#this was supposed to be an art for trans day of visibility but i missed it

[tomwambsgays]

anyone up thinking about t4t tomgreg

[olreid]

hi! haven't been on tumblr for a couple days so i might have missed this, but what is your #against representation tag about?=

lol to me that is one of the few tags that means exactly what it says ! but here are some associated thoughts that may help clarify . #against representation comes from:

feeling like i have recently become someone whose life is almost completely unrepresentable and incommunicable to those around me - thinking about what human experiences and parts of life are not able to be translated into language or image

not a new or revolutionary idea but the idea that pushing for representation in popular culture sucks as a political goal - what is the point of having the perfect trans life represented on screen if what it purports to be reflecting doesn't even exist e.g. if the material conditions for real-life trans people are not improving...

also not new or revolutionary but the fact that for marginalized people, increased visibility = increased violence . from the intro to trap door: "this is the trap of the visual […] it is frequently offered to us as the primary path through which trans people might have access to livable lives. representation is said to remedy broader acute social crises ranging from poverty to murder to police violence." etc.

thinking not only against but also beyond representation as in what do we lose when the only conversation about e.g. trans art is about the number and nuance of trans characters? can we talk about trans forms, trans narratives, trans sensibilities ? do we lose out on something when we narrow our focus to how many trans people are in a thing? thinking here about jay prosser's writing on trans narratology and caél m. keegan's writing on the wachowskis' trans cinema as well as framing agnes as a transgender film not just because the cast is all transgender but also because it tells a story in a way that felt to me uniquely transgender... anyway

i would say as a tag it shares some dna with #made for cutting in that it attends to the violence of mechanics that function to incorporate the marginalized more firmly into the social body, of things we are supposed to think of as a net social good -- after all, shouldn't we want to see more and more of us on bigger and bigger screens ? shouldn't we submit docilely to having our collective gaze directed away from political economy by bright lights and loud sounds ? shouldn't our utopias cease to exist anywhere but on page and screen ?

[ihopeyoubothstaysafefromharm]

Letters in Transition, 28 Jul 2022

A collaborative correspondence between @academicdisasterfic and I, inspired by our encounters with fic as queer, trans boys. Letters, words and art exchanged at the start of an unrestrained life. Previous entries can be found here. The fics mentioned in this letter are draco malfoy and the rabbit on the moon by me and Away Childish Things by lettered.

Dear Rooney,

I think a lot of trans people have a complicated relationship with summers. If you pick up on what’s going on with you as a kid, it can be a relief to have the number of people perceiving you daily suddenly and drastically reduce, to be left alone in your house to think whatever, google whatever, wear whatever. At the same time, it’s hard on our bodies. I dislike being cold, it’s one of my least favourite sensations, but I’ve always been particularly terrified of heat, on some grand conceptual scale. Over the years, I’ve got it down to this - if you’re cold, you can always put something on, but if you’re too hot, there’s only so many things you can do until it’s just you and your skin, and then where do we go from there? Summers, especially like the one we’re having now, are a constant reminder of that, to a trans body. You are forced to face your nakedness in a practical, almost clinical way. Pushed to seek comfort in what makes your skin crawl. Resigned to wear things you never would want to just because they’re there, and it’s hot, and you need to physically show up in the world.

Sometime next month, I’ll have to be very publicly visible for a couple of weeks. I’ll meet new people and people who haven’t seen me in a while, I’ll have to sell myself in a professional capacity and in between that attempt to make friends, or feel at ease, or do whatever it is you’re supposed to do when your little gray cells are buzzing with the proximity of others. I’m doing little things to prepare - I’m adding things to my wardrobe that will make me feel more confident, I’m in counseling, I’m making my skin intentionally and selfishly soft. It’s going well. But tonight, in the middle of this hot summer, it’s raining, and I’m sitting on the floor and thinking, again, if I should cut my hair.

We’ve talked about this before. You said that one day it gets better. I realistically know that I would look and feel better if I just cut it all off - but the last time I did it it was before i came out to myself. I was happy, in the salon, and then afterward I had about twenty minutes of pure unadulterated joy beforeIi was overcome with terror and confusion at what I was seeing in the mirror. With that came an awful, slow-burning bout of that unplaced feeling (that I now know is called dysphoria) whenever I had to see myself in the mirror, in photographs, in the eyes of other people. It was so painful that I don't EVER want to feel that way again - I would sob so loud that my housemate from across the hall would hear me, and I generally never let myself make loud sounds, the way I talked about loud breathing in this fic.

I was always frustrated that the chain of experiences in Away Childish Things means that that Draco will likely never grow his hair long again, that he’ll never plait it with ribbons. There’s that moment when he’s small and with Harry on the couch and he wails “I miss my hair”, when we think he’s going to say something else, and whenever I hear or read that moment I always think I’ll laugh but I never do, it always hurts, it always hits me right where I live.

In mainstream media, trans people cut their hair and love it. In  mainstream media, women cut their hair and either spiral or transform. In  mainstream media men cut their hair and…what? Either glow up or become incapacitated? I know I associate my own…value? interest? with the length of my hair. I know it’s probably something as simple as that, some conflation of internalised misogyny and the fear of looking like something I’m not - which would be what? A woman with short hair? Who knows. My point is, I don’t have any sort of answer or out to my silly, vain dilemma.

