#god there is So Much gender in these books

[anniflamma]

This isn't a question, but rather a love letter to your art<3.

Thanks to you, I've started enjoying Greek mythology and the Bible again (I mean from a point of artistic, mythological, historical, and theological analysis; my status with any kind of religion is being agnostic XD).

And I already enjoyed Epic the Musical, but I really love the designs you make, how you empathize with the symbolism and lore of the Gods when designing them, and how you make Odysseus so human with his crude expressions that makes me empathize with him (And he's one of the characters I hated the most from Greek mythology lol)

And then there’s your art about the bible, I have to admit that I tend to avoid the biblical religion because of the weight it still has on our daily lives, the damage it has done from the past to this day, and how they deny it with current hypocrisy (I live in Spain, there the official religion is catholic), but your lgbt drawings have really encouraged me to open the bible and see it from an objective and neutral point of view, and just enjoy it as another book and not as something I’m forced to follow.

Also I didn’t know there was so much LGBT content in the bible XD Seriously, thank you so much, if you had a patreon, I would pay you for the amount of happiness and culture you have given me (^///^)

By the way, reading your posts I found out that you recently experienced an internet drama that has become so popular lately. I just wanted to tell you that I'm sorry that both you and that poor artist had to go through this, that human hypocrisy has no limits or shame, and that I agree with everything you say. Just because we like a character or an author doesn't mean we agree with their crimes or ideologies.

I hope you have a nice day<3

Hi! I’m sorry it took me a while to respond! I mean it, I’ve read this over and over, and it makes me so happy. I’ve been thinking about how to respond, but sometimes it's hard to get it out into words.

It makes me so happy that my biggest interests make others interested in it too. Heck, when people ask questions, I get all giddy!

Talking about biblical/christian saints, greek myths, history, different cultural views and changes was kind of the whole point of why I started this tumblr blog. I have so many drafts filled with random info about LGBTQ+ saints..... Now… I post mostly thirsty drawings of greek gods with hairy chests... T.T

And I sympathize a lot when it comes to religious trauma. I consider myself lucky in these matters, my mom is Catholic, and she has her views that I don’t agree with and hurtful. Yet she still supports me in her way and watching my bible retelling animatics, everytime I post a new bible animatic, she writes me: "What have you done to Daniel..."

I also have my hurts and anger towards hypocrisies too, and I guess this is my way of countering that?

LGBT content in the Bible is something that really fascinates me. I think it's important to keep in mind that people from about 2,500 years ago had very different views when it came to gender and sex compared to how we see it today. In a way, the Bible does have strict social gender expectations, and if you didn’t fit in, then you weren’t considered part of that gender. But at the same time, it acknowledges that your sex. I think it’s in the Talmud were it discusses the fact that, throughout the Bible, there were about eight genders:

Zachar: male.

Nekevah: female.

Androgynos: having both male and female characteristics.

Tumtum: lacking sexual characteristics.

Aylonit hamah: identified as female at birth but later naturally developed male characteristics.

Aylonit adam: identified as female at birth but later developed male characteristics through human intervention.

Saris hamah: identified as male at birth but later naturally developed female characteristics.

Saris adam: identified as male at birth but later developed female characteristics through human intervention.

Some scholars even believe that Abraham and Sarah were Tumtum. A Tumtum is not considered to be very distinct but rather flexible between male and female sex/gender—"sometimes he is a man, and sometimes he is a woman." The simple fact that God said Abraham had a womb and from it, he would have children. Some say that this is why he is a Tumtum, while some historical linguists argue that ancient Hebrew didn’t have the vocabulary for male genitalia yet. Both arguments are valid, and I like them both!

There’s tons of stuff I could bring up—Joseph with his princess dress, Naomi and Ruth, David and Jonathan, and the discussions around whether Daniel was a Saris Hamah or a Saris Adam. We know he was called a saris, but we’re just not sure which. And then there's Jael, whose story is filled with a lot of phallic symbolism, and even her name is very gender-neutral.

