#mono-normativity

[polyamzeal]

do u have any advice on how to deal with and work through internalised monogamy-standards and like related jealousy and selfesteem issues? i also take recs for literature or something if it's too much.

thanks, i appreciate ya <3

I did a small polyam book recommendation list recently.

Unlearning internalized behaviors and beliefs is always hard and never happens overnight. It takes time and even long after you will slip up from time to time. Have patience and be gentle with yourself.

I honestly don't know if it works for everyone so take with a lot of salt. But to me a lot of mono-normativity and jealousy stems from toxic competition. The inverse of this is constructive cooperation. For example if a partner shows an interest in someone else you might feel like that person will 'steal' away your partner but instead try thinking about how that person might be a fun person to work together with to plan a gift for your partner. Or even from a more parallel sense maybe that person would be interested in going with your partner to that event that you really didn't want to go anyways. Look for ways to realize that a potential "enemy" could actually be a helpful ally that you can get along with.

[trasho-pando2011]

I feel like I'm doing way too many whiteboards but I'm just making a lot cuz some asshole keeps ruining them

anyway, I made a new whiteboard, dm me if u wanna join

[artemisaed]

[lovethisfatcryptid]

I love you polyamory. I love you relationship anarchy. I love you queer platonic relationships. I love you relationships that can't be defined by any known relationship structure. I love you relationships outside of hetero-mono-normativity.

[not-terezi-pyrope]

Progressives when people around them are complying with monogamous romantic norms: "All bodies are beautiful ☺️ Nobody should be discriminated against for who or how they love ☺️ Rights for minorities ☺️ Fat liberation ☺️"

Progressives (and everyone else) when they're reminded polyamorous people exist: "Fatty! Smelly stinky fatty! Weird! Weird clothes! Bad makeup! Board games (nerd!). You're ugly. You're ugly and nobody normal would love you which is why I don't have to care that you're getting more love and affection than me. Did I mention that you're fat? Also you're probably a liberal"

Like, we get it, you're insecure, but that doesn't actually mean you're allowed to insult and stigmatise people (and uncritically invoke other bigotries!) to feel better just because you think your mono friends will let you get away with it. The leftism really does leave people's bodies I swear.

This is the number one way I hear monogamous people talk about polyamory, even in leftist and queer spaces. Can assure you that there are multiple posts to this affect being gleefully passed around lgbtq tumblr circles right now.

[torimidori2-blog]

I'm poly, and I keep getting people who don't understand what the difference between polyamory, open relationships, and cheating, so let this be an educational moment for all the mono people out there.

Polyamorous is when someone is attracted to or in a relationship with more than one person at the same time. This is all with consent from everyone involved. A group of poly people who are dating are called a polycule. Just like regular monogamous relationships, poly relationships can consist of romantic, platonic, sensual, and sexual attraction, and can even be done with people who are aspec (on the ace spectrum).

An open relationship is when someone is attracted to more than one person, but the person who you're dating isn't attracted to the people you date. For example: if the relationship started of monogamous, and you decide you want to open the relationship in order to cater to a specific need that your current partner can't provide, that means you and your partner can see other people outside of your relationship with consent from your partner. Just like poly people, this can also be done between people who are aspec and you could have different reasons for wanting another separate relationship, whether you need a sensual, sexual, romantic, or platonic/queer platonic relationship. In my opinion, I think open relationships should be a last resort after communicating with your partner enough to where you both realize that your relationship needs aren't being met, but you still care enough about each other to still want to be together.

Cheating is when someone in a committed relationship sees other people without consent from their significant other(s). The reason why cheating is bad, is not because they're dating someone else, it's because you trusted them to not break the boundaries of the relationship by seeing other people, and they did anyway.

Even if you're in a poly relationship, you can cheat because if you didn't trust your partners enough to tell them that you're interested in seeing someone else and it breaks their boundaries and makes them feel violated and uncomfortable, that's cheating. It's also a danger to the polycule because they don't know the person you brought in and they weren't aware of you bringing them in. Why would you not tell your cule who you're dating when they're usually comfortable with letting more people in? For all we know, they could hurt the cule, or hurt you, or they could be hiding something themselves.

Someone who tells you that their actually poly after they got caught cheating is a blazing red flag. Cances are, they're just trying to find a valid excuse to cheat and get away with it. Someone who tells you that they want to open a relationship before sorting out the issues in their current relationship is a blazing red flag. Especially if you have a solution to the problems that you're facing, and it could've been solved through negotiating with your partner.

To be honest, as a poly person, I don't understand why cheating is a thing. For one, it could be because being monogamous is the societal norm, and seeing other people is a means of trying to secretly bypass that norm, but I don't think thats the case seeing that there is a whole cheating culture that proudly says that they like to cheat and gloat about how many people they play on a constant basis. It could be the fact that people just think that emotions are a game to be played with, or it could be some sort of insecurity that they have with the relationship they started before they decided to cheat. But fr, can someone tell me the reason why people cheat? I don't understand, and I need a real valid answer. Not some "They were boring and I don't like them anymore." because you can either do one of two things there, break up with them, or talk to them about how you feel and tell them what you want from them moving forward.

[starscatteredsky]

Fallen angelkin tips please?

tips for a fallen angel

pt: tips for a fallen angel end pt

wear a blanket or towel over your shoulders to feel like your wings

do dark, demonic, broken, or angelic makeup looks

dress in silvers and blacks, or other colours that reminds you of your angelself

learn about angel numbers, and if any reflect yourself

if you have/had an angelic symbol, maybe practice drawing it inverted/upside down/ backwards, or another way that reflects your fall

allow yourself to rebel against rules or societal norms you deem unjust

perhaps make a halo as gear! you could paint it black, crack it, or otherwise augment it to reflect your fall

use dark/morbid/‘gothic’/angelic/etc themed neopronouns!

hope these help!! - mono

[alicepooryorick]

So just pondering here but I feel like a big reason why gen Z at large has phrases like "ok Boomer" and use "millenial" as an insult is because, as a hyper fragmented generation, we don't have an identity beyond our generation. Our generation had the perfect social queues to guide us to be permanently online, leading to us finding those we are the MOST alike, leading us to mostly only talk to those who are exactly like us. This, therefore of course, led to the death of mono culture. There is no central cultural icon the vast majority of gen Z is into the same way millenials had Harry Potter and Gen X had friends or Micheal Jackson. All we really have is the upbringing within these cultural norms we all faced. That post 9/11 surveillance spike, that early day internet access that was right as it became useable but before it was truely enforced. The only thing I share with my fellow generation is just that, our socialization. So we cling to that. In an age of hyper individualization, all we have to link us together is our generation's name. That is our tribe. That is our one sense of belonging, especially for white generation Z whom don't even really have a culture to fall back on.

