#I personally find myself in the same boat as many trans men

[c0rvidfagg0try]

Hmmm have to post this for clarification I think becuz ppl keep misconstruing me:

A) I think u can HC what u want no one’s stopping u (that doesn’t mean ppl can’t say things abt it)

B) HCing other versions (like a book version or whatnot) of a character that r not specifically canon to a certain sexuality/gender is fine

C) if u HC a character as multiple genders that include the canon gender, fine whatever idc

D) now when u completely erase said characters canon sexuality/gender (specifically if queer (or honestly if straight if that’s important to the character, like Tao in Heartstopper,etc.)) that’s when I start to have an issue. Representation is so important to ppl and erasing that for ur fic or art or whatever is hurtful to ppl. Esp w/ underrepresented genders and sexualities. I am begging u to think abt how it might hurt ppl when u do this okay? Imagine if u HCed a canonically bi character as gay?? It’s not cool! Why is that different for gender? I understand gender is fluid and whatnot but these r characters, and representation of specific identities is important

Anyway blah blah blah what do I know I’m a stupid kid ig

[queer-advice-hotline]

To the anon who is struggling with their faith and identity, hi. I get you. I’m in the same boat in a lot of ways. (Discussion of anti-science rhetoric, lgbt-phobia, and conservative Christian stuff for anyone who doesn’t wanna read that)

I was raised Christian, and taught that evolution and the Big Bang were false. I was taught that dinosaurs were real and the earth was billions of years old, but we were still creationists.

I was also taught that being gay or trans was sinful and that gay marriage shouldn’t be legalized. My family was never outright hostile (my uncle is gay and we always loved him, even though “we just don’t agree with his decision” ugh), but clearly bigoted.

I was also raised in baptist churches, who absolutely love to quote the same three verses over and over in order to tell women (like myself) that our whole purpose is to shut up and bear children and take care of the house, that we are to obey our fathers and husbands in everything and cannot teach men at all. Fortunately my parents at least hated that BS, and after every sermon regarding that point my mom would lecture us that that was the only thing she disagreed with with our church, and that me and my sisters could be whatever we wanted to be. She continually pointed out the instances that contradicted what our churches had said about women’s roles.

When I went to college, I made friends, met people with wildly different backgrounds, and began to form my own opinions. I am a supporter of lgbt rights (I believe that there is strong evidence that wording was changed to condemn homosexuality, and that even if it’s a sin, we are called to love each other first and foremost, and that we cannot force our religious beliefs upon anyone else, and that respecting someone’s sexuality and pronouns is just basic fucking courtesy. I’ve even convinced my trump-supporting grandparents to use peoples preferred pronouns and respect gay marriages, with the logic that “you believe it’s sinful, but they don’t, and you can’t force your religious perspective on them. There is nothing loving about making them uncomfortable just because you disagree.”

I also strongly believe in scientific theories like evolution and the Big Bang. There’s plenty of evidence, and if you read genesis with fresh eyes it’s pretty clear to me it’s highly symbolic, not literal. I can believe God created the universe and that he did so through the Big Bang. I can believe God created humans in his image through the process of evolution.

As I was expanding and changing my worldview, I also realized that I was aroace. I’ve never been interested in dating, I don’t find men good looking at all, and my appreciation for women’s beauty is more similar to how someone would appreciate a painting, not someone they want to date or marry or have sex with.

And I don’t believe it’s a problem for me to stay single either. When I told my mom she immediately told me that the Bible says that singleness is, for many, a gift, and only a different path, not a wrong one.

I often don’t know what God’s intention is, but I do know that Christians are called to be the light of the world. So I will always be kind and loving, because that is how you be a light. I always pray for better understanding of how I should do things, but in the end the most important thing is to be kind.

Sorry if that was rambly, I just wanted to let you know that you aren’t alone in these struggles, and that you can believe different things without being a bad person. Personally, my family doesn’t know that I’m now fairly liberal and that I believe in evolution and the Big Bang and such, but I’m okay with that. If they find out, I’ll tell them more or less what I just said here. Best of luck to you and to anyone else in a similar situation 💛

Thanks for sharing, I’m sure this will be helpful for a lot of people.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

I agree with your stance on gender dysphoria, but I still have questions. What sources made you conclude that gender dysphoria is a mental illness? You can't say common sense, we know that already. Furthermore, I believe that gender dysphoria is primarily an effect of trans social contagion. However, do you genuinely think there isn't a single person out there with genuine dysphoria that isn't a result of social contagion?

I never said all gender dysphoria is a social contagion. Dysphoria and dysmorphia are both, as far as we can tell in the inexact field of psychology, real things. You can find definitions for both in several different medical sources. I'm willing to believe those conditions exist unless some evidence comes to light to show otherwise. And that's part of the problem as a whole, because those studies just aren't being done. Especially when it comes to gender dysphoria. There's too much money and ideology tied up in modern gender "studies" and "treatment" for anyone to want to risk rocking the boat by accidentally discovering that gender dysphoria is caused by a rare circumstance during pregnancy or, even worse, that it doesn't exist at all as currently defined. I don't personally think that last is true, mind. I do believe gender dysphoria exists. But for the most part, that's what it is. A belief. I'm choosing to trust the untrustworthy field of psychology and the people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria that the condition is real and people have it.

That said, I also think a lot of people who currently say they're trans these days, especially if they're underage and even more especially if they're little children, are the victim of either grooming or social contagion. I have seen nothing to show me that trans kids exist and there are generations of studies and medical proof of the effects of puberty. Kids going through puberty, especially young girls, often experience dysmorphia over their changing bodies. Kids going through puberty are maturing rapidly from children to adults and are being inundated with hormones and it's a very confusing time. They often don't know who they are as people and have to navigate the often turbulent seas of self-identity for the very first time. Kids in that situation are very open to manipulation, self-manipulation very much included. I can think of at least three things about myself that I hated when I was going through puberty that a trusted adult or group of friends could have used to convince me I was trans if they wanted to. Just look at how many young girls go on birth control to stop or regulate their periods. Do you seriously think it would be hard to convince those same girls that they could avoid the other unpleasant aspects of becoming a woman if they became a man instead? Especially with how prevalent the idea is that men are privileged and woman face a life of discrimination and abuse? What about young gay boys who just want to be attractive to their straight crushes? How hard would it be to convince them they're better off as a girl? There are so many alternative explanations for the sudden explosion of "trans kids" other than "they all have gender dysphoria and they all need to transition as soon as possible" but you're not allowed to entertain them at all.

Of course there's social contagion. But that doesn't mean every adult with dysphoria is "contaminated".

[genderqueerdykes]

okay so i've read some of the asks you got recently and i think i finally have words for this. i've been realising that i'm probably a genderqueer trans guy and i really want to go on t. most of the effects would be really great to have and the stuff i don't actively want wouldn't make me feel worse than not doing hrt. but i don't really want to get top surgery. i don't like my chest much but it's okay and i can deal with it. it's mostly social dysphoria anyway. and i don't want to/can't have surgery for personal reasons. i feel a bit weird for this? i know a bunch of people who do top surgery and no hrt but i rarely ever see people who do hrt and no top surgery. i don't know what to do. do you maybe know where i could find people with similar transitioning goals or something?

heyyy i'm really glad you've been able to figure things out, and i'm glad you've taken the time to figure out if hrt is right for you!! that's really awesome and it makes us really happy to hear we were able to help in some way

yes, i have absolutely seen this presentation of trans person before! i actually considered myself in the same boat for most of my transition- when i started, i told all of my professionals that i wasn't considering surgery and my only goal at the time was hrt. they respected it, however, some of my doctors have been pushy about top surgery

now i'm in a place in life where i have realized that i definitely do want top surgery, as i realize i have way more dysphoria surrounding my chest than i was willing to admit at the time- i have flat and low hanging breasts that can pass for a fat amab person's tits, but i realize now that i was just coping with that and being willing to put up with it, as opposed to. wanting them on my body.

however, it's absolutely okay to want them on your body- i have known trans men and transmascs who have undergone hrt and even bottom surgery but no top surgery! some people like their chests, some people really like having tits. i mean hell, if you're born with a nice set of tits, and you like having them on your body, what's the point in getting rid of them, you know? even if they're not "conventionally" nice, you can still enjoy them

you're under no obligation to transition any specific way, i think you're super cool for not wanting top surgery, besides, i don't think every trans person should feel obligated to go under the knife, as surgery is invasive and can be scary for many, whereas hrt is more personal and a gradual change. surgery is a big change and takes a long time to recover from

i think you're rad, and if you wanna keep your chest, keep it! men with tits are awesome, there's nothing wrong with being one, and there's nothing wrong with tailoring your transition to who you are! keep it up, i'm glad you're taking the time to think through things! if you need anything else, feel free to come on back, we're always happy to help!

[gayspiderl8ver]

I didn't figure this was an issue on this website initially

I saw an account that had a "bi lesbian" and "biphobia" in their dni list. Which is biphobia. I feel like maybe people don't understand or don't care about the difference between bi and pan. Pan just means you don't care about the person's gender. I thought I was pan for the longest time but what I actually didn't care about was the person's physical sex or other physical characteristics. These are not a part of gender, the thing someone pan does not care about. But I still like people of any gender, I just assumed I was picky, but I was the most picky about men. Doesn't matter if they're cis or trans, I just get more selective. I'm less selective with feminine men. This does not mean this is a transgender person in any way. they may be cis and just feminine, I'm less picky with femboys. but lesbian excludes these men, and also the other more masculine men I find sexually attractive.

The more I analyzed my sexuality, the more I found that I do still like men but I don't feel romantic attraction to them. And yes that includes femboys. I only feel romantic attraction to Women and sometimes enbies. Enbies is such a broad group of all kinds of different people. But the enbies that I feel more romantic attraction to are generally more woman leaning in identity. Not fashion or hormones necessarily. All of these feelings can only be described if I say bisexual (and then all these fucking caveats that just mean lesbian in romance and sex, bi in just sex). And I did describe myself like this for years. First I came out as bi to friends, then pan as I learned more (and then gay for the rest of highschool cause I was leaning fem before transition and then this girl asked my out and I panicked and said I like men actually), and none of these felt right but I felt like I had to choose lesbian or bisexual. neither of these were correct on their own because as it turns out, humans are not so concretely simple and fit into preset boxes. I just went with Bisexual that leaned towards women but (caveat, caveat, caveat, etc.)

Turns out the simple term for all this is just bi lesbian. An overlap of two umbrellas. Sapphic is close but still excludes some of them more masculine men I'm sexually attracted to. I don't want to ignore what I like to fit some idealized world view where people fit in distinct boxes. I think it's extremely simple to explain that my romantic and sexual desires aren't the same groups, my sexuality is a venn diagram and not a circle. Ain't no shame to it but it's real weird anyone would see that as a problem. I knew there was still biphobia around but to see it this frequently on an ostensibly progressive website is just scary.

I still have to fight for my right to exist in so many ways why do I have to take on another front when all I wanna do is just live my life? And I know these other people are fighting in their own ways for the right to live as themselves, its stupid to create a needless enemy of someone in the same boat.

I'm not looking to change a mind cause people like to create a social bubble and don't like it popped, and anyone wanting to engage in "debate" dont want a meaningful discussion they just wanna win and be the one to convince someone else. Has that ever actually worked? I guess I just saw that dni list and it was clicking against all the other dnis in my head that i saw that included "bi lesbian". Like to me it's no different than seeing someone putting "women dni" or "trans dni" in their bio or dni post or whatever. It's intrinsic and I didn't choose this. But these people have chosen to consider me as wrong or something. And that's kinda normal for me tbf I get it a lot day-to-day. but I think what got to me was just the "biphobes dni" bit on the other side of the same list. That contradiction is just eating at me and I need an outlet. And what better way to vent than on an ostensibly progressive website where I know in advance that people are brutal to each other for being or believing different.

