Tumgik
#and can you tell me what it is about trans people just existing that breaks your immersion? quickly
northern-passage · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
very interested to know if anyone would ever leave a review like this on a game that had all cishet characters... is that pandering to the "cisgender" narrative? or is it only pandering when it's the "transgenders"? 🤔 what makes it pandering? just because it's for an audience that's not you? because it's for a group of people you don't personally like? what makes you so special that only your stories are the ones you deem worthy of being told?
121 notes · View notes
acoldfrenchfry · 7 months
Text
Something great about adulthood is that you literally never have to be around people who don't respect you ever again. If you're unhappy with your friend circle/family? you can just leave and you'll be that much better and healthier. Don't like yourself? you can make a new self. Google is free and your life is customizable. Don't like who you are? then don't be that person lmao. You can just change. Make those choices, decisions, and meds to get you there. no one's gonna do it for you n you can't help people who don't want to be helped, which includes yourself.
n I know a lot of this takes time and money, but you gotta start somewhere. even just having a plan of action helps. Knowing what you wanna work on and who you wana be/people you want to hang out with. That's where it's at. Literally just do it. "idk if i'm ready" then do it unready. I didn't know how to move out transition pay bills dye my hair register my car move in with my partner get a better job change my name literally anything to do with a courthouse change my credit shave my face until i just. Free balled it by my damn self. No family support no pity party. I'm not waiting around for people who say sorry 10 billion times but continue to not be better anymore. Don't make yourself palatable for other people, be free bitches ꒰ᐢ. .ᐢ꒱₊˚⊹
#xcuse the rant. just been thinking about how much better i feel without the people in my life who were bad for me#thinking about the time i got in a fight w/ my (now) ex over thanksgiving#how i was expected to out myself to my ex's homophic transohobic bigoted family. and just be fine with it#“you have to be the bigger person“ ”It's lying to them to not tell them you were deadname and now you're Oli"#n i thought actually? i literally dont have to be around anyone who makes me unsafe bc thats the exact thing i escaped from my own family#dont like feeling like a showcase animal 'look at my trans boyfriend' so someone else can be visibly queer around me#dont like feeling like a problem that every1 else has to deal w/so poor old bigoted family wont die of heart attack bracing for my presence#made me feel like shit n i had to basically beg for an apology for over an hour bc i felt unheard hurt and unsupported.#n you know what i got told? “Thats not how it is youre wrong” after saying i feel unheard 7 times in a row. dont tell me how i feel#wanted to break up right then and there n my only regret is wanting to wait till the holidays were over#there is only so many “sorry i forgot” that i can forgive and i forgave way too many times. very convenient that things forgotten was never#once my exs identity feelings or safety#but when MY feelings MY identity MY safety and my CONSENT get forgotten about? nah man. im out of i forgive yous. it happened soo many time#i rlly dont have to be around people who dont treat me right. i dont exist to make other people better that is on YOU to be better#olive speaks
6 notes · View notes
zerosuitsammi3 · 2 months
Text
If I can take a moment to share my experience as a trans woman on the internet
My experience is by no means unique, it's just one experience in the plethora of trans feminine experiences and not unique to only tumblr. Though, I'll mostly talk about what I've experienced here. In the light of recent events, the reaction of "the ceo," and the comments he contributed regarding dog pile harassment; I simply wish to share my experiences that I have had to juxtapose the dynamic of his statements against a lived experience.
This account started as a way to document my social transition and eventually my journey with HRT. Tumblr had always had a large lgbtqia+ community. The queer people here inspired me and gave me hope. What I didn't know, but soon learned, is that there were people here who hated me for being trans. Being early in my transition I was a prime target. TERF groups would plan raids on my account. What this entailed was: rebloging my selfies into circles that would say the most vile things about me, threaten to kill, tell me I was ugly, tell me that everyone I knew thought I was a joke, I was a monster, my family hated me, that I should kill myself, they'd download and edit my photos into caricatures or depictions of violence. They would fill my ask box with hundreds of asks detailing how they'd kill me, call me slurs, describe the ways that I should kill myself, and pretty much everything else I mentioned above with the reblogs. Their words were carefully curated to try and break me, break my spirit, break my will to live. I tried reporting it. But it was impossible to keep up with, and like many others I saw no real response. Eventually I learned that I had to block all of them. 100's of blogs, eventually 1000's of blogs. My block list these days is incredibly extensive. I had to wade through their blogs, traverse sickening hate speech and imagery to eliminate entire circles of people harassing me. I became jaded to the hate speech, hardened to it. But mind you, I shouldn't have had to expose myself to all of this just to be at peace here amongst my community. I received no help, I was left to my own devices to protect myself. The people who hurt me never saw consequences. It was painful, it was unfair, and no one else should have to put the hours upon hours of effort and exposure to hate in to protect themselves like I did. But again my experience is not unique.
I have had to repeat this process of preemptive blocking periodically once a new circle discovers me. Blocking them all before they can start the process of hate all over again. A process of hate that seems to be hitting my community with rapidly increasing fervor as of late.
I've seen others experience far worse than me. The TERF circles will hunt down their personal information and doxx them. Expose their home address, telephone numbers, names of their family members. I can't begin to imagine the terror my queer siblings must feel when someone tells then that they want to murder them all while showing them that they know where you live. This is not a new thing, not a rare tactic, it happens. And we've all seen the news stories of trans people being murdered by people who planned it and were vocal about it.
I know this is depressing. And it doesn't reflect all of my experiences. I've had wonderful experiences here, met amazing people, made close friends, found inspiration, found hope. I found a community.
And it's my community, and I never want to let it go.
I do have fear that making this statement will get me banned. But, I wanted to say it. I wanted it to exist in the world so that everyone who doesn't know our experiences has a chance to understand and with luck empathize.
I'll part on these words and hope for the best both for myself and for every member of the community.
Tumblr media
420 notes · View notes
lemon-penguinn · 3 months
Text
I'm nonbinary. People, in general, do not tend to see me as a trans person, even though I identify as one.
Everyone usually thinks of me as a girl. A cis girl who has decided to pass herself off as a nonbinary person, or a trans boy, simply because she thinks it's "trendy". A cis girl who wants to be part of a community because she feels lonely. And that's because, by many people's standards, I just "don't look trans", whatever that means. I guess it's simply because my gender expression is not rigid. It changes.
Deep down, I feel like a stereotype: a teenager with a female body who claims to be a boy but occasionally wears dresses and skirts comfortably. In the eyes of others, perhaps, I am nothing more than a cis girl infiltrating trans spaces. I'll be honest: I've cried over this very situation many times, because, what am I to do about it?
Do I have to change and stick to the gender role that is expected of someone like me? Do I really have to change the way I show myself just because I'm not a girl, but I also don't perceive myself fully as a boy?
I think that's ridiculous.
In the end, saying that "if you are nonbinary you have to be androgynous" is something that perpetuates stereotypes and gender roles. It's like telling a trans girl that, to be a real girl, she has to wear a skirt - it makes no sense. Do all girls only ever wear skirts and dresses? Do all boys only ever wear black, loose tank tops?
Of course they don't.
My expression, my tastes, my clothes, my voice, and the way I act do NOT determine my gender identity at all, just like my private parts. Because I believe that gender is a part of us. Not a part of our body, our clothes or our personality. It's true, though, that our gender identity can influence those other things. I think that's why certain actions or concepts make us dysphoric or euphoric: because our gender influences whether we perceive positively or negatively those things that affect us.
But, until the day most of society can understand that gender isn't a rigid set of rules, nonbinary people will remain generally perceived as no more than "girls who want attention" (if we live in a female body) and "weird boys" (if we live in a male body). We do not exist. Breaking out of binarism is seen as a phase that will end once we grow up. Because, apparently, many people think that being nonbinary is something that doesn't exist in the adult world.
502 notes · View notes
breathlesswinds · 23 days
Text
(Devlog) What We Learned Making A Trans Dating Game
Tumblr media
Hello, Amelia here, the writer for Breathless Winds. It's been 250,000+ words, countless revisions, and three years since this game entered development, and I wanted to talk about what I've learned leading up to release.
The concept for Breathless Winds was actually sort of a joke between friends. I was talking with Doris about how there should be a dating game where you play as a trans woman and your dating options revolve around certain ‘tropes’ we’d both seen in trans fiction-- the totally accepting cishet guy who falls in love with the trans heroine before she even knows she’s a woman, the cool trans woman who the heroine doesn’t know if she wants to date or wants to be, and so on.
Doris wound up suggesting we make this game ourselves. We both like visual novels and want to tell LGBT stories. Still half-jokingly and half-seriously, we started fleshing out what the romance options would be and coming up with a setting-- and soon, we were fully committed to making this game real.
I was a fan of visual novels but had only ever written prose. I knew which visual novels I liked and which scenes stood out, but I didn’t know why they did or how to make my own. 
I read some great advice from visual novel developers, but a good amount of my knowledge came from just working on Breathless Winds. As our first project, this game has grown a lot with us and we’ve learned a lot while making it.
Learning How to Write Visual Novels
A bad habit I had to break out of was only using the ‘novel’ part of the game and not the ‘visual’ part. I would sometimes write “He smiled” or lines like that, and Doris informed me that we can convey this much more simply with a sprite change.
