#rat rant

As of rn, there are (soon to be) 6 playable thiren characters:

Nekomiya Mana (Cat)

Ben Bigger (Bear)

Von Lycaon (Wolf)

Ellen Joe (Shark)

Seth Lowell (Cat)

Jane Doe (Rat)

From looking through the story, trust events, character profiles, in game news articles, and Inter-Knot, we can find out the following about thirens:

- Some thirens can't have coffee because it causes heart issues

- Thirens that are fully covered with fur are called "beast thirens"

- They have sensitive hearing (most notably seen with Nekomata)

- Their tails are pretty sensitive

- They usually only let people they trust touch their tails (most notably seen with Ellen and Lycaon)

- Their fur is affected by their diet (tail fur included)

- Animals are naturally attracted to them (as seen with Lycaon and Seth, possibly others too but idk)

- They naturally have a higher ether aptitude than humans

- There are specific shampoos and massages for thirens

- Soap can cause their fur to knot

- Their ears/tails may move/twitch depending on how they feel

- They share multiple other traits with their normal animal counterparts, such as agility, dexterity, and more

- Thirens can shed

- Thirens can have allergies to their own fur when they shed

- Some thirens enjoy neck/head scratches

- There may be a law specific to protecting thirens, though I'm not 100% on this

And that's not all, as there is actually quite a bit of obvious discrimination against thirens such as:

- Sterotypes are casually said to the faces of thirens

- Some people view them as "dangerous creatures"

- Some accommodations aren't available to thirens (most notably the issue with movie theatre seats when it comes to bear thirens)

- Being harassed on the street by people who want to touch their tails (or even in Lycaon's case, a child wanting to ride on his back)

- Thirens in movies often don't get played by actual thirens, and instead by humans or bangboo

- In these movies, they're often times shown as dangerous

- Maybe I'm looking too into this one, but I find it weird that a large majority of bear thirens work at Belobog Industries

There are just so many things you can find out about thirens in this game and it makes me wanna ask so many questions. How do they exist? Why are only some thirens fully furred? What's with all the casual discrimination against them? Why are there so many different species of thiren? Why does someone like Nekomata have 2 tails instead of the standard 1? I genuinely hope the game goes more into the factors of thirens and especially the discrimination of them as I'm curious just what the full extent of it is

Posiedon: After everything you've done... how will you sleep at night? Odysseus: Next to my wife.

was honestly the coldest line in the entire musical. I've experienced many MANY emotions while listening to EPIC but after hearing that final line... HOLY SHIT How can one line make me feel like ice was pouring down my spine while bringing tears to my eyes and simultaneously a smile to my face?

While the Wisdom Saga felt colorful and like the embodiment of love in a hundred different forms, the Vengeance Saga felt raw, exposed, angry, and desperate, like a wound that has festered for too long. They contrast each other so beautifully it's so admirable.

So we were PCR tested twice during quarantine, and then we were given a bag of saliva test RATs. Took one of those before getting on the bus down to the wharf, then one every three days until 26th November. I messed up my first one and so had to grab one from ship supply, which was “oral fluid.”

This means that I am now in a position to compare the experiences of different RATs.

OLD SCHOOL Ye olde swab! Scrape the back of the throat! Then scrape the brain via the nose! Mix with buffer, apply to test cassette. Don’t fucken wuss out on the scraping either — SARS-CoV-2 infections present initially as lower respiratory tract, which we can’t swab. So there’s less of it lurking about in the upper respiratory tract. Also please swab your throat. YES EVEN IF THAT’S NOT IN THE DIRECTIONS.

SALIVA TEST Stick the hideous absorbent lollipop in your mouth until the indicator turns blue, which means it has enough saliva, then apply to test cassette.

ORAL FLUID Hock up a loogie into the buffer. Apply to test cassette.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

Now, I previously hated swabbing my nose. Then I started swabbing my throat, which I hate even more, so I don't hate swabbing my nose so much. Basically, I stimulate a pretty solid coughing reflex on the throat and I always, always sneeze after swabbing my nose, but it's now pretty inoffensive to me.

I've been aware of the saliva and oral tests for a while, and thought that something less intrusive would be good for people with hyper-sensitive gag reflexes, and also little kids, who really don't like sitting still long enough for someone to swab their tiny wee nostrils.

So I was optimistic about the saliva test.

My optimism was misplaced. The instructions say that it should take about 2-3 minutes for the sponge inserted into your mouth to absorb sufficient saliva. The indicator is supposed to turn blue.

My medication causes dry mouth.

3 minutes? HA. FUCKING. HA.

TRY 20 FUCKING MINUTES.

That thing felt like it was sucking out my goddamn motherfucking soul. And I had to move it around and swizzle it and press down and I had to do all this before leaving my cabin before shift. My very life essence was drained into this obnoxious fucker.

(I actually had significant shoulder pain due to continuously trying to move it around while lying down. My joints are weird. This is not going to be an issue for most people.)

We had a messaging platform on the ship's intranet, which I used to declare that if anyone had swab tests and wanted to swap it for the spit lollipop, I was down for that. I now considered swabs to be the best possible option.

Nobody took me up on it. Everyone struggled to get enough spit.

On the last day, I had that "oral fluid" test, which involves hocking up a loogie and spitting into the funnel. This was less of a trial, to be honest, but given my dry mouth issues, it was still a pain in the arse to muster up the necessary quantities of saliva. Not as bad as the fucking saliva sponge.

I cannot imagine that sponge thing works well with little kids, not unless they are producing copious quantities of spit and snot and--

[pauses abruptly]

--okay, yes, I now recall that little kids are absolutely capable of just leaking from every available orifice (hopefully not the ears), so maybe they would have an easier time of it.

Anyways, TL;DR: the saliva sponge is vile. The oral fluid is okay.

We've been fighting fire with fire. Fueling their tactics in erasing trans men and all kinds of enben and intersex people from the discussion, and our people have done little to nothing to combat that. We have aided in an important part of the dynamics of their opression and their attacks and it's time the queer community and our allies faced up to that.

So if you mean "trans women" say "trans women" but if that feels like excluding all the other trans people: it often is. Just making it "trans people" instead doesn't solve the problem. It impacts transfeminine discourse because it loses the specificity needed for many of these conversations and it fails to be inclusive to anyone else in a meaningful way. Instead it leads to "trans people" being used nearly synonymously with "trans women," which ironically excludes most trans people. So think about the situation from our persepctives specifically. And include us in specific ways.

But they push us out of feminist spaces because suddenly we don't understand anymore, they push us out of sapphic spaces because they deem our bodies gross, our self-expression wrong, and now they push us out of trans spaces because we don't suffer enough. I wonder how much more pain I am supposed to shoulder before it will be enough for it to be deemed worth talking about, for it to be deemed worth discussing, reclaiming.

Because we have the bi experience, the ace, and inter experience: every side turns us away. We're too queer and too damaged, and then we're not queer enough, haven't suffered enough.