[maturemenoftvandfilms]

I think what I want to say to all of your anons that berate you with questions and hateful claims is that we all go through it... Some form of shock at our own likes and dislikes, and some of us end up sticking to our guns about who and what we find attractive and think it's liberating to share who and what that is while some think that by suppressing it they're somehow helping... Neither one is right. We are just experiencing our world for what it is. On the one hand, I'm sure we all wish those politicians and celebs that are assholes weren't (because honestly who would want to be with them eww lol can't stand the high maintenance part) but some of us also consider that it's not the end of the world and might even find it funny or a turn on to make those same types feel awkward or aware that there's a whole group of gay men who lust after them. It's not inherently bad, but it also sucks to be judged about it considering we're all kind of in the same boat. I mean, I've read some of your supporters say really deeply stupid things like "Democrats or liberals are not as attractive as Republicans or conservatives" LOL WTF. I know what they are TRYING to say, but it's definitely not anything to do with political affiliation or ideology. That has nothing to do with biological makeup or appearances. We're all psychologically attuned to loving or lusting after something or someone or a certain type based on our experiences and very personal internal needs, like wanting to be subjugated, dominated, or to be the subjugator or be the dominant ones, it's ridiculous to try to put it in one lane or the other when we actually mean the same thing. Ultimately we are all gay, some more in control and some more prone to give up that control, men and should enjoy being gay men, no matter what branch of that tree we thrive on. I wish we could show love to each other in our community when we are both liberal in our thoughts AND conservative..... no matter the reason. We live with each other anyway, why divide ourselves into groups further just because one side has an extreme view to the other? I don't get why we fight so much. If this was the 70s throigh the early 90s, we'd be fighting the same fight. We would be united agaibst HIV and AIDS and the doctrines of the religious right trying to make monsters of us for contracting a virus that to this day has no cure. The internet has just made us and our sexual preferences so polarized.

I'll admit: This anon stays anon because he wants to express love and kindness, and that does not seem to be the preferred topic of the day. In the end, Trans, Republican, Alex Jones lovers, Effeminate, Masc, Leather, Daddy, Boy, etc. We should help each other. Take each other seriously but not too seriously, and realize we just love certain aspects of masculinity and femininity that bring us joy and pleasure.

Honestly, I found as many things to be proud of about myself just following your blog as I did about hating our community. We should not be so extreme in our reactions. You honestly seem very reasonable, and all you are doing is putting your inner most thoughts out for the world to see, and I can appreciate that, @maturemenoftvandfilms - I love that too. :)

I wish everyone the best, and I wish we could see where we are different is interesting and not a point for conflict. We have enough of that to face in the world as gay or bisexual men. Let's be honest with each other and inclusive even if it's about people we ourselves would not think of as "sexy" or "attractive" because some people are just playing a role.

I'd like to thank you. I was feeling angry and hateful these past few weeks and you've brighten my day.

[ajaxwrites]

Genshin Impact Fanfic Rec List

(because this is my most current obsession~~)

The Narwhal of Dihua Marsh by GreyLiliy

Childe hears of a strong Adeptus living at the Wangshu Inn. Despite warnings from Zhongli that fighting Xiao would be a deathly mistake, Childe seeks out the Adeptus living in the Dihua Marsh eager for a proper fight.

However, Childe severely underestimates his opponent, and the consequences of his actions may keep him from returning home to Snezhnaya.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: This fic is interesting primarily because it's not necessarily what you would call an easy story to read. The content can surprisingly get quite heavy as the relationship between Childe and Zhongli isn't healthy and it becomes increasingly obvious as the story progresses. You swing between wanting to separate the two and also desperately wishing that they'll work out because there is something there. The story snowballs from what seems like an innocuous, if stupid and rash, decision on Childe's part to a complicated mess that you can’t help but be enthralled in. I went in expecting your typical romance and ended up in something that was more complex than I expected but also beautifully thought provoking.

Entirely Out of Spite by Bgtea

"Welcome to a new user experience! You have triggered this interface with the keywords, ‘Stupid game! Stupid devs! I want my f*****g money back!’ You are now bound to the character Tartaglia, the Eleventh Harbinger of the Fatui, codename: Childe! We hope you have an enjoyable user experience and we welcome you once again to Genshin Impact 2.0!”

Those are some of the first words Ajax, starving college student extraordinaire, has the misfortune of hearing upon waking up in a brave new world from what he's fairly sure is a very, very fatal accident involving water and a shit ton of electricity.

Okay, so he's not dead. That's good. But what's this about him being stuck playing the character Tartaglia? Tartaglia, as in the shitty, one-dimensional, cartoonish villain who met his untimely, gruesome death in the first act of the original game?

Fuck that noise. Like hell Ajax is going to share that fate.

And so begins one man's journey to unfuck himself.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Whenever this updates, I squeal. If you’re a fan of The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System or just transmigration/reincarnation plots in general, you’re going to love it. Bgtea does a beautiful job in balancing humor with the trauma that comes with the whole reincarnation plotline. The whole of it is beautiful written and watching Childe/Ajax interact with the other characters (and the perspective of those characters) is a delight! 

the sister by glassdrachma

The tragic and unexpected death of Zhongli-xiansheng of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor occurred to the sorrow of many and the deep skepticism of a few.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: glassdrachma has a gift for humor and romance. In short, Zhongli fakes his death for plot reasons and comes back as Jianlao, the bereaved twin sister. Shenanigans ensue, featuring overprotective Liyue-ians (?), chaotic gremlin Venti, and Kexing. Very light hearted, good for the soul.

The White Cicada Society by clementinesgulag

After his little brother is bundled back to Snezhnaya, Childe makes good on his promise to the traveller and takes the first boat out of Liyue Harbor. Any sense of homecoming lasts about as long as an uncooked steak in front of Xiangling, however, when his boat sinks, grounding him back in the mainland.

It's just as well, because the next morning, a body is found in the Northland Bank. A visit from a fellow Harbinger reveals a far more insidious plot than anything Childe could concoct with a god of the vortex and twenty minutes without supervision. The murders aren’t limited to the one Bank. They’ve been trailing down the Liyue border, getting closer and closer to the city. The Tsaritsa has a new mission for him: to figure out who, or what is targeting Fatui forces.

Against his best wishes, Childe is forced to see Zhongli again at the morgue. It becomes clear that he’s going to need a guide, and Childe resolves to quash his pride, and their differences to request his help to navigate Liyue and solve the case.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: A diamond in the rough that I slept on and then stumbled back to by accident. I had it marked for later on AO3 and forgot about it for like a good week to my utter self-disgust. It. Is. So. Damn. Good! The mystery is intriguing but I live for the realistic portrayal of the aftermath of the whole gnosis plotline. The betrayal, the bitterness, but ah, the sexual tension. The harbinger interactions in this fic make it gold though.

Lungs full of Roses by SecretlyACatLady

Childe had always assumed that he would die young. He had accepted that a long time ago, ever since he accepted the mantle of a Fatui Harbinger. However, he always thought that he would die in a glorious fight, his body broken but spirit relishing the strong opponent that had bested him. He was okay with that type of death.

Unfortunately, it seemed like Fate had decided to add one last insult to injury, because, here Childe was, dying because he had fallen in love with the ex-Geo Archon. The same Archon who seemed to have discarded him like an old toy ever since the Osial Incident. --- In which divine beings are cruel and a cursed Childe starts preparing for his inevitable death because no Archon could ever love a mortal.

…Right?

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: The fic that started it all for me, the one that sucked me into the fandom. This fic is heartbreaking. We always do love a hanahaki plotline but something about the way it frames the disease and the shame that comes with it...I highly recommend giving it a read. The angst is real I tell you.

The Bride of The Golden Dragon by Erika_Bee

“You’re to be sent on a special mission, Tartaglia.”

The young man’s eyes gleamed in interest. “How special?” He asked as he wiped the blood off his daggers.

His superior grinned. “Special enough to put your name in Snezhnaya’s history books.”

—

In which the Archon War ravaged the land of Liyue and to ensure the people’s survival, the God of Geo established the Harvester Contract: One bride per village, every year, in exchange for protection and a good harvest.

Or: Childe is sent on an undercover mission to kill the Geo Archon, but things don’t go as planned.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Don’t let the title scare you off--this isn’t one of those fics where they feminize one of the male characters and reduce their personality to a mindless submissive bobblehead to the point that I want to throw my laptop out of the window. Not that there’s anything wrong if you like that kind of thing, just not my cup of tea. This fic though---READ IT! There’s just something refreshing about the writing and the plot, the way that Childe’s character reads off the page. I live for the interactions between the characters and how the author has mapped the relationships. Warning that recent chapters have swerved decided into NSFW territory though.

the brothers grim by izabellwit

Left in an unfamiliar land with a mission he never wanted, a young Kaeya lies, survives, and somehow finds a family in the process.

Or: How Kaeya came to Dawn Winery, and why he left it. Includes lore, sibling bickering, found family struggles, and a more in-depth look at the years between Kaeya’s arrival and Crepus’s death.

Ships: N/A

Notes: Ahh, little Kaeya. Cheeky ass little shit that’s too angsty and adorable for his own good. I don’t have words for this fic. It makes my heart warm but also makes me want to weep because god, this fic covers exactly how traumatic Kaeya’s situation is and why child soldiers/spies just shouldn’t be. And the dynamic he has with Diluc and Crepus--do me a favor and read it. Screams found family.

the wind through the mountain tops by glassdrachma

Boredom brings Barbatos of Mondstadt to bother a certain ex-Archon of the Earth.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: A light-hearted, humorous and fluffy as hell piece. Short word is that Venti comes to Liyue for some fun, causes chaos, accidentally plays matchmaker, and steals some vegetables. A get-together fic for Childe and Zhongli that includes a surprisingly self-aware (if blunt and snarky) Zhongli and jealous Childe that gets increasingly flustered.

melt (speak or forever hold your peace) by anatakana

Falling into bed with Diluc was an unbelievably bad idea given their tumultuous shared history, but Kaeya’s impulsive urge to amuse himself knew no bounds.

It’s all fun and games until emotions got involved.

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: THIS IS NSFW. With plot though? This is THE FIC that got me shipping the two (though the game did a good job on its own). The angst is real here and we love the sheer gal of both of these two stupid men.

Cascading (In a good way) by Hubbleablubble

Kaeya is a fascinating annoyance.

(Or: A series of events in which Albedo gets to know Kaeya, and they slowly go from strangers to acquaintances to something more.)

Ships: Albedo/Kaeya

Notes: Sweet fic. Not my typical ship pairing. Loved the Khaenri’ah mentions. Kaeya is Trans FTM here though it’s only briefly mentioned. There is also an incomplete sequel (as of May 2021) featuring an Overprotective Big Brother Diluc on a warpath giving shovel talks to everyone except apparently Albedo that’s also worth reading.

The Language of Flowers by Jules (Penwyn)

Kaeya Alberich has made a habit of lying—after all, the only truths he’s ever spoken cost him everything—but there are only so many lies a man can tell before the truth comes spilling out.

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: Hanahaki! Except not! Basically, Kaeya pukes up flowers that say the truth whenever he lies. Cue, angst! Lovely and quick read--love Kaeya’s voice here.

i know i'm where i'm meant to go by paperclips (pastel_paperclips)

"Childe," Zhongli says suddenly. "I am enjoying myself greatly."

Childe’s face breaks into a grin. "Then-"

Zhongli gasps, grabbing his wrist and tugging him over to an unsuspecting peddler with a cart full of rocks. "Is that an intrusive igneous pegmatite formed in the Inazuma regions?"

Childe’s grin smooths into a small, adoring smile. He has all the time in the world to figure the other man out.

OR: Finding the Geo Archon is on Childe's to-do list but hanging out with Zhongli is significantly more fun.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Childe, you idiot. Humorous and funny, very light hearted. Makes you wonder if Childe has an IQ. He’s too busy pining/lovesick to realize that he told his target that he’s going to kill him for his gnosis. Zhongli and Liyue remain confused on how Childe still DOES NOT get it but half-ass hiding his Archon status anyway.

the bird without wings by Anonymous

"Kaeya!" someone yells. Small arms wrap around his waist tightly, red hair spilling out of the ponytail, and Kaeya's heart almost stops.

