So I haven’t posted about this since college because I don’t think it’s ever happened to me since I got out of college, but a recent conversation reminded me that it’s still negatively affecting lots of other people, so:
Lots of people find it distressing to be asked their pronouns. They might be trans and not out, or trans and out to some of the people present but not all of them, or not sure if they’re trans, or entirely cis and just really hate being asked to think about the question. I personally freak out about ‘preferred pronouns’ because it makes me go “uh, I don’t really prefer ‘she/her’, I’d much rather be parsed as a genderless amorphous being, but I don’t prefer that strongly enough to go through the hassle of trying to get people to actually see me that way, especially since I’m not really sure it’d work, and people will get confused by ‘they/them’, and if I express a pronoun preference then I’ll be more upset about people getting it wrong than if I don’t, and aaaaaahhh I prefer not to be in a social context where I have to have this thought process it makes me sad!!!”
Other people find it affirming, and that’s legitimate too. There are definitely competing needs here. But I think, since there are competing needs, you at least need to allow for an exit strategy for the people who will be harmed by pressure to come up with an answer.
So: “nametags are here, also feel free to put pronouns on your nametag if you want” is great. “nametags are here, put your name and pronouns!” or “why aren’t there pronouns on your nametag?” are going to cause stress and potentially cause harm.
“Share any of ‘favorite animal, best concert you’ve been to recently, and preferred pronouns, but feel free to skip any of those if you’re coming up empty’” is a decent way to handle competing needs if you’re doing “go around in a circle and introduce yourself”. And if you’re doing introductions with pronouns and someone doesn’t volunteer a pronoun, don’t remind them; the risk they skipped it on purpose and you’re putting them on the spot is not worth the benefits of getting an answer if they just forgot.
Gender sucks. When we’re trying to make it better for people, we need to keep making sure there are doors open to flee screaming ‘aaaah fuck gender’.
Frogs don’t actually have long zappy tongues like in cartoons. Instead, the tongue is anchored in the front of the mouth, rather than the back, and can be flipped out like this to grab nearby food.
I can 100% guarantee you that bird is doing this on purpose. It may not have initially known what a windshield wiper does, but it knows now, and it is enjoying that.
Expository dialogue techniques that don’t rely on characters randomly explaining things to each other that they should already know, but do rely on your characters being obnoxious gits:
1. Character A fucks something up hilariously; character B upbraids them at great length about exactly what they did wrong.
2. Character A wildly misreads a situation; character B corrects their misconceptions.
3. Character A tells a complicated and implausible lie; character B points out the obvious holes in their story.
4. Character A can’t find their destination; character B provides rambling and discursive directions.
5. Character A has a straightforward question; character B requests a series of extremely pedantic clarifications.
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