#and I’m too scared to appeal because I’m scared I’ll get my blog deleted

[lustdotexe]

Everyday I come closer and closer to making an OnlyFans lol

#misc #genuinely so pissed off right now #and I’m too scared to appeal because I’m scared I’ll get my blog deleted #how do other people get away with posting the stuff that they do? #I miss the old tumblr fr #at this rate I’m going to get my blog deleted over something so stupid #aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa #okay rant over lol

[waywardrose]

On Babbushka

There is a group of well-known writers in the fandom who have been discouraged and put down by one of their own, Zannah - @babbushka​. It happens behind the scenes in DMs. It happens in posts and tags.

In DMs, she has started conversations with seemingly innocent questions. When she doesn't receive the response she was aiming for, she diverts the conversation to criticizing and humiliating the person. She has attacked writers for tagging—or not tagging—a post in a way she deems appropriate. She has gotten into arguments over how characters were portrayed and then tried to claim victimization when the other person wouldn't knuckle under.

She will appeal to her following to attack any fan or creator who has an opinion that differs from her own. She will encourage friends to send rude anons. Those same friends will also DM the target with rude remarks.

Several creators have stopped writing altogether because of their interactions with her.

We are tired of being discouraged. We are tired of being talked down to. We are tired of being bullied. Enough is enough. Under the cut we share our stories, let the chips fall where they may. It's up to you, the reader, to decide whether to support her.

We can only warn up-and-coming writers, artists, fans, and supporters of her behavior.

-

Hope - @callmehopeless

The Australian bushfires of the 2019-2020 season were nightmarish—for those living through it and those witnessing. As the season went on, cries for help increased. Joaquin Phoenix used the time during his Best-Actor acceptance speech at the Golden Globes to call for unity, action, and accountability. Regardless of what we may think of him, it was a thoughtful speech.

Hope, who is an Australian, found Mr. Phoenix's message encouraging and reblogged a gifset of his speech.

That morning, Zannah made a post about Mr. Phoenix's shady past and his association with a known sexual predator. The main reason wasn't because his speech was inappropriate or not timely, but because she didn't think he should be the one to get the attention over other actors who had spoken of the bushfires during the Golden Globes.

While Hope confessed she was scared of the bushfires, scared for her loved ones, Zannah was more concerned with purity. To Zannah it was about the face of the message, not the message itself. It didn't matter that Mr. Phoenix was amplifying support for Australia, what did matter was that he had done bad things.

It was virtue signaling on Zannah's part.

Still, this remains a complicated argument. Can a person who has done bad things actually have something positive to add to a cause? Should we listen to a problematic person if they share an insight? Does it reflect poorly on us to agree with their isolated statement? Will we be canceled, too? What about the bigger picture?

In this case, the bigger picture was hundreds of homes were destroyed in the bushfires and families were displaced. People died, thousands of animals died. And it was because of climate change. Mr. Phoenix called for his rich peers to examine their respective lifestyles and to give back.

Yes, Mr. Phoenix has done bad things. Yes, he has associated with people who have done bad things. His words resonated with people on Tumblr, and they reblogged part of his speech. He said something that gave Hope hope.

Hope was asked by a third party how they could help. She came back with a resource guide for those who wanted to send aid to Australians.

When it became obvious Zannah wouldn't silence Hope, Zannah decided to sub-post about the interaction. There, she accused Hope of being a rape apologist for reblogging a gifset and finding a little comfort in it. Zannah placed her ego before someone who was facing a very real danger.

Side-eying an actor is one thing, shaming a person you know for finding solace during a scary time is another. Hope isn't responsible for which voice got picked up. The only "colors" being shown here are Zannah's. She put her own concerns about being perceived as morally pure above actually supporting a friend.

I'll keep this brief - I knew Zannah for many years. And on one of the lowest weeks of my life, when my suburb was burning down and I feared for my family: she convinced me I was a rape apologist for sharing Joaquin Phoenix's speech asking for action on bushfires. In all my life, I never felt more alone. To add insult to injury, she then posted memes mocking me - something that has stuck with me to this day.

I've had dear friends quit the fandom because of her kinkshaming. I've had people I love message me distraught over what she's said.

Enough is enough.

— @callmehopeless

-

Rose - @the-wayward-rose​

This PM exchange started after I tagged my reblog of Zannah's fic Feast (Cameron Bistle x Reader) with cw: white reader. I had been on her taglist, and I wanted to show support because I liked the fic overall. For context, the reason for my tag is because of this sentence:

"But then you're blushing so pretty and squeezing his hand affectionately and reaching for the handle to the passenger side of his car, and then you're laughing when he swats your hand away to open it for you, and then you're beckoning him down as if to ask a question – only to place a chaste kiss to his lips instead."

This is from Cameron's point of view.

She asked the reason for the tag, and I explained it was because of the use of "blush" to describe Reader's appearance.

She misunderstood my premise. I did not mean only white people blush.

According to Merriam-Webster, blush means "a reddening of the face especially from shame, modesty, or confusion" or "a red or rosy tint."

It is an autonomic response, though. It happens in all humans for body cooling and nonverbal communication. The main problem with using it universally is that melanin obscures the appearance of said autonomic response.

Here's an example of three runners:

The two pale women, left and center, are pink in the face. They are blushing. The woman of color on the right is likely blushing, too. However, the melanin in her skin obscures the blood in her cheeks. She is not pink.

That's the pitfall of the word "blush." The observer can't always see it. We know what it feels like. We all do it. The face and/or neck gets hot. The use of "blush" is shorthand in narrative, and I understand that. Nevertheless, when writing to cater to a reader-insert audience of unknown heritage, writers need to consider describing with universal terms.

Again, she misunderstood my premise. I clarified by asking how Cameron sees the Reader blush under an abundance of melanin:

She sidestepped the physiological explanation to go straight for justification. She tried to legitimize "blush" as "perhaps [this]" or "perhaps [that]" when I stated earlier that blush by definition is pink or is to redden. That's the logic. A noncommittal, covering-all-the-bases, complicated defense diluted the conversation.

With her earlier "I have friends of color, hence I can't be exclusionary" statement, I wasn't sure she would get my point. I take full responsibility for not explaining, too. I should've asked for some time to gather my thoughts, but I didn't. Truthfully, I was unprepared, because I didn't think my insignificant tag would be an issue.

Also, I was confused why she was trying to police my blog.

Her replies came rapidly—before I could mention my confusion—and felt aggressive in the moment. Maybe that wasn't her intention, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

That doesn't take away from the fact that words have meaning. It's why we use specific words. It's not understood in the narrative that her use of "blush" could mean a bunch of things. If I had known, I wouldn't have tagged as I did. How is a reader of color supposed to know that? How does Cameron see Reader's blush if she has darker skin?

As writers, we don't know who is reading. Someone could be very pale or very dark. A person with medium-toned skin can turn a shade of pink or red. A person with darker-toned skin will not. We can't assume all readers are medium to pale. We need to develop better writing skills. We have to include everyone.

Readers of color > White-writer feelings

When I stood my ground, she doubled down, stating I made no sense in my tagging and that I lacked the ability to learn from her. She then diverted the argument, attacking a ficlet I wrote a few days beforehand—which had nothing to do with this argument. The Christian imagery in that ficlet was upsetting to her and "in such poor taste" because she headcanons Flip Zimmerman (BlacKkKlansman) is 100% culturally and ethnically Jewish.

Flip stated in the movie:

"I'm Jewish, but I wasn't raised to be. It wasn't part of my life. I never thought much about being Jewish. Nobody around me was Jewish. I wasn't going to a bunch of Bar Mitzvahs. I didn't have a Bar Mitzvah. I was just another white kid. And now I'm in some basement denying it out loud[...] I never thought much about it. Now I'm thinking about it all the time. About rituals and heritage. Is that passing? Well then, I have been passing."

By his own admission, Flip is ethnically Jewish, but not culturally. These are two separate things, and that should be recognized. While Judaism is ethnically and culturally entwined in ways that other religions are not, one does not equate the other. You can be one and not the other.

At the time, I didn't want her to sic her 3000+ followers on me. I wasn't going to argue further. I asked myself if the ficlet was important and worth anon-hate and realized, no, it wasn't. It was a throw-away.

And since I'm not culturally Jewish, maybe I had misstepped. And since Zannah is both culturally and ethnically Jewish, I asked for her guidance.

She flatly refused my request. I don't know how I was supposed to learn from her if she wouldn't teach me.

