#I'm not getting into language politics this is not what it's about

[cazort]

I strongly agree with almost everything in this post, but I have one quibble, and this is the use of the term "moderate".

I find this frustrating because I'm trans and nonbinary, and I consider myself a moderate, and I very much dislike how some people use the term.

Being a "moderate" on trans issues does not mean caving to any of the right-wing attempts to roll back trans rights. What it can mean, however, is:

wanting sports leagues or their independent governing bodies to make their own decisions about who can and can't compete on what teams (contrast with the right-wing stance saying they want the government to bar trans people from competing even if sports leagues want to allow trans people to compete, but also contrast with far-left stances saying they want the government to force all independent sports bodies to accept trans people according to some set of criteria that the government sets) Why am I moderate on this issue? Because I don't want trans identities politicized. I don't want politicians to be debating our rights. If it's kept in the realm of the independent sports bodies, it's kept out of the political sphere and I see that as a win.

wanting all trans people to face zero pressure one way or the other when it comes to any sort of medical transition (contrast with the right-wing stance which wants to make medical transition illegal, or at least ban it for minors and make adults have to pay for it out of pocket, but also contrast with the transmedicalist stance which is unfortunately common in left-wing circles, which says that medical transition is the be-all and end-all of transition and trans people need medical transition to be happy, it's necessarily the right choice for all trans people, and you aren't really trans if you haven't medically transitioned) Why am I moderate on this issue? Because I see great pressure to medically transition both from transphobia (not having our genders recognized unless we transition) and from other trans people (glorifying the effects of transition, saying it will solve all our problems, etc.) and from left-wing pro-trans ideology which can get wrapped up in transmedicalism (equating "transition" with medical transition, equating medical transition with transness, etc.) and I hate this pressure. When people don't desire medical transition, it can lead to regret. When people do, it can mess with our motivation because it can be hard for us to sort out which desires or motivations are innate vs. which are imposed on us.

wanting people to be a bit more tolerant of the language people use, especially in the absence of any overt rudeness or explicit proof of bad faith. For example, not berating people or snapping at them for using the wrong pronouns (only politely correcting), not criticizing people or telling them they are "wrong" or "transphobic" for using older terminology (like "FtM", "MtF", "became a (wo)man", etc.) Why am I moderate on this issue? Because I've seen so many people get attacked, sometimes brutally, for using the "wrong" terminology, and this then makes the trans rights movement look unreasonable. Also the single worst stereotype I have to contend with as a nonbinary person is the expectation from others that I will be "demanding" and get angry at them if they use the wrong pronouns or gendered language to refer to me. And this is so frustrating because I'm actually laid back about these things, but I have to contend with these stereotypes in part because a lot of people do react this way.

wanting any pro-trans people to be more understanding of things like how it can be hard mentally and emotionally to adjust to people changing the gender, name, and/or pronouns they are referred to by. Why am I moderate on this issue? Because I prefer they/them pronouns and yet I still find it a bit hard or awkward sometimes, even though I prefer them over he/him and she/her pronouns. And more broadly, even though I'm nonbinary, I find the concept of nonbinary genders highly abstract and a bit confusing and hard to wrap my mind around. So I figure, if it's hard for me, it's probably going to be even harder for a cis person so the least I could do is to have a little bit of patience with them. Also, I don't want people to perceive my gender as an imposition on them so I don't particularly want others to be abrasive or aggressive about enforcing my pronouns or gender.

So yeah, I'm a moderate on trans issues. What this means is that I want to keep government out of gender, and more broadly, keep trans people from being politicized, I want there to be no pressure to medically transition one way or the other, and I am tolerant of people using older and/or nonstandard terminology to refer to trans people, and I'm relatively laid-back about people misgendering me or using non-preferred terminology to refer to me.

It does not mean I want to cave to any of the demands of far-right ideology.

The state of gay rights in the early aughts was not good; criminal penalties for homosexuality were rarely enforced but were on the books in many places, there was no right to marriage, and the morality of homosexuality was hotly contested in public. Big culture war issue. In that environment, where substantive protections were lacking, Democrats could be tepid on gay rights without actively giving anything up—if, like Obama in 2008, you didn’t support gay marriage, you could still be seen (correctly) as advocating for an overall better situation for gay people, or at least one that was no worse, in contrast to your right wing opponents.

Trans rights are not in the same position. Before the big trans rights backlash started, access to gender affirming care was pretty widespread, was everywhere legal, and was a matter for private concern only. Trans people could play in school sports subject to whatever their league’s rules were, and the idea of trying to make it illegal to cross dress in public was absurd. The conservative position since has become one of an explicit rollback of rights: revoke access to gender affirming care, create new criminal sanctions to punish trans people, make it illegal for them to participate in school sports, etc.

In that environment, tacking to the right on trans issues means deciding which elements of trans rights you are willing to concede to this project of actually rolling back trans rights. The only thing comparable from the gay rights fight is maybe state constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage, or DOMA—all of which were, IIRC, passed despite gay marriage not being legal in affected jurisdictions. Their enactment, while deplorable, had no material negative affect; gay people already couldn’t get married.

