#personal essayish

[sabertoothalex]

A little bit on love:

Love is not mysterious to me anymore. That’s not to say it’s solved but it is no longer unknowable. When love was mysterious to me it was a childish thing, something I saw in movies or read in books. A word you said to family members as thanks for getting pizza on a Friday night. It hadn’t yet become something loaded, something to hunger for, something to question. I don’t really miss these days. I hated being forced to tell people I loved them or missed them, it made me uncomfortable. I was mostly lying through my teeth in these situations. Love was transactional for me as a kid, a mode of being I’ve since learned should be fought against as much as humanly possible. Transactional not in the 18th or 19th century way of love and marriage as a way to protect family and wealth above all but in the “Want lunch today? Better inform mom that you love her immediately or else you won’t get it” way. Do anything for yourself, make a big decision for your benefit? “Why don’t you love me anymore?” Not really set up for success when the time came to view the feeling as anything more than a means to an end. Or worse an emotional roadblock that is actively used to suppress and trap you. One of the great powers of romantic love though, the true kind, is that it can put all of these messy and traumatic events into context. To feel true love is to explore yourself just as much as another person. It tests your limits and asks much of you. To meet those expectations is elating, to not meet them is crushing. No matter what it will change you.

The first time I told someone I loved them was when I was 16. The tldr on that is that I didn’t know what love was, was super out of touch with my own emotions, and didn’t truly understand what I was saying. Not all that abnormal for a 16 year old I suppose! Still, this was the first person I had sex with, my first girlfriend, many firsts happened in the handful of months we were together. I was scared and unsure. I didn’t trust the acts of kindness or affection bestowed on me and eventually we broke up. One of the most embarrassing memories from this period was the only valentine’s day we spent together. We walked to my dad’s apartment after school, my dad worked late and I was alone for the vast majority of time during the week, and the front of it was decked out in decorations. Streamers, heart-shaped balloons, flowers, candy, it was a whole thing. A beautiful and sentimental display of adolescent feelings that I could not have felt less like I deserved. During the entire evening I was awkward, unsure how to communicate what I was feeling, and reciprocate what she was feeling. A disaster all things considered. The ugly truth at this point in time was that I wasted her time by pretending I felt something I didn’t. We ran into each other again a few years later and got to chat about it, expressed how we felt at the time, laughed about how young we were. She was engaged at that point! I remember feeling so happy hearing that. I’ve found that it’s very rare to get this kind of closure on messy periods of life, so I still cherish that it happened.

[hayeshellcat]

On Becoming A Lady Person

Okay, so I wrote this long essayish, memoir-esque piece while I was in gay rehab. It's a mess. So am I. I hope it has some value. I sorta Frankensteined various journal entries and scribblings.

I am author.

I am doctor.

I am monster.

I found gender euphoria and I never expected life to feel so good.

[vanibear]

Genuine question: do you think people are more likely to paint sora as (emotionally) naive, rather than a more book-dumb kind of way? like being too trusting of people, that kind of thing

ahaha anon So i kind of accidentally wrote an essayish in response, but it ended up moving on from ur question to expanding on thoughts i have abt characterizations of sora, oopsie 

but TLDR: To answer your question anon, i actually think its about equally both, and i think perceiving him with a lack of emotional maturity can bleed into perceiving him with a lack of intelligence; sentiments like friends as your power and leaving no one behind can seem naïve and irrational if one doesnt think that sora comprehends his odds and still chooses to proceed because his heart believes it is right. while sora does have a ways to grow emotionally, especially in regards to his own feelings, i dont think that he lacks knowledge when it comes to relationships and understanding others emotions, which is actually rather his strong suit. i also think that sora is generally very smart, and just dont quite understand why people portray him as not quite being so

~ the aforementioned ramble ~ ooo good question ! hm. i think more often i notice people characterizing him in a book dumb sort of way, but honestly that could be bc it bugs me more. however, we dont know if sora did well in school or not/what level of education he got, so instead of a strictly textbook smart sense, i see it more as a lacking the characteristics of someone who is book smart sense? basically, people painting him as airheaded, oblivious, or not very eloquent; i think especially with jokes or complicated subjects going over his head. but, if you look at his dialogue (and, while this is more subjective, puzzles and challenges he has to overcome in the gameplay), thats usually not the case? hes delivered plenty of introspective and articulate lines; hes witty, sarcastic, and even sometimes rude; hes incredibly adaptive and resourceful considering the situations he’s thrown into, and hes a quick learner, as shown by his keyblade skills.

