how you deny reality! What is wrong with you freaks? Why can’t you just be happy with the way you were born? And on and on, ironically refusing to concede the fact that states, hospitals, child care, and census data are not natural facts of the world and can be changed. Because if those things can be changed, perhaps sex is not this monumental biological destiny after all!
“Transphobia hurts us all” is an analytical statement that advances a set of cissexual assumptions about the world, and as a consequence, it is severely limited in its value for advancing a moral imperative about how to resolve the problem of transphobia. It is not a neutral statement, nor is one that is helplessly subservient to “the hard facts.” We know those facts - describing them is the role of the social scientist. Whether you are in a laboratory or on the street, you are doing social science by analysing social phenomena. And when you say transphobia hurts everyone, you are doing a poor job of it
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sunnywalnut · 1 day ago
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Also I'd like to add that quite literally the neurons in your brain require you to actually go through the process of learning something in order to maintain function. That's why so many people are told to do sudoku puzzles and other things when they get older to reduce the risk of Alzheimers and dementia.
If you have a question and you immediately get the answer, that might help in the immediate, but you're probably not going to remember that piece of information twenty minutes from now.
Like if I googled how many white rhinos exist in the whole world, just because I'm curious. That'd give me a number. But that wouldn't tell me the ways that conservationists are trying to ensure that this endangered species doesn't die off.
Same thing with math. If you don't attempt the problems, you're not going to know what's going wrong with your project. Whether that be working a trade, ordering stock, or even just putting up wallpaper.
It's one thing if I need a calculator to figure out how much fabric I need to make a stuffed animal that's slightly larger than the template I'm using. It's another if I can't figure out how much two yards is, when one is just $15.
That's the real life impact of "AI"
It's not helping us by using any real life data and adding it together(calculators) it's generating a bunch of mush that people are supposed to take as fact.
The reason people aren't shitting on calculators or microwaves is because they still give us the autonomy of messing up, while improving our lives at the same time.
If you insert a problem incorrectly on a calculator, it's going to give you an incorrect answer. Because the problem isn't with the product, it's with human mistakes.
If you overheat your food in the microwave and it turns it into a rubbery brick, you don't blame the microwave (unless it's old). You wonder if maybe you hit the wrong button.
You don't insist that the food is completely fine and edible even though it kind of feels like an eraser in your mouth. You try to figure out where you went wrong so the next time you try, your food will actually be good.
That's the difference.
I just started grad school this fall after a few years away from school and man I did not realize how dire the AI/LLM situation is in universities now. In the past few weeks:
I chatted with a classmate about how it was going to be a tight timeline on a project for a programming class. He responded "Yeah, at least if we run short on time, we can just ask chatGPT to finish it for us"
One of my professors pulled up chatGPT on the screen to show us how it can sometimes do our homework problems for us and showed how she thanks it after asking it questions "in case it takes over some day."
I asked one of my TAs in a math class to explain how a piece of code he had written worked in an assignment. He looked at it for about 15 seconds then went "I don't know, ask chatGPT"
A student in my math group insisted he was right on an answer to a problem. When I asked where he got that info, he sent me a screenshot of Google gemini giving just blatantly wrong info. He still insisted he was right when I pointed this out and refused to click into any of the actual web pages.
A different student in my math class told me he pays $20 per month for the "computational" version of chatGPT, which he uses for all of his classes and PhD research. The computational version is worth it, he says, because it is wrong "less often". He uses chatGPT for all his homework and can't figure out why he's struggling on exams.
There's a lot more, but it's really making me feel crazy. Even if it was right 100% of the time, why are you paying thousands of dollars to go to school and learn if you're just going to plug everything into a computer whenever you're asked to think??
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outrunningthedark · 1 day ago
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On Tina that mid season finale pissed you off 😭😭
As soon as the 'handcap' comment came out of that kid's mouth I probably should have changed the channel. 😶 I think I'm more frustrated than pissed, tbh. I'm frustrated that the fandom continues to mischaracterize Chris and misinterpret scenes that involve the grandparents because they remind people of their own parents or something idk. I'm frustrated that Tim had the plan to send Eddie to Texas since the start of the season and the father-son relationship had to suffer for it because if Eddie went to Texas "too early" there's not that ~suspense~ at the beginning of 8B as to whether he's really going and for how long. I'm frustrated that the show tried to be "funny" about a suicide attempt, and did so in front of Bobby, the guy who could have accidentally killed himself while under the influence. I'm frustrated that Madney has felt like they might as well not be there at times, and now the upcoming serial killer arc is probably going to the thing that sends them both (?) away to accommodate Jennifer's filming commitments. I'm frustrated that arcs were fast forwarded to make room for....Brad. I'm frustrated that the Brad arc was even able to be pushed to the mid-season finale because of Tim extending the plane emergency to one more episode, shortening the amount of time for everything else in an EIGHT EPISODE starter. Not 9. Not 10. 8. (As others have said) I'm frustrated that Buck is obviously going to "spiral" over Maddie, have to be without her for a bit - maybe Chimney, too - and also deal with his best friend wanting to relocate to another state, which is why any kind of serious relationship would not "make sense" right now anyway. Buck wouldn't be so quick to decline if he had someone to lean on every day, someone he trusted. (The fact that Tommy is gone while Taylor stayed through the struggle in s5 should show you the difference in how the two relationships impacted Buck's life, lol. Tommy was a positive influence. Taylor...not so much!) So, yeah. I'm frustrated. By a lot of things. But mostly? I'm frustrated that we're watching the show die in real time.
