#when they potentially see visibly trans people that i would be rooming with.

[obsessionexpert]

Damian Wayne is absolutely trans

So much trans energy

So I propose Trans Fem Damian Wayne with they/he/she

Gender:

Gender is more some foggy but solid quality, but in there is some feminineness, hence them identifying with trans fem as a simple label she slapped on so that they didn't have to question longer since it didn't feel wrong.

Discovery:

I don't think he'd spend much time thinking about her transness. Only reason she discovers it being that her dysphoria gets really bad, so they embark on a secret quest to figure out what's bothering her so she can no longer be a potential liability especially if this thing gets worse. "This thing" being transness.

They come out to Dick by announcing she is neither girl nor boy and he shall respect that. Then struts out of the room to avoid conversation. Next time Dick sees Damian its while Dicks talking on the phone about Damian (for some unrelated things) uses they on the phone, notices dami, mutes himself, asks if that pronoun set is okay. Damian is like "tisk is it not obvious" and Dick asks if other people can know, and about damians name. Damian clears up that yes everyone can know (tho not the general public) and yes she's fine with their name.

Finding out he's trans fem is a different story that probably involves a late night conversation/confession/pondering of transness. I'm leaning with Tim.

Pronoun Elaboration:

Damian wouldn't put that much effort into pronouns. He ponders what pronouns they'd be okay with for thoroughness because obviously they can't leave their research half-done, but caring about pronouns is an additional grievance that others can use as a weapon and it'd be weak if something so insignificant others don't really care about became something that could be used to harm them.

I do think Damian would end up using she more as he and the people around him, get more used to seeing her as trans fem. Especially as they transition more visibly (btw when I say transition I mean all kinds of transition. Damians mainly social for awhile but this applies for when he does medically transition to)

Dysphoria:

He doesn't really get social dysphoria, it's a lot more bottom dysphoria, physical dysphoria in general, and even the way she internally genders herself, but they do like being included in stuff like girls night and other groups/activities intended to be exclusive to girls. Damian doesn't really get how others (Like Jason who I also head cannons as trans) can be bothered by the wrong pronouns and stuff other then a pride thing.

Physical Transition:

Damians transition goals aren't really that physical. Maybe way farther in the future he might consider going on E but since that could decrease his physical possibilities they probably won't want it anytime soon. It might change depending on how canon goes for him. She figured out she was trans too late for puberty blockers, but he does want bottom surgery as soon as they discover transness. (Which isn't happening. I don't have an age yet for when this happens but they're not a teen yet). Damian as a teen goes through a phase of trying to build more lean/less bulky muscles but that ends somehow. The influence of muscly woman in her life and the general shattering of that traditional framework combined with Damian prioritizing what's needed for vigilantism.

Social Transition:

They tried wearing breast forms but some light hearted remark, embarrassment, and dysphoria led to them never trying it again. Damian doesn't want the general public to know, but everyone she deems as important enough to know personal info about him does. (Probably a pride thing and plus who wants the Gotham upper crust to rag on you *cough* what happened to Dick *cough*) Damian does give in (Begrudgingly they insist) to getting more traditionally feminine clothing and they definitely wear it. At first to kind of challenge the batfam, because really how far are they going to let him go? Surely they won't keep up with this when she wears a skirt? It's less out of any real desire for this to be in her wardrobe, but lo and behold it ended up mingling a bit with the rest of his fashion. They end up growing their hair out in a still short (The style only goes down halfway to his neck at the longest) but more androgynous haircut. Damian also employs the use of a plain dark green headband to "push back the longer hairs blocking her sight" even though he would never let his hair grow long enough to block her sight and really the hairband is for aesthetics sake more than functionality most of the time. The headband is a gift from Alfred.

Conclusion:

Holy shit I have so many trans batfam head cannons. Expect a part 2 to this probably

[queenofzan]

had a wild experience with my doctor visit yesterday

So my GP is a man I actually followed from the last clinic he was at, where I had been getting care for like. Nine years. I still go there for like, gynecology, because there is a nurse/midwife there whom I would die for, but I only have to see her like every five years or whatever. I had in fact only seen Dr. Brown twice before I followed him to the other clinic lmao, but both of those experiences were like. Honestly excellent. I think he was the first doctor I ever saw who spontaneously asked for my pronouns before I was out or started T, like. This was part of his introduction to a new patient was giving his name and pronouns and then asking mine, bc the paperwork didn't. Wild shit.

He was also the doctor I saw when it had been five weeks and I still had COVID symptoms, and he was very nice and wrote a letter that I should not have needed for my shitty ableist program.

Like, I've seen several other doctors at that clinic, but never really liked any of them that much? I didn't really click with Mom's doctor, and I was not about to start seeing the doctor who doesn't listen to her unless I'm in the room, even if she does seem to like me.

Anyway, like, this is a doctor I really like, for many reasons. The only reason I initially didn't see him again after the first time was because I was like, a male doctor? Who sees men on purpose? But like. Gaining more weight and getting more visibly trans it's like. Yes I would actually like the large man who did not bring up my weight or make weird remarks about my gender, and somehow immediately diagnosed my migraines as allergies and was correct, thank you.

But this visit on Thursday, there was a student doctor with him, and she was the one to do the first part of my visit, and like. Jesus H Christ it's night and day with these people. She didn't ask very many questions OR listen to my whole explanation, regurgitated textbook information that I KNOW was textbook information because I did research on my symptoms and the treatments for it before I even made the appointment, and was just like. Recommending lifestyle interventions like eating around acidic foods. Which I've been doing...for ten years....Not helpful. But she was still going to give me the meds I figured I needed, so like, I was going to just zone out and deal with it.

At the end Dr. Brown stepped in again and was like, hey here's some information (confirming my suspicions) that was, IMO, clearly drawn from actually listening to me, and also, here's a fun fact about testosterone and the medication we're giving you, the t has a protective effect against the negative side effects! So hopefully you will have an even better outcome than most people.

And like I said, I've seen him like. Three times. Only once did we go over my family history, and I don't think Mom's probable GERD was included then. But I said I'd been dealing with heartburn for a while, and Dr. Brown was like, "How long did you say you'd been dealing with this?" (I didn't say specifically; she didn't ask) and then was like, yeah, you're probably going to end up on this medication long-term, just shoot me a message via mychart and we can schedule an endoscopy so we can keep an eye on any potential side effects moving forward, no need to come back in, just keep taking them.

This was like the five minutes at the end of the visit! And it demonstrated so much better listening and understanding of his patient!

Anyway. Nothing like having a "typical" medical experience to make you appreciate how good your doctor that you specifically followed to a new practice is.

[kiidwritings]

so cringe, but i love u <3

chapter 0: prologue

wc; 3,563. tags/warnings; maybe ooc .T4T RAAAGGHHHH!! Trans horangi. Trans könig. 5+1 Things. sorry if könig is ooc. im trying here. also horangi might be ooc. I TRYING. idk i based his AUDHD on mine so :P. same with könig's social anxiety. author is nd. Author is trans. she/he/they könig. transfem könig. im trying my best ;-;. not beta read. events based on stuff in author's real life. lol mention of masturbation. author knows very little german. like the basics of german. thanks duolingo. FART JOKE/MENTION DFHBDGJB. possible grammatical errors

pairing: kim "horangi" hong-jin/könig

READ ON AO3!!

Love is a remarkable thing. Whether platonic or romantic, it’s something that everyone deserves and can really change a person’s character and heal wounds that were never properly treated. Love is expressed in many different ways; cooking for someone, basking in the warmth of another’s touch, or even through the act of lovemaking (or fucking if you’re freaky like that). 

Life isn’t some fictional romantic book with some ridiculous trope like soulmate strings, or love at first sight, you have to learn what love is beneath all the lovey-dovey shit- love was awkward flirting, one-sided infatuation, heartbreak, and realizing some things just don’t work out between people. 

Sometimes it feels like you’ll never find love, no matter how long you wait, it seems like no one has the desire to make you theirs.

To have those little inside jokes that no one else understands.

To be able to sit down and work out problems in a way that leaves both parties satisfied.

To have rubbed off on each other so much that everyone can see that they're yours and you theirs.

To be able to love is a beautiful thing, whether sexual or romantic activities are involved.

So when König first saw Horangi, dressed down in his all-camo attire and sunglasses that just barely made his almond-shaped eyes visible, he couldn’t help but let his nails pick unconsciously at the dead skin along the ridges of his finger beds and begin sweating underneath his hood from the raising temperatures.

Of course, König kept his distance, needing to read him from afar before even thinking about approaching him. His skills were good no doubt about that, KorTac is only filled with the best, but it seemed like König was taking too long because one afternoon, Horangi waltzed up to them and practically demanded a sparing match.

“You’re sparing with me today.”

König blinked, sweat pooling under their mask from both Horangi’s presence and having just beat the shit out of a punching bag (she had a lot of built-up anger that day and not enough sleep, you couldn't blame her!)

“What?”

“Sparing match,” Horangi pointed to the sparing mats, “Now, let’s go.”

He didn’t even wait before walking over to the mats, expecting König to follow him like a trained puppy at his beck and call. If König was none the wiser, maybe they would’ve seen the sway in Horangi's hips, like a cat courting a potential mate.

But deep down, König couldn’t help but be turned on by Horangi’s dominance, and their leg bounced and thumped like an excited bunny.

The more the two were around each other- whether it was for a mission, during a debrief meeting, in the mess hall, in the training rooms, or even after hours when everyone started to retreat back to their dorms, König and Horangi would always make some extra time to see each other.

Maybe Horangi liked the rank imbalance between them, or maybe it was the fact that they were both trans, but it seemed like whatever higher powers had finally answered König’s prays to be loved for once (by someone besides his mom and grandmother- whatta ladies man!) because after many long months of pining for each other, getting flustered over lingering gazes, and landing in awkward positions during sparing (which usually ended up with Horangi knuckles deep in himself), König made the first move.

If she’d told younger her that she made a move on a cocky, badass baddie such as Kim “Horangi” Hong Jin, little Anton would’ve scoffed.

Him? Talking to anyone about romantic interest? Yeah, probably in some other universe where König didn’t feel like the room got ten times hotter whenever anyone even remotely up to his standards stood within a 10-foot radius of him.

But here they were, standing outside Horangi’s door with shien of sweat over their skin, shaky hands, and having had hit his head thrice on the doorways around the base, his mind too clouded by how to even start going about this.

He owed another thanks to whoever was listening to his prayers because despite having not a complete family for the entity of his adolescence, KorTac had definitely filled in the voids he was missing. Asking around for advice was both embarrassing and nerve-racking.

Roze went the straightforward route; go up to Horangi, ask him out, take him to dinner, bring him back to base, fuck him hard and nice, and then ask him out. The euphoria of the moment will help bring out Horangi’s true emotions without the shadow of insecurities. (Maybe it was the fact that Roze was aromantic and didn’t care much for the several steps skipped when someone usually tries to ask someone out.)

Hutch’s advice was much more thought through and less… vulgar . Sure what Roze said about going to dinner would be great- König and Horangi were kind of in the awkward stage of wanting to be with each other- but in the following days after the date, it’d be best to try and keep everything as they were before, and if Horangi’s feelings grew, then she knew it was time to make it official with him.

With his mind still full of insecurities and inexperience, König went and flopped down on his bed, limbs hanging off due to his imposing stature. 

“ Gottverdammt … this shouldn’t be so hard, right?” König muttered to herself as she stared at the painting chipping on her walls. She inwardly cursed herself for not having gotten over her stupid social anxiety and gotten some game back in his youth. (His therapist would’ve shaken his head if he heard him say that.)

Maybe she could think about it over some paperwork, the reports piling up on her already messy desk. Neh, König needed focus to do work, and having his mind also occupied with this whole dating situation would have him staring at the same sentence for half an hour, damn his ADHD. 

Working out always helped relieve stress and it was late, so he’d basically have the whole gym to himself. (They will still never live down accidentally farting while bending down to pick up a weight… ugh .) But König did have paperwork to be done, damn that paperwork, know he’s gonna be thinking about it for the rest of the week, URGH !

Shuffling onto their back, they let out a deep belly sigh. Staring at the semi-stained titles of his dorm ceiling, he thought back to his childhood, memories of brisk early mornings, perfecting his handwriting so his teachers would stop berating him for it, running home to avoid being hit by rocks by kids who never seemed to be in school and helping with as many house chores as needed in order to help his mother who worked relentlessly for her baby’s sake. König smiled, remembering a day when his mother came home, her crooked teeth showing in her big smile, standing on her tiptoes to give Anton a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

<“Mama, you look happy. Did something happen?”> Anton asked as he shifted in the too-small table chair. The already-worn wood creaked under his weight. 

Elena’s lips were cracked, having worked out in the cold from the first light of day to the late dusk hours, but her smile never flattered. 

Anton was her rock and she was his, having stuck through everything in life together. 

When his father left, not needing to be weighed down by the responsibilities of being a father to a baby who would never grow up to be as much a man as he is, she cried and cried to her mother, a strong widow who was more than welcome to take care of her daughter’s pride and joy despite finally feeling her age. 

When Anton went through growth spirit after growth spirit, having to retuck his shirt into his waistbands and feel the breeze on his constant plumbers crack, she took all the old clothes her late father and dead-beat ex-husband left behind, stitching up whatever tears and rips were in the fabrics and sending him off, praising Anton for looking like such a big, strong boy when really, the clothes just made him look like the homeless man he’d see during his bike rides to the overpriced supermarket in the next town over.

<“Oh Anton, my sweet boy,”> She came over, cupping his cheeks riddled with freckles (they were more prominent on colder days), ance, and scars from said ance and placed one of her sloppy, motherly kisses on his forehead. His curly auburn bangs stuck to her lips as she pulled back. 

The sight of his mother’s smile made his hands shake and slap against his thighs with untamed happiness.

<”Go put on something nice. We’ll pick up your grandmother and go out for something to eat. I’ve saved up enough for us.”> Elena’s thick eyelashes were glistening with tears and up close, Anton could see the bags under her hazelnut eyes.

After fancying themselves up and picking up his grandmother, they made the half-hour drive into the city. To regular standards, the restaurant was barely even considered fancy, it was just some family-owned diner with mediocre food and greasy tables, but the sight of the food made Anton enthusiastic while reciting the prayers his grandmother made them say before meals. 

Whilst in the midst of practically shoveling food in his mouth, Anton’s grandmother spoke up. 

<”Enkel (grandson)...?”> She spoke in a weak yet gentle voice. It had lost its verbal liveliness, but only those closest to her could understand when emotions ran high through her words. Anton looked up, his lips coated with the spicy broth from the Potato Gulasch he was practically inhaling, before quickly wiping his mouth with a crumbled napkin. His grandmother taught him better.

<”Has your mind cleared from the last time we talked?”> There was slyness in her tone as Elena raised her eyebrow and finished chewing a particularly chewy piece of beef in her Tafelspitz.

<”Hmm? What’s this about?”> She questioned rightfully so, if there was something bothering her son, she should be the first to know!

Anton blushed and began pushing around the vegetables in his stew. <”I…umm, I wanted to ask out a girl. Remember the one I was paired with for that project?”> 

Elean seemed to perk up even more, playfully bumping shoulders with her son.

<“Wunderbar! (Wonderful!) Oh, my sweet boy!”> She gushed and grinned wildly. In other circumstances, Anton would’ve laughed bashfully and gone pink, but in the middle of a busy restaurant where any of his schoolmates could’ve walked in or been within earshot of this conversation, he ducked his head and mumbled incoherence, embarrassed.

<”Yeah…I just, don’t know how to though. She’s so sweet and pretty I just… she’s too good for me.”>

 Elean blinked at this, her smile gone and looking rather serious as his grandmother shook her head.

<”Enkel, we talked about this. You need to-.”>

<”No girl is too good for my son!”> Anton’s grandmother was cut off by Elean’s sharp words. She was frowning and looked rather upset. Not at Anton himself, but at his mind and his insecurities and the words he dared to utter, belittling himself and his abilities.

<”Whoever this girl is, she’d be lucky to have someone such as yourself, my own flesh and blood, ask her out on a date! Good confessions come from the heart of someone just as good, and if she can’t understand how blessed and pure you are by your words, then she doesn’t deserve shit from you!”> 

Elean’s cheeks were flushed by the time she finished her rant before they got even redder.

<”Ah! Entschuldigung, Mutter! Bist bald! (Excuse me, mother! I’m sorry!)”> She hung her head at her grandmother while Anton just stared at his mother in astonishment. 

Just his mother’s words alone filled him with such… confidence. He felt his hands shake and suddenly his mind cleared with only one thing in mind; asking this girl out.

His grandmother only smiled and let her ankle knock against her daughter’s in a silent acceptance. 

The rest of the dinner went well, Elean even treated them to some desserts. The ride home was filled with comfortable silence and the rumble of Anton’s stomach as it tried to adjust to the spices that laced the Potato Gulasch. 

Anton smiled to himself in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. The reflection in the mirror was no longer someone he scrunched his face up at, but a young man who was slowly breaking out of his shell, like a caterpillar wiggling its way out of its chrysalis.

With a full stomach and his mother’s words still echoing in his head, Anton nuzzled into his flat pillows, forgetting all his other school troubles and only thinking about the happy-go-lucky brunette who went the extra mile to say hi to him in the halls.

(He also doesn't think he’s ever farted so much in his life. His stomach growled and rolled from the spices that were now coating his insides and attacking his bowels. His asshole was on fire that night.)

It was about 20 minutes before lights out, the usual sounds of the Kortac base were now mellowed down as the night hours passed. 

