holy FUCK do you think a baby raised from birth in a vr headset playing a game of minecraft would eventually develop neural pathways associated with pain every time they took damage in game
her pants have lime blood on it. This means that its before condesce committed genocide of the whole lime blood caste. This also means its entirely possible that its during the time when GHB was still in power.
(pic attached) it’s olive! :O
pic attatched
its between lime and olive. considering the shade of her pants it stands to reason its lime on a dark surface.
Speaking of the “only fuchsia to make it to adulthood” thing, I’m fascinated by the contrast between Trizza as the heiress and Feferi as the heiress?
And also kind of sad.
Because while we haven’t seen much of Trizza herself yet, we have gotten a glimpse of the style of her rule, and well… she’s ruling. Not fairly, not well, arguably not sustainable, but she is openly ruling the planet and she’s making use of what seems to be a lot of official infrastructure, particularly the use of imperial drones and her heavy-handed media presence. And while she’s got some adolescent revolutionaries plotting against her she doesn’t seem to be facing any kind of official censure for her actions.
Feferi, by contrast, is at most a sweep or two younger when she enters Sgrub, and she’s… not ruling the planet. She’s barely keeping Gl'bgolyb fed, and she doesn’t seem to be using any of the resources Trizza does, but we’re told that she’s already actively fending off assassination attempts which she has reason to believe are imperially sanctioned.
I don’t think Trizza actually expects to ever rule anything except Alternia. She hasn’t bothered to court anything resembling positive public opinion among her peers, she depends heavily on a (probably automated? It’s hard to say exactly what the drones are) private army which is, essentially, borrowed from an empress who will one day want to eliminate her, and her long-term goals are so opaque that I suspect they don’t actually exist. Feferi fully intends to make a bid for the throne, and as such appears to have led a positively spartan childhood that leaves significantly fewer vulnerabilities for the Condesce to exploit, and this is freaking the Condesce the hell out.
The other thing about the word “queer” is that almost everyone I’ve seen opposed to it have been cis, binary gays and lesbians. Not wanting it applied to yourself is fine, but I think people underestimate the appeal of vague, inclusive terminology when they already have language to easily and non-invasively describe themselves.
Saying “I’m gay/lesbian/bi” is pretty simple. Just about everyone knows what you mean, and you quickly establish yourself as a member of a community. Saying “I’m a trans nonbinary bi woman who’s celibate due to dysphoria and possibly on the ace spectrum”… not so much. You’re lucky to find anyone who understands even half of that, and explaining it requires revealing a ton of personal information. The appeal of “queer” is being able to identify yourself without profiling yourself. It’s welcoming and functional terminology to those who do not have the luxury of simplified language and occupy complicated identities. *That’s* why people use it - there are currently not alternatives to express the same sentiment.
It’s not people “oppressing themselves” or naively and irresponsibly using a word with loaded history. It’s easy to dismiss it as bad or unnecessary if you already have the luxury of language to comfortably describe yourself.
There’s another dimension that always, always gets overlooked in contemporary discussions about the word “queer:” class. The last paragraph here reminds me of a old quote: “rich lesbians are ‘sapphic,’ poor lesbians are ‘dykes’.”
The reclaiming of the slur “queer” was an intensely political process, and people who came up during the 90s, or who came up mostly around people who did so, were divided on class and political lines on questions of assimilation into straight capitalist society.
Bourgeois gays and lesbians already had “the luxury of language” to describe themselves - normalized through struggle, thanks to groups like the Gay Liberation Front.
Everyone else, from poor gays and lesbians to bi and trans people and so on, had no such language. These people were the ones for whom social/economic assimilation was not an option.
The only language left, the only word which united this particular underclass, was “queer.” “Queer” came to mean an opposition to assimilation - to straight culture, capitalism, patriarchy, and to upper class gays and lesbians who wanted to throw the rest of us under the bus for a seat at that table - and a solidarity among those marginalized for their sexuality/gender id/presentation.
(Groups which reclaimed “queer,” like Queer Patrol (armed against homophobic violence), (Queers) Bash Back! (action and theory against fascism, homophobia, and transphobia), and Queerbomb (in response to corporate/state co-optation of mainstream Gay Pride), were “ultraleft,” working-class, anti-capitalist, and functioned around solidarity and direct action.)
The contemporary discourse around “queer” as a reclaimed-or-not slur both ignores and reproduces this history. The most marginalized among us, as OP notes, need this language. The ones who have problems with it are, generally, among those who have language - or “community,” or social/economic/political support - of their own.
