#not the books or the author and certainly not about the discourse

[centrally-unplanned]

There are two big "AI Art Discourse" events of note recently, which I thought were interesting: ACX's "AI Art Turing Test" and the new paper on "AI Poetry Beating Human Poetry". Both of these I think reveal the shape of "what is AI art for", and also say a lot about how these results were utilized in discourse.

To take the latter first, some academics quizzed people on some poetry and had these results:

We found that AI-generated poems were rated more favorably in qualities such as rhythm and beauty, and that this contributed to their mistaken identification as human-authored. Our findings suggest that participants employed shared yet flawed heuristics to differentiate AI from human poetry: the simplicity of AI-generated poems may be easier for non-experts to understand, leading them to prefer AI-generated poetry and misinterpret the complexity of human poems as incoherence generated by AI.

More human than human poems! This certainly seems impressive - and it is. You couldn't have gotten these results ~5 years ago. But that maybe doesn't mean as much as you might think? Because here is the opening half of the winning "Walt Whitman AI" Poem:

I hear the call of nature, the rustling of the trees, The whisper of the river, the buzzing of the bees, The chirping of the songbirds, and the howling of the wind, All woven into a symphony, that never seems to end. I feel the pulse of life, the beating of my heart, The rhythm of my breathing, the soul's eternal art, The passion of my being, that burns with fervent fire, The urge to live, to love, to strive, to reach up higher. I see the beauty all around, the glory of the earth, The majesty of mountains, the miracles of birth, The wonder of the cosmos, the mysteries of the stars, The poetry of existence, that echoes near and far

This fucking sucks. Straight up 2/10 poem. Did this bitch seriously establish the world's most predictable rhyme scheme only to try to rhyme wind with end? You had one job that you chose for yourself, and you screwed it up! This poem has been written a million times before, and says nothing - the Miley Cyrus lyrics of verse.

The reason this won is, yes, because AI tools have advanced heavily in the past few years. But it is also because it is being tested on a dead art. No one cares about poetry - certainly not the survey respondents:

We asked participants several questions to gauge their experience with poetry, including how much they like poetry, how frequently they read poetry, and their level of familiarity with their assigned poet. Overall, our participants reported a low level of experience with poetry: 90.4% of participants reported that they read poetry a few times per year or less, 55.8% described themselves as “not very familiar with poetry”, and 66.8% describe themselves as “not familiar at all” with their assigned poet. 

"Or less" is doing a LOT of work there; "yeah I read a few nonfiction books a year" oh sure, totally. 90% of these respondents haven't read a poem that wasn't displayed in the end credits of Minecraft since high school. No one does, poetry as a medium is essentially a relic. That isn't an insult to poets, by the way! There is no shame in being a niche. Not everyone can have the reach of hentai doujin artists; the community is small but they get a ton out of it. But you can't take the art of the community and expect that art to hit outside of it.

This survey didn't ask people to evaluate art; it asked people to evaluate their stereotypical impression of an art they don't care about. It was ~600 people hired off a website, they banged it out ASAP and moved on. This is not to invalidate the results; I am not actually claiming that "real" poets would have scored much better? Maybe, I don't know - that just isn't very relevant.

Let's swing to the AI Art Turing Test results to get more into why. Again, AI art is absolutely "art" in the sense that it is able to pass the test handily. You have to be head-in-the-sand at this point to think that AI can't make an impressionist painting a la the "most liked" art in this contest:

I have seen the "well real paintings have physicality this is a jpeg" discourse points and the cope couldn't be more real - 99% of art consumption in the modern world is digital or at least prints, let's get you back to bed grandma. But I did find it pretty funny that Scott noted this AI piece as one he particularly liked:

Because it is nonsensical, right? All that "faded paint", how was it originally painted - just bucket splashes of red and blue? What are those random doors, the random stairs going nowhere on the sides, the vague-nothings engravings? Scott just didn't care about that - he liked the vibe, right? Ancient ruins, epic scale. It isn't a coincidence that the Impressionist art did the best - current AI tools are always impressionist, they have an idea of the vibe and invent the details in between. In Impressionism that is the whole point.

Now the trap is to go "REAL artists can tell because of this or that" because idk, the tools might get better, they might fill in more and more details. The real revelation here is that you don't need the tools to get better - visual art isn't so different from poetry. Most people don't pay attention to it all that much. You see thousands, thousands of pieces of art a week; you probably don't even realize how many. Do you really care if the fading paint makes coherent sense on a billboard ad or a doctor's office wall painting? So much art that is made is "industrial" in this sense - it has no need to be good. Only good enough to fulfill its utilitarian role. In these fields AI absolutely is going to Take Your Jobs in some form, and already is (though imo not a ton of them). And it won't really bother most people. This can go pretty deep - I promise you people are "utilizing" AI porn right now. They are ~appreciating the details~ way more than is typical, the product is working.

All this works until it doesn't, though. When it is an art book by a favourite artist whose vision you want to pour over, learning that all the individual details were just made by AI completely defeats the purpose, right? Imagine reading a book of these poems. Outside of the novelty, "AI is the point" factor you would rather watch infomercials on repeat, I can't imagine a more pointless use of my time. "Reading arbitrary poems" is never fun, regardless of the quality of the poems. Most people don't care about poetry! The reason you care is that you care about the poet, and what they want to say. You read poetry with context, it being inserted with intent into the pages of a manga, at the end of a video game, because you like the artist and follow them on twitter. The quality of the prose isn't more important than that.

Which is a harsh limit for all of these kinds of tests. They essentially aren't testing art, right? You do not ever get paid twenty bucks to sit down and read a dozen poems and score them. That has no bearing on how you would actually ever learn to care about a poem. Which doesn't make AI art useless or anything, more that these tests will very quickly run into their limits of what they can meaningfully tell you. The actual bar is "creating something someone cares about". From that lens, I fully believe hybrid methods that privilege artistic intent are currently working and will improve. But I think for "solo" AI art getting that to work is going to be complicated.

