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sp1drrthwips · 5 months

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✷ COMING OUT TO THEM AS TRANS .

꩜ platonic! peter parker(s), miles morales, gwen stacy, hobie brown & pavitr prabhakar x trans! gn reader

𖦹 cw : one mention of accidental outing !!

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ꨄ︎ marvel studios! peter parker ;

⋆ supports you from the moment the words leave your lips. definitely hugs you and tells you he loves you either way <3

⋆ will definitely ask about how you want to be referred to as now, like completely, not just name or pronouns, he checks for other gendered words / phrases too !

⋆ lets you explain more on the topic yourself, but also does additional research himself to understand more !

⋆ is totally ready to support you through any transition stage you're in,,, change in style, puberty blockers, hrt, etc,, he's right there supporting you <33

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ꨄ︎ tasm! peter parker ;

⋆ doesn't really know what to say at first,, will probably stay silent with a slight smile on his face while trying to think of what to say and end up on “i don't mind, that's- that's cool.”

⋆ exactly like marvel studios peter he'll ask about all the ways you would like to be referred to as now !

⋆ doesn't change the way he is around you at all, aside from being a little tense from not wanting to slip-up and possibly hurt your feelings, he stays the same !

⋆ he doesn't know much other than the basics, so he'll start to dedicate parts of his free time to researching more on trans topics to try and support you better <33

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ꨄ︎ miles morales ;

⋆ very chill about it, and makes sure you know that it doesn't change his view on you whatsoever

⋆ probably asks who else knows, and depending on what your answer is will ask how you'd like him to refer to you as when around people you aren't out to !

⋆ he shows his support through not really acknowledging it, just making sure you still feel normal and not making you feel uncomfortable is the way he knows to support you best <3

⋆ for sure the fastest to come up with shortened versions of your new name ( if possible ) / new nicknames to match the new you !

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ꨄ︎ gwen stacy ;

⋆ absolutely supports you 100% immediately <3 ( and definitely goes for the same approach as miles' second hc !! )

⋆ the most educated out of everyone here for sure,, and she's very very mindful of her words, so slip-ups are extremely rare !

⋆ she is so so excited to help you explore whatever new style you want, and will tag along with you to go shopping nine times out of ten !

⋆ always encourages you to talk to her whenever you're having dysphoric days,, she may not understand, but she still wants to be there to listen and try her best to cheer you up and affirm you <3

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ꨄ︎ hobie brown ;

⋆ will most likely answer with “cool.” afterwards, and continue whatever he was doing,, but he if realizes you need extra reassurance, he'll tell you doesn't care ( in a –– he ‘still thinks you're awesome’ way ) and asks about your new name and pronouns !

⋆ he's pretty familiar with breaking gender norms, so, just like gwen, he'll be extremely helpful while you figure out your new style !

⋆ also like gwen, he's pretty mindful of what he says, so slip-ups are rare with him as well !

⋆ the most likely on this list to knock someone out for purposely deadnaming / misgendering you ....

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ꨄ︎ pavitr prabhakar ;

⋆ like miles, he doesn't really acknowledge it because he doesn't understand why he should, you're still his friend and he loves you either way <3

⋆ like tasm peter, he doesn't know much more than basics, so there is a chance he'll tell people you aren't out to yet that you're trans to correct them ( good intentions, wrong execution ),, but will apologize and stop if you tell him you don't like it and want to tell people yourself !!

⋆ will mostly likely stop at libraries throughout the multiverse to try and find out more about the topic, and if that fails, he'll finally turn to the internet !

⋆ i feel like once he starts to learn more about you being trans he'd want to have a celebration of some kind,, like a small hang out with you, him, miles, gwen and hobie to make sure you feel appreciated and know they all still love you <3

ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ

. . . hugs for all the trans readers here <3 🫂🫂🫂 happy trans awareness week !!! hopefully everyone had the sweetest and happiest week ever !! 🫂🫂 make sure to take care of yourself, you're all so so important !!! 💌💌

p.s. sorry to any trans tobey spidey fans reading ,, since his movies were so long ago i didn't really know how to write for him and just left him out :(

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 9 months

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was ita for ghosting/cutting off my ex girlfriend after our junior year?

i (currently 17, trans M) knew this girl (currently 17(?), F) from around 7th grade [middle school] to 11th grade [junior year of high school], so five school years/ten ish years total, give or take. we just graduated this year so this is kind of old drama, i was happier not talking to her but i always kind of regretted not giving her like. the reasons why

we dated from i wanna say. the middle of 7th grade to the middle of our freshman year. she broke up with me because her other boyfriend at the time was jealous she was dating another person [both of us are polyamorous]. we stayed in contact but i got a bit distant during lockdown because my mental health was going down the drain fast and i was just kind of isolating myself from Everyone, but got back into regular contact at the beginning of junior year because of our schools dungeons & dragons club.

she was running basically a continuation of the campaign that had been cut short because of lockdown and i didnt know any of the other campaigns DMs so i decided to join her campaign again since i had been missing my character anyways. at this point id been out for about three years i think? and made a point of introducing myself to the group with my chosen name and he/him pronouns. i dont pass very well, but i usually had a trans pride flag and pronoun pin visible on my outfit whenever we had sessions. my character was also a trans man, only using he/him pronouns as well.

whenever she addressed me or my character, she defaulted to using she/her and my deadname, despite my constant correcting her and the other party members. the only people in the party that used both the right name and pronouns for me and my character were the only other trans person (currently 18, F) in the group who she also constantly misgendered, and a guy (currently 18, M) id become pretty close friends with, since we'd accidentally started a running joke about my character being his characters dad.

i started to kind of resent her and the other party members for the constant deadnaming and misgendering and honestly was just waiting for the campaign to be over. it wrapped up at the end of the year and i just took the opportunity to stop interacting with her entirely. i had made other friends that year, and had a few from the old friendgroup we had both been part of, that respected both my name and pronouns with no issues apart from the very rare accidental deadname.

senior year passed without me talking to her a single time, only really seeing her in the halls like. once a week. now that we've graduated i doubt i'll see her all that much except the way you sometimes see a kid from school at the grocery store or the mall or wherever, so theres not really anything i can do to get back in contact or make amends or whatever, and even if i could i dont think id really want to unless she showed she could handle actually using the right name and pronouns for me.

shes shown she can use them for a mutual friend of ours (currently 18, trans M) that passes really well so it just always made me feel like she didnt give enough of a shit about me or respect me enough to actually see me as the man i am. so. idk. was ita?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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tvbyw0by · 3 months

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BSD Armed detective agency with a 13 year old reader who comes out as transgender,

MTF version

(FTM VERSION NEXT MAYBE)

Warnings: Deadnaming(accidentally), transphobia(you confess how your bio parents kicked you out.)

[NAME POV]

I walked down the streets, shivering against the winter air..

My teeth chattered as I tried to make my way fast towards the armed detective agency, where I work part time..

After awhile, I made it there, slamming open the door, not even surprised that there was no one here considering it was 2am..

My lips turned into a frown as I closed the door, now hurrying towards the couch,

Immediately I cuddled against the warm blanket that sat there, my heart hurting as I thought of the previous events.

Earlier, I had decided to finally come out to my very, VERY religious family,

Born a boy, destined to be a girl, is what I thought.

My body, it just.. I don't feel like a boy, and it makes me extremely uncomfortable to even be identified as a boy in any shape or form,

And so, me, a teenager now sat on the couch of my workplace, at 2am due to being kicked out by my biological parents.

I didn't know how long I stayed there on the couch, as all of a sudden I heard the door open, my gaze glancing up at the president standing there, glancing at me with a slightly confused expression,

"[DEAD.NAME], what are you doing here?"

I grimaced slightly at the mention of my dead name, before I shrugged, burying my face back in the couch as I avoided his gaze, unsure of what to say,,

Fukuzawas eyebrows furrowed as he stared, before he let out a loud sigh, closing the door and deciding to just sit down,

I looked at him as he sat down next to me, and soon enough tears grew in my eyes, and his eyes widened slightly, usually I was always so.. upbeat and happy, never has anyone ever seen me cry,

He pulled me into a hug, hesitantly I hugged back, now quietly sobbing as the events truly began to take a toll on me,

"Shh... Its okay,"

My eyes fluttered open as I glanced around, confused, I laid on a couch in the office, realizing I had fallen asleep,

"Ahh.. [DEAD.NAME], you're finally awake!!"

Dazai waved excitedly at me as I awoke, I once again grimaced as I realized he called me .. that name.

"[DEAD.NAME],"

Fukuzawas deep voice called out for me as I glanced at him, just now realizing everyone was looking at me, my eyebrows furrowed as I now sat up, still staying on the couch,

"Why were you here so early this morning?"

I frowned, unsure of how to respond to fukuzawa, suddenly I felt the couch sink down next to me, glancing at ranpo who now sat next to me,

"I didn't tell them anything, thats your place kid,"

He whispered it to me, and I wasn't even surprised he knew, I furrowed my eyebrows before looking at the others,

Some were giving me comforting smiles, others were just staring at me..

"I---" And without pausing, I suddenly broke down, sharing everything that had happened fastly, not making eye contact with everyone as some had furrowed eyebrows, some angry at my parents, some upset and feeling bad for me,

"..and my names [name.].." I confidently confessed my preferred name,

After hearing your story, yosano decided to let you live with her, deciding since she herself was a girl, she would help you with your transition

Everyone called you by [name] after that, and used your correct pronouns & gender when referring to you!

Sometimes, yosano & naomi alongside you have girl-days out where they help you find the style you feel most comfortable with

Kunikida, who views you as a little sister, decided to buy a whole bunch of books and read about transgender, learning facts and stuff that may help you with your journey

Fukuzawa signed you up for a type of voice therapy specifically for transgender people, to make your voice higher !

Whenever someone misgenders you(outside of the agency), dazai always gives them the most DEADLIEST smile ever, and ranpo gives them that fucking green eyed GLARE that makes everyone die from being to scared

I HC that tanizaki knows how to do hair, so whenever your hair grows longer, he always has hair supplies on him to do your hair

The first time you wore a type of dress, (imagine one of those cute dresses that go down to like between ankles and knees.)

Everyone made sure you felt comfortable in public wearing the dress, and whenever someone gave you a weird look...

Atsushi would bare his teeth at them like.. growling (furry but its okay)

Kyoka would threaten them without using words, she would like slowly grab out a knife until you look over all confused

After you actually told them your parents kicked you out..

Lets just say Dazai called up some people and went to their house

They went missing the next day.

Hope you liked it...‼️

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1pcii · 3 months

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SHADAHKNKAS saw u in the notes of some kuina posts and that made me realize that there is simply a bond with kuina and tashigi fans, who may even often be the same fan, because AOUGHHH KUINA I CARE HIM SO MUCH episode 19 literally changed me forever. swords + gender struggles are all you need to hook me on a character sometimes Maybe. the whole greatest swordsman promise... sob. also. something about zoro promising his name will reach the heavens and trans kuina. which made me think.. what if kuina and The trans fear of dying then having your deadname on your tombstone that you can't do anything about because you're dead. kuina dying before they even get to figure everything out and all of a sudden he's just known as kuina forever, and then zoro making a name for himself in kuina's honor or something idk (i like zoro's backstory) (KUINA )

THERE ISS. people who theorise that they are secretly related or the same person or direct parallels are so close to getting it but don't imo (no shade to those theories tho, I just personally find them narratively unsatisfying).

like they are parallels in that kuina is symbolic of the sexism people suffer and tashigi is an adult woman who has come out the other end sword swinging but ultimately so unsure of herself as a result. also the (trans)genderisms, we are all hand in hand 🤝.

MAN KUINAS STORY BROKE ME DOWN ON A BASE LEVEL AND REWIRED NY BRAIN. I had to take a break from reading just to let it soak in it's so good, a swordsmans promise indeed, that scene was beautiful, I love zoro the world's first a accidental feminist <3. zoro carrying on her dream with his will never not have me in hysterics.

FUCK YEA THATS SUCH A GOOD IDEA. I have soo many thoughts about baby!zoro and kuina and trangenderism. egg kuina cis zoro, egg kuina STEALTH TRANS ZORO ABSVDJFBKSHDKDN <333.

little baby zoro looking at his grave with the uncontrollable urge to carve out those letters. to carry and rearrange them and make sure they get back to him in the afterlife spelling 'worlds greatest swordsman'.

trans kuina makes me so emotional because ultimately I don't know if they were canonically trans but it's my FAVOURITE 'what if' for them. they never really got to be anyone outside the dojo masters daughter. the failure of a heir and the girl who beat zoro 2001 times. who would they have been if they got to grow up? come to terms with themselves and unlearned all that heavy, painful biases pushed onto them? as a transmasc who's studying into a (cis)male dominated field myself ik, the feelings of 'betrayal' and 'proving misogynists right' and imposter syndrome and inadequacy issues and perfectionism they might've gone through,,, sobbing my eyes out HE MEANS EVERYTHING TO MEE.

zoros backstory is genuinely one of my favourite parts of the manga idc how 'simple' it was it's still beautiful.

