#aka the “how do we make this man as autistic and trans as possible and also retain some of his fucked-up-ness from his protoype” build

[anendoandfriendo]

WIP Profile for Aster (Actual)

"Look, I’m a little busy right now, could you please come back la – ah, so you wanted to talk to me about that? I guess I could explain the difference once more between the two substances, but only once more. Please pay attention this time. I wouldn’t want you corroding your longsword like before…or losing an arm because of me…"

Aster and Astellaryx are probably more like fire and water: they seem more like opposites until you realize fire and water make steam. You wouldn’t really expect them to get along, until you do, and the dynamic that’s created still looks a lot more unstable and has a lot more movement than either of its components. It’s extremely hard to follow either of the twins, but more so Aster, who is the brains behind the scenes.

Aster has a tendency to take what most people would consider way too much time to accomplish his plans, and his curiosity is generally more idle curiosity for his surroundings. Observation is key to planning, which can come in handy both in naturalistic and metropolitan environments. Or, as he puts it: “I prefer case studies but, well, in a pinch I guess I don’t mind a bit of tinkering,” when asked. One will often find him fidgeting with some small part in his hands when he isn’t mixing some weird substance(s) and testing them out.

This is especially true when someone as, ah, excuse him, bullheaded as his sister is in his presence on a regular basis. At this point, he isn’t even surprised by the actions of his counterpart. He is just glad his sibling didn’t set the entire casino on fire, or just randomly grab him and get everyone in the building killed, that one time he got himself kidnapped by another organization. It’s Astellaryx he’s talking about. She can take care of the both of them just fine, so he probably shouldn’t question it too much. Annoyingly, she had decided kidnapping him right back would be a better plan than letting him bide his time and make his own escape.

It’s not like he’s super weak; he is a cow demon after all, just like Astellaryx. He just prefers to stay silent and step in only when things look bad enough, so the poor bastard who has earned Aster’s ire is probably in for quite the fun time! If they’re lucky, they will get to see his new dance moves featuring his newly-crafted blades, for about a few seconds before he snaps their neck backwards. If they aren’t lucky, let’s just say Aster is the kind of dude who is no-nonsense once you manage to light a fire under his tail.

He keeps a notebook on him at all times which contains many many diagrams, formulae, random notes he’s scribbled into the book over time, experiment ideas, observations he's made about other individuals, and more. Most of the toxins he coats his weapons with, and also his weapons themselves, likely originated from this notebook. The generic brands are just too flimsy for the way he fights: as adaptable and fluid as the water, the line between battle and dance can be very thin at times and it is a style he desires to emulate. Taking a life can be just as much of an art as observing or creating it after all…

Regarding this notebook: he would probably be quite lost without it as he tends to be forgetful at times, as it functions secondarily as a personal diary (Aster will not admit to this). If you squint a little you can see notes about his personal feelings in the day-to-day: a small flag (transgender flag) design is often doodled into the margins of the pages, and some of the diagrams are about the facial expressions and body language of several different species. This last one he blows off as an extension of his personal studies, but he is lying – very well, but still lying – as Aster is the exact opposite of a sociologist in many regards.

An extension of his curiosity can be found on his own body as Aster has made minor modifications to his own body for shits and giggles, much to the chagrin of many in his childhood village. The face paint was one thing and easily blamed on the social differences between him and his peers; sharpening his horns and his attempts at changing his physical biology were another thing that earned him and his sibling an exile. This was not before Astellaryx summoned an absolutely massive thunderstorm in her desperation and massacred half of that village after having enough of the twins’ mistreatment. This incident is dismissed by both as just “the stabbing of a local politician and his associates” if either of the two are pestered enough.

The lie has been repeated often enough that even Aster sometimes believes it by accident. He was quite skilled at bullshitting his way through and around situations even before this “stabbing” incident, which has not done him any favors. If he is trying to talk his way into or out of something, he could literally sell you water with food coloring in it, and most people would never be the wiser for it. :))))

//// Insert here: two weeks' worth of writing after today the personality and life of Aster, and while we're at it try to see if we can make some more inferences about the personality and life of Astellaryx too. \\\\

[jaelijn]

Trans!Vila - what’s up with that?

1. Introduction

It’s been a while since I posted a meta, hasn’t it? It’s probably not a good idea to start off again with a meta that it in many ways not typical - which I will get into. So, for reference, this is my usual approach for meta:

I tend to analyse and interpret close to the canon text, which in this case includes only the show (no expanded universe, no actor/writer etc. statements). Obviously, my reading of the canon text is not universal - your mileage, of course, may vary; see also: there is no such thing as “the canon” - but I tend to make it clear when I approach something from a specific perspective rather than just my general perspective on the show, and I try to clarify the line between what’s evidenced in the text and what is speculative. So, sometimes I do use a specific lens, but I rarely start off my meta with a coloured lens, aka I don’t usually (not that I have never, but usually) write metas that have prerequisite assumptions/ideas etc. about the canon without which the meta itself would be pointless. Even when I talked about asexual or autistic Avon, for example, I explained what in the text can support those readings; I didn’t go into the analysis assuming that Avon was (for example) asexual and explored the canon from there, or at least I tried not to. I started with the text and explored its evidence for that interpretative possibility, not the other way around.

That’s what I usually do. This meta is different.

It starts off with the premise that Vila is a FTM trans man (or possibly a F-T-male-aligned nonbinary person, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s not go into that), regardless of whether or not the text supports this. While I certainly explore the ways in the canon slots into the headcanon, I don’t intend to use the canon text to show the evidence for Vila possibly being trans. It may be that I’m implying a functional difference between my “Vila is trans” headcanon and “Avon is ace” headcanon (for example) in doing so here, which isn’t necessarily wholly intentional - they are both interpretations or headcanons, if you prefer, in the end - but I do think that the canon text supports both the ace and the autistic Avon reading in ways that it doesn’t do for a trans reading - any trans reading, really. That is not to say that the text can’t fit a trans!Vila in, simply that I think there are way less (however unintentional) clues for such a possibility than there are for my other “identity” headcanons.

That said, I did want to talk more about trans!Vila in a non-fiction setting, explore what makes it work for me, what made me think of it, what Vila being trans may imply for the story world / for him as character. So I’m not going to do a Trans 101 (or trans-folk-in-fiction 101), I’m not going to pick through the whole text for evidence, to point to lines that could say “Vila is trans!”, but I am going to expand on this headcanon of mine. Without further ado...

2. The Meta

There are three big topics I want to get into regarding Vila:

Vila’s name, naming conventions in B7 and names in a trans context

Vila’s chameleonic nature

the performative flavour to Vila’s masculinity

I’ll explain what I mean by these below. Afterwards, I will also briefly speculate more broadly how being trans may play out in the Federation.

2.1 What’s in a name?

While it is generally worth remembering, particularly also for this meta, that we know extremely little about Vila, one of the “oddities” that have in the past been pointed out about him is that while every single other male character whose first and last name we know is referred to by their last name, even Gan, Vila, clearly, isn’t.

The general speculation seems to be that it’s a grade thing, but by extension it also seems to be a sexism/gender thing, as all women (whose first and last name we know) are referred to by their first name. There are less female characters to draw on for comparison, but it holds true at least for both Dayna and Jenna.

If, for the women, the reason is gender, is it really sensible to assume that, in Vila’s case, the reason is something else entirely? Would it not be reasonable to assume that one reason applies to both?

Generally, my go-to one reason tends to be that it’s a matter of personal preference, as I tend to be less interested in exploring the Federation society (and by extension also our crew) as fundamentally sexist or as classist, but this is where I first started thinking: If the reason for Dayna and Jenna is gender, why could it not also be gender in Vila’s case?

Now, I am emphatically NOT saying that Vila, if he is a trans man, is “not really a man”/”actually a woman” and that is why he is referred to by female naming conventions. Aside from the idea of “just pretending” being a transphobic concept in the first place, that is not what I think, which brings me back to my go-to reason of personal choice:

Assuming Vila was assigned female at birth (afab), he may have become used to being called by his first name. The name “Vila” itself, with its -a ending, also has a slightly more feminine alignment (like Dayna, Anna, Jenna...), though this is perhaps less strong in English than it is in other languages. 

