#paper summaries

[intersexbookclub]

Summary: Chapter 4 of Critical Intersex

For many of us, Chapter 4 of Critical Intersex (2009) turned out to be a particularly rich source of information about intersex history. So I (Elizabeth) have decided to give a fairly detailed summary of the chapter because I think it’s important to get that info out there. I’m gonna give a little bit of commentary as I go, and then a summary of our book club discussion of the chapter.

The chapter is titled “(Un)Queering identity: the biosocial production of intersex/DSD” by Alyson K. Spurgas. It is a history of ISNA, the Intersex Society of North America, and how it went from being a force for intersex liberation to selling out the movement in favour of medicalization. (See here for summary of the other chapters we read of the book!)

Our high level reactions:

Elizabeth (@ipso-faculty): Until I read chapter 4, I didn't really realise how reactionary “DSD” was. It hadn't been clear to me how much it was a response to the beginning of an organized intersex advocacy movement in the United States.

Michelle (@scifimagpie): I could feel the fury in the writer's tone. It was a real barn burner.

Also Michelle: the fuckin' respectability politics of DSD really got under my skin, as a term! I know the importance, as a queer person, of not forcing people to ID as queer, but this was a lot.

Introducing the chapter

The introduction sets the tone by talking about how in the Victorian era there was a historical shift from intersex being a religious/juridical issue to a pathology, and how this was intensified in the 1950s with John Money’s invention of the optimal gender rearing model. 

Spurgas briefly discusses how the OGR model is harmful to intersex people, and how it iatrogenically produces sexual dysfunction and gender dysphoria. “Iatrogenic” means caused by medicine; iatrogenesis is the production of disease or other side-effects as a result of medical intervention.

This sets scene for why in the early 1990s, Cheryl Chase and other intersex activists founded the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). It had started as a support group, and morphed significantly over its lifetime. ISNA closed up shop in 2008.

Initially, ISNA was what we’d now call interliberationist. They were anti-pathologization. Their stance was that intersexuality is not itself pathological and the wellbeing of intersex people is endangered by medical intervention. They organized around the abolition of surgical intervention. They also created fora like Hermaphrodites With Attitude for the deconstruction of bodies/sexes/genders and development of an intersex identity that was inherently queer. 

The early ISNA activists explicitly aligned intersexuality in solidarity with LGB and transgender organizing. There was a belief that similar to LGBT organizing, once intersex people got enough visibility and consciousness-raising, people would “come out” in greater numbers (p100).

By the end of the 90s, however, many intersex people were actively rejecting being seen as queer and as political subjects/actors. The organization had become instead aligned with surgeons and clinicians, had replaced “intersex” with “DSD” in their language.

By the time ISNA disbanded in 2008 they had leaned in hard on a so-called “pragmatic” / “harm reduction” model / “children’s rights perspective”. The view was that since infants in Western countries are “born medical subjects as it is” (p100)

Where did DSD come from? 

In 2005, the term “disorders of sexual differentiation” had been recently coined in an article by Alice Dreger, Cheryl Chase, “and three other clinicians associated with the ISNA… [so as] to ‘label the condition rather than the person’” (p101). Dreger et al thought that intersex was “not medically accurate” (p101) and that the goal should be effective nomenclature to “sort patients into diagnostically meaningful groups” (p101).

Dreger et al argued that the term intersex “attracts the interest of a large number of people whose interest is based on a sexual fetish and people who suffer from delusions about their own medical histories” (Dreger et al quoted on p101)

Per Spurgas, Dreger et al had an explicit agenda of “distancing intersex activism from queer and transgressive sex/gender politics and instead in supporting Western medical productions of intersexuality” (p102). In other words: they were intermedicalists.

According to Dreger et al, an alignment with medicine is strategically important because intersex people often require medical attention, and hence need to be legible to clinicians. “For those in favor of the transition to DSD, intersex is first and foremost a disorder requiring medical treatment” (p102)

Later in 2005 there was a “Intersex Consensus Meeting” organized by a society of paediatricians and endocrinologists. Fifty “experts” were assembled from ten countries (p101)... with a grand total of two actually intersex people in attendance (Cheryl Chase and Barbara Thomas, from XY-Frauen). 

