#anyways. being trans is nuts

[fruitmouse]

looking at pics of me with long hair is sooooo strange now

[boo-cool-robot]

Sorry to make another Gojo mpreg post but while I do believe that he would absolutely abort an unplanned pregnancy, I also think that he wouldn't get pregnant because he would've gotten Shoko to give him a hysterectomy at age 17 immediately after he mastered Limitless. Like he's aware his clan wants him to make babies. He becomes both physically and politically unkillable? HYSTO IMMEDIATELY

[a-little-bit-oddish]

so i'm joining the stem cell registry and donating blood regularly now, because i like, should. and it's been a good process and they're very nice. but as i was signing up for things, it had the box for sex at birth. Which is kind of an insane question. not "what hormones does your body primarily run on". but just... sex at birth. something that is not relevant for blood donation, and also extremely misleading??

they check your red blood cell count when you show up. if I told them my sex at birth was female they'd be fucking horrified by my count. testosterone does shit to the blood! It is so much more relevant to know that my body runs on testosterone! i keep seeing medical fields doing this.

i think that they assume it's nicer, somehow. they don't just ask sex anymore, they just go haha please tell us what you were called as a baby :) we're doctors so we need to know, it's important :)

except it's not. at all. it is more ethical for me to lie to the blood donation centre so that they don't see my blood and flag it, when it is perfectly good blood for people with more testosterone.

i have to go to a throat doctor next month. they specifically asked for my sex at birth. there was not an option to tell them what they should actually expect from my voice and body. when it asked me to list medications, it physically wouldn't allow me to list testosterone, and it flagged it.

it's nuts, because all these places have actually been really welcoming and cool about me being trans, but the actual system is horrific, it's just forcing me to out myself by having to reach out after to correct it. because answering honestly is medical misinformation.

anyway you can just fucking lie i guess

[hazshit-hotel-hater]

Moxxie Redesign! (2/4)

You didn’t think I forgot about this did you? ‘,:/

I wanted to base Moxxie off of what his name actually implies, having nerve and determination. Ive almost entirely changed his personality in certain ways. He is still an assassin but he takes his job very seriously and struggles with his inner morals because of this. Being berated by Blitz often leads to him pushing aside his concerns with his job and causing internal conflict instead that he typically only ever talks to these issues about Millie. She is trying to get him to consider therapy but he doesn’t want to lose his “sparkle” (he gives in eventually and goes and it goes fine, this would be around season 2 but definitely after episode 6)

Moxxie also doubles as a medic for any potential injuries at I.M.P (this happens often). Moxxie was also born in greed so he has the more aquatic qualities of a greed imp such as the little headlamp, frills, and gills. And for any fish nerds, yes I know only female angler fish have headlamps, thats the point. Viv has literally no main trans characters so I guess I have to do everything myself. Plus I’m tired of the super straight shit that happened a few years back, Millie isn’t any less straight for dating a trans man. I think Moxxie certainly struggles with his masculinity and also takes his job so seriously as a way to prove to himself that he’s meeting some sort of “masculinity criteria” however he’s fully aware of how silly the mindset is (hes working on it). I think som trans imps may definitely paint their horns like Moxxie, but with certain days I really doubt he gives much of a shit considering it probably gets chipped a lot anyway.

Moxxie still hates his upbringing and the greed ring leaves a sour taste in his mouth, however he prefers to use his knowledge and features from greed in his work. For example, preforming minor surgery under his headlight, it’s goofy as hell and I think any show benefits from some extent of stupid silliness like that. It’s also good for distractions!

Moxxie isn’t always super serious like in this art either, he’s still a bit stupid but still respects himself. Tough nut to crack because of his past but is very kind underneath somewhere.

Heres some notes I went off while working!

- glasses (REQUIRED. Give him those stupid little circle spectacles)

- Get rid of the stupid suit

- Maybe some interesting horn stuff?

- Make him look a bit more like his voice, not sure how to describe this

- Write a boyloser properly

- Probably doubles as a medic? I think he’d be interested in medicine with all that errrm akshully energy he has

- Make him actually look like an adult (I tried)

- More of a fishy tail

- Born in wrath but both parents are greed imps so he has those features + moved back when he was like 6 idk

- Or idk maybe imps change the longer theyre in a certain ring? Could be fun

I have a lot more I could talk about with this guy but I’ll save it for some other posts :3

[harmless-variety-of-garden-snake]

Tommy's introduced as a bigot in season 2 and often shown taking initiative in starting the bullying of Hen and Chim vs. waiting for Gerrard to do something and just not standing up for them. There's even a scene in "Chimney Begins" where no one else is even in the room to overhear and Tommy still chooses to be nasty to Chimney instead of a bare minimum of civil. Even after the "resolution" of the episode and his 'apology' (not for racism, but for making Chim prove himself at work), he's still shown to have spent years not learning his lesson, becuase he goes back to the same behaviors with Hen and Chimnney even mentions that "the Asian guy" still isn't invited out by the team for drinks or BBQ.

Then when it's "addressed" in season 7, we see remarkably little growth from Tommy, where he's blaming "the environment" and Gerrard for his choices and actions as a grown man. And in season 8, we get a healthy dose of misogyny in ageism with how he speaks of Abby, while casually acknowledging he also screwed up her life.