Now, for the majority of trans people, changing their name is a major step towards living as their actual gender, rather than their gender assigned at birth. It doesn’t always mean choosing a new name that is clearly gendered in a different way, but divorcing oneself from the birth name, which generally reflects the gender assigned at birth, is common. Leaving aside the question of how the (fictional) name of “Vila” is gendered, which is impossible to answer, we have a few possibilities:

Given Vila’s criminal background, it’s highly likely that “Vila Restal” is not his birth name anyway, which would make the whole thing a chosen name - but if it is a chosen name, Vila would also have chosen to (continue to) be referred to by his first name, despite transitioning, even though he could easily have switched to the male conventions while switching his name.

If it isn‘t an alias, aka Vila Restal was always “Vila Restal” as person afab, then possibly Vila never felt the need to divorce himself from his birth name, female-gendered or not, including the convention of being called “Vila” as opposed to “Restal”. Perhaps “Vila” is gender neutral anyway, perhaps Vila was simply never bothered by his name.

Or perhaps “Vila” was his former last name, and it’s his personal insider joke.

It’s fair to assume, at least, that Vila isn’t as adamant about presenting whole male when it comes to his name, always assuming that the first-name-naming convention is a gender thing. This may be indicative of changing attitudes towards being trans, to gendered names, or simply of Vila’s own preferences - but if he is trans, he may be not bothered by being not entirely male gender conforming and/or not bothered by people possible catching on that he is trans. In fact, if he chose the naming convention himself, rather than simply sticking with it out of habit, it almost does read like a deliberate joke - and that wouldn’t be totally unlike Vila, after all.

(Now, we could also speculated that this is a hint at actually-female-and-crossdressing Vila, which is interesting in itself, but not the subject here.)

Either way, this little “oddity” of Vila’s name was what first made me go “hmmmm....”. 

2.2 Vila’s nature

Once again: we know very little about Vila. There have been discussions before on how sometimes he has a genuine menacing edge, where the career criminal really comes out as well as his cleverness, while at other times he can be (or play at being) a complete buffoon, to mention just two extremes.

I have said before that I think Vila heavily adapts his behaviour to his surroundings to the point of play-acting. Compare, for instance, Vila in “The Keeper” to Vila in “Killer” - in “The Keeper”, he pretends to be the funny but harmless jester in response to a dangerous situation, hiding his cleverness almost entirely, in “Killer” he is more outspoken and tough than usual in response to Tynus’s dismissiveness and, frankly, the tension in the situation, even when he’s alone with Avon. The two almost don’t seem like the same person.

While I tend to think that the real Vila falls somewhere in the middle, but probably closer to the one on “Killer”, the point of this is that Vila is, by nature, highly chameleonic, adapting to the environment for his own safety.

Again, I’m NOT saying Vila is only playing at being a man, what I AM saying is that it is not inconceivable that a young Vila would have experimented extensively with gender alongside all kinds of other roles, and in the course of this would have found that, actually, being male worked, being male fit, being male was what he was, and he then took that realisation and ran with it.

Perhaps it was, initially, a mere crossdressing/fitting in where “as a woman” he wouldn’t, but because Vila is so extremely chameleonic, I think he also is very careful in what he picks for being and remaining part of his actual, core self rather than part of a (protective) shtick. These parts, he clings to all the more tightly, sometimes to the exclusion of other opportunities - such as his identity as a thief vs his possible future with Kerril. And he certainly seems to stick with being male more than he sticks with being a coward or many, many other pieces of his performing nature.

2.3 Performing masculinity

Following on from that, another thing that makes me think there is more to Vila’s gender (and sexuality, really) than appears is that when he does posture as strictly cis het male, it feels, again, performative.

Now, in this I am also NOT saying that Vila isn’t “properly male” or that his maleness is “fake” (again, hello transphobic talking points), but that he has picked up on the fact that ALL masculinity, particularly as it is commonly (or should I say, normatively) understood and performed, is exactly that: a performance. So while Vila is (trans) male, he also seems to be more aware of masculinity as a construct, as something that he may dial up in performance, or dial it down, respectively, which is something that doesn’t seem to come naturally to the majority of cis people - and none of the other characters seem to do it.

I don’t think Vila, as trans man, is interesting in presenting hyper-masculine - he has settled on his level of masculinity, with a flexibility and possibly amount of self-referential humour in his position as trans man, see his name. He isn’t in any way “imperfectly male”, nor does he generally seem insecure about his gender the way he presents it. Beyond that, however, he also seems to know all of the talking points of “proper cis het male”, or of normative (and possibly toxic) masculinity, which will lead me to citing some things from the show below at last, but first a final thought: This awareness of gender as performance is what strikes me here, rather some notion of Vila performing “imperfectly”. As in, all of the male characters in the show perform masculinity in one way or another (even outside of a certain BS episode), but Vila strikes me as the only one who is aware of the performance, which he sometimes leans into, but never with full seriousness:

He occasionally leers, but never really pursues it - we have talked before about how Vila rarely even touches one of his female crewmates (or anyone, really) without them touching him first.

Sarcophagus, for example:

VILA [...] Thanks, Cally. [He looks at their still-linked hands.] I never realized you felt this way about me.

Also, his most “disgusting” (Dayna’s words, not mine) is in Stardrive, when it is, textually, a complete and utter pretense:

VILA [enters] Hello there! Anyone for a party? I'm afraid you'll have to bring your own booze 'cause I've already drunk my own. Anyone got any booze? Huh? [stumbles slightly as he crosses to the station next to Soolin] And how about my cold, calculating Soolin? I'd like to see you unbend [Soolin moves to a different station] just a little before we're all ... all ...

DAYNA Sometimes, Vila, you can be quite disgusting.

VILA Not so, my lovely. I can be disgusting all the time. It's easy. Easy as colliding with an asteroid, eh, Avon?

In fact, that is all but an admittance of play-acting at the more toxic aspects of masculinity. Even his reaction in “Moloch”, which is entirely saved by MK’s performance and just from the script could have gone very differently, hints more at playing up to the cishetnormativity for chameleonic safety reasons than to actually adhering to it.

Vila occasionally dreams about hetero(cis)normative life goals, but never with full seriousness, like dreaming of having kids (but not a partner!) in “Harvest of Kairos”, or his “Royal Mounties” in “Orbit”, both of which are wistful, over-the-top fantasies:

VILA 'Course I may settle down, you know, have kids. What do you think, Cally?

CALLY What do I think of what?

VILA The lakeside of Gardinos. We could go swimming by the light of three moons.

DAYNA Who could? You and Cally?

VILA No, me and the kids.

CALLY [to Vila] But you haven't got any children.

VILA Not yet, I haven't.

TARRANT Vila, you're dreaming. Two weeks of that, and you'd be looking for something to break into.

(And as a matter of fact, he gives up on Kerril.)

VILA I'll have an imperial palace with solid diamond floors, and a bodyguard of a thousand handpicked virgins in red fur uniforms. Vila's Royal Mounties.

AVON You're dreaming again.

Again, this isn’t to say that Vila fails at being a “proper (cis) man”, but that he seems to be more conscious of the fact that all gender (and sexuality) is just that, performances, than is perhaps average.

There is even his little remark to Avon, following on from Pinder calling him (Avon) “Ma’am”, which is perhaps the closest the show ever gets to overt slippage in gender:

AVON I was thinking about Pinder, and the way he said "pleased to make your acquaintance, ma'am".

VILA Is that worrying you?  Listen, if it'll set your mind at rest, I never thought you were a woman. 

While not being about Vila himself, this hints at an awareness of a flexibility of gender that is perhaps not immediately available to someone who never considered the subject for personal reasons, so it does feel fitting as a trans guy’s joke to me. (It also feels fitting as a gay/bi/pan guy’s joke, for that matter, but gender identity and sexual orientation, while separate, are not easily separated, if that makes sense, aka being trans is also generally being queer, even if one is strictly heterosexual.)

2.4 Summary

In sum, these are perhaps the three main reasons/lines of thought that make trans!Vila worked in my head. There are other, smaller things that I take more or less seriously (male pattern baldness, hehehe), but these are the big, essential ones, which really boils down to this:

Vila strikes me as someone who deliberately chooses his identity at any given moment - and we acknowledge that he does adapt in this way, why should he have stopped at questioning his gender beyond what he was assigned at birth? And, perhaps more importantly, if he does adapt to these extreme levels, what he doesn’t shift (anymore) is all the more telling, especially since he also seems to have the awareness that it can be adjusted. That is, that he sticks with being male in the way he presents is indicative of him having already made it to a point where he wants his gender / its representation to be, and refusing to go back. 

