#two other queer kids who im friends with

[fridayiminlcve]

if i dont move to nyc or london or paris by age 27 what is the point of anything

#i looooove my city so much you guys like if i wasnt who i am (queer) rn i would be so fucking glad that i am in my current city but #i loooove art and history and fashion and stuff and this citymight be about second best for all that but its still soo crowded #people WILL judge no matter what you wear something cutesy and people dont shut up especially when ur 16 and tagging along with your mom to #the mall or something and everyone just stares and even among your classmates ive been complimented so many times #for my unique style or whatever (aka i have beaded shoelaces and wear lots of jewelery and absurd ass eyeliner) and theyre like oh #n******** is so fancy itni stylish bandi hai woh and its so attention grabbing but i dont want it to be a big deal !!! #i want to like 20 badges and wear insane makeup and dye my hair without calling much attention to myself!!! #of course i know that will change slowly as you go in to uni and meet ppl of your type instead of a bazaar market and youll pick ur own #friends who r like minded but considering this is india how many people can you truly find. #also my next two years are going to be spent in a college for jee and neet kids #you can wear what you want theres no dress code but you have to appear serious studious and simple if you want to be taken seriously #elle woods at harvard law type #i asked my mom to get an industrial & second lobe piercing and actual dyed hair and shes like turn twenty get into a good college then do #not bc she minds she allowed me to get my hair dyed at age 13 but to go in th college im going to there is SO SO much rigour #and if you dont show yourself as professional and shit they will keep you in lower effort self study classes instead of best of the best #i KNOW how difficult moving abroad is bc my family does not have that money i need to do it myself its so so expensive bc the money #itself has such a high value compared to here (you see americans cribbing abt 30$ hourly wage but here that is 2500inr) #2500 inr is as much as an expensive pair of jeans here. expensive clothes here r 30$ and in usa its 300$ . see the diffence #im changing topics so much but sometimes i do feel this place is suffocating #its a priviledge i have that i can even think about going abroad comapred to other indians but still #dp you get what i mean #and ik movies and all are very romanticised so it might not even be this way in western cities and just an idealisation but still #if things change around here then the entire question of going anywhere is out the window anyway #smalltown boy will byers moment #dni if you read all this and plan on replying unless ur a close mutual (close mutuals u know who u are) #also if someone says why would you want to go to usa uk paris when they colonised your country shut up <3 shut up very much <3

[sp3akfri3ndand3nt3r]

Oddly specific feelings:

How it feels when you find out that people you knew distantly in elementary/middle/high school but were never friends with because they were more popular than you have come out as queer / discovered their queerness during or after college. They (generally) get love and affection for it from the people you thought were your friends once upon a time, but who left you to be in those more popular cliques because you were just a little bit too weird for them to associate with, for fear of it affecting their social image.

It’s a strange sort of awkward relationship, in which you know that even though you are members of the same family of minorities, they will never have struggled to fit in in the same way that you do, and thus will never quite understand you, no matter how much you now appear to have in common.

#lgbtq+ #lgbtqia #queerness #being queer #asd #autism #actually autistic #autistic #autistic adult #audhd #adhd #i was always the kid who was just slightly too weird for the popular groups and never fit in with any of the others #i was even too socially off to hang with the other social rejects for too long growing up #just socially acceptable enough to be acquaintances with many but friends with one or two people at a time #when you appear normal at face value people tell you your struggles are all in your head #but tell twelve year old me why none of his friends wanted to be seen with him after elementary school was over #tell me why people from high school smile and act friendly years later when you were too inept to realize when they teased you to your face #now x and y can post their pride pictures and get love from your family friends but those same friends joked about you being gay growing up #oops im rambling

[space-prophet]

Rant in tags do not clown

#boom- gay #ok. ill say it. steddie doesnt have any chemistry at all. i legit can not see it. it feels like the newest mash too hot guys together ship. #if you like it thats cool and i hope you have fun with it but what???? they have like q handful of conversations and none of them seem like #'flirting' like everyone in the tag is saying. stg we have to take the word queer bating away from u people bc youll use it anytime a ship #isnt canon that you like. sherlock? queer bating for sure. stranger things??? u have robin but shes wlw so no one cares much beyond #complesionist shipping ronance. the top ships in this fandom (aside from byler which isnt queer bating its queercoding will jesus christ) #are like steveXbilly and steveXeddie aka the hot guys everyone wants to fck for thier own weird gratification. what if it was murry and hop #huh?? two middle aged traditionally unattractive men who had arcs abt being gay? what if it was lucas who came ojt and realized he loved #like idk some random kid at school it kinda feels like the love for solangelo but worse bc stedi not even together and have satisfying arcs #im just tired of shipping culture and the wierd gaze fans have towards hot white boys who they can put in mlm ships. i want ugly gays. i #want a well crafted story like wills where its obvious he's figuring himself out. i dont want steve and eddie to out of nowhere in a time #and place where theyve never even taken time to think over or adress thier sexuality to like make out in a situation #wherw thier main focus is to look after thier very-young-child-friends. it would not be a well crafted or #compelling narritive for anyone. i hate #i hate straight ppl writing in queer ships for fetishistic gazes. you want well written queer rep in stranger things #we have robin and will- will whos arc this season was abt tackling his feelings for mike through body acting and subtlety- smthng #yall cant handle i guess #and robins queerness is adressed this season as well very very openly multiple times. stranger things is not abt queer life but it tries to #be respectfully inclusive. not every show can faithfully and respectfully be heartstopper or ofmd and st has never had that intention. #in fact it needs more diversity in other areas first i think. #anyways if ypu like stedi fr fun thats fine but some ppl have been so fuckin insane abt it that its made u lose your minds!!! i get it i #ship byler and elmax (potential ellumax) but im not expecting them to beome canon bc the show is truing to explore other things at the mome #nt. that is not queer baiting and the duffers are not evil for having a different plan for thier show #idk i only got q few hours of sleep cut me some slack for being ungraceful. #tldr: have fun shipping but dont be like thatTM when you know that youre blowing things out of proportion #sending the duffer brothers fucking threats for queer baiting will make them not want to be inclusive for fear of the tumblrrnas sherlockin #shit up #personal

[p-h-a-n-t-a]

Nimona was the first piece of media i found after realizing i was nonbinary that spoke to me, i read the webcomic every wedsneday in my history class in 7th grade. Middle school was hard for me because i was one of two kids in my whole grade that was out as some form of queer (pan, i didnt come out as nb until high school) and i lost a lot of friends from it. But also from just being "weird." I tried to come out to my dad at one point and heard nearly the same line balister says to nimona in the new movie "wouldnt it be easier to be a girl?"

I am now 21, working in a library where i see kids gravitate more and more towards graphic novels and we have the nimona graphic novel on our shelves, and i have waited so long to watch the movie, that when i finally watched it, i could not believe it was not just speaking to me, but screaming to me. Im a nonbinary individual that loves men in a queer way, and yet has been a weird little girl outcast for things other people did not understand. I have seen grown adults attack children online for not being straight or cis, and seen them say it is under the guise of protecting their kids. In the time between now and reading the webcomic in my history class, i have felt so many different ways about my identity and my existence, and holy shit does the nimona movie speak to me. In almost every stage of my life.