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twenty-qs · 2 days ago
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I find it SO interesting how Viktor and Ekko present different versions of an “underground utopia.” It represents their different philosophies of technology as well as their approach to environmentalism.
On the one hand, we have Viktor. He believes science will save us, specifically science that augments the human form. I think a lot about the hex claw as his vision of “improving lives”—because honestly, Heimerdinger was right. That thing is a blatant safety hazard. It is not ready for a mass rollout. Also, the only thing it would accomplish is making the exploitation of labor in the Undercity more efficient—it makes the individual more productive, and as Jayce puts it, enables the individual to work longer and harder, while doing nothing to actually improve the working conditions and rights of the laborer. Everybody knows what happened after the well-intentioned invention of the cotton gin, right? But Viktor was blind to this because he had spent so long separated from life in Zaun, because of his desperate ambition, and because he does genuinely believe that science is Good. Especially science that augments the human body’s capabilities.
This carries over to his Herald arc. “The goal of evolution is to supersede nature.” His idea of a utopia is a world where the pains and horrors of the human body are obsolete—where bio-engineered plants can flourish, where violence doesn’t exist simply because nobody thinks to engage in it. He’s the type who would look at a chemical spill and say, hey, we can engineer bacteria that can break the chemicals back down to something safe. It’s great, it’s a good thing. But it doesn’t address root causes, it just enables people to keep spilling those chemicals. It remains to be seen exactly what the price of his utopia was, but it’s notable that his version of “superseding” nature is fundamentally unsustainable. Once Viktor dies, once he takes his power and inspiration and knowledge away, the whole commune dies.
On the other hand, you have Ekko. He also builds a non-violent utopia in the middle of the Undercity with a culture centered around nature. But his idea of utopia is living with nature, stewarding it, taking only enough to live by and paying forward with the rest. His technology is simply part of the tree’s ecosystem. The hoverboard is explicitly inspired by the firelights. Bugs play a central role in the ecosystem by helping to pollinate plants across large distances. Ekko’s people use the technology to move around the tree to help take care of it, and to move across the Undercity and spread their ideology. He doesn’t interfere with or supersede nature. He sort of just—shepherds it. And when Ekko disappears, the Firelights are seen functioning perfectly well without him. That’s what sustainability means.
Ekko focuses on social inequities of the impact of technology. If he saw a chemical spill, he’d go to whoever spilled it and try to make them stop. Root causes.
Ideally they’d work together. After all, Ekko can’t help people who are too far gone on Shimmer. But I’ll be very interested to see if we get some Ekko and Viktor interactions in act 3.
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batmanisagatewaydrug · 2 days ago
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Hi, good [time of day]! I was hoping to get your thoughts on a sex question, but it could be considered close to one already in your FAQ, so I’ll in no way be offended if you ignore this ask. I’m curious if you know/have heard of the extent to which antidepressant medications affect interest in sex and ability to orgasm. Everything out there says they have an effect, of course, but I’ve been on them since I was 12 and am now in my mid-20s, so I haven’t ever had sex without being on meds. There was a period of a few months in there where I was off them, and I felt notably more romantic and sexual interest, but I was not in an excellent place emotionally and didn’t have time to worry about having sex. Essentially, I’ve never had an orgasm, or even any sort of pleasurable sexual experience, and I’d be interested to know whether sexual pleasure tends to increase when a person discontinues SSRIs. Thank you for your time and consideration!
hi anon,
I appreciate your consideration of the FAQ! and I'm sorry to say that there's not exactly a straightforward or simple answer to this.
SSRIs have different effects on everyone, because we all have a unique combination of shit happening inside of our brains and bodies and exactly how we'll react to any particular medication is an educated crapshoot at best. to offer a contrasting perspective on your experience as an example, I didn't start on SSRIs until I was in my early twenties, and now having been on them for something like five and a half years I can say with absolute certainty that the orgasms I have now are WILDLY better than the ones I was having in my teens and early twenties. so SSRIs are by no means a definitive boner killer; there are too many factors at play for it to be a simple on/off.
the same is true of going off your meds. some people see an immediate shift to a higher sex drive; I've known more than one student who stopped identifying as asexual after switching up their prescriptions and experiencing a rush of new hormones. for others, I'm sure, the drastic change in brain chemistry could tank their libido even further, and it could well be on a long-term basis.
ultimately, there's no reliable way to know exactly how a change in your med routine will impact you.
