#what the word 'culture' actually means

[inkskinned]

she's singing in another room and my dog is asleep at my feet. my grandma asked me why i haven't found a man yet and i laughed. oh, you know. i like my house clean.

my girlfriend is also my man is also "my partner" if i'm in a professional setting. yesterday we went to a ren faire and a man mimed at me - you're together? and at my delighted nod, his baffled, you're gay? made me laugh. a woman with rainbow hair said i love the two of you together. you're both so beautiful it's absurd.

my dad introduced my partner as my "..... friend. or whatever" the other day. he knows we're dating. in the same way, i was never able to get my sister's husband to stop saying that's gay like it's 2008. he still uses the word fa***t, and my sister's defense of him has always been well, he's just kidding.

my lover and i dance to old music in a tiny kitchen. we judge new music together and take food critique very seriously. we watch love is blind before we fall asleep and agree that if they had a queer season, it would be bloody but also make for excellent tv. of fucking course queer people would know someone for only 2 weeks and agree to get married. what are you saying.

at a bar with friends, a man puts his hand on my wrist. got a boyfriend? and yes, i do have a boyfriend, she's amazing. i am texting her while i wander around a gas station named after geese. i am visiting a swing state for a wedding. in the candy aisle i overhear: she's actually like a lesbian it's disgusting. two teenage girls with packaged sandwiches in their hands, giggling. no literally, like. i'm not, like. okay with her being there while we're all, like, naked and changing.

my girlfriend and i tailgate, drink gin and cider out of cups. from the frat group beside us, a man corrects himself with one of his friends: bro, i mean, nonbinary entity, and it makes everyone around him laugh, myself included. he razzes his friend the same way i would have killed for at 19 years old - like nothing happened, he continues: you apply sunscreen like an alien. he does a little sassy (and fairly accurate) dance interpretation of the motion. his friend is laughing so hard they're crying.

i am lucky, i live in a safe neighborhood in a safe state. my masc passenger princess comes up from DC. i drive her for an hour to where all the leaves are a violent arrangement of color. we walk along the trails, letting autumn into our blood. in this part of the state, there's a lot of pickup trucks and trump signs. when we chastely kiss before getting into the car, i accidentally make eye contact with a woman holding her child's wrist. she looks disgusted. she looks fucking pissed.

two hours later my girl and i are eating dinner on a patio, soaking in the last warmth of new england sun before the chill of winter sets in. we are giggling and trying to talk through plastic vampire teeth. at another table, i see a young woman sit up straighter. i watch her watch us. she blushes and takes her partner's hand from across the table. shy, like the taste of evening has just become something deeper.

it's worth it for this moment, i think. my lover is still humming the same song she's been singing for four days straight and i don't want to kill her for it. her guitar is beside my bed. her toothbrush is in my bathroom. in a few moments i will make us lunch. we are lucky enough to have found each other. it is lucky enough to be in love.

[honeyrisuke]

also if i see one more fucking post saying "in northern europe you are unlikely to be offered food" and this claim is SOLELY based on american cultural understandings i'm gonna turn that fucking wording around on yall real quick

bc i think its horribly fucking rude to already be invited to someones house, then not communicate what you want AT ALL and just EXPECT to be able to stay over for as long as you want without pissing off after what you met up to do is over and also expect to be catered to exactly how you want and like it, all without even saying a goddamn word. it gives "Karen"

[liuisi]

i feel like this is a topic that needs more than just a tumblr post to fully expand on but. i think that in modern-day christian culture we place WAY too much emphasis on Feeling and Emotion . and i think that this attitude is part of the reason why the most common struggle you hear is "God isn't speaking to me/I can't hear God". feels like the standard set is that you're constantly feeling a Supernatural presence and it's Big and Obvious and it Shows and you can't contain it... when that's just not it. God can be quiet. God can nudge. God's voice is contained in the Bible that you hold between your hands. If you're not "hearing Him" then maybe your expectation of what hearing Him is is flawed.

[serpentface]

Do you conlang? I was wondering if you had naming languages (or possibly even more developed ones) for pulling the words you use. I tried to search your blog but didn't find anything, wouldn't be surprised if the feature is just busted tho. Your worldbuilding is wonderful and I particularly enjoy the anthropological and linguistic elements.