N D Stevenson, and all the people who made this movie survive and be possible, you were able to reach into the core of my being and make me feel just as seen as i first did when i laughed about shark boobs in a middle school computer lab. Thank you so much!!

#nimona #nimona movie #nd stevenson #eugene lee yang #riz ahmed #balister blackheart #ambrosius goldenloin #nonbinary #pansexual #pride month #pride #you can tell i care because im actually tagging shit #oh my god this movie is one of the most important pieces of queer media to me rn

[txttletale]

Do you have recs for combatless rpgs? sorry if someones asked this ! im getting into ttrpgs now and its just pretty hard to find anything non combat focused ?

i recommended wanderhome (melancholy animal roadtrip), dream askew (queer postapocalyptic survival), microscope (collaborative worldbuilding), and crescent moon (kids learning and growing in a fantasy land) in resposne to an ask earlier today. other great rpgs that aren't combat focused include:

chuubo's marvelous wish-granting engine: i'll level with you, if you're just getting into rpgs this one might be A Lot because it's quite mechanically complex. but it's a beautiful game about having ghibliesque coming-of-age adventures in a surreal dreamy world.

nobilis is by the same person (jenna moran, a genuine game design pioneer and genius) -- it's about being godlets, the living embodiments of concepts from the concrete to the abstract. you might find yourself fighting in this game, but it's unlikely to look anything like 'combat'.

brindlewood bay, which is about being elderly women investigating murders.

pasión de las pasiones, a pbta (powered by the apocalypse) game about doing ridiculous romance drama shit based on telenovelas

monsterhearts, about teenaged monsters having weird drama and exploring their sexuality. think buffy or twilight, but queerer

pigsmoke, about being professors at a college of magic and competing to see who can publish the best paper (yes, really)

the girlfriend of my girlfriend is my friend, about... i mean i think the title makes it pretty clear! being gay and poly and kinda broke

it's been a long, long, time, about two people who used to date, their relationship, their lives after it, and their reunion

sagas of the icelanders, about being viking settlers in iceland during the saga period and playing out quasimythical dramas

hieronymous, about being a bunch of sinners making your way across hieronymous bosch's garden of earthly delights

thousand year old vampire, a solo journalling game about being a vampire and living through long stretches of history

blow up hamlet, where your table performs hamlet while changing the plot and improvising new plot beats at semi-random

slugblaster, about being rowdy teens hoverboarding through interdimensional rifts in the spirit of 90s teen movies

woo! that's a fuckin' lot of ttrpgs, but i wanted to give a lot of suggestions because i think it's so important for people getting into the hobby to understand the breadth of games out there and how far from the popular image created by D&D they can go! there are two-player and GM-less and even one-player games on this list. you can do anything! the world of rpgs is so fucking wide and beautiful. good luck and i hope you find something that speaks to you!

(oh, also, my game, most trusted advisors -- about being the untrustworthy privy council to a dipshit king and falling over each other's nested dipshit schemes -- has no combat in it. just saying!)

#ask #ttrpg

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AMITA for lying to everyone I know about my identity’s as a queer/neurodivergent person?

I (18M) am a bisexual, transgender man who is also autistic, ADHD, and OCD. When people hear this about me, even if they know me, I feel like they build up this image of me as an awkward, “cringy” 11 year old who’s obsessed with “cringy” fandoms. And while i have a qualm with this because I know they are looking down on people who are just less masked/higher support needs, I also dislike that they do this because it’s just not who I am. Without the labels, I mostly seem like just a normal dude, if not a bit nerdy.

I also used to be extremely bullied as a kid (7-12) to the point of a suicide attempt, mostly due to homophobic, transphobic, or ablest remarks about me. Since then I’ve completely changed community’s and do not talk to anyone i knew before high school.

When authority figures (Teachers, Show Directors, Investors of the teen programs I lead) apply ablest/transphobic stereotypes or prejudices to me, they also tend to be less,,, normal? around me. Less kind compared to other kids, call me an “inspiration”, or they’ll coddle me when I’m incredibly capable. I do a lot for someone my age- and I know the connections I make now at conferences and whatnot will help me in the long run. My dad’s family is poor, and my immediate family is more comfortable but not that much. I know I’m smart, and I can weaponize that to get a better life for my family by getting good scholarships and jobs in good fields. I can’t just let people who could be very important to my goals look down on me. So i just.. don’t tell them anything about me. They might assume Im odd or “not normal”, and for the most part I let them assume whatever, but if i’m ever asked directly about anything I deny it. Especially in relation to me being transgender; I have the very privileged ability to pass without any medical intervention, and I use that to pretend to be cisgender. Living in the deep south of USAmerica, most of who I am could make my social life very uncomfortable to downright miserable.

Here’s where the problem starts happening. when my social and (what i consider to be a) “professional” life occasionally touch, I wouldn’t be able to be out everywhere socially without someone I don’t want knowing finding out. So i don’t tell any of my classmates/friends/peers about any of my identities either. I hang out with queer and straight people, never be actively homophobic/ablest, and will be very vague about the two questions i’ve ever received about any of that stuff. It’s very, very exhausting to pretend all the time, every day, especially pretending that I’m cisgender because it’s a tricky game, but I can’t really back down and I’m afraid that I might get bullied again if I was ever open about it with classmates.

A few months ago, I was dating this guy, who i’ll call Kai (17M) Kai is also a transgender man, but does not pass at all and is comfortable with it. He’ll get shit sometimes, but also has essentially no straight friends. I told him I was queer when we became good friends, and then told him I was trans after we started dating. I also told him why I lie about being cishet or neurotypical, and while he didn’t seem happy he didn’t push it at first. I told him that I understood if he didn’t want to be in a secret relationship, but because of where we live and what I want to do I wasn’t comfortable with being out again. He said he still wanted to date me, and claimed he would support me, and we had a pretty good relationship overall.

A month after that, he started bringing it up again. He told me that I was more than my identity, and if people didn’t see me for who I am instead of stereotypes, it isn’t worth talking to them at all. And while I agree with the sentiment, it’d never be possible to just not hear someone if they were harassing me, and while I truely dislike a lot of the authority figures that I engage with, they are in the professional fields I’m interested in, and I’m incredibly lucky for getting where I am so early. Kai also said that since I am well known in our very small school (only 300 kids), being out could be a positive influence on what people think about autistic people or trans people. In a particularly heated fight, he even said I was doing a disservice or betrayal to my community by not representing or being proud of being apart of them publicly.

We broke up pretty soon after, but I think about what he said a lot. I know that I wouldn’t be the only out person at my school, and that my school is actually a lot better compared to most local schools, which are a lot larger and… dramatic, but I just don’t think I could be out without going back to how I used to be mentally. And Kai was right about how I could be a good influence on some of the meaner classmates- I do think some of my peers who I ingenuinely connect with might reconsider their prejudices if they knew I was transgender.

