Crawling out of Hell

Part-time dick factory. they/them.  

[ngbri]

(In the cadence of a joke)

Who's the rightful heir of Serque Removal?

🤷 Iono.

[editoress]

A tidbit from some of the critique of Ancillary Justice I see floating around GR.

The language of the big evil space empire doesn't distinguish genders in its personal pronouns, yeah? Everyone is she/her. Some reviewers are complaining that they were expecting more of an exploration of gender, but the book just left it at a genderless society. It's basic, it could have used any pronoun, etc.

To me, that writing choice was having fun with linguistics first and foremost. Singular pronoun -> applying "they" to everyone becomes confusing since most scenes have multiple characters -> using "he" for everyone risks defaulting all characters to male despite best intentions -> "she"

The thoughts about gender are in the conversation between the book and the reader, which in my opinion is the best place for them to be. Does the use of typically feminine pronouns affect how you read the characters? To what extent do you try to determine anyone's non-Radch gender? What do you base that determination on? The book is offering you the opportunity to think and have fun~

[alastair-made-me-undo-it]

the underlying thread in all of ann leckie's work, in my opinion, is the exploration of how methods of communication shape our perception of the world.

in radch, it's the ways we define ourselves and the world around us, and how we see ourselves and others because of it

in raven tower, it's the ways a "true" statement can actually have vastly different meanings or outcomes depending on interpretation

she has some short stories that're all interesting, too. different ways of looking at things, of interpreting things, and what that all means, and can mean.

[autistobrat]

this too shall pass but the fuck was that for

[damnhotpocket]

Gema.piano on instagram

Why are all music teachers like this 😭😭😭

[heartwarminganimals]

It wimdy

[violenceunimagined]

[the-frightening-ghoul]

‎

[tomhardysurinal]

I have never wanted to open a spam email so badly

[vile-images]

[screenshotsofdespair]

[s-h-a-s-e]

[anarkissa]

AI is not only taking our jobs, but…

[prokopetz]

A fun thing about fiction with large casts of characters is that sometimes you'll have a Spicy Bananas moment where every single character has an identical yet wildly atypical experience of some very mundane thing, and slowly you realise that the author isn't Making A Point, they just think that's normal.

[notsomeoneyouknow]

[fruutbaag]

[mixedscholarlybag]

Kalr Five's indignation about Breq trying to leave Omaugh without any nice dishes becomes funnier when you learn that Breq did specifically ensure that she got like an entire fucking crate of arrack

[leolaroot]

EVERY fucking stupid liberals university in the star trek future their fucking student sketch comedy group OF COURSE has at least one Vulcan and it's like their thing where they're like "haha I bet you wouldn't expect a VULCAN in an IMPROV group!!!!!" as if this hasn't become such a fucking tired cliche like literally since 2063 every fucking comedy show has the token Vulcan to be the straight man. you're doing nothing. call me when you guys make an effort to actually include tellarites in the writing room instead of confining them to punch lines. and to be honest with you guys your Vulcan isn't even that good. his performance was highly derivative of T'min's work in the big bang theory 3 (the third big bang yheory. they make a lot of sitcom sequels in the future)

[pegasus737]

The last thing you said cannot be true because star trek is supposed to be a utopian future.

[leolaroot]

star trek is very demonstrably not a utopian future it's a broken society playing at paradise. we see hints of this earlier in the post when I mention university improv comedy groups

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

In the very slow process of painting my house and I keep getting stymied by colour choices because I have absolutely no eye for colour and can't tell when they "clash" or understand what the fuck that means

Then I remember

It's MY house. I live here. Who the fuck cares if other people like the colour combos or not.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I'm starting with the toilet (the room itself not the porcelain throne) and I'm going full 90's deep-blue-and-golden-stars with it. Like the art you'd see in the home of a mid-20s woman who owned a hundred little dragon figurines and a shelf of astrology books. Deep blue 'nighttime' walls, yellow stars on them, debating whether to go with purple 'evening' trims and mantles so it can blend into the laundry next door which I'm going to be outfitting in full bubblegum purple. "Derin that's so tacky and outdated nobody does that blue and gold shit any more" okay but I love it. So there.

[magpiemirroring]

I think 90's blue+gold with stars/moons/solar imagery aesthetic went by the name Celestial back then.

It's starting to trend again (because the 90s were long enough ago to have retro appeal) thanks to the Whimisgoth aesthetic trend which is sort of 90s Celestial + Boho + Witchy vibes. (which, to be honest, if you were into Celestial decor in the 90s, there was a high chance you into all of those things).

Anyway, I think your bathroom sounds amazing. I bought some cheap stick-on wallpaper with a similar aesthetic to add accents to some of my furniture and I love it!

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Thanks for the term "whimsigoth", now I have a term to search that brings up the exact aesthetic I'm going for. This is very useful for designing.

[if-only-we-could-read-it]

If you like home reno-esque videos nerdforge made a video of them turning their guest bedroom into a deep blue celestial-vibes bedroom and reading nook! Its such a fun video and its made me really wanna have at least one room leaning into that dark blue and gold/yellow vibe when I get my own place.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Yeah I've been watching a lot of nerdforge for inspiration.

