#'the way i understand it you dont explore your gender - you just know'

[fortjester]

listening to my mother explain how she understands the trans experience and knowing she said this shit to my (trans) younger sister at some point and holding back an immense amount of rage

[zorosbeau33]

Courting Gifts~ One Piece Omegaverse Headcanon Part 1!

Starring: Ace and Luffy! x gender neutral reader Genre: Fluff, sfw AU: Omegaverse, Omega Reader Wc: 1180 TW: Mentions of battle Masterlist~ Part 2~ Is ready! Thank you everyone for all your support! All characters involved in this fic are legal age or older in my au hope you enjoy!

This Goofy goofball knows exactly how to court. He gives me soft alpha/strong beta vibes. And he learned from Makino the ways to court long ago.

HOWEVER that being said, he also likes making you laugh. Courting gifts when it was just a crush were often goofy and maybe small inside jokes, or even mini pranks. 

Like a cupcake with sour flavored icing, still good but not at all what you were expecting. Boy did he giggle and laugh when your face puckered up with confusion.

Once he realizes these feelings are here to stay, or if you take initiative and heavily hint or gift him something. Then he gets sincere and downright smitten and soft

I hope you like the color orange, because he thinks you look so cute in the fuzzy luxury fur blanket with orange silk lining. Yes the fur has been dyed orange to match as well and you stick out like a sore thumb on this winter island but you're warm!

He is much more of a simple gift kinda guy, first sign is him not just sharing his food with you but getting a plate and filling it for you before looking after himself. 

He long ago memorized your favorite food 

He uses his devil fruit as a gift for you as well…yes in his mind warm hugs or warm handed deep tissue massages count as courting gifts. They're a promise from him to you he will take care of you forever if you allow him.

He has never understood collecting shiny rocks, seashells, and the like…until now. Something about courting makes every exceptional seashell and rock extra special now and if he thinks theyre pretty he will pocket them to give to you later.

“The way it shined reminded me of your eyes/smile”

He's much more of a physical show rather than buying gifts. So his presents may not be noticed immediately.

Giving you rides in his flame boat (he has to carry you so his flames dont set you on fire and boy does he love carrying you now)

Insisting on being the one to be paired up with you for anything and everything. From crew game night, to exploration parties, to mission assignments, even to his previously hated cleaning duties. 

Soft touches, on your waist, your hand. To help you get across a large gap (if he doesn't just pick you up). To reassure you if you’re expressing a moment of doubt/trouble. When he thinks your smile is especially bright and he just needs to touch your cheek to ensure you’re real.

 Or to push you behind him in times of danger or conflict, yes you can take care of yourself BUT he wants to be your support and fighter. He is first to cheer you on in a fight, but if he can prevent a needless dangerous encounter he will put himself in front so any animosity is directed at him not you.

When he realizes you might want clothes, or scented items he goes to Marco.

He understands the process, he gets how to scent something. However he wants his brother figure and the very honest bestie to help him judge which ones are best. He doesn’t want to over scent something and have it be oppressive. And he knows he’s rough on clothes so he’s making sure the things he’s giving you are good quality still so they’ll last as long as you want to keep them.

He also gives you a nickname, you’ve always had one but it was more of a teasing best friend kind of thing. Suddenly you have a much more dignified and polite nickname…its also a very classic 50’s romance sort of nickname like Doll, or Pumpkin, or Kitten…or Angel

Okay he’s alpha, if that wasn’t evident from his emperors haki and being captain etc 

Unlike his brother he is dumb…very dumb. Has never cared about courting a day before in his life. Used to say “EW” and stick out his tongue (even at 16)

He doesn’t even realize at first that the things he is doing is courting when he first starts. Probably because he doesn’t realize at first that he has feelings for you.

Robin did from day one, Zoro did maybe the first week, Sanji had suspicions too after a month or so, and the others later feel like they should have seen it coming since he constantly talked about how mouth-watering you smelled and loved to cling around you and just burrow in your neck to snuffle you. He learned not to nip when Nami yelled at him for it the first day he met you. Like I said the others feel they should have seen this sooner.

Giving you bits of his food, scenting you, constantly asking to hold your hand, and giving you every single cool thing he sees for you to “keep safe” but if you try to give them back he’d “no thanks you keep them!” then laugh and bounce off

Unlike what anyone would have expected Luffy figures out his emotions for you very quickly. It didn’t take Robins hints to him, he knew after you all finally got in a large altercation together against the world government or some pirates. He was always protective of his nakama, but before the enemy could land the devastating blow to your back in the battle. Luffy was screaming in rage. Bounding across the battlefield to you to protect HIS friend. His…ohhh…

He talked to Robin and Nami, they advised him on courting and how to make you his. He only grasped 30% but he’s trying

He would make the ship go broke in order to buy you every cool thing, or every soft nesting thing, or all the food you could eat. 

The king of bringing you random plucked wildflowers (several have been confiscated by Chopper as they were poisonous plants, Luffys eye for weird things haven gotten the best of him)

They're messy but he learns to make flower crowns for you both to wear. Talks about making them for your future kids

He didn’t used to own much clothing, but now he is expanding his wardrobe just so he can have more things that smell like him to wrap you up in.

You have exclusive hat permission, don’t abuse it but if you ever ask him, he does not mind putting it on your head for a while

He thinks you look so good in it too, makes him puff up his chest and yell to the world how awesome you are.

He has bought you one very nice present, one he had to work his butt off to get. Literally, Nami made him get a job on an island to pay for it and he was actually sincere while working there (sorry Baratie). 

It's a unisex gold bangle bracelet with a red ruby with your and his initials engraved in the gold along with the date you joined his crew (because yes he remembers the date perfectly)

[aro-culture-is]

I've been questioning if I am aro or not for the past year, previously I identified myself as a lesbian because I dont have an interest in men, and I usually feel more comfortable on women. However when I try to imaginr myself in the future I dont see myself being in a relationship in the future, like I am wondeeng "how the hell does one manage a relationship"

But I dont know if I am really aro because when I was in middle school I had a sort of "crush" on a person but I was mostly thinking "Hey this girl is really nice and the only person that understands me maybe I have a crush on her" and I really love the idea of romance and shipping characters and seeing other aromantic people being repulsed by the idea made me question even more.

hi! thanks for reaching out. since it's been a while since I've answered stuff like this, reminder that all asks of this nature are filed under the tag 'am i aro'

Your first paragraph is such a common experience in a-spec communities - initially, most folks start from "well, i'm not attracted to x gender, so I must be attracted to y?" or "well, I'm equally attracted to all genders, so I must be bi/pan?" when the problem is, 0 attraction to one gender is not related at all to how you feel about others, and 0 = 0. You're in very, very good company among a-spec folks, including yours truly - who rotated through the whole of LGBTQ before realizing aromanticism was an option that actually fit very well.

With regards to the second paragraph - first of all, mood! Personally, that "crush" was something we'd later identify as a squish, or friendship crush. Hilariously, we no longer like this particular person at all, as becoming friends led to us discovering our specific neurodivergent flavors interacted to constantly frustrate us. Enjoying - or not enjoying - romance and shipping is not at all something inherent to your attraction.

Plenty of outwardly aro folks talk more about our experiences with romantic repulsion and frustrations with shipping culture because we are in aromantic spaces and talking about the sociological implications, but - personally? I adore shipping, dislike seeing irl romance, and think it's mostly interesting to talk about how romance interacts with expectations and laws in society. I don't like to call myself romance repulsed, romance favorable, any of that - I think those are personally limiting to my identity and how I interact with those subjects. Other folks find it useful as a shorthand to explain how they feel, and that's great too!

