#I don’t know you. I don’t know how you treat trans people yet.

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

with all the discussions around pronoun circles and similar practices, I’d like to add my thoughts as a Baby Queer TM:

u don’t get pronoun privileges until I’m sure you are cool.

“You” in this context can refer to a person or an institution, but the point stands. Unless I’m sure you’re gonna be chill about it, you don’t get pronoun privileges. Knowing my pronouns is a privilege, not a right.

Does having a compulsory pronoun share communicate to me that you’re cool?

Eh. Not really. It just tells me that I have to decide if you my pronoun privileges right now. And I’m probably not ready to share that yet.

[vasquez-rocks]

i know most ppl haven’t seen it yet but wanted to write something abt how annoyed some of the critical discourse abt I Saw the TV Glow is making me. MAJOR SPOILERS below the break, be warned!!

so idk i’ve seen so many reviews of the film positing that it’s about the dangers of obsessive fandom and overidentification with fictional characters, esp vis a vis real life self-actualization/coming out. (like, essentially every review has some of this in it, from what i’ve seen.) and, like: i don’t think that’s wrong, but i also think it’s massively underselling what schoenbrun is doing here. the metaphor of the show’s bleed-over is so smart because works in both directions at once.

like, in one direction: when maddy asks owen to come into the show by burying himself alive, you can read it as her asking him to abandon his real-life responsibilities, and the material facts of his real life body, in favor of a fantasy life where everything is already fixed. she’s inviting him to skip over the hard, messy work of transitioning and to sink even deeper into the analgesic obsessions he uses to numb his dysphoria. in this interpretation, it’s, like, the equivalent of overprioritizing “transition goals” instead of actually medically/legally/socially transitioning if that’s what you want, living forever in the ideal instead of taking difficult steps to change the material. (also, uh, if you don’t think she’s literally correct about the nature of reality, she is in fact asking him to kill himself. there’s that.)

BUT! it also works the other way. when maddy tells owen that the show is real, that their lives are just the buried dreams of dying girls in another life, she terrifies him by confronting him with something he’s always known about himself: he was supposed to be a girl. what she proposes is radical, dangerous, seemingly unhinged, and based on a childish fixation: all the things scared closeted trans people worry transition is, basically. on a more figurative level, too, the feeling she’s telling owen is real – that his real life is just a dream within a dream, that his home is not his home, that he belongs somewhere else, that he is supposed to be SOMEONE else – is something so, so, so many closeted trans people have felt before, myself so much included. when he sobs in the shower, yelling “this isn’t my home!” at his dad, i felt a sense of identification stronger than i’ve almost ever gotten from art before. when maddy finally calls him isabel, it’s the gentlest thing i can imagine.

in this read – which i do love, while thinking the other one is simultaneously true – it’s less “come sink deeper into delusion with me instead of dealing with your own life” and more “it’s going to be terrifying, but that childish dream of being a girl you once held wasn’t childish, and it can be real if you’re courageous enough.” he says he runs away from the football field because he thinks maddy’s not mentally well; it takes very little analysis of subtext to figure out he’s running away because he’s afraid of how much he wants what she’s offering. and, of course, the idea of the visible world being an illusion laid atop the world in which one is one’s truest self is a classic trope of trans cinema going all the way back to the matrix. (also: while i’m pretty death-of-the-author-pilled in most media analysis, it kinda seems like schoenbrun themself has interpreted the film in this way, as they’ve spoken at length in interviews about how, to them, transition felt like asking to be buried alive.)

all of which is to say: i think the film IS commenting on fandom, obsession, overidentification, and the ease with which queer people can sink into art as a way to dissociate from real life. but i think it makes the film so much more cynical and so much less tender to treat it as the ONLY read of the film’s relationship with the pink opaque. art, especially the sort of slow, metaphor-laden art schoenbrun makes, is best when it is complex and productively contradictory. the pink opaque is a problem, and an escape, and a fantasy, and it’s real, and one day isabel is going to wake up.

[pillarsalt]

hi um

I was? transmasc but recently I’ve been seeing a lot of really misogynistic sexist transphobic stuff from trans community and it’s just been totally accepted, even by other transmascs. It’s been going on for a while but recently there was a murder of a nonbinary afab person and yet the whole trans community here has been silent, instead screaming about a transfem user being banned or something? This isn’t the first time an afab trans persons suffering has been dismissed, but now right after this awful death, i see transfems making posts about how transmascs talking about their oppression are terfs.

I didn’t want to think about it but all i could think about was that it was weird how despite everyone claiming trans men have all this privilege, trans women always come first…they get the most representation, they get the fame the admiration and the opportunities, their voices are always the loudest and their problems always always come first no matter what.

But despite popular belief trans men’s issues aren’t actually less significant, in some cases we suffer far more than trans women especially in regard to sexual violence. Yet we are silenced. We are frequently left poor, we are discriminated against for our sex we are discriminated against for being trans we are discriminated against for being perceived as lesbians. Yet we are made to be silent?

Why are our voices less important than trans women’s?

And all I could think about was that this is how females are treated in every other area.

I don’t know what else to say… I tried so hard not to reach that conclusion because I don’t want to be transmysogynist but I kept coming back to it and I couldn’t find an argument against it. This is how females are treated. This is what male privilege look like. And if trans women have male privilege, then why the fuck am I sitting here letting them talk over me?

I just feel really really angry. Your a blog who I liked your art but I blocked you when I discovered you were a radfem, but I sort of had you in the back of my mind for some reason and now I feel lost and confused, and I don’t think I want to be part of the trans community anymore.

Hey anon, firstly I really appreciate your willingness to have an open discussion with me. This must be weighing on you pretty heavily.

Secondly, holy shit, you're right. While the entire website is treating this user's ban as a national travesty, I haven't seen a single person talking about Nex's murder despite how much they claim to care about trans people. That's really fucking low, and this situation does very much encapsulate the state of misogyny within the trans community.

And you're right, this IS how females are treated in every other area. Throughout history, the suffering and injustice women face is minimized, laughed at, ignored, and when we want to talk about it, we're shut down and told we're making people uncomfortable and our pain isn't that bad. And here we are again, with a female person's death outweighed by a male person's inconvenience.

The denial of sex-based oppression that permeates trans spaces is a blatant lie that can only be held together if nobody is allowed to acknowledge it, and those who do are punished. If the trans community truly stood behind what they say, discussion would be encouraged! The foundation of their movement would be backed up with facts and replicable science! But instead, they'll call you a bigot for pointing out systems of oppression you can see with your own eyes. Because if you do, transwomen's position as Most Oppressed, and therefore the final authority on what's right and wrong, collapses. You are correct when you say that it seems like transwomen always come first; I don't remember who said it first, but just look at magazine covers featuring trans people -- the transwomen are fully clothed CEOs, athletes, movie stars, but transmen mostly get on magazine covers for... being pregnant and half naked. Misogyny is built into every society on earth, and individuals simply calling themselves something else doesn't change that. And when you give male people free reign to be as misogynistic as they want without consequence, they'll grab that opportunity and hold on like their lives depend on it. The way they weaponize transmen's sex against them is indistinguishable from what 'cis' men do to 'cis' women, but if you ever speak out about it, somehow YOU'RE the one hurting THEM. They do not want transmascs to find solidarity with other female people, because then they would have to face the reality of their own place in a patriarchal world, and face the fact that there are experiences exclusive to female people and that we have the right to speak about it. I mean you see shit like this and the motives become completely transparent:

I do find it funny how hard the trans community and their allies work to prevent anyone from hearing what radfems have to say in case they "corrupt" you with mere words. A lot of the time, it's simply listening to transwomen themselves that sparks the feeling of "something's not right here" in your brain. That's what happened with me too. I'll tell you that most of us also used to be proponents of trans activism, many formerly identifying as trans too. You are seeing through manipulation, and I know it's quite shocking to realize. Even when I first started having doubts about trans rhetoric, I thought "well everyone else agrees about this, so I need to shut up and be nice about it even if I don't agree." It's an unpleasant place to be in. The cognitive dissonance is exhausting though, and it becomes impossible to ignore.

The mistreatment of transmasc people in the trans community by transfems is brutal, and It's hard to watch from the outside because I just want to say "Hey, you know you don't have to take this shit, right?" And you really don't. You are not at all a bad person for recognizing the frankly absurd amount of misogyny in the trans community. Feeling lost and confused is shitty, but it's normal for this situation. The best thing you can do is keep observing, keep reading, form your own opinions, and never let anyone tell you to shut up. Above all, prioritize yourself and your mental wellbeing. If you need to remove yourself from gender-related spaces and discussion for a while, that's totally alright. Just know you're not evil or a bigot for not blindly agreeing with everything the trans community has told you. Your opinions and experiences are worthwhile too.

[hollyhomburg]

Before I Leave You (Pt.60)

(Omegaverse au, Mafia au, Bts x Reader)

Summary: Life changes come in many many forms; courting gifts, leaving jobs, and...Murder

Tags: Slow burn getting warmer, Angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, Trans! Tae, Transphobia, gender thoughts, workplace discrimination, flashbacks, murder, the word 'r*pe' is used to describe what Geumjae did to her but there are no graphic depictions of it, allusions to physical abuse, graphic violence, there is a brief moment where someone not in the pack touches the m/c's ass without her consent, blood, briefly implied suicidal actions- but it's nothing like what you haven't seen before.

W/c: 12.6k

A/n: i'll be attending my cousin's wedding at the time this is posted so! give me lots of love when you read it cuz i'm so nervous~ i've never been around so many fancy people before <3

Previous part ~ Masterlist

You dab at the skin under your eyes carefully. You know they must look red and puffy. Tae’s careful instruction to treat your skin well as all good baby pups should has somehow stuck.

Even here. Even now.

“Do people like always loose it with you? Like when they walk in, do they all cry?”

Your therapist (yes, your therapist) across the narrow room is the opposite of threatening; soft face, pulled back hair, neutral clothing that might just as well be out of a country living catalog.

You don’t know where Jin found her, what little medical booklet he perused like a take-out menu, or how much her services cost per hour. Those kinds of details were not for delicate little pups like yourself to worry over in his opinion.

Most of the time, you're glad not to have to worry about things like this. But right now you're chomping at the bit. Weighting your odds. The other unknowns hover before you. One sticks out. One you're most concerned about.

Is she trustworthy?

Nothing about Dr. Rima seems outwardly threatening, yet you curl in on yourself. She smiles, scrawling something on the top of her notepad before she answers, and something taught in you ticks tighter.

“You’re correct in assuming that most people I meet cry in the first few minutes when they meet me, but you are the first person to cry on my threshold. Most of the time people wait until they’re at least in the chair.”

That has a smile tugging at your lips, albeit unwillingly. Your smile is like a leashed wild animal, with too many teeth when you feel threatened. Contained for now.

If you got up and walked out right now, would she call someone to restrain you? Will you be committed if you tell the truth? Or are you just misinterpreting the stakes?

You are here of your own volition. Even if it was a condition that Jin and Namjoon weren't willing to budge on after the events of last week. It's not like the pack is having you put in a mental institution or something, although they did come with you today. For moral support.

The waiting room was stuffy and yellow, one of those little waterfall mirrors in the corner that you’d watched in a fog sat between Yoongi and Jimin while Jin filled out the necessary paperwork. His pen hovering over the small boxes every few seconds. He'd taken the afternoon off of work to make sure he was there, just to fill out paperwork.

Are you on any medications? Do you have a history with substance abuse disorders? Do you have any intent to harm yourself or others?

Sending glares to anyone who dared to come too close, Jimin had looked and smelled threatening. You're not sure he’d have let you go into an isolated location with her if she’d been an alpha. Jin too had looked close to snapping.

yoongi was the only one who looked somewhat calm, althoug his hand was tightly laced with yours (and a little sweaty)

It’s a wonder that the rest of your pack had agreed to stay home for this. This was just one of several concessions you’d made after what the pack has politely begun referring to as 'sad pup time' during your more vulnerable moments, and blatantly 'your breakdown' during less fragile ones.

But sweet words or not. The facts remain; You are here in this chair after a nearly tearful departure.

You’d met the therapist in the doorway, shaking in your boots, and upon being separated from your pack with the promise that they’d be just downstairs in the lobby, you’d followed her inside.

Yoongi had made a noise in his throat, making you turn back. Dr.Rima turned to watch as he’d pulled you in for a last-minute hug, ducking down to your level. “One hour, okay? We’ll be just downstairs. Text me if you need me.”

His eyes were heavy-looking at the stranger. Unwilling to let you go just yet. A little stalwart, a little standoffish.

“Take good care of her please. She’s very precious to us.”

Precious.

That much was evident by the nearly three-page document that both your pack alpha and omega sent through once Namjoon and Jin had selected Dr. Rima as your therapist. Dr. Rima has quite a bit of experience dealing with overprotective pack alphas and pack omegas. Let alone a pack alpha and pack omega who have such a clinical background.

Yes, you must be well taken care of. At least on paper.

She’s already itching a little, to get her hands on all the others. Packmates and their names are written out, as a part of all intake files. Large packs aren't so common anymore. Her eyes fix on one name; Min Yoongi (beta, mate) unemployed.

The big windows help it feel not so small, on the second floor, the trees block out most of the view of the park below. A small voice that sounds like Hobi whispers that it’s a shame she doesn’t have any plants in here, they'd do so well with all of this natural light.

Your knees clack together a little, moving listlessly, the anxiety in your body begging to be released somewhere.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Why don’t we start with why you wanted to come in today.”

You avoid her eye contact, looking instead at the tops of the trees, you don’t know why they haven’t changed color yet, all of the trees on your street are half bare already. She has a smooth inoffensive scent, but you’re mated to a beta so you know what to expect when it comes to the relaxing effects, the subtle haze at the edge of your vision. It must come in handy, having the biological upper hand, when it comes to patients in distress.

If therapists are rare, beta therapists must be even rarer.

You can practically hear Jin, “Nothing but the best for my pup.” There is a part of your brain that won’t ever turn off, appraising everything around you. The designer pumps that she wears. The knickknacks on her desks, there are no photos of any packs that she might call her own, just a pink calendar in the corner.

Your breath goes just a little bit rapid, just a little, hitching when you think of it.

“Did Jin tell you anything?”

“He didn’t. Although my secretary did inform me that he filled out the paperwork for you.” The air in the therapist’s office is cold. Cold enough that it has you wrapping your sweater sleeves over your knuckles.

Your cheeks heat “My pack they- get a bit- protective.” Your fingers circle your wrist. You’re glad that Hobi convinced you to take one of his sweatshirts. He'd had a strange look on his face while he zipped it up, and you'd had to worry and wonder about it the whole morning. You'd worried more once he texted, just after he must have gotten to work.

“I have kind of a history of self-destructive behavior and I- I kind fell into bad habits a few days ago and blew up. It was all kind of triggered by this like- thing that happened with me and my other packmate.” It’s surprisingly easy to tell the truth.

You’re a right side better than you have been the last few weeks, now. A little bit more present, less foggy. The doctor just looks at her screen and not at you. What is it with her asking questions that make you not want to lie? Why does it feel like you should anyway?

Dr. Rima reads between the lines, what you're trying to say without saying it. “Is there a possibility of you hurting yourself again?” She clicks at the screen a little rapidly.

“No.”

The truth is you have no idea. It seems best to lie in this situation. But you consider it; one of your packmates making the call that you are too much to handle, that you need more help than they can offer. You imagine what it would be like to be in inpatient care. Grippy socks and group therapy and probably observed mealtimes. Maybe Iv's and feeding tubes if it came to that. Away from the pack and away from Yoongi.

He’s just downstairs, but that feels too far. There was no way that he was going to let you do this alone, you wouldn't be surprised if he never left the waiting room.

It’s just a therapy session. The very thing that you once refused. But now that you're here you might as well heal, you might as well work to stop this endless train of brief highs and endless lows. you'll give it a go, why not? What do you have to lose?

And yet, the texts from Hobi remain unanswered:

Ho-🐝 (9:48): Hey, I’m really proud of you.

Ho-🐝 (9:48): I’m really happy I get to be your packmate. In case you ever worry.

Ho-🐝 (9:49): And your best friend too &lt;3

Ho-🐝 (9:51): Just so you knowwww

The pack has kept you substantially plied with little solutions since your breakdown last week. They haven’t let you rot like usual. They’ve kept your days full of little activities; nothing too extravagant or tiring. Letting you rest when you need to and encouraging you to get outside of your comfort zone when it’s clear you’re giving in.

It comes down to that more often than not; giving in or not giving in.

Not giving in looks like trips back to the beach with Hobi. Like going to the salon with Tae and shopping with Jimin. Or another workout class with Jungkook where you’d spent more of the time lounging on the yoga mat than actually moving your body. But you'd still tenuously agreed to sign up for more classes under the encouragement of Wonho and Jungkook.

