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gyuswhore · 2 years ago

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the story of us ✦ j.w.w x reader

the story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now - the story of us

synopsis: So many walls that you can't break through; except you do.

wc: 2.1K

contains: best friends to lovers, angst, fluff, humour, happy ending, alcohol, arguments

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[a/n]: im exhausted, im loopy, im hungry, but i really wanted to post this so here you go my babies I'm sorry i haven't fed you in so long (ty @toruro for making sure i wasn't talking out of my ass in this ily)

[edit; 11/04/24]: grammar and spelling.

Jeon Wonwoo was nearing boiling point when he watched you push him away from yet another conversation.

He tried to understand, just like he always had. But it was proving near impossible at the five-month mark.

There were clear signs you exhibited when you needed space, for whatever reason, Wonwoo knew you would tell him when you recovered. So he gave you what you needed.

And yet, when he finds himself pushed away from what looks like a casual conversation between your mutual friends, he finds his mild annoyance grow into something hotter.

There’s a clench in his jaw as he tries not to squeeze the red cup in his hand with too much pressure, even when all the spiteful bit of his brain wants to do is to pour its pigmented contents all over your cream outfit. He manages to control himself, choosing to get up and exit the premises entirely. In complete silence, he refuses to acknowledge any yell of his name from passing acquaintances.

Jeon Wonwoo refused to respond to any of your advances after that.

Invitations to lunch were left on a jarring sent, the notification sitting in his log until he chooses to open it too late. His response was bare when you asked for help on some accounting concepts, pushing you over into Jihoon’s hands to fulfill your requirements. There’s a blatant shrug when you touch his shoulder, concerned, asking why his behaviour had become so distant in the past weeks; he responds with a mumble of, “just tired”.

The great divide happened a few days proceeding your birthday, one for which Wonwoo did nothing for but send you a quick message during the evening, never to see you throughout the extended day.

“I can’t believe you’re putting this on me!” you all but yell, eyes wide and expression exasperated at the situation.

“Are you blind? Or just plain stupid? Because I didn’t tolerate months of your shit attitude to have you say it isn’t your fault.” Wonwoo is breathing heavily, hands motioning towards your entire figure with equal disbelief.

“What attitude?” you emphasize. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know I couldn’t be upfront with my best friend.”

“There’s a difference between being in a mood and blatant disrespect. I’m tired of having to put up with your mood swings like it’s my responsibility to coddle you. When was the last time you genuinely asked me how I was doing?”

“All the time!”

“Yeah, after you realize there's nobody else to whine and wail to!”

“Wonwoo, you’re being ridiculous.”

“Fine. If I’m clearly so unhinged, I’ll leave you to your liking.”

The dwindled interactions, from messages to hellos, went from sparing to nonexistent — just like that.

You’d be lying if you said you didn’t expect for you and Wonwoo to reconcile in the matter of a few days, if not a couple weeks.

But when the distance did nothing but grow larger, there was a settle of resentment in the pit of your stomach as you accepted the feud you were in.

A text was sent from your phone a couple days after the incident.

[You]: can we talk?

But when you see no sign of the grey Delivered on the end, you knew he had blocked you.

This was all nothing less than baffling to you for a number of reasons, starting with how you had never witnessed Wowoo acting this way.

Wonwoo had done nothing but reprimand you the rare chance you suggested blocking an apprehensive individual, something about not showing that you cared. His voice seemed redundant after a certain decibel, the rarest chance to witness him yell at a failed video game or a frustrating professor.

You know better, which is the only reason you’re ruling off paranormal possession.

The claims against you came as an afterthought, not, however, rendering them any less strange. There’s a part of you that pondered if your shield of annoyance blocked you from seeing the truth in his words and in your behaviour, finding yourself overwhelmed with emotions when the thought crossed your mind, tears of frustration immediately blurring your vision.

You did not understand, you could not. And when it all got too much, you allowed the hurt and confusion to turn into something more dangerous. You replaced it with anger, in the same place that once occupied a more delicate emotion.

There was an uproar in Wonwoo’s mind when he sees you walk into the lecture hall, unaware of your overlapping schedule in the new semester. He watches as your eyes pass over the moderately packed space, briefly glancing over where he sat; if you saw him, you did nothing to bring a reaction out of it. You take a seat a few rows up front, right in front of him where he’s able to see the back of your head for the next two hours — for the rest of the semester.

He wonders if it’s too late to switch classes.

“Wonwoo, I honestly think this is getting out of hand.” Jihoon munches on his cashews, leaning against bark of the tree they were both sat under.

“Did you want me to keep tending to her bullshit then?” he grumbles.

“That’s not what I’m saying, you know it’s not.”

“That’s what it sounds like.” Wonwoo’s retort is brisk.

Jihoon is suddenly snapping his fingers in his face at the reply, a flinch accompanies Wonwoo’s already sour expression.

“See! See how frustrating it is when somebody isn’t making sense?”

“How does this—”

“Wonwoo, did you try talking to her about how you felt, you know, without the screaming?”

Jihoon watches as Wonwoo’s expression clears out, his eyebrows unfurrowing and the scowl fading. He doesn’t speak, choosing to let the realization kick in.

“No.”

Jihoon sighs, taking another pause. “I’m not saying what she did wasn’t uncalled for, but you need to talk shit out before deciding you hate each other.”

“I don’t hate her.”

“Right, so can we wrap this up quickly and have you confess your undying love so we can all relax.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Heat crawls up Wonwoo’s cheeks.

“What? If you don’t hate her, it’s gotta be the opposite.”

Did Wonwoo like you? Yeah, he probably did. Did he ever let himself ponder upon it? No, because he was downright mortified of the mere thought. He finds himself a hypocrite to say it was to preserve your friendship, but he figures he’s fucked it up in a way that’s arguably worse.

Regardless, Wonwoo walks away from that conversation with two things: a stark realization, and an even starker admittance.

Everything was going wrong. At least that’s what it felt like when you hear the clang of your water bottle hit the pavement, rolling off into the oncoming traffic as you sprint to grab it. You nearly cause a vehicle pile-up, swallowing a couple profanities from braking drivers.

You’re stuffing the darn thing into your bag when you trip on a loose brick on the path, nearly landing on your face. The glare you send into the pavement costs you even more when a hard shoulder bumps into your side, sending you another couple steps back. You don’t bother to see who the perpetrator is, too preoccupied with your attempts to take in deeper breaths amid the blankness of your mind.

There are no hiccups after that, what you might owe your more conscious mind to. Stomping up the library steps, you thank nothingness for the air conditioning that meets your hot face, slowing down as you take in the crowd.

Scanning the room for an empty seat is harder than you’d anticipated, hoping the heat would keep students away from the building as you left to get work done. Approaching a table, you set down your bag with a huff, pulling the chair out to finally take the seat you’ve been needing for so long.

The universe seems to have other plans.

It’s almost funny the way you and Wonwoo make eye contact across the other table, the recognition sending a jolt through your stomach.

You’ve never moved so fast, pushing the chair back in with a screech that earns you a few looks, grabbing the handles of your bag as you turn around to leave the building you’d just entered.

No way you'd sit there. Not when he was around.

You're bounding down the steps when somebody passes you, murmuring something without slowing their stride.

“I’m leaving, you can go inside,” Wonwoo says, and the sound of his voice has you halting almost immediately.

Whipping your head around to search for the sound, you watch as he takes a turn at the end of the steps, slowly moving out of your vision.

There’s a swirl of something in your chest, and you realise in that moment how much you missed hearing his voice.

Chiding yourself, you blink back the water that wells up in your eyes, embarrassed at how quickly you were losing yourself.

But the damage was done. And you wanted to be reckless, regardless of how desperate it made you look. A split second decision is made in that moment, one that lightens the heavy feet that you’ve planted on the concrete.

You’re back to bounding down the steps, but this time with aim.

Taking the same turn you saw Wonwoo take, you break into a sprint as you see his figure move farther away. You keep running, continuing to bump into both objects and people, hurried "sorry"'s the only thing you choose to throw their way.

“Wonwoo!” Your voice comes out stronger than you’d intended, the sharpness having him turn around in search, eyes landing on your accelerating figure.

Both of you realize too late how fast you’re really going, the velocity taking you directly into his outstretched arms, hands grasping the sleeves of his shirt as you come to screeching stop directly into his chest.

You don’t have the time nor the patience to be embarrassed, pulling your face back to look directly into Wonwoo’s bewildered eyes to huff out your next words.

“Why did you block me?” you ask, voice gruff and slightly out of breath.

Wonwoo’s mouth opens and closes like a fish, words refusing to come out.

“Why are you so mad at me? Why are you being nice to me if you’re mad at me?” You don’t stop, the direct questions tumbling off your tongue in desperation.

You search his face for an answer when his mouth fails, but all you find is the remnants of shock yet to ebb away.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for making you feel like you weren’t important, I’m sorry for taking your presence for granted, I’m sorry for hurting you, I’m sorry for…for… I don’t know! I’m just really sorry and I don't know how else to make this right.”

“I’m sorry, too,” you hear him say and you feel the moisture return to your eyes.

“Huh?”

“I should’ve…” he pauses, looking sheepish. “I should’ve talked to you before I, y’know, went off on you. I should’ve managed my feelings better, I’m sorry.”

You're silent for a few tantalizing moments before you raise your fists, and pound down on his chest with everything you have. You do it again, and then again, and again—

“What?- Ow!”

“When are you gonna stop bottling up your feelings for fucks sake, it’s landed you everywhere but good!” you say, nearly yelling.

Wonwoo whips his head around to see who’s listening, palm to mouth in attempts to silence you.

“I’m sorry! I know! I’m working on it,” he rambles, trying to get you to quit struggling. “Jihoon and I talked, that’s why I realised I was being dumb.”

“Are you gonna unblock me now or do I need to pay Jihoon to sit down with you again?”

Wonwoo’s eyebrows furrow. “You payed Jihoon to sit with me?”

“No, you idiot. But I should have because you can’t seem to figure out how to feel emotions.”

Wonwoo can’t help himself when he breaks out into a grin, letting out a breathy chuckle that has you asking “What?”.

He pulls you in, heart to heart in an embrace, holding you tight to make up for the weeks of no contact. He breathes in your scent and feels as though he hasn’t in years.

“I’m not gonna come running up to you the next time you decide you hate me,” you mumble into his shoulder, pouting slightly.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“No.” Wonwoo pulls away but keeps you in his arms, looking at you, “I love you. Like, the kind of stuff that makes you wanna live together forever. I love you.”

It’s your turn to gape like a fish.

“W-what?”

“You told me not to bottle up my feelings.”

“Yeah, but—wow, um.”

“Did I make another mistake?”

