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kyidyl · 3 years

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Kyidyl Explains Bones - Part 3

Well, I had this halfway done and then TUMBLR ATE IT, so let me start again. UGH.

(These posts are collected under the KyidylBones tag. Do with that information what you will, lol.)

So what are we getting into today? Sex determination!

Ethical Note: I’m adding this bc not everyone who sees this post saw my post yesterday and this is important info, especially on Tumblr. Anthropologists of all stripes are well aware that sex and gender are extremely complicated. Trust me, we know. But we still do sex determination for a few reasons. First, because missing persons databases are arranged on a male/female binary, and if we’re comparing a set of remains to that database to identify the remains then we need that info. Second, demographic info for populations that have disappeared is important, even if those populations are historical. This might shock you (<--sarcasm), but written records are usually either lacking or inaccurate. Third, if we know the sex of the skeleton we can compare that to the grave goods and learn some interesting cultural things, including possibly being trans, because none of the signs of being trans survive physically in the skeleton. So I am going to be using male/female binary language, but it isn’t to exclude the wide variety of sexes and genders that don’t exist on that binary, it’s because it’s what I’ve got to work with. And if you have questions about this, feel free to ask, but please be respectful.

Alright, so there are some vocab words for today’s post and I had them all nicely written out in an easy to read paragraph, but it got eaten, so I’m just gonna present them in list fashion this time:

Characteristic - All physical markers of human variation exist on a spectrum because humans are varied and we invented the categories to begin with. If something is characteristic of, say, a male? It means that it is very, very distinctly male. It matches the stereotypical expectation of what you’d see in a male. It’s a standard for an obvious example of a given thing.

Landmark - A landmark on your bones is a feature of the bones that is always in the same place. We use this to help us identify a bone and to help us know what side it is on. IE, your lesser trochanter is a bump on your femur (thigh bone) that is on the inside towards the back. It’s always in that spot, so we know which direction it should face and ergo which side it would be on. Landmarks are unique to the bone in question.

Foramen - A hole on a bone. The big one in your skull that your spinal cord goes through is the foramen magnum and it literally means big hole. But there are a lot of little ones all over your skeleton so your nerves and blood vessels can do to your skeleton what the weirwood did to Bryden Rivers. I said what I said. ;)

Bilateral - Both sides. Humans have bilateral symmetry and so one side is symmetrical (externally and WRT your skeleton, but not always your organs.) to the other. You can split us down the middle and the two sides are basically the same.

Ok, so there’s another set of terms that you need to know, but I’m going to be copying and pasting this into every post going forward so I’m making it separate. Anyone who works with any kind of anatomy uses these terms to be very specific about the location of something on the body. They are:

Anterior/Posterior - Front and back respectively. I remember them because my mom used to say posterior when she didn’t want to say butt, and because A comes before P the way front comes before back. Sometimes people say dorsal and ventral, and I remember that because a dorsal fin is on a whale’s back.

Proximal/Distal - Near and far vertically in relationship to the center of your body. I remember it because one end of the bone is in close proximity to me and the other one is distant.

Medial/Lateral - Near and far horizontally in relationship to the center of your body. I remember it because medial is closer to the middle of my body, and lateral isn’t medial. Also, if you are reading left to right L comes before M and you’d get to a lateral body part before a medial one.

So, where to begin? How do we know what sex people were assigned at birth from just their skeleton? Let’s start with what everyone is most familiar with:

The Pelvis

The pelvis of an adult human is a really common thing for an archaeologist to find. And by the time we find it, it’s usually in three pieces (excluding your tailbone aka last vertebra). Your left and right hip bones, called the innominates, and your sacrum. Mind you, the pelvis is made up of a number of bones, but they all fuse in adulthood except these three (fun fact: I’m so used to using the individual names for them that I had to *google* the word innominate.), so this is what we usually find. If it’s a kid, they still survive well because they’re thick, heavy bones, but they aren’t fused. Another fun fact, the bumps of bone that you feel under your ass are called your ischium and I’m only telling you that because I think it’s a fun word to say. Your hop bones, like the actual entirety of the flat bladed part at the top, that’s called the Illium. I like that word too. Aaanyway, here’s a human pelvis:

(Source)

These are actual bone specimens in the top down view, both are women, but they are of different ethnic origin.

(Source)

This is a cast (IE, plastic), front view of a male pelvis.

You can see those 3 pieces I’m talking about. The only joint there that remains unfused is the sacroiliac joint, IE, where the two halves of the pelvis join the sacrum. However! You sacrum is technically a series of fused vertebrae and your spinal cord runs almost all the way to the very tip. There are some conditions which cause these not to fuse, or to not fuse properly, or to not properly encase the spinal cord and it causes all KINDS of issues. But anyway, yeah, your sacrum is a really tough hunk of bone because it carries a lot of weight. The bit in the front is called the pubic symphysis and, despite what certain tumblr posts would have you believe, having children does NOT leave a notch on the inner side of it from the muscle tearing away tiny chunks of the bone. In fact, it is hotly debated whether or not pregnancy leaves behind any skeletal evidence at all.

Alright, so basically speaking, females make da babies and males don’t, so the different equipment is differently shaped......

.....wait, no, that’s not right. Let’s back up. Male and female humans are differently proportioned and their center of gravity is, on average, different. This is the whole thing about men having upper body strength and women having thighs that can crush watermelons. This is on *average* (I will be saying a lot about averages in these posts.) true. And so the physics of the forces exerted on your bones is different. Males are top-heavy, and so their pelvis is shaped in response to their gate and muscle structure because the pelvis supports and distributes the weight of your entire body. And bipedalism means that the shape of the pelvis is very, very different depending on the weight distribution. These changes to the pelvis are really obvious, which is why we can tell from just a few bones whether or not a hominin was bipedal. It changes the *entire* body.

It is true though that the pelvis of a female is different than a male, because a female pelvis has to be able to support the weight of a developing child while still allowing the individual to walk. So the interaction of average size, a uterus, and the bipedal gate means that male and female pelvises are a different shape.

Here is a comparison:

(Source)

So firstly, that angle is called the sub-public angle, and because a females pelvis is wider and flatter than a male’s (when viewed from the front) it’s wider in the front. This also gives any babies more room. Secondly, you can see the difference in the tilt of the sacrum - in the female you can’t see the tailbone. This, again, is due to the confluence of weight distribution and the necessity of passing a baby’s head through that space. It would be a lot harder to push it out if you had a tailbone in the way. Lastly, you can see that the shape of the circle when you look top down and bottom up are different - wider on the woman because of the same reasons I’ve already mentioned. There is one more major difference between the male and female pelvis, and that’s the sciatic notch:

(Source)

Characteristic of male on the left, intermediate in the middle, and female on the right (and dang, she was young, too.). Thinner is male, wider is female. Usually you can fit your thumb in a female’s notch but barely or not at all in a male. I personally find the subpubic arch and the sciatic notch the easiest to use because, fun fact #2, those 3 sections are a bitch to hold together with your hands and that makes it hard to see the other shapes. The amount of sacrums and pelvic bones I’ve accidentally dropped while trying to determine sex....it’s a lot, ok? It’s a lot. I only have two hands and pelvises are big.

There are also several less obvious ways of determining sex from a skeleton, so you guys should definitely visit the source for the above image because they go into it deeper and there are several excellent images of public bones.

So how else do we determine sex? The next easiest way is from the skull, because the features are distinct and skulls survive well.

The Skull

In my opinion the easiest landmark to use on a skull for sex determination is the jaw. There are several features of the jaw that can be used here - and, mind you, when determining sex we measure every small and large sex-linked feature according to a scale and then average it all out. We never look at any single thing (although sometimes the individual has something so characteristic that you can’t help it. The individual in my position has a brow like a neanderthal, so it was pretty obvious.). Anyway, there are several features here but the easiest is to look at the shape of the lateral distal posterior portion of the jaw. It’s called the masseteric tuberosity. Basically, it’s a little bit of bone that sticks out of the back of your jaw. It’s one of the attachment points of the masseter aka chewing muscles attach. Because males have stronger muscles pulling on that part of the jaw and exerting more force, it flares out further for them when you look at it from the front, like this:

(Source)

It’s that sticky-outy thing thing that I circled in red. Here is an example of the same thing on females:

(Source)

Female jaws are rounder, and so that bit is less defined, flares out less, and is not as sharp as it is on males. And this is a reminder that these measures aren’t absolutes - humans have a lot of variance in them. The female asian and the male on the right both have somewhat atypical structures, while the female european and the two other males have a very characteristic structure.

The two other easiest to identify are the shape of the brown line and the shape of the chin (the mental protuberance). Here is an image of the comparison:

(Source: Pinterest, but this images are from the Human Bone Manual text that I use and I used this image so I wouldn’t have to make my own. :P)

You can see in the profile that the female skull has a higher, more vertical forehead with less pronounced brow ridges. If you look, you can also see that her chin protrudes less in profile, and is softer and less pronounced in the frontal view. The angle under her teeth is less severe.

So these three things, the chin, the brow, and the jaw, are the easiest to identify the most likely to be characteristic of the sex of the individual. But, if you compare the images I’ve used here you’ll also notice that there are other differences in the skull. Females have more of a slope to the bottom of their jaw, the bump on the back of their heads (the occipital protuberance) tends to be far less pronounced; and this is the case for all muscle attachments generally speaking. On average, males are more easily able to build muscle mass and are larger, and so their muscles pull harder on their skeletons and create larger muscle attachments. The round, blunt thing to the right of the back of the jaw that sticks out from the skull (the mastoid process), is also at a different angle and is larger in males. This is another case of the muscles being bigger and stronger - the mastoid process is where several of your jaw and neck muscles attach.

There you have it, then. The easiest ways to tell the sex of a skeleton. :)

This post has been approved by Gage the science doggo:

#science #anthropology #skeletons #human remains #human skeletons #education #KyidylBones #archaeology #bioarchaeology #humans #bones #human bones

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hankwritten · 3 years

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Litany

Gen, 2k

Part of the DontNeedADiscord Pride Week, Day 1: Flag

“And what is the meaning of these?”

It was a good idea not to make Miss Helen pissy. She was the Boss around here, and not in the way Miss Pauling was the boss, but like the Boss with a capital B. I wasn’t exactly sure if she owned the building, or maybe the company, or maybe she was just our lawyer so we shouldn’t tee her off because of that, but the way Dell had explained it making her mad was a good way to have your desk packed by the end of the day.

So, I’d have to be very delicate about this. “They’re pins, Miss Helen,” I explained extremely politely. “It’s the first day of Pride Month; I thought everyone could do with a little company spirit!”

“Spirit?” The T on the end of the word popped like a firecracker. Miss Helen could make nice words like spirit or rainbows sound like she was actually saying dog doody. “And how exactly do these pins make you…prideful?”

“They’re fun!”

When she didn’t react, I at first assumed it was because she couldn’t hear me so well through my respirator, but then I considered what I knew about her and wondered maybe she simply didn’t know what fun was.

“Look,” I said, placing one in the palm of her hand. “It has a flag on it! I was thinking as people are coming in during the day, they can pick them out and wear them if they want to, just to show off a little color. See? This one is the bigender flag.”

She held it up and examined it like a jeweler inspecting a diamond. “And you find this…fun?

“Yeah!”

She waited, as though expecting the fun to start radiating out of the pin like a hand warmer. “…You certainly have quite a few of these.”

It was true. Along with the usual lollipops and stickers I kept at the front desk (the former being exclusively for clients and never-ever for sneaking myself one, no siree), the scattering of buttons took up a good chunk of counter space, with as many varieties as I could find. I didn’t want anyone to feel left out, so I’d just kept on printing until I had over three dozen.

“Very well,” Miss Helen said finally. “If it is good for company spirit.”

I clapped my hands in delight, glad the party wasn’t going to get shut down before it even started. So palpable was my relief, I didn’t even notice that Miss Helen hadn’t given the button back.

I didn’t have time to worry about it though, since just then Dr. Ludwig came in through the glass doors. He was normally the first one after me, as he always liked to get an early start down in the lab, and we’d developed a morning routine as fellow early birds.

“Dr. Ludwig!” I said, waving my hand, partly to get his attention and partly to show off the new gloves Dell had gotten me. The rubber ones had been so hard to type in, but these were nice and concealing as well as colorful. “Happy Pride Month! Do you want a pin?”

“Guten Morgen,” he greeted warmly. “Ah, buttons?” He picked up the closest one. “Pride buttons, I see.”

“Here you go!” I said, shoving a bi pin in his general direction since he’d shown interest.

But, to my surprise, he didn’t take it immediately. “Ehrm…” he said, staring down at the circle of metal.

“…Is this not the right one?” I withdrew my hand. Was I misremembering? “I’m so sorry, I guess I forgot…”

“No, no I did say that, didn’t I.” He ran a hand through his hair, sending its usual prim style haywire. “It is just…” He coughed lightly into his fist. “…Would you allow me to confide with you for a moment?”

Immediately, I pulled out the spare footstool I kept behind the counter, patting it as Dr. Ludwig came through the counter doors and took a seat. Our early morning chats were normally something to look forward to, shared over a donut or coffee he’d brought into the office, but today he just seemed run down. As he tucked his heels onto the stool’s crossbar, he rubbed his face.

“You know I am not as…up on all of this as some of your generation, ja?” he began.

“Millennials scare you,” I nodded, pulling my legs into my swivel chair.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” he huffed. “It is…well when we had our first conversations, and it was explained to me, it seemed to fit. At the time. Having to reconcile beginning a relationship with Mikhail when I still was not quite over Frida, nor really sure why things had fallen apart with us there.”

I remembered. “At the time? But not anymore?”

He sighed, ruffling his hair even more. “Now…now I am not so sure. Being with Mikhail is…quite different than any of the thirty years Frida and I spent together. I am starting to wonder if it was more just that I held extreme affection for her, and I was inexperienced enough that I was able to mistake it for attraction.” He chuckled humorlessly. “I thought I was so in love with her, and that’s why I never even looked at another woman. Töricht.”

“I don’t think that’s dumb,” I shook my head. “Everybody’s learning new things all the time. You can’t be expected to have everything sorted right after coming out.”

“Yes, I suppose,” he said. “But I still feel…guilty I think. Several of our coworkers are proudly attracted to both men and women, and I am aware that treating such a label as a ‘phase’ is a crude stereotype they have to deal with. I’d rather not have anyone think I was making a mockery of them.”

“It’s not a stereotype if that’s what’s really happening.” I patted him on the shoulder. “No one’s going to see it like that. If you think that’s where your journey is taking you, then there’s no shame coming out a second time.”

Dr. Ludwig responded to my words with a hopeful, if not entirely convinced, look behind his spectacles.

“Here,” I said, handing him both a bi and a gay pin. “You don’t have to wear either of them, this is just for fun after all! But if you change your mind…”

He looked at the two pins in his hand, then smiled tiredly up at me. “…Thank you mein friend. You are always helpful to talk to.”

“I try to be!”

After a few more assurances, the Doctor did eventually leave for the lab. Right on his coattails, Dell and Marcel came through the front door.

“Hey there, firebug,” Dell greeted. “What are you gettin’ up to here?”

I gave the quick rundown, pulling my shirt to highlight my own pin since I’d forgotten to show it off to my first two customers. “Pick any one you like!”

“Bear in mind I am saying this as a queer person,” Marcel said, sniffing down at the massive mound of multicolored circles, “this is all quite tacky.”

“Aw, learn how to have some fun, Spook,” Dell said, elbowing him in the side. To show him up, he claimed a pansexual pin for himself, and shot me a wink.

Marcel did nothing but sniff; but, when he thought no one was looking, I saw him discreetly sneak one of the pins off the counter as he left.

After that, the morning’s influx picked up too much to greet every person individually, but during lunch people saw fit to swing by and check things out again.

“Hi buddy!” Miss Pauling greeted. “I heard you were giving out Pride pins and wanted to see if- why are there so many lesbian ones?”

“Well!” I said, ecstatic to launch into an information dump. “The oldest of these is actually the ‘lipstick lesbian’ flag which, in absence of a more generic one, was used without the kiss mark in the corner. The one with the orange stripes wasn’t created until 2018, to be more inclusive all different lesbian groups.”

“Okay, but why does this one have an axe on it?”

“That’s the labrys!” I took the purple and black pin from her hand, pointing as I described, “the double bearded axe was used by the Amazons in Greek myth, and reappropriated in 1999 for its symbolism in female empowerment.”

“Wow,” she blinked down at the five different designs. “That’s really cool, except for the fact I have no idea how to use an axe.”

“I bet Tavish could teach you, he loves his Skullcutter.”

“…I’ll think about it. I’ll just take this one for now.” She picked up the orange five-stripe variation and pinned it to her purple shirt.

“Looks good!”

“Thanks!” she grinned. “And it was really nice of you to do this.”

“Honestly, the pleasure’s all mine. I just like seeing everyone happy.”

And everyone was! At least it sure seemed that way, even if it was kind of hard to tell with Mikhail. After lunch, he lumbered past my desk, picked out a gay pin, and put it on without so much as a smile. I took the muted grunt to be that of satisfaction

Tavish was next, dropping off half a roast beef sandwich since I’d forgotten to eat today, and instantly becoming my favorite person. While I was chowing down, he swiped two trans and two bi pins from my collection.

“Wadda you need two of each for?” I asked, quite a feat with my mouth full of roast beef and my respirator hanging halfway around my chin.

“Haven’t you heard?” Tavish asked with a raise of his eyebrow. “They just dropped a new identity: double bi. It’s twice as potent as regular bisexuality.”

I tilted my head, blinking perplexedly from behind my lenses.

“Ah, just a joke duck,” he assured. “The spares are for the husband.”

“Oh, right.” I swallowed down my mouthful. “I actually haven’t seen Jane at all today?”

“Ach, he came in earlier than you. Left at five this morning.”

“What? How?” I shook my head. “I’m the one who unlocks the doors.”

“Said he was tired of waiting for your ‘lazy, unpatriotic behind’ to start the day at seven. His words, not mine.” Tavish smiled apologetically. “He broke into one of the lab side doors.”

“…I bet Mikhail had something to say about that.”

He sighed. “That he did. They’ve been at it for hours. If there’s another office-wide prank war tomorrow, you’ll know why.”

Oh no. That’s how we lost our last two coffee makers, and our last seven office hamsters. Tavish assured me that it wouldn’t get out of hand, but by the time Mick showed up near the end of the day, my mood was somewhat dampened.

“Everything alroight, Campfire?” he asked me. “Ya look glum.”

“Just thinking about the impending damage to all those nice posters I put up in the breakroom,” I said sadly. “But! If you’ve come here to pick out a pin, that might cheer me up a bit.”

Mick chuckled in that cute little way of his, and already I was smiling. “Might have.”

We were close enough that I was ninety-five percent certain which one he wanted, but I’d learned my lesson with Dr. Ludwig and didn’t try to pick it out for him. Still, I let myself entertain a self-satisfied grin as he picked up the aroace flag.

“Hey uh,” I said. “If that’s the one you like, and uh…since I know you’re into archery…”

Carefully, I opened one of my drawers and extracted the special pin I’d made earlier, Mick watching me curiously all the while.

“Someone on the internet made this design,” I explained. “It’s for an aroace, arrow-ace!”

The flag was blacked out in several places to make a bow and arrow shape, and Mick grinned as he took it from my glove. “Clever.”

“Do you like it?” I asked hesitantly.

“Well, let’s see.” He pinned it to his vest. “Looks pretty good ta me.”

I couldn’t keep my stomach from doing a little flip at that. When Dell showed up, the last to leave the office for the day, he could tell I was smiling even through the mask.

“Everything go well, partner?” he chuckled. “You look pleased as punch.”

“Everything went great! Even Scout came by, although all he did was say ‘hey, free crap!’ and dumped a bunch of pins into his pocket.”

“I’m glad to hear the attempt at company spirit was a success,” a voice from behind Dell said, making us both jump. Miss Helen emerged from the shadows, her purple jacket an entire mass of pride pins, nearly one of every kind. When had she gotten all those? Had she been paying Marcel to sneak them out while I wasn’t looking? “A happy work environment is a productive work environment, as I always say. Well done, secretary.”

“Can’t remember you ever saying that, ma’am,” Dell admitted blandly.

“…Why do you have so many?” I asked.

“These are…fun…are they not?” she sniffed. “I am having…fun.”

Huh. Maybe this is just what she looked like when she was having a good time. I shrugged. “Glad you enjoyed yourself Miss Helen! Does that mean it’s okay to do it again next year?”

“…You have my permission.”

With that, she strutted out, and Dell shot me a grin. I scooped the remaining pins into my bag and closed up the front office, chatting with him on the way to the parking lot about how we could mix things up next year.

#dnadprideweek2021 #tf2 fanfiction

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crossdreamers · 4 years

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This trans woman supported the “gender critical” TERFs. Then she realized that she had joined a transphobic cult.

Sometimes trans people end up supporting the ones that that belittle and marginalize transgender people. This is not as strange as it sounds. They might have grown up in the same transphobic culture as, let’s say, religious fundamentalist fanatics or the trans-exclusionary, “gender critical”, radical feminists (TERFs). Even “normal” culture reflects the fear of sex and gender variation. Do they internalize the transphobia and/or the homophobia of the surrounding society.

This twitter thread of @Kinsys gives us one such story.

//I'm having this massive *duh* moment right now. When I first started becoming popular with the GC [Gender Critical/Trans-exclusionary radical feminist] crowd, a lot of trans people tried to sway me away from it. They called me bootlicker, quisling, TERF, truscum, and more. Some of the more compassionate ones tried to warn me.

"They'll turn on you eventually", they said. I didn't think so. At the time, I was still wet behind the ears and confident that I could good faith my way into solving the problems. I didn't see prejudice, I saw legitimate concerns and people frustrated by their inability to speak.

I realized that they needed a voice, someone who could stand up and speak The Truth, and on whom the accusations of transphobia would sound utterly absurd.

After all, I am trans.

After all, I was defending Reality.

But looking back, it turns out I was joining a cult.

It's suddenly clear to me that I was, in fact, bootlicking. I just couldn't see it because it wasn't GC boots I found so tasty. It was an entire lifetime of internalized homophobia and transphobia. I was driven to justify my existence to facsimiles of my family.

It wasn't just that, though. It's not as if I didn't, and don't, genuinely care about women's rights. In fact I cared very much and still do. But there are many perspectives on women's rights, and I chose to defend the one that most closely mimicked the values of The Cult.

It was, on some level, a subconscious attempt at putting myself through another unorthodox round of conversion therapy. I wanted to agree with their views on trans people, because if I could then it might be possible to redefine myself by them. I wanted to fix my transness.

Earlier, reading a long, cathartically ranty blog post linked by @surfacingwater, I began to realize a rather pesky truth I've been trying to hide beneath an attractive labyrinth of nuance: I have never truly accepted that I'm LGBT.

Alongside my love affair with GC ideas, I was also busy exploring Blanchardism [this is a reference to the transphobic autogynephilia theory]. If GC ideology represented my mother's perspective (I was a small child when she became the first to tell me, bitterly, that trans women were mutilated men), then Blanchardism represented my father.

It was cold observation, and required unflinching reflection. It was a new echo of so many moments in which my father grabbed my jaw and forced me to look him in the eye, admit I wasn't telling him the truth, and open my soul to him or else Hell.

GC ideology wanted me to believe that trans women are all just mutilated men, and fuck our pain, our effort. Especially if you're one of those fetishists Blanchard was kinder but no less firm: it's cool you are who you are, he said. Just admit that you're a perverted fetishist.