König balled his thin sheets up in his calloused fists before jerking up in bed, death staring at the hickory door of his room. König wasn’t a pussy, he wasn’t gonna disappoint his mother, and he didn’t his rank as colonel by letting his insecurities get the best of him!

Social anxiety be damned, this mountain of an Austrian man knew how to get shit done when shit needed to be done!

Without a moment’s hesitation, she threw open her door and made her way down the halls of the barracks, getting stares from those who were still up and about. She made a beeline for Horangi’s room and wasted no time giving the door a sturdy three knocks.

“I- just a second!” Horangi’s accented voice was heard through the door along with some rustling. König stood straight and waited for the top of the Korean man’s head to come into view.

Horangi appeared in his doorway wearing some casual attire; a pair of black cargos, a V-necked gray shirt, and a simple black hoodie. His usual pair of sunglasses were nowhere in sight, not even hanging on the collar of his shirt, and his eyes, dark and shimmery like black diamonds, looked up at König with such innocence.

König could tell he wasn’t wearing his binder, not that he made it a habit to look! But when you’re tall enough to see the curve of everyone’s boobs from above, it was sometimes the second thing you noticed about a person.

(Sometimes König wished they had boobs. The mere thought made their face flush and they felt vulnerable even within the walls of her own room. Someday, she’d work up the courage to find a bra that'd fit her chest and cry at the sight of how beautiful his body, which he spent years hating, could be.)

The sight of Horangi made him instinctively hunch his shoulders and swallow hard. König blinked before clearing they spoke, “Ah, good evening, Hor- I mean, Hong-Jin!” 

Hong-Jin made it a point that his callsign was indeed NOT his actual name and that during their casual time together, he preferred that name over Horangi (it especially sounded nice when it came from König’s lips, but he would never say that, no matter how blunt he could be).

“Hello, König. What brings you around this late?” Hong-Jin said as he leaned against the door frame, arms crossed and without the playful scrunch of his eyes, König would’ve thought the worst, and all his confidence would’ve gone down the drain. 

König had yet to tell Hong-Jin his real name.

Anton is not a colonel, but a citizen. She was beneath the sniper hood König adorned when on base and during missions. Anton was a mama’s boy who was too big for their own good and although hated their dad, wished he hadn’t left so that they might’ve had some sort of male role to look up to. 

But that was a can of worms she wasn’t ready to open, it’d probably go bad by the time she was ready to even think about cracking open its rusted aluminum top.

König gripped the fabric of his pants to keep them from shaking. “Can I come in? I wanted to…talk…?”

He inwardly cringed as his voice went up an octave as his sentence progressed, but Hong-Jin just smiled, well, König assumed he smiled based on how his eyes squinted (it was hard to see when he had his mask on), and stepped out the way to allow König into his room.

Making sure to duck, König went and sat on the desk chair. They were familiar with the arrangement of Hong-Jin’s room from the number of times the two had hung out in it… as friends of course!

Hong-Jin plopped back down on his bed, there were some stray clothes lying about but otherwise, it was tidy, as tidy as a ‘lived-in’ room could be.

“So what’s up, König? Roze told me you two talked earlier.”

König visibly stiffened, heart stopping for a second before pounding at his rib cage like a rabid animal and it was suddenly 80 degrees under his hood.

(Fahrenheit, of course. I’m American.)

“Really? What…what about?” König squeaked out. (What the hell, König didn’t squeak . He’s a grown-ass dude, the fuck would he be squeaking for?!)

Hong-Jin just shrugged smugly. “I don’t know, you wanna tell me? That was your conversation.” His everyday, average teasing seemed to be too much for poor, little ( NOT little. Remember? This was a middle-aged man we’re talking about.) König.

Their chest puffed and they exhaled loudly, almost unnecessarily loud. With averted eyes and sweaty palms, she spoke up again.

“Y-yeah, I had something to admit.” Hong-Jin blinked and if it hadn’t been for his mask, König would’ve seen the pink flush in his cheeks.

Hong-Jin shuffled on the bed but kept silent, pleading for him to continue.

König let out another sigh again, “I’ve been thinking about this for…some time now. Maybe three months after you transferred to KorTac and since we started really talking to each other,”

Her leg started bouncing and the desk chair let out little squeaks. Hong-Jin didn’t seem to care, listening intently to every word that slipped from König’s mouth.

“And, I’m not sure if it’s too early or if you're completely uninterested feel free to tell me off, but I’d love the opportunity to-.”

“ God yes .”

Kong blinked at the desperation and eagerness that dripped from Horangi’s agreement.

Hong-Jin blinked, his body leaning forward and hands gripping his knees, before leaning back and blushing hard.

Oh, such a pretty pink.

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“Well, is ‘Yes’ the answer you were hoping for in response to your question?” Hong-Jin’s voice was a mixture of bashful and smug. 

König crossed his legs, then uncrossed them, then crossed them the opposite way. “I…umm, well it depends! Can…can I finish my sentence?” König huffed in amusement. 

Hong-Jin nodded, so with a little bit less anxiousness, König spoke up again.

“I wanted to ask if you…umm, well, if you wanted to go out?…with me! Not just like in general, but like ya’ know…-“

“On a date?” Hong-Jin’s voice was now smug and he was definitely smirking under his mask. 

That sly cat…

König just nodded and fidgeted with the drawstring of his sweatpants. “ Ja. Well, I guess I already know your answer ‘cause you just said yes, but I wanted you to actually know what you were agreeing to! I’m not even sure if you like me or not, or just pitying me! Which is completely fine if that’s the-!”

“König…” Hong-Jin’s voice was now soft, a natural rumble from his chest, akin to a noise a tiger would make (haha, see what I did there?).

König just fluttered her eyelashes and swallowed, “Hmm?”

“I would love to go on a date with you. I do like you if that somehow wasn’t clear enough.”

So that’s how it started, two predators- a bear with the heart of a rabbit and a tiger who had a knack for teasing, learning to be soft with each other.

What people don’t realize about going from friends to lovers is how similar the relationship is to the previous friendship. You go about your normal routines with a little bit of PDA and flirting added into it (and a lot of fucking, Horangi’s sex drive was higher than König’s). Soon, you’ll be moving in with each other, spending late mornings in each other’s arms, sharing clothes, and swapping spit.

But like all humans, we have flaws and weaknesses. Whether or not you choose to deal with a partner’s flaws shows more about your character than theirs. And if you're strong enough to stay with someone despite feeling yourself physically recoil at the sight of their icks, then that shows your love and devotion towards them.

But one little ick wouldn’t ruin a relationship, right?

Till death do them part…although, it’d be years before those words would even be muttered.

Feel free to give criticism and feedback via ask, I’d love to know how to get better and to hear what y'all have to say about my writings!

Have a good day/night! :3c - alienkiid

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[ilgaksu]

I know they’re not really in all the shows (😢) but are there aspects of different adaptations’ versions of heihua that you draw on for particular personality traits (or I suppose if you want are there adaptations that you feel mischaracterized them)?

OH BOY WHAT A GOOD QUESTION I'M SO HAPPY

I've mentioned this in private conversation with people but I've realised recently that not everyone is aware that when I'm writing my heihua, it's deliberately a mash-up between Liu Yuhan's Xiao Hua (Ultimate Note) and Ji Chen's Hei Xiazi (SH, award-winning heihua movie, etc) and I did this for multiple reasons!!

so, the ~ilgaksu heihua extended cinematic universe~ or whatever we're calling it is actually very deliberately taking place in a very limited time-frame. It starts directly post-UN, when Xiao Hua is around 24/25, and ends when he's about 31. Literally every fic, bar On Anatomy, is designed to take place in that time-frame. It's basically me writing the early years of a marriage, as well as a bildungsroman from Xiao Hua's POV. The idea is that if you read the fics and try and flip the POV that they're in, they're actually telling very different love stories.

Xiao Hua's version of their relationship is the experience of a big first queer love and reckoning with how that contextualises a lot of his life he's been trying to emotionally suppress rather than reckon with (childhood, grief, gender, family; the emotional damage of growing up the only trans kid he ever knew and therefore a permanent anomaly under pressure to perform a role to survive in the family in his actual gender). It's about someone who effectively is recovering from emotional hypothermia. So, for me, it had to be Liu Yuhan because his Xiao Hua is so painfully young and so clearly grappling still with what it means to be Xie Yuchen, and we see a framework for how Xiao Hua behaves around people he loves which we don't see as much of in other adaptations (because SH really robbed Lay in giving him very limited interactions with characters he really cares for and focuses on how he operates solo. I think it's robbed because I think Lay's performance is deeply underrated).

Hei Xiazi's version of their relationship is basically the terror of having been on this ride before, and the rollercoaster of it broke your legs, and you're still choosing to try and get back on it again. It's basically this song. And Ji Chen's Hei Xiazi is just so much emotionally heavier. I feel flippant to say he's giving off divorced single dad energy who eats alone far too often in SH, but honestly he's giving that off nonstop. There's a real exhaustion and self-awareness and irony in his performance, and both a mixture of the potential for violence and the choice to withhold it. I think a lot about how he behaves around Liang Wan and Su Wan when they jump off the cliff together, and how telling it is that in a situation where he feels he's walking them to their deaths, he takes their hands.

Simultaneously, both of them are living through the reality of being loved as a person, when I would argue both of them have been depersonalised and unpersoned through their lives, and are viewed in terms of what they symbolise to people, or what they can supply. The cost of being a person in a world that doesn't want people like you to even be alive is really something I want to explore with them, and so it matters to me that visually you have Xie Yuchen as someone very young, who doesn't understand how not to fight for it and that he can stop fighting sometimes, and Hei Xiazi who has given up fighting for it and is being forcibly compelled back into it.

Also - I think when the age difference is so visibly codified by having a 20something visual against a 40something one it matters in terms of how they address it - it's always permanently in the room without any ability to not see it. I've been told it also emphasises the care and tenderness my Hei Xiazi is showing to Xiao Hua - it's not just someone loving someone younger, but an older queer man whose experiences of it are different reaching across literal generations.

I pull on other aspects too - some bits from the novels, some of the way UN structures HeiHua's dialogue (although I tend to work off analysis of linguistic features of LYH's and Ji Chen's and splice them against each other) and knowing that, in my head, Ji Xiaobing is the reality of my Xie Yuchen at 40, and figuring out how he'll get there. I think that arguments of mischaracterisation come down to what aspects of the character are being explored - I think we see in some series Xie Yuchen as opposed to Xiao Hua for example and I can rant about that some if people want, but this ask is REALLY LONG ALREADY.

[bekandrew]

A Good Trans Medical Story

This morning I had surgery today for the phase 1/trial period/temporary version of the nerve stimulator bladder implant I'm supposed to be getting (and first of all, holy shit! A relatively minimally invasive and easily reversible trial period for implants!!!). I'm decades younger than the usual patient that needs this, but I had sepsis earlier this year and it fucked up a lot of things, including leaving me walking with a cane. It should be noted that I'm transmasc and I live in Mississippi. Even though the doctor I was seeing wasn't in a religious hospital when I saw him for appointments, he had surgical space at one of the religious hospitals - and his people had marked me as Male in my records. Even when I had to clarify with the receptionist at the Mississippi religious hospital that I was trans because it was potentially relevant to the surgery, she was kind and happy to help me, and even went out of her way to ask a supervisor how to enter the information properly so it wouldn't get messed up. It should be further noted that the surgery had nothing to do with transitioning in the slightest, I was just a person who happened to be trans seeking healthcare. Even the original sepsis had nothing inherently to do with my transness, really, just poverty and being brushed off as "med-seeking" until I was obviously and visibly dying. The surgical nurse was polite when asking whether I still had the equipment needed for pregnancy to determine whether I needed the routine pre-procedure pregnancy test. No one gawked or made a big deal about anything. There was only one person who misgendered me, but I don't remember how long they were actually in the room, and I don't know whether they even saw anything other than my long hair. So I don't know for sure whether it was malicious and will choose to believe it was accidental because the rest of the experience went well. Beyond that, when I was (as usual) a difficult stick for the IV - I probably have some scar tissue in places from the sheer number of times I've been hospitalized or needed ER trips - the nurse tried only a couple short times before reaching for the lidocaine and using what would be a normally painful spot in the wrist. he got a great, painless IV line in only one more try and I wish hospitals would just do that sort of thing with me from now on. 11/10.

The surgery itself was also significantly less painful than other surgeries I've had before, and they provided low-dose but still completely sufficient medication and recommendations for how much ibuprofen to take. My symptoms already seem to be getting better to the extent I hadn't realized quite how bad they were before and I'm very excited to get the full implant soon after the trial period is over. My quality of life is going to increase measurably.

[femminane]

I had a lovely yet slightly haunting dream last night. I started walking through the perfectly crisp and pure white halls of some sort of facility or labyrinth. Initially, I had willow, my irl small black dog, with me. However shortly after I began walking through these white halls, she was replaced by a small white dog, terrier shaped. I understood that this dog was my responsibility but not mine, and I needed to keep track of him and keep him out of trouble.

We passed through many of these halls, encountering different people. They were all women-- it began with one old woman, who the dog grew from the ground, and who was disgruntled to see both the dog and I. We continued on, passing around differently turning, pure white, brightly lit hallways separated by doors. All the women we saw after that were young, and seemed angry and on guard upon seeing me enter. However, each time rather than attack despite the impression it was a possibility, they saw that I was only following this dog and instead settled into grim or indulgent amusement at my presence. There was one very large woman alone, and another where a group of very young women / older children were practicing their ballet stretches in identical white ballet outfits, who all stopped in unison when I entered. I got the impression that they would continue to get younger and more multitudinous as I got deeper in, and also that the younger ones were preparing for a ballet.

At last I reached the room where the ballet performance would be taking place. Through the doors, there was a luxurious theater, with lavish curtains, gilded woodwork, and seats both on the floor and on a second balcony level. The pure white sterility was gone and replaced with maximalist elegance. There were other people there waiting for the performance, but they were out of sight. There was also a man there, who I knew to be an agent of some kind and a trans-temporal being. He was the only one visibly seated in the audience, and none of the women or girls from the halls were present. He had on a grey pinstripe suit and a hat, but his face was shadowed and not visible.

This man had my little black dog in his arms. I approached him and expressed that our dogs seemed to have gotten mixed up, and he traded me willow for the small white dog who I had been guarding. Willow was wonderful and rectangular in my arms when I got her back. He told me that it would be polite to purchase something from the concession stand to support the ballet.

I woke up warm in bed after that, and felt like I could have easily drifted straight back into the dream if I wanted to. Although it was slightly haunting and there was an impression of potential danger, I still felt overwhelmingly comfortable and at peace when I woke up and thinking about the dream now. I don't usually have dreams that are so ambiently pleasant or internally grounded linear, or that I remember so clearly.

Anyways I don't usually record dreams, but this one was so nice I wanted to write it all out somewhere.

[boyplushie]

i feel so selfish but also im gonna start crying bc of this

[13yearslater]

Overheard

One of the things about not being visibly trans is how often people don’t even consider that they may be in the presence of a trans person. 

People say things when they think they’re safe, when they think they’re being funny, when they believe those around them will share the same mindset. People judge when they think those they’re judging are out of sight. They’re usually the kind of people who mean no harm, who would never say such things to a trans person; it’s a cheap laugh with no consequence, it’s sharing your opinions in a space you feel you will not be challenged and will have those opinions confirmed by those around you.

It reminds me of the days when men of a certain age would spend their evenings in the pub telling racist jokes. Safe in the knowledge that there was no one around to take offense, safe in the knowledge that their friends wouldn’t call them out and found their jokes equally hilarious. I knew men like this. It was just banter amongst friends. They meant no harm, they wouldn’t treat someone from another race with any less respect in person and they certainly wouldn’t share these jokes with someone from another race. That alone shows they recognise the wrongness of it so why do they do it?

Perhaps there’s a sense of danger and excitement in the taboo? Perhaps there’s an odd sense of community and bonding in partaking in something that isn’t acceptable in any other circumstance? It’s that us vs them mentality. 

I grew up in a small English town where everyone was white British and the small handful of LGB people were known by name to everyone because they were different. It’s just ignorance but not necessarily deliberately malicious ignorance. We joke about things we don’t understand; things we don’t understand challenge our worldview and make us uncomfortable so we separate ourselves from them, we make jokes about them. Maybe we use these jokes to gain a sense of control and community over something that is new and scary to us? It doesn’t make it ok, but they already know it’s not ok so I’m interested in what the motivation is to continue doing something that they know is wrong.

I can recall countless times where similar attitudes affected me as a trans person. Times when a trans customer had left the shop only for my bosses and colleagues to turn around and comment on their appearance and laugh, making jokes about their genitals, suggesting them as a potential partner for another colleague as the colleague would recoil in horror because the mere idea of dating a trans person is so outrageously disgusting that that in itself is hilarious, times when casual transphobic jokes just popped up spontaneously, times where their gaze sought mine for approval and affirmation of their hilarity. Then there were the times that there’d be a TV show featuring trans people and I used to dread going to work the next day because in every single job I’ve had it would be guaranteed to be the talking point of the workplace the next morning. I had to sit back and listen to everyone’s ill-informed opinions on trans people; how they look, how they dress, their bodies, “the surgery”, their opinions on whether or not they think trans people are valid, whether their treatments should be covered on our national health service, whether they should be allowed into certain spaces, the jokes, the misconceptions, the stereotypes, the “I’ll call them what they want but they’re not real men/women”. From the innocently ignorant to the outright hurtful, the list is endless. 