I can't tell you what your identity is, but I think it's useful to say this: you've described to me a very, very common story to many a-spec folks. You're seeking advice from me, which tells me it probably matters a lot to you, and I wouldn't be surprised if, in some ways, you feel like you need permission, or verification, or any of those sorts of things.

I think, rather than relying on that - what would happen if, privately, you give yourself permission to explore what it feels like to say "I am aromantic", or "I think I'm aromantic"? How do you feel? Nervous, anxious, bubbly, weighed down, vulnerable - those are all common. But the thing is, if I think of an identity I am 100% sure I do not belong to in that way - I certainly don't feel a little flutter of hope. I don't feel like I might be onto a scary new journey. I just feel like I've said that the world is shaped like a rabbit - nonsensical and wrong. If you feel like there's a possibility - does it hurt you to say, "I might be, and what does that change?" The worst that happens is, quite literally, you learned something about yourself.

-- mod axel

[kiruyeen]

rambling abt my danny johnson hcs bc I dont have anything better to do

alright so the fog most definitely changed everyone in it, but while most of them are for worse, Danny for better, actually. not for the "hehe I can mutilate people without worrying abt consequences" part. by all means I believe danny would get bored. of the same methods of killing, sacrifing, stalking for short periods, the same realms, same victims, etc. Danny, as patient as he can be while stalking, is a thrill seeking man, and only human, whether he likes it or not.

but this is a key part of him actually getting to explore who 'danny johnson' is. he spent his entire life putting on masks, physical or metaphorical, that he has no idea who 'danny' is otherwise, and this would give him a chance to explore, since, well, being painfully average isnt any advantage to him here and he has nothing better to do since he cant focus his attention on stalking and studying other people. when theres no one left to study, one is forced to study themselves.

he could actually grow out his hair, give himself stick and poke tats (maybe with the help of the legion, who knows), grow a beard to see if he likes it (I dont think he would), etc.

going from this, if he forms genuine bonds with anyone (especially any survivors) bc yk what else is left to do, he could actually, just maybe, open up about his past and realize oh fuck, that shit wasnt healthy or normal at all. I dont think itd fix him, but itd give him a better understanding of himself. I dont think he would ever upon up about this if it wasnt for the fog.

similarly I dont think he'd form any romantic bonds with anyone if it wasnt the fog as well, I fully believe danny used to cut himself off (more accurately, cut THEM up) as soon as he felt his feelings for anyone would get in the way of his mission. I dont think he even recognizes romantic love anymore. the difference in the fog is, well, you cant get rid of your problems by murdering them here bc they just come back like a boomerang.

he semi-canonly has NPD (as in the devs called him a bit narcissistic once and I stuck to it like a starving leech) and I most definitely believe he has the symptoms, as a lack of a sense of self is common with NPD anyway. I never wanna think too much abt this since I have a deeply set fear of misrepresenting already stigmatized disorders esp due to not having NPD myself but I will say, 1, he definitely has an internal hierarchy but the way he feels abt those above and below him are different than you'd assume, and 2, he would have been a murderer regardless of his npd and the npd has nothing to do with him becoming a murderer, it does influence it naturally yes bc its a PERSONALITY disorder but its not what makes him evil yk. its the ritualized abuse he went through all his life with the explicit intent to make him the way he is.

other, small stuff

so since the entity can and does change a few things with the killers, I love to think Danny has tapetum lucidum in his eyes, like a cat, to see better in the dark, esp beneath the mask's eyes.

the way his costume's... strap.. tentacle... things work is similar to a cat's tail as well. swishing furiously when upset, resting naturally when calm, curling slowly when curious etc. it makes it a little bit easier to guess how hes feeling with the emotionless mask on, for the theoretical audience at least.

he's actually not a fan of physical contact, unless it is to cause discomfort to or fluster someone. he's simply not used to it, but he will tolerate it when necessary. he's likely just touch starved but doesnt recognize the sensation, though.

he would not care enough to label his orientational identity but it'd definitely be pan and somewhere on the a-spectrum.

returning to the only getting to know himself after the fog bit, he'd probably realize hes at least a little bit gender queer. (I also love trans man danny headcanons I just cant seem to make it fit with my other hcs)

alr thats abt it I believe. feel free to share ur ideas as well I love reading abt different interpertations for a character esp when it is the silly sopping wet cat that is danny

[saintjosie]

hi!! fanfic writing person here again :D

i've been looking at a ton of stuff and first like. damn i didn't expect me headcanoning a character as transfem to lead me down a rabbit hole where i now 1. have loads of random knowledge on transfem issues and 2. have a massive amount of respect for transfem people and understanding of the differences in experience of different trans people. wonderful actually. your stuff has been super helpful tysm

actual question! how do i go about using femininity as a marker of transition without falling into gender roles? do you think that's disrespectful? because like. wearing makeup, 'feminine' clothes, that kind of thing-- functionally no bearing on someone's womanhood. but those are, to my understanding, big hallmarks of transfem experiences. i don't want to say that wearing makeup or a dress makes her suddenly feel wonderful and pretty and solves all her woes, but i also don't want to downplay the significance of that experience. ideally, how do you think those should be balanced? basically how do i make her feminine without it seeming like a certain level of femininity is required to be trans.

generally, are there any experiences you think would be helpful to know? i'm writing a lot about her (currently two fics on different effects of HRT as an adult, and two on her gender being affirmed as a teen when she had taken basically no steps in her transition) so any insight is helpful. ideally what would you want portrayed in a non-transfem author writing a trans girl? idk!

i understand that these are very big asks so once again don't feel pressured to reply-- thank you regardless! generally looking at your content as a trans woman has been super helpful so thank you so much for sharing <3 best wishes!

"how do i go about using femininity as a marker of transition without falling into gender roles?"

you cant! but why do you need to? a core part of the trans experience is experimenting with gender, stereotypical or not. so many trans fems (including myself) start off by leaning very hard into stereotypical femininity because they are things that many of us have not previously explored. and then a core part of that journey is learning that there is no right way to explore gender. i spent years leaning into being femme until i realized i was more comfortable with a little bit of fluidity and androgyny. i think the most authentic experience would be to have her explore femininity, stereotypical or not, and then eventually coming to terms with how she is a woman outside of stereotypical femininity. two experiences that i think might be a good way to introduce this concept is one, the gender affirming experience of being included as one of the girls. there's a lot of nuance to that experience that people dont necessarily consider. there is the self doubt of, oh am i really one of the girls or are they just humoring me? and also for some there is the need to feel like they need to confirm to expectations of femininity, and leaning too hard into it.

second, the experience of experiencing misogny for the first time. i specifically say misogny because a lot of trans women have face homophobia and transphobia before they experience misogyny that validates them as a woman and for many people there can be this sudden awareness of how different the world is when you move through it as a woman. there is your typical run of the mill, this guy is a dick misogny but then there is also that experience of facing internalized misogny from other women. the experience of being told by cis women how to engage with femininity because a lot of cis women haven't deconstructed that for themselves is an experience that can be particularly hurtful because it is infantilization and misogny that is also incredibly invalidating.

third, when youre talking about gender affirming experiences from pre-transition, there's a lot of nuance to those experience because while they are gender affirming, there is confliction too. for some theres the question of why do i like this? and you also have to consider that many times those experiences that happen to a person who sees themselves as a boy. there is a level of separation from the experience because they havent necessarily embraced transness yet, and if they have, theres tentativeness because being in your teens is all about forming identity.

if you can capture these experiences in your writing, then fantastic! but also these are hard to capture because often times it takes lived experience to write it with nuance. love these questions and happy to answer! good luck with your writing!