And now twice a week, you’ve got a mat to call your own during any classes, in the back, if you decide you want it. Your callender hasn't felt so full in years, it feels strange, to have something to do during the weeks that isn't just scraping the bottom of the barrel and doing house chores. Strange in a good way.

Not all of the pack's solutions aren’t silly but sometimes, silly is a good way to push out the dark.

The morning after your breakdown; you'd watched your pack work, fighting back a flush. Sitting at the kitchen bar stool while Yoongi applied painter’s tape to the floor, not intent on keeping back paint this time, but marking it off for you.

You’re a little bit more determined this morning although your first night without nightmares in a little over a month had kept you in higher spirits. You feel more well-rested than you have in ages.

“You don’t need to- I promise- I’m not going-“ but your requests had fallen on deaf ears. Worry building until Jungkook stood up fast grinning up at you, pupils wide brown pools from getting scented stupid this morning.

(Scented stupid, you'd been scented by the pack too, had struggled a little against it, too shy as Namjoon dragged his throat along yours, squirming until yoongi held you down a little, checking with you each few seconds that you wanted that, that your squirming was really just needing to feel a firm touch, a dominant one.

You will go nowhere until your pack have had their right to you, scenting you up, making your scent gland tender and swollen under their teeths and tongues.

It felt so much better to be made to handle it, each of the pack, even hobi, hovering over you to scent you with their wrists and throats. until you smelled so claimed by them that you couldn't breathe without smelling it- Pack.

Jungkook had pouted until he'd gotten the same treatment, although the omegaspace haze had lasted longer on him than it had on you.

He stands up so fast that his hair fluffs. Catching himself on your leg with a giggle before he topples over. grinning up at you before pressing a sleepy sloppy kiss to your knee and then another to your lips,

“No pup zone!" Omega Space Jungkook can get a little bit ridiculous even at the best of times. He's got a case of the morning omegaspace zoomies as he giggles and nips at your nose. You playfully push at his chest. He doesn't budge.

"Your whole face is a no-pup zone." The dissatisfied pur-chirp he'd let out had sounded half hurt, half encouraged.

Namjoon had eased your discomfort. Pulling you from the stool to lean back against his chest, fingers drumming out a rhythm on your legs as Jungkook huffes into your throat.

Having this failsafe- this rule, does not mean that they think you’re going to fail, these are guard rails to keep you on track. Namjoon looks down at you, his full bottom lip tucked a little, not a pout but close. “This is the easiest solution, if you don’t go near it then maybe, maybe it helps.”

His fingers drum against your skin again, and you lean back into him. Uneasy but willing to let him soothe you.

So yes, you’ve been banned from the kitchen, banned from crossing that line that runs from the edge of the coffee stand and just in front of Tae's library room, to the island and over to the fridge. Unless there is someone else close by. You are not allowed here without supervision.

It’s a simple solution, limiting you from the place that you use to hurt yourself. Never mind the fact that there are dozens if not hundreds of other possible avenues you could use. Your creativity knows no bounds when it comes to pain, but you quiet that part of yourself when the desire for hurt gets loud.

You can’t say it hasn’t helped. But then again, the pack has kept you so busy since your breakdown that you haven't had any time to think of hurting yourself let alone put any plans into action.

Across from you, Dr. Rima waits expectantly.

"It was kind of triggered by this thing that happened."

The tip of her pen bobs a little as she writes. “Could you describe the event to me? Or is that something you're not ready to talk about?" You nod and she waits patiently. It takes you a breath to answer.

“A little less than a month ago one of my packmates and I found a dead body."

You feel a little vindicated at her inhale of breath. Wide eyes that say yes- that is something traumatic, yes, it's fair that it kinda triggered you into a more fragile state.

"It dredged up a lot of feelings about my past. Before that, I was kind of starting to feel s-safe which I haven't like, ever been able to feel."

“And your packmate?"

There is new treacherous wetness balancing on your waterline. “Hobi’s a lot stronger than me, his past and mine are really similar but he just- handles his better. A lot of the time it feels like I learn from him even though he’d tell you the opposite is true. He’s my best friend." Your voice goes quiet, "I love my mate more than I love anyone else, but sometimes- Hobi just- gets me you know?" You go a little misty-eyed. Hands tightening on Hobi's sweatshirt.

“Yet he’s not the one sitting in my chair right now.”

You close your eyes, "he's not."

“For what it’s worth- you can have more than one best friend.” Dr. Rima writes as quickly as she can, taking it down. “How long have you been romantically involved with him? Who came first, your mate or him?”

You jolt forward, “Oh no- we’re not- Hobi and I aren't-" You take a deep breath to clarify. "Everyone else in the pack is together but Hobi and I are just friends. We all have our like… little units?”

"Primary partners." Dr. Rima offers.

"Yeah, that." But even that doesn't really cover it, because while Jin and Namjoon are JinandNamjoon and Jimin and Tae are JiminandTae. Jungkook is everyone's problem (in the best of ways) and you and Tae are something else too. The pack's girls the rest of them would say.

(You and Hobi are, well, YouandHobi.)

It sounds weird to say it once it comes out of your mouth. It makes an odd choked feeling lodge in your throat. Too much hope and too much shame for hoping blooming in your chest.

“I don’t know if I want to talk about him.”

She folds her hands over her knees, setting her pen down. Dr. Rima has chubby hands, disproportionate to her body. They look like they'd be soft.

She reminds you of your mom a little bit.

“That’s okay, we can talk about whatever you want. What you want and need is going to be the focus of our sessions. You’re the pilot here. I’m just here to help you interpret your thoughts and feelings.”

She folds her hands over themselves, setting her pen aside, “Why don’t we talk about the last time you remember feeling safe.”

"Physically or mentally?"

"Either, you can choose."

The rest of the session passes frightfully quickly. You can’t say that you don’t cry again. When you finally talk about Geumjae, her smile quickly dissipates. You talk and talk and talk until your throat is raw. Until you’ve depleted the whole box of her tissues. She shows you she's got more hidden under her desk when you apologize, her secret stash gets a laugh out of you.

“The fact that your pack omega filled out your paperwork isn’t the most unusual, but his preference for daily meetings or every other day is a little bit on the nose for a pack omega, I’m wondering if you share his preference.”

“He’s just overprotective.” She eyes you like Jin has good reason to be. You don’t blush this time, a little more comfortable with Dr. Rima than you were at the beginning of this. “I think maybe more than once a week but not every day.”

“How does Monday- Friday sound?”

~-~

When you walk to the door with Dr. Rima Yoongi stands abruptly from his chair.

You can tell by the shiny edge to his to his scent that he doesn't want to stay here any longer than necessary. He gets the information about your next appointment and then tugs you out the door.

Jins got his legs crossed, fancy leather shoes glinting in the sunlight by the windows. The lobby is buzzing with people coming and going. This building isn't just a therapy office but a collection of other businesses with a few shops and restaurants on the ground floor as well. He looks up and double-takes when he spots you, not standing from his chair, but he opens his arms and you fold yourself along his side, conscious of the other eyes but this.

This you need.

You press your face along the column of Jin's neck, breathing his cream scent in deep.

“Oh pup.”

Your red-rimmed eyes are too obvious and you sniffle wetly, “It was okay, I like Dr. Rima.” He laces your hands together and resists the urge to pester you with questions. Yoongi's hand is still tangled in the hood of your (Hobi's) sweatshirt. Your therapy sessions should be yours and only yours. Yoongi and Jin do not have Dr. patient confidentiality.

And yet the need to know if that helped burns through them. They won't have to wonder for long.

By the coffee stand, Jimin waves and he returns to you when the barista hands over a bag of sweets and a quad of cups. Jin continues scrawling something out for another second before he’s standing and pulling you in for another chaste scent mark.

“Let’s go home.” It's somewhere between an order and a request. But no one disobeys.

On the drive back (37 minutes total) you're a little quiet. You let the sounds of the others be your buffer. You look down at your phone and stare at Hobi’s texts. You respond with just a little heart emoji when you finally still can’t figure out a good response and you're close to home.

Home is its usual conflagration of moving bits and pieces. Each of your packmates is like a shiny cog in a pretty clock, tick tick tick tocking along. Tae and Namjoon are at the table looking through some of the pack’s bills, the pastries and coffee cups litter the table with little piles of powdered sugar and cinnamon. jimin bought enough for the whole pack.

You look at them a little too long, although not because you don't want to eat them. It’s been a while, a few weeks since you’ve made something like that, but every single one of the pastries is something you know how to make. You don’t know why you keep looking at them.

Tae smiles at you, still in the doorway. and it makes you feel a little less like you want to burst into tears. Her voice speaks of the quiet time you have in the library (the tenderness of having someone else do your makeup, another person combing your hair). You hope you'll get some dedicated one-on-one time with her soon.

"Hey little lovely, How was it?"

"She put me through the wringer but I think she got some suds out."

She and Namjoon giggle and you smile small. and you can tell that Namjoon wants to ask you more but he doesn't after a pointed look from your mate. There are footsteps in the hall and before you can move to take off your shoes Hobi is standing in the archway.

Yoongi efficiently strips you of Hobi's sweatshirt with a frustrated huff. It's Kind of like he’s trying to peel away the sadness (your clothes are soaked with your sour scent, rainy and unhappy. Regardless of Jin’s scent mark, you kind of stink).

You might have overheard their words just before you got into the car. Jin's hissed admonishment. “A lot of people cry during therapy Minnie, she’s not in trouble, can’t you smell it?”

Your scent is mellow underneath the memory of your distress, going sweeter by the second. Yoongi wants all memories of your sad scent banished from the house. Hobi stands at the door to the hallway, shifting back and forth, his eyes a little warmer than usual, hands shaking a little bit.

You’ve caught him looking at you a lot since the night he ran away, in the quiet moments when he thinks you’re not noticing. Eyes a shade warmer than usual, a sweetened franticness to his scent. Nervousness and happiness mix like blueberries and whipped cream.

When he pulls up beside you during movie nights and sits thigh to thigh with you. When his hands intertwine with yours over his knee or sometimes or when he pulls your legs sideways across his lap. He looks at you like that when he's doing the small things and he's looking at you like that right now.

You know how love starts, that it starts with the small things.

Hobi resists the urge to open his arms. would you come to him? Would you fold your body along his front so that he could feel your heartbeat? Pressing again and again to the opposite side of his chest with every thump?

He doesn’t say hey, but he does step a little closer. Fingers reaching out. The pad of his index finger slides down the meat of your pinky till it reaches the ball of your wrist. His own special hello.

Your breath hitches, just barely, almost imperceptible if it wasn’t for how close he stands.

A look behind you says Yoongi hasn’t made himself scarce, instead fussing with the pack's coats. Now that it’s getting colder, they don’t all fit by the door. You look behind Hobi and find Namjoon watching the three of you, he raises a singular eyebrow.

“How was it? Bad?” Hobi asks, breaking the silence and the tension, drawing your attention back to him. The next breath you let out is a lot less heavy, and your eyelashes flutter as he steps closer. Hobi smells good, a little earthy, mellowing out his usual sweetness. Sweet for an alpha.

“It was kind of hard, I kinda wanted to run away for a bit at the beginning." You can't keep meeting his eyes with how intensely he's looking at you and they flutter down to his hands. "I almost did.”

"I'm glad you didn't pup." Jin comments, full of reproach, the mirror to you and Hobi as he leans down to press a kiss to Namjoon's forehead. Shucking off his lapelled jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his button-down shirt.

“If you’d have called me, I’d have picked you up. We could still like- run away, if you're down.”

But the house is starting to heat up, and Jin and Yoongi are starting to cook. The light is still honey-yellow happy. And you tip your cheek into his arm. He finally- finally lets his arms settle around your waist.

“Nah, not yet.” You drag out the syllable all playful, and something forbidden stirs in Hobi’s gut. “Jin’s making my favorite tonight. not until later?”

Hobi goes silent, pulls back, biting his lips, eyes flickering from your eyes down. and-

You laugh and Hobi blushes. “Just spit it out.”

Everyone’s been a little bit touchier with you since that night (a little more overbearing too). You won’t immediately chalk Hobi's touchyness up to what you're all thinking. But the affection makes your scent gland feel tender. Zinging when Yoongi steps up behind you and nuzzles into it, huffing again.

Friends can hug each other after therapy right? Hobi swallows thickly and you feel it against your collar bone as he pulls back and steps away from you. “I ugh- got you a present?”

You brighten up instantly, and Hobi's anxiety increases tenfold. A bit of casual mischievousness on the edge of your lips that always have Hobi feeling like he’s being teased even though he knows he isn’t.

“Oh? A present? You’ve never gotten me a present before!”

He kicks at imaginary dust bunnies, fighting back what he knows is a noticeable flush. “I ugh- still owe you, from the car you know and honestly it's not even like a big gift it's like- so small in comparison and-”

Yoongi huffs and continues to disrobe you. Pulling your sweater over your head when he’s not satisfied that your unhappy scent has dissipated. Muttering something like. “hopeless alpha” under his breath. Your tank top pulls up, inches of your hip and skin on display. It's nothing that Hobi hasn't seen before and yet the blush reignites. The sunshine to your morning glory.

“I guess you're right.” But it doesn’t feel like it. Hobi doesn’t owe you anything for that, not when it was so easy to give. Not when you’ve gotten so many late-night drives from that gift.

Hoseok got the idea for your courting gift, one morning while watching you say goodbye to Namjoon:

The pack alpha has always been a fan of goodbye kisses, good morning, and goodnight kisses too. The particular kiss that morning had ‘I’ll miss you’ written all over it. It was so pretty in the way that you lingered, arms around Namjoon’s neck. His hand is underneath your shirt on the small of your back. Such a small touch and yet so gently possessive that it had Hobi aching to see it.

Hobi is unfortunately prone to jealousy and it turns the back of his neck hot. Makes his hands feel oddly tender. He's distracted by the visual, the task of packing up his work bag forgotten. Hoseok’s shift at the flower shop doesn’t start for another few hours, and he’s waiting, watching, an unhappy voyeur.

You and Namjoon have quite the height difference, if he was in between the two of you he’d be the perfect middle ground. That’s just another stupid thought, another stupid thought in the countless number of stupid thoughts that he’s had. (I like my alphas a little pathetic, and nothing's more pathetic than an alpha pining after an omega.)

He grumbles.

Yoongi prattles on, more awake than all of them as he outlines what you have to do today to make progress on the house- which is to go find a place that sells cheaper tile than the ones you first thought of using in the bathroom on the first floor. And maybe change it up a little.

The bathrooms escaped the renovations somehow, and a few nights ago- Jimin had admitted how much they actually use it even though it’s not the pack's primary bathroom anymore. Now that it’s not in use, they’re more willing to part with it for a few days for some very necessary re-styling. it toes the line from vintage to old a little too hard. The yellow is a little…yellow.

Yoongi wants to go light and airy with the color scheme, like he did with the upstairs bathroom and it's seafoam and brown tones. But like with most of the house, your vote is for colorful. “How about a light blue-” Yoongi continues to argue while you kiss Namjoon a little senseless in the doorway, at least Namjoon seems properly dazed, chasing your lips when you pull apart.

“No- we don’t have a room that’s magenta yet!”

This starts the same argument as always; “We can’t make every room in this house pink for Tae.”

But goodbyes take precedence, and when you turn back and smile at Hobi he flushes, shy to be caught looking. He moves, stepping around you and Namjoon to put his water bottle into his bag when you shout, “Stop, Seokie!”

Seokie is a new nickname, one that Jin only uses in the quietest of moments that you've somehow adopted when you don't want to call him Hobi. Hobi always thought that if you’d use any other nickname with him- you’d use daisy (he might want you and yoongi to share that pet name). But he’s a good pup and stops what he’s doing. Every atom in his body every electron no longer circulates neutrons but circulates you instead. Pulled in by your gravity.

You’ve moved so suddenly that you’ve spilled a bit of your coffee onto the floor. Maybe kissing Namjoon has left you feeling a little dizzy too. Yoongi just sighs fondly and wipes it up. Jimin looks up from his phone, smiling when he sees.

“You’ve got a rainbow on your cheek.”

It’s a trick of the light, early morning sunshine refracted through the mottled window just right to cast a single rainbow on the wall and on Hobi when he steps in front of it.

You cup his cheek, finger skimming across where the rainbow sits.

"Pretty."

Hobi feels hot all over.

At Tae’s call of, “If I have to do my eyeliner one more time I’m going to scream!” You giggle and dart away from him. Going to tend to Tae with a soft reply of "I've got you baby."

Hoseok is left, blushing in the morning light. Staying still like you might come by and cup his cheek again, Like a flower staying still in the hope of pollination.

Hobi is left, wanting to scream and somehow demand you back, both would be fair. His plight isn't missed by his packmates, who lean in like a set of jackals, grinning ear to ear at hobi's flustered predicament.

She's going to send him into rut if she's not careful Jin thinks, but doesn't say. instead he teases, “You’ve got to leave in the next ten-minute Hobi.”

