#about how it seems like being trans is getting in the way of progressing in my career

[hangingslothcentral]

It's Trans Day of Visibility!

Today I want to talk about being overlooked, which feels like an odd thing to discuss on TDOV, but there we are.

I used to talk a lot about gender things, and I don't anymore. One reason is that it's just not as present a discomfort in my life, now: I went on T and I got top surgery and these things meant that I didn't feel that grating dissimilitude between who I am and what I appeared to be to other people the way I used to.

But it's not that I don't feel it at all. It's that the way it shows up is different. A disconnect between myself as I am and how I'm addressed by the world. Sure, some people misgender me still, but it's usually relatives wilfully resisting respecting my identity. By and large, strangers assume he/him pronouns for me, even if sometimes look at me with question marks in their eyes for a moment.

I'm a writer and I write queer stories. Those stories often have trans and nonbinary people in them because they are a part of the world, and so of course they're there. I also have the privilege of being surrounded by mostly queer people, so when I'm imagining any given group of friends or colleagues I assume they're about. 70% queer people? I think my data is skewed. Oh well!

The thing is, I'm not particularly interested in writing coming out stories or stories about the process of transition, at least not explicitly. Whilst arguably both Not Quite Dead and Spirit Box Radio handle these things thematically, neither is interested in the explicit process as literally experienced. Part of that is that I think queerness, transness, LGBTQness, it's simultaneously highly individualised and extremely broadly relateable. Whilst most people don't experience an extra puberty in their twenties or thirties, that feeling of learning who you are and being brave enough to become it is something that I think most people can find something powerful to relate to in. Especially when stories lean on the consequences of that decision of radical self-acceptance, which often leads to losing people and muddling up other things in your life, and is rarely as straightforward and affirming as it might seem.

Sometimes it feels like my transness swallows up other parts of my identity. Sometimes that happens on a personal level, where I feel like I can't do things or be a certain way simply by virtue of being trans. I felt this for a long time about dressing and moving in feminine ways. I felt they were not allowed for me in the way they are allowed for cis men. But more often its others' perception of me which is most impacted by transness' distorting lens. People make assumptions about the kinds of work I make, the kinds of characters I will write, because of my transness. They overlook my queerness and my stated attractions because of it, switching the labels I might use for myself into ones they deem more appropriate on the basis of my identity. They'll assume that because I have had access to gender affirming care, I come from a background of middle class privilege and stability, and respond with surprise when I explain I grew up mostly on a council estate in a bedroom with a mould problem so bad the back of my wardrobe was physically damp to the touch.

In my private experience of my transness, it's something which is mostly about other people and the barriers between what they see and assume about me, and who I am. It's often a positive thing; for example, it's part of the reason I am able to connect with and articulate my emotions the way some of my cis peers who are men struggle to without huge amounts of hard work.

To other people, though, it seems like it can get in the way of them understanding other things about who I am, parts of me which from my perspective are far more important and far more integral for understanding and grasping my identity and experience of the world. It means there are expectations on me that don't exist for my cis peers. At it's worst, it can lead people to want to distance themselves from me, whether out of conscious or unconscious bigotry or a fear of being seen as 'too political'. I've been passed over for jobs; awards; opportunities.

Most of these discriminations are subtle. They're usually not conscious. This doesn't make them better than out-and-out, mask-off bigotry, but it can make things more difficult to deal with and express to others who are not used to experiencing these kinds of things. It can be harder to criticise the people themselves for their behaviour, too. They're not doing it on purpose and it's not their intent so the response can often be vicious, defensive, and sometimes even violent, in response to a disconnect between how they perceive their actions and what you're telling them the consequences of their behaviour can be.

It is an extraordinarily difficult thing to suspect that your work might be able to reach more people, that your career might've progressed more smoothly, that you could be in a more safe and stable position, were it not for this one, unchangeable part of who you are. I am fiercely proud of who I am, but that doesn't change that it's made my life more difficult. These kinds of prejudices stack, too. My working class accent; my Jewish heritage; all of these things swirl into a pot of reasons that other people use to overlook me and my work. This things would be massively amplified if I were not from an English-speaking country; if I had not had access to higher education; and especially if I were not white.

It is extraordinarily important for Trans Day of Visibility to exist, because we are so often overlooked to the point of invisibility. It's not just about normalising the idea for cis people; it's not just about pointing out there are trans people everywhere. Those things are hugely important too! It's also about us. It's about the impact that lack of knowledge has on us, those in the closet and out, those stealth and those public about their identities, passing or not. All of us. This impacts *all of us*.

[autistichalsin]

In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.

Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?

Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.

More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.

But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.

A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.

Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.

So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.

Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.

It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.

There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:

The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader. This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings. “[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad.’ That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”

A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.

It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.

And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.

Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.

Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.

So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.

Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.

So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.

And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.

And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.

And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.

Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.

Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).

It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.

[communistkenobi]

re: this post but also slightly off topic, this is also why the SOGIESC (sexual orientation, gender identity & expression, and sexual characteristics) framework developed in the Global South as a legal framework to deal with sexual minority rights, stands in some ways in direct opposition to the LGBTQ+ framework of the West, which asserts that rights for minority groups flow from identity/inclusion within the minority group, forcing the obvious question of how the law determines identity (this is part of how transmedicalism emerges as an answer to the question “who is really transgender?” and also likely informs community fights over who ‘really counts’ as lgbtq). the framework of SOGIESC gets around this problem by resolving it entirely, instead insisting that because everyone has a gender identity and sexual orientation, everyone has a right to their given gender identity and sexual orientation, and any obstacle to realising these rights must be challenged and dismantled. empirically this bears out as well, given that global south countries, especially in Latin America, have some of the most progressive legislation on trans rights worldwide, with Argentina being the first country in the world to allow for legal gender transition without requiring medical documentation or proof of medical transition. We can see how different theories of state and legal power between LGBTQ+ vs SOGIESC emerge: a series of legal concessions granted to a narrowly-defined minority by a hegemonic, cis-heterosexual majority (LGBTQ+), versus the universal vision of sexual minorities whose rights are the rights of all people (SOGIESC).

and like obviously this is not a solution without problems (the +ESC was only added ten years after the original conception of SOGI, for example, an obvious oversight that was corrected - we may never escape the acronym wars), and as a framework that is fundamentally legal in both scope and design there is the obvious question of how law fits into a truly just socialist society (a historical and ongoing debate within various socialist states that I know much less about; I’m also thinking about the ‘mission drift’ and mangling that ‘intersectionality’ has dealt with over the years, also a concept that comes out of legal scholarship). but as an international legal standard it seems like an obvious critical response to the various problems of the LGBTQ+ framework, especially re: how the law determines who “actually counts” as gay trans queer etc

[genderqueerdykes]

just kind of throwing this at your wall, sorry in advance. saw the post about "kill all men" and got really upset

im a trans guy. my boyfriend is cis, and im the first guy hes dated before. (sees me fully as whatever i want to be, does not care about my gender expression and loves me for me. great guy). he doesnt have many friends from being asocial as a teenager, so most of his friends are my trans friends!

of course. like every trans group seems to fall prey to, theres always the "all [CIS] men are bad" conversation that comes up somehow. and i never really thought much of it, because in my head itd be "ah yeah all men Except My Boyfriend"

but he and i were talking after some drinks, and he made a point that really struck me. about how he doesn't like being The Exception to the point, that he's still a man and has no interest in being anything But a man. so when people say stuff like that, he gets uncomfortable; not because He IS The Problem (like everyone who gives the "if youre saying not all men, youre the men" argument) but because it makes him feel ostracized from everyone. and idk, it really struck me.

we say stuff like that way too often in an attempt to exclude certain groups of people; and i feel like we end up excluding people close to us by proxy.

thanks for listening

i really appreciate you for taking the time to send this. i've been meaning to talk about this and have been forgetting. the following is of course not directed at you, anon, it is directed at people who behave like this

you're not feminist, progressive, cool, pro-queer rights or funny for saying "kill all men". you are exposing that you are a violent and dangerous person for believing that people should be profiled and literally killed for their gender or PERCEIVED gender.

this doesn't make people like you more. it outs you as a danger. how do we know you won't turn that hatred toward women whenever you feel like changing the goalposts? i can't trust someone like that to not turn that hatred toward other genders, either. YOU are the dangerous person you are profiling men as. you can't use men as a scapegoat for everything. sometimes YOU are the violent person who needs help.

your boyfriend shouldn't have to feel like that. like people have never really cared about gay men but people just straight up gave up all pretenses that they do and i hate it. cis men are not inherently evil. cis men can still be queer. cis men can still be good people. your boyfriend shouldn't have to feel isolated because he's cis. that's profiling. he belongs. why do people assume that everyone with a partner who is a man hates them? not everyone is choosing to be in a relationship with someone they hate. i understand that some people will date someone no matter who just to have a partner so they're not lonely, but not everyone does this. some people genuinely love their boyfriends

i'm sorry you both have dealt with this. i hope things can improve because men don't deserve to feel like this. this is why toxic masculinity exists in the first place. we have to stop reinforcing that men are evil monsters. they won't stop believing that if we keep telling them that forever. stay safe. your boyfriend is not a bad person & deserves to have a wonderful life.

