#this person's gender is Not Ideal To Society and also they are from the Wrong Place

[triaelf9]

*opens fantasy/sci fi book* 

 They only allow me in their group b/c they can exploit my special power, so I gotta learn to be useful as I'm not respected b/c I'm both the Wrong Gender and from kathikaBA'A, the Bad Country, so I have to prove I'm not like those-- 

 *closes book*

[number1villainstan]

I just saw Dune Part 2 (2024) with some friends so here are some Thoughts i guess

I feel like on the whole these movies are trying to either downplay or cut out a lot of the misogyny/sexism in the book, although Herbert's view of gender roles is so pervasive in the book that it's hard to change without completely changing the worldbuilding (the Bene Gesserit especially) and/or certain characters and getting second-order effects that weaken or change the main plot. But they did a good job at least making it much less in-your-face and offensive than in the book. One of Chani's lines is about how "men and women are equal" in the Fremen, and while I don't really think that's supported by how the movie depicts Fremen I can see and respect where they're coming from

It's still a very male-dominated movie, but it's honestly pretty faithful to the book, and like--what are you gonna do? It's Dune. You can't exactly just genderbend Paul and get the same story, at least not when the Bene Gesserit are still what they are

wait now i'm thinking about an AU where the Kwisatz Haderach turns out to be a trans man. ideally you'd get both the canon critiques of white savior mythos/the Messiah trope and a deconstruction of the sexism and strict gender roles of the society of the Dune universe. also ideally you'd get a whole bunch of other queer characters in the same AU. you could also do an AU where the Kwisatz Haderach/a potential Kwisatz Haderach turns out to be a trans woman, or even nonbinary, but i feel like those would make for very different stories cuz AGAB/ASAB seems to matter like A Lot in the Dune universe

the movies did manage to completely get rid of the homophobic parts of the Harkonnens' characterization though. i did like that

although it was still using disability/deformity as shorthand for Ugly Evil Guy which :/

but enough about the Problematic Elements(TM) let's talk about the actual story

Chani was a lot more politically and generally assertive in the movie than I remember her being in the book, although it's been A While and she was also very much a Main Character who had thoughts and opinions and importance outside of the male characters she was affiliated with (as much as anyone can escape the political black hole that is Muad'dib but) AND! she actively advocated for Fremen self-governance in the beginning! although she didn't keep it up cuz she got sucked into the Paul black hole. this may have happened in the book it has been like two years since i read the first book and it was very disjointed reading cuz College(TM). I also liked the ending part, where it was implied that Chani was leaving, on her own, because she was angry with Paul, which implies More Character Development. (Also they didn't seem to do the Fremen polygamy/concubines thing in the movie, which was a good call, i feel like that part of the book was maybe informed by anti-Arab racism)

Jessica was incredible, of course. Love me a good ruthless woman. Her main character trait/motivation was definitely Paul's Mother but her main personality trait seems to be incredible ruthlessness. there is no madonna/whore complex to be found here no sir

(i may be wrong about that part but eh)

And of course the Harkonnen Blood reveal. the story definitely sets up Atreides as The Good Guys (fair, just, merciful, looking out for and caring about the people under their rule) and the Harkonnens as The Bad Guys (cruel, unjust, power-hungry and traitorous), which makes the reveal that Jessica and Paul have Harkonnen blood an incredible symbol of Paul's corruption arc. He goes from "I must do anything possible to avoid the holy war" (the Atreides way) to "CONQUER ARRAKIS AND ELIMINATE ANYONE WHO STANDS IN MY WAY" (the Harkonnen way) over the course of...technically years, in the book, although that wasn't super well communicated in the movie I feel--in the movie it was only months, cuz Alia hadn't been born yet by the end. And right before we see the worst of it we end up learning that Jessica, his mother, was a daughter of Baron Harkonnen. Jesus fuck.

there's definitely some Not Great elements about using ancestors/blood to determine morality but still

princess irulan was introduced! as an independent character and actor in her own right oh my god! although she still falls prey to the sexism infusing the original material

the dune books (at least the first two) are in this weird state where there are very strict and specific roles/walks of life that female characters are allowed in (domestic/family life and religion) and men dominate Everything Else and nobody every questions that, not to mention the whole thing about how apparently even the very female religion/psychic field is supposed to be dominated eventually by This One Man who can do it better than all the women, and yet all of the female characters are well-developed and feel like people. ykno aside from the complete lack of protest in being shoved into a sexist role

anyways irulan got more development than i remember from the books, i loved that, and that we got her POV too. these movies are really working to uplift and spotlight the female perspectives that were often somewhat sidelined in the books and i love that

also stilgar's (blind?) faith REALLY came through which i liked

overall, yeah, the movie was great. it's very faithful to the spirit of Dune while addressing some of its flaws/datedness--it understands what its message is and what it's saying, and the way it's constructed really hammers home the critiques of imperialism and racism the original was built on

I think this is gonna end up a trilogy, based on only the first book, and it very much seems like the third (and final?) movie is going to specifically focus on the war against the Great Houses after the Emperor falls, which iirc was kinda glossed over in the book/between Dune and Dune: Messiah. I can't wait to see what they do with it

[lilyginnyblackv2]

I think something that we need to keep in mind is that Buddy Daddies is taking place in Japan. Not a fantasy setting or idealized depiction of Japan, but just real ol’ Japan. 

So a lot of shitty things happening to the female characters and the female characters in the series being placed in positions where they don’t have agency and power is likely being done on purpose. Why? Because the power that women hold in Japan isn’t much. They are still fighting for that, immensely.

Like, Japan’s gender equality ranking keeps getting higher (aka it keeps getting worse). It’s better than some previous generations for sure (and better than some other countries), but Japan went from ranking #74th in 2020, #80 in 2021, #103 in 2022, and now #104 in 2023, this is out of 190 countries. 

Kazuki and Rei are involved with an Organization that is male dominated. There isn’t a single female assassin in sight, Rei’s mother is non-existent, and wives, girlfriends, and girls (like Miri) are targeted because of their mere existence and bonds to these male assassins being viewed as a threat. Miri being non-blood related is also another reason why she is targeted, but her being a girl (and likely viewed as useless by Shigeki since, like I noted, we haven’t seen a single female assassin) is another. 

