if you use the search operators in the main dash search you can do things like "from:postsforposting #meta "#deadpool and wolverine"" to concatenate tags.
some navigation, in no particular order:
#deadpool and wolverine
#cablepool, #nathan summers, #cable and deadpool
#good omens (not everything has been added to sideblog)
if it's there to serve you, and follows all your orders, aren't you domming it? the ai singularity people must be ecstatic that we've saved the future. frankly idk why they didn't propose "make it a sub" right off the bat
efforts towards a "positive vision of masculinity" or whatever are so funny because what these guys are trying to figure out is literally "what's a way of being a good person that's Not For Girls™"
There's a thing where people hold different expectations about you because of your gender, and then you notice, and it makes you self-conscious.
For example... The fact that you talk about positive masculinity as being about guys wanting a version of being a good person that's not for girls.
I see this all the time, and... As much as people are against femininity I don't think I've ever seen someone talk about how funny it is that women want a version of good behavior that excludes those icky boys.
"what's a way of being a good person that's Not For Girls™"
what elements are specific to country music? ohmahgawd, anyone can use an acoustic guitar, that doesn't make it country. why do you want to exclude everyone else. why do you think only country can be good music, don't you ever listen to something else? it's lack of a proper innercity upbringing that's making you act like this *nods so rapidly my head flies off*
I frequently think back to this bit from Questionable Content:
There's no way to win!
Comparing yourself to people who make it is depressing and comparing yourself to people who don't is depressing and thinking about yourself on your own terms is depressing and I won't even get pat on the head by a robot lady and get my shit together 10 years younger than I am right now like this fictional character does.
Idk, I think comparisons can help when they're not done in a "competitive" framing.
With people who make it, comparison can tell you what they had that you're lacking, and thereby help you fix things or at least give you more information.
With people worse off than yourself, the same comparison can tell you what assets you have that they need, and you can consciously make use of those things. It's not about gratitude or sneering. It's simple inventory. You can't possibly think of everything in the world yourself, and you can't possibly expect yourself to reinvent the wheel with every new problem. Comparison is silently asking nosy questions about what differences exist, why they exist, etc the whole who-what-when-where-why-how. It helps you learn.
Rather than thinking about yourself on your own terms in a hostilely-critical manner a la looking for weaknesses to excise, an objective assessment can help you let go of self blame for not having things you need, for not solving things earlier or faster, and help you see things you did try regardless of whether they turned out well. You wouldn't sneer at people in a worse position than yourself; there's equally no reason to sneer at your own disadvantages compared to where you want to be. Which of course does not instantaneously alter how you feel about yourself.
Frankly, I think it's freeing to "accept death" in the sense that at any point in which you're still alive and still unhappy, death is objectively an option. But if you don't want to literally pull the trigger regardless of a desire to be dead, then you may as well try something else. If you fail, well, your options are still death or another attempt. Feel like shit enough, lose things you thought you couldn't? Death is still there as long as you're still alive. If you succeed at something? You're that much better off, even if it's a purely psychological, immaterial "it's all in your head" success.
I think ultimately it really feels like there is a shocking lack of actual agency involved. I can swap notes with people and consider my options and work hard and all that but it doesn't actually matter. (And on top of that, as an ADHDisaster, it hardly feels like I have any influence on which interventions I do or how or how much anyway.)
The results have very little to do with virtuous meritorious striving, so sneering isn't called for, but pity or envy for those who happen to be more cursed or less cursed by fate is still the natural way to feel so I'll still be mumbling self-pity at myself in the corner of woe regardless.
IMO lack of agency is still one of those "to die or not to die" things. It's not going to cure depression or ADHD or change anything. As you say, results have very little to do with virtuous meritorious striving. This is more about the very bottom of the barrel, absolutely going to die anyway no matter what you do, situation of yes death/no death. Do you take the sip of water because it'll make you feel better, even though you're going to die in an hour? There's no need to feel good about it, or enjoy it, or whatnot psychological analysis. I'm also not saying !Just Do It! because that doesn't help these kinds of things. It's just a different frame.
I frequently think back to this bit from Questionable Content:
There's no way to win!
Comparing yourself to people who make it is depressing and comparing yourself to people who don't is depressing and thinking about yourself on your own terms is depressing and I won't even get pat on the head by a robot lady and get my shit together 10 years younger than I am right now like this fictional character does.
