#who goes up and screams about trans people the whole time when there are actual problems to address

[beanghostprincess]

Thinking about transfem sanuso again (I love women I love trans women I love fem people I love saphics have I said I love women?)

You know about that one post of someone saying that if they had a lame ass bf they would hype the shit out off them before entering any room? That's them (not bc they think the other is lame but just to show off how beautiful and incredible their gf is)

Usopp putting ribbons and cute hair clips on Sanji's hair (I think she would like it)

Sanji liking to run her fingers on Usopp's hair on the mornings before she goes and prepare breakfast for all of them

Just them giving eachother quick kisses while they work

You said something about them sharing clothes (THAT WAS SO CUTE AND LOVELY I JUST AAAAAAAW LOVE THEM) so I had another thought about that

Sanji cares about her outfits and puts more thought into them so she does a little fashion show for Usopp

Usopp who doesn't care much about fashion (she looks good with anything but she likes her overalls and a shirt she has to put on since if she goes without one like she used to Sanji would die) but is Sanji's hype woman even if she doesn't get fashion that much but tries for her

*holds them gently* you have open my eyes to transfem sanuso and now they're my world :((

"I love women I love trans women I love fem people I love sapphics have I said I love women?" <- Same. Mood. This is like my whole identity.

OKAY SO ALL OF THESE ARE GREAT?????? I'M GOING INSANE THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA- I love them so much!!

YES! They would hype each other up so so so so much!! Sanji would literally scream how much she loves her girlfriend and how she's the best sniper at the top of her lungs for everyone to hear her. In the middle of a battle, she would literally be Usopp's biggest fan. And Usopp already does that in canon atp because I've lost count of how many times she compliments Sanji's food. And she's so loud about it too!! They would literally go to every person they meet and say shit like: "My girlfriend is the best sniper you'll ever see! Her aim is so good that her love arrows went straight to my heart!!!! *dies from a nosebleed or whatever*" and "Oh, actually I am dating the best cook in all seas!! Her food is so delicious it can send you to heaven and back and I would even say it gives you more strength and power than devil fruits themselves!!! And you can't have her because she's mine *mischievous/proud smile*"

I think Usopp one day catches Sanji cooking (the kitchen is usually closed when she works because of... Luffy reasons. But she always lets Usopp be with her) and she casually sees both of her eyes because her bangs are held by a hair clip. It does things to Usopp, honestly. When they're bored she always plays with Sanji's hair and does anything she wants to it and Sanji is just glad Usopp's touching her. Simp (derogatory but I understand).

Sanji, waking up earlier than her girlfriend, would absolutely love to worship her and stare at her for a while before getting out of bed. She'd run her fingers through her hair and whisper sweet nothings against her ear while hugging her close and kissing her all over (without managing to wake her up). She actually suffers a lot from the "I miss my girlfriend's warmth and I could sleep with her all day long" disease. But it's fine because an hour later Usopp is always in the kitchen to hug her from behind and see how she cooks breakfast and prepares food for lunch.

The quick kisses thing makes me,,, Go insane, honestly. I think it's so sweet and so real. They can't be apart. Do not separate them. They're SO clingy. Usopp often works in the kitchen while Sanji tries new recipes, so Sanji always asks her to try her food and judge it! It's always good, but Usopp always tries to give her very specific and objective criticism. Sanji always stops from time to time to give Usopp quick kisses after she has tasted a bit of her food, and when Usopp is feeling stressed for not getting something right in her inventions/drawings she always stands up to kiss Sanji. And I think they do this ALL the time. Whenever they are together without doing much, Sanji will always cling to Usopp and kiss her cheeks. And Usopp always kisses Sanji's knuckles and forehead for no reason all the time. These kisses are sweet and short but they mean the world to them.

OMG THE CLOTHES THINGY- Okay, so I LOVE it when couples share clothes. When my girlfriend wears my cardigans (lots of times. She's always cold and I would literally die before letting her freeze. I'm not a fucking monster. Always give your clothes to your cold girlfriends even if you freeze and turn to stone) I literally die. I think Sanji is basically the same. Usopp is dumb and careless and she's always wearing overalls without anything under or just bigass t-shirts and baggy pants. Whatever's comfortable (she's literally my girlfriend what the fuck- Also in my head Fem Sanuso literally dresses like me and my fiancé lmfao this is- This is very funny. I have so many clothes/aesthetic headcanons for these two. Should make a pinterest board or a post about it here or something idk). So she always ends up getting cold but keeps saying no!! That she's great!! (Liar) And Sanji always gives her her suit jackets. Usopp couldn't be happier, but Sanji always dies when this happens. On the other hand, Usopp's clothes are wayyy more comfortable than suits/dresses/skirts (which are basically all the clothes Sanji has if you ignore some t-shirts she barely wears anyway) and Sanji always ends up stealing them after waking up to make breakfast or whenever they are sure it's going to be a lazy day on the ship without anyone bothering them. Usopp loves seeing her wearing her t-shirts, especially because they're oversized (for both of them. Usopp likes baggy clothes) and Sanji's legs are more visible. Usopp dies every time.

Sanji always does lil fashion shows for her girlfriend every time she buys new clothes and Usopp is her biggest fan. And whenever they change to go on an adventure and Usopp wears eccentric hats Sanji would never wear, she hypes her up anyway because, after all, it's what her girlfriend likes. And she looks adorable anyway!

*holds them gently* I'm so glad you love them this much too because they mean the world to me !! <3

[ellieellieoxenfree]

22, 24, 25

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

canon is not always great at doing this either, but trauma and disability. i look at some of my faves — rita farr, josee, vegas theerapanyakul, ai di, hartley rathaway, teresa mendoza, rita west — and they’re fucking absolute messes, all defined by some brutal shit. their respective canons have handled this with varying degrees of sensitivity (you know exactly who i’m subtweeting) and i don’t participate in all of the fandoms for these pieces of media, but i turn into an absolutely wild beast when people gloss over that because it’s too much of a challenge to include. people who faced years of childhood abuse or who were suddenly confronted with an unexpected, uncontrollable loss of autonomy are going to struggle with those things. one of these characters got shot multiple times in the abdomen, for chrissakes. and people are like ‘idk i guess he can have a marathon fuck sesh it’s cool this won’t interfere with his life in any way’ like YES IT WILL YES IT IS FUCKING PERMANENT, DIANE. there are physical effects and limitations that never go away. there is an ongoing, volatile sense of loss that will body you over and over again for the rest of your life. i love josee for tapping into the anger of disability (you know how i feel about my best girl) but i also love characters whose canons force them to grapple with a reality thrust upon them at a point in their lives when they can draw a clear delineation between Me Before and Me Now, rather than those who have never known the grief of your bodily function being ripped from you unexpectedly. and that isn’t just disability. that’s betrayal and abuse and loss of security and stability and identity. and if you can’t actually deal with the whole of a character’s raw ugly misery and anger on top of the fun fluffy bits to read or write then MAYBE the messes are not your arena.

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

ooooh i’m gonna get canceled for this one but i will block people who get into internet slapfights about gender and sexuality. i’m an old shithead so i find the trend of needing to affix 500 microlabels to every character exhausting, especially in canons where none of these people would have the remotest fucking idea what you’re banging on about. and further, i find it extremely off-putting when a male character expresses traits that aren’t in lockstep with stereotypical or toxic masculinity and immediately gets painted as trans. i see one of these essays where you spend 10k assigning things to a character that are really just you projecting your own identity onto your fave and onto the blocklist you go. some of y’all make me miss fucking kinnies.

i also cannot fucking abide ship wars, because i came from a fandom where people got so mad about a pairing taking up too much screen time they engineered a plot to ruin a real person’s career over it (that was wave one of the bullshit, but i digress). i have watched that shit happen for years and years and yeaaaars — usagi/mamoru and seiya/usagi fans used to throw temper tantrums at each other like they were getting paid to, way back in the day — and it has never gotten any less noxious. it has, in fact, just gotten fucking worse with the increasing curdling of twitter and stan culture. it was bad enough when it was just screaming at each other over which boring girl harry potter should bone but now people have let that shit spill into the real world. now it’s just a normal thing to try to affect someone’s careers, or discuss your rpf ships in front of the people involved. FUCKING BOUNDARIES. LEARN THEM. RESPECT THEM. what the fuck is wrong with you people. stop sharing your fics with them or tagging them in your art. and yes, that even goes for bryan fuller. just because he’s a freak who probably beat off to all the hannibal/will art you sent him doesn’t mean you should have sent it in the first place.

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

since you’re my BTS buddy…i wish for a meteorite to strike everyone who identifies as an army because if i’m stupid enough to go into the tag, 99% of the posts are ‘hybe/bighit is out to sabotage (fave’s) career’ or ’this is why (ship) is the only truth and everyone else is a dirty sinner going to hell for wrongthink’ and holy shit TAKE A MIKE’S HARD LOOK AT YOURSELVES FOR FIVE MINUTES. if you are so deeply invested in the sex lives of some random korean guys that you are getting legitimately angry at other people on the internet about them not thinking your preferred boy is making the sign of the two-backed aardvark with your other preferred boy, log off. go the fuck outside. i’m not above cracking jokes but some of y’all are rolling out the murderboards and obsessively documenting every single moment their faves happen to be in the same area of the stage to explain why one of them moving their little finger an inch to the right means he’s gonna get his ass eaten after the show.

the career sabotage shit i don’t even know, understand, or care to know. i see it in the tag fucking constantly and it exhausts me. i need to not engage in baseless conspiracy theories. i’m not here for this. just like i’m not here to figure out who in the group is taking a ride on the humpatron 3000, i’m not here to go through a million posts on 50 social media sites every day combing every single word choice for evidence that my faves are one wrong step from being put to death by bighit management. i just want to enjoy myself for five goddamn minutes.

as a very casual new fan, my experience has been 1% gifs of people whose faces and talent i enjoy and 99% screeching harridan drama whose point entirely eludes me. i hate all of these people. i hope they fall into the ocean. maybe the fish will be a more receptive audience than i am.

[growling]

Ooo tell me more about these gore sites n whatever

yayayayayay :33 well just a few of them that I feel like I can explain somewhat, I have failed to stick to sites only and now just dumping all my cursed knowledge on every kind of shock site/image/video (none shown or linked obviously lmao) also as yall can probably tell: cw for like, general descriptions of shock stuff like gore or just things that are gross/unsanitary:

K-Fee commercial(s) - a series of coffee commercials that aired a while ago, i think the 90s or somewhere around then. So you know like, that veryyyyy popular screamer with the car road or something? So that was actually from this series, and there are multiple more but it's just that one which is most well known. I think they actually got taken down some time later after airing and I mean I'm not surprised there's gonna be like at least a few people got heart attacks for that. Like.. Yeah

The "Unholy Trinity" aka. TubgirI, Lemon Party & Goats e (last one without space i dont want to summon anyone lmao) - three most popular/infamous shock pictures that got passed around on the internets in the fucked up evil 2000s-or-so, basically any shocksite that exists no matter the quality like, has to have at least one of these on their site (up there with the Jeff the Killer flashing jumpscare or that Anne(?) image from the horror movie, but those are like, used as screamers and not just still images), they're like the shock image starter pokemon you get me right. A brief(??) description of these: TubgirI (cw for uh, enemas?) is an image of a woman sitting in a tub with her legs spread, and a mask (according to some, not gonna fact check sorry i value myself) on her face, and what looks to be the aftermath of an enema cascading out her ass and on her face. And like, I'm trying to be grossed out but the way everyone describes it just makes it look like some kinda abstract album cover like whoever photographed this must have really cared about the composition anyway uh Goats e (cw for. ass insides????) is an image of a dude presenting for a lack of better term, and using both his hands he kinda pulls/opens up his asshole from the sides to a point where you can see the inside of it. Lemon Party is literally just an image of three old men going at it. Yes that is all it's just three old men fucking. Probably got considered "shocking" by the net because homophobia and oldmanphobia i guess. Meatspin also got the similiar treatment because it had a trans woman(?) in it

1 Man 1 Jar - that one's a video and also somewhat of a classic just like the aforementioned three. Basically, there's this guy who really likes putting things up his urethra/ass, but he's more into extreme things than anything really safe, and there are multiple videos other than that one, where something just, uh, goes wrong while he's doing it. He also had a wife and a child(?) but he kept it a secret from them. Anyway 1 Man 1 Jar is contains him standing over a glass jar and then proceeding to put the whole thing inside (he apparently did that/or similiar things with glass before then but it went as fine as it could before), but the glass does what glass does and breaks, immediately after blood starts just gushing out and there's a LOT of it. The Guy just calmly starts getting the pieces out, doesn't even scream or anything, just doesn't have a reaction to that. After the whole ordeal (outside the video) he said he has patched it up himself and went to work the next day hiding the injury from everyone else (he was fine). He didn't go to the hospital because he didn't want anyone to know about what he's been doing and I honestly just feel bad for him at this point

Agor.io - soooo, you know how I mentioned earlier that it was like, when you wanted to make a site that's a screamer very often the jumpscare itself will be like, that one Anne(?) image or realistic Jeff the Killer? So yeah, they'd also typically, to make it (Jeff) scarier, they'd put up scream sounds in the background and a whole lot of flashing on the image/gif itself. The site agor.io had the jumpscare in it that is just like how I described, and it is named (and kinda modeled after) like that in order to trick people who made a typo trying to go on agar.io (that one circle game) instead. One day, a woman wrote a reddit post asking for help or explanation for that on some, I assume, that one law focused subreddit? saying that her young son, who's got epilepsy or some other condition that causes seizures can't really remember, found out about the game agar.io from school when his friends played it. When he went to home, he tried to play it there too, however, made a typo. And then had a severe seizure and landed in the hospital, he was still in the hospital as his mother made the post, and she was looking into taking whoever made the site into court over it. The site actually did get taken down a few days after, but we don't know if it's because the law got involved and they (person who made the site) were forced to, or if they saw the post and got scared and deleted it immediately to avoid that.