It sounds obvious in retrospect, but lines like that are often pretty invisible when you’re reading a non-visual novel. These lines change the sprite of the character inside your head (if that makes sense, haha). I realized that I’m so used to them being ‘invisible’ that I didn’t notice their absence in visual novels I liked, so I would accidentally include them while writing. 
I was also writing these routes in a word processor, so I didn’t have the visual portion to reference, myself. I wound up making a lot of ‘tone’ notes like, “Lantana should be smug here” so that the meaning would carry when revising and implementing these into Ren’py. 
So, while visual novels share a lot with prose, they’re an entirely different medium. On the subject of representing things visually, I’ve struggled trying to figure out how much can be visually represented and how much should be written. 
Every asset in the game has to be drawn by Doris, so if I want the characters to go to a new location for a scene, I have to keep in mind that’s another background that Doris has to draw. If I want a new character to show up, that’s another sprite she has to draw. I don’t want to overload her, but if I’m trying to avoid this entirely, characters sometimes wind up standing in one room talking for ages without anything significant changing on-screen.
I’ve learned that it’s recommended for something to almost always be changing on-screen, though, so sometimes I just have to ask Doris to make a new asset for a certain scene. I still try to stick to locations/characters that already exist more often than not.
Every single thing in a visual novel is deliberate. Another thing I’ve had to learn that I never even considered before is how to write each line so it fits in the text box. It sounds obvious, but when I’m playing a visual novel, I don’t usually think about how each line has to be carefully constructed so it doesn’t need to be split up into two or more text boxes. In my mind, if a visual novel is well-created, there’s not much that breaks a reader’s immersion.
Planning & Outlining
The previous section might sound really weird to some people, so let me elaborate.  I’m a lifelong ‘write by the seat of your pants’-er, so the biggest trial-and-error of creating Breathless Winds for me was planning out the game.
Initially, I created outlines for each of the four routes, and we agreed ahead of time on which CGs each route would have. That way, Doris could draw the necessary backgrounds and CGs while I was in the long process of drafting this game.  My original outlines weren’t great. I know a lot of people have different experiences with writing, but for me personally, a story is always shaping itself in my mind. When I started making the outlines for Breathless Winds, I knew the concepts we wanted to convey, but I didn’t know what each route (and the game as a whole) was really about yet. This might sound weird and unprofessional, but sometimes, I don’t know what a story is about until I finish the first draft.
So while I was writing, I would look at my outlines and I would think, “this doesn’t actually make sense, he wouldn’t say that” or “this plot point would work better if moved to this other section” or “there’s a plot hole here I didn’t notice”. The story wound up changing a lot in this way as I learned what it’s really ‘about’. 
And even after I finished the first draft, I’d get feedback from Doris and/or my editor and they would suggest fixes to problems that even I hadn’t noticed, and then I would revise the route some more, and later on I’d come back and need to redo part of the route to comply with something I wrote in a later route-- I haven’t really felt ‘finished’ with Breathless Winds at any point, and I think I’ll still feel this way after the game is released.
This means that sometimes, a background was created but would go unused because there was no space for the scene that would use it, or we’d need a new CG last-minute, or so on. 
When I’m figuring things out as I go while writing a non-VN, the only person that I can adversely affect is my own self… so I’m eternally grateful for all of Doris’s patience with me on this matter. I think Breathless Winds has come out a much better game for all the re-plotting and revision. 
I redid the outlines several times as I went. I think I’ve understood how to create outlines that personally work for me-- ‘living’ outlines that hit all the main points, but leave wiggle room for moments when a character does something unexpected, work the best for me.
Scope Creep
So, originally, each route was meant to be 40,000 words. “With four routes, that’s only 160,000 words!” I thought. “And some of my favorite visual novels are about that long, so I can write that much, too!” ← clueless
This is the most infamous mistake that new creators make, and I walked right into it. I should have known better since I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with past non-VN writing projects before, but I was starry-eyed and didn’t realize how much work it is to make a VN. Some of those favorite visual novels I referenced were made by much larger teams, writers whose full-time job was writing (I wrote all of these routes on the side while working at a day job). 
If I could have done it again, I would have asked Doris to start out with a really short VN. But, I don’t regret making Breathless Winds at all. It’s brought Doris and I a lot closer, for one. Every time I thought I wanted to give up on this, Doris would motivate me to continue. Without the two of us both and our strong friendship, Breathless Winds wouldn’t exist, and I think that’s beautiful. 
No matter what, we’re going to see it through to the end. (I hope people like it, though…)
Anyway, here I am talking about how much 40,000 words is. Each route now is about 60k to 70k words. The problem with having evolving outlines is that they can often evolve into double their original size.
We came up with the idea of the poachers really early in development, and then not addressing the poachers felt like a failing, but by that point it was too late to remove the poachers entirely… and so the game wound up a lot longer dealing with the poachers. 
I think that if we had an editor sooner on in the game’s development, then we might have had someone to tell us, “do you really need all of this in the game? Does this plot point really need to be there? Will you be able to write all of this in a reasonable amount of time?”, haha. But Doris and I were really excited about the possibilities of this game when we started creating it, and without anyone to reel us back in, we wound up coming up with more and more things we wanted to put in the game.
Did you know there was going to be an island full of talking rats who say things like “the big cheese” and stuff all the time in Breathless Winds? Yeah. 
The Core Design Philosophy of Breathless Winds
So, for anyone who’s read this far but doesn’t know yet-- the premise of Breathless Winds is that you play as a trans woman who doesn’t know she’s trans yet, and she finds love with one of four love interests as she discovers her gender identity. 
In real life, it can be a lot messier for a person to date when discovering their gender identity. To put it briefly and mildly, a trans person’s life and sense of personal identity can rapidly change during a gender crisis and the early stages of transition. 
However, we wanted to make this game a ‘wish-fulfillment’ type story-- a trans fantasy about acceptance, community, and love. During a gender crisis, it can be easy to feel as if one has lost touch with themselves and become isolated from others. A sincere wish shared by many trans people is to be accepted, loved, and even celebrated as their true gender, not just tolerated. 
Since many trans people don’t get love and acceptance in real life, especially with the ongoing transphobic moral panic, we wanted to create a game that would bring this feeling of trans joy and celebration to trans audiences. 
We also hope that cis players will still enjoy the story and characters, and maybe come away from the game with a new understanding about being transgender and other aspects of LGBT identity (although we never intended this game to be ‘educational’).
Making Characters that Celebrate Trans Identity
Although we went through several revisions, the core identities of each character stayed the same since the game was first ‘jokingly’ pitched. In another post, I discussed how each character is themed around a change in seasons. (I also wound up theming them around the four humors when I was initially concepting them-- I really wanted to avoid too much ‘overlap’ in the LI’s personalities, haha). 
Ultimately, characters are created to serve a role. The LIs in Breathless Winds were designed to be love interests, of course-- characters who would appeal to the hypothetical trans femme audience. As mentioned earlier, we modeled them after other trans fiction tropes because these types of characters have a certain tried-and-true appeal, but this left plenty of flexibility to put our own spin on it. 
A trans woman being loved as a woman by a cishet guy can feel like a high form of ‘passing’, ‘fitting in’ to the female gender role, and being validated by his orientation. He only likes women, and he likes you, so you’re undoubtedly a woman. As a cishet guy, he represents a sort of acceptance into a societal norm that trans women can desire to live to. (Lantana, as a cis lesbian, represents the sapphic counterpoint to this-- although there is of course a big gap between the ‘normalcy’ of a cishet man and a cis lesbian woman, and I don’t mean to say those two are equivalent.) 
But not all trans women want to live to that (cis) societal norm. Rue and Valerian, as a trans woman and a trans man respectively, are the t4t options. 
Rue’s route represents that trans/sapphic ‘envy’ (“do I want her or do I want to be her?”) as well as finding power in community aside from what society considers ‘normal’. We’ve always been pretty clear about what we wanted to do with Rue’s route.
We went back and forth a lot more on Valerian’s route. Initially, we were unsure if he should be trans. He and Rue are the two less-friendly love interests (at least initially), so I was afraid it would come across that t4t is a more hostile option, which is not true at all. But it also felt like a mistake to not have a trans man in the game-- but making Gallardia trans would have required a big overhaul of what we had in mind for him and his route. (Although, childhood friends t4t is a really good idea...)
Beyond that, Valerian takes a villainous role in any route that isn't his own. We were worried that it would be wrong to have a trans antagonist who represents unjust power. However, Breathless Winds is a queer game with other positive trans characters, and we've always approached Valerian as a hot anti-villain man that you can't help but like.
In the end, Valerian’s route is about breaking generational cycles and what it is that makes you a man, and I also managed to sneak in a scene where they dance at a ball in the royal palace, so in the end I think it all worked out great.
Wish Fulfillment and Catharsis
Doris and I both agreed that we wouldn’t depict on-screen transphobia in Breathless Winds. Poppy worries about not being accepted, but fear of acceptance can come with any change in identity. Rue was rejected by her family for being trans, but this doesn’t take place ‘on screen’ in the game. There exist certain metaphorical parallels for transness and transphobia, but every route has a happy ending. 
Following up on this-- it can be difficult to write about discovery of gender identity without writing about transphobia, considering how many trans people suffer from internalized transphobia during their period of repression.
Sometimes, repressed/closeted transgender people ‘hyper-perform’ their assigned gender as a form of denial. A trans woman might grow out a beard and join a gym, while a trans man might become very interested in makeup and feminine clothing. 
