#love exploring the trans experience through different characters

[ruthlesslistener]

Only just realized it, but I think it's very funny that of my two Elden Ring ocs (both of which are trans), one of them is a middle-aged woman who just recently had the chance to magically transition and a good chunk of her story is growing used to her new body and experiencing euphoria with her form after grueling years of war and how she tries to share that euphoria and joy at being different with Morgott, whom she accidentally falls in love with after breaking his legs. Then my second oc is a trans dude who medically transitioned years before he became Tarnished, went through nearly all of his journey without a thought for his own body, and then only just magically slapped on a dick at the end of it with the sole purpose of being a fuckboy. The dichotomy of gender

[a-bit-of-a-queer-one]

I loved Wild Blue Yonder, I thought it was a great episode. But if I see one more person proclaiming that the Doctor saying Isaac Newton was "hot" made the character "finally queer", I'm gonna set fire to sth.

For one thing, since they changed into a woman, the Doctor has, depending on one's definition, been canonically genderfluid/trans/nonbinary/genderqueer. That was made even more explicit last week in Star Beast. So saying that the Doctor as played by a man and using he/him pronouns calling a man "hot" somehow made the character queer is stupid in and of itself.

And secondly, the Doctor has long been regarded as aro and ace-coded by people of those communities and guess what? Aro and ace people really do exist and we are queer. And it would be lovely if other queer people could stop excluding us by saying that characters who provide what little, mostly accidental and incidental representation we get "become queer" by expressing same-sex attraction. It happened with Good Omens and it seems to be happening again with Doctor Who and I am so fucking tired of it

Edit (6th Dec 2023): Several people have pointed out in the notes that there have been quite a few instances of the Doctor ambiguously or indeed unambiguously expressing 'same-sex' attraction and exploring their gender identity/identities in the past, both in the show and in extended media. I just wanted to be absolutely clear on the fact that I was in way trying to diminish the importance of those moments by emphasing the aspect of asexuality and aromanticism in my post. That is not to say that I think anyone was implying that I was doing that, in fact everyone's been lovely (which is why I also wanted to thank everyone for their input, I learnt a lot, especially about the novels!!)

Of course, as an asexual, aromantic and agender/nonbinary person, that is the lens through which I watch the show and relate to the character of the Doctor. This does not make my reading of them any more or less valid than anyone else's. In fact, I absolutely love the fact that the Doctor is a character who speaks to people of so many different queer identities and I am so happy that RTD is exploring their queerness more explicitly, building on what he and so many other writers and also the actors have already established. I just hope that the fandom will respect the aro and ace aspects of the Doctor's queerness the same way they do their gender identities and other sexual and romantic orientations. Part of the reason I was initially quite worried about this was because of my experiences in the Good Omens fandom, particularly post series 2, as indicated in my original post. The other is that I doubt the show will explore the aro and ace aspects of the character as much as they may other queer identities - unfortunately aspecs have a history of being left behind in this regard...

But we will see, maybe I'll be proved wrong! For the time being, I just hope the queer community can celebrate all the different facets of the Doctor's undeniable queerness, including the aspec ones. And as the reactions to this post have been overwhelmingly supportive (I don't think I've seen a single outright negative response), I think this hope is far from unfounded.

(Sorry, this edit turned out to be longer than the original post...)

[transmascissues]

recently i’ve been embarking on the next leg of my gender exploration journey, and the hardest part of it has honestly been navigating the way people see manhood as at odds with any sort of complex gender experience.

because the thing is, i’ve seen myself as a man for years now, and that hasn’t changed! i still very much consider myself trans male, even as my understanding of my gender has continued to evolve. i’ve been exploring parts of me that feel more connected to gender neutrality and androgyny and fluidity and even womanhood than i’ve previously acknowledged, and none of those things contradict the fact that i am a man! all of those different pieces of my gender coexist perfectly well and don’t cancel out the fact that i want people to recognize me first and foremost as a trans man.

but other people don’t see it that way, and i know that. if i express any sort of relationship to those other aspects of gender — especially to womanhood — i know for a fact that people will view that as me saying i’m not “really” or fully a man. they’ll assume it means i’m just partially a man (which i’m not) or masculine but not a man (which i’m also not) or just living as a man on the outside when my “real” internal gender isn’t male (which i’m definitely not).

so even acknowledging that the more complex parts of my gender even exist at all has been an uphill battle, because i know what they mean for the way people see me if i express them. it’s already a herculean task to get people to see me as a man without that!

i recently told my boyfriend about some of these experiences i’d been exploring, and even then, i was terrified. it seems silly — if there’s any single person in the entire world who would support me no matter what, it’s my boyfriend — but it still felt like i was immediately taken back to the fear of the first time i ever came out to someone. honestly, even then, i watered down a lot of my thoughts more than i wanted to because i was afraid they could be taken as implying something about my gender that i never wanted to imply.

and i don’t want to be afraid of it! i want to be able to talk about experiences like revisiting the gender neutrality i identified with when i first came out and discovering androgyny through spirituality and seeing myself in genderfluid characters and finding new bits of gender euphoria in being seen as a woman now that i’m on t, and i want to be able to do that openly without fear that it’ll be used against me, that it’ll be seen as me giving people permission to ignore the manhood that’s still the backbone of my gender experience.

i love being trans! i love being genderqueer! i love all the gender complexity and playfulness that comes with that for me! and i was never afraid to express it before i started living as a man openly because before then, i knew that i could always count on other queer people to get it even if most people didn’t. but now, i know there are a lot of queer people who wish i would be anything other than a man, who see manhood as antithetical to gender complexity and think that’s a radical view somehow, and suddenly there are a lot less people i can count on for that support.

manhood can be neutral. manhood can be androgynous. manhood can be fluid. manhood can be womanhood. manhood can be all those things at once. manhood can be any of a vast array of other things. manhood can be fucking anything because gender in general can be fucking anything, and it really seems like a lot of people have no problem acknowledging that until it’s applied to men.

restricting manhood to nothing but the most limited, simplified, binary version of it is bad. expanding our concept of what a man can be is good. playing with gender and stretching its boundaries and showing that binarism is a lie because none of these experiences actually contradict each other is good.

it’d be great if people — especially people who pride themselves on fucking with gender and smashing the binary and all that — could realize that, because i’m really getting tired of feeling like i’m being shoved back into the closet after so many years just because y’all can’t wrap your minds around the idea that some of the people with the cool weird genders are dudes.

[angel---eater]

thinking about how my usual go-to intersex dirk is affected by cooercive gendering in both the beta and alpha timelines.... and just gender stuff in homestuck in general.... cause the timeframe really counts. where babydirk lands temporally really makes or breaks this guy and his rship with his body. dirk as a character is so concerned abt how others percieve him that he wears his interests and hobbies like leather armour. he wears the projected images other ppl have of him more than he just, yknow, is

dirk in the beta timeline wouldve been fostered and was CAMAB, but his puberty started doing Unexpected Things, so they took little bro to the doctor so he can have his manly male puberty 'fixed'. bro would spend his whole life directly under the thumb of hegemonic cismasculinity, and he would know that if he adjusted even an inch, just to shift his weight even a little, then he suddenly wouldnt be Man Enough. and the blowback for that would be terrifying for him. hed be being slowly suffocated by the adults in his life and lil cal constantly whispering into his ear. this would be part of bro's experience with being groomed for sure