But fic, especially fic in this universe, gave me something that’s a better anchor than an answer of the kind I might be expected to take away from a film, a montage in a music video, a prying news report.

In fics, I have so often found a mirror for my pain and gotten to sit with it, with the lasting and echoing reality of discomfort. That in itself is a gift.

Dreaming of an uncomplicated summer for you,

From the mirror, the summer, the rain,

yours,

joy.

[intheoryowl]

Diversity in KOTLC

[While commenting on this post please don't post spoilers for Unlocked just yet. Thanks. This post may contain legacy spoilers. This post is a repost of my Wattpad post that I made in Sunflower Crown called Diversity in KOTLC, so if you’ve seen this already please feel free to skip it. This post lines up with MLK day, but it was originally posted in reaction to Shannon Messenger announcing the live action movies.]

[Edit: Okay, after typing this post up I realize that there are a few more characters that are POC, but they’re not prominent at all, so the representation is still miniscule. They were mentioned, like, twice throughout the entire series. So, my point still stands.]

What's one thing you notice about the photo above?

Oh, yeah. All the characters are white, expect for the last three in the photo, which are all conveniently tacked onto the end.

Let's address the elephant in the room for everyone in the Keeper of the Lost Cities fandom. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about how little diversity there is within the cast, especially within the main group. I've been meaning to make a post about this since the #BLM movement started up, but I never got around to it.

I've found that a lot of the people in the fandom have been incredibly shy about having this conversation, but I think it's really time we have it. The cast contains very little diversity.

Disclaimer: Before anyone comes at me for this post, I'd like to first say that I've  been a huge KOTLC fan and a big fan of Shannon Messenger's work for a  long time. This isn't meant to be any sort of hate post, but instead a conversation I think we all need to have.

Let's start with the format of the art up above^.

First of all, out of eight characters 3 of them are POCs (or not white). Wylie isn't even in the main group/doesn't really enter the story until much later in the series. The same goes for Linh and Tam. They're all tacked onto the end of the photo, like they're just add-ons.

These three characters are the only characters I know the race of that are POC characters. Out of the entire series. Yes, the entire series. [And I would say that's the case for most people that aren't superfans or recently phased out of the series before art was starting to be released.] I wouldn't say I'm the biggest fan out there, but there aren't that many prominent characters in KOTLC, and just about every single one of them is white.

It feels like a last-ditch throw in when Shannon Messenger went *oops I forgot about diversity entirely!!*. I mean, think about it. Tam, Linh, and Wylie entered the series later on than everyone else.

The lack of diversity, quite frankly, I find ridiculous. And not even just because there are three characters out of eight in that photo (one of which that is POC isn't even in the main group, nevermind the original main group) are POC, and prominent characters. Not only is there a lack of diversity when it comes to race/features that aren't white, but Shannon Messenger also includes exactly zero LGBTQ+ representation throughout the entire series. There is nothing hinted, nothing said. Gender norms are never addressed in the story, and that's fine. But for there to be no gay/pan/aro/ace/freaking anything on the spectrum representation?? No trans representation? Non-binary? Hello??? I get that when she started the series LGBTQ+ characters might not have been something you saw in every single book, but even as new characters are added in we see absolutely no LGBTQ+ representation still. There's not even anyone questioning their sexuality or their gender identity. Nowadays, that's not only a huge part of being a teenager (I would know, I'm one), but also just something you would think is key in the identity of a character.

As a writer, when I start writing a book, one of the first things I do is make sure I know who I want my characters to be. Gender identity, race, sexuality, all of this - these are such fundamental parts to a character. Truthfully, i don't understand how you could just overlook them whatsoever. It's a choice you have to make, not a default setting that's already been turned on for you. I think - even to someone incredibly racist - that as an author writing a book, one would be aware of the outward appearance of their characters? Or the fact that all of the characters had one very certain thing in common? It's hard to miss, frankly, and it looks really bad.

There's really no excuse for it at the end of the day. You can't explain away the facts, and the facts are that the lack of diversity within KOTLC is concerning.

With KOTLC as well, the book doesn't even center around identity for the most part. It's fantasy, and that's what runs the plot, not someone's struggles with race. It really would've been just that easy for Shannon Messenger to throw in a few POC characters or people that weren't straight, maybe mention it in passing, and be done with it and we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Another thing I'd like to bring up is the microaggressive character arcs of Linh and Tam song, the only two out of the entire central friend group that are diverse characters. (they appear to have some sort of asian heritage, in case you never caught that. But I bet you did with their very distinctly Chinese last names.) When Tam and Linh first appear in the book, they're suspected delinquents and exiled for crimes to a school of people that have been outcasted from society. They're seen as outsiders. During the story, we see the both of them climbing their way up in the ranks through hard work & connections. unlike everyone else who is going to Foxfire from the start, and we don't see them as nobility at first at all. Not only do the twins come into the story late, but they start out being pinned as supposed criminals (for going to their school which they were wrongly exiled to) and being the underdogs.

Twins are also scorned and families in the Lost Cities with twins are highly stigmatized. Same thing, the only two Asian characters in the entire series and they're the ones who have to be scorned instead of the white ones.

I'm sorry, but that rubs me the wrong way. it seems incredibly microaggressive to me. You're telling me that the only two characters of color [in the main group] are portrayed this way by accident? You couldn't have chosen any one of your fourteen white characters to play the role? Please.

