#'i feel like no one wants me' YEAH. 'and i hate the way i'm percieved' LITERALLY MY GUY

[insomnya777]

jimmy solidarity u r so brutal by olivia rodrigo coded i love u

[lippiethehoe]

Well hi tumblr queers again :D.

Okay so for starters CONTENT WARNING I'll be talking about sexuality sex and overall sexual stuff so if that's not something you wanna look at then don't read thanks :).

I kinda feel like starting a little conversation and also hopefully getting some answers from lgbts from tumblr which hmmm... idk if this is the best place for this, especially since I don't particularly have a big following, nor do I think I have the means to make this be more visible to randos on tumblr so hmm, if this amounts to nothing know I'll be embarassed about it but that's okay, but also I fucking hate reddit and all my google research efforts have resulted in either basically nothing or people asking similar questions to mine but having very deeply different prespectives of both gender in general and sexuality in general than me so google research didn't slay at all, and so I'll lend my trust to the tumblers ig.

Ok so hello, I'm lilly I'm a demiromantic trans woman and I've struggled for kind of a while with my sexuality, not because I don't know what it is, but because I'm actually a huge labels person. Having a word to describe the way i feel about things has always helped me feel as though I know myself better and can make others know me better aswell. Even if putting labels on complex human feelings and emotions is essentialy pointless, it's still something that means alot to me, and I hate that for the longest time I have been perfectly capable of knowing what my sexuality is, but can't simple it down to one word and use it on my day to day life and that makes me sad. It also makes me feel kinda alone in my feelings? cause I'm basically the only person i know with this prespective on my sexuality at least for now so I'm a bit confused, obviously I don't think I'm the only person like this cause that's basically impossible but it still feels that way ig?

Also I remembered this recently only because it's pride month, happy pride month btw :3, and I was doing a thing on discord where everyday I'd add a flag that I indetify with on my profile picture, problem is I've ran out of flags, because no sexual orientation feels right and from my knowledge of it there isn't a sexuality nor a flag for what I feel, and now not only does my discord pfp not look full of colors and pretty it also re-awakened a little identity crisis I've had for a while.

This is definetly gonna be a very long post but I won't feel like I explained myself correctly if it isn't a big post so bear with me, but let's start.

So I'm gonna start explaining how I personally view sexuality and gender so you, reader, can have all the means available to understand my prespective on this. Sexuality to me is kinda simple, simply means whatever a person is attracted to, what makes them sexually interested in someone, whatever other way you wanna put it, and gender is simply the way a person identifies themselves with, the eyes they navigate the world through, the way they percieve themselves and the way they want to be percieved as by others etcetera, I won't explain my prespective on romanticism cause that's essentially useless to my question, but yeah simple stuff right?

So here's where I don't believe I fit in with most sexualities, here's the question I've had for quite a while but never thought to express it in a place where more than just a few friends could hear, I am not sexuality attracted to genders, ok now is when someone screams at me and says pansexual, I don't agree, but moving on, I'm not sexually attracted to people much, I am sexually attracted to penis tho, and here's where someone screams heterosexual at me AND IF YOU DID I FUCKING HATE YOU FYI NOT CAUSE I HATE HETEROS BUT BECAUSE THAT AS AN ANSWER TO WHAT I SAID IS FUCKING TRANSPHOBIC, YEAH I SAID IT, BITCH!!!

But here's the thing, what is a gender, ok I wrote alot after i said that but deleted it all cause this could fall into a very long rabbit hole, but gender's a construct blah blah, can you tell I probably have some neurodivergencies going on in the head anyways continuing. Genuinely, I don't know what it feels like to be a sexuality that includes gender in it, not because I don't think it to be true obviously i know people are heterosexual bisexual homosexual lesbians any other sexual orientation that implies gender being a part of the equation. But to me I can't be sexually attracted to men because a man can be anything to me, I can't be sexually attracted to women because a woman can be anything to me, i can't be sexually attracted to enbys cause being non-binary can be anything to me and the list goes on. Nothing is set in gender because to me gender can look like, feel like, and be like anything, if I labeled myself heterosexual, sexually attracted to people of the opposite gender of me, what would I mean by it? cause think about it, there're big men small men skinny fat muscular men hairy shaved brown eyed dark skinned pussy having dick having blah blah blah and the list goes on again, and even in there I'm not specifically attracted to any of the traits on that list anyways, none of those traits sexually arouse me, men don't sexually arouse me, women don't sexually arouse me, but you know what does? penis. So therein lies the issue, cause surprise, there's a bunch of dicks in the world, what? that's crazy? Yeah penis is everywhere, there're men with penises women with penises nonbinaries with penises intersex people with penises dildos people with strap-ons and the list goes on and in that entire list, the only thing that sexualy arouses me personally, is penis, not who has it, not wether or not it was there from birth, not wether or not it's made of plastic or human skin, not wether or not I'm specifically sexually attracted to any other aspect of said person, but simply the thing that sexually arrouses me and makes me feel pleasure is the thing that sexually attracts me, which in my head is so fucking obvious? Like it's a conclusion so natural to me, but it seems I'm the only person in a 50 km radius that feels this way? It's also possible that I'm actually wrong and view the current existing sexualities in the wrong way and if that's what's up please tell me.

Also i feel the rising tension of someone saying stuff like "people can sexually stimulate others with fingers are u FiNgErSeXuAl?" and the truth is not really but I still find it sexually arousing when it happens, but the last thing I'm gonna do is look at fingers and blush I think. WOAH THAT JUST OPENED A NEW DOOR FUCKK OH NO THIS IS GONNA BE TOO LONG MAYBE I SHOULDN'T POST THIS IDK. I am also sexually attracted to certain actions, but at this point I feel I'm leaving sexuality and going into kink territory and that isn't really where I wanted to go. EITHER WAY my overall conclusion is I don't understand most sexualities and feel as though my view of my sexuality should have a label so I feel more comfortable, maybe I should be the catalyst who knows maybe someone's already been the catalyst and I'm simply unaware of that, either way I'd like a sexuality flag to add to my discord pfp so maybe I'll just make a flag up, who fucking knows, that's it tho. So yeah if anyone who sees this post experiences anything similar to this and wants to share about it please do I'd be really thankful.

Thank you so much if you sticked with me all the way to the end, and if you feel like you might have some insight on what I'm saying or simply wanna say something relevant to this topic please do, it's pride month and I'm incredibly proud of all queers and gender fuckers :3 happy pride month!

Ps: I just wanna say something, this isn't an invitation to flirt with me send me unsolicited dick pics or respond to things I clearly showed not to be questions, I want this topic to be taken in more of a discussion way than a sexual one, if that could be possible I'd be thankful, ok that's it bie bie.

[sobeksewerrat]

Okay so- if you saw my aroace chr headcannon list, you probably saw Adam from Hazbin Hotel on there! It's been a while since I have written an essay, but honestly I really wanted to expand on my asexual Adam thought and @kiichu asked me to so here we go ;)

[ Just. Don't expect any actual thoughtful analysis. I am mostly just grasping at straws and projecting because I kin the dude ]

[ Oh yeah and I will reference the Trans Genesis AU a lot. Nope, Stanley and I did not abandon it. Sorry not sorry ]

First things first, let's look at his first appearance in episode 1.

Needless to say, he was a bit of an asshole. But something really stuck out to me.

In one of the scenes, he was recounting a date/one-night-stand he had to Charlie (because of course he was).

He clearly seemed to be describing the dinner date itself in detail, but he literally just caps it off with "and then we fucked, and it was awesome".

This line can be read in a few different ways, depending on your view.

1. They didn't actually fuck, the woman ditched him or didn't exist to begin with and he's lying to seem cooler.

2. It wasn't awesome (*at least for him, but yk could go both ways) and he wasn't about to go into detail about his less-than-stellar sexual encounter (I feel. Really uncomfortable writing this, I am too ace for this shit).

3. The logical explanation of the writers not wanting to include it for rating reasons and because of the episode's already short run time and also because we as the audience don't really need to know that. Though I think that if that were just that, a better alternative would've been that Adam either continues describing the date or starts describing the sex and either Lute or Charlie (or both) stop him.

For my interpretation of the ace Adam, we'll go with the second interpretation.

Allos love pointing out how "asexuals can still date/have sex" but they always neglect one thing: that's not exactly how sex-favourable and sex-neutral aces work.

I can't speak for everybody on the spectrum (especially since I am mostly repulsed), but wanting to have sex doesn't mean you feel sexual attraction.

So yeah this doesn't disprove him being asexual, though I am aiming for a very different interpretation.

Sex-repulsed Adam.