#kuina being the greatest swordsman of heaven and zoro being the greatest in hell. and they're besties and everything is good and nice :')#I fucking love him so much it's insane #him and zoro and koushiro are such interesting characters it's kinda a shame all ppl rlly focus on is the mundanity of their death and #how it 'sets a tone' and establishes a sence or mortality for zoro #like those things are important but let's talk about HER TOO!!!#the girl who wanted to be a 'boy' for her dream #who started out in self hatred but could've maybe grown to love of masculinity when exposed to healthy example of it #and I learning the internalized misogyny implanted by his father from within #psii.txt #text #ask #the-neighbours-kid #shimotsuki kuina #<-ooh using the official character tag for organising so if you see this in tag search I have a zero tolerance for ppl calling me or anyone #else a misogynist for having this hc. EPS my fellow transmascs who know what we're talking about #I will just block you #anyway cookie TY FOR SENDING THIS ASK YOU DONT KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE KUINA... SHAKING UR HAND RN THEY ARE SO FUCKING GENDER 🤝🤝🤝#trans headcanon #trans kuina #trans zoro

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maliciously-delicious · 2 months

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Okay so I have to get this out of my head and truly anywhere else. For context I'm an out trans woman who is visibly trans.

I'm in college and I turned in an essay, signed off at the top with my name, Anathema. I felt it was appropriate and safe to do this because I had already been assured by the faculty that my legal name would soon be changed in the system to reflect my preferred name, and I had already emailed my professor the first week of classes explaining my preferred name and pronouns. My professor ended up calling me up to her desk in the middle of class to tell me that I needed to resend her the essay with the name as it is in their system, which was still my deadname at the time. She emphasized that it was important that the name on the essay was the same name as the one in their system. So I decide alternatively that I'm just going to get ahold of faculty and see how the name change process is going in their system. I won't need to put my deadname on my paper if my deadname isn't in the system! They got back with me straight away and changed my name to Anathema "X" in the system, X being my legal last name, which I do not use. I had already stated as much, and suggested that "Null" be put in the place of the last name, because I understood it would probably break the system if I just had no last name. Evidently, they didn't care much about that, because the name was never updated again and they didn't email me back when I pointed it out.

I assumed at this point, "Okay, the essay is signed off as Anathema, and my name in the system is Anathema X, and since I've already done my part to explain to both the faculty and my professor that X isn't a part of my name, we're probably good, and I moved on to more pressing matters.

A few weeks later, my professor offhandedly mentions that she left notations and critiques on the essays after they were graded. I was curious about this, as I hadn't seen any, so I came up to her after class to ask if she could direct me to where I could see them. She then proceeds to lay into me about how much I just don't give a crap about her good will to let me reupload the essay with my deadname, as I had decided not to do so. I was baffled! What did this have to do with the critiquing notes??? I notably hadn't gotten a great grade on the essay, 59/100, so I was just very curious on what she had deemed specifically wrong with it. She refused to elaborate on that, citing the reason I hadn't received critques being because I hadn't put my deadname on my essay. After this, I found out my academic advisor had (accidentally??????????) Cc'd me in an email chain where my professor wrote an email asking someone else in faculty how to proceed with my preferred name being used to sign off on my essay. In this email she said, verbatum, "These issues are just so hard for teachers to deal with" and he/him'ed me MULTIPLE times. She then in this email chain, FORWARDED my email from the beginning of the semester where I explained my preferred name and pronouns, just flagrantly saying, "Here's my students preferred pronouns and name which are such an inconvenience to me and also I will not be using them"

I'm just mad. I have full time classes and I work part time, im 23 ass years old and I don't fucking have time to not receive a basic level of respect. I don't really have time to stew on this because I'm supposed to be writing my next essay now. I'm worried that the reason she won't provide critiquing notes is solely because my low grade was purely because of my using my preferred name on the paper. Like, its not a great paper. A bit of a rush job, but I made sure to meet all the length and mla format requirements and structure, and it was free of grammar and spelling mistakes. If my paper was truly so bad as to receive a 59/100, I would love to be critiqued so I can know why. But she's refusing to provide them, and I can only assume either that the grade is soley derived from my preferred name being signed off on the paper, or that the essay is just bad and she's not offering me critiques on it like she offered everyone else in the class out of pure pettiness.

I guess does anybody know how to proceed with this? I don't want to sign off my next paper with my deadname, but if I don't its likely going to tank my grade. It feels so plainly to me that this is just her cruelly leveraging what she feels she can over me, as she knows she can't be openly transphobic. Fuck transphobes yall.

#transfem #transmysogyny #transphobes #transgirl #transgender #trans #transphobia

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nhl-stories · 9 months

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hydrangeas where your face should be – Dougie Hamilton

Summary: Dougie had all but given up on ever finding his soulmate

Author’s Note: This is me breaking out of my comfort zone and writing a soulmates au for @huttons as a part of @wyattjohnston's summer fic exchange.

There's some accidental deadnaming, but the character was unaware of the transition and under the influence.

Title from Flowers Where Your Face Should Be by The Wonder Years

Word Count: 2.4k

Dougie always knew he was different.

He knew it at age 5 when he was the only kid in his class with red hair; everyone was eagerly waiting to point that out.

He knew it at age 13 people started to notice him on the ice; said things like he could make it to the OHL maybe even beyond if he worked hard.

He knew it in Boston and Calgary when he didn’t quite fit in; all shy and awkward and out of place in the hockey world of loud, gregarious men.

But all of those differences paled in comparison to his soul marks.

He was already a little different for having two. It wasn’t completely unheard of; his mother had two, an anchor and tulip, the tulip fading away as her bond with his dad grew over the years.

Because the universe didn’t always get it right with one guess. There are 8 billion people on the planet, how can some unseen, almighty power be expected to narrow it down to just one option.

For some a second mark might grow over time, like something could happen to change the course of your life and a new soulmate grew along that path. For others the two were always there, never to fade or change.

But Dougie’s two marks were different; because they were identical hydrangeas in different colors. Boldly staring up at him from each thigh.

His parents told him to be patient, finding a soulmate would come naturally like it had for them. But Dougie felt so different he couldn’t imagine anything happening naturally; no fairytale moment where his soulmate might brush the mark by chance and everything just clicked into place.

So, he took to voraciously reading about soul marks, hoping to find an explanation for the twin green and pinkmarks that mocked him. He pored through books on botany to try and make sense of some hidden, deeper meaning behind the flowers. He never could settle on one single thing that made sense of everything.

He thought he met his soulmate in the 10th grade. Paisley Van Wormer played on the volleyball team. She was smart and kind and clearly going places.

Anyone would be lucky for Paisley to be their soulmate, in fact every boy in the school thought she must be their soulmate. Dougie thought he had the edge because her parents owned the local nursery and she would spend her spare time around flowers.

The other boys would dare each other to touch her soul mark on the back of her shoulder. It was frowned upon to purposefully touch a soul mark without permission, like you were trying to circumvent the path destiny set out for you.

But all the boys who touched the green apple never had a lifechanging moment, just got detention if they were caught.

The summer before senior year, Paisley shaved her head and suddenly no boys wanted to touch her soul mark. No boys but Dougie, who was still completely infatuated, but wouldn’t dare touch Paisley without her permission.

He planned to ask her to prom despite the chirps he got for liking ‘the bald chick.’ But during his attempt to psych himself up he bumped into a ladder she was using to hang up a sign for prom, he caught her at the last second and realized one of his hands was on her shoulder, brushing over the apple.

The world didn’t shift in the way he always dreamed of, instead it shattered his heart.

He threw away his childhood obsession with his soul marks and threw everything into hockey. For the most part it worked; everyday he got to live out his childhood dream. He played with one of his idols in Chara, he got to play in the league with his brother.

Still, it could get lonely.

He saw teammates find their soulmates, settle in for a future while he bounced from team to team. He got labeled a locker room pariah by the media, even when he felt like he was finding a home. He felt unwanted by the first team he felt truly himself with.

Then he landed in Jersey. And things seemed to be looking up. Two years in and he felt things coming together, felt like he was part of a family who wanted him there.

He took rookies under his wing, even when he had a hard time believing he was the old veteran with a decade of experience under his belt. He joked with the media, tried to come a little more out of his shell.

It took nearly 30 years, but he felt like he had finally become the person he was supposed to be. And he didn’t even need a soulmate to feel complete anymore.

Of course, that’s the thing about destiny; it comes whether or not you’re looking for it.

❀•❀

Dougie decided to stay in Jersey for the summer. He knows he’ll miss the time with his family, but he feels the need to keep carving out space that’s just for himself.

He starts the off-season with a wrist surgery and looks forward to some relaxation before the grind of rehab begins.

One week into his post-surgery R&R, he starts to have an excruciating pain in his mouth. When the pain killers for his wrist don’t quite quell the pain, he texts Jack about the dentist he saw to fix his teeth. Feeling less like an adult since he hasn’t found a new dentist since the move.

Dr. Van Wormer, tell them I sent you and they can probably squeeze you in 😜

He texts back: Don’t get too big of a head someone will knock that tooth out again

He gets an appointment within a day; he won’t let Jack know about the namedrop. Though based on the fairly extensive collection of Devils memorabilia, he doesn’t think he needed to do that.

It turns out he has a wisdom tooth that they didn’t take out the first time when he was 18. The thing finally decided to make an appearance when he was already dealing with his arm. Perfect timing as always for Dougie.

He can tell the dentist is smiling even behind the mask while he pulls on a pair of gloves.

“Nice to finally get you in my chair, wish it was under better circumstances. You’re pretty much the only current Devil I haven’t seen yet.”

Dougie isn’t a huge fan of dentists trying to have conversations, but there’s something familiar and calming about this man.

“If you have time I can get this guy out today, I won’t put you all the way under but you’ll be a little loopy for a while, so if you drove, we can schedule another day.”

Dougie wiggles his arm in its sling, “I took a Lyft.”

“So, is that a yes to moving forward?”

“Uh- yes please.”

The grin clearly widens under the mask.

Dougie is given some laughing gas, it doesn’t fully put him under, but he manages to doze off during the lengthy dental procedure.

He wakes up groggy and feeling a little airy and high in another room, gauze stuffed in one side of his mouth.

There’s a gentle touch on his shoulder, “how are we doing?”

The dentist squats down in front of him and smiles unmasked, a spark of familiarity down Dougie’s spine.

Dougie gets a glance at the name on his badge

“I went to high school with someone with that last name, it’s not very common,” he babbles before his brain realizes what he’s doing.

“Yeah, you went to high school with me.”

Dougie doesn’t know if it’s the drugs wearing off or the news or the combination, but he stares opened-mouth. Drool pools in his mouth and threatens to drip out, the dentist laughs. It’s huskier and lower, but it’s Paisley’s melodic, intoxicating laugh.

Or is he allowed to even think about that name? He doesn’t even know what their new name is, he knows he should ask, say anything, but his brain is foggy.

“I know I look a lot different. It’s Parker now.”

“Nice to meet you, Parker,” Dougie awkwardly shoves out his free hand to shake.

“I’d love to have a whole catch up with you, but you’re obviously not in the right mindset for this kind of life altering news,” Parker’s eyes sparkle and Dougie doesn’t know how he didn’t immediately recognize them.

“But I’m done for the day so how about I get your post-care information and I’ll drive you home.”

Dougie gives a goofy smile that must look extra stupid with the gauze and nods.

“Okay let me grab my stuff and” Parker uses Dougie’s thighs to help him stand up again, “holy shit.”

Dougie furrows his brows, not getting it at first. Then the feeling hits him.

It’s different than how he imagined it, he can’t look up at Parker, just stares at his own thighs, where the lingering feeling of his touch prickles under the marks.

It feels like everything in his brain and heart just settles. Not the seismic shift in his reality he always expected, just that everything is as it should be. He’s wrapped in a warmth that feels like his mom hugging him when he was little. It feels like comfort and home and unconditional love.

It makes him want to cry with relief.

When he finally looks up, Parker mirrors his feelings. And his face breaks into a smile.

❀•❀

Parker drives Dougie home but they decide not to talk about the two elephants in the room, post-dental surgery doesn’t really feel like the right time for it.

Dougie understands but he doesn’t want Parker to leave, feeling like the tenuous bond won’t be able to survive the separation. Parker gives him some pain killers that make him too sleepy to think about the cross-town distance.

Parker surprises him the next morning with an overnight bag and a load of dentist-approved recovery food.

“I’m here for the long haul,” Parker shrugs and makes himself at home in Dougie’s living room.

Something flips in Dougie’s gut at sight: Parker looking so at home in his space. A tiny piece of what he’s been missing all these years.

He tries to act casual, like this is an everyday occurrence, and awkwardly sits a cushion away on the couch. Parker bridges the gap by pulling his legs up on the couch, his feet touching Dougie’s thigh. His toes curl into the green hydrangea on his left thigh.

It’s like a fire lights behind his sternum, not some white, hot passion but like a fireplace you want to curl up by.

“How’s your mouth feeling?” Parker avoids the obvious.

“Fine, the pain meds are working wonders,” he smiles the best he can, like that proves it.

“I would hope so, I prescribed them.”

The silence stretches too long to be comfortable, especially between two people who have so much more than small talk to get to.