At the meeting, they agreed to adopt the term DSD along with a “‘patient-centred’ and ‘evidence-based’ treatment protocol” to replace the OGR treatment model (p101)

In 2006, a consortium of American clinicians and bioethicists was formed and created clinical guidelines for treating DSDs. They defined DSD quite narrowly: if your gonads or genitals don’t match your gender, or you have a sex chromosome anomaly. So no hormonal variations like hyperandrogenism allowed.

The pro-DSD movement: it was mostly doctors

Spurgas quotes the consortium: “note that the term ‘intersex’ is avoided here because of its imprecision” (p102) - our highlight. There’s a lot of doctors hating on intersex for being a category of political organizing that gets encoded as the category is “imprecise” 👀

Spurgas gets into how the doctors dressed up their re-pathologization of intersex as “patient centred” (p103) - remember this is being led by doctors, not patients, and any intersex inclusion was tokenistic. (Elizabeth: it was amazing how much bs this was.)

As Spurgas puts it, the pro-DSD movement “represents an abandonment of the desire for a pan-intersexual/queer identity and an embrace of the complete medicalization of intersex… the intersex individual is now to be understood fundamentally as a patient” (p103)

Around the same time some paediatricians almost came close to publicly advocating against infant genital mutilation by denouoncing some infant surgeries. Spurgas notes they recommended “that intersex individuals be subjected (or self-subject) to extensive psychological/psychiatric, hormonal, steroidal and other medical” interventions for the rest of their lives (p103).

This call to instead focus on non-surgical medical interventions then got amplified by other clinicians and intermedicalist intersex advocacy organizations.

The push for non-surgical pathologization hence wound up as a sort of “compromise” path - it satisfied the intermedicalists and anti-queer intersex activists, and had the allure of collaborating with doctors to end infant surgeries. (Note: It is 2024 and infant surgeries are still a thing 😡.)

The pro-DSD camp within the intersex community

Spurgas then goes on to get into the discursive politics of DSD. There’s some definite transphobia in the push for “people with DSDs are simply men and women who happen to have congenital birth conditions” (p104). (Summarizer’s note: this language is still employed by anti-trans activists.)

The pro-DSD camp claimed that it was “a logical step in the ‘evolution in thinking’” 💩 and that it would be a more “humane” treatment model (p105) 💩

Also that “parents and doctors are not going to want to give a child a label with a politicized meaning” (p104) which really gives the game away doesn’t it? Intersex people have started raising consciousness, demanding their rights, and asserting they are not broken, so now the poor doctors can’t use the label as a diagnosis. 🤮

Spurgas quotes Emi Koyama, an intermedicalist who emphasized how “most intersex people identify as ‘perfectly ordinary, heterosexual, non-trans men and women’” (p104) along with a whole bunch of other quotes that are obviously queerphobic. Note from Elizabeth: I’m not gonna repeat it all because it’s gross. In my kindest reading of this section, it reads like gender dysphoria for being mistaken as genderqueer, but instead of that being a source of solidarity with genderqueers it is used as a form of dual closure (when a minority group goes out of its way to oppress a more marginalized group in order to try and get acceptance with the majority group).

Koyama and Dreger were explicitly anti-trans, and viewed intergender type stuff as “a ‘trans co-optation’ of intersex identity” (p105) 🤮

Most intersex people resisted “DSD” from its creation

On page 106, Spurgas shifts to talking about how a lot intersex people were resistant to the DSD shift. Organization Intersex International (OII) and Bodies Like Ours (BLO) were highly critical of the shift! 💛 BLO in particular noted that 80-90% of their website users were against the DSD term. Note from Elizabeth: indeed, every survey I’ve seen on the subject has been overwhelmingly against DSD - a 2015 IHRA survey found only 3% of intersex Australians favoured the DSD term.

