I know everyone says it’s best to just stick to “said” as a dialogue tag bc it disappears and that’s true and I mostly do but I want to take a moment for my all-time favorite dialogue tag, “lied.” Absolutely nothing hits like “‘I’m here to help,’ he lied.” NOTHING.
Fuck it, Urbanism hot take night, none of you bitches actually know what gentrification is
Those dilapidated warehouses being demolished and turned into a restaurant or an apartment complex is not gentrification
No, that man with a metrosexual haircut wearing airpods on the bus is not gentrifying your neighborhood, he is a person, not the American socio-economic landscape
They are incredibly cheap to build apartment buildings with the current building codes. They are called 5 over 1’s because they are 5 floors with wooden frames over a concrete base
Shout out to someone finally getting the point of this post
I feel like the villagers in Encanto overreacted to things they saw as prophecies that really weren't intended to be prophecising. "Your fish is going to die" when you put a goldfish in a tiny bubble aquarium is more of a remark/warning than a prophecy and they could put it somewhere else. "You're going to grow a beer belly" is also more of a rude remark but it is also under the villager's control and people comment rudely on other people's eating and drinking habits all the time without it being prophecies. I felt like he made random comments about random things that got interpreted as prophecies because of his gift. None of the things mentioned in the song counted as predicting the future in my opinion, just villagers overreacting to random (albeit sometimes rude) remarks. The only actual prophecy was the one about Mirabel and even then, her choices still ultimately influenced her future despite the prophecy.
But do you think Bruno said it like a random remark. Do you think he didn’t glower and loom over people with all his malnoushed shortie body and say random shit in the most ominous voice possible just because he could and maybe she WILL move her goldfish if he says it like that. Do you think he did not want everyone to believe every single word out of his mouth is a prophecy let’s be real here
I never really thought about this before but “suffer in silence” is a Christian thing? It’s supposed to be a virtue and you’re generally criticized for complaining. Even the Pope called complainers “whiners,” and said we should suffer in silent endurance (in a homily on May 7th, 2013).
I grew up soaking in that attitude, and I know I’ve internalized it a great deal. I’m working on recognizing it, but I still catch myself thinking that way all too often.
I’m reading Why Be Jewish? by Edgar Bronfman, and he takes a different view. Complaint is a Jewish pastime, he says, with biblical roots, and he points out that it’s both natural and necessary: “…complaint arises from a sense of deep dissatisfaction. Without complaint, there is no criticism, there is no vision of the way things can be. Complaint is the beginning of the vision of a better world. It rejects complacency and it rejects the status quo.”
It occurs to me that the social enforcement of “suffering in silence” serves the ends of capitalism quite effectively. I’m going to make a point to complain a little more and a little louder in the service of change.
You know, this is an interesting point, and my first thought was to nod along, like yeah, once you say it it’s totally obvious. And then I was like. You know what, on second thought I think I don’t agree at all?
On second thought, I really don’t think it’s about Jewish vs Christian at all in this case. (I know anyone who’s followed me for a bit is going to be shocked to hear me say that about something, lol.) I think it’s about different norms in different European subcultures.
I say this because my mom’s side are like Old German Jews. Like, the kind who brought the Haskalah Movement to the US in the early 1800s and turned it into American Reform Judaism in the mid 1800s. And my mom’s side? They’re all the stereotypical Stoic German type. They do not complain, or they only complain a little around close family.
My dad’s side, meanwhile, came from Hungary and Ukraine-via-Poland, they’re absolutely the stereotype the OP is talking about. Spend an hour with an older member of my dad’s side of the family and you’ll know everything about all their bodily functions and where they’re going wrong, and also what’s wrong with [everything about their professional specialty], and also politics. They complain in the way you always think of Jews complaining, yeah, but you know what? so do Christian immigrants from those places.
The thing is, when you think of American* stoicism, and where it’s strongest–especially like the Midwest–these are places that were settled by Germans and Scandinavians. Or the Boston blue bloods who were middle and upper class “stiff-upper-lip” British.
But then if you think of NYC, yeah, it’s a very Jewish city, but it’s also a very Italian city–and do you think of Italians, as a culture, as not complaining? But they’re also very Christian.
