#really good question!

[fluffytaffylamb]

If you could do one HUGE thing that makes a diffrence...what would it be? Why?

Hmmm... That a hard question- Uhm...

Hm...- Uhm...

What would be an appropriate answer???

Hm... I guess... When I was alive, I would've made it so Cain didn't have to work so hard. If the ground actually grew plants properly, then maybe Cain would've have been so... mad. Maybe then it wouldn't hurt so much.

[hopefulqueer]

Hi hi hi hi! I have had a Terra's Grace question bouncing around in my brain for over an hour now, and I'm fiiiiiinally at a computer so I can ask it. Very excited! (And happy happy happy that I didn't end up forgetting the question, haha. It's a little bit wordy/twisty, I guess...) So, as long as answering this doesn't interfere with your plans for the story in any way...

I think it might've been a post from your blog a little while ago that got me thinking about mirror pronouns today. And then I was wondering, well, hypothetically -- if Society A has only one pronoun for people to use in its conventional grammar, and also has no contact with any other society with a different pronouns situation, then as far as Society A is concerned, for practical linguistic purposes it has no distinction between "having [person pronouns]" and "having [mirror pronouns]", right?

SO. If Society A later encounters & interacts extensively with a Society B that uses a variety of personal pronouns including mirror pronouns... To what extent would individuals in Society A stick with the 'traditional' single pronoun, versus deciding to use mirror pronouns instead?

i.e., in the context of Terra's Grace, where Chapter 10 states that Grace personally uses they/them for every Eridian except Rocky -- well, 1) will the professional Earth linguists even agree with Grace's interpretation there, and 2) if they do determine that the Eridian personal-pronoun-equivalent is really identical for each individual Eridian, would the most 'proper/accurate' translation of an Eridian personal pronoun into English be "[gender neutral personal pronoun, e.g. 'they']"? Or would it be "[mirror pronoun]"?

FASCINATING QUESTION and one which! I don’t have a good answer for lmao. I do think that the linguists would have preferred to go with a specific neopronoun for Eridian use (at least in English, I truly cannot speak to any kind of linguistics or pronoun usage in other languages but I know there's lots of languages that don't do gendered pronouns at all and more that don't do them quite like English does), maybe ze/hir since that one is a pretty old one with a lot of precedent. But Grace *already* established the precedent with the Eridians of using they/them pronouns for everyone but Rocky, so would they change that? I don’t know. I *don't* think it would become a situation where Eridians all get whatever English gendered pronouns assigned by humans.

Tldr I think they either stick with they/them or use a simple consistent neopronoun like ze/hir. EXCEPT for Rocky. He's specials.

[ask-shane]

I didn't get a chance to ask Marnie about this so I'll ask you instead. What are your parents like? Do you guys keep in touch?

i don’t talk to my father at all. i haven’t in a very long time… i didn’t know the guy too well. i only have sour memories of how he treated my family.

i’m still in-contact with my mom, though we haven’t spoken much these past few years. as a kid, she always let me stay out late at night… she was laidback and maybe a little too careless. but even if she wasn’t perfect, i still care for her.

[arienai]

Would you recommend someone interested in Otherside Picnic check out the manga or light novel?

Also, do you have any thoughts on the "predecessors" to the notion of "Yuri of absence"? It's an idea that, despite its apparent absurdity, seems to make sense on some visceral level, so I'm curious what (if any) examples there are of such concepts in earlier Yuri works, and how these concepts may have evolved, if that makes sense.

I always recommend the novels for the Otherside Picnic. They are the farthest along in the story and I love all the character details, especially Sorawo's utterly nuts internal dialogue. I think the manga is also good and I love the character design and some of the visuals, however they are pretty far behind the novels in story.

Your question about Yuri of Absence is very good and I wish I had a better answer but truthfully I'm struggling to think of some good examples right now. I do think the idea of a lesbian love no longer being present, while the feelings linger, is ultimately an evolution of the old Class S stories where the relationship was fleeting and temporary. Yuri evolved from this and kept a lot of the sort of overriding melancholy and emotion.

I suppose yuri of "loss" could also fall into this. Sayaka's sideplot in Bloom Into You, for example, is about her accepting that she cannot have Touko. She ends without a relationship (until the light novels at least), but she is still yuri - a yuri of what could have been.

[liorlen]

This is probably going to be a really stupid question but I'm going to ask regardless. For those who might want to participate in your 'Transnatural' zine, do they have to strictly identify as trans or identify along anything that isn't cis? (Sorry, logically I know this sounds really dumb especially form someone who's enby.)

It’s not a dumb question at all! I get it! Um. Personally, anyone gender nonconforming/anyone who is not cis, I would love to see get involved!

I’m very open to this as a whole and honestly, after all the future mods have come together, I’m planning on reconsidering the zine name with them, as a whole, to be more inclusive to enby/gender nonconforming people who don’t see themselves as necessarily trans.

[dechart]

What made you decide to put the date in the tags?

Oh, I dunno! I guess I'm just a pretty organised person; when I want to look back on my asks, I can put them somewhere on the calendar and remember what happened that day :)

[withicecream99]

is math discovered or invented?

Ooh this is a really good question.  Thanks anon!

So I feel like it’s some of both.  You have a lot of stuff that’s philosophically pieced together and tested to provide a very good model/representation of how things work (physics, mathematical biology, etc.).  But then you have 100% pure math which is build up from the very fundamentals of sameness (which is probably a more interesting discussion in this case).

So, dropping out a lot of the non-negligible technicalities, a Lot of math is built up from the bare basics, the a = b, if you will.  Even the a = a.  There is definitely a fundamental “sameness” there between three fours and six twos, seven with two more and five with four more, twenty and twenty.  I can’t imagine a world where six is not the same as six (no matter how interesting that would be!), but this is still technically an assumption (because what really is six?)

Anyway, we’ve got a bunch of axioms that we sometimes recognize and follow and sometimes don’t, and those axioms (maybe even a = a) are completely invented.  They don’t really “mean” anything–they’re just representations of reality at best.  The Results from those axioms, though–they’re discovered.

I guess that my belief here (and I definitely don’t have enough teaching/experience to be credible!) is that math’s all there waiting to be discovered.  All we need to do is invent the right questions.

Anybody else have thoughts?  I’d love to have a discussion about this!

[we-dont-talk-about-potato-nonono]

have you ever drawn a character and thought “wow, I never noticed how weird your design is?“

hmm.. not really, no. i wouldn't say the design itself is particularly unusual or weird on its own, but when i bring it to life in my own art style, it becomes weirder :3;;