animalia

Finally a break in the tension.

Especially when they are based on inaccurate and/or outdated information.

This. 1000 x this EDIT: Also because it's hard to handle large amounts of information without breaking things into categories. It' good for dealing with said large chunks of information, but bad when you gown to individual examples/people

Well, that answers a lot of really awkward questions.

That forced smile is cringe worthy

Until this comic I didn’t realize it was Diane. Her new haircut makes her look too similar to Sarah.

I don’t know what to make of this.

Am I the only one lost by what just happened here?

It’s just I wish I had thought of it a few days ago. I realize it would have been useful for a discussion in another thread. But I got upset and the idea of using this paradox as a metaphor that could allow both sides to bridge the gap without upsetting each other never occurred to me. #hindsight

While were talking about stuff that sounds greek, because that’s as good a segue as I am likely to get, has anyone else ever heard of the Ship of Theseus?

That’s interesting. I didn’t think of it that way. Good point.

Who else wants Lucy to meet Rick, if only so she can clear up her OWN misconceptions about Diane? I don’t blame her for being scared of telling the truth to Diane given how she treated Justin. But I do want to point out the irony that the claim she lays on Diane, of “Not being as observant as she thinks” that the same can apply to her, she’s not as observant as she thinks either.

So are you suggesting that Lucy has a crush on Diane? I kind of got that vibe as well but didn’t want to make assumptions.

I wasn’t sure if need to state my politics because of earlier, if it’s uncessary can the mods please delete the footnote in the post above as well as this post.

Also if we are talking about Berserk Buttons one of my Berserk Buttons is trying to argue from emotion intead of logic. To me this feals like one of the most manipulative things a person can do because they aren’t trying to persuade you with the logic of their argument or how the ethics, but because of how they make you feel. (The extant that I engage the emotional side ofvthe argument temds to be “how did you think they were going to react”) This doesn’t mean I don’t care about the other person emotions but that I don’t want to manipulate them simply to “win” an argument/debate/discussion with them/make my point in a dialogue. Thst being said one of the reasons I am able to be as open about my personal experiences here, is because I had so many chats on the forums with you all, that I feel familiar enough with you that you all don’t seem like strangers. As a result I feel comfortable enough to tell you about these kinds of personal stories without feeling like I have to worry about unintentionally manipulating you. Because you know me well enough that these kinds of Frank discussions are possible. But when it comes to strangers or places like youtube comments.. Yeah that’s a place where I would be less likely to bare my soul. And as previously mentioned I don’t like the emotional argument for the reasons previously mentioned, but I have come to the frustrated realization that it works. * This leaves me feeling like I am banging my head against the wall as it often seems like the only way for people to hear you is to scream as loud as you can. *For the record I lean left in most issues, (some examples include immigration, health care, economic policy) but Swerve enough in some areas, to consider myself a moderate, in case it matters.

Fair enough. Thank you for meeting me half way.

First off I feel like I am often bad at explaining my own arguments so I often quote others. This was clearly a mistake. I am trying to start over. Second I want to preface this by saying something that while I feel should be obvious, but too often isn’t. No I don’t know how you feel. And this is only natural because I’m not you. The best I can try to do is try to imagine how I would feel in your place, or draw from the closest experience I have but even then no two people are exactly the same and no one will ever be able to know exactly how another feels. The best we can do is try to empathize. Second what do you suggest as an alternative? I am not saying that we cannot try to be respectful to the cultures we borrow from. People should ALWAYS try to be respectful to the cultures they borrow from, But what happens when people become to afraid of mesing things up that they don’t even bother to interact with other cultures? Speaking off drawing from our own experiences let me talk about a VERY personal experience. Because I can relate to that fear metaphorically through my fear of romantic interactions and the various rules involved with them. There is nothing I desire more in the world then to have a satisfing and emotionally fulfilling romantic relationship with someone. But at the same time my idea of dating someone who isn’t a friend is word for word the same as what Eliot and Susan have said. Now add to this the rule that you don’t want to pester someone who doesn’t have an interest in you, which is something that I can respect. I wouldn’t want to be hounded merciless by someone else either. Well with all of these complex rules I have all but resigned myself to the fact that I am likely to remain single. Why? Because of all the obstacles to a relationship. I’d have to make a friend who happens to be a girl. And yes I do mean happens. It won’t work if I go looking for it too deliberately. I don’t even make REGULAR friends easily enough. I feel like people toss around that word to casually. I would then have to fall in love. And here’s the real kicker for me. BECAUSE I can appreciate the desire of people not to be pestered I can only ask her out once. After that, (assuming we could remain friends) I would say that if she changes her mind to let me know about it but don’t expect me to ask again, no matter how much time has past because I don’t want to be a pest. All of this time I would be dealing with the fact that it is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE SHE FORGOT that I said she would have to be the one to tell me if her feelings change, as I am ill equiped to notice what she is feelings unless she comes out and tells me. And I know this firgering it thing is something that can happen because I will often preface a conversation with “tell me if x” only for my folks to forget it mid conversation. Combine it with the fact that I’d be so concerned about pestering het that I’d never bring it up again because I have now been told this is something not to do. And I only have one chance. This is because my deafult and really only way of dealing with conversations is tell me if something I do or say bugs you and I will stop it. I will treat you the same way. At the same time no topic is off of conversation for ever. Because some topics that bug people on one day may not bug them when their in another mood. But that means that a topic like this that I am not allowed to approach multiple times is impossible for me to deal with besides the one shot approach. If it isn’t clear what this has to do with being so afraid of messing things up they stop bother to interact interact with other cultures, I will make things clear. Here I go. Trying to navigate the complex rules of what we are and we are not allowed to borrow from other cultures and why the frustration of dealing with such a thing might lead people to give up reminds me of my own frustrations with the various romantic rules have disusded me from even trying. And here is what happens when people are discouraged from even trying to reach out across other cultures. When people discouraged from trying to reach out across cultures, people will end up not understanding other cultures. Which leads to even more ignorance and isolation.

