#but I have had other aspects of my identity that I am VERY sure of challenged in the past

[snapscube]

so i don't know if this is a post i'm gonna keep up cause, like i said, i don't really like talking candidly about aspects of my personal identity often these days, and lord knows i especially hate talking about legal identity and all the dissonance that entails. but this week was a pretty big one for me and i can't shake the desire to share my enthusiasm for even just a fleeting moment.

my name has been a sticking point in my mind for a long time. i've adopted many different ones. first, middle, last, you name it. i've been searching most of my life for a moniker that represented my true self socially, and a surname to distance myself from someone in my life who hurt me very badly and never really learned how to stop.

obviously for a long time now I've been Penny Parker to 98% of people who know me, and for the past couple that number has been bumped up to a solid 99% with a few stragglers. it's a name that is so mundane and assumed at this point that tbh I've even come to resent certain aspects of it. which to me is actually beautiful. i find that mundanity, that nuance, extremely telling of how it encapsulates my life. it's a fully three-dimensional reflection, smudges and sparkles and everything in between.

of course, i only just moved out on my own 3 years ago. and unfortunately that had to be the starting point to make this social and personal progress i've been sitting on for half a decade at least now official, tangible, legal. i've been playing a game of catch-up i didn't sign up for, but it's one that does have a silver lining in that i feel more in resonance with who i am and who i want to be than i ever did before being granted this independence.

and as of this week, i have the pleasure of entering an era of my life where the dissonance between who i am in speech and who i am in contract is nonexistent. my name is Penny Olivia Parker. i'm the same as i've always been, but getting better every day at it. soon i'll even have a license to match!

sometimes more of an Olivia Parker in brief moments nowadays tbh but i haven't worked out the details yet. nothin you need to stress over, ill take care of it. the full set is just fine and legally recognized, which is all i've wanted for as long as i can remember.

this isn't the end of my journey, both excitingly and unfortunately haha, but this is yet another huge milestone for me and in certain respects it's one of the biggest i've managed. i'm so happy to still be here. if you're reading this, thank you for being here too.

also those of you who watched my direct reactions the other day might have a little more insight as to why i was so emotional that the day after a judge signed my legal name change a new game by the Sonic Mania devs was announced called "Penny's Big Breakaway" LOL, it was a lot to handle for me but i wasn't sure how much i wanted to say just yet.

[nothorses]

What do you think gay men are attracted to in men that they can’t be attracted to in women?

It can’t be anything about femininity or masculinity obviously. That’s both sexist, and cultural so can’t be what drives men-only attraction.

It can’t be anything about stated identity because someone could lie just as easily as they could tell the truth in such a statement, and it makes no sense because homosexuality and heterosexuality exists in other species with no stated identities. It’s not like other animals without gender are all pan.

Saying idk it’s the vibes or some indescribable trait men have that women can’t but “I can’t explain” is a nonanswer.

Soooooooo what is it? Or do you think any sexuality but bi/pan is just cultural performance or an identity rather than an inborn orientation?

- [ ]

I think trying to find one perfect answer that applies universally is the critical mistake here. I mean, I am a gay man. I say this because as of yet, that's the clearest answer I have for myself personally; maybe there's a possibility I experience attraction to a woman at some point (maybe I already have???), but I don't really have clarity on that right now, and it doesn't serve me to shape or explain my identity around "maybe"s.

Trying to pinpoint exactly what it is that attracts me to other men, specifically, is also like... not that useful. I used to find myself really attracted to feminine men specifically; not feminine women, not masculine women, not masculine men, not androgynous anyone, but feminine men. Specifically, men who were feminine in a very particular, long-hair-certain-attitude kind of way.

Recently, I have found myself appreciating, more and more, a certain kind of masculine body type and gay masculinity that I was never really interested in before. I find it incredibly hot. A lot of that coincides with things I appreciate about my partner, too, and things I find myself appreciating more about my partner as time goes on- as well as things my partner expresses appreciation for about me!

And I haven't even touched on attraction to nonbinary folks here because, like, it's a massive spectrum. "Nonbinary" means something different for every individual nonbinary person. To my mind, of course there's a possibility I experience attraction to a nonbinary person; how they identity, present, and what attracts me to them are all even more impossible to know for certain than the "maybe"s and the "why"s around my attraction (or lack thereof) to men and women.

My relationship to my own orientation was vastly different pre-testosterone versus post-testosterone, too. I was much more reserved and uncomfortable with relationships and attraction before I started T, and the only dynamic I ever felt was even a little bit tolerable was one where I was the "masculine woman" in a lesbian relationship. I didn't realize until very shortly after starting T that, actually, I like men. A lot. I felt comfortable with my body and my masculinity in a way I never had been before, and I felt comfortable in relationships with men; I no longer felt like I was The Woman By Default in contrast.

And that's all just me! This is my personal, specific, individual relationship to attraction, and how gender- both others' and my own- factors into my relationship with orientation.

I don't think it's necessarily inborn, or completely unchanging for everyone. I also don't think the same factors apply for everyone. I think a lot of different things can be true for different people, all at once, and it's not really useful to try to pinpoint a specific, universal explanation for orientation.

Everyone has a different relationship to orientation and gender; everyone will be influenced differently by cultural factors, by their own ways of processing and understanding the world around them, by the ways different aspects of their culture, identity, personality, and inborn traits and how they all interact with one another, and sure, maybe even by biological factors and tendencies.

Trying to solve this puzzle for the entire world of diverse human beings isn't going to make it any easier to understand yourself. Focus on what this all means for you, personally, and accept that you will never, can never, fully and perfectly understand anyone else's internal world and workings. Things get a lot easier when you can let go of that & just appreciate the diversity of human experiences, y'know?

[genderqueerdykes]

in honor of aromantic spectrum awareness week, i thought i'd take the time to talk about how much my personal life and feelings improved after coming to terms with the fact that i'm aromantic. before i accepted this, i found myself in several romantic relationships where i was deeply unhappy, uncomfortable, and made to feel like i wasn't a good enough partner because i just couldn't do or feel certain things.

i've never enjoyed kissing, and cuddling gets uncomfortable for me within the first few minutes of doing so. even hugs are deeply uncomfortable to me unless i really know and care about someone, and even then, hugs only come when that person asks for them. it never occurs to me to touch people this way, the most you'll get out of me is a pat on the shoulder, back or knee.

i ended up dating several people who were very much romantics, and heavily focused on that aspect of our relationship. it kind of felt like torture to me, i felt like i was being forced to live every day like it was Valentine's Day- every day had to be filled with hours of cuddling, kissing, and telling the other person how much i loved them. while not all romantic partners are like this, it wore on my psyche quickly to be paired with folks like this, because i understood how important it was to them, but i just couldn't keep up the performance.

i thought something was "wrong" with me for years and that i just wasn't in touch with my emotions, or that i was somehow embracing some toxic aspects of my masculinity without realizing. it took me ages to remember that i came out as aromantic when i was much younger, but after criticism from my friends, including a friend who was asexual, i stopped identifying with the label, because i was told that aromanticism wasn't real, and that that just made me an asshole.

nearly a decade and several uncomfortable romantic relationships later, it finally clicked that there wasn't something wrong with me, but there was something wrong with the situations i was getting myself into. sure, i love being partnered- i have a queerplatonic partner that i've known for a decade and have only gotten closer to over time. but we've never been romantic. we don't exchange romantic platitudes, and i realized; i've never been happier with someone else than i am with this person.

why is that?

oh. because they don't expect romance from me. they are also on the aspectrum and don't have a romantic partner, either.

this relationship has brought me more joy than any romantic partnership i've ever attempted to pursue. that doesn't mean there's something wrong with me- i was just looking for happiness in the wrong places. i was miserable not because i'm aromantic, but because i was getting into romantic relationships.

romance can be a source of misery. romance does not inherently make everyone happy. we are not all looking for romance as a species. in fact, chasing it makes many people miserable. too many people spend their lives looking for "the one" that they can kiss, cuddle, hold and say all of those mushy things to when they may not even want that to begin with.

i've never been more at peace with myself since finally, fully accepting that i'm aromantic. i love who i am, and i love how i love. i am not loveless, i experience platonic, queerplatonic and other forms of love. but loveless aromantics aren't miserable, either. we are all embracing ourselves in a way that's true to us. we are refusing to warp ourselves to a society that tells us that we all must have homogeneous feelings.

i am aromantic. i am here. my aromanticism is queer in a society that expects and demands romance of me, and this is true of all aromantics, cis, trans, gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, and otherwise. we are here, we are not going away any time soon, and we will not be silent because our identities make some people uncomfortable. we are happiest being who we are.

happy aro week, this goes out to every last arospectrum person out there, appreciate yourselves this week. you deserve it.

