Month: October 2016

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

I can’t remember now who it was (I know @sinesalvatorem has been talking about school lately, but I think it was before that) who was talking about the overly large grip the school system has on society, and gave the example of how “what grade are you in?” is often used instead of “how old are you?”. I was thinking this morning* about that, about my own attempts to navigate the dreaded “what grade are you in” question as a homeschooled child.

At first, when I was very young, I would just freeze in confusion. I had no idea what they wanted from me.

Eventually I learned it was a weirdly convoluted way of asking for my age. I didn’t think in grades, I thought in years. Sometimes, if I could remember the age–>grade translation algorithm well enough (it was hard to keep straight even at the best of times), I would translate for them. Other times I would try to cut to the point and give them my age in years. (Occasionally I’d get persistent people who would keep asking for a grade after being told an age. Usually I tried to explain that that’s not generally a meaningful question when you’re homeschooled**, either in that abstract way or–if I could remember the grade levels involved–saying things like “well, my math and history textbooks are designed for Xth grade, my spelling workbook for Zth grade, my writing textbook for Wth grade…”)

This all got worse after I moved to Canada, because it turns out that by Canadian standards I was born on a different side of the school birthday cutoff. While homeschooled grade levels are, as I said earlier, generally flexible, my parents had taken the lead of the American school system and started me on a kindergarten program at the same time I would have started public kindergarten, shortly before I turned six. While the grade levels of my textbooks soon diversified according to my abilities, there was a rough trajectory based on this starting point. In Canada, the birthday cutoff is in December instead of September, and a Canadian kindergarten would have wanted me shortly before I turned five.

There was no simple translation anymore, not even at the best of times. If I told them my grade, they would think of me as younger than I was. If I told them my age, they would think of me as older than I was. If I told them both, they would think to themselves “ah, she was held back a grade”, lower their estimation of my intelligence, and view me through that lens.

In an attempt to avoid all of these outcomes, I started to use longer explanations more often. For a couple of years in my mid-teens, the explanations began with “I lost count at 9th grade”, because frankly I had. I didn’t bother trying to get a grip on it again; what would it help if I were going to have to do the whole explanation anyway?

When I joined Girl Guides, soon after moving, I was placed by grade. I was placed according to the grade I was “actually in”, not the grade I “would have been in” if I’d been raised in Canada. I was a year older than people expected of me, and it tripped them up, especially in my last year after I reached age of majority.

(”You forgot the ‘parent or guardian signature’ bit on this form.”

“I’m eighteen. I am my guardian.”

“Oh, right.”)

—

This sort of thing seems to be a common problem across a lot of people whose lives are weird in some way. Somebody asks you what they think is a simple question, expecting a simple answer, and you’re like “oh god, do I lie? do I say something technically true but highly misleading? do I dodge the question? do I give a short answer with lots of implied weirdness*** that raises more questions than it solves? do I launch into an explanation of why [it’s not a meaningful question]/[it’s more complicated than that]?”

—

*An hour before waking-up time, goddammit brain.

**Sometimes you get homeschoolers who try to be very rigid and follow a strict grade system, but most of them loosen up before long and the ones who don’t are considered kind of weird.

***Example: “I’m on vacation between Xth and Yth grades,” says a child in October.

Tags:

#oh look an original post #our home and cherished land #I should probably get a homeschooling tag #I’ll go for something obvious #homeschool

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

glumshoe:

fixkit:

glumshoe:

Concept: Great Old Ones arranged from most to least fuckable.

OKAY PEOPLE, SIT DOWN, BECAUSE I MADE A LIST. I even made a list with REASONS. Fuck yeah I’ve been waiting for someone to ask about the fuckability of the Mythos deities for a long time.

Pretty sure these aren’t all Great Old Ones but I don’t care.

Azathoth – The Seething Nuclear Chaos, the Blind Idiot God, being faced with him would destroy your mind and he wouldn’t notice you anyway. Probably one of the least fuckable. You kinda want your partner to at least be aware that you’re there. And not make you lose it.

