#IT'S BEEN A DECADE BUT THANK YOU

[spookbot]

the new mcr fans following ask-kobrakid occasionally are SO optimistic bless them

[itty-bitty-sunshine]

It's been 10 years and just now im learning how to draw the ogs smh

Happy ten years at Freddy's! 🎉

[astorythatwritesitself]

yes good day hi I am being COMPLETELY normal don't look at the tags about this Valentine's YCH from @valkblue 😭

[detnoto]

[gay-impressionist]

Hi! I’m starting to learn French and one thing that’s both cool and weird to me is how everything is gendered in a way (referring to someone/whose saying the statement/etc.) and I was wondering how that relates to people who identity as non-binary or gender fluid in France? Are there equivalents to they/them pronouns or neo pronouns in French?

I do plan on doing my own research about this but I figured since I love your blog and you’re really open about different cultural lgbtq+ communities I’d try here first!

That's an awesome question... with a complicated answer lmao. So buckle up and bear with me !

Basically, you can't be non-binary in French. The community found ways to do it but it's not mainstream. Most of the time, they're going to get misgendered or will have to misgender themselves to get understood.

Some things I'm going to list here are not proper French. Actually, they can even be forbidden in some circumstances, according to the law (the use of inclusive language, and more specifically le point médian, was made illegal in schools in 2021 for ex) or simply because your company etc forbids it. So use this wisely, there is a time and place for inclusive language in France.

That said, things have greatly developed over the last two decades. Which was partly because of the queer community and mainly because of feminists, who are tired of the way French erases women. More and more people are using inclusive language, at least in some circumstances and circles (for ex, i wrote my master's thesis in inclusive language and it was accepted bc i was in a leftist faculty). And inclusive language is debated as a serious issue now, which is saying something.

So, how do you use inclusive language in practice?

There are different ways, as it's informal and mostly new. People are still testing new things and trying out various methods. You can stick to one or alternate or mix them up.

Pronouns

Officially, there isn't a gender neutral pronoun. We don't have an equivalent to they. You're either talking about a man or a woman. If it's both, you use masculine pronouns ("masculine trumps feminine" rule). Same thing if you don't know the gender of the person ("masculin générique").

The most common neopronoun is "iel" (plural : iels), which is obviously a contraction of the masculine pronoun "il" and its feminine equivalent "elle". It works for nb folks or to avoid talking about someone's gender or to refer to a group of men and women. So it's equally used by the queer community and feminists.

I'm pretty sure other neopronouns exist but I can't think of any at the top of my head.

Choosing the right words

Sometimes, inclusive language is just about learning to use alternatives.

Instead of using gendered words, you can choose to use gender-neutral words or words "épicènes", aka words which are identical in their feminine and masculine form. For ex, instead of "homme politique" or "femme politique", you can use "personnalité politique". Personnalité is a feminine word but it's actually gender-neutral as you can use it for women and men alike. "Élève" (student) is épicène, as a female student and a male student are both referred to as "élève". Although épicène words as a gender-neutral option only work in their plural form, as you have to choose either a feminine or masculine article for the singular ("les élèves" is inclusive but it can only be "un" or "une" élève).

As good as this method is, it can be quite limitating. Your vocabulary will be drastically reduced and it can be quite hard to master that kind of speech so you can reach the point where you don't have to think everything over for ages before you open your mouth.

With oral French, you can take it a step further by choosing words that sound the same even if they have a different spelling. Ex, friend is "ami" or "amie" but it's pronounced the same way so if you say it out loud, people can't know how you're gendering it (as long as there isn't a gendered article/word with it ofc).

It avoids misgendering people but the downside is that, as masculine is considered neutral in French, people will often think : no gender specified = masculine. Not even because they're sexist or whatever, it's just so ingrained in our brains that it's a knee-jerk reaction.

That's also why most feminists often prefer to use explicitly feminine words when talking about women. For ex, they prefer the word "autrice" to "auteure" (female writer) because the second one sounds the same as its masculine version "auteur". And as previously mentionned, out loud, people will assume by default you're talking about a man. It's a big debate though, lots of women prefer words that sound masculine - going as far as refusing to use feminine words at all! Which sounds cool and gender-bending as fuck but in reality comes from feminine words traditionally seen as less legitimate and serious. Even today, if you look up the word empress "impératrice" in a French dictionary, the first definition that comes up is "wife of an emperor". "Woman ruling a country" comes second. Using a masculine title to refer to women can also be a way to mock them and show they're not welcome (a french deputy got fined in 2014 because he called the female president of the national assembly "Madame le président" and refused to use the feminine title "Madame la présidente").

Recently the tendency and official guidelines have been to feminize words, so I'd say go with that by default, but respect other people's choice if they specify how they want to be called.

