#What language communicates

[screambirdscreaming]

Something that peeves me whenever I see another post going around with some variation on "autistic people take things literally which means we are the only people who communicate Clearly and Directly" is that - for any given statement, there is not one singular, agreed on, universal Literal Interpretation. If there was, none of this would be a problem!

The nature of language is that there's always some degree of interpretability. Words have several different meanings, often overlapping, and there's nuance of context, cultural references, and so on.

Faced with a statement, most people will quickly come up with an interpretation that to them makes the most sense. But if you asked a roomful of people to explain in detail their interpretations, everyone's would probably be a little different, even for a pretty simple statement. Regardless of whether those people are autistic! Everyone conceptualizes the world a little differently, and everyone has a unique personal history of all the language they've encountered, and these things effect our interpretations.

In order for communication to be workable, given this slosh in interpretability, there's another couple of processes that go on. As conversation goes on, people reassess if their initial interpretation matches up with additional context. If it doesn't, they revise it, or ask clarifying questions. And on the flipside of this process, the other person in conversation is tracking if your reactions make sense with *their* understanding of what they're trying to convey to you, and offering context or rephrasing things if it seems you're out of alignment.

These processes are social skillsets that are, like most social skillsets, not ever directly articulated or explained. Many people are bad at one or both. Sometimes you encounter someone who is really, notably good at it - the vaunted "good listener", who puts in the effort to really understand what you're trying to say, or that really excellent teacher who engages with you back and forth until you really get it. But a lot of the time, it's a sort of passive social friction - people just not getting each other.

Sometimes, you encounter someone whose brain works so much like yours that talking to them feels almost effortless - you just get each other. But that's a pretty rare occurrence for anyone. More often, as you get to know someone, you start to understand the shape of the way they interpret things and learn to account for it, so over time it's easier to make sense to each other.

It's honestly not uncommon in society for people to aggregate in groups of people who interpret things similarly, and who are thus easier to talk to, rather than actually building the skills of communicating across interpretation gaps. Particularly egregious are those groups of men who talk about Women as an incomprehensible monolith, but it turns up to a greater or lesser degree on a lot of levels.

I suspect this is the root of a lot of parenting problems - people who have never built this communication skillset, and relied on choosing friends who make sense to them without a lot of effort, and who are then totally unprepared to interact with a child who interprets things in ways they don't expect.

Obviously I can't speak to The Universal Typical Experience, not least because it doesn't exist. But in general I would posit that:

Most people, give or take a few assholes, are not trying to say things that are confusing. Most people think they are communicating clearly, because the first interpretation *they* would come up with on hearing one of their own sentences is the correct interpretation.

Many people are not very good at accounting for different ways people could interpret things they're saying. However, it is normal and polite social behavior to be somewhat flexible about this and forgiving of misunderstandings. If people are being shitty to you about not understanding them, they are assholes. And I wouldn't assume that the rest of the communication they have with everyone else they know goes totally smoothly for them.

I suspect there is a bit of an unfortunate feedback loop, where people have bad experiences when someone gets mad at them for not getting something, and learn to hide when they're confused. Which then leads to larger, more complicated misunderstandings, which other different people get upset at them about, because those people think they should have asked for clarification in the first place.

Truly you can't win with everyone. No one can win with everyone. There is no monolith of "neurotypical communication" which resolves all these contradictions - all those people you're lumping in together under "neurotypical" have just as much trouble with each other.

[technically-human]

We're drawing the idiots with traditional clothing from our countries? hell yeah, here's stobotnik as Argentinian gauchos!

Plus a very normal and not at all unhinged rant about mate (the thing they're drinking) in the tags.

[schemelin]

More of my Lone Wanderer!

[chrissy-kaos]

Cuddles anyone?

[benevolenterrancy]

au where Li Yu teaches Prince Jing modern CSL, based on @skygemspeaks's au over here because after seeing how eagerly Li Yu takes to teaching him pinyin in bk4 I think they both deserve it!