They’re conversations that no one would willingly have in the presence of a trans person. But I was there all along. I squirmed in my seat as you told me you didn’t think they shouldn’t be entitled to healthcare, when you told me you thought it was a mental health illness, when you told me they’ll never be real men/women. I was there all along as I awkwardly nodded along to your opinions, desperately conflicted as to whether I should sacrifice my own privacy in order to speak up to a room full of people all in very much in agreement of their opinions about ‘people like me’ or if I should just sit there with the burden of guilt and the sense of betrayal by both those I considered friends and on behalf of myself for my cowardice and reluctance to stand up for myself and my trans siblings. I was there all along and you never knew it. The funny thing is I don’t doubt that many of these people would have been upset to realise they’d hurt me so why didn’t they think about impact of their words before they spoke them? Because they thought the impact wouldn’t ‘land’ anywhere?

I lived in fear of coming out for a long time. I was so afraid of the judgements I’d already heard so many times from the people I trusted and often those I least expected to hold those opinions. I didn’t want them to hold those views about me. If these were the people I otherwise deemed to be good people, what about the people who weren’t good people? What would they think, or even, do if they knew.

It still happens from time to time. Every now and again, someone will make a comment about trans people to me without realising I’m trans, maybe after seeing a TV show or perhaps after walking past a visibly trans person in the street. But now, I will not stay quiet. I am trans, I will tell you I’m trans and I will call you out. 

[wolfywordweaver]

Trans Mages Week 2021 DAY 6 - solidarity, pastel/punk

NOTE: this started out with the idea that Baz's dad didn't accept him being gender fluid but has somehow morphed into something a bit more. There's MalMage, a brewing storm, genderfluid vampire Baz, potentially gender confused Simon, biker gangs, magic, fantasy world building, 50s inspired towns, and political intrigue. What a mess. I don't know where I'm going with this, but it's possible that I'll morph this into a full blown thing.

The roar of the motorcycles was a familiar buzz in Simon’s ears, something that usually lulled him into a state of zen. However, this time there was a change in the feel of the roar, and he could catch a different scent on the wind. There was a town up ahead.

It took conscious effort to keep his folded wings from stretching out behind him at the thought of being able to make a stop and maybe even spending a couple of days somewhere. The Mage’s Men had been on the road for a while, slowly making their way to a kingdom out further past the High Mountains.

There had been a few odd jobs here and there to keep them fed and content until they got this big one, and he was hoping that maybe the nearing Watford would have a little something to do. It had been a while since he’d tasted a nice hot scone or something sweeter than a pack of discount sandwich cookies.

Davy threw back a few hand signs and Simon grinned widely. A much needed stop was just what they needed. The rest of the ride into down was a blur, and soon the whole pack was taking a quick tour to gauge the place.

Watford was a lot like most of the little towns hovering outside of capital cities. Coven’s magic signature was over everything, a bond of protection should anything befall the small town. Davy was not a huge fan of Coven, and Simon glanced nervously at the man.

Davy Mage was the leader of their gang, a man with great vision, testicular fortitude, and a willingness to do whatever it took to reach his goals. He’d earned the title of Mage after years of battle with another family, and Simon was quite lucky to have gained the title of Heir.

Whether Davy was his actual biological father or not was up for debate, but Simon tried not to worry himself about things like that. Davy was the closest thing he had to a father, and knowing the truth of the matter wouldn’t change anything. Any curiosity or whisper of discontent was tucked deep down with all the other things he didn’t want to think about.

Right now, the only thing he wanted to think about was finding a nice inn that offered hot breakfast. Freshly cooked food and a soft place to sleep sounded blissful, and he definitely needed a shower. Offing another round of goblins after his head had left him in dire need of getting cleaned up. Even his leathers had gotten messy in that battle.

Thankfully, the Mage didn’t change his mind and direct them out of town. They rode through the town square, taking in the views of shops and concerned looking citizens. It was normal to have people frightened of them until their intentions were made known.

There were a lot of wandering gangs that were carrying out missions from the larger kingdoms, and most towns never knew if they were on a hit list or not. If these guys were under the protection of Coven, they might be less than friendly for the duration of their stay, but Simon didn’t care. It’s not like he planned on settling here or anything.

Just a bit of food and rest was all he needed to be ready to move on.

The whole gang pulled up to a modest looking inn, and then the engines were shut off. Groaning in relief, Simon swung his leg back over and off his bike before allowing his blood-red wings and tail to stretch out. Premal jumped back in annoyance so that he didn’t get knocked off his feet, but Simon couldn’t be bothered to care.

Everyone knew that they needed to keep their distance.

“Simon,” the Mage barked as he pulled off his helmet and ran a hand through his hair, “get up there and scope things out.”

“Yes, sir!”

Flying was one of the only things better than riding down the open road, Simon thought as he felt the wind whipping around his body. The large wings at his back beat loudly, working to bring him up high enough to skim his hands along the underside of a few stray clouds.

Whooping loudly, Simon dipped and rolled through the wind as he examined the area around Watford. There didn’t seem to be any signs of danger and the Kingdom of Coven's capitol was far away enough that they would probably keep their nose out of the Mage’s business unless a fight broke out.

He was surprised to see a rather large school for such a small town, but shrugged it off and made his way back down to the Mage.

“Looks clear,” he panted upon landing.

The Mage nodded and thoughtfully stroked his neat thin mustache. “Good, good. No signs of the Coven moving?”

“Nope.” Those green eyes narrowed in annoyance and Simon quickly corrected himself. “Uh, no, sir.”

“Perfect.”

All of the Men waited outside while Davy and Simon went in to negotiate a stay. Things almost always tended to work better in Davy’s favor when he had Simon hanging around.

Blue eyes took in the modest décor of the place and noted that there was a lot of school memorabilia. These people were awfully proud of their school. The goat on the coat of arms was kind of silly, he thought. Once the negotiations were through, Simon was put in a room with two other Men and they all unpacked their few belongings.

Simon enjoyed a hot shower and washed off the reminders of the past few weeks. He still had a healing wound from a sword to his side a couple of weeks ago, but there was already a scaly patch over it helping it heal.

The scales would fall off after it was completely repaired, another strange bit of the magic that always seemed to be around him.

Once he was washed clean and in fresh clothes, Simon got the Mage to magically hide his wings away so that he could better explore the shops. There had been too many mishaps with his wings and broken goods and the Mage didn’t want to pay for anymore so he would begrudgingly oblige.

With all that finished, Simon strode out on the town in his cleanest pair of jeans and a white t-shirt with his leather jacket over it. Premal had cleaned his leather’s already, a kind gesture considering that Simon had been too scared to try again after catching his first pair of leathers on fire with his attempt to clean them.

Everything about Watford felt clean and quaint. There were perfect rows of homes, perfectly manicured and maintained gardens and yards, and rows of tidy shops he could explore. There weren’t really any children to be seen, and Simon realized that they were all probably still in school.

That thought made him a little sad. He’d never been to school. For the first half of his life he had actually been feral, a wild beast of a thing whose only thought was keeping itself alive. Then the Mage found him and took him in, teaching him the ways of people.

The magic that ran hotly through his blood belonged to the world of people, but the wings and tail were something else entirely. He’d heard the whispers of “dragon” often enough to wonder if that was his origin, but it had been too long since people had even seen dragons much less conversed with them. No one knew anything of dragon children.

Walking through the bookstore, Simon allowed his fingers to drag over the spines of the books, enjoying the different textures and designs. The shop keeper’s eyes were firmly planted on him, but the man said nothing. None of the adults did.

Maybe it was his tail, visibly swaying behind him. It hadn’t ever been as much of a nuisance as his wings, but it was still odd enough to put most people off. It made it hard to even get a date these days, but he still didn’t like hiding away these parts of him, especially for something as fleeting as a one-night stand.

“When does the school let out?” Simon asked with what he hoped was a casual tone.

The man blinked at him in surprise. “Three o’clock for the young’uns,” he replied with a gruff voice. “And 4:40pm for the graduates. Same as all the other schools.”

“Ah.” The man was looking at him even more curiously and Simon found himself leaving the store rather quickly afterwards.

A café called Pritchard’s caught his attention, and soon Simon was happily tucked in a corner scarfing down a pile of steaming hot scones. He’d never had sour cherry ones before, but was beginning to think that he had a new favorite now.

The bell over the door rang, and Simon peeked over the high-backed booth to see a small group of students come in chattering.

“Uncle Pritchard, is it true?” a beautiful person asked. She was taller than everyone else and had quite a striking figure.

Pitch black hair was neatly wrapped in a bun at the nape of her neck. She had a lovely silk blouse with wildflowers on it tucked into a sensible black pencil skirt and very shiny shoes. Simon always liked shiny shoes.

He also quickly noticed her pointed ears and the fangs peeking out over her lovely lower lip. A vampire? In this little place? The fact that no one was staking her meant that she was probably a pet or something, so he settled himself down and observed as quietly as possible.

“Kids, you shouldn’t be out-” the man tried before he was interrupted.

“They let us out early,” another young lady stated with the authority of a warlord. “Are there really mercenaries in town?”

He rather liked this one’s wild hair. It was tied back with a thinning ribbon and Simon wondered if the poor thing would give out and set loose the mane of curls.

“Now, now-”

“A gang in town!” Someone else squealed excitedly. “I can’t believe it! Nothing this exciting has ever happened before!”

“Our town had a showdown of Mages barely fifteen years ago,” the first girl snapped in annoyance.

“Yeah, but we were like babies,” someone else added.

“Kids,” the café owner tried again, his eyes nervously shifting towards Simon.

“Do you think they’re here to challenge Mr. Grimm?” the second girl asked with a grave tone. “He won’t go down without a fight.”

The first girl looked almost ill at the thought and the man quickly reached out and took her elbow. “Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. No one’s challenging anyone. They’re just passing through.”

Simon stuffed the last scone into his mouth and continued to enjoy watching the others hovering around the cash register. There was something quite refreshing about seeing other people his age who were so clueless to things like how gangs operated. Sure, there were a few roving bands of bonety hunters who would ride into places and raze them without provocation, but those were usually taken out by gangs like the Mage’s Men.

It was bad for business all around to have groups destroying villages and cities, so kingdoms wouldn’t put up with behavior like that. Even as a roaming gang with no kingdom loyalty, the Mage’s Men knew better than to get the ire of an entire kingdom pointed in their direction.

“Uncle, are they-”

“Really now, kids,” the man interrupted exasperatedly. “Do you want to order something or not?”

They all looked taken aback by his response and Simon grinned. The man obviously didn’t want them saying anything to offend him while he was sitting right there. It meant that he was scared too. Simon wasn’t easily offended, and really couldn’t care less about what some small-town gruffs thought about him or his family.

Deciding to take pity on the man and give them all a chance to gossip in peace, Simon stood up, his boots hitting the tile loudly. Everyone at the front of the building jumped in shock and Simon kept his most confident smile in place as he stared at them all.

“The food was good, mate,” he addressed the older gentleman and tossed a few bills on the table.

His eyes moved towards the group of young adults and found that tall girl. Her legs were even more stunning now that he could get a good look. With a brazen wink in her direction he strode right up to the front door and decided to head back to the rest of his group.

He hadn’t got more than a few meters from the café before the bell was ringing and there were marching footsteps behind me.

“Pardon me, you brute,” a voice demanded, “but you owe me an apology!”

Turning back in amusement, Simon glanced up into those indignant silver eyes. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” she snapped back.

“What for? Don’t like a compliment?”

A blush burned on her grey cheeks, but she stood her ground.

“Th-that wasn’t a compliment!” she protested. “That was rude! I am not a piece of meat to be gawked at!”

Blue eyes roamed over her more carefully this time and noted the more distinguished larynx and the deeper pitch of voice. “It’s not gawking, doll. Just admiring.”

The sputtering person seemed completely thrown off, caught somewhere between being even more offended and slightly flattered.

“It’s rude to stare!” the vampire shot back, seemingly not understanding why Simon wasn’t apologizing or backing down.

“People stare at me all the time,” Simon replied honestly. “I don’t waste my energy on caring whether they’re being rude or not.”

Those grey eyes looked completely baffled for a moment before the motion of Simon’s tail caught their attention. Eyebrows shot up and that lovely mouth gaped for a moment, allowing a better view of those darling fangs. It was nice to get to admire such things when they weren’t gnashing at you.

“Oh, you’re a...”

Simon shrugged. “They don’t have a name for my type, doll. Are you someone’s pet?”

“P-pet?! Not at all! My father is the mayor of this town!”

“Ah.” Simon gestured towards his ears. “Don’t really see a lot of you out and integrated into the towns. Makes sense with your dad, though.” The vampire self-consciously touched at their ear and Simon stepped forward carefully. “I don’t mean it it in a bad way, doll.”

“I’m...” The vampire coughed to clear their voice and shook their head. “My name is Baz. Please call me that. And it’s they/them.”

Simon jutted out his hand in greeting. “Simon. Good to meet you.”

“He/him?” Baz asked carefully as they took his hand.

“Yeah, that’s fine.” Davy had called him a boy from the moment he captured Simon, and the young man had never given it a second thought.

“A pleasure, Simon,” Baz greeted politely.

Warmth filled his body and Simon enjoyed the feel of that hand in his. Baz had oddly rough hands for someone as posh as they were, but they also had a smokey smell to them that made Simon feel comfortable and almost...safe.

Not one to ever let an opportunity pass by, Simon stepped even closer and put on his most charming grin. “Say, Baz, wanna go out on a date with me tomorrow?” The vampire seemed to choke on their breath, but Simon pushed forward. “I’d like to get to know you.”

He wasn’t certain if this place had certain courting rules, but he was sure that the Mage could get him out of any jam he walked into. The man knew how much he liked holding hands and getting close to other people. He’d tried something serious with a previous Mage’s Man but it hadn’t gone over well and the guy his head smashed in by a Numpty as Davy’s warning to the others to keep their hands off of Simon.

Simon was an Heir and weapon first and foremost, and having people fuck with his emotions was a no-go. So, Simon was limited to random dates and one-night stands any chance he could get.

“Uh, I...” Baz swallowed thickly and nodded. “Okay.”

“Can you come out for lunch?”

Baz nodded and Simon felt a happy warmth fill his body. “Alright. Here at noon, yeah?”

“Okay,” Baz responded shyly. There was a definitely blush burning on their cheeks.

Simon squeezed Baz’s hands and then quickly made his way back to the rest of the gang.

*****

The café owner glanced nervously between the two young people as he set the strawberry milkshake between them, but Simon ignored him and focused completely on Baz. The Mage had struggled to hide the wings away that morning because Simon’s magic was buzzing excitedly, but they were thankfully still tucked away.

While Simon was dressed the same as the previous day, he took the time to admire Baz’s outfit. They looked so polished and put together with their tan slacks, shiny belt, green polo shirt, and a fuzzy sweater neatly hung over their shoulders and loosely tied around their collarbones.

“How long have you been a vampire?” Simon asked dreamily as he leaned forward and rested his chin in one hand. Baz really was quite pretty.

“Since I was five,” they replied softly, a hand automatically coming up to cover the fangs.

“Don’t cover them,” Simon stated softly. “I like seeing them.”

“Oh,” Baz replied with a slight squeak before they leaned forward and drank down a bit of the shake.

There were two straws in the glass and Simon felt his body throbbing with happy energy. Everything about this place was sweet and delightful!

“I think you’re pretty,” Simon added, falling back on his tried and true brashness. He enjoyed seeing the blush light up on those cheeks. “Beautiful really.”

“You’re quite outspoken,” Baz retorted, but the smile remained on his lips. “And a flatterer.”

“I like to speak the truth,” Simon replied honestly. “And if I like you, I don’t see the point in not saying so.”

“Don’t you like to get to know someone first?” Baz asked curiously.

“I’m getting to know you now,” came the laughing response. “What’s your favorite scone?”

And with that, the two of them carried on an easy conversation. The strawberry shake dwindled down between them, and when Simon slid his hand across the table to drag his finger against the back of Baz’s hand, the vampire didn’t pull back. Their fingers hooked together as they talked, and both left lunch with dreamy looks on their faces.

As Simon meandered back to the inn, Davy Mage stood in a hall quite familiar to him and stared at a large portrait. The woman painted in it stared down at him severely, and he couldn’t keep the curl of distaste off his lips.

“What are you doing here, David?” a tired voice asked.

Davy looked over to see Malcolm Grimm, his all-white hair a shock from the memories he had of the man.

“You look old,” he sneered angrily.

Malcolm didn’t rise to the bait. He just stood next to the younger man and stared at the portrait. “Grief ages you, David.” The men stood next to each other quietly, each reminiscing over times gone by. “What are you doing here?”

The truth was dangerous, so Davy danced around it. “Passing through to another job. A Mage’s work is never done.”

Most Mages through history had settled into a town and worked from there, but Malcolm didn’t want to point out the obvious.

“Are you happy?” he asked, a heaviness in his words that had been there for so many years.

“What do you care?” Davy snapped, the irritation bubbling up.

“I’ve always cared.”

“Fuck you!” Davy growled as he wheeled on the taller man and shoved him. “Fuck you!”

The hurt was heavy in the air and Malcolm stared at the white-knuckled fists clenching his lapels. He’d seen that same grip so many times already and it opened up the wounds of his heart.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, knowing that nothing would make it better.

“We’ll be leaving soon,” Davy replied after a few moments, a crack of emotion breaking through the words. “And I won’t ask again.”

“I know.”

Davy stepped back and released the creased material of the suit. He ran a hand through his neatly trimmed hair, a bronze brown that had once hung loose and carelessly over his forehead.