Encyclopedia Dramatica, particularily the page "Offended" - Encyclopedia Dramatica was basically like, a satire version of Wikipedia, wackpedion reference. Except unlike other pages that have a similiar premise, Encyclopedia Dramatica's humor and wit was basically just racism slurs gore and whatever's the edgiest and literally nothing else. Anyway the page "Offended"/"Are You Offended?" (people provide different titles) was apparently frequently linked to people who were, well, offended. There are two differing descriptions of the page's content itself, them being: 1. that its a gallery, that starts out with cute animal pictures, but as you scroll down it quickly becomes progressively more disturbing, containing gore like injuries, bloody corpses, some with animals, crime scene footage, you name it. 2. That the content is the same, but instead of starting off innocent, the gallery is just gore. Not gonna check which is the true version.

EeI Soup - [long sigh] ok so there's two girls. a container of baby eels. girl 1 starts bending over. there's a funnel

Mr. Hands - (cw for beastiality) so the story behind it is fucking wild and I won't get into it because word limit and I don't remember. But there was this one guy who was part of a beastiality sex tape ring, and he really liked horses. It's a video of him and a few of his friends sneaking(?) into a ranch and he does things that beastialists typically do. With a stallion. It goes wrong. His internal organs get fucking destroyed during the act and he dies. And his buddies didn't even help him or anything just ran away. Also the aforementioned Guy had ties to like, numerous other infamous beastialists & zoosadists I believe he appeared on the Zooey podcast or one of the guys he knew did?? Anyway nearly all of them are connected in some way

1 4 4 4 (without spaces) - a video on youtube with that title that got since taken down but not after a few entire days. It showed Ron.nie Mc.nutt (censored cause i don't wanna summon anyone) dying via suicide. A lot of videos (especially on tiktok, disguised as a regular compilation or a dance and the suddenly cutting to that) liked to show that one back then. Like, a lot. Apparently that was a calculated test attack by some group from over at the dark web, which sounds crazy but there's like, concrete proof for that, apparently?? So yeah anyway

(hit word limit gotta do a line break)

Ogrish/Liveleak - most people probably know what liveleak is at this point, basically it was that really popular site where like uncensored news clips got posted but also a lot of gore and just videos of people dying and getting tortured or whatever you name it. Ogrish was actually the same as Liveleak made by the same people but like, the older version.

Rotten.com - i just feel like I HAVE to mention that one but I have like unfortunately zero info on that aside from like.. very old and (in)famous site, one of the first ones with that content, where its just a bunch of pictures of corpses or whatever. anyway its not up anymore. i think.

Run the Gauntlet - basically an internet challenge that is also a site. So basically, there is 20 videos that play categorized by difficulty (probably wrong the further i go but i think its like: beginner, easy, medium, hard, extreme?), and if you can watch every one of them up until the end without looking away, then you win the challenge and as a reward get absolutely nothing. you can pause/opt out of it anytime you want which is nice i guess. the videos are essentially, just, shock and gore that progressively get worse. for example, the very first video, in the beginner level, is two women arm-wrestling until one of them breaks their arm and you can see the bone poke out. then theres like, maggot stuff, some teenager falls while diving into water(?) and lands on something else and i think impales(?) himself, there's like, nature documentary level stuff with animals that isnt that bad like right after and right before some another gore, there's fake accidents, disturbing movie scenes etc etc etc so not just gore but like, mostly. The very last video is 3 guys 1 hammer, widely regarded as "the worst video on the internet", which without getting into too much detail, is two ukrainian(?) serial killers from some time back who liked to record themselves murdering people, and in this one its a man getting very brutally killed by them with hammers. So anyway actually a few videos on there got either shuffled, or deleted and replaced with others - originally there was a few involving children, but all of them got removed. There is a big discussion on the ethicality of gore videos but if there is something that most people can agree with is that maybe at least leave kids out of this. Anyway so thats that

Kek maga (without the space. i dont want to summon anyone lmaooo) - ok so the creator of the site made a fucking villain monologue one time even. Anyway its a small site with various gore videos that exists purely to scare the living shit out of people that accidentially clicked on anything on it. I thiiink there's like, first a starter page that says nothing(?) else other than "only proceed if youre above 18" and an enter sign that if you click it basically a lot of images and videos of well. gore. start flashing and it think theres like, screaming in the background of it its practically designed in a way to be THE most stressful experience in your life. You can leave but before the pages closes for real you get a box saying "are you sure you want to leave youll lose all your progress if you do :)))))))" and you gotta click yes on that too before you actually can leave so. that is cool. Oh I nearly forgot the maker of that site named it kekmaga because its got maga in it and he wanted to lure older conservative people to it cause they dont know how computers work or something

Nim p (anti-summon space) - similiar to kek-ma but no one talks about it. A lot of youtubers back in the day got linked that page which meant that they "got nimped" which we would consider very rude by todays standards but anyway. Its a page thats just screaming and gore and shock and yadayadayada except its all in like, these boxes(?) that just start appearing and dissapearing and flying around your screen and its WAYYYYY harder to actually close like you gotta really lock in in order to stop having to look at people dying

Women's Alliance - made by the same guy that brought us the maga bait. It is a site that disguises itself as like, a feminist forum for women and female empowerment or something like you know. Before you enter theres of course the starter page which says something along the lines of "the subjects on here may be a bit sensitive and mature so only proceed if ur above 18!!" and then an enter sign that you click. Except its not a feminist forum its actually a site with images of gore flashing on it. Except its got a twist this time and now its exclusively, misogynistic violence like women getting beaten, killed, pictures of their dead bodies, probably also some rape videos too i got no proof for the last one but like, i just know it like why wouldn't it have that too at this point.

That is all you have got your knowledge wiki.......... uhhh how long was this ask in my inbox/drafts at this point

[x-honeycomb-x]

I cried in the shower (manic rant)

I have done nothing but masturbating today. I also made some cereal.

I fantasized about a mommy, and looked up some lesbian porn. I really like smart and emotionally responsive but reserved mommies.

As I finished, I needed hugs from her. I grabbed my fluffy comforter and pillow to feel hugged. I thought about her (for the context I watched India Summer), and I let myself feel needy towards a mommy.

I thought about detransitioning into a girl, and thought "I wanna grow up pretty and smart like you." And in my head she replied, "No silly, I will grow up to be me, and you will grow up to be you."

That thought stuck with me for a long time.

I don't know who I am, I am rejecting a lot of parts of who I am (gender aside). I have C-PTSD and have an unstable sense of self even. You reap just what you sow, who am I? Who will I grow up to be if I would just let myself?

I need to be who I am. I am not taught how to be a functionable person? I don't even have a regular eating routine after school. These are all parts of me. I imagine the mommy and I repeat back and forth. "I can't be who you are, I am my own person."

And then I felt like it's her time to get going. I think about having a home, having a personhood to return to. "I'm gonna get going now." I often hear people say. Where to? Home? Back to their life? I don't have a sense of self, I only hang out with people until I am exhausted, so when people wants to leave I think they're tired of me.

I said goodbye. I imagine her having a regular day after us. I imagine her juices still wet on my pussy.

I look at my room. I am not what I want to achieve but haven't. I am not a bassist-to-be cause I'm not there yet. I am a musically inclined person who's is planning to play bass in the coming week. I need to eat. Hunger is part of me.

I need to shower. I need to feel clean, wanting to shower is part of who I am.

I started playing Dazey and the Scouts on Spotify, got my clothes and stepped in the shower.

The clothes I choose this afternoon is who I am.

I keep thinking about being me in the shower. I thought about that reply in my head, "Silly, I will grow up to be me, you will grow up to be you." Who will I be? I am genuinely scared. I remember fragments of being bullied in kindergarten, being abused at home, I imagine myself being under a hydraulic press, becoming what the press is besides at the seams; I am only myself when I can't contain it in me anymore. That would mean outbursts. And abstract daydreams.

I am scared. I am gender-fluid, and yesterday after getting a ounce of masc euphoria (my first in a long time now), I realized I really don't feel trans masculine right now. I feel feminine. What if this goes on for years, and I really feel like going off testosterone for a while because I feel feminine for like 3 years?

I feel a repressed self inside of me. But I don't know them enough. And I am really tired of not knowing myself.

I need to use my sensitive wash. The package has a nice lavendar color. I thought about how dysphoric I felt when I watched straight PIV porn today, and how safe I felt when watching lesbian mommy porn. I thought about how I would like a mommy to touch this, scissor on this.

Dazey and the Scouts started screaming in their song.

This womb is sapphic. I never. Looked at my stomach and thought about this. I know I like girls (and AFAB people). The idea of sapphic exists in my head. (The name is based on the first historically recorded female writer actually.) I know I have a womb, briefly. I've done so much things to this womb that I don't even wanna think about.

All I think about this womb is PIV, otherwise I shut it out. Textbooks, Tumblr, my family, 9gag, I've spent my whole life listening to how people wanna get a penis in this and how I should keep them in or out. I look at my stomach, this womb is sapphic. It wants to be scissored on, it wants to be kissed by girls, I never associated the imagery with this idea. Dazey and the Scouts started screaming in their song and I cried.

I've spent my whole life hating girls. I am autistic and couldn't relate to any of them at school. I thought all girls were bullies, or they're so etheral they're untouchable. It was only recently I actively try to think of myself as a woman, and as I walk past other women on the street, I try to think of myself as one of them. It's a strange thought and it still tingles my mind with some resistance. They're just people, they are all sorts of people, and I am one of them. (For the context I am gender-fluid, so I am also a woman.)

Girls can start rock bands, girls can scream their heart out in songs. Girls write and some of it gets in the canon. Girls wear makeup and girls shower. I just started doing makeup today and I wonder if the crying would melt my makeup. (It didn't.)

So that's it. I found out my womb is sapphic(+) and it doesn't want cis men. It doesn't want to be bred, it's tired of discussions around unwanted PIV sexual attention. But god, I've let so many in so many times. I didn't get a IUD so I can have unprotected sex, but my mental illnesses got the better of me. I don't want PIV attention and this device closes the door. I feel dirty for the men and woman that have cummed semen on this metal. My womb wants peace.

I thought of the bullying and the abuse. I am tired of being scared of myself. I wanna turn that negative thought into a positive mantra - I am not afraid to be myself. I thought about it and breathed it in and out. (I meditate and am in somatic therapy.)

I walk out of the shower, got dressed and started writing this. I will still struggle to find my personhood, but I am trying. I don't want to be afraid of being myself anymore. (I am so mentally ill.) I am amazed by all the things that girls can do. I am sapphic and turns out my womb is too. Some lesbians can be mean and scary, but I have every damn right to identify as part of the community. I am also very scared of my gender swings. When will it swing again, how long will it stay, and what do I do about the hormones situation - I wanna go off T at the moment so bad, but I also already miss T although I haven't gone off it.

So that's [edit: birth name] and her little gender adventures, and she cried in the shower. Now she's gonna go get some food and maybe go to a party after this. Or just stay in and read. I really have had enough masturbation today.

[fictionkinfessions]

(Warning: this is going to be a lot heavier than most of my other confessions, and it contains mentions of lookism and ableism, disability erasure, verbal/physical bullying and the resulting trauma, and other uncomfortable subjects! Sorry if this is too much.)

Looks like I'm now just using this blog as a place to vent about my personal gripes with the Vocaloid fandom, huh?

Jokes aside, I really want to talk about a huge issue I see with how people portray me. It's not *as* common as the whole memelord thing, but I'd argue that it's a lot more harmful since it doesn't just affect me, but it affects people in real life who have birth defects, scars, skin conditions, or anything else along those lines.

If you take a look at any art of me drawn by Mikuma (my official artist!), one of the first things you'll notice is that my face and eye are... a little fucked up. I've seen a lot of different interpretations in the fandom of what they may be. For me personally, it's actually a birthmark that goes allllll the way down the right side of my body (and there's also a few lil spots on my left side), and that's what gave me my all-red eye as well, but I know that's not canon-canon, and I enjoy seeing the different ideas people have, especially if they're another me! (Fellow Fukases RISE UP)

However, the problem comes when people decide that these things are "too hard to draw" or "look too ugly" or whatever, so they just. Get rid of those things and draw me like Some Guy™. I don't look like that irl, but it still makes me extremely fucking uncomfortable for reasons that I'll clarify in a minute.

Like I said, I was born looking like this. When I was little, a lot of other kids were either scared of me and avoided me like the plague or they just straight-up bullied me, all because I looked the way I did (well, there were other factors too, like my autism or the fact that I'm trans, but the birthmark was most of the issue). I hated myself for such a long time because people acted like and told me that I was ugly, so it made me feel ugly, too. Whenever I tried to talk to someone, I felt like I had to cover my face so they wouldn't get grossed out and run away. I'd get anxious to the point that I wouldn't be able to talk because I didn't want to accidentally draw attention to myself and have people stare at me. It was awful.

Eventually, it all culminated in something that I honestly don't remember too well. I think I was about 8 years old, it was during recess, and there was this group of other kids that I was talking to, for some reason. Things were fine for a while, but then (HUGE TW FOR PHYSICAL ABUSE IN THIS NEXT PART!!!) one of them threw me onto the ground, and they all started kicking me. Most of it's a blur, but I clearly remember them screaming at me to die and calling me a fr//k, over and over again. They just wouldn't stop. I had to be dragged away from them. I'm convinced that they would've killed me if they had the chance.

Obviously, that affected me a lot. You know how I have a cane in my canon design? That's because my spine got all fucked up from that incident, and it still hurts to walk sometimes, so I use that to help when my back acts up (ironically, I have chronic back pain irl too, but it's less severe and mostly due to genetic reasons). I can't hear the word fr//k even in passing, or I start panicking because of it. It's especially bad in-character, but it also makes me uncomfortable irl.

