Cliches you can't stand

[Alane1]

Interesting - considering that the Russian Empire helped the States at various times (and even sent a division to help the North during the Civil War.) Sounds like part of the "Ungrateful Neighbors" mythologem.



And in many ways this was true.

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A huge part of it was the Imperial Russian Pogroms in the late 19th and early 20th century were really, really poorly received by the American public and elites and as a result it had a massive negative effect on Americans views of the Tsar and his government.

Another factor was likely while there was a huge wave migrants, several million strong, to the US from the Russian empire most were Jews, German Russians, Poles, Lithuanians and other minorities trying to get away from Russian Imperial rule rather than ethnic Russians.

 

[Konradleijon]

The trope of someone who requires the assistance of the wheelchair bodyjacking someone else or by turning into a robot or alien. Because apparently requiring the use of a wheelchair is that bad. If evil they'd force other people to "convert" too.

See Doctor Who and Detective Pikachu. For the evil version.

It makes more sense for a able bodied tech bro to want to forcibly "fix" the disabled.

It seems like fiction requires loss of legs to be a fate worse then death and something people are willing to change their species as a way to avert it.

One of the few aversions is Oracle/Barbra Gordon. While being shot by the Joker in a plan to hurt her Father/Uncle and Batman. Understandably upset her and traumatized her and she was upset at the loss of her legs.

She was able to adapt and become Oracle.

Even when she does get treated and regains full use of her body. The trauma is still there. Because it wasn't being disabled that was the reason for her trauma it was being attacked by a supervillan in her home.

Fiction seems to despise people in wheelchairs alongside people with albinism, and plural people.

Disabled people in general but specially does group.

When South Park the show made by libertarian edgelords has better disabled rep that most of fiction not made by disabled people you know you have a issue.

 

[Byzantine]

It seems like fiction requires loss of legs to be a fate worse then death and something people are willing to change their species as a way to avert it.

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I think the takeaway here can be more that they just aren't actually all that attached to their species and are going "oh. Oh no. Whatever shall I do. I can only do this thing (that I totally wasn't thinking about anyway) now. No, no need to look behind the curtain, I'll just do this now…

 

[Arden]

I spent two months in a wheelchair last year because I broke a leg in four places. And you know what? It really sucks. You can't go anywhere. You can barely fit through doors. Every incline might end up becoming an insurmountable obstacle or end up with you losing control and rolling into traffic. Stairs? Yeah, forget it. You're reliant on other people for even the simplest things. Do you know hard it is to do even something as simple as sitting down on a toilet when your bathroom is tiny and you only have one working leg? Just trying to get into the bathtub to wash yourself is a potentially lethal challenge. One slip and you could hit your head on something and die. I couldn't even risk closing the door, because if anything happened, nobody might notice until it's too late to help. It was humiliating.

If I lost both of my legs and I had the chance to get them back by turning myself into a robot or an alien? I'd do it too. It's easy to talk shit about people for just wanting to have a fully functional body again when you don't actually know what it's like to suddenly be down a limb, nevermind two.

 

[Queshire]

How many of those problems would have been resolved if society was built with handicapped people in mind?

 

[Arden]

How many of those problems would have been resolved if society was built with handicapped people in mind?

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Going by my personal experience, the answer is "not as many as you'd think." What can society do about the fact that cooking while being stuck in a bulky wheelchair is really difficult and awkward? Having all your shelves and the stove lower to the ground would certainly make it possible, but that doesn't mean it's any less unpleasant or that it reminds you any less of the fact that you suddenly can't do a lot of things easily or at all anymore that you used to be able to do. You used to like taking walks through the woods to relax, like I do? Not happening anymore.

Permanently losing the use of one or multiple limbs isn't some kind of minor inconvenience. It's literally life-changing.

 

[htgriffin]

The trope of someone who requires the assistance of the wheelchair bodyjacking someone else or by turning into a robot or alien. Because apparently requiring the use of a wheelchair is that bad. If evil they'd force other people to "convert" too.

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I mean yes, in a setting where loss of limbs/paralysis/etc. are readily fixed one can ask why not do so. Things like you describe here indicate that 'readily' is not a term that really applies.

And yes, I am an Oracle fan as well.

 

[FelOnyx]

This is one of many problems in fiction that arise from only having a token (insert catagory here) charecter. It's not unreasonable to depict a charecter that deeply wants to walk again, because real people feel that way all the time. Other people don't feel that way at all, or feel something in between, and so the thing to do is actually present multiple charecters with different perspectives.

