#how is it possible for a man to be so trans coded I am going insane

[pinimi]

reading re-animator the novelization and Herbert is not beating the trans allegations

[frenchfrywrites]

CODE y69

MINORS DNI

Warnings: amab gn top dom(ish) living human reader, trans man bottom zombie Vil Schoenheit, monster(fucker) au, monsterfucking, medical play, roleplay, breeding kink, lots of drool, vil goes nonverbal, slight dumbification

Words used for Vil: pussy, cunt, tits, hole, clit. Mention of him having a period and getting pregnant

The sound of the door to Vil's bedroom opening softly tears his attention away from his vanity.

"Ah, sorry," he stares through the mirror at his door, where the doctor– he gathers from the white coat and stethoscope– he arranged a house visit with stands awkwardly in the doorway. "Am I interrupting something?" You ask, setting down your bag of medical devices and instruments on Vil’s bed.

"No," he’s quick to answer, capping the tube of lipstick he'd been applying and standing to greet you. Both of you size one another up as Vil sluggishly crosses the room. You’re handsome in the long white lab coat, undoubtedly so, and if he had the blood to do so, Vil thinks he might feel flushed. The mild anxiety he typically finds himself having when he’s among the living settles in, and he feels the urge to preen and reapply his makeup.  

The two of you exchange introductions, and Vil notes that your hand feels so nice and warm when it shakes his, before you ask him to make himself comfortable on his bed. Vil sits himself down as gracefully as possible as you open your bag “I almost thought I had the wrong patient,” you offer him a bashful smile, applying hand sanitizer to your hands, then tugging on some gloves. “You looked so alive,” and your admission earns you a soft laugh from Vil. 

“Thank you,” he mumbles quietly. After his untimely demise Vil's tried his best to cover his dead skin, the chunks of missing flesh, and his vacant eyes. He appreciates his efforts being recognized. 

“Alright, let’s just jump right in, yeah?!” you give him a wide smile, “can you tell me your first and last name? And your date of birth?” Vil tells you the information easily. “And when did you become undead?”

“A couple of months ago,” he hopes you don’t pry much more than that. It’s not something he likes to dwell on.

“Great! Do you remember the last physical you had when you were alive?” you ask carefully, rummaging around in your bag.

Vil doesn’t remember much from before his death. He has people he knows- or knew- tell him things about himself, but most of what they tell him feels blurry and out of reach.

“It’s okay if you don’t,” you say when he hasn’t responded in a while. He hums- and it sounds a bit too close to the sluggish groan he’s heard from older zombies for his liking- and anxiously flattens the wrinkles on his skirt. 

“This will be a bit different from an exam that an alive person might experience, but that’s why you called me in the first place,” you ramble as you put on a pair of gloves. 

“I’m going to skip over taking your blood pressure and checking your heart, for obvious reasons,” you tell him, standing next to where he’s seated. Suddenly, you press yourself into Vil’s personal space, 

“Can I touch you Mr. Schoenheit?” and logically Vil knows his heart has stopped beating for a long time, but he feels like it flutters in his chest all the same.

“Yes,” he consents, trying his best to not sound breathless. You take his head in your hands, feeling around his skull. 

“You have lovely hair Mr. Schoenheit,” it’s an offhand comment, but it makes Vil feel like he’s on cloud nine. 

“Thank you,” he practically whispers as you gently touch the back of his neck. 

“Good,” you step back and Vil tries not to follow your touch, “looking great! I’m going to ask you to make some facial expressions with me now, so I can see how your muscles are working.”

Vil nods, folding his hands in his lap. 

“Could you frown for me?” he does as he’s told, “then smile? Then puff your cheeks?” distantly, Vil remembers that people have told him he was in movies when he was alive; a memory of acting exercises comes back to him faintly as he moves his face through various expressions.

“Hm, I can see that the muscles on the right side of your face are still quite stiff,” Vil’s face falls at the news, “hey, it’s alright!” you caress his right cheek gently, massaging the muscle by his jaw gently. Even though your hand is gloved, Vil can still feel the heat radiating off your flesh all the same. He feels hungry. “Anyone who is not specifically looking for it would not notice, I promise,” you reassure. “Now can you open your mouth for me?” 

Vil drops his jaw and it cracks a bit, leaving his mouth open just a bit wider than a living being would be capable of. That’s not true, he corrects himself, knowing that the naga can open their mouths nearly twice as more as he can. 

“Oh Mr. Schoenheit what lovely teeth you have!” you joke, and despite himself, Vil laughs. “Seriously, you have a full set! Many of my clients would dream of having your mouth,” you muse, running your fingers along his teeth. The urge to wrap his lips around your fingers and suck is overwhelming, but somehow Vil finds it in himself to resist it. He thinks you must be a little stupid, even if you are a doctor, for putting your fingers in a flesh-eaters mouth. Slipping your fingers from his mouth you reach into your bag and grab a wooden depressor. 

With your free hand you grab a small flashlight from your breast pocket, and press the wooden stick against his tongue. 

“Say ahhh,” you instruct. The noise that comes out of Vil is closer to that of a moan, but you don’t comment on that. You press the depressor further back and he gags. With a look of surprise you pull away from him, removing the depressor from his mouth as you do. 

“Sorry, did that hurt?” you ask curiously. He clears his throat, trying to regain his composure. 

“It wasn’t so bad,” he confesses. Your eyes widen just a fraction, but Vil takes note of it. Turning back to your bag you take out an otoscope, “We’re going to check your eyes and ears next, you haven’t noticed any vision or hearing loss, have you?” Vil shakes his head, thankful that so much of his body continues to function.

“Can you look at…” you trail off, glancing behind you at his wall, “the calendar back there for me?” He looks at it as you flash the light into his eyes. “Ah, are you wearing contacts?” you ask after a moment. Vil hesitates to answer, but eventually nods, “I’m sorry Mr. Schoenheit, but I need you to take those out.”

With a sigh Vil makes quick work of removing the colored contacts- or as quick as he can be with the body he inhabits now. Trying his best not to pout he lets you take a good look at his glossed over, foggy eyes. 

“You’ve got very pretty eyes Mr. Schoenheit,” you say as you pull away, “pretty and they're doing everything that eyes should be doing!” Vil huffs, 

“Flattery will get you everywhere doctor.” You manuver Vil's head so you can look into his ear, brushing his hair back to get a better look and further exposing his expression. 

“I’m already alone in your room with you Mr. Schoenheit,” you whisper, moving to look at the other ear, “how much more will flattery get me?” you muse. Vil is so glad his body can no longer blush, because he thinks he’d be as red as a tomato if he were living. 

“Ah,” he goes to say something but before he can come up with anything, you’re moving onto the next thing. Feeling a little dumbstruck he watches you take off the stethoscope around your neck, and put it on. 

“I’m going to take a listen to your lungs now, is that alright?” Vil nods, so you continue. “Would you please lift your shirt a bit?” With slightly shaking hands (the excitement of having you so close is having an apparent effect on him) he lifts his blouse for you. Sliding your hand under the fabric, you press the cold metal to his chest, and Vil gasps. 

“Sorry,” you whisper in his ear, not sounding very apologetic. “Can you take a deep breath for me?” Vil does his best, trying to sound relaxed and calm, even when he feels the opposite. “Sounds good!” and within a blink of an eye you’re gone. 

After stuffing away your stethoscope you turn to Vil, “right, so next we’re going to- oh,” you stop mid sentence, staring at his chest. Vil looks down, trying to see what you could be looking at, only to find that his nipples are hard. Shame washes over him, and he tries his best to cover himself, but you stop him, sitting next to him on the bed.

“It’s okay! I’m sorry I had such an unprofessional reaction, it’s just I don’t see that often with my patients,” you rub his shoulder comfortingly and Vil slowly drops his arms. 

“Can I take a look?” You ask after a moment. Vil tucks his hair behind his ear, nodding slowly. Your hand falls from Vil’s shoulder to the hem of his shirt. As you tug it upwards you expose more of his skin. 

There are small patches of decay, some skin that’s been stitched back together, and on his left side some of his ribs are exposed. With your other hand you thumb over one of his nipples, and Vil lets out a soft gasp. He feels so good having you touch him that any insecurity he’d normally have about the rotting, peeling flesh previously covered by his shirt is flung out the window.

“Did that hurt?” and Vil feels tingly all over at the quiet rumbling sound of your voice.

“No doctor,” he breathes, his breath hitching when you rub your thumb over it again. 

“Feels good, Mr. Schoenheit?” you check, not giving Vil any relief as you continue to rub circles around his nipple.  

Not trusting his voice, Vil nods, blinking slowly as waves of pleasure work their way through his body. 

And as quickly as it started, it’s over. You pull back, and much to Vil’s humiliation, he can’t help but lean forward and try to chase your touch. 

“Ah,” he makes a soft noise as his brain catches up. Part of him wishes to beg for more, but his pride stops him.

“Are you having other reactions, Mr. Schoenheit?” you ask softly. Vil rubs his legs together as he focuses,

“Yes doctor,” he answers honestly. Your smile widens at that,

“Amazing,” you praise, “can I see?” Vil lets out a low groan at that. Instead of using his words, Vil takes the hem of his skirt, and lifts it so you can see his soaked panties. Vil can’t help but grin when your warm touch returns to his chilled body as you gently run your fingers from his clit to his hole. 

“Such a responsive, functional body,” you hum in his ear, and Vil clumsily jerks his hips into your touch, clutching desperately at his skirt. 

“May I take a closer look Mr. Schoenheit?” 

“Yes please, doctor,” Vil moans, his words slurring together. You slide off the bed, and between Vil’s decayed thighs. Your hands tug at the top of his panties, and with some combined effort, the two of you manage to take them off him. 

“Oh look at you,” you coo, using two gloved fingers to peel apart his pussy lips. The heat from your body, even with a layer of gloves between the two of you, feels scalding against his frigid skin. It makes him want to melt into you. He clutches tightly at the fabric of his skirt, putting all his energy there so he doesn’t reach out to touch you. 

"Ah," Vil gasps softly when your finger begins to slowly rub circles onto his clit. 

“I bet that feels good, doesn’t it,” he can hear the smirk in your voice, but he doesn’t seem to care, and instead nods dumbly. Looking up at him, you take note of how Vil’s eyes go in and out of focus as he watches you play with his cunt.