Proponents of “intersex” over “DSD” testified to it being depathologizing. They called out the medicalization as such: that it serves to reinforce that “intersex people don’t exist” (David Cameron, p107), that it is damaging to be “told they have a disorder” (Esther Leidolf, p107), that there is “a purposeful conflation of treatment for ‘health reasons’ and ‘cosmetic reasons’ (Curtis Hinkle, p107), and that it’s being pushed mainly by perisex people as a reactionary, assimilationist endeavour (ibid).

Interliberationism never went away - intersex people kept pushing for 🌈 queer solidarity 🌈 and depathologization - even though ISNA, the largest intersex advocacy organization, had abandoned this position.

Spurgas describes how a lot of criticism of DSD came from non-Anglophone intersex groups, that the term is even worse in a lot of languages - it connotes “disturbed” in German and has an ambiguity with pedophilia and fetishism in French (p111).

The DSD push was basically entirely USA-based, with little international consultation (p111). Spurgas briefly addresses the imperialism inherent in the “DSD” term on pages 118/119.

Other noteworthy positions in the DSD debate

Spurgas gives a well-deserved shout out to the doctors who opposed the push to DSD, who mostly came from psychiatry and opposed it on the grounds that the pathologization would be psychologically damaging and that intersex patients “have taken comfort (and in many cases, pride) in their (pan-)intersex identity” (p108) 🌈 - Elizabeth: yay, psychiatrists doing their job! 

Interestingly, both sides of the DSD issue apparently have invoked disability studies/rights for their side: Koyama claimed DSD would herald the beginning of a disability rights based era of intersex activism (p109) while anti-DSDers noted the importance in disability rights in moving away from pathologization (p109).

Those who didn’t like DSD but who saw a strategic purpose for it argued it would “preser[ve] the psychic comfort of parents”, that there is basically a necessity to coddle the parents of intersex children in order to protect the children from their parents. (p110) 

Some proposed less pathologizing alternatives like “variations of sex development” and “divergence of sex development” (p110)

The DSD treatment model and the intersex treadmill

Remember all intersex groups were united that sex assignment surgery on infants needs to be abolished. The DSD framework that was sold as a shift away from surgical intervention, but it never actually eradicated it as an option (p112).  Indeed, it keeps ambiguous the difference between medically necessary surgical intervention and culturally desired cosmetic surgery (p112). (Note from Elizabeth: funny how *this* ambiguity is acceptable to doctors.)

What DSD really changed was a shift from “fixing” the child with surgery to instead providing “lifelong ‘management’ to continue passing” (p112), resulting in more medical intervention, such as through hormonal and behavioural therapies to “[keep] it in remission” (p113).

Cheryl Chase coined the “intersex treadmill’: the never-ending drive to fit within a normative sex category (p113), which Spurgas deploys to talk about the proliferation of “lifelong treatments” and how it creates the need for constant surveillance of intersex bodies (p114). Medical specialization adds to the proliferation, as one needs increasingly more specialists who have increasingly narrow specialties.

There’s a cruel irony in how the DSD model pushes for lifelong psychiatric and psychological care of intersex patients so as to attend to the PTSD that is caused by medical intervention. (p115) It pushes a capitalistic model where as much money can be milked as possible out of intersex patients (p116).

The DSD treatment model, if it encourages patients to find community at all, hence pushes condition-specific medical support groups rather than pan-intersex advocacy groups (p115)

Other stuff in the chapter

Spurgas does more Foucault-ing at the end of the chapter. Highlight: “The intersex/DSD body is a site of biosocial contestation over which ways of knowing not only truth of sex, but the truth of the self, are fought. Both intelligibility and tangible resources are the prizes accorded to the winner(s) of the battle over truth of sex” (p117)

There’s some stuff on the patient-as-consumer that didn’t really land with anybody at the book club meeting - we’re mostly Canadians and the idea of patient-as-consumer isn’t relatable. Ei noted it isn’t even that relatable from their position as an American.