 

[Arden]

Other people don't feel that way at all, or feel something in between, and so the thing to do is actually present multiple charecters with different perspectives.

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Although that is a very reasonable point to make, there are some logistical difficulties with that. There are only so many characters any story can really have before it becomes hard to give any real and in-depth attention to any of them, which drags down the overall quality of the story regardless of how good your intentions were. I tend to think that it's better to stick with only the characters your story actually needs in order to be told and let people think what they will. You can't always go out of your way to equitably present every side of an issue just to placate everyone who might be upset about it, at least not if you care more about telling a good story than about making a point.

 

[10ebbor10]

I mean yes, in a setting where loss of limbs/paralysis/etc. are readily fixed one can ask why not do so. Things like you describe here indicate that 'readily' is not a term that really applies.

And yes, I am an Oracle fan as well.

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Otoh, part of this feels like a "normal" bias.

After all, if this was not about repairing a limb, but adding functionality, you suddenly have all this hemming and hawing and hesitancy despite tge fact that both are ultimately the same thing.

If becoming a robot to be able to walk is an obvious no brainer, shouldn't normal, able bodied people fall over themselves to become robots to get xray vision, or whatever the special ability du jour is? Becoming an alien to get an arm is ok, but do it to get a tail and it's no longer a sure thing?

Ultimately fiction tends to turn against such notions pretty hard, indicating it's nore about normality than functionality.

 

[Arden]

If becoming a robot to be able to walk is an obvious no brainer, shouldn't normal, able bodied people fall over themselves to become robots to get xray vision, or whatever the special ability du jour is?

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Some people do. Surely you have heard of transhumanism and all that jazz. Improving the body through artificial transplants is a positively ancient idea. That said, I think that's kind of a shallow take and not half the gotcha you seem to think it is. Replacing something you lost and desperately want back is quite different from chopping off parts of your own body, of yourself, for the sake of something that you could also get by instead just building yourself a pair of x-ray glasses instead. Body dysmorphia is something that cuts both ways. Blaming people for not wanting to cut off parts of themselves for minor benefits as if that was some kind of mark of bigotry is ridiculous.

 

[Susano]

Ultimately fiction tends to turn against such notions pretty hard, indicating it's nore about normality than functionality.

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You are not wrong as a mere observation, but, well, what you have here is an observation of a double standard - and any double standard can be solved two ways. The problem here is in fact that bias in fiction against augmentation, transhumanism etc. Ideally, that is what shouldn't exist.

 

[10ebbor10]

Replacing something you lost and desperately want back is quite different from chopping off parts of your own body, of yourself, for the sake of something that you could also get by instead just building yourself a pair of x-ray glasses instead. Body dysmorphia is something that cuts both ways. Blaming people for not wanting to cut off parts of themselves for minor benefits as if that was some kind of mark of bigotry is ridiculous

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You're adding pieces to the argument that weren't there in the original, and then arguing against those.

Scratch "minor benefits". This is an argument about equivalent improvement vs restoration. You can make anything seem stupid by arguing it's a minor/neglible thing.

The "chopping off" thing applies to both scenarios. After all the original mentioned species swaps, bodyjacking, and so on...

 

[Arden]

You're adding pieces to the argument that weren't there in the original, and then arguing against those.

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So did you. There's an actual difference between wanting back full functionality and being willing to accept trade-offs for that and willfully undergoing a risky and barely-understood experimental procedure for petty superpowers that might or might not be worth it, if you even succeed at all. Desperation is a powerful motivator. "Might as well, I guess" is not.

 

[Queshire]

I hate this line of conversation.

 

[10ebbor10]

So did you. There's an actual difference between wanting back full functionality and being willing to accept trade-offs for that and willfully undergoing a risky and barely-understood experimental procedure for petty superpowers that might or might not be worth it, if you even succeed at all. Desperation is a powerful motivator. "Might as well, I guess" is not.

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Again, you're just making stuff up, adding stuff to the argument that was never in there.

"Trade-offs" vs "risky and barely-understood" makes no sense when the entire point is that the two are equivalent.

Same with "full functionality" vs "might not be worth it". The things are equivalent. If one side works, the other will as well.

 

[Arden]

Again, you're just making stuff up, adding stuff to the argument that was never in there.

"Trade-offs" vs "risky and barely-understood" makes no sense when the entire point is that the two are equivalent.

