it's approximately 1:47 a.m. and I'm very very tiredI am positioned in a way that when I lose consciousness My body will go limp and I will press the post button. If you are reading this I have transcended to sleep. goodnight

I know a lot of writers like to act like their characters are fully fledged real people who popped fully formed into their head, but they're not. you invented them. and you should interrogate why you made them the way you did. why do they look like that? why do they have those personality traits? what inspired them? what characters are they similar to? why do you as the author treat them like that?

because you are not infallible. you absorb stereotypes from the world around you. and if you don't spend time interrogating your thought process, you will spit up reductive bullshit and create bad characters and storylines because of it.

in most cases, there is nothing inherently wrong with a character conforming to a particular stereotype. if you have an actual explanation for why your female character is the team mom or why your villain is gay, okay. there are ways to have those characters that does something for the story you're telling. but you have to be aware and compensate for the stereotypes in order to avoid perpetuating them.

and even before you do that, you should be asking yourself why? why is the girl the team mom? it might be in character for her, but you picked her personality. why did you pick it? why is the villain gay? does it add anything? a good writer should be able to explain their character choices and how those choices matter to the story they're trying to tell. if someone asks why the black girl is the only one who dies, and you don't have a solid answer, you need to change some stuff.

And let's kick off the new year with some more FemShawson!!

recently while poking around a little on reddit (mistake), i discovered a post on a subreddit called something along the lines of 'leftwingmen' discussing frustration with progressive people refusing to entertain misandry as a concept. this was about as hilarious and pathetic as you would expect, but the top comment suggested using 'trans*ndrophobia' as a foot in the door to get people to admit to the existence of misandry and leverage from there. it is unsurprising and we have known this for some time, but it is still unsettling to see tboy gamergate being uplifted by the same demographic who gave us the original.

someone in the tags expressed a little incredulity, which I suppose is fair, so I went back to check my work. I did actually make a mistake in this post, - it's not the top comment, it's comment number four when sorted by most upvotes. The screenshot attached has it highlighted, which is why it's showing up first.

This is not a symbol of hate. This is a child who has run out of words like our children here.

When a child in Gaza raises his middle finger, it isn’t rudeness or rebellion. It’s a breaking point. A hungry child, cold, living in a tent that cannot protect him from rain or fear. That gesture is the last thing left when there is no voice left in the chest.

People will argue about politics, but our children here don’t know them.

They know the cold that wakes them at night, the long wait for food, the faces that disappear and never return. This child is not an isolated case he is the image of every child here, carrying the same silent question in their eyes: why were we left alone?

If you are seeing this, don’t turn away.

Our children are not asking for pity they are asking for a chance to survive. A share, a reblog, or a small act of support could mean warmth, food, or one night without tears for a child here in Gaza.

my corner store guy is a 50 year old man who's my best friend in the world and recently he was like "you're too pretty to be single I have some nephews you should meet. very handsome!" and I was like "a niece might be more up my alley" and he just got more excited and said "ah even better! I was overselling my nephews but my nieces are very beautiful"

OP the tags!!

currently addicted to r/TVTooHigh

some real hits in here

i got a 100% on this bostonian-to-english quiz but i grew up near boston..... i'm curious what you guys get. there's a couple things in here i didn't even know are regionalisms + a couple things i hadn't heard before but could parse pretty easily from context. tag/reply with what you got and if you're familiar with the area or not!

for you and your warped reflection

If you are on a Windows 11 computer, pause everything you are doing for one minute and:

"But Mx. November, it says right there Microsoft doesn't collect the typing insights data!"

I mean, yeah, it says that..... for *now.*

It also only specifies that Microsoft themselves don't collect it, and they wouldn't have made this something that I was automatically, secretly opted in for without my knowledge if they didn't have something to be gained by me not knowing it exists!

I only found this because a cat walked on the keyboard and turned on Filter Keys and while trying to figure out why my keyboard was just making chirping noises instead of typing, I happened to click on "typing insights" by accident.

Generative AI, and especially AI that is used to "personalize" and track your activity across the web and on your computer are never going to be in your best interest, it is always going to serve these companies in whatever way will line their pockets the most, and all it takes is updating their terms of service once, and then all of that data they promised they weren't collecting suddenly all belongs to them.