What does this have to do with people drawing me without my birthmark and red eye? Well, basically, what I'm trying to say is that by getting rid of those things, they're erasing the trauma that I've had to deal with because of them.

Not to mention, you think it's bad for me? I've only dealt with this kind of thing in-character. The bullying I've dealt with irl was for completely different reasons and nowhere near as bad. I can only imagine how people who actually have to deal with this kind of harassment feel. Every other Vocaloid released previously and since have basically been flawless picture-perfect anime characters, and when someone like me finally comes along, someone that people with deformities/blemishes can potentially see themselves in, people bash me for being "ugly", "overly detailed", or "too hard to draw". How are those people supposed to feel about that? At the end of the day, I'm just a singing computer and I can't say anything about this, but it goes a lot deeper than that, and I know my pity is the last thing people want, but it makes me sick. It's not just about me; it's a bigger problem within not just the Vocaloid fandom or even fandom spaces in general, but society and its toxic beauty standards as a whole.

Wow, fuck, sorry for the essay. This issue is obviously extremely important to me, so I wanted to go into as much detail as possible. I hope everyone reading this has a nice day/night/whatever time it is where you live!

-Fukase (please tag as otherhearted (although I'm starting to think it's a bit more than that?), #👁❌️🔴)

🪵

[zutaralesbian]

I posted 1,800 times in 2022

274 posts created (15%)

1,526 posts reblogged (85%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@thegoatsongs

@whaticameherefor

@anniejanuarygf

@royaltealovingkookiness

@emilyskinners

I tagged 1,782 of my posts in 2022

Only 1% of my posts had no tags

#fanart - 399 posts

#killing eve - 317 posts

#villaneve - 241 posts

#spop - 223 posts

#shameless - 190 posts

#* - 177 posts

#atla - 170 posts

#gallavich - 161 posts

#first kill - 140 posts

#catradora - 135 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#and i’m afraid that in the end the villaneve content they give won’t be worth it and all these extra characters are just using up screentime

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

It’s funny that JKR considers herself some kind of champion of women just because she shits on trans people when even her books are actually riddled with misogyny and favoritism towards the male characters. Name 1 prominent relationship between two women in Harry Potter that’s positive, not filled with petty animosity, and gets a decent amount of page time.

You can’t

198 notes - Posted January 7, 2022

#4

The Killing Eve writers (at least the head ones) have always looked at the idea of Eve and Villanelle being in a “domestic” relationship through very heteronormative lenses I think. Like…Eve and Villanelle could have very easily ended the series as a happy couple and still be a little dysfunctional and commit crimes together. Their idea of being domestic didn’t have to align with what was “normal” and I don’t think anyone ever really wanted or expected that.

But the writers are too black and white and simple minded to think like that I guess.

257 notes - Posted April 11, 2022

#3

Will never get over the big brained storytelling of Fear Street. The cop who played the hero the entire trilogy and his rich ancestors turned out to be the villains the whole time. And the “witch” who was scapegoated as being the cause of the curse was completely innocent and was persecuted and punished simply for being gay and loving another woman. Like, I’ll be screaming about that years from now.

291 notes - Posted August 27, 2022

#2

I do think it’s funny how Eve and Villanelle have both caused extreme bodily harm to the other (the stabbing and shooting) and yet Villanelle frets over Eve having a minor injury on her hand and Eve loses her shit when Helene has Villanelle shot with an arrow.

It’s very “no one is allowed to do that except me” of them.

351 notes - Posted March 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I don’t know where the KE writers ever got the idea that Eve is someone that is “meant” for a normal life and just got dragged into the chaos by Villanelle. It actually goes against the core of her character lmao. (And it is a pattern with them bc Emerald Fennel said similar shit about Eve in her post S2 interviews). In the beginning, Eve was literally introduced as someone that was bored with her normal life, which is why she started chasing Villanelle in the first place.

Eve is a woman who has canonically:

- Broke laws and got someone killed in her determination to track Villanelle

- Repeatedly gaslit her husband and put his life at risk in her obsession

- Stabbed Villanelle while they were lying in bed together

- Seriously contemplated pushing a man in front of a bus for being rude to her

- Left a man for dead in order to save Villanelle

- Gleefully helped finish off killing Dasha (and then later agreed with Villanelle that it was romantic that they both killed her lol)

- Unapologetically shot Konstantin

- Admitted that she wanted Villanelle to fuel to her “monster”

- Kidnapped a child

- Got visibly horny watching Villanelle kill Helene

- Gorged out Gunn’s eyeballs

And you’re trying to say this woman would function well in normal society? Lmao.

Anyway, I remember when Sandra Oh said that the finale could be described as “killing Eve” even though Eve didn’t technically die. I take this to mean that she thinks killing Villanelle IS killing Eve in a sense and that scream after she resurfaces the water is one of complete despair at losing the one person who truly understood and accepted her. Eve’s ending was just as tragic as Villanelle’s.

I take her word on Eve’s character over Laura Neal’s, whose only been with these character for 1 full season.

860 notes - Posted April 12, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

Love the the majority of my top posts was me bitching about Killing Eve. That tracks lmao

[mxbitters]

lmao so some asshole posted this on my town’s patch page but god could you IMAGINE 

[duckprintspress]

Ten Things We Hate About Trad Pub

Often when I say “I’ve started a small press; we publish the works of those who have trouble breaking into traditional publishing!” what people seem to hear is “me and a bunch of sad saps couldn’t sell our books in the Real World so we’ve made our own place with lower standards.” For those with minimal understanding of traditional publishing (trad pub), this reaction is perhaps understandable? But, truly, there are many things to hate about traditional publishing (and, don’t get me wrong - there are things to love about trad pub, too, but that’s not what this list is about) and it’s entirely reasonable for even highly accomplished authors to have no interest in running the gauntlet of genre restrictions, editorial control, hazing, long waits, and more, that make trad pub at best, um, challenging, and at worst, utterly inaccessible to many authors - even excellent ones.

Written in collaboration with @jhoomwrites, with input from @ramblingandpie, here is a list of ten things that we at Duck Prints Press detest about trad pub, why we hate it, and why/how we think things should be different!

(Needless to say, part of why we created Duck Prints Press was to...not do any of these things... so if you’re a writer looking for a publishing home, and you hate these things, too, and want to write with a Press that doesn’t do them...maybe come say hi?)

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1. Work lengths dictated by genre and/or author experience.

Romance novels can’t be longer than 90,000 words or they won’t sell! New authors shouldn’t try to market a novel longer than 100,000 words!

A good story is a good story is a good story. Longer genre works give authors the chance to explore their themes and develop their plots. How often an author has been published shouldn’t put a cap on the length of their work.

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2. Editors assert control of story events...except when they don’t.

If you don’t change this plot point, the book won’t market well. Oh, you’re a ten-time bestseller? Write whatever you want, even if it doesn’t make sense we know people will buy it.

Sometimes, a beta or an editor will point out that an aspect of a story doesn’t work - because it’s nonsensical, illogical, Deus ex Machina, etc. - and in those cases it’s of course reasonable for an editor to say, “This doesn’t work and we recommend changing it, for these reasons…” However, when that list of reasons begins and ends with, “...because it won’t sell…” that’s a problem, especially because this is so often applied as a double standard. We’ve all read bestsellers with major plot issues, but those authors get a “bye” because editors don’t want to exert to heavy a hand and risk a proven seller, but with a new, less experienced, or worse-selling author, the gloves come off (even though evidence suggests time and again that publishers’ ability to predict what will sell well is at best low and at worst nonexistent.)

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3. A billion rejection letters as a required rite of passage (especially when the letters aren't helpful in pinpointing why a work has been rejected or how the author can improve).

Well, my first book was rejected by a hundred Presses before it was accepted! How many rejection letters did you get before you got a bite? What, only one or two? Oh…

How often one succeeds or fails to get published shouldn’t be treated as a form of hazing, and we all know that how often someone gets rejected or accepted has essentially no bearing on how good a writer they are. Plenty of schlock goes out into the world after being accepted on the first or second try...and so does plenty of good stuff! Likewise, plenty of schlock will get rejected 100 times but due to persistence, luck, circumstances, whatever, finally find a home, and plenty of good stuff will also get rejected 100 times before being publishing. Rejections (or lack there of) as a point of pride or as a means of judging others needs to die as a rite of passage among authors.

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4. Query letters, for so many reasons.

Summarize all your hard work in a single page! Tell us who you’re like as an author and what books your story is like, so we can gauge how well it’ll sell based on two sentences about it! Format it exactly the way we say or we won’t even consider you!

For publishers, agents, and editors who have slush piles as tall as Mount Everest...we get it. There has to be a way to differentiate. We don’t blame you. Every creative writing class, NaNoWriMo pep talk, and college lit department combine to send out hundreds of thousands of people who think all they need to do to become the next Ernest Hemingway is string a sentence together. There has to be some way to sort through that pile...but God, can’t there be a better way than query letters? Especially since even with query letters being used it often takes months or years to hear back, and...

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5. "Simultaneous submissions prohibited.”

No, we don’t know when we’ll get to your query, but we’ll throw it out instantly if you have the audacity to shop around while you wait for us.

The combination of “no simultaneous submissions” with the query letter bottleneck makes success slow and arduous. It disadvantages everyone who aims to write full-time but doesn’t have another income source (their own, or a parents’, or a spouse’s, or, or or). The result is that entire classes of people are edged out of publishing solely because the process, especially for writers early in their career, moves so glacially that people have to earn a living while they wait, and it’s so hard to, for example, work two jobs and raise a family and also somehow find the time to write. Especially considering that the standard advice for dealing with “no simultaneous submissions” is “just write something else while you wait!” ...the whole system screams privilege.

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6. Genres are boxes that must be fit into and adhered to.

Your protagonist is 18? Then obviously your book is Young Adult. It doesn’t matter how smutty your book is, erotica books must have sex within the first three chapters, ideally in the first chapter. Sorry, we’re a fantasy publisher, if you have a technological element you don’t belong here…

While some genre boxes have been becoming more like mesh cages of late, with some flow of content allowed in and out, many remain stiff prisons that constrict the kinds of stories people can tell. Even basic cross-genre works often struggle to find a place, and there’s no reason for it beyond “if we can’t pigeon-hole a story, it’s harder to sell.” This edges out many innovative, creative works. It also disadvantages people who aren’t as familiar with genre rules. And don’t get me wrong - this isn’t an argument that, for example, the romance genre would be improved by opening up to stories that don’t have “happily ever afters.” Instead, it’s pointing out - there should also be a home for, say, a space opera with a side romance, an erotica scene, and a happily-for-now ending. Occasionally, works breakthrough, but for the most part stories that don’t conform never see the light of day (or, they do, but only after Point 2 - trad pub editors insist that the elements most “outside” the box be removed or revised).

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7. The lines between romance and erotica are arbitrary, random, and hetero- and cis-normative.

This modern romance novel won’t sell if it doesn’t have an explicit sex scene, but God forbid you call a penis a penis. Oh, no, this is far too explicit, even though the book only has one mlm sex scene, this is erotica.

The difference between “romance” and “erotica” might not matter so much if not for the stigmas attached to erotica and the huge difference in marketability and audience. The difference between “romance” and “erotica” also might not matter so much if not for the fact that, so often, even incredibly raunchy stories that feature cis straight male/cis straight female sex scenes are shelved as romance, but the moment the sex is between people of the same gender, and/or a trans or genderqueer person is involved, and/or the relationship is polyamorous, and/or the characters involved are literally anything other than a cis straight male pleasuring a cis straight female in a “standard” way (cunnilingus welcome, pegging need not apply)...then the story is erotica. Two identical stories will get assigned different genres based on who the people having sex are, and also based on the “skill” of the author to use ludicrous euphemisms (instead of just...calling body parts what they’re called…), and it’s insane. Non-con can be a “romance” novel, even if it’s graphically described. “50 Shades of Gray” can sell millions of copies, even containing BDSM. But the word “vagina” gets used once...bam, erotica. (Seriously, the only standard that should matter is the Envelope Analogy).

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8. Authors are expected to do a lot of their own legwork (eg advertising) but then don't reap the benefits.

Okay, so, you’re going to get an advance of $2,500 on this, your first novel, and a royalty rate of 5% if and only if your advance sells out...so you’d better get out there and market! Wait, what do you mean you don’t have a following? Guess you’re never selling out your advance…

Trad pub can generally be relied on to do some marketing - so this item is perhaps better seen as an indictment of more mid-sized Presses - but, basically, if an author has to do the majority of the work themselves, then why aren’t they getting paid more? What’s the actual benefit to going the large press/trad pub route if it’s not going to get the book into more hands? It’s especially strange that this continues to be a major issue when self-publishing (which also requires doing one’s own marketing) garners 60%+ royalty rates. Yes, the author doesn’t get an advance, and they don’t get the cache of ~well I was published by…~, but considering some Presses require parts of advances to get paid back if the initial run doesn’t sell out, and cache doesn’t put food on the table...pay models have really, really got to change.

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9. Fanfiction writing doesn't count as writing experience

Hey there Basic White Dude, we see you’ve graduated summa cum laude from A Big Fancy Expensive School. Of course we’ll set you up to publish your first novel you haven’t actually quite finished writing yet. Oh, Fanperson, you’ve written 15 novels for your favorite fandom in the last 4 years? Get to the back of the line!

Do I really need to explain this? The only way to get better at writing is to write. Placing fanfiction on official trad pub “do not interact” lists is idiotic, especially considering many of the other items on this list. (They know how to engage readers! They have existing followings! They understand genre and tropes!) Being a fanfiction writer should absolutely be a marketable “I am a writer” skill. Nuff said. (To be clear, I’m not saying publishers should publish fanfiction, I’m saying that being a fanfiction writer is relevant and important experience that should be given weight when considering an author’s qualifications, similar to, say, publishing in a university’s quarterly.)

