the heart acoustic still does a weird audio illusion thing to me where I legitimately hear 'girl' instead of 'boy' for 'i was just a boy you see'
like, I don't know how, and even despite knowing it's boy I still fuckin hear it
It drove me insane a bit bc at first i just kinda accepted it as >oh this must be neat little lyric trick or something, maybe gender weirdness or something something metaphorical given it's the heart's part
i even tried making it clearer and all of that and strained my brain to hear 'boy' and tried listening through different qualities and everything but no, I kept hearing 'girl'
and my brain just got stuck on it for a little while bc it wasn't acting like audio illusions usually act for me-- once I know the right word or whatever that's being said, I hear that, but it wasn't doing that for me here
friend even suggested doing a test to see what people'd hear but I just kinda gave up on that thought immediately because I felt embarrassed wheezes
a year later I still hear 'girl' there but my brain knows it's 'boy' so I just think 'boy' anyway, and a couple times I've managed to hear 'boy' there
basically: my fun time with the heart acoustic and whatever the fuck my ears / brain were doing
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For the ask game: 4, 25, 28?
Thank you for the ask! It's been something for me to mull over at work today. This answer got quite long so I put it under a read more
4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral?
I don't know if this means good feral or bad feral, but I can't think of a bad feral right now so lets talk good.
A word by itself cannot make me go a good feral, its about the context and the connotations.
In this case, Want, and all its variations (wanting, wanted, etc).
I have had part of a phrase stuck in my head for a while - “wanting to be wanted” - I don't know what brought it on exactly. I suppose it's one of those basic desires, isn't it? Everyone wants to be wanted, at least to some degree, and when no-one wants you I suppose you pine for it. In the context of my current writing and WIPs, I suppose Ranger Nefarious would embody that phrase of “wanting to be wanted”, particularly in later chapters.
25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?
If I am limited to only one, then probably how my version of Captain Qwark is really into lingerie. It has little to no bearing at all upon the overall plot of Ranger Days and beyond, it's more just of a fun aside. He has quite the collection in his condo, of all sorts of colours, fabrics, and styles. He enjoys collecting it, admiring it, wearing it when he has the chance and when he can get something in his size that can withstand his musculature. There is quite the collection in his condo, but the most part he is rather quiet about it. Everyone has their own private hobbies and joys, don't they?
The idea grew naturally out from his canon penchant for going in disguise in various feminine outfits, Nurse Shannon in ACiT, the maid outfit in UYA. I imagine he goes all in on such disguises, right down to the underwear. The only bit that isn't changed, obviously, is his cowl.
28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?
This is a two part answer because I don't have just the one anymore.
Doctor Nefarious is my primary answer. He has been living rent free in my head since maybe 2017 or so, it's been years and it was after the movie+game was released. When a character lives that long in your head it eventually feels natural when writing them. When I am in the right space, I can hear his voice in my head as I write out his dialogue (Or not, and if not then it probably isn't something he would say). Even without that he is fun to write. I haven't properly gotten around to writing Doctor Nefarious, rather I've been writing Ranger Nefarious, but there's still shades of the later doctor in there that I'm weaving through as I write Ranger Days. Ranger Days is a corruption arc, fallen hero, type of a story.
But whether he is a Doctor or a Ranger, Nefarious is just plain fun to write and imagine scenarios with. He's loud, exuberant, funny, intelligent, doesn't give up no matter how many times the universe sends someone to kick him down, has good chemistry with his counterpart Lawrence. I could go on but this ask post is getting long and I'm not even finished yet.
Emperor Nefarious is my secondary answer. I have only recently started actually properly writing him and thus thinking as he does so I can get his voice and character right. Whilst he has some similarities to the doc, there are some key differences too. In my drafts on my unnamed Rivet and Emps fic, he's the constant winner now dealing with the personal, messy aftermath of being a first-time loser. He's bitter, he's a mess (mentally and physically), if he wasn't an alcoholic before, he is now, but even with all that he's still gloating bitch we all love, even if it's perhaps not to the same degree. He does get better during the fic to at some extent and becomes at least somewhat more functioning, literally and mentally. It's going to be a balancing act of portraying a broken man trying to pull himself back together after a crushing defeat, and pulling out the old playfulness and humour of his mannerisms in his Emperor days.
As a newer favourite character, he's still something of a puzzle and a challenge to work out, I'm still getting to know the ins and out of his character and mannerisms, and that in itself has been fun. I try to be as authentic as I can whenever I write characters, so with major characters especially I try to dig deep and understand them in order to portray them accurately. I'm looking forward to the challenge of writing the Emperor-Who-No-Longer-Is.