[so-i-did-this-thing]

You're the only person I know on Tumblr who I feel like I can send this ask so I hope this is ok.

I'm absolutely sick to my stomach terrified. People keep talking about not acquiescing early and to keep fighting and that's good but... I'm a trans person married to a trans person and we have a kid. We are so, so scared that we are going to lose our parental rights and have him taken away, even if he's biologically my partners. We are pretty fucking sure that the only way we could even possibly stay in the US and even possibly keep our family together is to detransition. But then we would still be queer, and I remember the 90s and how it was pretty recent that gay couples were considered unfit parents.

And this isn't us blowing things out of proportion, we have an education in politics so we've got a pretty good freaking idea about how bad things can and will get, but also we don't feel like we can afford to NOT take things extremely seriously. The worst case scenario is pretty horrific for us, so we've talked at lengthe about leaving the country. Which is it's own basket of heartbreaks because then there's a real chance we will never be able to come back. And I don't really feel like I can talk about it because a) the Internet doesn't feel safe to be trans on and b) there's been SO much chatter about how we need to stay and fight and people who can leave are privileged etc etc

I just... I'm scared and heartbroken and angry and I feel extremely hopeless. I guess I don't really have a question after all. I just needed to talk about it because it feels like not enough people are seeing this kind of true tragedy that could come from all this.

I wish there was actual help we could get. But there doesn't seem like there's anyone who can.

You're right, Anon - you're not blowing things out of proportion.

I want to say that I'm relieved in a sense that you are talking about where your lines in the sand are are and what you plan to do if they are crossed. There is hope and comfort to be found in a plan, even if it is a plan for the next generation's survival, instead of our own.

Every trans person needs to start thinking about real answers to the following questions:

What will I do if I'm fired tomorrow?

What will I do if I'm denied a loan? Housing?

What will I do if I lose my HRT?

What will I do if information about trans people is considered illegal to circulate?

What will I do if I I'm declared an unfit parent?

What will I do if my marriage is annulled?

What will I do if I'm declared unfit to own my own property or make my own legal decisions?

What will I do if I'm about to be arrested?

There are answers to all of these questions that aren't just "give up and die." But there's no one-size-fits all solution. People will have varying priorities based on how they see their role in fighting fascism and what resources they have access to.

Community is going to become incredibly important. Trans people have always existed. Sympathetic cis people have always existed. Trans people have always found ways to survive and even flourish, even though it often meant not being able to pursue their original dreams.

If you don't know where to begin with strengthening our community, the Trans Literature Preservation Project is a good place to get ideas. The virtual book burnings have already begun on .gov websites, so maybe doing a little preservation work will give you more hope that you're working to make a difference.

Because the work is important, even if the progress won't happen until after our time.

[asdfghjklartblog]

Vermillion

Trans masc reader x yandere batfam

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (here)

Hello! Sorry this took a bit longer, but the chapter is also longer than usual so hopefully it makes up for it! So this is like almost exactly 7.4k words so take a little break, grab a drink and maybe some tissues because I cried while writing this one. I’m also generally an emotional person so that’s not saying a lot tbh. Anyways have fun!

Tw: Neglect, Slight gore, Obvious favouritism

——————————

There’s no other way to say it, Jason’s been following you around both in and out the manor. But considering you’re a homebody who does nothing but go to school, read and write fanfics, draw commissions and whatnot, it was pretty damn easy to just follow you around. At first you found it unsettling, even you, a daddy’s girl didn’t hang around your daddy that much. But he grew on you, like how ivy grows along the side of a building. You guys get to talking and you two realise that you lived close to each other before you were taken in by Bruce. Which is both a pleasant and sad surprise. You love Jason, he was your family just like Luke.

You don’t know what’s going on with Dick per se, but you heard through the grapevine that he’s studying to be a cop in Bludhaven. He comes back home sometimes, well more rarely than anything but whatever. It’s not like it’s your problem. The two of you still have nothing in common, and he still finds your doujinshi and your obsession with anime a bit… Weird but he doesn’t say anything anymore. And considering that the two of you are older now, you don’t out right avoid or fight each other anymore. Mostly because he’d kick your ass.

Bruce is… Different. Not in a bad way but, he feels more unsure? Whatever Dick and Bruce fought about, you could tell that Bruce was still grumpy about it. I mean who could blame him? Dick was his favourite, his golden child, the one he wanted, the one he chose. You try not to think about it, because it hurts. And then it hurts more as you start to spiral and if it gets too bad you start feeling sick. But it’s fine. You’re fine. This is fine. Bruce is getting closer to Jason, it kinda makes your heart clench as you see their relationship progress. Jason tried to invite you to spend time with them but you knew Bruce would be uncomfortable, and you’d probably be throwing up less than a minute in from anxiety.

However you started thinking about being trans masc, at least that’s what you remember it being called. ‘Cause Robin was probably right. She has a knack for sensing these kinds of things. She helps you look into where to get HRT and how the process works. However the problem was getting permission from Alfred and Bruce to get the treatment. You don’t necessarily think it’d be a big deal but Alfred was old. He doesn’t seem like the type of man to be transphobic but, you never know. But Bruce? You weren’t too sure about him. On one hand he’s a respectful and good man. On the other hand he is a man and a playboy, so honestly the odds didn’t look too good.

The first person you come out to is well, Robin. Obviously. Well I mean she already knew so was it really coming out? It’s more like she was waiting for you to come out of the see-through a glass closet. However the second person is by complete accident. You see, you were tutoring Eric in Algebra. You didn’t have a choice, you were volunteering as a tutor and you couldn’t just refuse a person without a good cause. You were explaining polynomials to him and he just suddenly throws his head back and groans. “Ugh, this is so fucking gay. What do we even fucking need this for.”

And you replied without thinking. You chuckle before saying. “Yeah just like me.”

The both of you freeze before he just slowly turns to you and asks. “Dude, you serious?”

You lean back against the chair’s backrest and sigh. “Yeah.”

He then waits a beat before saying. “So like, you like women? You like pussy?”

You almost choke on the laughter that just bubbled out which he just looks at you weirdly for. You catch your breath and try to clear up the confusion. “Sorry, I don’t know why but that was really funny to me. But uh, maybe? I’m not sure yet. But I mean that I’m a man that likes other men.”

You can see that Eric needed to connect the dots, and you know he’s got it when his eyebrows shot up and he lets out a little. “Oh.”

You nod and say. “Yeah, I found out like a year ago but didn’t have time to delve into it at the time.”

He then nods, letting out a small hum. He sits up straight before looking at you and just says. “I think I like guys too.”

Your neck slowly turns to him and you raise an eyebrow at that before sassily turning back to the textbook and replying with. “Ew, that’s so gay.”

He immediately turns to you with a flabbergasted look on his face. You try your best to keep your smile down but he can tell. He punches your shoulder playfully before saying. “Fuck off man, piece of shit gay boy.”

You answer back with. “Pot calling the kettle black.”

Eric rolls his eyes and the two of you chuckle before a calm silence fills the room again. After a few moments he gets serious and saying. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

You look at and you can clearly tell that he’s nervous about what you’re about to say. You let him stew in his anxiety a little longer before giving him an answer. “I won’t, I promise.”

He releases a breath that he kept down in his anxiousness. Eric then says. “Hey, if you ever want like help to make your body bigger or whatever, I can help. I mean I am on the football team and run defense!”

You smile at him in a way that looks like you’re playing around with him like a cat toying around with a mouse. “Yeah? You got any moves to show me?”

His eyes widen almost comically as he immediately turns red, the freckles on his face barely visible because of it. He then tries to laugh it off before saying. “Wow! I am beat! I think I’m gonna go now.”

You look at the time and you say in a confused tone of voice. “Eric we still have like more than hour of studying-“

But he’s already packing his things and rushing out the entrance of library. You sigh and start to pack your own things before you notice some blonde dude in a trench coat. You felt someone’s eyes on you before, and you kinda feel like it might be that guy. It’s pretty quiet in the library and despite there being more than enough seats, he sits right in front of you. He flashes you a charming smile and when you look at him, he reminds you so much of Daddy. He’s also got the scruffy stubble on his jaw and above his lips. He then says with a scouse accent. “Hello, my name’s John Constantin-“

You interrupt him and loudly say. “Sir, I am underage.”

A few heads turn and he sighs then chuckles before saying. “Cheeky little thing aren’t you.”

You shrug before starting to pack up. He then looks you up and down before asking. “Mind telling me about something kid?”

You groan and ask him. “What? What the hell do you want? Why are you, as the people from where you live would say, gegging in?”

He raises an eyebrow before he asks. “You know scouse?”

You reply with. “I looked it up and watched a couple videos on it late at night. Kinda stuck to my brain for some reason.”

He nods before saying. “Makes sense. Now tell me, you seen any owls lately?”

Your heart skips a beat but you’re able to maintain your cool as you finish packing up, you then reply with. “Not really, I mean owls are hard to find in gotham not many trees and all that.”

He eyes you up and down before saying. “Don’t lie kid, it won’t do you any good.”

You get up and glare at him before saying. “Go fuck yourself.”

He smirks before sarcastically calling out as you walk away. “We actually say ‘sod off’ but nice try!”

