#my identity is not up for debate

[brother-emperors]

Slavery and Roman Literary Culture, Sandra R. Joshel

[fistfuloflightning]

There was a time before I knew what you’d become.

Shen Yuan can’t believe a world like PIDW that could spawn the scum villain could also create someone like Shen Jiu. He doesn’t know they will soon be one and the same.

[winteriron-trash]

rdj the (whitewashed) electric boogaloo

This is a reminder to everyone who's excited about RDJ's casting as Doctor Doom that this casting is whitewashing. Victor Von Doom is a Romani character and has been a Romani character since his introduction in the 1960s. (Fantastic Four Annual #2 [1964]) Not only that, but his Roma identity and the persecution he and his family faced due to it is integral to his character, it is what forms his identity. (Books of Doom by Ed Brubaker) Even if on the off chance this casting is meant to not be Victor but instead be some variant of Tony or whomever else becoming Doctor Doom, it is damaging to the character to rob him of that important cultural background. Doctor Doom does not exist without that history. Fans have been pushing hard to cast Doom as a Romani actor for years, especially since the MCU has whitewashed other Romani characters. (Wanda, Pietro, etc) This casting is not a celebration moment, it's fucking heartbreaking that the MCU repeatedly ignores the important and nuanced cultural backstories of characters.

I know I can't change anybody's mind on whether or not you want to be excited about RDJ's return to the MCU. But I do think at the very least you should be mad that the MCU is baiting us all and destroying nuanced and interesting characters for the sake of self-referential easter eggs and nostalgia bait. Because that's what it is. Feel how you'd like to feel about RDJ's return, but personally, this is soul-sucking. I had such a deep love for the MCU as a teenager, it was obviously something incredibly formative to me, especially Tony Stark. This isn't recreating what I fell in love with the MCU for. This is turning a well-planned and artistic storyline of adaptations into cheap cash grabs and fan service. Because, I think we're past the point of being able to call the MCU an adaptation of anything. They can use existing characters' names and powers, but to say they're being properly adapted is laughable.

This is not an adaptation of Doctor Doom. This is RDJ the Electric Boogaloo because Marvel's fear of losing the interest of dedicated MCU fans overrides their willingness to tell stories that are genuine to the characters. I don't know what there is to be excited about that. The MCU has lost its authenticity and aside from a few projects, feels heartless. Every movie is a copy of a copy. This announcement isn't something celebratory, it feels like a death knell of a cinematic universe that's so desperate to cling to relevancy it's resorting to nostalgia for a character/actor who hasn't even been dead for a decade. We're not getting anything new, we're just rinsing and repeating the same song and dance.

I get it. I love Tony Stark, his death destroyed me and I to this day, rue the ending he got in Endgame. It misunderstood his arc and it robbed him of a satisfying conclusion. But the solution to that isn't dragging the corpse out of the grave five years later to whitewash an existing character with rich and interesting nuance, just to forcibly tie his existence in the MCU to Tony. Whether he is a variant or not. Why would you want someone else's fave's legacy to be destroyed simply so your fave's legacy can go on? Hell, if we were really all so hellbent on the return of RDJ and/or Tony to the MCU, we have the multiverse for a reason. There were other ways to do it that didn't whitewash and ruin someone else. This just. Isn't something to be happy about.

[phightingconfessions]

Holy shit I love that this community is so supporting of chubby characters! The horrors of fat phobia I've seen in other fandoms is crazy especially the regretevator discord server the mods there are just scary..

EXACTLY!!!! like obviously theres still gonna be those people that get some violent rage and hatred over seeing someone draw a character fat but ive noticed theyre mostly.. a minority in the phandom? not even a VOCAL minority i just barely even see them and ngl its actually really refreshing

[gremlingirlsmell]

lmao they dont know that the concept of (perisex) afab transfems is one of these things that has been cooked up by transphobes and transmisogynists specifically to start this kinda discourse to discredit transfeminity and our language and rally and radicalize queer tme people against tma people

[cozybearz]

closing my eyes at almost every single queer label discourse i see now bc i am a grown ass person and i do not have the energy to spend on watching people argue abt incredibly personal and subjective shit like its an objective narrow category anymore

[yusufstits]

thinking about nile having nightmares and not being able to sleep post london and then being very tired during the day and taking naps on whoever's around

[mercuriangelic]

as a catholic, i will never understand the reason behind refusing to let people turn symbols like crosses and churches, angels and other religious figures into a part of their identity. as a vampyr, who's existence is extremely religious centrict, i will never understand disallowing others from incorporating religion into their pronouns or gender. christianity isn't a sacred religion that needs to be kept away from the public, or kept away from other religious individuals. using godself pronouns doesn't make you disrespectful, calling yourself an angel isn't disrespectful, using crosses and crucifixes as an aesthetic isn't disrespectful. not only as a catholic, not only as a religious vampyr, not only as a fictive of a priest, i will never force anyone around me to drop what their doing or just take away their identity for my own comfort. because it isn't my place to do so. at the end of the day we all have our stories, and i will always support your mogai/nonhuman labels and identities.