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incorrectfatui · 1 day ago
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okay, more HCs. This one is only Scara, so things might get a lil dark- I'm not normal about him. anywho: Scaramouche: -autistic. I am going to say this about every Harbinger, bc it's the truth. -most traumatized mfer in all of Teyvat. Seriously. someone give this guy a licensed therapist. -as Kabukimono, he's tried to eat several non edible items. This one is inspired by that one researcher who made up a story about him eating a humans arm. The image of little Scara munching on various dangerous items is so cute -related to the above: he still does it sometimes, to fuck with people. Dottore thinks its great. Pierro had to stop him from getting Kuni to eat a delusion. -Eyes (& markings) always glow at least slightly, even if he's not using his powers. Its not really noticeable in the day, but at night you can see it pretty well -hates Pantalone. Not bc he's jealous of him hanging out with Dottore or something (if anything, Pantalone gets jealous), but just because he is an ass. -Went to the Abyss again for a long time, just after Arlecchino became a Harbinger, and kind of forgot that Crucy was replaced. Came back and was like "who the FUCK- oh right". Why? because I think its funny -In general, has a better relationship with most of the female Harbingers than the male ones. -a little self indulgent, but I like to think that he was able to float a lil with electro as well. We see Raiden and Ei do it, and I think it'd be cute if he was able to as well, if to a lesser degree. -has used almost every element at some point, testing delusions with Dotty. Mostly bc I can't really imagine all those researchers just throwing 4 extra elements at shouki no kami and being like "figure it out" -speaking of delusions: I think he didn't use one. His electro is inert and I dont think he used another element. I see people headcanoning his delusion as Anemo, and I get it, but I don't like it all that much -SPEAKING of his electro being inert to his body- I refuse to believe he lost electro completely. The whole "oh he used up his divinity" is lazy. He can still connect to Irminsul, which he only learned while ascending, but he cant use electro anymore, something that he's had since birth? Bullshit. I understand him not using it, but I think it'd be more impactful if that was a voluntary choice. I'd really like to see him recover it over the course of the story -I think Youkai like him. Obviously this excludes Yae Miko, but I think as Kabukimono it wouldn't be strange to see him being followed by some Tanuki or the lesser Kitsune. I would really like to see him interact with the Youkai Children from that one Inazuma event, I think it'd be really cute. -I like seeing people write about him and Kujou Sara, both romantic, platonic and as enemies. The two of them are very similar in some aspects, and then radically different in others. I think it'd be really interesting to see Kujou Sara confronted with her own trauma being reflected onto Ei. I guess this is mostly because I just really like Sara and I want my favs to interact xD -more of a theory, but I think Pierro and Dottore, (will) remember him. He has a lot of foreshadowing in his voiceline about Pierro & Dotty, and other things. He's very clearly endgame/lore relevant, with his story not even being finished. -not a HC, but I wanted to mention it: I'm still stuck in Inversion of Genesis on my main account. I never played past it. I did the Fontaine and Natlan quests for friends/watched them online, but I'm still in IoG on my main, because I never fully decided on a name -last one bc character limit: I really like to imagine him interacting with Neuvilette. I think there could be a lot of interesting discussions had here- Neuvi would absolutely dissaprove of his attempt to overthrow Nahida, but at the same time I think he would, to some degree, understand his obsession with the gnosis. No, the gnosis/authority doesn't belong to Scara (or Ei, for that matter), but I think if you told Neuvi that Scara was quite literally created to hold it, he'd understand, to a degree.
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oriley42 · 14 hours ago
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Serious question but no need to answer if you don’t want to
I see a lot of talk about Amber’s portrayal being sexist in the show, but I’m not quite sure why? To me her motives always seemed really well-defined (high pressure = “I’m only worthy when I’m successful”) so she puts on this sharky mask with a feminine facade so she is feminine enough to get a certain amount of approval but never shows how much she cares (which could be used against her but also could be used to undermine her “oh you’re too soft”). I thought the show did an excellent job of showing a mask for her
But a lot of people talk about 00s sexism and how it impacts her characterization. The sexism… Is it that she gets called a cutthroat bitch? Or how her story revolves around a man after she leaves House’s team? Is it the fridging?
Any of those could be it I guess but it just sounds like you and others are talking about something a little more fundamental to her personhood so I thought I’d ask if I’m missing anything.
Very interesting question! I think you're getting at exactly the trickiness of the issue, which is that sexism always operates systemically. It's not that any key aspect of Amber's character "is" misogynist, it's that every aspect of her character is automatically filtered through a lens of sexism.