I think I’m going to end here. I could yap about these things forever! But thank you again taking your time writing to me and I hope you also have a nice day! <3

[sinni-ok-sessi]

love that Quincey Morris' speech is continually described as 'laconic' when in fact he's just said a normal sentence, but because no one else can say anything without invoking three separate metaphors and an entreaty to a higher power, they're all like, 'wow, this guy is so silent and stoic'

[spookyjarchivist]

while i do have a soft spot for “hobbits age slower than humans so 33 for them is our physical 18” i rlly dont think that’s how it is bc they get to about the same age as humans before death by old age, i also really dont think we appreciate enough a few things about what this means narratively and thematically

tolkien really said no child soldiers, no 20-something year old soldiers, they’re not really adults yet, they barely know anything of the world we’re sending them to die for it and that’s not okay, not when there are other options

he also addresses this with the hobbits specifically, frodo and bilbo are 50 when they go on their journeys, FIFTY, and we can see that they handle them differently than the others. while bilbo changes afterwards, it’s not in a coming of age like we would see if 50 really was the equivalent of ~27, he just accepts a part of himself he’s been suppressing for years, for him it’s accepting that getting older and being an adult doesn’t restrict you from the excitement and opportunities of youth. similarly frodo doesn’t change much either outside of his ptsd, all of his change is trauma, not maturity

now sam and merry are both past the age of majority, but they still grow into themselves in a way bilbo and frodo do not, they mature

but pippin, sweet beautiful pippin grows the most out of all of them. he’s the most childish, always running after his cousins and you can tell he’s not even 30, this is HIS coming of age story, before this journey he’s known nothing of true responsibilities, but by the end he’s ready for when he eventually has to take over as thain of the shire

and i think that this is a really beautiful way of saying something that has started to get really popular in the last few years

instead of being terrified of that big 30, we should be excited for it, we should embrace it wholeheartedly, because it’s the time when we’ve finally started ironing out the last of the kinks in being an adult, we’re growing into our responsibilities and and we can start learning how to cultivate that balance of responsibility and excitement and FUN that makes life living instead of surviving

[hauntingsofhouses]

i know I've mentioned my interpretation of mizu's gender a million times on here but i don't think i ever fully elaborated on it.

so on that note i just wanna ramble about that for a bit. basically, it's my reading of the show that mizu is nonbinary, so let me dig into that.

putting the rest under the cut because it ended up being pretty long lol. also here have a cute mizu pic of her being happy and most at ease with herself, symbolised by her letting her hair down. <3 ok let's proceed.

thus, when i refer to mizu as nonbinary, i am interpreting mizu as a woman, but not ONLY a woman. not strictly a woman. she is also a man. she is also neither of these things, she is something in between, while at the same time she is none of these at all. i've said as much many times, but i just don't want people to think that when i say nonbinary, it inherently means a "third androgynous gender" that essentially turns the gender binary into a gender trinary. not only is that going against what the term nonbinary was crafted for (to go against rigid boxes and categorisation of gender identities), but also, not all nonbinary people fall under that category or definition, and that's definitely not the way i interpret mizu.

okay before i go deeper i'd just like to address some important things. first of all, this post is an analysis of canon, and thus everything i am arguing for is about my own interpretation of the show, and not some baseless projected headcanon i am projecting onto the character. please remember there is a difference between an interpretation (subjective; interpretations will differ from viewer to viewer, but ultimately it is firmly rooted in evidence taken from the source material) VS a headcanon (unrelated and often even contrary to what is presented in canon; opinions wildly differ and they cannot be argued for because there is no canonical evidence to back it up).

ALSO please note that nonbinary is an umbrella term. this means that it applies to a vast range of gender identities. other identities that fall under the nonbinary umbrella include agender, bigender, genderfluid, and so on. however, it's my personal preference to use the term nonbinary as it is, simply because i'm not a fan of microlabels (more power to you if you do like them and find they suit you more though!).

also, before anyone fights me on this, let me clarify further that gender means something different to everyone. it's not your biological sex or physical characteristics. but at the same time, gender is not mere presentation. you can be a trans woman and still present masculine—either because you're closeted and forced to, or because you just want to—and either way, that doesn't take away from your identity as a woman. same goes for trans men. if you're a trans man but you wear skirts and don't bind or don't get top surgery, that doesn't make you any less of a man. because gender non-conformity exists, and does not only apply to cis people! some lesbians are nonbinary and prefer using he/him pronouns while dressing masculinely, but that doesn't mean they're a man, or that they're any less of a lesbian. neither does this mean that they're a cis woman.

the thing about queer identities in general is that, like i said, they mean something different to everyone, because how you identify—regardless of your biological attributes and fashion or pronouns—is an extremely personal experience. so a nonbinary person and a gnc cis woman's experiences might have plenty of overlap, but what distinguishes between the two is up to the individual. there's no set requirements to distinguish you as one or the other, but it's up to you to decide what you identify as, based on what you feel. either way, by simply identifying yourself as anything under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, you are already communicating to the world that you are not what a conservative, cisheteronormative society wants you to be.