Also, this might be a reach, but is there colorism also present in the KOTLC cast? The type of Asian that Linh and Tam seem to be (Eastern - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc) have a very light skin tone. Throughout all of KOTLC, the only skin tone darker than white is Wylie's character, who is obviously African-American. There is no one that looks Latina [okay, there is, it's Jensi who was mentioned twice in the first two books and never again], a different kind of Asian,  Romanian, Indian, Middle Eastern, nothing. Actually, you know what, it's not a reach. You're telling me that objectively based on facts, there is only one character out of the entire KOTLC universe that's skin tone is darker than paper? That's the standard?

To that I say: get outta here.

I'm not convinced that Shannon Messenger - as much as I love and adore her writing and her book series - ever truly cared about diversity and inclusivity among her characters. There's no representation other than straight, white, male, female, two Asians, and a single African American character (out of anyone who actually matters). That's it. Statistically speaking.

That's ridiculous.

[This is a later edit: someone in the comments also pointed out that the Lost Cities are located all over the world, meaning that having a mainly white cast also is whitewashing? This only gets worse the more you think about it, ugh.]

I understand that the majority of the KOTLC fanbase is very young. Believe me, I do. I'm probably one of the older fans that has been here for a while/still is here. Most people my age have moved on to fangirling over the Umbrella Academy or something. I get it. But I do believe that even twelve year olds can understand what I'm saying, stay informed, spread awareness, and think critically.  

One of the reasons I think Shannon hasn't been called out nearly as much for the lack of diversity and representation in her stories is because she has such a young readerbase. That's fine. I don't expect people that are ten and twelve to be thinking about any of this. It never occurred to me at the age, so why would it occur to you unless someone else brought it up first?

That said, now that I have brought it up, I think that the least you can do is have conversations with your friends, tag a few people, and think critically about the casts of your favorite books/people you stan. If you're not speaking up, it makes you look like you don't care that there's absolutely zero representation and diversity in the KOTLC series. And you should care.

Keeper of the Lost Cities is a very white, straight series. What does this mean? It means that it's inherently racist, likely colorist, and not currently supportive of any LGBTQ+ people on any LGBTQ+ spectrum. People out there just like you (if you're white) aren't seeing themselves in stories or media. Instead, they're being told that only if you have European heritage or a lighter skin tone can you be a hero. It's harmful. And we need to speak out against it.

[Not to mention that there are no different body types. This post was just on core character identity, and nothing else. As my friend StickyCarpet put in a conversation, what about religions? Do all elves believe the same things? There's very little identity variation between characters beyond their personalities.]

The reason I want to speak out so strongly now, is because as you may know, KOTLC is being made into a live-action series of movies. On screen, it's going to be even more visible and in-your-face that there's no representation. You know what that says to everyone who wasn't represented at least a little bit (or well)? It says we don't see you because we don't approve of who you are, which is just such an awful message to send. In the movies, it's going to be super important for especially younger readers to see themselves on screen. I don't want these movies to just be another movie chock-full of straight white people. It's time for change. This was never something that should've been the standard, so we need to try extremely hard to change it.

By no means will that magically fix or amend the fact that Shannon Messenger chose to put just about zero diversity into the story in the first place, but it will at least show that she's trying beyond throwing a few new characters with different skin tones in after people start calling her out for it.

Keeper of the Lost Cities is my favorite or second favorite series, and it was (and always will be) a huge part of my childhood. I'm a huge fan of the series myself, but I want to make my opinion on this subject very clear and encourage you to form your own opinion on it. I don't have instagram or socials, but I do have a large platform on Wattpad to spread awareness with. Please spread the message.

Please, if you can, tag people from the fandom in the comments. Share this post. Reblog it on tumblr or post it on instagram. We need to get the conversation started. It's not enough to just sit here and pretend like we're all okay with the fact that the series we all love is grossly unrepresentative/not diverse.

In the external link, you will find a carrd leading to Ways to Help & be a part of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, including ways that don't involve money. In my bio, there's a link that goes to all crisis resources around the globe with links to causes. Please feel free to share and utilize both links.

Thank you very much for reading & (hopefully) spreading the message/awareness with me! Your favorite series and author(?) possibly being racist is something that's harder to come to terms with, even for me at my age, so please don't blame yourself for everything and just try to help as much as you can ♡

[Please feel free to reblog and repost on any platform anywhere as necessary. Spreading the message regardless is much appreciated!]

[fantroll-purgatory]

@theshieldswordandcrown

I’d like it if you guys could look over my tea man for me! (Art by my friend lythaeriahomestucks. I haven’t made him a sprite yet.

Oofadoofa it’s been a while. Hi I hope your roleplay group is fun!

World: Alternia, but the draft is a lot further off than in canon, because none of my group is interested in roleplaying interstellar space battles or politics, especially considering the amount of setup that would have to go into making deep space believable. Though I think Friendsim’s stated they’re dragged off planet at 9 sweeps, so he’d still have a little time before getting dragged underground anyway.

Name: Oolong Matcha. Yes, they’re both types of tea. It started off as a quick joke, but I’ve grown to love it. Not only is matcha green, like his blood, but he’s a gardener, and really enjoys tea.