It's easy to see why this eventually created a mental health crisis. But while I was in it, being torn three ways, it made it possible for me to entertain the notion that I was actually Cis. It let me gaslight myself into believing I could actually be a straight man.

But I was never a straight man. I was always a queer. In high school, people identified me as a "faggot" and it didn't matter how much I protested. They bullied me just the same. And I knew on some level they were right. I knew I was different. I knew it showed.

So I worked to fix it. I spent years learning unnatural body language. I learned to pass for straight, most of the time, anyway. "Why do you look like you're posing all the time?" People would ask. "I'm not!!!" I would snap, while double-checking that I wasn't sitting wrong.

I've tried to hash this out a thousand times, invalidate it over and over but the truth is that I'm a really feminine human. I was a feminine kid, a really, really scared one. I wanted to be anything other than who and what I was.

But reading that long post was like a reflection of everything I spent my entire life trying to avoid. I wanted to be liked, because if people like you they don't abuse you, and in my world abuse was the default. So much so I couldn't understand why trans people fought back.

It was, and has always been, a desperate attempt to generate an illusion of control. But we can't control it. And I can't stop existing as myself any more than anyone else can. I *am* everything I was ever afraid I'd be: Trans, Homosexual, Fetishist, Irrational.

And I finally just realized that I don't need to justify my fucking existence. I don't need to tell you the contents of my soul, father. They're mine. I can keep them, I can love them, and if society hates me for them that's on them. It's not me, society, it's you.

And with this I finally understand what I should have figured out long ago: Justification isn't possible. We have a right to exist. We have a right to exist exactly as we are, without needing to justify it, without needing to prove our value.

And all these people bitching about "biology" can fuck right the fuck off, because this *is* my biology and it's not a joke. Most importantly, our suffering isn't about you. That's the whole GC problem: they're actually narcissistic enough to believe we're about them.

As for Blanchard, maybe he's right, maybe he's not. Maybe he's sometimes right, maybe not. Maybe he was then and isn't now. I don't know. The truth is I don't care. I don't see how on earth it matters. What matters is how we treat people. What matters is how we treat ourselves.

And no one is going to give us a space. We spend our childhoods rejected by boys and kicked across the yard by men loudly wondering why we don't hurry up and stand. Then these supposed women's rights groups accuse us of trying to infiltrate as if they're the center of our world.

And god forbid anyone come out as an enby: all of society will join in on the mockery. Sections of society shuffle us around endlessly like hotels that have only just happened to fill up, sorry. Try the next one, they'll take you.

So we have to fight for rights. We have to. Because being nice won't work. Being nice just means you get to be privy to 1001 conversations about how horrible people like you are. Every word indirectly slicing your self-esteem to ribbons. But at least they aren't calling you a man.

The fight isn't about what we always were. It's about creating a new way to look at the world that includes us as normal. It's about preventing further abuse. It's about solving the problem for future generations. That's what rights activism is about. That's why it matters.

And to all the actual TERFs out there bitching about how "the mask has fallen" and how I'm "showing my true colors": It's cause for celebration, no?//

Thread and comments here.

Top illustration by Henry James Garrett @henryjgarrett.

#transgender #trans #lgbt #lgbtqa #gender critical #TERF #transphobia #enby #nonbinary #gc

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lingthusiasm · 4 years

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Transcript Episode 43: The grammar of singular they - Interview with Kirby Conrod

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 43: The grammar of singular they - Interview with Kirby Conrod. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 43 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch. I’m here with Dr Kirby Conrod who’s a linguist at the University of Washington. But first, some announcements. The LingComm grant is still open until June 1st. You should apply for that if you have a linguistics communication project that you think will helped by a bit of money and a bit of support. There’s more details for that on the website at lingcomm.org. That’s “comm” with two Ms as in “communication.” We’ll link to that in the description as well.

[Music]

Gretchen: Hello, Kirby! Welcome to the podcast.

Kirby: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

Gretchen: Thank you so much for coming. I wanna start with the first question that we ask all of our guests which is, how did you get interested in linguistics?

Kirby: I have to preface this by saying that I didn’t know I was going to major in linguistics when I went to my undergrad for my four-year college. I got into UC Santa Cruz. It was lower on the list, but I ended up having an amazing time. When I was applying to colleges from high school, I thought I wanted to be an English major. I got to UC Santa Cruz and I realised, “Oh, my gosh! You guys don’t have an English major.” It’s just not a program that they have. So, I was like, “Okay. Well, I’m gonna make my own English major out of spare parts.” What I did was I decided, “Okay. I’m gonna double-major in literature and linguistics and that will make an English major.” What ended up happening was I essentially made, somehow, the opposite of an English major. It really ended up being the absolute perfect thing for me.

What really cemented, like, linguistics is where I was going to stay for sure was my first syntax class in my first year of undergrad. The first day of class my professor, Jim McCloskey, walks into the class and says – and I’m a freshman. I’m a little baby at this point. He walks into the class and says, “This is probably the hardest class that this university offers. Please don’t take it for a grade.” I have to say it was good advice. It was very hard. Taking it pass/fail meant that I could really focus on what I was learning. This was a Syntax 1 class. Syntax is all about the idea that we can make an equation to put words together to produce only the real sentences of language and not the sentences that don’t happen in language. By the end of the quarter, you have a pretty good working model of what sentences can be. It’s not complete yet. It’s always an ongoing project.

The other thing that really drew me to linguistics was that my instructors in undergrad were always really honest about this, and I try to be really honest too, about this is not a solved problem. This happens constantly – now that I’m teaching Syntax 1 and I’m on the other side of the room – it happens constantly that students will ask me questions that the answers don’t exist yet. It’s not that the answers aren’t out there. It’s that we haven’t figured it out yet. This happens all the time. As a student, to me, that was really moving and exciting of feeling like I could contribute something. There’s a lot that needs to be contributed. In undergrad, my instructors were very upfront about this of undergrads can and do produce new knowledge in their linguistics classes. Sometimes, undergrads go to conferences, present their work, do original research. It happens because there’s just a lot of unexplored space.

Gretchen: This was something I found really exciting as an undergrad as well that I can be looking at things and no one else has looked at this.

Kirby: It’s really, really cool. It’s one of these things that it gives you goose bumps to be sitting in a class and realise if I have an idea of how to deal with this, then I’m the first person to have this idea. I don’t have to just go back into the literature and find So-and-So has already solved this problem. It’s a matter of I can solve this problem. That’s really, really compelling.

Gretchen: You don’t have to go through 200 years or 500 years or 1,000 years of intellectual tradition of “I need to learn this entire history” before I can possibly make any sort of contribution to this area. It’s like this is a young field and there’s still stuff to do that.

Kirby: It feels like a math class where math isn’t finished being invented.

Gretchen: I guess there are still mathematicians who are inventing math, but you have to have a PhD in math before you know what math hasn’t been done yet.

Kirby: Whereas, very much it is the case that Syntax 1 students will run into new math in terms of syntax. It’s really cool and compelling to me.

Gretchen: This gets us into the next question which is, how did you get into your current research topic? What was the new thing that you were trying to figure out?

Kirby: I got into my current research topic when I got to grad school. I already knew that I wanted to study syntax, so I was taking syntax classes. In my first year of grad school was the first year that I was out as nonbinary and asking people to call me “they” and really being a participant in the trans community. Most of my friends were trans. The nonbinary stuff and the grad school in linguistics happened to me at the same time.

What this meant was I was sitting in semantics or syntax classes and reading stuff in our textbooks about pronouns that I could just say, “Well, that’s factually wrong. That’s descriptively just not what happens.” The reason that I knew this was that I was in this situation where being very newly out as nonbinary and being very newly asking people to use these pronouns, it was the situation where people would use just sort of random pronouns about me. I got the full spread of the three big ones of people would call me “he” or “she” or “they” sort of at random.

The other thing is that people would switch pronouns in the middle of the conversation and not necessarily notice it. Or I would constantly be having a conversation where one speaker – talking about the same person – one speaker is using one set of pronouns and the other speaker is using the other set of pronouns. None of this is something that can be adequately described in your grad school semantics or syntax textbook. What you’re going to see is something like, “Mary likes himself,” marked as ungrammatical. They’re gonna put the star on it and they’re gonna say, “This doesn’t happen.” As a trans person and as somebody with ears, I could just factually say that’s not true.

Gretchen: Because people are saying sentences like this all the time.

Kirby: People are saying sentences like this all the time. One of the things where I had this perspective that previous linguists had not had. So, I was really pulled to say I want syntax and semantics and sociolinguistics – I really want us to be able to explain this. Our theory is inadequate if we are throwing out data. This is something where the only time I would see this mentioned would be in footnotes of like, “Well, that’s not really relevant.” I was really pulled to say that is relevant. It’s relevant to me every day. I can’t get away from it. I came in knowing that I liked syntax first and being pulled towards thinking about gender and pronouns second because it was this apparently over-simplified area that left a lot of questions unanswered for me.

Gretchen: You’re like, “Look! I have this data and our current theory doesn’t account for that.”

Kirby: Exactly. That’s the thing that all syntacticians are doing all the time. It’s why we get really rowdy when you get a bunch of them in a room is because we all feel that excitement of there’s something that you can’t explain. You’ve given me an explanation that doesn’t explain everything. I have to make sure that people know about this.

Gretchen: And this idea that syntax should also be taking into consideration the variation in terms of how people use language and how different groups of people use language and learning from sociolinguistics about addressing these types of things better.

Kirby: Yeah. This is something where at my graduate institution where I got my PhD there is a lot of sociolinguistics. There is several sociolinguistic faculty. We have a lab. In my undergrad, we didn’t have sociolinguistics as a focus. We didn’t have any sociolinguistics faculty. It was very new to me. I was really excited by it because it feels like, yes, here’s all the complexity and diversity that my experience as a language user tells me it’s out there. Here's a way of thinking about it. As a syntactician, I’m really interested in incorporating the stuff that people are doing socially with language because I think if we’re building our model, our algorithm, of what are possible things to do, it is a little bit dishonest to be like, “Oh, but if you have this certain dialect, that’s a different thing and we’re just gonna ignore that data.” That feels a little dishonest. Then, the other thing is that it’s not the case that anybody speaks just one exact English. Everybody has some level of variation or multi-lectalism or your big box of forms that you have as an option.

Gretchen: I like to say that people talk differently to your boss than you do to your dog.

Kirby: Yeah. If I’m building a model that’s supposed to generate all the sentences, I wanna generate all the sentences. That includes ways of thinking about how you talk to your boss or your dog. For pronouns, this is so important because it does apparently seem to have grammatical consequences. It’s not just, “Oh, well, we’ll make the syntax part of it a little more vague and underspecified,” because there’re syntactic consequences where stuff has to agree with itself. If you use a pronoun in a sentence and then you’re gonna use another pronoun later, the rules are different than if you use a name and then use a pronoun later. The example I gave you of “Mary likes himself” where I said it sort of depends – I do hear people using pronouns in this way where it doesn’t seem to be totally linked to the name itself. A name is something that it really depends on who we’re thinking about in our mind. For example, my friend Rory who uses both “he” and “they,” you can say, “Rory likes themself,” and you can say, “Rory likes himself.” Those are both fine. Neither of them is misgendering them. But if I’m talking about Rory, even if we know that I’m talking about the same person – especially if we know that I’m talking about the same person – I can’t say, “He likes themself.”

Gretchen: Right. Because even though this person uses these two different pronouns, that makes it sound like you’re referring to two different people in the context of that one sentence.

Kirby: If I hold your head down and force you to say, “It’s the same person,” if I – like in my example – I’m like, “Okay. I put the little numbers on it to say I’m really talking about Rory both times,” then you’re gonna start saying, “Well, it’s ungrammatical. It’s weird to say this.” The rules seem to be really different for matching names and pronouns versus matching pronouns on pronouns, which indicates to me that there is something going on in the grammar itself, in the syntax part of it, and it’s not just social knowledge. It really has to be both parts of the puzzle to think about how we can explain what people are doing but also what people don’t do.

Gretchen: Because even within this “Oh, you have more options,” that doesn’t mean you have all of the possible hypothetical options.

Kirby: Yeah.

Gretchen: But you could do something like switching from one sentence to the next. Is that something people do? Like, “They like themself and he’s a good musician” or something like this.

Kirby: Yes. This is something where people do it about cis people – about not nonbinary people too. This is something where I noticed it in undergrad, actually. A friend of mine was telling us he had gone on a hot date last night. We knew what kind of gender that he was dating. So, it wasn’t that we didn’t know the likely gender of who he was talking about. But he was telling us the story about this hot date using “they” the whole time and saying, “Oh, yeah, they picked me up. They were driving this beautiful car” and stuff like this. Then, a ways into the story he started using “he” for a while, while talking about getting drinks at the bar of like, “Oh, he bought me this beautiful cocktail.” At the end of the story, he switched back to “they” of like, “I don’t know if I’m gonna text them again.”

Gretchen: Interesting. Like, as this person was getting more intimate in the story with this person they’re switching to a more, I guess, specific gender in this context. Then, when they’re saying, “Oh, I’m not sure if I’m gonna talk to them again” –

Kirby: This is something where it’s not the case that my friend’s date uses two sets of pronouns necessarily. The thing about “they” in particular is that it doesn’t tell you anything about the gender. It can imply things, but it can’t specifically tell you things. People have the option to use “they” pretty much all the time. People do use it to give you a little more detail and a little less detail. When they’re giving you more detail, sometimes that can give you additional of meaning of like, “I want you to know this is an important part of the kind of relationship that I’m talking about.” When they give you a little bit less detail, sometimes it’s like, “Well, gender’s kind of not relevant for this part. This is the part where I don’t think it’s important to talk about the specific gender of the person.”

It’s not that the gender stopped existing. It’s just that we have this option of turning the dial up of how much we wanna include. This opportunity to switch and change pronouns in some contexts but not others is something that also brought up a bunch of questions for me as a student in graduate school learning about sociolinguistics because the other thing is that sociolinguists talk about gender, but they talk about it in the very binary way – or up until a certain point. They’re starting to really grapple with this.

Reading my Sociolinguistics 1 and 2 papers, there’s a lot of, “Men do this, and women do this.” Or “Men mostly do this, and women mostly do this.” No mention of nonbinary people. For one thing, they did not include any in the study. For another thing, many of the authors of early sociolinguistics work just didn’t really have access to LGBT communities in the 60s and 70s. Or it was really separated from mainstream communities in a way that made it hard to compare directly. Reading these studies as an early student of sociolinguistics and being nonbinary in my first and second year of grad school, saying, “None of this applies to me. You can’t explain anything I do under this model” and really feeling like we have to develop the theory to be able to explain everything that’s happening not just the stuff that we don’t decide is weird.

Gretchen: Exactly. What’s the point in having a theory if you’re saying we’re only gonna try to explain some of this data and just ignore a whole bunch that doesn’t fit with the theory?

Kirby: My motivation for pursuing my work in pronouns, and especially my work with nonbinary and trans pronouns, has been all about answering those questions that came up for me very early in my graduate school and saying I think our way of doing this is not sophisticated enough. I really want to push us further.

Gretchen: What are some answers or glimmerings towards answers that you’ve ended up with?

Kirby: One of the things that I’m trying to discuss with people is that there’re a bunch of other kinds of pronouns in languages besides English, and English has had these in the past, but pronouns that encode this very social information in the way that gender is and still have grammatical consequences. We’ve just been not using this model to explain what’s going on with gender.

Gretchen: Things like formal versus informal “you” and these kinds of things?

Kirby: Exactly. One of the things that I’ve come up with is if we think of this existing thing, and there’s some really great research in Spanish of Latin America where people will switch between “tu” and “usted” and “voseo” – “tu” being the informal “you,” and “usted” being a formal “you,” and “voseo” is a form of the verb agreement. The verbs will change depending on the forms. There’s some great work within the last few years about, yeah, people totally switch in the middle of the conversation and they totally switch in the middle of the conversation as a way of accomplishing certain social goals.

This example given by Raymond 2016 where a 911 caller – he’s a tourist. He’s speaking Spanish and he’s calling and talking to the 911 dispatcher. At the beginning of the conversation, he’s trying to say, “I got scammed at this hotel.” He’s very indignant. He’s using “tu” to the dispatcher as a way of interacting of like, “You are a service person” in the way that you speak down to or, if you’re rude, you speak down to people who are providing you a service in certain ways.

Gretchen: Kind of registering his anger by not being polite.

Kirby: Yeah. Later in the conversation, when she’s starting to ask for paperwork or receipts or stuff and he’s starting to get nervous, he switches to the “usted” forms because – so Raymond conceptualises that the reason for this is that he now sees her as a gatekeeper to something that he wants. Now, he has to appease her rather than talk down to her. This is the thing of this all happens with gender too. It’s a little bit more abstract because the social relationships that we’re talking about are not up or down. You can map them onto hierarchies, but they don’t cleanly follow. Thinking about systems that refer to people’s gender, and especially systems that encode people’s gender directly into the grammar in some way, as more similar to systems that encode formality or honorific marking is a really useful model. It’s a really good way of getting away from the rigid binary models that we’ve looked at before.

Gretchen: Because the idea is that honorifics, everyone knows that they change in a given social interaction and people can switch to using a different form of “you” to address somebody or a different form of even “I” – like Japanese has all these different forms of “I” depending on how polite you wanna be.

Kirby: And depending on gender and depending on specific age – yeah. There’s a lot of rich expressive content there. Basically, the idea that comes out of my research is that you can use gender features – and I’m doing air quotes, “gender features” – where you can use pronouns in English but you can also use other parts of speech that are more grammatical to do that work via gender marking.

Gretchen: What’s an example of that?

Kirby: I’m gonna give you an example from Ru Paul’s Drag Race.

Gretchen: Excellent.

Kirby: This was very early on in a season. A contestant is not doing well. This is the contestant who is actually eliminated first. Have you watched Ru Paul’s Drag Race?

Gretchen: I may have seen an episode at some point but I’m not particularly familiar, so you should proceed as though I know nothing.

Kirby: One of things you’ll notice when you watch the show is that the contestants and the judges mostly use “she” for the contestants who are all drag queens but not always. It depends on how they feel about a particular queen.

What you see with this contestant who’s getting eliminated very early in the season, the lead up to her elimination is the usual reality TV of they do confessional shots where they’re talking about each other and then the judges are talking shit about contestants in the way that one does on reality TV. The contestant who’s going to get eliminated – I mean, they set this up pretty clearly. They’re going to eliminate her at the end of the episode. They talk a lot about how she is struggling with the performance. She’s not doing a good job with her costume construction or deciding how to do the performing art of drag. When they’re talking about her in her way of not being a good performer, they use “he.”

Gretchen: Okay. Like, “You’re not performing femininity well, so we’re not gonna use this pronoun”?

Kirby: It’s not exactly about not performing femininity well because none of them talk about her not being convincing as a drag queen. They’re mostly talking about her not being skilled as a drag queen. If you think about it as a type of performing art in the same way that opera or ballet or river dancing are all specific types of performing art that you can be good or bad at – and the specific thing about drag performance is that if you are good or bad at the specific performing art, you get different pronouns.

This contestant was not less feminine than the other drag queens. It’s that she was not good at dancing, which this is conceptually a little bit further away from she’s not very feminine. That was not the issue. It was not the issue that any of the judges or other contestants were talking about. They were talking about, you know, “She’s not good at dancing,” or “She’s not good at organising her time so she has enough time in the time period to construct a good costume out of garbage,” or whatever the reality TV challenge is – the thing of there’s always a time limit. Part of the thing of succeeding at the time limit is budgeting your time. If you’re not good at that, then you’re gonna do poorly in the contest.

Gretchen: That’s not really gender.

Kirby: It’s not gender. But using “he” as a way of layering meaning on top of that – and they didn’t call her “he” the whole episode. They did it only when they were specifically talking about her poor performance.

Gretchen: Interesting. So, it’s accomplishing this very specific sub-goal.

Kirby: Yes. This is obviously a very locally constrained use of that meaning, but it’s very productive – meaning that people can use those meanings to accomplish a lot of different goals and they can do it without really thinking about it. They can extend the meaning and be very creative with it. This is the thing that really, to me, indicates these are up for meaning making in the same way that “tu” and “usted” are up for meaning making which is sometimes “tu” and “usted” mean “I’m older and more senior than you,” but sometimes, they mean “I need something from you.

Gretchen: There’s this incredibly complicated flow chart about when to use “tu” versus “vous” in French. One of the questions is like, “Are you feeling lucky, punk?” and if you’re feeling lucky, you use “tu,” and if you’re not feeling lucky, you use “vous.” Sometimes, these decisions are microsocial decisions in a particular instance where you’re saying, “Here’s what I’m doing kind of.”

Kirby: Essentially, my contribution here is saying that that flow chart of “Are you feeling lucky, punk?” and a lot of microsocial decisions applies just as well to gender as it applies to formal pronouns. What this does is it means that we can conceptualise pronouns as more similar cross-linguistically rather than more different. This is a hard project because it doesn’t look like pronouns are a natural class – meaning that they’re not made out of the same stuff in every language. Languages generally need pronouns as a way to avoid saying the same name over and over again. What this ends up doing is encoding social information to varying degrees.

Gretchen: There are lots of languages that don’t have gender in pronouns at all.

Kirby: The majority of the world’s languages have no gender marking on their pronouns. The “he/she” thing in English, we’re in a minority position here.

Gretchen: It’s this weird artificial thing of Indo-European languages often have gender pronouns, but outside of Europe, very few languages do.

Kirby: If you’re gonna only compare cousins and then say that you found a fact about all humans, you have a pretty serious confound there in that they are related.

Gretchen: It turns out all humans have red hair.

Kirby: Yeah. Because I looked at all the Weasleys and they all have red hair and so all humans have red hair. It’s nonsensical to do that kind of comparison and only look at Indo-European languages because they are related. You are going to get some factors that there’s no reason to assume that’s universal.

Gretchen: You’ve done surveys of how English speakers use pronouns has been changing demographically as well – like by age.

Kirby: Yes. When I’ve been doing these surveys, my biggest survey was looking at “singular they.” Singular they has been in English for hundreds of years. There’s lots of work on this.

Gretchen: It’s in Shakespeare. It’s in Chaucer. All of this stuff.

Kirby: It’s been around. But the kind of singular they that’s been around is not the kind that I use as a nonbinary person. The different kinds of singular they are something like, okay, “Someone forgot their backpack.”

Gretchen: You don’t know whose backpack it is.

Kirby: Or “Each linguist should grab their nametag.”

Gretchen: I think the example from Shakespeare is, “There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me as if were their well-acquainted friend.” Here, it’s interesting because you have “man” there, but he’s clearly this man in a somewhat generic sense and using the “they” there rather than, “There’s not a man I meet but does salute me as if I were his well-acquainted friend,” which would be more this specific “men.”

Kirby: This is interesting because you’ll also see sentences like, “Pregnant women should always be given their parental leave.” We’re definitely talking about women, so it’s not the case that it’s just like, “Oh, well, Shakespeare thinks that man is the default kind of person.” No. It’s also the case that you’ll see that kind of generic singular they with “woman,” but the thing is that we’re talking about a set of people. We’re talking about a bunch of people in a group and then saying each one does their thing, which is different than talking about a specific person.

The new use is something like, “Kirby forgot their backpack.” I’m a singular they user, meaning that I don’t want to be referred to by “he” or “she” or anything else. I want to be referred to by “they.” It is also the case that this can happen whether or not we’re talking about someone who prefers that. Using “they” about a particular person is syntactically different than using “they” about a group of people that is singular because I’m talking about each one individually. So, “Each student forgot their backpack” is different than “Kirby forgot their backpack.” “Kirby” is a specific person.