It sounded as if she wanted me to delete the whole fic. Like none of it was worth saving because it hadn't been Zannah-approved. I had gone against her headcanon, and the fic was too offensive to fix.

The last sentence was supposed to cover her back from criticism, and it placed all the responsibility on me. Obviously, she was above such petty concerns as someone else's blog or writing. Never mind that she had just attempted to get me to change my tagging system and rewrite my ficlet. On my blog.

Later, I figured out she was only criticizing and not offering a constructive critique. Her argument was not in good faith. It was retaliation for not giving her the obedience she thought she was owed.

This is the passage that offended her:

"It’s because of the way he fucks you. Like it’s confession—though he’s never been much of a church-going man. Every touch, every thrust, is a truth between you. Even when it’s rough and greedy. It feels like flagellation when you claw his back. He wears the sin proudly."

This is what I edited it to:

"It’s because of the way he fucks you. Every touch, every thrust, is a truth between you. Even when it’s rough and greedy. It feels like flagellation when you claw his back. He wears your marks proudly."

Yeah, I'm not pleased with the revised passage. It's lost its teeth, but I keep it.

The anonymous message(s) she mentioned weren't very anonymous, either. Unfortunately, I've since deleted the two messages. I had apologized to Anon for disappointing them. I said that if the fic was too much, they should unfollow and block me. I meant that in a self-care way. At the same time, I did not—and do not—owe anyone discourse. I don't have to explain my art when it doesn't hurt anyone. And no one was hurt by some purportedly misplaced religious imagery.

I have been silent about this since late January/early February. I was embarrassed. I had been bullied into changing my blog and my fic by someone who proclaims to never do anything of the sort. I had been a fool. Since this conversation with her, I have been blocked/blacklisted by third-parties, most likely at her behest, when none of this exchange had been necessary.

-

Kassanovella - @kylorengarbagedump​​

Zannah's followers have asked her about Kassanovella’s Fix Your Attitude. For context, it's currently one of the most kudo-ed fics for Kylo Ren x Reader on AO3. It had a bit of a renaissance earlier in 2020 because a TikToker wrote a song for it.

There is nothing wrong with not wanting to read a fic. If the subject matter doesn't work for a reader, they don't have to partake. Easy as that. So, these tags aren't a problem.

However, it led to this...

She lashed out, calling Kassanovella's fic a joke. A joke.

She implied her fics should be as popular as Kassanovella's because she works really hard on them. She admitted she's tied to the metrics. She implied she wouldn't be writing fic if not for the external validation.

Here's the thing about fanfic: readers like what they like. They don't care about a writer's effort. They only know what works for them. They comment and give kudos, reblog and like what they connect with. That is not under the writer's control. All a writer can do is try their best and concentrate on what they're passionate about.

To bash another writer's fic because it's popular is disrespectful. This whole bitter rant drips of entitlement and is an affront to Kassanovella.

Some time later, an incident happened in a chatroom during a streaming event for veterans by Arts In the Armed Forces (Adam Driver's organization). At least one fan brought up Fix Your Attitude while waiting for Mr. Driver to make an appearance. They were also disrespectful towards the other presenters by demanding to see Mr. Driver. It caused a big stink within the fandom, and Zannah had some choice words.

While mentioning the fic during the livestream was inappropriate, it was also inappropriate to throw all fans of the fic under the bus as she did in her tag. Sweeping generalizations and incriminations of a subset of fans certainly reads as if she resents those fans for a perceived slight.

Next, Zannah made an earlier disparaging comment about Kassanovella's fic, Little Bird. Unfortunately, that comment is lost. However, the messages supporting the comment remain. (For context, Little Bird is a Kylo Ren x Reader The Handmaid's Tale AU. It has been well received in the fandom, earning thousands of kudos on AO3.)

What an author wants to write about and sexualize is their business. Fantasizing about being dominated by Kylo Ren isn't cringe. It's a sexual fantasy. Some sexual fantasies can be disturbing to those who do not share the same kink.

Sexual fantasies are like ice cream. There's a reason why there are different flavors.

Also, "I will never ever be a person that tells an author what to do or not do" is an absolute lie. As evident in this post, Zannah most definitely tells authors what to do or not do.

Again, she bashes Kassanovella, claiming her writing isn't good. Her motivation for bashing Kassanovella can only be speculation. With Zannah's previously stated opinion of Fix Your Attitude, though, it indicates a certain level of negative emotions.

-

Anonymous

An anonymous person came forward with a case of Zannah policing their blog. Anon has a sideblog for their personal AU with Flip Zimmerman. They reblog gifsets and post headcanons. They were an enthusiastic fan of Zannah's and reblogged a few of the gifset she made. Anon tagged their reactions, and Zannah blocked them for it.

Anon went to Zannah and asked why they were blocked, because all they wanted to do was have fun and support fellow Flip lovers.

Anon was under the impression that because they were shipping themselves, and not Zannah, with Flip, she blocked them. Their personal AU doesn't align with Zannah's headcanon that she alone is married to this character and has his children.

While Zannah's reply may sound innocent, and perhaps it is, it also speaks to someone who has set herself up as the owner of Flip Zimmerman. (Wait until Spike Lee or the real Ron Stallworth hears about that...) It appears that if a fan does not comply with the Zannah-approved headcanon, where only she is married to Flip, that fan shall be blocked. If a fan uses tags on their blog that she does not approve of, that fan will be blocked.

Zannah's policing is disturbing. Going into a blog to look for something as a reason to block is disturbing. Any fan is allowed to use any tag on their blog how they wish. If the OP has said their post can be reblogged, how a reblogger tags is beyond the OP's control. To punish that reblogger for not behaving in a way she finds acceptable is uncalled for and unjust.

-

Anonymous

Backstory: Zannah does not view Ben Solo's arc in the Star Wars sequel trilogy as acceptable canon. However, she does view the story she created for Flip Zimmerman in BlacKkKlansman as completely canon.

This is not the first time she has been asked to clarify her position. Nor is it the first time she has avoided giving an on-topic response. A question asked in good faith should be responded to in kind.

If a creator doesn't want to address the issue, they can state that they don't. Deflecting from the question only muddies the waters. Fans feel dismissed. The creator feels hounded, and comes across as irritated and unapproachable. No one has a positive fandom experience.

There is nothing wrong with having a headcanon. What is wrong is Zannah mandating her headcanon for Flip on the whole fandom. As evident in this post, if a fan does not comply with her headcanon, they will be summarily blocked.

Also, there is nothing wrong with rejecting canon. Writers of transformative works have always done this. The problem is shaming fans who have accepted canon while not offering justification for that shaming. A creator saying they "can't help them" is the creator washing their hands of responsibility from articulating their thoughts when they themselves began criticizing the canon in the first place.

Again, this is a bad-faith argument. Creators can't ask for discussion and attention and then get mad when their viewpoints are challenged. Just because a discussion isn't going a creator's way doesn't mean it's an attack, either. It means people want clarification, and if one criticizes, they should be able to back up their criticisms.

-

While sharing our stories has been freeing, it's not our aim as fellow fans to cancel Zannah. We would hope she would take the opportunity to reflect on the damage she has done to the fandom. We hope we all can move forward with a more approachable and supportive scene.

No one person speaks for our fandom. The actions of one fan do not represent the entire fandom. Whether creator or consumer, you are welcome here.

[posted July 25, 2020]

#babbushka #reader insert #flip zimmerman x reader #kylo ren x reader

[hillsofuhhtennessee]

Future of this blog

I’m probably going to mostly shut up on here and just turn this into an occasional art blog or storage for pics I like. I just can’t shake the feeling I’ve made more people uncomfortable than I realize with how obsessive and kind of creepy I’ve been in my thirst posts. Honestly, this is the only place I even publicly admit to what I’m into because I’ve been so scared of getting a reputation like that, so I’ll probably go back to hiding it. That and I’ve never really felt like I’ve belonged in the KISS fandom because I’m just.... so opposite to everyone else in terms of when and how I got into them, what I find appealing about them, and how I’m not really into most other classic rock. Plus I’m a straight-edge upper-middle class outwardly asexual corporate cog with minimal musical ability, I’m about as rock n’ roll as the middle-aged moms calling it satan worship lol

Not much will stop me from occasionally drawing the guys, their designs are too fun. I’m unsure if I will write much in the future since I feel like I’ve made people uncomfortable with how.... singular my interests are when it comes to what I write about. I’ve also started to reuse a lot of the concepts I’ve had for fanfics more for OCs since I just like to be able to call stuff 100% my own. Though if I get any more ideas in line with The Man with Smoldering Eyes I will likely write those. Despite how centered on... certain kinks a lot of my work is I genuinely find a lot of the themes in KISStory and the characters really interesting outside anything related to that.

