#gender and sexuality are so big and complex that it's impossible to shove them into tiny boxes

[allastoredeer]

I just read your entire Just Kiss Already series up to the latest one with the huge fight between the two and ARGH you write them both so well!! Especially Lucifer, his anxiety and stumbling-through-his-words dialogue that makes him oh so relatable to me are perfect. And as an English Language and Literature graduate who's not a native English speaker, your writing has some GREAT vocabulary and phrases I absolutely love.

As someone aroaceage myself (on all 3 spectrums not 100% completely aromantic, asexual, or agender, just FYI since people forget it's a spectrum and then attack me way too often and now I'm wary) it's so refreshing to see another aroace person writing Alastor with his "I hate personal space invasion" attitude that I share. I strictly hate giving up my privacy and your explanation for how Al feels makes so much sense (and also makes me feel like I won't be friendless my whole life, so thanks :') if Alastor can end up with someone despite hating intimacy and if Lucifer can despite being awkward and desperate then damn. Maybe so can I). Oh, and Vox being the pathetic desperate wet tissue he is is soo entertaining. I don't babygirl-ise characters often but he's just so. Fun to watch embarass himself. I can't help it.

I came to your blog just to say this but got a lot of RadioApple discourse that I'm honestly a bit intimidated by since I wasn't aware of all this happening at all, I just follow a very select few creators and now I don't know whether I'm doing something wrong. Personally I don't care much about top/bottom dynamics (except in certain situations) so I'm just confused and worried lol. And what's with the outfits and likes??? I'm out of the entire loop. But I'm glad conversations are happening when they should!

Anyway, I canNOT wait for more from your series, wherever it goes. I'd draw fanart or write fics in your AU with your permission but I'm currently having every creative block known to humanity for several years. Somehow.

I usually comment on AO3 itself but you connected your Tumblr after every chapter so it felt right to come here, even tho I'm not too active on social media sites. I hope you don't mind my mostly-unrelated rambles. All the kudos to your fics!

First and foremost: You aren't doing anything wrong.

It's fine if you're out of the loop. There's really no loop to begin with. It's just some fandom tropes and characterizations a handful of us don't enjoy seeing and we're ranting about it LOL If you like any of those tropes or characterizations, or follow people who make art/fics with them, there's nothing wrong with that either. There's no need to be worried, you're doing just fine 😊

Secondly, THANK YOU!!!

I don't think anyone is 100% ace, aro, or agender, it's a spectrum, afterall. There's no meter you have to reach to be considered 100% a sexuality, you just are :) If you say you're ace, aro, or agender, that's what you are, and anyone who wants to argue about it can go kick rocks.

I base a lot of how I write Alastor's aceness on myself, so hearing people say they feel the same is just (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`) It's so amazing to hear. I'm a very private person and I like my personal space; I'm not a very physically touchy person, and thankfully, I have an amazing friend (who's love language is physical touch and affection) who knows and understands this and doesn't touch or hug me without permission - I love her so much T.T

Vox is such a pathetic wet tissue and that's what I love about him

(づ￣ ³￣)づ I wanna give him a little kiss on his big, flat forehead.

I'm so happy you're enjoying my fics and relating to them so much. I don't think there's a higher compliment an author can get than their readers saying that they saw themselves in the story and characters. It's such an amazing feeling, it makes me all warm and tingly inside.

Once your creative block lets up - whenever that may be - you have my full permission to draw and write as much as you want in my AU.

Thanks for visiting my tumblr!! Sorry you felt intimidated by the discourse, that's not fun. Just know that you're not doing anything wrong, and whatever fandom content you engage with is perfectly fine and you shouldn't feel bad about enjoying it ^.^ Fandom is escapism and we're all here to have a good time.

Thank you for your rambles!! I enjoyed reading them!!

[pentanguine]

1. Do you use any other terms to define or explain your gender?

So…I got a little carried away. Most of these posts will not be this long, but I had a lot I wanted to say, and a long drizzly afternoon to work on saying it, so.

Aside from genderqueer, trans, and nonbinary…

I’ve started feeling more at home with the word transmasculine this year, after several years of circling it warily and ultimately running away because it would just be ALL TOO SHOCKING. Other people interpret transmasculine in a wide variety of ways, many of which make me deeply uncomfortable (eg “Transmasc = physically transitioning in all the same ways trans men usually do;” “Transmasc = trans man but woke about it;” “Transmasc = I have aligned myself against women and forsaken feminism and I love asserting my dominant gender role”), and voluntarily using a word that’s ripe for misinterpretation made my control-obsessed brain fuck right off.