He's talked his way out of all types of situations. From placating international disputes to buttering up his informants, he's always had a quick response to everything.

But for once, Kaeya is speechless. He stares down at the boy with puffy cheeks, slightly crooked teeth and sparkling bright eyes.

Eight year old Diluc beams back.

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: Diluc gets de-aged and Kaeya gets angsty. The interactions between the two are heartwarming and will induce tears. Childe makes a brief appearence that *chef’s kiss*

call me "lover boy" by Anonymous

Zhongli turns back, eyes bright with amusement, a stray lilypad still stuck in his hair, and Childe thinks, wow. I want to kiss him stupid.

Childe's not into the whole "swooning maiden patiently waiting for his beloved to swoop down and smooch the daylights out of him" thing. Nah, that's not his style. He's Tartaglia, eleventh of the Fatui harbingers, and he's going to kiss Zhongli right now.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: FUNNY AS HELL. Childe is straight up just trying to plant one on Zhongli but fate and people just keep interfering. It’s a weird trope aversion where the character is actively trying to confess rather than avoiding it but life gets in the way. 

springtime in snezh-nya-ya by miaomaomei

Tartaglia’s body moves before he can even think about it. He arches his back and flattens his ears against his head, baring his teeth in a hiss. Considering he barely even reaches Scaramouche's knees — Scaramouche, of all people! The guy is practically the size of a fourteen-year-old — he doubts that he is cutting as imposing a figure as he hopes.

It isn't a surprise, though. No one could become a Fatui Harbinger if they were scared of a little cat.

OR

Tartaglia is turned into a cat and he goes to Zhongli for help. It goes about as well as expected.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: TOO ADORABLE FOR WORDS. This is just pure fluff I swear. Love how Childe is written and the interactions between the two are just ahhhh. A balm on the soul.

Melt by tanktrilby

“My name is Diluc,” he says. A scowl naturally furrows his brow, and Kaeya looks like he wants to laugh.

He’s looking at him through his lashes again, blue eyes teasing and warm. “Diluc,” he says. “A knight in overalls isn’t quite where I thought my preferences would lie, but here we are.”

(or: Kaeya loses his memories and makes some assumptions. Diluc can't honestly tell him that he's wrong.)

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: As the summary says, Kaeya loses his memories. Diluc plays babysitter for plot reasons. Meanwhile, Kaeya freaks out and has an essential crisis because his instincts freak him out which = angst. Simultaneously, sort of love confessions? 

you are cordially invited by ktenologious

When the Traveler receives a mysterious invitation from a Snezhnayan businessman, they seek out help from the only Snezhnayan they are on good terms with. They decide it is a wonderful idea to go to this business party in the middle of the ocean because, well, what could be better entertainment than watching a Fatui Harbinger at work? It is too bad Childe couldn't come with them...

Meanwhile, the Tsaritsa needs someone to track down the source of a brand new drug at a party on a cruise; it just so happens that she has two Harbingers who specialize in causing chaos and sinking ships. Scaramouche is a sadist and loves this, and Tartaglia... Well, Tartaglia just wants to know why is he the one in the dress again.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe, sort of Diluc/Kaeya & Scaramouche/Childe

Notes: Features a crossdressing Childe and Kaeya for plot reasons. Funny as hell. Love Fatui dynamics/interactions. Highly recommend. Go read it. I’m serious. It’s so beautiful, I can’t. Also Zhongli is so love-sick and jealous, it’s hilarious.

The Road to Snezhnaya by paranoid_fridge

Everything's done and over. Now, Zhongli only needs to adjust to living like an ordinary mortal. Or that is what he thinks until a familiar face shows up in Liyue. Teucer comes looking for his brother who failed to return to Snezhnaya on the Fatui ships. And as Childe's declared "friend", Zhongli must help Teucer find him.

Or: Teucer drags Zhongli on a cross-country goose chase looking for Childe. Zhongli just happens to find a bit more along the way.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: I have no words for this fic outside of the fact that it is clear that Teucer has the only functioning brain and should be Best Man because he obviously did all the work here. Features an oblivious Childe and overprotective Zhongli, plus bystander Kaeya that is getting allll of the gossip. And also the most destructive group of children ever.

basket of knives by oronine

“I just want to be loved,” Childe says to himself, to whoever is listening. “Is that too much to ask?”

They are on the roof once more, this time Childe’s foot touches the edge of the building as he daydreams of something that cannot be. The sky is blank and cloudy and perhaps Lumine fears it’ll all end when he takes a step.

“Not at all,” she says. It’s still the truth.

Contrary to popular belief, Childe hates his family but loves them all the same.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: TW for suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, self-harm, depression, etc. Not a light read by any definition. Set in a modern AU, not in the genshin impact universe. Features a Childe that is Not Okay, good friend but also probably traumatized friend Lumine (and her brother Aether), and Zhongli. Family dynamic is messed up as hell and explores mental health quite well in my opinion. I’m not sure how healthy necessarily Childe’s relationships are but I think that’s a given considering the context and how derailed his mental health is in this fic. Definitely angst as heavy, made me tear up quite a bit. Read, but pay attention to the content/trigger warnings as it does get quite explicit.

Bane of All Evil by tzitzimeme

When Chongyun unintentionally offends Liyue's second most powerful adepti, he vows to mend the thorny relationship between Adeptus Xiao and human exorcists-- even though no one has succeeded in currying Xiao's favor for over a thousand years.

His best friend Xingqiu offers to come alone, mainly because he's worried about what kind of trouble Chongyun will run into. Along the way, they receive help from others: Xiangling packs them meals for their journeys, while Zhongli gives them advice on what demons to track.

Childe is just there because he thinks the whole thing is hilarious.

Ships: Chongyun/Xinqiu

Notes: JFKLFJS I LOVE THIS. I love Chongyun’s characterization and the interaction between all the characters. The dynamic between Chongyun, Xingqiu, and Xiangling are to die for. Also, this line: “Stuck-up Persnickety Bastard.” Random note but Xiao throws Chongyun off a balcony yet is also 100% a softie.

Talks about Nothing by tzitzimeme

In which Zhongli unlocks the Memory of Dust, only to find out:

1. Guizhong is 100% alive (just disembodied) within it, 2. Guizhong has been watching over him this whole time, and 3. Guizhong is very excited by the prospect of Zhongli getting a cute Snezhnayan boyfriend.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe, Venti/Xiao

Notes: The pure judgment that Guizhong unleashes on Zhongli (as well as her sass in general) is pure comedic gold. The dynamic between Xiao and Venti are also adorable. Meanwhile, Childe misunderstands and also just wants to know what the fuck is going on.

xi wangmu by tzitzimeme

Xiangling scales entire mountains to satisfy the palettes of her two pickiest customers.

(Or, two men who are emotionally stunted by their own immortality inadvertantly turn an overly enthusiastic chef into their messenger pigeon.)

Ships: Zhongli/Xiao (?)

Notes: Not sure if it reads romantic exactly, can definitely be read as platonic. The fic boils down to Xiangling trying to expose Xiao to variety because just eating plain almond tofu is a no no. Zhongli gives advice/uses Xiangling as a messenger pigeon. Backstory is explored!

Falling (Fallen) by asinglecrow

It’s only when Childe finds himself in front of Zhongli, a spear protruding from his stomach, that he thinks oh I might have fucked up.

Or: The worst (best) day of Childe's life.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Funny and lighthearted! Gets sort of NSFW with passing mention of mpreg but otherwise, it’s just pure humor/fluff. Get-together fic featuring deadpan dragon Zhongli and Childe that is just done with everything. 

the louvre by morisuke

Here in Liyue, the air is filled with the ocean, and the sun shines through the mountains like it’s flowing through a crack in the sky. Here in Liyue, there is a man with no wallet at a vending machine that is going to waste the rest of his day showing a stranger around their school campus for a pocket sized can of iced coffee.

It’s interesting here in Liyue, Childe thinks.

or

Where Childe flirts with a stranger at a campus vending machine.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Set in a modern/college AU. This is a relatively quiet, soft kind of story. Childe comes to Liyue because reasons and falls in love quietly. It’s more of a snippet of life type of fic that’s sweet and peaceful. Love the change that comes over Childe as he finds a home.

[itoldsunset]

semi-translating/summarizing some things p’boss said on the hardest brief podcast. putting it under the cut because it ended up being wayyy longer than expected. also, my thai knowledge is that of a little kid who left her country very young so i probably missed some words/references, sorry!

(i got lazy and skipped the last part where they talked about the props and the colors (red = oh-aew, blue = teh, purple = tarn) but i feel like enough folks on here have done the color/visual analysis so we should be good):

he had this story he wanted to tell about two childhood friends and also knew he wanted to cast pp and billkin, but to make it work they had to pull from pp and billkin’s personalities to make sure that the characters they ended up creating would mesh with who pp and billkin are as performers; in writing the script, they sometimes asked pp and billkin to talk about their experiences as teenagers and adapted it to the series, so for example the storyline where teh and oh-aew meet each other again at afterschool chinese class and start out not liking each other, comes from pp and billkin’s real life when they first met and didn’t like each other

the interviewer asked p’boss to talk about how the itsay team has balanced representation in terms of gender and sexual orientation, and p’boss said it was important to have a team that understands the human experience and can draw from life experiences from multiple perspectives, which led to diversity in gender, sexual orientation, and age

when asked whether itsay is a Y series (BL), p’boss said his intention is to tell a story about the relationship between two boys, so it depends on how you define what counts as BL, LGBTQ, etc.

the interviewer and p’boss had this conversation about what characterizes something as BL, and the interviewer said after asking around it seemed like BL is about relationships between boys but more from a fantasy lens and tends to be different from gay couples in real life, and focuses on scenes between the two male leads, scenes that make you “pinch your pillow” (op: like scenes that make you squeal), but not so much on other moments outside of that; p’boss’s response (approximate translation): “i’m not sure myself, but from what i know, BL series seem to be about relationships between boys, but from the perspectives of girls, since that tends to be the target audience. so it tends to be what makes girls happy, what entertains them, that ends up being the content of BL.”

p’boss on lgbtq series: “i think it looks deeply at the real lives of people who are lgbt, it might be more realistic. it might be like, this is a real thing, but when you tell it in a series it becomes dark, but it’s real. in terms of itsay, in the beginning i didn’t know how to classify it, but when a lot of people started calling it lgbt, i thought, okay. [...] it’s just the story i wanted to tell, and i wanted to tell it with as much humanity as possible. i don’t want to limit viewers, i want as many people to see this as possible, so we can call it whatever they want as long as they watch it and it makes them happy.”

this is his first series focusing on lgbtq characters, but in hormones he wrote goi and dao’s characters (op: i didn’t know this?!)

with itsay, p’boss said it was important to him to have slower pacing to explore the intricacies of the emotions in each scene (different types of anger, different ways of sulking, different types of happy, different types of crying), making it somewhat different from my ambulance where things had to move more quickly to keep up with the speed of a tv drama

the interviewer asked “how does having two male leads change how you work?” and p’boss said there’s nothing different in the way you build chemistry between the two characters because you would just pull from their personalities, but the difference is in the conflict of the story which involves confusion and questioning about sexual orientation which a straight couple wouldn’t go through

p’boss: “when we think about how teh is the kind of person who doesn’t say what he’s thinking, or how oh-aew is the kind of person who’s upfront, anyone can play those roles--women, men, gay people, trans people can all have these roles.”