In Breathless Winds, Poppy often struggles with ‘strength’ and what it means to be a man. In several routes, she tries to prove her strength under the assumption that being stronger would make her happy. Afraid the world would reject her if she became who she really is, she preemptively rejects herself.
Not every trans person suffers from prolonged denial, internalized transphobia, or even gender dysphoria. I don’t think it’s impossible to tell a purely-positive story about trans joy. 
While Poppy never gets rejected for being trans, faces transphobia, gets called a slur, etc, she faces both internal and external (metaphorical) obstacles to realizing and accepting her identity. 
Gallardia represents a societal norm that Poppy can’t live up to herself as a man.
Lantana suffers from certain aspects of her identity as a woman, which makes Poppy feel guilt for wanting to be a girl.
Rue is isolated from town at the start of her route, a ‘punishment’ for breaking this societal norm.
Valerian has to hyper-conform to his masculine gender role at first in toxic ways before finding acceptance from within and from his loved ones.
These struggles are real to a lot of people, but instead of pretending they don’t exist, I hoped to tell a story about catharsis. Poppy is able to live up to her truth as a woman and finds love with Gallardia, Poppy and Lantana redefine what being a woman should and does mean to them, Rue and Poppy find community in others who don’t fit the norm, Poppy and Valerian stop seeking gender validation from a society that was never made to serve them. 
Although these powerful forces of oppression exist, loving yourself as a trans person- and loving those around you, protecting the natural world, and standing up for what you believe in- can save the day. That’s the kind of story we wanted to tell.
Wrap-up
There’s a lot more I could write, but this has already gotten really long (sorry!) so I’ll wrap it up here. 
Learning how to write a visual novel in terms of technical skill (how to depict events on-screen, how long each line should be) as well as in terms of writing skill (how to outline the game, how to plan visual assets) has been a massive undertaking for me. 
Writing Breathless Winds has been a big challenge but also deeply rewarding, and all of your support has made the experience even more wonderful. Thank you for reading and thank you for supporting the game!
302 notes · View notes
letrune · 8 months
Text
Why I don't like the "X is perversion"
So, let me give you the short version. I am a polyamorous transgender furry woman, likely asexual (jury is still out on that one), coming from Hungary. Every single one of these was called a perversion in one time of history, but especially now, they are treated like being either, like just being a furry, is to be at best ashamed of, and most a reason to isolate people like me from society forever - and that I should be thankful for nobody calling for my extermination at the government levels.
Except, you know. Some do. Some US and Russiand jerks had been calling for building what amounts to be gulags for being queer and furry and foreigner, and stuff people in for that alone; simply because "you are a pervert and want to harm the women and children because you are queer or a furry".
So... What do these people actually think? Someone likimg cartoonish anthro characters is to be throw into prison? Asexuals to be throw in some cell in a panopticon? Asexuals to be sent to a forced labour camp? All of us to shut up forever and never even peep online?
Because I heard thrse proposals and yes, actual ideas on how to exterminate us. To have death squads like it's Pol Pot's Cambodia. To round furries up and shoot them. To break into homes in the middle of night and drag people away for public executions. You know, this is like "let us murder anyone who likes Star Trek!".
Back in 2017 if I recall correctly, maybe 2016, I was at a protest. LGBTQ+ people wished to be tteated equally. A man from the government came over and told us: "Come on. Stop it. Be happy you are not shot into the Danube.", which is like telling anyone wishing queer equity "be happy you are not sent to Dachau.". That same sort of "just shut up and be happy we are not murder you, secondary citizens" attitude came out again a lot of time.
Furries who want to claim being a furry is inherently perverted, some queer people wanting to throw the rest under the bus to secure themselves some secondary citizen rank, and so much more...
Just feels like these people want to go "please Mr. Government, let me kill people you don't like as long as I can keep my life, I am happy to be beaten up if I step out of line but please do not hurt me, I am willing to beat others up, please just spare me". You know, quislings. People who happily handed out blindfolds and then realised there was one for themselves and got pushed to the wall too. People who happily rounded up others to be shot into the Danube, or stuffed into a cornhopper to Dachau, or called the secret police on.
This puritanical "destroy them, because being X is perverted" is obvious when you consider that they said the same of homosexuality, trans people, furries and asexuals. That they are inherently a danger and should be removed from society, any means necessary, just like how they also wanted to remove people of other countries, religions and skin colour.
These people are a danger to society and themselves, as they want others dead for simply existing. They want everyone else to fall in line to some cis-het-compulsory, patriarchal, no-creativity allowed, it-is-all-about-me world.
Furries and being queer predate agriculture. Being a xenophobe is relatively new, especially xenophobes who think the only solution is "kill anyone in this group".
422 notes · View notes
vpgoldenrod · 6 months
Text
Aziraphale's Haunted Look: On Being Forcibly Outed and Exiled From The Garden
While we're all talking about Aziraphale's reaction to the kiss, I'm surprised by those who thought Aziraphale looked disgusted because that's not an emotion I'd seen in him at all. There's sadness, and confusion, and anger, but I couldn't remember seeing disgust. When I watched the scene again I realized there's something else going on that really struck a chord with me. It's an uncomfortably familiar look.
He feels exposed. And I know what it feels like to be exposed in such a violent and intimate way.
Stay with me, I promise this is relevant to my analysis.
I didn't know what being transgender meant when I was a kid. Being raised in a fundamentalist Christian house meant that I wasn't exposed to those ideas, so I lived my life feeling like something was always just kind of broken. It was like I was looking right through the problem at other things, trying to alleviate symptoms without understanding why they existed in the first place. I eventually met other trans people, who gently nudged me in the direction of my truth. I even became aware that I had experienced some minor dysphoria. Every time I came close to acknowledging the truth however, my eyes would once again begin to glaze over the problem. I always managed to subconsciously shove it back into a little box and move on with my life. It was like I accidentally “did a big miracle” and hid this truth from myself so well that I continually forgot it was there.
Til one day I had an encounter that changed everything.
We're friends now but oddly enough, it was only meant to be a fling. I won't go into too many details because it's not just my story, but it was a lovely time that culminated with us meeting and doing what adults do. The person I was with, a cis man, silently clocked me the minute we were face to face. For reasons I now understand, without warning and in the middle of our shared intimate experience, he decided to talk dirty to me as if I were a gay man.
No one had ever spoken to me like that before. It had never occurred to me to ask anyone to do that, or that anyone would want to. I was in an intimate space and filled with the typical emotions and endorphins one has during sex, but it was a fling. I had walls up. So for the first time in my life, in this incredibly vulnerable position, someone grabbed me by my lapels and forced me to face a deep truth about myself that I'd spent decades silently dancing around. It was a blunt, irrefutable truth and it hit like a sucker punch to the solar plexus. He saw me when I was very much not trying to be seen, and there's few things more terrifying than that.
Even now, years later, I have such a hard time putting into words the overwhelming emotions I felt that night. There were so many, and yet somehow I can see every single one of the emotions I felt in Aziraphale's face when Crowley lets him go. My heart breaks all over again seeing how exposed he felt. He can barely make eye contact until he stumbles onto the one emotion that gives him his agency back: anger.
Gabriel shows up to the bookshop completely naked. When a bewildered Aziraphale points it out Gabriel says, “Who told you I was naked?”
But that's not how the story goes.
God looks for Adam in the garden, but he hides from her. He eventually tells God, “I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.”
Then God asks Adam, “Who told you you were naked?” And of course Adam knows he is naked because he ate the apple.
I've made jokes about Crowley being the apple that bit Aziraphale, but I forgot the bit that happens afterwards. He is aware of his own nakedness. He is exposed. To God, to Crowley, and to himself. As a result he is exiled from the safety of his Eden. Man, if this isn't the perfect analogy for being forcibly outed I don't know what is.
This show is so gay you guys.
252 notes · View notes
aroacesafeplaceforall · 6 months
Note
You’re pissed that no one took any accountability for their supposed “aphobia/arophobia” but where is the accountability for the constant inhumane and disgusting homophobia, biphobia and transphobia STILL spewing out of ace spaces like puss? When will you all realize you feel that way because you are directly adjacent to the oppressor class and have next to nothing in common with the LGBT community as a whole but nearly everything in common with the average cishet? Y’all aren’t queer for not wanting to fuck, only fucking sometimes “if you emotionally connect”, or being emotionally unavailable to romantic partnership. And if you aren’t also gay, trans, or bisexual, you never will be.
I got my laptop out for this, goddamn. Where would i even start?
"You’re pissed that no one took any accountability for their supposed “aphobia/arophobia”" This tells me everything about you, you possibly don't believe in aro/ace identities. You don't believe people can hate on, or be hateful to, aro/ace spec people. And yes I am pissed. Because it was fucked up.
I would try to justify it with "if this was transphobic/homophobia you wouldn't be acting this way" but im guess you don't care about that as you obviously don't see it the same way.
you were also probably someone who sent asks like this (but more hateful) in 2016 and before, you were probably also someone who posted and reblogged aphobic content and said it was "just a joke" later while still sending asks like this to people. Take of that anon and show your face coward.
"where is the accountability for the constant inhumane and disgusting homophobia, biphobia and transphobia STILL spewing out of ace spaces like puss?"
where is the accountability for the homophobia, biphobia and transphobia still spewing out of ALL lgbtqia+ spaces? Where is the accountability in the REAL world? Where is it anon? Where is the accountability for the acephobia, the arophobia and so many other "not real sexualities/gender identities" -phobias?
