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spanishskulduggery · 3 years

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Hi! I'm very curious about something regarding the Spanish language. I'm currently studying A2 Spanish but I had this question and my teacher did not seem too willing to discuss it. Here it goes:

I know that Spanish has, something my Spanish teacher says, linguistic gender. I was wondering how do the people who don't align themselves with the gender binary (masculine and feminine) speak/write in it? I have read this article about Spanish speaking people from US adding "x" Or "@" and people from Argentina using "e" to make the words gender neutral.

Thank you so much for responding, whenever you get to it. Also love your blog. ❤

Short answer, in general speaking terms people are tending towards the -e now because the other two are very hard to actually speak, and because Spanish-speakers feel the -e is more authentic

What you're most likely to see in Spanish is masculine plural as the default, or in written things you might see todos y todas or like un/una alumno/a "a student", or like se busca empleado/a "employees wanted" / "looking for an employee"

If it's something official or academic you typically include both [todas y todas] or you go masculine plural [todos] unless it's specifically feminine plural

Related, linguistic gender applies to all things, not just people. Why is la mesa "table" feminine, but el libro "book" masculine? Just linguistic gender. I can tell you that most loanwords (that aren't people) in Spanish are masculine, and that there are certain words that come from Greek are masculine, and that -ista words are unisex most of the time... And I can tell you there are some words like testigo or modelo that are unisex and don't change for gender. Aside from that, speaking about nouns and grammatical gender... those particular things are harder to parse for regular people, but if you go into the field of linguistics you can explore that more deeply. Some of it is source language (i.e. "it came from Latin this way") or things like that. And in general when talking about nouns it's unimportant and not considered sexist, that's just how it is.

There is such a thing where it gets a little too far the other way and people will say "history? what about herstory" which is a nice thought but the etymology has nothing to do with gender there

When it comes to people - and when it comes to gendered attitudes - that's where it gets more confusing and more complicated.

I believe there was an experiment where people had French and Spanish speakers [I believe it was Spanish] try to identify how a "fork" would sound. French people gave it a more feminine voice because "fork" is feminine in French, while Spanish speakers gave it a more masculine voice because it's masculine in Spanish.

Whether we like it or not, certain gendered things do influence our thoughts and feelings and reactions. A similar thing in English exists where the old joke was something like "There was a car accident; a boy is rushed to the ER and the surgeon but the father was killed. When they got to the ER the doctor said 'I can't operate on him, he's my son!'" and it's like "well who could the doctor be?" ...and the doctor is his mother. We associate "doctor" as masculine and "nurse" as feminine.

There's a gender bias in our language thought patterns, even though the language changes. And that does exist in Spanish too, to different extents.

There are certain cultural and gendered stereotypes or connotations attached to certain words, many tend to be more despective or pejorative when it's women.

For example - and I know this has changed in many places or it isn't as prevalent - el jinete "horseman/rider", while the female form is la amazona "horsewoman/rider". Because la jinete or la jineta was sometimes "promiscuous woman".

There were also debates about things like la presidente vs. la presidenta or what the female version of juez should be, whether it should be la juez or la jueza

Most languages with gendered language have varying degrees of this, and all languages I'm aware of have gendered stereotypes related to professions or cultural attitudes in some way, and not just for women, and not all in the same way with some of them being very culturally based

The longer answer involves a bit of history, and I'll be honest, some of it is contested or considered a little controversial in Spanish-speaking countries particularly in the conservative parts (which honestly should come as no surprise)

The first symbol that I know of that came about was the X

First piece of contested history: As far as I know, it was the trans/queer and drag communities in Latin America who started the trend of X. When there were signs or bulletins that had the gendered endings - specifically masculine plural as the default plural - people would write a big X through the O. This was a way of being inclusive and also a very smash the patriarchy move.

Some people attribute this to women's rights activists which may also be true, but a good portion of the things I read from people say it was the trans/queer/drag communities in Latin America doing this.

I've also read it originated in Brazil with Portuguese; still Latin America, but not a Spanish-speaking country.

Where it's most contested is that some people will say that this trend started in the Hispanic communities of the United States. And - not without reason - people are upset that this is perceived as a very gringo movement.

That's why Latinx is considered a very American-Hispanic experience

The arroba (@) is relatively new. I remember seeing it in the 2000s. I don't know if it existed earlier for gender inclusivity.

People used it because it looks like a combination of O and A, so it was meant to be cut down on saying things like todos y todas or niños y niñas in informal written speech

I remember quite a few (informal) emails starting like hola tod@s or muy buenas a tod@s or things like that

I think of it more as convenience especially in the information age where you never knew who you were talking to and it's easier than including both words, especially when masculine plural might be clumsy or insensitive

Still, it's practically impossible to use the @ in spoken Spanish, so it's better for writing casually. You also likely won't be allowed to use the @ in anything academic, but in chatrooms, blogs, or forums it's an option

I love the E ending. And the gender neutral form in singular is elle... so it's él "he", ella "she", and elle "they (singular)"

The -e ending is I think became more common within the past 10 years though it might have existed longer than that. These sorts of changes tend to come from the queer or trans communities and tend to be more insular before becoming more of an outside thing that then the general population finds out about

It came about because there are some adjectives in Spanish that end in -e that are unisex. It's not an A, it's not an O, but it's something grammatically neutral for Spanish

It's not as awkward as X, and E exists very firmly in Spanish so it's not perceived as some outside (typically gringo) influence

The good news is, it's pretty widespread on the internet. Not so much in person (yet), but especially in Spain and Argentina at least from what I've seen, particularly in the queer communities and online culture.

The only issues with it are that for non-native speakers, you have to get used to any spelling changes. Like amigo and amiga, but to use the E ending you have to add a U... so it's amigue.

That's because there are certain words where you have to do spelling changes to preserve the sound; gue has a hard G sound like -go does [like guerra]... but ge has the equivalent of an English H sound [gelatina for example]. Another one is cómico/a "funny" which would go to cómique. Again, because co has a hard C/K sound, while ce is a soft sound more like an S or in some contexts TH/Z sound; like centro is a soft sound, while cola is a hard sound

Unless you make it to the preterite forms where you come across like pagué, alcancé, practiqué with those types of endings... or subjunctive forms, pague, alcance, practique ... Basically you'd have to be exposed to those spelling rules or you'd be really confused if you were a total beginner.

It all makes sense when you speak it, but spelling might be harder before you learn those rules

The other drawback is that the E endings are sometimes not applicable. Like in damas y caballeros "ladies and gentlemen" there's not really a gender neutral variation on that, it's all binary there. And while la caballero "female knight" does exist, you'd never see a male variation on dama; the closest I've ever seen is calling a guy a damisela en apuros "damsel in distress" in some contexts where the man needs rescuing, and it's feminine una/la damisela, and it's very tongue-in-cheek

There are also some contexts like jefe vs jefa where I guess you would say jefe for "boss" if you were going the neutral route, but it's a bit weird because it's also the masculine option.

I can't speak for how people might feel about those if they're non-binary or agender because every so often you kind of get forced into the binary whether you like it or not

I totally support the E, I just recognize there are some limitations there and it's quirks of the Spanish language itself

Important Note: Just to reiterate, E endings are the ones most Spanish-speakers prefer because it's easiest to speak and doesn't have the American connotation that X does in some circles

Where it gets very "Facebook comment section" is that you'll see many Latin Americans traditionalists and conservatives claim that "this is just the gringos colonizing our language" and "grammatical gender doesn't matter in Spanish". They'll say that the "gender movement" is an American feminist movement and that it's a gringo thing and doesn't reflect actual Latin Americans or Spanish-speakers

Which on the one hand, yes, English does have a lot of undue influence on other languages because of colonization, and American influence and meddling in Latin American politics is a big important issue

But as far as I'm aware of the X (and especially the E) were created by Latin Americans

The other issue I personally have is that any time this conversation comes up, someone will say something like somos latinOs and claim that masculine plural is gender neutral

To that I say, first of all, "masculine plural" is inherently gendered. Additionally, there is a gender neutral in Spanish but it's lo or ello and it's only used with "it" so it sounds very unfriendly to use on an actual person... and in plural it looks like masculine plural and everything applies like masculine plural

Second, the reason masculine plural is default is because of machismo. It's more important that we don't possibly misgender a man, so it has to be masculine plural. It's changed in some places, but growing up when I was learning Spanish, if it was 99 women and 1 man you still had to put masculine plural

I'm not opposed to there being a default, and I understand why it's easier to use masculine plural, but some people get very upset at the idea of inclusive language

...

In general, my biggest issues with these comments come when people act like non-binary/queer/trans people don't exist in Spanish-speaking countries, like English invented them somehow. So it's nice to see linguistic self-determination and seeing native speakers using the E endings.

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cielrouge · 3 years

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YA SFF Books by Latinx Authors

A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry: Spending the summer with his hotel-developer father in Puerto Rico, 17-year-old Lucas turns to a legendary cursed girl filled with poison when his girlfriend mysteriously disappears.

All the Wind in the World by Samantha Mabry: Working in the maguey fields of the Southwest, Sarah Jac and James are in love but forced to start over on a ranch that is possibly cursed where the delicate balance in their relationship begins to give way.

Beneath the Citadel by Destiny Soria: In the city of Eldra, people are ruled by ancient prophecies. For centuries, the high council has stayed in power by virtue of the prophecies of the elder seers. In the present day, Cassa, the orphaned daughter of rebels, is determined to fight back against the high council. But by the time Cassa and her friends uncover the mystery of the final infallible prophecy, it may be too late to save the city — or themselves.

Blanca & Roja by Anne-Marie McLemore: The del Cisne girls, Blanca & Roja, have never just been sisters; they’re also rivals. Because of a generations-old spell, their family is bound to a bevy of swans deep in the woods. But when two local boys become drawn into the game, the swans’ spell intertwines with the strange and unpredictable magic lacing the woods, and all four of their fates depend on facing truths that could either save or destroy them.

Blazewrath Games by Amparo Ortiz: 17-year-old Lana Torres, who after rescuing a prized dragon, is awarded a spot on her native Puerto Rico’s Blazewrath World Cup team. But the return of the Sire, an ancient dragon, soon threatens to compromise this year’s tournament.

They Both Die in the End by Adam Silvera: Set in a near-future New York City where a service alerts people on the day they will die, about two teens who meet using the Last Friend app and are faced with the challenge of living a lifetime on their End Day.

The Body Market (Wired #2) by Donna Freitas: When Skylar's sister betrays her and opens the Body Market, everyone in the App World is for sale and Skylar resolves to stop her sister and the malevolent market.

Bruja Born (Brooklyn Brujas #2) by Zoraida Cordova: Teenage bruja Lula Mortiz tries to save her boyfriend, Maks, by cheating Death; however, Lady de la Muerte is not so easily bested.

The Buried by Melissa Grey: After disaster strikes the remote town of Indigo Falls. A horrific event drove the residents underground, into shelters that keep them safe from the danger on the surface. Now, a handful of families inhabit this bunker together, guided by a charismatic leader named Dr. Imogen Moran.

Cazadora (Wolves of No World #2) by Romina Garber: In this follow-up to Lobizona, Manu and her friends as they continue to fight for a better future.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas: Latinx trans teen Yadriel, hoping to release his cousin’s spirit and prove himself as a brujo, accidentally summons the wrong ghost and resident bad boy Julian Diaz, falling in love with him.

Dark and Deepest Red by Anna-Marie McLemore: Summer, 1518. A strange sickness sweeps through Strasbourg: women dance in the streets, some until they fall down dead. As rumors of witchcraft spread, suspicion turns toward Lavinia and her family. Five centuries later, a pair of red shoes seal to Rosella Oliva’s feet, making her dance uncontrollably. They draw her toward a boy who knows the dancing fever’s history better than anyone: Emil.

Dealing in Dreams by Lilliam Rivera: 16-year-old Nalah leads the fiercest all-girl crew in Mega City, but when she sets her sights on giving this life up for a prestigious home in Mega Towers, she must decide if she’s willing to do the unspeakable to get what she wants.

Diamond City by Francesca Flores: Pulled from the streets at age twelve and trained to become one of the most powerful assassins in Sumerand, Aina Solis discovers a conspiracy that could rewrite the kingdom's history.

Dragonblood Ring (Blazewrath Games #2) by Amparo Ortiz: After the Sire’s capture, teen athletes Lana Torres and Victoria Peralta travel to Puerto Rico with their former Blazewrath team. While Lana discovers her roots, nothing fills the void Blazewrath’s cancelation has left in Victoria. But it’s up to their team and the Bureau to protect their dragons.

Each of Us a Desert by Mark Oshiro: Xochital is destined to wander the desert alone. Her one desire: to share her heart with a kindred spirit. One night, Xo’s wish is granted—in the form of Emilia, the cold and beautiful daughter of the town’s murderous mayor. But when the two set out on a magical journey across the desert, they find their hearts could be a match… if only they can survive the nightmare-like terrors that arise when the sun goes down.

Fire with Fire by Destiny Soria: A contemporary fantasy about two sisters, Dani and Eden Rivera, who were raised to be fierce dragon slayers but end up on opposite sides of the impending war when one sister forms an unlikely, magical bond with a dragon.

The First 7 (The Last 8 #2) by Laura Pohl: After leaving Earth, now devastated by an alien attack, and exploring the galaxy, Clover Martinez and her fellow teen survivors return home to find crystal formations in the soil that are threatening to destroy the planet, and a colony of survivors who are not who they seem.

Five Midnights by Ann Davila Cardinal: If Lupe Dávila and Javier Utierre can survive each other’s company, together they can solve a series of grisly murders sweeping though Puerto Rico. But the clues lead them out of the real world and into the realm of myths and legends.

The Grief Keeper by Alexandra Villasante: To have her family’s asylum request accepted, 17-year-old Marisol participates in a risky experiment to become a grief keeper, taking another’s grief into her own body to save a life.