I’m intentionally choosing not to take the opportunity to do better. It wouldn’t ruin ALL my relationships with the authority figures I consider to be important holding, since it would just be my school, It might dampen one or two of them. Plus, I’m lying to pretty much everyone who knows me. They build relationships with a false idea of me, and I feel like an asshole sometimes because I’m not honest.

TLDR: I’m a transgender, autistic guy in a very bigoted community. Everybody thinks i’m cishet and neurotypical. AMITA for not being proud of who I am because of potential social losses, and AMITA for lying to people and giving friends/peers false ideas about who I am even if they would not be friends with me if they knew?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole #suicide cw

[creekfiend]

Man sometimes I think about the gay adults in my life when I was a kid and I get so emotions

My shop ("technology education") teacher in middle school was this extremely gruff no nonsense older dyke who I was just totally enchanted by and she brought her rescue dog to class all the time and I like, drew her Sailor Moon drawings to put on her classroom door in sparkly gel pen. Other kids would go "ew I heard she's a lesbian" at lunch and I would be like "what did you say. Say that to my face. Meet me in the pit. I have no idea why I feel so strongly about this but meet me in the pit nevertheless. I'm 12 and I would take a bullet for Nancy Lynn and her wife who I have Never met"

Just. When ur a baby gay and ur like. "I have no idea why I would trust this loud opinionated masculine woman with my life," lol

I often wonder what she thought. As an adult now I am like, "Oh yeah, I can for sure identify when kids are fascinated by me because there is something about themselves that they see in me and they're curious and excited to meet an adult who is like them in some way even tho they don't know why" so she must have known. She was very nice to me and we were friends and she knew my parents also. so. OH IM FEELING EMOTIONS ABOUT IT ALL OVER AGAIN

Man. I love. Middle aged butches

A friend of mine has two 12 year old kids and one is a furry who loves to draw Wolves With Horns and I am going to stop at their house and visit when my friend and I drive back with Flare this spring and so my friend was telling her kids about me and she showed them some pictures and her kid was like SO EXCITED and my friend sent me a bunch of voice messages from her this morning being like "WOW I LOVE THE MOON TOO. WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO DRAW THEN MOST? WHATS YOUR FAVORITE COLOR MINE IS PURPLE" this kid already knows she is queer because her mom and her school are awesome and 2023 is a different place to be 12 in than 2001. But I'm still like 🥺 TO BE AN ASPIRATIONAL FIGURE FOR QUEER KIDS.. ooogh. Feelings

#i was also lowkey in love with our very gay family friend Steve as a child bc he was so CLEVER and FUNNY and WITTY #equal opportunity infant gay baby.

[qprsmackdown]

q!parrotduo (q!Jaiden and q!Roier from the QSMP) Propaganda:

They raised a kid together and he was the best dragon ever, they've been there for the other at their lowest and even when no one else believed them, they have been through grief and healing together, they would go through Hell for the other.

They are canonically platonic partners, Jaiden is Aroace and Roier has a husband (outside of the QPR) and had a wonderful son (egg), Bobby. Even when they were lawyers on opposing sides of a court case, afterwards they complimented each other on how they did during the case. On top of that, Jaiden threatened Roier's husband Cellbit before their marriage, telling him that if he hurt Roier she would hunt him down, and telling him to be honest to Roier. They are the greatest <3

they had a kid together and lived together and even after bobby died they’ve stayed the bestest of friends ☹️ roier even got married but jaiden is still so important to him and they both care for each other so much and roier’s husband sees her as equally part of their family too

they adopted a kid together because of an event and they didnt have to go hard as they did. after the kid died, they STILL were together. then roier married another guy BUT all jaiden did was threaten him bc all she wants is for roier to be happy.

i dont even go here but this qpr is literally canon. jaiden is an aroace queen and also these two raised a son together like come on bro

Q! and cc!Jaiden is aroace and q!roier is queer. They were selected to be a pair to raise a child who they named Bobby. Jaiden moved into roier's home, had their beds next to each other, they raised bobby together, went on adventures together. Jaiden and roier loved each other and called each other family. When people asked if they were together they both said no but they were partners. Jaiden was extremely supportive of roier's cross dressing and him working at a strip club. Roier helped her practice her fighting skills. When roier became romantically interested in another character nothing between them changed and Jaiden threatened the other character to never hurt roier. Bobby died and they mourned and Jaiden moved away but they were still very close and visit each other often and roier keeps an eye on her interactions with a federation worker called cucurucho to make sure it doesn't hurt her. They are literally the perfect example of a qpr; living together, expressing their love for each other, raising a child together but never being romantically involved and being such a unit together and everyone on the island knows it and loves them too.

its like halfway canon that theyre in a QPR, they raise a child together and sleep next to each other and are basically life partners. jaiden supports roiers other relationships, and they actually support and communicate with each other and its great

They raised a child together, Roier's in game romantic husband loves Jaiden almost as much Roier does

you don't understand your honor they're everything to me. they're basically canon. they raised a kid together, lived in the same house, slept in the same bed, and trusted each other with everything. Someone once asked if they were together romantically and their answers were 'family' and 'partners' and often times they're just called 'platonic life partners'. They trust each other first no matter what they are RIDE or DIE qpp bitrans and aroace

oh my gdodddd dude oh my goddddd oh my godddddd oh my lord oh my LORRRDDDDDD they got randomly paired together to raise a child and had hardly interacted before that and immediatley became besties and there is so much respect and patience and trust in their relationship even after the loss of their child they are eachothers confidants they always want the best for eachother they are everything to me im craszy ANIMATIONS FAMILY 4EVER

they raised a child together they live together Jaiden's aroace and supports her partner's drag stripping career she was at his wedding

they raised a child together. jaiden is aroace and roier was kinda a whore before he got married (not to jaiden though) but they are besties and they care for each other very much. when their son bobby died they were each other's rock. i barely watch the livestreams but i see the liveblogging and its just so so obvious they care for each other and are ride or die PLEASE LET THEM IN AND WIN

they were the best parents to their little egg, Bobby, and are just so silly goofy together. They hype each other up SO MUCH.

Just these two lol not much for me to say but lots of platonic love to give

roier is gay and married to a man and jaiden's aroace but they are still partners!!! they're family they're a couple but they're not dating or romantically interested in each other. everyone in-canon acknowledges their relationship as equally as important as a romantic one, even roier's husband.

They LITERALLY lived together and slept in the same bed and raised a child together and one of them is played by an aroace person! The ccs never implied or explicitly said there was anything romantic between their characters, but the characters are still incredibly close with one another, even when Roier had his own romantic arc with another character!

They raised a son together platonically, Roier is married and he and Jaiden’s relationship is treated with the same amount of gravitas and weight as Roier’s relationship with his husband. They’re mutually supportive and care about each other so deeply. They’ve been through the loss of their son together and have continued to wholeheartedly mutually support and protect each other.

BOBBY THEIR LITTLE EGG THEY

canonically a family unit but not in the nuclear way (they both parent a child, but they are not in a romantic relationship nor a couple, nor did either of them create this child). this platonic relationship is treated equally to one of the character's romantic relationships and is not seen as 'less' than the romantic one. it is expressed multiple times throughout the series how important this platonic relationship is.