It's not just that he was afraid to stand up against bigotry in the face of an evil boss. He could've taken Eli's route, and just be silent. But no, Tommy is someone who chose to actively participate in workplace bigotry and bullying, and then almost 20 years removed, shrugs it off as everyone else's fault.

let’s not forget his very recent comments about Abby that were reeking of misogyny. Talking about her dating some “himbo” younger than her (as if he wasn’t actively doing the same thing) and admitting he was lying the whole relationship (not just about his sexuality).

Word for word that man said, “Heard she went a little nuts after that” as if her entire world wasn’t flipped upside down with her engagement ending and having to take care of her sick mother. The only tiny bit of understanding he showed was him saying she deserved better, which duh. 

One time when I was five I put a bead in my nose and it went all the way up to the bridge and I had to push down on it from the top until I could get it out because I was scared it would go to my brain and kill me.

That has nothing to do with any of what you said, but I just thought I'd put that out there because you're doing some dumb shit and I wanted you to know we've all done dumb shit. This is a safe space.

Anyway, I don't think you've ever been a closeted queer person who's said and done some at times questionable or outright fucked up things to keep yourself safe from scrutiny.* I grew up seeing people like me getting murdered and heard people explain why it would've been avoidable if they hadn't been so obvious or if they'd just chosen to be normal. I also grew up with a lot of bullies who were only bullying me because it put them in the protected group. It kept them from having people look at whether or not they were actually a good target for bullying. I'm actually friends with a couple of those people now. Not close, but we're cordial and we'll talk when we bump into each other at the store. That has more to do with us being in our thirties and living our own lives. There's a couple who had no excuse whatsoever other than being actual homophobes, I don't talk to them.

I dated in high school, I was engaged but I was 18 so I don't know how much that counts, but then I came out when I was in my early twenties. I knew I wasn't actually interested the entire time I was with those people, either. At first I just thought the relationship wasn't right for me, then I started to realize what was actually going on. I still dated, I still asked someone to marry me because I thought I could be happy with them. I did love and care about them, just not the way you should if you're going to marry them. I also didn't tell anyone I was non-binary until two months ago, even though I figured it out about fifteen years ago. A trans person hiding their identity to protect themselves from danger or rejection is nothing new, but it's kind of a shitty feeling to know you've been lying to every ex you've ever had about something like that. I don't like that feeling, and it's going to take a while for me to shake that. I don't know that I ever will.

So all of that is to say that a character like Tommy is actually kind of important to those of us who also weren't perfect at being queer, especially those of us who grew up during a specific time. I was actually pleasantly surprised that a basic network show would have someone like that, but times they are a-changing. So onto your last point:

Abby Clark is played by a now 57 year old Connie Britton (drop the skincare routine, girl), Lou Ferrigno Jr is 40, and Oliver Stark is 33. When you're an actual grown person, a seven or eight year age difference is kind of nothing. One of you might be a little more ready for things like kids or marriage, but that's not a guarantee. But hearing that your ex started dating a 26 year old when she's about 50, whether or not he knows that she actually pulled Buck's info in a very questionable way (I love that no one going after Tommy ever seems to care about the massive ethical breach from Abby), is kind of...wild. And he presumably heard about this from a mutual friend of some kind, who likely gave him this information colored by their own perception of the situation. This is where critical thinking skills become important. Based on context clues, I can safely guess that Tommy asked someone how Abby was doing or ran into someone who knows her, too, and they said "Hey, did you hear about Abby's new guy?" Otherwise he would've said "I saw that she was dating...." or "She told me she was dating..." So this could've been secondhand bitchiness, it could've been that her behavior was being framed as extremely not okay by someone they knew. We'll never know, the show doesn't have the strongest writing all the time. I'm not touching the thing about her mother, because a very close family member of mine has Alzheimer's, a good friend just lost a parent to it, and I do not want to examine the behavior of a person who's dealing with that or that of the people in their lives.

Could he have said "But I get it, she would've been going through a lot because of her mom and then our breakup"? Yeah. Would it have been nice if they wrote any scenes between Tommy, Hen, and Chimney that bridged the gap between when they weren't close and when they actually celebrated him and his accomplishments when he left the 118 to show why he would be someone Chimney would call on in two major emergencies? Yeah. I think I would've liked to see them talk things out onscreen and to show any apologies. Mostly because it would keep people from dropping an essay in my ask box when I feel like my sinuses and temples are filled with hot needles. I don't actually need to see it other than liking the three of them together, because I figured that they would've shown some hesitation before Chimney would reach out to him or he would've pulled Buck aside to warn him to be careful with Tommy. Or Hen and Karen wouldn't have been so thrilled when they realized what had gone down before Buck and Tommy came into the hospital room. There's a lot of stuff they don't show on this show, but they'd at least make a point to do or not do certain things if a character hated or disliked a character.

*I believe a certain dispatcher even did a whole big speech about this on the very show you apparently watch. I didn't like the Glee part, because I don't like Glee after season one. But the rest of it was good.

[beatrixst0nehill]

"Here we go, last day living as a 'girl'! Hope no one's too bummed, I guess I couldn't keep having fun as a sorority girl with huge cow tits forever. I can't believe my university is really doing this, I swear it's one big kink to these people to see trans girls detrans. Soooo, basically I was just going about my life, hooking up with boys, having fun partying at college and this morning one of my friends is like, 'Hey, Josie, did you know Prop 843 passed?' I lied and said I had no idea what that was. She giggled and groped one of my tits, smiling as she said that my college was about to force me to detrans.