You rush out of the library and go home. What the hell was that, and how did he know about the owl in your dreams? You haven’t told anyone except Luke. Maybe you shouldn’t have just blown the guy off. You sigh as you think about it a bit more, but you’re tired from studying and just wanna have dinner and then go to bed. The dreams stop for a while after that, letting you sleep peacefully.

You start to do better in your classes for some reason, it’s definitely not the result of you now sleeping restfully and exercising with Eric. But after you start seeing the results, seeing the muscle on your arms and your back and whatnot, leaves you feeling amazing. It even gives you the confidence boost to come out to Luke who just says. “Yeah, I kinda guessed. Either that or you were some kinda freak.”

You pushed him playfully after he said that. He laughs and throws one arm around your shoulder and ruffles your hair. He sighs, as he goes back to lie down on the grass. The two of you are just hanging out on the grass as the two of you look at the stars. He then hums before saying. “You know, I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since we met. I still remember when you barely came to my waist, and now you’re just an inch above my shoulder! Absolutely insane.”

After he says that you sigh, you start to tear up as you say. “You know how I have trouble remembering stuff? I… I’m starting to forget my memories with my daddy. And I don’t want to forget. I try to write them down but, I can only remember general things. I can’t remember what was there, what we were doing-“

Luke interrupts you gently, and say in a low voice. “I know it’s scary. I had the same fears as you did when I started to realise that I couldn’t remember Monchi, my first dog. You want me to tell you about him?”

You close your eyes as you listen to him talk, he talks about how Monchi died when he was barely 6, and that he was a small pug that was also kinda fat. How the dog loved napping the most, and loved sleeping on Luke the best. How the dog loved those bacon treats you would always see on the commercials. You laugh and the two of you decide to keep a journal of your most precious memories.

One day you realise that you haven’t told Jason yet, and but figured that he probably wouldn’t know about any of that stuff so you put it off. However as you turn 16 you think that you should probably tell Alfred sooner than later. When you tell Alfred and he smiles gently as he says. “You are very brave for telling me. And I thank you for trusting me enough to tell me miss- no, master y/n. Excuse me but it will take some time before I ingrain this information into my memory.”

You nod and then continue as you say. “I was actually hoping that you could help me with something? I-I really want to get HRT, and I need Bruce’s consent to do that. I was really hoping you could maybe convince him? I just I’m scared of telling him myself.”

Alfred looks at you sadly before nodding and says. “How about we tell him now? He has an opening right now, and since he stayed home today, you can tell him face to face.”

You panic and reply with a stammer. “N-No that’s okay really I can wai-“

Alfred then starts to drag you towards the lion’s den and Jesus, this old man is strong, what the hell. He then knocks on the door, and you’re hoping, praying to god that Bruce says he’s busy. However you hear Bruce call out. “Come in!” When both you and Alfred enter, Bruce raises an eyebrow, he’s probably thinking ‘What did she do now?‘ Alfred then says to Bruce. “Master y/n had some news to tell you. Nothing bad, good news actually.”

You then blurt out a tad bit too loud. “I’m trans. A-And I like men. And I think I like girls?”

Alfred and Bruce stare at you in complete silence. Thankfully, Bruce interrupts the awkward silence with. “Congratulations. Is there.. Anything else?”

You take a deep breath and ask. “Can you sign the consent form for the HRT treatment?”

Bruce nods and then goes back to work. That was super anticlimactic. But at least you got permission! Over the next month you and Bruce fills out all the forms and you��re overjoyed! Everything is great you’re voice is getting deeper, you’re growing even taller, you started getting chest hair among… Other things. But overall this is great!

One day at school, you’re studying in the library in the little corner where nobody can see you when you overhear some people making fun of you. You don’t really care though, you’ve made your peace with how weird you are. However their topic then changes to Jason.

A boy says. “Have you seen that kid? He doesn’t deserve to be here, he’s alley trash! He should be back on the street with that slut of a mother he has.”

They giggles like it’s the funniest thing in the world, it grates on your ears. Another girl continues, saying. “Oh my god! Nick you can’t say that! But really, how is he getting good grades? Maybe his mom taught him a thing or two!”

You’re frozen in place, you can’t believe what you’re hearing. It feels vile, disgusting and you feel like tearing out the very throats that are assaulting your ears.

Another girl joins in and says. “We should get him to get kicked out of the school! Maybe we could make look like he’s harassing us or something? Oh! We could make it seem like he’s taking advantage of us!”

You get up. You’ve heard enough. As you walk to where the girls are, you feel red hot anger going through your veins. You get to where they are, and hearing their cruel suggestions laughter grates on your nerves. You walk right up to them, getting up close and personal before growling. “What the fuck did you say?”

The girls look at you as if you were a piece of gum on the sole of their shoe, the boy looks at you with a smirk as if to challenge you. The boy pushes you away and says. “Oh, look! It’s bloody mary, what are you doing here? Did you hear what we said? You’re lucky it isn’t you we’re targeting. At least half of you is worthy of being here.”

You glare at them before getting right up in the boy’s face again, you brush your hair back and stand up straighter and saying. “If you don’t fucking shut up, and mind your business. If I see any of you near my little brother, it’s on fucking sight. You understand me? I’ll fucking get teachers involved, the police, your parents, I’m dragging you all down.”

The guy scoffs and pushes you away before saying. “You and what army? Everyone in school knows that Bruce doesn’t care about yo-“

He doesn’t get to finish that sentence as you uppercut him. He stumbles a bit before he collapses onto the floor, unconscious. Then you look at the girls and hiss. “Either you stop whatever the fuck you’re planning, or I come back with more than just my fucking fists”

The girls look at each other and nod hesitantly. You leave them be as you go back to your little corner in the library. You then pack up your things and leave, way too angry to study. So you just go to the cafeteria, where you see Jason happily eating with his friends. You start to calm down and smile stupidly as you see him safe and happy, he notices you staring and mouthes the words. “Stop looking at me.” You chuckle as you turn away to scroll on your phone.

You were called to the principal’s after that, but there was no video evidence to prove that showed that you knocked out with whatever that guy’s name was. It’s not that it was edited out, it just messed up during the time you were there. Weird. But since there was no evidence saying otherwise you got suspended and this time it was put on record. Bruce was disappointed in you but to fair when wasn’t he? Jason heard what you did and spent the week you were just hanging out with you and giving you random hugs. Which didn’t really bother you, you liked the physical affection. And after so long of barely having any, it feels nice. You assume it’s the same for Jason. Not that his situation was the same as yours but you know.

You always try and let Jason come to you, like a cat. Cause sometimes he just gets really shy or standoffish about physical affection, probably trying to unconsciously defend himself or something. It’s a bit hard to restrain yourself though when he’s so cute, you even get cuteness aggression from just seeing him. And thank god for Alfred feeding this boy, because in less than a year he’s in the target weight for his size and age and now he’s got these cute chubby cheeks and you just love pinching them. He absolutely hates it though. And sometimes you have this urge to just… Sit on him though? It’s so weird. Like you wish you were a giant cat or something so you could lie on top of him so he’d be warm, toasty and safe under you.

Now you’re 17, and usually you don’t celebrate your birthday, but since Luke came back from his tour in Afghanistan, and Jason saying that it could be fun, led the two of you to baking your own cake in the kitchen. So with Alfred’s permission and under his watchful eye, you guys bake a cake. You brought out the ingredients you needed out from the pantry and fridge, Jason was in charge of mixing things together and Luke was making sure the oven was preheated and then started to make the (kind of frosting you like). You take out the cake molds and ask the two of them. “How many layers should we make and how big should we make it? And another question, what flavour of cake would you guys prefer?”

Luke shrugs and says. “I’m fine with anything. I ain’t picky.”

Jason thinks about it for a moment before saying. “Mango, or maybe we could make like an earl grey cake?”

You respond with. “We’re doing (favourite cake flavour).”

Luke rolls his eyes while he smiles, he looks to Jason and says. “Whenever I get a slice cake for him, he always chooses that flavour. I don’t even know why I bother to even ask at this point.”

Jason snickers at that while you huff and say. “It’s my favourite flavour. If you got a problem with it then take it up with management.”

Luke chuckles at that, and all of you continue to do the tasks you assigned each other. You guys laughed and joked around while making your cake. Then you guys put the cake mix in the oven, while it bakes the three of you go into the living room to play video games, you guys play (favourite game), and you let Jason play too. But he keeps making the wrong decisions so you and Luke end up backseat gaming and spoiling everything almost everything. While Jason is playing, Luke looks you up and down he notices something. “Shit, y/n. What has Alfred been feeding you? And where did you get all this muscle from? You look good, man.”

Your smile brightens up and you nod at him, saying. “Thanks, the HRT has been helping me build more muscle mass, I’m getting more hair too, but the mood swings are rough man. Like I switch from violently angry to violently…” You look at Jason and see that he’s still playing the game but decide to not say what you were thinking. “Excited.”

Luke makes grimaces and pushes your face away with one hand. “Gross. Did not need to know that.”

You chuckle and then you ask. “Is it normal to get butt hair?”

Luke shrugs and says. “I mean I guess, some of my friends back during my tour had ass hair. I accidentally caught a glimpse when I hit the showers a bit late from doing extra burpees the sergeant assigned for me.”