the interviewer said “itsay seems to be expanding the scope of lgbtq narratives by presenting it as easier for the characters to come out and say they love someone of the same sex. for example, especially compared to love of siam where the kiss scene between mario and pchy was considered something shocking, or in hormones, with the relationship between march and tou (phu and thee) where the characters spent a lot of time fighting with themselves about who they were attracted to. but in itsay, oh-aew was totally straightforward in saying he liked bas. do you think that’s because it’s easier and more open today?” p’boss: “i think the content changes depending on the generations, and oh-aew is really of today’s generation. it’s not that there are no longer kids who are confused about their sexual orientation or afraid to come out, even if ten or twenty years pass there will probably still be some kids who experience that. but there are people who are open and happy about how they live their lives. oh-aew is the type of lgbtq character that’s like, ‘i’m gay, and i’m proud to be who i am.’ [...] and it’s very positive that he sees himself as equal to straight people, because when we’re born, we can love anyone. if you’re a man, you can love another man and that’s a normal thing. that’s oh-aew’s attitude: i’m lgbtq, i’m gay, i’m proud, my parents accept me, and i can tell anyone confidently who i can love. i think a lot of people in this generation already see this as something normal, and we really need to make it something that’s equal. oh-aew represents that equality.”

p’boss on teh: “teh is a character who seems to come from older societal expectations where he’s a man, and he has to love women. but there are people who do still think this way. for teh, it’s hard for him to accept that he might like boys, but when he finds out oh-aew likes boys, he’s totally fine with it and sees it as normal. i feel like society needs to progress to this point, and beyond it, because it all has to be seen as normal. a lot of people when they talk about gay people they say there has to be a top and a bottom, but in reality anything can work, love can happen however. one day i could date someone who’s a trans woman, that’s possible, because it’s about feelings. or a woman who has always loved men could one day date a woman, that’s possible too. there’s a lot of freedom, and i want the characters to show that.”

they talked about how in the scene where teh pretends to hit on oh-aew in front of all their friends, the friends are shocked not that teh is attracted to guys, but they’re shocked that teh likes someone in the friend group. and that goes to show that it’s normal for someone to like someone of the same sex, whereas 20 years ago maybe the characters would have reacted in confusion or shock.

p’boss talking about what was challenging about making this series: “in terms of writing the script, we had to think about how to tell the story in a way that shows the characters’ emotions at all times. for example in episode 2, we explored the restlessness that teh feels when he’s confused about he feels jealous or possessive of his friend. when we say it like that, it’s relatable to people who know what it’s like to feel possessive of their best friend, but how to execute that on the screen is a different matter.”

why phuket? p’boss: “when i decided to tell a story about two boys, i wanted the atmosphere to be romantic. even if the story isn’t romantic, like two boys who are best friends eating together, but i wanted the visuals to be romantic that it looks like it could be a romance film. it intrigues the viewers and adds a certain sweetness to it. i wanted a good environment, so i searched in a lot of different provinces. at first i went to ayutthaya, mae hong son, chiang mai, chiang rai, songkhla. but when i talked to the team, one person wanted to go to the mountains, another wanted to go to the cape, another wanted to go to the beach. even if there’s a beach there has to be a city. we wanted everything, and phuket has it all. old town has a city feel, but there’s also the beach and mountains, so we decided to go to down to phuket while we were writing the script, to confirm whether it would actually work. i’m from hatyai, so i’m from the south, but i rarely ever went to phuket so i wasn’t sure if it would work.”

p’boss said filming the underwater kiss was difficult because there needed to be sunlight in order to capture everything in the way they wanted, but when they got to the island, there was no sun and it was about to rain. so they looked up the color of luck/success for that day and it was purple (op: i don’t have context for this so i can’t explain further lol), so they told everyone to wear a purple shirt. the day they went to film the scene, they all wore purple shirts, but when they got to the site it looked like it was about to rain, so p’yong took off his shirt and hung it on the boat, and as they were filming, every time they said “action” the sun would come out and every time they said “cut” the sun would go away, and p’boss said it was magical and that’s how it came out to be the scene we saw.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Gender

Lower engagement, but higher personal satisfaction... let’s go for that.

How I define my gender.

I’ve never really been 100% committed to being a woman.

https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-know-I-am-cisgender-Ive-heard-some-cis-people-do-question-their-gender-and-Im-trying-to-tell-whether-Im-trans-or-one-of-these-cases Taking the questions from here... it would split this way: Gender dysphoria- when I was younger, a little. Gender Euphoria- never. Gender Politics (beyond basic empathy for others)- Oh fuck no. I don’t get why so many, particularly cis men are hung up on men must wear pants and not pink. I *do* look for women in history, but it’s more like a solidarity and hating erasure of marginalized groups and celebrating those marginalized groups. So political one way, but not particularly on the philosophical performance part. I also tend to spend a lot of time on things I don’t understand.

“Do you feel equally comfortable in men and women’s fashion, only noticing the practical differences?” Pretty much. If you give me a man’s suit I’d wear it. I had no issues with playing as a man for a skit.

 Are you basically ambivalent about makeup? 50/50. Sometimes I do care and do it for “funsies” but most of the time I don’t care because I don’t like “woman as object and consumerism.”

“Do you ‘play along’ when someone tells you what your assignment should be doing, but also don’t really care?”

Pretty much true. Like I was told girls aren’t supposed to like dirt. Screw that. girls aren’t supposed to like sports. I was like screw that. Girls aren’t supposed to like bugs. So what?

I did tend to read more women-led fiction over men’s fiction, but that’s mostly because men’s fiction has “gems” that sexualize women in ways that made me squirm. Cis het men’s writing about women usually piss me off, so I usually don’t try. And I’m all about the fairness. (But also note I’m gray-aro and read a crapton of romance, so who knows how that all works. I’m also gray-a and read a crapton of romance, though not sex repulsed (more like somewhere between sex neutral and receptive? I rated myself a 6-7... on a 0-9 scale.)) Gender tests I’ve taken: 50/50. Usually get something like demi-boy or demi girl. Though I don’t really have that much dysphoria. I do occasionally feel pissed off about my sex presentation, but that’s not really dysphoria as in I hate my body parts actively. It’s more like, why do I have to bother with it? It’s so much work to have to worry in the first place.

When you look in the mirror, do you feel like there’s nothing that really needs to be changed?

This one is more like why do I have to care so much? I feel gender fucked. Like why do I have to go through the steps?

Are you happy with your hair, your chest, the shape of your face?

50/50 on this one.

Aside from maybe wanting to bulk up, wash your hair, or lose a few pounds, are you generally pleased with your appearance?

I give no shits?

Do you appreciate your genitals?

75%/25% appreciation/hate. Sometimes I hate they exist.

Do you like the idea of using them in sex or to make a baby?

This is more like my ace side, I think, but meh? Take it or leave it.

Do they make you feel connected to other people with the same genitals socially, such as complaining about periods, or talking about dick length?

Not really. I’m more like why do you care so fucking much? But I’m not sure how much this is an ace thing.

Do you feel like even if you don’t use them, it’s comfortable just having them around?

Sometimes, not always. Might also be an ace thing.

If you were in a social group of only your assigned gender, would you be happy with it?

Not always. I don’t evaluate that way. Trans people are cool. I pick usually by belief systems and who the person is, morally.

Would it be fairly easy to communicate and find things in common?

I feel ambivalent sometimes towards other women, especially when they go off on tangents about mall shopping, clothes, etc. I feel the same about men talking about watching sports and warfare.

Would you feel harmonious and homogeneous with the group, if the individuals had personalities you liked?

Meh? I also listen to people I don’t like.

If you took away all the physical features that made up your assignment, what gender are you now? Where does that feeling come from?

I’m still me. I don’t care.

If you got to choose your gender upon reincarnation, what would you pick?

Flip a coin. Roll a dice. I don’t give a fuck.

If a wizard changed your sex permanently, would you be pissed or excited?

Meh. Don’t care.

What gender characters do you generally play in RPGs, and what options do you wish were more frequently available?

I’ve generally played women, given no other options besides binary, but also moonlighted as men, but then felt sick because male privilege.

“Do I FEEL like my assigned gender?”*

Shrugs. Not that committed. If you got an all-expenses paid trip to womanhood spa central, and became a socially idealized version of yourself, THEN would you feel like a woman? 

No. I oscillate between liking make up for the pure knowledge of it, and not giving a fuck. I’ve never understood the hours of make up, hair performance, etc.

As a child, I was the type that wanted to be good at *everything* and was upset that my Dad wouldn’t give me the time of day for “masculine” things. I was *also* good at figuring things out. I *also* wanted to be good at sports. I *also* like girly things occasionally. I wanted it all and didn’t see why my brother or me got compliments for different things and felt deep insult when I couldn’t do that too and also get compliments for it. (If you’re imagining an annoying precocious child--that’s about right) I don’t see the point of the gender construct when it re-enforces ideas of genders can do only certain things, when it’s never been proven true. So why are people so effing committed to performing it? I wear hanbok. I’ll wear a male one. I’ll make an androgynous one. I wear those without issue. I’ll cross dress if I like, because I don’t really see the point and European and European-derived defined genders as fucked in the first place. What is this men==violence and horses thing? What is this women==weakness and capitalism thing? I don’t get it. And why do I have to wear European-derived clothes in the first place? Plus from my academic study of gender and gender history, that just cemented for me how fucked up the White European and White European diaspora is about gender in the first place and I feel even less committed to it. I do perform usually more like a woman than a man, but it’s more like whatever is convenient, rather than an absolute commitment to the role. ‘cause you know, my gender is my least concern here, (probably along with ace aro) while not quite hating on it. I wear my hair long, because money and I don’t feel like cutting it very often and I like to be able to keep it out of my food, as well.

I don’t mind masculine pronouns in theory, because whatever floats your boat. But I do care if you think foreign name==men, because that’s giving into masculine hegemony and that is rude to other people unlike me who might be more committed to their genders, and that I definitely care about.

[go-diane-winchester]

How Misha ruined slash fiction

THIS IS AN EDITED REPOST.

I first got into fandom slash fiction because of Lord of the Rings.  Before that I had no idea there were others like me.  The Ringers, as I prefer to call them, were the nicest slash fans and gave me the erroneous impression that slashers are really lovely girls.  How wrong I was.  But almost twenty years ago, I [and my generational demographic] had the semblance of mind to differentiate between fact and fantasy.  I came across the definition of slash fiction, way back then.  Its was generically defined as fanwork done by women for women.  Of course one would argue that men like slash fiction too.  Correction.  Straight and Bi women like slash fiction.  Gay or bisexual men like Bara.  That is something that they indulge in because it is attractive to them.  How trans people fit into this dynamic, would be an interesting study for the future and I have already done a post on that subject. 

Straight women are completely different.  How straight women show their attraction and what they are attracted to, is completely different to what gay or bi men like.  Even bisexual women are still women and still writing from a female perspective.  For decades, and I am counting the pre-star trek era, that was how things were.  Women, for decades, had no other platform for sexual expression except slash fiction.  The phenomenon started in the East, and spread all over the world.  But Eastern and Western slash are completely different from one another.  Why don't women just write something with a man and a woman?  This is where we notice that slashers and other women are completely different.  Slashers don't like to watch another woman’s love story.  Its not satisfying for us.  We can write ourselves as the other half of a pairing, like a Mary Sue scenario, but to be honest, its not the most popular genre because the only woman truly satisfied with the story is the writer herself.  Women, very seldom, bond over Mary Sues.  But slash stories are discussed as a way of bonding over a common interest.    

Classic slash was hidden.  It was underground, which was good because the uncultured riff raff stayed away.  It was the ultimate girl talk.  It surprised us, how similar our desires were and what we found attractive.  Remember the faulty character Becky Rosen?  Even though she is problematic, the moment Sam licked his thumb and wiped the ink stain off her nose, many of us turned into embarrassing swoony puddles.  Why?  He was cleaning her nose, for goodness sake.  What’s so cute about that?  I don’t know.  We all just gushed at him.  Remember Dean spinning the Impala in the episode “Baby”.  I played that bit again and again.  It had nothing to with sex.  Dean was handling a car but I remember having a flushed face over it.   