No! You wanted to scream. But you don’t. You instead lift your hands up to come around his face, cradling it. And you kissed him.

“I love you, too. Like the live together forever kind.”

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intersexbookclub · 4 months ago

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A lot of thoughts about Cripping Intersex

On 2024-09-29 we met to talk about Chapters 0 and 7-9 of the 2022 book Cripping Intersex by Celeste Orr. This was a book that numerous people had requested we read, and we wound up with deeply mixed feelings about it. 😬

Overall reactions:

Michelle: I found the concept of “hauntology” incredibly compelling. I’m here for some shitposting. 🍵

Apollo: I loved the concept of compulsory dyadism. I found the downplaying of “perisex” as a term to be weird, and the lack of divulging intersex/disability status was weird.

Elizabeth: the lack of diverging intersex/disability status wasn’t just weird, it was anathema to standpoint theory, and so every time Orr cited standpoint theorists, it made me seriously doubt Orr’s understanding of the theoretical basis that they actively chose to use 🧐. I was disappointed by this book. I agree with its central premise, so I should have been an easy sell. Instead I came out shaking, upset, feeling like Orr was a voyeur to our community, that Orr does not actually view intersex studies as a serious research area, that we’re just a theoretical fascination.

Remy: There were a lot of good points about how disability is socially constructed, but how Orr used “bodymind” detracted from their arguments for me. This book had a lot of uncomfortable conversations, some of them I was happy to read, some I need to come to terms with myself, while others I felt were treated a little too artificially equally such as the section with the phrase "the future is female" and the intersex community being involved in the queer community. 🤔

Bnuuy: it's really jarring how they approach the topic. There are a lot of pieces for a good theory here, but it’s kinda like Orr is just like the completely wrong person to go try to assemble them 🫤

As a collective, we generally were receptive (if not enthused!) about the central message that intersex benefits from disability studies/rights/justice perspectives, and that our community would benefit from more interaction with the disability studies/rights/justice communities! 💜

At the same time, we all agreed that Orr felt like a voyeur to our community. Rather than engaging with the intersex community, they seem to have a one-sided relationship where they read a bunch of things by intersex people but never actually conversed with intersex people. Whether Orr is intersex or not matters a whole lot less to us than whether Orr is actively participating in the community.

We made a lot of (unflattering) comparisons of Orr’s book to Envisioning African Intersex by Swarr, an intersex studies book by a perisex author. The latter is a great example of how a perisex scholar can do right by the intersex community: Swarr is clear about being perisex, clearly lays out her motivation for writing the book (she saw medical photography of intersex people, thought it was fucked up, later became friends with intersex activist Sally Gross, and then wanted to honour Gross’ memory after Gross died tragically.) Swarr was clearly connected to multiple African intersex organizations and made an explicit, deliberate choice to publish her book as open access so that the work could actually be read by the African activists she has been working with. Swarr’s perisex status matters a lot less than the fact that Swarr writes in a way that demonstrates personal investment in advancing intersex rights/justice.

Orr may or may nor be intersex. We don’t know. We don’t really care, because Orr doesn’t demonstrate personal investment in the intersex rights/justice/studies communities. That’s what actually matters to us, and it's what a lot of this post is going to talk about.

Underneath the cut we're going to go into a lot more detail about the book. There were things we liked about the book, and want to be fair in our assessment. Some of the complaints we had about the book hinge on an understanding of sociological theory and academic practices, so we'll give some context on those issues.

What we liked

This book had a bunch of things going for it.

The one thing this book did better than Swarr was its use of hauntology. Swarr invokes hauntology in her book, but not nearly as effectively as Orr does. Orr gets a lot of effective mileage out of how the spectre of intersex haunts people’s bodies. Not just intersex people’s bodies, but also the bodies of pregnant people who are called upon to exorcise the spectre of intersex through selective abortion should a foetus be identified as possibly intersex.

The haunting metaphor rung true for talking about how we intersex people are haunted by past surgeries, forced treatments, medical trauma, and so on. Even when we’re “done” with receiving gender-altering “treatments” we live with their ghosts every day.

We liked the explicit connections that Orr drew between intersex and disability studies. Elizabeth in particular was warmed by the shoutout to how Garland-Thompson explicitly includes intersex in her disability studies work. We felt that Orr perhaps underestimates how receptive many intersex people would be to their central argument - Orr takes on a tone of “hey bear with my crazy radical argument” that we weren’t sure was really necessary.

Orr is not the first to make the argument that intersex organizing and scholarship would benefit from more alignment with the disability world. This gets into criticisms, but Orr isn’t the first to make this argument yet seems unaware of how regularly the argument comes up. Indeed there’s a whole chapter in Critical Intersex (2009) arguing that intersex is better off allying with the disability community than the queer community. It’s not hard to find intersex people on this very website arguing similar things. Intersex-support even has a whole section on it in their FAQ, though it does cite Orr (lol). Orr does at least seem aware of Koyama’s work making this argument.

We appreciated Orr calling out ableism in a lot of intersex organizing. When intersex people and organizations insist that intersex is NOT a disorder or disability, they conflate disorder and disability. This is an ableist conflation: disability activism tends to start from a place of resistance to the medical model of disability, whether it be by the social model or more recent ones like the political/relational model.

Intersex activists insisting that intersex is “NOT a disability” reinforce the idea that disability is a negative, tragic thing. It’s the “I’m not like the other girls” rhetoric: putting down people who experience the same oppression you do in an effort to gain some credibility. It holds our movement back, because ableism is a very potent part of how we intersex people are oppressed. Orr does an effective job of laying this out, and we recommend reading the first chapter for this.

Orr coins a term, temporarily endosex, to talk about how people can learn at any age or time that they have had intersex traits all along. (Another way in which intersex can haunt!). For Elizabeth, the idea of temporarily perisex helped zer understand why perisex people can be *so* insistent in defining intersex as something visible at birth: because if intersex is something you can become at any age, this threatens perisex people with the possibility that they too could find themselves on the minority side of the tracks.

Other terms that Orr uses were big hits with the group. Elizabeth loved “curative violence” and ze expects to get future mileage out of the term. Ze also liked the framing of IGM as medical malpractice. Apollo praised “compulsory dyadism” as a concept. Remy shared that the cyborg stuff in the book gave them a lot to think about.

The book features a takedown of eugenicist rhetoric by a bioethicist by the name of Sparrow. We all agreed that Sparrow’s arguments sucked, were grossly eugenicist, and welcomed that Orr had put in the work to rebut his hateful messaging. Michelle praised how they invoked Sparrow’s lists of undesirables that Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis is supposed to prevent: for xem, it evoked monstrosity identification theory and ideas of the abject.

Elizabeth liked Orr’s argument that genital differences are a threat to the heterosexual (perisex) imagination: there’s so much porn out there that incorrectly presents intersex as “typical fully-developed penis plus typical fully-developed vagina” that really reflects how perisex people have a serious lack of imagination about genitals.

Fact Checking

There are a number of things that Orr says that we felt warrant an explicit fact check.

Orr presents the terms “perisex” and “endosex” as though they are contentious within the intersex community. They are not. The general consensus that one’s choice of perisex/endosex/dyadic is a question of personal preference and familiarity.

Orr clearly prefers the term dyadic, and makes a show of casting aspersions on “perisex” and “endosex”. They make it seem like their origins are disputed, and selectively cite Tumblr posts to make this argument. “Perisex” is actually the most common antonym to intersex on this very website, so it feels surreal that they're publishing the rare anti-“perisex” posts on this platform. Orr does correctly cite the Tumblr which coined “perisex”, the issue is they try to discredit it as a means to make it seem like this is not a term embraced by the intersex community.

Orr makes it seem like the origin of “endosex” is a suspicious mystery. It’s not. the term was first used in German in 2000 by Heike Bödeker. Bödeker is controversial for supporting autogynephilia 😬, but we've never seen anybody doubt Bödeker having mixed gonadal dysgenesis.

Orr clearly prefers the term “dyadic” and makes zero attempt to source the term, and the most minimal attempt at covering its controversy. This term actually does come from outside the intersex community! The term came from gender studies, popularized by 1970s radfem Shulamith Firestone. And it’s controversial for more than just being a laundering of “sex binary”.

Nobody calls it “ipso gender” anymore. It was coined as “ipso gender” but in actual usage has been “ipsogender” from basically as soon as the term was coined.

Orr uncritically repeats a quote which romanticizes home births in Black & Indigenous communities as that intersex-at-birth babies were accepted and cared for in a way that wouldn’t happen if the baby were born in hospital. This, sadly, is deserves scrutiny. We’re not saying it never happened: one can find stories supporting it. But the historical and sociological evidence show that infanticide of intersex infants has been widespread globally, and this includes traditional Black and Indigenous birth attendants. Collison (2018) as quoted in Swarr, reports that 88 of 90 traditional South African birth attendants they interviewed admitted to “getting rid” of a child if it was born intersex. That very story we just linked to about a Kenyan midwife saving intersex babies made the news because infanticide was the norm. In North America, some First Nations had similar traditions, e.g. the Navajo would leave intersex babies to die in arroyos, and the Halq’eméylem would leave them to die on a specific mountain. 😢

Michelle was visibly upset when talking about Orr’s repeated comments which insinuate that LGBT marriage equality was an attempt to fit in + liberalism + conformity. In Michelle’s words: “AIDS activists did not watch their lovers die for you to say that marriage equality is conformist bullshit. As a [polyamorous] person who is not legally married to xer spouses, I really felt that one, and I was intensely angry about how Orr was dismissing those activist efforts and the importance of them.”

The Voyeuristic Vibes

The consensus in the group was that Orr’s writing came off as voyeuristic of the intersex community. There were several points in the book where Orr seemed strangely disconnected from the intersex community. Sometimes it was small things, like spelling ipsogender as “ipso gender”, or favouring the term “interphobia” when “intersexism” is actually more popular in the community (it also avoids the potential casual ableism of framing bigots as clinically insane! Which you’d think a crip theorist would be sensitive to…. 👀)

Other times, it felt like a deeper, conceptual thing. For example, Orr’s top priority in future work was to apply their interpretation of intersex issues to critique how LGBT marriage equality was a homonormative, neoliberal, conformist movement. Not only was this viscerally upsetting to Michelle, for Elizabeth it was galling that this is what Orr seems to think intersex perspectives are good for: pushing down other queer groups. 😬 It added to the sense that Orr saw us as a nifty theoretical lens, and wasn’t particularly interested in advancing the intersex cause.

Another disconnection that was noted was in how Orr rebutted Sparrow’s claims that genital differences are disgusting and will not elicit sexual desire in others. Despite detailed rebuttals to other appalling comments from Sparrow, Orr does not bring up the intense fetishization of intersex genital differences which is uncomfortably familiar to all of us. Objectifying medical photography of intersex people with genital differences are shared widely and known to be used for sexual purposes.