[realitys-ex]

On Dwarf Gender in Discworld

So, Dwarfish gender stuff is clearly something that PTerry decided to add in later [I can't recall the first time it came up in any form, but I am 90% sure it was with Littlebottom], seeing as in earlier books he does use 'she' when Carrot is sending letters home, and he differentiates between Mom and Dad, which one can assume wouldn't happen in the mono-gender Dwarf world (admittedly it could happen, but I think with an ex-nihlo construction it wouldn't).

Now I have seen people attempt to explain Carrot's letters, but it always felt a tad flat to me.

Tbh, there is a lot of world building that happens in the Early Discworld books that gets retconned to one degree or another in later ones (the behavior of trolls changes, the set up of the university with its schools of magic disappears, the Dungeon of Dimensions becomes a non-factor, Hell with its Devils doesn't even get a nod after Eric, etc.).

This is not really a complaint, the books grew, as did PTerry's writing skill and ideas. This is just an observation.

So some of his ideas weren't fully thought out or explored.

And I really feel like Dwarf Gender is one of them.

So we have established that Dwarfs have a single Gender both Linguistically and Culturally/sociologically. They recognize another sex, obviously, but as something private that effects nothing outside of the bedroom, and should not be spoken about.

And that Gender is Dwarf-Man (which is, btw something that somewhat bothered me. shouldn't it just be dwarf? If they had an issue with knowing that someone was a woman, wouldn't that mean they have equal issue knowing that someone was a man? For a simple purpose of 'if person A tells me they are a man which is socially acceptable to do, but person B says nothing, I can infer that they are not man.'? Like, I understand the point that Pratchett was making would not have been served that way, but still).

But anyway, Littlebottom adopts some human-female gender norms, and what happens in the books happens.

But well, aside from the slight annoyance of Human Gender Norms being the Gender Norms, the concept of possible impact to Dwarf Society is never explored!

For example, accepting everything above, Dwarf society is Sexism (genderism?) free, due to the fact that outside the bedroom, there is no Sex. You can't bar women from jobs etc. if there are no women.

But now there might be women. Will human style sexism enter Dwarf culture? Will Dwarfs be barred from being Low King or Grag?

What about linguistics? Obviously Dwarvish would have no female pronoun, so would they add one? Is Dwarvish a gendered language that they need to create a full new set of styles for?

I know that none of these things would be the focus of a book, but I would have loved it if it got a bit of a spotlight.

[freckliedan]

we live in a mono-normative society. polynormativity does not and can not exist. this is a very personal subject and i will not answer insensitive asks about it.

[amadholes-lostre]

Another Wednesday/Wenclair idea because I hate myself- The 5th Ostrace

My brain keeps spewing ideas but refuses to let me write a story lol. The idea is that there is a new Ostrace (using my BNHA au term) category to be generalized.

And that being aliens.

It kinda make sense: nonhumans that can't exactly accustom to norm society, so they will fit into Ostrace society (there're many reason why, especially one big reason).

The idea that multiple alien states contacted humanity before the main series so that the characters could be used to them. The alien states, other than what our countries do for diplomacy like cultural centers and participating in local events, also do student exchange program, including sending some to Nevermore.

(I already have this idea other with other franchises, using my original alien races in doing so, like Harry Potter (got this fic idea since 2013) and The Prom.)

Being nonhumans (some don't even look remotely as one), it will be difficult for the exchange students to fit in. However, another reason why they will be categorized as the 5th Ostrace- well, other than some being vastly different in appearance (one of the race, Rín [not actually the race name] is just a rubber forehead human with only pointy ears) is due them being considered mono-sex races (a homosexual species if you will).

Unlike humans and vast majority of animals being gonochorism, the alien races are mono-sex (think Asari from Mass Effect, which what inspired me [either positive or negative]), though ironically the majority will be classified as semi-monosex. Because of that, depending on the species and culture, gender is not as rigid compared to humans, especially Western cultures.

I don't really know else to write ther next one (I feel like I need to finish what my last paragraph left out lol) but I want to talk about the three alien races, or more like the three countries. There're three alien countries (two states having multiple different races) that come in contact. I don't actually have proper names for them (except the United Planetary Democracy, but that because they never bother with a singular name like the UAE), I do have their type of governmen. The three are: the United Kingdom (not actually accurate since kingdom is gender-neutral in the language, also ghere is a good reasonwhy it's called that), the UPD, and the Empire (in their defense, it's not the proper terminology [think Japan, though that isn't good either], so they wasn't as prepared for the backlash lol).

Okay, enough of that, time to talk about three alien races/countries:

So, first up is the Rín (singular is Rin), who makes up the UK. The UK is one of the states that made up of multiple races, and that because they all originated from the same planet. Rín isn't even a proper race but actually a genus (think Homo like humans). There's some races that aren't even in the same taxonomic family or class, and you piss off a lot of other people off for it. One of the races who made up like 70-80% are - I calling them Idorín for now (I never properly name almost any this, but I did categorize this mentally). Idorín are the most human-like with only superficial details being pointy ears, more colorful anime-like hairs, and having light-blue blood. Internally, their anatomy is a bit more avian (they're still viviparity). This is due to having airsac along lungs, a bit more lighter bones (through more richer with carbon). The average height is 6'3.5, though this depends on the... subsex(lol)? They're also semi-monosex, one being Ovumsere (they give birth; make up 60%), and Polisere (they... provide gametes?; make up 35%)(there are true mono-sex, though very rare; 5%). Anatomically, they're not very different other than heights (only three inches: Ovumsere av. 6'3 and Polisere av. 6'6), voice (only a bit), and genitals (lol). They're very culture diverse, average lifespan of 160 years (now 350 thanks to gene therapy). Also, there're humans in the UK before even contacting Earth (though their population doesn't even make a percentage).

The second race are So'lenas (ironically the name only name I actually come up a decade before), and another ironic twist runs the UPD. The country that has a very vague name is actually the only one that has one species (lol, lmao even). They're human-like, though not like Idorín. They kind of filled up the Blue-Skinned Soace Babe tropes, though not that much (their nose is actually sensory organ like a whale melon, they actually breathe either through their mouth or a blowhole atop their back). Their skin range either teal, light to dark blue, and purple. Their skin is a bit reptilian, though softer, and resemble more like that over your knuckles. They have freckle-like bioluminescence called 'his'kiri (meaning "star-kiss", another named for So'lena is His'lena, "Star-Person"), crest and tendril-like atop their head, semi-aquatic being (though depends on their culture of how they utilize it) which allows them to hold their breath 10-45 minutes (they look very voluptuous because of this), and give live birth (they do have breasts). They have a paddle-line tail that them swim more effectively and digitigrade legs. They're true mono-sex beings, with an average height of 6'4 and a lifespan of 300 years. Because of this, they have very loose gender roles, viewing it more like how queer women view butch and femme identity. Do of the planet (actually a satellite) they hail from (being very hot and humid), many of their culture clothing have lose clothes and transparent garments; it will be common to see their breasts (some fashion are even similar to ancient Minoan)(it also helps they've petite breasts and is not as sexualized compared to many human cultures).