dirk in the alpha timeline however would be a free range kid. he wouldve grown up basically genderless until he figured out how to peruse the dead internet and discovered what boys and girls as cisgender concepts were. alpha dirks problem wouldnt so much be that hes directly under the thumb of Cis Manhood, but bc hed be desperately chasing after the ghosts of communities long dead. hed be directionless. he assumes hes a boy, he feels like one a lot of the time, but is he really? he keeps finding conflicting information on what Being A Man is, what Being A Woman is, what being Anyone At All is. hed chase after cismasculinity bc itd just feel the most familiar to him. he'd fall into the traps chrisofacist gender rolls laid out for masculinity bc thered be no one around but himself and his own very fallable perspecetive on this stuff to help get him out of it. and roxy is in the exact same boat. theyd have no idea how to even START talking about this except through the pidgeonhole of compcis

and its interesting too cause there IS talk of gender in the alpha session, but its from calliope whos also very very very removed from human (and troll, bc theyre analogous in canon) gender in the first place, eerily similar to dirk and roxy and their particular brand of isolation from humanity**. callie very explicitly represents the side of fandom that is good-faith exploration of canon, but whos too married to their own fanon and always more biased towards it over canon. i love callie so much but shes my biased and unreliable queen haha. what she says about gender, esp supposed gender-locked classpect stuff, isnt nessicarily, actually true. and thats REALLY cool bc of course everyone is a little biased about gender stuff and trans theories. its so personal how can we not be yknow?? and we experience other ppl through our own lens, having even residual biases (just favouring pink moreso than blue for example, im not talking abt bigotry) is just really normal imo. callie's a really good example of this. she knows shes a girl and loves being a girl, as she fuckin should, so she holds a grain of bias towards femininity and womanhood

**normally i would include jake in The Social Isolation, but again, where the alpha kids landed temporally REALLY makes a difference. jake is also completely isolated but he has an active and current internet to dig through. i wanna explore jakes relationship w/ himself more often but my brain is so full of dirk and roxy and callie its, well, its bias LMAO

[lurkingshan]

Hi. I recently finished watching Coffee Prince based on a few recs posts that you had put out and MY GOD I'm so glad I decided to give it a try. (This was the first Kdrama where I got past 2 eps) I loved this sooo sooo much.

Do you have any recs for media (queer or otherwise) with similar strong characters as Eun-Chan? Even otherwise, thanks for your great rec posts!

Another Coffee Prince convert! Thank you for telling me, anon, it gives me so much joy every time someone gets to experience it for the first time. And I am not surprised Go Eun Chan captured your heart, everyone who meets her feels the same.

Since I don't know exactly what about Eun Chan captivated you, I am not entirely sure what kind of characters you are looking for. Is it her generosity of spirit? Is it that endearing mix of bravery and naïveté? Is it the way she keeps going through confusion and uncertainty? Is it that she is just so lacking in artifice and unapologetically herself? Or maybe it's her gender questioning journey that spoke to you.

Given that I am not precisely sure, I am just going to give you a mix of great dramas of various genres with strong characters that give me some aspect of that Eun Chan swag--feel free to come back and ask for more recs if you have something else in mind! In alpha order:

Be Melodramatic (Viki)

Shan found another excuse to rec Be Melodramatic? Must be a day ending in y. But seriously this drama is full of fantastic characters and there's a strong thread here about being yourself unapologetically and finding the people who love you for that.

Great Men Academy (grey)

Another character experiencing gender, but this time via a magical-unicorn-induced body transformation (don't ask I could not possibly explain it). This story is all about Love figuring herself out and the bisexual king who loves her in any body.

Healer (Viki)

Chae Yeong Shin is Park Min Young's best character ever and it's not close. She has a lot of Eun Chan's relentless spirit and optimism in the face of life's nonsense, and she's a spunky one. Healer is also just a great action romance with a lot of fun hijinks and a very swoony male lead, if you're into that kind of thing.

Joshi-teki Seikatsu (Life As A Girl) (grey)

Miki is an all-time great character. A trans woman rebooting her life away from home, she is more assured about who she is but has a lot of Eun Chan's core generosity and bravery. I love her so much.

Kieta Hatsukoi (Viki)

Chaotic confusion with a heart of gold, thy name is Aoki.

Koisenu Futari (grey)

Sakuko, my beloved. This show is about two people on the aroace spectrum connecting and finding companionship and family in each other, and it's so beautiful.

Light on Me (Viki)

Woo Tae Kyung is definitely sitting at the "unapologetically themselves" table with Eun Chan. And he has a love triangle, too!

My Lovely Sam Soon (Viki)

If you're up for an even older kdrama, I love this one to pieces. Kim Sam Soon has a lot in common with Go Eun Chan, in that she doesn't perform femininity the way people expect and she is trying to find her place in the world, all while crushing on a guy who feels very out of her league. This is a journey for both lead characters, and I was so moved by where they ended up that I burst into tears at the end.

She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat (Furritsubs)

My girls!!! I love every character in this show. I don't think it's possible to watch this drama and not find someone to connect with; it's all about exploring the many different ways to be a woman and finding the people who will love and respect you for who you are. And it's very queer while doing it!

Twenty-five Twenty-one (Netflix)

Na Hee Do is a legend, and not just because of the fencing. This show is her coming of age story and you will love her.

Weightlifting Fair Kim Bok Joo (Viki)

Kim Bok Joo, another heroine wrestling with her femininity as she navigates coming of age and changing relationships. She's fantastic.

As always, if you have trouble finding any of these, you can always hmu (off anon, because we don't share secret files in public lol). Hope you find something to enjoy among these!

[heliza24]

Being a physically disabled Dimension 20 fan breaks my heart sometimes

I’ve been thinking about this since last Wednesday’s episode when we finally got a real scene with Lydia, one of the few physically disabled characters in the entire canon of the show. It was nice, but it was really just a lore dump. An excuse for exposition. A moment for Kristen to look good by expending sympathy/pity. (I’m a little frustrated about how that interaction went down. Extending the help action was nice but patronizingly touching the neck of a full-ass adult without consent was not. It was weird and not something she would have done to a nondisabled character).

I have watched almost all of D20 (still missing a couple of seasons) and as far as I know here’s where our list of canon physically disabled characters stand: Lydia Barkrock, Jan de la Vega (who feels pretty problematic to me, maybe more on that in a later post), one of the Dwarven statues in the temple in The Seven (who is not given the dignity of being brought to life like Asha), and Pete’s coworker in TUC2 who is in exactly one episode and is so unimportant I have forgotten his name. I guess you could make an argument that Gunny is disabled, but I don't feel that Lou or Brennan really talk about him or play him through that lens. So in terms of canon physically disabled PCs-- that leaves us with 0.

We do a bit better with neurodivergent characters and characters with mental health problems; Ayda (my beloved) is very well developed and Adaine is a PC. There have been some openly neurodivergent players, like Omar and Surena, whose characters also read ND to me. But that isn’t labeled or discussed in canon, so it's hard for me to know where to class that. I am going to focus the rest of this post on physical disabilities, since that is my area of lived experience. If another fan wants to write about their perspective of neurodivergence rep in the show, I would love to hear that, and will happily amplify.

There has never been a character with a sensory disability or a limb difference or a chronic illness (not a fantasy one, a real one) on Dimension 20. The only NPCs we have are nondescript, similar wheelchair users. And there has never been a physically disabled player at the table. On the flagship show of Dropout, a company founded on diversity and inclusion. It feels extremely pointed to me.

In fact as far as I can tell there has only been one (1) physically disabled performer on any of Dropout’s shows. (Shout out to Brett, you were great on Dirty Laundry.) Obviously I haven’t seen every episode of everything they have produced. If I have missed someone, please do let me know in the comments/reblogs. But it’s a problem. And Sam Reich even agreed with this criticism when I asked him directly about.

I do really hope they’re working on it, as Sam says. But why has it taken so long?

