#extradirty
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@swamp-spirit
Nonbinary People: What's the "genderflip" of your gender?
Against genderflipping as a concept that could apply to me
Exactly the same. The inverse of nothing/the middle is still the nothing/middle
A different nonbinary identity (agender to bigender, cloudgender to earthgender)
Similar gender with a different alignment (demi-girl -> demi-guy, tmasc -> tfem)
Cis
Other/it's complicated
I am not nonbinary/show results
before you are six different arguments. which do you insert yourself into?
previous
Taking seat 6, hanging out with my girl the entire time, literally never turning around.
Today has been incredibly weird and I can't talk about it without letting you know where I live and a name I use professionally. These things I can't talk about are unrelated, but please assume I have had the day equivalent of spending hours running from a vicious mountain lion, only to finally get through my front door to learn I'm late for my own surprise party.
put three f/f ships you like in the tags. doesnt matter how obscure or embarrassing the media, go for it. and no, your m/m ship doesnt count as women
My wife pointed out to me the other day that apparently most people were literally only taught how to say Sorry and not how to Apologize or even that they are different things so here.
If all you ever do is step 1, not only did you not apologize, but people will rightfully stop believing you and start getting pissed or hurt.
Wanted to add my thoughts for:
When there's something you want to explain (your grandma just died, they said something your middle school bully did, you were on two hours of sleep because of the puppy)
When you know the behavior will likely reoccur, either because it is impossible to change (like memory issues) or is hard and slow to change (like a trauma response)
I think explanations can be very helpful. But what's the difference between an explanation and an excuse. To me, the focus on and excuse is about saying "I have this going on, so you can't be mad at me" (which is a way you can feel, but isn't an apology). An explanation is about saying "You didn't do anything wrong and my behavior wasn't a reflection on how I feel about you or our relationship."
This means also not going on a "I'm sorry, I'm the worst ever, I'm trash, you should leave me."
I also think it's important not to promise things you can't do (you cannot promise to stop having your disability or to never get cranky again). If you think it will absolutely happen again, just leave out that part. But, even if you know it will happen sometimes, you can take steps to explain how you're working on reducing the behavior (setting alarms, working through trauma, getting more sleep, asking for space before you blow up.)
For example:
"I'm really sorry I've been so out of touch these past few months. I've been really struggling with my depression, and I ended up kind of going silent on everyone. I want you to know your friendship means the world to me, and I'm really sorry I haven't been able to act that way."
"I am so sorry I forgot we were supposed to hang out Saturday. I know how hard it is for you to cancel day of. I've been having a lot of trouble remembering things, but I want you to know I love spending time with you and was really looking forward to it. I'm going to set an alarm next time to make sure I don't forget."
"I'm sorry I snapped at you yesterday for doing your hair in the bathroom. You were taking a totally reasonable amount of time, and even if you weren't, I could have said something kindly. I was completely out of line. I've been really stressing about my bloodwork results, and it's made me super tense. I'm sorry for taking that out on you."
please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.
you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.
first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.
now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:
in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.
and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.
and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.
it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:
• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.
• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.
• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.
• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.
• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.
• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.
and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.
what i'm asking:
if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.
if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.
india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.
we can still save her. but only loudly.
reblog. share. don't scroll past.
I've seen a bunch of "fandom etiquette" posts on my dash today and I'm going to say something that is maybe going to be unpopular but;
The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.
And I am not going to mince words here:
A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.
That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.
"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.
So much of "fandom etiquette" seems to be about insulating creatives from Feeling Bad and hostility to any kind of negative feedback is a pretty big contributor to why bigotry festers in these spaces.
#imo the potluck analogy applies- it would be rude to critique someone's icing technique at a potluck bc it wasn't as good as at the bakery #but if they had decorated their cupcakes w hate symbols it wouldn't be rude to tell them that's gross and gtfo #in fact it would be inappropriate to NOT say anything in that situation #or to complain that another guest who did point it out was 'ruining everyone's potluck' #and pointing out racism in fan works is 100% the second thing not the first! (via destructions-daughter)
There's also a tendency to conflate anyone who critiques general trends with bad faith randos. Like, there is fandom behavior that is 100% racist and should be talked about, but there are also trends of racist/sexist/ableist preferences.