Bnuuy was annoyed that Orr seemingly didn't try to talk to or otherwise get input/feedback from any disabled intersex people for their thesis, given that disabled intersex people are not actually that hard to find! (Indeed, four out of five of us are both intersex and disabled.) Given Orr’s emphasis on intersectionality, it’s notable that when they sought intersex texts to analyse, they focused on texts from nondisabled intersex folks.

Orr does not reveal if they are intersex nor if they are disabled. It sticks out. Whether they’re actually intersex or not isn't actually that important to us. We’ve previously read intersex studies works by perisex authors which we loved, and we believe strongly that it is possible for perisex authors to do right by the community if they take the time to engage WITH the community. (See Swarr as an exemplar!)

What we had major problem with is the faux “objective” tone that the book takes on. Orr seems to be trying to hide behind academic language, the “view from nowhere”, and an expensive paywall. This was noticeable to everybody. But Elizabeth, as the only academic in the call, came in with a lot more context as to why it felt gross.

The Misuse of Standpoint Theory

For Elizabeth, Orr's “view from nowhere” became egregious when Orr cites standpoint theorists like Donna Haraway, Nancy Hartstock, and Pat Hill Collins. In a surreal move, Orr explicitly points to Haraway’s famous paper “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”. This paper is an evisceration of the “view from nowhere”, “objective” approach to academic knowledge production. Every view is a view from somewhere, and pretending otherwise feeds into the history of how science has been violently used to gaslight and oppress minority groups.

In short, Haraway says:

Elizabeth explains that as result, feminist methodologies accept subjectivity as part of the process: the researcher is expected to articulate their own standpoint, to be transparent about their subjectivity rather than to hide it behind a pretense of “objectivity”. There’s an emphasis on reflexivity, the fancy word for when scholars reflect on how their own social position affects how they do their research.

Feminist disability studies and crip theory both build on feminist standpoint theory, and Orr claims to be using both. Both frameworks understand disability as socially constructed, and that this social construction is entwined with other social forces such as capitalism, sexism, racism, and so on. Feminist disability studies scholars like Wendell (who Orr cites) clearly position themselves and how their disability (or lack thereof) affects their research.

Crip theory builds further on feminist disability studies, and acts to subvert ideas of ability. It began in the arts - cripping performance art by having wheelchair users perform as dancers, blind people doing photography, Deaf people making music, etc. It spread into other domains, such as crip technoscience. Crip theorists also inherit the tradition of reflexivity, whether it be Eli Claire writing about their personal experiences of disability or Sami Schalk talking about how being nondisabled affects her work as a disability studies scholar.

We provide all this exposition to emphasize how unusual it is that Orr provides absolutely zero information about their positionality nor their personal motivations to this research. 🧐 They provide zero reflexivity as to how their position may have affected their work. Yet their personal biases and subjectivity seemed obvious to us - we were all, in varying ways, set off by Orr trying to pass off subjective opinion as “correct”. As an example, we mentioned how Orr clearly prefers the term “dyadic” and manufactures controversy about the origins of “endosex” and “perisex”, while at the same time conveniently leaving out the unsavoury origins of the term “dyadic”.

Elizabeth pointed out that the ironic thing is Orr didn’t even need to invoke standpoint theory to make the argument that intersex studies would benefit from a disability studies lens. Plenty of intersex and disability studies is done using different frameworks.

Indeed, Elizabeth was surprised that this kind of error made it through a PhD thesis defense. In the department where ze teaches, if a student displays a major misunderstanding about their chosen theoretical framework, the student would be asked to redo the relevant thesis checkpoints (e.g. candidacy paper, thesis proposal/defense) until they get it right.

Some background on academia

Elizabeth brought up a structural problem with the book: it looks like it had zero intersex studies scholars review it prior to publication. 💀

This book originated as a PhD dissertation, which anybody can read for free here. A typical PhD programme is structured as a master-apprentice model of education, where a PhD student apprentices to one (sometimes two) professors. These are known as thesis advisors. The culmination of the PhD is a thesis (aka dissertation), which presents original research done by the student.

To graduate, the thesis needs to pass examination by a committee of professors. The committee acts as a secondary source of support to the student, providing guidance or perspectives to complement the advisors.

Elizabeth explained that when ze assembles a thesis committee for one of zer graduate students, the goal is to ensure any area that the student is venturing into has at least one committee member who is well versed in it. So, let’s say you propose you’re going to do a thesis on “intersex studies meets disability studies” but your thesis advisors are both gender studies people (as Orr’s were). Elizabeth would expect that Orr’s thesis committee would then include at least one disability studies scholar and at least one intersex studies scholar.

Instead, Orr’s thesis committee doesn’t have a single intersex studies scholar on it. Neither the book’s acknowledgements nor the thesis’ acknowledgments acknowledge any intersex studies scholars. Even though Orr is citing intersex studies scholars like Georgiann Davis, Morgan Holmes, and Cary Gabriel Costello, there's nothing to indicate that Orr has ever gotten feedback from any intersex people. This is HIGHLY unusual: normally, intersex studies books have acknowledgments which acknowledge several publicly intersex people, and often one or two intersex organizations.

Research is a highly social activity: researchers are expected to go to conferences, to be in conversation with people working on similar topics. And Orr is clearly social about their research, acknowledging the feminist/gender studies communities they have been a part of. It just seems like intersex studies scholars weren’t a priority for Orr’s academic socializing. 🙃

Orr’s acknowledgments doesn’t even contain the word intersex, which is unprecedented in our collective experience of intersex non-fiction. This is why Elizabeth says that ze was left with the impression that Orr doesn’t think intersex studies is a serious field of research. It appears that Orr views intersex literature as something to be consumed for their benefit, and not a community worthy of participation and a bi-directional relationship.

Early in the book, Orr points to Lennard Davis’ work with the Deaf community on reframing Deaf activism away from the “we’re not disabled we’re a linguistic minority” rhetoric. It’s a great example of disability studies scholars having an impact. Thing is: Davis openly talks about how he grew up in a Deaf family that was part of the Deaf Community. While Davis is not little-d deaf, he took on the project as a member of the capital-D Deaf community. His writing (including book acknowledgments) reflect this.

Elizabeth also pointed out that there are scripts and precedent in academia for how to handle positionality and reflexivity when you’re questioning or closeted. If Orr were closeted or questioning, they would have an excellent way to talk discreetly about it through their very own concept of “temporarily endosex”: Orr could write they don’t know they’re not perisex, frame it around how few perisex people actually know they’re perisex, and retain plausible deniability.

Other notes

Bnuuy was frustrated with the implication that disability studies is The Only Right Way to analyse intersex. It’s a useful lens for understanding intersex, but at times it felt like Orr was arguing it was the only appropriate lens rather than one of a collection of suitable lenses. Theories are analytic tools, and social phenomena are complex and fluid - it’s a matter of finding a suitable tool for a given research question, rather than there being One Correct Way to understand things.

Orr’s use of “bodymind” didn’t quite land. The term was created by Margaret Price to subvert the idea that body and mind are dichotomous: many disabilities cannot neatly fit into “mental” vs “physical”. It’s a term that’s had productive use in disability studies. But Orr’s use of it got a negative reaction. Remy pointed out it felt like it instead it actually reinforced the body-mind distinction. Intersex is, after all, a physical thing, and the idea of “brain intersex” is very poorly received by the intersex community - it’s seen as a way that perisex trans people appropriate intersex and/or live in denial about being perisex. It felt like Orr was using the word on autopilot rather than thinking about when and where it is actually subversive.

Bnuuy was concerned that Orr was reading OII Australia’s information on intersex in bad faith. Orr criticizes them for discursively distancing intersex from disability. Bnuuy points out that OII Australia is not writing for an academic (disability studies) scholarship. This is an advocacy organization speaking to a general audience that understands disability through the medical model. Bnuuy read the quotes from OII Australia as them just distancing themselves from a medicalized understanding of disability.

Elizabeth brought up that Orr’s manufactured controversy of “perisex” may have a classist element. While endo- does make sense as an antonym to inter- if one has formal science background, the term peri- is not conventionally an antonym to inter-. Elizabeth has personally noticed a resistance from zer fellow academics to perisex on the grounds that it’s “using scientific terminology incorrectly”, and thinks that’s a classist take.

Michelle brought up that “it also didn't sit great with me that they [Orr] were very condescending about Tumblr like, ‘aww, look at the baby activists trying to do a scholarship," whereas what I'd describe as ‘folk scholarship’ on Tumblr has been very valuable to me. It's not always correct and there can be misinformation, but it has worth.” Remy was unimpressed with how limited/selective Orr’s engagement seemed to be with intersex Tumblr, as well as Orr’s centrist take on “the future is female”.

Closing thoughts

This was a deeply imperfect piece of scholarship. Orr came across as disconnected from the intersex community, and uninterested in working with the community. The work still has some merits: Orr’s first chapter provides an incisive discussion of how ableism is detrimental to intersex advocacy and that trying to distance intersex from disability only adds to societal ableism. Ableism is a serious force in intersex discrimination and we’re stronger off understanding this and explicitly resisting it.

We hope that the stink of Orr’s voyeurism does not sully the important central message of their book. Work needs to be done to teach more intersex people about disability studies. Disability does not mean disorder. Disability does NOT mean medical problem. The disability rights and justice movements are FULL of disabled groups who, just like the intersex community, are actively seeking de-pathologization, bodily autonomy, patient-led care by respectful and well-informed physicians, and fighting neo-eugenics. We are in good company with groups like the Deaf, neurodiversity, and little people communities.

#oh also reminder: we're meeting on Friday to talk about Wicked!#intersex book club #intersex books #intersex #actually intersex #intersex studies #queer theory #crip theory #standpoint theory #disability studies #academia #crip #book reviews #book review #book summaries

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bumbled-bees · 1 month ago

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It's Okay to Not Know Things

One of the most defining and damaging traits in how Lily engages with the world: she has a visible, persistent refusal to admit when she doesn’t know something. And the consequences of that ripple outward into every corner of her behavior, her rhetoric, and the way her community operates.

At the root of it is something very human: the fear of being seen as vulnerable or uninformed. But where most people respond to that fear by either learning or listening, Lily shuts it down entirely. In her world, not knowing isn't just uncomfortable, it’s unacceptable. She equates uncertainty with weakness. So rather than admit she’s out of her depth, she does something else: she pretends she isn’t.

She does this in a few very recognizable ways.

