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Donkringel posted:Goons: Is this porn or is this the beginning of sexual assault? As a woman (tm), a bunch of teen boys cornering a naive teen girl and pushing boundaries touching her hair and prodding while negging her to prove herself, in a secluded location, which she responds to by trying to prove herself with how mature her body is… I immediately think sexual assault, yes. I know it’s almost definitely not the writers intent but this is a horror page for people who have been in this specific scenario and that is sadly a lot of women, not even touching on the trans aspect as I’m cis.
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Feb 16, 2022 23:49
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I'm starting to think we SHOULD be reading this as "potential sexual assault" since this looks to be first contact with elves. They know "people" are digging around, and have some inkling that they are different with questionable "realness". Robot people (what are we supposed to call them?) seem to work in pairs, maybe for safety, except Lana is technically alone since Loup shouldn't be there. The chapter is about Loup so we are basically waiting to see what Loup does.
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Feb 16, 2022 23:54
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life_source posted:I'm starting to think we SHOULD be reading this as "potential sexual assault" since this looks to be first contact with elves. If so, that's a pretty screwed up thing to write, especially for your marginalized, low-class, immigrant-coded young characters.
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Feb 17, 2022 00:19
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coolusername posted:As a woman (tm), a bunch of teen boys cornering a naive teen girl and pushing boundaries touching her hair and prodding while negging her to prove herself, in a secluded location, which she responds to by trying to prove herself with how mature her body is… I immediately think sexual assault, yes. I know it’s almost definitely not the writers intent but this is a horror page for people who have been in this specific scenario and that is sadly a lot of women, not even touching on the trans aspect as I’m cis. And yeah, I hope it isn't where the author's going with it, because in general I am exhausted of cis men writing about sexual assault and never want to see it again no matter how well-intentioned, but also: There Bias Two posted:If so, that's a pretty screwed up thing to write, especially for your marginalized, low-class, immigrant-coded young characters.
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Feb 17, 2022 00:24
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life_source posted:I'm sorry. I keep forgetting that this comic is Incredibly British in ways that I am culturally ignorant about. Hell yeah lets put the focus in a scene of a woman being assaulted on how it affects a male presenting character! Worst part is you're probably right, I bet this is going to be more about Loup than anything. Super good look.
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Feb 17, 2022 00:32
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Donkringel posted:Goons: Is this porn or is this the beginning of sexual assault? Dude it's a legitimate unease See above I suppose, I won't intercede where someone already explained the unease well
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Feb 17, 2022 00:33
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Tiny Myers posted:Yeah as someone who is non-binary but was raised as a girl, this is me. Was a little confused that people were joking about it being porn because it just immediately put a bad feeling in my gut. e: like I'm hoping this is supposed to be a "lower those eyebrows boy. And the other one" situation and Tom is just being very tone deaf about the difference in circumstances but sadly I don't think he's that dumb. Splicer fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 01:17
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The comments on the main site seem to be more of the same here.
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Feb 17, 2022 01:21
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Gunnerkrigg Comments posted:is this the buildup to GC's fist gangbang scene? please say yes. e: In the cold light of day I'm trying to remember why I thought Tom manually approved them. The last time I commented on the comic itself was wwll over a decade ago when the Web was much much smaller so I probably went "oh these are pre-moderated, must be by the author" and that stayed in my head as fact. So someone approved those but probably not Tom. Splicer fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 01:35
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Splicer posted:Doesn't Tom manually approve all comments?  please say psych
coolusername fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 01:36
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Splicer posted:Doesn't Tom manually approve all comments? Is Tom OK?
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Feb 17, 2022 01:36
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"Comment submitted! Comments will be reviewed before being displayed" So someone approved that. I hope it's just a service provided by his web host or something.
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Feb 17, 2022 01:44
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Splicer posted:Doesn't Tom manually approve all comments? If yes, then it's time for me to admit that this webcomic just might not be for me anymore. When'd I start reading, around Microsat 5? It's been a part of my life for a decent chunk of my life, and I think I'd be okay with appreciating those times and letting it resolve without me.
