Here's a commentary tape where Tom Francis talks bit about writing the Jen and Banks relationship for all you tactical wizard yuri enjoyers who didn't get the special edition upgrade ✌

Trying my hand at some Tactical Wizards Yuri

bye i love this

"Long Adolescence" and Disability Liberation

Cultural discourse around infantilization of young adults, particularly when justified with spurious "brain science," is a disability issue.

Even in disability spaces, I see the argument made that 18-25 year olds aren't "real adults" yet, because "science proves" that "the brain doesn't fully mature" until age 26. This concept harms not only young adults, but also disabled and neurodivergent people of all ages.

To get the basic facts out of the way: The brain does not "fully mature" at age 26, or any other age. The human brain changes continuously throughout the lifespan. There is no point at which the brain stops changing until death. There are certain brain changes that commonly occur in the mid-twenties, but declaring these changes "full maturity" is completely arbitrary.

So why has the "Brain fully matures at age 26" myth taken off, and what is the impact of it? Mostly, to justify economic and cultural norms. It just so happens that this myth of "brain maturity" happened to take off during a period of economic downturn, especially for young people newly entering the workforce. But it's okay, mainstream media outlets tell us, that young adults are increasingly unable to afford to move out of their parents' homes, to access healthcare independently of their parents, to get married, or to have children of their own -- in fact, it's a good thing, because young people are too neurologically immature for these things anyway.

A context in which I've recently had a lot of arguments on this topic is the claim that young adults are too young to consent to romantic relationships with older adults, or that such relationships are "pedophilia" or inherently unethical. This is an argument that has a lot of traction in social-justice-minded spaces, because it's ostensibly about sexual abuse but it's actually about infantalization, and it has deeply harmful implications that go far beyond your squick at May/December relationships.

"BUT HYPATIA, YOU HEARTLESS LIBERAL, older people who preferentially date younger people (especially older men who preferentially date younger women) often ARE fetishistic and abusive!"

Yes, they are. So are lots of people from privileged groups who preferentially date people from marginalized groups. It's a problem that needs to be addressed, but the assumption relationships that are "mixed" along a privilege axis, or that marginalized partners cannot consent, is still far more harmful, because it has implications beyond relationships.

"BUT HYPATIA, YOU HEARTLESS LIBERAL, we're protecting young people from abuse!"

No, you're not. Young people often enter unwise relationships -- relationships they KNOW are unwise -- because it's their only recourse for escaping the control of their parents. Normalizing the idea that young adults should still be under protection and control of parents or guardians ensures that young adults have fewer safe options for escape and autonomy. This creates a ripe opportunity for abusive, manipulative, and exploitative people to offer young people freedom from parental control. The harms done to young people by attempting to "protect" them from their own decisions are far greater than the harms young people can cause themselves by making unwise decisions.

"But people don't magically become mature adults on their 18th birthdays! Shouldn't there be a transitional period for young people to gradually assume more adult rights and responsibilities, with support, guidance, and scaffolding, and protection from predators who would take advantage of youthful inexperience?"

Yes, that's exactly right! There should be a transitional period! That is, in fact, the purpose of childhood. And adolescence. The fact that an 18 year old is not significantly different in maturity from a 17 year old is not an argument for giving the 18 year old fewer rights; it's an argument for giving the 17 year old more rights.

Adult rights and responsibilities should be gradually rolled out, over time, with support and guidance, and special protections in place due to the inherent vulnerability of youth. But the 18th birthday should be the end point of that transition, not the beginning. Because although the brain never stops maturing, rights are important, and the allotment of them should not be delayed any longer than absolutely necessary.

What does all this have to do with disability?

A lot. First of all, any time the argument is made that a group of people should be denied rights based on the structure of their brains, neurodivergent people are affected. The argument that young adults should be denied full autonomy because they're often financially dependent on parents/family also has implications for disabled people -- many disabled people will never be "financially independent," no matter how old we are. There are more specific ties to disability, too. Part of the justification for restricting the rights of young adults is that certain psychiatric disabilities are, or are presumed to be, more prevalent in, or originally manifesting in, young adults. Forcing young adults into involuntary psychiatric treatment is justified because, after all, they're too neurologically immature to realize that they're neurologically defective.

Another premise in the argument that young adults aren't fully "real adults" is that young adults are often college students, while "real adults" are out of school. This is, first of all, factually untrue -- colleges are increasingly recruiting students of all ages, and students older than 26 are far from rare. When I was arguing with someone who claimed that a romantic relationship between a young adult and an older adult was wrong because the younger adult was "probably still in school," I pointed out that most college classrooms are a melting pot of ages, and, in fact, many older/younger couples meet in the same college class! More specifically to disability issues, though, the assumption that "student = still basically a child" disproportionately harms disabled people who, for a variety of reasons, may take longer than "average" to graduate. The entire framing of higher education as a "life stage" is a centering of a class and ability experience that is far from universal.