Gretchen: Right. We can point to that person. “Each person forgot their backpack” is, if I’m pointing to each person, I have to do a bunch of different pointing.

Kirby: Yes. When I did my big survey, what I found was that use of the specific one – and I tested it by using names. I actually tested it using a bunch of different gendered names and I compared it with other pronouns as well. I did masculine and feminine and gender-neutral names with “they” – singular – and “he” and “she” to just see if there’s a difference. What I found was that there is a difference, but not for everybody. Older speakers do find it a little bit less natural sounding when I use a name and singular they. It’s different than when I use a name and “he” or “she.” Younger speakers – and the age cut off is around 35, basically millennials on down – younger speakers really don’t have a problem with it en masse. Most of them find it fine and they’ll rate it as “This is just a normal sentence.” Obviously, there are individual people who are like, “No. That sounds weird to me.” But it’s not as many. When you chart it all out, it really looks like there’s a slope that, as you look at older people, they have a harder time accepting that as part of the grammar or part of their unconscious syntax.

Gretchen: Is this a thing that some older people are managing to do it, it depends on how queer friends they have? Or is it like a –

Kirby: The studies on this are very new. To sort of triangulate across my research and some of Lauren Ackerman’s and some of Evan Bradley’s, it looks like, in general, if you have more nonbinary friends then you’re better with singular they. That makes sense. That’s Lauren Ackerman’s study. In general, if you are trans or nonbinary yourself, you’re better with singular they. Binary trans men and women are, in general, better with singular they than cis people in general. Nonbinary people are sort of obviously fine with it.

Gretchen: Like, “Oh, look! I do this myself, so I guess I better practice it a lot” or whatever.

Kirby: The other thing that influences it then – I’m talking about three different studies. We haven’t combined forces yet. This is all stuff that’s been published within the last two years. It’s very, very fresh off the presses.

Gretchen: This is cutting-edge linguistic research.

Kirby: It’s extremely cutting edge. Lauren Ackerman’s stuff is saying if you have more nonbinary friends, you’re better with singular they. I can say, “Okay. If you’re younger and/or trans and/or nonbinary yourself, you’re better with singular they.” Evan Bradley has been looking at people’s feelings about prescriptivism and feelings about gender ideology. People who have more prescriptive opinions in general are worse with singular they. Also, people who have – this is what he calls “benevolent sexism,” which is not “Oh, I hate women and I’m gonna oppress them” –

Gretchen: It’s like, “I’m gonna hold open the door for all the women.”

Kirby: Yeah. Benevolent sexism is sort of “I think that people of different sexes have fundamental differences and different needs based on their sex.” If you have that benevolent sexism, you’re more likely to be worse at singular they. It’s related to this idea that there are binary baseline categories of people.

Gretchen: I found for me that acquiring singular they, which I feel like I’ve done in the past couple years because I know more nonbinary and agender people who use singular they as a pronoun, and at first it took a conscious thought, which is kind of like acquiring a language but in an easier way. I also have to do this conscious thought when I’m speaking French and I’m figuring out am I using “tu” or “vous” or am I doing this thing in French. It takes a bit off extra thought, but it doesn’t mean that adults can’t acquire a language because adults clearly do learn languages. This is not learning an entire language. It’s doing something like that, but I think I had to believe that it was worth doing this additional bit of conscious effort in order to actually do it.

Kirby: Yes. All the singular they researchers agree that the next step is figuring out, what is the factor that makes it easier for some people to learn it and not for other people? You’re not the first person that I’ve talked to who has said, “Yeah. I’ve learned it in the past couple years” or “I’ve made an effort to learn it.” I also have people who have said, “I just kind of picked it up from around me,” but as an adult. Not something where the Zoomers – the very young Gen Z people – who are coming into my freshman classes with singular they already. They’re acquiring it as children. They don’t have to do any work. They already have it.

It is the case that some adults seem to be able to acquire it on purpose, and some adults seem to want to acquire it but really can’t, or they report significant difficulty. You will get people – and it doesn’t seem to be correlated with age. We need to do studies about this. We haven’t done it yet because we all need some resources to be able to do that. But there are people who say, “I’m really trying to learn singular they, but I mess up often.” Well, people will frequently under-report how much they mess up. You will frequently say – if you look at somebody who is saying, “I’m trying to do better but I do make mistakes” – they’ll usually say, “Yeah. I make one or two mistakes.” Then, you’ll actually look at what they’ve said, and they mess up almost constantly. We don’t really know yet what the issue is that makes it easier for some people to learn it.

Gretchen: Or something like intimacy? I notice this on the internet especially because you don’t have as many cues on the internet. Oftentimes, if you’re referring to a commenter above you in a thread and all you know is that the commenter’s initials are J.D. or something, you really have no information about this commenter, people will often use “they” to refer to the previous commenter. Whereas, if somebody knows me, one of the ways that I can tell that they know me is that they’re actually using “she/her” for me as opposed to using the generic “they” of the comment thread. It maybe signals a kind of intimacy.

Kirby: This is something that Leah Velleman has talked about – I cite her in my dissertation because it’s a great idea – something called “distal they,” where it’s a use of singular they that ends up implying social distance, essentially what you explained of like, “Well, if they knew me, they would be using a more specific form.”

It’s in the same way that using someone’s name, and especially first name, implies familiarity. It’s not necessarily that a first name has some sort of grammatical feature of familiarity. It’s just that it implies that you have enough social contact to know their first name, also they’re not gonna get mad at you for using it and this sort of thing. That way of using “they” to mark social distance or social closeness, if you have an option of a more specific pronoun, is something that falls out of how specific and how much information am I giving you about this person’s social position. I assume if it were relevant or if you had more information, you would be giving me more information, and if you had less information, that might be why you’re using this underspecified, vague form.

Gretchen: We’ve talked about people acquiring singular they very consciously and putting in this effort to do that. Did you also study why people are putting in this effort to organise their syntax? People don’t do this all the time.

Kirby: I’m gonna do a rude thing to you. You told me that this is something that you have learned on purpose. You made an effort to learn it. Why did you do that?

Gretchen: I mean, it seemed like the polite thing to do – the “being a considerate human” thing to do. If someone says, “Please, call me this,” then I either need to do that or I need to accept this person’s not gonna like me anymore.

Kirby: That’s the motivation. As far as I can tell you, and I haven’t yet gotten into the formal research, but it seems like – people volunteer the information to me pretty frequently – that the reason somebody would decide to change their grammar on purpose is to avoid doing this thing that’s baked into their grammar that ends up being very rude. Misgendering somebody is very rude. It is rude whether you do it to a trans person or a cis person. It just so happens that it happens to trans people a lot more often.

You’re asking me, why are people acquiring this? And the answer that you had given me yourself is, “I don’t wanna misgender people. It’s rude.” It’s rude to call somebody by the wrong name. It’s rude to just decide to give somebody a name that they don’t identify with. I think that a lot of people can say, if you just come up to me and say, “Hey, I’m gonna call you ‘Champ,’” maybe I don’t want you to call me “Champ,” actually. Maybe I don’t like to be called “Champ.” People really don’t like that feeling of being called something that doesn’t reflect what you think you are. If you know any nonbinary people, you have this motivation to not misgender them.

A really sweet story that I can share, when my friend changed their pronouns to “they,” one of the things that their cis friends did was they decided, “Okay. We’re gonna hang out” – they all lived together. They were all roommates. “We’re gonna hang out today. We’re gonna all clean the house. We’re gonna talk about them all day and tell stories about them to practice – to practice where they don’t have to hear us mess up.”

Gretchen: Oh, nice. The friend wasn’t there. It was just all of their cis friends saying, “We’re gonna practice.”

Kirby: Yeah. This friend came back – came over the next week – and everybody was already perfect at it because they had dedicated an eight-hour day of just doing that and correcting each other and getting the practice out of the way before it’s gonna hurt somebody’s feelings. That practice phase is something that’s really useful. Asking a bunch of friends to spend eight hours cleaning is something that not everybody has time to do.

The other thing that you can do is something like tell a story about the person and encourage yourself to practice self-correcting because it’s in this way where you’re doing it not in front of them, so you can get all your mistakes out of your system not in front of them. You’re not asking the person to do the emotional labour of correcting you every time. You’re just doing it out of the way, so they don’t have to be on your case.

Gretchen: The social awkwardness of like, “Oh, do I speak up and then make this conversation about that or do I let it slide?” But then maybe they’ll keep doing it, and this is something that’s hurtful.

Kirby: You can do that work without burdening the person because, okay, for my example, if I spent as much time in the beginning of my transition and grad school at the same time, I spent a lot of time correcting people and sending emails and really insisting. It took up a lot of time. I have to do it –

Gretchen: You’re trying to do a whole bunch of other stuff as well.

Kirby: Also, I was in grad school. I was very busy. I had to do this with everybody. If people took it upon themselves to get good it on their own, that was one fewer of my friends and family that I had to worry about tutoring. My sister just did it on her own and practiced and doesn’t mess up in front of me. It’s fine. It means that I never have to put my mental time and budget for correcting.

Gretchen: I think there are a lot of tips that people can have of, “Oh, this does seem like a thing that I wanna do of like I do wanna respect people and I do wanna not hurt people,” but you’re the individual pieces of that. And you’re putting together a guide?

Kirby: It’s not just me. I am absolutely indebted to the work of Bronwyn Bjorkman and Lex Konnelly who put together the They 2019 conference, which was a linguistics conference and was focused completely on nonbinary and trans pronoun use. One of the outputs of this conference is that everybody who attends is collaborating on materials and ways that we’re going to share our research findings for people to use in their real lives.

We are putting together brochures of – how do you practice? How do you learn? How can you help people? These are something that we’re trying to make very accessible and trying to make it very straightforward and shame free and all about allowing people to decide what they want to accomplish with their grammar because deciding to acquire a grammatical feature on purpose is making the decision that you’re gonna rewrite something totally unconscious as a way to stop hurting people. That takes work. But even making the decision in the first place is really important.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on iTunes, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. Lauren tweets and blogs as Superlinguo. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book is Because Internet. You can follow Kirby Conrod, our guest, on Twitter as @kirbyconrod.

To listen to bonus episodes and help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Current bonus topics include teaching advice for linguistics and a very special episode of Lingthusiasm written by robots. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life. Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, and our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is by The Triangles. I will leave you with our guest.

Kirby: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#linguistics #lingthusiasm #language #syntax #grammar #pronouns #singular they #interviews #Kirby Conrod #episode 43 #transcripts #gender #gender pronouns #trans #nonbinary #queer linguistics #sociolinguistics #sociosyntax

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a-polite-melody · 5 years

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Truscum are always “honestly asking in good faith” why someone would transition without dysphoria.

Why the scare quotes?

Because while that’s what they say they’re doing, and what they’re portraying that they’re doing on the surface, what they’re actually doing is more insidious than that.

First of all, on any other posts made by truscum, where they’re trying to “educate” people, they say that their stance can be summarized just by, “you need dysphoria to be trans.” Anything else they say is built upon that assumption. And yes. That’s true.

And so, while asking why someone would want to transition if they aren’t dysphoric may seem like a harmless question and an opportunity to educate, it’s actually a trap.

Usually, as seen by how they move forward on those posts, they’re asking this question in lieu of asking how someone can be trans without dysphoria. They’re associating transness with transition, which is assimilationist bullshit that trans people have fought against for ages.

They’re perpetuating the societally held cisnormative believe that being cisgender is the default and trans people suffer because they’re “born with the wrong body” or “have a different brain sex than their body’s sex” or whatever the hell else nonesense cis people try to explain transness with (while coincidentally ignoring the extreme amounts of variation within even just cis people who share agabs’ primary sex characteristics, secondary sex characteristics, gonad structure, hormone levels, chromosomal make-up, etc. that demonstrate that the binary sexes aren’t two distinct categories, but a spectrum of different traits, and so “male brains and female brains” being in the wrong “female bodies and male bodies” is a gross oversimplification, as all sex-essentialist views are).

Basically, it’s a very reductionist stance that truscum/transmeds have taken by way of equating transness with transition with dysphoria (ie. clinicially significant levels of distress).

So, to answer their actual question of: “How can someone be trans without having dysphoria?” while also going over the answer to their ““good faith”” question’s answer as well.

Being trans is defined as “a person whose sex/gender assigned to them at birth differs from their actual gender.” If someone, when they were born, had a doctor exclaim about them, “it’s a girl!!” and then the person themself later, once they’ve started learning more about themself as a growing, developing person, says, “actually I think I’m a [insert-other-gender-descriptor-here],” then they’re trans.

No part of that requires dysphoria. And you aren’t entitled to know if they experienced it or not in realizing they’re trans.

That isn’t to say that dysphoria isn’t a very common way trans people realize that they’re trans, and that it’s not a common thing many trans people deal with. It just isn’t (and doesn’t have to be) a universal experience for every trans person. Every person is different. Every trans person is different. Your experience of having dysphoria may not accurately describe other trans people’s experiences, just like my experience of having had only euphoria may not accurately describe other trans people’s experiences.

I, personally, have fluctuating dysphoria. It took me multiple months after realizing that I’m trans to actually identify that feeling as dysphoria because it did fluctuate so much (and still does), while my gender euphoria stayed constant and very strong. And no, I’m not saying that to say, “take it from a real dysphoric trans,” I’m saying that for a long while, even after I’d realized I was trans, I didn’t actually have dysphoria. I still go through long spells of not having dysphoria.

I knew I wasn’t a woman. It never felt wrong to be called a woman, but saying that I’m not a woman feels more right. Which is why I want to socially transition to being nonbinary, and have in online spaces and offline safe spaces. Even before I experienced dysphoria, even when I haven’t experienced dysphoria in a long while, I still am nonbinary and want to be referred to as such. Same deal can happen with body parts. While I’ve basically resigned myself to not have gender affirming surgeries because I don’t need even more surgeries on top of the likely many I’ll have in the future because of chronic illness and disability... I should have a penis. I was born without one. I’m not dysphoric about what I have. I even kinda like what I’ve got going on down there when it’s not throwing a tantrum at me about one thing or another. But I also have. Basically a phantom penis. It’s there, even if it’s not physically there. I’m not dysphoric, but if it were viable for me to have that kind of intensive surgery paying out of pocket (because for me it’s not necessary, even though I want it), I totally would. There’s physical transition without dysphoria, and notice how it doesn’t steal resources considering even with universal healthcare where I live, non-necessary procedures usually can’t be covered, and also get pushed down to the very bottom of waiting lists in favour of people who have serious need of those surgeries within a shorter timeline so that the resource of time actually ends up getting taken from those of us who might get an improved quality of life, but don’t technically need the surgeries because we’re not dysphoric and often will end up with our lives on pause for years so that people who need it sooner can only have their lives paused for a few months. Just saying. (Resource stealing arguments have never made sense to me, especially now that I’m in the medical system for other non-“necessary” crap related to the disability/chronic conditions and keep getting sidelined and nothing is moving forward because I’m not imminently dying, so it’s fine, I guess. But I digress...)

My experience of transness has had so little dysphoria that the majority of what I’d consider to be that transness has nothing to do with dysphoria. Dysphoria has almost no role in my identity or my being trans.

It’s at about this point that I’m expecting comments like, “But you are dysphoric. It doesn’t matter that it’s rare, all that matters is that you’re dysphoric!”

And that misses the point entirely. I’m not looking for validation for myself. I’m not looking for edgy teens who think bullying people is fun and cool if you’re an oppressed person doing it to tell me that actually, I’m a “twue vawid twans uwuwuwu!!!”

I’m saying that propping dysphoria up as the one single thing that makes a person trans is reductionist and has assimilationist roots. It’s intrusive and a violation to require knowledge of someone’s medical conditions (which dysphoria is, transness is not).

Take trans people at our words. We know us best. And you being trans doesn’t make you the expert on each and every one of us. Instead of trying to prove if someone’s a cishet faker, take them at face value.

And, you know... just. Use their behaviour to gage if they should be asked to leave or not. I’ve been hurt waaaay more often and way more seriously by gatekeepers in LGBT+ spaces than people in queer spaces who are “““transtrending”””. I’d rather outsiders see people having harmless fun exploring their identities and thinking trans people are a joke than them seeing people infighting and making what is meant to be a safe and welcoming space for people figuring out gender stuff into a place of bullying and harassment and think trans people are a joke.

Because, in the end, people saying they’re stargender will never hurt trans people as much as someone probing into their medical history, assuming things about them based on parts of their appearance which they can’t hide about themself (like big hips, breasts that can’t be made flat or can’t be bound at all, etc.) that make them “present female” (whatever the hell that means), especially if that trans person has been trying to love all of their body anyway as part of self care, and as such triggering dysphoria in a whole bunch of trans people in doing so.

#trans discourse #nonbinary discourse #truscum #transmed #trumed #transmedic #tucute #queer discourse #my post #high rambles #basically just a stream of consciousness rant while high #high blogging #long post

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semi-imaginary-place · 5 years

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fe3h blogging 2 because the post got too long

Edelgard Claude foiling. Both see that the world is wrong and that motivates them to make it better. Claude listens to people, Edelgard listens to herself. Claude reflects and introspects, Edelgard doesn’t.

I was going to write more but I realized I was just bashing Edelgard so I stopped. Anyways, the Gatekeeper has a backstory??? a younger twin brother and they’re from the empire?? Also wow Edelgard is REALLY into you (the light in the darkness pft)

I also want to comment how the Church of Seiros unlike some other fantasy religions really is like real life historical (and current) religious organizations. There’s a mix of people from the non believers but there to help, to those that believe this is the best way to help people, to those looking for power, to the people who are there because its a way to make a living. I want to make clear though that Sothis/The Goddess is dead and she can only act a little bit through Byleth. Before the game The Goddess has NO influence on Fodlan. Anyone praying is doing nothing in terms of reaching The Goddess.

Hilda: Tell me what I’m thinking about right now.

Ferdinand: Hmm... You want a snack.

Hilda: I DO want a snacc ;) ;) ;)

supports: Ashe Dedue, Sylvain Felix, Ingrid Dimitri, Hubert Ferdinand, Petra Claude, Marianne Ignatz

3h totally fooled me with the hair colors. I’m too use to JRPGs have rainbow haircolors so I think nothing of it but in this game the white/green hair are plot significant.

Somehow related to dragon shenanigans(white/green): Sothis, Lysithea, Flayn, Edelgard, Byleth, Rhea, Seteth

Plausibly a normal color with weird undertones: Ignatz, Shamir, Petra, Felix, Lindhardt,

That inexplicably JRPG colored hair: Bernadetta, Hilda, Caspar, Marianne, Ashe, Lorenz

Ch14 of Crimson Flowers has made me unfathomably sad. Claude hold himself so tightly, closed off with high walls. He always has a face on, doesn’t break composure. But in ch 14 in the face of losing his dream you can see the cracks in walls. And Claude may be closed off but he is in no way cold hearted or uncaring, he cares so much and you see that as the Empire gains ground. That battle is one of the few glimpses of Claude. Whether he is killed or spared, both are sad. The cut scene after Claude is spared is seemingly lighthearted and a tonal contrast to the serious battle right before it. Without knowing Claude better it seems like a breather before more plot happens, but knowing Claude that scene really breaks my heart. In contrast with the moments of honesty during the battle, Claude’s social mask has snapped right back into place, hiding all of his pain. Claude’s dream meant all to him, being able to walk side by side with his friends in a new world, and that dream just took a devastating blow. Claude is by no means dishonest during that scene, but knowing how devastated he is on the inside yet forcing himself to hold it all together... He’s sad and now I’m sad.

The Insurrection of the Seven is fascinating to me. Just because people keep saying different things about it. Was the Emperor seeking to consolidate power for the throne and the nobles stopped him or where the nobles always seeking to turn the Emperor into a puppet ruler? To my limited knowledge I think for a while Emperors had been losing power. Enough so that the experiments on Edelgard and her siblings could not be stopped. He then tried to expand his power and was crushed.

Crimson Flower is quite interesting. Edelgard and Hubert are walking a fine line balancing the church and the Agarthans. The Empire appears unified but its a shell for the Agarthans and Edelgard is betting on the appearance of that shell.

Wow Dimitri is surprisingly sane and not feral in CF. Does the purple clouds in Dimitri’s death CG remind anyone else of the S support CGs?

Lysithea and Edelgard can bond over shared childhood experiences and being short

Can you imagine Claude, Hilda, and Sylvain as a squad. They would radiate such chaotic energies just standing next to each other that Nemesis would leap out of his cyberpunk containment pod and start dancing to leek spin

How is Dimitri clean shaven post timeskip?? Most people in the grips find it hard to be functional and do basic tasks and your telling me he meticulously shaves everyday? I'm calling it. Dimitri is trans and can't grow a whisker

So the brits (and w europe really) went mad for tea and got it through colonization of india. Where does fodlan get its tea?? Its mostly too cold unless you want to convince me theres an extensive breeding program for hardy cultivars somewhere. Dagda?? We know coffee is imported. hot take: the empire started a war to get more tea

I dont talk about dorothea enough. I almost chose BE just for her. She hates nobles and its great. The voice acting is top notch too. Dorothea-Ferdinand c support is memorable to me because of the voice acting. The line delivery was so good. Especially the " I hate you " from Dorothea. She's so savage. She was the only one I considered S supporting after intsys robbed me of claude. Didn't go through with it though. It always feels wierd romancing fictional characters.I remember how P3 forced me on the harem route and wow that was uncomfortable. Dorothea is kind. I like kind people. She's so full of love (Manuela is the other character overflowing with love), and her compassion extends to everyone. She understands the grief of war. Contrast that to local manlet Caspar. Once he's decided someone is an "enemy" he stops caring. Oh Caspar... All of Dorothea's supports are so good too... Dorothea's backstory can get a little disturbing. She's 18 at the beginning of the game. She began singing with the company at 10 and gained fame at 13. What troubles me his how she talks about how after every show she was innundated with marriage proposals and such. The way she talks about it, it went on for a while, and while sure the letters and stuff could have been from other teenagers, that she was getting all this as a teenager is creepy. In addition, then she talks about the nobles fawning over her and it made my skin crawl. But the worst was that a noble possibly her father was coming on to her . Like Dorothea, I'm with you. Let's burn down the world. Despite the justifiable anger though, dorothea is so full of love. Until the last her heart never turns cold.

Thinking about claude and edelgard. On one hand their personalities, ideals, and ambitions complement each other. On the other hand Edelgard doesn't understand how people work and Claude is a manipulator, guarded, he never lets any one in(edited)Claude can totally read her, but Edelgard reacts poorly to criticism and dissent.... Claude has no faith. Not in his dreams and not in himself. With out a push, he's not proactive. Edelgard charges straight ahead while Claude takes the circuitous path. "Defensive" thats the word for edelgard, she so easily thinks people are out for her. Whereas claude deflects. Both are fuelled by a sense of justice. Edelgard thinks in terms of eliminating enemies, claude thinks in terms of recruiting allies. The point is the the tragedy that they would make great friends! But thats not happening in this universe! Because edelgard's bull headed and claude wont open up!

Watching s supports and anyone notice theres 3 variations on the ring. There 2 silver and green ones. At first I thought small green stone was from people with common origins and big stone from noble. But I just saw saw one with a gold ring.It could be that the character is just that extra. And yeah it is gold is from Ferdinand and Lorenz.

Ferdinand was so obnoxious at first. But hes such a good boy. He does his best. He's trying very hard. Also, existential angst is my jam.

