#sometimes i ask myself why i don’t just identify as a lesbian already

[polyamorouspunk]

sleepover friday thing and im sorry if i've already sent you an ask about this, i have the worst memory in the world at the best of times. with that out of the way... how do i cope with my orientation doing a 180? my whole life, starting from when i was about 10, ive identified as a lesbian. i exclusively dated girls (or people who identified as girls at the time anyway) and non-binary people. i was only attracted to girls and non-binary people. when i thought about being married in the future, it was always to a woman or non-binary person.

then i met my soulmate and he was a man. i dont use the term lightly either -- im talking about love at first meeting, spending time together as often as possible, sharing secrets, the whole thing. i plan on getting a tattoo dedicated to him. i still called myself a lesbian, just with one exception, because he was the only man i ever loved. and then he went dormant and hasnt come back (hence the tattoo).

then i started noticing i sometimes got crushes on men but not very often. now it's a couple years later and it struck me the other day that i don't think i'm sexually attracted to women anymore. just men and non-binary people. and it really threw me for a loop. ive been a lesbian my whole life but now im not? i'm almost exclusively (sexually) xlm now. which is certainly hard to deal with since i'm dating someone who is woman-aligned.

this is really long im so sorry i didnt mean to ramble so much akskfkf but do you have any words of advice for someone whose identity flipped on its head and feels lost now

I doubt that I’m going to say anything revolutionary here, so I’m just going to talk.

Things change for everyone. Different things change for different people. I don’t want to discount the experiences of certain people like men who are attracted to cis women exclusively, women who are attracted to cis men specifically, men who are only attracted to men, women who only attracted to women, etc. When I say stuff like “sexuality is fluid” it’s in the same way you say “gender is fluid” knowing that for some people it 100% isn’t, but it CAN be.

Some people have a very hard time accepting that sexuality can be fluid. It’s been pointed out before that some people are all for playing around with your gender and calling yourself a woman as a cis man in drag or calling yourself a liquid because your gender is so fluid or going “none of the above” in those gender questions or any amount of things like that. But as soon as someone implies that sometimes you can be a lesbian and sometimes you can be a gay man and those things can coincide or change certain people get really up in arms.

Complicated sexualities and gender have been around longer than any of us, and certainly around longer than tumblr and the internet. Perhaps my own favorite example is talking about how bisexuals and lesbians used to fall under the same or at least a more similar label in Stone Butch Blues. Before the phenomenon of lesbian separatists.

Bisexual lesbians and pansexual gays and all those kinds of things, while perhaps POPULARIZED by social media, existed long before that. Why is the idea that trans people existed before tumblr not a novel idea but the fact that perhaps wlw were all lumped under the phrase “lesbian” because there were women with more complicated sexualities like might fit under the label “bi lesbian” today wild and unacceptable to some people?

The idea that you can call yourself a lesbian exclusively but have some exceptions or call yourself gay exclusively but have an exception or hell even call yourself straight but have an exception is not a new thing. I, personally, love straight cisgender male content creators who say shit like “I’m not gay but I would make out with that man”. Cracks me the fuck up. I want more of that shit. But suddenly if a lesbian says “I’m not straight but I would make out with that man” it’s like woah woah woah are you sure you’re REALLY a lesbian?

Plenty of people who are straight/gay/lesbian fully accept that you can ID as one of those things and still use that label if you have on exception or even a few. Some do not, and will say if your thoughts even stray from your assigned sex of attraction then you are not allowed to use that label.

There will people who will say you can’t call yourself a lesbian if you’ve had sex with a man before even if you didn’t enjoy it. Gold star lesbian mentality.

The idea of sexuality being fluid is sadly a controversial one, as is every facet of being “in the community”. But for many people it is.

I see it a lot like coming to terms that you are not in fact cisgender. You go your whole life believing, truly believing, that you are a cis girl perhaps, until suddenly one day you realize you are NOT. Maybe there weren’t “signs” that you were trans along the way. Maybe one day it just hit you like a ton of bricks. What do you do? How do you cope?

Well. How do you cope with any other thing that hits you like a ton of bricks? How do you cope with someone you thought loved you deciding to dump you and never speak to you again in a day? How do you cope with being fired from a job you felt so secure in and planned on being in for at least another decade? How do you cope with the unexpected death of a loved one?

Over time. You try not to stress it. You try and move through your days by keeping it in the back of your mind until time has dulled that immediate pain enough for you to reconsider. The pain isn’t going to go away. But it can become manageable. You cannot deal with things if you are screaming and crying and hyperventilating and throwing things. You need to wait until you’re not doing any of those things in order to deal with the issue at hand, for a vivid and extreme example.

What does it mean to you to be xlm? I call myself a bi lesbian. On this blog I call myself trans masc and mlm. On my main I’m a [girl] and a bi lesbian. To me that means I, Savanna, personally will have sex with people who have a vagina, as someone who also has a vagina. Be they trans men, trans women, cis women, nonbinary/other. I do not like the idea of having sex with an actual flesh and blood and cummy dick, HOWEVER I’m open enough to say “I haven’t really been in a position in my life right now where someone has wanted to jam their dick inside of me, so I haven’t really had to worry about that. If it comes to that point, I can’t say for sure that I’m going to be like ‘ew no a dick’ even though I do not like dicks. Depending on the person and the situation I might be willing to make an exception.” And hey. There are people I might be with who have a vagina that I might just be like hey you know what? I don’t want to have sex. For whatever reason.

Your partner is woman-aligned, so I’m sure in your mind that’s not something you’re aesthetically attracted to right now. But sexually might you be? Do you think you’re having another exception to your sexuality like you did before?

Try your best not to worry about it and try to come to any conclusions until you’ve given it some time. I’m not sure how long it’s been since you came to this realization, maybe it’s been a few days, maybe it’s been a few weeks. But take the time you need to not make an emotional response to it in regards to your current relationship. Do what you’re doing and talk to other people about it. When you’re ready, you should talk to your partner about it. Perhaps there’s accommodations and arrangements that can be made. I’ve said before even though I’m transmasc here like if a cishet guy wanted to date me only as his gf I would be willing to compromise on my gender expression for that most likely. My gender isn’t a huge deal to me. Things like that.

Take it slow and take your time. Don’t make any rash decisions. Talk it out. Don’t worry about feeling like you “made a mistake” or are “living a lie”. We wouldn’t tell someone who came out as trans things like that, so much as gender changes and/or is fluid so is sexuality.

[ninjamelissajulien]

i want to get this off my chest

ive never felt connected to gender to be honest. i have the body of a woman, and sometimes i like it, but other times i wish i was just... vague. like, i dont see myself as a man, but i don’t quite feel connected to the set definition of a woman. ive always felt that inside im kind of a void, never truly a woman on the inside. ive always hated my name. yes, the one in my username. ive hated it for so many years. i refuse to change my url because im a stubborn bitgh. but, ive yearned for androgyny. I want to be androgynous. i want short hair. I want to be known as Hunter. i like that name. i like it when im called that irl. 

but my parents. i can never tell them.

they already struggle with me identifying as ace lesbian. even though its been 7 years since i came out, i know they still doubt me. i want to tell them so badly. i want them to know that im genderqueer. or nonbinary. something. i dont know. they already dont understand the “they” as a singular pronoun and they’re not too keen on adapting. i dont think i can ever truly tell them. but god do i want to. i want to experiment. i want to know who i am. i want to tell them that i lean towards tarot and wiccan ideology, rather than the catholic ideals i was raised with, yet they cant accept the fact that i never have and never will be catholic. 

yet, im also scared im never going to find love. 

ive never felt a romantic connection to anyone. the few times ive gotten close, nothing was ever reciprocated. im 25 and still havent had my first kiss for christ’s sake. i want to know what a real kiss feels like. i want to have someone i can hold hands with, to shower with gifts and tiktoks that make me think of them, to listen to them discuss what theyre passionate about. i want someone to hold at night. i want someone i can cook for. i want to walk around and say “look at my beautiful, handsome partner”. im so scared of dating apps, or going to bars. ive tried asking people out. it never goes anywhere. somedays, i think im too ugly to ever be loved. who would ever want anyone like me. im a nobody. im always going to be replaceable. ill be forgotten anyways. i always am. ive had so many failed friendships, ive tried to hold on but they always drift away. somedays i wonder why i bother. with anything. 

my name is hunter. im 25 years old, im genderqueer/nonbinary, i am she/they. im lonely, im scared, im forgettable, im replaceable. thats all ill ever be

[menalez]

im not necessarily asking for advice, i just see a lot of people here talking about this so i hope its ok to have a bit of a mini-vent. so i’ve pretty much always considered myself a lesbian. the only relationship i’ve ever had with a man was in 8th grade and i hated every moment of it, i couldn’t even bring myself to hold hands w him let alone kiss him. now with girls, i have a very obvious easily identifiable type. sometimes when i see a guy with the same features i’ll initially be thrown a little off guard with my sexuality until i remember that they have a penis (and other distinct male features). like i definitely recognize them as good-looking, but i don’t think that i’m actually attracted to them. but i’m not 100% sure how to distinguish the two feelings. it’s like looking at a nice painting and really appreciating its qualities— but you wouldn’t want to fuck the painting! maybe a little weird but that’s the best way i can describe it, hopefully that makes sense. if it counts for anything, this happens extremely rarely to begin with. i just dislike the feeling of being confused because when i ignore those incidents i’ve always been very confident and secure in my sexuality, and again i’ve never been interested in having sex with these men. any thoughts?

im kinda confused bc like ive seen men who look like my female type but very often i either perceive them as ugly or think oh if they were women they’d be v attractive, i don’t rly tend to find them good looking? well. like better looking than the avg man perhaps but like u described i have no interest in doing anything a them. if you feel similarly, why do u struggle to distinguish between the 2 feelings? isn’t it already v easy to distinguish for u since u can acknowledge you don’t even feel attracted to them despite being able to recognise they’re good looking?

[yourfavisanmspeclesbian]

not a request but I wanted to know if there is a term (that isn't gold star lesbians/exclusionists) that differentiates between m-spec and non m-spec lesbians? I support and believe any and all m-spec and a-spec lesbians and their identities <3 I just wanted to label myself to specify my attraction as a lesbian doesn't include men, but that I support those that do and their nuance. If not that's fine! Have a good day <3

if i can be honest here, just plain 'lesbian' should do just fine as a label for you without anything to qualify it. i think it's just worth accepting that a label can mean two things; attraction to women and/or lack of attraction to men.