If I say "I am uncomfortable with fandom's tendency to write trans men as feminine and submissive" I do not mean "I think every person who writes feminine submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I don't even mean "any cis-person who writes feminine or submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I mean "I would like writers to seriously think about why this is so common, why they write that, and if it fairly and genuinely engages with what it means to be a trans man, or if they just think it's hot when submissive people have vaginas and didn't want to write omegaverse or m/f".
Similarly, when people say "fandom is systemically less interested in black characters, less willing to give flat black characters rich fanon than flat white characters, and less interested in black characters in ships", the response is not to explain why you, personally, just happen to like popular white guy in that fanon. Your job is to look at yourself and ask if you tend to "just happen to be more interested" in the popular white guy across fandoms, be honest, and start unpacking that. Sometimes it's easier to love the flat character who's already getting 10,000 fics with headcanons and art and meta.
If somebody says "I wish there were more gluten free options at the potluck. I hate always showing up and not finding anything I can eat*", they are not asking you to throw your cake in the trash and weep. They do not want to hear your long speech about how actually this is your grandmother's recipe, and you've tried it with rice flour actually, but it just didn't work. You think about what you can do, and you listen to how they feel.
*The metaphor here not being that you can't read fic that isn't "good rep". The metaphor here is that it can be isolating to be in spaces where nobody is trying to make sure people like you are welcome.
We need more weird self-indulgent readerfic.
Your favorite character gets your insurance company to cover your claim.
Unionizing your blorbo's fantasy guild.
You introduce the leads to the idea of solving their love triangle with polyamory.
You fuck with the magic system 2000 words before the story starts, fundamentally changing reality.
The booktok women are fine!!!
Had a guy on Reddit tell me Percy Jackson and YA "rot your brain" and you should give kids "starting books" like James Joyce's Dubliners.
When you shame people for enjoying reading, you don't convince them to expand their horizons, you convince them to be ashamed of reading. Even teaching reading involves pushing kids to expand their skills, but also "confidence reading", giving kids books where they can focus on the story.
Letting people have fun is how you get readers! How many women have I heard say they hadn't really read as an adult, but romantasy got them reading again?
And the shaming never stops. You can read nothing but super technically challenging and emotionally challenging books, and you will just end up in increasingly insufferable circles who go "oh, of course you liked that one."
You expand people's horizons by getting them excited about what might be over those horizons, not be convincing them the things that make them happy are stupid and they're stupid for liking it.
Happy Disability Pride Month!
Celebrate by get any promises for accommodation in writing. I know they're nice and you don't want to be a bother. I know they've promised it's no big deal. In fact, it's so little of a big deal, why bother with all those forms? Don't worry so much. We can all figure it out when it comes up! Do you really want to be the pushy problem when it's a new job/school and they're being so nice?
Absolutely. These are your human rights.
Get! That! Shit! in! Writing!
Swerved around an Amazon delivery van while riding one of those pay-by-the-minute e-scooters and had the sudden feeling that I was in the opening credits of some nostalgia-bait movie from 2052
Last year, a guy riding a horse covered in conservative propaganda rode it into a lime scooter.
Which is from a different genre of movies, probably.
The thing is nobody at pride is evaluating you to determine if you’re queer enough to be there because they’re too busy thinking “it’s so hot out” and “why is this lemonade 12 dollars?”
"If you cared, you'd remember."
I regularly forget to take my 'not throwing up' pills before eating, the pills that make me not throw up and appreciate very much and take pretty much 0 effort when I remember.
I promise you there is no joy so great or consequence so dire that my brain will manage to remember a single thing.
Hi, its me. The warmest creature in the world. I love you. Im the warmest creature in the world and I love you so much and I need to be in your lap right now. Yes, I know about the heat wave. That's okay though because I was already the warmest creature in the world so I don't mind. I love you and you need to let me sleep in your lap right now. I'm soooo warm and I love you sooo much. If you say no you'll be saying no to a thing that love you. Let me sleep in your lap. When I fall asleep I get warmer. I love you
it would be so awesome
it would be so cool
Also on my whole "friction theory of fiction", it is vital not to mistake difficulty of prose for complexity of topic.