And that this project of rolling back trans rights is not a particular fetish of the religious right is more worrying. Plenty of liberals and liberal institutions are pretty transphobic. Britain has been working to export its flavor of (Moderate, Sensible, Secular) transphobia to other countries in Europe and the Anglosphere. Transphobes winning these fights isn’t a status quo situation—it’s a sharp increase in repression of trans people.

In light of that, I regard calls to “moderate” on trans issues with at best scorn. I think the party of civil rights condoning the rollback of citizens’ civil rights is really bad for its brand, won’t win it more votes, and may sufficiently alienate members of the base—who are invested in the party specifically because of its historic support for civil rights—that they simply don’t bother to show up in elections.

[themareverine]

DESIGNATED DRIVER ▹TEASER

— oldman!Logan x namelessfem!OC

SYNOPSIS: "Hey driver!" Tits, yeah—counts two of 'em. What Logan can't quite shake isn't the drunk-off-her ass's $20,000 tit job, or even the way his passengers embarrass themselves with shameless come-ons, stupid amounts of money. something else, entirely—a pretty little thing all done up in makeup and curls, wishing she were anywhere but third-wheeling a drunk hen party. "Sorry about my friend, she's—" "Didn't even notice her, honey."

warnings: flirting, drunkenness, flashing, maybe some oldman!logan inappropriate thoughts, maybe a kiss, general shyness/awkardness of that girl, language.

a/n: no thots, just this. i've had this in my brain for awhile, now. that one inevitable girl in the group that's the quiet, embarrassed, not-drinking friend catching his eye—the girl who never gets approached at the bar, the "hold your hair back when you puke up your guts" friend who tags along to feel wanted. it's me, i'm her.

too many irons in the fire but this is too much fun.

TEASER TEASER

Silence to stir the dead had followed after they’d eye fucked him into celibacy. Blissful, sweet as the Nile quiet. A creak of movement, the slip of skin on leather—her.

It’s her, the quiet-ish one.

Short brunette curls with highlights, icy blues peekaboo behind the lens of some-designer-he-didn’t-know frames. Defined collarbones in a hardly-strapped dress, big earrings. Sparkles, everywhere, blended into makeup that’s been on awhile but still looks good.

And she, she isn’t like the rest—not by a mile. How she moves, the way her lashes flutter. Doe-eyed and sweet. Logan doesn’t remember the last time he’d seen anyone like her, any woman of the night dressed like this. Booking rides, swimming the neon. Doesn’t smell like sin, the kiss of color on her cheeks isn’t sticky makeup. It’s real, raw skin—true woman. Some rosacea shit or red undertones. Natural.

Peaches, this one smells like frickin’ peaches. Something floral.

She’s sweet. Saccharine, sugary. Like everything Logan’s forgotten. Pretty, in that girl-next-door kinda way—the way he’s always noticed, the way nobody else does. And what a pretty thing like her is doing in the back of his sinwagon, riding with Jezebels, hunting for trouble—he’ll never know. Shit.

And fuck, she’d leaned forward, pretty hands on the back of his seat.

Done up nails that look fake, but not cheap. Her eyes smiled at him through the glass of his rearview, as if this were a game. Good at it, she won—he blinked first. Offered him a little half smile, that dust of color on her nose darkening to an almost strawberry.

When his eyes hit hers again from attention on the road, icy blues ramped up like pulsing neon, unlike any he’d ever seen in two damn centuries. She’d reached across the back of the seat to gently nudge him with her elbow—hey. Quiet, true. Genuine. Rings clear in the little lift of her brow, the tip of her lips into a smile.

It should’ve sounded like something you gave to horses, hey. Hey. How does he even frickin’ respond? And it’s considerate, testing. Like wading into deep waters, unsure in a way that says she’s giving him space but isn’t afraid.

Nearly fucking polite.

tags: @th3mrskory @permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88 @fandomxo00

[kiwiweewee]

