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velkyr · 3 months

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DUSK QUESTIONS MOMENT. 1, 10, 40, 52!! 👀

ON IT BOSS!!!! o7 (tysmmmm for letting me ramble mwah. I wrote more than I expected as per usual 💖)

(original ask game post here)

I've read more'd this because oops it got so long sorry orz

Why did you pick the race you did for your Tav?

the short answer is always just going to be I love tieflings, I am weak for tieflings, this is a universal unchangeable fact amen 🙏 I think 3 of the... 6(? I might be forgetting some other oneshot-only characters idk) characters I've played at a table have been tiefs or homebrew variants of them! they're very gender to me, I felt that way before I even really knew jackshit about my own gender. absolutely batshit that I still thought I was cis when I started playing d&d lmfao. also horns tails fangs and claws need I say more. I shan't, I don't have to

but yeah specifically for Dusk, I wanted to base them off of my first d&d character in particular, who was a tiefling homebrew to represent an au ra from ffxiv in our homebrew campaign based around the game. so it was important to me they were also a tiefling draconic sorcerer to match!

a lot has changed about them while I've reworked them, but many of the fundamentals have remained the same. gender, motivations, reasoning and general force of personality have been altered towards things that I find more compelling or more fitting, 6 years down the line - but race and class, the idea of them being nobility who left their home(land) and has a bunch of hangups around it, that's all as it was back then.

10. If your Tav didn’t become an adventurer, what else would they be doing?

this is an interesting one, I've been stewing on it a fair bit recently while I've been thinking about what they'd do post-bg3 shenanigans. the thing with Dusk is I've infused them with So Much raw adhd (to the point of it far surpassing my own, oops. this seems to be how I bestow love on my favourite OCs at this point), they Need enough outlets in their day-to-day life or they'll end up in an understimulated mess pretty quickly.

adventuring is obviously a solid option for that need! but without that on the table, I think it needs to be something that caters strongly to their interests and whims. I can see them working well in a profession involving enchantment and/or working with jewels and precious metals. enchanting things would be a good way to siphon off some of that raw sorcerer magic - if they don't use it often enough, there's a build up of sorts. with it being lightning based, it's a bit like having an unstable motor that runs way too fast, and it makes them incredibly irritable.

as for the crafting part of the equation, well, they're already fascinated by shiny things, they're pretty detail oriented and good with their hands, and it's the kind of skilled manual work that requires Just Enough focus to be stimulating. the only thing they'd probably end up hating about either of these would be dealing with noble clientele lmao, but I have no doubt they'd find a way to exploit that anyway. while they may not be the most book smart in the world, they're people smart by necessity. (something something insight proficiency)

and really, as an alternative or perhaps on the side, I don't think they'd be opposed to sex work if it were an environment they felt comfortable in, with a well-vetted set of clientele that they have full autonomy over.

40. What is the biggest mistake your Tav ever made?

welcome to 'pick a struggle' with Dusk, they have their fair share,,,

there's a couple of things that stick out, but I'll stick with one that's pretty fundamental to them. they deeply regret having lashed out at and pushed away the people that tried to help them when they were younger, still stuck living in elturel.

while they can't entirely be blamed for it - they were conditioned to think and feel a certain way, and those patterns were ingrained across a lifetime, all the hallmarks of the abuse they faced - at the end of the day, the friends they'd made after they started sneaking out at night were only trying to help them see how awful their living situation was.

by the time Dusk fled home, they'd burned all the bridges they'd tentatively built over the years. their best friend at the time was the one who made a sort of last ditch attempt to convince them, and it came at the right place, the right time to push them into leaving. but it was outright said that none of them wanted to see them again, after all of the vitriol.

with the distance of years and the gift of hindsight, they regret it all the more. they haven't really forgiven themselves for it.

52. What is your Tav’s worst fear?

oh you already know this one I'm sure 🤠 but I'll elaborate it into something a bit broader that pokes at the Theming more.

they fear being forced back into a gilded cage - whether that's being dragged back home to their family or pushed into a new one. they fear the loss of the autonomy they've carved out for themselves. they fear a loss of identity, and the concept of having it stripped from them, reducing them back into some (feminine) trophy to be given away for material gain.

at its core, it's a loathing of the idea of heteronormativity, really. that's what I always parallel it to, and it's pretty on the nose in that regard.

granted, it's kind of a paradoxical fear for them. they're so thoroughly weary after spending so long living with their guard up, molding themselves into someone who can take on the world alone, that in secret, there's a part of them that just doesn't want to fight anymore. that part would be tempted to give up - to let themselves be reshackled, so to speak - if the circumstances were dire, so long as there were the promise of them being safe and cared for at the end.

as a secondary but very much related thing, they've also come to fear and resent being alone, and the idea of being left behind by people they care about.

#me: oh I can be concise about this obviously #also me over an hour later: wait where did all of these words come from nobody could have predicted this wtf #local brainworm haver has brainworms over their favourite lizard more at 11 #tysm again <3 #dusk

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queerlyyoursygo · 11 months

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No gender in the Mesozoic by UnknownLifeform

Oops, got a little behind but next we have “No Gender in the Mesozoic” by @unknown-lifeform!

Tyranno stopped the car, and looked over at the small group of people gathered in the dusty parking lot. Ve recognized professor Stuart, digging through his backpack. Not Tyranno’s favorite person by far, but it was undeniable that he was excellent in his field, and so ve would have to put up with him.

If ve had survived multiple otherworldly beings trying to kill ver throughout ver teens, ve could deal with an annoying professor for a few days.

Ve didn’t know the other people. Four of them so far. Tyranno had never met most of the students involved in this dig. Ve was just here because one of ver professors had put in a good word for ver, so ve was a bit of an outsider. There should be a guy Tyranno knew, but he wasn’t here yet.

A brief moment to take a deep breath, and Tyranno left the car with a smile. Ve wasn’t looking forward to Stuart, but ve wouldn’t let him alone ruin the trip. It had taken a lot of work to get into ver doctorate program, pushing past people who didn’t think someone with a background as a Duel Academy student had what it took. Getting to work in the Hell’s Creek Formation, with all its fossils waiting to be discovered, was a dream come true.

“Good morning!” Tyranno greeted. It wasn’t even nine in the morning, and the heat was already uncomfortable. Ve would be sweating ver ass off soon.

“Ah, Kenzan,” Stuart said, with a smirk. “Move aside, Williams, we’ve got our real gender minority here.”

How Tyranno would like to land a punch on this guy sometimes. But he was the boss here, and ve would have to suck it up and swallow the microaggressions. How ve wished this was still high school, with the Academy’s unhinged teaching body who could be put back in their place with a good duel.

Williams, Tyranno guessed, was the only girl of the group, or at least the only person who was visibly not to a cis man. She eyed ver up and down with a strange expression.

“Professor,” Tyranno greeted, trying to keep ver voice neutral. “What are we gonna do?”

“Wait for the others, clearly. Here, take this.”

Tyranno took some papers from his hands. Maps of the area, a large geological one, then a few smaller topographic ones. Stuart could have told them to print and bring them on their own, but he was an old fashioned kind of man, with his own ideas on how to work. And on life in general.

Ve turned to the other people, and smiled. “Hey there, nice meeting you. Tyranno Kenzan.” “Tyranno?” one of them repeated, sounding slightly disbelieving.

“Yep. Picked it myself!”

The other nodded, mouth opening. “Oh, so the thing about gender minorities is…?”

“I’m nonbinary,” Tyranno said. Some days ve wished that wasn’t one of the first things ve had to talk about whenever ve introduced verself, but it was what it was. “And I use ve pronouns, before anyone asks.”

“What is ve?” another person asked.

“Well, you can say, ‘ve is Tyranno, and ver name is the damn best there is’.”

“Sure,” the guy laughed.

Williams, the girl, looked at ver up and down. “You’re not pulling our leg, right?”

Tyranno blinked at her. “No, why?”

“Nothing.”

The guy standing next to Williams spoke up. “You are really… nonbinary?”

“Yeah?” Tyranno replied.

“Huh. Don’t think I would have been able to tell.”

Oh for–

“Why not?” Tyranno asked, not sure what answer ve was hoping for. Maybe ve should have ignored the comment, but ve had never been too good about ver temper.

He shrugged. “You’re… Well, you are very masculine.”

And there it was. The usual assumption that because Tyranno didn’t look like an androgynous twink ve couldn’t be serious about being nonbinary. Because according to some having muscles that would make most cis guys seethe with envy was an automatic sign ve couldn’t be a gender minority.

It wasn’t like anyone ever dripped femininity on a paleontological dig, so Tyranno didn’t know what people expected. No one would show up with make up and a skirt while hiking in the dust. Maybe ve did look like a cis man whenever ve dressed practically, that didn’t mean ve was anything but what ve said ve was.

Before ve could reply – and in ways that might have been less than polite – another car drove into the parking lot, the wheels dragging up enough dust to make some people cough. A couple men got off, and Tyranno’s eyebrows raised up into ver hairline.

“Jim!” ve shouted.

“Surprise, mate!” Jim laughed.

Tyranno walked up to him, and dragged him in a hug. “What are you doing out of Australia?”

“I’ll have you know I can survive not seeing a kangaroo for a few weeks. Got a last minute invitation to join.” He gave a firm slap on Tyranno’s back, and stepped away. “Been too long. Karen will be so happy to see you.”

“Did you bring her?”

“Do I ever go anywhere without my girl? Hold on, gotta go introduce myself.”

Tyranno leaned against the car as Jim and his companion went to greet Stuart. Ve couldn’t believe he had said nothing. Jim stuck to Australia most of the time, ve highly doubted he would just be randomly invited to an American dig. He must have planned this.

And he had known full well Tyranno was here, because ve had been gushing to him about it for months now.

“Jim Cook,” he was saying to the professor.

Stuart raised an eyebrow, looking unimpressed. “Ah, the one with the emotional support animal, right? Seems right you’re friends with the gender minority.”

Jim glanced at Tyranno as Stuart went to dig out some maps for him. Ve just shrugged.

“You’ve brought a dog?” one of the other people asked.

The guy Jim had been in the car with snorted. Tyranno didn’t know him, but if he was Jim’s friend he had to be a nice guy.

“Karen’s not a dog.”

“What is she, then?”

“I’ll just let her out, poor girl must be feeling cramped in the car,” Jim said, having gotten his maps.

Everyone gathered by the car, only to scream when the large crocodile crawled out of the backseat with a hiss.

Tyranno crouched. “Hey girl, remember me?”

Of course Karen did, she was the smartest reptile Tyranno had ever seen. She crawled to ver, and ve rubbed her head vigorously, so that she could feel it even through her scales. Ve was rewarded with a deep exhale.

Jim crouched down next to ver. “She deserves a good prize after being in the car for hours.” He held out a sausage to her, and she took it from his hand with infinite gentleness.

“Prof giving you trouble?” Jim whispered to Tyranno.

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I know, I know.” Jim patted Karen as she swallowed. “Just tell me if you need help.”

Tyranno appreciated it, but ve was fine. Ve had always been tough, and just because ve couldn’t solve all ver problems with card games anymore it didn’t mean ve couldn’t take care of verself. Prof would have to eat his words by the end of the dig.

And as for what the other people thought, well. If Sue the T-rex could use they pronouns, Tyranno could do whatever ve wanted too. Ve’d show them gender had nothing to do with being a good paleontologist, and after all ve had a much more direct experience with dinosaurs than anyone else here.

“Don’t worry, got thicker skin than your girl here,” ve said.

Jim huffed in amusement. “If you say so.”

Karen was doing her best to shove her face inside Tyranno’s pockets to check for more treats. Ve hoped Jim had brought lots. A hungry Karen could be a much bigger problem than any mean professor.

“Don’t be rude,” Jim chided her. “Anyways, will we rely on your dinosaur sense to find the fossils?”

Tyranno grinned at him. “I’ll sniff ‘em out like a T-rex on the hunt.”

“Hope we don’t find your distant cousins.”

“Why not? We can make it a family reunion.”

Tyranno might be considered a weirdo by human standards, but ve was more than sure the relatives of the dinosaur whose bones ve carried would not see ver as any weirder than any human in the world.

“Alright, we only need to wait for a couple more people,” Stuart said, outloud. “And you, Cook! I don’t know what kind of quack doctor said that thing could be your emotional support animal, but you’ll better keep it under control.”

“Will do,” Jim said.

Tyranno stood up, shaking ver head. Such discrimination against archosaurs around here.

The guy Jim had come with held his hand out to Tyranno. “We haven’t met before, right? Name’s Damien.”

“Tyranno. Nice meeting you,” Tyranno replied, shaking his hand.

“So you’re one of Jim’s old schoolmates, right? Was that card game school half as insane as Jim says or is he pulling my leg?”

Tyranno grinned. “Jim was only in our branch one year. He has no idea.”

“Pretty sure I would have died if I’d been in your branch the whole time,” Jim piped in, putting one arm around Tyranno’s shoulder.

Maybe he should have said, died more than once. However, that wasn’t the kind of thing they could mention around most people.

“Sure,” Damien said. “I don’t believe either of you.”

Tyranno shifted ver weight. If only Damien knew all the things they said were real, and that not all the unbelievable things had to be connected to the Academy either. Everyone in this parking lot would have a fit if they knew there was an actual fossil in ver leg.

And they wouldn’t be in the wrong. Back then, Tyranno had been thrilled to have a real piece of dinosaur in ver body. Nowadays ve recognized how bonkers those doctors had been.

Heh. Ve was the gender minority and species minority here all at once, if one wanted to get nitpicky about it. Real special snowflake and all. Last person who had called ver that had gotten hit in the nose.

Another car pulled over. At the wheel was Alex, that Tyranno had met before a couple times. A second person was in the passenger’s seat, but that was all Tyranno could make out from behind the dust cloud.

“Morning,” Alex said, hopping out.

“And we’ve got out last ones here,” Stuart said. “Hurry up so we can start.”

Jim clapped Tyranno’s back. “Let’s get these dinosaurs.”

Hell yeah.