(and this honestly applies to mspec lesbians, too. it's just that a lot of us indicate that we are mspec lesbians to make that fact more explicit)

⚠ however, a label you should stay away from claiming is 'vixenamoric' which was a reactionary bad-faith label coined by transmisogynists, biphobes, and lesbian separatists in 2019-2020 when mspec lesbian discourse was reintroduced to social media...

and just some food-for-thought (you're more than welcome to ignore everything after this point but i'm using your ask as an opportunity to comment on this further)... if you're looking to coin your own term with this specific "lack of attraction to men" definition, you might benefit from asking yourself what the threshold for 'men' is. because there are plenty of nonbinary people who identify as men (whether that's partially, or as a multigender person, etc.)

this is something i've brought up before when discussing this 'label war' between mspec lesbian identities and so-called 'normal' lesbian identity: it's difficult to split hairs over who you're Not attracted to and it seems futile for anyone to make all these rules for themselves about things which are inherently messy and nuanced...

like, if a self-identified not-attracted-to-men lesbian is in a relationship with a multigender lesbian whose gender is sometimes 'man', does their partner being a man for a period of time suddenly cancel their relationship? do these hypothetical people have some sort of rule between them stating that their relationship is null and void if one of them is a man? do they have some sort of gender-quantum, wherein their lesbian relationship is still considered 'valid' as long as the multigender lesbian is a man for less than 30% of the time? despite their mutually strong, personal bond to the label 'lesbian', should these people 'just identify as bi already' and be asked to label themselves differently even if they don't really want to?

or maybe - [gasp] - they’re just. two lesbians in a relationship and they don’t draw boundaries around whether they ‘count’ as lesbians or not based on arbitrary fine details and technicalities. (like, is that not exhausting? like... aren't people tired of trying to scrutinize something that's this vast, messy, nuanced, and individual? why draw boxes? it's like trying to hold liquid with a piece of cloth, you know what i mean..) anyway...

not even the 'mspec lesbian' inherently means that the person claiming it is attracted to men. definitions for any queer identity label are self-defined. even the 'specific' ones.

[a-room-of-my-own]

I’m done with being white. It’s boring. From now on I choose to identify as black and I insist that you all refer to me as a black man. Please do not mis-race me. Of course I am not going to do this because it would be mad and also a tad racist. Clearly I am not black. And I expect that calling myself black would be an affront to actual black people, who would rightfully point out that I am as white as the driven snow. ‘You can’t just put on the black identity like a piece of clothing’, they’d say, and rational people everywhere would agree.

So why, then, is it okay for Eddie Izzard to announce to the world that he is switching to ‘girl mode’? More than okay, in fact — since saying on a TV show last week that he wants to be referred to with female pronouns from now on, Izzard has won praise and accolades from newspapers and campaign groups.

Everyone, instantly and uncritically, has bowed down to his request. From the Guardian to Wikipedia, Izzard is now a woman, no questions asked. ‘Eddie Izzard is an English stand-up comedian [and] actress’, Wikipedia informs us. That was quick: from actor to actress with the click of manicured fingers.

Just imagine if a white celebrity said he was switching to ‘black mode’. Imagine the furore that would ensue. In fact we don’t have to imagine. We know. Remember Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP chapter president, a white woman who passed herself off as black for many years? She still gets flak and ridicule for that. For a white woman to ‘identify as black’ is ludicrous, everyone says.

But it’s fine for a man to identify as a woman? It’s brilliant, in fact, for Izzard to go from ‘boy mode’ to ‘girl mode’? The female identity can be put on like a piece of clothing? Why this double standard?

Izzard announced his move into ‘girl mode’ last week on an episode of the Sky Arts TV show Portrait Artist of the Year. He said he intends ‘to be based in girl mode from now on’. He has previously identified as a transvestite, as transgender, and also as a ‘lesbian trapped in a man’s body’, which, I’m sorry, is bloody offensive to lesbians. Lesbianism is women being sexually attracted to women, not heterosexual men believing that their attraction to women is some fascinating transgressive identity rather than, you know, just straightness.

Izzard’s switch to ‘girl mode’ has been fawned over. Stonewall praised Izzard’s bravery, describing his public declaration of making a shift from ‘boy’ to ‘girl’ as ‘courageous’. Brave? Bravery is running into a burning building to save someone’s life or travelling to Syria to fight with the Kurds against Isis. It isn’t brave for a 58-year-old man to embrace the most media-celebrated identity of our times — genderfluidity.

This Izzard story is important because it forces us to confront the denigration of language, especially the language around biology, sex and gender. Most people are happy to use female pronouns for men who have been through some form of gender transition process. Even many of those who question whether such people really do become women are prepared to use female pronouns as a courtesy.

But Izzard is asking for something a little different. He is very clearly male. He’s the same as he always was. To the best of our knowledge he has not undergone any kind of meaningful medical transition. And yet he wants to be known as a woman. A serious question: what gives him the right to make this request? And shouldn't the rest of us be at liberty to say, ‘I’m sorry, you are male. You may of course wear what you like and do what you like, but you are a 'he', not a 'she'’?

I’m worried about what will happen if we don’t do this; if we fail to stand up for the meaning of words. Confusion will set in, especially among younger generations, and people’s right to describe reality itself will be shot down. Already people are being branded as ‘transphobes’ — and very often hounded and demonised by woke mobs — if they say sex is real, and immutable, and that if you were born male you will die male. These are all truths, but you will be punished for expressing them. It used to be a sin to say the Earth was not at the centre of the solar system; now it’s a sin to say that people with penises are men, not women.

Failing to defend truth and reason will lead to the denigration of what it means to be a woman. I think the reason it is acceptable for men to say they are women, where it wouldn’t be acceptable for a white person to claim to be a black person, is because womanhood has been robbed of all meaning by the more extreme elements in the genderfluidity movement.

It’s sometimes difficult even to say the word ‘woman’ these days. They’re referred to as ‘people who bleed’, ‘birthing people’, ‘womxn’, because apparently using the w-word is offensive to genderfluidity activists. It is this relentless denigration of what it means to be a woman, the transformation of womanhood into mere garb one can put on whenever one chooses, that means even people who are very clearly men can now demand: ‘Call me 'she'.’

Eddie Izzard, like everyone else, deserves to have a happy, fulfilled life. But his needs do not and must not overrule the right of everyone else to talk about the real world as it exists. Someone needs to tell Eddie that womanhood is not a ‘mode’ — it’s a real thing, and it deserves some respect

[thequietuptown]

I have a very specific & uncomfortable/NSFW question. After fives years of crisis I identify as a lesbian, but besides loving women sexually I also am turned on by mlm smut. I’m honestly upset with myself for it but not only do I not have a way to stop it, it just makes me question my sexuality even more than I already do. I’m not attracted to men & I especially do not want to watch or engage besides w/ written but it’s just a bad situation for me. Help? :(

Hiya friend,

So by some strange coincidence I just responded to a submission about finding male characters attractive when one is typically attracted to femininity. You can read that post below because I think most of that is applicable here, too, but I do want to look at the facet that is unique to your submission, which would be the sexual intimacy between masculine characters.

I know you said this was pretty much exclusively reserved for written smut, but there's a great scene in the movie The Kids are All Right in which Laser (Josh Hutcherson) stumbles upon his moms' porn collection and asks his moms (Julianne Moore and Annette Bening) why they watch "gay man porn" if they're lesbians, and their response is essentially because sometimes it's nice to mix things up and also that masculine arousal tends to be a lot more external than depictions of feminine sexual enjoyment. Even in written smut, it's easier to either visualize or identify with arousal expressed physically. I mentioned in the other post that authorship is an important thing to take into consideration, and I find that especially true in this instance. The author is most likely going to either be an AFAB person, writing from an AFAB person's sexual perspective utilizing language of external sexuality, which is something you might readily identify with, or they're going to be an AMAB person with an innate knowledge of arousal in that type of body and so they might be better equipped to talk about what things feel like in those types of bodies than they would be to talk about what arousal feels like in an AFAB body. Beyond the role of authorship and the advantages that different authors have in writing mlm erotica, there's also just the fact that mlm erotica exists externally from cishet male fantasies. The characters engaging physically are generally depicted as really enjoying their respective roles without problematic assumptions of sexuality (e.g. depicting someone who just really enjoys giving oral sex vs oral sex between a man and a woman in a way that degrades the woman) and are doing it for themselves and their partner(s) and not for an unseen audience (e.g. wlw erotica written by men for men with really unrealistic depictions of sapphic love).

With all of that being said, I think it makes sense to be interested in mlm erotica if you're into erotica at all. I don't think that's wrong or something that needs to be corrected in the slightest. Be kind to yourself. I hope this helps.

With love, friend.

[super-nowa-art]

i got angry. and when i get angry, i rant. and when i rant, i need to share the rant with the void of social media, just to have an outlet.

if you don't agree with me, i don't care. not looking for discourse.

i watched this video, for context. literally no one cares but idk

https://youtu.be/5uaJ1XyRwrU

Ok this is about to be long so bear with me.

To begin with, why are we still gatekeeping? It's 2020. Queers should stick together instead of debating who's identity is "valid" or not. Let people be who they want to be.

Also, I don't know what your views on trans people are (think you've made videos with trans folk so I'm guessing you're not intentionally being transphobic), but the preferred pronoun law is actually meant to PROTECT trans people. Which is fucking needed. In 2020 alone there have been at least 36 people killed in the US for being trans. There are probably a lot more, considering murdered trans people often get misgendered by the cops and the statistics don't include them. World wide, more than 3000 trans folk have been murdered for being trans in the last 11 years. And again, there's surely a lot more we don't know about.

The preferred pronoun law that you mock is life saving. It keeps trans people from being outed where it would be dangerous to be outed. Most trans people are killed by someone they know. Yes, the law is there to provide an encitement to use trans folk's correct pronouns because it can induce extreme dysphoria to be misgendered, but more importantly, it's there so a trans person's coworker or boss is less likely to mis-gender them and out them.

And the part where you said you can get a fine for misgendering when you make an honest mistake; no, you can't. At least, that's not what the law is for. The law is for repeated misgendering, demanding license or medical proof that you are biologically the gender you identify as, etc.

As you may have already guessed by my passion for this topic, I am myself trans. Non-binary, to be precise.

Now, I know that we as humans love to label things. I love to label things. I love labeling myself! I like knowing other people's labels! When someone identifies as merely "queer", I get this itchy feeling of: "yeah, but what ARE you?"

I get wanting to label things. What I do NOT get is aggresively stating that someone's identity is invalid. Identifying as simply "queer" is fine! If that's what you resonate with, go for it! Does it irk me that I don't know what that means exactly for you? Yes. Does my inherent need to categorise people start shouting for attention? Absolutely. But it's their identity, and that's cool! It is really none of my business, as long as I know what pronouns to use.

Now, I understand the confusion and anger around this. Before I came out as or even knew I was non-binary, I identified as a lesbian. Love being a lesbian! It's great! I really identified with that term, and I still do.

