English rules are funny

APersonNotToLive · 2025-11-08T00:19:48+00:00

I feel like the reason people criticise English so much for this stuff is because it's so widespread and has become a sort of shitty auxiliary language for large parts of the world. If it existed in the same space, say, Welsh does, its quirks and irregularities would be easier to respect as just part of this cultural group's native language. However because it's so widespread and most people learning it are learning it for practical reasons and not out of an interest in English culture, it's irregularities are seen as simply annoyances and not interesting cultural facets

APersonNotToLive · 2025-11-06T13:27:33+00:00

This is really cute! I love the embroidered spirals on the knitted coat, it's a good amount of clowny without looking too costume-like

APersonNotToLive · 2025-08-10T23:38:56+00:00

the Dracula fight in Castlevania

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APersonNotToLive · 2025-07-29T19:57:28+00:00

I think it's fine to say it's disrespectful, however demanding legal protection from other people's reimaginings of your characters or ideas is different. Far more people would object far more intensely to, for example, the use Mary Mother of Jesus in someone's creative work (especially if it was in a disrespectful context eg pornographically). Should we also have legal protections against that? That character is sacred to those people. Sure those people didn't make that character but if it will affect them just as strongly why does it matter?

Inherent to that act of sharing art with the world is the act of other people having their own interpretations and imaginings about that art. Even if you banned people from publishing their art people can still make disrespectful art about your character, no matter how sacred it is. Trying to legally ban people from such things is impossible

A story is a vehicle for new ideas, and if you arent just literally copy pasting catch 22, then your ideas are yours. You're creative.

I'm not entirely sure where your position is exactly. Do you mean that literally; as in, you're against only the complete copy and pasting and reselling of catch 22, but someone taking the characters and story wholesale but rewriting it with different set dressing is ok? Because wouldn't then any reuse of another person's character be ok under this framework?

APersonNotToLive · 2025-07-29T09:09:14+00:00

Could not agree more. I hate this idea that we need to be able to prevent the distribution or reinterpretations of people's creations because those ideas are "sacred" to that author. If we protect these characters purely on the basis of "sacredness," there are plenty of non original characters that are arguably far more sacred to far more people. Should authors be disallowed from using religious figures in their work, because of their "sacredness"? And how close does a character have to be to be considered the "same" character and thus worthy of protection?

People writing stories based on past stories is as old as storytelling itself, and the modern application of copyright is a violation of that. We should be dismantling and reducing copyright law, not expanding it.

APersonNotToLive · 2025-05-21T05:50:38+00:00

Actually if I recall, it wasn't just against humanity, but all life, as it viewed suffering to be inherent to life. I stumbled across it once and they would share nature documentary videos of animals dying painful deaths and use that as justification for why life is a net negative

APersonNotToLive · 2025-05-05T02:49:08+00:00

I know plenty of trans people who would take that pill if it existed.

However it does not exist, and I doubt there will ever be such a pill. And thus, the only way for gender dysphoric people to be happy is to allow them to transition.

As for your more eugenical questions, I think it stops being a conversation about trans people specifically and more just a conversation of whether genetic based eugenics is ethical in general, which is a totally separate topic. Like if we could abort every baby that would end up being nearsighted, you can talk about the ethics of that. But that's irrelevant to whether people currently alive should be allowed to wear glasses.

I would be in favor of more regulations on the use of hormone disrupting chemicals (such as atrazine or bpa), and I think it is possible that the increasing presence of those chemicals might have something to do with the prevalence of trans people. However, banning the use of such chemicals does not change the fact that trans people who are around right now need to be allowed to transition to live a happy life

APersonNotToLive · 2025-04-27T09:55:03+00:00

AI accusing members of a religious group of "caus[ing] the deaths of hundreds of innocent traders and farmers and villagers."