#happy pride 🌈#yugioh gx #nonbinary #ve pronouns #queerly yours ygo zine

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that-bookworm-guy · 1 year

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The Anxiety Book for Trans People - Freiya Benson

‘As a trans person, my anxiety has some extra facets to it that are a direct consequence of me being trans. A lot of this has its roots in anxiety that other people experience; it’s just that being trans often adds another layer to it, rather like a really weird cake that you would never want to eat.’

The WHO removed this mental health category for trans people in 2019, but back in 2014 when little queer me came out at 18, I had to go through hoops to get referred to the Gender Identity Clinic.

I was referred to the mental health team.

My mum was asked about my upbringing, how I developed, and how I was born; they asked so many questions that I zoned out. They also asked me when I 1st felt that ‘something was wrong’ leading me to tell my life story.

In my 1st session, I was diagnosed with severe depression, general anxiety disorder, social anxiety, panic disorder, & gender dysphoria. I had the diagnosis I needed. I was also put on meds. I got discharged from the MH team because I was too severe, they also didn’t know what to do with dysphoria.

I was referred to the worst place I’ve ever been. They pulled my (cis) boyfriend at the time, into a session where they spent the whole time trying to ‘show’ me how being trans was a burden to our relationship because he had a crush on me when I was my ‘true self’ AKA female. They also told me I was a burden to my family. As well as some other stuff, I'm not going to talk about because honestly I don't want to. This therapy wasn’t to help me manage my gender dysphoria, it was to ‘cure’ it.

As soon as I was on the waiting list for the GID, I got what I needed, & for my MH sake, I quit & never went back.

My anxiety has been up & down, but some of it settled when I came out, but being trans came with a whole load of more anxiety. There are things I do to manage it though, I have so many fidget toys on me at all times, including the black ring above. I have been on hormones for nearly 5 years, so I’m at a place where I can live stealth, this means no one knows that I’m trans. This comes with its own anxiety, but for me, it feels so much safer, especially in my area. Which eases some of the anxiety. I've outed at a previous work place and although my boss handled it well, it couldn't undo the damage that was done. I was getting yelled at, constantly misgendered and getting transphobic slurs and hate said to my face when I was trying to do my job. I was assaulted outside of work. All of this just added to my anxiety and I would much rather live with the anxiety of trying to be stealth than go through that again.

This year for me is about healing, and that includes working on my anxiety in every form that it takes.

#books #booklr #book blog #book #bookblr #book blogger #bookworm #nerd #geek #book lover #anxiety #trans #transgender #queer #lgbtqia

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jeannereames · 3 years

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Hi, Dr. Reames! I just read your take on Song of Achilles and it got me thinking. Do you think there might be a general issue with the way women are written in mlm stories in general? Because I don't think it's the first time I've seen something like this happen.

And my next question is, could you delve further into this thing you mention about modern female authors writing women? How could we, beginner female writers, avoid falling into this awful representations of women in our writing?

Thank you for your time!

[It took a while to finish this because I wrote, re-wrote, and re-wrote it. Still not sure I like it, but I need to let it go. It could be 3xs as long.]

I’ll begin with the second half of the question, because it’s simpler. How do we, as women authors, avoid writing women in misogynistic ways?

Let me reframe that as how can we, as female authors, write negative (even quite nasty) female characters without falling into misogynistic tropes? Also, how can we write unsympathetic, but not necessarily “bad” female characters, without it turning misogynistic?

Because people are people, not genders, not all women are good, nor all men bad. Most of us are a mix. If we should avoid assuming powerful women are all bitches, by the same token, some women are bitches (powerful or not).

ALL good characterization comes down to MOTIVE. And careful characterization of minority characters involves fair REPRESENTATION. (Yes, women are a minority even if we’re 51% of the population.)

The question ANY author must ask: why am I making this female character a bitch? How does this characterization serve the larger plot and/or characterization? WHY is she acting this way?

Keep characters complex, even the “bad guys.” Should we choose to make a minority character a “bad guy,” we need to have a counter example—a real counter, not just a token who pops in briefly, then disappears. Yeah, maybe in an ideal world we could just let our characters “be,” but this isn’t an ideal world. Authors do have an audience. I’m a lot less inclined to assume stereotyping when we have various minority characters with different characterizations.

By the same token, however, don’t throw a novel against the wall if the first minority character is negative. Read further to decide if it’s a pattern. I’ve encountered reviews that slammed an author for stereotyping without the reader having finished the book. I’m thinking, “Uh…if you’d read fifty more pages….” Novels have a developmental arc. And if you’ve got a series, that, too, has a developmental arc. One can’t reach a conclusion about an author’s ultimate presentation/themes until having finished the book, or series.*

Returning to the first question, the appearance of misogyny depends not only on the author, but also on when she wrote, even why she’s writing. Authors who are concerned with matters such as theme and message are far more likely to think about such things than those who write for their own entertainment and that of others, which is more typical of Romance.

On average, Romance writers are a professionalized bunch. They have national and regional chapters of the Romance Writers of America (RWA), newsletters and workshops that discuss such matters as building plot tension, character dilemmas, show don’t tell, research tactics, etc. Yet until somewhat recently (early/mid 2010s), and a series of crises across several genres (not just Romance), treatment of minority groups hadn’t been in their cross-hairs. Now it is, with Romance publishers (and publishing houses more generally) picking up “sensitivity readers” in addition to the other editors who look at a book before its publication.

Yet sensitivity readers are hired to be sure lines like “chocolate love monkey” do not show up in a published novel. Yes, that really was used as an endearment for a black man in an M/M Romance, which (deservedly) got not just the author but the publishing house in all sorts of hot water. Yet misogyny, especially more subtle misogyny in the way of tropes, is rarely on the radar.

I should add that I wouldn’t categorize The Song of Achilles as an M/M historical Romance. In fact, I’m not sure what to call novels about myths, as myths don’t exist in actual historical periods. When should we set a novel about the Iliad? The Bronze Age, when Homer said it happened, or the Greek Dark Age, which is the culture Homer actually described? They’re pretty damn different. I’d probably call The Song of Achilles an historical fantasy, especially as mythical creatures are presented as real, like centaurs and god/desses.

Back to M/M Romance: I don’t have specific publishing stats, but it should surprise no one that (like most of the Romance genre), the vast bulk of authors of M/M Romance are women, often straight and/or bi- women. The running joke seems to be, If one hot man is good, two hot men together are better. 😉 Yes, there are also trans, non-binary and lesbian authors of M/M Romance, and of course, bi- and gay men who may write under their own name or a female pseudonym, but my understanding is that straight and bi- cis-women authors outnumber all of them.

Just being a woman, or even a person in a female body, does not protect that author from misogyny. And if she’s writing for fun, she may not be thinking a lot about what her story has to “say” in its subtext and motifs, even if she may be thinking quite hard about other aspects of story construction. This can be true of other genres as well (like historical fantasy).

What I have observed for at least some women authors is the unconscious adoption of popular tropes about women. Just as racism is systemic, so is sexism. We swim in it daily, and if one isn’t consciously considering how it affects us, we can buy into it by repeating negative ideas and acting in prescribed ways because that’s what we learned growing up. If writing in a symbol-heavy genre such as mythic-driven fantasy, it can be easy to let things slip by—even if they didn’t appear in the original myth, such as making Thetis hostile to Patroklos, the classic Bitchy Mother-in-Law archetype.

I see this sort of thing as “accidental” misogyny. Women authors repeat unkind tropes without really thinking them through because it fits their romantic vision. They may resent it and get defensive if the trope is pointed out. “Don’t harsh my squee!” We can dissect why these tropes persist, and to what degree they change across generations—but that would end up as a (probably controversial) book, not a blog entry. 😊

Yet there’s also subconscious defensive misogyny, and even conscious/semi-conscious misogyny.

Much debate/discussion has ensued regarding “Queen Bee Syndrome” in the workplace and whether it’s even a thing. I think it is, but not just for bosses. I also would argue that it’s more prevalent among certain age-groups, social demographics, and professions, which complicates recognizing it.

What is Queen Bee Syndrome? Broadly, when women get ahead at the expense of their female colleagues who they perceive as rivals, particularly in male-dominated fields, hinging on the notion that There Can Be Only One (woman). It arises from systemic sexism.

Yes, someone can be a Queen Bee even with one (or two) women buddies, or while claiming to be a feminist, supporting feminist causes, or writing feminist literature. I’ve met a few. What comes out of our mouths doesn’t necessarily jive with how we behave. And ticking all the boxes isn’t necessary if you’re ticking most of them. That said, being ambitious, or just an unpleasant boss/colleague—if its equal opportunity—does not a Queen Bee make. There must be gender unequal behavior involved.

What does any of that have to do with M/M fiction?

The author sees the women characters in her novel as rivals for the male protagonists. It gets worse if the women characters have some “ownership” of the men: mothers, sisters, former girlfriends/wives/lovers. I know that may sound a bit batty. You’re thinking, Um, aren’t these characters gay or at least bi- and involved with another man, plus—they’re fictional? Doesn’t matter. Call it fantasizing, authorial displacement, or gender-flipped authorial insert. We authors (and I include myself in this) can get rather territorial about our characters. We live in their heads and they live in ours for months on end, or in many cases, years. They’re real to us. Those who aren't authors often don’t quite get that aspect of being an author. So yes, sometimes a woman author acts like a Queen Bee to her women characters. This is hardly all, or even most, but it is one cause of creeping misogyny in M/M Romance.

Let’s turn to a related problem: women who want to be honorary men. While I view this as much more pronounced in prior generations, it’s by no means disappeared. Again, it’s a function of systemic sexism, but further along the misogyny line than Queen Bees. Most Queen Bees I’ve known act/react defensively, and many are (imo) emotionally insecure. It’s largely subconscious. More, they want to be THE woman, not an honorary man.

By contrast, women who want to be honorary men seem to be at least semi-conscious of their misogyny, even if they resist calling it that. These are women who, for the most part, dislike other women, regard most of “womankind” as either a problem or worthless, and think of themselves as having risen above their gender.

And NO, this is not necessarily religious—sometimes its specifically a-religious.

“I want to be an honorary man” women absolutely should NOT be conflated with butch lesbians, gender non-conformists, or frustrated FTMs. That plays right into myths the queer community has combated for decades. There’s a big difference between expressing one’s yang or being a trans man, and a desire to escape one’s womanhood or the company of other women. “Honorary men” women aren’t necessarily queer. I want to underscore that because the concrete example I’m about to give does happen to be queer.

I’ve talked before about Mary Renault’s problematic portrayal of women in her Greek novels (albeit her earlier hospital romances don’t show it as much). Her own recorded comments make it clear that she and her partner Julie Mullard didn’t want to be associated with other lesbians, or with women much at all. She was also born in 1905, living at a time when non-conforming women struggled. If extremely active in anti-apartheid movements in South Africa, Renault and Mullard were far less enthused by the Gay Rights Movement. Renault even criticized it, although she wrote back kindly to her gay fans.

The women in Renault’s Greek novels tend to be either bitches or helpless, reflecting popular male perceptions of women: both in ancient Greece and Renault’s own day. If we might argue she’s just being realistic, that ignores the fact one can write powerful women in historical novels and still keep it attitudinally accurate. June Rachuy Brindel, born in 1919, author of Ariadne and Phaedra, didn’t have the same problem, nor did Martha Rofheart, born in 1917, with My Name is Sappho. Brindel’s Ariadne is much more sympathetic than Renault’s (in The King Must Die).

Renault typically elevates (and identifies with) the “rational” male versus the “irrational” female. This isn’t just presenting how the Greeks viewed women; it reflects who she makes the heroes and villains in her books. Overall, “good” women are the compliant ones, and the compliant women are tertiary characters.

Women in earlier eras who were exceptional had to fight multiple layers of systemic misogyny. Some did feel they had to become honorary men in order to be taken seriously. I’d submit Renault bought into that, and it (unfortunately) shows in her fiction, as much as I admire other aspects of her novels.

So I think those are the three chief reasons we see women negatively portrayed in M/M Romance (or fiction more generally), despite being written by women authors.

------------------------------------

*Yeah, yeah, sometimes it’s such 2D, shallow, stereotypical presentation that I, as a reader, can conclude this author isn’t going to get any better. Also, the publication date might give me a clue. If I’m reading something published 50 years ago, casual misogyny or racism is probably not a surprise. If I don’t feel like dealing with that, I close the book and put it away.

But I do try to give the author a chance. I may skim ahead to see if things change, or at least suggest some sort of character development. This is even more the case with a series. Some series take a loooong view, and characters alter across several novels. Our instant-gratification world has made us impatient. Although by the same token, if one has to deal with racism or sexism constantly in the real world, one may not want to have to watch it unfold in a novel—even if it’s “fixed” later. If that’s you, put the book down and walk away. But I’d just suggest not writing a scathing review of a novel (or series) you haven’t finished. 😉

#misogyny in m/m romance #how to avoid misogyny writing women characters #writing complicated women characters #asks #writing life #writing advice

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blishwix · 3 years

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❝ WE ARE ALL WEARING MASKS. THAT IS WHAT MAKES US INTERESTING ❞

huh, who’s LUKE MITCHELL? no, you’re mistaken, that’s actually JIMBO “WICK” BLISHWICK VI. he is a 35 year old PUREBLOOD wizard who is CEO OF A WIXEN TECH & MEDIA COMPANY. he is known for being CALCULATING, FRAUDULENT, HEDONISTIC, CONCEITED, and AMORAL but also CHARISMATIC, AMBITIOUS, INNOVATIVE, METICULOUS, and PERSONABLE, so that must be why he always reminds me of the song IT’S LONELY AT THE TOP BY BIG BAD VOODOO DADDY and STYLISHLY RIPPED JEANS AND SUEDE SHOES, PURELY AESTHETIC AND MISLEADING SOCIAL MEDIA FEED, NEATLY TRIMMED BEARD AND SANDALWOOD MUSK, HORN RIMMED GLASSES WITH SMUDGES ON THE LENS, MOLESKIN FULL OF ENDLESS CODE AND FUTURE TECH INNOVATIONS, EXTRAVAGANT PENTHOUSE OVERLOOKING THE CITY, WHISKEY STONES AND EMPTY DECANTERS, and CHARMING PERSONABLE SMILES WITH MALICIOUS INTENT HIDDEN UNDERNEATH THE SURFACE. i hear he is aligned with THE DEATH EATERS, so be sure to keep an eye on him.

