#IT IS a non issue !! i know because of weird gender issues its harder to find art refs of shorter guys !!!

[ofcowardiceandkings]

this is 100% unhinged pre-work thoughts so bare with me ... i know a lot of people are like "weh why is this such a big deal in fandom" like okay, but idk it smacks of weird gender attitudes & expectations to me yknow ?? short Link gang arent the ones making like a 18+ year old have a not insignificant growth spurt so he can be taller than his girlfriend lmfao ,, just let him be a short king

#IDK BRO LIKE AS A SHORT GUY .... #WHOS DAD IS ALSO 3 INCHES SHORTER THAN MY MUM ....... #IS DATING AN EVEN SHORTER GUY ... #AND ALSO WORKS WITH SOME PRETTY EXCELLENT SHORT GUYS ... #like IN MY HUMBLE ONION the ones doing the growth spurt rather than using canon heights are the people being weird about it lmfao #IT IS a non issue !! i know because of weird gender issues its harder to find art refs of shorter guys !!! #but listen !!! you dont have to make the guy the taller one actually !!! #i just stan a fellow manlet and so does Zelda lmfao #rory's ramblings

[lokilysolbitch]

loki wont let me make people stop being stupid

but my autistic brain is gonna ruminate until i say something so this is my compromise

first of all transgender does not mean someone genuinely believes they already have body parts that they don't have. Transgender also does not mean just following the social roles of another gender. I don't know where yall are getting that, but clearly yall have not even tried doing a BASIC google search. lord. go outside. go actually talk to some trans people. and if you wanna debate about something Do Your Research. like do it????? do you think you can debate a pharmacist when all you know about medication is "pain medicine make pain go away"??? tf???????

0.1% of the global population is 7,800,000 people. quit acting like its a small number of people. its a small percent. oh my god. im sick of people acting like an issue isnt important because it only affects a small percentage of people. There Are A Lot Of People. god

issues like blankism and blankphobias and such are not always gonna be big and loud. they're gonna be ingrained in a society like flour is ingrained in a cookie. you cant take a bite of a cookie and say "there no flour in this" just because you didnt get a clump of powder. -isms and -phobias will look like the fact there is barely any research on a group of people because they were so disregarded. It's gonna look like all the research was done by a certain type of person because for years an oppressed group wasn't even allowed to go to school, and when they were legally allowed they still faced obstacles (prejudice/financial, etc) because of who they were, and those obstacles further prevented these people to conduct studies. Not to mention studies should be peer reviewed, and if your peers hate you for who you are, who says they'll take your work seriously.

It's gonna look like doctors, even non -ist or -phobic doctors, won't diagnose you adequately because they don't know that your tests are abnormal since the basis of "normal" is not your demographic.

its gonna look like jobs being less likely to hire you, Not because of your demographic, but because of traits commonly associated with your demographic. (ex: "were not turning you down because youre autistic! its just that you were kind of weird in the interview socially so we dont think you'd be a good fit even if you still have the skills and experience for the job .")

its gonna look like most hairstylists not knowing how to do your hair, because they were not taught about your demographics hair type in school. its gonna look like your own demographic struggles on how best to take care of your hair, because they were forced to chemically alter it through the years.

its having parts of your culture ripped from you so far that most of your people forget it, and when its brought back up without context and twisted beyond recognition its demonised. and its so far removed from you that you cant recognise it and you demonise it too. and when you learn better and know the history of why its regarded that way, people ridicule you for bringing -ism or -phobia into it.

its everyone having a skewed view of history because they are only taught the history of the majority. and your people are not the majority. your history is a half of a textbook's unit. your history is an optional class. your history adds more money onto your tuition if you were to take it. and its never acknowledged. its never Their History and Your History. its Your History and the other is simply called History.

its not always about being hated. its also about being forgotten

its you having to change yourself for the society, because they historically have never made space for you, so you have to take extra steps to change yourself to fit and you are still expected to have the same amount of available energy available. not to mention even after getting legal rights you still have to work harder to get to the point everyone else was already at since they weren't held back. jesus

also learn how to read stats pls. learn how to read around them. learn to consider context and do research on that. i know too many of yall will read something like (im making these up) 70% of people who eat caviar have depression and assume caviar makes people depressed or that rich people are more depressed than everyone else. thats not how it works. you need to consider how much of the general population has depression. and that maybe rich people are more likely to even afford a diagnosis. and how many rich people were surveyed? 30, or 300, or 3000? what is the definition of depressed in this context, just the emotion or the disorder? and who conducted this study? is it peer reviewed? where are these rich people? are they in the same country you live in or somewhere else entirely? and what is the culture like? are the rich people in this situation culturally more educated on depression? would they generally be more open to saying they are depressed than anyone else in the same country? how old is the study? what percentage of these rich people are, let's say, women. are the women more or less depressed than the other rich people in this study? because if more of the women were depressed, and there happened to be more rich women than men, is it because they're rich, or is it because they are women? and now you have to look into if depression symptoms are more or less disregarded in female patients. just having statistics does not make you the "winner" especially not if all of them only have one side of an equation.

another thing, learn wtf a mental illness is i swear to god. you cant just say something is a mental illness just because its strange. there are actual criteria required to meet in order to consider something a mental illness. they teach you this within the first few weeks of any fucking psych class and i know this because ive taken so many. learn what a delusion is, learn what psychosis is, learn what ocd, autism, adhd, eds, etc are before you start talking it. respectfully, some of yall sound dumb. you can fix that. go learn. maybe watch crash course or something idk.

and i think an important part of anything is to evaluate yourself first. so remember to ask yourself why do you care. is it because you care about someones well being, or about something cringe, or because you want to feel right, or because you want to BE right, or do you just wanna look for holes in someone else's argument without having anything to prove yourself, etc. this is especially important for when you want to have a mic drop moment. if all you care about is something being weird or unusual, and you debate with someone who cares more about minding their business as long as no one is harmed, when you say "but people are dressing up at cats!" why would you assume they give a shit. are they robbing people while in the cat suits? are they making you wear a cat suit? no? okay then i dont care. "but its weird" so is devoting so much time to focusing on people in cat suits but you didnt seem to have a problem with that--

if you take something from this that's great. this isnt particularly to start shit im just autistic and prone to rumination and i saw too many stupid talking points. good god.

#vent #rant #autism #rumination #debate #handmadeorganicpost

[soulvomit]

stuff with gender anguish about not fitting in with today’s current gender constructions

From another post I made: I need to talk about 20th century gender norms at some point as a living breathing 20th century fossil and how different it was. To most straight people, being gender non conforming meant gay, trans was on the far end of the gay spectrum, and gay was associated with being socially Not Normal at a time when you had to be Normal to get a white collar job. (The whole Normalhood thing im gonna talk about is VERY connected to mid-late 20th century construction of the white middle class.) Apropos of gender specifically... I’m not sure how 90s/00s genderfluid/genderqueer map to NB, or whether they do. It’s a big reason I am weird about IDing as NB - because it seems to mean something else than my particular understanding of my identity as it was formed in the 1990s. (Another thing is my social world being more people over 45 at this point and also I’m in a hetero relationship.) Part of 90s GQ stuff was that you could identify as a man part time, a woman part time, you could contain multitudes. “Woman-identified person with a male side” was a legit identity within that, so was “man-identified person with a female side.” You could be one person in the streets and another in the sheets. You could be several people in the sheets, especially if you were aligned with kinky culture. (And for a long time... I was.) There was a greater sense in the 90s and early 00s in genderqueerness culture that you could be GQ for no other reason than wanting to be and it wasn’t assumed to be bundled with physical dysphoria or even desire to change your public social identity. Some spaces - like West Coast geek culture and goth culture - had enough flexibility baked in that we didn’t really need to go to LGBTQ culture to explore our identities, and there was a whole geek queer sensibility that was evolving alongside of the broader LGBTQ culture that was definitely its own... thing.  And while people *say* that NB doesn’t mean any one particular thing or any of these things, that’s not always the message I get when visible NBs on TV/in film are almost always at present one very specific image or “type” of person, and that doesn’t resemble me. NB representation on TV amounts to presenting NB as a third gender with very specific codified behaviors (androgynous AFAB person who binds and has body dysphoria).   The message I get is that whatever my experience is, is better described some other way. Also the discourse around relationships with NBs is that a relationship with an NB is necessarily a queer relationship yet having been in relationships in and out of LGBTQ culture, I’m not really sure how to distinguish “a queer relationship.” My relationship is non-traditional in lots of ways and we’re both gender non-conforming in lots of ways though it doesn’t parse to most people because it’s along the lines of stuff that shouldn’t have ever been gendered in the first place. What my partner does not ever question however is his actual gender identity.  The thing is, actually publicly identifying as anything but a woman would create weird problems in my life in terms of social dynamics, and other stuff, and probably an unpredictable series of ripple effects downstream. But - that... just means I’m closeted, right? And closeted doesn’t mean your identity doesn’t exist or isn’t as unreal as someone who isn’t? And what if - as a “shapeshifter” - my relationship to myself within my relationship *is* part of that shapeshifting?  One of the things is that I’m in a heterosexual relationship. My relationship *is* one of my few spots where I’m happy in my skin, let alone happy in the world and I have no complaints with how I’m perceived in this relationship, and part of it is that practically every assumption about my gender is true, or has been true at some point, including the fact that I’m fine with being seen as a woman in the context of my relationship.  It’s in other spaces besides the intimate, that gender stuff makes my skin crawl. My deep interior gender identity is “pixels floating in the ether, which can assume any shape or form.” My gender identity among other people in non sexual friend spaces is “friend.” My partner identifies as a cis het man. I don’t feel like my relationship has any special quality that’s different from queer relationships I’ve been in, other than identities people have. If my partner doesn’t feel our relationship is queer then I don’t feel it is, either... though it’s not exactly *traditional.*  I don’t feel like our relationship is different from our hetero neighbors’ relationships regardless of whatever history I have. I have no way of knowing what my ostensibly-female ostensibly-heterosexual neighbors’ interior identities really are, or what their history is. And because we’re monogamous, it just never ever comes up. Our social world is about half queer and half not so nothing has changed. After decades of only dating people who had LGBTQ identities, and having a particular social world, now I’m with a cis het man from that same social world and nothing really has changed about the shape of my life.   I’ve moved between different spaces my entire life, sometimes I perceived myself as a boy in a girl’s body, but sometimes I didn’t, and don’t. And gender is one of the spaces in which I feel like a chameleon. There seem to be a ton of gender expression based communities that disappeared since the 90s that either disappeared or were erased from discourse and that makes this weirder/harder to talk about.  Another thing is that a lot of the discourse around pronouns (if pushed I’ll say I’m she/they but I am literally comfortable in anything, depending upon context) makes me really uncomfortable. Even in LGBTQ spaces it makes me uncomfortable. There’s the me that my friends know, and some of my family knows, and it’s a big enough world to contain that part of me at this point. I would rather not put my identity under a microscope in any space that matters. It’s weird but I wish I could just be “they” in the work, creative, etc, spaces, without the loading of what “they” means. I wish it meant nothing about the people who love me, or who I love, or how I love, or how I live my life, besides what pronoun I use. But it doesn’t mean nothing. That is why I hope more cis identified people will actually identify as they in the public sphere. There are plenty of spaces in the public sphere that I don’t think should be gendered at ALL. My wanting to be a “they” is in some ways more about wanting public anonymity and having formed my sense of self - at a tender time - online, than about my gender identity. Which means I’d be potentially appropriating “they” from people for whom it IS a deep identity, and yet... haven’t I spent half of my blog talking about how I’m not exactly the gender identity I advertise?? Haven’t I spent a long time up to now advocating for “they?” Isn’t feeling like a they, evidence that I’m a they?  And the thing is, this is such a YMMV issue and the problem is that EVERYONE has competing access needs with EVERYONE ELSE. Anything one queer person wants or needs seems to oppress some other queer person, and it sucks. But sometimes I wonder if I even need to just recognize how cis het passing my life is and acknowledge my privilege. The thing is though at that point... is it how much oppression we’ve experienced or are currently experiencing, that alone makes our identity? That’s as silly an idea as saying I’m less of a Jew because I haven’t personally experienced a hate crime. And yes there’s a lot to shared oppression experiences forming group identities, but I’m not talking about group identity. I’m talking about personal feelings of identity.