“I’ll be at the same place,” Davy added quietly, almost in defeat. “You’ll know where to find me.”

[demonsonthemoon]

More Real (Your Brutal Truth)

Fandom: Supernatural Pairings: N/A Word Count: 7581 Summary: Dean accidentally gets hit with a "gender-affirming potion." Except that, for him, it's anything but affirming. The hunting life hasn't really equipped him to deal with the fact that he's stuck in a female body for the next few months. Note: Title from Against Me!'s "Delicate, Petite & Other Things I'll Never Be.” I've seen some discourse going around about the "inherent transphobia" of certain fanfic tropes like genderbent AUs, mpreg or sex swaps. Those posts made me realize that I hadn't read any new sex swap stories in a while, despite them being hugely popular a while back. Now, that might be in part due to the fact that they were especially popular in the Supernatural fandom and that I had moved away from it, but I also think there genuinely aren't as many of them as they were before. Anyway, the point is that I've always enjoyed them, and while they can indeed rely on transphobic and essentialistic stereotypes there's also just SO MUCH potential for gender exploration in them. And this is why I decided to rub my greedy little trans hands all over the trope, because I will always prefer subvertion over cancellation.

Read it on AO3.

“You sold me out, you bitch, you-” The second witch jumped at Elena before either Dean or Sam got the time to draw their weapons. She wasn't supposed to arrive this soon, they hadn't been ready, and if they didn't do something, one more person would get hurt. Sure, said person was a witch, and usually Dean would have said good riddance to her, but Sam had done a thorough job of convincing him that not all witches were the same, and Elena had actually been helpful so...

So Dean jumped into the fray, dragging the second witch (he couldn't help but call her The Evil Witch in his mind) away from Elena. The woman whispered a spell, and Dean was tossed across the room, hitting a set of shelves. His vision darkened, but at least he had the satisfaction of hearing a shot ring out before he lost consciousness. Sam would do what he had to do, Dean wasn't worried.

Turns out he should have been worried. But not about the Evil Witch. About the bottles that had been broken in his fall and whose content had been splashed all over him.

“And there's no way you can change him back? Give him the opposite potion so the effects counteract each other.”

“That's not how it works, the potion acts on your current shape, if we tried to turn him back that way, his body wouldn't be right. If it worked at all. The spell is designed to be unbreakable. That's what it's for. But it's only temporary, it won't do any damage. He'll just turn back to his normal body after a while.”

“How long?”

“It depends on the person, on the metabolism. I can't say...”

“Give me an estimate.”

“Between two to four months? Sometimes it lasts longer than that, but usually not less.”

“Four months. He has to stay like this for four months?”

Dean figured it was past time he woke up properly and found out what this conversation was all about. The first thing he noticed was that he was no longer on the floor, but had been moved to a couch. That meant he'd probably been out of it for a little while, which wasn't great news. Sam and Dean really couldn't keep getting knocked out as much as they did and still avoid brain damage. Statistically speaking, it would be a miracle.

He opened his eyes slowly, mindful of any potential headache.

“And he's just... He's fully...”

“Yes,” Elena replied through gritted teeth. “I told you, that's what those potions do.”

“Yeah, okay, I get it, I just...”

Dean sat up, and the movement must have caught Sam's gaze because he immediately moved towards him.

“Dean. Hey. How are you feeling?”

Dean stretched his shoulders, still coming back from the haze of unconsciousness. “I'm fine.” His voice sounded weird, so he coughed a little.

“Don't freak out, okay? But there's been... an issue.”

“This is literally the worst way you could have phrased it if you didn't want me to freak out.”

Wow. His voice really did sound weird. What was up with that?

He ran a hand over his face, trying to shake out his wooziness. His cheeks were... surprisingly soft. He'd shaved that morning, sure, but it was nearly evening know, so his five o'clock shadow should have already settled in.

“You broke some potions when you fell. Nothing dangerous, okay? But you're...”

Dean pushed his brother away, sitting up straighter. He looked down at himself.

“What the fuck?”

“They're gender-affirming potions,” Elena said, drawing Dean's attention away from what were definitely breasts on his chest. “It's not dark magic. It helps some people, when they can't access hormones or surgery.”

“Gender-affirming potions?”

“You know,” Sam replied awkwardly. “For transgender people. It's like...” He winced. “A sex change.”

Dean looked down at himself again. At his breasts and the way his t-shirt fell awkwardly over them, too large for his frame. At his jeans beyond that, and the way they were too large around his hips despite the belt that was supposed to hold them in place.

“What the actual fuck?” He couldn't help himself and put a hand to his chest, cupping one of his boobs just to make sure that it was really there, that it was real.

“Dean!” Sam exclaimed in protest.

He could take his prudishness somewhere else though, because Dean was freaking out. “You mean that I'm a woman now?”

“Your body's female, yes,” Elena explained. “Temporarily.”

“You need to change me back.”

“Like I told your brother, I can't. No one can.”

“This is bullshit. I can't just be-”

“Dean, come on, it's not her fault.”

Dean was about to protest again, because it was definitely not his fault either, this was what he got for trying to help a witch, he'd known it was a bad idea... He stopped when he noticed the expression on Elena's face. She wasn't revelling in this like someone who had just gotten their ways or played a bad joke. She looked sorry and, more importantly, she looked scared.

Dean forced himself to take a deep breath and calm down.

“Okay. Fine. So, what do we do? We just... wait? I'm just supposed to live like this for several months and pretend everything's fine?”

Elena shrugged. “Loads of people do it. For what it's worth, I really am sorry. This is the opposite of what those potions are meant for.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever. If you can't help, we'd better just go. Before another one of your spell goes off in a way it isn't meant to.”

Dean knew he was being too harsh, but he couldn't help it. The way his voice sounded kept irritating him, and now that he'd noticed it, he could feel the ways in which his body wasn't the same as before. He felt like he had a good excuse for being snappish.

He'd pulled his belt as tight as it would go and still needed to regularly pull his jeans up from where they threatened to fall off his frame. What a ridiculous situation.

He'd had to pull the bench-seat forward in the impala to reach the pedals comfortably, because turning into a woman had apparently also made him a good two inches shorter. Which was bullshit. Tall women existed.

He'd thrown a glare Sam's way, daring him to comment or complain about how he was missing his leg room. His brother hadn't said anything. He kept giving Dean short glances out of the corner of his eyes as he drove. It pissed Dean off, although the rational part of him knew that it was normal for Sam to be freaking out about this as well.

Dean got out of the car as soon as they'd pulled into the parking lot of the motel they'd booked the night before. He made a beeline for their room and didn't even wait for Sam to walk in before he locked himself into the bathroom.

With some trepidation, Dean started pulling off his clothes, starting with his shoes and jeans, then his t-shirt, until he was standing in his boxers and socks.

He raised his eyes and looked into the mirror.

For a while, he couldn't move. It as possibly the strangest thing he'd ever experienced. The reflection looking back at him was both decidedly him and not him. His face was thinner and a little softer than it had been, without any visible facial hair. But at the same time, his eyes were exactly the same as they'd been before, just like his hair.

Then there were the more obvious difference, i.e. his chest. He had boobs. Not too small either. Once again, he couldn't resist the urge to grab them, just to check that they were really there, that they were really his.

Touching them was weird. Not bad weird, but not really good weird either. Considering how much he liked touching girls' breasts, he was kind of confused that the only feeling being able to grab his own provided him with was bewilderment.

Dean stared at his boxers. He knew he needed to check. Knew he wanted to check. To be honest, he already knew that the change was as complete as Elena had promised. But he couldn't not check, right?

So he dropped his underwear and looked at himself. He looked and he felt... not much, really. That was weird, right? That was most definitely weird. He had a vagina, for fuck's sake. Of course he was supposed to feel something.

Dean had heard his brother close the door, so he knew that he was sitting in the next room, being thoughtful and giving him space. It made him feel a little guilty about what he did next, but once again... He couldn't not, right?

So he touched himself. Just a little. Just to see what it felt like. He let his fingers skim over the lips of his vagina, then trailed them upwards to gently press against his clit.

This was so weird.

This was so, so weird.

He stopped. He stopped before the sensation became more than that. A sensation, not yet really pleasure. He pulled his hand away and closed his eyes for a moment. Breathing.

His pulled up his boxers, put on his t-shirt again, and gathered his jeans in his arms. He didn't want to put them on again, not if they kept falling down. He had some sweatpants in his duffel. Those might hold better.

Four months. He was supposed to stay like this for four months.

Fuck. He was going to have to shop for clothes.

Sam didn't comment on his state of undress when he came out. “You okay?”

Dean shrugged. “I'm fine.”

“Dean-”

“Look, I don't want to talk about it right now, okay? I just got turned into a girl by a witch and am going to have to stay that way for the foreseeable future. I don't know how I fucking feel about it. Weird. I feel weird! But I'm fine, and talking about it isn't going to change things.” He dropped his jeans on his bed, then turned to his duffel and put on his sweatpants. Back turned to Sam, he added: “I'm gonna need to buy some clothes.”

“Yeah. Right. We... We can go tomorrow. I can... I'll grab some takeout for us to eat, okay?”

“Sure. Yeah. Good idea.”

“Okay.”

When Dean didn't add anything, Sam grabbed his wallet and moved to leave the room.

“Don't forget the pie!” Dean called after him, finally turning to face him.

“Of course not,” Sam said with a smile.

A kind smile.

He closed the door and Dean groaned. He knew he was about to be on the receiving end of a lot of those smiles in the coming week. Which was bullshit. His body had turned female. It wasn't as if he was sick or anything.

Dean put a hand on his stomach.

Shit. Elena had said that her potion turned your body fully into that of another sex. Did that mean he was going to have his period?

Going clothes shopping the next day was just as awkward as Dean had anticipated. He dragged Sam into a Goodwill, figuring that at least in a second-hand store no one would find him weird for picking up way too many items and trying all of them on. It took him five tries to find a pair of jeans that actually fit him. He put a skirt into his basket without trying it on and without looking at Sam. Shirts were easier, although most t-shirts were annoyingly thin and let the shape of his nipples show through.

How was he even supposed to begin figuring out his bra size?

He categorically refused to set foot in a lingerie store. The small little shops all had women wearing bright friendly smiles in them, and he knew they would ask him whether he needed help and he would have no idea how to reply and he just wouldn't. So they went into a department store, and Sam hovered over him awkwardly as he walked to the underwear department.

Finding out that sports bra came in standard shirt sizes was a relief. Dean was ready to take a pass on the chance to wear sexy underwear if it meant not having to try on 5 different bras. So he took two of the sports one in the same size as his t-shirts and didn't look at Sam until they were back in the car.

They went back to their motel room. They'd booked another night since they didn't already have a new hunt planned. (Technically, Sam had booked another night, because Dean didn't really want to know how the reception clerk would react if he saw his new face.)

“Go ahead if you want to...” Sam started, gesturing towards the bathroom.

Dean sighed, but carried the bags of new clothes inside with him.

Changing was slightly easier than it had been the day before. He wasn't used to his new body, far from it. But at least the ways it moved and the new sensations had stopped being as foreign. At least it felt like his body again. Different, but still his.

Dean pulled out one of the two pairs of jeans he'd bought. It had strass lining the pockets, which Dean didn't feel great about, but well. When in Rome.

He put those on over his boxers (He was not going to wear panties. Out of the question. Especially not with his brother there.), then put on the sports bra. The sensation was weird, but not much more than the feeling of his boobs moving when he walked had been. He put a branded white t-shirt over it. Finding a simple t-shirt that didn't have a horrifying design printed on it had been surprisingly difficult. This one had been his only decent find, but Dean had figured that he could always just wear his regular stuff. Oversized shirts were a thing with women, right?

He finished his outfit by putting the flannel he'd picked that morning back on. It was warm enough outside to go without, he supposed, but he wasn't ready to relinquish his layers. He rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves, then stared at his reflection.

He walked out of the bathroom.

“I look like a lesbian.”

Sam looked up from his laptop, where he'd probably been looking for a new case. “What do you- Oh.” He started laughing, then tried to hide the giggles behind his hand.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Come on. Don't be shy. I said it first.”

Sam tilted his head to the side, still laughing slightly. “I mean... Yeah. You kind of do. Jeans and flannel, you know?”

“I'm not going to wear one of those floral blouses, absolutely not happening.”

“But, well, it's not a bad thing, is it? I mean, you do like women, so...”

“Yeah. Straight women. 'Cause I'm a guy.”

“I know! I know, dude, I just mean... I just mean it's not too bad if people assume you're a lesbian. Might stop some straight guys from trying to flirt with you.”

Dean grimaced at the possibility. He had already considered it, had in fact spent most of the morning avoiding looking at people's faces so as to ward off any attention.

The thing was, he didn't care if it was a guy or a girl. The idea of anyone flirting with him while he was in this body just felt wrong. He wasn't about to explain that to Sam though, because the man was too smart for his own good and might pick up on the subtexts that there were times when Dean would be comfortable getting flirted on by a guy, and that was one of many conversations that Dean didn't want to have with his brother. “I guess.”

“Hey. Don't worry about it. You look fine.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

It did get easier after that. Once he got past his original discomfort, Dean set out to explore the possibilities of this new body more thoroughly. He wasn't about to wear a sexy dress or whatever, but he just let himself... be. Stopped hunching in on himself to hide away, which didn't feel natural to him in any body. He let his body be a body, and found it quite interesting to notice the differences between how people interacted with him now in comparaison to before. Especially women. Comments that would have obviously been taken as attempts to flirt in his old body were now received like honest compliments. He never got anything more than a smile and a thank you out of them, but there was often something so honest in that smile that Dean couldn't feel mad about it. Sam – who was in on the joke, obviously – found it kind of hilarious.

Another thing that was seriously throwing off Dean's flirting game was the fact that he and Sam kept being mistaken as a couple. And sure, considering that this had happened before when they both looked like guys should have prepared him for it, but it was still infuriating. A girl and a guy could hang out together without being a couple. And, yes, Dean and Sam had different hair colors and body types, but they were still brothers. Couldn't people see that?

Dean's exploration of his female body also took a more... hands on turn. Becoming female didn't mean that he'd lost his libido. Besides, weren't all guys curious about what sex felt like for girls? So Dean touched himself. In the shower, like he usually did, because Sam was always in the next room. (It was frustrating sometimes, but Dean would never trade privacy for the sense of loneliness that had settled in his bones when Sam had left for Stanford.)

He quickly figured out that sitting down would be a lot easier that staying up. So he did just that, settling himself on the tile of the shower floor, back to the wall, and spreading his legs.

He watched his fingers trail the length of his vagina to settle on his clit. He rubbed against it sotfly, experimentally. The sensation was strange, diffuse and too much all at once, like he was already overstimulated despite barely feeling anything.

He kept going. Soon the sensations changed, growing more familiar along with his arousal. He trailed his fingers lower once again, between the lips of his cunt and... yeah. He was wet. The sensation was a complete mindfuck, and Dean had to close his eyes as he slipped a finger inside of himself. Once again, the feeling wasn't what he'd expected. Not that he'd consciously imagined something but... yeah. He moved his finger around a little, trying to keep on rubbing his clit with his other hand at the same time. The angle wasn't great, which was really frustrating. He pushed another finger inside himself, still not looking, curled them upwards a little and... okay. He felt... something. Something good. He kept pushing in and out, a little more insistantly and maybe... he used his thumb on the same hand to rub against his clit as he moved and that was... really nice.

He felt his muscles clench as his orgasm approached, speeding up his rhythm even as his wrist started to hurt, frustration growing as he teetered on the edge.

And then the spasms started, and Dean struggled to keep any kind of rhythm at all as the sensation washed through him in several waves.

He stayed sitting for a few seconds, pulling out his fingers and washing the white fluids coating them in the flow of the running shower. He was careful as he stood up, legs still a little shaky. Washing himself down felt weird, as he was overly conscious of his vagina and the way the sensation of being stretched open still lingered.

He didn't spend much more time in the shower much after that, and walked out and into the bedroom as usual. After all, this was the usual. He jerked off in the shower all the time.

The next step was to actually wear the skirt he had impulsively bought in the charity shop. He told both himself and Sam that it was only a way to look the part when they went to talk to some witnesses for a case. They were supposed to be insurance investigators, so his usual butch look wouldn't work as well.

Sam didn't seem convinced, but he didn't say anything. That was pretty much his entire policy on this whole sex-change thing. He did what he had to do to sell their covers when they were out in public and acted as if nothing had changed in private. Dean had to goad him into making any kind of comment or joke. It was... nice, Dean guessed. Thoughtful, definitely, even though it didn't really make Dean any more comfortable. Joking was his go-to coping mechanism. Sam's silent respect only made him feel like this was a bigger deal that it really was.

Just like wearing a skirt wasn't a big deal. He just... wanted to try how it felt. (He did go back to a department store to buy himself some tights, because shaving his whole legs wasn't something he wanted to do. And rocking a skirt with unshaved legs kind of went against the idea that he was wearing it to blend in in the first place.)

And it actually felt... nice. Lighter than wearing jeans, allowing him a freer range of movements. (To an extent. Sam had to nudge him as they were seated on one of the witnesses' couch so that he would close his legs.) It felt even better without the tights on, which Dean figured out when they went back to their motel room to wait for nightfall before they broke into the cemetary to salt and burn the local vengeful spirit.

Sam avoided his gaze a lot during that evening, but he also didn't say anything. Dean knew the skirt thing was weird. Most of the time he shed his feminine clothes as soon as they were alone, reverting to sweatpants and old t-shirts. He would have to put on jeans again went they went out at night. But for now... it felt nice. Fun. It looked good and it was comfortable and... well. There weren't a lot of things about this situation that were comfortable, so couldn't he enjoy this one without overthinking it?