[swamp-milkweed]

roque dalton, "como tú," tr. jack hirschman

[gideonisms]

Just learned that when a sperm whale dives for food it goes so deep its lungs have to collapse and its heart beat has to slow so the pressure doesn't kill it. that must feel good as fuck if you're a whale. just diving until your heart slows down and the ocean pressure holds you like a weighted blanket. And it's cool and dark down there. I get it completely

[commsroom]

kepler threatening anne to provoke eiffel into attacking him (and knowing it will work) in into the depths, and eiffel's gut response to cutter bringing up his daughter in pagliacci - don't you dare even say her name, you slimy, stuck-up motherfu- - really stands out in the context of a man so otherwise committed to nonviolence.

eiffel gets angry, sure, and he's impulsive, and protective of the people he cares about, but, say... getting angry at kepler for usurping minkowski as mission commander, or getting angry at maxwell for the way she treats hera, just doesn't have the same connotations. those people are his adult peers (well, minkowski is technically his superior, but he respects her as a friend way more than he respects her as a boss) who can (and do) tell him, "it's okay, back off" and, even if he doesn't like it, he trusts them.

there is something significant about how that gut response, that jump to violence, is a uniquely parental instinct for him; it only happens when someone threatens his daughter. and, crucially, it's never an immediate threat - you can't really say he's just protecting her, because she's not even there. he knows this, and he's embarrassed after the fact. we don't know what "he turns into a bit of a good old-fashioned monster" fully means, but i think, in that, you can see the glimpse of a man who would kidnap his own daughter.

pretty often, i'll see people bring up that eiffel left a voice message for his daughter, his daughter who is deaf because of his own actions, and i think... on one hand, i think it's significant that anne is deaf and eiffel is the radio guy who likes hearing himself talk; it's a perfect symbol of the wedge his actions drove between them. on the other hand, i don't think eiffel leaving a voice message is just a product of the medium, nor do i think it's just him forgetting / another microaggression / etc. i think eiffel loves his daughter deeply, and i think that love is selfish in a way it's hard for him to let go of. i think eiffel feels doomed to be who he is, to say, "this is all i know how to do." i think eiffel knew there was a very good chance that message might not make it back at all, and even if it did... i think there's a way in which it was at least as much for him, for his own closure and finality, than it was in her interests. and if that file transferred over, if he heard it post-memory loss, if that's part of why he knows he needs to try to "set things right" back on earth... there's something about that that stands out to me, both the helplessness and the inability to express his love in the way that his daughter needs. it's the whole reason he's there in the first place.

[the-sea-anemone]

occasionally i encounter posts about people using like. language learning apps and figuring out their reading level and it's like okay yeah that probably is easier than going on internet archive sorting by language picking an article and/or textbook that seems interesting and then pausing every two seconds to look up words but i've chosen the hard road and i'm sticking with it 👍

[centaurianthropology]

I want to talk about fashion.  More specifically, I want to talk about fashion, and culture, and how the two come together.  Because theory of dress is one of those weird interests of mine, and I really enjoy deep diving into it.  And since my head is stuffed full of ‘Murderbot’ these days, I want to talk about fashion in the Corporation Rim and fashion in Preservation.

This is predominately speculation based on the scripts rather than directly what we see on screen.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I really like how much the show has managed to squeeze out of what is clearly a middling budget, and nowhere do I recognize that more than in the costuming.  It’s incredibly good for being incredibly economical, but I’ve got no budget to work within.  So I can just speculate to my heart’s content about how I think fashion works in both the CR and in Preservation, and how I would costume the show if I had the opportunity (and a gloriously unlimited budget).

THE CORPORATION RIM

I got to thinking about fashion in end-stage capitalism, and that was sort of what kicked off this portion of the essay.  I honestly imagine the modes, if not the forms, of fashion would be very similar in the CR as they are in our current-day, at least in some countries. 

To build a culture of fashion for the CR, I think it would be smart to draw on a few real-world examples.  The first is hyper-consumerism.  The CR is all about selling goods and services, and likely has the same non-sustainable perpetual-growth expectations of their companies that American corporations do today.  And how do you get infinite growth in fashion?  Constant turnover.  I think the five-minute trend-cycle currently seen in fashion would be in full effect in the CR, with aggressive and ‘personalized’ advertising selling the latest look as the real way to self-actualization.

I think the CR would say that they were all about self-expression.  After all, every single week you can buy a newer, better version of yourself!  See how much better you feel in these new clothes!  And the fact that you can keep up with trend cycles is a class signifier.  You can afford to replace your wardrobe every week.  Whether you can truly afford it or you’re going into debt to look rich, everyone is trying to play the game. 