#My chest stopped bothering me after my reduction #like - the relief was profound and being a size where I could go toward any expression I wanted based on a change of clothes - was enough

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Pro-variation vs. pro-selection culture

Evolution requires three things: some form of information that’s inheritable, some way to create variation from that information, and some way to select what information will be passed on to future generations. In biological evolution, of, course, we all know what these three things are: genes (information) can mutate (variation) -- well, it’s more complicated than just mutation, but this isn’t a biology lesson -- and those that are worse at surviving and reproducing themselves are of course naturally weeded out through cause and effect (selection). But other things -- art, culture, language, science, technology -- evolve as well, and they all need the same three things.

When it comes to variation and selection in things like culture and politics, there’s a sliding scale of which one people think is most important -- whether they’re more pro-variation, or pro-selection.

People on the pro-variation end of the spectrum tend to view diversity as a positive thing and selection as something that will take care of itself, or even something to be actively suspicious of because of its tendency to cause harm -- a rainbow queer community, an education system available to people of all cultures and economic backgrounds, country borders that are as open as practical, and embracing a diverse array of art make a community stronger, and things like gatekeeping, means testing and heirarchies on ‘what counts as art’ should be abandoned unless there’s a really good reason for the selective process to exist, in which case it’s grudgingly tolerated. To pro-variation people, exclusion and oppression within a community are threatening. Pro-variation people recognise that yes, you’re going to get some freeloading drains on resources and obvious money laundering schemes masquerading as terrible art and a few people pretending to be gay for a few years to look more interesting to their straight friends, and this is largely a non-issue, a perfectly acceptable price to pay for a diverse and fair world.

People on the pro-selection end of the scale tend to view selection as the main means of advancing or healing a society, and see diversity as something that will take care of itself and as something to be deeply suspicious of. Gatekeeping, unequal opportunities and financial heirarchies are needed to sort the what from the chaff and make sure everyone does their best (”capitalism breeds innovation”); initiatives to redress inequality and give minorities or poor people an ‘unfair’ advantage or make it easier for outsiders to enter the country should be abandoned unless there’s a really good reason for their existence, as they’re dragging down the ‘deserving’ and polluting the culture. To pro-selection people, contamination or invasion from outsiders is threatening. Pro-selection people recognise that yes, you’re going to lose some talented geniuses in sweatshops and stop some deserving people from achieving success and bully some LGBT people out of the community to face abuse and oppression alone, but this is largely a non-issue, a perfectly acceptable price to pay for an advanced and fair world.

“Oh, Derin, you’re just talking about left-wing vs. right-wing philosophies.” Sort of, but not really. It fits the stereotypes and common arguments to a T, but one can’t assume that all righties are pro-selection or all lefties are pro-variation. I have met pro-variation righties, although I’m not really sure how. And there are leftie TERFs out there, despite TERFism being an undeniably pro-selection philosophy. I find determining where people sit on the variation-to-selection scale to be a lot more useful for communication than left-to-right.

I say this because often I’ll see pro-selection and pro-variation people talking to each other, and notice that they’re having fundamentally different conversations. For example, let’s look at the issue of meritocracy. Most modern people would say that meritocracy is a good thing, but ’meritocracy’ means a fundamentally different thing to pro-selectionists than pro-variationists.

A pro-selectionist, when conceiving of meritocracy, tends to think in terms of, well, selection; devising a system where the strongest (those that excel in whatever the thinker thinks is important; innovation or determination or whatever) rise to the top and gain special privileges and power over others, that they can use to determine the rules and make life better for themselves and their children, elevating society as a side effect. To the pro-variationist, this is absolutely not a meritocracy. “You’ve built a system whereby those who don’t start out with more, those who are born poor or disabled or underprivileged in some way, have to work way harder and be lucky in order to get anywhere than those born lucky. People don’t get ahead on merit in this system because the playing field becomes drastically uneven after a couple of generations. This is not a meritocracy.”

A pro-variationist, on the other hand, would concentrate on making sure that everyone has a fair chance at exercising their skills and getting ahead. They’d focus on making sure that people had the space and security to exercise their skills and that, when it came to supporting the society to make that happen, those with more contributed more. To a pro-selectionist, this is absurd. “So those who have pulled ahead and succeeded are being penalised by having to give more? That’s the opposite of a meritocracy! That’s a system designed to drag the best down!”

I find this framework useful in explaining a lot of weird political quirks of certain subcultures. TERFs and tradwives, for example, are theoretically political opposites, but in practice their logic sounds almost identical to outsiders, sounding rather a lot like standard right-wing talking points and Fascism Lite. This is because they’re all using pro-selection arguments. To a pro-selectionist, the arguments of these groups look very different -- “we’re saying that X kind of people are good/virtuous/victims, and Y kind of people are bad/oppressors/sinners, which is the exact opposite of what the other group is saying!” To a pro-variationist, the fact that they are making literally the same argument makes them identical -- “you’re still putting people in your little ‘keep or cull’ boxes for exactly the same reasons, you just wrote different names on the boxes to keep or cull according to your personal taste.”

I think a lot of the things associated with right-wingers could be more accurately associated with people on the pro-selection end of the spectrum in general. It’s known, for example, that right-wingers tend to have a more sensitive disgust reflex and, as a consequence, be generally more xenophobic. You can see this in the way xenophobes talk of making room for outsiders; they talk of invasion, contamination, infection, hygeine, purity. LGBT exclusionists, lefties and righties, talk in the same sort of language. So do antis.

It’s also notable in the sorts of innocuous-seeming things that such people get really angry about. Right-wingers and authoritarians are known for their trend of an almost comical hatred of modern art. The idea that anything can be art, or that art can be measured on any level that isn’t strict complexity and realism of paint and sculpture, causes a surprising level of dislike in such groups. (See also arguments like ‘what is a video game’, ‘does this even count as a game’, althoughpeople thankfully seem to be bored of that now). Exclusionists are equally renowned for campaigns against inclusive terms like ‘queer’, and TERFs get obsessively nitpicky about people’s genitals to a really creepy degree and get very uncomfortable when you mention the ‘grey area’ in biological sex. This is normally assumed to be just dislike at people challenging their arguments, but I think it’s deeper. I think it’s like the modern art thing. Any kind of radical inclusivity is threatening to pro-selection thinkers, not because it’s a challenge to their rules and definitions -- they can have those arguments perfectly comfortably -- but because it is an attack on the very concept of meaning. “Words mean things! Groups exist! You can’t just... just get rid of groups and open up categories to include more people without putting them through a serious, rigorous proving ground first! You can’t just call anything you want to ‘art’, you can’t just call anyone outside cisheteronormative expectations part of the LGBT community, you can’t just call people men or women based on how they feel! That’s chaos! How can any progress be made if we just decide words don’t mean anything??”

(I also think this is a much-overlooked aspect of the same-sex marriage debate. Yes, most of that was garden-variety homophobia, but I’ve known a lot of people who were perfectly fine with ‘the gays having equal rights’, they just didn’t want it called marriage. To a pro-variationist, having the same legal language for partnerships regardless of the sex or gender of the participants is really important -- it’s a shield against future discrimination as the laws relating to either marriages or civil partnerships change over time. To a pro-selectionist, changing the definition of words related to fundamental cultural activities is a huge deal. “They’re eroding the very meaning of marriage! Chaos! How much more will the word change? Can people marry animals or cars next?!”)

As I said, this is a spectrum. I’ve met very few people who are on either extreme end -- even the most pro-equality liberal anarchist acknowledges that some standards of behaviour, community responses to inappropriate action and definitions of different communities do have to exist, to protect people, and the most hardocre fascist admits that there needs to be some measure of generating diversity to avoid stagnation and extinction. And people’s default reaction isn’t necessarily their position on all issues -- somebody who’s generally pro-variation might feel specifically threatened by immigration and think a strict proving ground for immigrants is necessary, or someone who is generally pro-selectionist might think that a robust social system is necessary because one’s economic status at birth has no bearing on one’s merit or value. But I’ve always found it to be a very useful general model.

#culture #politics #bigotry #left wing #right wing #queer #lgbt

[theartistgirl]

Warning: Spoiler!

Okay, so just got back from seeing Cats and it...wasn’t...that...bad...?

Spoilers below. This will be long.

When you go to see this, you can’t really compare it to the musical because the story is actually quiet different. It is truly a new take on the idea. I know some people are going to go in wanting to hate it but I liked it well enough. I will actually be seeing this again with Knitwitty and Windpurr on Sunday and may add more thoughts later but lets start with two things right off the bat: 1) Munkustrap is almost perfect, I mean, I could find no issue with this performance of my favorite silver tabby. Bravo Robbie Fairchild! 2) Female Deuteronomy was fantastic and not weird. Yays!

Okay, the real big issue I had: Tugger. Don’t get me wrong, there were a few times he was in character. There is this part during Bustopher Jones where he pours champagne into Bustopher’s mouth, then when he’s done Bustopher says ‘Thanks Tugger’ and yeah, that felt right. But the real issue,they did not give him sex appeal and his singing left something to be desired. It felt more like he had ADHD, which would work if he was a kitten. But as the Character he is supposed to be...not so much. His part of the Ball was odd and kinda forced. Worst of all, there was little to no interaction between Tugger and Mistoffelees. Zilch, zip, zero. He didn’t sing the song, he wasn’t even around till the end. No friendship or anything hinted at. 

Leading into that: Mistoffelees. I really enjoyed this portrayal. He was adorkable and shy, really a sweetheart that I wanted to adopt. However he did lack the cheekiness that the musical and the DVD version had as well as very low in self confidence. The only thing that really bothered me was, well, he didn’t dance. There was no conjuring turn, no amazing ballet moves, non of that at all short of Ball moment. I could go on, but I want to wait till I re-watch it to make my final judgement. 

Gus the Theater Cat: Perfect. Wonderful. Loved it. No complaints with Ian McKellen.    

Also, Growltiger was unexpected and I was happy to see him.

Now, for a performance I dreaded but hoped wouldn’t ruin the film: Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots. Oh, boy...to much to list so I’ll stick to the big things. First off, many of her moments (as always) felt forced and out of place. Yes, the crazy cat lady moment was funny and her interaction with Bustopher wasn’t bad. Second, well, she didn’t feel like Jenny. At all. While it didn’t ruin the film I felt dissatisfied with what should have been a large role. She also didn’t tap dance.

Skimbleshanks: Wonderful performance, had the energy and fun as always. They gave him the tap dancing parts and it worked really well. 

Old Deuteronomy: A pleasant surprise. I usually find myself disappointed when they switch genders on such an important character but this worked very well and Judi Dench made it a treat to see.

Macavity: Loved the crazy eyes, they really stood out and grabbed your attention. I really enjoyed his story in this retelling. At least most of the time. Later on he became kinda cheesy and not a threatening. Biggest issue was THERE WAS NO FIGHT SCENE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The fight scene was the big heart pounding epic score portion of Act ll and THEY DIDN’T HAVE IT!!!!!!!!! 

Also, Bombalurina worked for Macavity? As did Mungojerrie and Rumpleeazer? To be honest, the hardest thing was trying to figure out who all the non song cats were. Its harder without the wigs, they all blend together.   

Grizabella, as always was a beautiful sad part that chocked me up. 

And as I stated in the beginning of the post, Munkustrap was the best part of this movie and I loved every moment he was on screen. He was the one I was most concerned about and I was glad that I didn’t have to worry at all! 

Oh yeah, Victoria. Not a bad portrayal of the character. She even did some ballet which made me smile. And I enjoyed the cute little thing she and Misto had. All in all, I felt like they turned her a tiny bit into a Mary Sue but that could also be because they gave her all of Jemima’s singing parts.

.....was Jemima even in the movie? Actually, was Jellylorum or Demeter there either? Pouncival? Tumblebrutus? I might have seen Alonzo maybe. Cassandra? Etcetera?

So hard to tell who is who with the sleek fur design. -_-:

I could go on but really the thing that stood out more then anything was the lack of dancing. I mean, there was dancing, but it wasn’t the jazz/ballet that made the Jellicles the Jellicles. There was some break dancing that was fine but a lot of it was more interpretive dance and kinda...boring. Seeing the cast dance has always got me energized and wanting to dance along before (bad dancing but still) however, that didn’t happen with this film. 