I won’t be deleting anything because I really don’t feel like scrolling back through hundreds of posts to delete the ones that came off as more creepy/rude than intended. There are some that I feel that way about in hindsight. I know a certain subset of people really enjoy my writing, that’s also not going anywhere because I don’t believe in deleting my work unless it’s something I’m really, really uncomfortable with. I’m also still open to people messaging me if something I post intrigues you, I check tumblr frequently because I greatly prefer the content and people on here vs instagram and twitter and the like.

[windowinto]

Social Media

This post is just a thought vomit post: The feeling that I’m feeling is quite strange. As if I cannot show the world the things I genuinely appreciate. Social media terrifies me in every way possible to the point where it is entirely toxic. I constantly live in this panic or fear where everyone is laughing at me or judging me. I feel as if social media is a place where I should be able to express myself in whatever way I want to. Sadly that isn’t the case for me. As much as I would love to show the world or anyone who has an “interest” in following me, whether it’s a mutual “oh I know you ill follow or add you” thing, whatever, the things I love dearly and hold close to my heart. For instance I love Elliott Smith a lot and would love to share my love about him but I feel as if people will make fun of me for enjoying the beauty that is his music and self. I get so terrified or think “what is the point” or “who even cares?”. Social media is so strange and I feel like it has me pinned to the ground sometimes. It is always in the back of my mind. For the last few years I have consistently been on and off social media. I’ll have a stride of confidence and post on social media consistently but it never seems to last before I delete everything, Instagram, twitter, facebook. Ill start with Instagram and why it really scares me. With Instagram, I feel very pressured to upload pictures in a timely fashion. It’s almost a personal blog or a perspective from my eyes to share with the people who decide to follow me. There are people who follow me and will never interact with my posts when I do decide to post something. It makes me wonder what is the point in following me if you don’t like anything that I’m sharing, not in the sense of the actual like, but enjoying what I post? I would rarely post anything on Instagram, I turned my Instagram that is now deleted, into a page for my art. I was scared to share things I have created. Showing people something I like, a window into my brain, for them to judge, even though I have gotten good feedback on my art, at the end of the day I still think its not good. Yet another reason why I am afraid to post on social media. I have little to no ego or confidence in myself. Before my Instagram was my art page, I would sometimes upload selfies only because that is just, what we do nowadays? It felt like I had to fall in line and I felt this pressure to show the world how I was changing as a person. “ooh look at me” but in my head there is nothing to look at. I struggle with body dysmorphia. I look in the mirror every day and see someone completely different. It isn’t just a “I feel ugly today”. It is a brutal battle of one day I feel okay but 30 minutes later my face feels rearranged. I know it’s a very common feeling to never see what others see in yourself, but I look in the mirror a lot and can never figure it out. I’m not sure why, I just try to take time to really understand my face because too often I don’t understand it at all. My face is very A-symmetrical and I feel to be beautiful you must have good face symmetry. My face has twist and turns, which most people might not notice, maybe they do. It is just something I really struggle with. Some days I feel normal, my face looks fine, but some days it feels like someone took a blender to my face. The thing with mirrors and phone cameras you only see the mirrored version of yourself. That is what you are used to. So seeing pictures of me that aren’t mirrored throws my head into a fucking spiral of insecurity. I tend to avoid pictures with people or having people take pictures or videos of me because all I can do is watch the video or stare at the picture for hours wondering what other people are going to think of me and my contorted face and body. I know that no person is perfect and we all have our imperfections, but exposing mine to the world is terrifying. Pictures are different. They give people time to dissect and focus on your imperfections for as long as they want. People terrify me. I’ve been bullied when I was younger and I have been made fun of over the years for looking certain ways, dressing certain ways because I’m not what they want me to be. I just want to be myself without judgement. Being able to be genuine and to not be made fun of for “trying too hard” or “trying” to have a certain look. I always get thrown under certain labels and its so frustrating. “haha you are a sad boy” or stupid remarks as if I’m trying to be anything but myself. I am terrified to be myself because it will never be good enough for anyone. I have been around a lot of toxic friend groups where they even make fun of their best friends. They make evil remarks or judge them for having a stride of confidence or trying new things. I love when people express themselves or try new things instead of staying in the same box that people put them in. It just seems others like to make fun of people for trying something new or pushing the boundaries of what is “them”. Self exploration is a beautiful thing that everyone should focus on every now and then. We should all try to expand on ourselves and strive for the best versions of ourselves. Who likes being the person stuck in a box? Where is the fun in that? That is just a perspective of mine but I always feel forced into this box. Which is a big reason I stay away from posting pictures of myself because if I post a picture of myself I am either “cocky” “too confident” or “trying too hard”. I took a picture of myself. That’s all I did. I had no intentions other than to just show people hey this is what I look like today and for once I don’t feel like my face was hit with a tornado. With Instagram I feel if I don’t post frequently or become inactive then people will start to not care. I’m not sure why I have this feeling of wanting people to care, but that’s how social media feels to me. You follow me for some reason, maybe because you care, who knows. There’s certain people who like to look down on me because I’m constantly changing and they might of liked or are used to a previous version of myself. Some people don’t like change. People also get so wrapped up into other peoples lives which is also another reason why I don’t like social media. Instagram is full of fake pictures and perfect people. Sometimes I feel like I have to be perfect or have a perfect picture for it to be “Instagram worthy”. I don’t understand what is a right and wrong picture to post. Sometimes I want to post everything, sometimes I don’t. Some people get so wrapped up in their “aesthetic” or “online image” and its not them what so ever. I don’t want people to get the wrong idea of me, I would much rather have someone make a judgement of me in person rather than a post on the internet. Intention and tone are hard to grasp on the internet unless you already know that person really well. With twitter, It feels the same as instragram but instead of pictures it’s tweets. I used twitter like a journal of just random things. Random feelings, random thoughts whether they were serious or just goofy. I didn’t try to appeal to anyone, I just kind of posted whatever I wanted. Over the last 4 years of on and off social media usage, there has been a few instances that make me scared of letting people know on the internet what is going on in this complex head of mine. With the first instance, I’ll bring a bit of context. I was about 17 or 18 at the time, my memory with age and time is always so bad so I’m not exactly sure when. I was going through a really rough depressive episode. I stopped hanging out with my friends and isolated, didn’t get out of bed ever, didn’t even play video games. It was really bad. I would also tweet about my feelings, which there is a stigma on posting about being sad on the internet because everyone is sad sometimes or all the time and just wont admit it, but will laugh or judge you for having feelings like a human being. “Wow look at this dude, he is so sad? Go get a therapist sad boy” but are the same people who do the same things they are complaining about. It’s weird how it works. Makes absolutely zero sense to me. People will hide their sadness behind vent accounts but on their “main” act like they aren’t sad. Which there is nothing wrong with that, but don’t judge others for being sad. Maybe they need someone, but you are too afraid to be that someone or “don’t feel like dealing with it”. I finally broke free from the death grip of depression and finally decided to hangout with some friends. It was the current E3 showing off all the new games. We were all having a good time discussing new games and seeing all the new titles. A game came up and I simply said “I heard that game isn’t that good” and a friend of a friend in the room said “of course you think that, you hate everything”. Stunned I replied “how?” and he replied with “you are constantly tweeting about how sad you are and how you hate everything”. Ill admit I had some sad tweets but I never tweeted or talked openly disliking anything. This guy barely knows me at all just so you know. We have mutual friends, have hungout a few times, skateboarded in the same group of friends. Clearly he had bad judgement on me. My eyes scan the room to see all of my “close” friends at the time. They all were just as stunned as me and nobody spoke up. I said proudly, in which this is true “I haven’t tweeted anything sad in months actually, feel free to go look at my tweets” he replied with “well good for you then”. This will stick with me for a really long time and this was maybe 5 years ago or less that this happened, like I said I’m bad with time and memories. I still think about it all the time. Goes to show, be careful what you say, it might stick around in someone’s head for longer than you think. Apparently one of my friends told him afterwards “Dude, he JUST started hanging out with us again and you had to do that”. Although I’m not sure if that is true or not. I would then to go on to delete my twitter and stay off social media for about a year or so because I was so terrified of others having this same outlook on me. Because if someone I barely know can have this judgement of me, then someone else surely can. To this day it still messes with my head and is also a big reason I have been off and on with social media. The next instance is from 2 almost 3 years ago. I was talking to the girl of my dreams, a girl I had a crush on for years. We got along wonderfully, shared the same sense of humor, there was a connection there that I couldn’t explain. But even then I would still struggle with my depression. Even in the happiest of times I still had these dark depressive moments. Which I have to explain that, my mother who had raised me without my dad, had battled cancer for 4 years only for it to take her life in 2012, which turned me into an anxiety riddled depressed kid. I would disappear, walk away, disassociate, have these dips in moods even in public. She didn’t really seem to understand or has never really had to deal with something like this before with someone. I completely understand that I was easily too much for her to handle. It’s really hard to find someone who understands or cares enough to stick around. Unfortunately my depressive episodes lead to the demise of our short “relationship”. We were not dating. We got into an argument and I told her how I was feeling and how she made me feel like she didn’t care. She sent me a long text message about how I’m too sad to deal with and I’m too much to handle. She told me all I do is bring everyone around me down and that I am a sad negative person. I am just summing it up, I don’t want to go into detail. This destroyed me more than any other words have before in my life. We were young and she didn’t understand the power of what she was saying. This threw me into a spiral of a year long depressive episode that I could not control. I didn’t talk to my friends about how I felt or my family because I was afraid to bring them down. I still struggle to this day with opening up about my feelings because of this but I have gotten better about it. But I was scared to just tell people that I was sad. I became so focused on faking this image to not let a single person know how I truly felt. It was hell every day holding in this whirlwind of feelings. I felt like I had to hide all of my feelings and that my feelings weren’t valid. I felt as if I wasn’t allowed to feel sad. I would get so mad if I ever got sad. I would tell myself no. Which it kind of worked, it kind of helped me get better in a sense but I think its important to feel sad now. Its important to process those emotions instead of ignoring them. But this also made me stay off social media for another year or so. But this year of no social media it forced me to learn a lot about myself. I was going into young adulthood and trying to understand the world and figuring myself out. A lot of self-growth was made in this time which I am kind of thankful for. But this was a huge reason why I struggled so hard with social media and how people perceived me. Also another reason why I struggle still because words like those tend to stick with you. Twitter is such a strange platform. I still don’t use it to this day. All because of judgement. Not even about sad tweets this time, just fear of self-expression. Goes hand and hand with the way I feel about Instagram. People thinking you are trying to hard or people just not giving a fuck. Social media is so weird. I feel that I am also missing out on a lot of possible friendships because of not using social media. A friend of mine said “you aren’t putting yourself out there, no one can find you if you are in the shadows” which I feel is very true, for friendships and possible relationships as well. Okay so onto facebook… I grew up in the prime of Facebook. I was there for all the changes and updates and when it first really started to blossom into what it was. This was before twitter was even popular. I grew up with sending everyone friend requests and the bliss of making random internet friends. Not caring about what you post and just having a good time. I think before I stopped using facebook when I was around 15 or 16 and I moved to twitter completely, which felt better for the way I felt, I had around 2,500 friends on facebook. Well that is definitely not the case now. Facebook is a weird strange place filled with old people and family members who haven’t cared about me for 10 years that send me a lovely friend request. I have such bad anxiety about facebook friend requests. It is so incredibly hard to explain. I initially made a facebook for the soul purpose of adding friends on xbox so I could stay in contact with them when we weren’t playing xbox. And then of course I started popping up in peoples suggested friends on facebook. I was friends with maybe 20 or less friends, very close people. Then my friend requests started flowing with people I know who I wasn’t close with. I left some people in what I like to call the friend request purgatory for LITERALLY 3 FUCKING YEARS. I was so scared to accept it and let them into the things I liked and would share on facebook with my close friends. I slipped into a music “scene” and made some friends in this specific scene. There was a guy in a band that actually got signed to a big label who I thought was really cool and funny who I thought hated me, he sent me a friend request and I left him in the purgatory for a whole year before declining the friend request. Just because he lived a whole 3 hours away and was way cooler than ill ever be and I didn’t want him to find me weird or a fucking loser. So I just never accepted it. I am not sure if he ever saw it pending for so long but I did change my profile picture in that time and I am sure he seen that. I feel really bad about it and it makes me cringe with awkwardness. I am not that bad at socializing and id like to think of myself as a funny and nice person. I feel like I am easy to get along with. But now I am no longer apart of that “scene” if you even consider me being “apart” of it. I just went to local shows and really enjoyed the music. That’s is my main problem with facebook. Random people I do and don’t know sending a request “HEY LET ME IN I WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND” but… do you actually or do you think we are just mutual and wanting to network. Facebook is a weird place. Especially local selling communities. I live in the Midwest so there are racists and homophobes left and right. In conclusion of this awful mess of a post I just wish I could feel normal. To feel more understood. God forbid I ever tell anyone I feel “misunderstood” without being made fun of or not taken seriously because that’s just what people do now. I understand that the world is full of assholes and judgmental people but, there is also people out there that care and are good people. They are harder to find than the people who suck but they exist. You just have to look a little harder or just be patient. A dear friend of mine told me that I should just be myself and whoever doesn’t like it can just fuck off because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what other people think. But to just appreciate the people who do care. I try to focus on those points and to let myself realize everything will be okay if I just stay genuine and true to myself. People will always have something to say and dislike, all you can do is keep on truckin’ and keep doing what you want. At the end of the day the only thing that matters is your own happiness. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. Sometimes you have to just not give a single fuck. Maybe one day I will come back around to social media and finally come to terms with it. Who knows? But for now I am working on it one day at a time and will eventually ease back into it. Still very scared of it all, but progress is progress.

