Hats for Rats

1. If you see this post, highly recommend taking it as an opportunity to set a timer for 15 minutes and switch over to ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY. if after those 15 minutes, you want to go back to scrolling, that's okay!

2. Huge shout out to this popping up in my notifs often, bc I do go back to activity.

Your own analogy is crap - in it you’re the innocent and perfectly detached tattoo artist that had nothing to do with the art or the placement or the size or color of the piece, just head down needle out do the work, get paid for the job done, and anyone who isn’t happy afterwards is a karen who obviously doesn’t understand the industry works.

The problem is that tattoo artists fuck people over all the time on work you fully consented to and paid for. Your consent doesn’t make them not liable for their own mistakes. They pressure you into designs you don’t really love because it fits their style better, they do wonky lines and impossible anatomy, they spell things wrong, they shade poorly or blend colors weirdly, they scratch or cut you with the needles, they overcharge and then still act like you’re scum if you don’t leave a huge tip. They expect you to love it even if they do a shit job. There’s any number of things a tattoo artist can do to not just give you a terrible experience but to make you regret and resent something you were once excited and hopeful about.

The worst part is hearing them bitch and moan about how awful a client was and then go on to describe completely a person behaving perfectly reasonably.

And that attitude is pretty familiar:

If you change your mind after I’ve sold you something that’s your own fault!

If you regret it after I’ve done something permanent to you that’s not my responsibility!

If you’ve been groomed to believe you’ll die young and miserable without transition and then you’re still unhappy afterwards then you can fuck right off!

Where’s even a hint of the love and compassion and understanding they claim we need to all have for anyone questioning or confused about gender? Where’s the empathy? Trans people claim to be the most marginalized abused helpless population on the planet, and they can’t bring themselves to give a shit about the kids they leave behind in the wake of their overmedicalized ideology.

If this is truly your attitude then just call yourself the trans industrial complex. You don’t care about kids being happy or healthy, you don’t have a leg to stand on to even try and claim you do. You’re part of a system that tells kids that the only solution to feeling strange or uncomfortable in their bodies is medication and surgery, and then immediately and cruelly abandons them when it isn’t successful. That mocks them when it goes wrong. That turns on them the instant they start to have doubts.

You are the shitty tattoo artist actually, because after they get the surgeries you told them they cant live without, if they don’t absolutely love it then you’re content to wash your hands of the matter. You made your contribution and it’s out of your hands. Not your problem, not your responsibility, they brought this on themselves, they should have thought about it more beforehand, they were obviously never really trans.

I just wanted to tell you that a friend of mine works for Samaritan health service for their suicide hotline. She told me a 'funny' story.

The majority of her time is spent screening and blocking phone numbers so that the lines are free for people who need help. Why does she have to do this ? Hundreds of times a day men would call up while masturbating, of course they would only stay on the line if the operator was female, which the majority are.

^^^ cryptos this is a thing, like, you could be like me and just go off on main once people start catching wind (not as bad as you think, you don’t deserve the people who will turn on you on a dime), but the hive mind is so malicious, there are people I’ve never interacted with ever who’ve blocked me well before I started posting.

“I really think this “strong emotions” angle is a bad one for space aliens from another galaxy for all the reasons I listed above. But I guess if it was my job to make this work I’d imagine a planet of people that act like teenagers from a Shakespearean tragedy. They would be prone to feuds. They would probably suffer from a lot of one-on-one public duels over personal honor. You’d have to be careful to avoid wounding their pride, but they would be fierce allies once you won them over. They would constantly be professing undying love and then losing interest when the next wave of hormones hit and sent them after a new mate. They would be full of lust for life and prone to debauchery. They would have countless holidays and all of them would be an excuse to drink and feast. Dwarves are often portrayed as rowdy drunks who love food, and you could probably borrow that idea for these guys. They would be very serious about honoring the dead. Perhaps they should have intense familial bonds and build a lot of their identity around their heritage.”

I imagine this is what Vulcans would have been like pre-Surak (by implication it logically would be what Romulans are like, but we never see that).

Which makes the idea of some Vulcans being prejudiced against Spock cause he’s half human and therefore maybe more emotional kind of funny. Vulcans are naturally more emotional than humans, their logic schtick is compensation for that. If anything a human-Vulcan hybrid like Spock would be naturally less emotional and more chill than full-blooded Vulcans.

I guess it wouldn’t be the first time a racial prejudice makes very little sense when you think about it. The writers associate Spock’s emotionality with his human side too though. It’s one of those things that makes sense as drama but doesn’t make much sense in-universe.

Man, if I were writing fanfiction that touched on Spock’s childhood and went the “Spock was a bullied kid” route I’d write it as Spock quickly learned to fight back very effectively by weaponizing the fact that he’s actually got more natural emotional control than the full-blooded Vulcan kids.

Given some reasonable extrapolation of Vulcan culture I think that might be a devastating strategy. I remember Mike Wong on SDN once came up with an interpretation I like: that the Vulcan word that usually gets translated as “logic” actually means something more like “not acting like a savage.” I read the whole Vulcan logic thing as a reaction to a searing collective trauma, they’re very afraid of themselves and their own impulses, and losing control and acting violent is one of the worst nightmares and most shameful humiliations the average Vulcan can imagine, and for Vulcans socialization into that mindset starts early.

You know that mediocre scene in that NuTrek movie where other Vulcan kids are bullying Spock by trying to get him to show a visible emotional reaction? I’m imagining something like that but Spock does the same thing back and it goes maybe three or five rounds and then one of the other Vulcan kids goes full monkey mode and tries to rip Spock’s face off and has to be dragged off Spock by his friends and then breaks down bawling in shame and gets led off to the Vulcan equivalent of the principal or school psychologist while sobbing “I am in control of my emotions! I am in control of my emotions!” and Spock just raises an eyebrow and says “Fascinating,” while that kid’s friends all stare daggers at him (yes, I’m imagining Spock was a little mean as a child/teenager in this scenario; that’s a common reaction to bullying).

1. The app generates a proto-language with its own vocabulary and phonology.

2. Sound change rules derive daughter languages and cognate sets.