The Healer by Donna Freitas: Manifesting astonishing healing powers that cause some people to consider her a saint, Marlena Oliveria struggles with edicts that prevent her from attending school, having friends and falling in love when she meets a boy who makes her question what she is willing to sacrifice.

Hollywood Witch Hunter by Valerie Tejeda: When a coven bent on retaining their youth must sacrifice the beautiful, and rich women of Southern California, a society of witch hunters will try to protect humans from a great evil uprising.

Incendiary by Zoraida Cordova: As Renata Convida grows more deeply embedded in the politics of the royal court, she uncovers a secret in her past that could change the entire fate of the kingdom–and end a costly war.

Illusionary (Hollow Crown #2) by Zoraida Córdova: Reeling from betrayal, Renata Convida is a girl on the run. With few options and fewer allies, she reluctantly joins forces with none other than Prince Castian, her most infuriating and intriguing enemy.

Infinity Son by Adam Silvera: In the Bronx, two brothers, Emil and Brighton, get caught up in a magical war generations in the making.

Infinity Reaper (Infinity Cycle #2) by Adam Silvera: Emil and Brighton Rey defied the odds. When Brighton drank the Reaper’s Blood, he believed it would make him invincible, but instead the potion is killing him. In Emil’s race to find an antidote that will not only save his brother but also rid him of his own unwanted phoenix powers, he will have to dig deep into his past lives.

Iron Cast by Destiny Soria: In 1919 Boston, best friends Corinne and Ada perform illegally as illusionists in an infamous gangster's nightclub, using their "afflicted" blood to con Boston's elite, until the law closes in.

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova: Alex is a bruja and the most powerful witch in her family. . When a curse she performs to rid herself of magic backfires and her family vanishes, she must travel to Los Lagos to get her family back.

The Last 8 by Laura Pohl: After an alien attack devastates the Earth, pilot and future astronaut Clover Martinez bands with seven other teens to survive.

Lobizona by Romina Garber: As Manuela Azul uncovers her own story and traces her real heritage all the way back to a cursed city in Argentina, she learns it’s not just her U.S. residency that’s illegal… .it’s her entire existence.

Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas: When children start to go missing in the local woods, eighteen-year-old Wendy Darling must face her fears and a past she cannot remember to rescue them in this novel based on Peter Pan.

The Mind Virus (Wired #3) by Donna Freitas: Skylar Cruz has managed to shut down the body market that her sister Jude opened, and to create a door to allow App World citizens reentry into the Real World. But as tensions between the newly mingling people escalate, she s not sure if it was the right decision after all. Still reeling from Kit’s betrayal, she s not sure of anything anymore.

Miss Meteor by Tehlor Kay Mejia & Anna-Marie McLemore: Two friends, Lita Perez or Chicky Quintanilla, one made of stardust and one fighting to save her family’s diner, take on their small town’s 50th annual pageant in the hopes that they can change their town’s destiny, and their own.

The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore: Graciela Cristales meets Lock, a boy who was sexually assaulted at the same party as her, and they find their fates unexpectedly intertwined during a month of vanishing trees, enchanted pan dulce, and inherited magic.

More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera: After enduring his father's suicide, his own suicide attempt, broken friendships, and more in the Bronx projects, Aaron Soto, sixteen, is already considering the Leteo Institute's memory-alteration procedure when his new friendship with Thomas turns to unrequited love.

Never Look Back by Lilliam Rivera: An Afro-Latinx retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice set in the Bronx. Pheus is a bachata-singing dreamer who falls in love with Eury, a girl who lost everything in Hurricane Maria and is haunted by the trauma—and by an evil spirit.

Nocturna by Maya Motayne: In the Latinx-inspired kingdom of Castallan, face-changing thief Finn Voy and grief-stricken Prince Alfehr must race to vanquish a dark magic they have unleashed.

Oculta (A Forgery of Magic #2) by Maya Motayne: After joining forces to save Castallan from an ancient magical evil, Alfie and Finn reunite once again to preserve Castallan’s hopes for peace with Englass. But will they be able to stop sinister foes before a new war threatens their kingdom?

Pitch Dark by Courtney Alameda: Tuck Durante, a shipraider, and Lana Gray, a curator, must work together to try to rescue a space capsule hijacked by nightmarish creatures who kill with a scream.

Rated by Melissa Grey: For the students at the prestigious Maplethorpe Academy, every single thing they do is reflected in their Ratings System. But when an act of vandalism sullies the front doors of the school, it sets off a chain reaction that will shake the lives of six special students – and the world beyond.

Sanctuary by Abby Sher & Paola Mendoza: In a near future dystopian America set 2030, 16-year-old Vail and her brother must escape a xenophobic government to find sanctuary in California.

The Savage Dawn (Girl at Midnight #3) by Melissa Grey: A darkness has entered the world and the Dragon Prince is wreaking havoc wherever she goes. With the war upon her, Echo must use every bit of her firebird powers or risk losing those she holds dear.

Seven Deadly Shadows by Courtney Alameda & Valynne E. Maetani: A contemporary fantasy set in Japan, about Shinto temple priestess Kira Fujikawa, who must seek the aid of seven demons in order to protect her village and the world from an ancient evil.

Shadow City (The City of Diamond and Steel #2) by Francesa Flores: Aina Solís has fought her way to the top of criminal ranks in the city of Kosín by wresting control of an assassin empire owned by her old boss, Kohl. But Kohl will do anything to get his empire back.

The Shadow Hour (The Girl at Midnight #2) by Melissa Grey: With the firebird awakened, the war has become even more dangerous for Echo and her friends. There is a darkness spreading too and staying in hiding might not be enough to keep them alive.

Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older: When her summer plans are interrupted by supernatural phenomena, Puerto Rican teen Sierra Santiago finds herself in a battle with the killer targeting her family of shadowshapers who believes she is hiding their greatest secret.

Shadowhouse Fall (Shadowshaper #2) by Daniel Jose Older: While working on her shadowshaping skills, Sierra Santiago is beginning to think she may need all the skill she can summon because it seems that when she channeled hundreds of spirits through herself in order to defeat Wick, she woke up something very powerful and very unfriendly and put her family and friends at risk.

Shadowshaper Legacy (Shadowshaper #3) by Daniel Jose Older: Sierra Santiago and the shadowshapers have been split apart, but a war is brewing among the houses. As old fates tangle with new powers, Sierra will have to harness the Deck of Worlds and confront her family’s past if she has any hope of saving the future and everyone she loves.

Shutter by Courtney Alameda: When a routine assignment goes awry, 17-year-old ghost hunter Micheline Helsing is infected with a curse and on the run, pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, with only seven days to exorcise the entity or be destroyed body and soul.

Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland: A Mexican American teenage girl discovers profound connections between immigration, folklore, and alien life, when a spacecraft crashes in front of her car…and it’s carrying her long-lost mom, who’s very much alive.

Tigers, Not Daughters by Samantha Mabry: Loosely inspired by the story of King Lear and his daughters, set in San Antonio, Texas, following the Torres sisters, struggling to escape their tyrannical father’s claustrophobic world while dealing with the loss of their eldest sister, whose troubling death continues to haunt—perhaps even literally—the loved ones left behind.

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson: While investigating the supposed suicides of her best friend, Riley, and mean girls June and Dayton, 16-year-old Wiccan Mila Flores accidentally brings them back to life.

Unplugged by Donna Freitas: When she moves from the Virtual World to the Real one, Skylar Cruz discovers that her body is both exquisite and valuable -- a dangerous combination in a place where bodies are sought after in sinister ways.

Wayward Witch (Brooklyn Brujas #3) by Zoraida Cordova: Rose Mortiz begins to discover the scope of her powers, the troubling truth about her father’s past, and the sacrifices he made to save her sisters. But if Rose wants to return home so she can repair her broken family, she must figure out how to heal the land of Adas, a fairy realm hidden in the Caribbean Sea, first.

The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore: Although Lace Paloma knows all about the feud between the Palomas and the Corbeaus, she finds herself falling for Cluck Corbeau when he saves her life while both families are performing in the same town.

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia: When she is asked to spy for a resistance group working to bring equality to Medio, Daniela Vargas, a student at the Medio School for Girls, questions everything she's worked for.

We Unleash the Merciless Storm (We Set the Dark on Fire #2) by Tehlor Kay Mejia: La Voz operative Carmen Santos is forced to choose between the girl she loves, Dani, and the success of the rebellion she’s devoted her life to.

When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore: As odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches. Now they want the roses that grow from Miel's skin, convinced that their scent can make anyone fall in love. And they're willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore: A novel of magical realism, the Nomeolvides women have tended the lust estate grounds of La Pradera which they’ve grown for generations, until the reemergence of a family curse starts to makes the men they love disappear, again.

#authors of color #latinx authors #booklr #book recs #book recommendations #yalit

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frostfireft · 3 years

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Can we have more Bickslow headcannons? And maybe Evergreen, Freed, and Lexus too?

Fuck yeah you can! I’m gonna start with a lot of angst and then move into their dynamics as a team. (this got REALLY long but I’m not sorry)

-I gave you all my HC for Freed’s backstory in my last post and mentioned that Freed is the reason that Bickslow and Evergreen joined the guild, so have both their backstories too!

-Bickslow grew up in a travelling circus with several other child performers. It wasn’t exactly a nice environment. There were lots of issues and safety hazards and abuse going on behind the scenes, but they were forced to keep smiling and performing through it all.

-Bickslow was especially targeted by the ringmaster because of his magic allowing him to look into people’s souls. The ringmaster is the one who forced him to wear a helmet when he wasn’t using his ability on the crowd for money.

-Because of that, he only had five friends back then, all children younger than he was, who looked up to him both for his tricks and the fact that no matter how upset he was, he had a smile for them.

-one day the tent caught fire during a practice. Bickslow was the only one to make it out alive.

-but considering all the traumatic events they went through, most of the children kept there weren’t able to move on, and their spirits lingered in the area... Except for the five kids who were most fond of Bickslow. They stayed near him and talked to him all the time, especially once they realized he could see them. You still have a soul as a spirit after all.

-the town he was in began to think he was crazy because he was “talking to the air” all the time, and they would continuously call child services to try and take him to an orphanage. The five spirits however, would warn him before they could, and Bickslow used his years of acrobatics skills to stay away from anyone who tried to move him away from where the circus burned down. It may have been a place of trauma, but there were good memories too, and it’s all he had.

-So the town tried one last gamble. Who better to adopt a child with mysterious magic that Fairy Tail?

-And Makarov, in an attempt to get Laxus to be more social, decided to send him and Freed.

-It went about as well as you’d expect. Laxus tried to fight him while Freed did research on the area and what happened to him.

-Laxus didn’t have as much control over his magic as he thought he did at that age, and Bickslow was kicking his ass before Freed showed up and trapped him so they could talk.

-Freed shared his story with him and offered the same thing Laxus once offered him: a home.

-Bickslow cracked soon after that, and told them everything after Freed started asking questions about the town thinking he’s crazy while they were on the train back to magnolia.

-While many members of Fairy Tail were unnerved by him, those around their age did their best to make him feel at home. Natsu listened to all his stories about the circus and about the five ghosts who followed him, and Bickslow listened to his stories about the dragons.

-Freed used this time to research Seith magic extensively, and he eventually came across the idea of putting the souls into objects. He and Bickslow worked for weeks to figure out how to do it, and the five spirits became his five main “dolls.”

-He of course, asked them if they were okay with being alongside him before putting them inside the tiki dolls, and if he cried when they said there was nowhere else they’d rather be? Well Freed and Laxus weren’t going to tell anyone about it.

-Evergreen was both harder and easier to get back to Fairy Tail.

-Like Freed, She was once a part of the noble class, but under a name she never wants to use again.

-When she gained her eye magic, she accidentally turned her mother to stone, and it was all downhill from there. Her father tried to keep her locked in a room, and it worked for a long time.

-Eventually though, she had decided she’d had enough, and snuck out and ran as far away as she could. She kept a ribbon tied around her eyes any time she had to go into town, and learned how to walk while completely blind. This did some damage to her eyesight after several years of doing it.

-it felt like it was too good to be true. She was free and she did odd little jobs in a town far from her original home to earn money for food. it was all she needed..... Until a child tore the ribbon from her face.

-the second she made eye contact, the little boy turned to stone. There was nothing she could do about it except cover her face up again and run.

-her father, however, had notified several guilds about her disappearance and claimed she was dangerous if left alone, so when stories spread about a homeless child turning a boy to stone, it became their first lead in months.

-there was a lull in fighting missions at the time, and something about her magic intrigued Freed. It was an eye magic like his and Bickslow’s first magics, and they aren’t exactly common. Freed, Laxus, and Bickslow took it upon themselves to take the mission to bring her home.

-She very quickly figured out how to hide herself in the woods and away from people. Freed had to trap the entire area and make it so that eye magics don’t work within his barriers before they could even get close to her. It took almost a month.

-And much to their surprise, she was nothing like what they were expecting. After all, they were supposed to be hunting down a nobleman’s son, not a daughter.

-Bickslow almost immediately asks her about why she ran away, and Ever looks up at him- then panics as she slams her eyes shut- but he doesn’t turn to stone because of Freed’s runes, and he explains as such.

-They have a long conversation about why she ran away, and she tells them everything her father did to her, from being locked in her room to being terrified to tell him she’s his daughter and not his son because of his anger issues.

-They realize then and there they can’t give her back to him, and Freed comes up with the plan to tell him that they didn’t find his son, but rather a random girl with a similar magic, and she can join Fairy Tail instead of staying on the run.

-The only reason she doesn’t agree immediatly is because of her eye magic. She couldn’t control it, and the idea of turning someone to stone again scared her.