NOW, PLEASE HEAR ME OUT I KNOW I SOUND CRAZY!!

Ace men rarely get any representation, and a lot of men (especially cis men, but trans men too) don't realize they're ace or are actively in denial about it because of this thing called ✨toxic masculinity✨

I don't think it's too much of a hot take to say that Adam clearly falls into a lot of toxic masculinity stuff.

Being literally the first man, the original dick (or the original pussy if we're talking about the tgau), he is probably expected to uphold these harmful beliefs of masculinity or at least thinks he has to to be taken seriously (or be percieved as cis at least-).

Therefore, he's probably is in deep, deep denial of his asexuality and tries to cover it up by, well, sleeping around I guess (*hopefully not with human souls because i don't need any of the implications that come with that).

But that doesn't necessarily mean he enjoyed it, you know.

Now I don't wanna go too deep into this honestly quite depressing line of thought, so to keep it brief that's probably why he wouldn't go into detail about that one night stand- even though he totally seems like the type of guy who would talk about this stuff in excessive and unnecessary detail (can you tell I love torturing this guy. I mean if yk the TGAU you probably already know but shush).

That or because a lot of aces literally cannot talk about sex seriously. It has to be a joke or about an ao3 smut fic.

*ahem* Moving on-

The infamous "Now, I'm going to FUCK you" scene that every Adamsapple shippers love (no hate to Adamsapple shippers btw, except @roryheart fuck you Rory /lh silly (I love you buddy don't take this seriously)).

Just. Just look at his face when Lucifer says it.

It could just be pure confusion, which is quite understandable tbh.

Or we could go with the funny interpretation of Adam being so autistic and ace, he thought for a second that Lucifer was actually hitting on him this whole time and he just didn't notice. Purely because this has actually happened to me before and I wanna project-

Moreover, he looks lowkey disgusted by it and just attacks Lucifer immediately.

Whatever, now we get to the ✨angst potential✨ of ace Adam.

Elaborating on the bit of toxic masculinity from earlier, maybe he thinks that his aversion to stuff like is why both Lilith (and presumably Eve) cheated on him with Lucifer, because he wasn't a real man.

And if we wanna get really depressing, all we have to do is just remember that his only purpose was to have as many children with Eve (and previously Lilith) as possible to populate the Earth.

Yeah, sounds like a total nightmare scenario.

I have a few other ideas, but they're really half baked and not really well put together and stuff- idk I just think ace Adam is a cool idea.

Sorry if this wasn't exactly the essay any of you were looking for but I genuinely just think it'd be fun and kinda interesting to explore really.

Btw gonna make "sobek rants" exclusively for angry rants and gonna repurpose "brainingsewer" for essays and analysis and stuff. Not that anybody really cares about my tagging system.

[sigmxnd]

okay poll is saying yes so im going for it (this is gonna get very rambly and might not all connect or be coherent but oh well)

i've realized i love taking my favorite characters and putting a bunch of the same hcs to them cause i like making my favorites more like me

i know why this happens, its cause im silly and i look at these characters and my brain just goes "i like that" and then i just ARYARAYAEAGA4AYA and get rabies, but also like a lot of the time i look at these characters that more often than not i see myself in them

these stupid dumb dirt eating rebellious evil losers just exist and i see stuff happen to them for the plot and i just go "i see you. i know you. you're just like me fr" but they aren't real so they don't know i understand them but yknow

but at the same time its always an internal battle cause i percieve other people's opinions and hcs all the time, but at the same time i'm so utterly terrified of sharing most of my stuff and my own hcs that i'm not confident in for fear of being percieved and having someone else think I'M weird. and yeah i am weird but i don't wanna be seen as like. bad weird

i just recently shared that i hc mike and zeke as being autistic, cause as a peer reviewed autistic i find it extremely comforting and it makes me super happy to think of them like that, but like they're not the only ones i think of that way. it's pretty much all of them that i think of that way, which makes sense, but idk it makes me feel a lil weird

ik i can do whatever i want (within reason) but it feels almost strange to do all this when i currently don't even have access to the rest of the td seasons AND there's not a lot of hc differences between them, and it feels cringe or something idk

but anyway i love making jokes about how i am absolutely INFATUATED😍✨️‼️ with both duncan and scott and i hate courtney with such a burning seething passion. she was so mean to both of them, i can fix them (or also make them worse. i could do that for funzies)

tl;dr: I'M CRAZY I'M OFF THE WALLS I'M NUTS I'M BONKERS I'M SILLY I'M GOOFY I'M WACKY I'M SO UTTERLY GOOBERISH (i'm scared to talk about all of my hcs for my favorites out of fear of people looking at me with their EYES, and probably something else. sorry guys my own post doesn't even make sense to me)

sigmund silly sessions will happen again, this was fun to just vomit my thoughts

[my-castles-crumbling]

Dancer anon advice

Hi all! Someone wrote me about some advice, I'm just copy and pasting it here so I can add a 'read more' line and format it a bit differently than usual so I can keep my thoughts in order!

Italics is their writing

Bold is mine

i noticed ppl were using this blog to ask about stuff, so here goes ig?

(also im sorry this was going to be me asking about gender stuff but now its just kinda my life story 😭 if you dont want to answer this, you can just write a post saying like. dancer anon i dont feel comfortable answering this or whatever)

Ahhhh, you all need to stop apologizing! I never mind helping!

im afab, and i feel like i never really fit in with gender? like, i would always be so jealous of my feminine friends but i didnt feel good when dressing feminine myself

i also take dance classes (i started at around 6/7) and i felt like i had to wear all the skirts and shit because i wanted to be pretty like the other dancers, and i felt really terrible after a few years of that, because i hated how i looked in them and how i looked when i danced

(i also used to have a dance teacher whos hands were always cold and thats all i can remember about him but i really hated dancing with him and would get relieved when classes were over. ive hated dancing with boys/men ever since)

and it got like. really bad. i believe? (my memory is actually terrible. i cant remember anything for the life of me, so it could be my mind overexaggerating, but anyways.)

i would always ask for me and my teacher to just do stretching because i hated how i looked when i danced because i hated the skirts and everything because i hate my legs and how they look when bare. i hated attending dance classes because people would see me and see my legs and see how i looked and i felt terrible all the time (i think i was around 9 or 10 at this age?)

so one day i had a whole crying fit and my dance teacher told me that i dont have to wear skirts or whatever, i can wear pants and shit (i was so fucking relieved. istg. i now wear skirts to dance only like. couple times a year maybe)

and then soon enough covid happened! (also keep in mind that i grew up like. really sheltered. i did not know what gay people/transgender people were until i read fanfiction about warrior cats 😭)

and i was so delighted! because on distance learning, no one would see me and be able to judge me for how i dress or whatever

at around this time, my fear of everyone masculine really grew. its still there. im fucking terrified of all men. i cant help it. like every boy man masculine person. i get so scared. i hate it. i hate it so much

but then covid came to a halt, yk, school started again .-. i felt like shit, honestly. i didnt have ANY clothes i felt comfortable in. my hair felt too long and "feminine" and i wanted to cut it for the longest time. my clothes made me feel terrible. i hated how the leggings would wear on my legs and how my sweaters would show my body shape and how my butt looked (i still really hate how it looks. why is it big. i dont want it to be i hate it so much)

yeah so there i am, feeling dysphoric as shit (i did not know what that was, back then, by the way, but i believe thats what i was feeling)

didnt help that my only friend was a toxic, lying, manipulating bitch who led people on for fun and always expected everyone to worship at her feet

after a while, i discovered different labels! (bisexual was the first label i had for myself. i felt good with it, ig?)

and then i got to the gender situation. i used so many girl alligned terms because i was so scared of being percieved as the very thing i am terrified of (masculine ppl). i went through demigirl, girlflux, genderfae, genderfluid, i beleive, maybe somethign else too, because i wanted to stay connected to being a girl.