But ultimately it’s not really about using words (what does that even mean? putting them in your tumblr bio? buying the pride flag?) so much as knowing, however privately, that you are a thing. And I’m transmasculine! It’s a word that feels comfortable, and homey, and exciting. Other people who use that word sound like me! They look like me, and they look how I want to look! I get such a blooming, leaping, light-filled feeling in my chest when I see these people, because I instinctively feel that these are People Like Me. I recognize myself in their experiences of gender, and sometimes I feel like my whole body’s going to shake apart with a euphoria that’s like being on fire. Every time I read something by Daniel M. Lavery I end up rolling around on the floor in paroxysms of delight and Feeling Seen, and my brain lights up like a fireworks display when I see awkward bi men with curly brown hair and glasses. There is still a little part of my brain that’s convinced referring to myself as transmasc will make everyone deeply disappointed in me, and obligate me to go out and befriend a footballer named Chad, but I’ve been casually referring to myself that way since May in semi-public venues and the sky hasn’t fallen in yet.

Transmasc feels like a useful word for me because it makes me feel more settled. I think a lot of times nonbinary gender is simplified to gender neutrality (which it is for some people!), while for me it’s more like a stewing mess full of things that don’t make coherent sense in anyone’s mind but my own. So I can like masculine words and gender presentations, and that doesn’t mean I’m equating neutrality with masculinity, and I can also express my gender in the numerous non-masc ways that feel natural to me while still having that anchor to come back to. Ultimately, I think it just means that I have a more meaningful relationship with masculinity than I have with femininity, neutrality, or androgyny, and that I’m deliberately moving in a more masc-coded direction that the one I started out. And that’s it!

--

The other big gender-conceptualization-thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about is the complicated muddle of doubleness and inversion that I feel between gender identity, gender presentation, sexuality, and gender expression. I don’t feel bigender, because that sounds like I have two discrete gender experiences sitting side by side, and I’m not genderfluid, because it’s not like my gender actually changes, but I do feel like I’m part woman-affiliated agender person, and part genderqueer guy with the genderqueer dialed up to eleven and the guy dialed down to two. Part of me feels apart from gender, but nebulously attached to queer ideas of womanhood (lesbian! spinster! middle school girl at a sleepover who promises to love her friends more than any passing crush!), and then part of me feels apart from gender, but like I picked Guy Gender to steal for myself and imitate and relentlessly queer by virtue of not taking it seriously enough. But it’s all mixed together, you know? Like paint swirling on a palette, or light bringing out iridescence on fish scales. Sometimes it will be more like one thing, sometimes more like another, but it’s always whole and completely intertwined.

Earlier this year a Miriam Zoila Perez quote about being a faggy butch was going around, and man, that gave me a lot of gender feelings. I first encountered the term fairy butch on this old blog called The Butchelor, and while I loved it then, I didn’t use it because of a radfem-induced trepidation that it was all an elaborate joke everyone understood but me. I also have an extremely annoyed relationship to the word butch, because I’m not butch at all, and I doubt anyone else would think I am, but this seems to be the only word anyone is capable of using to describe queer masculinity. It’s like other people are determined to smash you into yet another binary (ironically, a binary that’s jealously guarded by the same people who keep enfolding you in it) because you’re afab and like wearing ties. It’s annoying!

But the phrase fairy butch just seems so delightful to me, because it’s whimsical and complex, and also so genderfucky. I’m not masculine in any of the ways that usually cohere to the word butch—I don’t have the interests, or the mannerisms, or the sexual propensities or the haircut or the total dislike for anything feminine-coded (why is masculinity always all or nothing, and all about absence?). I love my socks with the sparkly pink foxgloves, I love smiling (why must men never smile?), I like sitting with my legs crossed and talking with my hands. I’m not feminine, I’m effeminate. I’m a double invert, gay for women and gay for men, a too-boyish-“woman” who doubles right back around as a too-feminine-“man.” Maybe I’m not a butch, or even a (faggy) butch, but dammit I’m a fairy/butch. Two queers in one, two inextricable, contradicting queernesses that complicate and complement and mitigate and enhance each other.

