#this is actually more to help other nb people whom i KNOW get questions like this

[inkskinned]

Genuine question, because I don't know a lot about the topic and you're:

If someone identifies as non-binary and genderfluid, which from what I've gathered means something like "human" instead of male or female, doesn't that imply that women are not humans , like whole complete people with richer inner lives? And why is a dislike for (performative) femininity combined with a preference for things that are stereotypically associated with maleness an indicator that one is genderfluid? Does that mean a woman is only a woman if she loves to do make-up, wants to be a mother, only wears skirts, dresses and high heels, shaves daily, is always kind and never angry, has long hair, hates to get dirty and so on? Because I have never met a woman who's exactly like that in my life, but plenty who liked gaming, sports, being loud, opposed to shaving & make-up, who wore pants every day.

I do not believe this is a genuine question, but I'll answer it as if it was, just in case other people have to deal with this, and would like someone who is patient enough to give them the words. The argument you're making here is something that already stems from a deep logical fallacy in the beginning argument. You assume "If you are neither A nor B, and instead C, you think that A cannot be C."

It is a logical fallacy to say "X implies Y" when it does not do so. By this logic, I also believe men are not human. By this logic, I believe only nb people are human.

Some - but not all - rectangles are squares. Some - but not all - animals are dogs. Some humans are nb.

I have given no information about how I present, nor my interests. I am not going to give you that information, because it's irrelevant. What I need you to understand is that, again, you are making the incorrect logical assumption that "If a person dislikes X and likes Y, they must be Z." For all you know, I dislike performative masculinity and like stereotypically feminine preferences.

You then assume your own statement is correct and move forward with your logic as if I had debated you. This is not a "genuine question" about how nb people work, this is assuming being nb is based on a series of preferences.

As a teacher, I do think it's important to tell you: even if this is coming from a genuinely confused place: you are conducting bad research. You begin with an inherently flawed question, as it biased and assumes a position I must defend against - "why don't you see women as people?" Then you make logical conclusions about my personhood and experiences and ask inflammatory questions as if you were debating me, which I am not interested in doing.

If you were my student, and genuinely curious about how nb people see gender, I'd have no trouble with you asking an out nb content creator. If you're really trying to collect information, ask honestly, without personal bias. Here's some examples of what a genuine question would have looked like: - Do your preferences play into your gender identity? - How has being nb informed how you see femininity and masculinity? - What tools do you use to express your gender?

You are mistaking gender expression and gender roles as being part of my identity.

You are most crucially mistaking being nonbinary as being part of the binary and having to exist "in opposition" to other genders in order for it to "make sense". One of the most freeing things about realizing I was nb is that I don't exist in opposition to anything - and also that all gender works similarly.

Gender is a describing word, and this can be confusing for some people. In general, we tend to learn describing words in binary - short/tall, old/young, kind/mean. Therefore, there are (many) people who think - feminine/masculine must be oppositional. Gender is also a feeling word - and again, these are words that can be taught in opposition to each other. Hungry/sated, happy/sad, feminine/masculine.

But because gender is such a rare type of word - feeling and describing - it exists outside of binary. It exists more like art exists.

Green can exist in opposition to red, but it also just exists as its own color. Blue is a part of green, but it is also a part of yellow - blue is still its own color, and yellow is still its own color, and green is still its own color. One painting titled "still-life with fruit" may be a series of vague colors and boxes. Another may be a hyper-realistic singular plum. They are both how the artist expresses their personal vision of the fruit. They might even be by the same artist! And although we may compare them, they are not opposites.

One song by Hozier is not in opposition to one song by Britney Spears. They are different styles, not oppositional styles. You may choose to see them as oppositional - but that is your personal opinion, and not fact. And some people may feel and experience those songs as being actually incredibly in-line with each other.

This is why we say: gender is a spectrum. That all gender roles are made up. Personality, interests, and experiences may shape how someone sees and feels their gender, but it does not define how they see and feel their gender.

When we question gender roles and gender expression like this, it tends to make people upset. People like me tend to make people upset. So much bigotry is based on the lie that "feminine" and "masculine" are oppositional. Opposition is rigid and important - it keeps white hegemonic structures in power. I don't have time or space in this post to talk about how rigid gender roles/enforced gender expression rules are not just sexist but also racist, classist, ableist, homophobic, and bigoted; but I really recommend you do the research on how disruption of the gender binary might put the patriarchy at risk.

The thing you feel trapped by - that "being a woman" is a complicated series of rules - is exactly the kind of thing a nonbinary person would agree with you about. We have to fight hard to be recognized for what is a basic truth about our identity - of course we don't believe that gender expression is equivalent to gender identity.

And truth be told... I think you kind of knew that. I think you kind of knew all of this. I am going to hope that you are young. I'll tell you this: I was raised by someone who was a far-right extremist catholic asshole. I certainly didn't have the research/knowledge/exposure to interrogate this stuff honestly until I was probably 23.

I am so much happier now. I hope one day you get the same opportunities as I had. I hope you choose to move away from bigotry.

love u anyway. all this in kindness only.

#to be deleted #do i accidentally give my short lesson on gender here? yeah #<3 in this u can tell exactly the age that i taught for 15 years lmao #but also like. #yeah you got me.... i have never met a woman before and i totally think women are only fembots #meanwhile every person who has ever read my writing: #every 3rd week this bitch is on her bullshit about how unfair gender rules for women are #this is actually more to help other nb people whom i KNOW get questions like this #than it is to inform the anon #who like v clearly is not doing this in good faith #this is just like the 10th one i got like this #that first logical jump of - you think ur not male or female but human so therefore #women aren't people #was just SO wild .... like #yeah!!! that's totally a normal thing to assume! #do you think people who are like ''well yeah im from america #but i wouldnt consider myself to be from any particular state'' #are actually saying ''i don't think states are american'' #hell when i say #im cuban but i obvi grew up in america im just the daughter of an immigrant #nobody is like -- well. raquel. that means u think no americans live in cuba huh #anyway love u bye #okay to reblog #!! #love u

[daenrys]

going into this weirdly deep dive on a topic i only just learned about but not in a fun way: the transautistic community, NOT to be confused with the trans autistic community.

TW: transmisogyny, transphobia, and ableism / autiphobia.

i saw a lot of discussion (and rightful outrage) about this identity in autistic tags, which, for the unaware, is basically “i’m not autistic but i want to be autistic”. that’s the “transautistic identity”, and a lot of autistic people were pushing back on this, both as being ableist and as transphobic (i should note that in the carrd and main ‘positivity’ account for the “identity”, they do specifically say that it is not a gender nor is it people identifying AS autistic, just as someone who wants to be. this clarification will be relevant later)

and, objectively, it is both those things. it certainly is transphobic to compare being trans and wanting a disorder you don’t have, and it certainly is ableist to say you want to be autistic when you’re allistic (and frankly, it’s just weird). but as i was looking through the tag, i couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, the absurdity was intentional. i read their carrd and to me, at least, it doesn’t seem like just a random troll saying offensive shit for the sake of being offensive; the language is so concise it doesn’t feel like the brand of ‘humor’ some troll type would use in a post like that. i feel it would be more extreme. still, it’s objectively deeply offensive- but i was left with the question as to whether it was maybe offensive on purpose.

it’s not uncommon for right-leaning people to make up identities, particularly LGBTQ or ND identities and PARTICULARLY trans/nonbinary identities, to try and make the community and the left at large look ridiculous to moderates, and radicalize them against us. eg: attack helicopter jokes, “did you just assume my gender?” jokes, etc. so as i was reading this, i kept asking myself, ‘is that what this is?’ and when i searched the term on twitter, i DID see a terf (and an allistic terf, at that) tweet a screenshot of the carrd. but most of the other tweets in the search were people like me, reacting to it, many of whom were trans and nb etc and almost all of whom were autistic.

the biggest argument against the idea that this is an intentional transphobic attempt to make trans identities seem absurd was what i mentioned earlier about how the transautistic-positivity blog seemed to go out of their way over to state multiple times that this ISN’T a gender identity, nor is it a neurological equivalent to being trans; these people, if real, don’t think they’re born with the wrong neurotype, they just like… fetishize their perception of autistic life. whereas i would imagine a transphobic/terf attempt at parody would continually insist that it IS the same as being trans and that them wanting to be autistic DOES make them autistic, right? like wouldn’t that fit the whole “attack helicopter” caricature they like to paint better?

also, frankly, almost 0 able bodied allistic people care about autistic issues like, at all. even among leftists. so making a “parody” identity with the intention of inflaming anti-trans sentiment but using autism to do it is… weird, and would likely not have that much effect outside of the autistic community (and a HUGE amount of the online autistic community is trans or nonbinary so like even if we’re all condemning this identity, it would likely not be very successful at igniting outrage at the intended targets, if that was the intention). and terfs have used anti-autistic arguments before, saying that the reason so many autistic people are lgbt and trans specifically is because of our naturally feeling alienated by our peers, and that that feeling is being “preyed on” to get us to “join the cult” (this is actual verbiage i have seen used on twitter by terfs, btw). so they would KNOW there’s a large overlap between the communities, so this probably wouldn’t be that successful at their goal, which makes me wonder what would actually motivate anybody to spend this much time making this shit up.

and so, i am left wondering still. i think this identity, if real, is abhorrent- but i’m hesitant to make sweeping statements about it because again, i’m not sure any real people are actually identifying as this. i’m curious to hear others thoughts. do we think this is a transphobic straw man, or a genuine identity drenched in ableism??? either way it’s awful but i think it’s important to keep in mind that it COULD be either… and to not let either hateful rhetoric spread!

#actuallyautistic #transphobia tw #ableism tw #transautism

[saint-cichol-is-watching]

Their reactions to you breaking up with them // Part One

LUCIFER // BEELZEBUB // BELPHEGOR // DIAVOLO // SIMEON

Part Two (Mammon/Leviathan/Satan/Asmodeus/Barbatos) will come later this week ! It was supposed to come out with everyone else but I just wasn’t satisfied with some (cough Satan cough Barbatos) so I decided to split it into two parts and release the second one later ! ☺️

This idea suddenly popped in the middle of the night into my mind and I can’t ignore it so bear with me.

(Also sorry for the angst if you aren’t new here you should be used to it by now)

Fun fact I’m actually writing this while listening to ‘Left & RIght’ by SVT and let me tell you this does not fit the vibe at all, but it works lmao

MASTERLIST

NB: This is all made under the assumption that the boys love and respect you enough not to kill you right on the spot of course and that they’re not crazy enough (at least not anymore) to lock you up in i don’t know an attic for example

+ Also this goes without saying that most of these if not all are not “we should stay friends” kind of breakup, it’s more of a “it doesn’t work anymore we should stop seeing each other” kind of breakup.

(Sorry for the delay I got a bit sick yesterday and couldn’t find enough strengh to open my computer and actually concentrate)

—

The one who acted like it doesn’t affect him in any way.

He gave you his everything and that’s what you gave back to him? How preposturous!

He was mad. 

But he refused to show it. His pride and ego were so important to him and to him at the moment they were the only thing he could still salvage from this humiliation.

Which is why everytime he saw you afterwards, he looked at you for a milisecond before scoffing and averting his eyes before walking away from the room, his head held up high to the point it hurted his neck.

But the fact that he tried to stay proud didn’t mean breaking up with you didn’t hurt.

Because it did. And he hated every part of this.

You probably surprised him once or twice at night in the music room lazily playing a few notes on the piano with a glass of wine as his only company. 

Muttering words that you couldn’t quite understand without having to get closer, but you could feel each and everyone of them dripping with bitterness and pain.

After all of this Lucifer wanted to hate you, he truly did. But he couldn’t, and it was absolutely infuriating to him. 

He, Lucifer, the Avatar of Pride, one of the most powerful demons in the entire Devildom, the right-hand-man to the prince himself, fell in love with a mere weak human. And yet he was the only one left suffering. 

How humiliating.

Beel was actually surprised by how much it didn’t hurt.

A break up is normally painful, but appart from a little pinch in his heart  his body was completely numb to the pain.

So he didn’t try to fight it. He simply accepted it and watched you walk away. After all your happiness was always his first priority and it didn’t hurt that much so it was okay... right?

But over the days you, along with the other brothers noticed a slight change in Beel’s behavior. 

Which from his perspective was coincidental with the pain from his heart spreading more and more inside of him.

It started with a lack of appetite which, coming from him, was worrying of course but you all assumed it was his way of “coping” and that he would be back eating in no time.

But it didn’t happen like that. The lack of appetite was suddenly added to a tighter grip on things. At some points you had all lost track of the times you walked on Beel staring intensely at a doorknob that he accidentally ripped off its handles.

Then it escalated. It wasn’t object he was unconsciously hurting it was now other people as well, slapping their hand away or bumping into them hard.

Until one day he found himself into a fight with a lesser demon that to your knowledge hadn’t done anything to set him off. It took the the combined strenght of Lucifer, Mammon and Belphegor to get Beel off the demon. 

And it took him one glance your direction to stop fighting his brothers. He saw you look at him as if you didn’t recognize him, as if you were wondering where was the Beel you knew, the one who was kind and loving. And he started crying. 

The numbness of his body was finally wearing off to reveal all of the pain it had been hiding.

Probably the messiest breakup since first he just refuses to even aknowledge what you said.

You saved his life. He was living a life filled with hatred and despair since Lilith’s death and you came in, and while things happened that he is definitely not proud of, your forgave him and gave him a new chance at life where he could have fun with you and everybody else.

He had been latching onto you since that day, his only goal in life was you. You were his life line.

That’s why he refused to break up. That’s why he said “no” as soon as the words were out of your mouth.

You tried to tell him that’s it’s not his choice but he wouldn’t hear it. He was not going to let you go. 

A big fight exploded between you two, so vehement that some of the brothers who heard the ruckus rushed over to see what was wrong.

After a while they managed to cool you down and you finally got a look at his face. And you saw nothing but pain. 

With his emotions exposed like that in front you and everybody else Belphegor got really embarrassed, cursed under his breath under his breath and then turn around to run away. Far from you.

Not knowing what to do he somehow found his way back in the attic where he stayed on his own accord this time. He stayed there day and night refusing to go out. Afraid that he was going to see you again.

At that moment he didn’t hate humans as much as he did before he met you, but now after what you had said he couldn’t help but let a newfound yet familiar grudge grow inside him once again. He didn’t want to trust humans anymore. 

Probably and surprisingly the most crushed out of all of them. 

You. Out of all people, you were abandoning him.

You were the most intimate and the closest relationship he ever had. You were his entire world, he gave you everything he could give. This man almost worshipped you for loving him. And you were pulling away from him ?

All you see in his face is utter disbelief... And pain.

He doesn’t say a word, his knees simply give out and without ever breaking eye contact with you he crashes on the floor. 

When you decided walk away, he continued to look at you until you truly disappeared.

Afterwards, in public, he acted like he always did, he had this happy persona for more than a thousand years he knew how to make it look like he was feeling alright.

But you noticed. Because he avoided every plausible contact with you. He acted like you weren’t part of his world anymore because he knew that if he did so much as to look at you his smile would immediately falter. 

He wanted you back. Nobody could have wanted someone back more than he wanted you. You were the first person whom he ever loved and the first person who ever truly loved him back. 

He always thought he lived a life only filled with solitude until you single-handledly showed him that he wasn’t alone as he thought. Until you told him that with you by his side he would never feel alone anymore.

He thought about bringing you back by force, using his privileges as the Devildom Prince and only ruler to get you to fulfill the promise that you made to him. 

He actually nearly made it happen. 

But was advised by both Lucifer and Barbatos that it would be a bad idea and, while he did it reluctantly, he ultimately agreed. 

But he never felt so alone.

Surprisingly Simeon was the one who had the most trouble understanding why you wanted to break it off.

The only thoughts running thorugh his mind at the moment were : “What happened ? What did he do wrong?”

He was always so careful with you, so romantic, so understanding, so... perfect. 

There was no other word, he was a perfect boyfriend. He always did what he thought was right. He always treated you right. So why did you break up with him?

Simeon was a smart man, he wrote countless times about love too but he truly couldn’t comprehend the fact you wanted to end your relationship.

He thought was you had was so special, he was in love with you. Every moment that he spent with you was precious to him. 

And he couldn’t get around the fact that you didn’t feel the same anymore.

But he did let you go though.

Without asking any questions or giving much of a fight because even there he wanted to put your feelings first.

He didn’t even cry, nor complained. He just caressed your cheek one last time with his long fingers, making sure to remember the softness of your skin and the shape of your jaw. 

He looked at every detail of your face and he memorized them all knowing it would be the last time he would ever be allowed to be so close to you.

