a part of my extended family is coming over for almost the entire of my spring break and i hate it here. like yeah sure she’s said sexual things to me and slapped my ass even when i said to not to, crossed my boundaries countless times, belittled me almost everyday, called me and my siblings ‘abusive’ even though we were just trying to stand up for ourselves. no but she’s family so ofc that doesn’t matter, of course my feelings don’t matter, because she wants to come over and ‘hangout’.
well what if i just don’t like that? no because i’m the eldest so i have to set example so i have to be quiet and smile, make polite small talk, bite my tongue, agree with everything, let her touch me however she likes. just to keep what? to keep her happy? to keep the peace? or just so we don’t loose another family member because it seems the more time goes by more of my family rots and turns into a shitty person and we end up burning bridges. well what if i want to burn that bridge? but no, i’m a child, she’s given me gifts so i have to play nice, i have to sit still, have to endure her, because it’s the nice thing to do.
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Poll adventure (paventure? lol) Day 16: read the small story tidbit below the poll for more details, OR just vote based on initial impression
(✦ see past poll results + further information HERE (link) ✦)
Yesterday's poll decided that The Adventurer should offer to help the travelers with their broken wagon.....
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After much internal deliberation (and some zoning out staring at butterflies), The Adventurer decides it would be best to offer his assistance. Technically, he IS still following his goal of not getting distracted, because theoretically it would make his journey much faster if he were able to catch a ride on a carriage. So really, this is all an ultimate big brain genius strategy for maximizing efficient travel.. Or, at least that sounds like a good enough justification to him.
Gathering up all of his social courage, he approaches one of the travelers fiddling with a broken wheel near the far end of the carriage and meekly asks if there's anything he could do to help.
The man was so focused on his task, he seems initially startled to look up and find someone near him. "OH..! Oh, uhh.. help? With the wagon?", he smiles pleasantly, gesturing towards a few wooden boards that are just out of his reach, "Sure, kid. If you could just hand me th-"
"Apologies, but we actually won't be needing your assistance, stranger." A taller man, surprisingly almost matching the stature of the Adventurer, suddenly slinks out from somewhere behind the carriage, sternly placing himself like a barrier in front of the man working on the wheel. Wheel Guy nervously averts his eyes, making himself smaller, silently resuming his work.
The Adventurer tries his best to maintain composure against the weight of the tall man's bitter gaze, but can't seem to muster much of a response "Aeughh,,, uh… b-but, h- Bu--HHHh,,?.."
"Look, disregard whatever my father told you, he's old, never has any clue what he's talking about. It'd be best for you to simply move along." ('Father'? They don't look alike at all, and seem to be nearly the same age..)
"W-well.. he.. he didn't really tell me anything, I me-hhH,,.. I mean, I literally just got here, s-so...."
"Good. Even more reason to be on your way."
Placing a gloved hand firmly on his shoulder, the tall man begins to motion the Adventurer away from the wagon, but a strange noise interrupts, echoing from inside. Perhaps some sort of animal sound? Or a person faintly yelling about something? Or… both?
"WH-wHggg… whAT was t-that???!!" The Adventurer immediately stops in place, pausing to listen as the tall man keeps trying to push him ahead.
"I didn't hear anything, stranger."
"No, t-there.. was dEFinitely, UHH, a-"
"Likely something in the forest."
"Wh--aah... d.. do you think it was an animal?"
The tall man continues a dramatic struggle to 'subtly' drag him further down the road, whilst the Adventurer mindlessly digs in his heels, too distracted to even notice he's being so strongly prompted to leave.
"Many animals do, indeed, exist within forests. This should not be suprising."
"...It's just.. ..eughh… s… so weird…"
"I assure you, it is not."
"I-it really sounded like.. like it came f-from insid-"
"Yes, from inside the forest. Now, please, if you would.."
The noise interrupts again. It's definitely someone, or something, in some sort of distress.. And definitely from inside of the cart.
"wHoAAGH, aa!!! T-tHat's NOT from the f-forest, that-"
The tall man fully just shoves him now, sending the Adventurer toppling across the dirt, clumsily rolling and landing just past the other side of the carriage. A mother and young child who seem to be part of the traveling group simply stare down at him with empty blank gazes, wholly unconcerned about helping him up.
As the Adventurer fumbles back to his feet (still confused as to why he was even pushed in the first place), the tall man looms by the carriage, diligently watching to ensure that he leaves.
"Travel safe, stranger."
Despite his initial obliviousness, the Adventurer begins to piece the situation together as he stares back at the man, now fully convinced something suspicious might be going on...
…What should he do next??
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Additional Information
the adventurer's current main quest: follow his map to reach the abandoned castle ruins and see the rare animal specialist about the mysterious egg he has
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Another thing that drives me nuts is how often conversations about gender conformity or lack thereof seem to center on these very obvious visual markers of gender presentation. There are certainly valid conversations to be had about makeup or whatever but to hear the majority of people talk sometimes you would think that being gnc consists of shaving your head and putting on a tie (or painting your nails and wearing a skirt).