In today's world where "bitch" has been very de-clawed, turned into a more casual and way less gendered insult that's used without cruel intention in queer slang, I think it's hard to understand just how violent the term was--and was meant to be--in the aughts. House in canon is not calling Amber a bitch in a cute, almost self-deprecating, friendly way (though I think it's valid to re-write it that way in fic to defuse the term!). He is calling her a bitch to contain and belittle and dehumanize her. We see the term mobilized this way against Cuddy in 5 to 9 as well: calling a woman a bitch was an extremely powerful rhetorical tool to turn any dangerously competent, brilliant, threateningly accomplished woman back into a harmless, debased, controllable object. So, "CB" reflects how easily the fact that Amber is the "female House" gets turned against her--it doesn't mean she's an eccentric genius like him, it means she's an evil copycat who needs to be put down. And this kind of structural logic applies to her whole characterization--it doesn't matter that House does it all more frequently and worse, if she does it, it's unacceptable because she's a woman. (There are parallels here with how racism means that when Foreman acts like House, he also gets the axe instead of the narrative bending over backwards to make what he did alright.) That's why she was fired, after all!
And her death. Woof. Classic case of killing a woman for man-pain. Everything supposedly about her death is actually about how her violent destruction can be used to fuel Wilson and House's character arcs. The narrative is occasionally conscious of this, for example, Wilson saying "none of you even liked Amber" is an almost metatextual reminder of how cruelly she was disenfranchised in every way (including the sexism of her trying to "defect" to the men's team early on, having no female friends, because unlike House who has so many people orbiting him, she is truly alone). Comparing her death to Kutner's is instructive: Kutner gets a whole episode that's about characters desperately trying to know him better. They trace their relationships towards him. Amber, on the other hand, is nearly absent from her own death. The characters trace away from her and towards the way male characters feel (Wilson's loss, House's guilt). Amber becomes just an imagined figure of House's guilt. Even her ghost is not her own. (Though I think many fans do a more feminist read and reclaim the way she haunts the narrative--but imho that would be a negotiated if not fully oppositional reading, to use Stuart Hall's decoding/encoding terms.)
One easy way to see that gendered difference is in how the show refers to these characters after death. Kutner is always "Kutner," never just "House's dead fellow" or rarely "our dead colleague." Amber is often referred to as "Wilson's dead girlfriend." Kutner is his own person, Amber rhetorically gets reduced to an object belonging to a man.
In conclusion: sexism operates structurally, which can make it hard to identify! And one of the funny effects of contemporary fandom doing so much good work to un-fridge women and give marginalized female characters richer personalities and more chances to grow is that canon's intended message of sexism gets obscured. Which, is awesome? Keep up the good work! Let's make misogyny unintelligible 🎉
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savethecolytecampaign · 1 day ago
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Acolyte fandom, today we’re going to talk about Qimir!! What were your favorite moments? 😍😍😍
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Qimir is fascinating. I love every scene with him. We first see him as a clumsy yet kind-hearted man, then as a strong, cold, and calculating one, and later as a vulnerable and charming lover. But what I want to see the most is his role as a mentor with Osha. He's an incredibly complex and multifaceted character!
The quotes he delivers, his personalities—everything about him is captivating. Qimir is a great character, very interesting. Leslye really did an incredible job assembling the entire cast of The Acolyte.
One of the things that impresses me the most about Manny is the chemistry he has with Amandla. Just watching the way Qimir interacts with Mae and Osha, you can immediately notice the difference. It's impressive! It's fantastic! Their performances are incredible, and it only highlights their dynamic even more.
As The Stranger, he's so intimidating, so strong, and always spitting out the truth. It was the first time I truly felt a strong connection with someone from the dark side. And that’s the point—because not everyone is evil for no reason, we’re all shades of gray. Giving that depth to both the Jedi and to him was really well done and exciting.
Manny trained for such a long time for his role as Qimir, and you can tell. His skill is amazing, and watching him do almost all his scenes, portraying this villain who, even though we knew it was him, the way they present him is really what matters. It was so impactful!
I especially love the dual choreography in his fight scenes, something that's rarely done well, especially when one fights against two at once. And the fight between Qimir and Master Sol in the last episode was incredible!! Manny’s performance was outstanding, as was the entire cast's. What an incredible job!
Something I want to emphasize is that, while this man is physically attractive, what really captivates women is how he understands Osha, how he listens to her and understands her. He’s a vulnerable man who talks to her, who’s kind, who gives her choices, and who considers her at all times. One of my favorite scenes is the entire episode 6 (because there are so many reasons I love this episode!). Every interaction between Qimir and Osha in that episode is amazing. He always gives her a choice. He makes her face herself, heals her wounds, sets her free, and sees her. He understands her because he has lost everything too. In contrast, to talk Sol and Mae, he has to knock them out and tie them up. Although I won’t deny it, that scene is chilling, especially when Sol tells him she won’t hurt him, but the first thing she does when she runs away is to chase her and try to take her down.