You nod and then ask him. “Was it because the sergeant was homophobic?”

Luke looks at you confused and says. “I’m not gay.”

Which makes you smile but you try to stifle it as you continue to talk. “Yeah you are, you’re so gay. You fuck dudes left and right.”

He groans and the replies with. “I am helping you with both your schoolwork and making your fucking cake, and you’re seriously gaslighting me into believing that I’m gay?”

You laugh at that and then school your face and with your best brooding face and Bruce voice, you say. “Fox. You are gay. You are-“ and then you do the gay limp wrist thing.

Luke busts out laughing at that, and then starts to cough as he says. “What the fuck.”

You smile back at him and then see Jason doing something that requires concentration you, then start to practically lay on top of him as you say. “Ugh, gravity is increasing on me Jason.”

He tries to push you off and he almost does because he’s actually pretty damn strong surprisingly. He starts to get annoyed and says. “No it isn’t!!”

You nonchalantly reply. “It is too, Jason. Same thing happened yesterday.”

He groans and growls. “NO!” After losing the concentration game. He lets out another groan before pushing you off and saying. “Get your fat ass off of me!”

You laugh as you get off of him but then before he can even move you pull him onto your lap and start hugging him tightly which makes him groan even louder before struggling to get you off. That made you laugh and you eventually pull away from him, he goes back to playing his game and you sit there and wonder as you look at both Luke trying to help Jason with the game. Do they even know how much they matter to you? Do they know you’d kill for them? That you’d get your hands bloody and bruised for them? Would they do the same for you, you ask yourself. Would they love you and protect you just as fiercely? You then turn back to the TV and decide to enjoy this little piece of heaven.

The three of you eventually get back into kitchen and ice and decorate the cake together. It’s a bit lopsided, but it’s yours. And that is what makes it perfect. You guys watch (fav comfort movie) while you guys eat the cake. You guys all sleep in your room that night, having a little sleepover together.

In the morning you see that Jason is gone, you yawn and get up to go find him. You see his bedroom light is open and for some reason, you have this gut feeling. It tells you to be quiet, to peek into Jason’s room. Your brows furrow and you decide to trust your gut. You gently move the door, and peer into Jason’s room. You see Jason is changing. Gross. But as you’re about to close the door you see scars and bruises littering his torso. You freeze and decide to keep watching, why the hell does he have those? You’re almost absolutely sure he’s not getting bullied. You’ve made sure of that. So where did those marks come from? It can’t be Bruce, he might not love you, but he definitely loves Jason. And he isn’t the person to do that, you know it. It can’t be Alfred, he’d rather chop his arm off than hurt any of us. So who?

You then barge in, making Jason jump. Before he can say anything, you march up to him and pointing at the large purple bruise on his ribs you growl out. “What happened? Why the hell are you this scratched up and hurt? I know it isn’t from school and it not from-“

He tries to placate you by looking up at you with apologetic eyes and gently saying. “Y/n-“

You glare at him and say. “Don’t you fucking,” You then mimic the way he said your name and then continue. “I asked you a question and you better tell me the damn truth. I can read you like a fucking book Jason Peter Todd, don’t fucking play with me.”

Jason looks at you in the eyes and then looks to the ground. He sighs and says. “I’m in an underground fighting ring.”

You raise an eyebrow and roll your eyes before snarkily saying. “Yeah? Why the fuck is there cuts and slash scars on your skin then.”

He replies scoffs and mockingly says. “There’s a reason it’s called underground, there’s no rules.”

Your eyes widen at his attitude and you glare at him as you continue. “Don’t take that tone with me, boy. I may not be your father or mother but I am still still an elder.”

Jason looks at you with an unimpressed look and says. “You are three years older than me you are NOT and elder.”

You respond with. “Who made you the elder expert.”

Jason crosses his arms before growling. “No one. You’re just so unqualified that it’s clear to everyone.”

You’re about to respond to him again when you realise he’s trying to distract you. You then take a breath to calm down before saying. “Okay. Whatever. That’s not important. I’m just. Tell me the truth Jason, please. I’m your older brother, if you can’t trust me, who can you trust? I love you, very much. I promise I won’t be mad. I just want to know.”

Jason looks into your eyes before he sighs. He looks around the room before he gestures for you to lean in close. You do so giving him your ear, he then whispers into your ear. “Go fuck yourself.”

You pull away and groan in indignation before growling. “Fine! Keep your secrets! But don’t come to me when you need help.”

You march out of his room and accidentally slam his door, unaware that you practically broke the door and the wall around it. Why the fuck wouldn’t he tell you? Especially if he’s getting hurt from it! You can help, you’d do whatever he needs. You stop in your tracks and you know, that if you walk away now, you’re giving him a chance to cover his tracks. You’re giving him a chance to shut you out from… Whatever he’s going through. You groan, being a good big brother is hard. You start walking back and gently knocking on his door. The door falls over and you let out a surprised little noise. You see he’s staring at you before he turns away and puts his chin in his hand.

You take a deep breath and go to sit next to him. You sigh and you hesitantly put your hand on his shoulder. “Jason. Just… Please? Please just tell me what’s going on? Are you being bullied or something? Are you really going to some underground fighting ring? If so I’m not letting you go, at least not alone. Jason you’re my little brother. You and Luke are the only family I have-“

Jason blurts out. “I’m Robin.”

You freeze. You look at him incredulously and ask. “What?”

Jason also looks surprised. He then looks away and then turns back to you. “I- That was a joke.”

You look closer at Jason and you absolutely know he was telling the truth just now. You stand up and start pacing around the room before you come to a realisation. “Bruce… Bruce is..?”

Jason looks away, and that tells you everything you need to know. Everything starts to click together. Bruce is fucking Batman. Fucking Bruce?! Oh my god that’s why Batman can get all those gadgets. It makes total sense! And that means Dick was… Oh my god Dick was the former Robin, holy shit. What the fuck. You look at Jason and you want yell, scream, punch, not because you’re angry at him, but because you’re livid at Bruce for allowing this. They’re just kids! Jason hugs you from behind, startling you from your thoughts and says. “You aren’t mad, are you?”

You turn to look at him and gently cup his cheeks before saying. “No. No, I could never be mad at you. It’s not your fault. But Bruce-“

He holds your hands and puts them down before saying. “Bruce is doing his best. He’s been helping us. You saw how angry and how he’d used to be so angry.”

You then argue with him. “He’s still angry!”

Jason rolls his eyes and continues. “And I’ve been learning to control myself. I just, please. I like doing this. I get to help people-“

You raise your voice, not at him, but because you’re trying to plead for him to see things your way. “You can help people in different ways! You can volunteer-“

He then shouts as he looks deep into your eyes. “You know that’s not enough! Look at us! Look at why we’re here. It’s because it’s never enough. Look at how they dismissed your dad’s murder so easily! They closed the case in less than a month! Something was clearly going on there!”

You turn away from him, putting one hand on your waist and using the other to pinch the bridge of your nose. Jason continues and says. “If that really worked, neither of us would’ve been adopted by Bruce-“

You try to walk away from him but he quickly blocks your path and grabs your wrist. “Y/n please, it’s for the good of-“

“But what about you? I know you think it’s good, but is it? You’re 13-“

He interrupts and says. “I’m turning 14-“

You sarcastically say. “Yeah because that makes a WORLD of difference, yeah, sorry I didn’t realise you could pay your taxes and shit Mr. 14 year old.”

Jason’s hold on your wrist tightens and he argues. “Whatever! Look this is my choice-“

You interrupt him this time. “Really? Because to me it looks like Bruce is being insane, carless and-“

Jason growls back. “You take that back y/n-“

“No! This is actually insane Jason, he is making you fight people like the fucking killer clown, that scarecrow dude with the fear gas-“

“It’s actually a toxin-“ He grumbles under his breath, but you hear it. All this back and forth is driving you up the wall. You finally snap and start yelling.

“WHO THE FUCK CARES JASON THE FACT IS THAT YOU SHOULD BE SAFE, YOU SHOULD BE HERE, HAVING FUN, BEING A KID, NOT HAVING THE WORLD OR PEOPLE’S LIVES ON YOUR-“

You then realise that he’s looking at you scared, his hands are even shaking. You remember what he said about his dad. How he used to yell and beat him when he got drunk. You know this. You promised him you’d never yell at him, that you’d always love and care for him. Listen to him. But right now you’re yelling. You’re yelling at your baby brother, it doesn’t matter what you’re saying, or whether you meant to or not. You still yelled at him. Guilt floods your systems and the anger in your chest has changes into a heavy weight in the pit of your stomach. You slowly reach for him as you gently call his name but he smacks your hand away and runs out the room. You feel awful, how could you do that to him? You were angry and frustrated but you know better. You’re his safe house, you’re supposed to protect him. You turn around and try to chase after him but you bump into Luke. Seeing your panicked state and wide eyes he looks at you worried and asks. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?”