which is why i find all this queer infighting on labels to be so ridiculous. because we're all fighting the same fight; the common enemy is a societal structure that divides us into set roles and expectations purely based on our biological parts. that's why biological essentialism in the queer community is a fucking disease. because by arguing that women are inherently weak and fragile and soft and gentle and must be protected from evil ugly men, while men are inherently strong and angry and violent and exploitative of women, these people are advocating for the same fucked up system that marginalises and abuses women as well as effeminate and/or gay men.

anyway. i'm going on a tangent. this was meant to be a blue eye samurai post. so yeah back to that— the point i'm trying to make is that there's no singular way to identify as anything, as everyone's views on gender, especially their own, is specific and personal to the individual.

so with that being said, yes you can definitely interpret mizu as a gnc cis woman and that's a totally valid reading of the text. however, interpreting her as nonbinary or transmasc also doesn't take away from her experiences with misogyny and female oppression, because nonbinary and transmasc folks also experience these things.

me, personally, i view her as nonbinary but not necessarily or not always transmasc because i still believe femininity and womanhood is a very inherent part of who mizu is. for example, from what we've seen, she does not like binding. it does not give her gender euphoria, but is instead very uncomfortable for her both physically and mentally, and represents her suppressing her true self. which is why when she "invites the whole" of herself, she stands completely bare in front of the fire, breasts unbound and hair untied. when she is on the ship heading to a new land in the ending scene, she is no longer hiding her neck and the lack of an adam's apple. we can thus infer that mizu does not have body dysmorphia. she is, in fact, comfortable in her body, and relies on it extremely, because her body is a weapon. instead, what mizu hates about herself is her face—her blue eyes. she hates herself for her hybridised racial identity, hates herself for being a racial Other. hates that she has no home in her homeland. thus it is important to note that these are not queer or feminist themes, but postcolonial ones.*

* and as a tiny aside on this subject, i really do wish more of the fandom discussion would talk about this more. it's just such an essential part to reading her character. like someone who's read homi k bhabha's location of culture and has watched this show, PLEASE talk to me so we can ramble all about how the show is all about home and alienation from community. please. okay anyway—

nevertheless, queer and feminist themes (which are not mutually exclusive by the way!) are still prevalent in her story, though they are not the main issue that she is struggling with. but she does struggle with it to some extent, and we see this especially during her marriage with mikio, where we see her struggle in women's domestic spaces.

on the other hand, though, she finds no trouble or discomfort in being a man or being around other men—even naked ones—and does not seem stifled by living as one, does not seem all that bothered or uncomfortable navigating through men's spaces. contrast this to something like disney's mulan (1998), where we do see mulan struggle in navigating through men's spaces, as she feels uncomfortable being around so many men, always feeling like she doesn't belong and that she's inherently different from them. mizu has no such experiences like this, as her very personality and approach to life is what can be categorised as typically "masculine". she is straightforward and blunt. her first meeting with mikio, she tells him straight to his face that he's old while frowning and raising a brow at him. she approaches problems with her muscles and fists (or swords), rather than with her words or mind. compare this with mulan, who, while well-trained by the end of the movie, still uses her sharp wits rather than brute strength. this is a typically "feminine" approach. it's also the approach akemi relies on throughout the show—through her intelligence and persuasive tongue, she navigates the brothel with ease. mizu, in contrast to someone like mulan and akemi, struggles with womanhood and femininity, and feels detached from it.

thus, in my opinion, mizu is not simply a man, nor is she simply a woman. she is both. man and woman. masculine and feminine. she has to accept both, rather than suppress one or the other. her name means water. fluid.

as a side note, while i do believe mizu is nonbinary, i also primarily use she/her pronouns for her, but this is a personal preference. i find it's easier to use in fanfic (singular they is confusing to write stories with, but again, that's just my feelings on it, and this is coming from someone who uses they/they pronouns). i also lean towards she/her because it's what the creators and all the official promotional copywriting of the show uses. and even though i am a "death to the author" enjoyer, i feel that when interpreting things that are left open-ended, it does help to look at the creators' take on things. also because, in general, being nonbinary simply doesn't necessitate the use of they/them pronouns. nonbinary is not just a third gender. it's about breaking the binary, in any which way, and that's exactly what mizu does, constantly.

also, i'd also like to mention that one of show's head of story even referred to her with the term "nonbinary", rather than simply "androgynous" (see pic below). and it's possible this could be a slip up on his part, in which he believes the terms are interchangeable (they're not btw), but regardless i find it a very interesting word choice, and one that supports my argument.

so anyway yeah that's my incredibly long rambling post.