[scourgefrontiers]

yall ready for a gender journey post..

so yall could probably guess i grew up a cis girl. i didnt start questioning my gender until high school after i broke up with my first boyfriend which kind of freed me up to explore my identity as my own person for the first time. around age like 16 was when i first started identifying as trans, and at the time that meant a binary trans guy

after a couple years of getting comfortable exploring my gender i decided hey maybe im actually not a binary trans guy but instead nonbinary. still transmasc and guy leaning but not quite all the way anymore. this became a trend for the next loooong while, getting closer to the androgynous part of the spectrum as time went on

then in recent years (maybe about 5 years ago ish) i started to lean more towards femininity. this is significant for me because growing up i was always opposed to it--i hated wearing dresses, i hated putting on makeup, anything "girly" appalled me and i didnt know why. i ended up thinking its because i WASNT a girl, and thats why i was so uncomfortable with everything to do with being a girl. i rejected it so hard because it just wasnt me.

after living with eden for a while i got even more comfortable exploring the feminine part of myself. i started wearing dresses and skirts and actually ENJOYED it; i started painting my nails and wearing earrings again; i even grew my hair out to my shoulderblades (yeah thats where its at now LOL). ive even started using she/her alongside they/them. and im actually enjoying these things??? it feels like after all these years im finally able to reclaim them because i feel like im finally able to be comfortable with my gender--how my gender feels to ME, not to everyone else.

that was the problem when i was growing up--i was trapped in everyone else's perception of my gender and what it "should" be. i was trapped into a box that was made by everyone else's idea of what i SHOULD look like, what i SHOULD wear, what i SHOULD act like, etc. and it took me until age 26 to fully realize that my gender is what i want it to be, not what everyone else wants.

i dont have to be a guy to want facial hair and a flat chest and a low voice. loving pink and dresses and cute things and makeup and jewelry doesnt inherently mean im a girl. pronouns, features, clothes, even names dont inherently mean youre one gender or another. your gender is defined by you and only you and nobody should be able to put you into a box and define your gender for you.

..having said all this, im starting to explore my gender further, and im slowly coming to the POSSIBLE conclusion that i might come back around to being cis (albeit gnc). nothing would really change about me except the label tbh. if i do end up coming to that conclusion i will be very bummed about leaving the trans community, but i wont feel any less attached to it, as ive spent literally half my life as part of it. i understand what its like to be trans and to love myself as my most authentic self, and thats why im considering this possiblity!

identifying as a lesbian kind of pushed me in this direction as well--i cant remember the last time i felt truly comfortable and happy with a label regarding my orientation.. like ya damn. maybe i am a girl who likes girls LOL. it just feels right and natural for me personally??? its crazy. i love women. if youre a woman i love you no matter the flavor. i love my wife more than all of you though sorry <3

but god please dont take this as me being like "oh trans people just need to get comfortable with their gender and theyll realize theyre cis" that is a bullshit take and i am not saying that. this is strictly my own experience and journey! i am 100% not speaking for every trans person and you shouldnt either.

but ya. dan cis era???? we'll see. no official statement just yet but i just wanted to let yall know where im at in my ~gender journey~. until i confirm anything please still view me as a nonbinary girlthing! <3

[dyke-pollinator]

This is a bit of a personal question so if you don’t want to answer I understand if you just delete this ask but

As a relatively younger trans woman, and especially new to actually exploring my sexuality…at what point do I feel like a lesbian? Like I always feel bad or weird for being attracted to lesbians. It always feels wrong or amoral or like I’m lying in some way idk

I apologize for taking a few days to answer this my dear anon. A combination of Pride and IRL stuff has left me exhausted and I wanted to make sure I really took the time to give you a good answer and my bad for the wall of text you're about to receive lol.

There's a lot I could say about this. For the sake of this post, I'm going to assume that by "younger" you mean both in your transition and your age. Transition is hard. Finding yourself is hard. To answer your question, it takes Time. And I mean this in two specific ways:

Transition is a slow process. As you continue your transition, (whatever that means to you, whether that be social, medical, both, or neither, or something else entirely) you'll find a lot of things just making more sense. The labels might slowly start to be more comfortable. Or maybe they wont, and you'll switch to new ones, but that deeper sense of understanding yourself doesn't really go away (trust me I've changed both my labels and pronouns multiple times now lol). Either way, despite anything else, over time you'll just start to feel more at home, both in your body, and how you present yourself to the world. Now this is both the scary part and the hard part: you have to take steps to find a community who accepts you as you are, and (ideally) with people like you. Yeah this requires you to put yourself out there in a way that will be uncomfortable at first. Yeah, sometimes its going to go poorly, and you'll be rejected, or shunned. And yes, it will take its toll on you mentally, emotionally and (sometimes) physically. Its worth it. Having those people in your life does more than you can know in learning how to love and accept yourself. Having people look you in the eye and tell you that they love you, they see you, you're valid in who you are, no matter what anyone else says, is just so crucial.

You just get older. I know for a lot of people that can be frightening (and like, yeah, sometimes), but I can tell you with full confidence, I LOVE being in my 30s. You couldn't pay me to go back to 20. Your teen years and 20s are fucking hard. You just get so much better at knowing which things to give a shit about in your life and you get the necessary resources to be able to not give a shit. Most days I feel like a lesbian (more of a Dyke but w/e), so I am one, no one can take that from me, and the people who dont like me using that label can fuck off. I wear more masc clothes and have more masc hobbies because I want to and that doesn't define my gender or sexuality. I like doing mutual aid projects, and working on honing my DIY skills. I love the people who are in my life and tell them unapologetically, and I appreciate every day I get to spend with them. As I get older, the more I feel like "me" and the more I learn that in reality, I do love that person. She's actually pretty great.

I hope you can trust me that it gets better. That, in spite of all the pain, all of the heartbreak, the loss and tribulations, its fucking worth it. I know I didn't think so for a long, long time. But my god I am so happy I made it here. You'll get to that point to.

[vveakfish]

do you have any thoughts about the core four whose gender(s) are basically just a trans fruit cocktail that you would like to talk about? because I would love to listen

oh boy DO I !!!

I have So Many thoughts about them Anon, so thank you for giving me an excuse to try and put it into words beyond “Damn, these bitches trans! Good for them.”

Honestly, there are so many different ways to explore these characters genders based on how you choose to interpret their life experiences, and their aesthetic changes, and their relationships with each other. I am of the belief that any of them could be trans in any direction

But, that said, I Do have particular gender headcanons for YJ that i am very fond of, so thats what I’ll be talking about today.

(Small disclaimer. I have not finished all of the comics referenced in this. I am using the information i have to inform these, but you know, i might come back to this post at some point in the future and look at it like “wow, i don’t agree with any of this anymore.” And i think thats okay.

I’m just here to have fun, and i thoroughly enjoy these little guys, and think abt them alot, so enjoy

(also if you dont want to read 4.1k words of blorbo gender analysis, or would like to avoid spoilers for Superboy (1993), Young Justice (1998) & (2019), and Red Robin (2009) in varying degrees of detail, or you just want to see what lables i assigned them, scroll down to the bottom <3))

lets get started.

Bart:

Bart's gender is the most complex, but his thought process about it is also the most simple. I think his view of gender would be very much influenced by the fact that he grew up in VR in the future like…

A body is just an avatar, do what ever the fuck you want with it.

That said, the lil guy has always given me transmasc vibes. These vibes, however, are by no means binary.

He understands that in the 21st century a lot of people do not have his sort of “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” approach to gender, so he’s okay with being put in the box of Boy™. But his gender is a lot more * hand waves vaguely *

Clothes don’t have gender in his eyes, they’re fabric you put on your body. Wear what ever you want forever!

