"‘mech pilots are horny because they get sweaty and fuck after the fights’ you pedestrian, mech pilots are horny because the neural feedback loop from striking an acquired target w/ +90% accuracy on a full flight of LRMs makes most pilots leak in their seat. It’s not about two pilots, separated by mountains of metal, learning to mutually respect the others skill it’s about how these industrial war machines have direct lines into their nervous systems and an oxytocin & dopamine tap directly linking destruction to pleasure."
thinking about the scene in barbie where she asks for permission to be herself and she's told she doesn't need permission, and no one can give her permission for that, because it's just something you start doing
thinking about the scene in barbie where they say you don't need to be exceptional to have worth and deserve love, because just getting through the day is often hard enough
also thinking about the scene in barbie where barbie tells a bunch of construction workers she doesn't have a vagina and the construction workers who have no context beyond her being a pretty girl are like "oh okay that's cool"
Thinking about Doctor Barbie being portrayed by trans actress Hari Nef,
Thinking about Barbie concluding her character journey by obtaining genetalia,
Thinking about a narrative about confronting a fantasy of womanhood with a reality of womanhood, appreciating what that fantasy has done for you but also it's limitations and seeking out a more lived experience even if it means dealing with public perception, sexism and cellulite,
Thinking about all the Kens having a dance off on top of the trans flag.
Thinking about Barbie relishing in her version of femininity and finding it empowering until it is met with criticism for being consumerist and exploitative,
Thinking about Ken existing in a community which supposedly prides itself on autonomy and affirmation, but finding it has no place for him and his male identity,
Thinking about Ken finishing this film with the joy of affirming "Ken is me" and that's enough,
Thinking about Barbie finishing this film with taking a new legal name for herself.
What able bodied authors think I, an amputee and a wheelchair user, would want in a scifi setting:
Tech that can regenerate my old meat legs.
Robot legs that work just like meat legs and are functionally just meat legs but robot
Literally anything that would mean I don't have to use a wheelchair.
If I do need to use a wheelchair, make it fly or able to "walk me" upstairs
What I actually want:
Prosthetic covers that can change colour because I'm too indecisive to pick one colour/pattern for the next 5+ years.
A leg that I can turn off (seriously, my above knee prosthetic has no off switch... just... why?)
A leg that won't have to get refitted every time I gain or loose weight.
A wheelchair that I can teleport to me and legs I can teleport away when I'm too tierd to keep walking. And vice versa.
In that same vein, legs I can teleport on instead of having to fiddle around with the sockets for half an hour.
Prosthetic feet that don't require me to wear shoes. F*ck shoes.
Actually accessible architecture, which means when I do want to use my wheelchair, it's not an issue.
Prosthetic legs with dragon-claw feet instead of boring human feet or just digigrade prosthetics that are just as functional as normal human-shaped ones.
A manual wheelchair with the option to lift my seat up like those scissor-lift things so I'm not eye-level with everyone's butt on public transport/so I can reach the top shelf by myself.
A prosthetic foot that lights up when it hits the ground like those children's shoes.
A few more things to possibly tack on! (Ambulatory aid user here, I use a wheelchair, canes, crutches)
For wheelchairs:
An auto-balancer for doing wheelies when I go up/down a big bump. (hypothetically you could even go down stairs if you had enough balance like that, but ay yikes I would be Nervous, haha)
BETTER POWER ASSISTS OH MY LORD. the current ones I know of are super heavy and have a bunch of tech issues
A seat you can adjust yourself without having to get out of the chair, for if you're doing something more active versus just chilling/relaxing (the best body positioning for really active movement vs just sitting is different, at least in my experience)
Literally, some sort of alarm system that discourages people from trying to push me without asking, or like... push handles that only manifest when I want them to.
Variable shock absorption - if I could make it super shock-absorby over rough terrain, but then "harden" it somehow on smoother terrain, that would be really efficient!
How about wheel gearing? Like on a bicycle. Add in a push-motion-reverser thingy (look up Rowheels to see what I'm talking about) and I'd love that.
For crutches/canes:
SHOCK ABSORPTION. Crutches and canes are hard!!
On that note, multi-terrain tips!!
A magnetic crutch cuff that can detach from the crutch if needed so I can reach across a counter and not accidentally kneecap someone with the stick.
Better collapsibility.