Dimension 20 has had trans and nonbinary and queer players. It has had players of many different races. I’m not saying that the diversity here is perfect; there should always be more POC in the dome, more queer people. We should keep pushing for that. (And we should also push for performers at the intersections of these identities!) But we’ve seen the ways this diversity has expanded and improved the different seasons, because diverse players create sensitively drawn, diverse player characters. They add details to their PC’s experiences that make them feel rich and alive. I’m thinking about each of Ally’s PC’s incredible capital G gender and Aabria “all my characters (even the stoats) are Black” and how excellent they all are. D20 would not be the show it is without this input.

And yet. And yet.

There are 1,000 interesting and complicated themes to explore around disability. Dealing with access. Dealing with ableism. Dealing with compassion and community care. Dealing with none of it and just being a cool fantasy or sci fi character that happens to be disabled. We don’t get any of it.

I watch my favorite show and I see myself in the ace rep and the female characters. But I don’t see all of me. I see a silent but ever present message: you aren’t quite welcome here.

I have this fantasy that I play in my brain sometimes that someday I’ll get to talk to Brennan in person, like maybe if I buy a VIP ticket and risk Covid to go to a live show or we run into each other on the street or something. I am able to look him in the eye and articulate why he NEEDS to include a physically disabled player in an upcoming season. I reference the ways he’s talked about inclusion and writing diversely on Adventuring Party. Maybe I hand him a handwritten letter, or hell, a printout of this post. And because he really cares about diversity and his shows and his fans he would listen to me, and cast a physically disabled performer in the next season.

But I think that might be giving that nondisabled man (whose work I adore, who I respect so much) too much credit. Because he’s had Jennifer Kretchmer, a physically disabled actual play performer, on adventuring academy to talk about access in gaming. He’s hired disability consultants. He knows about physically disabled people, enough to give us shoutouts as inconsequential npcs. And he still hasn’t thought to include us at the table. In over 20 seasons. None of that other stuff matters if we aren't given a seat at the story telling table, and the agency to craft our own narratives equal to other participants in the game.

When Lydia was telling her story in the last episode, I kept wishing for a prequel, where she is more than a plot delivery device and a kind but unimportant parent. I want to know about her adventures with her adventuring party. I want to see a talented, wheelchair-using actor play out the scene when she decides to put the gem in her chest. I want to hear about what happened after. I want to know how she survived. I want it so badly it hurts.

I am in the process of trying to find new indie actual plays that feature more disabled talent. I am learning how to GM myself so I can tell these kinds of stories. But it’s not the same as being a fan of something. Sometimes I don’t want to have to make my own representation. Sometimes I just want to turn on my favorite tv show, the one that I have cosplayed from and written metas about and loved whole heartedly, and see myself included.

If you’re another disabled or neurodivergent fan I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. If you’re not, I’d love for you to reblog this. I would love for the absence of physical disability in this show to be a topic of fandom conversation, at the very least.

[decepti-thots]

☕️ trans girl verity :33

Verity as a trans girl is one of those headcanons where for me, it really makes the text as we are given it more coherent. It provides a lot of implicit motivation for things the comics kind of don't bother exploring her feelings about, I think. We have all that stuff in the early phase one stuff where she is nebulously "troubled" and constantly running away, happier to live as a young teen on the streets despite obviously knowing the risks inherent to that. There's her extremely glossed over (and very deftly executed so the reader doesn't question it) decision to leave Earth entirely to go hang out with Ultra Magnus. There's her reluctance to go back to a mother she was taken away from because doing so is scary, even if she now can.

And it's hardly as though "the foster care system Fucking Sucks" etc is not adequate for explaining that, to be clear, but I feel like Verity feeling invested in staying in this new world where everything is incredibly dangerous but also where she meets all these people with no context for who she might be in the "real world", who she gets to take control of how she presents herself to them... that's a narrative that works really well for exploring through a trans lens. What her association with these people offers her, despite the danger, despite all the traumatic experiences, despite how clearly negative so much of it is, boils down to a sense of agency. (And agency is really important to Verity; everything about how she acts in SotW boils down, by her own admission, to wanting that sense of control in the face of something she can't escape.) It offers her an opportunity to decide who she presents herself as to people with absolutely no way of questioning a lot of things her fellow humans might question her on, and viewing that through a lens of trans self-determination is really interesting in how it adds additional framing to that arc she gets. Sure, running off with the big scary alien robot embroiled in active warfare as a tiny squishy young human does not sound like a great idea- but if the tradeoff is that you can really truly reinvent yourself and nobody even knows that they could question it, well. Especially in contrast to how it makes her ostensibly 'peaceful' life she could otherwise return to in fact one that isn't uncomplicatedly peaceful at all as someone facing very different kinds of fear in that "normal" life.

There's also the fact that as you move through SotW and RotW, her arc converges with Springer's about what self-determination looks like. Springer's arc in the latter two-thirds of Wreckers is about making active choices to decide who you want to be in the face of cycles that try and force you into being a specific person you find that you do not like very much. People have a very specific idea of who you were supposed to be for them; resisting that because you do not want to is hard. Choosing something else is hard. That has a lot of resonance for a Verity who had to make that decision because she is trans, I think, at an exaggerated scale.

And the great thing is: it works. Verity gets to choose, as an adult, to meet her mother again on her own terms. She conquers all her nightmares and gets through it and reenters the world as an adult woman who is confident enough to assert herself and take what she wants. She can go back into that human world and assert who she has chosen to be there in a way she couldn't before. It works that way with or without the trans element, but the trans element just fits in smoothly, I think. It really adds to my love for her character to think of it as a part of that story about developing a sense of self.

[apolline-lucy]

Any tips for writing sapphic romance

I don’t think writing sapphic romance is much different from writing any kind of romance. Feelings are feelings, and human beings are human beings. We all experience love in very different ways, and yet it renders us crazy and desperate all the exact same.

I don’t write romance, but romantic fantasy; the nuance is that rather than having the plot gravitate around a relationship, the relationship supports my plot (usually a magical adventure of sorts). And whether i write wlw, mlm, or else, I don’t change my formula. I make every character unique and imperfect, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation.

What I like is putting them in uncomfortable situations (aka hell) and then watching them suffer, really. I put together people that originally don’t belong together + forced proximity + having them face their fears + having them help & rely on one another + slow burn + making them actually get to know one another + making them doubt and cry and get real with their emotions and feelings + having their beliefs being ripped apart, twice, because betrayals + pain pain pain

Too often, I read romances that start with a physical attraction and never elaborate much deeper. Attraction is great for just dating, it’s great for erotica, but if you want a much stronger story and a relationship to seem believable, they have to go through rough patches, they have to test their limits and see the worst of each other. No one’s perfect. That’s cliche, but that’s true. Your characters can’t (and shouldn’t) be perfect either—that’s boring and no reader will identify with them. Us readers are like our characters, we want someone who will keep on loving us when we’re bleeding and screaming and hurting and making mistakes (deadly or else).

That being said, writing sapphic literature, and not necessarily romance, allows me to get more chances to explore some topics that are important to me: feminism, feminine rage, women’s sexuality, inclusiveness, friendships between women, trans women, women of colour, women being women, women supporting women, etc.

These can all be written into non-sapphic stories, of course, but the more you make space for women into your pages, the more characters are women, the more voices you give them. And us women have so many things to say.

When people ask me why I choose to write sapphic stories, here’s my answer: I simply love writing about women because women can be anyone and everything, and that’s enough for me.

