#terminology discussion

[atypical-irritant]

Today I've learned there's a term called "chrono age" used by those of whom are apart of the trans-age community. Apparently, the term refers to someone who does not identify with their chronological age, but, of course, the examples given were purposely implied as being suspect, such as "20 year old who identifies as a 14 year old" and things which cross over the line between minors and adults.

Now, I'll be upfront and say I, myself, do not identify with the age I physically am, though I'm more aligned with agelessness than a particular age. This identity disconnect is linked to trauma. I do not see myself as any age, but am physically an adult and, as such, conduct myself appropriately, especially in spaces shared with minors. There are physical difference between adults and minors that should not be dismissed or ignored.

Admittedly, I don't know the whole reason people identify as "trans-age" or any other trans-ID description. My best guess would've been for systems who's alters do not identify with their body, but I'd never perosnally heard of this term before within system spaces. The posts I came across talking about this concept were rather insistent those identifying as trans-age were predatory and using it as a means to gain access to spaces they otherwise have no business in. Identity is complex and difficult to navigate, but there are situations where overlooking your chronological age could create serious issues.

What I do know, however, is if I come across information that seems to purposely paint something in an unfavorable light or otherwise implies the described party skips what could be considered common sense, I may not be getting the full picture.

If anyone within the trans-age community could help explain this and how it applies to them, feel free to interact. I'll tag this using what community tags I can find as well as discourse tags, so keep that in mind.

[sandybuny]

hard to feel proud of much this pride

[vimbry]

mid-show band meeting

transcript below

JL: (...) not really. is that Facebook thing working yet?

JF: I don't know. we'll find out tomorrow--

JL: I'm excited--

DW: (quietly, away from mic) remind me to talk to you about the song tomorrow.

JF: what'd you say?

DW: (louder, into mic) I said, "remind me to tell you about this song tomorrow".

JF: don't- don't--

DW: there's something on the recording that we didn't--

JF: don't fuck it up? [audience & JL laughing]

DW: (away from mic again) yeah. we'll change it tomorrow!

JF: (laughing) we'll change it tomorrow!? we can change it right now.

JL: yeah. we're here now, Danny, let's talk this out. [laughter, whooping]

JF: wh- what happens--?

DW: the very last verse, instead of going [unintelligible under audience laughter] it goes, A over C#, into C, into G over B. and then it does the walk up to--

(Miller?: we're not doing that--)?

JF: sounds like a cool part we missed out on, in rehearsal!

DW: should I play it, or no? oh- we'll do it tomorrow!

JF: wait, J--

JL: tomorrow will be a special, uh, New Year's Eve thing.

JF: right! there's still 20 tickets left for tomorrow's show.

JL: if you wanna hear this song played Correctly! [laughter]

JF: yeah.

JL: if- we're not gonna do it that way tonight--

JF: for the first time ever! okay, so ...

JL: mr. Danny Weinkauf. [audience cheering]

[theasexual-jackson]

Ykw? I'm gonna say it:

90% of fandomers are smut addicts who can't “respect” any identity outside of cis gay male for pure fetishism.

[mongoose-bytes]

I don’t know much about plural/system stuff, but since there’s a lot of overlap with dæmonism, I’m curious to see how many folks in the community are plurals and systems. Please be respectful to eachother in the notes! This poll is intended in good faith for community demographics, and not to cause any arguments.

[twoa-plus]

hello my gravity falls obsession from like 3rd grade is back for obvious reasons and i’m losing my mind. this is only the beginning expect more unhinged ramblings in the future

anyways. weird details about ford. i need to put this man in the washing machine and watch him spin around in there

so the first thing i want to establish here is that i am not a medical professional. i’m sure there’s other people that could give you way more details about this than i could, this is just based on my understanding. with that being said ford is Weird, not in the sense of “i mean yeah the dude’s kind of eccentric that’s his whole thing” but in the “hey that’s. that’s not how human beings work” way

the first thing is the polydactyly. again not a professional this is just from my understanding but his specific case is like. crazy. like the odds of someone with polydactyly having an extra digit on both hands, both feet, and all four of those extra digits being fully developed and functional are basically zero

the second thing is his mind. the dude defied the laws of physics for his high school science fair and then proceeded to get 12 phds by the time he went missing in his 30s. i don’t even have to say anything else that’s just insane on its own. there’s also the whole thing of fiddleford getting sucked into the portal for like 2 seconds and ending up Like That while ford was in there for 30 years and he’s just. fine. like i know there were some different circumstances around those incidents but ford has still undeniably Seen Some Shit and the fact that he’s pretty much the same level of crazy he was before that is WILD

