The Arcane Workshop of Artemis Noble

Rhetorical dogwhistles are things that most people would not be able to identify as bigoted because they're INTENDED to have plausible deniability.

The wording changes are meant to be subtle enough that people really can mix them up accidentally when they don't have much information!

So when the gender critical movement calls trans women "transwomen", they're hoping for 2 things.

this usage will spread enough among people who don't know any better, to give transphobes the plausible deniability of not LOOKING like a frothing bigot constantly.

the usage grammatically places trans women in a different category than other women; it's changing "trans" from an adjective to part of a noun to make this distinction.

The more we can avoid this usage, the less deniability have transmisogynists have when using it, and the less rhetorical ground we cede to the degendering and misgendering of trans women.

linux isn't harder you were just taught to use windows (windows is actually way more complicated once you know both. source I do)

linux has graphical applications for settings and installing stuff and whatever, you don't need to input commands if you don't want to

inputting commands isn't "coding" you just copy and paste 4 words that mean "run as administrator and install [program]"

and if you really do use a program that doesn't have a linux version or wine looks too complicated, that's okay!! just instead of going "NEVER!!" and playing into the Microsoft propaganda, considering saying:

I wish more developers would make their programs compatible with linux

Linux looks really cool, I'm just stuck because of [program] at the moment

fuck you Nvidia for making this harder than it needs to be

Woah that girl is really pretty

I wish that were me 😵‍💫

And of course, not only does the fact that Darcy, who owes their family nothing, has kept and continues to keep this secret for them even after Elizabeth’s refusal deepen the gratitude she begins to feel for him after the letter of explanation, but it also liberates Elizabeth to fall in love with him. Because Elizabeth-who-wants-to-marry-for-love would never be happy marrying someone who didn’t know the family secret in advance. She had resigned herself to spinsterhood because she couldn’t be satisfied with having to hoodwink someone to have their hand, but also couldn’t put her family at risk by trusting someone who wasn’t bound to them by more than an engagement. (Maybe she was even tempted to confide in Wickham at one point, and hasn’t Darcy’s letter proven she was absolutely right not to yield to that passing thought.) But Darcy figured it out himself, and he’s kept her trust, and she could fall in love with him without guilt—if she hadn’t already turned him down.

thats it! all 8 pages! i had a lot of fun drawing this, thank you for everybodys kind words on the preview post.

I have absolutely no issues understanding metaphors or idioms. When someone says their heart is on their sleeve they mean they’re emotionally expressive and openly display their feelings, not that they have a chunk of cardiac tissue on their shirt. I very rarely have issues with sarcasm. I sometimes have issues telling when someone who’s said something mean is about to say “just kidding”, but tbh I think that’s more on them than me.

BUT

My grandmother asked me “Do you know when the trash was taken out last?” and I said “I think Eliot took it out yesterday” and a few hours later she yelled at me for “not taking out the trash when I asked you to” and I was like???? You didn’t ask me????

I dread filling out forms and am crap at filling out diagnostic tests or personality quizzes because there are always questions I don’t know the exact answers to (how am I supposed to know what day I got dental surgery seven years ago?) or don’t understand exactly what they’re asking or the wording’s unclear and they could mean this or the wording says this but I’m pretty sure what they actually meant was this and should I answer what they said or what they meant, and how does everyone else just whip through the form when surely they can’t know all the answers either? Does everyone else remember the day they got dental surgery seven years ago?