Hope this helps🖤✨

[itsevanffs]

My five favourite fics

Thanks for the tag @moontearpensfic :3

"Self-rec time! What are your favorite five fics that you've written and why? After replying to this ask, feel free to pass on to five other writers to spread the love. 💗"

Ok this is a little difficult. In no particular order:

slowly [E, 14/?, Spider-Verse, Miguel O'Hara/Miles Morales]

Slowly is currently my favourite fic! This might change but I'm 1/3rds through it and it's still going really strong, which is super fun. For those who don't follow my spiderverse stunts, here's a plot summary:

Miguel, a 37 year old divorcee, gets invited to Miles' 14th birthday party through happenstance, where they befriend each other. Over the next six months, that friendship deepens into something Miles isn't quite prepared to handle, and which Miguel isn't ready to give up.

It tackles a lot of (in my eyes) pretty complex subjects, like the nuances of parental neglect, grooming, trans experiences, sibling dynamics, teen sexuality and more :D Aside from that, it's also a PWP, which tend to be my favourites overall. It's a good brain squeeze for me to navigate all the intertwined realistic aspects while still making it believable, and from the response I've gotten, that seems to be something I do pretty well!

Anabiosis [E, 3/3, Harry Potter, Tom Riddle/Harry Potter (implied)]

Anabiosis was a big ol chonker of a fic, and took a lot of research to get right, particularly in the last chapter. I cried as I wrote the ending of the first chapter---I think I sobbed for about 20 minutes straight, a sentiment a lot of commenters have echoed---and it's very close and dear to my heart. It's a big character study about grief; grief for something you never got to have, grief for something you didn't know was there until it was gone, and grief for something you always took for granted. I think it turned out the best it could be, and I'm glad I wrote it.

At the expense of the world [E, 5/?, Harry Potter, Tom Riddle/Harry Potter]

At the expense of the world (or expense, for short) is one of the oldest ideas for a fic I've ever had. I've always been sort of fascinated by ancient Roman culture, and the second I learned about the honestly massive amounts of slavery they did, I wanted to write a fic about it. That's over a decade ago, now, although this fic itself is a lot younger; it's just turned 2 and a bit :D It's also got a lot of research behind it, and while it's more fantasy and PWP than anything else, I'm still really grateful to the very warm response it's gotten!

Sugar [E, 3/8, Spider-Verse, Miguel O'Hara/Miles Morales]

Sugar is a big excuse for me to play around with a bajillion iterations of the omegaverse at once, and it's really fun! I also really like how organic the dialogue has turned out; watching ATSV 30+ times has really helped me nail down their voices :D It's got some heavy topics in it, like sexism (fantasy sexism I guess) and cultural differences among universes regarding treatment of different dynamics. It's cool! I love exploring stuff like that, so Sugar is a tasty treat to me! (pardon the pun)

the bad man [E, 1/1 Spider-Verse, Miguel O'Hara/Miles Morales]

This is my first ever pornshot with complete nonconsent, which was a pretty notable milestone for me! I had a lot of fun writing it---I think I wrote it in like... a week or something. I'd check but that takes the fun out of it :P It has two iterations; a teacher/student version, and a brother/brother version. The brother version is a separate fic, you can find it in the series if you want. I'm not sure which one I like better, tbh

Okay, uhh, tag... @cindle-writes, @toast-ranger-to-a-stranger, doubling the tag for @mosiva, and @aldergroves and @muchymozzarella. no pressure obv :)

[cripplecharacters]

Hello there! I love this blog, thank you for making it! I’ve had this fantasy novel in the back of my head for ages, and am actually considering sitting down and writing it out since I’m taking a break from studying. I’ve always imagined the main character as having a facial difference, specifically a split lip (and very visible given the medical technology of the world), though I’ve considered some sort of facial paralysis instead. I read your post on characters with facial difference, and none of those shitty tropes seem to apply, thank god. But as I am not physically disabled I really wanted to avoid anything harmful in my writing that could sneak in from subconscious bias I probably have.

There Is one element in my story that I realize might be getting into some dodgy territory, and that’s regarding her relationship with her disfigurement. Like I said, I am not physically disabled, but I do have some experience being “non-normative” visibly (I’m trans), and invisibly (mental illness). I’ve been kind of using this story as a way to explore the experience of being “non normative”, both visibly and invisibly through a fantasy world, and though I think all minorities often have comparable experiences and should stand together, I should of course be very careful not to completely override the real experience of disabled people with my own angst. The fact is that in the story and world I’ve built, ableism *is* very present, and part of her arc was becoming confident in herself in spite of the society around her, helped by the many other disabled characters she knows. She’s got lots of personality and the main plot isn’t really about her facial difference, but she starts out very self conscious of it, and sometimes even projects this onto those around her.

I’d love to hear your thoughts - is this a plot that I can write with sensitivity, or should I rethink this?

Hi!

First of all, nice to see a character with a congenital facial difference! :-)

I think when it comes to her relationship with her cleft lip/paralysis, this post could be useful for you. While "societal ableism" can be a reason for being insecure about one's disability, if you want to write about it more in-depth, you need to expand on that as well. What exactly is there that made her feel that way? What happened that started her self-acceptance journey? etc.

In the greater context of the story, I would look at not making her the most miserable one. If the story surrounds the topic of looking "non-normative" then just make sure you show a wide spectrum of what that can be outside of just facial differences. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with writing a story about the experiences of someone with a facial difference, that's clearly not what you're going for - and speaking about this:

I would also look out for her being the main character - if her experience is the main one of the story, and the story is about looking different, I'm not sure how feasible it is to not make it into a story about having a facial difference. It's not that it can't be done, but I'm quite curious on how you plan for it to play out, assuming that the goal is neither to ignore her disability nor to make it a big piece of it. Perhaps making her into a side character and having the main character someone with experience closer to your own would be simply easier. This would also help with not "overriding the real experience of disabled people with [your] own angst". Especially considering the part where she seems to be projecting her internalized ableism on others - that's a very sensitive topic even among disabled people, and it does feel rather strange to read about here. If you had to rethink one thing, it would probably be this one. I'd keep that kind of characterization for something you have personal experience with. It'd be very easily to make a mistake here and either send a message you aren't trying to, or just make her plain unlikable (and if that's the goal, then why the one character with FD, etc?).

I do enjoy that she gains confidence by being around other disabled people. If possible, make sure that there is someone with a visible disability and/or a facial difference, simply because that would make the most sense. Someone that she can actually relate to; see them being proud, happy, etc.

I hope this helps! Good luck with your story

mod Sasza

[adolfusraptor1985]

I was going to send this as an anon but I want to learn to be open about my curiosities and felt this was a good start.

How did you know you were therian? What was the realization moment that told you?

And did you ever feel a sense of imposter syndrome? Not in regards to "but I'm not really an animal" type feelings, but more in the "Other therians won't accept I'm therian because X reason" type feelings?

Were you scared, or anxious about making the claim, about being open about the identity?

I'm asking because I've had some feelings, confusing ones, for a fairly long while now and the last year or two have been one discovery after another as I slowly branch into a space where I feel I'm really allowed to explore myself and who I am.

And I don't know if I'm therian or not, I don't know if I have a right to call myself one, if it's my identity or if it's just that I wish being an animal were true of me.

I don't know if I'm therian, or just have wishes, or if it's just a matter of rejecting my self.

I don't know if even having these fears/anxieties/thoughts makes me therian, or means I'm definitely not.

How did you know? How would I know? And what do I need to do to fully understand?

For me, my realization of being a therian came to me similar to how I realized I was trans. I grew up loving animals a lot, more than people at times. I always pictured myself as an animal, almost 24/7. I kept getting older and tried to accept my self-image as an animal was just childish fantasy. I got into the furry fandom as a tween so I could have a more "real" or "mature" way of expressing myself as an animal.

Later on, I found the term therian through the internet. I was extremely hesitant at first to even interact with therian. Pretending to be an animal or animal character was one thing, but to actually believe you are one is another. I thought it was entirely delusional and absurd.