Bart in skirts is something i have seen many people draw/talk about before, and its something i agree with wholeheartedly. He likes hair clips, and like, those loud (actually loud and visually loud) beaded bracelet type things that ravers wear. He like nail polish. He doesn’t grow facial hair, but he wouldn’t care if he did. He’s not on hormones, but he definitely considered it for the bit. “Gotta drink my boy juice” Kind of vibes.

For him gender has Nothing to do with performance, its all about comfort. About wearing what feels right, regardless of whether or not he’s adhering to expectations of masculinity.

Yes, he Will wear that god awful outfit out of the house, haters can die mad

Cassie:

Anon, I need you to understand how much i love early yj98 cass. She is everything to me — her process of coming to terms with herself, and being able to watch her start to feel at home in her own skin. It makes me absolutely feral.

lets see if i can explain why… succinctly

When we first meet her in yj98, her identity as “Wonder Girl” is this sort of amalgamation of What it Means To Be A Hero in her eyes. She has her party city blunt bob wig (Because Diana is who she looks up to), the gloves, leather jacket, goggles combo (that so clearly take inspiration from Kon).

At this point in her life Wonder Girl is not really her. Its very clearly a mask she’s putting on. which is what makes it the perfect avenue for her to explore gender expression without it having to actually be about her gender.

I think the part that specifically makes me feral though is her… we’ll call it admiration of Kon.

The girl is a self proclaimed Superboy stan + theres all the weird not-drama between Cassie and Cissie over wanting attention from Kon. (And i say Not Drama bc its like… Kon flirting with cissie (which like… have you met 90’s Kon?? he flirts with everything that moves) and Cassie being upset that he’s Not flirting with her. and cissie is just along for the ride. She’s not quite as much of a flirt as kon is, but she has her moments)

All of this to say i feel like its impossible to have a conversation about Cassie’s gender without also talking about her experiences with comphet and lesbianism.

At the beginning, Cassie sees Kon — this cocksure, conventionally attractive boy with powers that (at first glance) seem very similar to hers, and felt something about it. And, in the way of teen girls who have been told since grade school that they’re supposed to like boys, Cassie comes to the conclusion that what she feels for Kon must be romantic in nature, right?.

All of this, the jealousy over Kon and Cissie flirting, basing her costume off Superboy’s (intentionally or otherwise), the fact that she wont let her team see her without the wig and goggles at all for so much of yj98. To me it all reads as the tangled mix of undiscovered lesbianism and gender dysphoria that the poor girl simply doesn’t have the words to define yet.

So, then what IS cassie’s deal with gender???

i am so very glad you asked.

She, too, is a transmasc of the nonbinary variety.

I think her relationship to femininity is complex, and ever changing. She doesn’t feel comfortable performing femininity the way the world expects her to, but she is also part Amazon. And i think having a relationship with both Diana and Donna would greatly influence how she felt about femininity as a whole.

The Amazons are strong, their femininity isn’t about beauty, or being soft spoken — it isn’t about Men at all. On Themyscira, to be a Woman is about bravery, honor, skill, and in some ways, divinity. Getting closer with her Amazonian sisters would change her relationship to womanhood immensely.

But it still wouldn’t feel Right. She would be able to see that womanhood can be defined differently, but that wouldn’t change the connotations that womanhood had as she was growing up. She’d never be able to lean into it the way Diana or Donna do — they both grew up only having woman defined as strong and brave and confident. Their experiences are not analogous.

The baggage of growing up a girl under the patriarchy wouldn’t just… vanish because she sees that it Doesn’t have to be that way. In some ways, the knowledge that it didn’t have to be that way could make her dysphoria all that stronger (especially if she hasn’t quite deciphered that dysphoria is what she’s feeling).

but i think there would be a point where two things sharpen into focus for her.

fiirstly she has a big fat crush on cissie king-jones.

and second (which would only come AFTER realizing her feelings for cissie) is that what she feels for Kon is Not the same as what she feels for Ciss.

She didn’t want to be with Kon romantically, she just wanted his gender.

I could see her experimenting with wearing a binder, liking that she can get rid of her boobs if she isn’t feeling them that day.

She already has her short hair, and her leather jacket and jeans, and shes big and buff and strong (because she deserves to be butch!!! okay???).

I still think she would use she/her pronouns, but she wouldn’t be picky ab it (if she gets called sir while at the pizza place, she’s not going to correct them.)

But here’s the kicker — I think leaning hard into her masculinity would be EXACTLY what she needs in order to actually ENJOY expressing femininity again.

When putting on the mask that is ‘womanhood’ becomes something that she can Choose to do, rather than something that is being forced on her, it can be pleasant. Like playing dress up.

She has a new appreciation for it, especially since her friends respect her gender, and she knows at the end of the day, when she takes the makeup, the clothes, and the wig off, underneath it all she’s just her.

(Small addendum re: TT’03 Cassie’s fem phase. I have Many thoughts about this as well, and while they end up in roughly the same place, i exploring her experience with comphet and her decision to dress in a more traditionally feminine in that run is something id like to explore in another post (once i’ve actually read the run too.)

Cissie (bonus):

This one should be shorter than Cassies, mainly because my reasoning for it is much simpler.

YJ'98 (#11)

She lists all these names, all of them feminine except for Fucking Ralph. “One weird phase” she calls it.

To me, Cissie is a transgirl through and through. She has this huge list of femme names she tried on while she tried to find the one that fit best. She mentions ralph in this off handed way, as if its not important, and i think thats just her way of dismissing her deadname as something of little consequence.

(that said, i think there’s lots of fun to be had with transmasc cissie, or tried transing-her-gender and realized it wasn’t for her Cissie. But as a transfemme, tgirl cissie is So important to me <3)

Kon:

other people on here have made posts about Kon’s gender that are much more coherent than this will be, but i’m putting the words down anyway. bear with me.

Kon’s experience with identity (especially in his earlier years) is almost entirely about the external rather than the internal.

Kon has his whole life planned out for him from the moment he opens his eyes. It’s simple really — become Superman.

So you have this freshly hatched teenage boy, saving the world as Superman (not the Only one, but definitely the coolest one (Kon would argue)). All eyes on him, all the time. In some ways, performance is inseparable from who he is. From the very beginning, everything he does is on display.

He starts his life with a Name (Superman), a life path (…again, Superman), and all the confidence of a sixteen year old jock with nothing but wins under his belt. then it all gets taken away.

Turns out Clark ISNT dead, and the world doesn’t need its pint sized superman anymore now that its got the real thing.

enter Superboy

Kon’s entire identity, his whole purpose for being alive, was to step into the shoes of a dead man who is no longer dead. So where does that leave our genetically engineered test tube baby?

lost, and extremely confused.

But he’s good at using his charisma as a shield, and even better at keeping himself busy. His problems aren’t there if he doesn’t have the time to think about them, right?

and i think that’s true about his gender as well.

Similar to Cassie, his discovery and exploration of his gender feels incredibly tied to his sexuality (to me). If you’ve read sb93, you know Kon’s deal with women. He is cute & conventionally attractive & he's like superman with a fashion sense, so of course there are people fawning over him.

And he loves the attention. He likes that people want him, or that they are looking at him. The issue is he doesn’t have the life experience to realize that their reasons for paying attention to him are often very shallow, manipulative, or selfish.

He isn’t treated as a person very often. He’s a brand, a product, a tool, a weapon. He’s arm candy, he’s a photo op, he’s a headline, he’s a paycheck. And it takes him a long time to be able to tell the difference between someone Liking Him & someone Using Him.

For the longest Time, Superboy is all he is. He doesn’t have a name outside of that identity (except for the various pet names the women in his life give him (kid & pup, mainly)).

And even when Clark does give him his real name, Kon-El, its still Attatched to his identity as Superboy.

I dont think that he would really even be able to start dissecting how HE feels about his identity until he’s much older.

