Siobhan has a very well-constructed and sourced takedown of some people who are trying to claim trans activists are opposed to science. I really have jack shit to add at this point, but a reminder to those looking at the science on trans issues: Beware of cisgender people constructing theories about transgender people. Eyes to the sides y’all.
As a youth, one of my first loves was action movies. I used to stay up well past midnight watching anything labeled as “action” in the TV Guide. I’d dig it when Gary Daniels did a totally gratuitous standing backflip or kicked someone’s face causing a bunch of talcum powder to burst forth in a mysterious cloud. When Bolo Yeung told Jean-Claude “You are next!” Good times.
I haven’t been very thrilled by an action flick in some years. Getting old I suppose. Space Shooters was alright, the one with the laser people? I forget. Anyhow, as someone who was once very invested in a thing, I must examine why, what was good about it, what wasn’t so good, and if I could get back a bit of that magic. Especially as a creator of narrative art, I have to ask myself if I can make something that would thrill a thrillable person. So analyzing action, in film, comics, prose.
My ideas aren’t very well formed yet, don’t know if I have much by way of conclusions. The work thus far has been in the laboratory of random thoughts, in the shower occasionally, waiting for a bus. But harken and hear me out! Because if I don’t present these ideas in half-assed form and they never reach a full ass, then they’ll never see the light of day in any form. Proceeding thus,
I love action movies, but I recognize some underlying problems in them. Aside from the usual reinforcement of toxic cultural norms and ideas, prioritizing the power and presumed righteousness of the victor in a violent struggle is a wretched mess. A corollary of ableism is vaunting athleticism as a moral virtue. We’re all taught to avoid thinking “might makes right,” but what is John McClane‘s victory over Hans Gruber if not the outcome of a contest for physical supremacy?
What is the fundamental appeal of an action movie or story? I tried to pare it down to the most abstract form, even before you get into questions like just how universal or valid the campbellian hero myth is, and came up with this: What makes a story “action” in genre is that the hero uses some form of power as an extension of their will to change the world. The hero could use gun skills to take out a bad guy, could use kung fu to avenge a murder, could use super strength to save people from falling off a bridge. The thing behind the power is will, desire to make something happen. The power is the tool that allows the will to be enacted.
So in essence, the action genre is a fantasy about being able to make things happen, to have an effect on the world. Not surprising that the heavily disenfranchised often find horror and romance more relatable. I’ve spoken with an AFAB person on the subject and they said they never felt like it was possible to make a difference or change anything, wouldn’t find it believable as a narrative. Running from monsters, on the other hand, easy to get into. Not everyone downtrodden has that sense of power crushed out of them so utterly, lots of girls getting into action stories these days. Progress on one front.
How do I, as a writer, craft a compelling action story? There are a number of different plot structures and subgenres that have been used over the years. An example I’m fond of is the tournament plot, like Enter the Dragon, Bloodsport, Heatseeker, Harry Potter and the (edit:) FUCK THAT SHIT, and so on. But I feel like, as long as you have a basic familiarity with how storytelling works and the genre you want to work in, this isn’t the challenge. Finding out what makes someone want to read a story and implementing that – this is my aim.
Not sure the best place to start, but with my favorite movies seems good. What made Hard-Boiled so awesome? What made Space Shooters so affecting? What’s so good about Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin, a Jackie Chan movie that predated his signature style? I don’t know, and what works for me won’t necessarily work for someone else. My conclusions are tentative.
The answer is probably something in the neighborhood of the last one, rather than the more superficial elements. But I’m not done thinking about this yet. One of these years…
Once again, I’m about to do a lot of talking out my ass on subjects I’m not certified to comment on. But what I’m about to say feels true to me, so good enough for now. Just don’t cite me in your term paper.
The struggle of all thinking animals is to make sense of the world, and all social animals are also compelled to make sense of their relation to conspecifics. Both problems (which I’ll return to later) involve an assumption of a self – that there exists at the core of one’s impulses, thoughts, and perceptions a singular entity that owns its being. “I think therefore I am” is often misinterpreted by people unfamiliar with philosophy* as meaning one must think to exist legitimately – “I’m clever therefore I am cool” – but it simply means that if there is an “I” to be capable of thinking, then the “I” must be real.
This “I” has not, since about age fifteen, felt quite like it is real. I’m not qualified to debate this formally, but if anyone has the high-blown formal jargon and practice to take that up in the comments, go for it. I’m simply saying I don’t feel like the self is as coherent a thing in reality as we normally assume it to be.
The pretentious teenage Satan of yore was introduced to Descartes and began to question their previous assumptions that reason+observation were sufficient to know reality, and this feeling followed from that. The failure of his ontological argument (which aimed not just to prove the existence of god, but to establish that one could trust the reality of the world) stranded me partway through his line of reasoning, in a state of endless doubt.**
What are we if not beings, individually existing selves?*** Biology can provide an idea of what I mean. We are colonies of differentiated cells, working together, but without any central governing body. The brain is an organ of those cells, but it doesn’t directly control all of the others, doesn’t even have a singular controller of the cells within itself. Likewise, the “software” of a human consciousness seems to be made of disparate impulses, senses, and thought processes that – while they add up to something that seems like a whole – remain distinct.
