#certified fun hater

[otatma]

okay, so neopronouns.

lemme get my bona fides in the open first. your neopronouns are valid, likely to have more historical precedent than you think, and you have every right to be called with the words that feel good to you.

that said.

what I want to talk about is the regressive / conservative hostility to neopronouns.

even that is too much for me to cover exhaustively, but there's one particular aspect of it that I want to dig into a little bit.

the aspect in question is a problem I'll call the Regal Couch problem. Stay with me for a bit.

there's a game children play. It has no name that I know of, so I call it Regal Couch. Regal Couch is a game about phonics. The goal of this game is to ambush a child and get them to utter curses as fast as possible, with large bonuses for making this goal within earshot of an overbearing adult. The speed is important, because if you get slowed down in any way then the intended victim's thoughts catch up and they begin to figure out that they're being pranked.

Yeah, this is the game people were playing when they tried to get you to unwittingly say "so fucking" or "I see you pee" or whatever low-hanging profanity felt the most fun on that day.

(This was a very frustrating thing to encounter as a neurodivergent fun-hating kid, but I digress.)

So, there's a lot going on here. It's almost a template. The important thing about Regal Couch for the neurodivergent person is the particularities - the phonics, the speed of the hustle, the proximity to gullible authority figures, the viscerality of the desired curses, etc.

It's important to outline these particularities because it's important not to be distracted by them. The important thing about Regal Couch for the perpetrator is that if your hustle is good enough, you get a pull on a slot machine. The prize you get when those reels line up is someone else feels bad, ragefits, gets in trouble, or all of the above. Which is to say, some agency and control over another human. (Kindly remember how these can be potent rewards when you're eight and every adult thinks they have to train you like some kind of dumb animal.)

Despite being neurodivergent, I'm not (just) bringing this up to fulminate about how kids can be monsters sometimes. It's relevant to the neopronouns thing. It's relevant because it captures an important aspect of regressive praxis, and that is the relation it establishes between hustling and speech and power.

When we ask people to use pronouns unfamiliar to them, it shouldn't be too surprising when the more regressive ones react as if we're playing Regal Couch. And they often do. Many of the same elements are there. They don't know what these sounds mean. Etymology doesn't get as much traction on neopronouns. They're already in a tenuous situation (learning about a new person living in a category that they feel is a threat). For the same reasons they're much more likely to be preoccupied with the precedent and power relations that Regal Couch is actually about. (And of course there's a massive raft of regressive preoccupations that don't relate to Regal Couch in any way, which I still refuse to treat with exhaustively today — but they're there and I do see them.)

The difference of course is that neopronouns are not about establishing who can play dirtiest for stakes, they are about courtesy and comfort and acceptance. If I was going to compare neopronouns to a game that it's actually similar to, I'd probably say it's got more in common with a trust fall.

Q: So what? Why make this comparison in this kind of detail?

A: There's one grain of truth here. The meaning of these words - the neopronouns themselves - is often unclear.

We therefore shouldn't have any trouble asking "Okay, and what does that mean?" This does a few useful things - it seizes on an opportunity to learn, it creates more detailed patterns to remember the neopronouns with, it proves we're not regressives*, and it models the right behavior for the situation.

It isn't without risk though, because of tone. If someone asks you in sincerity to practice a trust fall and your reaction is suspicious and hostile in tone, you probably don't ever get to know that person. Also asking people to do any extra work at a time like this will never be ideal.

That question "What does that mean?", then, should be as soft as the circumstances allow for. Make it a real and vulnerable request for information, not a micro-aggressive riposte on the entire project of neopronouns. Listen hard to the answer, even if it was nothing like you expected. Ignorance is curable, if you want.

* — for various reasons which I don't have time to list, regressives consider this kind of earnest vulnerability in any social situation to be literal suicide.

[glassedplanets]

guys being dudes but with fishies 🐟🐠🐡🦈

i liked the lines a lot for this! i've been trying to get myself to treat digital art like sketching in a sketchbook recently and these lines really reflect that. i didn't go into this with any kind of plan aside from "oooooo aquarium bar" which backfired on me in a couple of ways lmao but 🤷‍♂️

[reversenecromancerart]

UM LITERALLY ANY CREEK

ANY

C R E E K

I

AM DYING

I need Creek stuff that isn't just: I hate him grrrrrrr >:(

Taco costume creek

[jammboe]

Mipha being a rebellious gremlin 😈

Had a ton of fun animating this, might do midna or hilda next 😌

[solroskajan]

Thoughts on juzi?

