Savannah Dawn

Chatty—editor/writer—world explorer—hobby collector—queer—ttrpg player—library person—general life enthusiast—em dash abuser—PM, writer, editor for Aegis of the Elements Book 2— landloperslibrary.wordpress.com —opinions are my own—all pronouns

[africanmorning]

The app doesn't show tag pages and I refuse to moderate my reblogging, so—

Here's a pinned post with links to the main stuff I'm about, in case you don't want to sift through the rest of my nonsense:

Writing

TTRPG Stuff

Library Stuff

(Edit: okay I'm moderating reblogging a little bit. New art reblog sideblog is @africanmorningartreblogs )

I also wrote a book! It's a small sci-fi retelling of an Italian fairy tale where a young woman leaves her abusive household to work for a community of cats. You can find it here:

The Company of Cats by Savannah Dawn

Reblogs of my original content help me grow best as a creative, but likes are also appreciated.

(Note: I use the queue system extensively, so don't be surprised if I "like" something and it doesn't show up as a reblog until a week later)

[aleshakills]

Is there a word for occupying the space where normies think you're a freak and freaks think you're a normie?

[litwicking-it]

i do hope everyone on the trans spectrum feels safe on my blog/talking to me. there's so much hate from inside the community rn it seems like you can't reblog one group's issues without being flooded with posts condemning another group. its draining.

i love you trans women I love you trans men I love you tfems and tmascs I love you boygirls and agender people I love you genderfluid people and demiboys and girls. I love you intersex people and enbys. I love you afab tfems and amab tboys. I love you lesboys and gaygirls. I love people that use contradictory labels and people with xenogenders. I love weird and wacky forms of gender expression, I love people who are hyperfem or hypermasc. I love <3

[africanmorning]

My sister works in civil engineering and my bf is very into Lancer, so here

Karrakin Major House Water Quality Tier List

[strix-returns]

Why does the House of Promise have such dogpiss water?

[africanmorning]

They're kind of preoccupied with being on the front lines of the Dawnline Shore. Trying to build and maintain quality water infrastructure while worrying about military deployments and terrorist attacks is very difficult.

[moniquill]

Let me tell you a story about media representation and how it informs creativity.

When I was a kid, I wrote a (terrible, rambling, thoughtlessly colonialist) sci-fi story with a huge ensemble cast. It was a hugely diverse cast too, with tons of (problematically described) POC. I even had characters with disabilities and non-binary genders. This was mostly because my ideas about what sci-fi was and what characters could be in it were largely informed, at the time, by Star Trek and the Star Wars prequels and Independence Day and The Fifth Element and Men in Black and The Matrix. Stories with lots of POC in them, characters with disabilities, characters who were from disparate cultures and had disparate identities and ways of being.

When I was a kid, I also wrote a (really fucking terrible, even more rambling, preachy as fuck) fantasy novel. And there was not a single person of color in it. Oh there were oppressed groups – represented by light-skinned or animal-featured nonhumans. This was mostly because my ideas about what fantasy was and what characters could be in it were largely informed, at the time, by JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, by Disney and Don Bleuth and Jim Henson. Stories with NO POC in them, where everyone was able-bodied and white and usually thin and pretty (extra points for ‘pretty’ being described as ‘fair’) unless they were EVIL.

I am an NDN woman, and none of my characters ever, EVER, were.

Because until I actually gave it direct and attentive thought, before I considered the ramifications of setting and characters and who could be in what stories, my ARTISTIC VISION and my creative process was hugely affected by the stories I’d been told my entire life. I did not imagine POC characters in fantasy stories, but I did imagine them in Sci-fi stories. Because I’d been told by the stories I’d been fed from early childhood that POC could exist in the future, but not in fantasy; fantasy was set in mythical whitelandia not really resembling Europe, and if POC were even mentioned they were from exotic foreign lands to the south and the east (and they were seldom characters, certainly never core characters).

I say this because I am tired of hearing writers say ‘well I just didn’t imagine the character that way! You can’t fault me for that, it’s my story and my inspiration!’

Your inspiration does not come from a perfect, unbiased void. Every story you tell is informed by every story you’ve ever been told, and you cannot divorce yourself from that. So if you want to be a thoutful, aware writer who is writing the best, richest story you can write, if you want your creative process to be as free and uninhibited as it can be, you need to stop and think about what informs your creativity and whether or not it is, in fact, problematic as fuck.

