A cool writeup/essay someone mentioned on fedi. It is in line with "The Revolution Will not be Funded", but much shorter.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dean-spade-solidarity-not-charity

I now feel like I need to pay even more attention to needs and differences of members of our irl autism support community which feels like it is held together by us being poor and polyamory.

Happy No More Shaving Day to me

Ok, I think I got a new model for diversityphobias. *gets science glasses on*

In this one, the phobias are caused by cognitive load that arises when classifying people in attempt to predict their behaviour.
It has 3 major consequences.

1. The bigger the society is, all other things equal, the more phobic it gets, because you need to analyse more people each day. It is like those HRs in large companies looking for red flags and compliance with precise corporate expectations instead of talking and stuff. It is cheaper. In big societies, you can only afford so many bins to sort people into.

This is corroborated by historic records of ancient societies (which are smaller than modern) being generally LESS phobic and sometimes even achieving gender equality.

2. One other big cognitive load is poverty, which introduces phobias either directly by cluttering brain and leaving less resources to hear other people... or indirectly via religion which is a simplified worldview that takes less resources but penalizes diversity.

3. With size of society and religion spread being the same, you have less phobia in internet because in Internet it is easier to classify people. They have pronouns and other markers to distinguish them easily.

What do you think?

#queer #diversity #lgbt #homophobia

That feeling when your doctor recommends you fleeing the country.
I am so tired.
I am so incredibly tired.

Using yuri and yaoi stickers in your neighbourhood to ward-off commercial ads.
Demonetize your block today! :3
Homophobe protection as a bonus.

First, we have the main theme we want to explore.
For example, Ice.
Then, we split it into 3 or 4 subthemes that reflect it.
Like, Lattice, Cold and Water

Then, we agree to censor it, never ever introducing ice directly in our novel or even mentioning it.

Then, we seek for pairwise connections between Lattice, Cold and Water other than Ice. One can both go for less obvious ones and for more obvious ones, the result will be different.

By mixing the 3 themes without ever directly invoking the main one one can paint a plausible setting, like a land of cold springs and pachinkos (peg lattices used for gambling in Japan) in Autumn. Winter is right around the corner but not here yet, and it should get cold enough to snow eventually, so it should be Hokkaido or some higher in mountains.

But this structure we end up with is mostly static.
We need it to go forward somehow and in the end of the story there will be a new emergent main theme which will be more potent than Ice, we just do not know it yet,

Since I dislike stories where external forces crush and smash people, I like to keep it character-driven.

And I also like symmetry, so I would make a character that is situated right between each pair of our themes, to hold it like glue, while using the connections we found earlier.

Then, for each character I would try to understand their main drive, and we get 3 drives.
Finally, I would try to guess the rough story shape that fits this set. For example, knight stories are stories where A loves B, B wants to protect A (with loving them back or not) and C is some baddie that wants to harm everyone including A. Or there is a classic love triangle where A loves B, B loves C and C optionally loves A.
As with stand-in main theme, this story shape is also stand-in, we do not know wth characters will turn it into, but we need to bring them together somehow.

And it is the most tedious part because many sets of drives will just not work with each other and characters will just walk away and stop interacting. We COULD glue them together with external forces but for character driven stories I consider it cheating.

You may need to first make 2 characters, then see what drives they have, then brainstorm about story shapes that fit those two with a vacant place for the third one then TRY to construct the third character with both thematical and drive constraints to fill that gap.
If one story type fails, try next on the list.

This character is likely the main protagonist because of the pain you put into them has likely made them deeper than others.

One should now have a set of characters, a setting, and how these characters start interacting. The rest is up to characters, and if ever in doubt, one draws from 3 themes or main theme using them as a palette.
One is likely to rewrite the story several times, it is normal, it gets deeper every time.

Hope this was helpful for someone.

#writing #fiction

Took the first oestro today. My body was like... "W-what the hell was THAT?" and I felt kind of strange for an hour but then it was good and I actually was in a good mood.