You’re about to say exactly what happened but, it’s his secret. It’s not your place to tell. You’re angry, but you aren’t stupid. This isn’t a secret you can just tell, you might trust Luke but Jason doesn’t know him as well as you do. You sigh and just give him a general overview of what just happened. Luke looks at you sadly and says. “Maybe you should give him some time-“

In a panicked tone you trip over your words but manage to get out. “But I- I have to apologise, I need to- I need to fix this! Luke, I’m supposed to-“

He grabs your shoulders and says. “Calm down. I know you’re scared that this will drive a wedge between you two, and honestly it might. I’m not gonna lie, but I also know that you both love each other a lot. You two are like two peas in a pod, partners in crime, however you wanna say it. He knows you didn’t mean to hurt him, of course you should still apologise but… Yeah just. Give him some space. He’ll come around-“

You then pause and then weakly say. “And what if he doesn’t? What if he decides I’m-“

Luke rolls his eyes and then says. “And what if you explode tomorrow. Look, it’s going to be fine. I know it.”

So you wait. And wait. And wait. Two whole weeks passes of him avoiding you. You try to talk to him but he always leaves without a word. It hurts. The knowledge that you hurt him so badly that he won’t talk to you, makes your heart twist with frustration at yourself. You try your best to give him space, but as the days pass it gets harder and harder to stay put. Especially when you know what he’s doing at night.

You have a dream again, maybe because you’re stressed. But this feels worse. You wake up, lying down on the beach. You get up with a groan and see you’re at the same beach that your other dreams took place in. However this time you see foot prints all over the beach. Some of them bird like, some of them look like normal human foot prints. And some of them look… Unnatural. You stand there looking around before you hear a soft crying behind you. It has an owl mask, you kneel onto the floor and ask the kid. “Hey, what’s wrong-“

She mumbles something you don’t catch. You pause and try to ask her to repeat herself when she repeats what she says. You barely catch what she says so you ask again. She whispers. “It hurts.”

Before you can ask what hurts she repeats herself a bit louder. “It hurts.”

You start to see where this is going so you start to back off but bump into another child as you walk backwards. You recognise this one is a boy and at the same time they repeat the words ‘It hurts’. You try to back away from them but you only find two more children blocking your way. Every time you turn away, more of them appear. They’re all different, all shapes and sizes, the only common factor between these kids are the fact all of them seem to be under 15.

They keep repeating the phrase, and with every time they say it they grow louder. You try to cover your ears but it does nothing. They’re surrounding you now, they’re screaming, pleading for you to help them, to save them. You feel your pants being tugged and that’s when you see that more kids are coming up from the sand. But they’re not climbing up, no, they’re pulling you down. The sand beneath your feet start to loosen, making it that much easier for them to pull you down with them. You try to pry then off you but like a hydra every kid you pry off, three more take it’s place. You scream for them to let you go, but none of them listen. You start to see flashes of visions, of children and needles, of people in masks, of a dark ballroom and an altar on the other side of the room. The sand is up to your waist now, numerous small hand clawing at your skin, leaving trails of blood in their wake. Their hands start to reach your face, their hands covered in your blood as they clamour to drag you into sand, grabbing and scratching where they can reach. The sand is now right under your chin. You get your hand free to try to pry yourself out, but it doesn’t work. The last thing you see is an owl as your mouth and lungs start to fill with sand.

You wake up with a gasp and start coughing out sand, you run to your bathroom sink as you throw up more sand as well at last night’s dinner. You hear someone coming into your room, and in your panicked state you grab the soap dispenser. As the person tries to come in you swing at him, the person dodges and you let out an animalistic growl and follow the person. Your eyes are unfocused and you can barely see, it’s like you can see enough to move but not enough to recognise anything. You hear something, like someone’s talking, but it’s so muddled that it seems like distorted noise. You swing again and the person dodges again, but you catch them off guard as you throw it straight at their face which nearly hits the intruder’s, but instead it hits the wall behind him. You tackle the stranger but they use that force against you and throws you onto the ground. They pin you to the ground with great difficulty as you groan and growl like an animal, the intruder then jumps off you and makes a run to your bed. You follow and as you’re grabbing and lifting you’re the brown thing by a bigger thing over your head to smash into the intruder’s head, you hear your daddy’s voice.

You freeze and your eyes start to clear up, you can see again. You’re huffing and puffing, you the put your bedside table on the ground. You’re room is mostly okay, if not a bit messy because of the fighting. You look to your bed and see that Jason’s looking at you with wide eyes with your Oliver plushie in his hands. You start to piece together what happened and sigh before you stretch your body lightly. Jason then yells at you. “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?”

You groan and then say. “It just happens sometimes-“

Jason’s eyes widen further and he continues. “SOMETIMES!? You were acting like some backed up rabid animal! And that’s normal?!”

You turn around and massage your temples before saying. “Really? And you’re so much better, Mr. ‘Boy wonder’? Look if you came here to judge me-“

Jason makes you turn around and is about to yell again but stops himself. Instead he lets out a sigh and pulls you into a hug. You’re a bit surprised but you hug him back you two stand there for a moment in silence. The two of you let go and you take a step back from him, he gives you a melancholy look before calming himself down fully. He takes another moment to think and then says. “I get it. We both have secrets. I just… I don’t know. I’m sorry for avoiding you, and I’m sorry for running-“

You interrupt him, grabbing his hand and try to assure him. “Jason, no! You had every right to do that. I’m sorry I couldn’t control myself I just, recently it’s been harder to. I’m not saying it to excuse myself, I’m saying it to explain myself. And I was so frustrated, I… Jason I want you to be safe. And what you’re doing… I can’t protect you from that. That made me angry and scared, and the way you kept brushing off my concerns just left me feeling more worried and scared. I love you so much Jason. We may not be related by blood, but you matter to me more than anyone else. Well not anyone else, you’re a very close third to Luke.”

Jason chuckles at that, he then brushes his hair out of his face before saying. “Yeah, I get that, I’m sorry about that. It’s just I… I know. It’s dangerous. Of course it is. You don’t have to tell me that. But I have to, cause if it’s not me, who will? Who’s gonna protect the kids that are going through the stuff we went through?”

You look at into his eyes and that’s when you know, he’s not gonna quit this. No matter what you say. You cup his cheeks and tear up, your baby, your little brother. It brings you so much pride, so much pain and tremendous amount of grief to your heart knowing that every night you’re going to bed, he’s going out there to fight criminals and villains. People who don’t care that he’s just a kid. That’s when you let out a shaky sigh and let the tears run down. You kiss the edge of his hairline and really look at him. You look at his hooded eyes with beautiful brown irises, like the sweetest milk chocolate, his fluffy black hair which you run your left hand runs through, his full cheeks, the permanent little smirk on his face, which makes you smile. You chuckle wetly as you squish his cheeks as he chuckles back. You exhale shakily before saying. “It’s like I’m sending you off to war. Is there any chance I can make you change your mind?”

He chuckles at that and shakes his head as he looks back at you tearfully. You nod and softly say. “I thought so.”

You let go of him and you get a tissue to wipe your face. Once your face is dry you go back to him and say. “I’m not gonna stop you. I don’t think I’d be able to anyways.”

You both chuckle at the before you continue. “But I want to help. Whatever you or Bruce want me to do I’ll do. Well less Bruce, more you. I want to do my best to keep you safe. Just because you’re a vigilante doesn’t change that. And I want you to promise me,” You say as you put up your right hand with your pinkie out. “No more secrets. Please.”

He stares at your hand and then at you before asking. “Are you serious-“

“Just take the damn pinkie Jason.” You say with exasperatedly.

He rolls his eyes and then takes it with his own pinkie. You then say. “Promise me, promise me that if there’s anything and I mean anything that is potentially life threatening or changing you will tell me.”

He pauses, thinking about it for a moment before saying. “I pinkie promise to not keep secrets that could be potentially life changing or threatening from you.”

You nod, and before you release his pinkie you quickly add in. “Or else I get a free punch.”

“Hey! That’s not what we-“

“Well I guess you should tell the truth then to avoid getting punched then.” You say with a smirk.

He then rolls his eyes before you pull him into a hug and say. “I love you. So much. You’re my one and only brother-“

“What about Dic-“

You then interrupt him with. “He doesn’t count.”

Jason laughs at that and then says. “I love you too. Until I take my last breath.”

——————————

Tag list: @simpingpandas @randomlyappearingartist @birbtweettweet @soulsire @crazycaoticsimp

I hope you guys liked it! And thanks for waiting patiently! Also I still need a beta reader, not to like edit or anything just to read it over and like critique my stuff. But yeah, this chapter took longer as well as like became longer than I anticipated. I was initially thinking this would be the chapter that I, well, you know. But it didn’t. We’ll also see either Kori and Barbara in the next chapter or so. And if you guys want to see like Ethan again let me know! Because this might be your last chance :)

[toestychonk]

Pick one

Viv seems to want to be both edgy and progressive, but it doesn't work that way. Like, ya gotta commit to one or the other.

You can't just make SA jokes then turn around and have episodes about how wrong SA is.

Like if you're so afraid of the backlash, then either get a sensitivity reader or stop being pretentious acting like you're this beacon of lgbt rep when your writing and how you talk about trans men in private shows the exact opposite.

There's no such thing as a "progressive edgelord". Stop acting like there is, Vivienne.