Nyarlathotep – Dude. Dude. Have you seen the number of FORMS this guy can take? And how much special attention he pays a human when he chooses that human to take interest in?  I imagine he has something for everybody, he’d be fully focused on you, it could blow your mind. GO FOR IT.

Shub-Niggurath – The All-Mother, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, the lady who is often portrayed as either a shifting mass of genitals or VERY satyr-like? Her cult is lucky as hell and you’d be lucky to be part of it. There’s no way she doesn’t top this list.

Yog-Sothoth – Canonically had sex with and twin children by a human woman without her dying or going mad as a result, so this seems like a pretty safe bet. Might not be your most interesting option personality-wise, but I bet that form is hot as fuck if you’re at all xeno, which. If you’re not, why are you even interested in a list of Most Fuckable Great Old Ones? Get outta here.

Hastur – I have no solid reason for wanting to say that Hastur is eminantly fuckable, but good lord I imagine they must be. I want to say this would be an intense and fun experience. Maybe because they come across as a muse to me, associated with writers and actors as they are.

Hydra and/or Dagon – Mother and Father of the Deep Ones, the Deep Ones being fish people who totally do get married to, fuck, and have children with humans, so your odds are good. They’re also apparently super huge so if you’re into size kink along with your xeno then that’ll be fun for you. If you did have kids via either of them they’d be great parents, too, which is always a plus.

Cthulhu – Dead Cthulhu Lies Dreaming deep under the ocean, and when he wakes up he’s gonna go on that huge rampage of his, so, eh. Of course, eventually when things settle down he and his peeps will be teaching and mentoring humanity in its ascension to becoming Something Else, so after that whole scenario there’s some kinky mentor potential, but that’d depend on his awakening happening in your lifetime and you surviving it, so.

Atlach-Natcha – I mean, on the one hand, giant spider with a human face. Doesn’t seem incredibly fuckable by that description, even for xeno furries like myself. On the other hand, she spins the web that connects the waking world to the Dreamlands, so if she wanted I bet you could have some crazy sex dreams. That sounds amazing so I’m gonna say it counts and you should go for it.

Tsathoggua – Huge bat-toad, which honestly just makes him sound super cute. May or may not eat sacrifices, but hey. I like those odds. [finger-guns] He’s also super into self-indulgence and is very intelligent, though lazy. If he wanted to I bet the sex could be great, given that he’d want to indulge himself and encourage you indulging yourself.

Mordiggian – The Charnal God, the Great Ghoul, so like, his form is either a giant mass of darkness straight-up or probably something skeletal or ghoulish. He’s probably not going to be interested in fucking anybody, is what I’m saying here. Even if he went along with it, how would that work without being kinda gross? Necrophilia is where I draw a line, sorry. Fucking this one is unlikely.

Yig – I mean, “a serpent man, serpent with bat-like wings, or… a giant snake” sounds pretty damn hot to me (told you I was a xeno furry). And he’s apparently as easily pleased as he is easy to anger, and as long as you don’t kill any snakes you should be just fine, that seems to be his one rage button.

Daoloth – I mean he’s basically a complex, indescribable shape/mass of metal that transports you to a bizzare and alien world if he touches you, is constantly growing if not held within containment (while in this universe) so could accidentally just… kill everything, and if you actually look at him (ie if things aren’t in pitch black) you lose your mind. While the darkness part makes me want to find SOME way to say this would be kinky, I just don’t think there’s any way it could work. Sorry, you can’t fuck geometry this time.

Cthugha – He’s a giant ball of fire. Even if you like temperature play, fire during sex, things like that, I’m just not sure how this one would work. It would have to involve masturbation with Cthugha nearby, or you having sex with someone else while he voyeurs, or something. Not super fuckable himself.

Y’Golonac – With a name like “the Defiler” you know this one’s gonna be good. Y’Golonac is “the god of perversion and depravity,” a sadist, he encourages “depravity” in humans, and he has a mouth in each palm and is at least sometimes portrayed as having a mouth at his crotch as well. I’m betting he’s a fuckin’ AMAZING Dom, is what I’m saying.

