now, look here

- they’re Opawz pet specific dyes. Non toxic made specifically for dogs. Once they’re set and rinsed they can groom themselves normally, they pose no danger to her in any way, no fumes, there’s no bleach involved

- my dog is trained with cooperative care skills, the process is not stressful for her, she gets paid heavily for her cooperation and looks forwards to the opportunity to earn extra snacks with the grooming

is the dialogue actually too modern or do we just expect people to talk a certain way in a specific kind of story? why do we have those expectations?

is there too much focus on character, or have we been reading mainly plot-driven examples of similar narratives? or the other way around?

are we open to change? are we open to the genres we love evolving? is this story actually bad or are we just falling for marketing traps that homogenize material and strip creative expression from form for the sake of maximizing profit?

are we open to engaging with stories with characters who do not have our own personal strengths and flaws? are we currently capable of finding common ground with characters who come from vastly different backgrounds and experiences with us, or does a story considered boring if it is not immediately relatable?

if the latter, the way we stretch that is to take an active interest in other people's lives around the world and take time to read about different experiences. the life of a subsistence farmer is just as worthy of literary depiction as the life of a socialite. there's no reason a pastoralist couldn't be the protagonist of a sci-fi narrative.

what barriers have we erected in our mind around stories, and whose are allowed to be told and are worthy of reading? if someone told us that women are just inherently less interesting, would that ring true? It's blatantly false. Who profits from that perception?

Who profits from the idea that protagonists of specific genres have to look and behave a certain way?

i feel like the problem with this question is best illustrated by a conversation i had with a friend a while back, where i said something like, "i feel very safe with you because you don't do subtle hints and you are always very straight-up with me about what you are thinking and feeling."