[specialagentartemis]

Would you be open to elaborating more on your statement “#Admittedly I fundamentally don’t believe that many forms of ADHD and many of the tumblr-acceptable forms of autism are materially distinct”? I haven’t heard someone else voice this sentiment, but I think I have similar feelings to you around this topic and I am curious how others have come to this conclusion as well.

Sure.

When I was eight years old, I was diagnosed with ADD—Attention Deficit Disorder. This is considered a related but separate and distinct thing from ADHD.

When I was a teenager, a new DSM came out. ADD was no longer considered a distinct thing. My diagnosis changed to ADHD-I: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Inattentive Type.

My brain didn’t change, but the professional perception of what was up with it did.

Is ADD materially different from ADHD? Can you have ADHD without hyperactivity? That used to be no, now it’s yes; answer the first question, that used to be yes, now it’s no.

I see very similar things between ADHD and autism. Lots of people do. Traits like the ability to fixate on an interest to the physical inability to pay attention to anything else; infodumping past the point other people lose interest; penchant for physical clumsiness and poor coordination; emotional dysregulation; proclivity to sensory overload; anxiety over not emoting correctly… they’re ADHD things and autism things. Is bouncing my leg an autism stim or an expression of ADHD hyperactivity? Or is it just fidgeting like people do sometimes? I dunno. Are they in fact materially different things?

Similar to ADD, Asperger’s Syndrome is no longer a thing. It’s subsumed under Autism Spectrum Disorder now. Is “high functioning” autism the same material thing as “low functioning” autism? Is “high functioning” autism the same thing as “ADD”? Idk. In some people I think it is.

Especially in mental disorders and neurodivergences, diagnoses aren't physical, material things. They're names given to commonly occurring collections of traits or symptoms. There's no virus that causes ADHD, no bacteria that can be isolated that causes autism. COVID is caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2; strep throat is caused by Streptococcus bacteria. They have symptoms, but they are primarily defined by their root cause. ADHD, autism, and plenty of other Brain Things do have neurochemical correlates - that is, there is an aspect of physical reality to them, you brain is wired a certain way - but it's not like ADHD is caused by the ADHD Virus and Autism is caused by the Autism Germ. They're names given to observable sets of traits, in order to figure out ways of treating and managing them. And I think drawing a sharp distinction between them - THIS is ADHD, and THIS is autism, and they're NOT THE SAME! - is pointless.

I like to use the xkcd color survey as an analogy for... well, a lot of things about the human experience and the way we classify it.

If you weren't around in 2010, xkcd's Randall Munroe asked the internet to help crowdsource the true names and boundaries of colors. You could sit down at the screen, colors would appear before you by random hexcode, and you typed in the name you'd call it. You could do this as many times with as many colors as you wanted. This was the resultant chart he made:

This shows the entirety of fully saturated RGB color space. Each pixel is a different hex code. Each pixel represents a different individual's brain.

I usually use this chart to talk about sexual orientation/queer identities. But it's also a great analogy for the categorizations being diagnoses.

If "Blue" is, say, ADHD, and "Purple" is Autism, you can image how one person's "purple" experience may be wildly different from another "purple" experience but very similar to a "blue" experience. But they're labelled differently, for various reasons. Maybe the doctor had recently seen a lot of blues, and this one seems more purple in comparison. Maybe the doctor has a really specific idea of what blue is, so this can't be blue, it must be purple. Which is not to say some blues aren't wildly different from some purples, that some purples match the platonic ideal image in your mind of what "purple" is more than others. There's still clearly a lot of overlap in blue and purple experiences.

That's kind of how I think about ADHD and autism.

And who knows, maybe I think this just because I am actually autistic. I've asked myself that, wondered that before. Am I? Or are these just ADHD symptoms that overlap? And honestly at this point the answer isn't super important to me. I know how my brain works and how to deal with it when it gets bad, and there's very little that pursuing a diagnosis would do for me at the point I'm at in my life.

But when I say that I suspect the two aren't as materially distinct as they're sometimes made out to be, this is what I mean.

[catboybiologist]

I was wondering if you had any readings on the biological aspects of transitioning, especially with the info you use to deconstruct the transphobia argument that being transgender is ‘against biology’. Im a biological sciences major, but haven’t gotten to discuss (much less find resources on) this topic.

Thanks in advance.

Long and rambling response incoming! Sorry for leaving this in my inbox for a few weeks.

This is a very interesting topic to me, and doesn't really have a clean answer. Because its not really about the biology itself, its mostly about the philosophy of science, and how it interfaces with ethics, etymology, and societal understanding. The primary thing to understand is that science is *descriptive*. Morality or classifications are societal determinations that we use to "wrap" scientific observations- gender is therefore the societal "wrapper" to sex, which, over centuries, has snowballed and taken a social definition well past any biological system.

That being said, most of my arguments hinge on the totality of changes that are possible with HRT, and how they affect the molecular mechanisms of sex determination. To me, this sheer totality means that a trans man with significant time on HRT can actually be considered a "biological man", and vice versa for a trans woman. To me, the sheer extent to which cell expression patterns change, and structural elements of the body change, means that the way that transphobes use terminology like "biological sex" is bullshit. And as I've said before, this is NOT a transmedicalist argument, and if I ever sound transmed, I am sorry. Part of the totality of this biological definition includes the interface of genetics, pyschology, and sociology that comprehensively includes all trans people, even those not on HRT. Rather, I use the changes of HRT as a way to demonstrate the plasticity of sex in humans and other animals, and how thin the barrier between sexes actually is. This punches holes in a lot of the propaganda that transphobes tend to roll out, and helps demonstrate how flimsy their talking points are. All of this is to say, something can't be "against biology" because biology is morally neutral. It's not morality. It's not static definitions. It's a set of observations. But, our thinking about definitions and classifications can reflect and be advised by these observations. For me, it helped to think about HRT changes, because my personal mentality is one of a constructed identity. I define myself by what I am in the moment, and if I can document my current state, that helps define who I am- which is a woman. The biology of transition told me how deeply that is true, and continually becomes more true, on a molecular level. So. Here's some individual papers and points that help guide my thinking on the topic, and how each helped me find peace with transitioning: Medical descriptions of changes on HRT:

I'm sure everyone is familiar with this and the WPATH, but from the perspective of medical expectations. Instead, take a look at the changes documented here, and start thinking about how deep and profound they are- these cell types and body structure are sitting there just waiting to happen, and they are literally the same as their cis counterparts. This was huge for me in accepting that my post-HRT body wouldn't be "fake", and actually is literally the

Review paper of sex determination pathways in the animal kingdom:

Transphobes use chromosomes as a prescriptive definition of sex and gender. However, if you take a broader look and see how sex determination works in animals with similar genetic mechanisms as us, it becomes pretty clear that chromosomal sex determination is a late addition to the party. Essentially, most animals use a fairly random mechanism to ensure an advantageous sex ratio in their population. This is often environmental or based on some random gene on chromosome that looks nothing like XY sex determination, but if a large chromosomal deletion comes along, its a convenient way to keep the big version of the chromosome always paired with the small chromosome- for example, the X chromosome always being paired with another X, or its half-deleted pair, the Y chromosome. But there's nothing intrinsic about the chromosomes itself that define sex, its just an evolutionary ride-along mechanism.

