#among cis- fans

[griem]

ijbol idk man releasing screenshots of very polarizing things said in a private discord server between friends in a public "callout" post is #the most #tumblrific thing ive ever seen LOL.

#opinion 😱 in tags

[perenlop]

i'm not exactly innocent of this and i am not defending her at all as a person, but sometimes when people criticize l!ly 0rchard, i can't help but side eye a liiiittle bit when they nitpick EVERYTHING about her writing... including stuff that i knowwww the average person wouldn't criticize a cis and/or male writer for doing.

and it bugs me more that you cant point that out without people going "omg its not transmisogynistic to criticize a bad youtuber!! look, we don't misgender her, dont we get a medal for that?"

[matoitech]

talking abt cis ppl slapping top scars on their fanart of a fictional man and calling it a day in the Trans Ally department is criticism of how cis ppl will do the bare minimum and expect ppl 2 clap for them being the biggest allies in the world (wow awesome u recognize trans ppl exist sometimes bcuz u draw an anime man with top scars 1 time so ppl would leave u alone abt never drawing trans ppl, great lol) esp while never interacting with or boosting actual trans peoples art, not as a critique of the character ‘not looking trans enough’. if u think that was the criticism then u have lost the plot cuz being pissy that someone drew a usually masculine guy with top scars and complaining abt how he ‘doesnt even look trans’ is actually just you being shitty. what i always wonder w this too is like. u rly think its actually more progressive for a cis person who has 1 way of drawing men to draw the trans man differently than they do the cis men? you think thats Progressive and Accurate bcuz trans men are a TOTALLY Different Male Species? and u want ppl to think ur not a transphobic idiot and ur actually making points? u dont even understand what the original joke and criticism was

[dingodad]

please god i need to know what U think of the whole “jadebloods are all female!” thing because i got into homestuck in 2019 around the time of friendsim and (retching) Lanque so i always assumed they were explicitly intended to be an all-female caste. however, re-reading the comic this year, i couldnt find a mention of it other than virgo and the Space aspect being really feminine, but i think kanayas journey with motherhood is more kanaya-centric than All-Jadebloods centric??

on one hand, it makes sense given that alternia has very real gendered oppression, so what’s better for that than CATHOLICISM?? on the other hand, i always saw kanaya as being transfem coded, because it connects so well with roxy yknow.. homestuck fans love to insist that certain characters just have to be cis women (kanaya, jade, roxy)

(as an aside; was “long hair was butch on alternia” a one off joke? i like speculation about alternia’s fashion opposing earth, lol)

most all of our basis for explicitly gendered interpretation of Alternia comes from act 6 intermission 3, where Aranea tells us that "jade 8loods were also an almost exclusively female caste". so the door has always been open for there to be "some male jadebloods". but it's a mistake to view this as having anything to do with any kind of "biological sex". the whole idea of biological sex among trolls is a smoke screen. the jadebloods' assigned gender at birth is "jadeblood". this is what makes them a feminised caste.

Caliborn doesn't have a clue what biological sex is. Aranea will tell you that there are boy cherubs and girl cherubs, but for your own sanity you need to cast this idea out of your mind: cherub sex takes place between good and evil cherubs - which is determined by their blood - and anything else is just roleplay. Caliborn's attitude toward sexing is that the ones he likes are boys - that's all the thought that goes into it. and that's the mindset we need to be aware of when we delve into understanding troll gender. there are some trolls who have breast tissue and some who don't, but they aren't "mammaries" in any sense, so there's no reason to believe they're actually sexual characteristics of any kind; maybe this is what Lord English chose to base his gender schema on, but the idea that this means there must be "male trolls" and "female trolls" is completely imagined for the narrative convenience of the human reader.

when we read that there are "male-dominated" highblood castes and therefore by implication female-populated lowblood castes, it's not by some coincidence of biology: the highblood castes are male-dominated BECAUSE they are highblood castes. each caste has a role to play in Caliborn's Alternia, and just as the highblooded roles are those of patriarchal domination, the lower castes must take on roles of feminised submission; and in the case of the jades in particular, this means breeding duties. the fact that this also comes with the expectation to wear makeup and pretty clothes is just more roleplay.

