Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-26397825-20150719111502/@comment-24891101-20150725184120

LiveandSound wrote: It's no longer merely a fanart term. There's no reason to artificially restrict it to be so. While it originally applied to fanart, like all phenomena of this sort, its domain expanded, as there is nothing limiting it to merely that. It speaks to a human tendency to change characters' genders, because doing so is interesting, for one reason or another. It is a jocular truism, not actually factually correct, and therefore when a content creator genderbends a character, they are moving the world one step closer to a full realization of R63, irrespective of medium. A platonic ideal to be fulfilled.

But no one does do this, outside of TvT. Their definition is not generally accepted by the rest of the internet, and you cannot demand the terms be understood in that sense outside that community. I can see the distinction you draw, but I do not acknowledge it, because no one else acknowledges it. You seek to impose a prescriptivist definiiton of a word, while no one else recognizes that definition outside of that community. No one else cares that TvT defines the term a certain way; they don't use the term in that way. You seek recognition for a definition no one else accepts. That is the problem here.

Look above. I held that JNPR were genderbends of folkloric warriors who engaged in crossdressing, and you denied it. This is clearly confusing, undermining your point about its clarity. I hold that given the overwhelming use of the R63 definition, a different term be chosen to describe the shapeshifting of a character in-universe, as distinct from authorial decision. This is on account of the descriptivist primacy of the R63 sense.

We disagree on definitions. I maintain that these two processes, while related, are sufficiently different as to require different terminology, on account of a Watsonian/Doylistic distinction, favoring new terminology for the Watsonian sense, as the Doylistic is already widespread, in keeping with descriptivism. You maintain that only the actual effect of this process matters, regardless of means or other factors, and hold that the terminology is not confusing.