It takes a while for him to notice, but Vil eventually sees the hard to ignore tent in your pants. Within the moment that he notices your hard-on, you slip a finger inside of him, and he jerks violently, letting out a long, guttural moan. 

“I want to see if the muscles here are working correctly,” you explain, though you doubt he’s even listening to you.

Vil opens up nicely around your fingers, producing more than enough slick to accommodate the intrusions. His clit took a while to get erect, but it now stands proudly, twitching and aching for attention. While fucking him slowly with two fingers, you use your thumb to play with it. This draws a groan from out of Vil. You doubt he’d appreciate being told so, but it’s the kind of groan that’s classic of his zombie kind. 

“Unnngh,” he moans, “g’nna uhmm,” and there’s just enough consonants and vowels for you to put together what he’s trying to say. You pull back, refusing him of the orgasm that was so steadily approaching. 

“Wuh?” he blinks slowly, and you watch as his pussy attempts to clench around nothing. “Huh, please,” Vil groans breathlessly when he finally processes that you’re no longer touching him. 

“It looks like your ability to self lubricate is working perfectly. I wonder though, Mr. Schoenheit, do you still get your period?” you ask, removing your white coat and gloves.

“No, doctor,” Vil replies after a moment, entranced with watching you undress. 

“Then I suppose the only way we’d be able to tell if you’re able to get pregnant or not is by having me fuck your womb full of cum,” Vil nods along, though he questions your logic. He’ll agree with whatever you say if it means you’ll fuck him. 

You reach into your bag, and after a moment of rustling around, pull out a vial of lube.

Laying back, he spreads his legs wider, making room for you to join him on the bed. He makes a pretty picture, with his skirt bunched around his hips, and his shirt pulled up to show off his tits. You tell him as much,

“You look so good,” you praise, and Vil preens, smiling and spreading his legs wider. You make yourself comfortable between his thighs, massaging his stiff muscles gently. Fumbling a bit, you open the lube, and lather your cock. Vil doesn’t mind the slight lull in action, instead focusing his energy on reaching up and linking his arms around your neck to pull you close. 

He moans when he feels the tip of your cock press against his hole. Vil feels like he’s never been more alive as he feels your tip press into him. He knocks his head back against his pillow, arching his back as you slowly push yourself into him. 

“There we go,” you coo, rubbing his hips and thighs lovingly when you’re balls deep inside of him. “How’re you feeling Mr. Schoenheit? Any pain? Any discomfort?” you check in, because Vil looks fucked dumb already. 

“Guh-” he groans, then mumbles to himself. You wait patiently, and finally he forms a coherent sentence, “good, you feel- good,” he whines, his mascaraed lashes squeezing shut. His words divulge into mumbles and groans as he tries to tell you about how deep your cock is inside of him, and how hot you feel.

Slowly, you start to move your hips, fucking him nice and deep to make sure he’s properly adjusted to the intrusion before you take it up a notch. Vil practically melts into the bed beneath him, weakly holding onto you, his pussy clenching and twitching around you every so often. 

“You feel so good,” you tell him softly, “ah, so tight,” you groan. Vil keens, and then instead of using his words- which he seems to have lost already- he tries his best to work his hips back against yours. You let out a breathless laugh, “faster already?” and Vil nods, letting out a pathetic whine.

“I’ve got you darling,” you coo, easily picking up the pace. He lets out a pleased moan, settling back down and returning to laying like a corpse under you. 

“Just- ah- lay back and let me fuck you baby, you don’t ngh have to think at all, let me do all the work, sweet thing,” he nods dumbly at your instructions. 

“Shit,” you breathe, fucking him so hard that his tits bounce with each thrust. Your hand fumbles around for a second before coming in contact with Vil’s clit. When you begin to rub at it as you fuck him, Vil cries out, his mouth falling open with a loud click, and his clouded eyes rolling into his skull. He clenches like a vice around you, and if you didn’t know any better you’d think he may have cum.

Drool begins to pool from his mouth as you play with his clit, and he lets out weak groans when you thrust him particularly hard or deep. 

“I’m close,” you strain, because god you think you could get off just from looking at him, and the way he’s fluttering and clenching around you only gets you closer and closer to climax. Vil babbles something incomprehensible, drool continuing to fall from his mouth, puddling on the pillow and sheets beneath him, and thoroughly slicking his chin. 

One of his hands falls from where it’s been wrapped around your neck, and rubs at his belly. Your hips stutter as you catch his drift, 

“Fuck, yeah, ‘m gonna cum inside you Vil, gonna get you pregnant, gonna fill your womb, ungh, you want that?” he nods, his clit twitching under your fingers. 

“Cum with me- Vil- c’mon baby,” you feel like you’re teetering on a cliff edge, just moments away from coming face to face with your orgasm. 

He falls first, his groan of your name getting stifled as he slaps an arm over his mouth, squirting on your cock as you fuck him through it. You cum not long after, keeping your promise and snapping your hips flush against his as you pump him full of your cum. 

You stay seated inside Vil until he weakly pinches your skin with his other hand, a nonverbal cue that your fingers on his clit and your cock inside him are making him sore with overstimulation. Pulling out you take a second to watch your cum ooze out of his pussy. If he hadn’t communicated that he was sore, you wouldn’t hesitate to get your head between his thighs and clean him up with your mouth. 

Instead you flop down next to him, and take his cold body into your warm embrace. Vil removes his arm from covering his messy mouth, and snaps his jaw back into place. His eyes go unfocused as he looks at you next to him, and moving on instinct, he goes for your neck. His teeth just barely graze your skin before he realizes what he’s doing and resists the urge to devour you. Instead, Vil kisses your neck as an apology before pulling back.

Now that there's a bit of space between the two of you, you can get a good look at him. Vil looks properly fucked, his lipstick smudged, his mouth slick and sticky with drool, his mascara running slightly, his hair all out of place.

You can’t help but lean in and give him a loving kiss. Vil kisses back weakly, humming a tad mournfully against your lips. You think he’s probably still upset about nearly letting his monstrous inclinations take over. Through the kiss you try to convey that you trust him and love him. When you pull back there's a comfortable silence between the two of you for a brief second.

“Next time, I want to be the doctor,” Vil finally speaks, his voice rough and fried. You laugh, nuzzling into him, and pulling the comforter over the two of you. 

“Ooh I like that, can you be all fascinated and awed with my living body?” you prompt, causing Vil to crack a smile. 

“I think I could, at the very least, act like I would be “fascinated and awed”” he mimics you playfully. You laugh loudly, kissing him between giggles. 

“Whatever you say, Dr. Shoenheit,” you tease, kissing him again before he can get the last word in.

[suffarustuffaru]

Scrolling through your blog is such a fun experience, you bring an absolutely great vibe to this fandom and I love it SO MUCH. Could even say you restored my hope in it, since there has been some aspects that made me force myself to leave it, and I hope me bringing one of them up here won't upset anyone.

Now I completely understand if you wish to not answer my ask, but I figured it's worth a shot. So, one of said aspects was a controversy regarding one of the rezero characters that made me feel like you can't mention them without being called names (mostly on tiktok, but other social media also, tho not as much).

Yeah I'm talking about Felix. I'm not transphobic by any means, and I'm fine with people headcannoning whatever they want, but seeing thousands of people calling others transphobic for calling Felix a 'he' made me so unsafe I forced myself to look for other interest. Which is funny since most of the people saying this weren't even part of the fandom. I was wondering if anyone else here had similar situations and just.. how do you deal with it? It seems silly, I know, but feeling like I can't speak about a rather important character from a media I love made me so upset.

No matter how much I tried explaining it, they either dismiss it or say Tappei made him a trans girl without knowing.

Now, if you do decide to answer this and say that Felix indeed may have been 'trans coded' a little bit (Did I used that term correcly? Idk) I'll understand (hell, I would probably agree, you character analysis are great), I'm just upset at the absolute lack of respect for any other way of referring to Felix other then she/her.

(Also in case people don't know, their proof of Felix being a trans girl is the scene from EX1, with the whole calling himself a girl in front of a mirror thing)

Sorry for this is being long and probably messy I just had to get this off my chest.. also I hope I didn't came of as offensive in any way, if I did I'm really sorry.

hi there anon! first of all - aw thank you for your compliments about me and my blog. im super passionate about rezero (though thats probably super clear to anyone whos seen any content i make for a while aljsdlkf) and well. ive been lurking about in this fandom since summer 2020 so i definitely understand having to leave/distance yourself from this fandom because outside of tumblr, the rezero fandom is kind of . well. to put it simply, theres a lot of metaphorical landmines unfortunately!! T^T and admittedly i wouldve left this fandom a lot sooner if i didnt stick to my own corner and curate spaces with other people who were super chill (like lots of people lurking about here on tumblr + rz tumblr in general!!). so i totally understand how you feel anon (and youre not silly for being upset, i promise!), though admittedly im not super super familiar with some rezero spaces (such as rz twitter) bc i 1. dont speak japanese and 2. i try very hard to avoid the negativity whenever possible!! T^T

and also i apologize for taking a while to answer your ask!! you're one of my older asks that kinda got lost in my drafts hah but i also just wanted to like. take extra care with your ask bc its a super important topic. like not just to me (though its definitely important to me) but its important in general. and i really like felix so. <3

a quick disclaimer is that i myself am not transfem. i am however afab and most likely genderqueer!! (im winging it as i go hah.) felix is also not a character id say im as well-versed in yet, but i do like felix a lot and ex1 changed my entire brain chemistry. and ill also be defaulting to he/him pronouns in this post because thats what he uses in canon.

felix is - at the end of the day - a fictional character, and tappei is a cis man who doesnt Entirely write characters like felix through a queer lens. arguably tappei is Self-Aware when he writes characters who are into other characters of the same sex (though the Representation is arguably a little bit questionable at times depending on how you look at it), but when it comes to characters like felix or subaru who have some Gender Stuff going on, it's more nebulous there. i dont know if tappei 100% realizes he's made characters that could be read as Trans/Genderqueer (emphasis on "read as", because i support different interpretations of these characters), but tappei Definitely Is Very Aware that gender and gender presentation and gender roles are super important when it comes to characters like felix, subaru, and crusch.