GENERAL

FULL NAME: Jimbo Dashiel Bartholomew Blishwick VI NICKNAME(S): Wick, Jim, Dash, Bart (yes he legit will go by any of these) AGE/DATE OF BIRTH: 35, 02/16/1994 OCCUPATION: Tech & Media Mogul GENDER: Cis Man PRONOUNS: He/Him/His HOMETOWN: Dallas, Texas CURRENT RESIDENCE: London, I guess ALMA MATTER: Ilvermorny, Horned Serpent BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood

BIOGRAPHY

MEET JIMBO BLISHWICK: THE YOUNG AMERICAN CHANGING THE WIZARDING WORLD ONE STATUS UPDATE AT A TIME.

I’m not sure exactly what to expect when the invitation comes in. It seems archaic to be communicating over owl. There was even a part of me that thought I should revert to the “email” form which my subject is so fond of. What if the wixen tech mogul’s fondness for typing meant he had poor penmanship? To my delight not only was Mr. Blishwick’s handwriting clear as day, but it came with a gleeful acceptance to be interviewed. So it was on that high note that I made my way to Blishwix HQ in London to meet with the illustrious CEO. What I had expected was some pristine corporate office with dark leather and wood accents, sterile and admittedly cold and disconnected from the world. What I was met with was surprising. Blishwix is anything but old school in its style. Much like the young hip branding that accompanies its many products and services, the corporate HQ of Blishwix is sleek, modern and very accessible. It’s a open space of mostly glass walls, the bull pen dotted with standing desks and stability balls replacing wheeling chairs. Towards the entrance to the main floor there is a food bar, one which changes weekly I’m told. This week it’s a cereal bar, last week it was a sushi bar, the next week it’s expected to be a pho bar. Employees are scattered around it with tablets and laptops, giddily conversing around mouthfuls of rainbow marshmallows and corn flakes. There’s also several corners tucked away with velvet cushions where some team members curl up with headphones and e-readers or handheld video game consoles. Designated comfort zones, the tour guide describes them as. It’s the Blishwix goal to make sure the employees are all comfortable, so whenever they get stressed out or overwhelmed, there’s always a little place they can escape to in order to calm their nerves. In truth, Blishwix looks less like a company and more like an urban hang out for pretty hipsters in crop tops and flannels. Surely the big man on top would have a more professional set up, right?

Even the display in the bull pen did not prepare me for Jimbo Blishwick’s personal office. It’s one of a few closed off areas to the side of the floor, wide with tall glass walls over looking the bull pen, and predominately empty save for another bean sack, a slim desktop atop a standing desk, and a row of bookcases displaying dozens upon dozens of novels, all of which I can’t place and among the only print media to be found anywhere in Blishwix. “They’re muggle books,” says a voice from behind. When I turn and get a first glance at the figure leaning casually against the glass door to the office, my gut instinct is that this is just another one of those twenty something year olds squeezing stress balls on the work floor. He’s tall, wearing a handmade beanie in a burnt orange color -- One that is, frankly, not a good pair with his golden hair. His neatly trimmed beard and horned rimmed glasses speak of an elegance that doesn’t exactly match the acid wash tattered jeans or the faded t shirt worn under an oversized cream cardigan. The shirt is colorful and bears a phrase that doesn’t come easy to me. Woodstock. Perhaps this is another “muggle thing”. It isn’t until he draws close enough that I recognize the bare footed man. It’s Jimbo Blishwick himself. “Call me Wick,” he easily responds to my surprised expression, knowing full well he wasn’t what I expected. Instead of holding out a hand in a formal handshake and then pulling up a chair for the interview, he engulfs me in a hug and ushers me into the love sack. It’s awkward at first, but eventually I melt into it. It’s just as comfortable as it looks, and their use in the designated comfort zones make more sense to me now. Wick opts to sit crosslegged on the floor, a large coffee in one hand and a bowl of granola balanced on his thighs. He sips the coffee as my eyes wander the space, finding small and interesting little things to ask him about.

The first thing that draws my attention is a set of crystals sitting on the top of his desk, and when I ask he lets out a howling laugh that echos throughout the office, surely drawing the attention of his hard playing -- and hardly working -- employees beyond the glass walls. “Oh, I had a bit of a headache,” he says with a somewhat amused grin. “My wife said they might help.” The wife in question isn’t some darling stay at home mom you might expect. In Wick’s own words: She’s the reason the “Boss Girl” phrase was invented. Selene Blishwick is as shrewd a business person as her husband is, and perhaps a bit more progressive. As I attempt to shift a bit in the cushion, Wick relays some confidential information about some of their upcoming branding collaborations. Each is more unconventional than the last, and they all have one vital thing in common: Selene Blishwick is the one that found them. I’d go into detail, but Wick swears it would become a marital problem if I spill the big secrets before they’re due to come out. Instead he offers a sly grin and taps a single finger to his lips. “Our little secret, then you can be the cool hip one among your friends who knew all about it before it came out.” An exciting proposition, though I realize that I do need something I can share with the public from this visit, and as Wick’s bowl of dry granola gets emptier I fear I’m running out of time. So I set out to do what I’d planned: a profile on the CEO of Wizarding London’s premiere tech company.

When I ask Wick what was the event that kickstarted his long journey to bringing the wixen world into the 21st Century, he answers in one simple phrase: “A pen pal program.” I was surprised to say the least, but it all became more transparent as I urged him to elaborate. What ensues is a story about the overweight son of a MACUSA politician who was teased and bullied all his life and struggled to maintain platonic connections. “I had no friends,” he says, a sad truth but it comes out with a light and airy laugh. “But I didn’t make it quite easy for people to be my friend.” Despite his laid back and easy going charm, Wick reveals a disabling shyness and insecurity that kept him from engaging with the world. The only one privy to his thoughts and personality was the journal he carried with him wherever he went. “I always thought I sounded better on print than in person. I could be whoever I wanted to be on paper -- Handsome, smart, clever and fun. I just could never bring that outwards, you know?” I think we can all sympathize with the young Blishwick’s plight. It didn’t help that he had quite the shoes to fill. Sixth in his line, the Jimbos that came before the media mogul were all tied to American politics. They’re all charming and ambitious men, but Wick says he just didn’t have it in him to be a lawmaker. “Big Daddy” -- yes, that’s the moniker his father, Jimbo the fifth, goes by -- “He’s just built to be a Senator, I’m just the apple that fell a little too far from that tree.” Secluded and distant, educators began to worry that Wick’s development would be halted by the lack of socialization between him and his peers. So one Ilvermorny professor had suggested Wick be one of a handful of students elected to partake in a cross continental penpal program. “Fabricating friendship,” he called it. What they didn’t know is that the program would lead to a lot more. When I ask him who his first penpal is, if it’s someone he still has direct contact with, he lets another one of those amusing grins slip. “Oh yeah, very much so. I’m actually married to her.”

A fifth year at Ilvermorny, Wick was matched with a Hogwarts student a handful of years younger than him by the name of Selene Rowle. According to Wick, their correspondence lasted throughout both of their schooling and beyond, until he had taken a chunk out of his trust fund in order to travel to the United Kingdom to meet in person. He says that’s the only time he used his family’s money to get where he is now -- literally using it to transport across the Atlantic. Leaving behind his family’s estate in Texas and the promising job at MACUSA his father had acquired for him, Wick came to London in order to meet his long distance friend for the first time. The only person “who really knew what he was about” he says. I ask if it was for romantic reasons. He thinks about it while he sips his drink. “I guess in hindsight it does seem a little romantic.” Whatever his reasons, Wick came and he never turned back. He said that one of the first times they interacted in person, he and his future bride had lamented on their past communication and the long waits between letters. “We felt like we’d left things off on cliff hangers so often, and you’d have to wait forever just to get some kind of answer to those burning questions the last letter gave you. It was one of the most frustrating things.” The pair wondered what it would have been like if there had been a more instantaneous way to talk with wizards across the globe. After all, Wick had concluded, the muggles did it just fine. During his teen years, the Texan said he had grown very interested in what nonmagical civilization was like. A “No-Maj Studies Class”, as they call the Muggle Studies program in the states, had a unit on the technological advances of the nonmagical community during much of the modern era. The professors tried to teach the students that this was all building towards a very dangerous threat to the magical community: exposure and the fast spreading of information over the internet. Wick saw something different. “As I thought about how I wished I had a better gateway to my penpal during my teen years, I just kept thinking about how muggles had that already figured out. They could instantly send letters to anyone anywhere in the world. No long wait times for traveling owls or anything like that. It was instantaneous.... And why shouldn’t we be like that?”

It was this very thought that birthed the company the Blishwicks lead now.

So how do you bring the magical world safely into the 21st Century as dictated by the nonmagical? That was no easy feat. For his part, Wick said he had to learn all about something that didn’t exist in their world, something that didn’t interact well with magic. And how do you study muggle tech without magic interfering? Simple: You “become a muggle”. That’s when I realized there was a book I recognized on his eclectic shelf of reading material. Daisy Hookum’s best seller My Life as a Muggle. It’s the first book on the shelf, in the most pristine condition. A first edition, and it’s even signed by the author herself, though Wick doesn’t remember the meeting. It has a simple message in it: I hope you enjoy the time you spend in the nonmagical world and make memories as fond as my own. “Oh yeah,” he laughs, “I did tell her I was also voluntarily giving up magic in order to help kickstart my company.” He says it with an air of unfamiliarity, like he only vaguely remembers the moment. Still, he presses on with the story. A controversial choice for the son of a self proclaimed “conservative-traditional” pureblood senator, Wick was shortly disowned by the American Blishwicks for his choice to give up his magic for two and a half years to live among the muggles. But it had purpose. “I may have lied my way into an internship with a tech company in Edingbrugh. I was trying to learn as much as I could about this muggle innovation. If I wanted to create something similar for our community, I needed to master their version.” He says it took more than the two years he gave himself to live among them, and he’s still studying it to this day, but after that amount of time he had the ground work he needed to then create his tech and media empire. The biggest obstacle wasn’t even in creating the highly secret magically encrypted network which allows smart phones to be used in the wizarding world. No, for Wick the biggest hurdle to pass over was the longstanding traditional values the community had. “I think there’s an innate fear in not just advancing the community, but in mirroring any sort of progress than the muggles have done. There’s nothing wrong with it, I mean we have adapted enough of their inventions into our own world already so why not take it a step further?” He refers to radio and electric hook ups that appeared in a lot of wixen homes in the past century.

Blishwix started out small, creating and selling smart phones and desktops primarily with the idea in mind to change the way we communicate. Email was one of those first muggle digital contraptions that made its way into the wixen mainstream and has stayed, but within a short decade the company’s offerings expanded to mirror exactly what the digital world of the muggles looks like now. It’s becoming more and more rare to see wixen without a Loquix* in hand, or a Blishwix desktop at home. The Wixpix social media app, in which users post photos taken from the cameras on their cellular devices and add witty captions which can then be “liked” or “commented” on by users across the globe, continues to grow in popularity. And now the media and tech giant is rolling out a “streaming platform” -- a sort of home theater in the form of an app that catalogues film and television programs created by wixen for wixen. There’s Accio, an application that allows you to ask random questions and receive an answer instantly; Portky** which allows users to request forms of transportation when they desperately need it, including ministry-approved portkeys (or so it claims, we haven’t used it yet here at the Prophet). There’s even applications for those lonely wixen looking to find a love connection. Erised is one such app where user profiles are made with a handful of photos, a small ‘about me’ section, and a few small details that can be provided to prospective dates in order to help connect those with similar interests and hobbies. The married Wick does not have an Erised profile, but his assistant allows me to scroll through her’s and even swipe a few times on other profiles. I accidentally match her to someone she admits she can’t see herself interested in, but we all have a good laugh about it. These are only a few of many “experiences”, as Wick refers to them, offered by the company in order to branch the magical people from across the globe. “What is more beautiful than seeing people from different cultural backgrounds and walks of life coming together and sharing ideas and thoughts so quickly?” I realize as I’m sitting there in that bean cushion, scrolling through a prototype of the next Blishwix tablet that I know so little about the world beyond my little corner of it. I suddenly understand Wick’s enthusiasm about expanded communication.

It’s all pretty exciting to see coming together, it’s almost impossible to understand what more could be done by Blishwix. So when I ask him what’s next, Wick gets a very eager look in his eyes. “There’s a lot of places we still don’t have our tech in that I think would be all the better for it,” he solemnly reveals, and I’m shocked to hear it. Since visiting Blishwix, I have seen their product seemingly in every corner of Wizarding London I explore daily. Who isn’t using connected to their expansive network at this point? “I would love to do a partnership with the Ministry. As the governing body, I feel like we can offer them so much that could continue to further develop the community and continue progressing us into the future. If we could get our desktops in every Ministry Department, we can further the sort of work that keeps our world moving. Just imagine how we could expand Law Enforcement, Education or Wellfare departments if we can make all the relevant information they need all the more accessible to their employees? Think about how much easier it would be for them to process information on our fast and reliable network.”

On the topic of Education, Wick reveals his ambitions don’t stop with the Ministry. “I would love to see Blishwix in schools like Hogwarts,” he says, revealing what may be the biggest bombshell yet. “This whole dream started because of a chubby boy who had no friends in school and wanted a faster way to communicate with the one he made far away. I think a lot about that and how my life would have been different had I had this kind of technology available to me. If there are lonely kids like me who could have that, or even kids who are just struggling to get the information they need to be successful in school, and I could give them what they need to advance in life? Then I could say I’ve done what I initially set out to do. Until that day, I would say that Blishwix hasn’t been a success yet. Even teachers could benefit from the use of the internet and all the resources we have out there which we now have access to.” I begin to wonder if the technological genius is actually more of a philanthropist. “I don’t know, you tell me,” he quips when I muse out loud. Our interview comes to a halt by this point, and I’m left with so many more questions. What is Blishwix cooking up for the wizarding world next? What kind of innovations will define the company’s next decade? These, and so many more, questions are left unanswered as I walk out of Blishwix HQ, a takeaway bowl of fruity cereal in one hand and my previous generation Loquix in the other (scrolling through shopping apps in order to find that “love sack” I spent much of the afternoon lounging in).