I just remembered theres only 5 saints in the Church of Seiros and does that mean the tome of comely saints has erotica of... like... cihol??? And cethaleann????? Uuuuuuhhhhhh...I dont like my brain sometimes.

so that whole fuss that byleth's mom was rhea's daughter was because tons of "gamers" chose BE first and misinterpreted Edelgard's speculation. When in reality Jeralt was the one who Rhea gifted her crest (seiros) to, extending his lifespan. Rhea then cut out baby Byleth's heart and then replaced it with Sothis's crest stone hoping that Sothis would posses byleth. All we know of the mom is that she was a nun and died young. Flames crest stone joined to Byleth's heart (CF ending cutscene). Rhea placed Sothis' heart in baby Byleth to revive Sothis (VW ch 22 opener). She has done human experimentation on people to revive Sothis before (implication). Seiros/Rhea did so so that Sothis would posses the body (Rhea dialog consistently referring to Byleth as "Mother" or hoping that Sothis will poke through).

The only time Claude’s anger breaks through his composure is with Rhea. This is significant as Claude almost never loses his composure, and this highlights how Rhea in the only person Claude hates. Claude doesn’t hate Edelgard or Dimitri or any of the other people that may kill him, just Rhea.

question about the Black Eagles/Crimson Flower ending: why does Byleth collapse and then Sothis' crest stone break? I mean I will give it a break since its symbolic and thematically significant and all and it was a excellent touch that Sothis' heart and Byleth's heart have literally weaved together. Is reviving Byleth Sothis' last act?? Why did Byleth have to die to begin with though? ... well maybe Byleth didn't die since they didn't have a heartbeat to begin with. So far the writing in 3H has been pretty good though there have been weak spots. I think that CF final scene was put in more because it "felt right" than because it was logical. it fits with edelgard's goals and what the route's been about. its just if you really think about it. It doesn't make sense based on what is already known. I mean crest stones could have other powers but I haven't seen that anywhere else in the game. As for the story as a whole, the main acting forces in the game are Edelgard+Empire, those who slither in the dark, and Rhea+Church. Claude also has his own ambitions, but those 3 are more deeply entwined. Each faction has its own goals and past and a good chunk of the game is figuring out what those are. Its also ironic that GD despite how Claude is not enmeshed in ... that other mess, sheds so much light on the other factions.

The main theme is probably about Rhea since it plays a lot during Rhea scenes and the church is a central focus of the story.

the "M-metal gear?!?!?!" moment will always be hilarious for me. On par with dollar store Hitler

Why is it Jeralt's voice on the map even after he dies?

God Shattering Star: How Many Times Do We Have to Teach You This Lesson, Old Man?

Dawn is a recurring motif in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. “the dawn of a new age” is or such is

Claude, a child loved and lonely

i think blue lions was written first. 1 the two monthly missions that have to do with students’ families are both in BL (Ashe and Sylvain). 2 two fairly important side characters at the monastery are related to BL students (Annette and Mercedes). Chapter 3 actually provides a intro for all the lords in their respective routes. Edelgard’s scene is serious but not especially sad, instead you can feel te fire burning within Edlegard and the scene shows how she’s willing to sacrifice the lives of those under her if she believes she is doing the right thing. Claude’s is actually quite light hearted in tone after the first few lines and it highlights the mystery surrounding him and makes him seem very sketchy. Chapter 3 in Blue Lions though is really sad. Ashe my baby boy. Here there is a sense of tragedy in the post battle scene

oh there is another Claude loses his temper. Its when a bunch of thieves (badly) impersonate Almyrans and Claude is so offended they didn’t put enough effort into the act and that they’re weak.

Major Player Goals

Rhea: revive Mother

Edelgard: take down the Church and crest system

Agartha: vengeance on the Nabateans

Claude: usher in a new age of tolerance and prosperity for humanity

Dimirti: keep afloat???

CHURCH SKETCH AF. Rhea always raised the hair on the back on my neck. I mean even in ch3 the first real mission. We're being used as a personal assassination squad because Lonato threatens Rhea's power. and then she's like. This is a public execution to give an example of what happens when you defy the church. and I was like !!!!!!! let's mentally/emotionally scar a bunch of teenagers into fearing the wrath of the church. Rhea: prosecutor, defense, jury, judge

I remember ranting about revolution and society in fire emblem games before having played this one, and wow intsys made a game for me

Ignatz and Raphael. I must protect both of them. sweet sweet boys. Raphael has the biggest heart and Ignatz just wants to help. Team Protect Raphael's Heart. Raphs is pretty emotionally mature too. he gives warm fuzzy vibes. Ignatz takes on so many burdens and clams up about his own pain. He doesn't place any importance on himself. Let my boy be an artist! Raphael certainly has pain, but he doesn't want a life where that pain rules over all else. Raphael is a force of GOOD I would have love to meet Lorenz's dad. I don't have high expectations of him, but I'm curious. we've heard so many different things about him. And he's one of the major actors of the story. But we also know so little about him.

o both Mercedes and Emile have the Lamine crest. If that came from their shared mother, why did House Martritz fall since she was heir? Possible answer sexism or finances. The other option is that both Bartels and Martritz have the Lamine bloodline. Also, Jeritza is younger than I thought he was Modern Advances in Missile System Engineering Wade and Kruger 7e 2XXX

Schöner, Alexa, and ZaiCheng Jun. "Applications of Dymanic Systems Theory in Autonomous Bipedal Assault Units". Journal of Robotics 18.4 (2XXX): 157-170.

I think I'm hilarious. heh. Imagine though, While digging around Shambhala Claude finds these and everyone is just confused because it looks like their language???? and yet the words! they dont make sense!

I didn’t really care when hubert died in VW, but edelgard's death hit me you know. Because both claude and edelgards ambitions are to tear down the old system. and seeing edelgard in that armor. Its like the timeskip all over again. Part 2 begins and you relize how much all the characters have grown. And while you werent looking edelgard has been going through her own journey. When you fight her shes wearing armor with elements from both the flame emperor and her part 2 outfit yeah edelgard is yikes. i agree with her goals but her disregard for yhe lives under her concerns me. And between her tendency to brute force solutions, those who slither in the dark, and the empires situation, I think she was doomed to fail from the start

When Claude ... half jokes??? that Hilda can grasp his throat, is that connected to how Fodlan's Locket (in Fodlan's Throat) is under house Goneril control?

#Fire Emblem Three Houses #fire emblem #fe #fe3h

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morganapengdragon · 5 years

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An English guide to fanfic 1

So I've read a lot of fic set in England lately, by writers who don't have anyone to 'brit pick' what they've written. But everyone deserves to be able to write stuff set in this hellhole of a country so if you don't have/want a brit picker but still want some general advice I'm gonna make a series of posts which might help with making your fic sound a little more natural. I'm gonna start with education because that's the one I've seen people have most problems with.

This is a long post so be warned

Education

There are 3 main parts of the school system (for comprehensive schools in England, I know it's different for rich people and people in Scotland/Ireland/Wales).

Primary school:

Primary school spans ages 4-11 and the years are

Reception: ages 4-5

Year 1: ages 5-6

Year 2: ages 6-7 (some schools make a split after this point, with the younger years referred to as 'infant' school and the older years referred to as 'junior' school)

Year 3: 7-8

Year 4: 8-9

Year 5: 9-10

Year 6: 10-11

A couple of information tidbits:

A lot of schools teach sex education in year 5 and 6. They tell you what sex is and what periods are. The year is split into boys and girls. They don't really talk about gay people, trans people or contraception.

It's not very common now but some schools will do a SATS exam in year 6. The grades go from 1-5 with 5 being the highest. They mean nothing but we all used to get stressed about them anyway.

Kids can also choose to do an 11+ exam if they want to go to grammar school. I never did it so I can't help you there. Some places in the country put more emphasis on the importance of grammar school than others (looking @@@ Kent) and some places don't have any grammar school at all.

Hard hitting insults when I was a kid were things like 'nerd' and 'weird'. We don't really use 'geek' much. 'Damn' and 'hell' aren't swear words here and kids will sometimes say them.

Most primary schools have uniforms

Secondary school:

Secondary school ages are 11-16 and the years are

Year 7: 11-12

Year 8: 12-13

Year 9: 13-14

Year 10: 14-15

Year 11: 15-16

There are 4 MAIN types of secondary school (afaik)

Comprehensive schools (like the one I went to) are your standard school. You just kind of have to live close to it to get in.

Grammar schools work kind of like comps but you have to pass the 11+ exam. Not everyone takes this exam (I never did, my closest grammar school is fuck off miles away). Apparently you get a better education there or something. Idk man but they like to make fun of the local comprehensives.

Private/public school. You have to pay to go to these types of school. I don't really know the ACTUAL difference between private and public but from what I can tell, public is more expensive and fancier. I think their version of primary school is called prep school?? All of the years work differently and every time a public school kid tries to tell me something about their education its gets more confusing. Rich people.

Boarding school. This is basically a private school but you live there and it costs more money than all of my possessions put together. There are quite a few, with some of the most famous being Eton, Harrow, Winchester etc. They are usually either all boys or all girls schools (those three are all boys schools). Rich people.

More detailed infos:

Year 7-9 is referred to as 'lower school' with 10 and 11 being 'upper school'

The exams taken in year 11 are usually GCSEs. These used to be called O-levels for some reason and lots of older people will sometimes call them that by mistake.

Kids choose which GCSEs they want to do at the end of year 9, and start learning the material in year 10.

Maths, science and English are all compulsory and make up 5/6 GCSEs (one maths, two English, two or three science).

Most people do about 10 and can pick from all of the other subjects what they want to do.

We don't really have a 'locker room' culture????

It's quite common for people to go to all girls or all boys schools.

Schools here are nowhere near as big as American schools. We probably won't have high budget theaters or particularly large sports areas.

I've never heard anyone talk about 'funding'???? Just assume nothing is funded, arts and sports alike. We do lots of fundraisers for anything expensive like rugby tours or school productions.

We still have that weird culture thing where like if you're smart then you can't be popular or play sports???? Strange.

Sitting at a specific table at lunch time isn't really a thing. Actually most people brought lunch from home and then would just sit somewhere outside. A lot of the buildings would be closed during breaks.

Not many people really drive to school.

Sixth form/college

After you finish secondary school most people go into either college or sixth form (or a sixth form college). Years are

Age 16-17: sometimes called year 12, sometimes called lower sixth, sometimes called first year

Age 17-18: year 13, upper sixth, second year

Sixth form:

Some schools have an attached sixth form. A variation of the school uniform is often worn, or students will be asked to wear smart clothing or something

There are also sixth form colleges which are a bit more informal, less of a school environment. Students usually tend to wear their own clothes and call teachers by their first names. They're usually viewed as well.

The qualifications earned at the end of year 12 are called AS levels. They count partially towards your final A level grade. Students usually do 4 and drop one at the end of the year. You can do more if you want tho (I did five and died). You can do whatever subjects you want. Like. Literally nothing is compulsory. You wanna do art, music, dance and anthropology? Fuck it why not?

The highest AS grade is an A. B and C is a pass. D and E are fail marks. U stands for ungradable i.e you got so few marks that your exam isn't even worth a grade.

At the end of year 13 you do A levels. You need 3 to get into uni. Some people do 4. They always regret it.

Grades for A levels are the same as AS but they go up to an A*.

Some schools do a thing called the International baccalaureate. I don't understand what it is and frankly it scares me. I don't know how it's graded or what you need for uni. It's a mystery.

Sixth forms can be comp/grammar/Private/boarding same as secondary school.

College:

You can do a bunch of different types of qualifications. Most popular are usually B-Techs and Diplomas.

You usually only study one subject as opposed to four.

From what I gather, the point in doing a B tech is it's more practical and less theoretical and aims to help you get the skills necessary to go straight into the work force.

Unis kind of have to evaluate B-techs fairly, but they don't like them.

Nobody thinks very highly of B-Techs unfortunately bc they're considered to be less academic and easier. Idk if that's the case but there you go. People will sometimes refer to shit versions of other things as 'B-Tech'. For example, Pepsi is just B-Tech Coca Cola. Boris Johnson is a B-Tech Donald Trump.

I know nothing about the grading system for either of these qualifications im sorry.

In a sixth form college there will be people doing A levels and also people doing B techs all in the same building.

University:

I won't go too much into detail but basically you get a degree at the end of it and degrees usually take 3 years to complete. Years are first year, second year, third year etc.

Some courses are longer and some people will do a year in industry in their third year, making their overall degree time 4 years.

Tuition is currently £9,250 per year. I have never met anyone who hasn't gotten a loan for this.

Most people also apply for a maintenance loan. You get money proportional to your family income. The highest is about £8,500 per year. Idk what the lowest is. Some people choose not to take out this loan and their parents give them financial support instead.

The pay back plan for these loans is super lenient, doesn't affect your credit score and is wiped clean after 35 years. Most students think of their loan as more of a tax than a debt (tho we all still cry about it).

People don't live in dorms. We call them halls of residence (or halls for short).

Most people don't live in halls after first year, they leave and find shared housing.

Most halls aren't catered.

Most halls don't have shared rooms.

Because we study so few subjects at A level, we do have this system in the UK where you take a bunch of different unrelated subjects in your first year and then decide on your major later. Instead you apply for a programme already knowing your major. So when I applied to university I applied to the BA French and German Linguistic Studies course at a number of universities.

Different courses have different entry requirements. So it's easier to get into uni to study History than it is to study Maths.

Each 'class' is referred to as a module, and all of your modules are usually related to your main degree title.

Stereotypically STEM students think that humanities students are dumb. Humanities students think STEM students are arseholes who don't know how to read so if you wanna have that kinda jock/nerd type rivalry but in uni then humanities/STEM is quite a good one.

We call all of our lecturers by their first names. Sometimes we go to the pub with them. I watched a documentary about gay porn with one of them. It's chill.

I've never seen anyone show up to a lecture in pyjamas. People would think it's weird.

We refer to clubs as 'societies'. I love being part of the Musical Theatre Society. It's sounds so much more impressive than club.

The English version of Ivy League is Russel Group. The most prestigious Unis outside of Oxford and Cambridge tend to be: Durham, St Andrews (Scotland), Imperial, LSE and Warwick.

Slang and Groups

We don't really use the word 'jock'. In my school we called those guys the 'Rugby Lads' because they all played rugby.

We don't really use the word preppy/peppy whatever because I literally don't know anybody who is like that.

Try 'Drama kids' instead of Theater kids.

The kids who do drugs and don't come to school are called road men. Even the girls. To do road is to deal drugs but you don't really hear people say that much.

If we can't be bothered to say a teachers full title we will usually call them 'sir' or 'miss' but not really ma'am.

'Hall Pass' isn't a thing.

Our school did have prefects but fuck if I know who they were. They didn't really have any extra responsibility or power.

School uniforms are a thing in most schools. The things people did to make themselves seem cool were things like rolling their skirts up super short, wearing the rugby ties on match days, trying to get away with shoes that don't TECHNICALLY break the rules but are deffo not allowed, wearing as much make up as they could get away with, without teachers noticing. Our school was p strict on uniform tho in comparison with a lot of schools in my area.

If your accent doesn't fit the standard for your area it will affect you in some way (depending on your accent).

Homeroom is called registration

Gym is sometimes called the sports hall

People don't really go to school matches unless they're dating sb bc we don't have bleachers.

Home ecenomics was called Food Tech and Textiles in my school

Woodshop or whatever is called DT (design and technology)

People don't get as involved in extracurriculars in school (but they do at uni).

We DO have houses and we get points given to out houses like in Harry Potter but unlike Harry Potter literally nobody gives a fuck. In my school they added a whole new house and moved everyone into new houses and literally nobody noticed and nothing changed.

There is a BIG difference between comp schools and all of the other kinds in terms of culture. I didn't know this until I went to uni and started joking about the time some kid started throwing chairs in RE (religious education) or when so and so tried to set our French teacher on fire and literally all of the grammar school kids were like O.O WTF.

Slang and school culture will also vary a lot depending on where you live. I live in East London which is not a very well off area but it IS in london so my experiences would match with that.

Everything is completely different in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland so like.... Sorry.

#Fanfic #British fanfic #English fanfic #british #Brit pick #Education #writblr #writing resources #An English guide to fanfic

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wakraya · 6 years

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Alright, let me put a few points of stuff I’ve seen on the tags to rest here.

1) Jades Are A Rare Caste.

They are implied to be less plentiful than other castes, yeah, I believe Seadwellers are also rare? But here’s the thing- We have six Jades. When someone says “There’s twice as many Jades as we have Rusts or Bronzes”, it sounds like, shit, yeah weren’t they supposed to be less abundant? Except. They’re still, in total, just Six. Alternia is a planet. Lore-wise, they may be a less plentiful Caste, but they’re not even... In the double digits. This is not even the population of a neighborhood, Xefros’ suburban area likely had more Trolls in total than there are Trolls in this Troll Call, and besides it’s likely all Jades are in the same place for some reason- Jadeblood School is the biggest headcanon right now, for example, so... Why wouldn’t you have a bunch of Jades there?

2) Jades Are All Female.

This is a straight-up misconception, yeah they’re mostly girls, but canon still leaves room for Jadeblood boys. So Male Jadeblood? Yeah, can happen, and there’s nothing going against the canon here.

3) Trolls Have No Concept Of Gender.

This one is honestly baffling to me because I haven’t heard about this until the discourse today. I am assuming this comes from the fact Troll Reproduction doesn’t care who provides the genetic material? Their reproduction is not tied to gender, which has made people assume Troll junk is the same for both guys and gals. Except... That’s about it. Even though it’s silly because they’re bugs and implied to be hermaphroditic, they still show sexual dimorphism. And even if they didn’t, they still have a concept of Gender, merely based on the fact there’s Troll Boys and Troll Girls? He/She divide? With Hiveswap expanding on it and showing us there are, indeed, NB Trolls that prefer They/Them. This Gender Divide is actually talked about by Porrim, who also implies that while Fuchsia-down Alternia seemed a Matriarchy, Purple-down it was actually a Patriarchy, informing us that not ONLY is there sexual dimorphism, but also, a cultural divide. By saying that Lanque can’t be Trans because Trolls have no concept of Gender, you’re either mistaking headcanons for actual canon... Or being transphobic by equating genitalia to gender. In which case, fuck off.

4) Trolls Don’t Care About Fashion.

This is something Karkat says, and I believe Kanaya also implies she cares about it more than it’s usual? But Fashion in Troll Culture, seems to be exactly like Mail. Karkat mentions there’s no Mail they do not get a Mailbox with a Flag, yet we see Xefros get mail! Except it’s not Mail. It’s parachuted delivery straight from a website. There’s no standarized Mail system on Alternia, but that doesn’t mean companies can’t deliver things themselves, directly to their Hives. Similarly, Trolls have no concept of Fashion- They don’t care about things such as trends, variety, being dressed properly. And... Hiveswap doesn’t break this. They have more colorful clothes, and some look pretty good! But. Look at Cirava. They’re an absolute fashion disaster. Diemen is just dressed like a hot dog. The Jades all seem to wear uniforms of some sort. Fozzer and Marsti, Skylla, they are more akin to work clothes. The Soleil Twins and Marvus are more flashy, because they’re likely part of a spectacle. Most of them are either a sort of uniform or outfit that’ll fit whatever they’re doing, or a basic color with their symbol somewhere. And you can go from Bright Pink Bathrobe Stelsa, to Pirate-Clad Remele, and back to Punk Denim Elwurd. Not being Fashionable can be about trends, they may simply dress however they want, because of their interests, or their jobs.

But let’s think about this another way. Let’s say that, yeah, they did retcon Troll Fashion- Would... Would you really be mad if they retconned Troll Fashion. Like... Would you be happier if every Troll shown was wearing a plain black shirt with their Symbol, and pants or a skirt, with slight variations of a jacket or a tank top. I don’t think there’s a single Hiveswap design I dislike, and they’re all visibly varied and easily recognizable, and tell a lot about the character, which is like. Character Design 101? So I honestly don’t know what the complaint here is exactly, except Canon Purity.

5) Hiveswap Ruined Fantroll Variety

How. First of all, the entire previous point. Just, expanding upon basic Troll Clothes, showing us the extent of how Trolls dress. But also like... What did they limit exactly? We’re going to learn more about Trolls and Troll Culture and Biology, of course headcanons are going to clash with canon, but so far, what have they limited? I’ve heard about Horns, but like... These horns have all been so varied, and sure there’s stuff like hooks with Ceruleans and Jades, and Four Horns with Golds but... This pattern is also broken, with Azdaja having three, for example. We’ve seen new Psionic colors, we’ve seen stuff like Horn Piercing, we’ve seen Troll Twins, we have seen horns where the orange part starts at different heights than you’d expect and even some of the parts jutting out having their own red-orange-yellow coloration separate of the main shaft of the horn. If anything, until now, there’s always been headcanons for Horns, like, “Oh this is their symbol so it’ll be like this”, or “this is their caste, so, they’ll have big horns”, but no, we have Purples with small horns, we have Bronzes with curly horns downwards, we have a cerulean with super uneven horns, we have a gold with three horns, we have a teal with flat horns, we have rounded horns, we have hotdog horns. I’ve heard people wonder about some Horn Shapes in the prior weeks, about how they didn’t match their restrictive headcanons, and NOW you tell me they’re restrictive? There’s also been complaints about caste roles and stereotypes, and I feel people really forget that Alternia is a Tyranny that forces the inhabitants in roles they are most likely not happy with, specially for the lower castes. Like... Rusts are disposable, and likely to be bound to a life of servitude. Because they’re the lowest of the low, society treats them as such, and there’s stereotypes like Indigos being strong, but that’s not any more restrictive than Psionics being a Gold-only thing, and much like we see Zebede not having Psionics or Elwurd and Mallek having normal eyes to every other cerulean’s messed-up ones... There’s exceptions to the rule everywhere. There have always been.

I’ve also seen complaints about no mutant bloods or things like Albinism and such? And like... The fact they didn’t include it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We actually got Freckles with Zebede, so it already implies skin conditions are a thing, so Albinism could happen, if anything we have more PROOF that it may be a thing! Complaining about a lack of Limebloods and Violets, too, is just nitpicking, we know there will be Violets eventually, but either we haven’t been shown right now, or they’re just. In the sea. And we’re in the land. And Limes are likely to be a plot point, I’m expecting at least ONE Lime (Fiamet), if not more to show up at some point, and if there’s NO Limebloods I’m sure there will be at least talk OF Limebloods and their whole, you know, extermination, which is a canon thing that happened.

6) The Game’s Representation Is Bad Representation

Listen... Listen. I have friends ecstatic that there’s at LEAST three non-cis characters in Hiveswap (One trans boy, two NBs), without counting the possibility of other characters being Trans (Pretty much anyone could be), or NB (Like, I think about half of the characters don’t have pronouns on their bullet points?), not to mention, further acts with new characters. Hell, even Xefros or Dammek or Joey could be Trans. We. Literally know nothing about these characters, our information is so limited, and yet there’s already people cheering about it and super happy to see representation and I’ve seen one person in the tag encouraged to come out because Lanque is Trans. There’s also at least two Jewish Trolls, plus the possibility of Kanaya being Jewish as well, either her, Rose, or both. And yet, even though they have simply said this, in good faith, respectfully, and trying to add diversity to their roster, and even though we literally know NOTHING of how it’ll be handled yet, you... Bash them for it?