Hm... I can't say that I ship it, It's not the kind of dynamic that i'm usually drawn to, but I don’t dislike it or anything. I see it and I smile, not because I ship it but because It's  like... enrichment to me or something. I can't explain it. It's fun, but I also can't really take it seriously. I can see the appeal tho.

[y-rhywbeth2]

A much narrower portion of the FR video game fandom, but I find myself wanting to play a Myrkulyte Knight Captain/Spirit Eater. Despite him not being on the deity option list, you can worship vestiges.

Myrkul's divine essence saturates the Mere of Dead Men, clearly evidence of his power. A neglected orphan, who would've known Myrkul as lord of the dead in their early years pre Time of Troubles, with a village that keeps dying around them, might find comfort in the ancestor worship and reverence for the dead in Myrkul's doctrine. Also when your main enemy is the undead, being a necromancer gets useful.

KC, who spends most of their time locked in their room reading weird books and talking to dead people: 'Praise Myrkul!'

Daeghun: 'This is a worrying sign for my foster child's mental health and future that I will frown over and then do nothing about.'

And the fun stuff starts in MotB, where most of the party might kill you if you cling to cognitive dissonance instead of having a crisis of faith over the fact that your god is in fact an asshole.

One of Many is having the time of their unlife though.

*Start gushing over meeting Myrkul in the Astral. Kaelyn, Gann and Safiya draw straws to decide who's going to push you off the rock.*

'Myrkul was terrible to Akachi. Not me though. I'm different.'

'Also he was False and deserved it. Boo-hoo, your girlfriend died. So what?'

'This is all the Founder's fault.'

*Walk into the City of Judgement; insist on referring to it as 'Lord Myrkul's Kingdom;' call Kelemvor a poseur to his face.*

[princess-marths-princess]

Do you ever read a post where op claims to not be a terf or a radfem but then you look at their blog and first you see the acephobia and then the arophobia and then the 'q slur' tag and then the comments about hating men and then transandrophobia and you're like hm. Right. Not a terf or radfem 🤔

[dolokhoded]

Did you see The Passion of the Christ? If so, what do you think?...i know it has a white cast but i think the actor who played Jesus was REALLY hot (sorry this is one of the few blogs that can talk about biblical people without problem)

i have not. i do plan on it. but i've seen pictures and like gifsets and stuff. and you're right speak your truth this man has the most glorious hair i've ever seen. he's one of those dudes you look at and you think i wanna see him covered in blood and Guess What ! (there will be blood he is jesus it's your lucky day). "turn to god jesus loves you" omg tee hee do you think so ???? cause likeee

[sentientcave]

The Devil You Know

Dragon Age Fanfiction time baybeeee. Chapter 3 is up!

[thedaythatwas]

I forgot how much of watching death note is just cringing away from the screen and routinely making strangled “AGH! MISA!! NO! PLEASE NOT FOR HIM!” sounds (she deserves the entire world I will not debate this)

[otatma]

the B-52s never, ever should have been green lit to mass produce pop music.

[irithnova]

Whenever a white hetalian is saying some racist shit I just remember how fucking busted they probably look irl like remember those pics of those hetalians who Nazi saluted outside of holocaust memorials and who did Nazi cosplays? Not a single 6 in that whole crowd in fact that were all sub 4s LMAOO so to fellow poc hetalians, tips for dealing with racism from white hetalians: think about how fucking gremlin-like they look behind that computer screen and laugh it off

[pokedcheck]

aw jholl got a tribute video

[lustbile]

Oh shit unrelated to all that, saw some people on twitter saying that Johnny is ovulating? That sounds fun

[embroideredequations]

My oldest pony with a (literal) fresh coat of paint

[lesbiansanemi]

I've heard your Anti Gruvia? I was wondering out of curiosity if you are interested on joining my Anti Gruvia group on FB

I’m not “anti” anything, I just happened to not ship the ship. I also have not been interested in ft in years. So, no