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What happened to you after Will arrested you for killing people? How did you not, you know, get executed?

"Executed? What do you think I am, darling? Alive?"

"No, no, the Dispatch doesn't do that sort of thing. Quite contrary to the purpose. No, I had to take some remedial training on... hm... something or other. It was... dreadfully boring, great deal of paperwork... Bless me, I can't recall. You must understand, I suffered awfully during that time. No collections at all! For months! I couldn't even summon my scythe. Bare minimum pay, too. Why, I could hardly keep the wine stocked. And they were very particular about where I went and whom I saw---I had to file requests for just about everything, and then someone had to chaperone me whenever I travelled to the mortal realm, like I was some sort of child who couldn't cross dimensions on my own! Quite impossible to go on dates, of course. And the men they sent to supervise me were all hideous---short and blond and ugly. Really, darling, the way they treated me, you'd think I'd done something wrong.

"Anyway, at some point the higher-ups were persuaded I was reformed, or else the backlog of London collections grew enough that they couldn't do without me any longer, and now my torture is ended. It wasn't even the fun kind of torture...

"Oh, now I remember what that training was! 'Ethics'."

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i know this blog is kinda dead but now ive been meaning to ask, what would grell think about the numerous trans women serial killers in modern time? would she feel a sort of connection?

[Er—thank you for the question, but what numerous trans women serial killers?

I hope you mean fictional, so I’ll answer that in a minute; but since it’s not what you said, and there are way too many people who really believe trans women are going to jump them in an alley (the UK has been awful about this recently), I’d be remiss not to address that first.

<soapbox>

If you do mean irl, then I think you’ve been misled. Crime-wise, the only thing trans women are more likely to do is be victims. The idea that there are hordes of trans women skulking around murdering people is a transphobic scaremongering myth, perpetuated by people trying to strip them of their rights and exclude them from society. It’s the exact same recycled rhetoric that's been levelled against marginalised minorities since forever. (See: black people, gay people, immigrants, etc.) When, inevitably, someone from one of those minority groups does a bad thing, they’re held up an example of the intrinsic evil nature of the whole group, while bad individuals in the majority group are seen as rare exceptions. If you feel like there have been a lot of bad trans women in the press recently, that is why.

As a general rule, if people are yelling about how a certain minority is coming for our wives and daughters, or killing people in the streets, or preying on the innocent... they are usually trying to weaponise your protective instincts and fear of the ‘other’ to whip up a lynch mob based on outrage, bypassing the need to prove their outrage is justified. If you question them, they’ll accuse you of not caring about women and children, but they haven’t proven that anyone is even in danger. Be very, very careful what you believe before you pick up a pitchfork, or you might become the one preying on the innocent.

</soapbox>

If you mean the numerous trans women serial killers in fiction: yes, you’re right, there are a lot of those. And tbh... Grelle would definitely relate to and love them. And when they contribute to trans women being seen as an awful murderous threat, she’d love them even more. She’s a bad take.

In her... defence?

1.) She gets off on feeling powerful, and being feared definitely counts. This girl intentionally presents herself as a monster. She wants to be your worst nightmare.

2.) She leans hard into being degraded and dehumanised, which seems like a contradiction to the power thing, but it isn’t. If she wants you to hurt her, then hurting her isn’t an expression of dominance over her; it’s playing right into her hands. You can’t really hurt her at all, and she has the power again.

So yeah, murderpsychos is exactly Grelle’s idea of good trans representation. Since I keep saying edgy things like this (e.g. ‘Grelle doesn’t support women’s rights lol’), I feel like I should reiterate that what she believes is often the exact opposite of what is good for her, because she’s taught herself to love being hated and to enjoy abuse. She’d call it empowerment; it’s just as much a form of self-harm.

Basically, she’s an outlier who should not be counted. Respect trans women, even if Grelle wants you to step on her.]