So yeah, I think it’s about different European regional subcultures having different norms about complaining. Jews–in this one respect anyway–mostly matched their local subculture. And then, largely by chance, the more “suffer in silence” regional subcultures were much more involved in colonizing/settling America. And the “complain at every opportunity as a basic mode of conversation” regional subcultures didn’t immigrate to America as much, and when they did it was mostly their Jewish populations that came over. So now complaining seems like a Jewish thing within the American context, but it’s just about historical flukes in goyishe vs Jewish immigration patterns.
* Why am I jumping to “American” here? Because about half the Jews in the world live in America, and most of the rest live in Israel. So if someone is doing a compare-and-contrast between Christian and Jewish culture they’re almost certainly talking about America, because hardly any other Christian-dominated countries have enough Jews to even reasonably have this conversion. (And the few that do, mostly it’s due to 20th century immigration from other places, so the same argument probably applies.)
I’ve gotten quite a few comments and questions regarding the sex recognized sex categories in Jewish tradition, so here’s a standalone education post on the matter.
In fields such as anthropology and archaeology, we approach interpreting historical concepts and events in a multifacted approach. It’s not enough to have one line of evidence, there must be multiple. Stating that, we know that the six sexes refer to sexes, and not gender, through many ways:
-Historical tradition. The tradition of the six sexes is unbroken and is understand to refer to sexes, and not genders. Rabbinical discussions throughout history refer to these terms as sexes.
-Linguisitics. The etymology of these words are very explicitly referencing genitals and/or sex characteristics, not gender roles or identities. These are technical terms regarding tangible observed biology, not gender, which is a more intangible concept.
-Historical context. The society in which these terms were recorded had very specific gender roles. Laws regarding purity and reproduction were very specific and valued, and were connected to the biology a person had. Therefore, words to categorize groups of people with certain biology were needed so that in discussing legal and social debates, universal terms could be used.
The six sexes are:
Zachar (זכר)- perisex male. Person born with external male genitalia and developing typical male secondary sex characteristics at puberty. “Zachar” most likely comes from the etymology of “pierce”, as in, “penetration.”
Nekeva (נקבה)- perisex female. Person born with female genitalia and developing typical female secondary sex characteristics at puberty. The root of the word “Nekeva” comes from the Hebrew word for “cavity”, so you can see how it’s very focused on tangible sex characteristics, not gender.
Aylonit (אילונית)- Person born with female genitalia but who either doesn’t develop secondary female characteristics or fertility, such as one someone who never begins to ovulate or who was born without or with reduced internal reproductive organs, or who develops typically “male” characteristics at puberty such as those characterized by intersex conditions that cause hyperandroginism. An Aylonit is still categorized as a woman according to Jewish law, “Aylonit” is in fact as a feminine word, literally meaning “female ram”, in reference to the development of typically “male” characteristics upon puberty. According to Midrash Sarah the Matriarch was an Aylonit herself because she was born without a uterus, and the miracle was that G-d planted a uterus inside her later in life.
Saris (סריס)- Person born with external male genitalia but who either doesn’t develop secondary male sex characteristics at puberty, such as one whose testes never descend or whose penis doesn’t develop further or who is naturally sterile, or who develops typically “female” characteristics such as gynecomastia. A Saris Chamah (סריס חמה) is one who was born a Saris, and a Saris Adam (סריס אדם) is one who was castrated by another person or themself. A “Saris” is also a word meaning “eunuch”, which was an enslaved person who was castrated as a punishment or part of some religious ritual. A Saris, whether born that way or made into a eunuch, is still categorized as a man according to Jewish law.
Androgenos (אנדרוגינוס)- A person born with a combination of male and female genitalia and who develops a combination of male and female secondary sex characteristics. An Androgenos is commonly translated as a h*rmaphrodite (this is a slur used against intersex people, so I’ll only use it once for clarity). An Androgenos is described as being able to both ejaculate and experience menses, and is subject to both the Jewish laws pertaining to men and the Jewish laws pertaining to women. The word “Androgenos” is borrowed from Greek. An Androgenos is functionally treated in their own gender category according to Jewish law, because they are subject to unique laws regarding their sex, although they typically are treated as men in society.