But then I realised I was trans, and thought hey, I'm not a woman, can I still label myself as a lesbian? Should I just say I identify as "attracted to women"? Say I'm gynosexual and confuse everyone including myself?

I went with just calling myself a lesbian, because that is the term I've used about myself for years. When you said that this word is very important to some people, you were right. Where you were wrong, however, was when you implied that it isn't hugely important to us, too.

Because here's the thing: gender and sex are not the same thing, and more importantly, gender and what pronouns you prefer are not always directly correlated. I know this might confuse you. That's totally fine! I'm confused about everything almost all the time, I feel you! But it is how many trans people feel. I get this tingly awesome feeling when someone refers to me as he/him, because I want to be percieved as masculine. I don't feel like a man, but I want to be seen as masculine or androgynous. I use they/them pronouns, because it's easier than explaining that sometimes I want to be called him, but sometimes not, and basically explain my entire gender to someone.

I understand this feels threatening. It feels like someone is taking away your identity that means so much to you, and that you might have endured a lot of hardship for having.

But remember, us trans people have gone through shit, too. I don't mean to in any way compare the two struggles. I don't want to sit here and say "we have it worse", because really, it doesn't really matter. What matters is this: I get misgendered every day. When you're a binary trans, you can pass for being cis and automatically be called what you want. That will never happen for me. Unless someone asks me my pronouns (which is the best, try it), they are going to assume I'm a female. And I don't blame them! I see boobs, I think girl, too.

Now, imagine you have struggled with figuring out yourself for a long time, and you finally, finally find what you are. What you identify with. And then someone says that you can't identify as that, because you don't fit the mould. News flash, I never fit the mould anywhere, ever! The one place I have always felt safe and happy is within the queer community. And that's why gatekeeping fucks me up so much. Because people like me, who have been the weirdo all their life, hating their body and not knowing why, being confused and scared, not daring to come out, not wanting to draw attention to myself, finally find a place to belong. And then you get shut down. It feels awful.

Explaining that gender and pronouns don't have a direct correlation is hard. Because you can't really explain it. It's just a statement. Like: gender and sex aren't the same thing, but even harder, since it's based on experiences and not the fact that is: trans people excist.

Now, I know that this might have been focused more on cis women who use the pronouns he/him. And yes, like you said, pronouns do indeed give a big indication on what gender identity someone has. But it doesn't HAVE to. They might have a weird or bad relationship with their femininity for various reasons, or they might just feel like a woman but not identify with the female pronouns.

For example, I have a gender I know what my feels like. But I can't explain it for the life of me. Try explaining your gender in detail! It's a lot harder than you think, and it gets even harder to explain when the words aren't even invented.

A he/him lesbian is not a man trying to make fun of your identity, I promise. It's someone who either doesn't have any other word to use (like me), feels a strong connection to the word and associated identity (also me), or a woman who doesn't want to be labeled as she/her for various reasons, but who is attracted to other women. We are not here to shit on your identity! Please don't shi on ours!

I know that probably no one will read this absolute monster of a comment, and that's ok. I got so upset I actually teared up a little bit, so I felt like I had to express myself or I would be thinking about it indefinitely.

Please, if anyone's reading: be respectful. Understand that understanding others is hella difficult, but we have to try, and that both gender and sexuality is very fluid and complicated.

I tried to be as respectful as possible, please have the same courtesy if you intend to commt on my comment, so to speak.

Sad but hopeful lesbian signing off!

[in-this-body-of-mine]

To The Bone (2017) - Analysis and Charting

Let’s go! I’m NOT excited because life is hard but what better way to distract myself than to do this kind of shit. No one cares, anyways.

Since this is the first one, let me tell you what we’re gonna do here. I’ll include the IMDB summary, a summary with spoilers, the placements in the chart, we’ll go over each item (also, spoilers abound) and finally my review and final thoughts. Yes, it’s gonna be long. Read at your own risk.

IMDB summary:  A young woman, dealing with anorexia, meets an unconventional doctor who challenges her to face her condition and embrace life.

Summary with spoilers: Lily Collins plays Ellen/Eli and from the start of the movie she is on the brink of her disease. She was just kicked out of a recovery center and she gets an appointment with a ~cool unconventional doctor~ played by Keanu Reeves. She goes into ANOTHER inpatient treatment home to be treated by him. Shit happens, she seems to be getting better somehow, but then she spirals down, runs away, and after a... near death experience (I wish this was an euphemism) she decides to try recovery again and goes back to the treatment home. That’s where the movie ends.

Chart placements!

Now for each item:

White: Ellen or Eli is played by Lily Collins, who once played Sandra Bullock’s daughter in that movie were she was a Karen. It doesn’t get whiter than that.

Female: She changes her name to Eli mid film (which is how I’ll be calling her here bc we respect chosen names in this household) but she still seems to identify as female and be referred to as such, so here we have it. We do have a guy in the treatment home, but we’ll come back to him later.

Teenager/Young adult: I’m pretty sure she is 19 but every review I see says she’s 20. Either way, she dropped out of college even though she just started it. The actress, however, was 28 at the time the movie was released.

Wealthy/seemingly well-off: Her family has the money to send her to inpatient a bunch of times, and they make a point to mention how they have connections so she didn’t have to wait in line to see this new doctor. Case closed.

Skinny actress from the start: As we know, Lily Collins is already thin and she did struggle with anorexia in the past. Why, however, did she lose weight for this movie? They said it was her decision “to make the character more authentic”. As if not being skin and bones wouldn’t be enough. As if eating disorders don’t come in every size. They shouldn’t let her. The need to shock people is a very dangerous sign to me.

No distinctive personality or hobbies/interests: I’m glad Eli has a thing she loves. It’s not super present, but it’s there, and it’s plot relevant. She loves art and in the story, she had a tumblr (look, it’s us!) where she shared drawings related to her ED and a girl liked her drawings so much that, when she killed herself, she mentioned Eli by name in a note. But that isn’t really explored too much and I kind of got disappointed by that.

Good student: We don’t really know about that... and I don’t think it matter, it’s ok.

Seemingly irrelevant love interest: Why? Just why do we need Luke? Luke is the only guy in the home, and we can SEE that he’s only there to be Eli’s love interest. He wasn’t needed. None of the important plot points have anything to do with him. Make her date a girl. Make her date NO ONE. This is about eating disorders. She could have closer friends in the house. Why was this necessary. Her whole speech about how love is a lie could come from a friendship but no. They had to shove pretty white boy there.

Daddy issues (sometimes coupled with mommy issues): I find this extremely funny but her dad isn’t in the movie. At all. He’s alive and well, but he makes a point to never come home when Eli is even awake. I don’t think they cast an actor for that. As for mothers, she has three, and it’s a trip. Her stepmom on her dad’s side is very out of touch but she wants what’s best for Eli, but she really hates Eli’s biological mom. Bio mom, in turn, is described as a “bipolar lesbian” and the stereotypes are just... ugh. Bio mom has a wife and she is a bit weird too. They sent Eli to live with her absent dad bc “they couldn’t deal with it anymore”. This brings us to a great scene where we can see Eli shrinking in her seat and when the psychiatrist asks her what she is feeling she says “I’m sorry I’m not a person anymore. I’m a problem.” And that’s great to see. But at the same time, I hate that her whole issue in this movie seems to come from her family and anorexia is just a thing that happened, with some vague references to control. 

*Triggering event*: We never see it and it’s okay - but I kind of wanted some more explorations of motives because we have ZERO.

Anorexia as diagnosis: As I always say, what is even the point of making a cool looking movie about EDs if your protagonist is not only anorexic, but also terminally anorexic? Ugh. That’s the only portrayal of anorexia that happens in media and I’m fucking tired.

Checklist of habits (manual for those looking for one): I mean, I mark this down but as I always say: everything is a manual if you’re looking for one. But if you’re doing more than not eating or purging or exercising I’ll judge it as a new tip. A lot of us already thought of/did most of them probably. But the marking remains.

Inpatient treatment (or extended hospital stay): As I said, she is kicked out of one treatment center and goes straight into another. What fucks me up is that the movie HAS other characters with other diagnosis, but we never see anything about them. We don’t see their journey. We only know Luke is a dancer bc he is the love interest. We only know Megan is pregnant and then she’s not bc this sends Eli in a spiral. We only know Kendra is not straight bc she makes a joke about it (and Doctor Beckham follows with a horrible joke about conversion therapy). Did you notice Ciara Bravo was in this movie? I didn’t on first viewing. She has like two lines. The whole movie is centered around Eli and every scene in the house feels like all the other patients only care about her too.

Emotional tipping point: Megan loses her baby and for some reason this affects Eli. Luke kisses Eli and for some reason she’s pissed. At that point, I was annoyed. She has a bad session with Doctor Beckham who basically tells her to grow a pair and stop complaining (which is insensitive as a doctor, but as a person I wanted to do the same) and she decides to quit and leave. She has to go to her mother’s home and I’m supposed to care. Stepmom is mad but doctor says she needs to hit rock bottom. She weights like 70 pounds dude. Rock bottom was about ten pounds ago, next stop is a coffin, mate.

Mom hugs: And here we have the emotional turn around of the movie and it’s just... make it make sense. She goes to her bio mom’s ranch. Her stepmom # 2 tells they’ll have therapy with horses (?). Eli goes sleep in a tent and bio mom cries and says she accepts if Eli wants to die. Very supportive I guess. They have this weird bonding moment where the mom feeds her a bottle like a baby and look, if you liked that, good for you, but I don’t get what I was supposed to feel about it (but that’s mom hug #1). She goes on a hike next morning and... dies? Either way she has an out of body experience where she talks to Luke and sees how she looks - which is weird to me. Didn’t we go over this in the beggining of the movie? Didn’t we establish that she does know what she looks like and doesn’t care? But still she seems shocked and they have a cryptical conversation and she wakes up. And just like that, she’s ok now. She meets up with the other stepmom (mom hug # 2) and goes back to the home.

Happy ending: In the last scene Eli is back to the home and we understand she’s going to try to recover for real this time. I’m okay with that specifically, I think it would be bad if they pretended she just got better with no relapses and everything is fine, but it’s a hopeful ending. Despite the fact that we have no idea if she won’t have a fit and leave in two days and that we never know anything about anyone else and Megan, who lost the baby, never comes back. It’s fine. At that point, I didn’t expect much.

Analysis: I was hesitant to be critical bc this movie was based on the real life experiences of the director and Lily Collins. But fuck it, this is my circus and I’ll clown as much as I want. While I do understand that, I have a lot of thoughts.

Mainly, I need to say that while I understand this is her story, this is a story that was told so many times. I’m tired.