“I touched your soulmark in high school once,” it’s the first thing that comes to his mind.

Parker furrows his brows, no recollection of the moment that broke Dougie’s heart.

“Senior year, it was an accident.”

“Oh, the apple? I don’t even have that one anymore.”

He leans up and turns one foot to the side, a small bear below the ankle bone. Dougie can’t help but run a finger over it, Parker shivers in response. That at-peace feeling washing over them again.

“I always wished it was you,” Parker says it with so much reverence, like any other way might break the spell.

“But I never could figure out how you were connected to an apple or a bear, and then we graduated and you were drafted by the Bruins. But by then I thought our chance had passed already.”

Dougie feels a lump in his throat, mourning the loss of all the years they could have had.

“It’s probably for the best, I obviously still needed to find myself, become myself.” Parker adds like he can read Dougie’s mind.

“I always thought it was you until I touched the apple. I wanted it to be you so bad and then that happened, it broke my heart,” he feels the need to bear a little more of vulnerabilities to Parker.

“Even after I shaved my head?” It’s supposed to be a joke but his tone is off.

“I didn’t just like you because you were pretty. You were smart and nice to everyone, even to the guys who were dicks and tried to touch your mark.”

“I heard you yelled at the guys on the hockey team who did that to me.”

“Freddie did too,” Dougie shrugs off the compliment.

Dougie continues to rub a thumb over the bear as another silence consume the room.

“Can I see your mark?”

“You want me to take off my pants?”

“What’s a little nudity between soulmates?”

Dougie feels overwhelmingly shy, like he’s a scrawny kid in an NHL locker room for the first time.

He stands up and lets his sweats drop to the ground and step out of them. He’s not sure whether to stand or sit when Parker grabs his hips and maneuvers Dougie in front of him.

Parker’s face is unreadable, he’s staring like he’s trying to decipher, figure out what Dougie always wondered his whole life.

“Do you know what hydrangeas symbolize?”

“Beauty and grace and some other stuff.”

“Yeah, they also symbolize unity because there’s so many little blossoms making one big flower.”

He looks towards the right mark, getting close with his fingers but not quite touching, “pink hydrangeas symbolize love, normal soul mark stuff.”

Parker then focuses to the left mark, actually touching the skin ever so gently. He doesn’t talk for a while but Dougie can’t bring himself to speak, he doesn’t want him to stop.

"My parents gave me green hydrangeas after I told them I was transitioning."

He finally looks up, eyes a little glossy.

“They represent rebirth,” his voice cracks a little and he gives each flower a kiss, each giving Dougie a burst of warmth.

“The universe knew you’d love me before and after,” Parker is crying, but his smile is undeniable.

Dougie doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t have all the words, doesn’t want to say the wrong thing. So, he pulls him off the couch and holds him tight against his chest, because he knows the universe was right about loving Parker then and now.

#dougie hamilton #dougie hamilton fic #dougie hamilton story #new jersey devils fic #nhl imagines #nhl stories #nhl fic #hockey fics #nhl fics #new jersey devils #new jersey devils story #summer fic exchange 2k23

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theacedragon0w0 · 1 month

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Cash or Credit? Part 2

⚠️ WARNING

CHILD DEATH, CHARACTER DEATH, IMPLIED ABUSE, MANIPULATION, GUN VIOLENCE, ALSO DEADNAMING, DRUG AND ALCOHOL USE MENTIONED

Sam was head over heels for Becca, almost everyday the woman would stop by at Sam's work for a quick snack and she told them about how her day went. She apparently worked freelance as a escort which Sam asked what that meant, "oh i get paid by rich folk to be their friend for the day sweetie!" Becca answered.

Becca also helped Sam with stuff they wouldn't dare ask their mom for, like learning how to drive, and how to pick locks, "you never know when you accidentally lock yourself out dear!"

And more over Sam spent more time with her, Sam's mom didn't have to know and even if she did, she would be too out if it by whatever drug or booze she was using and for the first time Sam felt heard. Besides, it's not like Sam had to worry about her mom going out and not coming back days or weeks later. Becca also shared everything with Sam, her food, her car, hell she even spilt her booze and smokes!

Things felt like Heaven, but soon Becca asked them to do something that Sam didn't want to do, "I, I can't do that Becca,"

"Listen it's just a couple of bucks!"

"A couple hundred bucks! I can't steal from my work, it's all I have."

"So I'm just nothing to you?"

"No! Never! But I'll steal from anyone else than him, please," Sam was practically on their knees for their lover, which got a smile from her.

"Hmmmm, anyone else you say?"

"Yes, I'm begging you."

-----------

They parked in a nice residential area, the houses here looked almost identical as Becca hopped out of the car, "No backing down love~" to which Sam swallowed hard. Becca also handed Sam one of her pistols, "Don't worry I doubt you need this but one can never be too safe." Which sort of helped calm Sam's nerves.

They snook towards the house that was across the street from the car, the sidewalk lights were hard to avoid but they managed to reach the front door. Becca turned to Sam, "show me your art," to which Sam responded with pulling out their picks. Like butter, the lock gave in and the intruders were able to sneak in.

Sam went over to the alarm system, surprised that the security wasn't even turned on, Becca whispered into Sam's ear, "Listen, these pricks never expect people like you and me to have the guys to take back what is ours."

After they scavenged the first floor of shiny valuables like silverware and knick knacks, Becca nudged Sam towards the upper floor, "Listen this shit will barely cover the car's insurance, we will be set once we find momma's jewelry case"

Sam was wanting to leave but they knew arguing about this wouldn't help, so with a sharp inhale, they crawled up the stairs.

This sinking feeling was torture for Sam as they figured out which door led to the master bedroom, they quickly crawled around the bed to the side drawer, which had the large display case of shiny jewelry all thanks to Sam's flashlight reflecting off from the stones. Sam stuffed the case into their bag, feeling relieved by the quickness of the task, began making their way back towards the hallway.

But they froze, as a small child stood in their way, the child wiped her sleepy eyes, "Mommy? Is that you? I couldn't sleep."

Sam's mind ran through a million thoughts, but one thing that they will be certain about is that this kid's blood will not be spilled tonight, but their thoughts halted by the sensation of a cold object pressing against their back, "Go back to bed honey," they heard Becca chimed, and whispered in Sam's ear, "you are not going to have a fucking moral crisis here, it's us or her,"

Sam's eyes began to tear up, "please, you promised me that it was for emergencies," to which they felt Becca shoved the loaned gun into Sam's hand, "yeah and this is an emergency dumbass, you are out of your fucking mind if you think I'm going back to jail just cuz little Susan here was spared from eating lead, you're doing her a solid, honestly, don't you think that she deserves to live the rest of her days traumatized by this encounter?"

Sam's hand was shaking, the pistol aiming directly at the sleepy child who was hugging her stuffed toy. But they knew that they wouldn't go through with it.

And that's when they heard a loud bang, and in a panic they too squeezed the trigger, unaware of the chest wound that bled through their clothes,

all that mattered to Sam was that the child in front of them now laid there, lifeless as Sam dropped to their knees.

They watched as Becca grabbed the duffle bag that had the jewelry case, walking over the corpse whose blood now stained the floor, "That's your problem Samantha, you never try to take what's rightfully yours," Becca turned around just so she can lift Sam's head, who was now lying on the ground, succumbing to their wound, "this is why you never left that trailer trash dump, you never think for yourself, now you have a child's blood in your hands. But hey thanks for giving me a get away, now that all the blame will be put on you~"

Sam's vision darken as they saw Becca sauntered away, humming a tune that rang in their ears.

#hazbin hotel oc #oh god oh fuck #oh boy sage lore will be upon us #oc x oc #im so sorry

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sign-seeker · 1 year

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Was very excited to pick up Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson, because it looked bomb, and then realised it was LGBT lit, and became even more excited.

Was then very disappointed, because it's a bit crap. It's not total crap. Just a bit crap.

So, I didn't recognise the name Juno Dawson at first, and it transpired that she's a recently-figured-herself-out trans woman who was previously living for a long while as a gay man (same boat My Wife is in), and that she has written a whole bunch of books previously under her more famous deadname (I gather that her publisher is now reissuing her previous works under her new name) including the non-fiction "guide to Life for LGBT teens" entitled This Book Is Gay, which was, I seem to recall, infamously banned from a bunch of libraries and schools in conservative parts of the United States?

However, other than This Book Is Gay, her bread and butter was apparently Young Adult Literature, to the extent that this is part of the advertising for Her Majesty's Royal Coven, the dustcover of which read "Prepare to be bewitched by Juno Dawson's first Adult Series!" This turned out to be inaccurate: I cannot stress sincerely enough how much this book is extremely teenage YA schlock masquerading as adult literature.

Everything about this book, from the world building, to the characterisation, to it's stance on ethics, to the presentation of the central conflict, is so intensely teenage that it's almost painful to deal with.

So, worldbuilding: the entire universe is the incarnate body of Gaia the Mother, who decided that she was lonely in the primordial chaos and decided having some existence to look at might be nice. Alright, some fun cosmology to start. In transforming her boundless existence into physical form, Gaia The Mother accidentally trapped all the other beings who dwelled in the primordial chaos inside herself, caging the once boundless spirits in the prison of reality. These spirits are not happy about this, and in the guise of various Gods and Demons constantly whisper to mankind, trying to get them to destroy the world so they can be free. Fantastic, the fun cosmology comes with a neatly built-in threat and source of conflict. To combat the evil of the Demons, Gaia The Mother spoke to her children, and taught them the art of magic, so that they might defeat the Demons and forever protect the glory of physical existence from being cracked open like an egg. Good stuff, good stuff. Here's where it breaks down: the set up has presented a very spiritual approach to the concept of magic, in which the gift of magic is a personal connection to Gaia which makes you her defender and servant. You may suspect then that magic is something that can be taught, an art or a secret science, or that the powers of magic may be deeply personal or as varied as the souls of those who wield it. Nope! Instead:

1) Magic is expressly a hereditary gift, which either runs strongly in bloodlines or skips a few generations: one principal character does not come from a magic bloodline, and it is taken as read by other characters that this just means the magic skipped multiple generations and her bloodline just can't be traced to whoever she's descended from: all of the characters who matter to the plot have just been Born Special, and

2) There are only 4 types of witch, neatly categorised like fucking Hogwarts Houses, ready for the reader to make Uquiz tests to assign people to!

Elementals, who can manipulate the elements of the natural world. Note that there does not seem to be any variation in this: all elementals encountered in the book appear to be equally capable of demonstrating control over fire, wind, lightning, rain, cold, water, and on one fun occasion earthquakes. Your personal style or vibe does not seem to matter, only your power level, which determines how big you can make your elemental effects.

Healers. They heal living things. And also hurt them if they want to, so why are they called Healers? Call them something fun like Biomancers or Organoturgists.

Oracles, who see the future, but not always on demand, and who all go blind and bald from using their powers. It genuinely seems like being an Oracle is drawing the short straw in witchcraft.

Sentients, who get the Jean Grey style psychic power combo of telepathy and telekinesis.

You are born a witch, and you fall into one of these categories. You do not study or develop any kind of specialisation, as other than power level all witches with the same gift are interchangeable, and training is not about understanding your powers, or yourself, or Gaia, better, but is basically just the magic equivalent of weightlifting to learn to focus better: even then, your power level, ranked from 1 to 7, which can be determined from quite a young age, seems to determine your power cap.

There is only one exception to the above: the extremely rare Adepts. An Adept is a witch with multiple Gifts (usually just 2 but on even rarer occasions more), and whose gifts inevitably present very strongly, with high power ratings. Guess what our main character is.

So we have a set up where the potentially complex world of magic can be boiled down into easy categories, ready for all the fans to build simple OCs for. But wait, there's one more element we're missing for maximum YA projection potential.

Much has been said about the tendency of YA literature to have a protagonist who is very skilled/powerful but not personally very interesting, so nothing gets in the way of the reader projecting comfortably onto a power fantasy. In Her Majesty's Royal Coven, we theoretically have 4 main characters, 4 witches in their mid-to-late thirties who were all childhood friends, and who trade the position of viewpoint character from chapter to chapter. In practice, 2 characters, Leonie & Elle, are supporting characters, with Niamh, the rare and special Adept, as protagonist, and Helena as antagonist. But there is a fifth character who is central to the entire story, a non-viewpoint co-protagonist: Theo, transgender teenage witch, the super-duper rare TRIPLE GIFT ADEPT, and the driving point of the plot, who is, and I cannot make this clearer, a literal blank slate. Not only is she not a viewpoint character, it is a major plot point that no one can read her mind, including the 2 viewpoint characters who are actual mind readers. Over the course of the novel, Theo is given a very brief piece of backstory (victim of attempted infanticide, which happened before her conscious memories and which she only sees in her dreams, and then she was in foster care for a while, where she was sad) and the barest hint of characterisation: she's sad when people exclude her, and happy when people include her, and gets nervous easily. That's basically it. It's a tragedy that this isn't being marketed to teens, because being transgender is basically the only thing that prevents Theo being a total Everygirl Nonentity. She would be to sad teenage trans girls what Bella Swan was to sad teenage straight girls back in the noughties. With other teenagers who are much less plot-central, we hear very briefly about their fashion, their music, what their friend groups are like: Theo has nothing. She has no preference in movies, she doesn't listen to music, she only watches TV once in someone else's house because it's what they're doing, she doesn't have a favourite food, and she doesn't read any books that aren't about magic. She expresses excitement about going clothes shopping, but we learn little about her fashion or opinion regarding style: she's excited because she's being allowed to buy girl clothes for the first time. She genuinely has no identity at all beyond Sad Teenage Trans Girl.