Three weeks into the spell, Dean's stomach started hurting. At first he thought he might have eaten something bad, but it wasn't the same kind of pain. Then he found blood in his boxers.

Fuck fuck fuck.

He'd known the day would come, because Elena's potion was very thorough, but knowing it in theory hadn't meant that it had actually felt real.

This was very real. At least they were back in their motel room and not in a witness's house. Having to excuse himself to change his underwear would have been a lot more awkward in that situation. It also explained why Dean had felt so horny the past three days.

“I need to go to the store,” Dean grumbled.

Sam hummed, barely looking up from his laptop. The thing they were hunting was apparently only talked about in some African legends, so finding a way to kill it had been slightly more difficult than expected. “Beer run?”

“Yeah,” Dean easily agreed, happy for the excuse.

Finding the personal hygiene section of the local supermarket hadn't been an issue. The problem was that Dean was then faced with a lot more options than he knew what to do with.

He didn't know how he felt about the idea of tampons, because sticking a wad of cotton in his vagina and carrying it around all day was just... uncomfortable.

So, pads. Was he supposed to get the normal ones? Bigger ones? Was the fact that there were special packs for the night something he should be worried about?

He took a pack of the bigger size, figuring it was better to be safe than story, then was struck by the thought that the pads wouldn't fit inside of his boxers and that he would have to by some panties after all.

Fuck his life and fuck Elena's potions.

In the end, he bought the menstrual pads, a pack of three pairs of black panties, some painkillers, and turned around last minute to grab a six-pack of beer as well.

Had to keep up his cover right?

He didn't look the cashier in the eye when he paid for his items, even though the middle-aged woman didn't seem particularly interested in his selection. Dean knew he had nothing to be ashamed off. This was all natural and blah blah blah. Except it wasn't natural, not for him. It was fucking witchcraft and it fucking hurt.

As soon as he was back in the motel room, Dean settled at the table, opened a beer and used it to wash down one of the painkillers.

“Are you okay?” Sam asked, looking at him over the screen of his laptop.

“Just peachy. You find how to kill this thing yet?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

“Maybe? I'm not sure if that's good enough, Sammy.”

Dean had thought that it would become more bearable as time went by. He'd thought that he would get used to his new body, that it would get easier not to frown when Sam called him Dee in public or when guys in the street looked him up and down.

Instead, it just grated on his nerves more and more. At first it had been weird, confusing. Then there had been a short while where it had been... almost fun. He'd been able to see it as a sort of experiment, and he'd played with it, hyping up his female persona as some sort of game. But now it just felt heavy. He was tired of not recognizing himself in the mirror, tired of the offended looks he got when he dared act like normal in this new body, like no one had ever seen a woman chew with her mouth open or stare at a waitress' ass. He was tired of pretending, tired of being judged, and tired of this fucking body that didn't belong to him.

Still a month and a half. At least.

Even hunting was weird now, because he was used to being taller, larger. It was also very frustrating that every monster they fought always immediately went for him, like being female per definition made him the easy target. So he'd taught some monsters a lesson or two about sexism. At least there was that.

Sam obviously noticed that something was wrong. His puppy eyes had basically been trained on Dean ever since the potion had hit, and they only intensified as soon as Dean's mood turned sour.

“Quit it, Sam. I'm fine. Just... tired of this fucking spell. But there's nothing we can do, right? So leave it alone.”

“Maybe we can't reverse it, but you could still talk about it, you know?”

“It's not because I'm a chick now that you get more chick flick moments. Don't even try.”

“Yeah, but that's the thing, Dean. You're not a chick, like you say. You just have the body of a woman and are forced to interact with the world like you're one, and don't try to bullshit me because I know it's not easy for you, I have eyes.”

“Yeah, well. Still doesn't change the fact that there's nothing to be done about it.”

Sam frowned, looking thoughtful. It was the kind of expression that indicated he'd just had an idea that would probably take some time to work through.

Dean left him to it, instead starting the series of pull-ups and push-ups he'd begun doing every evening to compensate for this new body's lower upper-body strength.

Dean hadn't been so dilligent about keeping in shape since his dad had been around to tell him off for not doing it, so the activity brought back some weird memories. At the same time, it allowed him to genuinely feel in his body, in control of it, despite whatever form it took.

So yeah, Dean had a woman's body now. But as long as nobody tried to talk to him, and as long as he had the fire in his muscles to focus on, he could ignore that. It was fine.

“What's this?” Dean asked, looking at the item Sam had just handed him. It vaguely looked like the sports bra that Dean always wore when they went outside, and he wondered if this was a jab at him for not washing his underwear enough.

“It's... uh.” Sam looked... embarrassed? Awkward, at least. “A binder.”

“A binder?”

“For your...” He gestured vaguely towards Dean. “Chest.”

Dean frowned. “And you had to buy me one because...?”

“Look, it's not like a bra or something. It's to... to flatten it.”

“What the fuck?”

Sam looked towards the ceiling, probably trying to find his words as much as not to snap at Dean for his lack of helpfulness.

Sue him. He was the confused one in this conversation.

“A binder is a garment that transgender men use to make their chest look flatter. More masculine.”

Dean stared at the piece of fabric in his hand, which basically looked like some sort of black tank top.

“Okay. So why did you buy me one?”

Sam threw his hands in the air. “Oh, I don't know, because I like throwing around money we don't have! Think for two seconds, Dean. I bought you one because Elena's potion is making you miserable. Because you've started flinching every time someone calls you Miss on the street. Because it feels really uncomfortable to have to call you Dee when we're out and I keep messing it up.”

“This isn't going to make me a dude again.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “You're already a dude. That's the whole point. But it can make you... Look like more of one. At least a little. I don't know. You don't have to wear it, I just... I just thought it would help.”

Sam's voice nearly broke over the end of his sentence. Dean suddently realized how helpless Sam was feeling in this situation. Taking care of each other was what they did. What they lived for. When there was nothing that they could do... It felt wrong. Painful.

So Sam was trying to help.

Dean still felt like there was something not quite right about his brother's reactions, though. Sure, this spell was a pain in the ass, and Dean could admit that he'd been acting in a pretty foul manner because of it, but it wasn't like they hadn't ever been in annoying magic-related situations before. It almost felt like there was... some personal stake for Sam in all of this.

But Sam hadn't said anything, and Dean wasn't going to ask. His brother wouldn't expect him to.

Instead, he wordlessly stood up, binder in hand, and went into the bathroom.

He'd been avoiding looking at himself in a mirror for a few days. Couldn't muster up any awe or curiosity anymore for this too-familiar and still foreign face that stared back at him. He looked now. Tried to see himself behind every little difference that amounted up to too much, to something that had become close to unbearable.

He undressed. As usual, he had ditched his sports bra when arriving at the motel, still not used to the feeling of it over his chest. The fact that the binder looked even more constricting did not make it sound like an inviting alternative. Still. He ought to try. For Sam's sake, but mostly for his own. He didn't know if hiding his chest would be enough for people to treat him as a guy again, but he did know that the novelty of grabbing his own boobs had worn out a long time ago.

Pulling the thing on was not exactly a pleasant experience, but Dean figured it out. It was indeed constrictive, though it still allowed him to breathe. Once properly in place, he was glad to noticed that he didn't actively feel the fact that his breasts were basically being squished against his torso.

He looked up towards the mirror.

It looked... It looked like Dean was wearing a weird tank top, instead of underwear. But his chest did look... flat. Almost normal, if not for the fact that Dean's usual body had broader shoulders. He turned to the side, looking for the telling bulge that insisted on changing his silouhette and making it so recognizable as female, but could barely see any curve at all.

Dean grabbed his t-shirt, one of his old ones, from the male section of a department store somewhere. He puts it on, then looked at himself again.

It's not perfect. Dean's face is still slightly too thin, slightly too soft, so it's not perfect. But Dean can sort of see himself again in his reflection, in the eyes that never changed and the way his gaze can slide down past his collarbones without catching on anything.

So maybe Sam's idea had some merit. He braced himself, then went back into the motel room. Stopping a few feet away from his brother, he ironically spun around, showing himself off.

“How does it feel?” Sam asked, ever the worried type.

Dean shrugged. “It's a little weird. I can feel it when I breathe too deep.” He did exactly that, feeling the fabric stretch to accommodate the rise and fall of his chest. “But it's okay.”

“Okay. Do you...” He trailed off, unconsciously biting his lower lip.

“Do I want to wear it? I don't know. Don't know if it's gonna be enough to... pass. Or whatever. But I guess I'll try?”

A shy smile. “Okay. Yeah. That sounds good.”

Dean could let it go. Should let it go. This isn't something he feels comfortable talking about, and if Sam had wanted to talk about it he would have.

But he couldn't just ignore ir either, could he? Because protecting each other was all they had.

“Hey, Sam?”

“Mmh?”

“How did you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“How did you know to get me this? That it'd help.”

Sam shrugged. “I didn't. Not really. I just... guessed.”

“I didn't even know those things existed.” Dean could already feel he was treading unsteady ground, and told himself this was as far as he'd push.

“Like I said. A lot of trans people use them.”

There was a pause. Dean looked at Sam without saying anything, giving him the choice of where this conversation was going to go next.

But the fact that the silence lasted for more than a second was enough to indicated that something needed to be said. Both of them knew it.

“I was doing some research,” Sam explained, not looking him in the eye. Of course there had been research, this was Sam. “Before this.” He gestured towards Dean. “Before Elena.”

That, Dean hadn't expected. Because “before Elena” could mean a whole range of thing from three months ago to three years. He wanted to ask, but held his tongue. He was already overstepping by having initiated this conversation, he needed to rein himself in and let Sam go at his own pace.

“Research on the transgender community. I mean. Yeah, obviously. But that's why I knew what a binder is. And I figured... Remember how Elena said something about your situation being the opposite of what her potions were for?”

It did ring a bell, vaguely, so Dean nodded.

“They're meant to allow people to have the body they feel is aligned with their true gender, right? They're meant to ease the discomfort created by the fact that the way you feel and how people see you don't match.”

Dean nodded again. He kept noticing the care with which Sam chose his words, and thought of how much blunter he would have been if he'd had to talk about the same topic, of how many of the terms he knew would probably sound offensive to some, because Dean had never thought he would need to learn new ones.

“With you, it went the other way. Instead of fixing it, it created that discomfort. That mismatch between who you are and how people see you.”

Thinking of the past month, Dean could agree that that description felt right. He hadn't realized, before his body had changed, how much of his confidence and of his sense of self was based on how others percieved him and interacted with him.

“I figured... I figured you're kind of stuck in the same situation as someone who's trans? In a weird way? And obviously it's not the same, because you know what your real body's like, and you know it's temporary but I still figured... I figured that you're a guy, and so you want to look like a guy, and that this might help.”

Sam stopped. He looked down at his feet, then at the ceiling. “This is gonna be a really awkward conversation, isn't it?” he asked drily.

“Sam, you don't have to-”

“I know.” He smiled. “I know I don't have to, but I got this far so...”

Dean sat down on the second bed, facing his brother. In the narrow space between the two pieces of furniture, their knees could almost touch.

Dean didn't like emotional moments. They made him uncomfortable, because he didn't know how to react during them. Allowing himself to be vulnerable was equivalent in his mind to letting himself get killed.

But he knew he needed to be there for Sam. He knew that this might be more important than he'd expected, and that Sam needed him. There wasn't anything Dean wouldn't do for his brother.

“I don't think I'm... like you,” Sam started, looking at their knees instead of towards Dean. “When it comes to gender. I mean... You're so... confident. In your own identity. You overplay masculinity all the time, but it doesn't feel jarring. It feels like it comes naturally. Like you know who you are.”

Dean probably could have argued about the overplay part, but he wasn't sure it was the kind of hill he wanted to die on. He knew he sometimes... compensated. Played up his love of women to avoid thinking about other things, and built himself a persona in the process. It was strange, in a way, that Sam could see right through that and still call Dean confident. Dean was the person he'd needed to be. In order to survive a lonely childhood, in order to thrive in the hunter's life and its constant danger. Sam had always been the one who dared break the unspoken rules, who tried to find another way. Wasn't that confidence?

“It's not like that for me. It doesn't feel natural. It feels like it's always shifting. I look at you now and it looks like you feel so uncomfortable in this new body, and all I can think about is that I'm barely comfortable in the one I have right now.”

Dean had pushed. Dean had wanted to know, he'd wanted an answer, but he didn't know what to do with what Sam was telling him.

“What does that mean?”

“Honestly?” Sam's smile was self-depricating and Dean hated it. This was an expression he knew well. He'd seen it throughout all of their childhood every time Sam came home from school after a day of being bullied and called a weirdo, everytime he asked their dad for something simple and normal and got the answer that those things weren't for people like them, every time he'd been called a freak or called himself one, because of hunting, because of his visions, because of who he was. “Not much. I don't think it can mean much, not with the lives we've got.”

“Sam-”

“No, listen. I've thought about this, okay? I've thought about this for months. My relationship to gender is... complicated. Weird. And I think that... maybe that puts me on the trans spectrum. Somewhere. But I'm not a woman. I don't want to transition. And if I don't... it's just easier to let people think what they're gonna think, you know? And maybe what they think isn't the truth, isn't my truth, but it's my choice to tell them or not, and I've decided not to.”

“Okay.” Dean looked at himself, at his too-loose shirt and the new sweatpants he'd bought because Sam had insisted he couldn't keep wearing his old ones all the time without washing them. He looked at his chest and the way it felt new to see is so flat, the weird kind of relief that that sight brought. He thought of everything Sam had done for him in the past weeks, how careful he'd been, stopping himself from making any kind of jokes because even if Dean had been gauding him into them he knew that they might still hurt, maybe not right then, but later on, on days like today when Dean's new body felt like it was seeping with open wounds. And here Sam was, looking at him with eyes that begged him not to fall into pity, that begged him to actually listen and understand, and Dean couldn't do anything else. He couldn't help. Even though that was his job, because he was the big brother and Sammy was everything. Despite all that, he still couldn't help. “Okay.”

“Hey, Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry I didn't tell you earlier. It wasn't... It wasn't that I didn't-”

“Don't even go there, Sam. This isn't... It's about you. It's personal. I get that. I'm not gonna get mad that you kept it a secret or whatever. You had every right to. But... I'm glad you told me. You gotta know that.”

Sam smiled then, small and shy, but a smile all the same. Dean had wanted to do more. To be more. But this was something. Maybe it was even enough, at least for now. “Okay.”

“Okay. Chick flick moment over!” Dean proclaimed before letting himself fall backward on the bed. Sam tried to push his feet out of the way when Dean put them up beside him, and Dean kicked him in retaliation, leading them to play-wrestle like they hadn't since being both teenagers.

Dean got out of breath too quickly and had to surrender, wincing at the way his chest was constricted under the binder. That meant he wouldn't be able to wear it when they were out hunting. Actually... that wasn't too bad. He didn't need it when it was just him and Sam and whatever monster they were chasing. Those moments were when he was closest to feeling like himself, present in his body, adrenaline rushing through his veins, and Sammy by his side.

In the end, the effects of Elena's potion lasted for three months and 22 days. They dissipated just as quickly and as thoroughly as they had set in. Dean had felt tired all morning, and had settled for a nap right after lunch. He woke up to the uncomfortable sensation of being squeezed across the stomach, and it took him a minute to figure out that that was because his pants had become much too tight.

He changed immediately, taking the time to stare at his own face in the mirror, to rub his hands over the familiar stubble across his cheeks. He laughed aloud, an expression of pure joy that amplified when he recognized the lower tones of his old voice.

As soon as Sam came back from his trip to the local library (the thing they were after was mostly likely a ghost, so he'd been digging into the city records for potential gruesome deaths), Dean was gesturing at himself.

“I am back in the game!”

Sam smiled, with genuine happiness and relief. “That's great. So, how are we celebrating? Burgers after the hunt's done? Hitting up a bar or three?”

“I am going to get laid! It has been way too long.”

Sam chuckled, rolling his eyes at his antics. “Right.” They both knew that Sam had been celibate for a lot longer than three months and wasn't any worse for it, but they also both knew that Dean wasn't Sam.

Dean was pretty sure he didn't have to explain how much he'd missed being able to flirt with women, even more than the physical act of sex. Sam was too smart for his own good, he probably understood.

“It's good to have you back, man,” the younger brother said, clapping Dean onto his shoulder.

And it was good. It was really really good. So good that Dean couldn't help but think about what Sam had revealed, the day he'd bought Dean's binder, about how he didn't seem to experience the sense of rightness that Dean now felt at being back inside himself. But there wasn't any bitterness in Sam's eyes, not any jealousy. Only light. He was living his life, as well as he could, just like Dean was. That was their truth, and it didn't matter if it was a little imperfect.

It was good all the same.

[dalekofchaos]

Why do you think Finn and Rose were broken up in between TLJ and TROS?

I’d say it results in a few things

Racist toxic assholes who harassed Loan Tran won and JJ and Terrio kowtowing to the racists and sexist assholes for reducing Rose altogether

The popularity of Finnpoe/Stormpilot and Finnrey overshadowed Rose as a character and her possible relationship with Finn. The tie in novel just showed that the author preferred Finnpoe and wrote Finnrose out of the picture because of that. And….it was all FOR NOTHING! Finn and Poe did not get together and Finn and Rey did not get together. So Finn and Rose were broken up for absolutely nothing, the racists won and Finn ends up alone. It’s as if someone was afraid of an interracial relationship between a black man and a asian woman. 