The general public that wants to defend the movie says “well you can’t tell ALL stories”, and while I agree, these people probably only saw this movie about the subject. If you HAVE (or had) and eating disorder, you probably saw tons. And they ALL tell the same story. Which is why I started that chart in the first place.

This movie does have good moments. I do like the acting, I saw people complaining about Keanu Reeves performance - but I do know these were people who disliked the movie entirely. I think his performance was great, Lily Collins performance was great, and their chemistry was great. The best scenes in the movie happened between the two of them. The one thing that I LOVED was their first interaction when he calls her on her bullshit. “You’re not thin, you scare people, and I think you like that.” YES. I never heard anyone talk about that. And I guess I’ll never will, bc the movie itself never talk about this again either. Also when she justifies the tumblr where her art triggered a girl so much, she says that she was just drawing what she knows, he calmly tells her that she can draw, but she doesn’t have to share it online tho. I liked their interactions because often ED patients are treated with silk gloves (is that the expression?) and sometimes there is a need for some though love. I also love Liana Liberato who plays her sister and that’s about it.

The problem with the doctor ends up being: what’s his method? How are you going to cure her? The method makes no sense. I don’t see the reasoning. I don’t think anyone does. And somehow it works and she goes back there. 

I think my major problem with the movie is that it has the same issues every ED portrayal before it. It’s the same story again. I think it shines the most in the whole “it’s not about food, it’s about control!”. It IS about food though. For a lot of people, it is. Maybe not for this director or for Lily Collins, but for so many people it is about food. It’s about control as well, and it is possible that there is other factors related to it, but you can’t chalk it all up to a control issue and pretend it’s just whatever. If the food didn’t matter, it wouldn’t be an eating disorder.

Because of that, we have this heavy focus on her family issues and nothing to do with food. We have people trying to rationalize - maybe it’s bc your mom is a lesbian, maybe it’s bc i didn’t bond with you as a baby - and all that does is to make her lesbian bipolar mother seem like a crazy asshole and her dad seem like an absent asshole as if this is the only factor here. Give me SOMETHING. Any connection to food. Any sense. Nope. She just won’t eat bc her family is fucked up. Hoe, that’s all of us.

And I think the movie unintentionally DOES glamourize anorexia. Subtly, yes, but it does. Eli has SUCH an easy time refusing food. She doesn’t seem to think about food as much as she thinks about herself and her family and Luke and being annoying. She knows a bunch of calories and she overexercises. Idk.  Not to mention that moment when Kendra asks her about purging and she says “it’s not her thing”. I mean. It is no one’s thing. No one likes it. It’s a compulsion. And if you have anorexia that severe and you are not with a feeding tube, you do eat every now and then, and you do have purging mechanisms. If she had said she prefers overexercising as a purging mechanism than to throw up, I would believe her. But the movie acts as if she just never eats ever and somehow she’s still standing. Give her a feeding tube then. It would be more believable.

I know it sounds kind of ranty, but my point here is: this extremely anorexic girl, that looks like a sack of bones, and gets that by never eating and doing crunches all the time, it is the wet dream of a fatphobic society with a 71 billion weight loss industry. This is the dreamy and frugal idea of anorexia that people have when they are deep into the illness - not when they recovered as the people involved say they did. I get that this is a very personal project. But it’s flawed. It doesn’t do anyone any favors. It just tells the same story, for the millionth time, but since this time it was in a big platform, more people saw it, and it was better done, with a better budget and with a good enough resolution so I can see every bone in Lily Collins body.

Anyway, that’s it for today. If you read all of that, thanks. Since this is Netflix, I’m assuming everyone saw, but the other movies are out there and if you need liks, hit me up. Be back soon.

[ryuichirou]

Hi! So a friend of mine love your stuff and especially the nsfw one retwetting him all the time and it shocks me a bit cuz I have the impression it’s a thing like another for her but at my eyes it’s similar to porn (I’m a straight dude) and as I thought I understand while reading your tumblr you’re a girl who like girl (like her) so I asked myself what do you think about all this yaoi/hentai thing? Like are you excited about that or it’s just for fun and you don’t sexualized penis? 1/2

And at the opposite why don’t draw shojo or even yuri where you can more identify you?  I’m really trying to understand ^^’ Have a great day! 2/2 

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

Hi!

I’m very flattered that your friend likes my drawings! <3

And I appreciate that you decided to talk to me about this topic and not just be judgmental like a lot of people do. It’s always good when a person tries to do some research before making conclusions, so I’ll try to answer your question to the best of my abilities, but please keep in mind that I’m mostly speaking out of my own experience + things that I observed over the last ~10 years. You can ask your friend too! Maybe her opinion is different than mine :)

This… turned out to be a long read, so please bear with me. And pardon me if my English sounds broken.

Slash (in a shipping sense) and BL (Boys Love) are not 100% the same thing, but in a lot of ways they work similarly: it’s a subgenre that is popular predominantly among women. It is usually (but not always) is written by women and for women. It’s a known fact that BL started as a way for female manga artists to portray romance the way they wanted without being “stuck” in unfair gender stereotypes and tropes they needed to meet. BL/Yaoi gave them freedom to express different ideas, different scenarios and types of relationships without feeling obliged to create a certain narrative or to play a certain role. Of course, this was the very beginning, and BL as a genre evolved over the past 50 years.

Slash, as I already mentioned, is similar to that in some ways, because the main focus of slash fanworks is always, well, relationships. It’s all about the chemistry characters have with each other and possible scenarios these two can have, whether it is the canon universe or an alternative universe. Just a game of “what ifs”, so to speak.

So to me personally, the focus here isn’t the fact that these characters are both men, but the fact that characters have fun and interesting relationships that I want to explore.

But the thing is, it’s very difficult to find even one well-written female character, and it’s even more difficult to find at least two well-written female characters, and it’s almost impossible to find two female characters that have a good and entertaining chemistry and are “shippable” together. The “pool” of personalities and tropes related to them is also much smaller with female characters, and there are a lot of tropes that I love and don’t usually see portrayed with them. As much as I want to have as many girl-ships as boy-ships, it’s impossible if there is neither chemistry nor fun characters to play around with…

I can’t even read yuri-manga nowadays, because it’s always the same 1-2 tropes, the same school-based scenario and the same types of characters all the time. It’s (as opposed to yaoi lol) is often catered towards men and has some male-gazey stuff. So yeah, of course this is me being extra picky when it comes to yuri and femslash, but I can’t really read yuri anymore, unless it’s written by a woman and isn’t based in school. You can call me a hypocrite for that haha.

When my heart and soul are craving some femslash content, I often just… genderswap characters and sigh with delight and happiness lol With SnK it’s different though, it’s one of the best titles when it comes to female characters and ships, and I’m having lots of fun with them. That’s why I post one sfw (not porn) drawing with them per week rn on my main accs.

Back to the topic.

A lot of girls explore their own feelings and personality traits when they ship. And a lot of them just play around with different scenarios and find out what’s interesting to them and what isn’t.

On one hand, you can relate to a male character and don’t feel the pressure a female character would feel. Or you can relate to a male character because he’s much more well-written, nuanced and interesting. On the other hand, you can ditch trying to relate to someone altogether and just enjoy the romance as a very nosy bystander lol. A win/win either way.

When it comes to lesbians, I think the lack of good femslash content is one of the reasons it’s much easier to feel a bond with a m/m ship. Another reason is relationships you build with other shippers around you. A lot of couples I know used to ship stuff together or even roleplay m/m scenarios. A lot of people discovered their sexuality because of that, a lot of them were able to explore it and accept it.

And if we’re talking about nsfw stuff, I personally (!!!) don’t find penises sexy and don’t find men sexy. I’ve never been attracted to a man and irl gay porn isn’t exciting to me. Well, any irl porn…  I wouldn’t necessarily say that my nsfw drawings are arousing to me, unless there is a specific context that is personal. In my particular case, it’s just another extremely fun subgenre that fascinates me. Maybe it’s a different type of arousal haha I’m not sure how to explain it. But imo things that I draw barely look like real porn so…

But some people do find these things hot and that’s great! I’m happy if people like my nsfw stuff this much.

But in my opinion, it’s mainly the association with personal stuff that does the trick. If we’re talking about someone who isn’t generally attracted to penises, that is.

And to answer your last question, I do draw yuri/femslash from time to time! I have a lot of Shingeki w/w ships that I love, I genderswap my favourite m/m ships from time to time. Sometimes I even draw nsfw with them, but I never post it. I have complicated relationships with it because it’s more identifying to me and more, uh, real.

It’s an ongoing process, who knows, maybe one day I’ll be more comfortable to post this kind of stuff and less greedy about it haha. But right now it’s too personal and self-indulgent for me to share.

But for now you all will have to look at Levi riding 100500 dicks lol

[plague-of-insomnia]

Hi, would it be ok for me to ask how did you know you were non-binary? I'm questioning and would like to get some opinions, but no pressure to answer if this is too personal!!

So I got this ask months back, and with everything that has gone on with my health I wasn’t able to answer it... so I don’t know if the person who sent this will even see it, but since it’s pride month I figured it was a good time to get to the queer/questioning asks that have been languishing in my poor ask box/drafts...

First of all, I don’t mind questions like this; if I ever find an ask too personal I’ll usually just ignore it, but something like this I think is important especially since NB is such a... underrepresented concept, for lack of a better word, so sometimes that lack of exposure plus the very broad nature of the label can make the whole questioning process confusing and stressful.

Honestly, for a looong time I had no idea I wasn’t cis.

I didn’t know that you could be anything other than male and female; I grew up in pretty conservative Latin American immigrant family, Catholic, so the idea of homosexuality was bad enough, lol.

I was very involved in the (then called) “Gay/Straight” alliance back in high school, as we had quite a few gay and lesbian students and teachers. I had mostly queer friends, but even binary transgender people weren’t... as prominent back then. Ofc they existed, but I didn’t have as much exposure in HS, and I went to a catholic college where many gay students had to essentially be closeted—for example, (openly) gay men weren’t technically allowed in fraternities. I loved my school, but some of its views on women and LGBTQ+ people were pretty dark age stuff, so again I had no idea that gender was a broader spectrum than simply male/female, cis or trans.

As far back as at least around early puberty, I created a kind of alter ego. A character opposite my birth sex, who was unlike any other I ever created and who has stayed with me my whole life. They helped me survive my childhood/adolescence. They felt very much “me” and yet weren’t simply the person I was in actuality made into the opposite gender. More like the aspects of my self/identity I knew subconsciously.

Often, when I fantasized, I would put myself into their role. Imagine being the other gender, what their body would feel like, what sex would be like. I’d ask friends i was comfortable with about what it felt like to be the opposite gender. I felt I needed to know so that I could “feel” it too. So I could truly imagine being a gender other than my own, with different parts, different secondary sex characteristics.