Idk, I think comparisons can help when they're not done in a "competitive" framing.
With people who make it, comparison can tell you what they had that you're lacking, and thereby help you fix things or at least give you more information.
With people worse off than yourself, the same comparison can tell you what assets you have that they need, and you can consciously make use of those things. It's not about gratitude or sneering. It's simple inventory. You can't possibly think of everything in the world yourself, and you can't possibly expect yourself to reinvent the wheel with every new problem. Comparison is silently asking nosy questions about what differences exist, why they exist, etc the whole who-what-when-where-why-how. It helps you learn.
Rather than thinking about yourself on your own terms in a hostilely-critical manner a la looking for weaknesses to excise, an objective assessment can help you let go of self blame for not having things you need, for not solving things earlier or faster, and help you see things you did try regardless of whether they turned out well. You wouldn't sneer at people in a worse position than yourself; there's equally no reason to sneer at your own disadvantages compared to where you want to be. Which of course does not instantaneously alter how you feel about yourself.
Frankly, I think it's freeing to "accept death" in the sense that at any point in which you're still alive and still unhappy, death is objectively an option. But if you don't want to literally pull the trigger regardless of a desire to be dead, then you may as well try something else. If you fail, well, your options are still death or another attempt. Feel like shit enough, lose things you thought you couldn't? Death is still there as long as you're still alive. If you succeed at something? You're that much better off, even if it's a purely psychological, immaterial "it's all in your head" success.
As a semi-woke semi-christian, I think that the kneejerk reaction of "yes i am evil suck it" to people saying you're doing something bad is stupid, and, yes, evil. It's the sort of thing that leads you to Marc Andreesson and his moral equivalents. A kind of psychological insecurity that I am sympathetic to in children and youths but which adults should have grown past.
At the same time, even when I disagree on the specifics, I believe it is one of the great virtues to be "based" in the common sense demonstrated in the waow comic, which is also the sense of the base on which, in the words of Martin Luther, "here I stand, I can do no other". To have a serious moral sense which you attempt to reflect on, and which (even if you do not make a public big deal about it) does not bend under the weight of conventional society. Or, in other words, to "not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind".
(seems to be in response to a Poast I have not seen?)
There are lots of adults who are of the "here I stand" mindset about other people being inherently evil. Like modern fringe homophobes do, like historically people assaulting children for being left handed did. Attempting to argue with them is pointless, because even if you succeed at it, they will still treat you like shit. You will never have worth to them or respect from them. "I'm evil suck it" is a way to get them to piss off and leave you alone, to make them stop attempting to "save" you. Even the most fervent of Mormon proselytizers have a list of houses they do not go to; the point of "suck it" is to get yourself on that list.
Dunno what Andreesson did, but in no way is forcing yourself onto an asshole's Do Not Call list a slippery slope towards other "evil".
I'm not really sure why a child would be going "I'm evil" in normal circumstances, except for either side of schoolyard bullying.
Children are frequently in a position where they have parents or teachers or other people with a personal connection to them whom they cannot escape, and generally do not have the capacity to stonewall. In those contexts, I think this rhetorical behavior checks out. If they carry this over to internet contexts where that doesn't apply, it is still sympathetic.
Adults can normally basically ignore this category of people. If a mormon pair knocks on your door, an adult can tell them they are not interested and close the door and go back to what they were doing. Adults also more often have the option of just directly telling people to "piss off and leave you alone", and if they refuse, you can get a restraining order.
If, to take a real example, someone is making posts about how I am as bad as Leopold II because I am in the worm fandom (or, to take a slightly more serious subject, where it is quite common for people to call others inherently evil, because I believe ao3 should continue to host explicit snarry fic), I don't have to agree with them and go over the top and declare myself evil.
Instead, since I have the emotional regulation and social privileges of an adult, I can argue with them until I am bored of doing so, and then I can stop, and block them if necessary. Declaring myself evil is like turning myself into a snake: it never helps (1).
I hadn't thought children would go "I'm evil" out of anything but frustration; IMO most in those situations know that saying they did something bad would make it worse. I'd hope saying that would be out of frustration, but yeah, repetition of those situations would be a risk.
I don't think there's a problem with considering "I'm eeevil" to be childish, especially in the context of christian belief. Temptation is a real problem in religion, in the give an inch/take a mile way. That'd be an unhealthy thought pattern, because that devil is real. Even if it's obviously sarcastic, people would be concerned about why someone would say something that drastic.