But theirs is a homoginized self-expression, everyone wearing the same fashion for a week before a new trend comes along and everyone throws away their old wardrobe and orders another.  I imagine there are dozens of space Temus and space Shiens supplying the printer patterns for garment upon garment, all to chase the latest trend.  I think what the CR would almost certainly lack, much like current fashion in America, is any substantial fashion subculture or counterculture.  I think that, again, much like we see today, people may belong to subcultures on the Feed, but they can only express that part of themselves where no one can see.  When they’re out in public, they look like everyone else.  And I imagine that homogeneity would be rigidly enforced by a culture of shame and embarrassment.

I also think that cosmetic procedures would be not only widely available and accepted, but if you could afford it you started it an an early age.  I’m thinking of the Korean cosmetic procedures industry, and the culture of getting work done starting in Middle School, how crafting an idealized (homogenized) face is considered the height of beauty.  And I think about the Korean company that put out a style guide with facial proportions (and I believe cosmetic procedures) that would make a candidate look ‘employable’.  And just like the trend cycles in clothing, I would imagine that the procedures would also have cycles, different faces and bodies everyone with money can chase.  And that would be even more of a class divider.  Indentured or low-level workers wouldn’t be able to afford medical procedures for cosmetic reasons.  They likely can barely afford medical procedures for necessities.  Your face would tell everyone how wealthy you were, and the more ambitious lower-level employees would go to backstreet doctors to try to do it on the cheap.

It is a fashion dystopia to reflect a societal dystopia.  Clothing, people, and faces are all disposable.  Nothing is built to last.  You just try to make it to the next quarterly review without embarrassing yourself by looking too poor or ‘out of touch’.

PRESERVATION

Preservation, on the other hand, is a culture of hand-made.  Clothing, therefore, would not be disposable or plentiful.  Most people would own one or two outfits for a given occasion (work, school, leisure, fancy), and they would be owned for decades to be mixed, matched, modified, and patched.  Personalization would come far more from DIY modifications like embroidery, painting, dyeing, and add-ons like patches and collars and cuffs and ribbons and lace.  The work would sometimes be done by oneself, but just as often by a friend or a loved one.  We see that Arada sews and embroiders in the show.  She patches Bharadwaj’s uniform, and in the show notes they mention her embroidering everyone’s socks.  Ratthi makes his own jewelry. 

I would imagine that almost everyone on Preservation has some related skill to personalize clothing, and that they swap those skills around to further personalize what they have.  The work of their hands and hands of friends craft items that mean something.  Each modification is a memory, a gesture of love, making each piece of clothing a unique combination of dozens of hands and efforts.  Something truly personal and unique to that person, to be worn and loved as long as it possibly can. 

I imagine that, to outsiders who don’t understand their culture, they could look shabby, wearing dozens of clashing patterns, colors, random pieces of jewelry and patches and bits and bobs.  The notion of a popular ‘look’ is likely far less the common culture on Preservation, because your look depends on personal tastes, and what is locally available and able to be done by those around you. 

This is not to say that I think that Preservation fashion will be entirely without cohesion.  I think various pieces, fabrics, cuts, shapes, etc, will simply be culturally more common.  I like to think layering, both practical and interesting, would be common.  I think comfort and practicality would be common, but I also think whimsy and color would be equally common.  Lots of interesting jewelry, particularly of non-precious but beautiful stones, wood, and other natural materials.  Personalized tattoos, like Bharadwaj’s, as well as makeup looks, would also be common and meaningful either to culture or simply to the small group of people with whom a person shares an environment.  Preservation is a collectivist culture, so personal style is far more collective, influenced by the works and tastes of everyone around you, as well as yourself.  People certainly have preferences—I think Arada loves an oversized hand-knit sweater, and Pin-Lee likes asymmetry and really bold geometric patterns—but those tastes are elaborated by your immediate community.

Natural materials would be preferred over synthetics across the board.  Natural and organic forms in clothing, extensive patterning (dyed and painted and woven and embroidered), knits and crochet and other fun handmade construction techniques. 

I take a lot of inspiration from Afro futurism and from the Indigenous fashion scene as design inspirations, particularly for shapes and patterns.  (I admit I may be working on civilian designs for the entire PresAux crew).  The fashion shows in Santa Fe are a major inspiration, but also hippie styles from the late 1960s to earliest 1970s, before it was fashionable, and a lot of the gear was heavily modified or hand-made itself. 