Ok the thing is I had kind of decided I was not going to do any conlanging because I don't feel like I'm equipped to do a good job of it, like was fully like "I'm just going to do JUST enough that it doesn't fail an immediate sniff test and is more thoughtful than just keysmashing and putting in vowels". And then have kinda been conlanging anyway (though not to a very deep and serious extent. I maybe have like....an above average comprehension of how language construction works via willingness to research, but that's not saying much, also I can never remember the meanings of most linguistic terms like 'frictives' or etc off the top of my head. I'm just kinda raw dogging it with a vague conceptualization of what these things mean)

I do at least have a naming language for Wardi (and more basic rules for other established languages) but the rudimentary forms of it were devised with methods much shakier and less linguistically viable than even the most basic naming language schemes, and I only went back over it LONG after I had already made a bunch of words so there's some inconsistencies with consonant presence and usage. (This can at least be justified because it IS a language that would have a lot of loanwords and would be heavily influenced by other language groups- Burri being by far the most significant, Highland-Finnic and Yuroma-Lowlands also being large contributors)

The 'method' I used was:

-Skip basic construction elements and fully move into devising necessary name words, with at least a Vibe of what consonants are going to be common and how pronunciation works -Identify some roots out of the established words and their meanings. Establish an ongoing glossary of known roots/words. -Construct new words based in root words, or as obvious extensions/variants of established words. -Get really involved in how the literal meanings of some words might not translate properly to english, mostly use this to produce a glossary of in-universe slang. -Realize that I probably should have at least some very basic internal consistency at this point. -Google search tutorials on writing a naming language. -Reverse engineer a naming language out of established words, and ascribe all remaining inconsistencies to being loanwords or just the mysteries of life or whatever.

I do at least have some strongly established pronunciation rules and a sense of broad regional dialect/accents.

-'ai' words are almost always pronounced with a long 'aye' sound.

-There is no 'Z' or 'X' sound, a Wardi speaker pronouncing 'zebra' would go for 'tsee-brah', and would attempt 'xylophone' as 'ssye-lohp-hon'

-'V' sounds are nearly absent and occur only in loanwords, and tend to be pronounced with a 'W' sound. 'Virsum' is a Highland word (pronounced 'veer-soom') denoting ancestry, a Wardi speaker would go 'weer-sum'.

-'Ch' spellings almost always imply a soft 'chuh' sound when appearing after an E, I, or O (pelatoche= pel-ah-toh-chey), but a hard 'kh' sound after an A or U (odomache= oh-doh-mah-khe). When at the start of a word, it's usually a soft 'ch' unless followed by an 'i' sound (chin (dog) is pronounced with a hard K 'khiin', cholem (salt) is pronounced with a soft Ch 'cho-lehm')

-Western Wardin has strong Burri cultural and linguistic influence, and a distinct accent- one of the most pronounced differences is use of the ñ sound in 'nn' words. The western city of Ephennos is pronounced 'ey-fey-nyos' by most residents, the southeastern city of Erubinnos is pronounced 'eh-roo-been-nos' by most residents. Palo's surname 'Apolynnon' is pronounced 'A-puh-lee-nyon' in the Burri and western Wardi dialects (which is the 'proper' pronunciation, given that it's a Kos name), but will generally be spoken as 'Ah-poh-leen-non' in the south and east.

-R's are rolled in Highland-Finnic words. Rolling R's is common in far northern rural Wardi dialects but no others. Most urban Wardi speakers consider rolling R's sort of a hick thing, and often think it sounds stupid or at least uneducated. (Brakul's name should be pronounced with a brief rolled 'r', short 'ah' and long 'uul', but is generally being pronounced by his south-southeastern compatriots with a long unrolled 'Brah' sound).

Anyway not really a sturdy construction that will hold up to the scrutiny of someone well equipped for linguistics but not pure bullshit either.

[aro-culture-is]

Alloaro culture is wanting a similar word to qpr for a committed partner you have sex with sometimes that is not romantic: qpr isn’t right because it has the word platonic in it.

hi! in a very gentle way, i am vibrating to let you know this is incorrect :)

from the POV of someone who's been around the aro community since ~2013-2014 on tumblr, the only time i've seen folks start to say that qprs couldn't include sexual components has been when

they've learned an incorrect definition of QPRs, or

in one particularly notable case, the individual proposing it turned out to be quite sex negative and upset at the mere thought that people could think that qprs could include sexual activity. this individual suggested an alternative term for individuals desiring sex in QPRs in a rather explicitly alloarophobic measure. when gently called out from what had seemed to be a genuine attempt at coining a new term, the above came to light. smaller cases of this pop up every once in a while, but this one got some notoriety.

queerplatonic was always meant to mean "queering the idea of a platonic relationship", "queering the idea of what a relationship means", and by explicit definition, has always been broadly and radically inclusive. any relationship, so long as the partners involved agree it is a queerplatonic one, is queerplatonic. no exceptions. this can mean it involves romance, sex, traditionally platonic elements, and anything and everything those involved desire out of it.

tldr; the word platonic is in queerplatonic to say it is counter to the idea of a restricted "platonic" relationship.