Okay so here, I want to ask, what's the reason to wanting to say connected with being a girl? Is it feeling like you are partially a girl? Not wanting to be connected to masculinity? Not wanting to let go of the 'girlhood' that you grew up with? None of these reasons are bad but I think thinking about this more might help you figure out your gender.

around this time i started doing leader steps for dance. the euphoria i felt. please.

ahhhhh wait! I do ballroom, too! I'm a follower, though. what's your favorite? I LOVE tango. Okay, sorry, I got distracted.

found out i was a lesbian, used nonbinary but with she/they pronouns and felt like shit whenever anyone called me she but didnt want to make a big deal about using they

ooo, okay here- asking for your correct pronouns isn't 'making a big deal.' it's asking for what you need and asking for respect.

found out i was aroace because "people actually find video game characters attractive?" 😭

thought i might feel better as a boy? cut my hair. i loved it so much (i still do) (that was may of last year) got baggy clothes. covered up my figure. did leader steps for dance.

over the summer i started using labels such as agender? which i feel like fits me?

anyway, thats the life story part, now for the part about what the fuck am i

i feel like shit whenever im called a girl or refered to with feminine terms. im not sure if it would classify as dysphoria or not, becuase i dont feel /that/ bad about it, but it still ruins my mood and kinda makes me want to cry.

okay so here's the thing. not 'feeling THAT bad' doesn't mean anything. Dysphoria is dysphoria. and this is dysphoria. Just because you're not throwing up in a corner doesn't mean your feelings aren't valid.

if my grandma calles me granddaughter, girl, whatever in russian, it automatically ruins my mood. makes me feel terrible. i hate it.

i dont feel as bad when my sister calls me her sister, though, for some reason.

Okay! So for me, I hate being called a lady, but I don't mind my wife calling me her wife. Again, this is all completely valid <3

when i get called by she/her i hate it so much. i dont want to make a big deal about asking for they/them - sometimes my friends remeber, sometimes they dont.

ive never tried he pronouns, dont think i want to.

they/them pronouns dont give me that much euphoria either, its just like. ok

Okay! Have you tried neopronouns? If you're not interesting in those, it could just be that they/them is what feels best. And that's okay, too!

another thing. my friend has another nonbinary friend. she always genders them correctly, but almost never me. it makes me feel like shit, like she cares more about getting their pronouns than mine, even though i know that thats not a good mindset and shit.

*loud buzzer sound* wrong. Your friend should be gendering everyone correctly, not just some people. Good friends care about making their friends feel comfortable, and this friend is making you uncomfortable. Would you feel comfortable talking to them about it?

also, heres some more on my fear of men because who doesnt love being scared out of their wits irrationally :D

my dance teacher had to leave to go back to where she lives, so they gave me a male teacher (i tend to only have female ones.)

i would be in tears every lesson. i felt like shit. (also i hate the sound of peoples voices and he would always be talking and i hate it so much because his voice, amongst others, is one of the ones that hurts my ears the most.) i even went to my mom to ask her for a change which helped ig? my new teacher is really nice and i love her so,,, yeah

Okay, I want to stop here to say- a lot of this has to do with gender, right? But this particular response seems to be rooted in trauma. Without prying too much, I am wondering if there is something that happened with a man or masculine-presenting person or people? You do NOT have to share with me, but this might be something to explore with a trusted person in your life. I mean, there is a chance it's gender-related, but in the most loving way, there seems to be something deeper going on here.

anyway, you dont have to answer this, i was going to just ask for help with labels and feeling like theres no correct label for me (i use agender now, for simplicity, because i dont feel connected to having a gender at all)

So I guess my question is, how do you feel about the agender label? When I looked up the definition, it seems to be defined as exactly what you described- someone not having a gender at all.

Also, remember that your gender identity and expression are two different things! You can identify as agender (or any of the other things you mentioned) and still choose to dress however feels most comfortable and use whatever pronouns feel most comfortable. There are no set rules except: do what feels most genuine and comfortable!

if you do want to answer this but dont want to use this large of an ask on your blog, just call me dancer anon, i will see and understand 👍

again, sorry for dumping all of this on you

ahhhhhhh don't be sorry, you are a wonderful human!

have a wonderful day

you, too! please message me if you want to talk more! <3

[iravaid]

I love your writing so much, your Simon Riley in Situations series is probably one of my favorite works in the entire fandom!!! The way you write tommy and simon’s relationship gives me so much emotions lol, like even though it only comes up a couple times in the entire series there’s just so much there! That flashback we get in in the desert was just a brief glimpse, and yet it was so much more powerful than how they were written in the entire canon comic (which might not be saying much because that comic left a lot to be desired, but still) It had me imagining their relationship as kids, and how tommy probably had a much easier time navigating their dad’s moods while simon struggled to pick up the social cues and unspoken meanings behind words and stuff like that, and how tommy, as a kid growing up in a pretty ableist society who had probably never even heard of autism until his teen years, would probably get frustrated with simon and not understand why he couldn’t just say the right things when he needed to, why he couldn’t just do what he needed to do to not make the situation worse (and simon feeling the same way and wondering why he couldn’t just know how to smile and say what people wanted to hear, like tommy) (This ended up being long and rambling but your fics just give me so many riley brothers feels lol XD)

Oh shit!! Thank you so much!!!! I'm so happy you enjoy this series, especially the relationship between Tommy and Simon!! It's genuinely so interesting to me and has a lot of potential to be built upon, considering how little there is for them in the comics (both a blessing and a curse let's be honest).

Augh, yeah, them as kids has a lot of emotional oomph, especially if taken the way I have, in all essentialities, taken the characters in my grubby mitts and gotten lint all over them. Tommy probably was the golden child in this family, Nigel played a lot of games in tormenting his kids, and I imagine turning them against each other, or at the very least Tommy against Simon, was one of them. I wonder if that dynamic might have changed when Simon left, leaving Tommy to be the only child in the house and no longer having a 'weird' older brother occupying the role of scapegoat (and protector, in his own way). In the beginning, I can see Tommy hating Simon for leaving, it's easier than hating his abusive dad at this point.

Things do change for the better, and in all honesties I can see Tommy getting therapy/counselling as an adult and learning how to become better adjusted and look back on his childhood with a trauma-informed lense, equipped with a kind of knowledge and vocabulary Simon doesn't/refuses to have. Internalied ableism definitely informs how they process their trauma and percieve therapy, and for Simon this is another brick in that wall after growing up the 'strange' one in the family that just doesn't get it. This is another thing he doesn't get, and it's a source of anger for him.

I imagine there is a lot of frustration for Tommy in the things you mentioned above, which is a dynamic I love love love, considering Autistic Simon growing up in Manchester in the 80s/90s at this point would be. A Lot for both of them, for different reasons. I imagine it would serve to emphasise that feeling of isolation Simon feels in this series, and I would go so far as to say Tommy doesn't hear the word 'autism' until he's an adult/in his 20s. Before then it was always alluded to, or people saying 'he's rather... odd.' about Simon with a strange expression on their faces. Autism and Asperger's (it's an outdated term now, but one that was used then) were very stigmatised and you were seen as there was something wrong with you or you were 'slow'.

God but their potential brotherhood when Simon comes back and kicks Nigel out of the house, and helps Tommy heal. I really love the complexity of their relationship, how two brothers who survived an awful childhood have different ways of coping and healing from it. Again, all in our collective heads, but I'm happy the comics only gave us the bare bones to play with. We'll grow our own meat, with blackjack and hookers.

I really want to write/am in the process of writing a fic set in Tommy's POV, waiting for his brother, beginning from Simon being announced missing after he's caught by Roba, to him being found and returned home, and ending just before That Scene. I want to explore their brotherhood through Tommy's eyes, how disparate some parts of them are and how similar others have ended up, as well as play on a theme Ghost haunting the family well before Simon is returned and believes himself dead. I'm unsure how it'll end up, but the goal is a 20k oneshot. Hopin to work on it in earnest in August, when Art Fight is over :D

Again! Thank you so much for this message! Had a big grin reading this, I'm so happy you liked those fics! Hell yeah!

[d-parade]

I am a 16 year old trans male and it feels weird. I've been on your blog for a while it feels real to me to be honest.

I havent had a good life to be honest like yeah black mentally ill blah blah i was bullied and stuff and in 7th grade i found people that loved me no matter what and i decided i was transgender that i wanted to be a girly nonbinary silly goose or whatever

And yeah I was like this until maybe 9th grade when I had no friends again and got offline and realized that. I don't want this. It sucked i started binding unsafely, hated everything. I was envious. I wanted to be a boy. And I tried really I kept self reflecting and stuff and telling myself that god i was a woman but it never worked. I couldn't take looking at myself in the mirror after a shower, I want to be percieved as a man. I've been trying to accept my body and all bodies are beautiful!! But I can't. I can't accept it. I can't accept not being perceived as a man I hate not being one and it sucks. And God I'm always classified as a trans guy and one of the girls. Because I like men. God. God. I've tried playing into it like yeah! I do like earrings and nice jewelry and yeah i can be feminine but augh

And recently I got my name changed in the school system. A name i like. And i thought I would be better but I still hate it. I dont want to be perceived as a fucked up teen girl. I've reflected on every single aspect of myself and I always come back to this. Am I trans. Is this what I want? And I never doubted it but now I just want to know. I want to know before I ruin things for myself. I have a future ahead of me and it hurts my head. And when I think of who I want to be of who I can be in the future. It's a man. Fucked up sure, but it's still me. Not some overly fantasy. Just me.