Like, okay. Lanque. The big topic today. He’s not particularly masculine, but as has surely been repeated over and over and over again, not all trans men are masculine, and not all trans people suffer dysphoria. And yeah, it’s true! It would be nice if there was a more masculine trans man! It would be great if there were trans girls! It would be great if there were more diversely coded NB characters! And there may be?? There’s going to be more characters, if not in this Act, in future Acts, and of the ones we’ve seen, many of them could still be NB or Trans. Like... Again. We’ve got three bullet points from each character. Like, I’m sorry you didn’t get a trans character that you could identify better with yet? But that doesn’t mean you have to bash the one we got? When there are people genuinely happy and encouraged about it? You’re not being progressive. You’re being an elitist asshole, if you only accept 100% perfect representation suited to your tastes, and everything else is garbage, or god help me, ‘fetishization’ or ‘disgusting’ (I have heard both on the Tags), like seriously. You’re being the oppressive one. You’re the one making representation harder than it should be.

Oh and if you’re on the OPPOSITE side of the spectrum and simply being Transphobic or saying how all of this is ‘pandering’ to the audience, really I have nothing to say, if you cannot have basic empathy for a group of people finding representation in a game which source material is extremely queer, and have to resort to bashing it down, screw you.

7) WhatPumpkin Are Doing A Bad Job

This is your subjective opinion, and I’d dare to say, a wrong opinion, but let’s not go there for now. WP has suffered a lot of hate for some reason? There have been lies and slander and bashing for absolutely no reason. People hate Cohen for some reason, and have demonized him, when so far what I’ve seen about him is that he’s a pretty chill dude. The writing of Hiveswap wasn’t like, a masterpiece? But it was fun and it got a good bunch of chuckles out of me and made me care for the characters, and even got me a bit scared and sad at some points during the game! It has that Homestuck Spark, and if you say ‘it’s not like Homestuck’, you’re... I’m sorry, you’re just an elitist, or simply don’t like the style anymore? But it carries a very similar charm.

I’ve heard complaints about Hussie not being involved in the project- Which is false, he did write the entire story FIRST THING, and is overseeing the whole project with the rest of the team. There’s also been criticism towards WP ‘failing’ at representation (Before actually seeing the representation apparently, again, we know NOTHING about the game and how it’ll handle stuff so far), and also accusing WP and Cohen specifically of adding representation because of Woke Points and like... WP are Queer as Heck? I don’t know all of them, I don’t even know how many people are working at WP. But they’re not all straight 100% for sure, and I believe they’re not all cis- And even if they ARE all cis, I also doubt a group working on such a Queer game would NOT hear out from Trans friends. What I’m trying to say, is that they haven’t shown at any point disrespect of ignorance regarding the diversity they want to tackle, they’re not doing things out of bad faith, and we haven’t seen how they handle it yet. Even if they didn’t handle it ideally! Does it need to be absolutely perfect, there can be missteps on the way there, god dammit if someone’s trying to better themselves but not quite getting it right you don’t insult them and tear them down! You show them what to do better next time or where they are mistaken, by pessimistically ignoring what they’re trying to do out of spite you’re discouraging good will and being an asshole! Which leads me to my last point for now.

8) They Could Have Told Us We Were Misgendering Lanque

This one is... Really, a bit ridiculous. Okay, let me explain. If someone is Trans and you misgender them accidentally, they’ll tell you quickly and you’ll, hopefully, correct yourself. Obviously. When the Trolls leaked, everyone latched onto Lanque as ‘Butch Lesbian’, and clung to that hope, and now that they were proven wrong, there was salt, at first, and THEN came the talk about Misgendering Lanque. And let me tell you, I think this is very selfish of everyone saying it.

What WP likely thought would happen is that they’d reveal Lanque to be a Trans boy, and people would be like “Oh! Nice, Trans Rep!”. Sure they could’ve told us back then but... Why? Lanque is not. A real person. He’s a fictional character, he’s not going to be offended because you thought he was a butch woman for a few months, in fact the SILHOUETTE alone ALREADY had people clinging to him as a butch woman. If he were a real person? Of course there’d be a quick correction. But he’s. A character. He’s just a god damn character. Who is Trans, out of good faith by a very Queer company, showing us a Trans man, who is a character, and expecting that, like NORMAL PEOPLE, we would not do something like THIS.

When you criticize WP for not telling us Lanque was a Trans Man, all I’m seeing is a shift of blame, not wanting to simply admit you were wrong and jumped to conclusions, and like- Even if there was Fanart or Fanfic of Lanque calling him a woman briefly, shipping him around mistakenly, who cares? You just. Go. “Okay, I’ll change it” or “Whoops haha this was from when we didn’t know he was a Trans boy!” Why the militant hatred? Why the absolute disgust shown today? I can’t understand, I simply cannot understand why your first reaction to “Trans boy Jadeblood” is “WELL I THOUGHT HE WAS A BUTCH LESBIAN!! I WASN’T WRONG BY ASSUMING THIS, WHATPUMPKIN WERE FOR TRYING TO MAKE THEIR GAME MORE DIVERSE”. It’s like... You just. Correct it? You just correct yourself? And yeah you can want more masculine Trans boys, that’s fair! But dismissing what we got, entirely, and insulting it, and getting like THIS, and blaming the team, it just seems.

Narcissistic. It seems narcissistic and extremely self-centered, and perfectionist to the extreme of not wanting anything other than a complete and absolute ideal, that may fit you but may also not fit others.

In conclusion?

People are happy about representation. This isn’t destroying diversity or representation, this is not reducing customization of Fantrolls, this is only building MORE on the already expansive system, and giving us representation and hope for MORE representation in the future, and if you cannot be happy for a genuine, good natured, and honestly, perfectly fine attempt, if you cannot feel empathy for the people who did feel for this representation, if you can only want to find reasons to bash something down and demonize something good and point out how BAD and NOT GOOD things are and how MUCH BETTER they could be, then honestly, you’re a deeply unpleasant person.

Give things time. Give people with good intentions chances. Learn to backpedal and learn from mistakes and simply correct yourself when you’re wrong instead of going down a hateful spiral. Learn to separate fiction and reality. Just like... Think, for a moment, when you’re writing something down- Is it a jaded opinion, or an objective fact? Will it hurt and discourage people who’re genuinely happy or trying to make others happy? Why do more harm than good when there are good intentions paving the way?

I just simply cannot understand the basic lack of critical thought and empathy of some people I have seen today, and hopefully with this I can make my opinion on the whole absurd Discourse that transpired today clear.

#Hiveswap #Homestuck #Lanque #WhatPumpkin #Discourse #Long Post #Longpost

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bjro233 · 5 years

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The Life of a Gay Man and His Need To Prove It

#1 The “Gay Gene”

Although it has only been found in males, a linkage to males and homosexuality has been discovered by Dean Hamer and colleagues. On X chromosomes there is an unidentified gene that these scientists have named Xq28, which they relate directly to homosexuality. It’s a very controversial theory but ultimately purposes so many answers.

#2 Evidence is Mounting for Homosexual Men

“In 1993, genetic variations in a region on the X chromosome in men were linked to whether they were heterosexual or homosexual, and in 1995, a region on chromosome 8 was identified.” says Andy Coghlan from thenewscientist.com. This just proves that no, gay men don’t just wake up one morning and say “Hey, I wanna try dick today.”

#3 The Third Gender: Muxes

In southern Mexico, the Zapotec people recognize a third gender called Muxes. In our culture, they would be known as homosexual people and transgendered people. This just makes me realize that some cultures, although so old, are so ahead of their time, open-minded, and progressive. Another reason to yell @ Donald Trump, don’t build the damn wall.

#4 We Are Not Alone

Listen, science isn’t the only thing that proves this theory. Look at our environment and what isn’t directly affected by or altered by humans. “Homosexual behaviour is a natural biological feature and is common among non-human animals. In at least one species – sheep – individual animals have been known to form lasting preferences for same-sex partners.” says Australias Science Channel. Fun Fact: the oldest living tortoise who was thought to be female but was actually male only mated with males. Thus showing why no babies were being born.

#5 Should We Care About Giving Reason To Being Gay?

Of course, being gay myself, you’re faced with a lot of harassment, questioning, judgment, and bigotry. Religion really attacks you, and you’re forced to feel like an outcast and forced into a stereotype. So, given the chance and these scientific findings, it can help explain to people who don’t believe/understand. It normalizes sexuality, it lowers being/feeling like a minority. “It adds yet more evidence that sexual orientation is not a ‘lifestyle choice’. But the real significance is that it takes us one step closer to understanding the origins of one of the most fascinating and important features of human beings.” says Dean Hammer from newscientist.com.

#6 Being A Watermelon in A Sea Full of Cacti

One word: Grindr. If you’re a gay male, you either gagged or hid your face in shamefulness for using the app. My need to prove myself starts here, it completely drains lives of romance and relationship oriented people. It sends a message that all gay men are they same, they’re horny and only want to bone. “The mental health professionals I spoke to are seeing problematic Grindr use in their clinics. And there is little published guidance on how to help those who are struggling.” says Jack Turban with Vox.com. This app is notorious for only being used to have sex, and it’s showing and obviously causing detrimental effects on gay men.

#7 Breaking Stereotypes One Straight @ A Time

Growing up, I only had girlfriends. Instead of playing basketball or throwing a football at recess, after school, in college, etc... I jumped rope. I learned how to french braid, I sang and danced. I yearned for the male on male friendship, or bromance you may say. I never got it because theres a stereotype, “I don’t have a problem with gay guys, but if he hits on me its game over.” Now, I can say once straight cis men give me a shot, they realize the stupidity behind it. I always here, “I’m not gay, but you’re one of the coolest dudes.” which isn’t ideal, but it’s progress.

#8 Trouble in the Workplace

When I bring up LGBTQ issues to acquaintances, a lot of the times i’m faced with “I don’t think gay people have a lot of issues nowadays”. But we dont, thats why I feel its so important for me to prove myself, my life, and what comes along with it. The facts, the struggles, the ugly truth. “59% said that where they live, they are less likely to be afforded employment opportunities because they are part of the LGBTQ community. One in five stated that they have had difficulty when applying for positions.” says victoryinstitute.net

#9 Let’s Prove Stats Wrong!

Statistics can be demeaning, not all the time are they helpful or good. Sadly, for the LGBTQ+ community, the stats are disheartening. For example, LGBTQ people are 5X as likely to commit suicide than heterosexual people says thetrevorproject.org. 77% of LGBTQ youth reported are depressed, have anxiety, and/or have feelings of worthlessness says hrc.org. So, to all the heterosexual people out there wondering where their “Straight month” or “Straight parade is”, you have it, 11 months out of the year because you dont have struggles like that.

#10 Trans People are Simply, People.

Working with white, privileged, conservative, middle-to-upper class women, i’m forced to hear a lot of what they believe and how they think and what political decision they have recently made. Now and then, obvious and not so obvious transgendered women come into the store to shop and they outwardly treat them different or question the “real gender” of the person. I ask myself why whatever is under their clothes matter so much to them. When I tell them they are a woman, and that’s all they are, they are confused and partly agitated because I didn’t give them the answer they wanted to hear. Saddening fact? In a national study, 40% of transgender adults reported having made a suicide attempt. 92% of these individuals reported having attempted suicide before the age of 25 says thetrevorproject.org. Maybe if we stop making people feel so different, and start working toward progression instead of sticking our nose where it doesnt belong, we could actually get somewhere. Proving myself, to help the Trans community.

#11 “Gay People Can’t Naturally Reproduce”

I want a family, I want someone to call my husband. My son or daughter, my family. I need that in my life weather it is “natural” or not. People are so pressed about the natural way of things, but they can’t see that a majority of LGBTQ people who don’t reproduce via a man and a woman, help reduce the amount of foster children.14,000 foster children are being raised by Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual foster parents says Movement Advanced Project. Just because I am a man, married to a man, with our own children doesn’t make us any less capable for raising a family.

#12 LG(B)TQ+

Another group of people that are drastically hated on for being themselves. Human beings can’t grasp that someone may actually be more concerned about someones personality rather than their sexual organs. According to 2013 research by the University of Pittsburgh, 15% of people did not categorize bisexuality as a legitimate sexuality, with straight men being three times as likely to think it's "not a thing." People looking at you and just thinking you’re fake or just too horny. It’s pathetic, hence another reason to prove myself, my sexuality, for the other groups in my community.

#13 You Can Be Cured With Some Treatment & Religion - Mackelmore

Ever since before me, for a very long time, we were taught that there are conversion treatments, that being gay was a mental disability, a deformity. There were actually shock therapy treatments and conversion camps for LGBTQ+ people, people were killed in the midst of these treatments. But heres, *tap tap* the mutha f*ucking, *tap tap* TEA! American Psychological Association undertook a thorough review of the existing research on the efficacy of conversion therapy and their report noted that there was very little research on sexual orientation change efforts (SOCEs) and that the "results of scientifically valid research indicate that it is unlikely that individuals will be able to reduce same-sex attractions or increase other-sex sexual attractions through SOCE." says hrc.com. Today there are still states that legalize this method!! Stop this!!

#14 The Importance of PRIDE

This isn’t just a time for LGBTQ+ people and allies to strut down the street in cute colorful clothing. This parade we participate in is a lesson, its teaching others about what we’re trying to do. Policies, laws, and other arguments we want and need heard. During the 2000s, battles at local, state, and national levels were being fought for marriage equality. Pride parades were utilized to educate the public, generate support, and encourage lawmakers to vote in favor of LGBT rights says thegayfamilylawmaker.com. We need to educate people on the education pride parades actually do. If it wasn’t for these parades, we wouldn’t have made the progress we have today.

#15 The Audacity!?

My need to prove myself may be... borderline pathetic. HOWEVER, it’s so important and necessary in today’s society. The fact that just in 1982, it was okay to openly discriminate against LGBTQ people. IN 1996, it was BANNED to marry unless it was between a man and a women. Only in 2011 was “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” finally repealed. This may sound like good news... but then BAM! THIS YEAR, President Trump banned Transgender people from being in the military.(CNN.com) Every time we feel like we’re ahead, we get knocked back down a few steps. This is why it is important, this is why it is necessary, this is why i’m doing it.

REFERENCES

https://australiascience.tv/science-of-sexuality/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cross-cultural-evidence-for-the-genetics-of-homosexuality/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2155810-what-do-the-new-gay-genes-tell-us-about-sexual-orientation/

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/genetics-dna-homosexuality-gay-orientation-attractiveness-straight

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/giant-study-links-dna-variants-same-sex-behavior

https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/lgbt-rights-milestones-fast-facts/index.html

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/4/4/17177058/grindr-gay-men-mental-health-psychiatrist

https://victoryinstitute.org/issue-at-a-glance-lgbtq-employment-discrimination/

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/preventing-suicide/facts-about-suicide/#sm.00001tfv8n5yekdvsq5f6al6h6i7u

https://www.hrc.org/resources/2018-lgbtq-youth-report

https://justlists.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/familyequality/

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evakuality · 6 years

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Some thoughts on writing and characterization

I’ve seen a lot of discussion in the fandom lately about how to write characters and to what extent it’s okay to change canon characteristics in fic, and I guess in art too. One comment I saw really stuck with me and I want to explore the ideas behind it a little more. Now I just want to clarify here that I’m not telling anyone they have to write a certain way or that any idea in any post I happened to see (and which I can’t remember now where I saw it, so I can’t even credit the person with that idea) is wrong. I just had some ideas which were pinged by that one comment in particular and the whole discussion in general. This is messy and my own opinion only. I’m well aware that other people think other ways, I just want to record how I feel about it all. Also, as usual, this got VERY long so … uh, beware of that.

So, the comment I saw claimed that making Isak smaller and slighter and weaker than he’s shown in the show, or making Even actually taller and stronger is just a preference and that doing so is perfectly fine because who’s to say that in the parallel universe represented by the fic that those things aren’t true. And okay sure, in some ways that’s fair. We don’t expect things to be exactly the same in an au. Different situations will inevitably end up with characters having different outlooks, and I get that. I write that sort of thing myself, and there’s a real joy in thinking ‘how would changing x thing about y character affect him or her while still keeping them recognizable?’ But for me that’s different to what we’re talking about here.

What’s happening here is our fics taking actual physical traits of the actual actors and changing them. And unlike personality characteristics, these aren’t things that could believably be changed. To be clear here, I’m not talking about ‘what if Isak were a fairy?’ (I love that fic!) or ‘what if Isak were trans?’ (I love that idea too), but rather a tendency to write a ‘changed’ character as if he were an actual part of the canon. The difference is subtle, I know, but the distinction is actually huge. Again, I reiterate, we can all write what we want etc etc but I think exploring this difference is important in figuring out why we as fandoms write the way we do.

Deliberately changing something to wonder ‘what if’ is quite different to writing a certain set of tropes in a certain way. Because the thing is, if it really were just people having a preference we would have a much wider variation of these traits presented as if they were canon. Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say someone writes a fic. It’s labelled Isak/Even and presented as if what’s inside is just the sort of variation you’d find in a parallel universe. In it, Even is a small Asian guy with dark hair who is physically unimposing. Isak is a tall, broad, very muscular body builder. There’s no ‘what if’ and no hint that this is out of the ordinary. Indeed, the fic treats this as just how they are in canon. None of this is tagged because that’s just Isak and Even, no big deal. How many of us are squinting at that going ‘what? That’s not Isak and Even; how can the writer of that fic not say that’s a deviation from what we know?’ I think we can all agree that this fic would be strange, and we’d instinctively go ‘this isn’t Isak and Even’ because it’s not. I think those sound like fascinating characters, and I’d love to read about them, but they aren’t Isak and Even. I’ve also seen people saying ‘don’t like, don’t read’ but in this case that doesn’t apply because it hasn’t been tagged. There’s no way before going in and reading that fic for us to know that there’s something that’s been changed from canon.

So why is it okay for us to say ‘parallel universes so they’re just like that’ for one set of characteristics and not the other? Why do we shrug and accept tiny, weak Isak but we find it difficult to accept tiny, unimposing Even? Why is it that a particular set of tropes are an acceptable preference that can just be dumped into a fic as if it’s canon but others can’t be? And why is that particular set of tropes that’s permissible the set that allows for a heteronormative reading of the text and the pairing? We do a disservice to the characters when we do just shrug and accept this as just the way it is and don’t examine why we like it.

Because the important thing here is that these tropes are not just an Isak/Even thing; they occur in practically every fandom that has a popular m/m pairing. I’m not in the fandoms for Harry Potter, Merlin, Supernatural, Glee, Marvel etc and yet I have heard similar comments about pairings in all of them. Some fandoms even come to blows if you put the ‘wrong’ character in the ‘wrong’ role (Supernatural fandom, you are always fascinating to me). It was never quite that bad in Skam, but there was a long time when people were vilified if they wrote Even as the bottom and people were tagging bottom Even and making author’s notes because they were so worried that they would call down the wrath of the fandom on their heads. This is ironic since the only canon hint we have about their sex life strongly suggests that Even was the bottom in that case. And you know, if this was just harmless fun, people writing what they like and posting it for free, I’d probably be okay with it (though I’d beg for it to be tagged so I could avoid this stuff that I don’t particularly want to read). But the thing is there are two problems here: 1. It’s so ingrained in this fandom now that we now consider this ‘canon’ so it’s never ever tagged and 2. This type of thing can have an actual effect on actual real people.

Again, this wouldn’t be an issue if there was a wider range of stories in the fandom. I’ve seen people saying that the Scandinavian fics are much better in this way and that they use those tropes much less so there’s no problem with diversity of ideas in the fandom. And that’s fantastic, it really is. I’m genuinely happy for the people who can read those (and I really want more translated and/or to learn enough language so I could read them). Unfortunately, many people are like me and can’t read them so we are all stuck with the English language fics. Equally unfortunately, a lot of those fics fall into these tropes. Many of them include just small moments where some small thing is casually dropped in as if it’s ‘just how it is.’ Isak swims in Even’s clothes, Isak is tiny, Isak has to stand on tiptoes to kiss Even etc etc. None of these, by themselves, is inherently bad. The problem comes when they are piled on top of each other, fic after fic (and indeed art after art). When this is 90% of what we see in fic it becomes a pattern, and soon it becomes accepted as truth. Except that, in the actual show, none of those things is the truth.

I’ve said it before, but many of these accepted things are not correct: In canon, Isak and Even share clothes and they fit both of them fine, Isak is shorter than Even but he’s not so tiny that tiptoes are necessary for kissing. And the major issue with such revisions as if they were canon is that they all play into a certain set of stereotypes. And those stereotypes all serve to put our m/m pairing in a very heteronormative position. They trap Isak in the ‘weak, submissive, spoiled, nagging bottom’ role and Even is forced into the ‘dominant, aggressive, controlling, forceful top’ role. And none of those things is either inherent in the physical attributes of the characters (even if physical attributes reflected stereotypical personality traits, which they don’t) or a true reflection of the characters’ personalities. Even isn’t aggressive or domineering. He’s not controlling. He runs away from his issues rather than facing them, and he hates being controlled. He’s unlikely to enjoy doing to others what he hates having done to him. Isak, on the other hand, can be an aggressive little asshole who would punch someone if they looked at him or his boyfriend in the wrong way. In terms of personality (again, if personality truly reflected these stereotypes, which it doesn’t), it would make much more sense for those roles to be reversed. Canon Isak acts much more like the ‘top’ in these tropes, and canon Even (gentle, kind, avoidant Even) is closer to the ‘bottom’ stereotype. (For the record, I’m not advocating for merely turning the tropes on their heads and just having Isak be the strong, dominant one and Even the weak, submissive one; they may be closer to those stereotypes but they still don’t fit into these sets of personality traits. They’re both strong and confident in some ways and very vulnerable in others. This is just saying that even if we were sticking to the stereotypes, the way each role is usually ascribed makes little sense with our canon characters). These are such complex, layered, rounded, human characters that reducing them to these ideas seems so limiting; by doing so, we lose so much of what makes them such interesting and powerful characters. There’s also the fact that, as shown in this meta I wrote, Isak hates the feminized stereotype of gay people and would not thank us for putting him in that role. And while that might make for a fascinating character study, that’s not what tends to happen in fic. What tends to happen is that this dynamic is just accepted as true and assumed to be the way things are. I’d actually love to see a fic where a deeply internally homophobic Isak comes to terms with actually enjoying being a ‘feminine’ gay man (If anyone knows one, please feel free to let me know about it). But it’s not canon and it��s not what the bulk of fics with this type of Isak are doing.

Now I’m being a little facetious here because, of course, Isak is fictional and his wishes and preferences don’t mean anything except to add a layer of irony to this now-accepted and common idea (unless we’re trying to write a canon Isak in which case we should really pay attention to what he thinks and feels). But there is a group of people who are affected by this stuff -- lgbt+ people in fandom. This group is exposed to these ideas over and over and over again. This group will be taking on these ideas little by little. No one fic or artwork by itself is an issue, of course. No one person is ‘the problem’ just like none of us is perfect (I’m here to say I’m sure I’ve fallen, and will fall, into some of this stereotyped stuff myself despite trying not to, and I know I’m horrible at tagging in particular and am trying to get better). But the problem is that when this is the message, over and over again, it’s very hard to think outside or see outside it. No matter what fandom we lgbt+ people fetch up in, this message is always there. And much like Isak in the show, we lgbt+ people in fandom are exposed mostly to this certain set of tropes, this idea that there is an actual defined and acceptable role for gay or other lgbt+ people to take on. That one character is, and always will be, smaller, weaker, often younger, and therefore more submissive and that the other is, and always will be, larger, stronger, often older, and therefore more dominant. This is not inherently true, not in real life; people don’t fit into sets of stereotypes and lgbt+ couples don’t inherently have one who is always top and one who is always bottom. Again, this wouldn’t be an issue except that when we do this, we imply that those actual real life lgbt+ relationships also have a dichotomy which feminizes one half of the pairing in a way that can be harmful when it’s all that’s presented.