So what does actually determine sex? Well, as with any broad scale developmental effect, one signalling molecule or gene can cause extensive downstream genetic effects, and that active, lived set of gene expression then defines what secondary sex characteristics develop.

(even though the main point is about spermatogenesis, it does provide a lot of nice summary figures about testosterone signalling) While these papers don't talk about trans people, the introduction of cross-sex hormones will activate these pathways, and cause the wide variety of downstream transcriptional changes in gene activation. Essentially, the active genes in your body will follow the dominant upstream sex hormones in your body. If you're transfemme, on HRT, the active genes in your body are female ones. If you're transmasc, on HRT, the active genes in your body are male ones.

While I never explicitly studied trans people in my biology education, studying principles of gene regulation, chromosome biology, and just a tad of reproductive physiology means that I started to think about how all of those interface with the way we define ourselves in a lot of ways. And usually, that is dynamic- you can have developmental changes kicked off by signalling molecules later in life, and it would be deranged to ignore those changes out of spite and insist that the biological system is still the thing it was before. Sex determination is not exempt from that.

Again, I use HRT changes as an example, but you can find many similar papers on the psychology of transness even pre-HRT. But, I would caution against trying to find a "root biological reason" for being trans pre-HRT- its likely too polymodal to accurately characterize. It's why I stray away from neurological papers and arguments here. That is an ENTIRELY different argument and this post is already long. But hey, every ask I get like this helps formalize my thoughts on the matter. Hope this helped!

[biasbuck]

BiAsBuck’s ficrec Fridays

Happy Friday everyone! This is my first 911 ficrec post (I'm usually over here if ill-fated hunters and their angel husbands are your jam) but I've been DEEP in the Evan Buckley hyperfixation throughout April so come with me for what I've been reading!

This is a combination of Buddie and Bucktommy and buckeddietommy (aka buckeddie and meatballs, heh!)

26 April 2024

tell me about despair by @hattalove was the first fic I read, specifically because I wanted to get inside Eddie's head more as on first viewing I found him a little trickier to grasp...but yeah...that might just be because I am he and he am I. This fic was an wonderful way in to understanding his inner workings. His queer awakening and the associated traumas he has to work through were handled with such care, and the character voices were just gorgeous. "Eddie's not entirely sure he believes in getting help, at least not for himself. There's only so much healing to be had for a body torn apart by bullets, for a mind that's only half there, for a man who's been leaving pieces of himself behind all his life with nothing to take their place. Except, as it turns out, falling apart happens in increments, and healing does, too"

evan, elated and euphoric by @gayhoediaz 16500 words of bucktommy first time smut anyone?? "Buck likes it - not just being with Tommy, being with a man - that part is obvious, but he… likes that he likes it. He loves that he likes it. Truthfully, he doesn’t think that he has ever felt more at home in his own body than he does in this very moment." This is such a delightful exploration (through copious amounts of sizzling sex) in Buck feeling fully present and fully himself in his sexuality, and it's gloriously decadent as well as sweet and sexy as hell. I loved this characterisation of Tommy.

Both Bermuda and Golden (Lost but Doing Just Fine) by @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels all hail the threesome fics! In which the correct answer is always - Both? Both is good! This one is gloriously kinky and sexy and I love the 'guiding hand' aspect and how both Buck and Eddie allow themselves to be led. "It's not that Buck's not happy with Eddie. It's just that being with Tommy taught him things about himself, things he wants, and he doesn't quite know how to ask Eddie for those things. He shouldn't have underestimated how well Eddie knows him, or how willing Tommy is to lend a helping, instructional hand."

Heart of Flowers / Heart of Gold by @elvensorceress is a gorgeously written allegorical tale with PEAK Buddie and Christopher family vibes set between S4&5. "In the aftermath of the sniper attack, Buck has to keep going without his partner while sorting through the layers of everything they are to each other, while Eddie fights for his life and through all his internalized trauma and regret for everything they never managed to say. aka After nearly losing each other, Buck and Eddie find their way to each other and their family’s happily ever after." My absolute favourite thing about this fic is the thread with the bedtime story that Christopher and Buck have created together. Just beautiful.

five ways to fall in love with the man in the mirror by @buckttommy is a bucktommy fic but crucially a Buck absolutely revelling in the poetry of getting to know your own identity. It also crucially gives me Jay Hulme vibes (iykyk) "Buck meets God at a gay club. He finds him in an oil-slick puddle on a damp night, neon lights reflecting off the kaleidoscopic liquid in the parking lot. or; Evan Buckley falls in love with himself."

and i know how i feel by @middyblue is a very sweet Buck coming out to Bobby fic, written I believe between 7x04 and 7x05. ALL the Dad!Bobby feels. "Buck stares off over the hills of Los Angeles, hugging his knees. He half wants to take out his phone and start playing Nine Simone (it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me, and I’m feeling - ) and half can’t bear to drown out the thin peace of bird calls in the quiet blue of the morning. Footsteps scrape on gravel behind him and he turns, half-expecting another hiker, but it’s Bobby, carrying a coffee tray with two to-go cups and a paper bag."

Short and sweet fic:

For All Occasions by @storybelle FIREFAM FEELS! In which of course, as per tradition, Hen makes the 118 a cake. I neeeeeed Hen and Buck queer camaraderie show, I need it, and just like this!

Wedding Bell Blues by @klutzygirl - much needed supportive parents actually fic! "Margaret and Phillip meet their son's new boyfriend when they arrive in town for Maddie's wedding." it doesn't go how Buck would expect, in the best way.

PS - if you have any henren authors/fic recs I should check out PLEASE let me know! I'm new and I love them!

[rocketyship]

What don't you like about the '' i have no mouth but i must scream'' game versions of the characters? ( except ellen's story because that's understandable …)

OH HONEY LET ME TELL YOU!!!! As you said like most people I don’t like Ellen’s and it is understandable. But besides her I strongly dislike what they did with Gorrister, Benny, and especially Nimdok.

Gorrister: In the original text before AM took him he was a peace activist, a rights marcher, he was a man with intense morals that AM broke. That concept alone is just so fascinating to me. Our morals are what shapes as a human being, they affect every aspect of our daily life and AM took them and broke them and he ruined this man with a great sense of justice and turned him into just another shoulder-shrugger. Whilst what the game did to him was not that outrageous, I just don’t like him being a truck driver red-neck type. Personally I imaged Gorrister as someone very educated, well-spoken, and likely someone who may have played a role in the war which would add so many more layers to the story if that was the case.

