Envoy of the Ayatan

It keeps happening!

And by It, I mean, people who have no problem using He pronouns with strangers and friends, referring to me as They. People that interact with me frequently enough to know how I identify, referring to me, as They.

'Oh but I use They for anyone'

Incorrect!

Every time I've been referred to as They, it was by someone that has no such hiccup referring to any that uses He, as that.

Which means one of two things: Either you have an aversion to using She even for those that want it, or you do not percieve me as a woman. One of these things hurts a lot more than the other.

I've never been a They. I love identifying as a woman, it brings me joy to identify and express womanhood in my own way. And it pains me every time someone I thought knew me, denies me that identity.

Sometimes I wonder if some of the people that do it, think they're doing me a favor. Like I read like all the other She-Turned-They mutuals in our social circle and maybe these people assume I'm the same because I don't read 'feminine' and are attempting to 'validate' that, but it's the opposite of validating.

I'm not nonbinary, I'm not agender. These labels do not give me joy, and make me feel alienated when used to refer to me by people I thought knew me even a little bit. I am a woman, I love being a woman, especially being a woman My way. Being gender nonconforming doesn't remove my identity as a woman.

Many years ago, as a teenager, my mom had someone she knew at worked that claimed they knew someone in animation that could potentially get me into an internship or whatever. I, being excited at the prospect and not thinking any better, gave my mom a collection of art work to give to this person while she was away for work. It was a single, small 20 page sketch book and a few individual pieces. I, naively, thought, 'those pictures were scanned, it'll be fine'

cut to years later, I never heard of the job prospect, I asked over and over again for my art back. My mom's contact with them was limited, mostly through work, and it's not like ubiquitous online access was really a thing at the time. They were 3 hours away so we couldn't go pick it up. I offered to pay whatever it was that was needed to mail my art back, even if I had to send that via mail, myself. And nothing

Yesterday I texted my mom, asking her if she remembered the name of the people that I gave my art to. She did not.

For a long time I held out some hope that I'd be reunited with my old art. Finally asking the question and getting an answer like that, trying to take that as a signal to stop holding out for that hope and move on. Every piece of my art is basically a little piece of my soul, I hate the idea of loosing even the poor doodles and failed attempts. My heart aches to know that I will never hold those pieces again, in my hands, that I'll never be able to walk down that. It hurts even more to consider that the person in possession of those pieces, likely will never grasp how important they are, likely tossed in the trash years ago during a clean-out.

Nothing to do but just to be sad about it and preserve the last remaining remnants of the pieces in question.

so I've come to complain about ~Tone Indicators~

If you've seen people use stuff like /srs and /pos at the end of their sentences, these are tone indicators. They're getting more popular among younger users and frankly, I very much do not like them, and I don't think they really serve any benefit.

Some might say to this, 'what about Neurodivergent people that can't read tone in text?' and to that I say literally no one can read tone in text. It's not a thing that Neurotypical people get and Neurodivergent people don't get, it's a thing literally everyone has a problem with. It is entirely the reason why the smiley face :) in text, became a thing!!!

People have been using emojis for emotional inference since communicating over the internet was even a thing. Emojis have evolved more and more to help us communicate feelings in ways text could not and access to emojis and the valuable communication tool they provide has expanded more and more across our devices. It makes no sense to shirk these options for a clunkier and less universal option of Tone Indicators.

The thing that also bugs me is that it feels more like the same type of neurotypical invisible social rule setting I'm expected to just Get that I struggled with growing up. (because I myself am on the autistic spectrum) If you want something to genuinely help neuro-divergent people with something, the way you go about it is not with something that has to be understood with a key. You do it by speaking clearly and intentionally, by saying exactly what you mean.

And this doesn't even begin to cover people that don't speak English as a first language. You can argue that some of the meanings of the / can be easily inferred but that's only true if you're around English enough. You can't start throwing tone indicators at everyone and just expect them to have the same grasp of English as you do. This is why emojis have been more persistent and more important to expand, as it's able to communicate things that can be inferred without the knowledge of English. (are they western centric? Sure. But they still have a wider range than tone indicators ever could.)

'but what if you want to make sure a stranger knows you're being sarcastic or positive.'
So like, here's the thing, it's probably best to avoid sarcastic jokes with people you don't know. You don't know each other's speech patterns and often sarcastic jokes can be unnecessarily 'familiar' with a person you're not familiar with. And in the case, just say what you mean. Instead of /pos you can just say 'I mean this in a positive way' or 'asking genuinely' instead of /gen. There's no secret code to unpack here, it's something ESL people can understand, and it communicates your intent clearly.