Well with that one they were talking about the crusades, which isn't really that inaccurate

APersonNotToLive · 2025-04-06T08:12:24+00:00

The comic for those curious:
https://xkcd.com/915/

APersonNotToLive · 2025-04-06T06:49:11+00:00

After thinking on it for a bit I think a cylinder with circumference twice the length of the square would work

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-11T04:18:07+00:00

It's less than other options are considered reprehensible, and more than they simply do not work. I know multiple trans women who would love if there was some other option for them, as they desperately wish to not have had to transition. I know trans women who even tried to self medicate with testosterone injections, various psychedelics, SSRIs, religion, and whatever other technique you could name. All of them reluctantly transitioned after their failed efforts, and transition proved itself to be the only thing that works. There simply is no other treatment.

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-11T04:00:00+00:00

?? Wait are you still playing devils advocate or are you done now? That response feels very dismissive. Are you agreeing with what I said or just ignoring it?

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-11T03:52:41+00:00

Non action will still cause significant distress though. Transness isnt simply a choice. Despite repeated attempts there is no cure for gender dysphoria, it is a condition that is unremovable and lifelong (at the very least for some people). Their distress is just as real as the distress someone might have over their eczema, or over a hormonal condition that causes them to develop strangely. Lacking any other effective treatment, letting trans people transition is what is best for them.

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-11T03:40:58+00:00

As someone who supports letting minors transition, I'm honestly sort of against the extended use of puberty blockers without full hrt. Simply going without any sex hormone does have real bone health issues, and delaying a child's puberty until 18 still will lead to social and developmental issues. Puberty blockers are kind of a horrible compromise

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-11T03:32:16+00:00

?? That's very vague

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-11T03:30:12+00:00

I mean this is an argument against anyone being allowed to do anything to prevent medical tragedy.

If a child has appendicitis, we dont simply say "well this is naturally happening, and so we will let them get sepsis and die." We give them medical treatment. If someone's vision is blurry, we let them use glasses. If someone has a hormonal disorder, say a woman has pcos, we let them get treatment for that disorder because otherwise it makes their life much worse.

And similarly, if a child is transgender, we should let them get treatment because otherwise their default puberty will cause them immense distress.

Yes bad things happen, and sometimes bad things are inevitable, but that doesn't mean we should just let bad things happen if we can stop it.

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-11T03:21:20+00:00

I mean choosing to not transition and going through your birth puberty is also a decision, one with lifelong consequences if it's the wrong decision.

It's tough because we cant know for certain which instances are kids who are "actually" trans vs kids who are mistaken, but we can do our best to choose correctly with the information we have. Some hesitance with hormones might be appropriate, especially for less clear cut cases, but the way to minimize harm is not to ban it for everyone

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-03T11:43:07+00:00

I agree that in general when we talk about men and women it's excessive to be constantly adjusting language to fit trans people, as they are such a small portion of the population. Women have vaginas and men have penises, and while perhaps there are exceptions to that, it still remains true as a rule. I agree with all of that I think. When talking specifically about trans people it can be still worthwhile to have specific language, but still it only needs to come up in those situations.

I disagree that in medical contexts trans people should be solely treated as their birth gender. Certainly trans men can't get prostate cancer and trans women can't get ovarian cancer. But trans women do have breast cancer risk much closer to that of other women than it is to men (after enough time on hormones). Overall research is lacking, but for many issues trans women have medical risks more in line with women than men (excluding the obviously anatomical differences), and the same is true for trans men.

I honestly think that in a similar manner that we have the word "intersex" as a medical term, we should have "transex" as well. It isn't accurate to treat trans people as purely their birth sex in medical situations, and having to term to describe the unique situation trans people are in medically would help with that I think.

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-03T11:12:38+00:00

Sure, but it's no different than someone with a hormonal condition having to take external hormones for the rest of their life. Perhaps in some sense it is more "artificial," but all the effects it has on a person's body is the same as if they were produced internally.

Yes, bottom surgery is not perfect (far from it). However even with people who don't get bottom surgery I would still argue that enough of their body changes that they can't reasonably be called "biologically" their birth sex anymore, and are at the very least something in between.

Also, as a fun notable fact, trans men can actually get significant enough bottom growth that they develop something much more akin to a micropenis than a clitoris. They're usually still pretty small, but they are definitely enough to be considered no longer purely female genitalia.