Or, to say it differently: Just because you're hard to understand doesn't mean you have something to say.
i hateeee the framing of any type of media engagement that relies on juxtaposing fun, enjoyable, 'low' art (usually [m/m] fanfiction, romance novels, genre fiction, &c.) with difficult, fufilling 'high' art (usually classics, arthouse films, &c) as like. 'fast food vs. vegetables', 'entertainment' vs 'personal (moral?) development' not the least because these aren't remotely discrete categories but also because its annoyingggg
people used to love to do this in fandom with femslash specifically and i hated it then also. do you have any idea how demeaning it is to have to hear people framing the act of reading stories about people like you as eating vegetables. as atonement for the sin of wanting to read about men fucking. come on now
A model I have been thinking on a lot lately is switching from "low vs high" or "junk food vs vegetables" to "low friction to high friction". This can describe vocabulary and structure.
It's tricky because this gets into intent, but low-friction fiction is meant to not push you. You know who to like and who to dislike, what is bad and what is good. A "cool" character will never be pathetic, a "kind" character will never be manipulative, a relatable main character will never do something selfish or stupid and be held accountable for it. Bad things may happen, but they happen in the service of a character being cared for or being able to freely be the most pitiable person on earth.
On the other end of the spectrum, high friction fiction asks you to try and understand people who you might not want to relate to. It puts characters in hard to solve situations where no answers are right. People do terrible things and experience no consequences. Other people dismiss the main character's feelings and never change their minds.
Both of these should exist. A book about a normal girl who turns out to have the special power that saves a country and makes her a hero and gets her tons of friends and true love can save a life, and so can a book about an adult having to face how their childhood trauma has made them fail their own child. They can also both come from nasty places and promote cruel ideas about the world.
Low friction books main failing is they often make you feel important not by highlighting how everyone matters, but by letting you relate to one of the people who "matters more", which is why I think it can be great to push yourself to read books where the main character does not always get to be "special".
BUT women existing is not high friction. Black people existing is not high friction. The higher friction of a fluffy fiction about a man getting comforted is not a fluffy fanfiction about a woman getting comforted. Fanfiction that's focused on uncomfortable discussions of race, gender, and sexuality might be "higher friction", but a woman being there is not a discussion of gender. In that case, the friction is coming not from the author asking you to think about complex topics, but from your own discomfort or dislike or reading about certain people.
And, if you are trying to grow, "fun" reading and "yucky chore" reading is a good way to make yourself miserable. Friction, in the right dose, IS fun. A lot of the stories you love, you probably love elements that are complex and uncomfortable. If you want to expand your reading:
-When it's lateral friction (reading more of what you already like, but with more diverse casts) think of it that way. Not "ugh, now I have to read the good person fiction to be purified", but "the way the world works, it will always be easier to go along with social trends than to fight against them. So, as I seek out the stuff I like, I'm going to put in extra effort into supporting stories and creators who bring [x] to the table." People tell more cool action stories about men than women, so action fans are going to end up engaging with more men than women. Changing that means making the conscious choice to find it. And I do not mean guilt yourself into enjoying every mid-story to clear your conscious. That will only reinforce that this reading is less fun. The effort you have to put in is going and finding the exact kind of story you love, but finding it about somebody who doesn't usually get to be the star.
-If you want more friction, don't do it because you want to be seen as respected or intellectual. That game's bullshit. You just end up putting yourself around more and more insufferable and insecure people who'll mock you for reading the translated version or only knowing the "mainstream" poetic works of the French revolution. Instead, look at what you're not getting from the fiction you're reading. Do the romantic leads feel flat because they can't be imperfect? Do the main characters feel flat because they have to be relatable? You don't have to leave what you love to find that friction! Emotional complexity isn't the inverse of cool dragons. Somebody having bad sex in New York isn't automatically an emotionally valuable story. Everyone being really mean to each other does not make a writer smart. You love romance, but want to push yourself? Seek out love stories just a bit higher friction, where the romantic interest can be unsexy and the lead is a distinct character with their own flaws. Read amazing romances that makes you re-read sentences and look up words. Find romances you find absolutely unforgettable because they left the safe confines and did something amazing.
It is like vegetables in that way. If, instead of forcing yourself to choke down vegetables you hate, you try new things and keep an open mind, you'll find your favorite food may be something you never thought you'd try.
