It still tickles me that the TERFS and Transphobes tried to claim Terry Pratchett as their own, and everyone who actually knew him, including his daughter, and co-author Neil Gaiman, was like WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, you couldn't be further from the truth.
What strikes me funny is how much STP will be wetting himself laughing wherever he is now at the exact kinds of people he poked fun at behaving like this in reference to his literary legacy*.
ALL those books; if those cretins could read, they would have enough intelligience to understand the BS_Johnson_Anvil in a velvet glove approach STP had to satire.
It took great skill to send up everyone without identifying any particlar group, but sharing the qualities amongst many.
While his embuggerance affected his later works, some obviously helped by Rhianna & Rob, the key themes and genuine rage against intolerance and hatred remained.
I ought to be really annoyed at the cretins, but frankly they are beneath contempt and do not deserve my pity.
Besides as I said, I imagine he would have been amused by it.
*There should be punctuation in there, but i'm uncertain what so left it out.
@RickiTarr@ksylor@RickiTarr literally the one terry-pratchett-and-a-trans-person story I'm aware of was him quietly asking a closeted trans person what their real name was and then autographing the book to a glyph that kinda looked like their "name" and kinda looked like their secret real name
@Mary625@RickiTarr imagine devoting your life to picking on one group of people and hoping they all disappear, what a wasted, toxic life. TERFS really are strange.
They are, at heart, conspiracy theorists. And they progress along the same path as a conspiracy theorist.
They are faced with a conflict between their fundamental assumptions about reality and the reality they're perceiving.
Trans folks existing is a direct contradiction to their fundamental, core belief in a strict gender binary (it's interesting to see how they accommodate intersex people versus trans folks. Mostly by ignoring the former). And they resolve the contradiction by coming up with increasingly complex explanations of how reality fits into their assumptions rather than reexamining their priors.
So when faced with trans folks? Well, we can't exist. Which means they have to explain why we're faking it. Invent imaginary motives and reasonings to explain why we "pretend", why we go through the difficulties of transition.
And then they have to explain why medical and mental health therapists support us, why we seem happier...
Just like flat earthers have to constantly keep coming up with increasingly elaborate descriptions of the world to explain things like, you know, sunsets and horizons and air travel, and satellites and the moon landing....
TERFs fall down the same rabbit hole. Like the "moon landings are a hoax" folks, they have to come up with these elaborate conspiracies of powerful, shadowy figures pursuing frankly insane goals with the aid of thousands or tens of thousands of folks, faking every single thing in order to "gain power" in some sort of nebulous way.
And as those who "see the truth", they will take contradictions as proof of the conspiracy, view themselves as victims and "targets"' and, well, their fanfiction has gotten REALLY convoluted.
But that's it. They're just conspiracy theorists. They won't let go of some "perceived and absolute truth" no matter what, so they've invented vast and intricate conspiracies to explain the world.
@RickiTarr let alone know him, just reading his books should've disabused them of the notion.
And not even all of his books - probably a random paragraph is enough when one's not driven by the sacred fire of being a horrible human being.
@Amoshias I HAVE NO IDEA, I vaguely remember it starting with idiots starting a fight with Neil Gaiman when he took a pro trans stance very publicly, and they told him Terry wouldn't have agreed with him
@RickiTarr I mean.. dwarves are agender in discworld, monstrous regiment has a trans man as a main character... I'm a discworld super fan and I am racking my brain for a single thing that could be interpreted as anti-trans...
I haven't read very many of his non discworld books so I guess it could be in one of those..
@Amoshias I honestly think it's a kind of delusion, if you believe you're the good guy you put your own traits onto characters you like, even if the text or show really says the opposite
@Amoshias@RickiTarr
People have a great capacity to find what they're looking for, especially when the discussion is nuanced - & Pratchett wrote some of the most-nuanced satire I can remember ever reading. I.e. it doesn't surprise me that highly motivated bigots could construct a specious interpretation of something they read in Pratchett as anti-trans; but I also agree that interpretation couldn't stand up to scrutiny.
@Amoshias@RickiTarr
...& when I say it's nuanced, that's bearing in mind that satire is a blunt instrument. Pratchett's giving credible voice to his antagonists, which when done well (& he does it very well) helps one's point land better. But bigots will silence the rest of the argument, & hear only the credibly-represented antagonists.
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