Outside religion, it can still be considered childish like anything else can be irritating. Edgy people or, like you say, people who lack appropriate emotional regulation definitely come off that way even if they don't believe/mean it seriously. Given that most churches are packed on two holidays per year but never otherwise, most people are a "nonpracticing" type of christian where jokes/things that would send you to hell are considered offcolor rather than a serious concern.
to completely deny that someone's gender is found in the biology, you would need to suppose some sort of immaterial gender soul which is the origin of statements like "I really wish I was a girl" or "I will flee the country so I can transition".
since otherwise, such statements are coming from the brain and thus biology.
*nods* gender/body dualism. gender comes from the soul. in the version of heaven where there is no marriage, there is still gender. in the version of future rapture where a person's dead body is raised anew, trans people have already been raptured and raised in the perfect image of god: beings whose spirits transcend and thus have power over all weak flesh.
As a semi-woke semi-christian, I think that the kneejerk reaction of "yes i am evil suck it" to people saying you're doing something bad is stupid, and, yes, evil. It's the sort of thing that leads you to Marc Andreesson and his moral equivalents. A kind of psychological insecurity that I am sympathetic to in children and youths but which adults should have grown past.
At the same time, even when I disagree on the specifics, I believe it is one of the great virtues to be "based" in the common sense demonstrated in the waow comic, which is also the sense of the base on which, in the words of Martin Luther, "here I stand, I can do no other". To have a serious moral sense which you attempt to reflect on, and which (even if you do not make a public big deal about it) does not bend under the weight of conventional society. Or, in other words, to "not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind".
(seems to be in response to a Poast I have not seen?)
There are lots of adults who are of the "here I stand" mindset about other people being inherently evil. Like modern fringe homophobes do, like historically people assaulting children for being left handed did. Attempting to argue with them is pointless, because even if you succeed at it, they will still treat you like shit. You will never have worth to them or respect from them. "I'm evil suck it" is a way to get them to piss off and leave you alone, to make them stop attempting to "save" you. Even the most fervent of Mormon proselytizers have a list of houses they do not go to; the point of "suck it" is to get yourself on that list.
Dunno what Andreesson did, but in no way is forcing yourself onto an asshole's Do Not Call list a slippery slope towards other "evil".
I'm not really sure why a child would be going "I'm evil" in normal circumstances, except for either side of schoolyard bullying.
I'm not sure what specifically it's in response to either, but I think the issue with "I'm evil, suck it" in response to stuff like that is that you eventually start to internalize the "I'm evil" part and implicitly buy into their framework even if you're saying it sarcastically.
As a semi-woke semi-christian, I think that the kneejerk reaction of "yes i am evil suck it" to people saying you're doing something bad is stupid, and, yes, evil. It's the sort of thing that leads you to Marc Andreesson and his moral equivalents. A kind of psychological insecurity that I am sympathetic to in children and youths but which adults should have grown past.
At the same time, even when I disagree on the specifics, I believe it is one of the great virtues to be "based" in the common sense demonstrated in the waow comic, which is also the sense of the base on which, in the words of Martin Luther, "here I stand, I can do no other". To have a serious moral sense which you attempt to reflect on, and which (even if you do not make a public big deal about it) does not bend under the weight of conventional society. Or, in other words, to "not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind".
(seems to be in response to a Poast I have not seen?)
There are lots of adults who are of the "here I stand" mindset about other people being inherently evil. Like modern fringe homophobes do, like historically people assaulting children for being left handed did. Attempting to argue with them is pointless, because even if you succeed at it, they will still treat you like shit. You will never have worth to them or respect from them. "I'm evil suck it" is a way to get them to piss off and leave you alone, to make them stop attempting to "save" you. Even the most fervent of Mormon proselytizers have a list of houses they do not go to; the point of "suck it" is to get yourself on that list.
Dunno what Andreesson did, but in no way is forcing yourself onto an asshole's Do Not Call list a slippery slope towards other "evil".