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10. Tagging conventions (read: lack thereof).

Oh, did I trigger you? Hahahaha. Good luck with that.

We rate movies so that people can avoid content they don’t like. Same with TV shows and video games. Increasingly, those ratings aren’t just “R - adult audiences,” either; they contain information about the nature of the story elements that have led to the rating (“blood and gore,” “alcohol reference,” “cartoon violence,” “drug reference,” “sexual violence,” “use of tobacco,” and many, many more). So why is it that I can read a book and, without warning, be surprised by incest, rape, graphic violence, explicit language, glorification of drug and alcohol use, and so so much more? That it’s left to readers to look up spoilers to ensure that they’re not exposed to content that could be upsetting or inappropriate for their children or, or, or, is insane. So often, too, authors cling to “but we don’t want to give away our story,” as if video game makes and other media makers do want to give away their stories. This shouldn’t be about author egos or ~originality~ (as if that’s even a thing)...it should be about helping readers make informed purchasing decisions. It’s way, way past time that major market books include content warnings.

Thank you for joining us, this has been our extended rant about how frustrated we are with traditional publishing. Helpful? No. Cathartic? Most definitely yes. 🤣

*

Have a question about writing? Drop us an ask!

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[epicene-humanoid]

some trans Jeff thoughts:

he realized he was trans in elementary school and just went fuck it I'll just start introducing myself as Jeffery and see if anyone decides to stop me (as we know, jeff winger can get away with almost anything)

he got top surgery the second he could afford it (around the same time he started at his law firm), and probably bribed someone to keep it a secret

"I'm jeff winger and i would rather look at myself naked than the women I sleep with" are the words of a man proud of his transition

he's really insecure about his fashion sense, which is why he mostly dresses like the douchey guys at his firm in the start of the show, he thought you can't go wrong with the sleazy lawyer look

he will never admit it but he feels super good about the dean hitting on him, because the dean is a (cis) guy, acknowledging that Jeff is more manly than him

i think he starts out stealth and comes out to everyone one by one, probably starting with abed because he knows abed won't judge him and will probably just see it as an interesting backstory.

abed just says it's cool and maybe worth a prequel exploring Jeff's transition, and jeff asks him to predict how all of the members of the group will react to him coming out.

abed's predictions:

britta will be over-the-top supportive and do a ton of research about trans history, probably put together a slideshow just to prove how progressive she is, and jeff will be a little bit weirded out, but also touched that she did all that for him, though he would never let her know that

shirley will be confused, because she doesn't know how someone she trusts and knows so well could be part of a group she was raised to hate, but ultimately realizes that there's nothing actually against the lgbtq people in the bible, and, as a cool character development arch, starts to advocate against use of the bible to justify bigotry

troy will just think it over and decide that Jeff's physique and coolness are even awesomer knowing how much work he'd had to put in to be like that, and respects Jeff's manliness even more

annie will give him a hug, say something sweet about how she'll always love him, and worry about his health, because even she read somewhere that taking testosterone makes you more likely to have a heart attack, jeff will explain that the risk is still only as high a cis guy, and she'll be the one to always remind him to take his shots

peirce will say at best say "jeff winger used to be a chick?" and at worst call him a slur, either way there's sure to be a lot of misgendering from him, and pestering to know Jeff's deadname (needless to say, Jeff just doesn't tell peirce)

the whole group goes out of their way to keep their beach trips a secret from pierce (the girls don't want him there anyways, he's too liable to be creepy) even though jeff knows that even if pierce saw his scars, all he would have to do is make up a story about some childhood accident and pierce would never question it

sorry this ended up being super long. can I hear some of your headcanons for him?

YES ALL THIS!!! yes yes i’m fully accepting this as canon oh my god

i’m about to type a whole ass ESSAY at midnight because i have been DYING to talk about this for months ajfdksljk,,, this is going to be obscenely long and i might end up adding even more to it as i continue to rewatch the show because there is truly no shortage of trans jeff content (especially when you’re trans and see transness in every little thing ajdkslfkjs)

spoiler warning for literally everything about this show under the cut <3

i 100% agree, i feel like he realized he was trans super young, especially since in the show we see him as a little kid a couple of times. 

like look at little jeff with the oversized sweatshirt and little ponytail!! that’s childhood trans fashion. not to be dramatic but part of me thinks that jeff’s dad left before he fully came out to his family (which gives him even more angst about it, because until that one Thanksgiving episode, he’s never able to prove to his dad that he’s a better man), but part of me thinks that his dad left after he came out (which adds that spicy i-should-have-stayed-in-the-closet guilt that he has to work through). 

either way, because his dad wasn’t there, he had to base his concept of masculinity on something else, which was becoming a lawyer!! there’s some line that’s like “after the dust and divorce papers were settled the only man i looked up to was [the lawyer guy]”. like, replacing your father figure in your mind with the concept of “a job where you can talk your way in and out of anything and distort other people’s concept of reality”? that’s trans.

 and the fucking THANKSGIVING EPISODE... i struggle to watch it without crying hehe <3 yeowch! the dichotomy of willy jr. being the “wrong” kind of man because he’s “too soft” but jeff also not being enough despite adhering to all the social standards of masculinity... fuck!! this whole scene of him telling his dad “i am Not well adjusted” and talking about how he gave himself an “appendix surgery scar” when he was a kid and he still keeps the get-well-soon letters from his classmates under his bed? oh my god. the implication of people loving him not despite his scars but because of them?? trans. i can’t think about this episode for too long or i’ll start yelling.

OH and this scene? where he talks about how his mom got him a girl costume for halloween?? and everyone said “what a cute little girl” and after a few houses he stopped correcting them?? and “once the shame and the fear wore off, i was just glad they thought i was pretty”?? THAT’S TRANS... the man needs validation oh my god... and then in all the halloween episodes we see he has these ultra-masculine costumes (a cowboy, David Beckham, one of the fast and furious guys even though he never watched the movies, a boxer with his DAD’S boxing gloves... god) costumes are about becoming something else and he always chooses to be hypermasculine and that is trans.

THE PHYSICAL EDUCATION EPISODE!!!!!!! being uncomfortable during P.E. is a queer experience. period. but him being specifically uncomfortable in the clothes someone else is assigning to him? trans. “are we gonna talk about clothes like a girl? or use tapered sticks to hit balls around a cushioned mat like a man?” TRANS. and him eventually stripping in public? celebration of transness. and the fact that he eventually becomes comfortable in both the uniform and his own style!! trans!! god i love this episode. 

AND AND AND!!! the gay dean coming out episode!!! where it’s the three of them discussing the best way for the dean to come out as gay despite not entirely identifying with that label!! so we have both frankie and the dean who are sort of ambiguously queer, and jeff who’s a stealth trans man who’s probably only out to only the study group at this point. this scene where the dean and jeff have this like eyebrow communication while frankie is talking is just so cute. queer-to-queer communication. “I am so curious” “oh?” “intellectually.” “oh...” ajfdksljfk this scene just screams high school GSA to me and i love it so much.

and SPEAKING of the dean!! i totally see you on that. i feel like jeff has some internalized homophobia/biphobia (like he’d throw punches over someone else, but when it comes to himself he has a lot of shame). and also seeing the dean so confident in all his different outfits/costumes has a weird affect on him bc it’s like “okay, the dean, a cis guy, can do that, but i as a trans guy could Not because that’s Breaking the Rules”. which, like, throwback to the halloween thing. of course there’s no right way to be masculine, but mr. winger does not know that.

another thing!! the episode where their emails get leaked? that includes his emails with his therapist. fuck!! he was outed to the whole world in that episode!! no wonder he was so fucking angry!! this whole episode (and really any time he mentions his therapist) is so interesting when you think about them as a person he talks to about his transition. OH which adds to the thing with the dean!! “and you told your therapist you wanted to be alone this weekend” and “not you jeff, i know you’ll be visiting your dad” ”I told you to stop reading my emails”. luckily his study group has his back and just makes fun of him for emailing astronauts lmao

and WHO can forget “they’re giving out an award for most handsome young man!!!!” what else is there to say about this line besides: he’s trans. you know he didn’t get awarded enough for being a handsome young man when he was a kid, and no amount of compliments when he’s fully-grown can really make up for that. some people crash a kid’s bar mitzvah to cope with the fact that they struggled to be seen as themselves when they were a teenager <3

also his weird relationship with pierce? where he kind of hates him (understandably lmao) but at times has this almost-friends-almost-father-son relationship with him? especially in this episode where he’s forced to bond with him and ends up having a good time by accident (at a barber shop no less, the perfect place to Be A Man with your Man Friend). idk what to say about him besides the fact that pierce says his mom wanted a girl when he was born and made him dress like a girl (and his middle name is anastasia!) so if they’re gonna do any bonding over transness it’s gonna be that. 

okay one last thing and then i’ll shut up for the night. this episode kills me (and almost kills jeff hahahahelpi’mcrying). it’s a very Trans thing to not be able to visualize your future self, it just is. growing up trans at the time he did? i don’t know what kind of future he saw for himself, but i’m so happy that he ended up with a group of friends who became his family and love him the way they all do. i’m so emotional over this asshole it’s ridiculous. 

in conclusion:

they’re trans, your honor <3

[introvertbard]

More thoughts about Raya and the Last Dragon

I'm starting to see posts about #RayaAndTheLastDragon make the rounds with some Southeast Asians, and here's my thoughts as a Filipino-American:

1) THE DRAGON LOOKS LIKE ELSA. As far as I know, none of the Southeast Asian dragons have that much fur. As I mentioned in my other complaining post: If they have those snow-leopard/puma-looking mounts that are perfectly regal and intimidating, why not use BIG-CATS for your dragon design, instead of... like, the art designer's little housecat??? 2) DISNEY SHOULD NOT BE USING A CRAPTON OF EAST ASIAN ACTORS FOR A SOUTHEAST ASIAN MOVIE. Even without Awkwafina's issues, I saw Daniel Dae Kim, Sandra Oh, and Gemma Chan in the main cast and I went "ohhhhhh no. Kelly Marie Tran is the token Southeast Asian lead in a movie ABOUT fantasy-Southeast-Asia. NOT GOOD, DISNEY." If they have all that money and they reveled in that whole squad of researchers for Moana, why the fuck did they backslide fifty years and go "well, they're all Asian, nobody's gonna notice! WE NEED BIG NAMES FOR OUR BIG MOVIE, LOLOLOL." And yeah, I know there's lots of SEA folks with ambiguous names (Kelly Marie among them), but the main cast is FULL of those and I am not giving Disney the benefit of the doubt that they all just HAPPEN to be SEA folks with nice, compact one- or two-syllable names. Guess which actors suddenly start sounding like TROPICAL BROWN ASIANS??? The ones who play the bit parts, that's who. “But you got Kelly Marie Tran, who else do you want???” Maybe like... the five other lead roles that you gave to East Asian actors??? While I'm on "East Asian versus Southeast Asian," the dragon's name is Sisu and people remarked that it sounds extremely East Asian. Here's some Philippine names for our dragons: -LAHO. A sea-dragon/serpent who causes eclipses ("laho" does in fact mean "eclipse" in Tagalog). He was so entranced by the moon that he jumped from the ocean's depths and tried to eat it. While he is said to be a "god," he acts more like a wild animal--his motive is "MOON SHINY, I EAT!" and human issues such as "we like to see at night" and "the moon controls the tides," and sometimes "THE MOON IS A GODDESS, BRO!!!" don't concern him. The myth doesn't tell you to appease him with offerings or even fight him like a god, either, you just scare him off like a huge version of the neighbor's dog who got loose: Scream and bang on things until he goes home. He has several other not-names--two are "Nono" or "Buwaya," which just mean "ancestor" and "crocodile" respectively. Another Tagalog account calls him Sawa, which means "giant python/boa," compared to the common word for snake as "ahas." -THE BAKUNAWA is Laho's Visayan counterpart, who ate SIX OTHER MOONS before mortals scared him off. Like Laho, the Bakunawa doesn't actually have a name, more like a descriptor/title; "bakunawa" means "bent serpent” and is most often used as “THE Bakunawa.” In some versions, the Bakunawa eats the moon(s) in revenge, after mortal hunters killed his sea-turtle sister. -BUWAYA/BUAYA. Yes, it's "crocodile" in Tagalog. Dragons and crocodiles were seen as close cousins by many precolonial tribes, and Tagalogs apparently used the word interchangeably for both creatures. There was a Tagalog psychopomp called "THE Buwaya," distinct from Laho, who seemed fairly positive since he ferried our dead souls to the afterlife on his back. Also, we needed that help because the way to the afterlife was a dangerous sea-journey in varying directions, like "east where there's no known land," or "up to the sky-world," or "down to the bottom of the ocean." -ULILANG KALULUWA. This dragon has an actual name, and he introduced himself and everything! His name means "Orphaned Spirit." He's a sky-dragon who found the Tagalog creator-god Bathala Maykapal wandering in the barren islands before the world had people, but he was angered at the potential rival to rule the world. They both made claims and fought for possession of it, but Ulilang lost and got killed. Many years later, Bathala's friend Galang Kaluluwa took ill and asked to be buried with Ulilang Kaluluwa, since they were both of the sky-tribe and therefore kinsmen; their bodies created the first coconut tree. Galang Kaluluwa was humanoid, but able to fly and sometimes said to be winged; the spirit tribes seem to align more to "elements" than "species." (Note, I use "friend” loosely because that’s the Christianized version of his relationship with Bathala, but that’s not the point of this post.) -TANDAYAG. Currently means "whale" in Tagalog, but I found some unexpected new information on Wikipedia! Some Palawan people have a myth of their own Tandayag: A great fish, dragon, OR whale, who closes the navel of the world under the sea. If angered by something and not appeased in time, Tandayag may open the world's navel and drown us all in the flood. Noticing a theme? A theme with little fur, who’s prone to anger of the world-ending kind, and has exactly one out of five “names that you’d call people?” Now there are certainly dragons who aren't as powerful as the ones I mentioned; the vast majority of "dragons" in the pre-Catholic Philippines were the ancestors of a ruling clan and their village(s), or regional nature-spirits that people would meet up with on adventures. I actually would have liked the concept of Sisu's self-esteem issues as a minor dragon who’s now expected to rescue/find her lost big-name brethren.