I get it, I really do. I struggled (and struggle) a lot with similar feelings. The future scares me too. I’m scared of being rejected and discriminated against at workplaces for being a freak, I’m terrified of always being seen as a “tranny”, I fear I will never get the procedures I need. All I see when I look ahead is me being a man, but the current path I’m walking down doesn’t lead me there.

But honestly, I feel the best way out is to wait. Let time work things for you. Meanwhile, focus on other aspects of your identity that brings you closer to the “you” you wanna be in the future, aside from the male aspect.

Slowly, even if your pain doesn’t subside, it’ll be in the background. And one day, you’ll be able to make a clear decision about what you’re currently fretting about.

You’re 16. Soon, you’ll be 18, then 20, and then 10 years more in the future, you’ll likely look back and want to comfort your younger self for being so paranoid/ upset.

Anyways, all the best to you :)

[stardust-in-my-mind-blog]

standardized checklists

I've never been able to think only

in black and white though I have

been able to adopt it to survive here

I can get really logical if I need to

but I've always thought naturally

and nature wants to create and create

nature wants all colors to be used

nature wants to bloom and die

and rot and fall and dig herself

back into her roots in the soil

and then do everything all over again

nature needs to rest and be dormant

nature wants to be in the wind and wild

but the system has to deal in numbers

in humanity and rules that make no sense

there has to be a system of control in

every civilizations and it must be respected

or you'll be punished in slow degrees

until you are forced into whatever box

they need to check to move on

and so I'll do it to get through the process

put me into your box and watch me

twist myself into it no matter how much

more I am than what you project

a small mind can only project a small

storyline and I'm a story you can't quite

comprehend but nature was meant to

be observed and studied not to

be a checkmark in a simple statement

nature always surprised you

and she makes her own rules out of

the rules that even those who watch her

and study her and write about her

even the scientists have to say

yeah this is different than normal

and I've always been different

and small minds hate different

but great souls can't get enough

I can't tell you how much it hurts

to tell them everything and still feel

how they didn't take it in or even be

able to think about what I said and how

they echoed it back to me so much

smaller than the words I used

it's all a dishonest little game

and I'm not naturally dishonest

but I know how to fucking adapt

I know how to say the lines they

need to hear to feel safe and secure

I know how to write my own script

and play whatever character I need

to get what I want out of this situation

and now I have the full experience

of what the system wants of its

little ant farm and I happen to be

a dragonfly or mantis or even

a little spider that climbs up

the drainpipe just to get washed away

again but even in the song we learn

the spider goes right back up

and so will I

it makes me furious

but yesterday in that little room

where they punished me for not

meeting their illogical perfection

the unrealistic definition of what I am

supposed to be in unspoken expectations

made by a system that I just now

get to belong in as an autistic person

at least they admit my hardships

come from that and not because I

have attachment issues or mental

illness but a disorder caused by a world

not made or meant for people like me

I'll design my own outside the system

but I'll play the game to dot all that

documentation and numbers they use

to tell you if you're a good human

but I've noticed the ones they don't even

ask about who meet the requirements

still need to abuse and drain those they

deem beneath them and perhaps

looking at the elected government

who is at the top of the system

I shouldn't have expected more

this country will worship what it chooses

and I'll choose like the prophet daniel

to worship who I know to be in my heart

the heart and soul is so much

bigger on the inside than it appears

and my inner citadel is also a palace

who I'll be stingy with who I invite into it

I've lived in my kingdom of isolation

for so long and gotten quite comfortable

a few more weeks and paperwork

I'll play whatever part they need

I will get through this and also grieve

the illusion that the rest of the world

could maybe percieve me correctly

if I just use the right words and statements

it doesn't quite work like that

most don't understand my language

but the ones who do...

when I told the people in that little room

about the people I have met singing

about the way I can finally communicate

about being seen for the first time

in this little life where I thought I was

always wrong for not understanding

and cursed to be forever misunderstood

they saw my joy and my enthusiasm

they heard how the last therapist laughed at me

when I said my neurotype was autistic

their "help" just hurts like all the others

but my heart sang to be authentic

and broke completely when they

disregarded all of it for their lists

it broke to know what they wrote

to see myself percieved incorrectly

but I also know it was because those scars

are so deeply carved into my being

from years of misconception

that I grieved all of it at once

my weeping was for myself

not for what they saw

and this paperwork will go into a computer

at the end of this investigation

and be forgotten unless someone

dig it up to use as a tool for some other

kind of bullshit and I'll be ready for it

there's no one who can put a face

of calm on like I can when the angels

see that the situation requires it

allow me to bloom my chakras a moment

for my flesh may be documented and catalogued

according to the language of your superiors

but my spirit will forever remain

undefined by the masses

and I am a ghost in a human experience

but my heart roars like a lion when I am

treated outside the barriers of dignity

and it purrs now under my hands

knowing these days will be tough

moving and changing and once again

trying to find a lost phone dammit

but most in my situation would have folded

and I awaken with a new zeal to conquer

and so I will and so I will

kick my ass and I'll bite your neck

even give it a little lick

break my heart and I'll wink

at your divine spirit that you likely

ignore for your small ambitions

destroy me and I only get greater

with a few new tricks and things to play with

I am here and I will do my best

and judge it by my own definition

because I think conceptually

in colors that you can't even imagine

and I will never change

except, of course, when

I get bored and decide I want to

and isn't it fun that only I

get to decide the terms of that?

check that off your list

[furmata1]

mental health bad vent

not doing great. feeling like the one spongebob gag with this guy except it's worse because i'm undiagnosed autistic

i need more sleep. i need more food. i need more hours in the day. this fucking Sucks" i need something to surprise me in life in a good way. i hate doing this without any support system besides my casual friendships. i fear i need more help than i am equipped to ask for. im 29 and people expect tyou to "have your shit together" and also "have a life" the truth is i am a formless orb of chaotic passion until i enter my job's parking lot. i am oozing liquid drum and bass music. little cartoons are falling out of my pockets. yet here i sit almost 30 and in a warehouse job that i can't see myself doing for long.i dont want to socialize with my coworkers. i would love to not be percieved by them AT ALL if i oculd still get paid. i'd rather be making cool shit but i don't know how to get paid making cool shit. i just make the shit and am afraid to share it bc of people who steal cool shit from the people who make it. before i wrote this post in a fury i deleted a like 20-paragraph rant detailing every aspect of my life im unsatisfied with. turns out it's pretty much yeah earth has chewed me up and spit me out with ADHD, autism, and severe cPTSD and no family. i am so overwhelmed and i am barely maintaining this holding pattern waiting for something unexpected (good) to happen or hoping that the suffering ends quickly SORRY OKAY IM COMING OUT AS "EMO" I don't know what i expect posting walls of text like this. i'm not convinced anyone is going out of their way like that for me

[psalmsofpsychosis]

[ angry rant ahead ]

you know, i usually dont talk to other people much in real life right now, even less so on the internet, it takes a lot to get me on the case of disco horses and other variants of supposed "discussions". It's a strange thing because i'm actually a quite talkative person, but also in the recent 5-6 years any and every kind of expression i've had, no matter how mild or colorful it was, people [who had already decided they hated my guts] used as an excuse to justify why "they were leaving me behind". It was always my fault that i was being treated like shit; they were just reacting sensibly to me being a fuckhead.

So i learnt to control and manage and frame and reframe my expression, not because i wanted to and liked it, but because of necessity— you can only afford to be left behind so many times before it starts damaging you emotionally, mentally, and physically in many aspects.

And i actually started developing severe physical symptoms because of how much i curated and leashed in my self expression— eating up 3/4th of what i actually wanted to say and spend so much fucking energy trying to script my thoughts and opinions in a way that would be oh so accomodating and considerate and soft-spoken and mild and non-threatening and harmless and agreeable so paper-skin-and-glass-bones fuckers online and offline dont feel threatened and start crying, or start biting me for "being rude" when all i did was to literally just open my mouth and form one or two sentences.