I'm not really sure why a child would be going "I'm evil" in normal circumstances, except for either side of schoolyard bullying.
for real tho it feels exhausting that ive seen this whole "woman should be allowed to abstain from X beauty standard" -> "i perform X beauty standard, am i evil? do you think im evil? please forgive me i came up with a dozen excuses 🥺" since like 2015 (and i know its been going on longer than that) like girl thats not the poiiiiint
look me in the eyes. repeat after me. "i face societal pressure to perform this beauty standard. i should not face that pressure. i conform to this standard. i am rewarded for performing to this standard. i need to respect women who do not perform this standard. this is not about whether or not i am a sinner for wearing makeup."
people generally believe "if you don't do Thing that's necessary for being a good person, then you are an awful person". discussions about altering social norms inherently include that assumption, and so are inherently about who's a good person and who's not.
in such a discussion, changing Thing means changing who's good and who's bad. nobody wants to be a bad person, and nobody wants other people to think they're bad people.
people who agree that Thing causes harm will wonder if continuing to do Thing causes harm:
am i hurting people by participating in Thing
am i supporting harm to people if i do this
will everyone think i want to hurt people who don't do Thing
much like explaining reasons that not doing Thing does not hurt anyone and so it should not be necessary, people who agree with that have reasons they do Thing and will explain how Thing does not hurt anyone. they are talking about the other side of the coin, wherein that something others do should not be taken as social pressure, judgement, or a threat against those who do not.
lot of tumblr horror bloggers believe that typical romance cliches create real life misogynists, but somehow their fav serial killers and cannibals and sundry plot elements don't cause real life criminals
I'm giving Lord of The Rings (The book, not the movie) another shot. Frankly, I've always found it a bit dull and plodding, but frankly with all the stress I'm dealing with right now perhaps that's in order.
Reading it these days is different from reading it 30 or 60 years ago; I have a computer and internet access and I can immediately just look up whatever the hell the Elves are talking about when they thank some mythic figure; I don't recall how much of this was in the Hobbit, and of course if you read really far back you certainly didn't have the Silmarillion.
One thing I'm noticing this time, because of the preocupations of the time in which I'm reading it, is the immediate focus on Bilbo's pity for Gollum, and for that matter the pity felt by the elves and Gandalf for him as well.
Somewhere buried deep beneath it is one of the central tensions of modern Christian theology, which is that God provided us with wills of our own, and the capacity to act, in some small way, against him, and then immediately became infuriated and filled with rage when we used such things.
I'm not well familiar with the textual history of the Silmarillion, but if you read it it's hard to explain how Illuvitar and Morgoth are different; Morgoth seems merely to want Illuvitar's position.
One wonders why Illuvitar gave the Ainur the capacity to create disharmonious music in the first place.
I feel like there is something in this impulse that perhaps might be somewhat embedded in British culture, but I kind of felt it as a kid and never much liked it, which equates disharmony with wickedness. I think there's a lot of this in Chronicles of Narnia as well.
Actually, as a child I often thought the description of heaven in the Book of Revelation sounded profoundly unpleasant. Constant chanting, constant light, all aimed at satisfying the ego of a being which, quite frankly, should not need such things, no time to be alone and think your own thoughts, it just sounds unpleasant.
I guess Tolkien was a bit divided on the nature of Orcs and Trolls in his private writings? He would sort of have to be, because there is this kind of fundamental tension between the Christian belief in a universal pity and forgiveness, and the Christian belief that disharmony with God is inherently a form of wickedness.
I guess really what I kind of chafe at, and I think this is a constant tension in Lord of The Rings even in the first few chapters, is the sense that one should listen to and admire one's betters, and that to disagree with them, or resent them, or rebel against them is a sign of wickedness rather than, frankly, a fairly natural set of impulses (Particularly in the Children at whom these books are aimed!)
That's not the moral of the book, mind you. It's just one sort of overarching theme which is in some way in tension with an equally overarching theme of universal Christian compassion.
i've partially read the first LOTR, and also put it down due to the plodding pace. based on what i remember plus fandom osmosis:
>which equates disharmony with wickedness
>and that to disagree with them, or resent them, or rebel against them is a sign of wickedness
orcs and trolls are created "damned", inherently evil and unable to change that. i've heard tolkein said he regretted that bit of lore exactly because it's against the concept of grace.
frodo and gollum are paralleled. gollum kills someone to acquire the ring; frodo volunteers to carry it because no one else will, and attempts to resist it. bilbo carried it and used it for a long time, according to the Hobbit; i've heard tolkein said the discrepancies between Hobbit and LOTR are because bilbo lied. perhaps then, bilbo was not as nice and unaffected by the ring as the Hobbit claimed.