John Boyega. I am not referring to his “not being able to handle it” comment about KMT  as John has apologized for it. After TROS, he has obviously shown visible disdain for TLJ and TROS. Clearly he viewed Finn’s dynamic with Rose as a downgrade to the kind of character he was playing in TFA. He has shown that he prefers Rey and Poe and obviously shows he did not view Finn’s time with Rose very highly.

I just think it’s a real shame. I like their dynamic very much. I do still feel like there are internalized racist overtones with how Rian wrote them and it could have been written better, but I still like Finn and Rose together. These are two characters who lost their families to The First Order. We could’ve gotten a scene of Finn and Rose talk about their families in TLJ. Finn would say he was taken from his family by The First Order and never really knew them. Rose empathizes with Finn’s trauma and acknowledge that they are both cut from the same cloth. Rose and Paige lost their family and home and Finn lost his family and home, they have something in common and a reason to fight for The Resistance and against The First Order. Could’ve just cut the hostility altogether if you just let the characters empathize with each other.

Finn has shown throughout TLJ that he does care about Rose. He listened to her vent about the atmosphere of worlds like Canto Bight, he cared about making them hurt, cared about Rose’s attachment to Rose’s twin pendant, cared when Rose crashed into him and cared enough to carry Rose and cover her up when Rose was knocked out from the crash. Rose was enamored by Finn’s courageous actions from TFA. Escaping the First Order and leading The Resistance into destroying Starkiller Base. But, ultimately disappointed after discovering that he wanted to escape. Rose was in mourning and thought it was a dishonor to her sister. But ultimately they decided to work together and get along better and become close. Rose is obviously infatuated with Finn and wanted him safe after Phasma’s defeat and cared enough to save him from a pointless sacrifice. She kissed him because she loved him. Finn and Rose care about each other and it could’ve been more if they were allowed to.

Finn and Rose had chemistry and excellent potential for a relationship. There was no reason whatsoever to kill the potential. It was simply to please the Finnpoe/Finnrey crowd and to appeal to the racists and sexists who harassed KMT.

Instead of just passing off the kiss as a “heat of the moment” in the tie in novels and dismissing their relationship, Finn could’ve simply just kissed Rose back and they embrace each other.

What should have happened in TROS is that Finn and Rose are sent on a mission to start a Stormtrooper Rebellion. Just imagine Finn goes to Hux’s flagship and Rose helps using her skills to help Finn to broadcast a signal to every Stormtrooper. I think it could be something like this. “My name is Finn, I was FN-2187, a Stormtrooper. Like every one of you, I was taken from a family I will never know. I was raised to do one thing… but my first battle, my friend Slip died and that death marked me and made me realize We are people and we have a choice. I wasn’t gonna kill for them. I had nothing to fight for. Until I met my friends, they gave me a name, a purpose and something worth fighting for.(cue Finn smiling at Rose) So I am here to tell you.  You have a choice. You are people. You do not have to kill for them anymore. Take back your lives and fight the people who took your lives away from you. I am giving you the one choice they never gave you and choose for yourselves. You can either storm this very room and kill us or you can take back your lives. The choice is yours.” Then we get a very emotional scene of Stormtroopers led by Finn’s last surviving Squad member, Zeroes removing his helmet and tossing it to the ground and then we see hundreds, to thousands of Stormtroopers ripping their helmets off and tossing them to the ground. Officers DEMAND they put their helmet back on and kill The Resistance scum, but they don’t. It happens. Rebellion.  Finn and Rose have successfully led a Stormtrooper Rebellion and together burn The First Order from the inside out and Rose could say something that calls back to TLJ. “It was worth it, though. To tear them up, make ‘em hurt.” Finn would embrace Rose in a kiss and say “Now it’s worth it.” And you could’ve had the conclusion to Finn’s story by having Hux at Finn’s mercy. Hux is begging for his life, saying he will call for The First Order’s complete and unconditional surrender and giving Finn and the rest of the Stormtroopers info of their families and planets. But the defected Stormtroopers want blood. All the Stormtroopers who left the First Order because of Finn are telling him he has to kill Hux while Rose is telling him killing Hux will not be right. Finn makes the decision to spare Hux. Finn tells his brothers and sisters “that’s how we’re going to win this war not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.” Inspired by Rose, Finn let’s  go of his past and takes Hux in alive so he can answer for his crimes. 

It wouldn’t change anything if Rose were in the mission with Finn, Poe and Rey. Finn, Rose and Poe is a more believable trio than Rey, Finn and Poe. Rey seemed to largely annoyed by Finn and Poe’s mere presence all movie. Seeing Finn, Rose and Poe together would’ve just been good, and wouldn’t it make more sense to use Rose’s mechanical skills to get 3PO to learn the Sith language to decipher the Sith dagger? And really, why was Finn just given a new dynamic with Jannah? They pretty much erased Finn’s ENTIRE NARRATIVE by making Jannah a new Stormtrooper who rebelled and was not inspired by Finn’s defection. Could’ve had Finn and Rose hug, forehead kiss her goodbye and kiss her after the battle was over. 

But no, they deliberately left Rose out of the adventure. They just had Finn pat her on the shoulder. It came off as a giant middle finger to the fans of their relationship and their dynamic. Then Finn is back to being someone who is just clingy to Rey. The entire point of Finn’s character arc in TLJ is that he needs to live for more than just himself and Rey. He learned that Rey is not his only reason for being. So not only was Rey’s character horribly regressed, it was Finn. He was right back to screaming WOOOOO and REEEEEEYYYYYY. Good fucking god. No wonder everyone now ships Rose with Hux. You gave up a connection to Kylo from Jakku, gave up on trying to resolve the fact that Poe killed Slip and changed Finn’s existence and gave up a Stormtrooper Rebellion.....FOR FUCKING SPACE HORSES. So stupid

They could be more than their past, their trauma and build a future together. Finn could finally move beyond Rey. Finn could take Rose’s last name and get both first and family name from his friends and loved ones. Finn Tico. Now that’s a big deal.

[seven-oomen]

Hi, Ben!  I hope your day is going well so far!  Are you still getting snow, or has the storm calmed a bit?  We’re supposed to be getting a potentially severe ice storm over the course of today.  There’s already a thin layer this morning, we’ll see how the rest of the day goes.  And temperatures are supposed to stay in about the -4 to -6C range the rest of the week.  I’m very glad that I’m off the next couple of days, and managed to get by the grocery last night after work.

I saw your post about writing and writing styles!  It was helpful because I’ve not really seen the different styles written out and explained before.  I’m still not 100% which I am, but probably either an intuitive plotter or a methodological pantser.  Usually there’s a scene or a line or two that I’m like “this needs to happen in this story” and everything else is fairly free-form.  I did try actually writing down an outline for IYWTD, but even then it’s more a list of beats/tropes and the order I want to include them in.  (And I’ve only just made it past halfway through, although a couple may need to be altered a bit, oh god, how did this get so long…)

It’s also always kinda of amusing to me how many of those writing advice lists are like “Don’t do this”, “Stop doing this”, “Never do that”, and then they’ll encourage you to find your own voice and style.  Like, bitch, you just told me not to ever do half the shit that makes up my style.  Which am I supposed to do?  Damn.  XD  (You will seriously pry adverbs and similar descriptors from my cold, dead, grasping hands.  Also the occasional epithet.  No, I’m not using a character’s name nine times in one paragraph, sorry, and pronouns don’t always help if the characters are the same gender.  The reader can deal. ;D )

And I feel ya on the tall, skinny, blue-eyed boys thing.  It doesn’t have to be just a white boy, but if he’s taller than me, slender, and has a pretty pair of baby blues, my higher brain functions tend to go into insta-lag.  I ain’t particularly proud, but I’ve long accepted this about myself (there are many reasons Luke became my forever BAE.)  That’s not to say a lack of any of those is a deal-breaker in the slightest, but it’s definitely going to immediately get my attention.

Speaking (vaguely) of Luke, I had a thought the other day of him and Din being off on some planet together (Grogu is staying with Aunt Leia and Uncle Han for a few days), and there’s a noise in the middle of the night, and Din refuses to accept Luke’s assurance that there’s nothing out there, and in true himbo fashion insists on going out to investigate having grabbed only the darksaber and his helmet to cover his face -but nothing else.  Luke just finds it a combo of hysterical and adorable (and kinda hot.)

I hope your novel is going well (whatever stage you happen to be at), and I’m always up for hearing whatever you feel like sharing about it.

I hope you’re still doing well with the whole eating and hydrating regularly thing (it’s also totally okay if you aren’t!), and I’m super proud of you for sticking to it as much as you can anyway.  That shit is hard.  (Also, ignore the 1500 calories thing, I swear that shit is designed for 130lb women trying to shed a few pounds, not people who need to safely and steadily lose larger amounts of weight.  But then I’ve also never fully understood making someone lose weight before surgery, either.  “We need you to get rid of some excess weight before we’ll okay this surgery to *checks notes* get rid of some excess weight."  Like, weird flex, but okay.)

Anyway, I’m rambling again, and should really eat some breakfast and try to write a little myself today, maybe.  Hope you’re feeling okay, and that things are going well overall.  I hope Mo is doing well, and enjoying his best cuddle buddy life.  Take care!  *Hugs!*

Okay, gonna try this this way so that I can refer back to the links on my phone if need be.  I couldn’t quite see the full entries for the physical descriptions, and when I tried clicking on them it kept asking for a login, but I think I saw enough to get the gist.  I’m not sure exactly what sort of feedback you’re interested in, if any, so this will mainly be my usual sort of rambling stream-of-consciousness type thoughts and questions.  Hope that’s okay.  Feel free to ignore if it’s not what you’re after right now!  :D

I think one of the first questions that popped to mind was where is/what happened to Ellie’s mom, and is that something that’s going to cause problems later in some way?  (I.e.- was she killed on a hunt, are they divorced, was it bitter or amicable [would she come after her daughter if she heard about his relationship?])  I guess technically similar questions could also apply to Nate (late husband, ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, one night stand, sperm donor?) it was just more noticeable with Ellie being so young still.  Although that could also be part of why he’s ended up in Wyoming, which was another question I had, although there I assume it’s hunt-related.

I also anticipate quite a bit of tension of all kinds when he and Nate first meet, because Faron strikes me from his descriptions as someone rather used to being able to get his own way either through the influence of who he is, or through his size (not necessarily in any kind of intentional or aggressive way, more in an unconscious privilege kind of way, if that makes sense?), and I don’t think Nate sounds like the type to give two shits about either of those things, and it would probably drive Faron up the proverbial wall that Nate isn’t intimidated by him in the slightest.  (I could be entirely wrong about all this, this is just the impression I get so far. :D )  And I think Nate being noticeably older than him would just make it that much more irritating at first, too.  Now, how long these impressions last will just depend on how quickly they get to know each other, and whether Bachelor #3 is helping or hindering things.  XD  The potential for just sitting back and watching the fireworks as “laid-back dad jokes with a quick temper” clashes with “quiet, reserved, and possibly takes themselves slightly too seriously” might prove too much for our last contestant for a while, depending on where his personality falls.  ;D  (Especially since Faron coming in and starting shit will likely come off as a direct threat to people and places Nate considers under his protection.)

Also, are any of these three going to have met before?  Will Nate already have some sort of relationship with the werewolf (Does he already know about the supernatural at all?)  Did he and Faron encounter each other on the trip to Europe you mentioned in the Life Highlights?  If he and the wolf already know each other, how does he get along with Cas, or Nate’s pets?  Is the werewolf also going to be native to the region?  Does he know anything about Faron’s family?  Does Faron already know he’s a werewolf, or is that going to be a bit of a crisis for him later?  A test of how well he’s learned not to judge?  If Nate doesn’t already know, how will he deal with both their secrets?  Do you plan for full-shift only wolves, partial-shift only wolves, or a mix of the two like TW?  Are there other supes in the area?

I think you mentioned maybe having him be of Native American descent?  I think that could be very interesting, but would require a LOT of research into which tribes are active in the Yellowstone area, and what their individual mythologies say about things like shapeshifters, and LGTBQ+ issues, etc., because there can be a fair amount of variance, I’m sure.  Also, I’m just overall curious how he’ll fit in with the other two size wise (get your mind out of the gutter, you know what I mean.  XD )  Also curious if any o them are going to have the slightest clue on the feelings front, or are they all going to be just absolute disasters?  Will the kids figure it out before they do?  Will the kids get along?  (Will BachelorWolf have any kids of his own, or just Nate and Faron?)  Will Nate’s coworkers have any clue about either the supernatural, or what’s going on with those three?  Because I suspect at least some of them will be way more obvious than they think they’re being.  XD

Uh… I think that was all that’s occured to me right now?…  I’m sorry you’re having a yucky day overall, and I hope tomorrow’s a bit better!  The ice storm has finally moved in here, and I can feel the temperature drop radiating off of the front door and windows.  It went from rain to freezing rain/hail and I’m not sure how long it’s supposed to last.  Hopefully only a little while.  Also, sorry your book was terrible.  I haven’t seen too many recent recommendations from friends, and I’ve been mostly reading “cozy” mysteries (Agatha Christie, Elizabeth Peters, etc) as my comfort reading myself, lately, so I can’t really suggest anything in particular, unfortunately.  At least, nothing I think you wouldn’t already know.  Anyway, hope you’re getting some decent rest, and hope you have a better day tomorrow!  Take care!  *Hugs!*

Alright since this is going to be like a very long one, I’m break it down into a few things.

First full physical descriptions, cause I didn’t know Milanote would be a bitch about it.

Nate:

164 cm (5'4), 75 kg (166 lbs), Short slightly overweight trans man in his middle age. Nearly always the shortest man in the room, only standing around 5'4 and weighing in around 166 lbs. With kind moss green eyes that have permanent crow's feet in their corners and a polite but reserved smile always on his face. 

A face that's framed by faint freckles that are only visible in the sunlight. A neatly trimmed beard spices up his features and frames his pink lips. His thick but short eyebrows frame his eyes and create a short arc to his slim nose. 

A high forehead separates his brows from his wavy dark blond hair that's always tucked behind his ears. 

He generally wears the Superintendents' Park Ranger uniform while on duty. When he's not he wears comfortable jeans and t-shirts, usually a mono color like green, white, or black, plaid flannel shirts, socks with the weirdest patterns and colors, and hiking boots. He wears a steel ring on his right index finger and has a little steel Mjolnir on a necklace around his neck.

He's missing two fingers (his ring and little finger) on his left hand due to a childhood accident.

Faron:

185 cm (6'1 ft), 93 kg (205 lbs), Faron is a tall man with plenty of muscle from his time hunting. He can seem daunting and intimidating when you first meet him but there is a kinder, softer side to him. He has a warm light brown skin color, blue eyes, and black natural tight curly hair that he keeps very short. His full dark beard decorates his cheeks and chin, connects to his upper lip, and all the way up to his sideburns.

  He tends to wear dark clothing, leather jackets, no jewelry that could identify him, jeans, henley shirts, or V-neck shirts, and black, brown, or red jackets. He usually wears black combat boots or dark brown hiking boots. He's got knives and other weapons hidden all over his body and pockets and it might take him a good few minutes to unload every single knife from his body when he was to disarm.

There are also scars all over his body, including some scars on his neck that are visible from day to day life. He had the bad luck of being struck down by a vicious Wendigo but managed to escape. He survived thanks to his sister's quick thinking and first aid.

He covers some of those scars up with tattoos; he has one tattoo of a dragon laying down on his shoulder, with its head on his chest and its body curling over his shoulder and ending just below his shoulder blades. And one tattoo covers up some scars on his lower arm, it's a tattoo of a wolf's head that covers up a bite mark.

Dichali:

He’s 37 and has 4 siblings, and two children, Kajika & Kaniya (Jika & Niya, identical twins, but one of them identifies as male, he’s trans. Kajika is his chosen/reassigned name. They are 10.) Dichali grew up in Riverton, WY, which is the largest town of 10,000 in the largest Native Reservation in Wyoming. He’s also a dear friend to our Nate (who is also his boss technically) and has slowly been falling in love with him for the last few years. (Although he still hasn’t realized that he loves his friend.) 

Yena, his coworker and friend, who’s much younger at 25 has been watching her coworker and her boss joke and dance around each other. She has a betting pool with her girlfriend on who snaps first.

Not sure how I’ll connect him to Faron if it’s more fun/better to have him find out later or to already know him and keep it quiet. 

I’m still working on him, so I don’t have much of personality and other things written down yet. But I have made his physical description:

At 178 cm (5'8) and 83 kilos (182 lbs) Dichali probably isn't the tallest man you've met, he's also not the shortest. And while he's got some good muscle on him from working as a Park Ranger, and being a werewolf, he also has some softer sides. All the better to cuddle with. He has long straight brown hair that falls to his mid-back and deep brown eyes and a long nose that ends prominently. His eyebrows are thin and he has a high forehead. His skin is a light Tawny color, there's a hint of an orange brown with a cool undertone.

His skin is also relatively clear and youthful looking because of his lycanthropy.

He tends to wear pants and jackets made by native designers and always incorporates native fashion into his outfits. He has jackets of mostly gray, blue, brown, and black colors made of denim, cotton, wool, or brass that are lined with more traditional cloths and patterns like the designer brand Ginew. Usually he pairs them with dark jeans, either black, gray, or dark blue. He pairs it with white, blue, red, black, or printed band t-shirts (Metallica, Green Day, Marianas Trench). 