Then he layed his lips on your forehead for the last kiss he could give you and whispered, his voice trembling, so slightly that you barely even noticed it :

“If that’s what you want”

The first time he saw you again afterward he tried to make his way to you to talk with you as if you were back to friends. but as soon as he saw you shifting awkwardly while you looked at him he stopped in his tracks, gave you a small smile and turned around. 

Once again putting your feelings first.

#obey me #obey me one master to rule them all #swd obey me #obey me headcanons #obey me! #obey me lucifer #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me diavolo #obey me simeon #obey me beel #obey me belphie

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

Hello everyone, I hope you’re doing alright. I know i’m going to ask something “dumb” so to speak but is it possible to “brainwash” yourself into being queer?

In late 2019 i got into a fandom with queer rep (and started using my Tumblr account more actively) so I got in contact with more queer people. I felt like an impostor as the seemingly only cishet person in our little group, so i started digging again in questioning my sexuality and gender. “Again” because i did it before but i concluded i was cishet, as I was way more attracted to men than to women and i wasn’t “deviant enough” of my agab to really consider myself nonbinary, but i must admit i did believe your attraction had to be 50/50 (or *at least* 75/25 to the “gay side”) to count as bi, and that the concept of nonbinary reduced women and men to their stereotypes, and later that they had to be neutral or completely detached from binary genders. To clarify, I would’ve never thought bad of someone who identified as nonbinary for doing so, but i’d be like “well that’s your life i guess” and don’t bother with it.

I’ve had several identity crisis since then, from not feeling queer enough to feeling bad about becoming too queer to comfortably fit in with cishet norms. Even though I am nonbinary (or think i am nb at the moment), I dont fit in with most nonbinary people in online spaces because i’m not transmasc (or id as trans at all) and most enbies seem to be, which is fine because its their identity and they’re lucky enough to have several people who share their experiences.

Anyway, I went from being sure I was cishet (or that I still counted as cishet) to not really understanding how someone can be comfortable being a binary gender or being monosexual. I just don’t get it anymore, and that is the main reason I think sometimes that I have brainwashed myself, especially since i am “pretty close” to being a cishet woman, but deep inside I know that’s not true, and even if most people saw me as that it would be an oversimplification of who I am.

This ended up longer than expected (sorry) and I think I just need a confirmation/justification of how i’m not actually brainwashing myself, or if that’s even possible.Thanks for your time. This blog has helped me a lot in the past, especially with dealing with my bisexuality, but as you can see i’m still a work in progress. I really appreciate all of you 💜

Everything that you say screams "queer" to me. You repeatedly say that you know you are bi and non-binary, that you are not a cishet woman. You've questioned this before and it obviously doesn't pass, so you keep coming back to it. You are drawn to other queer people and media that depicts queer people - not to "brainwash" yourself but because that's whom/what you relate to. Because you're queer. And you show all the common signs of internalised queerphobia - for example not feeling "queer enough" or like an imposter. That itself could be used as a proof that you really are queer. If you are literally afraid of "not being queer enough" then you are probably queer. Actual straight and cisgender people are pretty okay with being straight and cisgender.

Nobody just "brainwashes" themselves to be queer. People grow and learn more about themselves and the world. You've learned more about the queer community over the last few years than you knew before, and that new knowledge in turn helps you to understand your own sexuality and gender better. For example: you previously thought that bisexuality had to be "50/50" or be stronger "on the gay side". Thinking that you'd of course not be able to identify with that and went "back" to thinking you are straight. But now you know better about bisexuality and it's only resonable that you'd now realise that you're actually bi after all. That isn't brainwashing, that's just education and personal growth.

Since you say you've known this blog for a while you may have seen this already but I'm going to link my post about internalised biphobia here anyway. Please check it out and see if any of those tips can help you work through your internalised queerphobia.

Maddie

[sepublic]

I managed to watch Infinity Train Book 2 finale!

I mean, everyone else has already said it, but... goodness what a phenomenal finale. What an amazing season, absolutely superb in EVERY respect! After Book 1 introduced a setting, Book 2 went out of its way to further expand on it! It... it’s like after Book 1, Owen and his team got the hang of what they wanted to do with the show even more and we got Cracked Reflection as a result!

Lake! Lake is free! She can see her reflection now! SHE GETS TO BE WITH JESSE AND EVEN MEETS NATE!!! Her emotional breakdown and anguished declaration of personhood at the end of the Tape Car lowkey gave me chills... That was powerful, watching her just break down in frustration at the pure, inherent unfairness of it all and even destroying robot workers minding their own business in her pain.

Really, that whole sequence in the Tape Car was nightmarish. Its name REALLY doesn’t quite cover what it’s like, and I felt like I was watching the Matrix with that scene of all of the pods lined up on a wall, robot tentacle-arms, people asleep and floating in murky liquid...

Also, that scene felt like all of the passengers were inside an even bigger, larger nervous system of sorts. And with how weirdly-organic it was for such an otherwise mechanical, sterile environment, I half-expected to see some horrific organic thing at the end of all of it, acting as the brain and nervous system for the Tape Car and potentially the entire Infinity Train! Goodness this train is so eldritch.

Seeing more of how the process works was also neat, as well as new robot workers! I kind of already expected the “Didn’t care about Lake and Dracula” bit but it was still neat, and on an unrelated note, we see what the point of the squiggly red-line vocoder is for on the pods; It’s apparently where the audio of One-One’s video comes from!

(Side-note, but that kid being messed up from accidentally killing a pet... That kind of hit close to home and honestly I felt that.)

And seeing the Steward again... FINALLY! Someone else suggested that the Steward is created to defend the Infinity Train’s mechanisms if they’re attacked, and this episode seemingly confirms it; It also makes the Steward’s preprogrammed command for passengers to ‘return to their seat’ also make more sense when you realize that the voiceline is probably meant for situations where passengers are in areas they really shouldn’t be (especially parts of the Infinity Train’s anatomy).

Everyone called it, but we FINALLY get to see One-One inside the Steward, piloting it as intended! And also, I’m glad to see I was correct in One-One now acting as a Lawful Neutral character due to his power and authority putting him at odds with people who are struggling with the Infinity Train’s system. Seeing him again is so weirdly nostalgic, and I love how we get to see the darker side of him as he struggles with what to do with Lake. Him popping out of the Steward to roll around in stress is amazing, too.

I love the idea of the Infinity Train struggling to quantify an ‘issue’ it can’t deal with by producing non-integers (many of which have no actual mathematical meaning, like ;P). It’s interesting that One-One talks about solutions to people’s problems, and how said problems are shown through numbers. And the solution to the problem is zero... It’s all like a complex mathematical pun and it’s incredibly clever. Also, him explaining that the train ‘fixes’ passengers... It makes me wonder if the Infinity Train is meant to be, like. A maintenance robot for humanity as a whole? A powerful machine built to ‘fix’ people’s malfunctions, a very specific kind of malfunction, an emotional one. This perspective and the Infinity Train’s mathematical, computer-like approach to everything (down to Lake fooling it as if by hacking) makes its nature and unknown origin all the more fascinating. 

Sieve isn’t happy... Big surprise there, but I didn’t expect him to get through the situation by suggesting a ‘solution’ to One-One’s problem that the latter darkly considers. He was always the more clever of the duo and good at dealing with/convincing people, and it shows. Not gonna lie, seeing him die by getting zapped by Dracula’s lasers and exploding from it in gorey fashion was... I should be more shocked, but after the Wasteland I’m not. God I love this show.

(Also, Sieve should show a little more respect to the Conductor and not PUT HIS FOOT ON HIM- He’s lucky One-One didn’t sic the Steward on him!)

Jesse having a second tape showing his experiences with Lake, all as memories building up to his newest problem, no Lake, was also great and I love how the show elaborates that tapes are specifically imbued with the memories related to and leading up to the issue that causes a passenger to board the train. Also, when he and Nate were talking about freeing Lake, I half-expected that joke theory about Jesse yeeting Nate down the stairs to get in trouble again was, like, going to happen, with Nate even voluntarily helping for it. But luckily the Infinity Train recognizes Jesse’s emotional distress of not having Lake as enough of a problem itself, and Nate doesn’t get any more broken bones.

(And can we appreciate how the FIRST thing Jesse fixates on after waking up is Lake? I LOVE THESE TWO)

I love in particular how Lake figures out how to cheat the system by reflecting Jesse’s number on her... And upon realizing this solution as well, Jesse’s number immediately goes to zero because he realizes it’s practically been solved! This kind of clever thinking and exploitation of the rules of a setting and using it to one’s advantage is one of my FAVORITE things to see in media, ever. It’s way more fun and clever than just a generic ‘Hero gets an emotional power boost’ that most stories have, and it’s part of what makes shows like Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure so endearing to me! Glad to see Infinity Train joining the list of shows that use galaxy-brain thinking to save the day!

I was really worried for a second that Sieve would stop Lake as she and Jesse escaped, and for a moment they seemed safe... But SOMEHOW he got a hold of Lake’s foot, genuinely surprising me after I sighed in relief when she arrived in the ‘regular’(?) world. At that point I was wondering what Alan Dracula was even doing, when LO AND BEHOLD Lake uses grass to beckon him!

Really, I love how in these last two episodes, Lake has figured out how Dracula operates and has grass and solutions stored accordingly. It just goes to show how well she (they? him? Lots of trans/NB coding with Lake) knows him. Also, I was lowkey anticipating some dramatic reveal about Alan Dracula, what with the foreboding foreshadowing in the minisodes and One-One’s confusion... But no, hilariously, he’s just like that. And that’s amazing, alongside the fact that One-One just treats him as... A particularly unusual creation of his, even by the train’s standards. (I should rewatch Dracula’s minisode cameos under the context of One-One having made him). Also, apparently One-One DOES design train inhabitants? Or is Dracula just the one? How many does he design? All of them? SO MANY QUESTIONS-

Finally, we get our happy ending, and Lake FINALLY gets her true name, which I’ve been looking forward to all season! Wonderful, phenomenal, amazing, brilliant season and amazing ending! Now I already miss Jesse, Lake, and Alan Dracula. I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get to check up on Tulip or Atticus, but perhaps that’s for another season.

This DOES make me wonder what Book 3 could be about, because there’s so much potential! We still have that blue-haired girl that was shown at a panel, whom an animator was excited to show off... Considering her distinctive trait I think she may be the next protagonist. Others have also suggested the old man that Lake scared off, and that’d be neat as well (Why not both? Perhaps we could have two passengers in a season, or one after the other!). There’s also the issue of the Apex, which as I expected, would be brought up in Book 2 to probably be resolved in Book 3. It’s like how Lake and her storyline were introduced in Book 1, and seemingly ended, only to be revealed that Mace and Sieve are still after her, and THAT storyline is truly resolved in Book 2.

I’m just excited, man. Between The Owl House’s premiere and the Book 2 finale, I’m just blown-out and exhausted. It’s been a wonderful train ride and I can’t wait for the next stop!

#infinity train #infinity train spoilers #infinity train book 2 #infinity train season 2 #infinity train crackled reflection #infinity train lake #infinity train jesse #jesse cosay #alan dracula #one-one #steward #infinity train mt #episode review #analysis #speculation

[fyrapartnersearch]

Find the Light

heyo, i’m jo! i've posted before, but life and Depression™ got in the way. if we've chatted before but things fell through, my sincerest apologies and feel free to contact me again! about me: -early 20’s -she/her pronouns -GMT+3 -Tired my roleplaying: -originals! -long-term -chill and flexible af -usually 3rd person, past tense, multi-para -lover of most (all?) genres -platonic lover, romance lover, will do non-hetero (m//, f//, nb) pairings ONLY -good with including or excluding mature themes e.g. smut, alcohol, drugs, etc. -more than one main character is great but not required! -if smut is involved, i refuse to play out top/bottom dynamics. my characters are more than that and i hope yours are too -NOT a rapid-fire response type of person. i need time and patience, and i will offer the same right back to you 120%! this is a No Pressure zone

-can go from 250-2k words depending on what the situation calls for

-i adore ooc talk! please be my friend and create something beautiful with me -diverse cast of characters (just a heads up, none of them are straight) -limits: adultxminor, slaves, romanticized abuse, scat, vore, rape as fetish you, hopefully: -over 18 -lgbt+ friendly -not extremely demanding when it comes to response time -like ooc chatter & plotting/talking about our dumb characters plot ideas that can 100% be edited to our liking:

character A intentionally or unintentionally summons a demon, character B. other demons are attracted to the summoning spot and character A ends up intentionally or unintentionally making a pact with character B, forcing B to protect A from the demons and any future enemies. B is now stuck with A because of the pact, and if A is ever killed, B would face the same fate. shenanigans ensue. basically begrudged partners in crime/survival! (bonus if the demon summoned is the grim reaper because the irony would be delicious)

character A is a fallen angel who has recently been kicked out of heaven. character B is a human delinquent who’s known for causing trouble. character A decides to take B under their wing and attempt to reform them as a way to get back into heaven and regain angel status. who will influence whom in this situation? alternatively: character B is a literal demon instead of a human delinquent, for extra Angel Points

vampires have taken over society and now control everything whilst humans are treated like cattle and bloodbanks. however, there is a hidden human rebellion group that wants to dethrone the vampires and make things better for humans. one day, their leader, character A, is captured and taken to some of the top vampire 'leaders' to be interrogated on the rest of the rebellion's whereabouts. plot twist: turns out one of the vampire leaders, character B, and this captured rebel were actually best friends before the vampires took over, and they had both thought the other was dead. old feelings crop up, morality is questioned, confusion and frustration galore.

  there have been more and more rumors and alleged sightings of vampires cropping up lately, so character A, a 'vampire hunter' is hired to take care of them. thing is, vampires are a relatively new thing and the humans don’t have them completely figured out yet, so the vampire hunter is given a vampire partner, character B (who probably has something on them like special handcuffs made of some material that's like kryptonite to vampires so they can't try any funny stuff) to help in tracking down vampires and generally figuring out what they’re all about. getting along immediately is probably not in the cards for these two.

  a dnd-like adventure where a pair or group of people are aiming for the same goal, whether it be a sacred treasure or otherwise, and decide to work together. personalities clash, infighting ensues, and irreplaceable memories are made along the way.

  the seven sins of hell are represented by seven demon princes/princesses/royalties. i don’t actually have a real idea for this but i think the concept is rad. we wouldn’t have to use all seven but yeah! maybe representatives of the seven heavenly virtues make an appearance or are a key part. idk, let’s talk!!

  character A is a detective, character B is their new deadpan android assistant. that’s it, that’s all i’ve got. i just think the concept is interesting as hell and apparently already done in D:BH, but i have Not played that game so i have no idea what they do with it.

  alternatively, we can just discuss characters and create plots out of them! i’ll also throw out some keywords/concepts that i have 0 plots for but would love to make something out of:

  witch academy / earth pirates / space pirates / elemental spirits / rivals / superheroes / supervillains / werewolves / gangs / mafia / magical girls/boys/people / ghosts / best friends to lovers / hate to love / amnesia / opposites attract / assassins / bands / cyberpunk / royalty / runaways / alchemy / bounty hunters

i’ve got a discord i use for ooc stuff (which i will give out after initial contact), and for the actual roleplaying i usually use email or gdocs, but if you use other mediums for ooc chatter and/or roleplay, just let me know! i’m willing to try new stuff out. you can hit me up at [email protected]. hope to hear from y’all!