[wickedlittleoz]

an artist i follow got an ask about whether it was alright to use their art as covers for fanfic bookbinding and i'm. sorry i must have missed this discourse but since when are people outright printing out other people's work and binding them into books? do you contact and get author's permission (sure as fuck hope so)? and how do we writers feel about that, because i certainly feel very uncomfortable with that idea. i mean not to spoil the artistic expression of bookbinding because it's beautiful work that i most certainly could not do, but. you can access them stories any time you want on the websites where they were originally posted. why print them? again i mean i get the pleasure of holding & reading physical books, i much prefer that too, but like. get some books i guess? sorry i come from a place of honesty and tbh surprise and confusion about this whole thing. someone tell me how we're feeling about this. someone explain to me why it's being done. i just wanna understand

[angrybubbles]

Was reading some interesting IwtV adaption criticism and just had to get my thoughts out.

Is the AMC adaption of Interview with the Vampire Gothic Horror?

Yes! It still uses story-telling tropes, character tropes, moral ambiguity, sensuality, psychology, and the limits of the human experience that Gothic Horror literature uses. Everything from the isolated haunted houses (haunted by the inhabitants within,) wealthy families hiding dark secrets, to the commentary of decay, the adaption is undoubtedly Gothic Horror.

But they sanitized it!

They adapted the elements that they could. Things that were subtext have been brought to text, and things that were text have been sunk to subtext. They dramatized things to make them more interesting, and gave more attention to character development than the earlier adaptions. I won't pretend that a lot of the chillier elements of the book didn't make an appearance on screen, but the show did a great job making up for it in other forms.

Now all the show fans react to the original books like puritans!

I'm sure some do, lol. But I also really want people to understand that a lot of what Anne Rice wrote was not just Gothic Horror, it was troubling. People don't point to the sexualization of minors as a reoccurring theme for no reason, and while Gothic horror is certainly suited to that discussion and exploration, it is really troubling just how far the in-book justifications go. There's also just how imperialist, racist, sexist, and fat-phobic her ideals are, making her works troubling on those counts as well. And don't get me started on her use of druids and witches.

But people crying over the incest? That's a genre staple; if you have issues with that don't hang out with the genre. Gothic is all about anxiety and dread, fear and guilt, isolation and rot, and how those can drive a human being to their limits. It's not about loving the act of incest, it's about why characters would feel comfort in the taboo.

These new fans just don't have media literacy :/

Look, as someone very close to the end of their English-History degree, I would be careful throwing that word around. It may not mean what you think it means, because it certainly isn't supposed to be an avenue for shutting down discourse. Discourse is healthy. Different things will be interpreted in different ways. Media Literacy is being able to not only support interpretations from the text, but also to measure their implications and intention. Sometimes we'll disagree, but someone who is media literate will stop and measure new information to consider it.

Anne Rice is a very flawed author and human being. She is also probably the only one who could have ever written the Vampire Chronicles, and we'll never get something like that again. Her work is sensational, but also extremely discomforting in a way that the genre isn't able to support sometimes. Times have changed, and we can word why better now.

[youareatragedy]

Is it really wrong to point out when ACOTAR fans are being very tunnel-visioned about these characters and suggest they read something else? I’ve noticed that they often get offended when people say “read more” to them. Exploring books beyond ACOTAR or SJM's works doesn’t hurt. In fact, it allows for experiencing more consistent and diverse world-building AND character. It helps us grow as readers.

You can argue that ACOTAR or TOG is the best thing ever and sure, to each their own. But when someone encourages you to expand your horizons by reading something else, it’s not an attack, it’s a way to help you grow as a person. I wish they stop getting so defensive just because their favorite series isn’t taken seriously by everyone.

In my opinion, despite its major flaws, ACOTAR is a great fandom to be part of because its large community and that it sparks a lot of discourse so at the very least, it forces people to sharpen their debate skills lol. That said, SJM isn’t the best author out there, though there are certainly worse ones. Trust me, expanding our reading horizons won’t hurt. In fact, it can help us understand why a favorite character might be flawed or why a hated character could actually be one of the best. Some people act like they’re afraid to challenge their own perspectives, as if stepping outside the ACOTAR and SJM bubble might make them enjoy it less (which might be why they resist doing so in the first place).

Let ACOTAR be the introduction to reading or the series that reignites a love for books, but allow your mind to explore something else too.

[olderthannetfic]

Hi I'm sorry for the incoming rant but I'm so frustrated and I need somewhere safe to yell. This is insanely long so I 100% understand if no one wants to read all this.

It’s so fucking ironic that people are trying to make publishing more friendly towards queers/women/POC/disabled people/etc. but at the same time they’re turning publishing into a fucking minefield of discourse.

I'm an autistic, bisexual woman with multiple mental illnesses and a learning disability and I'm absolutely terrified to publish anything.

Everyone keeps going “We love books by minorities! Hashtag own voices! We love to support minorities and their stories! Even if you’re not a minority, we love to see authors making characters that are! :)”

But they certainly don't act like it.

They see people like Amélie Wen Zhao or Tess Sharpe or Isabel Fall get harassed relentlessly and they go, “Well if people dogpile someone over something it was obviously because that person did something Bad And Wrong™ so if you’re a Good Person™ the twitter masses won’t have to punish you :)” except in reality that’s not at all what happens.

If your experience is not generic enough to fit every single person in a group, you’re obviously writing an unrealistic stereotype! How dare you write about your personal experiences as a mixed race Indian if not everyone can relate to it? What about the Indians who grew up in India!? You’re erasing their experiences!

You have to out yourself to prove that you’re one of the Correct People™ who’s allowed to write that experience. Oh, you’re writing a trans character? Please describe your gender, in detail, so we can know whether or not you’re Allowed or if you’re an Outsider who we need to punish. Oh, you can’t come out, because you might be killed or disowned? Well, no #OwnVoices clout for you, we don’t want your book.

Your character needs to be a Good Minority™. They cannot be angry or violent or rude. If they are, you’re clearly saying that all of those minorities are angry and violent and rude and not just that one character.

There are four additional rules you absolutely must follow at all times to prevent harassment, and all of them contradict each other:

If you’re not [minority], you need to have [minority] in your stories, because they exist and it’s bad if all your characters are [not minority].