however, i think some of these perceptions do come from how he is a very emotionally driven person. he follows his heart and is loyal and trusting to a fault, and that can cause him to take actions that seem impulsive, illogical, and naïve. however, i think sora is very knowledgeable of emotions because of how he connects with people. he’s incredibly empathetic and understanding of others and has made friends with nearly everyone he meets because of that; which i believe is an incredibly difficult accomplishment. while his feelings can lead to mistakes, they are also his greatest strength; he will try his best to fix those mistakes. where i believe he really struggles is in processing his own emotions.

and on that, sora is pretty self-deprecating, and laughs off a lot of things, which sometimes can cover up just how talented he is because even he denies it. i think that oftentimes, sora himself believes that he’s dumb, or lesser in comparison to others, which can lead to people taking that at face value if they dont look deeper

however. sora is still a cheerful and silly guy, and thats an important part of his personality too! he is an energetic, optimistic teenage boy who really just wants to have fun with his friends and thinks that everyone should have a happy ending.

sora has a lot of different dimensions to him, but unfortunately characters that have a seemingly cheerful disposition and noble motivations that come off as idealistic can often get sanded down to being stupid because they’re seen as too naïve to understand the gravity of their situation.

to clarify, i dont think that soras never been dumb. keyboard (and keyblade) smashing is probably not the best idea if a computer isnt working. but, in my opinion, i think sometimes we dont give sora enough credit in our depictions of him, and tend to exaggerate certain qualities of his while forgetting others

[tf2fansderogatory]

I'm siding with the anon, why the spy hate? Every single one of the mercs is somewhat questionable. I think spy is pretty neat imo.

It's okay I allow it <3 I think holding any actual genuine hatred for any tf2 character is like. insane. and I'm absolutely not gonna make judgements about anyone's character based on what hat men they like that's ridiculous. We hang out and we're friends and u know I tease u about him and say he has little toothpick legs and smells bad but it's all in good fun. Spy tf2 is just like a silly little guy to me. I'm, like, anti-Spy essay. I don't need any Spy essays whether against him or in favor of him. Here's a rebuttal France suck

[infinity-squared-comics]

As the title suggests, I am going to be attempting to explain the complexity of my sexual orientation and gender identity, by showing y’all some flags, explaining what they mean, and then at the end explaining why we have so many different weirdly specific genders and sexualities, because I couldn’t think of any other way to come out publicly.

Omnisexual: I previously identified as pansexual, until like two days ago when I discovered that omnisexual is a thing, and covers my personal experiences a bit better. Like pansexuality, omnisexuality means that you are attracted to all genders, the difference being that pansexual people are “gender blind”, meaning that they are attracted to all people the same, they don’t particularly notice gender. Omnisexual, on the other hand, means that they are attracted to all genders separately (I’m doing a bad job at explaining this). So, if a pansexual person saw an attractive person, they would think “that’s an attractive person” while an omnisexual person would think “that’s an attractive guy”. The difference being that omnisexual people are “gender conscious”. I hope this makes sense to you, I feel like I somehow understand this less then when I started writing this.

Aegosexual: (I really like this flag). This one is so obscure that spellcheck doesn’t even recognize it as a word. Aegosexuality is part of the Asexual spectrum, as you could maybe tell from the color scheme. An Aegosexual person expiriences sexual attraction, but has no desire to do any... things that would normally be associated with having sexual attraction. So, an Aegosexual person might find someone “sexy” but not actually have any sort of desire to do.. things with them. They might even be actively grossed out by the idea of sex (like me), which is known as being sex repulsed (seriously this paragraph was hard to write just because I had to be concious of the idea of sex).