Once I started questioning my gender identity however, I started to gain a better understanding of therianthropy. I began to understand that feeling like an animal was similar to feeling like a different gender. It was an involuntary and integral experience that made someone who they are. I started reflecting on my own past, and how I grew up always feeling like an animal. I realized that being "human" was a shield that I had been hiding behind. That if I just let myself be, well- myself, I would be an animal. Not because I want to be, but because it feels right.

The first year of identifying as a therian was confusing to me. I wanted desperately to fit in and be respected both within and outside of the community. I stuck very strongly to the "I know I'm physically human, it's just a spiritual/psychological identity" sentiment. I convinced myself of a watered-down version of my real identity just so I would be accepted. I was definitely nervous with the idea of calling myself an animal, even if it was only partially.

Now though, I've grown out of that fear. I completely reject identifying as my biological species. Deep down, not being human feels right to me. I openly identify as transspecies and have been considering using the physical nonhuman label. I fall on the really "extremist" end of therianthropy so to speak. The majority of therians don't feel themselves to be an animal or nonhuman to great extent that I do. But I'm okay with that, because for the first time in my life I feel sure and comfortable with my identity.

As far as knowing whether you are a therian or not, I can't do much to help. The one thing you should keep in mind is that there are tons of reasons someone can be a therian. There's not one exact experience that defines it. My advice is to stop thinking about having to be exact. Find whatever feels best or the most comfortable to you.

Every single experience commonly held by therians isn't a requirement you have to meet. But at the same time, having any one of these experiences is enough to call yourself a therian if that feels right. There's no "rule book" on what you need to be a therian. Believing some part of you, in some way, is an animal, is all there is to it. This belief can come from anything, even if it's considered "unusual" in the community.

[diminuel]

Thoughts on your thing with Crocodile not experiencing anxiety or rather comments? I don't know!

Anyway. In being trans you experience, typically, gender dysphoria and gender euphoria. Some trans ppl don't experience heavy dysphoria or experience it only about certain things. Like for a while I got weirdly dysphoric about my nail shape, but I was fine wearing skirts and makeup and not binding. But. Euphoria! It's a thing you experience in being trans. I guess what I mean.

For me, I always had an off feeling, but not much dysphoria. When I was recognized by he/him and male, though, I felt this incredible "high," I guess. As you said, Crocodile doesn't much experience dysphoria, but, I infer, he does feel euphoria. Thus, if what you were asking when you asked for thoughts was, is this how this works/is this somewhat accurate. The answer is that it is an accurate rep for sone trans people! I dont tend to see this way of being trans a lot in media. Anyway, i know you asked for thoughts, and I just really like how you've gone about showing Crocodile so far! And, it's rep i dont see of myself often. :D And sorry if this was a bit long.😭 I'm just excited to see my kinda of tranness being represented cause in media it's largely absolute dysphoria and self-hatred. Anyway, thank you, and even if/when you stop drawing this series or branch out, keep up the awesome work! I love your art a lot. You've got me seriously considering starting supernatural -3-

Thank you for your input! ♥♥

As you said, I think there are many different stories you can tell about trans characters and maybe the way I'm doing Crocodile isn't great for everyone, but if it resonates with some people that makes me happy~

I also just really like doing explorations of concepts of being a woman/ mother in particular worlds, how those ideas can or must be rejected, when there's space to embrace them, etc etc. I think an exploration of Crocodile where the change to male wasn't motivated entirely because of gender identity, but other things, such as the discomfort and danger of being a woman out on the sea as compared to the danger of being a man out on the sea etc etc, is also interesting. Though I don't know if that would still be a trans!Crocodile exploration and not rather just a female!Crocodile one?

P.S Yes, watch Supernatural, I can only recommend it! It's of course an entirely different genre, but it's really interesting. It was the first TV show I really watched and got into fandom for that wasn't anime >w<

And after One Piece with its over 1000 chapters and episodes, you are well equipped to get through 15 seasons of Supernatural ;D

[sillystringsimpsons]

THE D'AMICO CRIME FAMILY RELATIONSHIP MAP.

Content warnings: brief mention of sexual abuse, cartoon imagery of blood, cigars, cigarettes, discussion of struggling to transition, discussion of physical trauma. This AU is centred around a criminal organisation and by default involves mature themes.

Over hours, through a painstaking design process, I created an illustrated map detailing the relationships between frontal characters in my Simpsons alternate universe, The Good Ones. A lot of love and effort has been put into this, so I hope you guys like it! If there are any characters you'd like to see drawn, just let me know.

More info and close ups of icons beneath cut!

I know I always say this, but interactions, especially questions would mean SOSOSOSOSOSOSO much to me, as I've put so much thought into this and would LOVE to yap to interested people about it. I know art is done for oneself, but it feels really good to share my creations and hyperfixations with the Simpsons community :)

For every character, I drew a little icon and wrote a line of dialogue, in order to give some inside into their personality and traits in a concise way. A few further explanations and elaborations are given below!

Valentina 'Tits' Albertini Her icon is a visual pun, featuring two Great Tits drawn in the colours of the transgender flag.

Aside from Memphis, Valentina is the only other explicitly genderqueer character in the AU's focus (Lucy-Mae is heavily implied to fall under the nonbinary umbrella, but she never personally feels the need to explore it further, and is happy with identifying as female). Her former nickname was a play on how ballsy of a person she is within the mafia - though Cora is a wildcard, she makes very rash decisions: Valentina is both calculated and bold, and her current nickname is a crude (fittingly), but well-spirited adaptation introduced by Memphis. After coming out, she experiences backlash from Tony, who is concerned her late transition will impact the image of the mob. Memphis, being a trans man, asks him why Valentina is any different from himself, and in the heat of the moment, Tony exclaims that half the people in their own family have no idea that he's transgender, which leads to some tension between the two. Tits' main character arc revolves around her exploration of gender and gender expression, and the character that plays the biggest role in it is Tony's son, Michele (purposefully drawing parallels between Tony and Memphis' own relationship, and showing social change between generations).

Michele 'Softfoot Mikey' D'Amico His icon is a nod to his (in this AU) love of ballet, and how he uses it to his advantage in his role as an underboss.

Michele is a simple evolution on Tony's canon son, Michael D'Amico. In this AU, he's been aged up to 23, and instead of having an unconventional love for cooking, has an unconventional love for ballet dance. Most all of his other traits have been kept the same, however, aside from the obvious fact that he's more rational and mature than his in-canon counterpart. He's straight, but is portrayed as very effeminate - and comfortably so. Mikey really just is a girlboss who never fails to (sometimes literally) slay.

Cora 'Connie the Howler' Mezzasalma Her icon plays on her nickname, portraying a dog with some of her key characteristics, such as a matching necklace given to her by her adoptive brother, as well as a splatter of blood - presumably from one of her usual 'errors'. Her nickname refers to the colloquial term howler, meaning a laughable mistake.

Frankie's awkward adoptive sister of Greek origin, Cora was initially made with the sole purpose of providing a dynamic for Frankie, outside of his relationship with Johnny (which is still the primary relationship explored), but she really grew as a character. Initially I made the name 'Connie the Howler' on the fly as a sort of female version of 'Frankie the Squealer', but I ended up actually putting the effort in to rationalise it and bring it into her character. The result was an awesome little dynamic between two characters who were equally stupid, but in very different ways. She may be responsible for a number of incorrect hits, as well as a good few accidental deaths and injuries, but at the end of the day, she's a silly girl at heart who really synergises with her brother's anxious energy.

Maximus 'Legs' Legman & Luis 'Louie' Walters Both of their icons refer to an car accident the both of them got into, wherein Legs, ironically, suffered severe damage to his legs (resulting in the amputation of his left one), and Louie underwent significant cranial trauma.