I read somewhere that foreplay starts in the kitchen.  This applies to women anyway.  So warming your girl up starts way before you even get her to the bedroom.  So you start with a candle lit dinner and soft music and slow dancing.  While he may be ready when he walks in through the door, she will need wining, dining, dancing and lovey dovey talk to get interested.  Usually.  Sometimes, she will appear suddenly turned on, but no, she just saw her husband helping an old man cross the street, and she thought ���‘why is he so stinking cute?  Wait till I get my hands on him’’.  But that is once in a while.  We don’t switch on and off like men.  We are, by nature, cautious creatures.  Getting us in the mood is as important as the act of lovemaking itself.  That is why art that is geared to women, generally, is over-the-top and melodramatic, indulging the foreplay more than the sex. 

Ryan Gosling with a boom box [or whatever you call that thing] standing on top a car, confessing his undying love = foreplay.  Jack Dawson making Rose stand at the head of the ship [or whatever you call it], making her imagine she’s flying = foreplay. Is it necessary to the story?  Nope.  Will the Titanic stay buoyant because Jack didn’t make Rose fly?  Nah, its will still sink.  Do we like it, nonetheless?  Oooh, yeah.  

For the past 80 or so years, we have kept slash fiction solely to ourselves because:

men wont appreciate it because its not their “thing”

men will misunderstand it [case in point: Misha Collins]

because it was sexual fantasy and some of us would prefer not to share that openly. 

Did male actors speak about it when they did find out?  Yes, in passing, especially if they were the subject of the story.  A reporter or crew member would always tell them.  In the case of J2, Kim Manners apparently told them what he had found on the internet.  The Lord of the Rings cast found out because of Peter Jackson.  What was their reaction?  The same as all the other actor’s reactions: They would smirk/laugh about it, make a joke and move on.  Then Misha Collins came along.  The first time he had spoken about slash fiction, I had winced.  Apparently, judging from the audience reaction, so had they.  We really didn’t want this spoken about, openly, for two reason. 

1]  He was speaking to a general audience during his panel.  Some of them don’t care for slash fiction and no, homophobia has nothing to do with it.  If it doesn’t float your boat, it just doesn’t.  Keep throwing the word homophobia around, unnecessarily, and its going to eventually lose its effectiveness because it is frequently being used to bully people into doing what you want, rather than for equality.  So no, Jensen Ackles is not a homophobe because he doesn’t want to be up close and personal with Misha Collins.  Grow up. 

2]  The sane slashers of those days, [and it was a decade ago] didn’t want their personal naughty little secrets spoken about so candidly in a public setting.  Why?  Let me illustrate.  If you tell your friends, in a personal setting, how you like when a man runs his hands all over your body, it will illicit some “oohs” and giggles followed by their own contributions to the discussion.  If you are sitting with that same gaggle of friends at a crowded restaurant and you say the same thing loudly for the whole room to hear, what will they think of you, especially if they have children with them. 

Slash used to be one of those things a lady never spoke about in public, no matter how empowered she thought she was.  Personally, I don’t think a lady has to relinquish her femininity and decency in order to feel empowered.  That’s why I don’t like women, like Kim and Briana, who call themselves bitches to show how tough they are.  Sure, I will break a man's face, if he puts his hands on me, but that doesn’t mean that I have no feminine qualities, and I won't exhibit this aggressive side of myself with a loving and caring man.  I guess things have changed since the early days, and women are different now.  But this is just my opinion and not relevant to the subject at hand.

If Misha knew how to gauge the audience, he would have understood there and then, that this is not a suitable topic to indulge in, where the audience was mixed and included some younger people, i.e., teens and children.  What he did, was to keep running his mouth off about something he didn’t know.  And its shows in the way he refers to Destiel as pseudo-porn.  His fans were very angry about it, because it lessened their artistic efforts to pornography and nothing else.  He said he went on Wikipedia to learn more about slash fiction.  For a man who went to university, he is not very smart.  If you have ever done any academic research report at university level, you will know that any report that includes citations from Wikipedia are immediately rejected. 

Wikipedia is an unreliable source of convoluted, opinionated information that is sometimes not quantifiable and therefore cannot act as an academic resource.  Plus anyone can edit those pages, no matter what agenda they have or how stupid they are.  This fool didn’t know that.  So he started to “educate” the still fixated younger batch [who have now grown into the hellers we loathe with gusto] in the audience and on YouTube as to what slash fiction was and that is why they like him so much.  While other actors speak a line about it and move onto another topic, Professor Knowitall esq. will give his rather young audience a lecture on a subject he knows nothing about, thereby conditioning them to think that slash fiction is something that it isn’t.  Is he that stupid or that arrogant?

If you look through Wikipedia, it will give you the impression that slash is homosexual in nature, and that it is an expression of gay love.  The fact that those stories and artwork originated with straight women and are powered by the artistic efforts of straight women, is ignored.  There are topics about queer recognition and LGBT relevance on that page.  The page isn’t telling you what slash fiction is.  It is telling you what other groups feel about it.  I can tell you, almost a century ago, slash fans were not indulging this art form for those reasons.  They were doing it for their own satisfaction.  If other people like it too, that’s fine and dandy, but it is not about them.  And what Misha has done with this fandom, which is bleeding into other fandoms via intrusive destiel fans, is to make slash about the LGBT. 

That is why gay men are now getting angry because young impressionable girls are listening to him and turning a straight/bi female art form into an inaccurate gay platform.  They are using things like closetedness, gay bashings, bigotry and even AIDS as a gay “trope” or theme for their stories.  Gay men fought to change the name ''Gay Cancer'' to AIDS, because it was erroneously being considered a homosexual disease, and yet years later, we have a ''fake'' inclusive generation celebrating a story like ''Twist and Shout".  No wonder gay men hate teen slash girls.  If you write about a subject you know nothing of, you will write it wrong.  These children [because they behave like that] are writing about some very sensitive and serious topics and they are romanticizing them.  What person wont get angry? 

In the old days, the two people who made up a pairing, were differentiated, by using two words:  Seme and Uke.  While slash was a straight female art form, gay men didn’t give two hoots about these words.  They didn’t read the stuff.  They didn’t care.  They had bara.  When “woke and non-bigoted, inclusive” slash fans started speaking for gay men through their stories despite the fact that these men have a voice of their own, the guys got angry because they don’t have a seme and uke role type in their relationships.  Well, of course they don’t.  Slash is not about gay men.  Its about straight women and their sexual expression.  And in their fantasies, there are seme’s and uke’s. 

That is another problem with the Wikipedia page.  When you look at the history, it starts with Kirk and Spock.  The dunderhead who wrote that page, didn’t know that slash started in the east, probably Japan, although Hong Kong might dispute that.  When it became animated in the 1970’s, the anime version was called Yaoi.  The Japanese were actually making money from slash fiction way back when, by making comic type books, essentially novels with pictures.  And it was those translated stories, which were almost always set in another world, that gave birth to Kirk/Spock slash fiction.  Star Trek is also set in another world so to speak.  The westerners got hold of these books when the Asians immigrated.  The first slash stories were actually distributed in conventions, because the internet didn't exist back then. 

There is only one other person who over-indulged his slash fan base.  Harry Styles.  He regretted it, because it ruined his friendship.  So he stopped.  But he had a good excuse.  He was between the ages of 15 and 19 whilst in 1 Direction.  He was a baby and didn’t know any better.  Harry learned his lesson within five years and stopped.  Misha has been on the show for ten years. He was in his mid thirties when he started on Supernatural.  He was already a grown man who has no excuse, because he is not stupid.  With the amount of damage the militant destiel fans have done, you would think that he would stop.  He doesn’t.  Because it gives him staying power. 

The one thing I have noticed is, overindulging a slash fan [not necessary a heller - any slash fan] is like feeding a Mogwai after midnight.  It turns into an uncontrollable gremlin.  That is exactly what Misha’s militant fanbase is: a hideous collection of gremlins that he overfed and now they are attacking any mogwai that doesn’t show gremlin traits, even if they are mild-mannered destiel fans who don't like the leads beings threatened.  What Misha’s dumb section have now done, is that they have taken slash fiction itself, and turned it into an increasingly hateful and problematic concept.  Because, the general public, which includes J2 [because they have nothing to do with slash fiction], now have the impression that slash is a means of bullying and putting your indulgences before other peoples’ opinions and dignity, in the name of representation. 

It also give the impression, to unknowing people, that homosexuals are boisterous and demanding people and you have to please them or else.  The general public don’t know that predominantly female, heterosexual, entitled princesses are writing this crap.  They think that gays are pushing slash fiction because words like gay, queer and LGBT keep popping up in a pro-destiel argument.  Any gay man reading this, take heed, because these children are damaging your collective reputations.  And if you don’t deal with it now, the PR headache you are going to have to deal with, in the future, as a group, is going to be immense. And it won’t even be your fault, but you will be blamed for it.  How do you go about doing that?  Speak directly to Misha.  Shut up the master Gremlin-Troll himself.  Tell him he is doing you a great disservice.  After all, the mostly straight heller girls are speaking for you and he is pushing the microphones into their hands. 

I always liked slash because not only was it a means of female sexual expression, but it was also a means of female creativity.  Sure, we all like Cinderella, but it was lukewarm for some of us because, she was difficult to emulate.  And growing up, we didn’t know she was a character to enjoy, not to emulate.  Children always emulate what they see on screen.  She was thin, pretty, a good singer with nice hair and small feet.  I am club footed, bipolar and fat, with a lion’s mane that brushes broke on.  I felt sorry for her because she was abused.  I felt sorry for her because she was crying at one point.  Then I remembered what I look like when I cry.  Soft tears don't roll gently down my pink cheeks.  Snot rolls down my nose, careening to the inside of my mouth.  Not pretty.  Not delicate.  The story was nice but it left me feeling inadequate.  Some women love it.  Others, like myself, are “meh” about it. 

When I read a bemusing slash version with actors in place of the fictional cast, I read the whole story smirking.  I didn’t begrudge the beautiful lead [I think it might have been Jensen] because I was as besotted with him as Prince Charming was [presumably Jared].  I didn’t want to be him.  I wanted him.  I wanted the prince too, just FYI.  I could be a fly on the wall in the story, without actually picturing how my insignificant self would fit into the story.  That is what slash fiction meant to me.  It was an escapist art form into a fantasy 'verse, that is custom made to put a smile on my face. 

Now, Prince Charming is fighting for gay rights against his bigoted father, the king, and Cinderella is beaten by his ugly step siblings because he is a homo.  And I look at it and blink.  I am not the audience for this story.  Empathy is one thing, but replacing your sexuality with someone else’s, is something else all together.  Especially since every slash story now, seems to be about gay characters and gay rights and homophobia.  Slash has turned into a one trick pony.  How much could you write about gay rights?  Slash’s creativity is running on autopilot.  Take your ship, make them gay, make one closeted and unhappy, make the other out and happy, throw in a gay oriented trope, even AIDS [no decency threshold] and boom!  You've got a story.  

They’ve been writing in this way for the last ten years and they’ve ruined the whole genre.  So much so, that destiel and cockles stories aren’t enjoyed by anyone except destiel fans, because Misha and Cas are in those stories.  And he is always written as a precious smol bean.  At this juncture, I have to point out that, to be fair, other ships on Supernatural and other fandoms are doing the same thing, because destiel fans bend the will of others to their own.  I heard they are actually tagging destiel into posts about other shows.  Other bloggers noticed that destiel and Misha are in Mother Nature tag.  They don't even leave Mother Nature alone.  Why?  Because Misha has turned a harmless indulgence into an addiction.  He is their only dealer and pursuing canon gives them their fix.  They are gremlins on crack with stunted creativity. 

