#my desired gender..

[cheridraws]

The effect these two idiots have had on my fucjing gender identity is RIDICULOUS, I’m taking that bounty for compensation gob bless

[lucabyte]

even dogs pass the mirror test

[cartarg]

kitty of some sort

[t4transsexual]

really unpopular opinion but if ur trans u should probably lie to ur doctors. not all of them necessarily, but like you could and should especially in the er/urgent care, specifically if what youre having treated/checkups for has nothing to do with your transition. i had chest pain from binding for years that wasnt addressed because i was told it was just anxiety, until the first time i stealthed at the er. suddenly they wanted to run tests on me and said that my ribs were fucked up but they didnt know from what. ive had chest pain for years and i thought i was binding safely but i was also binding for 6 1/2 years before my operation and youre not really supposed to do that

also, even if youre getting gender affirming care, they do not need to know all the details. gay/lesbian/st4t? they dont need to know. transfem top/transmasc bottom looking for srs? dont tell them that. nonbinary/nondysphoric /otherwise gender nonconforming? dont fucking tell them that. a lot of trans people that arent t4c heterosexual and binary trans people, or just trans people who dont follow traditional gender norms during sex/in general are discriminated against all the time. you cannot lie to your doctors about everything, but theres a lot of things that you honestly should just keep to yourself when seeking care as a trans person. as far as your doctor is concerned, youre a binary trans person who isnt comfortable disclosing their personal sex life and its none of their business. letting them think ur a binary trans t4c heterosexual is the smart thing to do

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

This scene never fails to crack me up!

VINCENT PRICE - HIS KIND OF WOMAN (1951)

[aemulatorizrafel]

Happy Birthday colorful prince~

[i-like-forcefem]

When browsing through the wares of a newly opened magic shop you passed by an item that caught your interest, a massive mirror

You peaked inside expecting to see yourself, but instead you saw, a girl? About your height, quite pretty, good taste in fashion… Maybe your mom when she was younger?

It feels weird, in a good way, to see this girl follow all your movements, you couldn’t help but smile, and her smile is radiant

You felt an odd sense of relief… until you looked down to see that, you’re you, of course you are

Why do you feel so sad?

…

“Quite the item isn’t it?”, the Witch tending the shop noticed your interest and started talking to you “a magic mirror that shows you what you’d look like if you were born the opposite sex”

You stare into it

Why do you feel this deep dread?

“But that’s not all it does!” The witch continues “want to see a magic trick?” The witch asks laying a hand on your back

You’re curious to see where this is going, so you nod your head

In one swoop the witch pushes you against the mirror and as you brace yourself to slam into it, stumbling on your feet across the floor, you find yourself slamming into the witch face first

She laughs “I probably didn’t need to push that hard”

As you lay on the ground you feel different, you look as you prepare to push yourself up from the ground you notice your hands… are they smaller?

As you get it up and oriented yourself you glance at the mirror, still the same showing girl you, but how did you get turned around did… did you get

“Sorry” the witch says as her laughter days down “that’s the first time I’ve pushed someone through a mirror, should’ve seen that coming”

You look down and see the dress you’re wearing

“Now cutie” the witch claps her hands, and jumps up! She has a grin you don’t trust “I hoped you enjoyed the trick! If you ever want to become a guy again And I hope you have some savings! Gender-bending magic is quite expensive!”

You stumble back, you can’t turn back? The mirror is showing yo- Girl You, not the real Guy You, so… that’s a no go? You’re way to poor for anything

“But don’t worry cutie, we pay quite well here and just so happen have an opening for a maid and I can assure you, you’ll look just adorable in the uniform”

[freyashiftz]

Finally found my male face claim for any realities I'm a man in 🤭

thanks random man named Micheal that I do not know. Can't wait for the boner experience 😼

[dead-generations]

it's interesting talking to young men on the internet because they are, by a large majority, motivated by a gleeful and unfocused ressentiment towards basically everyone and everything. there is really very little concern for truth but more notably there is a semi-concious rejection of usefulness of action and of making things better.

the appeal of policies, actions or rhetoric is that punishment and cruelty are inflicted, that people and entities are laid low. they are not motivated by a desire for better things to happen, but for worse things to happen to those they resent. And they like being angry and resentful, they like it more than they like any hobby or activity or product.

