#shes trans and like me got put into the 'only out trans person for queer kids to look up to' slot at our summer camp jobs

[dykeinthedark]

venting in tags about gender n shit (long as hell) (u can comment and talk 2 me as always :3)

#okay so i got a really masc haircut about a month ago and i know it's just a haircut but holy shit has it changed EVERYTHING for me #like.... i've always leaned masc except 1) before i came out 2) when i was actively in love with someone who i knew liked femmes #and they always described me as a fem. because that's what i showed her. because i wanted to be with her. #but lowkey whenever i'm in a not-impressing-anyone raw-dogging-life-no-crush era i always resort to a very masc style #like masc being my default and i'd only lean fem to impress people whether it's for love or peer pressure in a specific setting #like ''dressing up'' has always been a form of drag to me. like something i HAD to do to fit in or impress my parents (scott favor core) #but ever since this haircut i've realized... i could just BE masc innately like i really don't have to be womanly if i don't want to #which i usually don't. again i have only ever dressed fem for other people. but it's not even being masc that attracts me on its own #it's like. being masc in a distinctly lesbian way. as in whenever i look in the mirror i don't wanna be like a Guy i wanna be a dyke. #like lesbian as a gender identity too sort of thing honestly. okay i've been waffling but basically i sort of want to call myself butch #but i don't know if i like... can?? if i'm allowed to??? #everyone always says it's MORE than just wearing boy clothes and not wearing makeup and having short hair (which i already do all those) #i mean i've always id'd as genderqueer because it literally just means gender weird and i experience gender in a queer way #what's probably the most telling is that my friends (all queer) CALL me a butch lesbian #like every time they do i feel really internally validated. it's not just my clothes but my personality too ig is what people tell me #i have a higher pitched voice relatively speaking but apparently the way i talk is quote ''very clockably into women'' #which?? gender euphoria asf. my best friend specifically he (gay trans guy) always uses butch to describe me very intuitively #people have also noticed that i ''transitioned'' in all aspects except hormonally. like ppl have commented and noticed my masculinzation #but at the same time i always feel rly haunted by my ex relationships because one wanted me to be more masc #(she's the one who came out as straight and would treat me like a man) which i didn't like and i didn't like playing up being fem either #bc now it feels like she (butch) won't believe me if i called myself butch too bc she remembers me being femme #idk i feel like there's her voice in my head all the time that sees everything i do through her eyes (i'm lowkey still in love) #i feel like even though this comes so naturally to me i must be putting on a performance #even though i've actually read stone butch blues and done research into the history and i truly love and id with the culture like i rly do #that im still just a sad imitation of a butch lesbian and can never really be a part of it because i used to enjoy dressing up sometimes #like it's so stupid but can i still be butch if i wore a dress to prom and i think i looked good in it?? #even though i was envious of my friends who wore suits?? that i used to try goth makeup?? that i liked long dresses?? #that i enjoyed stacked necklaces and rings on every finger??? #and tbh ALL OF THAT CAME FROM A CONCIOUS EFFORT TO FEMINIZE MYSELF IN JUNIOR YEAR OF HIGHSCHOOL WHEN I WAS 16 #because omfg it was 2 months before junior prom and i was worried that i was too masc and wanted to get comfortable with being fem

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

.

#its valentines day (yesterday but i havent gone to bed yet so its the same day) so im gonna talk about my crush #i figured out its really a crush because if it was just hyperfixation it wouldve been done by now #but its been months and i still really like her so its real #anyway. we became friends during one of the shittiest weeks of my life #in a time when everything was difficult and i felt so out of my element and inadequate and altogether bad. she was kind to me #she approached me. made conversation. several times. was the friendliest any stranger has ever been #at the end of the week i asked for her number to keeo in touch. and she gave it to me. and texted #i figured the friendship might fizzle out. but she kept texting. we kept talking. she talked about her problems and her happiest moments #shes trans and like me got put into the 'only out trans person for queer kids to look up to' slot at our summer camp jobs #she once texted me at 4am about horror movies and we ended up texting until 8am #she has a guinea pig named Agnes. she dropped out of college. she joined camp staff to avoid helping her mom move #and i love all of that about her. and i wish i could say these things but i dont want to freak her out and lose one of the best friendships #but im playing the long game because. this summer she applied to the same summer camp as me. so we'll be around each other a lot more #and that kind of proximity fosters incredibly close relationships. most of the people ive dated have been from that camp because of that #so im gonna spend the summer trying to get closer. and then maybe by the end ill shoot my shot #worst case ive just gotten closer to a very good friend. im not going into the summer with the goal of dating her #just the goal of getting to know a wonderful person better. and im just very delighted to have her in my life #and have the chance to work with her this summer. its all just good and makes me happy #its one of the only things keeping me going rn #so happy valentines day everyone

[olderthannetfic]

Being a trans man and not being an anti is also isolating, which is part of why I think trans guys gravitate towards either being an anti or reposting anti posts. If you're not an anti, you get booted from discord servers, blocked on social media at best or sent misgendering rape threats, death threats and suicide bait by other trans men at worst, and now that I'm in college I've found IRL that not being an anti makes a lot of people in queer spaces available to the average college student incredibly uncomfortable. So you have to either be entirely alone - which is very difficult when you're young, queer, and just coming into your own identity - or you have to be around it a lot without saying a word. Agreeing with it at first wouldn't even be necessary. You just have to not say anything against it, and then you'll be able to be around other people.

It doesn't help that most trans men who get sucked into anti circles are teens at the time. There's 501 proposed anti-LGBT laws right now, not counting everything that has passed, the majority of it anti-trans. If you're a teenage boy seeing all this transphobia on the rise, you're going to feel powerless. Bullying people like antis do makes you feel power over at least a few people. Being told you can consume your way into being a good person via media intake makes you feel like you have power and control over at least that.

I was sucked in incrementally because I wasn't exposed to the more violent antis who fantasized about murder and hurting people for writing fiction, I met my only friend - who was an anti - after my dad had beaten me for coming out as trans, and I was sixteen. I got out when I was eighteen because once I went to live with my mom, a psychologist, she gently corrected me when I would say things that aren't based in fact. She pointed out how upset these people were making me. She taught me how to fact-check claims and look into the veracity of claims.

And when I tried to convey to my friends that no, what they were saying wasn't supported, they turned on me. Including the only person who had been there for me when I was hatecrimed, who had reached out to me specifically because she met me what day. I lost every friend I had in roughly 30 hours.

If I hadn't had a really great mom, a very intelligent rabbi who's well-versed in psychology and is a former lawyer who saw the "fiction made me do it" excuse used to defend heinous crimes and doesn't buy it, and an older half-sister who lived through people calling her a psycho lesbian because she's a lesbian who played D&D, listened to metal and dressed Goth in small-town Montana in the 80's/90's, I would have probably killed myself. Having those three people who accepted me and did not accept this extremist rhetoric kept me sane and repaired my self-esteem enough to keep me going.

But a lot of people don't have three adults who are intelligent, supportive, and know better than to fall for this faux-psychology. A lot of people don't even have one. Often, they have unsupportive people who also believe firmly in the faux-psychology of "if you watch a thing you'll do that thing IRL". So there's not only no one hauling them out of this, it's getting reinforced.

Being a non-anti who is a trans man gets me a lot of shit from a lot of people online and offline. (As other anons have mentioned during the ace discourse, online talking points come up on college campuses and in real life, because the internet is not an alternate dimension, it is something being used by the people around you who exist in the same physical space as you.)

A reality that I don't think people want to discuss is that trans men, just like all other people of all other genders, suffer a lot of psychological distress if they're put in a position where they have no support. I sure as fuck wasn't happy being in a position where I went from having tons of online friends, discord servers I could hang out in and fandoms I associated with good vibes to none of that, plus harassment, plus massive misgendering.

It's a lot less awful of an existence to be a trans man and an anti when you're young and need community and support than it is to not be an anti and be isolated. And humans gravitate towards the least awful option 99% of the time.

--

Yuuup.

Having some kind of real support network, usually offline but at the very least not randos you met a day ago on discord, is vital and is the difference between not only whether you rot in a pit of antidom forever but in stemming the massive flood of trans teen suicides. The overall queer rates aren't great, but the specifically trans rates... they're bad. They're so, so bad.

[thedvilsinthedetails]

Rosekiller band au microfic!!!

hey guys, I wrote the first microfic in the lil series I’m doing, you can find the original idea for it here

ik I’d said I’d wait but I’m impatient hahaha

(some of the ppl that asked to be tagged if i ever wrote it: @always-reading @blu3stars @chaoticgaywitch @1284646imjusthere @depressedtheatrekiddo @idk-what-to-put-here-123)

anyway just wrote this pretty quickly so it might have some mistakes n stuff sorry abt that I don’t do grammar or punctuation anyway here you go, enjoy:

(EDIT: link to part 2)

••• Pink lipstick stains, cigarette butts

I lie in bed, I hate my guts

A day in the dark 

A muddled afternoon, yeah

Barty pressed his cheek close to Evan as they sang into the same microphone. He could feel the buzz of the music through the vibration of the stage below him. 