When like...I’m 99.9% sure nobody has ever looked at me and questioned which pronouns to use, and yet after spending even a little bit of time with me many people (both women and men) perceive me as deeply unfeminine in ways they find actively contemptible and/or threatening. I know this because many of them have taken it upon themselves to tell me! And I also know that I have certain mannerisms/character flaws/neutral character traits which have never caused even a millisecond’s worth of conflict with my dude friends while a huge number of women find them off-putting to the point that I’ve had to carefully suppress/explain/apologize for them in nearly every female friendship I’ve ever had. (And I only learned how to do this with reasonable success - or even to pinpoint exactly what was causing the problems! - in my late teens/early twenties, which is probably why I still have considerably more close guy friends and still often find those friendships easier to navigate. That is a simple statement of fact that frequently gets read as some sort of self-congratulatory not-like-other-girls superiority complex - but trust me, I’m more frustrated by it than anyone else.)
A lot of this stuff isn’t even self-evidently Gender Stuff on the surface! Eg one of the reliable points of conflict I’ve encountered in relationships with women - especially though not exclusively during the earlier getting-to-know-you stages - is that I tend toward being kind of emotionally guarded/slow to open up. This is a trait that many people of all genders have! You wouldn’t think it would be such an issue! And yet I need at least two hands to count the number of explicit conversations I’ve had to have with women to the effect of no, I do not dislike you/find you annoying/think I’m better than you, it just takes me a little while to be comfortable talking about personal subjects, because in my experience the social scripts a lot of women follow for making friends involve a degree of emotional vulnerability that I am almost never immediately comfortable with and when I don’t reciprocate it frequently gets read as me being aloof/condescending/dismissive/deliberately insulting when in fact I’m simply private. THIS HAS LITERALLY NEVER BEEN A PROBLEM IN MY FRIENDSHIPS WITH MEN. It’s been almost a constant in my friendships with women - and that’s in the best-case scenarios where they don’t just immediately decide I’m the world’s biggest bitch and they want nothing to do with me.
(To be clear I’m not saying that Wanting To Talk About Emotions is some essential trait that all women have and all men lack. But I do think women and men often learn different social scripts for how to do friendship, and there can be a subtle sort of culture clash/emotional language barrier if you’re using the wrong set of scripts, and there are certain personality traits that sometimes make one set of scripts considerably easier to pull off successfully than the other. Also, contrary to popular opinion I actually feel quite strongly that the friendship script which involves loads of talking-through-our-feelings is not inherently better/more intimate/more supportive, though obviously everything has its upsides and downsides and there are healthy and unhealthy degrees of these things. Also this is part of why I wish we could have nuanced and sensitive conversations about gendered socialization instead of all having a flinch response because the TERFs use it as a weapon in a deeply stupid way.)
I’ve gotten more conscious of the problem as I’ve gotten older, and taken more proactive steps to avoid hurting women’s feelings by accident, but it takes work. I also freely admit that some of this could be social anxiety-related - but I am hardly the first person to note that unspoken and occasionally byzantine systems of interlocking social rules are frequently A Thing in “women’s spaces,” or that complex unspoken social norms are hell on social anxiety. I also do not think it’s an accident that I have a FAR easier time making friends with women on the internet - probably for a variety of reasons, among which I strongly suspect are “I feel slightly more comfortable opening up in certain contexts if you don’t know me IRL” and also “a slightly higher degree of guarding one’s privacy is normalized and expected to begin with.”
That turned into sort of a ramble/rant but the TL;DR is that I’ve spent much of my life struggling to navigate majority-female spaces and/or relationships with women, this is not a point of pride but a source of immense self-doubt and frustration, and a lot of the reasons seem to boil down to social and relational expectations that are subtly yet deeply gendered.
And yet I’m built slender and like my hair long in a way that visually tends to read as quite feminine even though I don’t particularly dress that way and I wear makeup like once a year to a wedding or something, and it’s those visual cues that take up a disproportionate part of the discussion when people talk about gender presentation.
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hey, ive been rereading 'into the unknown' CONSTANTLY for the last couple of days because its so good?? i love it so much??? also, i wanted to know if we were allowed to write snippets based on your fics if we gift them to you on ao3? ive kind of been wanting to write stuff like how mari reacted to tim being called dilf (or how shed react if she got called milf) and/or tim finding out about how dami kept trying to manipulate mari about the daycare thing in chapter 14 lol
I've answered a similar question here and!! I'm just gonna do a little catch all thing:
Make content about my works!! Write your own versions, draw fanart, do spinoffs, etc! I'm not gonna be mad, in fact I gush about things like this to anyone who will listen CONSTANTLY.
All I'm asking is that you tag me in some way, because I want to see them!!!!!!!
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