#started from a talk about what makes a design feminine or masculine and i just had to see how it would look

[chin-chilla-7]

Obey Me Brothers: Their Favourite Part of You

This is a list of my headcanons for what part of you is each brother’s favourite plus some rationale. There’s slight spice stuff going on here (namely Asmodeus’), so it’s under a read more.

Lucifer: Hands

When I think of Lucifer, I’m reminded of Gomez from the Addams family kissing Morticia’s hand and down her arm: he gives those vibes.

You’re laying on his bed and he’s got one of your hands and he’s kissing your palm gently. You never really realized how sensitive your hands are until now. And it causes some shaky breathing.

Also during these moments, Lucifer’s gloves are off. It’s not something that happens often, so you always notice when he takes them off. And right now they are as he explores your hand with his.

There’s something about the intricate designs on your palms and knowing that each person’s handprint is unique that really intrigues Lucifer.

You often hold hands, both with Lucifer gloved and gloveless.

Mammon: Chest

Mammon really likes your chest, regardless of gender. A feminine chest or a masculine chest works all the same to him.

If he were to be the big spoon, his hand will be holding onto your chest as you sleep.

You find him pressing kisses to your chest often whenever you two are intimate.

“My eyes are up here” kind of guy, but he doesn’t overdo it. He knows there’s a time and a place.

It’s also not really something he mentions, but it’s something you very much notice.

If you were to point it out to him, he’ll simply blush and deny.

But you know. They all know.

Leviathan: Thighs

Okay, he has a fantasy where you’re sitting in his gaming chair, playing whatever, and he’s between your thighs going to town with whatever you got between there.

So he often thinks about your thighs.

If this were to be something you do with him, he gets very excited.

The way he touches your thighs makes you think you’re made of glass or something.

When you encourage him to be a little rougher, he goes for it: I see him as someone who likes to mark his partner. So there will be bite marks and scratch marks between your legs after he’s done.

After that, any time he sees you, you’ll notice that his eyes briefly glance down to your thighs, wondering if the marks are still there.

That excites him more than he’d care to admit.

Satan: Lips

He first started paying attention to your lips when he noticed that you would mouth the words you were reading during the times you spent at the library together.

He had noticed your mouth moving out of the corner of his eye, so he thought you were saying something to him.

When he looked over, he saw that you were focused on your book, mouthing the words you read.

He stared for a few moments, watching your lips move.

How nice it’d be to kiss those lips-

That’s as far as he lets his thoughts wander for now. He snaps back to focus on his book, leaving that thought to rest.

Though, since that day, you’ve noticed that Satan often glances down to your lips as you talk.

Asmodeus: Hips

Asmodeus really likes resting his hands on your hips.

Whether it be when the two of you are going out, he’s got an arm around you, hand resting on your hip.

Or when you’re at the House of Lamentation, making dinner for the lot, and Asmodeus surprises you from behind, grabbing your hips to pull you against him.

OR when you’re in his room and he’s holding onto your hips as he thrusts in and out of you.

He really likes your hips.

It’s not something you notice much, either. It’s just something that feels right and natural, so it’s never been something you needed to notice.

Beelzebub: Stomach

Beelzebub loves your tummy and it’s very cute.

If you’re someone who’s self-conscious about your stomach for any reason, you can trust that Beelzebub can offer words of support.

No matter the size or shape of your tummy, he thinks it’s a good tummy.

You find that when he kisses down your body, he spends extra time kissing your stomach.

At first, you thought it was because he was teasing you: being nearly where you wanted him but not quite.

But then you learned it’s because he really likes your tummy and it made you feel soft inside.

Beelzebub has a lot of love for you and your tummy.

Belphegor: Waist

In most scenarios of you sleeping with Belphegor (and I mean sleeping sleeping, not sex), he has his arms wrapped around your waist.

And I mean regardless of how you’re face or where the two of you have decided to take the nap, his arms are around your waist.

Like with Asmodeus, you don’t really notice it’s something he does since it feels right and natural, but Belphegor really likes the way it seems that his arms just fit around you so well.

It’s very comfortable for the both of you, too, which is a plus.

During the times the two of you are hanging out awake, he’ll sometimes have an arm around your waist, but it’s something less frequent than when the two of you are sleeping.

[randomyuu]

there's a lover in the story, but the story's still the same

Ahh, don’t you love it when fear motivates your drawing mood? (not really)

That’s what I felt reading the scene that is drawn below. It’s fear for Yuuji but also feeling excited picturing an emotionless teen!Gojou so here I am. Always down bad for Vox’s Goyuu fics, aren’t I? *sighs*

Welp, here we go.

Title: there’s a lover in the story, but the story’s still the same

Author: @voxofthevoid

Second fic of the series there’s a lover in the story, but the story’s still the same

Pairing YuuGo, NSFW, please read the tags carefully before giving it a read... the usual drill ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

!!! SPOILER FOR THE FIC !!!

Highly recommend you guys to read them first. Or not, it’s up to you honestly :v

Usually I would gush about the fic but I’ve already done that under the fic itself so I just want you to know this comic is solely carried by me wanting to draw the ticking time bomb called teen!Gojou-post-discussion-with-adult!Ieiri. You could probably guess what they’re talking about :”)

The fear for Yuuji’s well-being started this, but Satoru’s cold eyes kept me going. I can’t get rid of it from my mind lmao

You can say drawing these kind of expressions is my jam   (￣▽￣)

I hope I did Satoru’s emotions justice haha

A bit of my thoughts and doodle below. Unhinged maybe, it’s midnight, I got more work to do after this, and my brain cells are barely hanging on. Haha I'm living the life-

I AM STILL REELING FROM THE FACT I MANAGED TO GET THIS DONE.

There are so many things I want to talk about in the process of making this. But after I typed it out, most of them sounded so unnecessary so I rewrote it a few times. I tried to make this as short as possible lmao

Typesetting and sketching are the roughest parts of this project. During these stages, I kept feeling everything I did wasn’t doing the scene enough justice, and it was frustrating. As I planned this project, I read a few doujins and noticed the font types scanlation teams use. There are so many of them, and each helped convey the tone of each image. Felt like crying when I realised I’m not knowledgeable enough to apply good typesetting, ngl. And then the interior design. Fuck, the frustration is so real. I am absolutely clueless about this kind of thing. Tracing lots of references because I have no perception of space makes me feel even worse. I knew first times rarely create a masterpiece, but I was not satisfied with my accomplishment and the feeling of failing to fulfil my own expectations hurt.

BUT.

Thank goodness most of the things I need to draw are Shouko, Yuuji and Satoru. Because dear g o d drawing them healed me. I found so much comfort in drawing Shouko’s long hair and Satoru’s eyes and drowning Yuuji in an oversized hoodie. The comfort zone of character drawing never feels so real lmaooo

Drawing them was so effective that I can look back at the backgrounds with acceptance. Hey, I did it! Not perfect just yet, but I did it!

Haha I feel like I’m losing my mind. I don’t know if it’s in a good way or a bad way. Guess I do have one or two screws loose.

Only for Yuuji lmao

(nah I just need sleep, or cooling down from the rush of having finished this)

It might come off as a surprise if you’ve only seen my art on Tumblr, but I’ve always preferred to draw feminine-leaning ladies. I’ve always loved drawing their curves, whether it’s the figure, the clothes, or the (long) hair. But I’ve grown to like drawing masculine gentlemen as well with their sharp edges and straight lines, and now my ladies start to look more androgynous lmao

Anyway, I was pretty stoked to be able to draw adult!Ieiri! I… I kind of miss drawing long hair so here have some more before you go on your day ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

[3motionally3xhausted]

Kiss Kiss Fall into another old hyperfixation

Anyway, I randomly wanted to redesign the main cast of Ouran in my style/ with headcanons and my own embellishments

Here's a screenshot redraw, I'll put all the redesigns below the break bc I did all the main characters & wanna talk about the choices I made. Also I made up that uniform redesign on the spot bc I when I was doing the characters I just put them in casual clothes lmao

(I might do some others later, like Renge, Kasanoda, Yasuchika, Benibara, etc.)

Going in order of my least favorite to top favorite. And dont mind that I didn't color the clothes, that's not whats important here lmao

Mori is only at the bottom because I don't like the drawing that much, I still think the design is pretty good. Though, like right when I finished coloring, I decided a bun/top-knot would look better so it's a bit disappointing there. In my head, Mori is kind of struggling to figure out who he is & what he wants to do, which is why he follows Honey around and doesn't talk much. He does genuinely like being around the other hosts though.

Also, the undercut because A) he has the reputation for being the scary one & it kinda suits that, B) uh do I even have to say it? ...its hot He does lowkey look like Sokka from Avatar tho, especially with the blue accents

(edit: I accidentally deleted Mori's file so now this is the only copy so 😭)

Honey is next because again I think the drawing itself is a little off and the design is pretty close to Basil from Omori, which i didn't notice until it was too late lmao. One of the main things I didn't like about his character in the show was obviously how childlike he was & how girls still flirted with him even though he looked and acted 6; So now he still acts a bit childish but doesn't play it up as much & definitely has a more normal voice, not a fckn child's.

Haruhi! I definitely had to keep her glasses cuz they were really cute and kinda sold the whole 'commoner' thing in a way. But other than that I mainly wanted to balance out her femininity and masculinity to make her more androgynous/nonbinary/gender-fluid since she definitely has some of that going on in the show as is. I also gave her dark circles under her eyes to kinda show that she worked really hard to get into Ouran with low status.

Next up is Tamaki of course, getting into the characters I'm most happy with the designs of. One small thing I tried to do for each of them was give them varying hair tones; so even though Honey and Tamaki are both blond, I went very platinum-blond with him. When I started drawing him, my only real thought was "he has to be a pretty boy" so I dont have much to say about my choices, but i do think I succeeded. Don't mind the modern mullet thing, I can't stop it

Kyouya is definitely one of my favorite characters as is, seeing as he has one of the more fleshed out & heart-wrenching backstories in the show. I think the only thing I really wanted to change was getting rid of the Anime Bangs, so I just gave him this kinda sleek, kinda messy pushed-back look with a blue tint. Even though it's simple, I really struggled to come up with anything, until I found a page from the author saying smth like "I don't like the idea of him wearing neat clothes" with a picture of him in like a track suit so I did kinda the same outfit

My absolute #1 favorites, Hikaru & Kauru. They're honestly the ones that started it all because Kauru has been my favorite since I first saw the halloween episode (iykyk).

I don't know why, but I wanted their hair to be fluffier/curly and more of a natural(?) ginger color. I knew I wanted Kauru's to be redder and Hikaru's a bit lighter/blonder, but only subtly. I also gave Kauru a scar on his cheek from that time in Karuizawa, but most notably, I gave them blue and pink eyes as their signature colors. Lastly, their expressions are slightly different, because no matter how much they are in sync and try to match each other perfectly, Kauru's a much gentler soul than Hikaru, so I made Hikaru's smile a bit more snarky while Kauru's is soft.

Thank you for looking at my art/ reading my thoughts, here's an extra little design edit & comparison

(lol, I think they're mimicking Kyouya in this panel idek) (Also here you can see I tried the bun hairstyle w Mori, I think it looks good, but this is a really simple drawing so.)

[edonee]

You asked yesterday for someone to explain what trans people mean when we say we do or don't feel like a gender or sex. My comment is too long to put in the replies to I'm answering here instead. I don't really think this will change your mind at all, but this is the best way I can explain what it feels like to be trans masculine.

