#What's up with nonbinary characters and being sorta connected to death

[luminosityspecter]

He might be non-binary but He's too busy being evil to really think about it

(redraw from this month's @fairytail-redraw :3c I FINALLY DID IT)

[writingwithcolor]

Afro-Latine Jewish woman maintaining cultural connection in an isekai comic

Anonymous asked:

Hello! Mixed Latin American nonbinary Jew here. I'm working on a, relatively light-hearted, isekai-style fantasy comic concept of an afro-latine Jewish lady who gets sent through a portal to a colorful scifi/fantasy land, inhabitated by various imaginary creatures sorta like in Alice in Wonderland. She gains magic powers and goes on adventures, working as a scientist researching the land's magical energy. (some of the local creatures she befriends are entirely original species, and some are inspired by my local folklore, but otherwise I try to avoid culturally coding the creatures since they're mostly nonhuman looking). The story isn't supposed to touch any heavy topics like antisemitism or racism, but I've read about the cultural problems in ""normie protagonist finds a new home in a funky fantasy world"" stories, f.ex. how Harry Potter's narrative basically implies that Muggleborns have to abandon their original cultures in order to successfully integrate into the very prejudiced but ""cooler"" Wizarding World. My original goal was to break the mold that escapism fantasy usually revolves around white protagonists adventuring in heavily Western-inspired fantasy worlds, and poc-coded characters are usually nonhuman creatures or racial stereotypes. However the protagonist girl in my story comes from a loving, latine-jewish human family, and while she regularly visits them on Earth instead of just staying in the fantasy land 24/7, I'm afraid that making her story be about being happy adventuring in a separate imaginary land filled with nonhuman characters might turn into an ""abandon your family and culture"" narrative. Are there any ways how I could avoid this? Maybe making the fantasy land's worldbuilding and designs more Latin American or Jewish inspired and thus resonate more with her cultural background, or making it clear that the land is not ""perfect"" and she still loves her family?

One of the first things that stands out to me is that you haven’t set her up to need to abandon her culture in order to make a life in another place. She has the ability to go home and visit her family, but I also don’t see any reason why, if she lives primarily in the fantasy land, she couldn’t be portrayed as practicing Judaism actively in her new home. It’s true that Judaism isn’t solely defined by religious/cultural practices, but it’s also true that religious/cultural practices are one of the most recognizable and most uniting elements of Jewish identity.

I think it might help in this case to think about Jewish practices in terms of communal versus personal: that is, what are practices she would need to seek out a Jewish community for, and what are practices she can do independently?

Does she control when she is able to visit her family? If so, visiting for Jewish holidays so that she can be at a family meal or holiday services seems like a way to highlight that she is just as connected to her family as someone who moved to a different city might be. If she experiences/has experienced the death of a family member or partner, going home to be with a Jewish community for shiva or to say kaddish on a yahrzeit is another touch (for readers who may be unfamiliar, Jewish mourning practices are intensely communal and are intentional about bringing the mourner into an active support system and slowly reintroducing them to the world, and as such a mourner is likely to spend this time somewhere where they can access and be supported by a Jewish community).

As far as practices she can engage with on her own in the fantasy setting, it would be nice to see her observing Shabbat, either in a traditional way by refraining from adventuring and instead engaging in hospitality and prayer between dusk Friday and sundown Saturday, or in a less-halakhic way if she comes from a Reform or comparatively-assimilated background, by marking Friday sunset with candles, blessings, and a good meal, even if she is intending to continue her research through the next day. She would hardly be the first Jewish person to live in a place without an established Jewish community, and a festive meal can be shared just as happily with non-Jewish friends if they’re griffons and fauns as if they’re Christians and Muslims.

Here’s one idea that I think would be hugely meaningful as a way of establishing both that she intends to make her home long-term in Fantasy World and that she intends to carry Jewish traditions with her into her new life: hang a mezuzah.