I was like, 'WTF you can't be serious!' She kept groping my breasts, rubbing up against me, making me sooooo hard! She said my breasts were going to get chopped off immediately. I was stunned. I asked her if that was true and she was SO giddy! She miiiiight have rode my cock as she held out a video on her phone explaining Prop 843. Basically, at the discretion of all Kentucky universities, all trans students could be enlisted into a statewide detrans study. If we're between 19 and 25. And I'm 19, almost 20. By discretion, they were supposed to enlist uncertain and questioning trans people, instead they're only targeting the most passing trans people, almost exclusively those of us who never went through the wrong puberty and started blockers in junior high.

I was just getting used to really enjoying getting to be a girl, but I've already spent most of my life living as a girl, so I'll probably wind up as some femboy crossdresser anyway..... Which my friend reminded me I already was as she rode my cock. Guess I better embrace being a dumb boy. This sucks so bad though! I can't believe this bill actually passed! I miiiiight have voted for a few of the people saying they wanted to create it. But just as like a weird kink, like of course these people weren't going to actually win the election and pass this bill! But it made me hard af. Picturing it happening....... I nutted so many times fantasizing about it. I never thought it'd really happen! I was blushing so much as my friend rode my poor swollen cock, giggling and moaning all of her inner transphobic thoughts as she showed me the video, telling me she could always tell I was a boy even before we showered together, that it was so obvious I wasn't a girl. And of course her words only made me even harder and cum right into her pussy...... Um, hopefully all this estrogen that ballooned my boobs to this side made my cum too weak to impregnate anybody...... Ughhhh, guess it's time I get ready to embrace being a boy! Wish me luck!"

"Holyyyy fuck, guys! I am so happy I got detransed! Life is incredible now! I mean, don't get me wrong, getting fucked constantly by horny muscular frat boys was a dream come true, but now I'm like the femboy stud of the sorority. I 'officially' just volunteer here as a 'breeding adviser', but what I really do is use my newly enlarged cock to show all these college nymphos what a man I was always meant to be! Of course I still dress fem and I have my submissive days...... But this is seriously so much better than being a tanned bimbo trans girl with a tiny five-inch cock.

It's been almost a year since my last post and yes, at first it sucked. They practically shaved my head and chopped off my boobs immediately, as well as putting me on dick growth pills, a fuckton of T to masculinize me really fast, and steroids, mandating a new workout regimen to help unfeminize my body. I still look fucking gorgeous though! But now with way stronger arms, no giant udders weighing me down, and a fourteen-inch cock to destroy unsuspecting little sluts' pussies with. Honestly, facial hair is easy enough to cover with makeup, but sometimes I rock the beard for fun. I love having a deeper voice and all the ways my bone structure changed so fast to undo the unnatural girl puberty I cruelly forced on my body.

Finally, I'm getting to become who I was meant to be! A femboy stud who fucks anyone at this sorority no matter how vulnerable and pregnant they are. For all the bitching and moaning about locker rooms and bathrooms girls drag me into their spaces constantly now to fuck their brains out before a big test or game. Thankfully my cock is pumped full of so many drugs I can go for hours and barely feel tired. It's almost embarrassing looking back at my old vids and pictures, like how could I ever walk around with giant fat tits like that? 🤮 I was such a proud little whore, no wonder I was nothing but an ass to fuck for every guy here until I detransed and got my act together! Sooooo embarrassing looking back, but we all have our cringe phases! Some are just way worse than others! Hopefully more states pass this type of bill, please please please beg your representatives to introduce similar legislation in your state! I see a lot of 'girls' on my feed who need to face reality and detrans already! ❤️"

[transfemme-shelterdog]

i'm in an almost 8 year relationship with a cis straight man. came out as a trans man last year and tried to break up with him bc i knew we just weren't going to be compatible. he begged me for a year to "get used to the idea" of dating a man. almost a year later, i share that i finally scheduled my intake appointments for testosterone. i'm literally getting my blood drawn on wednesday. he just asked me if i would consider delaying starting hrt so he can "start getting things in order" in case we don't work out.

i'm absolutely crushed. i asked him if he had a timeline he could give me because it wasn't fair for me to wait until he's ready and he couldn't give me one. the entire time, he just kept saying "i feel so guilty for asking this" but asked anyway.

i told him i'd need to think about it, but the answer is no. me delaying my transition wouldn't do anything but continue to let him live in denial and make me miserable. i'm just so fucking upset about this. i know he was taking it hard but i thought he would ultimately support me. guess not

He's had since last year to come to terms with you actually being a man and wanting to be on T. It's time for him to nut up or shut up. Either he accepts you for you being a trans man, or you toss him to the curb. Sorry to say it, but that's what has to happen in order for you to be your most authentic self.

[insert-thenewbl-here]

Now I’m gonna ramble about Clarabelle if you care…

Firstly, we love cartoony girls who get to be ugly and silly without their lack of attractiveness being a punchline, but still very much feminine. She gives such middle aged aunt energy yippee!

Being these are Mickey Mouse characters and they’re inherently interpretable and inconsistent, I’m not gonna psychoanalyse her, but I like that she’s usually a bit naughty to some degree: she was evil in 3 musketeers, she was a shit stirrer in house of mouse, she’s just kinda nuts in Wonderful world of Mickey. I just like the lovely lady with bad side :3 makes sense cus they put Bells on misbehaving cows (sad fact, cow bells are actually bad for the animal) so Clara is not wearing them by choice lol.

