speakthetragicsecret

[speakthetragicsecret]

Recently I read a book called River of Stars, by Spencer Scott. It's a good book overall, but some of the narrative choices didn't seem to have been particularly well-thought-out, and that prompted me to consider similar societal blindspots. The book series revolves around interactions between humanity and various species of aliens; the three species most relevant to this post are the Aa'gimli, the Torzek, and the Li'farai'i.

The Aa'gimli mostly only come up in reference to past events. They were the first species to meet humanity, though the reverse was not true, and they initially mistook humans for non-sentient creatures, allowed the consumption of humans, which were an unusually efficient nutrient source, and ignored evidence that this was a mistake.

The main conflict of the book revolves around a similar mistake, this time made by humanity; the Torzek inhabit a planet extremely unusual in being both inhabitable by humans and nearly free of bitoxiphosphene (since most species aren't affected by it, they tend to never have placed restrictions on its release, and their atmospheres are substantially more bitoxiphosphene laden than our own). Humans make an attempt to determine whether Torzeks are sentient, but find no evidence of communication, tool use, or even motion. They conclude that they most likely are not, and begin killing them indiscriminately to make room for human colonists. However, in fact they are sentient, and just as intelligent as people; though rooted in place, they are in fact capable of higher-level reasoning on a level matching humans, and they turn out to have chemical-based communication of equal complexity with any human language. The story revolves around a few humans who managed to determine this attempting to prevent further murder.

My objection, then, is to the portrayal of the Li'farai'i. We are repeatedly shown allegedly-sympathetic characters, fully aware of the situation with the Torzek, remarking on the Li'farai'i as an obvious example of non-sentient creatures. On multiple occasions, two of the characters play a game involving shooting them for target practice. When Abibel displays empathy towards one of them, this is portrayed as naive, the result of her being eight years old.

The problem here is that they do not have enough information to conclude that the Li'farai'i aren't sentient. Perhaps they are correct, but if so it is because of luck, not because they behaved correctly. It may not be clear that they are, but in cases of uncertainty with stakes so high, it's better to err on the side of not committing murder.

Now, I'm not saying that we ought to be concerned that trees or water molecules or smartphones are secretly sentient. But when we wonder how people managed to conclude that other humans weren't people, we ought to keep in mind how often people err on the side of assuming they are not. We don't know for certain when fetuses start to be sentient, but that doesn't mean we should conclude that it is ethical to indiscriminately kill them, and the fact that being pregnant causes some harm to the mother does not change that. Opposing abortion doesn't require belief in God. It simply requires applying the heuristic that if there is any uncertainty about whether someone is a person, we should assume that it is when deciding whether to kill it.

It's easy to look at others and say that if they had only used such an obvious criterion, they could have avoided literal murder. It's harder to apply the same criterion to ourselves, but that in no way diminishes our obligation to do so.

#cascadia rp #death cw #murder cw #genocide cw #politics #discourse #post conditioning on the nonexistence of God and the afterlife

[speakthetragicsecret]

I definitely did not have crushes on other children as a child, and find the concept strange. If nine-year-olds are having sexual thoughts, that’s concerning, and if they aren’t, then anything going on is probably just a manifestation of friendship.

Havent you seen little children have cute crushes on their peers and authority figures? That isn't exclusive to kids who grow up to be shraight and that's how they know they're gay or bi or whatever.

Uh, kids can admire older folks of the same gender as role models and just because they’re cool.  I watched a lot of Rachel Emilia concerto videos when I was eight because she can play piano like a genius and I’m extremely straight.  Pathologizing normal kid behavior as Signs Of Future Gayness is really icky, please stop.

#cascadia rp

[speakthetragicsecret]

I’ve only seen two of these, but I’m happy to answer questions if people are interested.

New Year's ask meme: best movies of 2042 edition

edit: apparently some of these were censored in other countries, sorry! I tried to pick movies that weren’t but some of these I didn’t even think to check

Liberators 2: Awakening: best thing that happened to you in 2042?

Covenant: worst thing that happened to you in 2042?

Moondark: best thing about 2042 that didn’t happen to you?

Voyage of the Elves: worst thing about 2042 that didn’t happen to you?

Timebound: something you’d change about this year if you could?

My Life in Glory: something you’re looking forward to next year?

Johannes: something you’re not looking forward to next year?

Wrath: something you did this year that you’re proud of?

Whisper Game: someone new you met this year who made your life better?

Dancing with Samira: something new you learned how to do this year?

Times of Bondage: something new you want to learn how to do next year?

Saturn’s Blessings: something you tried for the first time this year?

Trustkeeper: something you want to try for the first time next year? Miriam in the Valley: your new year’s resolution?

#cascadia rp

[speakthetragicsecret]

I don't pay very close attention to what other people do on dates; it's not like their personal life is any of my business. I do, to be clear, go on dates with my wife.

I want to go to a gay bar but I’m worried that I’m going to see a cute guy at the gay bar and he’ll think I’m not interested just because I’m a lesbian!

[RP blog]

#cascadia rp

[speakthetragicsecret]

I really think you're overestimating how common your lifestyle is. Are you sure you aren't the one falling victim to the typical mind fallacy here?