In itself, this idea is an issue because it says all relationships fit into the same narrow set of dichotomies. This isn’t actually a good message for anyone in any relationship (and many heterosexual texts shoehorn similar roles into many romances too), but it’s worse when the relationship portrayed is lgbt+ because it implies rigid gender roles where, by definition, they don’t exist. It’s also true that even while we see these tropes in heterosexual romances as well, straight people have a much wider diversity in the way their relationships are portrayed. However, there are far more limited representations for lgbt+ people, particularly in traditionally published, or broadcast, media. That means that when they turn to fanfiction and the bulk of what they see is this very narrow set of tropes, it’s hard not to take on board those messages. Isak himself is a good example of why this is bad as I said in that internalized homophobia meta I linked earlier. He stays in the closet much longer than he might otherwise have done because he had such a narrow set of models of what it means to be gay.

Then, of course, there is the way that the smaller one in the pair can end up being fetishized. He is always the one who is made to wear the feminine clothing, he is the one whose body is most often exposed in art, he is the one who then acts in a very stereotyped ‘feminine’ way in fic. These fetishized moments are deeply uncomfortable to come across as an lgbt+ person and it’s an extra unfortunate byproduct of these ways of lgbt+ people being represented. So while, yes, everyone has a right to write what they like when they’re putting their work out onto the internet for free, it’s also nice for us to take a step back and look at the wider context. Because none of this happens in a vacuum, and as individuals and as a fandom it can pay to take that step back and ask why this is our preference. It may seem like a small thing to write a small physical characteristic change which makes one or the other character seem smaller or weaker (or alternatively bigger or stronger) but as part of a wider pattern it all builds on everything else we put out there and creates a fandom where a lot of what we consume just cements in a set of expectations of what it means to be lgbt+ that is then very hard to see past.

I’m not saying no-one should ever write these fics, of course. If we want to write Isak being small and needing to go on tiptoes, then we should go for it, but we should be aware of why we’re writing that way (and maybe find a way to put Even on his tiptoes; everyone deserves a good tiptoe kiss moment!) If we want to write D/s sex, we should do it, but maybe we need to think a bit about how we’re presenting it. Is it healthy? Is it properly negotiated? Why have we decided which character should be in which role? Stopping and thinking a little can only help the creative output in the fandom; it can give us a wider range of reading and viewing material to choose from, and it makes us more aware of what we as a fandom are doing. The Harry/Draco fandom in Harry Potter apparently turned this around, moved away from a rigid idea of who was top and who was bottom (and who was dom and who was sub) and it’s flourishing even now, so many years after its canon is over. If we want to flourish into the future too, maybe we can diversify a little more and be a little more thoughtful and respectful of the people this fandom is supposed to represent, too. To the lgbt+ people in fandom, who deserve to see ourselves in as much variety as straight people do and who do not deserve to see ourselves fetishized and reduced to tropes over and over again, this could mean a lot.

#skam #my meta stuff #fic writing #characterization and canon

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lgbtfalloutwinterholiday · 6 years

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[fic] Veronica Santangelo/Christine Royce

Happy Holidays!

Here is @nomette ‘s submission for @ffferris with Veronica and Christine.

Pairing: Veronica Santangelo/Christine Royce Summary: Veronica & Christine have a happy holiday together, can be set during any time (like past, in-game, or post-game), bonus if you want to throw in other characters also having a good time but no need to feel obligated to do that, & bonus for incorporating trans headcanons. Word Count: 2,542 Rating: Safe for work

It’s the 24th of December, and the Lucky 38 smells of tamales, pine needles and a mysterious mix of fruit that Raul’s been boiling for hours. Veronica and Arcade must have tracked down every package of Dandy Boy Apples in the Commonwealth to make this drink, but she doesn’t mind. It’s the holidays. Arcade’s put up some kind of weird candelabra he calls a menorah, and there’s a pile of presents sitting in the Rec Room and a bunch of lumpy stockings nailed to the walls, courtesy of Lily’s knitting needles. The V on Veronica’s stocking looks kind of like a U, but she’s not going to complain, not when Christine’s stocking is hanging next to hers.

Veronica pauses in the doorway to the rec room and leans against the doorway, enjoying the moment. Cass and Boone are playing pool, Rex is sprawled out on the floor, and the Courier and Christine are hanging spent bullet casings on the Christmas tree. Christine’s hair has just cleared two inches, and it sits in a little fuzzy lump on top of her head. Veronica feels a little kick of delight every time she looks at her. She can’t believe she’s gotten so lucky. Christine didn’t come back from the Sierra Madre the same- she barely talks now, and her hair has only just begun to grow back out, and her scars- but she’s still Christine, and Veronica still loves her, every piece.

“You going to come help?” the Courier asks. She’s a skinny, half-feral little thing who doesn’t talk much and doesn’t like to sleep in the same place more than once. Veronica’s always finding her asleep in random corners of the casino, her little hammock dangling between chairs or casino tables. Veronica doubts she’s seen two decades, but Benny’s bullet knocked half the memories out of her head, so there’s no way to know.

“I carried that thing halfway across the wasteland,” Veronica says. “I think I’ve done my bit.”

“But it’s fun,” the Courier says, puzzled. “Boone’s showing me how to identify the different kind of bullet casings. This is a .38, see?” She holds up a mangled piece of metal, beaming.

“Good job, kid,” Boone says.

“I’m more of a Power Fist kind of girl,” Veronica says, flexing to show off her weapon. The Courier contemplates Veronica, then glances back at the tree.

“We could put it on top,” she says, sounding kind of dubious. Christine makes a muffled snorting sound and bursts into laughter.

“No way,” Veronica says, wrapping a protective hand around her power fist.

“I think that’s a great idea,” Christine manages between giggles. “You have to admit, it would match the tree.” The tree- a scraggly looking young pine Veronica dragged all the way from the mountains near Jacobstown- is covered in bullets casings and caution tape. Several glowing bottles of Nuka-Cola Quantum have been wedged between the branches. The tree looks like it’s ready to come to life and stage an uprising against humankind.

“I don’t know,” Cass says thoughtfully, and smirks around the rim of her glass of whiskey. “I think it would look pretty good with Boone’s beret on top.”

“No,” Boone says.

“It is colorful,” the Courier says thoughtfully.

“No,” says Boone, and Veronica takes advantage of the distraction to slip away.

Arcade and Raul are in the kitchen, along with a alrge pot of what Raul calls “ponche” and an even larger pot of tamales. Rex is sprawled out in front of the oven, keeping an eye on the large chunk of Brahmin which has been roasting since this morning. He catches sight of Veronica and whimpers and wags his tail.

“Don’t listen to that faker, we’ve been giving him scraps all day,” Arcade says cheerfully.

“When are you going to give me scraps?” Veronica asks, and imitates Rex’s mournful face. Arcade gestures to the stove.

“There’s unmashed potatoes, refried beans, apple pie, carrot cake, Cass’s jalapeño cornbread, Cass’s go-blind eggnog, and ponche. Knock yourself out.”

“Unmashed potatoes?”

“Well, I haven’t mashed them yet,” Arcade says. “I’ve been busy with the tamales.” He and Raul have made what looks like about a million tamales to Veronica, and they’re only partway through the huge tub of masa. There’s a whole assembly line on the table- masa, leaves, stewed brahmin, chickpeas. Raul looks up from his current tamale and grins.

“You wanna eat, mija? You better work. Those tamales aren’t going to fold themselves.”

“Oh-fine!” Veronica says. It’s this or get robbed of her power fist, she supposes, and she’s always liked mashing potatoes. Halfway through mashing, she feels a warm pair of arms around her waist, and looks back to find Christine, her head leaning against the small of Veronica’s back.

“Hey there,” Veronica says happily. “You come to bust me out of this life of labor?”

“Nope,” Christine says, and stands on her tiptoes to peer over Veronica’s shoulder. She’s so small. Back in the day, Veronica used to pick her up and cart her around the bunker at every possible opportunity.

“Hmmm,” Christine says, and sneaks a bit of potato onto her finger and licks it off. A small smile sneaks onto her face, and Veronica can’t help but blush. She’d mash a hundred potatoes just to see that smile. She leans over and plants a kiss on Christine’s cheek, and Christine flushes and ducks away, smiling.

Neither Raul nor Arcade say anything; Raul is engrossed enough in his tamales that Veronica doubts he’s even noticed, but Arcade gives her a wink. It’s nice to be among friends. Christine settles down next to the Raul at the table and pokes at one of the finished tamales.

“So, how do you make one of these?” she asks Raul.

“Well, you start with the leaf…” Raul begins.

It takes them another two hours to get through all the tamales, and everyone is hungry by the time they sit down at the table and start serving food. Lily has a custom-made seat just for her, an early Christmas present from Raul and Boone to allow her to sit at the table with them. Veronica, Christine and Arcade are on the right side, Boone, Cass and Raul on the left. The Courier sits at the head of the table, food already piled on her plate.

“You want to say grace, mija?” Raul asks the Courier.

“Grace?” she asks, a little line appearing between her eyebrows.

“It’s traditional to thank God before eating a big meal,” Arcade explains.

“Uh, sure,” the Courier says. She clasps her hands together, then begins to speak. “Thank you Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth, for growing the crops, and thank you Hermes for my good luck, and thank you Hades for my life. I promise to kill a legionnaire in your name before the New Year, thank you, amen.”

“Fascinating,” Arcade says, and gets elbowed by Christine. The courier is a little weird, but so is Arcade, and he doesn’t have the excuse of being a teenaged ex-slave. “Uh, amen,” he says hastily. Cass looks like she’s trying real hard not to laugh. Boone lifts his glass and grins.

“To killing legionnaires,” he says, and everyone around the table echoes the sentiment. They clink glasses, and everyone digs in. Raul’s punch is fruity and sweet, with a faint hint of sunset sarsaparilla, almost almost worth the trouble it took Christine and Veronica to find twenty boxes of Dandy Boy Apples. There’s a mountain of tamales, some heinously spicy cornbread, moonshine, apple pie, pinto beans stewed with molerat, carrot cake, eggnog, roasted brahmin, gravy, and mashed potatoes.

Back at the Brotherhood, they mostly ate variations on carrots and potato, since they couldn’t get much to grow around the bunker. Fried potato, mashed potato, boiled potato, potato soup, potato salad- every potato and then some. Veronica skips the mashed potato and goes for the cornbread and roasted brahmin, and sees Christine do the same next to her. They grin at each other, and Christine serves Veronica a slice of pie.

“What’s in this?” Arcade asks, shoving a piece into his mouth. “I thought Raul used all the apple in his ponche.”

“Mutfruit,” Cass says matter-of-factly. “Some other stuff too, but I don’t kiss and tell.”

It’s quiet for a while as everyone stuffs their face. At first, the Courier had to be bullied into eating with a fork instead of with her hands, but she came around after Veronica pointed out that if you carry a fork and knife with you, you can also use them as back-up weapons. The Brahmin is spicy and savory, with a crisp outside and a juicy inside, and it vanishes as fast as people can cut pieces free. Everyone has at least one of Raul’s tamales, and Boone has three. The man puts away food like a refrigerator.

Afterwards, when they’re all full enough to burst, one of the securitrons comes in and clears the plates, and Rex finally gets his plate of scraps.

“I feel like the casino is going to collapse under my weight,” Cass says, groaning.

“Could that happen?” the Courier asks. She doesn’t look worried, only curious. Veronica supposes that once you’ve been shot through the head, a little building collapse probably doesn’t sound too bad.

“Probably not,” Arcade says hastily. He starts in on an explanation of how architecture works, but Veronica doesn’t hear any of it, because Christine has reached out under the table and taken her hand. One by one, she laces their fingers together. They used to do this back at the dining table in the hall, but back then it was one part bravado and one part fear. Veronica isn’t scared anymore. It doesn’t matter if anyone sees.

But she doesn’t need to show them. It’s enough that she and Christine know. Christine runs her thumb gently over the edge of Veronica’s hand, and they stay there like that, smiling, together at last. Dinner conversation turns from mutfruit to apples to weird things they’ve eaten, and Cass disgusts them all with tales of some truly dubious liquor. She and Boone are well on their way to being smashed, which bodes poorly for the midnight fireworks they promised the courier.

Only the Courier’s excited demand to get them all to the Christmas Tree for presents dislodges them from the table. Veronica and Christine walk, hand in hand, to the rec room, followed by a slightly staggering Boone and a very staggering Arcade, who got stuck supporting him. The debate about the star has been settled by ED-E nesting on top of the tree like a very strange bird.

Veronica settles onto the couch, and Christine settles onto her lap. Christine is light, a pleasant weight, and she grins when Veronica sneaks a kiss onto the side of her face. The Courier, oblivious to the people watching her, tears into her first present. It’s a framed piece of paper- nothing more than a contract, really. The Courier isn’t very good at reading. She looks at the paper, her lips moving as she tries to sound out the words.

Arcade, ever thoughtful, underlined the relevant part.

“... the undersigned Ca-Can-tra-ta,” the Courier says, frowning. “Cantrata. What does that mean?”

“Veronica and I did some research,” Arcade says. By research, he means that they broke into a privately owned building, but no one needs to know that. The man at the front desk of the Mojave Express deserves it for being so unhelpful, anyway, and it’s not like they stole anything valuable. “We looked up the records from when you were hired, and found what you signed as. It’s your name. Cantrata. I think it comes from Cantare, to sing.”

The courier looks at the paper, then at Arcade.

“My name,” she says, and repeats it. “Cantrata.” A strange look crosses her face. “I used to sing,” she says to herself, then gets up and launches herself at him. Arcade wraps his arms around her and pats her back.

“Hey, I helped,” Veronica says, and Arcade gestures for her to join in the hug. The three of them squish awkwardly together on the couch, and for a moment Veronica is on the verge of having a real Christmas feeling.

“Thank you!” Cantrata says, and wiggles out of the hug. “I got you something too!” Whatever it is, it’s apparently too big to fit under the tree, because Cantrata runs out of the room. There’s a loud clunk, and then she comes back hauling a huge power fist painted entirely in teal and pink.

“It sets off explosives when you punch people,” she says solemnly, and hands it to Veronica.

“Uh,” Veronica says, and picks it up. One side has a yellow warning sign on it. The other side has Veronica’s full name written on it in beautiful pink calligraphy, complete with a little heart dotting the i. There’s little rhinestones around the cuff. The courier must have hired someone to bling it out.

“It’s beautiful,” Veronica says solemnly, and Cantrata grins.

“Open your next present,” she says.

There’s a matching dress.

Veronica’s final haul is a power fist from Cantrata and a dress from Arcade and Cass, a new waist pouch from Boone, a blanket from Raul, a lumpy sweater from Lily, and one more thing. After the festivities have died down, Veronica and Christine go back to their room and shut the door.

Christine’s presents come in two colorful little bags. The first one is light. Veronica lifts it out to find a cute little bra and underwear set. There’s not very much of it.

“You can wear it under your dress,” Christine says, flushing.

The second pair is a set of shoes, likely looted from some vault. They’re a little dusty, but they fit well. Veronica slips her feet into them, and remembers. Back when she and Christine were kids in the bunker, it was a common game to talk about what you’d do when you left. No one ever left, of course, but it was fun to pretend that you would. Some kids wanted to be ranchers, some wanted to be singers, some wanted to be gamblers or rangers or deathclaw tamers. Veronica wanted to be a princess. She wanted to have a pretty dress, and live in a colorful, safe place where they never had to eat potatoes or worry about raiders. She wanted someone to love her, not for what she could do for them, but for who she was.

“A glass slipper, for my princess,” Christine says, smiling.

“I could be in rags, and you’d still make me feel like a queen, Christine,” Veronica says, and crosses the room. Christine’s hands are so small in her own. “But the pretty dress sure helps.”

“You were a princess when we were in a hole in the ground,” Christine whispers. “But you finally made it to your tower. Merry Christmas.”

On the roof, Boone, Cass and Raul are drunkenly shooting off fireworks. The sound rings through the air. Outside the window, sparks rain down over the strip in showers of gold and green, but Veronica only has eyes for Christine. Their lips brush, and for a single perfect moment, the world is exactly as Veronica has always dreamed.

#nomette #ffferris #veronica santangelo #christine royce #fallout #fallout new vegas #submission #fanfiction #long post

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fxngsfxgarty · 6 years

Text

youth, ever fading youth

so I wrote my first ever riverdale fic. it’s about nonbinary/trans jughead, obviously.

Jughead Jones has been Jughead Jones, or some similar variation on the name, for as long as they can remember knowing how to talk.

Also on AO3 here.

Jughead Jones has been Jughead Jones, or some similar variation on the name, for as long as they can remember knowing how to talk.

At seven, they are JJ. Elementary school for JJ seems to be a constant loop of days where the teacher would say “Florence” on roll call, and they’d say “JJ, Ma’am,” and expect the mistake to be corrected. The teachers always seem to ask “JJ? How does JJ come from Florence?” and JJ just says “It came from my head, Ma’am.”

And that has to be an acceptable answer. For a seven year old, there isn’t another one. Because when you’re seven, if something is in your head then it has to be real. Everything you’ve imagined or dreamed up in your life up to that point is met with adults saying “really? Is that right? What happened to you after that?” even if it’s just you in your pajamas with sleepy eyes and tousled curls, talking about hearing Father Christmas and the reindeer on the roof of the trailer in the night, or telling your Mom and Dad that you and your sister fought a dragon when they sent you out to play.

You win the fight, of course. You and your sister always slay the dragons when you’re together.

When eleven rolls around, the adults stop believing so much in the stories and spells you dream up. Jay is in middle school and their mom doesn’t drive them to the gates any more. Mom takes Jellybean to elementary and leaves them to take the bus with the bigger kids. The older kids think it’s fun to snatch hats and toss them around, and it becomes routine for Jay to not unwrap the granola bar Mom leaves them on the counter until they’re safely sitting down, because it ends up on the ground in the aisle more than once, trodden into the mud-stains and footprints and crumbled into oaty dust. The hat ends up back on Jay’s head by the end of the ride most days, and if it doesn’t, it’s in the lost property box by the end of the day and they get a lecture from the receptionist about taking care of their belongings.

“Your parents don’t buy you things for you to lose them,” she says, and doesn’t pay attention when Jay says that the kids on the bus take it and play catch every morning. “You should be careful about the tales you tell on others, Florence. Making up stories won’t do you any good as you get older. It’s time to leave the fairy tales to the younger ones.”

Jay’s sister is still one of the younger ones, and at night, they hide under the blanket together with a torch and a big hardback book of stories about frogs and peas and princesses, and Jay reads in one of Jellybean’s ears and covers the other with a small hand, nails bitten almost down to the quick. Jellybean’s silky dark hair is soft beneath their touch, not yet curling like Jay’s does. Jay wonders whether, if they’d stayed young forever, they wouldn’t have had to do this. Because outside the safety of the blanket cocoon, Dad is drunk and Mom is crying, “get out, get away from me and my kids,” and Dad spits back with “you get out”, except laden with cuss words that kids aren’t allowed to say, and Mom says “maybe I will, FP, maybe I will.”

Jughead is almost fourteen when the sex ed classes come true, the ones where the teachers split the class up, “boys on the left line, girls on the right” and Jughead almost hesitated before following the girls’ line, because they always got grouped with them and their long hair and glossy lips and eyelashes painted in black gunk from pink and green tubes that only flakes off when you rub your eyes, even though it makes them itch and then you look like you’ve been crying. Jughead wants to cry at the stains they don’t know how to get out, at the pain clawing low in their stomach, at the apparent confirmation that they’ve been one of those girls all along. Because by now, by nearly fourteen, they know they don’t want to be, they’ve never been, despite the name on all the roll calls and the ugly, defiant F on official papers and test results where something else should be. They almost shout out into the small trailer for Mom, but then, Mom isn’t here. Mom is gone, and so is Jellybean. This is Jughead and Dad, and Dad isn’t here right now. Dad’s hanging out in the bar with the other guys with snake tattoos and motorcycles, so Jughead may just be on their own.

They’re still on their own at one in the morning, sitting in the shower tray, but the water ran cold a while ago so they turned it off and stayed sitting there in their wet clothes, shaking, not from the cold or the pain but with fear, with silent tears because all the sobbing seems to have faded away. Perhaps the noise has trickled down the drain with the icy water, and perhaps if they could hold a hand steady, they’d be able to peel off their skin and send it away with all the other parts they didn’t need. Maybe then everyone would see Jughead, as the person they see themself, not what someone’s always trying to tell them they are. The thought makes it tempting to break that skin apart, to see what it’s hiding underneath. To see if things can really get any worse than this.

Jug is seventeen and skinnier than ever, wears a snake-embroidered jacket and endless faded, ancient bracelets, from festivals in days gone by, bought on eBay or found in FP’s closet when they tried to clean it out with him, adorning their arms. The bracelets are good at hiding their skin when the jacket doesn’t, and if they can hide their skin from themself, they can almost believe it isn’t there at all. The leather jacket and the hat they still wear, jaw-length curls dyed inkier than ever and mostly shoved up inside it, make a sort of second skin, and if they feel like the snake, due to shed any moment, at least other people don’t know they feel that way. Other people see the snake, see danger and venom and most of them stay away. It feels good, to feel like they’re making an impact, but by god, in a crowded room that falls silent when you first walk in, before everyone picks up their conversation in groups and pairs again, it feels lonelier than they’ve perhaps ever been.

When Jug is seventeen, they meet Archie at a basement party (Kevin insists it’s not a party, it’s just a get together that just so happens to coincide with the fact that it’s Christmas soon), and Archie has chocolate eyes and cinnamon hair and doesn't say "Jug? Weird name for a girl. Weird name in general." Instead, he says, "Jug? Like... Awesome. That's totally cool. Wanna sit?" And Jug does. Archie’s clutching a beer bottle like his life depends on it, and his face reads a mix of admiration and mild horror when Jug offers him the shitty vodka they’re drinking neat from the bottle. The rejection doesn’t phase them - they just take another gulp, barely a shudder, and jam it between their thigh and the couch cushion as they settle in to talk to Archie. Archie Andrews, who likes dogs and plays guitar and apparently didn’t learn to drink at his dad’s knee like Jug did, because after a couple of bottles his eyes have become wide and remind Jug of coffee the way they drink it, black and sweet. And Archie is sweet, even when the alcohol hits and he gets fixated on the slowly blinking lights on the Christmas tree. He’s so entranced that when he gets up for water he trips.

Jug catches him automatically even through their tipsy haze, pulls him close so he can right his dizzy head, and Archie’s hands somehow find the edges of the binder holding their chest flat and in place, and he feels, and the change in his face means he knows, fuck, he knows, and that’s nearly too much for Jug to bear. They push him away into the hands of someone else, someone equally drunk, mumbling something about a smoke, and their hood is over their head before they’ve even made it out into the night.

They’re not sure what happens between that moment and the next one they know, when Kevin is outside, picking them up from the snowy ground - when did it start snowing? It’s still snowing - and taking the cigarette they’re smoking away. The ground around them is littered with butts, and they mumble out an apology with near-frozen lips, not knowing how long they’ve been out there, not knowing how much they’ve smoked or how they still aren’t sober from the bitter chill to the air. Blacking out is scary, but a memory blackout when you’ve been conscious all along is even more so. Kevin shushes them, says “shut up, Jug” and “it’s okay, everyone’s gone home” and “you’re gonna be okay, sleep here” but Kevin neglects to mention that, inside, Archie is passed out asleep on the very couch they’d talked the evening away on.