Of course, the children argue that they can't read an unrealistic story which is why slash characters have to instead be gay.  Oh yeah, then how come in Cockles stories, Misha is something pregnant.  Sometimes, he is a pregnant wolf.  So you can take your “realism” and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.  When you write a totes realistic story, with gay characters rather than slash characters, you are disrespecting three groups of people:   

the actors, who are your, sometimes, unwilling muses 

the homosexual community, that you have absolutely no right to speak for

the earlier  slash fans who nurtured this art form, before you ''woke'' idiots came barreling in, with your inclusiveness, and flushed their efforts down the toilet, all at the behest on one selfish man. 

Decent slashers say:  This is a work of fiction and has no bearings on reality.  Then they go out of their way to not include themes that are synonymous with the gay community.  The characters in a properly written story are never explicitly gay.  They just like some guy, even though last week they were with a girl.  And no, that doesn’t make them bisexual either.  Remember, slash is a  platform with a large percentage of straight females and bisexuals don’t want you speaking for them, either.  Otherwise, nobody will dispute the hellers for saying that Dean is bi because he wore a purple shirt, once.  The fed up bisexuals reading insulting meta on how Dean is bisexual, because of his food and clothing choices, are a case in point.  So the character are fantasy slash characters.  If I were to coin a word, then they are slashsexual.  

They are just muses for the woman’s sexual expression.  We don’t need to tell them what we are doing, thereby putting them in an uncomfortable position to amend or dispute our opinion about the subject.  That is plain rude and borderline sexual harassment.  Even if we are women and they are men.  Treat them with the same dignity that you demand for yourself.  Its got nothing to do with them.  Don’t ask them.  Misha, on the other hand, has no shame and will therefore never turn down a question.  He will answer the question in a way that his gullible fangirls like, inflating his ego and giving him permanence in the show.  Has Misha caused irreparable damage?  I am afraid so.  Older women, in the SPN fandoms, get caught up in life so they don’t indulge in slash as much.  And so the brats are running this art form to the ground, teaching nonsense to those that are younger than them, parroting whatever crap Misha spews about slash fiction, in the name of sexual equality, representation and the LGBT. I am not even counting their online behaviour, just pointing out their horrible handling of slash fiction at the behest of Misha Collins.  They still listen to him and its going to get worse and worse, until slash fiction becomes THE most hateful thing about fan culture.   

Please note:

The analysis of slash fiction does not include tinhatting.  Tinhats do not believe that the people they are writing about are mere muses.  Cockles fans and J2 Tinhats believe that they people they are writing about, really are gay, but closeted due to public shame and ostracization.  Tinhats, at least the ones that I came across, do not like to be seen as shippers.  They are a separate entity altogether.  That would be a fascinating topic for the future.  Thank you to the tinhat who reminded me of this, because I completely forgot. 

[xxmisty]

Funny how someone who made fart fetish porn thinks he has a right to badmouth men

Oh boy, anon, you’ve really overpacked this suitcase, haven’t you??

Look, let’s just start by pointing out that there’s a contradiction between you having respect for my pronouns and yet an apparent prejudice against sex workers. I just don’t get that. Thank you for being more respectful than most and actually using male pronouns here, I think the rest of your message is seriously betraying the kind of person you are. Build on the good. You’re already head and shoulders above most people I know in that respect.

I was trying to work out what could have come across as badmouthing men and I found that two posts about Captain Marvel had come out of my queue. So that’s it. Anon, i’m not badmouthing men. But I will call out toxic masculinity where I see it, and there was a whole lot of it around the launch of that movie. Toxic masculinity hurts everyone, no matter who you are. It’s the kind of attitude that makes men feel they have to behave a certain way or they can’t be true men. As a trans guy that went a long way toward being terrified of coming out, and still goes a long way to not being accepted. It is also a master force behind the kind of behaviour that has left women vulnerable, scared and abused throughout history. I’ve been on both sides of that. I’ve had men roll down their car windows and cat-call me from the age of 14 upward. When I was 13 I took a term of piano lessons and quit because the piano tutor kept holding my hands and asking me if I ���painted my nails red when I went out at weekends’. I’ve had parts of my body groped and touched in public because someone was drunk, being egged on by their mates or just thought it was their right to do it. I’ve had a z-list celebrity slide his hand into my crotch blaming ‘the train’ with a huge grin on his face. I spent twenty years blaming myself for being sexually assaulted by my cousin’s husband because I was wearing a dress the night I met him. No, not all men are like this, but if you’re offended by someone discussing it then perhaps there’s a reason why. Maybe you see a little of that in yourself.

I’ll reblog posts about captain marvel until my fingers are sore because Brie Larson took so much abuse in the run up to its launch, most of it from a subsection of the population. And i’m not blindly backing it as a marvel fan, nor as a perceived ‘man hater’ - I didn’t think it looked that good from the trailers, but boy was I wrong. I still think the trailers were pretty bad and did the movie a huge disservice. The point is, I waited until I watched the movie to make up my own mind. Brie Larson spoke up on the press tour about how she was sick of looking out and seeing nothing but white men, and a whole lot of those white men took that very deliberately in the wrong way. She spoke of wanting diversity. She didn’t want to look out there and see no white, male faces, she just wanted to see a mix of them with POC and female faces too. You’d have to be extremely over sensitive to take that in any sense other than the one she’d intended it.

People flooded Rotten Tomatoes with negative reviews, days before the movie even came out. They hadn’t seen it, they just wanted to try to make sure that they stopped as many potential viewers from seeing it as they could. And that's why it’s so important to people who aren’t of that small subsection of the population to share the movie’s success. I’m so damn proud of Brie, and of everyone involved in the movie, and of everyone who has stood up for Captain Marvel when in doing so they’ve also opened themselves up to abuse.

The truth is, the world has been run by straight, white, cis men for countless years and that’s starting to change. The world is becoming a richer place for that. We need to hear all kinds of voices, especially as the world grows smaller. Anon, the world has changed more in the last twenty years than it had in centuries before it. But that means the truth is going to hurt sometimes.

I’m white, and i’m learning more about what that means from people of colour who share their experiences, their stories and their views. I understand a little better every day that it isn’t enough just to not be an actively racist asshole and that I need to use my privilege to speak up when I see it happening to others. I need to open my ears and listen to people from different countries, of different colours, of different religions, and hear about the struggles they face every day that i’ll never truly understand as someone born into a white family, in an area where there were very few people of colour as I grew up. I want to learn. I want to listen. I hope that the more POC speak out, the more that we can learn as people who haven’t faced the same prejudice. I’ll still never know what it’s like to walk in those shoes but i’ll be a little more mindful every day of what needs to change and how I can help.

It’s a similar thing existing in a predominantly cishet world. Something I realised recently is that, as much as I know it can take years, decades, sometimes a lifetime to really discover who you are, the cold hard fact is that when I was five years old I knew I wanted to marry a woman and call myself John but it’s taken decades to reverse the programming that a predominantly cishet world tried to write into me. We’re getting there, little by little. The world is changing, but a big part of that is from having the courage to find our voices and share our experiences as people of a gender and/or sexuality not defined as cis and heterosexual. I think trans folk have a unique point of view when it comes to gender wars since we’ve seen both sides of the coin to some degree. I’m just as scared of toxic femininity as I am of toxic masculinity. Both are dangerous and destructive, and they hurt everybody. It’s time they began to die and allowed people to be themselves without a gender-approved bar they have to reach to be a ‘real man/woman’.

Lastly, anon, I would really like you to rethink the way you view sex workers because most that i’ve met along the way have been the kindest, most genuine, most open individuals who work harder than you’ll ever know. Making fetish videos put food on the table, a roof over our heads and bought our boat when we were faced with being homeless. My health wouldn’t allow me to work a job outside the home any more and I wanted to make a living as best as I could. I feel like you would be just as critical if I lived by benefits alone. Plus making videos was a very important step in my own life. It helped me to love a part of myself that i’d always resented and felt ashamed of, and gave me confidence to appear in front of the camera which I could never have imagined some years ago. Plus I made a few wonderful friends that way.

Anon, you have a good heart, enough to not misgender me. I can’t and won’t apologise for reblogging posts that talk about subjects that affect me personally. This is, after all, my blog, and it’s important for people to see how many others have been affected by the same issues. It helps when you don’t feel so alone. If there’s something that triggers you about those posts then perhaps there’s something you recognise in it. This is a really good time to identify what that is and to work out why it upsets you so much. We can all learn to be better people, and listening to our discomfort is a good first step.

[transgenderadvice]

Okay, so! I'm a cis girl, who indentifies as pæn. The læst year however I've realized I'm not really attracted to cis guys - like, every gender but cis guys. But I'm so afraid that's transphobic, like, liking transgender guys but not cis guys? [1]

My attraction to transgender guys has nothing to do with the fact that they’re transgender, I just never find myself attracted to cis guys, but am afraid to admit it, because as I said I’m afraid it’s transphobic? So basically to be quite honest I searched the internet for a trans advice blog so you could clear out for me if it’s problematic or not that I like trans guys but not cis guys?

[/end]

Hey anon, 

I used to be in the same boat as you. I didn’t (and still don’t) find cis men attractive more so because of privilege and my views on toxic masculinity and misogyny. You aren’t the first person to feel discomfort and lack of attraction to cis men despite being attracted to multiple genders.

I would not know if this is a chaser mindset. I don’t quite know if this is problematic. I would say to be on the safe side that you shouldn’t make that distinction. I want to say this is 100% problematic but honestly I can’t blame people for not liking cis men. I think you’re definitely walking a blurred line right now especially since you aren’t attracted to trans people exclusively (this is a good thing otherwise youd totally be a chaser). I would say that this is fine however don’t really casually mention it I’d say? Like if you just said in conversation you’re attracted to trans men it would just sound terrible on so many levels.

I would start by figuring out WHY you don’t like cis men. I already stated a possibility for it but it may not apply to you. You aren't trans, so it can’t be the lack of a sense of understanding and support when it comes to gender. 

I’d reflect on this if I were you and be careful how you phrase this as many trans people, especially trans men, could (and will) take serious offense. I am not the God of trans people. I can’t speak for everyone about something like this which is quite literally an individualized opinion. Just because I think it’s okay not to be attracted to cis men doesn’t mean all or even most of us will.

Anyone feel free to add their thoughts for this anon! (be respectful and kind please)

-August

[motsimages]

@onsomekindofstartrek 

I am a native Spanish speaker and speak 5 languages, 3 of them gendered (French, Spanish and Russian). 

Turns out English has a lot of gender markers and a lot of gender insecurity for being “gender-neutral”. For instance, you need to make clear that a hairbun in a man is a man bun, not just a bun. In Spanish, it’s a moño, regardless of who wears it. Moño is grammatically masculine but wether women or men have one, it’s still moño, no extra marker. Same would apply to handbag if a man were to use one (remember in Friends when Joey had a bag?).

And then, you have all this objects that belong to men like cars, boats, motorcycles that are suddenly “she” and I don’t want to read anything into this but hey.

In Russian, the word for “man” is grammatically feminine (muzhshina) because  linguistic evolution. Native speakers don’t notice because adjectives and verbs go in masculine, even though the word itself has feminine declensions. I tought Spanish in Russia, explained this and native Russian speakers refused to believe until I forced them to make agreements adjective+noun with that word (krasivyi muzhshina as opposed to krasivii malchik or krasivaya zhenshina).

Generally speaking, native speakers of gendered languages do not think about the grammatical gender of words,specially when they are objects, not people or animals. The confusion between grammar and life may be problematic (and I, as a linguist, find myself often surprised and pissed off by the lack of linguistic understanding activists have) but it’s more theoretical than real.  In this regard: when teaching Spanish to foreigners, foreigners are always surprised to find out that “polla” (dick) is feminine and “coño” (pussy) is masculine. Native Speakers NEVER think about this. I realised this when some Northern European pointed it out to me. Until that moment, it’s just a word we use for genitals, how curious it works like that.