The fiance’ was disappointed that they didn’t have the Rumpus Cat story. HE love’s  the Peke’s and the Pollicles.   

#Cats 2019 #cats the musical #munkustrap #mr mistoffelees #tugger #jennyanydots #gus #skimbleshanks #old deuteronomy

[cumuluscrow]

dumb stupid gender stuff

i can’t believe i’ve actually resorting to making a read more tumblr post about this but sometimes life throws u curveballs

it’s so so hard for me to form coherant sentences about this topic, it’s just confusing and upsetting and i feel like the more i discover the less i know

i’m gonna refrain from describing my whole fucking gender journey but in essence, i feel like i see myself in a far more gender-neutral way, and i feel varying degrees of discomfort when i’m recognised as being female. that’s the long and short of it. i get that this probably seems like SUCH a minor thing to a lot of people (god there has to be a name for everything nowadays not liking makeup doesn’t mean you’re not female!! just be a butch lesbian or something you know). but it’s really not like that, i dont know how to describe it. this is NOT a ‘decision’ i made lightly, i’ve been torn up over this for years, and i know that i feel so refreshingly like myself when i just confess to myself that this is who i am. someone who is non-binary.

i’m trying to kind of... figure out metaphors and ways of describing the way i feel. it feels like i’m a spy with some kind of female disguise, going through life lying to everyone, and that brings a strange kind of disconcertment with it, almost as if i feel bad for lying to people... with like, my appearance??

i dont even know if this IS gender stuff. i might well turn out to be cis, when i finally figure this shit out in about 300 years time. maybe i’m just really insecure and fucked up (which i kinda am) and i’m subconciously choosing to channel my self-hate into my gender. i dont know! all i know is that i prefer to be seen and referred to in a gender-neutral way. that’s really all i know.

here’s the thing though, because this goes far deeper than me. how do you exist as someone who is non-binary? how is that possible? every single fucking aspect of life is gendered, society, science. the way you recognise people. when you see a person, you always notice 2 things - their race, and their percieved gender. you can’t not.

i feel like i can’t quite get across my point here. i think what i’m trying to get at is internalised hate. there’s a part of me that definitely hates me for this. like, just be goddamn normal for once in your life. i support non-binary people, of course i do, but there’s a part of me that eyerolls at the purple pixie cut, binder-wearing nb, and there’s a part of me that eyerolls at the sparkly eyeshadow-wearing, bearded nb, and i hate that. i hate that that’s in me, not only is it not very nice, but it makes things so much harder on myself and if i hate myself any more than i already do then my soul is gonna collapse in on myself and form a black hole. finally, i will be free of gender.

oh and then there’s the flipside, of course. my brain can’t give me a break because if it’s not thinking that sort of complex shit, its thinking that i’m not nb - not at all, you’re some snowflake attention seeker and you’re an asshole for appropriating other peoples terms. there are people who are actually nb and they’re nothing like you, they’re just not. they’re real and you’re some messed up immature little bitch.

then there’s the less deep stuff, the practical side of things.

i came out to my girlfriend a few weeks ago. even though she had a hunch, she was still really upset and i still feel terrible for messing with her feelings, or something

we’ve been best friends since we were in infant school. she doesn’t know how to change how she perceives someones gender when she’s known them so long. she was upset because she felt like she knew me, she felt like she knew my ‘soul’, that it felt feminine, or something (such an aquarius). she was upset because she knew she saw me in a way that might make me feel uncomfortable.

we can’t seem to have productive conversations about this. we just ignore it 99.9% of the time, and then we have conversations late in the evening where we both cry and we wake up the next morning and everything is the same. i still hear her use she pronouns in conversations with me (eg. i bet that person was stood there like ‘what is she doing’? the she in reference to me. bad example but i can’t think of any others.

here’s the thing though, i dont want to correct her. i dont want to make it weird, and i dont want to bring my issues into a normal scenario. after all, this is something we exclusively, only acknowledge in small, serious conversations late at night, i can’t bring it out into a normal scenario. and i think she’s the same. we’re both equally uncomfortable to acknowledge it.

which begs the question - where the fuck do we go from here?

oh, and other people. yeah, that’s a thing, too.

i don’t plan on ever telling either of my parents. talking to my dad about normal stuff kind of feels like torture at the best of times, and my mum, bless her, doesn’t really... get things. i’d rather her just straight up not know this, than have an inaccurate idea of what it was.

work colleagues? well, before lockdown when i was at work i had to listen to a conversation about how nonbinary people are all stupid, gender exists, sex exists, biology, blah blah blah (already something i’m extremely insecure abotu the concept of) i don’t know how to properly describe how unpleasant that is to stand and listen to, knowing that you’re the exact person they’re talking shit about. it makes dread curl up in your chest, it makes you feel sick, and it makes you too anxious to even think about speaking up. when i got home i just started crying

other family? well, i once had to sit and listen to my sister go on an anti-nb rant, too, equally unpleasant experience

all other family is shit. just shit. bunch of wankers i’d rather not talk to them ever

i feel like, i finally have a vision of a door in my mind that i’ve been looking for for years, but when i approach it and look through it’s just filled with so much anxiety and panic and distress that it negates that fact that i’m on the other side of that door, living far more authentically

i dont know what to do next. i really don’t, and i’m scared. i feel desperate to reach out and like, talk to some other nonbinary people or something. just, i want someone, in real life, to stand there and validate me, without there being any catch, without there being any negatives, without any other things at play. 

wow. this is so long

#wow i am sorry for dumping this here but there's stuff that i'm absolutely desperate to get off my chest and i have nobody that i can say #it too

[umbillicalnoose]

i think that you would think im pretty and would like my poetry and i want to share it with you. im shy.

to be honest, im very apathetic these days. im not the nice “cutesy baby flower petal boy” i used to be. a lot has happened & im bitter & sullen & all in all, a pretty shitty friend/person to know. i used to possess some redeeming qualities, believe it or not, even if they were construed by the subconscious in an attempt to be likeable - a facade, even tho its only a facade, is still tangible, still there, is still something, even if not authentic. is poorer character forgivable in the name of presenting more authentically? but nah. that makes it sound like im putting effort into being a better person, which im not. im just sort of fried & done. its been a very long time since i played the role i built for myself on here of the “small fawn boy who wants to help girls” lmaooo. how embarrassing. altho, i was just a kid, & i guess, if you had a tumblr as a teenager, you went thru some cringe (i know the use of that word has fallen in on itself & adopted its own definition but for lack of a better one) ass phases, whether it was kinning or malingering mental illness or oh fucking christ, all that gender bullshit, etc etc. from what ive observed, tho, loosely following kids im still casually friends with that i met on here, i think we’ve all managed to Grow The Fuck Up, at least a little. most of us have jobs or r in school or have partners - growing up & moving on is a very surreal experience to watch/go thru. im moving at my own pace & ive accepted that - im still currently using & starving myself & concocting a suicide plan every day but at least i use clean needles as much as possible, i actively & honestly do strive for the bare minimum calorically, & um able to work with the mentality of “well ill have this when i need it but todays not that day” a lot more readily, in relation to suicide shit. ive finally found a therapist who Really Gets It, is a frontrunner internationally on ritual & extreme abuse & mind control. its pretty incredible what a few years with a good therapist can do. anyways. im sorry, i know you didnt ask for all this & im not even sure why i divulged. i guess, what tipped me off, was your attempt at sounsing “cute” - dude, cut that shit out, i promise youll be a lot better off. & i know everyone interchanges aspects of their personality based on who theyre talking to/who they percieve themselves to be talking to, but i feel like not a lot of people give enough credence to the internet & its hand in shaping/molding young people, kids, vulnerable dumbasses, especially tumblr (tho, i get that its a relatively new phenomenon) - u get a bunch of the “weird”, “alternative”, ““ostracized” kids together on a website, of course its gonna nurture a culture of hypervalidatoon & pretending to be sick in order to fit in to the point that its not an act anymore & exacerbation of symptoms & basically, just sucking each others dicks, sitting in ur own shit, & never ending coddling. & then, you have the older group of kids, who have played this game before but instead of helping or ignoring the Dumbshit kids, they indulge their own normally-buried-but-unleashed-by-internet-anonymity sadism/human instinct to just be fucking dicks & so now you have this vicious cycle of anger & hatred & fucking melodrama up the urethra. im sorry, i know im comig off as/am being harsh but god fuckin dammit yknow? also, this isnt directed at you, specifically, more of a generalized thing, @ myself included. so uh. i mean, if u still wanna share it with me after reading all this, id be happy to read ur poetry. i used to be over the top nice & then reverted to Major Asshole & am now trying to find that sweet middle spot - honoring & allowing myself to share my pain without putting it on others. which is really hard!! cuz becoming a Dick was difficult in that it forced me to be more honest with my true self & as such, more vulnerable - now in trying to become Kinda Nice again because despite being a pulsating scrotom, ive had the intense desire for friendship & human interaction, while simultaneously doing things that i was consciously aware was pushing others away - but then, if i pretend to be nice, where does that authenticity i worked for & was so scared of go? & i dont mean telling someone their new haircut looks nice even when it doesnt - thats just not being a dick. but i guess, those r the normal trials & tribulations of any relationship & adolescent developing identity. which is weird too - dealing with “normal” issues, i mean. whats the point if your life/limbs/breaking point arent at risk? whats the point when your best friends already dead. im sick of people calling "survivors” (despise that word, so fucking female-originated & overdramatic) “brave” & “strong” - surviving is not brave or strong. its just survival. you wouldnt call an animal brave for running for its life from a predator but you would call a dog courageous for going into a burning building to save its owner. premeditated action on the notion that you are probably going to be hurt is brave. being subjected to pain with no choice is not. theres no “silver lining” or anything “good” to be drawn from it either - sure it may have made x a more compassionate person or made y more introspective & gentle but you know what would have been even fucking better??? if the shit hadnt happened in the first place! let x be an asshole & y be self absorbed - the “benefits”, so to speak, do not outweigh the cost, not by a long fucking shot. its not only patronizing to hear garbage like that, but a slap in the face to know that anyone could possibly see anything good coming from that nightmare & that the characteristics, good or bad, you developed either in response to or as a result of, are worth praise. dont tell me im strong for doing what i had to to escape a torture chamber - tell me im perseverant for studying my ass off & passing that test last week. in the words of one of my dearest & most fucking brilliant friends, “pain doesnt owe me/you purpose - the need to intellectualize & assign meaning to pain & death is not only futile, but harmful.” & honestly, i think that it stems from weakness (in most cases - i realize theres a plethora of other reasons such as those who r just desperate for something to hold on to or r hyperintellectual & analytical or who have been pressured by external “support” systems to find the “good” etc etc) - while the majority of people view the person who “can find the good in everything” (strictly speaking only in relation to trauma/tragedy here & more in denunciation of those that celebrate this trait as opposed to vilifying “survivors” who respond this way, though in my experience, its very very very rarely the “survivor” that perpetrates this ideology ) as strong, i sort of see it as a weakness - their inability to sit with & absorb their own pain or that of others is so strong that not only do they have to frantically pull rainbows out of the teeth of a meat cleaver, they also have to exist within this strange (tho, not malicious - more subconscious) superiority complex. like, nah, dude, some times shit is just awful. you cant tell me anything fucking good came out of a four year old girl being kidnapped, gangraped, & tortured for two years, before being impaled & left to die on a stake. her mom opened a non profit organization? oh well thank fucking god for that!!! those that believe the latter to be more “enlightened” or whatever the fuck r the same people who say shit like “dying is easy - living is harder” & i get that that its supposed to be interpreted metaphorically for the most part - giving up is easy, trying isnt (which also.....isnt true??? admitting defeat & fully accepting the fact that ur fucking helpless is beyond hard lmao???) - but pretend youre somewhere, anywhere outside ur sunny little fucking yoga studio full of white women whos biggest issues r the pta & johnny whos failing math, & lets say your life is in real, imminent danger, a gun is to your head & i want you to not scream or cry or beg for ur life since dying is “easier”. if dying is so easy, why do the majority of ppl cling to it with such desperation - why is suicide illegal? why do some ppl go thru 100s of chemo treatments even tho the doctors say theyre just prolonging the inevitable, ppl who cut off a diseased arm so it wont spread, those who walk dozens of miles every day for food & water, etc? & i know & understand the survival instinct better than anyone, even when i wanted to die more than anything, my natural instincts would kick in with no conscious neural input & id do what i had to do. im not condemning those who cling to life (ok - a little. ur wasting resources out of ur own fear. but i also realize thats just me being a Fucking Asshole As Always cuz technically, im doing the same thing tho its more due to lack of opportunity rather than fear. i just think, societally, death should be more normalized, discussed, & not made out to be so unknown & scary), instead just reprimanding those who say shit like that (inspirational facebook quotes). especially cuz most of the ppl who do spew that shit have never gone thru anything even remotely difficult - their worst nightmare is a Big Scary Black Man grabbing them on the street, mugging them, & touching their tits. & i also know that these stupid ass sayings are to be applied to bullshit like exercise & fitness (“no pain no gain” is another one of my Favorites) & not fucking torture or even just ur run of the mill rape, even that would probably smash the rose tinted banana republic shades off their beverly hills tanned faces. but ive heard the no pain no gain one a handful of times in the last few weeks, specifically from doctors performing procedures in preparation for my bottom surgery. & i know its supposed to be encouraging & they have no way of knowing, but its just like, buddy, u have no idea who youre fucking talking to. & im starting to understand what THEY mean when they say it - pain with a reward is infinitely more tolerable than pain just for the sake of pain; like, a tattoo, it hurts, but u know, when its done, its gonna be sick as fuck. when u r able to fall back on the idea that its for something u rlly want, its A Lot easier to handle as opposed to pain thats Just Pain - theres no reward for it except, i guess, that the more u experience it, the closer u r to the end of it lmao. i mean, i still hate when ppl say it cuz for most of my life, pain was just pain, & the “reward” was the opportunity to go home at the end & so whenever ppl say that, my mind just immediately resorts back to that & im just like haha fuck u. but im trying to remember my experiences r definitely not universal & im starting to sorta understand what they mean i think. but, flipping gears here, & going back to the sentiment of “everything happens for a reason”, the base philosophy of psuedo deep Fuckwads - a girls dad didnt fuck her “for a reason”, everything doesnt happen “for a reason”. like ok, hypothetically, the kid he impregnated her with & that she was forced to have at 12 may surpass all odds & not become a homeless junkie & instead become a world renowned doctor who finds the cure for cancer. but she wasnt raped repeatedly from the age of six for that “reason”, no matter what anyone says & honestly, the liberation of the masses does not justify the suffering of one, especially a child. in my eyes at least. but again, im a bitter asshole. sorry i just Went The Fuck Off here oh my god.....if u read all this, thanks, pal. if not, thats cool too. but yea, send me ur stuff, id totally be down to read it. as for me potentially thinking ur cute, i have to look at my disgusting shitstain of a “face” every goddamn day so everyone else to me is fuckin aphrodite. but im also tryin to not put so much worth into physical appearance- its not something that should be complimented cuz its just smth a person was born with which is the same reason it shouldnt be insulted. this is gonna sound gay & stupid but i personally find that a persons essence & personality really permeates. you can meet someone who, objectively, isnt all that great looking, but once u get to know them, u really see their beauty - how the sun catches in their hair, their dilated pupils looking up at u from under long eyelashes in the dark, the birthmark on their right shoulder that they despise but that is so Them, the gap in their teeth, etc. & idk how to phrase this without it sounding like “well ur ugly but at least ur a good person”, cuz that only reiterates the societally indoctrinated emphasis on appearance & my kneejerk reaction to assure the person in question that thats not what im saying is only another result of that!!! its inescapable!!! but no, really, its not just a matter of “its on the inside that counts” - physically, they change or maybe, actually this is more likely, when i first meet them, my “default” eyes r just looking for features that i know im immediately attracted to (tall, blonde, sickly as in sunken eyes sticklike pale but still looks like she could & will beat the shit out of me) but as i fall in love or get to know them better, my eyes adjust & i notice & adore the beauty that was there all along. so uh. idk if ill think ur “cute”. but probably, yes, ill think ur an angel.