The third race are Rahros ('hr' pronounce like Spanish J but with more vibration, also the full name is Ahnta'Sarnu'Rahros), and they're the majority of the Empire. Their government is a semi-constitution theocratic monarchy. The Empire and UK have a huge rivalry, almost Cold War political environment (think England-France rivalry). The race is the least human (being bipedal with a slight hunchback and 4 limbs their only resemblance), being archosauroform, though resembling more to crocodilians than to avians Most of their body are either in scute or soft scales. Though they have an upper and lower mouth, they have a pair of mandible that helps them push large food down their mouth. Their tongue is more like butterflys' (proboscis), and they can't move their mouth sideways (many of their cuisine are bite sides). They have tendrils- sometimes referred as dread or braid- growing from their head that resemble hair, shaping either smooth circle or overlapping scale oval, ranging half-an-inch to 1½ inches in thickness, and being made of keratin- it can be trimmed without hurting them (think like horse hoof trimming). They have three digit fingers and two opposing thumb in each hand. Their legs are digitigrade so they prefer to wear sandals and a small, vestigal tail. Their body shape is athletic and lean. The average height is 6'7.5, with ovumsere 6'6, while polisere are 6'9. (I have an idea Rahros character who's 8'4, 500 pound beef cake. Their dorm is in the 1st because they accidentally collapsed through the second floor. Somehow, they got their ass kick by Wednesday, fought and lost to the Hyde, and enjoys fighting Enid werewolf form). Their ovumsere/polisere ratio is similar to Idorín, though they give birth through oviparity: 45 days for the embryonic development and 8 months for incubation. Their scute colors range from light (similar to blond) to dark brown, bluish black (similar to alligators), and light sky blue. Their average lifespan is 146 years, though to 320 after gene therapy.

(Congratulations to the local lesbian, especially to Yoko and Divina.)

(Rín mocked polisere Rahros for having similar genitals to males, and Rahros fucking hate it.)

(One thing I trying to do is make their culture [each species has hundreds of different cultures and ethnicity] seem as different than our own, especially due to their sex and gender. One thing is that they having communal bathing and multiple relative family units living in the same housing [some Idorín/Rín culture/planet/satellite has segregated sex but this is due of excluding males from public space]).

I don't really have a plot, not compare to the Harry Potter one, however I do have some ideas.

My idea is the two children of my two OC have (ironicall, i based them on Wednesdayand Enid) are a couple, one being an Idorin (ovumsere) and anorher a So'lena. Even though both characters can't get either the other one pregnant (this isn't star trek/star wars), they use genetic engineering, so each child will have one percent of the other parent's genes. The two children are some of the main protagonists in the fic- the other are Wednesday and Enid - following their staying at Nevermore. Some conflict I think of is the Idorin OC having an identity crisis- she basically a clone of their mother and trying to explore who they are (and being short, only 5'8). The So'lena child doesn't have this problem since an average So'lena gain 95% from their mother. However, the So'lena OC too has one, of be it having an ethnic/species identity crisis- they rarely interacted with their own species that wasn't their own So'lena mother (they both lived their Idorin mother maternal family, the housing having around 100 people in it [it helps the family are a noble dynasty]).

Another idea is about how all three (or multiple) species are, either though physically and biologically different from one another and to humans, still share some common traits. One is how all 4 love to gossip and talk shit behind their back. I want Wednesday, who was excited about meeting them, disappointed how asinine, unambitious, and unimaginable they're, being so similar to humans. The Idorin OC will point out how idiotic and problematic she sounded, especially if she had said that to another Idorin.

Probably another idea is Nevermore nonalien characters exploring the aliens culture. One idea is Yoko trying to learn So'lena lingua franca, helps that I based the language on Japanese and Hawaiian (syllabary characters, no third person pronouns, a mixed of particle and grammatical case, subject-object-verb sentence, etc). Divina enjoying swimming with So'lena due of having aquatic body-type, though they will complain about the cold (their thermoregulation is meant to dissipate heat as quickly as possible). Enid will enjoy listening to one of the Rin races (having a more feline appearance) song genre, sounding similar to K-pop and J-pop (genre name in English will be Songstress Motet), though she will be shock just how dark and gruesome some of the lyrics are (think Yoru ni Kakeru).

I don't have much else to add, but this is a good amount, I think.

[bambamramfan]

Discourse knows, there have been too many articles in the UMC publications about polyamory, and I apologize for adding to the bonfire of think pieces. At least this one linked above is less obnoxious than most of them.

(The most obnoxious one is referenced in this article, the Atlantic piece saying that polyamory is bourgeois identity politics distracting from material change.)

And what gets me is that for a bunch of supposed Marxists decrying how polyamory is just cultural superficiality irrelevant to the superstructure of material conditions.... none of them can bother to write a Marxist analysis of polyamory! It's just throwing different names at each other, no discussion of material incentives.

And it's so fucking easy to write one, isn't it. Here's our starting points:

Marriage (and the relationship models that lead to it) is an economic institution.

The change in modern polyamory fads is, like most fashion, coming from the upper-class.[1]

I think we can all agree on these basic premises, and they provide a great deal of grist for economic analysis.

For instance, the middle class in America is falling apart. Especially if you are a recent college graduate. It's easy to get an internship that might be on track to a very lucrative career, especially in a big city. It's a lot harder to start a stable middle-class job somewhere between the coasts. So you can't really start planning for baby until you're 30 and after 5 different careers you maybe have one that will last more than a year, and can put a down payment on a home at maybe 35. (Housing costs rising, especially in cities, has really exacerbated that.

Does this apply to everyone? No. Does it apply to more people that in the past? Big yeah. So, what does a young educated something do in their twenties and early thirties?

But the upper class - I suppose we are supposed to say upper middle class, but c'mon programmer earning $250k you're fooling no one - is booming. It's easier to enter it, especially if you're smart, than ever (note that increasing from 1% mobility to 10% mobility is a big change, even if on the absolute scale it's still unfair.)

Polyamory - or extramarital sex - has always been popular among the rich. Because marriage isn't really an economic necessity for them. If a couple splits, well there's enough money to go around for all the kids to live in nice houses. Mormon bigamy flourishes when a male breadwinner is so ultra-successful they can support for 5 wives, and geek group poly houses flourish when one systems engineer can pay for the whole house on their own too (maybe there's one kid everyone chips in babycare for in the house, but no one is even thinking about enough children in the group house for a fertility rate close to 1:1.)