And i'm so insanely resentful about this. I'm resentful about constantly self censoring and watering down my expressions and forcing myself down to the level of other people the way grown ups squat to talk to a child so the child feels less threatened. Constantly writing and rewriting what i want to say so it's not "too antagonistic, too angry, too vicious, too confident, too anything" —"make it friendly, light, no-big-deal, agreeable, appropriate, acceptable to the rock bottom level boundaries of this context," the voice in my head says— when the truth is, i'm so so so much more than anything i've ever shown to people online and offline in the past 6 years. I'm full of hatred and rage and i'm shameless and i enjoy it too, i can hurt people terribly and i'm good at it and this is why i'm hellbent on kindness. It's a choice, i wake up and i make this choice every fucking day, and i dont like being taken for granted. I dont think most people truly understand what "where the light is brightest the shadows run deep" means, like no, you dont understand the depth of how fucked up i can be, you take my joy and delight for granted, and you cannot live up to either. You're not my equal on either front and you lack the substance it takes to mirror my happiness or my rage– and i get very irritated when people think they're on the same ground with me, "we're so alike!" no we're not, you just feel connected to the super mega easy digestable non-threatening responses i craft for you because i know you can't handle any more than this without having a mental breakdown and making me mom you.

Like, i solid feel like everytime i want to talk i have to put on kiddie gloves and do the kiddie talk, patting people's heads like "dont be scared, dont be scared, i'm a friend, no need to panic, now we're gonna play a game in which i give you super easy hints on life being more complex and deeper than you percieve it on a surface level and you proceed to think about that for 5 seconds everyday, easy, easy." Because that's what they are to me, children. I feel like i'm talking to children all the time, and no it's not about age, it's about the way most people are so incredibly shallow and superficial and simplistic and are so depth-averse it's kinda astounishing??? Like you'll find them hanging 6475378 adornments from every branch of a tree and thinking a tree is "a collection of leaves" and they never see the roots, or water them.

And yeah i'm so incredibly resentful about all of it. I feel like i put people in cute fun little floaties in the shallow end of the pool and stay with them and we play simple games and splash water at each other and they dont know the deep end of the pool exists, they dont care, they think everyone and them and me are kiddies playing in the shallow part, "oh you're just like me, we're all the same and having so much fun here," no, i'm so much more than you at any given point in this interaction, and what you sound like to me is a child mistaking their mother as "another playmate in the kindergarten".

And i'm super fucking tired of defanging and declawing my expression all the time so i dont spook the little dainty shallow people inside or outside my phone. "but they'll get scared and they'll leave!" and you know what? good. I want them to get very, very scared. And i want them to fucking run. I'm tired of trying to cater to simple people who i dont give a fuck about, people who are merely contemplating whether i'm worth loving or not. You walk into a haunted house only when you love ghosts and want to see one, this is not a space for the faint of heart. i am not a space for the faint of heart.

[purple-is-great]

I understand what op means by trans men having an "inherently different relationship to gender than cis men", but also it makes me pretty uncomfortable as a trans man to have my gender considered somehow fundamentally different from that of a cis man. And what if we compare a trans man to a gender-nonconforming cis man, or a cis man who questioned his gender and came to the conclusion that yup, he's cis?

And why is the fundamental axis of oppression, the one that decides whether someone is to be trusted, why is it gender?

Sure, compared to a white non-disabled cis man of the same socioeconomic status and membership in a cultural majority I'm more oppressed, but that argument falls down when we recognise that gender and being or not being trans are not the only or most important ways in which someone can be marginalised.

Also hey fun fact queer cis men exist and are oppressed? And frankly the idea that gay cis men being attacked for percieved femininity isn't gender-related is insulting.

Also, a space or person that isn't accepting of cis men would make me pretty wary both for myself (at what point is a trans man too much like a cis man? what if he has body hair? a deep voice? an adam's apple? what if he passes? dresses too masculine, too straight? has a flat chest? has a penis?) and for my nonbinary and transfeminine peers (what if they don't pass? what if they don't care about passing? what if they have a 'male' name? use he/him pronouns? have a deep voice? body hair? short hair? don't wear makeup? have a flat chest? have a penis?)

Also I feel like the tags might be referencing that maybe the poster is used to biphobia, but taking your partner, someone you love, to a space you hope to feel welcome in, only for that person to be hated, might actually feel worse than being told you yourself don't belong. Yeah oppressed people are allowed to hate their oppressors but like. that's someone a bi woman loves and trusts and wants to show the community she considers an important part of. he's a person with a name, not an amorphous blob of violence and oppression

“i can excuse biphobia but i draw the line at hating men”

like no the problem with intra community biphobia is that people are denying bi people’s queerness n shit not that they’re being mean about straight men (who are in fact the biggest source of biphobic abuse)

and the stuff about trans men like….

why do ppl use trans men so much as a shield for cis men…..

idk but to me it seems way more likely that queer ppl who “hate men” but are mostly ok with trans men just trust them more because of the additional axis of oppression and inherently different relationship to gender (which doesn’t mean trans men can’t be as shit ans cis men but like personally i’m more inclined to give them more of a chance teehee) (doesn’t mean there’s also transphobia to it sometimes but that doesn’t contradict my point it’s just something else)

men are an oppressive class !!! i don’t care if every single man in your life is wonderful or you’re a man who supports women in any way he can you’re still part of this oppressive class. doesn’t mean you’re inherently evil or whatever but oppressed people hating their oppressors is fine !!!!!!!

[thebisexualdogdad]

I was wondering if you could tell me about how you found out you are trans? Is just in having doubts about my gender identity recently but I’m not sure because I don’t have strong gender dysphoria. Also my therapist told me is probably just a phase but idk.

If you don’t want to or are uncomfortable just ignore this don’t worry.

Subconsciously I always knew but it just wasn't something I thought about because no one ever told me I could be. Like as a kindergartener my parents got called into parent teacher conferences many times because my teacher was "concerned" that I only wore boys clothes, hated playing dolls and house with the other girls and instead played with the dinosaurs and pokemon with the boys and generally I just fit in better with the boys etc. I always hated the idea of being a girl and wished i had been born a boy and once puberty hit I became super uncomfortable with my body and wore a jacket every single day to cover my chest from about 6th to 12th grade even in California heatwaves. Adults always told me that it was a phase, I was a tomboy and I'd grow out of it so I just ignored everything I was feeling.

I figured out i was queer first. My first celebrity crush at 5 years old was Lucy Liu in Charlie's angels and I had a total obsession with Jennifer Love Hewitt in ghost whisperer in middle school but again I just didn't think about it until freshman year of high school when the og pretty little liars came out and i saw Emily's story and went oh shit I like girls and don't really like guys so i must be gay so for many years i identified as a gay woman. Then at 19 I randomly watched a trans male youtubers coming out story and again it just clicked, I went Oh shit I'm a guy. At 21 after I started watching shadowhunters and saw Alec who i immediately fell in love with I realized I was actually bisexual and my dislike for men during my teenage years was really me experiencing severe gender envy and being jealous that i didnt look like them and wasnt percieved as a man like them.

Also at 21 I came out to two of my closest friends and one of them who i had been friends with since the first grade response was literally "Yeah I know" and I asked him how he knew and he said "whenever we played video games as kids you always picked the male avatars and most of the time you named them Dylan so your new name also makes sense."

So here's the thing, I know there's a lot of discourse about "people who don't experience much dysphoria can't be trans" but the only person who can truly know your identity is you. Everyone has a different relationship with thier body and just because you may not experience dysphoria the same way someone else does doesn't mean you aren't trans/non binary. If you feel in your heart like you are the opposite gender of which you were born, you're trans (or non binary if you feel like you are neither or genderfluid if you feel like various genders).

It's also perfectly okay for your identity to change. You can go some period of time thinking you are one gender and then later on go well actually I think I'm this gender or this gender non conforming identity now. Just like sexuality, gender is a spectrum and it's complex but it's your identity and you are allowed to identify and express yourself however you want.

[fortunatelycolorfulgay]

Is it just me or is being like "proper" rivals with someone just seem weird? Cause like to be a rival with someone, BY DEFINITION, it means you're trying to beat them. Meaning you care of what they think and if they win. Now here's my point, I can understand wanting to beat another team, but a singular person seems weird. Cause I would not be able to care enough about what one singular person thinks to be competitive towards them. Like if you hate someone that's a strong feeling, and I know what's like to hate someone, but the person I hate, I just try to avoid cause they make me angry. So like there has to be some other emotion and motive to want to beat someone, if they are sworn rival to the point where you are both competing but are also both civil? Like to me having an intense rivalry with a singular person requires deep emotional components that isn't just hate. Idk. Just me? Maybe that's why I like rivals to lover's so much? Like the passion in the rivalry just at one point goes from negative/neutral to positive? Bruh idk. I feel like this is especially apparent when they show rival reactions to each other in anime. So such intense emotions? That in some cases have no real reason to exist? Like I kinda get bkdk rivalry. But like yeah they say they "hate" each other, but like, I get why Baku might hate deku, cause he makes Baku feel inferior, but like it's been shown that deku has never held Kacchan accountable for what he did in middle school, and yea Baku can be kind of a dick but if doesn't hate for bullying what does he hate him for??? I'm so confused. And kagehina, Hinata "hates" Kags cause he beat him in his first and last middle school tournament/game. But like. What reason does Kags have to "hate" Hinata? He wasted time not actually getting better at volleyball???? What? Bruh I'm confused

Sorry for the rant. Just something I thought myself last night and I have no friends who actually have watched bnha or Haikyuu! My sister is in the fandom of bnha, but she hasn't read the manga or seen the show. She wants to read the manga before watching the show, but hasn't actually bought any of the books. Lol. But yea. She also doesn't ship bkdk. Whereas I do.