[lemon-verbena-writes]

Some notes on A/B/O, how I use it, and other thoughts on the genre.

This post is inspired by @pools-of-venetianblue‘s wonderful comment [link] on love like blood, and I quote heavily from it here; she had such well-thought-out commentary, I wanted to include it here. Anything quote-blocked is hers; my responses are formatted normally. 

I wanted a chance to discuss how I use A/B/O, and how others use it, and some other aspects of my fics, and this seemed like a good way to share that. I’ve put a read-more cut in about halfway through, because this ended up becoming very long. I think we all know that I’m a bit prone to long, though!

Your writing is stunning - the prose is gorgeous, poetic, and flows so well. You build the tension between Robin and Cormoran perfectly (and how are they both so in-character in such a different universe??? genius). And the angst... god, you are so good at drawing out that emotional pain until it physically hurts - and it made the moment where these two idiots finally give in and talk about their feelings so cathartic and satisfying.

Honestly, I left this bit in because I love flattery :) Also, I wanted to say that I’m so happy the angst was successful in making the feelings reveal both emotional and satisfying! I often find that I can draw out the emotions for ages, then when it comes time to wrap things up, I don’t know quite how to make it happen. So I’m very happy it worked!  

In anyone else's hands, this trope could be a giant disaster, reinforcing sexist ideas about the sex and gender stereotypes - but you have handled it really well, showing the characters themselves struggling with the demands of the trope. Robin fighting against her biology, refusing to give in to its demands by asserting her subjectivity and her right to pursue the life that she wants - and her need to know for sure that what she has with Corm is more than biology, that it is her, Robin that he loves, and vice-versa, is absolutely wonderful - and I am living for her acceptance that their hearts, minds, and bodies are all in sync. I really hope she gets to a place where she can integrate/accept being an omega while still not letting it dictate the way she chooses to live her life (and thank god that she's found Cormoran who genuinely loves her brilliance and would never want her to change). And while I feel like Robin's struggle really is the emotional core of the story, Cormoran's angst about feeling like he doesn't live up to what Robin 'deserves' in an alpha, and coming to accept that it's actually about what she wants, and she wants him (at least I think that's where you're going with it??), complements it really well.

Again, you flatter me! The fact that this all came through makes me feel very successful as a writer, because these are complex things to depict in ways that aren’t ham-handed. Also, this is what I love about writing A/B/O: the ways that you can exaggerate the internal feelings with an external mechanism, so that not only do the characters get to have all their canonical feelings and struggles, but there’s an additional layer of biological issues. Robin not only has to deal with being single, she has to deal with having heats; Cormoran’s not only attracted to Robin, but he can smell her, and her emotions, and her need for him, and still he feels the need to deny it. It’s a way to make things both easier and harder! And you may have noticed, I do love to torture my characters, and draw out the emotional pain while giving them physical satisfaction.  

All the things @pools-of-venetianblue touches on here are things I wanted to convey in my writing, and I’m glad it worked. There are many, many ways to write A/B/O, as many ways as there are authors. Every author uses it in a different way; in my writing group, there’s one author who writes A/B/O because it gives them a path to male pregnancy (”mpreg”), by making male characters Omegas. Other writers enjoy writing dubious consent, which Heats can provide, while still leaving room for eventual HEA and explicit consent. A/B/O has room for so many tropes, including things many people find upsetting or gross, such as rape/non-consent, gang-rape, animalistic traits beyond knots, and unbalanced power play. But at the same time, it can be a way to write m/m pairings having happy biological families, mpreg, nesting, and tooth-rotting fluff. It’s up to each author the directions that the A/B/O goes.

Like any collection of tropes, A/B/O contains multitudes. The ways I choose to use it are my own, and other authors will use other aspects in other combinations. I choose not to use many of “darker” tropes, like extreme possessiveness or total loss of consent, and I don’t usually dwell in the more visceral aspects of the biology, like the desire to impregnate. (That’s what knots are meant to be for; they hold the semen inside the Omega’s body, in order to have a better chance of impregnation. Some authors use this mechanism heavily; sometimes Heats will guarantee pregnancy, some A/B/O worlds have multiple births as a matter of course, triplets and more. But those don’t appeal to me, so I don’t use them! Others do. It’s all a matter of preference.)

Going back to what @pools-of-venetianblue says at the top of the paragraph: “this trope could be a giant disaster, reinforcing sexist ideas about the sex and gender stereotypes...” I choose to use aspects of A/B/O that suit my preferences, but other people enjoy the sex and gender stereotypes. They’re writing them on purpose, not by accident, and they generally know they’re not good things! (They wouldn’t know to tag them if they didn’t know they were bad things that needed to be warned for, right?) But they want to explore the ideas, and that doesn’t make them bad people or bad writers. The important thing to know about A/B/O, or any fic really, is that it’s not always about being good feminists and smashing barriers, etc. I fully support those things! But fanfic isn’t always about that; sometimes it’s about satisfying the weird parts of your id that wants things you know are bad/wrong/gross, but fascinate you anyway. 

There’s nothing wrong with that. It took me a long time to come to the realization that just because I sometimes enjoying writing things like dubious consent (that almost always becomes explicit consent) it doesn’t make me a bad person. In real life, dubious consent is bad! But this is fanfic, and I can explore the interesting-but-bad things in a safe context. I would never want to be in a dubcon situation in real life, but I can enjoy writing about it and exploring the character’s feelings and reactions in fic, where it’s not real.  

But at the same time the A/B/O thing isn't just a trope to subvert, it's also vital to the power of the fic, in that it takes their connection and compatibility and makes it material and visceral, letting you really amp up the desperation and euphoria in a way that wouldn't feel realistic in the canon universe - but which totally makes sense here. Oh, and it also lets you write really, really good smut. How is it so good? They have sex for like three chapters straight, but it's not repetitive at all?? How am I totally on board with this knotting thing, even though in any other context I find the idea super gross?? You're a smut genius.

Can I say again that I am SO VERY GLAD my absolutely gratuitous smut isn’t repetitive? I worry about it so much, but I just enjoy writing it so much that I do it anyway. Thank you for assuaging my fears on that count!

I do enjoy building the A/B/O into the fabric of the world! It’s one of those tropes which can be used to create an entirely different society, or can be integrated to our modern-day world, and either can work. I really enjoy fitting it in to our world; how would it work? What would be different? What would be the same?

I use A/B/O to, as @pools-of-venetianblue says here, “take their connection and compatibility and makes it material and visceral.” Their connection is the same, just more. Harder to deny, harder to resist, and ultimately inevitable. (Dear JK Rowling, it had better be inevitable! Who could write these characters and not see their relationship as inevitable? I digress.) 

My preferred tropes out of the collection that make up A/B/O are the ones that deeper and make physical the bonds that characters already have. 

So, to sum up, I have loved every single moment of this fic (and Comma as well!), and each new chapter absolutely makes my day. I probably still wouldn't ever read an A/B/O fic by any other author - but I absolutely will read anything and everything that you write in this fandom, no matter what genre or trope - this is that good. Thank you for writing this, I can't wait to see what you do next.

Again, the flattery, please know I love it and it’s working. 

P.S. How exactly does mating work? What are the effects? I'm really curious - I tried google but it wasn't particularly helpful. Do we get to find out in the next chapter? (PLEASE SAY YES)

Alright, mating. Again, something that different authors do differently. I’m not going to spoil either of my fics here, but I’m going to explain it, because sometimes people find it upsetting or gross and I don’t want to spring it on anyone. 

Generally, mating involves the Alpha biting the Omega hard enough to draw blood. There’s usually a gland for this; some universes, the scent gland, others have a specific mating gland for this exact purpose. (I have a mating gland in mine, because I prefer the mechanics of the mating and scent glands to be separate.) So in order to Mate someone, the Alpha bites the mating or scent gland hard enough to break the skin, leaving a scar which signifies the Bond to anyone who can see it. (The scent glands being scarred as a way to denoted who is Mated can sometimes be like wedding rings, an obvious indicator that someone is off the market.)

In  my universe, I haven’t discussed Beta biology much, but Betas are essentially us, no knots, no glands. They can’t sense as much of the information available through scent-glands, and wouldn’t be able to sense whether someone was in Heat/Rut without help. Betas cannot Mate anyone, because they don’t have the biological tools or imperative to. 