Men who don’t fit in or try to deflect from this Organization and the things it stands for, also become targets. Because they, too, are viewed as threats. They are viewed as traitors. Japan is still in a place, in regards to women’s equality, where men are the ones that have to support and speak up for women, in order to make the room and space for female voices to be heard loudly and for women in general to gain more power and control and agency over themselves.

There are, of course, many Japanese women fighting for all of this right now. They aren’t helpless, but the society they are navigating and fighting their way through, was not built for them to have the level of power as men. They really need the support of men, in the same way that any minority group ultimately needs the support of a majority group in order for their own voices to be properly heard. With Buddy Daddies, the Organization and Shigeki represent tradition. They represent “blood purity” and things remaining unchanged - in this case, men being in positions of power and traditional blood bound families that can produce blood-bound heirs. 

That is the world that keeps harming the women in this series, and that is the world that Kazuki and Rei are leaving. That’s the world that is viewed as being incorrect, wrong, and villainous. 

Meanwhile, the world that showed Kazuki and Rei that they could change is the one that is dominated by women - childcare. But, unlike the Organization, the world of Miri’s daycare is open to others - the head of the daycare is an older man, there was one male daycare worker at field day, Kazuki and Rei were accepted at the daycare, during field day you can see old, young, and Taiga’s parents who are “delinquents”. Women’s voices are heard. Miss Anna is depicted as strong. Miri is shown having agency, making decisions, being in a leadership role (both in Episode 6 when she leads her friends around the zoo to find Miss Anna and again in Episode 9 when she makes the field day speech). The mom’s shout and are loud (field day), we see them expressing themselves in various interesting ways in the mom chats. 

And it is only after Kazuki and Rei start stepping into this world, where learning, changing, growing, and accepting the non-traditional and unconventional are openly accepted that we start to really see them both grow and change too. 

Buddy Daddies writing isn’t perfect. I personally don’t like the whole “overprotective dad” stuff and I do feel that we should have gotten another episode between E10 and E11. Some of the events in E11 do feel rushed in their execution. Though I have seen far worse.

But the series is making some points. Kazuki and Rei are two men that are shown to be fully capable of caring for a child. There are some learning bumps along the way, but they are able to do it in the end. Many of the men who are part of Buddy Daddies, like the VAs, talk about how this is a series that men should watch, because more men need to be like Kazuki or learn to grow and put in the effort like Rei. 

Men in Japan (and like in many other parts of the world too) don’t put in the same amount of time, effort, and care when it comes to childcare and childrearing as women do. Our protagonists are showing that they can and should though.

And they have chosen to continue existing and pursuing the world of fatherhood, a space where women have more of a voice and unconventional family dynamics are welcomed, rather than stay in the world of assassination where men dominate and blood is what matters. 

If the series does go in the direction that many think it will, then Kazuki and Rei (likely along with the help of Kyutaro) are going to be directly targeting and potentially killing the character that represents tradition, male domination, and a world where women and children are killed because they are viewed as both useless and a threat at the same time.

Does it suck that most of the women in the series have been fridged or exist to further the plot of the men (Kazuki and Rei)? Yes, it does. But I think we are meant to feel frustrated about that. We can see the cruelty and pointlessness, and feel the frustration at the powerlessness that they have. 

The series hasn’t wrapped up yet. Episode 12 could do something that totally destroys this reading. But, for now, this is what I’m getting from the series. One of the script writers, likely the main one at that, since she is a veteran and has a lot of series to her name, is a woman. So I would like to think that these things aren’t just happening because the plot calls for it (getting Misaki out of the way for Kazuki and Rei), but for more complex issues instead.

[angelsaxis]

makeup is a gender role thats doing more harm than good because the only reason/way it exists in our society is to force women of all kinds to cover "blemishes" and "flaws" that are RARELY if ever criticized on men (and if they are, its never for gendered reasons. dark spots never make a man less masculine, but they make women less feminine). women of all kinds are expected to fit a certain ideal of femininity that a lot of us, especially those of us who are trans or women of color or fat, will likely never achieve.

as much personal freedom can be gained from being able to wear makeup that finally matches your skin tone or foundation that isn't super harmful to your skin, its fucked that we live in a society that, again, puts this expectation of conformity on women. in its most extreme form we literally have women contouring their faces into the exact same high cheek bone/slim nose/full mouth look thats connected with peak (white) femininity and that zombiefies the features of Black women with it. there are women of color slimming their noses and that is meant to make them look more attractive. be serious.

the makeup industry is run by cishet white men. i understand that wearing makeup for a lot of women is an act of survival and a means of avoiding violence. i understand that. i understand that. nobody should say i don't. but the solution should then be making society less violent and less a threat to women who don't conform, not trying to convince more people that makeup is a net good.

the body positivity movement once it hit the mainstream had its flaws but at least the underlying message was great. now i see a lot of people who claim to be feminists do the bare minimum in praising the bodies of women who don't fit the beauty standard; praises like "cunt" and "queen" are still heavily reserved for the skinny, the curvy (not in a plus sized way), the able bodied, the cis. the flawless, the hairless. never for the disabled, the hairy, the trans women regardless of if they have a bulge or not.

we've got razor companies capitalising on the body positivity movement by leaning 100% into choice feminism with ads like "women have body hair (shave it)! women have dark hair, pubic hair, thick leg hair, and there's nothing wrong with this (shave it). Women come in all shapes and sizes (buy the razor)". I recently saw an add that implied the facial razor used to get rid of fine, dark hairs on a woman of color would help the world see the "real her" (or "you", rather).

(a lot of these ads are becoming more racially diverse without the core message changing. again, i understand that there are some women who literally have to shave for survival. its society thats fucked, not them)

more and more people on here are seeing feminism slide backwards; i am. I have no idea why, if there even is one reason and not a series of factors contributing to the dilution of feminist language on this site in particular and on social media in general and real life, also in general. a lot of the concepts are still here (consent, the general understanding of toxic masculinity, etc). but theres also resistance to naming patriarchy and to explicitly saying men are the primary beneficiaries of patriarchal violence.

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

"And that's what ultimately made him stay and be fond of what used to be Yunmeng Jiang, [...] Jiang Yanli certainly wasn't grand, but kindness is always remembered more personally and why she is so important to Wei Wuxian." finally someone that gets it. I tried to convey that while writing, that he does leave eventually in that universe but that every day he stayed there was because of her and her unwavering kindness.

She wasn't very strong but she was kind in a world that urged her not to be and that's enough strength for me. I believe WWX loved her and that she loved him and that's why she chose to save him in that moment. She was strong then and people keep denying her that.