Like a Prayer

It's wild to me that Madonna's Like a Prayer has become this superhero genre, intense, emotional song. Mainly because the song's history. I've been on tiktok and I've seen the choir version of the song played for edits of Batman and various other heroes and while I'm glad the song is popular, it's kinda crazy that it is being applied the way it is. The song was really controversial upon its release. I only learned about this because I had a young high school teacher who was writing his own curriculum and decided to talk about it one day, so shout out to Mr. Challinor. Like a Prayer was considered controversial not only due to its religious theming/language in an otherwise sexual song but also because of the music video. The song itself. As said above, there's a lot of religious language that serves as a double entendre to sex. It's worth mentioning that the setting of the music video is a church, so Madonna sings this while surrounded by religious imagery. "I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there" "In the midnight hour, I can feel your power" "I close my eyes, Oh God I think I'm fallin" But this isn't the only thing to get her in trouble. The music video got her into hot water as well. While less sexual than the lyrics, it was a reflection of America and its politics. Madonna's character witnesses the brutal robbery and possible sexual assault of another woman by a group of white men. These men also kill the woman. A black man tries to come to the woman's rescue as the men leave, but when the police arrive, he is arrested for the murder. Madonna's character hides in a church and reflects on what she witnessed. Nearby, there is a statue of a saint who resembles the black man from earlier. Madonna falls asleep and has a dream, where she is kissed by this saint. She awakes and decides to go to the police to give her account of what happened. There are several depictions of burning crosses, something the kkk would often do. The audience knows the black man is innocent, so his arrest is suggested to be more than a wrong place at the wrong time scenario. He, like many black people in America, is considered a criminal/suspect out of prejudice. This whole plot may not seem radical now, but at the time, Madonna received a lot of hate. The Vatican condemned the video, several religious and family groups protested its broadcast, and she lost her Pepsi sponsorship after they used the song in an add and a boycott on the soft drink began. So you can see why I think it's wild how such a controversial song turned around to be a new superhero anthem. I actually like Deadpool and Wolverine's use of the song. The music video's message and subject of minority treatment is something that connects well to the X-Men canon. It's also a spoof on masculinity in a sense, with these big muscular men having this emotional handholding moment while Madonna, a notable queer icon, plays. I have no qualms with its usage in the film and I think it's inclusion is very deliberate. I'm actually not against the usage of it now. I guess that I'm just in awe at the massive turnaround this song has had in the way it's viewed. And hey, a bop's a bop, right?

[moth-time]

If I may offer a serious answer to a joke post: you should do it because knowing your parents language is a valuable form of connection. Cultural identity is very strongly rooted in language, and if your kid ever wants to try and connect more to your culture when they grow up, they will have a much easier time of it if they understand the language.

My mom is dutch, my dad is french, I was raised in germany. Early on, my parents decided that they would raise us speaking french, and not dutch. There were several factors at play in this decision and I can understand the choices they made, but I'm 30 now and I'm sad about it.

I understand dutch well enough - our grandma would speak it with us - but I can't speak it fluently. My dutch family speaks english with me, and I feel like I am missing a piece of connection. I did a semester abroad in Utrecht, hoping it would help me get better at dutch, but everyone there just spoke english to me. My brother took dutch classes, and got reprimanded for his rotterdam accent - where my family is from. Neither of us could tell you what makes a rotterdam accent.

it's nothing huge and terrible, but i am sad that my mom never taught us her language. we've been playing catch up - my brother put his phone in dutch, I try to read dutch news sometimes - but it's always going to be a 'foreign' language. Unlike french, or german, which I speak natively. And by extention, I am better connected to those countries and cultures. I know what's up with their politics, I understand various dialects and what their social context is, I can make terrible puns, I'm familiar with the food culture… I'm much more immersed in those cultures - even french, despite having never lived in france and having no interest in doing so.

And… knowing dutch wouldnt be useful to me, on a pragmatic level? It's not an international language, almost every dutch person speaks english. There is no grand life advantage to it. But it's my mom's language, and i wish i could speak it with her. I wish I didn't feel like a tourist in the city she grew up in.

me: I'm not sure if it's worth raising our kid to be bilingual. with just one parent in the house it might not take even if I do my best. I don't see it working unless we commit to attending a Korean church for immersion, which I refuse to do

the giant: I think it's worth trying because being bilingual has xyz cognitive benefits

me: I'm bilingual and I don't think that's true

me: I'd try harder to teach the kid Chinese if I were Chinese. that's a more useful language

me: maybe I could convert to being Chinese

the giant: that's not a thing

me: I once read a reddit story from a white couple that adopted a Chinese kid and did their best to raise him connected to his ethnic roots. he grows up fluently bilingual, has a bunch of Chinese friends, travel to China every other year, etc. and seventeen years in they find out, actually, he was Korean

the giant: that's pretty funny

me: it is. and we could do it on purpose

[belovanat2]

Our new chance, pt.4

Agatha and Rio are given a new chance. 

It's age regression, if you don't like it, don't read it - NEXT CHAPTER WE’RE GOING TO SEE MORE ABOUT AGERE

Alice is the reader's name, unrelated to the show.

I'm going to write several chapters, so it may take a while for the story to unfold. 

English its not my first language.

Rio and Agatha help Alice to get ready on the bed in the guest room, so that the couple can go back to sleep and Alice can start resting.

"Okay, I think everything's ready for you to go to rest," Rio says leaning against the guest room door next to Agatha, staring at Alice who was sitting on the bed.

"Do you need anything else before you go to sleep?" Agatha asks less indifferently this time.

"No, it's all very well, thank you for the evening Miss Agatha and Rio," Alice replies formally and the two older women laugh lightly.

"When you wake up, you can call Agatha and I, okay?" Rio asks, waiting for the girl to answer, but she only nods.

"We'll let you rest now, good night... Alice..." Agatha replies with a sad smile and leaves before the girl can answer.