Only then does Hoseok move- released from his spell and finally losing the rainbow on his cheeks though they might as well have stayed with how happy and warm he feels. How absolutely incandescent the love is glowing in his chest. A full spectrum of feelings, longing for you to come back.

He almost trips over noodle, darting after you with his tail raised high, catching himself on the edge of the couch at the last second, one shoe on and one off, his water bottle falling and spilling in the process.

yoongi sighs, and stoops to wipe it up. Jimin giggles and pulls Hobi up by his hips, the alpha's fingers feel hot where they've touched him, scalding. “What’s wrong, omega got your tongue?” yoongi returns to his breakfast, throwing the wad of soggy paper towels into the trash.

Jungkook laughs, “It’s more like he wants an omega to have his tongue in her-“

“You guys are gross,” He pushes at Jimin’s shoulder finally moving right. Yoongi hides his smile in a mouthful of Captain Crunch.

Hobi doesn’t think about the rainbows again until his next afternoon shift. When the low angle of the autumn sun cuts through the windows and catches the suncatchers that they hang in the doorway of the flower shop and cast more rainbows- dozens of them really across him and the flower.

He remembers when you came to visit, how you'd lingered over them, looked at them a second longer than you looked at the plants.

It’s a bit of a kitschy display. Other polished stones and nick nacks sitting on the deep shelf along with some smaller potted plants. A little tray of rose-quartz stones falsely advertises themselves as ‘heat reducers.’

The colors start to blend, and the rainbows sway softly in the light, gentle and pretty. He snaps a photo and thinks about sending it to you, but doesn’t.

The store is blissfully empty of Hobi's coworkers when he selects three of them. It's quiet when he packages them in tissue paper, one with a huge pink stained-glass moon at the top, another with three tiers. Each of them is delicate and pretty in their own right. No one’s bought a single one of them in the last three months anyway. They'll hardly be missed. Hobi gives himself a fat employee discount.

Hobi is unfortunately bad at hiding things, especially when he's nervous. Luckily the pack alpha doesn’t have it in him to tease. Namjoon had in fact been only too encouraging and given him a pep talk just this morning about courting and courting presents.

“The worst that can happen is that she doesn’t like it- and then you just have to try again which you were already planning on doing anyway.” Namjoon is quite simply the best at courting. It doesn't matter which subgender; alphas, beta’s, and omegas have all fallen under his touch. At least Hoseok has the opportunity to learn from a professional. Somehow the thought that you'd compare him to namjoon doesn't cross his mind.

Hoseok isn’t good at the romantic gestures that courting necessitates. He’s more of the ‘there when you need him’ kind of lover. Ready to make the small changes to make his loved ones' lives more manageable. Ready with his car keys for adventures. Those parts are easy, this is out of his depth.

Especially when it comes to you. Even After the love confessions, (are confessions still confessions if they’re so internal?) Hobi feels mostly unmoored. About to shatter upon unknown shores.

God, crushes are so frustrating (in the best kind of way, the way that keeps you sighing and daydreaming, the kind of way that makes you look in the mirror a little longer).

Tae helped him half an hour before she started on the pack's paperwork. They'd spent an hour deciding which places were best to hang them to get the greatest number of rainbows. She had even fussed with his hair a little to make it lie right. Having him hop up on the couch so she could see Hobi's face from your angle.

Hobi wanted to make sure there were at least one or two rainbows when he shows you. But when he leads you to the sunroom, his hands over your eyes (the same position you found yourself in when Namjoon surprised you with the nesting pod) there are more of them than there were when he set them up, whole constellations swaying softly.

The suncatchers are pretty and twinkly sparkly in the golden hour light, and your lips part in a simple show of awe when Hobi tells you you can open your eyes. It's so bright, they send dozens of little rainbows across the walls and your nesting pod. Over the white couch and the fig in the corner.

It’s very very pretty. and when you turn back to look a thim, Hobi once again has a rainbow on his cheek.

Your eyes twinkle, but you don't say anything. you stay quiet for long enough that Hobi gets nervous. his anxiety makes him talk fast. “I hung them here- but you can put them wherever you want- in the kitchen or upstairs or I can get you more for any places you want to put them- or- or- ”

You just about tackle him, arms looping around his neck resting your weight in his arms that instinctively grip around your waist. Hobi teeters, unsteady with such a heavy heart, toppling both of you onto the couch as you cry. "I love it!"

You’re sprawled not lying across him but his hand goes out to support the way you cling and rub your face into his chest, a happy little chirp slipping past your lips.

The wild thing in Hobi’s chest settles, settles, and curls around you. Tight and protective like a vice. You pull back, and your smile is just as bright.

Hobi sags, and rests his neck back against the couch, "Good- thank fucking god- I was so fucking nervous-" You fiddle with the buttons on his flannel, it's one of Yoongi's. It seems fitting that you steal his clothes and he steals Yoongi's.

"What brought all this on?"

Hobi doesn't have a good answer, in the quiet with the rainbows, or at least an answer he's ready for. He doesn't say that this is a courting present, and he doesn't need to because instead of answering your question- he replies with one of his own.

“Wanna go for a drive later?” he asks, voice tremulous like he thinks you might refuse him. You’ve never said no to him before, never said not tonight only not right now. Do you treasure our little talks the same way I do?

“Sure, after dinner? like I said? Just-" You lean back against his chest, and Hobi’s hands go tight tight tight around your waist. Holding you close. Clingy. He does not slip his hand under your shirt to cup the side of your hip the way that Namjoon might, but the thought crosses his mind.

Hobi is a good alpha, he won't cross that line until you tell him it's okay. Until then a thin layer of fabric separates his skin from yours. You're still warm to the couch.

“Sit and watch them with me?” You ask quietly. Almost shy, like you think he’d refuse you. He nods and the two of you sit on the couch to look at the rainbows together.

Eventually, Noodle finds the two of you, meowing and hopping up to stretch out along your thighs. Worming his way between the two of you.

The rainbows don't last forever, but Hobi sits with you until they fade.

~-~

Tae’s library is just like every public library:

Tall windows, wide quiet shelves with room for the stories to breathe. A colorful young adult section and an even more colorful kid’s section. A bit aways from the tables and computers so that any over-excited pups don’t disturb the adults. Big deep beanbags for small children to cuddle up to while they ponder fairy tales and adventures only a plastic-covered book away.

Tae’s long plaid skirt barely makes a whisper along the ground. The colder weather has allowed her to live all of her cottage core fantasies, her dark academia aesthetic truly flourishing. Her shirt is a little translucent today, and the fading summer tan of her skin pokes through it in spots where her tank top doesn't hide. Pretty long earrings dangle and clink in the quiet while she works on her shelving.

Wearing her chosen clothing items at work has been a bit of a work in progress.

Most of Tae’s coworkers approve of her transition in that overly willing-to-be-an-ally way that middle-aged women who generally consider themselves progressive outside of closed doors all do. And the ones that don’t approve have swallowed their words with lingering sour eyes and raised upper lips after the general receptiveness to Tae’s social transition.

It's hard to know who's genuine with it, who just doesn't want to cause a fuss, and who just doesn't give a shit. But most of the time her outfits get one or two compliments and thats it. Tae would rather them say nothing than anything negitive.

Tae likes the quiet of the library at this time of day, the silence gives her enough room to let her imagination wander. Tae likes to file away books in mid-morning, when there are fewer people around and her humming is less likely to disturb any of the library’s patrons. She sings to the stories and they sing back, tempting her with every well-worded title and delicately chaste summary.

But she doesn’t just think about stories or the book she's writing (her book is currently giving her hell on the 30th chapter) No. Today- there is a much more interesting love story blooming in her head, in the pack's den too.

She’s been thinking about you all morning (Tae thinks about you almost every morning) there are even little poems scrawled on the edge of her newspaper. Lines that are you and a bit of Hobi too.

I wished that I might be your hair clip / to know what it feels like / to be pressed against the nape of your neck/ To be your suntan/ perched on the edge/ of what you show everyone and what you show no one/ To be the bearer of every freckle/ like the sky holds the stars/ To hold and never let go/ Like birds hold sunshine / and flowers hold songs.

Everyone had noticed of course, how much time you and Hobi have been spending together.

The pack had even talked about it during a quiet moment without you and Hobi. Yoongi’s lack of communication regarding you and Hobi. “I don’t know anything” he’d unsuccessfully lied, and nearly been heaved up and wrestled to the couch as a result. But Jungkook’s puppy eyes had unsuccessfully endeared him.

Yoongi has kept Hobi's secret, but it's kind of hard not to notice. Tae isn't a fool. Tae is a much better liar than Yoongi is- because when you'd come to her after your late-night drive to gush with her about Hobi and the rainbows over makeup. She hadn't said anything about what she knows.

Tae couldn’t tell you how many times she’d noticed little touches, Hobi’s hand lingering on the small of your back, grabbing your waist when he moved behind you in the bathroom. When he take the greatest care to set out his sweatshirts in the morning and even asks Jungkook to make sure they’re clean. They’re practically not even his sweatshirts anymore with the amount you’ve been wearing them.

Tae isn’t an idiot, she knows that Hobi’s finally realized it. While she doesn’t trust herself to play matchmaker given how poorly the first time she pointed out Hobi’s attraction went. that doesn’t mean she’s not going to park herself firmly on the edge of her fantasy land with a box of popcorn.

If they were gonna get married, would Hobi wear a red tux or black or grey? Her brain is already thinking of wedding dresses. One of these days she’s really going to have to make a Pinterest board. Hobi would probably want to do sunflowers, and that might clash with the red unless it was a fall wedding- ooh, and what about pearl details and daisies? a beach wedding might be a little too on the nose for you.

Tae is so absorbed with her shelving and her daydreaming that she doesn’t notice the sound of small shoes on the carpeted floor. Nor does she notice the light-up flash of tiny iorn man sneakers. Her musings are easily interrupted by a small tug on her skirt, shy almost. She startles a little, looking down at the sudden touch.

The little pup's thumb is wet from where it was clearly placed behind their bucked teeth. He's got wide brown eyes and soft-looking hair, Tae can't stop the smile that comes to her lips.

“I wanted to read a book but I couldn’t reach, can you help me? Please?”

Tae’s heart swells as she leans down to the pup's level. “Of course, I can! Why don’t you show me what one you wanted,” diligently Tae follows the little one a few isles over, tugged along by their insistent pulling as he tells her about the pretty cover.

The little pup turns back, furrowing his bushy brows up at Tae, “are you a princess?” he asks. Tae almost has to laugh, a bright happy gender euphoric feeling filling her chest, that feeling of I could be filling her.

She makes her whisper just a little more hushed, playing along, “Don’t tell anyone okay? It's a secret.” The little pup nods, eyes darting around like there are dragons that would threaten her.

“What gave me away?”

“Princesses wear long skirts!” the pup says cheerfully, like it makes the most sense in the world. He's a little too loud and Tae winces. He finally finds the shelve with the story. The spine glimmers pink and gold and Tae is unsurprised to find the illustrated copy of Cinderella. Not the Disney or PJ version, but the Brothers Grimm version.

Tae cringes at the pair of doves on the cover.

Tae doesn’t say that the little pup is too small to read a book so big, or that there is one with more pictures much more appropriate away from the young adult section. The child can’t be more than 6 years old.

But still, Tae retrieves it and delivers it to their waiting arms. The little one clutches it to his chest, thanks Tae, and then promptly plops themselves onto the carpeted floor right there.

He opens the first page, huffs, and then looks up at her imploringly.

“I just realized I can’t read.”

He pouts and Tae melts. Tae wonders where the pup's mother is, but really, there certainly can't be much harm in this. This isn't the first time Tae has been guilted into reading a story to a pup while their parents work or make use of the library's computers.

"Just the first page.” She intones, caution for the child’s hopes in her voice, she presses her skirt under her knees and sits on the scratchy carpet. The pup curls close to see the pictures. Resting his tiny chubby cheek in the billow of Tae’s big puffy sleeve.

Tae's chest is all tight as she reads. The pup is very well-behaved, he pauses, and asks questions in a soft voice only when Tae gives him space to respond. Tae easily ommits the parts that aren't appropriate. but tae finds herself watching the pup a little bit more as the minutes stretch.

In a few years with your own little ones around, will Tae become the defacto bedtime story reader? Will she do this with the pack's pups one day? Will she be the one to take that bright little light in their eyes that imagines things as greater and more and cultivate it? Her cheeks feel warm at the prospect, heart beating like a hummingbird's wings in excitement.

Your pups and Jin's pups too- they're gonna be so loved. Tae's gonna be the best mom to them, The best alpha too.

One page turns into two and then three. In this quiet corner with only Tae’s voice as ruler and god, the little pup hinges on every word. Until there’s another voice close by. An adult not wishing to be loud, a whispered name.

“Jae?”

Tae smiles up at the woman at the end of the aisle of books. Her smile turns sweeter when Jae hops up and runs to press his face into her jeaned thighs. Tae remembers how that felt, how every scent besides Tae’s own omega mother felt overwhelming and icky.

Tae stands with a crack of her knees and makes to hand over the book, “This makes a great bedtime story until about chapter 8, that one you might want to skip until he’s a little older.”

The woman makes to smile, but it only goes so far. Tae watches in perfect detail, everything in slow motion, as her eyes flicker down to Tae’s Addams apple.

She drags her child close by their wrist quicker than Tae can blink. Tae sees the moment that the child realizes this touch isn’t gentle, wide eyes going fear-stricken as he's tugged behind her back. And then it's all downhill from there.

I'll spare you the more vile bits.

But the saddest moment of the argument that follows (Which involves not one but three of Tae's co-workers to calm down the hysterical woman whose screeches echo around the quiet library) is when the pup tries to get his mother's attention. "Mom, I liked that she was reading to me."

"He" the certified Karen hisses, moving in a way that makes the pup flinch back. "-should know better than to corrupt a pup with such- such-" her eyes dart down and up, and Tae's skin burns. "Disgusting behavior."

The misgendering doesn't even sting. What does hurt is the eyes peering in. She isn't being quiet and it's causing many of the library's patrons' attention is diverted. Tae's coworkers have put themselves between Tae and the woman. But there still aren't enough people (enough packmates) in between her and the verbal tirade.

An hour later, after the woman has left after threatening to call the police, Tae talks with his boss and his boss’s boss. The room behind the front desk is glass, and he knows that the door doesn’t keep the sound of their raised voice out.

“I wasn’t harassing her child; I was just helping him find a book for Christ sake!”

The worst part is that this isn’t the first time that this has happened. No- since Tae came out there have been two other complaints leveled against her from bigoted patrons. Both right at the beginning before she got the hang of presenting how she wanted to.

At least those confrontations weren’t face-to-face. At least those complaints didn’t end with someone threatening to call the police and a pup cowering, tugged along too roughly out the door.

The little pup had glanced back at Tae, mouth in pout, eyes swimming with tears.

Even if the woman felt righteous in her anger, the least she could have done was not yell in front of the pup. Tae promises herself right then and there, that she'll never raise her voice in front of the pack's pups, not in anger.

The book has stayed on the counter at the front. Pink and gold and treacherous. Tae hopes that if anything, the pup finds it and reads the ending one day. Stories have a way of finding us, even when the world makes us let them go.

Now in the back room behind the check-out counter. Tae’s boss levels her with an expectant look, the kind that people give when they don’t want to be transphobic not really- it’s just so hard for them not to, so learned. Tae is the nail that sticks up. It’s bullshit really. Tae can tell it's bullshit before she opens her mouth.

“Really? He asked for Cinderella?”

“Yes.” Tae’s biting tone is an alpha’s tone, not a man’s, and yet she knows how it sounds.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I’m not lying.” Is Tae supposed to only help some children find the books they want? Is she supposed to look at them and make her best guess if they’ve got homophobic parents and skip them over? It’s not her fault that the sweet sweet pup’s parent was a bigot.

“I can’t help but feel like- you’ve got a personal agenda-“

"Charlie-" the district manager cautions.

Tae can’t stop herself from snapping, alpha anger sparking with the intent to burn. “Little boys should be allowed to read Cinderella if they want to” Rats and all. Her hands are shaking, and it isn’t missed by them. The room smells thick with Tae’s spicy cinnamon anger.

The district manager sets her hand on Tae's shoulder, and her anger ebbs just a little. “I think maybe you should go home a little early today, just to cool off. We can talk about it more tomorrow.”

Tae doesn’t want to go home early, Tae doesn’t want to go home at all as she packs up her books. Her bag lighter than usual, absent of the stories that she wants to take home. For once there aren’t any that she wants to read.

She walks to the train station because Jimin won’t be off work for another 2 hours and that’s when he’d usually pick her up, the last three days he’s gotten her flowers too; white roses the first day, pink the second, and red the third. She sends him a text.

Tae <3 (1:48): I left work early today, you don’t have to pick me up, I’ll get an Uber home.

Mini-alpha (1:49):!!!!!