Seeing myself and having others see me as a girl was painful. I felt a deep sense of wrongness when people called me "she" and when people described me as a girl. It sometimes made me throw up, it made me cry, it made me dissociate. When I transitioned and people called me "he" or "they", I felt an overwhelming amount of joy. I felt like they were seeing who I was, I felt right. I felt this deep sense of wrongness in relation to my body as well - I couldn't stand seeing my breasts, I couldn't stand having a period, I hated the way my face was shaped. I also often felt uncomfortable when doing things or wearing things considered traditionally feminine, but I think that was because I hated that people used those to associate me with being a girl. Now, I often enjoy wearing clothing or activities that fit feminine gender roles. My point is, my dysphoria and my experience of gender is almost entirely based on how I feel most aligned with the gender designation of man, and not at all aligned with the gender designation of woman - rather than what aspects of those gender roles I wanted to participate in.

I don't think there's one simple explanation as to what it means to feel like a woman or a man or any form of gender that does not fit within the binary. I personally believe that we all have unique experiences of gender, and most people's match up with how they are perceived by society, but others make them feel dysphoric. I honestly agree with the idea of gender abolition - as long as we don't divide people by sex either. It would be great if we could all just exist as people without these arbitrary categories acting as defining characteristics of who we are.

I can't answer if, in that hypothetical society where we don't have genders, I would still experience the dysphoria I've felt about my body. I don't know - I'm sorry. I get that there are a lot of confusing things in play when it comes to gender and trans people, and I think it's great that people like you want to understand, and I get that it can seem suspicious when there are some things that we can't answer.

But I don't think that those areas where there's a lack of clarity need to push you away from supporting trans people. We are not claiming to be trans for some manipulative agenda, or just very swept up in internalized misogyny. Most of us are people who suffered a lot trying to exist as the gender that society ascribed to our sex, and now that we've found another way to exist, we feel freer. I feel like a man because I don't feel wrong when I exist as a man. I don't feel like a woman because I felt wrong when I existed as a woman. I don't see what in that is a threat.

Thank you if you bothered to read all of this! Have a lovely evening.

Hi ^^ good morning, I just read this and I'm going to try to make my point as linear as possible. I want to start off by giving you a definition of sex and gender (just so that there's no confusion over what I'm talking about) I've simply taken the definitions from The World Health Organisation as I find those exhausting and agreeable enough:

Sex is defined as the different biological and physiological characteristics of males and females, such as reproductive organs, chromosomes, hormones, etc

Gender is defined as the (of course variable based on place, culture, and historical period) socially constructed characteristics of women and men – such as norms, roles and relationships of and between groups of women and men.

I want to start by addressing what you said at the very beginning of your argument: you said that people perceiving you as a girl distressed you even to the point of physical sickness, whereas getting gendered as a man made you feel seen as your true self. First, I want to say that your "true self" can't be the social classification of characteristics attributed to either sex. Gender is, by definition, purely constructed, therefore any identification with either gender comes from a personal sympathization with its elements and not from an innate connection to a system that is man-made and cannot therefore borne any biological bond. Secondly, I don't want to make a diagnosis out of your experience, but that simply sounds like an extreme result of growing up as a female. With the way girls are treated in every society it's no wonder that the passage from childhood to girlhood is burdensome. When a male child grows up he becomes a person, whereas a female grows to be a woman. Very trivially, the reason why I used to identify as non-binary when I was around 13-14 was that I felt too complex to fit into something as shallow and one-dimensional as womanhood. Of course I'm not saying that's why you specifically feel this way, as there could very well be another reason personal to you that has shaped your mind and put you in a psychological condition where you feel alienated from your body. But even in that case, the argument of transgenderism still doesn't hold up. Gender is not biological, so of course anyone can identify themselves in and out of it as they please, but that doesn't change two things:

1) the structure of it remains the same

2) a female who identifies as a man is still female and vice versa

You also go on and say that your experience with gender comes from feeling aligned to the “gender designation of men – rather than what aspects of those gender roles (you) want to participate in„

I find this definition quite feeble, as the "gender designation of men" is exactly equivalent to the gender roles linked to it, and nothing more. Again, I can't help but get the idea that the motive of your discomfort with femaleness stems from an underlying uneasiness with the poor way women are treated in a misogynistic society rather than an abstract and impractical affinity with the male sex.

Now, toward the end of your argument you hypothesized a world where gender has been erased, leaving sex as the only undeniable distinction between people, and you said:

"I can't answer if, in that hypothetical

society where we don't have

genders, I would still experience the

dysphoria l've felt about my body"

And, although I don't know you personally, I'm quite confident that the answer would be no. Feeling discontent over your body is not innate, it's learned (subconsciously or otherwise) through socialization. If you feel envy towards the male body and hatred towards your female body it is not because there's something inherently wrong with it, but rather because you aspire to the male gender class. Without sex discrimination & gender existing in the first place, there would be nothing that would make you resent your female body.

However, we clearly don't live in a word free of gender, so does that mean that we should endorse transgenderism for the sake of those people who suffer from dysphoria? The answer is no. Dysphoria is a direct result of gender, therefore the solution is to question the very construct of gender, and not to go through medical procedures to change one's sexual characteristics in order to "be your true self". Just like anorexia can't be cured by starving, but only by deconstructing the underlying fixation with thinness and body image. Not to mention the idea that gender is actually real is harmful to feminism. It does not only solidify gender stereotypes, and promote the definition of certain behaviors as either masculine or feminine, it also strips words away of their meaning, making the fight for female liberation a nebulous movement that stands up for the rights of – who exactly? Females? Anyone who identifies as female? Men who say they are women?

I'm genuinely sorry that there are people who suffer to the point that they want to be the opposite sex, but I refuse to advocate for the idea that you can be born into the wrong body. Believing that your body is wrong is a fucking miserable way to live, and it's also simply not true.

Let me know if you want to ask me anything else, have a good day

[kookiecrush]

Something I find strange from purely a psychological point of view is how in j*kook narratives, JK is always shown to be the whipped one. The one who always has to "prove he feels" something for JM. And it's never the other way around. Tkk or even Yoonmin for that matter, don't really have this. I sometimes wonder if this has something to do with fetishizing: that JK is always the masc, while JM is designated the fem roles in j*kookers minds, while in Tkk there is no such predisposed role. And the same with Yoonmin. Yoongi is not always designated with overt male characteristics who needs to "prove his love" or something like that. And maybe this is why j*kk is such a smut-heavy ship. I have nothing against smut, but it sort of makes sense why j*kook is such an sex-obsessed shipping fandom.

It is strange, anon. I've definitely noticed a reoccurring theme with j*kookers and the difference in the way some of them treat J*min compared to Jungkook. J*min always has to be the main character for them, and Jungkook is the love sick puppy who can't live without him. Always fawning over him. Aways the one who has to prove how he feels. A great example of this behaviour is their response to j*kook enlisting together. I saw so much for concern for J*min, and plenty of praise about Jungkook "stepping up" to protect him," but no worry for Jungkook or concern about how he might have been feeling. They treat him like a prop. Someone who's just there to make J*min look good. I suspect there may be some sort of "self-insert" behaviour going on with them and J*min, which would honestly explain a lot. That, or they're secretly pjms 🤷‍♀️ because as soon as Jungkook's success started overtaking J*min's they turned on him.

Remember when a lot of them ended up throwing a fit after Jungkook started racking up all those achievements and breaking all kinds of records with his solo music? They like him when he's playing the part of adoring boyfriend (in their eyes) but not when he's outshining J*imin. How dare he do that 🙄

Like you mentioned, I think a lot of the way they view j*kook is rooted in fetishism. Jungkook is this big, masculine, strong "alpha" who protects and dotes on J*min, the small, feminine, delicate "omega" (anyone else cringing right now?) For a "relationship" that consists of two men, they sure place a lot of heteronormative expectations on it, don't they? Part of me is convinced that the only reason they find the idea of taekook being together so inconceivable is because they don't have a height difference. Because then how would they know which one is the "man" and which one is the "woman?"💀

I really don't think that j*kookers have an accurate perception of who Jungkook and J*min are at all. I think they see what they want to see, and make the rest up to suit their narratives. Every time they talk about j*kook it perplexes me how they can be so utterly wrong about them. They really can't see past the fanfiction they've created.

[stormblessed95]

Hello Stormy! :)

What are your thoughts on Jimin’s photobook pictures and the possible hints on his bisexuality? Could we add this to “Jimin’s rainbow moments”? I particularly think it is pretty significant that he shared all that with us after saying that he wanted to show us his raw self. But I would love to know your opinion, specially because your posts on their rainbow moments are the best. 💜

Hi! Sorry this post got a bit postponed but I'm finally ready to post and I'm just going to use this ask to talk about my thoughts over the photofolio itself here too! And all the pretty clear and what seems to be blatant queer coding that he used throughout his themes and design choices here too. Starting with the first concept shoot he did and going from there.

The theme Jimin had for his concept was "persona." He wanted to showcase, in his own words, his colors, various sides of himself that he hadn't always gotten to express. To be raw and honest through the process. The process of this concept was one he started planning back in October of 2021, probably the initial stages of concept planning took place even before that.

Concept 1 (ch 1) he wanted to express the side of himself that was full of thoughts, worries, and is a bit lonely. You can see some of the photos from that concept here too

So one thing I'll talk about here was his tattoo of Artemis that we saw peaking out from his collar. Artemis is referred to symbolically through this shoot (the moon spotlight) and the others well. Artemis is the Greek Goddess of the Hunt, Wilderness, Wild Animals, the Moon, and Virginity. One thing to make note of though is that in Ancient Greek, the same word for Virigin means Unmarried Woman. Basically making her the Goddess of Maidens. Which is true as we know from the many myths surrounding Artemis, her and her maiden followers basically never took a man to bed or to love a man, among other things. We also know that she wasn't a "virigin" in the way of never having sex, she had a female lover, her name was Callisto. Her twin brother, Apollo, was also, among other things like being the God of the Sun and Music, he was considered to be the patron of same sex marriages. He was often called upon to bless same sex unions. He also has been noted through MANY myths to have had multiple lovers throughout time of both genders, male and female. Both Apollo and Artemis show up as busts in later chapters in Jimin's photofolio too. Artemis and Apollo throughout history have often been used to represent themes of femininity/masculinity, light/dark, and night/day. The contrast and embracing of these various sides is something Jimin has often explored in both his photoshoots and his performances. Jimin even calling attention to how he wanted to express the lightness and darkness within during this shoot as well. And that's your mythology lesson for today! 😅😂

Jimin shot these scene portraying a more melancholy mood. Surrounded by broken mannequins, a darker color scheme, light coming through but overall a darker concept. One that expresses his worries, his fears, his loneliness. Which I don't think anyone else can understand. We can empathize, especially for those of us who deal with things like anxiety and depression on the regular. But can I ever even pretend to understand the loneliness that comes from the level of fame he is at? The second guessing who is in your life for YOU and not just for your clout? The second guessing of every action because every move you make is analyzed and critized by the public in mass? How even when you are surrounded by people on every side, you can still at time feels alone? I'm so glad the members have each other, because they will understand those worries and that loneliness better than anyone else ever could. And if you add in the suspected possible queerness, in a country where you know you wouldn't be accepted? Adding that on top of all that fame? I know how hard that has to be. And I think Jimin did an incredible job expressing some of these harder feelings through this particular shoot.

In the second shoot, the theme was color: freedom. He said for this chapter he wanted to express something more innocent, like an unrefined boy. Freedom. Interesting to me that the colors he chose to represent freedom are the bi flag colors. You can find some more photos from my post here

The first thing I'll mention here is how HE MENTIONED that one of his focuses during this shoot was his adornments, the tattoos, the glitter, the crown...

