Why I stay, making drinks for you all here at the Penguin Cafe:
"In 1972 I was in the south of France. I had eaten some bad fish and was in consequence rather ill. As I lay in bed I had a strange recurring vision, there, before me, was a concrete building like a hotel or council block. I could see into the rooms, each of which was continually scanned by an electronic eye.
In the rooms were people, everyone of them preoccupied. In one room a person was looking into a mirror and in another a couple were making love but lovelessly, in a third a composer was listening to music through earphones. Around him there were banks of electronic equipment. But all was silence. Like everyone in his place he had been neutralized, made grey and anonymous. The scene was for me one of ordered desolation. It was as if I were looking into a place which had no heart.
Next day when I felt better, I was on the beach sunbathing and suddenly a poem popped into my head. It started out 'I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random' and it went on about how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what's most important. Whereas in the Penguin Cafe your unconscious can just be. It's acceptable there, and that's how everybody is. There is an acceptance there that has to do with living the present with no fear in ourselves."
Trust the process. Trust is the little hope that brings total artistic freedom. I will embrace the process. I will enter into it and give myself to it completely. And when I am finished I will turn my gaze upon what has been created. Where once was trust there is now beauty. And I will begin again.
I'm loving the Murderbot show. I really hope they keep it going, and even if they don't stay totally true to the books hopefully I'll still get my favorite scenes from Exit Strategy
Pin-Lee suggesting that Murderbot start reacting to its injuries more to let humans know it’s been injured after realizing that it’s been casually walking around after a fight leaving a trail of Fluids. It’s like “I could.. probably write some code for that I guess.” and Dr. Mensah is like “don’t worry about it if it would be distracting to you. Just…. tell us afterwards. We want to know how you’re doing” and it’s like “i can give status reports yes.”
Pin-Lee is like “I still like the idea of you giving an indication you’ve been hit. For example.” she points finger guns. “Bang oh no I have definitely hit you with a projectile. Indicate that somehow.”
Murderbot, with extremely flat inflection which would not immediately seem like a distress call to nearby humans: “Ouch. I Have Been Injured.”
Pin-Lee is like “hm no there’s gotta be some sort of. I don’t know, you don’t have to verbalize if you don’t want to, maybe there’s like an alarm noise you could make? or an “AAA!” sound? Okay let’s try again BANG”
There is a brief delay (less then a second) and then Murderbot responds with damage vocalization option 2.
“File:Wilhelm_Scream.ogg” blasts through the station.
What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?
Oh. Well. The side of the fandom that does mental gymnastic to fit the canon into a neat metaphorical narrative with clear cut moral lessons. TO ME, it's a very narrow interpretation, which doesn't work unless you overlook some key points of the canon to make the metaphors work, and I think taking your interpretation of an ongoing canon THAT seriously is potentially a big recipe for disappointment when the canon concludes without explicitly validating the answers you're looking for
But I love that the character is unapologetically agender, asexual, and aromantic. Putting it in romantic or sexual relationships goes against everything the character fundamentally is. People love shipping, and I'm not going to yuck their yum, but shoehorning romancing into fics about a canonically ace aro character is erasing a major part of what I love about MB.
When a space cares a lot about making sure its members are queer enough to participate, you get a space that aggressively polices the queerness of its members. There's no way around that, it's pretty much tautologically true. Only by paradoxically not actually caring if you're queer or not can a group really accept the full range of what queerness can look like.
Also, a space that has room for a cis straight guy who means well and wants the best for his friends has two crucial things going for it.
1) it has space for people who are learning and might fuck up a bit while they figure things out, and that learning process is probably not so godawful and unpleasant that a guy with other prospects would have to be a fool not to go find some nicer friends. This is nice because it is very difficult to personally embody the entire alphabet at once, and learning how to be good allies to one another is a crucial part of queer solidarity. It's nice for that process not to be painful.
2) it has space for people who aren't yet willing to or comfortable with presenting an externally queer label to continue to exist and soak up the queer vibes and information, which means it's welcoming to actual questioning people rather than the theory of questioning people. Probably it therefore has more interest in actually doing things rather than hierarchy politics.