#oc rp #multiple paragraph #long term #email #submission

[shkspr]

hey do you have any advice on figuring out your sexuality? I don't know what your experience has been but im struggling

anon, i am deeply sorry that it took me so long to answer this. it’s a combination of the fact that you can’t edit a draft of an ask on mobile (wack) and the fact that i’ve been trying to figure out how to say what i want to say (normal, i feel). anyway, this is what i’ve got, and i hope it helps.

first off, due to the nature of the things i’m discussing here, i want to state unequivocally that i am a lesbian who is open to relationships with trans women because i am attracted to women, and trans women are women. if anybody touches this post with their transmisogyny i will cast the evil eye on them. 

for what it’s worth, my experience with my own sexuality has been a long, hard process, and it’s been heavily, undeniably affected by my simultaneous journey with my gender identity, my personal identity, my childhood trauma, and my mental health. pretty much from the ages of 13 to 19 i was in a constant state of questioning everything about myself as a person. the only reason i even considered i might not be straight was bc i had friends who were not straight and i admired them. you can see how that would be confusing to a small teen who is already insecure about being a poser and a fake in every other aspect of life.

once i really examined what i was feeling, and talked it out with some of the aforementioned friends, i could admit that i wasn’t pretending, and that’s when i began identifying as bi. i wove in and out of different terminologies for a few years, burned thru several nb identities and several aspec identities, but the bottom line was that i was attracted to my own gender and other genders, and that was solid for a while.

when i was 18, i began thinking that i might be a lesbian bc, shock of shocks, i had made some very cool lesbian friends whom i admired. and i pretty much pushed that idea out of the way for a bit, telling myself it was not the truth, that i just wanted to feel special and cool, i just wanted to fit in. but then, shock of shocks again, i talked to some of my cool lesbian friends and they were very understanding and accepting and explained to me why all the reasons i thought i “couldn’t” be a lesbian were actually bullshit. 

so then i was a lesbian! and i spent a long time exploring my relationship with sex and found that i wasn’t asexual; some people are, and that’s cool! but my experience wasn’t a lack of sexual attraction or desire, it was a fear of vulnerability and a traumatic history with sexual content. i still had (or have) a complex experience with sex, and a muddy picture of gender, and a deeply flawed concept of interpersonal relationships, but i am a lesbian. and i’ve been comfortable with that for a while now, and i don’t foresee myself changing how i feel about that, but unexpected things can happen. 

and even though i’m comfortable with being a lesbian and calling myself a lesbian, there are always going to be things that give me pause. the thing is, the main way that i’ve changed and grown in this regard, is that those things don’t make me seriously question myself anymore. i’m secure enough in my sexuality to know that comphet, genderfeels, societal bias, etc etc, doesn’t make me less of a lesbian, even though it might feel like it sometimes.

that’s what it’s been like for me. my experiences are not universal, but i do happen to know that some of them are fairly common. but there’s also no right or wrong way to find yourself. there’s no rush, there’s no requirement. it is confusing and difficult more often than not, in a lot of different and scary ways. that being said, if there’s one piece of advice you take away from this post, it’s to always remember that your experiences are your own, and nobody else can decide for you what they mean or what to do with them.

it’s like this: you know when people say “everyone’s a little bit bisexual”? that’s not true, obviously. but i think there’s a truth hidden underneath it, and i think it’s a common experience that erroneously leads some people to that belief. no matter how you identify, there is almost always going to be something - compulsory heterosexuality, personal trauma that makes sex or romance uncomfortable, past relationships, one (1) very attractive man, whatever it is - that makes you think you’re wrong. even if you know you’re right. there’s always going to be something that could at any moment cause you to stop and think: wait, am i lying to myself?

and some people are not as vulnerable to those thoughts! some people go thru their daily lives and very rarely, if ever, consciously question their sexuality or their perception or performance of it. but other people are more susceptible to the thought spirals and the self-doubt and the confusion, and society at large feeds that and feeds upon it. for every lesbian you meet, there’s seven people giving twelve different reasons why they can’t be a “real” lesbian. for every bisexual person you meet, there’s a handful of thinkpieces about bisexuality that contradict their experiences. and so on and so forth. and that’s enough to cause a lot of indecision and anxiety.

but it’s also very freeing to take that thought and follow it to its necessary conclusion: that nobody on earth can tell you what your sexuality is. sure, if you’re a woman who feels genuine attraction to men and wants to pursue sex or relationships with them, you’re not a lesbian. that’s just because words have meanings. but you get to decide what “genuine attraction” is to you, and you get to decide whether you’re comfortable pursuing those relationships. and that’s just one example; the same logic applies broadly.

the bottom line is really that agonizing over labels and definitions just means you miss the forest for the trees. in a practical sense, in real life, who would you want to date, marry, kiss, have sex with, etc.? without thinking about what you should do, what you should want, what you’d be able to do if you had to, what you did last week, internet discourse, a dream you had when you were 12, whatever, none of it is relevant except insofar as it informs your current feelings on the matter. you’re not obligated to choose a label, and if you want one then there’s no deadline to pick one, and once you do you’re not locked into an identity for life.

which is all to say that no, not everybody is a little bit bisexual, but nobody is 100% anything, in this or any other facet of life. and that doesn’t mean that people’s sexualities aren’t valid; they are valid, but they aren’t objective or concrete in the way we would often like them to be. they’re helpful labels for explaining something that is actually unfathomably complicated. so whatever you do, whatever you decide: you don’t need to be sure, you don’t need to be right, you don’t need to be a certain kind of person, you don’t need to be anything in particular. you just need to be comfortable. 

#Anonymous #long post --- #ok to rb #gd this is a doozy

[snicketsleuth]

Whatever happened to Mrs Widdershins?

Fiona Widdershins' life was plagued with abandonment issues. Her birth father is unaccounted for, her mother died when she was very young, her only sibling disappeared and her stepather left her stranded on the Queequeg without so much as an explanation. It's no wonder that Fiona snapped when she finally got her brother back and decided to stay with him at all costs. It's the tragic tale of a broken childhood, and a broken family.

But the topic of Mrs Widdershins' untimely demise is interesting from a narrative point of view. Why did Daniel Handler decide to make Fiona and Fernald's mother such a big deal in the first place? Surely the tension between the Captain and Fernald was enough to explain the trauma inherent to the Widdershins family drama. Adding a mysteriously departed mom on top of it is kind of overkill.

The Netflix adaptation attempted to give us some resolution by turning Fernald into a lab assistant at Anwhistle Aquatics and giving the Captain the subplot of his wife's disappareance. That's all well and good, and satisfying from a narrative perspective, but the books have their own separate canon.

Surely there's a reason why this subplot was included in the books. Daniel Handler probably had a resolution in mind but decided not to include it (just like he never confirmed that Lemony was the taxi driver from "The Penultimate Peril", for example). So why did he think Mrs. Widdershins was important? What's the missing story behind her death? Her demise looms in the background of the Widdershins family dynamic like the missing piece of a very important puzzle. It seems inoccuous, but it's probably the key to understanding everything. So what really happened to her? And how would it help us rationalizing the actions of Fernald and his stepfather?

Although the following hypothesis will mostly focus on Mrs. Widdershins, we will also try to answer a number of burning questions regarding the Widdershins family, including but not limited to:

How did Fernald lose his hands?

Who killed Gregor Anwhistle?

Who burned down Anwhistle Aquatics?

Why did Fernald betray his stepfather and join Olaf's troupe?

More after the cut.

There are some interesting tidbits of chronology to be found in the Widdershins legacy, so let's try to organize events in the right order.

We don't know anything about Fernald's and Fiona's birth father. Apparently Handler chose to make the Captain their stepfather to better explain why the relationship between Fernald and the Captain turned sour so quickly. Indeed if you look at the chronology it turns out that the Captain is only older than Fernald by a few years. So basically the Captain became Fernald's stepfather when he had barely entered adulthood. Fernald probably never saw him as a proper authority figure, which would explain why his bossy attitude particularly annoyed him.

For more details on Fernald and the Captain's age, please refer to this article : (Link).

Although not traditional, the family was originally a happy one:

"I found something else," Violet said, handing her brother a crumpled square of paper. "Look." Klaus looked at what his sister had given him. It was a photograph, blurred and faded with four people, grouped together like a family. In the center of the photograph was a large man with a long mustache that was curved at the end like a pair of parentheses – Captain Widdershins, of course, although he looked much younger and a great deal happier than the children had ever seen him. He was laughing, and his arm was around someone the two Baudelaires recognized as the hook-handed man, although he was not hook-handed in the photograph – both of his hands were perfectly intact, one resting on the captain's shoulder, and the other pointing at whoever was taking the picture – and he was young enough to still be called a teenager, instead of a man. On the other side of the captain was a woman who was laughing as hard as the captain, and in her arms was a young infant with a tiny set of triangular glasses. [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Twelve]

This does beg the question: who took the photograph and towards whom is Fernald pointing? Who’s this assumed friend of the Widdershins family? More on that later.

Then the questionable death of Mrs Widdershins took place:

"Phil!" Violet cried. "What on earth are you doing here?" "He's the second of our crew of two!" the captain cried. "Aye! The original second in the crew of two was Fiona's mother, but she died in a manatee accident quite a few years ago." "I'm not so sure it was an accident," Fiona said. [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Two]

The Captain and Fernald seemed to get along well when Mrs. Widdershins was alive. Then the relationship changed.

"You?" said Olaf's henchman. "What happened to Widdershins?" "He disappeared from the submarine," Fiona replied. "We don't know where he is." "I don't care where he is," the hook-handed man sneered. "I couldn't care less about that mustached fool! He's the reason I joined Count Olaf in the first place! The captain was always shouting 'Aye! Aye! Aye!' and ordering me around! So I ran away and joined Olaf's acting troupe!" "But Count Olaf is a terrible villain!" Fiona cried. "He has no regard for other people. He dreams up treacherous schemes, and lures others into becoming his cohorts!" "Those are just the bad aspects of him," the hook-handed man said. "There are many good parts, as well. For instance, he has a wonderful laugh." [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Ten]

It’s jarring that Fernald cites the Captain’s behavior as the main reason he joined Count Olaf’s troupe. Why would he suddenly resent his stepfather when he used to actually like him? In fact, he seems to think so little of him that he considers Olaf an upgrade. What made Fernald change his mind about his stepfather so quickly? There could be three explanations for this: either the Captain’s behavior changed dramatically after his wife’s death, or Fernald learned something about the Captain which redefined the relationship entirely. The third option is that Mrs. Widdershins’ death was so traumatic an ordeal that it severed any affection between Fernald and the Captain.

As one can imagine, it’s easy to posit that these three hypotheses could combine themselves. There are things about Mrs. Widdershins’ death which Fiona does not know and which severely damaged the bond between a stepfather and his stepson. A huge disagreement occurred over her untimely end, and feelings were hurt. Now there’s one legitimate reason for Fernald to be upset at the Captain: he’s lying about the true circumstances of his wife’s death. Fiona was already questioning the official version while she was devoted to V.F.D. and her stepdad, so it’s safe to assume that Fernald does not believe this story either.

Although Fernald's eventual defection clearly has much to do with what happened at Anwhistle Aquatics, it's clear that the death of Mrs Widdershins is equally important in the matter. Is it possible that the two events are linked? In fact, it's likely. The composition of the Queequeg's crew of two is especially revealing:

"Aye! The original second in the crew of two was Fiona's mother, but she died in a manatee accident quite a few years ago." [...] "Then we had Jacques!" the captain continued. "Aye, and then what's-his-name, Jacques's brother, and then a dreadful woman who turned out to be a spy, and finally we have Phil! Although I like to call him Cookie! I don't know why!" [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Two]

Now there is someone apparently missing from this list: Fernald. After his mother died, it would seem likely that her son would replace her as the second-in-command in the crew of two. Fernald remembers the Captain bossing him around. It's possible that Fernald was indeed a member of the Crew of Two and that the Captain is omitting him out of shame, but that’s unlikely. You see, Fiona is in the room with the Captain while he is listing these people. If he had “forgotten” to name Fernald, she would have corrected him immediately. But no, the list appears to be correct in Fiona’s own assessment. For some reason, Fernald was NEVER considered a member of the Crew of Two, even though he was old enough and had the qualifications. The Captain immediately replaced Mrs. Widdershins with Jacques Snicket.

And that’s really telling, because we know Jacques was occupying this position at a time where Fernald was already part of Count Olaf’s troupe. Here’s a passage from a letter which Jacques sent Lemony from the Queequeg. At that point in time, Fernald was probably starring in Olaf’s play “One last warning to those who try to stand in my way”:

Under normal circumstances, new volunteers like ourselves would not receive disguise training until our years of apprenticeship were finished, but we have not been under normal circumstances for quite some time. For instance, currently I am under sixty feet of water, rather than under normal circumstances. [Lemony Snicket’s un-Authorized Autobiography, p.96]

The two actresses playing the Defenders of Liberty now have their faces painted a ghastly white color, and the part of the Little Snicket Lad, once played by the young actor pictured here, has been replaced by a sinister-looking person far too old for the part (also pictured here). [Lemony Snicket’s un-Authorized Autobiography, p.78] [NB: The picture in question depicts a young man in a fedora who looks eerily similar to the way Brett Helquist draws Fernald in the official illustrations of the original editions]

And that means something very significant: that Fernald left the Queequeg a short time after his mother’s death, to the point that he was never considered a second in the Crew of Two. As we know, Fiona is barely older than Violet even though she was born before Lemony’s and Beatrice’s break-up (that is, before Jacques became a secon-in-command in the Crew of Two).

So we've established, chronologically, that the fire at Anwhistle Aquatics and Mrs. Widdershins' demise are part of the same debacle. Is there a reason for a second in the Queequeg's Crew of Two to be involved in Gregor Anwhistle's research?

Potentially yes. Anwhistle Aquatics, for some reason, was built upon a subterranean grotto which could only be accessed by deep-sea divers. You'd need a submarine to get there. The grotto was arranged to conceal specimens of the Medusoid Mycellium securely: the spores can't travel by water, so making sure that only deep-sea divers can access it makes complete sense. Shortly after they visit the grotto, Violet and Klaus are able to safely contain the infestation in a submarine helmet. It's probably the only way safe for the fungus to be handled. Therefore, in order to make his experiments on the Medusoid Mycelium securely, Gregor Anwhistle would need constant access to a V.F.D. submarine and its crew, making long trips from the research center to the grotto.

This is why we need to understand what truly happened during the fire. The Queequeg's crew didn't just have access to Gregor Anwhistle's research center: they were heavily involved in it. They knew exactly what he was doing and the Widdershins family perhaps even had a hand in it.

So let's imagine that Mrs Widdershins wasn't just a submarine operator. She was a scholar. She was one of Gregor Anwhistle's assistants, and, more importantly, one of his accomplices. Gregor Anwhistle took the photograph of the Widdershins family.

"I think the ruby ring is very in," Esmé purred. "It would look wonderful with my flame-imitating dress." "That was my mother's," Fiona said quietly. "She would have wanted me to have it Esmé said quickly. "We were close friends at school." [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Thirteen]

And if you think that's doubtful, ask yourself this: why is Fiona a mycologist? And why does the Queequeg's library contains so much information on mushrooms in general and the Medusoid Mycellium in particular? This library is a legacy of Mrs Widdershin's works on the Medusoid Mycellium. She knew everything. And that is exactly why Kit Snicket targetted the Widdershins family when she reached a disagreement with Gregor Anwhistle. Kit definitely had Gregor Anwhistle murdered. The reason she specifically asked the Captain and Fernald to commit this crime is because they had easy access to Anwhistle Aquatics (through their submarine) and to Gregor (through Mrs Widdershins).

Violet smiled. "Precisely," she said. "A Hobson 's choice is something that's not a choice at all. It's an expression our mother used to use. She'd say, 'I'll give you a Hobson's choice, Violet – you can clean your room or I will stand in the doorway and sing your least favorite song over and over.' "  Fiona grinned. "What was your least favorite song?" she asked. " 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat,' " Violet said. "I hate the part about life being but a dream." "She'd offer me the Hobson's choice of doing the dishes or reading the poetry of Edgar Guest," Klaus said. "He's my absolute least favorite poet." "Bath or pink dress," Sunny said. "Did your mother always joke around like that?" Fiona asked. "Mine used to get awfully mad if I didn't clean my room." "Our mother would get mad, too," Klaus said. "Remember, Violet, when we left the window of the library open, and that night it rained?" [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Seven]

We may never know what truly happened at Anwhistle Aquatics that terrible night. We can only makes hypotheses. But here's our proposition.

Kit Snicket eventually realized Gregor wouldn't listen to reason. In order to stop his bioweapon project, she needed to come up with a way to burn down Anwhistle Aquatics and murder Gregor. That way, the research would be lost forever. Kit then reached out to the Captain, who had both access to the research center and a wife who was part of Gregor's inner circle. The Captain accepted the mission and even enlisted the help of his stepson. He told Fernald that his mother was under a corrupting influence and that she had been brainwashed by Gregor. She needed to be saved from herself.