Mmmmm I mean joke trolls are famously canon in Homestuck. See: SWIFER EGGMOP or the salt and pepper shaker troll BUTTT mmmm. I feel like naming a character based at least partially on Japanese monks Oolong would deserve some side-eye. But I like the matcha bit! So let’s see…I like him being a gardener since monastic gardens were very much A Thing, and one of the famous still-extant ones is at Rievaulx abbey, so maybe we give him RIVULX, which sounds sufficiently trollish and is obvious enough for someone to get the reference.

Age: 9.69 Sweeps, or 21 Earth years.

Theme/Story: He’s partially themed after monks, specifically Irish and Japanese, which was originally an excuse for his bald head, but ended up influencing his clothing, calm demeanor, and lusus. I was also, oddly, thinking of 4chan – not maniacs like /pol/, but just average people who don’t get out enough, like to chatter about anime or cooking, and generally act like a bit of a dipshit. Fatherhood is definitely a theme with him as well – he’s already a father figure to two other trolls.

Hmmm. I like the broad concept, but I think we can tighten up a little on the “monk” theme by expanding it. Review Goals: General overview, classpecting advice, filling in missing details like fetch modus or lunar sway, etc.

Strife Specibus: He greatly prefers to snipe threats before they reach him, but if he’s forced into melee, he’ll grab a pipe and go berserker nuts. He takes satisfaction in neutralizing threats, especially if he’s protecting someone or something. He’s not averse to talking things out, but dislikes putting others on the line.

Hmm. None of that is a strife specibus, though I suppose you’re going for riflekind and pipekind. Generally void players use fistkind since it’s the absence of a weapon, but if you want to give him another option besides hand-to-hand melee may I suggest poisonkind? He could use something from his garden, like monkshood :3c. Or if you want to give him a melee weapon he could use the sansetsukon per the 36th Chamber of Shaolin, which would double as a symbol reminder since he could arrange the segments in a backwards s. Fetch Modus: ;;3;; I have absolutely no idea.

What about a clue modus where the items are obscured but contain details describing them? With the caveat that some of them will have similar color/taste/textures listed. I think this might be fun because there are actually *two* famous detectives with the last name Monk, Adrian Monk and William Monk.

Blood Color: Jade.

That works great, especially with Friendsim’s reveal that many jades are indeed monastic/cloistered.

Lunar Sway: Not sure.

Given that he’s a monk and you have painted him as someone unlikely to cause conflict or rebel against the system, I think he’d be a Prospit dreamer.

Title: Knight of Void, someone who exploits what little secrecy and irrelevance he has for all it’s worth. He was first conceived as a Bard, to fit into a fansession, but I eventually decided it didn’t fit what the character had developed to be. 

Symbol and Meaning: I made it up, and it doesn’t have a name. It’s an infinity symbol, broken in the center - like this, but flipped 90 degrees clockwise. I guess it could tie into his aspect by…destroying infinity, I guess, but I really haven’t put that much thought into it.

If we’re going by the EZ, he would be Virittanius, the Deliberate. Which I think fits him quite well! It also looks like a further corruption of the sign you gave him, so I may toy with that a little in the redesign. Handle: I feel like I might have given him a serious handle at one point, but if I did, I forgot it, so for now, it’s oolongMatcha. Just his name. Considering his classpect and desire for secrecy, this makes about as much sense as a rain barrel made out of crackers, but I’m not sure what to give him.

Since his new initials are RM, maybe revenantMyiopsitta. Revenant, of course, to hint at the fact that he’s part of the blood caste most commonly associated with rebirth after death, and Myiopsitta being the genus for two types of parakeet: the cliff parakeet and the monk parakeet. So we have his true identity as well as the unusual nature of his hive, both concealed in plain sight. Quirk: he types in all lower case and likes putting his horns in his emoticons! ’:)  Maybe doing it like (:; would make more sense, as it’s his right (our left) horn that’s busted.

I like it! Depending on his redesign you may also want him to uƨe backwardƨ ƨ’ƨ to mimic hiƨ ƨymbol.

Special Abilities: Supreme Dadliness. Jokes aside, he’s a crack shot, even with his impeded vision, and has been successfully flying under the radar his whole life.

If you still want him to be a crack shot even with the changes I suggested above, maybe he uses blowdarts to poison his enemies from afar?

Lusus: His father is a MASSIVE white snake; I was thinking some kind of constrictor. Personality-wise, he’s close to a prototypical 50s dad. He’s a safe haven for his son and those his baby cares about, and is exceedingly patient, to the point of letting a small child fingerpaint on him. He’s also willing to carry Oolong in emergencies, though I’m not really certain that would work in real life, movement-wise.

I feel like the snake can be a little overplayed as a lusus. If we want to give him something similar to a mother grub as a jadeblood, why not a massive butterfly based on the monk/dusky friar? It also gives you the mechanics for how his dadderfly would carry him around in emergencies.

Interests: He used to spend a lot of time alone on the internet - I originally conceptualized him as a very lonely NEET, to the point he had to find his wallet to remember his own name - but has become more adventurous and friendly, spending more time with his girlfriend and friends (and he has friends now!) He’s very proud of his garden and fruit trees, some of which are rare, difficult to grow properly, and/or dangerous (offering more security).

Huh! You don’t explain *how* he goes from isolated to friendly, but I’d hope that gardening is a way for him to reach out to others since it’s a hobby you can commit to on your own but bond with other hobbyists.