"Door open or closed dear?" Rio asks

"Open please" she replies shyly and Rio nods.

"Good night, anything just call me”

"Thank you, good night..." Alice replies and Rio leaves her alone to go to her and Agatha's room to go back to sleep.

As soon as she hears the two of them, she quietly goes to her backpack and takes out a teddy, a teddy she wouldn't sleep without at all. She went back to bed, lying under the softest covers she had ever seen or come close to. The house was very comfortable. She wished she'd had a life like that....

She decided to go to bed soon, because she wanted to wake up before the women so that she could leave without them noticing. 

She just didn't know how to deal with goodbyes, and she was in a bad situation, she didn't want to have to talk about it. And what if Rio and Agatha changed their minds in the end, and called the police on her, and they took her to a shelter or back to her mother. That would be terrible.

She decides to push the bad thoughts away and hugs her teddy and falls into a deep sleep.

----

In the early hours of the morning, all three of the girls in the house were sleeping soundly but restlessly. It was a restless night. 

Near dawn, Alice woke up, realizing that she was lucky to have been the only one to wake up.

She looked around the room and mentally thanked herself for a comfortable night's sleep. But she had to leave. 

Alice politely tidies up the bed and leaves the room as it was. She even manages to find pen and paper to write "thank you". 

She puts her favorite stuffed animal back in her backpack and leaves the room as quietly as possible, this time being very careful not to make any noise.

----

Agatha's dream

Nicky appeared in her dream, they were lying on the grass, the little family present. Rio, Agatha and Nicky. Laughing and telling stories.

Until the boy sat up abruptly, looking frightened. 

"Nicky, baby, what happened?" Agatha asks, sitting down next to her son with her wife accompanying her.

He looks desperately at them both.

"She's leaving, moms! She's leaving!" He despairs, gasping for breath.

"Who? Who's leaving?" Rio asks, confused by her son's reaction. 

"My sister, my sister Alice!" He starts to cry, and the two women look at each other in fright without understanding "Don't let her go, go! Quick, don't let her go! Wake up! Wake up!" Nicky begins to speak repeatedly.

These words echoed in Agatha's mind. She wakes up gasping 

“She's leaving!" She says, nudging Rio awake.

"What?" Rio asks sleepily.

"Alice is leaving," she says, getting up and looking for Rio to do the same. 

Rio then obeys her wife's pleading look and quickly gets out of bed. The two of them head for the stairs. Agatha holds Rio's hand and looks at her deeply.

"It's really her..." she says, starting to tear up "Nicky told me..."

Rio looks at her in shock, with her heart in her hand, but gives Agatha a reassuring smile. 

The two then run back up the stairs and spot Alice about to open the door and leave. The girl doesn't even notice them.

"No!" Agatha shouts and Alice jumps up frightened "Don’t go" the woman holds back the tears that insist on coming out.

Alice turns to face the women. "How did they know?" She thinks.

"Where are you going?" Rio asks in a slightly lower voice, trying not to scare the girl any more.

Alice lowers her head in shame.

"I have to go, I can't stay..." she replies in a whisper 

"Why not?" Agatha asks, moving closer to the girl.

"This isn't my home... I have to find my place" Alice looked at Agatha, who was visibly upset.

Agatha sighs and puts her hand on the younger girl's chin, making her stare at her. Rio approached, even though she knew Agatha wouldn't hurt the girl, she knew her wife was upset by the dream she'd had. 

"But it can be," Agatha finally says, and Alice opens her eyes in surprise, "this can be your home, you don't have to leave."

Rio also looked at the woman in surprise. This was an exciting and confusing moment for everyone.

"What do you mean?" Alice asks in a shaky, unsure voice.

"She's saying that we want you to stay," Rio interferes, hugging her wife and looking at Alice's soft but frightened features.

"But.... But why?" The girl asks confused. No one ever wanted her, never made a point of her presence, this had to be a joke. She began to cry, her thoughts racing.

"Because it's been right... since the beginning," Agatha replies, this time letting a tear fall. She takes Alice's hands and holds them, caressing them "What do you think, darling?" 

They all sit in silence for a minute, thinking, confused and breathless. 

"I think... I think I want to stay too" Alice replies with a shy smile

[steddieunderdogfics]

For today's Monday challenge of finding fics with 20 comments, I'd like to recommend I'm A Bad Boy For Breaking Her Heart by @dreamwatch.

This fic is an absolutely lovely look into Eddie finally meeting Steve's parents, who are just struggling to accept that the future they'd dreamt of for Steve, is probably gonna look a little different than they'd expected.

It's often so hard, accepting changes to your world and your views, and this fic is a wonderful look into that process.

