![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptPrompt 4 for the Sunshine Challenge are the ones who don't rest until they are satisfied: The Furies
Before Supergiant Games came out with Hades, the video game that provides the prompt image (Tisiphone on the left, Alecto on the right, Megara in the middle) and that pits your character against one of the three as a boss battle (or, if certain conditions are met, more than one of them), the last prominent reference I had in my head to this trio is their presence and eventual duty in the Neil Gaiman-written graphic novel The Sandman, where they are most often referred to not by their individual names or their more accurate title of Erinyes, but as the Eumenides, rendered in the comic as "the kindly ones." (Which is also one of the titles of the trade paperback compilations later on.)
Given the nature of the work they do mythologically, or in various adaptations or works that feature them, calling them "kindly", "gracious," or "well-meaning" is a very clear euphemism meant to avoid drawing their attention, because, after all, they punish humans (and others) for the things we do, and calling them down on someone else is, at luckiest, an exercise throwing stones from your own glass house, and at worst, trying to invoke them when you have pretty significant things of your own that they would be interested in. Some other euphemisms are intended to be descriptive, so if you look at some of the etymology of a word like "bear," for example, and finding that at the root, it means "the brown one", and you have some insight into what was considered safe enough to be spoken aloud and descriptive enough to be understood by birth speaker and listener. Dire consequences await those who use the actual word, [xkcd] regardless of what the euphemism is supposed to convey.
Euphemistic speech isn't limited to the substitution of words or names, of course. Subtweeting, for example, is much older than Twitter, as the practice of making it fairly obvious who is being talked about without actually naming them is at least as old as Mr. F--- O--. We can see the idea of "names mean power" in a lot of our stories, whether they're ones about using the True Speech to effect change in the world, about the need to guard a True Name so that someone can't use it in magic to control you, or that certain names are to be avoided because the powerful magician/demon/villain can hear when their name is spoken and listen in on conversations or plans, or directly teleport or otherwise appear when their name is spoken. The previous U.S. Administration generated several euphemisms for the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, many of which, admittedly, had their roots in ableism about his perceived disabilities. And while he was the kind of person who wanted to direct the flow of the mob against his enemies, real or perceived, his followers had a tendency to go after those enemies all on their own, singly and in great numbers. (He, and his followers, did not spring forth from the forehead of Zeus, but instead are part of the progression of attitudes that believe, and attempt to enforce, that all persons who were not born white cisgendered male abled heterosexual Christian landowners are the chattel of such people and should not aspire to assert their humanity over meekly accepting their lot in life to be the property of others, which is why those terrorists persist after the removal of the previous administrator from the office.)
The way to avoid the mob, then, unless you can raise an army of similar ferocity and strength as theirs, is to not be seen, but not being seen comes with its own set of consequences. It can become dystopic to have to perform one thing, even if you think or are another. That way lies large societal problems where people have to be euphemistic about fundamental aspects of their lives because speaking up and speaking authentically about themselves and their experiences provokes not acceptance, but an insistence that such experience be buried, forgotten, and ignored as unfit for polite society. Furthermore, that euphemistic insistence demands those who do not couch themselves in euphemism be repressed or excluded so they cannot spread their ideas or tell about their experiences. Then those same people who have declared certain people out of bounds push harder for more repression, or take it upon themselves to personally engage in repression when it becomes clear and obvious again and again that people do not go willingly into an oubliette. I'm fairly certain that the reader, through virtue of having lived this past year, this past decade, can supply their own examples of what has happened and is happening along these principles.
Fandom is not exempt from these dynamics. The Premise, as it was called, is a euphemism. Even slash and femslash are euphemisms, highlighting the virgule, the thing that is not the names, and that is also a lot easier to say than "romance or erotica between two or more entities of the same gender," because there's nothing in that phrase to hide behind or use as a smokescreen to get away fast enough before the other person can make a judgment about you and your life choices, and decide to marshal their resources to prevent you from enjoying your fandom. Similarly so for fanworks themselves. Fanworks says what it is on the tin, but you have to know or have it explained that yes, people do like this thing so much they're going to put creative effort into writing, drawing, acting, and so forth, new and different stories from someone else's world. Or participation in costume play (cosplay) where they dress up as characters, either of their own creation or of someone else's. Which, again, leaves someone open to the possibility that some other fanatic might take offense at some aspect of your portrayal of the character, and could summon a mob to direct at you, sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with the portrayal and everything to do with their belief that this character or fandom is Not For You.