Mini-alpha (1:49): What happened? Are you sure you don’t want me to pick you up? I can leave now.

Tae sighs, looking down at her phone while she waits for the crosswalk light to come on. Red still, green in a few seconds, she only has to wait. She can practically feel Jimin's nervous energy through the phone. it's a wonder he doesn't immediately call her.

It makes her soft. It isn't in Jimin's nature to give any of his lovers any space but he always makes an effort when it comes to her.

Tae <3 (1:53): No. It’s fine. I’ll talk to you when you get home.

Tae doesn’t want to talk to Jimin about transphobia again. At least not yet. It’s too much energy. It’s not that Tae doesn’t want to make what happened during Namjoon’s rut better. It’s not that she doesn’t want to talk about it- it’s just that there’s nothing to talk about, the explanation of his actions are such a burden for Tae to bear. And Tae trusts that Jimin’s heart is in the right place even if he makes mistakes. And even telling Jimin off, yelling at him, wouldn’t change it.

Either one day Tae will not have to deal with bigoted parents, either one day she’ll pass and won’t have to worry, or she'll always be in this awkward middle ground.

Trans people are like toupees, you only notice them when there’s something off, something a little misplaced about them. Tae fears that most of all. Femininity, as much as she wants it, as much as it's hers to take, what if it won't ever fit right? What if she never passes?

Tae loves her job at the library, it’s the perfect mix of boring and safe and easy even if it doesn’t pay enough. But even as she's gained things like skirts and puffy sleeves, she's exchanged them for days like today. Really, the library was her favorite place before today and now, every step away from it makes her feel a little lighter. She's not even angry anymore, just exhausted mentally.

Tae decides to walk home at least she’s in her most conservative channel flats, they could use a little bit more wear and love and Tae’s thoughts are still too sharp. She dulls them to a palatable edge that all falls apart when she gets home.

You’re there, thank fucking god you’re always there when she gets home. You’ll always be Tae’s comfort person.

Tae opens the door with a creek and push of cold air, you're saying something to Yoongi turning with a toss of your hair, eyes brightening when you see her before you've even said her name.

You look a little healthier today, with a little bit more of a rosy glow to your cheeks and a healthy brightness to your eyes, not all glassy.

"Tae! You're home early!"

Tae will never stop being proud of how hard you try, and will never stop being a bit envious either because Tae-

Tae looks at you and wilts, bag flopping onto the floor, and predictably burst into tears.

"Oh- oh Tae."

"Baby girl-"

You and Yoongi are just about the best security blanket a packmate could ask for. You're so good as you pull her down to your level so you can kiss away her tears, maneuvering her like a perfect team onto the couch. Yoongi's strong hands slide off her shoes. Yoongi's fingers digging into her sore heel as you kiss away her every tear.

A substantial amount of babying and a Sos packmate in distress text later, and Tae is reclining across a freshly fluffed nest, the muscles in her body relaxed. The blisters on the back of her feet are bandaged and kissed. Every inch of her body is too.

You don't talk about it until after the pack's facemasks are finished, and hobi's clear coat has dried over the tiny nail sticker that you left. a small bumblebee.

Your skin smells sweet after a long long bath full of fancy bath bombs. Jinnie had also rubbed oil onto her freshly shaven legs. You helped, dragging it along oh so carefully to not nick her skin. Ending each pass with a kiss to her ankle and then upper thigh.

Tae’s head is in your lap now, cheek pressed against your (slightly chubbier) thighs. Her sniffles the background music as Tae gives her final recap of what happened.

Your nose gets a wrinkle in it when you go cross. "There's so much meanness to the world, I hate how people have to add to it."

Jimin’s anger leaves an undercurrent in the air, dragging the other alphas along, Hobi’s hands are strong where they dig into Tae’s shoulders, belly down in the nest while you play with her hair, braiding it back and forth. The attention makes her feel a little tingly.

“Do you know what her name was? Did you get a look at her car-“ Jimin asks, nearly barking. The library has cameras. Jimin knows it does.

Jin sets a hand on the back of his neck, a scruff threatening. “Down pup. Tae doesn’t need you to track them down.” Jimin’s teeth look particularly sharp in the light. For a face so soft he has quite the mouth on him.

“They made her sad,” he growls, but it's softer, more pointed as he crouches over her.

Namjoon’s quiet voice unlocks the whole world's worries, massaging gently down the column of Tae’s delicate neck, rough hands, worn tender touching her regardless. Namjoon is rarely ever so pointed, but it's logical, from an alpha's perspective, Tae knows what he hints.

"I think that if your bosses aren't going to protect you from people like that, then I want you to leave your job." Jin gives him a look like, 'Now you know where I'm coming from' but Tae's the important packmate right now.

Tae rolls Namjoon's words around her tongue, her hand loosely twined with his. Namjoon has the steadiest hands out of everyone in the pack and a few minutes ago he repurposed his surgery skills to do her nails. Took off the chipped red and re-did them because Namjoon knows she feels best when her claws are polished. He checks them now. Tapping them lightly to not smudge them.

It's a girl's night, the first girl's night you've ever had with the whole pack. Tae's face is still glossy from the face mask.

“I don’t think I want to quit; I don’t think that would help at all that’s not going to like- solve the world and all its issues.”

“No, but- if it’s making you more sad than happy. Then maybe it’s worth considering.”

Tae knows Namjoon’s not saying that she doesn’t make enough to affect the pack's finances, but that's still the truth. Hobi pulls himself along her other side and you watch him with heavy-lidded eyes.

Hobi presses a kiss to Tae's temple, “All you want to do is write every day anyways, and we just want you to be happy,” 6 heads nod their agreement.

Hobi isn't wrong; The last four weekends in a row Tae has woken up several hours earlier than the pack would usually stir from morning cuddles, just to get a few hours of uninterrupted writing done. She’s also spent nearly every night in her library room, staying up late after the pack has retired upstairs until one of you comes down and wrangles her upstairs. The pack's prettiest alpha needs her beauty sleep.

But is it enough to count on? Is it worth quitting her job over?

You duck down low, kissing the same spot Hobi did, your lips touching just a Tae away. a heavy breath wooshes out of her chest. "Yeah why wouldn't we want you to quit? If you're always here then I can always do this."

Your kiss is gentle, and it tastes like belonging more than Tae would ever be able to write, to describe. A love that makes you feel like you belong is a rare thing. And Tae's hand goes up to tangle in your hair, keeping you there for just a shared breath longer.

The next breath tastes a bit like freedom. It's scary to be free.

(But Tae leaves her 2 weeks' notice on her boss’s desk before the end of the next work day, and she doesn't feel bad about it one bit).

~-~

(1 year prior)

Maybe the truth is that the reason why you don’t feel you deserve agency is because you know what your agency looks like. The choices you’re willing to make when it comes down to it.

The secrets you tell and the lies you have buried deep in your pocket like one of Hobi’s found things. Something you can’t get rid of and cast back into the ocean. No matter how hard you try. There is something about murder that sticks, that stays no matter how many times you try to wash your hands of it.

It's not guilt, because you don't feel guilty for what you had to do.

Being backed into a corner can make someone do a whole hell of alot of monstrous things. And back then Life was monotonous. Back then there was Anguish without change.

Your life went like this: Go home. Get beaten. Get hurt. Get Raped. Wake up. Meet up with Hyejin. Make poison. Make pastries. Go to the Don’s house. Feed it to them. Listen to Moonbyul tell you to wait. Go home. Get beaten again and again. Get raped every night. On and on and on.

Clean up your blood from the tiles. Clean it from the carpet. Hydrogen peroxide and not bleach. Cover the bruises up with color corrector first before you put concealer over them.

Smile and tell everyone that your husband and you are perfectly happy. There will be a pup on the way soon enough, I'm so lucky to have someone who supports me, and I'm so lucky to have a love like this.

Go home. Get beaten. Get hurt. Get Raped. Go to sleep and don't cry because then he'll beat you for keeping him awake.

In the darkness that curls around you. Blood going tacky between your legs, you start to dream of wicked sweet things.

What you've been through would be enough to make anyone go crazy, Enough to make anyone consider drastic action. Enough to make anyone consider murder.

Enough for you to slide a pair of small syringes off of Moonbyul’s night desk and a small packet of arsenic too. You know how to make a simple syrup. You know how to mix in arsenic to it, how to make it liquid soluble without breathing it in.

You make it in the fine china and break it after so that you can throw it out without worrying. You get a beating for it but you hardly feel it when Geumjae drags you across the floor by your hair. It hardly breaks your heart when he steps on your ribcage with the intent to break bones because you know what you have to do.

After, with your own blood on your teeth, you make sure to leave it in the bottom of the trash, and ask the cleaning staff not to take it out yet. They're supposed to find it.

You don't care if you die, you just want to make sure the necessary villains are punished. When it comes to blame the person who is most to blame is you anyway. You are simply numb to pain, numb to your own anguish. Numb to the idea of your own death too. Geumjae's already killed you in every way that matters.

Cut off a wolf's head and it still has the power to bite; give a girl an enemy and she'll do dangerous things.

Your meetings with the Don and beta always go the same; gossip, and greetings. Sometimes when you come bearing bruises, they tell you to wait just a little longer.

Go home. Get beaten. Get hurt. Get Raped. Wake up. Just give it time for his temper to settle. Once you're mated it will get better.

Even Moonbyul and Hyejin tell you that planning the perfect crime takes time. That you'll be saved if you only wait. Help is coming.

Bullshit.

You’re tired of waiting for him to kill you, you're tired of waiting to die. You're smarter than all of them because you know exactly how to get everything you want and you're willing to do anything to get it.

The next time Moonbyul and Hyejin take you to the Don and Beta’s house under the guise of afternoon tea, you are prepared for war and dressed with revenge in mind. Your white dress knotted at the shoulders falling in a heavenly sheet, like an avenging angel, neither pious nor sinful.

You are a force of nature and nature does not ask when it takes lives.

What’s worse; the people that enable the abusers or the abusers themselves? Who is more to blame for the pain caused?

You are no longer hiding and you won't let them hide this time. The bruise on your cheek is purple and mottled, the rings of bruises on your wrists from his hands while he held you down.

When you smiled at Geumjae over breakfast this morning, there was only one thought in your mind.

You’re next.

Your agency looks like this; elegantly done hair your skirt a little short for fall. A basket of arsenic-backed goods in a basket as is usual. Fluffy pink cupcakes with the perfect Swiss meringue buttercream in little spirals.

A gentle smile at the beta when she opens her doors for you, letting the monster in, because you’ve been over enough times that she trusts you. You suppose that's your doing too, you've fooled her into thinking you're just another idiot girl who decided to marry rich and didn't bother to consider the strings attached. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, you bare your teeth when you smile.

Hyejin has helped on that front; over the past few months, she has taught you exactly the kind of conversation that the beta likes- the useless conversations about family drama, the small little bits that you let through about your husband’s opinion on which pup is marrying whom, which alpha is good or bad for the packs near dozen omega pups that aren’t mated yet. Which alphas are likely to be a liability? This kind of gossip is all information and strategy.

You might have lied in your call to her and told her you were fearful of one of the younger ones- and a conversation you’d happened to witness on a street corner, a shadowy figure that looked a little too severe not to be the authorities. Of course, these kinds of things have to be handled with discretion and ginseng tea.

The Don does not bother to turn down the TV when you walk in, sitting vulnerable in his recliner with his feet up. It doesn’t appear that he has any sort of inclination or plans to interact with you when you sit here at his kitchen table and talk. Instead, he lounges and watches his sports, loud because his hearing is so bad, nearly deafening.

It’s good. hopefully anyone nearby will not overhear.

You hope that if this goes south before you have a chance to confess that they find the letter you wrote at home; the one that says your husband is the one that put you up to this.

You know that the pack’s retribution will be swift, that any sort of alibi he has will be null and void with the evidence you’ve been leaving. A little trail of breadcrumbs that leads right into a pretty little grave for your husband. Even if you won't be around to see it.

You're already a friend of pain. You already find comfort in it. If they kill you (which they will) then at least it will finally be over.

You wait until the moment you know is coming, when the Don looks over his shoulder at you and comands “Be a dear and bring me one.”

You put one of your artfully created confections on a pretty gold-rimed plate and walk to his side, you lean over to put it in his lap as he indicates. the same way he does every time you come over with sweets.

The lingering hand on your ass is hardly abnormal. behind you the beta's tea cup clinks as she sets her tea down and says nothing. even though you know she notices.

He’s so busy coping a feel he doesn’t notice your other hand, going to the syringe duck taped to your thigh.

It happens quicker than the Don can blink. The most powerful man in the underworld can't be bothered to protect his life for a pretty little piece of ass. You smile down at him, and his hand squeezes the round apple of your behind.

His hand is still on your ass when you whip your arm around with as much force as you can and drive the syringe and plunger into his neck.

You must have hit something in his neck because he barely has a second to splutter before he’s going still and quiet. Mouth falling horrifyingly slack. His breath rattles and his eyes dart as his whole body is paralyzed near instantly, in the time it takes for his blood to circulate.

Two paces, swing, plunge.

The beta barely has a second to scream or stand to attack you. You are so much younger than they are. Your body might be fragile and frail but It’s still stronger than hers. Her brief scream is easily drowned out by the scratch of the TV.

She ends up on the floor, the icing on the cupcakes sticky as she falls into half of them, tossed onto the floor by your brief tussle as you straddle her struggling form. Her pushing gets weaker and weaker and she sobs.

It doesn’t surprise you when you see the black tracery of a dying mating mark itching up her skin.

One thing that the family had always been oh so careful of was to talk only in their mother tongue around you. Secrets are best kept when they’re spoken in foreign tongues. It was a way to isolate you. To make them speak English for you to understand felt like a beholden request. At one point It was a point of insecurity for you, always left out of the loop, always relying on your husband to keep you in the know.

You bend over her as her pushing gets weaker and weaker, the arsenic doing its job, causing numbness and the tingling of extremities before it causes paralysis and then coma and death. Your hair falls in a sheet over the beta’s face.

You’ve studied much over the last few months. Enough that you lean in close over her and speak your words in perfect Korean.

“You look so angry,” you croon softly, dragging a finger down her cheek. Spittle froths at her mouth as she breathes heavily. “You shouldn’t- if you want someone to blame you only need to look in the mirror.”

You lean in close until your lips brush her ear, “it's your fault you see- you're the one who lied" you mimic her voice, making it scratchy, "'just wait a little longer, it will be better for the family if you stay quiet." you laugh, "as if that where true, the only person it benefits is you. You where ready to let him hurt me and kill me if i just stayed quiet."

You wipe away a bit of spit from her lower lip, "You always told me how it was your duty to protect the family- but you only serve yourself. If you'd have done something, if you'd have helped me I wouldn't have had to do this. You just wanted me to shut up and die quietly.”

You switch back to English, “Well now it’s your turn.”

You watch her tongue go numb, paralyzed, but the poison hasn’t advanced far enough for her not to speak.

“Fucking- worthless bitch.”

You laugh and stand brushing some crumbs from your skirt. She’s already too weak to move, to shout, or fight you. You watch the light start to leave her eyes, winking out so slowly, like a dying star. But she still looks so pissed.

“You don’t have a right to be angry, you killed me first. You can’t blame me for fighting back.”

She gives her last breath and the TV plays on. Your shoe ticks her hand, her fingers twitching weakly. You watch as she gasps her last breath, a small smile on your face.

You sit at the table and turn the TV down. You wait a few minutes, but it quickly becomes an hour. You have yourself a nice little treat while you watch, turning the channel to a food network while you eat.

You really are a fantastic cook. The crumb on this batch is so nice you don’t even taste the metallic tang of poison. You eat through one, and then another, until the whole basket is empty.

Before you know it there is a concerned knock at the door. The lock clicks and turns when you answer it.

When Moonbyul opens the door, you laugh at the expression on her face. Licking the frosting from your lips. Even that is delicious.

She takes in their bodies, crumpled on the floor the frosting on your cheeks. The evidence. Both of them dying. A violence you cannot undo.

Her voice is somber. “Oh Pup, what have you done?”

~-~

Please Like, Comment, and Reblog <3 every word helps motivate me to write the next chapter!

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Come tell me what you liked about this chapter!

~-~

Notes:

this chapter is a very classic bily chapter, in the fact that there is a fuck ton of fluff and then bang the mafia bits just take you out. we needed to get back into the mafia bits of the story sooner rather than later though 💀

i felt like i was going a little too over the top with certain bits of puptalk in this chapter, but i really wanted to use it to show that like yeah- the pack has been treating her alot more gently since her breakdown, they've been babbying the fuck out of her, even if we don't get to see it :(

Hobi's texts are so???? Fucking cute?? He's so hopeless my god he wants to make her feel loved without actually saying it and i hope you read them and just go "oh, you're an idiot."

