Political Things, April-June 02019.

Or something like that. This post can be excluded by excluding the "political links" tag from your Reading Page, if you are someone who has that option available to you.

( The pace of terrible things accelerates. )

Yet more (non)sense - May-June 02019

Greetings! It's time to start with the news that Botswana is joining the Century of the Fruitbat by decriminalizing gay sex!

The City of New York will honor activists Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who did excellent work at and post-Stonewall. This also means there will be black, trans, and Latina representation in statues intended to show more of the important women of the city. The riot at Stonewall was one in a series of activist responses to police harassment, social discrimination, and a lack of acceptance of queer culture.

Louisiana sets a minimum age for marriage, although as in many other states, it appears to have been more "make sure the pregnant teens are married" rather than any thought toward curbing marriage of those who have not reached the age of majority.

Which came first, the indications that someone could never succeed at femininity, the bullshit standards that ensure that failure, or the decision to stop trying to do the impossible? They're all related to each other, and sometimes, one seems to take the lead, but the others quickly catch up.

It certainly doesn't help that there's a lot of free-floating fatphobia, both internal and external, ready to attack women-looking bodies at any time.

( Enjoy the rest of the post! )

Last for tonight, an extended trailer of the Final Fantasy VII remake that includes new characters and their looks. The remake has done quite well for itself in terms of looking good, but I think that scrapper Tifa, as demonstrated in this demo, needs to have a more developed muscle profile commensurate with her strength. Tifa's not buff enough. As I saw elsewhere on Twitter, a thing to be wary of is that Barrett still looks and sounds like a stereotype of a black man as perceived by Japanese people watching U.S. popular culture.

OK Soda, an attempt by the Coca-Cola company to market to the cynics what Coca-Cola thought they wanted more of.

The significant differences in whether you have to name a child, and what names are acceptable, and whether names require the gender of the child.

An article that suggests people's ideas about how difficult or easy various magic spells are matches their opinion of how much violation of known physics those spells engage in, and therefore, their conception of how magical worlds look and work are fairly similar to how our nonmagical world does.

And one other thing - if you're stuck on a plot, or just need a good laugh, try out The Newberry Award-Winning Book Plot Generator, taking all the finest parts of books that have won the Newberry Medal since its inception and generating entirely new plots for people to write award bait books with.

Sunshine Challenge #1: Grab a Broom and a Mop

It's Sunshine Challenge time! A low-stakes, low-worries, participate-as-you-like event as the summer equivalent of the Fandom Snowflake Challenge that runs every January. A much more realxed pace to the things, as well, with challenge things happening every four days instead of every day. If snowflake_challenge seemed too frenetic to you, or you thought you wouldn't make it through all of them, and that was a disincentive to participation, hopefully sunshine_challenge will make things work.

So, here's the first challenge: Do Some Fannish Housecleaning.

Because a lot of the fun in these challenges is that other participants come say hi (or you go say hi to them) and there's a certain amount of "oh, hey, this is a cool person and I should subscribe to them" that often happens when you're taking a look around all the people who participate in these sorts of challenges. To make that job easier on everybody, it helps to have the material that people are going to look at out front and updated. At the challenge page, there are suggestions on what to do to make your space ready for visitors.

1. A Transformative Works Policy


2. Friending Policy


3. Interests (in profile) + Introductory “About Me” Sticky Page


4. Master Lists (of fic or recs or meta or just squee about the different things you like)


5. Post Tags (can also help people notice your interests at a glance)


6. Current Icons (these can also help advertise your fannish interests. Does anyone not love it when someone pounces just to say, "Love your icon! I love that show!")


7. Sidebar Links (do you have an AO3 or Tumblr page that people might like to visit?)


8. Access Filters (do you have personal and fandom filters to keep your posts locked?)

Most of which I now have covered in my sticky post about commenting culture, and the rest in the profile. I'm ready for visitors. And, at least at this point, the main types of posts that will appear here are conveniently arrayed underneath. That's fun all by itself.