I can understand wanting to honor your friend, but by making his death the butt of the joke that’s a lot more collateral damage than you intended.
It might work out better if you make dark jokes that aren’t pointed AT your friend but are directed outward, with a “he’d like that” tacked on. That way, it highlights something you liked about him without hitting other people.
Probably because you crossed the line from “dark” to “cruel”.
Without speaking to him in years, and especially about that mutual friend, you have no idea how he’s viewed that loss, or has other, more recent losses that are similar.
And you kept pushing it when he didn’t laugh, either deliberately or inadvertently using the social convention of not causing a scene/confronting someone over a joke to your advantage.
I agree with the premise that defining one’s gender as “what the other gender doesn’t/can’t do” is limiting and will inevitably conflict as said other gender makes gains, but I disagree that this is an aspect of capitalism.
History is chock full of men bemoaning the current state of manhood and how modern (whatever age that is) man is actually modern woman, regardless of whether they barter, bow to a king, or buy stocks.
They can’t, but that’s not a flaw: the stated aim is to terrify and harass trans people out of public venues, but the side effects, of policing ANY behavior or presentation that is outside of cultural norms - autistic people, short haired women, effeminate men - the point is to use cruelty to enforce homogeneity.
I suppose I get it if you’re really interested in watching technological progression in particular, but to me it’s like taking a bite of dessert and then of dinner and then of breakfast: even if you have very similar styles (3rd person mission oriented/linear shooter, for example) there’s still some degree of continuity between parts of a trilogy/franchise that’s greater than between franchises, not to mention world and characters and story and themes.
I’ve done deep dives into franchises by going straight up through the years (my favorite is Geneforge/Avernum/Avadon) but bouncing between them would really throw me off.
Is it the right time to say it, the right thing to say, am I the right person to say it, are they in the right frame of mind to hear it, and is it necessary?
That’s the gold standard of changing people’s behavior for the better, and I rarely hit it.
Would it make you more or less frustrated if you imagined you were gym staff trying to explain to someone that they can’t cancel because they never had a membership?
This is destroying my fantasy of it being a short story about a non Muslim equestrian falling for a Muslim girl who’s afraid of horses.