You saw a post about aphobia, and instead of being like "yeah that was f-ed up" or "i dont care" you went "but what about meeeeee" which is very all lives matter of you. (I am not comparing racism to homophobia, however the "what about me" bs can be summed up very easily using all lives matter as an example) For the fucking record, all spaces have assholes, all of them. On behalf of the "normal" aro/ace spec folks, i apologise for any homophobia, biphobia and/or transphobia you have experienced from us. "When will you all realize you feel that way because you are directly adjacent to the oppressor class and have next to nothing in common with the LGBT community as a whole but nearly everything in common with the average cishet?" This is a main aphobe talking point so thank you for doing this by the text book so i can break it down easier!
Three pages about asexual hate crimes which im sure every average cishet has to deal with (assuming their white and male) 1 2 (a booklet for asexual people to be actually fucking included) 3
An incredible interview is here but im going to quote a few things from it as theres a 99.9% chance aphobes wont click a link
"We know aromantics and asexuals have existed for as long as humans have. However, it’s only through the terminology recently going mainstream"
"Because of Freud’s influence, many of us grew up learning that our sex drive is the primary motivator of human behavior, but that isn’t the case."
"That mindset replicates itself within the community so that when a new identity emerges, or when people try to explain themselves, there is resistance and pushback from within the community with the mindset that “if we let these kinds of people in, then that will dilute the access to power and resources we have.” And it forces the community to maintain adjacency to white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, ableism and classism, all while leaving behind entire groups of people."
" Do you think there will be more identities joining the LGBTQIA+ acronym? JP: Yes. The more words we have to describe ourselves, the better we are understood."
"The biggest comparisons are the lack of visibility and exclusion from communities on the basis that they’re weird, different, othered or “don’t belong in this space.” Every queer person has experienced this narrative and as more join under the umbrella, the newbie will experience the same challenges, discrimination and misunderstandings as those who came before." and here is another article that has a quote i just live by
"When did trauma become the mark of queerness?"
but back to the aphobe ->
"Y’all aren’t queer for not wanting to fuck, only fucking sometimes “if you emotionally connect”, or being emotionally unavailable to romantic partnership. "
if you think queer = sex then so help me. queer does not equal sex, queer is sexuality. and guess what that is NOT always sexual. sexuality is who your attracted to, whether it be romantically OR sexually.
and Asexuality is a spectrum, some asexuals never have sex, some don't want to have sex but have had it due to trauma or peer pressure, some don't care for it, some did it for a partner but just dont care about it.
same with aromantic. Its a spectrum. By your process here, so so so so so many people are removed from the lgbtqia+ community but you couldn't possibly mean that-
"And if you aren’t also gay, trans, or bisexual, you never will be."
-oh you did.
So none of these are part of the community either then? Agender, Bigender, Intersex, genderfluid, pansexual, omnisexual, Omnigender, Questioning, transgender and queer?
interesting anon.
Anyways i hope my followers enjoyed that! Let me know what you think if you finished reading all this!
Love;
An aegosexual, pansexual, aromantic, trans guy with to much fucking time on his hands.
210 notes · View notes
spacelazarwolf · 6 months
Text
hmmmmmmm i’m real fucking tired of jew haters lying abt me!
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
let's break this down, shall we?
white trans mascs like spacelazarwolf have no issue calling indigenous people "bone chillingly disturbing" for disagreeing with them.
actually i called what you said antisemitic, because it was. i called what i've witnessed from gentiles in general bone-chillingly disturbing and cruel, and that i've witnessed so much ignorance, hostility, and bloodlust from gentiles. because i keep seeing posts celebrating the massacre that happened on the 7th, and i keep getting anons that tell me "hitler missed one", "the world would be better off without your ilk", "we should have gotten rid of you all ages ago", "die zionists rats *nose emoji*", and a lot of very graphic descriptions of how they would like to rape and kill me. one user, blatantly on their blog, openly said that someone should kill me, and someone said they knew where i lived and could make that happen. that's not disagreeing with me. that is bloodlust.
they pretend to care about racism when trans women engage in it, but have zero issue jumping right to demonic stereotypes about indigenous people who dare to point out that their support of israel is supporting genocide.
hey asshole. I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT YOU.
also. I HAVE BEEN OPEN ABOUT MY CRITICISM OF ISRAEL, MY REFUSAL TO SUPPORT IT AS A STATE, AND MY BELIEF THAT WHAT THEY'RE DOING IS GENOCIDE. YOU FUCKING IDIOT.
literally just blatantly lying about a jew's opinion on israel so you can harass and demonize them is, i hate to tell you, antisemitic.
these so called "anti-semitic rants" were me saying jewish people can survive without israel and do not need to colonize or genocide another group of people to survive.
let's give some of the highlights of your posts:
"while you're here hand-wringing about the safety of israelis and spreading the white supremacist lie that they must be in israel to be safe, israel secured its continued existence by just now murdering 500+ parients and doctors under the excuse of 'well hamas is violent and is hiding in there"
'handwringing' do you mean mourning the deaths of peace activists and children? also if you've read literally any of my other posts on the matter, you know i literally talk about how zionists institutions and leadership use jewish safety and antisemitism in the diaspora to bolster support for a jewish state. pointing this out isn't agreeing with it when you do it, why is it when i do it? what could the difference possibly be??
also, there has been no confirmation on who caused the hospital bombing. there are many reports that it was a misfire by one of the groups in gaza, and those are still being investigated. regardless of who fired it, it's still a tragedy. it's still hundreds of innocent lives lost. and it does not change the fact that the lives lost on the 7th were also a tragedy. using this devastating loss of palestinian life as a bludgeon against a diaspora jew for having the audacity to mourn dead jews is disgusting.
"[you] only bring up jewish people of color to argue that israel is actually not a racist project because israel is the only thing stopping jewish people from being exterminated."
literally just lying.
"jewish people in israel are behaving as and acting as white supremacist colonizers of color"
thanks for literally just outright saying that you think the problem is jews, not the state of israel.
"colonizers globally are constantly killing kids"
and therefore the israeli children who died don't matter? are you expecting jewish people to choose between their nieces and nephews and innocent palestinian children who are killed in gaza?
"[spacelazarwolf has] ranted and raved that without israel existing, the jewish people would be genocided. he's appropriated the struggle of indigenous and black people abroad to cry that jewish people aren't welcome in countries like the us, despite living in the us and benefiting from his whiteness and the oppression of indigenous and black people as many other white jewish people do"
i think you've made it pretty clear you're totally fine lying about what i've actually said regarding israel, but the idea that jews are "appropriating the struggle of indigenous and black people abroad" when we talk about experiencing antisemitism in the countries we live in is so???????????? also you make it really clear in this snippet that your issue isn't with israel but with jews in general.
"white jewish people...have been able to exist in relative safety for decades in european countries"
are you actually fucking insane.
"israel's existence has made things more dangerous for jewish people in the middle east and north africa because these are areas that HISTORICALLY had co-existence between religious groups"
nice historical revisionism! swana was safer than christian countries for sure, but it's SO clear to me that you know absolutely nothing about the history of the jews of swana.
"he and israel supporters like him are constantly distracting from the war crimes and terrorism ISRAEL IS COMMITTING by handwringing perpetually about 'but violence is bad and hamas is bad for being violent, the only good palestinians are the ones that are quiet and don't fight back against us when we kill their kids"
sorry, who's "we"? are diaspora jews killing kids? or do you just equate every single jew in the diaspora to israel? also, yet more blatantly lying and claiming i support israel when i repeatedly have stated i haven't! but it's much more convenient to claim i have, because then you can say that i kill kids!
there's a bunch of other times you repeat the lie that i support israel and "advocate for the continued existence of a settler colonizer state and lying and claiming it's the only way for jewish people to be safe" but i won't include all of those bc this post would be VERY long.
"israel supporters are really out here arguing that palestinians need to hold hands with their genociders and forgive them and find peace - completely ignoring that for centuries there was peace between religious groups in the region and israel destroyed it"
goyim being embarrassingly ignorant of jewish history outside of a warped view of the holocaust? i am shocked!
"the supposed civilians attacked turned out to be iof soldiers so yeah actually it's fucked for you to say. they shouldn't attack people who colonize and massacre palestinian people for their day job"
blatantly supporting the massacre of 1,300 israelis, including children.
"all they can do is fight back or die, while israelis grab their passport and fly back to the us or some other european country and wait for israel to finish their genocide so they can go back"
feel like i don't need to explain why. this is conspiracy theory levels of antisemitic.
"the crying and bellyaching that if the jewish people don't have israel, they'll have to go back to countries that are hostile to them is not one i have sympathy for"
yeah we know you don't have sympathy for jews, that's very clear.
"jewish people, black people, and indigenous people all still live there and survive and fight back and thrive in solidarity together. and they DON'T participate in genocide against other groups of people"
yet again making the blatant assertion that it is JEWS who are committing genocide, and not the israeli government. also let's not pretend that. there's always been perfect solidarity between our communities. jews have not always been the best allies to indigenous people and black people, and vice versa.
"there are other places to turn to if you had any interest in NOT participating in western hegemonic white supremacy. but instead of staying and fighting and existing and thriving with other marginalized people who are at HIGHER risk than you in these countries, you argue that somehow jewish people should be exempt from this work that every other marginalized community does"
shouldn't have to point out that i don't argue that, but also this is, again, conspiracy theory levels of fucked up.