For shoes he has brown hiking boots that are part of the Ranger uniform, more western styled boots like black cowboy boots, and a pair of sneakers.He also wears a copper bracelet with lighting bolts etched into it.

-

Now this whole story got started because I had the question what if we had a DILF romance going on while/because the following happened?

What if a YouTube video that accidentally got uploaded shows the existence of a werewolf in Yellowstone park? Threatening to expose the entire supernatural world.

The werewolves right now are a mix, so half shift is like the classical half shift of a wolf head on a man’s body, but the full shift is more like a larger wolf. Almost the size of a black bear. Though I might change those ideas as the story progresses.

But that is how the Cryptid of Yellowstone is brought into the world. And that brings problems. Big problems.

Wendigos, vampires, djins, I plan to create a world where a lot of supernatural creates exist. From all sorts of cultures. I’m also toying with the idea of Kelpies and Griffins. That kind of stuff.

The supernatural world is hidden from ours, hidden in plain sight if you will. Most encounters are written off as really strange, sometimes a picture pops up, but with the coming of the internet, things have gotten more complicated. Also with deforestation and competition with regular wildlife has made some bigger supernatural creatures either extinct or thought to be extinct. They’re not sure what still lives in Australia, though.

Nate or his son don’t know about the supernatural world. Neither does Yena. Or much of the world. Dichali, his children (to some extent), Faron, and Faron’s family do know about this world.

-

Alright, as for your other post XD

Right now it’s no longer storming but due to the freezing temperatures the snow’s not going away and all public transport and delivery services are still not driving/delivering/running. So that’s neat. Not. 

I swear we get some snow and the country is just down. Upside, ain’t nobody going outside and this helps with lockdown.

I hope your snowstorm won’t be too bad and everything thaws down soon. Snow’s fun for a day but after that...

Make sure you stay warm alright? And bundle up.

Yes dad... alright XD

Honestly, I’m glad to hear you liked my advice too. I’m getting quite a bit of positive feedback on it and that just makes me really happy ^^. I’m definitely writing more writing advice from everything I’ve learned so far.

There’s honestly so many contradicting ones out there, it’s a matter of picking and choosing which ones work best for you and applying those. And that’s the real trick of advice.

Fun fact, a lot of famous writers are also pantsers. Steven King, Neil Gaiman, George RR Martin are examples of famous pantsers or gardeners as they are also called. 

John Grisham, JK Rowling, RL Stein fall into the plotter or architect category. 

Writers like Hank Green seem to fall in the in-between category of plantser (somewhere between a plotter and a pantser. Or the Intuitive plotter.)

Okay but the DinLuke things is really really kinda hot and cute and adorable and has me smiling <3

And I can’t remember what else I wanted to say since it is like 2 am and my meds are seriously kicking in now.

But I hope you’re doing alright and that the snowstorm isn’t too bad where you’re at.

I’ll be alright, my diet hasn’t been going so well the last few days and I can’t really exercise, but I did mostly get healthy groceries that will be delivered friday so there’s that. 

Fingers crossed I can pick it back up.

Okay I’m heading to bed XD 

I’ll talk to you later, B <3 

Hugs from me and Mo <3

[mr-kamiyama]

A Word for Zoomers Who're Told They're "Making Up" Genders and Orientations.

I'm an Xer.

Well, actually I'm in that b.1977-85 throe where no two people can agree what I am. I'm Post Dankai Junior in the old country, but I was too old to be a kid for Pokémon, Harry Potter, I caught Digimon 02 during its premiere US run a rare Saturday the firm I worked at, that normally had Saturday hours, was closed. I met Windows Millennium Edition because a housemate, as back then, I'd realised I wanted to live with company, wanted to upgrade our computer to the newest version of Windows (and I promptly made AMVs using GIFs and lost them to the sands of time all before YouTube even existed) So that gives you an idea of my age.

I came out for the first time in high school. I came out as bi.

In Japan, transness, like here had different words we no longer use, but unlike here, wasn't a secret.

If I'd stayed in Japan just one more year, in '95 politician Kamikawa Aya began advocating on NHK for trans rights.

Maybe I'd've learned that transition *to* male and actual medical treatment like HRT to make that possible existed a whole lot sooner.

But I didn't. And so, I didn't realise it was actually something I could *do* and I wasn't doomed to be stuck until about 2010.

I claimed "bi" in the '90s, and mistook "you're a really cool person and really nice to me when few people are and so I really like you in a platonic sense" +aesthetic attraction for crushes of a romantic and sexual nature.

The SAM model was developed by bi people in the '70s, but where and when I was, there weren't exactly highly visible LGBT centres where I could learn this. So I thought any orientation had to be "x-sexual"

And I only knew about straight, gay/lesbian, and bi.

Which, the term "laaaaaaaabelllls" was coined by biphobic people my age. See, we weren't like people today, who literally can't live because of unfettered crony capitalism. You could get a nice studio on the nice side of town for eight days' work at minimum wage (of course, being POC, you had to find the right realtor), which back then was under four dollars an hour. You could get a 2br/1.5ba rowhouse for about two weeks' worth, which is half a month, but these days, that much work will get you a barely-studio in shoot-you-in-the-face-in-broad-daylight territory.

But we were still plenty suspicious of marketing. So queerphobic Xers went "don't make me acknowledge your filthy non-mono sexuality! What if I told you naming what you are is dehumanising, like labelling a jar of mayo, and you're the product!"

Which is no different that queerphobic Millennials claiming "Queer is a slur uwu call it gay because cisgay and cishet are the only valid IDs uwu Gay has never ever been used as a pejorative uwu"

Which is also bunk because back in the '90s, if one young man did ANYTHING another didn't like, the other one could call it and him "gaaayyy" and that would be a homophobic attack via toxic masculinity on the first young man. Heck, I don't listen to much grunge, though I did at the time, but it's used this way in some Nirvana song. I just can't remember which one.

Anyway, so I claimed bi and spent the next 23 or so years fighting for it even against physical violence to make me claim something in the false straight/gay binary

All along, I thought "the mushy stuff squicks me because I'm a guy (insert ways I justified things before I realised that yes, I actually am male for prior to 2010)" which, yeah, I'm still sorting through the myriad manifestations of toxic masculinity and learning to spot them. What that actually is is romance repulsion.

I'm actually aroace.

To go further, I actually have very strong platonic affection feelings, and "idemromantic" is not necessarily my actual identity, but that, and at least some idea, if even wrong, that the other party was interested, was how I sorted whether I should approach the other person as "friend" or "potential partner" subconsciously.

Plus to further complicate things, I'm sex-favourable ace/cupiosexual, which meant that just hearing limited definitions of things like sex repulsion in aces didn't clue me in. It wasn't until discussing what sexual attraction was with a newly-realised gay first wave Xer last year that I realised I had no idea what that was and had never felt it, and was therefore asexual. Which after the discussion with that guy, I dove into readings by you all on Tumbler first.

And I only realised I'm aromantic last month, though I've been questioning for actually a year this month.

Now, I'd say my aesthetic attraction is definitely bi, and yes, I accept the redefinition made with the info we have now of two or more genders including your own" which *I read* as "but not necessarily all genders, and perceived gender is a factor" whereas pan seems to me like "perceived gender is not a factor in attraction" ??

Now, I still actually don't have an idea about my potential aesthetic feelings towards people who present NB. The men and women I feel it towards tend to have this or that decidedly masculine or feminine traits, and I may never, because people my age are less likely to come out.

Whether orientation or gender, people my age are products of a very binary 20th century. We were really all sorts of shape pegs, but many of us were and still are dodecahedrons and whatnot with choices of only square, circle, and mayyybe triangle holes.

Naturally, the dodecahedrons and the hexagons all tried to jam themselves in circle and square holes, whichever ones it looked like we could maybe wedge into.

This means plenty of us are going around thinking things like "I guess I don't like sex because I'm a woman" or "I guess I don't like the mushy stuff because I'm a man" or "I don't feel female so I guess I'm a man because I'm AMAB and that's all I got" etc.

Those most likely to come out are those with very strong NB/aro/ace feelings WHO BECOME INFORMED. And some may still not, or those with feelings they can't sort, because they've lived so long the previous way, they may at least feel they have too much to lose.

There's also people like me that need a lot of info to realise they were misreading their own feelings due to decades of amatonormative/heteronormative/binarist/toxic masculine brainwashing.

(I still don't like the term "toxic masculine" because I really want a term where we have more room to redefine "masculine" as decidedly masculine but wholly without the toxic stuff that's so married to "manliness," room to reject that stuff and revision manliness, but whatever)

THE REASON OLDER GENERATIONS DON'T HAVE THIS STUFF IS NOT BECAUSE YOU'RE INVENTING IT. IT IS BECAUSE OUR TIME DIDN'T ACKNOWLEDGE IT.

Yes, I think it's funny imaging how lost you'd be trying to use an 8-track player, or a library card catalogue actually made of index cards.

And had I not miscarried in December 2003 and had a sixteen year old, I'd have had them set up the internet TV device I got instead of three hours barely restraining myself from breaking it into pieces just like I was the only one who was able to figure out how to set the VCR clock and VCR+ timers when we got one when I was young. Which my difficulty with this stuff is more like a Boomer than an Xer. Most of my peers are pretty savvy. Sometimes my friends can tele-help me.

And I think new music,which I define as post-Y2K, stinks.

So I'm not hip and new. Plenty about me is just like your parents.

But no, you aren't making this up. And you're informing a lot of us. You're waking us up to how truly diverse humanity is. You're waking some of us up to who we really are.

And as for those of you who have crummy and even Karen parents, two things:

A. The Latino kids took me and the other Asian in in high school. There aren't many Asians in FL. (The "Another Chinese Family" bit on Fresh Off The Boat is so real) There are definitely some crummy Xers out there, and that's been true all along. There was even a right-wing youth org called "young republicans." There were Regean-loving racist queerphobes all along. They made my life miserable in high school, too.

B. There are also others like me that believe in you. That actually need you. You're bringing *back* a diversity that was smothered by colonial Europe. Historical precedent is actually on your side.

Thank you. I mean it. You're doing good, you're legit, and there are a lot of us who believe in you, too.

[hamilton-one-shots]

Trans Alex w/ Jamilams?

(Edited by: @daflangstlairde-writes)

(TW: Slight homophobia)

John gave Alexander a sympathetic smile as the other looked around the water park. “Are you sure about this?”

Alexander took a deep breath, but nodded.

Thomas put a hand on Alexander’s back. “If anything happens, we can leave as soon as you want.” He kissed his cheek and the three made their way towards the current river.

Normally, the three spent these hot summer days at their friends’ - Hercules and Lafayette’s - pool, but with Lafayette being sick, it didn’t seem fair. So, Alexander had suggested a water park and the other two had agreed, on the condition that Alexander would be open about his potential discomforts.

“I’ll be okay,” he assured as they got in the water. “I do have my shirt, which really helps.” Even if the curve of his chest was still fairly obvious. Alexander was definitely a little irked by it, but he wasn’t going to ruin the day over it.

Besides, it was kind of fun. Just wading through the water and floating along with the current, nothing interrupting but the occasional relaxed hum or the sound of the current speeding up for a second. Eventually, though, Alexander wanted to try something else.

“Let’s try a water slide,” he suggested. “I’ve always wanted to go on the ones where the bottom drops out.”

John smiled. “Those are great! I’d love to go with you.”

“Me too,” Thomas piped up, getting them out at the next exit.

The three walked over to the ride and climbed up the many stairs to the top, finding the line to be pretty short.

Once they got to the front, the person running the ride stopped Alexander. “I’m sorry, but you can’t wear a shirt on this ride.. It’s a safety hazard.”

“Oh..”

Thomas put a hand on his back. “I can walk back down with you..”

Alexander shook his head. “No.. No, I can handle it. Besides, it’s not like it’s forever, right?” he said, sure of himself. He smiled back at Thomas, who visibly relaxed.

“I guess you’re right.” He kissed Alexander’s cheek and watched as he and John got into the two tubes.

Alexander pulled off his shirt and held it in his arms as he crossed them over his chest, smiling even wider as the ride door closed. He wasn’t going to let stupid dysphoria ruin his day. Not that easily. He listened to the countdown and yelped when he was dropped early, closing his eyes and letting gravity take over.

Once they reached the bottom, John and Alexander were both laughing, the adrenaline rushing through their veins as they slowed down and got out of the water.

“I can’t believe I did that!” Alexander cried as he put his shirt back on, going over to John. “That was too cool, we should come more often.”

John kissed Alexander’s cheek, just glad that he was so comfortable there. “You’re right, we should.”

Thomas wasn’t nearly as graceful, screaming most of the ride down and vowing never to go again as he got out, stumbling as he joined John and Alexander. “What you two see in these kinds of things, I’ll never know,” he said, wringing some of the water from his ponytail.

“Oh, lighten up,” John teased. “Come on, Alexander and I are going to go on a few more rides.”

Alexander nodded. “Whether you join us or not is your choice.”

Thomas tutted and found himself back in the current river a few minutes later, opting out of the rides. They just weren’t for him, and Alexander and John respected that, getting him once they were done with their fun.

All three of them were pretty tired by then, ready to go after a quick shower. They went to the changing rooms and rinsed the pool water and whatever else was in there off of themselves before changing into dry clothes. John was the first one out and he was the one who watched, reacting a second too late as someone walked in on Alexander.  

“Oh, god, sorry! But this is the men’s room, sweetheart,” the stranger reminded him, shutting the curtain.

John glared lightly. “That’s my boyfriend you’re talking to,” he warned.

The stranger tutted. “I don’t mind calling him what he wants, but for him to date another man,” he commented, muttering the second half. 

“Excuse me?” John scoffed.

“You heard me.”

“Say it out loud, you-”

“John,” Thomas said sternly, grabbing his boyfriend’s shoulder. “Come on, drop it.”

“But he-”

“I know. But fighting won’t get you anything but trouble. Let’s just go home once Alexander’s out, okay?”

John grumbled, but calmed down. “Fine…”

Once that stranger was gone and the room was mostly empty, Thomas told Alexander and he came out of the changing room. He was clearly upset, but wasn’t quite to the point of tears yet.

“I’m sorry..” John said. “I should’ve been watching out for you.”

Alexander shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault.. I just hate people like him..” 

“Me too.. But, it’s like Thomas said.. Maybe we should just go home.”

He nodded and the three went back home, piling into the bathroom for a proper shower.

As Thomas washed John’s hair and John washed Alexander’s, the smallest man couldn’t help but sigh.

“I wish I didn’t have to deal with those kinds of people… I wish you guys didn’t have to deal with them.”

“It was just a stupid homophobe, we already deal with them,” John pointed out.

“And there are people who hate that we’re polyam,” Thomas added. “Even if it had been a transphobic asshole, we can handle them.”

“But you shouldn’t have to.”

“Nobody should have to,” John corrected. “It shouldn’t matter to them what you have in your pants or what you were born as, you’re a man. It shouldn’t matter to them who you love, either.”

Alexander sighed. “You’re right… It’s just… It’s frustrating..”

Thomas nodded. “I know.. But we’re happy. And they can’t take that away from us, no matter what names they call us or whatever bullshit points they bring up.”

That alone was incredibly reassuring. Alexander nodded and accepted that as he and John finished up with their shower, Thomas staying behind to deal with his hair. And who knew how long that would take?

So, John and Alexander put on warm clothes and got comfortable in bed, putting on a movie. 

“Are you going to be okay?” John asked, kissing the top of his boyfriend’s head.

Alexander nodded. “I’m fine.” After all, he knew what Thomas said was true. They were happy. Nobody could take that from them.

(Is it late? Yes, but in my defense, it was on time when I queued it I say as if anyone besides me keeps track of when I post.)

[sanderssidesfanfiction]

We’ll Carry On - Chapter Twelve

We’ll Carry On Tag

General Content Warnings: Sympathetic Deceit Sanders, Substance Abuse, Abandonment, Minor Character Death, Transphobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Dissociation, Bullying, Homophobia

Chapter-Specific Warnings: Police

July 21st, 2018

Roman sang quietly to himself, so as not to disturb the other kids in the house, and prayed that no one would tattle on him for making noise. “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Roman, happy birthday to you...” He bit back the tears that threatened to escape as he sang. This was his first birthday without his mom right there to help him. He was twelve years old, stuck in a broken foster home, with no visible way out except in six years.

Something had to be done, though. He couldn’t stay here for six years, he just couldn’t. If everything became unbearable one day, he resolved to himself to just get up and leave. But he didn’t want to risk leaving just yet, because he had no idea where he would go. He needed to get his hands on his legal documents. Every kid had a mom and a dad, biologically speaking, right? If he could figure out who his dad was, maybe he could ask the man for help.

He had to hold out that hope for as long as possible.

February 6th, 2019

Roman came home from school that day, to find Mister Emile and Mister Remy arguing over how to build a bedframe from...Roman thought it looked like IKEA. He awkwardly cleared his throat. They both stopped and looked over at him. “Where’s Logan?” he asked.

“Uh, last I checked, he went to visit Jack,” Mister Emile said. “Which is just as well, because this is a really ugly situation.”

“Uh-huh,” Roman said, not really understanding.

Mister Remy shifted from his knees to sitting on the floor. “Roman, we hate to ask you to do this, but are you willing to share a room? With either Logan or one of the twins?”

Roman’s stomach sank. “So you talked to their grandmother?”

Mister Emile winced. “She’s not capable of raising two seven-year-olds right now; apparently she had a recent shoulder injury and can barely take care of herself. Meaning we’re fostering them until further notice.”