Hive: He lives out in the woods by himself, though not so far from other trolls that he can’t take the day to go shopping or see his mate. His hive is surrounded by his garden on all sides, and has a very visible path down the center (making it easy for him to see anyone approaching, and shoot if they’re a threat). Trees surround it, and dangerous plants are strategically placed to make going through his garden unpleasant at best (it also makes weeding a pain, but he thinks it’s worth it). His hive is especially unusual in that the porch is raised up to the second floor with large poles, and you have to use a ladder to get up to it (unless you’re snakedad, in which case you go up the poles). He has a remote so he can let it down from the ground, as well as access to it on the platform, so he can let people up himself. I don’t think the ground level has a door. I’d be happy to submit pictures, if you want.

Feel free to show us pictures, but I like the concept a lot!

Appearance: Tall and rail-thin, excepting his oddly curvy hips. (I figured due to jades being majority female, developing jade males might be exposed to more than the usual amount of estrogen and androgens. Also I’m way more used to drawing women than men and his initial outline was a gal for like ten minutes.) He shaves his head bald. (This is because A) I didn’t want to bother trying to figure out men’s hair - I almost never draw dudes - and B) he’s partially themed after monks, who often shave their heads. I don’t remember why he says he does it.)

…man, I’m gonna take issue with the way you phrased this description. There’s a lot of gender essentialism going on in your explanation there, and given that a number of us mods are trans and nonbinary I feel obligated to point out a few things:

1) Trolls are bugs. They’re not even mammals. They aren’t exposed to androgen or estrogen or any hormone to give them a certain body shape. It is quite heavily implied that when the mother grub gives birth it is to a bunch of larvae.

2) I know that Homestuck lore has given us largely jade girls and one jade trans guy but that’s no reason to assume that jade men are broadly more “feminine” by default in *any* dimension

3) Even if trolls *did* work like humans, it rubs me the wrong way to see someone talking about a man’s “oddly” curvy hips like I’ve got guy friends both trans and cis with wide hips and the only reason to remark on it at all is because We Live In A Society that forcibly genders people in relation to physical characteristics.

…So I am otherwise taking your description at face value. ______ Matcha is tall, rail thin, with curvy hips and a bald head. I will probably add some little fangs, per the Alternian fashion guide.

He wears leggings (unless it’s very hot) and long tunics or robes, usually tan, with his symbol emblazoned on the breast. He goes barefoot if he can. His right (our left) horn is broken, due to an accident in his youth (I think he fell onto something?), amusingly improving his vision, since his unbroken left horn points in front of his left eye, obscuring it somewhat.  His face could almost be described as delicate, and his default expression is calm.

I don’t knooooow that tan is a color trolls wear all that often in Alternia, so I will see how I can rework that in the redesign. I get him being barefoot, but I may give it a shot spriting him monk shoes for if he wants to go on an outing. :3c For his broken horn…hm. When we see trolls with physical damage, it is almost always something more significant than just “childhood accident” (see: every troll in Homestuck except Equius who somehow had like 3 simultaneous accidents?). I have an idea for his horns that I will get to in the redesign, and I will probably add a hook to his front horn, both because it’s a jadeblood trait and because it seems suitably horrifying to constantly have a sharp implement millimeters from your eye.

Personality: Oolong is a nice, fatherly young man, well regarded by most he meets. He really really likes tea. He has a beautiful, dangerous mafiosa matesprite in a rustblood named Andora Ingenu, and they adore each other. He’s also taken on the substitute dad role for an adorable young fuschia who lives in the swamp near his forest, Lillie Waters, teaching her how to cook (and keep her tools clean) and rescuing her from other fuschias. He’s very protective of his and his loved ones’ privacy and safety, and spends a LOT of his time in the massive gardens around his hive, of which he’s deservedly proud. He is very good at being sneaky, and sometimes takes the time to run around seeing what he can get away with, especially in the realm of snatching seeds up for his garden. He sells whatever plants he can grow for money, especially fruits and vegetables, but he doesn’t really enjoy sales. He doesn’t put a lot of stock in blood superiority, but doesn’t make a big deal out of it. He’s oddly well adjusted for someone who spent most of his life alone.

I like this description! Also looking at his close compatriots, it looks like I can swap the tan in his design for rust or fuchsia. We already see jadebloods wearing a fair amount in the red/burgundy/purple spectrum, so it should fit right in with the others.

Land: I don’t remember if I’ve come up with one. If I did, I feel like it may have heavily wooded areas, dark and tangled and difficult to navigate.

Hmmm. What about Land of Rough and Reflection (LORAR)? Covered in rough terrain, with pools to contemplate oneself. Unbeknownst to your troll, there are switches at the bottom of each lake (deeper than he could ever hope to dive and hold his breath) that must be flipped to drain the lakes and free the consorts from the underwater caves in which they’ve been trapped for generations. His land would initially seem completely empty and without guidance, and it neatly parallels his own situation before he began to socialize.

I hope you like him! :) I’d love to see what you guys think of him.

He’s certainly an interesting troll, and I hope I’ve helped by way of sharpening up on his theme! Let’s move on to the redesign.

Top to bottom as usual!

Hair - I gave him some stubble courtesy of fan-troll (I have never managed a post without plugging fan-troll/tajazzled’s sprite sheet and I’m not gonna stop now)

Horns - I wanted to make his other horn sort of…curve away from his head so it looks like his symbol from above?