And it's based on a Tom Petty song, so that's a major bonus! ❤️

I'm A Bad Boy For Breaking Her Heart by Foreverlong

Rating: Mature

3,610 words, 1/1 chapters

Archive Warning: No Warnings

Tags: Period-Typical Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Disabled Eddie Munson, Internalised ableism, The Harringtons Are Trying Their Best, Miscommunication, Meet the Family, Awkward Conversations, Steve Harrington Has Good Parents, Prompt Fic, One Shot

Summary:

'“We better go in,” Steve says, not looking at Eddie. Not really looking at anything. And that doesn’t exactly instil confidence in Eddie, about how all this shit is going to go down, because Steve has been telling him all week not to worry about it, it will be fine. But he’s sitting here looking like the world is about to end. And maybe it is. Maybe that’s exactly what’s about to happen, Steve’s world, that complex relationship with his parents that they cultivated with such tender hands, will just shatter once the reality of everything Steve has been telling them for the last couple of years manifests in their dining room. Eddie might not have done this before, but he knows his part. Turn up, be polite, play nice. And above all else don’t bite if the other kids don’t play nice. Because Eddie will always be the one that gets the blame.' After two years together, Eddie finally meets The Harringtons.

Thanks for the rec!

Know a fic that deserves extra love? Submit through our asks!

[liquidorcard]

Lily Orchard is very politically opportunistic and her posts on Palestine show how blatant this is. She presents herself as militantly anti-fascist and anti-hate, she claims to hate centrists who try to give fascists a space to speak (instead implying she'd be willing to use violence to stop them). But like, as soon as it comes to electoral topics, she aggressively, AGGRESSIGELY insists that the liberal centrist parties are the only viable option. Like, the guys she pretends to hate. To the point where she's victim blaming activists for Democrats losing the election and telling people not to listen to activists when they call for a boycott against the liberal centrists who are upholding the right for fascists to speak and politically act. She pretends to be a leftist, but it's blatantly performative, the reality is that she is centre right and she seems to hate herself for it. Kind of sad, honestly.

I've said something before here that Lily and I grew up in similar environments? Well, I honestly think that has something to do with it.

I grew up in a very right-wing household in a very right-wing community that like, I knew I knew from a very young age I wasn't ever going to be accepted in. Assigned Reject at Birth. You know, it's one of the many ways religious and right-wing spaces just tare apart interpersonal connections important to the human psyche. That makes a wound in people. I won't go into detail, but my home life was bad to begin with. Being queer just made it that much worse.

Before moving away for college, I very much believed I was the most left-wing any human being on this earth could possibly be. I thought I was going to be met with open arms and the unconditional human acceptance I had always wanted, even though I wasn't fully cognitively aware of that.

I wasn't. And I feel people were even less forgiving of my lack of leftist literacy because I was a queer AFAB and concluded there was no excuse for me to be as ignorant as I was.

Now, I know the discussion of the social policing and virtue grandstanding gets flattened of any nuance online so the right can use it against the left, so I want to make sure I'm clear with what I'm about to say. No, the left should not be tolerant of bigotry. No, not every right-wing nut job can be deradicalized by hand-holding them through their own come to Jesus moment. Nor is anyone owed that emotional energy from you. But when you were raised right-wing, even if you grew to resent it, a person needs time to be deprogrammed. And, I know this might upset people to hear, but you won't understand how much of a privilege it is to be raised in a more liberal household unless you weren't. People who were can sometimes be, what I feel is unreasonably hostile to those of us who don't know any better because we haven't had the chance to learn.

It also just so happens I started college in 2015, right when gamergate went down. And it was an art school. Really, it was a uniquely not very ideal environment to rid myself of right-wing brain worms. And in a very real way, it retraumatized me getting rejected for not having the sociopolitical context to understand everything I was expected to. I'm not blaming anyone in particular for that-- that is more an unfortunate symptom of the anti-social rot the right causes, but it wasn't a good time. I think some people could have been kinder, and to this day I do my best to be charitable with meeting people where they're at myself. And I do think there is a problem in the left, especially online, failing to read between the lines and respond appropriately-- especially when it comes to vocabulary choice. You know, sometimes people use dogwhistles without the proper context to understand they are dogwhistling, sometimes people are just genuinely misinformed and lack the language to ask the questions they have, and vocabulary does shape perception. Right-wing ideology only can survive on the basis of rigid, strict, conceptually or literally divine hierarchy. Right-wing language is shaped on the premise of that hierarchy. The reason why a lot of social progress doesn't make sense to right-wingers and is almost impossible to communicate properly in right-wing language is because it disregards the premise of that hierarchy. Right-wingers don't literally live in a separate reality, but they kind of functionally do. Mentally. For people who are more on the right, but open minded enough to genuinely learn and want to, it's better to use as their language as much as possible to explain to them things that can ease them out of the premise of that mental trap of explicit social hierarchy in a gentler fashion.

With all that said, the root cause was still that right-wing upbringing.

I feel I have more than enough reason to very confidently say Lily went through a very similar experience to me. A shitty childhood for a lot of reasons, but one of them for sure being a queer person in an extremely right-wing household. She has a hypersensitivity to feeling shame and will go to extreme measures to avoid it, she feels isolated and desperate for acceptance in an extremely unhealthy way. In one regard she was knee-capped significantly in her ability to function socially that I wasn't, in that her parents decided she was a simpleton when she was very young, basically wrote her off and conditioned her to never take accountability. Though being overly critical of children is equally harmful (though in different ways), dismissing a child of all agency because you think they're too stupid to handle it can result in a lot more damage to everyone around them aswell as themselves and is a form of emotional neglect.