***

Having now summarized the chapter, here's a summary of our discussion at book club...

Opening reactions

Michelle (M): the way the main lady involved became medicalized really made my heart sink, reading that.

Elizabeth (E): I do remember some discussion of intersex people in the 90s, and it never really grew in the way that other queer identities did! This has kind of helped for me to understand what the fuck happened here.

E: It was definitely a very insightful reading on that part, while being absolutely outraging. I didn't know, but I guess I wasn't surprised at how pivotal US-centrism was. The author was talking about "North American centric" though but always meant the United States!!! Canada was just not part of this! They even make mention of Quebec as separate and one of the opposing regions. I was like, What are you doing here, America? You are not the entirety of our continent!!!

E: The feedback from non-Anglophone intersex advocates that DSD does not translate was something that I was like, "Yes!" For me, when I read the French term - that sounded like something that would include vaginismus, erectile dysfunction - it sounds far more general and negative.

M: the fuckin' respectability politics of DSD really got under my skin, as a term! I know the importance, as a queer person, of not forcing people to ID as queer, but this was a lot.

E: it was very assimilationist in a way that was very upsetting. I knew intellectually that this was going on. There was such a distinct advocacy push for that. The coddling of parents and doctors at the expense of intersex people was such a theme of this chapter, in a way that was very upsetting. They started out with this goal of intersex liberation, and instead, wound up coddling parents and doctors.

Solidarities

M: I feel like there's a real ableist parallel to the autism movement here… It dovetails with how the autism movement was like, "Aww, we're sorry about your emotionless monster baby! This must be so hard for you [parents]!" And it felt like "aw, it's okay, we'll fix your baby so they can interface with heterosexuality!" [Note: both of us are neurodivergent]

E: A lot of intersexism is a fear that you're going to have a queer child, both in terms of orientation and gender.

E: You cannot have intersex liberation without putting an end to homophobia and transphobia.

M: We're such natural allies there!

E: I understand that there are these very dysphoric ipsogender or cisgender people, who don't want to be mistaken as trans, but like it or not, their rights are linked to trans people! When I encounter these people, I don't know how to convey, "whether you like it or not, you're not going to get more rights by doing everything you can to be as distant as possible."

M: it reminds me of the movements by some younger queers to adhere to respectability politics.

E: Oh no. There are younger queers who want respectability politics????

M: well, some younger queers are very reactionary about neopronouns and kink at pride. they don't always know the difference between representation and "imposing" kinks on others. In a way, it reminds me of the more intentional rejection of queer weirdos, or queerdos, if you will, by republican gays.

E: I feel like a lot of anti-queerdom that comes out of the ipso and cisgender intersex community reads as very dysphoric to me. That needs to be acknowledged as gender dysphoria.

M: That resonates to me. When I heard about my own androgen imbalance, I was like, "does that mean I'm not a real woman?" And now I would happily say "fuck that question," but we do need an empathy and sensitivity for that experience. Though not tolerance for people who invalidate others, to be honest.

E: The term "iatrogensis" was new to me. The term refers to a disease caused or aggravated by medical intervention.

M: So like a surgical complication, or gender dysphoria caused by improper medical counselling!

The DSD debate

ei: i think the "disorder" discussion is really interesting. in my opinion, if someone feels their intersex condition is a disorder they have every right to label it that way, but if someone does not feel the same they have every right to reject the disorder label. personally i use the label "condition". i don't agree with forcing labels on anyone or stripping them away from anyone either.

M: for me, it felt like a cautionary tale about which labels to accept.

ei: i'm all around very tired of people label policing others and making blanket statements such as "all people who are this have to use this label”... i also use variation sometimes, i tend to go back and forth between variation and condition. I think it's a delicate balance between being sensitive to people's label preferences vs making space for other definitions/communities.