3. Speculation: Being Trans in the Federation

To close this, I want to highlight some areas of speculation regarding being trans in the Federation more broadly, without really going into any of them in depth.

Medically transitioning: I didn’t really go into this, but I do think Vila medically transitioned, at least in taking hormones, if not necessarily surgery. Depending on the advances of medicine and/or trans healthcare, his transition may however have looked differently than it would today, and may have different long-term implications, such as a permanent hormone change replacing the need for taking them etc.

Societal attitudes: This is particularly interesting, as in some ways Federation society strikes me as fairly equal in terms of binary genders, while also sexist in others, and of course there would be a follow-on effect on transgender people. There is also the question of general attitudes towards LGBTQIA+ folk.

Prison environments/criminal environments: As Jenna demonstrates, female criminals aren’t unheard of, but as Jenna also demonstrates, there are gender-related difficulties to being anything other than (cis) male in those kinds of environments. Whether this would have influenced Vila’s transition is another question, really, but it may certainly have been part of his earlier explorations, with a certain blurring between crossdressing/gender-nonconformity and being trans.

Gender constructs/concepts: I have, in this meta, very much drawn on contemporary gender concepts, but it’s also entirely possible that the perspective on gender would shift entirely - perhaps being trans would be normalised to a point where nobody would remark upon it, or gender generally would become more flexible, or something else entirely would happen, particularly given potential contact with non-Earth intelligent species with potentially even more diverse sexes, never mind genders. I don’t think the canon text necessarily supports that, but it is also 40 years old and reflective of its own time - whereas we may well go far further with the scifi speculations!

And this, really, is the thought I want to leave this on. Perhaps there is too little textual evidence to call this headcanon an interpretation or an actual reading of the text, but does that really matter? Why not just run with it? Trans people do exist, after all.

[vampish-glamour]

My experience with people overthinking trans people’s name/pronouns

I’ve been meaning to make this post for a while, but then I forgot about it, and just saw a post on my dash that reminded me about it. So here we go. Basically the point of this post is to talk about how people put so much thought into getting a trans person’s name and pronouns right, that they end up slipping and getting them wrong. Usually it comes from being overly attentive to being supportive.

I had a teacher who was one of the very woke people who were so woke that they did a 180 into bigoted rhetoric. She’d talk about how “everyone’s a little bi”, and when I pointed out to her that that could be used as justification for conversion therapy (because if everyone’s a little bi, gay people can just not be with the same sex since they have the possibility to date the opposite sex), she shut me down with “oh I don’t mean it that way”. She’d go on about how “everyone’s a little autistic” or “everyone’s a little adhd”, not understanding that not being able to focus sometimes doesn’t mean everyone has adhd for example, and that if she has to believe that everyone has these things in order to be supportive... she’s not really that great at being supportive.

She believed in all these labels, saying that the lgbt(qia2S++++) community was supposed to be ~inclusive~, and had a huge pride flag hanging in her classroom. Plus a pride pin she’d always wear. Plus an “ally” sticker on her door. (She’s not lgbt.) it was a lot of stuff going on that really makes a gay bitch (aka me) feel not all that comfortable, because you just want to be treated normally.

Now from what I’ve said, you can probably gather that she prided herself in being accepting and woke and inclusive. You’d assume that she was an expert at using correct names and pronouns, right?

Wrong.

She takes up the #1 spot of the “people who misgendered my friend who’s trans” list. She would constantly slip up and say “she” instead of “he”, I think she’d even sometimes get the name wrong despite never even knowing him when he went by his deadname. This happened enough that it’s memorable. It was crazy to me, because you’d think somebody who was super supportive would have no problem with this, right?

Here’s my theory; she overthought it. Because she was so ~super supportive~, she didn’t see the trans guy as just a regular student who’s a guy.... she saw him as The Trans Student Oh Shit I Better Not Mess Up. Whenever she saw him, she didn’t think “oh hey there he is”, she thought “oh hey there’s the trans guy, gotta get this right because I’m Supportive. She—I mean—shit, he—“. Just a theory, but I think it’s fair to say that she was thinking so hard about being supportive, that she tripped up. It’s sort of like how if you’re playing a song on an instrument, and you don’t think about it, you’ll do it perfectly. But if you think about it too much, you’re suddenly getting every second note wrong.

So people who overthink trying to get a trans person’s name/pronouns right are way more likely to get them wrong compared to somebody who just goes “ok cool” and carries on. Because the overthinkers are so caught up in making sure they use the right words, that they’re actually actively thinking of trans people differently than cis people (because you wouldn’t be that overly cautious with cis people), and end up fumbling because they’re trying so hard not to fumble. Ultimately, they see trans men and trans women as people to tip toe around to show how supportive they are. The “ok cool” people see trans people just like everyone else, and don’t think twice about what pronouns or name to use. Perhaps they’ll get it wrong once or twice, but eventually they’ll just see a trans man as a man and a trans woman as a woman.

Moral of the story, don’t overthink it. You wouldn’t do the same for a cis person.

[drake-the-incubus]

What’s Bad for You is Good for Me

Or otherwise called, conflicting needs in representation. Which is most certainly a thing.

Sometimes we have specific needs ton representation that isn’t met due to certain circumstances. Recently I posted something about how Lazy Eyes are portrayed as inherently ableist, despite the fact I grew up with it being incredibly disabling and being treated poorly for having one, and in a discussion with other people, have been told they feel the same way.

Today, I saw a post about how someone being transphobic, complained about how trans characters gave him dysphoria. While he was incredibly transphobic about him, I realized that there’s intersectionality on representation no one really talks about.

We don’t talk about how it’s weird to define representation as good and bad depending on how stereotyped it looks. We just sort of do it.

Like, for example, a flamboyantly gay, gender-nonconforming man who is very open about his sexuality and might even be sexual. This is considered a horrible stereotype. I... I've known gay men like that who genuinely enjoyed the nice representation of those characters.

I think the issue is the difference between how it's played off, and why it's being done. And I'll use a few examples.

Power Puff Girls has the Devil who suspiciously borders on a transmisogynistic and homophobic stereotype, being a villain. The femininity that the character displays is part of the villainous routine, and there's not much to the character outside of this. When the character feels like it, he drops his femininity to become masculine and aggressive. Top it off with being the devil, it's pretty bad. This is bad representation, if not for the villain part, then for the fact that there's no substance to it at all.

Which is actually what the problem with representation usually is. It's two-dimensional, and it's villanizing. The character is not only that way because it makes them more villainous, but it also helps make us look horrifying to the viewers.

What changes when you include Lil Nas X's recent release, MONTERO (Call me by your name)? It's a form of self-expression and it's inherently fighting back against the need to sanitize oneself for an oppressing class. It's fighting back against the idea that in order to exist, we need to be pure. To be accepted into heaven we atone for being gay. It's a rejection of Modern Religion and society's base treatment of us.

And it's necessary. We can't have the soft, loving, sanitized rep. It can suit plenty of us. Being accepted into heaven- in spite of our flaw of being gay? I've been told that before- isn't what everyone wants. In order to have reached acceptance, we must not readily display the "bad" part of ourselves.

If a straight woman was to want for a dude, it's highly more accepted than if a man were to do it. Regardless of the man's input?

I can't go to a conversation, openly as a trans man, and discuss my attraction to men as a man, and not get shut down, "because it's weird" but I do have to sit there and hear talk about anime boobs. Sometimes for hours. Because you know, that's acceptable in society, me liking men as a dude isn't.

And the thing is, neither is bad. A gay man being openly sexual and open about his sexuality in media, so long as it's not his defining trait and he's not demonized for it in the media- aka villainizing a gay man who is flamboyantly gay and gnc is very common- it's good.

A gay man who is soft, caring and understanding for his partner, emotionally mature and shies away from his sexuality is also good. It's not representation I need, but for younger audiences it is.

A gay man who is selective in his men vs a man who isn't. We need both.

Representation makes us feel human. Like we're not horrible for existing, and one set is never going to be enough.

For example. I'm a very androgynous trans man. I wear dresses and makeup.

I enjoy the feminine trans characters because they can exist and so can I. I also enjoy the masculine trans characters.

I hate the written trans experience and I absolutely cannot stand fanfiction regarding trans man, regardless of which it is.

