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[sparklyeevee]

My coworker said he was having a bad day and I said 'it can't be that bad you haven't started howling like a sad dog yet' and he let out the saddest most pathetic little howl I've ever heard and I was like 'damn ok do you need to have a break?'

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I get so frustrated when people try to draw lines in the sand regarding misogyny and types of misogyny and male privilege especially when it comes to trans people.

Like I only pass as a man most of the time, I transitioned in my early adulthood, I’m afraid to wear skirts because of social stigma around men doing so, I got affected by misogyny aimed at little girls growing up, and I still have the ability to get pregnant.

Where exactly does my male privilege begin and end here? Am I tme because I’m not transfem or not because I’d like to wear dresses but am stopped by social stigma around men doing so? Was I “socialized” to be a girl? Do I have male privilege when I pass but not when I don’t? How am I to know then when I do or do not have male privilege because I don’t know when I meet someone if they read me as a man or a woman?

Like all of these lines in the sand are idiotic and piss me off. We’re all supposed to be on the same damn team here.

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I have longer thoughts about this, but I think when you're writing fantasy, it's good to pick a couple of things to be realistic about, and not worry too much about being realistic in other areas. The things you're realistic about should be important in the story, but need not be what it's About. If your story is gonna spend a lot of time in spooky environments full of hazards, you might wanna go for ecological realism, but it's equally reasonable for the hazards Our Heroes encounter to be driven more by the needs of plot and character arcs, and focus on biomedical realism (how do injuries and diseases play out, how are they managed or treated in this environment, is everyone hydrated), or material realism (how are clothes, weapons, equipment and supplies maintained, repaired, or made, what are the available resources). Or you could do any two of those three (so we know exactly how everyone's laundry is getting done and what kind of plants the giant moths that the giant spiders eat lay their eggs on, but no one worries about getting an infected cut when they dramatically run through brambles, or whatever).

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I can't speak for anyone else, but I have a tendency to scroll Tumblr with my eyes out of focus, and the destiel confession format means I usually, y'know, notice when a post is conveying big, serious news.

i am legitimately so frustrated by the stupid unfunny destiel confession news thing u losers r still doing. destiel “the us has bombed iran” do u ppl not understand how obnoxious this is? the bit has run its course and been unfunny for years now anyways but doing this shit is so fucking offensive and irreverent

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I know I wasn't supposed to.

But I went into the woods.

Another me came out.

We seem to be equally suspicious that the other is the imposter. I keep checking him for roots and he keeps doing the same to me. Is it a double bluff? Is he gaslighting me into thinking I'm the neverwas thing and he's the human being with organs and anxiety? Is he truly unaware he's a mockery given shape? If he can be unaware of it, I can be too.

That's kind of a lonely thought, really.

-

It's been several days and the tests are all inconclusive. We both bleed normal blood that doesn't turn into a spider and jump to the ceiling when you touch it with a hot wire. We know the same trivia. We pretended to know the same stuff we forgot that we were embarrassed not to remember. We both got uncomfortable at the exact same time when we walked into the cathedral.

We arm wrestled and didn't tie somehow, but we weren't sure if winning meant he was more likely to be fake or less likely.

I worry that we don't really know anything about accursed other selves from the woods.

Wikipedia has been less than helpful.

-

Mom claims she knows which one of us is her 'first boy' but refuses to tell us on the basis that she loves us both and thinks we should get along.

He thinks she can't tell and is too embarrassed to tell us. I think its because she wants to double her chance at grandkids. The difference in opinion is interesting, but is it a sign of an imposter, or the divergence of our experiences?

-

We've decided to flip for the job. I won, so I don't have to find new work. I don't know if that's a win.

I think the curse is that neither one of us is an unnatural imposter out to kill the other. Or else whichever one of us is the monster has realized they don't think my life is worth killing to steal.

I know I think about smashing that copy of my own face open with a rusty fire axe, a gush of sea water and blasphemous screams roiling from the empty hole that should contain bone and brains, and it just seems like a lot of trouble and effort.

I think I'm going to start going by my middle name.

-

Another me just showed up on our doorstep.

He's caked in mud, sticks and twigs in his hair, babbling about harrowing experiences. I'm fixing him some tea while the other-other me hands him the pamphlet we made just in case.

Now he's telling us about the Night King. Like we don't know.

I need a bigger place.

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“you support gay rights so you must be gay”

i support animal rights do i look like a fucking alpaca to you

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Torn between the need to write hard scifi intimately grounded in reality, and the need to have the Aesthetic on point

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Where's my Jewish phrase for when you people are being irrevocably horny?

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Walking around my neighborhood wearing my sick as fuck custom T-shirt that says "I STEAL EVERY FRIENDLY CAT I MEET WITH NO REMORSE I DO IT ALL THE TIME DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK I BEEN HERE FOR YEARS KEEP THAT BEAST ENCLOSED LEST YE FACE MY LIGHTNING CAT GRASP" and smiling politely while my neighbors' indoor-outdoor cats gently trot down the sidewalk towards me as the neighbors themselves read my shirt with a growing sense of panic.

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I like when Pheidole ants do the thing with the head

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Right now what I have is that R18 felt they ought to get eyes on things in the Waste because they never, y'know, see Aiel men who can channel, and while conventional wisdom in the 790s held that the Aiel just can't channel, plenty of people have the teaspoon of critical thinking necessary to know that doesn't sound right.

Re: your tags, she's Arafellan, but since this was almost 200 years before Laman did the thing, being Cairhienen might have worked to her advantage.