Eyes and brows - they didn’t change but big ups to fan-troll for giving me bases to modify!

Mouth - this is a modification of Sollux’s mouth but I gave him lil fangs and a little lower lip definition

Robes - I just modified some of Kanaya’s robes, appropriately enough! I decided to go for a red/pink shade that was between rust and fuchsia so he could fit in while subtly broadcasting his allegiance

Shoes - they’re John’s but with buckles! :B monk shoes

Aaaand that’s about it for my critique! I hope this helped!

-TR

[galina]

hi galina! i was wondering if you could share us some of your favourite quotes?

In no real order, just ones that I have collected and think of often:

‘If you are called to change your life by any example, and your self responds–––you must change your life. and once you change, change again.

Your next self, too, will be challenged by examples, to find a self still waiting beyond. Thus there is no perfection in perfectionism; the process of experience and correspondence never stops. If there could be any end in view, it would be only this: that the circle of things corresponding to you grow not wider, but infinitely wide, touching everything that exists.’

Mark Greif, ‘The Concept of Experience’, Against Everything

‘Emancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’, must reveal what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be a mere contingency, just as it must make what was previously deemed to be impossible seem attainable.’Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

‘A good deal of the hostility to theory no doubt comes from the fact that to admit the importance of theory is to make an open-ended commitment, to leave yourself in a position where there are always important things you don’t know – but this is the condition of life itself.’

Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory (A Very Short Introduction)

‘When they fall in love with a city, it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn’t love it. The minute they arrive […] they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.’Toni Morrison, Jazz

‘I think what I’m confessing to is that, however I choose to write about over-there, I am forced to reflect that world in fragments of broken mirrors […] I must reconcile myself to the inevitability of missing bits.’

Salman Rushdie, Shame

‘What tethers me to my parents is the unspoken dialogue we share about how much of my character is built on the connection I feel to the world they were raised in but that I’ve only experienced through photos, visits, food. It’s not mine and yet, I get it. First-generation kids, I’ve always thought, are the personification of déjà vu.’

Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood

‘If you are not from a particular place the history of that particular place will dwell inside you differently to how it dwells within those people who are from that particular place, Your connection to certain events that define the history of a particular place is not straightforward because none of your ancestors were in any way affected by these events. You have no stories to relate and compare, you have no narrative to inherit and run with, and all the names are strange ones that mean nothing to you at all. And it’s as if the history of a particular place knows all about this blankness you contain. Consequently if you are not from a particular place you will always be vulnerable for the reason that it doesn’t matter how many years you have lived there you will never have a side of the story; nothing with which you can hold the full force of the history of a particular place at bay.’

Claire Louise Bennett, Pond

‘The past conditions us, harries us, black-mails us. The historic avant-garde […] defaces the past […] destroys the figure, cancels it, arrives at the abstract, the informal, the white canvas, the slashed canvas, the charred canvas.’ 

Umberto Eco, ‘Postmodernism, Irony, the Enjoyable’,Reflections on The Name of the Rose

‘The past cannot be entirely recuperated from so much power arrayed against it on the other side: it can only be restated in the form of an object without a conclusion, or a final place, transformed by choice and conscious effort into something simultaneously different, ordinary, and irreducibly other and the same, taking place together: an object that offers neither rest nor respite.’ 

Edward Said, ‘The Art of Displacement: Mona Hatoum’s Logic of Irreconcilables’Mona Hatoum: The Entire World as a Foreign Land

‘[What] if history has nothing more to teach us than that all the shapes of the spiritual world, all the conditions of life, ideals, norms upon which man relies, form and dissolve themselves like fleeting waves, that it always was and ever will be so, that again and again reason must turn into nonsense, and well-being into misery? Can we console ourselves with that? Can we live in this world, where historical occurrence is nothing but an unending concatenation of illusory progress and bitter disappointment?’

Edmund Husserl trans. David Carr, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology

‘To me, of course, the river paid no attention, caring only for itself, those changing, roving waters into which – as I later learned – you can never step twice.’

Olga Tokarczuk, trans. Jennifer Croft, Flights

‘Imagine having no discarded personalities, no vestigial selves, no visible ruptures with yourself, no gulf of self-forgetfulness, nothing that requires explanation, no alien version of yourself that requires humor and accommodation. What kind of life is that?’

Michael Warner, ‘Tongues Untied’, Curiouser: On the Queerness of Children

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as               unattainable as that moon;thus, they do not later                       have to waste more timedefaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselvesin some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze inand let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

Terry Hoagland, ‘I Have News For You’, Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty

O God, I am not like youIn your vacuous black,Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti.Eternity bores me,I never wanted it.

Sylvia Plath, ‘Years’, Collected Poems

At that timeanxiety was in you like a scribble.

An oblivion-scribblelike a big piece of Abstract Expressionism where your thinking brain was supposed to be.That was like nothing. It was a big waste.

Emily Bludworth de Barrios, ‘“he beheld the plumage on the miraculous casque shaken in concert with the sounding of the brazen trumpet”’, Splendor

I doubt if 30 years of bleak Leeds weatherand 30 falls of apple and of maywill erode the UNITED binding us together.And now it’s your decision: does it stay?

Tony Harrison, ‘v.’, v.