The matter of Theo's trans-ness forms most of the novel's plot. Theo is crazy powerful, far more powerful than a "man" should be (oh yeah, Gaia is sexist. She "favours her daughters", that's a whole thing, but it's fine, it's a very 90s Girl Power vibe Gaia's got going on), and this has caused something of a stir: Niamh is of the opinion that Theo will be a credit to the Coven as a witch, and Helena is of the opinion that Theo is a dirty man at best who should be shipped off to The Man Coven (called "The Cabal"), or possibly even an evil world ending prophecy child at worst who should be put down like a dog. This is reasonable: in your transgender power fantasy, using transphobia as villainous motivation seems like a pretty sensible choice. But the way transphobia, and conversely, allyship, are presented, falls extremely short of any kind reality at all. In the world of the novel, there are no well meaning idiots, or concerned buffoons, or even people who haven't given the matter a single thought: there are only Perfect Allies, and Raging Hatemongers, and never the twain shall meet. Niamh is a Perfect Ally, who supports Theo's transition from the moment it is brought to her awareness, and who, even if she doesn't know al the answers, always knows what questions to ask in a way that won't cause offence. This is the position that Niamh, Leonie & Elle all immediately occupy: Conversely Helena, from the moment she becomes aware that Theo is trans, immediately and steadfastly refused to gender her correctly, can't stop being weird about the thought of her genitals, reduces her personhood down to being "a penis", arranges her kidnapping, and eventually betrays every oath she has ever sworn to both her sister witches and to Gaia by voluntarily freeing a Demon and letting it possess her in order to gain the power to kill Theo with her bare hands.

The concept and reality of being an ally to trans people is presented in such a simplistic and all-or-nothing fashion that it seems to distort reality. There is a brief attempt made to demonstrate that even "Allies" don't always get it right, but this is constructed in such a was as to be entirely toothless: all 3 of the Supportive viewpoint characters, at some point accidentally misgender Theo. However, all 3 of them do it in the exact same "he shit sorry she" kind of way, which feels intensely copy-pasted, like Dawson wanted to get it out of the way, but more importantly, all these occurrences happen when they are talking to each other: no one ever has that kind of accident, or any other kind of verbal or social fumble, when talking TO Theo. It's the cowards way out of writing character foibles: "look, the hero isn't perfect, but her imperfections cannot actually have any negative consequences." This is fine for YA, where the nuances of interpersonal relationships are often by necessity more broadly drawn, but in a work of adult literature it feels like a cop-out: in real life, shit like this gets fucked up a lot. My Mother In Law has never been anything but supportive of My Wife's transition, but even with all of her good intentions and her determination to get things right, she'll still sometimes ask My Wife a question that temporarily sends her to another plane of existence out of sheer frustration, and you can bet your arse that happens a hell of a lot more with other people!

This issue of good people as Perfect Allies and bad people as Raging Transphobes crops up in other, really odd ways. At one point, Niamh is having a conversation with an adult trans woman who she has sought out for advice after finding out about Theo's secret, and there is a brief aside about how nice it is that some other nations and organisations have gotten miles ahead of Britain and Her Majesty's Royal Coven in terms of trans rights, and it is noted specifically as a good thing that there are a number of transgender witches working for the CIA.

The CIA.

That BASTION OF MORALITY, The CIA.

So, leaving aside the question of whether or not an intelligence agency that orchestrates the pushing of crack cocaine into inner-city black communities in order to diminish African-American financial and political power is good because it has trans-friendly hiring practices (it isn't), this all-or-nothing approach has one other, far more character-relevant presentation, in the form of Snow.

Snow is Helena's teenage daughter: she initially joins the little witchcraft study group that Theo is in under Niamh's care because her mother has instructed her to keep an eye on Theo. It becomes clearly apparent that Snow, despite being a bit of a drawling snob, is not actually a bad sort, and doesn't really give much of a shit about her mother's concerns: sure, she'll pass on information, but her reports don't mark Theo as a danger, even when Theo accidentally almost kills someone, which Snow attributes to clumsiness rather than malice, she happily hangs out with Theo outside of study hours, even tagging along for Theo's first girl clothes shopping trip, and she actively contradicts her mother in Theo's support multiple times: she asks her mother to stop misgendering Theo in private conversation, and she even is the one who goes behind her mother's back at the climax of the novel to warn Niamh that Helena is making her climactic attack on Theo. She is, pretty clearly, Theo's friend, and quite a good one, if not overly demonstrative of that affection due to her aloof air.

Except at the end of the novel, Helena, her fucked up Demon-Crimes exposed, gets the death penalty (yes, witches still have the death penalty. They burn major criminals to death. Yeah I know, it's fucked up.) and Snow immediately swears vengeance against everyone involved, principally Niamh & Theo. Now this isn't that odd: I imagine many teenage girls would probably loose their shit if their mothers were horrifically cremated alive, regardless of their criminal circumstances, but there are 2 aspects that make it odd, 1 a little bit odd, 1 a lot odd: the little odd thing is that Snow, previously totally on the side of trans rights, is suddenly throwing around transphobic slurs regarding Theo, even when she's not talking to Theo, so you know she's not just doing it to hurt the feelings of someone she's mad at, meaning that if you become an antagonist you do literally just become a transphobe along with that. The BIG odd thing is the way Niamh as the viewpoint character, and thus the voice of the narrative for that chapter, takes this. snow says that she's going away to live her her grandparents, but that she'd be back one day to destroy Niamh & Theo, and Niamh... swears a silent and solemn vow to be ready to defeat her when she does.

No Niamh. No. Snow is not a silent movie villain, composed of pure malevolence. She's a 15 year old girl who's mother was just brutally executed for trying to kill her friend. Her feelings are clearly all over the place, and as a grown adult and Snow's former teacher, Niamh does not need to be swearing a solemn vow to beat the shit out of a grieving child. Snow needs help, and kindness, and time, and possibly some weed, and definitely a therapist, not a grown woman with super-powers saying "oh yeah, now that your mum's dead I'm in the market for a new arch-nemesis". But this is not a world where people are allowed to be complex: Snow is a baddie now, and that means she must be destroyed, and that also means she's a transphobe now, because that's how being a baddie works around here.

This extremely teenage "if you're not with us you're against us" attitude is made profoundly laughable by the fact that the book actively believes that it's mature. Take this ethical quandary: Niamh is psychic. This means she is completely aware that Jez, the husband of her good friend Elle, is having an affair, and has been for a long time. Elle has absolutely no idea, and Niamh has absolutely no intention of ever telling her, because according to Niamh, she believes she should only use her powers to make the world a better place, and telling Elle about her husband's infidelity would make her unhappy. At one point, Jez and Elle's teenage daughter, Holly, finds out what Niamh knows, and is not satisfied with Niamh's justification, for obvious reasons. And Niamh hits us with the following:

"It's hard sometimes, we put such a high premium on the truth when we're kids. But as you get older you realise you don't wanna hear the truth. The truth, more often than not, is feckin' awful."

Now, I don't believe that books are obligated to teach good moral lessons. Sometimes stories about fucked up people doing fucked up shit are incredibly entertaining. But this whole book is set up as a deeply straightforward good versus evil, right versus wrong narrative, in which Niamh is pretty solidly the voice of correct morals. So her opinion gets presented here as ethically sound, which anyone who has ever been in a functional relationship will tell you is unbelievably fucking stupid. Relationships are built on trust. Jez is untrustworthy. If Jez and Elle want to arrange an open relationship where he gets his sexual needs taken care of elsewhere, that's one thing, but that's not what he's doing: he's betraying his wife's trust, and lying about his needs , desires and actions, which demonstrates that the trust she's placed in him is worthless. What happens down the line one day, if he leaves and she's blindsided? If she cries "I had no idea anything was wrong!" will her friends look her in the eye and confess they knew the whole time? Because it is friends in the plural, I might add: it would be bad enough if it was just Niamh keeping this secret, but the novel doubles down at the end by revealing that Leonie, Elle's other psychic best friend and the novel's other Good Opinions And Morals viewpoint character, has also known the whole time, and is also of the opinion that Elle should not know for her own good, corroborating the novel's stance that Niamh is in the right, when in reality, "who cares if this woman's whole marriage is a sham and her most important relationship is a lie so long as she's deluded herself into happiness" is just the stance of a teenager's first experiments with cynicism.

The whole vibe of the book is deeply immature, and the fact that it believes itself to be mature only heightens the impact of the immaturity. It was a deeply disappointing read, emphasised by it's failure to live up to the incredible potential of it's premise.

#her majesty's royal coven #literature #books #lgbt #lgbtq

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yesterdays-jam · 5 months

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Why is blocking people so harrdddd

Some people do it so easily, But when it comes to family my stupid brain is like maybe they’ll stop misgendering me and stuff and then proceeds to get hurt

Esp when my aunt “accidentally” sends a voicemail deadnaming and misgendering me saying that I “think” Im a girl sending me into a stupid imposter spiral and all of my toxic tendacies come back out to haunt me.

Like why do I allow this shit? Sure maybe I have a stupid dream of being a cis girl speaking italian with my family and bringing a boy over and just enjoying life the traditional way I was brought up to believe in,

But then again I’m so happy living with my girlfriend and her fiancée, I’m so happy with a found family that doesn’t talk about me behind my back, I’m happy living this life and maybe if I was born cis part of me would long for this life?

#queer #trans #thoughts #found family #bisexual #polyamory

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yeonchi · 5 months

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Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special Review Part 1/3: The Star Beast

Air date: 25 November 2023

Welcome to the Whoniverse. I'm Azuma Yeonchi and I previously wrote reviews of the Chibnall era under the Thirteenth Doctor Reviews banner. With the RTD2 era set to be yet another reboot to the franchise, the fanbase is calling this new reboot the Whoniverse era. This refresh, if you ask me, is well-deserved given what came before this. Although I'm coming into this new era with a more casual investment compared to the 50th Anniversary in 2013, I'll continue to review the RTD2 era even if only for the content.

This is the return of the dream team. Check out my Doctor Who 10 for 10 post on Series 4 for my thoughts on the original run of the adventures of the Doctor and Donna Noble.

As is and will be tradition, here is my spoiler-free thought for the episode. A pre-premiere review published on the BBC's website literally says at the end, and I quote: "Although the show has always been progressive, this special is preachy, and by the end, little more than a delivery system for The Message." My spoiler-free thought is this: "Sometimes, you have to be willing to overlook The Message in order to find enjoyment in this series."

Spoilers are after the break.

New look, new everything (but not really)

The special starts off with a recap of the Doctor and Donna's story in Series 4 before we get the new theme music and title sequence. The title sequence seems a bit shorter compared to previous ones as it clocks in at 30 seconds (the average title sequence appears to be 35 seconds long), not helped by the fact that for the first time, there are cuts in the title sequence. It feels padded and rushed at the same time. Anyway, the theme music and title sequence feels like they incorporated elements from previous sequences, particularly the music which sounds like the 2008 theme made to sound like the 2005 theme, and it's pretty nice.

The logo is a direct redesign of the diamond logo from the Tom Baker era, made to look more 3D. It's also appropriate given how the 60th Anniversary is the "diamond anniversary".

We start off with the Doctor landing in Camden Market. The Doctor helps someone with some boxes, but he suddenly realises that it is Donna Noble. He also learns that she has a daughter, Rose, just as a spaceship is on a crash course in the sky and Donna manages to miss it (as usual). As Donna and Rose head home, the Doctor hears someone calling for them from a taxi and he asks him to take him north to where the spaceship apparently crashed; he learns that the taxi driver is Shaun Temple, who was a minor character in The End of Time as Donna's fiancé, now husband.

The spaceship was revealed to have "crashed" upright in a steelworks; UNIT scientific advisor Shirley Anne Bingley surmises that it pulled up at the last minute and parked. Shirley gets a little interaction with the Doctor, during which he explains that although Shirley knows his current face as his tenth incarnation, he had other faces before regenerating back into this one for some reason. Note that Shirley is using a wheelchair and remember this for later as there is something I need to address.

After the Doctor sneaks off with some UNIT troops to find the escape pod missing from the spaceship, another soldier alerts Shirley to a signal coming from inside the ship. Shirley has the soldiers head up to investigate, but they are taken in by a mysterious power.

The Trans Trifecta

Just as Donna and Rose arrive back home, we hear some passing-by boys openly deadnaming Rose. When they head inside, Sylvia is cooking tuna madras for dinner (apparently it's a big thing in RTD's family according to the audio commentary, but am I the only one who thinks that hayashi rice sounds better?). While Rose goes to the shed, Sylvia states her concerns about accidentally misgendering Rose, something which Donna does share, but the family is nonetheless accepting of Rose's transition.