If you’re not [minority], you cannot have [minority] in your stories, because you’re not [minority] and clearly, you’ll never be able to understand how [minority] thinks and acts because you’re not them.

If you’re not [minority] you can still have them in your stories, but they can’t experience any discrimination at all, or talk about their culture or experiences with being [minority] because that’s not your story to tell and you’re profiting off of their trauma. No, you’re not allowed to do this even if you hire ten sensitivity readers that confirm these experiences are realistic and correct.

If you’re not [minority] you can still have them in your stories, but you need to show their experience with discrimination, and have them talk about their culture or experiences with being [minority] because if you don’t, then you’re basically just taking [non minority] and pretending they’re [minority].

Also, there’s an additional surprise bonus rule: Sometimes people will just want to destroy you for no reason, so watch out!

They’ll take things from your story, remove them from their context and then present them as the most horrific, problematic thing possible in order to create a hate mob.

Sometimes, though, they don’t even know what they’re talking about. People who are not part of a minority group (or not the one relevant) will see something, go, “Omg? Problematic?” and post it on Twitter so they can say, “Um guys wtf is this shit? Are you fr? Can we talk about this?”

And the worst and most horrifying part, people will blame YOU for the harassment campaign!

I’ve literally seen people say, “Well if someone calls you out on Twitter you should admit you did something wrong, apologize, and tell them you’ll do better :)” as if that’s not the most insane, victim blamey shit.

Like, I cannot fathom seeing a marginalized author get torn apart by a mob, get sent horrific death threats, and have their career and life ruined, only to say, “Okay but they must have done something Problematic. Have they tried publicly flagellating themselves to appease the people who are threatening to break into their house and kill them?”

People just sweep it under the rug and pretend that it’s not a big deal, and say, “Twitter’s not real, it doesn’t matter!” as if thousands of people harassing you and sending you threats isn’t massively damaging to someone’s mental health. Like, this is the kind of shit people kill themselves over, and it's apparently no big deal because "Twitter's not real"? What?

Writing is supposed to be fucking fun! Showing your beloved story and characters and work to the world is supposed to be enjoyable!

But instead of writing my story and just enjoying the process and adoring my characters, I’m sitting here, absolutely terrified, trying to make sure I give people the least amount of ammunition to destroy my life as possible.

One of the main characters in my story is vaguely based on me. I love her with all my heart, I think about her all the time, I want people to love her just as much as I do.

But instead of having fun writing about her, I’m waking up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, thinking to myself, what if she’s too problematic?

Will people get upset with her saying the word “cunt” or bathing naked with men (and thus having her tatas out) and accuse me of being sexist or catering to the male gaze or not being a Good Amazing Feminist™? Will people call her a pick me?

Will people get upset with her being bisexual, but ending up in a “straight” relationship with the male character? They have a five year age gap, is that too much? Will people think he’s a predator or abusive? Is their relationship toxic?

Will people think he’s a creep for flirting with her and getting into her personal space and telling sexual jokes, even though that’s how I want someone to flirt with me?

What if people think she’s not autistic enough? Will people get mad that she’s ~glorifying violence~ for not becoming a pacifist and admitting that violence is bad and yucky at the end of the story?

I need to make sure she spends ten paragraphs explaining exactly why she works as an assassin. I need to sit cross-legged and whip my head around like Dr. Strange in that Avenger’s movie so I can imagine Every Possible Discourse Outcome™ and make sure she debunks everything people could call problematic.

I need to change that. I need to remove that. I need to make her sanitized and good enough so that I'll be safe.

And then repeat this thought process, with every other minority character in my story (and there are a lot).

--

Things are bad, but if you stay off of book twitter and do not write YA, you're a lot less likely to face this level of drama. There are always exceptions though, like Fall.

[conclaveconfessions]

The dating sim beef is so silly.

The only people who actually “look” like their movie counterparts are Tedesco and kinda Benítez. Lawrence looks nothing like Ralph Fiennes and Agnes looks absolutely nothing like Isabella Rossellini at all. (Bellini looks vaguely like Tucci but it’s vague). They made Wozniak hotter. Where’s the anger for all the people on Twitter drawing Benítez as white or literally grey??? What’s the issue here?? The art style?? I’m lost on why that’s a problem. They didn’t whitewash him. Adeyemi is dark skinned and handsome!

The Tedesco criticism is always gonna be a criticism and people can have their opinions on that; but it’s interesting to note that the people who seem predominantly obsessed with him are also Muslim/poc. Idk if it’s white-knighting or what but lmao I think it’s just that people think Sergio is a hot old man. (I don’t get it but I respect the gilf enjoyers)

Some people are mad Adeyemi was treated too harshly, and it seems like other people are mad he wasn’t treated harsh enough. Do you all… do you all see how silly and ridiculous that is??

I get that people don’t like his good ending (everyone repentant deserves absolution!! But I’m on the fence if I like him or not) has him in Kabul taking over Benitez’s post; but bishop missionaries aren’t the ones directly aiding the people they serve. (That would be a nurse or a doctor). They’re the ones dealing with the local authorities/managing deliveries/keeping the lights on, which is why it’s dangerous to have that position. They’re the ones whose life is on the line first.

Idk. I feel like this is very much a situation where people are bitching on anon because they don’t have enough courage to say it with their name attached. Are there criticisms? Sure!! I have several! Why is Ray a yandere??? He deserved to be a full blown dating option and I’m mad about the fact he wasn’t. Tremblay and Adeyemi over Ray was certainly a choice!!!

But if you want to have a discussion and not a discourse you have to be willing to start a discussion.

As always in fandom spaces; fanworks are treated more harshly than their source material.

Where’s this energy at Robert Harris for making every single character the most racially stereotyped version of that group??

Why is the African Cardinal the one with a sex scandal who abandoned his kid? Why is the Italian Cardinal the racist fascist Mussolini asshole? Why is the Southeast Asian Cardinal the one treated as a mystic/higher spiritual guide for the white character AND ALSO has some poorly researched bs about gender/sex and the culture surrounding it? Two for one there on racist stereotypes for book Benítez. Great job, Rob.

