A home for buns

Someone asked F1nn why it was that on her larger branded social media accounts she still listed herself as a femboy in some places while in more intracommunity spaces she more readily and comfortably identified as transfem.

Now, depending on who you ask that kind of question to you'll probably get a meandering answer on the complexities of how one defines their own identity. But instead F1nn gave a very quick and simple answer.

Instead of a cutesie reference to film censorship it was an explicit statement of defiance of Maryland's criminalization gay sex, which was not repealed until 2002. This wasn't a guy saying "Oh they can't put what I do in the movies according to a completely voluntary industry code" he was saying "The State of Maryland wants to put me in jail for being gay and having gay sex."

So Satsuki Kiryuin is so interesting to me. Because she's impressively charismatic, and powerful, and authoritative. And she's wrong.

She's presented as perfection. Pure white dress, long jet black hair. A beautiful swordswoman. A traditional Japanese beauty. Noble, strong, and perfect. Everything about her is "pure." Her appearance, her motivations, her mannerisms. Even her kamui's name means "Purity." Though her methods are cruel, she believes wholeheartedly that she's right, and that everything she does is for the greater good. If it leads to defeating Ragyo, then she is in the right.

Except she's wrong.

You can't dismantle fascism from within the system. She herself taught that lesson to Ryuko and Mako once, in the Fight Club episode, but she failed to see the bigger picture: that by using Ragyo's methods, she was doing the exact same thing. For all her willpower, all her training, all her charisma, all of her uncompromising strength of character, she cannot overcome this. Because her perspective is limited by what she knows. What she has experienced. And what she has experienced is force. She only knows pain, and manipulation, and pressure to be perfect. And she thought these were sources of strength. But they were just the abuse of an unloving mother.

By making Satsuki a protagonist in the back half of the show, the writers almost flub the message by justifying her actions. But they save it by making her fail, and when she reconciles with Ryuko, she makes the point of it all very clear. In her own words:

In the end, she throws it all away. She doesn't need to be perfect. She doesn't need to be powerful or beautiful or intimidating or larger than life. She's just a girl. A young woman, just 18 years old. She cuts her hair short, distancing herself from that symbol of traditional Japanese purity. And she just lets herself be a person. A loving sister to Ryuko, and a close friend to the elite four.

The other day I got into a discussion on the death penalty in the replies of a post, and i haven't been able to stop thinking about a moment of it. They had said something about how a person who kills another person, when not done in their own self-defense, is irredeemable. I read that and thought "I don't know about that, I don't think this person has considered that there's often a lot more nuance then that, and that there are any number of times when a person may commit murder for a reason you find distasteful, even heinous, but is still capable of change, and may still be capable of returning to society some day without posing any greater threat to others than the average person." I wrote up a little scenario like that, about a murder committed in a fit of rage by someone who, in the time since, had come to grieve their actions, and with the full understanding of what it means to take a human life, is now unlikely to ever do something like that again. I asked them if someone like that is still beyond redemption, if that person still needs to be kept from the world for the safety of others.

they told me I was straw-manning them.

i don't know what to do about this. I don't know what to say about it, other than to point it out as many others have before and go "hey, maybe this isn't great." But i think it's why I still try, though am not always successful, to approach arguments online with a "good faith first" mindset. That doesn't mean go in willfully naive, or to take every piece of bait, or to let someone drag you down rabbit holes, but it means that when someones post, someones comment, someones reply seems on the edge, when a best-faith interpretation of it could be merely the result of ignorance or misunderstanding, or not considering something from a viewpoint you see as obvious, give them a chance. try and treat it in that good faith way, and treat them with the respect that interpretation would warrant. nine times out of ten you'll be wrong, and it'll be an argument, and you'll have to block them anyway. but every once in a while you get through to someone. Maybe you don't change their whole world view, but you plant the seed of an idea. and sometimes, when those conversations are constructive, someone shows you a side of the world you've never seen before, and you come away with a better understanding of where they're coming from and motivates them, weather you agree with them or not.

Get inspired by studying examples of ChatGPT-written dialog that were generated by other people.

Think back to prior times you interacted with ChatGPT, and use those recollections to guide you.

Combine high doses of stimulants with sleep deprivation to put yourself in a vacant, but peppy frame of mind.

Use a different AI large language model, such as Claude or Google Gemini.

If someone were, as a random example, say hospitalized for over two weeks with no explanation, I think that should automatically trigger a special election to replace them.

If you're still able to do your job, then prove it. And if you're not, then you're actively obstructing democracy by not stepping down.

Which is to say, that if a public official were to pass away or into a coma, and their handlers choose to obfuscate that fact, this should be seen as intentionally obstructing democracy.