-Freed sent Laxus to buy a pair of glasses without a prescription and a nice dress for her to wear, and he etches runes into the glasses to block her eye magic when they’re on.

-She’s sold from that moment on, and the raijinshuu’s friendship is sealed with that secret.

-Laxus helps her chose her name before they get onto the train, and they solidify the story before then too

-Makarov Accepts the story without question, even though they have a sneaking suspicion he knows.

-They become a tight knit group in no time.

-Then they learn about Ivan and all he did to Laxus, and they start to jokingly refer to themselves as the Laxus protection squad. It’s a lot less of a joke when Ivan’s actually around though, and the guild definitely notices. Makarov even starts to officially call them that in some reports.

-No one remembers who suggested the name “raijinshuu,” but they all privately agree it’s dumb. Especially since it insinuates that Laxus is the team leader. Freed’s the captain of their team for a reason.

-Dispite the fact that Bickslow is the tallest of them, both Laxus and Freed are both physically stronger than him. That’s not to say he isn’t strong, but Laxus can carry freakish amounts of weight due to his slayer biology, and Freed does the same due to his demon biology.

-Freed can carry all of them at once. No one knows how.

-Freed puts new runes on Ever’s glasses every time she gets new frames or a new prescription. He knows she doesn’t need it anymore, but she’s always grateful for the option.

-if they share a bed, Freed and Ever cannot sleep next to each other. Their hair tangles together and they’ve only had to make that mistake once.

-Ever and Bickslow are not under any circumstances allowed to cook, Freed can make fancy meals, and Laxus makes homemade stuff that would make your mouth water. He also stress bakes in secret at four am.

-That’s how they always know he’s stressed when he doesn’t tell them. It’s kind of hard to miss 6 batches of cookies that spontaneously appeared overnight

-Freed has an unsharpened rapier that feels like getting hit with a slap bracelet at full speed. Naturally, this is the sword he chases Bickslow with when he pisses him off.

-Laxus likes to pretend he’s one of the smartest members of the guild, but the raijinshuu knows he’s actually kind of a himbo.

-Bickslow is really close friends with Loke, and when he noticed the man was dying slowly, the others comforted him despite not knowing what was going on.

-Bickslow often helps ghosts pass on from the mortal plane.

-Evergreen keeps up with all the latest fashion, but she still considers Freed to be more fashionable. Because of this she always double checks her outfits with him.

-Evergreen’s always the first to sass someone when they’re being rude to her team. It’s earned her her reputation as a “bitch” but she’s far too proud of it to be offended.

-One Laxus was open about his dragon slayer magic, they pushed him to talk to the other slayers to learn about himself and his magic. Freed and Bickslow pushed the hardest though, since they’re friends with Natsu and knew that he would be all too willing to drag Laxus into his little family of dragon slayers.

-Laxus was much happier oncce he accepted that he was more dragon that human anyways, and the more he learned, the happier he was.

-In case it wasn’t clear: mtf Trans!Ever (she/her exclusively), he/they Freed, and wtf is gender, is it a food?” Laxus and Bickslow (any pronouns).

#fairy tail #fairy tail headcanons #bickslow #evergreen fairy tail #Laxus Dreyar #freed justine #the raijinshuu #trans evergreen #enby Freed #Gender ? Laxus #Gender ? Bickslow #it's kinda angsty #but there's som esoft headcanons at the bottom!#I'll do more soft headcanons if anyone wants them #<3 #frost speaks

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cuntess-carmilla · 3 years

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On disability and gender

I'm writing this from my perspective as a dyadic TME non-binary lesbian (also mixed but very pale and non-Black, as well as relatively thin). I will group myself with women but like, I'm also not really a woman it's complicated lol. I say this because I can't have first-hand comprehension of all the possible dynamics between gender and disability, and other physically disabled people are very much encouraged to add their own thoughts and perspectives to this post.

I don't feel equipped to speak on how being disabled and intersex impacts gendered experiences because I have too much left to learn, so I'm sorry that I'm not going to go into it. It's not because I don't recognize that struggle, it's because I just don't have the range, so please, if you're an intersex and physically disabled person and you want to expand on this, don't be afraid to do so.

Able-bodieds can reblog but don't speak out of turn.

------------------------------------------------

For a long time I've been trying to articulate my thoughts and pain on how physical disability impacts our gendered experiences and I think I'm finally starting to get to it.

When you're physically disabled you're immediately stripped of a (willing) gender identity as well as desexualized.

Gender is embodied and performed. You can embody it "incorrectly" and perform it "poorly". Everything regarding the embodiment of physically disabled people is seen as incorrect, and the literal meaning of "disabled" is that we can't perform the same way that able-bodied people can, or at least we can't without severely impacting our wellness.

Disabled men are emasculated. Constructs of ideal manhood are in big part built on things such as physical prowess, never expressing vulnerability, being self-sufficient outside of anything domestic, and conquering women sexually and romantically.

Disabled men are seen as weak, they are seen as pathetic for having visible vulnerabilities or (if their disability isn't immediately visible) for exposing their vulnerabilities instead of "sucking it up". By needing aid, accessibility and carers that do more than what a wife would traditionally do for any man, the sense of self-sufficiency men are supposed to perform is unavailable to disabled men. All disabled people are desexualized and seen as repulsive once our sexualities are acknowledged, and even disabled dyadic cishet men can't escape this. Able-bodied women see them as unfit for any sort of serious romantic or sexual partnership. Not to mention too the traditional role of men as providers and how difficult it is for any disabled person to acquire wealth at all, let alone enough to support more than ourselves alone. The rates of poverty for physically disabled people are fucking astronomical, so most disabled men can't even use that to their advantage in romance and sex to make up for all the other ways in which they're at a disadvantage compared to able-bodied men.

Disabled women fail at embodying and performing every single aspect of traditional womanhood too, but in particular; domestic labor, sexual labor, and beauty standards.

All labor is difficult if not downright impossible when you're disabled. Disabled women who need carers as adults are seen as complete failures because, even as children, but especially as adults, we're the ones who're supposed to be the carers of others, not the other way around. People love to pretend that women are coddled more than men, but nothing breaks that illusion more than being a disabled woman. A woman's needs are supposed to be invisible and self-fulfilled, or else we're whiny spoiled bitches, and guess what that means for disabled women. When we can't perform this pristine role we're immediately marked as failures, we're undesirable and nothing but a parasitic drag in the lives of abled people.

Yes, not all disabled women are straight, plenty of us are bi or lesbians, many are also aro/ace, but the point is that the patriarchy doesn't really give a shit what a woman's sexuality is, because no woman is seen as having sexual agency, so even if we're not straight we're expected to exist to satisfy men sexually. I cannot describe how difficult it is to be sexual, even when you're not ace, if you're physically disabled. Speaking from my own experience, trying to maintain a sex life as someone who experiences chronic fatigue and chronic pain is one of the most frustrating and demoralizing aspects of my disability. I want sex, I want to want sex, to be able to fuck my fiancé, but most of the time I simply can't gather the energy to even feel horny. I feel like such a failure of a lover because of it. Even though my fiancé is patient and understanding with me!

Can you imagine what it is like for disabled women who aren't as "lucky" as me, to have a partner who understands that we simply can't do it all the time even if we do want to? I don't want to go into too much detail about this because it's very painful and triggering to many, but I think you can imagine what happens to a lot of disabled women (and disabled people in general) when we're not satisfying a partner sexually and they get too frustrated by it. Being as vulnerable as we are, nobody cares much what happens to us. More so since, again, physically disabled people are seen as sexually repulsive, so if anyone wants sex with us we're supposed to be "thankful" for it, no matter the circumstances.

As for beauty standards, any woman who doesn't fit traditional beauty standards will know just how badly men treat you when they don't find you physically appealing, and well... Let's just say that a cane or a wheelchair aren't seen by society as particularly attractive, no matter how much the woman using them fits traditional beauty standards otherwise. Then there's female amputees, women with deformities, etc. In my case, I'm a literal mutant. If I don't disguise my tells with corsetry, long sleeves, and so, so much more, my body looks "off", I have been told repeatedly that my body looks "off" my whole life, and I'm one of the least visibly disabled ones! Even regarding body hair it's fucking hell. My collagen is so elastic that when new hair grows it stays ingrown unless I manually break my skin with a needle or a pumice stone (no, gentler ways of exfoliation don't work), but shaving isn't ideal either because my skin is, due to my altered collagen too, literally transparent and you can see the roots of my dark hairs under it even if I shave down to accidentally harming my skin with the blade.

Performing femininity at all is just... It's fucking hell. If it's exhausting for able-bodied women, can you imagine what it is like for us? I can barely manage to shower, by the time I'm done with my hair, makeup and outfit, every bit of my very limited energy is depleted and then I still have the rest of the day to go through. And I LIKE being feminine. I like wearing makeup and wearing the outfits I wear and yet I still dread it when I know I'll have to do more than stay in my pajamas at home.

Also, the perceived fragility of disabled women isn't the type of fragility that is seen as desirable in women. It's not delicacy. Wheelchairs, canes and other mobility aids aren't seen as "delicate" or "demure". Neither is kinesio tape, or compression stockings, or any other sort of medical equipment which, on top of it all, tend to not be very "aesthetic". Our fragility isn't the romanticized type, it's the "wow, you're an useless burden who can't serve me the way I expect you to" type.

When it comes to "binary" disabled trans people (for a lack of a better term) the degendering is even more intense than it already is for their cis counterparts (all that I described above applies to them too). There's a dichotomy of the even heavier denial of their actual genders as men and women due to the combination of their transness and disabilities, contrasting with how even if they were to conform to their assigned genders at birth they'd still be seen as failures at it due to everything I've already stated. There's also the sentiment that their identifying outside of their assigned gender at birth is a sort of consolation prize, something they're going for only because they were failing at being proper cis men and cis women, and thus their actual genders are even more invalidated and effectively pathologized in the most medical sense of the word, which is already a problem for all trans people, but for physically disabled trans people this intensifies the problem even more.

When it comes to non-binary disabled people things get so fucking confusing and infuriating. If binary disabled people get denied their manhood and womanhood, best believe that multigender disabled people (bigender, genderfluid, etc) are denied all aspects of their genders even harder. Not even completely agender disabled people are safe from being seen as failures of their gender identities by people who would perfectly respect the identity of an agender but able-bodied person. The fact that the default gendered status of all disabled people is forcefully degendered makes it so agender disabled people aren't seen as having any agency or self-determination in their (lack of or neutral) gender identity, it's seen as a passive inevitability from their embodiment, so it doesn't really "count", while simultaneously being subjected to the general transphobic bullshit any other agender person would be subjected to.

All of these things already affect white, thin and dyadic physically disabled people. When you add race (especially Blackness and/or being dark skinned), fatness and being intersex into the mix, the ways in which we're degendered and misgendered are off the fucking rails.

We can't fucking win.

#disability

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astaroth1357 · 3 years

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This is going to be my last post on this subject, I would appreciate if you hear me out...

First, I want to say unequivocally that I am sorry. I'm sorry to anyone that I've hurt, I'm sorry to anyone that I disappointed, I'm sorry to anyone who felt marginalized or hurt by my handling of the situation. It was wrong of me, I see that now, and I accept responsibility...

Secondly, I want to reiterate what I said in my original post. I care for the mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing of all people, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, what have you. And I do what I can to not cherry pick this principle (minority or majority, I always try to approach every individual as that, a person, with a unique perspective, thoughts, and feelings to share with me if they’re willing). My blog is a reflection of me and my stance on this. I do have people of several backgrounds as my friends, family, and colleagues and though I don't claim to perfect at always knowing how to address what troubles them, if it involves my behavior I always try to make an effort to correct myself and not let it happen again. They are who I think the most about when approaching the things I know that matter...

Thirdly, transphobia is a big deal. It is not something to be taken lightly. It effects the wellbeing of trans individuals everywhere and I never meant to downplay that. I know what hate feels like. I had to be careful of which friends I visited in my hometown because their neighbors would shout and threaten to shoot me for the color of my skin. I don't wish that feeling on anyone... I'm so sorry if I've made you feel unheard... It was never my intention.

Fourthly, a short background on me... I study Comparative Religion at the academic level (had it not been for COVID I would be going for my Masters right now). I was raised Unitarian Universalist and though I don't follow as much any more, its principles of unity and respect are still ingrained in my soul (if I were to have one). That is to say that I've been personally exposed to multiple practices, faiths, personalities, and viewpoints.

The first thing you learn when you've had that much exposure is everyone, and I mean everyone, believes differently. They may use the same book, but have different interpretations. Merely saying it is or is not in the scripture means almost nothing when the words themselves could be interpreted 5 different ways by 5 different people (including yours and my own). To anyone who says that by subscribing to a religion you must subscribe to all its views, I'm sorry but I believe that in practice that view wholly incorrect. Belief is individual and should be regarded as such.

I am personally friendly to religion, I have to be, it's my area of study. I think it's a beautiful expression of culture... But that doesn’t mean that I hold any of the views they apposed or agree with everything I hear. It took me years to learn for myself that tolerance is not acceptance, because if asked for my opinion I'm not afraid to speak it if it differs. I'm quiet with my opposition, but that’s because outright denounce things left and right only ends a conversation before it can start.

The difference in my approach to some people's is that I don't shut out different beliefs, nor do I assume that a person of faith can't be spoken to. As I've said, the same book can have a million interpretations. Sometimes it just takes respectful discourse to see things a different way. A way more true to who the person wants to be, while still maintaining their goal of salvation. It takes a while, a long while, but it never starts with me shutting them out completely.

You are not me. You're free to disagree with my approach, you're free to disagree my beliefs, you're free to hate me or how I have handled this, but I think it’s important that I at least share where it is that I'm coming from... I understand that my situation is different from others and I have the privilege to make this kind of decision. I'm so sorry to anyone I've hurt...