Have fun with the scifi aspect. Have your character tinker and add a load of gadgetry into their aids (and that goes for wheelchairs and crutches/canes). I don't know. Stick a grappling hook function into it. Have them be usable as defense weaponry. Have a cloaking device built into the crutches/canes themselves for stealth. I dunno. Use your imagination!!
And finally, if you've got a cool idea, feel free to run it by someone who actually uses whatever aid you're writing about to get an opinion! (With permission, please, don't just barge into a random person's inbox. I myself am totally open to questions like that, and I know @cripplecharacters is a good resource!)
That Ghibli inspired 5e book that I saw some people commenting sparked a lot of thoughts in my mind, but most of it is how we are filled with books with a lot of surface level inspirations that dont make a full critical analysis of what they are referencing and end up being not even a good homage but fail to unuderstand their inspiration, like saying that they are a cozy game but fill the rules with stat blocks and loot. It also always coming back to this nature of ttrpg in general to use pre estabilished systems that most of the time dont work with the fiction they have in mind, because that system itself is created with another fiction in mind. But the first thing that comes to my mind is that those products dont strive to be engaging and fun, is just to generate profit quick using a system that is very marketable, a visual style that is generally adored and you can post how you reach your ks money in 10 seconds.
It is a pattern not uncommon not only in ttrpg but game in general, something is popular or becomes popular and there is a lot of copycat, but with the tabletop rpg scene tradition of using srds, specially the OGL because it's tied to Dnd and it's big popularity, we see more of it, or at least a version that I don't want to call lazy, but focuesd on only generating buzz and sales on Kickstarter.
idk if anyone cares about this kinda thing, but i’ve been pondering the idea of a mammal with four toes on each paw coming up with some kind of counting system. it’s base 4 and these are the symbols i came up with for it
the animal society in my mind that uses it are about as smart and developed as something like warrior cats or watership down so they don’t actually really write. an idea i had is that they can pick up a stick or stone in their mouth and draw it out in the dirt if they needed to. most of the time, though, they just say the names of their numbers verbally.
they don’t consider zero to be a numerical value, thus there is no symbol for it. to them, it’s nothing, so there’s no need to make a symbol for it.
when counting, they do something similar to counting on their fingers, but with their paws. they will stamp their paws, starting with their dominant front paw and going around in a circle. it’s kinda like a weird little dance
better, clearer drawings of the symbols with the numbers they are equivalent to (they will not have the same names, but for rn just refer to them with the english names until i figure something out)
Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a "master-planned community," constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don't exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
Every single house is pastel with white trim and a white picket fence with the family's name on it in a handwritten font. The streets are paved with red bricks and lined with palmettos, and families bicycle past. The streets are clean, the lawns manicured, the sidewalks pristine.
Soon after we arrive my friend says as we walk, "God I wish I could live in a place like this. Imagine having the money to live in a place like this." I reply, "I don't actually know for me...it's gorgeous don't get me wrong, but there's no grime, you know? Where's the grime? I'd feel uncomfortable. It feels like there's not a dive bar for a hundred miles."
We reach the town center, which is a wide square lined with shops on one side, food trucks on the other. We have a lovely time looking through the shops, though I start feeling kinda weird, and I'm not sure why. Probably the extreme cleanliness of the area is making me feel off-kilter. And the surreal feeling of walking through areas I recognize from The Truman Show only adds to the weirdness.
We go into a clothing store, and it's crowded with people who appear to have stepped out of a Land's End catalog. It sells boring tshirts, shorts, and sundresses in whites and blues, all needlessly expensive. Employees walk through, refolding already-pristine shirts. So perfect. "Anyone buying from here is so rich they can probably smell the poor on us," my friend jokes, "that's why they have so many employees refolding things, it's to fix anything we brush against." "Or even breathe on!" I add.
We continue on to the grocery store where, in the movie, Truman finds Marlon stocking the vending machine and first tells him he suspects his world is wrong. I buy some pasta salad there to eat for lunch (all the cafes are quite expensive), and we find a place to sit and eat. As my friend finishes up her food, I write a postcard to my sister, telling her about my trip overall and my day in Seaside, describing the town as 'vomit-inducingly picturesque.' (It has been weeks since my visit and she still has not received that postcard)
Lunch done, we decide to walk down to the beach and have a swim. And I realize something about the surreal feeling. "Weird question," I say to my friend, "have you seen any non-white people here? Am I imagining that?"