So if you cut out the ladder from the middle-class-monogamy path, and widen the highway for upper-class-laissez-faire-culture, then cultural norms are gonna flow from the former to the latter.

The thing about relationship norms that makes the change really noticeable is their NETWORK EFFECTS. Being the only polyamorous person in a monogamous community is basically irrelevant, right? Who you gonna date? Similarly if you are in an entirely polyamorous community, my sympathies if you happen to be monogamous and so everyone you want to date has incompatible norms.

But once you start getting away from the edges, they S-curve up real fast because there's finally the option to try the minority relationship style, and for the agnostics who are okay poly or mono, they start seeing people they think are cute in the other camp, and hey, why not try it out.

So combine the collapse of the middle class, the proliferation of upper class hedonism, and network effects and a poly-explosion seems almost inevitable, doesn't it?

...

Of course, I haven't presented any hard evidence, this marginal change at most applies to less than double digits percentage of the populace, and this isn't even how the story feels from inside my head (as a poly converted person.)

But it was. At least. An attempt. To do. Materialistic analysis!

Why are all published Marxists so bad at this.

--

[1] Polyamory, or extreme family/relationship/household flexibility has always flourished in the underclass. But the NYT isn't going around interviewing trailer parks in Appalachia to ask them about their exciting new lifestyle.

[shinmelodia]

Love & Process: blue (2002)

Hello to everyone reading, and welcome to a highly belated attempt to squeeze some of my thoughts and emotions through some semblance of a creative process and onto a page. Today, I want to introduce this blog by talking about a lovely film, blue (2002), directed by Hiroshi Ando and based on a manga by Kiriko Nananan.

Since I'm still somewhat new at diving into live action film, especially, like, uh, Japanese indie film, its helping to start with the yuri genre. Because like practically any other woman on this site, I quite enjoy lesbians. blue's manga original offers something of an alternative to the yuri norm, though, and the film follows suit. Both are definitely examples of the Japanese filmmaking trend I've heard of called "mumblecore," (or maybe mumble-komi for the manga equivalent) that most people know through the likes of Inio Asano's early work. Like Solanin or Girl on the Shore, blue is shoegazey, quiet, and contemplative, adorned with moments of subtle physical intimacy, layered emotion, and stunningly beautiful compositions of daily life.

My metric for these kinds of slow mood pieces, which I've previously tended to watch at random whenever the mood struck me, is that if my barely-medicated ADHD brain can even finish them, there's clearly something special going on. blue passed with flying colors; yeah, ok, it took two sittings, but I spent all of both enraptured, immersed, and invested in the mono no aware of silent, fragile love and messy asymmetry that formed this movie's emotional palette. blue is about love, of course, but its also about process and expression, both emotional and creative, and how processing things, artistically, verbally, non-verbally--is often required of real, human love.

In being about this, I think it did things for me that a lot of yuri often doesn't and gently hit me in a place that I really needed to be hit. So, let me get into it. This is going to be...very personal, and also obviously spoil the details of the film, if you care about that, although I'm sure there will be plenty of depth left in the text that I leave untouched. Whether you read it or not, I'll be happy I made it. Oh, and sorry if I come off as really New for being so struck by themes and aesthetics that are probably sort of standard for this type of film. I can't help what I feel like writing about, though.

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

Kirishima Kayako lives in a small town by the sea, one much like dozens of other anonymous, disaster-prone exurban towns in Japan at the turn of the millennium. She rides the bus to her girls' high school every day, where she eats lunch with her friends and tries her best to learn something in class. Really, though, she's aimless, quiet, lonely, and introspective. She's trying, but its rare for others to be able to tell. She's also in love with her classmate, Endou Masami. When she confesses at the end of the first act, on a windy beach against the vastness of the ocean, Endou responds that she's glad, and the two become our lesbians for the movie. Kayako falls to her knees and cries in relief. Masami is different from the others--she sees how hard Kayako tried. Does that mean she loves her back, though?

Endou Masami has cool passions and interests; she collects American CDs, which she expertly critiques and describes while lending to friends. The mere view of her vibing to her American alt-rock while smoking a cigarette in front of her apartment window is album-cover worthy in itself. Kayako feels the same way: one of the most intimately gay scenes of the pre-confession portion of the film is when Masami lights a cigarette and asks if Kayako is shocked. The quiet girl declares without hesitation, "No, I'm admiring the way you lit the match."

The whole early film is such a delectable, lonely vibe. The slowly intertwining couple's solidifying dynamic is the kind that forms between an emotionally complex introvert and the perhaps even more unknowable yet somehow more confident object of their affection. The two are classmates, (there's no classic yuri kouhais and senpais here) but for the early part of the film we are seeing things from Kayako's perspective and Masami seems unmistakably older in spirit. There's something about the dense emotions conveyed in her gazes at her new girlfriend, the almost world-weary tinge of recklessness in her distant grins. She talks about music Kayako's never heard of and lends out books with Romantic-era paintings that she has well-formed thoughts on. Kayako even openly admits that if she could, she would want to be Masami.

I think we've all loved a girl like that.

It's a pretty typical experience in middle school or high school, for really anyone lonely who loves women, to be drawn to these sorts of sad, beautiful, oh-so-seemingly-complex femmes. I guess straight men have a similar thing going on with the whole Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype, but for us women (or, women-to-be, at the time, I guess), the phenomenon of these people to us often involves a sort of existential jealousy. I'm not sure what is so alluring to other people about the sense that the object of their love has Something Going On that they are working through, or a vast and complicated life beyond the scope of one's understanding, but it me it always felt like something I was missing out on for myself. Obviously, a lot of their experiences and interests must be interesting and fun and super cool, you think, but even what pain you think they convey must be somehow more edifying than yours.

For me, the edifying aspect was the mere fact of femininity itself. The idea of a girl who has deep and Real emotions, who feels Real love and Real sadness and can actually express that in how she looks, beautiful and imperfect, always threw into stark contrast my own inability to express myself comparably. I was depressed, I was growing up, and I felt things, too, but, as someone who everyone thought was a straight boy and who was too scared to admit to being otherwise, I lacked that sort of beauty, that means of expressing what was inside me through fashion, makeup, book or music knowledge or taste. Or at least I thought I did. Thus, my own emotions must have also meant less. So, I ignored them and belittled them, and entire years passed before I processed a thing correctly. I always wanted to be some other girl. That was the only thing that would fix me.