It's dysphoria-inducing. Why? Because it focuses on the aspect of being trans rather than the aspect of existing as a man, and those aspects tend to center around dysphoria or being AFAB. Either way, the experience is uncomfortable for me to interact with and can really bother me.

That form of representation isn't for me. I live the trans experience. I don't need it in my media. I want a person who lives the average life and happens to be trans. Where being trans isn't the center of the story.

Other people need it the exact opposite, and if being trans isn't integral it bothers them. They feel like being trans is on a higher level of their identity and their rep needs to reflect that.

In fact, I talked to another trans friend of mine, who said that the kind of stories that focus on the body being AFAB was reaffirming to them and it helped them along. They loved content like that. Where as I couldn't bear it, it caused me issues and I saw it personally as harmful.

The thing about rep isn't actually the stereotypes, most of the time. IE a feminine trans man character isn't bad rep, so long as he's an actual human being.

I also think the person making it and the intent behind the character are important.

Example 1: A cis woman who makes a trans woman villain the epitome of masculinity who is pretending to be a woman, and is defeated by a woman, is just bad rep.

Why? Because a) it targets and puts down another minority to uplift women. b) it intentionally tries to erase trans women from being women. c) it reinforces the stereotype that trans women are just men trying to pretend to be women and are inherently violent. d) it demonized masculine trans women who may have been denied- or do not want- to medically transition.

Example 2: Created by someone who is LGBT+ with input from a trans man. A trans man is flamboyantly gay, talks about how much he loves men quite a lot, and is known for being fairly feminine. He enjoys hobbies such as boating and fishing, and his story is about connecting with his community and accepting himself as a person without needing to give a part of himself up.

Is example 2 real? I hope it is, I'd enjoy that. But this is good rep. Yes, it plays on stereotypes, but this is a person. Their story is about their identity and they have traits outside of the stereotype. For a flamboyantly gay trans man, this would be perfect. If you challenged toxic masculinity in the movie and addressed how trans men feel the need to overperform into toxic masculinity for acceptance and how it ruins our connections with our emotions, it would be pretty great.

Example 3: Created based on a real person. A character who is clearly autistic, and struggles with communication, who acts childish and clearly has a prominent lazy eye. This character struggles with tasks but gets them right. This is done with input and the person's input

Bad Rep?

If you said yes you'd be wrong. A character based on a real human being can't be bad representation. Because a) they're human, and b) there's a nuance to people that needs to be addressed.

Human beings will never be a monolith and having a monolith idea of representation to show oppressors what we're like ignores the fact of human diversity.

I can only speak for myself. This means the topic of race and how to handle racial issues in media vs the sanitization of the culture people of colour have, is not one I can speak on, and I wish I could have input on it.

I'll add if I'm not cohesive enough, it's usually because of Autism and possible Comorbid ADHD fighting each other.

If someone better at the topic can handle this, feel free to reblog and add on, I'll reblog additions and reply to any concerns made.

[galaxylohnce]

VUD paladin headcanons!!!!

BTW this is based off of @voltronuniversaldefender ‘s reboot!!! CHECK THEM OUT THEYRE DOING GOD’S WORK

also i have read approx 2 headcanons and baRELY understand this AU so if there are similarities to anyone else or inconsistencies iT IS AN ACCIDENT AND IM SORRY

anyway this is just about the 4 confirmed paladins BET ill be doing more about Fa’rah/Takashi/Zahi/Ashanti once i know a bit more about their roles in the team!!

Alvaro Garcia Valladares

he has a twin. i don't make the rules, but he has a twin.

he has a big family. the biggest family. we’re talking, his mom has 8 siblings and his dad has 9 and there’s a 10 year age gap between him and his oldest sibling and he loves them all so much

natia is his best friend. i repeat, NATIA IS HIS BEST FRIEND!!!!

he’s also quite close with kiki. Natia and Kiki are the only two that he met before their great space adventure

he wasn't really sure of his sexuality at first. (i say this because i wasn't sure of my sexuality at first - im bi btw - and all the media i saw told me that any lgbt+ character was 100% sure of their sexuality form the day they were born, which made me doubt myself bc i didn't figure it out till recently, so i wanna see that in some media!! sometime!!) he probably figured it out halfway through having a crush on someone

the someone is akio, and he definitely tells Natia about it first

“natia... natia listen.... I have a crush on akio. freakin akio.... what do i do??? I’m bi, natia... I'm bi. what does this mean -”

“alvaro, I'm so proud of you, but this is a public bathroom and akio is right outside -”

GUARANTEE that the first time he saw Akio he just basically wanted to fight him but also flirt with him and had a slight moral crisis and ended up doing nothing

he is a goddamn sharpshooter, okay. he straight up becomes famous for it throughout the galaxy.

yet despite that he’s still insecure, and those insecurities prevent him from really getting together w akio until much later

he comes off as very suave and extroverted when you first meet him, but underneath it all, he’s actually really warm, personable and funny: not that anyone outside the team know that 

aliens on social media, probably: god, the blue paladin is so cool... i bet he’s amazing and awesome and eloquent...

meanwhile, alvaro: do u guys think i could fit my whole hand in my mouth or nah?

enjoys memes, and shares this love with kiki

basically an all around great guy. because he often felt like a seventh wheel at the beginning of the formation of the team, he always tries to include everybody as best as possible, going way out of his way to ask after people, even if they forget to ask about him sometimes :’)

Natia Nanai

first off: what a gorgeous name. seriously. incredible kudos, my dude. anyway on to the head canons for this gorgeous girl

probably alvaro’s soulmate. already mentioned this, but it needs reiteration. they are best friends

had a large family too (not as big as alvaros tho) and probably major relate to him with that big family dealio

v close with kiki. they complete each other on a technological level. 

natia is very, very creative. she and her sweet engineering know how are always instrumental in getting the Team out of tough situations

Akio: theres no way out of this we’re going to die -

Natia: bet?

she does say “bet” a lot. like, almost too much? but she's always right and valid when she says it

the villain: i’ve got you now!!!!

natia, under her breath: bet

the paladins, thinking: thank god, we’re saved

very soft but also badass as hell. she has a unique duality.

pulls a violet baudelaire: she puts that GORGEOUS hair up in a ponytail when doing work or whenever she has an idea

everyone on the team, regardless of sexuality, is low-key in love with her because she’s just so nice. no one can hate her. she's way too solid of a friend

speakinG of being a great friend: natia is 100% the secret keeper up in this bitch. everyone comes to her because they know she’s got the best advice around and will take their secrets to the grave

akio: idk man... alvaro is just rlly cute, u know?? but i can't tell him...

natia, thinking of alvaro literally whining to her about akio not even five minutes ago: christ

the mom friend. she always has all the things everyone needs on hand or in her lion, and she’s got it all going in terms of chore charts and family meals. she is the queen of figuring out times for team bonding and everyone loves her more for it

definitely started a board game night asap

she has a silent bravery about her that no one else can match. despite her trepidation, natia will always do what has to be done for the greater good. 

she is guided by her heart and her morals, and is easily the kindest person on the team

bc of this kindness, she is often the diplomat when conflicts arise between people on the team

she is seen by the general public (aka the galaxy) as a strong, morally righteous woman. kind of like rosie the riveter-esque??? she’s the symbol of justice and fairness. 

aliens: she's so... peacekeeping :0

natia, at kiki: throw me that wrench, or so help me god - 

basically, a queen who always considers everyone and works really hard to create a family, even when they're all so far from home :’)

Kiki Evans

generally over it tbh

“always tired, but always inspired” - kiki, on being asked why there were dark circles under her eyes

kind of standoffish. she’s not really about being nice, she's about getting the job done, and that can rub people the wrong way, since she is always the first to offer up the cold, logical solution

but underneath that, she’s just a computer science nerd who is loyal to a fault

she really is loyal. its almost dangerous sometimes, because she would put the universe in danger to save her friends, which actually comes into conflict with her typical cold, logical approach.

she has 0-1 sibling. she's every bit the single child. she cannot relate to living in a big family setting, and at first its hard for her to deal with before she warms up to everyone else on the team

she's a genius, and thus found school to be tedious. in fact, she got fairly bad grades, as she wouldn't do the work that she saw as pointless and boring

she is a meme connoisseur, and loves to quote vines, often assisted by alvaro

kiki, as they approach a giant black hole: HZZK

alvaro, catching on immediately: is... is that real???