Oh baby darling how I long 

To become your suicide blonde

He ran a hand through Evan’s platinum curls as he sung the line. Evan leaned into it, eyes meeting Barty’s, grinning as he sung. 

To lie beside my Romeo

Oh what a wicked way to go

Evan’s fingers moved deftly on the guitar, he lifted a hand, twirled the pick in his hand before resuming immediately, he didn’t take his eyes off Barty the entire song. 

•••

“Ah fucking hell look at the comments Bee.”

Evan was sat at the base of the sofa, scrolling through the comments on a video of their performance last night. He held the phone up to Barty on the sofa, who squinted before taking it and reading it out to the room.

“Skittlefiend57 says ‘omg Blarty and Evan! I’m so gone 4 them u guys’”

“Blarty?”

Regulus raised an eyebrow.

“We’ve been getting my name wrong all these years guys. Wow that’s a crazy thing to discover at 23.”

“Bad spelling aside, there’s way more. And it’s not all good stuff.”

Evan said and Barty looked back down at the comments. 

“Barty and Evan are queerbaiting, they act so gay but they’re not dating. It’s all clearly faked to get attention. Fucking pathetic. Why thank you peenisonapizza. Glad to see you know us personally and can therefore speak on our behalf.”

“Don’t know why they’re obsessed with accusing a band with two trans guys of queer baiting.”

Evan pinched his furrowed brow and shook his head in disbelief.

“They don’t even care about the fucking music, just us and whether we’re dating or not.”

Barty laid down on the sofa, dropping one arm around Evan and resting his chin on Evan’s shoulder.

“Hey cheer up Rosie. They care about the music. There’s a few assholes but that’s a given. If they weren’t talking about us acting gay they’d be talking about whether my tattoos are real or fake.”

“Or some conspiracy theory that Reggie’s not actually lactose intolerant.” 

Pandora chipped in.

“I’m not lactose intolerant!”

Regulus replied indignantly.

“Is that you talking or your obsession with chocolate?”

Dorcas rolled her eyes as she spoke. Regulus avoided her gaze as he mumbled out a half hearted response.

“Remus got me hooked on Tony’s chocolonely.”

While the rest of the group squabbled Evan leaned his head back against Barty’s shoulder, he pulled out his phone.

***

Evan.Rosier✔️

Hey everyone, I’ve noticed there’s a lot of speculation about me and @Barty.Grouch.JR and I wanted to say that it’s none of your business, you can think what you like but please don’t ask us or spam comment sections with theories. As always thank u so much for listening to our music, the skittles luv u x

***

Evan breathed in and passed the phone to Barty.

“You think this is good?”

Barty read it over and nodded.

“You’ve been really nice about it too.”

Evan huffed out a laugh.

“I was normal about, not my fault you would have said something like-“

“Roses are red, violets are blue, you are a cunt and I hate you @peenisonapizza.”

Barty took a small bow, flourishing his hand dramatically. Evan turned around and flicked him in the leg, which only succeeded in making him laugh. 

 “Ok I’ve posted it.”

Evan clicked post and watched as the ‘likes’ number quickly began to climb.

“Now I’m just not gonna read the comments on that post.”

Evan huffed out a laugh and Barty patted his shoulder.

“Good on you Rosie. Now who wants to watch a movie?”

Evan clambered onto the sofa next to Barty who leaned against him immediately, head resting on his shoulder.

“Rosie.”

Barty whispered.

“Yeah Bee?”

“Give me your phone. Look we both know it will bother you all evening not reading those comments if you have your phone on you. Just- out of sight out of mind, I’ll give it back to you once the movie is over but you deserve to have an evening off.”

Barty’s eyes were wide, expression genuine as he spoke. Evan hesitated then reached in his pocket for his phone.

“Don’t spam it with photos alright?”

A smirk spread on Barty’s face quickly, eyes sparkling.

“I make no promises Ev.”

Evan rolled his eyes but handed the phone over. 

The movie was something Pandora had picked, something from the late 80s, a strange mix of fantasy, reality and meta theatre that Evan actually didn’t hate.

Still he drifted to sleep at some point watching it, the stress of the day had clearly gotten to him and something about the way the top of Barty’s head made for a great pillow probably didn’t help.

Either way he woke up to the feeling of Barty shaking him.

“Come on sleeping beauty, let’s get you to a real bed. Here’s your phone back.”

Evan rubbed his eyes and got up, stumbling to his room as thanked Barty in a half asleep murmur.

He got to his room and turned on his phone, wincing at the glaring brightness, turning it down quickly. He opened his photos app, just as he’d suspected his camera roll was filled with new photos.

He began to scroll through them. There was one of his friends, all waving at the camera. A zoomed in shot of Inigo Montoya‘s face on the TV screen from a funny angle. Himself, looking dumb, sleeping with his mouth slightly open. He scrolled to the next picture and stopped. Barty with that cheeky grin of his, curled up against Evan, flipping off the camera. Eyes twinkling in that way that always made Evan feel a little warmer, a little brighter. He fell asleep again dreaming of a body pressed against his in a hug, the hum of a movie no longer playing, soft hair tickling his face and mischief painted in big brown eyes. 

For info about the position they’re sat in (it’s clear in my mind but I’m not sure how clear it is in the description), the song that they are playing and the movie they watch, look below the read more:

Position they are in before Evan gets on the sofa, red is Evan, green is Barty - yes Barty is uncomfortable, yes he would sit like that anyway bc Barty will do fucking contortion to be able to hug Evan argue with a wall

Don’t question the drawing skills, I can’t draw and did it in a moving vehicle

the song is EVOL by MARINA

the movie is the princess bride suggested by the lovely @lulublack90 who u shld defo check out bc she’s rlly amazing at writing

(Oh also Evan and Reggie are both trans in this)

#Can you tell I know nothing about playing guitar🧍 #marauders #dead gay wizards #harry potter marauders #marauders era #marauders fandom #evan rosier x barty crouch jr #evan rosier #barty crouch jr x evan rosier #barty being barty #barty crouch junior #evan x barty #barty crouch jr #barty jr #barty x evan #rosekiller #rosekiller microfic #rosekiller fanfiction #rosekiller fluff #rosekiller fanfic #ace evan rosier #asexual evan rosier #trans evan rosier #trans regulus black #Rosekiller band au #Rosekiller rambles #slytherin skittles #dorcas meadowes #pandora rosier #regulus black

[hazbin-but-good]

another hazbin hotel rewrite/redesign?

yup! and i'm so serious about it that i made a whole blog for it. i'm a white queer ex-cath tran doing this as an art and writing exercise, so feedback from other creatives + jewish and/or racialized folks is especially welcome.

i'm putting this post and only this post in the main tags for visibility. also, not gonna link my main, but i do make my own original stuff, and i encourage fans and haters alike to do the same.

anyway, here's a mostly good-faith 1.7k-word essay on the original. i think it's pretty funny and brings up some less talked-about points. correct me on the facts, disagree with my opinions, and ask clarifying questions, but don't come at me with any piss-poor reading comprehension.

the hellaverse is garbage, and here's why

cw: strong language, stronger opinions, intersectional feminist critical discourse analysis

1. vivienne medrano, the person

medrano was born as a well-off white-passing latina (salvadoran-american) in bougieass frederick, maryland. while attending new york's top art school, she got popular on deviantart-tumblr-twitter by being a prolific multifandom fujoshi furry who's more into ornamental character design than storytelling. upon graduation, she leveraged her fanbase and industry connections to make the hazbin and helluva boss pilots, get helluva made for youtube, and get hazbin made for amazon prime.

like every woman online, she gets harassed for no good reason, and as a certified autist, i will defend her right to be dumb, weird, annoying, and bad with words. however, there are legit reasons to criticize her:

racism, misogyny, homophobia, fatphobia, some antisemitism, past transphobia, past ableism

shitty boss, bad friend

cowardly, vindictive, manipulative, thoughtless behavior

skeevy friends

sucks at taking criticism

in short, i think she desperately needs a PR person and someone to clean up her digital footprint.

2. medrano's art

incurious

inauthentic

noncommittal

creatively stagnant

overindulgent, and the indulgence isn't even fun

shallow and childish framed as complex and mature

bland and boring framed as shocking and subversive

to be clear, i'm at peace with the existence of suckass art like this; i just think the money, attention, and praise it gets are unearned and should go to more interesting works, of which there are infinite.

medrano's had the time, money, and social cache to grow as an artist, learn from the best, and take creative risks, but she hasn't. if she truly has nothing more to offer, she should let her collaborators take the wheel, but she doesn't do that either. instead, she keeps getting more and more resources to make the same baby bullshit, and that pisses me off. she could be the nicest person ever, and this fundamental arrogance would still make her art blow.

stop with the pointless guilt: liking medrano's work does not make you stupid or evil. however, if you stay in the kiddie pool of culture, if you refuse to engage with a diversity of art, if the hellaverse is your point of reference for anything media-related, you can't expect to have your opinions on art, media, or culture taken seriously. you have not earned a seat at the table. you gotta hit the books first.

i cannot emphasize enough how much incredible stuff is out there if you're willing to look further than what social media and streaming services put right in front of you. if you come away from this blog having learned about just one new artist or piece of art, i'll be a happy camper.