They co-parented their adopted kid together for a while and were acknowledged by pretty much everyone as the best parents, and now that Roier is married, his husband treats him and jaiden with just as much respect as she does their marriage,,,, which means a lot to me personally <3

roier literally considers his relationship with jaiden (who is aroace) to be equal to that of his relationship with his husband. his husband also treats jaiden n roiers relationship as equal to his and roiers!! plus jaiden and roier raised a son together and slept next to each other and were often mistaken for being husband and wife bc of how affectionate they were but its completely platonic! also when roiers husband, cellbit, was being an asshole pre engagement, jaiden talked with roier about how she thinks he deserves better and threatened cellbit if he hurt roier. i have many feelings about them but most of them are like just stick figure gore images

qpr of all time. i dont even watch qsmp but theyre so sillies. they raised a kid (egg) together. jaiden is acearo

Roier is a very gay hypersexual man and Jaiden is AceAro!! They refer to eachother as partners and raised an (egg)child together. Theyre besties theyre ride or die they trust eachother above anyone else etc etc

Q!JAIDEN CALLED Q!ROIER HER PARTNER SEVERAL TIMES!!! SHES AROACE AND HES MARRIED AND ALSO THEY RAISED A CHILD TOGETHER AND LIVED TOGETHER (<- i am feral)

They have said they love each other and it wasn’t romantic. One of them is played by and aroace person, one of them isn’t and the character still has a relationship outside of the romantic/platonic binary while still having both romantic and platonic relationships.

They have directly referred themselves as platonic partners multiple time throughout their time together. Despite the fact that Q!Roier is married to another character, his relationship with Q!Jaiden is never dismissed and is held at the same importance as his romantic relationship.

Literally call each other partner and family. Raised a egg son for a while (rip Bobby) Jaiden helped set him up with Cellbit! (They’re married now)

#propaganda #qparrotduo propaganda #this is how i decided to do it #mod cycad

[fakeshibe]

the internet is so overtly hostile to kids and young people. commercialisation and profit margins killed off the places younger kids were safe and welcome to be in, creeps and those seeking to goad people towards extremism took over those spaces designated for teens.

There is no safe place. Every time i see a 14 year old on twitter, I see them being told to get off the platform. It’s not safe, it’s not for you. And that’s entirely correct, twitter is not a safe place for a 14 year old, but where is? Tumblr? not really. Club penguin? it’s dead. Community forums? not really a thing anymore. Discord? not without that teen being very aware of their safety and how to look after themselves, at which point they may as well have stuck to twitter.

Like it or not, it’s the job of every single one of us to make a space that is safe for teens. Doesn’t mean you have to be kid friendly, just means you need to take reasonable precautions that your not-kid-friendly content stays in your space, that they can’t accidentally come across it. Content warnings, censoring/spoilering posts, possibly avoiding the main tags for a thing if that topic is child friendly and your art is not. stuff like that. Like if young people are likely to search for stuff like lego, maybe don’t put your nsfw bionicle ship art into the general lego tag, stuff like that.

It’s your job to keep an eye out for your fellow humans. If you see a young person they you know displaying signs that they’re possibly being harassed/groomed/generally made uncomfortable/not doing well, make sure they have a safe person to speak to. You don’t have to be that safe person, you just need to make sure there’s someone who can listen to them.

If you see a kid doing something they really shouldn’t be, it’s on you to explain why they shouldn’t be doing that. Don’t berate them, don’t attack them for it. Explain, help them to understand why that’s concerning to you. We all know internet safety classes in schools are pretty rubbish, usually super outdated. I did a child safety course like two years ago that still included tips on building a safe myspace page. School isn’t going to teach kids about the immediate issues on todays internet, it’s on the community around them to guide them and look out for them.

Also playground humour is fine, just be aware when you’re joining in to not take it too far or make it weird. And bear in mind that even just by virtue of being a couple of years older than whatever young person you’re talking to, there’s a power imbalance in that conversation. Don’t encourage playground humour to the point of making it an entirely inappropriate topic. Your the one guiding this conversation, steer it in the right direction.

And if you see someone being weird towards any minor, wether you know them or not, call that shit out. Let it be known that someone is keeping an eye out, let that kid know that they’re welcome and they’re looked out for. Let that creep know that people see them, and people are very, very aware of what they’re doing. Make them feel unwelcome, run them out of your spaces, spread awareness of risky people. Keep your spaces safe.

This is all especially as important as IRL spaces become more hostile to potentially vulnerable young people. Queer teens especially are going to be looking for community and safety online more and more frequently. Make sure that the places they find will be a respite from the real world, not just a different set of threats to navigate.

Make sure young people feel safe on the internet, and make sure that those looking to take advantage of their presence, don’t.

Why am i writing all this? I’ve seen too many posts about people’s experiences as a young person online, and i talked to my brother the other day about him and his friend’s experiences and it’s terrifying that there’s really nowhere for young people to go. Also i’ve realised that i’m not doing enough to be part of the solution. so this is part of that, im gonna be far, far more aware of the issue and doing more to try and help.

#internet safety #This post brought to you by seeing several communities on twitter oust dodgy people the last few days #no beef with bionicle fans btw i just couldn’t think of another example

[enby-iggy]

Im going to try and explain my gender to the 0 people who are paying attention to this blog, because I deserve to ramble a little bit I think

For context I'm afab. I've pretty much always known I wasn't a man, which is a big part of why it took me so long to question my gender at all. I specifically remember seeing the term transmasc online when I was first discovering queer terms and being like "hmm I wonder if that could be me" and then looking it up and seeing it listed as a synonym for trans man and just being like "oh ok then guess im still cis". I didn't start seriously questioning until like. April of this year I think

I don't know why it took me so long to consider the idea of being nonbinary, but it was actually a conversation with some of my trans friends that made me consider it. I remember saying something like "I may be cis but I'd trade my female body for a completely neutral one in a heartbeat" and one of my friends was like "r u sure ur cis lmao". Silly stuff. My whole thing was like, I want a body that looks like nothing, that I can make look like anything. If I want to wear mens' clothes I don't want boobs that get in the way of that. But I want to be able to wear a dress and not have like, idk body hair and a dick getting in the way of that. And I said stuff to my friends like, I don't rly want hormones but Id wear a binder to look more neutral, Id voice train and get my voice deeper, that makes sense right

My biggest hangup was on pronouns, because I was REALLY proud of being a she/her. But I decided, hey I can't knock they/them until I try it right? So I proposed a they/them test for a week, and never looked back lmao. I went through a phase of absolutely despising she/her for a month or two, but I've since made up with the pronoun set as you can see in my bio. She/her and I are good friends now we've settled our differences <3

Putting the rest under a cut for the sake of my 2 followers' TLs not being flooded because I still have much to say

My gender is very multifaceted, but in the physical realm you could call me transmasc. It took me a while to realize but I hate my boobs (or rather, took me a while to realize that disliking your boobs is not normal lmfao), to the point where I very quickly went from "eh I might get a binder for some outfits" to "I NEED to get top surgery". I'm also not a fan of my hips and ass, never have been but I don't think there's much I can do about that one. I also have solid evidence for vocal dysphoria, in that I can remember a specific time as a kid where I learned that your voice sounds deeper to you than it does to other people because of the way you hear it through your skull. This disappointed me GREATLY because I always prided myself on the idea that I had a boyish voice. I do think I'd like to train my voice lower, if possible. Lastly for physical dysphoria I've always had a thing about my height, but I mostly learned to ignore it since boys LOVE to make fun of girls (and other boys I suppose) for their height. I learned to shut it out and make fun of myself as well as a coping mechanism, because it really did and always has bugged me. But what can I do, I've 5 foot even at 19 years old and it doesn't seem to be changing any time soon.