Like, she probably just chilled out at Lake Nowhere, somehow it turned into a city (because she’s immortal and doesn’t realize five hundred years is a LONG TIME for humans, after all), and now everyone thinks she’s a level 10 dragon who causes floods and hurricanes when her actual jobs are still boring, regular LOGISTICS stuff like helping the fishermen for a cut of the haul, scooping folks up when their boat tips over, and checking on the rice paddies.

But uhhhhhh... stories like this in Western society tend to go "WOW, YOU DID SOMETHING HUGE AND WORLD-SAVING! Turns out you ARE ridiculously powerful!" instead of "WOW, YOU USED YOUR MODERATE SKILLS IN CREATIVE WAYS!"

[a-clockwork-justice]

Everything I Love About Loser Geek Whatever

So, not too long ago, it was the third birthday of Loser Geek Whatever. Yes, I know the single was released on November 30th 2018 and its considered the song’s official birthday, but the 26th July three years ago was the first showing of the 2018 Off-Broadway revival of Be More Chill and the first time Loser Geek Whatever was shown to the world in any capacity. Therefore, I consider that day to be the song’s unoffical birthday and I’ve been waiting to write down everything I love about it so here I am. (This was originally gonna be posted on the 26th July but I can’t make anything concise so it took longer than that).

I’ve gone on and on about what Loser Geek Whatever means to me personally, how a slew of random chance introduce me to it, got me deep into Be More Chill, introduced me to 90% of my current friends, and overall up-ended my whole life, but now it’s time to dissect the song itself and why it’s so great. As much as I adore Loser Geek Whatever, it could’ve easily been any other song that threw me down a rabbit hole and that I could’ve latched onto- no, wait, it couldn’t have been, because Loser Geek Whatever is unique in that way. I did about a year of music at A-Level so I’m gonna delve into some of the technical aspects here too. I’m chronicling this mostly for myself so I am going as deep as I see fit because this song is a treasure hiding yet more treasures. If you happen to love Loser Geek Whatever as much as I do, this’ll be your goldmine.

So, grab a snack my fellow fans, because here’s a comprehensive list of everything to love about Loser Geek Whatever in roughly chronological order. Long post incoming:

The song starts off strong from the first millisecond - I don’t know what instrument(s) they used but just listen to the single version again - that opening chord blares at you like a siren. It calls for your attention, screaming this is incredibly important, and indeed it is. That chord, an F chord, has no indication as to whether it’s major or minor - it’s just the tonic F with its dominant C and another tonic F above it. In other words, it’s unresolved, it hangs in the air. From a narrative standpoint, Jeremy is at a crossroads, torn between giving into the SQUIP or staying loyal to Michael, and the music paints this. It has the same effect on both the single and album versions - I always hold my breath as it holds, it’s the gap in this crucial transition for Jeremy between who he was and him becoming something he isn’t.

To continue the thread of musical painting, the melody line contains the accidental E-flat which doesn’t belong to the key of F major. This once again illustrates Jeremy’s uncertainty, but there’s more - the whole introduction is a slowed-down version of the Apocalypse of the Damned theme from Two Player Game, arguably the point in the show when Michael and Jeremy’s relationship was at its strongest. Jeremy’s recalling everything he had with Michael, but the slowing down of the melody shows hesitancy, along with highlighting the accidental E flat. These latter points of course aren’t unique to Loser Geek Whatever - they’re also in the section of Upgrade that twins with Loser Geek Whatever. I’m just laying out why they work so well. 

I’m glad I waited until after I saw the show in London to finish writing this - I’m something of a Loser Geek Whatever purist, as made clear by my ire at them cutting it in half and tacking the end of Upgrade back on for the London version. I still enjoyed the show in London though and I’m glad I knew about this change ahead of time, because they did change something about the song that I think really worked - they added two notes in the bass to each bar, like heartbeats, which once again signifies Jeremy’s uncertancy and the importance of this major turning point.

It’s been firmly established by this point that Jeremy is a loser and he knows it. He doesn’t want to be a hero, he just wants to survive, but there’s a difference between that and feeling “inconsequential.” Jeremy is basically admitting that, in his eyes, it doesn’t matter to the world or anyone except Michael if he even survives or not. He’s not just a loser, or a geek - he’s a whatever, with no one caring who he is. And he’s felt this way for years - since middle school began. He’s now in his Junior year of high school - that’s five years of being in this state of being unnoticed at best and picked on at worst. He’s “the one who’s left out”. With just one little line, hell, one word, we’re given more layers as to why he so badly wants to change that.

Moving from the first verse to the chorus, we start to see Jeremy’s attitude shift, from being sad to being angry - he’s frustrated, resentful that he’s spent so long in this state (A lot of people have made similar comparisons about Will Roland’s Jeremy as a whole in relation to Will Connolly’s Jeremy and I think this song exemplifies that). He doesn’t deserve to feel this horrible - not now and certainly not for the next two years until he and Michael can be “cool in college.” When you think about it, what options does he really have? He could either give into the SQUIP or reject it and go back to where he was, still miserable and lonely. Yes, he has Michael and Michael is an amazing, kind, loyal best friend, but as many have pointed out, he’s also dismissive of Jeremy’s feelings of inadequacy whether he means to be or not, which only made Jeremy feel more lonely. Should Jeremy just expect to feel better about himself at some point before college? He’s waited for years, why would that happen at any other point?

More layers baby! Second verse, Jeremy rants on about his father’s advice about following his own instincts and how it’s gotten him nowhere he wants to be. Come to think of it, Michael’s advice about staying the same and waiting for their environment to change can be seen as similar - it’s arguably easier for Michael as he has two loving mothers who undoutably give him plenty of positive reinforcement. Meanwhile, Jeremy’s mother has left them, which likely instilled further feelings of not being good enough, and his father has fallen apart to the point where he can’t even put pants on, let alone step up to take care of his son, meaning that Jeremy likely isn’t going to take his advice very seriously, especially after it’s failed him so thoroughly. But to Jeremy, the problem isn’t necessarily the advice itself - it’s that it’s being followed by him. So now he’s going to turn around and put his life and every choice in something else’s hands, even if - no, especially if it goes against his own instincts. It still doesn’t feel quite right, it “feels bizarre”, but it’s getting him somewhere, so it has to be right in the most meaningful capacity, and to Jeremy, the “most meaningful capacity” is any capacity that isn’t his own.

Now the best line - the one about being a “normal, handsome guy”. Let’s get this on the table - Jeremy is trans. Will Roland himself said that he often thinks of the show’s young trans fans when he sings that line. Naturally, societal transphobia plus gender dysphoria would have a pretty catestrophic effect on the self-esteem of any growing teenager, even more so one in Jeremy’s situation for the reasons I’ve just laid out. He’s probably missed out on a lot of things that “normal” guys take for granted, with most girls barely looking in his direction, let alone in any positive manner. Jeremy’s own sexuality aside, it’s mostly society, and the SQUIP by extension, that considers scoring with girls to be a “manly” or masculine activity, and through Brooke treating him as dateable material, Jeremy feels better about fitting into society’s rules of how a man should be and act. This isn’t the only reason he feels good about Brooke finding him attractive, of course, but it’s just another layer that Jeremy sees more value in conforming to how society says he should be rather than in how he actually is.

I know I just said that the last point was about the best line, but honestly, there’s more than one best line in this song. The bridge is where we start to see Jeremy’s language becoming more technologically inclined - “prompt”, “command” and “bandwidth” are all terms used in computing and used to show how Jeremy is likening himself, or his intentions, to a computer, effectivly merging himself and his SQUIP into one entity and Jeremy willingly giving over his own individuality.

And HERE, we get to the kicker. I’ve talked a lot about layers throughout this whole essay, about themes and motifs building on each other. Jeremy is essentially peeling back the layers of his own situation and only finding reason after deeper reason after deeper reason as to why he should follow the SQUIP and not be a loser anymore. Now, he hits the core, the seed, the crux of it all - “The problem has ALWAYS BEEN ME!!” Everything he is, everything that makes Jeremy Heere himself, is and has always been wrong. This line is a gut punch and EVERYONE knows it - the performer always takes a few seconds to let it sink in before continuing.

As an aside, I wanna mention the differences between the single and the album versions of the bridge. The album version starts of quieter after the vocalising of the last chorus, and builds up to the climactic final line, while the single version is loud all the way through but gets even louder and punchier at the end. Both are good, but I personally prefer the single version - the album sounds like Jeremy is broken and desperate and on the verge of tears as he reaches his inevitable but ugly realisation. The single is also desperate, but it’s pleading and all-consuming and a THOUSAND times more powerful, I get chills every time I hear it. (Side note, the London version starts of loud like the single and ends quieter like the album, almost as if Jeremy is reluctant to admit what he truly believes about himself, and it’s easy to see why, it’s a damn harsh condemnation).

“Take a breath and get prepared” - Jeremy sings to both himself and the audience. The first half has been heavy and we need a breather. Yet just before he goes over the brink, he has second thoughts. His conscience, his own voice in his head, breaks through, warning him that his choice will have consequences for other people than himself. People will get hurt - Michael most of all. Not just by Jeremy ditching him; here’s something else - when Jeremy is the “cool dude”, he might end up being a bully to those who are losers just like him, cutting them down just as Rich’s SQUIP made Rich do to him. Who would be the perfect target for Jeremy’s potential future bullying? His former best friend and fellow loser, Michael Mell. It’s pretty damn likely that if the SQUIP hadn’t optic nerve blocked Michael, it would’ve told Jeremy to pick on him, and even though Michael has ostensibly been pretty good at brushing these things off before, the takedowns would hurt a LOT more coming from his former best friend - and we know this because IT ACTUALLY HAPPENS, granted without the SQUIP influencing Jeremy directly (also let’s just clear up that just because the SQUIP wasn’t on doesn’t mean its influence on Jeremy hadn’t disappeared - that’s not how emotional abuse works).

Twelve years of loyal friendship, of borderline unhealthy codependency … can he throw all that away for Christine, a girl he’s thus admired from afar and is only just starting to get to know as a person? Moreover, even if Jeremy gets Christine, what about himself, who he wants to be? He just wants to be something other than himself because he thinks that anything is better but … what? The cool dude, the hero or … whatever. He’ll take anything because he’s that desperate, but what about when he gets it? Will he finally be satisfied? Will it be worth failing his one real friend, an act so scummy that the only way he could possibly stomach it would be to somehow pretend he hadn’t done it?

But none of those questions matter to Jeremy now - he’s fully gaslit into believing that every thought and inclination that comes from himself is wrong and shouldn’t be followed. He needs to sync up with the SQUIP and the rest of the world and mute his own defective inner voice. When you think about it, the relationship between Jeremy and the SQUIP is one of the most intense abusive relationships ever put to fiction - we’ve seen emotional abuse and brainwashing before, but here, Jeremy is literally preventing from THINKING the wrong way because the SQUIP can detect his every thought. See what I mean when I say that doesn’t go away when the SQUIP turns off for a few minutes?!

Throughout all of this is the undercurrent of Jeremy wanting to get better. He’s been trying so hard for so long to have a better life, but nothing has worked. Not listening to his dad, not trying to get closer to Christine through theatre, and certainly not listening to Michael’s advice to wait until college. Why should he resign himself to even more time being miserable with no end in sight? After all, being cool in college isn’t a guarantee. After all he’s been through, it’s his turn to finally be cool, after an eternity of being someone he doesn’t want to be.

Another best line in this song - “I’m Player One.” As mentioned a few times in the show before, like in the Broadway upgrade, Jeremy feels lower even in his friendship with Michael - he’s Player 2 as the more experienced Michael is Player 1. As previously established, Jeremy admits that he’s “not the one who the story’s about.” Now he’s ready to finally take control of his life, be the main character and have good things happen to him, and that means cutting out Michael, the old Player 1. The irony here is that Jeremy is less like Player 1 and more like a video game avatar. In reality, the SQUIP is Player 1, making Jeremy do whatever it demands of him.

More best lines! The slew of insults towards the end serves not just as yet more gut punches for the audience but as a major catharsis for Jeremy - It’s telling that the insults get harsher as his rant goes on, from the “weirdo” to the “weakling freak” to the “failure” to the climactic “please don’t speak”. He’s unloading everything that he’s been carrying over the years, ripping out the bullets that have been embedded in his skin and re-opening all the wounds in the process, but he’s done with the pain and he’ll never ever let himself be hurt like that again, if he follows the SQUIP.

I’ve made a whole post about the significance of the best line “Please Don’t Speak” before so I’ll mostly be repeating a lot of what I said there because it’s been a while since that post and because I want to. Who would’ve said that to Jeremy? Probably not Rich or Chloe, it’s not like them. It had to have come from an adult in a position of authority that could’ve commanded Jeremy not to speak like that - one that apparently did so enough times for him to internalise those words like he did the others. (Even worse if it was more than one adult ...). Out of all of the insults, it’s easy to see how that can easily be the most scarring out of all of them - how would an adult let a child know they’re inadequate? By silencing them. Making it clear that their expression of self not only means nothing, but should be forcibly avoided. Put like that, it makes it much easier to see how and why Jeremy fell under the SQUIP’s influence so easily - telling it was hardly different from authority figures he’s experienced before. In even more sad irony, as Jeremy claims that he’s breaking free and letting go of his past as the “please don’t speak”, he’s just walking right into another, similar trap that he can’t easily escape from. The SQUIP literally vocal cord blocks him during The Play - if that doesn’t say “Please don’t speak,” what does?!