She lives on a moor in the north.She lives alone.Spring opens like a blade there.I travel all day on trains and bring a lot of books—some for my mother, some for meincluding The Collected Works Of Emily Brontë.This is my favourite author.Also my main fear, which I mean to confront.Whenever I visit my motherI feel I am turning into Emily Brontë,my lonely life around me like a moor,my ungainly body stumping over the mud flats with a look of transformationthat dies when I come in the kitchen door.

Anne Carson, ‘The Glass Essay’, Glass, Irony, and God

Spring is here! We are going to die!

Louise Glück, ‘For Jane Meyers’, Poems 1962-2012

Persephone had it right.If you must go, might as welltake all of spring with you—

Cathy Linh Che, ‘Letters to Doc’, Split

I’ve exhausted my cruelty. I’ve arrived at myself again.The sun builds a slow house inside my house,touching the stilled curtains, the bottoms of cupsleft out on the table.

Jenny George, ‘Reprieve’, The Dream of Reason

[ayellowbirds]

Pre-senting, here upon this very first night of November, elsewise known as National Novel-Writing Month, the sequel to Cypora’s Guide to Becoming an Evil Queen! A tall tale centered upon the not-so sinister destiny of an autistic trans girl in a world of high fantasy based upon both Jewish and North American folklore and legends.

Here we are! The first 1817 or so words, a bit earlier than planned, because I reached a stopping point and need to rest after a nervous day at work. The text is below the Read More, but first, a reminder: NaNoWriMo is a big undertaking, and it will mean a lot to have some support and encouragement. How can you do that?

Keep your eye on the Cypora’s Guide to Cementing Your Rule as an Evil Queen tag on my blog. Story updates and thoughts will be posted there.

Look back at the tag for the original story, here; the posts from last year of the original, un-edited draft of the story can be found about halfway down this page.

Tell me about your favorite characters from the story—or draw them, if you like! You can find visual references in the art tag, or look at the stuff that inspires me, visually, in the inspiration tag.

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Got any questions about Cypora’s Guide, the characters, or the setting? Feel free to send them to me!

And now;

30th day of the month of Vernary, the year 5647 CC

Alícha de Matos sat in a corner, staring into a cup of coffee that was long past even being counted as lukewarm, much less hot. She’d arrived in the small café in the “city” of Berry Hill when it opened in the morning, as she had done every morning since the end of the sabbath. Three days of making the gesture of ordering an overpriced mug, three days of waiting and watching.

By now, she had memorized every small detail of the café, from the mismatched chairs and tables, to the aging broadsheets and posters nailed to the walls from the days of the revolution, before she was born. Caricatures of the Icarian Empire and its leadership as monsters more grotesque than any she’d faced in the depths of a dungeon, and bold illustrations of revolutionary leaders in now faded colors. On the wall beside her, the red mane of Velvela had turned a sort of orangey-pink, like lox left out a little too long.

She was starting to think that the word she’d put out had been a waste of time, and the advertisements a waste of money. In a larger community, she’d have just hit up the local adventuring guilds, but Berry Hill was too small, too rural to even have a guild office run out of someone’s house or in the back of a shop.

Someone less familiar with adventurers—say, a wealthy citizen seeking to hire a swordswoman, spellcaster, or shootist to slay some monsters—might have assumed that a tavern, saloon, or bar would be the place to go to find them. And sure, that would be the case if you wanted to hire someone who had already won treasure and was happy to spend it on overpriced brandy.

But an actual adventurer looking for others like herself? Well, Alícha knew that the place to start was anywhere that served coffee or tea. She looked out at the crowd over a mug that she had only bothered to sip from when the café owner started to look sour at her, and tried to judge the current small crowd.

The first type coffeehouses attracted were ordinary people of the land looking for a kosher indulgence. Second were foreigners, visitors from outside the former Icarian Empire who were curious about what life was like now that the Icosans were either dead or gone. These showed up because of the third type: former revolutionaries, and those of like mind. The common sentiment was that the revolution started over a hot cup of dark roast, though Alícha was sure that café owners were the ones who popularized the idea. Whatever the truth of it, late nights of planning and strategic meetings over brown-stained maps had created a lifelong coffee habit, and the revolutionary generation and their children had proven the best thing for the business.

That generation was key. When the revolution—really, a great many small revolutions, rebellions, and insurgencies that happened to roughly coincide—achieved lasting victory, many of those at the forefront turned to seeking out treasures hidden away in the labyrinths and fortresses created by the Dungeon System. The most noble* claimed they were trying to liberate centuries of stolen wealth and property.

This café did not attract the most noble adventurers, but she hoped it would at least attract a few. Alícha looked out over those seated, standing at the counter, or loitering near the entrance, where a golem in a sandwich-board sign hawked extra-cheap cups of the weakest brew the café offered, a mix of leftovers and chicory root.

A western-looking woman in a lilac headscarf near the counter, haggling over exchange rates; most likely a foreigner passing through. Berry Hill might be a speck of dirt on the map, but it was a speck on the side of a major road, and travelers from afar often passed through. Other probable foreigners included the trio in fine black garb heavily decorated with colorful beadwork and copper, probably far-easterners† of the type who had brought coffee to the people of the land in the first place.

Seated further back was a woman who had been just as much a regular at the café as Alícha herself; all delicate features and the softness of a pampered lifestyle, with long blonde hair that curled beneath a red scarf in the way that suggested deliberate alteration rather than natural growth. Her green eyes met Alícha’s, and her expression hardened. A snob who thought herself trendy and important.