i also have this screenshot from thisisnotawebsitedotcom

again i don’t even have to say anything. just. damn alright i guess

anyways. in journal 3 he says “i am attracted to the strange, and the strange has always been attracted to me.” idk if he ever goes on to apply his “grand unified theory of weirdness” to himself (i think he does ?? i’ve heard people say that at least) i haven’t gone through the book in its entirety yet but if not i’m gonna do it for him. i am so 100% sure that this guy ended up in gravity falls because he, too, is paranormal

like, he’s still human, obviously. probably. he still has flaws and emotions and all that super fun stuff. but also this dude just straight up does not have the hardwired limits that other people do when it comes to The Horrors. like ford’s mental capacity goes beyond “hey man that’s a really cool math equation” and into “dude you’ve been having a casual conversation about the weather with a lovecraftian horror for like an hour how are you still sane” (i intend this as an exaggeration for the sake of making a point but honestly god knows what he saw during those 30 years dimension hopping lol). even outside of his encounters with the supernatural he still has so much raw intelligence that i feel like it should count towards his paranormal points

the extraordinary case of polydactyly is just a footnote at this point but i still thought it was worth mentioning lol. anyways. please give me more supernatural ford i need it

i like how it contrasts with stan too, like i don’t think stan has anything paranormal about him and that’s great imo. sure ford may or may not have a brain that goes beyond the biological limits of any other human being but stan has the raw unfiltered human Audacity. there is strength in intelligence and there is also strength in sheer willpower

[red-revival]

I feel like TMA/TME are useful tools to discuss trans experiences, I just don't think they can be our only tools.

If we discuss trans experiences and opression exclusively via whether or not we experience what a specific part of the community does, we miss out on a large portion of trans experiences and institutional transphobia. There are things transmascs/men, intersex people(who I know aren't always trans, but who I mention here due to overlap and similar treatment), and trans people not aligned with binary gender experience that can't really be summarized by whether or not they're a target of transmisogyny. There are things some trans women experience that can't be summarized only by the fact that they experience transmisogyny.

Transmisogyny as a term(and the information that goes along with it) is incredibly useful for understanding transfems/women's experiences and dissecting part of how transphobia functions, but we need to be able to discuss other aspects and angles of trans experience as well. Only examining trans experiences through a single lens is going to result in a lot of people left behind for bigots to target.

[stellewriites]

just had a fucking banger of a session at work with some teens,, i feel like it’s such a breakthrough like this is so rewarding omg

[frownyalfred]

have you given any thought to how binary assigned gender works in the coralverse? (like, how would/would somebody be assigned m/f gender at birth) love your fic a lot!!!

I have! Since, going off previous asks I've done here, pre-presentation external genitalia is largely identical in pups, you'd have to go off other indications to assign gender.

Things like a blood test came to mind. Hormonal tests too, maybe. These could also both be done prior to birth hypothetically. Post birth, you could determine gender but likely not dynamic (until closer to the actual presentation).

Differences in gender would be present in similar ways like irl pre-teens, i.e., boys tend to be slightly larger, etc, and these differences would increase post-presentation. For example, a male pup who would later present alpha would look very similar to a male pup who would later present omega. A female pup who would later present alpha might be a little smaller than both of them? But these aren't hard and fast rules.

It's an interesting discussion of gender versus dynamic. Assigned gender as a pup matters far less in the a/b/o universe than dynamic post-presentation does. I wonder if that's largely because the only extreme differences between people are their dynamics.

Also, since being male or female in this universe doesn't impact whether one can reproduce, you have less of an emphasis on gender and more of an emphasis on dynamic. I'm still playing around with the idea of beta presentation and what that entails. I'm desperately trying not to write myself into a corner, as you can probably tell 😅

[rouge-the-bat]

something i love discussing with others is the different ways people experience kin bc its so interesting the vastness of how everyones personal experiences with it can be. i really dont get people that will be like "kin is only ever LIKE THIS! everyone else is fake!" or trying to act like people with kin past lives (or anyone that "takes kinning too seriously") are crazy. like just!!! how do yall not enjoy the vast and unique experiences of other people!! how do they not fascinate you!!! its INSANE to me

[aloe-vega]

Think of the universe for a moment as having three additional directions (alterward, paraward, and otherward) all at right angles to the ones you know (length, breadth, width, and time). This is a tremendous oversimplification, but it may help.