[velvetvexations]

I just saw a post that was like “I want to skin all men alive, and I’m only partially joking lol.” And this was in the context of misinformation around pop history of Venus statues being an erotic image/porn for men. And like I understand the frustration around pop history, especially this, but like I legitimately I don’t think fucking skinning people is going to help people stop spreading misinformation. Also forgive me for saying this I don’t think this is entirely the entire gender category of “men’s” fault for this piece of this information and if it was, I don’t think this is an appropriate punishment for it. Something something sins of the father mass punishment is bad. Like it’s complicated in my brain’s way too zooted out to talk about this further in depth. But like, forgive me when I say that I’m really uncomfortable when people say shit like this and label it feminism, I don’t like my progressive messaging to be filled with threats of death and torture, especially as a torture victim. 

Like I keep wanting to play it off and making it seem like it actually isn’t that bad of a thing to say and that I am at fault for being uncomfortable. And then I realize again they’re talking about skinning people alive and that’s what’s making me uncomfortable especially in relation to progressivism. I would ask when progressive spaces got like this, but in reality they always were, it just got a lot easier to see because of the Internet.

I say a lot how I used to be totally onboard the Down With Cis bus, but people trying vainly to LARP their imagined stereotype of a cool radical edgy activist have reduced all their actual activism to mindless hostility that still doesn't touch the people who are actually oppressing others, because it feels most good when you're aiming it at another marginalized group that'll actually be hurt by it.

Like, imagine thinking any of this is transfeminism:

This is what "transfemminism" boils down to for a lot of people on this website. It's just constant, misdirected anger. They will never actually contribute to anything positive, just yelling shit like this in an echochamber for all time, and patting themselves on the back for being on the frontlines of an imaginary revolution. They've copied complicated terms to disguise it, but they know nothing, do nothing, and say nothing but a constant barrage of hostility towards people just as oppressed as them because they make for easier targets.

Like, hey, can someone tell me the number of times any of these people have argued with TERFs? Are any of them on TERF blocklists like I am? Have TERFs ever gone after them personally like they have me? All the harassment they talk about is almost exclusively made up of people pointing out when they said really horrific shit, as though they could not have simply avoided saying shit like this while transmascs are routinely murdered and sexually assaulted at the same rates as trans women:

Genuinely, this is all there is to it. They do this everyday non-stop because it's the only activism they're interested in. It's lazy, it's cheap, and they think they can get away with it by going "but trans men are men and men are the oppressors" because they can't comprehend more than two ideas at once.

Like, yeah, well, trans women are women, so I guess they have all the privilage of cis women too, right? Shut down all the transmisogyny discussion, transmisogyny doesn't exist because if it does you're implying trans women are different than cis women, and who would do that? You're not a TERF, are you?

[rjalker]

I do think it's funny that people will insist that saying transmen or transwomen without a space in the middle inherently makes you a crypto TERF when most of the people I see writing it that way are also trans, and moreover, it's a direct literal result of the words transfem and transmasc now being almost exclusively used as synonyms for trans women and trans men. You don't put spaces in those, so no shit the people who read those words a lot and type those words a lot are going to start leaving out the space in the other ones too. That's how language and brains work.

If you don't want people spelling trans men and trans women without spaces, then instead of using transmasc and transfem as direct synonyms, actually say what you mean. Lol. We all know you are almost all exclusively referring to binary trans men and binary trans women and the non-binary people you are misgendering into those categories. If you don't want transmen and transwomen to be spelled without spaces as the natural evolution of our language which you are directly contributing to, and is not inherently a bad thing, but you think it is a bad thing, then stop using transmasc and transfem as direct synonyms for that. These two things are 100% related.

But that won't happen, because these ~totally not reinventing the gender binary again~ terms just let the binary trans people sort non-binary people into the gender binary again, and claim it's progressive this time, and they are ~totally~ including non-binary people in the conversation when they refer to the entire trans community as transfems and transmascs so they're not going to stop doing that anytime soon.

like people. This is just how language works. You are training people's brains to see these as one word that does not need a space.

But you'd all rather die than actually include non-binary people in the conversation so whatever, stay mad over the problems you are literally creating for yourself.

Language evolves over time. That's just what is happening here because of the choices you are all making. It's not inherently a bad thing, you don't have to be mad about it. But if you are mad about it, you can just. Stop using spaceless synonyms for what you actually mean in an attempt to seem progressive while excluding and misgendering non-binary people as usual.

Trans men. Trans women. Nonbinary people. It's not difficult If you're not a raging exorexist

And if you can't be asked to just say that, then you don't get to complain when language evolves in the most obvious way possible. It is literally the path of least resistance and you are all paving the way by refusing to just say the word nonbinary.

[doberbutts]

this whole debate regarding transmasculinity is so weird for me because it's like, i see the argument that trans men benefit from transmisogyny, and i just... don't think that's true? like, a lot of these discussions seem to take phrases from discussions about white privelege and replace "white" with "tme", which just doesn't really make sense. perhaps i'm looking at things wrong, but i'm unsure how trans men would benefit at all from transmisogyny. are there transmisogynistic trans guys who throw trans women under the bus? yes, just like there are binary trans people that throw non-binary and gnc trans people under the bus. every anti-trans law and ruling hurts all trans people. the uk supreme court ruling has been used as an example of trans men not being effected by anti-trans policy, but that ruling did not say trans men were allowed into women's spaces. it said trans men aren't allowed in men's or women's spaces. that doesn't mean that trans men are worse off from that ruling than trans women, but especially with how much "tme privilege" is compared to white privilege, i feel like people really play up the differences between trans men and trans women, when in reality i think we have a lot more in common regarding our life experiences than we do differences.

So this is sort of a multi-faceted thing here.

I don't necessarily have a problem with the understanding that if all else was exactly the same about me except I was a trans woman (or even a cis woman!) instead of a trans man, that my life would probably be harder and I would face challenges that I simply do not face in my day to day life. I think that is objectively true. Just as I think it is objectively true that I could live the exact life I currently live right now as a woman- I would just have to date slightly different people. I've even offered this opinion unprompted in conversation about gender multiple times.

I just think that this is a hypothetical, and that the chances of me running into someone with literally the exact same life as me with a single gender difference is fairly low, because there are a near infinite amount of combinations of various intersections and identities and a significantly smaller number of people who live in my geographic area. There are some who get close- like my Canadian friend- but she also has a number of differences which do dramatically impact the way she lives her life vs the way I live mine.

Which at that point makes the "who is more oppressed" point moot- because the other person's life may differ so significantly from mine and their point of view may consider something worse than my point of view. For instance, the trans woman who mentored me in college felt that being murdered is worse than being raped. I have the opposite opinion, that being raped is worse than being murdered. Unsurprisingly, the violence that affects our respective demographics is directly reflected in our feared "worst outcomes". It's a matter of perspective, and there isn't one right answer to two horrific acts of violence regularly enacted upon the transgender community as a whole.

She had the opinion that we both had the right to use the word transmisogyny to discuss the differences and similarities of how we were treated from "both sides" of the gender equation. To this day I still think her framework made more sense than a significant amount of what I see online. But people have called me an MRA for *checks notes* listening to the trans woman who taught me most of my basic queer politics.

I don't think that what trans men vs trans women experience as a demographic are that different. I think what differences do exist are largely the same hate coming from the same place, wearing a different face depending on who it's directed towards and what assumption that person has made about their victim.

And I think a lot of people are caught up on a "finished product" as the mental pictures of their theory and not the in-progress or still-closeted portions of their own communities. Sure, a guy like me who passes for cis in 99% of situations nets a lot of situational male privilege. But does the teenage trans guy with a Disney Princess name who can't breathe a word to any of his friends and desperately wants to kill himself while his parents deny him access to gender-affirming care and force him to wear push up bras and short skirts and heels and make up? Because that was me too, and I'd love to know what male privilege I experienced as I was pinned to the ground while they put makeup on me, while I was flashed by strangers on the bus, while I was sexually assaulted by a classmate.

There is this disconnect as though anything we've experienced prior to coming out no longer exists, and as though simply coming out fixes the entire situation and the male privilege fairy comes down from the clouds to deliver our he/him pronouns herself. Sorry, but I was on the receiving end of a whole lot of misogyny and misogynoir until suddenly I wasn't because I looked too much like a man for people to continue to treat me like a woman. I've known I'm transgender since I was 13. That day didn't hit until I was 30.

Do trans men have the ability to lean into transmisogyny in order to benefit from it? Sure. But so does Caitlyn Jenner on a fairly regular basis, so I don't think you have to necessarily not be a trans woman in order to do so. Kanye West has benefited quite highly from his own antiblackness, despite being modern white supremacy dancing monkey. Cis women on the Supreme Court voted against abortion rights. Musk is an immigrant and Trump is a felon and they both are gleefully enacting policies to hurt immigrants and felons. Being *able* to wield oppressive structures to hurt others you see as below you does not require you to be in a different demographic than those people. It just requires you to have a slightly different experience as a result of a different intersection.