And look, I don't really care if you're judgmental of May/December romances. Fine, judge them. No one is making you approve.

I care that universities consider it appropriate to notify students' parents about health information, and that states are making it easier to involuntarily commit 18-26 year olds, and that underpaying or not paying at all younger workers is justified because "They're not really old enough to be independent anyway," and that people with fallopian tubes aren't allowed to have tubal ligations until they're 25, and that transgender people aren't allowed to access gender-affirming surgeries because of "brain maturity," and that disabled adults are denied civil rights because they supposedly "have the mind of a child." And all of those rights violations are enabled by this pervasive myth that people can't become "real adults" until they've financially succeeded in a bad economy, or until they've graduated an inaccessible higher education system, or until they reach some arbitrary level of "brain maturity" that some neurodivergent people will never reach. That's a harmful premise, no matter how well-intentioned.

Dragon age is coming back so you know what that means. Logging into your dash each day and seeing callouts because someone sided with the magical wizard rumpus club over the warlock circlejerk in their playthrough. Getting messages calling you problematic for following someone who has mixed feelings about the gnome independence movement. Seeing paragraphs upon paragraphs about how slorpity porpity the esteemed magical elf was actually justified in signing the pixie exclusion act. Get ready.

almost time

this is so fucking funny to me. who wants to join the ancient athenian evil dining club with me

still thinking about the very correct post abt how discussions abt good gms always leave out austin underscore walker, and it's honestly just fucking bleak.

fatt has been around for a decade at this point, if you're gonna Do The Thing where you talk about different gms and how great they are, it's nigh impossible you haven't heard of fatt. and yeah, hieron started out rough, audio quality-wise, but the "inaccessible" excuse rly just does sound like An Excuse when you consider that a) cr puts out 4+ hour videos that are unedited, b) for some stuff like d20 you straight-up have to pay, and c) marielda as a starting point has been around for fucking years.

like you can't praise the gm qualities of taz without at least acknowledging that austin had a huge influence on said gming.

and don't you feel fucking stupid praising the odd queer character of some other shows when fatt has a (correct me if i'm wrong) exclusively queer cast cast that's almost exclusively queer (sorry Art, i forgot abt you, I don't think you ever talked about being queer) including multiple trans people + seasons filled with really cool representation of just about every identity you can think of? like even when fatt folks fuck up with their rep (counter/weight...), they actually sit down and talk about it afterwards, and then you get the joy of seeing them go above and beyond and Do Better

like it rly is just how that one tag on the post that got me thinking abt this said - sorry austin isn't a straight white guy who just gets a little fruity with it sometimes, i guess

while i do agree that there's some level of bias in play, i think it's worth understanding that shows like dimension 20 and taz, never mind CR, are whole orders of magnitude bigger than fatt. austin's never talked hard data when he's discussed this and i suspect that's deliberate, but if you ballpark purely by the number of twitter followers these shows have (in late may 2024): fatt has ~16k, and then taz and d20 have nearly 190k and 200k respectively, over 10 times as many. cr? just under 720k, more than 3 times its dnd-based competitors and over 40 times the fatt figure. the raw difference in attention is staggering.

to be clear, this popularity gap is almost certainly influenced by audience response to open queerness. we all know how these things go; fandoms have latched onto scraps of representation in mainstream high-budget projects instead of embracing full meals from the indie scene for decades. but it's also worth remembering that fatt is struggling against a very particular quirk of the medium, which is that they are not a dnd show and dnd has a stranglehold on the tabletop gaming industry. fatt not playing that game is itself a huge turnoff for many people, and other tabletop podcasters have talked about seeing huge dropoffs in listener numbers when switching from dnd to an indie system, even just for a season or two.

i say this not to like, excuse the biases of those who have heard of this show; i just want to illustrate that there are way fewer people in that group than you might think. tabletop is a weird fucking medium for a lot of reasons but the constraints of dnd's monopoly are chief among them. plenty of taz and d20 fans praising their white guy gms legitimately have no idea that austin was so influential on the way those dudes ran games; huge numbers of them don't even know there's TTRPGs that aren't dnd. the unfortunate truth is it's not even close to nigh impossible that someone hasn't heard of fatt. most people, even if they're already in the very niche hobby of "tabletop RPG show fandom," probably don't have any idea it exists