Gla’aki – On the one hand, all his worshippers are undead, because if you touch one of his spines you die and turn undead and join his hivemind. Also he’s a giant slug covered in spines. So I’m not sure how that’d work, but on the OTHER hand, he’s apparently intensely smart, so he might be able to think of some way to make it work himself, and some people find hivemind stuff kinky, so if being a zombie doesn’t bother you, idk. I don’t know your life.

Abhoth – Don’t. You’ll get an infection.

Ithaqua – Another giant, so great for size kink, and if you join his cult you won’t be affected by the cold, so the arctic wastes will become a great potential for mild temperature play, so there’s that. Again he may or may not eat people, but on the other hand, he’s apparently tried to reproduce a lot because he’s incredibly lonely, and there’s, like, some bullshit romance novel potential right there. But if you want to stay on Earth, I wouldn’t.

Yegg Ha – If you find Nightgaunts sexy, this is the god for you! And who doesn’t find the faceless, totally silent, super strong, winged nightgaunts sexy? I’m betting this one’s super into tickle play, though, so if that does nothing for you, maybe refrain.

Tru’nembra – Living noise. It’s also possible he’s not really aware of what decible level humans can handle, given that he’s described “with soundwaves louder then ever recorded blasting off of the shimmering mass of air he would manifest in.” Even if he was quieter, though, not sure how sex would actually work. Maybe he could be your mood music/horrible background porn soundtrack, but like with Cthugha, sex with him wouldn’t actually be a thing.

Yidhra – A “beautiful, awesome, and terrible earth-mother” who is regularly being reborn, the fact that she’s another lady (lady deities are RARE in the Mythos wow) made me want to add her, and when I saw that she’s fuckin’ telepathic and an an illusionist I knew I had made a good choice. Can you imagine all the ways someone could use telepathy and illusions during sex? The only downside is that she doesn’t seem very xeno. Maybe more like fucking a classical goddess or someone with superpowers. Still, fuckin’ awesome.

SO MY FINAL LIST, IN ORDER FROM MOST TO LEAST FUCKABLE:

1. Shub-Niggurath
2. Nyarlathotep
3. Y’Golonac
4. Hastur
5. Hydra and/or Dagon
6. Atlach-Natcha
7. Yog-Sothoth
8. Tsathoggua
9. Yidhra
10. Yig
11. Yegg Ha
12. Cthulhu
13. Ithaqua
14. Mordiggian
15. Gla’aki
16. Cthugha
17. Tru’nembra
18. Azathoth
19. Daoloth
20. Abhoth

HELL YEAH.

You know that moment when you see a notification on your dashboard, informing you that the reblog of your dreams has finally happened?

I disagree with some of the final list here, but I’m so glad someone finally engaged with me on this in a well-reasoned and considerate way.

Tags:

#nsfw text #Lovecraft #oh my god #somebody actually wrote a list #I saw the concept getting passed around before but nobody had actually taken them up on it #I don’t even really know this fandom #(and I probably don’t want to because I hate horror) #but I’m weirdly glad that this exists

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

day-glow-odyssey:

Tags:

#pretty things #recursion #I like how it looks like a three-dimensional corridor #it kind of reminds me of a shinier version of those corridors you walk through to get on an airplane #or a more abstract (and also shinier) version of the corridor #that leads you away from Space Mountain after you finish the ride

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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Justice-Turtle Icon

@justice-turtle​ replied to your post : (under a cut because I reserve the right to delete…

(having trouble getting the usual reply blockquote to work, so I’ll italicise instead)

I keep wondering if a certain type of verbally-oriented autistic is the only person who actually questions – maybe who CAN actually question – feelings and assumptions that everyone else seems to take as bedrock. :P It’s a discouraging possibility.

(also: emigrant from an overtly hierarchical society here. I can attest you still get told the problem is with you if you don’t fit in, questioning the people who have power is still dangerous, it’s only those OTHER societies (communist russia anyone?) whose different trappings on the same structure make them problematic, and everyone else insists they actually feel the way they’re programmed to. I don’t know. Neurotypicals are weird. :P)

Sorry, I’m babbling. What I’m trying to say is: apart from the specifically anti-authoritarian trappings, this all sounds startlingly familiar given how opposite our cultures are. Like, very specifically familiar in individual details. Does everybody actually live in the same sort of toxic power structure and out-group everyone else so thoroughly they can’t recognize it? I feel like that kind of thinking is awfully… like, “I am special, I see what others can’t”, kind of attitude, but (cont.)