Hello,anon!

I think there are several factors as to why fandom is very harsh on Jiang Yanli that stem from misogyny. Casual misogyny, internalized misogyny against the gender and the everyday social accepted misogyny that is ingrained in us by what we see from most depictions of women that are counterproductive and outright contradictory in what we should be or tell ourselves we can just be.

Usually kindness and softness are seen as a weakness for women and is mocked as either being too feminine in execution and disdained in nature despite it desperately being something humans really want and crave as natural instinct. Kindness is weak in Jiang Yanli because she does not have the physical clout to uphold the protection wanted doe Wei Wuxian, but Wei Wuxian also never holds that as something she needs to strive for to be a good person. While he values strength he values the kindness in being able to use that talent for other's benefits even more.

He never disparaged the women in the work for their own positions or even judges some of the routes they take for survival because he understands the unfairness in the Jianghu and overarching society they are from that is not kind to idealism, love, kindness, and softness. He thinks it's commendable to live and be able to flourish against that though by trying to stay nurturing and loving.

What draws him inherently is kindness towards the people he befriends and continues to interact with. And also meets that kindness for kindness. MXTX main characters as men wonderfully incorporate what the general confucian gentlemen is expected to be and that does include the idealism of treating women as respectable people which is a usual counterpoint for a traditional practice steeped within misogyny and hypocrisy. There is a very blurred line of praise of men that shows these traits to be masculine while condemned in women from overarching real world politics that are superimposed upon Jiang Yanli.

What is praised in the man, is mocked for the woman. Fascinatingly sad when a simple "why" is asked in terms of what Jiang Yanli did wrong, that is not also mirrored in Lan Wangji her counterpart in caring and loving Wei Wuxian in the same capacity but romantically. Which is the one that usually gets reasonably defended about their actions and said "nothing more could be done by them" and that is usually unanimously agreed upon due to the logic of the world Wei Wuxian was created for?

[jackoshadows]

I noticed that someone said the quiet part aloud on the tags.

Oh, and also this post was tagged Jon Snow for some reason, probably because Sansa treating Jon like a bastard makes her a ‘soft girl’, I dunno 🙄

It’s basically this isn’t it? Sansa gives ‘soft girl/fairy tale’ vibes because she goes along with the patriarchal ideals of oppressing people who are different, who belong to a different class, who don’t fit into society’s idea of the right kind of gender, class, race, sexuality etc.  Arya is messy, spoiled and bratty because she gets along with the small folk, she fights back, she wants different things, she is unhappy with the status quo - hence she is not a ‘soft girl’ with fairy tale vibes.

Wanting to be treated fairly is like ‘modern person views’, has nothing to do with empathy, a basic sense of fairness or right and wrong. Nah, there’s not just enough of ‘fairy tale’ in helping the less fortunate and minorities wanting to be treated equally. It’s not like people have been fighting for rights since the start of civilization - it’s just a modern day phenomenon.

I wouldn’t have a problem if this person had just said, ‘I find Sansa more interesting because she’s a character that strongly believes in the patriarchal system of rules and laws of her world unlike her siblings and that makes her unique amongst the Starks’. Rather, what stood out for me is the way they describe Sansa as ‘soft and fairy tale like’ for being a bigot, but the Arya who plays with the babies of the kitchen cooks and picks flowers for her father will never be that.

This is why Sansa’s the fandom bicycle who gets shipped with every Tom, Dick and Harry in the series, why are her fanon crackships are more popular, why they take away from the ‘non soft’ girls like Arya and Daenerys to give to Sansa. This is why Jonsa is a thing - because Sansa has ‘soft girl/fairy tale’ vibes and they want that fairy tale romance and ending for her.

Why folks want or are looking for a fairy tale princess in a grimdark fantasy series where the author is deliberately deconstructing and subverting all these fairy tale tropes (Jaime/Brienne, Sansa/Sandor) is beyond me in the first place and secondly, I like how the post just ignores that this ‘soft girl’ with fairy tale energy mocked her little sister for being ‘ugly’, horse-faced and unsatisfactory.

[Note: I do acknowledge that this post at the least is different to the usual ‘Sansa is so realistic like a modern day 11 year old’ when excusing all her actions because she’s just a real world child and notes that Sansa is actually a character who believes in the rules of her world and hence a bigot. It’s just the equating of this bigot to being a ‘soft girl’ with ‘fairy tale’ energy that gets me 😂]

[aroanthy]

i've thoroughly enjoyed everything you already said on the topic and would like to ask if there is anything else you might want to get off your chest about saionjis gender shit if it strikes the fancy?

i am the transfem saionji truther, we know this, but mannnn. her whole thing with masculinity is so damn interesting and i see very few people actually grasp at what's going on in that (malcolm tucker voice) abandoned barn of a brain of hers. that was a joke btw her brain is not an abandoned barn she actually makes some of the most astute points in the whole show lmfao. anyway

saionji's masculine ideal is much more informed by traditionally japanese ideas of gender, as opposed to the americanised 'modern man' masculinity that akio peddles. like saionji thinks that princes are cringe. he's just also tormented by the fact that no one else thinks that and everyone loves these princes and because he's got the world's biggest inferiority complex, he can only think that he's wrong, that he's been left behind to a world deemed 'unspecial' because of some innate quality about him. and whenever saionji thinks this (all the time) he becomes fucking awful to be around.

i digress. saionji takes being the president of the kendo club very seriously, not just because he takes Everything seriously but-- well. arguably the reason that he takes Everything seriously is because of his practice of kendo. i think it's a bit of a chicken and the egg situation wrt 'is saionji Just Like That or did his warrior grindset make him that way'. kendo is really important to him, and the way that he and touga are (rarely, lol) able to connect through it would suggest, i argue, that it's a good and healthy thing for him to have in his life. same goes for touga but that's a different post about 1000 other things.

i think this gets at a) something rgu is trying to get at wrt americanisation and a critique of aspects of japanese culture that doesn't then discard that culture altogether. ikuhara does this a lot more obviously in his other shows. and then b) on a character-level, it's about separating something valuable and important (the practice of kendo) from ideas that have enmeshed themselves with it bc Society (misogyny, namely). saionji's conception of masculinity is all about kendo, and he likes kendo, but he's uncomfortable with/stifled by this expectation of Manliness that he simply cannot access in a way he's comfortable with. it's only when he lets himself forget about his obsession with power dynamics and Being A Man that he can just. enjoy this aspect of his life that informs how he lives it so wholly. tldr girls can be kendokas too. which is obvious to people who aren't as misogyny-brainrotted as ohtori academy student saionji kyouichi, but swagever.