Part of this would come from the space to be someone else that gaining a civilian identity would give him. As Superboy, the goal has always been to stand out, to be seen, to shine like the sun.

As Conner Kent, he has to blend in. He doesnt want to draw attention to himself, or the Kents, or Clark. He has to fit in, which was never something he had to do as Kon. And i think it would kind of chafe at him — but he wouldn’t really know why.

I think he’d chalk it up to how different of an experience it is. Not being loud, having to be normal™. And so i think he’d just… continue to play the part. For a while anyway.

And like, part of being Normalest Boy Conner Kent would also involve actively un-queer coding himself for the sake of fitting into the ecosystem of Smallville High. and its like…

Young Justice, as a friend group, is SOOO queerplatonic. The lines between romantic and platonic intimacy are so blurred, and Prior to Kon’s YJ days he he was also like… living with these woman who he had complicated relationships with that also blurred the lines between platonic, romantic, and sexual (…looking at you, Knockout).

So learning where the line is when it comes to how he can acceptably interact with his civilian friends (particularly the boys) would Really open his eyes to just how close he is with Bart and Tim, and how similar his feelings for them are to his feelings for… lets say, Simon Valentine.

But i dont think That is what would actually tip the scale. I think realizing that these feelings for his friends aren’t considered ‘normal’ would make him shove them down deeper. As ‘Conner’ anyway.

from here it could go two ways, right?

Either we get Teen Titans ‘03 t-shirt Kon, who sheds his GNC 90s swag in exchange for adhering closer to traditional (read; boring) masculine gender roles.

or we get a Kon who leans Harder into his punk roots, but its a conscious choice now.

(this isn’t even digging into how he would feel once Jon comes into the picture, because while Kon cares for that boy Deeply, his feelings abt the new kiddo in the family could also be very complicated. But that’s a post for another time.)

Personally i prefer the second one.

Kon has always been a curious kid, i love the way he makes pop culture references, and how he bases his behavior off of 90’s teen tropes that he Most Definitely learned from TV. In his early days this wasn’t done in a research way necessarily, but he Did want to learn what it was like to Be a Teen™, and TV was the easiest way to figure that out.

(and, playing in the space of Kon adaptations, his love of media/pop culture, and just over all thirst for knowledge, are present both in the Reign of the Supermen Movie, and in his iteration during the n52 (which is one of the few things i personally have internalized from reading n52 Superboy/Teen Titans)).

But post gay awakening, i feel liked he’d be interested not just in behaviors, but also the context of them. Digging into punk as a subculture rather than as an aesthetic. Learning about its connections to queerness, and community, and self expression. And i think this would be extremely freeing for him. (especially if this were around the time of Jon becoming Superboy v.3, but again, not the point of this post.)

this all culminates in Kon being like yk? gender just… isnt for me. Like, it takes im a long time to get to this point, but realizing that the path that was set out for him is just one of the potential paths he can take, and while he might not know where this new path will take him, its his, that that matters.

And also like, Because his friends are who they are, he’s seen different versions of queerness, and transness, but i think it would take him a bit to see himself as someone who Isn’t Cis bc like… he doesnt have dysphoria in the traditional sense.

He’s still the beefcake he’s always been, but i think he’d start playing with makeup when he realizes it makes him feel good (he shows up the the cave one day with smudgy eye liner and Cissie is immediately like a) you look so good and b) can i Please do your makeup? (and then she does it, and he looks so pretty, and he gets these weird giddy feelings that he doesn’t realize is gender euphoria until his friends start talking abt gender euphoria)

His uniform starts to get more personalized too, like the designs where he has knee patches, and all his little belts, and stuff. maybe he starts experimenting with showing skin. bc he deserves it

(’its for maximum sun exposure!!!’ is the what he tells clark… he’s not sure if clark bought it or not)

And hey, exploring gender presentation more as Superboy might help him do the same as Conner. Cassie will take him thrifting, he’ll try of a flowy skirt or a sun dress or something and then its Over. Gender euphoria part two, electric boogagloo.

In the end, its about realizing that adhering gender roles (and truthfully, any socially imposed ‘rule’ about self expression) is something he can simply Choose not to do. And i think this freedom would be something that benefits him in his civilian life as well.

His gender is: literally what ever, man.

Tim:

Ok, here’s the thing about Tim and gender, right? I think he’s kind of just comfortable as he is. He’s good at playing the roles he needs to in what ever situation hes thrown into. ‘Robin’ and ‘Tim Drake’ (and even ‘Tim Drake-Wayne’ if you want to split hairs) might be masks he wears, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less him. if that makes sense. like…

Lets look at the differences between Bruce (or Brucie) and Batman for a second. They really are different people. Batman is who bruce is at his core, ‘bruce’ is this sort of liminal space between the cowl and his public persona, and then theres Brucie™, and well, you know how he is. These are personas that Bruce puts on.

With Tim its like he just highlights different aspects of himself when a situation requires it. (oh no, the autistic!Tim head canons are being loud today.) But like, he’s Always been masking. And i think this is something he would look at as like… getting a good grade in adapting. or something. He’s comfortable, all the roles he plays are ones he’s familiar with, and he doesn’t really question who he is outside of who he needs to be.

That is, until Caroline Hill makes an appearance.

I feel that the decision to go undercover as a woman was a wholly practical decision in the moment. It’s what the mission required, and therefore tim stepped up. Its just another mask, right? Surely this wont awaken anything in him…right?

But this is an entirely new mask. And i think it might like… shift the way he looks at/thinks about the other masks he puts on. He was able to step into a role that was very foreign to him, and it Worked. (and he felt pretty, which like… woah, thats a new feeling. and he kinda liked it? file that under ‘thoughts he doesn’t have the bandwidth to process right now.’ Bruce needs him back at the cave! its time to debreif! and he has a biology test tmrw! no time for gender scaries!!!).

I think it would take a while for him to be able to admit it to himself though. Because like… hes Not uncomfortable with his body, but he also keeps thinking about how good he felt dressed up femininely, and how he felt powerful, in a way. That putting on that mask felt just as good as putting on his domino.

Personally, i think itd be funny if instead of coming out right away, Tim doing undercover missions essentially in drag becomes a recurring thing. And i imagine some people give him a hard time. (not in a transphobic way or anything, i just mean like, teasing him fondly or what ever.) (Also, i like to imagine that when cissie Did kons makeup, bart and Tim jumped in there too bc like hey why not, and hoooooo boy, if Tims egg hadn’t cracked before then, it sure would have cracked after.)

The thing about him is, i’m not sure if he’d come to the realization himself. You know, that he would like to present femme sometimes, in a situation that has Nothing to do with a mission.

I could see Tim convincing himself that its a pointless or frivolous desire, which is Why he relegates his time presenting femme to when he can prove that it’s useful.

but i have this image in my mind, right? Of him, taking his makeup and wig off, and hes chatting with whoever is in the room with him (literally anyone else mentioned above… or Dick). And Tim’s just talking about how he wishes he could present this way in situations other than missions.

and the other person in the room is just like… i mean, you literally can.

and hes just like…. shit you’re right. i Can :0

I could probably go further into depth abt this, but i think this just frees him to start playing with gender more as Tim. and start to recognize when he’s feeling more masculine, more feminine, or somewhere in between.

His gender isn’t consistent, its this thing he’s constantly listening to, and trying to understand. but in the mean time, he can paint his face, and wear pretty clothes, or dress like just Some Guy, or be a hedgehog dressed in traffic light colors, or what ever his heart desires.

As far as like… how He describes his gender, i think he’d say something corny like bi^2 (bi of both the sexual and the gendered varieties). Or shrug, handwave, generally give a non-helpful vague description. Or tell who evers asking to buzz off.