so tl;dr what i think of "the all jadebloods are female thing" is that it is very obviously true but in a way more 5 dimensional gender studies way than anyone else tends to mean when they say it

my pet "long hair was butch on alternia" headcanon - which is a joke but in the way all headcanons about alternia should be jokes of some kind - actually kind of relates to this lol. bc i figure that if gendered expectations of female trolls includes working in disgusting underground caverns filled with genetic material, it's going to be practical to keep your hair close to your head where it won't get dirty, in much the same way the feminist image of the short-haired woman became popular in the west during and after world war 2, wherein a lot of women had to start wearing their hair close to their heads to avoid scalping themselves in the factory machinery they suddenly had to start working with. hence kanaya dedicated to her assigned feminine role and wearing her hair short vs. porrim rebelling against it for feminist reasons and thus wearing her hair at a length that would be totally impractical for wading through gene pools.

[mordcore]

ever notice how the people who will be like "eww linux haha" are just bullying a group of mostly autistic people

but it's okay because they're stereotypically men and disabled men get no rights i guess

like yes cis male linux-fans can be annoying (often in an autism way btw) but as someone who has spent years among them they are on average less sexist than your average man. also a lot of us linux users are genderqueer poople. the trans women in STEM you've heard about? most of them are linux users as well, if they don't use unix or more obscure systems.

the techbros you hate? they don't use linux, they use windows and mac. linux is overwhelmingly non-commercial, and techbros are hyper-neoliberal. most of linux is FOSS (free & open source software)

linux comes from the same ideological corner as firefox. if you think firefox is great but think linux is nothing more than a funny joke you need to look in the fucking mirror. and at your own computer because if you use windows you'll have a lot of anti-features that you take for granted. if you made the switch to linux it would be like exhaling the breath you didn't know you were holding for years. not saying that you have to, just, most people don't even consider making their own lives easier. you know?

[olderthannetfic]

What's the current consensus (among you and your blog followers that is) on the good ole discourse topic of "fixed top-bottom roles dominate in fandom because straight women are imposing a heteronormative binary on slash and femlash"? Because that popped up recently in the fanfiction subreddit, and the replies (mostly blaming straight women and stereotypes, with the occasional smattering of "examine yourself") have been giving me a rage-induced headache.

--

LOL.

There is nothing new in this argument or my reactions to it.

Strict roles often come from men and from offline queer culture, not just from women and BL/slash.

The women (and "women") who like strict roles are often not straight, and the people whining about The Straights have no basis for telling who's who, which makes them inherently transphobic, biphobic, homophobic pieces of shit.

Role-based relationship dynamics are not necessarily heteronormative.

What this shit is, fundamentally, is reheated queer community wank from like the 80s about how butch/femme is insufficiently progressive and your sex life is political, wah wah wah.

People who fall for it in fandom now are some combination of radfem poisoned and those defensive idiots who think the cis gay men will validate them more than the BL fan sitting next to them.

They might be a trans man asserting that he's more male than you and thus more valid while ignoring that he isn't hanging out in other dude spaces because they disrespect his gender and/or laugh at his delusions about horny content. They might be a nonbinary person asserting their not-femaleness by asserting that everyone else is the most stereotypical cishet woman ever. They might be a woman pulling that "my gay best friend" shit.

Regardless, they're all the same morons we saw in the 90s, futilely hoping that some man will validate them.

No one is going to validate them.

If they could write for beans, they'd be a famous BL author themselves, making everyone like whatever dynamic they prefer. Instead, their only skill is crying about how the talented and productive people waste time on The Wrong Art.

Laugh in their faces. It's what they deserve.

[evcns]

i've had a cleanup of my servers and closed the inactive ones, meaning i'm now looking for new writing partners on discord.

my name is evan, i write rapid-fire to small paragraphs in length to move the story along, i can write longer responses on the occasions that the plot requires it, but i don't like writing just to pad space.

i'm 26 and will not interact with anybody under 18, preferably you'll be over 21. minors do not interact with any of my posts.

gmt timezone but open to writing with any.

i have a long list of ocs i have information on for you to play with and am also happy to create new ones, i play both males and females but lean more to male muses.

i write mxm and mxf ships, as well as switching any party out for a non-binary muse. i write trans and cis muses.

i am happy to write nsfw content, and can do plots with as much as 80% smut - but there has to be some form of plot to make it interesting for me - similarly, i can write plots that don't include any smut at all, if you prefer to fade to black.