btw if anyone whose better educated on nuances of japanese culture than i, white british person whose only read a handful of academic articles on the subject, thinks something ive said here is off in any way, please let me know!! i always always always want to gain a better understanding of rgu as a distinctly japanese show, my lack of resources and formal education on these topics be damned!!

i just think saionji is an androgynous legend who should get into textile crafts. let her woodcarve and knit. she'll be unstoppable. practical queen etc etc. lets embrace gender anarchy together

[bimboficationblues]

is fight club a left or right wing movie?

part of what I like about the film is that it is politically idiosyncratic in a way that I find interesting, but I think I’d be hard-pressed to defend it as “leftist” without giant screaming caveats in a way I really wouldn’t if I wanted to make a rightist case. So take that as you will. I wrote about my feelings on it here so apologies if you read that and I repeat certain points below

Like another hotly debated Fincher movie, Gone Girl, I think that there’s a preoccupation with how we construct gendered identity and how it is shaped by class and conspicuous consumption and media systems. I find that quality really interesting, but I wouldn’t call it meaningfully leftist per se except in like an Adbusters kind of way - an interest in “authenticity” is something I’m both personally skeptical towards and also a grounding value of reactionary politics

I think it’s pretty unambiguous that Tyler Durden’s politics are a kind of nihilist, revanchist manhood, and his picture of an ideal society is a weird sort of “retvrn” take on primitivism. As far as authorial intentions go I think it’s likely that Palahniuk shares Durden’s worldview at least in part (which I personally don’t feel totally translates into the screenplay adaptation, perhaps in part due to the diminished homoeroticism) and Fincher seems at least sympathetic to it in his public comments, though he also seems to focus more on the economic aspects. But I don’t think author intent is the end-all of cinematic critique and I’m a lot more interested in how stuff is framed and structured and shot

I think what really seals the ambiguity is the lack of a meaningful alternative to Durden’s worldview even though that worldview is presented as wrong (quite literally delusional). Like, the reveal that Tyler is an idealized self looking to complete suicide and take the world with him (“liberating” it in the process), does sap the power of some of the salient critiques of consumption and advertising and alienation - the tradeoff being that it also undermines the stupid male resentment stuff. It almost becomes a kind of anti-politics. Is the idea that everything is actually fine? Is the critique unqualifiedly correct but the solution wrong - perhaps there *is* no appropriate solution and the status quo should just be accepted? Are the critiques a hodgepodge of semi-accurate complaints about modern capitalism distorted by male entitlement and fear of feminization, which leads to (or rather, justifies) bad solutions? That last one is probably closest to my personal reading, but I’m cognizant of the fact that it’s the one that most closely aligns with my own views, in that it resonates with how I understand certain reactionary modernisms. One of the most interesting details for me that supports this is how the fight club is meant to offer an alternative individualism to consumer culture’s pseudo-individualism, but the fight club is eventually subsumed into cultic, conformist behavior, the exact sort of mass manipulation that advertising and culture-industry engages in: people who dress the same, repeat rules they don't understand and had no participation in making, follow arbitrary orders, and only have identity in death.

On the flipside, there’s also a kind of interesting thread where like, the narrator is homoerotic with Tyler and views Marla as an invasive presence right up until the point where he’s reached disillusionment with Tyler and Project Mayhem, and at that point he pivots hard to a reaffirmation of his heterosexuality through desire for Marla. This might be a discomfort with M/M sexuality (note the adaptational change from the narrator meeting Tyler on a nude beach to meeting him on a plane), suggesting that the film's underlying anxiety is not Tyler's fear about emasculation and feminization creating a weaker society, but a fear of male homoeroticism and its supposedly destructive, anti-civilizational quality

These are all a lot of different, potentially mutually exclusive readings but I guess it points towards the answer of "I dunno, it depends on where you place your emphases."

[darkfictionjude]

Etymology nonnie here!

On the topic of MC's gender. I don't think this is one of the IFs where it was clear the author had an specific gender for the MC while writing the story. I have read some where it was clear the protagonist was written as female/male, and it clashes when you play as anything else.

I say this because I always have played as male. And there wasn't any instance in which I said: "Hmm, this would make more sense if MC was a woman". Now, I do recognize that a female MC can make some themes more evident, powerful, or adds something that otherwise wouldn't be present. For example, Sally's infantilization of MC, his condescension and overprotectiveness gains a different aspect. It can be read as misogynistic, since it would conflate the way Sally conceives and dehumanizes MC with the way women are seen as lesser, and less capable than men. Not that Sally is purposely being misogynistic, but rather than it gets involved with the other issues his relationship with MC has.

It also makes the Orla parallels more obvious, since both her and MC would be the daughters. It would he expected MC was like Orla, that she followed her steps. It makes sense that Prudence tries to mold MC into Orla 2 Electric Boogaloo.

However, that is not to say there isn't things that are interesting or exclusive for male MCs. For instance, it makes Prudence need to make MC a second Orla significantly more abusive and delusional. She is just so disappointed by MC, so disgusted, that she strives to change him into her favorite daughter.

Or, for example, it makes MC more of an anti-Orla. Because now MC is everything Orla isn't. Orla is popular, conventionally beautiful girl, beloved by all, the favorite of her mother, the ideal. While MC is an unsettling boy, hated by most, despised by Prudence, the kind of boy no one wants as a son.

There is also the relationship with Nia. Either a friendship or romantic. Nia's way of understanding feminism, in my opinion (so I may be wrong), holds a very bad overall evaluation of men, and expects them to fail at the bare minimum when it comes to behavior and their actions regarding gender issues. I ignore if Nia believes men can change and evolve from this sorry state (I hope so, otherwise feminism is in a losing battle and it would absolve us men from our wrongdoing). But this belief does provide an interesting conflict to be solved, that adds over the intrigue any relationship MC and Nia already have. Could Nia believe less on a male MC than on a female one? That is an interesting question to ask ourselves.

Now, both male and female MC seem to fail at conforming with the traditional ideals of either gender. Female MC is too detached, too unpolished, too uncaring. While Male MC is not muscular, is not strong (the right way), is stoic for the wrong reasons, doesn't care nor understand sports, etc. So, both also have to confront society by the simple fact they aren't what society demands them to be. Which goes in line with the other present issues MC has, as their mental health and declining social standing (both personal and of their family).