The same day I begin writing this piece out, Blishwix has announced the Loquix VI, their most advance smartphone yet. They livestream details of their upgraded OS and hardware reveal on the company’s social media, an event I watch while typing this article up on my worn out typewriter. Halfway through and I’m out of ribbon, and I silently curse myself as I order a new set online. All the while the Blishbook Pro is being revealed on the stream, its sleek wireless keyboard and slim expandable monitor shimmering under the stage lights. I join in with the loud gasps from the shareholders crowding the conference room where the event is being held. The irony of this isn’t lost on me, and as I sit here writing out these last few paragraphs with a quill in my cramped hand I begin to realize exactly why I admire Jimbo Blishwick and his forward thinking. At least he’s not sitting here with ink blotches in obscene places, running to his editor’s office just barely before deadline with a mess of typed and handwritten article. I remember in that moment, drenched in the rain while rushing through the offices of the Prophet, the first line in his owl response to my inquiry for the interview:

You should have just emailed.

Touché, Blishwick, touché.

*Portky app idea comes courtesy of Kim ( @strvngemagics ) **Loquix phone name comes courtesy of Vic ( @cfdiggorys / @moodyparis / @aarlingtons ) Both gave permission to use / mention these galaxy brained concepts in the intro and credit for their conception goes to them. Thank you guys so much!!

TL;DR: Wick is full of shit. What can I say? Here’s the ‘Murrican lad who claims to be some hip and cool CEO of a wizarding tech and media company. Okay he’s I guess apple meets zuckerberg. Idk I’m not galaxy brained enough for this afheiahfpea hence the very oddly written bio. Wick’s a pureblood from america who supposedly forsake his family’s purist ways and then decided to create a company modeled after muggle tech in order to “bring the wizarding world into the modern era”. In actuality? He’s a fucking bigot who created a network that he could use to spy on people who may be enemies of the cause. At least that’s how it’s being factored into the DEs. His theme song is “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Rockwell bc he’s always watching you. Gives off this very laid back and down to earth and charming persona just so he can gain your trust and meanwhile he’s leaking your information to the DE and helping them further their agenda. Some extra tidbits not seen above:

He’s got some daddy issues which are leaking into his parenting. Aka he is not exactly excited to be a father but you wouldn’t know that from his Wixpix feed which feature so many “cute” dad photos with his baby boy. In order for him to become his best self, his dad had to make his life a living hell and he believes that’s how he’s gonna have to handle Zephyr as well.

He is smart, yes, but he’s not some brilliant innovator like the world thinks he is. His empire is built on stolen material which he simply “adapted” to the magical world. He’s not original, but he is clever.

He’s not a fighter, clumsy with a wand, had a severe stutter as a kid which made it very hard for him to cast spells etc, so he avoids battle often and instead offers up his company more for espionage for the DEs. He’s better suited to behind the scenes mayhem, and that’s kind of the way he likes it.

He’s a coward. He’s hiding behind computer screens and tbh if things get really sticky he’s likely to try and sell out the DE in order to save his skin. Has an escape plan to the states if things get really sticky but the likelihood of him succeeding are slim to none.

He acts very charitable and humble and kind but he’s conceited as hell and he’s a real shady bitch sometimes. Talks shit on everyone behind their backs

He’s had a few affairs here and there despite being married. Even with that, he is in love with his wife and feels a sort of fealty towards her. She’s a very important part to the company, she’s pretty much the brand of it and so he relies on her a lot to help manufacture their image even just as individuals to help the rouse.

BODY IMAGE TW/EATING DISORDER TW. Wick has some body image issues due to his past tbh. He got bullied a lot as a kid for being overweight and quiet, his solace was in food and he was a binge eater. As he got a bit older, he made some desperate choices in order to lose weight to gain a slimmer figure. It wasn’t healthy, it landed him in hospital a few times, and eventually he had to meet with nutrition specialists and therapists in order to work out a more healthy mindset on food. He’s still harbors body imagine issues, but he’s learned to be better about it. Still, he maintains a very strict diet and work out regime because he feels his image is one of the most important things about him. He did meet Selene when he was slim and athletic and therefore thinks it’s best he maintain the figure even just out of fear she wouldn’t find him attractive otherwise.

is any of the stuff he said in this interview true? Idk, idk

Idk, I hate this man and this bio afheuiahfpea I’ll end up rewriting it eventually.

MISC

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Biromantic LANGUAGES: English FAMILY: Jimbo Dashiel Bartholomew Blishwick V (but they call him “Big Daddy”; father), Cricket Blishwick née Berkeley (mother), Beaufort Harland Blishwick (younger brother), Cora-Lou Blishwick (younger sister), Selene Blishwick née Rowle (wife), Zephyr Blishwick (infant son), and by extension all the fucking Rowles I guess PETS: TBD FACE CLAIM: Luke Mitchell ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius MBTI: hm PINTEREST: (coming soon)

WANTED CONNECTIONS

interns - a couple new grunts at the blishwix HQ. they can be any affiliation, but if they are DE affiliated then they’ll know a little bit more about what is going on behind closed doors at the company. could be fun for future plotting purposes.

co conspirators - other DEs who similarly to wick lead a double life in the public eye. philanthropists, media stars, all sorts of “do gooders” who are banning together in order to break “harmful stigmas and stereotypes and join the wixen community globally”. blishwix mission statement aims to create a platform for wixen of all types across the world to interact free of prejudice and judgement and to bring the magical community into a modern era free of harmful ideologies. of course that’s a fucking lie, so if you play a baddy bad who’s pretending to be goody good then this could be a fun collaboration.

partnerships - alternatively, let’s see some honest to good people and groups get schemed by these fuckers. this would involve some potential screwing over but no worries, at the end of the day blishwix will tank and then your character can get their sweet revenge on this man and his corrupt business.

idk hmu with ideas.

#potterintro #sorry fam no fun doodle this time #bad men don't deserve it #ahfieafea i'm sorry this is kinda lame but i wanted to get something out there to help with plotting

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itsclydebitches · 4 years

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Hey! So I saw the AU you wrote about Oz reincarnating into Ruby and was absolutely amazing. The potential there is great. For example, with Yang, in canon, she was hostile Oz all the time, but what would happen if he was bonded with Ruby? Same for her team. Anyway, are you leaving it as a oneshot, or do you intend to continue?

Thank you, anon! :D Sadly right now I only “intend” to continue in the general sense of wanting to complete every plot bunny that’s ever popped into my head... but the reality is I’ve barely got the creative energy for the one WIP I’m posting at the moment. So it’s a oneshot up until some mythical, may-never-exist time in which it’s not lol. But here, take a broad list of things I was thinking about while mulling over this AU:

Yes! As you say there would be some real tension between Ruby-as-sister and Ruby-as-Ozpin’s vessel for Yang. Same goes for Jaune. For me this would be a chance for them to realize that Ozpin isn’t the evil, manipulative mastermind it’s been easy to paint him as via Pyrrha’s tragedy and Raven’s incredibly biased words. If Ruby is a like minded soul to Ozpin... then what does that say about Ozpin that he so perfectly aligns with the sibling/leader they’d all die for?

Same sort of “omg this relationship just got weird” for Qrow as he balances his boss/friend in the body of his niece. It’s more lighthearted for him once he works through things though, along the lines of trying to send Ozpin off to bed because he’s his “uncle” and he’s “older.”

There’s contention in regards to weaponry. Do they carry Ozpin’s cane or Ruby’s scythe? Do they prioritize a defensive, non-combat weapon or one specifically designed to shoot/cut through as many things as possible? (All of which would, obviously, reflect on their different perspectives regarding Salem: do we hack and slash our way through her and her army or play it smart with strategy?) As the two work to find a middle ground they eventually combine their weapons as well. Something something, another soul who upgrades the staff. Something something, Ruby taking after Qrow by having one kind of weapon that turns into a scythe. Something something the gears in Ozpin’s cane are explained.

In many ways Ruby’s notoriety is a problem. Ozpin doesn’t get to play the anonymous farm boy like he did with Oscar. Many already know who Ruby is - and what she’s like - via the tournament and deeds she’s done, which makes personality changes glaringly apparent. More significantly, she’s already a target for her silver eyes. Ozpin has been trying to protect her since he saw that recording Glynda sent him, but now he has even more of an incentive. He doesn’t care if he dies (again) but taking out Ruby and him simultaneously would be too big a blow to their side. Too big a blow personally given that she’s the first person he’s ever known before reincarnating into them. He’s loved all the people he’s been paired with - they’re literally a part of him - but Ruby is, as in many things, a special case.

(It also causes more angst than normal for Oz because for the first time he has a crystal clear view of what his vessel's life was like/what their personality was like prior to his arrival. It’s a... disconcerting perspective of something he thought he’d finally gotten used to after a thousand years.

More discussion/work on their part to balance two souls using one body. Ruby needs a good amount of time to get used to everything, but she eventually realizes that Ozpin only takes control when he has to impart important info/help her in battle and she’s like... don’t you want to just... read a book or something? Go for a walk? Talk to Uncle Qrow?? Yes, I get that you’re being super courteous and letting me keep my life as much as possible but this situation sucks on both ends and it’s not your fault we’re in it so just let me be the disembodied voice for a while. Go do some lame headmaster-y things.

Sudden Realization™ that omg wait I’m a girl? You’re a guy?? Is this weird?? and Ozpin just chuckles softly, explaining that he’s reincarnated into many women before and doesn’t align himself with either gender fully. Non-binary Ozpin ftw

The conversation encourages Ruby to question her own gender identity/expression and, even if she’s still cis, that questioning was useful, making her feel more confident about the whole I’m-a-girl-housing-someone-I-originally-assumed-was-a-man confusion. They have their own shopping trip where Ruby keeps her combat skirt (“It’s Weiss’ and my thing”) but leans more towards pairing it with masculine vests and ties.

“Ugh I can’t sleep.” “I’m aware, given that I cannot sleep until you do.” “Shut up! Feeling guilty won’t help us sleep!” “Hmm. Indeed not. Would you prefer that I tell you more about Vacuo’s economics?” “Ew.” “That knowledge will assist you greatly should you ever take another class with Professor Oobleck -” “Doctor Oobleck.” “Ah. Of course. Doctor Oobleck, with the added bonus of lulling you to sleep. Should history, pardon the pun, repeat itself.” “Again sir: ew.” “I see... Then I suppose you likewise wouldn’t have any interest in hearing about their 500 year old weaponry?” “......................go on.”

Emotional Moment™ where things aren’t going well and Ruby reiterates that all she ever wanted to do was help people. Ozpin - unsure if this is even something she’d want to hear - admits that at the very least she’s helped him.

Idk I’m touching on a lot of Big subjects but let’s be real, 75% of the story would probably just be the group worrying about their health. Between Ruby’s cookie habit and Ozpin’s hot chocolate habit - and their dual inability to impose any self-restraint - they’re gonna go into a permanent sugar coma one of these days.

#rwby #rwbyfic #Anonymous

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violetsystems · 3 years

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#personal

I was invited the other day to join a community as a Creative Advisor from a survey I filled out for Adobe. I made the choice last November to purchase Creative Cloud for an entire year at a discount. When I worked at an art school I had all those applications free. Anybody in the arts community will tell you that software is expensive. I don’t necessarily feel too connected to the local arts community these days. But being a Creative Advisor basically means I participate in focus groups and offer my opinions in writing. It’s a not a bad way to stay active as a creator. I bought a drone basically so I had 4k footage to mess around with in Premiere. I am a YouTube Creator by definition. Yesterday after posting a video of the stream there was another survey in the right hand corner. I cautiously opened it and read through it. It was an inclusion survey. YouTube wanted information to help with their community. The first question was what race I identify as. I can’t really argue I’m not white. The next question was if I identified as part of the LGBTQ community. I don’t so I answered no. The third question was what gender I identified as. I said male because I’m cis. I completed the survey and went on about my business. A few minutes later another popup asked me how satisfied I was with the YouTube community after all this. I answered Very Satisfied and closed the window. I’m also part of a larger community here in Chicago. This can be drilled down so far that you can find yourself standing in a lonely circle with a thousand fingers pointed back at you. My immediate neighbors identify. I wouldn’t know what specifically or why so I don’t ever really pry. I live on a pretty diverse property when it comes to tenants. That expands into a pretty diverse neighborhood with a pretty diverse set of issues when it comes to power sharing. I live the mad max sort of mentality these days. Think more Fury Road than Road Warrior. Where he helps out then silently fades away to focus on his own car wreck of a life. One winter while shoveling snow I discovered somebody had written something in front of one of my neighbor’s doorstep. It said “gay people live here.” I processed it, shrugged and shoveled it away. I couldn’t tell if my landlord was supposed to discover it, if my neighbors actually wrote it, or if it was somebody being hateful. I made a judgement call on the account of safety and made a mental note of it then made it disappear. I cared enough to think about it no matter how much this entire process exhausts me. People join communities for connection. People seek out authentic communities for safety, pride and respect. And people in America should be able to do this freely without being exploited, judged, watched, or compared. Communities overlap and the geopolitics therein get a little tricky. When you live in a city with so many different influences, cultures, and hang ups the fog of the ideological war muddles up everyone’s intentions. I think we retreat to the sanctity of our own communities because they understand the narrative and context best. I’ve been welcomed into many communities that aren’t my own. But my circle is pretty small these days. Mostly because for all the care and attention I apply to the concept of community, I’m often left out to fend for myself here in my bachelor Castle of Doom. Communities do consolidate power for better or for worse. Just like rich people hoard money and dodge taxes. Communities have their own cultural queues and signifiers. Communities in America have increasingly become more like tribes in the economic desert. Impenetrable communes at war with myopic definitions and hidden rules that are meant to keep people out for resource sake. So much so that the Road Warrior doesn’t seem like science fiction to me from personal experience.