The climax is growing! The music shifts into the relative minor as Jeremy fully gives in to the SQUIP’s evil influence. This is the point of no return, the point where he’s literally being surrounded and overtaken - if you’ve seen this on stage or even just a bootleg, you’ll know what I mean, when the lighting shifts and the circuitry start closing in around him, it’s wonderful. The bass ascends, Jeremy declares once and for all that HE IS NOT THE LOSER, THE GEEK, OR WHATEVER, and he never will be again! As some have pointed out, the sequence of notes on the final “again” is the same as at the end of Be More Chill Part 2, except the last note is different. In BMC part 2, it goes further down by a minor third, but in Loser Geek Whatever, it rises up to the same note it started with. This foreshadows Jeremy’s fate - that he will eventually overcome the SQUIP and that he still has it in him to do so. Man, let me just point out how amazing that last belt is - it lasts for a full 15 seconds in a really high range and takes a LOT of control to bring it back up to the high B without breaking. This song really was written for Will Roland - his voice can pull it off seamlessly, but other actors and understudies have had to find workarounds. No disrespect to them, it’s a damn hard song and it kicks ass all the way through. Scott Folan apparently had trouble with it too, but on the day I happened to see him, he pulled it off without breaking, so props to him!

Overall, Loser Geek Whatever is my favourite song in Be More Chill and not just for its sentimental value to myself. It’s a genuinely deep, complex piece that earned every second of its six minutes. Loser Geek Whatever is definitely the missing piece the show needed - not only is it Jeremy’s solo song, it’s also his “I Want” song and, in a way, his 11 o’clock number all in one, as he’s having a major epiphany after going on a journey, albeit only half of one. It’s easy to see why Joe Iconis dubbed this his anti-Defying Gravity, but it’s also easy to draw parallels to No Good Deed - how both Jeremy and Elphaba vow to become something that society is forcing upon them rather than what they are, even if that society’s will is objectively worse for them. Loser Geek Whatever deserves a thousand times the recognition it has and I still wonder to this day what the fandom reaction would’ve been if it had been in the original soundtrack.

So, that was it. I’m not sorry it was this long.

TL;DR: Loser Geek Whatever is wonderful and anyone who doesn’t think so is wrong.

[ironwoodprotectionsquad]

Penny being trans + autistic coded made me resonate with her as I am nonbinary and autistic myself. Her being a robot felt like me when I have to hide my neurodivergent traits. Her getting confirmation that she wasn't just a robot/machine but a real girl felt so validating. I don't have to look like everyone else to still be considered "real".

Ironwood's semblance being literal hyperfixiation, something I've dealt with since I have ADHD + autism would have made me feel better about myself. This is a man who, despite everything: his PTSD, being an amputee, still was a kind-hearted man. This is something rarely seen in media. I was happy.

Then they fucked up both Penny and Ironwood in ways that struck me. Penny is hacked into and forced to comply with basically forced suicide- she was to open the vault, then self-destruct.

Ironwood, oh dear god. They couldn't wait to fuck him over. He was so HAPPY to see team RWBYJNROQ. He told them everything about his plan, trusting them with literal GOVERNMENT secrets, giving them a place to stay, FREE weapon upgrades (Atlas is known for its advanced technology), hell even gave them their HUNTRESS LICENSES THREE-ISH YEARS EARLY (which Ruby later uses as a credibility source in her broadcast, which was eerily similar to Cinder's in Volume 3, when she says IRONWOOD CANNOT BE TRUSTED.)

Not to mention that she conveniently forgot she was calling for help from OTHER KINGDOMS. OF COURSE they wouldn't arrive soon enough. And no one had reason to trust her. She's a nobody. She was at the Vytal Festival and her team made it all the way to the singles? Cool. Ruby wasn't the final fighter, hell after the 4 vs 4 match she didn't compete further.

Blake would have obviously been a bad choice: she's a faunus and if anyone knows about the White Fang, they might recognize her.

Yang is more known than Ruby, but the world saw her kick an unarmed teen in the finals round. She doesn't have too good a reputation.

Weiss? She's well known as the Heiress, but also her singing. Having her give the speech is a mixed bag: on one hand, she's a recognizable face. On the other, that's a problem. Her father, the CEO of the SDC, is known for his cruelty. Blake said it herself way back in Volume 1: questionable business practices and partners.

So... How about no broadcast at all? What did her broadcast accomplish?

Nothing. Help didn't arrive and likely caused more panic. Plus, people still had a negative view of Atlas, as the last thing the world saw was Atlesian soldiers turning against civilians.

The last broadcast was before Beacon fell. So likely another hacker giving a message would be met with fear.

And what attracts Grimm? Negativity.

Ruby's broadcast could have been a DEATH SENTENCE to so many. But no, this is treated as the... Right course of action?

Ruby and co. hates Ironwood's plan, yet it's clear they don't have one. RWB spends a lot of time moping around the manor drinking tea. Team YOJR (Yang, Oscar, Jaune and Ren) actually DO SOMETHING. Oscar gets kidnapped and they chase after him. Ren rightfully points out that NONE OF THEM SHOULD BE DOING THIS. But that goes against the Hivemind™, so he must apologize and agree to whatever the fuck Ruby decides to do.

Which is NOTHING! RWBY didn't even take down the hound: WILLOW and WHITLEY did. A drunk woman and an unarmed teen defeated it.

Oscar is the one who blows up the whale (with his time bomb? huh??)

Ruby whines that it's all too much, cries on a staircase while her sister (remember that Ruby and Yang are related????) comforts her. The scene has no emotional depth because the two barely interact anymore.

OH GOD AND WHEN YANG TAKES A HIT FROM NEO THAT WAS MEANT FOR RUBY IT TAKES HER OUT COMPLETELY. AURA? GONE. HELL, SHE'S EVEN UNCONSCIOUS. I swear it's like the animation budget could only afford to have ONE character react, and it's Blake "sad kitty face" Belladonna. Not Ruby, who is her sister. WHO HAS A SPEED SEMBLANCE. But no, they just watch her fall, not knowing if she's alive.

Ruby has more of a reaction to CRESCENT ROSE, HER FUCKING WEAPON falling.

Which is retconned so hard in the Vol 9 trailer, where she tells Neo "I hope it was worth it" before falling into the void. Huh??

Anyways I'm rambling again but I am so angry!

-🎼

Never, ever, EVER apologize for rambling. I LOVE hearing peoples thoughts and sometimes it's a really nice feeling to let out your frustrations and anger towards something that has caused you harm and it really REALLY sounds like this caused you a lot of harm and so I do not blame you one bit for being hurt and angry. I should apologize for this taking so long. This was a lot and I needed to sort my thoughts and even so I probably missed some points so I also apologize for that.

Penny and Ironwoods biggest mistake was trusting and being kind to RWBY. They lied and betrayed James and treated him like garbage even though he showed them nothing but kindness and did whatever he could to help them and listened to them. Penny was told what to do and think far more so then James ever supposedly did. Ruby decided to give her a new body, decided she didn't like how James was treating her and that she thought James was a bad person, and decided that Penny was better off with them. Penny stopped being able to make her own decisions once she started hanging out with RWBY and co.

Really though what did they all think was going to happen when they sent out a message that matched beat to bear a lot of what Cinder said before Atlas fell? Did she think about the panic that would cause? Did she forget she was worried about Ironwood telling everyone back in Volume 7 because of the panic it would cause everyone??? Did that just conveniently slip her mind?

I honestly think Weiss would have been the best choice to give the broadcast of them all but I don't think they should have sent out the broadcast in the first place. It should realistically only cause panic and death but the narrative is gonna yadda yadda right past all of that.

Oh god yea RWBY and co complain and whine and scream that Ironwoods plan is bad whilst offering up no alternatives then just taking his plan and acting like it was theirs the whole time. They even did this in Volume 7 when in episode 2 they where worried about James telling Atlas about Salem and then turning around and acting all happy and shocked when James told everyone near the end of the season as if they wanted him to the whole time and not the other way around.

Man RWBY really did jack shit all volume huh? As you said all the major things side characters did: Fight James TWICE: Winter, Emerald, and JNRO.

Try and rescue Oscar: JRY

Blow up the Whale: Oscar

"Redeem" Hazel and Emerald: Again Oscar

Defeat the hound: Whitley and Willow

Launch the tower: Penny

Help defend Mantel against the swarm of Grimm: FNKI and the soldiers that all died trying to buy Ruby time while she cries in a mansion.

Like what does this girl do to help any of the people SHE trapped???

Oh god Ren, poor Ren, he's finally seeing the light but he can't stray from the Hivemind so he needs to get back in, we can't question the pure and perfect Ruby her plans are always right even if it causes Salem to get two relics and destroys the only kingdom with an army or the technology to restore global communications in the process.

Yea you're right like CRWBY can make excuses all day for why Ruby didn't react to Yang falling and MAYBE I can buy her not using her Semblance because she's in shock but not crying or reacting at ALL to her supposed death?? Why does her weapon get a more emotional response then her SISTER? Why is only BLAKE allowed to be sad about Yang supposedly dying? Why does fucking WINTER have more of a reaction to her sister dying?

Why are all the people we are supposed to be rooting for so fucking unlikeable???

[ashdumpsterpile]

I know you talk abou st*cky in the interracial ships stuff, but can we talk about st*ny? Iron husbands is literally right there, but I also always sees Rhodey as Tonys moral support only. And ik Tony is very shippable with most characters, but the fact his ship is Rhodey is one of the lowest ships in ao3 (ironstrange, winteriron and god forbid stark*r all had more fics in ao3).. It's pretty telling this side also has racism problems...

I'll go ahead and answer this here, but letting y'all know that I do have a marvel sideblog if you want to hit me up there (@themarvelarchives).

Hey, I'm going to ramble for a good minute.

So after I posted my very incoherent, controversial take on St*cky vs SamBucky, there were a ton of ppl who came onto anon saying that St*cky shippers were racist. I think I only answered a few, but y'all were pretty insistent on it. I personally have not observed that St*cky shippers are so I'm not calling anyone out on that side of the fandom for that.

I also did not call out anyone on this side of the fandom bc that's not what my meta was about. I think I mentioned maybe once or twice in the whole post that there was underlying racist in the fandom, but since you asked, we can talk about it here.

Covert Bigotry In Fandom Spaces.

To understand what's going on in the MCU, we have to first look at what I call "woke-queer" fandom.

So "Woke-Queer" Spaces is the phenomenon where certain fandom members like to call ppl out on their bigotry, while covertly harboring their own queerphobia/racism/etc. An example of this that we're all familiar with is TERFS and how they like to claim that they are progressive and woke, while also claiming that trans women are fake and trans men are sexist.

How this translates to fandom, however, is the hypocrisy that is cancellation and callout culture.

For example, Supernatural in particular is a fandom that likes to call out the writers on their homophobia and racism, and yet, somehow, the fandom is chalk full of homophobia and racism. If you want to read more about this, here is a truly excellent article from the perspective of a queer woman of color.

Moving on, I've also talked in a previous meta post, on the internalized acephobia that exploded in 2019 after Good Omens was released. Rather than reiterate everything I said in that post, I'll just leave it at this: the controversy in the Good Omens fandom can be summed up by the fact that queer audiences are claiming that Ineffable Husbands is the wrong kind of queer. The hypocrisy oozes off the screen, doesn't it?

A final way this viably translates to fandom, is in how the Doctor Who fandom evolved over time.

So Steven Moffat takes over as head writer and showrunner in 2010. It's a new series, a new Doctor, a new Tardis, and new branding. He steps up the action, changes the color grating, and raises the stakes. Women are sexier, the Doctor is smarter (and more of an asshole, but that's another meta post), and every companion comes with their own impossible mystery that makes them Special™.

Series 5-10 got tons of woke points for having lesbian characters, an episode where the Doctor is homoerotic with James Corden, and an underlying trans narrative with the Master's reincarnation. What a lot of people forget, however, is that his series was incredibly sexiest, incredibly lesbian/biphobic, and basically turned the Doctor into everyone's fantasy sex-object.

This, unfortunately, brought out the worst of the fandom. There was RTD Era vs Moffat Era wars exploding in certain corners, TenxRose shippers vs ElevenxRiver shippers.

What does this have to do with covert racism in fandom cultures though?

Hnnngng ok, so back in RTD era's we get Martha Jones, the Actual Best Companion On The Entire Show. Except for the fact, of course, that she is written to be in love with the doctor. She's a brilliant character--smart, sassy, flawed, funny, flirtatious--and her entire plotline is reduced down to a school-girl crush on a white man.

She doesn't do well with fans, they scrap her after one season.

We move on to Donna Noble (The Other Actual Best Companion On The Entire Show) and RTD's era ends with them scraping her too and regenerating David Tennant's Doctor.

It will be five more series (not seasons, SERIES) until Doctor Who will have another black companion--who gets extra points for being gay--only to fall victim to "bury your gays" at the end of the season (but not really bc no one stays dead on Doctor Who).

The fandom's reception of Martha Jones was historically bad. The comparisons to her predecessor, Rose Tyler, were rampant and everyone was finding a reason to hate her.

The fandom's reception to Bill Potts was also historically bad, as everyone was screaming that she was being written for more "woke points" and that they wanted Clara back.

Fandom has a historically bad reputation of being problematic and, I would argue, the majority of it has to do with these toxic undertones of bigotry that slip under the radar. "Woke-queer" spaces, as I call them, are these instances above where spaces that claim to be inclusive of gender/orientation/race are covertly bigoted.

Marvel and Cancelling

Now is an excellent time to talk about the MCU.

Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson) has recently come under a lot of criticism from fandom members for shutting down shipper speculation.