(cont.) but I haven’t got an alternate paradigm that would still fit these parts of the evidence.

I did wonder if “the problem is with you” was too negative a way of putting it, given that the contexts I originally encountered the idea in were autism (generally a positively-connotated trait around here) and asexuality (grey area, but while some people say asexuals have equal status with straights (that is, no status), the people talking about growing up feeling like all allosexuals were lying aren’t those same people). In such cases, it isn’t the trait itself they consider a problem, just that it’s harder to navigate being surrounded by people unlike you if you don’t even know they’re unlike you, let alone how to account for it.

Part of me feels like a society where questioning your superiors is genuinely permitted is too much to hope for, and a more feasible goal is a society that doesn’t pretend questioning is allowed but then punish you if you actually do it. That would be the point of moving to an overtly hierarchical culture: not an attempt to reduce the total number or restrictiveness of rules, but an attempt to increase the number of written rules and correspondingly reduce the number of unwritten ones, and especially instances like questioning, where written and unwritten rules contradict each other. (The opposite of the usual description of hypocrisy: “do as I do, not as I say”.) That you still got everyone insisting they actually felt as they were programmed to is a bad sign for that idea, though.

Re: “I am special, I see what others can’t”, it kind of seems more like missing something, some aspect of morality that would allow for the proper sincerity…but I remember you saying something about how you used to believe you were sociopathic, and that you don’t think that anymore. Was that a similar thing?

—

Relatedly, a few months ago @deusvulture (who I’m apparently not allowed to ping) wrote a post speculating on ideological “hobbits”. Like The Authoritarians, the post assumes no members of the group it’s talking about are in the audience; unlike The Authoritarians, it tries not to call its subjects inferior beings who are likely to get us all killed.

The post stayed with me because my reaction to it was “damn, where do I sign up?”. Pay lip service to a given hierarchy, turn up when it’s in need of sheer numbers in ways that don’t require you to put yourself in harm’s way, perhaps use some of its dialect in a non-status-y way when casually chatting with friends, but mostly you and it ignore each other. It sounds too good to be true.

Tags:

#justice turtle #replies #our roads may be golden or broken or lost

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

(under a cut because I reserve the right to delete this)

The hierarchy whose rule you live under is a cruel one. You can’t tell whether it’s unusually cruel–you don’t know enough about the cruelty levels of other hierarchies–but it seems to you like the hierarchs are more cruel than necessary to maintain their positions.

It’s not that they hurt you physically. Some of them take pride in never hurting anyone physically, saying physical violence is categorically worse than emotional violence. (Sometimes, when you are feeling brave (which is to say, when your anger outweighs your common sense), you point out to them that a slap hurts less and heals faster than an insult. They never listen.) Others simply reserve it for crimes greater than those you have committed (which still, in its way, buys into the idea of physical violence being necessarily worse).

Instead, they play mind games. They forbid you from acknowledging what they are. They order you not to follow orders, tell you to shun anyone who admits they did things simply because they were ordered to, tell you you should do what they say because you sincerely believe their views are correct.

They ask you if you sincerely believe their views are correct. You say yes. It takes you a while to realise you don’t actually know what “sincere belief” means, but you know what you are expected to say. You keep saying yes.

You learn to find the powerful people by looking for the people talking about how powerless they are. They continue to call themselves powerless even as they punish their inferiors for insubordination. Only serfs speak of the power they hold, a power that never seems to actually manifest. One might think the serfs were safer, and they are in that they are less able to hurt you themselves, but you soon observe that most of them will turn informant for the hierarchs at the drop of a hat. They aren’t safe to question, either.

You know that your caste is near the bottom, but not quite at the bottom, of the hierarchy. There are a few scraps of power available to you, but you have trouble using them effectively. You aren’t a very good liar, and interacting with the power structure is all about lying. Out of practicality, you emphasise the inferior aspects of your caste instead. If you don’t try to claim power, people don’t check your lies as thoroughly, and it’s easier to get away with it.