[plaidos]

hi, it's the tgirl who showed up during your twitch stream for support after having her world shattered by the realization she's a woman. i've so far been very privileged in my life but my parents are dropping me entirely after this semester of college and i've been terrified by the ramping up of transphobic legislation & general rise of fascism in the United States. thank you for talking about how things are in the UK, it's really been helpful in keeping myself grounded.

i hope things get better for all of us everywhere soon, and I hope I've not been too much of a bother to you either

i’m glad that i was helpful, but i think something needs to be said — you yourself said that you had lived a privileged life until now so I’m going to assume you are also white so i can see why you think i that the US has been getting considerably worse lately but like…. it hasn’t really changed that much, people are just able to talk about it on social media now. like, people my parents’ age/generation lived during racially segregated bathrooms; this stuff isn’t new at all, it’s just new to you because you’ve been thrown in the deep end of learning you’re a minority.

speaking of segregated bathrooms, it is absolutely scary that the US is implementing anti-trans bathroom bills — but these bills are only being presented as a resistance to trans rights progressing. twenty years ago in most places there didn’t need to be bathroom bills because nobody was gonna stick up for the tranny when we got kicked out of a bathroom. so in some ways this legislation only exists because people have conceded we exist and can’t just be ignored and easily put out of mind.

things seem rough right now but they’ve always been rough. there has never been in a time in recent history where being trans has been easy. and i promise, as dire as it seems out there, there has never been a better time to communicate, co-operate & collaborate with other trans women worldwide.

it’s going to be okay. like i said, you jumped in the deep-end. coming out as trans is like jumping in to a pool to get over the cold. you’ll acclimatise, i promise. and it’s actually better in here. even if it’s a little cold. you’ve always wanted to go swimming, after all, right? 😊

[genderqueerdykes]

I’ve been feeling really sad lately bc after this latest rise in anti transmasc sentiment I’ve had to unfollow some trans women I’ve been following for literal years bc they started reblogging and posting really nasty and very uncharitable things abt transmascs on my feed. And like. These are women whose voices I very much respected and listened to, and to hear them basically say they consider me an enemy who can’t be trusted bc I want to talk about my experiences, but all of our issues are really just splash damage from bigotry directed at them and talking abt my own experiences without acknowlefing that it’s not really meant for me is wrong. It’s like. So hurtful. And it makes me feel really hopeless about the future of the trans community.

How do I fight back against that hopelessness?

it really sucks and i'm sorry you're also being affected by this. i hear people talk about this every single day and i really don't like that this is just becoming a default in the trans community in general. it seems like the default mode of most online queers is hating transmascs and trans men as if that will somehow make cishet society accept them more. it's selfish behavior.

i'm an intersex trans woman and it's hard for me to interact with the online transfem and trans woman communities, because we're seeing a new experience in the form of transradfeminism, where trans women proudly adopt the anti-man ideals from rad feminism and spread it like it's the truth. it's a sad and painful thing to say, but these trans women are doing this because they believe rad fems and women who hate men are the only "Real" women and desperately want to be seen as "real" women. it stems from their personal dysphoria rooted in manhood, how they take out their own dysphoria in being seen as men on men and mascs. it comes from a place of pain, and it is misguided. instead of directing their hatred toward transmisogyny, they keep it inside the community. it's vile.

it's really sad but trans women and transfems are not immune to being indoctrinated by rad fems and terfs. applying those ideals to being trans isn't progressive. dictating who is and isn't trans is an act of policing. feeling as though one has the right to sit there and claim to know every trans experience, claiming to be the authority on transness... it's fascism.

i'm just plain tired of hearing people make fun of afab trans people and trans men and to talk about them like they're a blight on the community. im tired of people saying things like "do we really need more men?" i'm really sick and tired of chronically online people saying that trans men "aren't real trans people". this one really pisses me off. implying that trans womanhood and transfemininity are the only "real" ways to be trans is also identity policing. what is "unreal" about trans men? i'm tired of trans men being treated like they're unreliable. i'm tired of people wearing their misogyny on their sleeve to constantly treat trans men like they are not reliable narrators. i'm tired of people thinking somehow the instant you begin identifying as a man, you benefit from patriarchy.

i'm tired that people seriously think trans men and mascs can't coin terms for their own experiences. why the hell not? they happen, just because you don't see them personally doesn't mean they don't happen. i have met and lived with so many transmascs over the years, and we've all shared very similar stories about the discrimination we face. it's not spitting in the face of anyone to coin terms like transandrophobia and antimasculism. they happen just as often as transmisogyny does, and happily participating in it only increases trans violence

these talking points are old and it sucks to see more and more trans women get indoctrinated into literal rad feminism. hating trans men will not make dysphoria around being seen as a man go away. hating trans men does not dismantle the patriarchy. hating afab people isn't progressive, it's misogynistic. hating intersex trans men isn't progressive, it's transphobic -and- intersexist. trans men deserve so much better than this. trans men are trans. trans men are people. trans men are not evil by virtue of existing

i say try to do your best to connect with and appreciate the other trans men and mascs in your life. we have to stick together. if you have transfem friends who are on your side, make sure to be there for them, too. not every trans woman is like this fortunately, most trans women are very chill about trans manhood. this is a vocal minority of people who want to be fascists and want to control and police other trans people. transradfeminism isn't progressive, it's just as bad as regular rad feminism, if not worse, because now there's an even bigger focus on hating trans people.

hating other trans people will never get you ahead in cisheteronormative society. try to take care of yourself as best as you can. really relish trans joy when you experience it. take time to affirm your gender. know that manhood is a blessing. manhood is beautiful. it is varied, nuanced, and complex. it is a wonderful thing to experience. men are not evil. men are not bad. we should never remove the accountability from individuals.

hating trans men makes you transphobic. there's just no other way to it. whether or not you accept that it's called transandrophobia, it is still transphobia, and you really should care. the trans community isn't here for just 1 type of trans person. it's here for all of us. good luck, stay safe out there. be good to yourself

[so-i-did-this-thing]

I don't know where else to ask this but honestly I sometimes wish I was trans, from what I hear the transitioning is wounderus to go through (not so much the transphobic people obviously) and I just can't seem to find any joy anymore

I also can see why this is horrible as trans people have to go through so much just for being trans and i

just don't know what to do anymore

Idon't feel uncomfortable in my body or seek to become a woman so I don't think I'm actually trans, but the idea of becoming happy for once in my god damn life just seems so good

I'm sorry if this is a horrible thing to say but I just want to be happy

Hey there, Anon. Sounds like you're in a bad place right now.

Fwiw, medical transition for me was the clearing out of a lot of background radiation so I could do the actual hard work of becoming a better man. There is a lot of shit about myself I've had to fix that HRT will never improve. It's been a long road and continues to be so.

I feel like you're looking for a blueprint for happiness, and maybe it seems to you that trans people have a clear path, given how dramatic physical transition can be.

But I'd ask you to dig deeper, and look for inspiration in all the groundwork that goes into transition. And see how this work could apply in your case:

Realize you are not alone

Understand there is a lot of work to do - a lifetime of it - but it will be worth it

Constantly self-reflect

Articulate who you are and who you are not

Set goals and find role models for who you want to be

Work out a plan for what steps - even modest ones like a fresh haircut or change of clothes - you need to take to be your best self

Empower yourself to experiment with how you present yourself to the world

Get comfortable with the idea that your "best self" might look very different in the future than how it looks now

Stand up for yourself & uplifting others

Reach out for community - ask for help when you need it, and help others when you can

Get professional help when it's necessary

Learn the benefits, risks, and limitations of medication

Track your progress & being kind to yourself on the bad days

Relentlessly look for joy

Find strength in vulnerability

Don't be afraid to cut out toxic people from your life

Give yourself permission to take up space in the world

Acknowledge that change takes time and is the accumulation of mostly a lot of little steps, with the occasional big leap

Transition is deeply rooted in how we see ourselves and how we want to be perceived by and move about in society. And honestly, isn't that just being a human being?

It seems to me like you're unmoored right now. And possibly isolated. A good way to find help is to connect with other human beings (seek out community) and learn tools for making better connections (work with a therapist).

Hopefully with some time spent working on these connections, you can connect better with yourself and forge your path towards happiness.

[trainsinanime]

Is there a specific scientific term for what I'll call "harm construction", meaning "thinking of ways that something harms someone in order to condemn it"? There must be, right? I see it all the time and it's not new. Let me give some examples in random order.

One of the first cases where I really remember it was at least a decade ago, an online article by a British newspaper, about how an online store had put a pole dancing pole in their toys section. A bit of an embarrassing mistake but nothing more.

However, that article provided several quotes from a British couple who said they were very worried, because their kid could have seen that. It seems pretty clear that their kid did not, in fact, actually see it, but the newspaper treated their concern as if it was a genuine thing to worry about. It was utterly ridiculous.

A more recent example is a call-out ask I received a few months ago and, of course, immediately deleted, but it's still been living rent-free in my head since then, because it was so horribly bad. I'll not repeat the exact wording, but they were annoyed that their victim blog (which I don't follow and haven't for years, if ever, and they don't follow me) was annoying and sometimes said mean things. They very ineptly tried to explain that this might have been part of the reasons why someone else, completely unrelated, sent out hate messages to yet another person. That was the harm that was so big that it supposedly justified a targeted harassment campaign. (If you're the person who wrote that call-out ask, please rethink your life. You were only increasing the hate in the world, not making anything better. I suspect the sender wasn't anyone who actually follows me, but just in case).