TumTum “טמטום”- A person who was born with indeterminate genitals and sex characteristics. The word “TumTum comes from the Hebrew word for "concealed”, in reference to the indeterminate nature of their genitals. A TumTum’s gender status according to Jewish law varies depending on the law and on the person. They can be treated as either a man, a woman, or both.
***
These terms were extremely important and held a lot of weight for those in certain categories. Whether a person’s body was determined to be that of a Saris or a TumTum, for example, would define what their gendered roles would be in society and whether they would be required to perform certain reproduction and purity based commandments. A Saris, for example, is determined to be still in the gender role of “Ish”, a man, and would be classed as such. A TumTum, however, because of the observed characteristic of their body, would be in a much more difficult position of being exempt from certain gendered commandments, and obligated to do others. In a society valuing reproduction, a person’s biological reality and how to classify them were extremely important.
What sex a person was classified as was extremely important in defining their ritual purity status. Whether someone’s genital discharge was considered menstrual blood or ejaculate was dependent on their sex, and there are specific ritual purity laws for each. A person who discharges menstrual blood would have to wait seven days after the cessation of their menstruation and then bathe in a ritual bath before they’d be allowed to engage in sexual relations. A person who discharges ejaculate would only have to bathe in a ritual bath after the event to be allowed to engage in sexual relations.
In a culture very focused on reproduction and reproductive roles, defining someone’s sex was extremely important.
These categories are extremely biology-based and medicalized. They are about someone’s genitals and reproductive status, not their gender. Judaism at the time recognized the existence of cross-dressing and gender flexibility (even if it was frowned upon), and these categories have nothing to do with gender. The best way we know this is that it was forbidden to cross-dress, but the existence of intersex people was not considered forbidden (although they were subject to different laws depending on their category) because they cannot control how their body appears.
Nobody was having hormone therapy or sexual reassignment surgery in the ancient times. This is why there is no such thing as an “Aylonit Adam” (yes, you were lied too, if you thought this was a thing), because castration was something done in the ancient world, but hysterectomies certainly were not, at least not with any survival rate.
As a trans person myself, I do not even understand why perisex trans people would even want to identify with these terms. These are highly medicalized terms and refer to biology, not identity. They also do not change a person’s gender assignment. An Aylonit is still in the gender of “Isha” (woman), so why a perisex trans man would want to identify with that category just because he’s taken testosterone and/or gotten a hysterectomy is beyond me. A Saris is still in the gender of “Ish” (man), so I don’t know why a perisex trans woman would want to identify with that category just because she’s taken estrogen and/or gotten vaginoplasty. And TumTum and Androgenos are categories that are evident at birth. They refer to the state of a person’s genitals at birth. Perisex nonbinary people are not intersex, they were assigned a specific sex of male or female depending on their genitals at birth. What their genitals look like in adulthood does not change their sex.
We all recognize that sex does not equal gender, so why is this misinformation still being spread that equates these sex-based terms to gender? That’s going against everything trans and nonbinary liberation stands for!
The Romani people who were the easiest
to record and exterminate were those who were the most integrated in
society. Like the Jews, these people existed on census records, military
rosters, and school files. The decimation of this Romani middle-class
meant that there were few strong voices who were in a position to speak
up about the Romani genocide after 1945.
There were no Sinti or Roma called to
testify at the Nuremberg trials. There were no Romani scholars, no
Romani lawyers, no civil servants. No one left to document the
atrocities committed against Romani people alongside the Jews – the only
two peoples specifically targeted by the Nazis’ Final Solution to ensure German racial purity.
Whereas census data for Jews can be
compared before and after the Holocaust, this is rarely the case for
Sinti and Roma, meaning the total loss of Romani life is extremely
difficult to piece together. Estimates vary somewhere between 500,000
and 1.5 million people. In 1939, around 30,000 people referred to as
‘Gypsies’ lived in what is now Germany and Austria. The total population
living in Greater Germany and its occupied territories is unknown,
though scholars Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon have provided a rough estimate of 942,000. Of the Sinti and Roma living in Germanic Central Europe, only 5,000 are thought to have survived.
Towards parenting that respects the bodily autonomy of children? Not sure about viability. Children are such an ethical nightmare. It seems very bad that they are often subjected to things they don’t want but you can’t grant them full autonomy ofc
I’d like to add TME/TMA and the male-female sex binary as well
male and female are genders, so yeah. gender binary bad lmao. unless you’re one of those people who thinks that male and female only describe sex so it’s totally ok to misgender trans people as what they were assigned at birth because “it’s not gender” or some other bs. we don’t do that shit here.