It was the great poet Lord Humungus who may have set it best. Just walk away. Safe passage in the wasteland they said. Be your own boss. Own your sexuality and answer for your horny crimes. Shit, I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to where I belong in all of this. For me things have become equally obfuscated and easy to understand at the same time. I’m more of an anarchist these days than I would like to admit. I don’t really want to be on Tucker Carlson’s radar. Simply because everyone is looking for something to label you as so they can pass an easier judgement on you. People want you to identify so they can fit you into whatever conversational hole they wish to project at you. I run into my neighbors all the time. I treat people like people. Simply because I’ve been treated enough like shit to know I don’t want anyone else to experience that. I don’t really want revenge. I want all this nonsense to stop getting in the way of my pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. And the constant arguing and debate team every step of the way is troubling. It’s people with a beaten down sense of self confidence proving themselves in the arena of mob rule. For all the chest beating online on twitter or facebook people are kind of shook in the streets. It is a winner take all mentality. And even the more valid sides of the fight have taken to dirty tactics leaving some of us in the middle of an absolute shit show. Par for the course if you ask me. There are plenty of opportunities to be the hero these days. Not many to be acknowledged as one. You can be you and still support people that think differently. I had a dream about guns last night. I don’t own a gun. That’s not the right choice for a person like me. It doesn’t mean I can make a sweeping generalization for the rest of America. Neither do I actually care to. I’m cis. I don’t spend my time psychoanalyzing or judging gender or sexuality other than my own biases towards it. This is to treat people better and learn respectful communication. Communication is a two way street. And some communication is blocked, obfuscated or hidden for it’s own protection. It can also be self serving. Some of my closest friends are behind infinite onion layers of identities. Layers of firewalls that I pirouette through like a whirling dervish just to show I still care deeply. We take the time to show love. We take the time to understand the obstacles. And we have patience to understand that we have to sacrifice things sometimes for the sake of change. Make no mistake the way I see things on my own is fucked. I am part of a community here on Tumblr. A much wider community. There are times when I don’t fit in. When it’s not about me or you or whoever behind the screen. It’s what we connect to and how we learn to respect each other as human beings first. Not as names. Or fame. Who we really are behind all of this doesn’t really matter as much as the content and ideas we share. Community has it’s own memory and it’s own duty to hold things sacred. Some larger communities do a totally shitty job of understanding the needs of their ideological neighbors. And passion, pride, and lack of patience can burn bridges more quickly than building them. There are times when you realize you are part of a community that doesn’t honor your identity at the core. Sometimes it’s worse. You find you aren’t welcome in a community for whatever reason. If you are an abuser this is a safety issue and not really up for argument or discussion. But sometimes its far less deserving. And it’s a game of musical chairs to understand where you fit in and where you aren’t welcome. For me I’m part Swedish and also a minimalist in nature. Just look at Ikea and my habit of rearranging furniture. I grew more inward this year in terms of who I trust. Now it’s just me and a small percentage of screen names that might be owned by the same person or people. I identify them as my closest friends.

The thing about community I’ve learned over the years is that it can always be infiltrated. Trust can always be broken. We find we don’t belong to the bigger picture because motives are out of place. We long to just be normal and accepted for that. It’s exhausting to have to identify every time you walk out the door. I identify as human. Mostly I identify as Tim. Freedom in America is best summed up by a quote by my favorite person in the world. She’s from China. She said once she loved New York because it was the only place where she felt free to cry in public without anybody prying into why. I’m paraphrasing. But that shit has stuck with me like a knife for years. That isn’t what America is about right now. It’s almost like it’s looking for victims. Looking for signs of weakness to trick into a confidence game. It’s a setup on every corner. A prank waiting to happen. A constant obstacle to your main quest. And this isn’t what America is about. At least not the way I live it. I don’t think I solve the situation with more policing. I don’t think I solve it by doing anything other than continuing to live free. The challenge here in America is constantly evolving as it is around the world. America’s idea of free isn’t always well thought out. It’s riddled with paradoxes. And yet this is all I really have. I’ve seen enough people stalking me in the streets with shirts emblazoned with messages. Freedom isn’t free. Penetrate the world. Blue lives matter. Make seven up yours. I’ve made statements too and found myself more and more alone. And then I’ve started to realize geographically what’s worth fighting for. I’m tied to an address. That’s the address where the government sends my ballots and rejects my state taxes at. That’s the address where the utilities are in my name and I pay my rent on time. Sometimes even a month ahead. I’m fiscally responsible for once in my life. I’ve conquered years of societal glue that held me to mediocre and half assed standards. I’m a diamond in the rough except I’m not really all the rough. I’ve stood up for people who aren’t like me so much that I feel more isolated and weird every day. And I learn that sometimes it’s better to shy away from places where you aren’t welcome than to make a scene. I am stuck in my little hole here. If the answer were getting out there and networking, I’d ask people to look at my passport. It’s not good enough for the state to acknowledge as proof of my identity. But I spent a lot of money going back and forth to Asia trying to do just that. And I paid off all that debt awhile ago. I know the world is bigger than me. And I believe sometimes people think they’ve travelled the world in their computer. They’re the authority on everything. And here is the problem with freedom in America. The authority isn’t always right. This is why we seek out communities. For democracy. For peer review. To have our narrative understood and respected. And we need communities to be more about democracy and less about autocratic reactions to a zero sum game. I think it’s okay to not be part of something you don’t belong. And I also think it’s okay to respect people’s wishes to seek out where they do. But we have to learn to live together in America despite of this. And well this would require us as Americans to really look the beast in the eye. And doing that alone is scary. I should know. I do it every day. So much so that I’m literally not fucking around with much of anything other than what’s easy enough to read. Even when it’s easy to read it doesn’t mean it’s done in earnest. I can only really worry about the things I hold intimate and secret. The creative culture I’ve salvaged with my bare hands. I really don’t care if you don’t get who I am. But I want you to know I care about the world being free. At least for the people I care about. If you ever catch yourself crying in public just remember I’m right there over your shoulder cheering you on. I’ll fight for your right to cry about it and scare off anybody who interferes. That’s just who I am and nobody will know or even acknowledge me by name. Sometimes I do feel like a ghost. I’m not trying to walk through walls people set up for protection. But I will break down the barriers people put up to keep us from living together. <3 Tim

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briek58454521 · 4 years

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Cancel Culture?...

Okay.

I’ve seen this shit going around for a while. I feel obligated to correct the record.

In the wake of multiple Breadtube users being eviscerated by the public in the last year, I’d like to talk... about “cANceL cULTurE”.

But first, some back-round. I’ll be brief.

Over a year ago, Youtuber Lily Orchard’s video about Steven Universe blew up the internet, invoking praise from many facets of online culture, as well as a sizable backlash, as any video criticizing Steven Universe will invariably do. In an attempt at a response, Breadtuber Sarah Z uploaded a video titled “Bad Media Criticism”, which around 17 minutes in, talked about said video.

The response was filled with, let’s face it, lies and actual bad faith criticisms towards the content, misinformation, omission of context in important bits, and general shoddiness in action (yes, I’m biased. Reality is biased, sometimes). Criticism was swift to arrive, and the video provoked Lily herself to respond. And in the face of the factual corrections, and legitimate criticisms... Sarah doubled down, and in her infamous Twit-Longer, decided to continue to assure herself and others that her criticism was valid because regardless of whatever Lily actually said, it was still bad faith criticism.

A short while after that, fellow Breadtuber Lindsay Ellis uploaded a video discussing Black Ariel, claiming that the decision to make Ariel black was entirely a decision made because of “Woke Branding” to make more money off of people and continue raking in more and more cash, citing HBomberGuy’s “WOKE BRANDS” video essay. Many commented that this was rather racist, considering that Cartoon Network is just as much of a greedy bastard corporation as Disney was, yet, denounced criticism of Steven Universe, a show of Cartoon Network’s body of work, because “support minority voices”, with the same people commenting that this looked rather selective.

Lindsay doubled down on the criticism, and would continue defending it and publicly shitting the bed as more shitstorms (PLURAL) would erupt (lol).

After THAT, Breadtuber CONTRAPOINTS/ NATALIE WYNN would publish many videos that kept pissing of trans and non-binary viewers with a fuck-load of back handed remarks and general derogatory comments about them, as well as getting pissy that people ask for her gender and pronouns in public safe-spaces. In “The Aesthetic”, Natalie had a character playing the role of the people who make the CORRECT claim that gender is eternal and that you are what you say you are, and ANOTHER who was a truscum who would repeat the arguments that “kinda hypothetical” and, “kinda a weak argument”. This would create a backlash, and Natalie would respond with a thread that, contained a lotta shit, but also contained THIS BULLSHIT. Straight from the horses mouth, fam.

“I’m sure this is not the experience of many NBs. I’ll leave it to them to articulate what NB existence looks like in a binary world. I do not and cannot speak for them. But surely(sic) an account that begins and ends with “I’m not a man because I don’t identify as one” is pretty weak”

Later, after deleting the thread and getting more shit for it, she would upload an absurd non-apology video called “Pro-nouns”, where she would dress up like a fucking clown-ass Oompa-Loompa who just escaped from Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and make several dumb-ass claims and a fuck-ton of truscum arguments, including stating that she “wants to be a convert” to “believe” NBs, and that she would listen and respect NB people’s beliefs “so long as those beliefs are valid” After more backlash to that happened, she would continue this trend, platforming actual truscum like Buck Angel, selling anti-semetic reptilian agenda merchandise, and hosted a Patreon stream where she just... basically shat on everyone. She shat on people like HBomberGuy, for performativity in regards to the meme “Donkey Kong said Trans Rights” (yes, she is that desperate. She will accuse people who raise 340,000 fucking dollars of performativity and virtue-signaling), stated that older trans people would be considered truscum, and even that most of her friends were truscum.

The one thing that was consistent in these stories was the insistence that the criticism was just an attempt at Cancel Culture.

Cancel Culture is essentially the point where in an attempt to either exclude, harass, or target others for political views, religion, ethnicity, race, sexuality, gender, etc., people will devolve into many forms of online harassment and abuse of the media outlets, among other things, in order to silence the target, or deter the target from making an argument. It can even happen just because people don’t like someone.

For Sarah, this took the form of accusing the people criticizing Steven Universe of having a dishonest double-standard, because if a straight, white, cis-dude made it, no one would be saying shit about it. Even though the show is historically praised by WHITE progressives, and criticized by EVERYONE else.

For Lindsay, it was that the people making this claim were just fooled by the “Woke Brand” train.

For Natalie, it was “the Left is eating itself”.

I would like to say this right now. The only time I actually saw Cancel Culture in action was during the shitstorm that erupted with VivziePop and her pilots for Hazbin Hotel, and Helluva Boss came out and everyone was looking for a bunch of shit to bring up about Vivzie personally, her apparent “transphobia”, “homophobia” as understood by Steven Universe fans, and generally just a bunch of bullshit that Rebecca Sugar got away with when she pulled the same shenanigans.

That is Cancel Culture.

And the only reason I can see for it was just because Vivzie (to my knowledge, at least) isn’t a member of the LGBT community. (Those same people would respond to her stating that she plans on having Alistor, the Radio Demon, be ace with “Hey, did you hear something?”, btw)

(EDIT: I initially stated, as shown above, that Vivzie wasn’t a LGBT community member. She is. She’s bi. Apologies for getttin that bit wrong. I’d also like to mention that she’s Latin as well, but is also shit-talked for apparently being too white to be Latin.

So......yeah. Can’t begin to imagine why all of those mentioned weren’t given the same treatment.... Was there any doubt when Lindsay said she was Native?......)

And that wasn’t the case with any of the aforementioned. Natalie wasn’t “cancelled” until she kept shitting on people for the fiftieth (hyperbolicly fiftieth) time. Sarah was never cancelled. She got away with slander, and was quickly forgiven just because she’s a leftist. Lindsay is getting away with excusing away, and flat out DEFENDING PEDOPHILIA, AND IS STILL POSTING. She ain’t cancelled.

Cancel Culture may happen sometimes, genuinely, like with Vivzie, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule. It’s mostly just “this person said I sound completely contrary to what I believe, it must be (insert cause)”

It’s Lily’s fault, it’s a dishonest double-standard, it’s the radicals, it’s Woke Brand brain-washing, it’s “bAd faITh cRitISIsm”, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...

Let me tell you something. In Sarah’s case, not all criticism is because there’s a dishonest double-standard. And even if it were, that doesn’t make doing something horrible because of your identity the right thing to do. Because NO ONE should be putting in the most racist, bigoted, and frankly gross and disgusting shit in their work, regardless of whether you’re white, black, gay, lesbian, trans, NB, Gen Z, Boomer, etc. Like the human zoo, the Amethyst-Garnet fusion, Bismuth, the Pearl-Rose dynamic, the Nazi woobification, and the blatant disregard for the very people the show claims to be an ally too.

See also, the N-Word.

Despite the belief that white people can’t say it while black people CAN, black people don’t use it in a conversation formally, and can’t really use it ANYWAY because it’s still a fucking slur. And if you say it in public, there will be consequences, whether it be social repercussions, or legal action. And people have been saying it less and less as a result of this attitude becoming more present.

In regards to Lindsay, we know, bitch. We fucking know. We know that Disney wants our money like crazy. We know that this could be just another woke branding thing. We know that brands aren’t our friends, we know, we know, we know, we know. We know, Lindsay, we know. But, don;t chat shit about it if you aren’t going to criticize Cartoon Network for Steven Universe, Amazon for selling Pride merch, and Target for Pride clothes. Because then we know that you’re being very selective about what you’re labeling as “woke branding”.

In regards to Natalie, SHUT THE FUCK UP. SHUT THE FUCK UP. That is literally all you have to do. Just SHUT. THE FUCK. UP. And accept that you aren’t as woke as you like to think you are. The left isn’t eating it’s own by disowning shitty people. It’s doing itself a favor for it.