A boy alerts Rose to the presence of the escape pod. She heads back to get her phone, but in the alleyway, she encounters the Meep, which she brings back to the shed as the Meep is under pursuit from other monsters. At the same time, the boy meets the other monsters, who are the Wrarth Warriors.

Back at the Noble residence, Donna comes into the shed and encounters the Meep, who clings onto Donna's leg as Silvia desperately tries to deny the existence of an alien in the house. The Doctor arrives as well and so does Shaun. The Doctor heals the Meep's injury and during their conversation, Rose questions the Doctor for assuming the Meep's pronouns. When asked about this, the Meep states a preference for the definite article, that the Meep is "always the Meep".

So, there we have the big SJW red flag of the episode and the first of the RTD era, which is what I call the "trans trifecta", namely deadnaming, misgendering and assuming pronouns. I'll talk more about this in my next review, but it's amazing how I managed to catch several SJW red flags in the first episode of RTD2 when it took three episodes to get the first one in the Chibnall era. I guess RTD doesn't pull any punches when it comes to politics and domestics. Also, let me tell you, it's a pain trying not to refer to the Meep as "they". The things I do for these reviews...

Meep the Grifter

The Meep explains to the Doctor that the Wrarth Warriors hunt Meepkind for their fur. It is then that the possessed UNIT soldiers demand a search of the house, but just as the Doctor closes the door on them, the Wrarth Warriors blow through the back door. The Doctor manages to get the Nobles and the Meep five doors down to Shaun's taxi. Though they manage to escape, the Doctor realises that something is wrong.

They head down to an undercover carpark, where the Doctor brings out the Meep and summons two of the Wrarth Warriors to parlay. It is pointed out that there were no plasma weapon marks on the taxi and that a soldier the Doctor found was merely unconscious, not dead. The Wrarth Warriors explain the story of the Meep; their planet once lived in peace until their sun went black with psychedelia and turned Meepkind mad. After the Galactic Council were beheaded and eaten, the Wrarth Warriors were summoned and they fought across the stars, Meepkind willing to die rather than surrender until only their leader was left, Beep of all the Meeps.

With the truth revealed, the Meep kills the Wrarth Warriors and summons the possessed UNIT soldiers, the Soldiers of the Psychedelic Sun, to capture the Doctor and the Nobles. They are about to be taken onboard the Meep's repaired spaceship when they are saved by Shirley. Shirley helps the Doctor get through to the ship to stop the Meep from launching, which would destroy five square miles of London through use of a double-bladed dagger drive. The Nobles are about to escape, but Donna turns back to help the Doctor, Silvia becoming horrified that Donna called him by that name.

Look at this and tell me that the Meep isn't a satire to "left-wing grifters", I dare you.

Donna Noble descends

Donna gets onto the spaceship just as the Doctor is working out how to prevent the takeoff, so now he has to do it without letting Donna die. However, the room is bisected and the Doctor is unable to stop the launch in time. The Doctor points out that there is only one thing he can do, even at the cost of Donna's life, and with her agreement, the Doctor unseals Donna's Time Lord consciousness.

Upon regaining her memories, Donna explains how she gave away the lottery money the Doctor gave her for her wedding (after buying her own house, of course) because of the Doctor's influence remaining in her, wanting to help people in need. She and the Doctor then manage to successfully prevent the takeoff before Donna faints in the Doctor's arms. I wish RTD made the technobabble a bit more believable to the intent here, though I could understand if it was ad-libbed. See Journey's End for how it was done better.

The Meep sends the soldiers in to kill the Doctor, but they are suddenly released from their possession thanks to Rose outside. It is revealed that while the power was too much for Donna alone to handle, it was passed down to Rose which influenced her as well, naming herself after the companion and making toys of the monsters the Doctor and Donna met on their travels. Of note, two of the toys resemble the Cybermen of the Cyberiad and a Lupar, both of them appearing in the Doctor's future when the meta-crisis happened, meaning that Donna would have never known about them. Surely there were other monsters that the Doctor and Donna met on their travels to make it less anachronistic.

The Meep is captured by the Wrarth Warriors to be imprisoned, but not before teasing the existence of "the Boss". The Doctor notes that he still needs to deal with the meta-crisis, but after Donna and Rose briefly berate him for not thinking of this method, being "a male-presenting Time Lord", the two of them hold hands and let the power go. You know, a similar sequence was done in Journey's End but that came off as the Doctor not having human intuition since he was merely a Time Lord; this just comes off as being misandric given everything that feminism and the gender (LGBT) movement have given us since then. Also, remember the Tumblr NSFW ban of 2018 and all that kerfluffle about male and female-presenting nipples? Good times.

The Doctor and the Nobles head to the TARDIS, where Donna is allowed in so they can visit Wilf in sheltered accommodation. The Doctor gives Donna a cup of coffee, but she spills it on the TARDIS console, causing it to explode as the TARDIS dematerialises.

Other general thoughts

Wilfred Mott is mentioned in this episode. The Doctor mistakes him for being dead when he is actually in sheltered accommodation thanks to Kate Stewart wanting to help him as an "old soldier". Although Bernard Cribbins is slated to reprise his role in the specials, he died on 27 July 2022, a couple of months after his involvement in them. He is sorely missed.

Although there have been stories in the past adapted from extended universe material (usually written by their respective writers), this was the first story to be adapted from a comic, the original comic being a Fourth Doctor adventure in Doctor Who Magazine written by Pat Mills and John Wagner and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. John Wagner was not credited because apparently, he and Pat Mills were credited for four comics which they took turns writing, hence Pat Mills was credited as he was mostly responsible for writing this one.

The Doctor gets a new sonic screwdriver after it was destroyed in his first adventure, also published in Doctor Who Magazine. It appears to be a combination of design elements taken from the sonic screwdrivers used by the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. Of note, it has a new ability to draw up holographic screens and shields, meaning that we finally have a better version of the Samuraizer in Doctor Who, and yes, this is my first tokusatsu reference in the RTD2 era. I'd say it was a Shodophone, but there's no brush on the end. The sad thing is that the Fifteenth Doctor is apparently getting another sonic screwdriver because RTD had certain requirements for it. I'll try to talk about it more when we first see it, but it's such a shame to see given that the RTD era used similar designs for the sonic screwdriver and its replacement. It's the Twelfth Doctor's second sonic screwdriver all over again.

Would it have been possible to use the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor to remove the meta-crisis energy from Donna before leaving him in Pete's World? Then again, it would have gone against the story if the Doctor had the foresight to do that or even think of it, merely being a Time Lord, let alone a "male-presenting" one.

"There's a word for you, Doctor, and that word is 'jammy'." I really think the Doctor should have responded to Shirley's line with "Jammy Dodger", and no, I don't care if it's an Eleventh Doctor reference. I think it sounds better that way.

The new TARDIS console room looks spacier than others, but I think it's because there's nothing much in it at the moment, not like the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS. The walls are white like the console rooms of the classic series, but there are LED round things on the walls that can change colour, which is a pretty big diversion from the console rooms of the revived series.

RTD shut the fuck up and stop baiting fans challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

For each the 60th Anniversary Specials, I'll be covering a special focus topic related to the event. I wanted to start off nice and do a summary of everything released for the 60th Anniversary, but this is an SJW red flag that I absolutely need to address.

On 17 November, a short titled Destination: Skaro was released for Children in Need. It featured a sneak peek at the Fourteenth Doctor and the return of Davros as he shows his assistant, Castavillian, the prototype of what would become the Daleks. As Castavillian wonders what name they should call the new Mark III Travel Machine (based around various anagrams of the word Dalek), the Doctor accidentally crashes in and breaks off a part of the Dalek, replacing it with a plunger upon seeing what it actually was. Noting that “the timelines and canon are rupturing”, the Doctor quickly leaves before Davros returns to his assistant.

Davros’ return was somewhat controversial both for and not for the reasons you expected. While it was nice to see Julian Bleach play Davros before the accident that led to him being paralysed, the main issue I and many others had with Davros’ return was how RTD justified it. In the accompanying Doctor Who Unleashed episode, RTD commented that the reason why he did this was because Davros is an evil guy who used a wheelchair (which was also his life support, mind you) and the production team apparently had an issue with associating disability with evil. And yet he didn’t even try to excuse it by saying it was because of budget issues, which would be a batshit argument anyway because Bad Wolf Productions has the backing of the BBC, Disney and Sony Pictures Television. I know Disney is only partnering with Bad Wolf for the distribution of new episodes, but who’s to say that they don’t have a finger in production?

OK, you know how some people apparently have an issue with popular series like Doctor Who becoming woke? This is the reason why. If you asked a conservative to define what “woke” is and you can’t get a definitive answer out of them, that shouldn’t be a surprise because in all honesty, wokeness is a very broad thing to define. Personally, I define “wokeness” as people caring about things that people don’t care about (especially when people inside and outside of particular demographics claim to speak on behalf of them when some within said demographic disagree) and therefore, really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. A particular example I can name is all the changes that came about because of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and other similar decolonisation/anti-racist/solidarity movements, such as the removal of monuments, the changing of names or the recasting of voice (not live-action) roles because the characters they voiced didn’t match the actors’ racial backgrounds, or even, for the sake of this argument, disabilities.

As someone with an invisible disability, I kind of understand why disability activists and groups like Changing Faces would speak out in support of things like this, but in the end, isn’t that what acting is for? Look, it’s fine to have more representation for disabled people in media, but maybe it should still be okay for able-bodied actors to play disabled characters if there were more consultation and guidance from disabled people in production crews. Even if there are disabled people who don’t believe that disabled villains are that big of an issue, there is a better way around this; instead of not wanting to have disabled villains or changing already existing disabled villains, maybe make an effort to counter it by putting in more disabled characters. Hell, RTD literally did it in this episode by casting Ruth Madeley (who has been disabled since birth) as Shirley, and she’s got darts and rockets in her wheelchair.

RTD’s statement was said in a way that implied that this would be what Davros would look in future appearances (as if destroying an iconic character wasn’t enough, he’s also got to gaslight that he was like that all along). Now, Davros’ status of disability when he invented the Daleks can be explained in extended universe stories and bringing Davros back as able-bodied can be somewhat justified by previously aired material. Although Davros’ accident that paralysed him was the catalyst for the invention of the Dalek, there is apparently an account that the idea was already forming in his imagination before his accident. In The Witch’s Familiar, Davros siphoned regeneration energy from the Doctor and transmitted it into every Dalek on Skaro while also using some of it to renew himself. Now, it was implied that Davros wasn’t able to get a lot of it seeing as Missy managed to save the Doctor, but the Dalek City began collapsing soon after this and the Daleks were never seen to regenerate in appearances following this one.

I don’t believe that Davros would have been able to regenerate himself fully from whatever regeneration energy he was able to obtain, but I could buy it if when Davros’ story continues, we see him walking with prosthetic limbs or crutches. Otherwise, RTD’s justification for showing Davros as able-bodied is absolute and unnecessary jack shit when it was already implied that the short could take place in another timeline before Davros’ accident. This is the only reason why this isn’t more controversial than it shouldn’t have been, especially for such an iconic character whose use of a wheelchair and life support was a part of his character and the origin story for one of the most iconic villains in the franchise. Davros wasn't evil because he was disabled, but his evil did carry over into his disability, and yet his character was not defined by it.

I understand that RTD has the freedom to express whatever opinions and champion whatever causes he wants, but seeing RTD’s interactions with fans on social media makes me want to tell him to shut the fuck up and know his place. This is a twofold argument; one is his justifications for making certain decisions in production and the other is his replies to "haters" (and subsequently blocking them).

In regards to the first argument, there is this whole debacle with Davros, then there was RTD’s explanation for why the Doctor’s clothes regenerated back in The Power of the Doctor. RTD explained that David Tennant wearing the Thirteenth Doctor’s clothes would be a mockery of drag culture and that he feared that it would be weaponised by the media, which can be summed up as him essentially saying to the media, “This would have been drag blackface if we did it that way.” With the Davros debacle, RTD also justified the decision to do this for Children in Need, saying that, “It's a night where issues of disability or otherness or being excluded from society come right to the front of the conversation,” which is absolutely ironic given how he “erased” Davros’ disability in the short then justified himself in doing so right after.

“But Davros isn't a child in this,” I hear you say. Fuck off, RTD knew exactly what he was doing.

Moving onto the second argument, disabled fans of the series, including wheelchair users, have commented about this on RTD’s Instagram. One user who essentially had the same thoughts about this shared them with him and RTD just responded, “Tough.”

I didn’t want to make a big deal out of the previous situation with jacknibbletmaine, but seeing this makes me think that RTD has little to no respect for the fanbase who helped get New Who to what it was. Then again, I would expect nothing less from these Hollywood types with sticks up their asses. At least Chibnall knew to stay off of social media, whether it be because of not being tech-savvy or wanting to avoid the mixed reactions of the fanbase among other reasons. I don't want to call this now, but if RTD keeps going like this, this new era is going to be like post-Twitter Shinichiro Shirakura tokusatsu (Zi-O, Zenkaiger, Donbrothers).

