@Wretched said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@insomniac7809 But then how will people know my pc got these tiddies?
<calmly wipes down the monitor>
In all seriousness part of my escapist fantasy is playing women with smaller boobs than mine. Because a strapless dress is part of my fantasy dream world, goddammit.
I honestly care about this more than hair/skin/eye color or combination thereof by miles and miles and miles.
@Kestrel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Is it because they're being self-absorbed and making you do unchecked emotional labour without considering your current availability for it?
This. So much this. So, so much this.
There's someone that I have known for a long time that only pops up once in a while to demand counseling and emotional support while being abusive, or simply to be abusive.
They became very angry when I said I was not available for that, and tried every angle of emotional blackmail to force the issue.
But I am not a therapist. I am so not qualified to be someone's therapist. I am super extra not qualified to be someone's therapist when the time they choose to drop in to demand attention is fifteen minutes after I get off calming my own shit down to 'will survive the night' on a crisis hotline at 3am. Even when they were told this, none fucks given, I'm such a monster for not providing them support because they want it! They want it now!
There is a very special hell for these people, so help me.
@Ganymede It's more the rest of me. In a power corset dress, I am round enough -- think larrrrrrge hourglass, I guess? I stole the term 'dayglass' from a beloved friend years ago and have stuck with it ever since -- that the proportions of 'incredibly short fat hourglass woman in a corset powerdress' would be very Ursula. Especially balanced on wee small feets.
I mean. She had style, so that's not totally a complaint, either, I suppose, but I would look completely hilarious and can admit this to myself quite comfortably. 
@L-B-Heuschkel I'd lend you my idiot poking sword on principle.
"Yeah, that it's never going to get better for me means I'm livin' on easy street!" <-- might get the point across.
I probably should relate some of the reasoning behind my 'if I think I could hurt someone, I will not do it' stance, because as I was thinking about it last night, I really couldn't think of much else.
The first two schools I attended through 6th grade -- and we're talking about the late 1970s here, into the early 80s at the tail end -- were not what I'd call bastions of tolerance or diversity. Both were Catholic schools. The first (1-4) was pretty much nightmare fuel; there was zero protection from (sometimes very violent) bullying, and they were so genuinely backward they tried to keep someone back a year 'because they were too short to move on to the next grade'. (Not me, but you can imagine why being a short kid in this place was, uh, not fun.)
So my first 'real world hero' -- not someone from a book or a movie or even documentary TV (I was a Cousteau nerd) -- was that student's mother, who came in to read the nuns the riot act about how completely absurd that was so loudly we could hear her all the way across the stone and brick building.
It had nothing to do with race, gender, or any of the 'big bigotries' we think of, but -- hell, maybe the ADD did the usual blender routine on it in my brain, maybe because it was a stupid 'otherism' that affected me as well so it was more personal than something completely abstract would have been -- it was a very early formative example. 'How tall my son is has nothing to do with the capacity of his brain or his ability to learn, and if you're too ignorant to understand that, maybe I should find someone smarter to teach him.' Go Mrs. McGonegal!
It was a low-to-mid middle class school. 5-6 were at an all girl's upper middle class+ school, and it was so much worse. Everyone in the first school save for one student was white; that improved slightly at the second, but to say the experience those students had there was worse would be a profound understatement. I was 'the poor kid' in that group, and the impact of that was similarly obvious. Catholic Mass and sacrament participation was mandatory. The Jewish girl didn't get a pass. The Hindu girls didn't. The latter had parents who had filed a court order to prevent them from being forced to participate and the school forced it anyway, and fellow students shit all over them along with the teachers.
Again, maybe I only saw it -- and other things I won't relate here because they're egregiously awful and I don't want to dump those into a post where they could trigger someone who has experienced similar -- because I was being shit on by the same people, albeit for a different completely stupid excuse to shit on someone.
But I couldn't not see it. I spent a lot of my childhood feeling batshit crazy because the people in authority -- who were supposed to be our role models and the authority figures we could turn to for help and advice and protection -- were behaving in what was so clearly a harmfully nonsensical way. It was not possible to not see that, either.
That's generally what I draw from, along with the observations I've made over the course of my life since then, when I do make an attempt.
I'm liking it, too. It's different, and I have to second 'the worldbuilding is pretty cool'.
Also, a small-but-not-insignificant part of me just knows the incel crowd surely has a bigger hateboner for it than The Handmaid's Tale, and that always tickles just a smidge.
@Roz Randomly, but there is a connection:
About a dozen or so years ago, there was a new law on the federal books re: not making 'drug paraphenalia' for sale (and I think that inventory of the same needed to be destroyed, but I don't recall the specifics of that part). At the time, there was a thriving community of glassblowers and glass artisans who made all manner of things from beads to vases to artsy trinkets, but the biggest sellers were always the pipes. They were rarely usable and were collectibles, but that didn't matter so long as they took the form of a pipe. (As in, you couldn't just seal it off -- even permanently with more glass in every opening -- and make it a vase.)
This is where the bulk of the sales were coming from to support an art form that was already at risk at the time, until the law of unintended consequences kicked in.
...anyone remember how artsy glass dildos came into vogue a little over a decade ago as something other than a obscure rarity, and could now be found everywhere?
@Wretched But do you have a custom phrase for indicating to other members of the household when it's one state or the other?
Because those get great, and if anyone doesn't have them, I strongly encourage it. If you have them, share, dammit!
This week's new addition to the household list was, "Can't watch that right now, it's googling-how-to-do-shit o'clock."
@Kanye-Qwest It hasn't happened to me, either, but I have seen it happen to someone else that wasn't playing any differently than I was (and wasn't playing any sort of gross tropes or similar).