bilbo left the shire in the middle of his joint bday party with frodo. frodo left shortly after, and frodo eventually left for the Undying Lands. maybe the real function of the ring is death. accepting it like gollum did, like bilbo took it, like the other people accepting the sibling rings linked to it, requires that you either leave your world behind or that "who you are" dies and what's left becomes corrupt. like a body without a soul, an empty shell. to return to the place you left makes you a sort of zombie, that "disharmony with god" type of thing, a wraith among the living seeking to bring down everyone else for company in their misery. perhaps bilbo was not affected like frodo because he did not know what the ring was.
if the ring's function is death, maybe it turns hobbits invisible because hobbits can move between spirit forms like wraiths are and the physical world without becoming corrupt. i've heard the undying lands used to be freely accessible, not a one way trip; if so, that would parallel the hobbits' ability to move between worlds. if the ring is death, perhaps morgoth putting all his soul into it was sort of him becoming the lord of death, like a satan figure. it feels like there's a relationship between frodo volunteering to carry it and morgoth creating the ring of his own will; they both freely chose. if morgoth and illuvitar aren't terribly different, perhaps they are different types of life and death: illuvitar and the undying lands as a spiritual form of heaven, wherein you physically no longer exist in the mundane world, vs morgoth's immortality of the body on earth and death of the soul.
maybe the world is called "middle" earth because it's between the lower world of soul death and the higher world of bodily death. the parallel between frodo and gollum has the sense of "there but for the grace of god go i"; maybe the orcs and trolls and gollum all chose to spurn grace, spurn light and eternal spiritual life to instead choose indulgence in physical life. if so, the "indulgence" is likely a play on the christian idea of "the flesh is weak", and that flesh itself is damned and unclean due to original sin. it could also be a form of the christian "three enemies of the soul"/"three categories of sin", which are the world, the flesh, and the devil.
if that's true, then perhaps orcs and trolls are inherently damned because they are created as a body without a soul, like a zombie. maybe orcs, which i've heard are twisted forms of elves, actually are elf bodies raised from the dead via some kind of necromancy. in the movie they're born from the dirt, which kind of feels like a play on the christian idea of "from dust to dust" wherein humans are created from dirt and will return to it in death.
light and dark, illuvitar and morgoth, the undying lands and the depths of greed where the balrog lives, could all be different forms of eternal life. hobbits going invisible could be them giving up their bodies willingly, taking a sort of true/eternal form like the invisible hand of god working in the world. maybe tom bombadil could not be tempted by the ring, by eternal life, because he never existed in bodily form--maybe he's a sort of solid spirit, master of nature. goldberry, his spouse, is called the river-daughter. water is cleansing and life giving, like the religious concept of baptism cleansing sin. cleansing death, i think, since they're called "life giving" and one gets to the undying lands by *sailing*. if that's true, then going to the undying lands is a "clean death" that gives the peace not found in life and allows the body to literally "rest" in peace, never to rise again.
goldberry as the daughter of the *life-giving* river--not the river itself--could be the spirit of life itself. bombadil is thought to be a type of genius loci, which IRL is the spirit of a place; he could be the spirit of the middle earth lands itself.
maybe singing, playing, food, happiness, and taking pleasure in the world (hence all the long nature walks in the books) are the elements of *satisfaction* in life. satisfaction and fulfillment could be the factors of immunity to the "temptation" of becoming a soulless body, seeking in death what was missing in life.
since the ring does not affect bombadil and he plays with it like a toy, the metatextual idea could be that he's telling the hobbits there is still pleasure and life after their task, that the ring ultimately does not affect what truly matters in the world. maybe the ring isn't standard death, but a loss of pleasure in life. that fits with gollum and frodo both forgetting bodily sensations like the taste of strawberries and soft wind.
maybe that means illuvitar isn't "god" as such; he's the representation of joy. morgoth would be its loss, and the ring would be morgoth--who already had eternal life--volunteering to make himself a permanent physical presence on middle earth. he wouldn't be sin, he's a soulless existence, the opposition to pleasure in the flesh and the world. in destroying the ring and thus morgoth, middle earth passes into the "age of men" without magic and without eternal beings like the elves. destroying the ring would be destroying dissatisfaction itself, and passing to the age of men is allowing men to exist in peace and happiness forever. sort of like an eternal eden, which sam as the gardener cultivated and kept alive for frodo. maybe bombadil isn't just the spirit of the world, but a spirit of eden, a safe world without conflict. aragorn's rule could be heaven on earth, an eternal union of body and spirit for humans like the hobbits already had.
