#and also: women

[eemamminy-art]

Rambly story thoughts about my other wol, F'lihn!! She's not in the same universe as Leigh, so in her story Leigh is probably just like.. a normal guy in Ul'dah lol. But I had some new ideas about her recently and today thought of adding another one of my OCs to her story so I wanted to talk about it!!

First of all, I changed her look ever so slightly the last few times I drew her:

Pictured with Glassi in this first one 🥰 I had been waffling for a while on whether she just bound her chest or had surgery, and ultimately I decided it made the most sense for her to at some point in her story have surgery. A big part of her background is that she is running from her past and afraid to let others know that she's a woman, so she presents as a man to most people she meets but doesn't identify as such in private. I thought the leaf tattoos would be nice because it ties into purple as her overall color scheme, and also her tribe is from a Garlean occupied territory so I thought of the Roman motifs using leaves as like a nice way to kind of.. reclaim her homeland by putting flora from it on her body.

Here, I opted to give her a different nose and make her hair even curlier, and you'll notice I gave her a Garlean third eye as well. Which leads into the next thing...

In my initial draft of her story, she was just pressured to conform and mate per usual sun seeker tribal lore and that was her reason for leaving her tribe, but I felt like something about it didn't quite sit right with me. Like it felt a little too upsetting for me personally and kind of disingenuous for the way seeker lore works out in practice.

Not that it's any less dark what I decided on... 🥲 but basically, I had an idea that her tribe was being subjected to experimentation by the young Prince Varis. His grandfather may have invented magitek, but Varis was seeking genetic modifications to try and create a way for Garleans to harness magic. F'lihn's mother was one of the test subjects, with the intention of F'lihn coming out as a magical garlean but instead she was born a very magically apt but otherwise normal miqo'te-- save for the third eye which normally was only in full blooded garleans. So the experiment was regarded a failure, Varis was pulled away by the emperor for other matters, and F'lihn was left to grow up with her tribe as some sort of abomination-- half garlean, half miqo'te.

It made her an outcast in her tribe, it made her hate herself at first, then as she grew older she directed that hate toward Garlemald and the future emperor instead. Her echo awoke when she had a premonition of her becoming the next subject for experimentation and she got the fuck out of there, never looking back and changing her entire identity.

She traveled for a while through Garlean territories until reaching Kugane, then from there secured travel to Limsa Lominsa. There, she began ARR as the warrior of light, and also she would soon meet her gf, a failing but stubborn ship captain named Glazisil-- Glassi to her mates.

Glassi was my first OC in ffxiv but she never ever felt like a proper warrior of light. She's not very bright, she's loud, she's brash, but by gods is she loyal and stubborn!! She had been trying to follow in her father's footsteps ever since she inherited his ship, but Limsa is different than it was in her father's youth, and between the red tape around piracy, her own inexperience, and her inability to wrangle her crew all into one place long enough for them to have any amount of success, she's been floundering and just barely making by up until she meets F'lihn. She's totally awestruck and enamored the first time they meet, and she's the first person F'lihn ever really gets close to. Think of her like a golden retriever in the body of a pitbull, with a bad habit for swearing and drinking. (I wrote about them once for ffxiv write-- their first meeting, centered around her and her crew making bets after not being able to discern F'lihn's gender at first glance)

F'lihn would've begun her journey as an archer I think, trained to hunt like most miqo'te women even despite being the black sheep of her tribe. In Limsa she would discover arcane magic, and learn just how much magical ability she truly had in spite of being half garlean. Which would eventually lead to her becoming a scholar, but I'll need to work out details of just how that happens :3

It also gives me a fun dynamic to explore for her when eventually meeting Zenos, since they would share a father and have their connection spark due to that. Zenos obsessing over the sibling he never knew he had, you know? It makes it so much more complicated for her too, that she hates this place and these people with every fiber of her being but that there's reminders like this that she's connected to them in an inescapable way. And that she seeks ways to reclaim her own body like the body modification stuff I mentioned above, to try and deal with it!!

Onto the new thought I had today:

This is Aya, she's another OC I made who I ended up not doing anything with after I made her... but I had it in my head that her being absolutely huge despite being a female au ra was due to some sort of garlean experimentation as well.

So what I thought of today, was that she was kidnapped from sui-no-sato as a child (to kind of compound their reasons for being so isolationist) and taken to garlemald after the occupation of Doma, and then was experimented on to make her grow tall and muscular like that. They wanted her to be a super soldier but they underestimated how resilient she is, and one day she was able to break free and flee the capital. She's a gunbreaker, so I want to think she fled through Bozja and picked that up there, and eventually made her way to Eorzea.

Given they have a similar history and similar hatred for the garlean empire, I thought Aya and F'lihn would get along really well and become fast friends!! Another addition to the wol's entourage.