Also if ya missed it, I completely hc her as polyamorous considering she has 2 love interests she flips between regularly. Also maybe trans cus sometimes she wears pants and no way she can fit an udder in there… either she’s trans and Thats pre op, or she got cow top surgery and Thats post op lmao… I like both

Also theme parks Clarabelle is an absolute queen if you haven’t seen…

I wish there was more stuff done with her she has potential if they embrace her being a bit mischievous. Her and goofy are adorable, her and max COULD be adorable if they weren’t cowards. (Idc about Horas yet)

Anyway, her colour should be green, not yellow. Purple looks good too but that’s usually daisy’s colour. That yellow is ugly…

[everything-transmasculine]

i just wanna pop in and yap on a topic that i initiatially wrote as a post, but am too afraid to post

___________

(based on a post from a transrasfem blog I've seen recently talking about transandrophobia)

___________

you people do realize that it's a very fucking weird thing to say that "trans men who still associate with femininity and their afab'ness are on their way to detransition and become TERF's"?

trans men still struggle with PCOS, trans men still stuggle with bad gynecologists, trans men still are affected by abortion laws, and saying that "well maybe you shouldn't care about abortion laws/feminism/insert something afab-esque affecting you because you just unnecessarily tie yourself to femininity, you are a man now, stop trying to get into womens spaces, if you want to get privelege from both sides so bad just go kys" IS STUPID AND HARMFUL and i hope i dont have to explain why

just imagine that you have this super insane condition that can kill you, disable you, make you blind, make you develop chronic pains, make your depression worse and etc etc (pregnancy) and the only ability to prevent it anyhow(abortion) is being stripped away from women, which ALSO affects you because of your anatomy, NOT because you are a detransitioner or "are secretly on your way to become a TERF", but when you bring it up, or say that saying that "imagine if men could get pregnant" is harmful to trans men, you are getting hit with a huge metallic hammer across the face a thousand times in a row, because howdareyou speak about something that affects cis women and tie it to yourself(are you a terf? are you a detrans in hiding? etc etc), you are a man now, you shouldn't even try to say that something can harm you or else you explode your nuts and die, you should solely focus your entire life's purpose on helping trans women and never caring about yourself

the problem is that trans women (and other amabs in general) don't really have the exact same problems that are tied to their anatomy that trans men do(imagine having ovarian cancer and being denied care for months if not more because you are a trans guy and a lot of gynos are uncomfortable with you, especially if you are on T and passing)

so i only suspect for them without knowing what PCOS is, it sounds like trans men unnecessary want to still secretly be women, which is wrong

anyways im tired of talking about it im gonna go sleep

i think i know what post youre talking about, anon, and ive actually been discussing it with my partner irl. the idea that transmasculine people are just one step away from detransitioning and becoming terfs at all times is… well, its transphobic to say the very least. theres no issue in having a relationship with your asab - i mean, i know i definitely have a complicated one myself! - but thats no reason to tell transmasculine people to stop caring about issues that still affect us. the reduction and removal of transmasculine people from reproductive healthcare is an ongoing struggle, and one that really isnt talked about enough.

however, i am going to push back against your groupings of transfeminine people and other people with male sexed anatomy (sorry for the weird language there, im trying to be as neutral as possible as to not be offensive) - the internal anatomy of the male sexed body often IS neglected and turned away similarly to transmasculine people. many proctologists and urologists refuse care to transfeminine people the same way gynecological care is refused to transmasculine people. its not an us vs them, but all of us vs the oppressive systems of healthcare in place that deny the most basic rights to non-cis (and non perisex) bodies. intersex people and trans people alike are often subjected to discrimination in the healthcare field, no matter whether they are transfeminine or transmasculine. i mean, i saw it plenty times myself when i worked in healthcare - they dont care about “what kind” of transgender you are, just that you ARE transgender, and that alone is enough to warrant discrimination.

[thekeeperof-thefandoms]

TW: sensitive topics

Adam slowly becomes more tolerate and less misogynistic over time via osmosis but won't admit it and instead hides it.

Adam thinks women bitch too much about the pink tax until he's sent out to get period products for Reader and Lute, only to realise that his cost of his shopping just doubled in price from just one pack.

Adam thinks women bitch too much about not being welcomed to normally male occupied spaces until he's playing late night online and hears a woman join only to leave after five minutes because everyone kept harassing them.

Adam hounds a girl for her number, thinking that he's so smooth for getting it in the end, but then decided to lose it after watching a film with Reader and Lute where it showed a girl terrified of what would happen if she didn't give a guy her number and hears Reader and Lute, two very capable women, talk about how they've been in similar positions.

Adam has done a lot of thinking lately.

Personally, I'd like to think that Heaven, while flawed, is above some of the nonsense like the pink tax. I do still think catcalling and being harassed happens, probably mainly in result to a lot of men modeling Adam's behavior.

But once he gets with you and you start calling him on his shit, and therefore Lute gets more comfortable calling him out, and especially after the period simulator, he's more aware of certain things.

I feel like eventually he'd ask you if this is how bad it is now, what did you do when you were alive? When you had to work constantly, sometimes 2 jobs at a time, just to afford basics. That's when you tell him you didn't really have a choice but to suck it up. That you weren't allowed to get a hysterectomy, you couldn't take sick days just for a period, and that most doctors wouldn't believe you anyway.

Especially if you're a trans person this is a big foot in the door to explaining how poorly women and queer people are treated. Hit em with the fact that religious nuts use Adam and God as examples for their behavior and he's going to feel physically sick. I think he'd have to take a few days to just be by himself and really think about how he acts and how people interpret that.