Cormoran leaves Robin lots of love-marks partially because of the Mating instinct; he is in Rut, and with an Omega he wants to Mate, so he bites down and uses his mouth, because his instincts tell him to. He doesn’t go for Robin’s mating gland because I don’t take away all of their higher brainpowers in bed, but he wants to, and instincts are hard to deny. (I also tie in the possessiveness here; it’s not all-consuming, but he’s... territorial about his Robin. That’s canon, though!)

I hope the mechanics of mating doesn’t upset anyone, but there it is.

Thank you to @pools-of-venetianblue for the wonderful comment and flattery, and for permission to re-use your words here, and to anyone who’s enjoyed my work and is curious enough to have read this entire thing. It’s terrifyingly long, but realistically, what do I write these days that isn’t? I hope this has been useful and illuminating for anyone who isn’t familiar with A/B/O, and everyone should feel free to ask me other questions you might have.

[deathbanchou]

character stats !   (  bold all that apply. ) TAGGED BY: i think i just stole this one.

WEALTH  —

financial: wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty  medical: fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged / non - applicable class or caste: upper / middle / lower education: qualified / unqualified / studying / other criminal record: yes, for major crimes / yes, for minor crimes / no 

FAMILY  —

children: has a child or children / has no children / wants children / verse dependent relationship with family: close with sibling(s) / not close with sibling(s) / has no siblings / siblings are deceased  affiliation: orphaned / adopted / disowned / raised by birth parent (s) / not applicable

TRAITS  +  TENDENCIES  —

extroverted / introverted / in between (as a child, eikichi was an introvert by habit due to his shyness, but later shaped himself to become an extrovert through his transformation, to the point where i feel like these days he actually feels pretty uncomfortable if he’s alone for too long / too much. he needs distraction and external stimuli to keep up his positivity ) disorganized / organized / in between (i feel like he would be naturally inclined to be a little disorganized if he hadn’t been raised to be organized! his dad is really strict, i don’t believe he’d let him be messy or disorganized at home at all. so it’s kind of a battle between his somewhat of a scatterbrain vs. upbringing... he’s still definitely not a planner, but much more prefers to improvise and go with the moment at hand ) close-minded / open-minded / in between calm / anxious / in between disagreeable / agreeable / in between cautious / reckless / in between patient / impatient / in between outspoken / reserved / in between leader / follower / in between (he likes to think of himself as a leader, and in some ways he is, as he’s managed to become the Boss of kasugayama high and even set up rules there, and has takeshi, ken and shougo following him.. and he can be pretty assertive nowadays! but. in the end, he’s pretty content in giving tatsuya the reins when they become a group, though he likes to think of himself as tatsuya’s rival rather than a follower. still, he isn’t necessarily ever taking charge there, so. yeah. depends. in the end, the leader qualities he has have come through him self-fashioning himself that way after he decided to change, and wasn’t innate..) empathetic / unempathetic / in between optimistic / pessimistic / in between traditional / modern / in between (he wants to be unconventional and express himself without any limits of tradition (that tradition crap has been shoved down his throat enough hashssdf) but-- he still retains some kind of conventional thoughts sometimes about manliness etc. -- yknow, all the “that ain’t how a man should act” stuff. but you can blame his dad for that, for spouting toxic shit at him for all his life. thankfully most of these things he believes in are pretty positive and harmless? like he believes “a man” should be fair and honest etc etc but doesn’t believe in any super toxic shit about gender roles and such) hard-working / lazy / in between (eikichi tries very hard. trying hard is his very essence!!) cultured / uncultured / in between loyal / disloyal / in between (also his essence. so loyal!!) faithful / unfaithful / in between

BELIEFS  —

faith : monotheist / polytheist / atheist / agnostic / it’s complicated belief in an afterlife : yes / no / don’t know / don’t care belief in reincarnation : yes / no / don’t know / don’t care philosophical : yes / no / sometimes (it may not seem that way to those who don’t know him that well, as he seems pretty airheaded (which is just a defense mechanism, trying to live in the moment so he won’t start wallowing in any negative feelings etc. but. in the right company he’s very philosophical and deep. also, one of his contact actions in battle is literally “discuss life”)

ABILITIES  —

combat skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none   literacy skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none (don’t get me wrong, he can read on the same level as his peers, but i always had this headcanon about him maybe being a bit dyslexic, which is making school a bit harder on him? at least those kinds of subjects. again he tries very hard to have good grades, but isn’t academic, and this is one reason why.) artistic skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none  (as in, it’s a special talent of his!) technical skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none (kinda torn with this one, because i’m not sure how poor poor means here, but i imagine moderate, like, normal, but more on the poor side than the good side. so like, not good with technical shit as he’s type of person who thinks hitting the television will fix it, but also not poor enough for it to be like, his personality trait. just regular bad.) cooking skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none (at least with sushi, he’s been forced to become pretty good at that because his parents want him to take over the sushi shop and have certainly taught him. he’s also forced to help out with the shop pretty often. but-- as we know. he HATES sushi. so, it’s def not a passion or anything. still, i imagine you cant make a good sushi and not be at least kind of good at cooking in general then, or kind of understand it + i also imagine that their sushi shop may have other traditional japanese foods like miso soup, another thing eikichi doesn’t like, so...)

HABITS  —

drinking alcohol : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess smoking : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess other narcotics : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess medicinal drugs :  never / sometimes / frequently / to excess (i’m considering this as like a frequent, then yeah, nothing really? only if he’s sick. and he also used to take some weird diet pills back in the day but not anymore, tho idk if those can be considered medicinal or even drugs lmao but its worth mentioning ) indulgent food : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess (this is like a taboo for him. he likes good food, but if it’s unhealthy or fattening he’s gonna have a crisis over it, as he has body image issues due to his childhood and is super paranoid about gaining weight ghhgj. so he definitely just avoids indulgent food as much as he can, but idk, on a special occasion he might chill a bit and eat some with friends..)

Tagging: @crossfortun, @interlacedfates, @gamenu, @dolgelo + whoever wants to!!

#【 HEADCANON 】— ɢᴏᴛ ɪᴛ ᴀʟʟ ғɪɢᴜʀᴇᴅ ᴏᴜᴛ. #ooc #[ this has been sitting in my drafts god knows how long but i finally did something with it ]

[timeisacephalopod]

Death of a Bachelor

Non-powered coming out IronStrange AU in which Stephen brings Tony home under a few... false pretenses. And, as always when I write him, Stephen is Asian (Nepali). The title for this is literally because Death of a Bachelor is stuck in my head and it sorta fits lol.

Peter sighs, “just you know... be yourself,” he says.

Tony squints, “‘myself’ sucks, what kind of garbage advice is that?” he asks. “I’ve got one shot at this and I know I’m going to botch it.” He’s never been good at ‘meet the parents’. Its happened once and Pepper’s parents still hate him and they aren’t even together anymore.

“That’s what you’d tell me!” Peter says.

“That’s because you’re a sweet, loving young man and anyone would be lucky to have you. I’m an asshole with a long history of warmongering and that’s honestly not even my biggest flaw.” And that’s a fucking feat. 

“Okay you know what, is Stephen even the type to care if his parents like you? Because you’ve been for dating for over a year and I think he’s mentioned them once and that was in direct reference to his dead sister so I don’t really think it matters too much,” he says.

Probably not, Stephen isn’t the type to care what others think period. But Tony wants at least one set of parents to like him and he loves Stephen so this is probably his last chance. If all goes well he wants to propose, was going to anyways, but Stephen brought up his parents so he thought he’d deal with that first. So he really, really only has one shot at this. “It would be nice if a set of parents didn’t hate me for once. Not that I’d blame them really- if you brought home someone who’s a fan of me I’d tell you to dump them immediately. My fans are worse than Fight Club fans.”

Peter laughs, “its true. But I think that’s mostly because they think that time you were a womanizing warmongering alcoholic is like peak you and glorify it, not because you’re actually crappy,” he says.

Across the apartment the elevator door dings and Pepper steps out, “what?” she asks when they swivel to face her.

“We’re talking about dad’s crappy fans,” Peter says. “And also him meeting Stephen’s parents tomorrow.”

Pepper rolls her eyes, “ your fans are awful. They take who they want you to be and tout that image around no matter how little it actually resembles you as a person. As for Stephen’s parents, I have no advice. You’re horrible at these things,” she says.

“See?” Tony says to Peter. “Even Pepper thinks I’m hopeless.”

*

Stephen considers not telling Tony but if he doesn’t he’ll be in for a rather nasty surprise and he can see how nervous he is already. “They’re going to hate you,” he says bluntly and Tony glares at him.

“Is that really supposed to make me feel better?” he asks.

No, but that isn’t why he’s telling Tony anyways. “It won’t be your fault, they’re raging homophobes so they’re going to hate you on account of not being a woman. And I sort of told them you were Christine because I didn’t want to come out over the phone so they’re also going to be a bit surprised. Not that I care, its my grandmother I’d like to like you anyways but if she doesn’t she’s old, its entirely possible that she’s gone senile.” She’d have to be to not like Tony.

Frankly the only reason he’s doing this is because he’s going to propose and his parents Google him once and awhile to figure out what he’s up to. He can’t not tell them and if he tells his gran she’s got a big mouth, she’ll tell them accidentally or maybe on purpose- its hard to tell with her- and then he’ll have to explain himself. So to bypass all that drama he figures he’ll bring Tony home, deal with his parents’ crap, and then propose and get married in peace. Assuming Tony says yes and its a very real possibility he won’t. He’s only been stated that he’s not a marriage person his entire life.

God, he loathes risks he can’t determine the outcome of with at least some educated success.

“This is going to be a disaster,” Tony mumbles and Stephen pities him, really. At least his parents are dead so Stephen doesn’t need to worry about impressing the dust in their graves.

*

To say meeting Stephen’s parents goes badly is an understatement. The first thing they did was look confused, which Tony can’t blame them for considering he very much does not look like a ‘Christine’ let alone Stephen’s Christine. First of all she’s taller. Then Stephen had issued a rather formal ‘I’m bisexual’ and pretended like he hadn’t just said that and then his parents launched into transphobia with their relief that Stephen wasn’t dating some kind of freak. Because apparently he can totally pass as a Christine. Stephen had winced almost harder at that than Tony considering he obviously forgot Peter is trans and Tony doesn’t have the patience for people insulting that.

As it was he only kept his mouth shut because he didn’t want to make anything worse but Stephen’s parents insist of doing that themselves with their weird and invasive questions. Eventually Stephen’s old as shit grandmother told them to shut up, which had resulted in the best part of the night. It had been pretty clear that Stephen’s relationship with his grandmother was stronger than the one with his parents so he’d look pleased when she stood up for Tony, who was very close to his wits end and he thinks he has a dash of patience these days.

When she tells him to stop putting up with Stephen’s parent’s shit Stephen stuffs his face into his glass of wine, obviously anticipating disaster. Tony considers not saying anything but he’s had a bad night and frankly it can’t get worse. 

“Alright- I know I’m more than famous enough for both of you to know who I am and that I’m a recovering alcoholic. Stop trying to offer my wine, its ignorant. Neither Stephen nor I are the woman in our relationship, that’s the fucking point. Neither of us even fit traditional gender roles anyways and if this is some weird, coded way to ask about our sex life neither of us fit the ‘top’ or ‘bottom’ stereotypes either and its fucking boring to stick to one or the other. Also what the hell would it have mattered if I really was Christine? The fuck does my junk or gender have to do with you? You have a lovely home, but its too bad such shit people live in it. Except you, you seem like you’d be fun a a bachelor party,” he says to Stephen’s grandmother.

She grins at Stephen while his parents sit dumbfounded, “I like him, he’s spunky!” she says. Yeah, because apparently the woman who’s two days older than the damn earth itself is more openminded than people half her age.

*

By the time Tony gets home Stephen is howling with laughter. “I can’t believe you started quoting studies at them,” he says, shaking his head.

“Its not my fault they’re idiots, someone had to tell them they’re wrong and also I have an eidetic memory. Figured I’d put it to good use,” he says.

Stephen shakes his head, “well, at least you made that marginally less painful and gran likes you so there’s that. And she’s not easy to impress- she didn’t like actual Christine.”