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i agree w u that we need to be way way more critical abt shit like makeup and plastic surgery wherein "freedom of choice" is just leaning into patriarchal white-centric ideals of beauty etc. but i think freedom of choice is still impt in other aspects like life goals and saying that choice doesnt matter as much as fighting patriarchy in all aspects seems a little off to me? like if a woman happens to want kids, which is a gendered expectation, then by your post's standards, she isnt fighting the patriarchy. if she chooses to stay at home and watch the kid because thats genuinely what fulfills her more than a job and is fortunate that her spouse wants to and can financially support her, thats also going to be considered not feminist simply because she isnt doing the opposite of gender norms, according to your post. same goes for if a woman wears gendered clothes? has a job like childcare teacher, nannying, nurse? i dont like the idea of defanged (and largely cishet white abled) feminism as much as you, but acting like all forms of freedom of choice that conforms to gender norms is inherently bad strays really close to political lesbianism ideology wherein even choosing to be romantically involved with a man becomes traitorous. because dating men Is a gender norm. short of being a radfem, there is a line where we recognize that choice does matter because otherwise, the act of dating a man in itself plays into gender roles and expectations.
i just think theres a bit more nuance. i.e. genuinely further normalizing hurtful rhetoric/ideas (which makeup and plastic surgery do) should be looked at critically and i personally think we ought to abandon aesthetic surgeries n makeup for the sake of simply fitting into beauty standards all together. i also think that people will always have innate preferences. mine is towards counselling and psychology- is it unfeminist to go into a field that is woman dominated? must we let go of all freedom to choose to do "the most anti-patriarchy thing possible"? i feel like more nuance is necessary or we fall into traps for ourselves and actually end up stifling other women. like women who dont want to go into male dominated fields because its rife with sexism. like women who genuinely want kids with a man. like women who dont have the capacity emotionalmy or physically due to disabilities to work the jobs they are qualified for and so they choose to be homemakers. or even trans women who choose to do makeup because it saves them from transmisogyny. like yes, absolutely we need to critique where some preferences come from because, like with beauty standards and diets and skincare and fashion/makeup trends, some of them can be genuinely harmful to others (especially young girls who are exposed only to manicured picture-perfect bodies and faces). but at the end of the day, sacrificing All individual preferences will not make women happier, healthier or freer. and i mean this for ALL women.
yes I agree that nuance is important! that post is only a few paragraphs long and I made it in a moment of anger--so please nobody think that when I went into it, I was thinking that any conformity to a gender role is worse than death itself lol. like im literally in cornrows and a woman's shirt now.
that's why i always make the distinction between feminist action vs nonfeminist actions, rather than IDing as a feminist and then taking all the things I do as either qualifying or disqualifying me as a feminist. There's women who, for any reason, choose to be homemakers rather than work. Is that a valid choice for them? Yeah! Is it a feminist action? In my personal opinion, no--but is it wrong? Hell no. It's just that, on the list of things that a woman might say are things she's done to dismantle the patriarchy, being a SAHM/homemaker wouldn't be on the list. That's not a bad thing. We can't live our lives wholly dedicated dismantling something to the point of our own self destruction (and considering how deeply gender roles run--even down to social interactions--this would be impossible, anyways). that's where liberal feminism and choice feminism are in the wrong--it's ID first, and then the belief that as along as she's a woman Doing What She Wants, she's fighting the patriarchy (in lots of ways this is the case, but in lots of ways it definitely isn't). so a woman ends up saying its a totes feminist thing to like. actively support plastic surgery and the harmful makeup culture. rather than admitting that those are things that a feminist can do that don't make her not a feminist, but that definitely aren't feminist actions.
(I think most of the people reblogging that post understood as much, considering how there's any number of folks reblogging that who are women w long hair or wearing bras or doing something else that's a gender role and thus supported by the patriarchy)
My beef is with the pushing of personal empowerment over liberation from the thing that makes you need to feel empowered in the first place--and then acting like that is a win against patriarchy. like in the ideal world, people wouldn't need to wear make up, you know? Like, there'd be no expectation for women of any type of contour their faces and coat their skin and clog their pores and spend dozens or even hundreds every year to look a Specific Way. The fact that trans women have to wear make up for their safety is evidence that we live in a society where women are at risk of facing extreme violence for non-conformity--that's a fundamental change to society that make up, while helpful in a lot of these situations, bandages over. Bear in mind that I'm not saying that trans women shouldn't ever wear make up or anything! Make up as a choice for personal freedom/safety obv varies between women and by situation. It's still a gender expectation that men don't have to face, though.
My post was aimed more at the hardline liberal feminists/choice feminists who truly do think that make up is like. a 100% liberating tool whose acceptance actually contributes to the furthering of women's rights and the dismantling of patriarchy. it was generally directed at the women who call themselves feminsts but don't actually have like. an ounce of anything negative to say about the gender roles that are forced on us from birth. like they keep insisting that there is liberation through conformity as long as you change your mind about it or change the definition of feminism entirely. I don't think anyone's evil or partaking wholeheartedly in the oppression of women by wearing makeup n heels or being a SAHM, but again I know better than to equate a choice (often made under some level of misogynistic social coercion) with like, strives to get women in normally male-dominant fields or boost our representation in government or securing our reproductive rights.
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