she is a conspiracy theorist, for sure. the government is watching us all, trying to make sure we don't learn too much.... she’s sure of it, and akio is too

tbh, the first proper conversation she had with akio was about cryptids and how the government had hidden them from the public

she was friends w natia and alvaro from before, but it is akio she becomes closest with the fastest. in some ways, she feels more distant from natia/alvaro bc of how close they are with each other and  bc all of them have known each other for so long while akio is someone she got to know recently: he has no preconceptions about who she used to be, and she has none about him

plus, she and akio relate on many levels: both trans, both gay, both autistic, both theorists, and both loyal to a fault. she finds a real blood brother in akio :D

very openly gay. very. she's a space lesbian, and theres no denying it

kiki, meeting some random space girl: oh

kiki, moments later to akio: god I'm gay

akio, downing a glass of water but acting like its vodka or smthg: god, same

the public sees her as the cold and calculating techie, the brains of the operation

natia is her partner in crime. they finish each others sentences. they've got a tech connection going, babey

kiki: if we just cross-reference the zaiforge tunnel with the -

natia, nodding: particle consummator, of course we’ll get the perfect -

them, together: amount of energy!!!

everyone else: sorry wot

basically, she's a tech goddess with a splash of genius. she's uneasy and a bit awkward, but thats just bc she’s never been in a situation like this before. after literally 1 second with her, she opens up and is such a loyal friend. :’)

Akio Himura

wow this boy is gay and he knows it

he loves his parents (zahi, takashi, and ashanti) but god he will never admit it. not ever

alvaro, after listing his parents, 20 aunts and 100 cousins: and i love them all so much, with all my heart. what about ur family akio?

akio, not wanting to show weakness: they're nerds.

alvaro: um okay cool good talk haha :)

akio, internally: but i love them nd would die for them tbh... but i can't show weakness

he's so guarded after his biological parents left/died/disappeared. poor boy

definitely a single child, and definitely adopted

his parents love him SO MUCH. so much.

akio: why do i have three parents, dad?

takashi, almost crying: its simple. u deserve so much love, that it couldn't be contained in just two people. we needed three. its how its gotta be, my beautiful, sweet summer child

a yeehaw kind of guy. he grew up in the midwest riding horses before his biological parents died and theres a piece of him that will always be a southern boy

the kind of kid in school that pretends he’s a delinquent, but actually just has the aesthetic of a delinquent, and is truly soft

akio: hell yeah I'm a rebel. i logged onto disney.com without my parents permission

kiki, choked up: so brave

mothman is his love. his passion. all cryptids, for that matter. kiki is more of an all around conspiracy theorist: akio is in it for the cryptids 

he’s a bit awkward, and doesn’t totally understand all social cues/jokes. because of this, he stays away from memes, and is very guarded when meeting new people, especially after experiences with light bullying for not only his social ineptitude, but his upbringing.

considering that, his first meeting with alvaro was supremely awkward, and akio accidentally fought with him multiple times before they established a solid friendship

akio, having a gay panic: you are the light of my life

alvaro: sorry what??

akio, panicking more: I said, you wanna fiGHT WITH A KNIFE???

he pined after alvaro from basically day one, but had the foresight to actually know that he was pining, unlike alvaro who just floundered

of course he would never say anything

he is a stabby boi. he is unrivaled in swordplay, and enjoys routine. his natural affinity for picking up new skills plus his unrivaled work ethic basically DESTROYED everyone else when it came to swords

he’s loyal af and is always the first one to take action. akio is a “do something. do anything, but do it fast before we lose a chance to do something” kind of guy

the general public sees him as the fiery one: he’s the one with the fanciest footwork in a fight, and he’s very good with battle tactics. he can come thru with that strategy at the perfect times

he's a low-key emo. for sure. he loves MCR, but strangely dislikes other similar artists like p!atd and fob. 

kiki: but...brendon urie, akio....

akio, sipping tea: as a gay, i can appreciate the aesthetic. but no one can compete with MCR

kiki, exasperated: its not a competition -

basically, a slightly guarded boy with a real talent for defending the universe and his friends, but also an emo cowboy mess who is in love with alvaro and loves everyone :’)

WELL THAT ENDED UP LONGER THAN I EXPECTED. I HOPE U ENJOY AAAA

ALSO FOLLOW @voltronuniversaldefender !!!! its amazing, guys, really check it out :D

[covered-in-ash-archive]

eddie is horribly abusive and y’all need to be aware of him

i really did not want to have to resort to this. i fully intended to not call eddie out and just let this die off. since it hasn’t, multiple friends have convinced me to come forward with the abuse, stalking, harassment, manipulation, gaslighting, misgendering, etc i have been subjected to at the hands of eddie over the past week+. i haven’t used tumblr in... ages, so i’ve completely forgotten how to use coding in tumblr posts. sorry in advance for that. this is going to be both a call out and a “hey, this is what really went down” type of thing.

before i hop into covering the hot garbage that has been happening, here’s is where to find eddie. i fully encourage everyone to block him and warn others. he has been getting away with abusing people for years.

his twitter: https://twitter.com/mrgluskin

his horror blog: https://outlastwikia.tumblr.com/

if anyone knows the url for his main blog, please let me know.

update: been told his main blog is gluskin. i have not confirmed it for myself because i simply want nothing to do with eddie.

this is going to be long, sorry. tw for... pretty much everything. reblogs are encouraged and appreciated. let’s expose this abuser before he can abuse anyone else.

alright. for background’s sake, eddie followed me on twitter because we had a mutual friend, catherine. right off the bat, he bombed me with positive attention, liking all of my tweets, complimenting me, etc. a friend has since pointed out that abusers often do this before abusing their victims. i just figured he was a friendly guy and didn’t think anything of it. catherine and i had a falling out because she kept frequently using the r slur, despite not being autistic, and it was really making me, an autistic person, feel extremely uncomfortable (this is a whole different can of worms, though. catherine has also been outed as an abuser and a suicide baiter). disgruntled by the situation, i posted this to vent my frustration.

this is my personal opinion on the issue, as an autistic person with autistic friends and family, all who agree with my stance. i’m not here to debate this. i want this to focus on eddie and not get derailed.

eddie absolutely flipped his shit at me. he claimed that since he has adhd (which he went on to say is EXACTLY LIKE AUTISM... not even gonna bother to explain how wrong that is. i have both. i should know) he is entitled to use that slur, my feelings be damned. he said that me saying he should not use the r slur erases the ableism people with adhd face. again, this is... not how it works. i wish i had grabbed screencaps because it seems that his tweets have been deleted. all i have is my side of the conversation, where you can see that i was perfectly calm and polite.

i ended things by explaining that i could agree to disagree for the sake of our friendship & that as long as he didn’t use the slur around me i would be fine. he stopped replying to the thread after that.

a while later, i received this message from eddie.

i’m going to point out real quick that the last time i posted to twitter about my makeup was months ago. eddie could only know this if he dug through MONTHS worth of tweets. this was where his stalking began. he went through hundreds upon hundreds of tweets looking for any tiny thing he could use to attack me over. he was actively looking for conflict & things to be mad about. he needed something to demonize me over, because “they asked me to not say r*tard” is obviously going to make him look bad if he cites that as his reason why he has beef with me. we discussed jeffree star briefly & then he blocked me. i wrongly assumed that was going to be the end of it.

i noticed that, during all of this eddie/catherine drama, someone had stolen my url. i thought it was petty/funny, and posted this to twitter. this is the only thing i said about the url. this is literally it. i did not and have not accused anyone of stealing it. i honestly don’t care because i very rarely am on tumblr nowadays.

i’m not sure of exactly what happened, but i’m assuming either catherine told eddie i had said it was him, or eddie somehow convinced himself of it. eddie unblocked me instantly and sent this.

he reblocked me after this. at that point, i consider it harassment.

as i’m combing through his twitter for all of this shit he did to me, i just now saw that he posted screenshots of our conversations in an attempt to turn people against me, while omitting that this whole thing began because he wanted to use SLURS. he posted a handful of tweets gossiping about me.. he has been attempting to paint me as a racist transphobe and he has been telling everyone i accused him of stealing my url, even though i told him i hadn’t accused anyone.

a mutual friend of ours (who has since ditched him) then contacted me saying eddie was posting screenshots of my social media while shit talking me.