[dearinglovebot]

sammy is trans because of the many ways you can read her arc within the show but most importantly she is trans because in early development they considered making her a boy before going nahhhh

[daftpatience]

transmasc flag combined with butch flag just for me but im sharig bc why not. use it if you want!

transmasc flag and butch flag for context:

[silverwhittlingknife]

hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?

GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE

Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.

I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:

Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?

We're gonna go in chronological order!

Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:

Aww. Such a cute elephant!

Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!

Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:

SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.

(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)

Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:

Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.

Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.

Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:

Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:

... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.

Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.

For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.

Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.

Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?

tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later

Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!

The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.

(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)

Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.

By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.

So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)

Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do

Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.

(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)

The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.

Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."

But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.

Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)

Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!

(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)

Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.

Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.

Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.

So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.

And look, here we are:

Aww.

Whew - that's everything I could find!

Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3

[put-me-on-a-hitlist]

Shifting so I can wear dresses and not feel perception dysphoria <3

[witchedwicked]

Nemuri feeling so comfortable around Hizashi and Shouta she’s not afraid to pass out drunk on their couch or burp loudly or take her bra off from under her shirt once she’s in one of their homes to hang out. Complaining about her period in detail. None of the bullshit appearances women feel like they need to keep in front of men lest their womanhood, their humanity, be too gross for men to handle.

But more than that she feels completely safe with them. No fear of judgement or harassment, complete trust to be open and vulnerable in front of them without a single itty bitty drop of fear that they might take advantage or be predatory.

And they accept all of this and never once let her down.

[bayetea]

so you’ve mentioned before the trouble with frazel raising a child. BUT, what stuck in mind was you said they’d have conflicts with having a son and not a daughter.

what do you think would happen if frazel had a son?

what do you think would happen if frazel had a daughter?

so this is informed by my own analyses of frank's canon material and upbringing, but at the end of the day this is my own interpretation, so you don't have to take this as like a fact or anything!

but the crux of my thoughts on this subject boils down to this: frank didn't grow up with any male role models that we know of, positive or negative. his household has always been highly matriarchal, especially after emily went to war and he was left in the care of grandma zhang, who is stern and unforgiving and absolutely impossible for frank to relate to at all. in an ideal world "male" and "female" role models wouldn't be a significant distinction at all and positive role models of any gender would be equally accessible for all children - but realistically kids often prefer people that resemble them in some way (gender, race, ethnicity, etc) as such, and frank appears to have had no men to help him develop and navigate his masculine identity. we can also note that in western pop culture asian men are most dominantly represented in two forms: martial arts action movie heroes or... brainiac nerds. frank is neither. like I'm not gonna get into this much (because it's a big topic) but like we know how asian men are stereotyped as and deemed less than for being """less masculine""" in the west so I think that might be a thing to keep in mind when considering frank's feelings, i.e. why he might care more than others about his own masculine self-image

anyways, there's this one line from grandma zhang in son of neptune that I've always found very poignant, and honestly kind of chilling:

Men do not cry. Especially Zhang men. You will endure, Fai.

it isn't made 100% clear when exactly she said this in the books but I believe the implication was that she said this to frank during emily's funeral - which is fucking crazy lol. his mom just died and his grandma is pulling a "boys don't cry" on him. I can see that she just wanted him to be strong but the complete lack of tenderness during the worst time of his life and emphasis put on his expression of sadness as a detriment to his masculinity would make any young man feel like shit. we aren't given any insight as to how frank felt about this line specifically in this chapter but we do know that frank almost never pushes back against the things his grandmother says, because emily zhang is quoted as once saying to frank:

There is no arguing with Grandmother. It'll only make you suffer worse.