#i dont want to talk about this any more #please...#i just want to write...#thats all i ever wanted...#obey me

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Hey Clyde, did you check out Wonder Egg Priority at all? The first ep is super promising, but the series as a whole is one of those real fascinating disasters from a story and a production standpoint that might be up your alley as a thing to pick apart haha.

I’d warn that it’s also reeeeal offensive and this generally gets worse as it goes though.

Hi, Phoenix! How are you and Cube doing?

Okay, I hadn't watched Wonder Egg Priority when I received your ask this morning. Now I have. In a fit of intense curiosity I settled down for a rare binge session and tore through all twelve episodes + OVA in a single sitting. It is now nearly 3:00am as I write this because I, oh so clearly, make fantastic life choices.

A question for you: what did I just watch?

The rest is going under a read more partly for spoilers, but more-so because WEP—and the summary I'm about to give, because I feel like I need to try and explain this to tumblr's faceless void for my own, dwindling sanity—comes with about every trigger warning under the sun. Seriously, if you are triggered by anything that we might think of as a "standard" trigger (meaning, not unique to you and your own experiences), best to proceed with caution.

Right! What the ever loving fuck happened in this show? Well, let's work through this chronologically. Two genius, frat boy brothers (I get their names mixed up so I'm not even gonna bother) are locked in their apartment and closely monitored because of Super Secret Science Research. Even though, I think, they're the ones who created this company. Not important! What is important is that they're bored enough to create an AI for funsies, thinking of her as their daughter and letting her name herself Frill. Frill is the perfect, cutesy, also genius child who has a habit of popping her lips — which the camera focuses on in an incredibly creepy fashion. One day Brother #1 (the hot one) falls in love with a random woman we know nothing about and Frill gets jealous.

"Jealous in a general sense?" you ask, thinking this show is in any way normal. "Like, just of her Dad giving attention to someone else?"

"No," I respond, patting your hand. "Jealous because she's in love with him." Which, beyond the subject matter itself, comes completely out of nowhere. Frill has a line about what you'd do if some woman stole your husband away. I, fool that I was, briefly considered that these two guys were lovers, not brothers. Oh no. They're brothers. Frill just considers Dad #1 to be her "husband."

So, in true evil AI fashion, she murders the wife, leaving only her newly born child behind. Who is a daughter.

Uh oh.

Dad #1 locks Frill in a coffin-esque hole in the basement and goes on with his life. Things are great! Until years later when the daughter reveals that she has fallen in love with her uncle (Dad #2 to Frill). She knows (somehow??) that both her dad and her uncle loved her mom, so if the loser uncle will just wait a few years he can marry her instead! He brushes her off, but the next day she’s found dead of an apparent suicide.

Realizing that this was somehow Frill’s doing, he marches down to the basement and confronts the murderous child they’ve had locked up for years. She’s now surrounded by screens in, again, true creep AI fashion. How did she get all this while she was locked up? Oh, just the three bug girls she created as friends prior to killing the wife. They’re devoted slaves, I guess. So the uncle says enough of this insanity and seemingly sets Frill on fire.

OH and Frill’s subtitled dialogue also puts “uncle” in quotation marks, implying that the daughter was always Dad #2’s??

Anyway, both brothers are now super obsessed with death and claim that they think Frill has had a hand in lots of girls’ suicides, even now after her own death. This is brought into question later when it’s revealed that they might have just concocted this scheme to try and bring back their daughter. I’m really not sure. Regardless, they use hand-wavey science to create eggs that I guess contain the souls of young girls who have committed suicide, then they sucker in other young girls who have lost people to suicide to try and rescue their loved ones in a dream world, saving others along the way. A tomboyish girl, Momoe, lost a classmate who admitted to loving her, but who Momoe rejected. Rika, a former junior idol, used and rejected an overweight fan only to learn later that she’d starved herself to death. Neiru, the 14yo president of some science company (yup) was attacked by her sister before she jumped off a bridge. Finally Ai, our protagonist, is a victim of bullying who managed to make friends with a single girl, Koito, who then jumped from their school building for unknown reasons. They’re all given the chance to bring these individuals back to life, provided they protect other victims of suicide by defeating the monstrous traumas that drove them to that act in the first place.

And you know what? That concept was great. However, the execution ranges from “Okay, that was pretty good for an anime. Kudos there” to “That’s the most offensive thing I’ve seen in my life.” Needless to say, unpacking all the battles they fight would take a lot more than this already absurd summary. Basically, if you can think of something horrible to happen to young girls (and one trans guy whose existence in that egg undermines the whole message of the episode), there’s an attempt to tackle it here.

During all this the four girls become friends and Ai works through her suspicions about Mr. Sawaki, a teacher at her school. What’s going on with Mr. Sawaki? Uh… everything! He’s somehow connected to Koito’s death, he’s dating Ai’s mom, and Ai apparently loves him too because her friends say so, even though this is never actually addressed and she barely interacts with him. It’s all quite the complication.

In time though the girls complete their “mission” of bringing their loved ones back to life. Rika and Momoe manage it first, only to find that Frill’s bug-girl lackeys have arrived to kill them. Why? Because that’s what Frill does, I guess. Momoe’s crocodile familiar (cute animals the girls were gifted to help them fight) takes a killing blow for her and the bug-lady then proceeds to carve up his corpse and force feed it to Momoe. Fantastic!! Building off of that, the next bug-lady who Rika encounters kills her turtle too, following in the footsteps of her bug-sister by, presumably, forcing her to eat parts of its head. Ai refuses to sacrifice her familiar to stay alive, but luckily the suicide she was protecting turns out to be herself from a parallel universe (that's a thing now!) and she takes the killing blow herself, which is done by pulling out the eye she’s sensitive about (she has heterochromia.) So parallel Ai passes on (again?) and the three girls don’t work through this trauma at all, instead becoming more traumatized through the realization that the loved ones they brought back no longer remember them. They’re alive, but the relationship they all had with them is dead.

It’s about this point that the main storyline wraps up and I’m relieved that there’s an OVA to finish things off. Surely they can somehow bring this all together in 45 minutes.

…25 minutes of that OVA is recap.

So with only about 20 minutes left, we learn that Neiru, the only one to not complete her mission yet, has mysteriously gone missing. It turns out she was an AI/clone/something all along, made to replace her sister and, presumably, that’s what caused the whole stabbing-suicide incident. She successfully brings her sister back, but stays behind in the dream world because Frill promises her she can become human. How is Frill here when she’s dead? How will Neiru become human? Isn’t Frill the “temptation of death” or whatever? There are no answers. A flashback finally reveals that Koito was having a relationship with a teacher at another school, he committed suicide, she transferred, she tried the same thing with Mr. Sawaki, he kept refusing her advances, and finally while threatening suicide to get his attention, she accidentally fell.

(So why was she in the suicide egg if it was an accident??)

Except, all this information comes through Mr. Sawaki himself, there’s a whole subplot about whether he’s really a villain, or if Ai is just making him into one, and this show might as well be titled How Much Pedophilia Can We Put into One Anime? So make of that what you will.

A dead character randomly shows up, but it's fine because she's actually just a version from a parallel world. How did she get here? Why is she here? Lol, it's cute that you think these are answered.

Rika, the character who cuts and almost committed suicide halfway through the show, breaks down saying how much she misses her dead loved ones, right after her friends refused to let her go on another mission that would surely end in her death and… that’s it. That’s all we get about her.

Momoe too, though she’s hopefully just vibing somewhere with that longed-for boyfriend.

Ai transfers schools and then one day randomly remembers that she loves Neiru and rushes back to start cracking eggs again because that will? Somehow?? Let her see Neiru???

When I say there are too many unanswered questions to possibly list here I really, really mean it.

Finally, in a personal attack on me, the protagonist with a name that is literally AI is not in any way an artificial intelligence.

And that’s it! Congratulations, you now “understand” WEP. And see, the funny thing is that the off-the-rails, bat-shit crazy aspects kind of catch you off guard? Yeah, the first episode is fantastic. In fact, I think I got through about six episodes thinking that this was a solid, if at times really messed up anime, but I was willing to shrug off a lot of stuff due solely to the amount of sensitive material they were attempting to cover (which is always quite difficult to do). Probably the only reason I was able to binge so fast was because the first half of the series was so engaging. The characters are charming. The animation is GORGEOUS. There's actually a ton of good here that is also worth yelling about. But then the plot comes in like a freight train and I was left staring dumbfounded at my screen as more and more insanity kept happening. Having watched the "explanations" I am now more confused about the show I just saw.

Phoenix, if you’ve bothered to read this rambling, 3:00am rant: thank you. I think? Idk if I should actually be thanking you or cursing you for tuning me into this, but it was definitely an experience, that’s for sure lol.

I'm off to bed now RIP the chance of having normal dreams ✌️

#mymetas

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dystopiandilfs · 3 years

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I just want to remake a post since the other day I made a post about educating creators and some people thought I was saying don't educate them and that people who do educate them are narcissistic and are very entitled.

My post was basically saying that you can preach about educating creators all that you want but it's all performative unless you are also willing to put in the effort to help educate. Telling people to educate themselves but not what on and how to do it isn't help anyone. What it comes off as is you going "well I'm educated on the subject so you should be as well" and that because you're not then you're basically a shit person.

A good example is Jack who on stream asked about the whole "you're gender" thing and how he sees people saying they want to steal his gender and how he is gender. If you would responded to that with Google it, find the answers yourself etc then he's clearly not be educated on it. If he was to Google it he probably won't get the right answer and if he would get the right answer he'd probably get one that's conflicting it or he'd get an answer that you didn't agree with he might get an outdated one.

You can't expect people to put the effort into educating themselves if you're not putting in the effort to help them with resources or answering questions no matter how stupid they might be to you.

A lot of it is often down to privileged. For example Australia, UK, Canada etc don't know about American issues because it is not out main news same as Americans don't know about our issues because that's not big on their news you can't expect people to know all the news in the world because they won't because they don't see it it might be on your timeline doesn't mean it's on theirs. The only reason that you're getting big news stories from other parts of the world is because you're relying on news from Twitter. That's your first problem.

A good example for privilege based things is Dream. He didn't have social media until he started his YouTube channel maybe beforehand so 2018 at the earliest. He was a homeschooled Florida boy that in itself is both privileged when it comes to status and normal things yet unprivileged in terms of political education and things so he's not going to know what's racist, what is transphobic, minority issues etc. He's going to grow up using terms that he was surrounded by because that's normal to him that's the only normal he knew. Thankfully he is slowly educated himself which is a good thing however if people have just said "you're racist educate yourself" he's not going to do that because you're not helping him. Not a handhold help but like a general here's a link to a page full of information from the point of perspective of someone who's part of the group he's offended.

For example telling someone they are transphobic and something that they've said it's transphobic isn't that helpful because you're saying that they're transphobic but by not saying why why is the thing they said offensive to the trans community. What's the correct way to say something that isn't offensive. Is there history behind it if so what's the history behind it.

If someone has said something offensive and you'll tell them what they do is offensive you have to tell them why because they're not going to know they're not gonna change because they don't know what to change because you're not to helping them to understand.

You can preach about educating people as much as you want but it's all performative unless you help them. If you're not willing to help people educate themselves on topics then you can't expect them to be willing to change you can't expect them to want to be educated.

For example if you got told that a main ingredient in in your shampoo was actually damaging your hair and they said don't believe me Google it, would you Google it?

Most people would say no they just trust that person's opinion would they stop using that shampoo probably not you might change brand when they get a new bottle. Or the change shampoo and end up buying one with the same ingredient so it's like nothing changed because they didn't do the research so their hair is not going to get better.

It's the same way educatingcreators you told them they're racist they just can't go ok sorry, that's it because you're not helping them learn. Back to the shampoo if they were to say that the third ingredient down with the stupidly long name was damaging your hair because it contained alcohol and the alcohol is really drying your hair out and it wasn't good for your hair and it's the reason that you gets split ends and you get a dry scalp and it's the reason your hair breaks, you'd start doing research you change your shampoo you'd change your hair products, you would try and avoid that one item because you got a bit more information on it other than it damage your hair and that's the difference between just telling people to educate themselves and actually helping.

A big thing that might not seem privileged it is, is saying this person is 22 and I'm 16 and I'm more educated on issues than them. Like okay cool I'm glad you've got good education and understanding but also that's a dumb flex to make because you just look stupid.

However on the other end of the scale if you do try to educate them and they don't listen or they do it over and over again then call their ass out that's when you stop getting upset that's when you have a right to shit on them.

#dreamwastaken #mcyt #jack manifold #EvangelineNeg #im tagging them because they're two great examples #it's not negative towards them so it's chill to tag their main tag #right? correct me if not

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ziracona · 3 years

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Something I think it’s worth the mention when it comes to writing ace characters (aside from the obvious ‘listen to ace ppl/look up q&as/learn from the source’ and ‘it’s a spectrum & the experiences are not all universal’), is that I don’t think people get how valuable variety is to us. We’re pretty rarely represented, so we tend to be happy we get anything at all, but so much of the time if we get an ace character, they’re kind of mousy and reclusive or naïve and young or inexperienced, fragile, isolated. And that’s not like, a de facto bad character type for an ace person or something, but it’s definitely not representative of us as a whole, and so it really shouldn’t be the only kind we get. So please, consider adding more types of people to those hc’s and wips.