3. the hellaverse

a. empty and confused

hazbin and helluva's content and marketing has no clear target audience. the subjects are inappropiate for teens, but the execution is too childish for adults, and lemme tell you what i don't mean by that, first.

not inherently inappropriate for teens:

sex and sexuality

violence, including when it intersects with the above

politics and religion

not inherently childish:

animation (any style)

comedy

episodic writing and/or loose continuity

young characters

fun, happiness, optimism, the power of friendship, cuteness, tenderness, sincerity, etc.

what i mean is that these shows are literally about adult characters who fuck, smoke, drink, do drugs, go clubbing, work full-time, manage their own finances, and deal with stuff like bureaucracy, sexual violence, domestic abuse, marriage, divorce, late adoption, and family estrangement.

however, none of these "adult" things are given enough specificity to create drama or comedy. it's all too stock, vague, flat, weirdly sanitized, and thus utterly banal—pure aesthetics on top of bad saturday morning cartoons. it's exactly what i'd expect from a sheltered disney kid who needs to log off and get into their local gay scene ASAP so their only contact with things like poverty, policing, addiction, and sex work stops being facile movies and TV.

if the shows were aware of this and played with it, that could be amazing, but they're not. they give you the mickey mouse version of the world with a straight face and then play looney tunes sound effects to try to make you laugh and sad_violin.mp3 to try to make you cry. now that's funny.

b. old and tired

let's make like americans and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist. even within the confines of the USA, home of the hays code, the red scare, and reaganite propaganda, this neopuritan fascist state ruled by 1000 megachurches in a trenchcoat, the indie/underground animation scene has been doing crazier shit for decades. anti-war films in the 60's, bakshi movies in the 70's, the simpsons shorts and r-rated movies in the 80's, adult swim and MTV in the 90's, flash/newgrounds/youtube in the 00's, streaming in the 2010's—so what are we doing in the 2020's with this wet white rice drowned in expired ketchup? i feel crazy making this point because it's obvious if you've watched these things, but if you haven't, you're gonna be like "well, there's gotta be something new here". no! there isn't! in the words of jimmy "the scot" jordan, nothing, nothing, NOTHING!

c. ideological purgatory

actually, there is one thing in these shows i've never seen before: the presbysterianism. shout out some interesting or at least intentional presbysterian art in the comments, because the way these ideas are presented here is not compelling. it just makes the rainbow neoliberalism even more confusing and contradictory.

i guess the big presbysterian things are protestanism, calvinism, and, uh, big church government? presbysterians, get your shit together. get your brand down. catholics have BDSM and vampires, evangelicals have TV and corporatism; what do you have? celtic crosses? no wonder medrano has such uninspired ideas on divinity.

d. queer deficiency

when i look at a piece of art, i ask myself: "what does this give me that i can't get from the hunchback of notre dame (1996)?" if the answer is as limp as "uhh, gay people, i guess", i can probably look for my gay shit elsewhere and rewatch the hunchback of notre dame (1996) in the meantime.

but let's say that you have no standards. you've been waiting for ages for a show about gays by the gays for the gays, and by god you're gonna get it. this is it! here we go! time for some

generic twink obliteration

male sexuality as aggression and dominance displays

WLW (sex and chemistry not included)

a couple straight femdoms

and the stalest sex jokes known to man

...yeah, it's not very queer. and by "queer", i mean "questioning or subverting gender norms (including sexual roles) within a given cultural context regardless of creator identity and intent". i'm not a queer studies scholar so LMK if there's a more specific term for this, but whatever you call it, it's not in the hellaverse much.

there's not even any transness, literal or metaphorical, just ancient drag jokes. i guess the writers thought we would've been too controversial. so much for an indie animation studio that prides itself in the diversity of its staff both above and below the line, bakshi-style. i wonder how medrano, a bisexual woman, would've felt if told that a lesbian main couple in hazbin would be "too controversial".

4. spindlehorse and the vivziepop brand

spindlehorse toons underpays its overworked staff and keeps outsourcing more and more labor to even more overworked freelancers overseas to cut costs. a rainbow sweatshop is still a sweatshop, and just because these practices may be "industry standard" doesn't make them any more ethical.

the studio has also been repeatedly accused by current and former employees and contractors of creating a hostile and abusive workplace. AFAIK, it still has no dedicated HR person, and victims are too afraid of retaliation like blacklisting and online harassment to speak out.

this is exactly the stuff that unions exist to prevent. as i'm writing this, the IATSE (the parent union of TAG, which is the parent union of all US animation unions) is negotiating with entertainment industry executives for better working conditions, and if the execs fuck around like last year, it's strike time again. so watch this space, voice your support, and don't cross any picket lines.

i hope spindlehorse unionizes, but until then and for these reasons, i don't think you should give money to the company.

first of all, all content on amazon-owned platforms is ok to pirate, and all youtube ads are ok to block. everyone involved in making the episodes has (or should have) been paid upfront, so you're not taking the bread out of anyone's mouth.

next, let's look at the succulent offerings of the official vivziepop merch shop:

$10 pins and keychains

$15 sticker packs

$20 mugs and acrylic cutouts

$25 shirts

$30 metal cards (not even tarot)

$40 lounge pants

$50 mini backpacks

random $80 skateboard deck

forgive my latin americanness, but this is all stuff you can get made by a local metalsmith, print/sublimation shop, or just crafty people in your life. it's cheaper, customizable, and better for the environment to skip all the shipping and packaging. also, not painting your own skateboard is poser shit.

the hazbin website also has $15 pins, one $20 keychain, and $6 trading card packs. people are weird about trading cards, so if for some reason you wanna gamble for a mass-produced bit of cardboard, plastic, and tinfoil, at least bulk-order for all the vivziepoppers in your area so it's less of a huge waste. better yet, trace the designs and make infinite bootlegs.

at the end of the day, buying merch is not activism. your bulk order of trading cards will not save any wage slaves from getting evicted from their overpriced studio apartments. however, the shop links you to all the credited artists/designers, and more of your bucks will actually reach them if you buy their designs directly, then turn them into body pillows or life-sized bronze statues or whatever the fuck.

go through the credits of any episode of helluva or hazbin, and you'll find even more creatives you might wanna support. get jinkx monsoon's albums on CD. subscribe to actually good artist, animator, and composer gooseworx. lots of voice actors now have patreon, cameo, or self-hosted pages where you can write better lines for their characters and have them read it. these things may not look as shiny as Official Merch™, but we all need less plastic shit and more culture anyway.

#spindlehorse #vivziepop #hellaverse #hazbin hotel #helluva boss #spindlehorse critical #vivziepop critical #hazbin hotel critical #helluva boss critical #hazbin hotel rewrite #hazbin hotel redesign #helluva boss redesign #communism #degrowth

[they-them-that]

Light trigger warning: gender roles, misogyny, transphobia

I love Ouran Highschool Host Club and with the Shoujo classic that it is, I adopted the general consensus that the show was "ahead of its time" with how it portrayed gender. Haruhi will always be a non-binary icon but upon rewatching it, especially after my own trans awakening, I remembered something that never sat right with me and that was how Tamaki treated Haruhi. My two cisgender friends didn't seem to pick up on the same problems even though they also consider Haruhi to be non-binary which made me think I was just projecting onto the anime. But another friend of mine later told me how it was much more "heterosexual" than she remembered that helped validate the feeling I had.

Although Haruhi doesn't like to make a fuss about gender, the anime does and it constantly reminds us that no matter what Haruhi feels, she is still a "girl". Tamaki is the worst offender of this mentality where even his entire perspective on Haruhi changes as soon as he finds out she's afab. A huge part of Tamaki's character is that he dotes on Haruhi "like a father" where his actions are actually founded on the authoritative, patriarchal belief that he needs to "protect" her because she is a woman. Not just protect her from actual harm either but from things like kissing someone and wearing a swimsuit...

Although in certain ways, we're supposed to laugh at Tamaki's overbearing nature, he's never actually taught to respect Haruhi's autonomy. In what felt like every episode, Tamaki fixates on Haruhi's assigned sex much to her annoyance. Yet rather than learning to look at Haruhi as a person regardless of gender, we're expected to see his obsession with upholding gender roles as a sign of affection. This felt clearest in episode 8, "The Sun, the Sea, and the Host Club!" where Haruhi confronts two men for harassing her female peers. She gets shoved into the water where Tamaki saves her but the conflict arises when he scolds Haruhi for standing up to men at all. The message emphasizes to us that "Haruhi is a girl" and it's something that she has to accept for her own well being while Tamaki's anger is meant to be perceived as chivalrous rather than patriarchal and heteronormative. The reality is, even if Haruhi was in danger, that isn't actually her fault but the fault of the men who felt entitled to women's bodies (something Tamaki is guilty of, even if not to the same level of aggression).