i think tappeis own perceptions of gender and gender roles do bleed a bit into the text as much as tappei is pretty purposeful with themes surrounding gender in rezero, but rezero itself still has all sorts of identity issues to explore with a lot of its characters and gender is a big part of that!!

so first and foremost im gonna be examining felix the best i can Purely Off Of The Canon Text, though i do like viewing rezero from a queer lens myself (and it is arguably very queer). im gonna talk first about felix and then ill move onto talking about my personal feelings on rezero fandom stuff :o !!

so felix's relationship with his gender is complicated and he Absolutely does not fit into traditional gender roles or gender presentation right now. these are undeniable. and if people headcanon felix as transfem thats totally understandable and valid!! but to say a headcanon is 100% canon and that other interpretations of a character as complex as felix are invalid isnt exactly it. for sure. i mean i myself interpret him as nonbinary haah. but felix's relationship with gender is so so so So complicated that i dont think you could just say hes transfem and then Not Elaborate More.

but regardless of how Exactly you label felix, i think you could possibly say that hes trans coded. tappei, even if he probably doesnt entirely know hes made pretty genderqueer characters, is Aware and Purposeful of how gender affects felix and his perception of himself and his identity and other peoples perception of him and this is brought up Over and Over Again in canon—felix’s gender identity, at the moment, aligns more with femininity in his presentation in every way, though he still perceives himself as masculine. felix’s case is complicated, and while im not entirely sure on this i think you could argue that hes trans coded—“coding” suggests a level of intent when making these characters, and i think that intent is present in some way with tappei. because tappei Knows just how important gender is with felix’s character and you can tell with how often and how Integral it is to felix’s entire character.

(more under the cut) (i do have a habit of being rambley/wordy sometimes if. if you couldnt tell already. but i hope this response is up to your standards!!)

these three analysis posts on felix's relationship with gender have all discussed this topic in-depth before i have, and i 1. really like the rezero content i see from all three of these people and 2. they All have slightly different takes based on the canon we have but also some similar points. because felix is complicated!! of course our takes are probably gonna be a bit different - he's a multifaceted character with such a complex relationship with his gender that it's hard to tell what every single one of his personal feelings on it is (especially when at the moment he hasnt appeared in the main story since arc 5 and he still has a Lot of character development to do). and of course fiction is fiction, we can all take away any sort of meaning from a story like this.

but you know. this is my post so im gonna try to analyze felix right now and say my two cents on what i think of his relationship with gender.

so im gonna try not to retread too much on what liquidstar, sufferu, and gourmet of gluttony have already said about felix (and i think theyre all very smart people with interesting analysis posts and theyve all explained their thoughts pretty well) and instead add on with my own thoughts - theres this felix excerpt from arc 4 wn that i think about sometimes. im gonna put it down here!!

and also important to note—like other people have mentioned, crusch and felix made a “deal” of sorts in the past where crusch takes on felix’s masculinity and felix takes on crusch’s femininity. and also like other people have said—and i myself have said in the past—i do have some mixed feelings on this wkdndn and as i said before also i do wish tappeis feelings on gender bled a little less when theyre Not Integral To The Story. bc i dont think tappei 100% knows hes made trans coded characters, but. anyway yeah so thats the whole deal with crusch felix. and in its own right i think it has So Many Interesting Implications!!

i think when it comes down to it, gender presentation IS a bit of a performance, isn't it? like i love to wear dressses and skirts and i love to keep my hair short and wear suits, but you know - these sorts of things tend to be gendered. our gender is often perceived through how we present ourselves, but in recent years gender roles being attached to clothing has gotten a bit less Rigid. but these rigid roles associated with presentation are even more dialed up to Eleven in a medieval world like the rezero fantasy world. and i dont use the word "performance" in a negative way -

what i mean is that when it comes to felix's character, does felix think he's a boy because that's what he's been told? does he think he's a boy because he TRULY sees himself that way, or does he THINK he has to see himself as one? does felix try to present and perform femininity, ie as or like a traditionally feminine girl, purely ONLY for crusch's sake, or is it because felix ALSO WANTS to? what does felix think of gender outside of crusch? who is felix outside of crusch? who is felix outside of tying his entire personality to other people? does felix’s femininity show the “radiance of ferris’ soul” bc of the deal he made with crusch or bc this truly is felix’s soul? these are like the big questions behind his entire character and character arc that would determine in the end how felix identifies in both his gender and In General.

so what is felix's identity at the moment? bc right now, felix is stuck between his feminine self, tied to crusch, a symbol of crusch, tied to his own reliance on crusch and worship of her—and his masculine self, someone broken off from crusch. felix is tied to crusch right now to worrying extents with his obsessive devotion to the point of changing himself to mold into her image, and beyond that, hes still tied to guilt surrounding fourier’s death. gourmet of gluttony puts all of this way way more intelligently than i ever could, but at the end of the day, i think the best narrative decision here would be for felix to accept himself in ALL of his entirety.

healing in rezero is noted to be a kind power, specifically by fourier and fourier saying this right to felix when hes the most talented healer in lugunica, and healing itself is often stereotypically feminine activity. knighthood is stereotypically masculine, and on top of all this, we see in ex1 that biehn argyle twists the power of healing into something grotesque—trying to bring back the dead and revive what cant be revived, which is once again another reoccurring theme in rezero.

how far can “from zero” go? what HAS to stay dead and what can be revived? who is allowed to live? HOW do you live freely? felix is someone born from a horribly abusive and neglectful family who twisted healing magic’s kindness into cruelty, felix is someone who was taken into a family that showed him kindness and now hes desperate to pay them back with everything he has and everything he is, felix is a healer who lashes out when hes cornered and a healer who treasures life and a knight who cant physically fight like the others, felix is someone stuck with the horrible knowledge that he cant save everyone—that some things just Couldnt end better no matter how much he wished for it to.

felix is stuck between all kinds of worlds, and in terms of gender, hes quite literally still stuck between boyhood and manhood in the biological sense—hes purposefully made it so that he hasnt hit puberty yet so he can better pass as feminine. he hasnt Physically Grown past puberty—which is the mark of becoming an adult. and he hates himself in a number of ways, but he also hates himself for failing to be traditionally masculine. his abusive family stole ten years of his life and the torture left him physically weaker, so he cant be strong physically, which is something associated with traditional masculinity. felix is the best healer, a traditionally feminine job and skill, but he cant save everyone. felix becomes more feminine as part of his deal with crusch, but while crusch accepts her femininity and masculinity readily, and while crusch’s memory is erased by gluttony—felix is left behind, alone, still holding onto femininity while not entirely being able to hold onto it while he also cant entirely hold onto the traditional masculinity he expects out of himself. and with arc 3 on, felix feels hes failed both fourier and crusch. the two most important male and female figures in his life.

felix is basically stuck in this liminal space where hes not Enough for himself in literally every direction, and the only way out is to accept every part of himself and move forward by trying to define who he is without other people—his birth family and his found family dont define him. they can shape him, sure, but he has to stop shaping himself to meet them and figure out how to let himself just. Be. and take up a space thats firmly his. from a queer lens, this kind of thing is pretty queer—because to stop being in between worlds, you have to accept everything instead of splitting yourself into halves over and over again. killing or maiming yourself or parts of yourself is no way to live, and felix is Life itself.

and i think regardless of the Exact Labels you could give felix, i think his arc—which is perfectly in line with all of rezeros themes—is inherently about self acceptance and the bridging of the gap and combination of femininity and masculinity. felix is both and identifies, in one way or another, with both, similar to how he loves someone who identifies with both (crusch) and just as hes loved her and fourier. imo it wouldnt be right for felix to choose one or the other in terms of feminine vs masculine—he needs to be the one learning and navigating his honest feelings on both sides bc i think he Yearns to be both. hes a boy who dresses like a girl and its up to him to know if he wants to be a man and/or a woman due to his own internal desire or if parts of that is Only due to external pressures.

--

and alright now that ive said all my thoughts on felix atm im gonna address the other questions you had in your ask!! note that this is just my opinions and thoughts regarding my own experience in the english fandom, you dont have to agree or anything 👍

but i AM very sorry about your negative experiences in this fandom. T^T people calling other transphobic for using he/him for felix (and also people being transphobic about characters like felix or subaru/natsumi in general) is something ive seen as well. the rezero fandom is sadly very often toxic and Bigoted in a lot of ways (with the exception of rezero tumblr and certain segments of rezero ao3, from what ive seen), which is Ironic for a story thats so clearly about love and self-acceptance, which is also ironic because arguably tappei and otsuka and the rezero marketing team (i Love the female characters in rezero but theres just so much sexualized or vaguely sexist merch/moments that dont add to the story, you know? kind of just. misses the point of their characters sometimes.) sort of contribute to it a little bit as much as tappei does do some really great things with his writing.

rezero is the first fandom ive been active in but its definitely not the first ive ever been in, and ive been in some insane fandoms before. like i said earlier though, i think i just cope by curating my experience to what i like, yknow? liking posts i enjoy, looking at stuff i enjoy, etc :O !! fandom is a hobby so i try not to look at negative stuff when i can help it wkdnd. which im sure youre aware about already but i always have to keep reminding myself of this bc places like rezero reddit or twitter get pretty rough!! but its really helped me just following artists and creators i like, enjoying their content, chatting with cool people i vibe with, rezero tumblr being the chillest rezero space in the whole fandom, and its also helped me a lot making rezero content of my own—like this whole blog!! its really shocked me how much people seem to value my thoughts enough to ask me things frequently but i appreciate it pfft. and i hope you guys like reading my posts!!

but yeah like. curate, curate, curate. it helps a LOT and it gets me excited to experience rezero not only by myself you know? not that i didnt have fun by myself but its its own level of fun finally finding spaces to have fun with others!! and i LOVE finding beautiful fanart!! chef’s kiss. and trying to be the change i want to see is satisfying on its own :,) i want to post random shit about rezero, so i post it. i want to make fanart for fun and share it. i want to brute force people into loving otto more so i ottopost (dont worry, i still hate him bc true otto fans also hate him at the same time <3 /lh). i want more queer rezero content so i try to make some more!! brings more personal power i think and its very fun!! and it helps with lessening the quiet despair of fandom toxicity ;-;; (which is something ive done many times and will continue to do sometimes so i feel your pain 🫂) and i promise theres cool people in the fandom 👍 i may reply late to asks or dms but im ALWAYS down to talk about rezero things its so fun 👍👍

and its really really hard sometimes to deal with fandom toxicity especially if its forcefully knocking at your door—definitely dont force yourself to stay or look at things if you cant, bc thats totally understandable!! and i myself have been harassed a little in the past. but definitely having some sort of coping—the block button, backing out of things you dont agree with or like, lots and lots of curating, etc—helps me a lot. and i think mental health wise i feel much better trying to look on the bright side of things!! its MY hobby goddammit!! ill fight people subaru-style if they try to poison it!! and however long anyone reading this decides to spend with rezero and rezero tumblr—you are welcome here 👍

but yes my very Long rambling aside - i hope this post somewhat helped you!! felix is a very important character that i like very much and need to learn more about and i have Many Feelings on the english side of this fandom, but im very grateful to all the cool people ive met over the years here for sure!! :o

also ill probably post the finished version soon but if youve read this far here is a sneak peak of felix art i did recently (just as a reward for once again reading all of my Endless Yapping)👍👍

[innocuousibis]

Blue Eye Samurai is trans, right?