There’s no wrong answer here, or trick. The scary jock girl ready to throw hands, the super romantic ray of sunshine, the sarcastic aloof asshole guy, the stoned nb literature nerd, the wise old woman, the fun uncle; they all work; there’s not a type. It’s a sexuality, not a personality type or a trait. And while this one is not a character type, just an experience, when it comes to ace representation period, one of the areas I think it’s especially important to include ace characters specifically is people who have experienced sexual violence. —Not as the sole ace, not saying that every character who has should be, none of that— but. For ace people? Regardless of our actual past and the presence of that or complete lack of it there, do you know how often people assume if we are asexual it must be a trauma response to abuse, probably in our childhood? Constantly. Repeatedly. Thoughtlessly, and invasively. It’s one of the most hurtful, damaging, and personal things I expect nearly every ace has heard. Which is why it’s extremely important to have ace characters who have experienced sexual violence. Not characters who are ace because of that, just ones who are. Because as annoying as it is for the rest of us, it’s fucking hell to get invalidated 24/7 because of past trauma by people who act like they think they’re simultaneously helping you and beating you. Aces who have experienced sexual trauma exist, and are not any less valid than the rest of the group, or ‘fake,’ or ‘messed up,’ or ‘only sex-negative because.’ The harassment gets to a point a lot of ace people won’t even be willing to admit to any trauma in their past to their friends even because the almost certain assumption is there that the second you do, people will treat you as if that automatically invalidates your sexuality. People get treated constantly if they have experienced sexual violence in their past as if that means they cannot be ace, and just think they are because someone hurt them. And that’s fucked up. They’re ace. They are. You don’t know shit about them, and they’re as valid as anyone else. There is no proven causality there, no matter how much people act like it. At best, they’re grasping at minor correlation, and being massively entitled and arrogant dicks about something they know nothing about. People who are asexual and have a history involving sexual violence are still ace. Being a lesbian who was raped by a man once doesn’t make you a reactive faker and not a lesbian. A dude who has sexual trauma caused by man before realizing they’re gay doesn’t mean the trauma ‘turned you gay.’ Being body shamed horribly or experiencing sexual trauma before realizing you are trans doesn’t make you a fake trans person. And it’s the same for aces. They’re just asexual, like any other asexual. You don’t know shit about them; they don’t owe you shit, and you should stop being horrible to them all the time over stuff you cannot know what you’re talking about in.

Which is why it’s really important to have some ace characters who have been victims of sexual violence. There’s little enough representation and solidarity and voices saying “you matter, you’re real, you’re not just broken, you’re not wrong” as it is. And they deserve representation and validation as much as the rest of us. They probably need it more. So please, if you write, consider adding someone who is ace and has gone through something sometime. Not ace because of it. Just. Valid. And gets to be valid and treated like it. It’s important.

#tbh well written people with trauma is probably a much needed representational area for a lot of minority identities #asexuality #writing #writing ace charcaters #thoughts #lgbtqa+ stuff

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rallamajoop · 3 years

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...and the unironic joys of better living through chemistry

How do I love Venom: The Hunger, let me count the ways…

It’s by far the shippiest Venom/Eddie story to come out of the character’s heyday. It’s the only story of the era to treat Venom’s violent wild-animal instincts not as an immutable fact, but as something that can be managed. It pulls off an aesthetic like nothing else that was being done at the time.

And then there’s the way it says, Does the world around you seem sinister and foreboding? Do you lie awake at night contemplating metaphorical oceans of despair? Well shit, son – have you considered you may be suffering from a mundane neurochemical imbalance, and a round of the right meds could clear that right up for you?

It does all this without breaking the atmosphere, without a whiff that our story has been interrupted for a Very Special Message about mental health.

In the near-decade since I was first prescribed anti-depressants, I don’t think I’ve read another story that lands the message “Sometimes, it’s not you, it’s just your brain chemistry,” so well.

Fair warning: if you have not read The Hunger, I am about to spoil every major plot point. If you have, well, maybe I can still give you a new appreciation for a few details you might have missed.

It’s a strange book, whatever else you take from it. It’s almost the only thing either author or artist contributed to the Venom canon, and it’s so different stylistically and tonally from the 90′s Venom norm that it feels like a tale from some noir-elseworlds setting instead of 616 canon. When you take risks that big with a property, you leave yourself precious little landing space between 'unmitigated triumph’ and ‘abject failure’: if this book hadn’t absolutely nailed it, I’d be dismissing it as edgy, OOC dreck. Fortunately, if The Hunger is nothing else, it is a story that $&#@ing commits – to basically everything it does.

Now, I'm not going to tell you Venom: The Hunger is a story about overcoming depression, because I don't know whether author Len Kaminski even thought about it that way while working on it. There's always space for other readings, and this one take is not gospel. That said: holy shit is this thing unsubtle with its metaphors. And with that in mind, let’s start by talking a little about Kaminski’s take on Eddie himself.

As I may have mentioned before, I like to divide 90′s Eddie into two broad personas: the Meathead, and the Hobo.

Kaminski’s Eddie nominally belongs in the angsty, long-haired Hobo incarnation, but that’s a bit of a simplification: this version certainly has plenty of angst and plenty of hair to his name – but nowhere, not even at his lowest ebb, does he doubt that he and his Other are meant for each other, which is usually Hobo!Eddie’s primary existential quandary.

He’s also taken up narrating his own life like a hardboiled PI.

So that’s... novel.

The only other time Eddie’s sounded like this is, er, in that one other Venom one-shot Kaminski penned (Seed of Darkness, a prequel that sadly isn’t in The Hunger’s league), so I think we can safely file it under authorial ticks.

Then again, Hobo!Eddie’s always been one melodramatic SOB, so maybe this is just how he’d sound after learning to channel his angst into his poetry. You can’t argue it fits the aesthetic, anyway.

We’d also be remiss not to mention Ed Halsted’s art, which I can only describe as gothic-meets-noir-meets-H.R.-Giger. Never before or since has the alien symbiote looked this alien: twisted with Xenompoph-like ridges and veins.

But Halsted doesn’t treat Venom to all that extra detail in every panel. Instead, the distortion tends to appear when the symbiote is separated from Eddie or out of control – and I doubt you need me to walk you through the symbolic importance of that creative decision. More importantly, Halsted’s art provides exactly the class of visuals that Kaminski’s story needs.

Did I mention this is a horror story? You might be surprised how few Venom stories really fit that genre, but if all those adjectives about Halsted’s style above didn’t clue you in, this is one of them.

Anyway, with that much context covered, let’s get into the main narrative of this thing.

As our first issue opens, Eddie’s world has become a dark and foreboding place. He’s not sleeping, though he mostly brushes this off. (Fun fact: trouble sleeping is one of those under-appreciated symptoms of depression. Additional fun fact: the first doctor ever to suggest I might be suffering from depression was actually a sleep specialist. You can guess how that appointment was going.)

Just to set our scene, here’s all of page 1.

Eddie’s narration has plenty of (ha) venom for his surroundings, but the visuals are here to back him up: panels from Eddie’s POV are edged in twisted, fleshy borders and drained of colour, the people rendered as creepy, goblin-like creatures. A couple of later scenes go even further to contrast Eddie-vision with what everyone else is seeing:

As depictions of depression go this is a little on the nose, but then, you don’t read a comic about a brain-eating alien parasite looking for subtlety, do you?

Eddie doesn’t see himself as depressed, of course. As far as he’s concerned, he’s seeing the world’s true face: it’s everyone else who’s deluding themselves. He’s still got his symbiote, so he’s happy. He’s yet to hit that all-important breaking point where something he can’t brush off goes irrevocably wrong.

But he’s also starting to experience these weird... cravings.

He just can’t put a name to exactly what he’s craving until a routine bar fight with a couple of thugs takes a turn for the horrific.

(I include this panel partly to point out even in The Hunger, the goriest of all 90′s Venom titles, you’re still not going to see brains getting eaten in any graphic detail. We don’t need to to get the horror of the moment across. The 90′s were a more innocent time.)

Eddie himself is horrified when he comes back to himself and realises what he’s done.

Or rather, what his symbiote’s just made him do.

Kaminski doesn’t keep us in suspense about why, though. Eddie may have just done something horrific, but there’s a reason, and it’s as mundane as a vitamin deficiency. He’s bonded to an alien creature, after all, and his symbiote is craving a nutrient which just happens to be found in human brains. And if Eddie can’t or won’t help it meet that need, it’ll do so alone.

Now, giving us that explanation so quickly is an interesting creative decision: this is a horror story, and horror lives in what we don’t know. Wouldn’t it be all the more horrifying had the symbiote been unable to explain what’s going on, leaving Eddie without the first real clue as to where this monstrous new hunger had come from?

The Hunger doesn’t take that route though, and I love it. Eddie isn’t a monster, this isn’t his fault: he has a fucking condition, and wallowing in his own moral failings is going to get him nowhere. You might as well try to cure scurvy or rickets with positive thinking. Just like depression can make you feel like an utter failure at the most basic parts of being human, and all the affirmations in the world won’t fix it when it’s fundamentally your brain chemistry that’s the problem. Or like addicts aren’t weak-willed for struggling not to relapse, they’re dealing with genuine chemical dependency – or even like how someone who’s trans isn’t at fault for being unable to reconcile themselves to the bodies and the hormones they were born with by pure force of trying. Free will is more than an illusion, but we’re all messy, biological organisms underneath, and your own brain and biochemistry can and will fuck you over in a hundred wildly different ways for as many wildly different reasons and it’s not your fault.

We aren’t monsters. But if we do, sometimes, find ourselves identifying with the monster, there might be a reason for that.

(Ahem)

I’m just saying, that’s fucking powerful, and we need more stories that say it.

Anyway, in case you missed it during that tangent, issue #1 closes with the symbiote having torn Eddie’s heart in two itself free to go hunting brains without him.

I’m trying not to get too sidetracked at this point talking about Kaminski’s take on the symbiote itself. Suffice to say there are broadly two schools of thought on how it ought to function while separated from its host: the traditional ambulatory-slime-puddle version, and the more recently popular alternative where anything-you-can-do-with-a-host-you-can-also-do-without-one. I’m not much of a fan of the latter, personally: if your symbiote doesn’t actually need a host, I feel you’ve sort of missed the point. (The movie takes the route of saying symbiotes can’t even process Earth’s atmosphere without a host, which is a great new idea that appears nowhere in the comics, and I love it. Hosts or GTFO, baby!)

Kaminski has his own take, and I can only wish it had caught on. Without Eddie, the symbiote becomes an ever-shifting insectoid-tentacle-snake-monstrosity, driven by an animalistic hunger. It’s many things, but it’s never humanoid.

If you absolutely must have your symbiote operating minus a host, I feel this is the way to do it: semi-feral, shapeless and completely alien (uncontrollable violence and cravings for brains to be added to taste).

Issue #2 comes to us primarily through the perspective of the mild-mannered Dr. Thaddeus Paine of the Innsmouth Hills Sanitarium (yes, really).

Yeah, he’s not fooling anyone. Meet our official villain! He joins our story after Eddie is picked up by the police and handed off to the nearest available institution, on account of how completely sane and rational he’s been acting.

Naturally, Dr. Paine soon has copious notes on Eddie’s ‘crazy’ story about his psychic link to a brain-eating alien monster. Fortunately for Eddie, Paine also runs some tests and makes an interesting discovery.

Congratulations, Venom: the ‘vitamin’ you were missing officially has a name!

Finding the right meds isn’t always this easy. I got lucky – the first ones my psych put me on worked pretty well – but I have plenty of friends who weren't so lucky. In fact, the treatment for Eddie's problems is so straightforward it arguably has more in common with, say, endocrine disorders like thyroid conditions or Addison’s disease, which differ from clinical depression but present many similar symptoms (but can sadly be just as much of a bitch to get correctly diagnosed – please do read author Maggie Stiefvater’s account of the latter when you get the chance, because forget Venom, that is a horror story).

‘True’ depression remains much less well understood by medicine, either in its causes or how to effectively treat it. But simply having a name for what was wrong with me made so much difference, and that’s an experience I imagine anyone who’s dealt with any long undiagnosed medical condition could relate to. It put my life in context in a way nothing else had in years.

(I can’t speak to the accuracy of the way phenethylamine is portrayed in this comic – a quick google suggests there may be some real debate that phenethylamine deficiencies have been overlooked as a contributor to clinical depression, but having no medical background, that one’s well beyond me. Either way, scientific accuracy really doesn’t matter in this context – it’s how it works in-universe for story purposes that we should pay attention to.)

Since this issue is mostly from Paine’s POV, we don’t get Eddie’s reaction to having a healthy amount of phenethylamine sloshing around in his brain again, just the assurance that treatment appears to be ‘completely successful’.

He’s still a paranoid, hostile bastard though. Meds can turn your life around, but they won’t make you not you.

But even if Eddie’s feeling better, he’s still psychically linked to someone who isn’t. Symbiote-vision still comes through drained of colour and edged in viscera.

That’s the thing about meds: they won’t solve all your problems overnight. If you’ve been depressed for a while, there are good odds you have problems stacking up. But working meds can be a godsend when it comes to getting you into a space where you can deal with your problems again, whether said problems are doing-your-laundry or all the way into not-giving-up-completely-and-just-accepting-you’ll-die-alone-on-the-street.

For Eddie, ‘dealing with his problems’ begins with stealing a keycard and busting out of the asylum.

Of course, that’s the easy part. How do you solve a problem like a feral symbiote? Like any good 90′s comic book protagonist, Eddie tackles it by putting on his big-boy camouflage pants and kitting himself out with weapons and pouches while quoting “If you live something, set it free. If it doesn’t come back, hunt it down.”

We can add this to the list of things I love about this comic. Even if The Hunger is a weirdly-stylistic tract about depression at heart, it’s also still a goddamn 90′s Venom comic, and not ashamed to be.

We’re into issue #3 now, and back to hearing the story from Eddie’s POV.

Eddie is very much aware that his symbiote has murdered innocent people while they’ve been separated. Even if this is the result of extreme circumstances, there’s a good case to be made that the symbiote is too dangerous to be allowed to live. Plenty of heroes would treat it like a rabid dog at this point.

