Fennecoonagon

I'mma second this! I was a big fan of the Powerpuff Girls.

One, and I love em with all my heart. I don't get emotionally attached to people easily, and I am very picky about those I choose to interact with on a personal basis. I appreciate sincerity, straightforwardness, loyalty, principles that align with mine, and a capacity for critical thought, among other things. I have found that not many people check all those boxes. I'm fairly peculiar about the way I think of friendship. There has to be a good degree of devotion for the other person, I need to feel like we fulfill each other in some way, and they should be someone whose absence would have an immense impact on my life, to name some aspects. I find that when people talk about "friends", they often just mean someone they like talking to and hanging out with. To me, that's unfulfilling. That's normally not hard to find, and thus it doesn't strike me as something special. I feel like the way people normally think of friendship undermines its significance, to the point that the word "friend" just means "acquaintance". So I do my best to not contribute to that. Quality over quantity, all the way!

To the best of my ability, with exceptions whenever lying is extremely necessary to protect myself or someone I care about, or if it's extremely necessary in order to help someone I care about. If a situation doesn't fall under either of those two categories, I never lie. Even in cases when I'm too lazy to give an elaborate answer to something and I provide a lazy response which is only simliar to the truth, I always make sure to go back and give an unnecessary amount of detail to make sure I'm not lying. I don't care if it makes someone uncomfortable, I don't care if it makes me uncomfortable. Unless being honest can ruin my or someone's life (or it's extremely necessary), I'm never dishonest. I can't even stand people who throw white lies around in an attempt to not hurt other people's feelings, and I also don't like when people lie to fit in. If anyone's ever seen the show Lucifer, that's pretty much how I am when it comes to lies. With the only two exceptions being the ones listed above. This world needs more transparency.

It really depends on what is meant by the term. If we take "meaningless" to mean that it isn't "meaningful", in the sense that it's not significant or that it changes nohing... That's a very subjective thing, and therefore up to the invidual making the judgement. If by "meaningless" one refers to life not having a purpose (which by definition requires an intent, which in turn requires a consciousness preceding it), then it's because there's no objective proof to conclude that it does. On a personal level, I feel like it's much healthier to recognize that from the get-go so that we can then assign *our* life the meaning that *we* want it to have. I've always felt like a life with a meaning assigned by somebody else would be insubstantial and impersonal. If my life's meaning was determined by someone else, then... It isn't really my life.

In all honesty, I find myself unable to wrap my head around the concept of gender. I don't think there was ever a time in my life when I made an actual distinction between males and females. I'm not blind to the physical differences, of course, but I've always been baffled by how people treat others differently on the basis of their sex. Originally (while I can understand gender dysphoria, as I see it as more of a subconscious rejection or unease towards one's own physical traits), I used to think about how I never quite understood why transgender people assigned such an importance to gender. But then I realized: it's not just transgender people that assign a lot of importance to gender. People in general have always done that. On average, kids seem to mostly form interpersonal bonds with people of their gender, and I believe the same could be said for teenagers and adults, although to varying degrees. Personally, I never gave a shit. I remember when I was a little kid there was this girl I used to spend time with, and my mother tried to get me to "play with the other boys instead", and when I asked why she could never give me much of an explanation other than "because you're a boy". I remember a time when I must've been around 6 or 7, and some dumbass kid asked me if a boy I was chatting with was my boyfriend. I made a confused expression in response, cause I GENUINELY didn't understand how that was meant to be an insult, so I asked "what if he were?". Let's... just say, my mother wasn't happy when I shared that with her! So I believe I'm the odd one out. I consider myself a male, because... of the way I look, I guess. But I don't have any particular attachment to said "gender", as I don't consider it relevant to my identity and who I am as a person, as I would act exactly the same way regardless of how I looked. My current understanding is that it's a psychological construct of sorts.Now, most things which shape society are, so I don't mean that in the sense that it's something on which people's concerns should be dismissed at all. I do nonetheless feel that if we could all just give less of a damn about what term we assign ourselves in an attempt to fit in somewhere, and just were ourselves regardless of what's supposed to be feminine or masculine and whatnot, we would have a much more unbiased perspective on things. But it could very well be that I'm blind to something that's very real to most people and there's just something I'm missing regarding all this. I don't know. I find it confusing.

I honestly have no idea! I remember that I attended extracurricular classes for a couple years when I was very young, but eventually I stopped going because I realized I already knew the stuff that was being taught, so I didn't see much of a point to it. I do have the internet to thank for my proficiency nowadays, as it allowed me to actually start speaking the language with others in a more natural and consistent manner, but I wouldn't quite say that it was a conscious effort. I remember mostly just looking up the definitions of words which I didn't understand, and translating some when necessary. I would say it's something that I did more or less intuitively, if that makes sense. So I suppose the answer to the question would be, "reading, googling, and talking".

It depends on the context and the people involved. If I believe someone is unwillinng or unable to be reasonable and objective about the subject matter, and there's no need for me to involve myself, I'd probably ignore said person and move on. Or... Well, that's what I try to do. I'm not gonna act like I've never engaged in a pointless back and forth online. One thing which I've found that tends to happen fairly often, nonetheless, is that people don't really know how to communicate, at times. When that happens, I try to act as a mediator or a translator of sorts: oftentimes people aren't particularly literal when interpreting language, and instead of using or understanding words based on their given definition, they respond to the connotations that sometimes go with them. I find that trying to understand what a person is saying, restating it concisely, and asking relevant questions for clarification to then ask the other person (or person's) for their thoughts to then take the same approach with them, can be very beneficial as it provides some structure and gives people something more concrete to focus on than when people just talk over one another without an end. Trying to maintain a cold or neutral tone can also be helpful, as it might not elicit as many counterproductive responses from others. All in all, I feel like the best course of action is: Summarizing one person's perspective. Asking relevant questions for clarification Doing the same with the other parties involved. Discussing specific arguments in a structured manner while keeping track of the points made, ideally by keeping a list. And listing down agreements, as well as incoherences between a person's statements. That way, either something can be gained from the conversation, or you have something more concrete to point at when someone's being illogical.