I just finished season one and have some thoughts. I'm a fan of the author is dead and personal interpretations of media being valid, but if the coming arcs turn this into a queerbait situation I will be sad.

I read Mizu as a gay trans man who does not have the language or examples of transness present in his society to come to an understanding of who and what he is. Even for me as a trans person now it was really hard to come to full a understanding of myself and my desires with so few examples to identify with. I went for years living in an in-between state, verbally and internally denying my identity, and making failed attempts to assimilate into cis roles before I figured out what is really going on. I can't even image how much harder this would be for people living in the past.

Mizu's tendancy to want to confide his real sex to people he is close with feels to me exactly like what I have to go through when I am deciding to come out to people as trans. I live as a man now, and now people that I meet perceive and refer to me that way. But being trans is still a big part of my experience, and something that I often feel a desire to confide, while I also worry that it will change how I am perceived and treated. Mizu doesn't want to be treated as a woman, but he also doesn't want to deceive those he cares for. And he also wants to be with men and desirable to men, which creates another place of tension against his identity.

We see Mizu attempting to assimilate into the role of wife, and it is clear how uncomfortable in that role he is. The more his husband Mikio allows him to be himself and express his masculinity the more Mizu falls in love with him. He wants to be treated as a man and an equal in society, to be one of the guys and to spar on with Mikio on an even field. But when he finally fully shows Mikio his true self, the formidable swordsman he is, Mikio is repulsed and rejects him.

I think the most powerfully trans moment in the show was when Mizu was at the brothel and reacted to the sight of two men kissing. As a gay trans man he instinctively identifies with the two men.

It's possible that the next season will attempt to scrub Mizu's character of queerness and chalk all of his behavior up to pragmatism. We have this season, and it is trans as hell, but it would suck if the next season were to change Mizu to fit him into a cis narrative.

Perhaps Edo period Japan did not have any language to conceptualize what it might mean to be a trans person, but this is a modern piece of media, subject to modern analysis and interpretation. Considering how much blatant trans coding is built into Mizu's character, it bothers me that the creators refer to Mizu as 'she' while the character is almost never referred to that way in the show, and have nothing to say about the trans interpretation other than "oh that's cool, yeah you can call her 'they'."

[sickknotdoom]

Someone should tell Eve that squeak doesn't get to decide how we feel about squeak's characters.

REAL. this is definitely gonna set some people off, but the whole "cuddles is the only real villain in the entire story and all the other staff are actually innocent" narrative is bullshit. nearly everyone that works at that hospital tortures and permanently detriments innocent lives if not ending them entirely in brutal ways, and were supposed to just forgive every single one just because "theyre being forced to do so"?

also, the "one true villain" being the only cishet and likely only neurotypical in the comic really rubs me the wrong way. apparently the reason sparklecare even got rebooted was because kneeby thought having evil characters also be queer was "bad representation". i am not a fan of the "queer people can do no wrong" approach. as someone whos gay and under the trans umbrella, id like to point you towards dahmer and chris chan.

jeffrey dahmer was a gay man who cannibalized other gay men. christine chandler is a transgender woman who committed incest. those traits are not mutually exclusive in the real world. they are taken simultaneously, unrelated to eachother unless you go out of your way to relate them. and i think its safe to say that nobody would try and link dahmers sexuality with his actions unless theyre homophobic.

just because one figure within a minority is fucked up, does not mean the rest of the minority is fucked up by association. if that was the case, then id be associated with edp445 and h/tler due to the fact im black and suffer from autism. but thats not the case at all, so why are the clowns so afraid of letting queer characters be antagonists, or vice versa?

all the nurses are treated like theyre completely innocent just because of their identities and/or them being possibly coded as neurodivergent. it seriously comes across as infantilizing queer and/or autistic people, which as someone whos both, i do not like. especially nurse puppy. i do not like the way puppy is written.

puppy is, in my opinion, the most explicitly autistic coded character in the comic (not including characters that are confirmed to be). lo is also the most babied by both the clowns and the fandom. loves whole premise is that cuddles brainwashed lov into seeing loves job (murdering and torturing innocent civilians) as a fun game. lo is canonically 30 years old, by the way.

speaking from experience, us autists are relatively easy to take advantage of when were younger, due to our difficulty grasping social cues. ive been taken advantage of by so many people in just fourteen years of being on this earth. ive been groomed, sextorted by someone who i saught out comfort from after said grooming, painted as a predator by the very person who sextorted me, and then propped by my only remaining "friend" group who would bring all that shit up just to milk my reaction and use it to further damage my reputation.

almost all these people were also queer and autistic, and coincidentally also liked sparklecare, my sextorter being the one who initially got me into it, since he had a uni pfp one time. theyre also victims of similar shit themselves. does that mean all queers/autists/sparklecare fans/abuse victims are like them? no. but does being any of those things excuse the torment they put me through? no the fuck it does not. you cannot give me the excuse of them "not knowing" or being "brainwashed", theyre all at least two years older than me, some being legal adults as im writing. you cannot convince me they didnt intend to fuck me up.

so it reasonably infuriates me to see a Grown Ass 30 Year Old Adult That Murders People For Fun And Listens To Them Scream In Misery With A Smile On Loves Face given the excuse of "lo doesnt know!!!! blame cuddles not lov!!!!" and the fandom just not questioning that at all. imagine watching your lover or best friend get murdered by someone breaking into their house and chucking a toaster into their bath while theyre taking a shower, and the cops* tell you to sue the manufacturers of the toaster. see how fucked that logic is? thats basically sparklecare.

*not like you should trust american cops but i needed an example ok

one of these people i described earlier happens to kin puppy, what a surprise. maybe im just projecting, but the most explicitly autistic coded character (also the only character so far that uses neopronouns/identifies as a xenogender) being treated this way is revolting to say the least, and i feel like lo is made immune to criticism by the clowns because lo just so happens to be those things. if this character werent queer, they would give no chances.* i will gladly allow puppy to exist as is, same personality, everything, i dont mind. its the constant infantilization and justification of loves abhorrent actions that upsets me.

*and this applies to all the other nurses in the comic, except maybe nurse snare since shes practically nonexistant after volume one. but in volume one we are shown barry being tortured and injured by, as far as i can tell, every nurse thats been introduced so far. barry, one of the fandoms most beloved characters, is put through excruciating pain and trauma on screen (with a million trigger warnings before each page, in typical clowns fashion) and nobody gives a fuck once its over, just because everyones queer except cuddles, and cuddles is the Only One To Blame For Anything At All Times.

the cycle of abuse is extremely common. an abuser being a victim does not cancel out them being an abuser, and if theyre not actively seeking help theyre a bad person, regardless of what minorities they belong to. but that does not mean everybody within that minority is a bad person. sparklecares creators and fandom cant seem to grasp that. kneeby cannot erase my opinions on the way the staff is portrayed.

[dandy-dog]

📌🌈🐶☀️

★ SOLAR - 23 YEARS OLD - QUEER - POLYAM - CLOSED - AUTISTIC - GNC TRANS GUY - WHITE - BRITISH - HE / IT ★

Hey there! My name's Cody, but I generally tend to go by Solar, Ray or Sunny online. That said, you can call me pretty much whatever you want. I'm not too picky. I'm a hobbyist artist, occasional writer and professional dog who's had the misfortune of being on this miserable hellsite (do people still call Tumblr that?) since 2014. I was around before then, but I didn't make an account until that point. My blog isn't strictly NSFW, but I do reblog posts with dirty humour and references to sex. So if you're a minor or someone who doesn't want to see that kind of thing? Be wary of that. Want to know more about me or about this blog? You can find more info under the cut! ✌️

The dividers in this post were made by @chocoperrito and you can find them here! ❤

》 WHAT'S THIS BLOG ABOUT, DOG MAN?

I'm glad you asked! This is my main blog so it's generally just a mish mash of all sorts. Anything and everything pertaining to my interests goes here, it's a total free-for-all. That said, you can mostly expect reblogs about queer topics, political and social issues, different media that I like, shitposts and furry art. Lots and lots of furry art. I may occasionally post my own art here and possibly my own writing in the future if I feel confident enough.

》 WHAT ARE YOU INTERESTED IN?

I am, in fact, a human person with nuance so you can argue that no matter how many things I tell you that I like? None of this will even come close to conveying the full spectrum of who I am, so please keep that in mind. I'm more than my interests. That said, it doesn't mean I can't at least give you an idea of the things I enjoy so to name a few things offhandedly: I really enjoy art, writing, reading, poetry, photography, filmmaking, animation, cartoons, video games, RPGs, 3D platformers, visual novels, folk punk music, ska music, 80 and 90s visual aesthetics, bright colours, primary colours, breakfast foods, thrifting, kitsch, antiques, tacky button-ups, animatronics, toy restoration, early 2000s internet, xenofiction, medieval fantasy, lost media, queer history, TV history, film history, furry history (namely the funny animal era and 2000s era), cooking, horror movies, folklore, cryptids, musicals, storytelling, worldbuilding, history, psychology, archaeology, zoology, etymology and space!

》 WHAT MEDIA DO YOU LIKE?

