wwdits :

Cause like

You can define how gender is talked about in your setting but then how do you communicate that to the reader, if it’s sufficiently different? If you’ve got a setting where being trans is just kinda normal and not really noteworthy how do you tell your reader “by the way my character is trans” without making it Weird? And if the way being trans is conceptualized in your setting is not just normalized but is regarded as different or important in some other way you gotta figure out how to make it clear to the reader THAT way? Like say you have idk some trans women temple priestesses (a classic), to go “the priestesses were recruited from the boys of the village and ritually attained womanhood” that still requires you’re writing a society that assigns gender to children the same way that we do while also making, both in-universe and out, the dubious assertion that a trans woman begins as a boy, and if you’re like “the priestesses had dicks” then you gotta figure out how to work that into the story without it being Weird (I have seen it attempted this way in the Broken Earth books by N K Jemisin and it was Weird) and if you’re like “the priestesses cared very much about collecting pregnant horse urine for ritual purposes and they were typically very tall” then most readers will miss it completely and if you’re like “the priestesses were transgender women” then you’ve broken verisimilitude because everything about the history of the word “transgender” is founded in the cultural concepts of gender that exist in mainstream western society and isn’t how a culture that has transgender priestesses is likely to talk about them

Like 25 is such a strong number on the horizon.

"I can't answer that, it's outside my purview"

"mr. Mueller, the taxpayers paid money to have you come here, and you can't answer their questions? What a waste of my time and their money."

"with all due respect, I can only speak to what has been written in the report"

"Would you say that if there were aliens at area 51, and they had tiddies, would you cop a feel?"

"I can only spe-"

"yes, yes, answer the question please"

"I can only speak to th-"

"IT'S A YES OR NO QUESTION, MR. MEULLER"

"well, ah, I, uh, maybe, it, uh, "

"Mr Meuller, doesn't it say in your report, volume 2, page 131 that you "would grabba hold of them alien tiddies like white on rice"?

"I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?"

"Would. You. Grabba. Holda. them. Alien. Tiddies, like. White. On. Rice?"

"what page?"

"Volume 2"

"yes, what page?"

"131. Would you?"

"Let me read this please."

"okay"