Edit: so I asked my mom about it, and she has a degree in psychology and was therapist for while, and she says that rivals to lovers is in fact a real possibility because of the reasons I've stated above, that rivalry isn't driven by competitiveness alone. She said this "most competitiveness is there because of some internal factors[such as subconscious emotions] rather than the person or object of competition itself" my point was that rivalries require a lot of passion, and that passion can be positive or negative, and sometimes positive but percieved as negative and vise versa. But that negative passion can transform and morph into positive which can result in a relationship, whether be platonic or romantic. But yea that's my point.

Edit #2: I've now watched she-ra and my point has been proven. The whole reason Catradora became enemies/rivals is because Catra loves Adora and Adora loves Catra but Adora left and so Catra was hurt. And they fought and there were misunderstandings. Its so easy for one kind of strong emotion to turn to something else, or for it to cause an equally strong negative version of the emotion. Just because they were fighting never meant they stopped loving each other, but they were at odds due to personal filters and feelings. They fought to hurt each other cause they felt like they had to. Truly they never wanted to fight each other. Catra was just hurting because of Adoras actions and didn't know how to handle it so she blamed Adora and thought that to get rid of that pain was hurt Adora the same way she hurt her, or to get rid of the person that cause the pain. Honestly. Enemies to lovers/rivals to lovers, isn't as far out or bizarre as it seems. Like, yes. In a lot of real life situations enemies to lovers and rivals to lovers would probably end badly, and that's fine. Catra and Adora ended pretty badly at first. I mean Catra tried to actively destroy reality and kill Adora. And some people, can't recover from fights like that. I mean obviously in real life someone isn't gonna try and blow up the world if they end a Relationship badly(whether be platonic or not) but you get my point. The thing about characters is that if you want, you can always have them have a happy ending. Or you can give them a tragic ending. Cause they are fictional. But you know. That's just my opinion

[faith-trustpixiedust]

One thing I love about your blogs is the complete lack of anti sentiment toward any character. The Descendants fanbase is full of so much hate and I really admire how you can be above it all, just in your own little area enjoying the characters you enjoy while people flog them.

BUTTTT one character whom I truly dislike I just wanna get your thoughts on something I've thought up about them recently. I might be being bias or maybe I'm onto something, idk.

Y'know how a lot of people blame Ben for the serenade to Mal and how it upset Audrey? Well obvs it wasn't Ben's fault as he was drugged, but if you look at the Did I Mention music video *Chad* just seems.... So into it? And happy about it? And unlike Ben, he wasn't spelled! And unlike the other jocks there I'm pretty sure Chad and Audrey were friends right? So Chad perceived his friend's boyfriend to be humiliating her in front of the entire school and just happily danced along. So essentially what anti Ben's describe Ben as here is essentially what Chad is; someone who humiliated someone he was close to in front of the entire school. He didn't run off to see Audrey and check she was okay but was just delighted. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth because I suspect maybe some of that joy was because he saw a chance to get with Audrey himself.... I find his feelings for her quite creepy tbh.

Yet Chaudrey is like... Shipped? So when Ben does something by being magic spelled into it it's the end of the world, but when Chad does it of his own freewill it's fine? Make it make sense lol.

I don't mean to bring hate into your blog, I just get the impression you aren't a Chad fan either so we can kinda mutually dip on him. If you like him though then I apologize and will leave my anti Chadness off your blog in future.

Chad is honestly such an interesting character to me. For starters it's how did Cinderella and Prince Charming's kid end up Like That, and then just...why is he Like That?

I've come to the conclusion that Chad likes a good time, and doesn't really care that much about how his having a good time affects others. With Did I Mention it's "oh we're singing and dancing now? sick I hope this Mal chick enjoys it". When Audrey announces that Chad is her boyfriend and she doesn't need Ben's "pity date", he's excited about that too. (Then in Descendants 2 he gets excited about the fact that Ben has been kidnapped and hopes that means he's king, which in my opinion, is the most messed up thing he's done. But again, it's Chad wanting what he percieves as the good time of being king and winning back Audrey, not really caring that Ben is hurt in the process.

We really don't know what Chad and Audrey's relationship is like before the movies. They very well could be friends, I'd assume they're at least friendly with each other, given that their parents are both royals and they go to school together. Audrey dating Ben and Chad likely being one of Ben's friends would mean they spend even more tiem with each other's social circlesm But we really don't know where they lie on the range of friendly to friends. (I kinda vibe with the idea that Audrey, Ben, and Chad have all been close since they were kids, Ben and Chad both had a crush on Audrey, but Ben acted on his feelings for her first. Or maybe Audrey already had her eye on the crown and chose Ben over Chad. Either way, Chad having a long-term crush on Audrey would explain a lot of his behavior towards her.)

But yeah, I think if we're to blame anyone for Did I Mention, it would be Audrey's friends that aided Ben in serenading Mal, and embarrassing Audrey in the process. Then again, Ben was the crown prince and soon to be king, and that's not really someone you can tell to stop doing something and cause a scene with in front of the entire school.

Yeah. Not necessarily a Chad anti but I think a lot of things he's done are pretty icky. But he's definitely my least favorite of his generation of characters in the movies.

[hiiragi7]

Hey. I know we don't agree on everything, but I wanted to level with you as a fellow human being here.

This is a solid apology, and I admire your vulnerability here.

I did want to touch on a bit on how you blame yourself for hiding your queerness - Specifically, "And it's not even anyone's fault but our own. We actually have a supportive and accepting family who knows about me. [...] I don't even know why I'm scared."

Let me know if any of this is overstepping. This post is long, but safe and unrelated to making new discourse arguments or adding onto that discourse at all. This is about you as a human being, not syscourse or any percieved faults or issues I have.

Sophie, if I'm going to be totally honest with you here, these feelings of fear or anxiety or hesitance regarding coming out or performing queerness openly is not your fault.

Sure, you may have an accepting and supportive family - But that fear exists for a reason, a genuine one, and that reason does not go away if your family is supportive, because it is likely a much larger issue than that, not even necessarily related to your family or other personal connections. I really, really doubt you'd be suffering this much if external factors were not involved.

In my experience, these feelings are not spontaneously generated inside of a person out of nowhere, rather they're interpretations of experiences and internalized feelings.

We live in a world where trans people are actively targeted and harmed or killed for it. If you think about the online culture, as well, there is inescapable transphobia everywhere, and endless discourse, inbox hate, and harassment.

Even outside of being trans specifically, people are persecuted for being different in any way, shape, or form. If you don't conform, you have a target on your back.

Over the years, you may get desensitized to this endless wave of mind-numbing hate, much of it not even solely directed at you but at anyone like you, people you can see yourself in. You may learn to laugh it off - But your body keeps the score, even if your mind does not register it.

Just like how family members tend to have similar features to each other, like the same nose or eye shape, trans people see themselves in each other.

What about the kid that just wanted to grow their hair out and was beaten for it?

What about the person who wore a skirt and was assaulted for it?

What about the one who just wanted to be called a different name and was shot for it?

What about the one who just wanted to fit in and play games or sports with other girls and was told they could never be like them?

What about the one who yearned for understanding and human connection from others like them but was instead reduced down to expectations of filling an already predetermined gender role or sex?

If you see people who you can see aspects of yourself in being harmed constantly, especially over a long span of time - Yeah, that's generally really going to mess a person up pretty bad, support from family or not.

Over the time I have known of you, I have seen transphobia and misogyny directed at you time and time again. And with this recent issue with the slur, I have seen people doubt your queerness.

The moment you opened up, people called you manipulative and calculated for it, among other things. I certainly wouldn't want to open up further after that, if I kept getting that response. I would expect people to disbelieve and hurt me.