The two do admittedly have a closer relationship because of the shared experience, though they both experience significant impacts. Notably, Louie develops Broca's aphasia (yes, I know the injury is on the wrong side, that's my bad), a form of non-fluent aphasia where one's quality of speech and grammatical structure is significantly diminished - even though the words are in your head, you cannot get them out, usually due to damage to the area of the brain responsible for the production of speech. Louie really struggles in the aftermath, and has a difficult time adapting to his disability. Thankfully, he's got his friend there to help him through it.

[moxpunk]

Moxie's Big-Ass Retrospective on Games She Played This Year

There's going to be a lot of games under the break, and I'm going full-hog on spoilers. Honestly, I'm going stream-of-consciousness with these, so there's not going to be a clear point made for some of them. Just how I remember them and how I feel now looking back.

Final Fantasy XIV This is my current MMO of choice, and it's been this massive part of how I spent my time this year. The patches and content continue to be great, even if I breeze through it all in a few days after the patch when plugins/mods are back up. I've definitely noticed a dip in my interest lately. I think it's because we've hit a good stopping-point for the plot and junk, so most of us are just waiting until the pre-patch of the new expansion next year. RP continues to get fucking worse and worse for someone that plays a lalafell, since the community at-large (especially the modding community) is actively hostile towards lalafells and their players. Having to check every single venue to see if my middle-aged potato is going to be treated like a child by the hosts gets exhausting after the umpteenth time. Still love the game and I poke at it on a regular basis.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom One of my favorite games I've played this year, but also one of the most frustrating in hindsight. There was a ton of lost opportunity in multiple aspects in this game, and it's sorta the thing I keep coming back to in my head. I loved the exploration and fucking around with physics and just getting to play around in Hyrule. It's a magical experience that I think transcends the fact that 2/3rds of the map is essentially re-used. The Underground was a missed opportunity to shove lore of ancient civilizations in there, Ganondorf was a missed opportunity to finally depict him as a tragic hero with Hyrule being the villains for once, and no plans for DLC or even a Hero Mode is a massive miss for me wanting to return to the world.

Baldur's Gate 3 Hands-down my favorite game of the year by a massive margin, but like TOTK, an immensely frustrating experience. The game is half-cooked in so many areas, and the bugs are plentiful to the extent that they can't really be ignored. The pathing system continues to be the Larian Special of being jank as all hell, with my characters running in the opposite direction of the path it lays out for them. I played this one on stream, and I cannot remember a single stream where I didn't have at least a handful of frustrations with the combat system. Hell, I had to completely restart my file in the middle of Act 2 because Karlach's romance bugged out. I continue to be very upset and frustrated at how goblins are treated, doubly so since in order to pursue the Good Route with Halsin, you have to attack fucking children. I don't care if they're goblins, they're kids. Also very disappointing we don't get a single short-race origin character, meanwhile half of the cast is some form of elf. At least it's nice letting me be full-on cock-out trans. Despite that, the writing and characterizations in this game are unparalleled. It's immensely refreshing to finally have a RPG where you fucking roleplay, after years of it being dialogue that doesn't matter in the slightest other than "points towards the good/evil ending". I love the Brain Slug Squad immensely. This game is probably going to become part of my "play this every year" list because there's just so many different ways to play through this game.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Been waiting for this game (or a game like it) for fuckin' years, and it's everything I wanted and expected. I know a lot of people went into the game expecting some massive thing that lasted hours and hours, but my memories of JSR/JSRF was a game that I could reasonably beat in an afternoon or two because I just get into the flow and know what I'm doing. Cyberfunk is the purest successor to JSF that I can thing of where it just adds to the fun formula of the past. Incredible game, love seeing the mods coming out for it, hope we get another game in the universe since Team Reptile said they aren't doing DLC.

Pizza Tower Love this game, adore the movement and the music, absolutely fell off at about the halfway mark. I think it's because a lot of stuff was coming out at the time, and I just kinda played those instead. One of these days, I'll beat it and be very satisfied, but for now my gremlin-brain that demands collecting every single collectable and getting at least an A-rank on every stage gets exhausted just thinking about it.

Elden Ring Opened the game up after upgrading to a new PC, marveled that I could run it on Ultra with the game keeping a smooth framerate, killed a few enemies, remembered about the fucking giant ants in this game and how there are zero mods to remove/change them, and then turned the game off and uninstalled. Begging someone to make a mod that gets rid of the fucking ants. Please. I've already gotten every trophy in the game last year, so any incentive I have to return is predicated on that.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty So, I'm going to give my thoughts about the base game and the DLC, since I played both. The base game continues to be this utter fascination to me where my brain adores just existing in the cyberhell future of nonstop advertising (if I have to hear YO YO YO MY CHEWERS SHROOMERS AND FUMERS! one more time I'm going to fucking strangle someone to death) and ultraviolence. The game continues to ride that weird line of "might as well do every side-quest because they're quick enough to get to and there's hardly any compared to Witcher 3" and "oh my god I do not care about these fucking sidequests other than I have gremlin-brain". Doing anything with sniper rifles or heavy machine guns is an exercise in frustration thanks to there being zero silenced sniper rifle until late-game and there being no unique HMGs.The DLC is... fine. It's fun antagonizing Idris Alba, it's not fun that the DLC is based around a stealth build, it's extremely not fun that the changed ending is deeply unsatisfying from a narrative standpoint.

Pseudoregalia An adorable little game that I enjoyed quite a bit for the very short time I got to fool around with it. Love the movement, love the style of the graphics, love the little pieces of story. Game doesn't get enough love, so here's me giving it some more.

Potionomics I fucking adore this game. I think what helped endear me was getting to do all the voices on-stream, but who cares this is my retrospective and I get to be biased. Loved the romances and characters in there. I absolutely headcanon Xid as being trans, Roxanne turns me into a babbling idiot, and I relate to Luna so hard it almost hurts. I enjoy that characters remain your friend if you already picked a partner, and you have to have a conversation about "hey, you were kinda flirty for a while and I feel a little weird about that now" for each of them. Breaking the economy by the third competition was immensely satisfying.

Paradise Killer I slammed through this game over the course of a single sleepless night thanks to Super Depression. Love the character designs and how bold they are, love the lore behind the world, got kinda sick of it taking so long to travel from place to place, gremlin-brain refused to let me part with the game until I collected everything. Hope to see a prequel/sequel of some sort, because Lady Love Dies is such an interesting character and I liked the bugfuck-weird world.

Peglin It's Peggle, you're a goblin, you get funky ball powerups, adore playing this game on my phone in short bursts. Not much more to say, it's my potato-chip game.

Rimworld Friend gifted this to me and I got horribly obsessed for like a week. It's a lot easier to grok than Dwarf Fortress thanks to the UI and information being easier to comprehend. I never know how to do the crazy shit in these games, I usually peak at having a little self-sustaining settlement with like 4 characters that live their little lives until a plague or bandit raid sweep through and kill everyone.

Halo: Master Chief Collection Another series of games I got obsessed with and pounded out before dropping it. Halo 1 is like twice as long as I remember, Halo 2's remastered cutscenes are fucking gorgeous and it continues to be my favorite out of the series, Halo 3 I'm lukewarm on it's whatever, Halo Reach is... eh I don't care, ODST I petered out of thanks to playing it with an ex that does not understand videogames, Halo 4 is a slog. Didn't do any multiplayer.

Helltaker Finally played it, beat it in like 2 hours, thought the puzzles were fun and the art continues to rattle around in my noggin.