Yet at the same time, I felt comfortable enough with my birth sex that I explained these moments away. I was just thinking like a writer. Curious, bc that’s my nature. I never thought I could be trans because despite the power of these feelings, the sometimes intense longing I felt to be other than I was, the thought of completely changing my body, abandoning my assigned gender, felt horrible. Like I would be losing part of myself.

I first heard the term nonbinary during Pride. I had never encountered this before, and being who I am immediately looked it up. I was floored. Gender was a spectrum? You could be both male and female??

I felt like I had been hit by lightning.

I immediately reflected on a lifetime of “queer” thoughts. About my alter ego and how I had clung so tightly to them, how often I fantasized about having parts I didn’t have (without necessarily wanting to take away parts that I already did). How I went through phases where I dressed very masculine in some points of my life and very feminine in others. How I related so strongly to certain characters over others, and other past experiences that I had always managed to discard or shelve away in “comfortable” boxes.

And I reflected on how I had always had this... shame about these thoughts and feelings, this fear that they made me a “freak,” which might be why I had always been so quick to file them away with safe labels.

Discovering that I wasn’t alone was liberating. I read about and spoke to people who identified as NB, and often found they had a similar thoughts and experiences growing up as I did, and that helped cement in my mind, without a doubt, that I was also nonbinary, that I wasn’t purely male or female, but both.

I’ve suffered with depression my entire life, and am likely bipolar (something my current therapist agrees with, though I haven’t been formally diagnosed for various reasons). And once I opened my eyes and began questioning, I discovered that a significant part of my depression was actually tied to my gender dysphoria.

Exploring my gender identity in various ways, and finally accepting that I am NB/gender fluid has made me much more content.

Now, ofc there is no one way to be non-binary. So just bc my experience doesn’t align with what you’re feeling, doesn’t mean you’re not NB yourself.

Some people don’t feel any gender at all, and wish they didn’t have any secondary sex characteristics. Some want to be purely androgynous. Some feel mostly one binary gender or another, but maybe not “fully” male or female. Some feel a mix of both, and some shift between two or more genders.

For me, I feel like I’m always partly male and partly female, though sometimes one is more dominant than the other. Sometimes I’ll have gender dysphoria so bad that looking at cis bodies can be very upsetting, or the feeling of “missing” parts I feel I have/should have is so intense it’s almost all I can think about. Yet other times I feel pretty “stable.” Sometimes I feel like I’m thinking a lot about my gender and my presentation and others I barley think about it at all, I just “am.”

I feel freer now that I have shifted names and pronouns. Like I’m finally accepting my full self.

A huge part of why I enjoy playing Animal Crossing so much is bc I can indulge my gender fluidity by playing with how I dress my character... it brings me a lot of peace I can’t always get IRL.

I hope whoever reads this finds this helpful, original anon or anyone who might be wondering if they may be NB or not.

Feel free to send other asks if you’d like, or if you know me you can DM me and we can talk privately. 💕

Happy Pride 🏳️‍🌈

[longinglook]

I’m going to be gone for most of the day so I thought that the best way to use up my last 10 minutes before leaving would be to write a multi paragraph post on what I think about Fighter’s behavior so here we go

(under a read more because this could get very very long)

so. fighter. our confused messy boy we are just starting to understand

i’ve read a lot of tweets/posts/comments of people that don’t understand his behavior or think that his storyline doesn’t make sense which has always left me a bit perplexed because to me everything he does seems justified and coherent to where his mind is at the moment so i’ll try to explain

but first, something about me kfmslkcls 

i identify as lesbian but i have struggled with compulsive heterosexuality all my life, i’ve spent years identifying as bi because the scary part for me was not admitting that i liked girls but admitting that i did not like boys past the occasional crushes on fictional boys and let me tell you: a lot of what fighter does/the way he thinks reminds me so much of how i was and here’s a list of things:

1) he seems a lot more at ease with same sex friends, the only times we see him with hwa you can tell that he’s forcing himself to act a certain way, he knows he’s supposed to do boyfriend things like taking her on dates and kissing but he is not comfortable with it, he tries and fails at it. of course part of the reason is because of his father but not only does he seem uniterested in her, there’s always a sense of uneasiness when he’s with her, like he’s scared of actually having to kiss her. he’s fine with the relationship as long as it’s just texting and hanging out (like a friendship would be) but he seems not to want it to become phisical. since he’s a very confused boy he’s probably blaming all of this on his father forcing him into the relationship, instead of knowing right away that he’s not interested in her

2) thinking whatever he has with tutor is just friendship and teasing: i feel like this is such a common experience for most lgbt+ folks, thinking you just have a deep friendship with someone of the same sex, only to later realize it was actually a crush and you had no idea. ex. liking the casual cuddling and touches and looking for more, paying close attention to all the displays of affection, wanting to always be close and being a little jealous of everyone else that they interact with. I feel like a lot of people go through this thinking it’s just a friendship, especially if it’s with someone of the same sex because they are not even considering the option of it being a crush. that’s why fighter keeps saying that they’re only friends and he’s behaving like a close friend would, he just doesn’t let himself consider the option because it would be way too scary and that leads us to point #3

3) being too scared to say what he wants: he does this A LOT. instead of asking for something, which would mean saying it out loud and admitting it, he just acts. words can be so scary (again making this about me, i have id’d as lesbian for over 2 years now and ive come out to a lot of friends but ive never said the word lesbian out loud because it’s just terrifying to me), and fighter seems to only use them after he has acted to justify whatever dumb shit he has done with an excuse. saying something like “i kissed you because i wanted to” would mean admitting he wants to kiss another man (meaning he’s not straight) and that man is fighter (meaning he has feelings for him). it’s much easier for him to go with the flow  and do first, explain later. and by explaining i mean lying, even to himself because deep down he knows, of couse he knows what’s going on but acknowledging it would have serious implications on his life.

also the way he reacts to tutor asking him if he likes boys is a big indicator of what's going on with him, it's his way of answering, not his way of avoiding the question. he can't say it out loud so he shows it but then he's scared of the consequences and no homos it. and the choice of replaying the question scene while they're making out shows us that fight is tormented by it, he's scared of other people asking him that as well, now that tutor has noticed it more people could as well and that's why he pulls away. 

4) on a similar note, teasing until tutor does something/not wanting to be the one to start it: this is pure fighter behavior, hoping tutor will be the one to start it so he doesn’t have to. i called this gay chicken last week, it’s fighter making everything into a challenge so he can blame it on tutor and say that he was just reacting. we can see how desperate he is for tutor’s attention, how happy he is when he has it and how frustrated he is when he doesn’t. he’s like a child who wants people to pay attention to him but doesn’t know how to ask for it, so they start annoying people. fight knows very well that he could just say hey tutor i’m here, please talk to me but how could he give a realistic reason for it other than because i have a massive crush on you meaning i’m not straight. he knows tutor doesn’t back down from a challenge and he riles him up because he has learned what that will lead them to. it’s like he knows there’s an easier way to get to that, but it’s scary so he just keeps going with his soundproof tesing tacting which so far has worked every time. also in general reacting is a lot easier than acting, again a personal example: if someone asks me if i like girls I’ll say yes right away, but if i have to start the conversation i won’t. (one thing i do a lot is to be like “hey i have something to tell you about myself but you have to guess it”)

5) backtracking/giving mixed signals: again he’s terrified, he knows what he wants but he knows what /wanting it/ implies. sometimes he follows his heart, but then his brain comes back to tell him that, hey, you’re kissing another dude and you’re enjoying it and of course he freaks out and leaves. i would be way more annoyed with him if the show had been portraying tutor as pining and in love, meaning that fighter has been giving him false-ish hopes, but after ep.6 we see that tutor himself still hasn’t admitted to himself that he likes fighter (in bold because i feel like this part is very important and often overlooked) so they are both confused about their feelings. 

i don’t think they are actually confused, they know but they are scared which in my opinion is very realistic of how someone behaves when they thought they were straight and they are not. It’s not about being dumb or being slow, it’s about realizing that once you take that step and acknowledge you’re not straight your life changes. idk how many of you are actually not straight (i assume most just because tumblr) but like…… coming out is so stressful being straight is just so much easier you dont have to do shit i wish that were me

6) his father: i feel like we only grazed the surface of fighter’s daddy issues, but he seems to be a very controlling and inflexible man, meaning that he probably wouldn’t be thrilled at the idea of his son dating another man. we don’t know about fight’s past, and maybe he has already had crushes on men and had to repress them. fighter seems to be used to a pretty luxurious lifestyle, he can’t just fuck off and go against his father because he would lose his support.

so it’s not just admitting things to himself, which can be insanely hard on its own especially if you were brought up in a traditional family, it’s also having to deal with the reactions from everyone around you

I KEEP THINKING ABOUT NEW THINGS TO ADD TO THIS POST SORRY anyway i think fighter has already shown multiple times that he does care for tor, it's just in a very shy and lowkey way because he's scared of giving himself away but he does indeed worry about tor (ex. he notices tor is stressed about his test, he tries to help outat his part time job). it also seems that in times of urgency he's more explicit about ex. offering to pay off his debt when tor was being threatened or saying he's his boyfriend when the gross cafe dude was hitting on him

also can we talk about how heartbreaking and soft fighter can be when he lets down his guard and shows his emotional side ex. telling tor nobody has ever taken care of him like that or the way he looks every time tutor pulls away first... this poor boy is touch starved and he craves affection but he can't ask for it yet. he's going to be a real gem once he can be honest with his feelings

for future episodes i think that tutor and fighter are well on their way to realizing their feelings for each other and there's going to be some development soon, but i dont expect fighter to come out to anyone else in the next few episodes because there's a lot of work to be done still. i just hope they dont pull the /i dont like boys i just like you/ trope because i WILL drop this show. so. fast. please don't ruin this character please let him accept his attraction to men fully

in conclusion. i dont blame fighter for anything he has done so far, he’s scared shitless but knows what’s going on, i trust he will soon be brave enough to start being honest with himself and with tutor

man this did NOT  take 10 minutes to write and i dont have time to proofread

[hangmansradio]

are you gonna change Grant's pronouns?