Think about it: a mezuzah is the visual marker of a Jewish home, as much to the resident as to a guest. When she is home from her adventures, in her garden cottage or enchanted tower or wherever she returns to between adventures to record and categorize her research, simply showing a mezuzah in the background instantly makes the point both that she is intending to stay, and that this is a Jewish space. If as time goes on she adds other Judaica items to her space, it can add to the sense that her Jewishness is present and alive in this world, simply because she is present and alive in it.

If she doesn’t have a settled space or if you’re not planning on setting any scenes there, having Jewish visual markers on and around her can help, too. For low-hanging fruit, maybe she has a silver Jewish Star or chai necklace that catches the light now and then, but since you’re going for a light, fun vibe, maybe she’s packing her adventuring supplies in a bright-blue vinyl backpack emblazoned with “Temple Shaarei Tzedek Junior Youth Retreat 1998” (am I old? I’m pretty sure there are adults reading this who were in Junior Youth groups in 2003, but I’m willing to bet retreat swag hasn’t changed that much).

I do like the idea of including Latin American and Jewish elements in the worldbuilding, especially as an intentional way to combat the cultural dominance of Western European folklore over fantasy writing, but because your character is from and has access to our world, you have the beautiful opportunity to carry real-world markers of Jewishness with her as well.

-Meir

I adore Meir’s answer, but then, I’m the kind of person to whom “enchanted tower with a mezuzah” as an aesthetic is so near and dear to my heart that I wrote a whole fantasy series about it. Couple of random suggestions: one thing I really enjoy is exposing my gentile friends to Jewish food—I love watching the absolute shock of delirium hit someone’s face the first time they taste my charoseth. Imagine this little bowl of chopped apples and walnuts, looking vaguely dirty because they’re soaked in cinnamon-infused wine, so it’s basically dingy beige slop….so that first bite of sensuous, deep sweetness is a huge surprise. Pick your favorite equivalent and imagine the first time a centaur or a winged princess or whatever other fantasy character tries it at your MC’s behest! (Feeding brisket to dragons would make a great name for…something…)

I don’t think you’re likely to do this anyway but since these are public answers: “fantasy world fun, Jewish upbringing a chore” is a narrative I would not feel at home in or care to read. But that’s a rather predictable remark from me anyway ;)

And of course I support the “the secondary fantasy world is actually Jewish” solution too, having one of my own.

–Shira

[symphony-tv]

dunno if im too late but 1 and 3 for the OC ask game?

thank you for the ask!!! i’m assuming this is about the pride ones, correct me if i’m wrong lol

1. “What’s your OC’s gender identity? What’s their relationship to their gender?”

for my not-cis OCs:

lucy is a trans girl, ciel is a trans guy, i have an unnamed OC who’s a demi-boy, there’s a few loose concepts of others floating around in my brain but none have any concrete details yet (this OCverse is pretty early in production)

3. “How did your OC discover themself? Did something cause them to question, or did they always know?”

(assuming this one is for sexualities too) this is gonna be kinda long so im putting it under a cut 😭 warning for discussions of death, since they’re ghosts (nobody’s death was related to their identity tho)

even in the early days of the OCverse i envisioned lucy as a trans girl, although her coming out story has been changed a bit since then! so for those who don’t know, all of these characters are ghosts living in the afterlife, which sounds kinda dark at first but i promise it’s not 😭 (not to get sidetracked but the setting kinda came to be due to my own fear of death and what happens after you die, it’s sorta my exploration of it to see it in less of a fearful and scary way as it’s typically shown in the west) and to actually answer the question now, she was definitely suspecting before she passed away. canadas pretty progressive so she felt okay exploring it a bit, but coming out is still a very scary step. she eventually thought about it like that one twitter post that was something like “i’m probably nonbinary but i’ve got a job so i can’t worry about that rn” (except replace nonbinary with trans). flash forward to her death - hit by reckless driver - and once she saw herself as a ghost, that’s when she was kinda pushed to embrace her identity. it was smooth sailing from there, the main cast is very trans-positive! her identity is also why i chose a butterfly motif for her design, the themes there are pretty self-explanatory i think. hopefully this all made sense lol

as for her being aroace, she had never really thought about romance or sex, and kinda just assumed that was the status quo for everyone. she eventually discovered that part of herself after finding out the definition of it at a pride parade.