As for my internal experience of gender...I think this low-quality ms paint chart will explain it best.

Basically my gender exists on two simultaneous sliding scales--one of them a distinctly gendered outside-of-binary gender that I'm choosing to call neutrois, because it's an existing term that works for what I'm talking about. The other gender is a female-aligned gender that is distinct from cisgender femininity but is still feminine in nature, which I am choosing to call femme because I hate the words woman and girl and female in relation to my own gender. I can experience both of these scales at maximum intensity--bigendered as both neutrois and femme at the same time--or minimum intensity--essentially agendered, no distinct experience of gender either way--OR I can be some strange combination of these, such as minimum femme and maximum neutrois or half neutrois and full femme, etc. I've found that the strength of ANY gender fluctuates over longer periods of time, in that I tend to feel low amounts of gender for a period of about two weeks, followed by higher feelings of gender for about two weeks, during which the relation of femme to neutrois fluctuates on a daily basis.

As for labels, the best way I can think to describe this is bigenderflux, and also demigirl (or demifemme, as I prefer to call it). But for obvious reasons I usually just call myself nonbinary. I also like terms like librafemme, describing the property of being both agender and feminine, and juxera, describing the property of being feminine aligned in a way that is different from the way cis women are feminine. But it's...hard to label.

The funny thing about this is that it doesn't really line up with my gender expression much at all. There are days that I'm feeling fully agender or fully neutrois, and am strangely in the mood to wear a dress. Or days that I'm feeling mostly femme and want to present like a boy. So realistically my gender doesn't really have any bearing on anything at all. But I like charting it, because a few months ago if I'd woken up feeling feminine I would have spiraled into a panic about how I must be faking being trans. But this allows me to understand myself and predict how I'll feel so I know that when I feel a certain way, that's normal and part of who I am.

I feel like I had more to say in this post but I guess this is purely a gender summary. Now you know I guess

#iggy's gender #queer #pride #lgbtq #trans #transgender #transmasc #enby #nonbinary #agender #neutrois #femme #gender #demigirl #bigender #genderflux #juxera #that's all the tags i can think to add #if anyone sees this post hi hello #yeah.

[aemiron-main]

realization about eddie’s death

ok so remember when the duffers/st team said that eddie’s death would have major implications/effects for s5?  this might be a stretch but i think those implications could actually tie into a.) gay mike reveal and b.) mike getting vecna’d in some way (not necessarily in the typical way but yknow).  i’ve talked abt this in other posts, which i cant find rn so im gonna explain it again, but mike’s feelings for eddie are also paralled to his feelings for will via the soundtrack and the video store movie poster choices.

  long story short: in s3 and s4, the video store posters each represent a character. Mike’s poster is “coca cola kid,” but WILL’S is “teen wolf,” and the character parallels will in many ways, especially in the way that being a werewolf is DIRECTLY paralleled to being gay in the movie, like the main character literally ‘comes out’ as a werewolf and his friend is like ‘are you gonna tell me you’re a fag?’ and the main character is like ‘no im a werewolf actually.’ so, how does this tie to eddie? teen wolf. teenage werewolf. ‘i was a teenage werewolf’ by the cramps is one of the songs that plays during eddie’s cafeteria scene. but the other song that plays is ‘fever,’ also by the cramps. imo, ‘fever’ is about mike’s crush towards eddie, esp considering the lyrics about love and kissing that play during scenes with mike and eddie specifically, demonstrating that attraction, but then ‘teenage werewolf’ links that attraction to Will, too, and how mike feels the same way about Will that he does about Eddie- caveat, Mike is not ‘in love’ with eddie, but IS with Will, but ‘feels the same way,’ simply in terms of being attracted to both of them/thinking gay thoughts LMAO. plus, there’s also a MOVIE called ‘i was a teenage werewolf,’ just like the song, and just like how teen wolf is a movie. 

and so, i think that the feelings of attraction are shared but also therefore that the feeling of GUILT about both will and eddie is also going to be shared. not just guilt for being interested in will/eddie/guilt for being gay. i don’t think that’s enough for mike to come out/be targeted by vecna and possibly OUTED, something i also talked about in this post in terms of why mike likely wont admit his sexuality and may end up being outed and how that ties into a mike fake death. 

anway, it’s not just guilt over mike’s feeling for will and eddie or his guilt for being gay because imo that’s not quite enough for vecna to end him:  it’s guilt over eddie and will’s disappearances and deaths too.  think about it. two people that mike had gay feelings for. both having died/disappeared due to the upside down. troy’s comments about ‘fairyland’ and tying the deaths of people like will and eddie to queerness. mike, who has enough evidence from lonnie and the bullying to suspect that WILL was gay, and in mikes mind maybe could’ve been targeted for that gayness outside of mike’s feelings for him- but mike doesn’t have much reason to suspect that EDDIE was gay/queer. So, in mike’s mind, if being targeted/killed by the UD is associated with queerness, then where does the queerness come in? oh right. from mike’s crush on him. it’s mike’s fault, in mike’s mind.  Mike, finding out about Eddie’s death in s5, trying to talk with Dustin and Lucas about it, and Dustin’s guilt because he was THERE, trying to save Eddie, and Dustin and Lucas not understanding why Mike seems to feel so guilty, and Mike can’t say it, can’t explain his guilt, so it just festers inside of him just like it did for Max and Fred. 

Vecna’s victims all seem to have some sort of guilt, but the way that vecna approaches people like Fred and Max, who have guilt related to somebody’s death is actually different from the way that he approaches people like Chrissy, who don’t have that guilt related to somebody’s death (and we don’t see his interactions with Patrick, but we do see that Patrick’s guilt/suicidality is tied to disappointing his family and his father’s abuse towards him, rather than towards having been responsible for anyone’s death)  When it comes to Chrissy, he talks about just bringing her suffering to an end. He says “don’t cry, Chrissy. It’s time for your suffering to end.”  When it comes to Max and Fred, though?  To Fred, Vecna just says “I want you to join me.”  To Max, Vecna says “Time for you to join me.” 