By the way. Before you rush to get a professional diagnosis for a Brain Thing you should really weigh your options. Like do you just want to "prove it" or will this actually give you access to treatment you can't have otherwise? Are the treatment options available worth having the government know you're neurodivergent? Because sometimes it's better to keep things off the record because unfortunately we still live in a very deeply ableist society and you might not want to have more real material oppression stacked against you than you have to

Idk I see a lot of people seeking diagnoses just for, like, validation??? You do not have to do that. I cannot stress enough how much you don't have to do that. If people give you a hard time about being self diagnosed you can just tell them to eat shit. Better yet, you don't have to disclose your diagnostic status in the first place! Your medical history isn't anyone's business and I wholeheartedly support lying to doctors. Be free. You are allowed to control the information you share with people even (or especially!) if they're in a position of power

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) dir. George Miller

working draft

note: if you gender these terms I may ask you to leave

no no, a ternary plot is just a bit unintuitive

here's an example: let's say we were trying to put okuu, my pfp, on here and we said she was 60% devotion, 30% malice, and 10% grace. she would find herself here:

notice how the lines start at those values on the corresponding side and then meet up in the middle? that's the core of how it works

takes a bit of practice, so just try some values and it will start to make more sense

I'd slide prince a little bit further up in terms of grace. It should be overlapping but still lower than princesses

I definitely considered that, but the gap is actually due to differences in devotion. to my eyes, a prince with less that 30% devotion is a prince in name alone.

fair, but i do think it should be at least one notch up. Follow-up question, what's the distinction between maid (romantic) and maid (postmodern)?

a question with layers, but in essence, maids (postmoderm) are not held to traditional standards of hygiene and manners like cleaning their knives (or using knives in the first place)

penis blast nefarious

diverse types of penis blast call the penis blast various

penis blast electrical

penis blast delectable

penis blast campaigning call the penis blast electable

sorry

Congratulations to Suletta and Miorine on their victory!

yeah that's exactly what i was saying

(suddenly serious) what i was saying was that Dungeon Meshi has some really well-written characters that also have flaws. half the cast constantly gives Laios shit for being socially awkward, Laios forgets about the basics of human decency a couple of times when interacting with Izutsumi, the funny late-story villain squad are 80% convicted criminals, basically every character is a bit racist in some way, and, yes, Marcille, everyone's favorite silly little disaster lesbian, gets the "ick" about Tall-men portraying the characters in her favorite romance novel because she thinks they're too ugly and pouts about the idea of Falin (her dear beloved Falin) wearing clothes that she would be happy and comfortable wearing because "that stuff is for men"

i feel really silly talking about this but a weird thing that happened for me when the Dungeon Meshi anime took off and the fandom really exploded was seeing how weirdly cutesified a lot of fan depictions of the characters was. the "canon versus fanon" of it all, if you will. a week or so ago there was a bonus comic drawn by Ryoko Kui that got spread around Twitter about a What If situation in which Laios got eaten instead of Falin, and people were shocked about the idea of the party basically immediately giving up on the idea of saving Laios, including at least one "why does the writer think she knows so much" joke (i'm hoping it was a joke), which really baffled me because it just made sense to me that the party initially wasn't all that close to Laios (besides Falin, obviously). the relationship of the main cast is something that grows over the series. please read that carefully: the main cast does care for one another, they care for Laios, it's just that it's something that is developed over the course of the manga... and even that idea was too much for some fans

i'm probably going to sound really snobby, but i think there's a lot of people who are more fans of the fanart than the actual series...

i was mainly being silly when i was like "yeah let Marcille be weird about gender" but i was also kind of serious because it kind of is a prominent part of her character. it speaks to the world she lives in, what she values and finds important, and if you think about it, it actually speaks a lot to the subtext around her and Falin: Marcille hates "gross things," Marcille hates being uncomfortable, Marcille thinks women should be girly, and men should be masculine, and yet she willingly journeys down into a gross dungeon and eats weird monsters in order to save Falin, a woman who likes bugs, fucking around in the dirt, and pants. what do you think that implies about Marcille?

i appreciate writers that don't smooth all the rough edges off their characters. in Kui's case, we all know she's put massive amounts of thought into the world Dungeon Meshi takes place in, and the views of her character reflect all these thoughts. i don't think Marcille being "conservative" is an accident- i would go so far as to say that i don't think the "contradiction" of Marcille's love of Falin is an accident. i think this is all the sign of good writing, and i think it's a diservice to the writer to try and make these characters more "palatable" (and fit all the corny "found family" memes lol)