He has a "tattoo" that says Free Love, one word on each part of his arm. Free Love is a movement that started in the 19th century but only really picked up notable progress in the 60s about how its a social movement that accepts ALL kinds of love. The initial goal was to seperate the government from all sexual and romantic matters. And even if we take away the movement part of this "free love" is very "love is love is love." All types of love are important and matter. It's very.... queer coded, at a minimum is very *ally* of him. Lol The Love also had what looks like the male symbol ♂️ in it in place of the "o." Which defintely says SOMETHING. He also had tattoos of the words Filter, which is his solo song and we could get deep into all the possible meanings behind those lyrics as well, but that's a seperate post. He also had tatts of the Sun on one hand and the moon on the other. Drawing back to those Artemis and Apollo parallels?

On top of this we have a rainbow necklace and rainbow beads used in his crown. An emphasis on heavy makeup, the idea he wanted to just show us an unrefined boy. He wanted to present himself as raw and "unrefined" as he could, all the colors and symbols meant to represent his inner self. And I think that's beautiful. Again playing on the masculine and feminine symbols, he is posing with an Apollo bust, who again, is a very queer God with all his bisexual king behaviors in myths 😂 He is also wearing a shirt from the pride section from Yves Saint Laurent, from an openly gay designer with very open support for gay rights. Not to mention the colors Jimin associated with Freedom are the Bisexual Pride colors, and if we add in the color scheme of his wings into the photos as well, it's giving the gender fluid colors as well. Which again, fits into his masculine/feminine comparisons through this whole shoot and many of his other shoots/performances. Including incorporating both very stereotypical poses for both masc and femme energy. It's giving Jimin embracing his contradictions, both sides of himself and everything about everything included in this photoshoot, is saying bisexual. Or at minimum, it's saying LGBTQ+. This whole chapter is heavily queer coded, the others are too, but this more than anything else.

In the 3rd shoot, he stated he wanted to portray the tougher, cooler side of himself. And I think that translated very well. You can also notice that the moon and sun tattoos on his hands stayed on and stayed visible even if the others were covered up. He did various poses and also posed with a bust of Artemis too. You can see some more of the photos here

I think it's also interesting to note that the concept that is stereotypically more masculine was included with the bust of Artemis, who generally represents femininity. And the concept that is stereotypically more feminine was included with the bust of Apollo, who general represented masculinity. I think it's an interesting play and statement that shows both are there, both are always present. Even when one side is showing more than the other, both are always within him and both are always part of who he is. His femininity doesn't go away because he is giving more masculine energy at some point and vice versa. And its the way that artemis' bust has kintsugi on the cracks which symbolises embracing your flaws and imperfections. It's beautiful. And it's a beautiful way of showing that your imperfections are part of what MAKE you beautiful. It's not something to be ashamed of or to hide away. I think its an incredible way to show Jimin possible embracing all parts of himself. Even the parts he considered to be flawed, or not perfect or that he may not like as much. Accepting his differences and what makes him unique and recognizing that those things are part of what makes him who he is. And that who he is, is inspirational and beautiful, inside and out.

And his last concept! He stated that this was the concept he worked on the most. It was him wanting to tell a story and he used the mannequins all around himself to represent all his different personas. All the different aspects of who he is and what makes Jimin, Jimin. You can find some more of the photos here

This again, feels very linked and reminiscent of his song Filter with the use of mannequins. If anyone wants me to do a breakdown of my thoughts of Filter or even Persona, Namjoons solo, let me know, because both songs touch on similar ideas and concepts that I believe Jimin was going for in his photofolio too. Which is super interesting. The mannequins representing more abstract and simplified versions of his personas (maybe even in filter too?) Is super interesting to me and I love the idea behind it. How much of each of your personas (because we all have some, even if we don't have as many as celebrities might) do you show at once, or even when you are being open and vulnerable, do you only expose the most abstract and simplified verisons of yourself all at once. It takes time to break down those walls. No matter who you are. It's brave to present yourself in front of so many like Jimin, and the other members, do so often. He also can link Artemis through symbolism here in this concept too. She has been the common connection through all 4 chapters. Artemis is often depicted as the Goddess of the Hunt or with a deer/stag. Note the similarities in the masks Jimin used?

Another link to Filter and to Artemis here too would be how Artemis, in mythology could shapeshift. Which bares startling resemblance to Jimins Filter lyrics about being able to become anyone, anything, whatever you want. Pick your Filter, and he can do it. And I think his range and complexity in personality and in who he is and how multifaceted of a beautiful human he is (we are all complex) is displayed beautifully through the various and different concepts he chose here. And how even though they are wildly different, they also connect and compliment each other so well. Jimin is SO beautiful, inside and out.

Also trying not to be giddy over the fact that Jimin and I both had our favorites of his concepts be the first one, with the moon lights. We both loved the color scheme. AND how if Artemis is his favorite Goddess, we have that in common too 🥰😍 I'd love to pick his brain one day. He must have the best conversations about everything, even just life in general.

ANYWAY, I think that mostly covers and wraps up my thoughts over his photofolio and his concepts. And how queer coded the entire thing is or can be. Hope yall don't mind I answered your ask and did a "my thoughts" post all in one. And again, sorry for the delay in getting this post out to everyone!!

Also a P.S. reminder that my links to photos only include SOME of the photos. The photofolio was 80 pages long and had extras. Lol I don't have that many photos linked. Sorry! You can find and watch many flip throughs of the entire photobook on YouTube though, like this one here, which is long and comprehensive!

Love yall. Hope you all have a good week!!

Editing to add this link as well, which is HD scans links to the ohotos in Jimins portfolio as well as the poster and photocards!

[therese-lokidottir]

Did in mcu and in comics asgard sexist?

I meant we saw in mcu asgard more value brute strength rather magic and if you use magic that meant you are coward and not a man

I don't know about comics though but it's that weird that they shaming something that make asgard more value than mortal? I meant Odin use magic, Heimdal use magic and thor hammer is from magic too,

I am never understand that, also in comics and myths the reason why they shaming loki it was because his like chating like women, and change became women and didn't give a shit about masculinity

And in mcu even his armor androgynous and he have feminime code but he mostly masculine like ordinary man, and less talking in short words besides using magic loki is pretty much masculine and not deserve got shaming just because he use magic

I feel weird here, mcu really trying saying he deserves got mocked

So the thing about the comics is that the sexism seen is more of a biproduct of when the comics were written. Remember Thor comics started in the sixties. I don't think Asgard every meant to a sexist place, but if you sift through comics you properly while find characters say crappy things, but comics Asgard is meant to be pretty equal. Remember, they are unquestionable Gods in the comics with the power and authority that comes.

Even in the movies it is something a bit more subtle. Like, people aren't like Loki's girly and I don't him, more like Loki is someone who is exists as a quieter person who avoids conflict in a boastful and war loving a culture. Think even today in our world a man who likes poetry and the theater and cares a lot about his appearance could be considered feminine even if those aren't strictly feminine things.

It's not that Loki is mock for being girly it's that he is mocked and feels very reminiscent of what women have to go through. The way loki is told to shut and be pushed to the corner feels like what women have to go through when they're shut down.

This post here gets in the gender of costume design of asgard in an interesting way

I feel weird here, mcu really trying saying he deserves got mocked

But what I would say is the first three films did not think Loki deserved it, not until Waititi's Ragnarok. Waititi been pretty open about is dislike of Loki. Honestly, MCU ended up being a case of life imitating art. Loki was someone who was different in this bright masculine world and was mocked and thought lesser and then the narrative of the MCU mocks and treats Loki as lesser because he's different in these certain ways.

[marengogo]

UGH!-6: But like … Did They Stutter?

Yet To Come - by BTS  [Proof]

[Music is a very big part of my life and I’m MOSTLY INCAPABLE of writing without music, so I just thought I'd share what I am listening to while writing this]

–🐺–🐺–🐺–

…

Given that even my coworkers, who generally REALLY DON’T CARE/KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT BTS except for the ones who now have started listening to some of their songs thanks to yours truly, came to me saying “So. BTS. They are disbanding uh? …” the day after FESTA 2022 dinner, I’d say it wouldn’t be a gross generalization to assume that at least every ARMY, OT7, x/y/z-biased, solo, anti, shipper, whatever-you-prefer-to-be-called, saw FESTA 2022 dinner. Right? 

If you haven’t I’d highly recommend you to do so but as always you feel free to do you as the boys did explain everything that they could at the time, which is pretty much what is happening right now. They also made a couple of sentiments and statements clear, and I, for one, am writing this post even though I am painfully aware that the boys are never going to see it, yet I still wish to put out this message in the universe, maybe its energy will manifest and reach them somehow, as I would really like them not to think that we all have poor listening and reading comprehension. 

BTS’ CHAPTER 1: THE END OF AN ERA.

The Beatles. The Jackson 5. Menudo. New Edition. Backstreet Boys. One Direction.

According to the following Wiki definition this is what they all have in common:

A boy band is loosely defined as a vocal group consisting of young male singers, usually in their teenage years or in their twenties at the time of formation.[1] Generally, boy bands perform love songs marketed towards girls and young women. Many boy bands dance as well as sing, usually giving highly choreographed performances. South Korean boy bands usually also have designated rappers 🤡 LOL LOL LOL 🤡.

That being said, with hindsight, we can add/examine a couple of aspects, which have surfaced through the years and further represent boy bands. For example, the fact that at the very beginning boy bands were usually the union of a group of friends, or classmates, basically, people who already knew each other. Let’s fast forward a couple of decades, and we see that the music industry catches on to the fact that waiting for the next phenomenal boy band to magically appear is not sustainable and that is when they realise that they can actually make the groups themselves. So starts the scouting and the auditioning with the sole goal of slapping together supposedly talented boys who are complete strangers to one another, but who at the very least, have a desire to become rich and famous. “Win-win”. 

Moving on, around the same time, we'll have to leave the West and take a trip to East-Asia, where the boy band industry has had an even bigger eureka moment. What they’ve realized is that even though these boys may not have the affinity of a band of boys who already know each other, from a business point of view they can easily be molded into whatever it is on demand at the very moment, afterall, everybody loves a good story, and even better if it comes with a great soundtrack. So what better than creating a narrative for these boy bands, each member would have a role/character associated and fans can not only enjoy the music but also follow a sort of “storyline” as they watch for example the silent masculine strong member interact with the cute feminine talkative one. Even greater “win”, brr brr!.

Now, in an ideal world, all that reasoning would make sense and bring about endless profit, but we don’t live in such a place do we? The whole purpose of a business is to make money and if money is what you base your every decision on, sooner or later, you are bound to encounter problems that money can’t solve without changing things irreversibly and in most instances, for the worst. The thing about grouping ambitious strangers with the intent of becoming rich (usually more for the company) and famous (usually more for the artists) is that if you don’t have a common goal all you are essentially doing is building a glorified House of Cards. 

And don’t get me wrong, Longevity, is something that this type of companies, and the artists themselves, could only dream to achieve but never actually aim at. Nobody does, because it is very much a pipe dream type of thing. In fact, for the most part, the company's goal is it to at least have one amazing CD, make fans go crazy for a year or two, so that they can spend some money, and then if it doesn’t work anymore, the artist would hope to have garnered enough fame to allow them to start perhaps a solo career, or at least stay within the business, while the group inevitably disbands and the company moves on to the next group. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. This has been the blueprint, and it was indeed the same blueprint used to form Bangtan Sonyeondan. 