[lexyscross]

Horror fans will nut over brutal murder and gore, but then insist on shipping only the most vanilla ships you've ever seen and pitch a fucking fit over any ship they deem Problematic™. 🙄

[eldritchqueerture]

you never realize how much of our language for emotions is rooted in experiences from our bodies until you have to write emotional experiences of an entity that only possesses an arm up to the elbow, a foot and two eyes.

[catboygirljoker]

normal normal normal normal i hate the word normal. i hate people using it as a stand-in for "kind" or "compassionate". i hate people using it as an unmitigated positive. im white and able bodied and can pass as cis and neurotypical in a pinch but im autistic bi and trans i am not "normal" and even i have been hurt by uses of that word can you imagine how much worse it is for people who don't pass as neurotypical or cis or aren't white or able bodied. saw someone praising someone else for being "normal" about kink artists and you know what it looks like to be "normal" about kink? it means disparaging it. treating it as inherently dirty and amoral unless in the very specific forms that have become pop culture signifiers. it is in fact very "normal" to be awful to kink artists.

im still mad at that one post thats like "be normal about intersex people!" / "no, no, people are sexualizing intersex people in the reblogs, i meant be NORMAL!" and its like yeah buddy. sexualizing intersex people without their consent in inappropriate situations IS normal. if you wanted people to be compassionate to intersex people and humanize them you should've said that. instead of appealing to "normalcy". like even if the word "normal" DID mean only positive things you fucked up when you used an extremely vague word that means different things to different people in different contexts and expected them to know exactly what you meant

[good-beanswrites]

My english lyrics for Triage woo! (They're written out under the cut, I just wanted to share my lil chart lol)

Though I'm too indecisive to officially label this as my favorite song, it's had the strongest emotional impact on me by far. It holds a special place in my heart, I definitely wanted to write lyrics for it first! I'll leave all my rambling process commentary in the tags, but I was so happy with how it came out!!

All of those cards of promise thrown down carelessly,

This must be retribution for all I've taken endlessly.

If that were the case, it should have been fate for me to die.

That's the truth, given my crime, so why--?

No, I can't take it, to this cruel joke I'll submit. You

don't know, you can't know, but I'm ready to admit:

Killing for them, extracting for them, won't change the fact they're dead.

I need someone to tag me as RED.

It makes me sick (sick), it's too unpleasant. Sick (sick)

Is this punishment? What do you mean I'm INNOCENT?

I see, the world is cruel and leaves you on your own.

(I can't die) to atone. (I can't love) alone.

I can't be saved (saved), you've nothing to give. Saved (saved)

But what if I lived? Why else would you choose to forgive?

I see, there's lives to save so let's be sensible.

Right now, you need me, (I can be) indispensable.

Tilt to and fro, I know the scales should land on GUILTY for me.

Tilt fro and to, it's INNOCENT that they choose.

They cry (x4) out in pain, I can hear them. There's no one else, to guard their health,

My mission is offering help.

All of those cards of promise thrown down carelessly,

This must be retribution for all I've taken endlessly.

So if that's the case, then it must be fate to make amends,

Extract that fang before we meet the end.

It makes me sick (sick), it's too unpleasant. Sick (sick)

Is this punishment? What do you mean I'm INNOCENT?

I see, the world is cruel, but what I've realized is

(Now I want) to be INNOCENT. (Now I want) to live.

It makes me sick (sick), This wasn't my plan, hostages at my command.

Their future resting in my hands

I see, there's lives to save so let's be sensible.

Right now, please save me, (I will be) indispensable.

Maybe this was meant to be -- oh  -- or maybe neither of us can know

There's lives to save so let's be sensible.

Right now, please save me, (I will be) indispensable.

---

I mentioned earlier that I always get annoyed with myself when people post translyrics and I can't figure out the rhythm they were going for, so here's a recording of me singing, but I'm bad at it! It's just for fun! Like a rough draft for music! Because the only thing worse than people hearing my voice is people thinking I can't count syllables!

[seventh-district]

not even gonna tag this properly bc i don't wanna get Involved but i do have some Thoughts i need to get out into the void so here we go

(aaa quick edit: CW for mention/discussion of Boothill leaks)

[sysig]

Feeling and looking good 🌈 (Patreon)

[harmoon]

i love it when i end up watching series in a language i'm not familiar with*

[mint-mumbles]

Gonna use this image any time someone says something low key sexist about Sable (ie "she's showing too much skin" regarding a fucking bathing suit 😭🤦)

I don't hear you complaining about Spirit 😭

[angelicsentinel]

Not to yuck anyone's yum here, but I don't see how someone can do meta if they don't even have basic reading comprehension, much less do surface level critical analysis that says anything of substance.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Recent game related things .. hrmm...