I just wanted to let you know that I just found your tumblr within the past week and you have immediately become my 2nd favorite tumblr, being only behind Blogatog. Love your ttrpg takes.
Anywho, you said to ask about flags, so what is your biggest/are your biggest red flags when it comes to ttrpg design?
thank you! i’m glad you enjoy my silly little posts. anyways i think my biggest red flag is unintentionality–the feeling that the writer of a TTRPG has done something by ‘default’, the inability to put myself in their shoes and understand (or even better, be told by the text itself) the reason why a particular decision has been made.
one of the biggest places this rears its head is in terms of tone and voice. let me quote jay dragon’s really good the storyteller technique:
Another advantage of getting to know the narrator of your RPG is that it helps mitigate unconscious bias in your design. Dungeons & Dragons has a notably anthropological narrative voice, explaining other cultures and creatures like a scientist in the field. The language of D&D mimics the writing style of mid-century scientists traveling to “exotic” locations and cataloging non-Western experiences as part of a documentation of the Other. It’s easy for newer designers to want to “write a game like D&D” without regard for how even the narrative voice of Dungeons & Dragons carries unintended political baggage. Is a bird’s-eye and judgemental perspective really the energy you want to bring to your whimsical fantasy world? Or is there another perspective within your world that can be more useful, and allow you to find new perspectives on the world you’ve created.
narrative tone is a choice–the attempt to use a 'neutral’ tone for rules text and description is also a choice, how formal and how informal you get with it is a choice, and when i read a text that seems to have made that choice thoughtlessly it imo bodes very poorly for the rest of the game.
other examples of this kind of unintentionality are games that have a comabt system despite not being about combat in any way–games with equipment rules despite them not setting out to tell the sort of story where which sword or gun a character has matters–games that measure themselves in exact distances without actually using a battlemap–&c.
while most of this unintentionality takes the form of 'falling back onto what DND does’ because DND is the market leader and many people’s first TTRPG, so imitating it without purpose is something that both cynical market-share chasers & unexperienced designers without a wide range of expereicne can do–it’s absolutely not unique to it. one form of unintentionality i see a lot in indie TTRPG circles is creating far more Moves for your PBtA game than necessary–clearly more out of a sense that 'AW/MotW/Masks has a Move for this’ than any specific understanding of what that move will do in your game
in game design–as in any art–there is no such thing as a 'neutral’ choice or a non-choice. there are only choices, and how much someone’s thought about these choices is important!
Honestly!!! This is just psychological trauma in the making
THANK YOU
I’ve asked parents about this and they always say they are teaching the child responsibility and “respect for other people’s things.” If I point out that the child accidentally broke their own toy they always say “I bought them that toy” or “my sister gave that to them.”
The problem is that parents view all possessions as not really belonging to the child. A part of them always seems to think that the adult who provided the money is the real owner
If a parent breaks a dish they see it as breaking something that already belonged to them, but if a child breaks it they see it as the child breaking something that belonged to the parents
People raising children need to realize that household possessions belong to the entire household. If everyone has to use that plate then it belongs to everyone and anyone can have a forgivable accident with it. It’s okay to deem certain possessions as just yours and ask everyone in the house to respect that, but extend the same respect to your child’s belongings
Big mood. I know most of these are talking about little little kids, but here’s a tale from middle school. I had forgotten to charge my phone one night, and this was back when cell phones used to beep loudly when they were low on battery. I kept hearing the noise throughout the afternoon and not recognizing what it was because I’d never heard it before. When I finally did realize what it was, I was in science class and my fellow classmates were making presentations. I reached into my bag to try to turn off the phone, and then the low-battery sound went off, loud enough for the teacher to hear it. She confiscated my phone in front of everyone, and I didn’t get it back until after the weekend because it was a Friday. I was really embarrassed, especially to tell my parents.