I apologize to non binary folks and their NB MCs. For I cannot think of anything that it isn't obviously unique to them that could be applied to the discussion. Which may come from my own ignorance, as I'm very much a cisgender male (I did explore my identity at one point, and I confirmed it). My redeeming feature is just how gay I am, lol.

Also, unrelated: I have to thank Selfie. I didn't expect the praise and the kind words, and it's appreciated. I think you are cool too, since you usually provide a nice positive energy with your asks. I'm glad you enjoy reading my asks, since I sometimes feel I'm just obnoxious by writing such long ramblings. Or worse, that I'm writing too much but saying too little. Which may be just insecurity from my own part, even if it does not stop me. As long as Jude enjoys it, I'll try to continue. Since I do really love this IF.

Etymology nonnie you really decided to talk to me today huh? 😌

Yeah people have said to me that mc doesn’t really feel like they have a gander in the way think and I feel that’s great. It falls in line in how detached they are to society and thus societal creations. They don’t act like a man nor a woman because they don’t see a reason to and wouldn’t understand why the should to. I’ve read many IFs where I’m like “yeah the MC is clearly a woman”

One of my fears is one day writing an MC that leans too far to one gender despite the reader choosing another gender as apart from flavour text I want all my mcs to have universal thoughts that we all have. I think it has to do with me, as a person while a feminist woman I don’t think like a man nor a woman so it helps to create a protagonist who is gender selectable for their thoughts that don’t pertain to gender but other topics

Speaking of flavour gender text, in one of the routes for who you choose to go talk to that will come up especially sexual harassment women face

It would be interesting to see what Nia thinks of a male mc when you are allowed to talk to her further 😌

[alistairssock]

Every day I grow increasingly disappointed and mad that the body options in BG3 are so limited when it comes to their bodies

I complain a lot about all the male companions having rippling abs (first off: why??? second off: the hell¿¿¿). While most the female companions have hourglass shaped bodies with uber perky tits facing the sky. Except Lae'zel and Karlach. Lae'zel being weird and lanky yet strong, gitting her being githyanki and a warrior. Check. It's good, I really like that about her, it makes her interesting and unique. Her tits are even slightly diffrent than the others. Karlach? I could never slander Karlach. She's perfect. Hope she can continue to piss off whiny gamer boys who are afraid of muscular women taller than them. Or awaken something in them. Either option is fine.

But the main thing that bothers me is that we're living up to this insane beauty standard that is so implimented into our society that it's so to speak impossible to un-stick from video games. It's a sick and twisted cishet gamerbro fantasy, rubbed into our faces. It's lazy and boring, and lacking of flavor and I'm so so tired of it. And don't get me started how unrealistic most their bodies are compared to what they do and how they've lived and who they are. That could easily be a whole other wall of a text post.

Thing is, I wouldn't mind this as much if the 'standard' bodies were just one of many options. If these body types were just one of many and not the default on every single character model. There could be a custom option/sliders to adjust the character's bodies to your own vision and preference. Though, I do wish it would come with a lot more diverse bodies to begin with (baseline for npcs, and that isn't much to ask for, they clearly have the power, but are not willing to wield it). Hell, even a height slider would be good. Not all player/non-playable characters abide to the standard set body options; that is simply ridiculous when you think about it.

It does however bother me extra much because it's such a cowardly trap both Dragon Age - and probably also other fantasy games (and let's be real, most video games in general) - and now Baldur's Gate fall into. Men are square and burly, and women are hourglass shaped and dainty in comparison, no matter the race option (cough, cough I'm looking at the dwarves mainly). Dare i say The Ideal Male Body and Sexulised Version Of What Most Women Look Like. The only two genders. They do have given us muscled options, for which I'm grateful. But they are mostly just "would you like to be bigger and taller?", and that's it. Essentially same body, just streched out and slap some muscle in it, no problem. But seeing as it's in a fantasy world very much like our world (as in...people are people, living their people person lives), there should be a lot more bodily diversity. Fat people should exist, and they shouldn't be limited to antagonistic characters. We all see why that is wrong and fucked up, right?

It is progressive in it's ways, of course. The fact you can mix and match genitalia to body is a huge plus in my book. Pronouns are also super epic. Not much to complain about on that front, not many gives us these options. It's a small step for gaming, a huge step for humanity, or whatever.

It might be a lot to ask for to have options that include and embrace every aspect of the human experience. I do want more disabled characters in all shades and colours, I do want more fat characters in all shapes and sizes, I do want better and more hair for poc characters. The list goes on forever. So while I'm grateful for what we have and know and acknowledge and mourn it's not a perfect game by far (by wishes and just as a fact), I do appreciate what has been offered us so far. I just need to get this all off my chest, air out some thoughts

[teamloyalty]

look how football players who are for some reasons not classified as "GENDER CONFORMED" based on some toxic masculinity standards are being treated...jules koundé dares to wear boots with heels or experiment a bit with his outfits and sense of style in a somewhat more fluid way and the french call him julia. pavard gets outed by a paparazzi who said he's gay (true or not, we don't know) and because he perhaps looks slightly more elegant/soft than average he's made fun of or called the f word. those rumours of mbappe dating a trans woman as an excuse to drag him or call him freak.

if I were a queer footballer I would never ever come out. never ever.

i'm with totally with you, anon. truly i see no reason why a queer footballer should risk any semblance of peace for the rest of their lives to come out lolz it really is that dire. and its all SO wrapped up in sex like

not sure i'm going to say this well but - what makes an athlete a successful representation of the ideal man is his ability to perform hegemonic masculinity in all facets of his life; because these men are high performing athletes (the peak expression of masculinity) they're also expected to perform masculinity at an elite level in all other respects as well. these toxic norms of masculinity emphasize domination, over most other men and over ALL women (and anything perceived as feminine).

and the minute an athlete transgress the boundary into anything NOT distinctly male, they're called gay -- or at the very least treated as though they are gay. queerness indicates an inherent wrongness about the male body, something sinister in the way gay men use their male bodies for acts outside the realm of acceptability for real men.

and this is a problem because by definition elite male athletes model for the rest of society the most successful, most masculine, perfected use of the male body.

look at the way that people responded to just the SUGGESTION that declan rice would love [white, blonde, VERY beautiful] girlfriend because she's midsized. (they'll call her fat and she's not. she's midsized at most.) she does not conform to the highest possible beauty standards so ppl think that he could do better, find some prettier, skinnier woman to fuck (because that's all he could possibly want in a partner: the hottest woman to fuck, and to demonstrate to the world that he's fucking her). i've seen people wonder if he's not attracted to women at all. why else would a famous young athlete want a fat, ugly girlfriend? (she is neither of these things). he MUST be gay.