We then spoke about language for a bunch of communities (Black people, non-binary people) for a while

E: one thing that was very harrowing for me about this chapter is that while there was this push to end coercive infant surgery, they basically ceded all of the ground on "interventions" happening from puberty onward. And as someone who has had to fight off coercive medical interventions in puberty, I have a lot of trauma about violent enforcement of femininity and the medical establishment.

ei: i completely agree that it's psychologically harmful tbh…. i was assigned male at birth and my doctors want me to start testosterone to make me more like a perisex male. which is extremely counterproductive because i'm literally transfem and have expressed this many times

Doctors Doing Harm

M: for me, the validation of how doctors can be harmful in this chapter meant a lot.

E: something that surprised me and made me happy was that there were some psychiatrists who spoke out against the DSD label. As someone who routinely hears a lot of anti-psychiatry stuff - because there's a lot of good reason to be skeptical of psychiatry, as a discipline - it was just nice to see some psychiatrists on the right side of things, doing right by their patients. Psychiatrists were making the argument that DSD would be psychologically harmful to a lot of intersex people.

ei: like. being told that something so inherently you, so inherently linked to your identity and sense of self, is a disorder of sexual development, something to be fixed and corrected. that has to be so harmful

ei: like i won't lie i do have a lot of severe trauma surrounding the way i've been treated due to being intersex. but so much of my negative experiences are repetitive smaller things. Like the way people treat me like my only purpose is to teach them about intersex people …. either that or they get really creepy and gross. I’m lucky in that i'm not visibly intersex, so i do have the privilege of choosing who knows. but there's a reason why i usually don't tell people irl.

M: intersex and autism have overlap again about how like, minor presentation can be? As opposed to the sort of monstrous presentation [Carnival barker impression] "Come see the sensational half-man, half-woman! Behold the h-------dite!" And like - the way nonverbal people are also treated feels relevant to that, because that's how autism is often treated, like a freakshow and a pity party for the parents? And it's so dehumanizing. And as someone who might potentially have a nonverbal child, because my wife is expecting and my husband and she both have ADHD - I'm just very fed up with ableism and the perception of monstrosity.

Overall, this was a chapter that had a lot to talk about! See here for our discussion of Chapters 5-7 from the same volume.

[batghostgirlfan]

Tfa Autobots get Mind controlled/Possessed Poll summary

Ratchet is mind controlled by the Ice crown

Bumblebee is mind controlled by Pecharunt

Prowl is possessed by the Shadow queen

Bulkhead is possessed by Undergrowth

Sar Sumdac is possessed by The Core

Optimus Prime is the only one who isn’t possessed/Mind controlled and now has to figure out how to save the others

Good Luck, you’ll need it.

Thank you all for Voting

[hadleysmis]

“All Armenians know the name Victor Hugo thanks to Les Misérables— a delectable book that every last one of our peasants and the humblest of our village schoolteachers have read and reread and that has become like a second gospel for our people.”

- Arshag Chobanian (1902)

[The first Armenian translation of Les Misérables created a] "Hugolatria that bordered on mania," taking hold of many Armenian readers and writers and leading them to treat Hugo like a kind of oracle."

- Not the original person who said the terminology, but I got it from Manoukian's 2022 paper

[pjsk-story-summaries]

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to take a moment to give you all a super heartfelt thank you for being patient with updates from this blog. I know it's been pretty quiet recently- life ultimately always will come first, and while I truly have been enjoying what I do recently, it has left me with very little time to sit down and write summaries. Thank you all so very much for being understanding of this, and still showing support anyways!

My spring break is coming up soon, so I'm hoping to take some of that time to get a few new summaries out. In the meantime, if you'd like to help contribute in any way, you are more than welcome to collaborate on requests in our discord or submit a summary through the google form! Links to both are in the pinned post <3 With love, and see you soon, Mod Acey :3

[ooftale]

I DONT THINK IVE EVER SHARED THIS HELP 😭 im doing it now

[daylikescookies]

some of my favorite projects from 2024!

[artbenbeau]

I can confirm that 2024 was, in fact, a year.