People who have guilt about somebody’s death get ‘asked’ to join Henry, but he’s not really asking, he’s TELLING, he’s saying that he wants fred to join him, that it’s TIME for max to join him. And I think that Mike is going to be one of those people, and that Henry is going to ask mike to ‘join him,’ and how that ties into something else I talked abt in this post about how I think that we’re going to get a scene where mike ‘chooses’ to die, so that his suicidality is narratively tied up without having to show him making a typical non supernatural active suicide attempt, and so that Mike gets to fulfill his hero complex. It seems like a choice for Mike, like he’s getting ASKED to join henry, but it’s not really a choice at all, it’s the illusion of choice. Which ties into something I’ve also talked about in regards to mike being suicidal but also pushed towards that suicidality by the actions and attitudes of his family + by the homophobic rhetoric he’s internalized + by the bullying. It’s like how he makes the CHOICE to step off of the cliff in s1, but he’s verbally pushed towards making that choice by the bullies, it’s like the bullies irl who bully queer people to the point of suicide instead of actively murdering them.  We also see a LOT of the red-blue light imagery around mike specifically during the hellfire game: the same red-blue light imagery that we see in eddie’s trailer, and specifically behind eddie, actually, the night that chrissy dies. But why am I bringing this up if i’m saying that Mike is going to get attacked in a different way than Chrissy was/that chrissy’s isnt tied to somebody’s death and Mike’s is? Because it’s an EDDIE death flag, not a chrissy one. Chrissy was already screwed by the time we see those red and blue lights in the trailer, and we see them RIGHT behind Eddie’s head specifically. And so, Mike having that same pattern of lights behind HIS head during the hellfire game? Not only is it a mike death flag tied to Vecna, but it’s a mike death flag tied to EDDIE, the same death flag as eddie, which doesnt mean that he’ll die in the same WAY as eddie, but instead, that Mike’s death will be tied to eddie’s somehow, which fits in with what i’ve said about mike’s guilt about eddie’s death and the links to other deaths + mike’s queerness/feelings for both eddie and will.  It’s also interesting to me that Barb got killed by Henry, but Nancy did not. In terms of queerness, Barb was the one with a crush on Nancy, and it got her killed/targeted by Henry. Mike had a crush on eddie/is in love with Will, and so it may very well result in the same thing, in terms of Henry attacking Mike. 

and again, like i talked about in this post, mike is linked to will’s disappearance via his queerness in terms of being the ‘other queer’ that troy talks about and how the other queer is also henry, yes, but its also mike, and how the ‘flying around in fairyland with all the other fairies’ scene serves to demonstrate that the reason that mike is tied to will’s disappearance via the ‘other queer’ comment and how the bullies start targeting mike right after they talk about the ‘other queer’ and how the scene finally focuses on mike after that to, isnt because mike is the other who kidnapped will, but rather, because he’s also queer. the ‘other fairies’ comment serves to expand the idea of ‘other queer’ beyond Henry, and into people like Barb, too, with the ‘other fairies,’ comment, which means that Mike can be included in ‘other queer/other fairies’ and paralelled to that without ONLY being paralleled to henry bc again the point isnt ‘mike kidnapped will/is like henry,’ the point is ‘mike is also queer.’ As well, with that inital parallel between mike and henry both being the “other queer,” it narratively ties mike to a sense of responsibility/guilt for will’s disappearance, esp since it was mike’s house that Will left, even though it wasn’t his fault. So, Mike’s queerness is tied to will’s disappearance already via Troy’s dialogue choices and the choices of focusing on Mike in those scenes every single time that ‘other queer’ or ‘other fairies’ is brought up. like it doesn’t even focus on mike’s reaction when troy says that will is dead during the first homophobic bullying scene (the one where mike gets pushed), but it DOES focus on mike IMMEDIATELY after queerness is brought into the conversation. again i go into this in way more depth in that linked post.  So my point is: there’s already an existing narrative link between mike’s queerness and will’s disappearance and a sense of guilt. And I think that the same is going to apply to Eddie after Mike finds out about Eddie’s death. And like I talked about in one of the posts I linked, Mike imo is more likely to be outed than to come out on his own terms I think, esp in regards to the themes of his character and his queerness and what his character represents in those regards. So, Vecna attacking Mike based not just on his feelings for Will, but instead his queerness as a whole + a mike fake death? It addresses Mike’s suicidality, it addresses Mike’s sexuality outside of Will, which ties into gay mike and the milkvan breakup and into Byler getting together, but does it in a way where Byler getting together isn’t JUST tethered to the revelation of Mike’s sexuality and instead gets to stand on its own and be about Mike and Will’s love as individuals instead of just ‘oh yeah mike is gay and hes getting with will because will now knows mike’s gay despite the unresolved interpersonal tension between them regardless of sexuality’.  Like again- Mike being queer IS paralleled to the cause of Will’s death/disappearance during those death scenes in S1. The ties are there, not just to Will’s queerness playing a role in his vanishing, but MIKE’S too, with him being featured as soon as the ‘other queer’  is mentioned, or the ‘other fairies,’ are mentioned, and how using both ‘other queer’ and ‘other fairies’ means that mike isn’t SOLELY paralled to henry/his queerness isn’t SOLELY tied to will’s vanishing, but it is tied to it in ADDITION to being tied to the ‘other fairies’ and positioning Mike alongside the victims (like barb and will) instead of just positioning him alongside henry (the other queer comment and the framing of mike immediately after that’s said and how it ties him to henry/ties mike’s queerness to will’s disappearance). 

(obviously mikes feelings for will are way way deeper than his ones for eddie and he just had a crush on eddie but still.) Anyway! Much to think about. 

#stranger things #st analysis #mike's mental health #gay mike wheeler #byler analysis #mike gets vecna'd #max mayfield ref #eddie munson ref #fred benson ref #chrissy cunningham ref #mike's crush on eddie #st i was a teenage werewolf by the cramps #st fever by the cramps #st soudtrack #st music #troy ref #barb holland ref #Patrick McKinney ref #st bullies

[eclipse15]

EXTREME TW: INTERSEX AND TRANS BASED VIOLENCE (RAPE, MURDER), GRAPHIC

THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT TMA/TME OR TRANSANDROPHOBIA DISCOURSE

I see lots of people discussing gender and sex based violence to queer people who have said they never experienced said sex or gender based violence, but that they knew of other people who have. Knew of, not knew personally. They often use it to argue either “transandrophobia is real” or “only transmisogyny is real”. Im not gonna give my stance in this post, that’s not the point. This is a very hard post as I am still struggling to absorb what happened as something that actually took place and something that happened to me. Please be patient if this doesn’t have enough details. As somebody who has been a victim of this violence, this is my experience.

Number one, my gender and sex: I’m afab, I’m not female. I’m intersex. My gender as a whole is multigender, so I am not TME or TMA. I also don’t pass as a man, or even as androgyne, at all. The only people that recognize my pronouns are those I’m friends with, and even then they don’t understand I’m multigender. I do not have male privilege

Number two, attempted murder: I’ve had an attempt on my life during a rape. He found out I didn’t have the body he wanted to violate, found out I was “one of those tranny kids” (he either didn’t know what intersex was or thought I had some surgery to look more masculine) and attempted to suffocate me. I was saved but never brought justice because the person who saved me was selling my body to other adults for money. I was scolded and told not to “do it again.”, as if I did anything at all. It’s very hard talking about this all because I’ve never told anyone, but I feel the need to get it off my chest and speak out. I’m the only part that remembers this (DID).