It was the same blueprint, but Bang SiHyuk was a visionary that had goals of his own, with a knack for unusual experimentation 🤡. And exactly like a Mad Scientist, if you will, he played around with what he believed to be “slightly usual ingredients”. However, what he didn’t quite know at the time, was that these “ingredients” were actually very unusual. Some of the “ingredients” didn’t follow instructions, some very quickly dropped their assigned character, and some even had secret jobs but what they all had, and he probably didn’t account for or maybe he did, who knows right? was an extraordinary fighting spirit, which pulled up strong when it became clear that it was Bangtan vs the World. These boys had something to prove. They had somehow found their common goal.

As we all should know, early Bangtan, due to Big Hit's lack of reputation and funds, became the industry’s punching bag. This would have normally caused an “explosion in the lab”, instead, it created something new. The boys were fired up with this fiery will to fight back. They took the negativity and turned it into artistic fuel and did all of that while naturally learning about each other and consequently depending on each other solely. Somehow, these boys ended up actually liking each other. They kinda fought like members of a band made of family members, but had the passion of members of a band of strangers. They were an anomaly. 

An anomaly in a world that had rapidly become full of “anomalies”. Your everyday listener was, yes, looking for good music, yes, looking for something new and entertaining, but when they realised that they could also get someone who they could relate to; … 🤯🤯🤯. And so the “ingredients'' began to mutate. Along the way, they found their true calling, while adapting to their environment and understanding their receptors fandom, which also understood them in return, creating a never before seen bond, Tannies & ARMY, that brought them to where they are now; a world where THEY are the blueprint has anyone else noticed the number of boy/girl bands that got back together. 

These boys have created something unique. 

Something that other “Mad Scientists” have ever since been trying so hard to recreate in “their labs” and so far to no avail. This “something” is not only insanely lucrative, but also so emotionally rare, and has a chance at Longevity. These are boys who trust and genuinely love each other, but because they are also human, and have learned to be honest with themselves, they also know their limitations. And like they’ve always done, they sat down, exposed the problem, and tried to find a solution. And even though they didn’t have to, they also sat down with us, FESTA 2022 dinner, and quite clearly explained their solution. But, as always, the world managed to take their words and turn them into whatever sold better on the front page of the next morning paper we’ll get to that later on or/and whatever better fits their personal agendas. 

BTS’ CHAPTER 2: A LIMITED AMOUNT OF TIME, WITH AN UNLIMITED NUMBER OF POSSIBILITIES.

Have any of you experienced moments where you just wanted some time to yourself? Like, you love your friends, your family, your job, your everything, but at the same time, you are mentally exhausted and you need out for as long as you can afford? This is usually what most people use holidays for, you might be thinking. But the type of out I’m talking about is the kind where you want to be able to pause your present life, start another life for a while, and then go back to your past life kinda out. Basically, a “have your cake and eat it” type of out. 

That’s what I feel the boys are trying to experience and I ain’t mad at it, not one bit. Cause, let's be real, most of us regular people can’t really afford to even think of experiencing such a thing without MAJOR repercussions to our everyday life. But not only do I feel like they deserve it, but if it also allows them to reach their goals, and solve their problems, it would be like killing two birds with one stone. I mean, they really are not hurting anyone, by wanting to have a chance to experience life outside BTS other than those who are setting themselves up to be hurt that is 🤡.  

October 2022 rolled around and we got the following:

This theoretically gives a precise time frame to BTS’ CHAPTER 2. Let’s say that being back together means that they will physically be together and do a WLIVE on the 31st of December 2025, that means that, if we assume their serving period to be 18 months, the latest any member can enlist is the 30th of June 2024 (which I calculated considering the 30th of December 2025 being their last day). Obviously, I don’t know if their plan is to be together by the end of December 2025 and start working on a new album in 2026. Or be together say by August 2025 and ready for a tour in 2026 with a new album; only time can tell. But for the purpose of this post: BTS’ CHAPTER 2 began on the 15th of June 2022 and could end on the 31st of December 2025.

SO, that being said, a couple of things happened on the 15th of June 2022 that I would like to point out and a couple of things, define a couple of others, and I would like for people to remember one particular thing:

THINGS TO POINT OUT:

Some OT7 ARMY decided to dip and come back when BTS comes back to be 7, so after MS.

Other OT7 and/or x/y/z-biased ARMY decided to support each member’s solo endeavour.

Last but abso-fucking-lutely not least, SOLOS FINALLY GOT THEIR TIME TO SHINE AND PUSH THEIR AGENDA, along side antis.

THINGS TO DEFINE:

FAMILY BOY BAND MEMBER or FBBMs: Is what I will call boy bands with members that already knew each other, or were already related, etc etc etc.

STRANGERS BOY BAND MEMBERS or SBBMs: Is what I will call the type of bands that were put together through an audition, selection, etc etc etc.

ONE THING TO REMEMBER OR REALISE:

There was a point in time when BTS was seriously considered by NOBODY. Many knew about them, but still wanted nothing to do with them. Some that knew about them, went on and treated them like trash. Even though they had the talent, it took their fandom at the time to be persistent in order for people to give them a chance. In short, differently from many FBBMs and SBBMs who eventually ended up splitting up after reaching fame, BTS experienced having nobody but themselves and their label and fame came AFTER THAT. Because everyone was a nobody before becoming somebody, but how many were nobodies, who were constantly shoved down by semi-bodies and ignored by somebodies before they became THE BODIES themselves? So yeah, they may be smiling to people that harmed them in the past, and they might have decided to forgive and forget in other instances, but as real and intended as the experience they had were, you can bet that so are the choices that they make nowadays. A method to madness.

If you are a businessperson like yours truly, or have dealt with managing a business, you probably know that it is like in Love and War; all is fair. Obviously, this brings about injustice right away, but this is a known fact, no matter how clean you are, if you come and play in a muddy place, what do you think is gonna happen? Not to say that everyone is trying to get down and dirty, in fact, there are people that try their best to keep clean, but the reality of the fact is that you are still playing in mud. Yet, there is a difference between purposely trying to suffocate people in those muddy waters and trying to simply play by the rules, harm as less people as possible in the process and going home to live another day and start all over again the next day. 

Life is about balance, that’s why I like the color gray so much, it is the balance between black and white. And even though the Tannies are our beloved artists, it is important not to forget that in their own right they are also businessmen. I’m sure they want nothing else than to be there for ARMY always in theri best capacities, but this is not a charity, their lives, and the people who work for them, depend on the amount of money they make; this needs to not be forgotten. Now, how they make this money, all depends on the muddy field they play in, but from what I can see they really try their darn best to keep as clean as they can and harm as few people as humanly possible. 

ALL THAT to say that, when you experience having NOTHING with a group of PEOPLE, you will TREASURE THAT GROUP OF PEOPLE. Hence, ONCE AGAIN and it will not be the last time, I’ll keep hammering this, Chapter 2 wasn’t brought by for them to spread their wings and keep the fuck out, but as a means for them to have the experience they each want to have so that they can eventually be together again, healthily in order ot achieve Longevity which I will also get to towards the end of this post, don’t worry. And this brings me right to the current issues on the fandom-streets: FAVORITISM & SOLOS.

So at the moment “JUNGKOOK and his radio play” are the most recent subject. I will not go in depth, as I’ll be damned if I brought up all THE UNNECESSARY energy that has been riding with this valid topic. In fact, one thing that I found very helpful in understanding the radio play issue, was the following post by Ororo and Artiechikoo: 

​​https://www.tumblr.com/chikooritajjk/722232413519052800/so-youll-are-basically-saying-since-the-industry?source=share

Now, once you’ve read that, you’ll understand that the ACTUAL ISSUE HERE IS: WHY DIDN’T HYBE SEND LIKE CRAZY TO BE PLAYED ON THE RADIO, and that ladies, gentlemen and distinguished enbies, is a legit ass question. However, none of the members have anything to do with ANY of that, or with anything related really. During Festa 2022 dinner, they all told us the order in which their albums were coming out, which would indicate that they all sat down months beforehand, and all discussed what they wanted to do during their chapter 2. I would also dare to say that they also all were responsible for their projects, promotions and every aspect of their chapter 2, but that is just me.

ANYWAYS, back to the Jimin radio play issue, which, once again, is A VALID TOPIC, that unfortunately is being muddied from all the shit that solos are bringing forth that has NOTHING to do with anything. Is like the story of the boy who cried wolf, when the actual wolf arrived, nobody was there to help. When you are still stuck on cakes, on accusing members of sabotage, or any moving thing at that, THE REAL PROBLEM WILL BE OVERLOOKED.

Also, just putting this out there, if you actually think that ANY OF THE MEMBERS is out there actively sabotaging other members, then rest assured that you are also stanning a phonie-ass person. If you took a second to check out every other member, for every member who is being sabotaged by members, there is a story about that same member sabotaging another member. MEANING that we would all be supporting a band of phonies, who wouldn’t think twice to backstab their band mates; ALL OF THEM. 

So when, for example, you are accusing JK of throwing JM under the bus, or in the mud, stop one second, breathe, and TRY to put yourself in JK’s shoes. Imagine for example, spending a whole day reacting to JM content, or even just the following:

And then, imagine not giving a fuck about him: HOW DOES THAT WORK EXACTLY? Yes we don’t like Scooter Braun, yes we don’t agree with MANY OTHER THINGS, but it is vital to know how to address the correct issue and not just burn EVERYTHING DOWN, or/and involve not concerned parties. So when for example, the company is to blame, then the fucking company is to blame only, and not everything you would like to blame along with it. 

I 👏🏾DO 👏🏾 NOT 👏🏾 CARE 👏🏾 FOR 👏🏾 SOLOS 👏🏾 IN  👏🏾ANY 👏🏾 WAY 👏🏾 OR 👏🏾 FORM 👏🏾. 

Not too long ago, I was making this example with someone who told me that there was maybe a valid reason for people to become solos, but to me it felt like people saying they had a valid reason for becoming Nazi; would I support a Nazi, no matter what reason? 🤡🤡🤡THERE IS ALWAYS ANOTHER WAY, and unfortunately, keep suffering for a while longer, is one of them 🤡🤡🤡Becoming a Nazi WILL NEVER BE THE ANSWER for me, in the same way in which BECOMING A SOLO WILL NEVER BE THE ANSWER. When you become a solo you actively decide to care fuck all about all the other members. Now the person you want to support, loves and wants to keep building something with the people you decide are expendable, so, once again: HOW DOES THAT WORK EXACTLY?  Being able to pinpoint the actual issue is hard, it is confusing, it is stressful, but it is essential, please please please understand that.

BTS’ CHAPTER 3: BTS IS ENDGAME. PERIOD.

… I mean, I really don’t want to sound like a broken record so let me allow them to say it:

💙:

Here is the link to the full article: https://www.instagram.com/p/CpgkLqbtEKB/?hl=en

🩷:

🖤:

❤️:

💛:

💚:

💜:

AAAAAND, Except for Yoongi who is being rightfully private precious:

ALL OF A SUDDEN, I have a feeling that Yoongi got a “matching tattoo with the rest of the rapline, so his tattoo is somewhere on one of his legs …These boys have spent YEARS OF THEIR LIFE fighting against all sorts of prejudice, hate, nonsense, and more. It used to be from those who never gave them a chase, but now it seems that the adversary-wave is coming from within the fandom. YEAH IT LOOKS BAD RIGHT ABOUT NOW. But let's emphasize the LOOKS part of that sentence, because Social media “ARMY” aren’t IT. 

When you spend too much time on any SM, it will feel like that’s what ARMY is ALL about but I can guarantee you that there are so many ARMY out there who don’t know or care about the noise and just mind their business and keep streaming and advocating for the right causes. There are ARMY who do their best to support the boys in the best way they can, even if they can’t afford to buy every single piece of merch. 