Thank you all so much for the support, I hope I can make some cool stuff next year too.

[cali-kabi]

~ Here’s my art summary of 2024 some irl stuff has been stressful for me for certain parts of the months and another thing- ;0; I appreciate those who supported, reblogged, and commented on my arts throughout this year thank you so much ;w; 🌟💫💜

What happened this year happened frequently to me don’t know if it happened to anyone else but have you ever made gift art for someone and they start ghosting ignore you, yep that happened to me 😢 makes me feel like my art or me isn’t worth anyone’s time.. like that’s so rude don’t know why some people do that. I hate rude people >< Another thing since the a/i situation I haven’t been that confident to make much comics this year either I been scared worried anxious that my style is eeehhh 🤷🏻‍♀️ sorry for venting that what this year stressed me out about I hope 2025 is better for me and I have confidence to do more stuff with my arts ;-;💖💦

[thebearme]

Happy 2025

[septiseph]

this year's art summary!!

yeah I'm still using the same template I've been using since 2013 for consistency

I rarely fully colored my fanarts this year… life is hard and this is a busy year for me _(:3」 ∠)_

[camelots-daffodil]

If scientific databases had a filtering and search system half as good as AO3 everyone’s lives would be significantly improved

[outfoxt]

Another Käärijä Research Project

aka: käärijä style-shifting project

as a preface, here are my (non) qualifications for this project and the circumstances under which it happened:

I am a linguistics student, and this past semester I took a course on sociolinguistics. the goal of this project was to become familiar with the concept of and analyze style-shifting (it's more commonly known as code-switching online but theres a difference and this is style-shifting), specifically by analyzing the speech of one person. We had the option to study oprah or to have someone else approved by my prof, so you know I had to ask my prof if I could study jere. This project is solely my intellectual property; even though I had a tutor help me a lot, everything written in this paper and on this post was my work alone.

now, on to the actual findings! the full paper and transcripts will be linked at the end :D

the actual variables (words or sounds) that I studied were the pronunciation of r, and use of the word "the".

to make things a lot easier from the get-go, i'm going to introduce you all to one of my favorite websites, ipachart.com (the international phonetic alphabet [ipa] chart is a big chart with an entry for every sound that exists in a language. this handy dandy website has an audio recording for each one of those sounds).

go to this website, and then scroll down to the table. go to the column labeled "post alveolar" and then click on ɾ and ɹ. those are the sounds i studied in this paper! ɾ is the finnish r and ɹ is the american r :)

so basically what i did to find instances of my variable was i just looked up a bunch of esc interviews and listened out for use of the different r sounds. i also transcribed the entire dinner date live because i love torture apparently :) the specific interviews and lives/stories are in the bibliography of the paper :p

after i transcribed all the interviews and lives/stories i went through and highlighted every instance of the r sound. then i calculated the ratios of ɾ to ɹ based on the context they were spoken in. the two contexts i looked for were formal contexts (sit-down interviews) and informal contexts (literally anything else).

i found that jere uses ɹ WAY more often in formal contexts than he does in informal contexts, and the same in reverse with ɾ.

i then went back to the transcripts and looked for all instances of the word "the". i also looked for instances where i thought it should be present, but was omitted. i calculated the ratio of present vs omitted "the"s in formal vs informal contexts and made some charts.

the graph with the smaller black section is "use of 'the' in formal settings" and the one with the smaller green section is "use of 'the' in informal settings" (the images are transparent, sorry)

i found that jere uses "the" WAY more often when in formal settings! there were also some instances where he added a "the" where it was unnecessary, which is studied at length in this wonderful paper by @alien-girl-21

something i also noticed that i elected not to study because this paper took enough energy on its own was that in formal contexts, whenever the "or" sound came in the middle or at the end of a word, jere wouldn't pronounce the r. it stuck out to me mostly because i heard words like "performance" turning into "perfomance", which i thought was an interesting quirk.