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I miss you :(((

[Aww thank you!! Sorry I’ve been absent. ^^” I haven’t given up on Grelle, I’m just a bit burnt out on RPing (and this entire bloomin’ year, let’s be real) and I’m focussing on other projects. She shall return in some form, some day---at the very least some thematic cosplay shots once that’s practicable, because how could I not take advantage of London like that

In the meantime I’m still sort of around and checking things, just very quiet]

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It’s already autumn in my country so here’s a modern Grell in more casual and comfy clothes ❤️🧡💛 Don’t repost/use. Instagram. Asks/requests.

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Effeminate pansy. This is my best attempt at cyber bullying, pls rate me

“2/10. Surely you can do better, dear.”

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Can you do the last and first few on the sexuality headcanon post?

[I would be delighted to, thank you! 

{ Meme }; Accepting 

1. what do you label your muse as, and how do they label themselves? is there a difference, and if so, why?

I call Grelle a trans woman. If she knew of that term and understood it, she’d use it as well, but alas, she’s got a lot to learn and even more to unlearn before she reaches that point.

Normally, she just refers to herself as a woman, without modifiers. If you press her on that, she’ll eventually say something like [BAD TAKE ALERT] she’s a man who’s happiest pretending to be a woman. If you really trigger her, she’s likely refer to herself with outdated homophobic slurs, because she has the Victorian idea that [BAD TAKE ALERT] she feels female because she’s so gay.

2. has your muse’s understanding of their own identity changed after realising they aren’t cishet, and do you see it developing further in the future?

3. when did your muse first realise they’re attracted to the gender(s) that they are?

Answering these together because that makes most sense to me.

Her attraction to men is, of course, straight, but since she was raised as a boy it’s the deviation from the expected that she had to ‘realise,’ and she was made aware of it long before she started figuring out her gender. I say ‘made aware’ because other people noticed it before she did. Grelle is severely lacking in self-awareness as is, and her human self was 100x moreso. She would have been made fun of for checking out guys before she was even conscious she was doing it.

Even after that, though, she lacked the presence of mind to really ‘identify’ as anything, and if she had I doubt it would have made much difference anyway. The conundrum of being a woman attracted (mainly) to men, while expected to live as a man attracted to women, made her feel like she was accidentally living someone else’s life and didn’t have the power to change it. I’ve talked about it more in-depth elsewhere but the tl;dr of her suicide was to reclaim some agency in the only way she felt remained to her.

So the first time she consciously presented as something other than cishet was after her death, when she had a brief but intense period of living as a gay man (though she wouldn’t have used that label, because anachronism). “The Tale of Will the Shinigami” shows right when she began to realise that wasn’t quite what she wanted either—or rather that it was only part of what she wanted.

As of 1889 she’s in a weird sort of identity limbo of knowing that she’s most comfortable perceiving herself and being perceived as a woman, but she doesn’t understand the difference between sex and gender, so she doesn’t think she can actually be a woman without a womb and all that. For the same reason, it feels invalidating for her to acknowledge what her body is, even in the context of working towards changing it. Evidently at some point she heard tell of sex reassignment surgery, so that’s a start. Given that she literally has all the time in the world I think it’s inevitable that she eventually meanders her way around to medically transitioning, and I’ve written a couple things on here where she’s on hormones or at least further along in going ‘full-time,’ as they say; but tbh #1 on the RP wishlist is a slow burn of Grelle finally getting some good takes that give her the mindset she needs to transition.

21. what words do they reclaim, what are they okay with being reclaimed, and what do they do not want to used to describe them?

Her terminology is totally different from modern terminology so I’ll address it more generally.

On the whole, Grelle isn’t too bothered by words. She’s heard every slur for effeminate and/or homosexual men in the book and she’s put up with them for more than a lifetime. She’s also rather good at blocking out things she doesn’t like. So yeah, it’s not like she feels empowered by them, necessarily, but nor do they have much power over her. She doesn’t use them herself unless she’s having a self-destructive dysphoric moment, which does happen from time to time.