But Eddie isn’t a hero, he’s a mess of a character and an anti-hero at best, so we don’t have to hold him to the same standard. He’s well aware his symbiote may be too far gone to save, that he may have to put it down – but that’s only his backup plan. He wants to help it. He wants it back. He’s down in that sewer with screamers and a flamethrower because he knows all his symbiote’s weaknesses, but he’s also carrying a large jar of black-market synthesised phenethylamine, because if he can just get close enough...

Depression can’t make you a literal monster, but it can make you an asshole. Miserable to be around, lacking even the energy to care who else you’re hurting. The depression doesn’t excuse that, but it makes everything harder, and it’s that much easier to sink back into your spiral when everyone around you has given up. It can make you think everyone around has given up even if that isn’t true.

So to have Eddie here say, in effect, I don’t care how many people you’ve eaten, I know it wasn’t your fault. I still love you. You’re still worth fighting for – god, does that get me right in the id.

There’s still a whole issue left at this point – we’ve still got to deal with our real villain, Dr. Paine, who we’ve just learned is into eating brains himself and torturing his patients recreationally, and who wants to capture the symbiote for his own purposes. There’s the scene where Eddie and his symbiote finally bond again, and Venom beats up all Paine’s goons while singing David Bowie because like I said, this is still a 90′s superhero comic and this is what Venom does.

But for our purposes, I'm going to skip to the penultimate page of the story, because the way it mirrors our opening page is really lovely.

Remember that shot of Eddie dealing with a beggar back at the beginning of the story, thinking about how these people would 'get their despair all over you'? Here he is again, cheerfully forking over the last dollar in his pocket to the next man to ask him for change. For all the gothic atmosphere and gore, it’s moments like this that make The Hunger easily one of the most positive, uplifting Venom stories ever written. Funny, that. (I could probably write a whole other essay on sympathy for the homeless as a recurring motif in Venom stories, but that... well, whole other essay and all that.)

What’s Eddie learned from this experience? Don’t take your symbiote for granted. Is ‘symbiote’ a metaphor for mental health here, is paying attention to its needs an allegory for paying attention to your own? I still don’t know how literally Kaminski meant us to take this, but it’s a lovely note to end on no matter how you parse it.

At the end of the day, The Hunger isn’t flawless. The conflict with Paine ends on a thematic but slightly unsatisfying note. Eddie makes much of his symbiote's loneliness and desire for union, but when the two of them are finally reunited, the only reaction comes from Eddie's side. In fact, the symbiote seems to have no response to being able to return to Eddie at all, and that’s an omission that bugs me.

But Kaminski is more interested than any other writer of the era in the truly alien nature of the symbiote, in its relationship with Eddie from Eddie’s side, and though plenty of others talk about the symbiote's love/hate relationship with Spider-man, no-one else had the guts to portray their relationship this much like a romance.

And Venom: The Hunger is no less interesting in the context of Len Kaminski’s other work. You don't have to look far into his Marvel and DC credits to pick up that the guy has a real thing for monsters. (“All of my favourite characters are outlaws, misfits, anti-heroes,” he says, in one of the very few interviews I could find with him, “I wouldn't know what to do with Superman.”) He's written for vampires, werewolves, victims of mad science, and all of three at once, littering his work with biochemistry-themed technobabble, melodramatic monologues, gratuitous pop-culture references, and protagonists who must learn to embrace their inner demons. So The Hunger represents more than a few of his favourite running themes.

For our context, his more notable other work includes Children of the Beast, in which a werewolf must make peace between his human and animalistic sides, and The Creeper, in which a journalist must make peace with the crazy super-powered alter-ego sharing his body. In fact, The Creeper and The Hunger share so much DNA (including an evil doctor posing as a respected psychiatrist who uses hypnosis on our hero while he's trapped in a mental institution) that it’s quite the achievement that they still feel like such very distinct entities beyond that point.

The human alter-egos of both werewolf and Creeper even use prescription meds while wrestling with their respective dark sides. The difference, in both cases, is that these are stories where meds play their traditional fictional role – and that's a role that could be as easily filled by illegal drugs or alcohol without making any substantive difference. You see, if a protagonist is using them, it's a sign of unwillingness to tackle their 'real' problems. Even among work by the same author in the same genre, The Hunger represents an outlier. And that's just a little disappointing – at least to me.

In real life, of course, prescription meds are no magical cure-all elixir. Depression meds that work for one person may not work for another, or may not keep working in the longer term. Everyone has heard stories about quack doctors who prescribe them to the wrong patients for the wrong reasons, about lives ruined by addictions to prescription painkillers, or the supposedly-damning statistics about how poorly SSRI's perform in rigorous clinical trials. The proper way to treat depression is obviously with lifestyle and therapy. People will still airily dismiss medications that we all know previous generations got along just fine without, or suggest that figures like Van Gogh would never have created great art if they hadn't been mad enough to slice off an ear. I mean, the fact you think you need those bogus mediations is probably the best possible sign of just how broken you are, right? Who do you think you’re kidding?

Our popular fiction loves stories about manly men who bury their trauma under a gruff, anti-social exterior and come back swinging at the world that broke them, bravely refusing even painkillers that might dull their manly reflexes. Other genres make space for broken people confronting their demons in grand moments of catharsis, finally breaking down into tears when someone gets through to make them face their problems. "I could barely make it out of bed in the mornings until I found a doctor who started me on this new prescription" is not only wildly counter to the accepted social narrative, it's a hard thing to know how to dramatise.

Even other Venom comics have been guilty of this.

Believe me, I recognise all of this, and just how much progress we've made in the last few decades. But I haven't the slightest doubt that for so many vulnerable people, the stigma against prescription medications does infinitely more harm than those same meds could ever do. And just having the right to externalise my problems into it's not you, it's your brain chemistry, may have helped me more than the meds themselves.

(And again, no, being prescribed SSRI's didn't fix me overnight, but I honestly don't know if all the talk therapy and tearful conversations with family members in the world could've got me as far as I've come without them.)

I love Venom: The Hunger. It's no-one's idea of high art, but it doesn’t need to be. There is a whole other post’s worth of things I love about it that I’ve already cut out this one as pointless tangents, and that may actually be it’s biggest drawback as a go-to example: I fully recognise that I would not be making this post if The Hunger hadn't also also grabbed me as a great bit of Venom canon, being the massive fan and shipper that I am. Other people who are just as desperate as me for more stories with the same core theme, but not into weird 90's comics about needy goo aliens, probably won't get nearly as much out of it as I have.

But if it sounds anything like your jam, maybe you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

If nothing else, it proves that you can make a viscerally satisfying story out of a message that shockingly unconventional. And you may even have people still discovering it and falling in love with it 25 years after the fact.

#Venom: The Hunger #Venom #depression #SSRIs #Symbrock #Venom meta #meta #Venom comics #Len Kaminski

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brandyspringsluxury · 3 years

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The Staff of Brandy Springs Suites

Welcome to Brandy Springs Suites- a luxury apartment complex filled with clean, cared for facilities and on location gym, spa, emergency laundromat, and even a recreation room. It was once a hotel, but bought and modified by the current owner it is now peak luxury living. It’s a place that values consistency, kindness, and loyalty. The owner, a very mysterious man known only by Mr. Carter, was already very wealthy, so money is not something he prioritizes solely. In fact, he values loyalty more than income and if you prove to be a loyal and kind person, you may find certain perks and advantages. So, I hope you enjoy your stay and remain here for a long, long time. Nevermind all the tenants who seem to always have ulterior, hidden motives or the ever revolving spa and cleaning staff. Oh, and if you’re looking over things, please do try to ignore the first floor after midnight- and if you go down it’s in your best interest to feign ignorance to whatever noises you hear or things you see. And if you ever- EVER- manage to meet Mr. Carter make sure you are on your best behavior and prove your worth, or you may not leave the complex alive.

TW: mentions of sex trafficking, kidnapping, murder, drugging, torture

The Owner - Mr. Carter

55 - 6’1” - 188 lbs || Caucasian || he/him || lives separate || Weinstein Wannabe

Evil, awful man. Sells victims in the basement of the apartment complex, sex trafficker and if a tenant can’t pay and their intensive “background check” indicates the tenant is not someone that may be missed that tenant will be sold. That being said, if a tenant shows worthwhile attributes that could bring the Owner more money (ie bringing victims, more tenants, or generally having skills the Owner can exploit, etc) then the Ownery may be able to help the tenants with their own, perhaps nefarious, deeds (ie kidnapping/killing someone for them, bribing the police, etc). That being said, only the staff know what he looks like and have a direct line of communication with him. All tenants speak to staff, unless they are unlucky enough to have bumped into him or to have been a direction for his ire. He has no empathy and doesn’t attempt to pretend he does. He’s a cold, cruel man and he makes it known to everyone he interacts with.

Emergency room in complex is Room 002

The Front Desk - Ronaldo Cortez

28 - 5’9” - 196 lbs || Latinx || they/them || lives separate || Golden Retriever Friend

Raised hyper christian american; couldn’t speak at the table or if they weren’t spoken to, couldn’t make or visit friends outside of the church, etc. Because of that they are fantastic at masking or playing characters and very much embodies the charisma of the golden retriever friend, but has an aggressive and vicious side hidden. Doesn’t let the tenants know much about them, but does blind side them with occasional double-sided comments. Great at picking up information on the tenants or on potential tenants from the position of Front Desk. Very beneficial for the Owner. The Owner places a lot of trust in them and how they vet tenants and workers-- essentially the Owner’s right hand person and second in command. Much smarter than they seem and is quite intuitive. Struggles to back their intuition so they get along very well with Lily-- the very person who can dig up the evidence to back their intuition. The pair are largely unstoppable. Their intuition is never wrong and Lily can find literally anything if they motivated her enough. Has never personally done anything illegal (hands on) but has facilitated and encouraged it enough. Essentially, the plan B of the operation should it fail. Cannot legally be prosecuted for any crimes and thus can help anyone who falls into legal trouble get the best help to get away with whatever crimes committed.

In case of emergency has access to Room 003.

The Head of Security - Lily-Anne

23 - 5’4” - 180 lbs || Russian American | she/her || Room 005 || Greasy, Lazy Genius

Doesn’t look it but can pick anyone up and throw them like they’re nothing. Learned to deadlift and hack to prove the boys in her high school classes wrong. Mastered biology freshman year and went on to throw herself into the STEM programs. Won lots of scholarships but never went to secondary school. Can find anything about anyone. Normally quite apathetic but you don’t want to trigger stronger emotions- obsessive to either degree. She’ll either kidnap you as hers (and literally love you to death) or she’ll just kill you in her anger and hatred of you. Wants to push those around her to the brink, control them to the point that they’d do anything- kill or die for her. Heavily sapphic but not exclusionary and likes who she likes. Has few friends, most online, but Ronaldo is one she begrudgingly admits to befriending. The Owner knows a lot of Lily-Anne, but she knows little of him. She mostly digs up the dirt for Ronaldo, in return for a toy to play with and some cash, but she also largely protects the complex more heavily than traditional security including cyber security and bribing/hacking the police. This makes her a very valuable asset and the Owner has a soft spot for her, throwing her a toy to play with out of the blue occasionally if one fits her preferences that the Owner can tell.

The Gym Trainer - Rocky

25 - 6’1” - 265 lbs || Dominican-German || he/him || Room 217 || Aggro-gym bro

Got hired after being a tenant due to his actual degree but also because Marissa had stumbled across his strength and ruthlessness and mentioned it to Ronaldo. The perfect backup and, well, Rocky killed his darlings often enough that the disposal of their bodies was payment for the heavy lifting he did for the Owner. Doesn’t know much, just knows he sees some bitches being taken and he beats some douchebags up. He doesn’t care what happens to the victims, doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know or care. Rent is significantly cheaper and after being the backup for a few years, his rent was waived. He showed loyalty and that is rewarded. Always on the prowl for tenants to trick into the complex and then trap them in the gym so he can bully them. Its a win-win for the Owner and for him. He earns commission from both. Quite handy to have on staff despite his own (willing and willful) ignorance. The rooms on either side of him are often vacant due to the screams of his victims (both sexual and tortured) and the Owner buckled down and sound proofed his entire apartment. Saves them both some stress.

The Head of Maintenance - Marissa Thompson

27 - 6’ - 178 lbs || Black American || she/her || Room 008 || Chaotic ADHD gremlin

Trans-woman and proud. Black and proud. Can do everything a straight white man can do but better. Always has 100+ projects on her plate but still takes on every project offered. Prioritizes well and always helps the tenants in a timely and kind manner. Has never gotten a complaint-- about her work. She, herself, now requests tenants be out of the apartment while work is being done because she’s so chaotic it stresses out the tenants. Loves and leans into the “plumber’s crack” trope when she does plumbing work. Makes straight white men super uncomfortable and she lives for it. Unlike most other tenants, she knows nothing about The Owner or his operations, she was vetted by Front Desk and okay’ed due to her oblivious nature and genuine skills. (Front Desk totally knows about how she’s obsessive and stalks her love interests, how she sneaks into their rooms and frots against their bed while she caresses their skin while they sleep, how she hooked cameras up in her apartment so she can watch them always, how she always helps them first-- drops everything to help them first; but it’s okay, Front Desk can use all that to their advantage and when it stops being an advantage, well, they have more proof against her than she could dream of having against them. This job pays too well to lose, anyway, right?)