unfortunately i was somewhat limited by both my brainpower and capacity to do more work on this paper in the relatively short timeframe i was given (2 weeks) and the fact that i was given a 5 page MAX for this paper (not including a bibliography). i had a lot of fun doing this though and am definitely planning on studying jere for for academic credit again in the future if given the chance!

also i would like it to be known that i spent an hour searching for that 5 second clip of the urheilucast where jere said that he used to sell kitchens and understands english better than he can speak it.

link to a google drive folder with the actual paper i wrote and the transcripts of the interviews with notation:

please feel free to send me asks and dms with questions or comments about this paper! i absolutely love rambling about linguistics :3!!

[jade-green-butterfly]

~January~ - Poppy Playtime - Monstrous!DeerDelight ~February~ - Happy Valentine's Day 2024 ~March~ - Trolls TrollsTopia - JD's Space Bride, Amalthea~ ~April~ - Coossy, Three Years Together~! (~4th Anniversary~) ~May~ - MerMay Vanilla Nutmeg AU~ ~June~ - Lovely Vivian~ (Happy Pride Month 2024!) ~July~ - Trollsona Jussy - Harmonia's Successor + Vessel ~August~ - Happy 24th Birthday dA! (Hanging Around by Namtia) ~September~ - TFA Jadebutterfly 2024! ~October~ - Unicorn Trolls OCs - Xanos + Yvette Glimmergem ~November~ - Trolls TrollsTopia - SynKaa Moments~ ~December~ - Merry Christmas dA 2024 Main post can be found✨->here!<-✨

[lucy-frostblade]

fan wikis for big fandoms are like a godsend and fan wikis for small fandoms are a desert with tumbleweeds

[allupallu]

Here's my art summary of 2024! I feel like I really grew this year, especially since I used a new marker to shade skin, my poses are more dynamic and my lines are cleaner. Most of it was oc art and I love it xd

[honeyteastar]

The Heishin mer au! Info dump part one!

Includes the beginning of this au smirks

Later on when I do write part 2 (which ig includes the separation arc then omgies reunion </3) which is current events! But at the end you do get a taste of part 2 ish! But like I said will go more in depth. On top of that I will do another post ig talking about more on the seafolks n etc.

Shinichi and Heiji actually meet when they are both children and spend with each other for a whole month together. How they meet is when kid heiji had a scuffle with his dad so he wanted to get out of the house so he kinda grabbed a few of his things and left because he just don’t want to be in the same premises so he just wonders about until he reaches to a beach which is the farthest away until he finds yknow entrances to secluded era. Which funny enough that’s where shinichi is.

Shinichi was technically left there from his parents because the Kudos wanted to wonder and got tired of being in the ocean traveling around and never staying in one place. So shinichi is kinda used to them traveling around the ocean until they stop at cove. Which he thinks oh we are taking a break from the constant traveling. Until his parents tells him to say here until they come back! Which isn’t the first time they left shinichi alone, they go for a few hours then they’ll come back. Unfortunately for shinichi his parents didn’t came back because they left to travel on land. Until the first day during the late hours of the night that shinichi realized they are not coming back so he stays where they left him thinking they’ll come back to him and just continue what they do… He kinda scraping by because he knows how to hunt but is more left to his parents. That’s until he sees a creature? No that can’t be right…probably a kid like him but in two legs and just going about like his frustrations and crying while at it.

Heiji kinda tired himself out so he’s just head in his knees not really focus on his surroundings at the moment so he’s not seeing shinichi dragging himself out of water then tru sand to him. When he feels someone is like watching him, he raises his head but funny enough shinichi was super close to heiji so they kinda bump faces. So they both go oweww…then shock because alone to a space for burst of emotions then the next second of legit in front of you is a creature of the sea just cladding your face, which his palms are super soft, caressing for comfort and some low chirping? because you dumped faces is kinda crazy for afternoon. Minus the insane emotional breakdown you had a while ago with still tear marks on you but wow! Vs shinichi interest in the kid in front of him like woagh…pretty eyes….and 100% feeling his life source via his palms and trying to comfort him because he saw Heiji very distressed sooo shinichi copying what his mom does to him when his upset.

