[Image description Tweet from FeoUltima "Kojima would never name a trans woman character Sirona Ryan, he'd name her something like Hard Mommy and trans women all over would go "changing my name to that" in response."]
"Hard Mommy is the leader of cougar cell.
Her specialty is defense, but I guess you've realized that by now. By analyzing the battlefield she is able to quickly deduce perfect formations for infantry deployment and fortifications.
She has lead her men against seemingly impossible onslaughts, including Chemical and Biological attacks.
Fighting along side her men, she has taken more than a few bullets for them. They respect her like she was their own mother."
"So thats why they call her Hard Mommy..."
"No, Hard Mommy isn't for that. Its because she's a top."
ok so I did some further diving and this isn't so much a new genre as it's just a fairly niche one — 规则怪谈 rules horror, i.e. a horror story told through increasingly bizarre and disturbing rules
I initially came across the online short story 《动物园规则怪谈》, which comes out to something like "Strange Tales of the Zoo Rules." it opens with 15 rules for visitors to follow while visiting the city zoo, beginning innocuously but swiftly veering into inexplicable strangeness:
Rule #1: There are absolutely no problems with the security measures in this zoo. There is no possibility of animals escaping, particularly small herbivores, most of which are kept in closed environments. If you see a rabbit escaping on the roadside, please take your children away and report it to the staff immediately. Do not approach the rabbit or touch it, particularly if the rabbit notices you and begins to approach at high speeds.
[...]
Rule #6: There is no aquarium in this zoo. If a staff member sells you a ticket to the aquarium, refuse them.
Rule #7: If you have already seen the aquarium, please leave immediately and call the phone number marked on the map.
the visitor rules are then followed by the employee rules, which continue to escalate in peculiarity:
Rule #1: If you find an escaped rabbit, do not immediately capture it or approach it. Lead it to the lion enclosure and leave the rest to the white lions.
[...]
Rule #6: There is no aquarium in this park. If your colleague mentions the aquarium to you and seems confident that it exists, stop the conversation immediately. This colleague is no longer
the person you know.
Rule #7: If you see the aquarium, do not enter. Tell yourself that it does not exist and leave immediately.
Soon, the various rules begin to contradict themselves:
NOTICE POSTED AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE AQUARIUM
If you are lucky enough to see this notice, please do not make it public. [...] You have surely noticed from the rules on the map that this zoo is not only unsafe, but also strange and disturbing. We are an undercover government organization determined to protect innocent visitors. Please be sure to abide by the following rules to ensure your safety. This is your only way to escape from this zoo.
Rule #1: Enter the aquarium. There is no one here. Pick up a black uniform at the door and put it on...
versus:
NOTICE POSTED INSIDE THE AQUARIUM
Rule #1: Do not enter the aquarium when there are people. If you are greeted by a staff member after you enter, please find an excuse to leave immediately after reading this notice.
[...]
Rule #7: Our staff wear red uniforms and only conduct daily routine cleaning and inspection of the aquarium after 12:30 A.M. If you meet someone in a black uniform who claims to be a staff member of the aquarium, you can talk to them, or agree to let them serve as a temporary tour guide, but do not give them your map, especially the part torn along the dotted line.
[...]
Rule #9: The aquarium exists and does not serve any organization.
versus:
A note posted in the security room by a security guard working in the elephant enclosure three years ago:
Rule #1: Always remember the color of your clothes. It can be any color: red, blue, or black. Do not change the color of your clothes. It is very important to remain firm in your self-perception. Do
not let "it" find out that you are hesitant and indecisive in your perception of the outside world....
through these found texts, which include official rules, unofficial signage, and torn scraps of notes with frantic, increasingly incoherent scribbles in the margins from people trying to escape, the story builds an unsettling portrait of this zoo through negative space — a zoo that you, the reader, can only catch glimpses of as you try to piece together what's going on through in/consistencies in the found texts
the short story is both puzzle and adventure, horror seeping through the increasingly porous membrane of the mundane. given that various rules contradict themselves, which ones are the rules that will guarantee your safety, and which ones will deliberately sabotage you? which ones were written by someone in their right mind, and which ones were interfered with in order to trap more victims for "its" amusement?