Among the lingerers out front, there was a more promising figure, who had something of the look of a lumberjack of the northwoods. Well, a lumberjack if clothed by someone who had forgotten when to stop knitting or weaving. Red plaid not as a shirt, but a robe that reached near enough to the ground that its ends were frayed and mud-stained, paired with a tuque that extended so far that Alícha thought it might have been originally intended as a thigh-length stocking for a giantess, rather than a hat.

The promising part was none of this, but the too-long sword strapped to the figure’s back by way of a bandolier that also lashed a very large bag to their hip. When they moved, Alícha saw what looked at that distance like an unusually large assortment of membership badges from adventuring unions and guilds. As the person turned to enter the café proper and come into better view, this was confirmed. The flannel of their shirt-robe parted to reveal faded blue trousers reinforced with old-fashioned plates of armor, and boots that were either gray-brown or else far too encrusted with mud to make their real color visible.

They made their way through the cafe, casting wide smiles that showed too few teeth, with several of those that remained well-chipped. Alícha could not guess at their gender from their appearance, though she supposed that it wasn’t proper to make that kind of assumption in the first place. She’d dealt with that enough in her childhood.

The likely adventurer reached into a pocket, and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper, and shook it out, then looked around the café.

“Hey, uh,” they said in far louder a voice than was needed for the small coffeehouse interior or the volume of conversation therein, taking a sip of coffee from a cup at an abandoned table before continuing, “anyone know anything about this here ad looking for adventurers and such as?”

They were met with brief glances and a few expressions of contempt, but Alícha raised a hand and waved to herself.

The cracked grin returned, and the newcomer sat down heavily on the chair opposite Alícha without turning it around the proper way. A good thing, too, with the size of the sword on their back, which Alícha hoped they could actually use. This close, they did look to have the muscles for it, but many a new adventurer grabbed the biggest and scariest weapon they could without consideration for how to actually fight with it.

“Oh hey, you’re scrappy looking and suchlike,” they said as they scooted the chair closer. “Name’s Broke, on account of my pop had a bad sense of taste for a feller named Moneymaker. I’m here about the advertisement, likewise I said.”

Alícha boggled for a moment. “Your name,” she began, and hesitated, “is ‘Broke Moneymaker’?”

“Sure as a skunk is striped,” Broke replied, passing Alícha a card‡. “Excepting those as has spots.”

The card was not a typical business-card; in fact, it was a playing-card with text hand-written over the back in surprisingly precise and bold ink. Broke tapped a deck of other cards back into place in a box, while Alícha took a closer look.

BROKE A. MONEYMAKER

Ze/Zir

PRO-FESSIONAL ADVENTURER, BODYGUARD,

BOOK-KEEPER,

SWORD-SWINGER AND INK-SLINGER

“SUMS AND CRITTERS A SPECIALTY”

“I’m afraid I don’t have a card, myself,” Alícha said, offering a handshake. “My name is Alícha de Matos, of Martıkoy.”

She recalled the format of the card, and added, “she, and her.”

“Proper excellent and good to meet you, Miss de Matos,” Broke replied, returning the offered hand. Ze had some sort of curious tube or hose wrapped around zir wrist, with the rest continuing further up zir sleeve. “Say, wait a minute or less. Ain’t you the Alícha such as some people been calling ‘the Breaker’, on account of what you done to dungeons?”

“Is that what they’ve been calling me?” Alícha sighed, and fussed with her eyepatch. “I suppose I’ve been doing things on my own for too long.”

“That’d be whatfor you made this bill of advertisement?” Broke guessed, waggling the paper. It was not the only one Alícha had paid to have posted, or else she might have been uncomfortable with Broke so casually keeping it to zirself.

“Yes, it is,” Alícha said, patting the paper down flat on the table and stopping the crinkling noise it made. “I’ve realized there are reasons I should involve myself in the adventuring community more, and either join, or if necessary, form a party.”

“Well that sounds reasonable,” Broke replied, the grin returning. Alícha wondered just how much sugar the strange-speaking androgyne ate on a regular basis. “One presumes such terms and conditions for party formation as are de-fault across most unions and guilds?”

She shrugged. “As I said, I’ve not been very involved in the community. We can go over what I had in mind, and I would welcome suggestions.”

Alícha and Broke started to discuss the fine contractual details of forming an adventuring party, including division of resources and starting finances as well as shares of any treasure, even pausing so that Broke could order zirself a proper cup of coffee on Alícha’s coin. In spite of the oddities of zir speech, Alícha quickly realized that ze had a mind for details that gave truth to zir card. Considering that canniness, Alícha made a point to keep quiet on exactly the reasons she wanted to get a closer look at the adventuring community. Her recent defeat seemed spurred by a hatred of adventurers not only by monsters, but humans as well. If there was reason for ordinary people to mistrust adventurers, it might be that there was corruption in the community. Getting more involved might be risky, but she needed to find out for herself.

She was focused enough on this and the discussion, that she didn’t notice the close attention the pampered blonde paid her or Broke.

* Or at least, those who most ardently insisted on their nobility. 

† Said “far-easterners” referred to themselves as being from the west, which was generally confusing for everyone involved, requiring the matter to be ignored during discussions. This led to a lot of circuitous avoidance of giving directions, especially difficult in planning trade routes.

‡ The Knave of Swords, in this case.