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A ramble about respecting other people's interests

I was talking at Shabbat dinner last night about my sadness over Twitter dying and how dreadful Threads is as a substitute and I was pissed off by my husband's irritated dismissal. "I don't care. It's like someone telling me their car died and another one came out."

I'm definitely preaching to the choir here, but I want to put in a good word for the ability to let people care about things you don't care about and listen to them when they talk about it. This goes for friends, certainly, but also partners and absolutely positively for your kids (or kids in your life).

I have a friend who's frequently eyerolly about her kid's interests (e.g., anime, manga, toku) and my husband is often the same to our kids. And, like, they both wonder why the kids would rather spend time with me. Hmm, dunno. If you're a teen anime fan, would you rather spend time with the adult who brushes you off if you want to talk about the latest episode of something or the adult who takes you to anime con even though she doesn't like anime? Yeah, real headscratcher there.

It's not like you have to try and be interested in everything they like. My son loooooves watching video game playthroughs and I flatly refuse to watch with him. But he and I watch science videos together and funny things that aren't about games and watch toku together and…etc. and so on. And I don't roll my eyes when he's enthusiastic about them or wants to tell me something funny that happened.

(Am I perfect about this? Oh gods no, I hurt his feelings the other day when he wanted to show me something and I was just so tired and so cranky. But he got over it, because it's unusual for me.)

I listen to my husband talk about his job and woodworking and other things he's interested in and I try to learn enough to engage in conversation. But as is unfortunately typical in a cisgender male/cisgender female relationship, I don't get the same courtesy. I hope I'm raising my son differently, damn it.

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* take into account you don't get to choose what they do with you -- anything from cosmetic surgery practice to weapon testing is possible.

** no fossil fuel emissions, takes 90% less energy than regular cremation, which contributes to air pollution. also this one is basically just getting disolved in lye

*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm/ for locations

(+) https://bodyworlds.com/ (warning: pictures of preserved human bodies with musculature exposed -- not creepy/scary imo.)

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It's actually a very rare video of me when engaged in local politics. The politicians don't know what to do with me either :D

🐯 🐯 🐯

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i love these two characters. i need to trap them in a collapsed building so they can talk about their feelings as one of them slowly bleeds out.

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me: “yeah I dated a guy in high school who came out as gay. it was before i knew i was a boy so needless to say it didn’t work out”

coworker: “damn dude was preordering”

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I can 100% imagine this. Absolutely. My son would straight up tell teachers he identified as a bunny for the lols. Well...okay, due to social anxiety he wouldn't actually tell teachers that, but if another kid did it, he would join in. And he would back them up.

Now my daughter, she'd do it in a heartbeat. Total deadpan, straight face, serious: "Yes, I identify as a cat. Meow. Meow meow."

I can easily name a bunch of other kids who would do it! You know the theater kids are all in on this. They have Plans.

So obviously furries exist but the Tories and the British media trying to whip up a culture war frenzy about “Kids in schools identifying as cats” runs into one major problem…

Kids fucking love to wind adults up, especially those in positions of perceived authority.

Imagine sitting in class, knowing if you say something funny that it could end up on national news because your head teacher is a frothing culture war bigot.

Imagine all the other kids going along with it and backing them up.

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“ao3 should have an algorithm” ao3 should continue only giving me exactly what I ask for which happens because I know how to use the search, sort, and filter functions

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Okay, I could totally see this being younger Wu Xie but Shen Wei would *never*.

Wait, body swap with Zhao Yunlan! That's it. Body swap and he decides to take Shen Wei's body on vacation because he figures Shen Wei will follow him and maybe he'll spend a minute relaxing.

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Tbh I think fandom generally needs to get better at sitting with the uncomfortable fact that a story/fanwork/meme/whatever can hurt one person and help another

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This. Between all the nasty bits of transphobia, there's a big heaping helping of "don't you dare tell me that children are people too!" Children are to be seen, not heard, etc. and so on.

All parents have an occasional moment where we wish our kids would just SHUT UP and do what they're told, but good parents understand that's not healthy. We see that kids can (and should!) have their own ideas, identities, and experiences.

If you acknowledge that children are just small people, you have to acknowledge they have the right to their own ideas about gender, religion, and politics. And if your entire worldview requires that nobody think for themselves, that sounds pretty damn scary.

None of which is an excuse for the transphobic assholes, mind you. Sucks to be them, because we're raising a generation of kids who understand that everyone gets to be themselves and define who they are.

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the amount of people who have said something like "id rather be called a faggot than queer" makes it clear its not actually about "reclaiming a slur" its about queer being cringey and associated with weirdos who have opinions like "bi lesbians are cool and literally always have been" and "exclusionism is a traumatizing waste of time psyop"

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Exactly. Izusubs wins because they're fast and our watch party is Sunday morning at 10 am.

Question for my fellow toku folks especially yall watching Geats rn: Who do you usually watch sub wise? I've stuck to Excite personally but I'm just curious if yall have someone else you prefer/think does the best job in your opinion

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Oh and quick note for writers:

One difference between this strike and the last one is that there are a lot more fellowships targeted at early career tv writers than there used to be (there have always been some, but the fellowship model is way more commonplace these days)

Studios are about to make a ton more of these opportunities and advertise them widely as a way to break into the industry, and they will be very specific about the fellowship not technically counting as a writers room or a tv job

THIS IS A TRICK TO GET YOU TO SCAB

Sharing any written content with a studio (even if they route it through a 3rd party "foundation" or development org or something) IS SCABBING

What you do in regards to the strike is your business, but the WGA has been very clear that anyone who scabs will be BANNED FROM JOINING THE UNION FOR LIFE. That means even if you get hired, that's no health & pension and no union protections for your entire career. This shit is serious

So please please double check and dig into any new submission opportunities you see in the next weeks. Playwrights especially be careful - many studios are finding their writers through play scripts these days so be very careful about how and where your work is being shared

No writing going to the studios means NO WRITING of any kind

(if you see suspicious fellowship stuff being passed around let me know, I'd love to keep an eye on that for my peeps)

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discuss

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lesbians love and support our trans sisters 💖💖

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