THIS IS A STRAIGHT RELATIONSHIP.

idk man its just sooooo darksided. maybe out players wouldn't receive direct in-person harassment from fans at games, but anyone who knows anything about how homophobia actually operates in society at large and isn't a fucking idiot knows that homophobia isn't solely damaging in the form of physical in person violence. football fans online can't even handle someone wearing fucking rainbow shoe laces. FUCKING SHOE LACES.

and that's not to mention the myriad of ways that implicit bias would impact out players, negatively affecting their ability to make connections in the game, acquire brand deals, move to the right clubs, etc etc.

well-meaning people in the football world will say that for forward progress, a few brave footballers just need to come out and normalize queerness in the sport. they're too entrenched in that world to recognize that its very foundations are rooted in homophobia.

[betterbemeta]

A huge component of injustice in the modern world is flattening image and reality.

That has always been sort of timeless, and it's sort of part of how societies that skew heavily towards hierarchies use aesthetics as the means to clock the 'place' of a person, environment, or object. But given that many more people see... stuff, every day, thanks to the internet and advertisements the effect is not local to what you personally witness, it's extremely widespread.

Don't get me wrong-- the power to spread imagery has also had positive impacts. Modern anti-war protests wouldn't be the same without photojournalism that spread witness of war realities to the greater world. Images that depict ordinary people, and especially marginalized people in daily life are self-evident proofs of humanity and existence when art can be skewed by wealth towards being a self-portrait of the rich and powerful. Stuff like that.

But the structure of our world and how it thinks and breathes now is still very powerful and all tools will reinforce that first unless purposefully turned against that structure. The power to assert reality is also the power to create alternate reality and you can see it every day today. Entertainment and news are blended together in new ways. "Lifestyle" content depicts curated imagery as a form of reality, often imagery that reinforces what a successful person looks like, what a rich person looks like. Or the ideals people with that wealth would prefer others hold.

I challenge anyone to find an 'aesthetic' or 'curated imagery', 'a look that invokes emotions or a sense of intuition' that 1) isn't just a form of discrimination like racism or sexism or ageism, or bias against fat or disabled bodies, and 2) can't be achieved by borrowing items, cooperation, paying artists as you have ability to, collecting secondhand things, travel to another location, and a time investment (something that our modern world blames working-class and poor people for having if they don't have money, tries to eliminate.)

'You actually CAN'T tell anything from the image' is the core of many seemingly baseless freakouts by hierarchical conservative mindsets. In fact, it's the most effective way to sell those mindsets to people who don't have any wealth at stake: fear that they can't discern actual reality, a need to control the images around them instead. Transphobia and also control of gender expression in all people. Bias against those who don't have or don't publicly display markers of hitting certain life goals like marriage or householding. The need for poor people to 'look poor,' the insecurity of the middle class in physical space and the resulting surveillance culture in many neighborhoods, the hatred of any marginalized classes enjoying luxuries as 'tacky', or even just seeing them in public. Hatred of seeing children they do not control in public. Thin people of the majority race in plain clothes as 'a fit' but fat people and people who aren't the majority race in plain clothes as 'not caring enough,' and more.

Hell, even the whole 'hatred of piercings dyed hair tattoos' thing plays in. It wraps 'the bliss of the Other being easily identified by Shibboleths, even when they're my same race' and 'I need others to look the same around me, I don't want to stick out as living incorrectly,' in a neat little burrito. Both of which easily are gateways to, 'Support for Austerity: Poors Don't Get Nice Things, 'How To Clock Queers,' and finally 'Nazi Phrenology.'

Caring so much about imagery seems like a vanity thing. But the anxiety is actually about 'reality' and seeing conflicting images that 'compromise it.' Flattening complex reality into imagery that can be sorted without fail onto a hierarchy has always been a part of top-down, oppressive structures. Think like, feudal systems where the only art or imagery that has power 'belongs' to the church, to magistrates, or to nobility. But now with the ability to broadcast images to the entire world, hierarchy's alternate reality can feel like it envelops the globe.

[menalez]

Is it wrong for me to not care about gender nonconforming men's right to be feminine? It seems contradictory that some believe femininity is oppressive objectifying nonsense while also supporting the right of men to access it. From what I can tell the sorts of men who are most invested in femininity tend to hate women as well. They build their subcultures around this hypersexualized feminine ideal they should strive toward, and use the most misogynistic language to get these ideas across to one another. The same way your typical man obsesses over female sex icons, these feminine men obsess over female pop stars. How is this as important of a right for them to achieve as our right to exist as our bodies naturally are, masculine or not? I get that some people are naturally softer than others and I have nothing against men with long hair or sensitive personalities (the ones that aren't abusive, anyways). But if you boil it down to its essentials I'm not even sure what femininity would even be once it's divorced from our misogynistic consumer culture. The way some women argue that women in our natural state are seen as masculine makes me wonder if _that's_ even okay for us to accept, or if it makes more sense to say that being feminine is just an extention of being female in more of an abstract level. Idk if that makes sense, but to me it seems like even the most masculine women are authentically feminine in a way that guys who wear pounds of makeup and false eyelashes aren't. But I also recognize that there's something flawed in that line of thinking. It seems degrading in some way to see femininity in women who are trying to reject it. Idk how to parse this.

i don’t think u have to care about any specific struggle, ppl care about different things and that’s fine. i think the line i draw is that ofc these men should not be attacked or insulted or persecuted for being gnc (because just bc they’re partaking in practices created to oppress women doesn’t mean they arent simultaneously going against what society accepts & expects from them) and i do care that people reinforce gender roles and get mad at them for not “acting like men”. i’m not saying they can’t be misogynistic or that femininity ie makeup heels shaving and the like aren’t restrictive & created to subjugate women, but also at the same time they do face ostracisation & violence for doing things deemed as “not for men”. both men and women are punished when we do not conform to the gender roles ascribed to us. but ofc no one can tell u that it’s bad that u do not care about a specific issue, ppl care about different things ultimately

[pinkkittysaw]

I agree with your tags on that rb btw angel!! I don’t shame anyone’s decision to have a kid. Hell, every mother in my family except for one has had at least two kids before 22. And that’s fine!! I think at least for me my gripe is the social media aspect of it. So much of the content coming from family vloggers / family tiktokers is making profit off of children without the kids consent or even having children for the sake of views… or putting kids personal info / medical info out there… and I do feel like a lot of what we see paints a certain lifestyle that statistically is unattainable for most young families (unless they convert to Mormonism akdjskdj that’s a whole other topic) idk something about the social media aspects of it rubs me the wrong way in a “Christian fascism conspiracy” kinda way LOL.