I get tangled up by bureaucracy because the rules on the website say that for this you need that and for that you need the other and for the other you need something else for which you need the first thing, and I go in circles for hours or days or weeks or months or years because their stated rules say there is no way to get what I need, and when I talk to somebody else they’re like “just call them?” and I’m like “how could that help? the rules say that what I’m trying to do is impossible”

this is idea is particularly useful with regard to transmascs. we should all be mature enough to bluntly acknowledge that presenting as more masculine conveys privilege, but of course trans men are not afforded the same degree of privilege that cis men are. frustration with this + leftover cismisogyny bullshit = confidently asserting corrective rape, reproductive rights, etc as transmasc-specific issues.

even though reality very obviously works the opposite way, people believe that we are somehow transcending gender-based structural violence. and so they have to cut us down, often by asserting (overtly or covertly) that we are men and thus inherently responsible for the violence that we're supposedly escaping.

you can talk about v-coding, murder rates, wage gaps, etc til you're blue in the face and a shocking amount of people will just fail to absorb it.

they're trying to undercut the reality of our social position for personal, emotional reasons. a rational argument (or even just basic observations about society) will never satisfy that feeling and so they're easily ignored.

This is her title card at 00:02:51. note the colors. Prominent pink white and blue. Hm. Interesting.

The first frame we see of Gwen onscreen is at 00:01:24. She is pink, the other prominent colors are blue and white. She's drumming, she's feeling her emotions, she's expressing herself.

as the scene moves forward, her bandmates confront her, essentially asking "what's wrong?", and she can't tell them about anything she's thinking because everything involving her life as Spider-Woman is a secret. One could say she is "in the closet." During this scene, her bandmates have more realistic skin tones, while Gwen is blue.

The next scene, with Gwen and Peter having dinner with George (Gwen's dad) and Aunt May, Peter has photos he's taken of Spider-Woman. Gwen asks about this "dangerous menace", Peter (who has figured out her secret) defends Spider-Woman. George (a cop) says "Why wear a mask if you have nothing to hide?", shutting down any chance that Gwen could "come out" to him. Aunt May shuts the conversation down with "No politics at the dinner table." and winks at Gwen, protecting her. One could read this as Gwen having "come out" to Aunt May.

Note the pink dress. The blue necklaces. The rainbow pin.

In the scene starting at 00:05:50, Gwen is walking through vibrant yellow/orange/pink city streets, shielded and isolated from the world in blue, after her best friend died. She is listening to her father condemn Spider-Woman for the murder. She's alone, with the only person who knew her secret gone forever.

George's badge is a trans flag (00:06:03)

Gwen seeing her reflection as Spider-Woman, not the person everyone else sees. (00:06:10)

George proceeds to tell her that they've caught a break in the Spider-Woman case. Gwen's father is actively hunting for her without knowing it. He's a cop, she's in danger. Gwen is still blue.

at 00:07:20, George drops the cop stuff and talks to Gwen as her father and they hug. Gwen is vulnerable for the first time since the very first frame, and the blue drops away and the world starts to fill with warmer colors.

The hug ends at 00:07:33 when George's radio goes off. He's back in cop mode. And Gwen turns blue again. Because she is hiding from him for her own safety.

I think it's notable to point out that up to this point, everyone else's skin tones have been consistently normal, with differences coming from exterior lighting. By contrast, Gwen has been pink when no one is looking, blue whenever she is being perceived, and something closer to normal when she's allowed to just be a teenage girl hugging her dad.

We get a close-up of Gwen putting on her suit as the movie transitions to the next scene. Her face is a much more realistic color as she puts on her mask, the physical Spider-Woman costume allowing her to drop the blue shield she's been wearing onscreen so far this movie. (00:08:03)

at 00:17:15, Spider-Woman takes off her mask to stop George from shooting her point blank. This is the first time in the film George has seen Gwen with her realistic skin tone. The first time Gwen has been honest with him, and it's because if she doesn't she's either going to be arrested or shot.

Look at how small and isolated she looks compared to the hug. Look at how the warmth of the color emanating from her father doesn't quite reach her anymore. (00:17:24)

The next few scenes of Gwen pleading with her father to listen to her about the truth show George's background colors blur between the warm yellows and oranges of Gwen's dad to the cold dark blue of his role as a cop. (00:17:35) (00:17:46)

Note Gwen's pinks and blues in comparison

Look at how George starts to raise his gun at his newly outed daughter, deep blue, as she pleads with him for understanding. No hints of fatherly warmth. (00:18:30)