Doctor Who should be a show that tries to appeal to everyone, even if it is clear that RTD is implementing his own flavour of wokeness into it. I knew I was going to have to talk about SJW red flags in this era (particularly with trans representation which I’ll cover in the next review), but I’ll admit, I was blindsided by this controversy when I saw it after watching the Children in Need short. I guess I should be more wary about things like this in future reviews.

Anyway, I’ll continue to have fun doing these reviews and talking about what relevant topics I feel like. If RTD or the fandom police don’t like it, then they can cry about it and cope harder (I say while acting like fandom police).

Summary and verdict

At this point, if you're still surprised that RTD is woke, then I don't know what to tell you, though I understand if you were blindsided by the extent of wokeness shown by RTD, particularly with the Davros debacle. The writer of the pre-premiere review on the BBC website says that "this special is preachy, and by the end, little more than a delivery system for The Message". Right now, I don't agree with it entirely, nor do I disagree with it entirely either. I said in my spoiler-free review that "sometimes, you have to be willing to overlook The Message in order to find enjoyment in this series", but that doesn't mean I won't call out stupid things if they come up.

That being said, this special was alright. It feels more like a series opener rather than an era opener since it's not a post-regeneration story nor did RTD feel the need to reintroduce the series to everyone; he just got right into it. The Fourteenth Doctor is practically the same as the Tenth Doctor, though he is "slightly more human" according to RTD, plus he no longer has the guilt of the Time War or the god complex of the Time Lord Victorious. Why did this face come back? If it was because of Donna alone, that was already resolved in this episode and we still have two left, so clearly that wasn't the actual reason.

Speaking of Donna, this episode did undo a great injustice to her character, which was forgetting the memories of her time with the Doctor. Some people may say that this Moffat-style cop-out undermined Donna's character development in Series 4, that she was the most important woman in the entire universe and yet, she could never know, but I really think Donna deserved this and so did the Doctor, because it was clear that the Doctor felt bad about having to make Donna forget her time with him.

In the end, the world was saved with the power of being non-binary and Rose having her identity affirmed as a result of it. It's a bit cheesy if not cringeworthy, but in the end, that's what Doctor Who is all about. The Doctor getting berated for being "male-presenting", though, is just... no.

Rating: 6/10

Regardless of what you feel about the series or its fanbase, stay tuned next week as I review the second of the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials, Wild Blue Yonder.

#doctor who #doctor who 60th anniversary #fourteenth doctor

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seakicker · 2 years

Text

hey again, i wanted to come back really quickly and clarify on a few things because i've had tons of free time to think since my semester wrapped up and all that. i've been trying to cool my head and destress so hopefully these thoughts are a little more coherent than the post i made on wednesday (2 days ago from the time of this post)

under a cut for length. again, please don't reblog, i would feel a little weird about it, i think. i don't want notes for explaining myself and apologizing.

on the deadnaming comparison

i wanted to start by saying that i never used the word deadnaming in my original spam post about feeling frustrated that people were potentially leaking my irl name and using it to talk about me. i did not use the word either in the context of describing what was happening to me (for instance, i never claimed that i myself was being deadnamed because of course that word doesn't apply here; i'm a cis girl who just uses an internet nickname because i have issues with paranoia and i feel 'safer' using a nickname online) or just as a concept in general; i never said anything like "leaking my name is just as bad as deadnaming" etc. because that wouldn't be true; using my irl name to talk about me wouldn't be as bad as deadnaming and i'm fully conscious of that.

i would never want to claim like "well people took my post out of context!!!! people just misinterpreted what i was saying!!!! if you read it a certain way, that's on you and that's not what i meant at all!!!" because i do completely understand how my post could have potentially come across as me trying to say that using my irl name is no better than deadnaming and because i would never want to fault anyone for interpretation. communication is tricky, and of course intent doesn't always cross over into interpretation and vice versa. it's okay for ppl to be upset with me even if my intentions may not match up with their interpretations and vice versa; everyone has different experiences and i don't want to speak over anyone or make anyone feel guilty, upset, etc. over reading something i said a certain way.

in my post, i said a sentence along the lines of "tumblr always stresses the idea of respecting people's names and nicknames regardless of gender identity" to show that i was frustrated with the idea that people were maybe using my irl name to talk about me. to me, it felt like my privacy and comfort weren't being taken that seriously and that my comfort was an afterthought on a website that always stresses comfort, though i agree i think the "gender identity" bit was a bit of a red herring on my part and i should have just left it at like "why cant people respect my privacy." the post was an emotionally-charged vent post so the things i said were volatile and i don't think i ever would have phrased it that way if i had a clear head, and that's on me for sure. i have a lot of problems with paranoia over being "seen" and "watched" (i don't really know how to phrase this, i apologize) like in a way that conflicts with how i choose to see myself and present myself, and so i freaked out at the prospect of people knowing and using my irl name. there were two instances in my discord server where i accidentally leaked my irl name myself, one via a google drive screenshot that had my irl name in the corner and one where i accidentally connected my youtube account (which had my irl name on it at the time) to my discord profile and these instances caused me a lot of personal stress knowing that there were people who saw it and now "knew" my irl name. of course, it's dramatic of me to expect that anyone who sees my irl name is gonna go "mwahaha now that i know juju's real name, i can RUIN HER LIFE" or something but that's just the nature of paranoia. it's irrational and extremist and so things like the idea of people using my real name, talking about my identity outside of "juju seakicker" other than the things i choose to reveal about myself (that im a psychology major, that im american, etc etc) are hot-button stressors for me.

but regardless of my own personal fears and feelings, i wanted to say again that i'm really, really sorry to anyone who read my post and felt that i was trying to compare my own feelings to the idea of being deadnamed. i can't apologize enough to you and i promise that my intentions were never, ever to compare people using my irl name rather than juju to deadnaming, and i'm so sorry if it maybe reminded you of your own experiences with being deadnamed or mocked. i would never want anyone to feel that i was intentionally trying to appropriate a trans-specific term to use to describe my feelings and worries as a cis girl. for that, i'm really, really sorry and i hope that maybe my explanation made sense above. i was stressed because of outside factors (my family's divorce + finals) and i've already had years and years of issues with paranoia so everything combined made me sort of implode and make a dramatic, poorly-worded vent post on spamkicker.

on the harassment i have received

i would like to say that this does not encompass every negative ask i received. there were about 2-3 genuinely constructive asks asking me to consider my wording relative to the post i talked about above. to the people who were polite and constructive in voicing their concerns and criticisms, thank you. i don't want you to feel like i'm including you when i talk about any and all negative asks i received, because thta's not true. you voiced your feelings maturely and i've been thinking about the things those people said, and it helped me understand why and how my spam post may have come off as me trying to compare what happened to me to deadnaming, so thank you for providing your perspective and commenting.

when i say harassment, i mean the people who sent me fatphobic stuff (like seriously?), death threats, and asks saying that i "deserve" the hate i was receiving. i don't know why internet culture is so caught up with the idea of who deserves what treatment and this idea of "getting what's coming to you" bc i don't think that's constructive and it's just... a weird thing to say. like when you say i deserve the hate i'm getting, do you mean i deserve to have fatphobic things said about me? because i really don't agree.

additionally, i don't want it to try and come off like i'm using the hate i received to deflect from the issue. that's not my goal, but i think it's fair to talk about when it was the #1 reason why i chose to deactivate-- i couldn't deal with comments like that anymore on top of everything else i'm already dealing with, nor should i be expected to just grin and bear hate. again, this is not about criticism and constructive asks, purely the ones that had nothing to do with the situation at hand and were just idk an excuse to call me ugly or something. i won't be posting screenshots simply because i didn't take any; i didn't want to be reminded of some of the fatphobic things people said because they were really hurtful.

i don't really know what else to say about this except i think if you were someone who sent me a death threat or a fatphobic comment rather than a genuine concern, question, or criticism, i think you have some reevaluating of your own to do as well. if you see a post from someone outlining their personal experiences with me and your first instinct is to go like "oh cool i can send anon hate now and nobody would blame me for it" i think that's weird, but i digress.

on my deactivation

like i mentioned above, the violent harassment is what ultimately pushed me to deactivate. in my post on wednesday, i kind of sardonically joked that i was running away from my problems, but i don't think i'd agree with that anymore. i didn't want the harassment anymore and i still hold true that i was already using so much of my mental capacity to deal with the irl events that have been ongoing for months now that i simply had nothing leftover to deal with the events here on tumblr.

of course, you could propose like a "well here's what you should have done instead of deactivating" and i'd agree with you. i agree, i think just turning off anon, taking a break to think, and coming back to address things could have been a better course of action, but there's no point in talking about what i "could" have done since i can't go back in time and undo anything. i agree, i think deactivating was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction on my part, but again, i was dealing with a lot of harassment, stress from my irl life, and paranoid feelings related to my privacy and life. i'm just a normal person at the end of the day and i was dealing with too much and wanted to cut at least something out, and deactivating of course cut out the harassment.

on the future of seakicker

i still don't know. i don't think deciding where i want to write or if i want to write at all should be my priority right now; i've instead decided to prioritize real life events and reflecting on myself as aforementioned. i totally understand that sometimes i can be difficult to deal with because i'm an emotionally impulsive person; i have a short fuse, i'm prone to explosive outbursts of anger, stress, and frustration, and sometimes i have difficulties communicating. i think i would instead like to put my personal emphasis on learning how i can take better steps before lashing out at people and saying things i regret. i think i could learn the "take deep breaths and count to 10" method of self-soothing for sure; i don't want to think about the future of seakicker and how/where/when i'll write until i can learn to be more in touch with myself, my feelings, and how i interact with others.

i consider myself a caring person, and it was hard to pull myself away from tumblr and deactivate because i care about my anons and i care about my friends. i don't think it would be a stretch of the imagination to say that i feel things deeply, and that includes both my negative feelings like frustration, paranoia, and anger and my more positive ones. i care about the community i had built in my time on tumblr and i miss those little interactions in my inbox from people, whether it was like "have a good day" asks and asks congratulating me on my TA position and the like or thirsts, ideas, and the nsfw stuff. i hope that maybe we can meet again and reconnect if i ever feel like using tumblr is something i can reasonably manage again, but i definitely think i should focus on myself, my habits, and my feelings first. hopefully you guys understand and maybe even agree.

at the end of the day, i'm just a normal person too and being a somewhat well-known smut author doesn't undermine that. i still have negative traits, bad habits, and the like. you don't become an emotionless monolith once you become a content creator and so of course there are things i need to work on and will continue to work on, but please just remember that i'm just a person as well. i'm not perfect, and i would never claim to be. i've made mistakes and said/done hurtful things just like everyone else, and i will definitely keep the constructive criticism i have received in my mind as i move forward and work at improving.

this is everything i would like to address, i think. these are the things i felt needed addressing, because the deadnaming comparison was a valid concern/criticism and i wanted to talk about that more than anything else. thank you for taking the time to read this, and i'm sorry if it's awkward for me to post again after i already mentioned saying goodbye. i don't think i have anything else to post after this.

#do not reblog #long post

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emersonfreepress · 2 years

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For trans MCs, you said gender angst can/will manifest in the form of people who knew MC pre-transition can accidentally call them by their wrong pronouns and their deadname. I'm curious about the mechanics of it.

How will you handle the deadname part? Will we have to enter a name or will the narration be like

"And there is you, with the name you...

a) used to have (enter the deadname) b) still use even after transition (name remains the same) c) no longer use after transition. (skip entering a deadname)"

Related to it: will we get to be nonbinary and trans?

Can MC be nonbinary from the start even if cis? Like with the deadname option, will it be like:

"Before coming out as nonbinary, you...

a) used she/her pronouns b) used he/him pronouns c) ... well, you don't want to think about that time (avoid putting pronouns)"

Coding and narration-wise though, I can see that would be hard, especially if those few people who knew MC pre-coming out have dialogues or direct conversations with MC, or even just talking about MC's past to someone else.

Like using direct speech if pronouns and/or deadname is put:

""Yeah, then (Deadname) did (former pronoun) best," said Character A."

vs indirect speech if not:

"Character A said you did your best, using your deadname and former pronouns before apologizing and correcting themselves."

So I'd understand if you don't implement such options.

Ok, there's at least three questions here 😅 That's why it took me a while to properly finish this answer, I think I ended up confusing myself a few times lol

Regarding MC deadnames

I only plan for deadname customization around the time of the first scene it is actually relevant to, which isn't until Thanksgiving-times (typical). You'll be able to write in a custom one or choose that you've always had the same name. That won't extend to misgendered pronouns, though; it wouldn't be anything like the examples used here. Feels shoehorned/immersion-breaky.

Can MC be non-binary and trans?

We don't get assigned or raised as our gender, yeah? Non-binary is trans, so yes.

Can MC be non-binary from the start?

Yes, but with caveats.

I wasn't any less agender when I was using she/her pronouns for the first 20 years of my life; I just didn't have the vocabulary or established language to express it. I still had the queer feelings and thoughts, but I only had the words available to me through others and a ton of straight, cisgender media. I probably referred to myself as a tomboy or a person a thousand times more than I ever referred to myself as a girl. That word bothered me; not she or her. That was the word that was heavy to me, it meant too many things. It held the weight the of the expectations of my family, my peers, and the world at large. It shackled me to activities and mannerisms that I had no inclination towards, it forced me to conform to mannerisms and assumptions that never fucking fit.