In the final analysis – a phrase which here means "after much thought, and some debate with my colleagues" – Captain Widdershins was wrong about a great many things. He was wrong about his personal philosophy, because there are plenty of times when one should hesitate. He was wrong about his wife's death, because as Fiona suspected, Mrs. Widdershins did not die in a manatee accident. He was wrong to call Phil "Cookie" when it is more polite to call someone by their proper name, and he was wrong to abandon the Queequeg, no matter what he heard from the woman who came to fetch him. Captain Widdershins was wrong to trust his stepson for so many years, and wrong to participate in the destruction of Anwhistle Aquatics, and he was wrong to insist, as he did so many years ago, that a story in The Daily Punctilio was completely true, and to show this article to so many volunteers, including the Baudelaire parents, the Snicket siblings, and the woman I happened to love. But Captain Widdershins was right about one thing. He was right to say that there are secrets in this world too terrible for young people to know, for the simple reason that there are secrets in this world too terrible for anyone to know, whether they are as young as Sunny Baudelaire or as old as Gregor Anwhistle, secrets so terrible that they ought to be kept secret, which is probably how the secrets became secrets in the first place, and one of those secrets is the long, strange shape the Baudelaire orphans saw, first on the Queequeg's sonar, and then as they held the porthole in place and stared out into the waters of the sea. [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Thirteen]

The Captain betrayed his wife's confidence by sneaking into the research center to set a fire while Fernald murdered Gregor. Then they retreated to the safety of the Queequeg. However things didn't go as planned. Instead of fleeing the flames, Mrs Widdershins threw herself into them. She was desperately trying to save Gregor's research in order to duplicate it. In spite of her family's insistence, she never came back to the Queequeg. She died in the fire. Fernald and the Captain agreed to never tell Fiona what had transpired.

"Our stepfather knew Jacques Snicket," Fiona said. "He was a good man, but Count Olaf murdered him. Are you a murderer, too? Did you kill Gregor Anwhistle?" In grim silence, the hook-handed man held his hooks in front of the children. "The last time you saw me," he said to Fiona, "I had two hands, instead of hooks. Our stepfather probably didn't tell you what happened to me – he always said there were secrets in this world too terrible for young people to know. What a fool!" "Our stepfather isn't a fool," Fiona said. "He's a noble man. Aye!" "People aren't either wicked or noble," the hook-handed man said. "They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict." [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Ten]

This is why the relationship between the Captain  and Fernald never recovered. Fernald could never forgive the Captain for starting the fire which killed his mother. Although the Captain certainly never intended for Mrs Widdershins to die, his responsability in his wife's death was inevitable.

Interestingly this tragic death would explain A LOT about Fernald's decision to join Olaf's troupe. After all, one can understand why killing Gregor Anwhistle was necessary. It's morally ambiguous, for sure, but it's not a good enough reason to join a criminal gang. But if you add the trauma of losing a mother on top of this shady assassination, things start to make more sense. You see, Fernald and Olaf had a big thing in common: both lost parental figures in a shady assassination scheme orchestrated by members of V.F.D. The Baudelaire parents killed Olaf's parents at a opera house. Count Olaf used this connection, this proximity in background, to warp Fernald's feelings. He turned him against his stepfather and V.F.D. in general by sharing some aspects of his own backstory.

"Fiona!" the hook-handed man cried. "Is it really you?" "Aye," the mycologist said, taking off her triangular glasses to wipe away her tears. "I never thought I would see you again, Fernald. What happened to your hands?" "Never mind that," the hook-handed man said quickly. "Why are you here? Did you join Count Olaf, too?" [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Ten]

It would also explain why Fernald is reluctant to share some aspects of his past with Fiona (such as the way he lost his hands, for example) even though she knows about the Anwhistle fire. Although she's begun to scratch the surface, there are simply aspects of the murder which are worse than she thinks and which Fernald is not ready to divulge. Indeed Fiona could very much blame both Fernald and the Captain for her mother's death. Her stepbrother fears that. It's likely that the reason he lost his hands has as much to do with their mother than it has to do with Gregor. If we had to guess, we'd say he burned his hands trying to rescue his mother at Anwhistle Aquatics.

What makes this theory credible is the cover story which the Captain used to explain away his wife's disappearance. More specifically, it involves a manatee. And a manatee shows up in another dubious disappearance story :

"Have you lived your whole life on this island?" Klaus said. "Yes," Friday said. "My mother and father took an ocean cruise while she was pregnant, and ran into a terrible storm. My father was devoured by a manatee, and my mother was washed ashore when she was pregnant with me. You'll meet her soon. Now please hurry up and change." [The End, Chapter Three]

"Oh, Ish," he said, his eyes shining bright, "I told you many years ago that I would triumph over you someday, and at last that day has arrived. My associate with the weekday for a name told me that you were still hiding out on this island, and–" "Thursday," Mrs. Caliban said. Olaf frowned, and blinked at the freckled woman. "No," he said. "Monday. She was trying to blackmail an old man who was involved in a political scandal." [The End, Chapter Eleven]

However this story is later proven to be untrue: Miranda Caliban and her husband were on opposite side of the schism which divided the island. Thursday left with the Baudelaire parents, while Miranda remained on the Island with their daughter. She made up the entire story. It's a little too much of a coincidence that two different disappareance cover-up stories share the exact same weird detail about a manatee.

"Have you been here before?" Violet asked. "No," Kit said, "but I've heard about this place. My associates have told me stories of its mechanical wonders, its enormous library, and the gourmet meals the islanders prepare. Why, the day before I met you, Baudelaires, I shared Turkish coffee with an associate who was saying that he'd never had better Oysters Rockefeller than during his time on the island. You must be having a wonderful time here." "Janiceps," Sunny said, restating an earlier opinion. "I think this place has changed since your associate was here," said Klaus. "That's probably true," Kit said thoughtfully. "Thursday did say that the colony had suffered a schism, just as V.F.D. did." "Another schism?" Violet asked. "Countless schisms have divided the world over the years," Kit replied in the darkness. "Do you think the history of V.F.D. is the only story in the world? Bu: let's not talk of the past, Baudelaires. Tell me how you made your way to these shores." [The End, Chapter Eight]

"Occasionally someone leaves," Ishmael said, and looked down at the Incredibly Deadly Viper, who gave him a brief hiss. "Some time ago, two women sailed off with this very snake, and a few years later, a man named Thursday left with a few comrades." "So Thursday is alive," Klaus said, "just like Kit said." "Yes," Ishmael admitted, "but at my suggestion, Miranda told her daughter that he died in a storm, so she wouldn't worry about the schism that divided her parents." "Electra," Sunny said, which meant "A family shouldn't keep such terrible secrets," but Ishmael did not ask for a translation. "Except for those troublemakers," he said, "everyone has stayed here. And why shouldn't they? Most of the castaways are orphans, like me, and like you. [The End, Chapter Ten]

At this point, it seems more likely to be one of those memetic code phrases which V.F.D. likes to use. "Eaten by a manatee" is a slang term that adult volunteers use to hide something horrible from their children. So what does "eaten by a manatee" mean, exactly? Surely it doesn't mean "dead", as Thursday was clearly alive and well when Miranda started spouting those lies. "Eaten by a manatee" is not used to cover up deaths, it's used to cover up betrayals. Instead of telling young volunteers that someone went to the other side of the schism, parents tell them the person was "eaten by a manatee". It's the ultimate way to sever the parental bond. It's common to tell someone who betrayed you: "you're dead to me". V.F.D. takes the expression to its literal extreme.

So when the Captain affirms that his wife was eaten by a manatee, he means that she actually betrayed the organization. It's not obvious because she didn't go to Olaf's side of the schism (as Fernald did later) but rather to the other side of another schism: that is, she chose Gregor's side in his feud against Kit Snicket. There are indeed multiple schisms within the history of V.F.D. The schism between the "noble" and "villainous" side is the first one and the most important one, but the "noble" side suffered other disagreements: Ishmael vs the Baudelaire parents on the Island, Kit vs Gregor, Lemony vs his mentors in "All The Wrong Questions", Dashiell and Theodora vs Gifford and Ghede, etc.

And on that topic, the newspaper clipping which Violet Baudelaire found in the grotto is especially revealing:

" 'VERIFYING FERNALD'S DEFECTION,' " she said, reading the headline out loud, and then continued by reading the byline, a word which here means "name of the person who wrote the article." "By Jacques Snicket. It has now been confirmed that the fire that destroyed Anwhistle Aquatics, and took the life of famed ichnologist Gregor Anwhistle, was set by Fernald Widdershins, the son of the captain of the Queequeg submarine. The Widdershins family's participation in a recent schism has raised several questions regarding..." Violet looked up and met the glare of Olaf's henchman. "The rest of the article is blurry," she said, "but the truth is clear. You defected – you abandoned V.F.D. and joined up with Olaf!" [The Grim Grotto; Chapter Ten]

Violet missed the point of the article entirely. The text clearly mentions a “recent” schism; that is, not the original one which happened while Dewey and Kit were about four years old and which split the organization into two. The “recent” schism is clearly the one which divided the “noble” volunteers into Gregor’s followers and Gregor’s adversaries. And note that this is the “Widdershins family” who is involved in that particular schism; not just Fernald.

"You should have seen the fire," he said quietly. "From a distance, it looked like an enormous black plume of smoke, rising straight out of the water. It was like the entire sea was burning down." "You must have been proud of your handiwork," Fiona said bitterly. "Proud?" the hook-handed man said. "It was the worst day of my life. That plume of smoke was the saddest thing I ever saw." He speared the newspaper with his other hook and ripped the article into shreds. "The Punctilio got everything wrong," he said. "Captain Widdershins isn't my father. Widdershins isn't my last name. And there's much more to the fire than that. You should know that the Daily Punctilio doesn't tell the whole story, Baudelaires. Just as the poison of a deadly fungus can be the source of some wonderful medicines, someone like Jacques Snicket can do something villainous, and someone like Count Olaf can do something noble. Even your parents –" [The Grim Grotto; Chapter Ten]

As Fernald warns the Baudelaire orphans, the newspaper clipping is propaganda meant to disguise the volunteer’s more questionable behaviours. It purposedly fails to mention that the Captain helped start the destruction of Anwhistle Aquatics, for example. So the author clearly wants us to question the official narrative. And for some reason, as Fernald starts defending his own version of the events, he starts spewing unsavory revelations about the Baudelaire parents. Why would he do that? Is he projecting his own family issues on the Baudelaire legacy? That would be fitting. We already know that the Captain did morally questionable things for V.F.D. It’s not a big leap to assume that his wife committed some crimes of her own.

#0561 #theory #asoue #a series of unfortunate events #Lemony Snicket #daniel handler #captain widdershins #Fernald #fiona widdershins #gregor anwhistle #kit snicket #violet baudelaire #klaus baudelaire #Sunny Baudelaire #count olaf #esme squalor #vfd #ishmael #miranda caliban #friday caliban #jacques snicket #medusoid mycelium #beatrice baudelaire

[elementale]

According to your “logic” being non binary (which is made up) means you’re neither male of female (makes no sense) so how the fucking shite can lesbians date them and still be lesbians?

Well, if you’re genuinely curious to know I’ll be more than happy to explain if you’re willing to listen.

Let’s begin with context and transgenderism itself. I think if nothing else we probably can both agree that at the very least there are different contexts where it might make sense to distinguish people based on what they were assigned at birth. For example, medically speaking, you don’t offer abortions to cis men; likewise, you typically wouldn’t offer testosterone blockers to a trans man beginning his medical transition.

Socially speaking however, the same cut and dry approach dealing in scientific and objective absolutes cannot always be used regarding differentiation by gender. A person who looks and acts like a woman or man will be assumed to be one of the two by a society comprising of cisgendered individuals; if the person in question seems ambiguous in gender, cis society can be noted to have a notorious history of responding with the kind of ignorance and/or anger that no small number of people have had to pay for in blood. Regardless of what gender a trans person may have been assigned at birth, they will at some point realize that, at least psychologically speaking, that prescribed gender simply doesn’t align with their reality as a person in some significant manner that may vary from person to person. The ensuing discomfort that can potentially result from the dissonance between the person’s inner and outer reality as it pertains to their gender is known as gender dysphoria, and it can take on several forms. Some trans people (mainly the transmedicalist crowd) will insist that the discomfort is a necessary element and a person is not trans without the brand of discomfort that will compel them to take hormones and medically transition, but that tends to lead into another set of discussions altogether.

With that established, here’s the concept of nonbinary as an ism. You know how everything can fit your definition of binary gender and corresponding sex if you just dismiss all exemptions to your rule as inconvenient aberrations? Apply the XX vs. XY binary medically and you would be dismissing a lot of chromosomal variant and intersex individuals in the process (and make no mistake; 1.7% of the people in the population may sound small but that is effectively still hundreds of millions of people worldwide who do not neatly fit a “males=XY testes and females=XX ovaries” model of biological sex) if that binary were the only legitimate model. Biologically speaking, there’s already a grey enough region to establish that the most effective model of gender distinctions would have to include people who may not fit the pink and blue boxes. So if medically and biologically there’s already some undeniable ambiguities that bring the unwavering authority of a strict binary into question, where do you think that leaves us socially? Socially - where matters have layers of nuance to them and tend to be even less cut and dry? While there are social expectations on men and women that vary from culture to culture, a constant is that these rules and expectations are socially made and culturally imposed. When people say “gender is a social construct” it might be best understood that what makes the statement true isn’t that gender itself is inherently social in its construct, but rather that the social side of gender and the rules that come with it are socially changeable/pliable. GNC people are a great example of this in action: they break the rules prescribed by society regarding how they should be and express divergently. Non-binary identities are like GNC expression except unlike gender non-conformity in expression and practice, non-binary identities are more of an inner truth regarding gender identity itself. Since society at large has no place for the non-binary in its list of currently acceptable social genders, the rules to being non-binary are kind of non-existent right now; to express one such identity in a way that will register with a cisnormative society, individuals tend to choose gender non-conforming ways of expressing to get the memo across (this is not to say that NB people own GNC itself though). Medically speaking, NB people are as varied as they can be, and there are some for whom hormone therapy and surgery are part of their transition. Like with any other gender identity, there’s not much barrier to entry and the lack of any concrete way to go about being NB means people questioning their own gender are offered a conceptual space to explore being trans. For some folks, agender, genderfluid or demi-boy/girl fit like a glove; others realize it’s just not for them and either realize they’re trans binary later down the line, or realize they were cis all along - absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Non-binary identity does still remain a reality of a lot of people’s gender however whether or not you agree with that. I’m genderfluid myself and while being afab means I am medically recognized as female, I am genderfluid in every other relevant aspect of my life. It’s not a dysphorically-spurred thing for all NB people, but for me it actually is: for example, I have a gender confirmation class surgery I would like done at some point. Since I’m demi-ro and pan I personally don’t really have to think all that hard about any real gender-imposed limitations over what my orientation may entail, but here’s the thing regarding lesbianism as I currently understand it.. it’s not so much about wlw for the body as much as it is the lady in question. By including trans men as people who lesbians can be attracted to, there’s a gender ambiguous element one may inadvertently introduce in that if that were part of the definition. I’m going to assume you got here after having seen one of my responses to that one @empanado-feliz post, and the problem with restricting lesbian to afab people is, as I’d mentioned there in a later reply, that it is a definition that fails to account for and thereby excludes people like intersex lesbians and trans women who it should be accounting for (not to mention how transphobic it is to include trans men in that considering how most if not all of them are trying to reintegrate into society as men). Also expression in a femme fashion isn’t something exclusive to afab persons; women are not attracted to amab trans people because of their anatomy, they love the person and sometimes that person - binary or NB - carries themselves in a viscerally womanlike way. I’m not a lesbian so I’m not really someone who could explain it as effectively as a lesbian who’s had that as a lived experience, but I do know that it’s simultaneously more multifaceted and simpler than a lot make it out to be.

In conclusion, thanks to how ambiguous and multifaceted things regarding gender can be, gatekeeping the identities of lesbians who date non-binary individuals (regardless of whether they are afab, amab or intersex - something that is no one’s business but their own by the way) regardless of how they express helps no one. If nothing else I hope this does offer some food for thought at the very least.

#thanks anon

[alexlayer69]

How not to ever, ever defend Jaune, Part 3: Special Edition

Today we exterminate @rainbowloliofjustice‘s reply as well as her apparent ingrained misogyny, taking everything into account, following @outcasts-redeemer’s argument’s deconstruction. Full thread here.

Hey uh… Chick here and…

Hello! NB person here.

Asking someone out, a grand total of twice is not being a douche.

It was more than twice, and it’s not the constant asking out that’s the problem, it’s the disregard and disrespect for the girl’s agency that makes him a douche.

What he told Neptune was hardly a lecture. He was basically telling Neptune to just ask Weiss out because she liked Neptune and Neptune thought she was out of his league so why bother.

Jaune actually called out Neptune on not caring about Weiss’ feelings, which is practically giving him a lecture and incredibly hypocritical of him considering his behavior towards him.

Weiss indeed is a rude bitch…. during the first volume. She’s rude to Ruby, thinking she is incompetent as a leader and even going as far as to complain to Ozpin and demand an explanation on why she isn’t the leader, even basically saying she think that she would be a better leader than Ruby. She wanted to be friends with Pyrrha solely because of her name and fame… ring a bell with Weiss not liking Jaune because she thought he was after her money? Oh and bonus… Pyrrha was fairly uncomfortable with this.