[groundramon]

Homph I finished tri and I wrote down my thoughts as I was watching because I had too many funny shitposts and nobody to share them with bc charlie hasn’t watched tri yet

PS i wont be reblogging tri spoilers (besides MINOR stuff like, digivolutions of already confirmed digivolution lines or non-spoilery shitposts, but I’ll try to tag shitposts as #tri spoilers anyways [digivolutions specific to tri ill tag as well but not ones that were already basically confirmed]) for a while so ur safe here!  I’m just gonna like everything/most things because then I can rb em to hisyaryumon lmao (also u should check out hisyaryumon....its me n charlie’s digimon blog)

EP 1:

- ok. alright. ok. good. they’re dealing with kari’s emotions now instead of just. nothing.  ok. alright. cool.  Still dont like how obscure/”artsy” they’re being with it, this is digimon not kagerou project, but ok.

- Also. I stand by tk and kari being one of the few good straight ships in digimon.  just saying.

- kari: this is my fault... me: god damn it shut up you little brat also me: god relatable ALSO me: ill take whatever display of emotions i can get

- I love how nobody believes tai is dead like.  They’re upset and worried but they’re also like “nah. he cant be. that fucking asshole just left us in our time of need” (actually only matt is the last one)

- Gabumon i would die for you also im crying and I think that’s the first time tri managed to make me fucking CRY

EP 2:

- I had thoughts but then the 02 kids happened and I entered another plane of reality.  I don’t feel real right now

- the only one I can remember is evil!gennai being a dumbass and being like “SUFFER AND SQUIRM YOU PATHETIC HUMANS AS YOU FIGHT OVER THE LAST SEAT” 1. humans are KNOWN for their ability to care for others you dumb obvious fuck and 2. is. is the entire tube going? because that tube can fit too people if they squish.  This isn’t a joke I’m serious it can.

- oh yeah also when i saw whomstever the fuck his name is (adult guy who i love but fuck names) and he was all bloodied i was like “its a cold day in hell when i see blood in digimon” (I think there was blood in an earlier ep but shh idc)

EP 3:

- didn’t nishijima start off as a fucking life coach to these kids.  What the fuck he was supposed to help them find a career not emotionally scar them by bloodily dying in front of one of them

- im realizing that the reason hackmon was always in his cloak, in the shadows, standing still is that they cannot animate him in any normal position for the life of him.  I drew him with better anatomy when i was 14 and didn’t have a tablet.  No seriously, look:

I didn’t say it wasn’t bad, you guys are just underestimating how bad the anatomy on this poor creature is.  Why cant ppl draw dracomon or hackmon correctly imma cry

- ordinemon has the best reaction faces

the best part about these two screenshots is that they literally cut one to the other, first the first one to the second one and then it cuts back to the first one.  They were really proud of these stupid ass expressions.