Paraward, we find a sheath of histories which are either eternally separate from our own anchored time or which diverge and return to it so far in the past, or so far in the future, as to be - functionally - eternally separate from it in terms of the noospheres of the Great Houses. The physical laws of these universes are identical to ours, but all else is different. We call these paraward space-time entities 'parallel worlds'. Alterward, we find those histories which divert, at critical or innocuous moments alike, from ours. Here are the worlds where a toe goes unstubbed, or a vital battle is lost, where the five hundred and eleventh hair on a sloth in the forest has gone gray in one world, and white in another. Many (perhaps most of these) rejoin the main anchored universe as their micro-changes fall away into quantum uncertainty. When the million sloths are dead and decomposing, what effect will the colour of one hair have had? A few (the mathematics contains several high order infinities, so the number itself may be high) do not appear to rejoin, either eternally leading outside the 'time-space' horizon approachable by a normal time-ship, or curving back in closed loops longer than our normal ships can reach, beyond the futures we can access. We call these alterward space-time entities 'alternate worlds'. Perhaps paraward is just a way of talking about extreme alternates, and alterward is just a way of talking about probability bundle universes. But then there is Otherward. Otherward is Outside. To Otherward the laws themselves are different, the biodata is constituted from other principles. These are universes held on separate 'branes' in hyperspace, outside the sheath that contains the paraward and alterward components of our universe. These are beyond the reach of our time-ships, who go mad in the horrors of the void between.

-- The Brakespeare Voyage (2013), Simon Bucher-Jones and Jonathan Dennis

[toytulini]

god this stupid fucking intracommunity infighting bullshit never ends and im so god damn tired. stop it. and if youre fucking discoursing this stupid shit you should have to add a fucking disclaimer to your fucking posts at least im tired of having to search yalls blogs when smth slightly off about your wording that i cant explain has me like hmmmmm and then i end up right and i really dont want to be

[uefb]

Why do you think there’s a pattern of Theseus being abusive/overly aggressive in Fantastic Beasts fanfic? It’s been driving me up the wall trying to find Newt and Theseus fanfic that doesn’t make them OOC especially Theseus, and idk, in the context of Newt being Autistic I find it disturbing. Like sure, Theseus is hot-headed and loses his temper, he doesn’t always understand Newt, but those traits seem overtly exaggerated in a lot of fandom content.

Obsessed with this ask. I have been thinking about it all day, and am just now getting to write it up! Thinking about it in the background of my statistics class almost singularly got me through its sensory and anxiety hell. /sweat-laugh emoji/ So thank you!

Please remember, all of this is based on my own perspectives, knowledge, and headcanons, as well as canon clues. Nothing here is definitive and is open for respectful conversation! (Not directed specifically at you, salamander, just since this is a public blog I like to cover my bases. ^_^)

Buckle up: major autistic info dump incoming

Alright, so, my initial thoughts are that...

Obviously, there was a decent chunk of Newt fic written between 2016 and 2018 before CoG came out, that first film where we really got to see Theseus as a character, for who he really is (especially since they cut that letter from him to Newt at beginning of FBWTFT, that starts with "little brother," which is just pretty endearing). IMHO, this two-year gap means people had a wide open playing field to build the character themselves. Here's a few thoughts on that:

The framework for the entire Wizarding World, narratively, is the Harry Potter series. Boy wizard, shunned by family, isolated from socialization -- Outcasts have always been the backbone of She-who-must-not-be-named's stories. It's compelling. We love it, we lap it up. With only one FB film out before 2018 and Newt being such a unique protagonist, I think it's likely people fell back on the more typical Harry-Dudley trope to create a compelling backstory for Newt, using that tried-and-true fantasy Cinderella-type trope.

Second, from what I can tell, there was a lot less serious consideration of Newt actually being autistic in the early years of the fandom. (I only "joined" relatively recently myself, despite going to the first 2 movies on opening day, but I'm nothing if not fastidious in consuming every scrap of historical content when I develop a new interest, lol.) I've read pages of threads and plenty of "think pieces" attributing Newt's behavior to trauma-related social anxiety and/or his profession as a magizoologist. I absolutely buy the latter (adjusting body language for one's profession), but not entirely the former. (Personally, Newt doesn't strike me as an inherently anxious person--he strikes me as an inherently autistic one who also sometimes experiences anxiety. Discomfort and anxiety aren't the same thing, but people often conflate them, imho.) Anyway, THAT BEING SAID, I've noticed in quite a few fics that people write Theseus as being part of that implied social trauma, via sibling bullying that rises beyond typical sibling harassment. People perhaps tried to explain Newt's behavior by making him, at the very least, overshadowed by Theseus (and ashamed of it) or, at the very worst, abused and/or neglected by his family.