the green thing is a screenshot of my listography. i don’t like or associate with q*eer because it’s a slur. i’ve been distancing myself from the lgbt community as of late due to the influx of rape threats, misgendering, harassment, racism, and overall nastiness i’ve been dealing with from lgbt people. i shouldn’t have to justify this. i have my reasons. this is, again, eddie grasping for anything he can use against me.

because liking problematic things makes someone a bad person, amiright? it’s not like i’m an adult who can recognize when something is problematic & still have the capacity to enjoy aspects of it. to put into perspective... eddie is vocally kin with a serial killer from a game that demonizes mentally ill people. he has no room to talk.

this whole time, eddie has been telling people that he cut me off as a friend over me owning jeffree star makeup and was incessantly trashing my name publicly while spreading lies about me. we have mutual followers, so i posted this, trying to keep his name out of things in an attempt to not escalate the drama.

eddie continues to vague and obsess. meanwhile, i’m trying to move on with my life.

not wanting to be associated with a community that treats me poorly doesn’t mean i suddenly don’t face the same struggles as them or can’t have an opinion on the issues i face, just so you know.

at this point, i sent him a message politely asking him to stop talking about me all over his twitter and to move on with his life. he deleted the response but the preview is still on his twitter.

here he is, again, lying about me. i have not contacted a single one of his friends once. i have harassed no one. i haven’t even spoken with catherine since this all began.

anyway.

1) i’m 22 but that’s irrelevant

2) anyone else think him calling my friend ‘babe’ is kind of creepy? just saying

eddie began implying if not outright saying that i’m abusive. he posted this while talking about me. he was “confronting” me at the time so... who else could it possibly be about?

i tweeted these in response, because i take abuse allegations extremely seriously. as an abuse survivor, i do not appreciate even having it be IMPLIED that i am abusive.

after posting these, i hopped in the shower. eddie proceeds to have a meltdown. he had me blocked but i had not blocked him. at this point, i had blocked our mutuals. the only way he could have seen these tweets was by refreshing my twitter over and over again, waiting for me to say something about him/the situation. eddie unblocked me & quoted my tweets with this.

i haven’t lied about anything, as my screencaps illustrate. he just wants to be absolved of any responsibility. i also did not “throw a fit” - i very politely requested that he stop gossiping about me publicly. he also messaged me around the time he quoted my tweets.

again, have not lied about anything. he attempted to gaslight me by saying he was actually calling jeffree star abusive, which is absolutely not what he did. check the screencaps.

i was tired of being nice to the person who had so far harassed and stalked me, lied about me, and attempted to gaslight me.

*drops this here*

well i mean, at least he admits he’s been harassing me?

this tweet below was confirmed about me. in it, he calls me a trans man. i have explicitly stated many times that i am not a trans man. i am nonbinary. i have told my twitter following countless times that calling me a man is misgendering. it is in my bio.

@ranunculae aka fawn reached out to me late at night on the 21st. we had a 5+ hour long conversation in which they explained to me that eddie had abused them and has spent the past 2 years harassing and stalking them like he was doing to me. eddie and catherine had teamed up and suicide baited fawn until fawn had to go inpatient. eddie and catherine have been attempting to socially isolate fawn for 2 years now by spreading lies and doctored screencaps in a sketchy “call out”. you can read fawn’s statements here.

https://ranunculae.tumblr.com/post/166659734265/i-never-abused-eddie/amp

https://ranunculae.tumblr.com/post/166779554950/ranunculae-ranunculae-keythecoward

the 2nd link includes a conversation in which a minor talks about eddie grooming him and attempting to be sexual with him.

i’m going to post some things that fawn sent to me over chat just because they’re semi-relevant.

my irl best friend, cat, was close friends with catherine. fawn and i felt that cat needed to know that catherine was involved in suicide baiting and abusing fawn with eddie. so, we approached cat about it and fawn explained their entire side of things to cat.

eddie, through his relentless stalking of me, noticed we were all in contact.

i want to clarify that fawn/katie has not been on his twitter once throughout all of this. fawn’s boyfriend periodically checks eddie’s twitter to see if he’s still stalking and obsessing over fawn. fawn’s boyfriend saw eddie harassing me, and he let fawn know that eddie had picked a new target to abuse. then fawn contacted me. it literally is a smear campaign. and fawn said the smear campaign was against ME, not them, even though eddie has been posting libel about fawn for years. 

1) actual minors have come to me and fawn to tell us about eddie preying on them and grooming them

2) this was a response to cat taking mine and fawn’s sides

3) eddie called cat a ‘cuntbag’, which is misogynistic 

4) these ‘victims’ have not come forward because they don’t EXIST. meanwhile, i am nearly the 30th victim of eddie’s that has ACTUALLY COME FORWARD.

eddie attempting to guilt trip and manipulate cat, a csa/incest survivor, for siding with fawn.

again, more lying about me. as you can clearly see, i never threw a fit. i have been calm during this entire ordeal. also... this is, once again, him trying to divert attention away from what really started this; his NEED to use the r slur around someone who is uncomfortable with it.

cyberfuneral = cat’s twitter handle

cat sent me screenshots. eddie does not have her blocked. this is, again, lies and manipulation. if it looks like we’re sneaking around a block, then we’re obviously the bad guys, right? 

when cat confronted catherine about eddie calling her misogynistic insults, eddie lied to catherine and claimed he never called cat a cunt. he didn’t even bother to delete the tweets to hide his lies. 

scroll up to see him calling me a man, which i am not, thus it was misgendering. also, childish insults.

this is referring to something i added at the bottom of my listography. i’d like to point out that he posted this within minutes of me updating my listography. further stalking right there.

this is what my listography currently says. it is a temporary placeholder in lieu of an actual call out. it will be replaced or updated with the link to this post after it is published. you wanted the screencaps posted, eddie, so you’re getting your wish.

i can only imagine what filth eddie is saying on his locked personal twitter. i think i’d rather not know, though.

it has been more than an entire week of stalking, harassment, gaslighting, manipulation, lying, smear campaigns, misgendering, misogyny, etc etc from eddie. he is awful. he is abusive and a manipulator. do not befriend him. the second you upset him, he will turn on you and treat you like he has countless others. i am just one victim out of many. stay away. block him. spread this to warn people.

@eddieabuser2

[aquarianlights]

Coming out as transgender to people who you have absolutely no idea if they're going to reject you or not is worse and way more traumatic than coming out to people who you KNOW are going to reject you.

I'm literally fucking sobbing right now. Two of my oldest friends... Two people I have known since pre-k...maybe before that...Jymboree... That. That was before pre-k, right? Well, I've known them since Jymboree.........and I don't think either of them know I am transgender. One of them only just now found me on FB and we haven't spoken since... early college years. And the other...we haven't spoken in a few years.

I'm just coming out to them both RIGHT NOW....and I'm shaking and crying. I'm literally shaking and there are tears rolling down my cheeks.... I have known these two girls probably 24 of my 25 years of existence. Maybe almost a full 25. They were two of the biggest influences in my entire life....and they are like sisters who I grew up with.

I only found out I was transgender and not just "faking it/pretending to be a boy" around the age of 20-22ish. I honest to god thought I was pretending and my ex girlfriend breaking up with me after over 5 years of an LD relationship because she thought I was pretending, too, was possibly one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. Not THAT it happened...but how it happened. And the things I have experienced from being transgender... specifically from cishet males... is horrible.

And people misgendering me and just not understanding for some reason??? I'm sorry, but even if you're on the autism spectrum, you can understand when someone says they're a boy, they're a boy. You're not misunderstanding this because you're autistic; you're misunderstanding it because you're a white, cishet dude who apparently has a crush on me.

Receiving a text that says or someone saying "I'm sorry, but it's just weird for a me, being a straifght guy, to have a crush on you as a transboy." LET ME MAKE ONE THING CLEAR RIGHT FUCKING NOW: YOU EITHER HAVE A CRUSH ON ME OR YOU ARE NOT STRAIGHT. There is ///////////NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/////// inbetween. You cannot be male and like another male and call yourself straight. Can you? Then how can you like me and call yourself straight? I'm just as male as you are. Always have been, always will be. Before and after HRT + gender correction surgeries. Just because I am transgender and haven't transitioned yet does not make me ANY LESS of a man than you in ANY way.