I still cherish OHSHC but it hasn't fully stood the test of time as I've been led to believe. That's not to rob gender queer people the comfort they feel from the show but that for myself, it's a bit hard to look past the cishet energy that the anime exudes. Although I see Haruhi as non-binary, the show doesn't seem to agree and goes great lengths to invalidate Haruhi's gender indifference. It's tragically common in anime and manga where trans-coded afab characters are reminded that they're still women and it's usually "proven" to them through patriarchal scenarios that put CIS men in a role of dominance. A lot of the time, these women are only gender nonconforming out of happenstance or circumstance rather than by choice, which even includes Haruhi Fujioka (she only cut her hair because there was gum in it). That's not to conflate gender expression with identity but it does feel like we're only being met half way, especially when the anime still romanticizes the gender dichotomy with Haruhi and Tamaki's relationship. I would've loved to see Tamaki be able to toss the notion of gender the same way Haruhi is able to and have that be the groundwork in which their mutual feelings blossom. Instead, it just felt like we got a man who stubbornly wants someone who grew up without gender labels to visualize herself the way he does, as a "woman".

#ouran high school host club #ohshc #haruhi fujioka #tamaki suoh #tw transphobes

[evilwickedme]

When I was in twelvth grade my school brought in a trans man to talk about his experience and I wanted him to know so bad that I had changed my name and that I accepted him and I was weirdly jealous in a way I did not understand bc I was perfectly happy being a teenage girl, right? In eleventh grade I decided I wouldn't shave my legs for a year because I was sick of beauty standards and then my dad time me I was hairier than him so obviously there was something wrong and when I got diagnosed with pcos my parents dragged me to laser hair removal, and then reminded me I needed to keep going every few months. I kept going, even though I hated it. I miss my leg hair. When I was 15 I changed my name. When I was 18 I shaved my all the hair on my head off even though I'd always loved my curls because they were too damaged to deal with anymore, and when a haredi man approached me to ask me if I wanted to put on tefillin, mistaking me for a boy, I spent the rest of the week strangely giddy and entirely unable to take it out of my mind, even though he'd immediately taken it back. I used to say before I came out as bi that I was an ally and didn't want to speak over queer voices, and I said the same thing about trans people, but I kept feeling like I had some much to say, like this mattered in ways I couldn't put into words. I've wanted a hysterectomy for years, and was devastated to learn it's incredibly unlikely that a doctor would agree to perform the procedure, since I was a young woman.

I thought, again and again, about that man. He thought he was a lesbian for the longest time. He used to avoid gendering himself, even in an incredibly gendered language, had gotten so used to it it came naturally. His partner considered herself a lesbian, except for him. I didn't know how to feel about that. What does it mean to keep your identity static when the people you love change around you. Is it easy to accept?

I changed my pronouns to she/they, then they/them, then in Hebrew I said please pick either she/her or he/him but stick to one or the other, then I said stick with he/him in Hebrew, then I switched to they/he. I said I was a demigirl, then I said I was nonbinary but didn't feel comfortable being called trans, then I started applying the trans umbrella to myself, then I said was transmasc. Around me so many of my friends were transitioning, mtf, ftm, exploring using gender neutral pronouns before settling back on their agab, exploring gender neutral pronouns and stopping there. A friend of mine told me that they were jealous of me because I was so sure of my identity as a person in their early twenties, while they were thirty and only just discovering themself. Did I know my identity? I wasn't sure. Another friend told me, they're currently nonbinary but they could see a future where they detransition. I cannot understand why my mtf friend was so sure she's a girl, when I didn't know, I had no clue, I didn't know where to go from here.

I thought of that man again.

I wanted to take my tits off and put them back on again and take them off again, just to see how it felt. I bought a binder, I told my parents it's just to fit into my button up shirts. I hadn't worn a dress or a skirt since the year after I graduated high school. I stopped wearing bras. I wore a button up shirt and a blazer whenever I could. I tried to find myself in the performance of gender.

I changed my named when I was just about to turn to fifteen, and a teacher followed me from middle school to high school, and she asked me if I was still going by that, cause she wasn't sure if I'd meant it, if it would've stuck. It stuck for ten years, even as I asked myself, is this really what I want? Is this my name? Would it be okay if I changed my name again, is it allowed? I told everyone who'd listen it's okay to changed your name for any reason, at any time.

I don't remember that man's name. I don't remember most of his story. I remember picturing him walking around, remember wishing I could pretend I wasn't a girl just for an evening. I wanted...

Well.

#transmasc #genderqueer #trans #nonbinary #queer #lgbtqa+ #gail speaks #or maybe. #daniel speaks #jew tag

[jamisonwritestf2trash]

Slightly boring question, I know, but what LGBTQ+ headcanons do you have for the mercs (if any) , and for any of those, how do you think they realized?

LGBTQ+ Headcanons For The TF2 Mercs

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oh no anon this isn't boring at all, I love talking about queer shit, and TF2 so this is super fun for me!

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Uhhhh, light homophobia and transphobia??? I tried not to add any but a little bit of it!

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Demo is trans and gay. He was like twenty when he realized he was trans, like this dude was sitting in his home, and it just randomly clicked? Immediately thinks,

"Oh, that explains a lot." He had absolutely no clue what to do with that information, but he eventually figured out how to be comfortable in his own skin. As for him being gay, it was probably just the natural progression of things. He liked men before, and he liked men after. This man was so scared to tell his mom that she literally didn't care, she loves her son.

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Engie is pan and trans. Engie just always knew, like felt it in his bones knew. One of those kids who the moment they could talk just goes, "Oh yeah, I'm a boy now." His parents would just tell him he was a tomboy and that he'd grow out of it. Wrong! He only became comfortable with his identity when he was fifteen, only after years of internalized guilt and transphobia though. Uh, he definitely had to keep it a secret for a lot longer than that. He also just always knew he was pan. He always liked women and men, and he realized he didn't even care if the person he liked was both or neither. He just likes people!

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I think Heavy is bisexual,and like, he didn't even realize it until he met the other mercs. He just ignored the fact that he liked men. After all, every man around him seemed to only like women, so he just focused on women. (Well, not really, lmao) anyway! One night, all the mercs were talking about their escapades, and then some mercs brought up their experiences with men, and he just stared at them and was like,

"You, you can do that?" The team is just like,

"Yeah???"

"Oh."

(I've seen other people headcanon this and I love it and agree so much.)

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Medic is intersex and it just went unnoticed? Lack of proper medical care and a neglectful mother will do that to you. He's glad, though. Growing up, it was confusing for him, especially when he realized that his body was different, but he learned to love himself. He actually learned that he was intersex indirectly. He read some books on anatomy and realized he didn't look like the people in the book and that his body couldn't quite be defined as male or female. Would only be able to put a name to it years later. (I think he'd have Klinefelter syndrome) He's also gay! I think he just always knew, he just never had interest in women, but always chalked it up to being to busy with his work and studies to have time for dating, then he kissed a guy, and oh boy it clicked then. Once, he didn't have to worry as much about being harmed for his identity he became the silly guy you see now.

(His ass does not have a wife! He would call his husband his wife.)

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I want to trans Scout's gender so bad, but alas, it's funnier if he's cis with T-boy swag. BUT, this man is a queer. Bi disaster. He had a stroke when he first joined the other mercs. This man had to work through a lot of shit, all while pretending he isn't working with men who make him question his sexuality on a daily basis. I think at first he tries to convince himself that it's nothing or battles with extreme internalized homophobia and self hatred, and it takes him forever to accept the fact that it isn't weird or wrong to like both men and women. He's still just scared that even though he likes both, he's not good enough for either. (Oops, got angsty my bad.)

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Sniper is queer but just doesn't care too much about exploring his sexuality. He knows he has a preference for men but also has never considered being attracted to other genders, but also doesn't think he'd mind, and over all he just, doesn't know, and it's easier for him to just call himself queer and not have to figure it out. I don't think there was a defining moment, I think one day he just realized he wasn't attracted to just women anymore.

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"You can't just headcanon every shapeshifter as genderfluid!" Uh, yes, I can. So Spy is genderfluid. Spy dress might not be canon, but it's canon in my heart. He has no problem with being masculine one day and feminine the next. I think he realized on a mission one time (not with the other mercs) where he had to present fem for some reason, and he really liked it. He's also bi with a preference for women. He dealt with a lot of internalized homophobia like Scout did (like father like son and all that), but eventually came to terms with it when Scout came out actually. He realized that it probably wasn't that weird, especially when the other mercs chimed in with their sexualities.