Remember R. Kelly? Everyone said that black people were just turning on each other when actual, legitimate evidence came forward, showing that he;s a FUCKING PEDOPHILE. And that attitude would continue for almost three decades before someone FINALLY said, “No, this man is dangerous, lock him up”. You know the phrase “A few bad apples?” People only say that, and just ignore the rest when defending shitty people on the Left, mostly because they don’t want to disown them. The phrase, however is ACTUALLY “A few bad apples SPOIL THE BUNCH”. If you don’t weed out the bad ones, they’ll spoil the tree.

Most of this bullshit would have been solved easily if ANY of the aforementioned had looked at their behavior, ACTUALLY apologized, expressed due diligence, and STOPPED FUCKING DOING THE SHIT.

The only reason people get away with this is because A LOT OF PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET HAVE FUCKING TERRIBLE PRIORITIES.

People take more offense to someone shutting down an opinion rather than someone being a scumbag.

People jut decided not to care about Sarah’s lies ENTIRELY because “It’s Lily”.

People defended Lindsay entirely because “Fuck Disney”.

People defended Natalie because “The Left is eating itself, we need to support minority voices”.

Because the myth of Leftist-Cancel Culture is just an excuse to not have to change. To not commit. To not put in effort. To not expand time to bettering yourself or the environment around you. To jerk off to how woke you are while criticizing others who tell challenge that. To wax poetic because it’s good for your ego.

It’s not just them. It’s many of their fans, and hundreds of thousands, if not, millions of people on the internet. And by far, their worst deeds aren’t that they inadvertently or otherwise attract Nazis, keep sucking off incels, truscum, TERFs, pedophiles, and other facets of human garbage while disemboweling others for far, FAR lesser crimes on the basis that they aren’t woke or nice enough for their liking, or EVEN the harassment that they’ve engaged in, caused, and instigated.

It’s that they’ve convinced themselves that by doing all of the above, that they are in any way superior to the people they cry foul against. The people who call them out on their bullshit when it arises. The people who raise $340,000 for their OWN people while the most they’ve done is play dress up and recycle Eddie Murphy’s shtick for the 500th time. The people who are part of the very minority voices they claim to support yet disregard on the basis that they said some mean words, or argued in bad faith, or just have a personal grudge against the people that they criticize. The people of color who FLAT OUT know better than them, yet, who they write off at every possible opportunity as just believing that companies care, or that Disney is good, or even just write ‘em off as having the wrong priorities or being stupid, as if they are in any way super clever and superior for coming to a conclusion that many more talented, creative, intelligent, and just frankly BETTER people came to years ago.

They are MORE PERFORMATIVE, more ENTITLED, more ARROGANT, more IGNORANT, more UNAWARE, more BIASED, more SELFISH, and more SELF-INDULGENT than a good 98% of the people they criticize.

They hate these people so much...because they hate looking in mirrors.

And Leftist Cancel Culture is just a manifestation of that psychological projection. Simple as.

If you skipped to the end, fuck you. No TL: DRs in this neck of ‘da fuckin woods

#wokebrands #lindsayellis #lily orchard #contrapoints #cancel culture #entitled brats #entitled people #lgbtq #vivziepop #projection #steven universe #r. kelly #n-word #bad faith #breadtube #sarah z #briek (not that one)

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trans-advice · 4 years

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Hey, for the past 5 or so years I have privately identified as nonbinary or not conforming to any gender, and even recently requested that my boss and coworkers use they/them pronouns. About a month ago I stumbled across a "gender critical" blog and started reading it. I know it's a bad idea to engage with trolls, especially when it will impact your sense of self, but I felt restless that my existence was being debated and wanted to hear the other side. Now I am feeling confused (1 o 2 asks)

I’m feeling confused and gross, wondering if all this time I have been actually working against my own feminist beliefs, or if I’m just being naive and getting indoctrinated. Like,I worry about me being a female who simply didn’t subscribe to gender stereotypes, tricking myself into thinking I"wasn’t like the other girls". I have also been wondering about what it means to identify into an oppressed group, and why we can’t talk about it without being dismissed as a dumb TERF. (1 o 2 asks) Thx

— Eve: CW: long post, possibly rambley, could’ve used better editing, transphobia, “gender critical”, recuperation, discussion of “terf” politics, recuperation of liberation movements, politics, oppression, rape culture, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist,

So basically I have tried for almost 4 weeks to write a response detailing this stuff. however it’s gotten too unwieldy. i tried to condense it, but this was as close as i got. it’s practically like 3 drafts back to back. I couldn’t figure out the differences & when i saw similarities it seemed significantly different enough. so I’m not editing any further. here’s a mindvomit. i wish i had this more polished but I can’t do that & i didn’t get a response.

however I’m going to make a history book recommendation, a referral to gendercensus2020, and i need to emphasize that these are much more like personal beliefs & not generally the tone of this blog which aims to give advice & positivity, while this is inherently political, the good bad & ugly. and there are trans people of various persuasions so I don’t want alienate them. i dissecting some ideologies that are transphobic, how they became that, how they got recuperated, and how you can find the same concerns being addressed. I’m answering this because it totally makes sense to me that this is asked in good faith & I want to respect your concerns & show that there are better methods of liberation activism that are trans affirmative, or at least must become & develop into such.

So I’m going to recommend the book “Transgender History (Second Edition)” by Susan Stryker, which I have put on our blog’s google drive account, so hence a link. It goes into the historic common ground between the feminists & LGBT+ peoples. It also gets into historic movements. And on top of that, the first chapter is literally a list of terminology deconstructing gender, which is also helpful for analyzing topics feminism analyzes..

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IvCwNvCJ_EiDmOer4zS8SbFGz4m-WDJ1

another thing you need to know regarding the label lesbian back in the day is that it was a catchall for any woman who didn’t have sex with men. now granted, this was a cisnormative understanding, but basically lesbians included celibate women, asexual women, and of course bisexual women in addition to gay women.

basically the normal advice of wait til you have your own money to have sex, wait til your mid 20s, don’t rely on a man to pay your bills etc, all of this comes from political lesbianism, which was like be celibate or else have sex that doesn’t involve sperm. (granted, communities cannot be monoliths if they want to be ecosystems, like any movement label there are different interpretations made by members of it, and therefore there are some strands that uphold a homonormative appreciation for conversion therapy. perhaps a middle ground for understanding how that happened is that joke about macho sexuality purity “if a man masturbates with his hand, he’s using a man’s hand to get off, then it’s gay.” granted, there was of course a political/economic reason to this, but still, it seems in terms of history that this joke was considered actually legitimate.)

“lesbian” was a catchall for women who didn’t have sex with men. this included ace, celibate & gynephiliac women. part of the reason these communities were conflated again had to do with the economic pressures to get married which I’ll detail a few paragraphs from now. (while this next thought could be incorrect because I did just learn about ‘compulsory heterosexuality" a month ago, I think the vestiges of those economic pressures are basically the gist of “comphet”.) the goal of political lesbian as well as lesbian separatism was to build an economy/get money that didn’t require submission to patriarchy, via marriage, pregnancy etc. so basically in an effort to build like support networks, “men” were shunned as much as possible.

however these networks ended up replicating capitalism, (partly due to oppression against communes & other anti-capitalist activities) which then replicated the oppressions of capitalism. it makes sense that transphobia had formed of assimilation/respectability politics for such feminists. To quote from the criticism section of the Wikipedia article on the women’s liberation movement.

> The philosophy practised by liberationists assumed a global sisterhood of support working to eliminate inequality without acknowledging that women were not united; other factors, such as age, class, ethnicity, and opportunity (or lack thereof) created spheres wherein women’s interests diverged, and some women felt underrepresented by the WLM.[208] While many women gained an awareness of how sexism permeated their lives, they did not become radicalized and were uninterested in overthrowing society. They made changes in their lives to address their individual needs and social arrangements, but were unwilling to take action on issues that might threaten their socio-economic status.[209] Liberationist theory also failed to recognize a fundamental difference in fighting oppression. Combating sexism had an internal component, whereby one could change the basic power structures within family units and personal spheres to eliminate the inequality. Class struggle and the fight against racism are solely external challenges, requiring public action to eradicate inequality.[210] >

birth control helped to liberate women & that accommodation/handicap for reproductive health disabilities (disability is merely inability to do something that’s Normative. so if having a uterus, pregnancy/menstruation/having breasts etc aren’t considered normal, which is especially common in a patriarchal society for these examples, then it’s disability.) It should be said that due to the desire for bodily autonomy to regulate our own body parts, as well as a desire to manage our fertility & sterilization, the transgender movement has a lot in common with feminism’s female-as-disability movement.)

it should also be noted that before the medical transitioning became accessible that us trans people relied a lot more on social transitioning than medical transitioning. it should also be mentioned that the medical procedures are available & used by cisgender people too.

that being said, since both cis females & transgender women were denied birth control etc, there was a very intense fear of impregnation happening & trans women going back in the closet not only to get money under patriarchy but also because life raising a kid is hard. like if you’ve ever seen “the stepford wives” & look at how the ally husband betrays his feminist wife, then that should clue us into how a lack of birth control scared us.

the problem with the school of feminism that emphasizes physiological sex over gender identity (in order to deny the existence of trans people with female-organs or not) is that it doesn’t account for birth control & how that’s affected the landscape, the economy etc, the revolutionary impact of birth control basically. it also ignores that trans people & cis women feminists have the same goals when it comes to getting freedoms about reproductive rights & bodily autonomy. therefore it ends up being transphobic & wanting to run back into the times when we didn’t have abortion access because they want to hurt us.

That being said though, we need to have birth control & more in order to help liberate trans people too, so if somewhere doesn’t have birth control, then we’re not doing well either because it’d pay a lot more to be transphobic (which of course it doesn’t now when we have birth control & various medical & other technologies). i think what I’m trying to say is that similar to disability accomodations clashing with each other, if we of the women’s liberation, the trans liberation, and the gay & lesbian liberation, and the bisexual & ace liberation get stranded then we’re all doomed. granted we might be doing that due to defensiveness with hostility similar to how in the 1980s feminism got very conservative in USA & how some transgender people get spared in systems with strict gender conformity & anticolonialist values, it’d be wrong to say that all our liberations are in conflict with each other. they can be mishandled, but ultimately, safety still tends to favor cisheteropatriarchal people. internalized patriarchal thinking is like internalized queerphobia, and so forth.

I want to emphasize that it is relatively easy for transgender people especially nonbinary people to find gender critical discourse somewhat appealing. Here’s why: TERFs & Gender Critical discourse is agender-normative disability discourse regarding reproductive health & other AFAB organs. (a disability is being unable to do things that society considers normative. so if you can’t drive & your locale de facto requires it, then that’s a disability. also in usa you’ll find that pregnancy & disability are the main things welfare programs prioritize. a pregnancy can be harmful, but can be easier with the right monitoring etc. which again is the same with disability.)

the problem though is that they then insist on misgendering you as one of the binary genders based on objectification of your body (specifically, “morphology”). point being, because you feel dysphoric over being misgendered as something nonbinary as being mislabeled as cisgender, this implies that you are indeed transgender.

https://gendercensus.com/post/612238605773111296/the-gender-census-2020-is-now-open

—

Now to be clear, there are historical economic considerations that made the decisions to specialize on the intersectionality of cisgender AFABs, but the economy & technology has changed. Basically marriage back in the day was economically necessary because there was effectively no birth control available. Therefore, to get child support etc, required getting the father to pay the consequences. However, marriage was very much a chattel property institution, marital rape was still legal, and women couldn’t get credit etc in our own names.

At the same time, similar to birth control being unavailable, hormones & other procedures for medically transitioning trans people were unavailable as well, which meant social transitioning & wardrobe etc were the main methods of affirming our gender. however, we sometimes got lucky & had a doctor write us a note affirming our gender & sometimes we got even luckier & govts accepted this. this however required getting labelled sick & begging doctors to give us treatment & getting money for this since insurance companies etc still discriminated against transgender people even when we agreed to have our gender identity situation labelled as sick & medically necessary. (similarly insurance companies still refuse to cover abortions & so do some doctors & hospitals.)

So this meant that AFABs were concerned about getting hijacked via impregnation. Because of the patriarchal economics of the whole thing, people were afraid of “the stepford wives” repeating itself in their own lives, where the mind can only handle what the ass can stand would mean trans women would go back into the closet.

Granted, that’s a bit misrepresentative of trans women & trans people because trans people & cis women who can get pregnant do have a lot more in common. we take the same meds, go to the same clinics, menopause etc gets taken due to distress over how our bodies work, etc. then again, how would trans AMAB people have gotten the money for child support?

historically & still to this day we basically had to beg doctors for the ability to get hormones to get a surgery to get a gender marker change & so on, which granted, what we trans people had available to us varied from locale to locale because it required collaborations of trans people, doctors, and the local govts & especially their police stations. again, before roe v wade abortion providers were super underground & secretive & there were specialized units at police stations for hunting down patients & providers under the charge of “murder”. it’s the same dynamics.

seriously trans people & people with bodies that can get pregnant, menstruate, menopause, etc, we go to the same clinics! women’s health clinics take trans patients, planned parenthood takes trans patients, do i need to go any further on how trans people & feminists have the same interests regarding reproductive health?

—

as for political lesbianism:

basically the normal advice of wait til you have your own money before having sex, wait til your mid 20s, don’t rely on a man to pay your bills etc, all of this comes from political lesbianism, which was like be celibate or else have sex that doesn’t involve sperm. (i’m not sure what the conditions were like surrounding not piv sex among the straights, and therefore what the likelihood of avoiding piv sex was. I do know that rape culture was much more heavily normalized than it is now.)

“Lesbian” was a catchall for women who didn’t have sex with men. this included: - ace, - celibate - bisexual - gay women. Part of the reason these communities were conflated again had to do with the economic pressures to get married, (while this next statement could be incorrect because i did just learn about ‘compulsory heterosexuality" a month ago, i think the vestiges of those economic pressures such as weddings are basically the gist of “comphet”.)

The goal of Political Lesbianism as well as Lesbian Separatism was to build an economy that didn’t require submission to patriarchy, such as that of marriage, pregnancy etc. In efforts to build like support networks, “men” were shunned as much as possible.