Well nonny... Let me answer your question but also explain the reasoning behind my answer. So I apologise in advance if this ends up being quite long-winded.  In short, my answer is no. But please don’t think any less of me and let me try to explain. I’ve talked to so many people about this and been having a really hard time trying to decide what to do. My knee-jerk reaction when I heard everyone saying they were going to change pronouns was that I didn’t want to do that. And then I felt like an awful person for feeling that way, and basically spent a day believing I’m a hideous person and trying to beat my brain into thinking differently.  I’ve talked to people who identify as cis, as trans and as non-binary. I have dozens of friends who slip up and down the gender spectrum sometimes on the daily and it makes no odds to me how someone identifies. You can ask me to call you by any pronoun you desire, you could tell me you’ve decided to live your life as a pot-plant, its all good!  I read the interview with Grant where they talk about their gender and how they were exploring things like cross-dressing as young as ten. And the whole interview felt very relaxed, and not at all like a sort of... coming out tale, for lack of a better phrase. Grant didn’t seem to be dictating (to me at least) that they wanted people to alter the way they talk about them. They were just discussing gender and new words for gender in the context of how times have changed. How they themself didn’t have words like gender fluid or non-binary when they were young, and that this is why things like the t slur ended up in the Invisibles. But I digress. Grant is now sixty years old, which means they’ve had roughly fifty years living their life as non-binary, even if they didn’t exactly have the words for it. Which says to me that they’re probably extremely comfortable with it, relaxed, and have no qualms or issues that tend to surface in young people. So... Why was my instinct reaction to changing my work anything less than joyful acceptance? I’ve asked myself this question over and over. I have been told I’m being ignorant. Have been told that as a cis person I have no comprehension of why pronouns are important. I spent yesterday evening crying to myself, when I was already sick in bed, and made quite the sorry sight.  And the thing is, as a writer, I’ve spent the last two decades getting into other peoples mindsets in order to write a myriad of characters. And so far, people tell me I do this quite well. I have a degree in psychology. I am working towards a masters degree in psychology. I have done separate studies into counselling specifically. Understanding people is my thing. It’s what I do.  So why then, do I not want to change the pronouns? In answer, I had to stop and think entirely selfishly. I had to look into myself and away from the all those voices telling me I don’t understand or that I’m ignorant, and question what made me feel uncomfortable. And the answer is quite simple. I write fanfiction, yes. But the characters I create are MINE. I do not write about Grant Morrison the comic book writer. I write about a character all my own, and slap the face of Grant onto it. I don’t read MCR fanfiction, or any fanfiction about real life people because it makes me uncomfortable, and recently I’ve been warring with myself about leaving the MCR category when it comes to writing, because for me... the disconnect between real people and my characters is wholly, utterly complete.  If I could explain it simply - I view my characters (all of them) as OC’s. But for the sake of writing in the same category I have been for years, and thus keeping the readers I adore so much and the friends I have made - I use MCR or Grant or their wives as the actors and actresses to play the roles of my characters. My fanfiction is a movie in my head, and the people whose names and faces I borrow are my cast. So for me... to change my fiction every time something changes in the real world just does not compute in my head. If Gerard Way was to act in a film today, and announce tomorrow that he prefers she/her pronouns, the movie wouldn’t be re-filmed to accommodate. If Grant Morrison decided tomorrow that they would like to act in movies, I’m almost certain they wouldn’t insist on only being cast in non-binary roles. Equally, I have read fanfiction in the past that gender-swaps all members of MCR. I have read fanfiction that casts them as trans characters. I have read fiction where they are gay, straight, ace. I myself have written them as vampires, werewolves, mafia dons...  For years, Gerard and Frank especially have talked about how frerard fanfiction makes them uncomfortable. Yet that has always been my main forte. I do not write it to be disrespectful, and it is my sincerest wish they never read it or have it mentioned to them. It is just fiction... it’s transformative work, and the morals are dubious I agree, which is why I still am considering leaving the MCR fandom for good. So... If I have been writing about two straight men and making them gay for years and years... If I have been writing Mikey (who we all know is a sweetie pie) as an evil character multiple times... If I have taken their straight wives and wrote them as lesbians... Then surely, surely, it doesn’t make sense for me to go back to the work I have written in the past and change it now for the sake of something happening in real life? Something that Grant themselves have not come out and made a statement about, and probably never will, because to them, it’s not a big deal. Or so it feels to me. In short (and I apologise again for the length of this answer), fanfiction to me has always been FICTION. I cannot stress this enough. I do not, and will not, factor the real world into it because the whole point is that it is a world of my own creation. If I decided to write a fic tomorrow that had Grant as a female presenting octopus no one would bat an eye. And to not change their pronouns is not meant as a statement or a slight, far from it. It is simply that those stories were written before the change, and were not about a non-binary character. And as someone who often writes erotic stories, is it my place to try and write sex scenes involving a non-binary character when, as so many have kindly informed me, I am ignorant in this matter? Especially when, in my eyes at least, writing someone as non-binary is not as easy as simply changing the pronouns and letting the story remain the same in every other aspect. I hope this makes sense and doesn’t make me come across as someone who is being cruel or stubborn for no reason. Or as someone who just doesn’t understand. If there is one thing I have learnt from talking to so many people yesterday, it is that there is no right or wrong answer, and the only true way to avoid hurting one another is to listen to each other and accept that we all feel very strongly about this, and sometimes for different reasons.  Fanfiction shouldn’t be something that others can dictate. It was always about reading and writing what you enjoy, and if you dislike it, then hit the back button.  That being said - The Devil’s Furnace and Domino will have the pronouns changed, out of respect to Ry who has requested as much and who owns the soul of those stories as much as I do. 💜

[guardiandae]

Why Asexual Awareness Is Important To Me

because growing up, I was told that one day I’d get married and have a honeymoon. like it was as inevitable as death. it terrified me. I didn’t know there was any other option. “You’ll understand when you’re older.” 

because when I started dating, I was never exactly opposed to sexual experiences. but I got rejected anyway out of impatience, because I didn’t pick up on clues, or I didn’t initiate. I’m still not sure. ‘We’ve been dating a few weeks and you don’t wanna do anything, so forget it.’ You didn’t ask. How am I supposed to know? In retrospect, I’m glad.

because when I came out to my mother as gay, it felt so simple to me. matter of fact. how could it be any different? but she made sure it hurt. she twisted my words and screamed at me. she called me an embarrassment. she asked if i’d ever had sex with a girl, and of course I said no. why would I have to have sex to know? why is straight the default when no one else at my age has had sex either? why would sex ever be a prerequisite? but she screamed at me that it didn’t count then. I couldn’t be gay. didn’t count. she made sure that I ended up in tears. and to this day I see other LGBT screaming at aces that we don’t count. That not having sex or not feeling sexual attraction towards the same sex is homophobic. the same homophobic arguments that were used against me when I identified as a lesbian, recycled by the people whose rights I’ve stood and fought for my entire life.

because when I had my first Real girlfriend, my first Love, my first sexual experiences, I was never frightened, but also never into it. I didn’t understand why it didn’t click for me. Why I was never struck breathless by her beautiful form but instead, oh no. How am I supposed to react so she doesn’t take offense? because she was Gorgeous, but whatever I felt was clearly... lacking. not enough. and I felt broken, broken, broken.

because in my time, the A in LGBTQIA often did stand for ally. Sometimes asexuality was mentioned offhandedly, interchangeably. an afterthought. barely a footnote. but I never knew what it was. The information I was given was limited. aces aren’t interested in sex. as if it were all wrapped up in a neat little bow for them, content and perfect. but i was interested in sex. how could i not be? it haunted me. I didn’t know you could feel romantic attraction separately from sexual attraction, or that aces could deal with sex without feeling attraction. I thought I was “gay but just really bad at it.”

because I spent so many sleepless nights crying myself to sleep wondering and worrying if the person I was dating really knew and believed that I loved them even if I couldn’t feel sexual attraction towards them.

because I was so terrified of sex that I became obsessed with it. I thought I had to learn as much as I could and that would somehow cure me. Read articles, learn in theory how to do the acts, what to expect, how to behave. Consume fiction, consume porn, brace myself for the inevitable, condition myself to grow into it. All I managed to do was become very good at writing smut and still have a complete disconnect in real life.

because when I finally questioned myself, my ex boyfriend, who was asexual, told me flat out that because I wrote and enjoyed fictional porn, I “didn’t count” as asexual. because I thought that he, as someone who had already claimed the label of asexual, surely knew better than me what it meant. and nothing online that I could find, at the time, contradicted him. I thought to myself, but... that’s fiction. but nothing supported me. so I cried and then I buried it and I tried even harder to fit in with my sexualized peers and didn’t let myself think about it anymore. for years.

because I admittedly put myself into really dangerous situations, thinking that if I could just lose my virginity and get it over with, I’d be better off down the line for someone else. like it was something I could just break out of me.

because despite literally years of trying to condition myself to think and behave sexually online, to roll with the jokes that made me cringe, eventually it got to me. I started having breakdowns, panic attacks, crying fits, and I had no idea why or what was wrong with me.

because when I revisited asexuality and finally found just a single line that said aces can masturbate and enjoy porn and still be ace, it was the single biggest relief of my life. I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. I didn’t have to keep breaking myself trying to fit where I didn’t belong. I wasn’t broken in the first place.

because when I came out as ace, on my first ace week, several of my fandom friends did as well, and none of us had known the others felt the same way. We’d been so lost and isolated and alone and now we weren’t anymore.

because just knowing and being able to set boundaries for myself and give myself permission to walk away from conversations that became too uncomfortable, was a tremendous relief on my mental health and happiness.

because when I came out, my blog was posted on r*dd*t for the lulz and I had anons coming to harass me and ask me if I had been assaulted and traumatized and wishing for me to seek a ‘cure’. Complete fucking strangers. I saw my friends get death threats and rape threats just for saying ‘I’m ace’.

because despite personally writing smut and knowing other aces who write smut, I’ve still been personally attacked and accused of ‘hating nsfw’ and I’ve seen aphobes react like aces existing is somehow a fucking moral judgement against non-aces

because even aces who are completely sex-repulsed shouldn’t have to suck it up and act like they personally approve of sex in any form, in order to make other sex-crazed people mind their own fucking business and give them a ‘pass’. I’m not ‘one of those good aces’ just because I like fictional porn, to a degree. and I’m not breaking into your fucking house to stop you from wanking just because I personally don’t like a thing. It’s called personal preferences. one person having negative associations with sex is not a reflection on you personally. Someone saying “I don’t like sex, it disgusts me” is not the same as someone literally saying “you’re disgusting for having sex.” Grow the fuck up.

because not knowing that asexuality was an option caused me years of pain, and being given wrong information and gatekeeping held me back even longer in that prison.

because there are still misconceptions about what it means to be asexual.

because I remember what it was like to be stuck in that dark place, feeling broken and confused and alone because I didn’t quite fit the mold, and I want to help others find themselves sooner.

because despite all of the bullshit thrown at us, embracing my asexuality has made me the happiest I’ve ever been. I love being asexual. I love being me.

because I’ve had numerous people come to me privately inquiring about their own asexuality, just for the sake of confirming it privately, and then vow to never come out publicly because they’ve seen all of the hate and harassment aces get, even from fellow LGBTQ folks, and they couldn’t handle that. and I don’t blame them one little bit. it would be naive to pretend that doesn’t exist. it does, and it’s ugly, and it hurts so much to see. but just remember, there are so many more people who will love and support you.

you don’t have to come out. but just knowing for yourself? is so much better. and there are so many more of us than you’d think and you’re not alone.