Lobby Cleaner - Amelia Moser

21 - 5’6” - 134 lbs || Caucasian || he/him & she/her || Room 004 || Discreet Wallflower

Soft, sweet, and quiet. She often blends into the background unnoticed. Gathers a lot of intel that way and is quite willing to play the bait or honey pot people for the Owner. She’s more dangerous and promiscuous than she looks, after all looks are deceiving. She’s always getting dirt on the tenants, too. Cleaning the lobby and gym bathrooms while people are in them, eavesdropping on conversations, and generally watching everyone with a very close eye. She, herself, has an entitlement to her if you can catch her in conversation, though just know if you are in a conversation with her she’s already got you hooked. She doesn’t talk to anyone unless she wants or needs something from them- though they’re largely the same. Whatever it is, she’s getting it. Loves sweet things that aren’t just pretending to be kind, if you treat her and everyone with kindness but also get shy and flustered or you’re a little bit of a crybaby then- well, you’re her’s now. She’s kidnapping you, locking you up in her nursery, and drugging you until you believe you’re the child she’s treating you as. And if you try to leave- well, she won’t be afraid to take drastic measures. She knows how to clean up the toughest of stains after all.

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catspluscrows · 4 years

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Hi! I really like your writing and was wondering if you'd be willing to write Tanaka or Yamaguchi, Aone, and Kyotani with a dysphoric trans reader (he/him please)? I hope I'm not bothering you too much with this request but if you do write it, could you please tag me?

I did all four of them! (I repeatedly mentioned them supporting you because I think they’re accepting good people and you should only have those sorta people in your life!)

And thank you for liking my writing!! <3

Some of them are more general trans! reader who’s dysphoric headcanons with a couple lines referring to a female to male reader. I hope that’s okay! Sorry it took so long to write, Tumblr didn’t notify me of the ask and I’ve been inactive because of personal reasons. I tagged you too, like requested :) @simplesadsoup

TW: Dysphoria, Trans reader (implied female to male)

𝐑. 𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐊𝐀

If you thought you knew what support is think again.

He cares so much about you that even if he's confused about how you're feeling he'll listen and then research it.

You don't like the hormone shots you're on? Tanaka will schedule an appointment so you can move forward properly. Anything for you.

Tanaka makes it his goal to make you the happiest you that you can be. He'll be there every step of the way.

A pretty good listener. He'll sit next to you while you cry, telling you he'll be here for you always and that you're beautiful inside and out. He will sometimes talk but he’ll shut up when he realizes it.

If he can't be there in person he'd call. Sometimes just hearing his voice is reassuring when things are feeling too heavy.

Never pressures you into doing anything. Even if you have plans he'll cancel them. If you tell him that you can't go out to dinner because none of your clothes feel right or you don't want to make an appearance he'll stay with you.

When you're feeling especially insecure about your body Tanaka will hold you. Everything would be silent (maybe some sappy song in the background), nothing to process except Tanaka's sweet words and warm embrace.

Tanaka never wants you to feel alone.

He wants you to know he's always there for you, even when you can't be there for yourself.

𝐓. 𝐘𝐀𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐔𝐂𝐇𝐈

Yamaguchi feels helpless at first. He's worried he won't be able to comfort you when everything becomes too heavy. He's anxious you'll spiral deeper because he can't help you.

What he doesn't know is that he's a big help when you feel awful.

Considerate and observant, Yamaguchi brings you all your favorite things. Movies, books, foods. He gets all the things he knows you like to try and make you feel better.

Of course he realizes material possessions won't fix how you're feeling. Yamaguchi will stay with you as long as you need him to. Even if he's just holding your hand or helping you cut your hair. He's there at a moment's notice.

It makes him a bit angry and confused when you say what you're feeling dysphoric about. You don't like how high your voice is? He adores your laugh though? He knows why you don't like these things and respects it. But he'll never not see you as perfect, no matter your gender.

He tells you that every chance he gets too. If you thought Tanaka was a simp, well, get ready for Yamaguchi.

Stuff like: "That top looks really good on you!", "I love your smile and laugh. I'll tell another joke so I can see it!" are said a lot more

Reassures he's always there.

3 am and you've been having a long struggle with taking a shower? He'll rush over to help if that's what you'd like. Five minutes before a date and you can't bring it in yourself to go? He'll happily cancel.

Yamaguchi would rather hold you while watching movies anyway.

𝐓. 𝐀𝐎𝐍𝐄

It's true he's not the most expressive person but he'll show you he's there for you.

The best listener. Forget about how great Tanaka and Yamaguchi are at listening. Aone is a million times better.

He's not as great at cheering you up though. He tries his hardest though and that's enough!

His support is shown through his actions. In the way he'll stay up late with you or sleep in late in your bed. How he'll buy you your pads because you don't want to look at them longer than you have to.

Aone is super considerate of you. He won't make plans unless he knows you want to go. He's also ready to cancel on outing to stay instead withing a snap of your fingers.

Probably the best one to have at doctor visits.

He listens so carefully to what your doctor says. Prior to the visit he was listening intently to what you were saying about your treatment in case you forgot to mention anything.

Of course if you purposely avoided saying something he wouldn't tell the doctor.

Has a very gentle and calm approach. Part of it is that he's not great at expressing his feelings. The other part being that he doesn't want to be too blunt and hurt you further.

Knows that sometimes the best way to be there for someone is to just reassure them.

𝐊. 𝐊𝐘𝐎𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐈

He cares about you a lot. And I mean a lot.

Pays close attention at any doctor visits he tags along with. He also keeps a close eye on you at home.

Unprepared but also very prepared.

He's ready to comfort you when you're feeling awful. He's also scared he'll be too rough and hurt your feelings too. When I say he's prepared I mean he knows what to do in his head, it's just acting it out can be hard. He takes the same determination on the court to your appointments.

Usually Kyotani is able to make you feel better. Without words and with only actions usually. Like he’ll bring you into a hug when you’re rambling about how he wouldn’t ever want to touch you and feel you melt into his body.

Definitely the "aggressively caring" type. He also holds you accountable of dates and when to take your medication.

But Kyotani is also really soft and will try his best to be patient with you. Especially since he's learning about this everyday with you. He'll research about it on his own but will also talk to you since he doesn't want to push any boundaries.

Will bring his dog over if you like dogs.

It'll make him so happy to see you smiling because his dog is licking your nose when you've been fighting tears for days. If he can't make you feel better he will kinda rely on his dog.

Sometimes it'll be hard for Kyotani to be patient but he'll always try to help you get through this. He'll make sure you know you aren't alone through the highs and lows.

#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x trans reader #yamaguchi tadashi #yamaguchi x reader #tanaka ryuunosuke #tanaka x reader #aone takanobu #aone x reader #kyotani kentarou #kyotani x reader #fluff #tw: dysphoria #tw: depression #kinda angst #headcanons #a request

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sleepless-in-starbucks · 3 years

Note

2, 15, and 94 with LoSleep?

2. Royal AU || 15. Criminal AU || 94. Hair Brushing/Braiding

anon i hope you know this is like the Perfect set up for a rapunzel AU. maybe you did. maybe you did this on purpose. regardless... tangled AU

imma go with remy being the lost princess, and logan the dashing thief, because while my instinct is to go the other way around i like Switching It Up on y'all

remy's bigender, using male pronouns but female titles/referrals. he figured this out solely because he preferred the way the male pronouns sounded, while also liking being a princess a good deal more than being a prince. he doesn't mention this to mother gothel tho. i mention this mostly so none of y'all get confused as i go sdkjhncfjsd

logan's transmale, and his struggles as a poor trans kid are what made him go Fuck Society Actually. he targets the crown especially bc the king and queen can stand to lose their gold

he doesn't stumble upon the tower after being chased for the crown, however; he's just looking for a place to hide in general. he's just made off with a good sack of gold, and he wants to stash it for a bit, let the heat die down, before he tries to buy anything with it

and that's how he finds the hidden clearing, with the surprisingly intact, singular tower dead center

he, of course, goes to investigate, and ends up nearly getting run through with a broomstick, which he feels would be a pretty bad way to go

but that's not entirely horrible, because the person dangerously weilding the cleaning implement is a bit absolutely stunning

he says as such and almost gets a broom through a lung, because apparently this tower dweller thinks he's a threat and is also insulting them

after a... lot of talking, and logan wisely easing up on the complimenting thing (for now...), they get things figured out. the tower dweller is remy, and he's waiting for his mother to return from a store run or smth. logan has to be gone before mother is back, or logan will be in trouble

aside from the fact logan doesn't really want to leave remy just in General, he has some doubts about 'mother'. like why she was raising her kid... here. in the middle of the woods. in a hidden clearing. in a high tower. with no clear way in or out (logan had to scale the thing, and it doesn't look like remy's used to that method of entrance). and the best defense weapon on hand being a broom

so when remy faux-indifferently asks logan what the moving lights are ("i know they're not stars... please don't tell me they're stars..."), logan jumps at the chance to invite remy to see them- it'll only be a day, mother wont mind that long, right? logan can keep remy safe from his every fear of that real world, and remy'll get to see the lights, and everyone will be happy

remy's hesitant, but it's clear he wants to go. it doesn't take that much prodding to convince him to leave mother a Very vague note about being back soon and being safe, to go with logan

that's when logan learns about remy's hair. he hadn't noticed before, the dirty blond hair on the floor not having caught his attention, but he certainly notices it when remy's jumping out the window, cascading down the way by hanging on to all... goodness knows how many yards of it

if he wasn't already suspicious there was something off about this whole situation, the hair that was Way longer than it should be- and way stronger to boot- tipped him off pretty seriously

and as their trip goes on? logan's only adding to the list of Sus, including (but oh so not limited to)

the clear fact remy's Never left the small, sheltered clearing (which in my version is still within the forest, no overhead open sky) to the extent seeing the sun has him doubling over and clutching his eyes like they burn

after making do with some cloth wrapped over remy's eyes for a bit, logan gets him some sunglasses and remy doesnt know what they are at first

remy has too much fucking anxiety in his him- he hides from a passing person faster than logan, the known and wanted criminal

and it's clear he's not just avoiding social interaction- he loves talking to logan, and he's plenty social and alive and everything then- but he just seems to have some fear against. well. the world

remy is also... oddly clingy to logan. like. wayyyy too much so. maybe logan could blame it on remy not knowing enough about the outside world, but it seems... more than that. as if just bc remy's decided to trust logan on this, logan's the end-all be-all of trust or smth. logan's not exactly how to put it to words but. it's wrong

overall, remy has a very Vibrant personality. he's confident, strong, unwilling to just be led around and nothing like a damsel in distress. but it seems much too... surface level. like if logan pushed too hard, it would all crumble, to reveal something- someone- who's not sure about anything and who's terrified because of it

making their way to the center of the kingdom makes it all the more clear to logan that Something is wrong with remy, and that there is no way he can ever go back to that tower

because logan's an orphan kid, he's seen his fair share of foster homes, of some of the kids who come back from them

he knows what child abuse victims look like

that's not all logan's learning about remy on the way to the kingdom, however. he's also learning about his favorite story, how much he's thought about the moving lights, how the world looks so different from the ground. logan's learning how remy's genuine smiles are much prettier than the faux one he wears a lot, how his laughs are rare but perfect, how incredible he is between the poorly concealed fear and hurt

logan's a thief and a cynic, someone's who had long written off most of the supposed good in the world, much too used to an orphaned childhood, growing up in poverty, misgendering, pain

something about remy makes him reconsider some of his more pessimistic beliefs

they reach the kingdom at midday, but remy stops them before they can actually go in. even with the sunglasses, logan can see the blinding fear in his eyes at the sight of civilization, of all those people. he grips his hair, takes a half step back, looking about ready to call it all off and run all the way back 'home'

logan grabs remy's hand. the grip is light, easily escaped, but remy doesnt, just looks at logan, trying to school his expression into one of cool neutrality instead of fear

"i can braid your hair." logan says, holding remy's gaze as he speaks. "so no one steps on it while we go to see the moving lights."

logan knows that's not the main thing stopping remy from entering the kingdom. it's an excuse, just for him. because it's easier to be worried about your hair being stepped on then to admit just being Afraid, right?

"I will not let it come undone" logan adds, lightly squeezing remy's hand. i will not let you get hurt

it's a long minute before remy agrees, but he does agree

they sit on the floor of the forest, just outside the kingdom, logan's deft fingers making quick work of the tangles that have developed in remy's hair over the course of the trip, the thief carefully watching the way remy's stiff as wood at first, trying not to react to logan's work on his hair, but slowly relaxes, leaning back a bit, tilting into logan's touch each time it comes back to remy's head

it takes a while, but soon enough, remy's hair is mostly restrained in a braid that's held together at key points by flower stems, leaving remy's hair decorated with wildflowers to boot

remy loves it. logan's starting to think he loves something too, but he's less willing to admit it

spending the rest of the day in the town is surprisingly wonderful- remy keeps close to logan, but he manages to talk to some people at times, and when they find the library he seems just about ready to die happy in there

logan stays close to him the entire time, usually holding his hand. he's never loved being around people more

it's getting close to the time for the lanterns to be released when logan realizes who remy is

the tower girl makes a comment about how familiar the lost princess's mural is. logan glances between it and remy, between the uniquely red-tinted brown eyes, the bright baby hair that could've easily turned dirty blond, the story of a dying queen and a magical flower springing to mind

remy is the lost princess. and as loathe as the thought of letting him go is, logan knows remy's the one treasure the thief can't have

so logan promises to himself, after they see the lanterns, he'll explain. he'll bring the princess to the king and queen, and hope he doesn't get arrested in the process. he'll set things right, and then he'll leave

because the thief doesn't get the girl anywhere other than fairytales

they still share an absolutely magical moment out on the water though. the way remy's eyes light up seeing the lanterns rise into the sky, sunglasses off in the dark evening, awe-struck... and when logan reveals the lanterns he snagged at one point, that they two of them can send up- logic help him, logan's not sure how much longer he can go on denying the truth

they don't kiss, don't even get close, bc logan's too busy trying to deny the truth and remy's still got a million trust issues

but remy's hand is slotted in logan's nearly the entire time, and they release their lanterns at the same time, and they hold each other's gazes a few times too long, and that seems pretty damn close to Something for them

they head back to the kingdom land before the other boats. logan knows remy will prefer to hear what he says without too many people around them, and if logan's being honest with himself? he's running away. he's running away from this closeness before it can get him (it's already gotten him, but he's always been so good at lying)

then logan gets shot :D

bc mother gothel found that note and she didnt like it!! she was after remy as soon as she saw it, and now she's caught up, and she's not letting anyone keep remy from her

she comes totting a crossbow that she levels on remy the moment she sees him. demanding he come home, saying the world is too dangerous for him to be out and about, pretending the crossbow is for logan instead, that he's a threat, can't remy see he needs to come home with her? where it's safe?