(There's an entire complicating discussion about where the lane lines are, who gets to drive in them, if it's a lane someone can drive in as a guest, if they are respectful, what obligation, if any, someone has to disclose about why they're in that lane, who, if anyone, gets to gatekeep that lane, and so forth. The very simplified rules are that you punch up, not down, and the more privileged you are, the fewer lanes there are that you should feel entitled to be in and the fewer lanes that you should feel empowered to gatekeep. These rules are not generally followed by the people who need to follow them most.)
All of this presents a relationship between how much someone participates in fandom and how likely they are to have the kindly ones summoned upon them. Each person's balance point is different, based on their privileges and marginalizations, but everyone has a point where too wide of participation will eventually offend someone enough that they make a plea for some higher power to put this person in their proper place and stop them from spewing all over.
Right about now, I should probably also mention some people get the Wrath of Fandom called on them for good reasons, some people should get called out way more, but don't, and what I'm thinking about over most of this piece are the people who get the harassment, the brigading, and the sustained effort to drive them away from what they were enjoying for unjustifiable reasons, things with -ist origins, or for supremely petty things like ship wars. It's weird to say that you liked it more when the ship wars were more open, but it's a lot easier to put things in perspective and give them the attention they deserve when the combatants are being honest about the reasons that they are fighting. In these days, reasons can be euphemized so that it looks and sounds like a much more like a social justice issue of high importance than someone engaging in a pretty grudge or using their position of privilege to stomp over someone else. So much so that the accusation of a ship being "problematic" can bring sufficent furor by itself that it can obscure what little reasonable discussion there may have been on the matter or entirely snowball under someone pointing out legitimate reasons why this relationship or friendship would fail if people were enforcing healthy boundaries with each other. Or saying why they enjoy the pairing because it hits their id buttons, even though they know full well it would never work in reality. And sometimes the reverse happens, where there are people trying to point out genuine issues that the text isn't engaging with and may not be aware of and getting swarmed by a larger group flexing their privilege and saying "How dare you say that our perfect relationship has problems?"
These particular brigades, when I have seen them at work, seem to be entirely willing to commit an error that I don't actually know the right name for, where the things a person creates and reads must be reflections of their personality and desires outside of the fictional realm. While it's certainly possible that a creator with a running motif (or a particular body type, or they always have their characters suffering similar situations) might be interested in defictionalizing those things, assuming they find someone(s) who wants to participate in that, it's certainly not a guarantee that someone who writes about Α/Β/Ω dynamics is at all interested in living their life, or even having a weekend fling, according to those dynamics. (But if that is you, and there's a community around who all want to consensually participate in something like that, then have fun and remember that consent can be withdrawn at any time by any participant.) Some people really like the exercise of changing some variables and then letting characters crash against each other to see how it goes and if something satisfying can be drawn from the new world. Some people are using fictional characters as proxies for figuring out their own beliefs and ideas, and are being rather brave, honestly, by putting those things out where others might find them and connect the dots, either to the author or to themselves. It may be easier and safer for them to to talk about their very personal feelings by using these other entities as euphemisms, rather than risk the possibility of the kindly ones coming directly for them.
I suppose the thing I want to hammer home the most is this: The invocation of such forces, who do not rest until they have been satisfied, is not to be done lightly, trivially, or on anyone who you do not fully intend to drive away without the possibility of return. Calling upon them, if necessary, should be done when the cause is just and the person who has offended did so out of malice or indifference instead of ignorance. (Persistence in ignorance is indifference or malice.) And those that do the calling should understand that the powers they unleash are the sole determiners of when they are satisfied, so they should not cry foul should it turn out that the kindly ones come for the one who invoked them as well as (or instead of) the one they were directed at.
The Furies, also known as the Erinyes, are a trio of vengeance deities whose immortal task is to hear complaints of insolence from mortals—and to punish those crimes by hounding the culprits relentlessly. They are said to focus on punishment for lying, killing, or sinning against the gods, but any lawbreaking was indeed punishable by them.
“Alecto was the oldest, unceasing in anger. Megaera was next, retaliator of jealousy, and Tisiphone, the last, regarded as the avenger of murder.”