When I still thought that not being a boy automatically means you're a girl, all I ever understood about myself was that I was not a boy and that I despised being a girl, wished I didn't have to be a girl, largely hated girls who naturally enjoyed conforming to things that tore me apart inside. There was a distinct hatred of being born a girl but an equally distinct disinterest in being born a boy instead. I didn't know "neither" or "none" was a box I could check or a thing at all and yet that is always what my gender has been.

ANYWAY let me hop off this soapbox ffs /personal rambling over. all of that is to preface the following:

As progressive and different as Emerson is, singular they as an indicator of gender identity and neo-pronouns were beyond obscure of a concept in the late 90s to the general American public; forget about it as an actual practice or show of respect. Book 2 takes place in 2008 and will introduce singular they/them as a third pronoun option if MCs want it. All the rest of my IF projects (🤞🏾🤞🏾🤞🏾🤞🏾) will take place in the current day or the not-so-distant future (or literal Hell ☺️) and will have they/them and pronoun customization as options. Because moderntimes.

So! As it stands, Book 1 limits the MC to using one of the two binary pronouns (he and she) but both books will use 5 variables to represent MC gender: cis boys and girls, trans boys and girls, and non-binary kids. Non-binary MCs get the additional option to clearly indicate that they don't ascribe to, subscribe to, or generally mesh well with binary gender norms and expectations—they will be written as non-binary. it's kinda important to me

I also want the beta and final version to have a "gender angst" toggle that runs the game filtered in such a way that largely leaves out most gendered flavor text and most references to being trans outside of just a few scenes or lines. This would also let MCs use "they/them" pronouns throughout the game without fanfare. I talked about it a bit here.

Idk if it will work for all queer players... and it's possible this is an unsatisfying answer for some folks. But it's what this one queer coder wants to do for their game, so 🤷🏾‍♂️

Ultimately, this is all smoke and vapor until it is properly coded and written anyway. Execution speaks louder than planning, so I'll be trying my damn best ☺️

#lovely anon #answered #gender stuff!#new kid #customization #hot mess walking #did i answer the question...?#god i hope so i am tired of reading what i did say lol

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autumnalwalker · 10 months

Text

Find The Word Tag

Thank you for the tag, @writernopal.

My words to find were lucky, smoking, empty, racing, & stare.

Passing the tag to @hollyannwrites, @blind-the-winds, @void-botanist, @rickie-the-storyteller, @dontjudgemeimawriter, and the usual open tag.

Your words to find shall be acknowledge, upstairs, coarse, darkened, & unison.

Lucky: Empty Names - 13 - Open Office

“So. Loopholes. I don’t know a lot about nominal magic but I’d done a little bit of reading up on it for personal reasons and then tried to refresh myself on the topic when I knew the contracts were going to be a thing. Point is, I signed and swore the magic part of it with my deadname, hoping it would be me enough to let the contract seal but not me enough to be enforceable. Magically anyway. Legally, yeah, I’m still probably in trouble.”

“Clever,” Bridgewood says. “That’s the sort of trick you can only get away with once though. Twice if you’re very lucky. More than that and you risk acknowledging it as a Name of yours once again and you’ll get any bindings you’d been avoiding that way snapping back on you at once.”

“Thanks for the warning?”

“I speak from experience.” His tone seems genuinely sympathetic for once. Lacuna finds it disconcerting.

Smoking: The Archivist's Journal, Day 152

I was awoken by an unusually loud crack of thunder this morning. Earlier than I usually wake, but late enough that I couldn’t really get back to sleep, so here I am. How close must that lightning strike have been that I heard it so clearly in my twice-barred subterranean chamber? I briefly went upstairs and stuck my head out the door to the street, but I didn’t see anything smoking or burning, so it probably didn’t hit a building.

Empty: The Archivist's Journal, Day 311

We made the usual greetings that friends unexpectedly bumping into one another on the street would make, both claimed to be “fine” when asking each other how we were doing, and had a moment of awkward silence as we both contemplated whether to bring up the topic of Maiko. Thankfully, the presence of the dustpan and bucket made for a convenient redirection of conversation.

With the embarrassment of a child caught in the middle of some mischief, I told her about my visits to the empty tower and how on something of a whim I’d decided to try cleaning it. In a spur-of-the-moment decision I invited her to come up with me. I thought she might enjoy the view.

She had a moment of hesitation, citing other things she should be doing, followed by a coarse-languaged dismissal of said responsibilities and acknowledgement that she needed a break. Her immediate transition into heading off toward the tower left me being the one to follow after her.

Racing: The Archivist's Journal, Day 31

It was Lin who gently ended the reverie, wanting to show me something. While we’d been sitting there stargazing and “star”gazing she’d left one arm dangling over the side of the boat and trailing in the water. Now as she pulled it up to show me her fingers had taken on a similar starry glint. It faded back to normal within a few seconds of showing me, and as it did so I could tell that it was not just a matter of being coated in a dark glitter-filled liquid. It was as if her skin itself had darkened to a blue-black and begun glowing with a white light from scattered pores, especially clustered along her veins.

This unsettled me greatly as my mind started racing to think of things that could do that to a person and not coming up with anything good. I apparently did a poor job at hiding my concern as, seeming upset at having accidentally scared me, Lin began frantically reassuring me that it was perfectly safe and people even went swimming in this lake all the time. As if to prove this point she started kicking off her shoes and then jumped off the side of the boat fully clothed, splashing me and setting the small craft rocking. I suppose this was the “just in case” for bringing along a second set of clothes.

Stare: Empty Names - 4- Prince In Gold

“And I see you still insist on wearing that same hideous vest as always,” she continues.

“No, this one’s gold. You’re thinking of the dandelion one. Or maybe the ochre.”

“It’s all the same pattern though, just different shades.”

“And it’s a lovely pattern, isn’t it. I’m considering wallpapering one of the guest bedrooms with it. What do you think?”

His friend laughs. “Only if you want to drive whoever tries sleeping there mad.”

“I’ll take that as your seal of approval then.”

“Don’t you dare,” his friend says, suddenly serious and glaring at him from across the table.

“Oh, I dare,” Sullivan says as he meets her gaze.

The two of them stare in silence for a solid minute before bursting into laughter in near unison. Not that any of the other restaurant patrons can hear. Privacy is part of the service here.

The laughter dies down and Sullivan wipes a nonexistent tear from his eye before saying “It’s truly been too long, my friend.”

#tag game #find the word tag #manuscript search tag #writeblr #my writing #writers on tumblr #writing tag games #empty names #the archivist's journal

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sissytobitch10seconds · 11 months

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Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: Viktor had learned about siblings in the most round about, backwards way imaginable. It only made sense that the reveal of who his mystery person was would be the same way. Warnings: Viktor is referred to with his deadname and she/her pronouns until his written coming out, and mentions of canon-typical child abuse/neglect Word Count: 4,828 Ship(s): Five Hargreeves/Viktor Hargreeves

Archive link!

A/N: Thank you to both my brother and mutuals for helping me figure out how I wanted this soulmate AU to work! I don't know what it would necessarily be called out of all the heaps of soulmate AUs, lol. Thank you so much for reading this fic! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

wedding/proposal - sick fic - (accidental) love confession - "you aren't what I expected" - downpour - soulmates AU

Sir Reginald Hargreeves had made the worst possible decision out of millions when it came to educating his children about soulmates.

Instead of telling them about the rich history that was included in how soulmates had first been discovered or even what they were, he decided that he was going to shelter them from it entirely. They were already cut off from the outside world because he refused to send them to a traditional school to get a standardized education, convinced that it would somehow disrupt the experiments that he was running on all of them. It was a normal part of every day life for those outside of the Academy, so no one had ever bothered to bring it up to them when they were doing interviews. It wouldn’t have mattered much even if they had, since Vanya was always left at home and Reginald kept a close eye over their shoulder whenever they were speaking to the press.

Reginald was very good at keeping secrets and this one in particular he knew he had to keep from them. He didn’t want them getting distracted by any kind of frivolity or attachment when they had important work and training to do. He had accounted for basically everything when it came to the curriculum that they got, fed carefully to them through Grace with censored textbooks and edited educational videos. He even made sure that they weren’t around people that would deign so low as to try and find their soulmate when others of their social standing surrounded them.

The only thing that he didn’t account for, was how rebellious teenagers happened to be. None of the windows had locks, which made for easy evacuations when they had to get up to the roof to go on an emergency mission, but it also meant that the children could leave with little to no hindrance.

Klaus had found that out a long time ago and had been sneaking out ever since. He always seemed to know exactly when Reginald was going to be running the tests where the video cameras would be on to see what they did in their sleep, and on those days he’d actually be home. Tonight was not one of those nights, and he had been running around with weed, alcohol, and other teenagers that were the same age as him. He was doing what none of the others had been allowed to do, being someone that was actually his age.

His window was just a little too far over for him to climb to with how weak his limbs felt that night, though. So he decided to try something else, which resulted in him doing a head-first summersault directly down onto Vanya’s floor.

She hadn’t been nestled up and asleep in her bed like he had first suspected she would be, but rather sitting with her back against her wardrobe and a book spread out in her lap, like she had been reading from the moonlight before she got distracted by the shapes on her ceiling. “Klaus?” she asked as she startled out of her reverie and turned so that she was facing him.

“Hi,” he smiled stupidly at her. “What are you doing awake?”

“What are you doing out of the house?” she asked in reply. She snapped the book shut and he could have sworn that while she was turned away from him and tucking it up onto her desk she was also wiping at her eyes. If he hadn’t been so terribly intoxicated, he might have asked her what she was reading even if he didn’t have the courage to ask her why she was crying.

“I can’t be out of the house?” he asked, almost whining.

“You know that you can’t. Dad only lets you guys go out on missions and for press releases. He never lets me out,” Vanya replied bitterly. She used to sneak out with them sometimes, when they were going to get donuts at the twenty-four hour cafe a block away from the Academy. Five was always the one to remind them that she existed and would want to go with. Since he was gone they had slowly stopped sneaking out together, and they had never remembered her since.

Klaus rolled his eyes and flopped down on the ground. Her room was just big enough that his head didn’t brush up against the door while his toes were touching the bottom of her nightstand. His room was the second smallest out of all the siblings, but at least he and Ben were able to comfortably lounge together in the center without wondering if they were going to dislodge the furniture. “I was out, Vanny. I was having a very fun time with some friends of mine.”

“Oh?” she replied, sounding like she would rather be talking about literally anything else. Given that Klaus could always go and find another person to talk to like he always did, though, Vanya bore the weight of her jealousy as hidden as she could.

“They taught me about something that I think dear old Dad hid from us on purpose. How would you like to be the second person in the entirety of the Academy to learn about it?” Klaus asked. He flipped around so that he was looking at his sister from his spot on the ground. She was still standing near her desk, having pushed herself up and away from him when he began to stretch out over the bare wood of her floor.

Something inside of her sparked but was quickly put out. She nodded silently as she sunk down in front of him, like if she moved too quickly it would startle him and he would disappear. For a moment, Klaus’ weed-foggy mind wondered if that was something that Five had done a lot when they were hanging out together. If he decided that Vanya was too much for him when she spoke too loud or moved too fast and vanished like he did with all the others. Klaus didn’t think so, Vanya was always something else to Five.

“So I found out,” Klaus grunted as he pulled himself up so that he was sitting on his knees and no longer spread out all over the ground. He grasped at her desk until he found what he was looking for, a ballpoint pen that they had to use for their engineering homework since it wasn’t erasable and rarely ever broke through the paper. “That if you write something down on your skin with something like this, then someone writes back to you!”

Vanya looked at him skeptically. They had all written on their palms or arms before, when they needed to get a note of something and didn’t have paper at hand. Reginald had, of course, scolded them for it immediately. He had informed them that they were not items to be vandalized and then made Diego and Five, who were the first ones to try it, spend hours in the bathroom scrubbing it off.

“I don’t think that’s true, Klaus,” she shook her head in denial. They were sitting with their legs crossed in the narrow space between her bed and the desk and wardrobe that the opposite wall held. He could feel a little bit of the heat that was radiating off of her and onto his own chilled skin as he shoved the sleeve of his shirt up on his arm. He then placed it on her knee and began to write in his messy chicken scratch.

He wrote something simple since he was doing it with his non-dominant hand so that she could see it easier. The words sat there, alone for only a moment, before green ink matched with his own in far neater letters. “See? I told you,” he smirked.

She stared at it for a long moment, like she wasn’t able to process what she was really seeing. The clicking of shoes out in the hallway was enough to snap them out of their reverie as they realized that they were both supposed to be in bed and would most certainly get in trouble if they were caught as they were. Vanya scrambled up towards her bed after snagging the pen back form him and then left Klaus to wait until the sound was gone.

It was only after her bedroom door had softly clicked shut as he began his adventure next door to where he was supposed to be did she realize that she had snatched the item from him. She glanced down at it and then at the bit of her wrist that was exposed from underneath her pajama top. “It’s worth a try,” she breathed.