There are also ARMY who are waiting for the boys to come back and also those people who have no idea yet, but will suddenly become ARMY in 2026 when THE BIGGEST COMEBACK THIS PLANET WOULD HAVE EVER WITNESSED, will kick off after they announce their world tour. In conclusion, as always, DO AS YOU SEE FIT, but if you decide that, believing and following people who think that having the boys competing against each other for future solo supremacy is where it’s at, all I’d “cutely” have to say is that:

THEY DIDN’T STUTTER: OT7 IS ENDGAME.

HAPPY ARMY DAY 🫰🏾.

Always respectfully yours,

Marengo. 

[justkarama]

Okay so how exactly do I start this umm this is my first official RWDE post like ever that isn't a reblog off another post so bear with me I am going to be tagging people I follow because I want to hear their thoughts and open a dialogue @kitkatopinions @itsclydebitches @ironwoodprotectionsquad @rwbyconversations @rosekushina @bad-food-sells-burgers @rwde-chibi @dragynkeep

First and foremost I've had no interest in volume 9 I don't know why but I was more invested in volume 7 then v9 I thought volume 7 first to second half was mid and boring. From what I've heard volume 9 is poorly written after seeing criticism for it and watching the episodes yeah I can see why the majority of the volume feels like filler

Personal feelings aside I have a question why was Weiss Blake and Yang and jaune in this volume legitimately why were they there one of the writers I believe Eddie talked about how this volume was about failure and self acceptance basically this is supposed to be Ruby volume the one where she finally develops for the longest time Ruby always felt underdeveloped .

So wouldn't make more sense if this volume only had Ruby fall in the ever after let this be a character study of Ruby centering her as the main protagonist for this volume

Weiss Blake Yang and jaune all had character arcs Weiss learning to break away from her father Blake learning running from your problems doesn't help Yang learning to get her spark back all happened in volume, 4

Jaune learned to grieve phyrra death for three volumes

Ruby never had a character arc so for a volume that should be about failure Ruby should be the only one there narrative wants you to believe Ruby feels underwhelmed by the responsibilities of others the one to always come up with the plans Ruby has always been the one with the most moral compass out everyone what if Ruby question her morality questioned if she was right or wrong questioned if ironwood was right dealing with the fall of beacon not just atlas

In my volume 9 rewrite ( more like a rough outline) Ruby fall through the void with neo

Now why neo well volume 9 neo doesn't feel like a character in fact neo in general doesn't feel like a character neo is only popular because of her design semblance and fighting style. V9 neo is a plot device so Ruby can unlive herself neo wanting revenge for Roman is never explored because the show never explored either of their characters why does neo feel so strong for Roman all of these questions are answered in a book that is never truly addressed in the show in my v9 rewrite

Neo is told by Ruby herself she didn't kill romen I always found it odd how neo was so quick to believe cinder like cinder is more likely to kill romen then Ruby ever could

.the two are forced to work together to put aside their differences to help each other out

.I also toyed with the idea of neo and Ruby sort of leaning on each other in a sense that they learned to be more open with each other and sort of learning to cope with one another

I would also introduce Alex and Louise changed their stories to my knowledge of the volume it never explains how the twins ended up in the ever after I would have it to where tht twins were being evacuated and because of cinder the siblings fall into the void

I would also provide proper characterization of the twins Louis is a silver eyed who was being forced to become a huntsmen by his father who's also a silver eyed warrior Louis was a prodigy and natural gifted he is considered to be a model student and son

But Louis never wanted to be a huntsman he doesn't like fighting I like the idea that he always wanted to be a make-up artist but his father saw it as too feminine Louis from an early age had toxic masculinity placed on him

Alex wasn't a silver eyed warrior she was more like a tomboy and liked to do boy things but since they grew up in Atlas that was seen as weird and unladylike she wasn't considered talented at all and her father never really bonded with her favouring Alex

.I like to think Alex resented Louis for being the favorite I also imagine that she was to be married off to a wealthy family basically Alex was kinda like Weiss but worse she had no real freedom

The twins meet Ruby and neo I imagine that Louis and Ruby feel a connection as silver eyed warriors

I would also change the jabberwalker to be the main antagonist with intelligence manipulating the cat to do its dirty work befriending the group picking them apart starting with Alex who i feel wouldn't want to leave the ever after because of the freedom it grants her

So yeah this is my sorta rewrite of volume 9 it's a rough outline but I am interested in seeing how others feel about this or how they would rewrite volume 9

[junebugwriter]

I guess I never had much of a chance.

I just started watching Jessie Gender on Youtube's essay about masculinity and... it hit like a goddamn truck. So much of what she talks about in her past so closely mirrors my own, it's downright eerie. Down to the fact that I was an Eagle Scout. Although, to be fair, it sounds like she had a much better time in it than I did, considering I never really made many friends in my boy scout troop, and I never worked any of the camps.

But to the point... I really did echo a lot of her experience. I tried my hardest to be a man. To live up to the ideals of masculinity that society enforces. But I was never going to be anything close to that. I was always too fat, too sensitive, too emotional, and too unathletic to ever be anything close to Western Masculinity (tm).

I did try though. I was desperate to be seen as something close to approaching masculine, but it came out in such strange ways.

For those who don't know me in person, I grew up in the United Methodist Church, quite literally. My dad was a pastor all his life, and that's the only life I knew growing up. As such, we lived life "in a fishbowl," as we'd call it. That means we were supposed to be the Model Family. Above all reproach, under all scrutiny. If any of us stepped out of line, we were going to be reprimanded for it. Do you folks on here have any idea what that does to a kid? My parents loved me, to be sure, and I bear them little ill will. They did their best under the circumstances. But we were a religious family in Texas. There's very little non-conformity afforded to us. My mother, God bless her, she already bucked tradition. She wasn't exactly feminine, mostly. Sure, she wore dresses, wore makeup, even went square dancing with my dad. But she had little time for the trappings of femininity, and only wore them under obligation. She did not enjoy being a pastor's spouse, for the most part. She endured it, for my Dad's sake, but she made no secret that she wasn't going to pretend to be some Stepford Wife bizarro Tammy Faye Bakker. Not her.

So I grew up with my dad, a uniquely anxious person, stressed about how me and my brother were going to make it. My dad was a pretty old-school guy, but at heart he was a bleeding heart liberal, as much as one could be in Texas in the 80's and 90's in religious circles. There's not a single Democratic president he didn't vote for. He was Democrat til he dies. Yet... that could never be public knowledge. Not in the church. Not in Texas. So already, we became bearers of secrets. Mom isn't a pastor's wife. Dad isn't a Republican. And so we were taught to bear our own secrets.

I'm neurodivergent. I have ADHD. And I am almost entirely incapable of telling a lie. (Ask my partner, she knows!) But little secrets... that was a matter of survival. Little secrets, for the benefit of the Image. Everyone has them, I learned. But God help you if your secrets ever got out.

So I learned, and learned, and learned some more. I'd ask questions, and to their credit my parents answered most of them truthfully, if they could. But there were some things you do not question.

One of them was gender. But I did not know that word.

How could I?

Not in that environment. Not in the fishbowl. Not in Texas. Not in the church.

Girls did x, boys did y, and that's that. Girls were x, boys were y, and that's it. End of discussion. Black and white.

There were signs I did not conform. I loved the show Barney and Friends... until I overheard kids at school call it a show for girls and little babies. Not a show for boys.

Overnight I stopped watching.

I used to sleep with a blanket every night. I loved, adored that little blanket. I found solace in Linus from Peanuts, and his little blue blanket. But my father chafed at its ever-presence. He never said anything against it, but he didn't have to. I could tell. So my mother, God bless her, she stitched me and my brother some pillows with fun animal designs on them. They substituted for the blanket. Father approved, as they had things like tigers and killer whales on them, which were Boy Approved (tm) things to like.

But then there was the ladybug puppet. It was a cute little stuffed ladybug that fit on my hand, and it even had an extra leg so as to be anatomically accurate. I slept with that every night.

Until my mother told me that dad didn't want me to do it anymore. He was worried it was too "feminine." And she said it in a very sing-song voice, a teasing tone I grew all too familiar with.

So into the closet the puppet went. And me with it.

I became hyper-vigilant about what could be perceived as "feminine" from there on out. I watched what I did like a hawk, trying never to ever raise the annoyance or ire of my dad or my peers. But it was never enough. As anyone who has ever had to play that game of gender chess, there was never going to be any chance for someone who is a trans girl to ever be anything but, even if they didn't know that was what they were.

I didn't hear the word "transgender" until I was in grad school. By then, I had already felt a call to ministry. By then, I had long ago locked up all gender nonconformity in a closet back when I was in grade school. I had lost an entire childhood, teenhood, early young adulthood. And by then, I felt like they described what being trans was like, as if it was for someone else. Glad I didn't deal with that issue!

But I did. I simply did not allow myself to question things. Did not allow myself to break the box I was put in as a child. Because I was a white guy, going to be a pastor. I figured I would just be that all my life.

Life has changed about three times since then. I only allowed myself to ask myself the hard gender questions in October of last year. I was 35. I'm turning 36 this next month.

I'm starting my life over again, a fourth time. But I'm actually looking forward to the future, for the first time in my entire life.

Because now it actually exists.

[secretgamergirl]

Just what is it with wiki editors and trans characters?

It’s still June, which means it’s still pride month, which means I’m still updating this blog more often than the usual maybe 3 times a year, and today I’d like to talk to you about some fictional characters who are trans and the weird wiki entries bending over backwards to deny it. And I’m not even playing this game on hard mode here, talking about like the cast of FF6 or something. I’m here to talk about a gal from Final Fight, and a guy from One Piece.

Oh and I guess I’m also talking about Poison. You all know Poison right? She’s pretty commonly referred to as the first trans woman in a video game, specifically Final Fight in 1989. And that little fun fact is... not an actual fact.

Prior to Final Fight, we had Ms. Pac-Man in 1982. While I hesitate to deadname even fictional characters, Ms. Pac-Man began life as Crazy Otto, and had a brief stint going by Super Pac-Man and a couple other monikers before going with just Ms. Pac-Man. I don’t see why she shouldn’t count.

Perhaps you think we shouldn’t count Ms. Pac-Man because to your reasoning, the origins of the game and the character re-design process behind don’t qualify as transitioning? OK then, the next example that comes immediately to mind is Luigi, from Super Mario Bros., in 1993. Who has had a remarkably consistent portrayal as being very very into feminine clothes, acting super girly while wearing them, and quite enjoying this. Doesn’t count because it’s all in supplementary material? No, it’s in multiple games too. Want to argue there was no in-game confirmation prior to the release of Final Fight? That’s really splitting hairs now, particularly when tie-in media got onboard this train quite early on. Perhaps you want to make the argument that Luigi is not trans, but is a cis man who likes to crossdress, perhaps as a sexual fetish? That is a weird argument to make about a character from a series of games aimed at young children but you do you.

How about Metroid, 1986? Samus canonically dresses like a man, uses masculine pronouns, and when that armor comes off we reveal a woman in a low cut leotard ready to start living it up. Who’s also canonically two meters tall, has super broad shoulders, had her biochemistry tweaked as a child... I think I wrote a whole separate post on this once. We still gonna play the “oh that’s all a disguise/misunderstanding” card on that one?

Well, Doki Doki Panic came out in 1987. Birdo (Catherine in Japan) is quite explicitly a trans woman. It’s right there in the manual, and ad campaigns, and really tastelessly referenced in many sources since. What possible justification could anyone use to argue she isn’t trans?