"The idea of two guys being friends and loving each other in 2021 is a problem because of the exploitation of homosexuality. [...] something as pure and beautiful as homosexuality has been exploited by people who are trying to rationalize themselves."

I can't find the rest of the quote, but Mackie goes on further to say that it was important to him to portray "a sensitive, masculine figure" without insinuating that there was romance involved.

Woke culture lost it's shit. Everyone was suddenly claiming that Mackie was calling them exploitative for shipping a gay ship as a queer audience, which could not have been further from the case.

Mackie actually makes some very excellent points in that sensitivity is not gay/queer. Woke culture loves to rag on Toxic Masculinity, but the minute someone plays a character who is loving and sensitive with no queer narrative in mind, they are immediately canceled.

What Am I On About

Okay, let's actually address what your ask was about, Nonnie. You pointed out--rather truthfully--that it is unfair to call-out racism on one side of the fandom, while ignoring it on the other side.

Well, I've gone back through my St*cky vs. SamBucky analysis (which is incoherent at best, I apologize for that) and I see maybe once instance where I called out fandom members for being racist. Here's what I had to say about racism:

"[...] Iron Husbands is a rarepair, probably because it’s an interracial ship."

"[there is] nothing wrong with shipping two white men, but it does become a problem when you ignore/bash POC/interracial ships to the determinant of your own white ship."

And then there was the post you brought up where I addressed interracial ships in the fandom. That one is probably more relevant to this topic, to be honest, as I actually addressed fandom racism there. I assume that your reason for bringing up Stony is because it's a ship that is more relevant to my side of the fandom, HOWEVER, the reason I highlighted Stucky instead was because I was comparing the fact that they've both been around the same amount of time and are relationships that feature the protagonist and their best friend.

You brought up St*ny in the ask, however, so I'm going to talk about St*ny for a minute.

As someone who never has nor will ship St*ny, it never even occurred to me that some of the problem behind the Iron Husbands tag being so small is because everyone ships the white, boring ship. You brought up a very valid point, but because I was never in that part of the fandom, I can't really speak to any possible underlying racism there, besides what I've already said above.

I would be interested in hearing a St*ony shipper or ex-St*ony shippers thought on this, but sadly I don't know any. If you have any more thoughts regarding this, Nonnie, pls drop back into my inbox.

You do make some excellent points in this ask though, and I would like to talk about racism on my side of the fandom.

So back to Mackie and his Twitter cancellation. Notice that Disney made him address the rumors and not his co-star, Sebastian Stan. Anthony Mackie is put on blast and made to answer fan demands and receives backlash, while Sebastian Stan gets to fly under the rader. This is not, by the way, a criticism of Stan, but instead of the blatant racism Disney has been displaying over the past few years.

How this ties in with the rest of my post has to do with my "woke-queer" spaces bit. The outcry across the MCU fandom over Mackie was swift and unforgiving. He was cancelled on charges of homophobia and bigotry--all the while these same fans turn a blind eye to any queer interpretation of other interracial ships and discourse in their own fandom.

The racism that I'm speaking about, of course, is an almost passive racism. Of course if you don't ship a specific ship for reasons other than their race, it's perfectly fine. It's okay not to ship Iron Husbands or SamBucky or any other interracial fandom ships. However, the distinct lack of shippers in the fandom IS telling because there are people who would ship that exact ship if not for the fact that one of men is black.

I don't have much more to say about this except to thank you for bringing it up and for listening to my long rambling post.

(Feel free to bug me about Tony Stark, MCU ships, MCU Meta and anything you want to talk me about on this blog and @themarvelarchives.)

[mashup-writing]

Somebody else by 1975 and it is sparkles-✨

It worked out well; Park Chaeyoung (Blackpink)

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Summary: Y/N and Rosé had decided to announce their relationship, but they were gonna be extra about it.

Requested? ☑

"I remember it all too well."

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It was the final part of Y/N's concert and while he's used to the feeling of thousands of eyes on him, what's going to follow was something that made him extremely nervous, which says a lot. Especially when he was counting on the audience for his plan to work.

At the start of his career, he had announced that he was a Transgender man on all of his social media platforms. An action that took a lot of guts, and and an action that drew a lot of attention to him. At the rising point of his career when he was questioned about it in an interview, his answer was something that made him well known figure within the industry.

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"Now Y/N at the very beginning of your career, you told the world that you were a trans man. That must've taken extreme bravery on your part seeing as those people who are against your community- The LGBT community, can be downright nasty and ruthless in 'Expressing' their dislike. What mae you decide to do this so early on in your time in the spotlight?"

Y/N smiles in his seat, switching from a laid back posture to one that elegantly demands attention, his next words being the ones that made him an icon amongst allies and LGBT people alike. "I am an advocate of LGBT rights before I am an artist, at the very start of my career I wanted to make it clear that I didn't want bigots to be a part of my following or an avid listener of my music and while I'm a man who values my privacy, I value honesty and transparency just as much. So if you're someone who believes that transgender people are just 'Confused' or that they're a 'Crime' against nature? Then go ahead and consider me your worst nightmare."

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Y/N had been sitting on a chair for quite a few moments now, holding a Q&A onstage before he stands up and decides to follow through with the first part of his plan. "Alright, now today's intermission, I'm going to do a cover of my most favorite song called 'Somebody Else by The 1975'. Oh and don't worry you guys, the Q&A will still continue after this cover." The stadium fills with loud screams and cheers from the people watching as he places his mic back on its stand and goes to pick up his electric guitar. The lights dim into a sunset red as the opening notes of the music fill out through the speakers, Y/N starts singing and playing his guitar as the crowd claps along to the beat.

At the start of the second verse, Y/N takes off his guitar and takes the mic off of the stand, walking back to the guitar stand, he puts the instrument down before walking back to the front of the stage and hyping the people up to sing along with him in the pre-chorus. The entrance platform that had sunk back down starts rising as a distinctly feminine voice fills the stadium at the start of the chorus. Y/N smiles widely as the stage screens show Rosé walking towards him, offering her hand. He takes it and raises their hands up, leading the Blackpink member into a twirl, the crowd has gone wild at this point and the duo are pretty sure that somebody or multiple people in the audiences are Blinks seeing the way they've started chanting Rosé's name even without Y/N introducing her beforehand.

The bridge part comes along and the two singers alternate their lines. When the instrumental hits, Rosé takes his hands and starts dancing along to the beat, dorkily smiling and roping the man into dancing along. When the final chorus comes, Y/N and Rosé sing together, motioning for the crowd to sing along and the stadium fills with the sounds of music and the combined voices of a chanting crowd.

The song comes to an end with loud cheers for the two vocalists who are now smiling widely while catching their breaths. Y/N offers his hand to Rosé and when she takes it, the two raise their hands and perform a bow. He lets go of her hand once they've come up from the bow, turning to face her before speaking. "May I introduce, Park Chaeyoung of Blackpink everyone."

The woman in question laughs, shaking her head before going to bow once again and waving to the crowd with both hands, Y/N decides to push his luck. "Also known as Rosé of Blackpink, or Rosie, or Foodsé, or Chipm-" He runs as she jokingly tries to swat at his shoulder.

The cheers continue and the two laugh with each other before Rosè speaks to the crowd. "So how did you guys like our cover?" She's answered with loud cheers and Y/N's manager signals at the two from behind the curtain, raising both his hands up. 10 minutes left, Y/N nods at him and smiles while Rosé turns her attention back to the crowd, he gives the singers a thumbs up with a dorky smile before taking his leave. Y/N shakes his head in humor.

"I'm pretty sure I'm speaking for both me and Y/N over here when I say that we're happy to see you guys loved it." Y/N turns to Rosé to agree with her statement. Y/N speaks into the mic saying that he and Rosé will spend the last ten minutes of the concert for the Q&A. The following minutes fly by with questions aimed at Y/N, questions aimed at Rosé as well as questions aimed at both come in droves, until Y/N announce that the next question will be the last one before the event comes to an end and they have to start saying goodbye. Multiple people raise their hand, and he leaves it up to Rosé to pick who gets to ask the final question. She gives her mic to a girl in the front row, and the girl states her question.

"How did you come up with the idea to have Rosé make a special appearance for a cover? Going by your latest Instagram posts before this album dropped, it seemed like you guys were writing songs together. So we were really hyped for a collab." The fan hands the mic back to Rosé who smiles at Y/N as he takes a deep breath, steeling himself for what's to come next. The Western singer brings his mic up to his lips to answer.

"There's a pretty good reason for this cover actually. 'Somebody Else' is a song that holds special meaning for the both of us, besides being our favorite song." Y/N motion for Rosé to take the lead, and she steps closer to him before speaking. "There was a point in me and Y/N's life that we didn't know where we stood. It a point we could sort of compare to the kid's game: Tag." She looks over to the man beside her, silently asking if he wants to back out of it. Instead Y/N takes her hand, interlocks their fingers and squeezes. Go on, I'm ready.

"Long story short is that I was hung up and broken hearted over this person and he was hung up over me." Collective gasps resound through out the stadium. After all, the only thing they know about you and Rosé relationship up until this point was that she was helping you write songs. You bring your mic up to your lips and speak. "The pictures on my Instagram of her looking at the lyrics I wrote? That wasn't Rosé helping me write. That was Chaeyoung reading what I wrote about her." The crowd goes crazy over the newfound information, and Y/N's pretty sure that they miss the way he referred to her using her real name instead of her stage name. But Chaeyoung catches onto it and she smiles softly at the man.

"I can't even begin to describe how thankful I am to Y/N by the way. Staying up countless nights and listening to me ramble on about being torn up, being there for me in every single way, helping me heal and doing all of this without expecting anything in return. Such a gentleman really." The crowd collectively 'Awwwwws' and Y/N hangs his head low, hiding his blush from everyone, Rosé laughs as Y/N looks at the ceiling, composing himself before speaking.

"I would never expect anything in return from you and you don't have to thank me either, I was just doing what a friend would've done at a time like that. Anyways, I stuck by her in those times all while all I could think of afterwards was how stupid the person who broke her heart was, all while I wished I was the one she had ended up with instead of them. I never even hinted at how I felt about her in those times, much less actually tell her. I promised myself I wouldn't tell her how I felt until the time was right. I didn't want her to feel guilty or pressured at all by what I had to say." Y/N looks from the crowd infront of him to Rosé before continuing "Time passed and her heartbreak had healed. But she still wasn't ready for a relationship for a while after that whole ordeal, so I kept my promise and I waited."

"When I had told my members and Y/N that I was finally ready for another relationship- That like, I was completely okay. Y/N decided to court me instead of asking me outright to be his girlfriend. Can you believe this sap?" The crowd laughs with Rosé as Y/N's jaw hits the floor, he walks away from Rosé and heads to the other side of the stage. He crouches and points to Rosé "I was being noble, chivalrous and mind you I was trying to prove that I was boyfriend material! Then she goes and calls me a sap?! I can't believe this..." Y/N lowers the mic and shakes his head in mock disbelief. Rosé doubles over in laughter before walking over to him and resting her free hand on his shoulder.

"Yes, I'm calling you a sap because you are one. But it worked out didn't it?" She looks down at Y/N before continuing. "I gladly said yes." The crowd goes crazy, people cheering, some were jumping, and the others were speechless.

Y/N smiles, a full smile from ear to ear as he takes Chaeyoung's hand on his shoulder to bring it to his lips. "Yeah, yeah it worked out well in the end didn't it?"

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A/N: Damn writing in 3rd person is a TASK. I might never do it again, I hope this was good enough? I'm not too sure about the ending but I liked the idea of them announcing their relationship infront of a crowd instead of doing it via a social media post. So yeah.

[writingpuddle]

The other night best friend and I (yes, that best friend) were riffing on trans Neil headcanons over the phone, but a realistic trans treatment of aftg gets dark real fast, so without further ado:

~The Mafia May Be Sexist (But It’s Not Transphobic!) AU ~

(tmmbsbintau, if you will)

Does this premise make sense? No, but if Nora can write about made up mafia sports, I can write a nonsense AU where transphobia doesn’t exist okay this is my party and ill be self-indulgent if i want to

We open with baby Neil, who was named after his maternal grandmother or smthg idk

Now lets say Neil is one of those “I always knew I was trans” kids

So even at a fairly young age he was like, nope this is wrong

For the most part his dad basically ignores him (what use is a girl to me???) but if he makes the mistake of getting in the way it’s the usual shit with knives and hot irons and basically Neil’s bog-standard Traumatic Childhood

His mom signs him up to play Exy to get him out of the house, and he loves it, because of course he does

Now tiny Neil may be terrified of his father

But remember transphobia isn’t real

So he when he’s about ten years old he tells his parents over dinner

His mom just puts her fork down and says that’s alright

But Nathan

Nathan

Nathan’s eyes start to glow

He has a son? Not a useless daughter?

He’s practically levitating with glee

And Neil, poor Neil, who has never had any positive reinforcement—from either parent, Mary, you’re not innocent in this—he soaks it up

Nathan puts both hands on his son’s—his son’s!—shoulders and dubs him Nathaniel

His son, his heir, his legacy

Mary takes one look at the possessive look in her husband’s eyes and thinks oh hell no

For the next few days Nathan absolutely showers Nathaniel with affection

He takes him to the hairdresser and buys him a whole new wardrobe, neglecting his mafia duties in order to dote upon his new son

It is possibly the happiest week of Nathaniel’s life

And then he wakes up in the night with his mother’s hand on his mouth and is given less than a minute to pack his things

Now he’s grown up in a criminal household; the notion of making a run for it isn’t exactly foreign to him

But it’s not until they’re in the car that Nathaniel realizes that his father is nowhere to be seen

Where’s dad? He asks

Shut up, his mother hisses, and slams the car into gear

From then on, he is never Nathaniel

His mother is 100% on board with his transition, but…not really anything beyond that

After all, people will be looking for a woman and a trans boy, which means Mary’s investment in Neil’s gender pretty much starts and ends with him passing as cis

She gets him all the medical treatments he needs (on the black market, since they’re on the run)—puberty blockers when he’s younger, testosterone when he’s older

But he’s never allowed to acknowledge being trans whatsoever

Not to his classmates, not to his teachers

He never gets the chance to have a queer community, or explore the nuances of his gender, because the only presentation they can afford for him to have is Masculine Cis Boy. The restriction is stifling. It’s suffocating.