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Soldier is pan, but he is also another case of "I want to trans his gender so bad, but it's funnier if he's cis." The comedic value of him not understanding being trans so he's supportive in the weirdest ways. Um, as for him being pan, he just doesn't care. He likes anyone who's a similar personality type to him, gender doesn't matter. It's all the same to him. I feel like it's another case that he always knew, dealt with internalized homophobia, and then the other mercs helped him work through it. (The team is very helpful when it comes to being queer, nothing else, though, lmao)

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Pyro is well, a whole bunch of identities, but I personally rock with, mtf trans agender, pan, and ace. So the mtf and agender part might seem kinda complicated, but I'll do my best to explain! I feel like Pyro was born male, but just always hated they're body and always wanted to have a female body, but then they realized that they wanted to have a feminine body, but no gender, so they did just that. Another case of them liking everyone, they just have a lot of love to give. Being ace, for Pyro, is no sexual attraction at all, just wanting to love a person, wanting romance, not anything more. They realized everything separately, being trans when they were around their teens, basically going through puberty and realizing how awful it felt for them to present as male, being agender years later when someone referred to them neutrally and they really liked it, and being pan when they forst started viewing people romantically, and ace when they got into a relationship.

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Not that it was asked but Miss Pauling is a lesbain btw

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Ah, these queers. UH Medic did everyone's surgeries, in case you we're wondering. He has so many uteruses lying around.

Some short and sweet hcs, uhhh, i have no idea what order im writing anything rn to be completely honest, I'm hoping I'll get through my flufftober asks, then some angst and some other asks but we'll see if I switch this up.

I had such a hard time writing this, I kept getting embarrassed at my writing style and thinking it was the worst thing ever written 😭

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #tf2 headcanons #team fortress headcanons #tf2 hcs #tf2 demoman #tf2 engineer #tf2 heavy #tf2 medic #tf2 scout #tf2 sniper #tf2 spy #tf2 soldier #tf2 pyro #tf2 miss pauling

[soopest]

SO GUYS. I FINISHED III

GOD DAMN DO I HAVE THOUGHTS GUYS. but i'll just cover things i think are relevant to the doodles i made afterwards. if you have any questions on my thoughts on things i wouldn't be impartial to asks or replies to the post :3 i just need to rant for a minute im so mentally ill please

knife is only there because my friend watched ii s2 and he LOVES knife and i was like. word. hes awesome so i drew knife for him

HOOO BOY OKAY nickel and balloon. it was a bumpy ride fellas. going immediately from s2 where nickel was kinda a POS to s3 where they suddenly became acquaintances was a little weird to me. (especially in that one episode where silver & candle interrogate nickel about baseball. no suitcase mention?? huh???) but it was cool to see their journey! the buddy-buddy thing seemed weird throughout earlier episodes because in s2 balloon and nickel kinda hated each other's guts so i'm glad that was covered in a later episode and that their friendship was actually solidified. BUT that doesn't leave nickel off the hook if he dont march his ass up to suitcase and say sorry the minute they go back to season 2 i'm gonna have a WORD with that boy

BOT!!! OH BABY BOT they are SO adorable and i loved the reveal that they were a robot! i was so mystified on how bow was magically alive at the beginning and seeing that it was just a product of tt and fan's grief was very heartbreaking... but seeing bot evolve into their own person was genuinely so so so beautiful and the representation for queer folks is done very gracefully and it's very wholesome. seriously im not even trans and i was tearing up like a little bitch y'all. fan and test tube are the parents ever it's so cute and they are the cutest fam ever

silver spoon and candle.... hrrrmmm you are certainly funny little guys.... i would like to put you in a jar and study you.... their sudden intense craving for winning was a little jarring but their dynamic is funny. i didn't like silver much at first but he def grew on me especially in the finals, and candle's friendship with yinyang was really cute too (still bawling he got out i really grew to love him.) AND dont think i didnt see ur blushing in ep 17 silver. im onto you

i already covered bot but i just needed to say their friendship with painty is the BEST THING and for some reason painty just stating they were nonbinary made me unnecessarily happy like YES KING (NONGENDERED) GO LIVE UR TRUTH WE LOVE YOU

cabby... oh you are an interesting little gal. i saw her design before ever watching iii and i was like wow! what a critter! but i'll be so honest at first i didn't like her because her information obsessed demeanor seemed very cold and calculating to me (and i'm so biased for fan and tt so when she got them out i was like. Girl.) but now that i understand her whole character arc, how she learned that its not always about the "facts" and how to lean on people, it was really heartwarming and shes rly grown on me. im a cabby appreciator

blueberry's whole fiasco was interesting. errrrrm u tried buddy that's all i gotta say. respect the hustle man

AND FLOORY IS THERE TOO i love him he's in the club of my favorite brits he's a silly guy

okay. if you read this far i'm so proud of you. also the whiteboard doodle was before i finished the series LMAOOOO um hope u enjoy that. thanks for reading my insane ramblings it might happen again i am not sorry

#inanimate insanity #inanimate insanity invitational #ii #iii #ii nickel #ii knife #ii suitcase #ii balloon #ii bot #ii floory #ii test tube #ii fan #ii fantube #ii silver spoon #ii candle #ii silvercandle #ii paintbrush #its past 1 am #i am so insane about this series its not even funny

[garfield-milk]

pspspsps. transfem zuko headcanons? im all ears please tell me

you have no idea how much I've waited for the day someone asks me about this...

ok so I want to start about how I think her childhood was like. pretty much everything happened the same as in canon but!!! ursa realized that there was something going on with zuko (she was showing her feminity) she didn't know exactly what, but she neither wanted to dig too deep. she just went "oh wow my kid is a queer, I personally don't care but I don't want to see him get hurt" so she let zuko try some jewelry and do femenine things with her but letting her know that it was seen as something "bad". HC that zuko secretly loves (both in canon and in this au) when azula calls her zuzu bc it's not a masculine nickname. anyways stuff happen, zuko started hiding that part of herself and then Ursa leaves and the agni Kai happens and she had to cut her hair (ouch). she didn't let it grow back or have it united bc she felt ashamed about everything about her !!!!! (I know I'm making this up myself but IM GOING TO CRY UGHHHH). there's more under the cut, I just don't want to make this too long lmao

ok so 3 years go by she gets really depressed and angry and blah blah blah your average zuko angry but with more flavour. then she a iroh have to flee from de FN and she cuts her hair!!!!! and lets it grow longer (it grows really fast ok?) which feels great for her and when they get to BBS and trans stuff start to happen. I have this idea (idk if this works well with canon but idc) that, meanwhile in the FN lee is a masc name in the EK the only name similar is Li (a femenine name) so one time iroh is talking to a costumer and calls "lee" to help him and the consumer just says something like "oh I didn't know you had a daughter" and iroh doesn't correct them (old man suspects a few things) and neither does zuko so iroh looks at her with that knowing smile but let's it be hehehehehe.

also I have a feeling that in BBS they arent really lgbt friendly but they let queer people live their lifes freely bc they want everyone to be "happy", so there's a ton of LGBT paces. zuko just happens to stumble in one and there's a lot of queer people and when zuko tells them that her name is Li they share a look and go "li girl come here, let us give you a makeover" and they dress her and put make up and jewelry on her. zuko starts coming over and meets a bunch of trans people and realizes that there's nothing wrong with her (after this is by the time she catches that 'im becoming good' fever, because she's also redeeming herself). she doesn't tell iron but!! she start wearing a bit more femenine clothes and some jewelry and pretty much everyone in the tea shop calls her iroh's niece/daughter so...

oh!!!! and zuko and jet have a thing bc jet didn't realize that she was a firebender until after the ferry. so one time zuko takes the courage to tell him that she's a girl (first person she actually came out to) and jet is completely fine with it bc why wouldn't he?? and then he finds out she's a firebender and tries to kill her (jet is a dumbass, he doesn't die and 5 years later they find each other and jet sees her and is like wow I shouldn't have tried to kill her but Zuko doesn't want to know anything about jet bc #girl boss). also the blue spirit is believed to be a girl and when zuko first heard someone say "oh wow do you not know about the blue spirit? she's like the coolest folk hero ever..." she got really fucking happy but attached it to the fact that that way people wouldn't associate the blue spirit with her (lie).

and this is without going too much into what would happen after she joins the gang (not really sure when that would happen, if in the bbs catacombs or like in canon after going to the FN) but she and Katara would be absolutely besties after the firsts weeks and Katara would be GLAD, even if she tries to not show it, to finally have someone to be girls with (no, she insists that toph doesn't count because she's just as nasty, if not more, as the boys) and Katara would say stuff like omg im going to teach you how to be the perfect girl, and even though it might sound weird bc katara wtym perfect girl, but they are both excited asf and loving the concept so it doesn't matter (they are doing each others hair while shit talking about people)

i would love to know your opinions about what would she change her name to bc, yeah she prefers li over zuko but it's still very much a masculine name to her fire nation ears. so I have a few opinion but in not really sure witch one I like the best: suzume, sao, sakda or kuniko. but I'm open to hear any suggestions tho! and about head canons too, and pretty much anything related to transfem zuko!!!!!