[leon-on-the-froggy-chair]

my mom signed my christmas presents with year with dante/my dead name and yknow what. thats progress.

[daz4i]

how and why is there discourse about whether or not certain queer identities exist/if people should be allowed(???) to use them. why is "people know their own identity better than you ever could, and they're the only one who get a say on what they are" such a tough concept to grasp

i think if you find yourself offended by the label someone uses (especially if they're a stranger) or think it invalidates your own, it's a good idea to look inside yourself and question why that may be. more often than not, it's a result of insecurity or uncertainty of your own identity (or many other things, but i won't make a whole list here). whatever reason it is, until you resolve it, you shouldn't take it out on people for having an identity you don't understand

many have said it before but it's worth saying over and over. infighting only helps our oppressors. conservatives don't care if you're a cis gay or a xenogender aegosexual aplatonic lesbian, they hate all of us either way. trying to fit in by going for people who are easier targets for them isn't gonna help you, it'll just alienate you from your own community, and you're never gonna please them. the momentary rush you get from hearing you're not like "one of /those/ gay people" is not worth it and is gonna do more harm in the long run, i assure you

also, it is important to me to say this, but having some less than nice kneejerk reaction caused by confusion about an identity you don't understand doesn't mean you're a bad person or anything. as long as you aren't mean to that person, and you take a second to think smth along the lines of "wait a minute, this isn't any of my business" after having said reaction, you're good 👍 a lot of reflexive reactions we have to things are ingrained into us simply by. well. living in a society 🤡 and you're not terrible for having those thoughts. it's your actions that matter, and your second thought (the "wait, why did i just think that?") is more defining of your actual character and morals than your reflex. i know that having thoughts like this, even tho they're unwanted, can very easily make one spiral, so it's important to me that whoever needs to hear this knows this doesn't make you a bad person 🙏 you're good, keep taking actions to be good, accept other people even if you don't understand them, and you're on the right track :)

[autisticlee]

the whole "you shouldn't identify as X, don't form an identity when you can't/don't know yet, you're too young, what if/you might change your mind!" etc etc. it's so silly when you think about it. what's wrong with changing your mind anyway? why did we all decide that gender/sexuality identity has to be static and can never change? why did we decide that it's a bad thing to change? because the old generation tells us change is bad? because they (mostly conservatives) want to conserve "the good old days/the way things are supposed to be" in their minds???

WHO CARES if someone says they're gay then realizes 5 years later they're bi. WHO CARES if someone says they're a girl and realizes after trying it out they're not. let people explore who they are until they figure it out even if they go through every lable available to them! maybe none fit and they make up their own! who cares! who cares if they change it every year for the rest of their lives! humans change. that's the only constant about us! why is it a bad thing, even taboo, to accept change and exploration within sexuality and gender specifically?

there's always so much shame that comes with someone realizing they were wrong, changing as a person, or discovering something new about themselves. i've seen people afraid to explore themselves more or afraid to talk about a change in identity, for fear of the queer community pushing back on them the same way they're afraid to come out to the cishets in their life who are trans/homophobic. that's just not fair that their own community can become hostile towards them, too. being in a closet within a bigger closet essentially. everyone is always told to figure it all out first before claiming an identity, because then you're locked in it for life, apparently. you can't change your mind after that. why though? what's the point of that really? why can't we embrace fluidity a bit more? why can't we accept that humans do change all the time? why is making and trying to prove that these identities are static/unchanging/innate the only way to validate them? why can't they just, I don't know, BE VALID. without reason. why must we jump through hoops to be valid when we should just automatically be valid because we are human. stop letting the cishets gatekeep everything, leading to us gatekeeping each other!

I am sometimes very hesitant to talk about my own identity. I identified as a gay/biromantic trans guy for like idk 8-10 years? transitioned and everything. then like a year or two ago, I realized/decided that doesn't fit right anymore. now i'm a nonbinary, but also kinda fluid, aroace person. sometimes I don't like to talk about that because of the stigma behind changing your gender/sexuality identities. but you know what. i'll talk about it anyway and people have to learn to accept it.

what were the consequences and bad parts about changing my mind/identity like that? none. absolutely none. (outside of people being weird about it for no reason) but the benefits are feeling more comfortable with myself, and that's no one else's business.

[gayabeilles]

my house is STINKY send post

[tiktaaliker]

it's pride month and that inevitably means that I start overthinking things about myself

[phlegm--princess]

june pre transition going through alot of denial and internalized transphobia (esp on the meteor where she has a lot of time to herself) but eventually coming to terms with herself and transitioning with the help of jade. and shes like very self concious about herself at first cuz the transphobia and fear are still internalized. later she gets much more comfortable with herself and jade and gets the courage to be more out with people But shes faced with a lot of the same transphobia she worked so hard to deconstruct in her mind and her identity becomes a topic of debate ridiculously often when shes just trying to like. be around people in public or whatever. so shes just like. <_<

[scarecrowshindig]

big fan of mysteries that never get solved

[martritzvonmercie]

being aroace is crazy bc sometimes it's like. whoo yay i have such a wider perception of relationships that's so cool yay!!! and sometimes it's like. i hate this it sucks