now the line "especially zhang men" was probably quite meaningless to frank in the moment because he did not care even a little bit about his family name or his chinese ancestry - and he certainly doesn't see himself upholding his grandmother's notions of what a zhang man is supposed to be, but a man in general? what's a young boy to think when he has no men, no male role models in his life and his grandmother is telling him that men don't cry? he has no grounds to push back against that. and I think this teaching is exacerbated heavily by frank going to camp jupiter, which appears to uphold the same general principle that showing weakness is unacceptable - not for men specifically (as far as we know), but validating that idea at all is just. not what I think frank needed to be hearing

funnily the first positive male role model that we know frank to have had is percy, who is slightly older than him - and frank immediately attaches himself to percy and likes and admires and respects him so so much. and although percy is put through the freaking wringer in son of neptune, frank doesn't ever actually see percy shed tears (percy does cry/almost sheds tears/gets emotional to the point of his voice breaking about twice in son, but both instances occur in front of hazel, not frank). the only time he really sees percy showing emotional weakness is the scene where he gets so freaked out by evil centaurs that he gets triggered and can't move - and that wasn't even a voluntary moment of vulnerability, he was legit triggered and got physically sick over it. I'm not gonna go so far as to claim that percy becomes frank's image of what an ideal man should be, but ehhhhh from the way frank talks about percy throughout hoo and especially son I don't think that would be the biggest reach either

and there are several bits and pieces throughout the books where frank expresses a desire to assume a role of conventionally masculine importance. I'm not gonna go to the trouble of singling out like all of them but here are three instances that I consider most noteworthy:

frank in son:

Whenever [Hazel] wanted something, he had the irrational urge to provide it. He wanted to be the old-fashioned knight riding to her rescue, which was stupid, as she was way more capable at everything than he was.

frank in son:

If he admitted how weak he was, that his whole life depended on a half-burned stick... Hazel would never see him as a hero. He'd never be her knight in armor.

frank in hoh:

Frank was so pleased to be holding [Hazel's] hand, [...] He felt needed--useful. Not that Hazel required his protection. [...] Still, Frank liked being next to her, imagining he was her bodyguard.

all these of these instances are specifically related to hazel, which I find significant - because they say something about how frank thinks he needs to be for a female romantic partner. like the first quote literally has him wanting to be a provider for her and the second has him fearful that if he appears weak (think about the "men don't cry" line) then he won't be good enough for her, so I don't think it's wrong to assume that frank still has some not great ideas in his head about the specific ways in which he needs to be a man. do you guys know those jokes about "the masculine urge to bleed out in the snow" or however it goes. frank retweets the shit out of that post every time he sees it and piper is in his dms like "are you okay???" /lh

furthermore we see frank really taking pride in himself as a son of mars towards the end of son when he's mouthing off against alcyoneus - and I think his godly parentage plays a role in this. mars is a highly "virile" god and considered the second most important deity in cj's roman pantheon. he's a highly significant figure in the roman mythos because he is considered the pater (father) of the romans, the father of romulus and remus from whom all romans are descended - aka the father of rome itself. so there's something inherently paternalistic about frank, the son of mars, assuming the role of co-praetor at camp jupiter. it's the ultimate fulfillment of his repeatedly expressed desire to be able to perform his masculinity in the specific way that he really wants to

and alllll of that is basically just to evidence that I don't think frank would be the sort of father who's going to parent his kids the exact same way regardless of gender. I think I see frank being tougher on his son (if he has a son) in the future than his daughter as a result. not to such an extreme that he would say terrible harsh things like "zhang men don't cry" to his own boy (I don't think he ever wants to make his kids feel the way his grandma made him feel) but just in little ways that build up over time

whereas if frank had a daughter, I think he's more likely to spoil and be lenient and extremely protective her. not necessarily to the point of sheltering her excessively or refusing to let her fight (i.e. I think he'd be happy if his daughter joined the legion or ever became a praetor herself) but just in the way of not having the same kind of, say, rigid masculine expectations that he might have of his own son

and like. I'm worried that my saying this might incur frank hate or whatever but I want to say clearly that I think he'd still be a good dad? good enough anyway. obviously it would be great if frank could unlearn some of this and care less about gender norms but the books kind of just... put all of this stuff on the table and don't resolve/address it meaningfully so I'm just working with what we've got. hilariously despite being from the 1930s I think hazel would be more evenhanded towards their kids regardless of gender so I can totally see this being a thing that they clash over in the future. not in a relationship-ruining way but just as an add-on to the issues they'd have as parents that I mentioned in my other ridiculously long post on frazel child-rearing lol

(and if their kid is neither a girl nor a boy then I think frank would be a little confused lol but still highly supportive and willing to learn)

[aqua-owo]

Hey so it happened again. I gave in. My new boyfriend is now my wallpaper