anyway, more poking around revealed that rules horror is a whole subgenre of (mostly) short fiction that renders the ordinary uncanny and the mundane horrific through the sharp contrast of something as "dry and boring" as rules conveying bizarre and illogical information. the specific medium of "rules" places the reader in medias res, situating the reader in a lineage of discovery as anonymous forerunners test boundaries, hypothesize rules, die in obscure and disturbing ways, go mad for undisclosed and unknowable reasons. the subgenre also resonates with video game-style storytelling despite being static; there is a sense of the narrative being pushed forward by "actions taken" and an assumed end goal of "clearing the level" (escaping the zoo)
and perhaps this specific overlap with video game logic particularly aligns rules horror with unlimited flow, because hardly a month after I first stumbled across these silly little blind box theaters that the worldbuilding of rules horror showed up in the unlimited flow novel I was reading, so it's been very cool to see the intertextuality manifest right in front of me in real time
mutual reblogs a post once: normal. expected. they liked the post and wanted to share it. an average transaction in the tumblr economy
mutual reblogs the same post again immediately after: whoops! hit the button twice! happens to us all. easy enough to scroll past. the state of the economy continues
mutual reblogs the same post three times: a statement. dashboard art. the rule of threes. this is no longer economical it is political. there’s something being said here. ! ! !
four times: oopsie daisie tumblr glitched! look at this frog four times :) haha
five times: your tumblr mutual has lost themselves in the post. they’re sobbing. this image, this string of words, this series of gifs from the television show “The X Files” (1993-2002) has enraptured and enthralled them so deeply that for a moment they have forgotten where and who they are. all that exists is the post, and as they click the reblog button over and over again in a way it is themselves they are sharing. it is their essence that they are spreading over the dash. look at me, mutuals. hear me. see me splayed out. this reblog is my intestine; this, my liver; this, my two lungs; this, my beating heart; and this, my sordid brain on full display in my tumblr blog’s glass jar. does it make you uncomfortable? does it make you as uncomfortable as it makes me? has any other person felt so publicly displayed as i do now by this gif of david duchovny? when god made man, were his motivations the same as when man makes art?
im not even the type of guy to go "actually it's frankenstein's MONSTER" because a painting by rembrandt or picasso or any other artist is often called "a rembrandt" or "a picasso" as shorthand. so in this respect frankenstein's monster can be considered "a frankenstein"
this girl was showing all the signs of being a secret mermaid so i pushed her into the pool and she turned into a forty foot long mosasaurus which is tbh way cooler
for those of you asking why i pushed her into the pool in the first place: i work for a duplicitous small town aquarium and i'm trying to kidnap mermaids to jump through hoops and shit to entertain tourists and make money. fucking obviously. now that i know she's actually a mosasaurus though i Have fallen in pure-hearted love with her
this girl was showing all the signs of being a secret mermaid so i pushed her into the pool and she turned into a forty foot long mosasaurus which is tbh way cooler
for those of you asking why i pushed her into the pool in the first place: i work for a duplicitous small town aquarium and i'm trying to kidnap mermaids to jump through hoops and shit to entertain tourists and make money. fucking obviously. now that i know she's actually a mosasaurus though i Have fallen in pure-hearted love with her
The sandwich gender spectrum post has escaped containment again and reading the responses at this point is almost as fascinating as the original field work that provided the data. It's very hard for some people to grasp, even on Tumblr, that sandwiches have no inherent gender.
Liking a specific sandwich does not gender you in any meaningful way. Loudly rejecting a sandwich because it would portray you as too effeminate or masculine, or demanding a sandwich as a way of asserting your gender identity -- that is the what I'm discussing, not the sandwich itself. A man eating a veggie wrap doesn't impact my data because that's actually very normal; men performatively rejecting a veggie wrap as too feminine is what the post is about.
Don't get dysphoria because you like a sandwich that the patriarchy has assigned to another gender, my beloved trans readers. That's the tox-cis-ity talking.
Glad everyone is getting so much joy from early Quaker names! Looking forward to seeing any future pets/children/bands/drag acts named after stuff on this list.
Fake Names Your D&D Characters Made Up To Get Into A Formal Event: Eustace Cockery, Corn Russell, Marvelous Scanfield, Elizabeth Poope, Gey Poope, Job Bland, Love Beer, Rich Whale
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