#sorry if its too long but this is like on of my favorite aus ever #i could rant for hours about how well would this work #i would have added some zukka in here but idc how it happens really #i just know that it happens #and thanks for letting me rabt about transfem zuko!?????!!!!!! #hope you enjoy my nonsense #atla #avatar the last airbender #zuko #transfem zuko #my asks #this is not even the half of what i have planned about this au but this is already a lot lmao sorry

[the-catboy-minyan]

i'm trying to comprehend your points about the terf-focused jkr discussion instead of holocaust denial focus, you are getting at something here i want to really understand from your perspective. i think people often come at these events through the lens of their own experience - for me i would fall under the mentally ill group that nazis identified as unworthy of existence but i don't see the holocaust at large as a primarily mental health community focused event, it was obviously an ethnic cleansing. i never put myself into the place of people targeted for ethnicity, religion, etc. by the nazis. i guess i'm asking - are you asking people to remember the totality of the holocaust and its staggering impact on Jewish people, not just take a detail and magnify it to focus on groups that have gained visibility in recent decades? if i misunderstand pls let me know! i want to understand these topics better, but if you don't want to explicate it that's all good too!

hi anon, thanks for the ask. sorry that my post wasn't clear, my thought process is a bit weird at times and i sometimes accidentally try to make multiple points at once, or forget my point halfway.

my problem wasn't that people are focusing on queer aspects of the holocaust too much, I'm queer myself. my problem was that people (in general) looked at JKR's behaviour and acted like:

of course she would stoop this low to engage in holocaust denial, she's a terf! only "evil" people can do such a vile thing as holocaust denial.

saying Nazis didn't burn books about gender affirming care is the worst act of holocaust denial you can engage in ever!!!

it being holocaust denial is a major part of why it's horrible.

now for why I think that:

pretending like only objectively horrible people like JKR are the only people who engage in holocaust denial is ignoring the rise of holocaust denialism we've seen from both the right and the left in recent months. there are people who have actively denied parts of the holocaust "calling out" jkr on it, while also insisting they're not denying parts of the holocaust because "they're right and the history books are wrong actually".

people are tweeting "hitler was right" or "hitler should have finished the job" every fucking day, recently AI translated videos on one of his speeches got circulated on social media positively. people are denying the death count is really 6 million Jews, or that the holocaust happened at all. JKR is denying specific books were burned, not that book burnings never happened or that they "weren't that bad", it's disgusting but it's nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be.

she's not denying those book burnings because she thinks there's no way Nazis would have stooped this low or whatever, she's denying them because she can't fathom trans people existing in history (the horror!). is it holocaust denial? well it's an important event that happened as part of the holocaust and she's denying it, so technically yes, but she's denying it because she's transphobic, not because she's actually denying a holocaust event. like, the reason people are mad isn't because they were burned during the holocaust and she saying they weren't, it's because it was books about trans research and she's saying they never existed.

I hope this makes more sense, thanks again for the ask, I highly respect people going out of their way to listen to other people's perspectives (this is something I also try to do myself). please feel free to engage with and discuss this post and my take, this is my personal opinion, not an objective fact, and others may see this differently.

#asks #antisemitism #holocaust denial #jkr #fuck jkr

[sophiamcdougall]

I saw a post earlier about "women's spaces" and how the writer had often experienced them as hostile rather than inherently safe and welcoming and therefore precious. Now, I could relate to that to some degree, as I still tend to start off pretty tense at events for, say, queer women even though I now go quite a lot of them: "hello I'm bi! If anyone's going to have a problem with that it would be nice to get it out of the way immediately!" But I do value some women's spaces. I would be sad if gendered loos, for instance, went away completely. I've had mad, intense conversations in women's loos that I do not think would have happened in an evenly mixed setting. I have experienced the Drunk Girl Oracle who exists nowhere but in the queue for the ladies: I want her habitat to continue to exist. But the thing is: no "women's space" I've ever been in has ever been this inviolate grove of Artemis where no man may set foot without getting turned into a fucking stag.

Trans women are women. Trans women belong in women's spaces. Trans women make me feel not less but more safe in women's spaces, for reasons that will become clear. When transphobes are screaming that the sky will and does fall in whenever a trans woman walks into a women's bathroom, of course I argue from that starting point.

But also I think it's worth examining the entire premise that spaces FOR [this type of person] are inherently spaces from which [that type of person] is banned.

So like, where are these women's spaces that don't come with the common-sense understanding that while usually, mostly you won't see men in there, if you do he's probably got reasons and its fine?

Is no one else seeing those signs that say "these premises are cleaned by male and female staff"? What about dads with small daughters? Is it really that bad if a man just plain gets lost or has one shot to avoid an emergency from time to time?

There was this meetup for bi people I used to go to. But of course there were never only bi people there. People brought along friends and partners who might be straight or gay. And oh-shit-it-turns-out-I'm-bi people who were still identifying as gay in the rest of their lives came on the quiet. And there was this one lesbian who -- ironically given a certain slur the GC crowd like to throw at bi women -- came quite unapologetically as a tourist, to observe our strange ways and, as she put it, to "encourage us."

These people were explicitly welcome. It was not a space from which not-bi people were barred. It was still a bi meetup. It was still a "bi space." I was at a sapphics' club night last Friday. And there were some men there. I mean, apparently cis, entirely male-presenting, gender-conforming men in the Women's Space™ . Some of them were bar staff, for starters. Is that OK with the GCs? Does all the terror and horror and loss at the thought of a man in your precious Women's Space go away if the man's being paid? If so, it seems oddly ... conditional. But also some of them some seemed not to be working but just sort of ... there. Maybe they were somebody's friends? They certainly didn't bother anyone. I didn't see where they ended up. You see, I was mainly focused on the hot chicks.

There's another wlw event I go to, to which a guy regularly shows up and we've chatted a few times. He usually wears what you'd conventionally call "women's clothes" but does not present as a woman. I know he uses he/him pronouns at present, (I asked) though he implied there was some possibility that might change. I don't know if he's a regular because he's a friend of the host or if he's a friend of the host because he's a regular. I don't know if something about the wlw label speaks to him on some personal level or if it's about queer solidarity, or if he's like the encouraging lesbian at the bi meetups. Whatever the reason, he's just there.

And aside from the fact that we have similar taste in hats, his presence in ye olde sapphic space also makes me feel more safe, for much the same reason the presence of a woman I know is trans does. I'm afraid it's selfish. Because if everyone's being cool about him, or about her, I can be pretty confident no one who finds out that I, too, disrupt binaries just by existing, is going to decide to ruin the evening over it. Because, you know, that has happened to me.

Now like I say, Actual Men in women's spaces aren't the reason trans women belong in women's spaces. But Actual Men entering women's spaces and not thereby ruining them forever do illustrate the utter pointlessness of thinking of women's spaces as these high-walled fortresses to begin with. Spaces for [a type of person] can exist, and still be porous. In fact, to be healthy and functional, they have to be.

[mae-i-scribble]

I've recently read through all of fabiniku (my life as an ordinary guy who reincarnated as a girl or something like that for the english title) and it's just been such a fun and genuine time that made me so much more endeared to the series than I thought I was going to be going into this. And for me it touches on a very important part of representation and the argument that queer people will inherently tell queer stories better (spoiler alert i think this mentality is simplistic and unrealistic). Because full disclosure, yeah the author of fabiniku is not someone i assume is the best ally on the planet, and i dont even know if she's queer or not. Her author notes have some pretty :/// stuff in them about trans identity and the idea that being trans is a fetish or childish choice. However, there could also be translational errors messing up what exactly she means, and I can't exactly translate myself, so there is some doubt in that regard. But regardless of the author's opinions, none of that changes the very genuine and heartfelt story she is telling with Tachibana in fabiniku.

(putting the rest under a readmore bc its getting longer than i thought)

There's a reason fabiniku got its reputation as one of the queerest isekai's to ever isekai and that reputation is well deserved bc holy shit yeah these bitches gay and trans as hell. Fabiniku does something with its queer narrative that I personally really appreciate: it sidelines the queer themes. Now this may seem contradictory, but for me, I don't always want queer stories about being queer, I want the queer elements to be a part of the narrative without it being focused on them. And fabiniku absolutely delivers on this. It isn't the story of tachibana finding out he's trans and jinguuji finding out he's gay but also kinda technically bi now- it's a batshit insane isekai romcom about 2 best friends realizing they have feelings for each other. Of course, those queer elements are still very much there, but they're entrenched in the characters, not in the author saying "see this aspect of identity, i want to use these characters as a vehicle to tell a story about it." (Not that there's anything wrong with that, its just a difference in writing goals and how one goes about writing themes/stories)

Fabiniku was never trying to be anything profound or meaningful in terms of queer representation, its mostly a gag manga with some large overarching story beats, but the author's earnestness in portraying the romance and personal growth gives the series a real heart that 1)makes it enjoyable unlike some other comedy based isekai and 2) stops it from being offensive representation. Tachibana is a guy who finds himself becoming a girl one day without and warning, and his slow journey into realizing what exactly he wants in regards to his gender identity is never used as the butt of the joke or mocked. (I'm using he/him for tachibana bc literally as of a couple chapters ago we just got him admitting he may not want to go back to being a guy, he's still on the first steps of his trans journey). In the same vein Jinguuji's love of Tachibana is never truly treated as "only now bc tachibana is a girl, no way did jinguuji love him before nope nope." (yes the initial premise suggests this interpretation, but as the manga grows on it is increasingly clear that both these 2 loved each other before this isekai shenanigans began).