--

The idea that I’ve been slowly winding towards is that contradiction is part of my gender. It’s not something that’s going to get smoothed out one day when I find The Perfect Word, and the questioning and revisiting isn’t going to end when I reach The Final Stage of Transition or whatever. I read an article a few weeks ago that nebulously cited Jack Halberstam as saying “refusal to resolve my gender ambiguity has become a kind of identity for me,” and that’s something that resonates with me so, so much. I don’t have to make myself neat and appropriate for consumption, because my gender doesn’t exist at the mercy of other people’s understanding. I’m not a problem that has yet to be shoved into a “woman-aligned” or “nonvir” box, I just am. Sitting amidst the dissonance of things that other people tell me are impossible to feel at the same time is my identity. I never want to cohere.

It reminds me of the way I feel about historical figures like Katharine Hepburn and Daphne DuMaurier, who were definitely genderqueer as fuck, but also closeted to the outside world for their entire lives, and unclassifiable in modern terminology. They were real, complex people who existed, and are now gone! It would be really weird to assign them a coherent identity, like “Hepburn was a nonbinary trans man” or “DuMaurier was genderfluid” or what-have-you, when all you have are decontextualized fragments of their gender feelings. (I feel comfortable calling them genderqueer because that can be used as an adjective to describe cis people who queer gender, which they definitely did)

Anyway: I feel very deeply connected to these people, and the way they saw themselves as being boys, or like-men, or men-in-certain-contexts, or men-and-women, or women-who-wanted-to-be-men. But the thing is, wherever they may have wanted to go, they never arrived. Would Hepburn have preferred to be known professionally as Jimmy, gone by he/him pronouns in all areas of life, and identified as a proud trans man? Barring some spectacular archival discovery, we’ll never know, because that was never a viable option in Hepburn’s lifetime. And that space of possibly-wanting, but not-arriving, feels like a destination to me. That gap, between wanting and actualization, or fantasizing and pursuing, or playing around and Identifying As, feels like it is part of my experience of gender. I’m not a man, I’m a woman-who-wants-to-be-a-man. There has to be that distance, and that wanting.

I’ve gone on for an absurd amount of time here, but ultimately: I’m queer! My gender is queer! Some people are men, some people are women, and I’m a queer.

[kaspbrak-tozier-reddie]

“And They Were Soulmates?” - Reddie

I’m rewriting this into a Reddie Oneshot.

Warnings: swearing, slight homophobia mentions

Requests are open.———————————————————————

After the phone call with Mike, Eddie immediately looks down at his wrist, not really caring about how bad his car is. He can’t remember why his wrist is so important but it must’ve been a long time ago. Much like the cut section of his cast that he refused to part with. Eddie is finally brought back to his senses by someone tapping his shoulder, “I need your details, for insurance purposes,” the man who was driving the taxi, says.

“Oh right, yes of course,” Eddie replies. He eventually looks at the damage he had caused only minutes ago, both inner sides of the cars are smashed. “Fuck!”

“Yeah, ‘fuck’ indeed.” Eddie quickly gave the law-abiding driver, his details and walked to the subway, not wanting to watch his SUV get towed away. The closer he gets to the subway, the more he thinks about Myra. She was going to take him to the emergency room for sure, ‘you may have a concussion, Eddie-bear’. Eddie shudders at the thought.

His eyes flick to his wrist as it heats up, it’s only in a small spot, centred on the side, in line with his pinky. Why doe it burn? Why does he remember it burning 24 years ago?

****

He walks up the stairs from the station and makes a beeline for the apartment complex that was just up the road. It’s like a sprint, almost like he’s desperate to get in and out and back into the ‘safety’ of Derry, his home, the place he loved?

Eddie stops, he looks up at the stairs, leading to his apartment, he can’t bring himself to walk up the stair. He feels as though someone was keeping him grounded, unable to move from his spot on the sidewalk. Derry? Home. Derry? Richie. Richie? Why does that name sound so familiar? 

Small memories started to file in and Eddie knows he has to go back, he has to go back for Richie. Richie? There it is again! 

“Eddie-bear! There you are!” Myra exclaims joyfully as she embraces her husband. “I thought you left me!”

“Now why would I do that?” Eddie replies, he tries to die down his obvious fake tone and must’ve been successful as Myra skips away to the kitchen. “Um, Myra, I have a work conference that I must go to tomorrow. It’s two hours out and is only going on for a few days.”

“Okay! I’ll come!” 

