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.

From a stranger on the internet so feel free to ignore me, but I have thoughts I must scream into the void.

You absolutely make a good point about the nature of reader inserts, but this is how I've navigated as One of the Palest People Alive but never really thought about consciously or considered the greater implications of until reading your reblog. If I found an author I like, or a plot I find interesting, I'll likely read it because, well, interest, but I've never really commented on them. Not because I don't believe their good or deserving of comment, but because I see POC!Reader and go 'I am not the target audience.'

I have entered a space that is not for me, therefore I'm a guest trying to be respectful of the space by not inputting an irrelevant opinion. I've never really thought about how that might come across before in the 'lack of I engagement = lack of interest' type of sense until literally right now and I wonder if that also accounts for a chunk of the lack of engagement. Like, I'm sure I am not alone in this sort of thought process. A 'well meaning' avoidance that I now see could be misinterpreted/counter productive.

I totally get where you’re coming and I am, of course, just one person with one opinion and there will be others who feel differently because their experiences as a POC are significantly different than mine.

It includes:

A digital copy of the movie (with subtitles in 30+ languages via download)

My transcript of the movie (more on that here)

Audio recordings of the movie

A PDF of the book

An EPUB of the book (for e-readers)

The full audiobook

A copy of Andy Weir's doc on Eridians

A copy of Andy Weir's spreadsheet on Astrophage physics (among many other things!)

A draft of the screenplay for the film from 2022

An audio recording of the director's commentary

My transcript of the director's commentary

There's also a google doc with some instructions to follow if any of the files aren't working or aren't allowing you to download them, which usually happens when too many people try to access or download something at the same time.

Additionally there's a UHD copy (that's too big to fit in the drive) here!:

Please note that because of the way that google drive works, some of the subtitles only work if you download the file yourself.

The audiobook, audio recordings, and commentary all have their properties programmed so they (should) work just like songs with a track number, album cover, artist, and so on if you download them.

There are two audios of the movie, one is the entire film untouched and one is that same audio cut up and broken down into separate scenes for convenience.

Additionally, there are two versions of the movie transcript, one with time stamps that match the audio recording and one without. The time stamps (+ their titles from the audio) are outlined in that version, so if you double-click on that tab or click "show outline," they'll all show up and you can pick a specific scene.

Similarly, there are two different versions of the director's commentary transcript. The first is made to listen along to the commentary, while the second is more intended to be read on its own. The first is a direct transcription of everything that's said (an attempt, at least), while the second is slightly cleaned up for easier reading, meaning things like jumbled sentences and stuttering were removed or reorganised, but nothing has been actually paraphrased. Both are broken down into different scenes based on how their conversation goes, and the listening version includes timestamps. 

The first few seconds of the commentary are missing unfortunately as my US friend who was kind enough to record it for me had some technical difficulties at the start, but the she paraphrased the part that was missed. The commentary starts at that first red shot of Ryland Grace's face in the coma suit 32 seconds into the digital copy.

As always, if anything's not working right or you notice any mistakes in anything, please let me know and I'll fix it as soon as I can!