Benny: This man was the biggest missed opportunity, and what they decided to do to him in the game just breaks my heart. In the og story and the radio adaptation there was the idea of Benny being a brilliant scientist, well respected, world renowned, he was handsome, and he was gay. AND AM TOOK ALL OF THAT FROM HIM. AM literally broke and blended this man so much that when you put his life during the war and the one after it, it’s like to different people. And then there is this opportunity, this idea that game missed out on. In the book Ted called him luckily because he’s had everything taken from him and doesn’t even know it, but like what if he does? What if he is still conscious and trapped in his head and literally unable to do anything about it. And when AM decides to turn his eyes to jello, then Damn!!! He is just stuck in this dark void where he feels this pain, hears it, but can do nothing about it. AM turned what seemed like a cool dude into a horrific animal and that’s so fascinating to me. The problem with game Benny being “a monster” before AM took them, also kind of defeats the horror of the whole twisting him into one. Like I don’t care that this terrible war person has been forced to devolve, he kind of deserves it, like what is he gonna learn about himself? What is he gonna confront? “Oh I’m such a bad person!” I’m pretty damn sure he knew that already and just didn’t care. Where’s the tragedy? What reason do I have to be entertained, horrified and sympathetic to this dude? No reason. He just sucks

Nimdok: Why the actual f*ck is he a n@zi?!?! Like I like the idea of all the survivors being from all over the world and not just American, but why in every damn piece of media are German characters always n@zis?!?! In fact, since he is one I don’t care what happens to him, I don’t care about his regrets, or the “nice” things he decides to do in the HOLOGRAPHIC WORLD. HE DESERVES TO SUFFER AND THAT IS THAT. I HATE IT. I HATE IT. AM’s hate and torturing of humanity is meant to pointless. He picked these humans cause they were either everything he desired to have and be, or by possible chance. Normal people, perhaps even good people, he twisted into this way. In the og story it was so vague what was up with Nimdok, the only clue to him being German was Ellison’s dramatic reading of the story where he puts on a accent for him. The horror is that this older man has been given a speed run on Alzheimers, which in itself is Damn scary in real life, he has this fake childlike bravery, this way to aimless believe whatever AM tells him. He doesn’t know his name! His identity is gone! No one is there to help him figure it out, cause the other survivors can’t, there is nothing he can and that’s just that. (I’m actually getting very frustrated right now, so I’ll just stop here).

So yeah. There. That’s my hot takes. Maybe someone will disagree with me, but never in my life have I seen anyone like Nimdok or really his story in the game.

[cpeedemon]

Green/Blue Fire in HB + Specific focus on Asmodeus

Gonna start off by saying that I am certainly not the first person to identify the clear narrative difference between green and blue fire in HB.

While green fire has destroyed everything, it arguably correlates both to the nature of fire and the symbolism of the color green.

Green symbolizes money/greed (this is redundant, ik im sorry). But we can say, Fizz became both literally and figuratively wounded/consumed/scarred by the greed of Cash Buckzo. I’m not sure of the extent that Fizz was working under Mammon at this time, so I think it might be better if we stick with Cash’s greed. Although Fizz’s idolization of Mammon may have been one of the factors that aided in ignoring the abuse, we can also argue that Cash laid the groundwork for normalizing an exploitative relationship.

Furthermore, green can symbolize envy. So maybe, we can view green fire as not only a symbol of Cash’s greed, but .... possibly Blitzo's jealousy?

I'd argue it is a bit of a reach. Although his jealousy is apparent from childhood, before the fire Blitz always seems to be supportive of Fizz even after he's got fans.

After the misunderstanding between the two that further separates them, his jealousy is a bit more obvious though. Never can he forget about his own lack of success in the circus, and Fizz seems to represent that era of his life.

So again, the idea of Blitz's jealousy as one of the things that "destroyed" Fizz is iffy... But Cash’s greed makes sense symbolically.

Let's move on.

Blue fire, on the other hand, seems to be ineffective to hell's citizens just like normal red fire, seen as how Fizz doesn't flinch using Ozzie's fire batons and yknow openly cuddles his big blue flaming bf.

But I looked into the further symbolism of blue fire, cuz I felt that there had to be a reason why it was such a big aspect of Ozzie's design. Furthermore, what makes blue fire more tame? In part because i was interested, in part cuz of my increased procrastination during finals season, I stumbled upon this dandy lil article --

https://atlasmythica.com/blue-flame-symbolism-meaning/ .

TLDR: describes distinct symbolism of blue fire (meant to be interpreted in relation to dreams, but i think it's interesting to see in HB's context, too)

Although red fire -- fire in it's purest form, really -- can symbolize destruction, it also symbolizes passion, energy, desire, or love.

The color blue intrinsically seems to combat fire in itself, being that it symbolizes depression, tranquility or rationality.

What the article really deduces is that blue fire can represent 'healthy emotions' -- those in which we balance passions and desires without repressing them.

Not gonna go over Ozzie's little love/lust tangent we get when we're first actually introduced to him cuz I think by now everyone gets the gist of it. But it's important, cuz it underlines his regard/performance of his sin. And I think the article's conclusion of what blue fire represents really correlates with his identity as the embodiment of lust/passion.

Lust is not meant to be forced, neither should it be repressed.

Arguably, his expression of lust can correlate to how he shows all other emotions.

Overall, Ozzie is a chill guy - blue very well matches his personality in the sense that he kinda oozes comfort, contentment and self-possession. Outwardly, he seems naturally charismatic, like Fizz, loves entertaining a crowd, and is very open and proud about his sin.

But, dude doesn't hold back when he's pissed, as do all the other sins we've seen, yet even that has nuance. Yeah, he gets disgruntled at the thought of all his factory assets being given to Crim, but at the thought of Fizz's head on the guy's wall -- that's an automatic hell no.

When it comes to things he's passionate about, he bares his emotions on his sleeve, impulsively letting them guide actions that someone like Stolas would have thought twice about.

He wanted Fizz back so badly, he was willing to sign Crim's contract off the bat -- imagine if Stolas hadn't intervened. And what about the factors that built up to his public confession of loving Fizz?

I get it -- Ozzie was fed up of hiding his relationship, but this confession wasn't a goddamn soft launch either, it was very abrupt, in the heat of the moment. Right then and there, he's not thinking of the consequences of his actions, which are hinted at considering Mammon will def make a reappearance.

So, along with his naturally relaxed demeanour, there’s that component in accordance with fire — the passionate, fiery, shameless side that cannot be repressed.

What I mean to say, at the end of it all, is that what we can surmise about blue fire really matches with Ozzie's character. It's a testament to his design. Love the guy and I'm so curious to see what the show ends up doing with him and Fizz.

[csuitebitches]

Heylo, I don’t know if you answer to personal relationship questions. I have recently stumbled to your account and I really love your content and I would love your advice on this.

I have recently realised I am not comfortable around masculine energy. I mean I always knew but I thought I had a progress and like I would want a relationship with a guy with healthy masculine energy. Turns out, being around masculine energy still scares me and I just don’t know what to do. How to overcome this uneasiness?

Hmm. I used to be the same way. I’m not sure if my story will resonate with you but see if it helps.

Growing up I wasn’t the beautiful friend. I was the chubby, spectacled, shy girl with a stutter. It took me a while to get myself sorted and feel confident.

But as a result, guys never really paid attention to me till I turned about 16-17. Which, for a girl, is pretty late considering that my friends were all dating boys since 11-12 (not like it even counts but basically the fact their crushes reciprocated their feelings and mine never did was a bit … crushing).

This meant that I began dating boys, that very frankly, didn’t deserve me. I began dating boys who were ready to “settle” for me because I thought I could never get the guys I wanted anyway. Or I began dating guys I would have the upper hand with; as in, I knew they liked me more and I could leave the relationship anytime. I know it sounds psychotic.

Confident guys made me nervous. Even as I grew older, lost all that weight, grew my hair out till my waist, learned how to use make up, got a dermatologist, went to speech therapy and became objectively 100x more attractive, I still felt like that “ugly” 12 year old on the inside even if i showed a very confident front. As my confidence had grown in another aspects of my life, my career, hobbies, academics were good - but men still made me nervous.

I realised that the problem was with me.

The fact that I dated men “below” my level showed what I thought of my own self, what I thought I truly deserved.

My fear stemmed from the fact of never being good enough for a man, not being beautiful enough, smart enough, fun enough. All these other girls were so seamlessly confident and I seemed to only have the fake kind of confidence.

True confidence can be spotted from a mile away.

Here’s what helped me. I began focusing on myself and began cultivating healthy platonic relationships with good men. I can never date these guys but they’re like my family now.

I think what made me sort of wary of confident, healthily masculine men was that their sense of identity was very strong. They knew what they liked and didn’t like, they knew who they were, they weren’t afraid to say what was on their mind. The last guy I was seeing projected exactly this and in that relationship (it was healthy, ended for other reasons) I felt very comfortable in my feminine. Which he was equally appreciative of. But I still felt not good enough.

