in the garden of wind and thunder

really funny to meet a genderless alien and make them your gender out of convenience and then fall in love and now you’re gay. you made yourself be gay.

in most cases (ie the left hand of darkness) there’s some amount of gender imagery that is latched on to to justify the arbitrary gendering. in project hail mary he meets a rock and is like this is a boy rock because i’m a boy too :)

you'd think "manosphere" would be a beautiful sphere made of nothing but men or perhaps even a beautiful spherical man but no. misogyny.

I'm not gonna lie when I saw that AI image of trump speaking to Nordic aliens I assumed they were costumed actors involved with professional wrestling and went about my day.

"must be some Broadway thing. Trump loved Broadway."

like, do I think andy "I don't do politics" "socially liberal fiscally conservative" weir was knowingly and deliberately doing queer gender things with eridians? no, and it would feel especially absurd to say that when the contemporary scifi novel scene is so full of authors who are doing queer gender things on purpose. I think what's happening here is that weir is competent enough to make his characters gnc agender intersex gay men by accident as a result of being committed to worldbuilding an alien species that feels genuinely alien in its social and physical norms, which is the opposite tack to the "how do I create a scifi allegorical representation of an already existing human queer experience" approach that a lot of other authors take. and I can't say I don't enjoy the idea of a gay little he/they genderless rock spouse with a tomboy name who according to the movie apparently works in aquatic habitat maintenance.

Im always like "i will not add my two cents. i will not add my two cents" but i cant lie the pennies are getting sweaty in my hand

There's also the additional aspect that if luxuries are what's expensive, you can choose to go without and then you don't have to make so much money. You can choose to work part-time, or seasonally, or one person can provide for a group, if living is cheap and you don't need luxury. But if being alive is expensive, you have no choice but to work a lot, regardless of how frugal your lifestyle is. And then you may as well buy yourself the latest gadget to cheer yourself up after another annoying week at work, because it costs barely anything anyway.