#tmbmtb

[korokposting]

the 'explaining why transfem maya fey is so important to me' post is here

I tried to keep this relatively short, when I could (and maybe will) expand this into an entire essay, but it's still ~700 words so it's below the cut ⬇️ cw for some discussion of transmisogyny

The reason that transfem Maya is an especially important interpretation to me is for many of the same reasons as transfem Wilds-era Zelda. Both characters exist in a framework where their status as women is given an increased importance as a marker of their (potential) abilities, and therefore viewing this through the lens of transfemininity provides a wider context for how these characters interact with womanhood.

Only the women of the Fey clan have the potential for spiritual abilities. Of course, it is interesting to consider Maya’s abilities emerging before an understanding of her gender identity, and this therefore serving as a catalyst for a realisation; however, I tend to follow the interpretation that Maya’s understanding of her gender came first, as a relatively young child. This provides an opportunity to explore an aspect of transmisogyny: how her womanhood may have been treated as conditional. 

The adults around her accepted Maya’s assertion of her identity, perhaps even celebrated it – women are the ones that hold (this specific type of) power in this environment! But due to this, an immediate condition is placed on the rightness or wrongness of her identity, an acute manifestation of this dimension of transmisogyny. As a member of the main family, Maya’s identity implies that she must hold spiritual power, and to fail at that would therefore be seen as to fail at correctly performing womanhood.

This adds a new dimension to some of the scenes we see in canon. Maya puts a lot of pressure on herself: she becomes incredibly upset in Turnabout Goodbyes when she is unable to channel Mia, viewing herself as useless and a failure. While part of this is no doubt due to the high standards she is held to in general, as she is already considered to be the next master of the channeling technique, Maya as a trans woman would likely also be viewing this as a failure at correctly being a woman. This is a way for her to prove and assert her identity, and have it affirmed in the culture she grew up in; therefore, it is also a way that she can ‘disprove’ her gender in the eyes of others. Maya is hyperaware of the tightrope that transmisogyny forces her to walk in order to ‘correctly’ be a woman.

Morgan Fey’s actions also have added context with this interpretation of Maya. Rather than just ascribing transphobia to her as she is a ‘bad person’ in other ways, this leans more into providing further understanding of why Morgan may have felt so determined in her belief that Maya should not be the heir of the channeling technique. If Maya’s realisation of her gender did not come until after Mia had left Kurain, then there may have been a period of time when Morgan believed that any child of hers would be the next master. Maya’s assertion of her gender, then, would have disrupted this. Morgan’s existing resentment regarding how her own ‘failures’ were treated may have then become reactionary, believing that Pearl’s spiritual powers are stronger than Maya’s (as she states in Reunion, and Turnabout) by virtue of Pearl being cisgender.

However, an interpretation of Maya as transfeminine should not rest solely on negative experiences that she has. I find Maya as an example of trans joy to be equally compelling. Despite the transmisogyny that Maya as a trans woman would have faced, she has asserted herself as a woman. She is the next master of the Kurain technique, disrupting what may have been rigid beliefs in a society that seems to follow a gender binary quite strictly. 

Additionally, Maya is – despite everything she faces – working to thrive. She is lighthearted and makes jokes, she connects with people, she is expressive with her emotions. While this sometimes being a performance is worthy of discussion (such as in the conclusion of Bridge to the Turnabout, when Edgeworth and Phoenix talking about how Maya is ignoring her own emotions for Pearl’s sake), Maya is still often joyous and proud of the work that she has done. Maya as a trans woman is an example of how trans people can thrive, and the fact that transition is a positive decision.

[urfavspacenerd]

THERE MUST BE MORE THAN BLOOD😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[antidepresssion]

tmbmtb on repeat (i am mentally ill)

[f1rewalk3r]

this is high praise, henghost. i appreciate it. if you’re having trouble adding the disjecta membra song to your playlist, you should be able to add it to spotify using the local files feature, which is how i have the entire discography on my spotify. not sure how it works for apple. personally i think Broken Birds is a great pick for her too.

but don’t tell me you dislike MADLO?? it’s great and TMBMTB is a FANTASTIC song that i have a deep emotional attachment to (listened to it religiously before dropping out of college and. heh. leaving town.) but yes, i would say i am entirely too familiar with the CSH discography, but i think i’d prefer the term “inside the bell jar” to the bell curve. sure twin fantasy is great and fantastic and it’s seminal but it’s also twin fantasy and there’s a whole catalogue of other albums to explore. like i’m deranged, my fav csh album is Nervous Young Man.

as far as kid war goes, i think it’s emblematic of a deep anger that Will experiences. you can see this in some songs, but for the most part his songs are usually about how much of a weepy little blorbo he is. not in kid war. here, all of the nasty feelings are on display. and i think that’s very Taylor coded. she has that anger in her. that “i hate you, i hate you, i hate you” type beat

Amy's top 5 csh songs? Your top 5 csh songs? Do they match?

ah. a question only for the truest of car seat headrest scholars. fortunately you've come to the right place. let's leave the question of my amy dallon scholarship unanswered.

amy's top 5:

Anchorite (Love You Very Much)

I Want You To Know That I'm Awake/I Hope That You're Asleep

Famous Prophets (Stars)

Broken Birds (Rest in Pieces)

Love Me Too Much

I hope these speak for themselves. Let me know if you need an explanation.

my top 5:

There Must Be More Than Blood

tybee island horse ghosts

Sound Man/Low Fidelity

Knife in the Coffee

Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales (Single Version)

bet that wasn't what you expected.