(small addendum wrt Kon and Cassie in TT’03. I haven’t read this run yet, so i didn’t really include it in this post. But i Do have thoughts about what might cause the two of them (my gnc besties from my comics books) to lean sooooo hard into traditional gender roles after being So Queercoded in their other appearences. Before i talk abt that though, i want to read the comic. So, that will have to be a post for another time)

ANYWAY, heres that TL;DR i promised.

Bart: NB Transmasc Cassie: NB Lesbian (of the transmasc variety) Kon: Agender Tim: Fluid (bi-gender) + Cissie: Transgirl

Thank you soooooo much for giving me the opporrtunity to ramble abt the silles and how Not Cis i think they are. Love you forever.

[dingodad]

eh, fuck it, you were talking about ships so i'll send this Q in. what are your thoughts on 'shared aspect' ships (ie aradave, junetav, erijake, whatever)? do you think any of them have any meat to them? i do think there could be some interesting exploration of what it means to be shoved into a certain sburb mandated box- and the ways various characters find home or try to break out of those boxes- but i don't know if anyone's exploring them in that way.

to be frank i am not really a Shipping Guy to begin with and i dont really understand the whole thought process of like. "could character a and character b be a good ship because of x y and z parallels." bc yes i think certain parallels would give those characters something interesting to talk about but that's only sometimes going to lead to an interesting dynamic between the characters and that doesn't really make a "ship" either. unless it does and i just completely dont know what a "ship" even is in which case im sorry women

i think we get some stuff in this direction in homestuck itself with like. jade and kanaya taking some time to discuss their assigned roles and then jade and calliope getting a bit of the same later on but ultimately those characters dont really end up forming super important relationships becus i think the aspects were meant to complement and play off of each other rather than double up. and every single homestuck reader has thought they were soooo smart at some point for realising that there are almost no aspect double ups among the characters who are still alive at the end of the comic but this is for fundamentally the same reason, classes + aspects are basically a formalised system of "character parallels" and generally speaking the most interesting stories don't happen when you put two characters next to each other who already had roughly parallel character arcs

which is not me saying none of the pairings u suggested could possibly be interesting i just have not put much thought into any of them. and maybe it is like conceptually homophobic for me to say same-classpect pairings "aren't interesting" or whatever LOL but i think if you want to tell a story about characters bonding over having the same gendered roles assigned to them then that story is going to necessitate the characters breaking and transcending those roles, which on some level means that they have to stop being the characters we currently understand them to be. so you could tell an interesting erijake story but for it to grow anywhere it would need to involve eridan no longer being "eridan" and/or jake no longer being "jake" bc i think the two of them are too similar to click with each other in their existing states

[bellybiologist]

Hello! I was wondering if I could ask a question about mpreg. I am not apart of the community, but am a curious outsider and come with respect to ask this question. Where is the baby held in an mpreg situation? From my understanding a baby can come out in a few different ways (anally, from the urethra, c-section, magical hole, or one person has female anatomy) but none of the sources I found explained exactly where it was held inside the body. This is a genuine question, and I would appreciate a genuine response. Again I am only asking as your account is one of the few active mpreg accounts I found on Tumblr and I couldn't find the answers on Google. Thank you so much for your time. :))

It really is gonna depend on who you ask and the context of the situation the character is in! Generally, unless specified somewhere, most mpreg I draw for work is without context and left up to the imagination of the viewer! A lot of people don't really care enough about those details to tell me how/why they want the situation to work, which is absolutely fine, cuz i often dont need to know to draw it. :P I don't draw personal mpreg pics for myself these days, but I prefer mpreg via more practical means where the guy is either trans or intersex, and having all the parts a human would need to create, carry and deliver a baby: uterus (a duderus, if you will), ovaries, vagina, birth canal... all that good stuff. My enjoyment of mpreg has always been an extension of my own gender expression, and I often used it to explore character couple dynamics, so the process is incredibly mundane. With other, more "invasive" sources of mpreg, like oviposition (ie. shoving eggs in them), parasites and whatnot, I imagine they just sit somewhere in the digestive tract and come out the butt (or mouth) unless whatever is inside them is being extra in some way. Magical sources can be w/e the hell the magic wants. A lot of mpreg is also just an expression of power dynamic in a gay relationship. yknow, being "submissive and breedable" and "being pregnant means a guy fucked them" and all that. Most would just hand-waive it, though i've been seeing some works (particularly in japanese mpreg/come inflation works) where guys just have an extra uterus area connected to the colon where the baby grows that shares the same exit as the butt. So yeah. You're always gonna have to ask the artist/customer specifically to see which line of logic they follow (if any at all!) for each individual mpreg piece.

[boy-gender]

hey love ur blog! idk if you have anything for this but im questioning my gender rn and i feel like some mix of a guy and agender or nonbinary (so im thinking demiboy maybe) (im afab) but i also kinda sorta feel like a girl sometimes but only like a tiny tiny bit. and only sometimes. and every time i feel like a girl i also feel like a guy at the same time. idk my gender crisis only started like a week ago (i’ve had others in the past but this is my worst so far) so i’m scared i’m faking it or it’s a phase and i just want the aesthetic of being a guy or something. idk totally fine if you don’t wanna answer this cuz ik you’re not an advice blog or anything but i js thought you might be a good place to ask

There's no such thing as faking a gender, unless you are doing it intentionally. If you arent purposely, knowingly, choosing to lie, then it's not fake. Gender is confusing and multifaceted and contradictory and not static. It changes throughout a life, and as quickly as hour to hour. Just because your gender shifts around and you dont always know how to keep track of it doesnt make it fake- it makes it what gender is. A qualia. A subjective experience. There are 8 billion people on this planet, so there are 8 billion unique genders, even if most people tend to use the same handful of words to approximate their feelings.

If demiboy feels like a label that fits you, try it out! You can always change it again later. Maybe youre genderfluid. Maybe youre agender. Maybe youre genderqueer. There is no limit to how many times or how often you can change your understanding of yourself, or how you describe it.

Also, id like to throw this out there, not just for you but also because ive seen many newly trans or questioning people echo this: "im not really trans im fetishizing being trans" is straight up not a thing. Do you see trans people as people? Congrats, you have not dehumanized trans people the way negative fetishization requires. Thinking you want to relabel or explore your gender based on aesthetics is fine! a lot of gender IS aesthetic! Thats not a "lesser" or "wrong" or "shallow" reason. Aesthetics matter to people. Aesthetics influence gender presentation. Anyone accusing you of faking being trans or saying your reasons for calling yourself trans are bad/wrong/not enough? That's a transmedicalist scumbag and you go put their opinion in the garbage and then block them.

I cant tell you what you are. I cannot diagnose you with genders. Only you can tell you who you are, and it's okay to not know, or to change it. I would recommend instead of asking outsiders, ask yourself. Sit with it. Examine it from different angles. Rotate gender in your mind, if you will. What words are you drawn to? What kind of body would you want to have? What aesthetics matter to you? Amongst what groups of peers are you most comfortable, and why? What about gender makes you decidedly uncomfortable? You don't need to know all those answers now or soon or even ever, but they can be places to start.

Ultimately the opinion of anyone who *isnt you* isnt worth jack shit in this regard. You gotta spend some time with it and decide for yourself. And there is no wrong decision; there's only yourself in progress.