The flaws are in the original text. If we wanna have a discussion as fans let’s have a discussion!! But to act like a fan project made by like two people for free is somehow more harmful/worse that the original work that got nommed for several Oscars and made millions? Keep that energy for Robert Harris please.

~

[separatist-apologist]

I really hate that you can't critique a published author's writing without lovers of that book or worse, lovers of particular characters jumping in to tell you that either 'you are overthinking it' no? I read a book, it compelled me enough that I joined the fandom I just took a moment to actually think about the implications of what I just read and tried to have a civil discussion about it on my Own Blog. or 'you just hate the character' VISIT MY BLOG? I have artworks of that character, I Love that character but also that character is not real and the author is.

People will be petty over stupid shipwars, over which of these two super powerful characters is 'more powerful' and send each other hate over this nonsense but the one making a polite conversation discussing harmful tropes etc is the one that needs to 'touch grass'. Sure.

This is my biggest complaint in bookish spaces. I don't owe published/indie authors ANYTHING, especially when they're asking me to purchase a product. If that shit sucks, I should be allowed to say so. I BOUGHT it. I invested my time in it, I'm allowed to discuss what I did/did not like.

This always circles back around to the brain off people, which is really just anti-intellectualism and toxic positivity wrapped up in "its not that deep" discourse. It is, actually. "all reading is good reading" literally I don't care if people disagree, I'm not putting this under a cut- not all reading is good reading if you refuse to engage critically with ANYTHING you consume. I'm so tired of this argument that because the American's have low rates of literacy, that we need to uplift every book as inherently good if someone read it.

Your enjoyment of a book is subjective- I've certainly had a good time with trash and disliked well written books. But whether a book is good/bad- thats OBJECTIVE. There are STANDARDS. You not knowing them doesn't mean they stop existing (maybe you could, idk, critically engage with what makes a book good/bad?).

I don't want to even touch on the shipwar stuff- I am staying far away from all of that. What I will say, I guess, is that I do get frustrated when I attempt to critique Rhys, for example, and someone comes in pissed off and calls me an anti.

I just think he has flaws that are interesting to talk about.

[librarycards]

Hello, do you have any books on children's rights and patriarchy to recommend? 🥺

this is very much a category in-progress; children's rights discourse has advanced a great deal in the last few years (and will almost certainly continue to)! here are a few texts I recommend [with the caveat that these generally address children's rights but have other foci]:

Jules Gill-Peterson, Histories of the Transgender Child (also, Jules's substack!!)

Eric Stanley, Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable

Stanley & Smith, eds., Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex [in both, Stanley / Stanley & Smith track the process by which youth, particularly queer/trans youth of color, are rendered unpersons)

Kathryn Joyce, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption [discussion of adoption –– in many cases, explicit child trafficking serving christofascist ends –– is inextricable from children's rights and is far too often ignored]

I have learned perhaps the most about children's rights and youth liberation from queer/trans disabled & Madppl. Remi Yergeau's Authoring Autism as well as Eli Clare's Exile & Pride have been pivotal here. Samuel R Delany's Heavenly Breakfast also has an incredible set of passages on youth liberation, harm reduction, and substance use.

Finding blogs like (now-inactive) We Are Like Your Child have been transformative, as have Mel Baggs's (z"l) body of work, which I discuss in more depth here. One final shout is to Parenting Decolonized, who call attention to the entanglement between racial capitalism, ableist cisheteropatriarchal white supremacy, and the oppression of children, incl. its reproduction via the nuclear family form.

[mickstart]

Twitter discourse about HR all being evil women who refuse to hire white men has got me thinking about the eternal cycle of like.

Women are herded into / limited to specific job fields by social barriers -> men begin to believe the job is unskilled and beneath them BC it's For Women -> job becomes understaffed and underpaid and the area of society and work it supports becomes underfunded and undersupplied -> men complain about how X job is full of evil callous bitches and that's why they hate women it's certainly not because they're WOMEN its because they all just happen to work in careers that he doesn't like. Like the bitch secretary at the doctors who took too long to answer his call or the bitch teacher who never gave him a good grade or the bitch hr officer who told him he couldn't say slurs anymore or the bitch author who wrote a woke romance book or the bitch nurse who-

[the-cryptographer]

Have read a lot of books recently. Surprising overlap of text and audio.

The Immortals Series by Tamora Pierce

Had a lot of fun tearing into the pederasty subtext in Pierce's The Song of the Lioness series, and tearing into the grooming subtext in The Immortals was just as fun. In all sincerity I enjoy the majority of Pierce's characters, their dysfunctional behaviour and relationships, the earnestness of the writing. The series does end on a bit of a whimper though. Despite being disappointed by the lack of Cloud and Onua as the series tromped on, the third book, Emperor Mage, was definitely the high point of the series for me. Prince Kaddar and his relationship to his culture were pretty fantastic. And it was really the high point of political machinations and interesting facets of our villain, who I had to accept by the fourth book was less meant to be complex and more an oddly compelling jumble of plot-convinience and queer-coded villain tropes. Alas.

The Nine Cloud Dream by Kim Man-Jung

A bit embarrassed by how much I liked this one. Very aware that it was not written with someone of my cultural background in mind and was not intended to be gratifying to me in the way it was - and in light of that am feeling rather concerned about applying too much significance to the parts I enjoyed. For the record, I do appreciate a lot of the tension and discourse in the book in trying to reconcile Confucianism and Buddhism as warring ideologies with different appeals and applications. (Taoism is certainly in there as well, though I'm less knowledgeable it and can't speak as much about its visibility in the narrative.) But, yeah, this was sort of destined to be a favourite just for the pure joy of idiotic manslut protag boning his way through an improbable harem of women who, though idealised, have a lot more internality and agency than I would have strictly expected. The whole thing really felt so good-natured and loving and the-opposite-of-punitive to me, it made it hard for me to be upset with the narrative when it was being gratuitous.