Genderfluid: the most well known of this list of three, and the one that I personally have had the hardest time being open about. I am genderfluid. That means that my gender identity fluctuates. Sometimes I feel female. Sometimes I fell male. Most of the time I feel somewhere in between. I’m lucky enough that I happen to have a gender neutral name (Jamie), which means I don’t have to go through the ordeal of finding a new name. (Edit: never mind, my gender has been solidly fem for a few years now.)

Why do we need to be this specific?

And now for the most essayish part of this essay. Why do we need to have these specific genders and sexualities? Why do we need to have specific terms for Graysexual, Demisexual, Aegosegual, and all the other sexualities that fall under the Asexual spectrum? The answer is experiences. No two people will have the exact same experiences, but the more specific theses terms can get, the more likely you are to be able to find people who share some of your own experiences. And why does that matter? Because knowing that other people feel the same way you do validates your emotions. When I identified as pansexual, I never really felt valid, because other pan people would talk about gender blindness, and that wasn’t something I was familiar with, and just knowing that there was a term for the way I specifically felt was so validating. one of the most important thing to help young queer people is to make sure that they have access to all the ideas, that they know of all of the different genders, sexual orientations, and romantic orientations that there are, so that they’re more likely to find the one that fits them. Of course, I’m not qualified to talk about many of these, so I encourage anyone else with an “uncommon” sexuality or gender to try to explain it to the best of your ability on this post.

[illegiblewords]

I think I mentioned before that there are certain social bits I’m re-evaluating for myself after getting out of an unhealthy situation. Overall doing a lot better than I was, but there are a couple of spots I think might be causing a little confusion still so gonna mention those in case it’s helpful!

1) This one I mentioned before, but sometimes when I either am analyzing hard or trying to explain a complicated thought I wind up writing more formally. Usually comes with more essayish language too, which can read more assertive than I think a lot of folks are used to. I know a few people saw that before and got a bit spooked. This is something I’m trying both to mitigate with friendly chatter or at least do disclaimers about, but basically it has more to do with me getting very focused/how I process stuff. Definitely not intended to be chilly or intimidating or anything!

2) How I talk outside of stories is very different from how I tell stories. Ex. I do actually take characters I write, the stuff they struggle with, different factors that do or don’t influence them, etc. seriously. But I also am very, very prone to affectionate teasing and sometimes referencing points I take seriously in more lighthearted ways.

An easy example, when I deal with Harvey Dent (Two-Face from Batman), this is a guy with severe mental illness. I write him as having a lot of invasive thoughts and essentially having his sense of personal agency so degraded that he has lost the filter that allows him to choose between thoughts and actions, regardless of his personal opinion on the thought. He also has a severe physical disfigurement stemming from violence. And on top of that (using the comic version) he has wife who he loves and who loves him, but given the nature of the illness things are ungodly strained. I think this is all very sad and interesting and it resonates with me a lot.

Meanwhile, when talking more casually I might say how lame Harvey is or how he ran away from home because he’s ugly. I also have old scenarios that made me laugh a lot back in the day essentially taking his horrible luck and attempts at leadership then pushing them to completely stupid extremes.

None of this negates the more serious thoughts I have, it’s really just affectionate teasing. I usually figure if I have serious writing attached to myself too it can be inferred I am just teasing from a place of loving these characters... except a lot of folks aren’t strictly aware that the stuff I write seriously and me teasing are same person haha.

Especially guilty in FFXIV lately. XD

So in case anyone might be worried the teasing was serious, trivializing, or dismissive—just want to clarify that it’s just an affection thing I do with fictional characters really. I tend not to tease like that unless I have sincere affection there and some level of respect.

I’m still going through my own longstanding habits and deciding how I feel about them, but I hope this helps clear up somewhat!

[thegenderdruid]

A short essayish thing about IEM Pyeongchang, Scarlett, Starcraft, and esports, adapted from a twitter thread I wrote this morning

Ok so, you may have heard that Scarlett just won IEM Pyeongchang, but if you aren't as big of a esports/Starcraft/Scarlett fan as I am some of how big of a deal this is might have been lost so time to talk about why it's so big for all 3.

