I posted on my personal fb and in an enby fb support group about my analogy for gender. I came up with it a while ago, but it popped in my head again when someone was telling me about a muffin one. That one wasn't very good. It's hard to find good analogies for it.
Mine is gender as pizza toppings. Men are handed sausage pizza, and women are handed pepperoni pizza. Society encourages them to love their toppings (only those) and to never change anything like the sauce or dough. A trans woman is handed a sausage pizza, but hates it and loves pepperoni. She doesn't hate people who love what they were given, but it's not for her. If she picks off the sausage and trades toppings with someone else, suddenly society at large is in an uproar. How dare you eat pepperoni instead of sausage! This goes the other way with trans men.
Gender non-conforming people, who still like the topping they were given, might add other sauces and dough. Non-binary people, as a whole, would have different and/or multiple toppings. Agender people specifically might not have any toppings, except for extra cheese. Genderfluid people might have different toppings depending on which gender they are at the time. Bigender gender people could have 2 toppings of any of then. 3 for trigender people. Or, some might have one totally separate gender, and they'd get a different topping entirely. Demigender people might have their pizza partially covered with a certain topping associated with a gender, and maybe another topping for the rest of it. The possibilities are endless, but society will only focus on the sausage and pepperoni pizzas. They have to be the standard for those pizzas, too. They don't want people to switch with each other. Or, even to ask for another one.
I think this is the best one that I know. It's got many layers to it. Plus, gender expression can be mixed in there with the sauces, dough, or different types of cheese. Really, there are many ways to look at this one. I went with pizza, because it's one of the most popular foods around the world. Sausage and pepperoni are some of the most popular toppings, and considered 'classics'. Funny thing about this is I can't have those toppings in real life. So maybe that was another added subconscious thing. Also, with genders that aren't connected at all with the binary they could have things like fruit or veggies. The concept is flexible. I'm extra cheese in this. It's not boring, especially considering you could have something like a 4-cheese pizza for it. For a cheese lover, like me, that's amazing stuff. Plus, we can have any sauce, dough, etc. that we're comfortable with.
I had a couple of loves and a share on my personal page. I'm still getting lots of likes, loves, and comments in the enby group. People really seem to like it. Someone suggested we should list what type of pizza we are, which was cool. Very interesting to see what people are in that one. This could be a 'thing' now. It'd be cool to see illustrations of the pizzas. Not sure if I'd do it. Someone recently commented in the group that it's perfect.
It's been really warm lately. A lot of the time when this happens I feel like not doing much. I end up trying to stay in the coolest area of the house downstairs. It'll be a little warmer the next few days. Oh joy! At a certain point, I can't have my desktop on. Unless I want to heat up the house, particularly my room, even more. My room usually is the hottest, even when my desktop's off. Makes it difficult to go to sleep. Even with my new window fan.
This means I can't write more of Alliance 3 until it cools off again. Not sure when that will be. I did brainstorm a bit on what will happen next, today. That's something.
Yesterday, I decided to lower the prices of all my paperbacks. I thought since my ebooks will start their promos soon, I might as well do something with their paperback counterparts. I made it so I get at or close to $2.57 in royalties for all of them. They also just started giving authors the option of Expanded Distribution for their kdp paperbacks. So, it sounds a lot like it'll be similar to Smashwords ebook distribution system. It'll be available to bookstores, libraries, etc. Unlike how it was only available on Amazon before. This will be immensely handy. If I get 3 ebooks on Smashwords' Premium Catalog, and check the box for Expanded Distribution, all 3 of those books (both versions) will be distributed to different places. Smashwords only deals with ebooks, although I think you can provide a link to other versions of them. I'll have all my bases covered for those 3. 2 of them would just have their paperbacks distributed to other retailers. (I'm keeping those 2 ebook versions on Select for now.) This sounds like it'd really work out.
I managed to check all but 1 for Expanded Distribution. That one didn't meet their requirements. It has to be a certain trim, at least. I think it's has the largest trim for my books, so it makes sense. 4 isn't bad. The prices are required to be a little more for this option, too. I still kept the royalties at the amount I planned.
Alliance's paperback is now $11.70. Alliance: Dawn's paperback is now $10.40. Sweet Endless Terror is now $10.80. More Than Meets the Eye is now $9.80. My Mother's Treasure Trove of Recipes is now $8.99. For some, I've lowered the prices by quite a bit. Like I planned, I'll get at or close to $2.57 royalty for them all. I think MTMtE was the one I couldn't check off for ED. Oh well. This all might help. After my ebooks are finished with their promos, I'll either set the prices back to where they were or set it to somewhere in the middle. It all depends on how they'll do. I'm pretty optimistic about this working out more. Some people (some of whom I know) who bought the paperback version of the cookbook already might get angry at me for lowering the price now. However, self-published authors mess with prices all the time. They need to find that 'sweet spot' with all their books. Maybe they'd be happy they got it either way? Hopefully. Or, they might be happy they helped me? I should look at it like that.
Today, I went through the Colors unit for Chinese. Interesting that for colors they lit. say things like 'blue color', 'brown color', and so on. I'm doing even better with the pronunciation. Still a few mistakes here and there, but not bad. The next unit is The Attributive.
Started the live-action version of Mob Psycho 100. It's probably the best way they could have adapted it. It's just not the same 'feel' as the anime. The anime made it seem so much more epic. They really tried to make the characters look as similar as possible. They did a pretty good job with that. Even the eyes are similar. The mangaka (creator) has a unique design for the characters, so again that makes it difficult to translate it to live-action. Ekubo, an 'evil' green spirit with red 'dimples' (also nicknamed Dimple) turned Mob's pet, was a little hokey looking. He looks better in the anime version. Not sure how different the anime is to the manga, but it's following the anime's story closely. They just left out the cool tunnel scene from the beginning, and I think when he fought Teru subconsciously it was in a different type of building. I like that in the story the 'jocks' of the weight training club are really kind and against using violence unless it's absolutely necessary. So much media has the jock high schooler stereotype of being rude or like a bully. It's refreshing to see again. Mob joined that club to become better physically and possibly get the girl he likes to notice him. He's not very good at it, but then again he just joined. The other members really care about him. When he falls down from exhaustion, they congratulate him on trying his best and encourage him to keep at it. When he faints they haul him back to the club's room to let him sleep it off. Usually alone. It's interesting that Mob is strong with his psychic abilities, but very weak physically. Saitama, the main character of One Punch Man, is superior physically. Both are 'overpowered' characters in different ways. ONE is the pen name of the mangaka for both series.
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