I’m not here to deny that Weiss wasn’t the best of the best during Volume 1, but she’s actually shown development and evidence of moving past this. Yeah, she approached Pyrrha with her own interest in mind, but that was just once and it has never been repeated since. Not to mention Pyrrha was nowhere near as visible uncomfortable about any of this as Weiss was with Jaune shoving himself in between them, and at least Weiss was smart enough to pick up the hint and drop it.

Bitch have you watched the series? Pyrrha actually has her own character outside of Jaune. She’s anything but a bland and boring sidekick for Jaune. If anything, she outshines him as a character because she is talented, smart, dependable, absolutely badass fighter etc. She’s even shown to be insecure when it comese to doing something she wants to do and questioning whether what she does is fate or her own choice. So miss me with that shit about Pyrrha being a bland and boring character.

Yes, Miss Chick, I’ve watched the show, and I stand by this statement. Pyrrha was made, from beginning to end, to complement Jaune’s arc, not to be a character of her own. And if you don’t see it, then… girlfriend, sister, gal pal, wake the fuck up! Not that I’m saying that you can’t like Pyrrha on her own right, but what can you even tell me about Pyrrha other than she’s kind, badass, smart, and dependable, mh? What are her hobbies? What are her dreams? What’s her background like? Do we even know anything about her family that might tell us anything about her? About how she grew up? Can you even tell me what’s her relationship like with her teammates and fellow classmates other than Jaune? ‘cause I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but outside of Ozpin’s circle during her would-be “arc” in Volume 3, Pyrrha is practically never allowed to interact one-on-one with characters that aren’t Jaune. Her conversation with Weiss in Volume 1? Interrupted by Jaune. Ren and Nora trying to cheer her up before her big fight in Volume 3? Interrupted by Jaune. Her apologizing to Ruby in V3 after killing Penny? Goes about two lines before Jaune steps in again to claim all of Pyrrha’s attention once more.

Even her death has served nothing but Jaune’s development. We’ve never seen any characters mourn Pyrrha other than him. Not Ren and Nora, who were her teammates, not even Ruby, who saw her die first hand. Nobody outside of Jaune seems to even remember her most of the time (and yes, I know Ruby mentions her in one scene in Volume 5, but that’s about it), and even her remnants were melted down to improve Jaune’s equipment rather than being brought to Pyrrha’s family to be placed on her grave or something.

Again, I’m not saying you can’t like Pyrrha for what we’ve seen of her. I myself liked her as well, but in the sense that I really wish she had been her own character, that we could have actually gotten to know her and see what she was really like, rather than have her near entire screen-time revolve around Jaune. Stop for just a moment to think of what Pyrrha’s character would be like if Jaune wasn’t in the show, and you either come to the realization that she’d have no purpose, or realize about the endless possibilities there is to her character that the show never bothered to explore because the writers never saw her as anything but a complement to Jaune’s character. From day one, she was meant to die. She was made by design to be little but the Disposable Woman, and it shows.

Also, you’re blaming Jaune for something Cinder decided to do. Cinder is a sadistic person who goes after the weak. She only targeted Weiss because she wanted to torment someone and taunt them. It could have easily been Ruby, or even Yang, Nora, or Ren. However, Weiss had already lost her fight against Vernal and was the weakest and easiest target. Cinder was toying with him… as she was all of them. Let’s be honest… Cinder probably did intend to insult him because she enjoys seeing people writh with anger and espair… because she is sadistic.

Honestly, no, not really. I mean, I didn’t really meant to blame Jaune for those things. You’re right. Cinder is the one to blame here, for everyone that got hurt. I do believe, however, that Jaune’s behavior during that fight did more harm than good during the earlier half of the fight, and made so many mistakes that it makes you wonder if he’s really learned anything throughout the series, though really, the whole part here is not so much about issues with characters as it is with the writing. I mean, why would Cinder even target Weiss instead of Ruby, whom she holds a personal grudge against and was even more vulnerable than Weiss? This is what worries me, that it feels like the writers chose Weiss because, since Jaune used to crush on her, that would hurt him the most. It’s a writing decision placed solemnly with Jaune’s character in mind and no one else’s, which is a serious problem because it shows the writers keep prioritizing Jaune above most other characters, even the titular characters.

Weiss, in general, shows everyone more respect because she’s no longer the precious, stuck up bitch she was in volume 1. It isn’t just Jaune. It’s Ruby, Yang, Nora, Ren, etc. It’s everyone.

That’s fair, but even then, there’s been zero interaction between Jaune and Weiss since the reunion in Volume 5 (they practically didn’t acknowledge each other). In other words, there hasn’t yet been a development to their relationship, which I wouldn’t be exactly against. What I’m against is the writers using the whole “Jaune saving Weiss” as a shortcut to show a development in their relationship and thus completely avoiding having Jaune own up to what he did wrong in the past, as if suggesting Weiss was in the wrong (and no, she wasn’t. It’s completely within her right to reject someone she’s not interested in) and Jaune never did anything bad, which just isn’t true, despite what they want the viewer to believe. They themselves (the writers) need to own up to their shortcomings just like Jaune needs to.

Also, a lot could have been done to change the outcome of something… want for a nail. Had Pyrrha not rushed up there without any help or backup she’d still be alive. Had they not decided to keep everything a secret maybe Pyrrha would sitll be alive. Sorry but it’s a little hard to ignore the screams of your friend and partner undergoing an experiment that hardly either of them was given any type of information for. Had Ozpin and Co not kept what was going on a secret and even to a degree Pyrrha, maybe he could have watched the door a bit better instead of being taken off guard by the screams of Pyrrha as she basically has her Aura combined with someone else’s.

A lot of things could have been changed but no it’s all Jaune’s fault for not watching the door.

Like I said before, this much is right. Mind you, though, I only brought up Jaune failing to stop Cinder as Ozpin told him not because I really want to blame him there, but because @outcasts-redeemer actually dared blame Pyrrha’s death on Weiss for failing to save Pyrrha after Jaune asked her and Ruby to do just as much, which… I don’t need to tell you just how ridiculous that is, now do I?

Maybe if you stopped taking everything Jaune did as something negative, spotlight stealing, etc. then people wouldn’t have to “”mainsplain” to you.

If you wanna ignore the obvious fact that there’s clear issues with the way Jaune’s written, and the way near everyone gets written to accommodate things for his sake (the battle of Haven being by far the worst offender), then you do you, but I’m not. We were promised a show about four badass action girls, not about a boring, generic and stereotypical dude who’s just the most unoriginal archetype ever but has the world bend to his whim because the writing says so, and so long as they keep making these blunders, criticism will continue to show up.

#RWDE #Jaune h8 #Jaune Arc

[vixianna]

So I Just Figured Out Something Weird About Exclusionists...

So, I was looking through a few exclusionists blogs. Normally, I’d say that was purely a #mistake, but this time it was enlightening, especially about specific claims exclusionists make about asexuality.

So, a good number of the posts I looked at were aimed at lesbian and gay people, which is like normal and nbd. They were about helping questioning people who thought they might be lesbian or gay and describing their experiences as lesbian or gay people. A large number of responses to asks were like “well if you feel lesbian/gay, then you probably are.” which super valid, that’s how it works for LGBT+ people. Except, a lot of the people I saw sending in questions, especially to like bottomsona’s blog, specifically expressed experiencing attraction to multiple genders, but were not at the moment interested in pursuing relationships with men. Most of the responses were tailored around "well, if you're not going to date men, you can just call yourself a lesbian if you are only gonna date women/women-aligned people", which is fine on its own, I’m not the label police.

However, this response was informed by the stance that that lesbian(or gay, or bi, ect) existed as a label to communicate who you intended to date not who you are attracted to. I bring this up because a really common and previously to me super goddamn weird obsession of exclusionists was focused on how "asexual doesn't communicate anything". “How can you be asexual and still date/have sex?” And it occurred to me after reading this that if exclusionists were using sexuality labels as a shorthand for “who I am sexually/romantically available to” and not “who I feel attraction to” without any implication of dating/sex/relationships/ect then all of their “asexuality is a modifier and also doesn’t mean anything and the definition keeps changing!” starts to make sense.

Instead of:

-Lesbian = woman who is solely attracted to women

-Lesbian = woman/woman-aligned person who is solely attracted to other women/woman-aligned people(this definition still has a lot of problems but it's the one that is closest to how they use it)

It's:

-Lesbian = woman/woman-aligned person who is solely interested in forming relationships with women/woman-aligned people

They mean it to communicate like availability, openness, to others about who they are going to form intimate relationships with. This connects with several inclusionists observations that exclusionists seem really fucking pissed about things that don’t immediately signal whether you are available to them or not. Or more accurately, whether you are available to what they understand to be “gay relationships” or not.

For example, this is why they feel asexuality is a “modifier” because in this case it would have to be a combination of “doesn’t desire sexual relationships” and “desires relationships with these genders”, and it’s why they are so obsessed with whether or not asexuals have sex, and with whom, and under what circumstances. Because obviously the only way asexuality means anything if it is communicating that you do not desire a sexual relationship with others.

This also explains why they are so freaked the hell out about anyone saying they are asexual, especially kids, because it would be announcing a specific aspect of your sex life (and why some of them keep comparing it to kinks?? For reasons that used to confuse me.) To them it is only communicating your desire to have sex or not(which is why they find ace spectrum sexuality especially confusing or “not real” or describe it as “just people being normal”.)

This means one of the bigger problems is them operating from the idea that sexuality labels are meant to communicate to others who you'd be open to fucking/being in a relationship with, and not a representation of like your internal experiences of attraction.

This is also one of the reasons why they are so hostile to the idea of “examining your attractions closely/at all” because it ultimately “doesn’t matter”, not if what really matters is who you’d be willing to be in a relationship with and everything else is “incoherent” and “not important”, because your label is supposed to communicate who you’d fuck/date. It is essentially why they are so hostile to a-spec identities, but it also spills over onto other groups.

Attraction, dating, ect are not so clear cut or easily defined for many members of the community, especially Nonbinary people. So a lot of our sexuality labels require more introspection as do our genders. Further, that’s one of the reasons behind the push for NBs to use alignment language(or even have it prescriptively assigned). If you don’t tell others if you are man/woman aligned(and often you have to pick either one or the other!) then they don’t know whether you are someone they could be attracted to/should be attracted to/are included in their attraction label. Or more exactly, they don’t know if you are someone who they would form a relationship with, whether or not they are personally attracted to you.

It is also ultimately, why they are so hostile to queer as a single label. Because while it, as an orientation label, definitely tells you this person is likely “sga” by their standards(which are highly flawed and cissexist lmao), it doesn’t inform you “who”/“which genders”/“how many of them” you are available to form intimate relationships with and so “is useless” and virulently attacked because of it. Never mind that it is often used by people for whom gender is a complicated subject, or picking out which genders they are attracted to is difficult or impossible(m-specs, Nbs, ect), it doesn’t communicate what they feel labels are meant to:

Who are you sexually/romantically available to?

Mind you, the claim that people are ID’in as queer in order to infiltrate the community is even more ridiculous than the one against ace/aro people.

Why?

By their own admittance, and concurrent campaign, queer is seen as a slur by straight people. The chances of some “cishet woman calling herself queer because she pegs her boyfriend.” as so eloquently described by hatetobreakittoyou, existing is literally nil. Like, in what universe are Real CisHets™ going to think "this person is really straight and one of us" about someone who describes themself as "queer"?

This means a person would be literally putting a target on their back...for what? Being an open member of a violently targeted minority group does you no favors. There is nothing for this mythical woman to gain by putting herself through the ringer pretending to be LGBT+!

It’s a coherent, if wrongheaded, expansion of their idea that identity labels need to be completely immediately clear and only exist to tell others if you’d fuck/date them, but it’s an ultimately destructive stance and ideology to have. It’s m-spec antagonistic, requiring that m-specs be both in “sga” relationships and have to be “sga” in order to be m-spec(which is you know also exorsexist). It’s hostile to ace/aro people. It’s hostile to queer people and others whose identity is far more complicated. It prioritizes lesbian and gay people(especially binary ones, and especially cis binary ones). It fractures the community, and it’s one of the main toxic tenants behind a lot of their garbage ass rhetoric.

You don’t have to be open to dating/fucking at every particular moment every gender you are attracted to to be m-spec. Your label says nothing about whether you are interested in dating or sex if you are a-spec. That’s not what these labels have historically or even currently mean in general usage, which is why there is so much cross talk when trying to come to an accord with exclusionists. They are working for radically different definitions of even typically understood sexuality labels.(bi to them means “same and others” and not “two+”, ace means “doesn’t want to fuck” and not “doesn’t experience sexual attraction/attracted to no one”, ect)

Has anyone else encountered these underlying beliefs and would be willing to talk about it? Because I’d like to get some dialogue going so that we can maybe more easily actually understand some of the underlying tenants of Exclusionism.

#ace discourse #aro discourse #ace exclusionist #nb discourse #bi discourse #it's sorta every discourse at this point #because it's like a basic difference #in how they define #sexuality labels and such

[katrinapavela]

Olivia Pope: When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong (#Scandal S7)

NB: This essay is now available as a free PDF download

Olivia and Mellie had a riot of a scene in “Pressing The Flesh” (702), which I enjoyed, but was not the one that left the most indelible impression. The presidential bedroom scene was filled with pithy quips about the sexist double standards befalling women in powerful positions, and the crucible of expectations in which they are enmeshed. It was also a reminder that being in those spaces does not make them original, just rare.  I bring up that scene because the themes it contains are connected to the ones in another scene that impressed me. They are themes which this essay explores: the meaning of success for women in patriarchal institutions; and a denial of feminine values being the price of power in those spaces.

Olivia walks into a male space (the bathroom) with ease, comfortable inhabiting spaces not created with her in mind. She is there to leverage blackmail against President Rashad, should he not wish to comply with the proposed nuclear treaty. For the second episode in a row, Olivia threatens the adolescent family member of a man to get him to play ball. Her father, former Command, spent a lifetime playing this kind of ball, and even once had it played against him. The man she still loves had this kind of ball played against him. Even she has had this type of ball played against her, both as the leveraged ‘object’ (kidnapping), and the leveraged ‘subject’ (S3-5). Having earlier told Mellie that being in these positions of power does not make her original, Olivia, in this moment, lives up to her own words. She believes her end is right, no matter how dark the means, she is justified. There is nothing original about her behaviour in this moment. Chiefs of Staff and Vice Presidents before her have gone down this same road. I’m sure they were all self-righteously convinced. Self-delusion is a heck of a thing.  Yet, Olivia imagined that as head of B6-13 and HBIC in the White House, things were going to be different. She would be the key to setting the nation on the right path, and Mellie was her conduit. She, as her father proclaimed of himself, was the lynchpin in making “democracy possible” (302). Now that B6-13 was under her wing (the source of the blackmail), she couldn’t lose. Or could she. She gets called “The Devil”, something her father, Rowan, has been labelled (“Even the Devil Deserves a Second Chance” (507)). Rashad turns Olivia’s own words back to her (like a mirror):

“You’re right, Ms. Pope. Actions do speak louder than words. And this? This tells me your country is still sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong your actions tell me America is still sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong.” When Olivia warns President Rashad not to let his pride get in the way of progress (this, too will come back at Liv), He tells her that Ambassador Marashi warned him about her as the devil who threatened his child. This, Rashad says, “tells me everything I need to know about your character”. Rashad leaves. Having failed with this blackmail attempt, a dejected Olivia catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and quickly looks away, hanging her head. She is unable to look at her own image in the bathroom’s mirror:

Destination Syndrome

Olivia: “I am a person. I am not a hen. I am not a prize… And I have a business to run, people to support. A life to lead. A desire to wake up and face myself in the mirror every day. Oh, and oh…once I fixed a presidential election, and I’d like a chance to right that wrong. …This is not about you. My whole life is not about you. I have goals. I have DREAMS! I did this for me. …I have to take care of myself. I have to protect my people. I can’t spend all my time worrying about you. This whole house worries about you: what you want, what you need. It has to be about what I want and what I need.”

 Ever since I wrote about the scene above from “We Do Not Touch the First Ladies” (312), I have waited to know what Olivia dreams of (we’ve seen it three times (406, 410, 610). Waited to hear, or see her goals defined (is she there yet?). Waited for the moment she looks in the mirror and feels good about what is reflected back at her. We’re both still waiting. 