remy doesn't move. mother is supposed to be safety, right? he should go with her

...he doesn't want to leave logan

things escalate. logan says he'll never let gothel have remy again. remy doesn't react to this, but he doesn't step closer to gothel either. her frustration builds. the trigger gets pulled

it's unclear who she meant to hit but logan's the one who takes the arrow through his chest, barely even thinking as he made sure he was between remy and the projectile

by then, the townspeople have begun returning to the town, so there are people to grab gothel, ensure she doesn't attack further. someone runs for the king and queen, because one soldier recognizes gothel, as long ago as it's been since she was last seen and known and Wanted by the rulers, wanted for taking their baby

people try to approach logan, to help, but remy curls around him, refusing to let anyone near, not trusting them, refusing to lose the one person left in this world he cares about

remy's hair has fallen out of its braid, falling around himself and on top of logan, whose head remy is carefully supporting in his hands. logan's trying to convince remy it's okay, everything will be okay, that as long as remy is okay it'll be okay, but remy's really not buying it, not when logan's blood is staining his shirt and hair and his voice is getting weaker and weaker and weaker

"it's okay" logan tries to promise, even though remy can barely hear him over the gurgle of blood in the back of his throat

"how can it be okay? you're dying"

"...and you're safe" logan replies, just barely, wasting the last of his strength to reach up, cupping remy's cheek, holding his face like he was the most important thing in the world, "you're safe. and i love you"

logan's eyes slip closed after that, and they don't seem to be opening again soon

remy could do a lot of things now. scream, cry, breakdown. he's already pretty close to doing a lot of them

but instead, he sings. he sings the song mother gothel always made him, the one that could deage. he doesn't know what it will do. but he hopes against hope it'll do Something. that it will save logan Somehow

and before the eyes of the town, before the eyes of the king and queen just fetched from their castle, they watch as remy's hair glows with magic not seen in nearly two decades

it's dangerous for remy. gothel had always taught that. people would do Anything to take his hair if they knew. but he doesn't care right then. all that mattered was logan. nothing else

he doesn't even realize what he's managed to do until logan's gently shaking him, telling him he can stop singing, it's okay, for real now, he's okay, they're okay

and you know how it goes from there... the king and queen reveal that Yep Remy You're Our Daughter, logan is accepted by the family bc Took A Hit For Remy Our Daughter, remy and logan continue to have their own issues due to Childhood Abuse but with each other, and their love, they get better... and they get to live happily ever after

#okay so i would just to formally apologize for how Dark parts of this got kjsdhnfvksd #i got so caught up in the euphoria of the exchange of trust and vulnerability between the abused i lived in a world where this wasnt #supposed to be lighthearted KHDFSVJU #losleep #ts logan #ts remy #rapunzel au #abuse tw #child abuse tw #trauma tw #violence tw #fanfic #ts fanfic #the cryptid speaks #lost in the fray #so long.........

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books-secretgetaway · 2 years

Text

Cemetery Boys Review

Yadriel is a transgender boy who wants nothing more than to prove to his traditional Latinx family that he is a brujo. When he accidentally summons the spirit of Julian Diaz, he has to race against time to release his spirit before Día de los Muertos, but Yadriel quickly learns just how stubborn Julian really is.

Cemetery Boys is a strong representation of what it means to be a trans boy who wants to prove himself to a family that refuses to break from tradition. For the most part, I think it’s a strong story. Even though it faltered at the end, and my rating dipped down a bit, but it didn’t make me hate it. I do wish it was done differently but as it is, I give this a strong 3.7 out of 5. It’s definitely worth the read and should be on everyone’s bookshelf if you enjoy YA fiction filled with magic and the paranormal, but more importantly, endearing characters.

I have been trying to read this book for about a year now and I finally managed to finish it. This is in no way a reflection of the book, but rather myself, who struggled to get any reading done in 2021. I reread the first 50 pages about three times which means it was a strong opening. I usually don’t torture myself so if a book isn’t grabbing my attention, I put it down. I wanted to read it, so I was very willing to read those pages again each time I attempted to finally finish a book. I kept going back to it over and over again, determined to read something. And finally, I got myself to focus and stick with the book, and I’m so glad I did.

Character is the most important thing in a novel for me and I fell in love with Yadriel, Martiza, and Julian. For the most part, there was good pacing, the writing was strong, and it was a really lovely story. The last quarter of the novel was drastically weaker though, and I’ll discuss that in the spoiler portion of the review.

Cemetery Boys centers on a Latinx family and I love the liveliness and the strong familial bonds depicted. Often times when a novel has a large cast of characters, the secondary and tertiary characters feel flat and unrealized. They often lack a substance and feel as if they’re an afterthought. Here, for the most part, I didn't feel like any of the characters were there for the sake of being there. I got a clear sense of the large family Yadriel was a part of without needing to have them running around in every scene. There were some characters I wish we had spent more time with, but the world of Cemetery Boys felt realized and lived in.

This is the first novel about a transgender character that I’ve ever read. It’s not that I actively avoided such a topic, I just simply hadn’t found the right book that spoke to me. I’m drawn more to the fantasy and sci-fi genres than contemporary which is more often the genre that tells transgender stories. When I found Cemetery Boys, I was immediately intrigued by the premise, and I was excited to find a novel about a topic that I know very little about but want to learn more. I have met only a few openly transgender people before, none of whom I knew beyond acquaintance. I am ignorant to a lot of the issues that transgender people go through and I often felt like Yadriel’s family. Though I was speaking more from ignorance than willful refusal to acknowledge one’s gender, reading about Yadriel’s frustration showed me how frustrating and disheartening it can be for the transgender community when people like me slip up and make mistakes.

Novels like this are powerful. They allow people who are like Yadriel to see themselves portrayed and it gives them a character to bond with. It also allows people outside of the trans community to have empathy for trans people. Ignorance hinders progress and the more novels we have about the LGBTQIA+ community, the easier it is to tackle ignorance. I am so glad that I found this novel and that it was even featured on the Barnes & Noble YA Book Club, which is the gorgeous edition that I got. We need to continue highlighting these stories, not only for the youth that this book is largely targeted to, but for adults as well. I have always been an advocate for people to support media that depicts people different from them. We have far too many CIS white men and women in leading roles, and any time these roles deviate, the biggest argument is ‘I can’t relate to this character’. I am not a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, but I relate to Yadriel feeling alone in his school. Obviously not to the extent that he did, but I did struggle with bullying and feeling isolated in middle school and high school so I can empathize. But I also empathized with his struggle that I myself will never face. I don’t have to relate to every aspect of a character to be invested in their story and it seems a lot of people have yet to learn that.

Now, onto spoilers.

I absolutely love the way Yadriel describes Julian, especially as he’s falling in love with him. In the beginning, Julian’s stubbornness threatens to expose Yadriel’s secret and he has to put up with him until he finds Julian’s friends. By the end, Julian’s stubbornness becomes endearing, a trait that Yadriel falls in love with. I think that the progression of their affection for one another is well paced and feels organic. Many times, when you have a story that takes place over just a few days, the romance can feel rushed and unbelievable, but in Cemetery Boys, I can believe it.

“He didn’t see how anyone could get a clean break from Julian once they entered his orbit […] He was a bit of an ass. Headstrong, impulsive, and definitely obnoxious. But Yadriel could see how ferociously he cared about the people who were important to him.”

“He was so…visceral. He was so real. Even with his blurry edges and chilling touch, he was a force of nature. He was loud, he was stubborn, he was determined, and he was reckless.”

One of the things that Yadriel loves about Julian is how confident he is about who he is. When Yadriel assumes that Julian is straight, Julian corrects him instantly, stating that he is actually gay without any hesitation. Yadriel has struggled with his sexuality and gender identity, not having the confidence that he envies in Julian.

“He’d said it so… ’casually’ wasn’t the right word, but maybe ‘easily’ was. Whenever Yadriel came out to anyone, it was always an ordeal that he overthought and dragged out. It was nerve-racking, waiting to see someone’s reaction, whether they would reject him, or even understand what it meant when a trans boy said he was gay. But not for Julian.

He’d said it as almost a challenge. In a way that said he didn’t care what you thought.”

We see Julian rub off on Yadriel as he becomes more and more comfortable with who he is. He gets the courage to use the boy’s restroom at school. This feels like such a small step but is actually a huge leap for Yadriel and I love seeing him become who he truly is.

“But he was a boy, and if this was what they bathrooms were like, then he’d get used to it.”

We see why Julian is so good with helping Yadriel be truer to himself when we finally meet his friends. They are truly a band of ‘misfits’, people who are rejected by everyone else and have formed their own family. We have Luca who was abused and subsequently joined a gang, Rocky who lives in a group home, Flaca, a trans girl who was thrown out of her home, and Omar whose parents were deported. Julian lives with his older brother, Rio, as their mother abandoned them, and their dad was killed in street violence. I appreciate that Thomas touched on other subjects that the Latinx community faces, bringing these kids together in a support system that no one else shows them. When Julian is missing, none of them call the police because of their fear of deportation which is a very real and very terrifying issue that Latinx people face every day. I do wish this, and the other issues facing Julian's friends, were touched on a little bit more since this is such a topical issue and feels like it could really add to the story.

This leads to my biggest problem with the book, the last quarter of the novel. We had been building up the mystery of what happened to Julian and finding his friends, but then we just leave them and don’t see them until a brief moment at the end. I wish we had spent more time with them and bring them in on the search. Luca helps for a brief moment but then is gone as well. I wanted to see more of Yadriel and Flaca interacting as they have that shared trait of being trans. Flaca has more confidence in who she is, using the girl’s restroom without fear, even as she gets in trouble for doing so. I wanted to see some bonding between them. They could be the friends that Yadriel desperately needs, as he seems to really have no one except for his cousin Martiza.

The final day before Yadriel releases Julian takes a sudden turn in tone and all of a sudden, Yadriel is skipping school and stealing Julian and Rio’s’ car. They go to the Halloween bonfire, and all of this adds nothing to the story. It severely weakened the pacing and all the buildup we had been leading to. I also want to know what happened to the whole day. One moment, Yadriel is buying all of Julian’s favorite foods, then they’re stealing the car, then they’re all of a sudden at the bonfire? Where did the day go? This was such a huge waste that could've been much better utilized.

I wish instead they had kept on track with finding Julian’s body. Maybe Yadriel skips school and finds Julian’s friends to get their help. He can still get Julian’s foods for his ofrenda, but the grand theft auto storyline needs to go. I wanted to feel the building tension as they run out of time to find Julian’s body. Maybe one of his friends is in danger of being killed like Julian or goes missing as well and they have to find them. I picked up on Tío Catriz being the villain about halfway through and I absolutely loved the potential of this. You have him being an outsider like Yadriel, as he was born without the powers of a brujo but then he chooses a very dangerous path to be acknowledged by his family. The juxtaposition of this would’ve been incredible but unfortunately, it’s rushed through. The fight between Yadriel and Catriz ends much too soon. It’s resolved almost as quickly as it’s revealed and that really weakened it. I wish that Catriz had shown some more hints to being the bad guy or that we got to see him spiraling into desperation and anger. Maybe he says something that raises Yadriel’s suspicion. His character is definitely the weakest of the cast. He needed more time to be more realized and so we could feel his anger and frustration that would lead him to such a horrid crime. I would’ve liked to see him come unhinged slowly.

I’m not sure how I feel about the end, with Yadriel bringing Julian back to life. I almost wish that Julian had died, and Yadriel released his spirit, so that we have a more unpredictable ending. Another part of me is glad they get to be together because Julian is such an endearing character. Although, I really hated how he was acting in the end. He was almost animalistic in how he held onto Yadriel, not even letting his family help him. It was excessive and eye rolling. I know we have built up Julian to be an incredibly protective person, but this just wasn’t done right to me.

I do love the ending though. Seeing Yadriel be accepted into his family, becoming a brujo with his mom there to see is so wonderful. The final line shows that not everything is resolved with a neat little bow in one day.

“No, it wasn’t the end. It was a better beginning”

But it is progress. His family has made a huge first step in understanding who Yadriel is and accepting him. Yadriel’s father’s speech really moved me and is something that I wish so many more people understood.

“Growth isn’t a deviation from what we’ve done before, but a natural progression to honor all those who make this community strong.”

People are so afraid of growth when it means accepting something they don’t understand. Seeing Yadriel’s incredibly traditional family accepting Yadriel’s identity is a powerful message that I truly hope that one day everyone will achieve. This novel relied on Yadriel proving himself in a literal sense, summoning a spirit which only a brujo could do, but in real life, it isn’t so simple. It is still possible, and stories like this help in educating people about trans people. As we have more and more visibility in media, one day perhaps trans stories will be more accepted and we learn to understand those who identify as a trans person.

I really did enjoy this book despite the dislike I have for the last 80 or so pages. I want to read more stories about trans characters because I have so much to learn. I love that the LGBTQIA+ community is given a stronger voice and that we are starting to listen. Cemetery Boys is a wonderful novel and I loved reading Yadriel’s journey. I know that there are a few other fantasy novels about trans characters, and I will definitely keep my eyes out for them.

#cemetery boys #cemetery boys review #book review #review #ya fiction #reading #aiden thomas #lgbtqia #transgender #lantinx #paranormal #diadelosmuertos #secret getaway

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