Huh? Propoganda? I don’t think she was ever seriously considering saying murders was a culture so much as exaggerating to make a point, about how fiction writing works. Sorry I got angry. Let me try to find a meeting place for us. THEN we can start over this conversation on a personal level. I am thinking of a line I read from the Stormlight Archive that helped me understand some people I had trouble understanding before. It was “Sometimes no amount of logic or reasoning can overcome that overpowering desire to get what you think that you deserve.” That helped me understand, because I have the opposite problem. Sometimes no amount of Empathy for a person’s situation can overcome my frustration with their inability to see logic. For me the logic is that the best way to breakdown cultural barriers and to try to understand other people is to invite them to try and experience other cultures. The only alternative is to completely close the doors of all cultures and have them remain completely static forever. The thing is when you open the door like this you WILL find a lot of people who discover something they genuinely love and want to share it with the rest of the world, but you’ll also encounter assholes who don’t understand or try to understand. It’s impossible to get the good without the bad. Am I making sense so far?

@The Old Hack I think you missed a couple of points, for example. “In 2013, I published Big Brother, a novel that grew out of my loss of my own older brother, who in 2009 died from the complications of morbid obesity. I was moved to write the book not only from grief, but also sympathy: in the years before his death, as my brother grew heavier, I saw how dreadfully other people treated him – how he would be seated off in a corner of a restaurant, how the staff would roll their eyes at each other after he’d ordered, though he hadn’t requested more food than anyone else. I was wildly impatient with the way we assess people’s characters these days in accordance with their weight, and tried to get on the page my dismay at how much energy people waste on this matter, sometimes anguishing for years over a few excess pounds. Both author and book were on the side of the angels, or so you would think. But in my events to promote Big Brother, I started to notice a pattern. Most of the people buying the book in the signing queue were thin. Especially in the US, fat is now one of those issues where you either have to be one of us, or you’re the enemy. I verified this when I had a long email correspondence with a “Healthy at Any Size” activist, who was incensed by the novel, which she hadn’t even read. Which she refused to read. No amount of explaining that the novel was on her side, that it was a book that was terribly pained by the way heavy people are treated and how unfairly they are judged, could overcome the scrawny author’s photo on the flap. She and her colleagues in the fat rights movement did not want my advocacy. I could not weigh in on this material because I did not belong to the club. I found this an artistic, political, and even commercial disappointment – because in the US and the UK, if only skinny-minnies will buy your book, you’ve evaporated the pool of prospective consumers to a puddle. I worry that the clamorous world of identity politics is also undermining the very causes its activists claim to back. As a fiction writer, yeah, I do sometimes deem my narrator an Armenian. But that’s only by way of a start. Merely being Armenian is not to have a character as I understand the word. ... Efforts to persuasively enter the lives of others very different from us may fail: that’s a given. But maybe rather than having our heads taken off, we should get a few points for trying. After all, most fiction sucks. Most writing sucks. Most things that people make of any sort suck. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make anything. The answer is that modern cliché: to keep trying to fail better. Anything but be obliged to designate my every character an ageing five-foot-two smartass, and having to set every novel in North Carolina. We fiction writers have to preserve the right to wear many hats – including sombreros.” Basically she did all that stuff you said she should do and she constantly tries to better. People get outraged DESPITE that.

I’d also like to point that even stuff that pleases the juvenile pervert in us can also have well-written characters that move us to tears. (Not saying epic masterpiece, just saying that even that stories like that can have their value when done right.) I guess that why it bugs me when Dan talks about how hes matured. Called me crazy but why can’t you enjoy dirty jokes AND want a relationship with someone that’s based on based on emotional attachment? I wasn’t aware the two were mutually exclusive.

I am not saying there aren’t assholes who honestly don’t care about things, but I do think that sometimes it feels like there is no middle ground with people. As a result all you it seems you can do is write what you want to write. Try to be as accurate as possible, yes. Be as realistic and human as possible, yes. But if you let fear of insulting people keep you from writing the story you want to write what’s the point. There is NO story in the world who won’t offend someone. And you can’t please everyone.

Here is the second link. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/lionel-shrivers-full-speech-i-hope-the-concept-of-cultural-appropriation-is-a-passing-fad

How about trying to create a comic just trying to have fun and not care what other people read into things. One thing I noticed is that people bring their own judgments wherever they go. You can try to conform to them or you can just have fun and tell the type of story you enjoy and let people read into it what they read into it. This may be the state in comics, and to be fair the comics industry probably deserves it but let’s talk about other industries. That being said I should probably define some ground terms first so before we go further I want to share a video with everyone. THEN I will share the link dealing with the problematic subject I wanted to address in the next part.

I was talking about what Justin was reading not the real world.

Also did the comic DELBERLIATLEY ADVERISE it’s selling point was it had no social agenda, or did it come across as having none after flipping through it?