[ayy-spec]

Anything to Add?

The final question in this survey was a write-in section for people to leave any additional comments. 113 people responded.

Important/Particularly Interesting Comments

• I hope this goes well for you because you seem nice and if you have any advice for new to the community 15 year olds like me, don't be afraid to share because I'm trying to embrace my sexuality as much as possible but it can be hard when I don't know where to go or turn to to find what I'm supposed to do and where to ask questions and just fully embrass this part of me and it can be hard when I don't even know many if any aspecs so representation is great and it is helpful to hear your experiences and how you handle certain parts, so just keep doing what your doing because it is making a difference [note: 🥺🥺😭]

• i often consider myself more as just aroace rather than aro and ace seperately so i prefer seeing the blue and orange aroace flag over the individual aro and ace flags

• I don't really shorten my identity often with aroace, only when im feeling very romance repulsed and its been a while since I felt romantic attraction. I am a pan-demiromantic asexual. My pan label makes me feel more connected to the lgbt+ community bc it feels like my nonbinary and intersex status doesn't count either. I know I belong in the queer community, but the lgbt+ community is so sexual orientation focused.

• Thank you for having a wide variety of labels to choose from in the options!! I don't see the term aegoromantic very often on things, it feels nice to be known I guess haha

• Thank you for this, i recently started thinking about being in arospec and it was so relieving, all this time i thought something was wrong or maybe i was broken. I'm still trying to learn more about it, and I'm grateful for people willing to teach and help

• didn't realize I hadn't experienced sexual attraction until I finally did and was like "OH, no wonder all my other relationships felt like I was playing pretend"

• I dont often tell people I'm gray aroace. Not because of shame or it not being "as important" (I'm a gay trans dude) but I think because I just feel its a very intimate part of myself, as well as my romanticism and sexuality (in terms of like asexuality) feeling as though it doesn't always need a label. I'm fine just being myself most of the time, a lot of labels can be tricky for myself I think. I'm happy the label exists nonetheless though because Its nice to know I'm not the only one who feels like this.

• I'm queer! But if I'm getting down to the bones of it, I'm pan/ace. Still relearning how to be proud of that, after The Grand Clusterfuck years back.

• even though I would be considered to have an alloromantic orientation, alloace isn't really a term I feel any strong connection or attachment to

• i'd like to add that i do consider myself alloaro and use that label openly but i'd also not consider myself 100% allosexual. i'm questioning my sexuality but even if i do end up feeling more solidly ace-spec i'd still use the alloaro label

• Idk who else does this or if this is interesting enough to write down, but I thought I would! I use Aroace as a label. Other, smaller labels inside that would probably fit me better! Aroace feels too big, like it doesn't *really* define exactly who I am. But at the same time, I prefer using it because more people know what Aroace means (at least compared to myrromantic and myrsexual). I use Aroace so the public can define me. I don't typically use it around my close friends 'cause they already know my idiosyncrasies and where I really am. They already made their own definitions for me, so I don't have to make one for them!

• I'm still figuring myself out, so I leave myself at the blanket terms and hopefully everything'll work out in the end

The rest of the responses are below:

Comments Alerting Me About Typos (that I was then able to resolve)

• There's a typo in your "sexual orientation labels" question, because you have Aroflux listed and not Aceflux, but I didn't want to confuse things so I put Aceflux (which I do use) under Other. I also am polysexual (I flux between polysexual and asexual but I am always aegosexual) but didn't know if I should but it under Other anywhere since it's not an acespec label. I consider my polysexuality tied to me being aego/aceflux though, which is why I mention it here.

• the sexual orientations options are the same of the romantic ones ( for example, there's arovague and arospike in the sexual cathegory)

People Clarifying/Expounding Upon Their Own Identity/Experiences

·  to clarify: i'm unsure whether or not i am demi or aceflux; so i use graysexual since both labels technically fall under that as an umbrella term.

• I’m still a confused gorl and I really only know that I don’t like sex it sexual acts but I do like romantic and sensual acts

• Sex/romance repulsed and I have aesthetic attraction

• I'm also animesexual and fictosexual (and romantic I guess but I don't like using the SAM for myself).

• I have never seen most of these labels, haha, I expect one of them is the one I always forget that's for being aro due to past trauma but people always assume it's romantic/sexual trauma so I don't use it and thus have forgotten it...but that's the essay I'm not usually up for writing: was biromantic but then had several awful life events on top of each other and had a complete breakdown and have been aro since. Unclear if it's permanent but it's been 14 years now. [note: I believe this person is thinking of caedromantic]

• I tend to use the word ace more than asexual because it's shorter, but I don't feel more favorably about one than the other.

• i can't tell the difference between platonic vs romantic attraction, and am unsure if people i have "liked" in the past was romantic, platonic, or a fake stemming from peer pressure.

• Also Gender-Neutral/Agender

• I’m gray-aro but identify more with being biromantic even though I know I’m aro-spec. As for sexual orientation, I’m just completely ace xD

• The fact I'm still trying to figure out my gender makes it harder to pinpoint exactly what my orientations are :( but I usually say I'm queer, and if it's safe: Bi Ace, and if I can get more specific: biromantic grey-asexual

• I also use a platonic label (biplatonic). I use it not in a friendship way, but more like in a QPR way.

• Thank you for doing this! My identity on the aro/ace spectrums has shifted a lot over the years and while I’ve just settled on aroace and queer for the most part, this community is so diverse and under appreciated. People who find joy in/identify with micro-identities are valid and deserve representation!

• I'm still figuring out my romantic orientation but it's looking less allo by the day lmao

• My romantic label is very fluid, but in terms of sexual labels, very sex repulsed Asexual

• Content with just Aspec cause it's difficult to pinpoint anything but cool with both asexual/ace and aromantic/aro

• I think of my romantic orientation as halfway between aromantic and homoromantic

• I'm a polyamorous ace, if there'd be a way to include that sometimes that'd be neat :)

• I am still questioning my identity

• I used to identify as 100% ace but now I have no idea other than that I seem to be pan-ace in some way shape or form so my identity is ???people???

• Sex/romance repulsed and I have aesthetic attraction

• to clarify: i'm unsure whether or not i am demi or aceflux; so i use graysexual since both labels technically fall under that as an umbrella term.

Queer Rights

• Trans rights, baybee 🤠🦂

• I just hope a-spec and aro-spec people will experience less negativity and hate this year <3

• Aspec rights!!

• aspec rights, baby

People Being Nice to Me  (I appreciated this thank you everyone!!)

·  :)

• Have a good day

• Uhhh, cool survey, nice to see a lot of labels.... good job! Nothing I have to add, it was great

• Have fun chief, thank you for your work

• Thank you for creating!

• thanks for the survey! I don't know too many aspec in person so I love participating in things like this about the ace/aro community!

• Thank you for what you’re doing

��� just hi :)

• thanks!!

• I really love your blog! Reading your posts always makes me happy :) [note: thank you!]

• Good luck, have a nice day !

• I hope you're having a good day :)

• you're lived and valid af!! have a great day!!!

• Thank you for all your hard work i really appreciate it ☺️

• Drink some water Right Now OP

• Nope, :> hope the best for you.

• Cool survey, 10/10 would survey again.

• 💛

• Have a nice day uwu

• Nope! Have a nice day!

• Thank you for making pride flag edits! They're really nice! [note: thank you!!]

• nope, but this is really cool!!

• ❤️

• Have a good day.

• I think this survey idea is super cool! Definitely a great way to see what sort of aspec people are on tumblr :)

• You are doing the lords work

• Thank you for asking us.

• good luck!

• This is really cute idea :)

• I hope you're having a nice day!

• Good luck in your endevours!

• Thank you for making our community visible!

• Have a good day :3

• Have a good day!!

• Keep doing great stuff!

• Thank you for all the positivity I get from your blog! It's super helpful, keep it up :) [note: thank you!!]

• thanks for doing this. recognition is always nice

• Have fun <3

• Lots of love 💛

• This is a cool project, thanks for doing it and good luck! :)

People Saying They Love Me (and I love you, random a-specs)

·  i love you OP!!!!!

• love you, hope you have a great day

An A-Spec Person Being Rude to Other A-Specs

• If you enjoy sex with your romantic partner then you are not asexual

A Person Who Is Not A-Spec Being Rude To A-Specs

• sweetie im sorry that you're so insecure that you feel like you have to make up new identities to feel better about yourself. if you are a lesbian or bisexual please know that you are welcome in the community, but other than that making thousands of microlabels like this makes a huge joke out of what was once an important and respected group. nobody takes us seriously anymore because of this shit. does labelling your identity like this really help you with anything? demisexual and fraysexual and all this are just fancy words for normal human feelings that everyone has. there is no need to microlabel it.

Other

· [variations of “no” (12)]

• not sure that helps lmao but still hope it does. all the best

• Axolotls (or as I like to call them, asexulotls) are amazing and I love them [Note: the man in question]

• Sorry, I can't remember the names of any blogs that do edits

• Ok random but the colors of the aro/ace flag? The blue and orange one? They’re gorgeous.

• I'm not so sure if I should use the aroace flag, I feel comfortable using both aro and ace flags, but I don't like the colors for the aroace flag :c [note: these are in chronological order, it’s a total coincidence that these comments are together]

• Curious to see where the survey goes

• It would be cool if you could also do some aplatonic-spectrum edits!

• there were fully half of the terms on that list that i had never even seen before. like, everything below litho down to no label was entirely new to me. at some point i will look into those! (but not right now, my brain is full enough at the moment)

• actually had to look up the majority of these orientations. Thank you for the opportunity to learn!

• Gonna reblog and follow and hopefully learn a bit more, about others and myself

Note: The only comment that is not listed in order is the first comment, which I put at the top because I found it the most important. It’s so important that kids and teens have space to explore their identity and learn about themselves. The reason I made this blog in the first place was because I was 19 and working on figuring out my gender and sexuality. Now that I’m a bit older and understand things better, I’m so glad that I’m able to help people in this way. 

I make it a point to be very openly queer in my life and at work because I need LGBTQ+ people, especially youths, to know that we’re here. I’m lucky that I live somewhere that I can be visibly queer and speak about it openly. We are everywhere, and there’s more of us than you think!

Something that I really like about the comments at the top is that they show how diverse we are, and how people use words differently. Some people feel like they’re more aroace than aromantic and asexual separately, and others consider their romantic and sexual orientations to be completely different things.