At this rate F'lihn is just gonna be surrounded by giant women... 😂 which I'm very okay with (and so is she lmao)

Slowly I'm developing this alternate wol storyline and I'm enjoying it!!! Much as I've built up Leigh and he's forever going to be who I consider my main wol, I really love all I've thought of so far for F'lihn and Glassi's story :3 I kind of had some hopes to draw the two of them for oc kiss week but I'm quickly running out of time, so we will see if I pull some things together last minute haha

[velinxi]

Lord of the Rings fanart! I watched for the first time recently and loved it

[EDIT: Thanks for the love on this! Prints of this are also available on my shop for those interested!]

[crimeronan]

i think about this tweet Every Time i see people scared to write women with flaws bc they think it'll come off as sexist. cannot believe this is nearly a decade old. Ahead Of Its Time.....

[spitblaze]

I don't see people gas up gnc and butch transfems nearly enough, can we get a fuckin round of applause for gnc and butch transfems

[zanmor]

We are well beyond canary in the coalmine warning levels with the way trans people and particularly trans women are treated on this site.

Maybe you've heard the metaphor of allowing wolves and sheep to share the same space, welcoming everyone. You end up with just wolves because allowing them in that space makes it unsafe for any sheep. Or the story about how a nazi goes into a dive bar and is refused service. The bartender then explains to someone else at the bar that if you serve them once they tell their friends and before you know it you're the nazi bar they all go to and normal customers don't feel safe.

Terfs and other bigots are seeing these targeted harassment campaigns succeed against trans women and rejoicing. They see Tumblr ban them and officially stand by those decisions as endorsement for their harassment. It's a sign to bigots across the internet that Tumblr is a good place for them.

And what's more is that a lot of us probably don't realize just how much trans women contribute to Tumblr. The women banned recently were sources of site-wide memes and posts I wasn't even aware originated from them.any years old memes and references can be traced back to trans women on this site.

How many of these folks have to be removed before this is no longer a site you want to be a part of it? Sure you cultivate your own experience, but you can't follow or interact with people who aren't here. And if I wanted to interact with the nazis and terfs I'd go to reddit.

I encourage everyone to reblog this. Trans women shouldn't have to be the only ones speaking out against the bigotry they're experiencing. They shouldn't be the only ones risking their blogs being nuked by staff. We have to stand with them.

[mono-red-menace]

"love every trans woman you meet before it's too late" is a tumblr post that is very close to my heart because it was inspired by a friend of mine attempting suicide.

like a lot of people seem to assume it's about the banning and stuff and i mean like it can be. love the trans women in your life before the structures around them isolate them. love them before they feel like they're unloved. yk.

but like.

love every trans woman you meet before it's too late is particularly strong to me because it's literally about a friend of mine i thought it was too late for.

i was too scared of making her uncomfortable to let her know how much i love her and how wonderful it is to know her and how happy i am to have met her. and i thought she was gone.

love every trans woman you meet before it's too late is a reminder to me to always push past that discomfort. to always try to make the trans women in your life feel loved. because we so often feel unlovable.

even if you think your actions speak for themselves, push beyond your fears. tell them directly.

"i love you."

"you're a wonderful force in my life, you make me happy."

"i would miss you when you're gone."

"please come to me with your problems."

"i love you."

let the trans women in your life know exactly how much you care about them. let them know you love them. let them know they're your best friend. let them know you'll always be there for them.

they will doubt they're good enough they'll doubt they're loved they'll doubt everything that gives them value. but take them into your heart and make them feel it.

be their shoulder to cry on.

please don't ever let it be too late.

[wishing-well-art]

Wake up it's time to get blocked and reported

[wewontbesleeping]

the weirdest fucking thing to me is how men will be like "it's so hard being a man. no one cares that i'm sad. the loneliness we experience could NEVER be understood by a woman" and then also be like "btw i never talk to my friends and i don't know their names and i love hanging out with men because they don't talk about their stupid emotions all the time. women could never understand a bond like this." like ???

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The squad of all time has arrived on scene.

[transassdemon]

[My art, don't steal, tag if reposting]

[yardsards]

this site has learned to accept men's tits into their hearts. now i need you all to embrace women's flat chests.

[bernard-the-rabbit]

Oh alice..you would have loved Tim pls don't end up like him <3

[anotherpapercut]

genuinely it will never stop baffling me how people will wear twilight shirts and talk about team Edward vs team Jacob and then the same people will be like "I'm not basing my personality off of a piece of media (harry potter) made by a transphobe 😌" like good that's great! so you can excuse racism but you draw the line at transphobia? good to know

[riverthebooknerd]

"but why do you even ship them-" IT BRINGS ME JOY AND WHIMSY!!!!!!!

[inkiedraws]

I think he's into gilfs.

Tsuru specifically.

[stromblessed]

Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows

In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.

If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.

So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.

I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?

However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.

Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)

And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.

Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.

It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.

Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?

While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:

She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.

You see where I'm going with this.

When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:

And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD

When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.

MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS

No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.

And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:

Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!

The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.

And, uh

Yeah.

I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.

But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.

Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:

But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.

There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.

After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:

"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.

Kind of like another bird in this show: