Ten Thousand Days For the Sword is not yet fully ready for release. But this preview of 10kDays is playable, contains outlines of anything that isn’t there yet, and causes me to not suffer a terrible fate.
I think the worst kind of tags I got in that post with the stupid Tolkien and CS Lewis tags (you know the one) was those that implied that Tolkien used the concept of LOTR being a fictional translation to “avoid” explaining things. First of all, as if Tolkien would use any excuse to be lazy about WRITING of all things, he was using it to make his story feel more real, more rich, he was trying to build myth and he knew how to do it in a way few people could.. Segundo, Francia, and third, that’s called narrative framing, it’s been used since ancient times and it’s something I don’t even feel qualified to even talk about because I’m sure people have written entire papers on it.
Just the idea of Tolkien being lazy. Goddamn.
No, actually the worst thing were those tags that said something like “I don’t know where coffee or cellphones do and I’m sure OP doesn’t” because fuck you, some of us actually are interested in how the world works, do you think things appears in your supermarket out of nowhere?
No, no, actually, the worst thing is when someone said “Asimov is like Tolkien” and, I quote “Heinlein is the wheeeeee space opera guy”. Heinlein. Fucking Heinlein being the wheeee space opera guy. The guy who dedicated whole pages to explaining how the technology and society of his worlds worked and made whole books on that premise to the point I think he was a hardass. Heinlein would burn your book if you didn’t explain how the propulsion system of your spaceship worked.
Heinlein would not say “wheee space opera” ni de casualidad. Goddamn.
No, no, no, actually the worst thing is all those tags that say “I’m like C.S. Lewis” oh you mean you’re writing heartfelt, profound fiction with mythological themes inspired by your religious beliefs and your complex relationship to them? “I’m like CS Lewis I don’t have to explain anything it’s just magic xdxddxddxd” oh okay, la re concha de tu madre entonces
No, no, no, no, actually, the worst part of that post was all the people telling me I haven’t heard about “suspension of disbelief” or “don’t like don’t read”. Yes, if your story just has generic knights eating potato stew with no thought at all at the society they live in, I will not like it and I will not read it. Thanks.
No, no, no, no, no, the worst thing is when people tried to make a sick burn at me saying I should just read encyclopedias. Yes, that’s what I like to do. Yes, there are whole fictional encyclopedias to read out there, it’s a thriving and fascinating genre. Not my fault you don’t know about them.
No, no, no, no, no, no, the worst thing was that one that said I caring about potatoes and coffee in settings as such was just nitpicking like the people who complain about people of color in fantasy, when most of that post was actually ABOUT why non-european people are not represented in fantasy and science fiction to the point that their contributions to the world and customs are completely erased. And when I tried to answer them they blocked me.
Do other people in the world really believe the genocide is over or that conditions have improved? They began starving the North in March last year and then continued to starve the whole Strip for a year and now they are starving the whole Gaza Strip again this March, in Ramadan.
Genocide is an act of collective punishment and neglect of the most essential life sources.
In reality they began committing genocide against the people of Gaza the day that the siege on Gaza was imposed. What we continue to witness since Oct 7th is only the same genocide accelerated which I will never stop repeating.
Not only that, the murder by aircraft has not stopped. israel’s fascist death machines are still hovering and threatening and firing and killing people in their tents, in their damaged homes, in cars, at people trying to rebuild…their thirst for Palestinian blood is literally infinite.
Even if the fire stopped, it would still be genocide. There is no such thing as an israeli ceasefire because they practice murder by freezing and starving and medically neglecting and physically and psychologically torturing Palestinians too.
during transitory periods of your life you may hit a ‘this isn’t even worth it, i’m already exhausted out of my mind from the effort of bringing this about, and losing any comforts i may have had in my life before - is it even going to be better for all of this?’. that’s the hater PRINCE DIOS speaking and you have to run him over with a car
A philosophical anti-essentialism is so central to how I understand myself in the world as a trans person that it’s mind-boggling to see other trans folks who aren’t truscum/transmed/whatever who still hold onto essentialist ideas about gender & identity.
So here’s the basics:
1. Existentialism. There is no essence, or at least, essence does not, as the classical philosophers held, precede existence. This means that things exist before ideas about them or their purpose exist (what Plato calls “forms”). We find ourselves in a certain set of conditions and we ascribe meaning to those circumstances, not the other way around.