Mrs. Martin's Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan

Sapphic Romance numero uno. What I enjoyed: The main characters had a lot of personality and got to both reap the benefits and suffer the drawbacks of their stronger personality traits. Always fun. I enjoyed the unrestrainedness of the narrative in pursuit of what it wanted to indulge in. I enjoyed the anxieties of the characters about their personal worth, especially viewed through the lens of the anxieties of older women worried their value is depreciating with age in a society that doesn't seem to want them. What I enjoyed less: The not-entirely-believable vindictive revenge fantasy against an idiot nephew whose negative traits are more informed than shown (he's bad because we're told he's a rapist which is bad, but no real interrogation of that). The Victorian England setting felt more like something cherry picked for legal plot convenience and aesthetic, rather than a fully realised cultural atmosphere. Although I enjoyed the main characters individually, felt their chemistry was sort of paper thin. Soz.

The Orc and Her Bride by Lila Gwynn

Sapphic Romance numero dos. What I enjoyed: The prose - clear and simple and easy to read, yet engaging. Unlike what looks like most of the goodreads reviews, I liked the bratty unlikeable elf heroine a lot. Even though I don't think the narrative treated her destruction of the orc's cultural artefact with quite the gravity I wanted it to. I liked the orc heroine a lot too. Calm and gracious and poised with a firm gravity but a bit of a doormat in a lot of ways - easily sells out her own interests for the greater good unlike elf heroine. Believed the chemistry in this one. What I enjoyed less: The conflation of orc with butch is something I feel sort of weird about. Also I understand and respect the author being disinterested in fantasy racism and avoiding the topic overtly, but I feel she ended up recreating those themes with elf heroine's classism and xenophobia in the face of culture clash, and then essentially refused to engage them :/ Like this is too tied up in the human experience to ignore, imho. Also... this is a bit me just not really being the audience for a lot of romance and I *did* buy this book knowing it was about courtly lesbian arranged marriage. But I just find courtly lesbian arranged marriage so hard to believe. The lack of acknowledgement that marriage is more about reproductive resource management and holding female and child family members hostage against economic interest than anything else in this context is just such a hard sell for me. Soz.

Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe by Simon Winder

Only a couple chapters through this one currently and already feeling a lot of tension between myself and the author. Enjoying the witicism of his writing style and feel like he'd be an entertaining person to have a conversation with or hear a lecture from, but the way he's organising information is sort of obtuse for me, who doesn't do well with being dumped with a lot of minutia and details devoid of ideological abstraction. It doesn't help that a lot of the ideological abstraction he does provide is so painfully British cultural shorthands. There's one point he characterises a portrait of a Central European man in a fur hat as *Canadian*. And while it was clearly meant to be ironic, it seems really tasteless and vapid in the context of the actual colonialism of Canada. This sort of hyper westernised view also seen in his whole concept of Europe and how the conflicts between AustoHungary and the Balkans with the Ottoman Empire are given a different emotional weight and register than their conflicts with their other neighbours. And while it would be remiss not to notice that the people in these regions *do* give a different emotional register to conflicts with non-Christianised West Asia, it seems sort of shortsighted that the text is taking this as uncontested reality. (Also his characterisation of Jeanne d'Arc and the idea that anyone but a particular British audience has their spirits lift at her death is quite insane. Most of us are over the Hundred Years' War by now, if we were ever invested to start with.) Idk, I'm committed to finishing this even though I'm not quite confident at my ability to retain a lot of the information. I'm giving myself permission to skim for amusing anecdotes and vibes, so hopefully it will be a good time for me.

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

Is there anything good (positive achievement) about the Valyrian/ghiscarian empires? I feel GRRM didn't bother giving them nuanced and interesting history beside mass slavery, rape and genocide, esp the ghiscarians they are mash up of the all the racist oriental tropes you can think of

Hi anon, this is a really good question. I think you can look at it two ways.

On the one hand, if we're analyzing the books from a literary perspective, GRRM's portrayal of the entire continent of Essos is pretty Orientalist and doesn't hold up that well. And we can blame this to some extent on GRRM being a white boomer who clearly did not think all that deeply about the stereotypes he was playing into when he created his "exotic" eastern continent. 90s fantasy was rife with this stuff (even my beloved Robin Hobb is not completely immune-- I'm looking at you, Chalcedeans), and at the time Orientalism was, much like critical race theory or decolonization, a grad school level concept, unless you ran in activist circles. You didn't have Tumblr and Twitter and TikTok and Youtube generating Discourse, you had to actively seek out different perspectives. And ex-hippie liberal white boomers often assumed that they already had the right perspectives, that they knew what traps to avoid, and so you'd get 90s SFF authors thinking they were very cleverly subverting these tropes by going, "I know, I'll have an intensely misogynistic culture of desert dwelling nomads who have harems and slaves but I'll make them white." It was pretty bleak. Luckily for all of us, fantasy has come a long way since then.

And yeah, once you see the Orientalism in ASOIAF, you can't unsee it. Lys is basically the fantasy version of the "pleasure planet" trope, the Dothraki are a stereotype of the Mongol armies without any of the many positive contributions the Molgols made, Qarth is like the Coleridge poem come to life with people riding camels with jeweled saddles and wearing tiger skins, with its women baring one breast and it's sophisticated assassin's guild, and Mereen has its pyramids. The entire continent is brimming with spices and jewels and pleasure houses and people saying "Your Magnificence." It is also a place of blood magic and dragons and Red Gods and shadowlands. It is everything exciting and "exotic," juxtaposed against what appears to most readers to be very mundane--septas and pseudocatholicism and maesters in the citadel. So yeah, it's an Orientalist's fantasy world, and the point of all this is not necessarily to cast it as evil per se, but to cast it as "Other" (and to be clear, Orientalism is harmful and GRRM deserves the criticism he gets for leaning into stereotypes). Valyria and the Valyrians are certainly included in that-- they are explicitly Other as foreign born ruling family in Westeros, and they are treated that way both in-world and by the narrative.