Tony smiles, “she knew you weren’t going to last or at least that’s what she told me. And also she’s still convinced Christine is a lesbian even though I’m pretty sure she’s bisexual. But she seems to think we’re good together and she’s also completely convinced your father isn’t actually your father. She’s certain your mother cheated on him at some point but given the fact that she’s Asian and the guy she thinks is your actual father is white it’d be basically impossible to tell. Which is how she explains how fucking tall you are.” Turns out the woman, despite her age, is quite spry and has a lot of opinions that she’d been happy to share with Tony. But her conspiracies on Stephen’s parentage were his favorite and, to humor the woman, he agreed to run a DNA test to confirm or deny who Stephen’s father is.

Stephen lets out a long, drawn out sigh that indicates he’s heard this before. “I’ve told her a million times there is no way more than one person would be willing to sleep with my mother. I’m shocked one person was willing to sleep with my mother and if it weren’t for the pictures I’d assume I’d been kidnapped as a child.”

“Yeah, but apparently your actual father is a very tall Scandinavian man and I think your grandmother is on to something. I looked up the average height in Nepal and you’re a literal foot taller than that. You’d be a giant there,” he says.

“And if we’re going by the average height in Italy, you’d be a woman,” Stephen says, giving Tony an irritated look.

“Rude,” Tony mumbles.

*

Stephen settles an arm around Tony’s waist, “I think maybe we should have waited until she died to get married,” he says, eyeing his grandmother talking to Peter.

“I’ve always wanted a grandson that isn’t a massive prick, you seem like a lovely young man,” she says, grinning happily.

Tony looks up at Stephen, who is indeed his father’s child, “your grandma gives off chaotic trickster vibes, I’m half convinced she’s immortal.” 

Stephen sighs, “you probably aren’t aren’t wrong,” he says.

“I don’t think Stephen is that bad,” Peter says in Stephen’s defense not that it works out in his favor given his grandma’s reaction.

“Honey I’m old, but my senses are still working just fine. He’s an arrogant little shit,” she says. Tony doesn’t think he’s ever seen a grandmother swear that much but when he met all her spunky granny friends last week he’d been subjected to a bunch of sex jokes and talk of dildos so he’s not really surprised anymore. Even if he genuinely had no clue that grandmothers made sex jokes.

“I think I’ve earned my arrogance,” Stephen mumbles, coming to his own defense.

“That doesn’t explain why you’ve been like this your whole life. Take some lessons from Peter, he’s humble,” she tells him and Tony snorts and starts laughing. 

“Our wedding is gunna be awesome,” he says.

#ironstrange #tony x stephen strange #alternate universe #fanfiction #writing #coming out fic

[cruelsister-moved2]

you know i love my family bla bla bla and i know them knowing im a lesbian it will be not be an issue but i really dont want them to know, they will know one day if i'll get a gf lol but till then i dont talk abt my love life with any of them. The main reason is because i don't want to deal with whatever misconceptions they have around homosexuality. There are two things I clearly remember, not that my family talk about gay issues so these two are the only ones that made me go "hmmm". My cousin is wlw, she is married, and when we got the news (by text) I remember my mother saying something like "I wonder how she must have felt when her mother would dress her with skirts and dresses" and then i dont remember more lol my cousin dresses maculine for context, idk that comment seemed so unnecessary. The other moment i remmeber is when i was watching The Wire with my sisters and there is a character who is a lesbian and she presents masculine and my sister was like "i didn't like how the lesbian character had to be a stereotype and "act like a man" this really made me mad, i remember i replied to her like what she has saying was not it but i didn't said much because otherwise i felt she will know i'm a lesbian asdfd. Idk, it was just (I'm 26 y.o btw) sometimes I think i will tell them im a lesbian, but then i remmeber these comments and im like yeah no.... especially because they have this view regarding gender non conforming; masculine and butch lesbians. I dress masculine so yeah, I wish they didn't think like that, because i dont want to explain myslef. But who knows, maybe they will say nothing and im just painting a scenario that may not happen.

i so get you with this its why I took a while to come out to my family too. i knew they wouldn't kick me out or anything but i just didn't want them to be awkward and uncomfortable. i also hate talking about my love life and feelings with them like i just dont talk about personal things like that with them. i only came out bc i wanted to be free with my gf and not have to sneak around. it depends how your relationship is with your family but I really don't think more than that is any of their business, im just like here's who I'm dating btw.

you don't need to come out if you don't want to even if it's not because you feel unsafe or anything. if you get a girlfriend you can decide how you want to handle it then but i didnt come out until like last year. your family also might already know or at least have an inkling, like my mum used to always make annoying comments that I realised were her way of trying to probe and she actually stopped after I came out.

i know how annoying the weird comments can be and I was always so anxious of being othered or misunderstood & its so frustrating. when i came out to my mum I was basically like, im just letting you know & I don't want you to comment on it or anything LOL and it was pretty fine, we talk about it occasionally when I want to but she knows she isnt invited to be nosy.

also im really sorry that your family have stupid opinions about masc lesbians specifically, that's a whole other layer to it -_-; i just avoid talking about that side of things with straight people at all because they just don't get it but it's harder when it might affect how they see you. I guess one way of looking at it is if they see you just being comfortably masculine it might start to challenge the stereotypes they have, especially since a lot of them rely on dehumanisation. not that u have to sit them down and explain but just being around someone can challenge your biases especially when it's someone you love.

but yeah, for me as someone who's quite private i was happy just to let my family know I'm seeing my girlfriend and leave it at that. you don't need to explain or justify your sexuality or dressing masc, you can just say you date women which is the only part that's really relevant to them. and if people try asking about it you can just say that being masc is just what's comfortable and natural for you and not invite them to pry.

i hope that helps a little <3 I've been in this exact situation and it's so frustrating and not really an experience anyone talks about its either super loving accepting family or vicious homophobes. I always kinda felt like a failure or something for not coming out even though it was safe to do so, but that's so stupid. coming out is entirely for your benefit not anyone else's, so right now if it feels like the costs outweigh the benefits then there's no reason to!!

#ask #anon #also I thought I'd never be able to and eventually I just felt ready #so if it doesn't feel right rn then just take ur time #so happy for ur cousin btw 💜

[reclaiming-womanhood]

About

OP is NOT a libfem.

OP critiques when feminism works against itself.

OP believes ya’ll overreact on here

OP’s inbox is open

——

Gender Beliefs

- there are 2 genders. If you’re intersex you can get a pass but most choose one or the other

- you need disphoria to even consider yourself trans why is this an argument ya’ll are the dumbest of all.

- non-binary is really dumb stop being ashamed of your gender and face the facts. Society will still treat you like the gender you look like.

- no fluffy pronouns or kin

-mogai is dumb as fuck

-OP believes there is a difference between a trans woman and a woman but thats obvious however, you shouldn’t hide that experience because it’s not “bad”

- OP has been in a 2 LTR with an intersex trans woman who hates the trans community if TERF trans person is a thing she’s it (we’re still friends). And is friends with many trans women who hates how trans people are not critical of discussing gender or passing and has become a shit general show where nobody can criticize (even trans people. If you make 0 effort to pass you’re stupid.

——

Sexuality

- you can’t help who you’re sexually attracted to. Don’t be mean to people for not liking your genitals or appearance.

- bisexuals are amazing

- you can be a straight radfem

- lgbt community is tearing itself to shit

- ace is not inherently lgbt

- MAP is not lgbt (do I even have to say this???)

——

Femininity

- feminine is beautiful and one of the best parts of being a girl. 10/10

——-

Womanhood

- (see above for trans belief)

- women are universally defined by how we are treated by society as women. We all share this experience as women. Majority (i have to say this or else ill be flamed) of us bio women are united by our biology and experiences with hormones and reproductive issues.

- it is a woman’s duty to help and inform other women and deter creepy dudes from them.

- gender based oppression against women is real. Using silencing tactics have just changed.

-abortion is a choice

-motherhood is a choice and OP hates kids but supports the rights of moms

——

Mensturation

- vagina is cool 💯 it has been historically not depicted in art or seen as “dirty” in abrahamic religions so it is not talked about. The vagina is important to many of us for this reason and is why lots of us go nuts over it.

- freebleeding doesnt mean what you think it means... the weird tumblr version is a biohazard

- always give out tampons and pads if you can!

——

Law / Politics

-men can be raped by women, women can be raped by women

- boards of directors, japanese diet, parliaments, congress and senate should be 50% Women and we should strive for that

- more rights for working moms and women who want to breed

- yes breast feeding in public

- rape is a serious thing not to be thrown around or made fun of and sexual misconduct is serious.

- equal wages for genders. Yes I’ve seen relevant arguments on why pay gap isnt real but if you look again at some jobs who report how many women work there and how many men and see the pay rates you can see why this is still an issue.

____

Religion

- a lot of religions, Especially abrahamic faiths, are inherently homophobic and misogynistic as fuck like why is this even debatable lol.

- Islam oppresses women globally and I’m not about to deny that. You say a few radicals but entire countries believe this soooo....¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I don’t see how Islam (at its core) and feminism can work together. You can believe what you want but also look at memri tv

-fgm is horrible

——

The Shit Men Flame Over Online

- mansplaining is real. Sooo real.

- manspreading is a stupid concept I agree just don’t be a dick on public transport is a general rule for all

- if you have to chime into every women’s issue with BUT MENNN pls stop. We can and should talk about your problems but you can care about two things at the same time

- ya’ll dont know how to behave on dating sites for real...

- I’m personally not angry at “all men” and like dudes. Majority of my friends are dudes who support me and my beliefs.

- I would greatly welcome the island of women in power though like an unironic matriarchy ....literally

- circumcision is amoral and awful. It is not as bad as FGM but it is still a barbaric practice.

- look at society... look reallll hard... beliefs tend to be reactionary. if you can’t see why we have these feelings please look harder. If you don’t see why we feel this way (even if you disagree) you’re stupid.

——

#about #op #reclaiming-feminism #feminism #terfs please interact #terf #radfem #radical feminism #about op

[syntaxeme]

[A/N: So, Jean and I have been talking a lot about our superhero babies lately. Charisma here is one of those. They’re part of the East Coast team, I think, the ones stationed at the Academy. Anyway they’re a grumpy healer and I love them a lot.]

Name: Bao Hanh Phang

Callsign: Charisma

Species: demigod (?) half-human, half-…something else

Age: 28

Gender/sexuality: nonbinary (afab, they/them), pansexual

Ethnicity: Vietnamese-American

Alignment: Chaotic Good 

Body/body language: 5’, petite, soft. They definitely have no muscle definition to speak of. They’re not a physical combatant—though they do have a weapon to defend themselves. They didn’t always, which is the reason their right arm, from just below the shoulder, is prosthetic. Their prosthetic is permanently attached, as it’s connected to their nervous system in order to be fully functional. (That process was incredibly shitty to go through, but they’re not a fan of idealistic quick-and-painless healing anyway.) It’s made of some light but sturdy non-metal material and was provided by the Academy, as they were injured doing Academy work. Their skin is sort of olive toned; their mother is Vietnamese, and their physical appearance seems to mostly take after her (aside from their hair color). Their face is pretty round, as are most of their features. They have a severe case of Resting Bitch Face. 

Hair: ginger, thick, usually messy. It reaches about to their waist, but they usually have it bound up somehow (without much care) so it’s out of their eyes.

Eyes: monolid, dull green 

Background: Charisma is the child of a mortal woman and a god—at least that’s what people say. It’s difficult to get them to talk about their family, and when they do, they’re evasive. They were raised by their mother without a whole lot of influence from their other parent and lived the first 26 years of their life passing as a human. That is, they’re pretty new to the whole superhero thing. They went to medical school with the intention of being a doctor, but a very persuasive acquaintance convinced them that someone with their abilities would be useful to the hero community. So there they are at the Academy, teaching and healing and occasionally doing field work. They teach Human Anatomy, basic Theology, and very occasionally Magic Theory. They’re also involved with any first aid/medical training that goes on.                    During their first year with the Academy, one of their first field missions, they were taken captive by an enemy faction in order to heal an injured teammate, which they did. The baddies had every intention of returning them to the Academy when they were done, but after seeing the extent of their healing abilities, one of their leaders determined that they were too great an asset for “the enemy” to have. It was quickly made clear that they had no interest in joining up, so the leader decided to eliminate them instead. The others managed to keep him from killing them, but he did mangle their right arm beyond repair. They have a number of other scars down their right side, but most of them are covered by their clothing. It was a few months before they received their prosthetic (designed by some techie at the Academy), so it’s been about a year and a half now since they got it.