However these networks, (partly due to lacking radicalization) ended up replicating capitalism, (partly due to oppression against communes & other anti-capitalist activities) which then replicated the oppressions of capitalism. It makes sense that transphobia had formed of assimilation/respectability politics for such feminists. To quote from the criticism section of the Wikipedia article on the women’s liberation movement.

> “The philosophy practised by liberationists assumed a global sisterhood of support working to eliminate inequality without acknowledging that women were not united; other factors, such as age, class, ethnicity, and opportunity (or lack thereof) created spheres wherein women’s interests diverged, and some women felt underrepresented by the WLM.[208] While many women gained an awareness of how sexism permeated their lives, they did not become radicalized and were uninterested in overthrowing society. They made changes in their lives to address their individual needs and social arrangements, but were unwilling to take action on issues that might threaten their socio-economic status.[209] Liberationist theory also failed to recognize a fundamental difference in fighting oppression. Combating sexism had an internal component, whereby one could change the basic power structures within family units and personal spheres to eliminate the inequality. Class struggle and the fight against racism are solely external challenges, requiring public action to eradicate inequality.[210]”

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cruezins · 4 years

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☣ ; ( KIM TAEHYUNG , 24 , HE/HIM ) coming up next on rebel radio is OPAUL by FREDDIE DREDD . this tune goes out to SIWON RYU . rumor has it they just rolled into town and are fightin’ for the GHOULS . they’re AFFABLE , INQUISITIVE but also AIMLESS , MERCURIAL so watch your backs out there . we wish them the best of luck here in our golded city of light . stay vigilant , stay dirty rock ‘n rollers and we’ll catch you for the next one .

𝐎𝐎𝐂 : hello ! i’m deni and i don’t know what editing is . i use she/her pronouns and live in the gmt+9 timezone . i’m terrible with ooc chats and half the time just want to vibe a connection or plot idea , so please don’t hesitate to throw a half-formed thought at me because i swear i’ll do the same . my discord is gay fairy#6371 . anyway , here is siwon , someone i’ve been work-shopping for a while ! looking forward to writing with you ♡

☣ ; 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐁𝐘𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐇 .

cw : drug mentions ; stop me if you’ve heard this one before------

his dad’s a junkie and he hasn’t seen his mom since some fatcats bought their restaurant for a steal a few years before , but that’s the way of life for a lot of people in the underground . young , bored , and desperate to hear and smell anything that wasn’t the rottenness of his own childhood home , siwon found himself on the streets more nights than not , spray paint in one hand , painting nights in greens and purples until reds and blues chased him away . makes his first steal before he can tie his shoes . creates alliances with the neighborhood kids , sneaks around to watch how the haves live with their pretty , pretty screens and their ugly , ugly words . school isn’t anything special , either , and while siwon can’t remember shit that he reads from a page he can work with his hands . fast and efficient , nimble fingers whether they’re flying across a keyboard or fucking around with some screws . you can make something of yourself , some of his teachers tell him while others can’t stop bitching about homework or tardiness or the way he falls asleep in the middle of class . but what’s siwon supposed to make ? he and his ragtag group of weirdos he calls friends . when he gets older and nights get hungrier , siwon learns to stop relying on the benevolence of neighbors and finds a job --- he’s fast , after all , with a sweet face and wide eyes , makes a helluva getaway after years and years of running .

thieving’s a natural grift . he’d been training for this his whole life . then he catches the eyes of a boss man who isn’t nearly as mad as he should be catching some kid with his wallet in his hands . courier comes next , ferrying messages from a bunch of suits all over the city . siwon never opened the packages , never second guesses the credits that start bloating his account . desperate , he does what he’s told and does it well ------ and that’s the real kicker , isn’t it ? that after a year and some-odd months of dedicated service they leave him high and dry with some bullshit he doesn’t have any involvement with . after years of running , boys in blue finally catch him and he’s left to take the fall of some dumb fuckery , man , and he’s pissed . steaming in jail , it’s a wonder some other gang didn’t get to him first . the longer he sat and talked with that ghoul member , the more he grew to despise the rich , the ones who left him to rot after all the shit he did for them . what was even the point anymore ? dog eat dog kind of bullshit , no sense of loyalty or shit anywhere . the law and all that money was out to get him from the beginning and siwon had enough of it . a few months locked up but he learned and leaned and learned , only able to get out on a technicality . the second he stepped back out into the sun , siwon followed the map given to him and signed up for the ghouls . city of light be damned . the only lights he wants to see are flames eating this hellhole alive .

☣ ; 𝐈 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐎𝐔𝐂𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 .

➤ full name. ryu si-won ➤ date of birth. january 29th ➤ hometown. city of light ➤ gender. cis male ➤ affiliation. ghouls ➤ primary occupation. drug runner , pickpocket ➤ secondary occupation. network manager at an internet cafe

➤ sexual attraction. pansexual ➤ romantic attraction. panromantic ➤ character alignment. chaotic neutral ➤ personality type. enfp ➤ temperament. sanguine ➤ wants. power , family

stands around 5′11 . broad shoulders , slim hips . floppy , messy hair and sun browned skin . half legs . a few pieces of silver in his ears and a small hoop on his bottom lip . dresses somewhere between a washed up rockstar , your college weed dealer , and a miami vice reject . style’s a whim with a closet’s chaotic mix of anything he thrifts or patches together . most of the time he’s sporting cuffed jeans , vintage blouse , a denim jacket or tweed blazer and thick ass boots . keeps all that hair back with a bandanna or a headband , hair ties on his wrist . nothing in his closet’s technically new and he loves looking for a bargain steal —— or simply just a steal . likes colors just as much as he likes his neutrals . wears a black air filtration mask and fingerless gloves . considers his floral button-up shirts fancy material and his trousers cut off at the ankles . likes the smell of old leather and the breathing of fringe on a jacket , the weight of heavy rings on his fingers and sunglasses swooped low on his nose . wears a monocle because he can’t be fucked with reading glasses . his hair’s been every color of the rainbow and he’s always changing it up thanks to temporary dye .

☣ ; 𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐎𝐍𝐄 .

hustles at arcade halls , scarfs down ramen and burritos like they’re gonna disappear , looks as comfortable in a dark , dirty alley as he does standing under all those lights in the neon district . pockets full of candy and a lollipop between his lips . likes cheap beer and cigarettes , fast talking and smooth smiles . gets up when the sun goes down . who knows if he ever gets a full night’s sleep , but you can find him taking a nap just about anywhere . seems to live for the dark hours and stays busy as a bee , at the internet cafe one moment and grabbing fried cheese sticks in the next before crossing the bridge to watch the street races and venturing to the tunnels for the fighting rings . complains about being broke but puts down bets faster than anyone . lives for the feeling of wind in his hair so the window of his top-floor one bedroom shit hole stays open all the time . feels the rain on his skin , plays with matches . learned how to assemble a gun in less than sixty seconds and stays packing nowadays though he can’t really shoot for shit . spray paints boobs on the sides of government buildings and dicks on malls . looks like an angel under all those holographic lights .

rides a motorbike and his skateboard . can do crazy math in his head and spot fake bills with incredible accuracy . can barely stand to sit still , always moving except when there’s a computer screen in front of him . gets addicted to things so easily it’s scary --- people , food , liquor , feelings . craves that intimacy , craves that closeness that’s always been denied to him . has a loud as fuck laugh and a love for sneaking into places where he doesn’t belong . catches extra cash on the side by fixing up broken-down machines and can figure his way around a motor with a bit of elbow grease . still sees his family . not as much as a good son would , but he sends cash when he can and looks after his younger sister , makes sure she stays well and clean . they don’t know half of what he’s gotten up to since he was let out of prison , but they might have some idea --- after all , who’d pay a crooked boy with a record as well as he seems to be ? when the sun starts to come up and he crashes into bed , siwon stares out the window and thinks about how in another world , or in another time he probably could’ve been something . could’ve made something great . but for now he’s just got a whole lot of anger , raw like a fresh wound he can’t stop picking at .

☣ ; 𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐓 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐘𝐎𝐔 ?

➤ bonds. my loyalty to my friends is unwavering ; i owe everything to my mentor --- a horrible person who’s rotting in jail somewhere ; i fleeced the wrong person and must work to ensure this individual never crosses paths with me . ➤ flaws. once i pick a goal , i become obsessed with it to the detriment of everything else in my life ; when I see something valuable , i can't think about anything but how to steal it ; i have a weakness for the vices of the city .

he’s friendly , but he doesn’t make friends easily --- the ones that he has made , he’d do anything for . because that’s how he’s gotten this far , right ? all those people who looked after him when others tried to stomp him out . he’s still close with his teen friends who threw a few grifts with him , gaming buddies that he knows only through a screen . little escapes from all the other bullshit going on in the world . even though he isn’t a club guy , he runs into more than a few faces on his rounds . maybe they’re bad influences or sweethearts who help that touch starved affliction that comes from living in a city so wired . on the flip side , there’s some enemies --- competitors in the runner world , antagonists he meets at the races or rings for whatever reason ( insane bets make tempers run hot , who knows when they’ll flare for good and siwon’s learning the hard way how to keep his mouth shut ) . he’s fixed up a few cars or weapons for people recently because he misses working with his hands . y’know , making nice . then there’s people he’s caught in a crossfire with , where they’ve met something nasty one too many times before over turf , territory and clients . a newer face to the ghouls , he’s bugged someone into mentoring him , and gone on a few runs with someone he loves to call a coworker .

eager to prove himself as more than a green kid with a keyboard and an eye for detail , find him cutting deals and making trades in smokey barbecue houses , hole-in-the wall ramen shops or by taco tents . a full bellied class of clients are happy clients in his opinion , and siwon isn’t above not making deals with the other groups who’s names aren’t violent delights . speaking of which --- there are definitely some skeletons there he aims to confront , some old demons to fight from that class of people that fucked him over . there’s an ex lover in there somewhere , probably met in that pre-prison childhood phase when he mingled past class lines more ( ~1.5-2 years ago ) . someone he’s healthily fearful of for whatever reason , and maybe a vendetta against the family that scammed his parents out of their business and basically sent his life spiraling . there’s someone who isn’t what they seem --- he doesn’t know who they really are , and maybe they don’t know who he is , either . they’ll learn eventually . someone he’s protective over , someone who protects him in ways he doesn’t even know , and those he looks after because they grew up on the same side . desperate for connection , desperate for a place , he finds it all in heaven and hell .

#neongraves:intro #. 𝐒𝐈𝐖𝐎𝐍 𝐑𝐘𝐔 ➤ DEVELOPMENT .#this is A Lot #but i had so many notes for myself #let's see how this pans #chaos reigns always

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askanaroace · 5 years

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Can I get some clarification about "aplatonic"? I've read your tag on it but am still confused. Do aplatonic people still need social interaction? Do they need emotional bonds in some form to be happy? I thought these were universal needs but aplatonic people seem to prove this false. I might have some self esteem issues because I feel sort of guilty about needing that sense of connection to be happy if it's something people can not need, if that makes sense? I hope this wasn't irritating

If I found questions irritating, I’d’ve chosen the wrong type of blog to start!

I’m going to answer your questions because I know most people are likely baffled by aplatonicism. I know because I could not wrap my head around what it must be like before I myself was aplatonic.

However, I’m going to address something else first, because you don’t seem to really be asking these clarifications out of a genuine sense of curiosity and desire to get to understand aplatonic better in order to support your aplatonic family (hi!).

Something does not need to be a universal need, desire, or want in order for it to be a valid need, desire, or want that you have.

It doesn’t matter how I or any other aplatonic person feels in regards to if something you feel or want is valid. We do not control that. We do not hold some omnipresent power to validate or invalidate you.

Gay folk are valid even though some folk are straight. Bisexual folk are valid even though some folk are gay or straight. Trans folk are valid even though some folk are cis. Cultural-specific third genders are valid even though those genders don’t exist in other cultures.

Your desire for connection and bond and relationships is valid regardless of people who are aplatonic and nonamorous, whatever their own personal feelings about relationships.

This feeling of guilt you have over needing and wanting connection and bonds with others is absolutely an issue you should address in yourself. It is not healthy to beat yourself up over your own needs and wants. It is not harmful to want or to have relationships. Therefore feeling guilty over it absolutely has basis in something unhealthy in yourself that is hurting you. Please find a way to address and work on this in yourself. If you’re in a place where you can, this is exactly something you can work on addressing with a therapist or counselor. If not, try an app like Pacifica that can help you learn CBT techniques to keep mindful and treat yourself well.

It is healthy to prioritize your needs and wants. People are diverse and complex. We do not all need the same things as one another, nor do we have to need the same things.

I need an inhaler to live thanks to my asthma and allergies. If you have properly working airways (or an issue which inhalers won’t help), you don’t need to take an inhaler just so I can be valid for taking care of my own life.

My sister is involved with a community of vegan folk because otherwise she feels very lonely and isolated being the only vegan she knows. I do not need to become vegan or join that community in order for a) her choice to be vegan to be valid, or b) her desire to engage specifically with other vegans to be valid. It is also valid that my sister feels lonely in her dietary choice even though I’ve never mocked her choice and always make sure there’s food for her at my place or any place we may meet up because it’s true that as someone with a far less restricted diet, I don’t understand the daily struggle to check every piece of food around to see if it can be consumed or not.

My friend deeply wants a child and is working hard with her husband to have one, including going through their options, as due to her health, pregnancy may be out of the question. I do not want to raise children at all. I do not need to want to have children for my friend’s desire to be valid.

People need and want different things all the time. There is nothing inherently wrong about this. When it’s wrong is when it’s hurting someone, and right now the only one being hurt is you for not allowing yourself to have feelings and desires. Of course we all want and even need validation at times, even when the choice is ours alone to make. But you shouldn’t need validation that 100% of people feel exactly the same way as you to allow yourself to feel a way.

Your guilt is unnecessary, and it breaks my heart that your brain would trick you into treating yourself like this.