You need to essentially develop friendships with men. Don’t look at them as creatures from other planets. Talk to them, make them your friend. Men are much more easier to befriend than women in my opinion - I’m always more conscious of myself around women than men. (that doesn’t mean that i don’t like being friends with women; I love my girlfriends, I feel it’s harder to impress a woman than a man).

At the same time, work on your confidence and try to figure out the root cause of why exactly you feel so uncomfortable.

Here’s another post that I had written about this topic.

[stevetonyweekly]

SteveTony Weekly - Jan 28st - Week 4

Hey, friends and Stevetony lovers! I actually got to read quite a bit this week which was surprising looking back at my list? Anyway. Enjoy it, and be sure to leave a comment/kudos for the author! 

~*~ 

Masked and Anonymous by panickyintheuk

“When Mr. Stark opened the door, he had his shirt untucked, and no shoes on. It was evening, and it was his own apartment, and Steve was dropping by unannounced, so that was all really fair enough, but it was also the least put-together Steve had ever seen him."

Steve drops in on Avengers benefactor Mr. Stark, but it seems that Mr. Stark was expecting him.

This was so cute, Steve was so excited and confused and Tony was just--uggghhh. I loved it. 

Found the place to rest my head by nanasekei

There was blood in the corner of Steve’s mouth.

A tiny slice of hurt/comfort with Tony taking care of Steve? Yes please. 

Good Luck Charm by BlossomsintheMist

Steve’s been reckless on the battlefield lately, and gets himself hurt. Tony worries over him. Steve pines over Tony. Things go unspoken, but they still manage to be there for each other all the same. Maybe what they've always had is still as strong as it always was, after all.

I love how gentle Tony was with Steve AND how hurt Steve was. So often he’s untouchable, and him explicitly responding to pain was a lot and very lovely. 

The Fight by elwenyere

Steve gets himself kidnapped, and Tony is not happy about it.

Always a sucker for the pining idiots in love who only realize it when the other is in danger.

Demon in a Bottle by AvengersNewB

Young alpha Tony Stark picks up his omega, Steve Rogers, from his dad's place, bruised and battered, and he has to do his best to protect his omega from the harms of abusive alcoholic parents.

I don’t read omega Steve often, but this was really well done. 

Transcendental Blues by Carsonian

The best place to be after an argument with your partner is in the collapsed ruins of a building. Having said partner as your only company and being mortally wounded is an especial bonus.

For the prompt fill: trapped together while one of them is injured

This ends very bittersweet? So go into it with your eyes open on that aspect. But it was lovely. 

Limit by Saber_Wing

Steve straightened and took a few steps forward, working his way toward a pile of twisted metal that looked slightly more lethal than its surrounding compatriots. Someone could really hurt themselves on that. Sweat poured off him in buckets, and he blinked it out of his eyes, shaking his head, as if to shoo a fly away.

Big mistake. Steve’s head swam in a way it hadn’t in years, and his vision blurred before he blinked it away, dazed, light-headed, more than a little stunned. He stumbled over a jagged piece of rock; limbs heavy, movements sluggish.

Oh. Oh, wow, he was dizzy.

Steve overworks himself. Tony is not pleased.

So often we see Steve taking care of Tony when he’s overworked himself and putting limits on his work, and this is so good because it flips that dynamic and Tony’s so sweet and angry and worried. 

End Racism in the OTW - Hypotenuse by derryderrydown

Steve breaks up with Tony because he's in love with Iron Man. That's when things start to get complicated.

This was such lovely identity porn, plus the whole Iron Man fucking Steve was. Yeah. THAT never gets old. 

If You Never Say Your Name Out Loud To Anyone by theladyingrey42

Sometimes, Steve has panic attacks.

Or at least he used to. Nowadays, he mostly just has conversations with Tony Stark.

These two taking care of each other. I’ve been reading it for years now and I still can’t get enough. 

All That Is Merry & Bright by askaniblue 

Steve isn't Captain America anymore and he isn't an Avenger, but when he stops by the Tower for some intel he stumbles into the Avengers holiday party. He knows he should leave, but everything keeps pulling him in.

Look. I am such a sucker for Steve as America’s Top Cop and absolutely miserable, while Tony pines and misses him and knows exactly what he needs. That’s pretty niche, I’ll admit, but it’s one of my favorite dynamics and this was PERFECT. 

From You I Cannot Hide by SailorChibi

Being a sub isn’t the worst thing in the world. Being a sub who doesn’t like pain, well. That’s just weird. A sub’s sole responsibility in life is to be anything and everything a dom wants, an open canvas for a dom’s brush, malleable and sweet. Obie taught him that, and that fear ultimately tears him and Pepper apart. So Tony hides his dirty secret and doesn’t sub for anyone now. But that doesn’t stop him from wanting.

I’ve read this before and I still love it. Tony is so damaged and Steve’s patience with him is just. Lovely. 

in the storm, we stay clear by Thahire 

Beside him, Tony’s getting comfortable, too, unknotting his tie with one hand, the other tapping away on his phone. The light from his phone illuminates his profile. Steve forces his gaze way when he realizes he’s been staring at Tony’s mouth for a solid five seconds.

It’s going to be a long wait.

Steve and Tony's car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. It leads to some misunderstandings and then finally some long overdue conversations.

I really love how, finally, trapped together, they communicate. 

We All Need Somebody to Lean On by tnystrk3000

Summary: 5 times Tony fell asleep during movie night and the 1 time he didn’t

Takes place a few weeks/months after the Battle of New York, 2012.

This is such classic 2012 team as family and bonding. I love it, love seeing it in this, 2024. Never change, fam. 

5 times tony indulges steve's strength kink + 1 time he doesn't mean to by meidui

Steve really appreciates how strong Tony is.

It’s always Tony appreciating Steve’s strength, so this was a very nice role reversal. 

Tinsel Rings by NotEvenCloseToStraight

On New Years Eve, an attempt at one-upping Justin Hammer goes awkwardly wrong and Tony suddenly has to come up with a fake fiancee at a moment's notice.

Thankfully Steve Rogers is gorgeous enough and sweet enough to get the job done.

Ahh, Tony getting himself into a mess and find something lasting on accident is perfect. 

***Truth or Dare, Do or Die by itsallAvengers

Honestly? He'd brought this whole debacle upon himself. It was Friends With Benefits rule 101: whatever you do, don't get attached. Don't become too familiar. And do not, under any circumstances, fall in love.

Tony Stark had always been a bit shit at following rules, though.

Hanahaki disease in a way I’d never seen it? Two idiots pining? Soft absolutely smitten Steve? Check, check, check. I loved this so fucking much.

The Most Amazing Things (Some Terrible Lie) by copperbadge

Tony's decision not to reveal his identity as Iron Man to the world was shrewd and calculated. Too bad it's about to backfire on him like a Jericho missile.

I am actually a big fan of Tony not revealing he’s Iron Man in the MCU, and this one is so incredibly well done. 