The weird thing about her (well, one of the many) is that being excessively validated bothers her just as much if not more than being misgendered, because she doesn’t think she’s valid, so she feels like she’s being mocked. And she’d much rather be outright opposed than mocked.

Once she’s a bit more secure in her identity and also actually knows some terms specifically intended for trans people, I think she’d feel fine about any that don’t reference her genitals. Tbh I haven’t written enough of her at that point to decide if she relaxes her overcompensatory standards of ladylikeness to use any herself.

For obvious reasons, she absolutely refuses to tolerate being called any slur associated with promiscuity or prostitution.]

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7, 19 and 20 (and hugs you tightly :3)

{ Meme }; Accepting

7. how public is your muse about their gender / sexuality / romantic attraction? 

[She’s very public about her gender. It’s largely unconscious at this point, but every other word out of her mouth is like ‘friendly reminder I’m a woman’ because she knows certain things about her appearance suggest otherwise. It’s kind of a self-comfort thing as well. She validates herself because not many other people do.

Her openness about being attracted to men is the same—see Victorian theory that attraction to men is what makes your psyche female. It’s also the thing she was most conscious of hiding during her human life and it’s very therapeutic to not have to hide it anymore.

Though she is bisexual, she has more hangups about being attracted to women for the inverse reasons, so she’s not as aggressively upfront about it. Still, it’s not like she denies it when it comes up.

 19. what’s your muse’s relationship with the current state of their body? 

In a word: bad. She’s mentally present in her body as little as possible. You could argue she copes better than she used to, in that she’s more aware now of what makes her more comfortable and what sets off her dysphoria, but (a) she still has nothing like a healthy relationship with her body; and (b) she often dissociates so hard that she forgets she isn’t actually cis female and ends up accidentally triggering herself, rip.

Bonus related post

20. what are your muse’s feelings towards the culture of romance and sexuality as it pertains to their identity?

WELL. Reapers have their own weird cross-cultural, cross-generational, cross-dimensional environment, and I might differ from the fandom a bit here in that I don’t think it’s necessarily LGBT-friendly so much as it’s just… apathetic. Nobody cares about your personal life so long as you get your job done. Of course there are more resources available to educate yourself on your downtime if you have the initiative, but Grelle’s a 119-year-old boomer and dissociated and dumb and doesn’t do that, so I hc she’s still most affected by human culture, much as she denies association with it.

She was raised Georgian, and though she doesn’t remember much of her human life (or any of her life tbh) it had a lasting effect on her worldview.  And obviously the setting of Kuro is Victorian. Grelle’s insecure in her identity as a woman so in one sense she tries to conform to every possible standard of womanhood she’s presented with. She talks about wanting to be a good lil traditional submissive housewife [insert “Kill in Heaven” here], buuut she’s also a bloody psychopath with some very Gothic fantasies [insert “Shinkou” here]. Medieval courtly love made a comeback in popular literature (Scott, Tennyson, etc.) and so she dabbles in playing the role of the noble lady-love as well. This may be another reason why she struggles with her attraction to women: she doesn’t have an archetypal feminine part to play, and since she doesn’t actually care about other people, playing roles is the only way she can have relationships.

Nowadays Victorians get painted as the Ultimate Prudes, and tbf there was certainly a good deal of prudery, but I think it’s more like… with English culture generally, and with 1800s people generally, and most of all with English 1800s people, they don’t necessarily care what you do so much as what you talk about publicly. The focus is always on keeping up appearances. And Grelle gets a kick out of playing with that. She makes a great deal of very thinly veiled innuendoes, but if you call her out for being sexual, she’s like “Me? A good Victorian woman? Talk about the naughty? I would never :3c”

I’m reeling off topic again so to sum up, her attitude towards Victorian womanhood and sexuality is kinda simultaneously conformity and parody? And I couldn’t tell you which is ‘real’ and which is an ‘act’ because Grelle is an act, really.]