Two things stick out for me, in the present,  from Olivia’s words above: the mentioning of personhood and self-care, as well her relationship with Fitz needing to be about her emotional needs as well. But Olivia has never been able to articulate what she wants, and certainly not to Fitz (while he was president), so fulfilment was not possible in that regard. She runs before she can ever reach that point. Secondly, as I outlined in my pre-season 7 video, Olivia no longer feels like a person to me, nor to some of the characters in the show. She’s missing now, Quinn reminded us in 614, and upon which even self-centred Mellie picked up (“She’s there, but she’s not there” (519)).

Olivia has now helped someone else realize their dream of being the first woman POTUS, but is CoS her dream? Or is it a path she was encouraged to pursue as the only option to take back her power? In many ways, Olivia is still trying to recover some sense of self she once knew, before the original sin of Defiance. The presidential election she colluded to steal, led to two subsequent elections she did not earn. But much like America’s unwillingness to contend with its original sin (slavery) as the root of its continued racial problems, Olivia will never recover some authentic sense of self, or be able to look herself in the mirror until she tackles the ‘why’ of Defiance. The ‘why’, as I have suspected since S2, is not really about her version of loving Fitz (though she did/does). As she says to Fitz in the The Decision (610)’s alternate universe, “[I didn’t agree to fix the election because] it would have destroyed us”. And while that understanding is developed by Olivia after the fact, I cannot help think, subconsciously, that in choosing to Fix the election, Olivia chose power and chaos (a think that stokes the fire of the Popes (512)). The why of Defiance was connected more to Olivia’s lack of self-knowledge and the replacement of that with external goals. Olivia wanted the White House back then, badly. Her life circumstances had not damaged her enough to actually murder for it back then (517, 616). She has wanted the White House since law school (504), so she could impact policy and affect change. This woman does not like to fail when she sets herself a goal. It brings her shame.

Olivia now has the position she has been coveting, one which she complained was taken from her by Fitz (520). To boot, she has inhabited a second position (Command) to ensure that no one can take anything from her ever again. But Olivia has still been taken from herself. Emotionally disemboweled and disconnected, there is no balance to her power in the present. This has been the case ever since her kidnapping, the very purpose of which was to render her an object, not a person (410). With her PTSD having gone unaddressed, Olivia has instead filled her life with a fake world in which she will never feel internally validated, but instead be too consumed with perpetual chaos to ponder this lack of satisfaction, let alone making it a priority to address.

Maya: “You sure do love a problem. You’re so vain. It’s always about you, isn’t it? The problems you create, so you can solve them. The power you wield, so that you can feel important.  Did your father and I not tell you you were special enough when you were little? Did we not give you enough hugs? Baby, this uppity fantasy world you’ve decided to be a part of, it’s not real, Boo. You need to come on back down to this planet where the world doesn’t revolve around you…” (You Can’t Take Command, 422)

Olivia has made it so the world does revolve around her, by becoming its sun and moon. Even the men with whom she exchanges sex for stress relief are to revolve around her. Even the new president has a similar charge in Olivia’s envelope filled world:

She’s the boss. She sets the rules.

Olivia may inhabit ultimate positions of power inside the White house, but she does not have control over the White House, it has control over her. Her power in these roles is illusory. But if we stay with the idea that Olivia ‘has it all’, the question now is: upon reaching the peak of this mountain, is there some other destination she is trying to reach? Does she imagine that once she’s done with the go-round at the White House in 4-8 years, that she will suddenly be a person capable of being her authentic self with another, let alone with herself? There will be opportunity costs.

Olivia is brilliant,  beautiful and impeccably put together, but she is mostly façade. Happiness and satisfaction are states of being that manifest within, not destinations which one can reach. Wherever Olivia goes, she will always be there.  As historian, Thavolia Glymph says, “…freedom is often reified as a ‘thing’ or ‘place’ that one can ‘obtain’ or ‘go to’. But freedom is not separate from the understandings and intuitions of those who seek it”[1]. Claiming the full humanity of her black femininity cannot be relegated to the White House alone. No one in the previous administration found freedom there, except FDR in that pool. But it is gone now, and it makes me wonder if Olivia ever felt emotionally unburdened when she swam. Does she still do it now, or is she too emotionally disconnected to bother. I hope to find out.  

A Witness to Her Life

In a short video, Yours and Mine[2] , Beyonce talks about needing something real in order to make her many accomplishments matter. That without that witness to one’s life, accomplishments fail to validate one’s life. Without something real, people are more compelled toward addiction (chaos). I thought back to 701, when Olivia is having dinner with Rowan. While it was delicious to see the tables turned in some ways, Rowan has never been a witness to Olivia’s adult life. He cannot behold her because his relationship with her is grounded in incessant scrutiny and manipulation. She receives his instruction and dictation about achievement and black excellence, but not emotional support.

Alice Walker, reflecting on a speech she gave, in 1979, to a room of largely Black women, concerning our alarming suicide rates, laments “Not one of them said one word about why young women of colour were killing themselves. They could take the black woman as invincible…, but there was no sympathy for that which ended in defeat. Which meant there was no sympathy for struggle itself—only for ‘winning’”[3]. In The Last Supper (408), Rowan says something similar to Olivia:

Rowan: “I haven't been a perfect father, Olivia, I know that. I want you to know that I know that. I want you to know that I've always wanted the best for you. I wanted you to be the best. Because, to me, you always were. Now, I... I didn't have a... a role model for how to be a dad, and I stumbled. I know that. I got angry when I shouldn't have. I focused too much on how you did rather than how you were doing it. I didn't say enough how important it was to me, when you were trying, that you were struggling, because it was. Because I should've understood because that's what I was doing. Trying. And struggling.”

As poignant as it reads, this, too, is a manipulation of his because this acknowledgment Olivia has long sought is used as a preamble to murder, and proof of his continued need for her obedience. He tells her to never choose another man over him. How can Olivia be the ‘best’ if it is only defined on Rowan’s terms and not her own. He cuts off every path that doesn’t lead to him being right. Though Rowan is the one seemingly under Olivia’s thumb as Command, he is still dictating limitations for her about what she can achieve and who she is able to be. Their relationship is anchored in fear; fear of failure. One cannot see or be seen in such a relationship. One cannot grow in such a relationship.

Jake, too, cannot be a witness to Olivia’s life. He has literally been created by Rowan (518), and insinuated into Olivia’s life as an extension of Rowan, to infiltrate that which a father should not control: his daughter’s sexual and romantic life. (This is the reason for the incest references that proliferate the second half of S5). Olivia cannot keep it real with Jake because he is fake. She doesn’t even know his real name or backstory! From their initial meet-cute in 214, to their short-lived ‘convenient, safe, secure, easy’ (sounds like a Staples commercial) arrangement (701), Jake’s purpose in Olivia’s life has always been predicated on a denial of the real.

Having someone who truly sees you is one of the most powerful things you can experience. This means a person who sees your faults, struggles and inconsistencies and doesn’t use them against you, but, through grace, supports your striving to be better. Supports your efforts to contribute something good to the world, and not just selfishly to their own life. The generosity of such a person can make you feel safe. There is liberty in this kind of safety because it is shelter, not confinement.

We can connect with people on multiple emotional levels, but what matters is the authenticity of those connections. Olivia may no longer be spinning, but does she know the difference between spin and the truth anymore? Whether at OPA or the White House, Olivia’s job is public relations. It is her responsibility to make things seem other than they really are. To mask and evade. Because she fears that which is within (because she cannot control it), she sometimes brings the spin of her public relations to her private relationships. Olivia has no truth in her life right now. Everyone in her life is being kept at arm’s length, and probably in the misguided belief that this is how one conveys authority and power. You know, being a ‘boss’. Even during “family” time with dad, Olivia instructs Rowan to ask her about work. Because, what else is there for her? Her life is busy, but not full.

A consistent criticism I have of Olivia Pope is that she has no friends. No emotional anchors. She shares her life with no one. Everyone in her life is connected to her work. Fitz, as a now ex-president becomes the exception, for the first time. He doesn’t need intervention and handling anymore. We’ll see where that leads for Olivia.

I used to fear that Shonda would make Olivia into Christina from Grey’s Anatomy—a character whose true love was her work. I am not saying that a woman enjoying her work is wrong, or that she needs a romantic other (side note: a woman wanting the love of a man does not make her less strong, or less of a feminist because no one says that about women who have romantic relationship with other women). I realized Shonda likely won’t make Olivia--her first lead black woman character—into Christina, because Olivia’s greatest satisfaction does not seem to come from the work she does, though she finds in it purpose and direction. Besides, Christina did have a witness to her life: Meredith. Shonda has referred to Olivia and Fitz as the Meredith and Christina of Scandal[4]. Theirs is the central, meaningful relationship on the show. It’s real. Olivia’s current world has purpose and direction, but it is one constructed to replace what’s real.

Patriarchal Fear of the Feminine

Audre Lorde, in her work on feminism and intersectionality, frequently talks about women identified women (WIWs). This is not necessarily a reference to lesbianism, or even to feminism. WIWs are women who are connected to and value the feminine within themselves and others. It is also possible, though much more rare, to find women identified males. Far more common are male identified women. A society that values (white) male attributes and (white) maleness as the default of humanity compels women and gender queer people to adopt these values in order to survive, or be valued by society. Some feminist rhetoric, particularly ones lacking an intersectional frame, advocate for a lot of male, patriarchal values to be embodied by women as the path to personal success and liberation. But, in the words of Audre Lorde, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”[5] . Investing in the master’s tools simply ensures that (white) patriarchal values remain primary: profit, property, and violence and domination as stand ins for power.

Olivia is barely a woman identified woman these days. She is primarily a male-identified woman (so is Mellie, for the record). The speech she delivers to Mellie in the Oval (701) is a most recent quintessential example of labelling something feminist because it is said by women in competition with men.

What that speech establishes is Olivia’s domination (as the boss), which requires Mellie subservience as a soldier who carries out her orders (“you do not ignore me”; “I am always right”). This, Olivia, declares is the only path to success for the first female president. Success is manifested in Mellie becoming a statue people can gaze upon. To top it off, both women are wearing pantsuits, which we, as the audience, are supposed to take as a nod to Hillary Clinton. However, the nod to her is aesthetic and superficial because HRC is a woman identified woman. Her definition of success is about the difference she can make in peoples’ lives, not the monuments that would be erected in her name. Olivia used to be focused on giving people second chances (308), but that now seems obscured.

Olivia is disconnected from herself because she has been raised, primarily by a man who, scorned by love and damaged by white supremacy, came to see the rejection of the feminine, through the embrace of patriarchy, as a path of success for black people in America, despite its terrible historical track record. He has even bragged about the fact that he was raising his daughter to feel as entitled to the world as any white man (504). We should all feel that the world is ours instead making ourselves small under dominating structures. To summarize a quote  from Crissles of The Read podcast, Black people are not trying to be whit. I don’t want to be a white man, but I don’t want to be punished because I am not one either. Rowan’s way of teaching his daughter to feel this entitlement was to behave in destructive ways like white males, for whom the end always justifies the means.  His values, and definitions of power and weakness are an infestation in her life (much like the character Jake in this show):

Rowan: “you can either stand there like a 12-year-old and lecture me about morality or, even worse, rat [me and Jake] out in the name of justice or you can take your cue from us and get yourself some power... Real power... 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue power. You think you have that now, but you're standing on the sidelines, screaming at the referee like a sad, drunk parent at a high-school football game. If you're okay with that, by all means. But I know my daughter as I know my son, and I know that won't suffice.” (It’s Hard Out Here for a General, 510).

Morality and justice are for 12-year olds (the age of Olivia’s arrested emotional development).  Running the world is true power. Parenting and other identities are weak. Again, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. For black women to define success in the same terms as white patriarchal men is a means to their destruction, not liberation.  

Rowan finally showed Olivia respect when she had gotten into the Oval again (“and you didn’t do it as First Lady” (614)). To him that Oval is the source of real power. It is no accident that it has only been inhabited by men—real and fictional—before Mellie. Previously, he praised Olivia’s ability to fleece power from Fitz when she was in the White House, instead of imagining a situation in which, gee, power is willingly shared. As I have said before: “Rowan’s comments often interrogate Olivia’s black feminine identity (the questioning and manipulation of her sexuality), seeking to have ultimate control over the representation of that identity and those with whom it is associated”. Rowan le Olivia down this path with Mellie (510). And in the absence of any other kind of power, Olivia held onto it like a life raft (“This all has to mean something. Otherwise why did I do this to you [Jake]? To myself?” (605).

Olivia has no female relationships that are not connected to her job, and her primary relationships have been with men. Most importantly (for me), she has no black women in her life. Having been abandoned by her mother, who was kept captive as punishment, by Rowan, it is obvious to me the dearth of Maya’s presence has left a lacuna in Olivia’s life, which has been filled mostly by maleness, to her detriment. She is outwardly successful, but inwardly she’s lacking. The lack of, specifically black, feminine presence in Olivia’s life is directly connected to her fear of real commitment to Fitzgerald Grant.

I know what you are thinking: girl, how the hell you figure that Olivia’s missing black mama has anything to do with choosing some white man? Let me explain.

 Fitz as Symbolic of the Feminine

Self-knowledge has been a process for Fitz, and he is still coming into his own.  I would not have expounded upon his femininity as a strength a few seasons ago. Though he has always been emotional, in the early seasons, he and the circumstances of the Olitz relationship were often too emotionally intense to sustain.  However, his sense of self is no longer tethered to Olivia, he’s in a better position to emotionally support her. Consider this essay a plate of potato salad, from the cookout, that I am bringing to him.

Fitz has grown to embrace the feminine within himself. In a world that values his identity above all others, it is feminine qualities upon which he draws, internally, for strength, support and growth. His rejection of his father’s brute definitions of success and masculinity, as well as his unapologetic emotional centre are evidence of this for me. He cares for Olivia’s well-being, safety and happiness, often the only person to enquire about these things. And he does this even when their relationship was platonic. The giving of Doux Bébé (417) and his rescue attempts during her kidnapping (410-13), thwarting her plans to martyr herself for her father’s crimes (611) serve as just a few examples. As the most consistent feminine presence in Olivia’s life, he has been the only one to penetrate (no pun intended) something real and truthful inside her

Fitz has connected to an erotic power inside Olivia that has little to do with his magic stick. It has to do with the desire for home and a domestic aspect to her life. A place where she can practice authentic love and feel safe. Vermont is a metaphor for that, not necessarily a literal space in which those things will be realized. Wanting those things is not the same as confining one’s life. It is a recognition of the expansiveness of the interior life, and of private identities that are not conjured through public or representational roles. It is a space of retreat and self-determination. In Out of the House of Bondage, historian Thavolia Glymph explains that during Reconstruction, black women “pursued citizenship, land ownership, femaleness (denied through white patriarchy), and private leisure time. ‘Most of all,’ writes Glymph, ‘they claimed the right to determine for themselves what all of this meant’ (Loc. 4105).  These acts of reclaiming the self had far-reaching political and socio-economic consequences, the echoes of which are still felt today.”[6] Formerly enslaved women attempted to live and define, in confining political circumstances, full public and interior lives, which were denied to them for so long.

As Audre Lorde tells us, the erotic is our deepest desire, and it comes from a deeply feminine place. It is connected to community, not denial and ascetism. The erotic is not to be confused with sensation, a plasticized version Olivia has tried out in several models (Jake, Russell, Curtis, even Edison). The erotic’s power is so great, that Olivia repeatedly runs from it. It is not accident that a woman raised to prioritize male modes of success would be afraid of embracing this type of feminine power. Olivia has been taught to fear the feminine and devalue it as weak, and it is partly because society sees it as weak. As I said earlier, living in such a society, women are compelled to reject feminized traits, making themselves small or more male-oriented just to survive. In her television interview about her relationship with President Fitzgerald Grant (505), Olivia repeatedly indicates that falling in love with him was a weakness. It disrupted her life and threatened her success.

Of the interview, I commented that “by painting to the public her love affair as an unfortunate failure on her part, Olivia cast herself as a woman who had fallen prey to cupid’s fate. Her resilience, her strength were no match. She’s already wrestled, so please don’t ask her to try again. She’s incapable of not loving Fitzgerald Grant. Loving is the one thing outside her grasp of control. The chink in her armour.” 

So, loving is a failure. It is a flaw because it is outside the sphere of Olivia’s control (“You can’t fix the fact that I love you”—Fitz, 220). Olivia’s life is about control, the exercising of which shows domination. And domination is what? A means of showing power. Women are often to ones taught to aspire to love while men are not. hey are taught to acquire property, including women and children. We see a gender role reversal (in some ways) with the Olivia and Fitz character. However, the devaluation of love as a feminine quality, whose value pales in comparison to political power, is still very present. Olivia chose the latter, and so did Mellie. In this world, love isn’t power; it threatens it, as Olivia so reminded Mellie, after some bow chicka wow wow with Marcus (602). I do not blame Olivia for thinking this way. These values have been instilled in her by a man and a society that does not value women, or their feminine traits, except where it helps men: managing the home, bearing children, sex. Olivia was kidnapped, treated as a bargaining chip, threatened with rape, and treated like a problem to be eliminated, all because of love. Since then, Olivia has grown to see loving Fitz as a kind of sacrifice that limits her potential.