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Yeah, no. You basically suggested that anyone who would ever consider going to desperate measures to undo a severe and crippling injury should also be willing do the same thing to themselves just for funzies, because otherwise they're "biased." That's completely inane reasoning and if you didn't want to have that pointed out to you, you shouldn't have said it in the first place.

 

[FelOnyx]

Although that is a very reasonable point to make, there are some logistical difficulties with that. There are only so many characters any story can really have before it becomes hard to give any real and in-depth attention to any of them, which drags down the overall quality of the story regardless of how good your intentions were. I tend to think that it's better to stick with only the characters your story actually needs in order to be told and let people think what they will. You can't always go out of your way to equitably present every side of an issue just to placate everyone who might be upset about it, at least not if you care more about telling a good story than about making a point.

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The point isn't necessarily to appease everyone, that just pisses off everyone. More that, if there's a prominent theme in your story, it's good for several characters to interact with that theme. With the current topic, if a character has a disability and decides to take extreme actions because of it that's probably caused disability itself to become a theme of the work and it might be worth rejiggering your character roster so more of them have something to say about it, to better support that theme. It's plain boring to have prominent themes presented only one way. Representing real perspectives has benefits but some of their perspectives should be completely out there and not 'appease' anyone, that's the fun of fiction, and it still serves to encourage people to give the topic more thought.

 

[Konradleijon]

This is one of many problems in fiction that arise from only having a token (insert catagory here) charecter. It's not unreasonable to depict a charecter that deeply wants to walk again, because real people feel that way all the time. Other people don't feel that way at all, or feel something in between, and so the thing to do is actually present multiple charecters with different perspectives.

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Imagine if you flip a coin fifty times and it always lands on Heads. That's what it's like with gender in media. No one asks "why are they all male?" If they do then they are looked at funny.

Has anyone looked at the Hobbit and said "why is every important character a man?"

Anyone that isn't a Cis Heterosexual Able Bodied White Man is seen as a variation on the platonic form of a human. Replace "White" with dominant ethnicity in whatever culture produced it.

In Japan it's a Cis Heterosexual Able Bodied Yamato Man.

That's what the Bechdal Test came from it was a joke from a Lesbian comic strip about how male dominated media is that two women talking about something other than a man was extremely rare in media. While the opposite two men talking about something other then a women is extremely common

I mean yes, in a setting where loss of limbs/paralysis/etc. are readily fixed one can ask why not do so. Things like you describe here indicate that 'readily' is not a term that really applies.

And yes, I am an Oracle fan as well.

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I think it's a different between you will regain use of your legs. In your body no harm. To I'm willing to steal someone's body or turn everyone into Cyberman. (Fuck Doctor Who)

 

[Arden]

The point isn't necessarily to appease everyone, that just pisses off everyone. More that, if there's a prominent theme in your story, it's good for several characters to interact with that theme. With the current topic, if a character has a disability and decides to take extreme actions because of it that's probably caused disability itself to become a theme of the work and it might be worth rejiggering your character roster so more of them have something to say about it, to better support that theme. It's plain boring to have prominent themes presented only one way. Representing real perspectives has benefits but some of their perspectives should be completely out there and not 'appease' anyone, that's the fun of fiction, and it still serves to encourage people to give the topic more thought.

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No, no, I get where you're coming from, I just don't think it's always practical. I mean, in the most typical case, a story like that isn't about disability to begin with. It's a conceit that allow for the actual conflict of the story to take place - someone wants something, they're willing to cross lines to do it, someone else wants to prevent this. So you might say the story is really about the conflict more than anything, while the rest is incidental. That the character in question has a legitimate and even sympathetic reason for what they do adds depth to it, which is good, of course, but it's not really the point.

So the problem I'm seeing with your suggestion is simply that it would not be easy to implement without possibly doing more harm than good. Can the writer discuss these things without diluting the story he actually wants to tell? Without causing it to bloat beyond the intended word count? Without being forced to write extensively about something that the readers just aren't that interested in, and possibly not even the author, either? I think it's fair to say that a story can feature disability without being about disability and I honestly don't think it would do anyone much good to demand that it has to be.

Plus, there's the fact that many people will probably already have their own opinion on the subject and not everyone enjoys it when a work of entertainment tries to editorialize at them. Personally speaking, I don't care much for writers who try to teach me moral lessons or "educate" me about social issues I'm already more than aware of myself, if only because they rarely have anything to say that's half as new or insightful as they think it is. It tends to feel arrogant and more than a little condescending, in addition to honestly just being kind of a waste of my time.