I like a lot of different media and the ones I actively choose to engage with fluctuates pretty frequently, but currently the ones of note are... Pokémon, Warriors, Watership Down, Animal Crossing, The Lion King, Ginga Nagareboshi Gin, Beastars, The Legend of Zelda, Bugsnax, Banjo Kazooie, Viva Pinata, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Sonic The Hedgehog, Zero Escape, Ace Attorney, Another Code, Welcome To Nightvale, Little Shop Of Horrors, Ride The Cyclone, Starkid, Be More Chill, Heathers, Cats, Waitress, In The Heights, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Child's Play, The Gregory Horror Show, The Owl House, Steven Universe, Portal, Half Life, TF2, HLVRAI, What We Do In The Shadows, Our Flag Means Death, Interview With The Vampire, Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, Scott Pilgrim, Sam And Max, The Good Place, Gravity Falls, My Little Pony, Night In The Woods, Slay The Princess, Dragon Age, Fable and Good Omens! Hyperfixations are bolded, because like it or not I am autistic and that does affect which of these wretched things will get a stranglehold on my attention at any given time 👍

》 YOU'RE QUEER? WHAT ARE YOUR LABELS?

I'm a gender non-conforming trans man. I go by he/him and it/its pronouns and I mostly use masculine terms (man, dude, guy, etc) to refer to myself. That said, the latter can and does vary whenever I feel like it and I've got no intentions of trying to mirror cis men. I see myself as a man in the same way Bugs Bunny is a man, masculine in theory but pretty malleable in practice. A man but tilted a bit too much to the left so it doesn't quite fit on the gender shelf. I'm a vaguely man-shaped dog thing that's just trying to resemble a person above all else, if we're being entirely honest here. I use the labels pansexual and queer pretty interchangeably. Gender doesn't really play a part in who I'm attracted to, it's pretty irrelevant and just kind of a neat bonus more than anything. That said? Overall I'm predominantly attracted to other queer people! I do class myself as acchillean because of my attraction to other men but in a non-committal handwave kind of way, considering how weird my relationship with my own gender currently is. I consider myself as polyamorous. I can comfortably exist in both monogamous and polyamorous relationships but between the two? Up to now I've found the latter is my preference. Also, I know I don't owe anyone an explanation about my identity. I'm talking about this because I'd like to (queer expression is fun to talk about yippeeee) and not because I feel obligated to. People aren't owed your life story, especially people on the internet ✌️

》 DO YOU HAVE A BYF / DNI?

Yes! You can find it here. I know some people consider these to be pretty superfluous because anyone who most BYF / DNI lists apply to probably won't be the kind of person to be courteous enough to listen to them. That said? I'm aware of that and I don't expect this to stop anyone who doesn't want to be stopped. The reason I have it here is more for the benefit of those who I will inevitably end up sharing spaces with. It's more for their reference so they can make an informed decision on whether they want to follow my blog or not and what's best for their own comfort. Think of it less as a foolproof and more as a filter.

I can and will still block anyone pretty liberally for my own comfort, whether that's because something on that list seems to apply to them or just because I don't like someone. The block button exists to be used, I'll curate my own internet experience in whatever way suits me personally and I recommend you do the same 🤷

》 WHAT ABOUT A TAGLIST?

Not yet, but I'm slowly working on it. In the meantime? Here's what you mainly need to know. You can find my talking and general shitposts under solar talks, or my art under dog draws. I do have content warning tags! I try to be conscientious and tag anything that I know is a common trigger for people (blood, gore, bones, bright colours, insects, etc) as and where I can. I format all of my content warning tags as "cw //" and then whatever the content of the post is that needs tagged. So for example, if you don't want to see insects? You can blacklist it on my blog using cw // insects and that should stop you from seeing anything with a number of legs you aren't comfortable with. This same format applies to all of my content warning tags. If there's anything more specific you need tagged? Don't be afraid to let me know. I'm happy to accommodate you wherever you need so long as it doesn't infringe upon my right to exist; If it's something that triggers you? Then it warrants being taken seriously.

》 WHO'S THE GUY IN YOUR ICON?

That would be my fursona, Circuit! He is me, I am him, I love showing him off to people so although the art may change? He's usually the face of my online pressence. Here's his current (feral, I still need to make a regular one) reference sheet that I made for him:

If you're curious, the art of him I have as my Tumblr icon currently (as of February 4th 2024) was a commission I got and is drawn by Pawtastic!

》 WOW, YOU TALK A LOT.

Sure do bud. Thank you for noticing! Want to hear me talk more? Then I have some sideblogs you can check out if you feel like it. fuzzypath is my Warriors sideblog (active) funky-fella is my Bugsnax sideblog (semi-active) canid-canon is my writing sideblog (WIP, inactive) I also have a NSFW sideblog dedicated to outright hornyposting, but respectfully I'm not sharing that here in public view of minors and just flat out people I don't want to see it. If for whatever reason you'd like to see that? PM me privately to ask for it and if you're both 18+ (have your age clearly stated somewhere on your blog) and someone I trust to see it then I'll most likely give it to you!

[izzyeffinhands]

The only Facebook group I feel safe in as an Izzy Hands stan is Our Flag Means Daddy.

Even though I am apart of the two main groups as well, i.e. Our Flag Means Deathposting, Our Flag Means Fans, I do NOT feel SAFE. I see the wildest and hottest fucking takes in these groups and they piss me off. Are you even watching the same show? I’m also sick and tired of people calling Izzy a villain when he clearly is not. Also there are many that don’t recognize he’s gay, even after season 2. If you voice you’re upset and betrayed? You get attacked. I was again last night.

I guess I’m a proud Izzy “apologist”, but it fucking baffles me how fans just give Ed a pass on all the brutal things he did. Oh but the love story—- NO. Recognize you’re an Ed apologist as well. I like both Ed and Izzy, but I recognize the horrifying things Ed did.

The day of the finale, I posted my thoughts on various social media. I got attacked. I got messages even on tumblr from anon cowards who I imagine followed through Twatter. I was called the t slur. That I was stupid, fat, all sorts of things.

It’s because I said I’ll never trust David Jenkins again. Now, do I have my own thoughts as to whether parts of the finale are a dream state/gravy basket that Stede himself is in? Absolutely. But let’s dive into why I was especially hurt.

First off. I am disabled. For those who know me, I’ve also had two leg surgeries and my injury has ruined my life. So seeing Izzy with a false leg, as a disabled character, still being badass? It felt good. It boosted my confidence for me to keep going. I had so much metal in my leg it caused pain that left me bedridden and using a wheelchair and cane. Many a time I wish they’d chopped my leg off.

I see a lot of myself in Izzy. I swear, he has the traits of an Aries with his anger and intense emotions. This man feels deeply for those who cares for, even though at first this seemed to just be Edward. Despite the hardened shell, he’s a romantic at heart. I’m very much the same.

That hardened shell is also a form of masking to me. In my opinion, and in my own headcanon for this roleplaying blog, Israel is neurodivergent and suffered sexual assault on ships when he was young. It’s part of the reason he has bowel issues. He had to force himself to put on that rough motherfucker mask in order to protect himself. I was bullied mercilessly in school. When I started middle school, I decided to align myself with the “bad kids” as a form of protection. Guess what? Part of myself was masking I was a bad ass, part of myself became the badass I was masking to be after years of torture.

Also. I am transmasculine. I’m pre-HRT. But to me, Izzy is very transmasc coded. This was even confirmed by Con himself when a transmasc fan at Supercon brought the conversation up. I’d just like to say again how much I adore him for supporting the trans community, particularly transmascs who often are glanced over.

Then David Jenkins, a straight man, that swore he wouldn’t fall into the kill your gays trope did exactly that. So let’s exclude here the thought that this is possibly a dream state, or even that he might be resurrected by Buttons as a zombie or ghost which I fucking hope not. We’re talking about my initial feelings. Now it felt like they were setting him up to be killed but I said oh no Jenkins wouldn’t do that to us. He promised he wouldn’t.

Guess what?! He fucking did. Not only that, he murdered off the disabled, gay, transmasc coded character after giving him the most beautiful character arc of any character on the show. You can have a gay pirate rom com, you can understand some characters can get hurt, but killing someone as a means to advance plot? Fuck you. Also, the fact that Izzy apologized to his ABUSER?! As if the victim blaming and shaming wasn’t enough for Izzy Hands, which I see plenty of still, that’s fucked up on so many levels.

So to me I watched a version of myself be murdered. It hit me in the hardest way imaginable. I cried for days. I’ve never been so attached to a character in my 38 years of existence. I’m sick and tired of people saying they like his redemption arc. Izzy never needed redemption. He just needed one, single, person to tell him that he was loved and cared about.

So voicing that I felt betrayed and that I no longer trust Jenkins got me nothing but vitriol. Then toward the end of the day, he made a tweet about how there’s no version of the show without Izzy and had the comments turned off. He knows what he did. And then in the FB groups, if you dared say you were upset that day, requoted Jenkins, you’re a horrible person? Right. I didn’t start attacking the writers. I just said I’m betrayed and I can’t trust what I thought was my comfort show. Because of that, I got hate.

As much as I’d like to believe Izzy will return, the interviews David has done post season 2 talking about his character give me little hope. It’s like he just stabbed every fan in the back. Id like to think the rushed finale is really a dream sequence or gravy basket deal. Id like to think that Izzy will come back thanks to Buttons. But now I just don’t trust David Jenkins.

And if you dare voice this opinion anywhere but Our Flag Means Daddy and Twatter, you get attacked. So here goes. Thanks for my TED talk.

[scriptlgbt]

i'm currently in the writing process of writing my first book. the main love interest is an androgynous non-binary heir. Considering it's a fantasy world, I chose to make it societally normalized. My biggest issue so far has been gender coded appearance descriptors and gendered titles (ie. prince/princess). I want this character to remain as impossible to misgender as possible. close friend's of mine who are non-binary said that oxymorons (ie. softly angular) are my best bet - (1)

(2) - as a cis writer, i thought i'd ask you on how to describe someone androgynous in writing without using gendered words/descriptors. I'm sorry if this may seem like an overbearing question, and please correct me if I had said anything misinformed or offensive. Thank you for your time.

