#can you tell i have something something first gen overachieving asian trauma

[toffeelemon]

what does it mean to be an immigrant gay kid (simon pov) 

(ft. trans simon??? because if i’m projecting why not go all the way)

look. simon loves being Gay. he has never once felt ashamed, or resentful of this part of himself. it’s not like being gay is his entire personality, but he loves following Gay Culture. getting in on all the memes, watching all the films with representation, following stockholm pride as if he would ever go as a bjarstad teen. but - he can’t help but feel that the ‘community’ he’s seeking out is so White. it’s not like there aren’t poc at pride - but the pop culture around it all seemed so one dimensional. the pop music. the drag. nothing wrong with pop music, simon is a benevolent music lover, but - he imagines eventually going to a gay club, and hearing nothing but White preppy music, and honestly, it doesn’t sound like a good time. he feels torn, like he has to pick between his gay side and latino side

it’s no surprise to himself that his best friends ended up being rosh and ayub. and simon is so grateful for them. at marieberg, there has always been an invisible divide between the white kids and the ones who are not. the side that simon belongs to is not just latino kids - it’s also south asians, arabs, black kids. thrown together with the single connecting factor that they’re kinda outcasts. but somehow there’s an exaggerated toxic masculinity - the defensive need to lash out, protect yourself from this society that isn’t very kind on them, perhaps. simon hates it. everyone knows that simon is gay, and no one cares enough to be mean about it - he has played nice with some white soft-boys before. (and by that he means, kissing at parties.) but in the end, they return to their relative worlds, because simon is not one of them, and they would never want to cross over to simon’s world either

with rosh and ayub, simon is comfortable. he can just be. he doesn’t have to be man enough or unthreateningly white enough. they understand each other and each other’s strict parents or unavailable parents, and they could just make fun of straight people and white people without having to worry about the fragility of these people’s feelings, as if they don’t casually hurt minorities on a daily basis. ayub and rosh taught simon how to be queer more than the internet has ever taught him. they are living proof that there’s more than one way to be queer (and trans), and simon can be someone else other than an androgynous white twink who’s conventionally pretty

simon loves his mum. and he knows that linda loves him. and yet - trying to come out (as trans) has weighed on him so much, him trying so hard to find the right words in spanish and then wondering, fuck, are there even all these expansive words to describe gender in spanish, or is he slowly losing his roots the more he embraces his queer-trans side? of course he is going to talk about it with his mum in spanish, because these are the matters of the heart, so why does it feel so foreign and so heavy on his tongue when he tries to say, “mama, i’m a boy”? he ended up saying something cringey about being born in wrong bodies, which was definitely not what he meant to say anyway, because bodies have no gender and he has an exciting new world beyond the cisnormative that he is dying to show the woman he loves the most, but those outdated clunky words are the ones linda would understand, so he started with those

it was important to simon that linda takes part in choosing his new name. simon knows that his deadname was what it was because it was a familiar name to both swedes and his hispanic family - and as much as his deadname crawls up his skin uncomfortably, abandoning it felt like giving away something precious that his mum had gifted him, a part of his heritage. linda gave him a few options, all slightly biblical because she’s catholic by convention - simon fondly rolls his eyes at the biblical references - and they settled on simon. he loves his name, and knowing that linda chose it also feel like a tangible piece of reassurance and acceptance that simon could carry with him every day

simon isn’t That brave. he tasked linda with the job of telling the extended family, who they hardly see anyway, so if worst comes to worst and they’re transphobic? simon would just have to forget about the annual christmas gatherings where half a dozen families scramble from different corners of europe, converging at his cousins’ in copenhagen into a colourful chaotic mess. (he’ll survive. he will. even though it already feels lonely out here in the middle of nowhere sweden, and he has no one to speak spanish to but his family, and the cashier at that one corner shop) but the reception was less bad than he thought - although simon suspects linda hid the worse from him - and abuelita simply sent him a short email (an email! what a woman) that says she liked the name simon, and asked him does this mean he would get a girlfriend soon. simon was hysterical reading it - but he loves abuelita. glad to know that she loves him back in her own way

masculinity is a strange thing to emulate. it doesn’t help that simon doesn’t exactly have good role models. he thinks about his uncles, the traditional Man of the House - and decides to start there. he’s always been protective of his mum - jumping into banal arguments in the supermarket queue when the swedish language fails her, being used to calling the bank people and the tax people for his mum because bureaucracy language is designed to gatekeep, and simon might as well put his elite education to use. it makes him worry about the bills and the house even more. and now that he’s the Man of the House - he wants to step up to protect his family, his mum and his sister. linda told him to look after his sister, so he did 