Well, let’s ask Wikipedia.

“ Since the character's North American introduction, Birdo's gender identity has been an issue of discussion and speculation. The Japanese manual for Doki Doki Panic, when translated into English, states her name to be Catherine and as a man who thinks of himself as female, adding that she likes to wear a bow and would rather be called "Cathy."  However, in the first edition manual for the North American release of Super Mario Bros. 2, Birdo is referred to by a text block that states "he thinks he is a girl" and would "rather be called 'Birdetta.'" In later printings, mention of Birdo being male was omitted. Mention of this fact is further not included in most later games featuring the character and seems to have been retconned to Birdo always being a female to begin with. In the Japanese version of Super Smash Bros. Melee, Birdo, called Catherine, is described similarly to the original manual, though wanting to be called "Cathy." In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it is said that Birdo is of "indeterminate gender." Birdo appears in the Wii Japan-only video game Captain Rainbow, which delves into Birdo's gender identity. It specifically depicts her being imprisoned for entering the women's bathroom, and the player is asked to locate proof of her femininity (her vibrator) to get her out. Birdo is often lauded as the first transgender video game character. The character was given a female voice actor in Super Mario Advance, a remake of Super Mario Bros. 2. The Spanish language website for Mario Smash Football while describing Birdo suggests that the character's gender is indeterminate. The European website for Mario Strikers Charged Football refers to Birdo as a male character.”

And later in the same article, we have this whole subsection:

“Gender identity

Birdo has been the subject of discussion relating to her gender identity and has been regarded as transgender. She has become a trans icon due to her gender identity. She has been credited as an early transgender character in video games. The manual excerpt from Super Mario Bros. 2 about Birdo's gender did not receive attention until some time after the game's release. Writer Lorenzo Fantoni suggested that this was because few people read the manual or because no one cared about Birdo's gender at the time. Fantoni also compared the Captain Rainbow scene to the later bathroom debates regarding trans people. Fantoni also suggests that Nintendo does not know what to do with Birdo and that changes to Birdo's character are made to match present-day morals. Author Sam Greer was critical of Birdo's portrayal, stating that her gender had become a "running joke" and was the "subject of much derision and stereotyping." Paste Magazine's Jennifer Unkle criticized Birdo as a caricatured trans person and as an example of Nintendo's poor handling of gender identity in general.

It is speculated by Wired's Chris Kohler that the gender issue was retconned to make her a cisgender female, while video game developer Jennifer Diane Reitz suggests that she may have undergone gender reassignment surgery. Writer Andrew Webster of The Escapist used the history of Birdo in the lead-in to his article, commenting on the changes Nintendo has made to hide Birdo's gender status.”

Weird efforts by wiki editors to try and establish some sort of “ambiguity” or “controversy” here highlighted in bold. Really though, ALL of this text can quite easily be boiled down to just “it used to be that every single mention of this character in any source of any kind felt compelled to include a gross transphobia-informed vulgar 'joke’ about her being trans, but more recently, in North American localizations, they don’t do that as often.”

I wasn’t planning to focus so heavily on Birdo, but wow what a fantastic example of the thinking at play here. Nobody’s trans unless you’re explicit about it. And by explicit about it we mean making gross jokes... and even then the character is only assumed to be trans when we hear that joke, if you go too long without making any, they revert to being cis.

Anyway I’m sure there’s plenty of other examples with other weird excuses not to count them that I’m forgetting. Was Faria out before Final Fight? It’s hard to pin old arcade releases down to a particular month.

How about Final Fight though? Poison isn’t even the first trans character in the game she appears in. Roxy pops in at the tail end of the first level, then again just before Poison, her palette swap. Believe it or not though, there are absolutely people out there who will insist that Poison is trans but Roxy isn’t. I have a lot of building up to do here but have a little tease from the dedicated Street Fighter wiki to get us going...

Before getting into why “it has been speculated” that Roxy is trans, let’s head over to regular wikipedia and see what they have to say about Poison’s “gender history” shall we?

“Originally conceived as a female thug in Final Fight and part of the game's antagonist group, Mad Gear, concerns during the game's development about reactions from North American audiences to fighting women led to the character being re-imagined as a "newhalf". However, that was not considered satisfactory and both Poison and her palette swap Roxy were replaced by the male characters "Billy" and "Sid" and have been for every subsequent North American port of the title on Nintendo consoles and handhelds. After the Final Fight series, she later appeared alongside wrestler Hugo, acting as his manager, with her schemes revolving around finding a tag team partner for him or developing their own wrestling organization. Poison first appeared as a playable character in Final Fight Revenge. She was also to appear in both Capcom Fighting All-Stars and Final Fight: Streetwise; however, the former was canceled and she was omitted from the latter as development progressed. Following those aborted attempts, she ended up appearing as a playable character on Street Fighter X Tekken. She was also added as a playable character to Ultra Street Fighter IV.

The character's potential status as a trans woman, consciously left ambiguous by the developers, has remained a topic of frequent debate by both fans and media alike.”

OK we’re going to be here a while, this is just the first section. Before even getting into the point I was going to make it’s super weird not to mention that she’s a playable character in Street Fighter V, how long ago was this last edited? Anyway, right off the bat, we have perhaps the most oft-repeated lie in video games. Which is even called out as such in the next section here... while repeating it again.

“Conception and history

Poison's first appearance in Final Fight featured her and a palette swap character named Roxy as recurring minor enemies for the player to fight. Named after the band by an unnamed female employee at Capcom, she was designed by Akira Yasuda to contrast against the bigger characters in the game and move about randomly and described as a "cool and rebellious woman". According to the book All About Capcom Head to Head Fighting Games and Final Fight director Akira Nishitani, the characters were originally planned to be cisgender women, but were changed to "newhalfs" (a Japanese slang term for trans women) after the game's release, due to the suggestion that "hitting women was considered rude" in America and the concern that feminist groups would sue. However, concept artwork included in the 2005 compilation Capcom Classics Collection of the pair specifically uses the kana for 'newhalf' (ニューハーフ), contradicting the statement the change occurred post-release. In 2007 Nishitani stated that he supposed the character "could be male", but added it was up to the viewer to decide. He later clarified in a discussion on Twitter that in his personal view Poison was a woman. Yasuda himself commented that as far as her gender, he considers her transgender in North American localizations, but cis in Japan.

A later appearance by Poison as a playable character in Final Fight Revenge, an American-produced 3D fighting game spinoff of Final Fight, portrayed the character in a highly feminine manner and had her romantically interested in Final Fight hero Cody. Commentary about her ending in the game in All About Capcom suggested that the character may have received sex reassignment surgery. The Final Fight-related character profiles featured in Capcom Classics Collection instead allude to her being a cross-dresser, while addressing Roxy as a "she" who dislikes Poison's cross-dressing.

Street Fighter IV's producer Yoshinori Ono, when asked in an interview about Poison's gender, stated: "Let's set the record straight: In North America, Poison is officially a post-op transsexual woman. But in Japan, she simply tucks her business away to look female." He later emphasized it again when asked about what female characters could be included in the game Street Fighter IV, stating that it would be too confusing to include her due to the region-specific gender. However, in a 2011 interview with Electronic Gaming Monthly at the Tokyo Game Show, he stated that Capcom "doesn't have a stance technically", and while they wouldn't give an official answer, felt it was up to the viewer to decide. He added that his intent was to please all fans and that the mystery behind her gender was the core of the character. During the same interview, a Capcom representative further added that they worked closely with GLAAD, an organization concerned with the portrayal of LGBT people in media, to ensure "anything that might be offensive has been very tailored to not be" for Poison's portrayal in Street Fighter X Tekken.”

Where do I begin? Besides shouting a string of profanity and mashing my keyboard while I read all that. Well first of all, I’m fairly certain every woman who has ever worked at Capcom has, in fact, had a name. Also can we have a look at that Final Fight Revenge ending that allegedly hints at her getting bottom surgery?

I don’t even want to diagram the thought process by which one would get from some stock tropey “I bet I could make him like me” to “clearly this alludes to her running off to get surgery performed after this.”

Anyway damn, I haven’t even gotten to the sections on “censorship” and “reception” here, but I don’t want to be here all night. So let’s just say there’s a bunch of quotes from various people about how she’s really hot, half of those add some “I hope that doesn’t make me gay” sort of comment, and we have a couple more rephrasings of the big lie. So... yeah let’s get into that properly.

So... game developers tend to be gross creeps who love dehumanizing jokes about women and queer people in general, “games journalism” has traditionally been the realm of clueless teens quoting each other in circles, paraphrasing press releases, and pasting anything that claims to be a translation of an interview with someone speaking Japanese, said interviews tend to involve flummoxed third party interpreters, and none of these people are particularly likely to know a single damn thing about trans people, let alone what various slurs and terms in languages they don’t speak really imply.

So, first off, there’s nothing at all “mysterious” or “left to the player’s imagination” about the Final Fight girls. They are a pair of trans women who when not busy being brawler enemies or getting folded into the Street Fighter franchise and rounded out are sex workers, specifically catering to the the plausible deniability crowd who can go “hey she totally looked like a hot cis girl when I picked her up” in regards to women they very much know are trans and haven’t had bottom surgery. It’s a pretty common fetish. There has never actually been any ambiguity or deviation on that. It’s spelled out plain as day right on their original designs. Which I have a scan of, right here!

There it is, plain as day. If you can read katakana, and you’re up on your Japanese sex work slang, there’s no ambiguity here. Same term all these developers keep tossing out in interviews. It ends up getting translated in all sorts of awkward ways because an interpreter is going to have to try and clean it up and simplify it, especially back when most of these quotes were pulled (the one from Ono is a bit more explicitly worded) and I’m guessing all the bits of “well in America she’d be considered a woman” stem from our language regarding trans women being a bit better generally, and/or a further weird crack because, well, America is kind of the country all the other country’s trans women come to when they want bottom surgery. Very few people in the world perform it, and we have a shocking percentage plus the best reviewed ones. Now you know.

The whole story about “making them trans in the U.S. to avoid being sued by feminists” is... just self-evidently BS? That’s like, a 10 year old on a playground’s understanding of “feminists” and the concept of a lawsuit. The closest thing to a source on it is a vague second or third hand anecdote passed along a decade after the fact from someone who thought one of them was blonde. Plus when you remove the later embellishment about neither of them being trans before being swapped out for random guys in the SNES release, it’s uh... pretty obviously all just a setup for a gross “trans women aren’t really women” joke. So let’s all stop spreading that around and get an adult to fix wikipedia.

All THAT said, back to the full text of the funniest thing I’ve ever read on a wiki:

“Trivia

Roxy is named after the English rock band Roxy Music. It has been speculated that Roxy is transgender like Poison not only due to the latter's gender history but also because of Roxy being referred to as a "newhalf" (Japanese term for a pre-op transgender person) in her original character concept art, but this has never been confirmed or denied.”

Yes, that’s right. According to the Street Fighter wiki, some people have this wacky theory that Roxy might be trans, just because the artist who first designed her wrote a giant note under the illustration stating “hey this is a trans woman!” And apparently this “has never been confirmed or denied” despite the citation note literally linking to her original concept art. Which, again, could not be more clear on this subject.

You can’t even ask, “what do designers have to do? Spell it out for you!?” because they ACTUALLY DID in this case.

But I’ve got one more for you all. The other day see, someone showed me a recent scan from the manga One Piece, with a very satisfied “well that should finally settle this.”