"bonkers to watch israel-supporters screaming and crying that if they don't colonize and genocide palestinians then jewish people can't safely exist"
yikes.
"if it were remotely true, israelis wouldn't have pulled out their dual citizenship passports and gone back to europe and the us to wait at a distance for their government to finish the genocide they started in 1948"
again, yikes.
there is a choice outside colonization - you can just fucking leave and go back to your home countries that are welcoming you with open arms cuz you still have dual citizenship. you don't have to commit genocide colonize people to exist."
more yikes.
"spacelazarwolf really wants to try and argue that they can't stop colonizing palestine cuz if they do, they have to go back to - checks notes - countries where a ton of people still live"
who is "they"?
"for some reason [spacelazarwolf] thinks that to avoid going through [genocide], jewish people need to be allowed to commit genocide themselves and eradicate palestinians"
once again lying abt me, and also openly saying that they believe it is jews who are committing genocide.
"fucking bonkers that he thinks he somehow has the right to commit genocide and colonize to avoid the situation other jewish people, indigenous people, and black people worldwide find themselves in. cowardly bitch baby behavior actually. like i'm sorry lots of other groups of colonized people, who have been subject to genocide and violence, and racism and are still undergoing it, has managed to NOT colonize other groups of people for their own gain."
bc jews are just inherently more evil than other marginalized ppl, right? we're just more prone to being selfish and hurting people? we're just sniveling whiny bitch babies who will turn around and stab you in the back, right?
"screaming and crying that 'we need to be allowed to genocide palestinians or otherwise we have to go back to the us, where we as white jewish people never have to actually deal with the things indigenous and black people there do' is disgusting genocidal behavior. the thought of actually being in solidarity with colonized people is repulsive to people like spacelazarwolf - that's why they all seek to justify colonial projects instead."
again, conspiracy theory levels of fucked.
at no point do i engage in anti-semitism. all i ever criticize is israel.
don't feel like i need to point out that this is not true.
he has repeatedly stated that israel has to exist, otherwise jewish people have to go back to the us, where indigenous people are being genocided.
cool lie! also fucked up thing to say!
i've said nothing about jewish pain and trauma. in fact, i have said on numerous occasions that jewish pain and trauma are very real and that they DO NOT justify. colonization.
mmmmmmmmmm nah. "whiny little bitch babies" is not saying that "jewish pain and trauma are very real." also oops you accidentally did dual loyalty again.
but spacelazarwolf is so rabidly racist he immediately began fearmongering about the bloodlust savage knocking at his door trying to kill him.
i'm on desktop or i would include that mike wazowski standing meme bc genuinely what the fuck.
anyway, i have no doubt that their support palestinians is genuine. that's great. but it is also incredibly clear that they hate jews, and that is going to be a huge detriment to their activism for palestinians, and they're not the only one this is happening with. people need to figure that shit out on their own instead of harassing and lying about jews online and perpetuating this kind of violently antisemitic rhetoric. bc this is like beyond fucked. i am tired of gentiles blatantly lying abt me so they can get away with saying horrendously antisemitic things to and about me. get your fucking shit together.
181 notes · View notes
enduringmoth · 6 months
Text
thoughts on marvin's abuse, care's existence and paul's transness
taking a break from my usual bg3 posting to talk a little bit about my newer hyperfixation through the lens of queer allegory
necessary author's note: i am an afab transmasculine nonbinary person. obviously, while i do believe my transness does lend my opinion authenticity, at the same time, being trans myself does not mean i can't be transphobic -- so if any of the contents of this post set off alarm bells, please tell me.
trigger & content warnings: child abuse, kidnapping, torture, general petscop badness. obvious spoilers for petscop in its entirety, as well as references to the recent youtube deepdive by nexpo.
TL;DR -- perpetuating the idea that someone can force someone else to be a different gender than they are is harmful to trans people. however, all things involve considerable nuance. to pretend that marvin's actions could not have influenced paul's sense of self in the slightest discredits paul's lived experiences, and i believe a more trauma-informed dialogue about paul could be worth exploring as a community.
my preferred theory explaining petscop is that marvin tried to make care more like lina through abuse and "failed". after this, care would eventually end up in lina's home, and transition to paul.
(simply to make all of this less confusing, i'm going to call paul pretransition "care", though i will avoid pronouns. this is not me trying to invalidate paul, it's just so i don't have to keep saying "paul before he transitioned" or similar phrases.)
it is not a result of marvin's "failure" that care transitioned to paul. but i do believe there is a link between paul's perceptions of self and the trauma he endured pretransition -- and discussing these things gives us a deeper understanding of paul and his history.
obviously there is no "canon" answer to petscop. but im seeing this theory discussed a lot within the tags, and i personally agree with it -- i just feel some of those who are saying we cannot consider marvin's actions are not necessarily accurate, either.
what i am positing is that while marvin certainly did not make paul trans and i would never claim that he did, we understand that marvin's abuse of care -- his cruelty towards care, his warping of care's perception of appearance and self-worth -- is certainly a factor in how paul must see himself.
marvin's treatment of care was poor enough that paul struggles to recall that time of his life. he thinks they are different people -- and in a way, they certainly are (and i've seen DID theories for them which i also enjoy because of this) -- and has clearly repressed what it meant to be marvin's child.
marvin locked care in a basement for six months. that is no small amount of time, and it likely had no small amount of affect on paul. we can assume based on the implications of some school scenes that marvin was trying to convince care to be more like lina during this time. care escaped, and returned home -- though eventually, we know from belle's dialogue that paul would find his way to lina.
"do you remember the day you were born?"
paul's "birth" occurred after marvin's abuse, and though it was not a result of it, there is something almost poetic about following the thread of paul's life from care to his authentic self that plays as a foil to the heinous rebirthing practiced by marvin and rainer.
contrasted with what happened to belle (and seemingly others), paul chose (a form of) rebirth -- transition. marvin tried to make lina be reborn through care. instead, care resisted -- and he would eventually become paul, and that strikes me as so narratively compelling. it's not to spite marvin and please don't think i'm saying that, as care was naturally always paul -- it is simply self-discovery at its most raw and beautiful, and i love it.
the above is why i love petscop as a queer allegory. taking ownership of one's future and selfhood, even when others are trying to tell you who to be.
and that's why i think saying marvin made his afab child transition in rejection of martin's quest for lina -- or that marvin tried to make his amab child transition to care/lina, as nexpo posited -- is so wrong, and harmful.
yet, paul's trauma is real. it happened. and it's a part of him that should be able to be discussed for what it is.
as someone with extensive trauma history, i can tell you that my gender expression and personal identity are in some way connected to pieces of trauma, because those pieces are part of me. i am not trans because of my trauma, but my gender and my trauma are parts of me at the same time -- i am not each of my pieces, but a sum of my whole.
the point i'm trying to make here is that while i think nexpo genuinely missed the mark here with this whole "care never existed, marvin tried to make paul a girl" thing, i do think there needs to be room for a trauma-informed discussion around paul.
i hope that all made sense. if any of this is harmful/transphobic, please let me know. i genuinely love this game and i think it's so fascinating to discuss. /gen
132 notes · View notes
girltigerclaw · 5 months
Note
breaking into ur house rn
top ten characters and bottom ten. reasons are optional
I just finished this chart thing i think i actually stole from your blog a few months ago <3 Slightly edited to my own prefs.
Tumblr media
If anyone wants the template check the reblogs, and feel free to add you own. I'd love to see. I'm just rambling under here:
Leafpool: She is more special and sacred than the virgin mary. She has everything. Daughter of the first protagonist, ex boyfriend for me to hate, TONS of wlw situationships<3, a lifetime of tragedy, and some of the most gorgeous canon art to exist.
Crookedstar: Crookedstar is a trans woman to me. Her life is genuinely just so tragic and fucked, I love it. The erins asked: “How much truama, death and misfortune can you fit into a single cat?” and then they wrote Crookedstar’s promise.
Tawnypelt: GIRLS WHO HATE THEIR FATHERS. The erins dont love her like I do.
Tallstar: I love old men… I fucking love seeing older characters and how much they’ve changed from their younger selves. Tallstar is considered one of, if not the most peaceful leader in the clans. But also when he was like 19 he went on a quest to fucking murder a guy :3
Cloudstar: I rlly do not care abt anyone in Skyclan(I like Leafstar but she's not a fav yknow?) Cloudstar... he was based as fuck. Why did Starclan get away with this shit for real??
Scourge: It’s fucking Scourge. He’s awesome
Briarlight: I’m disabled and I love her. She has such a consistent fun, sweet personality and she makes me happy!!<3
RavenBarley: It deserves all the attention and hype it gets. Though I wish mlm ships didn’t overshadow wlw ones in this fandom, RavenBarley is genuinely well written and makes me very emotional even if the publisher didnt allow it to be explicitly canon.
CrookedBlue: TRANS WOMEN CROOKEDSTAR YURI. Two leaders having a forbidden relationship and kits is way more interesting than Oakheart. The angst of Crooked and Blue sitting next to eachother every gathering while the entire forest has their eyes on them. Don’t look for too long, don’t let the mourning slip into your voice. You have to pretend your lover is a stranger. You… have become strangers. You can never be together again. You're enemies now. This is what we wanted, isn’t it? …We’ll never be happy again.
Mothwing: Her novella delving into her relationship with Hawkfrost was so good and heartbreaking.