linda worked so hard to give them the best education they could afford, jumping so many hoops and pulling so many favours to get them into hillerska. waking up an hour early to prepare breakfast ever since they had to get up earlier and travel further to school. it took so much effort to get into hillerska - so simon had no heart to tell his mum that everything isn’t exactly peachy at this bullshit elite school. he smiles through his teeth and pretends that he doesn’t have no friends. that august doesn’t make casual jabs at rowing practice like “stop running like girls - oh sorry, sosse”, as if he’s really sorry. that the third years don’t make fun of his singing voice - as if there isn’t variation between cis teen boys anyway. that he isn’t totally invisible because he’ll never be one of the boys, but he’s not a girl either, and anyway it doesn’t matter, because he isn’t white or rich, and he’ll always be an outsider. he’s a big boy, he can endure it - linda doesn’t need to know

and simon works hard at school. really hard. because his mum just wants the best for them and he can’t be a disappointment. he already has the world on his fingertips - so what’s his excuse for getting a C in maths? wille well-meaningly tried to tell him that the system isn’t fair anyway, because the grades will always favour you if you’re rich and white and your parents are friends with the headmaster, but simon panicked and all he could hear was that he’s not doing all he can to excel, to be good enough

wille - wille isn’t scared of simon, even when simon bares his teeth and proclaims to burn down the monarchy. he doesn’t look down on him either. it’s what drawn simon initially - if wille could see past simon beyond being a poor immigrant kid, maybe simon could let his guard down and give this skinny white boy a chance?

wille is so good. almost too good. simon doesn’t have a grudge against dating white people like rosh does (white girls, *hiss*), and it’s really unavoidable that most boys he kisses end up being white, because they are in the middle of nowhere sweden. but wille is something else - ayub can’t help but laugh. simon really picked the richest, whitest guy out there, and he’s not even sure if he likes boys. (the internalised demon in simon almost whispers - and you’re not even a real boy.) simon is over that phase in his life, doubting whether he’s good enough or not, but - this is the prince. he has the right to feel a little nervous. (wille is so much more than just being the prince)

wille keeps exceeding his expectations. (or maybe simon just has really low expectations.) simon wasn’t sure how to feel about how wille feels about his dorky, working class friends - simon’s not ashamed of his friends, never, but he’s afraid of how wille would react, being confronted with people so unfamiliar to him. because, as much as he hates it, he cares about this particular white boy’s feelings and opinions. but wille is cute and makes an effort, almost more nervous to impress than vice versa - and simon is not in love. he’s not

and then wille goes out of his way to include linda, to make her feel comfortable, and simon’s fierce protectiveness and defensiveness morphs into something else at the back of his heart, pitter-pattering. he’s ridiculous. how could a boy get him so whipped?

wille called him low. because simon tried to protect himself and accidentally fucked up and fuck, he’s a drug dealer now, what a cliché. and he’s angry, he’s so angry, because wille didn’t say it, but all simon hears is that he’s working class and he’s latino and he’s poor and he’s a barely passing boy, and he’ll always be pit against harsher standards. he can’t be less than perfect - mistakes are only allowed for rich white kids who can buy their way out of them. and it takes only one mistake for wille to turn on him right away. how could simon be so blind? and here he was, looking right past all the times wille had hurt him. in the end wille is like the others - self absorbed and self-important. simon should have known better. maybe they should have both kept to their own worlds. simon surely doesn’t want the prince’s world

and then it all comes crashing down, and bad becomes worse. because simon has been waiting to change his legal gender once he turns 18, and now his biggest insecurities are aired nationally for everyone to see. because the prince is getting off with a boy? but no, it’s actually a girl, haha. and everyone is keen to see who is this fucked up, poor and brown and sexually deviant thing that somehow corrupted the prince. simon passes most of the time, he hasn’t been misgendered for so long - and now he can’t escape it, it’s everywhere, blaring words on screens and magazine covers and his chest feels tight, even worse than usual. he is usually very strong mentally - Man of the House and all that - but one dark night, the only thing holding him together is the cursed thought if anything happened to him, the headlines would still be misgendering him, and simon is nothing but a spiteful creature. that is not a legacy he wants to leave behind. and linda. he would never break his mother’s heart like that

wille finally makes a public appearance, and simon has no tears left to cry. and he hates himself, he really does, to still be so soft on wille when the world has been so harsh against simon - but wille using he/him pronouns to refer to simon, not even bothering to mention him by name, still felt like a lifeline. simon wishes he could ask for more, and he hates himself for his impossibly low standards, but he still appreciated the bare human decency

he asks nothing of wille, but at least wille gave him a little shred of dignity back