Online I think she searched out for a community that would accept her, and when that did not work out for her, when she experienced that retraumatization again of rejection . . . She took some very interesting lessons away from that. The wrong ones.

And, glass houses, it took me a whole journey aswell to get where I am. But I was conditioned to internalize social rejection, for better or worse. Lily was not. She is aggressively, profoundly, depressingly incapable of self-reflection, in healthy or in unhealthy amounts-- and even though that's not wholly her fault, she's a big girl now, and she's the only one left to accept responsibility for that. As someone myself who feels deeply angry at the ways I was psychologically damaged, I'm speaking as someone who has accepted that dwelling on how unfair it is that I have to be held accountable for that isn't going to improve my situation.

Believe it or not, I don't think Lily is inherently stupid. I think she was treated like she was stupid since she was young, and has put a lot of energy into pantomiming intellectualism instead of actually learning stuff. Again, glass houses, I also learned how to pretend I am smarter than I actually am out of an extreme aversion to shame-- but I can tell I have more actual knowledge, interest and curiosity to learn than Lily does.

I don't think Lily has any interest in learning about left-wing politics, and I don't think she has actually deprogrammed herself from the right-wing environment she was raised in. She has no motivation to care, and likely still is deeply bitter about the social rejection she's experienced in left-wing spaces. However, she has a lot of social capital to gain by PRETENDING she is.

And pretending is enough for the people she courts in her audience.

[tunglo]

I would so love to watch/read that! Here's my own little bit of personal history with it:

I went in from Gotham after getting a human/android fic prompt based on the game (after which I ended up watching a run through on Youtube in German, a language I hadn't done more than read an occasional news article in since high school, and that was my only actual engagement with the gameplay...), fully expecting to write Hank/Connor, but I just could not deal with Cole's death. Like, it's a cornerstone of Hank's story, but I can't bear to think about losing a child. (Parenthood ruined true crime for me too. Just gotta stick my fingers in my ears and find something where everyone was an adult instead...)

But! There were a few people trying out Gavin/RK900 instead and, now I'm back on my wireplay bullshit, so I figure I'll give that a go. For ages I had been thinking about writing some Paul/MX-43 (Almost Human) fic but, you know, you've gotta get a new characterisation right, work out how an MX would *think*, etc. Here, on the other hand, I can write basically the same dynamic with little to no restrictions on how I want to characterise, backstory, etc, etc.

At the time there were only a few pages of Reed900 fics on A03, and a lot of them were quite heavy BDSM stuff that just wasn't my thing. I like my characters to be kind of sickeningly, adoringly in love with each other after the obligatory enemy stage - so RK900 would have to drop the cold characterisation that had been gaining favour.

Then I read a Hank/Connor fic (cos that was still overwhelmingly the main ship), I can't remember who by, that was genderswap with the idea that Connor's face was fixed into a polite smile and the resulting restrictions that placed on her.

That! That was the answer. RK900 just had extreme resting bitch face. He's not created to be public facing, it really doesn't matter to Cyberlife whether he can express emotion or not. The more android the better, in my book.

Re. the name. Nines was already widely used (this was late July 2018) but I didn't particularly like it. The designation was nine hundred. It was early enough that I didn't feel compelled to use it though, especially as what I wanted to write wasn't going to fit with much of the existing fic, so I shortened to RK instead.

I didn't really expect to get much response because, like I say, the 'norm' for the ship seemed to be pushing in a different direction and, more to the point, I'm essentially playing in a sandpit with OCs. But, to my delight, my Tumblr inbox quickly filled up with all kinds of prompts for me to write and I churned out nearly 200k before exhausting it and moving onto the next thing.

I was already on that when the first short film was announced, but I had to come back to watch that and the follow ups. It was so wild to see how much the general characterisation, etc, had changed since the beginning. I feel like, if he had the ability, the ruthless RK900 I started reading about would be sick at the thought of the character he became - even if I infinitely preferred it! xD

I need someone to make a 3+ hour video essay about the history Reed900

The origins, where it came from

The first art, fic, other fan content made for it

The most popular head-canons, Nines getting a name, different interpretations of the personalities

How the most agreed upon quality of Gavin Reed, loving coffee, comes from a scene, where the importance of him asking coffee is minuscule and it is not even confirmed that he even likes it, and it leading to the other super popular head-canon of him having insomnia

The mods and modding community

The most influential fics

The comics, and the shear amount of dubbed vids of them on youtube

The movie, the short film and the behind the scenes stuff for it. Neil Newbon engaging with the cast

It becoming the top DBH ship, with basically nonexistent characters

[icewindandboringhorror]

Recent game related things .. hrmm...