And if we try to isolate the center by feeling our way through to the dark pit of our minds, to some of us, it will feel like there isn’t anything there. My guess is that there really isn’t anything there, for any of us, but that people with a strong sense of their self are more able to construct a functional illusion. That isn’t always a good thing, because a social animal’s sense of self can be fundamentally horrible.
Which takes me back to the first paragraph. Assuming a self that needs to eat and dodge bears to continue experiencing life – this is useful and great. Determining the value of that self, the relative worth that entitles us to experience life, is a kind of hell that no animal should have to deal with. If it works out for you, it doesn’t even feel like you did anything at all. If it doesn’t work, everything you do can be ruined, all the way down to simply breathing.
This is where I was before I truly started to understand what self esteem means to people that don’t have it. I couldn’t imagine there even being a question of whether I’m entitled to happiness. If someone outside tries to bring me down, it is obviously because they are wrong. I didn’t know the reason I felt OK was because my mind was actively doing something. Feeling OK doesn’t feel like anything.
But as a social animal, being worthy of life is a decision I am making, an act I am undertaking. Or more accurately, something that was decided for me by luck and circumstance practically before I could speak, and that has since been an assumption I can take for granted, that my healthy mind reinforces every day. If, at the age of two, I had been ignored, dismissed, abused, I could feel very differently. I could feel like the only metric of my worth is the approval of others, that without an overwhelming amount of positive reinforcement from people around me, I should just shuffle off and die.
I could, when I look in a mirror, see every insult or dismissal or cutting remark made about every aspect of my appearance, or of the appearance of people who look like myself. And then what? I’d think of myself as gross, disgusting, unlovable, worthless. I could earnestly believe all of those things as if they were my own thoughts, rather than the programming of a society that exists in a twisted and cruel scramble of social sorting.
There isn’t any cure for it. That’s our minds doing what they’re built for: forming a socially stable population with maximum potential to carry the genes forward. As animals, we’ve gotten beyond the need for this kind of built-in social valuation, the same way we’ve gotten beyond the need for whatever the appendix was. We have an ethical system that builds on what’s best in us – humanism – and other ways of helping the whole population get by. Bad self esteem is a holdover from a time when our species was less fancy.
In our society as it exists now, bad self-esteem is a maladaption that has to be worked past, like natural childbirth. Bring on the pod-grown babies. And bring on a cure for bad self esteem, whatever that may be, because living in a world this full of sadness bums my neurotypical shit out. No one should have to feel like they are unworthy of life and happiness.
Seems like my topic did a 180 there and maybe it did, but I feel like these things are related. Maybe something that insulated my brain from bad self-evaluation is that I’ve never had a fully developed sense of self in the non-social sense in the first place? Or maybe it was having a peer group in the form of siblings near my own age, so that being ignored by parents didn’t harm me. I dunno. I just wish I could donate all this extra self-esteem to those in need. It is extra – I feel like I have more esteem than self.
*I have literally 101 level familiarity with philosophy. It’s enough to mess with childish teenage me of long ago, not enough to go into any substance with trained professionals.
**This doubt isn’t very significant. It’s there, but it doesn’t affect a life that has thus far been safely lived as if apparent reality can be trusted. It just felt disturbing at the time, having previously always felt much more confident in my sense and senses.
***This whole essay has likely suffered from a lack of vocabulary to address the issue. I hope that it still makes sense.
“Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” by The Vaselines. There are a lot of songs against god and that means plenty of room for disagreement. “Dear God” by XTC is strong, really lays out a case. This one is more personal. Lately, I’ve been feeling that the personal is more powerful. It’s like the difference between a grandiose story with a cast of thousands, and a story about just a few people. Personal is more affecting. Anyway, fuck god in all his names. Carry on.
Same song, different video. This cat‘s edits are hella fun.
DIFFERENT WARNINGS: The Usual Rap Mention of Gang-style Violence, Beavis and Butthead Brand Cartoon Violence, Objectification of Ladies, Uncensored Lyrics may be NSFW / Not Safe for Work
I need a new post on top of my stack, so have a music video.
WARNINGS: Strobing Lights / Seizure Risk, Comparatively Naked Ladies Gotta Do the Hardest Dance Moves, The Usual Rap Mention of Gang-style Violence, Transphobia (“How High” interlude ends with ‘lol, a woman said she has a penis’ moment)
If you can get through all of that, this video will make you dance like a fiend. I was pretty checked out of pop culture when this was new, so it’s new to me.
Somebody thinks I need to make a public statement of specific criticism against specific bloggers and commenters elsewhere on the network. Someone with the same last name as one of PZ’s obsessive haters, which of course could be a coincidence. Whether or not their feelings on those matters were genuine, the post is indistinguishable from a slyme pitter trying to start shit, and therefore this person has been added to my blocked list. Alongside, amusingly, the name of one of the people they wanted me to publicly rebuke.
I am allowed to choose my battles. If you think that’s a moral failing, that’s cool. Lots of other things for you to read on the internet. Goodbye.