Number three: I have also been raped just because I “needed to be a woman”. When I was a little over 1 years old one of my first memories was having a large dildo inserted into me to expand my vagina. According to them, I needed to act more feminine and “training to accept a male” would help. I’m not gonna share too much of what happened because I’m still having trouble accepting this happened. I’m bringing it up because it was purely because of my sex and gender. It’s transgender and intersex based violence.

I hate myself because of what happened to me. I still think I deserved it then, and that I still deserve it now because it wasn’t successful. I feel so ashamed and can’t tell anyone. I’m only telling you all because I’m not a person on here, I’m a blog that sometimes spouts out words that seem like a person.

Please stop assuming somebody is safe from gender or sex based violence. Please stop assuming somebody has never been sexually assaulted or mistreated in any way. Please stop assuming somebody has never had an attempt on their life because of their gender and/or sex. Please stop using us as pawns in your community in fighting.

#any support is welcomed #intersex #intersex trans #intersex transneutral #intersex transmasc #intersex transfem #trans #transgender #transphobia #intersexism #gender based violence #queer based violence

[pinkandpurple360]

(wtf where are moms who kill* husbands why there are litterally so many characters who have dead moms...)

My friends don't give me enough reply on my HB rants so now you're my friend for hour lol

Btw i wanted to rant about it more lmao sorry. forgive me mother for not sending you ask about Striker™.

Actually this is a terrible writing right here. Honestly im not so much into shaming authors for writings things i don't like (like i don't like seeing bad writers getting bullied. No matter popular of not. I hate seeing shaming and harassment even for someone such popular as viv, since for me rethoric overlaps very much with how female, kids, and queer writers get treated.)

but this trope is so overpopular i just need to rant to someone.

I only liked it in ducktales 2017 because she is apparently alive and very akward mother, but interesting character still. :D

I also like. Hate it. Like... If you need mother-related-drama, why just get them killed off-screen and never write (and design) them at all, and show them, what they actually meant, like they're non-existen hallucinations in a dream.

If you just need to throw out mother from family, THERE ARE TONS of funnier/angstier/happy for her ways to do it. Like. Idk she can just divorce man and get happier life/family, with someone else. It would be more painful for character that their lovely, kind, supportive mom is alive, but is unreachable, and maybe even choosed not to be near kid (for any reason. Probably dad was at fault not letting her get her child back or whatever you want to write). She can become brutal assasin and gangster :D Or anything, really. Maybe she have a criminal job and it's better to left kid behind, or is a political activist who don't want their kid be threatened by violent tyrants. Heck maybe she is even IN family but pretends to be aunt or anything else. Maybe she just reverse-dad-runned-to-get-milk-uno-card and ran first :'D we like. Have all kinds of mothers.

BUT. i also don't see why you need to kill specifically mother and left her as unwritten character to fan's imagination and writing. Idk why not unalive father and give us conflicting gangster couple of lesbians for Moxxie parents.

If it's a queer show, why not have queer parents? Why go with nuclear monogamous family? Esp in hell where all queers "go to" lol. What about poly family. Just sinner orphans, who died due to illness, while their parents still alive? Idk what about single parents. What if cool aunt™ was soo cool kid decided to live with them for sharing their interests and just rejected parents lol. Artificial Birth can exist too in hell i think, since "playing in god" with science is also a sin. Also if it's a hell, why not write some species just intersex or nonhuman? They can have any other stupid form of reproduction (and even magical and horrorish, surreal, relating to sin maybe. Imagine people in gluttony have to vomit kid formed from overeating idk.), or family system model, that doesn't involve two parents as the most important in kid's life. Like lions. Idk. They can just form communities and then all care about kids, and dont treat them as "theirs", or have special professionals to care, like ants do.

characters relationships with moms can be not even a bit less interesting with mothers than with fathers (i kinda have all my characters have very messy and interesting relationships with them, and i left fathers completely unwritten lol like viv treats moms) and seeing mothers overpowering husbands or them being non-mattering in characters life at all (like, that the kid doesn't even mourn or sad about it, and care more about other people.) is funnier.

OKAY SO the fuck. Like EVEN SECONDARY characters apparently have their moms dead?? (yes agent one im looking at you).

I just noticed how it plain weird when i noticed it more. Like... We had moxxie, blitz, fizz (who is a complete orphan as i rember), barbie, and agent one in anonymous "momless" club. Add if i missed someone. Wtf? Andddd we didn't even saw their faces, we Didn't even saw them speaking... Idk, even if you want to give moxx dead mom, why not let her live, and then boom. And then moxxie gets so mad, and audience get so mad and cancels viv again.

It's just so... Damn unsatisfying. And then we have stella who is just depicted as pure evil. Dammit.

Also, im mad at choice to make agent one's mom dead for literally only very cliche joke. (i hope she will get back on earth to see him, but as demon. that'll be interesting since he works as demon-hunter lol)

why at all blitz should make MOM joke? It would be more unexpected in show that always throws mysoginystic slurs swears and jokes if it. Was about NOT females. Idk what about dog. Or father. Maybe even grandpa lmao. EVEN BARBER (or how men who do haircuts for other men called i dont rember) WOULD BE HILARIOUS OPTION. Imagine him going "MY BARBER IS DEAD!!" i would die from laugh.

Maybe even some religious symbol. There are SO many possible relatives and important things for character, but ppl always go with boring mom-jokes and boring mom-is-dead-counter-joke. Would be funny too if blitz saw him having some demon husbando/waifu pin somewhere and then going "lmao i sitted on a face of your fictional crush sorry" and THEN agent would have a whole cry about it.

I swear i don't like how viv treats female characters in her shows... And jokes with them. She just constantly throws very boring, mysoginystic, and generic swears at them without any punchline, instead of showing something interesting or funny about them. :( if i wanted to see slut-shaming i would just go straight to reddit. Idk if you want to show how your character insults sex-positive female char, why not make it idk more personal or unrelated? We, like, saw it thousands times. And lived with it even... Would be more fresh to see how characters are like "ok i cannot say a bad thing about woman doing what she wants." and they insult them for other reasons and hobbies. Tho it's so hard to not depict succubus/sexual character not only as 1-dimensional person who have other interests, isn't it... Idk... Sorry for rant lmao my brain fog is shit sorry if it's barely coherent and ty for reading it to end lmao

There’s some kind of inane Madonna whore complex in this show, the writers have the most backwards outdated misogynistic beliefs I’ve seen in years. For cryin out loud Viv thinks the biggest problem in society right now is that women are too mean to men.

Yeah what’s with Stolas insisting that they keep the monogamous heterosexual marriage going?? It’s so obvious that he was the one fighting against the idea of a divorce. Not Stella. She wanted out. He refused because he wanted Octavia to have a “normal” life. Even though he himself has traumatised her countless times. Then he cheats and decides he wants out. He decides when it’s time. What a control freak. Women become enraged when they don’t have control of their own lives, when men control their lives. And that’s exactly what we see with Stella.

It’s stupid that Crimson drowned “his wife” who doesn’t even have a fucking name but the random shark bodyguard does because that’s a perfect yaoi ship opportunity. None of the men are heterosexual and yknow what? That’s actually really stupid and not good representation at all. It’s just an AU where everyone is bisexual or gay. But nobody is lesbian.