Heathertail: Daughter of leader, sister of a major villian, and former love interest of a protagonist! Why did she fall off the second po3 ended. She’s shown to be very compassionate and willing to put her own feelings aside for the sake of others. Would’ve honestly prefered her as a mate to Lionblaze or get a pov herself over the nothing we got.
Blackstar: *Murders an elderly woman trying to stop me from kidnapping children. Supports a dictator openly abusing/neglecting children and the elderly. Murders a man for refusing to kill mixed raced children- then tells said man’s sister that she will never be safe.* Man…. i sure do feel bad for abusing and killing all of those people…. Good thing I will face no consequences and proceed to be made leader, where I will have even more power over the wellbeing of others.
I hate. This guy.
The New Prophecy: A classic. My first series was actually tnp! i feel more attached to first arc cats tho, if you couldn't already tell by my list lmao
Johanna Map- Best Tawnypelt content out there
BlueQuince: My personal handcrafted, homemade Yuri. Bluefur feels terrible about Tiny going missing and promises Quince she’ll help her find him. They never did, but they had a very… fleeting but intimate relationship. Quince is grieving and Bluefur feels so overwhelmed by the duties in her clan. They’ve always thought of eachother since but never met again.
Tigerclaw: My name sake<3 The angst of his earlier life is so, so facinating to me. Starclan being straight fucked up and decided killing him is their only option? He was a kid and they saw him as a lost cause from the start. They never tried any other methods, never tried to steer him in the right direction or… even just take it into their own hands and kill him themself, which they have SHOWN they’re capable of.
They watched all the the horrific crimes he commited, entirely aware they were going to happen. Thats. Fucking. Horrifying. Starclan is scary as shit… and his death? FANTASTIC. I only wish he’d gotten lives from cats he killed so that him coming back to life to suffer over and over was an actual curse from Starclan and not blessings. They knew how he would die and they gave him the lives to torture him for his sins…
Flywhisker: Adhd girlies. Painfully relate to that feeling of the constant scolding for never being “good enough” because I prefer to do things a certain way or struggle to focus. So, SO happy for her when she left the clans! You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone! Hope she’s happy and warm indoors with her brother💕
(P.S. I was very suprised to find she actually had an official art piece!)
Bluestar: Get behind me women with mental disorders. I will defend you. Beautifully complex and tragic character, my favorite written in the series. Literally can't think of a single other female character in handled as seriously and with the complexity of Bluestar. (Although her super edition was a bit of an L with how others treated her, it ultimately makes her breakdown even more painful.)
Exile from Shaodwclan: Nightstar my beloved! He's such a great guy. The rightful leader of Shadowclan, always and forever.
Ravenpaw's Farewell: HE DIED IN BARLEY'S ARMS, TELLING HIM HE WILL FIND HIM, NO MATTER WHERE HE IS. FUCK.
Crookedstar art: So beautiful. I genuinely think she's one of the prettiest cats in the series. This along with her official art by Wayne Mcloughlin.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Leopardstar: As a kid I hated her and loved Blackfoot, now I hate Blackfoot and love her. #feminism. But seriously I think she has way more going for her than he ever has. Her father is a medicine cat who hates violence, the DRASTIC change in Riverclan's view of outsiders upon Crookedstar's death and her leadership. Her already having a position of power before proving she's unworthy of it. (Unlike Blackstar who gets rewarded for his racism and violence by being made leader afterwards) and the fact she has to interact with her victims on a daily basis after what she did.
The writings attempts to redeem her are really lame and dismissive of the actually damage she did, but at the very least they TRIED to do something else with her. Personally, I would have loved to see her assassinated by Mistyfoot. Just like her mother Bluestar was almost killed all those moons ago by Tigerclaw... The parallels of violence for power and violence for peace. A victim repeating the actions of the very man who killed her brother to put an end to what he started in Riverclan.... A shadow in Riverclan, if you will. (<-Pretending erin hunter has hired me to rewrite their series)
Windclan: Tunneling as a concept and inviting outsiders into their clan so friendly and casual makes the clan seems so much more diverse than the others. It always stuck out to me!
Andddd there are my current warrior cat options as of 2023! If someone actually read this whole ramble ily<3
79 notes · View notes
luvtonique · 4 months
Text
I suppose considering my last post I should address something.
I'm currently writing "Melodi," and "Foxen," and a lot of people have asked me if there will be "Representation" in those stories.
The answer is, "Not intentionally, no."
I do not write labels, I write characters. I'm sorry, I don't give a flying fuck about representation, I write characters that are important to the story and give them personalities that further the plot.
I love character interactions, I love when characters with heavily different personalities and opinions interact with one another and have disagreements, make stupid decisions, do things that the reader would never do (like "DON'T GO IN THERE" moments).
I also like world-building. I like imagining entire worlds where the governing bodies, the landscape, the whole society is completely different than Earth, especially since I feel very strongly that bringing real-world issues (especially political or ideological) into fictional media completely pulls the viewer out of the fiction.
A story about a fictional world shouldn't be a story about Earth.
Period. I will never change my opinion on that.
It's time to really lay things out here. People have asked me, "Will there be any trans characters in <Melodi/Foxen>?"
The answer is an absolutely resounding, "No. Trans people do not exist in those universes literally at all."
"WHOA, WHAT!? SO YOU'RE JUST ERASING TRANS PEOPLE!?"
No. I'm inventing a world where you can swap your sex by drinking a potion or casting a spell, thus meaning gender dysmorphia would not exist, because if you wanna be a girl you can just snap your fingers or drink a potion. That is not "Erasing Trans People," that is looking realistically at a fictional universe in which we are not born into a body we can't easily change out of.
I'm sorry to have to tell you this but the concept of gender, of culture, of race, of species, are all concepts that exist on Earth, and a fictional world is not required to have any of those things. At all.
Do black people exist in Melodi? Yeah, humans can have darker skin, a lot of them do. Are they a different culture? No. Do they act different? No. Do they look different? Other than the skin color, no. Do they wear their hair different? No.
All of these things are because "Humans" in Melodi's universe are a society obsessed with technology. Humans are the only species with no natural magical affinity, and therefore they put cybernetic bio-chips in their children that give them artificial magic affinity that slowly replaces their circulatory system as they grow up to make them able to cast spells. In Melodi's universe, humans are a society revolving around technological advancements, spellcrafting with their cool digital magic and they've developed kinks and fetishes for people with different cyber wiring patterns in their faces instead of like, "Freckles or no freckles"
There's no Africa or America in Melodi's universe so why would there be African Americans? There's just black humans, who act like all the other humans but have black skin, no cultural differences at all, no racism between them, none of that.
I hate to be the one to break this to all of you but fiction is not real, and as much as you wanna demand it, fiction has no implicit criteria to be realistic or relatable in any way.
And now we get to the elephant in the room, "But Jay, you've said in private that Melodi is a lesbian, isn't that lesbian representation?"
No, that's girls who are attracted to girls existing in a fantasy world where it's extremely possible and reasonable for a girl to sometimes, hear me out, be attracted to girls.
Where gender dysmorphia wouldn't exist because of the immediate ease of access of sex-swapping magics and potions, the same can't be said about a person's attractions. Yes, magic and potions do exist in Melodi's universe that change a person's sexuality, but people still have a sexuality by default.
And here's another elephant, "But Jay, what about racism? Does racism exist in Melodi?"
Yes. Very much so. Melodi takes place in a universe where the different races are fucking vastly different and have extreme cultural differences. EXTREME.
An example: The Feliki do not have familial bonds of any kind and will gladly sell their children to pay their bills. They treat their children, parents, siblings like invaders in their own homes, and will only keep them around if they're useful to the household.
Another example: The Lupos choose a person once a year to be their "Hunt Target" and tell the rest of the world that anyone who interferes with their hunt will be slaughtered, and will spend the year hunting down and murdering their target to have a ritual feast.
A prime example: The Bicci literally need to have sex to live, and when starved will literally sexually assault people out of desperation. This has lead to the Bicci being forced to have partners if they ever leave their city so that they can feed off each other, and they will be arrested and dragged back to their city if they're seen alone outside of it. Bicci are also commonly referred to as rapists by other races.
See, I'm very much of the opinion (and always will be) that fiction is not real, and the more that you demand fiction be real, the less you're demanding fiction and the more you're demanding reality.
The world Melodi is in is a very fucked up world.
You will likely not relate to the characters, you will not see a single transgender character, and you will not see any intentional plot points that relate to anything happening in a socio-political sphere in real life because I'm sorry, but that's not the story I'm writing.
I'm writing a story about a fucked up nightmare world, and in Foxen's case I'm writing a story about a family going on an adventure in a silly world with goats and foxes and magic and candy.
I do not write stories about real life.
I do not write my opinions into metaphors nor use my characters as soapbox puppets to convey my opinions on real-life social matters.
And you will not see intentional representation in my works.
That is final, and I will never, ever, ever change this fact about my works of fiction.
Thank you for reading, hope you're having a great day.
Luv you.
~Jay
67 notes · View notes
bumblee-stumblee · 1 year
Note
I am one of those 'kids who can't consent'. I can consent. But because of radfems allying with the conservative right, you are forcing me through irreparable changes. Every day I wake up and my body is more and more disgusting. But, because of you, I keep getting gaslit by GPs that I'm not trans, that I will learn to love my body, when the reality is it's wrong. Radfems do want to kill trans people, and they want kids to stay sexually available to them. I've lost count of the amount of lesbians telling me that I shouldn't "mutilate" my body because they lose out on another butch. You're disgusting and why I may be attracted to girls but will never date them.