Also, quite simply: people process their own family trauma via fic. I think it's highly likely Theseus just served a sibling or parental role for some people in stories. (The abundance of abusive!Thranduil fic in the LotR fandom in the early 00s is another example of this.) Nothing wrong with using fic to process feelings and life experiences (god knows I do, it's horrifically obvious and always has been lmao), but this bulletpoint is still one explanation for the pre-CoG "Theseus being a dick in fic" phenomenon.

Plus, fanfic doesn't occur in a vacuum. Even when new canon info comes out, existing fic and whatever the going/contemporary fanon is often impact how new writers write their characters, even post-CoG. (And how those characterizations are received by the larger fandom--that reception may subsequently impact how writers maintain or change their characters in the future, imho.)

As for the current reasons Theseus is often OOC in post-CoG fic...

Well, I have my theories, but I am also not entirely sure. However, I feel pretty confident it has to do, primarily, with points 1 and 4.

Leta Lestrange and the Scamander Brothers - Honestly, I think people likely are pretty offended on Newt's behalf for the Leta/Theseus marriage. In mainstream media, we're kind of trained to think that dating your friend's ex is ultimate betrayal--it's difficult for people to imagine a world in which a person who marries their brother's ex is a good person. (...I was once in a friend group where we had all dated the same girl at some point, but we were all either ridiculously honest or autistic so we just--wait for it--talked about it and moved on.) That being said, I never read Leta & Newt as overtly romantic (then again, I also didn't know Bunty liked Newt until the 4th time I watched CoG), so I don't entirely get this one to the degree that I think some people viscerally feel this. But I expect some people see that and assume it says something much larger about Theseus' character than it does. (I do think it says a lot about Theseus that he loves Leta, but I don't think it says the same things about him that some other people do -- I think it speaks more to his similarities to Newt [compassion and positive outlook] than it does to stealing Newt's Hogwarts sweetheart. But I digress.)

Something Did Happen at Some Point - Now, there is undeniably a distance between the brothers that we, as viewers, don't necessarily know the origin of. (So I think I may have mentioned in my letters that [my brother & I] have quite a complicated relationship. // Does he want to kill you? // Frequently.) Have they always been like that? Is it new? Is it because of the age difference? Because they have different personalities? (Though I will argue until I'm blue in the face that they're actually extraordinarily similar people, at their cores.) Is it because Newt got expelled, or because Theseus scooped up Leta, or because Theseus expresses emotion through touch & Newt jerks away from touch he doesn't initiate himself, or because because because because because? I don't know. But there is something there and, based on the "complicated relationship" comment, it sounds like it is something that likely developed over time. So imho - I think some people see that and just lean in way too hard. Like, pedal to the medal, 0 to 60 too hard.

Theseus is Snarky to Newt on Multiple Occasions - Mostly based around how Newt directs his life, carries himself, etc etc. For example, it would be easy to take that whole scene before and after Newt's travel hearing in CoG and assume Theseus is an overprotective, condescending, and ableist prick. But if we look below the surface (and the stage directions in the screenplay help, too. When he says "maybe a little less... / like me. / well, it can't hurt" the instructions say 'not without fondness', or something like that), it's pretty glaringly obvious he doesn't mean to be that way. Even condescending behaviors usually have causal correlates, even if we can't see them on the surface. (Believe me -- and this is something we both touched on in DMs, salamander, I'm just repeating for the sake of the ask -- well-meaning pep talks and encouragement can still drip with condescension when loved ones think you need guidance because they "love you and know better " and you're just too autistic or too idealistic or too naive or whatever.) Ultimately, whether due to a failure to approach these snarky exchanges with grace and nuance, or because it can make a good fic to put brothers at odds, IDK -- but I expect this particular point plays into some people's decisions to interpret Theseus in a way I view as OOC.