Anyway I'm getting off-track but what I meant was that in French, if you avoid talking about gender, you're automatically erasing women (and nb people). So if you want to include everyone, you need to make it obvious.

Inclusivity as a statement

The most common way to make women and men equally visible is the "point médian" rule, which you can also use to refer to non-binary people as it avoids picking a specific gender.

Basically, it means pasting together the masculine and feminine forms of a word and using dots/middle dots/hyphens/parentheses/capital letters to create an inclusive word. For ex, instead of saying acteur (♂️) or actrice (♀️) for actor, you'll write "acteur.ice". For the plural form, there are two schools of thought : either you separate the feminine and masculine form AND the suffix used to signify the plural, or you don't. Aka, "acteur.ice.s" or "acteur.ices". Personally I prefer the second option because less dots makes it easier to read and faster to write, but it's an individual choice, both work.

There are two major downsides to this method : it only works in writing + it isn't doable for every word, as feminine and masculine words can be quite different and pasting them together that way would be unintelligible. Ex, "copain" and "copine" (friend or boyfriend/girlfriend depending on the context) would give something like "cop.ain.ine"...

You can work around that by choosing alternative words (as previously stated!). And it's still a pretty good method, especially as it works for any type of word (adjectives etc). Some people argue that it's hard to read and ugly but personally I think it's just a matter of habit (although it does pose a problem for people using screen readers). Be aware that it is the most controversial version of inclusive writing, as it's the furthest structure from how languages typically work.

If you don't like dots or want an alternative for oral speech, you can also straight up create new words that sound both feminine and masculine, making them gender-neutral. To use the previous example, "copain" and "copine" become "copaine".

Obviously, this only works if it's obvious which words they're based on. I think it's a great way to make French more inclusive but I'd advise against using it with uninitiated people as it would probably confuse them more than anything. This method is still quite niche.

An inclusive, yet binary language

As you've probably figured out, inclusive language remains quite binary in the way we approach it. It's more about making things both masculine and feminine than transcending gender and creating gender-neutral alternatives. Probably because inclusive language was more often a will to stop women from being erased rather than a non-binary friendly gesture.

Which means, there are also some rules that were created to avoid the "masculine trumps feminine rule" but don't allow room for non-binarity at all. I'll still explain them because they're interesting and you might encounter them at some point.

The proximity rule ("règle de proximité") is one of these. It existed in Ancient Greek and Latin but was dropped in Modern French in favor of the masculine trumps feminine rule. Basically, you gender things according to what's closest in the sentence instead of systematically using masculine words to gender a mixed group. For ex, instead of saying "Les hommes et les femmes sont beaux" you say "Les hommes et les femmes sont belles", as the subject "femmes" is closer to the adjective "beau/belle" than "hommes".

Another method is to systematically use both masculine and feminine words (which I personally find excruciating to write and read). Meaning, instead of writing "Les étudiants mangent à la cantine" (students eat at the cafeteria), you'll write "Les étudiantes et les étudiants mangent à la cantine".

This is mainly for the subject of the sentence : adjectives and such are gendered according to the masculine trumps feminine rule. The point is to explicitly include women, not to make the sentence unintelligible or gender-neutral.

When following this method, you also have to pay attention to whether you put the feminine subject first or the masculine. The rule is to follow alphabetical order. For ex, in "l'égalité entre les femmes et les hommes", "femmes" comes first because F comes before H. But in "Les auteurs et les autrices de roman", "auteurs" comes first because E comes before R. Etc.

This method is common as it's the only inclusive language you can get away with, given that it's a valid way of speaking French. It's even mandatory in some situations now, like in job descriptions for the french administration, in the spirit of gender equality.

So, how do I gender a non-binary person?

In short, you can use the pronoun iel + avoid gendered words and/or use the point médian and/or make up new words.

But keep in mind that if you're not talking to someone familiar with these rules, you'll have some explaining to do. And looots of people are still very anti inclusive language, because they're sexist and/or transphobic, ignorant, language purists, etc. A few years ago it was the thing to be angry about for conservatives and anti-feminists so it's still very controversial. But if you're in a trans inclusive queer space or talking with intersectionnal leftists, go for it !

I hope I covered everything (fellow french, don't hesitate to comment!) and didn't put you to sleep lmao. If you want to see some examples, you can look it up on Wikipedia or check #bagaitte on tumblr (it's the french queer tag) 😉

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

YES! JOIN ME IN THE DELCIOUS DUNGEONS!