- I started overcoming my dissociation shock from the second episode and my hypercritical mind was analyzing the shit out of everything that happened (it is Not happy) but then evil!gennai called kari and evil goddess and idk if he’s exaggerating to make her feel bad or if she’s literally a fucking god of chaos and destruction and either way im like

she did kinda like.  Watch wizardmon die, watch tai die, watch gatomon get absorbed.  The dark ocean is just a metaphor for depression and honestly if 02 wasn’t all over the fucking place I think Kari would’ve had some pretty decent development in it.  Actually you know what, I’m using that as an angle to approach Tri at now, wish me luck bc i might actually give it more leeway now

EP 4:

- I’m not dissociating but I forgot to say anything again and I already forgot what happened

- Cant believe mei is fucking dead

EP 5:

- I like to imagine that Tai got there like a few minutes ago, but he was like “well damn guess yall figured it out without me.  alright ill just. see if I need to do anything” and then meicoomon was Still Bad so he waited for when she struck just to make the most badass entrance possible.  Fucking extra ass bitch

- I forgot to write anything again but uhhh I wasn’t satisfied so anyways lets just get into the Juicy Details

Originally I was actually planning to be kinder to Tri than I expected.  Was very invested during it.  ‘Round the end of the last ep I realized hmmm no this isn’t working out.  Where are the 02 kids.  You should’ve brought them in to save the day.  That would’ve been SO cool and SO fun.  Fucking cowards.

god I’m kinda tired so I’m going to address a couple things I still had problems with, note that this isn’t everything it’s just everything I felt comfortable yelling about without rewatching past eps.  Like I forgot nishijima was all bloodied and presumably died in the last part until they brought it up and I was like “????” ALSO DID THE LADY WHO WAS HIS PARTNER OR W/E KILL HERSELF WITH THE GUN SHE FOUND, I JUST REALIZED LITERALLY AS I WAS TYPING THIS THAT SHE FOUND A GUN AND THEN I THINK IT CUT TO BLACK AND I’M

DID SHE FUCKING KILL HERSELF WHAT THE FUCK

anyways my problems:

1. They did joe. really dirty.  I’ll write a more proper rant on this sometime later (mostly bc charlie is MUCH better at talking about joe than I am) but basically I can tell you that his character development in the movies squandered his OG character development.  He’s basically an entirely different person.  Like Tri joe isn’t bad, besides being largely neglected (yes he has a whole half a movie to himself, no that doesn’t make up for it all), its just...not OG joe.  He’s a fine character just not the same character, and its NOT fine when you put the two together.

2. THEY DID THE 02 KIDS EVEN DIRTIER IM SO BITTER sorry you nostalgia-blind, money-hungry fucks at bandai, but the 02 cast is PART OF THE ADVENTURES UNIVERSE.  The only people who hate 02 are ones who like the characters but hate the mess of the storyline at the end, or are completely irrational and elitist about their love of the digimon series and would greatly re-evaluate their opinions if they watched the original series and 02 back to back.  They couldn’t even show them in some kind of group montage at the end??? Standing in the background when they call Mei???  Why couldn’t they call mei from a home phone also, but that’s a less important problem idc that much.  It was a cute scene besides the lack of 02 characters.  Whatever.  AND THE PROBLEM IS LIKE kari and tk?  This entire time???  Were like “oh they disappeared. oops” instead of being frantically searching for their lost friends???  Like i get tk and kari probably have fucking ptsd and can’t express any emotions because they watched important people die in front of their eyes at an incredibly young age but also 1. they didn’t address the ramifications of ptsd, so fuck that theory/excuse and 2. THAT??? WOULD ONLY MAKE THEM LOOK HARDER??? and put on a brave face as they look, but inside they’re so scared and so worried.  Not just “oh sweet, they were found/saved, theyre in the hospital but that’s fine” like WHAT theyre fucking assholes if that’s what they’d canonically do lmao.  God I am SO bitter over the ENTIRE thing with the 02 kids, it would’ve been BETTER if they were deleted from the fucking canon entirely.  Would I have still been bitter?  Yes.  But at least I wouldn’t be madder at TK and Kari too.

3. I stand 100% by the notion that Digimon is not and will never be cut out to be an adults’ franchise.  It wasn’t designed for adults, and it can’t be skewered towards adults.  These particular characters were designed for kids to relate to and find entertaining.  They do not work when placed into an adult setting.  Like, can you imagine a character like Ed from FMA going to the Digimon world?  I guess in a way that’s just Marcus but like.  Just imagine the FMA cast in Digimon Adventure.  It doesn’t work.  Digimon Tri is basically that except real.  Also Data Squad was darker than Adventure so my joke doesn’t even work.

I guess my primary point is that Tri isn’t mature enough of a setup for an adult audience.  It puts a focus on being “complex” and “philosophical” instead of working within Digimon’s constraints and making something good and adult out of that.  Like!  Digimon is a fucking TOY COMMERCIAL.  Don’t give me messages about the futility of human life.  I want bad puns and emotional characters.  That’s what Digimon has ALWAYS been, and ideally always will be.  Tri could’ve made itself more mature by dealing with the ramifications of the Digital World’s events, how it affected the kids psychologically and dealing with healing old scars.  It would’ve been a more mature take on a story we loved and would use things we loved about the story already - the fact that it took so much time exploring characters’ emotions and was surprisingly mature for the time - to make itself better.  You need to take the aspects that drew adults to the show and amplify them, not just slap on a complex story and unfunny dialogue and be like “oh this is fine, right?”

It’s not that Digimon can’t exist as an adult property, its just that if it repeats what Tri did, it’s got no merit and in my eyes the franchise is dead.  If it survives I guess I’ll be happy that people can still enjoy it but I find it unsustainable and unsatisfying to fans of the older series.  Tri is just a fuckfest of highly specific nostalgia that tries too hard to appeal to old fans without capturing what made the original series so magical, and in part thats because the original series WASN’T FOR ADULTS.  I don’t know about the Digimon Story games, bc they’re T-rated so perhaps they’re a better take on an adult Digimon story than Tri?  But you either need to make your own characters and lore specifically for an adult-oriented Digimon season, or perish.  Also, please make it a series and not a group of movies.  Getting four eps every 6-9 months was hell.

I stand by saying Appmon is a more faithful Digimon season than Tri to Digimon’s original spirit.  I believe it holds more potential for success than Tri and better embodies the spirit of the older Digimon seasons.  It’s dumb, its corny, it has horrible puns, but I LOVE it because it also has a deep dark story and emotional moments.  If you dislike Tri and you agree with things I said that make it unlikeable, I highly recommend giving Appmon a chance - if you watch a few episodes and think “oh yeah, I guess this is decent” you’re going to like it.  It’s everything Digimon has always been and hopefully always will be, just with a different concept.  And hopefully the end of the series doesn’t leave a sour taste in my mouth and I have to redact this statement haha since I’m not done with it yet, but I’ve heard good things about it so I’m hoping not so.

Overall, if you watch Tri, don’t get your hopes up.  It resolves everything okay-ish but it’s a pretty forgettable anime on its own and simply doesn’t work as part of the Digimon franchise.

I am, however, pretty interested in what evil!gennai said at the end about Diaboromon and Daemon.  It raises interesting questions about the timeline too.  We know Daemon is in the dark ocean, so perhaps that’s a hint at a future project?  (They did confirm a future project btw, in conjunction with tri being over)  But what about Diaboromon?  I dont believe that Our War Game (I think thats what its called?) took place after Tri, based on the outfits and ages and stuff, but I also don’t remember the movies that well.  Could Diaboromon still be out there too?  It’s interesting.

However, because of the lackluster performance of Tri, I don’t have my hopes up and I really hope that this “next project” goes in a different direction.  Although I guess if they include the 02 kids, I’ll be somewhat less salty...

Side note, did they ever explain why the gennais went evil?  Like ?  That’s a pretty important thing.  The gennais helped SAVE the human world in 02.  And I get that apparently Tri is ignoring 02′s ending but still.  It’s shitty, because Gennai was still a good guy in the original too (and also they cant just keep is younger look and act like 02 never happened)  MAYBE its something I missed but I dont think so.  God there’s just.  So much wrong with Tri.  I’m very displeased and very bitter and I wanna get back to Appmon asap.