The question then becomes, although GRRM's depictions of Essos lean heavily and inelegantly into Orientalist tropes, why did he create these worlds the way he did? Why is Valyria an "Other" and what significance does it have to the story? And I think that some of this is GRRM's shorthand for something magical that is lost and forgotten and fading away, just like Valyria itself is in the memories of the Targaryen family. It is the Xanadu of Coleridge's Kubla Khan, not just the East viewed from the West, but the past viewed from the present, a nostalgic yearning for a place that only ever existed in the imagination. When the narrative does visit these places in person, rather than telling us about them secondhand, they become ugly and brutal, the jeweled facade hiding a rot underneath. In ASOIAF we have Dany ripping that facade off of Meereen and Yunkai, but she idealizes her own Targaryen heritage, and that is not insignificant, and as readers, we are invited to idealize it right along with her, in spite of plenty of hints that perhaps we should not (like the aforementioned slavery). We even hear Astapori and Yunkish slavers speaking to Dany echo sentiments about the even older Ghiscari empire, also lost, "Ours is the blood of ancient Ghis, whose empire was old when Valyria was yet a squalling child." Old Ghis and the Valyrians who conquered them are both long gone at this point, and yet their descendants are clinging to the legacies of cultures that would be wholly foreign to both of them. Because if Valyria is Xanadu, the Old Valyrians and Old Ghiscari are also Ozymandias, the mighty who have fallen, their once grand civilizations nothing but forgotten ruins. The Targaryens don't yet realize that they are that "half-sunk shattered visage," that they are yearning for something that is gone and never returning, something they never really knew in the first place.

Westeros is not immune to this either. I think it's a consistent theme that GRRM plays with is the ways which the past is glorified and distorted and romanticized. Even in a meta-sense, his entire medieval world is, in many ways, a half-remembered medieval fantasy, the medieval world as imagined by people who read Ivanhoe, rather than a medieval world as actually was. And GRRM simultaneously presents this romanticized world alongside the brutality of the past (and to drive that point home, George's medieval world is much more brutal than the real medieval world was), and so he asks us, just like Dany must ask herself at some point, is the past really all that romantic? Or are we simply yearning for something unnamable and Other? And if we yearn for that, why?

On the other hand, from an in-world perspective, if you are Westerosi, are there any redeeming qualities to Valyrian culture? And I think we can answer that question by asking ourselves, is there anything salvageable from the past, even if the past was terrible? Even if what we perceive of Old Valyria wavers between a horrific empire based on conquest and slavery, and an idealized homeland full of magical dragonriders, depending on who is doing the telling, if we accept it as a fully fleshed out world, then I think we can remember no cultures are monoliths. Old Valyria had art, architecture, fashion, music, literature, and I like to imagine that there were good freeholders, perhaps even Valyrian versions of the Roman Stoics and the Cynics, who raised moral objections to slavery. Certainly the Valyrian "freeholder" government itself, a kind of proto-democracy, similar to that of Athens, was innovative for its particular time and place, even if it was not as democratic as our modern democracies are, and that model of government is replicated throughout Essos, where strict hereditary monarchy seems to be relatively uncommon. Valyria also had a great deal of religious freedom, which persists throughout Essos as well. And as with any empire, it's important to keep in mind that the ruling class made up only a small percentage of actual Valyria, and we know there were Valyrians who were not dragonlords but just normal people, going about their lives who had nothing to do with the atrocities committed, and those people were telling stories, creating art, writing songs, and producing culture too. So I think, tying back into how GRRM uses Valyria and Essos in his narrative, we do not have to discard the past entirely, nor do in-world Targaryens, but it's the romanticization that's the problem, and I think that's something that both in-world characters and readers are cautioned against.

[jesncin]

Hi I love you guys' work. I know I already sent in an ask before, but I'm also a queer Indonesian creator who loves animated stories and musicals. And plans to make her own animated indie musical show on YouTube. Which is queer and based on space. And the main character is plus sized, queer, and has a non binary love interest. I wanted to ask since Indonesia is still really homophobic, how do you deal with being a queer Indonesian creator making queer content while your country is extremely homophobic. Because I often feel scared to do so because of what the government might think. Sorry for randomly asking this btw

Hello there! That sounds like a very ambitious project! Best of luck to you, I'm all for more queer space adventures.

So I'm sure to a lot of queer Indonesians looking at the work I'm doing, they're thinking "how the heck are jesncin doing all that and being so loud about it" haha. At least so far (who knows what the future holds now that my book is out) I've managed to create queer Indonesian art online for years (including smaller published work) and had very little homophobic pushback. Which I know I'm very lucky with- I've lost a lot of peers to bigoted locals and hate campaigns. It's a mix of strategies and contingencies I keep to foster as safe a space as I can.

It's a common practice among queer Indonesian activists to speak predominantly in english, something I already do because of my language barrier. Most locals don't bother interacting with an account speaking in english- weaponizing their language barrier haha. I stuck to western spaces early on, but because I drew a lot of blatantly queer Indonesian art- queer Indonesians (diaspora or otherwise) naturally flocked to my stuff. The audience filters itself. I don't interact with local discourse at all. I also stayed away from visibility events (on twidder like #artIDN or #ArtistsofIndonesia or even #tetapbangga for Malaysians) until I felt comfortable with the community I fostered to join in. It's common especially for queer tags to be monitored by bigots looking for people to pick on. Speaking of which, block and don't interact with them. Don't give into the temptation of replying to bigots because it just gives them more ammo. Their goal is to exhaust you so you lock your account and "can't spread your agenda" or whatever.

I purposefully wanted to publish my stories through an American publisher for a lot of reasons, but it certainly helps that Lunar Boy can be out and proud out there where it can't get to be in Indonesia. I notice queer authors here tend to publish either online or internationally with an independent publisher too. Still- you'd be surprised how much the local queer community is enthusiastically ready to support you. Because of the state of Indonesia as it is, everything is handled more "under the radar" for the sake of safety. My personal biggest fear is starting another moral panic incident- but the many queer Indonesian communities I've been in have their own strict rules and precautions to keep members safe. They're worried about that too, but they want to help you succeed! Once my book released, the Indonesian queer community had my back and even helped me with some author events and exclusive meetups. At least for me, it was instrumental to be connected to the local community.