― Elisabeth Naughton, Stolen Fury
Maybe you are inspired by Alecto (“the implacable one”, incites war), or perhaps Megaera (“the envious one”, vengeance) speaks to you, or maybe even Tisiphone (“avenger of murder”, guards the gates to Tartarus) – however you want to interpret the prompt, we’d love to hear from you!
Before Supergiant Games came out with Hades, the video game that provides the prompt image (Tisiphone on the left, Alecto on the right, Megara in the middle) and that pits your character against one of the three as a boss battle (or, if certain conditions are met, more than one of them), the last prominent reference I had in my head to this trio is their presence and eventual duty in the Neil Gaiman-written graphic novel The Sandman, where they are most often referred to not by their individual names or their more accurate title of Erinyes, but as the Eumenides, rendered in the comic as "the kindly ones." (Which is also one of the titles of the trade paperback compilations later on.)
Given the nature of the work they do mythologically, or in various adaptations or works that feature them, calling them "kindly", "gracious," or "well-meaning" is a very clear euphemism meant to avoid drawing their attention, because, after all, they punish humans (and others) for the things we do, and calling them down on someone else is, at luckiest, an exercise throwing stones from your own glass house, and at worst, trying to invoke them when you have pretty significant things of your own that they would be interested in. Some other euphemisms are intended to be descriptive, so if you look at some of the etymology of a word like "bear," for example, and finding that at the root, it means "the brown one", and you have some insight into what was considered safe enough to be spoken aloud and descriptive enough to be understood by birth speaker and listener. Dire consequences await those who use the actual word, [xkcd] regardless of what the euphemism is supposed to convey.
Euphemistic speech isn't limited to the substitution of words or names, of course. Subtweeting, for example, is much older than Twitter, as the practice of making it fairly obvious who is being talked about without actually naming them is at least as old as Mr. F--- O--. We can see the idea of "names mean power" in a lot of our stories, whether they're ones about using the True Speech to effect change in the world, about the need to guard a True Name so that someone can't use it in magic to control you, or that certain names are to be avoided because the powerful magician/demon/villain can hear when their name is spoken and listen in on conversations or plans, or directly teleport or otherwise appear when their name is spoken. The previous U.S. Administration generated several euphemisms for the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, many of which, admittedly, had their roots in ableism about his perceived disabilities. And while he was the kind of person who wanted to direct the flow of the mob against his enemies, real or perceived, his followers had a tendency to go after those enemies all on their own, singly and in great numbers. (He, and his followers, did not spring forth from the forehead of Zeus, but instead are part of the progression of attitudes that believe, and attempt to enforce, that all persons who were not born white cisgendered male abled heterosexual Christian landowners are the chattel of such people and should not aspire to assert their humanity over meekly accepting their lot in life to be the property of others, which is why those terrorists persist after the removal of the previous administrator from the office.)
The way to avoid the mob, then, unless you can raise an army of similar ferocity and strength as theirs, is to not be seen, but not being seen comes with its own set of consequences. It can become dystopic to have to perform one thing, even if you think or are another. That way lies large societal problems where people have to be euphemistic about fundamental aspects of their lives because speaking up and speaking authentically about themselves and their experiences provokes not acceptance, but an insistence that such experience be buried, forgotten, and ignored as unfit for polite society. Furthermore, that euphemistic insistence demands those who do not couch themselves in euphemism be repressed or excluded so they cannot spread their ideas or tell about their experiences. Then those same people who have declared certain people out of bounds push harder for more repression, or take it upon themselves to personally engage in repression when it becomes clear and obvious again and again that people do not go willingly into an oubliette. I'm fairly certain that the reader, through virtue of having lived this past year, this past decade, can supply their own examples of what has happened and is happening along these principles.
Fandom is not exempt from these dynamics. The Premise, as it was called, is a euphemism. Even slash and femslash are euphemisms, highlighting the virgule, the thing that is not the names, and that is also a lot easier to say than "romance or erotica between two or more entities of the same gender," because there's nothing in that phrase to hide behind or use as a smokescreen to get away fast enough before the other person can make a judgment about you and your life choices, and decide to marshal their resources to prevent you from enjoying your fandom. Similarly so for fanworks themselves. Fanworks says what it is on the tin, but you have to know or have it explained that yes, people do like this thing so much they're going to put creative effort into writing, drawing, acting, and so forth, new and different stories from someone else's world. Or participation in costume play (cosplay) where they dress up as characters, either of their own creation or of someone else's. Which, again, leaves someone open to the possibility that some other fanatic might take offense at some aspect of your portrayal of the character, and could summon a mob to direct at you, sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with the portrayal and everything to do with their belief that this character or fandom is Not For You.