It’s got good moments, its got bad moments, I dont know, I don’t care.  There’s nothing wrong with you if you like it, there’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t, and there’s nothing wrong with you if you flip flop and are split like me.  I just wish Tri fulfilled its potential instead of becoming a boring mess.

#stormy speaks #digimon

[thecrookedgavel]

The Black Box Readings - Ep 3 Transcript

Here’s the transcript for episode 3 of The Black Box Readings, the podcast where I read to you the backup of queer blogs that have gone down.

See Other Episodes

An: Hey, all! And welcome back to The Black Box Readings, the podcast where I read to you the backup of queer blogs that have gone down! I’m your host, An Capuano. So episode one released and I was very happy with how people responded to it. I got a lot of messages saying how raw the experience was, or how happy they were to have the chance to listen to a queer experience. Usually it was from queer people, but sometimes it wasn’t! 

Though responses were positive for the most part, the podcast did get some negative attention too. Ignoring all the stuff that wasn’t constructive, there were two main criticisms of the show. The first was actually surrounding its premise. People were concerned that it was unethical to put something that was deleted back onto the internet. Even if it wasn’t deleted, isn’t it essentially stealing to use it in a podcast like this? Ok, so I understand the concerns and I guess I wasn’t clear enough to begin with. I received permission from the original author of the material to use it any way I’d like. Probably something I should have said originally, and I’m sorry that I didn’t. As for whether or not I’m just copying someone else’s work, I believe that The Black Box Readings count as a transformative work, and therefore it’s protected under fair use. There’s more than enough “Me” in this podcast that it’s really become something more than just the original “text”. 

The other problem some people had with the podcast was that Emmy didn’t seem like a trans girl at all to them, and they felt like I was grasping at straws in my explanations pointing out trans aspects. Well, I do understand that there isn’t anything that outright says Emmy is trans within her posts in the first two episodes. But what you have to remember is that I actually knew her, and even though it’s sort of a spoiler for this episode, she did come out as trans on her blog. Look, I’m trying to present the posts I chose in chronological order to make a coherent narrative. Even so, it felt too weird to hide Emmy’s identity until this episode, when that’s largely the reason I’m doing this podcast in the first place. 

So with all that aside, I’d like to get into the episode proper! Today’s episode is largely a feel-good one. It’s got a lot of positive energy, and focuses on the budding relationship between Emmy and EmeraldSkies. In case you don’t remember, the two of them met playing Overwatch and became fast friends. At this point, Emmy has been posting about their interactions on her blog, and it’s official now that Emmy has a crush. *laughs* it was really cute to watch her navigate through her feelings, but I didn’t want this episode to be… you know, two hours long, so I’ve come up with a few posts that best illustrate an already-established connection. To start us off, here’s one entitled:

“I Told Her

I know I talk about her a lot, but -”

Oh, *Laugh* I guess it happened again. She used EmeraldSkies real name, and I’m really not comfortable saying it in the podcast for privacy reasons. Let’s see, given that EmeraldSkies is Latina, let’s go with Selena, like our favorite wizard from Waverly Place. *laughs*

“I know I talk about her a lot, but Selena is just so cool! I’m sorry if it’s getting annoying to anyone, but I’m not going to hide how I feel either. This is my Tumblr, after all, I can post what I want. Anyway, today I finally told her I was deaf, and that’s the reason we don’t do voice chat. She understood completely, and told me that voice chat wasn’t something she liked doing in the first place. Ahhh, She’s so cool! I’m lucky to have her in my life! I was so scared that she’d see me as weird or broken or something, that’s the usual reaction I get anyhow. But not with her! I’m so happy right now!

Selena has been continuing to share her poetry with me, it’s really good! I feel so at home reading it. It’s such a personal look into her soul, I’m glad she doesn’t feel too vulnerable letting me read it. It’s especially helpful that it’s a medium I can fully understand. Honestly, I sometimes feel a little lost when watching tv, even with captions on. It’s sort of an incomplete experience, you know?”

I find the sort of “sorry, not sorry” attitude Emmy has here to be a big step up from previous ones. She exudes a bit of confidence here, not caring if people unfollow her because she’s talking about a crush. It’s nice to see Selena bring that out in Emmy. It’s also really heartwarming that Emmy didn’t receive the usual reaction she says she gets when telling people about her disability. Selena seems like a very accepting and kind person, and I think Emmy deserves that in her life. Also, I want to point out that Selena is averse to using voice chat. There’s a reason for that, and you’ll probably be able to guess it by the end of the episode.

Also, Selena is an amateur poet! I feel I should point that out, because it’s immediately relevant in our next post, which is Emmy talking about a poem that Selena wrote especially for her. 

We don’t get the poem itself, just Emmy’s interpretation of it, which does give us a fair bit of insight on to what the poem might have been like.

The post is called: “She wrote a poem for me??

I’m so excited you guys, you have no idea! Selena wrote me a poem! And I’m swept off my feet by it. She says it was nothing, but I don’t think so! She called it “Flowers Down by the Lake” and it’s beautiful! Like, I don’t want to read into it too hard, but I think this means she likes me back?? And not just because it’s a poem that she wrote for me, but because of what’s IN the poem, guys!

It’s about two flowers that are more beautiful not in spite of how they’ve been damaged, but because of it. And how they’re both really different, but they’re even more beautiful because they’re side by side. So. Fucking. Romantic! I love this poem, it gives me so many feels. 

Maybe there’s something to this whole ‘fate’ thing after all”

Before getting into the meat of this post, I’d like to touch on the last line. This is where Emmy first publicly posts about the idea of fate starting to appeal to her, though I imagine that she has been playing around with the idea of it for a while now. I’m not personally sure I believe in fate myself, so *sigh* I’m not entirely sure why this seems so important to me? So, I like to look at the universe as truly random, and because of that, two people finding each other amongst that randomness is the most beautiful thing imaginable. So whether it was just the randomness of the Overwatch matchmaking system, or fate itself that brought these two together, I think that’s something really special. 

Anyways, I’ve never gotten the chance to actually read this poem, but it sounds pretty spectacular. The message that Emmy sees is one that we can all take to heart. All of you are beautiful in your own way, and it’s in part because of what you’ve been through. You’ve been shaped by your hardships in a way that makes you more of a person, and the people around you that are enriching to your lives help you to “bloom”, so to speak. 

Although I am partial to getting all sappy with you folks, we do have an episode to get through, and so we’ll be moving on to our next post. 

And what a post it will be! This is for sure the most important post in this episode, perhaps the most important one so far. I alluded to it in the beginning of the episode, and I’m really excited to finally share it with you all. I can’t hype it up enough, but I am certainly trying *laughs*. It’s called:

“I Have Something To Tell You

I don’t want to waste any time, so I’m just going to come out and say it: I’m a trans girl! If you don’t know what I mean, it’s kind of hard to explain, but I’ll try to. 

“Trans” is short for transgender, which means that I don’t identify with my birth sex as my gender. So I was born a boy, but I feel like a girl on the inside. Gender is just different than sex. Period. It’s complicated, I know, since we use similar words to talk about them, but it’s true. 

Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of interactions with kids my age, because I was homeschooled. A lot of interactions were through reading books. I found myself enthralled with stories about girls, but less interested in stories about boys. When I did read stories about boys, I’d latch onto female secondary characters and see the world through them. Some examples of female characters I saw myself as are: Clary from Mortal Instruments, Katniss from Hunger Games, and even Hermione from Harry Potter. 

When it came to video games, I found myself picking female characters when given the choice. I even do it in Overwatch! I’m a Mercy main, after all.

I used to tell myself that it was because the books were just that good, or because the video game characters were cute, but I see now that was only half of the truth. It’s really because I saw myself in those characters, that’s the kind of soul I have, you know? 

There are other, more private reasons surrounding my body I won’t get into here, as well.

I guess I realized what I was feeling because, well, Selena is a trans girl too! I guess I found out when we decided to swap pictures of what we both looked like. She prefaced her’s by saying that she might look a little boyish, and that’s because she’s trans! I was happy that she felt close enough to me that she could share that, since she’s more private about this sort of thing than I’m being. I’ve never met a trans girl before, especially not in real life, so that’s why it took me so long to figure out. Plus my Dad is very “traditional”, so I’ve been conditioned to hide who I am throughout the years. I doubt he’d embrace me as his daughter with open arms, so for now, it’s a secret I’m keeping from him. If he thinks I’m going to go to hell for it, then fuck him. I don’t care what he thinks about me anymore. 

Thank you for reading to the end of this post! I hope I made sense.”

