WTF, Etsy? Again!?

     Hey, a sequel post! :P

    So, I posted before about Etsy's algorithm doing weird stuff, putting in recommendations for things that are totally unlike anything I've been looking at/buying.

    Well, it's still at it.

    Here's my recent activity feed on the main page:

    As before, it's all MDZS merch, most of it cuddly romantic images of the two leads, and most of it in cute chibi versions at that.  (For those who happen upon this post unaware, MDZS is short for Mo Dao Zu Shi, typically translated as The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, a danmei novel (the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese genre called Boy's Love), and the basis of the very popular (and excellent) live-action drama The Untamed.)

    Now, my most recent purchase, admittedly, was not MDZS.  It was a bit of Persona 5 fan art:

    You will note that again, it's cute, chibi, and depicts the true love between two male characters.  (And yes, I feel justified in calling it true love, even though the game as it is does not allow you to romance Fox, because there's way too much evidence that he was originally supposed to be not merely a romanceable character, but the romanceable character.  I am intractable on this point.  Joker/Fox (or Fox/Joker, whichever floats your boat) simply is love.)

    So...the recommended items on the top of the page were a mix of MDZS and MegaTen items, which is reasonable enough, especially since I've bought MegaTen fan merch on Etsy before, and will certainly do so again.  (MegaTen is short for Megami Tensei, the super-series that the Persona series is part of, though in the US it's all released as Shin Megami Tensei, which is technically incorrect, because that is itself a different sub-series.)

    But lower on the page, it picks out a few "categories" that it thinks you're interested in, and points out some examples within those categories that it thinks you'll like.  And here's where it gets very messed up.  Because these are the ones it showed me:

    Again, I can only say "WTF, Etsy?!?"

    I do not buy things that sexualize women.  (I mean, not unless you count Barbie dolls.  And that is a very different level of sexualization than we're talking about here.)  And I haven't bought anything that could even remotely count as an action figure from Etsy since 2019!  I've bought some acrylic standees recently...but they were romantic ones depicting two men.  (Mostly Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, the leads of MDZS, of course, but I also bought a fantastic one a while back depicting the versions of Patroclus and Achilles from the game Hades.)  I may have looked at a few figures/figurines since then, but those were more MDZS merch.

    Furthermore, while much of what I've bought has been romantic, none of it has been erotic, so why is it showing me things that are so NSFW that the site feels the need to censor them?  (A few of the shops I've followed do sell some NSFW items, but only ones depicting men.)

    I mean, I guess I get it, to a certain extent.

    Persona has become a very popular series since it was restructured with the release of Persona 3, and Persona 5 is especially popular.  And there is a broad misunderstanding within our culture of gaming as the near-exclusive domain of the heterosexual male, especially the subset of heterosexual males who cannot obtain the love of real women, and thus pour out their desires onto absurdly sexualized representations of women.  That subset certainly does intersect with the subset of the population of gamers in the Venn diagram of the general populace at large, but it is merely a small intersection, not a complete overlap.  The grotesque assumption that "gamer = horny straight male loser" is disgusting and repellent.

    You would think that their algorithm would at least get the difference between art depicting women for the male gaze and art depicting men for the female gaze (or for non-gender-specific gaze, like in the case of the Hades fan art I've bought).  Or if that's too much for it, it could at least note the difference between male-presenting characters and female-presenting characters.  I don't think that's too much to ask for!

    Sorry.

    I realize there's no actual point to this post aside from me complaining, but...sometimes you just have to say these things, somewhere, to someone, even if it's just shouting into the void like this.

    Besides, really, how does one chibi keychain of two male characters hugging lead to having the algorithm suggest that I'd be interested in an erotic statuette of a furry woman with her chests hanging out?  It makes no sense!!  (The oversize figure of a robot soldier from the Star Wars prequels also makes no sense, but at least it's not erotic.  Though actually I might prefer an attempt to eroticize those silly-looking things to some of what the site has been pushing at me.)

IWSG - On Genre

 

    So, I totally have nothing to talk about this month, because I still feel like I'm being put through a very slow wringer by this VN I agreed to write. 😭  Therefore, I'm just going to tackle the month's suggested question instead of trying to dredge up my own topic.

October 5 question - What do you consider the best characteristics of your favorite genre?

    Alarmingly, a few moments' intense concentration on this question has led me to a question of my own:  "What even is my favorite genre?"

    Pre-contemplation, my instinct would be to say that my favorite genre is fantasy, but I don't actually write all that much fantasy, and even when I do, it tends to be a very splintered section of fantasy that some might not even consider fantasy anymore.  (My Greek mythology-based novels, for example.  Or the series that I initially intended to be steampunk but which morphed into a Victorian-tech-level, animal-powered airship tale with a few magical creatures and magic-like alchemy, but otherwise not particularly fantasy at all.)

    This realization is actually rather alarming.

    In any case, if we assume that the answer really is fantasy, the best characteristic is definitely the flexibility:

• Don't like the laws of physics?  Toss 'em and write new ones!
• Think humans are dumb?  Don't need 'em!
• Ever wanted to be able to fly?  There's a potion for that--or a spell--or maybe all your characters have wings!
• Want a society that's more egalitarian?  Write one!
• Etc.

    It's great being able to invent the entire universe of a story from scratch, not needing to worry about whether you're accurately portraying a time or a place.  (Which isn't to say that you shouldn't research any societies that might be similar to what you're going for.  You absolutely should still do that.)  And it's great to be able to make a world where everyone's nice to each other, or where women have always ruled, or where homophobia/transphobia/racism/bigotry-in-general just plain doesn't exist.  Or where bigotry does exist, but then your protagonist is "the special" and able to defy the whole world to prove their worth despite that the whole world hates them for being whatever it is that the world judges against.  (That trope should, of course, be used sparingly in works you plan to share with others, but it's very satisfying to write.)

    Ironically, I saw a similar question about favorite genres in a VN-dev space not long ago, and my first thought was to ask if LGBTQ+ counted as a genre. 😆  The same flexibility applies there, too, but even more so, since every other genre can be included within it.  So I guess that means I really appreciate a genre where I'm not constrained by anyone else's rules.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    In a related/unrelated thing, someone posted a link to one of those personality quiz things in discord.  This one is about figuring out the emotion that drives an artist/writer to create their art:  https://uquiz.com/quiz/p0u5c3/what-emotion-do-you-create-from

    My result was "Discontent":

You create from discontent.  Most of your life has been spent being uncomfortable in your own skin.  This body is just another house that's never felt like home.  You don't know how to be at ease in this world or this life.  Art is a way of running away, of forgetting yourself and escaping to a more comfortable place.  To cope with an unhospitable reality, you create more welcoming worlds to consume your work and your waking hours.  But the foundation of your art has always been your discontent with the real world and your life within it.  Lurking behind the inviting scenery you desire to be anywhere but here.  It is a world constructed as a respite from this one.  Such vivid fantasies are the dream of one who considers reality a prison.

    As one of the others in the discord commented, I feel like I'm being called out by these results.

    It's eerie, especially considering how many of the questions left me going "none of these answers apply to me!"

    And it also feeds disconcertingly well into everything I said about why I enjoy working with the fantasy genre...

    (The big lesson here, I think, is probably to stop pre-writing these posts.  I wrote the first half on Monday, then discovered this quiz right before bed on Monday night, and am now adding this second half of the post on Tuesday morning.  Obviously, I should just make it a habit of getting up early on the first Wednesday of the month and writing the post that day, instead of scheduling it from a day or two before.)