That's where I am for now. I created Lunar Boy while being closeted the entire time. I've erased my queer publications from my resume when applying to author events locally. There's always some kind of assimilation that happens in the process. I'll always be scared of pushback or sparking another moral panic incident. But that's the risk this kind of representation is, isn't it? I had no one else to look up to. No other queer Indonesian graphic novelist making explicitly queer Indonesian stories. It was an isolating experience making this book. But now that I'm here, the next person who comes along won't be alone. And seeing the people who've connected to Lunar Boy, especially other queer Indonesians from all around the world, makes it so worth it.

[drdemonprince]

Probably goes without saying but I feel like your latest insta post on invoking ableism to promote hyper-individualism (which is so on the money while remaining succinct, kudos) is a clear illustration of what can happen when someone experiences oppression along only one axis. I'm sure there are exceptions but the kind of discourse you describe feels like such a phenomenon among white, middle-class disabled people, specifically.

The truth is, anyone can leverage a focus on individual identity and personal success in order to dilute a broader fight for collective liberation.

This phenomenon is sometimes called "white feminism," yes, and I certainly think white, middle-class people have a vested interested in promoting it more than anybody else. but it's something that, particularly in the social media age (which converts every conversation into a matter of personal branding), a person of any constellation of identities can leverage a narrative of personal oppression to make themselves wealthy and trusted as an authority figure.

I am reminded of the countless people who enriched themselves by self-marketing as a racial equity scholar on Instagram circa 2020...including many people who had absolutely zero expertise in the subject. Or the people who, because they were sexual assault survivors, began marketing themselves as equipped to run accountability sessions for accused people, or to run consent seminars, again when they had no relevant experience on the topic or any connection to existing organizations or movements working to address such issues. they were just using their personal positionality for their own gain. (And lots of Autistic people do this now with neurodiversity seminars etc).

This book goes into it so, so well

and relatedly:

(Koa is very clear in her book that many women of color are also white feminists -- under capitalism, a lot of people are interested in advancing their own careers rather than fighting for economic justice and structural improvements for oppressed groups. and as the behavior of many trans mascs and enbies show, you dont need to be a woman to be a white feminist either).

So, to respond to your comment, I think ultimately the problem is one of people lacking class consciousness or any kind of firm understanding of how power is built and change is created, according to leftist theories. It's also a phenomenon of some people, particularly ones who already have a little economic power, wanting to enrich themselves further rather than taking any steps toward justice, which would probably cause them to lose money. It's not a phenomenon of which identities a person inhabits. However, it is certainly true that privileged groups have even less incentive to ever learn about these things or care about them!

[susandsnell]

For the character ask game 4; 8; 21 for Daniel Molloy and 10; 20 for Madeleine Eparvier? If that's too many, just pick which ones you're most interested in obviously :)

Hi anon! Finally sitting down to do these. Thank you for your patience with this, and double thank you for being the first person to ask me things about that old man and that spectacular queen. Let's go! I'll put it under the cut because boy I'm about to get long-winded -- I blame you for giving me so much to work with!

CHARACTER ASK GAME!!! 💫

Daniel Molloy

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

You do not want to know the crossovers I've envisioned for this old man. Because of his meta role as the narrator, the messenger, and the archivist of the story, he fits surprisingly well into so many other pieces of media with the premise "what if he was the one investigating/interviewing the survivor". There are many other vampires I'd like him to interview (especially the ones from Tanz Der Vampire), and I'd love to see how a younger Daniel would fare in Fright Night (we all know how The Lost Boys would end for him..). But mostly, final girl that he is, I think he'd rock it in other horror media; the thing that has plagued him and enthralled him all his life. The thing he has begged for and run from. I wonder if The Ring's Rachel Keller was a former student or colleague of his, and if she'd enlist his help with respect to breaking the story on cursed video tapes. I want to see him in a Se7en or Longlegs type of neonoir slasher, sticking his nose where it doesn't belong, and yet coming through when it counts. I think that I would want to personally beat him to death myself for the things he'd say to Dani Ardor (Dan to Dan communication), but he's actually proven himself to be solid at deprogramming someone subjected to intense gaslighting (and very good at ruining relationships, including those that aren't his own!), and if he can keep the insanely misogynistic comments to a minimum for more than five minutes, he might've been able to get her away from the Harga by talking sense.

And finally, in what must make me the greatest parody of myself fathomable, yes, I think Daniel Molloy should investigate and probably write the retrospective on the Black Prom of Stephen King's Carrie. I've frequently joked that for all the addiction trouble, marital and familial trouble, and insanely out of pocket offensive comments, he's a Stephen King author avatar guesting at Manderley or perhaps Wuthering Heights.

But all seriousness, you have Sue Snell, who wrote her own autobiography of the horrific and targic events for which she wound up both scapegoated and disbelieved. Given his nose for the supernatural/preternatural, Daniel would follow where that thread leads and maybe help her find some peace in the process. The two certainly have a lot in common; both did fucking horrible things as a teenager for which they later faced an insanely disproportionate retribution, both have curly hair (usually in Sue's case), both are heavily coded to be repressing queerness leading them to unfulfilling heteronormative relationships/plans for unhappy family life, both take the role of the archivist and messenger to shape the horrors they lived into a narrative - their narrative - before the world will make of it what it will. Both fell in love with their monster(s). Both are fucking SURVIVORS.

(I kind of want to write this now...)

8. What’s something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

Honestly, I don't want to rehash bad discourse from twitter, so I'll just say exaggerating his very apparent flaws to thoughtlessly trigger people in the interest of winning a morality contest in this of all franchises. On the flipside of that, reducing him to his ship with Armand -- I've been very vocal regarding how much I despise the Armand Is Alice theory, and so long as it persists I'll continue. Not because of this or that headcanon, but it's phenomenally misogynistic to erase women we haven't even seen onscreen yet for slash because eewwww no girls allowed. Like what in the circa 2007 misogynistic yaoi livejournal, TJLC ass theory are we doing here. But also because it would be terrible writing. The emotional impact of old Maniel as a character concept is that he's lived a full life, accomplished incredible things, and had relationships that were meaningful and that he also destroyed. He has these things because of Louis' rescue of him and Louis' words, and when they see each other again in 2022, the tangible impact of his great deed are written in every line on Daniel's face. I don't mind 'the Chase happened' truthers at all, but my God, you undercut everything when you suggest that it's Oops, All Armand, meaning Daniel never had a life fully lived and failings and triumphs he carries with him. You also ironically make DM less interesting by making him the only person in Daniel's life of any significance. Just. Take the character as we got him, my god.