[wistfulcynic]

gonna go off a bit on the subject of the "he's me fr" school of character analysis. Because while it's absolutely fine and good even to relate to fictional characters and see aspects of yourself in them, it's also important to recognise the difference between your interpretation based on your experiences and what is actually shown on the page or screen.

humans are primed to recognise patterns. We are strongly inclined to contextualise things to suit our existing worldviews. We don't like contradiction and we don't like things we don't understand. It's so natural for us then to reframe anything we find confusing or contradictory that we often don't even notice we are doing it.

this is bad! This is dangerous! This is how you get bigotry and hatred!

a lot of people reframe things they don't understand (other races, cultures, religions, genders) into Other and Other is frequently Bad or even Evil. It's relatively easy to spot when other people do this and to understand that it is wrong. But surely, you may then say to yourself, if i am reframing things into what is familiar to me that's good, right? i'm Relating and that's a positive thing!

and i guess, yes and no. Yes because finding connection can be validating and because there's a reason that representation in media is so important--that reason being largely because it gives a wider range of people the opportunity to see others like them on screens and in pages. But also that act of relating to something you know is in fact an act of bias. You are biased in favour of recognising that thing because it is You. It's important to you as part of your identity but you should be aware that this can lead you to overcompensate and to misinterpret things because you are seeking that connection so intensely. And honestly i think this is also fine so long as you are able to recognise the difference.

there's a difference between saying "i identify in X way and demonstrate Y characteristic. This fictional character demonstrates Y characteristic therefore i am going to interpret them as identifying in X way" and saying "this character MUST OBVIOUSLY identify in X way because I DO and I SAID SO and this is now a VALID TEXTUAL INTERPRETATION."

maybe it is. Maybe it also isn't. Maybe Y characteristic is something that supports many different interpretations and "because they're totally me and i said so" is neither a strong argument nor a healthy way to process the world.

let me give a real world example. i am acespec, something i didn't understand until relatively recently and definitely couldn't have defined when i was in college because that was like 1997 and the language i needed really didn't exist then. Or at least it didn't exist in my corner of the american midwest. Anyway. i had a friend in college who was gay. He had come out at 18, which in the late 90s rural midwest was a big fucking deal. He was very proud of his identity, to the point of being aggressive about it and one of his big things was trying to encourage other people to explore their own sexual identities.

which is fine, right? Good, even. People should be able to do that and his intention was to be a safe space for his friends. His intentions were good! What wasn't good was the way he absolutely targeted me as someone who didn't date and didn't "chase men" <-this was literally the way he phrased it to me. He said "you don't chase men and you don't want to date them therefore you are a lesbian just admit it."

he absolutely would not accept that i wasn't gay too. He used to get mad at me for arguing with him about it. The way his world was framed you were either gay or straight (reminding folks this was the 90s) and so if you weren't demonstrating Accepted Straight Behaviour, ie dating and lots of sex, that must mean you were closeted gay and should just come out already, otherwise what are you some sort of homophobe?

he wasn't able to recognise that his interpretation of the characteristics i showed were not the only possible interpretation. Even if i weren't acespec i could just not have met anyone i was interested in! (this was also true). There were at least half a dozen other explanations for it but he insisted his was the only way because it was His identity and His experience and he was i think genuinely trying to relate to me on that level. Instead he ended up alienating me because i knew the choice wasn't as simple as "gay or closeted and probably homophobic" but there was absolutely no convincing him of that.

obviously there is a difference between what he did and fictional character analysis. Obviously fictional characters are not going to be hurt by people interpreting them as whatever the way i was hurt by my friend's behaviour. But i put it to you that the same inability to differentiate between what is real and what is your own interpretation based on your personal biases is a negative thing and something people need to be aware of. If you are capable of imposing traits on fictional people based on your own identity and recognising that doesn't necessarily mean they have those traits then great, more power to you, go forth and fanfic. But if you interpret a character in X way and genuinely, deeply believe that your interpretation is the only right and valid one based on nothing more than your own experiences then i strongly urge you to examine your biases and learn to do textual character analysis. For yourself, for your own metacognition skills, but also for the people around you. Believing you are right and there is no other way to think is the quickest path to intolerance and hatred that there is.

[lurking-latinist]

I am sure everyone has been biting their nails waiting to find out what the next Hornblower fic premise that I’ll never write is. It is below the cut.

Retribution fix-it, obviously. Nobody is dying and if anybody tries to confess to anything and sacrifice himself (I don’t trust Hornblower not to pull this stunt either) the other two will sit on his head until he stops being silly.

So the lieutenants all stick to their story and as far as the court-martial can tell there’s not a pin to choose among them. Hammond argues that in that case they should hang the lot but Pellew is pulling every string in the British Empire to save their necks, and he has a lot of strings. The compromise they come to eventually is that they will all of them be stripped of rank and dismissed the service. (I don’t know if this is historical. I haven’t done any research at all. That’s why I’m not actually writing it.)

So our boys (and Buckland I guess; I wonder just how many times Buckland’s name has been followed up with “I guess”? Anyway he goes off and does his own thing) are cast adrift, metaphorically, they are on land, that’s the problem, in Kingston. There will be opportunities for fun (for the reader) and chaos (for the characters) if they are drifting around penniless for a bit; I imagine Hornblower’s one remunerative land-based skill, which is card-playing, takes him to rather less posh surroundings than in Portsmouth.

But anyways obviously they are still sailors and they eventually find a short-handed privateer that will take them no questions asked under the names of Smith, Jones, and Robinson. Only to find a few days out of port that she is less of what you might call a privateer and more of what you might call a pirate, and her captain is a drunken murderous tyrant… During a particularly horrible moment Bush sees Hornblower and Kennedy exchange one of their telepathic glances, realizes he too knows what they’re thinking, and thinks, when did this become my life?

With practice and without Buckland, and with a captain none of them had any respect for in the first place, they’re a lot quicker. If they have a reputation as desperate men now they might as well use it. So they explain to the pirate captain very softly, very politely—well, Kennedy’s very polite; Hornblower’s blunter, and the headlock Bush has the pirate in would definitely not be accepted in any drawing-room—that they are the Renown mutineers, they find they don’t like how he runs his ship, and if he doesn’t care to accept their advice he is welcome to find out what happened to their last captain.

(They don’t really mean to kill him in cold blood. Probably. But he thinks they do. Hornblower will be miserable about this ambiguity later—more so, weirdly, than the big ones like “we are technically also pirates now.” The loss of identity he has suffered through loss of his rank and position in the Royal Navy has not even begun to reach the surface of his labyrinthine subconscious. If you were wondering, Bush is just straightforwardly sad and angry about it and Kennedy is mostly worried about the practical aspects, i.e. what are they actually gonna do.)

They don’t kill him and he does agree to their terms. But very soon they take a small French prize and he tells the three of them, you take her, take a small crew and she’s yours, just get off MY ship, and they take some of the more decent-minded and/or ex-Navy sailors who were amenable to their attempted reforms, and they do, and now they have their own ship. They probably pick one of themselves to be officially in command but they are really a triumvirate and everyone knows it. And they work really, really well together.

I wish I could make them go properly ideologically rogue but I am afraid they will still mainly want to harass the French. (Hornblower is despite his own repeated assertions chock full of revolutionary sympathies but they’re not democratic, they’re aristocratic-republican, and he was born 150 years too late to be an English aristocratic republican.) But it’s a start.

As I said this is probably deeply unhistorical in some way and anyhow I am not actually writing it. But it brings me pleasure.

[centrally-unplanned]

As I am now full-in on the body count section of The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, I do have growing complaints about how it handles its sort of mystery build-up and reveal aspects. There is an adage for mystery novels to "have your answers ask more questions"; you set up a mystery, you *resolve* the mystery, but that resolution itself just creates deeper mysteries. This of course works very well to keep ratcheting up tension and keep the story moving forward; but it also resolves tension at the same time, you do actually get answers as you go. As an author you can perhaps think of there being a "quota" for the number of active questions for the reader to be considering; if you stack too many at once its both too hard to track them and is frustrating to read about, the story never delivers.

TFTBN breaks this rule; not every time, but a lot. In particular with Su's identity/trauma origin it happens all the time, you get literally dozens of "more mystery" moments behind it before you ever get any answers around it. Its just too coy by half! Why is my narrator like deliberately hiding their own thoughts from the reader across dozens of instances where those thoughts would be extremely relevant? The tension has already been ratcheted to the max, you can set it aside for a bit if you want but if you dangle the question in front of me too often it loses impact.

And even though now we have been getting answers, its *still* playing coy. You have a flashback to a scene of child Su being confronted by Ran over her identity mystery, and she breaks down and starts to explain it, and then the scene just cuts, so you only get a half an explanation. Which is enough to pretty much piece it together, so like the tension is gone? Now when you are coy about it (multiple times after that scene!) its a little lame actually, who ya fooling! But what it did is take away the opportunity to just have a really good scene. You cut away from a character's moment of emotional revelation and interpersonal confrontation.