First, she reframes ignorance as insight. When she doesn’t understand a topic (whether it’s economics, neurodivergence, gender identity, or history), she doesn’t say, “I don’t know.” She says, “That’s not real.” Or “That’s stupid.” Or “Only idiots believe that.” It’s not just dismissive, it’s defensive. She bulldozes past any nuance and acts as though rejecting the premise entirely is the same thing as having a valid opinion.

You can see this clearly in moments like her recent comment about inflation, where she mocked people for believing inflation is the reason prices are high by saying, “Inflation is man-made,” as if that somehow invalidates its effects. That doesn’t just miss the point, it refuses the point. She doesn’t engage with the economic forces at play, doesn’t question how inflation works, doesn’t admit there’s a complex web of causes and consequences. She just declares the whole thing fake or irrelevant, and dares anyone to challenge her.

Second, she leans on tone over substance. Her confidence becomes the argument. It’s not about what’s being said, it’s about how decisively she says it. That certainty is seductive to people who are unsure of their own footing. So instead of cultivating curiosity, she cultivates a culture where people don’t question her, and in turn, don’t question themselves. And if someone does challenge her, she either talks down to them or implies they’re acting in bad faith.

Third, she treats questions or criticism as attacks, because to her, being corrected is synonymous with being humiliated. It doesn’t matter how gently it’s phrased, how factual it is, or how necessary. If someone corrects her or points out that she misunderstood something, she almost always responds with sarcasm, mockery, or condescension. She has to reassert dominance. Because again, the idea that she simply doesn’t know something isn’t on the table. She can’t just be wrong: the other person has to be stupid, or sensitive, or some kind of hater.

And finally, this bleeds directly into the culture she builds around herself. Her community internalizes this allergy to uncertainty. Disagreeing with her becomes risky. Asking her to clarify something becomes an act of defiance. So even when she’s clearly talking out of her depth, there’s no one around her who’s willing to say so. Or if there is, they’ve learned to stay silent. She doesn’t create spaces where growth is possible, because growth requires acknowledging that you don’t already have all the answers. And Lily can’t do that.

In the long run, this isn’t just a quirk or a personality flaw: it’s corrosive. It stunts dialogue. It undermines trust. It damages the people who look up to her. And it ensures that any time she speaks on a topic (especially one with real-world implications), she’s just reinforcing her own ego rather than actually contributing anything meaningful. Her resistance to saying, “I don’t know” isn’t strength. It’s insecurity masquerading as wisdom.

And it shows. Every time.

#lily orchard #cd-call #lily orchard critical #lily orchard analysis

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ko-existing · 5 months ago

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do you think someone can be a non dualist and practice law of assumption at the same time if they have the same principles on both? (e.g. everything being pure consciousness appearing in different forms) because when they practice the law it's still consciousness experiencing itself in another form.. so I believe they can (?) what do you think?

Well, since you asked what I think of it, this is my direct honest opinion.

Calling yourself a "non-dualist" is already putting yourself in a box, but that’s not even the main issue here so that aside— What’s more contradictory is claiming to have direct experience—truly seeing things as they are—while still feeling the need to ""practice"" something like Law of Assumption.

I, for example, don't even ""practise"" Advaita Vedanta.

Reading your message, it honestly sounds like an unintentional(!) excuse to keep engaging with a limiting framework while trying to cover it up with non-dual language. If there has been direct experience—meaning a direct recognition, not just an intellectual understanding—then what is left to seek? What is left to get? What are you going to LOA for? That’s what I don’t understand.

Because let’s be clear—Law of Assumption is fundamentally about desire, control, and the belief in an individual self that can shape its reality. It operates on the premise that there is a "you" who can assume, believe, and manifest outcomes. Nonduality, on the other hand, is the a HELP(!) to direct recognize that there never was a separate "you" to begin with or any "thing". These two perspectives are not just different—they completely contradict each other.

If nonduality has been seen clearly, then the entire framework of LOA becomes meaningless. Who is there to assume? Who is there to manifest? What is there to get? The whole notion of chasing desires collapses when it's recognized that nothing was ever lacking in the first place. The very structure that LOA is built upon—the belief in a person who can control their experience—dissolves.

So when someone says they are practicing LOA with the same principles as nonduality, it just shows that the fundamental point hasn’t fully clicked. They are still operating from the assumption that there is something to be gained, something to be changed, something to be controlled. And that assumption itself is the very illusion that nonduality exposes.

Once there is direct experience, everything else dissolves. There is no lingering question of “what about this?” or “can I still do that?” because the entire premise of seeking, desiring, or manipulating experience collapses. There is nothing to apply anymore.

So again—if there has truly been recognition, what is there to assume? Who is assuming? For what? The whole idea of "practicing" LOA while claiming to see through the illusion of the separate self just shows that there hasn’t been a full recognition—it’s like trying to wake up while still wanting to stay in the dream.

That’s why I don’t think the two are compatible. It’s not that you can’t do both—people can engage with whatever concepts they like—but the fact that there’s still a pull toward something like LOA just shows that the foundation hasn’t been fully grasped. That's why I always stared at the few accounts I saw on tumblr and twitter who had "ND" and "LOA" in their bio next to each other. The point of AV completely flew by.

Once it’s clear, there’s no more trying to "get" something. There never was a "someone" to get or practice anything in the first place.

So, long story short: Why.

There you have an essay with my irrelevant opinion.

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messengers-of-the-gods · 4 months ago

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So when I die (which I must do), Could it shine down here with you?

Canonical account from Mercury, a short amount of time before the round occurred.

Walking around the large backstage area was one of Mercury's favorite pastimes. Winding corridors, large machinery, isolated enough that they would largely be left alone, but near enough that if they were needed, someone could find him.

And that was just what Mercury needed right now. Space to breathe, space to think.

Mercury wasn't worried about losing, per se. Mercury was worried about Daian-how has he managed to keep his innocence? Who has shielded his eyes from the truth? They didn't understand it. And the worst part was, Mercury didn't want to be the person to pull the wool off of his eyes. That made him a coward, he knew, but the idea of seeing Daian scared and having him panic before the performance would be worse.

Still, came the dilemma. Did Mercury really want to see him die? They supposed they didn't have much choice in the matter. Though the idea made them feel sick, he knew that there was no use in hoping.

Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Someone had told him that once, she thinks. They don't remember who.

Deeper into the winding tunnels Mercury went, mind wandering amongst the vast expanse of similar-looking hallways, the same white and grey with the Alien Stage logo every once in a while. Occasionally, they would pause at a doorway and peer inside, just to see what was inside; mostly it was machinery, or an extra dressing room, or something of that nature.

But the next doorway Mercury stopped at was different. The door was slightly ajar, and Mercury could hear hushed voices on the inside. This made them pause, especially after realizing they recognized both voices.

Inside of the room seemed to be an armory of some sort: weapons, long-ish sticks that Mercury presumed were tasers, and collars, placed on hooks on top of the wall. In front of these columns of collars, were two familiar Segyein.

Caligula was standing beside Minski, looking at them with its ear flicking nonchalantly-Daian had once compared Caligula to an ancient human creature called a horse, and that comparison had never left Mercury's mind, even now.

And just what were they doing there? Sure, Minski was running the competition, so it's not a stretch for them to be there, but Caligula was explicitly not allowed on the premises. Nobody's Segyein were, so why's theirs here now?

They were standing next to a pair of collars in glass cases, each with their own label; Mercury read the pair of names on them almost like gravestones, or whatever Daian had called them. Places to mark where people in the past were laid to rest eternally.

The cases were both open; and Minski laid down a collar into the one labeled Daian.

"There, it is done," they said, eyes blinking at Caligula, who's ears perk up as a sign of satisfaction, which Mercury has been trained to recognize.

"Good," It says, joy unmistakable in its voice. "You've secured all of the votes then, yes?"

"Of course I have," Minski huffs. "I'm not the owner of Alien Stage to be powerless, you know."

"Then it is all set and done" Caligula says, joy turning into excitement. "We'll get our official collaboration after all, eh?"

"Watch the way you say that, Caligula. You're lucky im getting rid of the footage of you saying that. If someone, especially Daian's guardian were to find out…"

Caligula bristles, threat clearly identified as one of their hooves brush against the floor. "And if it were to go out that the owner of Alien Stage was rigging their own competition, you would most certainly lose your job, would you not?"

Minski glares at Caligula, taking the point without comment and turning away. "Come. We must prepare for the next round, too, if we wish for Mercury and Nadohan to compete against one another."

Their next words are lost as they leave through a separate door. Mercury doesn't think they'd be able to parse it through the churning in his stomach, anyway.

It was rigged. The entire round-and the next one, was the entirety of the competition rigged? Or just the next two?

More importantly; Daian was going to die. He was going to die without a fighting chance, without even knowing he was in danger.

Mercury stared at the cases, and stepped inside of the room.

This competition, while not honorable, was supposed to be fair. Was supposed to be based on talent, or whoever was good enough at convincing people to vote for them. But they were setting them up to win. Did the vote even matter? Was Daian doomed to die either way?

He had made up his mind from his dilemma earlier. He didn't want to see Daian die. Especially knowing that he would die. Knowing that he would be a willing lamb sent to be slaughtered for someone who doesn't deserve it.

They walked to the cases, and gingerly opened the lids. Swifty, careful enough to be unnoticeable, Mercury switches the collars.

Theoretically, if this had all been a misunderstanding, surely it wouldn't matter if they were switched. If the competition was supposed to be fair.

But if Mercury was to believe what they had heard, what they had seen-they couldn't stand by and just watch. Couldn't just let Daian die, knowing he could have done something about it.

Mercury leaves the room swiftly, taking a deep breath as they go.

No matter what happened, they would sing. No matter what happened, they had to protect Daian. No matter the cost.

#is this what the kids call a log #anyway #alnst #alnst oc #hermes.txt #hermes oc #hermes art #mercury #alnst oc: daian #idk what daians tags all are #oh well #enjoy <3

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flower-boi16 · 1 year ago

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I think what's actually alarming about Helluva Boss and Vivziepop is that the shower suffers from heavy creator-fan enmeshment, and the writers/Vivziepop don't see themselves as the problem for it. It's like they see themselves as the victims, too, while encouraging their fandom's toxic mindset and behaviors.

The writers/Vivziepop are not only too entangled with their fans, but they're THINKING like fan artists/fanfic writers instead of actually making a show. There's a difference between writers of a show and fanfic writing. When you take up the mantel to create a show you have to carry yourself in a way and write your show with a point otherwise you end up with shows like Helluva Boss/Hazbin Hotel, Miraculous Lady Bug, SVFOE, SPOP, and other shows that fall into that category. Some of them focus more on the shipping than the point of their show to begin with.

What makes a good show is having that distinction or maintaining that professionalism. Creators of shows should NEVER let themselves sink into the cesspool of their Fandoms because they should be focused on their story/message instead of all this shipping/woobing bullshit.