I love Qimir, and I want to see more of him in that role, but I also want to see more of his vulnerable side, to understand what led him to the dark side. I’m curious to know how he found Mae and how his training began. I want to see more of this magnificent duo. I also want to see more of the relationship between Osha and Qimir, both as master and pupil, and in their lovers’ role.
Qimir is a character full of nuances, and I love how Leslye did such a great job, a role only Manny could have played so perfectly. The whole cast did amazing work. What I love most is how Manny and Amandla would get excited every day to be on Star Wars. You can clearly see the passion and love they have for the saga!
It’s very important to mention that there is no Qimir without Osha or Mae, because his life is deeply connected to theirs since Qimir decided to train Mae. There is still a part of his story we don’t know, but once we learn about his past with Vernestra and Sol, we’ll truly see that his journey revolves around training Mae and then Osha. This relationship is crucial to the development of all their stories, and it's a key element we want to explore—the important bond between them.
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cordycepsfem · 2 days ago
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I'm not preaching, which is what you seem to be doing with your appeals to emotion. I told you there are sources out there to find and they're all perfectly accessible. Khelif, like all people with DSDs, is not related to trans issues at all, so I don't really see much point in continuing with that avenue of conversation. It seems to mean a lot to you, so please by all means go find the sources that you're demanding I find for you.
If people didn't have it out for trans gals, why is the worry about getting estrogen an issue? Why is getting puberty blockers an issue?
"Trans gals." Yuck. You sound like a 45-year-old autogynephile.
Maybe there's a worry about getting estrogen because people tend to catastrophize. Or because men (and women) don't actually need to take cross-sex hormones, because it's not proven to help gender dysphoria or accompanying mental health conditions.
Maybe getting prostate cancer drugs - aka "puberty blockers" - is an issue because children should not have their puberty blocked, lest they end up with osteoporosis, emotional and mental stunting, and under-grown sex organs, an inability to ever orgasm, and further mental health issues not cured by the magical drugs shilled by gender clinics.
But that might just be me.
Gender doesn't mean ANYTHING in the purely literal sense.
Great, so why are you trans?
It's some idiotic concept someone came up with eons ago. But then why should you care how people identify within that social construct?
I see my thoughts about selfish and uncaring people taking away spaces and rights from women and girls made 0 impact on you. Unsurprising.
Gender is not something "someone came up with." It is a societal structure that has always benefited male individuals and left female individuals oppressed. Because of gender, women are thought to be weaker, dumber, less deserving of education, unable to own property or have their own money, get jobs, or even in some places, unable to be around males without wearing full-body coverings.
I don't care how people "identify," because I know that "identify" means "isn't." If you have to tell me you "identify" as a woman, okay, great. What are you identifying with? Which woman are you identifying with? Women are adult female humans, and while we're all different, the one thing we all have in common is being female. So what exactly is there to "identify" with?
You're right. Gender was (possibly, I haven't done enough research to verify) created to keep women down. That's despicable.
Yes, you're very definitely 14.
And now gender is "despicable" - great, so why are you trans? Seems weird to want to play directly into the hands of a social construct that oppresses women and was literally just described as you by "despicable."
And if you stand with us, you can help make sure that someday, gender means nothing more political or oppressive than a name, or a haircut. Or you can stand against us, and reinforce the idea that gender is the measure of someone's worth. Someone born a girl, in the truest sense, isn't any less of a person than a boy and doesn't have any less potential. So then why should someone born a boy not be able to stand with her sisters and try and make the world a better place, one voice at a time? Birth conditions isn't what makes a person. It's what comes after.
Radical feminists believe that gender is immaterial, because biological sex is how women are oppressed. Women can have any haircut or any name - being female is how "gender" oppresses. I don't believe gender has any worth. I don't believe in it.
Someone born a girl "in the truest sense" doesn't have any less potential than a boy, but around the world that girl is more likely to be aborted before she's born, left to die once she's born, have her genitals mutilated, married off to an adult male, never learn to read, die in childbirth, have to avoid males while she menstruates, face rape and domestic violence, and have her rights voted away by males. So no, it's not anyone's "gender" that determines their potential - it is oppression on the axis of sex.
Birth is literally what makes a person. I know you thought you killed it with that line, but you literally need to be born to be a person.
So Miss @cordycepsfem, please stand with your fellow sisters, cis AND trans, and help us make the world a more livable place for an woman. I believe in you.
Males aren't my sisters. You want to go all out for trans rights - have a ball. Fix everything for trans people. It's noble and you'll definitely have my support.
But it's not women's job to make the world more palatable for males of any kind. Feminism is not the "all rights matter" movement. It is for women and girls, and it will be the means by which the world is made safer for them.