The hierarchs speak, disparagingly, of other cultures where people “know their place”. The longer you live in your twisted homeland, speaking its twisted language, the more the honesty of “knowing one’s place” starts to sound refreshing, attractive.

You aren’t sure you could bear to defect. It’s not that you “sincerely believe” the enemy is wrong–you still don’t know what that means–but you are very aware of what things are safe and what things are not. You don’t know how long it would take that safety sensor to recalibrate for a new hierarchy, to stop screaming that every word people said and every action they took was painting a gigantic target on themselves and everyone around them. You don’t know how long it would take you to stop looking over your shoulder, expecting the enforcers to show up at any moment. Maybe you would never stop. And conversely, you aren’t confident of the enemy’s rules, of how to navigate a foreign land without setting off their enforcers.

(Not to mention the purely logistical issues: if you were to defect, you would then be living in and dependent upon an enemy household.)

Still, you look. Cautiously, you peek at the closest of the cultures the hierarchs decried for having too overt a hierarchy. You try to ignore the screaming of your safety sensor long enough to get a look at them, though it is hard.

You find they are no different. Oh, they wear different colours, speak a different jargon, but they, too, portray themselves as people who fight for freedom and justice and equality. They speak, disparagingly, of your culture, where people know their place.

(You begin to suspect that the existence of overtly hierarchical cultures is a myth, is some sort of propaganda, but you know it’s possible you didn’t look far enough afield. It’s hard enough, though, to think of moving to the nearest culture. You doubt you could bear moving farther out, and you aren’t sure you can even stand to think about it too hard.)

They say that when it seems like the whole world is lying about something, you should start to wonder if maybe the problem is with you. (They say this in the context of being things like autistic or asexual, but it gets you thinking.) Maybe there’s something different about you, something fundamental, something that leaves you unable to understand the thought processes others are using.

(Nobody ever drops character, even in small groups of close friends. Sometimes, when you think the group of friends might be small enough and close enough, you drop character yourself and encourage them to do the same. They always react badly, always insist that they are not playing a part. Maybe they mean it? What would it even mean to mean it?)

A while ago, you read a book. It was a study of the enemy, a study of the alien. It portrayed itself as such, referred to the people it studied in the third person, spoke with an assumption that you, the reader, would not understand the thought processes the people studied were using, and would not look kindly upon those who used them.

And they were clearly foreign. They did speak a different jargon, associated their castes with different traits. The book treated the jargon and the castes and the thought processes as being inextricably linked. That equivocation obscured things, but you still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that you understood the alien thoughts, the alien motivations, better than your own people’s.

You aren’t sure which possibility scares you more: that everyone around you is lying, or that they are all telling the truth.

Tags:

#here is the post from my thoughts last night #though it’s not the first time I’ve thought about it #political terms tend to be very fuzzy #meaning several sometimes contradictory things at once #often not distinguishable by context #I can’t usually tell what exactly people mean when they say ”authoritarian” #but this is what I think about when they say it #oh look an original post #our roads may be golden or broken or lost

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

My thoughts sometimes (or maybe “often”; I’m not sure which way to categorise it) write themselves in forms resembling blog posts. They’ve done this sort of thing for a long time, but now that I have a Tumblr they’re often more specifically Tumblr posts.

Some of them I adapt into diary entries (particularly the ones that might not actually make any sense to other people), some into forum comments. Occasionally there is one sufficiently standalone (and relatively unlikely to start a flamewar) that I can actually use it in its original form. Many require jumping-off points that don’t actually exist; once in a blue moon, I stumble across roughly the right jumping-off point after the fact and manage to dig through my memory and find the prepared response I now have an excuse to give. Many never leave my head: things I wanted to say to people, but never found a good opportunity, or was too afraid, or was simply worried nobody wanted to hear.

I don’t know what to do about wanting to write but not having a good enough excuse to give people the words I have. I don’t know if there’s anything I should do.

Tags:

#(and yes this post is itself an example of what it’s talking about) #(though I made some tweaks to the wording as I was writing it down) #(this one is fresh and the phrasing hadn’t fully settled yet anyway) #oh look an original post

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