The other day at a job skills development center or whatever, I mentioned that I was into conlanging, right? And right away it was the same ol’ spiel about “Oh, like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings? Are you a fantasy writer?”.

And one bozo says, “Hey, you should write, like, an anti-woke fantasy book! That would be super cool!”

And I immediately reply, “Oh no, I’m gonna make the wokest fantasy of all time!”

And the bozo replies, “Oh, well, then I’m not gonna read it.”

And I say with a laugh, “Well I don’t need your approval, man!”

—It was a small thing, but it felt good to snap back at him, because he’d been saying crap like that for weeks. The whole place has a real problem with this sort of reactionary “frat boy culture”.

(Note: the story takes place in a former colony that recently ended its apartheid rule, and there are at least six trans-equivalent characters when including background worldbuilding, one of whom is in fact the main character of the story. So it is in fact the type of shit that would give a conservative an aneurysm.)