There's a lot more words in my head, but Im gonna wrap it up here. Fabiniku is hardly "perfect" representation, but it is telling a meaningful story with a lot of love put into it regardless. Blaming its mistakes on the author not being trans or gay while ignoring its strengths is useless nitpicking. I saw a post saying it would be a much funnier manga if a trans person wrote it, which is such an illogical point to make that I just had to go ????? at my screen for a minute. There's a lot to talk about with this story, and that's what you took away from it?? And im not saying there aren't criticisms to be made, I still think Jinguuji's arc should have been about him realizing that even if he didn't like women, it didn't change the fact that he was attracted to Tachibana- would have made for a more in character arc for him but again, the author was never intending for anything more than a romantic comedy manga, so I won't hold it against her too much.

Anyways everyone go watch or read fabiniku you won't regret it its so fucking good

#fabiniku #Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout #hinata tachibana #tsukasa jinguuji #i am totally normal about the media i consume i promise #you want to read my rambling about the queer aspects of this show so bad right right #genuinely i think the rep in this is so fucking good #judt because it isnt perfect doesnt mean it doesnt have value #it is also 3am when i write this so things arent exactly coherent

[sirenium]

Time to obsessively talk in depth about my Sonic head-canons, because I literally cannot stop thinking about them. This is likely to be a long post, so I'll spare you all by putting everything under the cut so you aren't forcibly subjected to the wall of text💀

Also sorry for the sudden increase in Sonic related content, it's just that my hyperfixation is slowly coming back lmao

⚠️these are mostly queer identity centered, so if you're not into queer headcanons you've been warned⚠️

Sonic: arospec, bisexual, trans man, he/him. Stealth. Is only out to Tails. Actively fights for trans rights, just doesn't feel comfortable sharing his identity with most people. Hides his negative emotions because he feels as though he has to be a source of positivity 24/7. Probably cries himself to sleep sometimes, the poor guy. In a QPR (queer platonic relationship) with Shadow.

Tails: (I don't feel comfortable labeling the sexuality of a literal ten year old lmao/lh), transmasc, he/they. Looks up to Sonic, literally aims to be exactly like him: he's the only other trans person he knows (who's out to him, at least), and he's cool asf. Admires his bravery. Tails sees Sonic as an older brother figure, and Sonic sees him as a little brother. They've got the ultimate brotherly bond, which also means they argue over the dumbest shit lol.

Knuckles: panromantic, pansexual, transfemme, he/him. Masc presenting, gives off egg vibes (not because he's masc presenting and uses he/him, but because he's hella clueless about trans people). Isn't out to ANYONE, not even himself.💀

Amy: heteroromantic, heterosexual, cisgender, she/they. MASSIVE ally, one of those friends who gives their gay friends rainbow pride merch(/pos).

Shadow: panromantic, asexual, non-binary, all pronouns including it/its, slight preference for he/him. Doesn't give a fuck about gender; they think it's irrelevant to who they are. Though he has pronoun preferences, if someone referred to it using pronouns other than he/him, he would literally not care.

Rouge: greyromantic biromantic, lesbian, cisgender, she/her. Secret mom friend vibes. Has the scariest 'you fucked up' glare known to man(/hj). Takes no shit.

Omega: bro is unlabeled, literally just vibing. Pronouns? Nah bruh (use he/him). A GOD at baking, doesn't brag about it. Can't cook for shit otherwise, literally almost blew up the kitchen somehow (how he knows how to operate an oven but not any other cooking device is beyond me, he just gives off those vibes lmao).

Less detailed HCs:

[plaintext: less detailed HCs end pt]

Espio: biromantic, acespec bisexual, cis, he/they.

Vector: aroacespec, cis, he/him.

Charmy: transmasc, he/him

Silver: panromantic, gay, cis, he/they

Blaze: lesbian, asexual, cis, she/her

Big The Cat: aroacespec, gay otherwise, cis, he/him

Time for the villains I've thought about:

[plain text: time for the villains I've thought about end pt]

⚠️trigger warning for Infinite, mentions of death and other potentially triggering themes (they're kind of heavy but nothing too serious)⚠️

Eggman: aromantic, gay, cis, he/him. Surprisingly supportive of trans people... as in he just doesn't care enough to not be.

Infinite: biromantic, bisexual, cis, he/him. Bro's in denial: he thinks all 'straight' guys have the occasional crush on other guys. Doesn't even know about the label 'bi' so he just thinks someone can either be straight or gay, and since he DOES like women he's convinced his attraction to men is either not real or unimportant. Definitely cries himself to sleep, and has nightmares about the death of his squad. Secretly blames himself for everything, has extreme self esteem issues but hides them by inflating his self worth. His life SUCKS; he's lost everyone who was important to him, just when he thought he couldn't lose anyone/anything else. He's also very prideful despite having low self esteem, and those two things mixed together give him an extremely fragile ego that's easily shattered. He genuinely hates his face, because as far as he's concerned that is the face of someone who's failed everybody, including himself. A 'pathetic' face. Would literally start having a panic attack if his mask were to come off for whatever reason. (Jesus this one got depressing, but I just put a lot of thought into his character because I feel like he has a lot of potential as a character that wasn't explored. Literally just 'lol he had a temper tantrum because he got beaten up and called weak' and that's all the backstory he gets? Nahh💀. I could make a whole post going into the backstory I made for him lmao)

Uh so yeah those are my headcanons–

I know I missed characters but these are the ones I've really thought about/remembered. If someone reblogs this, it'd be cool to see their own headcanons (you can also just comment them or like, message me or whatever/lh /nf)

#random self indulgent sonic related post #sonic the hedgehog #sonic hcs #sonic headcanons #queer headcanons #Sonic #knuckles the echidna #miles tails prower #shadow the hedgehog #rouge the bat #e 123 omega #sth espio #vector sth #charmy bee #eggman #infinite the jackal #can you tell how passionate I am about infinite's character #i can literally rant about how much he was screwed over for hours and just go around in circles in increasing anger💀 #I spent like an hour typing this out pls like/hj /nf #blaze the cat #silver the hedgehog #big the cat #who needs a side blog when you can just have an inconsistent theme on one?

[levmada]

Hii! Congrats on starting your transition! ❤️ I hope you don’t find this too intrusive, but I really want to know your story with realizing who you really are and taking the steps to get there? (If that makes sense) and how is testosterone treating you? Also, do you still menstruate?

I ask this with curiosity, love and support 🙂

thank youuu<3 yeah i can :)

//tw gender dysphoria. also this is extremely personal just so yk👍

i knew something was off the second i started puberty hahahahahaha(🥲). i was 9 or 10 and didn't know what being transgender was, so, to be shamelessly honest, i refused to wear panties (i even hate that word honestly) and would just go commando until my mom gave in and got me "boy shorts". aka panties with an extra inch.

i hated the idea of bra. actually it made me sick. i couldn’t fucking stand living in my own skin at that point. despite growing them at 10, i was 12 or 13 before i gave in, but it was sports bras.

however there was a very short timeframe between that and learning about being transgender, so i'd do the double sports bra trick + 38943809 layers until i got a chest binder (which i don't remember how or when😭it might've been a loan from a trans friend when i was 13ish.)

never was a fan of makeup, dresses or long hair. funnily,,,,,, the only reason i got my ears pierced when i was like 8 was so i could get out of shopping for easter dresses.

meanwhile my mom wanted my hair long, but also around 8 or 9 i chopped that bitch. i'd chew on it (anxiety) and not brush it until it was like. all in knots so it would get cut. my mom stopped gaf, but everytime i got a short cut it was the cursed pixie cut most transmascs know too well lol, so i had it in a ponytail all the time. never liked it though

there were a lot of reasons i hated my body with every inch of my being, but i did cover up and layer all the time cuz of gender dysphoria. a core memory is going on vacation to florida in summer and sitting in front of a pool wearing jeans and a fucking black jacket😭like are you kidding me

i didnt rly comprehend being transgender (or lgbtq in general really) until i was 12 or 13. growing up on the internet, it continuously shocked me at that age what problems people had with gay people / queer people in general. it was the same for being trans, but i think i labeled myself straight and cis cuz i was already a fucked up individual with fucked up problems and i didnt want any more, especially one as heavy as being trans.

but it was too agonizing not to bind my chest, and i didnt shave my legs or underarms. i did use a nickname but it wasnt gender ambiguous whatsoever and it sucked.

along the way, while i was in choir, for a performance i had to wear a dress and i tried to shave my legs and put on makeup. when i saw pictures i didnt even know who that was, but it was wrong.

that’s not me.

but it has to be.

it's not supposed to be me.

i think i was 14 going into high school when i was like: pronouns? am i gay? chop all my hair off and be a Boy? yeah, and it helped i found a friend group that was queer.