Maya and the Black Feminine Absence

Rowan put Maya in a cell and literal hole to contain her, though he supposedly loved her. Once her black feminine presence was relegated, Maya’s absence from the home led to Rowan sending Olivia away, never to live there again (301). Olivia never had a sense of ‘home’ after that. Olivia, therefore, did not grow up to value anything domestic, especially as a necessity from which everyone has benefitted, but few value, including many women. Maya worked and took care of Olivia (306), as many black women have had to do. With Maya’s removal from the home, Olivia lost an important role model at a crucial juncture for transitioning from adolescence (she was 12) to womanhood. Her values were replaced by those of the people inhabiting the fancy white, European boarding schools she was made to attend. Sure, she gained social and cultural capital, but she lost something, too.

First Ladies Problems

I did not want Olivia living in the East Wing when she and Fitz were together in season 5. I thought it was too much, too soon. However, I am also convinced that much of Olivia’s argument with Fitz in 509, and subsequently casting him as the villain in their breakup, was profoundly dishonest in some ways. It still bothers me more than I am comfortable admitting. Then I thought about the immense power fear has over people. Here’s a revolutionary idea: what if Olivia found herself liking some aspects of being First Lady, and was afraid of the threat to who she thought she was, and what she’s been taught she should become? She even said she was good at it. I don’t like being good at things I hate. I go out of my way to be bad at them so no one expects me to do those things (shhhh, don’t tell my wife).  

Olivia tells Mellie in 511 that she left the White House (and Fitz) because she was scared. But, she starts wearing dresses after leaving the WH; replaces her bed with a four-poster one like the one in the East Wing; she regales Vanessa, Jake and Rowan about the details of a cake she buys from a bakery (514). These are all influences from her time in the domestic realm of the East Wing. Olivia has fetishized normalcy and domesticity as something she is incapable of, since she pushed Stephen to propose to Georgia (101). She is afraid of her own desire.

Think about it.  Rowan mocked and shamed Olivia when she told him Fitz wanted to make her his First Lady (301). He told her that was a useless position, and that Secretary of State or Chief of Staff were much more valuable. Mellie, in typical white feminist form, grew to see it as the seat of her oppression (503), even though she aspired to the position since the age of ten (208). She tells Olivia to expect the same confinement (503), which pissed me off because it assumed Olivia wanted what she wanted. Mellie picks interesting times to assert her difference from Olivia, and her sameness at other times.  

In a great bout of irony, now that Olivia is Chief of Staff, she still has to field typical FLOTUS questions because there’s no one in that role. Why doesn’t Olivia, as Chief of Staff, insist on hiring someone to help the WH Social Secretary?

Instead she complains to Cyrus that she has to pick out China patterns. Hmmm, like she was doing here

While it is an antiquated position, my point is that the FLOTUS position is not without importance, but it is devalued specifically because of its association with the feminine. It is the feminine for which women are persecuted, even as men’s self-actualization is tied to this very thing. Perhaps they are simply resentful that not everything is within their control.

Fitz and the life associated with him is but one representation of the erotic. Olivia has to embrace this power within herself before she can engage Fitz as a witness to her life. To get there requires reconciliation of feminine, masculine and queer identity traits as powerful and valuable assets she possesses, not just her intellect. Contrary to the Enlightenment thinkers, mankind is more than a thinking, rational being. She is an emotional one, too.  

Reconciliation of the Self

Accomplishments and other people cannot make you happy. That is a job that can only be fulfilled by the self. If happiness is internally derived, and comes from accessing the truth of our feelings, then happiness, too, is a feminized feeling. In a world that values power in terms of domination (‘big dog’ status), violence (blackmail and threats), and the ability to withstand pain (pushing things down with alcohol and sex), it is no wonder Olivia does not value it enough to make happiness a mission she pursues.

Maya: “I could not make you happy because happiness was not the mission”—(Tick Tock, 615)

Olivia cannot define what she wants because wanting is desire. Desire comes from a space of truth within us. It is a spiritual place. Olivia’s self-abnegation means she has pushed that away, thinking it leaves her power open to vulnerability. In addition to telling us that the aspiration to feel nothing is a place of “grave immobility” (it leaves you stuck)[7] , Audre Lorde also tells us that Black women, in America, have traditionally had compassion for everybody else except ourselves[8]. Olivia’s own mother conjured a similar sentiment:

Maya:“Damn shame. I tell you... being a black woman. Be strong, they say. Support your man, raise your man, think like a man. Well damn, I gotta do all that? Who’s out here working for me, carrying my burden, building me up when I get down? Nobody. Black women out here trying to save everybody and what do we get? Swagger jacked by white girls wearing cornrows and bamboo earrings. Ain’t that a bitch? But we still try. Try to help all y’all. Even when we get nothing. Is that admirable or ridiculous? I don’t know.” (Tick Tock, 615)

Olivia still thinks its admirable enough to stake her very sense of self on it. But it will be ridiculous if she doesn’t let anyone else share her burdens and her joy.

I think I know a guy. Facetiousness aside, I also mean this in terms of friendships, familial relationships and the relationship with the self—the most important one.  

Let me summarize Mahatma Beyonce again[9]. She says that everyone is not good at everything. Even the great Olivia Pope. Depending on one other is what we are meant to do as humans, for we do not thrive in prolonged isolation. Olivia is not accessing an entire part of herself to which she is entitled. Beyonce goes on to expound that when you grow up, you’re no longer afraid of going to certain places, in your mind and your body, that may make you feel uncomfortable. You’re no longer afraid of the unknown. And it all starts with looking at yourself in the mirror and liking the person staring back at you. I want that for Olivia. I hope she still wants it for herself.

 ____________________________________________

Enjoyed this essay? You can download a free PDF here: 

 ____________________________________________

[1] Glymph, Thavolia. 2008. Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household. loc. 320. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kindle.

[2] Beyonce. 2014. https://youtu.be/x4pPNxUzGvc. Video

[3] Walker, Alice. 1979 “Looking to the Side and Back”. In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose. (1983). Loc. 4467-4555. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Kindle.

[4] Entertainment Weekly, September 2015.

[5] Lorde, Audre. 1979. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.”     Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. 1984. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press Feminist Series. 110-113.

[6] Glymph, Thavolia. 2008. Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In Pow, K. 2018. Forthcoming article.

[7] Lorde, Audre. 1979. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.”     Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. 1984. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press Feminist Series. 53-59. 

[8] Lorde, Audre. 1979. “Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface”  Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. 1984. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press Feminist Series. 60-65. 

[9] Beyonce. 2014. https://youtu.be/x4pPNxUzGvc. Video

#Scandal #Olivia Pope #Fitzgerald Grant #Mellie Grant

[askanonbinary]

Hello. I think I'm nb but I'm worrying about concept a lot. I mean, I think I really feel something like this but I can't explain it at all and I'm not used to have feelings I cannot explain. And when I try to read about gender I always have answers like "it's what you feel" or "it's complicated", but nobody explains WHY I and some other people feel so, what happens in minds, how can I explain to other why it feels so important when I don't even understand what is it? It worries me a lot(

Honestly, all you need to say to explain something is important to you is that “this is important to me”. People are not owed an explanation. We all have stuff we like and dislike without being able to well articulate it. Same for why we can be passionate or dispassionate about different things. I may be able to list some surficial reasons for why I’m passionate about science education, but when it comes down to it, what triggers the instinct in my brain to latch onto that as something I get more excited about than teaching young children? Both are important, I’m actually not bad at either, but one is what I really want to do and the other is something I could do but am not pursuing. 

But this is a really personal struggle for you. I can see that. So for your own sake of trying to understand yourself better and to be able to better communicate with those whom it is important you can talk about this with, maybe some scientific studies and others articulately postulating on gender would help?

I am going to give a blanket transphobic/cissexist warning for any and all of these for strong stances on the sex = or =/= gender camps and a fairly binary view of gender because that’s the point at which science has really been stuck. However, even so, you might find some terms or phrases amongst these that help you out.

Gender is not just male or female. 12 people across the gender spectrum explain why.: https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/9/28/12660752/gender-binary-spectrum-queer (contains people talking about why their identity is important to them)

Here on askanonbinary, Mod Leo and Zoe Leo’s “What is Gender?”: http://askanonbinary.tumblr.com/post/166083006096/what-is-gender-what-does-it-feel-like

Why is Gender Identity so Important? | Rikki Arundel | TEDxWarwickSalon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFBU7h7fqLcYT will also suggest a whole bunch more Tedx Talks along these lines that you should check out. Specific mentions to these talks:Beyond the Gender Binary | Yee Won Chong | TEDxRainier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lm4vxZrAigAre you a boy or a girl? - You don’t define me | Becky Strohmer | TEDxEAL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEOc5a5qvmM

Why is Gender Important?: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-gender-identity-important

Gender Identity and Adjustment: Understanding the Impact of Individual and Normative Differences in Sex Typing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2661758/

Dimensions of Gender
: https://www.genderspectrum.org/quick-links/understanding-gender/

Patterns of Gender Development: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3747736/

When do children develop their gender identity?: http://theconversation.com/when-do-children-develop-their-gender-identity-56480

The gender-fluid generation: young people on being male, female or non-binary: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/23/gender-fluid-generation-young-people-male-female-trans

Gender Identity (especially check out when they get into gender development): https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/917990-overview

A host of links about nonbinary from a scientific view point: http://askanonbinary.tumblr.com/post/164349925329/is-there-any-scientific-evidence-which-suggests

Science finally supports that we are all born as blank slates and gender is merely a construct: http://www.theplaidzebra.com/science-finally-supports-that-we-are-all-born-as-blank-slates-and-gender-is-merely-a-construct/

The Gender Tag (How to Explain Your Gender to People Who Just Don’t Get It): https://www.theodysseyonline.com/how-to-explain-your-gender-to-peoplehttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+gender+tag

A-Life Podcast episodes on asexuality and gender (even if you’re not asexual, some of the conversations might help you, although I haven’t specifically listened to these first):https://alifepodcast.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/a-life-18-asexuality-and-gender/https://alifepodcast.wordpress.com/2010/12/07/a-life-40-genders/https://alifepodcast.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/a-life-64-gender-repulsion/

Sex And Gender: What Is The Difference?: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/232363.php

What is the difference between sex and gender?: http://www.med.monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html

None of these are going to specifically answer your question because, as you’ve already heard, it’s complicated and we don’t really know. But perhaps reading these could give you some language to help describe why it’s important to you or just help you better understand what’s going on (or why it’s so confusing)? 

As to myself, gender is important, societally as a whole, because humans love labels. Humans categorize. We break down and put into boxes. That’s how we understand things, so that’s how we interact with the world. We break things down and break things down and break things down until it’s as simple as we can get it. That’s why we have the broad category “animals”, but then further break animals down into “domains”, “kingdoms”, “phylums”, etc. all the way down to “species”. Doing this helps us make connections and understand the world around us. So, of course, the same applies to us as humans. We categorize ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, health, etc. Gender is important to you because humans like to understand and to understand, we apply labels and we work very hard on fitting them into nice, neat little boxes (even when they’re way more confusing and messy than that). And the reason we have such problems talking about this and understanding is because gender isn’t just a nice, neat little idea we can easily throw into organized boxes. It’s just one of the things that we’re actually trying to talk about that isn’t as simple as broad categories like “human” vs “bird”.

I do hope this helps in some manner! And I know this isn’t what you came for, but I do also want to encourage you to work on letting go and just accepting yourself. When I was first coming to terms with not being cis, the hardest thing was that I didn’t really understand how I felt, I didn’t feel connected to any specific labels, and since I was confused and unsure, I didn’t feel valid. The single most helpful thing I did for myself was to just let myself be. When I was finally able to give up my search for the One True Answer, that’s when I suddenly found myself coming to terms with my identity and accepting who I was. It’s a hard thing for sure, and very personal, but just know that it’s okay not to have the answers. 

~ Mod Sock

#mod sock #q&a #labels #categorize #resource #study #cissexist language #cissexism #exorsexism #acceptance #questioning #confusion #Anonymous

[ellaenchanting]

(She/They, NB) So, I have a crush on someone and I kinda have since I first met her at a hypnocon about a year ago (for a lot of reasons that I can’t fit into 1 ask), and a huge part of me wants to ask if she’d be interested in me, but she’s also several years older than me and lives across the country. from what she’s said, she’s not really interested in LDR and maybe has enough partners already. So, I guess, my question is: How do you get over a crush that just isn’t going to become anything?

Hi Anonymous!

Thank you for reaching out. :)

So to start with the obvious- You don’t know at this point that the person isn’t interested in you. Maybe ask? Even if you have a good hunch that it’s going to be a “no”, sometimes actually hearing the no helps to dampen the crush. Your brain works a lot better with certainties- it can stop you from ruminating over the might-have-beens. 

Is this a play partner or someone that you did hypnosis with at this hypnocon? The whole “play partner” thing can be really confusing.  It’s a space and a role that doesn’t really seem to have a good equivalent in the non-kinky world. If I’m translating from my  non-kinky and mostly-mono life, it lies somewhere between “friend” and “romantic relationship” but, like queer, the term is so vague it can easily mean different things to different people. I’ve had play partners who have felt like lovely acquaintances, ones who have felt like really good friends, ones who I have felt maternal or big-sisterly towards, ones for whom I have had friendly flirty feels, and ones who have felt like a traditional romantic relationships- all under the title of “play partner”.* Sometimes a relationship shifts from one facet to another depending on moods/ who else is around/other life commitments/the alignment of certain stars/etc.  

It’s especially confusing when the two people in a relationship are not quite on the same page about what kind of “play partners” they are and what that means. We get our social role rules mixed up and this causes conflict: If I see my play partner as more of an acquaintance, I may or may not prioritize seeing them if we are at the same place (like, say, a con). If I see them as a strong romantic relationship, I’ll likely be hurt if we don’t spend enough time together. “Play partner” by itself can carry almost no social obligations** or it can carry lots of obligations, depending on the people using it and their relationship.

This is relevant because- I’m not sure your crush  has to become nothing. If the person has shown interest in you before, that interest was likely genuine.*** But also- it may not turn into something with the intensity that you would like. Is that OK? How important is it it you that your crush shares the same level of intensity/commitment towards you?  Is it worth it to adjust your expectations to accommodate a less intense relationship to keep this person in your life?  Is this a crush you can back burner for a while as you pursue other relationships that are meaningful? Or would that hurt more than it helped?****

If you decide that you’d rather just get over this person, then realize that getting over someone will take time. Be kind to yourself while it happens. Try and be as realistic about the person as possible. When we are in crush mode we tend to only notice strengths- see if you can form a more well-rounded view of the person, flaws included. If the crush is harmful enough, you may want to avoid the object of your affections for a period of time. Consciously redirect your thoughts when you find yourself ruminating about them. Instead, throw yourself into doing good things for you:  self-care, hobbies. other positive relationships, etc. Remember that your innate value has nothing to do with how other people react to you.

Good luck and thank you again for writing!

*And I’m not even getting into the complications of doing a sexy thing that is not technically sex but definitely takes up a similar space in my brain. Or the complications of doing it with a monogamous primary partner.

**Besides basic safety of course

***I’m assuming here that there was some mutual interest at some point.

****If you’re monogamous, I’m going to answer that one for you- waiting on this person would hurt more than it helped. Don’t do it. Also- I’ve broken up with a play partner before because I felt like I wanted way more than they did and was afraid of that getting unhealthy for both of us. Be really mindful of what’s going to help more than hurt here.

#asks #hypnokink relationships #polyamory or whatever the fuck we are doing here

[stop-brunotime]

CW: I'm ranting about personal stuff, using bad language, feeling shit about myself and being a bad example, complaining about my emotionally abusive mother, etc. Proceed with caution. This is further to my post on Thursday. Thank you to everyone who reached out. It meant the world, and I'll reply individually when I'm done with this post. I'm going to list the questions that have been bugging me to the point of suicidal ideation, and if you know the answers, please help a sibling out!