"Trans women are actually women for real, not in a metaphorical sense, not in a "anyone can be anything" sense, but genuinely actually make more taxonomic sense to classify in the category of women than any other group" is a position you'll find is pretty radical even in queer spaces
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homestuckreplay · 2 days ago
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Boondollar Financial Crisis Imminent
(page 877-885)
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Rose Lalonde is an absolute hero and a fool. With three minutes left until meteor impact and no safe place left to escape to, she logs into Sburb to check on John. And THEN begins explaining what she’s learned about meteors to him. John is so right to say ‘um, ok. i don't really think i get it. is this relevant?’ (p.880) I think both these two are smart and good at solving problems, but Rose is the only one who needs to provide a lengthy explanation of how and why she did it.
People in Homestuck sure love ascending and descending recently. I’ve found all the examples so far, and everyone’s had the chance to ascend, but so far only Rose and Jade have also descended. Also, the two most recent of these – [S] Jade: Descend and [S] Rose: Ascend – have both linked back to John’s rooftop battle.
page 660 John: Ascend to the highest point of the house.
665 [S] Dave: Ascend to the highest point of the building.
757 [S] WV: Ascend.
788 Jade: Ascend.
879 [S] Rose: Ascend.
840 Rose: Descend.
843 [S] Jade: Descend
Navigating via the Sburb interface is a moment where the second person perspective really pays off. I sure am Rose Lalonde right now. It’s also effective at showing us the state of John’s house (even more destroyed by imps and oil, windows broken, chunks of wall on the alchemiter, but no more ogres yet) without John himself having to run around and look.
The end of this fight is incredible. Nannasprite is the MVP, apparently able to make a ghost duplicate of anything in the house and a giant laser. She puts John in the oven. She puts him in the oven like a cookie???? Rose also helps out by dropping a fridge (ultimate bludgeoning weapon) and bouncing John, easily the bounciest of the four kids, off the alchemiter. But they’re both careful to give John the killing blow and therefore the experience points. He comes out triumphant, surrounded by grist bigger than he is, streaked with tar instead of blood. The silly elements, the teamwork, and the more comical antagonist of the ogre all combine to make this the opposite of Dave’s fight, where he was fighting alone, attacked by the person who should be supporting him, and ended up getting thrown down the stairs with no reward.
New grist!!!! The ogres drop both tar and mercury. If John has mercury and Jade has uranium, I wonder what highly dangerous element Rose and Dave will end up with. And with his level ups, John is now a Boy-Skylark, something I can’t help linking to ‘heir of breath’ – air, flying, sky, birds – especially as Nanna mentions the Sassacre prophecy just a few pages later.
I think it’s possible to interpret the spritelog on page 885, and Nanna holding the old Sassacre book in her aura, as her adding the message to the front right now. But I still think she wrote it when John was very young – page 759 is written as though Nanna is vague on how John will grow up – he is ‘no doubt’ handsome and strapping, but it’s unconfirmed – and there ‘will come a day’ when John goes on an adventure, but it’s written as if in the future. Also, if she were writing this now, I think Nanna’s words would appear in glowing blue ink because her powers seem to work like that.
The key insight from this spritelog, I think, is that when John goes through the first gate, ‘everything will change. You will find the place where the constellations dance beneath the clouds. And then your true work may begin’ which suggests that instead of building straight up, each gate will take John to a different location, and maybe he needs to find his way back to the house in order to build up again. This ‘true work’ is surely connected to the Ultimate Riddle, the point of all this that John still needs to find out (p.425) which is entirely unclear to me, the reader. Between the meteors, other planets, various chess piece entities, and mystical predictive powers, it feels like whatever is going on is too alien for regular human logic, made by something with a completely different understanding of existence.
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This image from page 884 is so ominously composed. The soulless gray roof stretching off into the empty wasteland and John’s dark silhouette reaching out to it is incredibly eerie, a real reminder of how isolated John is. Now if I’m not mistaken, this is the hole John looked up through on page 539 – the one leading to his dad’s room. And that page was also composed with a lot of gravity, really trying to make what’s inside that hole feel important. But this time, Rose isn’t around to tell John not to go in. This could be a big moment for John, and we cold finally learn the truth about Dad’s business clown troupe.
John’s ‘do you think that instead of telling me exactly why that is with a clear explanation, you can give me a series of really coy riddles about it and then sort of giggle?’ (p.885) is holding hands with Rose’s ‘I require a font of frighteningly accurate yet infuriatingly nonspecific information. Do you know where I can find a wellspring of this sort?’ (p.838). It does help that they’re all written by the same person but it’s sweet to me when the kids talk like each other; I know I pick up turns of phrase from my friends so it really helps establish the closeness between them.
> John: Attempt to captchalogue a unit of build grist.