from the very beginning of that, i was a trans guy. i rly don't remember what changed that? i think mainly my gender was a work in progress so nothing was sticking (they/she, they/he, they/them, and such). i think..... my earliest name.... wassss casper? aidan? lol

i got bullied/shamed out of the first name though. this was the mid 2010s where there was a lottttt of transphobia in the trans community.

i'll explain just in case. there were basically two parties: trannies who thought you needed gender dysphoria to be trans (transmedicalists), and trannies who thought you didn't (tucutes). in the former's opinion, there were "normal" trannies who "didnt make it their whole personality". if you didn't want top and bottom surgery + hormones? if you liked dresses or anything remotely fem? — you weren't trans.

you can probably see immediately how damaging this way of thinking is. a youtuber named kalvin garrah was basically the leader of the transmeds or truscum as they'd go on to be called lol, and i watched him religiously for reasons i can’t remember. youtube was still pretty new and it was hard to find youtubers whose channels was about being trans, and kalvin was always transparent about it from what i remember.

so yeah i got it into my mind that i couldnt be a transman bc i didnt fit exactly a transmed’s idea of what being trans means. i didn’t think i wanted bottom surgery for instance, but i was also FUCKING 15?? in no position to even be thinking about that.... and i also had a trans boyfriend at this point and he wasn’t gay so . that contributed. rip.

and like i first said, i got bullied out of being named casper because other queers and even some trannies thought i was being a "transtrender" which ties into all that.

for the bulk of high school and on (like 5 years) i was pretty firmly nonbinary and went by they/them pronouns. but also, there were a lot of reasons i wasn't in touch with my body and self so i was more or less oblivious, and the gender dysphoria blended in with the general self hatred?

yeah so imagine a super realistic robot coasting through life without any higher awareness. i was (dissociating) simply Not There so much that i don't think my personal problems or me in general ever was something i was cognizant of, let alone concerned about.

so that was me from age 17 to 21. i went by it/its pronouns for a while after something bad that happened, but not much change.

it was kind of a fluke really. as far as my gender went i was like 'yeah i’m okay with this whatever' while being objectively depressed, but i was depressed for so long about it that i became used to feeling helpless. didn't give a fuck about outfits, my body, even my hygiene much, and i hated mirrors.

"""""im okay with this""" yeah ok💀

i can’t even remember why i started testosterone😭i knew a shit ton about it and being trans for several years, so it was just...? spur of the moment...?

it turned out to be so easy it seemed too good to be true, but it wasn't, and i got my T prescription. during the initial appointment i chose to give myself subcutaneous injections on the spot...? i was hesitant about this idea, but perhaps it means something that this was the perfect method for me (compared to gel or intramuscular injections for example). i started on a little higher than average dose.

then my WHOLE world flipped upside down bc even the acne and the voice cracks were incredibly gender affirming. EVERYTHING felt so good and right + i realized there are 0 feminine things i can do/be that i'm anything but uncomfy with.

(not that there can’t be for you, but my experience is extremely binary)

it was jarring to change my gender after identifying as nb for soo long. i almost thought it was because i hated myself and my body, so i was only happy that i was looking different, not that i was looking the way i needed to. i gaslit myself a couple times into thinking i wasn't seeing any changes too lol.

in the first month, my menses stopped, and a lot more changes happened fast lol, like my voice dropping, smells changing and getting stronger, and hair growing.

perhaps within the first two months my mood became majorly destabilized. i already took a lot of psychiatric medications on account of having bipolar type 1, ptsd, and a slew of anxiety disorders lol. but it was then i actually started giving a fuck about THAT, too. as it turns out, getting off some of those meds / lowering my dose made me felt 100% better (like i could actually sleep and think clearly for instance).

and testosterone is still treating me extremely well :)

i mean it when i say every single aspect of my mental health improved extremely in a short span of time. i didn't realize i didn't know what it was to be actually happy or even okay till then.

it's pretty expensive, but it's worth it. so is top surgery which i got super recently.

since starting T, i have been scouring reddit and other forums to learn from others' experiences. that's how i was so prepared for top surgery for the most part. and it felt rly odd for me to read of how some people were/are scared of regretting it, or soon after surgery feeling that way/depressed. because god i'm so happy (not that anyone is wrong for feeling the way i described). i feel so free. of course it's disabling right now, and there's pain, and blood, but that quite literally means nothing to me because my chest is right, now. i didn't underplay it when i said that it has always been the biggest/worst source of my dysphoria. if i got a chance to redo things, i'd do it the moment i turned 18 (if possible sooner).

i am currently in the process of getting my legal name changed / my sex changed on my ID. meaning i need to turn in the request lol. i've put it on hold for now so that i can heal👍

that's everything so far i think. i plan on continuing medically transitioning, prob w/ phalloplasty (meaning, tissue is taken from somewhere else on my body and creates length for a penis + urethra so i can pee while standing up lol). but that'll be when i've been on T for a year (since surgeons generally advise giving the dick a chance to grow as much as possible from T lol).

so yeah :)

#this is my experience so if it doesnt line up with you or your understanding dont come at me pls<3 #transgender #ftm #kane has mail #kore #trans man

[andromedaexists]

GENRE

Fiction - somewhere between suspense & fantasy in a dystopian future

Sublime Grimdark

sublime (n.) - art that refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation

grimdark (n.) - a genre of fiction, especially fantasy fiction, characterized by disturbing, violent, or bleak subject matter and a dystopian setting.

STATUS

Drafting

AESTHETIC / TROPES

Greek mythology, corrupt government, social outcasts, QUEER!!, heavy themes of abuse (both power and familial), mental health, (stealing some from book 1) trans men's wrongs, anti-establishment, friends to lovers to strangers to enemies to ????, tattoos and piercings as a form of therapy, bullying as an act of love, etc etc

(it got kinda long so I put the rest of the info under the cut :) )

SUMMARY

An anti-establishment retelling of the fall of Icarus.

Ten years. Ten years of solitude, of surviving, of hiding. It has been ten long years of navigating the world alone, of planning how he would exact his revenge on those who have wronged him once he gets the chance.

A chance he has yet to receive. He's just one man, one cast out kid. How can he expect to go against a corporation as large as ATLAS alone?

Only he isn't alone, and it is time to make his move.

Διαφθορά is a tragic continuation of Δάιος, following Icarus as he and his dysfunctional found family lay the groundwork for a revolution. It seems like everything is going in his favor so far, even as the appearance of his sunshine throws him off-kilter. Will that continue as protests rise up throughout the country in his name?

MAIN CHARACTERS (BY THEIR CODE NAME)

Icarus (he/they) - We all know Icky baby, he is the man we see the story through the eyes of! Icarus is a chronically exhausted autistic trans man with a caffeine addiction and anger issues. (i suppose he's babygirl too idk)

Apollon (he/him) - I guess he's the love interest for Icarus but he's best known as my beloathed. Apollon is the #2 Elysian just two years after his debut! He is a childhood friend/lover? of Icarus' and perpetual pain in his ass.

Andromeda (they/them) - Our mama bear. Andromeda may share the same name as me, but they are not based on me. Rather, they are heavily based on a good friend of mine. Meda is the oldest, they take care of the group and make sure that everyone comes back alive and well. They don't specialize in fighting, but in healing. Particularly herbal and natural remedies (remember, lavender for anxiety and antibiotics for a fucking infection)

Achilles (he/him) - Another childhood friend of Icarus. He is Icarus' adopted little brother and right hand man.

Thanatos (he/him) - The information broker of the group. He specializes in getting what he needs to get and doing so discreetly, a huge benefit for Icarus' group. He is gender non-conforming and is a lovely person to be around, so long as your name isn't Icarus.

The Elysians - The figureheads of the government. They basically have free reign to enforce the laws of the land. The most notable of the Elysians are Daedalus (#1 rank), Nyx (not ranked, she operates out of sight), Casseopeia (former #2 rank), Prometheus (#5), and Thetis (#9). Each of them specializes in different fighting styles based on their mythological code name. 

MASTERLIST

Website, CMI tag, and Spotify Playlist 

Updates: 

Picrews for Icarus, Andromeda, Apollon, Thanatos, Achilles, and Patroclus!

Character Introductions (Main Group): (will likely update these)

Icarus

Andromeda

Achilles

Thanatos

Apollon

Character Introductions (Elysians): (yeah i gave up on this)

Daedalus

Nyx

Cassiopeia

Prometheus

Sisyphus

Shit Posts!

Incorrect Quotes: Banana Earth Edition

Find The Word Tag

Last Line Tag

Heads Up 7 Up

Worldbuilding Wednesday

Storyteller Saturday

Blorbo Blursday

Other Misc Tag Games

TAGLIST

@flowerprose @isherwoodj @cream-and-tea @touchingmadness @lockejhaven @marinesocks @wildswrites @the-finch-address @leighvalentin @inkspellangel @outpost51 (this is borrowed from book 1's tag list, if you would like to be removed please lemme know) @/love-whatit-loves

Please fill out this form to be added or ask to be removed!

#wip intro #writeblr #call me icarus #wip update #wip #διαφθορά #cmi book 2 #writing #wupdate #tragedy #adult fantasy #dark fantasy #andi writes