TLDR: Helluva Boss never had potential with VivziePop holding the reigns to begin with. It's too disorganized and unfocused, and with the Fan Enmeshment, it was never going to grow or expand from its fanfic-y feeling. If the creator of the show never grew up, we should never expect the show to grow, too.

Though it is a shame since it could have been charming, had someone more professional taken the show.

Viv definitely was never cut out to handle a big project like this. I’ve said this many times before, but ya, Viv writes like a fanfic writer; everything with how messy the structuring of how her shows is and how poorly they are planned makes me think this.

It reminds me of when I tried to make my first fanfic and just went in without a plan with how to structure it which led to me just abandoning it early on. Viv writes like that.

She didn't listen to criticism of her Zoophobia comic and she still isn’t listing here. She shifted the focus of HB away from the premise to shipping nonsense and now we have this weird mess of a show that doesn’t even know what it wants to be anymore.

Season 2 seems to prioritize relationship drama over the actual premise which caused the show’s downfall. Hazbin feels a bit less fan-ficy but it’s still very messy.

Viv just crams too much shit into too little time which results in the pacing being awful. She paces her shows like a fan fic writer. It feels like she only came In with a small understanding of how show running works and jumped right into the industry because she was excited to show off her gizzalion OCs she had since high school.

Everything about HH/HB feels amateur. I really think that before you get into storytelling you need to actually study how to create good stories, like there are YouTube videos out there you could watch for free that give a run down of what is good or bad writing.

You don’t need to spend 20+ in school to be a good writer but you need to have a basic understanding of how to even write your ideas before you start making stories…which Viv clearly does not.

HB Season 2 in general doesn’t feel like a natural continuation of the first season. It feels like a fan-fic written by a fan after season 1 ended posted on wattpad that the show runners decided to animate and voice into a full season.

Viv should have learned how to run a show before jumping into something as ambitious as this, but she didn’t, and look at what we got.

#vivziepop critical #hazbin hotel critical #vivziepop criticism #helluva boss critical #helluva boss criticism #hazbin hotel criticism

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lordandgodoftheobvious · 3 months ago

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Possibly the most ironic thing about stumbling ass-backwards into the perfect setting for a harem fantasy anime is that whenever I intentionally try to deconstruct/reconstruct isekai harem bullshit it always go off the rails. For instance, I once mentioned (not linked because (1) I'm not digging through a million years of notes, and (2) I explained it poorly anyway) a setting in which I basically just took the premise of World's End Harem (as I understand it) and applied it to a world of elves--but after posting that, I was eventually like "Y'know, the things that are happening in this other character's life are actually way more interesting than Protag-kun; I'ma refocus the story to be about her." One thing led to another, and Protag-kun dies in the prologue now.

Anyway, I bring this up because I did it again.

I began with the excuse; you know--the reason why a gaggle of shawties would be interested in our random isekai'd dude. And that excuse is...*drumroll*...that everyone else in this place is related. Our protag-kun ends up on a homestead with little contact with the outside world. In fact, let's have the father of the girls himself have several wives, so that we can get enough variety in the girls to be interesting and also have them already have normalized polygamy as a concept.

But of course, questions beget themselves, such as why are these people so isolated? If it's because this place is dangerous--then why are they here? (Somehow the idea that they're a cult never occurred to me until just now--far too late for that, of course, but perhaps something that can stew in the back of my mind in its own right.)

Anyway, what I eventually settled on was that the OG harem was an adventuring party (and I could figure out the consequences of that bit of worldbuilding later) that ventured into this haunted woods filled with monsters in order to close the interdimensional rift that monsters keep falling through (and that protag-kun would eventually fall through years later; always try and be economical with your magical bullshit, kids!), and then set up shop there to keep an eye on it (as they clearly would need to, since we axiomatically know from protag-kun's presence that it isn't a perfect seal). They actually had a cushy gig here, in that various magical universities from around the surrounding kingdoms were obviously interested in the rift and in exchange for, you know, lodging and protection were willing to foot the bill/arrange for the homestead to have features it otherwise would never have warranted (such as its own library and magical laboratory--which helped the university students lodging here, too). But then a few years ago--just as it was getting about time for their oldest children to start going out and seeing the world for themselves--war broke out among the surrounding kingdoms. The party refused to take a side--having the much more important task of saving the world here to deal with--and visitors (and funds) from the outside world dried up. They're not in danger because, you know, a forest full of monsters makes a hell of a moat, but by the same token they are isolated.

And all this raises a lot more questions. First of all--do adventuring parties even exist in this world? That's so very...D&D. But more to the point: this all, and some other things I have the party do, imply that the party is much, much more badass than is the standard fare in this world; for Christ's sake, they're literally raising a family in a place where armies fear to tread. Why are they so strong? Why isn't anyone else apparently this strong?

Because they have a patron. Once upon a time the leader of the party--who is not the husband, BTW--made contact with some sort of entity, who could hand out powers and advice and suchlike; it did not want to be known, because then the best-case scenario would be for the various kingdoms to decide it was useful and try to control it (in the worst-case scenario, they decide it's untrustworthy and try to destroy it), and so she spends some years assembling a crack team to deal with the threat (which just so happens to evolve into a polycule). This solves several issues, but raises a pretty big new one: where does the patron come from? I'm not just going to have it be a god, and if it's the magical equivalent of an AI from a lost civilization, that raises the questions of where said civilization came from and what happened to it...

...Oh, right; we have the rift, don't we? What better way to prove that it's only a matter of time before something civilization-ending falls out of it than by it having already happened at least once? Which conveniently gives our Light Hope expy ample personal motivation to want to assemble the power rangers to seal it....Damn, I'm getting so much mileage out of this thing!

Now to understand how this lead to this thing going off the rails, we have to back up a little bit, because while I was figuring all this out, I was also thinking about Protag-kun's actual story, since it's not like I was ever going to have his situation be all sunshine and rainbows--what do you take me for? No, there has to be a twist or a deconstruction or something. (If you saw the post I didn't link in the first paragraph, you perhaps remember that the intended subversion to that story was that sure, there were legions of elves who would fuck that Protag-kun in order to save the species and whatnot, but they don't actually respect him, seeing him as a child at best--they're all well over 100--and a tool for furthering their geopolitical ends at worst.)

At some point I decided that he is straight-up being manipulated by the party. These people don't have a secret, dastardly plot or anything, mind you, they just have quasi-pseudo-medieval mores--the sort that aren't above using your children as pawns and marrying for political reasons--and are concerned mainly with (1) protecting the world by keeping the rift sealed, and (2) ensuring the prosperity of their family in this location (which itself would be a major boon to the first goal, as it ensures someone'll be on hand to keep an eye on things), so yes, they are very much capable of doing whatever it takes to maintain their monopoly on Protag-kun's otherworldly knowledge (he was basically a nut for all those how-to-rebuild-civilization Youtube channels) and use it to strengthen, enrich, and attract settlers to their homestead, even if it means psychologically, emotionally, and sexually manipulating a teenager.

...But do they really need two fonts of otherworldly knowledge? And honestly, it never really sat right with me that they couldn't prevent Protag-kun's arrival; like, that's their whole-ass job.

Oh, don't worry, I'm not killing off another Protag-kun...the guy from the first paragraph is ultimately saved by his time-traveling daughter from the future. >:)

(This is the "more interesting character" I mentioned, BTW--and I really shouldn't have to say this, but because I know I'm playing with some of the trashiest tropes associated with a family of artistic movements that have been stereotyped as problematic here: she is not a love interest of his.)

No but seriously--they do need a front man to launder all of not!Light Hope's innovations through. So why not make one?

Hence, what I'm now thinking will be the shocking twist of the story--Protag-kun's a replicant, built by not!Light Hope in an antediluvian genetics lab, his memories of being from another world fabricated based upon those of two or three of not!Light Hope's civilization's original founders. Probably also has several people's DNA in his balls (after all, why increase your risk of genetic bottlenecking if you don't have to?) and command overrides in his head so that the party can go in and literally change his behavior if they don't like it; it is, after all, the logical conclusion of both lines of thought that lead us here.

Which is why I began the way I did, but I've been working on this post for a couple days now, and in that time I've concluded that the more I think about it, the more I realize this is exactly what I always wanted out of playing with this trope. On the one hand we have the perfect excuse to get very self-indulgent here (because why wouldn't not!Light Hope, advised by the party and perhaps a few of their adult children, give Protag-kun the rizz of Rentarou, the IQ of the guy from Dr. Stone, the body of a teenage Arnold Schwarzenegger, encyclopedic knowledge of the industrial revolution and all that came of it (AND the Kama Sutra), and some bullshit OP powers besides that'd be useful to have but they wouldn't otherwise be able to explain away?)--and then BAM! I rip away the illusion, and suddenly we're in Blade Runner.

Or perhaps the audience can know from the beginning, and the dramatic irony of Protag-kun thinking he's an isekai protagonist (except that the concept of isekai has been erased from his memories, to prevent him from getting too genre-savvy and/or suspicious) and not knowing when or how the shoe is going to drop could be a major source of tension. Dunno; many possibilities here.

Of course, this means that not!Light Hope chose to make him a teenager (or I could just age him up--not!Light Hope, at least, comes from a culture that did inherited our age of consent laws, after all--but it's tradition for isekai protagonists to be high schoolers), but between the fact that the younger he is the longer they can get away with having him live and the fact that they're aware that depending on how long the war goes on for he could eventually be asked to father children on women who are currently very young girls, I think we can handwave that.

#wip #my writing #isekai #plot twist #fantasy #my work #op #ipot

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desidov · 1 year ago

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The Structure of a Successful Game Changer pt. 1 - Make Some Noise

An analysis of the stages comprising an entertaining and innovative Game Changer episode, explained by breaking down the episode Make Some Noise.

Stage 1: Our contestants have no idea

With prompt "cow," Josh responds "cow." Sam replies, "I'm sorry, that is not the answer I was looking for."

Often only a turn or two, this first stage is comprised of the players identifying the core mechanic of the episode—getting a basic understanding of what each question will ask of them and how they might earn points or advance further. Other examples: the first forays into navigating the Jeopardy board, or Sam’s opening instructions for “Sam Says” demonstrating an instruction not preceded by “Sam says” should not be followed.

Stage 2: You all understand

With prompt "duck," Zac responds "quack quack" and receives a point. Josh comments "Okay I see, I see what this is about, okay."

Here the players realize the structure of each question, and witness some behaviors receiving points while others do not (excluding non-point-earning episodes.) Sometimes, this is all the players need to understand the fundamental premise (mimic the sound produced by the prompt) while sometimes unraveling the mystery of the premise is the overall conceit of the episode (tell us about yourself, yes or no.)