Powers: 

Spoken influence – This power isn’t really an absolute as in, “they speak it and it’s true.” It only works to affect other people’s thoughts and feelings; you could just say that they’re very persuasive. There is magic behind it, however. It only functions in the form of a statement or a command; questions and suggestions don’t work. It also has to be spoken aloud and clearly heard. These statements can range anywhere from “don’t worry; you’re going to be fine” to “it’s not as scary as it seems” to “you are going to live, damn it.” While they may not necessarily be true, they’re believable, which makes the psychological ones the most effective. The issue with this is that they can’t really turn it off, so they’ve learned to be careful of how they choose their words. (On a sort of separate note, this makes them come across as very trustworthy to anyone who talks to them; it’s almost impossible to suspect them of lying.)

Isolated condition reversal – This is a sort of time-reversal ability, but it has very specific conditions. Charisma’s “healing” is more like “un-damaging”; they can isolate a particular object and rewind it to its previous condition within a span of a few hours. Most often, they apply this to injuries on their patients, e.g. reversing a broken bone or a torn/cut muscle, etc. It can also be applied to other objects, however, such as a broken window or a wilting flower.

The longer the period of the “rewind,” the more energy it takes on their part.

The larger and more complex the subject, the more difficult it is for them; living things are invariably harder to work with.

The longest rewind they’ve ever done was eight hours, and it was so draining that they passed out for two days afterward. It’s essential for them to get to the subject in question ASAP.

They’ve never tried it, but they theorize that if they were to be around someone almost immediately after time of death, they might be able to reverse even that. However, 1) it would be incredibly difficult for them because it’s both a full-body rewind and who knows how much time would need to be taken off in order to make the body viable again in the first place, and 2) there’s the matter of a “soul,” if you want to call it that, and whether or not it would still be there when the body wakes up. They have absolutely no interest in ever testing this theory, but if worse comes to worse, it is still there in the back of their mind.

Personality: Impatient, irritable, more caring than they’d like to admit. They mostly get frustrated when people are hurt due to their own dumb or reckless decisions. They have little sympathy for that, though of course they’ll heal anyone who needs it. (Decisions made for the sake of helping others are an exception.) They prefer to use conventional medicine when possible, partially on principle (“things aren’t just magically fixed”) and partially because their healing magic takes a lot of energy, depending on the severity of the injury.             They’re pretty argumentative, but that doesn’t mean they don’t listen; they just want you to explain yourself properly, and if you can’t, reconsider what you’re saying. Contrary to what many people must think, they really don’t hate everyone, and they feel bad when they snap or realize they’re being a little too snarky. Their temper and tongue are just quick to react to what they perceive as foolishness or lack of consideration. When it matters and they know it, they can be more compassionate. Their teammates have noticed that they seem to be much more encouraging in the field. For some reason.             In terms of romance, they’re very straightforward. They don’t play hard to get. They don’t “make you work for it.” If they like someone, they see no point in tiptoeing around it. And if that’s a turn-off, oh well. They’re unfailingly honest—with the way their words affect people, they have to be, or they risk being completely misunderstood—and that’s not about to be compromised for anyone else’s sake.

Misc.:

They grew up English/Vietnamese bilingual and learned ASL in college, so they’re fluent in all three. Their mother strongly prefers Vietnamese, so that’s almost always what they use when speaking to her.

They don’t really do the whole “secret identity” thing, nor do they do the costume/mask thing. The only traditionally superhero-ish thing they do is the nickname; they go by Charisma to pretty much everyone, including people at the Academy. Their real name isn’t exactly a secret, but they introduce themselves as Charisma, so you would have to either ask directly or investigate their Academy files in order to learn it. It’s probably listed on the syllabi for the courses they teach.

They have a very high tolerance for alcohol; if given the choice, they’d pick beer over water most of the time.

They often curse without thinking too much of it. It’s only when people look at them funny or react strongly that they start to think “oh was that not appropriate here?”

They’re much more likely to be patient and understanding when it comes to kids (like 13 and younger) for some reason. This is one of few aspects of their personality they prefer not to openly admit to and very possibly has something to do with their weird parent situation. They’re not in any way interested in having children (that is, being pregnant and giving birth), but maybe they do have some parental feelings that they just…try really hard to ignore.

It’s not uncommon, particularly since they’re working with a lot of non-human or superhuman people, for their scientific curiosity to get the best of them, which leads to them studying how their patients and coworkers function biologically. They try to refrain from asking invasive questions on the subject, but it doesn’t make them any less curious.

Clothing:

They have a particular fondness for crop-tops, and their favorite color is powder blue.

They don’t do finger/hand accessories but wear lots of earrings. And probably sparkly things in their hair.

Although they’re nonbinary and will tell you so if you say or suggest otherwise, they don’t make any particular effort to look androgynous; they don’t try to hide their curves, and their pattern/color/textile selection could easily be called “girly.” They like embroidery (particularly flowers) and wide, loose sleeves. They wear a lot of blue jeans, usually light-colored ones. And boots. Probably Doc Martens. 

#Charisma #Im love them #superheroes #my OCs #I should give these kids a group name....

[soc3300-lifeart]

“Two Sides, One Coin” - Afrah Rasheed, 12/15/2019. Acrylic on canvas. 

Click on the pictures for a better resolution.

This is the painting for the first interview I conducted with Maria. Maria is a 20 year old woman (she/her/hers) who moved to the Midwest from Puerto Rico when she was 12 years old. She currently lives with her younger sister, two parents, and some extended family, all who play a significant role in her life.

This painting embodies what she has taken from both her Puerto Rican culture and the Midwestern culture she is living in now. The two sides reflects these different cultures, and the one coin is her life.

She discusses her Puerto Rican heritage first. She describes that the strong emphasis on personal space in the U.S. was initially jarring to her, as “Especially between different genders, our standard greeting is to kiss on the cheek, and in America it’s considered, not to say taboo, but it isn’t standard.”

The grandmother figure is present because of the matriarch role that is often present in Latin American households. Here are some quotes Maria stated when it came to shaping her life and her gender identity:

I think in Latin America there’s more of a drastic gender division than in white America. The family household is more of a woman’s domain, like very matriarchal. That’s sort of what was expected of me, since I am the oldest daughter, and that’s how the matriarch role is passed on, from eldest daughter to eldest daughter. Like my great-grandmother…it’s weird to think about how my mom was a matriarch, or more like a matriarch in training. In my mom’s side of my family, we always had my great-grandmother, and everything revolved around her approval, and she was the center of my family. Then that role was passed on to my mom. Then we moved here and that shook the dynamic…then my great-grandmother died…and we have more family that moved here and now my mom is very much the matriarch of the family. I don’t know, I feel like that’s just something that is expected of me eventually…it’s less of a serving role than in white America, where the mother in Latin America is less providing and more establishing. The father is still the breadwinner, he’s supposed to be masculine or whatever, but the mother is very much the center and the strength of the family, essentially. 

Gender role was…violence and aggression is not a female expectation, so that got me in a lot of [trouble]. I’ll be talking to my mom sometimes and she would say it was so embarrassing, walking to the principal’s office, and how I was the only girl being reprimanded over behavioral issues. That’s…again I was way too young to recognize gender expectations, but in hindsight…well not in hindsight but now talking to my mom…I realize that was not expected of me, being a girl…I couldn’t be aggressive or violent. My issues were cracked down on…because people are of the mindset of “raising girls is so much harder than raising boys”, when it’s not. What ends up happening is that they (society) is more lenient on boys and they don’t sort their issues out as much. That’s what I see with my baby cousin, who is being raised by a whole commune, and now we are seeing the repercussions of what happens when you don’t raise a boy right. There are a lot of issues where my mom talks about how… there are a lot of issues that they haven’t focused on or corrected because he’s a boy, and boys are expected to be immature, violent, aggressive, insensitive…and they don’t correct those. I am a girl. When I did half of those behaviors, that was something they cracked down on, and they did that to me because that was not what they expected of me, and because he’s a boy, those behaviors are seen as normal.

Ugh, I think my parents are embodiments of what a woman and man in Puerto Rican culture should be. My dad maybe less so…as much as I hate him, ha! I don’t really hate him, but as much as I am angry at him all the time, there are things that I applaud. I feel like he’s a guy who doesn’t know what toxic masculinity is because other people realize he’s breaking toxic masculinity when he talks about how much he loves his wife. He refuses to talk [bad] about my mom, no matter what they say about their own wives, because she’s his best friend. My parents always get stressed out when they’re apart...And my mom, she likes to say she’s a tomboy, and I think that has a little internal misogyny in it. She’s still…family is her focus and she’s like small, beautiful, very intelligent, very reasonable…not reasonable…She’s trusting. She always seems to know what to do. My family thinks of her as someone who knows what to do, they trust her, if they have problems they go to her. Again she fell into the matriarch role, which is Woman™ in Puerto Rico. So my parents fit very much into their gender roles.

Maria was also open when talking about her discovering her bisexuality and exploring her gender identity. 

Not really, but I have definitely questioned my sexuality. But in terms of gender…no. I was a huge homophobe, and as I got closer to my friend group…seeing them being very open about their sexuality, and these are female, women, that are attracted to women, and they would  talk about what that’s like and what they’ve felt…and it took me a couple years to reevaluate myself and to realize that I’m not entirely heterosexual. It was a reoccurring joke that I was questioning my heterosexuality for the longest time until I embraced being bisexual.

Again, grew up a woman, assigned female at birth, expected female for the rest of my life, and the heterosexual expectation of me…I would say “hindered” in the sense that my parents are not the people who could consider non-heterosexuality “viable”, or even consider the possibility... knowing that my parents might not embrace that fact…I feel like I was scared for a long time. I was terrified, that bisexuality resonated with me and as I got older, I realized my attraction is not exclusive to men. My parents still don’t know. They still think I’m straight. And I don’t want to think about what might happen if they realize I’m not.

--------

Much of her gender identity was shaped by the matriarch role she observed and that she was expected to grow into, and viewing her parents who strongly embodied Puerto Rican gender roles. It was also largely influenced by her close friendships with other bisexual and lesbian women, and trans friends. Lastly, she encouraged others to educated themselves on LGBT+ issues.

Friends and social media, for sure. The social media I’m limited to is Tumblr, which is very much a left-wing platform, especially the people I surround myself with, who are all very left-minded..It’s opened my eyes. It’s just not memes and laughs, it’s very often issues that are brought up and its very serious stuff and my friends are very much in the same community. It’s stuff that makes me introspect. My friends are very involved in the LGBT community, very passionate about gender identity, gender studies, LGBTQ+ rights. You know if you’re surrounding yourself with these people all the time, it makes you think. It makes you realize stuff. In terms of other people learning, it’s finding the right community. I know there are resources on many campuses. In my college, there’s the gender and sexuality center and that’s the LGBT community.

This post was published 12/22/2019.

#1 #Interview #Maria

[scifimagpie]

Political Oroboros: Why Marx Is Not Enough

First of all, I realise the title of this piece is inflammatory, so let me lay out some caveats.

I am absolutely not conservative. (One of the first things to know about leftist fighting and discussions online is that 'liberal' has two different meanings; the broad sense in which conservative commentators use it, and the more specific and technically correct sense that leftists sometimes use it - as well as the tertiary sense of, "anyone who isn't quite radical enough.') 

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a liberal in the sense of condoning a capitalist system; I do find the most common ground with proponents of democratic socialism. However, some elements of communist ideology do seem solid, although I tend to like many of the ideas I've seen from anarcho-syndicalists more.

Confused by those terms? You're not alone, but some of the hippest trends among the youth of today are not just trap music and street wear - it's political and philosophical discourse. Different streams of communism and anarchism and debating the concepts of idealists through the ages is pretty great, but treating those ideas as a firm road map and, perhaps, the only acceptable solution or map, is not so excellent.

After several weeks of careful surveillance and investigation, I also came to some unsettling and unsavory conclusions.

Source 

There's a weird and disconcerting mix of progressive and regressive ideas in this new wild west of a political movement; using "gay" and "retard" as insults in this year, and talking about second-wave feminist gender concepts (Penis =  man! Vagina = woman! are not scientifically validated ideas anymore, even if they have held sway for a long time) as though they're based on reality is...a special kind of confusing, frankly.  The person mentioned below isn't actually the "leader" of Antifa (antifacism is a general belief and approach, not an organization; the Black Bloc is something different) but the points they're making shouldn't actually have to be made. And yet, here we are. (To clarify: this person's opinion is, as far as I'm concerned, correct, because it's a summary of historical facts.)