Before embarking on the postcanon fic, I had occasion, for unrelated reasons, to help create a tool for essentially randomly generating Wheel of Time OCs. This is straightforwardly necessary for creating 392 Aes Sedai and their Warders without physically melting one's brain. The focus is on like, talents, knowledge base, etc - it doesn't help with names or eye colors. Anyway, this tool mostly does what it's supposed to and produces plausible, if not terribly interesting, characters like Aes Sedai R16, who was born in a traveling menagerie, got tested for the ability to channel at age 18 when they stopped near Tar Valon, and has a Talent for Healing but joined the Red Ajah because her pillow friend did. Unfortunately, sometimes it's like, girl, you are a 248 year old retired former Sitter for the Red Ajah, you're barely allowed to know that Windfinders exist, why are you familiar with their current and historical role in warfare and how do you know this much about the Aiel?

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@kaijutegu This came across my feed at random, and I was curious for your thoughts on their behavior in this video. The guy says that they're "getting along good" but I have a little doubt given the pushing. I mean, they're not actively trying to kill each other, but I think that's probably not a high bar.

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R18 has been retired and keeping bees just past the northern edge of Far Madding's anti channeling field for the past like, almost 50 years, so it needn't be a Thing.

Before embarking on the postcanon fic, I had occasion, for unrelated reasons, to help create a tool for essentially randomly generating Wheel of Time OCs. This is straightforwardly necessary for creating 392 Aes Sedai and their Warders without physically melting one's brain. The focus is on like, talents, knowledge base, etc - it doesn't help with names or eye colors. Anyway, this tool mostly does what it's supposed to and produces plausible, if not terribly interesting, characters like Aes Sedai R16, who was born in a traveling menagerie, got tested for the ability to channel at age 18 when they stopped near Tar Valon, and has a Talent for Healing but joined the Red Ajah because her pillow friend did. Unfortunately, sometimes it's like, girl, you are a 248 year old retired former Sitter for the Red Ajah, you're barely allowed to know that Windfinders exist, why are you familiar with their current and historical role in warfare and how do you know this much about the Aiel?

[sparklyeevee]

Ah, I should have put a paragraph break in my initial post or something. The one from a menagerie is a different Aes Sedai. I honestly think I'm gonna have to go with "Yeah she's secretly an entire damn Wise One and just, never mentioned it for the past, uh, 2 centuries." It doesn't feel totally out of parameters that if she managed to learn enough to tell the Tower about them, the Wise Ones might have decided taking her as an apprentice so she'd like, understand why it was important to keep their secrets (or die during training and stop being anyone's problem) was the best available course of action.

Before embarking on the postcanon fic, I had occasion, for unrelated reasons, to help create a tool for essentially randomly generating Wheel of Time OCs. This is straightforwardly necessary for creating 392 Aes Sedai and their Warders without physically melting one's brain. The focus is on like, talents, knowledge base, etc - it doesn't help with names or eye colors. Anyway, this tool mostly does what it's supposed to and produces plausible, if not terribly interesting, characters like Aes Sedai R16, who was born in a traveling menagerie, got tested for the ability to channel at age 18 when they stopped near Tar Valon, and has a Talent for Healing but joined the Red Ajah because her pillow friend did. Unfortunately, sometimes it's like, girl, you are a 248 year old retired former Sitter for the Red Ajah, you're barely allowed to know that Windfinders exist, why are you familiar with their current and historical role in warfare and how do you know this much about the Aiel?

[sparklyeevee]

Atha'an Miere pillow friend is plausible, although I think I might have a hard cap on how many Sea Folk I can have. Although she could be a peer to one of the older canon ones. Her knowledge base includes some of the military history and research techniques of the Age of Legends Aes Sedai, the internal and inter-clan politics of the Goshien, the art, tools, and herb lore of the Codarra, and a shitton about socially and physically navigating the Waste, so it's sort of hard to escape the conclusion that she actually completed training as a Wise One and went through the columns, somehow.

Before embarking on the postcanon fic, I had occasion, for unrelated reasons, to help create a tool for essentially randomly generating Wheel of Time OCs. This is straightforwardly necessary for creating 392 Aes Sedai and their Warders without physically melting one's brain. The focus is on like, talents, knowledge base, etc - it doesn't help with names or eye colors. Anyway, this tool mostly does what it's supposed to and produces plausible, if not terribly interesting, characters like Aes Sedai R16, who was born in a traveling menagerie, got tested for the ability to channel at age 18 when they stopped near Tar Valon, and has a Talent for Healing but joined the Red Ajah because her pillow friend did. Unfortunately, sometimes it's like, girl, you are a 248 year old retired former Sitter for the Red Ajah, you're barely allowed to know that Windfinders exist, why are you familiar with their current and historical role in warfare and how do you know this much about the Aiel?

[sparklyeevee]

Before embarking on the postcanon fic, I had occasion, for unrelated reasons, to help create a tool for essentially randomly generating Wheel of Time OCs. This is straightforwardly necessary for creating 392 Aes Sedai and their Warders without physically melting one's brain. The focus is on like, talents, knowledge base, etc - it doesn't help with names or eye colors. Anyway, this tool mostly does what it's supposed to and produces plausible, if not terribly interesting, characters like Aes Sedai R16, who was born in a traveling menagerie, got tested for the ability to channel at age 18 when they stopped near Tar Valon, and has a Talent for Healing but joined the Red Ajah because her pillow friend did. Unfortunately, sometimes it's like, girl, you are a 248 year old retired former Sitter for the Red Ajah, you're barely allowed to know that Windfinders exist, why are you familiar with their current and historical role in warfare and how do you know this much about the Aiel?