All the moms are dead or just mean. Fucking lame.

#helluva boss critical #misogyny

[ifihadmypickofwishes]

Book Review: The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester by Maya MacGregor

This book was a mixed bag.

Plot Synopsis from Publisher: "In this queer contemporary YA mystery, a nonbinary autistic teen realizes they must not only solve a 30-year-old mystery but also face the demons lurking in their past in order to live a satisfying life."

This review contains spoilers.

The Good

The author is autistic and non-binary, like the main character. OwnVoices is always nice to see.

The main character's dad, Junius, is a beautiful portrayal of Black fatherhood. One of the best fictional parents of an autistic child I've ever seen. He communicates with Sam their way, is always patient and kind, and is determined to get them what they need to feel safe. No Autism Parents™ here.

Sam was adopted at age 7 after bouncing between foster homes and group homes, and the time it takes them to fully adjust to their new life is realistic.

The portrayal of stimming, including self-injurious stimming, is very accurate.

Sam finds friends who like them for them, instead of having to change themself completely to make friends. Good change of pace from a lot of advice for autistic teens.

Autistic shutdown is correctly identified as a type of catatonia, which as far as I know is the first time that's ever happened in a fiction book.

Sam has very obviously learned a lot of social rules the hard way, like many of us do. There are direct references to learning social rules like what to do at a funeral, what specific facial expressions mean, what appropriate student-teacher conversations are, etc.

Sam does the autism/alexithymic thing where you relate to a story very deeply and have to back up and unpack why. That was very relatable.

The Bad

Sam is supposed to have a pretty morbid special interest in kids who died before 19. The portrayal of this was not realistic. Sam has no trouble hiding their interest when they think other people might feel upset by it. There's no mention of the pressure cooker feeling so many of us get when we want so badly to talk about a SpIn and can't. There's no mention of how having a special interest like that is deeply lonely; not only are people afraid of the subject itself, they're usually afraid of you, too. No one they reveal this interest to is at all perturbed.

There's a bizarre hang-up with Reactive Attachment Disorder, of all things. Sam was misdiagnosed with RAD as a very young child, which is a perfectly reasonable diagnosis to make when you have a severely traumatized, socially withdrawn foster child. The text treats this as some kind of cockamamie diagnosis they were only given instead of autism because they're AFAB.

The author seems to think mental illness means "for no reason," and this is reflected in the way characters speak about RAD. At one point Junius says to Sam, "I met you at that group home, and they told me you had reactive attachment disorder. I saw the hungry way you looked around and the frustration I knew all too well, like you were shouting and everyone pretended they couldn't hear you. I figured... maybe you had a reason not to get attached to people." Having a reason not to get attached to people is literally a key piece of RAD. It's a traumagenic disorder. None of what he says contradicts a RAD diagnosis at all, but Sam and Junius both act like it does.

The portrayal of Montana is about two decades out of date and seems to confuse it with Canada in some spots. There's regular mention of having lived in Airdrie, which is in Alberta, in the same sentence as Missoula, Montana. The main character says there was only one out gay kid in their entire high school in Missoula, in ~2021. Missoula has 73,000 people and a pride parade every year. There is no way there would be one out gay kid, in a public high school, in a town that large at this point in time. There were about a dozen out LGBT+ kids in my high school in my much smaller, less progressive town circa 2013. I mention this because it's important to recognize the ways homophobia, transphobia, and ableism have shifted over the years. Pretending there's no change at all does everyone a disservice.

Verdict: I've read much worse, but I also wouldn't reach for this as an example of spectacular autism representation.

#actuallyautistic #actually autistic #autism #autistic characters #book review #bookblr

[proteovaldez]

Im gonna talk Jason, Reyna and Octavian. Reminder I haven’t read these books in like five or more years. Are these headcannons? Let’s call it that.

Wolf boy Jason should be talked about more. Also I like Octavian as a character cause he’s a little freak. And Reyna is my personal Ace/Aro representation. My sister and I have made little phrases to help others understand how we’ve characterized them. Octavian is “Dog eat Dog.” Reyna is “Dog and Dog.” Jason is “Doggie Dog.”

Now to explain how I think pre Hera/Juno Camp Jupiter was like. So in my mind time works differently at the wolf house. Reasoning, no way a two year old in just a year is Roman ready. So Jason spends a lot of time there. He’s a baby, so obviously he picks up on the wolf stuff and as a result he’s more animalistic. The only explanation why he was able to succeed at being a soldier at age three for fifteen years is because he is not the usual soldier. He’s a wolf first and a Roman soldier second. No matter how much training you have, it’s kind of hard to beat someone who is not afraid to bite and theoretically tear out your throat. I like to think he had longish hair. I mean I fully believe he refused shoes and his cohorts would brush his hair or give him head scratches. He has definitely bit an adult.

Now Reyna is just trying to do her job. I mean you’re telling me that Jason wouldn’t immediately investigate the new girl. He does and she’s cool. When did she get the metal dogs? Doesn’t matter she’s clearly good with dogs. Also both of them are great fighters and intelligent. I’m confident they bonded even before he became praetor. I fully believe they are in love. I mean like queer platonic love. Like the most they’ve done is holding pinkies when slightly stressed or doing each other’s hair. She cringes when he tried to hug her once. So when they both are praetors it’s her just silently begging for him to wear shoes at meetings.

Now Octavian, our favorite little freak of a teen. Octavian is a legacy, I’m assuming his parents live in New Rome. I like your think Jason went to a school and had classes with Octavian. Octavian has always been weird. Also he can read. I don’t remember if legacies are also dyslexic, but you’re telling me Octavian wouldn’t know how to read with no struggle. He would and he’d lord it over everyone. I just know he’s always been a little ambitious and power hungry. I mean what child with prophetic tendencies wouldn’t crave power? He definitely notices Jason is powerful and useful. He knows it’s better to be on the possible feral child’s side. Also he’s incredibly patriotic like most Roman’s are historically at least. He knows Jason is good for Rome and I bet he’s one of the many who thought Jason fumbled choosing the fifth cohort. Like he’s known of Jason forever and knows that Jason is all for the Roman cause he’s a child soldier. He can rely on Jason to be on the side of Rome. Now Reyna he definitely was wary until he actually met her. He’s a smart kid, so obviously he likes Reyna. He respects her greatly until she becomes Praetor. After that he has two separate Reyna’s in his mind. There’s smart, intelligent Reyna, and then there’s Praetor Reyna. The second one is an implied sneer. Cause I bet she’s had to alter her original ideas and plans to appeal to the council. Octavian has heard Reyna’s original plans and thinks they’re genius, but Praetor Reyna is a sellout.

The three of them are literally the most recognized campers at Camp Jupiter. It’s kind of hard to not at least respect your coworkers when they’re useful and technically are working towards the same goal. Like Reyna wasn’t there long so she probably was just pleased she had people to talk to. Maybe not friends exactly but acquaintances. And Jason likes people. Then Octavian likes useful people. Also they’re teenagers. I just know the three of them hung out and have stupid jokes, but only do so in private as they’re kind of serious people.

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