Perhaps it's different for homosexuals, or for Cascadians.

I want to go to a gay bar but I’m worried that I’m going to see a cute guy at the gay bar and he’ll think I’m not interested just because I’m a lesbian!

[RP blog]

#cascadia rp #personal

[speakthetragicsecret]

Oh, so it's the word for people who feel the normal way about sex and relationships? I suppose that makes sense, since otherwise there would be no way to describe it in contrast with other types of people. I guess I just assumed it was describing a non-default way to be.

I want to go to a gay bar but I’m worried that I’m going to see a cute guy at the gay bar and he’ll think I’m not interested just because I’m a lesbian!

[RP blog]

#cascadia rp

[speakthetragicsecret]

I don't see how that translates necessarily to 'identifying' as a different gender, let alone somehow being one. Just because someone acts like the other gender, or wears dresses while a man, or has a masculine personality while a woman, does not make that person the other gender. If I put on a dress, it wouldn't cause me to stop being a man, any more than historical actors stopped being men when they acted out female roles.

I want to go to a gay bar but I’m worried that I’m going to see a cute guy at the gay bar and he’ll think I’m not interested just because I’m a lesbian!

[RP blog]

#cascadia rp

[speakthetragicsecret]

Every part of this thread is confusing.

1. How can one have a gender that is different from one’s sex? If someone was born a man then that person is a man, and if someone was born a woman then that person is a woman. I'll grant that there could be exceptions in the case of rare medical conditions, but that doesn't seem to be what you're talking about. What would it even mean to ‘identify as’ a particular gender?

2. Why would a bisexual person not just marry someone of the opposite gender? Even in Gilead, that person could just never tell anyone that he or she was also attracted to his or her own gender.

3. Can someone explain asexuality and aromanticism in more detail? The resources I've been able to find online listed several perfectly normal traits as signs of were not particularly helpful.

I want to go to a gay bar but I’m worried that I’m going to see a cute guy at the gay bar and he’ll think I’m not interested just because I’m a lesbian!

[RP blog]

#cascadia rp #ooc: #text with strikethroughs not visible

[speakthetragicsecret]

Does anyone have advice on housing a teenager? Asking for a friend, who has suddenly found herself with a teenager living in her house. (It's always unfortunate when someone loses their parents at that age, but it's too late to prevent what's already occurred.)

#cascadia rp #personal #this is an rp blog and every statement in this post is technically true in-character

[speakthetragicsecret]

Interlude

March

"Why do you believe in God?" Lídia asks him.

Casimiro rubs his arm awkwardly. "This conversation isn't really supposed to be about me," he says. "It's is about you, and your faith journey. You're going to be Confirmed in less than two months--"

She looks up from the passage she's reading. "You aren't normally this cagey."

He bites his lip. "Well, I suppose I believe in God because it's the only way to make sense of the universe -- something has to have created it --"

"That's a deistic argument," she says, "not an argument for the existence of God as interpreted by Catholicism in particular."

Casimiro glances around the church basement. Official policy is not to leave a single minor alone with an adult, but official policy is routinely ignored for practical reasons, and today is no exception. Still, he can hear the muffled sounds of footsteps in the space above them, and there's at least a chance that the reverse is true.

"You read Aquinas's five--" he starts to say.

Lídia drops her voice to almost a whisper. "You're terrible at this. How have you avoided people figuring out until now?"

It's not the sort of thing most people think to question, he doesn't say. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You aren't stupid," she says.

"Neither are you. In particular, you're smart enough to know that there are some things that one does not simply discuss in the basement of a church."

She glances down towards her backpack. He follows her gaze, but it doesn't look particularly unusual: a tiny stuffed penguin, a tricolored heart, a set of beads arranged in a colorful pattern, all attached by caribeaner to what appears to be a completely ordinary backpack. "I understand," she says softly, then louder, "I should probably get to choir."

As she walks past him, she adds, quietly, "I wouldn't be asking if I didn't have a reason."

#

September

She shows up at his door late in the evening, shivering slightly, though it's not that cold this far south.

"I need a place to stay for the night, maybe longer, and I need you to not tell my parents," she says. "Do you-- can you--"

He glances back. He and Teresa don't have a lot of space, and Teresa's girlfriend might drop by unexpectedly, and she's gone out shopping, so he can't ask her.

But she might not have anywhere else to go, and they are called to shelter the homeless, not because it's convenient but because it's right.

He nods. "Of course," he says. "You can stay here as long as you need to."

#cascadia rp

[speakthetragicsecret]

I think 39-lashes is a homosexual woman who does some kind of violence with her wife? and it seems to mostly be a kink thing, or smth, rather than actually-violent-fighting?? last I saw of her blog she was pretty open about it and would probably be okay with answering questions?

@39-lashes is actually a man, and the scenario described to me as normal seems relevantly different from his admittedly-concerning situation in various ways.