Mysteries, to simplify of course, do two things for the reader; they make you turn the page in your desire to know more, and they set up dramatic stakes for their reveal in scenes. Its a balancing act ofc but you don't want to sacrifice the latter to keep baiting the former.

I feel this too around the "villain faction" for the story. Right now the villain faction is a virtually-unknown group of actors who have had no interactions or relationships with any of the characters, using mystery tactics to kill people. We are many chapters into that plot, multiple people of note have died, but they are still just strangers - their stated motives minimal and seemingly farcical.

Ofc I am no fool, I understand via meta knowledge and have picked up on the hints they have dropped that they will in fact not be strangers in full - I get how stories work. The problem is that meanwhile we have had like multiple scenes of the group having the traitor debate - "is it one of us?" But that question is silly because I *know nothing about the villains* of substance. Why would any of these classmates betray their group for them? We have no info on that. Oh sure sure I have these like, tiny *mechanical* hints. Like one time Seth? He gave a thumbs up to Ezekiel, when they were supposed to be mad at each other. Sus, my dudes. But that isn't a *motive*, right? Its not a compelling story, its just data. Because the story wont resolve any of its dangling questions, the idea that any of these people is a traitor is just dumb, you would have to like explain the entire plot in one infodump to sell it as interesting. By insisting on drip-feeding every mystery, instead of chained resolution-renewal, these plot threads aren't developed enough to work when they need to.

I do think this comes back to the fundamentals of the pacing issue - there is essentially a desire for this story to be longer than it is. Its a 3000 page book (equivalent ofc), but it isn't, not really. I am ~1000 pages into it I guess, but its probably not even ~500 pages in actual content. I could do this in definitely 400. And this is more than just a padding problem - its that structural thing, to make that length work and still be decent as a story (which it is, its a good story overall) you have to sort of chop up your big moments , which sort of kills them.

Like there is a character, Jia Fang, a fellow student who doesn't go with the group, but is mentioned a bunch as a sort of wild card, and its built up right? They are totally gonna show up somehow, there is tension about what they are up to, and then bam, they literally burst through the door. Its great, they make a huge impact, the chapter ends on that cliffhanger.

And then after maybe a few paragraphs with them the next *multiple chapters* are about a conversation between other people, about other topics where Fang is barely mentioned, and then literally, literally, we get multiple other student's academic thesis presentations, before the plot that Fang showed up to be involved in kicks back into gear. Its self-sabotage right, the literary moment broken apart because the story has to hit quota.

Its certainly a case where the serial nature of the publication would make it ludicrously difficult to fix, that I totally get. Art is really, really hard.

[givemeanaccountalready]

I am now slowly mulling over the Milgram ladies, and how their femininity is used for and against them…

Some is obvious to me. Like how Yuno uses the girlfriend archetype many female characters her age are boxed into to explore different facets of herself while knowing that sex work will result in social condemnation so this exploration of self is hidden from others. Girlfriend characters are usually limited to something they share with their partner, in this case, Yuno matches one part of herself to a client’s wants and makes herself a one-dimensional perfect girlfriend for her client. Similar to Amane, Yuno refuses to have naivety assigned or even associated with her to maintain a sense of agency. She iterates over and over in the second trial that sex work was something she chose. Don’t blame others if you’re going to condemn the sex work aspect, blame her.

Your teenage years are a fun time of trying to assert agency and independence when the rules keep changing based on the adults around you. If you’re not “just a kid who didn’t know any better” when you do wrong, why do they then insist on you being just a dumb kid when you present reasonable arguments or signs of independence? It’s irritatingly unfair. Pick a lane and stay with it. Is she an adult who knows better or a child who doesn’t? You can’t have both. That’s the gist of some of what Yuno is arguing. Granted, every 18 year old, male, female, or nonbinary, thinks they have it all figured out. I’m pretty sure that in five years’ time, Yuno will look back and go wtf was I thinking? I’ve never done sex work, but I’ve certainly looked back at my 18 year old self and wanted to go back and bitch slap some sense into her.

I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume that she didn’t start sex work at 18. And judging by the images of the dates she has gone on, two of her clients are wealthy, older men (green dress Yuno and purple plaid Yuno). They are probably old enough to be her father. Those seem to be expensive sites and objects. Not something a teenager or college student could afford. IRL, it’s all very concerning behavior from Yuno, especially considering how vulnerable sex workers can be to abuse, exploitation, etc. Her being a fictional character means my immediate reaction isn’t to yank the person away from the live grenade of their choice but to watch and see what happens.

But back to Yuno’s use of her femininity to explore her identity. Sex work may not be the healthiest way to figure out who you are, but it is what she decided for herself. Yuno resigning herself to reflect girlfriend characters in media (these one-note gals who like what their boyfriends like) isn’t going to give her any happiness anyway, because human beings are complex and have more than one side. It’s funny in an ironic sort of way that Yuno chose the most out-of-the-box method to box herself in to find what fits her.

That’s just one spitball of an example that I came up with. I’ve got others for the others ladies of Milgram.

I do wish we had an older female character, someone close in age with Kazui to measure the fan reactions to the two oldest prisoners of each gender set. The average age of the female characters is 17.6 years old while the average age of the male characters is 25.6.

[sweaty-confetti]

some thoughts about cultural appropriation

a few important notes before you read this: 

- here, when i say “white,” i am referring to specifically white canadian, white american, and white european, with white european being a rather loosely defined term but typically relating to britain. this is not intended to ignore the existence other white identities such as white south africans, but i am a mixed-race indian+white person who has spent most of his life in the united states and does not have enough experience or knowledge of these identities to make accurate takes about them.

- this is not me making excuses for cultural appropriation. it is a dangerous thing that waters down and erases culture, and should not be encouraged. - this is written in a gentle and hopefully palatable way to white audiences, who i encourage to read this. not every take from a poc is going to be nice-nice about these kinds of things, but this is.

i find it very interesting that when you ask white folks about why they’re so obsessed with certain aspects of culture, the palatable, easily-appropriated ones like native headdresses and whatnot, their reason usually is in the form of “mysticism” and “exoticism.” this is a problem in itself, obviously, tying into the long-standing colonial fetishization of culture, but here’s the bit i actually want to talk about:

when you ask why it’s so “exotic” to them, why it’s so obviously “different and other” at a personal level - it comes from a sense of community.

let me break this down a bit. culture and community are often used as very loose synonyms, and for pretty good reason. a culture is based around the ideas of societal norms and roles, material things, ways of thinking and whatnot - and these all come down to community.

there are certain things that are intrinsic and unique to every culture (even if they are a medley of various different cultural influences), whether they be classical carnatic music in south india, pinakbet from the ilocos region of the philippines, or the ninauh-oskitsi-pahpyaki social role/gender in the blackfoot tribe. even cultures we would consider to “appear” white have these, such as the tales of tuatha de dannan in irish mythology. but the idea of whiteness as a concept does not have these.

whiteness as a concept is a sterilized, “de-cultured” identity that attempts to assimilate most/many folks who appear “white” into a single monolith. this is obviously very damaging and dangerous to many cultures - for example, many ancient celtic traditions have been lost due to the deliberate erasure of these in order to assimilate these people into whiteness.

whiteness as an identity was founded on a basis of eurocentric values and traditions as well as either the deliberate assimilation or erasure of all other cultures and traditions - white supremacy. it still exists like that today (see groups like the KKK or proud boys).

now we know obviously that not all white folks are intentionally racist and a large portion of them genuinely don’t mean harm to poc communities…so why is cultural appropriation so rampant, even in white folks who would otherwise be decent allies to poc?

again, it’s coming down to a sense of community.