When I got my phone back that Monday, my teacher said it was important for me to learn this lesson now since in college they wouldn’t tolerate phones going off. Fast forward to when I was in college, any time someone’s phone went off, either the professor would tell them to turn it off, or they would say, “Oh, my bad,” and turn it off themselves, and everyone would move on. I even had a professor who danced around while someone’s phone went off, and it was a welcome moment of levity during the lecture.
I say all this to say, one of the worst aspects of being a child/teen was adults assuming my intentions were malicious.
God I’ve been reading these posts for a while and each time I am struck with the realization that certainly not all parents were supposed to be a parent
“I say all this to say, one of the worst aspects of being a child/teen was adults assuming my intentions were malicious.” YES this
The problem is, even if families are forgiving the culture around children still effects the child. I use myself as proof of that.
A few times between the ages of 4 and 18 I broke things. I broke my grandma’s favorite Christmas ornament. Her first question was: “Are you hurt?” and when I apologized profusely she said “I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.”
I broke a few plates. I broke a couple glasses. Every time my dad’s first response was “Did you get cut?” the second step was cleaning up the broken bits, and the third was a discussion of what led to me breaking it and how I could avoid doing that in the future.
Same with spills. Same with stains. My biggest “punishment” from my immediate family was being taught how to clean up the mess I made and being shown in detail how to avoid the same mistake in the future if it was avoidable. There were consequences for my actions, but they were the direct result of those actions and nothing much beyond that.
My family tried so hard to teach me how to deal with accidents in a healthy way. They were patient. They treated every slip-up as a learning opportunity. They showed me a lot of love. The other adults still got to me. Teachers still punished and publicly shamed me and other students for our mess-ups. Extended family members outside of my small supportive circle still yelled at me. My friends’ parents still got mad.
To the point where whenever I messed up my first instinct was that my dad or grandparents were going to punish me, or yell at me, or hit me, even though they never did. They just didn’t. They always responded with patience and an attitude of “I’m glad you’re safe and I want to help you learn from this.” And I was still afraid of messing up. Mortified. Expecting the worst every time.
It’s like… we need to change the culture around this, man. Completely.
Also, not entirely related but this shit exposes one of the biggest things I habitually point out about the hypocrisy of the pro-hitting children moral framework: it’s generally would be seen as morally wrong to physically harm an adult for messing up the same way.
Like if an adult guest (adult, fully capable of defending themself from me) came to my house and accidentally dropped one of my plates and I started trying to beat the shit out of them everyone would agree that it’s assault and morally wrong for me to do. But if it’s a child (easily physically overpowered, can’t stop me from hitting them) then suddenly some of those same people would think that beating them for that same mistake would be not only okay but, in fact, a moral imperative. All justifications for why it’s okay to hit children are ultimately fronts for their actual reason, which is simply “i think beating children is okay because I can do it and they can’t stop me”
I don’t think any video game I’ve ever played that tries to deliberately play up the “liminal spaces” angle has ever achieved even a quarter the liminality captured by sheer accident in the act of backtracking in a certain brand of late 1990s to early 2000s console RPGs.
You know the ones – from that era where the idea of linear, event-driven stories had just caught on, but the practice of putting the world map itself on rails wasn’t yet de rigeur, so you could in theory revisit anyplace you’d ever been, including the areas that literally only existed for the purpose of one specific setpiece.
When you returned to such an area, all of the monsters and NPCs would be gone, and there’d be no music or audio ambience because no non-event-related soundtrack for that area had ever been written, which made the game’s regular sound effects seem conspicuously louder. Just wandering around in this empty, silent backdrop; maybe you’d run into an NPC the devs forgot to dummy out who still acts like the event is ongoing, repeating now-contextless lines of dialogue and gesturing frantically at thin air. Maybe you’d stumble upon a treasure chest you missed the first time around, and the “item get” jingle would crack like a gunshot. Maybe there’d even be a room where the devs neglected to unset the event flag, and you’d suddenly be assailed by pulse-pounding techno heralding the approach of absolutely nothing.
Like, forget the Backrooms – give me a game that plays with that.
My new webcomics masterist!
I'm Ukrainian, but since I spend a lot of time in English-speaking section of internet, a lot of my thoughts and rants end up in English, so I have an English-speaking blog.
Also, the reason I have this blog is Homestuck which is an awesome thing.
My hero title seems to be Mage of Light; either that or Maid of Light; I'm not really sure.
