This is only sort of a joke
I’ve never had any trouble keeping up with threads (whether or not I was in them) so I don’t really buy this excuse
maybe I’m typicalminding but
If you spend a shitton of time, sure.
If you are a mod who doesnt care for FM but has to check your whole thread, cuz it was flagged so many times, its hell.
If I were 20 percent pettier and 50 percent less worried about making us look bad I would get some of the people there to have long, thoughtful, productive, on-topic discussions and then report the posts for producing 16 minutes worth of content in a single day
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it’s not the actual rules that are the issue, it’s the fact they were foisted on the community without even consulting them
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that unwillingness to work out a solution with a small but active and dedicated subset of your community because they annoy you somehow is worth criticising
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anyway I should probably get back to writing my novel but I’m experiencing Writer’s Anxiety™ about the introduction of my new character
i feel an urge to make them non-binary but i’m struggling to find natural words to introduce them
for context, they’re human, because I’m not in the mood to handwave issues like that by making non-binary characters aliens
i could do a much better job introducing an aromantic/asexual character for… obvious reasons, but I already have an aroace character and quite frankly non-binary folks need the damn representation, even if it’s from a book that i’m writing for the sake of it
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because for context i’ve saddled myself with a framing device where the character writing the narrative is from the same time period, so I’m trying to figure out how to explain being non-binary in a society where said identity is already Reasonably™ accepted without coming across as exposit-y and preachy.
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conveniently I was writing one of my patented “explaining what I actually meant by my previous post” posts that answers this exact question
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believe me, merc, just because gendered adjectives aren’t a thing here it dosen’t make it easy to explain a relatively recent issue to a relatively igonorant audience while pretending to be from a more accepting time without it coming across as extremely weird
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hmmm idk
a cheap shenanigan like reading a book about the past and being shocked at how harsh that time was?
there’s also the springhole chat
Does the viewpoint character already know the non-binary character, or are they meeting them for the first time?
Do you know any other media with how NB charas are apresented in an environment where they belong?
i guess I could have somebody explain it to my matriarchal fishpeople hypergenius traditionalist monarchist alien race?
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they do actually have a name i just like referring to my species ideas using reductive and elaborate adjectives for comedy effect
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i mean it is the classic trick
pull in a convenient outsider to explain a concept you need explaining as the insider explains it to the outsider
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actual answer: the viewpoint character that my narrator is following most closely (due to the fact that the narrator’s father was the viewpoint character’s best friend) is already good friends with my new character
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I think i’ll have an alien come in and then mansplain to them but I won’t like it
it’d be as abhorrent to me as if the plot twist was that the main character and the main villain are rElAtEd???
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