I don't have her tools and I'm absolutely not building stuff for my house out of bullshit crafting foam so I can't do the stuff she does but her videos are great for colour ideas

[lilisonna]

My dining room ceiling is wallpapered in a dark navy with gold and silver stars, and I can not stress enough how amazing it is.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

That sounds amazing I wish I trusted my skills enough to apply wallpaper

[alastair-made-me-undo-it]

my walls are covered in those peel and stick murals of trees because I wanted to live in a forest. many of my trees are crooked but they're trees they're supposed to be like that.

[professorsparklepants]

It is still sooooooo fucking funny that tumblr, the "fuck that old man" website, the villain apologist website, AND the paranormal boyfriend website read Dracula and went "Count Dracula sucks, we hate this dude." Planetary alignment levels of unlikely.

[gifsfromthecrows]

[asha-mage]

My toxic trait is that I am far more interested in the socio-economic and geopolitical implications of ABO settings than the smut.

For example: I can't read any ABO AUs set in England or France because while I can suspend my disbelief far enough for a gender trinary set up, I can't suspend it enough to believe those two countries would still be distinct entities in a alternate history where Richard the Lionheart could have impregnated Philip II.

If there was a viable dynastic future with Richard, Philip would have climbed him like an oak and dragged him to the altar if he had to. It's a match that makes perfect sense from both their points of view: Philip gets Aquitaine back under French rule, the best general in Europe on his council, and a powerful check on the Angevins... then unexpectedly (after Henry the Young bites it) the entire Kingdom of England for his Capetian dynasty. Richard meanwhile gets to stick it to his father, secure Aquitaine's prosperity, and gets the leverage to start pushing for his mother's release. Then when Henry kicks the bucket Richard doesn't actually have to be King of England in anything but name: Philip can run the countries and unify the Crowns and what not while Richard runs off to go Crusading.

Plus they also like, loved each other and stuff and being able to get to be together long term instead of being torn apart by politics would have been cool. But I'm mainly obsessed with the historical and dynastic implications.

All this to say any ABO au set in England or France that doesn't have them united as a singular Anglo-Frank empire is doing it wrong.

[felididasephophatase]

You joined the military, to serve as a soldier on a spaceship. It's not like this means much anymore, there hasn't been war for centuries or anyone to challenge your fleets.

You're starting in the lowest rank, not high born, sleeping in bunk beds and cleaning duty, but you work hard and you're good at your job, best in your group. Still, your duty is all routine and watch.

That is until one day, communications with HQ go down and when they go back up, your captain has picked the wrong side in a civil war inside the existing government that started right here right now in the very space station you were guarding. All existing officers on your ship are swiftly court martialed, congratulations, you are now an officer! Move into your now solo quarters and meet your new coworkers: You are now reporting two level higher directly to a fleet admiral, the emperor's cousin with an apparent past as intelligence officer and who likes shooting, singing and saying things that will get you court martialed. Your colleagues are the grumpy doctor, and living legend captain and only survivor of a ship fallen a thousand years ago, now degraded to lieutenant, and a teenage recruit lieutenant with migraine, well at least until it turns out she's was also supposed to be the emperor herself.

What I'm trying to say, Ekalu had one hell of a career change that week. And she got no one to confide, her family unreachable from the information blackout, how former bunkmates now her subordinates and the situationship out-of-her-time captain turns out to be a stupid snob.

[hypokeimena]

i was just talking about this after being wrecked by the discovery that the little elf-goblin fellows my parents/family used to tell me warnings and stories about as a little kid are regionally specific, and that you can trace people's geographic origins by what word they use for "little spirit-fellows who live in your house". no matter what you call them (domovoi, kobolde, brownies, so on); for purposes of this post henceforth "little guys"

i think one of the things that i find frustrating about like, idk, modern animist revivalist movements is that very few of them ime spend a lot of time romanticising and spiritualizing human habitation. obviously, we as a culture need to think more about protecting and defending nature/the earth/so on, but like.

if you don't have room in your heart for making up a little guy who lives in the water heater, or who squats under your stove and makes it run 15 degrees off the programmed temperature, and thinking of him with the same kind of respect/affection as you do for the spirits (or whatever) of the wildlife you interact with like.

genuinely: what are you even doing. you are removing a source of richness and fun and whimsy from your life! like, pip @creekfiend made up the concept of "little guys who live in an airport (and are the reason it's so shitty to be in an airport)" and i already like airports like 30% more just knowing it's the little airport inconvenience guys doing that.

more importantly, like. genuinely: interrogate what parts of the world seem ~rich with spiritual meaning~ to you. what parts of the world are "wild"? what does that make the rest of the world - a chore? a burden? who has to carry that burden?

we're never going to like, "return to nature", because that's nothing and the concept of untouched nature is also nothing; we're always going to have some sort of human habitation and interaction and cultivation with nature. if you can't extend grace and whimsy and genuine and sincere meaning to human habitation, including its inconveniences and annoyances, you are making your own lived experience duller!

notably, most of these kinds of little-guy-spirits historically exist in the parts of human habitation that are partially abandoned, partially removed: haylofts, inside the walls, under the house, in the bathhouse, behind the furnace... i've been thinking a lot about urban wildlife lately, and the animals who make space for themselves in and around human habitation. the "natural" and the "wild" persist inside and around the edges of the "tame" and always, always have. if you have a crawlspace, there's a little spirit who lives there and he's the reason the dryer always eats your socks.

LIVE WHIMSICALLY.