Good time for a periodic reminder that "butch" does not mean "has muscles" and it does not mean "sidebuzz haircut" and if you look at a cartoon girl who wears makeup and skirts and high heels and decide she's butch purely on the virtue of "she's kind of buff" or "she's got short hair" or "she's rude to men" or "she knows how to fight" then you need to delete futchscale.png off your hard drive and talk to an actual butch for once in your life
EDIT: This post is somehow still dominating my activity feed after two months so I feel like I should add a couple of disclaimers:
No, I don't hate She-Ra. I like it quite a bit, in fact. I don't know why some people seem to think being annoyed by the fandom response to a character means I hate the show...?
Also, this post isn't really "about" Scorpia. She just came to mind first when I wrote the tag
(imagine I'm standing up on a big box with a megaphone for this one) THIS POST WAS MADE BY A GLEEFUL TRANSSEXUAL AND IF YOU HAVE AN ISSUE WITH THAT THEN MY WORDS ARE NOT FOR YOU. TRANS-EXCLUSIONARY FEMINISM IS A BOLD-FACED LIE AND SERVES ONLY TO REDIRECT SUFFERING AWAY FROM YOURSELF AND TOWARD THE LESS-PRIVILEGED. COWARD
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yesterday while feverish i wrote about how boats can moor next to each other like pigeons, cooing with the gentle rap of water against their hull. you once said that that the way i see things - birds in the water, feathers in marina paint - was "childish and naive." you said i'd been misdiagnosed - "it can't all be adhd. you might be just kind of stupid and lazy."
i still do certain things like how you taught me - turn the pillow case inside out before putting it on. drive defensively. hate myself entirely.
the prompt for this poem is "mahler's fifth." i wish it wasn't, but mahler's fifth was our song. it ended up in my book. every person that knows your name has promised me they'll give you one swift rabbit punch, right to the face. dean read the book and showed up on my front porch, drenched in sweat from running the 8 miles at 4 in the morning. he was shaking. pacifist and gentle - he works with children - i'd never seen him furious. a punch isn't going to do it, he said, and then said i'm sorry. i had to come to see if you were okay.
mahler's fifth was mine first, like my girlhood. i like the way each movement piles onto the next movement, each instrument bleeding into the next. i like the horn version the best. before i met you, i danced to it on grass still-wet from sprinklers.
later you would tell me that the way you heard it was somehow better. you understood something in it that i couldn't quite wrap my fingers into. once, on our anniversary, you asked the classical music radio station to play it for us. we missed hearing it because we were fighting. one of the things people get wrong about abuse is that sometimes victims are, like, brutally aware of the stupidity of our situation. what do you mean that you thought i wasn't good enough for you? you? you're just... nothing.
sometimes people can pull the poetry out of your life. i watched my words become clothesline, and then thin out into kite twine. i watched you chew through every good syllable of me. so many good songs and places and moments were ruined. i am glad you didn't like most of my music - less to tie back to you.
but still mahler's fifth. the music swells, and i am 21 and throwing up in a bathroom on my birthday. a woman i will later refer to as lesbian jesus runs a cool hand down my back, her perfect pantsuit starch-pressed. she told me to leave you. she said - and this is true, and not an invention of rhyme or fantasy - i'm you from the future.
i am 22, and i got home from an award ceremony, and i remember you telling me - you act so proud of yourself when you're actually so fucking embarrassing. i took you to disney world. you took my virginity. i gave up visiting spain for a week with my family - i instead choose you, to spend the time just-cuddling. you called it "our fuck week." the music swells. it probably should have been a red flag that for about 3 years - i just gave up on crying. my grandfather died and you said nothing. my uncle died and you ghosted me for 3 weeks. you said i need to protect myself from your ongoing tragedy.
every so often i come back to the memory of one of our last afternoons in person. i had just told you that i wasn't going to law school, despite the free ride - i was going to join a creative writing program. master's in fine arts. i was going to finally do it - i was going to follow my dreams. this blog was already internet-famous. however reluctantly, i would occasionally refer to myself as a poet. i got into umass amherst's writing program for fiction authors. it is one of the the top 5 programs in the country.
wait are you seriously considering actually attending that? dumbfounded, you turned completely towards me in your seat. for the 3rd time in our relationship, you almost crashed the car. you actually want to be a writer?
the first time i went viral, it was for a poem i wrote about you:
he wants to say i love you
but keeps it to goodnight
because love will take some falling
and she's afraid of heights.
every time i see that, i want to throw up. you weren't in love with me, you were in love with the control you had over me. a little truth though: i am afraid of heights. you caught a rabbitgirl and skinned her alive.
mahler's fifth still makes me sick.
give me that back. give me back music. give me back everything i had before you. give me back fearlessness. give me back bravery. give me back a scarless body.
give me back what you took from me.
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What I like most about farcille is that I think its a perfect encapsulation of Ryoko Kui's signature mixture of the cozy and the horrific. Overall Marcille has this clean pristine aura that she breaks only for Falin's sake. She's uppity, rigid and idealistic almost childishly, then she shows this immense drive, gets her hands dirty, and bends and bends. Dungeon Meshi is about how all beings become objects of consumption, and Marcille wouldn't have arrived at that conclusion if Falin hadn't died. She also wouldn't have if she hadn't befriended her in the first place. The course for Marcille's life was set when she was just open-minded enough to follow the weird girl to the cave in the woods. Forever cursed to eat wildlife
It's that contrast between cleanliness and filth that interests me, the interactions between the comfort and the horror, the uncanniness of the familiar and the familiar in the uncanny.
Every bit of Marcille's characterization points to a type of immaturity (the picky eating, the detached romance obsession, the failure at foreseeing the obvious consequences of her actions, the ridiculous plans to equalize all lifespans, the death crisis). Even in her dream she appears as stuck in childhood due to her loss trauma. Her development throughout the manga consists of coming to terms with grime and disgust, learning where food comes from, learning her limitations, coming to terms with death and decay... And it's all powered ironically by her drive to save Falin
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