Inky Thinking

This one was a little bit more challenging to do than I thought it would be – and that was mostly in all the detail (RIP) ,as well as figuring out ways to adapt a Klimt-esque look to Howl. It was really tempting to put him in his pink jacket since it lends itself to rectangular form so well. However I just had to go and make things difficult for myself… because I love his transformed version!

grace lands on calling rocky "he" because he has a split second of panic in one of their first interactions and thinks "uhhh he or she or oh gosh this species might have a dozen sexes and use pronouns I don't even have words for um uh okay I'll just use 'he' because using 'it' for a sapient creature feels wrong. why does no one talk about how to use pronouns in first contact." personally I find this hilarious because it characterizes grace as being just about Gender Aware enough to conceive of and be cool with the idea of sex and gender existing outside of the socially constructed binary and is probably even down to use neopronouns for people, but also a) he still opts for "he" over "they" and b) is completely unaware that zillions of people are absolutely having fifth dimensional discussions about pronouns and first contact.

grace never refers to adrian by pronouns.

grace thinks of adrian as rocky's spouse specifically, not husband or wife.

there's a tiny bit at the end where grace says if he shined a light out of the clear xenonite of his dome then he could "see an eridian going about his business," meaning he's probably just using "he" as the pronoun for all eridians.

Never forget that Victor Hugo invented the first Clickbait Title:

THE CORE FOUR: Buffy, Willow, Xander, & Giles

Vimes, a day later and thirty years earlier: immediately institutes a prisoner tracking system with associated signed paperwork, assesses promotion potential for every employee, determines which underperformers get put on a PIP and which get shown the door immediately, provides one-on-one mentoring with his younger self and particularly focuses on communication coaching, slots himself into the chain of authority to protect employees and higher leadership from each other, and institutes accountability policies with documented checks

“Grace says he would like half of dome to be water.”

“Oh, is necessary for humans to have large amounts of water question?”

Small Eridian equivalent of a sigh. “No. Not needed for life. In fact Grace will die if he falls in water and does not get out.”

“Tell him we give him water in containers that won't kill him. Lots lots lots of water on Erid for Grace to drink.”

“No. Grace say he want water on ground. Also want it with excess sodium chloride compound so it will be unhealthy for drink.”

“Grace want this liquid for celebration.”

“Of course.” They scan it. “You have wrong liquid. This contain compounds which are poisonous for humans.”

“Yes yes yes. Grace say humans like feeling of being slightly poisoned.”

There's two major philosophies when it comes to labels, they don't have names to my knowledge so I'm gonna call them Reflective and Telegraph.

The Telegraph Label philosophy states that labels primarily function as a means of conveying useful information about one's self to others. It's telling others what pronouns, what parts and what genders that person has or is attracted to. This is usually pretty straightforward, the stuff someone interested in dating you would check before asking you out to avoid embarrassment.

The Reflective Label philosophy states that labels are primarily a tool for describing an internal experience. Putting words to feelings for the benefit of the self. This is how we get lables like stargender or autismgender. These aren't meaningfully useful labels that tell others what to expect physically or what pronouns to use. But that doesn’t mean they're useless. In the case of someone using autismgender, that label probably describes the internal experience of the ways a person's autism impacts their views on and performance of gender. Stargender likely explains not that they literally see themselves as a star but rather that their internal experience of their prefered gender performance makes them feel a way that reminds them of stars or stargazing.

And this applies to sexuality too. Boy lesbian might seem antithetical but ultimately that label isn't there to tell others anything. It's merely a comfort to have words to describe a mess of feelings and social dynamics.

And for clarification, anyone calling themselves a boy-lesbian probably isn't the cis male boogieman forcing lesbians who aren't interested in cis men to date them or else be labeled a bigot. That boogieman doesn't exist. A more likely explanation is that a nonbinary or trans person has a complex relationship with their changing gender that doesn't trigger a change in the way they see themselves in relationships and attraction thus causing them to keep or adopt the lesbian label despite the gender weirdness going on.

I see a lot of infighting about what people call themselves and whether or not certain combinations can even physically exist. And Y'know what? I don't think that's terribly productive. Neither philosophy is wrong. People are just using labels to address different root problems.

What makes reflective or symbolic labels worthwhile is precisely this opacity. That they require work to understand is what leads to the creation of new shared knowledge and collective meaning making. Creating more ways to describe, interpret, and understand the human experience is intrinsically valuable. Refusing to engage with these kinds of labels implies that one believes the totality of human experience to be adequately summarized by extant linguistic forms. However, modern language is heavily reliant upon taxonomic and diagnostic terminology designed to index as narrowly as possible a sign to a specific and exclusive signifier. This semiotic practice is informed disciplines and ideologies which are expressions of structurally prejudiced societies which defined (and still presently define) social position through exclusion of the other. Put more plainly: the insistence on only using pre-existing indexical/telegraphic labels comes from the same impulse that existing oppressive norms. Having internalized this modernist approach to semiotics, we replicate it amongst ourselves to the same effect of excluding those we do not yet and do want to understand.