TL;DR nonbinary mizu rights 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 congrats if you reached the end of this btw. also ily. unless you're a TERF in which case fuck off. ok i'm done.

[twinsoftheday]

today's twins of the day are:

skye and summer tanberry from the chocolate box girls series

[murdleandmarot]

for the ask game, 🎧 and 🦖 :]

hi hello mystic!!!!!! ty for the questions :))

headphones or earbuds?: I’m a headphones girlie, always will be. I only have one working ear so im placebo-effecting myself into believing that they’re somehow less likely to make me go deaf. Also I’ve just always liked them, they’re my favorite. They’re really comfortable, they’re cosy, etc

(The person who removed headphone jacks from iPhones, I’m COMING FOR YOU. I’m gonna hit you with a hammer and also bite you. Get fucked)

Favorite extinct animal: ….do early humans count? Probably not, but ily earlier versions of us anyway 🫶🫶🫶

Uhhhhh there’s prolly one I was obsessed with as a kid that I’m blanking on now, but I simply do not remember. I’m a dinosaur fan but I’m unfortunately basic about it 😭😭😭, and I’d have to say a brontosaurus. I’ve always like pterodactyls beecause of the magic tree house books.

(This is all despite the opabinia propaganda spread by my very good friend @isopodcreature which I mean. Love you opabinia. But dinosaour)

[mossiestpiglet]

not having both ryo AND juta being awakened by asuka’s femininity, i literally can’t take this anymore juta you are fucking in love with him

[bibiana112]

"The handmaiden is male gazey" did you know lesbians like fucking other women sexy style? Did you know that a large theme in the handmaiden was the male gaze and misogyny and if you can't separate explorations of a harmful idea from endorsements of it you may be hopeless?

guys I knew it I knew that would be a comment inflammatory enough to attract my first hate anon cut the cameras we did it bois :D

[the-busy-ghost]

There are some books that are just BETTER if you go through them with a pencil and underline the shit out of tiny details, and honestly if anyone found Hogg's 'Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner' difficult to get into, I highly encourage you to give it another go and give yourself a license to extensively research & annotate every little bit

[danielnelsen]

oh THANK GOD

there are only three quests you can use for an infinite rings exploit and the way they work is that you get rings in the text before the reward screen, so if you close the app after getting the rings but before the reward screen, it resets that part of the quest. the first one (know your friends, i think it’s called?) needs your mc so you can’t really progress the main storyline, and the second needs ezra, like so:

he’s not required for any important quests until much later, but i’ve still got about 5 side quests sitting there that need him.

but the third one, do you know julian, DOESNT need any of the main characters. i forget if it needs any other classmates (i just know that i used it in my original game and it was sustainable), but ezra is FINALLY free!

[enneamage]

The original incel essay post got way out of hand, so this is a shortened version, which is funny because it’s still pretty long. For now I’m rounding it down to the concern I have for The Nerd Youth and the ‘no bitches’ meme circulating among them. I want to say it’s not unusual for a generation settling an internet frontier (new scene, new website, new movement) to do something oddly regressive, because they're New Humans and don't know how things are connected yet. It’s not unusual for them to pick up the nearest seemingly-safe sticks they can find and jab each other with them to get some conversation / social hierarchy going, even if those sticks are really loaded with history and negative consequences.

Internalising incelisms

‘if you haven’t had X sexual/romantic experience by Y date you’re a ruined person’ is a pillar of incel thinking, so making people for being virgins or single is keeping that attitude alive, even if the person throwing the insult isn’t technically an “incel” themselves. Incels are partly a symptom of a much bigger problem culture has with treating the number and availability of sexual partners in your life as a persons overall value, because the manosphere didn’t just make that concept up themselves.

Underneath the rise in ‘bitches’ memes going around it’s clear that this is just people taking shots at an easy target because society puts relationships high on the social success escalator; if someone is dating you, you’re apparently doing something right, and slightly less suffocated by the loneliness problem in the west. In the context of hookups, you’re appealing and socially acceptable to attractive strangers, getting physical fulfillment without putting down vulnerable attachments. Overall, you’re capable of fulfilling someone else and someone else finds you worthy of fulfilling, a successful social exchange. On the flip side, you’re apparently a loser If you don’t have that. It’s got its barbs because it’s based on a simplistic understanding of sex & relationships, even from the people using it, and it really takes root where people tend to be isolated online.