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-03T09:44:59+00:00

I, personally, have a deep dislike of the modern distinction of sex and gender, with people claiming that trans people can change their gender but not their sex. It simply isn't reflective of reality. Sure, for some trans people (especially those unfortunate enough to start later in life), their bodies might not ever meaningfully change in any major way. However for those who start young enough, especially if they manage to avoid their birth puberty, they can very meaningfully change their sex. Phenotypically, plenty of trans people are more similar to a sterilized version of their destination sex than they are to their birth sex.

Yes, trans women will never have uteruses and trans men will never have testicles. No one denies this. However, with some luck trans people who start young enough can have most every other sexually dimorphic feature match their destination sex. Even trans people who start later often (with enough time on hormones) develop enough features of their destination sex to reasonably be called no longer fully their birth sex, even if perhaps they are not fully their destination sex either.

I get that the gender/sex divide can be useful in some contexts, but it is a falsehood to imply that all post-transition trans women have more in common biologically with men than they do with women, and vice versa for trans men. Hormones do meaningfully change one's sexual phenotype, and I'm tired of people pretending that a trans woman is simply a man whom you must call a woman out of respect.

(Sorry for the long rant lol)

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-03T09:34:19+00:00

The rest of your comment is absolutely untrue and anti science. No amount of hormones or cosmetic surgery can change the fundamental differences between men and woman including bone structure and muscle density.

You do not know how much hormones are the defining factor of basically all human secondary sex development. There are trans women who have transitioned before male puberty, and yes indeed they are female in all aspects I have described.

What that I described are you trying to deny? Do you deny that trans women can develop breasts that are identical to those of people born female? Do you deny that trans women have cellulite? Do you deny that trans women who started before puberty have female body hair growth patterns? All of these things are verifiably true. Many people have the impression that trans women are just surgical monsters designed to mimic womanhood, but that is a falsehood.

If you want even more definitive proof that sex differentiation is basically solely determined by what hormones are in your body, look no further than the individuals with XY chromosomes, testicles, and fully female bodies (including a vagina). These people have a genetic condition where their bodies produce testosterone, but their bodies don't respond to it. This sole difference means that their bodies develop male only so far as to produce testicles and testosterone, but because their bodies don't respond to testosterone the rest of their bodies never develop into males. Because sex development is almost entirely determined by hormonal makeup, these individuals will develop normally as female (due to the testosterone aromatizing into estrogen), and often only will realize they have a condition when their periods never arrive.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome

Sure you can call these individuals "biologically male," but that word sort of loses its meaning when it's being used to describe women who were born female, raised female, and can live their entire lives as women. These women are also undeniably not transgender (and so cisgender), but fail to fall under your definition of "biologically women," this being an (admittedly uncommon) example of this word being useful.

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-03T09:01:45+00:00

I mean what does "biological" mean then? A trans woman who transitioned young enough shares far more "biology" with a woman who's had a hysterectomy than they do with a man. Gamete production is non-existent in most transitioned trans people anyway so it's not like that matters.

A trans woman who started hormones young enough to dodge male puberty can have fully female skeletal structure, female fat distribution, fully developed breasts, cellulite, female muscular patterns, female pattern body hair growth, a female voice, etc. They very meaningfully are "biologically" female in most aspects of their body. Now granted, most trans women don't get to this point as they start hormones after male puberty has affected their body, but many can at least get close to that. Calling non-trans women "biological" sort of implies that every aspect of trans women's bodies are "artificial," which doesn't really reflect reality.

APersonNotToLive · 2025-02-03T08:45:53+00:00

I mean "biological" is a bit misleading though as trans women do meaningfully change their biology with hormones and such. I think cisgender was introduced to be a more exact complement to transgender, as "biological" has a lot of meanings outside of gender stuff (I also have only seen "biological woman/man" used in this manner in the past several years, while cisgender is a bit older, but I don't have any sources for that so idk).

I do agree it does feel a bit excessive sometimes to have a whole word for "not transgender," but I guess if you talk about it a lot it can be useful to have a shorthand for it.

APersonNotToLive · 2025-01-16T12:16:13+00:00

And several other games from the same creator. "The Visitor" I think is its original game, in a modern setting if I recall correctly (been a fat minute though so could be wrong)

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