Christmas

Am I the only one bothered by Christmas trees? Like, everyone knows Jesus was probably born in August/September, because that's when Judaism's 'go visit the family' holidays are and there's no way shepherds would've been hanging out in the pastures in midwinter. Christmas trees are a blind appropriation of European Paganism's customs (and, while we're at it, holiday, since it's not even Jesus's real birthday). We're all claiming to celebrate Jesus, when in reality we're just marking our homes as places the tree spirits can overwinter. How can we claim to live lives of peace and love and do ignorant, appropriative shit like that?

Santa. FFS, this one grates my carrot to the quick. Named for St Nicholas (who was an African bishop and very definitely Black, despite what the white supremacists will tell you on Twitter), Santa seems to be a combination of Scandinavian Pagan myths. Either he's a Christian appropriation of Odinn, who gave kids gifts at midwinter, or he's an erasure of Sami (native Scandinavians, traditionally marginalised) shamans (who were typically women) who apparently gave the grown-ups entheogenic mushrooms. So, we're erasing POC and Native women and getting toxic about it on socials. Nice. I totally want gifts from that guy! (I'm aware that in Spain and Germany [and probably other countries too] it's the Baby Jesus who brings the gifts. I'm not resident in one of those countries, so have to deal with all the Santa bullshit) Again, we claim to be all about the peace and love how?!

Bringing me to Christians. Now, I identify as one, so am spraying friendly fire here. Why are my choices of places to worship either the kind who preach heterosexism from the pulpit, regularly using 'the homosexuals' as our go-to example of unrepentant sinners bound for eternity in Hell, or the kind who just don't mention it, which feels like ominous silence? The church who don't actively hate on queers have asked me to play in their music group. I gave guy some bullshit reason about being too busy to do something I would actually like to do as a person of faith, because I was scared that, if I started doing it and they found out I occasionally fall for women and NBs/GNCs, they'd throw me out and publicly shame me and maybe sell me out to the cops (who are wildly heterosexist, backed up by the law, and allegedly not above a bit of corrective gang rape of queer prisoners).

And onto Trump. The man reminds me of my mother. And that makes me a terrible human, because he does so many worse things than triggering memories of her being consistently passive-aggressive and theologically inaccurate about "Christian values". He makes such rapey comments all the fucking time, and just dismisses anyone who tries to call him on it. He is the embodiment of everything that's wrong with the world, and yet I meet so many people who love him. We live in fucking Africa...what exactly are we doing supporting the guy who's defunding all the USAID healthcare programs that keep us in contraceptives? Like, sure, I've never had an abortion, and, barring medical necessity or a pregnancy from being raped again, am probably going to keep any pregnancy I achieve before menopause (which is only ten years away, and I don't exactly have the most active sex life from which to achieve a pregnancy)...but I've been the emergency contact on enough hospital admission forms to know that it's a necessary medical procedure and people need access to quick, cheap, and as-painless-as-possible abortions. We got that from USAID. Now Trump has fucked that up and we need to go private, which is a D&C under full anaesthesia, with associated risks. Sure, Trump blustered a bit about Mugabe, but didn't do anything real in the eleven months between him taking office and us having our coup-that's-not-a-coup. Tweeting doesn't count. How exactly is that asshole going to be 'the next Mordecai of Israel' and 'the one to rid the world of dictatorship'?

Speaking of pathological Machiavellian narcissists, does anyone have resources for recovering from a parent who used you to meet her needs from when you were really small? She never raped me or anything, but the long-term emotional neglect, belittling, passive-aggression, criticism, gaslighting, parental alienation (yes, for almost twenty years she had me convinced that my dad, whom I love and who I'm most like, was the angry abuser in their relationship and she was the victim) have taken their toll. My therapist says I need to adjust my expectations of her and my problems will go away. I see her point, but my mother is still mean as fuck. For example, she sent me a room diffuser that smelled like it came from a pound shop for Christmas. (It was called 'african spice'. It smelled of cinnamon. There are no African spices. Cinnamon is from Asia. She's heard me rant several times about people mis-labelling plant origins, so it's not like she doesn't know how much it bugs me.) This is after a quarter century of me saying variations on, 'Books or nothing, but please no cash or girly shit,' every Christmas and birthday. This is after coming out to her as genderqueer. She said she immediately thought of me when she saw it. Surely there's a more direct way to tell me that I or my house smell/s bad? Perhaps a way that doesn't subtly signal that she still frames me as the gender-perfect imaginary daughter she has in her head? She went to the effort of having it brought to Zimbabwe in a suitcase (what comes in suitcases isn't charged import tax). She could have spent that fiver on a second-hand book from Amazon, sent it out in a way that bypassed ZIMRA's human rights violation of a book tax, and given me the gift of freedom of information. But she chose to force her gender ideals on me in a way that says, yet again, that I need to be just a little bit better to be worthy of her love

I'm legit concerned that she's made me a horrible person. She gave me so many of her issues that I'm pretty sure everyone feels about me the way they do about her. I'm sure everyone looks at me and sees the lack of tangible results that come from being terrified of being publicly shamed as crazy and weird. I'm horribly awkward and say the wrong thing often. I've had dates end because I got awkward and up in my head and told him that wood cockroaches eat their parents' shit to replenish their gut flora after molting. I take days, sometimes months, to reply to messages. I hold opinions that are shared by a tiny minority of scientists and theologians, and everyone disagrees. And my writing output bears this out. The only time people say nice stuff about my writing is when I've written porn under a fake name that doesn't really have socials. The rest of the time, it's people calling me out or trolling me. Am I wrong? Is the internet just a toxic shit hole? Is everyone talking smack about me in DM, and I have no idea how many people are laughing at me? Should I just delete all my accounts, move to the Andes, change my name, and raise llamas for yarn and bees for mead?

What even is the right thing to do? I was raised with so much certainty, and have since found out things like the universe wasn't made in six days five thousand years ago, and nobody really knows where Mount Sinai is. It doesn't feel right to just pick the most convenient set of rules. I should be able to tell what the right choice is. Who died and bequeathed me the right to decide right from wrong? How am I supposed to help others when I don't even know the answers myself (and neither do any of the scholars, who are simply putting forward a best guess model) and will probably be wrestling with existential questions on my death bed? Put your own mask on first, sure, but how do I fit all these masks on one face?

#personal #rant #questions

[theclaravoyant]

also okay - if you're ever wanting to write more in the trans!fitz universe, i'd absolutely love to see a fic where someone on the team learns what 'nonbinary' is and decides they might be nb, and come talk to fitz about it! :) and maybe talk about fitz's experiences being trans and his view of gender and stuff like that

AN ~ awesome prompt! It was a lot of fun exploring nonbinary-ness and different experiences of gender (which is probably why this almost hit 2K!). 

Disclaimer: I’m a cis woman, but I based what Fitz talks about on experiences of several trans and non binary people (from these sources as well as past research, friends, tumblr posts, etc.). I hope I have done the topic some justice!

For those not familiar with my trans!fitz universe, this fic takes place in the Bridget!verse where Fitz transitioned (FTM) from a young age. He is out only to a few select people as trans, and prefers it that way, although this fic also allows for him to be more out re: his sexuality (which is not specified in this fic, but implied to be non-straight).

As for who he’s talking to… I know they’re not part of “the team” exactly but I couldn’t resist using this opportunity to write about everyone’s favourite nb lesbian, Agent Piper!

Anyway, without further ado-

Read on AO3 (~2000wd)

Piper

Pride season was an opportunity for a splash of colour in the increasingly gloomy lives of Shield’s now-underground team. The younger Agents especially filled the base with life and vibrancy while the older ones, for whom Pride was much if not more a commemoration than a festivity, provided strength and fortitude, serving as living reminders of a whole range of struggles that could affect an Agent, and a whole range of ways of being a survivor. Pride was a light in the darkness not unlike the end of year holiday season, if directed at a smaller cohort.

Tonight, many of the Agents were preparing to drive out to a Pride Parade in a nearby city, and were donning all manner of bright colours and some of them even preparing spectacular outfits for a night on the town. Daisy had on a hot-pink sundress with platform sandals and chunky jewellery in blue, purple and silver. Jemma went for a look that somehow managed to be more subdued, in a bright canary-yellow t-shirt and black jeans, with a pink bandana tied around her neck. Fitz was stuck in his room trying to figure out what to wear that was different, but that didn’t scream a Pride flag vomited all over me, when he heard a knock at the door.

“Oh, thank God,” he sighed. “Jemma, I-“

Fitz cut himself off when he pulled the door open and saw not Jemma, but the shorter, stockier, also somewhat-bewildered-looking Agent Piper waiting for him. She was still wearing fatigues, not yet prepared for the evening’s outing, and her expression was a little too serious for Fitz’s liking.

“Um. Hi,” Fitz greeted after a moment. “Can I help you? Is something going on?”

He stuck his head further into the hallway, but Piper shook her head before he could work himself into too much of a panic.

“Nothing, it’s all good out here, I was actually wondering if I could – maybe – have a private conversation with you.”

“Okay. Sure.” Still a little unsettled, Fitz invited Piper into his and Jemma’s room. He waved a hand apologetically at the suit-jackets, feather boa, dresses, heels, and button-ups that had sprawled across the room during their preparations, but Piper seemed content to ignore them even as her eyes cast about the room a little, not quite sure how to broach the subject she’d come here to speak about.

“Sorry,” she said eventually, bringing her eyes back to Fitz as she seemed to remember she was prying in a private space. “It’s just, I know you’re not really out with it and I didn’t want to be creepy. I wanted to talk about… gender. I’ve been thinking about some stuff and Jemma sort of mentioned that you might be someone who knows something about it. If you’re not comfortable with talking to me you can send me on my way and I won’t breathe a word of it – I know how it is – but it’d be really cool if you could help me out, man.”

Fitz shrugged. “It’s alright.”

“You sure?”

“Sure.” He smiled. “Happy to help out if I can.”

“Awesome.” Piper sighed, and a lot of the tension left her body. For want of a better place to plant herself, she perched on the corner of a desk.

Fitz sat nearby, in a clear space at the edge of the bed, and waited for Piper to gather her thoughts. He hoped she wouldn’t ask too much about him. Then again, he hoped she would. If it would help. If it would maybe mean he was sharing something of himself with someone who might get it in a way that the others didn’t. He wondered what she would ask. What was questioning even like? What was it like not to wake up and know? Of course, he’d been through his own questioning period, but most of that had been forced upon him, particularly by his father’s efforts to reshape him. Inside Piper’s head, Fitz knew, there could be a whole different set of sensations going on. Legitimate questions. Questions in which politics and oppression only played a part. Questions that could be daunting, and probably moreso to a thirty-year-old mind than to a seven-year-old, who didn’t yet understand so much about the weight of the world.

“Want me to start?” Fitz offered. Piper groaned.

“God, please.”

“Do you think you’re a man?”

Piper recoiled from the suggestion, but quickly recovered.

“Sorry. But no. I don’t think so – it feels wrong. It’s just that… I’m not really sure I’m a woman either. Does that make sense? Is that possible? I mean, I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy but like… recently, it feels different somehow. It’s difficult to describe. Maybe I’m just being weird, but to be honest, it’s kind of freaking me out. I thought I’d already done the whole identity-crisis thing, you know?”

Fitz laughed a little. He could relate.

“There’s no need for a crisis. You’ll figure it out eventually. And believe me, I get the double-take. Identity is an ever-changing beast.”

“How was it for you, though?” Piper wondered. “The gender thing I mean. How did you know?”

“I don’t think I can really help you with that one, unfortunately. I’m one of those people who just always, sort of, knew. I’ve known since I was a kid. I don’t really know why. Some of it was the obvious I guess. I played with model trains and cars instead of dolls. I hated wearing dresses. Tried to cut off all my hair with scissors. I wanted a pee-pee.” He snorted. “Seven-year-old me didn’t really get into the philosophy of it all, but there must be something to it, because… well, let’s just say I went through some things that would have chased it out of me if that were possible.”

Piper nodded solemnly.

“Not all the confusion is bad though,” Fitz continued. “My mum raised me, mostly, and she did it without a lot of that masculine bravado bullshit. She taught me to be gentle, sensitive, forgiving… sometimes it felt like I was less of a guy because of that kind of stuff, and the teasing didn’t help, but in the end it gave me faith in my identity. Mum always told me there should be more guys like me. That it shouldn’t be left to the girls to be the soft ones.“

“I like your mom,” Piper put in.

“Me too.” Fitz smiled. “And honestly I think having someone who believed in me like that made it all so much easier, even though she didn’t get it entirely. She started calling me by the right pronouns – you know, he and him and all that - and even gave me a different name. Helped me transition in lots of other ways, too. I couldn’t have done it without her.”

“Oh, I don’t want to transition, either,” Piper clarified. “I’m happy with my body just the way it is. Is that – I mean, does that mean anything?”

“Not really,” Fitz explained. “I mean, for me it did. I had… I had dysphoria in a big way. Phantom body parts. Huge discomfort about my dead name and pronouns. Not every trans person gets that. Some have it the other way, actually. Euphoria, it’s called. They just feel more happy when they express as their gender, or when they’re referred to by some other name or pronouns or, you know, gendered words, even if they’re not particularly unhappy with their assigned ones.”

“See, that sounds more like me,” Piper agreed. “But can you be, like, gender-neutral trans? Or is that a different thing, I don’t know. But can you?”

“You mean like nonbinary?” Fitz suggested. “Some people think of it as trans and some don’t, but yeah, sure. It’s a thing.”

“It means you’re like, somewhere between a boy and a girl, right?” Piper speculated. “Like on the spectrum.”

“Basically,” Fitz agreed. “I mean, for some people it’s more complicated than that, and just like with sexual orientation there’s a whole bunch of subsets. Some people like the spectrum, some people go with a third non-spectrum gender, some people even prefer no gender at all. It’s up to you. I can’t really tell you which one to pick, unfortunately – I mean as far as I’m aware, we as a scientific community still don’t know what gender even is yet – but if you’re feeling like nonbinary’s an option for you, try it out. There’s no harm in a label if you’re safe and happy with it. And even if it doesn’t work out, it’s not like you’re getting in anyone’s way.”

“Really?” Piper checked. “You think I should go for it?”

Fitz held his hands up, palms out. “You don’t need my permission.”

“Can I keep my name?”

“Sure, if you’re happy with it.”

“What about that pronoun stuff?”

“Well, if it bothers you when people call you she/her, tell them so. If not, you can keep them and still be non-binary. It depends on you. If you’re looking for a more neutral pronoun, ‘they’ is getting pretty popular, relatively. There are some more obscure ones around, so Google it maybe, but if it’s not a strong point of contention for you, or none of the others really speak to you, you could try they/theirs.”

“You’re right, that does sound better,” Piper agreed, a smile breaking out across her face at last. “Thanks so much, Fitz, honestly. I feel like I’ve lined up so many things in my brain right now.”

“My pleasure.” Fitz found himself beaming too, unexpectedly broadly. He kicked his legs in glee. “Glad I could help.”

“Wait.” Piper interrupted, her tone heavier again all of a sudden and, if Fitz was not mistaken, tainted with dread. “Can I still be a lesbian, then?”

Fitz’s excitement faded a little too. With the weight Piper put on it, he could tell, this part of her identity was important to her. Painstakingly so. Handling it with care was essential, and yet, he had to walk blindly into it and do the best he could.

“Well, I don’t know,” he offered truthfully. “If someone else, if another lesbian, came to you with something like this, what would you say, d’you think?”

Piper’s eyes searched the floor, the carpet, the nose of Fitz’s dress shoes poking out from under one of Jemma’s discarded dresses. She took a deep breath.

“Well, I’m sure as hell not a man. And even if I’m not a woman exactly, I still feel pretty close to it. I’d like to think I’m enough of a woman to be a lesbian still.”

“Then there you have it, I guess. Maybe talk to the girls, they might have more to say about it, but I think that’s fair enough.”

“Cool.” Piper nodded once, and then twice more for good measure as she let it all settle in. Her eyes trailed the mess that was FitzSimmons’ room and, as the mess in her own head cleared away, she remembered why it was all there.

“Shit, we’d better get ready, hey?” she reminded Fitz. He escorted her to the door, as best he could through the widespread pig-sty.

“Again, thanks so much for the talk,” Piper continued. “It was really great. Really helpful. If you don’t mind though, can we keep it on the DL for now? Sprinkle a couple ‘they’s here and there if you could, but the other stuff, I’m still easing into it.”

“No worries,” Fitz promised. “And you know, my stuff –“

“Lock and key,” Piper promised in return. “See you tonight.”

“See you there.”

#leo fitz #agent piper #aospositivitynet #aosfic #bsquadbrigade #aosficnet2 #happy pride! #piper #piper vasquez #trans!fitz #prompt me stuff #clara's fic tag #buckysbears #aos fic