She pushed the material up, just like Klaus had, a few times, before she settled on rolling it so that it stayed up properly. She then set the tip of the pen down on her pale skin, giving herself blue freckles in her indecision. The words were coming to her slowly as she tried to figure out what she was supposed to say to this mystery person. Eventually, she realized she should start with a greeting and then see where it went from there.

-Hello

The word stood starkly against her skin, blinking back at her like the biggest mistake she had ever made in the entire world. She didn’t know why she had ever believed Klaus when he showed her something like that. While she was cut off from the outside world, she knew that basic magic tricks existed after Ben had snuck in a book about them for their twelfth birthday. It was probably a practical joke that he thought would be funny to pull on her since she had no way of fighting back.

Just as she was beginning to lose hope and panic about how she was going to get it off by morning, another writing joined her own. The word was already beginning to sink into her skin and leave lighter shades of blue in its wake, anyway.

-Who are you?

-I’m not sure I’m allowed to tell you. Did you know that this was something people could do?

-Do you mean talk to each other?

-That we could write on our arms and someone would reply.

-I did. I read about it in a book.

-What’s your name?

-I don’t want to tell you.

-Why don’t you want to tell me?

-I don’t like my name very much. I haven’t had the time to pick out something new that I might want to be called. And I asked you first but you didn’t respond.

-Well if you’re not going to tell me your name then I’m not going to tell you mine.

-This conversation hasn’t been going on for very long and it’s already gotten rather uncivil.

-I don’t want to be rude with you, I just don’t like being forced to be unequal with people.

-Neither do I. Can we start over, even if we don’t tell each other our names?

-I guess so. May I ask you a question to get to know you?

-Yes.

-How old are you?

-I think I’m sixteen. I haven’t been able to keep track of if my birthday has passed yet.

-Where are you that you can’t keep track of your birthday?

-Somewhere bad. I’m working on getting out of it as we speak. Sometimes I may not be able to write to you if I’m busy, I hope that you don’t mind.

-I wasn’t expecting you to write back to me at all, even after this session alone. People don’t talk to me a lot. I’m very lonely.

-I’m sorry that you’re lonely. I am as well. I’ll try to keep you company as often as I can.

-Thank you. I hope that you get out of wherever you are as soon as you can. I want to be able to talk to you all the time.

-You really are lonely if you want to talk to a stranger that you barely know.

-I don’t barely know you. I know that you’re around my age and you seem to have some things in common with me already.

-Oh yeah? Like what?

-Our handwriting is similar, we speak the same language with the same kind of accent, and we both don’t like having to talk about ourselves.

-I think I would do it if you asked.

-I can ask the next time we talk to each other. I have to go to bed and figure out how to get the last of the writing to come off before my father finds out I’ve been writing on myself.

-My parents didn’t approve of it either. I hope you don’t get in trouble and I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

---

For years, Viktor had kept a lot of things to himself. One of them had been a very big change in his life and the life of those around him, his gender. He had realized that he was trans due to the questions that his mysterious bodily penpal had asked about him. Up until that point he had completely ignored everything about himself and the kind of person that he might be. He had always been looking outward, admiring the stars that shone around him while introspecting on the black hole that was desperately trying to suck in some of their light.

Something about the way that his penpal spoke to him, though, made him do a lot of thinking. If any of the other siblings had asked him about parts of his life he would have given them some bit of the truth wrapped up int he language that he knew they would want to hear. It was different with the stranger that he was talking to, it seemed as though the other teenager genuinely just wanted to know about Viktor and what his life was like. They had conversations about almost anything that could be written down in the space of his forearm.

It was wonderful to have a confidant that no one else knew or cared about. Someone that was there for Viktor and only Viktor, as it seemed that his mysterious stranger didn’t have anyone else that he wanted to talk to. He had never had that before. Grace was created to serve the needs of all the children and while Viktor was the one that was home the most often, she had to take care of the others during the majority of the time that they were around. His siblings couldn’t give him the time of day and Five had been missing for the majority of the last decade. Five had been the only person that he had been able to talk to like he was with his penpal, but Five had been busy with training and missions and the siblings forcing him to bond for the ‘sake of the team’, so he wasn’t just Viktor’s either. The person on the other side of his ink trail was, though.

There were times when they were both too busy to do much else other than send each other simple messages to check in with one another. Those times were fine and brought Viktor just as much comfort as the hours that he spent writing to someone he didn’t even know the name of. Just knowing that someone with real feelings, thoughts, and emotions beyond several thousand lines of code cared enough about him to ask if he was alright when he hadn’t written in a while made his whole world.

It had made him actually think about himself. Until then, the only thing that he had been doing with his life was going through the motions of what he thought might get people to look at him. He had someone that cared about him now so he didn’t have to look for that validation from his siblings as much as he did before. He began to pour himself into his schoolwork so that he could find out what he was best at versus what he actually enjoyed. He prompted Grace about homework assignments and had her branch out into stuff that would be considered college level once he had.

Eventually he determined that he really enjoyed fiction writing, as well as op-eds about current events and old fashioned movies. He didn’t really like writing about himself because they were was so much that he had yet to figure out. He still loved music, something about the way that the notes flowed from inside of his heart and brain out into the open air around him soothed his soul in a way that nothing else did. He didn’t mind math and science bored him, especially when it started getting into the more technical sides where everything had to be related back to the powers of the others.

He also liked ballroom dancing, which had led him to him discovering the most important thing that he would in his entire life. It was a year after he started talking with his penpal when the Umbrella Academy had been asked to attend a ball and the others all needed to brush up on their etiquette. In the past, Viktor had been left out until the lesson was over and Grace or Pogo indulged his want to be included and danced with him. But with Five gone, Viktor was the one to make it an even number and thus his siblings had to use him so that they could get their practice in.

The swirling movements of the dances made him desperately want to attend something similar to what he had read in the classics they were assigned for English. He adored the music, it was what he played most often when he wasn’t working on something specific that had been assigned by one of his teachers. The only thing that he didn’t like was that he was often forced into the following position because he was a girl.

There was something sticky about that word or phrase when it was used in reference to him, and eventually he figured out that it was because that descriptor was wrong. He had never been a girl and it was wrong to describe him as such, not that he had known any better until that very incident. It was a relief to figure out that the reason he hated looking at himself was because it was almost like he was looking at a mockery of what he was supposed to be. All the right features were there, his mouth, eyes, and nose all perfectly located around each other, but they were hidden beneath a sheet of brown when that wasn’t what was supposed to be there.

By the time that he had realized it, he was week away from attending the college that Reginald had signed him up for. Viktor chose out his new name, got his father to change it on the university’s role and then had his mother cut his hair. He didn’t bother coming out to any of them officially since he knew they didn’t care, but he did tell his penpal. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of his entire life, even if it turned out that he didn’t need to be. He had only mentioned his gender once or twice before, usually in reference to his siblings and how he was the more unwanted sister. Despite that, his penpal had made sure to affirm his gender several times in the following weeks after Viktor came out.

He had gone to college and then graduated with a degree in music and a minor in teaching. He had written a couple of children’s stories of the world that he had dreamed of when he was younger and desperately looking for something good to latch onto. They weren’t the most popular thing in the world but they had enough of a cult following that he was able to buy himself a cute cottage on the edge of the city. He also taught at a theater and played with an orchestra for a bit of steadier income.

His life had felt so stable and he had been so sure of himself with the help of his penpal, who he had come to learn was his soulmate after his college roommate had realized he had no idea who was on the other end of his arm-writing, that Viktor had actually dialed back the medication that he had been taking. It got bad right after Ben died, to the point where he could barely feel anything because he was taking so many of them to avoid the pain that came with grief. Now he took a pill with every meal, just like the bottle said and less what Grace had recommended when she saw him looking unsteady as a teenager.

His life was good and he was thriving.

That was, of course, until he saw the news of his father’s death on one of the TVs in the storefront that he always passed by on his way home. A lot of feelings had overwhelmed him at the time, to the point where he couldn’t even discuss them with his soulmate like he had when Ben died. In fact, he hadn’t said anything to his soulmate the entire time that he had been preparing for the funeral and afterwards.

Of course, the feelings had settled out when he saw his siblings again. They were as dismissive of him as they always were, but it felt less hurtful than it had when he was a teenager. He didn’t know if that was because he had a better support network through his siblings or because he was on less of the medication and thus his mind his was less foggy, but it was a welcome change. The thing that had overwhelmed him on that day was the realization that his brother was back and had been through a Hell of a journey to get there.

Viktor had just gotten home from the Academy, in desperate need of a nap, shower, and then to talk to his soulmate about everything that had happened. He was thinking about how he was going to break it down when he realized that he wasn’t alone in the house.

“What are you doing here?” Viktor asked when he noticed that it was Five pacing around in his kitchen and not the intruder that he had thought it was. He set down the umbrella that he had grabbed to defend himself. It wasn’t a good weapon, but he had never thought to put anything else around his home to defend himself.

“I just wanted to pop in on my old friend. Is that allowed?” Five asked, raising a brow at his brother.

Viktor rolled his eyes. “You could have asked to come with me from the house instead of breaking in,” he replied.

“I didn’t want any of the others to overhear about where I was going. Something is wrong with Luther and Klaus is annoying,” Five replied. He picked up the mug that was balanced precariously on the edge of Viktor’s sink and turned it over a couple of times. “I think a lot has happened since we were last in the same room together, Viktor.”

He sighed. He wanted to shower off the day and then curl up in his bed to talk to his soulmate, but it seemed like his brother needed him more. “I think so too. Do you want to have a cup of coffee and talk with me about it?”

“I don’t want to disturb your nightly ritual. I know that it was important when we were younger and I assume it’s the same now,” Five shook his head. “I’d like to ask if I can stay here, with you, for the time being. I can explain everything about where I’ve been and why I’m back now in the morning.”

“I would never say no to you, Five,” Viktor shook his head. Years had passed and he had gotten attached to someone else in the way that he had never thought possible, but Five was still the gooey core of his heart. Five was the first person to express an interest in Viktor outside of rebellion and to honestly sit and listen to him.

“I have a murphy bed in the spare room I can get ready for you. Are you going to want to take a shower?” Viktor asked.

Five thought about it for a moment before he nodded in affirmation. The other man retrieved him a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that was likely to fit him. As soon as Five was shown the bathroom and shut away in there, Viktor worked on getting things in his spare room moved around so that he could put down the murphy bed. He occupied himself with stretching the sheets over the mattress and getting out a pillow and a spare quilt from the linen closet in the hall.

After Five finished with his shower, Viktor cleaned himself off and then checked in with his brother again. “I was going to head to bed. Is there anything that you need from me before I do?”

“This is going to sound slightly odd, but would you mind bringing me a pen?” Five asked, refusing to tilt his head up to look at Viktor from where he was staring at his hands in his lap.

“You going to talk to your soulmate?” Viktor asked. He walked over to the desk and then fished out one of the ballpens that he used himself when he was doing the same thing.

“I didn’t think that you would know about them,” Five replied sheepishly.

“I’ve been living out of Dad’s house for almost a decade Five, you think that no one would have told me about soulmates in that time?” he laughed. Viktor stuck one of the pens into his pocket and the other he handed over to Five before he shut the drawer. “I hope that the time-traveling different aged body thing doesn’t screw with your ability to talk to your soulmate. See you in the morning.”

“Me too. Goodnight, Viktor,” Five said in reply as the door to the guest room shut.

It was like a weight fell down onto Viktor’s shoulders the second that the door was closed. He realized everything that he had been going through since he had learned about his father’s death and that moment. It was a lot to process and while he knew that he could do it, he wanted to talk to his soulmate now more than ever.

He walked to his room and turned out the lights. He tucked himself under his sheets and then flicked off the cap for the pen. He couldn’t even care where it fell amongst his sheets in his rush to start writing on his arm.

-I went to my father’s funeral today.

-Not even a hello?

-I’m sorry. I know I haven’t talked to you in a while, but a lot happened.

-It’s alright, I’ve been busy as well so I didn’t even notice. Your father dying must have been a lot for you to take in so I understand you not wanting to speak about it.

-My siblings were nice and I reunited with my brother.

-The one that you were close with when you were younger?

-Yeah. It’s a really long story that I don’t have the energy to write out right now, but he’s back. He’s staying with me in my house and we’re going to talk in the morning.

-It’s kind of funny that you say all of that. I recently came back to my own family, finally out of that horrible situation I was in and somewhere safe. I’m staying with my brother for the time being.

He stared down at the words and felt his heart beating rapidly in his chest. He could be wrong about so many things in his life and recover from them, but if he happened to be wrong about this then he wasn’t sure how he was going to cope. It was something that he had hoped for, that he had needed the same way someone needed to breathe, his entire life. It had been something that lived in the back of his mind for as long as he could remember. It had changed and shifted over the years as he developed as a person and learned about the world, but it had always been there.

He touched the tip of the pen to where the words from the other were beginning to fade away as they always did. His hand shook slightly as he wrote out the next, small word.

-Five?

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #ao3 #archive of our own #tua #the umbrella academy #viktor hargreeves #year of fiktor #fiktor #five hargreeves #oneshot #five x viktor #viktor x five #soulmate au #soulmate #a pen fic

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