It was bizarre, and uncomfortable to hear spewing all over the OOC room constantly. Like 'archery isn't native to <specific culture> so rar rar rar she's doing it wrong' bizarre... in a modern real world setting where anyone could have learned archery from anyone, anywhere. I dunno, but if I saw someone specifically using some ancient weaponry of <specific culture> that was more or less never used by anyone ever any more, I'd feel it to be more stereotype gross/fetishizing?
It was weird, and it felt weird, and I still don't know how to explain why it felt weird, other than to say 'it felt like someone saying "omg your First Nations character is wearing PVC pants and driving a car, that is not traditional! Doesn't that ignorant player know about horses and leather?!"' and it was very souring and gross.
But, like, I'm not in a position to say anything other than 'this felt very weird and extremely uncomfortable to observe for so very very very many reasons all at once'.
@TheOnceler <empathy fistbump>
Until this moment, I had almost forgotten about the fourth grade talent show, the Morris the Cat costume, and the lipsync number to 'If my friends could see me now' that my mother squealed madly about 'how adorable!!!' it was.
Now, in my head, adult me confronts the child psychologist who asked, 'Why do you think your parents didn't do enough to prevent you from being bullied in school?' with a slideshow, starting off with: "Exhibit one, your honor, this furry neon orange cat-eared potato sack and matching tights."
@Auspice Yep, that's what I was thinking of exactly. It was incredibly uncomfortable to watch.
@TNP You do not have nearly enough upvotes for that link, OH MY GODS. 
OK, I'll tackle this one (and please fill me in, JinShei, if there is something?)...
What is the issue with dressing as a nurse for Halloween? Or, I presume, a firefighter or doctor or any number of other professions?
I can understand the reasoning with regional cultural clothing being worn (especially for Halloween) but I have to admit, the whole subject is aughsville to me for a catalogue of reasons.
@JinShei You mightily kicked that pattern's ass, bad instructions or no! That came out great.
Also: you clearly have something that's so vital, not even kidding. All the stuff you've shown is with excellent choices of good quality materials, tasteful colors and patterns. Nobody can really teach that, and it's such a huge part of 'making stuff well'.
@Three-Eyed-Crow Agreed, the 'sexy X' thing is always pretty gross to me, but just... a nurse? Period?!
I know there can be issues with some military costumes if they use pieces of real military gear bought from a surplus store or somesuch in some areas, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.
Re: the clothing NOT on Halloween issue... well, fashion exists as 'is inspired by and reinterprets', and always has. I have a bunch of stuff that people would flip their shit about me wearing now that I bought in Japan or Hong Kong from people thrilled to have me try stuff on and buy stuff, and were anything but 'angry at/insulted by the teenage white girl trying to steal their culture', and were pleasantly surprised at the questions I was asking about how they were made/etc. since I knew about what I was looking at. I always planned to display some of that collection -- because, bluntly, kimono-making is an amazing art form -- if I had the space to do so, but I wouldn't even do that now. So I have some amazing things that will moulder forever in archival boxes in a hall closet until I die and they get donated to a costume museum somewhere.
@Macha ODD. Oppositional Defiance Disorder; I know the feel. It is non-fun.
It's like having a brain hard-wired to send you running full tilt into the nearest wall repeatedly, like it's going to make a difference and fuck that wall in the first place because what business does it suddenly have being there the fucking fucker.
It is maybe one of the most annoying of all brain weasels. 
Much empathy, all the virtual hugs (if welcome, obvs).
I can rarely be pried out of the house. Now, I want late night coffee at the diner. I want to lose money on the claw machine or grab something derpy we give to my wee second cousin's kidlets. I want to randomly browse at Michael's and getting my roots done -- which has been 'meh, whatever' for almost a year now is suddenly climbing out of the Marianas Trench of apathy to tap me on the shoulder, all, 'psst, your OLDNESS is really showing honeybear!'
I also really want to note: Gany, that is a great example (in both examples you used) of 'calling in' vs. 'calling out', and that difference is not to be overlooked.
It is such a valuable difference.
Someone calling out a stranger on twitter with no data is easy, which is I think why we see so much of it all around on every possible thing. Having a conversation with someone is not so easy, but is usually so much more effective, as it's less likely to get someone instantly on the defensive to the extent that they usually won't listen.
There's definitely a place for calling out. I wish certain world 'leaders' would stop proving that...
OMFG my state is apparently stupid.
Got three letters from the state tax office today, claiming I owe business taxes for three years.
They are basing the amount owed...
...on my husband's income. Not mine.
As in, they want business taxes from me based on my husband's already normally taxed income -- and he works out of state, so he pays income tax to both our state and the one he works in already.
And they want shit-tons of fees.
We have our taxes professionally prepared to conform to all the technicalities just like this. (Irony: some years, that costs more than my income for that year... even is.)
So I get to spend the morning calling and yelling at people, then calling our tax lady over at H&R Block to yell at them even more and doubtless sic their legal team on this idiot's ass.
Bonus irony: up to $1000/year of 'craft work' profits are not even subject to tax in my state. With the major depression and inability to work for the past three years, uh, yeah. I haven't even made that $1k/year. I might maybe have hit $1k for those three years combined.
There's gonna be yelling. A lot of lispy Sylvester-the-Cat stupid spluttery yelling, thanks to the teeth from hell, but they're not going to stop me from the yelling, nope.
@Macha I've been impressed. It's definitely worth watching. Again, I'm kinda biased because I love this sort of period drama, on the scale from serious to Reign/DaVinci, so.
In a number of cases, since they're showcasing generational shifts, they're aging up the young actors somewhat regularly as the series goes along. They're doing a good job of acting older and with more gravitas through that change steadily and well, which isn't something I always see. (Often enough, it's really just 'the same dude in a beard with a white streak, still acting 20something.)