So there we have it, official word from Emmy that she is trans. Not only that, but Selena is trans too! There’s a lot to unpack here, so we should get started. She gives a good explanation of what being transgender means for her, even if it contains a few pieces of old language, like being “born a boy.” It’s generally best not to say that about someone else, fair warning. It’s good that she had that sort of “aha” moment when Selena explained what transgender means. 

For me, my Aha moment was in the form of a rather… outdated term, I think it was “Male identified lesbian.” *laughs* Ohh, well… I guess I had some suspicions about myself, and so I did some googling. And I found this term that sounded so much like me. It had a bunch of bullet points like, attracted to lesbians, identifies with women over men, stuff like that. It was actually kind of problematic, looking back because it was really steeped in men sexualizing lesbians, but it was a stepping stone for me when I was 20ish. I don’t think that website is still there all these years later

Definitely something that I did when I was younger that affirms my trans identity looking back was wearing dresses. Not an Aha moment in the slightest, though. Well not for me, but probably for my friends *laughs* When I was 14, my friends put together a murder mystery party. It was a pre-written story, and there were roles to assign to everyone. And I got assigned the mother of the victim. My friends just thought of me and said, you know what would really suit An? Playing a woman. Heh, And I rocked it, too. It helped that one of my friends brought a dress for me to borrow during the party. Though I wore it so well and was obviously so confident wearing it, that she let me keep it. I’d use that same dress to play a woman again in a play, but maybe that’s a story for another time.

Back on track, Emmy talks about playing video games as female characters being a big indicator looking back, and I really feel that one. I remember specifically choosing Talim and Tira from Soul Calibur all the time and being like, it’s obviously because they’re fast characters, and that’s just my playstyle. But naw, it largely had to do with me seeing myself a certain way. Like, I remember specifically one time I looked at my stats in Left 4 Dead, a game I played all together too much of, and noticed that I picked Zoe to play as like, 80% of the time? Like there’s 4 characters to choose from, all the same stat-wise, and I picked the girl more often than not. It sort of shook me to my core when I realized this, but I didn’t know what it really meant until a few years later.

Also, to preemptively answer any concerns about Emmy realizing she’s trans because of someone else, don’t worry. I don’t think she’s like, copying Selena’s identity to fit in or something like that. The thing is… seeing a trans person as just that - a person - can be a trigger to figuring out who you really are. Like, this was the case for my ex who I was dating at the time I was finally able to call myself a woman. No name change, no pronoun change, or anything like that, but I had admitted it out loud by then. It sort of had a reaction in him to call himself gender fluid, and I think that was really important for him. In this case, it was a stepping stone to realizing that he was a trans man, but that’s still valid, right? It’s ok to change your identity as you learn more about yourself. Labels can change over time. For Emmy, Selena was probably the first instance of positive representation that she ever saw. Anyways, even though my relationship kind of exploded, I talked with him at a later date, and we expressed how important being instantly supportive was to each other. We lost contact since, but I honestly hope he’s doing alright out there.

That’s probably enough about me, sorry. *laughs* This post just sort of pulls it all out of me, you know? 

Either way, we should probably get back to the posts at hand so we can end this episode in a reasonable timeframe. So I messaged Emmy to congratulate her, and I know she probably saw it, because she references something very similar to what I wrote to her in her next post. I don’t remember what exactly what I sent, just that at the time, I recognized what I sent in her wording. Also in the post, there’s another section that reminds me of the frequently asked questions about being disabled. Though this time around… well we’ll talk about it after I read it to you.

“Thank you and Fuck you!

Sorry not sorry about the title, but don’t worry, you know which one you are if you recently sent me a DM. First of all, thank you for all the kind and supportive words you all had to say! Coming out is really hard, but you made it worth it! I feel so loved and valid, it’s been great to have you all in my inbox!

However, there were other people in my inbox that I appreciated a lot less. Lots of transphobic assholes messaging me about needing mental help and how I’m going to hell now. Dicks asking me if I want to chop off my dick now, and of course, fucktards telling me to kill myself. Many of you said you’re unfollowing my blog too. So, all I have to say is fuck you!!! That’s all.”

I feel like we should talk about the second part of the post. I honestly believe she has a right to be angry here, and lashing out is perfectly natural. So I’m not saying she’s not allowed to tell transphobes off. But if you notice the last time she got a lot of upsetting messages in her inbox, she handled it with grace. There was a “fuck you” for sure, but it was implied, rather than… you know, in the title? And I think I know why there’s such a difference in tone here.

When you come out like this, you’re telling your truth for the first time. Everything feels a lot more raw and vulnerable for you. She’s probably used to the dumb questions about being deaf, so she’s developed a way to politely answer the grosser questions. But here, it’s been like, a few days? She’s going to feel like she needs to go on the attack here. 

Coming out as trans for me was really hard too, and I didn’t even do it on an online platform. I’m even hesitant to talk about it now, because of how deeply personal it is. But I think it’s important to give you context to why Emmy would want to say “fuck you” to so many people.

So the first person I ever came out to was a friend of mine from high school. She was… not a great person. She was a complete narcissist, she lied to me constantly and ended up using me for sex. That and she was deeply transphobic. Honestly, I could talk about that whole situation forever, so I won’t get started. What’s important is that when I told her I felt like a girl on the inside, she told me that was weird. And that really hurt my personal growth. It put me back into the closet for a few years. I didn’t tell anyone again for a while. The screwed up thing is that she was queer herself, and she was dating someone who would later come out as a trans guy. She didn’t support him either. I remember her telling me that it was stupid that he changed his name, and being impressionable at the young age of 22, I believed her. Even after I came out to my family, I didn’t change my name for a good while after that.

Oh, speaking of my family, coming out to them went very, very poorly. *sigh* I was having dinner with them, and I had decided earlier that day that today was the day. I finally brought up enough courage to finally say that I was a girl… and they all laughed at me. That was about 5 years ago, and the laughter is still something I never got over. After I clarified I wasn’t joking, they took it really badly. I was told later that I had almost given my dad a heart attack when I clarified that I was not only a woman, but a lesbian too. There was a lot of yelling at the table. They still have some trouble with my name and pronouns these days, but they honestly try really hard, and I really appreciate that about them. But the initial experience? It was extremely traumatizing. 

Coming out is something that you never actually get to stop doing, and I could tell more horror stories, but I think I have given you enough of an idea of why Emmy felt so many raw emotions when writing that post. 

Next up is another special post that continues the trend of being a big turning point in Emmy’s life. It’s in the form of an announcement, and I feel like I should mention that the overall time lapse in this episode is rather large. Obviously she has been posting a lot about Selena and they’ve been spending a lot of time getting to know each other. In the interest of brevity, I’m only touching on the major points. That may make it seem like things were rushed, but please note that they weren’t. She starts things off with:

“I have another announcement to make!

Many of you have been DMing me asking about me and EmeraldSkies, and saying how we should be together. Well I have good news for you! We’re official! We’re in lesbians together, lol. We’ve known each other for months now, although it feels like I’ve had a thing for her forever. Anyway, she asked me if I wanted to try and make it work long distance, and I did! So I said yes! I’ve never been happier! Also, I convinced her that her poetry is totally amazing and she needed to share it with the world. Don’t just take my word for it, check out her new Tumblr!”

And there was probably a link to Selena’s Tumblr if you clicked on the last sentence. Now, I never personally messaged Emmy about this, but I did ship them very hard since the point where Selena wrote her first poem for Emmy. It felt so wholesome to see this announcement, and not just because my ship was confirmed. Emmy said right there that she had never been happier. She was finally feeling fulfilled for the first time in her life, and I think that had a lot to do with coming out, which had a lot to do with Selena in the first place. So seeing them together was such a treat.

Alright! Last post of the episode. Here we have something a little different than what we’re used to. It’s not a post that Emmy has written, but a post that she reblogged. Since she put it on her blog, it counts for our purposes, especially since it’s about her in the first place. It’s a poem about Emmy written by Selena. And it’s titled:

“Free From Tyranny

Although you still feel trapped, you are now free,

It may seem like you are damned by the followers of God,

Stuck under the rule of a not-so-heavenly father, 

But it is all an illusion, completely superficial.

For you see, you have been freed,

Freed from fear, denial, and self-loathing,

These are the metals that form the bars of the true prison,

The prison of the mind, the prison of the self.