A Hat In Time Another game that I finally beat after owning it for like the better part of a decade. Cute little game, I don't have a clue what any of the updates and junk do these days. The big mountain level is a fucking nightmare to navigate and explore and that's why I fell off last time.

Puzzle Agent Played this one on-stream because I'm Minnesotan as all fuck and I enjoy Professor Layton puzzles. It's just as good as I remember, even if it's incredibly short.

Kingsway Love the premise, adore that it takes me back to the Windows XP era of using my parents' computer. I had like one good run that died in the middle of things, and I never really went back. I should do this game again at some point.

Loop Hero Another procedural game where progress is usually bottlenecked by gathering base resources in each run so you have a fighting chance. All my runs sorta ended up the same by a certain point and I wasn't really having much fun anymore.

Lethal Company Game scares the absolute shit out of me, I cannot play this game for extended periods because I get heartburn from fear. Excellent experience with friends.

Super Mario RPG I didn't have a SNES growing up, so I never got a chance to play the original. So far, I've been greatly enjoying the remake! I don't have much to say because I've only played like four hours of it on stream.

Katamari Reroll Just beat this game again on stream last week. Extremely fun, extremely short, Lonely Rolling Star continues to make me get emotional and cry, my memories get mixed-up with We ♥️ Katamari when it comes to the final sequence of levels.

World of Warcraft I made the return, and holy shit have things changed in-game. The UI actually looks like it's part of a cohesive artstyle, catching up with the story and questlines after bouncing in the middle of Shadowlands is honestly kind of exhausting, and the RP community is still splintered and fractured between Retail and Epsilon. Controller-support has been my biggest gripe since XIV's is fucking stellar and I do not have the wrists/hands for putting my abilities on the keyboard anymore, I either have to use my janked-out mouse buttons or a controller using ConsolePort which is... serviceable but nowhere near good. Uh, I don't particularly care for the dragon-stuff in WoW's lore, and I still haven't done a single dungeon since I play Brewmaster and I'm so out of whack with WoW tanking that I just don't bother. I'm usually doing RP on my endless ranks of characters if I'm not playing with my girlfriend. Season of Discovery has been a fun thing to do with my friend and our guild, it's sorta what I wanted out of Classic when they announced it. The "No Changes" thing was stupid because we'll never get back the lack of information and endless time we had back then, so I'm very happy to have World Of Warcraft Chopped And Screwed Edition. As much as I still have massive, major gripes with Blizzard and ABK in general... Azeroth is still home for me. It's been important to me as a person. Wouldn't have realized I was trans or poly without it.

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT My thinks and feelings on all the games I played this year in 2023. I guess to sum up the year in general? It's been a real shit year for me. Went through like three big breakups, my art output's been dogshit in quantity thanks to mental-health issues, and for the first half of the year people just sorta generally treated me poorly which exaserbated a lot of problems. I'm recovering, but I've noticed it's been a lot slower than it has been in the past. Games are a huge hobby of mine, so I'm glad I've gotten to play some bangers this year. Being more active on Tumblr's been good for my mental health, since I finally feel like I've got a community again after not really feeling like I've had one in forever. Love you guys, stay weird. 💖💖💖

Sorry not sorry for this being so long.

[lurkingshan]

Only Friends and Engaging with Queer Male Media as a Cishet Woman

I’ve had some good conversations this week with friends as we’ve been unpacking our early reactions to Only Friends, which has only just begun getting into the messy dynamics we know the show is going to explore. One of the things that has come up in conversation is our different reactions to the scene between Boston and Top in the shower stall, and how we each read that in terms of consent, sexual coercion, and what it says about each of the characters. Some of us were relatively unfazed by the scene, finding it to be a fairly realistic depiction of a pushy aggressor and his conquest who is not that into him, but also not really opposed to getting sex anywhere and any way he can. Some were more uncomfortable, recognizing behaviors we might call assault in other contexts and wondering whether we should be condemning the character or the scene for the behavior depicted.

For me, this discussion brought up a lot of my previous fandom experiences, taking me all the way back to ye olden days when Queer as Folk (US) was airing and the majority cishet woman fandom spaces were scandalized, scandalized I tell you, by some of the aspects of gay male culture it depicted. It was not the first or the last show to do so, but it stands out in my mind as an important cultural moment at the turn of century as I was coming of age, when the internet was booming and the proliferation of online fandom spaces was rapidly accelerating. Because QaF did it all—casual sex, cruising, group sex, very public acts of indecency, aggressive boundary pushing and peacocking, open and polyamorous relationships, cheating and betrayal, age gaps—and it depicted it all quite explicitly, which made a lot of people uncomfortable. Especially women who were used to thinking about sex and relationships through two primary, and heavily socialized, lenses:

heteronormative romance, and

heterosexual rape culture.

Let’s take a moment to unpack those terms. Heteronormative romance is a big, broad term that I’m using as a kind of container for a lot of things, including patriarchal structures, misogyny, rigid gender roles, purity myths and fetishization of virginity, courtship rituals, promiscuity and respectability politics, the madonna/whore complex, sex as an act primarily for breeding and procreation, expectations of sublimating sexual desire in service of caretaking for others, and so on. Basically, all the bullshit cis women get jammed into our heads from birth that gives us so many hang ups about sex and love. With heterosexual rape culture, I am referring to the undeniable culture of sexual violence women also endure in a majority heterosexual society, in which we are in constant danger of having our boundaries transgressed, being physically and psychologically hurt, and then being told it doesn’t matter because our personhood has always been in question and never mattered as much as any one man’s power or pleasure. I’m not going to drop a bunch of citations for the above because this is tumblr and I have escaped the icy grip of graduate school, but if any of these ideas are unfamiliar to you, google is your pal (and please read about intersectionality as it relates to these concepts while you’re at it, because there are layers of identity that make these dangers worse for some, like our trans and BIPOC sisters, and all of this is undergirded, as ever, by white supremacy).

So, yes, engaging with media about sex is fraught for women, especially when that media does not conform to our heteronormative ideas of morality that have been shaped by all of the above, and particularly when we as individuals have not done the work to unpack and interrogate our socialized beliefs, which is often the case for cishet women especially. Many of us instinctively cringe away from unromantic depictions of sex. Many of us can’t stand cheating and betrayal in our love stories. Many of us shy away from media that depicts the unfortunate reality of grey and dubious consent. All of that is valid, to an extent, and rooted in the way we have been taught to think about this stuff from birth, and the ways we’ve had to adapt to survive. 

But, here’s the thing, girlies: most of those socialized hang ups I just talked about? Do not apply to a story by, for, and about queer men. 

Before you start yelling, here is your disclaimer: of course patriarchy and misogyny also hurt men. Of course rape culture also exists in queer communities, and of course some queer people engage in heterosexual sex, so these are not mutually exclusive categories of people. And, importantly, cishet women are not the only ones who struggle with these tensions—just the ones who are most relevant to this particular post. 