From there it's a slow build up to correcting his behavior. And it's not always gonna be easy. He's going to be defensive, he'll tell you that you're overreacting and that him persistently following a girl around to ask her for her number repeatedly isn't bad, it shows he's interested. He's a nice guy.

Tell him that's what other men thought too until "insert any woman you can think of who was assualted".

Lute's more direct, she sits his ass down and has him watch as many true crime stories of women getting kidnapped, SA, tortured, and murdered as she can find. Usually she picks ones based off the names you drop. He really only has to hear 4 or 5 before it sinks in. (Tiktok reminded me of the girl who was tortured to death for 45 days and assualted with lit fireworks so, have that fresh horror in your minds).

Tell him about any personal experiences you had and how terrifying it is to be a woman or queer. Show him the responses to the man or the bear question. Let him fully realize how many people, people he knows as strong and capable, would rather face the bear because "the worst the bear can do is kill me". Or "Nobody accuses me of liking being attacked by a bear"

"No one asked me what I was wearing when the bear attacked"

"People would actually believe me if I said I was attacked by a bear."

"The bear sees me as a person."

"The bear lives in the woods, the man probably followed me."

Each answer is gonna send a new shiver down his spine.

Reforming Adam isn't an easy or fast process but it's fully possible because I don't think he's bad or a fullblown narcissist. I think he's been told his entire existence that he's a good guy, a pinnacle of creation, someone to be admired and obeyed without question.

You could argue he may be a bit controlling and narcissistic because of how he treated Lillith and requested a submissive wife with Eve. And I don't think he's ever not going to be full of himself and expect his ideal partner to be a bit more traditional in the sense that they're a housewife/domestic type. But he also likes people who go out and have fun, can get wild, and he definitely thinks it's hot if you can defend yourself even if it strokes his ego if you let him do it.

But overall, I think with enough time, patience, and exposure Adam could become a better person. Probably the type who would throw hands with himself if he could. Definitely becomes the type to start borderline hating other men.

[erintoknow]

2024 reading roundup

i managed to read over a 100 books this year, which is, personally nuts, for me as a pace, especially when i feel busier then ever. the joys and benefits of downtime at the desk job, i guess? the bulk of what i read is YA which is ostensibly for professional reasons as a ya librarian but i was still able to sneak in a few decent adult grade books at least

this is probably also the most trans fem authored fiction i've read in a single year (hooray), in large part things to having a resource like @thetransfemininereview now whereas before i just kinda out in the woods poking at rocks with a small stick, praying the library will pick things up

so like, here's a sampling of some books and a few thoughts; trans fem authored books listed first ofc ofc:

These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein

goodreads says i read this in december but i swore i picked it up over the summer - anyway, transfem protag, transfem author, sorta cyberpunk noir murder mystery deal. really enjoyed this book, especially with how it played with cyberpunk genre conceits while still feeling like it's not just importing stuff unchanged from the 80s.

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

i'm still stuck waiting for a library to get the Translation State ebook in so i thought i'd give Leckie's fantasy novel a spin; this was great. i'm uncultured swine apparently (joke) so i didn't pick up on the very end that at least half the book was a twist on Hamlet but i was on board from pretty much first page. the use of 1st and 2nd person with the narrator being a character in the story telling the events of the novel to another character in the story was great. loved the world building and finished the book hoping Leckie will come back to this concept for another go in the future

might be my top book that i read in 2024?

The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy

i really want to talk about this book, but i'm not sure what to say. i didn't realize going in that this would be YA (just because the protag is teen doesn't always equal YA and all) but, yeah, it's very YA. it feels like a gender flipped tamora pierce novel and i gather that was extremely intentional. our trans girl protag trades places with her best friend who was promised to a coven of witches and 'disguises' herself as a girl so she can do so

i liked the book and i'm looking forward to the continuation but the whole thing kind of feels like a dream on review after reading, specific details are hard to grasp onto. the narrative voice of protag feels a lot younger to me then 16, more like 12 or 11 maybe, which felt off? but didn't overly detract from the story which gets into some pretty high stakes!

the ending felt weirdly forced with the big-bad duchess just deciding not to press the advantage and go for the throne after everyone else is exhausted from fighting the big climatic battle, but sure, okay, this is a world where an entire country just collectively agreed to live by anarchist principles so clearly human cognition works differently in this setting

Magica Riot by Kara Buchanan

i read like three different magical girl books/novellas this year which feels wild. anyway, this was great cotton candy treat of a book. a solid entry in the 'everyone is nice to the trans girl for once' genre of trans fem fiction, our protagonist gets to become a magical girl, make friends, and save the day, hooray! it looks like this is going to be a series, which yes, sure, i'm sold

A Little Vice by Erin Elkin

i picked this up on a whim without really knowing what i was getting into and ended up really enjoying it. trans fem egg protagonist is stuck on the sidelines while the plot of a magical girl show plays out at her school with her best friend as one of the lead members. lotta angst and big feelings in this one. i understand this was originally a scribblehub serial? it certainly seems to follow in the scribblehub tradition of 'make as oblivious a headcase of a trans fem egg as possible' but whereas i've bounced off of that before the combination of addressing dsyphoria/angst/and sunk cost fallacy got me hooked - you know i love my sunk cost fallacy characters. also, i wanna add: the metatextual conceit with how each chapter is framed was a really cute touch and really completed the whole vibe

and a sampling of some non trans fem work i chewed through this year:

A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon, translated by Anton Hur

i picked this up after seeing it get a lot of positive press and... i don't know? maybe it's because i'm missing something about the culture context the book was written in / released into, or because magical girl stuff largely missed me as a kid (i got sucked into digimon instead of sailor moon), but this really fell flat for me. like, i wouldn't call it bad but it felt stale and kind of a surface level take? maybe i would feel better about this book if i hadn't been lead to believe going into it that it was saying something deep and profound

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White

this book fucking rocked, let's be clear - it might be my top non-trans fem authored novel of the year? our protag is a trans boy in an old appalachian mining town who's family has been in a generations long bloody and violent feud with the sheriff's family dating back to a coal miner strike. YA gets a lot of rightly deserved derision i think (i've read enough stinkers this year) but White knocks it out of the park every time and this one was no exception.