Jug can’t sleep in a binder. You’re not supposed to, it’s dangerous, it restricts your breathing and can crush your ribs if you wear it too long. But they’ll be damned if they’re telling Kevin the thing even exists, as he’s coaxing them onto the admittedly inviting warmth of the other couch, near the fireplace where the last embers are still giving off a little heat, and wrapping a soft blanket around their shaking shoulders. They’re too tired, too cold, too drunk to fight this, to fight the wave of exhaustion washing over them. It feels like the warmth and the threat of sleep is a tsunami, and Jug is paralysed on the sand of the beach where the water is going to fall. To drown them.

When they wake up, it sure as hell feels like drowning. The blanket is over their face and their head is spinning and they can’t fucking breathe, and they sit up coughing and gasping for air and somewhere along the lines the coughing brings tears to their eyes and then, of course, of course they’re crying too. Painful, choking crying, the kind that sounds like you can’t get enough air into your lungs because they can’t, it’s too tight, it hurts. It’d be humiliating to die like this.

But then there’s someone there, a hand on their shoulder, pulling the suffocating blanket away, talking in a voice Jug can’t quite place. “Easy, Jug. Shh, you’re gonna be alright. Breathe in, slowly.” They’re panicking, coughing. “I can’t!”

“You can. I know you can. I got you.”

Through the fear, the voice gets in, centres itself in Jug’s terrified mind and sits there. I got you. They don’t remember ever having anyone say that before. It’s always been them, saying that to a scared kid sister or a heartbroken Kevin or a wasted father, carrying him home. The tears dry without any further input from them, and they finally muster up the control to open their eyes. Then, of course, they nearly bolt again.

Archie.

His hand tightens on their shoulder, the other curling in their hair - the hat is gone, again, they don’t remember whether they had it when they fell asleep or not. “Steady,” Archie murmurs. “Breathe. You’re gonna be okay.” Jug takes a shaky breath in, and the pain is sharp, and their hand has to press against their ribs to try and will it away. “I know,” Archie adds in a whisper, thumb brushing the edge of the binder where it sits on Jug’s shoulder/ If they hadn’t already been feeling like they were about to pass out, they’d be feeling it now anyway. “I know. You gotta get it off… Will you trust me?” They don’t have any choice but to do that now, so a shaky nod is all the reply he gets.

And Archie gets the binder off, taking Jug’s loose black tee with it, instinctively covering their exposed skin with the blanket, but being sure to keep it away from their face. Jug inhales deeply, and it rattles and aches, but they can worry about that later. For now, their gaze is on Archie, all the panic revolves around Archie and whatever the hell just happened as they try their best to get the air back into their lungs. A couple more coughs, and Jug feels like they might be able to say something. What comes out is “don’t you say a fucking word to anyone”, and they think that maybe a thank you or an apology for waking Archie up with their drowning in air would have been more appropriate, but the words are hanging in the air now and there’s nothing they can do about them. They cough again, and Archie’s hand is once again there, now holding them steady through the blanket, making sure the shaking doesn’t knock Jug over, or at least that’s what it seems like. They’re breathing better when they say “I’m sorry.”

“You’re what?” Archie seems genuinely surprised at the words. “Jug… god, no. You don’t have to be sorry… I get it. It’s okay, so long as you’re okay.” He squeezes their shoulder in a way that’s surprisingly comforting. “Just keep breathing a little longer. I don’t wanna get blamed for you being dead when it’s actually morning.” “Time is it?” It feels like Jug’s been asleep for days.

“‘Bout five, five thirty.”

“I woke you… I’m sorry.” That gets an eye roll from Archie. “Told you, you don’t have to say that. Just be okay. I know you will be, but try to be okay soon, so I can stop freaking out… Here. I’ll turn away… if you want me to.” He’s holding out Jug’s tee, and they take it, waiting until his back is turned before pulling it on, then deciding to stay wrapped in the blanket anyway. It’s thicker, more covering, hides them just a little more. Whispering “ready” gets an “okay” in an equally quiet reply, and Archie comes back. He looks down at the couch space beside Jug and waits for a nod, like permission, before he sits. And then sits closer.

Jug closes the gap.

They’re quiet for a while, silence broken only by Jug’s still rasping breathing. They’ll deal with it, or it’ll deal with itself, in time. For now, it’s the last thing on their mind. “You said you knew,” they finally tell Archie quietly. “What did you mean? What do you know about me?”

“Probably more than you expect,” Archie replies, running a hand through his hair. Somehow, the arm ends up around Jug’s shoulders instead of back down by his side. They don’t mind as much as they probably should. “I know what a binder does. And everyone calls you ‘they’, not ‘he’ or ‘she’. It’s more obvious if you know what the puzzle pieces mean.”

Jug snorts, but it turns into a cough. “You’re being mysterious. Nobody told you that’s my job?”

“Nope. I think you say enough with your attitude. Thinking you’re unique.” A pause. Archie clears his throat, and then sighs, and then his head drops sideways to rest against Jug’s, which has at some point fallen to the redhead’s shoulder. “You’re not the only one.”

The words hang in the room like cigarette smoke, which Jug has just realised is probably clinging to their hair and skin and jeans. It must be pretty gross, but Archie’s body is curled up towards them, open, inviting and warm in a hoodie maybe three sizes too big, and he doesn’t seem to want to move away. Jug watches his face, the long eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks. Wide brown eyes, a smudge of what could be makeup left on the corners of each eyelid. His lips look chapped, yet somehow still soft, and his cheekbones are strong and up this close, Jug can see that they’re peppered with freckles. It dawns on them, lights up the realisation like the sun casts gold over the rooftops as it rises.

“You too?”

Archie nods, closes his eyes, bites his lip and grits his teeth. Jug knows that look. It’s a look of fighting back tears.

“S’okay, Archie. We’re gonna be okay. That’s what you told me,” they murmur. “If I am, you’re gonna be too.” Archie curls up more, and then he moves and buries his face in the crook of Jug’s neck.

Jug brings a hand around to stroke at his hair. It’s sticky and stiff with day-old gel, but the residue brushes away with fingertips, and it’s soft underneath. “Gonna be okay,” Jug repeats, in their rasped whisper. Archie hums almost inaudibly in response.

They must fall asleep again, because when they wake up, all the lights are on and there’s an unexpected touch on their cheek. Their eyes open to Archie’s, hazel now it’s brighter, and close again against the sudden onslaught of a headache. Archie laughs, makes a sympathetic noise, and cups Jug’s cheek so he can kiss the other one. His lips don’t really feel all that chapped once they’re on skin, they realise with a faint smile.

Archie leans in once again and whispers, close to their ear. “Kevin’s making coffee upstairs. Said we could have some. Come with me… S’gonna be okay, Juggie.”

#jughead jones #jarchie #archie andrews #riverdale #riverdale fic #jarchie fic #jarchie fanfic #jughead #juggie #im bad at tags

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arplis · 4 years

Text

Arplis - News: Your Comprehensive Guide to Online Dating Slang

Internet Dating Slang Terms You Need to Know in 2020

Though we're still meeting in bars and going to see movies together, dating today would be largely unrecognizable to people 10 years ago; changes in how we find our dates, how we treat them and how we describe ourselves to them have radically altered the dating landscape.

To many, modern dating can seem like a minefield of technical jargon; the phrase "My poly pansexual situationship ghosted me so I'm breadcrumbing this snack I had a half-night stand with last year, will you be my emergency call if he wants to Netflix & chill?" will be clear as day to some and unintelligible to others.

RELATED:All the Sex Slang You Need to Know

If you find yourself in the latter category, this gigantic glossary of 61dating terms is for you.

AROMANTIC

Identity / Celibacy

Pronunciation: ay-ro-MAN-tick

Aromanticism is pretty rare, but it is real: A certain portion of the population does not experience the feelings of romantic love that seem to come naturally for so many of us. While that might seem like either a blessing or a curse, depending on your take on love, perhaps the most significant hurdle for aromantic people is simply feeling left out and misunderstood by a culture for whom dating, love and marriage are not only the norm, but the de facto expectation for all.

Etymology: The "a-" prefix roughly translates to "without;" "romantic," here, means capable of having feelings of romantic love

"I don't know what's wrong with me. I just can't... fall in love." "You're not broken maybe you're just aromantic!"

ASEXUAL

aka Ace

Identity / Sexuality

Pronunciation: ay-SEK-shoo-UL

Being asexual doesn't specify whom you're attracted to, unlike other terms on this list. It specifies you don't experience sexual attraction. But this doesn't mean you can't have sex only that you don't feel the need in the same way. Dating an ace person? Expect to check in regularly with them re: their desires and boundaries just as you would when dating anybody else.

Etymology: Knowing that "a-" means "without," I'm sure I don't need to tell you what "sexual" means.

"Patrick, are you dating Scott? I thought he was asexual, not gay." "Scott's asexual and likes boys! It ain't mutually exclusive."

BENCHING

Graeme Adams

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: BENCH-ing

Benching is when you're not into someone enough to commit to officially dating them, but you don't want them to move on and find someone else either, so you string them along juuuust enough to keep them waiting on the sidelines for you.

Etymology: You know when you're on a sports team but not actually playing, just waiting on the bench until the coach needs you? Yeah, it's the dating version of that.

"Rachel only ever seems to text me after I've given up on hearing from her. She's definitely benching me."

BIG DICK ENERGY

Dating / Identity

Pronunciation: BIG dick EH-nur-JEE

Big dick energy, or BDE, is something only a small amount of people possess. Its the quality of having supreme confidence without needing to be loud or controlling, a quiet understanding of who you are and what you bring to the table that doesnt require backtalk, bragging, or B.S. In short, someone with big dick energy is incredibly hot, and more guys should try to emulate that. The truth is, you can have BDE no matter what your penis size is as long as youre comfortable with who you are.

Etymology: The phrase was coined by Twitter user @imbobswaget in a tweet mourning the June 2018 death of TV personality and chef Anthony Bourdain. It implies that a person (or thing) exudes the confidence that must come with having a large penis and Bourdain's kindness, charm and humble swagger were just that.

Damn, look at that guy over there. Hes totally exuding big dick energy.

BISEXUAL

Identity / Sexuality

Pronunciation: by-SEK-shoo-ULL

Bisexual persons are attracted to two genders. In the nineties, we'd have said "bisexual persons are into men and women", but we know a little more about sex and gender than we used to. Swinging both ways, flexible, cross-platform compatible, or rooting for both teams, a bisexual person can enjoy sex with or fall in love with the same gender as themselves, or a different gender from themselves. Bi people might prefer dating one gender and sleeping with another, but we still call 'em bi.

Etymology: A bisexual person is like a bicycle; both share the prefix bi, which means two.

"Mike, why do you call yourself bisexual? You've only ever dated women." "That's true, but I just haven't met a guy I wanted to call my boyfriend yet."

BREADCRUMBING

Graeme Adams

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: BREAD-crum-ing

Breadcrumbing is when you send flirty but non-committal messages to a person when you're not really interested in dating them but don't have the guts to break things off with them completely. The breadcrumbee is strung along for the sake of sparing the breadcrumber a confrontation.

Etymology: Think of the phenomenon of getting a small creature to follow you by laying a trail of breadcrumbs here, and you've got the right idea.

"Rene replies to every second or third message I send her but never wants to meet IRL. I think she's breadcrumbing me."

CASUAL RELATIONSHIP

Dating / Type

Pronunciation: KAZH-oo-ull ruh-LAY-shun-ship

Somewhere in between f*ckbuddies and going steady is the casual relationship, in which two people typically hang out regularly and have sex but don't partake in the hallmarks of a serious relationship, like exclusivity, ongoing commitment and spending time with each other's friends and family.

Etymology: This one's pretty straightforward in meaning: it's a romantic relationship that's not too serious or committed.

"I have a friends with benefits type thing going on with Emily, you know? It's a casual relationship."

CATFISHING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: KAT-fish-ing

Catfishing is one of those dating terms that has legitimately made its way into the mainstream, thanks to the TV show and movie of the same name. Messaging with someone who's pretending to be someone else? You're being catfished! These setups tend to end badly. But until then, move your conversation with your crush to the phone/IRL/video chat of some sort as soon as you can muster. If they're resistant, they might be catfishing you.

Etymology: The term gained popularity after the release of the 2010 documentary on the then-burgeoning phenomenon, Catfish, but the real reason for the name is harder to come by.

"She always has a different excuse not to meet up with me." "Sounds you're being catfished..."

CISGENDER

aka Cis

Identity / Sexuality

Pronunciation: siss-JENN-der

Cisgender is a term for people who aren't transgender, or whose assigned gender lines up with their actual gender. But isn't that 'normal', you might ask? Actually, it isn't, it's just more common: variations in sex and sexuality are perfectly normal and occur frequently in nature (gender is a little more complicated, as we don't have a theory of mind that encompasses gender for nonhuman animals). While cisgender persons may outnumber transgender persons, it isn't a default setting; it's one of many.

Etymology: From cis-, meaning literally 'on this side of' in mathematics and organic chemistry.

"So what's the opposite of trans, then? Normal?" "Well, no, it's not that simple. But the term you're looking for is 'cis'."

CUFFING SEASON

Dating / Type

Pronunciation: KUFF-ing SEE-zun

Cuffing season is the period between early fall and late winter when everyone starts to shack up with the nearest half-decent single person to ward off loneliness and cold during the cooler months. Cuffing season typically implied a short term, mutually beneficial arrangement that's strictly seasonal, and it ends as soon as the leaves start turning green again. The term is African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and has been around at least since the early 2010s.

Etymology: Cuffing, as in "handcuffing", because you're chaining yourself to someone else at least until winter's over.

"Starbucks just brought back the pumpkin spice latte, it must be cuffing season!"

CURVE

Dating / Trend

Pronunciation: KURV

Getting curved is being rejected, shot down, turned aside, said no to, dissed and dismissed. Yes, it sucks. When you get curved you need to take a moment to properly absorb all of the "no" that just hit you. But there's also something beautiful to a well-done curve; it's a memento to a failure, big and small, that you can carry around with you and use to prop up or tear down narratives about your dateability.

Etymology: A curve is often subtler than a flat-out no (think: Your text gets "Seen" but not responded to), so even if it hurts the same, it carries a name that implies a redirection rather than an outright rejection.

"I tried to ask out this babe at the bar last night and she curved me harder than I've ever been curved in my life."

CUSHIONING

Graeme Adams

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: KUSH-on-ing

As above, cushioning is the process of staying in contact with one or more romantic prospects as a backup in case things don't go smoothly with your main squeeze. The "cushions" are usually kept on the periphery, eg. texting rather than full blown cheating.

Etymology: Cushioning, as in, keeping a person or several people around to "cushion" the blow if your main relationship doesn't work out.

"I do really like Priya, but I'm still texting Sian just in case. Yeah, I guess I'm cushioning."

DADDY

Dating / Identity

Pronunciation: DAH-dee

Over the past few years, daddy culture has risen to become pretty mainstream. These days, its normal for teens and assorted millennials to use the word daddy in either a sexual or sex-adjacent context. You might call your partner daddy in bed, or you might acknowledge a hot older mans daddy vibes because of his muscles, body hair, facial hair, and personal wealth. Either way, yes, its low-key incestuous, but the people have spoken.

Etymology: From the word daddy, meaning father.

She keeps on texting me, choke me daddy. What the hell does that mean?

DEMISEXUAL

Identity / Sexuality

Pronunciation: DEH-mee-SEK-shoo-ULL

A demisexual is a person whose sex drive is tied not to an immediate visual or physical attraction but to people's personalities once they've gotten to know them. As a result, demisexuals are poor candidates for one-night stands and casual relationships which may make them feel a bit alienated in our current dating climate. But they're no more or less capable of deep, loving relationships as the rest of us, so if you're prepared to take things slow sexually, demisexuals can make for great partners, too.

Etymology: Demi means half, or part positioning demisexuals between asexuals and people who do typically experience sexual desire.

"At first I thought I was asexual, but then I realized I can have sexual desire for people... just not until I really know them!" "Sounds like you might be demisexual."

DM SLIDE

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: DEE-em slide

A DM slide is when you direct message your crush using the private messaging functions available on all of the major social media networks, eg. Twitter and Instagram. You usually need to be mutuals first ie. follow each other to avoid your message ending up in an "other" folder, and DM sliding tends to occur after some public interaction, eg. liking each other's pics or @ replying.

Etymology: DM stands for "direct messages", and "sliding" is the process of entering someone's direct messages to flirt with them.

"Brandy just posted a selfie and she's looking hot AF! I'm about to slide in the DMs."

DTR CONVERSATION

aka DTR, DTR Convo

Dating / Trend

Pronunciation: dee-tee-ARE con-ver-SAY-shun

A DTR conversation is a pivotal moment in a relationship: It's the moment you discuss what you are. Are you a for-real couple, or just friends with benefits, or a situationship? Timing is huge, here. Have your DTR too early and you risk scaring the other person away; too late and you might discover they've been casually dating around the whole time, assuming it wasn't serious.

Etymology: There's no great mystery here DTR simply stands for "define the relationship."

"It's been six months and I just don't know what we are yet?" "Well have you had a DTR convo with him?

EGGPLANT EMOJI

Dating / Trend

Pronunciation: EGG-plant ee-MO-ji

There are other sex emojis the peach (a luscious butt) and the water drops (either wetness or ejaculate, depending on your tastes), notably but the eggplant emoji is doubtless the most suggestive. Why? Well, peach and water drops are actually used in other contexts. But when was the last time you needed to use a damn eggplant emoji to signify eggplant?

Etymology: People just noticed that the eggplant emoji was phallic-looking. The rest is history.

"Wow, did you see that bulge? Man, I'd love to see his eggplant emoji, if you know what I mean."

EMERGENCY CALL

Dating / Trend

Pronunciation: eh-MUR-jun-see KOL

An emergency call is a fakeout that allows you to politely get out of a particularly bad date. If you can tell the night's going to be a trainwreck from the earliest moments (and you often can) but you're genuinely afraid of insulting the stranger you're sitting across from, a fake emergency call from a friend saying "Your brother's in the hospital" or "Your cat just died" early on in the evening can be a real lifesaver.

"Oh, God, thanks for agreeing to be my emergency call last night. What a nightmare date that was."

FIREDOORING

Dating / Trend

Pronunciation: FIE-er DOH-ring

This is the dating version of the one-way fire door on rare occasions, someone will come out of their shell to contact you, but won't respond if you attempt to get in touch. It's a setup that only works in deeply unequal situations if you're getting firedoored, you're constantly feeling frustrated and only occasionally satisfied. If this is happening to you, get out and close the door behind you. There are tons of people out there who won't do this to you!

Etymology: A fire door is a one-way door it allows you to exit (on rare occasions) but never allows anyone to enter.

"She never responds to my messages, but texts me 'u up' at 1 a.m.? What's the deal?" "Sounds like you're getting firedoored, bud."

FRECKLING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: FRECK-uh-ling

Just as cooler temperatures bring out cuffing season and associated coupling up, warmer temperatures change peoples dating behaviors. If someone only seems interested in you during the warmer months, it might be a case of freckling. Maybe they got out of a relationship of sorts during the spring and now that its summertime, youre on their hookup roster. Unfortunately, theyre not looking for anything serious or permanent just like freckles, theyll disappear come fall.

Etymology: From freckles, small patches of facial skin that darken during the summer for some people with pale skin.

"Its been three weeks since school started and I havent heard anything I think she was just freckling me."

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

aka FWB

Identity / Dating

Pronunciation: FRENDS with BEN-eh-fits

Friends with benefits is the relatively classy way of saying you know someone and care about them and are regularly engaging in sexual acts with them, but not within the context of a relationship. It implies a certain looseness of arrangement. You probably don't see each other as often as a real couple; don't tell each other all the details of your lives; don't put each other down on emergency contact forms (or mention each other on social media profiles). That doesn't mean you're cold, unfeeling robots; it just means a relationship isn't exactly what you want.

"So what are we? Is this a relationship? Or are we just friends?" "I think we're friends... with benefits."

F*CKBUDDIES

aka F*ckfriends

Identity / Dating

Pronunciation: FUK-buh-deez

Isn't that... basically friends with benefits? Yes, arguably, they're pretty similar. At the same time, though, the use of the F-word in one of the terms (compared to the very euphemistic "benefits" denotes a very different sexual ethos. One is classy, old world, and stuffy; the other is crass, lewd and very present. So, arguably, one is for the type of people who are ashamed of such a sexual arrangement, and one is for people who aren't. Or maybe how you describe your setup depends more on who's asking. Whatever works!

Etymology: F*ck means sex... buddies means friends... should be pretty straightforward.

"I met this great girl. We've been seeing each other a lot... just for sex, though, no dates. We're f*ckbuddies."

GAY

Identity / Sexuality

Pronunciation: GAY

This term is one of the more flexible on the list, but, generally speaking, someone who identifies as gay is exclusively attracted to, or exclusively dates, or exclusively has sex with, people who are the same gender as themselves but it's a term that's been reclaimed by many across the spectrum of sexuality so if you see a queer woman proclaim she's gay despite dating men too, it's not necessarily the contradiction you think it is.

"Carol, would you like to grab coffee with me this weekend?" "Sure, Jim, but as friends. You do know I'm gay, right?"

GENDERFLUID

Identity / Gender

Pronunciation: JEN-der-FLOO-id

Can be applied to people who feel outside the gender binary, or it can be applied to persons who feel that their gender isn't fixed, but variable changing from day to day. Unlike nonbinary persons, a genderfluid person might identify as male and female, on different days, whereas a nonbinary person will usually identify as neither male nor female. Someone's gender identity has nothing to do with whom they're attracted to, or what they look like on the outside, or what physical sex they were born as. Gender is a mental conception of the self, so a genderfluid person can present as any gender or appearance, based on how that term feels for them.

Etymology: Gender, as in, your gender. Fluid, as in flowing, non-stable, movable, changeable.

"Hey, could you ask Scout if I could have her number? I need to ask her about this chem assignment." "Hey, buddy, I'll definitely ask for you, but you should know that Scout's not a 'she' they're genderfluid."

GHOSTING

Graeme Adams

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: GO-sting

Ghosting is when you disappear out of someone's life because you're no longer interested in them, instead of telling them directly. It's more abrupt than breadcrumbing: the ghoster will suddenly stop replying to texts and won't answer calls, and the ghostee is usually left hurt and confused.

Etymology: You know the disappearing act ghosts are known for? That, but it's your crush instead of a poltergeist.

"I'm not really feeling Melissa anymore, but she's really into me. I think I'm just gonna ghost her."

HALF-NIGHT STAND

Dating / Type

Pronunciation: HAFF nite STAND

The traditional one-night stand involves meeting a sexually-attractive stranger and taking them home for a night of unattached sex: they leave in the morning and you don't see them again. Well, the half-night stand cuts out the staying over part: the late night guest leaves straight after the sex is over.

Etymology: A half-night stand is 50 per cent of a one-night stand get it?

"Joe was lazy in bed and wouldn't give me head, so I got out of there as soon as he fell asleep. I guess I've had a half-night stand now!"

HAUNTING

aka Zombieing

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: HAWN-ting

Haunting occurs when you think you have finished things with a date that didn't work out or even a serious relationship but then you notice signs that your ex is lurking your social media feeds, eg. they randomly like old Instagram pics or watch your daily stories. Often the notifications are a deliberate attempt to remind you that they exist.

Etymology: This is another supernatural dating metaphor but the meaning is almost the opposite of ghosting: in this case the offender lingers around rather than disappearing.