I definitely relate to the person who identifies are myrromantic and myrsexual with their friends but just says aroace when speaking with people they don’t know as well. I believe a lot of people use different words depending on who they’re speaking with.

[kyu-bri]

Magia Rapport pt 5

@magiarapport​

August 27th prompt: What character do you identify with the most? Why is that? Do you have a favorite quote or moment from them?

WOOOOOOOOObuoy gonna Expose myself here. Gonna just reveal Way Too Much about my personality. Prepare for Maximum Cringe.

We’re gonna exclude Kyoko, the angry lesbian disenfranchised christian, and just use MagiReco characters.

Tsuruno Yui & Alina Gray.

(Artz under the cut)

Tsuruno is literally someone who comes out of left field. I have to imagine this is even stronger for the JP audience because they probably already know that Yachiyo, Iroha and Tsuruno are voiced by a real-life Idol Trio. So they were probably just waiting for the third member to enter the story. Then she does so by just, running up to our main character and offering her help and then sprinting off to help achieve such. Tsuruno puts her Character Quirk of being Alot right on out there and we just roll with it. Sometimes with dread. I thought she was boring initially. (A anime character whose a brunette???? What A Waste)

While I was watching PMMM for the first time I immediately caught on to what was happening with Kyoko. This cute hardass bitchbaby shows up and is mean to the protags and kicks their asses. Also she’s constantly eating and it’s obnoxious. But even if she was a villain that couldn’t be all there was to her. So I was just waiting for the plot twist that would force the audience to love her. And BOY did we GET THAT in S P A D E S.

I didn’t anticipate it with Tsuruno. Even when she was taken by the Uwasa I didn’t know what to expect or what the Deeper Thing could possibly be. And it wasn’t too earthshattering- Local girl whose always happy and enthusiastic and helping her friends with every littlest thing but never asking for anything in return is secretly miserable isolated and Exhausted. And, fuck, Same Hat Babygirl

I have a long history of being The Mom Friend. A concrete unmoving constant in groups that people come to for help and is always first to problem solve and help others to compromise. Usually ending up being the head of projects in which its my own enthusiasm and micromanagement that carries the whole thing. Let me tell you it’s a awful role to be in by yourself every time. And entrusting other people to help out has sometimes even brought catastrophe.

Not dissimilar to Tsuruno’s personal story. Her ‘tragic backstory’ hit me like a truck. I already liked her family dynamic that she’s the cheerful daughter helping her father and grandfathers ailing business. To find out that the wish she made that by all logic Couldn’t Possibly Go Wrong, did infact, Go Wrong In One Of The Most Horrible Ways Possible, and that she had now resigned herself that the only thing she’s worthy of is achieving some impossible perfection to try and make up for it.

Same Hat Again Babygirl.

Then we have with Alina “Jojo Pose” Serket

It might just be my many experiences with media and anime especially that made me completely unphased by Alina’s Murder Horny bullshittery, but I never understood why people thought that was startling of her. Maybe it’s because she’s the only one of the brand in MagiReco? Just that it’s whats funnest about her? Is it because she’s otherwise a cutesy anime girl who you wouldn’t normally expect outside of yandere anime? Idk but she’s relatively mild in her Crazy in my opinion.

She genuinely could just be a shallow Yandere Joke and I’d still think she’s entertaining. But then she gets, like, one of the more complex backstories out of the girls that isn’t explored in an Event. We see her Fall and Rise in her MSS and oh, she’s not crazy. She’s fucking Relatable and gets Super Powers.

There’s been jokes about College Kids perfectly understanding Alina but goddamn if she isn’t just a runofamill Gifted Child who grows up into a stressed out passionless teen. The bulk of why I feel for her is probably in relating to her art insecurity. She’s truly talented and passionate until a faceless peer shoots her down from her already terrible mental state with “Your work is meaningless, so you should just stop altogether.”

Alina clearly enjoys her art- or at least misses being able to. And as she has grown has lost the enthusiasm that used to drive her to make her best work, or else been pressured to recreate it when she doesn’t have that enthusiasm. It’s being paid to do what you love but not resonating with what you’re asked of. It’s the reality faced by every artist who everyone tells should make money off their talent, because if they can’t make money off of it, why are they wasting time on it?

Alina is a little girl. Fuck you. She is sixteen and she’s under so much pressure to achieve this expectation everyone has for her but that she couldn’t give two shits about. And she has no support through this or adults who care about her outside of it. She has Karin who while she cares more about Alina as a person is still probably doing more harm then good in idolizing her over this talent that everyone else is ruining her over.

I think Alina sticks with Karin and at least mildly cares about her back because she sees who Karin is, with much less talent but so much more joy in what she does, and wishes she could be like that again. Wishes she could be like that from the start. To have less talent so she could enjoy it more. I wish I could be more carefree and optimistic like Karin too, but I’m more nihilistic and angry at the world like Alina is instead.

Almost nothing Alina’s done since she contracted has been good, but I don’t blame her for any of it either. Society failed her like it does plenty of gifted children, she just got the superpowers and the bitterness that made her fight back in an awful way.

Amnesia is the best thing that could have happened to her, and 95% of me keeping up with the story in Arc 2 is going to be wanting to see if she’ll turn out okay.

Also shout-out to Yachiyo who isn’t a millennial but definitely resonates as one.

[werevulvi]

Have you met other lesbian transmen irl? Been kinda wanting to label like this which really takes me aback because even pre-everything (years ago) i swore i had no ties with lesbianism and wanted nothing to do with that. I'd get mega-angry if anyone confused me for a lesbian so yeah, total embarrassment and inner shock over my new pov. It doesn't help that my few friends are "twaw tmam" type and i get the feeling that if i do it things will get ugly and maybe i'll end with no support net.

Not that I know of, but then I also don't really have much of any irl friends at all. I live most of my life online, and have for many years. The only people I actually hang out with irl are my family, my girlfriend (although we're long distance), my therapist and a few libfem/TRA acquaintances that I don't know well. I can almost guarantee none of those acquaintances are lesbian trans men, nor would they likely like it if I said that's how I identify.

I mean, I barely even know of any lesbian trans men online. Only one as far as I know for sure, but I've also come across also a few straight-identified trans men in random trans spaces online who cherish having positive ties to lesbianism (although more so in a past tense kinda way), and I'm also in a facebook group for lesbians that's created by a trans man, or if they're a butch on T, I'm not sure, but that's like the one lesbian space I feel truly welcome in, aside from radblr. So although lesbian trans men exist, it's either very rare or only a few are open about it, it seems.

I'm mostly only open about it with my girlfriend and online, and my family knows I'm lesbian and that I'm planning on going back on T and considering another name change, but I haven't talked to them about being a lesbian trans man specifically. I think they wouldn't understand, and I don't feel up for trying to explain it. I'm exhausted enough just trying to explain to them why I like being hairy, lol. Because apparently even that is beyond their scope of understanding. My therapist doesn't give a rat's ass one way or another, as she's really ignorant on trans stuff, but happily accepting of literally anything.

I haven't told my gender therapist about it yet, but I'm sure it will come up at some point, as she's also my sexologist. That'll be interesting...

Online I dare to be more open about myself and how I identify. It's easier for me to communicate freely in the form of writing, and I wouldn't like not being able to explain myself as I'd like to, due to being confronted about it irl. However, if someone (even crazed TRA's) would ask me about it, I'd tell them. I'd say I'd be willing to calmly explain why I identify that way, and be open to discuss it in a civil manner, but that I would not tolerate being berated for it in any way. If they'd have a problem with that then, that's their problem.

It can get ugly. I'm not gonna deny that. I've been berated for it online on several occasions, and even once totally dogpiled by a whole group of angry transmeds/truscums (mostly some 5-6 "straight" trans men but it was led by a "lesbian" trans woman) who wanted my blood (figuratively) for daring to say trans men can identify as lesbians if they so wish, but don't have to, and that I personally feel best viewing myself as a lesbian and as a trans man at the same time. That was definitely ugly, and it upset me for several days afterwards. However, I actually made peace with the trans woman who led that dogpiling against me. She apologised (seemed very sincere) and I don't hold grudges towards her anymore. Although she has very different opinions than me, so a friendship is probably not on the table. People are generally less nasty in terms of discourse irl, though. But that's not saying it can't get ugly with irl friends, especially if someone feels trust has been broken, or... if someone's gender/sexuality got invalidated.

I do have at least a few trans friends online who are totally okay with me being a lesbian trans man, though. Some of them are transmed and some leaning gender critical. One is even a trans woman who considers herself a gay male and is married to a gay man, and she has very similar views to me. Most of those friends who accept me are new, and some I've known for years. So, if your current friends don't accept you, I'm sure you'd find better friends who do.

It was kinda similar for me, although pre-transition I swore I was bisexual despite I on some level deep down knew I wasn't attracted to men. So I didn't have any ties to lesbianism back then, even before I decided to transition, when I briefly tried to date other girls, as a "bisexual girl" in my teens, while trying my hardest to ignore my ever-increasing dysphoria. It wasn't until my (attempted and failed) detransition a couple of years ago that I realised I'm only into the same sex and decided to actually face that once and for all. With that grew a connection to lesbianism. Despite I was already transitioned. Then going back to being a trans man, I didn't want to leave behind lesbianism which I had worked so hard to embrace about myself. So I decided to take my lesbianism with me.

Sometimes it does feel like I'm hanging onto lesbianism by a thread, though, I gotta admit. Especially irl. Being open about it irl is really difficult because passing as male means other lesbians are more likely to wanna pepper-spray me in self-defence upon telling them I'm a lesbian too, than to casually bond over some lowkey homophobia or give each other advice somer heartfelt about good lesbian movies. Even online I get accused of being a creepy "straight cis man" sometimes. Oh, if there ever was a bane to passing, lol!

But also, because I already have a partner, and am monogamous with her, I'm not in the dating scene. Which means my sexuality just isn't of that much worth for other people to know about, nor is it really their business, unless I'm trying to plead my way into a lesbian space or wish to connect with other lesbians in a non-dating kinda sense. As lesbian trans men seem to be really scarce, it tends to be the easiest for me to connect with butch lesbians, detrans lesbians and otherwise dysphoric lesbians. They're not exactly the same as me, but I tend to have a lot in common with them, both in terms of gender and sexuality. Which is also a big reason why I bond so easily with my girlfriend, who is gnc and dysphoric, just opting out of transitioning.

Despite the social hurdles, I feel good being a lesbian, especially with my girlfriend, and I feel like that's where it matters the most. Then it doesn't (or shouldn't) matter if the whole rest of the world views me as a straight man, and has to be argued into believing otherwise. I mean, being proud of who you are doesn't necessarily mean telling everyone about it, unless you want to. It can also just be a select few who you find to be worthy enough to know you that well.