i have grown up and lived in the united states for most of my life, and as early as i can remember i have always had questions about the cultural identities of white americans. i’d look at the indian half of me and indian culture that i partook in and experienced, things i cherish such as cooking traditional South indian food, learning carnatic classical music, participating in religious ceremonies, etc. and then i’d look at the white half of me. there was no culture there i could find.

sure, i could look at typically “american” things, such as hamburgers and surfboarding and apple pie, but these fall apart very easily with minimal research. similar hamburger-looking foods appear in europe as far back as the 4th century. bodysurfing/surfboarding has existed in peru, africa and various polynesian countries for thousands of years. versions of apple pie existed in british and french cookbooks as far back as 1390 BCE with influences from the ottoman empire - and apples aren’t native to the americas.

the colonization of the americas and the subsequent reframing of canada and the states as “white” areas is due to the influence of colonization, obviously - and the genocide of millions of first nations people. this was deliberate.

but here is the interesting bit. for hundreds of years, as far back as the pilgrims, cultures that were not fully assimilated into whiteness were rejected and oppressed - even as they colonized.

take italian-americans, for instance. the late 1800s to early 1900s saw a huge influx of italian immigrants to the united states. these immigrants faced oppression in the form of religious and political discrimination (anti-catholic sentiments and anti-communist sentiments). they were often subject to horrible living conditions compared to their american white counterparts as well as violence - one of the largest lynchings in america was the mass-lynching of eleven italian immigrants in new orleans in 1891.

yet today, when we think of italian-americans, we often see them simply as “white.”

a huge amount of immigrants to the united states and canada were forced to give up their original cultures in order to assimilate into whiteness. if not, they were subject to prejudice, discrimination and overall just shitty conditions. for some groups that resembled “white americans” in appearance, such as irish folks and italian folks, this method worked eventually and they were assimilated and accepted into whiteness. for many others due to their skin color or features, such as black enslaved folks or jewish folks, even giving up their own culture still meant they were not accepted as white - they didn’t “look white.” additionally, many cultural groups resisted assimilation and rejected being seen as white.

this is somewhat why i believe so many white americans, canadians, and british participate so heavily in cultural appropriation. it comes from a sense of loneliness, of little to no original culture - and whatever is left has been bastardized and reduced to just “white,” neglecting the cultural nuance.

growing up as a brown-skinned mixed person with heavy ties to the indian side of my culture, i was subject to a fair amount of racism. i remember people asking why my hair was “oily and gross,” and then begging my mom to never put coconut oil in my hair ever again. i remember people telling me that the khichdi my mom had carefully made for my lunch “looked and smelled like fish eggs,” and then only eating bland sandwiches at school. but there is one experience i remember very clearly.

i had a white american best friend when i was very young, from kindergarten to third grade. she never judged me for my food or my clothes or my grandparents’ accent or any other part of my culture and i loved her for it. but i remember having this experience with her one day.

she’d met my grandmother who came to pick me up, donned in an elaborately-formed red sari. the next day, when i sat with her at recess, she said something like, “i liked your grandma’s dress. it was pretty.” taken aback by open appreciation of my culture, i just mumbled a pleased “oh, thanks.” but she didn’t stop there. she said, “my grandma only wears boring clothes, like sweaters and granny dresses. i wish i was indian.”

i said something like, “granny dresses can be nice. you can be white and wear cool clothes.”

“yeah, i know. but any old person can wear sweaters and dresses. they’re just…not from anywhere.”

at the time, i didn’t fully understand her desire to be connected to a specific culture, but i understood in a bit of a detached way. i was always very connected to and appreciative of my indian culture, but look to the white side and i was met with exactly that - a gaping white void. the closest answer i got was “well, your great-grandparents came from germany.” that answer dissatisfied me, although i couldn’t articulate why. now i can.

it’s something like, “but after such a long time, they’re not really german anymore.” i’d seen the absence of culture in whiteness, and how my white friends and family could name a distant time where their family belonged to another culture - but not anymore. now, they were just “white.”

whiteness as a concept strips and sanitizes culture to fit a very, very narrow version of culture - a culture defined on the surface by cheeseburgers and british accents and football and canadian politeness, but dig deeper and you find colonialism, colonization, eurocentricism, racism, and various other systems of oppression.

once again, this is not an excuse for white folks who appropriate culture nor is this me trying to reason my way into approving of it. it’s not, and i’m not. i die a little bit inside every time i see some random hippie on the internet bastardize and water down the concept of chakras. but it is a bit of an explanation, and this is why i have some degree of sympathy for white folks who culturally appropriate.

so, to all white or white-passing folks who read this and understand/relate to it: i implore you this. please, please, please, if you have the time and resources to do so, reconnect with your native culture. talk to older irish folks, or learn about traditional welsh folklore. learn german, or watch documentaries of italian culture. read stories from white-passing native folk, or talk with your black grandparents. please do not lose the culture that your ancestors had to give up in order to assimilate into whiteness. understand that whiteness is a part of you and that it impacts those around you, but if you can, please make the effort to reconnect with your culture. it does wonders for your identity and sense of self.

[nabbit-unmasked]

Hey! I am most likely one of the China placekins you've heard before. I reached out on Reddit but I'm pretty sure r/otherkin restricts new users or something. I was so excited to finally know of someone who is both a country AND objectum for another country!!

Excuse some awkwardness here and there. I just wanna rant about being countrykin. It's so awesome to meet you CAR!

I am personally objectum for the USA (she/xe/purr/it) and I introduced my bf to that as well (we're both otherkin.) We wish you and The Gambia the absolute best! The post with the hearts you made with her is my fave.

I have some very strong thoughts on the controversy of being countrykin/placekin, especially since I believe my alterhumanity originates from trauma (not copinglink though) and being China gives me so much strength, physical and mental, and the power inherent of being a giant physical and conceptual entity is so freeing.

It's one thing to be connected specifically to countries/concepts specifically connected to one brutal regime/etc., but as an Asian guy with Chinese descent, it just feels gross and even racist to an extent. I am so much more than my government. I am the mountains that touch the sky, the rivers of life that color the soil yellow, the love and hearts of a billion people, the endurance of a long history, the strength of my flora and fauna. Same with being the CAR. There will always be issues within a place that exists in our physical reality. But we are more than the sum of our parts.

I am just so glad to have another countrykin here. It feels really isolating sometimes. Especially when my kin has affected my identity so much, including my chosen name down to my favorite colors and how I choose to curate my room.

So I am here to say... Please. PLEASE talk, discuss, ramble, vent, rant more about being the CAR. You are awesome. I connect with it so much.

Love from China 🇨🇳 ❤ 🇨🇫

Hey! So, as it turns out, I didn't meet 2 China placekins, and it's just a coincidence that we've found each other twice on the expanse of the internet! You're the only one lol. Also, I do remember you from reddit :3

I've actually talked to Gold before and he mentioned you. He and said that you might have talked to me in the past, so I'm glad we could meet again! I was super excited when I saw you in my notes :)

Thank you so much for the kind words towards me and The Gambia!! We're doing well and appreciate your wishes :) I wish the same for you and the USA and whatever other objects/things you and Tank are loving on ^^

I feel the same way about the whole placekin controversy thing and I couldn't have said it better myself. While man-made things are important to mankind, we are so much more than that. My identity is not human and has nothing to do with being human. I am a place who's human aspects are ran by humans, but that is only one part of me. There are many, many non-human aspects that make me...me. All of my life and non-life share me, a nonhuman entity.

I will continue to speak for myself and other placekin: that's why I made this blog! I couldn't find any other (active) placekin accounts that spoke out about us. Our community was in the shadows and pretty much unknown to the world, so someone had to be a voice for us. Not to from egotistical, but this blog brought placekin together, educated others on who we are, and even allowed others to discover that they were placekin themselves. I'm here to tell the world that we're here.

Happy to meet with you again, China.

Much love 🇨🇫 ❤ 🇨🇳 /p