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Feb 17, 2022 01:47
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Tiny Myers posted:Yeah as someone who is non-binary but was raised as a girl, this is me. Was a little confused that people were joking about it being porn because it just immediately put a bad feeling in my gut. A young girl being cornered by a bunch of dudes touching all over her is going to bring up bad stuff for a lot of people. You have to understand that for a subset of the population it's going to bring up uncomfortable poo poo and it's not jumping at shadows or goons being goony and weird, it's their lived experiences and a lifetime of DANGER DANGER DANGER signals being burned into our heads. im treating this as an absurd start into a pornographic scene because thats the only scenario in which this doesnt send me running away screaming
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Feb 17, 2022 02:24
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The following are potential ends to this scene: Loup diffuses the situation by being a weird simp (shades of "Coyote started to believe he was a dead goose") Loup diffuses the situation through unacceptable violence (shades of Ysengrin) Lana diffuses the situation through superior synthetic wit/charm/strength The elves pull the old "We're having a party tonight, you should come" (the party is shown to be a regular elf party, the guy who asked is shown to be legitimately sad Lana didn't come) Girl elves show up and the situation changes Two other fun thoughts I remembered: This is elvish culture shock. Remember when Kamlen just walked in on Antimony sleeping to give her a gift? Super normal that. Real class act. Nothing like what these jabroni's are doing. This isn't the first time an extremely uncomfortable situation like this has been shown. Remember when Jack cornered Anitmony?
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Feb 17, 2022 02:35
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life_source posted:To pull this back a bit, Lana is still super jazzed about showing off her body to anyone and everyone. Her expressions on this page could be read as uncertain, but the last part is definitely her wanting to show off. The elves are likewise showing interest. at the risk of stating the obvious, the fact that tom chose to write a character that is extremely jazzed about her body to the point of displaying exhibitionist tendencies towards a group of strangers is certainly A Choice also this character is a child
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Feb 17, 2022 02:37
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... So I just read the comment section. "OK..... it's hot." "is this the buildup to GC's fist gangbang scene? please say yes." "L-lewd." "Whelp. Full throttle on R34." If this is manually approved I'm out. e; Yes I'm editing twice to say like... This is the one thing I never expected from this comic. The Tony arc was lovely but at least it was comprehensibly so and not that unusual a resolution. The disappointing arc endings lately have been disappointing but not truly upsetting on an emotional level. But if Gunnerkrigg is swinging from something that I at least trusted not to go the hypersexualised teen girl route that turned me off Marvel and DC so thoroughly, so many times, into manually approving gangbang and R34 comments about a teenage girl while she strips and shows her cleavage twice in a row in a scene I thought was meant to read as uncomfortable and dangerous, not sexy, I just. What the hell? She's a kid. coolusername fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 02:39
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A big flaming stink posted:at the risk of stating the obvious, the fact that tom chose to write a character that is extremely jazzed about her body to the point of displaying exhibitionist tendencies towards a group of strangers is certainly A Choice Yeah, it's messed up, no one should be saying it isn't. But it's believable to an extent. This character got her ideas of how to make her body from books. What books? We don't know. It could very well have been art history books. And everyone know the kinds of things that people liked in art history (it's the nudes, it's always the nudes) The child thing is up to debate, one that was happening in the thread but it got drowned out by something else. Are all Robot People children no matter how long they have been sentient because their bodies are new? She's naive yes, and that's where the issues are, because a naive person wouldn't be doing what she is doing.
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Feb 17, 2022 02:52
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she's not a real person. she is a narrative construct that tom specifically chose to create this way. and we are deeply dismayed that tom made that choice
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Feb 17, 2022 02:57
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life_source posted:Yeah, it's messed up, no one should be saying it isn't. But it's believable to an extent. This character got her ideas of how to make her body from books. What books? We don't know. It could very well have been art history books. And everyone know the kinds of things that people liked in art history (it's the nudes, it's always the nudes) The thing is, there was no reason to have to use sexuality to demonstrate this. There's no reason to put the characters in a situation where the "actually it's an adult in a young body" argument ought to be raised.
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Feb 17, 2022 02:57
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A big flaming stink posted:also this character is a child Aren't the vast majority of the robots quite old? They've got new bodies with new thoughts but they aren't children.
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Feb 17, 2022 03:19
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GlyphGryph posted:Aren't the vast majority of the robots quite old? They've got new bodies with new thoughts but they aren't children. Can we please not do the "actually this is an adult in a young person's body" thing? We've seen how the author draws older characters and even older robots (for example, Arthur). These characters are pretty clearly drawn to look about the same age as the teenage cast.
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Feb 17, 2022 03:24
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Your comment makes me realize I honestly have no idea how old anyone is in the comic anymore. The bodies looked late teens to early 20s to me, not like a childs body, so I thought they were referring to them as essentially being kids in an older persons body.
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Feb 17, 2022 03:52
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Yeah, the 'robots in human bodies are basically teens' thing has been hammered on a ton with Lana and Loup-bot in the comic so far. Some of the bots are clearly older and more adult, but this pair are Obviously Teens, presumably so that Lana flirting with Loup-bot is fine and Loup-bot having a crush on Antimony was fine rather than immediately creepland. Which leads us here. Which is not a good place to be. If Tom just wanted to have Lana be flirting with other teens/robots in a less creeptastic scenario than 'cornered by strangers in an alley' it would come off differently, but this particular context is just such an incredibly bad idea. Also all the touching is really off as well! Also strangers! It's a mess, and as pointed out it makes Lana's earlier body enthusiasm/goofy flirting retroactively much less fun and wholesome. This is a real turn for the worse and it just came entirely out of left field.
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Feb 17, 2022 03:59
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Yeah if the goal was to display that the forest elves doubt the "realness" of the robo-people, it would have been easy to have Lana and Loup just meet one of them. Have the elf question them, then have Lana go FEEL MY HAIR, IT'S REAL AND SOFT AND BEAUTIFUL or something. Could even call back to her teasing Loup earlier by having her start doing the same to the elf, then having Loup stop her in embarrassment (and have some internal Loup dialogue about how stupid these robo-humans are or something) Would convey the same info with the same beats, but would avoid the VERY creepy undertones going on.
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Feb 17, 2022 04:10
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As a small woman who has been touched uncomfortably by strangers and frequently has to worry about my own safety, I am not getting any of what yall are off this. Not the sexual menace, not the 'stripping' (unless collarbones are now equivalent to flashing cleavage), not 'hypersexual'. It's like I'm reading an entirely different comic. It looks like teens that are strangers to each other being awkward and uncomfortable around each other and navigating that in varyingly inappropriate ways. The forest folk have always been touchy and nosy, it sucks but it's hardly a rape in progress. I'm not saying anyone is *wrong* to be uncomfortable or have a different read, it's just such a wildly different read that it's blowing my mind a little bit. And I only added the first sentence of this post to sat its not that I've been sheltered from those experiences in my life that is the reason. It's also valid to be uncomfortable of course. The bit about speculating on Tom manually approving comments seems like something that would be worthwhile to confirm? mycatscrimes fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 04:14
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Just... What I had thought the last few strips were gonna be from catching up on the thread versus what they actually were really suprised me.
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Feb 17, 2022 04:18
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capitaldelendaest posted:Just... What I had thought the last few strips were gonna be from catching up on the thread versus what they actually were really suprised me. I’ll agree my view here is influenced by having been in a fairly similar circumstance in my teens. I simply can’t read it as unthreatening under the circumstances presented in the comic itself and I think a lot of people are in the same boat - ignoring the frankly terrible sexual ones, most of the 80 odd in the comment section are saying they hope Loup rescues her or are worried about what’s going to happen, similar to this thread, unlike the Tony stuff where the goonthread and comments were quite opposing.
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Feb 17, 2022 04:58
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That's fair, and makes sense. I can't say why it doesn't hit me that way despite having experienced being in similar postions but I don't want to belittle anyone else's reaction. And I think it clearly is meant to be to be awkward and not comfortable, so I'm not judging people for not being comfortable.
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Feb 17, 2022 05:07
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I'm expecting Lana to continue going on about her physicality, ability to perceive and be perceived making her a real person, only for the Forest folk to say, "Nah love, y'not real. We can barely see you in the ether, so you're like, a really clever doll or summat, like when Linden made that pile of leaves dance." They they'll go into trippy ethervision and either Lana will show up as a person-shaped hole in reality, or like a wispy, flickering outline. Then they will triumphantly declare her an Unperson, and the bullying will commence, because kids are little shits.
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Feb 17, 2022 05:26
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The real world parallels kinda whizzed by me as I just read it as fantasy culture interacting with a literal robot, so it was intended to be strange? Admittedly, I am not spending much time reading these. What was offputting was Tom going back to this well in the very next storyline, and also that he did additional art of her being exhibitionist on twitter. It’s just feels unsettling
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Feb 17, 2022 05:30
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Pants Donkey posted:The real world parallels kinda whizzed by me as I just read it as fantasy culture interacting with a literal robot, so it was intended to be strange? Admittedly, I am not spending much time reading these. what https://twitter.com/gunnerkrigg/status/1466994808803803138 Ah.