I assume that the teen (and, uh, sometimes beyond) existential pining experienced by some other people in real life usually lacks the fun bonus that mine had of a screaming void where my femininity should have been, but I'm not sure how much this actually matters to the crux of the kind of experience I'm talking about. That some kind of void is there is all that matters, really, and its there for Kayako in her relationship with Masami at the beginning of the film. She has nothing, Masami is everything, and just being close to her is enough, for now. Just being noticed, just sharing something with her, is all Kayako feels like she can ask for.

Of course, this incomplete way of seeing love can't last, which brings us to the next part of the film, which starts when the two are hanging out and Masami reveals through a guarded, distant grin that she had an abortion a while ago. This isn't something that shocks Kayako or is really meant to shock the audience, and it isn't the big moment where she forced to reconsider her feelings. Rather, she asks how it went, and Masami responds honestly. She mentions she felt horrible the next day and had to be picked up by ambulance from the nurse's office, prompting Kayako to recall silently what to us was the film's first scene, a view from her window during class of an anonymous ambulance, sirens turned off, discreetly rescuing a student.

That she had this ambiguously traumatic, and at least unpleasant and potentially taboo experience is something that could have made Masami feel even older to Kayako, her pain even more distant and obscure. It certainly already is a way that Masami herself feels distant from others. Yet, by considering her own special, observant view of the ambulance back when it happened, it becomes one that Kayako can in some small way assertively share with her. Rather than continuing to put her lover's experiences on a pedestal, Kayako in this scene makes a silent decision to turn a blossoming mutual acceptance simply that they happened into a moment of true intimacy between the two, a sleepover punctuated by smirking kisses and satisfied cuddles initiated by each of them for the other. Despite her remarks that Kayako is weird for unhesitatingly wanting to stay with her, its an intimacy that Masami is happy to accept. This is all an important turning point in Kayako's development because she begins to choose insight, closeness, and assertion over the distant admiration that trapped her earlier.

As we go on, we'll start seeing how blue's gentle impact comes from the way it doesn't glorify or sugarcoat that earlier kind of unhealthy and immature dynamic. Instead it subverts it by giving Masami depth and Kayako agency, before reaching an endpoint that reflects on how the dehumanization of that kind of depressed, pining relationship can be overcome. In that sense, blue is a yuri romance mostly about the couple coming to accept their own and each other's humanity and capacity for expression. Like any good mumble movie, its full of long silences and almost unrealistically hesitant dialog, and doesn't give any explicit internal monologues like a lot of manga do. The world of this movie is one where expression is an uphill battle, something that has to be worked towards and struggled through. It's the world that Kayako and Masami share, in their own separate ways. And that's why its such a triumph to watch Kayako finally find her voice, her passion, and her process, which all starts in this scene.

First, though, it's time to learn about the Something that Masami has Going On.

Things begin when Kayako is still sleeping. Masami gets a call on her house phone that she doesn't answer, but that sends her into a silent spiral of emotional dread. She spends the next day at school in the nurse's office, refusing to tell Kayako what's going on and confiding only in her friend Nakano. Then, when summer break comes along, she disappears, leaving Kayako alone at home, pouring silently over the book of still life oil paintings that Masami lent her.

It ends up being Nakano who tells Kayako why she left. It's the story Masami didn't tell about the source of her abortion: an adult, married man whom she had a relationship with and eventually a pregnancy from. She got things taken care of without telling him, alerted her parents and tried never to see the rotten salaryman again. That is, until he called. He wasn't getting along with his wife anymore, apparently, and she had some sort of attachment to him that made her come running back. Her taste in music originally came from him, after all. It seems that, for the time being, her devotion to this mysterious, abusive man is going to perpetuate a brutal cycle: she'll keep hurting both Kayako and herself all at once.

What really destroys Kayako and her relationship, though, is that she lies about it. When she comes home after some predictably rough interactions with this guy, she tells her supposed girlfriend that she was enjoying a vacation with friends, and even gives her some grapes, supposedly grown in the prefecture she was hanging out in, as a twisted souvenir. The more assertive Kayako enforces her boundaries without hesitation, though, in equally as blunt a tone as she complimented her love, as when she told her she wanted to stay with her, all those nights ago. "Why are you lying to me?" Its with that same grin, now tinged with emotionally oblivious deception, that Masami dares to at first first feign ignorance.

"Eh?" Her smile is shallower than its ever been.

So Kayako walks away.

Their dynamic has now become worse than just immature; it's entirely toxic. From an outside perspective, Kayako is working on her shortcomings, while Masami refuses to reconcile her past. This kind of toxicity, though, is sadly just as common in high school (and even sometimes middle school) as is the kind of misunderstanding, lonely pining I talked about earlier, just usually among different sorts of people. Appropriately, its often even that exact kind of beautiful, hurting, mature femme (in the eyes of disastrous, moody lesbians like Kayako) who is going through that sort of pain. Its that mysterious and tragic byproduct of compulsory heterosexuality that causes a lot of girls to seek validation in the love of an older man, and that I imagine becomes a sort of addiction to that validation that only masquerades as love. Hell, Masami attributes much of what made her seem so interesting on the surface, her love of music, to this guy. She feels like she'd be nothing without him, and the way Kayako praised her, at least in the way she interpreted it, did nothing to dispel this fear. Which I think is really why she decided to go back, even though it would mean betraying the very girl whose love provided her an escape from it all.

Its an ugly truth, and its one that yuri media usually shies away from portraying, but it is explored with refreshing frankness and resolved with astounding maturity by the end of blue. And I think its the source material's status as "alternative" (I guess in Japanese parlance, Garo-inspired) manga, not to mention the movie's simply as an independent film, that allows it to break with genre limitations in this way. There's been tons of writing done on how yuri definitely presents a fantasy of the sapphic experience. Mainstream yuri's origins in Class-S still to this day often cause it to portray romances between women as fundamentally different, and inherently more pure, than those involving men, trapping them in a bubble of unassailable innocence. While that kind of makes sense and seems extremely cool to those of us who celebrate having little interest in moids or whatever, it also has the effect of sugarcoating and sometimes even outright obscuring what real women, even (and sometimes especially) sapphic ones, go through.

There's already a decent amount of yuri, especially among those aimed at older demographics and those where its more of a secondary genre, that do deal with compulsory heterosexuality and the experiences that come with it. What are much rarer are yuri series where one of the lover's flaws more resemble Masami's than Kayako's. Not enough that I've read at least is willing to make its relationships messy, or have one of its leads just do straight up bad things like self-destructive cheating and lying.

Because, really, its the same as what Kayako went through, isn't it? The lonely longing for something more that feels like it can only be cleansed by denying oneself all one has and betting it all on being close to someone else. The only difference between the two's actions is temperament and perhaps socialization--one sought it from a cooler woman, the other from an older man. And somewhere out of sight, that sad, irresponsible, fucked-up adult was probably hopelessly lonely, too, just like Kayako had to accept Masami was. Maybe disaster lesbians, disaster bisexuals(?), and yes, disaster straights aren't so different after all.

