swirlingFlight

For example:

For some people, the idea of someone redeeming a villain is a power fantasy.

For other people, the idea of a villain being defeated is a power fantasy.

And for other people, the idea of a character owning their villainy is a power fantasy.

You are revolutionary and beautiful simply by existing. You are made of magic and share it wherever you go. Your whimsy, your fire, and your compassion can change the world. Stand firm for yourself and your community.

Even if you don't feel safe to express who you are yet, know that you are safe with me--whoever you are is what I will see. Even if all you can do right now is internally accept yourself, that is still an incredibly important step. There is always a place for you, whether you find that place or create that place.

Take up space! Experiment! Be silly, or be refined. Be loud, or be quiet. Be colorful, or be monochrome.

Be.

If you're looking for a sign, this is it. Remember what Pride stands for: fighting for the right to self-determine, the right to live your truth without persecution, and the right to openly love who you are. It is never too late to start.

Come join me in the grand tradition of breaking the mold--because what about us was ever going to fit expectations, anyway?

The woman's breath caught, and she said, "Yeah, I'm fine," in the least fine voice I have ever heard.

So I walked away. Made it all the way to the sinks. Washed my hands. And turned around and went back because nope, not fine, not okay.

"Look, I don't want to be a dick, and you don't have to tell me what's going on, but is there anything that would help? I've got water, ibuprofen, and safety pins, and I could find other stuff."

"No, no, it's fine. I have those too."

"...okay."

I made it to the sinks again. She went back to sobbing like her heart was being torn out one strand of muscle at a time.

An older woman sidled up to me. "Did she tell you anything?"

"Nope. I offered her water and ibuprofen, too."

"Oh! I've got snacks. Maybe that'll help."

"Worth a shot. Oh, hey, I think I have some of my business cards for my Etsy shop in here—I could write my number on one if she needs help later."

"I've got a pen!"

We hurried back to the stall, offered the snacks, and were rebuffed. Finally we slid the card and the pen under the stall door, explained that we were both mom friends/teachers/etc. and trying to help-not-creep, and reluctantly fucked off. I personally felt like shit about it, but I had places to be and I felt like I was close to overstepping the crying woman's boundaries if I hadn't already done so. And if I'd made her feel unsafe, well, she could toss the card.

The following morning, I got a text from an unknown number.

She identified herself as "Rose from the bathroom" and explained that she'd had a hell of a day, with multiple people being cruel to her, seemingly for no good reason. She'd hit her breaking point and fled to the bathroom to cry it out ... at which point two strangers had rocked up, checked on her multiple times, and generally done the dance of most social mammals when a member of their group is in unexplained distress. The two of us had, more or less accidentally, restored her faith in humanity by being worried apes at her. 18 hours later, she was having a much better time, and a lot of it was due to the two of us shoving things under her door.

Anyway, turns out we live about 20 minutes apart, and we're going to meet up for tea after we've recovered from con exhaustion.

So if you ever feel like humans in general and/or fandom humans in particular are irredeemable shits, remember that sometimes the same species who'll ruin your con day will try to slide trail mix and ibuprofen under your stall door in case it helps.

I still don't know what Rose looks like, btw (although apparently she knows what I look like—I mentioned I was in cosplay and she said she'd seen me around). I don't know whether she's cis or trans. So next time you hear someone bitching about trans women in the ladies', feel free to tell them that it never once crossed anybody's mind to ask. If you're crying in the bathroom, you're my sister.

Look me dead in the eye and tell me that people being able to sit at home and watch The Game -- the fandom that encourages, the ongoing investment over the years, the memories and traditions of Watching the Game with family and friends -- harms the ticket sales of real live go-to-the-stadium sports. Of course it doesn't. Of course all that *is the reason* that people care so much about sports they'll invest a small fortune on not only tickets but often travel costs to be part of it all in person. And the people who aren't doing that *can't* do that and weren't going to regardless, but their at-home participation and investment still boosts the profile of pro and NCAA sports as cultural institutions.

It’s the final few days of the Bluminarmour Project! After some issues with Kickstarter let’s see how far we can get!

If you want to see fantasy tropes, historical movement and silly tricks tested in authentic full plate armour, please consider chucking a few quid over (or like and share this post):

Kickstarter removed my highest funding tier so I lost £11k of funding since earlier today.

BUT

A family of core memories for me is playing with whatever the latest chatbot on the web was and they were all crap! Smartbot was useless! There was a Sony cross-promotional event with one of the James Bonds where you used an NLP bot to direct an agent through a simulated scenario and it would lose track of your meaning if you were even slightly indirect.

A language model that runs on your phone can, in a few seconds, translate an entire webpage. This is how Firefox translation works! It's not going to the cloud, it's like 300MB of machine learning model that lives on your phone and runs incredibly quickly. It takes them 15 days and a few thousand dollars to train a translator that beats any prior on device translation by a huge margin. Simply not possible to do it this well 10 years ago.