Don’t worry about this being an “overbearing” question - it’s not at all. This blog specifically exists to answer questions like this. There are undoubtedly other people who wonder the same things but who either are afraid to ask (so don’t) or are rude about it. So asking a question respectfully, especially in a setting where you are specifically invited to ask questions, is the best option of those. At least when it comes to something where you need to know the answer for some reason, like in writing good representation.

To get to the actual advice though: I can’t actually tell what you mean by gender-coded appearance descriptors, so I’m going to try to cover what I can. If you’re worried about something like, “soft ringlets and bold eyeliner” skewing feminine (for example), I wouldn’t worry that much about it. Something that describes body parts that happen to be gender-coded by society (breasts or an Adam’s apple for example) will land a lot differently, however. They will likely read with a fetishy tone in most writing. (I’m sure describing these characteristics on a trans character *can* be done in an alright way, but I don’t advise it because of how difficult that would be to pull off.) But as for general descriptors, I wouldn’t worry too much about making sure the descriptions are perfectly even.

Androgyny tends to be perceived differently based on the birth assignment as well. This isn’t fair, but it’s something society does a lot. Ideas of masculinity bringing a DFAB person closer to androgynous, and vice versa, as though our birth assignments are inherently going to skew us one way or another and we need to take efforts in our presentation to counteract that. I found when I started presenting in a way where I was confident and assuming what I would want to wear after top surgery and being on testosterone for a long time, people started assuming I had a different birth assignment more often. I think some of this may be just that people tend to assume groups of people are the same and that I am most often with trans women. But I only think that’s some of it. I’ve sometimes gotten this assumption when I am on my own as well. (Someone once asked me how I’d deal with it as a nonbinary person after being on testosterone long enough to “start passing as a man” and I had to explain that I never really passed as a cis man. Maybe I’ve passed as DMAB, but not as a man. These are not at all the same things.)

Another thing: I get what you’re going for when you mean “as impossible to misgender as possible” but I think it’s also important just to keep in mind that people will find ways to misgender us no matter what. Being seen as myself doesn’t change that some people are going to want to undermine that by making up details in the absence of information. There’s no shortage of people on the internet who tried to hurl transmisogyny at me when I was pointing out transphobia, because their sole perception of transness was the kind that transphobes fearmonger about. So if you can’t get an audience who genders the character correctly, it’s not your fault. Pronouns are easy to get (w/ some variation) when you fundamentally believe that a person is who they are and that their pronouns are part of that. And/or when people practice enough. Don’t take this as a measure against your writing.

Some neutral-coded description ideas:

(Note: some of these may not be neutral-coded depending on setting, but I read them as such personally.)

describing mood/facial expression

mannerisms/the way they carry themself

tone of voice

the way they dress (do their shoes look comfortable? jeans look well-worn? shirt ironed? aesthetic choices?)

confidence, hesitancy, timidness, how this may change around different characters or in different settings

voice speed/volume/pacing

their body language in relation to others present

hair, complexion, other physical features (highly rec this masterpost by Writing With Color on describing various features)

interacting with some object or hobby that helps paint a picture of them (smacking gum, holding a skateboard, paint stains on an apron, boxing gloves hanging off their bike)

piercings (& jewelry), tattoos

the way the weather is interacting with them (wind making their hair blow into their face constantly, rain weighing down their velvet pantsuit, clumsy on the frozen sidewalk, twirling a parasol)

- mod nat

[ooops-i-arted]

Some fans really just make Barriss Offee's identity all about Ahsoka, when Barriss was de aged (she was originally a skilled knight around the same time as Anakin) and she was turned into a damn terrorist (fuck Filoni for that) to prop up Ahsoka's story.

Yeah for real. And she was a really cool character on her own! It's been years since I read the MedStar books or The Approaching Storm but I remember liking her and of course I enjoyed her and Luminara's scene of defending themselves in the Jedi Temple in the original Clone Wars. Also her and Luminara were a very clear example of Jedi allowing their members to have connections to their homeworld and home cultures - Mirialans are described as having a spiritual connection to/interpretation of the Force and it's quite telling imo that Barriss and Luminara are paired as master and student (presumably by mutual choice, as this was supposed to be the norm originally like in the Jedi Apprentice series, NOT how in TCW Ahsoka was randomly assigned to Anakin), so Barriss can learn from someone who is not only a Jedi but also of the same culture and belief system as her. But that doesn't fit Filoni's narrative of "Jedi have no attachments and are emotionless."

The terrorist thing is Bad when Barriss is a Muslim-coded character. This post explains better than I could, as the op is Muslim themselves. I've never watched that TCW arc (quit at Mortis in season 3 because it was so fucking stupid) and I am no expert on Islam but what I've heard secondhand via Tumblr osmosis really sets my This Ain't Right alarm bells off, especially since there is a LOT of Islamophobic comments and content here in America and I remember it being especially bad when the show was airing.

Obviously that's bad enough but combine with the fact that none of the clones look remotely like Temuera Morrison and have had their features whitewashed, the "main" clone Rex has also been made blond and further white-featured, Mandalorians were turned into majority White and Delightsome when previously their most famous "face" was a Māori man (also their traditional warrior culture has been forcibly converted into pacifism and anyone who doesn't agree is exiled), and now we have the Bad Batch which is even MORE white-washed than the original TCW clones to the point where a character who is supposed to be an exact duplicate of Jango is blond*..... Let's just say my This Is Sus sense is MAJORLY activated. One portrayal steeped in racist stereotypes is bad, but possibly a fluke. Unfortunately TCW has a pattern of it - and this is just what I've seen as someone who tries to avoid the show! - and it's not a good look for the show or its creators.

*"But his sister is blond!" Omega isn't a clone of Jango's sister, she's a clone - an exact duplicate - of Jango. She should look exactly like Daniel Logan and if she is going by she, either her or Jango and all of his other clones would have to be trans. Disney would never risk alienating the transphobes tho.

[paperw0rmz]

How to use Pinterest, a tutorial by a kid who wasn’t allowed social media but was allowed Pinterest

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social media platform where likes, followings, comments, don’t fucking matter which means it’s the best social media platform period.

How do I use Pinterest?

First make an account you fucking tard. Do it. It’s fuckinf 2023. Why don’t you have a Pinterest? Make one. Now. Do it.

Anyways

Once you make and set up your profile you will probably be forced by Pinterest to click on interests n shit that you like, you CAN do that if you want, but you can skip it too.

So after Pinterest takes your personal info you can now do the best thing which is starting F.R.E.S.H

First pins

Go look around now! Like cats? Look up cats! Want a recipe? Look up some food! I don’t fucking care! Search around and then click the little pin button which then saves it to your profile so you can check on it later you probably won’t ever look at it again

Reorganize

FUCK! You saved too much random shit and dell down the rabbit hole of pins. You have cats, grandma cookies, and old screen shots from tumblr with an ifunny logo in the corner along with outfits and hair ideas all cluster fucked on your profile! What do you do?

You make boards or even better sections.

A board is where you have basically like a cork board and you can pin certain shit to. So say you want a board for everything to do with Misha Collins, you create a board and then transfer all your saved pins that have to do with Misha to that board and BOOM! It’s organized now : D

Sections are even better!

To make sections you must first have a board, so say you want to then REALLY organize your Misha Collins board. You then press create sections and then label your sections! So say you want crying misha happy misha or mishapocolypse, all of those sections will now be saved in the Misha Board even MORE organized than before!

Expert Mode

Psssh Pinterest is easy anyone can do- wait, five quick and easy ways to turn an old T-Shirt new again? Wait, no hold the fuck on I need to try this. Wait so I just cut it here and then- wait so I tie it here? But how do they- am I missing a step??? That doesn’t make any fuckin- why doesn’t this look like the picture? I don’t get it!!! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU

Has that ever happened to you!? You see an idea on Pinterest and you then try it out and it doesn’t go as planned? No? It came out perfectly? Well you should go kill yourself actually. But before then there’s a really cool feature on Pinterest (that nobody uses anymore really) called Try it! Its a way to show that you attempted to make whatever the original pin made and is a great way to see if it’s actually humanly possible or if the instructions suck ass, also it’s funny to look at peoples failed attempts!

Shit my Pinterest is just misha Collins

Did your Aunt Barbra ask to follow you on Pinterest? Do you have nothing to show other than some Slavic mediocre looking man that you treat like a preteen girl? Post your own shit! Make a board and then sections in it for all photos you take!!! Literally!!! Please!!! It’s so cute to have a digital scrap book!!! I might kill myself if more people don’t show the mundane and boring parts of their lives!!! This is a cry for help!!!! If you want your pins to get noticed make sure you add generic shit like “twilight core Alex g” or “trans Fem robot bdsm” stuff that people just look up you know. Same with the discription, the first 50 words

are what pops up for other Pinterest users, so make sure to use those characters wisely!

Hurray

You now know how to use Pinterest! Congratulations! And of course don’t forget the other feature like:

Commenting on pins, hearting pins, staring pins, the inability to truly look up names so you are forced to send a link to your account instead for people to follow you, the useless QR code, linking in pins, store links in pins, and more!

In all, Pinterest is a very good website and app that allows you to just hoard images and then probably never look at again even though you tell yourself you will. It’s great for creatives, autistic people, and some other people I guess.

TLDR: go ape shit fam

[sapphicbookclub]

Author Spotlight: Amanda McNeil

This week, we're highlighting Amanda McNeil, author of the current club read Bloemetje. This essay is titled Depicting Queer Families in Fairy Tales: My Journey from the 90s and Y2k to a Thumbelina Retelling - we hope you enjoy!

I’m queer and bisexual but growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s I didn’t have the words to articulate either. The possibility of being gay or lesbian was acknowledged in my small town. My high school debated the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. While it had a Gay Straight Alliance, it was both very small and, as far as I was aware, had no one in it who was out. My only exposure to someone out and living their life, then, was the media - primarily the tv shows Will & Grace and Friends. Both problematic in their own ways, and yet they made me aware that it was possible to be something other than straight and live a life that made you happy. But because of the culture’s monosexual biphobia, I thought that the only options besides straight were lesbian and gay. (And thus, for me, as a woman….lesbian.)