And I guess on the other side of the fence 'how am I supposed to understand a person's intent if they don't have tone indicators'
You... you communicate with them.

Like first a tip on approaching the internet in general: Try reading more things as neutral as a default.

'But I've had people that used neutral tones that didn't mean it'
Yes I'm sure you have, I'm sure many people have, I have too! But I swear to you, not every single person on the internet is your manipulative parent/sibling/grandparent/friend/partner/coworker/boss that you have to look out for. You benefit more to read others more often as neutral than you do to read everyone as your potential enemy. And if you're unsure of someone's intent/tone, ask???? Tone indicators don't fix basic communication skills people need to work on. Asking people what they mean and giving yourselves and them, space to explain how things read, benefit all people.

If you see something that when you read it, you realize it could be read as both genuine or sardonic, ask! 'did you mean this genuinely or are you being sardonic?' If they're genuine they'll be more than happy to elaborate further to clear up any mixup because they're genuine. But if they're being sardonic or cruel they'll either double down or bite back or even reverse the accusation on you. In fact, you can learn a lot more about asking the intent of something than if you just let a tone indicator do the heavy lifting for you.

Also, tone indicators don't save you from people using those maliciously. They did it with emoji's they're do it with tone indicators. They really don't enhance clarity or communication at all.

Humorous Addendum: I am autistic and have been online since 1997 and still it took me 10+ years to find out what IIRC (if I recall correctly), FTR (for that reason), FWIW (for what it's worth), all meant, and you expect me to intrinsically know anywhere from 10-20 or more brand new acronyms and word shortenings? Are you kidding me?

I get fed up really fast with a piece of media constantly telling me how attractive a woman is. I hate when that is an ingrained feature of the character when the media/genre the person is in, is supposed to be some sort of serious or action based setting. (if the setting/genre is already supposed to be inherently sexual, like that's its goal, then that's a different matter entirely) Like, being attractive and people being attracted to a person as a concept is not what bothers me, it's this framing that's difficult to describe.

Like if you compare how men's attractiveness is framed, their autonomy in it and how other people treat them is different. When men are attractive, they aren't constantly told how 'dangerous' it is for them to be attractive, unless it's paired with some sort of haha ball-and-chain having a relationship, thing. Women are usually shown being twitterpated and bashful, and it's usually in a setting where the behavior is already desired, but the men's being attractive to others is not framed as something inherently dangerous for them, it's a show of prowess and status.

With women it's always about how sexy or how pretty they are, the media tries to remind the audience, they're sexy, the women are told how dangerous it is that they're sexy so that you, the audience, know how important it is that she can defend her honor against leches to make them seem like Real Strong Independent Women. BTW did you know they're sexy? I'd really just like it if physical attraction was something in the background if it exists, or if the attraction was also combined with the impressiveness of one's skill, SPECIFICALLY where the skill is still more important than the physical appearance.

This is why I emphasized so strongly when looking for music about aggressive women that the lyrics should not mention anything about how sexy or attractive they are, because if I look up that same kind of tone of music for men, their attractiveness is almost never a factor into how they're dangerous. And no I don't want to get rid of it, people like it and they can have it, I just want some options I can relate to, something more neutral leaning.

Some may argue 'well I would like it if men's sexiness was framed like a woman's' and that's fine! That's good! I'd honestly welcome that because it'd put things on a level playing field and the things that piss me off wouldn't stand out as much. I'm not upset that it exists in general, I'm not saying we should get rid of it, I'm upset that I have so few options where it doesn't exist.

Don't Give Unsolicited Advice

I don't see what's complicated about this statement. Have a discussion, ask first, or don't engage if you can't tell. Sometimes learning when to not engage, is an important skill.

Yes, it could be argued that 'well telling people what to do isn't advice' and I would agree! 'so you should make your statement about how you shouldn't tell people what to do' Which is valid BUT the amount of people do that and are of the impression in their mind that they're giving advice through telling people what to do. And instead of discussing how invasive that is, all they'll do is argue about how it's Advice and it's acceptable No Matter What. In fact some people's expectation to give people 'advice' often overtakes the needs and boundaries of others just so that they can feel good about themselves.

If you don't do that, good great. I give advice to people too! Sometimes I've done it off the handle by accident! People do that by accident, that's fine, I'd be a hypocrite if I said it wasn't acceptable. The important part is that when someone says they don't want it or don't want to carry the conversation further, YOU STOP. That's literally all you have to do, apologize, and see if maybe what they need is just to vent or whatever. Very simple. Like, if you couldn't tell before, and someone tells you in some form that your advice was not desired, even if you didn't realize what you were doing, at least level with them, apologize, don't grind your feet into the ground and defend why they are Supposed to hear it.