Neil hates her for it

His life was, so briefly, perfect

He had his father’s love and approval for a day, a week, and he is both old enough to remember his father’s cruelty and young enough to believe that it could end

Nathan is incandescent

When he realizes what Mary has done he goes to the Moriyamas in a storm of fury

She stole my SON! He bellows

Now the Moriyama’s didn’t particularly care about Neil back when they thought he was a girl

Girls in the mafia are basically just for child-rearing, so he wasn’t a threat

So once they figure out what Nathan is talking about (this takes a sec, owing to Nathan having not previously gotten around to telling them about Nathaniel’s revelation), their first thought is that look, we might do the nepotism thing here in our family, but underlings don’t get to do the nepotism thing. Sorry, them’s the breaks

Obviously, Mary has to die—nobody’s disputing that, a woman who robbed her husband and stole his son? Only death will right that wrong—but Kengo tells Nathan that he’ll help find Nathaniel on the condition that he’s given to the Ravens upon capture

Nathan is utterly confident that his son—his son!—will perform admirably. He accepts the deal without a second thought

So they’re on the run for years and years, and Neil’s resentment towards his mother festers, but he never acts out too much, and he doesn’t contact his father

He almost does a couple times, but then he presses his hand to the iron scar on his shoulder and he can’t quite make himself go through with it

He’s sixteen when Nathan catches up with them in Seattle

There’s a shootout and Mary and Neil almost get away

But

Nathan arrives

Nathaniel! He shouts. My boy!

And Neil lurches to a stop

There is his father, walking towards him, his eyes still shining with the same fierce love and pride from when he was ten

Nathaniel, his father says. Hasn’t this gone on long enough?

Come home.

Mary is trying to drag Neil away, but he’s too fixated on his father

Can I? Neil asks. Can I really?

Of course, Nathan says. Everything is forgiven. I’ve even secured you a place on the Ravens. Didn’t you always love Exy? Come home with me, Nathaniel

Neil can barely believe it. His father is offering him everything he ever wanted. His mother has been keeping him from this, his whole life?

Why would they run?

And through this whole exchange Nathan has been getting closer, and Mary is pulling Neil back, and now he’s close enough to touch and the sound she makes is like something physical tears when she finally releases Neil and tries to flee

She isn’t fast enough

Nathan’s grin is as wide as the sun when his cleaver bites into Mary’s waist

Blood pours out

Neil screams

Mary clutches her side, staggering away, but it’s obvious she won’t make it far

Dad, no, Neil says. Don’t—

Shh, his father says. Don’t be afraid. She kept us apart all these years. She deserves to die.

And Neil—

Neil has hated his mother for most of his life

But he looks at the woman who has struggled so long to protect him—who has failed as often as she succeeded, but who fought anyway, everyday—and the man whose eyes are bright with glee at her pain

And he makes a choice

He only has a split second to see the betrayal in his father’s eyes before the pipe in his hand slams into his head and he pitches forward, unconscious

Neil does not wait to see if he survives

He grabs his mother and they run, her arm locked on his shoulder and her palm pressed to the wound on her side

Neil puts her in the passenger seat and jumps in, throwing the car in gear

You need a hospital, he says, frantic

No, she hisses, pinning a towel to her side. No hospitals

Guilt floods through him as he looks at her pale face

Sticky red handprints smear on everything she touches

I’m sorry, mom, he says, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—

Enough, she says. Drive

He drives

He drives, and drives, and he follows her instructions, and later he wouldn’t have been able to say if he actually thought she would survive; he believed it, because he had to, because he had never been without her; he knew better, because gut wounds are slow, but they are inexorable

He parks on the beach and there are tears pushing at his eyelids but he chokes them down

I’m sorry, he said, I never should have believed him. I’m sorry—

You never would have been enough for him, she says, and Neil flinches

Her hand finds his chin and she yanks him down to meet her eyes, her gaze fierce.

He never loved you, she says. He would have made you in his image, and when you failed he would have torn you apart. I would not—I would not watch him try to make my son a monster. Don’t—don’t waste it

Mom, what are you saying—

Promise me, she says

Promise you won’t go back to him

She is dying

Neil can’t refuse

He promises

She releases his face and her red fingerprints on his face burn like brands. He can feel them hours after the tears wash the blood away.

Her last few breaths are jagged as broken stones before she rattles to a stop, and Neil is alone

He burns her body and staggers out onto the road and he keeps moving, he keeps moving, because he knows if he stops he’ll shatter

His hesitation has cost him his mother’s life

But his action costs him his fathers love

In one blow, Neil broke the golden image Nathan had of his perfect son, and now all Nathan wants is to destroy him

He finds his way to Millport almost on instinct alone

He finds one of Mary’s contacts who can supply him with the hormones he needs to continue passing and squats in an empty house and speaks to none of his classmates

When the Exy team tryouts are announced, he goes, intending to only watch from a distance

Perhaps it is inevitable he’s sucked in

There is so little light in his life

Can he be forgiven for wanting one little spark?

The Foxes come for him in May, and Kevin doesn’t recognize him, because how would he? Even if they met as kids, Kevin never saw Neil post-transition

Wymack ends up telling him something about Kevin’s past and the truth about the Ravens, and Neil pales a little bit, remembering how his father had said he’d gotten Neil a place on their line-up and finally understanding why

And sometimes he looks at Kevin with blinding jealousy for the life Neil didn’t get to have, and sometimes he sees him nearly comatose with fear and drinking vodka like it’s water, and his stomach hurts thinking how cheerfully his father would have consigned him to the same fate

So canon proceeds and Neil still bitches Riko out on live TV, and Riko still manages to acquire Neil’s fingerprints

And would you believe that? The Foxes mouthy new rookie is [deadname], Nathan Wesninski’s brat?

Well, well, well

At the banquet Riko pokes and prods until Neil finally snaps, and as Dan drags the team away from the wreckage Jean grabs Neil’s arm and says, low and fast in French, You’ll meet with us later

Why the fuck would I do that? Neil demands

Because otherwise everyone will find out that the Butcher is your father

Neil can’t hide his flinch and Kevin’s eyes go wide

They flee the scene, but before they even reach Coach, Kevin is already rounding on Neil

Is it true? He croaks

Not now, Neil says

But Kevin reads confirmation in Neil’s deflection

I didn’t know [deadname] had a brother, he says

Now here is the thing

Names are obviously a touchy subject with a lot of trans people, and certainly with Neil in particular

But with everything that just happened, Neil is a bit preoccupied, and it’s been a long time since he’s associated himself with that name

Since before he stopped using it, truthfully

And so his response is out of his mouth before he can even think twice

“Who?”

Kevin nods seriously, because he is wise to the ways of mafia bosses, and it’s not exactly shocking that Nathan Wesninski had a mistress and a secret second child, especially considering his first child had been a girl

It’s several moments before Neil puts two and two together and realizes that he has inadvertently slipped through a perfect loophole

He’s failed his mother so many times, but at least this secret is still safe, and he clings to that

Neil’s gender doesn’t really affect his interpersonal relationships with the Foxes—he’s already changing out separately, so this isn’t even a whole other thing

It’s harder to hide his testosterone when he’s living in shared dorms, but he has everything in the safe and figures out the safest schedule to open it up when he’s sure Matt will be in class

Andrew finds out when they start hooking up

But remember transphobia isn’t real so it’s sort of more like Andrew goes to undo his pants and is like wait your dick is removeable? Okay.

And then he just gets on with it

So Binghamton and Baltimore happen as canon, and if Neil had ever harboured hopes that his father would forgive him and love him again, they’re broken for good when his father stalks in and sees him shivering and just grins

It is the smile of someone who has torn someone off a pedestal and is going to enjoy reducing them to dust

Nevermind that Nathan had been the one to put him on that pedestal in the first place

Stuart deus-ex-machinas us out of the maws of death and we end up back in that classic Baltimore scene with the Foxes, and they still claim him, and they still take him home

He tells them all about his mafia father and life on the run, and it doesn’t really click until later that he forgot to mention the trans thing

Not like he, you know, has to tell them, and being trans is hardly an issue in Exy since it’s co-ed, but it would probably be nice to see a real doctor instead of keep buying his hormones illegally

And moreover, he wants the Foxes to know him

So they hit the cabin in the mountains and everyone knows Neil doesn’t drink, but when Andrew pours him a shot, he takes it

Ooh, Nicky says, Is Neil about to start spilling his secrets?

Allison snorts. What secrets does he have left?

Uh, Neil says

Wait, Allison says. There’s more secrets????

Yeah, he says. Um, I’m trans

There’s a pause

Well, that’s no good, Allison said. We didn’t have a bet going on that

Everyone laughs, and Neil smiles, and he looks at the sunset and remembers his mother, and he remembers a life filled with hiding, and secrets, and loneliness

Bats swoop in the twilight beyond the cabin, and he turns towards the warmth and light inside, and he does not look back

[twig-soup]

so when i finally accepted that i don't want men the way i'm "supposed" to and that i actually want women in that way, i still had a lot of unlearning to do. coming out (to myself, to my family) was just the beginning. there were still many aspects of queerness that made me uncomfortable, and i thought that having a mix of conservative and progressive beliefs on the subject made me unique, but really it just helped preserve my relationship with my conservative family and really i was being selfish, which i suspected deep down but had a very difficult time coming to terms with. i knew i was gay and there was no coming back from that revelation, and because i personally only identified with the L in LGBTQIA+ at the time, i let my conservative upbringing color my perception of people who were queer in different ways. i think, honestly, that i was so codependent with my parents that i blinded myself on purpose so i wouldn't lose them (in hindsight, maybe that might have been better. could have avoided the whole "stop crying over sodomy!" situation after my first sapphic relationship ended, and a lot else). it bothered me, though; at times it tore me up inside. the more i thought about it and the more i researched and participated in the community, the more i realized that i want to see A LOT more men in crop tops and short shorts. i want people to talk about sex as if they are not ashamed of having a body or experiencing sexual pleasure. i want a trans girl to announce her preferred pronouns and for it to be normal, not brave. i want people to talk about their multiple partners and be received with normal enthusiasm. i want people to wear elf ears to the store and paint their skin blue. and i even realized, upon seeing someone use she/they pronouns and feeling a flutter in my chest and reliving select childhood memories, that although gender was never a crisis for me like sexuality was, i am queer in other ways than just my sexuality. (this became longer than i thought it would be oops)

although a less life-changing discovery, this revelation was in some ways even bigger than the one about my sexuality. you don't have to identify as queer in multiple ways (or at all!!!!) in order to embrace people for all that they are, let's not get it twisted, but something just clicked for me then, and i saw with true clarity how much of my thinking was shaped by my parents' horrible and isolating outlook. like, before i came out, my family didn't believe that gay people loved each other. seriously. they taught me that the love between two men is not the same as love between a man and a woman and never can be, that gay relationships revolve around sex, that gay people are simply obsessed with their unnatural desires, all the queers are. but they were wrong! it's not about sex! it's never been about obsession with "unnatural desires"! and i always knew that, i screamed it at my parents, it's not about sex i love her!, but turns out it's even more than that. queerness goes beyond your personal experiences and i think more people should be reminded of that. queerness is about sex, actually, about virgins and whores and feeling sick of being shamed into silence, and it's about love, love between partners, between friends, between strangers, and it's about being proud of yourself and everyone else who lives and expresses themselves in a way that usually brings rejection, harassment, and discrimination. it's about recognizing that western society was designed specifically with cis straight white men in mind and no one else, that monogamous heterosexual marriages didn't have to be the standard, that gender roles didn't have to develop the way they did (or at all), that the reason you're uncomfortable seeing a face with a full beard and blue eyeshadow isn't because you're a free thinker but because you were taught to feel that way and haven't realized yet that you don't have to.

last year i went to my first pride celebration and it was delightful. the freaks were out and i was one of them. i kissed my girlfriend and the usual flash of panic, is someone going to shame us? hurt us?, wasn't there. there was a man wearing nothing but cutoff shorts and a really pretty bra. fat girls with bellies out. people who's gender i couldn't have assumed if i wanted to. a big grin on every single teenager's face. these were people my family and society taught me to judge and avoid, when in reality, these are the people i feel safe around, because i'm one of them. and i always knew that, but when you hear what your parents say about the freaks of the world, accepting that you're one of them is basically accepting that your parents don't like you, or wouldn't if they knew the real you, and that's a very painful thing. and listen, you don't think your brand of queerness is weird because it's yours, but can't you see? this mindset of "what is different from me is inherently lesser" is exactly the one that homophobes and transphobes have! and while it's not your fault that this was imprinted on you, it is your responsibility, as someone who wants acceptance for yourself, to change the way you think. how can you expect nonjudgement from others when you yourself have rigid standards of acceptance?

this post is for everyone but especially queers who are newly escaped or in the process of escaping their conservative upbringing. you're not unique for clinging to what is familiar and whatever logic you're using to explain away the validity of other weirdos like yourself is flawed and will never hold up against this one simple truth: being embraced wholly and completely, for everything you are, is a core human need, and nobody deserves to be denied that just because they look, act, or make life decisions that make you uncomfortable despite posing no actual threat to you whatsoever.

happy pride to all, and remember that whether you identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community or you're just a freaky lil guy you deserve love and acceptance and that is a fact. regardless of where you're at on your journey i love you and i think your existence makes the world a better place.