I knew I wasn’t a lesbian because I absolutely felt sexual attraction to men. I was so certain about that, I gaslit myself about how I felt about women. I told myself that I simply admired Christina Aguilera. I was only drawn to the woman in the red dress in The Matrix because she was wearing red and was supposed to catch our eye. I only identified with villainous (and queer-coded) characters like Shego in Kim Possible. They had more interesting plots than the heroes (ignore that I had similar feelings about Kim Possible herself….) And this is only considering the lack of awareness of my bisexuality. I knew that I wasn’t the heternormative woman, but the only way I could articulate that was by saying I was a feminist. Now of course you can be a queer feminist, but in retrospect most things I was saying I was a feminist about were actually expressions of my queer orientation. I wanted to exist outside of society’s mandates. I wanted to simply be myself.

Even at my liberal arts university, it took until my junior year to encounter bisexuality as an identity and realize that was me. There was a word for how I felt. It took a few more years after that to start embracing the word queer. These two words together define who I am. And in those years I started to build my own queer community. 

The years passed, and my friends and I all started to form our own family units. And I’m seeing what that looks like for queer people. Queer families in all our incredible varieties are not as present in the media, even today with better representation. We do now sometimes see two women being moms or two men being dads, but other permutations are not as clear. 

I view any going against heteronormative expectations as innately queer. The many ways this can be done is evident in my own family and in my friends’. My marriage is to a man, and at first glance we seem heteronormative, but we’re automatically a queer marriage because I am queer. We’ve also been married for eight years and have no children. One of my friends (who is also a bisexual woman) is married to a trans man, and they have two children that they had with fertility assistance. A friend has a normative looking marriage but it is in fact an open marriage. I’ve listened to queer people wrestle with whether to have children through fertility assistance or adoption. And even though I don’t have kids myself, I am the aunty to many children, and the godmother to a biracial little one with two moms. 

As my friends began having children, I started to wonder what sort of representation might they be seeing these days? And my mind jumped to fairy tales specifically, because I so loved them myself when I was a little girl. There are an increasing number of fairy tale retellings showing the princess looking for a princess or the prince looking for a prince. While this is important representation, they don't illuminate the beautiful diversity in queer families. They often seem to depict a reality where you grow up in a heteronormative family, come out, and then ride off into the sunset. There’s not a glimmer of what it looks like for kids to grow up embraced in a community that normalizes queerness in all its flavors. The feeling I have when gathered with my queer friends, their spouses, and their kids is vastly different from how I feel when I’m the only queer family in the room. While queer families do face some of the same challenges as heteronormative families, there are also unique ones. That combination of the beauty in the many different permutations of queer families and the challenges that we face was what I wanted to highlight in my fairy tale retelling.

Queer families deserve to see ourselves depicted in the fantastical world of a fairy tale in all the fullness of the many ways we can be. I wanted to be able to sit down with my goddaughter and say, “Let me tell you a beautiful fairy tale set on another planet in another time far far away” and have her see her own reality reflected within the magic. While of course I want these little ones to hear the message “you can love whoever you love,” I also want them to see queer families wrestling with issues that go beyond our queerness. Where the central conflict is not, “I’m queer.” Because for children growing up in queer or allied families that should hopefully never be a conflict. So instead, let’s see a queer-affirming culture and family tackle a conflict. How do we do that? What does it look like? In the case of Bloemetje, the central conflict is, “oh no I’m participating in colonizing…now what?”

Fairy tales at their best are an amazing combination of beauty and grotesque. The princess in a silken dress pricking her finger on a spinning needle and going into a coma. The amazing edible gingerbread house that hides a witch who is planning to eat you. In Bloemetje, there’s a wonderfully queer-affirming society but it also is a profit-driven monster out to use its workers at the expense of their physical and mental health to steal a whole planet from the Indigenous population. Fairy tales wrap an important caution in an ethereal other-worldliness. Be careful when using machinery. Don’t trust people based on what their house looks like. Don’t fall for the belief that your society is beneficial just because it allows your family (or other families) to be openly queer.

I wrote this fairy tale for this rising generation of little ones being raised in queer and allied families. May they see themselves and those they love. May they also see all the ways in which they can use the strength found among their queer families and friends to tackle whatever difficulties may arise, remaining rooted in love along the way.

[thesouppond]

Missed yesterday's update but we're up to chapter 11 now and mostly through linework for the first prologue comic!

- Val/entina and Kazu teasing each other is so cute 🥺🥺🥺 I am shogun sniper trash and I will go down with this shippppp

- Cammie is insanely well written. How she has very childlike tendencies but she acts very maturely. It's all balanced beautifully

- Every time we get a small reminder that Chase doesn't have a physical body I just wanna hug the man.

- The party scenes are amazing. Esp cause it's prime shogun sniper content

- XPNSV being a fuckin queer icon. 'Darling, I don't do anything straight' I fuckin wheezed. I do love that Gen:lock canonically gave us another queer nb/trans character. I hate that XPNSV only showed up here and we didn't get to see more hacking shenanigans with Cammie outside of storm warning.

- I cannot say Aris webb without using Cammie's accent now.

- Yaz and Val/entina talking about growing up and having been involved in fighting from an early age 🥺🥺🥺 I wanna hug the blorbos

- Also this made me Google what a samovar was. It certainly is interesting how Persian and Russian cultures ended up mixing.

- I want to try tea with jam now.

- Yaz really doesn't get a lot of focus in this book. I think she's the character we get the least perspective from. We really need more Yaz content.

- Val/entina backing Cammie up ayy. Kazu and Val looking out for her like a lil sister makes me so happy.

- Also Migas and Cammie geeking out over coding and schematics with Caliban being a shit in the background is awesome.

- We were absolutely robbed of the chance to see the code weapons visually. They sound cool as fuck.

- The only gripe I have with this book honestly is that Cammie's able to access mindshare and the holon systems without being uploaded in her pod, which I don't think is canonically possible but we'll just gloss over that.

- Knowing the plot twist that happens makes every small detail slip into place and god this is beautifully written.

- I know book 2 was confirmed at some stage but evidently it's been canned after RT fucked themselves but goddamn we were robbed. I wish we could have more of this. Melissa Scott, hats off to you, this is incredibly well done.

[genderqueerdykes]

Hi I'm transmasc I'm 18 and I've been wanting to go on testosterone for a while now but honestly I have no idea where I'd even go or what I'd say? Like would I go to my doctor or a therapist?? I've never been to a therapist ever and i havent seen a doctor in a long time so i dont know? Also they probably wouldnt just give me testosterone because I asked for it right I'm assuming theres like a procedure that happens first or some kinda evaluation? Sorry for the whole rant I just really wanna know as much as i can from someone who has real life experience and i saw u said you've been on testosterone for years now so i wanted to ask the biggest changes you've noticed body wise if you're comfortable answering that. Also has it affected ur hairline or like hair growth? Feel free not to answer this if it's too much😭

it's okay to feel overwhelmed and not know where to start- that's exactly where i was when i was ur age =)

i am extremely lucky and i have a transgender resource center in my area. i walked in and said i'm a trans man who wants to start T and they gave me the literal cheat codes on how to get it as fast as possible in my city.

i know not everyone is lucky enough to have a trans resource center- if you don't have one, look to your local university and see if they have a Pride Alliance/LGBT Club/Etc. or university Hospital to see if they have any centers for guidance on trans healthcare.

you can go through your therapist but that can take a long time depending on the therapist. however it will not hurt to ask them, and they can't start you down any kind of treatment path without your permission. you can in fact also ask your doctor, the thing is you just need to get a referral to A doctor who will prescribe it to you. that's all you need, and any of these places can get you the resources to do so if you're not in a totally crappy area.

what happens when you meet with the prescribing doctor, usually some kind of endocrinologist or trans health specialist, they will ask you a lot of probing questions about your identity, how long you've identified as trans, how long you've wanted to transition, and then they will give you a form stating you understand the risks of starting HRT and you have to manditorily wait 1 week, sign it, and return it, to ensure that you've read over the information they give you about what T will do to your body and understand what you're about to begin medically. from there you can start getting prescriptions, and eventually your own doctor after education may take over prescribing the T to you so you don't have to keep seeing a specialist if you don't want to. though you can and should stick with an endocrinologist if you get a referral to one.

also my hairline has receeded maybe half an inch or so, but i have notice it recede! however, my hair is still as thick as it's ever been. i've gotten a lot of chest and facial hair as well! honestly no negative side effects other than like. i'm smellier now in general. but that's fixed with routine hygiene so like, #winning.

anyway hope this helps u! like i said, reach out to a local college or some place with an established queer resource center that can start giving you places to start. feel free to ask more questions if u need to! take care!

[marlaluster]

The devil making it seem I should reiterate some things I said years ago as it may have relevance to trans people...

"Marla has said things in the past about people to not be who they are here. I am doing something, I am saying that: I am making her feel like she is saying things I will take," the devil said.

The devil was trying to bring up the things I said and connect them or express them in a way I won't have to say anything because it felt disturbing to try to express anything on a certain topic that I've expressed in the past. Something is making it feel disturbing.

"I'm saying you can't say stuff where I wouldn't be. Things you said then, I am not allowed to go on," some part of the devil said.

It was making me feel like I couldn't talk about things I think I may have said about the star of David representing people to be able to be themselves here in the rule of the devil. I think years ago I just said something like that it wasn't true people could be themselves here, despite the six pointed star or star of David possibly seeming to represent this in my view.

The devil wanted me to talk about this, especially with the news surfacing that a religious school is acting like people are who they are here in their action against trans people. But it feels unclear now what all I said and it seems bothersome that the devil has pretended that some things I said were said by others, like it connected some saying, "as above, so below" to the star of David, which is what I think I connected many years ago. But I think the saying didn't exist as far as I knew outside of a movie title. I think I thought the movie title expressed something about how my soulmates couldn't be at the end of the world.

"I think you are telling the truth. I have made it something not what it is, what you said. But I have tried to copy you," the devil said. "I'm talking about the 'a'as above, so below' and the star of David. I connected those things because I wasn't okay. It did cause trouble for me. It's supposed to be very bland, those things."

The devil it seems has also altered an image of a man in a five pointed star to have some significance to the man's genitals.

I think I made some connection to the six pointed star versus the five pointed star having something to do with people's sex and their presence in this reality.

I can try to make a connection now to that people are not present fully as their true sex here. I can say the five pointed star is reflective of a condition created by the devil here for people. The six pointed star is also not wished because it's celebration is reflective of that people are pretended heftily to be present as who they really are here.