“No!” It comes out harsher than he intended, and both wince. “No, it’s only workers, it’s just me and two other men going.” Myra sighs and nods. “I’ll need to leave in like two hours.” He hates it when she does this, it was almost like she hated the idea of him leaving. How he didn’t pick up on it soon, he didn’t know. It’s a smothering type of relationship and he can’t take it but he doesn’t want to hurt her.

“Oh, but I made your favourite.” The pungent smell of burnt spaghetti bolognese gets stronger and Myra removes the lid off the pot. Spaghetti? I never liked spaghetti but why do I like spaghetti?

He continues to think about his life choices since leaving Derry as he walks to the bedroom he shares with his wife. “Eddie Spaghetti.” Eddie mutters, “that’s why I always watch Trashmouth! He was my - “ Friend? No. Best friend? No. 

Two thoughts left and Eddie can’t bring himself to even think like that, so he shakes the thoughts. It’s impossible, he has a wife who he loves? Why am I fucking questioning this? 

He doesn’t bother to fold his clothes, just shoving everything he can into his suitcases. He grabs his toiletry bag and his old fanny pack that he hasn’t touched in 2 decades, still packed to the brim of old medication that he refuses to take. Just as he is about to walk out the door, he looks down at his hand. 

The wedding ring. 

He always thought it looked funny. It never sat right, it was slightly big but wasn’t big enough to fall off his finger. It was gold, he wanted a black silvery band but Myra wanted matching bands. Eddie always wanted to have sex but Myra always claimed it was dirty and a “sin”, even though they are married. How would we even reproduce? Eddie often wondered, he always thought about having kids. 

“I’m sorry,” Eddie mutters and leaves his ring on the side table as well as a quickly scribbled note and finally drags his two suitcases down the hall and out the front to hail a taxi.

***

The flight over, Eddie has time to rethink everything. He pulls open his laptop and quickly sends a few emails regarding divorce and needing to update some forms. It may be too soon but Eddie knows that it isn’t. As he tries to think back to that Summer 27 years ago, he remembers yelling at his mother. Everything that Myra had done, it wasn’t healthy and Eddie laughs quietly to himself. I married my fucking mother! 

The drugs and the little cuts and bruises and believing he needs to go to the hospital for stitches and medications to stop the bruises from forming. Leaving his mother in Derry made him forget everything he had done to prevent from being a hypochondriac and now he still is. He isn’t sick, he gets that, he never had asthma or weird illnesses that he had never heard of. 

He opens Netflix and plugs in his headphones, he searches for Richie Tozier’s Netflix Special. Even though there’s only an hour left in the 2-hour flight, he still plays it. It’s obvious from the start that the jokes aren’t his, they were homophobic and nowhere near as dirty as they used to be. The humour was restrained and dry, only heckles and coughs were heard, no applause or laughs. It breaks Eddie’s heart, he isn’t sure why. 

Sure he remembers the Losers and they had a friendship, a strong bond held by IT and bullying by Bowers’ gang, but Stan and Bill were two out of his three closest friends. Richie seems different and Eddie can’t put his finger on it. He tries to dig in his mind, staring at Richie’s tall figure on stage. 

Richie was a comedian back in the day, think Eddie, what makes this so different to when we were kids?

“Would you like one from me too, Mrs K?” Richie had asked just before he, Eddie and Bill had gone somewhere, the Barrens? Sewer?

Crap!

Richie always made Eddie the butt of the joke or made dick jokes. 

The burning on his wrist reappears, this time the skin where it burns starts to turn red. Eddie immediately covers it, trying to conceal the area from the open. It didn’t hurt this much the last time, Eddie recalls, it must have something to do with Derry.

****

As he drives past the ‘Welcome to Derry’ sign, the hairs on his neck stand up straight, goosebumps start to rise on his arms. The strange and uncomfortable feeling of being watched looms over him, he passes the cemetery, almost veering off the road as he catches a glimpse of a fluffy red hair and a white clown suit. “It’s just your mind playing tricks on you, Eds.” Eddie tries to reason with himself. “I hate being called that.” It rolls off his tongue, just like ‘Eds’. 

Who called me that? I liked it though but said I hated it. 

Hatred and frustration washes over him, he doesn’t want to be back in the homophobic town. He couldn’t, even as an adult, he didn’t want to fathom what the town would do if they found out he was gay. 

Gay?

Crap!

No wonder why his marriage felt loveless, he wasn’t attracted to her! Or women in general. He was and still is attracted to men, well one man ... Richard Tozier.