There is literally no way in this world or logic or ANYTHING that can state factually that you can be straight and male and have a crush on me. I don't understand how a man can call himself straight if he has a crush on another man? Can someone explain that to me? Please? I'm just DYING to know. And for anyone who is autistic (I think I have like maybe 2 or 3 friends on the spectrum here on FB and who knows how many on tumblr where I'm gonna c/p this to), you have absolutely no excuse. If a fucking child can understand that I'm a man....so can you. Idk if autism and down syndrome are synonymous... I don't think they are, coz my cousin has down syndrome and he's not like any of the autistic people I've spoken with online... (So I'm a little confused there), BUT EVEN HE UNDERSTANDS I AM MALE OKAY! He can't even speak for himself or change himself or dress himself or do anything for himself. He holds a bagging position at a local grocery store with help. Other than that, that's about it. He is in his late 20's and he acts like a child...always pulling my hair, can't speak correctly, speaks through sounds and groans and motions, reacts emotionally like...toddler-like emotions...Stuff like that to give examples. And I thought, for the longest time (coz I was ignorant and sheltered) that that was what autism was.

Well, I'm sorry, but if my cousin WITH THAT SEVERITY OF DOWN SYNDROME (which may or may not be autism?????? I have no clue on any developmental issues coz I only have mental disorders and not developmental issues and I only study psuedo-sciences (aka psych things) relevant to myself because I'm forced to so I'm ignorant by choice here which is probably abelist but it emotionally hurts me to look at this stuff) CAN UNDERSTAND THAT I'M A BOY EVEN WHEN I'M IN A DRESS AND HIGH HEELS WITH MAKE-UP ON, UNDERCOVER IN DISGUISE FOR A FAMILY FUNCTION.... ANY OF YOU AUTISTIC PEOPLE CAN. NONE OF YOU HAVE ANY EXCUSE. NO ONE WITH A DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDER, MENTAL ILLNESS, OR ANYTHING HAS ANY EXCUSE. AND, NO, I'M SORRY, BUT YOUR BIGOTRY IS THE SAME AS PEDOPHILIA BEING INCLUDED IN THE LGBT+ COMMUNITY: IT'S NOT COUNTING AND IT NEVER WILL BE, YOU SICK FUCK.

I'm just....I'm just so scared and so angry and so hurt and so...

All the experiences I've had irl and online with both people I know and people I don't know and anything inbetween...professionals and acquaintances and anything inbetween... I'm fucking traumatized by it all and yes that's actually part of my PTSD. It's not the main part of it, but the trauma associated with accumulated experiences due to being out and proud as a transman are a part of my extremely severe PTSD. Again, not the main part...but the fact they are a chunk is scary... Coz that means it could be the ENTIRE reason for someone's PTSD if they were to have lesser experiences than me (lesser being used in quantitative terms here, not qualitative---everyone's traumas are equal...the times we experience traumas are all different, obvs, and the times we experience traumas that contribute to PTSD are different and since I have so goddamn many, thinking some trans person could have PTSD based SOLELY around their experience as a trans person is horrifying when that is one of the least of my worries in the PTSD category).

I didn't realizing coming out could be this terrifying...

When I thought I was pretending to be male and was actually female irl, I thought I was just a lesbian since I am attracted to mostly girls. (Didn't know bi and pan was a thing either lol) so I came out on my very first day at a new school sophomore year of hs by people asking me or something and me doing something really bold and rash to prove it and then shrugging and being all "And? What are you gonna do about it?" Like. Coming out as lezz was as though I were coming out as human in my mind. It absolutely did not matter to me at all. 

And, frankly, I got off on it mentally coz it added a shock value when someone called me a dyke in a crowd and I would grab the nearest girl and ask her permission to kiss her and kiss her as hard as I could and then throw her aside (gently) into the crowd and strut right up to said (cishet white male obvs) person who asked and stand so close he could smell the shampoo I use and look him directly in the eye and dare him to do something about it and basically say "Are you just angry I get more pussy than you? Is that why you tried to make it public that you've got such a small dick?" Stuff like that. I get filmed a lot doing this stuff so there's prob videos of little female-presenting, bright blue haired, 5'1 3'4" kandi kid, harajuku girl Nickita version of me floating around being all confrontational and angry. Lol.

I forget why I made this post.

Oh yeah. Because I'm crying and shaking coz my friends aren't gonna respond for a while I'm sure and Idk if I'm going to lose them and at the same time I am super super SUPER sick and drained by guys not treating me as equal to them when I'm just as male as they are, with or without the parts.

I’m seriously so drained by cishet boys. By the ace thing and by the trans thing. I’m sick of cishet boys trying to coerce me into sex because they’re the “one exception” and I’m sick of cishet boys trying to say they’re straight but they have a crush on me, when I’m a boy. You CANNOT BE A STRAIGHT BOY AND HAVE A CRUSH ON A BOY!?!??!?!

These are things I deal with MULTIPLE times a day from MULTIPLE people...from people with autism and aspergers...to actual full on neurotypicals. Like. THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!?

NOTE: I have since learned the aspergers, autism, and down syndrome are like...all different or something like that. I don’t really want to know, which is ableist af, but I don’t want to know on purpose. I want to stay ignorant on specifics. I just want the general knowledge and the tl;dr version of it all. At least....right now....maybe when I’m not about to have a panic attack, ready to slit my wrists, overdose, shoot someone, can slow down my thoughts, can force my intrusive thoughts back into intrusive thought zone and not desire zone, and can STOP HAVING AUDITORY HALLUCINATIONS WHEN I KNOW DAMN WELL MY SCHIZO MEDS ARE WORKING THEY ARE WORKING THEY ARE WORKING SO THIS ISN’T REAL AND IDK WHY THIS IS HAPPENING....maybe then I’ll like to know specifics, but I cannot an will not handle specifics right now. No thanks. Pseudo-science are ew. It’s bad enough I have to lean my OWN psuedo-sciences. (Psst. I still only learn the tl;dr textbook version of my own pseudo-science stuff (aka: psych stuff) so I can just learn the rest from self experience. it works. pro tip, y’all.)

[mermaidfan76]

Homeless Autistic Girl

Hey guys... this really kills me to ask, however right now I’m homeless at the moment.

Technology, I’m living with a long time friend who is hounding me to find a job since she believes it’s just so damn easy and move out by The end of February. I’ve put out application after application and only maybe a couple have called back for an interview. Only for them to tell me the same exact thing over and over, “You don’t seem like you will do well for this job.” With out even giving me a garsh darn chance to show them I’m willing to work my butt off.

Yet, they hire people who are literally ALLERGIC to manual labor, and pay them twice the wage to appease them so they don’t get sued. It pisses me off. I have Autism and PTSD, I watched my mother and fathers beloved dog get run over by a car, I know these people have mommy and daddy’s that coddle them. My parents died on September 22, 2013. My sister’s threw me out in the cold and said I’m on own. I’m still here, sadly. Not one day goes by and I don’t think about giving up and killing myself. Love to give that bayberry (under a new name) Bitch and all the rest what they wanted in the first place! With heartless pieces off shit like them in this world, I definitely don’t feel it’s worth the aggravation!

You push, you kick, you fight, you bite, you bunch, but guess what you end up someone else’s lunch! It’s survival of the fittest and you’ve won the game if you have Money, Fame, and/or Power! Just 1 on these gives you the right to control poor peoples lives!

You can play the advocate for good all day, but turning a blind eye to the innocent people that are truly in pain by the very people you are advocating for. Who’s the real villain? Saying the people who did nothing deserve it because someone said its poetic revenge... read a book. Get your facts straight, you really think they would attack now? Why didn’t they attack back then? People don’t postpone revenge -_-...

(if I had a grudge against a person, I’d want to get them now, not expect my descendants to attack his descendants. 1. How do I know if they’ll follow through? 2. What if everything is patched up and my other descendants didn’t know that and still desire to take their revenge? (They don’t even know what the whole argument is about... could be about stealing the last slice of pizza) This is about taking over the world just like before! We stopped them once! They’re trying again, however they fooled you!)