ciel’s coming out as trans is a lot shorter; it’s a long story but basically he was “born” in the afterlife vs. going there after death. unlike ghosts, whose appearance has a direct connection to the person (like, if your thing was that you were really into cars, you’d have a car motif in your design), he would be closer to just an average person, minus the wings and halo from being an angel (that’s also a long story). so because of that, upon creation he was like “hmm i don’t think this is the right form for me”. from there he kinda just started covering up his chest and got a haircut, people are chill about it. discovering his sexuality was easy, he just thought about it, going “guys are hot”, and that was that lmao

those are the OCs with thought-out coming out stories; everyone else kinda just settled into their identities naturally (subject to change since again this OCverse is still being fleshed out)

[sorakingdomhearts]

I just finished watching all of the Kingdom Hearts game cutscenes in 16 days! Under the cut, my super-long analysis post.

This was such a bad idea and also the best I’ve ever had. I can no longer tell the events of separate games apart, other than the stuff I added to this post’s draft while watching, but it’s given me so much to do in the quaran-times.

I would say my favorite games at this point are KH3, BBS, and 358/2 Days. I actually played through KH3 to like 90 something percent so I’m most attached to it, but storywise Aqua, Ventus, Roxas, and Axel/Lea have the best plots. If I had to pick a top favorite, other than Sora(because. Well. Sora’s my chosen middle name for a reason) I would say it’s Axel/Lea, and Aqua is the world’s closest second.

My favorite Disney worlds are probably Traverse Town for the music, Nightmare Before Christmas for the costumes(both the wintery ones and the spooky ones), Disney Town for the character appearances and aesthetic/colors, and BH6 for the plot/dialogue. Honorable mention to Hunchback of Notre Dame for being the only one I hadn’t heard about before starting this journey AND being a friend’s current hyperfixation so I got to share hyperfix joy with them for a bit.

I think Aqua has the best voice in the series. Especially with BBS 0.2/KH2.8 there’s quite a few scenes where the only dialogue is her talking to herself and she’s got such an emotional, pretty voice to pair with her heartbreaking journey home.

Axel/Lea’s relationship with his name is the same as a trans person with their deadname and I love that for him. For example, in the end of Dream Drop Distance, he gets frustrated with Riku not knowing it’s changed to Lea again but gives up on correcting him because the rest of what’s going on is more important. I’ve definitely done that with people deadnaming me.

On the other side of that coin, in ReMIND Demyx struggles to remember it’s Ienzo, not Zexion, but he corrects himself over and over. He doesn’t seem to want to deadname Ienzo, he just hasn’t gotten used to it yet. I think that more than anything else is what proved to me personally that Demyx really was trying to do something good.

Also, with Axel/Lea, can he not make bad jokes IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS OWN DEATH? Hello?! I said this on Twitter but hey, buddy, I love you dearly but now isn’t the time.

Xion’s name is pronounced she-on, not zee-on like I thought when I read it. Idk why I thought it was that way when I read it printed but it’s not.

Donald is always cute, all the time, and he’s cutest when he and Sora are squabbling like little kids. I love him. Or maybe that’s the Ducktales fan bias creeping in...

Speaking of HEY, WAS ANYONE GONNA TELL ME HDL AND SCROOGE ARE IN MORE THAN JUST THE KH TRILOGY?!?! What a pleasant surprise to see Scrooge in BBS and to visit Disney Town.

Nobodies make the wobble sound of laminated paper being shaken. I keep thinking about that for no reason.

Does anyone else think Riku saying he can “smell the darkness” on people in ReCOM is weird? Am I just really late to the party, or are we just going to ignore that? Yeah? Okay.