wonder if anyone has turned to long-dead languages for their pronouns. "neopronouns? no, those are so yesterday. the future is archeopronouns. hēo/hīe/hire."
from where I'm standing, "she" is a neopronoun because it doesn't appear in the written record until the twelth century, significantly postdating all the other english personal pronouns
There was some variation in some forms in different dialects and sometimes even within a single dialect, but this table captures the basic forms. (Note that the vowels here basically have classical values, so hē would be pronounced somewhat like hey, hire would be something like hee-reh, and so on. A macron or acute accent just indicates that a vowel is longer.)
he/hine/him are archeopronouns. grab "him" by the hiney.
the third person for "she" is "hīe", which was also the plurals for every gender.
the current they/them/their evolved from old norse.
personally, i think the populace would be best served by adopting the pronouns hire/me
A lot of women's underwear is sold online with pictures of it fully sucked into the crotch as if even the most full coverage granny panty is a gstring. Is that the single feature all women look for? How much wedgie per dollar they can get?
like it's already weird and a heinous character assassination when you interpret rocky's proactive, bossy, endearingly passionate but perhaps a little overenthusiastic personality as dominating and sexually aggressive in utterly shallow mastubatory ways, but when you're putting him in the body of a latino or otherwise nonwhite guy it is also, and i take absolutely no pleasure in telling you this, pretty fucking racist
the notes got long, so copy/paste of thread below.
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postsforposting
(Not sure if this is a vent about a personal no go? Seems more like a "nobody should do this" line in the sand.) Nobody has to like any given bit of fic; lots of people don't like westerns, lots don't like horror, etc. That said, I don't see the difference between people writing the stuff common to horror like murder, abuse, etc vs things like racism. I don't think stories need correct IRL moral stances as a disclaimer for what used to be called "trash parties". Character assassination and shallow masturbatory ways are par for the course, especially in fanfic. Authors frequently don't even spell anything correctly. The Twilight Zone was pretty much nothing but "ahaha wouldn't that be fucked up! Anyway,". The Black Mirror show is the same. Fic is like kink, hence the historical "don't like don't read" that was attached to nearly every queer fic. Like you were saying the other day, there's no harm in enjoying fic that other people hate and vice versa. No matter how morally disgusting it would be IRL.
valtsv
??? this is such a weird interpretation of my point. i'm not saying people CAN'T be racist or explore racism in their fanwork, i understand it's largely born from ignorance, and i'm pro acknowledging and exploring social issues in fiction. i'm questioning why the hell anyone would want to be casually racist in lazy, offensive ways on purpose. like who does that serve except your own gratification at the cost of other people in very real and signficant ways.
valtsv
@/valtsv depiction isn't endorsement, but not all depictions are created equal. you can create racist fiction and even do it on purpose if you want to - i'm not naive, it's happened for much of human history and is still happening today, right now - but people are allowed to have critical opinions about it, including that it's useless dogshit which communicates nothing of value.
postsforposting
@/valtsv >useless dogshit which communicates nothing of value
uhhm....yeah, it is useless dogshit that communicates nothing of value. So is literally all PWP. Stories need not "communicate" anything, they're not sermons in church or jesus-y moral parables. Lots of people like moral themes, and lots of people like imagining trash.
>i understand it's largely born from ignorance
Not really? Like you said, people do it on purpose. Like PWP is on purpose. Doing it on purpose isn't endorsement, like you said. Just as deliberately writing a forcefem torture story with noncon body altering isn't endorsement. None mean nothing about the IRL author. It's all equally thought crime, like actors playing villains is pretend crime.
>i'm questioning why the hell anyone would want to be casually racist in lazy, offensive ways on purpose. like who does that serve except your own gratification at the cost of other people in very real and signficant ways.
Because it IS fiction. It's not real, there are no costs to real people at all. Yes, readers can go "this is disgusting I never want to see anything like this", and readers can go "this is the most racist piece of writing I've ever seen", but that's radically different from going "use your brain". The "use your brain" is part of why I wasn't sure if you were venting, or if you seriously meant that those authors are terrible ignorant people. If *they* are naive or immoral, then all murder plots and the Twilight Zone etc should all mean those authors are also awful immoral people IRL who ignorantly murder people. That's silly.