You want connection and relationships? That’s valid. You’re valid. Go forth and foster connection and relationships. And don’t forget to work on learning to let go of that unnecessary and harmful guilt that you’re harboring. You deserve better than that.

Now, to try and briefly answer the questions you asked (because I don’t want to take away too much from the above):

Do aplatonic people still need social interaction? Do they need emotional bonds in some form to be happy?

Depends on the person.

First off, unless you’re a hermit (and even then, it’s not guaranteed you’ll never run into anybody), it’s nigh impossible to go without any social interaction whatsoever. There’s a lot of ways to get social interaction without having close friendships: shopping and interacting with a salesperson or cashier, smalltalk with people in an elevator you’re riding in, familial relationships, talking or even going out with coworkers, interacting with customers if that’s a part of your job, playing games online with folk, participating in forums and blogs, volunteering and helping people out, catching up with an acquaintance, going to classes to learn a new skill/forming a study group, joining a gym with group classes, etc.

Emotional bonds can also be formed in a variety of ways. You can have a bond with your pets. An aplatonic person may also have a variety of other bonds. Familial bonds. Sexual bonds. Queerplatonic bonds.

Aplatonic means a lack of desire/difficulty forming platonic relationships. That’s it.

Some aplatonic folk may really struggle for form platonic relationships/bonds but may desperately want to. Some aplatonic folk may not really have friends but when they start getting to know someone well, that person goes from acquaintance straight to family. Some aplatonic people are not nonamorous/nonpartnered and may desire or have a queerplatonic partner.

For me, I’m pretty exhausted by the whole state of things. Yet, I have bimonthly dinners with my sister because I love her and it’s ridiculous that we live in the same city and almost never see each other otherwise. I started the dinners to improve the relationship I felt we had, since I think she feels like we can’t do anything together. Yet, I have a good relationship with my coworker. I work in an office with just him (our bosses are in another state), so a good relationship with him keeps things running smoothly and comfortably. Yet, I go out with my coworker and his wife (who is actually my friend from HS) because a) I had a close friendship with her before I became aplatonic and I still care deeply for her, b) it helps get me out of the house and I do usually have fun, and c) I know they appreciate it and I like making people happy. Yet, I still go to muay thai two times a week and chat with my instructor and laugh and talk with people I spar with because that’s a part of going to a group class, and I genuinely enjoy the atmosphere of the class and the attitude of the people that attend.

I don’t really have anybody in my life that I trust to tell or want to tell some of the deeper, more personal things about me, especially the bad stuff I’ve been through and being currently without healthcare, I can’t talk through these things with a therapist. Sometimes I do get lonely and hate that I’m this way. It’s scary that if something happened to me, I wouldn’t know who to call for help. Sometimes I just want to share, but I don’t feel I have anyone that I can do that with, and I don’t have the energy to put time forth fostering a relationship in which I could. And on the whole, I prefer to be independent, even though it makes some things harder.

We’re all human. We all have struggles. We all have our weaknesses. Some people may be happier and more confident being aplatonic than others are. As is the way of people of all groups. We don’t invalidate each other because we feel differently about our label any more than we invalidate you for not having the same label as us.

#validation #aplatonic #apl #relationships #connection #bonds #people #humans #ask #op #long post #Anonymous

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sadwetmoomin · 4 years

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ok so im tired

The problem isn’t ‘not enough people of color or women are making enough good films and TV shows.’ The problem is whenever someone ACTUALLY gets recognized, white, cis men think that their own identity and the ‘integrity’ of award shows are being compromised to appeal to diversity. I remember watching Ramy Youssef accepting his Golden Globe for his performance in his own show, Ramy. Now, the show itself is incredible; as someone who’s trying to maintain faith and culture (though not Muslim), I found a lot of the things in Ramy’s reality really interesting and relatable. I felt like this was a story that many people have experienced, and making it a comedy makes our own lives more enjoyable. Furthermore, it addresses real issues in a way that exposes how ingrained they are in our everyday lives, and how (as a latina and child of immigrants) I had to grow up with all these preconceptions about myself and the people around me. However, when he was making his acceptance speech, a person walked up to the screen and talked over him, saying, “He only won because he’s Muslim. The academy loves to pick people because they’re diverse, and it’s unfair how political they are.” Yet, how can this statement be true when most of the nominated people were white? If the Academy truly rigged elections to pick people based on diversity alone, the whole audience would be different shades of brown, correct?

And why does the meaning of the award change depending on whose hand holds it? Without seeing the show itself, how can a person decide the merit a person deserves? Not only does it discredit the hard work a person did to fulfill an artistic vision, but it implies that the main difference between a white man’s work and anyone else’s is that a white man always deserves to be nominated. According to this ideology, a white man will always produce quality work that deserves every award it is teased with; everyone else is only there to piss off Republicans.

Listen, a lot of movies were good this year; i recognize that. But what I don’t understand is that in an industry where creativity is encouraged, a formula has developed that systematically puts some movies at a higher value than others. In a sense, there’s an elitism that only recognizes movies that appeal to a certain demographic and doesn’t venture too far from the center and actually pushes boundaries. Some actors aren’t getting nominated based on their actual performance; they’re getting nominated because, well...they’re That Actor. They are always supposed to get nominated because that’s What this Actor does.

And this reality sucks! How the hell am I supposed to say “women and people of color aren’t recognized enough” when the first argument I receive is, “what? men can’t make good movies?!” What, in fact, can I say that won’t make me feel trapped or won’t let people ignore me like they’ve been encouraged to do? And how can I say “The awards that aren’t segregated by gender but are still given to us are so few that we can’t even change the pattern?” Without someone saying “Well, you won that year!”? How can I communicate my point for people to actually understand that one award in more than 75 years isn’t nearly enough to solve a deep-rooted issue like this one? And how the hell am I supposed to actually create knowing in the back of my mind that if I don’t get recognized, people will automatically shrug it off with, “Well I guess women/POC didn’t make any good movies this year!”

In this reality, a Gerwig film will never come CLOSE to a Scorsese film. Or a Tarantino film. And, mind you, I’m not saying that these two men don’t deserve their nominations; OUATIH was a good movie, and I’m sure the Irishman was good (listen, I’ll be honest - i’m not sitting through a 4hr movie about Old People who Used to be Interesting). What I am saying is, Greta Gerwig had a truly interesting take on an old classic and made something important of it. And while she did all that, she made a stunningly beautiful film with a star-studded cast that truly made Little Women something incredible. Every single March sister had an assigned “fate” for women at the time, and throughout the film, Gerwig’s writing demonstrated that we’re still in this reality today! And film analysis aside, her creativity shone, and Little Women was intelligent, well-spoken, INTERESTING...I finally felt like there was a movie that had packed all my frustration growing up in a patriarchal world, even exploring a male character trying to live outside that world that didn’t suit him, and made that frustration art. Not seeing Gerwig receiving proper credit for directing this movie into perfection was disheartening, to say the least.

Furthermore (and this point will be shorter), there’s also a prejudice around actors usually known for comedies. In short, the elitism goes even deeper to exclusively prefer drama actors over comedic ones. Ironically, however, the dramatic performances by these comedians tend to shine, exposing these people as truly talented actors with a versatile and noteworthy range. Of course, this brings me to mention Uncut Gems, which deserved a seat at the table, and it makes me mention Adam Sandler, who truly SHONE. Furthermore, Awkwafina (and The Farewell in general) was incredible, and the story she told was powerful and amazing. Though Hustlers was not my favorite movie, Jennifer Lopez was AMAZING...yet these aren’t ‘serious’ actors, right? They haven’t done whatever the fuck these other people have done!!!

We have to start recognizing newer directors, newer writers, newer actors, newer stories that haven’t been explored before or invent a new category on Netflix or whatever. Not to be Virginia Woolf on main, but there is a certain beauty of ordinary life, of ordinary women, of ordinary people of color, of ordinary people from the LGBT+ community, that doesn’t have to be fetishized or insulted in order to be of worth to male audiences. Women don’t have to beat up, people of color don’t have to be criminals, men don’t have to be war heroes or powerful bosses or manly at all! What are we supposed to learn from art and culture if we are only exposed to the same points of view over and over again? What makes a tired world war story (albeit a different world war this time) - in which the SAME people are considered infallible heroes (even though in WWI no one truly was the good guy but that’s another point) - something new and truly nuanced about our society or the way the writers think or tell stories? I can’t critique any of these old, white, male directors or writers or actors because not wanting to watch their films or whatever makes ME the idiot for “not knowing what culture is”! If their names are the only things giving them merit, then they can do no wrong, and I am in the wrong for preferring someone else’s movie.

tl;dr Movies are a form of art, and everyone is encouraged to indulge in said art and make something wonderful. Yet, if we are going to applaud certain pieces of art over others, then we have to break down these nonexistent barriers that define what “valuable art” consists of. We can’t change the definition of good art based on whoever holds the award, and we can’t hold good art to the same standard of people who no longer know what the world of art looks like. Give people a chance to actually CREATE; and see how beautiful films can actually be.

#i know im just some meme account but hey u signed up for this #raw unfiltered AAAAAAAA babey #and yeah im just a nerd on the internet but im mad and someone might care #im just tired of never being listened to and actually having thoughts ya know #anyway heres wonderwall #oscars #films #movies

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terfslying · 5 years

Text

All longanon answers:

also why does nobody care that gc men/radfems talk positively about intersex issues FOR THEIR OWN SAKE not just to confuse people about sex. Some of us have CAH or AIS, PAIS. 2nd, a GC opinion: men want uteri & to go by she? Go for it. I think it's reactionary, & I'll be open about that, but it's not my choice. But pushing lines like "lesbians like dick, afab-exclusive=fetish" is WRONG. My family has already brought up transdick as a gotcha. Too few of yall care about fallout for gnc/gay people.

Not sure if this is out of order however: “afab-exclusive = fetish” is wrong, it’s not a view I support, and I agree there’s fallout for gay people, so why are you telling me off for pushing it when I don’t?

where do I see lesbians like dick? everywhere. Not explicitly here, though implied with referencing that some lesbians might like no-op transwomen. You are carving out a niche balanced view, and I appreciate that. Don't pretend like it's the majority of the trans/nb community, or the liberal or leftist take on things.

Why are you talking to me as if I am speaking for the entire liberal or leftist ‘take’? You’re talking to me, you get my viewpoint.

there's a lot more going on with ‘erase women’s anatomy and oppression’ than I even have knowledge of. But for me some big ones: it's no longer women's reproductive justice. It's pregnant people, despite us all knowing damn well the intersection between our potential reproductive system and how woman has meant (still means) property too often. Femininity isn't social control, it's fun! It's expression, medically necessary, a part of womanhood. Rapes/assault being covered up.

“Pregnant people” vs “pregnant women” is important in medical contexts to prevent female people being denied medical care on account of not being ‘women’. It also makes self-help resources more inclusive for gnc female people.

“Femininity isn’t social control, it’s fun!” - femininity is social control for female people. Non-female people practicing femininity are literally breaking their prescribed gender roles and undermining the patriarchy.

“Rapes/assault being covered up” - specific examples?

And I'm sorry but I've seen some of the same trans-activist people in threads you're on, who you interact with positively, say shit like "anyway terfs die". Now, maybe someone they perceive as a terf has threatened them. Someone I know to be trans has threatened me. Is it ok for me to go online and say "TRAs, die"? Ofc not. So you tell me you call hateful TRAs out equal to calling out terfs, and I have doubts. Perhaps you could title your blog Terfs and Misogynist TRAs lying, and work on that.

I like how manipulatively you have phrased, “someone they perceive as a terf” vs. “someone I know to be trans”. I’ve also seen hundreds of TERFs online post shit like “Trannies die”, and had death threats personally from people I KNOW to be TERFs. Both sides behave like shit in that sense, and both sides feel like they are on the defensive. The only way to end that nonsense is to STOP participating in “well they do _____ so it’s okay for me to do _______”. But guess what? I’m also not the Tumblr police. Do you personally check the blog history of every person you interact with on Tumblr to ensure they’ve never said anything Problematique? Because I don’t, sorry.

re: erasing women's oppression, there's also a deliberate attempt to chuck out all the shit from the 70s you apparently hate. God forbid we misgender a rapist, or "cancel" any man for misogyny, but reading even excerpts from old radical feminists? Heresy, evil, invaders. Quite fucking honestly, I'll look into the history, but this calling some women political lesbian and thus dead to us thing has all sorts of potential as antifeminist slander. Especially if men think they can talk on it.

I’m talking about actual events in the 70’s that set up the trans-discourse-in-lesbian-spaces-non-stop situation, not whatever shit you’re talking about here.

Also, I have literally done readings and annotations of many radical feminist texts on this site. Stop using me as a puppet to argue with every person you’ve ever thought was a TRA.

I’m also curious if when you became "ex-" radfem, does this mean you also became against being critical of porn and critical of the sex industry? Note - critical of the INDUSTRY and culture, as in the corporations and bosses, pimps, traffickers, johns, and the academics, "art", and media who cover it as queer or fun or sexy or a good way to pay off student loans... not the workers or the prostituted (i'm differentiating here based on a spectrum of how much autonomy and liberty is retained)

No, it doesn’t mean that. I’ve said before - I am pro sex-worker and believe in evidence based rules for helping women in that situation, which means no Nordic system, but I don’t believe that you can ‘manage’ any sex workers in a brothel-type situation without it being dangerous.

I also am passionately opposed to all kinds of trafficking and slavery for personal reasons, and that obviously includes people trafficked for sex work.

at the end of the day I'm still just like... why can't women who love cis and trans women (or men who love cis and trans men) just say you're bi and that's your preference? Why does gay and lesbian have to always theoretically be flexible? It's obviously used against us, in a biased manner (again, does anyone really expect and go after straight people to be flexible?) ... and is it really worth it? Is temporary relief of a social construct borne pain worth it?

It’s not for ‘relief of a social construct borne pain’ - it’s just to accurately describe myself.

Because I’m not bi. I’m a lesbian. I exist in my city’s lesbian society, as a lesbian who dates lesbians. Then later, I became trans-inclusive. ‘Lesbian’ has to be flexible because human beings are flexible.

#longanon #tag for asks

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