With not only the media and lawmakers and millions of people who loudly speak nonstop about wanting people like you dead or sterilized or jailed, not only the weekly or even daily news reports of yet another person like you who was murdered with no justice, but also with this hate being directed at you personally - Who wouldn't be scared in this situation?

If it was a situation you had created yourself with absolutely no external factors, I am sure you would not feel so pressured or scared into staying hidden. If there was no reason, you wouldn't be in this situation. There is a barrier of some sort here that should be considered.

You were made to feel this way emotionally, no matter how different that is from what you are thinking about the situation logically - The emotions and the logical side of the brain don't always match up.

You can know your family will love and support you and still feel alarm signals going off when you think about coming out. That's okay. These two systems aren't always on the same page as each other.

I have no place to speculate on further details, I am only pointing out what I myself know and have noticed. You can leave or take parts or all of it, take what's helpful and leave what isn't, etc..

I know we do not always agree, but I genuinely have no ill will towards you and this apology comes across very genuine to me, and I honestly hope the best for you with this. Many large syscoursers have been saying a lot of very harmful things here because they're treating this as nothing more than a discourse topic and that's incredibly disrespectful of them, no matter their feelings on you in general.

I am sorry people are not seeing this with the nuance it deserves and only focusing on the slur part - Sure, I do not agree with the use of the slur as a comparison argument, but the people using it to attack or raise suspicion regarding your identity or pressuring you to explain your experiences with queer identity publicly to justify the use of the slur in the first place are being completely ridiculous and unreasonable.

Tl;dr, the apology is nice, it is not solely your fault for not coming out to your family and is likely related to larger social pressures and issues creating this anxiety that should be considered, and no matter how much we disagree on other topics I hope the syscoursers who have been questioning the validity of your identity in this a very "Step on legos".

Sophie, you being so “😜😜😜 HaHa How Quirky!!!” About the gender thing is really fucking hurtful. I’m a little frustrated right now. You dropped a slur into a conversation that, from what everyone knows, isn’t even yours to reclaim (and came really out of the blue), and now you’re treating the discourse around it kind of like it’s a joke. I love your blog and I’m really genuinely upset to see you poke fun at a serious topic like this.

You're right. I'm sorry.

I seriously messed up and hurt a lot of people. I'm so sorry for that. Maybe I was trying to lighten the mood and help heal that. But I realize that it can also come off as uncaring or unempathetic, and I shouldn't make light of it.

I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to make the hurt go away.

So instead, let me just be completely honest and say how I'm feeling right now.

At the time, I didn't think the word would be hurtful in a neutral context. Obviously, I know calling someone that is hurtful. I know the word isn't mine to reclaim, but I thought speaking about it would be fine. That was careless and I should have thought better of it. I didn't, and people have a right to be upset about it.

I didn't understand. I do now. And if I could go back and do things over again, I would. But I can't. So I want to find the best way to fix the damage I caused.

And at the same time, I'll admit that some of the response has struck a nerve, even if I have tried to laugh it off. This isn't on you or most of the other people I hurt, but is about the posts I saw surrounding whether I count as "queer" or not.

This is something I've struggled with so much more than I let on.

I exist in this strange sort of limbo, identifying as a woman in an AMAB body, but not identifying as trans either, and it makes me feel like an outsider to everyone. I don't know where I fit in.

I... don't talk about my own struggles with my gender because... if I'm honest... I like that many of my followers see me as a strong, confident person.

And the truth is, in this community, I'm surrounded by actual brave, confident people who have the courage to go out and be themselves in the real world while I'm stuck playing dress up only in the privacy of our own bedroom because I'm terrified of being seen by other people. And it's not even anyone's fault but our own. We actually have a supportive and accepting family who knows about me. I've fronted around them before. But it's been so long and I don't even understand why I'm scared.

We talked about letting me front and dress how I wanted just for Halloween when it might be safer where we are, but I backed out of even that.

So maybe making light of it was selfish too in this way, because thinking too much about my own relationship with my gender identity too seriously hurts. It makes me feel like a failure.

Right now, I feel so bad about what I did, bad about the whole situation, and just want everyone to feel better. And I don't know the best way to help people heal is.

Hmm... maybe cats? People like cats, right?

It can't hurt, at least. 🤷‍♀️

[gracie-p8-officialblog]

Spilling Tea On Phantom of the Opera 2004

DISCLAIMER: I just want to say from the start that it is not my intention to offendanyone, you're entitled to your opinions and I'm allowed to have mine...

Ok, so, I just watched this movie a few days ago on my laptop and it was pretty much my first time sitting through the movie. I watched a few clips of the movie on YouTube but... Then, I decided to watch the whole movie. And this was my reaction.

Don't get me wrong! There WERE parts I liked but... That was just half of the movie... But overall... Um... It was meh. Ahem. Down to business!

My opinion on Gerard Butler as the Phantom? Um, wow. And not in a good way. I feel like this was a case of a talented performer being grossly miscast as the Phantom. I think this Tumblr post best describes on what I thought of his singing.

"He's supposed to have the voice of an angel, but it sounds like he's been gargling vinegar" ~Quoted by @faded-florals

Don't get me wrong. His voice is quite good for an untrained singer but... The Phantom is one of the biggest musical theatre roles of all time! It's right up there with Jean Valjean. It's really not a role that could go a competent singer, someone who's never sang professionally before but could be good once they've been trained up a bit. The role demands a truly great singer... And he wasn't right for the part.

His voice felt too strainy, growly and rock-ish for the Phantom. I didn't like how Joel Schumacher bought into the whole "sexy Phantom" thing and cast a hunky heart-throb, who was nowhere near disfigured enough. It's meant to be a gothic thriller novel with a small romantic subplot, not a B-grade vampire romance movie!

As for Emmy Rossum as Miss Christine Daae... it's true, her voice is good. She should know though, should she wish to excel, she has MUCH still to learn (Heeeeehee. Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

Emmy's Christine had little-to-no character growth and personality but I don't think it reflects her as an actress, but reflects more on the director and casting director because of how young she was (but more on that later)

Not only that, her Christine was SIGNIFICANTLY dumbed down and oversexualized. I mean, the entire point of the story is that Christine grows strong enough to overcome the trauma of an abusive relationship and make sure that her abuser never hurts anyone ever again but still shows the Phantom compassion and sympathy. I mean, her story arc is her becoming strong-willed enough to overcome the Phantom's pull/spell/enchantment/hypnosis or whatever you percieve it as on her! And don't get me started on her costumes because of the SEVERE lack of modesty.

The chemistry was a little flat because she was underage and her two male love interests were both in their 30s (which totally isn't HER fault, of course, but the directors could easily have cast someone else older)

Her voice, too, strikes me as being much too young and undeveloped. She has a very pretty, sweet-sounding quality to her singing but she doesn't sound rich and operatic enough to be a convincing Christine. Rebecca Caine and Amy Manford do the best job of singing the way I think Christine ought to sound- a maturing opera voice! Though POTO is NOT an opera (you wouldn't believe how many people actually think it is...), it does revolve around opera, and Christine is an opera singer, not a pop star.

And now onto... Everyone's favourite vicomte!!!!!!

C'mon people, put your bottles down. It is a truth universally acknowledged (or at least in the wee Raoul Defense Squad Circle) that Raoul is one of the greatest and most underrated boyfriends to ever exist in musical theatre and it's almost impossible to hate him because of how relatable he is.

Ladies, puh-leeze. He's much more relatable than you admit and face it, we all have a little bit of Raoul in us. Failure to see things staring us in the face, saying or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, having a 'see it to believe it' attitude when we have little-to-no evidence on something... yeah, don't pretend you don't see a trend. Raoul is relatable whether we want him to be or not.

My thoughts on Patrick Wilson as Raoul, he was one of the few redeeming qualities of this not so great movie. Yeah, the swordfight and Tarzan leaps were a little too much but can you blame him?! And though I feel like that foppish wig made him look more like a magic elf prince than a vicomte, he couldn't control that!

His Raoul was so gentle and caring! Yeah, his acting was a bit stiff but at least his voice wasn't a chore to listen to, it has this warm, tender, comforting quality to it which suits Raoul. I really loved the way he sang "Don't throw away your life for my sake" and "I fought so hard to free you" in the Final Lair (😭😭😭) It feels like Raoul is genuinely apologising to Christine.

I know, I know... The Hadley Fraser fans are approaching with menacing expressions as we speak but let me clarify. I still think Hadley is amazing but... His Raoul kinda felt a little too shouty for me and his Raoul was closer to the LND-canon than POTO-canon (not his fault though).