Killing trans people is your end goal and that's why people think you're evil. 56% increase in hate crimes in the UK, thanks for that.
No, actually, you can't consent and if you don't understand the dangerous precedent this sets (for full grown adults with agendas to tell you can consent,) I'll explain it to you.
Within the trans community there's an idea that the sooner you can get a kid to transition, socially or medically, the sooner this can be seen as normal. The normalization of transitioning children is important, it pushes the idea that they could be born in the wrong body and normalizes the idea that a child knows what is medically best for them.
Child predators will try to find a way to have access to children by any means, now imagine how much easier it would be for them to have access to vulnerable children if they just claim to understand and support their gender identity issues.
The idea that children can consent would mean parents have no right over their children when it comes to their health and protections. I'm not saying children shouldn't speak up for themselves but we need to acknowledge that many children can be coached or groomed into saying or thinking things that may not benefit them or their safety.
The people that would love it for the law to 'recognize' that kids can consent doesn't stop at transgender rights advocates. It extends to pedophiles/child molesters that would love to get off the sex registry(something Jacob Breslow thinks it shouldn't exist to begin with) & pedophiles in position of power; informing and creating guidelines regarding childrens health & gender identity issues/transgenderism.
Pedophile sympathizer Jacob Breslow advocates for the rights of pedophiles, he thinks people are too mean to them. He thinks minors can consent too.
Tumblr media
In his book Ambivalent Childhoods, Chapter 3 Desiring the Child: Queerness, Motherhood, and the Analyst, he writes:
[a description of a 12-year-old child dancing and mimicking sex acts to a crowd of adults.]
“As his movements transition from those that mimic break-dancers to those that mimic sex acts, repeating the easily citational gesticulations of pelvic thrusts … I find myself caught up in exhilarating waves of memory, identification, and desire … a desire for him himself,”
Why am I talking about Jacob Breslow? You should know him right? He was a Mermaids charity trustee until all of this came out, the pedophile sympathizing and all that.
Breslow also cited as an inspiration for his own writing Judith Levine’s 2002 book Harmful To Minors: The Perils Of Protecting Children From Sex in which she wrote that “sex is not in itself harmful to minors” and argued for the lowering of the age of consent to twelve.
He also was a guest speaker for a Pro-Pedophile B4U-ACT conference, an organization set up by a convicted child molester to destigmatize pedophiles and rebrand then as MAPs or Minor attracted person.
He's just one person tho, right? Not like there are more pedophile sympathizers in position of power when it comes to the transgender movement-
Anyways, all that to say;
Kids cannot consent because they don't have the cognitive or emotional maturity to understand long-term ramifications of such things.
>forcing irreparable changes
Going through puberty is normal. You've been convinced it's not but i promise you, you can still transition as soon as you turn 18 or whatever if that's what you want and you'll be fine.
Radfems don't align themselves with the conservative right but i can understand how you'd come to think that's what's happening when certain radfems talk on conservative platforms. I think there's a lack of understanding that they have no where else to speak on, especially when leftist first action is to label them as terfs and often don't give them the opportunity to have a conversation lest they be cancelled for even giving them the time of day.
Your body isn't disgusting. I'm sorry you feel that way and I'm sorry there are certain people that have convinced you to hate your body. I won't tell you you can learn to love yourself, it's taken me decades to learn to love myself and stop hating myself so much for things that happened to me that were out of my control and made me resent being a woman. Learning about radical feminism has definitely helped. I hope you can find something that will help you you as well that won't cause irreversible damage.
Radfems don't want to kill transpeople, I've already explained this in a different ask. Radfems don't want kids to be sexually available to them either, that's disgusting.
Hey, it sounds like you're dealing with a lot, including internalized homophobia, maybe some trauma. I truly hope you get an actual therapist that can listen and validate your concerns. My end goal isn't to kill transpeople tho I'd definitely would like to know where you're getting that from.
442 notes · View notes
cursedvibes · 7 months
Note
Hi..... Can I ask your top 5 (or top 3) favorite characters from JJK? And why you loved them? And your top 5 favorite moments from the series (until now)? Thanks....
No problem. It gives me a great excuse to whip out this image of my top 9 jjk faves
Tumblr media
They're not in order here, but compared to other categories, I don't actually have such a hard time ranking characters.
Kenjaku
I've talked about them a bunch, most recently on the last ask about my favourite characters, so I'll just summarize what I love about them: mad scientist + family drama + trans + chill & genre-savvy + Japanese history + body snatcher
2. Yuuji
Also like him for how he's a pretty unusual shonen protagonist. He's not overpowered, he doesn't want to become the jujutsu king/kage/president and almost every shonen mc trope he does exhibit gets punished or beaten out of him. He nontheless doesn't lose his base compassion for people. That compassion is also what will drive him to kill if he has to, something for the few people he actually hates. He's selfless to the point of suicidal. His whole character arc(s) revolves around him finding a satisfying way to die and now being forced to also find a satisfying reason to live (with how jjk is going, I don't think he'll find that but he's not able to die either). His conflicts with the villains are deeply personal, he doesn't just challenge them on the basis of them breaking the law or being some nebulous depiction of a bad person. That's how it starts out, but he can't beat them on that basis alone. He was only able to really hurt Mahito and defeat him after he accepted their personal connection and similarities.
3. Tengen
Problematic conservative grandma. She's really the root of all of the problems in jujutsu society, she's the one who build up the entire basis of the series from world building to the antagonists. Without her Kenjaku wouldn't be who they are right now, they would likely not try to challenge the system and forcefully advance humanity in the way they do and might even be dead for hundreds of years. Gojo wouldn't exist without her either. Riko wouldn't either and she also wouldn't have died the way she did. Same for Yuki. Sukuna might largely be influenced by her as well. She's responsible for so much of what's happening in the series, but gets all too easily overlooked both in-universe and outside. Her whole backstory is so fascinating, her relationship to Kenjaku drives me crazy and I do find her stubborn, kinda grumpy personality quite charming. Also gnc as fuck.
4. Uraume
While in Sukuna's case I really care more about his backstory than him as a person and find his personality not that exciting, it's the opposite for Uraume. I do want that Heian flashback and also see where Uraume came from and how they met Sukuna, but what I really like about them is their personality. At first glance they appear so calm and collected, just a loyal servant without much autonomy, but they're actually so much more. There's so much passion in them, they are so easy to tick off and always ready for violence. Especially in combination with Kenjaku they are so entertaining. I need to see them cook more often. Preferably human. That brief glimpse we got when they prepared Sukuna's bath was so good. The way they pinned down and sliced up those curses without destroying them...I want to see them do the same with humans.
5. Angel
Heian era's craziest paladin. I just love how hypocritical and bloodthirsty she is. She has her sense of justice and right and wrong, she doesn't pretend like everyone has to agree with it, but she will still mercilessly kill everyone in her way or who she just doesn't like for one reason or another. If Kenjaku is a social butterfly, she's a social caterpillar. I miss her just blatently telling the protagonists that she doesn't care about their goals or innocent people dying. She must have been wonderful to witness in politics. I'm really curious how her relationship to the Abe clan looked liked. It's such a shame that all that got toned down, so Sukuna didn't get one-shotted and Gojo could be freed. The volume 24 extra show though that Gege does care about her or at least her technique, giving me some hope that she will actually get something to do again soon. Once we get her backstory, she could easily rank above Uraume. Btw, I want more panels where Angel is just a mouth. No Hana, just that mouth with a monotone background and overly detailed teeth. It looks so fantastically creepy.
Favourite Moments
1. Kenjaku talking to Kogane
Tumblr media
It's just such a good moment that does a lot for Kenjaku's characterization, their goals and relationship to Tengen (and arguably also Yuuji). Still feeling pretty ambivalent about ch222, but this was undeniably a highlight. It has had a tight grip on my mind ever since. I could write whole essays about it, starting with the scenary of it all. Kenjaku sitting alone, the only one in focus and the only one in the light, while being in front of a game console with two controllers that remain untouched and without a game running while talking to someone/something that/who can't hear them or can't understand them. Kogane is basically just a computer. It can't give insightful answers or challenge Kenjaku's beliefs, while Tengen has also lost all autonomy and most of her personality I assume. She also can't talk back, probably can't hear them and isn't even there, but Kenjaku still directs their musings at her, knowing she won't/can't answer, but still asking for her input, challenging her and leaving space for what would be her own words. They hate her, but also want her to do better and this scene really shows that while Kenjaku's plans my succeed, they probably won't get what they really want.
2. Yuuji chasing Mahito
Tumblr media
Pretty easy pick. I'm really looking forward to seeing this animated soon. It's not just the beautiful imagery or how their roles have now reversed, but also what leads up to it. Yuuji accepts who he is, how he is not so different from Mahito. He discards any pretence of high and mighty reasons for why Mahito should die and embraces his hate. He's not pretending to be any better than Mahito, no "I'm not gonna kill you because I'm not like you", he says with absolute senserity that he will kill Mahito as many times as it takes. He's gonna hunt him down just like Mahito did. It's also the start of Yuuji giving into the role jujutsu society has put him in and starts thinking of himself as a cog, a mere object that serves others and blindly obeys its function (killing curses). I think getting Sukuna out of his body was the start to him evolving past that thinking, but this was a very necessary step. He needs to be broken down before being build back up. It was a great end for Mahito as a character as well.