Aqua’s end of Birth by Sleep has some of the sweetest, most poetic dialogue in the series imo. When Aqua and Mickey are talking about Ven, and Sora and Riku talking about hurt within the heart? Yeah. I’ll cry.

Also, another sad scene: Isa and Lea as kids when Lea explains his whole “get it memorized” thing is so he can be remembered and live on, if need be. I cried real tears at that one.

Conversely, some of my favorite sweet scenes are: in the beginning of BBS when Aqua tells Ven and Terra they’d “make the weirdest brothers,” Sora meeting Santa in KH2(I think?) which reminds you hey, these are children, the scene right after they find out Goofy’s not dead and Donald flips out, Lea summoning his Keyblade for the first time(powermove,) and of course the series of reunions in KH3. There’s at least a solid scene or two in each game that really warms my cold sad heart.

Speaking of the KH3 reunions, the best one I think was Xion, Roxas, and Lea’s. At least with Aqua/Terra/Ven they started out with hope, and Aqua and Ven at least had the ability to hold onto that hope to get them through. The ex-Nobody crowd really didn’t have anything. Just the promise that they’d meet again, and maybe not even in this life. I will cry.

Some of the voice casting is surprisingly great. Like, Nala’s voiced by Vanessa Marshall, who did Gamora in the GOTG tv series. Love her. And Hynden Walch who does Starfire is the Alice voice at one point which was such a pleasant surprise.

Also hey, Zachary Levi went so fucking HARD on his voice work. Even Rapunzel has some lines that fall a little flat compared to the tone of the original, like the KH version of the “first time outdoors” sequence. But Flynn Rider has this consistent energy to him that I really love.

In ReCoded I really liked the second-person Mickey narration. Idk why. It just made me super happy.

Hercules is a movie that frequently becomes a level in these games and like every time they continue that trend of Phil’s “I got two words for you” joke like guys, wasn’t the thing in the original that it translated to two words in Greek? Not that he couldn’t count? Anyway that’s the best reoccurring joke. I hate it and love it in equal measure.

One of the frequent things in KH that I love is there’s this sense of ridiculousness to it. Like, it’s a lovely story with excellent worldbuilding and character designs, with a brilliantly complex plot, but like. You get into scenarios like the end of ReMIND, and Sora’s time-travelled to save his dying and sorta already dead friend(Kairi). He’s cradling his other dying friend in his arms and talking about how he found his way to them by tracing the connections between their hearts. Beautiful, poetic, showstopping, right? Except it’s Mickey motherfucking Mouse. You can’t find this anywhere else.

Speaking of ReMIND, the part where Sora connects all the keyhole things? It looks like a starry sky full of constellations? Yeah. Holy fucking SHIT is that pretty. I literally had to pause it twice to absorb the visuals in that scene.

To end off, here’s some of my pride headcanons: Terra and Xion are trans, Ventus and Riku are nonbinary, Saïx/Isa is agender, and Sora is genderfluid. Axel/Lea is pan, Kairi, Riku, and Sora are poly, and Aqua is bi. ((I definitely have more of these but these ones I think are most important.))

[transastronautistic]

I'm not sure if you picked your name or not, but do you have any advice for choosing one? I've been having trouble with picking one

ooooh yeah anon, i picked the name Avery for myself :D besides saying things like “don’t worry if it takes you several times to get your name right, don’t worry about what others think if you change a few times” and “try some names out online / with folks you can trust and see what sounds right” and “it’s okay if a name doesn’t feel quite right immediately; it can take a little while to get used to even if it’s the name you want,” the only advice i have for you is Nerdy Advice:

to pick my name, i looked through a site with a list of gender neutral names and i started out with a list of like 12 i thought i might like. i looked up the meanings of each of those names, got rid of like half of them because the meanings weren’t ones i felt fit me even a little bit. then i thought about things like

“will people spell this wrong constantly?” that was a thing that happened endlessly with my legal name and i was tired of it haha