The biggest and most prominent example of harm construction right now is of course all about trans people, bathrooms and school sports. Conservatives and TERFs alike need a reason to oppose the existence of trans people beyond "I personally find them weird", because saying that out loud gets them correctly branded as bigots. How do you turn "let's be really mean to a marginalised group" into a progressive cause? By saying that the existence of this group causes harm. The problem with that is that trans people existing does not actually cause any harm, it's literally fine.

So in an effort to construct harm after all, they have searched far and wide for something that trans people could even theoretically damage, and the only things they managed to come up with are "there might be someone with unexpected genitals behind that bathroom stall door" and "the sanctity of gender-segregated sports". If it weren't for their cultural and political power then it would almost be funny how little potential harm they managed to find and how much they have to amplify it. They're just another couple in the newspaper worried that their kid might potentially see a website.

If you look for it, harm construction is everywhere, because we all sort of agree on a surface level that dividing people into "normal, acceptable" and "weird, must be punished" isn't nice, but the instinct to punish people for being "weird" is still alive and well and many people refuse to question it.

At a completely different end, anytime someone uses the word "normalisation" about a fanfic on Ao3, that's another example. We all know making blorbos do weird things doesn't actually hurt anybody (assuming proper tagging and so on), but we still want to punish people who do it wrong. So we construct harm, by arguing that seeing something on Ao3 might "normalise" the thing and make it more likely that someone will do it in real life.

These examples are very different, at very different ends of almost all scales of power and cultural influence and meaning, but the core idea is always the same. So, yeah. There must be a better term for this.

[deadend-if]

DEMO TBA | INFO | 17+

Most people would describe your life as normal. You live in a small apartment in the middle of a bustling city. It's a city bursting with life and opportunities, things you’ve grown accustomed to. It's been a few years since moving here with your former college roommate, turned best friend. Life pulled the both of you to the city to pursue your careers, living comfortably since. So, when someone comes knocking at your door with wide, panicked eyes, you feel the urge to just move on with your day. That is, of course, not possible when they drop the fact that your roommate is dead, followed by an invitation to get them back.

This IF is written in twine and will be posted on itch.io. It is currently a work in progress. Advice is appreciated due to this being my first attempt at something like this <3

This story will delve into grief, death, and dying, all while exploring everything the underworld has to offer. Face ghosts of everyone's pasts, get into trouble with Underworld Law and become closer along the way.

Play as a fully customizable character, choose your character's name, pronouns/gender, sexuality, appearance, college degree, and more!

Travel through the underworld, explore the vast layers the city of the dead has to offer and meet the people who reside there.

Determine how you traverse loss and all the things that come with it. Either ignore or come to terms with what might happen at the end of it all.

Build a relationship with 1 of 4 character options (or 1 of 2(?) poly options!), two gender selectable, and two set genders (non-binary spectrum). (Play as aro, gay, straight, bi, trans, etc. Platonic relationships will be just as important in this game!)

This game is for 17 and up. There will be NO sexual themes, but there will be heavy topics, explicit language, and graphic descriptions of death. More Content Warnings will be listed in the demo.

The Best Friend | Abel/Abella Robinson [he/him or she/her] - RO

Your best friend since freshman year of college, once random strangers sharing a dorm, now living together of your own free will. A is an elementary school teacher with a calm, gentle heart. They are a bit of a doormat but are kind despite the world being cruel. For years they have been a loyal friend and helped you whenever you needed it, now it's time to help them escape the clutches of death.

The Guilty Reaper | Mortimer/Mort/Mortie [any pronouns] - RO

Mortimer has your best interests in mind, at least that's why they tell you when they pop up at your doorstep with tickets to the underworld. Being out of touch with humanity is supposed to be an asset for reapers, but Mortimer has always wanted to know everything there is to know about humanity. Can you even believe someone like them? Mort seems a little too honest, and a little too curious, but they're the only tour guide for the underworld that you know of.

Your Best Friend's Best Friend | Santiago/Santina "Santi" Vega [he/him or she/her] - RO

You know A has other friends, but what you don't know is why they hate you so much. Santi has never liked you, not four years ago, not today. They are sarcastic and confident. They will always take the opportunity to outshine you, it's hard to understand why someone like A would even tolerate being around them. Whether you like it or not, they're still A's other best friend, and are just as determined to get them back safe and sound... Even if it means having to do it with you.

The Guard | Kyo [he/they] - RO

A (begrudging) friend of Mort and one of many guards of the underworld. They're a mystery to you and even to their closest friend. Kyo doesn't speak much. They are blunt, easily annoyed, and strictly there to keep an eye on everyone. He prefers to follow the rules and stay under the radar, especially since he seems to have something to lose. They seem to only tag along to keep Mort out of trouble, but there has to be something more to their goals. Why else would they risk so much for people they don't know?

Poly Options <3

A & S K & M (A secret third option, perchance?)

DEMO TBA | INFO

[rottingmalice]

mizuena/ena5 incoherent rant below bc i love them so much im losing my mind

I can't stop thinking about how much of mizuki's conflict in prsk is resolved entirely by ena's actions, not mizuki's own, and that's actually really fucking good. hear me out.

One of the driving emotions for Mizuki's conflict is obviously fear; she's afraid of being left once people know her secret, she's afraid she can only ever have shallow connections with people who wouldn't really accept her as who she is, she's afraid of losing the few friends she has and the one space where she feels like she can express herself through their shared art.

But beyond that, the other driving emotion for her is guilt. She feels guilty that she's been "deceiving" everyone else, she feels guilty that she's left Ena waiting for so long without telling her her secret, she feels guilty that everyone else seems to be moving forward and facing their fears while she seemingly can't. And when her secret is revealed, the strongest emotion she's going through isn't her fear of being left behind, it's the guilt that's been eating her away from the inside.

She tells ena that it can't be the same, that now ena won't be able to treat her the same, that she knows Ena and Kanade and Mafuyu are so kind they'll smile and tell her they're fine with it, but that they'll just be forcing themselves for the sake of kindness. That they'd rather not have to deal with everything that makes Mizuki complicated, but they would anyway because they're kind like that. That she can't bear that. She doesn't deserve that.

And all of this guilt is so real for this young trans girl to feel because it's what we're pushed towards constantly, even when we're supposedly accepted for who we are. The lie that we're deceiving others when we present as our own gender is so deeply written into our collective psyche, and even beyond that, even in "progressive" spaces, the violence we suffer is often treated as our own burden to bear, as something we have to deal with and not burden other people with.

So many basic bitch stories about trans women, with trans women protags written by cis people, have them struggle and "grow" as the story progresses, having to "face their fears", to come out to people they're scared of leaving them, to "trust their loved ones" and take that first step. I think a lot about The Missing, a game that gets a lot of the horror of being a trans girl and yet still has the protagonist, who is so terrified of how her mom would react to her coming out she tries to end her own life, learn the lesson that she should come out anyway, trust this person that's only given her reasons to fear her, because that's the only way for her to move forward.

Mizuki doesn't do that. She doesn't have to. Mizu5 is all about the horror of being outed before you're ready to come out yourself, even to someone you know would show you kindness. And it allows Mizuki to stew in her own guilt, the guilt that she never faced her fears herself, that she's burdening N25 with her suffering. But Ena5 is about Ena, so patient and unwilling to hurt Mizuki, finally being moved to action by kaito and meiko agreeing that it's up to her to be selfish and try to bring Mizuki back, to recognize that Mizuki doesn't want to be alone.

It's up to Ena to do the scary thing, for her to be open and vulnerable about her feelings. For her to go up to Mizuki, despite being ignored for so long, as someone who is so sensitive to being ignored- to being rejected- and to tell Mizuki what she needs- and deserves- to hear. That she's wanted. That Ena doesn't care if Mizuki thinks she deserves it or not, that Mizuki's guilt shouldn't factor in because Ena wants Mizuki beside her.

It's the ultimate transfem fantasy because it's the fantasy of being truly wanted, of being unconditionally loved. It's the fantasy of someone seeing you for who you are, and not just "accepting you" as if it's a favor they're doing you, but going as far as telling you that the way you've been conditioned by a lifetime of violence to feel and act to protect yourself is NOT your fault, it's NOT just your responsibility to deal with, that you deserve someone who will go through the effort of digging you out of that hole and that you're not a burden for needing that.

In a lot of subtle ways, Mizuki's story feels 1000% written by people who understand trans girls so far beyond the scope of the usual explaining-transness-to-cis-people style of narrative, even understanding ways that these narratives fuck up routinely and also understanding exactly what is needed to sneak this into a highly commercial hatsune miku gacha game. There's a lot of compromises made there for the sake of being this kind of story in this kind of game, but what we get in return is so much more meaningful as a transfem narrative than anything of similar popularity that I can think of, it fills me with so much emotion and I truly can't fathom believing it's somehow "bait" or "not real rep" unless you've never had to think about transmisogyny and how it emotionally affects you to this degree.

I'll never stop thinking about them. Congrats on the wedding mizuki and ena. someone like ena is exactly what every trans girl deserves, and never has someone proven herself more deserving of a trans girl's love than ena. i love them both so much my heart feels like it's going to explode whenever i think of them. huge thanks to everyone involved in creating their story