First of all, for esports generally. Sadly there are not very many female players in esports, let alone trans female players, the amount of casters/writers/hosts who are women has been steadily rising over the years but the amount of players has remained pretty stagnant. I can't speak for all esports because I don't watch all esports but between the ones I have watched (primarily LoL, Starcraft 1 and 2, Dota 2, Overwatch) probably 99% of the time there have been 0 professional female players in all of these games at the highest level. This is slowly starting to change with Scarlett really coming into her own as a tip-top level Starcraft player and Geguri recently being signed to an Overwatch League team but these remain largely outliers. The reasons for this are sadly pretty obvious, gaming is rampant with sexism, many of the top esports are currently team games which to reach the highest levels of require using voice chat which opens you up to harassment (read this article if you want to know more: https://www.polygon.com/2018/2/5/16964202/heroes-of-the-storm-voice-chat-blizzard). Also, although I have no proof of this as I’m not an industry insider, I've heard esports teams are often very sexist in hiring which just makes the problem even worse. As much as some people would like to say that women are just biologically coded to not be as competitive or good at esports, that misses the point of systematic sexism and also another big thing, lack of role models. 

This is where Scarlett comes in, admittedly she's not the most outspoken person or particularly into advocacy or anything but just the fact that she is a woman, and a trans woman, playing at the highest level is massively inspirational to me and many others. The amount of people I've seen who are like, I'm not into Starcraft but I watch when Scarlett is on because she's a huge inspiration to me and inspires me to play other games more seriously is a lot, seeing someone like you at the highest level after just not for so long is super inspiring honestly, this is part of why there being no female players in the Overwatch League at the start was such a big deal for people, having someone who is like you to look up to doing the thing you want to do is really inspiring. Anyways, the point is Scarlett being so successful this year is a huge deal for esports as a whole and has inspired many people I know.

Now for the context within the Starcraft scene, this is going to get a bit more technical so let me first provide some context. Starcraft is a franchise that has had a robust esports scene since the early 2000s, first with Starcraft 1, and later from 2010 onward with Starcraft 2, both of these games gained massive popularity in Korea and worldwide but especially in Korea. It's just an accepted fact in the Starcraft scene and in most esports honestly that Koreans are just the best, this comes from a variety of factors which I'm not going to go into but it mostly has to do with culture both societal and individually. Anyways, because of this, Korean tournaments are the biggest and most prestigious and the biggest and most prestigious of them all is the Global Starcraft 2 League, or the GSL. This tournament has been run tri-annually basically since the launch of the game. Winning the GSL is basically the holy grail of Starcraft competition, if you win a GSL, you have made it. It's arguably more prestigious than winning Blizzcon because the level of competition is so high, it's a tournament that runs for approximately 3 months with long breaks between matches and because of this and because the matches are announced far in advance, each round the players have weeks to months to meticulously plan strategies tailored to their opponents, something Koreans are experts at. Making it into the GSL at all for a non-korean is a massive accomplishment, making it past the first round is extremely rare, if you want to read more about the history of non-korean players in the GSL for further context, I recommend this article: http://scdojo.tumblr.com/post/155549201195/the-complete-history-of-foreigners-in-gsl

Anyways, that was a bit of a tangent but it will be important for later, the point is, this week, a major tournament, run by a non-korean organization but in Korea, IEM Pyeongchang happened and in it, Scarlett, a Canadian player, won it in dominating fashion against a top-level Korean pro, sOs. It's pretty rare for top non-koreans to beat top Koreans period, although it's been starting to happen more and more recently, but not only did she beat a top Korean player, she did it in dominating fashion. Furthermore, her opponent, sOs, is not just any Korean but the highest earning Starcraft player of all time and widely regarded as one of the best players in the world. On top of this, although it wasn't necessarily a Korean tournament because it was run but a non-korean company, it was in Korea which is a huge deal. In the history of both Starcraft 1 and 2 before yesterday, only 2 non-korean players have ever won tournaments in Korea.