Stage 3: Escalation of Rules

After Zac's response to "frog," Sam says "I'm gonna toss it up to the other two contestants [to steal the point.] Brennan, give me your best frog."

An expansion to the initial rules is revealed, allowing players to further advance/gain points beyond the initial bounds of the premise. Here, the escalation is that players may steal prompts from each other—others include incorporated phrase bonus points from The Official Cast Recording and the hidden immunity loop-de-loops from Survivor.

Stage π: Departure

Sam says "We are now headed into our first mini game." Each player attempts to recreate a melody on an otamatone.

This optional stage, typically presented as a “mini game,” is thematically connected to the premise but operates on its own rules. Make Some Noise iterations typically include a mini game where contestants are provided a prop and must mimic a given sound with that prop—no spoken entries qualify. Similarly, A Sponsored Episode and its continuations feature a mini game of providing commercial voice-overs for stock footage (where non-commercial interpretations are not rewarded,) and a mini game of identifying brand taglines/logos.

Stage 4: Escalation of Concept

Sam introduces the next prompt, "Your word is jack hammer." Josh makes a jack hammer sound, bouncing with a hand above his head and explaining "that's him keeping the hat on."

While Stage 3 adds on to the rules of the episode, Stage 4 applies the same rules to something new—here transitioning from animal calls to all manner of sound effects. Escalation of concept can be clearly demarcated, as this example is, or more gradual, like the escalations from common animal calls to obscure animal calls or from physical prompts to intangible prompts like “anguish.” What matters is that escalations continue to push the format to new heights and prevent the conceit from stagnating.

Stage 5: Expansion of Concept

The prompt is a stock photo of a smiling young adult white man. Brennan roleplays the man arrogantly describing his improv group, ending with "This date's going well."

Though similar to Stage 4, I characterize this stage as a dramatic alteration to the format of prompts—here from text prompts to image prompts. This can be for several turns, as it is for MSN, or just one, such as “go” from Sam Says or the cockroach union from “Do I hear $1?” This builds a finale that presses the bounds of the format to their limits, capping off the episode.

#dropout #game changer #make some noise #txt #more to come?!

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meimi-haneoka · 14 days ago

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Hey Cinzia. Hope you have been well. I have been thinking about YunaAki and I think I realise why people have a lot of problems with it, besides the age gap of course, and I think it probably has a lot to do with its pacing. I am actually talking about the pairing's pacing rather than clear card, although even the latter's pacing is also a problem. I think if YunaAki writing would have more "clear", no pun intended, like the stages of their relationship more clearly registered out than the love part overlapping with it, I think a lot of people would have found it more agreeable. Like yes, Akiho has feelings for him, but if it is made clear that Yuna's feelings at that point is more of a mix of guilt plus affection rather than subconscious romantic love, I think it would have landed more nicely with more people. Like then it would have made sense because it could have been framed as Akiho taking a step back with her feelings and taking care of Yuna thick and through regardless of whether he returned them or not, and then slowly as Yuna learns to navigate different emotions, it would make sense why he slowly falls for Akiho - the independent person, who is choosing to travel with him to find Momo and a cure for him, rather than Akiho - his ward (not exactly, he was the "butler" employed by her clan, but the dynamics stand). Then it would make sense why years down the line he says "The Moon is Beautiful". He not only has come to love Akiho romantically, and actually understand that he wants to be with Akiho romantically but also that he was confessed to already and now he is taking the chance to hope that she still returns his feelings, years down the line. Basically, a crisper writing would have probably served the ship better.

Aubretia! I hope you've been well too. ✨

I think I know what you're talking about when you say a more "clear" writing. But then the entire premise that kept us (and whomever will read this story all at once from now on) on our toes for the entire duration of Clear Card, when reading the YunaAki side of the story, would've crumbled down. 👇🏻

Their side of the story is supposed to be obscure, vague, especially on Kaito's side. You are supposed to wonder why Kaito is doing all of this and what exactly are the feelings that are moving him till the very end. You're supposed to be strung along till the very end, wondering "is it guilt? Is it familiar affection? Is it a sense of obligation towards her late mother? Is it romantic love?" You're supposed to be confused about his intentions altogether, till the last 10 chapters people weren't even sure if he was doing this for Akiho or himself.

That's sooooo typical of Clamp. To show you how preconceptions and prejudice can lead you astray in the judgement of a situation and of a person.

And although I completely agree with the opinion that if their writing had been more clear from the beginning, we probably would have more people invested in their relationship right now ( in addition to a clearer understanding of how things exactly started for them ), I also recognize that characters have also a function in the greater scheme of the story. And Kaito's, specifically, was to mislead. Over and over. And they wrote him very well for that purpose because he's 1) an introvert, so he doesn't spell out his intentions clearly; 2) he's got a twisted personality; 3) he hates himself so he defines himself wicked and bad when he's actually not; 4) because of his upbringing he doesn't know what love is and so he's unable to acknowledge the reason for his own behavior till the very end. They really built him in a believable way so that he could trick us into thinking he was up to no good till chapter 70. Why? Simply because that made the story more interesting and intriguing.

But I think framing Kaito's feelings as just guilt and affection until the aftermath of the last battle wouldn't have brought benefits to the perception of the pairing at all. First of all because the story was supposed to be over by then. We wouldn't have seen all the slow, complex changes from guilt to romantic love, and his "the moon is beautiful" would've felt literally coming out of nowhere. Like, literally. We would've needed a spin off to unravel all of that in a convincing manner, and as of now that doesn't seem to be in CLAMP's plans.

Instead, with the inclusion of elements that can make you think that Kaito had developed romantic feelings for her along the way (chaste, of course) like the hand stopping, the revelation of his true name to her etc., well that helps making that slow process a bit more coherent. And believable.

When you say "making Kaito's feelings just guilt and affection AND THEN, in the part that we cannot see, slowly turning them into romantic feelings would've landed more nicely with more people", I cannot help but perceive it as yet another pandering to the age gap complaints, to put them "in standby" till Akiho reached the right age. It would've just given more people the excuse to consider YunaAki a platonic kind of love forever. It would've just calmed down their uncomfortable feeling with an age gap ship and nothing more. I'm sure people are already trying to ignore the special chapter as "never happened" or as "maybe he meant it in a platonic way" (that phrase is never used in platonic circumstances in Japan!!), I imagine the thing would've been even worse if we postponed all the romantic attachment to the "post-chapter 80" part of the story that we couldn't see. Instead, it seems like CLAMP wanted to dot the i's and cross the t's as to what exactly those two feel for eachother before the arc ended for good. People who don't like the pair already ignore them as they are, might as well give a little sweetener to us, the ones who could see their potential from long time ago and had to suffer all the harshest parts of the story related to them, over the years. Without mentioning the fact that after seeing Akiho struggling with this love for 70 chapters, it would've felt very disappointing and anti-climactic if in the end all of the mess Kaito did for her was "meh, it was just guilt and yeah maybe a bit of affection". Like come on give this character some gratification 😅

I think the difference in points of view here lies in the fact that I don't see Kaito as falling for "Akiho, his ward" in the story, I already see him as being attracted by her assertive, independent, brave, bright personality. Otherwise he wouldn't have said, quite irked too, "you ARE capable of doing so many things even without magic". He already could see her worth back then. She wasn't his "ward", she was a valuable person he was trying to accompany (and then part from) towards happiness.

I agree that their pacing needs to be slow. I just think it can be done while being romantic. I am still firmly of the opinion that YunaAki's love story will develop very slowly and very carefully over the years, in a trial-and-error fashion, while still being a bond of romantic kind.

People's perception is usually "ah, if it's romantic love then it means he wants to turn this into something physical immediately" because that's all people ever think about, but it doesn't have to be like that, they don't even have to consider themselves a "couple" if none of them are ready.

The ones who like this pairing of course are aware that we are missing some "pieces" of their story. Like what prompted Kaito to go from a boy who couldn't care less about others, to getting up and try to change a little girl's destiny. It's the price we have to pay for YunaAki having the role and purpose they have inside the bigger story. We can stomp our feet all we want about how unfair that is, but every character in the end is like an actor inside the plot. They have a function. Yeah I also don't particularly like that Kaito has been berated and hated (and so did Akiho) for the entirety of the story because we couldn't see through his intentions. But that was part of the game. I also don't like that if people didn't pay enough attention, taking it away for one second from the main lovey-dovey pairing, then they would've surely missed all the beauty and tragedy of YunaAki's story, particularly because it was so subtle and between-the-lines.

But oh well, in the end that's their loss. I made my peace with that by now and I do what many other fans do; I try to "fill the gaps" with fanfictions and fanarts. I've written my "Gravitation" fanfic with that specific goal in mind.

And I don't do it in a raging, spiteful way but with positivity and gratefulness. Because the gaps allow me to expand their story for how I see it. Because that allows for this pairing and this series to stay here, in my heart, for a long time. ❤️

(thank you sooo much for this ask! 🙏🏻 Anxiety is consuming my days lately and I really really needed something like this to take my mind off things)

#reply #yunaaki #akiyuna #akiho shinomoto #yuna d. kaito #clear card arc

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literary-illuminati · 1 year ago

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2024 Book Review #5 – The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

I read Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea last year and, despite thinking it was ultimately kind of a noble failure, liked it more than enough to give his new novella a try. It didn’t hurt that the premise as described in the marketing copy sounded incredible. I can’t quite say it was worth it, but that’s really only because this novella barely cost less than the 500-page doorstopper I picked up at the same time and I need to consider economies here – it absolutely lived up to the promise of its premise.

The book is set a century and change into the future, when a de-extinction initiative has gotten funding from the Russian government to resurrect the Siberian mammoth – or, at least, splice together a chimera that’s close-enough and birth it from african elephant surrogate mothers – to begin the process of restoring the prehistoric taiga as a carbon sink. The problem: there’s no one on earth left who knows how wild mammoth are supposed to, like, live- the only surviving elephants have been living in captivity for generations. Plop the ressurectees in the wilderness and they’ll just be very confused and anxious until they starve. The solution: the technology to capture a perfect image of a human mind is quite old, and due to winning some prestigious international award our protagonist – an obsessive partisan of elephant conservation – was basically forced to have her mind copied and put in storage a few months before she was killed by poachers.

So the solution of who will raise and socialize these newly created mammoths is ‘the 100-year-old ghost of an elephant expert, after having her consciousness reincarnated in a mammoth’s body to lead the first herd as the most mature matriarch’. It works better than you’d expect, really, but as it turns out she has some rather strong opinions about poachers, and isn’t necessarily very understanding when the solution found to keep the project funded involves letting some oligarch spend a small country’s GDP on the chance to shoot a bull and take some trophies.