So, after that long and winding road, back to the point: this debate about the bathroom scene in Only Friends is the same shit that’s been debated in majority female fandoms around depictions of queer male sex since time immemorial. And whatever your personal feelings are on that scene, or the no doubt numerous other depictions of questionable romantic and sexual etiquette and dubious consent coming our way in this show, what it boils down to is this: can a majority cis woman fandom step outside of our own conception of sexual morality to engage with this show not with judgment, but with curiosity about what sex and relationships look like for queer men? This show has an entirely queer male writing and directing team. It is made with love by people of the community, for the community. They know what they’re about, they have resumes demonstrating they are damn good storytellers who understand safe sex, consent, sexual health, and sex work, and they are here to tell us a story grounded in their reality. BL has been moving in fits and starts toward depictions of sex that are more honest about queer male experiences, and Only Friends, spearheaded by the Jojo Tichakorn Phukhaotong (who demonstrated quite ably that he has a firm grasp on consent, sexual assault, and the damage that dubious consent can cause in The Warp Effect), is the next step in that evolution. The key point is that sexual activity simply does not mean the same thing or carry the same associations and hang ups for queer men as it does for cis women. With that in mind, can we try our best to process and critique this story on their terms, instead of our own?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Only Friends is not going to be a good time for people who are looking for romantic depictions of relationships and sex or invested in identifying heroes and villains amongst this cast of characters. This show is about deeply flawed people hurting each other, rooted in the lived experience of the Thai queer male community—and those of us who do not share all of those lived experiences may not understand the nuances of every single thing that is happening. We can be sure that the characters will all be wrong sometimes and they will all do things we think are stupid or reckless or unkind. Does that mean we can’t have empathy for them? Do they have to act in a way we think is morally “correct” in order to love them? You don’t have to be comfortable with the things these characters do, and it’s certainly valid to point out when you think lines have been crossed. But attempting to sort them into “good” and “bad” camps is pointless, and moralistic judgment of their behavior is out of place, particularly when it comes from a place of trying to force them into our own irrelevant frameworks for sexual politics. 

And with all that said, I am passing the baton over to my dear friend @waitmyturtles, because there’s an entire aspect of the intersectional cultures at play here that I have barely touched on—Only Friends as an Asian queer story that is building from a specific lineage of Thai queer media. I’m gonna let her take the mic for that part, and say thanks to her, @bengiyo, @neuroticbookworm and @wen-kexing-apologist for reading this over and helping me think through what I wanted to say here, and shoutout to @williamrikers whose post I also linked to above. 

[l0veraven]

why the fuck would you reclaim the violently transphobic webcomic instead of writing your own thing. awful. are you tme? don’t think i’ve ever met a tma leasebound enjoyer. funny.

I'm trans-masc (this is the first time I've seen the term TME so that was pretty cool to see), but there's more to it than just reclaiming the story.

I 100% disavow the author, Rusty, and her beliefs that she shoehorns into her story. Many of her characters are bland and one-note, and (even though the original story is wildly transphobic), it's turning the transphobia on its head and taking a critical look at transphobia while also focusing on the actual lesbian love story.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it in the Author's Notes from the top of my head, but the love story is heavily overshadowed by the story being a soapbox and shouting, "trans women are evil and ugly and [insert more insults here]." In my fic, I'm still bringing topics of gender into it, but in a way that, again, takes a deeper look and is an integral part of how the characters interact with each other.

We also need to talk about how allergic Rusty is to depicting men. That's actually another major issue I have. The flavor of terf/radfem beliefs that Rusty upholds is genuine misandry (prejudice/discrimination against men). I don't use misandry lightly and don't mention it much in conversation.

Chapter 12 actually highlights this point.

(Spoilers for people that haven't read the chapter)

Shez's backstory is explored and details how her trauma with her mother being in abusive relationships with men had negatively impacted everyone involved (the mother, siblings, and herself). The character being averse to men and having trauma is completely valid and I would never critique someone having PTSD. I, myself, have PTSD from abusive relationships (familial and otherwise) throughout my entire life, so this isn't something foreign to me, but everyone does experience trauma differently.

I bring up Shez's backstory because even though it's a perfect way to explain why she hates men, it perpetuates the idea that men are inherently violent, predatory, and abusive. This isn't helped by how Meriam, the mother, is genuinely heterophobic and refuses to acknowledge that therapy would be beneficial for her.

(Here are the heterophobic panels in question)

I understand where Meriam is coming from, even though I don't have the same trauma as her. It's understandable that she wouldn't want a man in her house. I see why she's avoidant of meeting Rissa's boyfriend. It's normal to avoid triggers.

What isn't normal is actively avoiding seeking help to work through trauma. This isn't to say she should invite men to her house and "get over it". It's that she needs to learn that not every man is out to hurt every woman they encounter. I had to get therapy myself in the past and had to learn that not every romantic partner will manipulate me, but need to establish boundaries to ideally avoid being in a situation like that again.

To point out the heterophobic lines (which is wild because this is the first time I've seen actual heterophobia in any piece of media)"

Rissa: "[...] SHANEZY doesn't NEED to date women. [... Your ex-husband] was ONE man, mum. ONE. [...] He treats me like a QUEEN. You'd know that if you just gave him a CHANCE!"

Meriam: "One chance is too many. Nice men are the best liars."

This is where Meriam is unable to see the nuances of human interaction. People with enough charisma, period, are the best liars. Could be Ted Bundy, could be your mother-in-law. Anyone and everyone is capable of lying and tearing a person down. Toxic lesbian relationships can and do exist. You don't avoid liars just by attracted to the same gender or only interacting with the same gender.

Rissa: "And WOMEN never lie?!? They're just perfect angels who can do no wrong?!"

Meriam: "Women cannot make you pregnant."

We'll look past the women being able to impregnate (trans women do exist, but that's besides the point). Rissa is making a very valid point. Anyone is capable of lying and you can't avoid toxicity by only avoiding one group of people. Liars exist in a variety of spaces and have a variety of identities. Men are not the only ones capable of bad behaviors.

Rissa: "[...] So my options are: be a fucking lesbian or die alone? Great!"

Meriam: "Rissa... I am not saying this."

But she is. To a degree. I'm assuming that Meriam would be fine if Rissa abstained from relationships entirely (but we can't forget that terfs tend to not acknowledge asexual and aromantic identities), as long as she wasn't with a man. In theory, assuming that Rissa is straight, she would unfortunately be pressured by her mother to remain single.

THE BIGGEST POINT HIGHLIGHTING THE HETEROPHOBIA HOWEVER:

Rissa: "What if we get married, hmm? You just won't come to the wedding? You won't meet his family? Nothing?!"

Meriam: "I cannot support this, but I cannot stop you either."

Rissa: "Well, I guess you'll just never see me after that then!"

Meriam: "You will always have a home here..."

THIS is the problem. Instead of trusting her daughter to ensure her own safety and establish hard boundaries in her relationship with someone she hasn't even met yet, she just doesn't trust men. Period. This dialogue is something that comes straight out of a conflict with a homophobic parent. Remember the lines, "I cannot support this, but I cannot stop you either," and, "You will always have a home here." This reeks of "I don't support your lifestyle, but I still love you and you're always welcome here. Just not your partner."

Why go on about heterophobia?

For one, it demonstrates how hating men is acceptable in the comic, because with how the conversation is treated within the comic, Rissa is the irrational one for not siding with her mother. The other aspect is that it perpetuates "man violent," which isn't really beneficial to anyone. It fails to understand the nuances of people as a whole.

We also can't forget the gay couple with a gender nonconforming son that only appeared for a split second and never returned. Again, Rusty is allergic to men. I actually hate how her friend rags on her "inability to draw men". I think it's untrue, and frankly, I like some aspects of Rusty's art style. However, Rusty herself has mentioned that she refuses to depict men in her comic (unless they're characters like Trinity AKA "Madame President" as shown in Chapter 13).

THE POINT IS:

Why not take a shitty piece of media and re-write it to make it better? It's kinda like being mad at all the anime abridged series out there because the original media is shitty in one way or another. Besides, the story itself has SO MUCH POTENTIAL, but it's completely ruined by the transphobia and focusing on that aspect rather than developing the relationship between Jaden and Riley.

This comic has been going on for 5 7 years and we got the backstory of a side character before getting a look at Riley's backstory. Focus on the main characters please. We haven't even gotten to the inevitable break-up between Riley and Blaire yet.

Who knows, maybe one day I can publish this fic as its own book like with 50 Shades of Grey 🙈