I have this whole elaborate backstory to how wonho's gym works with monthly subscriptions to classes where people can decide how many classes they want to take a week, ie gym dues for facilities and then discounted classes on top if they pay for it before hand, with several tiers.

this chapter almost feels clerical- this is definitely more of a set up chapter- where i needed to check off a lot of boxes, like hobi's courting present- before we go any further into the story. things are going to start amping up in terms of stakes pretty quickly.

That one part, where hobi is kinda malfunctioning after the m/c touches his cheek and everyone teases him feels the most representative of the pack as a whole. like that part where they're all replying- feels very real. i struggle a little to capture a sense of domesticity in concise ways, but i think this part is very tidy.

That little touch with hobi- where he touches her wrist and her finger, that touch has so much weight to it, i personally think the whole pack was tasting the sexual tension on the air, can you guys feel it too or is it all in my head?

idk why yoongi calling tae babygirl makes me so flustered but it does 🥵

i really wanted to work calling tae mommy into the chapter someway but tbh this chapter felt complex enough without it.

there is like- one plot hole in this whole story, and that is in the first chapter of the story when yoongi gets a call the person on the other line says "grandfather is dying." implying that his death wasn't instantaneous like this is shown to be. however, in my mind- the injections don't actually kill the don and beta but plunge them into a coma that they never wake up from- is this an actual possibility with arsenic poisoning- NO IT ISN'T lol, you're just going to have to suspend your disbelief for me.

the m/c has always been the person who killed the don and the beta- i've known this since like...maybe the 4th chapter? it wasn't in the og og plan for the story but almost everything in bily has been hammered out since then. and tbh you already knew she killed them just not that it was this violent! does this count as a secret???? idk! maybe!!!

she's a little murder baby just like minnie <3

[lafemmemacabre]

@ People who’re not lesbians and want a better understanding of lesbophobia in order to extend better solidarity towards us:

(Repost from my old blog)

The first thing you have to internalize, is that the most recurrent themes behind lesbophobia are patterns of humiliation, punishment and denying us vulnerability.

The “mean” (arrogant and cruel) lesbian, and why lesbians must be “humbled down” (humiliated):

We’re perceived as offensively arrogant because under the patriarchy, women are supposed to be inferior to men, men are supposed to be superior.

One of the key roles of patriarchal manhood is to desire women exclusively. By taking on that role that’s supposedly only reserved for men, we provoke people to think “Who do they think they are? Do they think they’re equal to men? Or BETTER than men?“

Us not “giving men a chance” is seen as a cruel act, too. Even though straight men not giving men a chance, and straight women not giving women a chance, is them just knowing what they do or don’t want.

Because of our perceived cruelty and arrogance, we need to be humiliated back down into our proper place within womanhood.

There’s a reason why men tell us they’re going to make us “real women”, when threatening us from a distance, as well as when correctively raping or beating us. When it reaches a point in which they see us as incorrigible through humiliation, they kill us.

Projecting aggression on us, which must be punished:

Even other people who’re not cishets see everything we do or don’t do as violent, abrasive or aggressive. We’re seen as raging beasts.

Expressing my unattraction to men in public in the most neutral terms possible has been treated as me shaming people who are attracted to men (an attack), or as an attempt to hurt all men. It has been deemed homophobic or biphobic, too, no matter how careful I’ve been to not hurt other people’s sensitivities.

Don’t get me started on me not liking men on itself earning me being called a TERF no matter how clear I make it that I’m inclusive of trans women. This happens even to transfem lesbians ALL the time too.

Our mere existence is seen as an act of violence, as a threat, and our violent crime must be met with punishment, which can fall anywhere between isolating us, up to meeting us with concrete violence.

The emotionless, yet hysterical lesbian:

Since we’re violent beasts, we’re seen as emotionless. Since we’re unemotional, we’re unbreakable, which means that no violence we face is punishment enough. In consequence, when we’re subjected to violence, it’s minimized. Since it’s minimized, if we complain about it, we’re exaggerating. We’re being hysterical.

We aren’t vulnerable human beings with emotions in other people’s eyes. The only emotion people allow us is anger, and only because they can use it against us. Lesbian anger at being constantly humiliated and vilified is used to demonize us further.

We don’t need protection, we don’t hurt, so it’s fine to stomp on us, and if we complain, we’re exaggerating. Actually, we’re the ones being mean to whoever hurt us, by making that person feel guilty for a non-issue.

We ESPECIALLY don’t need help, much less to be rescued!

By being lesbians, in other people’s eyes, we’re making the statement to the world that even IF we were to not be completely unbreakable or unfeeling, we still don’t want to be rescued, we don’t want help. We did this to ourselves, in other people’s eyes.

When you see a lesbian saying or doing anything and start to feel indignation, to feel attacked, to feel threatened, to perceive them as aggressive, cruel or hysterical, ask yourself:

Is this lesbian being genuinely offensive, aggressive, cruel or hysterical, or is it ME who has lesbophobic bias I haven’t unlearned yet?

Is this lesbian actually exaggerating, or is it me who sees lesbians as unfeeling and unbreakable, so they shouldn’t be so upset anyway? If you stab a lesbian they won’t bleed, so why are they making a fuss about it?

[frooogscream]

This show who’s creators said time and time again that it is kind and that it knows how important it is for queer people just spat in my face and told me that I don’t deserve a Happy End. 

To me the worst part about Izzy dying, is that right before he gave the "piracy it’s not about glory it’s about belonging to something in the world that makes you feel like you don’t fit in it’s about finding your found family" speech! This is the last thing we see of him before he fucking dies. 

Why is this so bad? Well, why do queer people love pirates, vampires, monsters, every representation of something that is deemed unnatural and bad? Because this is how the world treats us till this day. We don’t belong. We don’t fit in! Izzy’s statement is something that every queer person can identify with, something very essential to the way we survive as queer people in a world that doesn’t treat us kindly. 

And in this show full of outsiders that don’t fit in with society, Izzy is the one character that even in the world of the outsiders still doesn’t fit in, still is portrayed as the antagonist even though looking back most of his actions are very understandable and human.

Even in this show, where pretty much everyone is queer, Izzy still symbolises the queer outsider, the one who doesn’t fit in, the one who is demonised, the queer person that is not plateable to society, the angry queer who has been through so much that they lash out to protect themselves.

Izzy represented a very essential aspect of being queer and his statement right before his death reinforcorces that yet again. And then he has to die!

Because after all only the queer people who are acceptable to society deserve a happy end. But as soon as you get bitter or start having problems trusting people, because of the horrible way this world treats you, then the best you deserve is a noble death. 

Some queer people are just not acceptable to society, I loved every single one of these characters but THE ONE that I can truly see myself in, as somebody who is scared, who is hurt, who as a trans person gets demonised more than ever, was Izzy! 

This show who’s creators said time and time again that it is kind and that it knows how important it is for queer people just spat in my face and told me that I don’t deserve a Happy End.

[aoi1dee]

hi everyone, i was asked to do renee too so i will! because apparently people are misgendering renee too 💔

the thing is is that i don’t really know that much about renee, i mean i found out she was trans through the our life wiki in november 😭 and most of the information im getting for this post is from the wiki which honestly i don’t really trust because anyone can edit it so if there is anything incorrect please correct me!

also i’m basing this off of how i would feel if i was in renee’s spot…

it’s the same thing for qiu if you are telling a story that is based in step 1 you can use the name darren and he/him but if you are talking about how she was in step 1 then you call her renee and she/her

example: “omg renee in step 1 was super mean to tamarack :(“

example 2 set in step 1: “darren muttered something to himself though you can tell qiu definitely heard it”

it’s the same thing that the game does where in step 1 at the time renee was darren

BUT

do not misgender renee in step 3 she goes by she/her

for step 2 i’m not absolutely sure.. on the wiki it says that at the time renee went by ren and he/him but i’ve seen people call her renee and she/her in step 2 so im not completely sure sadly :(

conclusion:

renee is a trans woman and you should treat her as a woman because she is

and if you are writing a story in the time of step 1 then you can use darren and he/him

yet again i’m not completely sure about any of this so if i messed anything up please let me know in the comments and i will fix it!! 🩷🩷

and please stop misgendering and/or deadnaming our life characters and anyone in general

thank you for coming to my ted talk

[gimmethatagustd]

collard greens | kth

Working as a counselor at a summer camp for kids isn't the most exciting job, but hanging out with Taehyung makes it worth it.

○ Pairing: Taehyung x trans man!Reader

○ Rating: Explicit/18+

○ Genre: A classic Jai weed fic, friends to lovers, summer camp au, smut, fluff

○ 13 / 100 Drabble Challenge (Camp Counselor)

○ Word Count: 3,670

○ Warnings: Some body/gender dysphoria, reference to top surgery, reference to hormone therapy, marijuana, oral sex, (self) hand job, Jai didn't proofread this jhsdkjfsk sorry friends

○ Notes: Today is International Transgender Day of Visibility, created to celebrate trans and nonbinary people worldwide. Particularly on Tumblr and with reader-insert BTS fanfic, there is little representation of trans and nonbinary characters. Readers are often written as AFAB and use she/her pronouns and traditionally feminine terms to describe their genitalia (even when listed as gender-neutral readers). I wanted to share a story that explicitly focuses on a trans reader. I welcome everyone to read this story, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong." 

○ Disclaimer: The trans community is diverse, and this fic doesn't represent all trans and nonbinary people's experiences. If you'd like to learn more about how to be an ally for trans and nonbinary people, check out this article from the Human Rights Campaign. 

○ Post Date: March 31, 2024

○ Masterlist | AO3 Crosspost

○ What was Jai listening to? A weed playlist

“Did you know that smoking weed makes your sperm count decrease?” 

You scrunch your nose at Taehyung’s vulgar question, but he doesn’t notice. He’s nearly cross-eyed as he licks along the edge of the blunt he just rolled with expert fingers. 

“Not me,” you challenge. “Maybe you.” 

Taehyung stares at you for a moment. You can practically see the gears turning in his head before he sticks the blunt between his lips and speaks around it. 

“Shit, yeah.” 

The summer air, thick with humidity, doesn’t help when your face heats up from Taehyung’s mistake. It’s funny how seemingly inconsequential moments—like Taehyung forgetting that you don’t have the same parts as him—can bring you such euphoria. Taehyung has always been good at that, though. He’s never treated you differently, singled you out, or made you feel like you aren’t enough or are too much.

You’re just two dudes perched on a mossy rock in the middle of the woods, smoking a blunt while the camp kids you’re supposed to be taking care of are asleep in their cabins.

Simple as that. 

Taehyung pauses to light the end of the blunt and inhales deeply, drawing smoke through his pink lips and exhaling it slowly. The thick cloud doesn’t have a chance to disappear into the night sky before Taehyung breathes it back in through his nose. 

Rolling your eyes at Taehyung’s unnecessary display of stoner prowess, you take the blunt from his pinched grip and curl your lips around the tip. 

“Are you trying to say weed is, like, male birth control?” you ask, smoke coming out of your mouth in disjointed puffs and streams between your teeth while you talk. 

“It basically is.”

“That feels very unreliable.” 

Your fingers brush against each other every time you pass the blunt between you. The contact makes your arm tingle, and the feeling wiggles down the right side of your body the more times you reach for the blunt. 

“I mean, I smoke, like, every day, and I haven’t knocked anyone up yet,” Taehyung admits with a shrug. 

You nearly choke. 

“You’re fucking people raw, Tae?” 

“Shhh!” Taehyung giggles with his index finger to your lips. You grab his wrist and try to push him off, but he doesn’t budge. 

“Taehyung,” you whisper, but he pinches your top and bottom lips together to keep you quiet. It’s useless; his giggles are louder than you are.

“Listen,” Taehyung grins as he brings the blunt to his lips. Yours are still pinched together with his other hand. “I got tested before camp started, and I got no babies.” 

“That’s not–” 

“I know the test is for STIs, not babies, obviously!” Taehyung squawks, shoving you hard on the shoulder when you finally free yourself from him with a giggle, almost sending you flying off the rock. “I’m just saying I got neither.” 

“Alright, alright! I believe you. No STIs, no babies.” 

“Exactly.” Taehyung winks at you as he exhales a thick cloud of smoke. 

Since you’re sitting next to each other, it’s impossible to escape the shy embarrassment Taehyung triggers in you. He has no business looking as good as he does when he smokes. It’s his lips and eyes, you think, watching him take another hit. The perfect pink bow of his upper lip and the plushness of his bottom lip make his mouth look pretty when the smoke swirls out of it. 

When he looks at you through the smoke that surrounds you, his eyes are dark and lidded, a heavy gaze that weighs on you as you bring the blunt to your lips.

“Do you want me to roll another one?” Taehyung asks, his voice rough and thick, after a few more passes of the blunt between you. 

It doesn’t feel like you’ve been outside for a long time, but a quick glance at your phone tells you it’s way past time to return to your cabin. 

“We should head back, unfortunately,” you say with a sigh, “Waking up in the morning is going to fucking suck.” 

“There’s probably just this last hit left.” 

You wave away Taehyung’s offer of the blunt now smoked down to a pinched nub.

“I started it, so you have to end it,” Taehyung insists.

“Fine, come here.” 

You’ve shotgunned weed with someone before. Although people may call it a shotgun kiss, it isn’t a real kiss. The person who inhales the smoke is supposed to blow the smoke into the other person’s mouth. Sure, that requires getting close to the other person, but it doesn’t require mouth-to-mouth contact. Everyone knows this, especially someone who smokes as much as Taehyung does.

So why does Taehyung lean in too close to press his lips against yours when you blow the smoke into his mouth?

It’s quiet outside, just the chatter of insects and other forest dwellers breaking the still summer night, so you easily hear the breathy way Taehyung inhales the smoke you’ve passed to him. It’s a soft, gentle sound that makes your entire body tingle, starting where his plush lips connect with yours.

Have you wondered if Taehyung’s lips are as soft as they look? Of course, you have; who hasn’t? Taehyung is easily one of the most gorgeous people you’ve ever met, but he has always been just a camp friend.

You’ve known Taehyung for years, spending half of every summer together at this camp since you were kids, eventually becoming counselors once you aged out of the program. Despite living in different cities and attending different universities, you’ve maintained an unlikely friendship through camp. 

However, now you’re wondering if you’ve been reading your relationship all wrong.

Taehyung pulls away and turns his head to the side to exhale the smoke before cupping the back of your head and leaning in again. He’s pretty like this, with his eyes closed and expression relaxed.

“Is this okay?” he asks, and for some reason, it feels like the hottest thing anyone has ever said to you.

“Yeah,” your voice is hoarse when you respond, scratchy from the smoke making your throat raw and your mouth dry. You made the rookie mistake of not bringing anything to drink.

When Taehyung slips his tongue in your mouth, you can taste the smokiness of the blunt. He cups your face with both hands and deepens the kiss, tilting his head slightly and causing your noses to brush against each other. Making out while high comes with an indescribable pleasure, something airy and electrifying that washes over your entire body in waves. It isn’t like normal arousal that you feel throbbing from your core and spread throughout your body. Kissing Taehyung while high makes your entire body tremble.

You twist your fingers into the sides of his baggy t-shirt to have something to hold onto as he sucks your bottom lip into his mouth, eliciting a low groan from you. The old camp shirt is faded and soft from years of going through the wash. You’ve got an identical one in your dresser at the cabin.

“We have to go back,” you insist weakly once Taehyung releases your lip from between his teeth.

“I forgot.”

“Of course you did.”

Your laugh is full of anxiety as you look away from Taehyung’s heavy gaze. His eyes are blazing red. You wonder if he kissed you because he’s high and if he’s going to wake up in the morning and pretend it didn’t happen. Is that better than the alternative outcome where Taehyung is weirded out because, well, you’re you?

“Shut up,” Taehyung grumbles, but he wears a grin as he digs the toe of his hiking boot into the ground, twisting it to make sure the blunt is put out. 

“First one to the cabin gets to shower first,” he declares.

“Taehyung!” you hiss, but he’s already crashing through the forest brush with flailing arms.

It takes a few seconds for your brain to get in sync with your body, still foggy from weed and Taehyung’s kisses. You scramble to get up, having to adjust your pants with a tug to your crotch as you jog after him. Bottom growth is affirming, but it’s also a pain in the ass sometimes. You can’t imagine how cis men deal with all that.

Taking off in what you hope is the direction of the camp, you quickly realize there’s no way you’ll make it to the cabin before Taehyung. The forest floor is uneven, and you’re an idiot and didn’t wear your hiking boots. Your smooth-soled Converse slide against mossy rocks and get caught on raised tree roots, nearly sending you flying as you try to catch up with Taehyung.

When you finally reach the cabin, you’re wheezing, and your entire body is sticky with sweat. Taehyung is already in your bedroom, whistling as he rifles through the dresser like he’s having a grand time despite his hair looking like a rat’s nest and having welts on his legs from running through bushes in shorts.

“Took you long enough,” he grins as you stomp through the front door and head straight to the bedroom.