So with politics, islamphopia (more like not wanting an ideology of woman haters who desire to take over any free country and turn it to a world of oppression and insanity), racism (a political term used when a white person doesn’t agree with you), feminist (because women are oppressed because they have tits and a vigina), fatphopia (because veggies don’t taste like cake, if they did we’d still become fat, why? Because we��d get sick of sweets and want savory tasting veggies that you only get from cake... oh the irony), LBGT without Q (Queers are just feminist men who are really flamboyant gays... and real gays try to avoid, ever heard the term, “Queer as a Clock work Mouse.” Man I miss my English mother! The LBG, The Les, The Bi, and The Gay, do as you wish... Hey I’m you Bi, I find shapely girls just Be A U Ti Ful to draw, have to get that full body motion. Gays, love ya, best guy friends and you give perfect fashion advice, Lesbians, you’re very easy going and easy to talk to, al yal are A O Kay in my book. Trans, um... look umm... I’m female... I have more of a male mind... we can find common ground here can’t we?) and that’s what I go through everyday. Half the words I’m called... how do they apply to me? Like racist? I judge by character, not by skin tone.

(All I see is another human being in front of me. If you act like you’re above a human being, than I’ll treat you the way you treat me. Not one human is above another. If you have earnt that privilege than you are granted that only by the people who gave you such power, however they have the power to take it away. That is the true purpose of the second Amendment! In short; “a president is a civil servant to the people of his/her country that he/she has sworn to protect! As such nothing is beneath them!”)

I really wish people would do their homework...

My friend I was talking about earlier; well she’s not only getting on my case about finding a job, but she’s also pissing me off about politics. Her plan is to be an American History Teacher. She wants to teach her class how America was founded on the “Socialistic” Principles we use today and that’s bullshit! We wouldn’t have many of our largest company products that I bet everyone of you see every single day, more than likely every minute of your day.

(For Starters:

Let’s start off with Ford, if America was a Socialistic Society, well then all of you who drive a Ford let alone a car in general, would walk everywhere. If it wasn’t for Ford’s Model T being a Successful test run clearing the way to Model A. Ford’s company could only up from there. (Btw: anyone who drives the VMW Bug- just a little trivia for you did you know that the original design was created by Adolf Hitler himself? Adolf Hitler was the original Designer for the shape of that car the VMW Bug, just a little tid pit I know from Graphic Design School, hope that doesn’t ruin your VMW driving experience:D)

Another one I’d like to point out: McDonald’s, that famous Golden Arches fast food places started as a ma and pa rest stop, now it’s one of the biggest fast food chains in the world! Mickey D’s started again in America! Again how is that possible in a Socialistic society?

Socialism is structured to where everyone is equal... equal pay... equal healthcare... equal quality of living... doesn’t count the politicians! In this system if you work you’re an idiot. Those who sit on their ass get everything handed to them, those who work their asses off barely survive. So why bother putting yourself through that much torture. Because:

No one working:

No power

No cable

No doctors

No teachers

No police

No food

No safety

No security...

Why? This would have been a good thing! This here proves Socialism doesn’t work!

If everyone decided to not work because they’re getting ripped off; than America shuts down! The government is screwed! And so are the moochers!)

Those are only two examples of capitalism being a good thing.

There is so much more... not to mention the feminist aspects like Susan B. Anthony: Voicing her “opinion” by voting for who she thought would be a good president. Of course the judge was going to let her off with a warning because “woman privilege” (woman today would be like okay and do it again), however she, Susan B. Anthony, A Real Feminist, (no Feminist is an insult to her, She a Real Woman, The Genuine Wonder Woman!) demanded she was sentenced to jail just like any man who broke the law! (Please oh please can we do that to these modern, pussies who call themselves women!) The first woman to fly a plane over the pacific Amelia, or the women who rose up against unjust treatment Rosa Parks, I mean come on. Worst of all is, she’s being taught tha John Wilkes Booth was Republican and Abraham Lincoln was Democrat... and it’s reversed. There’s a saying the liberals came up with: “if those damn n$&@€ must vote then they should only vote Democrat!”

My friend has become heartless and greedy, I’m in a fucked up spot because of a malicious brat who played innocent and didn’t understand what happens when you compromise. It’s not one side surrenders and the other gains, but what do I expects from the preppy college school type, (not all preppy girls are mean, I just have this personality that sends the wrong vibes and makes them more territorial)AKA mean girl type... however, this girl demanded everything goes her way or else. She’s from Georgia, yet she comes to higher elevation part and in the middle of the US, it’s winter yet she expects sunshine and beaches? All of us to be drinking out of a coconut? Yes, her hair is blonde at the roots, and she smokes pot in the apartment. Kind of gives you a clue on the person she is. Of and her Boy Toy is always there... when I stayed there. She blamed me for her messes, and her food she didn’t eat. Thing is I hate fish. Well another one to count she has a low IQ from the Mercury poisoning... and here I thought fish helped with brain development.

Anyway, it was hell, so my friend volunteered on the condition that I find a job and move out ASAP. I’m tryin as hard as I can here.

Being told no everywhere I go is very discouraging. I’ve made a gofund me campaign to maybe to maybe help a little... I don’t expect anyone to donate really... if anyone could click the link and share it to a friend they know and spread it around.

By February the only place I’ll be staying is my car on the side of the road... just sharing the story helps. Thank you.

<link>https://www.gofundme.com/homeless-autistic-girl<link>

[imrelatedtobenefitcheats-blog]

I no longer feel a part of this community

And it’s Tumblr’s — and people who follow the same ethos as those on Tumblr’s fault: I’m a homosexual white man, cis-gendered which means I don’t fit with your trendy labels. As a homosexual I am not attracted to the same gender as many people state, I am attracted to the same sex, so as I’m cis-gendered that means I like cisgendered people aka males, not men, males, people with penises. For this I am accused of being transphobic, which is absolutely not the case; for this I am accused of invalidating transgender people, which is not my intention and I don’t want people to feel invalidated — and in any case, you shouldn’t feel invalidated anyway: as Arielle, the lesbian YouTuber states, if someone who is a lesbian isn’t attracted to her, it doesn’t delegitimise her as a lesbian nor as a woman.

But it’s more than that: we’ve made great strides from the days of conversion therapy being the norm (yes people still find themselves forced into things like that e.g. as a result of people like VP Pence), but it also happens within this community: when people call me transphobic and tell me I should be attracted to a trans-man, and that I should love them, that is conversion therapy: you are attempting to change my sexual attraction from males (not men) to women, or make it not exclusively male. This is NOT possible, and this is what homosexuality is and always has been and always will be: same-sex, not gender attraction. As a result of certain people gender is now conflated with sex, when they are separate things, meaning that we are supposedly allowed to be labelled as transphobic because we cannot be attracted to the opposite sex.

I don’t care how many genders people want to identify as, but there will only ever be two sexes, and intersex — and while I don’t want to appear rude to those people, intersex is a condition whereby the body starts producing one sexes organs and then stops and starts making the other: if a person is a hermaphrodite, or whatever the polite way of calling someone with a penis and a vagina is, there is still only one sexual organ that works — therefore the only way intersex could be valid as a sex, making there three sexes and however many genders there are, would be if both sexual organs were present and fully formed, which they’re not/

A final issue I have is with the idea of “it’s okay to change your mind” about your sexuality. No it’s not ‘okay’, it is the belief that sexuality can be changed that created bigotry in the beginning, that enabled gay people like me and lesbians like Arielle and others to be targeted in the past and as I said before, were put forward for conversion therapy or on hormones to attempt to ‘combat’ and change our sexuality. If you’re bisexual you are bisexual; if you are gay/lesbian, you’re gay or lesbian; straight, the same: if you state that you’re bisexual and then ‘change your mind’ you were never bisexual: it’s the same principle as something like autism: if you are diagnosed with autism, you are autistic, it’s not something you ‘grow out of’ because it is to do with the way your brain works, you are autistic — if you do ‘grow out of it’ then you weren’t autistic in the first place, but rather you had a few behaviours that happened to be some of the same that is used in the diagnostic criteria. The same logic applies here.

It is for reasons like this that I do not feel a part of this community anymore, because it isn’t a community: it’s a competition whereby every new label that’s added tries to be more different than the last: You’re gay/bi/straight? Well I’m transgender. Oh you’re transgender? Well I’m agender. And that’s another thing: the acronym is LGBT, not LGBTQIAHTJFKJDZSJFALBUKRGDKJBJSTREASLDJGSHKLRTAETDHGTLSRGKJHSRAEKDGNZFKRSEAFDFGUHRFG as it has become: allies aren’t a part of this community; queer and gay are the same thing; pansexuality and bisexuality is the same thing, but has been conflated into two terms because of the conflation of gender and sex, which I’m sick of; intersex people aren’t part of the community, they’re not nor have never been the subject of discrimination or the loss of rights.