BONUS: TAYLOR HEBERT'S TOP 5:

1937 Skate Park

Hey, Space Cadet (Beast Monster Thing in Space

Boxing Day

kid war

Unforgiving Girl (She's Not An)

[briekv]

Ik, (Briek Verdoodt), fotograaf. 9 mei 2020. Dag 27 van 35

[carseatchestpain]

if i die soon. this is what killed me.

[korokposting]

wip wednesday snippet + yap was won by autistic franziska!! which is cool because I have a lot of thoughts. ⬇️

“Franziska!” Her head snapped up. Maya was walking towards her, waving with both hands and smiling. “Maya Fey.” In that moment, it was crushing to realise that she didn't know how to do this. At all. She'd never been able to dig into those social scripts that everybody else seemed to have. And it hadn't mattered for so long; court had its own rules that could be taught and learned. The only person she spoke to outside of that was Miles, who appeared to understand it all no more than she did, so she didn't need to try. But here, she was horribly out of her depth, and Maya was going to see that this was all a mistake. They could have kept in touch online, where Franziska didn't seem so wrong and out of place. Seeing each other for nothing more than conversations on the courthouse steps about work. Maya grinned. “It's so good to see you!” She had a dimple in one cheek, and her eyes creased at the corners, and… there was nothing about it that felt mocking. “I…” Franziska stumbled. “You, too.”

all my pov characters are autistic-coded to some degree (see also: bth sheik), largely because I don't understand how an allistic person would perceive the world, so I'd struggle to write otherwise. but I also find franziska specifically very interesting to explore as autistic.

I'm sure I come across as hyperconfident when I am Doing My Job, which similarly has a lot of rules and procedures that I can follow and know if I'm doing correctly or not, and that I have been very good at learning! but that's not my natural state, as well as the fact that some of the autistic traits that make me good at my job make me extremely not good at social interactions.

similarly, franiska has learned how to channel those parts of herself into something good for her court appearances, but still struggles with it outside of that. I really struggle with how distressing it is to feel like you know you're behaving "wrong" but you can't make do anything else because it's just not there, and I really wanted to explore that through her.

but, of course, maya doesn't perceive it as a failing. it doesn't really cross her mind that how franziska acts could be seen as one. maya is also definitely autistic, though it'll probably come across less obviously because she isn't the POV character.

[korokposting]

also! experiencing Consequences from it now but I have updated my neocities to include a page about my post-AA3 stuff: here

I have also made a tumblr tag for it: #tmbmtb (there must be more than blood is kinda too long for this sort of thing lmao but unfortunately it's the franziska song of all time)

[korokposting]

(The Crisis in the context of my AU is franziska dealing with the fact she doesn't want to be a prosecutor)

unfortunately I haven't written much Yay Niceys franmaya for the fic yet because I need to not be in the torment nexus for that but it is high priority!! I will be able to share a wider array of maya content from it soon :3

[korokposting]

wip wednesday friday?? whatever. bit from a canon-divergence AU after bridge to the turnabout that I keep rotating in my head. something something, what if miles and franziska have to take different paths to escape from manfred's shadow, and she has to confront the fact that she never wanted to be a prosecutor but didn't have a choice

“Is everything alright?” was the first thing Miles asked after she’d arrived, before she’d even had a chance to take her boots off. “Yes. I’m fine.” “You spent the whole time complaining when you last stayed here. Has something happened?” What had gotten into him to make him so relentless? He was usually content to stay back from her personal life. “I’m…” Two options. Keep insisting that it was nothing, and Miles would lay off, but it would leave him with suspicions that he’d try to resolve later. Or tell him something adjacent to the truth, and that might actually keep him minding his own business. “I’m taking a break from work. And I don’t want to be alone all day.” From his look of complete incredulity, she may as well have told him that she was a serial murderer.  It hit her, then, that there was no way she had any choice in the matter. Manfred von Karma might be dead, but that didn’t stop the rest of the world from watching his successor. The one time she’d even implied anything similar, her brother had looked at her and said, If you say you are going to quit your walk down the prosecutor's path... Then, this is where we part ways, Franziska von Karma.  Maybe he thought he’d been helping. But all she’d heard behind those words had been her father. Miles had seen the self-loathing from her first failures in court, and decided that was the only reason for it; and at the time, that was what Franziska had thought, too. But she’d done so much since then. Despite it. And she knew that walking down the path she’d never had a choice in was never going to make her happy. But Miles was staring at her like that, and it made her wonder why she’d ever fantasised that there might now be another option.

pondering an I need to leave to be happy arc will always make me feel like losing it a bit I fear

[korokposting]

intro post !

gif by the-carnival-of-time :)

all my links, about me, about my projects: here!

[it/he/xe]

video game autism haver. 🔞 as I occasionally reblog nsfw/promote my own nsfw works

some of my personal tags [links to archive, won't work on mobile app]: #korok.txt, #korok arts, #korok writes, #friend art, #bite the hand (alternate OoT ending, shink), #tmbmtb (post-AA3 canon divergence, franmaya)

this is a sideblog so you won't see follows coming from me, but I follow back most people. feel free to dm if you want my main/other socials :)