Well, other than that Kayako has worked to process her feelings, while Masami went and ruined her relationship over them. That's an important difference. Still, though, even Kayako has some work to do about how she feels about all of this. Masami's pedestal has been smashed, whether she likes it or not, and now she's lonelier than ever. So where does this vampiric cycle of taking from others end? What substance can replace loneliness in this ouroboros of etropic emotional alchemy?

Kayako doesn't touch the grapes. Instead, she silently processes things, lies on the floor listening to the cicadas scream in the garden. The grapes go rotten, and her brother throws them out. She sulks for a while.

Then, she starts painting. A still life of grapes, inspired by the books that Masami lent her. At first, her drawing is lousy, as the school fine arts instructor later tells her, but the colors are gorgeous. The deep purples of the fruits are expertly layered to capture light and tell a story, one deeper than the instructor could possibly imagine. It's the story not only of the transformation of a relationship, but of the growth of one of its participants. As the hot, still air of the coastal Japanese summer cloys around her lonesome final vacation of high school, Kayako finally salvages a passion to call her own out of a floundering relationship. When school starts again and she picks up art classes, going to Tokyo for uni, a dream that was previously held only by Masami, starts to be within her reach. She has a future, an interest, and a way to process all has happened to her.

And then comes the time for Masami to try and return. She proves unwilling to address all that happened before, instead trying to kiss Kayako after school in the art room. Her undeserved attempt at intimacy is rejected with a shove, but so too is her self-pity that causes her to instantly run away. There's more that needs to be said that simply "I'm a terrible person." Kayako pursues her into the town's small shopping district as night begins to fall and neon crackles to life against a cool late summer night. Now the emotional climax of the movie begins.

First, Kayako starts talking. She tells Masami about the painting, about her summer, about how lonely she was without her, about all the places she wanted to go with her. She talks about how happy she was at the same time that she found something she wanted to do without her. This approach is new for her. She's never so far relied on words so heavily to express her emotions. When Masami points this out, Kayako says:

This is how she's choosing to process things for the time being. At first, it was being silent to carefully consider her emotions. Now, its speaking up to keep them focused on what she really wants.

Then, its Masami's turn, for the first time, to tell the truth. By now they're away from the small cluster of lights, staring out at the blackness of the beach where they first got together. Masami broke up with the guy, she says. But she also asserts that she came to his emotional aid to begin with because she felt his need for help was more important than anything else to her. She couldn't tell her girlfriend this before, because doing so would mean telling a truth she didn't think Kayako could bear to hear: that he meant more to Masami than she did.

Kayako already knows this, of course. And by speaking up to quell her justified anger, by weaving words like the deft strokes of honest color on the tip of a paintbrush, she's gotten herself to a point where she can accept it, too.

I mean, think about it. Masami is broke now; Kayako needed to buy her a sandwich so she wouldn't be hungry on their impromptu date. Her sabotaging drive to be validated and her inability to accept love from the girl willing to give it has, by all accounts, ruined her life for the time being and harmed those around her. Even though she broke up with the guy out of necessity, or out of some fleeting impulse to run back to Kayako, she still feels like nothing without him. As she says to Kayako later, now the envy runs in reverse--Kayako is passionate about painting now, while Masami will still amount to nothing. Despite it all, though, Kayako is willing to love her. She's called Masami out on what she needs to be, then decided to stay nonetheless.

"I always come second. You broke up with him, so the number one spot is vacant. When someone else comes, you'll put him there...

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For most of my life, I believed that artistic expression was primarily the product of unrestrained, innate, and self-indulgent passion. I thought it was just something people either have or don't have, and that when they do, its something that can drive them to great heights of accomplishment and happiness otherwise impossible for humans to reach. It was mostly Japanese otaku media that instilled this into me, I think. I grew up exposed to a dizzying array of diverse and often miraculous artistic products that captured my imagination in ways the safe output of my own boring, monolithic home empire never did, and most of them were made by people who literally poured their lives into working on them. From Eiichro Oda's future-destroying, decades-long devotion to making One Piece to Kentaro Miura giving his life to practically paint the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel in pen on page after double-page spread in Berserk, to all of the hyper-passionate, universe-shattering early works of Hideaki Anno and his animator cohorts, I thought that I lived in a world of weird and wonderful treats whose cooks had the work ethic of demigods and the talent to match.

And even on the lower levels of the medium, among fan artists, cosplayers, writers, posters, historians, I felt surrounded by people who lived and breathed impossible passion, whose lives must have been defined by a kind of information processing my brain simply wasn't capable of. They had some ability to inhale the miraculous vapors of an abundant artistic landscape and spew out works of their own that further decorated the texture of a fleeting age of impossible marvels. And all that time, there I was, left on the sidelines, interested in many things but passionate about none, and lacking the motivation to really work to pursue anything at all. It was (and, honestly, still is) a state of existential discomfort similar to that sort of lonely-girl-pining, but doubtlessly far larger in scale. Some people had passion, while I had nothing to show for all my years of being alive. For fuck's sake, there was so much stuff out there, and I barely could muster the motivation to even read any of it most of the time.

After a while, I started to feel like I was simply broken, like I was an empty person that didn't belong in the very world I loved living in. And while I think this might be a niche outlook and insecurity (although one represented, to my profound gratitude, in Masami), I think it's also how a lot of people think about love. Love is often portrayed as a feeling sparked entirely of instinct, one that, when a person truly feels it, will never cause them to make any mistakes or do anything fucked up to those they care about. Something that will drive those bolstered by it to impossible heights, improve lives beyond the sorrow and loneliness to which they are otherwise condemned. But, as Kayako learned and as Masami and I are having to find out, that isn't really the whole story.

Expression is love. Love is process. Therefore, expression is also the labor of putting love through a process, of rigorously trying to get your ass in a seat and put in the steps of putting your feelings into form. As this is required of art, so is it required of relationships. And so the two are a cycle. Creation requires emotions to process; relationships require emotions to be processed. And the love that creation inspires feeds itself into the love for others that inspires the emotion to fuel more creation. A Labor of Love. Again, I know I'm New.

But this is what Kayako has been working up to all movie long, first with her silence, then with some words, then with the labor of painting, the iteration of getting better, then with more words again. She has found a slow cycle that is elevating her above her loneliness, a cycle that Masami helped create, and is welcome within, but that can, if need be, exist without her.

Love, labor, process. Expression, creation, process. Creating, processing, choosing...in the end, to do it all again. To stay with what--and who--you have labored to love. And that is the choice Kayako has made.