3. Kenjaku & Tengen get Sukuna's body
Tumblr media
This whole scene is so interesting. Like in the first moment it's basically just Kenjaku talking to their hand puppets again, but this time there's a bit more outside input. Ngl, the mere fact that Kenjaku and Tengen are together, talking to each other and working with each other excites me already. There's not much of Tengen's consciousness left and she can't actually refuse anything Kenjaku does, but their interactions were still very fascinating. What's also interesting is how they (both of them) treat Sukuna's corpse. They stroll up to it so casually, as if they have done it in the past. Kenjaku asks Tengen if they can take it and she says yes, but neither of them consider Sukuna and his wishes in all this. Kenjaku even jokes that it's their souvenir for him. It makes me so curious about how they are connected to him and what kind of relationship the three used to have. It gets even better now that we know that Tengen was the one who prepared his corpse (without his knowledge) and Kenjaku was the one who turned Sukuna into a cursed object. These two have clearly passed around Sukuna's corpse between them before. "Do you mind if I take his fingers?" "No, go ahead, I don't need them" This scene gets better and better as the story progresses.
4. MCs meeting Tengen
Tumblr media
Speaking of scenes that get better with time, ch145 and 146 have been one of my favourites for a long time. They have to be on this list for how many times I've reread them alone. The more information and backstory we get, the more interesting this whole info dump becomes. There are always little phrases and moments that become a lot more meaning full on a reread. We also got so many hints. Tengen's connection to the Star Plasma Vessels and Six Eyes, Yuki being able to hear the other SPVs, Tengen and Kenjaku's relationship (many hcs were spawned by Tengen casually calling Kenjaku a child and I'm happy to see that many of them are turning out to be true), the first hints at Kenjaku's plan, even though a lot of depth was missing of course and Tengen underestimates some of their reasoning and end goals, and Tengen's utter failure to understand Kenjaku as a person (they aren't even that shy to talk about their reasons, especially to her! grandma please...).
5. Noritoshi preparing to die/visiting his mother
Tumblr media
It's this scene of Noritoshi finding his mother again plus the context of her side of the story at the end of the Sakurajima colony and Maki's advice re matricide that really moves me. Probably Noritoshi's best scene so far. I really hope the reason he isn't with the others is because he went back to his mother to finally talk to her openly. I swear, these two are so horrible at communicating. It's so heartbreaking to see Noritoshi lose all will to live and being ready to die in battle to do at least something useful with his life. He dedicated everything to changing the Kamo from within for his mother, only to get kicked out of the clan and find out that his mother has moved on. Everything he has done so far becomes meaningless. However, it is what comes afterwards that makes it even more clear how toxic his mindset was. Noritoshi thinks poetic words about how he's gonna die for his friends, only to be interrupted by Daido and Miyo. It shows that this way of thinking is entirely unnecessary and something he has to break out of. It's what sets him on the right path to reunite with his mother. Kenjaku forced him out of the clan and gave him no way to return. His mother showed him that there is a way to live a happy life despite the abuse both of them suffered from the Kamo clan, it is possible to move on. Daido & Miyo disrupted his suicidal thoughts and took over the fight for him aka he has to rely on others and accept their "help" without giving anythign in return. Maki taught him that there might be a way to reconnect with his mother and that he should ask all the questions he has for her regarding his purpose and name openly. I really didn't care much for Noritoshi before, but this whole arc elevated him so much for me.
49 notes · View notes
catwalkvivi · 1 month
Text
well hey, since hardly anyone's looking at this corner of the website anyway I might as well take the opportunity to vent (it's annoying to do it on twitter with the character cap)
Man, social media is hard.
I see so many people posting regular content consistently for years and years without even seemingly breaking a sweat, while it's always been so difficult for me... Calculating engagement, deciding the best times to post, or, hell, even just sharing what they think/feel/made/fucking ate that day just seems, like, so easy and second nature for pretty much everyone around me. It's genuinely incredible to me that somebody can share what they've learned about idk shitty impractical tanks made in WW1 on this website and make it such an interesting read that hundreds of people engage with it!
But I've tried keeping social media accounts for art and stuff so many times now, on here, on Instagram, on Artstation, on Xitter, and eventually it just- kinda- fades away, it just feels so exhausting to keep track of all the things necessary to Chase the Algorhythm™ if you wanna have any relevancy. Is it a charisma thing??? Where do I grind to get a stat boost on my Cha???
I'd love to say it doesn't matter to me, since I've been drawing shit for myself for years now, but unfortunately artists do need social media presence if they wanna get work. Not to mention, well, I wanna reach people with the stuff I do! I want people to react to what I made, to say what they liked about it, or how it made them feel, and then when I post something I worked on for hours only to get, like, almost zero visibility? idk, man, it just kinda hurts. It's probably selfish and immature for me to say it, I know that it takes time and effort to build an audience and all that, but damn I get happy when people show me that something I've made has affected them positively. I like the connection, I like the conversations, I like meeting people who enjoy the same nerdy trash that I do!
(I was very fortunate to have an art post of mine reach a lot of notes here years ago, which was amazing, but it's such a rare thing)
God, and, like, there's all these weird unspoken rules about interacting on social media too.
The other day a friend of mine came up to our friend group and was like "oh my god this girl liked my stories on instagram it means something does she like me" and I was SO confused and then they were like "well, when somebody not on your friends list likes your stories, it means they're interested in you"
Then some time later another friend was telling me that somebody stopped liking her posts and unfriended her and how that is a horrible offense and my fucking brain hurt, like- okay I get the unfriend part kinda but there could be a hundred reasons for it??? it's not like you have a deep personal connection to all 300 friends you have on your account???
Then I see so many people out there simply sharing something they think or did only to have some rando twist what they said and come at them like they're the shittiest person on the planet that deserves everything bad in life actually (except the ones that are willingly spouting/promoting hateful shit to begin with. Those can rot in hell and I shall not mourn their demise)
Like??? It might be the Power of Autism™ in me but it always feels like I'm one step away from either making a fool of myself or offending twenty different people or both. It's both the fear of having hundreds of thousands of eyes on me and the fear of having none at all. And that makes it really difficult to share anything on the internet for me. I already have to deal with my entire existence as a trans woman making some cunts around the world mad, it sucks that I have to risk it in places where I just wanna post dumb drawings and talk about dumb things that make me happy with others.
I dunno. Word vomit I guess. Social media is hard. Interacting with humans is hard. Sharing stuff is hard. I prefer Pokémon
Tumblr media
21 notes · View notes
m-a-n-g-o-m-i · 2 months
Text
cw// suicide/ self harm mentions
Just wanted to announce for my like 8 followers that I will be taking a possibly permanent break from this site. Really I just can’t handle it and I know it’s mostly my fault but I also want people to be aware of the effects that ur discourse has on people. I saw a post about how transandrophobia truthers should kill themselves to rid the world of their disgusting presence yesterday and well, I wanted to take that advice but I chickened out and now I just have bruises. I’m sorry. I don’t want this to come off as a guilt trip, and I know some people reading this might think I’m making a big deal out of nothing, and this is nothing compared to the harassment transfems face. Maybe that’s true, and I know it’s a little ridiculous to self harm so dramatically over things people say online, but you know, i really believed them. I wanted to do the right thing, and I mean it.
I guess I just latched onto the word transandrophobia because I thought it described the way I could be assaulted for being a woman in other people’s eyes, and then be told to shut up about it, because I’m a man, after all. I thought it worked well to explain how I could be targeted by the sort of fetishization people put on Asian women, while simultaneously being seen as predatory for being masculine. And while I’m fine to stop using the word “transandrophobia”, I will never stop believing that my experiences exist at some legitimate intersection. I don’t know what it is yet exactly. I’m sorry that I don’t have a better grasp on all this. But because I can’t stop believing in the things I’ve experienced, i guess I’ll always be some sort of “truther,” to some people. And I know it’s wrong to be this— don’t think I don’t feel any shame over it! But I’ve tried to drive out those thoughts before, and they just crept back and back, whenever my back was turned. I cannot get rid of them. I’m not very connected to the big accounts posting about this stuff, so I think I also just don’t really comprehend the situation with harassment and everything that lead people to tell others to kill themselves. However, I do think that if you tell people to end their lives, you should be prepared for some of them to do it, legitimately. Maybe that was the intention all along, and this post doesn’t mean a lot, then. But I prefer to believe that people don’t actually want a lot of their fellow trans people dead.
I’m sorry, genuinely. I saw a different post last week that said we should drive transandrodorks out of every irl queer space until they realize they’re all alone, forever. Well, the people I know irl haven’t driven me out yet, and maybe it’s shitty of me, but I’m going to keep hanging around them until they stop wanting to be around me anymore. They love me so far and selfishly I hope it continues like that. Im sorry, genuinely, but I don’t want to leave. They make me feel like it’s a beautiful thing that I exist. I hope I get to live like that for a long time. They’re also telling me to get off this website so I might not see responses to this post.
You can reblog this if you want, even though it’s very personal. I hope people realize I’m being real with this. I don’t fully understand this discourse and this post will probably reflect that— I’m really not trying to play into a particular narrative. I’m very autistic and take things people say very seriously by default. I just want people to understand how it feels. Thank you for reading this all.
13 notes · View notes