[africanmorning]

My sister works in civil engineering and my bf is very into Lancer, so here

Karrakin Major House Water Quality Tier List

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

Apparently some people still need to hear this so: using an 'ai checker' is still using ai. If you are feeding someone's fic to one of these checkers, you will still not be sure their fic is ai because they are not 100% accurate, but you can be 100% sure that you are using ai. For fic. Furthermore you are doing the work of an ai scraper for them. You are, personally, feeding the machine. There is no actual excuse for using an ai checker on fanfic as a hobby. YOU are the problem.

If you think a fic is ai, mute it and move on. That's it. That's all you do.

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

Um. Yikes

[celsius451]

For disability pride, think I want to focus on this one thing that been bothering me

Been very frustrated lately by lack of phone call accessibility as someone who lacks speech but needs a lot of resources to stay healthy.

With rise of AI, it's only getting worse and worse.

More places changing their systems to incorporate AI answering machines.

Thing is...

Whenever I hear most people ranting about this change, it's usually about how annoying it is from an abled-person perspective or environmental or ethical impact.

Which are important valid reasons to be upset. I share those sentiments too.

But feel like disability is once again forgotten about within important discussion about change.

AI creates terrible language accessibility issues.

In fact, that's why it so annoying to deal with it.

In the past, if a place didn't have a call center or desk person to answer calls, they use extentions.

That meant you had to press a few numbers to get the right person.

Now with AI, you're expected to have a full conversation with a robot.

Tell them why you're calling, who you need to speak to, verify your info so the humans don't have to later, etc.

These bots can be bad at understanding what able-people are saying, so imagine how they handle these disabled callers:

People who use AAC (speech aids/devices)

People who slur, stutter, have "strange" voice or pronunciation

People with rapid or disorganized speech

People who use poor grammar & who don't speak full words or sentences

People who mix up similar common words

People with "deaf accent"

(i don't know if there is a different preferred term for this. Im sorry if I sound offensive. Please Lmk)

People with non-communicative speech such as vocal tics, echolalia, or babbling

Anyone who uses speech or language in a way that needs a human mind to interpret

Anyone whose voice sounds notably different

Ability to understand what AI is saying can be harder too:

d/Deaf people and other hearing differences

Auditory processing disorder

Receptive language disorder

Developmental disability, especially intellectual and learning disabilities

(AI can't help people who need things explained a certain way. AI unreliable and fails to adapt a lot.)

Anyone who frequently can't make out sounds and/or speech

Anyone who frequently has trouble with meanings in conversation

The problems I often face with AI answering machines (and that I'm sure many other disabled people have faced as well):

AI slightly mishearing me/my device

AI mishearing so badly that it basically makes up a fake conversation

AI not hearing me/my device at all

AI registering tics and stims as answers

AI "explaining" an instruction by repeating the same instruction again word-for-word

AI directing me to the wrong person without trying to confirm what I said

AI sometimes just... hanging up on me right after I speak my first answer...

These are the machines being put in front of

hospitals

doctors offices

mental health centers

pharmacies

transportation and in-home care

health insurance member services

medical supply companies

government resource agencies

non-profit organizations

advocacy groups

justice centers & other legal resources

customer service lines

many other places disabled people often need to access from home

It's another example of some of the most vulnerable being pushed away from the things we need, and we're also being forgotten in these discussions about things that can affect us a lot

Next time someone is ranting about AI job interviewers, please also remember:

the AI pharmacy assistants that make it impossible for someone with a speech disorder to sort out their meds

the AI scheduler that won't allow a D/deaf person to access the right extension of the clinic to set up an appointment

the AI agent that confuses an intellectually disabled person into anger and tears

the AI answerer that hangs up on a mentally ill person seeking help in crisis because they aren't speaking coherently enough

Human beings need to be at the forefront of human resources and issues for disabled people especially. Please remember us. Please fight.

Happy disability pride ♡

[spikelleberrygin]

If given the chance to change your height, would you want to

(4'11" or under) be taller

(4'11" or under) be shorter

(4'11" or under) stay the same

(5' - 5'7") be taller

(5' - 5'7") be shorter

(5' - 5'7") stay the same

(5'8" - 6'2") be taller

(5'8" - 6'2") be shorter

(5'8" - 6'2") stay the same

(6'3 or more) be taller

(6'3 or more) be shorter

(6'3 or more) stay the same

Voting ended onJul 22

[samuelroukin]

one thing i hate about english is your open compound words. what do you mean it's a light switch and not a lightswitch or a water bottle instead of a waterbottle. get real

[samuelroukin]

why won't you let your words frot.