[mainfaggot]

i just had cute small talk w a white gay barista but im afraid i came off as arrogant

[telvayns]

Hi just read your tags on a Terror post about Inuit languages and wanted to say they’re currently phoneticized using Canadian aboriginal syllabics: ᖃᓂᐅᔮᖅᐸᐃᑦ is how you’d write “qaniujaaqpait” which is the term for Inuktitut syllabics! The writing system is based on Cree syllabics. I find this stuff rly fascinating and recommend you check out the site tusaalanga.ca if you want more info!

thank you for the information - this is so cool!! here's the hyperlink to tusaalanga from anon for others!!

[mymblesbuir]

accidentally put my phone in my pocket unlocked and almost posted this:

[beep-beep-imma-sheep]

Gentle reminder that

Smart ≠ Wise ≠ Literate ≠ Jerk ≠ Know-it-all

A character can be really good with, say, numbers but know absolutely nothing of history. Or be really clever and tactical but never once in their life has opened a book. Or be a genius when it comes to music, but being a complete idiot when trying to efficiently arrange objects in certain space. Or instinctively coming up with clever solutions, but lacking the words to express them. Or having a very vast vocabulary, but but it's not someone actually clever.

The say way someone can posses a lot of knowledge in a variety of areas but being unable to put that knowledge to practice, to use, or intertwine that knowledge to find a new and creative way to come up with an answer to a problem.

There are a lot of way to be smart. A character can be smart and ignorant. A character can be smart but know oh-so-little about a lot of things.

Yes, the character can be your stereotypical know-it-all that has all the solutions in less than a minute, doesn't miss a thing, gets impatient and cocky because no one can keep up with them and so one, but it doesn't need to.

[phantomrose96]

Tumblr can never be my main means of engaging in politics and it comes down almost entirely to Tumblr's pathological need to distill The Right Opinion:tm: from any complicated issue.

It's always the most important thing. Not because it helps solve the issue or helps the people impacted, but because The Right Opinion:tm: is a proxy for you, morally, as a person. And every issue needs to be broken into the language that sets the stances of Make You Good or Make You Bad.

And I don't mean this in any generic statement about echo chambers or virtue signaling. Those are separate but related concepts. What I'm talking about is how people are nervous about a topic until one doctrine is crafted which defines the Sports Team Color of our Sports Team, so we can be identified as being on the Us Sports Team, and absolutely not on the Them Sports Team. Because this issue is actually about you and the proxy for you as a person and how people should perceive you so, really, the sooner we figure out the Home Sports Team Colors the sooner you can stop feeling worried.

The moment something new happens is usually the first and last time you'll actually see a range of opinions on it. And some of that is fueled by misinformation! Some in bad faith! When dust settles and clarity is achieved, this helps combat those things, but it's also the moment when the Loudest and most Articulate voices craft the Zeitgeist Opinion and everyone comes to roost around it.

You get people on this site pissed off at AI models that can diagnose cancer from a research paper in 2019 because The Right Opinion is that AI is bad. If you even see a post trying to articulate good uses of AI, well that's someone wearing Packers colors at a Vikings home game, and if you wanna make a point in the "wrong" direction you better be damn articulate about it.

A well-defined set of actions are transphobic. Another set are actually not transphobic, and you'd be transphobic for thinking so. Are you trans and actually your lived experiences differ? Get articulate real fast or shut up. You might be able to eek an exception for yourself, but it's going to require a 10-paragraph post justifying your claim. If you're REALLY good at it though, you might be able to rewrite the Zeitgeist and now anyone who disagrees with you is transphobic. Teams switch uniform styles every now and then, after all.

And it's such a farce because so often it's not actually about the topic at hand. It's about why you should be allowed to be perceived as a good person while toeing outside the fringes of The Right Opinion, why you aren't actually quitting the faith or committing blasphemy or deserving of exile for going off the written word. Or if someone really IS trying to make it about the topic at hand, the ensuing slapfight in the comments needs to be about whether OP has sinned against the covenant.

It's not helpful.

[hyperlexichypatia]

This is a semi spinoff of this post, but really its own thought.

When a job pays less than a living wage, it generally attracts one of two types of employees:

Desperate people (usually poor and/or otherwise marginalized or with barriers to employment), who will take any job, no matter how bad, because they need the money, or

Independently wealthy people (usually well-off retirees, students being supported by their families, or women with well-off husbands*), who don't care about the pay scale because they don't need the money anyway.**

And sometimes, organizations will intentionally keep a job low-paying or non-paying with the deliberate intent of narrowing their pool to that second category.

People sometimes bring this up when discussing the salaries of elected officials -- yes, most politicians are paid more than most "regular people," but they're not paid enough to sustain the expensive lifestyle politicians have to maintain, and that's on purpose. It's not an oversight, and it's not primarily about cost-cutting. It's a deliberate barrier to ensure that only rich people can run for office.

The same is true, albeit to less severe effect, of unpaid internships -- the benefit of "hiring" an unpaid intern isn't (just) that you don't have to pay them; it's also that you can ensure that all your workers are rich, or at least middle-class.