The first was grrrr..., a Canadian player in 2000, the second was Neeb, an American player currently regarded as one of the best if not the best non-korean player in the world in 2016, and now there is a third, Scarlett, in 2018. Even excluding tournaments in Korea, it's very rare for non-koreans to beat Koreans in best of 7 series, I can't find exact statistics but it has happened probably less than 10 times in the history of both games and almost certainly almost never against a top-tier Korean like sOs. Back to the GSL, Scarlett currently is in the GSL ro16 and will play on Friday, her group contains Innovation, widely regarded as the best Starcraft 2 player in the world right now, Leenock generally considered the worst player in the ro16 and who Scarlett beat in the GSL qualifier, and Zest, a player who was at IEM Pyeongchang and lost to Elazer, a Polish player who Scarlett went on to beat in the ro4 on her way to winning. All she needs to do to advance to the GSL ro8 are either beat Leenock and Zest, or Zest twice depending on how things play out, and both of these things seem very possible for her given her level of play at IEM. This, quite frankly, would be massive, the GSL ro8 is basically the 8 best players in the world and the last non-korean to make it there was in 2012. So yeah, Scarlett being this good is a huge deal for the Starcraft scene and esports in general.

Now for some perspective on her career, particularly in 2017 which is when she both truly rose to prominence in the global scene, and also massively under performed in my opinion. Scarlett started playing in 2012 but only had middling success from 2012-2016 with a few top 4s and 2nd places in medium sized tournaments, but very little success and no tournament victories. If you look at her performance in 2017, it may look the same at a glance, but as someone who watched almost all of her games in 2017, they really tell a different story. If you look at her Liquipedia page (the main SC2 esports wiki) you'll see 0 top 4 finishes in all of 2017 in premier tournaments, however if you go a bit deeper you'll see that not only did she qualify for all 3 season of GSL, something no other non-korean did, she also made at least the round of 16 in all three of the foreign WCS events she participated in, and lost once to the champion, once to the runner up, and once to a ro4 finisher. 

On top of that, in the games themselves, there were things that don't really show from a glance at the results, she had several moments of absolute brilliance, destroying top players like, Stats, Innovation, and Classic in GSL games before proceeding to not be able to maintain her level of play and eventually lose the series. The potential was definitely there last year but something seemed off, whether it was nerves, feeling the pressure, or possibly travel problems in the case of the WCS tournaments, either way, all year I kept thinking she had the potential to do make deep runs in tournaments and kept being disappointed. Now after all of that last year, not only is she in a very manageable GSL ro16 group, she also just came off of winning a major tournament in dominating fashion, against several top non-korean players that many analysts perceived as better than her, and a top tier Korean in the finals. I'm really hoping this the start of the year of Scarlett, we will see how things turn out on Friday in the GSL ro16 but things are looking up for her career and I can't wait to see how far she can go in the rest of the year.

That is all, thanks for reading all of this if you made it this far, I hope it was interesting or informative. Now go watch and cheer for Scarlett, especially in the GSL this Friday at 8pm PST! Go Scarlett!

[somervta]