I have not yet answered what, after thinking and writing about this movie for days on end, might be the substance that can replace loneliness as fuel for the alchemical cycle of emotional taking and giving. By the end of the lovers' reunion, sitting by the road under the slowly-illuminating blue of a haphazardly-clouded dawn sky, Masami doesn't feel like she has an answer, either. She feels small and hollow, manipulative and weak. She's jealous of the coping strategy her own girlfriend has developed to deal with the effects of her bad behavior. So, in the end, what is she? What is there even left for Kayako to love?

I'll be honest, this feeling is so fucking real I get perilously teary every time I think about it. Because, for as much as I mused about Kayako's feelings resonating with me as a former and sometimes girl-piner, when it comes to my current relationship at age 22, it's Masami in whom I see myself most clearly and brutally. It's hard not to when she is the only representation in romance, let alone in yuri, I have seen so far who is as much of a fucking brat as I am at times. Whose tendency to sabotage her own relationship makes it so asymmetric that what her girlfriend feels appears almost one-sided, but whose love is real all the same. If she lacks process, talent, maturity, mystique, if no one is ever going to be good enough for her, then what at all does she have left?

The answer to all of this is the thing that lies at the core of her being, that makes her who she is. The source of her potential to express herself, the starting point of a process yet to fully begin. It's hard to see, but it's there. Its what makes her Endou Masami. And its what Kirishima Kayako loves the most.

It's color. It's the thing at the core of creation that can't be described with words, that forms the motivation for any process. Its the vivid purple of a painted grape whose intentional creation transcends deception and nurtures discovery. It's the blue of a dawning sky whose light guides two girls in messy, lopsided love back into each other's arms. It's Kirishima Kayako. It's Endou Masami. It's what everyone has, and it's all anyone has.

It's the source of love, its process, and its object.

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

Eventually, Kayako has to leave for Tokyo. That's the decision that's best for her, and its a decision that, for the time being, will leave Masami behind in the countryside, hard at work on the process of learning to love herself. At the end of the film, she sends Kayako one final piece of proof of who she is. It's a painting of sorts, recorded on VHS, composed not of oil but of compressed light and sound. Stylistically, as the camera zooms in, it begins to resemble less Renoir and more Rothko: at first, its the beach, then, simply the point of the horizon, the area where the sea and sky meet. Its raw, not quite processed, pure color, vibrant blue, filtered and compressed into chunky, washed-out 800x600.

By way of description, "this is all I can do."

For years, I've struggled to believe that my emotions, hindered by depression and self-sabotage, have any value at all. As someone for whom love, passion, and expression have always felt difficult, even putting my thoughts down on a page, let alone drawing, painting, composing, or directing, has always seemed impossible. Recently, though, I've grown a lot. I've found the beginnings of a process learned to accept its existence. Both this process, and all the loves that go along with it, are often uncomfortable. They are painful and brutal and blissful things into which to pour the labors of communication and the torments of understanding. I've learned to process discomfort for the sake of creation, to create for the sake of love. It sounds cheesy, but again, I can't help what I wanted to write about.

I hope you'll join me as I find more new things and tough feelings I love to process on this account. There's so much more I'd love to say about blue, just for starters. I could talk about my undying appreciation for the work of Mikako Ishikawa, or how the shots in this movie are so gorgeous and evocative that I'd seen many of them before in "Japan in the 00s" vibes compilations.

But, until then, this is all I can do.

[imustbenuts]

Reading Grima as an Abrahamic god stand-in in the world of Fire Emblem, and how that is filling in gaps in the narrative.

Preface: this is one possible interpretation out of many, and I will be talking about this pov as a person who resides in SEA.

To get to understand this worldview though, some very dry explanations need to be done, but I'll do my best.

First, an overview of Grima.

Grima in FE: Awakening's story functions as a god of annihilation/death. They are worshiped and brought back into the world by the Grimleals, an extremist religious group in Plegia, which is visually middle eastern desert-ish.

Meanwhile, their Japanese name is actually Gimlé, a reference to the Norse mythos of the place where survivors of Ragnarok (an end of the world apocalyptic event where gods duke it out way too hard) are foretold to live. It's a super pretty place, almost heavenly.

So there is some credence here to hint that Grimleals are the extremist sect, and that Grima inherently isn't good or evil, but possibly a death god closer to the likes of Anubis or Hades. This can then explain why Plegians who aren't extremists are said to be pretty chill.

Anyway, moving on, because I need to explain the next bit to really highlight how much he looks like an Abrahamic god to a someone like me.

FE's world is structurally polytheistic. Or, Shinto Buddhist.

On the surface, FE puts forth the idea of polytheism in the form of multiple Dragons, without a singular clear, definite distinction for what threshold exactly qualifies one to be a legit God vs just-a-dragon. In fact, it can be summed up as "this one is powerful enough to do things, and/or because we decided so" by the people.

So, that tracks with the belief system in place in Japan and really, the whole of Asia in general. Polytheism is the norm, rather than mono. In this view, any being which are not human all belong into the classification of supernatural, so the question of how god-like they are matters after they are able to pass a certain threshold of power or worshiping status.

A popularity contest of spirits/gods, if you want to put it that way. In fact, lots of eastern gods irl are like this. Power often doesn't factor into things, since these gods are very closely associated with nature in some form, and their popularity in history is very dependent on events.

In fact, Japan follows Shinto Buddhism, a polytheistic belief. Technically made of 2 parts.

Shinto supplies the idea that Gods (or rather, kamis) in general cannot be perceived, and that they must be loved and nurtured to gain their favor. Disregarding them brings instead disharmony and destruction. Shrines are one such places where the love and nurturing or the disregard can be seen/done. (Thebes labyrinth, anyone? 😉👌)

The other, Buddhism. Also polytheistic due to reframing gods as just other beings trying to break out of the cycle of samsara. Buddha is technically not a god, but a title, and an idol to look to to remember the teachings of how to break out of this cycle, by understanding suffering and how to end it.

In some ways, Naga, the biggest defacto "god" which is treated as the 'proper' God by the narrative, is actually more of a Buddha. Her voice lines in FEH even points to this:

Meanwhile, Libra uses the plural, gods. Frederick's famous crit quote is "Pick a god and pray."

That is what I mean by FE being structurally Shinto Buddhist.

Meanwhile, Abrahamic religion is monotheistic.

Without getting too deep into the details and scholarly debates of it, or even the multiple branches of religion, the singular God in this family does not want his followers to turn their eyes towards other false gods. One is meant to devote themself entirely to this God, follow his teachings and live a life he deems worthy to live with him in the beautiful, heavenly afterlife.

Failure to do so will mean a divine retribution of sorts, but often in the form of eternal damnation.