Old Wounds by Logan-Ashley Kisner

horror story where a trans boy and his ex, a trans girl while running away to california get stuck in a small town where locals sacrifice a girl every year to the local monster - so who in this scenario gets to decide who counts as a girl?

this was a really fun book, full stop, no notes. easily in my top 5? 10? for the year and not just because i share a name with the trans girl.

The Girl in Question by Tess Sharpe

the sequel i didn't know i wanted, or existed - a follow up to Sharpe's previous book, The Girl's I've Been, which was a fasted paced thriller that kept you engaged even has it jumped back and forth between past and present. The follow up here is more of the same, and while i don't think it follow recaptures the magic, it manages to take the same basic premise and both up the stakes and add a new twist on events that i still came out with a pretty good time

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew

surprise non-fiction entry - this was a really great and thoughtful little book on how we currently approach ability aids and technology and how we might do better, if you see it, i recommend picking this one up

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

what if ender's game but not by a homophobe? okay, that's a bit reductive. Some Desperate Glory follows Kyr, a child solider who grew up in a fanatical fascist cult on her painful and reality bending journey to learn empathy. Kyr never really becomes a 'good' person by the end of the story, and she's aware of that, but her journey through self deprogramming her monstrous beliefs set to a backdrop where humanity lost the war (and their homeworld) against an alien empire was way better executed then i expected going in. this book is going to be peak 'your mileage may vary' but is absolutely worth giving a shot

[plaidos]

so I will say, I started being in the Homestuck fandom around, like, 2010? 2011? and to be honest, after they started getting popular, I was really unimpressed with the transfem Roxy headcanons at the time, mostly because it was all young teens, and most of them were TMEs, and this all led to this nonsense fuckin thing where theyfabs with yaoi addictions would scream about "omgggg she programs!111! and shes a catgirl!!!111 just like TRANS GIRLS xDDD smol cinnamon roll too pure for this world" bullshit, and it really soured me on the whole deal. she got hit with some really disgusting sexualization at the time that was directly the product of TMEs screeching about what a perfect representation of trans women she was, like they could not just be fucking normal about any of it, and I grew to associate transfem Roxy headcanons with the kind of people who'd screech and cry about me getting bottom surgery and not being their perfect programmer dickgirl anymore. that said, I also didn't like the transmasc Roxy confirmation in the Epilogues because, like you said, it felt super transmisogynistic and reactionary toward that (although I didn't know it was actually confirmed a transmisogynist wrote it on purpose to aggress transfem fans, that's nuts??? This fucking comic I swear.) anyway the whole thing kinda makes me wish they just left her as-is and focused the trans lens in tighter on June and Vriska, because like. come on. their stories are way better anyway, having been planned from the beginning.

nah here’s where i’ve gotta disagree with you slightly anon — my (obvious) problems with transmasc Roxy aside, i stand by the fact that the transmasc stpry we got about Roxy in the Epilogues was legitimately compelling, and after the bitterness of a favorite reading of mine being destroyed had passed I really enjoyed the split canon reflection on Roxy’s identity & i think it has some legitimately really interesting things to say; it’s particularly a good usage of classpect in the Epilogues, and i think the stuff they do with Dirk being transphobic is genuinely worth it.

almost every single major character from Homestuck proper who returns significantly in THE/HSBC needed to have their character “wrecked” in comparison to the original; it is fundamentally what the story is about. i think the majority of fans of specific characters were disappointed with where those characters’ stories were taken specifically because they had incredibly fannish understandings of what that might look like in an epilogue, and The Homestuck Epilogues/Beyond Canon are intentionally subverting the dichotomy between the sugary-sweet fannish “candy” interpretations & the gross-n-gritty “meat” interpretations, like that’s The Whole Point.

also, correcting you: all i heard is that somebody who historically had problems with transfem headcanons spearheaded the transmasc Roxy changes. i think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that that person legitimately did that to intentionally hurt transfems, even if we can agree that it was transmisogynistically loaded & eyerolly regardless

[thekaratcake-blog]