[pineappleciders]

Can you do sp main 4 with a reader who is trans mtf?? I really like your ftm one and since my sister is trans mtf she would love to read this x

sp main 4 finding out reader is trans mtf

A/N: i am so glad you liked it and i hope your sister likes this too!!!! i know this is really similar to the ftm one mainly because i dont think they'd react too differently! link to ftm vers here

also i wanted to add that i usually write with a fem reader differently than a g/n or masc reader!! mostly because they're like 4th graders and the whole girls vs boys thing. so i'm sorry if they're... colder??? idk how to describe it😭

stan marsh

he's just like "oh" in a surprised voice

doesn't really care but might ask a few,,, personal questions. he's genuinely curious and he doesn't mean harm. asks about what it means and why you transitioned

"how did you find out? like what does it feel like?"

he might encourage you to talk to wendy and the girls if you haven't become friends with them already! he says this because he knows it'd probably be nice for you to hang out with other girls so they can dress you up and help you feel like you fit in

also puts in a good word to wendy for you and u two become friends :)

again you coming out might make him question his own gender. he just gets really confused because he's never had the chance to explore himself and having a trans friend makes him more comfortable to do so!!

might ask you questions at first about how you found out, but other than that he just treats you like how he normally does; probably forgets that you're trans if anything

kyle broflovski

kyle never really hangs out with girls in the first place, the closest girl friends he has being you and sometimes wendy. he is very awkward around girls .

so you don't have to worry about him treating you like more of a bro after you come out, because he doesn't. if he were to treat you any differently he would treat you like more of a girl if anything if that makes sense

like he doesn't mean to exclude you but he figures it'd make you feel better to not be grouped with the boys??

"yeah, i get that. sometimes i feel like i was made to be a tall black man. it's really hard to play basketball as a 4'3" jewish white boy."

mostly, he doesn't really care, and he probably actually would prefer not to hear you talk about it. like i mean he prefers to not hear about 'assigned genders' because it makes him think of genitalia and honestly he does not like to think about that

so yeah, he's a little confused but he tries his best to understand, and he might be appreciative that you opened up about it, but for the most part he's just like "good for you" and moves on

eric cartman

similar to the ftm one, since he's known you as a girl all this time that no matter how hard he wants to misgender you he never truly sees you as anything other than a girl

he'll call you names and tease you for it but at the end of the day he still sees you as a cootie-ridden girl

he kicks you out of games because 'girls can't play games' and the others say you can play and he gets all pissy

he shoos you away at lunch not because you're trans but because you're a girl. he would rather be caught dead than hanging out with a chick. so in a way he's kind of accidentally an ally LOL

he gets uncomfortable when the topic gets brought up and would prefer not to think about it. he genuinely wants to stay out of it because he does NOT want to know what people have down under. absolutely hates thinking about it

"dude, i already live in a hot dog. i don't need to have any more wieners in my face."

kenny mccormick

he looks at you funny all confused.

"mph, nmph? mphph? (wait, what? really?)"

"mmphmph, mph mphph mmf mmphh.. (jesus, dude, i never would've guessed.)"

he's genuinely really confused because all the stereotypes of trans girls he's seen on tv and they all depict them looking super masculine and stuff. he's never really met a trans person so he's confused when you're just some normal kid

he's supportive, but he doesn't really care. he pats you on the back and says cool and then goes back to like. playing mario kart or whatever you guys were doing

he doesn't know anything about what it means so he might ask some questions about what dysphoria is and transitioning and all that. he will listen genuinely but he might fall asleep. he actually does care though!!!

thinks it's interesting but never brings it up again or talks about it and treats you like normal. honestly he would be very happy to play princesses with you as princess kenny

you have sleepovers and he acts all girly. like you do his hair and nails and dress him up and he kicks his feet having the time of his life

[logicroute]

hi so im normal abt shin tsukimi being nonbinary. most of this is just hcs but this is real to me. read it undercut :3 i also touched on my hispanic shin and him being gay aroacespec by accident. whoops

to me at least. shin hasn’t really ever cared abt his gender that much, it was never really a big part of his life growing up so he never put thought into it or really had a meaning for it in his mind.

he is still transgender to me, he started exploring himself at around.. 14? i would say, it wasn’t anything much, just dressing more GNC, having fun with combining both styles of masculine and feminine clothing and all of that. in a way wanting to seem confusing but not at the same time.

he likes exploring and experimenting with how gender feels for him while hes older, but ya know how it is. it just, doesnt really seem right to pick a side with something you dont really understand yourself.

so thats where the quoigender comes in. its also called WTFgender which i find amazing. quoigender pretty much means that you cant really put a definition on your gender. so i think over time shin starts like. feeling more connected to that term for himself..!!

to me he uses any prns and any terms because of his like.. somewhat lack of care on how people assign a gender to him in a way when he meets new people, like the way that people think of him hasnt reallu been a big thought to him. until the death game which he puts up the front of  someone that is threating to survive but he still doesnt really care abt prns in the death game. a really funny idea is that everyone just uses a completely different set of pronouns for him and everyone just understands that its abt shin cuz of the tone in the voice.

theres also the whole… not really having an idea who you are with the hiyori persona in the death game but whooo cares abt that rn. something something gender playing into how he copied how he remembered hiyori acting like.. so acting more dramatic and the works.. 

and i also hc him as hispanic which.. can also play into his gender in a way. to me his mom is hispanic for context. she herself never liked the idea of gender roles but she never gotten a chance to break out of them..until she moved to japan for school, met shins dad and all of that. so when she had shin she wanted to make sure that nothing was being overly expected from him that fits into any of the norms.. she is also somewhat breaking without knowing but its whimsical for her. i need to talk abt the tsukimis more they mean so much to me.

not to get too ibto his sexuality in the gender rant but. i thibk he knew he was gay for a while, hes alaways liked boys for his whole life pretty much, he hasnt felt attraction to girls at all besides like.. the planotic “ohh ur pretty:)” thing you know. but then also the aroace spectrum kicks in. 

at least to me. shin hasnt really felt romantic feelings for anyone reallly. like he couldnt really place how he feels for ppl on a romantic scale if rhay makes sense, but like he has felt them in rare occasions, but nothing really happens lmao. so the plain term of arospec usually works.

im aceflux shin number one believer. its just really dear to me for some reason. it doesnt really breach out of the demisexual area that much but its okay he gets to have some fun with labels.

also no cisgender person only wears winter clothing all year long. he is most likely nonbinary but he has a minimum wage shift in the hour and is kinda doomed in a death game later so he cant care abt that atm. 

in short uhhh shin tsukimi any pronouns quoigender/nonbinary aroace spec gay real forever. 

[spidermanifested]

this is not my usual type of post but ive been rotating some thoughts and i guess my blogs as good a place as any to get them organized. okay so this is basically my take on the entire discourse surrounding the "feminine (presumed cis lets be honest) women are uniquely oppressed for being feminine/making female characters quote unquote Less Feminine is antifeminist" thing. which i keep seeing come up. on this internet of ours

context being im a trans guy. grew up largely seen by others as female, probably, sort of. was about as far from a cishet womans feminine as you can imagine. not in a cool tomboy way. not in a way that society had a box for. and thats the thing, is that when you fail at gender, whether youre conscious of it or not, theres this extremely profound loneliness that comes with it. part of it was the autism but i made like 6 real-life friends total from ages 4 to 18 and there were no examples of anyone with an even remotely adjacent experience i could find in the media or irl. anytime a female character skirted a little too close to actual masculinity in a tv show or movie shed get that makeover eventually. i was bullied by both boys and girls but the girls who bullied me were uniformly very feminine.

and so i see people talking about how hard feminine women and girls have it, how the world hates them for being beautiful, and on the one hand its like okay, Misogyny Exists. thats not really refutable thats just the reality of it. society hates women. and as for eurocentric femininity specifically i understand its a hard tightrope to walk!!! you have to put on all these masks BUT make them seem natural, youre forced into these narrow boxes of acceptable behavior and appearance and desires, and if you under- or over-shoot then people get reminded the whole thing is a farce and get mad (often violently!) at YOU for it