The cabin is small, with a living room big enough for a couch and a coffee table, a small kitchenette off to the side, and a door to the bedroom you’re sharing with Taehyung. You each have a twin-sized bed that sits across from the other in the small room, and you share a large dresser placed in between your beds against the back wall. On the opposite side of the room is the door to the bathroom. Everything is a tight fit, but you don’t mind. The two of you are hardly ever in the cabin anyway. Being a counselor requires long hours full of activities, meaning you’re only in your cabin to sleep unless you have an off day.

“I’m gonna go enjoy a nice, warm shower now.” Taehyung rubs his victory in your face, his tongue pressed to the inside of his cheek, and his eyes glittering like fire embers in the cabin’s pale yellow lighting.

“Dude, fuck off,” you give him your middle finger as he shuts the bathroom door with a cackle.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take long for Taehyung to finish showering. You trade places silently, your red eyes avoiding Taehyung’s because the time you had alone made you paranoid about what happened in the woods.

The paranoia only gets worse while you’re in the shower. There’s no need to scrub yourself with your washcloth so aggressively, but you feel like your entire body is crawling. It isn’t the discomfort you once felt when you looked at your naked body. It’s been a while since you felt discomfort when touching your chest or washing between your legs. No, this feeling you’re experiencing now is something different. Rather than feeling the urge to hide, you want to be seen. You want to be seen by Taehyung, and you don’t know what to do with that desire.

Showering doesn’t calm the need pulsing through your body. You feel a little less high, but you’re still buzzing with electricity, still incredibly sensitive as you dry yourself with a fluffy towel. With your brain still floating in the clouds, you almost think you’re hallucinating the slow opening of the bathroom door. Quickly, you wrap your towel around your hips and stare at Taehyung, whose head pokes through the door crack.

“Hellooo,” Taehyung drags out the word, low and slow, as his eyes sweep over your body.

He’s blatantly checking you out, and you feel your cheeks heat up from arousal or shame; you’re not sure which. You may not experience dysphoria anymore, but that doesn’t mean you’re running around shirtless, sporting scars where most guys’ pecs end. It was never “okay” to be shirtless with the chest you had before; it’s taking a while to feel “okay” doing it now.

You take a deep breath and remind yourself that Taehyung has never cared. He watched you blossom for over a decade as you shaped yourself into your most authentic form, and he kept up with every change, no matter how different things were from the summer before.

“Do you need something or…?”

Blinking, Taehyung’s face turns pink, and he shakes his head.

“No. Well, I mean, sort of?”

Taehyung laughs at himself, and you can’t help but laugh, too, because who can hear Taehyung laugh and not want to experience that same joy, even if it’s twinged with nervousness?

“What do you sort of need?” you finally ask with a grin, that shared joy warming your chest.

“Can I come in?”

“You’re already halfway there.”

With a cheeky grin, Taehyung slips into the bathroom and closes the door so you’ll stay warm. He’s wearing loose boxers and a tank shirt because the cabin’s lack of central air conditioning makes it hot at night. He’s cute like this, soft and domestic.

“Did you like it?” Taehyung keeps his hand on the doorknob as though preparing to leave, but his voice is steady when he asks the question.

“Like what?”

You know what. Taehyung knows you know what.

He clarifies anyway.

“When I kissed you, did you like it?” Taehyung switches between focusing on your eyes and your mouth. “Because… I want to do it again.”

It only takes a slight nod for Taehyung to crowd you against the bathroom counter. The kiss feels confident this time, no longer an accident or hesitant test ride. Taehyung holds your jaw to tilt your head up and kisses you hard enough to leave you breathless. You noisily inhale whenever he lets you.

“I didn’t want to wait,” Taehyung explains against your lips while you moan against his.

“For what?”

“You to finish showering.” Taehyung’s free hand runs down your side to squeeze your hip, part of his hand slipping under your towel. “Is this okay?”

You don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you let him unwrap your towel and drop it on the slippery tile floor. Maybe it’s the weed making you feel reckless, letting this boy see you in a way you haven’t let a boy see you since you started your transition. Maybe it’s just because it’s Taehyung.

“You, too,” you groan when you feel Taehyung’s clothed cock press against your thigh.

Taehyung doesn’t need to be told twice, reaching over his shoulder to pull his shirt over his head by grabbing the back. Once he’s shirtless, his mouth finds your jaw, kissing across to the sensitive spot just below your ear while you tug down his boxers so he can kick them off.

Beneath the arousal building inside of you are nerves you can’t seem to shake. They’re making it difficult to concentrate on how fantastic it feels to have Taehyung’s soft lips kissing and sucking your neck. All you can think about is how you’re afraid that Taehyung will freak out, that he keeps forgetting, and how it feels nice when he forgets when you’re talking about guy stuff, but it’ll feel devastating when he realizes he has forgotten now.

Slowly, Taehyung’s fingertips skirt your torso, creeping down your side to swipe over your waist and trail along the crease where your hip meets your thigh. You hold your breath as he ventures further, eventually shooting your hands out to squeeze his biceps when his fingers dip into your hole to gather your arousal and drag it upward.

“Can I suck your cock?” Taehyung breathes, hot and ragged, against the curve of your ear.

Jolting back, you stare at him with wide eyes and feel your heart flutter painfully in your chest because you still haven’t started breathing again.

“W-What, what did you say?” you stammer, holding Taehyung’s red, lusty gaze.

“Can I suck your cock? I want to suck you off.”

Taehyung says it so simply, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. He slid his fingers through your arousal and didn’t refer to it as your pussy or clit, as if he already knew those words would make you feel disgusting.

“You, how did you know… why did you call it that?”

Scrunching his eyebrows and frowning slightly, Taehyung pulls his hand from in between your legs.

“Uhh… you always call it your dick when we’re talking about stuff with the guys?” There’s a panicked edge to Taehyung’s voice, each sentence coming out like a hesitant question. “But, uh, I feel like most of society agrees that dick isn’t really sexy, so… I thought cock would sound better…”

When you don’t respond, Taehyung’s face shifts from pale with panic to bright red with embarrassment.

“Shit, should I not have said that? Should I have asked first? I’m sorry I—”

You kiss away Taehyung’s embarrassed babbling, your fingers dug into his hair, and your body pressed flush against his. His hands curve around to hold your lower back and pull you closer as if it’s even possible. You want him to try, to mold you into him.

“Thank you,” you whisper. 

When Taehyung smiles, his teeth press against your bottom lip.

“You don’t need to thank me. I just wanna make you feel good. Will you let me?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

You bite your bottom lip and squeeze the edge of the counter on either side of your waist as you watch Taehyung get on his knees. The bath mat protects his knees from the hard tile when he kneels in front of you.

“You’re so pretty,” Taehyung says softly as he rubs his hands up and down the inside of your thighs with slight pressure to push them apart a little bit more, “Pretty boy.”

It’s hot watching Taehyung lick the tip of your cock, the hormones you’ve been on making it stick out beyond your folds. Taehyung is gentle when he presses your lower abdomen with his palm and uses his fingers to pull your lips back slightly to expose more of you. He gets you nice and wet before he wraps his lips around your cock, suckling it and flicking it with the tip of his tongue.

“Oh fuck,” you moan, grabbing Taehyung’s head with one hand so you can run your fingers through his bangs and push them away from his face to see his eyes better.

Taehyung hums in response to your moans, and you feel the vibration rumble through your groin. He’s skillful as he licks and swirls your cock with his tongue and keeps a tight suction around it with his lips and hollowed cheeks.

For a moment, you tip your head back and try to regulate your breathing because how is Taehyung about to make you cum already, just from his mouth? Sure, your body has been more sensitive since you started your hormone therapy, but fuck.

To make matters worse, when you look back down, you notice that Taehyung’s free hand is wrapped around his cock. He pumps his cock at the same rhythm as he begins to bob his head as if he’s sucking even more of you than there really is. You can say, without a doubt, that no one has ever tried to affirm you and make you feel as complete during sex as Taehyung is.

“Fuck, yeah, Taehyung,” you adjust your grip on Taehyung’s hair and start guiding his movements, pulling him up and down by his hair, “Just like that, shit, your mouth feels so fucking good.”

You aren’t pulling his hair hard; you’re really only following the pace he’s already established, but it feels good. It must feel good for Taehyung, too, because he whimpers and jerks off faster. His body trembles just like yours does, and it doesn’t take long for both of you to be panting and frantic.

“Gonna cum, fuck, fuck.”

You squeeze Taehyung’s hair and the edge of the counter as you buck your hips, coming right as Taehyung adjusts his angle to lap at the gush of arousal at your hole, painting his mouth and chin.

“God, you’re so hot, you have no fucking idea,” Taehyung groans into the inside of your thigh, where he nuzzles his face.

His breath is hot and wet as he pants, trembling for a few seconds longer before he finally cums, too. Some of it leaks between his fingers and lands on the inside of your leg, but you don’t care; you just caress his hair from his face while he breathes slowly to calm himself down.

With trembling legs, you twist around to collapse onto the closed lid of the toilet, unable to stand any longer. Your head feels spacey and throbs, likely because you’d been holding your breath too much. It’s okay, though. It makes your body feel all warm and jiggly.

“We have to shower again,” Taehyung says quietly.

He looks just as fucked out as you feel, his eyes wide and staring out into the void as he continues trying to relax his shuddery breath. You can’t help but laugh, throwing your head back and letting it out, like whatever other pent-up energy you had left over after you came needs to escape somehow.

“Yeah, we do,” you wheeze even harder once Taehyung’s face cracks into a boxy smile, and he starts laughing, too.

“I got cum all over the floor,” Taehyung cackles, falling back on his bare ass and holding up his cum-covered hand.

You wipe the tears collecting in the corners of your eyes and shake your head. “That is something I don’t envy.”

“It’s so fucking inconvenient!”

Taehyung grins up at you with crinkled eyes, and you don’t know why you were so nervous before. He’s so perfect it makes your heart hurt.

“Next time, I’ll be the one to swallow,” you promise slyly, pleased when Taehyung lets out a weak moan in response.

“Bro, don’t do this to me,” Taehyung throws his head back and whines at the ceiling. "I’m gonna fall in love with you if you’re not careful.”

Grinning, you shrug. Tonight has been pretty reckless; there’s no use in being careful now.

Disclaimer: All my writing is fictional and for entertainment purposes only. None of these characters are meant to actually represent the real people mentioned in the stories. 

All rights reserved © @gimmethatagustd​ - Do not copy, repost, modify, or translate any of my writing. Do not use my writing for any AI purposes whatsoever. Do not use my fics for anything aside from reading and commenting on them. My fics will only be posted on this Tumblr and on AO3 (gimmethatagustd & daddytaehyungie).

[kaelidascope]

Fandom and LGBTQ Hostility and My Experiences Trying to Exist in Both Spaces Online

I came into these spaces with a very strict rule that I would not react or do anything cancel-worthy out of an overabundance of caution. Digital footprints are dangerous. The things you say online will follow you around forever. I know that first hand. I’ve bottled up and stayed silent about a lot of things I’ve either witnessed first-hand or experienced because I was trying to maintain a clean online persona. I’m not an ‘airing out dirty laundry’ type person. 

In light of recent events however, it’s gotten so bad that I can no longer sit here and not say something about how I feel. I’m disappointed and frustrated with the experiences I’ve had both in fandom and LGBTQ+ spaces and I can’t be complacent. I’m tired of getting treated like this, I’m fed up and I’m not going to put up with it anymore. I feel it’s important I voice what I’ve been watching and what’s happened and how I’m not going to tolerate it anymore by calling it out first hand. 

This is a two-topic rant. They overlap in some instances, but it directly has to do with how fandoms behave in general towards each other on Twitter and Tumblr, and also how absolutely hostile LGBTQ+ individuals are nowadays to each other on the same platforms. 

I come from a different generation and a different social media platform. I wasn’t on Twitter and Tumblr until last year. I’m not dismissing the fact that I may have missed out on decades worth of culture and social expectation. The places where I come from aren’t exactly fantastic either, but at least here, more queer people are interacting with each other with shared interests much more widely than in places like DeviantArt. The amount of culture and information I’ve absorbed in one year is more than I ever had within the past twenty years. It should be a good thing, and I’m disappointed that it wasn’t. 

This is not the way I wanted to come out online to anyone. I’ve been figuring out where I sit on the gender and sexuality spectrum for a while now. I will not document a specific timeline for anyone because that’s nobody’s business but my own. Within the last year, I took a massive stride forward in exploring things I legally didn’t think I was allowed to. I expected backlash from cishets and the usual thing I see LGBTQ+ folks write essays over, about how the world hates us, but at least we have each other. Shockingly, the backlash didn’t come from straight people. It came from other queers. 

I am 27 years old and I am entirely self-sufficient. I’m mixed Puerto Rican living in a red state. English wasn’t even my first language. I don’t have a network, so I’m teaching myself these things. I'm asking questions. I'm reading materials and expressions of self-experience and self-identity through fanworks and other autobiographical content. I'm actively trying to seek community and support through transgender and non-binary individuals with shared interests and so far all I've been met with is hostility and assumptions. So much so that I've now been made to feel like I'm on a timeline to figure it out so I can have a well-practiced, short introduction to copy and paste to every person who comes across me. And the only reason I even need one is so that they can make the decision to pass judgement over whether or not I'm allowed to speak, write, draw, wear, act, breathe the things I do. I'm disappointed. I'm anxious. I honestly feel more shoved into the closet now than I ever did before and I shouldn't be. Nobody should be treated this way when trying to figure out who they are. I probably won't even get an apology for the things that were said to me, either. I pride myself on the extraordinary caution I take to be politically correct, vetted through reputable sources, and as close to authentic as possible. And yet somehow I’m still getting called things like terf, transmisogynistic, triggering, when I’m fucking trans myself and all of my content gets vetted/REQUESTED by trans individuals. I get promised up and down that people are kind and welcoming in these sorts of spaces and honey, they aren’t. The people you choose to be friends with aren't as inclusive and friendly as you think they are. You don’t even know me and what body parts I have. The fact that you need to know in order to decide whether or not to treat me with respect is telling of an internal issue that has nothing to do with me. 

I have no reference point. I live in a place where laws ban anything gender and trans. I have no local resources or community. I've barely met any LGBTQ people in person. If I have, they never came out publicly. Most of my queer exposure has been online, and the fact that I've seen nothing but angry, mean, exclusive and discriminating behavior without any sort of reasoning why other than selfish defensiveness, I don't know where else I'm supposed to go for support. Something a lot of you guys need to take into retrospect is anyone who identifies as LGBTQ gets shot where I live. We have sundown towns here. If you don’t even know what that is, good, but also that’s telling of your privilege that you need to consider when talking to others not from blue states. I didn’t grow up in an environment where we had these highly liberal culture points and the word ‘gay’ was never allowed to be said out loud. We did not have gay clubs in school. I'm about as fucking late to this as you possibly can get. The only reason I know anything about our history, representation, and barely anything about what's socially acceptable and what's not, is because of the internet. So many of you had the privilege of being exposed to this information as young as under the age of 10. I didn’t. Sue me for not immediately knowing what every gender label means right off the bat. Half that stuff isn’t even legal here. 

I can't believe it's boiled down to the fact that I have to somehow justify my existence on this Earth and give an explanation that fits into predetermined boxes just to do anything to engage with other people. I have no time or space to figure it out. I’m disorganized and overwhelmed because I can’t ask questions about ‘can butches do this?’ ‘How versatile is transmasc/transfem?’ ‘Am I more genderqueer or do I fit under the trans umbrella?’ Gender and identity is fluid and ever changing. I have actually seen people harp and attack individuals for "defaulting" or "detransitioning" when they change their mind after giving this big coming out speech. It’s like support on these platforms is entirely conditional and a one-time thing. Y'all really expect people to wear the first style of shirt they buy for the rest of their life? Are we not allowed to do anything unless we know for sure? How’s college working out for you, for those who believe this mindset?

The vocally aggressive ones who use big words that contradict their statements can do, say, and be whatever they want.  But people like me can't. The ones who have to straight pass in public to keep their jobs and maintain their life safely. Some of us have been on our own since 19 with no family support. Consider the environment someone lives in before assigning your harsh assumptions. I can’t just change myself on a whim without doing significant damage control. Half the jobs I work for don’t even allow unnatural hair colors. If we list our pronouns as anything other than our assigned sex at birth, it causes legality issues with taxes. The way I have to navigate how to explore my identity and also keep a roof over my head and my bills paid may seem highly conservative to most. It’s in no way shape or form meant to reflect disrespect on how others live and express themselves. I am doing the best with the environment I have. The way I do things is not meant to be read as a message of ‘you’re doing it wrong because you’re not doing it the way I do.’ None of us are wrong. That should not be the subliminal message here. 

You know someone actually challenged me on that? Saying I was being harmful for purposefully straight presenting in public? Please research your country and state specific laws before you say that to me. If I could afford to live somewhere safer and queer-friendly, this conversation would be different. I am working on getting the fuck out of this state. But I don’t have a partner or parents money to default on. I’m doing this by myself. It’s not impossible, just a slow process. 