“does it go well with my full name?” that’s not a huge deal really; most things “go well” with any middle and last name combo and it’s just a matter of getting used to it, but i did wanna make sure i didn’t end up with awkward initials 

“does it Sounds Pretty?” i’m a big Sound person when it comes to poetry -- one of my fave poets is Aflred Tennyson and he’s the king of getting things to sound nice, doesn’t even matter what the poem is about he knows how to pick words that sound like the thing he’s discussing -- if he’s writing about a river it’ll sound like a river, ya know? so anyway yeah name Sound was even more important than name meaning to me

“does it connect to someone / something i care about?” i’m super sentimental, so picking a name that made me feel connected to one of my passions interested me. this last point is what my name choice came down to in the end:

i was between Avery, Adrian, and one other name that i’m totally blanking on right now? i went with Avery because it’s linked to the name Alfred! Avery comes from the Old French way of saying the English name Alfred; both names mean something like “elf counsel” or “elf power.” aaaaand as i mentioned a second ago, Alfred Tennyson is one of my favorite poets!!

i did a whole project on Tennyson in college, he’s one of the poets i had a special interest in for a while, and gosh personality-wise he is my fave poet. allow me a quick tangential info-dump:

he was super timid -- so much so that in Cambridge he was gonna read a thing about ghosts at the Cool Kids Club he was in but read it so quietly no one could hear him

also once he became a Famous Poet he was taking a walk on his Fancy Lordy lands and he saw in the distance what he thought was a crowd of adoring fans approaching to get his autograph and he ran away because Eek Socializing and it turned out it was just a flock of sheep he just had bad eyesite lmaooooo

he was In Love with one of the other students in his Cool Kids Club named Arthur Henry Hallam who was the Coolest of the Cool Kids, all their classmates were like “yeah Hallam is the man. he’s gonna be the most famous dude of all of us”

and Arthur and Alfred were so cute together they like. went on a top secret agent mission yes, an actual real-life spy mission together that i sorta forget the details of because what are politics but i remember it involved crossing some mountains and messages in invisible ink; these dweebs thought they were james bond or those Totally Spies gals or something

but then Arthur died super suddenly at like 22 (okay i just cheated and looked it up i was gonna say 24 what are numbers but wow. 22. that’s so young this poor baby) and Alfred was so heartbroken he wrote a big ol’ collection of poems over the course of quite a few years called in memoriam about Arthur and it’s beautiful and tragic and sweet and very very gay

“BUT NO!” cries my university professor, summoned to this post by my even breathing a word of Alfred Tennyson’s Gayness (Bi-ness more likely) “they were not homosexual together they were homosocial” -- yes professor, i know i know, your favorite Academia Term no-homo-social yes of course

“no homo” tennyson wept while writing about how his grief for arthur is like the grief of a widow for her husband; “no homo” he murmured as he worried about whether Arthur would Move On Without Him in heaven since he made it to the afterlife so much sooner than Alfred; “no homo” he signed the letters to Arthur that his son -- named Hallam!!! -- would burn  after Alfred’s death so the world wouldn’t be able to read whatever totally-not-gay stuff was written in them

anyway anyway tennyson also was probably nonbinary/trans in some way, my best guess is bigender, and you can pry THAT theory from my queer dead hands, Professor Homosocial -- 1) he wrote so many poems from women’s point of view; 2) i know i once read a quote from him about how he believes poets must be both masculine and feminine in spirit in order to be good at their craft, i can never find this quote but i know. i. read. it.

um. whoops. i’m sorry anon. uh.

anyway yes, i chose Avery out of the rest of the names i looked at because of its connection to a poet i love! if there are historical figures, or mythical/religious figures, or fictional characters you really like, and you’re a big ol’ nerd like me, why not name yourself after them? you can go for subtle like i did and pick a name related to that person instead of being the exact same name, if you want.

i hope this helped, though probably it didn’t...sorry for the Alfred spam but! he’s cute!! and a good poet!!!