When nonprofits brag about how little of their budget goes to "overhead" and "salaries", as if those terms were synonymous with "waste," what they're really saying is "All our employees are financially comfortable enough that they don't worry about being underpaid. Our staff has no socioeconomic diversity, and probably very little ethnic or cultural diversity." ***

This isn't a secret. I'm not blowing anything wide open here. People very openly admit that they think underpaid workers are better, because they're "not in it for the money." This is frequently cited as a reason, for example, that private school teachers are "better" than public school teachers -- they're paid less, so they're not "in it for the money," so they must be working out of the goodness of their hearts. I keep seeing these cursed ads for a pet-sitting service where the petsitters aren't paid, which is a selling point, because they're "not in it for the money."

"In it for the money" is the worst thing a worker could be, of course. Heaven forbid they be so greedy and entitled and selfish as to expect their full-time labor to enable them to pay for basic living expenses. I get this all the time as a public library worker, when I point out how underfunded and underpaid we are. "But... you're not doing it for the money, right?" And I'm supposed to laugh and say "No, no, I'd do it for free, of course!"

Except, see, I have these pesky little human needs, like food. And I can't get a cart full of groceries and explain to the cashier that I don't have any money, but I have just so much job satisfaction!

And it's gendered, of course it's gendered. The subtext of "But you're not doing it for the money, of course" is "But how much pin money do you really need, little lady? Doesn't your husband give you a proper allowance?"

Conceptually, it's just an extension of the upper-class cultural norm that "polite" (rich) people "don't talk about money" (because if you have to think about how much money you have or how much you need, you're insufficiently rich).

*Gendered language very much intentional.

**Disabled people are more likely to be in the first category (most disabled people are poor, and being disabled is expensive), but are usually talked about as if they're in the second category. We're told that disabled people sorting clothing for $1.03 an hour are "So happy to be here" and "Just want to be included," and it's not like they need the money, since, as we all know, disability benefits are ample and generous [heavy sarcasm].

***Unless, of course, they're a nonprofit whose "mission" involves "job placement," in which case what they're saying is "We exploit the poor and desperate people we're purporting to help." Either way, "We pay our employees like crap" is nothing to brag about.

[lucianinsanity]

Every time some science fact is mentioned and it's something that was discovered thanks to the help or invention of your country and you die a little for the lack of acknowledgment

Anyway if you’re from the US and you ever wanted to know what tumblr feels like from a non-USAmerican perspective (please note that the rest of the world is not a monolith either and none of these apply without exception):

Everybody’s talking about brands and stores you’ve never seen in real life. You generally assume they exist, but they might as well be one giant prank the rest of the internet is in on.

You find a post that just sounds wrong. It makes no sense. It’s like OP lives in a weird alternate reality. 9/10 times, it’s just some USAmerican Thing.

You’re still not entirely sure how much an inch is. Or a foot. Or even how many of the former there are in the latter. You maybe know your height in feet and inches.

You have no idea how much a pound is. You’d also like to know how the fuck pound shortens to lbs.

What the fuck is “military time”

Somebody talks about some legal process or something similar. They don’t mention which country’s legal system this pertains to. You know anyway.

People talk about politics. None of it pertains to you. Many posts contain guilt tripping. “How can you not care about this?? Why won’t you reblog this?? People need to know this about x candidate for y position!” You’re busy trying to stay on top of the political landscape in your own country.

You pick up some random slang from the internet. Monkey see monkey do. You’re called racist. You didn’t know it was AAVE. You learnt it from black letters on white background, not from the mouths of people whose faces you could see. How would you have known? You try to unlearn it.

People tell you that you must publicly denounce Chick-fil-A or you’re homophobic. You don’t even know what a Chick-fil-A is.

People say you don’t know LGBTQ+ history. What they mean is you don’t know USAmerican LGBTQ+ history. Nobody cares about your country’s history.

You’re “called out” on using an “offensive” term. It’s (a direct translation of) a completely harmless word where you live.

People expect you to have an idea of how far apart 2 USAmerican states are. You barely know geography past your country’s immediate neighbors.

You randomly switch between British and American spellings. Nothing’s real and there are no rules.

People talk about multiple hour car rides and you get twitchy just thinking about it. You suddenly understand why USAmerican cars are so big.

Somebody talks about school shooting drills. You only ever had fire alarm drills.

You see a cool statistic. The study’s only about the US. It’s unfortunately of no use to you.

People misuse/misspell words and names from your native language. It’s tiring.

(You feel sorry for the French. Nobody should be allowed to mangle the word déjà vu like that.)

You’re still not over the fact that USAmerican school children are supposed to say that pledge thing every morning. You’re never getting over that.

You still don’t know why the men are fresh or what the fuck a sophomore is.

Who the fuck pays up first and then fills up gas??? That’s made up, right??

Everybody has a weird obsession with some comfort food you’d never even heard of before you signed up here.

Fellow non-USAmericans, please add anything else you can think of.