*

He finally makes it to the Chinese restaurant but stays in his car for a few minutes to compose himself, not wanting to have a full-on panic attack during dinner. Aside from the killer clown returning to Derry, it was meant to be a happy reunion, a way to catch up with the other 6 survivors of Pennywise. 

Eddie huffs and pulls himself out of his car and carries himself towards the restaurant. “Reservation for Michael Hanlon,” Eddie says to the waitress, who then leads him to a reserved table where two familiar faces stand. “Mike? Bill?” 

“Eddie!?” Mike exclaims, racing over and hugging Eddie, Bill kind of stands awkwardly. 

“Bill!” Eddie exclaims and hugs the horror writer. 

*

Not even 10 minutes later, 3 others walk in and a gong goes off. Eddie catches the eye of the tall comedian, he watches the dark curls falling over the glasses, the way his jack clung to his broad shoulders. The burning sensation, that Eddie has been experiencing for the past day, starts to burn deeper and Eddie sees his skin form black bold letters. As he looked down, black inked appeared, ‘R.T’ was written. 

Did I ever tell Richie? Or did I cover it up like I did with my sexuality?

“Did your soulmate’s initials fade when you left too?” Beverly asks as they all sat down to eat.

“Mine just came back,” Eddie replies. “It started burning when I got the call from Mike.”

“Mine never left, still says S.U,” Mike replies. Mike knows that Stan was happily married to Patricia and would never want to get in between them, sure he may never find anyone else but he likes being alone, in that sense at least. He loves having friends but doesn’t mind being alone relationship wise.

“Did you ever tell Stan!?” Bill asks and Mike shook his head. “Well, I got my soulmate.” That meant that Bill and Audra ... ? Eddie feels himself deflating.

“Mine faded too,” Ben says.

“Same,” Richie finally says just as he winces in pain and looks down at his wrist. “Shit.”

“Show us, boys!” Bev pipes up reaching over at both Eddie and Richie. Richie shrugged and reached over to Bev, Eddie followed. “OH MY GOD! Guys!” Ben, Mike and Bill gathers around Bev and looked between Eddie and Richie’s wrists. 

“OH DAMN!” Ben squeals and clamps a hand over his mouth in embarrassment. Richie grabs Eddie’s wrist, his eyes widen.

“Eds ...” Richie whispers. Eddie shakes his head as a warning and flips Richie’s wrist round he looks down at his wrist and sees the ‘E.K’. 

This shouldn’t be possible, his mother always told him that you couldn’t get an initial for someone of the same gender. Then again, she and the majority of the town were homophobic. Those thoughts are out of date now, being part of the LGBTQ+ community is accepted now, Eddie should have no fear. His mother is dead and he is planning at finally divorcing his wife.

Eddie looks into Richie’s eyes and remembers all the good times the two had shared. It was a type of love that Eddie never got from his mother or Myra, it wasn’t forced and he was able to be who he wanted to be. He could be a normal teenager who shouldn’t need to be scared of any health risks. 

All the times Richie climbed in through his window, all the times he had snuck in through Richie’s window. The hammock? The hammock, he used to argue with Richie just so he could squeeze into the hammock with him.

“I’m still married, Richie. Until the divorce papers go through,” Eddie whispers. Richie didn’t seem to care and still kissed Eddie; both had waited 27 years for this to happen and didn’t want to wait any longer.

“Eds, I fucked your mom,” Richie whispers against Eddie’s soft and now swollen pink lips.

“BEEP, FUCKING BEEP, RICHARD!” Eddie groans. “Of course you had to ruin it!” 

“I’m not even sorry, Eddie Spaghetti.”

That’s why he ‘likes’ spaghetti! One of the many nicknames that Richie gave him. ‘Eds’ he secretly loved but if he said anything, the others would call him that. ‘Eddie Spaghetti’ he absolutely hated! It was cringy and annoying, it was a means of Richie calling him cute and pinching his cheeks.

“Don’t call me that.” Eddie says. “You know i hate it when you call me that.”

“How about ‘babe’, Eduardo?” Eddie blushes, he couldn’t help it. There’s a fire inside of him that he hasn’t felt in almost 30 years and he loves it.

Eddie puts his arm up on the table, signalling for an arm wrestle. “Just like the old days.” Eddie whispers.

“Amen to that.” Richie chuckles. Their competitiveness never left, both needing to assert dominance. It had been like that for years and now was no different.