Another noteworthy bit, Abrahamic religion originated from the place we call the Cradle of Civilization, also known as the Middle East. Which, you know. Deserts.

And now, the pieces of Grima being a Abrahamic god stand-in starts to form. And that then explains a lot of other mundane unexplained bits too.

Basically, Grima is the patron deity of the Plegians, who reside in the harsh desert.

If we assume that normal Plegians are pretty chill despite Grima being associated with straight up annihilation, then a pretty good extrapolation would be that Grima is a watcher type deity of the afterlife for their worship. This type is typically popular as they soothe the anxiety of what happens to a person after death, explaining that there is something else other than pure emptiness, which frankly can kick many people's existential dread into overdrive.

Which, if one really thinks about it, the Abrahamic religion and their God kind of is this.

God watches a human, then judges them for their actions in life when their time is up. In some interpretations afaik, God can also be seen as a 'system' or a 'higher conscious', but the idea of being able to join with him is still the same. This is still the ultimate honor and bliss, ie, heavenly.

But in order to do so, one must wholly devote themself to him. Spread his word. Ignore all other Gods. You know how it goes.

With Grima, this bit manifests in how Grima kills Naga in the Future Past DLC. Even Tiki became a target, who wants to become the next Naga in it. (Which btw this wouldn't make sense unless one treats the word, Naga, as a title, which tracks.)

So. In conclusion.

What I'm trying to say here is that Grima is easily read as a monotheistic, or even a Christian god to many people on this side of the planet. Because there has been precedent in extremism when it comes to religion associated with Abrahamic religion, and this is how it's being expressed through the writers when they create FE.

And yet, because either the world of FE is structurally shinto buddhist, or the writers are, this is the result, and why I have interpreted Grima as this.

There are also elements of that mistreatment of a god narrative going on in FE:A that I think is worth talking about for Grima, too. I'm almost certain that the writers are not saying Grima is inherently evil, in fact, the narrative of good and evil in FE is often easily explained by characters being dreadfully flawed, and even human. And because of how Gods have this piece of humanity in them, it's possible for so many narratives to be the way they are.

And maaaybe why they decided to put Grima in a cat costume for Halloween banner with all the funny lines that comes with them. I think.

And that's about it, really. Ask is always open. Thanks for reading! 🎃🎃

[cherrytea556]

I notice a trend with people who find aro and aces not belonging to the community because 'their not oppressed' like it's a fucking competition. And how they do that is basically downplay our experiences to just being nothing or something that's not worth mattering. Things such as 'oh your oppressed? What? For your family asking if you date sometimes? That your friends and family may not understand you? Pfft, like that's the same as the r4pe, assault and murder WE experienced!'

Of course, aro and aces face more than that (and even HAVE faced the same things your claiming we don't experience) but that's not the point. The point is, they belittle experiences of aro and ace people without any sense of understanding what it would be/feel like from our perspective. Of course, our loved ones not understanding our orientation is not a big thing to you. But it is to us.

Within my family, love is an expectation, not an option. Many of them express how love is this universal important thing and when I reject that notion by just simply stating that i don't even want to be in one, they dismiss it and tell me that later on, I'll change my mind. It's the same with sex but in a lesser extent (that being it's not as talked about as it is to love) This expectation drives me away from expressing my true self to them, hiding my orientation in fear of their reactions (whether it's not believing in me, claiming that i was brainwashed my the internet, you get the deal) This is combined with the fact that aro and aces are practically invisible in representation (aromantics especially) makes it a rather isolating experience in the closet as most people wouldn't know that people like you exist and with society centering love and sex as this universal thing, how can they believe you? And to anyone who tries to downplay isolation, note this to someone that was very isolated before that; it can truly be a slippery or even miserable experience. It is predominantly so too if your mental health is already declining. Everything remaining in your head with no room to release is very frustrating, I would know, I lived it as my own mental health took a downturn. It's only when i started making friends, people I can talk to without this lingering fear, that i started to get better. And I'm lucky i still have friends who support me and my identity, some people don't even have that at all. Some of them are completely isolated with no one to turn to for support. These people also associate us as being 'too online' but that is majorly because the internet would be the only place to find this support from given free access in expressing ourselves on social media. Why else am I so public about my aroaceness online? But of course, it's not like they'll care. The only reason why they say that shit about us is because they don't bother to understand our experiences/issues we face because it doesn't make sense to them. Like a standard bigoted being, they would rather stay in their bubble and attack rather than venture out to explore our perspectives.

No, I don't care about your orientation, you belittling our experiences is no different from bigots belittling your own experiences. And you know which community also faces isolation from lack of understanding and representation for their identities? That's right, you. The lgb alliance and anyone ace/arophobic in our community. You might as well dismiss your own isolating experiences while your at it.

We have shared similar experiences to you (being in the closet, fear of coming out, lack of representation, lack of understanding etc) and all bigots want us as well as you to be non existent. So why bother trying to gatekeep us out of the community just because we don't follow your personal norms of sexuality? The whole of lgbt is to give people who aren't fit in societal norms a sense of community. We clearly don't fit in society's norms of orientation (that being mono straight cis and allo) so why is this even a debate?

Anyways, aro and aces are part of the community whether you like it or not. Peace.

[bonefall]

Hey, with the gender updates, I was wondering how Tree would be seen gender-wise. On the one hand he would definitely read to Clan cats as a meewa with his mediator role and extra toe, but on the other hand he comes from a different culture where his role as male is very focused on. So how would Tree see gender upon encountering the Clans' very different conception of it?

I think Tree finds their 3rd gender extremely comfortable, in a way that the dichotomy of the Sisters was not. Xey'd probably adopt being Gib-gender immediately!

The Sisters, I'm actually feeling that they have a mono-gender system. You have gender, or you don't. Kittens are born with just as much as the adults in the group, but a male kitten slowly "leaks" it out as they start to get older.

And because of that, they start to lose their role in the group. They're expected to trail behind with the older boys, become less involved in the daily rituals, and eventually are meant to break off entirely. For the most part this works fine; 1 year is now the norm for a male Sister to have their Departing.

But sometimes, like with Tree, that doesn't fit them. So they get older and older, become uncomfortably "old" to be hanging out with the young boy cats (adult forced to sit at kiddy table at Thanksgiving energy), and eventually the Departing is forced onto them

In the Sister dialect of Tribemew, they probably do have gendered pronouns, unlike Clanmew with its threat level system.

But, anyway, I think it's a comfort to Tree to encounter Meewa gender. They lost their role, slowly and horribly over a long time. It's like they were stripped of something they cared a lot about, so it's actually nice that the Clan cats had an entire prophecy around xeir extra toe, a defining trait of this unique gender.

THAT can't be taken away, you can't lose your meewa-ness like you can lose Sister-gender.