"Your own gratification" is why fic exists, why people read it, especially PWP fic. Like raceplay kink or breathplay or anything else icky to the general public, pretend does no harm to anyone. That's the reason ficcers used to put "don't like don't read" on gay fic, because they'd get this same kind of backlash.
@fag-lore
@postsforposting all stories communicate something, even ones that aren't trying to. stories are communication. that's why stories that reinforce racist stereotypes do actually harm real people. OP didn't say that people who unintentionally create racist material are terrible people and i think wasn't even talking about intentionally racist material. OP is saying "use your brain" to consider whether you're accidentally creating and perpetuating racist dogshit
also, if one were to say "people who unknowingly reinforce racist stereotypes in their fiction are probably racist in real life", that really wouldnt be silly or at all the same as saying "people who write about murder are murderers in real life". that's an extremely false equivalency.
equating racism with porn is also really weird. racism isn't a moral purity issue. racist art isn't "thought crime"-it exists in real life and causes real life harm.
(end of copy/paste)
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let's poach the elephant in the room. notice that i am posing questions TO YOU without sharing my own thoughts.
that's why stories that reinforce racist stereotypes do actually harm real people.
how? you are stating it happens, you are not describing how it works. show your math.
does this apply to video games when their "message" is "commit wanton violence freely" and you are required to do it?
that's an extremely false equivalency.
how?
"use your brain" to consider whether you're accidentally creating and perpetuating racist dogshit
does superman perpetuate the idea you can fly? show your reasoning.
racism isn't a moral purity issue. racist art isn't "thought crime"-it exists in real life and causes real life harm.
ergo, superman exists in real life. do we arrest every actor who's played hitler since hitler was actually real and those actors perpetuated harm to real people? how about everyone who worked on the grand theft auto video game franchise?
racist art isn't "thought crime"-it exists in real life and causes real life harm.
what is the difference between "real" meaning "i am holding a photo of superman and so it is real" vs the "real" you are using to mean "therefore superman is real and is a real person who exists right now in real life"?
can you personally share a room with racist art without becoming a racist? can you personally read mein kampf, a nonfictional political manifesto, without becoming the next hitler? how do toddlers know that they can't fly like superman does, and that they should not commit violence upon people like he does? can a teenager be trusted to share space with a cardboard cutout of superman without believing she can fly? how about sharing space with a tinkerbell poster?
how do you define the difference between fiction and nonfiction? what does it mean when a thing is called "fiction"? how do you interact with it? do you believe it can make you do things, do you believe it contains real facts you must incorporate into your belief system like a textbook? do you treat it like a church sermon, a holy book, such that you're a helpless monkey see monkey do? how do you think other people define "fiction" and interact with it? what does "purity culture" mean and why do fictional murder fests like the saw franchise not tick the box while racism does? why can fiction make you racist but not make you a chainsaw killer? can fiction make you believe wrong things about math, about physics, how asthma works or how to do cpr?
do stories, which you have said contain "messages", need to have a disclaimer acknowledging that every immoral act in the book is immoral like some sort of toddler's parental guidance explaining that flying people aren't real so please don't jump down the stairs?
people who unknowingly reinforce racist stereotypes in their fiction are probably racist in real life",
why? did they kill someone? what's the difference between a fictional story and a real person's real actions and real behavior toward other people? why does gleeful grand theft and gloriously bloody texas chainsaw massacre murders get a pass but fictional racism does not? how about noncon or underage sex or all kinds of abuse? is there any issue that falls under "not all depictions are created equal" that you personally have no problem with, or do all those inequalities perfectly line up with your own moral beliefs?
equating racism with porn is also really weird
having pointed out that there are at least two conflicting definitions of "real" you are using interchangeably when they cannot be swapped like that:
what is the difference between engaging in cnc rape fantasies in real life with a real life sex partner(s) vs writing a PWP of the same thing? does it matter if the PWP is outright noncon instead of cnc? is porn somehow exempt from "fiction causes real harm to real people"? why is it exempt? is only written porn exempt, or is all porn including videos with real live actors also exempt? is racist porn exempt, is raceplay porn exempt or are people who do that harming others? is it only harm to others if they talk about their sexcapades or does it cause harm purely because it exists and god's watching from the cuck chair?