You have bent these bars, they are nothing to you now,

So even if you still feel the tyranny from the outside world,

Know that you are finally free from the tyranny of yourself

And you are so beautiful for it. “

It’s quite a lovely little poem, and I do love the themes and the message. It’s just that, *sigh* I don’t know if I can agree with it fully? Yes, for sure, that being free to be your true self to yourself is magical. It’s something that was a huge turning point for my own personal growth. But whether or not that makes you truly free? I can’t say for sure. A terrible environment can really hurt a person’s sense of self. I worry that after a while of it, even folks with the brightness of convictions might willingly go back into their own prisons, so to speak. I do really enjoy how it’s written though, and my view of Selena as a poet isn’t hurt by my worries here.

Anyways, Emmy posts a little reply in her reblog that I find pretty funny,

“I love this poem, but I wonder who it’s about”

As if you don’t know Emmy, stop being silly *Laughs* 

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Black Box Readings! Thanks again for all for your feedback, supportive or constructive, it honestly all really helps! I went really deep with the anecdotes today, I hope it wasn’t too much. Follow me on Twitter at TheCrookedGavel to stay up to date on this and other queer podcasts. Feel free to contact me there as well. This is An Capuano, signing off!

[tohoberry]

Foolish 

(written on December 20, 2010)

They are finally coming back, it was about time they did. this year has been tiring. Taking diferent paths, they made their decision and we respect that, wait no we, not everyone will think the way I do.. I respect their decision, I have never had clear why they decided it, something about a beauty cream company, creativity, money and freedom. Still am not clear about it, it was their choice, that's their life. Am just a foolish person for supporting them no matter what.

You might think that this "obssession" (that's how even I call it) for a boy group it's childish and inmature. I don't disagree with that, it is childish and inmature. No. It was childish and inmature: because it became love. And being in love with 5 guys it's even worse than being childish and inmature. And you might say that's not love, you don't even know them. I do know them, because they are honest. As honest as they can be, but honest either way. When you worry about someone, when you care about that persons health, when you care about that persons opinion, when you see that person smile, and you also smile, when you feel helpless because you just want to see that person smiles but you can't even calm its pain, and you do everything in your might to relieve it, even if it's just a little bit. Don't you love that someone? I love the 5 of them, and it's not like a I want to marry with one of them and drool the rest of my life because of their handsome faces. I just want them to be happy becuase it makes me happy. Selfish, I know, I know. I decided this to be my first entry here, because reality affected me today, because this blog is going to be the place where I'll freely talk about them, and let everything out. They are split and that affected me. All this time I have been in my little bubble, chanting my self: "they are the same", "they have never changed" If you ask me why do I love TVXQ. I won't be able to answer that question with confidence, becuase I don't even know the true reason myself. If I loved them because they are really good looking, I would be in love wiht BSB or Take That, or N'sync or just any boy group that has a bunch of cute guys. The truth is that for people to be chosen to be in a musical group, they have to be appealing. So it's not that.. then it is because of their cuteness? I can have a great time with it, but not, that's not it. Because they are funny? nope. Because they are 5 and five has always been my favorite number since that was the first multiplication table I learnt? nope. It was because of their team work. I've always been alone in my entire life. I've always thought that if I want something to be good, I have to do it myself, asking for help is a waste of time and effort. And at that time I was so damn alone, deciding what to do with my life, just stay stucked or go and fight for a dream? does dreams come true? I believe now that they do. thanks to them, am happy or sad, or worried, or anything. Thanks to them I could actually live and realize that the only way you gain something is fighting for it, is taking a lot of pain, sweat and blood. And if I go for the music field... They are amazing. They have a least one song for each mood. For even when you don't want to listen to nothing at all. They have they really cheesy bubble gum pop songs, that you would only love in you teens, no doubt about it. It was a challenge for them to be considerate more than an "idol group" that an actual group of music. There are so many songs, that am sure I would be listening to when I'll be on my 30s. they have perfect harmonization. They can compose, and write, and play instruments, they are talented. They have what it takes to be in the music field. This is when I blame us. Because for them being an "idol group" a group of perfect five boys that are not more than human being that are not perfect, because we are obssessed with them, we care too much about them, we daydream the whole day with them, we buy anything that has their face on it, anything that come from their lips is an angel's comand and we go and do it, because we are so foolish in love with 5 people that have no idea of our existence as individuals... then comes marketing and publicity and reputation and money and contract deals and all that sh*t. So if there is anyone to turn the finger of blame, its on us, because we love them and people who loves gets hurts. This is how love is so painfully beautiful. Is not SM faults. because I don't know what was going trough those five minds when they sign that paper. I don't know what on earth does the paper says. I have not the correct aknowledge to determine if its fare or not. If SM has the fault in something its about them having the tools to make people famous, and make artists. I don't know anything about that world, so things has to be the way they are for some reason, it'll probably be money, may be not. Still is not SM's fault that this world is ruled for a tiny piece of paper. We could blame it of being greed. But wich business doesn't greed for money? Is not JYJ faults because wanting to be free and spread your wings and want to sing about anything you want, wanting to not be smiling the whole day and feign that everything is perfect when it isn't, it's human nature. They got tired, and I can't blame them for that, I have never been adored by millions of fans being photographed another billion, being told what to sing, what to wear, when appear, what to say, being asked about my life, and not having one at all. I've never been in their shoes, so who am I to judge them? Is not the new TVXQ faults (I got sick of call them HoMin when they call themselves TVXQ) it's about their time to finally shine, to finally perform, because that's actually all they know how to do, all they want to do. It kind of bothers me that they actually call themselves tvxq because its not the same without 5 members. But they have all the right of being called tvxq, they all won that spot in our hearts with effort, not just for the pretty name, but I can't help myself, it bothers me. This is one thign I could blame on SM, but again, was I there when they decided to came back? would you came back with that huge name, reputation you had all over the world with less than the half of people you use to work with? I understand why are they scared to hell. I would've rather to change my name, so I won't have to carry that amount of pressure. They have to work 10 times harder, they have to fill 3 empty spots, not dissapoint any one, and sing and dance 10 times better to fill the stage. Is not that they can't.. of course they can each of them can handle a world tour and rule it. But when you are used to be in a group, to be in charge of part of the job, to enjoy your work, to have someone that knows exactly what you are going trough because he is part of your team. It's hard to let that go, and go to face the world on your own. It's hard for everyone to go away from home and make your own. I'm not going to support any of them more than the other because I'm a self proclaimed cassiopeia, and when I decided that, I decided to be Jaejoong's, Yunho's, Yoochun's, Junsu's and Changmin's fan I knew the time would come when they would take seperate ways and each one do whatever they wanted to. Actually I just want to each of them do whatever they want, act, produce, write, compose, go into law school, protect animals, anything! is their life! I can't not even wait to listen to the leader sing a ballad by himself to remind me why is he a TVXQ member. I can't wait to see in the great men they are becoming, I can't wait to envy their wifes, and trying to find someone like them for me. They deserve to live as much as any human being in this world. So its no fair to blame any one. Because in the end, everyone is guilty. My selfish little wish is to be able to see them perform as 5 , live! with me being part of the red ocean. It was my wish before all this begun and it'll be until it'll become true. Is a dream that am not the only one who has to fight for. Actually makes me sad that it could never be reachable and not because of me... Either way, I still have to study, have a job, save money for the trip... So take all the time you need to be five again, I won't push you, I don't want to see you suffer trying to make something that is out of your hands. It depresses me that you are not free at all, that you have to carry such a big burden on you, that it's also my fault and there is nothing I can do to remend it. It's not fair, it's not fair that JYJ can't perform in their own country, it's unfair that Yunho and Changmin can't talk about the matter, and have to carry so much pressure, it's not fair that things turned out this way.  I'll just stand by you, because am helpless and that brings me back to earth and reminds me whats truly important in life. No one can predict the future. All we can do is keep the faith that someday everything gets better, all we can do is learn from the past, remember it with a bitter smile, and never forget it. Your story has just begun, don't tear out the pages, nothing can be misspelled. Because it's yours.

                                         Thank you, thank you for everything                                              This shining feeling is a gift from you                                 It's taught me that we can support each other,                                                Gaze into each others eyes,                                                              And that I'm not alone                                                                       Because I'm with you

I wrote this on centimeterisloved.blogspot.com. I deleted that blog today but I did not want this to go to waste because surprisingly I still agree with most of this.

#tvxq #dbsk #yunho #changmin #jaejoong #yoochun #junsu #mebackin2010 #7 years later I still love these guys