I'm disappointed and fed up. I've reached my limit, and I don't really care anymore if someone uses this essay to try and cancel me 5 or 10 years from now when the world goes through another gender renaissance of terms and identities. I will not put up with being treated like this when you refuse to listen to anyone else other than the sound of your own voice. I’m trying my best to learn, adapt, and express myself. I do not need to be lectured or be called derogatory things just because you think I’m coming from a malicious place.  

It’s not just about the hostility and gate-keeping behavior exhibited in online queer spaces. The same exact thing happens in fandom spaces too. People get pissy about queer headcanons and presentations so much to the point of taking it upon themselves to police the fandom and scrub it clean of “impurities.” I’ve watched y’all go through people's social media pages for any type of ammunition for justification of a personal grievance. It shocks me how much hyperfixation gets put on specific and morally harmless things when there are people out there writing diabolical shit way worse than what I have to offer. And y’all happily support them too but bark at me about what I make cus that author fits your social criteria and you assumed I didn’t. Don't think I'm ignorant to every single scrap of hate mail and harassment I've gotten over the past year and a half in my inboxes. Including the passive aggressive posts about my work, vague tweets, and discussions about me in discord servers. Over what? Have you actually read my work? If it’s actually as problematic as you say it is, provide me with a modern and unbiased example why this particular scene and execution is harmful. And not because you got triggered or disliked the kink, or read the summary/tags and assumed it was something it’s not. I don’t know how much more caution tape, massive warnings, obvious clear-cut tags (that were provided to me by queer individuals to PUT on there in the first place) out of insane amounts of caution I can do. I have always been willing to provide spoilers and explicit details in case someone is unsure how they’ll be affected by something I make. If you already don’t like it based on my warnings, that’s always been more than okay! My work is not for everyone. I’m getting tired of politely and respectfully saying please move on, because the message seems to be getting lost in translation. So let me be clear; 

Get off my pages if you don’t like what I make. It’s not for you. It will never be for you. Dead dove. DO NOT EAT. PREFERRED DEMOGRAPHIC 25+ ADULT CONTENT RATED E FOR EXPLICIT. I can recommend so many other fantastic creators with better suited content for you! If I could hide my content behind a roped off section deliberately keeping you from seeing it, I would. BLOCK ME. 

If your response to this section is ‘well then just don’t write it’. Honey, there’s people out here in the RWBY fandom writing trans incest actively commenting on all your shit and you respond back. A magic grimm-goo strap and monster smut featuring a transfem character (again, requested by literally 3 trans people and WRITTEN by one) should be the least of your worries. 

I have actively chosen not to address the harassment and hate mail, because it's sad that half of you hate me so much you need to make a point of telling me so regularly. I sincerely hope moving on with your lives will grant you peace of mind. Truly.

This is why I barely interact with anyone. Nothing but hostility, harassment, and expectation to behave in ways I cannot emotionally commit to. I am exhausted, uninspired, and have such a bad taste in my mouth it's proving extremely difficult to want to do anything creative. It’s been worse with my recent exploration of my gender identity. Opening one door to write about certain things somehow, miraculously, closes ones I previously existed in. I’m practically getting kicked out if I’m not 100% one way or another. I don’t go out of my way to shove my content down your throats. Why you feel the need to come to me and tell me you dislike my existence because you read it, despite me stating this is not for everyone and probably not for you, doesn’t have anything to do with me. Idk what else I can do. Disappear off the face of the planet, I guess. That seems to be what the overall solution is when y’all find something you don’t like. I can't believe I witnessed grown adults in their mid twenties with self-proclaimed senses of rightness start a trend on Twitter to go through people's mutuals and their likes to see if they’re socially acceptable in Fandom spaces or not. That was fucking ridiculous. And especially not fair to those who had their private accounts leaked and put on blast when it was already behind an vetted follower wall. Believe it or not, people draw weird, lewd, diabolical shit. They’re actually being responsible by putting it behind a paywall, or some type of ‘proof of age before following’ requirement. It falls on the people who go on there, take screenshots, and post them publicly for minors and non-consenting individuals to see without filters what was previously hidden. It’s irresponsible and immature. 

For fear of getting canceled by the Fandom, I moved all 600+ accounts I was following onto a private alt. I don't interact with my main anymore. I went so far into hiding and didn’t dare share anything about liking content made by people I wasn’t allowed to like, because that’s how cruel it is out here. It's honestly stupid I even felt like I had to do that. For what? People glazed over the brief moment of drama within a few weeks and went right back to posting the same shit they always have. They find new things to gossip about on their privs. New enemies to cancel on Twitter. New things to deem problematic and attack. 

I will be heard with this letter. I don’t care to be associated with anyone who treats people like this. I don’t believe in it, I won’t support it, and I’d rather have a small circle of people who won’t be rude or attack other people for existing. I’m not going to sit here and take the abuse any longer. Leave me in peace. There is no reason any of this should be happening. 

This is not meant to undermine the support I have gotten from the few who know what I'm going through and have given me the space to figure it out. I appreciate every question answered and insight provided as much as your abilities allow. I'm so grateful for it. I just wish it wasn't 2 people while everyone else is an asshole.

[memory-and-sky]

hobie x male reader """""""""dating"""""""" hcs?

okay this is something i can work on and get done relatively quickly. THANK YOU FOR THIS ANON! to everyone who’s sent in asks for fics, they are being worked on, i swear🙏 hope you like this though!

word count: i dunno, it’s a good chunk of headcanons

containing: explicit mention of homophobia, brief description of injury via fighting, small small small sexual reference, hobie brown x m!reader, could be cis or trans but i wrote this with cis males in mind

the rest of the headcanons are under the cut!

“dating” headcanons

hobie brown x male!reader

since Hobie lives in the 70s in Britain, gay rights weren’t really…. y’know, the best.

for your safety and his, the most he’d do in public is holding your hand. and even that was a big sign of rebellion. holding hands with a person of the same sex? how scandalous!

anyway, while holding your hand, he’d love to put both your hands in his pocket, especially if you run cold (like me :P).

he’d totally be the type to rub his thumb slowly on your palm, too.

Hobie knows a lot of people, especially in the queer and punk scenes. he gets invited to a lot of house parties, and feels safer to put your relationship on display more then, but he’s definitely not over the top with it.

a simple arm over the shoulder, around your waist, or a hand in the back pocket of your jeans, though he doesn’t need PDA to show your relationship off.

“Have ya seen this new patch on the ol’ battle jacket? Or this pin? Yeah, my lovely boyfriend made ‘em fo’ me. Gorgeous, innit?” [speaking to a random friend]

“Have ya had the pleasure of meetin’ my boyfriend yet?”

“I thought you said you hated labels…?”

“Mmh, (y/n)’s influential like tha’. Clearly ya haven’t met ‘em.” He’d say, undoubtedly with a smirk plastered on his face.

i really don’t think Hobie would get particularly jealous over you.

of course he loves you with all his little gay heart, but he doesn’t feel insecure or get upset at you or anything if you talk (or flirt) with another guy (as long as you communicate). if anyone is flirting with you and you seem really disinterested, he’ll totally intervene.

maybe hold you in a way that makes it clear you’re together, or explicitly tell the dude that you’re not interested.

but he doesn’t like treating you like an object he ‘owns’ at all, it’s why he’s pretty hesitant to slap the ‘boyfriend’ label down on your relationship right away.

and the 70s were a sexual revolution! revolting against gender norms and relationship norms, stuff like that.

if anybody ever dared ask you two ‘so who’s the man and the woman in the relationship?’ or ‘who’s the top and who’s the bottom?’ Hobie would be dreadfully disgusted and educate them immediately.

speaking of sexual revolution and whatnot, Hobie would be down for polyamory if you were.

you two have a very good line of communication, and if you wanted to open your relationship and communicated that to him, he’d be fine with it.

you’re so great, he gets how other guys might fall in love with you, too.

Hobie would give the best gifts, try and change my mind. whether it’s for your anniversary, birthday, or just a random gift, they’re always handmade.

maybe he’ll make you a piece of clothing like a shirt, hand-pick a bouquet for you, or even customizing/fixing one of your old clothing pieces with a bit of added Hobie flair.

Even small things, like a charm, pin, or patch have so much love put into them because he loves you!

touching on my first point again, homophobia was very present outside of the queer/punk scene, even in some aspects of the punk community he didn’t feel welcome at all.

usually, he’d tell people where to shove their opinion, but sometimes he’d feel completely unsafe to be himself around anyone.

yeah, he’s spider-man, but he’s also a very young adult. he could fight people, and he definitely used to, but he hated coming home to you being worried sick about all the horrible bruises, cuts, and scrapes on him.

back to the lighthearted stuff, he’s definitely the type of guy to cook for you.

doesn’t matter what meal it is, he’s gonna make it for you if he has the chance to. and he actually makes good food, despite living in Britain his whole life.

if you’ve got issues with trying new foods, his place will always be stocked full with your safe foods no matter what.

you’ll eat together, and he’ll gaze dreamily at you, wondering how he ever got so lucky to land such a stellar guy like you.

this man loves coming home after a long day, popping in a VCR for a movie of some sort (TV could be in your bedroom or living room, doesn’t matter), and just cuddling with you.

he doesn’t mind being either the big spoon or little spoon, but tends to like being big spoon cause he likes holding you close to him so much.

he’s very scrawny, but doesn’t mean he won’t love you all the same, and hold you tight.

one more thing, Hobie loves you above all else. he’ll protect you and fight for you anytime you need. when it comes to his partners, he does not play around!!

[scientia-rex]

If you don't mind, I saw your post about smoking while on hormones recently and I have a couple questions.

Obviously quiting smoking is better for you in general. But are the adverse effects while on hormones the same for testosterone and estrogen?

Secondly, is this mostly about the nicotine in cigarettes (generally what people mean when they say smoking) or is it about smoking anything at all (weed, vapes, nicotine vapes, etc)?

Thanks!

Good questions and unfortunately I have to say that we don’t have enough solid data for great answers on either.

Testosterone raises risk of heart attack or stroke, in part because it causes an increase in red blood cell production. You might be familiar with blood thinners that can be used to prevent heart attack or stroke; blood thickeners do the opposite. However, this data is nowhere near adequate in the transgender population. I cannot tell you much at all about how dose, method of delivery, duration of treatment, or T levels during treatment affect this long-term risk, especially over decades. The best response to this uncertainty is for trans men and transmasc people on T to protect their cardiac health from all other risks as much as possible.

Which then leads to the question of type of smoke. I would love to be able to offer you conclusive answers on that, but the Feds made it virtually impossible to study marijuana until a couple of years ago, so I can’t tell you whether marijuana is as dangerous as tobacco or not, or whether mode of intake matters. I can tell you that tobacco is bad but that people consistently underestimate the risks of nicotine by itself. Nicotine is the insecticide component of tobacco. It will cause your small blood vessels to contract, decreasing blood flow to critical areas of the body and heart. Nicotine impedes healing—smokers are notoriously bad at healing after surgery to the point where I know multiple surgeons who will literally do a blood test for nicotine metabolites before doing higher risk surgeries. They don’t trust patients to tell them whether they smoked, and they have reason to distrust. You want top or bottom surgery? Quit smoking. Now.

I had an attending once describing to me watching what happened to a woman who had fingers reattached. He warned her that if she ever smoked again, she would lose the fingers. She didn’t believe him and thought just smoking a little would be fine. The fingers necrosed—died—immediately, because those small blood vessels are critical to healing a process like a reattachment or transplant. So then she had open wounds with gangrenous fingers attached to them. Great.

We don’t have long-term health outcomes data on vapes yet but for my money they’re going to turn out to be really bad for you as well. Nicotine is a poison. Your lungs don’t love poison delivery by any mechanism. The combustion products of tobacco are also REALLY FUCKING BAD for creating cancerous mutations in your cells, but don’t inhale poison if you want to live a rewarding life where you get to enjoy doing things you want to do, like fucking. (Erections also depend on blood flow and healthy blood vessels. Treat yours with kindness.)

[rivetgoth]

I’ve definitely expressed this sentiment before more eloquently but oh my god can y’all stop conflating being a GNC trans man with being a pre/non-transitioning trans man who is perceived and treated as a gender conforming cis woman. I’m not in the business of invalidating identity and I don’t think there’s something wrong with presenting in such a way or whatever but it’s INSANE how often I see takes that are like “being a gnc trans man means nobody will ever see you as your actual gender and you’re doomed to be misgendered and invalidated forever“ with a billion notes when like. Dude I go out in club clothes like fishnets and short shorts and crop tops and a full face of makeup and I’m read as a man. I have had bouncers not believe my ID is really mine because I hadn’t changed it yet lol. Like I know it’s the hot word on here right now but I have been called a faggot like… in real life 😭 And I am immediately treated as an effeminate man even when I’m just in jeans and a button down. People read me as and presume me to be a queer man when I’m just in my work clothes. Like I’m not sure how to say this tactfully but it’s kinda insane to me to see how allergic trans internet is to suggesting that trans men are capable of actually passing as men without being some extreme caricature of masculinity and anything other than looking like FTM Arnold Schwarzenegger will get you instantly she/her’d. Like cis gay men are just privy to some special kind of gender nonconformity where they’re he/him’d in makeup but trans men will just never have that privilege. Hello.

[transmascissues]

I’ve been struggling for a long time (almost 5 years now) over whether or not I’m trans. At this point I’m think I might be, but I’m terrified of loosing all the stuff I love about womanhood. The friendships, the clothes, but mainly being able to call myself a lesbian.

I think I really need to confront my gender, but I don’t know if it’s worth loosing all of these things that mean the world to me, advice?

fun fact: you don’t have to lose any of those things to be trans!

your friendships don’t have to change. sure, if you get to a point where you pass as a guy / are seen as not-a-girl in some way, new people might treat you differently and approach friendship with you differently, but the friendships you already have won’t have to change at all. absolutely nothing about my friendships changed when i came out; there’s no way of being friends that’s exclusive to women. and if a friend does treat you differently just because you’re trans? that’s on them, and it honestly might be a sign that you’re better off without them anyway.

you can wear all the same clothes you do now. my wardrobe hasn’t changed at all since i came out. i’ve always chosen my clothes just based on what is most comfortable for me, so i’ve been perfectly happy keeping all of my old clothes. my body and the way other people see me were the things i felt the need to change, not my clothes. i might not have the most masculine wardrobe ever, but it’s what i’m comfortable in and that’s the important part. if anything, being trans just expanded my wardrobe instead of changing it — i kept wearing all the things i always liked, but i also started to look in the men’s section and found even more things that i like wearing.

and you don’t have to stop calling yourself a lesbian just because you’re trans. it’s one thing if being trans also means the label doesn’t feel like it fits anymore, but if it still feels right? you can keep using it as long as you like. nonbinary lesbians and transmasc lesbians and lesboys and trans men whose love for women still feels gay and people whose only remaining connection to womanhood is the fact that they’re lesbians and multigender people who are lesbians because of their womanhood while also being other genders and people whose genders are just butch or femme or dyke and nothing else all absolutely exist, as do trans guys who don’t personally call themselves lesbians anymore but remain part of the community because it still just feels like their home; you’d be far from the first person to transition while holding onto an identity that’s still meaningful to you, even if it sounds contradictory to other people.

i’ve gone through similar processes of trying to reconcile newly discovered parts of my identity with the parts i’d already accepted, and you’d be surprised how often the answer to the dilemma is just “i guess i’m both, unless/until i decide one of them doesn’t feel right anymore.” i don’t talk a lot about my specific identities on here but they’re full of so-called contradictions. the thing about queerness is that it’s never been about making our identities “make sense” or “sound right” to other people. queerness is automatically looked down on by most people as wrong or unnatural or confusing or just completely unintelligible, and the job of queer people is not to make them more intelligible but to embrace them despite the fact that most people think we’re ridiculous for doing so. the only person your identity has to feel right to is you; no one else matters.

any shift in identity is going to feel like a massive change when your old identity is one you lived in for a long time and grew attached to, but being a big change doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a loss. of course, if it feels right to let go of some of the old to make room for the new, do that, but never feel obligated to do so. if you aren’t ready to let go of something associated with your old identity yet, let those things stick around while you welcome the new stuff in and see how they get along. you aren’t on any kind of timeline; you can take the transition slow and only let go of things once you feel absolutely sure that they aren’t serving you anymore, even if that means never letting go of some of the things other people say you should want nothing to do with. some of us are happiest when we embrace identities and ways of moving through the world that make absolutely no sense to anyone but us.

so my advice is this: don’t run away from this. it’s not fair to yourself to live your entire life in a limbo space of perpetually agonizing over your identity but never doing anything about it. the best thing you can do is give yourself permission to explore these feelings in their entirety, rather than only focusing on the things they might take away from you. i know it’s scary, but i guarantee you’ll come out happier on the other side no matter what you end up identifying as. knowing more about how you want to be seen and how you want to live life is only going to help you be more satisfied with the life you’re living — you can’t be happy if you never give yourself the space to learn what being happy means for you.

if, at the end of it all, you do end up letting go of some of the things you feel attached to now, it’ll only be because you found something that makes you even happier and feels even more right. and if you don’t? you can live the rest of your life holding onto all of the things you love about womanhood without actually/entirely/only being a woman! there are no rules; gender and queerness have no limits except for the limits of how far you’re willing to go to truly know yourself.