"Guess who watched my Instagram story today, of all people!? John! He's haunting me, and it's really creepy."

INCEL

aka Virgin

Identity / Celibacy

Pronunciation: IN-sell

Incel is a term that became popular on Reddit to describe men who can't get laid. The term, as a descriptor, is doubly demeaning. Not only is no one attracted to incels, but they also have a stupid name to describe them. Most incel problems could be sorted out by putting in minimal effort into looking better and having more positive interactions with women, but that's none of our business. Incel's slightly less embarrassing cousin is volcel the voluntarily celibate.

Etymology: Incel is a portmanteau of the phrase "involuntarily celibate" someone who's sexually inactive but wishes they could be.

"Ugh, I haven't had sex in almost three years. I'm such an incel."

KITTENFISHING

Graeme Adams

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: KIT-in-FISH-ing

Coined by dating app Hinge, Kittenfishing is when you portray yourself in an unrealistically positive light in your online dating profiles. We all do this to some extent, but kittenfishing crosses the border into dishonest territory: think photoshopped or very outdated profile pics, or listing "lawyer" as your occupation when you're really a first year law student.

Etymology: You already know about catfishing, when a person pretends to be someone they're not online. Well, kittenfishing is the lite version of that.

"Remember that girl I was messaging on Tinder? Well, we met IRL, and she was definitely kittenfishing."

LEFT ON READ

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: LEFT awn RED or LEFT awn REED

You send a text to your crush and wait for their reply, giddy with excitement. Maybe youre asking them out on a date, or maybe youre just trying to start a conversation. Regardless, rather than a reply, you simply get a read receipt. Read at 2:39 p.m. Then nothing. If youre watching the convo like a hawk, you might get the indignity of seeing them start to type a reply and then give up. Its a demoralizing feeling to be left on read. Its also a good reason not to use read receipts.

Etymology: From the phrase read receipt, a notification visible in a chat or text window when a person has seen a message but not responded.

"Is he still leaving you on read? You need to get over him ASAP."

LOCKERING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: LAH-ker-ing

If youve ever experienced someone ditching you by claiming theyre studying when in fact theyre just not interested, what you felt was lockering. For high-school sweethearts starting college at separate schools, this could be a prelude to a Thanksgiving breakup, better known as a turkey dump. Since the main feature of lockering is the claim that nothings wrong, theyre just focusing on their studies, it could occur at any point during your time in school.

Etymology: From the word locker, a small, typically locked space for your personal belongings in a large public building such as a school.

"How come youre always studying and you never have time to catch up? Are you lockering me?"

LGBTQ

Identity / Sexuality

Pronunciation: ELL-jee-bee-tee-CUE

LGBTQ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (or questioning), and its an acronym that's used to include the whole of a bunch of different communities of people whose sexualities or gender identities place them outside of the mainstream both historically and today. Some incarnations of the term include groups like intersex people, asexuals; and often the final Q is omitted in popular discourse. Nevertheless, it's a useful term when you're trying to refer to several, often intersecting groups of people at once.

"I love all my LGBTQ friends!"

LOVE BOMBING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: LUV BOM-ing

Love bombing is when a new partner shows extreme amounts of affection early on and expends serious energy in a deliberate attempt to woo you. However, once you've committed to a relationship with them, the love bomber will withdraw all that affection and let their true, ugly colors shine through, leaving you stuck in a nightmare relationship. This one's really not cute: love bombing is manipulative and abusive.

Etymology: Like its literal counterpart, a love bomb is awesome and spectacular at first, but ultimately very destructive.

"Graeme was so sweet at first, but now he's manipulative and jealous all the time. I guess he love bombed me."

MICROCHEATING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: MY-cro-CHEA-ting

Microcheating is a form of infidelity that stops short of the full-blown, overt cheating that occurs when a person sleeps with someone else behind their partner's back, but is low-level, cumulative dishonesty and infidelity that is intolerable in a committed relationship. Think heavy flirting, tonnes of secrecy, furtive kissy-face emojis and emotional affairs.

Etymology: If you think of cheating behaviors as existing on a scale, these ones are on the more minor end.

"I've never caught Imogen sleeping with anyone else, but she's constantly flirting with other guys and texts everyone except me. In my opinion, she's microcheating."

NETFLIX AND CHILL

Graeme Adams

Dating / Trend

Pronunciation: NET-flicks and CHILL

In its original inception, "Netflix and chill" was a euphemism for a stay-at-home date that led to sex pretty quickly. The idea being: You invite your crush over under the premise of "just watching some Netflix and chilling" and then either abandon the movie pretty early or perhaps never even get to it, as hooking up becomes the main attraction.

"How'd it go?" "Well, I invited him over for a little Netflix and chill... you can guess what happened next."

NON-BINARY

Identity / Gender

Pronunciation: non-BYE-nuh-ree

A non-binary person isn't cisgender, they are transgender. But not all transgender persons identify as the 'opposite' gender they were born as; in fact, many reject the idea that there are 'opposite' genders at all. A non-binary person may identify as neither male or female, or both male and female, or as a traditional gender to their culture (such as two-spirited or third gender). It's polite to use 'they' as a default pronoun until instructed otherwise if you're unsure about someone's gender. Never assume!

Etymology: The prefix non- is modifying the noun 'binary', nullifying the idea that gender exists as only two options.

"I thought Padraic was trans? Why doesn't Padraic want to be referred to as 'she'?" "Padraic is trans, but they're nonbinary, not femme!"

OPEN RELATIONSHIP

Dating / Type

Pronunciation: OH-pin ruh-LAY-shun-ship

An open relationship is a committed, romantic relationship that contains an arrangement where both parties can sleep with other people. It's not cheating, because both parties are honest with each other and have the same freedom to engage in sex with other people. Open relationships often contain specific rules and boundaries, just like monogamous relationships, but "no sex with anyone else, ever!" isn't one of them.

Etymology: The opposite of a traditional, "closed" relationship, an open relationship relaxes the rules on monogamy.

"I love Max, but I think we'd both benefit from a bit more sexual freedom. I'm thinking of asking him for an open relationship."

ORBITING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation:OR-bih-ting

Unlike with ghosting or zombieing (a term you'll find if you keep scrolling), theres no text, call or other form of communication that initiates anything. In this case, you'll see a notification, get your hopes up, but find they never actually reach out.Just rememeber: if someone really wants to date you, theyd probably make more of an effort than tapping on a like button.

Etymology: Just as the planets revolve around the sun with no direct interaction, this person checks all your social media accounts without ever saying a word.

"Hmm ... watches my Instagram story, likes my photos, reads my DMs, but doesn't respond. Yep, I'm being orbited."

PANSEXUAL

Graeme Adams

Identity / Sexuality

Pronunciation: pan-SEK-shoo-ull

Some people, for whatever reason believe that the term bisexual doesn't apply to them. Maybe they're a woman who's attracted to women, men, and nonbinary people. Or maybe they feel like their sexuality is too fluid for a simpler label. Some people have adopted pansexual because it doesn't reinforce the gender binary through its name.

Etymology: Pan-, meaning all; someone who is attracted to all persons and genders.

"So are you still bisexual?" "Well, ever since my partner transitioned I feel like the word 'pansexual' suits me better, you know?"

PHUBBING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: FUH-bing

Ever been hanging out with a date or significant other only to notice theyre paying too much attention to their phone? Thats a case of phubbing. Its a pretty ugly word, but honestly, its a pretty ugly act. With people using technology to stay in constant connection to their friends and followers, it can be easy to forget about the person right in front of you. A consistent phubber is sending a message, intentionally or otherwise, that youre simply not the top priority, their phone is.

Etymology: A combination of phone and snubbing.

"Man, every time me and Mark hang out, hes always on Instagram when Im talking to him. I feel so phubbed."

PIE HUNTING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: PIE HUNT-ing

As you can probably deduce, pie hunting is an unsavory dating phenomenon in which a person (the "hunter") deliberately dates "pies", or heartbroken, vulnerable people with messy dating histories, who are perceived to be easier and lower-maintenance.

Etymology: A "pie" is a person with a disastrous dating history familiar with rejection and heartbreak. It comes from "pied off", British slang for being stood up or dumped.

"Dave only ever dates divorcees. He's a real pie-hunter."

POLYAMOROUS

aka Poly

Identity / Dating

Pronunciation: paw-lee-AM-oh-riss

In its various forms, polyamory has been a part of human culture for millennia, particularly in the form of polygamous marriages, but it's enjoying a resurgence in modern dating culture as millennials (children of divorce faced with untold levels of choice) break with monogamous tradition and begin exploring their options. It's not a free-for-all there are still rules, and cheating does exist but consensually dating (and loving) multiple people at once could represent the future of dating.

Etymology: Polyamorous comes from the Greek poly (many) and amor (love), meaning many loves.

"To be honest, Camille and I are thinking of experimenting with being polyamorous."

QUEER

Identity / Sexuality

Pronunciation: KWEER

The word has been reclaimed by those communities as a positive term. 'Queer' is often treated as the 'umbrella' term under which gay men, pansexual non-binary persons, and people experimenting with their sexuality can come together under. It's a term of solidarity to foster community between sexuality-and-gender-diverse persons. Queer is one of the more amorphous terms on this list, and is used by queer persons to describe themselves. So what does it mean? Basically, 'not straight', in any flavor you like, and usually with a slightly more radical edge.

Etymology: Originally meaning 'strange', 'queer' was used for years as a slur against non-normative sexualities.

"Not gay as in happy, but queer as in 'screw off.'"

REDPILL

Identity / Celibacy

Pronunciation: RED-pill

If you decide, once and for all, that women are bad and society is set up in such a way to privilege them over men at every turn, you're completely off your rocker but you've also had a redpill moment. You'll probably want to head to Reddit and swap stories with other incels and MGTOWs about how women are ruining your lives.

Etymology: Redpilling is named for the scene in The Matrix when Morpheus offers Neo the choice between taking a red pill and a blue pill with the red one representing the horrifying truth and the blue, blissful ignorance.

"Yeah, my brother totally got redpilled in his first year at college. Yikes."

ROACHING

Graeme Adams

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: ROW-ching

Roaching is a new dating trend where people hide the fact that they're dating around from a new partner and, when confronted, claim to have simply been under the assumption that there was no implication of monogamy to begin with. In today's more poly-friendly dating culture, this is a slick tactic to shift the blame to the person confronting them, but the truth is it's both parties' responsibility to be at least baseline open about seeing other people if that's the case. Roaching, as a result, deeply messed up.

Etymology: Roaching refers to the adage that if you see one cockroach, there are a ton more that you don't see just like this person's sneaky side-dealings.

"So it turned out he'd been seeing like, six other girls the whole time!" "Damn, Tina. You got roached."

SAPIOSEXUAL

Identity / Dating

Pronunciation: SAY-pee-oh-SEK-shoo-ull

Perhaps most infamous for the time Tinder CEO Sean Rad confused it with the word "sodomy," sapiosexual is a word that's gained increasing currency in recent years. Meaning someone who's turned on by a person's mind rather than physical appearance, it's a neat marriage of style and substance, as only huge nerds would dare self-identify as sapiosexuals. Not to be confused with any of the other sexualities, this isn't a clinical definition of an innate quality, merely a descriptor meant to state a preference.

Etymology: The "sapio" part comes from the Latin word "sapiens," which means "mind."

"What really entices me about a woman... is her mind. Yes, you could call me a sapiosexual."

SEVERAL-NIGHT STAND

Sex / Trend

Pronunciation: SEV-rull NITE STAND

If the one-night stand was a product of the 20th century's loosening sexual mores, the several-night stand is a distinctly 21st-century invention. For people who care about someone else enough to sleep with them multiple times but not enough to take it past that, it's an arrangement that necessitates the hyper-connectedness and smorgasbrd of choice that our phones now offer us. Your drunken hookup is just a text away; but exclusivity seems foolish when your next drunken hookup might also be just a text away.

"Well, we kept on texting each other 'u up' every evening and it basically turned into a several-night stand."

SEX INTERVIEW

Sex / Trend

Pronunciation: SECKS INN-tur-vyou

Have you ever had sex with someone before going on a real date with them? Then you've engaged in a sex interview, my friend! Sex researchers (yes, that's a real job) coined the term in 2015 to describe the practice, which is increasingly popular among millennials who are less shy about sex and more interested in weeding out incompatible lovers than so-so conversationalists. If you have high standards for sex, it makes a lot of sense the possibility of developing real intimacy and chemistry with someone only to discover you're nothing alike in bed is a real turn-off of its own.

"So what's the deal with you and Brandon? Is that happening?" "Nah. He's still messaging me, but to be honest, he failed his sex interview."

SITUATIONSHIP

Dating / Type

Pronunciation: SIT-chew-AY-shun-ship

In use on Black Twitter since at least 2014, a "situationship" is Facebook's "It's Complicated" relationship status come to life. Similar to a casual relationship, a situationship is a sexual relationship that stops short of constituting a serious relationship, but it's not nothing either.

Etymology: It's not a friendship, or a relationship, but something in between: it's a situationship.

"So what's the deal with you and Molly now? Are you together?" "I don't know, man. It's a situationship."

SLOW FADE

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: SLOW fade

The slow fade is the process of ending a lackluster relationship or fling by gradually reducing contact and response times. Like a smoother version of breadcrumbing, the person doing the fading will taper off contact, like gradually turning down the volume on a song and starting a new one without anyone noticing.

Etymology: Similar to breadcrumbing, the slow fade is letting someone down gently without actually saying so.

"I want to end things with Lee, but I can't stand the idea of hurting him. I think I'm gonna do the slow fade."

SNACK

Identity / Dating

Pronunciation: SNAK

A snack is a babe, a honey, a stunner, a smokeshow, a jaw-dropping vision. A snack inspires DM slides and thirsty texts. A snack is a powerful force in the universe whose mere presence can cause those in proximity to them to lose their minds entirely. In short, a snack is someone so attractive, you almost want to eat them right up. Of course, some snacks are SO attractive, you have to call them a full meal. Because let's be real, Beyonc is more than a handful of tortilla chips.

"God damn, did you see that babe who just walked by?" "Yeah, man, that girl was a snack!"

STASHING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: STA-shing

"Stashing" is when a person won't introduce the person they're seeing to anyone in their lives, and doesn't mention their existence on social media. The "stashed" partner is kept hidden from view and stashing is a classic move of the commitment-averse.

Etymology: Stashing a partner is hiding them away from public view, like a squirrel stashing nuts in a tree.

"Maria won't introduce me to any of her friends or family. I think I'm being stashed."

STEALTHING

Sex / Trend

Pronunciation: STELL-thing

With all the cute names, it's easy to forget sometimes that not all dating trends are created equal. Take stealthing, for example, which is just a form of sexual assault. Named for when guys surreptitiously remove a condom mid-sexual act, enabling them to finish the deed unprotected, stealthing is a horrifying reminder that consent and sexual health education are woefully lacking in modern society.

Etymology:Stealthing is necessarily a sneaky move, since it involvesremoving the condom and keeping it a secret.

"When we started, he was wearing a condom, but halfway through I realized he wasn't!" "Oh my God, he stealthed you?

STRAIGHT

Identity / Sexuality

Pronunciation: STRATE

Straight persons are attracted to, date, or have sex with only members of the 'opposite' gender. Some people might have crushes on the same gender as themselves, but never follow through, and still identify as straight. Sexuality is wild, man!

Etymology: Straight means heterosexual, mostly.

"I'm flattered you'd think to ask me out, Zander, but I'm straight."

SUBMARINING

Graeme Adams

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: sub-muh-REE-ning

Did you just get haunted, or zombied, but it felt even worse than usual? Maybe you were submarined! Submarining is when your old flame pops back up in your life after a lengthy period of silence, but rather than copping to the disappearance, simply acts as if dipping without warning is normal behavior. This person knows they have you wrapped around their finger, so why put in the effort to apologize or explain? They don't need to! If you're getting submarined, pro tip: Get out of there before the whole thing sinks.

Etymology: Submarines go underwater... and the occasionally pop back up to the surface! That's normal behavior for them.

"So after disappearing for two months, she just pops right back up!" "Damn... she submarined you!

SUMMER FLING

Dating / Type

Pronunciation: SUM-mer FLING

The counterpart to cuffing season, summer flings are casual relationships that end once the leaves start to turn brown again. Summer flings often start on vacations and end when the other person has to go home, and tend to be of the "short and sweet" variety.

Etymology: This one's not rocket science: a summer fling is a short, informal relationship over the warmer months.

"I had such a good time with Nicole in Cabo but it was definitely just a summer fling."

SWINGER

Identity / Dating

Pronunciation: SWING-ur

The de facto term for consensually sleeping with someone outside of your marriage while your partner does the same, swinging has lost some cultural currency in recent years as millennials opt for the "poly" lifestyle instead. Still, swinging is alive and well for Gen Xers taking advantage of increasingly liberal sexual mores as society shifts slowly away from the restrictive confines of absolute monogamy and towards something a little bit more flexible.

Etymology: Swingers are people who 'swing' from one sexual partnership (their spouse) to another.

"Yeah, this married couple asked us if we wanted to come to a swingers party with them."'

SWIPING

Dating / Trend

Pronunciation: SWHY-ping

Swiping, swiping, swiping. For some singles, it might be difficult to conceive of any other way, but it's worth remembering that swiping didn't even really exist before 2012. Unless you've been living under a rock (and if so: congratulations, you lucky duck), you'll know that swiping is the physical interaction you have with your phone (a single finger moves intentionally across a thin piece of glass covering an electronic brain) when deciding whether you're attracted to someone's profile picture or not. From Tinder it spread to Bumble and a few thousand copycat apps. It'll be replaced eventually, but until then, swiping is how we as a culture perform love or at least our aspirations thereto.

"No plans tonight... I'm just going to stay home, re-download Tinder and swipe myself silly."

TEXTLATIONSHIP

Dating / Trend

Pronunciation: text-LAY-shun-ship

A textlationship is a flirtatious connection between two people that works on paper but never seems to manifest itself in practice. For whatever reason, the chemistry between two people is just better over texts. It could mean one of the two is playing the other just for the attention, rather than both parties being shy or awkward. Regardless, if the passion is there in the texts but never translates to the streets or the sheets, its a textlationship.

Etymology: A combination of text and relationship.

"Shes always texting me but never wants to actually go on a date or hook up. Honestly, we might just be in a textlationship."

THIRST TRAP

Dating / Trend

Pronunciation: THURST trap

In the natural world, spiders have webs, and millennials have thirst traps. They're intentionally sexually provocative pictures posted on social media in order to ensnare hapless scrollers-by. Often, such pictures will draw way more likes than their typical posts, as thirsty people rush to offer their likes as sacrifices to an uncaring god. These can be a great ego boost for the thirst trapper, but the high tends not to last. Then you're back on the timeline, thirst trapping again for your next fix.

Etymology: Thirst is desire, sexual or romantic, that tends to be unreturned; a trap is how you catch unsuspecting victims.

"Damn, did you see Sheila's selfie last night? That outfit was wild!" "Yep, that was a real thirst trap."

THRONING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: thr-OWN-ing

Throning is essentially another form of gold digging that extends beyond wealth. It involves someone using another person for their power and social status, and it's most common when one person in the relationship has significantly less money or influence than their counterpart.

Etymology: When you think of a throne, you think of a crown. That person doing the throning wants that crown.

"Every time we cross that rope, we get inside and suddenly it's like I'm not even there. I feel like I'm just being throned."

TINDSTAGRAMMING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: TIND-stuh-gram-ming

Tindstagramming is the process of contacting someone through Instagram's direct messaging feature after you have seen them on Tinder but not become a match. It's an annoying and generally poorly-received way of bypassing a left-swipe, and women in particular get fatigued by the messages that pile up in their "Other" folder when they link their Instagram account to their Tinder profile.

Etymology: A mashup of "Tinder" and "Instagramming," Tindstagrammers try to make the most of both platforms.

"I have 10 new messages in my Other folder on Instagram! These Tindstagrammers won't leave me alone."

TRANSGENDER

Identity / Gender

Pronunciation: trans-JEN-der

At birth, (even before, if you've ever been to a gender reveal party), pretty much all of us are assigned a gender, whether by our doctor, our parents, or society. Transgender or trans persons are those whose actual gender is different from the one they were assigned. Some trans people undergo surgery or take hormones to have their sex characteristics better match their gender, but not everyone does! Transgender, or trans, like queer is often an umbrella for those with diverse genders.

Etymology: Trans-, meaning across or beyond, plus gender

"So I hear Paul's cousin is transgendered now." "Actually, she's just transgender no 'ed' necessary!"

TURKEY DUMP

Dating / Type

Pronunciation: TUR-key DUMP

Another seasonal relationship event, turkey dumping is common among college students, many of whom are in long distance relationships with people they knew in high school or from their home towns. The turkey dump happens after one person in the relationship returns back to college after Thanksgiving and realises it's too difficult to keep things going.

Etymology: So-named because it's a breakup that occurs after the Thanksgiving break.

"I had such a good time with Jake while he was home for Thanksgiving, but he broke up with me as soon as he got back to campus. I got turkey dumped."

UNCUFFING SEASON

Dating / Trend

Pronunciation: un-CUFF-ing SEE-sun

What sets cuffing season relationships apart from real relationships is the possibility that they came together at a specific time for a specific reason. You could link up with someone in the fall, because as it gets cold, you want something steady and dependable so you arent chasing a bunch of different people all winter. As a corollary, once those conditions fall away, it makes sense that the relationships would, too. The springtime can be considered uncuffing season because its the time for people to break things off with a semi-serious cuff and venture out into a sexy and flirtatious summer.

Etymology: A variant on cuffing season.

"Man, how many couples have broken up in the past few weeks? Is it uncuffing season already?"

VULTURING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: vul-CHUR-ing

Vultures can sense when a relationship is on its last leg. Their moves are selfish, and typically, they're going to do whatever they deem necessary to get what they want: you. Sure, having a bit of hope that your longtime crush will split from their wretched partner and fall for you might not be considered vulturing per se, but taking advantage of. someone in an incredibly weak and vulnerable state? That's a whole other story.

Etymology: Just like a vulture circling its wounded prey, some people swoop in to pick up the pieces out when they sense a relationship is on its last leg.

"Stop vulturing, it's just a rough patch. They'll get through it!"

WATER DROPLETS EMOJI

Dating / Trend

Pronunciation: WAH-turr DROP-lits ee-MO-ji

After the eggplant emoji, the water droplets emoji might be the horniest one out there. One notable benefit is that its unisex. Depending on who you are and who youre messaging, the droplets could be semen, female lubrication/ejaculate, or a bit of the comparatively tame (and universal) sex sweat. Regardless, throwing a couple of these into a naughty text message is a good way to visually convey the activities to come if you will.

Etymology: Anyone whos ever made a mess with their sexual fluids will understand.

Cant wait for later tonight. Im gonna make you water droplets emoji all over the place.

ZOMBIEING

Dating / Move

Pronunciation: zom-BEE-ing

This is ghosting to. the next level. After losing touch with someone who you'd been talking or seeing, zombieing is when they make a triumphant return as if nothing ever happened.Your zombie may get in touch with you via DM, text or by seeking you out in person. Hearing from someone who totally dipped out on you can bring up some conflicting feelings, but if youre looking for a positive, the situation does have the potential to offer some clarity or closure.

Etymology:A zombie is an undead person coming back from the grave. Need we say more here?

3 months of radio silence after we texted every single day. I can't believe he's zombieing me ... should I answer?

All illustrations by Graeme Adams.

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/your-comprehensive-guide-to-online-dating-slang

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