I, myself, aren’t trans but I have lot of trans and nb friends. The grammar is not the issue. “cuerpo” happens to be masculine but nobody thinks about it like that..The disphoria they feel doesnt’ come from the fact that “boob” is grammatically feminine in Spanish but from the fact that it is associated with women, “dick” is grammatically feminine too and is associated with men. “dress” is grammatically masculine and associated with women, and I could go on. As with many of the examples I used above, we only think about the gender of a word if it’s related to a person* or, sometimes, an animal. Body parts belong to the world of “things”, of “abstract” in a way, so not the problem.

*It is particularly noticeable with adjectives. For example, and here is another proof of the not-so-neutral-English: beautiful vs handsome. In Spanish “guapo/guapa”. You would use “guapo” for men, and “guapa” for women. In English, in theory, everyone is “beautiful” but it’s mainly used for women and “handsome” is mainly used for men. You gendered ungendered words. In Spanish, if you were to use “guapo” for a woman, it would be misgendering her because there is a clear marker (-o) but it’s an adjective. But if you were to say “You’re the nicest thing” (eres lo más bonito/Eres la cosa más bonita), notice that one is masculine, the other is feminine and you could use any option for either men or women or nb people because you made it abstract, it’s not the person anymore.

*calls myself “she” but in an unmistakably unfemale way*

[ilya-t]

Living in the Transit Lounge by PICO IYER (1998)

By the time I was nine, I was already used to going to school by trans-Atlantic plane, to sleeping in airports, to shuttling back and forth, three times a year, between my parents’ (Indian) home in California and my boarding-school in England. Throughout the time I was growing up, I was never within 6,000 miles of the nearest relative—and came, therefore, to learn how to define relations in non-familial ways. From the time I was a teenager, I took it for granted that I could take my budget vacations (as I did) in Bolivia and Tibet, China and Morocco. It never seemed strange to me that a girlfriend might be half a world (or ten hours flying-time) away, that my closest friends might be on the other side of a continent or sea.

It was only recently that I realised that all these habits of mind and life would scarcely have been imaginable in my parents' youth; that the very facts and facilities that shape my world are all distinctly new developments, and mark me as a modern type.

It was only recently, in fact, that I realised that I am an example, perhaps, of an entirely new breed of people, a trans-continental tribe of wanderers that is multiplying as fast as international phone lines and Frequent Flyer programmes. We are the Transit Loungers, forever heading to the Departure Gate, forever orbiting the world. We buy our interests duty-free, we eat our food on plastic plates, we watch the world through borrowed headphones. We pass through countries as through revolving doors, resident aliens of the world, impermanent residents of nowhere. Nothing is strange to us, and nowhere is foreign. We are visitors even in our own homes.

This is not, I think, a function of affluence so much as of simple circumstance. I am not, that is, a jet-setter pursuing vacations from Marbella to Phuket; I am simply a fairly typical produce of a movable sensibility, living and working in a world that is itself increasingly small and increasingly mongrel. I am a multinational soul on a multicultural globe where more and more countries are as polyglot and restless as airports. Taking planes seems as natural to me as picking up the phone, or going to school; I fold up my self and carry it round with me as if were an overnight case.

The modern world seems increasingly made for people like me. I can plop myself down anywhere and find myself in the same relation of familiarity strangeness: Lusaka, after all, is scarcely more strange to me than the foreigners' England in which I was born, the America where I am registered as an ‘alien’, and the almost unvisited India that people tell me is my home. I can fly from London to San Francisco to Osaka and feel myself no more a foreigner in one place than another; all of them are just locations—pavilions in some intercontintental Expo—and I can work or live or love in any one of them. All have Holiday Inns, direct-dial phones, CNN and DHL. All have sushi and Thai restaurants, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Coke. My office is as close as the nearest FAX machine or modem. Roppongi is West Hollywood is Leblon.

This kind of life offers an unprecedented sense of freedom and mobility: tied down to nowhere, we can pick and choose among locations. Ours is the first generation that can go off to visit Tibet for a week, or meet Tibetans down the street; ours is the first generation to be able to go to Nigeria for a holiday to find our roots—or to find they are not there. At the lowest level, this new internationalism also means that I can get on a plane in Los Angeles, get off a few hours later in Jakarta, and check into a Hilton, and order a cheeseburger in English, and pay for it all with an American Express card. At the next level, it means that I can meet, in the Hilton coffee-shop an Indonesian businessman who is as conversant as I am with Michael Kinsley and Magic Johnson and Madonna. At a deeper level, it means that I need never feel estranged. If all the world is alien to us, all the world is home.

I have learned, in fact, to love foreignness. In any place I visit, I have the privileges of an outsider: I am an object of interest, and even fascination; I am a person set apart, able to enjoy the benefits of the place without paying the taxes. And the places themselves seem glamorous to me—romantic—as seen through foreign eyes: distance on both sides lends enchantment. Policemen let me off speeding tickets, girls want to hear the stories of my life, pedestrians will gladly point me to the nearest Golden Arches. Perpetual foreigners in the transit lounge, we enjoy a kind of diplomatic immunity; and, living off room service in our hotel rooms, we are never obliged to grow up, or even, really, to be ourselves.

Thus many of us learn to exult in the blessings of belonging to what feels like a whole new race. It is a race, as Salman Rushdie says, of ‘people who root themselves in ideas rather than places, in memories as much as in material things; people who have been obliged to define themselves—because they are so defined by others—by their otherness; people in whose deepest selves strange fusions occur, unprecedented unions between what they were and where they find themselves.’ And when people argue that our very notion of wonder is eroded, that alienness itself is as seriously endangered as the wilderness, that more and more of the world is turning into a single synthetic monoculture, I am not worried: a Japanese version of a French fashion is something new, I say, not quite Japanese and not truly French. Comme des Garçons hybrids are the art-form of the time.

And yet, sometimes, I stop myself and think. What kind of heart is being produced by these new changes? And must I always be a None of the Above? When the stewardess comes down the aisle with disembarkation forms, what do I fill in? My passport says one thing, may face another; my accent contradicts my eyes. Place of Residence, Final Destination, even Marital Status are not much easier to fill in; usually I just tick ‘Other’.

And beneath all the boxes, where do we place ourselves? How does one fix a moving object on a map? I am not an exile, really, not an immigrant; not deracinated, I think, any more than I am rooted. I have not fled the oppression of war, nor found ostracism in the places where I do alight; I scarcely feel severed from a home I have scarcely known. Yet is ‘citizen of the world’ enough to comfort me? And does taking my home as every place make it easier to sleep at night?

Alienation, we are taught from kindergarten, is the condition of the time. This is the century of exiles and refugees, of boat people and statelessness; the time when traditions have been abolished, and men become closer to machines. This is the century of estrangement: more than a third of all Afghans live outside Afghanistan; the second city of the Khmers is a refugee camp; the second tongue of Beverly Hills is Farsi. The very notion of nation-states is outdated; many of us are as cross-hatched within as Beirut.

To understand the modern state; we are often told, we must read V.S. Naipaul, and see how people estranged from their cultures mimic people estranged from their roots. Naipaul is the definitive modern traveler in part because he is the definitive symbol of modern rootlessness; his singular qualification for his wanderings is not his stamina, nor his bravado, nor his love of exploration—it is, quite simply, his congenital displacement. Here is a man who was a foreigner at birth, a citizen of an exiled community set down on a colonised island. Here is a man for whom every arrival is enigmatic, a man without a home—except for an India to which he stubbornly returns, only to be reminded of his distance from it. The strength of Naipaul is the poignancy of Naipaul: the poignancy of a wanderer who tries to go home, but is not taken in, and is accepted by another home only so long as he admits that he's a lodger there.

There is, however, another way of apprehending foreignness, and that is the way of Nabokov. In him we see an avid cultivation of the novel: he collects foreign worlds with a connoisseur's delight, he sees foreign words as toys to play with, and exile as the state of kings. This touring aristocrat can even relish the pleasures of Lo culture precisely because they are the things that his own high culture lacks: the motel and the summer camp, the roadside attraction and the hot fudge sundae. I recognise in Nabokov a European's love for America rooted in America's very youthfulness and heedlessness; I recognise in him the sense that the newcomer's viewpoint may be the one most conducive to bright ardour. Unfamiliarity, in any form, breeds content.

Nabokov shows us that if nowhere is home, everywhere is. That instead of taking alienation as our natural state, we can feel partially adjusted everywhere. That the outsider at the feast does not have to sit in the corner alone, taking notes; he can plunge into the pleasures of his new home with abandon.

We airport-hoppers can, in fact, go through the world as through a house of wonders, picking up something at every stop, and taking the whole globe as our playpen, or our supermarket (and even if we don't go to the world, the world will increasingly come to us: just down the street, almost wherever we are, are nori and salsa, tiramisu and naan). We don't have a home, we have a hundred homes. And we can mix and match as the situation demands. ‘Nobody's history is my history,’ Kazuo Ishiguro, a great spokesman for the privileged homeless, once said to me, and then went on, ‘Whenever it was convenient for me to become very Japanese, I could become very Japanese, and then, when I wanted to drop it, I would just become this ordinary Englishman.’ Instantly, I felt a shock of recognition: I have a wardrobe of selves from which to choose. And I savour the luxury of being able to be an Indian in Cuba (where people are starving for yoga and Tagore), or an American in Thailand; to be an Englishman in New York.

And so we go on circling the world, six miles above the ground, displaced from Time, above the clouds, with all our needs attended to. We listen to announcements given in three languages. We confirm our reservations at every stop. We disembark at airports that are self-sufficient communities, with hotels, gymnasia and places of worship. At customs we have nothing to declare but ourselves.

But what is the price we pay for all of this? I sometimes think that this mobile way of life is as novel high-rises, or the video monitors that are re-wiring our consciousness. And even as we fret about the changes our progress wreaks in the air and on the airwaves, in forests and on streets, we hardly worry about the changes it is working in ourselves, the new kind of soul that is being born out of a new kind of life. Yet this could be the most dangerous development of all, and not only because it is the least examined.

For us in the Transit Lounge, disorientation is as alien as affiliation. We become professional observers, able to see the merits and deficiencies of anywhere, to balance our parents' viewpoints with their enemies' position. Yes, we say, of course it's terrible, but look at the situation from Saddam's point of view. I understand how you feel, but the Chinese had their own cultural reasons for Tiananmen Square. Fervour comes to seem to us the most foreign place of all.

Seasoned experts at dispassion, we are less good at involvement, or suspensions of disbelief; at, in fact, the abolition of distance. We are masters of the aerial perspective, but touching down becomes more difficult. Unable to get stirred by the raising of a flag, we are sometimes unable to see how anyone could be stirred. I sometimes think that this is how Rushdie, the great analyst of this condition, somehow became its victim. He had juggled homes for so long, so adroitly, that he forgot how the world looks to someone who is rooted—in country or belief. He had chosen to live so far from affiliation that he could no longer see why people choose affiliation in the first place. Besides, being part of no society means one is accountable to no one, and need respect no laws outside one's own. If single-nation people can be fanatical as terrorists, we can end up ineffectual as peace-keepers.

We become, in fact, strangers to belief itself, unable to comprehend many of the rages and dogmas that animate (and unite) people. Conflict itself seems inexplicable to us sometimes, simply because partisanship is; we have the agnostic's inability to retrace the steps of faith. I could not begin to fathom why some Moslems would think of murder after hearing about The Satanic Verses: yet sometimes I force myself to recall that it is we, in our floating skepticism, who are the exceptions, that in China or Iran, in Korea or Peru, it is not so strange to give up one's life for a cause.

We end up, then, a little like non-aligned nations, confirming our reservations at every step. We tell ourselves, self-servingly, that nationalism breeds monsters and choose to ignore the fact that internationalism breeds them too. Ours is the culpability not of the assassin, but of the bystander who takes a snapshot of the murder. Or, when the revolution catches fire, hops on the next plane out.

In any case, the issues, in the Transit Lounge, are passing; a few hours from now, they'll be a thousand miles away. Besides, this is a foreign country, we have no interests here. The only thing we have to fear are hijackers—passionate people with beliefs.