So this is a novella, and a fairly short one – it’s densely packed with ideas but the length and the constraints of narrative mean that they’re more evoked or presented than carefully considered. This mostly jumps out at me with how the book approaches wildlife conservation – a theme that was also one of the overriding concerns of Mountain where it was considered at much greater length. I actually think the shorter length might have done Nayler a service here, if only because it let him focus things on one specific episode and finish things with a more equivocal and ambiguous ending than the saccharine deux ex machina he felt compelled to resort to in Mountain.

The protection of wildlife is pretty clearly something he’s deeply invested in – even if he didn’t outright say so in the acknowledgements, it just about sings out from the pages of both books. Specifically, he’s pretty despairing about it – both books to a great extent turn around how you convince the world at large to allow these animals to live undisturbed when all the economic incentives point the other way, a question he seems quite acutely aware he lacks a good answer to.

Like everyone else whose parents had Jurassic Park on VHS growing up, I’ve always found the science of de-extinction intensely fascinating – especially as it becomes more and more plausible every day. This book wouldn’t have drawn my eye to nearly the degree it did if I don’t remember the exact feature article I’d bet real money inspired it about a group of scientists trying to do, well, exactly the same thing as the de-extinctionists do in the book (digital resurrection aside). The book actually examines the project with an eye to practicalities and logistics – and moreover, portrays it as at base a fundamentally heroic, noble undertaking as opposed to yet another morality tale about scientific hubris. So even disregarding everything else it had pretty much already won me over just with that.

The book’s portrayal of the future and technology more generally is broader and less carefully considered, but it still rang truer than the vast majority of sci fi does – which is, I suppose, another way of saying that it’s a weathered and weather-beaten world with new and better toys, but one still very fundamentally recognizable as our own, without any great revolutions or apocalyptic ruptures in the interim. Mosquito's got CRISPR’d into nonexistence and elephants were poached into extinction outside of captivity, children play with cybernetically controlled drones and the president of the Russian Federation may or may not be a digital ghost incarnated into a series of purpose-grown clones, but for all that it’s still the same shitty old earth. It’s rather charming, really.

#book review #the tusks of extinction #ray nayler #sff #cli fi

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lemon-dokuro · 11 months ago

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Yesterday, I watched Sound Holic's 2007 Touhou fan film, Touhou Project Side Story ~ Memory of Stars.

The plot is about Kaguya's father, the Moon's ruler, coming to take her and Eirin back. Makes heavy use of sci-fi aesthetics and is mostly set in space. Naturally, because it was released before Bogetsusho/Silent Sinner in Blue, all it had to go off of for the state of the Moon civilization and Kaguya's relationship to it were the 8th Touhou game and maybe Reisen's route/interactions in the 9th. It's a little interesting to see the creators' interpretation because of that, but... It was recieved very poorly by the japanese Touhou fandom in 2007 when it came out, you can even find comparisons to the infamous Cookie series. The reception is understandable — it really isn't good. I actually wouldn't call the story or the premise bad, they're just kitschy in a way characteristic of the otaku culture of its time, but they are ruined completely by the wonky presentation and especially the incomprehensible pacing. I don't want to recap it here because the anime isn't even that long or hard to find, but if I did, I'd have a fair bit of trouble. It feels like one of those 90s OVAs that tries to cram 4-6 volumes of a manga in about 40 minutes, so most things happen too fast to have an impact. There's a whole character that makes absolutely no sense because she has too little screen time and too little actually explained about her (Sphere Sieben, the redheaded space commander lady). Sakuya is there for a barely explained reason. Mokou comes out of nowhere in the middle (well, at least that had a point, ridiculous as it was). And considering this, bizzarely, the movie also has a lot of pointlessly drawn-out scenes where not much happens, like they were trying to pad out the runtime, even though there's a lot of substance they could have added. I have no idea what kind of constrains they were working with, but it's not like they couldn't have just written it more tightly. If not better, then, you know, at least. Even though I don't think the general premise and the story are bad per se, they are very unfitting for Touhou. The creators are obviously going for space opera aesthetics, which is a really weird fit for Touhou. They don't even really try to make it fit. Egregiously, Kaguya's presumably biological father, Luna Marius, has a sci-fi-ish western-style name for absolutely unexplained reasons. Of course, that kind of naming difference is not implausible at all, but it's a really weird creative choice, especially considering it's never adressed, not even in a throwaway line or anything. One could say it's emblematic of the work not compromising the conflicting aesthetics in any way. The visuals are often criticized for obvious reasons. They are great to me because I'm an oldschool doujin fetishist, but it's clearly all very stiff, mildly inconsistent, generally amareurish and feverishly oversaturated with bright flashing effects half the time. The backgrounds mostly consist of said effects. A lot of the animations are obviously reused. That being said, the original character designs are pretty well done. The bunny girl looks especially good, the artist absolutely nailed the early windows Touhou design style. Also, naturally, because Sound Holic is mainly a music circle, the soundtrack is decent. It's not remarkable, but there's nothing wrong with it, it's standard for 2007 Touhou arrange tracks. There's not much to say about the voice acting either — standard for doujin anime. The voice actors are inexplicably pretty well-known, but it's not that uncommon to see big names on the most random 2000s doujin projects. That's probably how these people become popular in the first place.

Well, what can I say overall. It's a weird little movie. I can't recommend it, but maybe you'll get a laugh out of it, or maybe you'll like the visuals as much as I did.

Also, that rabbit's names are both mochi types...

#own post #movie thoughts #doodle #touhou #touhou project #kaguya houraisan #eirin yagokoro #reisen udongein inaba #doujin anime

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leohtttbriar · 1 year ago

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For the Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme: would love to give you the excuse to talk about voyager. (or if that's too easy, something you like about your least favorite star trek series??)

i love voyager. so so much. i tried to think if i love another star trek series i've seen any less than voyager, but i can't honestly say that i do? i love ds9, tos, discovery, and, yes, even snw. i am in the embarrassing position of admitting that i really just love star trek, in a mostly uncomplicated way.

of the things i love about voyager, the premise is probably the biggest one. i have rambled about this a lot already but: i think it confronts for the first time in star trek the inherent sadness associated with us studying the stars--and therefore the sadness that science-fiction writers mostly imagine their way out of, often as a way to speculate a time when this reality may be less real: the fact that space is big. it is too big. the fastest human beings have ever traveled, with their own bodies along for the ride, still isn't fast enough to get us to the moon in less than three days. light--the speed limit of the universe--needs a full eight minutes to get from the sun to us--a relatively close planet. space is enormous. we measure things that are "close" in light-years. everything is so spread out and that's just from the perspective of being inside a galaxy, which is actually crowded when compared to intergalactic space. everything is so far away and so long away and it feels impossible to think of getting anywhere in a time meaningful to us and our lifespans. which is in its own way heartbreaking.

and while in voyager they are clearly not alone in the way we feel we could be (and in practice are until we get the smallest sign that even non-intelligent life exists off our very own special rock) with all the aliens they meet and the fact that they are on a ship that can go faster than light, they are stranded and they are on their way back home and it will still take them a life-time. that's the reality of the story: that they will spend the rest of their lives trying to get back. and though i know they do get back much quicker than that, where i'm at in the beginning of season 3 that is still the reality of it. and this makes literally everything that happens in the show so fascinating--even if it's a plot or an idea that not only happened in another series but was done technically better in that series. every plot in voyager is colored by the tension between what the star trek ethos is as a whole--exploration and diversity and learning and humanity--all in an optimistic light--and what voyager is about--getting back home. it makes me think of the tension in the actual "voyagers," somewhere now in interstellar space, and the golden record with a map of earth's position etched onto it: spacecraft meant to never be returned but contained on them is a deep, deep hope that in some way they will be. this tension, to me, affects everything on the show.

but that's maybe too big an idea without specific examples from the series--i might ramble about that at another point lol

in the spirit of your question, i will say there is one star trek property that i don't particularly care for on the whole and that's the 2009 movie (and sequels). but i will also say what that movie did right and what i do love about it even if i don't love the movie as a whole is how it portrayed the high-tech poetics of star trek in a much more immediately understandable way than even the 90s shows could for a 21st century audience. the "apple-store" aesthetic is really an argument about how this is the future and it's sleek and stylish and humans have advanced in their engineering and scientific abilities. and among this high-tech argument is uhura front and center: she's very loudly and explicitly a linguist and she fits in this silicon-valley look despite the fact that nowadays things like linguistics are considered "soft sciences" in a general way and treated like that very specifically by the tech-industry now (the attitude being "there's an app for that"). but uhura makes a central discovery in one of her labs at the beginning of the movie which gives her and kirk a leg up on understanding the Movie Threat. the 2009 movie significantly raised her importance as a character, to the point that the "main trio" in those movies is, arguably, more kirk/spock/uhura than it is kirk/spock/mccoy---especially if you're going by the movie posters.

also they gave her this line:

UHURA: And did I not, on multiple occasions, demonstrate an exceptional aural sensitivity, and I quote, "an unparalleled ability to identify sonic anomalies in subspace transmissions tests?"

which is excellent world-building about communications-officers, if you care for that sort of thing. and it provides a starting point for an argument about how listening to a universe (famed quiet due to the lack of material through which sound can travel) is essential to understanding it---an idea that can be further extrapolated via sci-fi regarding things like: listening to gravitational waves if we record them right; or working on the idea that all matter is but a vibration in a quantum field; or, from a more cultural concern, the implication that it is absurd to think you can travel to an alien world and not bring someone with an "exceptional aural sensitivity" who can facilitate an exchange of language and, thereby, meaning.

#star trek #thanks so much for asking!!!#i love rambling on and on about star trek apparently. really enjoyed this exercise y'all #voyager #star trek: aos #uhura #nyota uhura

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thethiefandtheairbender · 5 months ago

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Hello! If you don’t mind, I wanted to ask you..how do you know if a story is worthy of analysis? I feel I don’t have an intuition for what a Good story looks like since I haven’t seen too many (and I tend to not like the ones I do see???), and when I try to analyze my (bad) favorite shows, I feel like I’m gaslighting myself into thinking it’s deep. Lmao. Is there even a point in trying to analyze if you don’t have good taste? I hope you have a good weekend!

Quick note: there's not really such a thing as 'good taste' or 'bad taste'. Classics are usually not classics, after all, because of a bar of quality that they pass (though many of them are very very good) but because they were very influential of literature that came after (Jane Eyre inventing the coming-of-age genre for female main characters), very popular, or a great look at how people were thinking and feeling at the time they were written (The Great Gatsby, More's Utopia).