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elftwink · 1 year ago
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to preface this post i am anti-advertising i think we should explode the entire industry but it's sooo funny when you people make posts like "and they don't even work!!" like. sorry to be the bearer of bad news but yes they do. that's why we have to put up with so many despite everyone hating them and thinking its annoying. because they actually work really well and make a shit load of money
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luxshua · 2 years ago
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The winners of the life series all had their own ways of winning:
1. Grian loyalty, playing into every one of Scar's schemes no matter how stupid they seemed. His win came from blood and tears, a descion made surronded by sand and cacti.
2. Scott defiance, he was never going to play the game the way it was designed. Why would he take life needlessly, no his win came from the refusal to do the watchers bidding.
3. Pearl alone, discarded by her soulmate, discarded by the one who pulled her into the nether in the first place. She won with her ties cut, she won not of her own descion but of the one who decided for her.
4. Martyn scavenger, taking time where most convient, stealing kills from right under peoples noses. His win came when even his trusted ally had his guard down, feral and desperate for just a drop more time, even if it left him frenzied and alone.
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I think the thing about your first response that is provoking knee-jerk reactions (at least, it did for me) is that it implies that character death's only purpose in fiction is to "maximize pain" for the readers, and that any other purpose it might serve can be found through other means. And I don't think that's true at all.
To a certain extent I agree with the OP commenter that it's not necessary to kill a character simply for 'emotional impact' or 'realism'. If an author's main goal with a character death is just to "inflict maximum pain" on the reader, then that's probably not very good writing, and not "necessary". The death needs to do more than just hurt the reader; it should affect the story in some way, either in how other characters react to the death, or how events change because of it.
But I also agree with friskdaferret's argument that some character deaths are necessary for the story that the author is trying to tell. That's the key. Could they choose to write it a different way? Sure. They're the author, it's their story, it's all made up. But then it would be a different story.
I know that you consider the Holes argument to be a bit of a tangent, but for the sake of using an example that's already been brought up, Sam's death in Holes serves a particular purpose in the story. It reflects real-world racism in a very direct way: black men being lynched for having a relationship with a white woman (or after being accused of assaulting/touching a white woman, whether they did or not) is a real fact of American history. It's an ugly fact, and it's something that Louis Sacher decided was important to include in the story. For some kids reading that book, it may even have been their first exposure to that sort of racism. Having Sam leave Kate for other reasons, as you suggest, would change the story, and would make a different point. It's not the story Louis Sacher was trying to tell.
Your argument, if I understand correctly, is that sometimes, the potential pain inflicted on a reader who is very attached to the character might outweigh an author wanting to make a particular point or tell a particular story. How then, do we handle telling stories that are inherently about painful topics? What is the "utilitarian calculus" as it relates to a story like Orpheus and Eurydice which is about grief; or tragedies like Hamlet?
I also think that if you're going to make that argument, you have to consider the other side - that is, what benefit do those deaths, as written, bring to readers? Why has the author included it in the story? What do people get out of it? That answer is going to be different for different readers and stories, but there is a reason that death has been such a prominent trope in human storytelling since forever. Death and grief are inherent, immutable facts of life, and so storytellers are going to find ways to engage with and examine it.
Two examples that came to mind while I was thinking about this post were The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and Babel by R.F. Kuang. Both of those books contain absolutely devastating moments of loss in connection with characters we have become very close to as readers. I don't think I've ever cried as hard at a story as I cried at those two books in particular.
Both of those stories would not be what they are, or say what they wanted to say, if those deaths didn't happen. They are a book about cancer and a book about imperialism and the violence it engenders, respectively. Both those topics are impossible to handle without at least talking about death.
Now, would I give people a warning before I recommend those books to them? Absolutely, because it's the sort of thing you probably want to be in the right headspace for. But do I think that those books should have been written differently, just because the stories were painful? Absolutely not.
I don't know that I agree with any sort of utilitarian argument about the potential effect of a character death on readers vs its function in the story, in part because that sort of thing is impossible to quantify. How would you ever possibly judge what was "too much"? It's entirely subjective, and in the end, authors do not have control over what a reader's reactions to their story will be.
I also think that to a certain extent, readers are responsible for their own reading experience. If a person does not want to encounter painful moments in their reading, that is their responsibility to tailor their reading accordingly. If they as a reader know they are prone to making deep connections with characters such that it might genuinely hurt them if that character then dies, they can take steps to avoid those sorts of stories, or to use sites like doesthedogdie.com to check whether a story has something that they don't want to/can't engage with. But it's not an author's responsibility to tailor their story so that it doesn't make anyone sad. That's not the point of fiction.
Fiction is a reflection of life, and a way for us as humans to examine and process all aspects of it, including the aspects that hurt, that are awful, the parts that don't make sense. It's perfectly valid for someone to not want to engage with challenging fiction, but to say that authors shouldn't be writing it at all because it might somewhere cause someone grief? I can't agree with that.
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im starting to think you guys dont like it when stories make you feel things
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aconstantstateofbladerunner · 8 months ago
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Genuinely I think at least 80% of fandom toxicity would vanish overnight if people stopped seeing shipping as the primary way of engaging with media.