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[You know the drill, I started writing a reply to an ask meme and got off topic so I’m making a separate post lol

As I’ve said before, Grelle doesn’t identify as trans, or bisexual for that matter. She doesn’t even know the words. The hot term in the 1800s was ‘Uranian,’ which started as the idea that amab people attracted to men have a ‘feminine psyche’ and constitute a sort of third sex. If, hypothetically, Grelle had a moment when she was calm and self-reflective and undissociated, that’s probably how she’d define herself. She doesn’t feel like a third sex, she feels like a woman; but she doesn’t have the knowledge or vocabulary or the braincells tbh to describe it any better.]

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sexuality & gender diversity headcanons.   here’s one for the lgbtq+ muses: put a number in my ask, and i’ll tell you about my muse’s gender or orientational identity and their relationship with it. tw: topics of homophobia, transphobia, dysphoria and discussion of internalised oppresive attitudes in some of the questions. if you want to help your followers to pick out questions a bit, tag this post with your muse’s label(s) as you reblog!

what do you label your muse as, and how do they label themselves? is there a difference, and if so, why?

has your muse’s understanding of their own identity changed after realising they aren’t cishet, and do you see it developing further in the future?

when did your muse first realise they’re attracted to the gender(s) that they are?

when did your muse first realise they’re not attracted to the gender(s) that they aren’t?

when did your muse first become aware that they’re not cis?

when did your muse first become aware that their gender identity isn’t within the binary?

how public is your muse about their gender / sexuality / romantic attraction?

is your muse out as lgbtq+? how specifically and in what situations, if that varies.

how much does your muse’s gender identity and presentation differ from one another? is this a source of issues, or does the relationship between the two feel natural?

how does your muse feel about not being cis or straight? are they content with it, proud, ashamed? would the situation be the same if the culture or surrounding support systems were different?

have there been other meaningful people of the same or similar identities in your muse’s life that they’ve looked for support or understanding from? how did that go, and was the impact positive or negative in the end?

what are your muse’s feelings towards stereotypes relating to their identity? do they affect their self-image, or how they perceive others?

was your muse ever in denial about the matter? do you have any examples of specific instances where it was particularly obvious?

has your muse had feelings or experiences that seem to / do conflict with their identity? are these general knowledge? does it alter how others see them, or how they see themselves?

if the thing that originally caused them to realise / start the chain reaction to realising they weren’t cishet had not happened, how much longer would it had take to end up here?

do they consider to ‘always have been’, or do they see the phases in their life before coming out as ‘back when i was [cis/straight/allo]’?

how are their feelings towards pride and related phenomenons?

how does their family feel about the matter? friends? coworkers?—and does their thoughts matter to your muse?

what’s your muse’s relationship with the current state of their body?

what are your muse’s feelings towards the culture of romance and sexuality as it pertains to their identity?

what words do they reclaim, what are they okay with being reclaimed, and what do they do not want to used to describe them?

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What’s better than your wife or your husband making a cake for you? Your wife AND your husband making a cake for you 😚 A very very very happy birthday to my darling friend @grelleswife! You are one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met and I’m so glad to have met you and the rest of our awesome Kuro family! Here’s to many years of being dorky and soft together 🥰 💖 Made with Autodesk SKetchbook on iPad 6, finished with Paint Tool Sai and Genius Easypen I405X. This is gift art so don’t repost or edit if you’re not the person I made it for, please respect this. Instagram. Asks/requests.

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the.eldritch.kitty on Instagram

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“She is dead, the dead are mysteries.”

— Louise Glück, from The Complete Poems;1962-2012; “Persephone, The Wanderer,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

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grell won my female character poll on patreon. thanks for everyone who voted. :3 [8/1000] ♡ twitter | commish | ko-fi | patreon | store | Leave caption, don’t reupload w/o asking ♡ 

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chillin’