So... full disclosure here, I haven’t been up to date on what’s going on in One Piece for at least like a decade, and my effort to catch up on the context here ironically just involved me hastily trying to look up what that is with the horns between Luffy and Zoro. I’m not even sure what his name is. But I sure as hell know when I’m looking at some wiki editing weirdo trying to deny a character is trans when I see it.

Like all trans characters with wiki pages, we have a big subsection just labelled “Gender” which does some filibustering about “controversy” Japanese not using gendered third person pronouns (and conveniently ignoring the first person ones) and so on before begrudgingly hitting us with something like this:

“However, certain statements by characters in the manga have continued to create confusion and uncertainty regarding Yamato's gender, particularly regarding Yamato being referred to as Kaidou's son. Yamato has stated that she refers to herself as Kaidou's son due to her desire to adopt Oden's identity, saying "Oden was a man, wasn't he? So I chose to be a man too!"  Yamato has also been referred to as Kaidou's son by Kaidou himself as well as the Beasts Pirates; though their reasons for doing so still remain unclear, given their relationship with the real Oden and their reactions to Yamato claiming to be the legendary samurai. This has led to a significant portion of the fanbase believing that, in-universe, characters who know Yamato consider her to be male, and the official VIZ and Funimation translations have taken this approach, with Luffy and the Beasts Pirates referring to Yamato with masculine ("he/him") pronouns.”

I know, I know, us trans people are always itching to claim any character we can as a trans guy, but just because someone unambiguously says 'I am a man' and 'I am this guy's son' and that guy says 'yes, this is my son' and the official translation exclusively uses he/him pronouns, and when visiting the bathhouse he heads to the men's side and nobody bats an eye at that, well that doesn't really mean ANYTHING, necessarily!

For real though, wiki editors are out here admitting to going out of their way to misgender this guy and stubbornly shout that the official localization is wrong. There’s also some grasping at straws involving a trading card, but like... even if the guy writing the manga were to say “oh this character is actually a girl” that wouldn’t trump the fact that he... unambiguously says “I’m a guy, refer to me as a guy, everyone refers to me as a guy, I am living my life as a guy.” Like, that wins. The only way to argue this isn’t a trans character is if you want to go and say he was actually assigned male at birth and we should just ignore the gynecomastia that might have lead to thinking otherwise.

I don’t know what it is about people who edit wikis where they find it so damn hard to admit when a character is trans, but according to the standard they seem to have set, I guess I have to infer that no cis person has ever actually existed in any work of fiction, or indeed in real life! If they did we’d clearly be bombarded with crass jokes about them.

Also for real, for as often as people make [citation needed] jokes, nobody who edits wikipedia seems to know a primary source from a hole in the ground. People seem to just be searching for whatever they just typed, pasting the first hit, and praying nobody thinks to look at any of the footnotes. It is a MESS down there.

[the-official-account]

Is it just me, or does lesbian fandom have a problem?

My name is Edil. I've been a medium-sized name in several small fandoms, especially podcast fandoms. I am also a women appreciator, and enjoy media that centers on women. I'm going to mostly be talking about my experiences in two fandoms: The Strange Case Of Starship Iris and Pasithea Powder, both podcasts with central wlw ships, though I've also seen these same issues in Goncharov (1973) of all places.

When I go into fandom I go hard. My brain, which is very autistic, breaks down information of small details for fun. It's the reason why I wrote a dwarnian (TSCOSI's fictional alien language) dictionary for the podcast. The reason why I have a massive notes document on all of Pasithea's season one and the reason the wiki...looks and reads like that. It isn't owned by me, but most of the formatting, fonts, content: yours truly.

And I'm proud of these projects, which took time and effort and skill building to do! But I haven't finished or caught up with either of these podcasts, and that's because the online spaces that center around them have been overwhelmingly hostile.

I have a strong emotional connection to this issue — of whether or not sapphic fandoms tend to be more hostile to diversity, especially race and nuerodivergance — so I can't make a distinct analysis, not without more distance and more information. That's part of why I am making this post.

Mods and members of the TSCOSI discord circa 2020 will know me, and know why I left. That being a series of unwarranted criticisms and bad faith readings that left me with anxiety even interacting with the fandom I loved.

I am probably a lot less known in the Pasithea fandom, because I wrote fewer fics for it and left more quickly. After TSCOSI, I recognized resentment faster. But the Pasithea notes document that I've posted here before and the wiki, three fics, fan art and that one comic that's still to this day the only comic I've drawn: me.

This is not a callout post, not for individuals or for groups, and I don't have screenshots. I am only trying to open a discussion.

See, the pattern that I am seeing is that fandom spaces centering on wlw ships attract fans who are wlw. And while nothing is inherently wrong with that, issues in the lesbian community start to become very obvious.

Firstly, the lack of diversity in sexuality among most of the fan base (As I suspect bi and gay people have largely more popular media that attracts them, and lesbians have to dig deeper for smaller spaces like these podcast) starts to feed this sense of possession among fans. As if there is a correct, normal, or standard way to be sapphic. A set of rules stating that anyone who doesn't obey it hates lesbians.

From Pasithea, I got this in comments about how I was drawing the characters "ugly" (Jane is canonically fat and has a scar, which I made very visible...because I wanted to. I gave her strong Hispanic features because it appealed to me. Sophie is butch, and canonically has or had a buzz cut. Which is what I drew. — The "appearance" section of the wiki? Yup. I wrote that.)

These comments, which were themselves problematic, came from a place of implying I was lesbiphobic for drawing these wlw as "ugly". When in fact, I was drawing the type of characters that would appeal the most to me, and hopefully to others like me.

These expectations of skinny, eurocentric appearing, usually feminine characters... Well it reflects a lot of issues with TERF-y feminism and lesbianism at large. Lesbianism on the internet has an issue with gender essentialism that isn't universal but is incredibly worrying. And when WOC are often masculinized because of their non-white features, that transphobia becomes anti-butchness (or strict standards of butchness) and racism.

While TSCOSI fans were more receptive to my designs, I was drawing in a less realistic style where "ugly" was less of an issue — and, to be frank, The main ship being Southeast and South Asian made it hard to draw them "ugly" from a eurocentric perspective. Realism there would just be...exotic, I guess.

However, with TSCOSI fans there was still a sense of possession around how these characters were interpreted, especially in headcannons, that lead to me deleting more than I posted as time went on. Some of those were genuine issues on my part ("what if the Jewish guy was a vampire in a au haha!" I said. Then went to bed, woke up, googled it, and went "NOPE! NOPE!!! SORRY.") Others were just unnecessary, such as comments on how silly head cannons were "unrealistic", and how I should write more cannon compliant work, rather than what I was doing for fun.

Ultimately these are the ONLY things that made me stop listening to these podcasts. The ONLY reason I put down the projects I poured consecutive hyperfixate weeks into. Part of me thinks it was this enthusiasm in the first place that was the biggest threat others reacted to in how I spoke and acted.

For instance, in trying to write for both the TSCOSI and Pasithea wikis, I had folks try to change my methods of research and writing to a style that worked best for them. When I said they were welcome to work that way, there was no offers to assist. And communication with those who had established work was either non-existent or hostile. I've had people question if my passion projects were necessary, berate me for meaningless mistakes, and treat what could be fun collaborative work like a pissing contest. For TSCOSI, none of this occurred on the wiki, and mostly around documents I owned for my own note taking. Even then, the hostility of Wikipedia culture is an unnecessary and hurtful thing to bring into fandom wiki culture.

The TSCOSI people went on to make a wonderful wiki that I deeply admire, but I still wish I could have been part of that project in its infancy, instead of being pushed away. (I may have made the navigation system if I remember correctly, but I'm not certain. So this is not to say I was not allowed any input whatsoever.)

I love sapphic media, it's my bread, butter, pride, joy, and favorite past time. But time and time again I have found far safer social spaces for media that centers around gay men, even if it isn't my personal first choice.

As a non-white, non-allistic, non-lesbian, not-skinny fan...I have concerns.

I know you all want sapphic media to get more attention. I want that too. But unless you start actively searching for and calling out bigotry in those spaces, it absolutely cannot and will not happen. So much of fandom is powered by autistic people with time on their hands, and I want there to be space for people like me. Who get TOO excited, TOO far from cannon, TOO analytical about race and class and fatphobia and whatever else.

Sapphic media obviously has issues reaching fans that aren't the fault it's its current audience. But the good thing about being part of or close to a problem, is having the power to make incredible, effective change.

I refuse to leave these podcasts behind, I love them more than anything, and the projects I got out of them are still my beloved brain children (The alien calligraphy from the random writing system I made for dwarnian is still up on my wall. "It is what. It IS what, keeps us from the abyss.") I refuse to be shoved aside my racist fans and random people who assume they can act rudely to strangers because they treated characters or lore differently. I refuse to be sidelined from conversations just cause I can act weird.

But I also refuse to spend so much of my beloved labor on people who turn up their noses and belittle it.

This all has had a lasting effect on how I interact with fandom, a legitimate fear-responce to the idea of trying to engage deeply with women-centered podcasts. Something I'm trying to unlearn and overcome.

So. There's my explanation of why I don't do tscosi anymore, which I mentioned on the minibang I'd eventually follow up on. And a criticism of sapphic fandom which, I'll be real, I have a few more essays worth of commentary about, and it's also another expression of how I stare longingly at Pasithea every time it comes up on my dash.

But, most importantly, this is my question of whether anyone else has found themselves in a similar place. If it's a trend or an anecdote.

If you have thoughts, please reblog with them. I'd love to know what you have to say.

[sage-nebula]

A trend I've noticed cropping up into Pearlina works that has started bugging me a little is the tendency to make Pearl masc/butch while Marina is femme. Which, on the one hand, at least people aren't making Marina butch just because she's Black, which is something a lot of fandoms do to Black women due to racism. But on the other hand, it's still not true at all to Pearl's character and, more to the point, I think it's bugging me because I feel like it's heteronormativity applied to a queer couple.

I mean, these are fictional characters so at the end of the day it's not a big deal. But this is something we (i.e. queer people) face all the time. Like as a lesbian, I've had to have the "well one of you would have to be the man" talk with my father multiple times because although he understands on some level that we're both women, there's a part of him that's like, well, one person still fulfills the Masc Role and one person still fulfills the Femme Role. And it doesn't help that I'm gender nonconforming and always have been (to the point where, even as a child, I would get my older relatives to purchase my clothes from the boys' department because I, an otherwise extremely well-behaved child, would pitch fits if made to wear feminine clothing). So like in his mind I'm the Masc Role, which I mean, true, but that still doesn't make me "the man," I'm still a woman, and a cis woman at that. But this is sort of veering away from the point.

The point is, in a wlw relationship, sure, sometimes one of the women involved is butch and the other is femme. But also, sometimes both women are butches. And sometimes both women are femmes. And being butch or femme isn't always about how you dress anyway. And sometimes people like to change up how they dress depending on the day, and so on and so forth. But I feel like, at least in fandom, sometimes fandoms take queer couples in fiction and they still subconsciously box them into Masc and Femme roles. This happens both with wlw couples and mlm couples. Because we're raised in a very heterocentric society, we'll often subconsciously apply the heteronormative relationship patterns onto these queer couples in our art and fiction without even realizing we're doing it.

And I think it's happening here because Pearl's personality is very rough-and-tumble. Pearl is loud, she's assertive and can be aggressive when she's protecting those she cares about, she's not afraid to fight and get messy, she's reckless and brave and has a stereotypical "masculine" personality. This contrasts with Marina (intentionally), who is sweeter, more gentle, more openly affectionate, more cautious, et cetera, and overall has a more stereotypically "feminine" personality. So people are like, okay, Pearl has the more stereotypical "masculine" personality, so we'll make her the Masc/Butch one, and Marina the Femme one. Which, again, at least they're not going the racist route with Marina. I do appreciate that.