But I did see some tags on that post that are just shaming young families and that’s just not right.

- aleks

for context, i deleted a reblog to this tumblr post here but i will share the tags of that post under the cut since i took a screenshot of them then deleted the post after i got this ask

i definitely didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t agree with my tags. my problems with the post were honestly from other people who reblogged it, not with that you said in particular /lh

i agree with you on your points in regards to the social media aspect of it all and the harmful effects of “influencers” showboating their children online for views/interactions. i think it’s very weird…to say the least.

obviously this is a lot more nuanced than a simple brush stroke of, “it’s all bad or it all isn’t”. there’s a million and one factors and a million and one scenarios to each individual situation and that’s why it can be difficult to articulate points on a particular situation, especially on social media.

i do think the people on social media who paint staying at home and having kids as something that should be ideal for every “woman” and romanticize it as well are also harmful. especially if said people making these posts are earning an exuberant amount of $$$, when that’s not the case for most people today.

(i don’t want to be negligent of the fact that women aren’t the only gender who can and do give birth but often times when consuming media where these social norms are praised, cis women are often the target audience specifically although these social norms do effect all people who can give birth)

social media heavily influences people, i definitely won’t deny that.

there are people and institutions in place that are abusive and preach/push this rhetoric that staying at home and raising a family while still being young is the most fulfilling/best/only option one can have. i don’t want to take away from anyone’s experience from the harm that’s caused.

i am very much a proponent of educating people on sex, birth control, pregnancy, financial independence/literacy because unfortunately, some of these stay at home moms/wives/girlfriends are put in abusive situations and have nothing to fall back on to help themselves rebuild their life.

I GET that is the point with a lot of posts like the one i initially reblogged are ultimately saying.

I GET that they’re criticizing world views that have kept women in an oppressed position for so long.

(not to say that they aren’t still oppressed in today’s society but hopefully you (general) get what i mean with my point)

my biggest biggest problem with all these posts is that they don’t critique the harmful institutions that create scenarios where domestic violence/misogyny/ general harm may arise, they just broadly critique all young parents (and mothers especially).

that’s truly my main issue with it all. not every young parent was forced to have children and to imply that the only “valid” (for lack of a better term) reason for people to have children that young is if they were in a position where they were forced to is also…wrong.

my mom had me when she was in her teens (later teens but still) she wasn’t forced or coerced into choosing to keep me, does that then make her decision “wrong” or make her a shameful person for choosing to keep me? even though she was young? and “didn’t have a future” like so many people in the reblogs love to say. i should surely hope not.

not everyone’s life stories look the same. i too wanted kids. back when i was eighteen i genuinely thought my future was going to contain three little kiddos and a husband. it was only little over a year ago, that i realized that wasn’t really the life i wanted to have, at least for the time being (granted, the time gap between 18-21 isn’t really a large one). me choosing to not pursue a life with children does not make me a better or worse person and that’s the root of what i think all these posts are about.

“you’re inherently wrong and bad for choosing to have kids at a young age” except now it’s repackaged to seem more feminist than before when really, it’s the same exact branding of shame that teen moms have been getting for years and it’s that same shame that prevents people from reaching out and getting the resources they need.

it doesn’t matter what my personal views on teen/young adult pregnancy are because there are always going to be young parents regardless of the amount of education we give them. some people just want to have kids at a young age and that doesn’t make them inherently bad people.

if people who make posts like that want to critique trad wife culture, christian conservatism (which is indeed a whole other can of worms), other systems in place that take advantage of vulnerable girls/women and force them into give birth at a young age, i’m all for it. i just wish they wouldn’t go about it in the most obtuse way possible because then you get a thousand people in the tags being like “i feel sorry for my friend who’s having a kid” “you’re young and stupid too why bring a kid in this world”

the shame that these posts create and endorse is what i have a problem with, not the actual message behind it.

ANYWAY, this was all very long winded but i wanted to make sure i got out everything i wanted to say. also this was more of a general post on my whole thoughts on the matter, not specifically to you aleks /lh

i never meant to imply that you held the beliefs that i was criticizing in that initial reblog and i apologize if it came across like i was.

[variousqueerthings]

I think glen or glenda is elevated through time and context -- 

the time being that this is a good insight into how people were talking about trans identities at the time. it’s framed through a psychiatrist talking about transvestites, it’s got a lot of pathologisation, it uses old words for intersex, it’s Very Very Insistent That Transvestites Are Not Homosexuals. you can see the cracks in how transness is talked about, because then it’s also trying to use a sliding scale from “people who actually use an alter ego and just need some good psychiatry to be fixed” to “extreme cases of transvestites” who are actually heterosexual women -- the way it’s depicted is that this other character enjoyed doing housework early in life and was then “revealed” to be intersex... 

it also contains a segment that is racist, but carries within it an idea of almost understanding something about gender outside of western norms (it deals with “men in other cultures who wear colourful masks and makeup in order to attract women” and it is as you can probably glean from this description very unfortunate in wording and framing)

between that racist segment and the discussions of intersex as a “form”? of transness and the pathologisation of transness as a whole, it’s very easy to draw threads from western-medical ideologies about gender to todays politics, including and especially limitations that come from appropriation of intersex lives and non-white-western culture, and especially how these were furthered through the (white, male) medical communities of the time being considered the sole “experts” about how one should talk about trans people and gender and sex as a whole. no wonder we’re so muddled now! there’s a lot of damage to untangle!