3) it's probably not a radfem tar pit interested in weaponising you against people they've decided to hate in a social smear war that benefits nobody and nothing but their need for a power trip
Oh it’s even more than that! The cis straight guy is very often a ride home, dad or husband. Or a Bob which I will explain in this essay is a signifier of a healthy ecosystem, like frogs are.
This is a 3 am take so consider this a blanket apology and a readmore but if you hate this post you were warned.
If he’s someone’s ride home, then his presence enables queer people to show up. Note this importance in, say, rural America or where the person might use a wheelchair or need care or can’t drive. Or where the meeting place is generally awkward.
If he’s someone’s dad, his presence enables kids to show up. I know a 5 year old trans kid in real life. I know a nonbinary teen in real life who’s allowed to do a lot on their own, but their parents worry, and if they’re hanging out with adults the parents want to attend and meet the adults. Teenagers are so liminal with this.
If he’s someone’s husband, that’s a perfectly common accessory for a bisexual, nonbinary, or trans person. I think it adds a delightful dimension to queer spaces. I think it’s great that there’s a whole class of sexuality that’s “bi wife energy” or “straight except for loving this person” or “straight since I think nonbinary people are considered a different gender to my own - actually I’m completely lost about whether that’s true but we’ve been married ten years?” or “straight except for the fact that my partner transitioned, and we’re still married, and it’s none of your business.” At this point they’re so common that they’re their own subspecies. I think all spaces should have a slightly bewildered guy in his late forties who owns a set of good screwdrivers. I am bi and have one myself; it is a common pairing. “Why would your husband come to your social thing” idk this is a genuine thing people do sometimes in non-tar-pit spaces. They stop by. It’s almost like birds. You meet this incredible ornate, splendid older queer person and then they introduce their husband Professor Robert “Bob” Kevinsworth, who’s just this extremely straight old big fat Linux geologist in a 90s t-shirt with a trout on it, they’ve been married 45 years. Evolutionary pressures mean that the Bob must be relatively drab in order to camouflage themselves on the nest or something; if you want to attract the flashy half of the couple to your garden, then you have to provide habitat for Bob. idk it’s 3:46 am right now. But it’s like frogs; the presence of Bobs indicates a healthy and established ecosystem, like Grison and Derin indicate. Because frogs, who absorb environmental toxins readily through their skin, are an indicator species for pollution and biodiversity; a Bob means there is going to be less toxicity and more diversity.
[And also it’s none of our business but there are an awful lot of queer Bobs (Bob himself, again, possibly being queer) and it’s really none of our business. Sure, maybe that person looks like a straight grandpa. A lot of people do/did. I have always hated the idea that you can “spot” a queer person by their haircut, clothes or youth (largely because I don’t look very unusual or amazing myself.) the oldest nb person I know is a sort of Bob with a big white beard and grandchildren, and I’m sorry but at their age they are NOT going to be getting a different haircut! Let alone pink Shein dungarees and black circle sunglasses to signify their queerness to gatekeepers. A lot of people seeing them would assume they are cishet. Nope! Just old, fat and unfashionable.)
So a space that doesn’t have room for a cishet guy is a space that has made decisions about children, non-drivers, a large proportion of bi and nonbinary people, straight trans women, dads, and so on.
Which is fine in itself I suppose, but what they’re clearly kinda selecting for is a population of able twentysomethings who can all have sex with each other. and the thing is that there’s often a vibe they feel annoyed by seeing people they don’t want to fuck (children, middle-aged people, unfashionable queer people, people unironically wearing trout t shirts).
So in my admittedly highly limited personal experience, the exclusionary “queer spaces” just tend to be an elaborate drama-production exercise for twentysomethings to date each other, the rituals are intricate etc.
And all the rest of the weird queer people are just. at the seed swap.
I didn't know this about frogs, since I am from a Very Dry Desert, BUT! The same is true of roadrunners! If you see a roadrunner in your area, it means that you live near an ecologically healthy desert, with all of the plants and insects etc that are required to keep it balanced and sustainable. So, I guess Bobs are also roadrunners. Or maybe Bobs are frogs, and the roadrunners are the cis wives who are still married to their wives who transitioned at 45, or whose kids are queer as hell and love to show up at events with snacks and support the community but especially the gaybies who remind them of their own kids.