But it's still is a stereotype that doesn't really fit Pearl, and when I look at some of the fanart, it still doesn't square. Of course people can draw what they want, and I have reblogged some of it, and I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad. But I am just saying, Pearl is VERY feminine in her dress and presentation. Yes, Pearl has a brash personality, but actually take a moment to look at her, in both Splatoon 2 and Splatoon 3. Here are hallmarks of Pearl's wardrobe and design:

Traditionally feminine colors in pastel shades: pinks, creams, and yellows/golds

Shiny jewelry, such as rings, necklaces, and most notably jewel encrusted crowns

She wears dresses; her main outfit in Splatoon 2 is a dress, she wears her baggy hoodie in OE like a dress, and she has a gold sparkly dress under Marina's her jacket in Side Order

Pearl is princess themed all over (hence her stage name of MC Princess), and it shows! She's very feminine. She loves being pretty. Yes she has short hair, but it's a cute, feminine bob. Yes, she has a rough-and-tumble personality, but that doesn't have anything to do with how she loves to dress up in girly pastel dresses (or hoodies that she can wear in such a way that they look like dresses) to look pretty. This squid contains multitudes. (And if you're like, "But what if she ruined her pretty dresses?" well, she's filthy rich, so what does she care? She'll just buy a new one lmao.)

And yes, I am aware that when Pearl was in her heavy metal phase before meeting Marina, she did dress in a black punk outfit, complete with pants. She is also wearing a black version of her OE hoodie in my icon, which comes from a Famitsu render. (At least I believe it was a Famitsu render.) But as I mentioned before, people can change their styles every now and again, and at least for the past 5+ in-game years, Pearl has not only been doing hip-hop instead of heavy metal, but has also been dressing a lot more feminine and in much brighter colors. Who knows? Maybe meeting Marina brightened up her outlook, and that inspired her to brighten up her wardrobe :)

And none of this is to say that Marina should be depicted as butch, because she absolutely should not! Marina is ALSO very feminine! Yes, Marina likes to wear pants, but pants aren't automatically masc, and she still wears a lot of feminine tops, pumps, et cetera. Both Pearl and Marina are feminine.

Again, I'm not trying to police what anyone can or can't draw or depict, but it just started to bug me a little in a, "This is the same heteronormative pattern I often see" kind of way, and also a, "This is not true to her character" kind of way as well. Especially as a lesbian woman who, again, is GNC and not feminine at all. Trust, I would love more honest representation of women like me, but Pearl is just not that. She's a sparkly, high-femme, rowdy little princess. And I love her just the way she is.

[eirian]

me and ruby had a long talk last night abt making woman ocs and i think im more prepared mentally to grasp how to start making more women

i thought about how i have over 1.2k ocs (real) and 90% of them are guys in some way (either cis or trans/nonbinary) and how All of my stories are headed by guys (even the magical girl story i have is mc'd by a dude. like what even) and i was just like. damn. i really fucking need more girls LOL

the reason Why ive made ocs like that for so long though is bc ive been projecting my gender and gender envy and aesthetic attraction onto them. for a long time ive identified as transmasc, and i reflected that in my ocs. but now im coming to a point where i no longer identify as transmasc and am exploring a more feminine aspect of my identity, and i want to break free from my habit of making Only Dudes and maybe add a little more representation to my oc horde!

my aesthetic attraction to men was a big problem w all this tbh, i love the shape and Look of masculinity, but im starting to think that i love that in women too? i designed two girls recently and they were super masc and i was like [eyes emoji] at them so hard lol. i think i might just like masc women lmfao. but yeah

another problem i need to work on and break out of is how like..because there arent a lot of well-written, interesting woman characters out there, i havent rly been exposed to a lot of them, and my "image" of a woman character is very "for the male gaze" still. like stereotypical skinny girl with curves and big bahonkas. while that is what some women look like, yes, its definitely still a design that caters to the straight guy and id like to move away from that. an anon once told me that ppl can look like anything and i want to implement that into my designs--i thought i was already doing this but apparently i had been trained to see women a certain way physically and i wasnt doing that philosophy justice at all!

so here's where im gonna start. im gonna take the personalities of guy characters i rly like and just slap them onto a woman. not a genderbend, no, but like..this personality, as a woman. yknow? i think i'll be able to better make women that way!

my next ocs are def gonna be women just you wait

[cemetaryvampire]

II balloon headcanons

just a copy and paste from my headcanons book on Wattpad :3

Starting off strong with a character I have a lot to talk about. Balloon!!!!

LGBTQIA: Unlabed, AFAB, He/Him/His and They/Them/Theirs, Polyamorous.

Relationships: dating nickel, friends with suitcase and cheesy

Presenting: Balloon usually dresses in more masc clothes/just presents more masculine in general, but sometimes he does dress more feminine

Random stuff:

-Him and cheesy used to be enemies. Cheesy would often make jokes out of balloon, and he obviously didn't like that. One day, when cheesy was having bad writers block, balloon helped him out a bit. They then started having writing sessions together, which slowly built up their friendship and trust in each other.

-in the start of s3, balloon had like the TEENSIEST crush on silver spoon. That ended quickly though

-balloon has Autism, Anxiety, and Dyslexia.

-balloon is a dog enjoyer

-they really like butter pasta, it's their comfort food

-an absolute MASTER at project Sekai 

-special interests are vocaloid and poetry

-sometimes cosplays in his free time. He would go to a cosplay con, but due to his anxiety and autism, he'd probably just get really overstimulated.

-really hates mayonnaise

-as a human he'd probably work at like a bakery or some shit 

-uses tone indicators a lot and can barely understand text without them

-he's in the Vocaloid, cosplay, project Sekai, poetry, and CR:OB fandoms

-when he dresses more feminine, pepper likes to help him with eyeliner/mascara. They aren't best friends, they're more acquaintances than anything.

-Wikipedia editor

-likes making friendship bracelets but doesn't have many friends to give them. Nickel, suitcase, cheesy, even PEPPER have like 10 bracelets from him. When he makes one and none of them want it, he either ties it to himself, keeps it in the bracelet box (/silly), or throws them out

-THERAPY PATIENT

Humanization:

This design definitely needs some tweaking, but overall I think I like it. Atleast, more than my last one.

I’m also taking hc reqs! You can request by reblogging this and tagging the character.

another copy and paste from the actual book:

Here's how to request a character:

Clearly state which character you would like. Put an emoji based on what kind of headcanons you want for them

Emoji guide:

🩷: Random

❤️: LGBTQIA+

🧡: relationships

💛: humanization

💚: design

🩵: Gijinka

💙: Other (if you put this, please specify what exactly you want)

You can use multiple emojis in your request!

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

I would love to hear your thoughts on how louis engages with masculinity.

anon 2: Not the same anon, but would you like to talk about how Louis engages with masculinity? I am quite interested to hear your thoughts on it.

******

Thanks anons - that's a really interesting question that I've really enjoyed thinking about.

I've been mulling over what a useful framework for understanding msaculinity is - particularly from a point of view of how an individual might engage with it and there are two points that I want to make. The first is that I think masculinity is something more than what would currently be understood as gender presentation - masculinity is also about power. So to understand how someone engages with masculinity also involves looking at how they interact with other people and heterosexuality as an institution. The second, obvious but worth articulating point, is that every part of masculinity is culturally specific - and not in an abstract sense, but about a particular time and place and relating to the wider power relationships of that place.

By starting with how Louis self-presents and interacts with cultural signifiers that are associated with gender - we can see that the starting point is the working-class, northern English culture he grew up with. A lot of fandom discussion don't really seem to understand that relationship - and see everything which is a signifier of not liking posh things as being about gender - as if working class women don't exist. (This is a side note so I won't go fully into it - but one of the things I hate about shallow discussions of masculinity - is that they'll often equate masculinity with being working-class in a way that seems designed to erase the dangers of men with power).

I'm not going to talk specifically about fashion today, because I've talked about it before. But as he largely engages in fashion that is part of working-class culture - there is an interesting ambiguity around gender and fashion. Nobody would ever look at Louis and say 'that's feminine' or 'those are women's clothes. (Even though I think there have been a couple of times when the fashion ID suggested that they were). But if a woman or non-binary person was wearing them, people wouldn't necessarily say 'those are men's clothes'. It all comes back to men and masculinity being treated as normal - but the dynamics of streetwear are quite different from clothes that trace their history to more formal menswear traditions.

It is very obvious that as well as focusing on working-class gender performance - he also largely avoids engaging with cultural signifiers associated with feminity. My assumption here is that Louis almost certainly likes the things he says he likes and dislikes the things he says he dislikes - but he's also not sharing everything. We've no way of knowing what he engages with and doesn't share (and I think it's really important to assume that there's lots he doesn't share with us. I think it's as annoying to assume that what we see is all there is, as it is to assume that what Louis is hiding conforms to a very narrow image a particular fan has of him). But I think it's also reasonable to respond to what he presents - and he presents himself as largely not engaging with cultural signifiers associated with femininity. That's one of the things that fans are responding to. Part of my problem with responding to it is that I've had a lot of terrible takes in my inbox and it's hard not to feel like I'm somewhat responding to them. So I might just leave it there. I'll just say that I think the way to analyse this is focusing the way that seeing an absence of femininity is core to masculinity - and not demanding that an individual performs femininity for your amusement.

There is an interesting exception to this, which is slightly bigger than signifiers - and that's emotions. Louis presents himself as someone who is very in touch with his emotions and willing to be vulnerable (this is where there are some interesting cross-overs into power). I think that's interesting about him as a person, but I also think how he does it is really telling. When he talks about it, he often makes it a characteristic of men like him (saying things like - in Yorkshire we wear our hearts on his sleeve). He's not presenting himself as separate and different from other men, but instead suggesting that being in touch with emotions is fully compatible with his understanding of masculinity (I don't know how widely recognised this would be - I think it's interesting either way).

This provides quite a nice segue into power - one of the things I reacted to most strongly recently (although there's tough competition) as a description of Louis as macho - to me that suggests an aggressive and combative understanding of power and masculinity. That's not what we see Louis do - when we see him interact it isn't with a sense of hierarchy, but much more attempting to build common bonds. So much of the way Louis interacts with people appears to have elements of siblings to it. With fans, or people who he has status around - he's the big brother. But it's not just that - you see a wider attempt to make those sorts of relationships when he interacts with other people. (I'd probably have to rewatch X-factor to comment on how he interacts with people with more power and status). It's worth noting that this is really compatible with working-class northern masculinity. It's not separate from the rest, but part of it.

The relationships we mostly see Louis have are fraternal relationships - he does mostly seem to interact with men. I've talked about this in terms of discrimination and I'll continue to do so. But I think it's also worth understanding as part of his engagement with masculinity. It is part of the wider cultural context - one of the things that I really noticed when I moved to the UK is that socialising was much more gender segregated than I was used to. But mostly interacting with men is a way of engaging with masculinity.

There's an interesting flipside of this, which is that Louis doesn't seem that interested in representing women or femininity in his music (particularly not in his solo career).

That last point is connected with his (lack of) engagement with heterosexuality. I've made it clear that I don't think that Louis is very good at performing heterosexuality. And I do think that feeds into all of this - it's part of why the siblings dynamic is so strong with fans and how these different elements fit together.

I'd be really interested in other people's thoughts about all this - because there is a lot of sort of odd handwringing about Louis and masculinity - and not a lot of discription of what's going on.