(There's an entire complicating discussion about where the lane lines are, who gets to drive in them, if it's a lane someone can drive in as a guest, if they are respectful, what obligation, if any, someone has to disclose about why they're in that lane, who, if anyone, gets to gatekeep that lane, and so forth. The very simplified rules are that you punch up, not down, and the more privileged you are, the fewer lanes there are that you should feel entitled to be in and the fewer lanes that you should feel empowered to gatekeep. These rules are not generally followed by the people who need to follow them most.)
All of this presents a relationship between how much someone participates in fandom and how likely they are to have the kindly ones summoned upon them. Each person's balance point is different, based on their privileges and marginalizations, but everyone has a point where too wide of participation will eventually offend someone enough that they make a plea for some higher power to put this person in their proper place and stop them from spewing all over.
Right about now, I should probably also mention some people get the Wrath of Fandom called on them for good reasons, some people should get called out way more, but don't, and what I'm thinking about over most of this piece are the people who get the harassment, the brigading, and the sustained effort to drive them away from what they were enjoying for unjustifiable reasons, things with -ist origins, or for supremely petty things like ship wars. It's weird to say that you liked it more when the ship wars were more open, but it's a lot easier to put things in perspective and give them the attention they deserve when the combatants are being honest about the reasons that they are fighting. In these days, reasons can be euphemized so that it looks and sounds like a much more like a social justice issue of high importance than someone engaging in a pretty grudge or using their position of privilege to stomp over someone else. So much so that the accusation of a ship being "problematic" can bring sufficent furor by itself that it can obscure what little reasonable discussion there may have been on the matter or entirely snowball under someone pointing out legitimate reasons why this relationship or friendship would fail if people were enforcing healthy boundaries with each other. Or saying why they enjoy the pairing because it hits their id buttons, even though they know full well it would never work in reality. And sometimes the reverse happens, where there are people trying to point out genuine issues that the text isn't engaging with and may not be aware of and getting swarmed by a larger group flexing their privilege and saying "How dare you say that our perfect relationship has problems?"
These particular brigades, when I have seen them at work, seem to be entirely willing to commit an error that I don't actually know the right name for, where the things a person creates and reads must be reflections of their personality and desires outside of the fictional realm. While it's certainly possible that a creator with a running motif (or a particular body type, or they always have their characters suffering similar situations) might be interested in defictionalizing those things, assuming they find someone(s) who wants to participate in that, it's certainly not a guarantee that someone who writes about Α/Β/Ω dynamics is at all interested in living their life, or even having a weekend fling, according to those dynamics. (But if that is you, and there's a community around who all want to consensually participate in something like that, then have fun and remember that consent can be withdrawn at any time by any participant.) Some people really like the exercise of changing some variables and then letting characters crash against each other to see how it goes and if something satisfying can be drawn from the new world. Some people are using fictional characters as proxies for figuring out their own beliefs and ideas, and are being rather brave, honestly, by putting those things out where others might find them and connect the dots, either to the author or to themselves. It may be easier and safer for them to to talk about their very personal feelings by using these other entities as euphemisms, rather than risk the possibility of the kindly ones coming directly for them.
I suppose the thing I want to hammer home the most is this: The invocation of such forces, who do not rest until they have been satisfied, is not to be done lightly, trivially, or on anyone who you do not fully intend to drive away without the possibility of return. Calling upon them, if necessary, should be done when the cause is just and the person who has offended did so out of malice or indifference instead of ignorance. (Persistence in ignorance is indifference or malice.) And those that do the calling should understand that the powers they unleash are the sole determiners of when they are satisfied, so they should not cry foul should it turn out that the kindly ones come for the one who invoked them as well as (or instead of) the one they were directed at.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-14 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-14 06:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-14 07:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-14 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-14 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-15 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-15 02:40 am (UTC)