sciatrix

Signal Boost: Article about Disabled People being Suited for Space

Tue, 05 Feb 2019 16:12:37 GMT

access_fandom posted: Article about Disabled People being Suited for Space

Rose Eveleth at Wired:
"It's Time to Rethink Who's Best Suited for Space Travel"

https://www.wired.com/story/its-time-to-rethink-whos-best-suited-for-space-travel/?mbid=social_twitter_onsiteshare

We need the strongest, smartest, most adaptable among us to go. But strength comes in many forms, as do smarts. And if you want to find people who are the very best at adapting to worlds not suited for them, you’ll have the best luck looking at people with disabilities, who navigate such a world every single day. Which has led disability advocates to raise the question: What actually is the right stuff?

Go check out access_fandom, if you haven't already. This article is really good, and I've left a longer comment there in the comm.

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how did I miss this?

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 17:45:49 GMT

This morning kicked off in an excellent way when I absent-mindedly glanced up at T, mind still on the Last Podcast on the Left episode I'd been listening to while emptying the dishwasher, and said, "Hey, do you remember Mark Twitchell?"

( You know, the dude on the Edmonton cosplay scene who killed a man in 2008 in part because he thought he could be like Dexter, but cooler? )

We also got to talking about surrealism and shitposting, especially in the context of the fandom of yesteryear, and on balance--I don't think Tumblr fandom is actually any more clearly fascinated with surreal humor than media fandom on the old LJ/DW circles, either. T kept pointing out Heero Is Not Toast, which is something that wouldn't be out of place in any Tumblr reblog chain (although the Relena-killing thing would be now, thank fuck). I kept thinking about things like wingfic or some of the weirder crackfic premises I saw c. 2006ish. Seriously, what the hell was with wingfic? It's easily as weird as anything SuperWhoLock came up with, and it just appeared everywhere--like A/B/O, actually, but less explicably.

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queerfic vs slashfic?

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 18:17:30 GMT

So this post popped up again in my feeds and I got extremely excited, except that I actually sat down to read the comments and got depressed by the, ah, discourse in them.

Which is a shame, because the distinction between the types of stories I would classify as slashfic versus queerfic are not necessarily about what kind of story is necessarily sufficiently good and didactic or even sufficiently representational. It's not a distinction about whether the story is important or whether it's worthy of existing or whether it's even necessarily realistic. So instead of commenting on a two-month-old post full of really irritating infighting (which seems to be the case for the OP, too!), I want to maybe start a new discussion.

Let me reiterate for my space: this ain't a question about whether slashfic is worthy, or what kind of story is only created by appropriating straight women, or whether this distinction should exist. It's a question about whether this genre distinction applies to the stories within the broader genre of fanfiction.

( To me, it's a question of focus. )

[Posted originally to Pillowfort.]

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Mon, 01 Oct 2018 22:24:18 GMT

The first thing in my Pillowfort feed right now is a meta post discussing Girl Genius in the context of the genre of Rationalism Fic. While I first saw that post in the context of the Fandom Meta community, I'm not sure of the etiquette of posting this as a comment--not when the author didn't reblog the post to the community and seems to have written it for her own page--so I'm going to talk about it in my personal space. Besides, the conversation I want to have is quite orthogonal to hers, and it feels rude to derail it in comments. (And hey, I can crosspost from over there to DW that way--I like being here, too.)

Here's the thing: I loathe the genre of Rational Fic. I had several friends who were very enthused by Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, many of whom tried to get me avidly to read it. This... probably didn't work very well, because the attempts at realism in the story fell badly flat to me in the very first point: the characters seemed to me to certainly not be developmentally realistic for eleven-year-olds, and to a greater or lesser degree sympathetic protagonists appear to be... look, put it like this: the genre abandons emotional realism for me. I can't work out how this kid becomes this obnoxious, biochemistry professor stepfather or not--and I'm perpetually astounded by the absence even the emotional weaknesses I associate with highly logical gifted kids given their head in the context of academics.

Of course, this isn't surprising, given the conceits of rationalism: the idea that the emotional is the enemy of rationalism, that emotions are the primary source of mistakes in logic, and that pure dispassion would allow us to best understand and predict the chaotic world around us.

(I think this is silly. We know empirically what happens when you lose emotionality: you also lose the ability to make any decisions at all. I also find that the result of striving to minimize all potential emotional reasoning is to... muddy the water where emotions hide, making illogical decisions and behavior more likely than it would be if people would just acknowledge their emotional position outright and move on with asking whether those emotions are justified or ethical or whatever.

I would have so much fun yelling at Vulcans over the poor logic of their position, is my point. I love Vulcans, but I don't think they're right about the approach to emotionality and kohlinar, particularly.)

The big problem with this kind of "Rational Fic" is that I'm reading fanfiction heavily for emotional continuity. I don't think it's a surprise that the Fanlore collated criticisms of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality focus heavily on the contentions that the characterization is bad. Because many people explciitly enjoy fandom as in ways heavily focused on emotional continuity and characterization, of course a genre driven by a philosophy that totally fears emotional reasoning and engagement would mesh badly for many people.

But I do find it interesting and wryly amusing that I find this "hyperrationalistic" genre of writing so completely frustrating because I parse and perceive it as completely emotionally unrealistic and incoherent.

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