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

This was specifically invented to pad out nanowrimo word counts and now that it no longer exists, we can start putting words together again.

[queerautism]

Hey so as the economy continues to get worse in the next few years, gambling companies are going to go extra hardcore predatory as people become more desperate. Yes, even more than they already are. You have to promise me right now you're not going to fall for it. No gambling, okay?

This is going to be especially bad with prediction markets and sports gambling, and it's already really fucking bad. But it also goes for loot boxes, blind box collectables, trading card games, and ESPECIALLY gacha games.

[english-mace]

yes labubus are gambling

[drafty-castle]

Can you expand on the labubu is gamboling bit? I guess I don’t know enough about them because I can’t see how going out to buy an ugly doll is gambling.

[drafty-castle]

@africanmorning

Thanks. I didn’t realize that they’re blind box. Thought they were more like beanie babies. You buy what you want but everybody wants them all out specific ones so it’s a rush when a bye one comes out.

[africanmorning]

Yeah, I didn't know it either until I saw another Tumblr post a while back specifically unpacking the predatory gambling tactics behind Labubus lol. It's all still very strange to me.

[pawthorn]

Really hate that most people don’t understand the difference between “self-expression” and “artistic-expression.”

I say this as someone who sells pottery, and many people who see my art assume I am using art as an outlet to “express myself.”

I am not.

I use art to challenge myself. A lot of what I do is the equivalent of doing a hard sudoko or a half marathon, answering the question of “can I do this?”

I use art to question things and explore ideas. Finding physical synthesis between concepts and working out a design to its end state.

I use art to make money. I make some things just because I suspect they’ll sell well, and I keep making them when they do.

This idea that an artist is “putting themselves out there” every time they create is not only stupid, but harmful, and it kills critique and analysis.

Yes every creative work is influenced by its creator, but the most preliminary step of analysis is to define the purpose of a work of art (functional, narrative, entertainment, persuasive, decorative, ceremonial, etc.) and a vanishingly small percentage of that is self-expression. Even then, it’s generally tied to the self’s relationship with something else—perception, society, etc.

It’s very tiresome to have people assume they know you because they like (or dislike) your art, to make assumptions about who you are and how you approach the world. It’s nothing new— people called the Impressionists insane and the Fauvists degenerate. And now people are expected to hand out their identities and traumas to prove they have the right to explore certain subjects.

But to actually understand art, you have to contextualize it beyond assuming it’s just what the artist felt like making at the moment and it’s somehow coming from their deepest soul, or you’ll badly misinterpret most art you come across.

[queerautism]

Hey so as the economy continues to get worse in the next few years, gambling companies are going to go extra hardcore predatory as people become more desperate. Yes, even more than they already are. You have to promise me right now you're not going to fall for it. No gambling, okay?

This is going to be especially bad with prediction markets and sports gambling, and it's already really fucking bad. But it also goes for loot boxes, blind box collectables, trading card games, and ESPECIALLY gacha games.

[english-mace]

yes labubus are gambling

[drafty-castle]

Can you expand on the labubu is gamboling bit? I guess I don’t know enough about them because I can’t see how going out to buy an ugly doll is gambling.

[sirfetchd]

how it feels to be obsessed with your own ocs but you cant think of what to say about them

[d1g1t4l-cr1ppl3]

This disability pride month remember to include those of us who aren't ambulatory wheelchair users in your advocacy

[spacemancharisma]

do y’all remember usernames??? from back when every fuckin website didn’t need your email phone number home address social security number just to join/sign up for something?? when you could make website-specific accounts that weren’t linked to literally anything else??? they tried to boil us like a frog slowly switching to “username/email” and then just asking for your email. but I remember. I remember usernames.

[feynites]

Tip:

When it comes to stuff like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, I’ve found it’s usually way better to think to yourself ‘I don’t want to be’ than ‘I’m not’.

I.e. if someone goes ‘that thing you just did is ableist’, instead of going ‘I’m not ableist, I don’t hate disabled people!’ it’s usually a lot better to go ‘I don’t want to be ableist, I should rethink what I’m doing/saying/etc in light of that fact’. Because that shifts your thinking so rather than jumping straight into denial and attempts to defend your character, you’re instead more inclined to look at how your actions could be misrepresenting your intentions. Or whether you’ve overlooked something, been callous, or acted in ignorance.