Clearin' some shit up

Some people have decided to take my issue with misinformation as an issue with the groups that spread it, so let's clear some shit up First, the most important shit I fully and wholeheartedly support everyone in the queer community, this includes intersex people, anyone on the trans spectrum, anyone of any sexuality I'm a firm believer in "don't fight for what you think a community wants, actually ask them what they want" and "nothing about us without us" I however absolutely despise misinformation, pseudoscience or general disregard for science and I will call it out when I see it I absolutely despise things using other terms of legitimate identity or causes to try and elevate themselves to an unearned level of legitimacy, however if you're open and honest about the reailty and level of legitimacy of your label, that's fine, if you're not pretending it's something that it's not, that's fine, as long as, of course, it isn't hurting anyone If you claim something that isn't scientifically supported, that's okay, don't expect me to take it as absolutely fact, but if it's not hurting anyone, that's okay If you claim something that is actively against the scientific consensus, that is not okay, expect backlash from me If you think I'm wrong about one of my views on a scientific or at least somewhat solid basis, I'm more than happy to hear, I want to learn and understand people as best as possible, and being wrong is great as it means I've learnt and grown However obviously if your basis for me being wrong is "well I think so" or "well you can't absolutely 100% prove that this doesn't happen so" basically any sort of fallacious reasoning, I'd personally suggest you don't waste your time, but if you want to try anyway, expect me to call out flawed or fallacious reasoning If you just want to message me to insult me or say useless shit that doesn't lead anywhere or progress anything, go nuts, I will then reply to it as if you said something completely different and turn it into an interesting learning or fact moment, so that it's not entirely wasted And finally, I'm not looking for this shit, I'm not on any tags for it, infact I've blacklisted a few of them to try and see less of it, but tumblr keeps showing it to me, I am not targetting any groups, I just call out misinformation when I see it, and tumblr is just for some reason only showing it to me from those specific groups, but I've called it out for groups that I'm in as well The reality is, I'm here on tumblr for memes, and because my partner @muffinmuffinx3 is on here, and I love them and like to see and share lil memes back and forth, but if I see shit that I have something to say about, I generally do, it's just how I am, I'm autistic, I'm weird, I'm just lke that, sorry, that's just how I do things really, maybe it'll change over time and I'll start to behave differently, but if that does happen, it'll be naturally, not because someone yelled at me and told me I'm doing tumblr wrong If you have any questions about my beliefs or suggestions of something to add to this, send it to me in an ask or reblog this or reply to it or whatever you want to do really, lmk, even private message me, I don't really care how you do it just lmk

[animentality]

if blue lock fans keep cancelling you for your cucking headcanons tell them to cancel their goat kaneshiro first, i hear super ball girls is showing off his NTR kink. or tell them to read as the gods will. it was very interesting but some moments and the overall sexualization of teen girls made me go "its for the best there are no girls in bllk" LMAO

lmao and they cancel me when he's the one getting paid to do THAT in his official work.

fanfic is a completely different space.

I would not write anything so grimdark or self indulgent in any of my own published works because that's a completely different sphere.

you are allowed to go absolutely nuts for fanfic bc it's not something you sell, it's something you give yourself and the audience who looks for it. it is literally a safe space for being a freak, it's not corporate, it's not produced.

it is literally your minds playground. you can test out your strangest ideas. play with your nastiest kinks.

it's like that study where liberals tend to like bdsm and conservatives tend to like wife swapping. if you believe in feminism and equality, then the taboo thing for you to want is being degraded and dehumanized. if you believe in God is good and said that a man can only have one woman, then you yearn for other partners.

that or ebony or trans or group gangbangs, I don't know.

people are attracted to things that are taboo. things that are supposed to be repulsive to them. your mind is allowed to be flexible and play with taboo desires, as long as no one's getting hurt.

I know for a fucking fact that people roleplay teacher x student all the time even though it's morally and sometimes legally wrong.

or cop x prisoner even tho that's always illegal.

and yet, that's fine. that kind of "play" is harmless and doesn't normalize anything, right?

my fanfics are fucking tagged. they're tagged as explicit, all of the kinks are spelled out, warning you.

no one is forcing you to look at them.

the worst thing too is that Kaneshiro is a fucking misogynist who does actually encourage misogyny or at least ACTUALLY normalize it bc it's in his official stories, that are published for a wide fucking audience of teenage boys.

my "problematic fics" are literally omegaverse anyway.

I can't normalize anything towards a group of people who don't even exist as anything other than a sex fantasy shared by women and queer people.

Christ.

[angstintensifer]

Hunter Huntsman headcanons

Hunter knows more than he'd like about shoes because he always listens to Ashlynn's many facts about them.

Hunter plays Minecraft with Cerise, Cedar and Sparrow, sometimes he teams up with Cerise just to kill Sparrow on Minecraft.

Hunter lets Dexter play Tailer Quick in their dorm room and keeps it a secret because Dexter doesn't want to get teased for it, but Hunter was already used to it anyway because Ashlynn is also a fan.

Hunter always lets Dexter vent to him about anything, he's a very good listener.

Hunter is very good at keeping things to himself as he has been hiding things about himself from his parents for years.

Hunter gets fairy down on himself a lot, because he knows he will never be the son or huntsman his father wants and while he doesn't want that destiny, he feels ashamed that he can't live up to it.

Cerise is older than Hunter and he has often come to her when he needs advice or to vent.

Hunter and Cerise are fairy good friends, he always suspected Cerise was hiding something but since he hides things about himself as well he never asked her about it and respected her privacy.

Their mothers are actually friends. Hunter's mother once made a comment about Hunter and Cerise "liking" each other in front of them and they both laughed because they never saw each other that way.

Hunter's phone contains millions of pics of Fern, Ashlynn, him and Ashlynn, Pesky, sunsets and any of his favourite wooden works.

Hunter always takes a picture of a good sunset or sun rise.

He is a terrible hexter and doesn't use his phone a lot.

He wants to be good at poetry, because he thought it would impress Ashlynn, but he's not, he's awful at it. (Literally the episode Cedar wood would love to lie)

Hunter can tell something is wrong with Pesky if Pesky isn't throwing nuts at him.

Hunter once scolded Pesky coldly for accidently hitting Ashlynn with a nut.

His favourite artist is Hozier.