So funny enough they try to communicate but sadly there’s a language barrier between them because the mermaids have their own language going on while on land has its own. Shinichi does know a few words but not a lot because the Kudos didn’t really teach him (when they know a lot about it) they would until he was ready to shift into yknow “having two legs and looks human passing” so they can all travel together but sadly didn’t happen but we get omgies teaching each other language and heiji brings books to shinichi so he doesn’t get bored, this where shinichi fascination starts and becomes a bookworm, obviously he likes mystery books n etc. He also brings stuff to makeshift a tent and other things! Bc Heiji does sometimes sleeps at the place with shinichi! Gets to a point they cuddle/sleep together under the tent. heiji does start a routine with shinichi to like see him everyday and etc. There’s a time Heiji didn’t came to visit Shinichi because he was introduced to Kazuha bc his parents kinda noticed that Heiji would come very late or even in the next day so thought needed like a friend because they legitimately didn’t know where so talks here and there so evil meet up. Heiji didn’t like the idea at first bc he does have shinichi but he can’t do a lot of stuff with him because he’s stuck at the cove. So funny enough kazuha and Heiji goes along well but unfortunately shinichi kinda having the doubts about Heiji never coming back like his parents but this didn’t last long, Heiji did appear and shinichi kinda burst emotionally because the friend up to perhaps crush abandoned again but is fine!! Heiji was like what I’ll never abandon you ever. I just was making a new friend and I can’t really take her here. Kazuha does get the shinichi this and shinichi that but never seen this other kid that Heiji talks about a lot.

There is another scene that a festival does happen in Heiji’s town, he does mention to shinichi and that he would love to take him with him but he doesn’t know how but is fine! He’ll spend the time with shinichi! Shinichi kinda doesn’t want to see Heiji sad/disappointed so he kinda focuses hard to shift/removing his pelt which he kinda succeeds but not fully (you can see his ears, hands, teeth and a few markings that didn’t fully shift into human) which to surprise Heiji which he did and was like blinks and stares we can go! But let me get you something… so YAYYY they go out and is the best time shinichi ever had and they have holding hands all the time because shinichi the fear of loosing Heiji but Heiji is like just hold my hand! So we don’t get separated(like otters and while holding hands all the time shinichi feels very safe and comfortable because he can feel Heiji life source moment so he having the best time of his life) Funny enough Kazuha does meet shinichi and likewise but shinichi kinda shy away but they had fun!

Gets to a point where shinichi actually likes likes Heiji to where he gives his special gem aka a proposal gem that you give to your mate, mind you Heiji doesn’t know this he knows that’s is important and he’ll keep it until he dies BUT Heiji likes likes shinichi too!!! was gonna tell him that <- already proposed to fiancé in a sense because he did accept shinichi’s gem! Then heh this where I rip you apart they get separated because the kudos comes back to get shinichi and leave the place. Shinichi was very reluctant to leave but he left without saying goodbye to Heiji. Heiji comes to see shinichi and tell him something important but when he got there he wasn’t there and he checked the only thing he has from shinichi is the gem he has and shall treasure it until they meet again. Which they both forget each other! Heiji only thing to remember is the gem while shinichi remembers vividly his eyes, the festival date and the cove he stayed.

Shinichi when he gets older he goes to port to port, town to town just to read all the books in the bookstore and to remember that night (aside from Heiji eyes he vividly remembers the festival he spent and the cove) so he ask around n stuff after he’s done he disappears to leave for the next town funny enough the time the lands on heijis port town he kinda remembers the street n stuff and ask the question and get a yeah we do celebrate said festival n stuff and ironically enough he gets a glimpse of Heiji in the crowd bc that person looks very familiar moment to he trails after Heiji (even when Heiji leaves with a small vessel from his town shinichi follows him and that’s how shinichi legit saves Heiji instantly)