The Valley Of The Bitchless

Why are people just tossing the phrase ‘getting bitches’ out there like it’s nothing again? I know it’s ironic but is it. Is it really. Because it’s looking like people kinda mean it even if its hyperbolic.

More than half the value of this meme comes from the fact that ‘getting bitches’ is meant to be easy for the Cool People but hard for either you or the person you’re insulting. Being alone was turned into a stick to poke people with because it was easy to weaponize people's insecurity about being awkward and unlovable, especially online. People then internalize this insecurity and then throw it back at other people, causing a loop. People attack each other for not conforming to a vision of what a "desirable person" is, and in some circles that vision comes dangerously close to the incel invention of 'Chad and Stacey'.

'Chad and Stacey' are the perfectly beautiful, socially gifted, perfectly 'normal' mythological creatures of incel thought. The idea of "Chad" came from the mind of people who defined themselves by their social exclusion. They obsessively poured over what they felt they didn't have and built an image of 'the perfect person' based on media and everything they felt they lacked. In the online circles I've been watching, there's a building pyramid of value based on how far removed people are from the internet and its cultures (intense niche interests, unusual hobbies, social anxiety, looks), and it's a validation of the existence of Chads & Staceys by everything but name and a few cosmetic changes. It's really not that different when a Twitter user with a picrew icon does it.

“Uncool” people fuck plenty, you’re fine

Here's the secret-- our sex neurotic culture actually isn’t talking about sex for sex's sake, and we haven't been for a long time. We're talking about soothing an anxiety, proving that you're performing your life correctly by using sex as a scorecard. Notice that sex isn't remotely cool when the swingers or the nerds or the band kids pull it off? Some people are calling the shots based on personality and looks, but there's another part where it's not cool because it wasn't achieved by playing the game that sex is meant to keep score of. You weren't tough, you weren't cool, you didn't handle yourself in the right way, you didn't go to the right places or do the right things. It's meant to be a reward for doing the right things, a validation of worth, a story you can brag about, and it has vanishingly little to do with the other person except maybe how good they were to look at. This is a pretty deeply rooted mainstream problem, and if you look for it, you’ll find it in a lot of different places.

I’m going to make a bold statement: I know people who have had sex on a scale that qualifies as modern history. They also fail the ‘cultural coolness’ test with flying colors. Turns out that someone inviting, fun and unpretentious is more personable than the intimidating 2 cool 4 anything archetype, even though certain internet standards are more likely to punish you for being the former than the latter.

fin

I feel like these things are taking root in very-online young people who are getting into their heads about how far removed from society they are because of who/how they are. This is the incel pipeline, it’s a part of what starts to prey on people’s mental health and drives them deeper into isolation, it’s just that these people aren’t in the incel demographic.

This is happening every day in certain online circles, and it's really unsettling to watch how young it goes, even though I do know that some version of it has been around for ages. Peer to peer bullying over attractiveness/lovability isn't new, but seeing a surge of people going after each other for being Bitchess and single in a world that openly considers incels to be a terrorist threat is bizarre. Really gotta emphasize we're drinking the sewer water here.

[quatregats]

🌹🌹 :)

This is from a very silly self-indulgent crossover fic in which Stephen Maturin comes to Portsmouth to do top surgery on Horation Hornblower because why shouldn't all the characters I like be trans

Now, ten years later, much more acquainted with the failings of memory and the importance of committing things to paper the moment they were thought of, he cursed his younger self, which had left him only with some illegible, poorly-preserved notes from the first surgery at Trinity, written in a version of the encoded Catalan he used for his diary that he had changed away from several years back. He had hoped to review the notes on the ride to Portsmouth, but between the code, the poor light, and the rattling of the carriage, he found that the task was nigh on impossible, and gave it up.

Milesker <333

[mielgf]

just finished my first read of little women and i will never be the same

[clownsnake]

getting the sudden urge to make a new fursona thats literally just a Minecraft cow or maybe a frog because, as far as I know, there is no sexual dimorphism in any of the mobs in that game

[tyrannuspitch]

i'm reading this historical novel with a third gender character and like. i don't know how to feel about it. because obviously gender is personal and contextual and they will be operating within their own society's rules. but i feel like the author is keeping things so just-within-the-rules that it almost becomes like... a weird reluctance to engage with actual queerness? only with alternative norms? almost like. inventing new ways to be cis and then doing cisnormativity with them lmao

[neverendingford]

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