[mochiiniko]

ANNIVERSARY BLAST

[gracelesstars]

"Back when you first came into my life, I recalled a place that I knew as a child A special place One that I held close to my heart Won’t you lead me in a dance down this winding road where light and shadow entwine to take hold of the thoughts of the one left far behind? Know that, sometimes, I want to turn around and see the things that I’ve passed on the journey, but know with love on my side, with courage and pride, I’ll fight I will carry on"

R.I.P. Akira Toriyama

[salarymanwaka]

late for work...

[hyakunana]

"Anyone can find happiness. That's the world we're striving for!"

[katabay]

trains :)

this is a very rough and scribbly comic, but sometimes that's all a comic is going to end up being lmao. the guy with the jacket is darren, glasses is andy. not featured, andy's dead brother who nevertheless insists on haunting the subtext

the main thing I wanted to draw was the train tho

bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara.app

[kobochasketch]

A cool Lady rockin’ a fur coat! (inspired by @fabdante‘s lovely Devil May Cry art of all the various fun alternate outfits and fabulous fur coats!!!) ;D

[hanafubukki]

Happy Three Year Anniversary 🥹💚🌺

It’s my three year anniversary since I first started writing fanfics on tumblr. I think back about the first time I published fanfics on here and everyone I met along the way because of that one moment of time.

When I took that step to allow myself to express/be myself and publish something I wrote. It led to meeting so many wonderful people here and irl and I am forever grateful to myself and to all of you.

I am forever grateful for all the encouragement you all give me and I can’t say it enough. Be it comments, asks, reblogs, likes, tagging or what have you.

Everyday is fun and brings a smile to my face. I look forward to the future because of it.

So really, thank you everyone. I’m so happy to have met and interacted with you and hope to continue to do so ☺️💚🌺

[canisalbus]

Not quite sure how to politely phrase this so I'll just be blunt, sorry, but would you ever open commissions? I'd pay big bux to get my priest mouse drawn by you

I do commissions extremely rarely, I'm afraid. It's not that I don't like drawing for people (or that I have no use for that extra income), I just can't handle the additional pressure and deadlines that well at all at the moment. Sorry!

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Lmao Frank would absolutely keep a list of everything they tried to do to fix this situation. He has his work cut out for him with poor wally as well. Does he know what happened to Sally?

Frank does know what happened to Sally! ofc he caught his first glimpse of her when he sorta woke up, then after he Actually woke up, Wally made sure to sit him down and be like "she will kill you if you go near her <3"

still, Frank didn't really believe Wally. so Wally showed him proof:

and Frank quickly changed his tune.

and honestly, it's more like Wally has his work cut out for him with Frank lmao. cause by the time Frank fully wakes, Wally's pretty much given up. and rightfully so, there's... not really anything he can do except protect his sleeping friends.

so Frank's initial attempts to make a plan kinda went like:

Wally is very earnest about saying "that's nice". it is nice. it's refreshing to have someone around that still believes something can be done, however futile that hope is. Frank will catch on eventually.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, I recently went into the x-men and I found my own dead with Charles and Erik AND I NEED READ MORE OF THEM BUT I SO LOST AFTER POWERS AND HOUSE OF X SO I DON'T KNOW WHERE CONTINUE, can u help me?

(alsoIlikeyoursdrawingsiwishbeingsoconstantwithmycontentlikeu)

i'll be very candid with you my friend: i'm totally lost too !!!!!!! your comic-reading journey is about as green as mine and so i cant personally give you a super great guide- but beautiful people on the internet exist who've done most of the dirty work for us when sorting through the stories you 'should' read so i'm borrowing them to help us both

you can read this article to read about one person's advice with exploring krakoa and- in their opinion- its most 'significant' stories, though to summarize the issues they recommend looking into:

House of X/Powers of X (which you should have already done)

X of Swords event

Hellfire Gala

Inferno

X Lives and X Deaths of Wolverine

Second Hellfire Gala

Third Hellfire Gala

Fall of the House of X/Rise of the Powers of X (also should have already done, however...) +Single issue: X-Men (2021 series) #35 aka Uncanny X-Men #700 is featured at the end of the FoX omnibus, though the omnibus excludes an extra bit at the end involving a cliffhanger for Charles's fate after he's arrested

if you want to dig a little deeper though, you can check out this article from another individual which includes another wave of 'relevant' (word used loosely as some can be considered more poignant than others) krakoa stories and stories related to it or set during the period.

it's a lot longer and more in depth than the last article, so again i only really rec peaking at this one depending on how deep you wanna go, or if you decide you want to explore more after reading the more 'key' stories. def wouldn't hurt to give it a glance just in case you read some summaries that pique your interest!

all in all, don't take these as concrete rules or guides to follow: comics are meant to be fun, these are just good starting points if you're feeling lost or overwhelmed. at the end of the day, you decide ultimately what you want to read and which stories interest you the most

happy reading !