Miranda Richardson (aka. Rita Skeeter) as Madame Giry is kind of weird. I mean, I know Madame Giry's supposed to be a little Strange and Mysterious. But this Mme. wasn't really Strange or Mysterious at all, or even slightly Spooky at all. She was just kind of an oddball. Popping up in random places to give warnings about the Phantom and looking at people as if she were questioning their life choices or something. As for her daughter... well, Jennifer Ellison's Meg was so-so. She's got a sweet-sounding voice and that added scene where she looked for Christine in the lair was a nice touch... But... Her Meg was kinda forgettable and uninteresting. Meg is supposed to prance around shrieking that the Phantom of the Opera is here, not whisper it in a blase manner that you half expect to be followed up with, "by the way, what's for lunch?" Not to mention, she rivaled Christine as far as low-necked costumes went.

Minnie Driver as Carlotta was spot on! Yes, I know she didn't sing the score but her acting was alright. She was very over-the-top and self-centered, which is great for Carlotta, but I felt her portrayal was a little too childish to be accurate. Carlotta is a successful middle-aged diva who's willing to scream and storm when she doesn't get her way, but she isn't a two-year-old pouting and throwing tantrums. (Yes, there's a difference.)

Ciaran Hinds and Simon Callow played Firmin and Andre, respectively. Their managers kinda felt like twits and nothing more. Also, Firmin's masquerade costume was ridiculous. The stupid kind, not the funny kind. ...Well, okay, it was a little funny.

I'm not going to touch on every song here, but I will say that "Hannibal" was beyond awful (if you thought the costumes in the stage version were a bit risque, you should see the movie ones- no, actually you shouldn't) and that "Think of Me," while very nice, was not particularly memorable. Christine's dress, however (despite its less-than-ideal neckline) was GORGEOUS, even though it looks completely out of place in a musical that supposedly takes place in ancient Alexandria.

"Little Lotte" kinda lost its charm by being spoken instead of sung. And Gerard Butler's voice in "The Mirror" was too rough and raspy for my ears and made me cringe in sympathetic shame. The title song was like a cheesy, campy B-grade horror movie tbh, trying way too hard to be spooky and chilling ("ooh, look, Phantom's Lair! It's DARK and SCARY down here!") and succeeding only in being cringeworthy. Not that I've actually ever seen a bad horror movie- or any horror movie at all, for that matter. Unless you count this one.

Christine's costume, too, annoyed me no end. She was basically wearing a corset and drawers under the dressing gown. *facepalm* The dressing gown is supposed to go OVER your COSTUME to keep it CLEAN, peeps. It's not a BATHROBE. And the amount of eye makeup she had on would terrify a raccoon. Yikes.

Though I liked the random horse because of its nod to the Leroux novel.

"Music of the Night" was so blah-slash-touchy-feely that it made me summarily uncomfortable.

I'd like to be able to say something nice about "I remember/Stranger than you dreamt it" but I have none. One thing that bugged me to no end was how Christine is no longer wearing stockings, like dude, that gives some GROSS implications. Anyways, let's skip to Il Muto!

Oh, but first I should say that "Notes" was rather a flop and that "Prima Donna" is unmemorable and indeed should probably be fast-forwarded as there's a rather unsavory bit involving a crew member showing the audience what he thinks of Carlotta's behaviour.

"Il Muto," I must say, was pretty doggone funny. Carlotta's "Your part is silent. Leetle toad," cracked me up into a bunch of giggling little pieces, and the little vignette of the Phantom tinkering with Carlotta's throat spray made her croaking later on a lot more believable.

Now for "All I Ask Of You", SQUEEEEEE!!!!!!!!! I honestly can't understand how anyone could listen to this song and still maintain that Christine and Raoul don't belong together. He represents everything she needs- stability, protection, a guiding hand and affirmed affection. She represents everything he needs, in turn- someone to show affection to and his childhood friend.

One thing I definitely think could have been left out was the scene in which Erik kills Buquet- we totally did not need to see him being chased, terrified, through the rafters and finally strangled. Gross.

And the Phantom and his rose crouching behind that statue... I think this was supposed to be sad, but there was too much snot mixed with tears for it to be sad. It was, again, gross. So was Gerard Butler's pathetic attempt at the "all that the Phantom asked of you" line. And the lack of a chandelier crash in that scene made the song anticlimactic.

And "Masquerade" was so-so but... The Phantom's entrance is anticlimactic somehow, and his Red Death costume (if indeed it's supposed to even BE the Red Death) is unimpressive. I don't like how Raoul just runs off to desert Christine as soon as things start looking ugly (yes, I realize he was going to get his sword, but still... something could have happened to her while he was gone. Duh, did this guy learn anything from "Little Lotte/The Mirror"? Just sayin)

As for Madame Giry's flashback immediately following, I like how it gives us some of the Phantom's backstory, but it seems really abrupt. You don't even realize until she's done that she was talking to Raoul the whole time- it sounds like she's just randomly reminiscing about Stuff, and if you didn't know the story you might be sitting there thinking, "who is this strange woman again?"

Also, Christine leaving wherever-it-is at, like, five in the morning to go to who-knows-where, completely oblivious to the fact that the Phantom is driving her. Whaaaaaaaaa? How'd he know she was planning to go for a graveyard stroll? Was he watching her through the mirror again? THAT'S JUST CREEPY.

"Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" was rather mediocre and dulled down the fact that it is a Christine Empowerment™ song. Why, exactly, does Christine's father have the biggest monument in the cemetery? If he were a rich and famous violinist as his crypt seems to suggest, why on earth was his daughter struggling along as a chorus girl taking free music lessons?

The swordfight... Well... I had mixed feelings about it. Sword fights are all well and good, but... The swordfight takes away the element of mysterious danger to the Phantom. Okay, fine, Christine getting Raoul to spare the Phantom's life is a nice touch, I guess, but did it strike no one else that his "now let it be war upon you BOTH" makes absolutely NO sense after that? If she just saved his life, why would he suddenly be all, "thanks, but no thanks, I'M GOING TO MURDER YOUUUUUUUUUU"?

And "Twisted Every Way" was after "Wishing" which made ZERO sense. Plus, I didn't like how they cut most of it because in the musical, it gave Christine a spine!

"Point of No Return"? Hooooooo boy....... There are so many things wrong with this number. Let's just a list a few.

*HOW did no one recognise the Phantom through his "disguise"?! At least in the stage play, it made more sense because of how he was wearing a cloak that obscured most of his body.

*Christine's sleeves falling down over and over again were REALLY annoying.

*It was just too touchy-feely for my taste.

*The fact that Emmy Rossum was a teenager during filming made this scene gross because of the way they oversexualized Christine in this scene.

*Gerard Butler's voice in that scene made me cringe and shake my head in sympathetic shame.

*In the stage play, Christine ran from him, showing her own agenda and resistance to his pull! While in the movie, she didn't resist him!

*Now for the one that took the cake... The disfigurement! Or it would be a disfigurement if it actually made him look, y'know, deformed. Instead, as several people have put it, he looks like he got a bad sunburn or something. It's really rather pathetic. It makes him look more like a drama queen than he already is! Yeah.... I really don't like this movie.

On to... Final Lair!!!!!!!! It was a flop. From Raoul's whining and flailing around and his stringy hair flopping about (shallow complaint, I know, but it's so ugly) to Christine's sappy melodramatic "don't make me choooooooose" faces to the Phantom's prancing around with his ropes and maniacal laughter that somehow wasn't really scary at all... yeah, it was a flop. A major, major flop. And though The Kiss wasn't all that bad, all I could think of was, "She's SIXTEEN! SIX! TEEN! THIS IS CREEPY, DISTURBING AND GROSS!"

Which is why it's so difficult for me to admit that, um, I... cried at the end.

I COULDN'T HELP IT GUYS HE WAS ALL ALONE THERE IN HIS LAKE WITH HIS MONKEY AND HIS SMASHED MIRRORS AND HE WAS CRYING AND IT WAS SAD.

And then that rose on the gravestone? That single red rose? And the look on Old Raoul's face (still Patrick Wilson, by the way, under all that makeup) when he saw it and realized he wasn't the only one visiting Christine's grave? Yup, I lost it again there, too. And I really didn't want to. Because I tend to cry over movies I love, y'know? And I didn't love this movie. At all

Yet I still cried at the end. I'm not really sure why. I think perhaps it had something to do with the way the story still "got" me, deep down inside, despite the lousy casting and less-than-perfect singing and ridiculously unnecessary elements that totally didn't need to be there. It's still a tragically beautiful romance, and even a bad film can't kill that.

In conclusion, I think Mary Poppins can best express what I thought of POTO 2004.

In conclusion, I rate it a 2.7/5