Gift-Giving Part 2: the Second Principle

So, last year around years end, I wrote this essay on  gift-giving and what we can learn about it from economics and a paper on the deadweight loss of Christmas. After having several discussions with people about gifting advice, I realized there were a lot of other principles I use that I never mentioned there. So I’m gonna add to it a little again this year! More disjointed, probably, and more linky less essayish, but there are Principles I have not yet articulated that aren’t about economics! In particular, I’m going to talk briefly (okay, maybe) about two categories, which I’m going to (uncharitably) call Manipulation and How to Buy Things. I’ll probably be linking it back to the original post, so read that if you haven’t already! Also, if you’re interested in the topic, there were some interesting comments from others Manipulation is, like I said, something of an uncharitable description. I call it this in my head so that it doesn’t come to dominate my decision-making, and to remind myself that it can become manipulative - it’s my name for the category of thought that’s about the emotions and reactions of the recipient, as independent from the ‘true value’ of the gift. Have to buy gifts for coworkers, or bosses, or family members you don’t know well/care about intrinsically yet, but still want to think warmly/well of you? This is the category of thought for you. This is about gifts that make people grateful, that make them think of you often and warmly, and about navigating the weird social lines needed to get people good gifts (or gifts perceived as good), without the personal level of intimacy last year’s essay talked about. There are two simple principles to follow here; Buy relatively expensive (here and throughout metonym for high-quality; don’t be that asshole who buys hyper-expensive-but-not-good things because you can, and don’t pass up a chance for the best X just because it’s inexpensive - distinct from being cheap) small things. That is, get really really good things that are in a category which people usually spend little on. Pens are a great example here, for people who aren’t stationary/calligraphy aficionados.  You can get really high-quality pens for 20 dollars (less, depending on how much you want them to look amazing as well), easily fitting in the budget range that’s reasonable for a ‘not-close acquaintance’, but it could easily be the best pen the person’s ever used. Experiments have shown that people feel much more grateful for such gifts than for even a more expensive gift of an item that’s typically that price, and feel concomitantly better about the person giving them. (By the way, while most of this is backed by various research, I’m assuming the reader has read and discarded the research from Gino & Flynn on how usually the most appreciated gift is money, or something specifically asked for  [in that order]).  The second principle in this category is something simple and retrospectively obvious, although often neglected or not explicitly considered (it, too is backed by research). That is, a gift will more strongly and lastingly engender feelings if it is something the recipient uses frequently. Think of it as though each time they use it, there’s a chance that they’ll remember it’s from you and think of you fondly (assuming using it is pleasant)! I won’t spend too much time on this - it’s not deep, merely neglected.  Notice the connections to the principles discussed last time, but with a different take - it’s not a coincidence that the relatively-expensive gift is explicitly something they wouldn’t get themselves, usually because the category is something they couldn’t justify spending so large on (like men’s underwear. If you can buy a guy really good underwear who hasn’t worn good underwear before, you’ve hit the jackpot.)     I don’t have experimental data to back this one up, but I strongly suspect the ‘get people things they would get themselves (but are happy about anyway)’ is deeper than it seems. It combines so many aspects - pleasant surprise, avoiding replicability (I’ve gotten gifts I was happy for, but I knew that I probably would have gotten the thing myself sooner or later), perceived thoughtfulness, a stronger psychological link to the giver, a hedge of sorts against deadweight loss.... it crops up again and again in my thinking, to the extent to which I’m tempted to label it a sort of meta-principle.  Next time (maybe?): How To Buy Things Well, and the obvious extension to gift-giving.  ...no promises about not taking another whole year

[sabertoothalex]

A diary of objects, what they meant to us, and what they might remember about our time together

Early

I hope my mother’s old table can remember me. It was a light wood, one I cannot put a name to. The swirls and knots on it captured my imagination as I played scenes in my mind where one formless blob was on its way to visit another. Do you remember my arms? I rested them on you often. As I laid them down my skin would spread slightly and my body’s oil would infiltrate your cracks. I believe many of my memories seeped out through my skin and into you. Do you remember when I was sad? Those were the times when my arms felt heavier on you because I slumped my shoulders as low as was allowed. Perhaps you have fond memories too but those are harder for me to recall. I wish there was a way to speak to you as one would an old friend.

Later

What about the passenger seat in an old crush’s car? Do you remember the contour of my body pressing against and being accepted into you? Grey cloth, a few little rips, well loved and held dear. I fidgeted a lot which could not have been comfortable for you. I’m sorry for that, I hope I didn’t disturb you too much. I wasn’t very good at that whole thing back then, some may argue I still am not. Being invited into such an intimate space…could every piece and part have felt what I was feeling? Does the seatbelt remember the shape of my ribs? Could the outside of the door, cherry red paint, feel for me when I missed the handle the first time I attempted to grab it?

Later still, but repeated often

My computer chair’s armrests. You know the material right? The one that gives just enough to let your elbows slightly sink in but firm enough to keep you rigidly pointed forward. Forget the breathing exercises my therapist recommended or the mindfulness meditation I was too far away from to recall. You, my silent companions, got me through my panic attacks more often than not. I squeezed you, I twisted you, I hurt you. I cannot imagine a more wretched task to undertake as often as you had to. I hope you know still just how much I appreciated your assistance. Your friendship, almost. Yeah. I would call you friends. I don’t know what you would say about me but I’d understand if you were bitter. Wherever you are now I hope you’re being treated more gently.

something to accompany