I <3 Scotland. ^u^
Wow, how about that Brexit, huh? I don’t know much of the world except for stereotypes gleaned from tourists I’ve met, public personalities of actors, and bits of news, but I kinda like the impression that’s given me of Scotland. Young people dressed like sluts punching each other in the streets, but still with better political heads than the overwhelming majority of Britain. Look at the Grindr poll on the Brexit. They supported Remain.
They’ve given the world so much, including the cutest and sexiest white person ever, Alan Cumming. I hope next time they vote for independence (sounds imminent), things go their way. Also it would be hilarious for Northern Ireland and Scotland to bail, re-join the EU, and have Britain’s racist asses surrounded. Motherfucking excelsior.
I’m about to do a lot of talking out my ass on subjects I’m not certified to comment on, but what I’m about to say feels true to me, so … good enough for now. Just don’t cite me in your term paper.
Today I saw a juvenile brown-headed cowbird being fed by a dark-eyed junco, the first time I have ever witnessed an act of brood parasitism. I crossed the street to get a better look. The most famous brood parasite is the cuckoo, whose creepy behavior has been folded into a number of human languages to represent male sexual paranoia derived from the attitude that women and children are more important as property than as people. This includes the word “cuck,” beloved of internet racists and misogynists, though their memetic use of the word has outstripped any sense of meaning.
I’m not here to talk about that. I’m talking about birds that destroy the eggs of other birds, leaving their own offspring to be raised by parents of a different species. Birds that engage in brood parasitism are typically larger than the species they use, meaning that raising the changeling bird is more demanding and potentially dangerous than raising a member of the bird’s own species. The brown-headed cowbird I saw was larger than its deceitfully adopted parent, a junco that seemed small and skinny as it went about its work.
How is a bird fooled into raising a child that doesn’t even look right? Depriving itself to feed a monster twice its mass? It’s like a sheep raising a calf. A lot of birds just aren’t very smart, have to rely on pure instinct to drive them, and other birds can exploit that. Even the brood parasites themselves aren’t necessarily clever. They just happened into that niche a million years ago and it worked, to the point brown-headed cowbirds wouldn’t know how to raise a baby if they were in a position to do so.
Instinct is a weird beast. People like to say humans have instincts that drive us and take the concept too far. Yes, we have instincts, but they aren’t necessarily the ones people talk about, certainly the average evopsych tool. The main instinct I see in people around me is social sorting. We try to understand and control our relationships with the people around us reductively, drawing in and out groups, choosing arbitrary or socially promulgated ways of discriminating against others. It can be turned back on ourselves. When abused as small children or changed by life circumstance to a kind of person we have previously learned to hate, we sometimes socially sort ourselves as “unlovable” and hide away.
Instincts for non-human animals are much more obvious, and without as much ability to teach each other how to act socially, their instincts often have to be wildly specific. Take cats’ burial of feces. You do not have to train a cat to use a litter box. Some cats may have dysfunction that needs to be sorted out, but most kittens will quickly figure out how to use a litter box. Why?
Here is the instinct, in the cat’s mind: “I have to relieve myself. Ugh. It feels right to do this on a surface that gives beneath my paws. Ah, this dirt is just right. Now I can go. Holy crap! This smell is terrible! For some reason, I feel a tinge of mortal fear. I want to wave my paw next to it. Oh, that’s moving dirt. Will scratching the dirt make the smell go away? If yes, sigh of relief, carry on. If no, RUN AWAY!” Some people don’t know about the last part. It’s hilarious to watch your cats tear ass across the house to get away from their mess, when burying isn’t enough.
Humans have almost nothing like this weird chain of highly specific inborn feelings, because we gained the trait of culture. We can teach each other to wash our food, to bury our feces, and so on. Practically anything necessary can be taught instead of relying on instinct alone. Unfortunately for birds, they aren’t as bright as us. They have to rely on feelings.
The instinct, in the bird’s mind: “I got laid. Woo! Now I’ve got some other weird feelings setting in. Better make a nest. Unggh! Eggs. Better sit on these.” The brood parasite slips in here, knocking eggs out of the nest and laying its own. The victim of this sheisty move returns to find its eggs different. (Some birds actually recognize the switch through various means and knock the cuckoo eggs off, try to start over.) Apparently a lot of birds, even if they recognize the change, don’t know what to do with that, and just carry on. “Sit on weird eggs. Baby hatch. Feed that thing!”
This is the tragic romance. The finagled parent is operating on the closest thing a bird has to love. It is selflessly giving up its food, seeking more and more, doing its best to keep this baby alive and well. A brood parasite baby is even more demanding than its natural child would have been, potentially making the parent wreck itself with hunger and exertion in the process. But the parent is driven to harm itself like that, for the love of this strange monster. It’s beautiful and sad, it’s no kind of way to be. If your human relationships involve giving until you are broken, reevaluate them. A tragic romance is something to behold, not something to live.
Well, that went around the world, and I have no snappy way to end it. Have a song.
*the video I’d originally embedded disappeared
and this was the least worst replacement