Ease of Narrative ~ Nuance is hard - I mean, this one explains itself. Writing characters in a nuanced manner that allows digging into the messy horrible confusion of relationships--embedded as they are within families and societies and personal & general history--is not easy. It takes not only patience and significant effort as a writer, but it also takes a degree of self-awareness and maturity that we all reach at different points. I'm not there yet myself (there's no real arrival -- life's not a perfect graph), but still: My fic writing is very different now at 32 (with 14 years of 'adulthood' and 12 years of therapy under my belt) than it was when I was writing about adults when I was 15. (And, yes, I still have my first posted HP fic up on MuggleNet and FFnet, so you don't just have to take my word for it lmao.) To be very clear, this isn't me being ageist or whatever: I'm just saying that I often get the sense while reading fic where Theseus is reallllly overly aggressive that the writer is sometimes either very new to creative writing (and good for them! we love new writers! keep writing, lovelies!), or else quite young, and thus still acquiring life experience that is going to improve their work as they age, every single day.**

Sibling Experience - Not having personal or narrative experience with an age gap like Newt and Theseus have. I'm an older sibling by 7.5 years, which is close to Theseus & Newt's age difference. I basically half-raised my younger brother, so I have a real soft spot for that kind of sibling relationship, which comes across in most of my fics (LotR & FB). It's hard to imagine the sort of borderline sibling-parental love, responsibility, and anxiety that can permeate those kind of relationships if you haven't experienced or seen it represented in media yourself. This is just a theory, of course---I have no actual data on this being actually related to his OOCness.

What else? What do you or others think?

Final very random thought

I also think a lot of people forget that autism runs in families. So yes, Theseus doesn't always "get" Newt (god, no, lol) and he doesn't have guidance on what to do when he doesn't, but it is highly unlikely he hasn't seen behavior similar to Newt's before, whether in a parent or cousins, an aunt/uncle or something else. People *also* tend to forget, IMHO, that subclinical traits are often present in direct family members of an autistic person--Theseus' rigid thinking, for example, isn't necessarily "autistic", but he may get Newt better than people think for certain reasons we never have an opportunity to see in the script. (Not that the movies are paying *that* much attention to the actual research or autism presentations lmao, but I'm just saying it is a possibility). Being able to relate to a smaller version of someone's struggles can simultaneously make one both a better support and a worse one in a lot of ways. (And certain autistic traits can even rub up against each other poorly in different people--I have a few acquaintances that rub me the wrong way because our "symptoms" manifest in very different ways and their natural behavior triggers some of my own sensory issues or overdeveloped sense of justice or whatever. Conversely, my ADHD tendency to be 20 minutes late to every hang gives one of my autistic friends a panic attack every time -- I feel terrible, but all we can both do is try to adjust the behavior around our symptoms. And sometimes the same traits--firmly held beliefs, for example--bump into each other explosively, which I have experienced in fandom myself: two autistic people w diametrically opposing views interacting, but because we process information in similar ways even with very different perspectives, no progress can be made before someone shuts down.) BUT I BRING THIS UP BECAUSE, I do think it's possible to headcanon that some of Newt and Theseus' conflict (which does exist) could even be rooted in differing forms of neurodivergence or presentation of subclinical symptoms.

The world is a big place and there's so many possibilities. These are just some of my thoughts on why Theseus is often portrayed in a way I find to be OOC!

Asterisked footnote under cut -

**I'm trying to convey what Sandra Cisneros does much better in her short story "Eleven." That we, all of us, carry our entire lives and what we have seen inside of us at all times, and I think that's what we bring to our writing.

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven. Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.

[atthebell]

i’m sorry this is SO random but i saw you mention that quackity randomly uses east coast vowel changes. and well idk where HE gets those, but i’ve lived in california for my entire life and i have a tendency to fall into an east coast accent/way of speaking. i’ve never known anyone from the east coast, nor have i ever visited it.

no this is so funny bc i'm also from california and during college i picked up various vowel changes, including some east coast ones. i think sometimes you just start saying weird shit, whether bc you watched too much tv or were exposed to new people and took on part of their way of speaking, or sometimes who tf knows why. so it's not like completely bizarre that q has some of those vowel changes it's just really funny bc on the surface it seems strange and makes no sense how his accent got there.

[artemisiafem]

im not touching that post with a 10 foot pole but why are 13 year olds on here talking about "boyp*ssy" and "girlcock"... please please please get off the internet for your own good i say this as someone who was exposed to horrible stuff on the internet at a very early age...