........but then my thing is, that on one side of the tightrope, the "overperforming eurocentric femininity" side, the tradwife or girlboss or blonde bimbo side, theres an entire history of structural trope-crafting to break your fall, right. like its a shitty box but its the box society WANTS you to be in. they look at you and go "yep thats a woman. we dont like those but that sure is one". there are known social niches to carve out. theres a script.

on the unfeminine side theres just. nothing. its stone cold concrete down there. and apparently twitter would have you believe its actually that the "more masculine" somebody presumed female appears the more society respects them but that to me is the wildest and most nonsense take on the planet because if people see you as a woman or girl who has not taken the needed steps to justify your place as one of those things you might as well be an alien, or even a monster. theres no script at all. and i feel like this is one of the major experiences that trans and gnc people of every gender share-- god knows trans women get the brunt of the vitriol-- and from my knowledge a lot of nonwhite people too, and also fat and disabled people, like. there are SO many things that affect your ability to achieve even a fraction of success at this aspirational femininity.

ive had to see people for real make the argument that princess peach making an angry face is masculine. i think the most masculine woman anyone on twitter can imagine right now is like a businesswoman in a form-fitting pantsuit and light mascara. maybe the struggle of succeeding at femininity under patriarchy deserves exploration, ive seen plenty of coherent and reasonable points, its not without worth as a discussion. but i do not trust the general public with the topic without immediately sliding into bog standard gender policing and transphobia, and so in closing, when the mainstream feminist take on the whole thing seems to be "the more you perform the femininity expected of you the worse you have it", i get the sensation that nobody told me it was opposite day and im about to feel real silly

[transmutationisms]

HI really love your thoughts on stuff. do you think succession - as a tv show with a script - makes all of its negative statements negatively or positively? this is something im having trouble with, specially with shiv and the overwhelming misogyny. i understand its quite literally real life. but they know the importance of media as a statement that defines real life - its sort of meta, but the whole thing with whether or not calling mencken, knowing it would affect politics, is something that can reflect on the show itself. i dont think i fully agree with what they do to shiv in the way they portray the misogyny. it feels like a "and thats how it will always be" more than "thats how its been". idk. maybe I just hate misogyny and cant stand to see that. but everything is a statement. what do u think?

well in general i agree that, yeah, the show is more interested in satire and criticism than offering any kind of imaginative solution or alternative. so, if you want to watch something that suggests alternatives to logan-style misogyny (& i'd understand why) then i think you're going to be dissatisfied with this show. like, obviously even with logan gone, his influence still haunts the company and the family, and anyway the broader structures of capitalism and its use / exploitation of women were always much larger than logan alone. all of this also applies to how roman and kendall (& to a lesser extent connor) are punished for failing to live up to standards of masculinity; logan feminised kendall to punish him for business failures and derided roman for what he saw as a more innate femininity that made roman disgusting to him.

i actually think gender is a strong suit for the show. it's very deeply interested in how they each relate to standards of bourgeois masculinity and femininity, and how these strictures are confining and punishing (often literally, as logan used them as tools of his abuse). for shiv she lived up to some of logan's femands for an heir (her emotional repression, flashes of killer instinct) but was ultimately always doomed by the fact that logan saw her as permanently being his little girl, denied a body (bc this was less disgusting to him than thinking of her as a woman) and never the right fit for his corporate mould, even when she was trying her hardest to fit it. roman and kendall ofc pick up on this and the way her gender can be used in itself to lock her out of the upper echelons of power (a walking pair of teats, all the men got together in man club). but ultimately this is a dissection of misogyny and masculinity, not a suggestion for escape.

i have mixed feelings about the sort of ethical argument here. it is fair to say that succession has a fundamentally conservative ethos in the sense that the satire and snark angle is uninterested in offering solutions or imagining alternatives. it's grounded in exploring capitalism, fascism, the resulting gender politics, &c, and to the extent that it challenges these things, it's by portraying them as worthy of mockery. it's not a leftist political treatise. but like, i think there's a can of worms to open here in terms of asking how revolutionary a television show is capable of being simple by virtue of the medium. like, even if the content is radical internally, does is matter that the form is still one embedded in capitalist production, ie, that the show is a commodity on the same market? i identify the root of misogyny within the capitalist mode of production; how far is something made within these parameters capable of going in offering any kind of alternative? and also, do we care? like, am i watching tv because i'm looking for radical politics? again, this doesn't negate the critique of succession's critique. but i do think it's a bit... trite? to ask tv to be some kind of moral guide---particularly on a show where the premise is such that any 'challenge' to misogyny would still be constrained within the bourgeois world the characters inhabit.

[ispyspookymansion]

kora if u feel comfortable could u talk about ur gender journey and relationship w lesbianism bc sometimes im like that tweet that's like. im probably trans but i have a job so idrc about that but. ough it's scary and confusing. what if im just butch.

oh wow! well let me think. going to put this under a cut because its longish

it was a much harder path for me to get to lesbianism than to get to Gender. i had a really hard time accepting that for some reason, it took a lot of agonizing, a lot of intentional repression, a lot of misery and wallowing around words and labels and avoidance and definitions. so by the time i got through that it then opened up some gender doors for me because lesbianism is inherently disruptive of the cisheterosexual matrix, but i really, really didnt want to go through that misery again, so i just decided it didnt matter what i was as far as gender and what mattered was how i felt and what made me happy. i only became confident in calling myself trans in the last ohh i dont know, 6 months? and yet ive been on T for a year! for me the actions came easier than the wording. i tried not to stress about what i was doing and whether it was or wasnt aligned with lesbianism. i trusted in our history of transness and masculinity and found a lot of comfort in talking to other butch and transmasc lesbians about their experiences and feelings, and found such a range of experiences that felt very relevant to me

ultimately, i feel like a lesbian. i knew that and i continue to know that. the way that i feel about the people im attracted to and the kinds of relationships i want to have is what connects me to lesbianism. i dont feel like lesbianism is my last thread to womanhood. it isnt a thread to that at all. theres too rich a history of gender defiance and creation to simplify it like that, so i dont let it be that for me. i dont feel dysphoric about being a lesbian even if cis(het) people might not understand me as being transmasc as well. + butch and transmasc arent exclusive and are often beautiful beautiful copilots in dykery !

i also find pursuing what makes me feel good matters a lot more than finding exact words for it. im not really sure what my gender is honestly? it took me a long time to get comfortable/feel like i was allowed to call myself lesbian, trans, and butch too honestly. but i went through a lot less misery when i took actions First to figure out what felt right and then accepted the words that naturally followed After. am i trans or am i not trans stressed me out much more than do i want to bind or not? do i want my voice to be lower or not? do i want to try a different name and pronouns or not? and then my answers to these led me to actions and opportunities that got me to feeling comfortably trans, without putting so much questioning strain on the lesbianism i felt at my core.

+ the opposite is helpful. crossing off what am i Not and what i dont want can be a lot easier than what Am i. woman has always been absolutely not right. trans took longer to feel right which is silly versus logically if i wasnt cis, i was trans, but i had to go in steos

i guess just remember that theres not a really hard line between butchness and the transmasc umbrella (other than personal definition obviously) and you can be one or both or one now and then later realize the other feels better. try to read about butches and he/him lesbians and transmasc dykes and talk to them where you can and enjoy the range of answers and identities and give yourself grace to explore that without so much pressure on whether its one or the other. youre still you regardless of what words to use to describe it so take your time figuring out what you want before you worry too much about what that means you “are”

ALSO you dont have to be butch to be trans and still a lesbian or vice versa you can be nonbinary or genderqueer or agender or genderfluid or etc etc etc and consider those under the label Trans and also be butch! or you can be those things but Not butch and still a lesbian! you can do whatever forever!