We can try to tweak the perspective on things and change the way someone is seen, but facts have this tendency to assert themselves. And when those facts take the form of thousands of dead bodies, politely covering them up or scootching them out of the way is a bit harder. In the case of leaders such as Winston Churchill, it's been easier to laud their successes and forget the death toll because they were victorious, but it doesn't erase his contributions to the Bengal Famine and his decision to test gas weapons on Kurdish villagers. 

Yet even when we debate the value and leadership of dictators, history tends to reassert itself. 

“History isn’t like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always—eventually—manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve.”  ― Terry Pratchett, Mort

 Nobody is good enough

Of course, just because someone agrees with history (!) and is willing to unflinchingly consider mass murderers as guilty of their crimes doesn't mean they'll avoid participating in the cannibalistic discussions of leftist politics. A particularly difficult issue has been criticism of the Youtuber Contrapoints, who has both been lauded for her very real effects in de-radicalizing extremists, and criticized for fumbling her way through understanding non-binary genders (and struggling to deal with the flood of online criticism afterwards.) But merely liking a figure who is problematic (or worse, Trash, if they have failed one time too many) can be grounds for a friendship breaking up or the sort of extremely tense, stressful discussion that keeps one awake for hours afterwards.

As I said on Facebook one night, "Whiny comment of the night: it would be easier to unite the left if the radicals weren't so dead-set on everyone just converting to their beliefs as much as possible.And Seems like you can learn about Marxism, cultural history, feminism, and all of that...but it's impossible to unlearn American cultural hegemonic approaches and seeing violence as the default/best option."  But to clarify, this isn't speculation without sourcing. I did a bit of an investigation into a few leftist pages, and it was really unnerving to see the number of pro-gun and "eat the rich" and "fetch the guillotines" sorts of remarks and posters. The thing is, we've all done that dance before, and it's going on in other countries at the moment. Riots and protests are excellent when they work, but sometimes, they don't - and we don't talk about what happens when they don't. 

The risk of small government

At the risk of sounding like a cranky old lady, smaller governments are still governments. People who think some military junta of kids with guns can replace all the architecture and organizational levels of "the state" are welcome to try working in a city planning office as an admin assistant some time. Having done that myself, I would welcome anyone who wants to just replace and rewrite all those land laws, which by the way exist for reasons, to maybe take a civil engineering course or two.

And if you DON'T want to replace all that architecture, just get rid of the bad stuff - congrats, that's actually just reformism, which is still a far cry from "just accepting things the way they are." 

As a fan and casual scholar of cults, I've had many opportunities to see examples of small, ideologically-driven communities turn rotten. Frankly, I wouldn't trust my own town to just secede and govern itself, even though I'm very pleased with our mayor's decisions. I know too much about white people and sociology and Christianity (as well as other religions and groups) to trust that small, self-governing, autonomous groups will be fine on their lonesome. We're kinda in a globalized society with many, many supply chains. If you don't like that, get working on a time machine.

Yet even if one were to travel back in time, we've always had international trade and whatnot, and isolationism has never worked especially well. Also it's how you get fascism in the first place, so...history says it's how you make the exact monster you're trying to fight. Worst of all, these defenses of fascists and murderers do nothing but divide us along sectarian points of conflict. 

Sometimes I worry the Revolution will just be online and never actually get offline

— 🏴🛡Justin🛡🏴 (@sharkle82) July 19, 2019

What do we do? 

Honestly, my approach lately has just been to ignore Leftbook and debate spaces and not engage. Trying to discuss theory and concepts has led to some arguments over the applications of violence that have, honestly, made me stop trusting and just lose certain friends altogether. One otherwise brave and locally committed person said, "violence is neither good nor bad. It's a tool." Although I agree that self-defense actions are not exactly violent, I just don't think we should glorify aggression, or be eager to shed blood. It tends to lead to bad results, and it's uncomfortably similar to the stance we're opposing. My take?

Personally, I don't trust anyone who thinks the problems will all be fixed if we just kill a few of the right people.

The people who sit around day-dreaming about 19th century revolutionaries aren't necessarily the ones helping to, say, actually fight the battles that need fighting here and now. It may seem ridiculous to say, "hey, watch out for this," and also, "but you can basically ignore it," but frankly, that approach has worked extremely well for me in real life. 

The key is this. What do you want to accomplish, in practical terms? Forget about "praxis" and "theory"; what are the concrete, fundamental changes you want to see, and the results you want in society and your community? Every change comes incrementally. Evolution is unavoidable. However, we have an existing system that we can use - and dare I say it, that we can apply our strength to if we're determined enough. 

How to change the world 

Writing actual letters to politicians in my city, province, and country, engaging in the community fight for preservation of a local Safe Consumption Site, signing petitions for various environmental protection causes, and applying pressure to politicians, as well as keeping an eye on actual local white supremacists, fascists, and extremists has done more and had a greater impact than anything in my decade or so of arguing with people on the internet. 

My only regret is that I didn't start using my skills in the real world much, much sooner. It turns out that all the people who insist that those in power won't listen to "us" are, unequivocally, wrong. And while I do have white and cis privilege to thank for some of my results, I would also argue that we on the left must not presume our own helplessness and confine ourselves to training arenas online.  Get out there. Talk to politicians. Stay up to date on the news and follow multiple sources, rather than reading 150-year-old essays. And above all, embrace the power of both individual actions and solidarity. 

I have more to say about this topic, but instead of creating another series, a few essays may be cropping up. Until then, however, I have real work to do, both in the political world and out of it. For one thing, books aren't going to finish themselves! 

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and Max the cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

#politics #discourse #tactics #leftism #liberal #how to #debate #activism

[edrecoveryprobs]

RE: Anons 9-16

In this post:

#9: how to provide lowkey support to a friend at a group meal

#10: when you have to do a meal log

9. Hello! I was wondering if you could give me some advice? I'm going out to eat with a group of friends for prom and one of the girls recently got out of an in-patient treatment program for her eating disorder two months ago. I was wondering if if there was any way I could help and make it less stressful for her? Obviously I don't want to baby her or anything like that, and it'll be just like any other time we've gone out, but I want the night the night to be fun for her, you know?

You’re such a sweetheart!! If she’s mentioned it to you before, you could maybe pull her aside at the beginning of the night. “Hey, how are you doing? Idk if tonight might be stressful for you, so let me know what I can do to help make it easier” Mirror whatever tone she’s putting out -- if she’s acting tough, keep it light. If she looks petrified, have a more gentle, softer tone. You might offer to do some kind of hand signal if she wants to meet outside to calm down.

At the table, keep your menu out slightly longer than she does, and if she’s having trouble deciding, ask the waiter for more time so she doesn’t have to. Menus are really hard for me, because I go back and forth in my head about each item listed. It takes me a lot longer and it can be embarrassing to have to ask. Also, EAT FOOD! Normalize eating a normal amount of food! If anyone at the table is like loudly bragging about whatever diet, or beach season, or how fat/thin anyone is, change the subject.

If her eyes are glazed over like she’s watching a horror movie in her head, nudge her and then show her something goofy -- like putting the wrapper on a straw and blowing at at someone, or mimicking a teacher/whoever using the silverware as a mustache, etc. Or, find a way to naturally direct the conversation to something she’s excited about. “Yeah, I love their new song! Actually Shelley, you saw them when they came to the city, right?” It’s a nice way to be invited back to the party, especially if you’re doing that for everyone who has been rather quiet.

If she gets up to leave, give her a couple minutes to herself. After that, go outside/in the bathroom (if appropriate) and just check in on her. “Hey, just wondering if you’re doing okay? We miss you at the table!”

Try especially to keep her engaged after the meal. Perhaps suggest going for a walk or a drive, somewhere there won’t be an opportunity to purge. She might be quiet or seem moody, but that’s okay. Give her a couple of minutes and then casually invite her back to the party a la my previous suggestions.

I hope that helps! No matter what happens, your heart is in the right place, and just knowing that is sure to help her feel better than she would have otherwise. I hope y’all had a great prom!

10. In a couple weeks I'm seeing a dietician for the first time. I'm still quite early in recovery, and I'm worried about the food journal I need to complete before the first appointment. I'm afraid that essentially having to make a list of everything I'm eating is going to be triggering and my ED will turn it into another excuse for restricting, like "you need to be eating as little as possible so you won't be judged" or something. Do you have any tips for dealing with this? Thanks! :)

I would talk to your dietitian about it. Does the journal need to be exact? A lot of the time accuracy isn’t what they’re going for, they’re more looking to see general things -- what nutrients are you generally getting enough of? Which are you not getting? How is the balance of things? Etc. No sense going through all the stress of it if they don’t really need you to.

If they do need it to be exact, then brace yourself for a triggering 48 hours.

Aggressively remind yourself that she’s not there to be wowed by how sick you are, she’s there to figure out how to help you. And she needs your cooperation to do so.

Like actually. I did this and I had the same “I need to eat as little as possible!” thing, and she straight up just didn’t believe me, and was annoyed because me altering my diet just made it harder for her to figure out what my normal eating habits were like, which made her advice less useful to me.

Make a voice memo when you eat instead of writing it all down. Then you can list them all out later in one go, so you can’t pause and hyperfocus on one day or one meal.

11. How do you deal with trauma in recovery? I'm doing really well ed-wise; not even seeing a dietitian anymore, eating intuitively, etc. However I realized recently I think I have complex ptsd from longstanding emotional ... stuff and I don't know how to recover from that without relapsing (I have strong motivators not to relapse though). I do have a therapist rn but I'm not sure if she's specialized in trauma or not. Thanks!

Ask your therapist! Also keep in mind that you can start working on your trauma issues one bit at a time. Eating disorders are often intertwined with trauma issues so you’re definitely not alone. Remember to continue your support for your ED recovery as you address other issues so that you can improve your overall health.

Personally, I’ve found that the more I talk about trauma stuff, or at least write about it, the better I feel, as long as I balance it with non-trauma stuff. Once you have expressed/explored a thought in a journal entry, for example, then go do something unrelated to care for yourself and any of the feelings that got brought up.

I also have found it immensely helpful to talk to people who have experienced similar situations. A big part of abuse is gaslighting and invalidation, so helping you rebuild your trust in your reality is really important.

Mostly, keep talking to your therapist and remember that you can get through this <3

12. This might sound like a weird question, but do people diagnosed with OSFED do inpatient treatments/residential treatment?

 Absolutely!

13. Is it normal to have facial swelling during recovery? My face looks so puffy and its bringing my self esteem down :(

I think that symptom is called edema, which is normal as your water/salt/electrolyte levels stabilize. But I’m also not a doctor, so you should really check out new symptoms with a doctor!

14. I was just scrolling through the recovery asks and read #11. I just wanted to thank you for your answer to that anon's question. Your words validated not only my years of struggle, but my year of recovery. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 💕

<3 <3 you’re very welcome

15. Is it possible I'm using my ed as a coping mechanism..?

That is very possible! A common thing among many ED’s is that the person suffering is using the ED to cope with other stressors in life. A very high number of people use their ED to cope, and if you find you are, that’s ok! With help, you can treat the ED and the underlying problems.

16. @mod 7, do u feel like u being trans intersects with your ed? I'm nb and I feel like I can't talk to anyone about how my anorexia & gender affect each other 🌻 tysm!! 💖

Honestly, nope! My ED and my gender identity don’t overlap at all, they are two separate things entirely. If yours do, that’s totally fine! It’s very common for people with gender identities outside of cis to use their ED to cope or change physical features of their bodies., However, that is nothing to be ashamed of. I am very lucky that my ED has not clung on to my gender identity, though it has baffled my treatment team a lot! :) Keep in mind that ED’s affect everyone in different ways, and there is no right way to present an ED. (all ways are wrong, disordered eating should not be in anyones life, not only does it suck but it ruins lives and is deadly. No one deserves that).

I hope that you can learn to feel no shame that your ED overlaps with your gender identity, because if that’s how it is, being honest about it and with yourself is a very important step to recovery and coping in healthy ways. I wish you the best of luck, and if you ever want to talk my blog is instadong.tumblr.com

#anonymous #ask #fanmail #trans #osfed #what to say #meal logs