I would love to see a show with a crazy budget really go in for hand-made items, with multiple cultural inspirations, creating a very different vision of a sci-fi future from the sterile visions of homogenized Western culture we often see.  Something colorful, fun, fashionable, not bleak or boring or earth-tone-poor-laborers-in-a-dystopia or only-the-rich-evil-queers-can-afford-color, but truly embracing fashion as a cultural expression. Having fun with it! Letting it be living and wild and fun in a way that, inevitably, some of our very CR-leaning-cultural audience would find embarrassing.

Just as much as the hellish five-minute-trend-cycle of the CR would be incredibly fun to visualize, so too would sourcing, commissioning, and creating the vibrant culture of Preservation through its fashion.

[phoenixkaptain]

Reading the novelization of A New Hope already changed how I saw Luke as a character but Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is going one step further and making me question the very fundamentals thought to be obvious about Luke.

Like, Luke is, for lack of a better term, a nerd. He studied languages and cultures -

“”Yes,” Luke admitted modestly. “I used to study a lot about certain worlds, back on my uncle’s farm on Tatooine. It was my only escape, and educational as well. This,” and he indicated the creature resting a massive long arm on his head and shaking him in a friendly fashion, “is a Yuzzem.””

-he wants to study more languages and cultures-

“Empty doorways beckoned to him and he was tempted, very tempted, to enter one of the ruined structures to find out if its interior was as well preserved as the outside.

This was not, he reminded himself firmly, the time for playful exploration. Their first concern was to find a way out, not to go poking around this ancient metropolis. However wonderful it was.”

Luke wants to know about people. He wants to know about cultures and creatures and he wants to be able to communicate and…

He really just. Is a great Jedi. He jumps between Leia and danger and he befriends the Yuzzem the prison guards thought would kill him and he wants to explore the creepy abandoned ruins of a civilization long past and he uses Anakin’s lightsaber underwater to cut the stem of a lilypad they use as a boat and he comments that the rock formations are almost too beautiful to cut down and he knows how to work Imperial explosives and

He’s a Jedi, man. He’s a Jedi. He’s been a Jedi this whole time, before any of us even knew what that actually meant.

[fl00mie]

honestamente, no sé

to prevent confusions i'm giving credits of every fankid in order (starting with the tall one)

layden (fresh x ink fankid) by @/sugary-alienn dot (cross x ink fankid) by @/yo-honne abstract (reaper x ink fankid) by CATA-824 on wattpad gradient (error x ink fankid) by @/askcomboclub paper jam (error x ink fankid) by @/7goodangel palette (dream x ink fankid) by @/angeutblogo blueprint (swap x ink fankid) by @/pepper-mint aiden (zack x ink fankid) by ariscastleart

[jewreallythinkthat]

Just seen someone say "am yisrael chai" is a dog whistle.

Like a dog whistle for what? It's a Jewish term which has been around for fucking forever and literally had dnothing to do with anyone not Jewish. They really are taking our word and sayings, deciding a new meaning which is totally bogus and then punishing us for something they made up and pretended was true.

And they call us colonisers.....

[natalievoncatte]

Even in the vast softness of Caitlyn’s bed

(their bed)

Vi felt the jolt. It was either that or the soft, pained exhalation that woke her, but it didn’t really matter. She snapped awake with the sudden alertness she’d been taught by Vander and had honed in Stillwater. Even though she came around in an instant, she still expected to feel a cold concrete floor beneath her aching side and smell the charnel stink of sweat, desperation, and blood. Waking up to soft linens and the clean, fresh smell of sheets washed in lavender water, and *Cait* felt fresh and new every time.

“…no…” Cait mewled. “…no… stop… Jinx… Cupcake! Cupcake she calls me-“

Vi hesitated, unsure whether to wake her. She’d seen plenty of people cry out in their sleep and knew that eight times in ten it was better to let them ride it out instead of waking them in the middle of something that might make them lash out or hurt themselves.

When Cait let out a blood-curdling scream, Vi lept wxross the bed and pressed a hand to her cheek, finding a cold sweat sheening her skin.

“Cait, wake up.”