historically I think very important to be learning about, because one can see how ideals about “woman” and “man” were very racialised and also very much about “correcting what was wrong” (whether what was wrong was in fact some past trauma that was being dealt with through crossdressing, or what was wrong was your body)

the neat thing I think is that it did take pains to stress that not everybody would want gender affirming surgery, which was increasingly not a popular idea in the medical community, because above all they really wanted this to be a “fixable problem” type deal, where someone would be corrected into the opposite sex and then take on all the acceptable roles of that sex (using sex here because I am mocking the idea of the innate biological desire of women to do housework as a way of being able to tell that someone is a legitimate trans woman)

-

the context is the personal part of the story about “glen/glenda” played by ed wood, who of course was a transvestite and so you can’t help but see the script (also by ed wood) as akin to “different from the others” -- if more exploitation film in style -- a plea for tolerance that’s using medical language as a form of authentication

there’s real gold nuggets in this movie, especially in its depiction of what we now would call transphobia as ill-fitting in the modern society of 1953 (sigh)

least strong moment was that it ended with “glen” transferring the “glenda” persona into (his?) now-wife, barbara, on advice from the psychiatrist (yeah, it’s just as messy as it sounds) and the movie in this case affirming that good ol’ heteronormativity would fix “him” (literally calling barbara his mother, sister, wife, and glenda, so she no longer gets to be barbara I guess? it was very odd, and came a bit outta nowhere)

most strong moment was bela lugosi using his magic powers to poof someone’s gender, thank you bela, we owe you!

also was personally into the choice of bela lugosi, even if he wasn’t always used uh... in ways that made sense. they were clearly trying to imbue horror tropes into what is definitely not a horror movie, at one point invoking frankenstein (yaay, susan stryker), but where he really worked was in the marrying of the ideas of horror-that-is-non-acceptance with the... I guess magic? magic-that-is-horror-but-good of gender affirming surgery? 

gender-as-horror-society-as-horror-intolerance-as-horror -- it wasn’t always done perfectly, but it was very neat to see it

[thetantiger]

Character Insight #6: Ashley

Full Name: Ashley Cindra Scorchmane Gender: Female (she/her) Race: Worgen Class: Mage Specialization: Fire Orientation: Straight (ally!) Relatives: No Known Relatives Age: 39 Height: 6'11 (5'7 Human form) Voice reference: Loona - Helluva Boss Theme: Choke - I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME

[BACKSTORY] (TWs for implied queerphobia and racism happening in this character's backstory)

Ashley grew up in Tirisfal Glades surrounded by the Scarlet Crusade. As a toddler, her parents were slain by rogue undead, and thus the organization took her in. Their goal with her was to raise her to be an Inquisitor of the Crusade, and so they assigned her to one Samuel Price in order to teach her their arts of interrogation. However, their methods were.. less than humane, with Inquisitor Price teaching Ashley to set alight the flesh of any the Crusade had deemed heretics until they either gave in to their ideals or died of the torture. If she protested or questioned him, she was often abused herself, and as a result, Ashley's outlook on any that disagreed with the teachings of the Crusade turned sinister quickly. She was indoctrinated to believe that those that opposed the Crusade or any of its teachings were not to be trusted, and sometimes that spread to some people's mere existences as their race or sexuality or gender orientation. After all, she was taught that they were heretics, and any accused of such that the Crusade would bring to her, once she had taken up the role of Inquisitor and grown into her own, would burn before her magic.

Except.. something went wrong. In her own perfect world of delusion existed the outside world of Tirisfal, full of monsters and harsh realities she would soon face. A wild, feral Worgen found her in the woods and sank its teeth into her. Before she could even begin to wonder how to stop the bleeding her mind and body were taken over by the Worgen curse. Her mentor, Inquisitor Price, took enough mercy on her to administer the cure to her so she could be of sound mind again. However, he also outcast her from the Crusade, and swore she would be killed on sight if she were to ever return simply for her state as a Worgen.

Ashley did the only thing she could do. She fled, running into the hills of Tirisfal, her mind still plagued by the Scarlet Crusade's indoctrination. She lived alone in the woods, surviving on her magics and only delving further into insanity.. until she met the Shadows of the Faithful.

The most notable member of the group to her was one Derek Montend, a Gilnean priest that had also previously been a sort of.. harsh person. An overabundance of Light magic crazed him and caused him to attack the Shadows of the Faithful, later returning as an ally to fix the wounds he had left behind. He saw himself in Ashley quite blatantly, and chose to help her leave her old mindset behind instead of fighting fire with fire.. literally. So, he took her in. She had to be caged at first in order to restrain her insatiable need for violence against the members of the Faithful--many of them she found disgusting and worthy of incinerating--yet slowly but surely, she began to warm up (see what I did there) to both Derek and the rest of the Faithful. She conversed with them, and found that they were simply people just like herself, and, over time, she noticed herself growing fond of quite a few of them. So, one day, when discussing the fact she still wore a Scarlet Crusade tabard, she silently made a decision.

The Scarlet Crusade had been long wiped out for a while now. Their remaining settlements were few and dwindling. Lady Whitemane was a Horseman of the Ebon Blade. Renault Mograine had been slain long ago. The Dreadlord in their midst had ruined them, and their ideologies were simply outdated in modern society. But the ruins of their hatred remained in the northern lands of the Eastern Kingdoms. Ashley journeyed into the Eastern Plaguelands, towards their old settlement on the coast near Light's Hope Chapel and Acherus's former residence. She did not enact her horrors here, but it fit well enough. She had dawned a new tabard, one still reminiscent of her firey magics and even kept a blazing symbol as a small reminder to her origins, but was orange and yellow instead, bearing new colors to represent a new era of Ashley Scorchmane. She raised her old tabard--the red and white one bearing the mark of the Crusade as well as faded bloodstains--to the podium where a preacher may have once stood, and set the tabard alight. She ripped demonizing texts from their pages and set those alight, too, keeping them locked in a permanent state of incinerations with a little arcane touch, and wrapped them around herself. The very teachings that had taught her so ruthlessly to burn those unlike her would, themselves, burn. Satisfied, she stepped back outside, and for the first time in her life-- felt the true, warm and pure embrace of the Light.

She would serve the Shadows of the Faithful as retribution for her past actions and philosophies--just as Derek Montend had done.

[THOUGHTS]

WHEW, personally I fucking love this girl's development! She only had her redemption moment recently and I would argue there's still a long way for her to go to truly balance out everything she's done, but I absolutely adore this spoicy little ball of hatred that evolved into a warmer, happier and friendlier gal. She even knitted a little pride mug warmer for Rachel qwq

Anyway, hope y'all enjoyed! I sure enjoy writing these, so :D