"That is what she said before. She went back on something she said about the number six. They wish to move on now, but not deal in this information anymore about the stars. No more," the devil said.

The devil made me feel stars were significant here just now as he spoke above. He tried to make me think of how celebrities are called stars in this reality.

"I was doing that, but they will move on. It will be fine," the devil said.

"It's saying it: You've already cracked a code with this. That is what it said," the devil said of things I said years ago related to the six pointed star or star of David.

[writingwithcolor]

Argentine trans man with controlling parents; can I code them as Jewish?

@rcsordinaryworld asked:

The main character of a comic is an Argentine trans guy named Levi who ended up being somewhat Jewish coded. I’ve been debating whether to make it explicit, and I’m a little worried about his parents in particular. Part of his story is that he comes from an affluent family, and that his parents are somewhat toxic if not abusive. They’re funding college + transition for him, but on the condition he does what they want him to do. While he himself is a fairly good person, I’m worried about his mother perpetuating antisemitic tropes because she’s pretty manipulative and overbearing and finances are tied into it. Most of my characters are queer with bad parents, but I was wondering how I could handle his backstory respectfully if I did commit to making him Jewish?

If you are Jewish, disregard this part, because you are allowed to write your own experiences: If you’re writing us from the outside what is your motivation for making him Jewish in the first place? Because, yeah, I understand where you’re coming from that this might be messy. The experiences of a Jewish trans man with an unpleasant mother might be something highly specific that even a gentile trans man author with an unpleasant mother wouldn’t be able to capture accurately, or without accidentally stepping into stereotypes.

I understand that writing about queer characters with bad parents puts you in a bind vis a vis marginalized ethnic groups, because it’s tricky to write that setup from the outside of the group without accidentally sounding like a critique of the marginalized group as a whole. (Of course one way to do that is have lots of members of the group counteract the bad parents by treating the queer characters better.)

So yes, I would hesitate before making a character with a manipulative, overbearing, financially abusive mom Jewish if writing from the outside. There’s no reason that plot can’t be written about a gentile, and that way transmasculine Jewish readers won’t feel torn between the affirming validation of your character’s journey and feeling unwelcome and unsure about the portrayal of the mom. (Disclosure: I am not trans, so if you are trans and Jewish please weigh in on the notes.)

If he needs to be Jewish -- can they be bad parents in another way? Like completely preoccupied, or play favorites with a different kid, or something?

  - Shira

While I see Shira’s point, I would like to say that this:

>>Most of my characters are queer with bad parents

makes a big difference to me. If I had to pick the Number One Thing to communicate when writing bad Jewish characters, I would probably say make sure it’s clear that they’re not bad because they’re darn Jews. The fact that most of your non-Jewish characters are in the same boat with their own parents, achieves that.

The specifics of this character’s bad traits, using money to control and manipulate, are a little problematic. In my opinion, the money-grabbing and string-pulling tropes are just about avoided, purely because the only victim of the financial abuse is also Jewish. Usually, the stereotype is that we’re conspiring to benefit Jews at the expense of everyone else.

For this reason, you might be able to work with this story if you emphasise the son’s Jewish identity and highlight his positive experiences and personality traits associated with his Jewishness. If that involves finding a community with other Jewish people where he can be safe from the abuse, even better.

It would also help to make some of the other bad parents equally wealthy. I’m starting to see more examples in fiction of Jewishness being used as a synonym or shorthand for privilege, and I’m a little worried this is becoming a modern version of the money-grabbing trope. Diluting this association by having non-Jewish wealthy families would be helpful.

Even with these things in place, not all Jewish readers will agree that the stereotypes have been averted. In particular, I think Shira made an excellent point (which I don’t really feel qualified to expand on) about transmasculine Jewish readers. People in this group may not often get to see people like them in stories, so I don’t know how it would feel for that to be in any way tarnished with even a slight stereotype. Coming back to the fact that most of your characters are queer with bad parents, how interchangeable are their circumstances? Can you simply swap this character arc with someone else’s to avoid the uncomfortableness?

-  Shoshi

Though Shira and Shoshi covered things nicely, I'll weigh in briefly as the resident trans/nonbinary Jewish person. 

Here are the issues I see at a glance: 

A Jewish mother who is manipulative, toxic, abusive, and uses money to get her way

A Jewish man who is cowed by his mother, and vulnerable to financial coercion

An affluent Jewish family who uses their money to control

Now, as you suspected, having an overbearing, manipulative Jewish mother is feeding into a trope that causes constant pain for Jewish women. The idea that Jewish women are shrill, demanding, and unconcerned with the lives, and happiness of others around them is tossed around, even by some in the Jewish community. It's damaging, and also leaves Jewish women vulnerable. I think you could offset the damage by also including Jewish women, and especially maternal figures who are very clearly shown to not be overbearing, and to be generous (or at least not dictatorial ) with their money. 

Your character himself is also a concern for me, and one of the reasons I decided to give input, despite Shira and Shoshi covering things very well already. The trope of the domineering Jewish woman is incredibly prevalent, and beside it you will often find the trope of the weak, nebbish of a Jewish man. The idea is that our men are ineffectual, easily cowed, wimpy. In short, the nebbishy Jewish man, written into so much media, is a reflection of the idea that our men are not really men, and how much harder does that stereotype hit, when it's being applied to a Jewish trans man? There is a danger here, when you show your character (who has his own reasons to play along, transitioning socially, or medically can have astronomical attendant costs) bowing to pressures from his family, especially his mother, you are unintentionally reinforcing that negative image of Jewish men, and of trans men. 

Finally, the stereotypes of Jewish men, and women, are both combined with the overarching theme I'm seeing here: they have money, and they use it to get what they want, no matter the harm. Now, some people do this, of those people some are parents, inevitably some of those parents are Jewish, but this falls right in line with a third, very dangerous conception of Jewish people: that we all have money, and we use it for harm. 

So, like Shira I do wonder what made you want to make this character Jewish. Did you decide arbitrarily, and build the overbearing mother, the money, and the capitulating character himself after that, or did you have those things first, and decide he must be Jewish later? I feel this is a character, and a backstory that can be written, but not without putting in a fair bit of work, and examining your own logic is a part of that. In your writing you will need to show other Jewish people who are not rich, some who are and are not using that money to control. Showing mothers (and maternal figures) who listen, and are gentle, loving, sweet even. Showing Jewish men who are thoughtful, but know their own minds, and are willing to stand up for themselves, and others. It's possible, but certainly will expand your word count, and increase the time spent double-checking your work for these biases, and tropes. If you want to go ahead be ready, and be determined, it's a lot of work.

- Dierdra

[northern-passage]

i wanted to make a post breaking down the current choices in TNP regarding gender & presentation for the hunter to explain what these choices are & what they’re telling the code, as well as offer some new choices that will hopefully help clarify the hunter’s identity for both the player and for the game/code.

so the first choice is your gender: man, woman, or nonbinary. this tells the game what the hunter is and tells it how people refer to them: man, woman, or person. that's the only code that's set in this choice. same with the pronouns right after - this choice simply sets your pronouns.

the next choice specifies the hunter’s chest. if you choose either bra option or the binder option, this is going to tell the game simply that the hunter wears a bra or a binder. if you choose the bra option that also specifies the hunter had implant surgery, then yes, this choice does tell the game that the hunter has breasts.

if you choose the top surgery option, then this tells the game that the hunter had breasts and had them surgically removed.

and finally, the most basic option simply tells the game that the hunter has had no surgery and wears no undergarments over their chest.

obviously you can see there is some room for interpretation with these options & that is intentional. later in chapter one, we then get the option to choose whether the hunter takes hormones or not.

if you chose for your hunter to be a woman, and you chose the no surgery bra option, this is simply telling the game the hunter is a woman who wears a bra. it does not tell me if the hunter is cis or trans. same as if you chose the hunter as a man that does not wear undergarments on his chest - it’s still not telling me if they’re cis or trans. literally none of the possible combinations can really tell me that.

my original plan was to then have the hormone option act as the trigger for certain flavor text regarding the hunter’s identity, though after thinking it over i still don’t think it will work, since like i said before, there are people that choose not to pursue surgery and may not take hormones, and likewise there are cis people that may get surgery or take hormones. & ultimately i think the easiest thing is to just have a clear option where the player can say Yes the hunter is trans.

SO what i’m thinking now is that i’ll leave the chest options as they are, because when it comes down to it they serve their purpose in the code. what i think i’m going to do is in the hormone scene, add more options for the player to clarify their hunter’s identity.

i’m thinking four options, along the lines of:

Lea also brews hormone potions for me, too. I began my transition during my apprenticeship and have been taking hormones ever since. (tells the code the hunter is trans and takes hormones)

Lea also brews hormone potions for me, too. While I am not interested in transitioning, the potion’s effects make me feel more comfortable in my presentation. (tells the code the hunter is not trans but does take hormones)

I don’t take hormone potions - I’ve transitioned without them and am comfortable this way. (tells the code the hunter is trans and does not take hormones)

I don’t take hormone potions. I am comfortable in my identity and presentation without them, and have never felt the need to transition. (tells the code that the hunter does not take hormones and that they are not trans)

this way i now have absolute confirmation in the code that yes the hunter is trans or no they are not trans. this will allow me to string the flavor text in a way so that it will first run a check to see if the player chose one of the options that explicitly state that their hunter is trans -

<<if $trans>>

and then under this space i will be able to break it down with the other options - do they take hormones, have they had surgery, do they wear a bra or binder, are they a man, woman, nb, etc.

then i can have <<else>> which again i can break down the same way as above.

this way, you aren't restricted by any choices or locked out of others, and your hunter can freely choose their presentation. choosing any of these options - having surgery, taking hormones, wearing a binder, or simply choosing either of the trans options will open up flavor text and conditional scenes.

i also want to note that at the moment i don’t know how explicit the intimate scenes will be later in the game, but if it does ever come up then it will be a choice within the scene when it comes to the hunter’s body - i don’t intend to make any assumptions about that, and since i don’t currently have plans to put bottom surgery options in game that will just be up to the player and what they want for their hunter.

whew!! hopefully this clarifies things… and with the new choices i’m open to feedback & it’s something that i'll be looking to implement with the twine port. let me know what yall think.