Back to the old house

???

and like. do we have to keep gently phrasing things to protect naturally-thin people's feelings. in my life it has never been fashionable to be fat. "fat" is still a bad word. there has never been institutional power pushing people to gain weight; no trillion-dollar industry to "fix" skinny people. a larger body type has never been over-represented in models, influencers, celebrities. sure, people might say "i'm worried for your health," but they do it with respect and gentleness, like they're talking to a scared deer.

every single fucking time i talk about this, i have to be so careful with what i say, in case i offend even one skinny person. it is just true that skinny people have social capital across many cultures. there is a reason you almost never hear someone say "i wish i was fat," but you will constantly see people say "I wish i was thin." and yet inevitably some skinny person will tell me: i thought you wanted body positivity. it is the same fucking attitude as when a cis man says "when you say men have power, well, i've been bullied for being a man. i thought you believe in mental health awareness. don't you know men have a higher suicide rate?"

two things can be true at once: your experience being bullied for being thin was terrible. and people with larger bodies probably have it worse.

i have been big and small. i know many other people who have been big and small. trust what i'm about to tell you: being small is much easier. the world is kinder to you. people treat you better. honestly, this pattern occurs pretty much regardless of gender - my guy friends have confided that they'd rather be bullied for being thin than be bullied for being fat. if you're skinny, the pressure might be to gain weight, sure, but it's often to do so in a way that keeps you skinny - to gain muscle, specifically.

thinness is seen as innate and natural, genetic. whereas carrying any fat - that is a moral failing. it is assumed to be related to your character, your personality. i have seen people equate it to discipline, to hygiene. that bias is why we need to talk about this.

📸 Indira Varma

"The sex tells the story, so it never felt gratuitous to me. The sex is character development. The sex is what is moving this relationship forward, and watching it change over time."

When I was a teenager writing fic, I remember finding out that one of my favorite authors was in her 50s and that just was SUCH a revelation for me!! What do you mean, 50 year olds can write fanfic?!? Does that mean I can write fics when I'm her age?? That's AWESOME! I seriously looked up to her so much. And now I'm 35 with a husband and kid, and I'm still writing fanfic and posting fandom content - and I have no plans of stopping!

I don’t want to sound like I am hating on younger people in fandom, but god, y’all need to stop it with the ageism. You don’t have to give up what you love once you’re an adult. Honestly, the belief that you have to is pretty bad. It sounds like it would make people afraid of aging. Granted, modern society is so very afraid of aging.

Teenagers don't have the resources and skills to build something like AO3, it has to be people with degrees and money doing that, and that translates to a 30+ crowd. But teenagers especially need the protection and legal advocacy that something like AO3 offers them.

Part of the reason the then 30- and 40-somethings who built AO3 did what they did was so that someone with as few resources and as little support as the average 15-year-old fic author can safely and comfortably share their fanfic and find fic to read.

Bureaucracy is good and important, actually.

Let me tell you how this shit went down.

I get an email from my law firm to tell me their native ai assistant is going to call me to collect my answers interview-style to basically fill out a form for me. They also sent a pdf of the form so I could look over it and prepare my answers. Did this mean I basically had to fill out the form before the phone call? Yes. Could I have just sent the scanned document back and skipped the phone call? No. Their AI has to do it <3

The ai calls me. I expect to do the interview right now, but the AI ASSISTANT is calling me to SCHEDULE an appointment for me and the ai to do the interview. I ask why we can't just do it now or today since I'm available AND IT IS A FUCKING AI WHO CAN DO THIS SHIT WHENEVER IT WANTS TO AS OPPOSED TO A HUMAN BEING WHO HAS A FINITE SCHEDULE. It doesn't answer me because that's not part of it's highly restrictive dialogue tree. It takes me three times as long to schedule because this thing has to repeat its question and the time and date we set 3 times. It also gets my name wrong, but I cannot correct it.

The next day (yes, this is a three day fucking affair now), the ai calls me and we fill the form. This takes 3 times as long as filling the form by myself WHICH I HAVE ALREADY DONE because this thing asks questions slowly and has to repeat all my answers back to me (which a human assistant would never have to do). It started using pounds instead of dollars halfway through for no reason. It misheard basically everything I said that wasn't a number, a yes, or a no, (yaaaaaay speech impediment!!!!!). It was fucking annoying and agonizing to have to basically fill the entire form via text to speech after I'd ALREADY filled the form on paper. A human assistant would've been able to achieve some sort of brevity during the interview by just saying the unique word in every question when the questionaire gets very repetitive. But noooooo, the native ai is way easier and more efficient than just filling it out and faxing it yourself because technology.

Anyway, the ai then tells me I will be called by a human representative to GO OVER ALL MY ANSWERS WITH ME. So not only is this now a FOUR DAY EVENT instead of just one day, I have to make THREE PHONE CALLS instead of just one, AND on top of filling the form out myself and filling it out via text to speech (agonizing), I now have to be called by a human rep anyway to go over all my answers FOR THE THIRD TIME.

“Any ideas for the new park sculpture?”

“How about a giant, metallic octopus attacking a rook?”