Sometimes, though, just sometimes, I am brought up short by symptoms of my condition. They are not major things, but they are peculiar ones and ones that would not have been common fifty year ago. I have never bought a house of any kind, any my ideal domestic environment, I sometimes tell my friends, is a hotel room. I have never voted, or ever wanted to vote, and I eat I restaurants three times a day. I have never supported a nation (in the Olympic Games, say), or represented ‘my country’ in anything. Even my name is weirdly international, because my ‘real name’ is one that makes sense only in the home where I have never lived.

I choose to live in America in part, I think, because it feels more alien the longer I stay there. I love being in Japan because it reminds me, at every turn, of my foreignness. When I want to see if any place is home, I must subject the candidates to a battery of tests. Home is the place of which one has memories but no expectations.

If I have any deeper home, it is, I suppose, in English. My language is the house I carry around with me as a snail his shell; and in my lesser moments I try to forget that mine is not the language spoken in America, or even, really, by any member of my family.

Yet even here, I find, I cannot place my accent, or reproduce it as I can the tones of others. And I am so used to modifying my English inflections according to whom I am talking to—an American, an Englishman, a villager in Nepal, a receptionist in Paris—that I scarcely know what kind of voice I have.

I wonder, sometimes, if this new kind of non-affiliation may not be alien to something fundamental in the human state. The refugee at least harbours passionate feelings about the world he has left—and generally seeks to return there; the exile at least is propelled by some kind of strong emotion away from the old country and towards the new—indifference is not an exile emotion. But what does the Transit Lounger feel? What are the issues that we would die for? What are the passions that we would live for?

Airports are among the only sites in public life where emotions are hugely sanctioned, in block capitals. We see people weep, shout, kiss in airports; we see them at the furthest edges of excitement and exhaustion. Airports are privileged spaces where we can see the primal states writ large—fear, recognition, hope. But there are some of us, perhaps, sitting at the Departure Gate, boarding-passes in hand, watching the destinations ticking over, who feel neither the pain of separation nor the exultation of wonder; who alight with the same emotions with which we embarked; who go down to the baggage carousel and watch our lives circling, circling, circling, waiting to be claimed.

[theratprince]

processing some more stuff about IDing as gray-aro/ace, putting it under a line because it’s probs gonna be long

like i’d kind of thought about IDing as demisexual for a looong time and it didn’t feel quite right because sometimes i do experience sexual attraction based solely on physical appearance. but also i didn’t want to be grey-ace because i dated someone who was grey-ace and i remember wanting to have sex a lot but they didn’t and so that didn’t feel quite right. but also maybe i just had a lot of messed-up feelings about sex and relationships because i’d become so dependent on those things for validation. and even i have been craving a romantic relationship up until a few months ago, and looking back i think it was still tied into a kind of false dependency on romantic relationships. sexuality is certainly fluid, so for whatever reason i was an intensely, obsessively sexual and romantic being, and for a long time now i absolutely haven’t been. and certainly many trans people don’t have a full understanding of their orientation until they are at a point where they feel comfortable enough to know themselves.

so for a lil while i was like “i’ll just rescind labels entirely” and even rn i kind of fluctuate between IDing as male or agender. i’m male about 80% of the time and agender about 20% of the time, and they definitely feel like distinctively different states. but the grey-aro feelings are more consistent, in spite of the fact that it is a fairly inconsistent orientation?

but it’s like. i’ve had these feelings for so long -- that i do want a romantic/sexual relationship but i don’t feel like i’m looking/waiting for the right one in the way that a lot of people seem to be doing. i don’t like dating. i don’t like making the effort to persuade someone to find me attractive, as i so rarely experience attraction in the first place. literally i have been saying “i’m gay but i rarely am interested in other men” for an entire year. and for awhile i really tried but i have zero motivation or interest, and it makes me really uncomfortable when men do form attraction to me. and i mean? maybe it’s because they’re not my type but?? at what point do you realize that you just don’t really have a type?

like.. okay, for awhile now i’ve been really fixated on tall red-haired guys. and i think i do typically like more effeminate men, and no i don’t really have to decide on a “type” which i always will go for lol. but also i’m pretty sure i didn’t start fixating on tall redhead guys until i started a general hux rp blog and took the time to analyze every aspect of this character and get into his head -- basically, to form an intense empathic connection even if it is fictional. and i sure af didn’t give a shit about kylo ren until i had to write about hux falling in love with him so lol

i can only name about a handful of people that i am legitimately attracted to, and i don’t really know any of them. and all the crushes i’ve had this year? just guys that i’ve known or awhile that i’ve wanted to be friends with. i cried over one of them once but tbh i’d set up a lot of unrealistic expectation that i didn’t legitimately want from this person. the vast majority of the time, i don’t “develop” feelings for someone unless i convince myself that they are capable of developing feelings for me first.

anyway, i’m not trying to prove to myself that i am grey-aro/ace. i’m just relieved that this finally feels like a fitting label for feelings that i’ve been having for well over a year now. it means that there are other people who are much in the same boat, and have felt disillusioned with a culture that glorifies dating frequently and regularly with multiple people even. like... polyamory is totally valid but i just feel so utterly disconnected from it and it’s no longer due to my bad experiences with it (like i realized today that i have no anger for my ex adam m. anymore? i used to literally want to empty a gun in his face, but now that just seems... really unnecessary? at most, i hope he gets some kind of counseling. but i’m not angry anymore, and that pain is just.. gone?).

so anyway i’m glad i’m not broken or crazy. i thought maybe my apathy stemmed primarily from a lack of suitors but... idk there are a handful of people who have been interested, and i haven’t cared because they’re not Domhnall Gleeson or Hozier or Cillian Murphy. *shrug emoji*

and like?? lately i’ve been thinking about how i have a crush on this new guy at work. and like, yeah, for much of 2017 i’ve been intensely wanting a relationship, but tbh it was just when i was looking at pictures of actors that i liked lmao. i have been obsessive about certain kinds of attention, but i think ultimately uninterested and certainly unwilling to make any effort. but still it’s like i see my friends dating and having sex and talking about it and i’m like “i guess i need to do this” which is my own damn fault. and then nothing would come of it and then i’d feel frustrated, like something was inherently wrong with me. and then i’d daydream and hope and tbh i did dozens of tarot readings trying to figure out where and when i’d meet My Guy and what he’d be like. and recently i had a couple readings done that said i’d meet him at work so when we hired this new driver and he was my age and *nice to me* i was like “here it is, here it comes, i’m about to get Attention”

like when i dispatch and he calls, i feel all fluttery and warm and it does seem different than the other crushes i’ve had this year -- but more importantly, i haven’t met him yet and i’m going off of voice alone which gives me all kinds of opportunities to fill in the blanks with my imagination, and put the guy on a pedestal without having even met him. i’m supposed to meet him this thursday because we’re having a driver appreciation that i’m not even 100% sure he’s going to. i’ve been mildly stressin’ because i’m all “what if he doesn’t like me” and “what if he’s straight/taken” and “what if he’s actually horrible” and “what if he wears velcro-strap sandals and buzzes his hair like every other shitlord in this town” but then it occurred to me that none of that matters?? like, we’re drawn to this business perhaps because we have similar personalities and i enjoy talking to him when i get the chance, so we’d probably be good friends.

also lmao like ... a lot of the things i’ve been thinking i want in a relationship is actually just stuff that i want out of a friendship. like spending time together and talking about mutual interests and watching weird movies and going cool places like camping and museums and cycling together?? plus i want crazy kinky sex but i’m not even really sure that i actually want that. i’m pretty sure i do. I DUNNO WHICH IS WHY IM GREY I GUESS

and it’s like having this epiphany enabled me to also realize: i don’t have a crush on that new guy. also this explains why i keep trying to date my friends -- i confuse intense care for romantic feelings (and maybe i’m just a naturally really affectionate, loving person??). also: i don’t know how to deal with it when people do get attracted to me so i just run away.

so i guess this has just been in the back of my mind for a long time now. and while yeah i am an intensely sexual and romantic person, i extremely rarely experience that attraction for anyone, and i’m tired of feeling like something is wrong with me because our society, frankly, makes it a compulsion. and now i can put a name to those feelings. and?? i’m proud of it? i’m fucking grey-aro/ace and i’m proud <3

btw the gray-aro flag looks like slytherin. just saying

anyway i need to sleep

[donnanadine]

About me

Lately I’ve had an stronger than usual urge to talk about this.  Somehow this is screaming to be let out. I am a crossdresser, I’ve had these types of feeling since I was about four or five years old.  For me this has been an ongoing source of confusion and conflict. Today I don’t think I’m gay as I don’t find men attractive. Yes I already know women are in a lot of cases an oppressed class. I know the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence.  Mom and Dad found out about this in 1986 after my roomate came home after church and caught me.  He went to work and  later talked about  moving out claiming rent in this area was too high. I had a panic attack and told my parents. Nothing came of it and I never talked to them about it ever since. Dad wasn’t too thrilled and Mom blamed it on Rocky Horror. To my roomates credit he didn’t bail on me and I was able to talk to him about it as long as I kept it on a tolerable level. A year later I saw an episode of the Phil Donahue show. It was about a social club for crossdressers called Tri Ess ( Society for the Second Self). That December I met up with a member who I’m still in contact with to this day. This person is now retired and lives in Citrus  Heights. Her name is Rose Ann and a week later she took me cross dressed to a social group called Rainbow Gender Association RGA for short. This group had folded. For the first time in my life I was in a room full of people with the same or similar head trip I was dealing with with. I remember growing up I thought I was the only one. This was their Christmas party. I later went to a New Years Eve Party thrown by another crossdresser group in San Francisco called ETVC ( Educational Transvestite Channel) . I was a member for a few years and was in their outreach group, in 1990 I spoke at a sexuality class a Gavilan College with a group of other ETVC members. Rose Ann let me change at her place until I moved out on my own after Carl got married. I was able to park the Camaro outside my front door when I lived in Santa Clara.  I would go out crossdressed after dark and go to the RGA meetings and even went to the homes of other crossdressers once in awhile. This came to an almost abrupt stop when IBM put me on swing shift.  I’ve been to RGA a few times afterword but it wasn’t the same.                                                   Recently I’ve been attending transition meetings at a community center called Billy Defrank here in San Jose. It consists of mostly transgenders  and transsexuals. We sit in a circle and talk about our transitions and issues. Being a crossdresser I had always thought of myself as the odd person out. Recently I’ve been discovering that I have some transition issues here and in other places in my life. Mostly that with this and a few other things in my life I’d like to move forward. At present I don’t know which direction I want to take. I don’t plan to change my sex. I do want to find out what is going on inside my head. One question I want to ask of this group is how they think their lives would’ve been different if they had been born the opposite sex? I’ve often wondered that for most of my life. When I was twelve my Mom took me to have a catscan and we found out neither side of my brain is dominant.  Sometimes I wonder if this is the reason I’m in between on so many things. I don’t blame this for all my problems but I suspect this has contributed to the bigger picture. Now I wonder if I would’ve been better socialized, and had better attitudes towards work and school. I’ll be asking this question in the next meeting of the transition group.   I’ve also been better able to connect with some women and with LGBT/Trans people. Two years after I left Hitachi I confided to  a former coworker who was a post-op transexual that I was crossdresser. She said she had always suspected something gender related about me. Prior to leaving Hitachi I had taken some Friday nights off to go to RGA Meetings. I had some photos of me taken there and emailed  them to Stephanie. She said I was very convincing and very cute. I wish I could’ve gotten to know her better than I did. There are also some things I may tell you later when I find the right way to word them. Since I’ve noticed the acceptance my cousion has gotten from my youngest sister and Mom I felt this would be a good time to confide these things to you.  P.S. this quote from Gilda Radner has stuck in my head for many years. I had to share it with you.      "I love being a woman. You can cry. You get to wear pants now. If you're on a boat and it's sinking you get to go on the rescue boat first. You get to wear cute clothes. It must be a great thing, or so many men wouldn't be wanting to do it now”.   Gilda Radner