 

[10ebbor10]

Yeah, no. You basically suggested that anyone who would ever consider going to desperate measures to undo a severe and crippling injury should also be willing do the same thing to themselves just for funzies, because otherwise they're "biased." That's completely inane reasoning and if you didn't want to have that pointed out to you, you shouldn't have said it in the first place.

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I assume you're having fun with that strawman, but very little useful is going to come out of this.

 

[firefossil]

If becoming a robot to be able to walk is an obvious no brainer, shouldn't normal, able bodied people fall over themselves to become robots to get xray vision, or whatever the special ability du jour is? Becoming an alien to get an arm is ok, but do it to get a tail and it's no longer a sure thing?

Ultimately fiction tends to turn against such notions pretty hard, indicating it's nore about normality than functionality.

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To conduct a proper cost-benefit analysis you need to evaluate risk as well as reward, and think over the range of alternatives rather than just a binary "do this Y/N?"

To give an example I'm near-sighted. Wearing glasses is both reversible and imposes little or no risk as a treatment, and brings quality of life nearly on par with normal sighted people. Getting lasik could possibly improve my quality of life, but is also irreversible, even when successful it involves thinning the cornea, and the possibility of a screw-up on their or my end is very real. In a world where glasses didn't exist, were very costly, or had their own risks, my calculus on lasik would be different though.

The same underlies the theoretical scenario of getting a bionic eye that is better than a regular eye. Would a bionic eye bring an improvement in quality of life? Perhaps. However you also have the many risks of having your eyes surgically removed and replaced by binoics, such as it needing replacement, it being rejected by or damaging the body, it going off warranty, it getting hacked, all of which are risks that'd be nonexistent if you'd stuck to existing.

I'm very pro-transhumanism, but I feel like in terms of order of preference things like bionic eyes might well be near the bottom:

1: Doesn't require surgery. (ie glasses)
2: Requires minor surgery (cochlear implants, I guess you could argue that a cyberpunk USB jack on people would fall here then anything attached into A)
3: Requires major surgery (pacemaker)
4: Outright replace body parts (binoic eye)

It'd also definitely be below A here and arguably below B depending on the specifics:

A: Grow replacement body parts. (still requires surgery, but replacements should be as good as original, and solves the reversibility issue)
B: Brain in a jar set-up that remotes into other machines or bodies. (radical, but eliminates a lot of risks for organic or cyborg bodies)

You also have cases where there is clear benefit but accommodations are normally adequate. For example humans and other primates cannot synthesize vitamin C in their liver like most animals, which puts them to being vulnerable to scurvy. Genetically engineering humans to do so would've been very useful to the sailors of yore, but in modern civilization not being able to have vitamin C in one's diet is rather rare.

 

[10ebbor10]

To conduct a proper cost-benefit analysis you need to evaluate risk as well as reward, and think over the range of alternatives rather than just a binary "do this Y/N?

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Cost benefit analysis is pointless here, because we're talking about fiction in general. The cost and benefit can be whatever the writer wants it to be.

Like, the starting example was a bodyjack or turbibg into an alien. Not exactly doing hard sci fi here.

My point was that there exists a bias, where things with the same cost/benefit are treated differently by the average writer dependibg on whether they're a return to or a deviation from the standard avle bodied human.

 

[Arden]

Getting lasik could possibly improve my quality of life, but is also irreversible, even when successful it involves thinning the eye, and the possibility of a screw-up on their or my end is very real.

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Just sharing this because it's something most people probably aren't quite aware of: it's also not permanent. Nearsightedness nearly universally tends to worsen as you age, so you'll have perfect vision for a good long time, but no more than ten years or so. After that, you'll eventually start needing glasses again regardless.

 

[Giblets]

Probably been said before, but LitRPG where the numbers don't actually mean anything important. Seems like everyone and their dog is making LitRPGs with even longer more exact "stat screens" that increasingly mean less and less as more and more are added to the point I've seen people including "arm wrestling" as an actual non-satire skill. It can be done right, the few times it has been done right are 1/4 of the reason it's such an over done cliché to begin with but does anyone actually give a crap that your Worm OC (that we all know isn't an SI no matter how much you say they are) wins a fight because he had an 87.627 in strength vs Uber's 87.626? No.