She pauses. "The lady cleaning the bathrooms?" she asks.
"No I mean vacationers. Guests, customers. Other than you, I haven't seen a single one who wasn't white."
"...No. I haven't either."
And now that we see it, we can't unsee it. It's a wealthy area, so I had been expecting it to be pretty white, but the fact that there is not a single nonwhite person who isn't working a service job feels so gross. It's as though the place is somehow still segregated, like we have stepped back in time, but not to the fun, fake, rock-n-roll-and-soda-parlor-nostalgia version of the fifties, but to the real racism-and-repression fifties.
It is so fucking weird and sinister. I feel I have stumbled into another realm. All these people giving us sideeye, riding around on their golf carts in their pristine $45 seaside-branded tshirts, taking pictures of the perfect houses all lined up in perfect rows. A whole town of Meryls wearing lulu lemon.
We walk on. It's hot, and a swim is exactly what we need. Surely they can't ruin the ocean. I myself am extremely excited to swim, because now that we've spent a few hours among the pompous populace, I want to piss in their perfect ocean more than anything in the world.
We walk along behind the beachfront bar patios that line the beach toward the access point, and the ocean looks so blue and inviting. Although the hedge growing between us and the dunes is strangely tall. "Huh," I think. "It's weird that they'd grow it like this, it blocks the view for everyone sitting on the patios."
We arrive at the boardwalk, and there is a man standing there. He says "Hold on! Do you two have a beach access pass?" I look at him in disbelief. It's a public beach, but the sign behind the man says you have to rent a beach chair to use the beach, and it's $35 per person. We glance at each other, turn wordlessly, and head back to town.
I seriously consider trying to sneak onto the beach somehow, because at this point I am very invested in the idea of pissing in their ocean, but I realize that with the tall hedge it would be nigh-impossible.
We went home after that.
So many reviews for Seaside on travel websites mention how they love to visit Seaside because they feel transported, they feel it reflects a "simpler time" or a "peaceful life." It's been weeks and I can't stop thinking about my experience. It really drove home how...complicit people can be in their own ignorance. A lot of people want to live in that perfect bubble, and especially if they have the money, they can maintain that barrier. It reminds me that part of the reason I often have trouble persuading these types of people is because they simply do not want to be persuaded. They're so proud to be the place where The Truman Show was filmed, but I rather doubt they really think about what it means that they live on a movie set, in a surreal dream.
Honestly visiting Seaside was a 10/10 unique experience. I would highly recommend it as a place to go for a couple hours if you're gonna be nearby and want to feel like you've been kidnapped into The Truman Show and/or your brain has been put in an easy bake oven. It's like a zoo for superrich WASPS. We had a really good time loudly making fun of how insane it all was, invading their little paradise with our riffraff energy. Treat it like an excursion into the jungle; you're gonna have to park a half mile away minimum, and bring all your food and water with you so you don't have to buy anything. You don't want to give them any money. They have enough.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, next time I go to the panhandle, I will be going to the nearest free public beach access to Seaside, and I will walk to the Seaside area of the beach, and I will piss in their ocean.
between tumblr being found guilty of moderating lgbtq content unequally during the 2018 ban in court and @ sorryforpartyrocking being nuked for suggesting one of tumblr staff may have investment in defending terfs to now many different trans women having their text posts and selfies being flagged as mature without the opportunity to appeal in any meaningful way (one of which was nuked herself)… it’s very. hmmmm. it’s a bad look. as if staff wasn’t already on thin ice for refusing to engage in any effective way with hate speech. “queerest space on the internet” my ass
The poem is written in common hymn meter (alternating lines of 8 and 6 syllables, usually iambs), so there are many possible tunes you can use to sing it:
My horny ass could NOT be the sole mechanic for a mech, alone in the repair bay, talking to the mech's AI core, discussing the harsh reality of the war we've found ourselves in. Me discussing my mortality, the 50ft entity I've spent the last several years learning the intricacies of and is fully aware of the fact that as a tool of war it'll either die in battle or end up abandoned as it's systems all fail until emergency back-up power keeps it awake for possibly thousands of years. We talk about how neither of us has felt a connection between ourselves and anything else worth dying for like that, except maybe... Well, the rest of the base has almost certainly gone to sleep by now. The cockpit clicks shut with a soft "click" and I. I mean uh, I forgot where I was going with this.
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