Caitlyn’s eyes (*eye*, a bitter voice added) snapped open and she looked around, jerking up from the bed, her chest heaving as she drew in ragged, pained breaths.

Vi pulled her into an embrace, wrapping Caitlyn up in her arms and bending her body as much as she could to form a shield around her while Caitlyn desperately hugged her back and buried her face in Vi’s neck.

Sometimes they said more this way than they did by talking. Vi sat up and gently rubbed the back of Cait’s neck with her fingertips and pressed light kisses to the crown of her head, for no other reason than she loved her and she was free to show it.

Finally Cait said, “I had a nightmare.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Cait didn’t answer, instead resting her head on Vi’s shoulder while her finger aimlessly traced the tattoo on Vi’s arm, sort of half-humming on exhalation. Vi had learned that Cait wasn’t being rude when she didn’t answer her and that these little things she did to soothe herself were just as important. That Vi could savor Cait’s touches forever was incidental. Vi hadn’t touched her enough and would make up for it for the rest of her life.

“Do you remember the… the tea party.”

Vi swallowed hard. That night had been one of the most painful of her life, when all her sins had marched out of the darkness to revenge themselves on her tenfold. It was the terror she felt when she saw Cait’s eyes that shattered her, but the worst, the worst…

(I paid your girlfriend a visit…)

It hurt to even summon the thought, like touching the edges of a barely healed wound, feeling the scab lift and pull at the raw flesh beneath.

For a moment Vi knew that Jinx was going to lift that lid and Caitlyn’s severed rotting head would be sitting there staring at her with blank eyes and she cringed in horror and fear, a shiver ripping through her.

Cait knew; Vi didn’t have to say yes.

“Did you ever wonder how she knew you called me cupcake?”

Vi shook her head. “I thought she must have heard me. On the bridge maybe or…”

“She might have, but she delighted in making me tell her. I was helpless, terrified. She spent hours hurting me, but she kept saying she wouldn’t kill me because she was waiting for you. She said you’d do it.”

“Did you believe her?”

“No, never.”

Vi let out a long, slow sigh in relief.

“I hurt you. I hit you, but you would never hurt me.”

“We talked about that, Cait.”

“I know.”

There was a brief silence in the dark. First light was beginning to peek through the curtains and soon it would be time to get up. Most nights Vi hated waking now. She wanted nothing more than to spend then rest of her life in soft sunlit moments with Cait, making love under the warming sunlight as often as not.

Cait’s hand worked between them and traced over the scar on Vi’s belly, in the same spot where Cait’s rifle butt had smashed the air from her lungs and left her begging, sent her spiraling into a booze-fueled nightmare of longing where the pain of a fist to her face was the only thing that kept her awake long enough to keep looking for someone to kill her in the ring before the drinking did.

They held each other a little tighter.

“No one is going to get you now,” Vi promised.

“You’re not my keeper, Vi. You mean more to me than what you can do for me.”

“I meant you can hold your own. You took me out, remember? Do you know how many people can say that?”

“You let me win because I’m me.”

Vi shook her head. “Not until I was already face up on the ground. You took down Ambessa.”

“I had help.”

“You’ll have help if someone comes at you again. My help.”

“I told you, Vi, you…”

“No. It’s not because I owe you something, it’s because I love you.”

Vi hadn’t said the words yet, despite all this time, but it shocked neither of them.

“We protect each other, then.”

Vi nodded in agreement. She could see Cait’s eye growing lidded and the tension slit out of her body as Vi lay down with her. She was asleep in a few minutes, snoring lightly against Vi’s neck.

Vi vowed to stay awake, Cait was too soft.

[batsbirdsandspeedstersohmy]

Nonbinary community. We need something that's ma'am / sir but for nonbinary people or people who don't identify always with those.

I have a few people I interact at while working. That use ma'am and sir all the time and who stop and are apologetic. And would really love something they can use.

I am not nonbinary I am a trans man. But we have a nonbinary coworker. And there nothing online that we can find.

Just something that should be thought about. Cause there are people that use those words and would be relieved if there was something they could use for those who don't fit the binary of them.

[selunesfavouriteprincess]

you could probably argue it’s just for gameplay purposes but the fact that Clea can understand very clearly what Alicia trying to say even when she can’t physically speak does rotate in my mind permanently