2. Gender is Not Real. Gender exists in our world sort of the way that the forms existed for platonic philosophers: as abstractions that are unattainable yet supposedly desirable. No one can fully conform to everyone’s expectations of what it means to be a man or a woman, and no one can really claim authority on knowing what those categories entail. Even radfems who fall back on “biology” (as a defense of what is basically gender, even though they wouldn’t call it that) don’t really have definitive answers when it comes to, say, intersex people.
3. Gender is a System of Control. If gender can never be fully realized, why do people try to conform to it? The answer is that gender is a method of imposing behavioral norms on people based on the role power structures want them to play in things like reproduction and the institution of family. Presenting people with established roles, appearances, and activities based on notions of gender (and punishing them for nonconformity to these things) makes them easier to control.
4. Gender is Enforced both Externally and Internally. The enforcement of near-ubiquitous systems like this will involve just about every aspect of society. Gender norms are imposed by authority figures, of course, but also by peers and even by the individual upon themself. We grow up in a gendered society, and in order to escape the punishment not only dished out for deviancy, but for the perceived deviancy of anyone who questions this system, we learn to internalize gender, both conforming to it and adopting its logic. We police ourselves, even internally, in how we talk, look, act, and think.
5. Being Trans is Not a Discovery. Since there is no essence and gender is just a set of imposed ideas, being trans is not discovering the essence of a different gender within yourself. This social system of gender is hostile to the variety of human experiences because it imposes monolithic ideas about behavior and appearance upon people. Because of this, many (if not all) people will have hostile encounters with gender throughout their lives. Transness is a particular response to these encounters: a way of taking control of your body and your perceptions of it.
6. “Dysphoria” is Not an Internal Issue. Gender, among many social systems, forces us to understand our bodies as symbols of a deeper, essential identity. What psychiatric professionals call dysphoria is a feeling of discontinuity between what the body symbolizes and what we would like it to symbolize. Part of this, of course, is the way that we are perceived by others, behaviorally and in appearance. But it also extends to the way that we perceive our own bodies and even believe (whether consciously or not) our essence to be. From a young age in a world of essentialism, we conceive of essence (with regards to gender) as related to many things: at the most shallow level, appearance and voice, but at a deeper level, behavior, social roles, and “biological factors” like hormones can become divining rods for essence. Transmeds engage in this kind of practice all the time, establishing standards by which they judge the essential transness of a person. This is just a microcosm of a larger tendency that dominates a cis-normative society.
7. Complete Identity Autonomy. So rather than try and judge whether a person (yourself or someone else) really is trans, how do we respond to these issues? Understanding that identities are not a result of essences but rather socially manufactured categories, how do we navigate a society built upon identity? The answer is to demand complete control, wresting your autonomy back from everyone who will try and police you, including yourself. Foucault says (and I’m paraphrasing) that identity can be a sort of game we play, but that if we try to place bounds around it, it becomes a prison again. As trans people, I think it should be easy enough to see the ways that social demands to conform keep us imprisoned. But I think, for many people, the trans experience (if you’ll pardon me talking about it as though it were one monolithic thing) lends itself to new forms of expression, and an understanding that even as we navigate these social categories, the categories themselves and the systems that produce them are really just violent bullshit.
If you ask me, the coolest kind of machines are the ones that shouldn’t exist. Capitalism is all about making sure that you only get something if a bunch of other people also want it. And for those of us who are particularly niche weirdos by nature or necessity, we’re forced to go into our metaphorical basements and emerge with some homemade nightmare tool to solve our exact problem.
Sometimes it’s a tool that I want badly, but can’t afford, and I spend a couple afternoons looking longingly at pictures while copying them down. Other times, it’s something that has never been created before, but solves my exact problem. Want to punch a bigger hole in the middle of tiny wheels because your ass is too lazy to go to the store and get the right axle? You could use a drill press, or you could make an ordeal out of it. Bonus project, bonus project! Oh boy!
Folks who come to my shop will invariably see the big box on the counter marked “tools, weird.” They’ll root through it a bit, and the brave ones will even put on the welding gloves and reach right in there to pull whatever not-even-deburred piece of junk I have made. Once in a while, lightning strikes. They look at this horrible abomination that was brought into the world by my thought and deed, and they realize “holy fuck, I could use one of these too.”
No second one will be forthcoming, though. I’m not in business making tools or anything. If they really want it, they can just have it, and if that problem ever turns up again, I’ll make a whole new one for myself. Bonus project!