#cascadia rp #violence cw #kink cw #OOC: #abuse cw

[speakthetragicsecret]

I heard someone claim recently that it's normal and not a sign of any sort of problem for women in homosexual relationships to resort to violence to settle arguments. Does anyone know if this is true? It sounds implausible, and I would certainly be concerned if someone were making that same claim about heterosexual relationships, but being neither homosexual nor female I can't say for certain. It certainly sounds like the sort of assertion one would make if one couldn't remember any of the reasonable anti-homosexuality arguments.

(Apologies if this is disrespectful; I know there are a lot of myths about homosexuality, and I don't know how to distinguish them from reality without asking. I'd try to research it online, but I assume most of the reputable sites are being filtered out, and I don't have a dispensation to get around that particular internet block and when I tried using my VPN, it gave me results for pornography instead, which were not very useful.)

#cascadia rp #violence cw #OOC: #abuse cw #Stts does not tag this with #personal #text with strikethroughs not visible #this is an rp blog and every statement in this post is technically true in-character

[speakthetragicsecret]

I've got an elderly friend who grew up in pre-split texas (houston and san antonio mostly) who sometimes answers questions for my novellas. do the same answers mostly probably apply to los angeles? what about for the rest of california and florida?

It’s better than nothing, but there were some fairly significant differences between the cities (I don’t have firsthand knowledge of Houston, but I know some former Houston residents). Notably, Houston had a higher rate of both Gileadite and non-Gileadite Protestantism while Los Angeles had a surprisingly high proportion of non-religious people – not a large population on absolute scales, but certainly on relative ones. Los Angeles had a significantly higher proportion of immigrants, and Los Angeles residents were much more likely to speak languages other than English, which had various effects on the educational system.

But of course, most of the subtle details of what it was like to live in Los Angeles can’t be captured by a demographic summary, and that’s part of what makes it hard to generalize one experience to the other. Houston isn’t just Los Angeles with more Protestants, or Los Angeles with less Californian values, it’s its own city with its own culture. Still, historical Los Angeles and historical Houston were probably more similar to each other than either was to any currently-existing country.

I don’t know very much about what Florida was like before the Split. The rest of California was more similar to Los Angeles than to Houston or San Antonio, but bear in mind that the fact that Los Angeles is a city is and was very relevant to the experience of living there.

#cascadia rp

[speakthetragicsecret]

One thing that frustrates me about a lot of literature set in pre-Split Los Angeles is the number of authors who treat it as a complete clone of either present day Mexico or present day Gilead (or more rarely, usually in Cascadian literature, Cascadia). I grew up in Los Angeles, and it wasn't an exact clone of either, it was its own city with its own culture. Just because it is now part of Mexico doesn't mean it was exactly like Mexico; just because it was once part of the United States doesn't mean it resembled the polity that now resides in that segment of land. 

I know it can sometimes be difficult to befriend a resident of Los Angeles in the relevant time period, but we do in fact exist. If you can't find someone willing to answer your questions, some of us have blogs, and others have written essays about what it was like; it's still a good idea to have one of us beta-read your book, but any research is better than no research.

#cascadia rp #personal

[speakthetragicsecret]

Juana and I live in a relatively Traditionalist-dominated area (that's not the official name of the party, but I'm told that non-Mexicans have a hard time remembering which parties are which), which means that our local elections are normally Traditionalist-dominated, sometimes with a Charismatic candidate whom no one expects to actually win. (The last mayoral election's results were approximately forty-five percent winning Traditionalist candidate/forty percent losing Traditionalist candidate/ten percent Charismatic candidate/five percent other candidates.)

This election looked like it was going to be much less close than most, after one of the candidates was implicated in a corruption scandal relating to his forcing of government employees to volunteer on-the-clock for his campaign. It seemed like the election was going to be an easy victory for the other candidate, but he mismanaged his response to the elder abuse scandal in Monterrey so badly that there is a substantial fraction of people refusing on principle to vote for him. This means that the Charismatic candidate actually has a chance of winning, although the Regeneration candidate is making a good showing (the Labor candidate would have had a decent chance, but he'd essentially given up before any of the scandals, and he's been struggling to get back into the race in a meaningful way.)

I'm probably going to vote for the Traditionalist candidate who mismanaged his scandal response; most of the reasons I vote for Traditionalists are less relevant to local elections, but the Charismatic candidate has signaled that he might try to use a victory to support a future political career, and in addition to being unusually expansionist even for a Charismatic candidate, he's young and influential enough that he might have a chance of making a difference in that regard. I think my candidate has a better chance than the other of winning, and frankly I'm less bothered by poorly responding to one scandal halfway across the country than I am bothered by the other candidate's level of corruption.

#cascadia rp

[speakthetragicsecret]

They both have an eye.

(I told this one to Juana after solving it, in an attempt to cheer her up, but alas, she had already heard it.)

Riddle of the day:

What do a potato and a needle have in common?

#cascadia rp #personal

[speakthetragicsecret]

This is all because you think babies are people.

Technically, my confusion arises because I expect atheists to consider babies people, not because I consider babies people, although I suppose the fact that I consider babies people probably leads me to assume that other people also consider babies people. I suppose if atheists tend not to consider babies people, that might lead them not to be sad about the countless babies dying in pain. The impression I’ve gotten is that atheists consider at least some babies people, but my experience is admittedly limited.

#cascadia rp #death cw #torture cw