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Feb 17, 2022 07:41
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Honestly, the thing that this latest page is reminding me of is when we met Red again and she was making discoveries about her body too. I'm not saying that it's the same plot beat, but it is interesting to see the parallels between forest-born beings becoming humans and court-born beings becoming humans. I'm kind of hoping that this chapter goes into how different Kat's Robot-to-Human approach is different from the Etheric-to-Human approach.
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Feb 17, 2022 08:01
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capitaldelendaest posted:The bit about speculating on Tom manually approving comments seems like something that would be worthwhile to confirm? coolusername posted:... So I just read the comment section. "OK..... it's hot." "is this the buildup to GC's fist gangbang scene? please say yes." "L-lewd." "Whelp. Full throttle on R34." Splicer fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 09:57
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CodfishCartographer posted:These feel very different because they come off as her doing it as a means of teasing / poking fun at someone who's obviously very naive and bashful, who maybe she has a crush on. Joe Slowboat posted:as pointed out it makes Lana's earlier body enthusiasm/goofy flirting retroactively much less fun and wholesome. This is a real turn for the worse and it just came entirely out of left field. So having a character who is all "lol I gots boobs!" makes sense and is a fun plot beat. She is being adorkable and we the viewers can see it and go haha, such a goof, that's not how you're supposed to act! You're making that guy so uncomfortable lol! There's probably a proper literature term like dramatic irony but dramatic goofness. Having a character be harmlessly adorkable with her in group as set up for the same adorkableness turning out badly when interacting with others is also not exactly a weird way to show that Kat etc are being kind of negligent with their... children? People? Creations? Again, perfectly good storytelling. There's also loss of innocence for the new society, fuel for the robot cult etc. Having them be the same character so the goofy lol I gots boobs becomes hey bunch of guys explicitly unpersoning me in am unsafe situation, aren't I sexually desirable? Like... I'm not saying there's no story that that works in, but it's sure as hell not what I read this comic for, and there's far, far less skeevy ways for robot's naivety to goof up in front of the elves. e: or like, keep the whole thing exactly the same but have it be a mixed group so a girl elf gets mad at Lana for blatantly hitting on her boyfriend, or take her aside and go "OK you seem to be confused". Or the first and then the second! Like at the moment the "good" interpretation is that Tom legitimately did not see the weird visuals of the last panel and just sees the page as a bunch of kids goofing off, but that indicates a freshly decanted robot level of naivety. If that's not the intended interpretation but he did see it as a possible interpretation then including even one girl in the Elf Youth Random Encounter Package would have completely changed the tone. If it's the intended interpretation but only as an end of page jokey cliffhanger to be subverted in the next page by them all departing as friends... dude. And if it's this: Captain Oblivious posted:Hell yeah lets put the focus in a scene of a woman being assaulted on how it affects a male presenting character! Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 11:04
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hm. don’t like that
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Feb 17, 2022 12:35
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The initial occurrence and even the tweet were okay, and showed that she enjoyed her body a the way she looked, a little sketchy being written by a guy but I've made characters who have had the same general idea after achieving the body they wanted. It showed she was comfortable being who she is, and showed her agency over herself. This scene negates all that and amplifies the sketch. With it being done as a reaction to them doubling her realness and in a situation which is very much a sexual assault, no matter any excuse Tom or other may give about it being elves and robots it's not humans so things are different, it's shown that no ten previous scene wasn't about her being comfortable with herself it about how her physical appearance is all that matters and what make her real.
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Feb 17, 2022 12:47
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Her hair and her sleeve have been pinched. "but that indicates a freshly decanted robot level of naivety" ok I'm remember why I felt the need to disclose I am a woman who has often felt physically unsafe and been subject to unwanted touching by men. I know this comment was about Tom, but just because someone isn't getting the same vibe from the scene, doesn't mean they're naive or haven't experienced sexual harassment or feeling unsafe. It's starting to feel like there's this weird undertone of 'if you don't have a problem with this scene you're stupid, or not a woman', so i'm out.
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Feb 17, 2022 13:57
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Yeah, I’ve been pretty down on Gunnerkrigg lately but the response to this page feels really out of proportion. Depiction is not endorsement, but also the depiction isn’t even that bad. Also, robots are not trans people. You can draw some high level parallels between them but on the object level there are a bunch of significant differences (trans people are not artificial beings originally created to serve the court) and the characters in universe are going to be reacting to the object level stuff.
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Feb 17, 2022 14:10
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capitaldelendaest posted:Her hair and her sleeve have been pinched. Unless it is happening, in which case, as previously stated, yikes.
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Feb 17, 2022 14:34
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