Ashlynn is his go to person when he messes up.

He does not like Sparrow, at all. At first it was general annoyance, then it was Sparrow teaming up with Duchess in the exposure of him and Ashlynn's relationship, and then it was back to general annoyance but their friendship has improved because Hunter doesn’t like to hold grudges.

Hunter made the tiny satchel Pesky wears, and he made one for Fern as well.

When Fern learned to walk, Hunter insisted on taking her out for her first walk around the enchanted forest, his parents trusted him because they know he would protect her.

Once he tried on a pair of heels at Ashlynn's shop to see what they felt like, he tripped and accidently damaged them, he vowed to never do it again and paid damages for them.

Ashlynn tips him for delivering shoes, he fought her on it because he only did it as an excuse to see her.

He once beat Daring in a sword fight. Daring made him promise to never tell anyone. (He lied and only told Cerise)

Apple was never close with Hunter even though they share a story but after his relationship with Ashlynn was exposed, Apple lost some respect for him for betraying their story and with that causing her friend to betray hers (no one actually talks abt this and I didn’t even think abt it until I read Gumjesters eah rewrite and Apple made one comment to Hunter during true hearts day and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since)

He is a trans man (I know this is v popular headcanon for him but I adore it and I had to include it bc I love it sm)

Despite being a rebel Hunter is still afraid of telling his parents he doesn’t want to follow his story, he knows he will let them down and he wants to put that off for as long as he can. He thinks they won’t support his decision and his romance.

Hunter and Pesky met when Hunter rescued him from a wolf by distracting the wolf with some meat. Hunter showed Pesky he wasn’t a killer and gained his trust.

He is a great horse rider and has ridden Ashlynn’s dragon (the one from dragon games)

[lesetoilesfous]

anyway here's my thoughts on veilguard.

i liked it! i really, genuinely enjoyed it. there were moments that made me cry and truly moved me. there were plot twists that really surprised and shocked me. i felt emotionally impacted by the game. i love so many of the characters - both companions and npcs. it's beautiful. it's fun to play.

is it a perfect game? of course not! a) there's no such thing b) gang, i thought we knew this?? it's a game that's been in development for a decade, more than 3/4 of the team got laid off, it's had its usp constantly switched around lord knows how many times. it was never going to be perfect! i went in with my expectations underground and came out with a game i liked much more than inquisition.

neither inquisition nor veilguard were ever going to be like origins and da2. the creative team changed massively between those games. but also, the world changed! the industry changed! the climate in which people were working changed! for goodness sake there was an entire pandemic!

we were never and are never going to get games like da2 and origins again because the world is different now and that's ok. it's good to have new things!

could there have been more conflict in veilguard? sure. could it have been more politically and socially sensitive? maybe. but you know what? i work in media and i know how incredibly fucking hard it is to get any kind of purse-holder to sign off on one explicitly trans character, let alone nine (by my last count): specifically and lovingly designed across a wide spectrum of voice and appearance to illustrate that non-binary is not 'girl-lite' or a third gender, it's just not binary.

we went from vivienne being BALD in inquisition because they couldn't be fucked to design afro hair to a game where it is literally not possible to have an all-white or an all-male team for the first 5 or so hours of the game. one of your team members is a south asian woman with a prosthetic leg and at no point is her disability fetishised or exoticised.

god knows its not perfect but gang i really don't think y'all are recognising how fucking much good stuff we got in this game. literally, please, give me the title of another AAA game that has this much explicit trans rep. that has this many major characters of colour written with care and thoughtfulness. this many companions who are people of colour and essential to the plot. do you know how hard that is???? and everyone got fired!!!! it took 10 years!!! despite everything they got all this through!!!

like. it's not surprising to me the game is gentler than earlier entries in the series. earlier entries in the series are also, often, VERY RACIST. as far as earlier entries in the series are concerned: transgender people don't exist (except Krem, of course, but he is one character in a very big game). they are so obviously trying so hard and in a landscape where i literally cannot think of any other game of this scale and budget that is trying at all, yeah, i'm giving them a pass!

the things that drove me nuts in previous DA games were the christian fascism, the genocide apologism, the white supremacy, the 'peaceful protest' crap, the copaganda. veilguard doesn't do that and it's amazing and heartbreaking to me that so few folks in the fandom seem to value that.

there's this thing that happens whenever a piece of media is actually, truly diverse where fandom attacks it much, much more savagely than media that is actually racist, sexist etc (supernatural vs steven universe, star wars vs dream daddy, etc). people translate the fact that it takes them a little longer to connect with characters they're unused to seeing in fiction into meaning that the art is 'objectively bad'. and then assholes with money use that violently negative reaction to justify continuing to make games without trans people or brown people or a majority of female characters.

"look! veilguard did that! nobody liked it!"

please. consider why you are reacting so much more harshly to a game like this than you did to a game where you literally led a catholic inquisition, planted your flag in indigenous people's land, and had the power to enact military law on anyone unlucky enough to come across your army of religious zealots, up to and including executions.

no one is perfect. fandom isn't activism. consumption of media isn't activism. you're allowed to dislike things and you're allowed to yell about it on the internet and it's my responsibility to block content i don't want to see. i get that.

but just in case anyone else is feeling the way i am: i liked veilguard. i think they tried really hard. i think a lot of the team got fucked over by asshole bosses and worse executives. i think the game obviously got cut short and rushed, which we knew before it came out. and i still think they wrestled a fun, emotionally impactful game out of that housefire, and that that's worth celebrating.