[us-the-voices-and-more-voices-2]

hot take, omega verse is actually a really interesting and cool concept

it’s actually a really good idea but I only ever see smut and shit, like I know it’s inherently a smut concept but my goodness it’s such a good idea for portraying sexism and gender based and sex based discrimination and AAAAA

I really really love the idea so badly, but I just wish there was more original stories about how the world works and how beta’s work and all these things, there so much here and yet it’s underutilized!

I just want to see beta/beta and omega/omega and alpha/alpha and beta/alpha and beta/omega

like you literally have mad sex/gender 2.0 now with added genders and sexuality’s

like literally it’s such a gay idea and yet? Omega/omega and such DON’T EXIST???

like homophobia and transphobia 2.0

like ughghhghg, it’s such a good concept and idea I love it to bits. But I just wish there was more angsty social and societal stories.

like what is it like to be a trans beta?? Is there different customs for different omegaverse cultures???

are trans first sex people treated better than trans second sex people?

are same second sex relationships discriminated against?

I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.

uuhhuhuhuhuuhhuuhhhhhggghggh

[catboybiologist]

I'm trans! Here's a way-too-long ramble on my internal thoughts on that!

My other posts on this:

https://www.tumblr.com/catboybiologist/725852054829023232/im-going-to-document-some-things-about-my?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/catboybiologist/725851397783011328/the-short-answer-is-no-but-im-gonna-have-a?source=share

So yay I’m trans! Which like, is neither unexpected nor abnormal for the community I’ve fostered here, so I’m guessing most of y’all’s reactions is just a “hey cool”. But, you see the online side of me, not the irl side, so there’s still a lot of thoughts to sort out on my end. So I’m dumping a lot of thoughts here to sort all that out. And hoooly shit, it got very long, and I still feel like I have more to say… but yeah. If you wanna hear some perspectives on my relation to gender, transness, and femboy culture, read on!

I guess the best way I can think to style this is as an interview with an imaginary third person, sooo…. Bold text is questions I can imagine people having LOL

So what’s my own personal relationship with the term femboy, catboy, and gendered terminology in general? Is the name of your accounts gonna change?

Short answer, no. I like the name CatboyBiologist. “Catboy” itself is a term that is completely untethered from gender at this point to me. Tbqh, the “cat” part feels more wrong than the boy part- as time goes on, I’ve generally ditched the cat ears for most of my outfits as I take them a bit more seriously. Maybe that’ll change when my transition actually starts, but for now, CatboyBiologist stays, and the femboy related language stays in all of my own past posts (keyword, past- more on that in a bit).

I’m not gonna be updating my approach to pronouns. Any pronouns do just fine, I’m sending a vibe into the world and pronouns are my feedback as to what other people interpret that vibe is. Default to they/them if you don’t know what to do with that.

I will be updating my pinned post to link all of these posts, but mostly copy/paste the information from before. That might take a moment cuz I’m lazy, tbh.

And let’s get something else out of the way.

I’m not socially transitioning yet, and probably won’t for a while.

Which, I think leads to a lot of follow up:

Well, why not?

I present fully male and masculine on a day to day basis, and look the part too. Part of it is just this looks insecurity. The mask stays on in my pictures for a reason. Beyond just facial hair (which grows aggressively on me and always shows some shadow), my face looks pretty masculine overall. It takes time to look the way I do in my posts. I wanna give my face and body some time to change so I can look more femme in more casual ways before I present it to the world.

Beyond that, I’m also just worried about being “accepted” as femme straight off the bat. Implicitly, I know this will be easier if I already have some small amounts of physical feminization down my belt.

There’s two main environments that worry me: family, and professionally. Family is a weird hot mess grey area that is too personal to talk about here, but the professional atmosphere is certainly going to be a bit… weird. I live in an accepting geographic region, and around people who are very outspokenly trans supportive…. But most of whom are cishet and simply don’t have a lot of experience seeing or working around trans people. I’m more afraid of being seen as “trans first, biologist second” as far as my career is concerned, than I am about outright transphobia. I know this will never fully go away, and given that I’m 6’2”, I’ll probably never “fully” pass- but I’d at least like people to implicitly read my as femme on a gut level before I start changing how I present that way. One thing my irl femboy experience has shown me is that, even if people can “clock” you intellectually, the way their gut instinct reads you affects whether they treat you as masc or femme. I hope that makes sense on some level. Of course its always going to be an awkward shift, but I hope some time on HRT will make it less awkward.

I’ve come out to one person that doesn’t know about this online persona, or the depths of my queerness. They straight up told me they were shocked. They were incredibly supportive, but they told me they didn’t see it coming at all. And they already knew that I “crossdressed occasionally”. So that’s kinda what I’m working with here.

Essentially, I’m not actually truly “transitioning” in a real sense yet. More than that, I feel like I’m getting the ball rolling. If there’s anything I learned in my research, it’s that HRT takes a while, much longer than anyone expects (suppressing my rant about how the media cherrypicks people in early transition for trans representation and the effect that has on public perception). Two years is often cited as the “end” point, but based on both scientific and anecdotal accounts, that is wildly untrue and variable. I also know that the first changes onset quickly (skin and mood, most notably), but that overall body shape changes sometimes take a VERY long time to start and progress. So to be quite honest, I barely feel like I’m transitioning yet, I’m just laying groundwork for the future.

So yeah. I’m gonna be boymoding for a bit. Possibly a year or more. Even for the people who know, I’ve still asked them to address me as he/him or they/them, and use my masculine name for now (haven’t even really decided on a femme name yet, although I have ideas [open to suggestions as well]).

Wait, so why address it online at all?

Put simply, honesty. I’m displaying a lot of selfies and experimentation with my look here, and I want to make it abundantly clear what I’m doing to have an effect on that. People have asked me if I’m on HRT in comments before, and like, I’m not gonna lie about that. Might as well also make a shitpost, a data gathering post, and a too-long ramble about it as well (which you’re reading now!).

There are a LOT of body image issues in femboy spaces (and trans spaces too!), often among very young people. While I have no issue with people on HRT continuing to call themselves a femboy (more on that in a bit), I do think transparency on that matter is helpful for those body image issues.

So to make it abundantly clear: all of my selfies and pictures that I’m labeling and tagging as “femboy” are pre-HRT. In the future, everything I tag with “trans” is post-HRT. I still got 1-2 weeks before actually starting, and I’m still going to use the femboy tag for any outfits I post during that time. The moment an estradiol pill hits my mouth, though, new pics will use trans tags.

Posts that relate to discussion of the interplay of the communities, and how I view myself within them, I’ll tag with both.

Which leads to another follow up question. This one isn’t about me specifically, but it’s my hot take about a certain brand of trans discourse I’ve seen around (mostly on reddit tbh):

Why would someone who knows they’re mtf trans willingly call themselves a femboy and/or request people to “misgender” them?

So this is actually gonna be striking a nerve with me, and I know I’m gonna kinda be strawmanning here by arguing against the ghost of reddit comments past. I’m not gonna try to dig any of them up in the internet archive, but they are sentiments I’ve seen multiple times.

I’ve seen this question almost word for word in the comments of trans subreddits multiple times. Imma be blunt, and it’s maybe gonna sound a little mean. If this thought is going through your head, you’re likely way more sensitive and particular about labels than most people. And that’s okay! Ask people to address you how you want, you deserve that respect! But the real answer to this question is that many people simply don’t mind being called whatever label is most useful or familiar to themselves in various contexts.

The moment that it becomes completely unacceptable is when someone does actually change their pronouns, name, presentation, etc, and people still address them as “male” or “femboy”. That is completely the fuck out of line, and if you don’t agree, fuck off.

Why does this strike a little bit of a nerve with me? Well, the “conclusion” I saw reached in these trans spaces multiple times when the subject was brought up was annoying as hell. That conclusion was that the only or primary reason that people labeled themselves a femboy, even while on HRT… was to sell their onlyfans. My fucking god, seriously? This is just conservative rhetoric. Luckily, on tumblr, it seems that people are a lot more accepting towards people using whatever language they like to describe themselves, which I’ve enjoyed a lot.

I’ve also had a lot of hate towards “fencesitting” directed at me on reddit, from trans people, for calling myself a femboy. I can’t remember it verbatim, but I very distinctly recall getting a DM that went something like “I fucking hate femboys, just transition already. You’re making us (transfemmes) look bad.” So yeah. Bit of a sore spot.

Yadda yadda yadda the personal journey shit

If I can be real for a moment…. In an ideal world, I would still want to be a part time femboy. Even moreso than the sheer utility of it all (eg, enjoy cis male privilege when I want, but still get treated more femme in certain contexts), it feels almost more profound to fuck with gender norms without sitting on one side of the gender line or another. But I can’t really ignore what I’ve described as my “mental resting state”- a baseline crackle of dysphoria that fills the space in my head when there’s nothing else to fill it. It’s easily distracted, but its always there, and I can’t imagine living my life that way anymore.

I’ve pretty much known I was trans since I was about 12, and had a realization that puberty was just starting to hit me, and I hated it. I suppressed it deeply, for many, many reasons that I don’t think I want to share here. But it made a lot of other mental health struggles in my life a lot worse, even if I didn’t consciously acknowledge that’s what was happening. By the time I was willing to consciously acknowledge it, I realized that my dysphoria wasn’t so bad as to dive in right away. But, I made moves to stabilize my life overall, which have been massively beneficial to me in other ways as well.

During the pandemic, I found myself living alone for the first time ever. So during the pandemic, in one last ditch effort to try to convince myself I wasn’t trans, I delved into femboy aesthetics to try and “just be a feminine man”.

That failed.

So yeah, here I am. I have a wonderful queer community both irl and online, a meagre but stable income, health insurance that has great coverage for trans care, and accepting people around me in my life. It’s long overdue. Maybe I’ll beat myself up for waiting so long and masculinizing so much as a result, but I don’t think I really could have done it any other way.

This all said, I don’t actually really consider myself a woman yet. I’m sure many of you are aware of two different ways transfemmes view themselves(and trans people in general, but using a transfemme perspective here):

-Some view themselves as having always been girls or women, but took some time to realize it and make their body more comfortable for themselves with that information.

-Others view themselves as boys or men who made efforts to become women later.

I fall strongly in the second line of thinking for myself. For my own personal experiences, even though I have felt dysphoria for a long time, I don’t really think I’m “actually” a woman yet. I don’t know what my identity as a woman looks like yet. But I deeply want to discover and create who that person is, and there’s no way to do that without transitioning.

B but… BASIC BIOLOGY!!!!!

How many biology degrees do you have? I got a BS and an MS, and I’m working on my PhD. I’m sure you’ve brought a similar level of expertise to this discussion.

But seriously, I could genuinely write an entire fucking essay about how studying biology has influenced my views on this subject, but honestly, that’s an entirely different topic. But tl;dr is that bioessentialism is brainrot, and if someone tries to use essentialist language to “justify” someone’s transness (or gender in general)… well, I think they’re wrong. Plain and simple. We don’t say someone isn’t “really able to see” if they put glasses in front of their eyes.

I’m stopping myself before I write more here, because this warrants another post or even a fucking video essay, to be quite honest. But yeah. Biology based.

Conclusion?

Uhhhh… in conclusion, I’m not particular about language or pronouns you use for me, I’m making posts about it anyways to ensure honesty associated with my selfies, if you’re transphobic jump of the tallest bridge you can find. I think that about covers it.

[creekschaoscorner]

This is about two parts analysis and two parts personal connections, so bear with me here. The first half is talking about certain lines from Malevolent Part 43 through the perspective of a trans allegory, and the second half is the rest of my thoughts about the episode. This is gonna be long

SPOILERS FOR PART 43

“You cannot even admit it to yourself. Hell brings about the truth in people��… It’s who you are: A King. Such a being as yourself… playing human is only a facade.”

This whole section, where John is talking about regressing to his former ways in the Dark World, reminds me of how sometimes people are forced to de transition due to safety, peer pressure, or a variety of reasons. The hag’s response to this only emphasizes the parallel- treating it as though because John caved under immense duress this is the “truth” of him.

“From what you have told me, you are simply… (Momentary whispers.) Lost.”

The experience of being told that we’re just confused, just misguided, is something that I think many trans people can relate to. Especially autistic trans people.

“Perhaps it was affecting me, or… or I was meant to be back there…” “Ah. So there is hope for you, yet.”

There are times, when it’s hard to be completely happy with your transition. It can make you wonder if maybe you’re not really trans, if somehow you’re faking, or like you’re destined to be what you were? It’s a miserable feeling to have. But to have someone treat it as proof? As proof that you are still capable of being ‘saved’, because they are so sure they know you better than you know yourself? That’s something I think an unfortunate amount of people are familiar with.

“You introduced yourself as the King in Yellow. Did you not?”

Presenting as your AGAB temporarily for safety, job security, familial pressures, etc. is such a common phenomenon that ‘boymoding’ and ‘girlmoding’ are terms created to describe it. What the hag is doing here is reminiscent of someone taking that and using it against a person- claiming that because they had to present as their AGAB that means that *must* still be who they are. The parallel is continued with her insisting that John must still want the power that comes with the King in Yellow’s name (I know trans men who still use the women’s restroom, because they’d rather be misgendered than harassed).

“This role you’ve been playing. Your time pretending to care.” So many trans people- particularly nonbinary trans people- have been told that it’s a phase, something they’ll grow out of.

So many trans people- particularly nonbinary trans people- have been told that it’s a phase, something they’ll grow out of.

“You have decided to be something that robs the world of its King.”

Sounds so similar to ‘You’re robbing your parents of their son/daughter’. It’s a gut punch to hear, the idea that you somehow owe people to be something you’re not.

“I cannot… fit into your version of what I must be.”

As a gnc trans person, this one resonated with me. Even when it comes to the people who have been my biggest supporters, especially my mom, I can’t fit into their idea of what my gender should be. I just can’t. That doesn’t mean they don’t love me, and that doesn’t mean their support doesn’t matter, it just means I have to define myself on my own. That’s something John has come to terms with on his own, just like I have.

I am someone who has struggled for a long time with an often compulsive need to “be a good person”. It’s made me a pushover, it’s made me self-destructive, it’s made me miserable. The black and white morality that comes with being autistic doesn’t help. It’s impossible to be 100% good all the time. It’s impossible to 100% good in everyone’s eyes. Good, Evil, they’re all subjective- everyone contains multitudes. I contain multitudes. There was something deeply healing about hearing John call himself both.

I have struggled with the darkest parts of myself a lot, especially in recent times, and so has John. But the fact that I can be mean, or selfish, or petty- it doesn’t make me unworthy of love. It doesn’t make John unworthy of love. When I fuck up I still have to take accountability for it, I still want to strive to be better, but I am allowed to be complicated. I’m allowed to be messy. Hearing John acknowledge that about himself out loud felt like confirmation that I am allowed to acknowledge it about me as well. (I haven’t even murdered anyone, so if John can accept himself so can I). I don’t know it I completely agree on John’s outlook on life, but that’s okay. I don’t need to. It’s his own, and that’s all it needs to be.

It feels silly to say, but I feel like my relationship with John as a character has grown so much, especially with these past couple episodes. I like to joke about it a lot, but I really did not like John when I first started Malevolent. I thought he was a fantastic character, but I couldn’t stand him. His manipulation, the way he deflected blame, it got under my skin. My opinion on him had just as many ups and downs as Arthur’s did, if not more. One moment when I was live-blogging to my friends I’d be typing “JOHN STOP BEING A FUCKING DICK”, the next moment “guys I think John is growing on me”. But this episode made me really feel like for the first time, I really understand him. Like I’m seeing for the first time him as everything he is. And that’s really special to me, in a way that’s hard to describe.

And the hag. Oh, the hag. She’s everything I love in a villain, it’s like she was crafted to get under my skin. She’s a lot like the kind of villains I love to write, and I’ve gotta say, being on the opposite end- being the audience- and getting twisted in that manipulation? It was AWESOME. I am delighted to say that I got caught up in her story at first, that I almost lost sight of the goal like John did. She’s incredibly written and I feel like I understand her, and that just adds such an extra layer to her cruelty. There’s so much I want to say about her but I don’t even know how to put it into words. She’s a wonderfully written character and I’m going to be thinking about her for a while.

This episode was beautifully written and masterfully crafted, and has more than earned the praise it’s been given.