I would also personally have more fun and that is the real issue here.
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natjennie · 11 months ago
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i think mostly we as a culture need to stop pretending media is for us and instead recognize that it's for the people making it. "the show didn't do the thing I wanted it to" is so not the point. did it do what the people making it wanted it to do? did it tell the story they were trying to tell? than it was successful. if that doesn't align with what you wanted to happen, don't get up in arms about it. don't badmouth the creators and throw a tantrum. that's what fan works are for. the text is the text, and it told the story it was telling. you wouldn't be like "ugh shakespeare is insane for act v btw like there was no reason for juliet to kill herself she should've just waited and then her and romeo could have been together wtf this ruined the whole play" like no!!! the themes were there the set-up was there the foreshadowing was there shakespeare did what he intended to. just because it wasn't a happy ending and just because you thought it should've went differently doesn't mean it was bad. read a fic where juliet lives and move on.
#this is about ghosts but honestly fandom in general#stop pretending the creators of things owe you certain story lines. they're making it not you#i explained it like this to my sister:#imagine you're reading a book and there are sort of hints and scenes that you take to interpret a character as gay#you cite quotes and talk about the themes and the impact of your interpretation#and then at the end of the book the character comes out as asexual.#and then a lot of those scenes and quotes that you were using as evidence for your interpretation-#now they could be construed to have been pointing towards them being ace all along#just because it wasnt the end you fabricated in your head based on your understanding of the hints#doesn't mean it wasnt always the writers plan from the beginning.#AND it doesnt mean you can't keep imagining a world where they're gay instead#it just means that the writer was leaving those clues to point you towards the ending#and you interpreted the clues differently#bbc ghosts#ghosts spoilers#bc like. if last resort was the ending#you could 'read' the whole series with the understanding that they weren't going to leave the house#and the foreshadowing would add up#but now with the special. you can go back and 'read' the series with the understanding that they leave#and it still all adds up. the foreshadowing was there it just meant something different than you thought.#stories have beginnings middles and ends#you predetermined the ending while still in the middle and got mad when you weren't right.#does that make sense?
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kyouka-supremacy · 1 year ago
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Could you elaborate more on akutagawa bringing out atsushi's cruel side and atsushi bringing out akutagawa's kinder side? Despite everything i do think there were moments where atsushi held akutagawa's strength in high regard and felt inferior to him but denies this by constantly mocking akutagawa and reminding him that he lost in their first fight. Ngl i really love how atsushi can be himself around akutagwa, he doesn't need to be the atsushi that everyone loves, he can be the atsushi that only he can love 😭
Okay I've talked about this plenty so you might want to check out these posts (1) (2) (3) (4); on Akutagawa's good nature (1) (2); on Atsushi's mean nature (1) (2) (3)
My final take is: it's true, Atsushi brings out Akutagawa's kind side and Akutagawa brings out Atsushi's cruel side. But it shouldn't be left at that, risking of running into the error of reducing their relationship to an oversimplifying formula. It's true, Atsushi is mean around Akutagawa and Akutagawa is kind around Atsushi; but what we should really focus on is the fact that they manage to bring out a side of each other that other characters don't. Which is a good thing! It means that they can be their true selves, letting go of the fear of judgement and abandonment, because they know they're okay with each other. And I'm positive that yes, although it initially manifested with Atsushi being straight up a jerk to Akutagawa, it's not going to stop at that; because if it's true that Akutagawa brings to light facets of Atsushi's nature that don't usually emerge, it's also true that Atsushi's true nature isn't all evil and nothing else. First off, Atsushi is also manifestly more confident around Akutagawa, he's more brave and cool. He's sassy and sharp, he's blunt and stops overthinking things. Who knows if, once he's grown more affectionate of Akutagawa, once he's changed his mind about him, that will also translate in him being more open about how much he admires Akutagawa? Personally, I like to believe it will (Atsushi's love language being words of affirmation which is exactly what Akutagawa needs, eheh). After all, the “If you asked me, I'd say Dazai-san has already recognized you long ago” (which I've said, probably made Akutagawa fall right then and there) likely didn't come from a place of high esteem as much as it was just Atsushi honestly expressing his thoughts, unfiltered in front of Akutagawa. Then, just think of what he could tell him once his feelings for Akutagawa have morphed from simple animosity to something positive!
To me sskk really is:
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It's unpealing each layer till they're completely naked in front of each other, but God knows if having someone they can be utterly vulnerable with isn't exactly what they need. And yes, that started off as Atsushi being extremely rude to Akutagawa, but I'm sure it's not going to stop at that. It's going to develop in Atsushi being comforted by Akutagawa saying “do we need any more?” because having each other is truly all they need, and it's going to develop in Atsushi softly smiling at Akutagawa because no one else could make him feel safe and serene as he does.
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