A certain ex friend loved to 'advise' me things that I stated repeatedly I was not capable of doing with my means available and I was reprimanded for 'turning down good advice' by other people because he had them all convinced my issues were what they were because I wasn't taking his advice specifically. Like it was something I wasn't allowed to fight or say no to because it was wrapped in the trappings of 'advice'. I've known people that were in similar situations, having people hound on them for not doing X thing and reprimanded for 'not taking their advice' while ignoring the person's unique circumstances.

Just today I was seeing a thread of people defending telling people how to write their fan-characters as 'advice', that they can't let people just have fun because their 'advice' is more important than someone else enjoying themselves I guess. This goes along with unsolicited critique, which it's the same thing, it's advice just uses the word critique. People use the word 'advice' as an excuse to tell people whatever they want tot tell them and make it the other person's fault or shame if they don't want to have that discussion. It's very common and just making the argument 'but that's not what advice is' doesn't make the issue and social stigma go away.

While it could also be argued that it'd be better that I use a phrase like: "It's best to have caution when offering advice to others, and to frame it as a question or discussion so that you can allow them to feel invited to the conversation and provide feedback for better understanding. If someone tells you that what you're doing is undesirable, apologize and let the topic drop and don't demand that you must be heard. No matter how good you feel your advice there could be many reasons you can't see that would be bad for that person to take that advice. Exceptions to be made for situations with obvious and explicitly dangerous events, such as insisting someone going to the hospital for ingesting something lethal. Similarly, try to avoid unsolicited critique or at the very least, try to make it a discussion and drop it if they do not wish for a discussion about it to be had. All forms of art do not need to be perfect and artists are allowed to draw as they need and do not require formal training to have fun with it."

but that's more than 140 characters. Like holy cow what good is twitter as a random thought stream if I can't just drop random non sequiturs.

Sticking to just posting art and game stuff there, I guess.

Seems the Uncle that supposedly isn't speaking to my side of the family has sent me a friend's request on Facebook. Now normally, I would confront him directly about this matter before venting here, but the coward has his privacy settings such that I can't send a message if I'm not friended to him.

I'll ask my mom to see if apparently we're magically on speaking terms again. If so I might add him back. But, if he's just excluding my parents then he can count me out too, I will not stand for such behavior. I'll leave a public little note out saying so because I can't tell him discretely. Seriously, I really don't care at this point who reads it. I really do not need to have more things to make me angry.

I am so sick of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bmj-H7o2v0&NR
http://youtube.com/watch?v=X3_fL9oBk84
AWESOME KEFKA COSPLAYER

( I AM FEELING RANTISH )

( Sketches! 7 Images )

I want my ticket issue fixed now dangit..

I'm currently dealing with Certificate issues when trying to access my Control Panal.. FireFox won't let me, IE will (big surprise.. what with IE's countless security holes)
Yes, I even dumped my cookies, and I constantly dump my cache.

And now my FTP won't even connect.
yeah
I submitted another help ticket, so I HOPE this gets resolved soon. (I'm antsy to get my comic's website up and running, now that I've found free PHP comic organizing things)

I just need to fuss.

Edit:
Okay, I got the responce.. it says:
"We have investigated on this ensim issue. You aer getting this messagescoz SSL certificate is installed on this server for ensim. This is forsecurity purpose. If you click on 'No' it will not proceed. If you say'View Certificate' then you can check certificate details. So to loginto cpntrol panel, you have to click on 'Yes'.

These are not error messages. These are info about the SSL certificate on the server.

You need to click on 'Yes' to login to the control panel."
THIS is not an error?
If those of you in the know of security and tickets could take a look at this, it'd be much appreciated.
there's something wrong.. *grumbles*
(before when I accessed my control panal, FireFox would give me all green lights, told me the certificate was secure and what not.. it's not now, therefore, there's a problem)

Yes, near unthinkable has happened... someone has drove me as far as to BLOCK THEM!!!
This is something I REALLY don't do, because I believe one can talk any problem out... but he has tried my patience for the last time. (yes similar problems HAVE occured with him)
I'm a tollerant person.. I believe almost anything thing can be talked out... but my GOSH is he ignorant

( See JUST how some one was able to accomplish this! )

*takes deep breaths* I'm fine now, really I am...