Roman nodded. He wasn’t thrilled, but he wouldn’t want to send the twins anywhere else if it wasn’t with someone who could take care of them. “I’d prefer sharing a room with Logan,” he said. “Because I don’t care if he has boobs, but sharing my room with a little kid is...not fun, in my experience.”

Mister Emile and Mister Remy shared a look, and Roman sighed. “You know that I know you both worry about me, right?” he asked. “Because I do. And I’m touched, really. But foster care sucked. That’s the long and short of it. The police found out that I didn’t have any parents, and they shipped me to foster care, and the people who were fostering me weren’t good people.”

A thick silence hung over all three of them until Mister Remy said, “I’m sorry, Roman. That sounds rough.”

Roman shrugged. “It is what it is,” he dismissed. “And it could be worse. I could still be there. But I’m not, and that’s the end of that. You don’t have to worry. I’m out of there.”

“You may be out of there, Roman, but that doesn’t mean you’re not hurt,” Mister Emile said softly.

Roman flinched minutely. “Yeah, well, I’m not, as far as I know. I’m good, really.”

Mister Emile looked like he wanted to argue, but Mister Remy steered the conversation away from that topic. “So, are you sure you’re okay with sharing your room with Logan?” he asked.

Roman nodded. “I’d prefer it be him to either of the twins. I don’t mind them, but I’d like to use my room past eight thirty, you know?”

“Yeah, that’s not an issue,” Mister Remy said. “You can ask Logan if he’s okay with it once he’s back. Though truth be told, I don’t think the twins are going to want to separate anyway, and we can’t move the office down to the basement, because the basement is already being used for storage and it’s too small to be of much use anyway.”

Roman sighed. “So, I’ll be sharing with Logan for the foreseeable future. Got it.”

“Actually...” Mister Emile paused. “Do we tell him?”

“I mean, we should probably tell them all, since it involves them,” Mister Remy said, shifting back to his knees to work on the bed frame.

“Tell me what?” Roman asked.

“Well, since the twins’ grandmother can’t take care of them, and giving them back to their parents is not an option, we’ll need more space to take care of all of you. We want you to be able to have your own room, and same with Logan. Patton and Virgil made it clear when Remy found them that they’re inseparable, so they might be okay with sharing, but the fact remains that this is a three bedroom house that has six people living in it,” Emile explained. “So Remy and I are looking into buying a bigger house.”

“We’re...moving?” Roman asked.

“Potentially,” Mister Remy said. “And not before the end of the month, for sure, because we need time.”

“Okay,” Roman said. “That’s a little shocking, but not surprising. If we want space, we’ll have to move.”

“You’re surprisingly calm about this,” Mister Emile said.

“Well, I get to keep my stuff, right?” Roman asked.

“Yeah,” Mister Emile confirmed.

“And you two will still be taking care of me?” Roman added.

“Of course,” Mister Remy assured.

“Then it’s no worries,” Roman said. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

“You’re putting a lot of faith in us,” Mister Remy said lightly.

Roman shrugged. “I mean, I’ve been through way worse, right? So long as you guys are there to help, sooner or later things will work out.”

The front door downstairs burst open and two high voices started stampeding through the house. Roman smiled and put his backpack in his room. “I’m gonna get to know my brothers a little more,” he said.

When he got downstairs, Virgil and Patton were happily chatting to each other. “No, look, those books were so cool! They might be for the older kids but I definitely want to try them at some point!” Virgil exclaimed.

Patton shook his head. “If they’re for the big kids how will you understand them?” he asked.

“Easy! I’ll find a dictionary to go with it!” Virgil exclaimed.

Roman laughed and the two looked over at him. “What books are you talking about?” he asked.

“Animorphs,” Patton said. “The covers are creepy but Virgil really wants to read them anyway.”

Roman thought back to what he remembered from reading one or two of those books. “They’re definitely for older kids,” he told them. “Not necessarily because of the words, though. It has a lot of death and fighting and creepy-crawly stuff.”

“Oh,” Virgil said. “Maybe I won’t read them, then. There’s always those Goosebumps books to try. And those don’t usually wind up with people being dead.”

“Yeah, good call,” Roman said. “I read some of the Animorphs books and they’re good, but definitely not for the faint of heart.”

“I’ll stick to other books, then,” Virgil said. “Maybe I’ll read Animorphs when I’m older.”

“Maybe,” Roman said. “But until then, don’t worry about it too much. Though you’re right, the covers are pretty cool.”

Virgil grinned. “Right! That’s what I’m saying!”

“Those covers are creepy, plain and simple,” Patton said, shaking his head. “Did Mister Emile and Mister Remy talk to Granny?”

“They did,” Roman said, thankful for the change in topic. “Apparently she hurt her shoulder really bad and she wouldn’t be able to help you two right now. Sorry.”

Patton deflated a little. “Oh. So, where will we stay?”

“Here,” Roman said. “Mister Emile and Mister Remy are building two new beds for the bedrooms. Do you two want to share a room?”

“Yes!” Virgil said, eyes wide and his answer just a second two quick. “I mean, if that’s okay with you, Pat...”

“‘Course it is,” Patton said with a grin, hugging Virgil. “I’d feel weird not sleeping in the same room as you, too.”

Roman nodded. “You should probably let Mister Emile and Mister Remy know. And I’ll ask Logan if he’s okay with sharing a room with me.”

“What?” a new voice asked from the doorway.

“Oh, Logan, you’re home,” Roman said. “Yeah, uh, the twins don’t have anywhere else to go, and they want to share a room. So...since we only have three bedrooms, we have to double up. I hope it won’t be...a problem...?”

“But...” Logan shook his head. “Roman, I’m...you know...a girl.”

“No you’re not!” Roman exclaimed. “Having breasts doesn’t make you a girl, Logan! If you’re not comfortable sharing a room with me, that’s fine. But if you’re only worried about me seeing you without a bra, or binder, or whatever, I really don’t care? We’re brothers; it would be really creepy if I did notice.”

“Wait, you’re a girl?!” Virgil asked, turning to look at Logan.

“No he’s not, dummy! Didn’t you just hear Roman? He’s got a girl body but a boy brain,” Patton said. “You’re not a dummy, actually, but you can’t ask those things!”

“Oh,” Virgil said, thoroughly chastised. “Sorry, Logan.”

Logan was just staring at the three of them in shock. “But...but...” Tears were coming to his eyes. “But everyone said...for years...and I know I’m not, but...”

“Logan, you’re not a girl, and that’s all that matters,” Roman insisted. “It doesn’t matter what anyone else said. And Mister Emile and Mister Remy are okay with us two sharing a room. I’ll move all my stuff to your room, if you want, because I know you have a place for everything already and I don’t want to mess that up.”

Logan looked like he was about to cry. “I guess...it didn’t really sink in...that...”

“That you’re our brother, not our sister?” Roman asked with a grin. “Yeah, Lo, that’s kinda how being trans works.”

“Shut up,” Logan said through his tears. “I hate crying. You’re making me cry!”

“Happy tears or sad tears?” Roman asked.

Logan sniffled. “I don’t even know.”

Roman shook his head with a fond smile. “Well, if you want to use your room to cry, I’d suggest doing so now and kicking out Mister Emile and Mister Remy, because this might be the last time you get your own room for a little while.”

Logan sniffed and wiped at his eyes. “No, I’m fine. And we can share a room. Having the three of you share with me having one to myself just because of my government-assigned gender doesn’t seem fair.”

“Government-assigned gender?” Virgil asked.

“You know how they say whether you’re a boy or a girl when you’re born?” Patton asked him.

Virgil nodded.

“That’s what he means. Because everyone, including the government, I guess, calls him a girl.”

“Not us, though,” Virgil said, frowning.

“No, because we know he’s a boy,” Patton confirmed.

“That’s confusing,” Virgil whined.

“Imagine having to live through that, though,” Patton said.

Virgil blinked, once. Twice. He turned to Logan. “How do you do that?!” he asked.

Logan smiled bitterly. “Very carefully,” he said.

“I didn’t realize that most boys didn’t have those problems,” Virgil said. “Well, I guess I did, but I didn’t realize that you can’t just choose what gender you are and have everyone accept it automatically.”

“Yeah, it takes a while,” Logan sighed. “And even then, not everyone will accept it, because people are jerks.”

“That’s dumb,” Virgil said. “Obviously you’re a boy. You know you best.”

Logan laughed. “Tell that to my ex-parents.”

Patton gasped. “You had parents before, too? Like, you didn’t just have Mister Emile and Mister Remy?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Logan said, shifting on his feet. “I don’t like to talk about it, though.”

“Same,” Roman said.

The air hung thick over them with awkward silence. Virgil cleared his throat. “So...uh...Logan? Have you ever read the Animorphs books?”

“Yes?” Logan asked, furrowing his brows. “They’re really dark, looking back on them. Are you wanting to read them?”

“Yeah,” Virgil said. “Roman says to wait, though.”

“I’d recommend the same,” Logan said. “Maybe wait until you’re at least in the fourth grade. And if they freak you out then, don’t keep reading them.”

Virgil made an oh face and nodded. “You’re smart,” he said.

Logan preened a little under the praise. “Thank you,” he said. “I certainly try to be.”

Everyone moved to the living room and kept talking, and Roman grinned as everyone got to know each other and relaxed. It was peaceful, despite the count of kids doubling overnight—literally. As Patton and Virgil brought out their backpacks, asking Logan about their homework, Roman offered to bring out snacks and juice. Even Logan accepted, on the agreement that the juice wouldn’t be orange juice, because he was convinced that was for breakfast only.

Roman was pouring the juice when there was a loud pounding on the door. “Mister Picani?” an unfamiliar voice called.

Roman hid out of sight behind one of the walls in the kitchen but peaked around the corner to look as Mister Emile went and opened the door. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“Sir, we’re here to ask you a couple questions,” the man on the other side said, flashing a police badge. Roman’s stomach dropped. “May my partner and I come in?”

[noahfence1d]

Queer people who took time coming to terms with our identities know the dance of avoiding definitive terms and labels. We know what it can look like when someone is a baby queer in waiting; we certainly understand what it’s like trying to figure out how to exist both authentically and safely in the world, calculating the risks of being your true self, and why that waiting period exists—and, for some, never really ends. This process of coming to terms and coming out, however, poses different challenges and has specific implications when you’re a celebrity. Some celebrities—especially those with teen fanbases, like Shawn Mendes or Taylor Swift—are no strangers to being pinned as queer icons because of their presentation, language, or even the friendships they have, despite not being out as queer. However, figures like Mendes or Swift are known for vehemently pushing away from any narrative defining them explicitly queer. Other celebrities, like Harry Styles, have strongly leaned into queerness—or at the very least, embraced being coded as queer.

Look up “Harry Styles queer” on Google and you’ll get a range of headlines from “We need to talk about why Harry Styles is a lesbian icon” to “Harry Style’s New Music Video is Extremely Bisexual.” Styles often dons floral suits and a more stereotypically feminine demeanor alongside lyrics like ones from his song “Medicine,” which are unmistakably bisexual: “The boys and the girls are here/ I mess around with him/ And I’m okay with it.” Recently, Styles announced a tour with artists similarly dubbed queer icons, Jenny Lewis and King Princess, a musical setup that seems like it was made in heaven for queer fans. On his new Saturday Night Live appearance, Styles played a sexually ambiguous character in the Sara Lee sketch, referencing being thirsty for men, almost locking in his “brand” of queerness yet again. In October 2019, Styles’s single “Lights Up” was also deemed a bisexual anthem by certain members of the queer community, especially as the corresponding music video shows a nearly naked Styles surrounded by people of all genders who are touching and carressing his body.

In a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, he explained why he often dons rainbow flags on stage at his concerts and why he’s been so vocal about supporting queer people. “Everyone in that room is on the same page and everyone knows what I stand for. I’m not saying I understand how it feels. I’m just trying to say, ‘I see you.’” At this point, Styles isn’t new to curiosity surrounding his sexuality. Throughout his time with One Direction, rumors about his sexuality swirled, as he had a close relationship with bandmate Louis Tomlinson. The relationship became a hot topic, and one hugely obsessed over in fan and fanfiction communities. In a 2017 interview with The Sun, while discussing the way that celebrity sexuality is constantly questioned, he said, “It’s weird for me—everyone should just be who they want to be. It’s tough to justify somebody having to answer to someone else about stuff like that … I don’t feel like it’s something I’ve ever felt like I have to explain about myself.” At his final show for his tour in Glasgow in 2018, Styles announced onstage, “We’re all a little bit gay.”

For much of his career, it’s almost seemed like his fanbase is rooting for his queerness. One reason that online communities seem to be so obsessed with queer-adjacent celebrities like Styles is that they normalize queerness, making it feel more accessible. “If they were to come out, it would be a huge benefit to LGBTQ visibility in the media, and a lot of people in the LGBTQ community would love to have a celebrity of that stature on ‘their’ side,” Ash, a bisexual woman, told me. But Styles doesn’t actually claim queerness just because many fans, queer and otherwise, have hoped that he’ll one day do so explicitly. “Can straight people be queer?” asked a 2016 Vice article about the impact of the term’s increasingly broad application. The fact is that cis, straight people can’t be queer—so what does that mean when queer communities tout artists like Styles or Swift as part of our culture?

At some points in history, having these kinds of allies for the community who are not queer themselves, like Lil’ Kim, who has advocated for gay men and against homophobia in the rap community since the early 2000s, has been monumental. Queer audiences of yesteryears also gravitated toward performers like Dolly Parton who didn’t have to be queer themselves because they were accepting and loving toward all, and used their platform to normalize and uplift the queer communities that have celebrated them. In this day and age, however, expectations of performers have heightened. Unlike other celebrities dubbed “queer icons” who happen to be straight, including Madonna, Janet Jackson, or Parton, the fanbases of artists like Styles’s skew younger. And younger audiences don’t just want performers who see and welcome them. They want performers who are them—artists who understand the queer experience because they are queer, and they’re here to reflect audiences back to themselves.

So why the critique if there are seemingly so many positives to any representation or acceptance? It’s not that Styles, or any celebrity or public figure for that matter, owes us any information about their sexualities. On one hand, simply by existing in such a public manner, these celebrities offer a sliver of hope that there might be someone just like us navigating the world of queerness and identity. Celebrities like Styles or Swift—who has made use of queer aesthetics herself, and whose friendship with model Karlie Kloss has been the subject of rumors—remind us of who we were when we navigated our queerness more subtly before we were ready to explicitly tell someone close to us, or our resident queer community. Entertainers like Jackson or Parton became queer icons because they embraced queer fans during a closeted time, and perhaps it felt okay to have acceptance without representation. It was clear the performers weren’t trying to be queer. On the other hand, with Styles or Swift, the lines are blurred, and it’s unclear whether they’re trying to say they’re one of us or merely accept queer fans while borrowing from the culture to fit in and create a brand.

“I think it’s important for white queer folks to interrogate the whiteness of their queer idols, and work to understand why they feel more inclined to celebrate the visible queerness of one artist over another.”

There’s often a concern that celebrities are co-opting queerness as a marketing ploy. With the long history of queerbaiting (using the possibility of or undertones of queerness to gain favorability with queer people) in popular culture, there’s a certain level of disingenuousness to letting the bait and switch go on with minimal critique. The kind of support and lauding that celebrities like Styles receive for more playful expression and experimentation is not always present for queer people of color like Syd (formerly of The Internet), Alok Vaid-Menon, or Big Freedia. When she sees mostly white, thin, able-bodied figures with “queer energy” centered as icons in the queer community as opposed to queer people of color, Olivia Zayas Ryan, a queer woman, wonders why. “If you’re showing up for a pretty white boy in a tutu, where are you when Black and brown queer folks are vilified, ridiculed, and worse?” she told me. “If you are excited and feel seen when queer aesthetics are in the mainstream, what are you doing to honor, protect, and recognize the folks who created them? I think it’s important for white queer folks to interrogate the whiteness of their queer idols, and work to understand why they feel more inclined to celebrate the visible queerness of one artist over another.”

Conversation around both queerbaiting and our curiosity about celebrity queerness is an ongoing and complicated one. For example, there are theorists who have posited that Kurt Cobain was a closeted trans woman. “Many transgender women see themselves in his shaggy hair, his penchant for nail polish and dresses, and his struggles with depression,” Gillian Branstetter, a transgender advocate and writer, told me. Cobain’s fascination with pregnancy (“In Utero”) and his distaste for masculinity (“In Bloom”), as well as his partner Courtney Love’s references to having a more fluid lover (“He had ribbons in his hair/ And lipstick was everywhere/ You look good in my dress”) stoked this interest in his sexuality and presentation. “It sounds very familiar to trans women whose own relationship with masculinity and femininity was often expressed in coded ways before they came out,” says Branstetter. Styles, who like Cobain shows disinterest in conforming to a traditionally masculine rock-star presentation, seems to spark the same interest in fans from the queer community.

With our investment in Styles or other celebrities who are likely straight but exude “queer energy,” it feels as if we’re looking for a mirror of ourselves, seeking to claim the most popular public figures as our own, and in turn feel more normal and accepted. Perhaps our obsession with artists like Styles comes down to the excitement of feeling visible—but what do fans of potentially straight queer icons like Styles actually want? Can we thread the needle between feeling seen and normalized in our queerness while also feeling the imbalance between Styles’s privilege and the most marginalized people in the queer community’s lived experiences? Ultimately, it’s queer fans who get to decide if Styles’s kind of allyship and solidarity with the queer community is enough, or if it’s begun to give off the all-too-familiar stink of disingenuous baiting.