21. If you’re a fic writer and have written for this character, what’s your favorite thing to do when you’re writing for this character? What’s something you don’t like?

I have a whole Thing about how I'm a strident feminist who somehow hitched her wagon to this geriatric misogynist, but it is a part of his very distinctive voice, so I do like to dig deep with "what's the thing a man could say that would piss me off the most", and then I run it through the canon content (since his character voice is very particular and distinct), plus some meta works with Eric Bogosian, to see if it fits, sprinkle in some Freak Shit, and bada bing bada boom, we've got our favourite asshole. It's weirdly cathartic in a way? Exorcising demons of shitty men I've dealt with or known of I guess lmao. I would say in sappier moods I like looking for the gentleness and the silver lining underneath the ten layers of Having No Limits, and when I hit on what's tender but still plausible, aka my favourite Daniel moments? No better feeling.

The flipside of this, being what I don't like, is that keeping that voice up is hard and it is a challenge to stay as sharp and ten steps ahead as he is. Need to brush up on some Columbo, I think...

Madeleine Éparvier

10. Could you be best friends with this character?

My heart would really, really, really love to say yes, but my gut and my brain say a definitive no. For one thing, while they make it very, very clear she's not a Collaborator or antisemitic in the slightest, the way her wartime affair came about and her later actions betrays an amorality in those circumstances that I probably wouldn't be able to look past, outsiders though we both may be. I'm also one for obsessive morality-related thoughts in general, so I don't think this would jell especially well with her survivalist mentality. I'm also fluent in French but it's not my first language, so that would likely get on her nerves. And while we'd share an interest in fashion and I'd commend her for her tastes in both clothes and women, I feel like she'd see me as a bootlicker for my legal education lolol.

And most importantly - Madeleine is incredibly mean. It's hot, it's funny, it's sexy, but I am profoundly oversensitive, and she would absolutely make me cry several times lmao. I don't really know if there's any character on this show I'd be able to get along with because everyone is so delightfully awful and also, you know, murderous. But that's why it's fun!

20. Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn’t matter?

Well, Claudia is her companion and soulmate, so that's the easy answer; they complete each other in a way that no one ever quite has. Two outcasts, two people brutally mistreated in societies to which they were supposed to belong, two women carrying pain and humour and brutality and softness, and growing flowers over the corpses they leave in their wake. She is the X at the end of Claudia's long journey, the reason she doesn't leap in the fire who did not think twice about burning at her side; she is the only one who reads Claudia's diaries with permission. Claudia is her window to the wider world, her rescuer twice-over, and the only person who meets her where she is, in strangeness and violence and joy, in sucking the marrow from the bones you leave behind you.

So...'best friend' is probably a very light way of putting it lolol.

But also? I genuinely think she'd get along with Daniel. Two unapologetic amoral assholes who defiantly faced their past trauma to sacrifice themselves for the one they loved. And they both bully Armand, too!

Thank you so much for this! Apologies again for the length.

[theweeklydiscourse]

Hello, I first off would like to say please take this with a grain of salt. I am very new to the ACOTAR fandom . I am seven chapters into the first book so this is no way a character analysis from anyone in the book. This is just about the fandom from what I have observed online. I really wanted to get this off my chest, and this seemed like the perfect void to yell into.

From what I have seen online, a lot of the people who read the books are trying to read or see it as Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. Where the good guys are always good and they do no wrong. ( though I would argue that even the good guys in Harry Potter and Percy Jackson have done bad things) People need to start reading it or looking at it like Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon. Where the ‘good guys’ do messed up things. ( I don’t believe there’s any true good guys and house of dragon or Game of Thrones that’s why I put it in quotes)

These are all very traumatized characters and thus they will react in the scope of that trauma. I do think that if people stop trying to put these characters into boxes, they would be able to better understand the characters themselves and be able to understand different arguments for and against these characters. And from what I’ve gathered the first three books are being told from Faya’s point of view. So we will always have a biased outlook on these characters because of that.

Once again, please take this with a grain of salt, most of my knowledge from the book series comes from what I have spoiled for myself. I just really wanted to share what I think about the book series and the fandom with someone. 

The void welcomes discourse of all kinds! There’s a common thread of absolutism that seems to run through many fandoms nowadays, and depending on the text you read, there are instances where such a reading is encouraged. A Court of Thorns and Roses is a good example of this concept, where in the first few chapters, characters are divided into categories of good and bad. The fact that this occurs in the first three chapters effectively sets the tone for the series and it creates an impression that many readers have not been able to shake off. This is later complicated by Maas’s choice to elaborate on the nuances of the designated “bad” characters later on in the series.

ACOTAR has a nasty case of protagonist-centric morality and the overall quality of the series suffers because of it. It adds to the overarching contradictions of the plot while simultaneously weakening the impact of the emotional conflicts that Maas constructs. As much as the series gestures at themes of feminism and the constraints of abusive relationships, it is all diminished by the author’s need to force a very specific narrative. If more people realized this, the fandom might not be so explosive and divided. One way readers can challenge this narrative is through critical readings and empathy (as you mentioned). Viewing characters actions through a trauma-informed lens is a great way to analyze the story and get more out of it!

I think a case can be made for Feyre being an unreliable narrator, but in my opinion, I’m not entirely convinced by that reading. She’s certainly unreliable in some pretty glaring ways, but the narrative fails to really do anything with it and instead just sinks further and further into her unreliable perspective. This perspective then becomes what the reader understands as canon in the story as opposed to a skewed view that’s informed by a biased protagonist.

[txtssera]

i don’t really have a horse in the race bc i haven’t read the new books in terms of wtv shipping discourse is going on but i think it’s certainly a choice to have this reputation as this almost revolutionary author with books about characters that have learning disorders and then to continually call your MC stupid and dumb in the more recent books.