What's more useful framing, might be "this story worked for me on Various factors" vs "I only like a few things from this story and am discontented with the rest of it". Both can be useful to analyze in their own way. I will say, however, that if you focus on reading/watching/engaging with things where you enjoy more of the story than you don't, you will have a better time and probably end up learning more, especially if you're trying to build up analysis skills to start with, because it is easier to analyze something fairly when you enjoy it than it is with something you don't enjoy and you haven't built those analytical skills in advance. (More here on some of the analytical skills that are useful to employ that also provides good questions to start with when it comes to analysis.)

That said, the good news is that any story is worthy of analysis!

Every story has different strengths and weaknesses, and they're all worth examining. Whether a story is 'shallow' or 'deep' can differ depending on what you're looking for; some stories are light on plot but go deep on character work, for example. Different stories/shows also have different aims and requirements to succeed within their genres. For example, a sitcom doesn't need to have strong worldbuilding, but a great understanding of their cast's chemistry and how to pace the storylines they do have. Alternatively, while not every fantasy property needs to have a lot of lore to be 'Good,' if a fantasy series breaks their lore, chances are it's not going to be a very good fantasy series.

This also goes into looking at stories you think are bad but enjoy anyway. Clearly something is keeping you there (probably the characters) so what is it about that aspect you think the show did well, at least once upon a time? Even if you think they're bungling their execution of the characters, that probably means the show did a good job at crafting characters that were compelling on a premise basis, even if they're not living up to it.

I also think a good indicator of quality—at least what I find in the stories I enjoy, and why only 2 stories in my life have Disappointed me (the Star Wars sequel trilogy after the first movie, and Voltron: Legendary Defender after s3 and I cut ties after s6 / knew s7 and s8 wouldn't be to my taste)—is asking yourself "Is it evident that they have a clear end goal in mind while writing?"

This can be a clear end goal for getting a character from Point A to Point Z, or a conflict, or a theme. For example, Avatar: The Last Airbender makes it very clear from its title and initial episodes (Aang being both "the boy (child) in the iceberg" from ep1 and "the avatar returns" from ep2 followed by "the southern air temple" as his birthplace) that his main journey is about reconciling these three identity factors — being a child; being the Avatar; being the last airbender — is his main arc. This is evident even without looking too much even from the episode plot themselves or the dialogue, though they help push it further and develop it, of course. Therefore, the last episode of the series being "Avatar Aang" and the central conflict being his identity is unsurprising, and shows that this core goal was built throughout and then to fruition. This is also why defeating the Firelord was always going to have to be a non-violent (pacifist) solution; not because Aang is 12 and doesn't want to kill anyone, but because to do so would be to revoke his Air Nomad values and retroactively make Ozai/the Fire Nation correct that his people/culture was not 'strong enough' to exist in the world he finds himself in. This does not mean that the reconciliation of his identity / how this idea was developed or finished has to be to your personal taste, but it IS objective that there's a consistent arc and ideas being put forth.

This can also be something in plot and worldbuilding/lore. For example The Dragon Prince made it very clear two seasons in that 1) humans not having magic was unfair and the story was conscious of it ("the blindfold gives us a way to test the system to imagine we have not been born yet [...] that a fair system should be fair no matter the accident of my birth, that the laws and opportunities should stand to empower everyone") and 2) this unfair magic system would be fixed (main character proves humans can connect to primal natural magic after all). Therefore, 4+ seasons later when we finally started to get into the weeds of having characters In The Narrative who decided that humans couldn't have magic, and that these characters also suck absolute ass, like... Yeah, because this system was always unfair, and dismantling it Eventually was always going to be a Thing. Clear plot and worldbuilding goals from the start being steadily taken to fruition.

Good stories are not necessarily dense and complex, either. I know for me I tend to lean towards stories that have lots of motifs/symbols and are very thematic, because looking for that 'deeper' meaning is fun for my brain. I also find they help create richer, more engaging characters and plotlines. However, I also enjoy stories that have only 1-2 themes and very few symbols because they have other things that are still very good, like plot or character bonds.

The reason why it's helpful to feel and/or tell that a story has a Clear Vision (an end goal or multiple goals) in mind is because the two pillars of analysis (at least how I've always engaged it and how my professors encouraged me to) was two main things:

You examine every part of the story to see how it works together.

You examine every part of the story to see how it works together in good faith.

And that is easier to do so when you can look at, or make assumptions, that every part of the story is working together towards a holistic, cohesive ending. Sometimes this means leaving your personal hang ups or biases or feelings at the door. You may not like a ship, for example, but chances are there are still thematic and/or plot reasons as to why they're being put together. It is easier to argue in good faith when you like something (aka something works for you) which is why I recommend starting there. Doing so when something doesn't work for you, especially on a first pass, is important in creating an expansive viewpoint and stepping outside of your personal bubble.

For ex, like 10 years ago when Moana came out I felt like her conflict with her parents was a bit underdeveloped because she didn't 'push back against them "enough"'. I realized on my own that I was probably expecting a more Western (white) protagonist, rewatched the movie with a more collectivist mindset, and my previous complaint went away, because it was grounded in my (limited) cultural (dominant) context, not the movies (nor was I necessarily the audience in mind, anyway, which is also useful to keep in mind).

So, things worth analyzing in stories which can all be entirely separate (but often overlap):

How they utilize their protagonists and antagonists from a: characterization standpoint, from a foils standpoint, from a plot standpoint, from a thematic standpoint.

How does a story introduce ideas, such as: their characters, relationships, threats, conflicts, solutions, themes.

How does a story pace its: plot, character arcs, relationships, instalments (chapters, episodes, sequels, etc).

What are the repeating ideas in the story? Similar shots, turns of phrase, choices, etc? (Parallels/patterns is how characterization and growth / theme are built, so it's especially useful). Is the story drawing on other older tropes or ideas to subvert them?

All stories, even 'bad' ones, are worth looking at for how they do these things and which parts worked for you.

Ask why. Just always ask why. "This character made such a selfish choice" --> "This character made a selfish choice. Why do I think it's selfish? Do I think the character thinks it's selfish, or justified? Why? What could the narrative be saying about what/who/why people make selfish choices? Why would this character be selfish? Is this in line with their consistent behaviour? If not, why do I think that? Am I overlooking something?"

For example, in the movie adaptation of Wicked which was quite good, Glinda was portrayed exactly as I like to be portrayed: she's allowed to be more cunning and mean and artificial rather than playing up her 'ditziness'. However, while I generally prefer my Elphabas to be a bit angrier/meaner/sharper, I really appreciate that they didn't have her be that way when they cast a Black woman to play her. My preferences, depending on the context(s) of the adaptations, casting, staging, etc. do not rule all, and the film is not worse as an adaptation for not aligning with that specific preference of mine; on the contrary, I think it is undoubtedly better precisely because it doesn't align.

Now for the (hopefully shorter?) recommendations section because it seems like you tend to be dissatisfied with what you're watching and there's 100% stuff out there that'd suit your tastes better and/or be helpful to learn from even if they aren't:

The Dragon Prince (TDP) for its explorations of morality, its character work, its respect for all of its character emotional states, and how consistently it makes you watch all of its characters ("good" guys or "bad" guys) make choices that are bad or you know are gonna have disastrous consequences, but you also get 100% why they're making them every time. A 'good guy' protagonist uses a torture spell on someone when he absolutely did not have to. A 'villainous' character saves his sick child from dying. The show slaps. Also a very good example of thematic maturation, where the series starts off with a more simplistic view of love (love = good) for the first 3 seasons, only to then explore the darker underside (you will do terrible things in the name of love) consistently across the main cast.

Six of Crows for the way its multi-POV chapter style hammers home what you can do with gaps of information/perception between characters. How Inej or Matthias view Kaz, or vice versa for example, is radically different, and illustrates how as an author you have to hold/understand many differing viewpoints and motivations on your characters and their actions simultaneously. The YA fantasy duology also does a great job at showing how to craft characters who are very distinct from each other in personality and association, bolstered by the symbols/objects given to each of the main cast (Matthias is associated with wolves; Inej has her braid and two knives and ghost-imagery; Kaz has his gloves, his crows, his canes, etc).

Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA) for its cultural worldbuilding and natural worldbuilding integration. The former is due to its pacing and its biggest main theme as a series being "cultural preservation in the face of imperialism is important," with the latter due to its strong character work (Sokka's sarcasm often provides a basis for Aang or Katara to correct him or explain things in greater detail in Book One, for example).

Sidenote: This is also a great example where understanding how a story is operating vs personal preference be useful. For ex, my brother preferred Dragon Prince to ATLA because ATLA was slower paced and he liked stuff that was faster, and TDP focuses on historical/lore worldbuilding whereas ATLA focuses on cultural worldbuilding partially due to being paced slower / having more room within its seasons, but the trade off is that TDP has more character development and is more thematically tight, which is my preference.

Tales of Arcadia: Trollhunters for its utilization of a very strong roster of multiple villains / antagonists going at all times, and subsequently for its plot pacing as a result. Many shows have what I call a 'crowning achievement'—the thing this show does very well amid other things it does well—and I think this is undeniably Trollhunters' greatest strength. I'm not usually much of an antagonist person (I tend to be most invested in the protags) but I think Trollhunters' willingness to subvert pacing expectations and keep a general sense of uneasiness adds to the fun of the show, i.e. 2 villains want the same thing so one teams up with the hero, etc.

Crazy Ex Girlfriend (musical comedy drama tv show) because it's a great example of a deconstruction narrative and an unreliable narrator as a protagonist. Basically S2 onwards goes "remember all those sit/rom-com trope things you laughed at in S1 that we made light of? yeah they're all unhealthy and here's why" while still remaining a comedy. The show also deconstructs common tropes and expectations around love / female archetypes as well as the title itself in thoughtful discussions on mental illness without ever being preachy.

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous for writing interpersonal character conflict / dynamics without ever feeling contrived. This is probably one of the 'simpler' shows on the list (there's a few framing parallels, 1-2 verbal motifs, meanwhile like every other line or shot in TDP winds up having deeper meaning, especially on rewatches) but what it does well, it does very well. The main 6 kids who are left stranded on the island are very well written, the show provides ample space for everyone to be developed and balances storylines / character beats, it lets you see how trauma is affecting them without always spelling it out, and the dialogue always sounds like stuff real people would say or reason through without feeling like the characters sound too young or too old or anything like that.

TLDR; you like what you like, even if that's just parts of a story, and you have good reasons for liking it. Examining what you don't like and why can also be useful. Separating stories or parts of them into "this is bad vs this is good" can be a useful jumping off point, but in order to analyze having specific reasons for each one while considering why the story made the choices it did (in good faith) is a strong foundation.

Sorry this is long, but hope it helps! Most of my recs are all completed series, on Netflix, or easy to find online if you do choose to look into any of them <3

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