with regard to nsfw content, my established list of muses are a mix of doms, subs and switches as well as tops, vers and bottoms, so if you want to include nsfw content, please let me know what your muse is so i can match accordingly. similarly, i myself have limits which i can share, but my muses have their own individual kinks and limits also. i don't want to write any nsfw content without discussing what your kinks and limits are to be included.

big fan of including text/call elements to our plots for days when we just want very quick back and forths and don't have time but do have muse.

will consider single plots, multiple plots and multi-muse words depending on how many characters you want to throw in and what plots you have in mind.

interested in slice of life, supernatural, horror, college, fame, historic, western and apocalyptic plots. open to ideas not listed here to, however.

happy to write non-fandom, if you want to write fandom content - here are some of the fandoms i will write (not exclusive):

movies

marvel (mcu)

childs play

halloween

friday 13th

saltburn

video games

the quarry

heavy rain

the dark pictures anthology

until dawn

detroit: become human

wolf among us

telltales the walking dead

god of war

dead by daylight

far cry 4, 5, 6

bioshock & infinite

life is strange 2 & true colors

uncharted

skyrim

[utilitycaster]

Unpopular opinion: parts of the cr fandom are really dismissive/ reductive of Travis’s characters. It feels like it’s due to Travis being seen as THE cis het man of the group, and by extension his characters must be heteronormative and bad, despite the fact that you could have queer interpretations of his characters. At the very least, Travis’s characters explore masculinity and the different ways it might look. It’s like the people who are all “ew men are gross and shitty” and act like that’s an absolutely normal reaction to a man just existing.

So this is another one in that I agree with the initial statement, but I'm actually not sure re: the reasoning why. I think it's possible but I could not tell you for sure.

I used to, again, think this was people carrying through Campaign 1 elements well beyond the point where C1 had ended, and so Grog having an intelligence of 6 was being applied to Travis; and this definitely does come through to an extent when people treat Fjord (objectively as smart as Beau without her circlet) as stupid or act shocked that Chetney is the brains of Bells Hells or that he can play a Cerrit, Fjord, or Nathaniel. However, again, I think this is one of those opinions that pops up among people who weren't around for Campaign 1 (or early enough in C2 to be exposed to it regularly) so I don't know if that's the case anymore. It could still be - it could be that Approved Fandom Opinions get passed down even when the logic behind them has long since been lost; that's a really common thing in institutional memory. But I can't say for sure.

I also have in the past credited it to, as you said, people assuming his characters are the cishet guys and then writing them off. That's still possible - I've seen both Fjord and Chetney called "token straight" despite considerable evidence of bisexuality, and they also paradoxically are both commonly headcanoned as trans while still getting called "token straight," which sort of ties into a post I would need to find from someone else from quite some time ago about which cast members are granted agency by the fandom in their choices vs. which are assumed to be the victims of circumstance. And I do think that there are people in fandom who have decided men are icky or whatever, and I used to think this came from a place of bigotry and a slide towards t*rf ideology but I now do genuinely think it's just idiots who don't grant interiority to characters outside their own limited understanding.

But I think it's also useful to consider a few things, most of which I've brought up before:

Travis is extremely offline. He is not here to entertain your headcanons; he has been politely but openly dismissive of some (imo, really fucking dumb) fanon/fan theories. I think the cast frequently talks about how it's their table, and I think that's valid and correct, but Travis is one of the players who lives it the most. He is playing this game with his friends, and he'd like it to be a good story, but if you don't like it, he is not here to make you like it. I think that really fucks with the parasocial connections some people desire with the cast.

Travis's characters tend to examine masculinity as a performance but also the general performance of the self, and the fact that you cannot in the end control how you are perceived entirely, and I think that really unsettles people who have equated presentation with reality and are again, looking for external validation of the self.

Travis can play it big but he's often extremely subtle, especially with his more serious characters, and he's not as easily quotable out of context as some others at the table. I think because he is a lot more naturalistic than dramatic at times (Chetney notwithstanding) and isn't as pithy and quotable in his characters as many of Taliesin's PCs are, and a lot of the strength is in the delivery, he gets overlooked despite being very good with words on the fly.

And finally: this would be a whole post on its own but people are still very foolishly wed to this idea that pressing the big red button in D&D is Wild and Chaotic and haha Big ADHD Man when it's actually how you play D&D if you're not a coward; the button is where the story is stored, and a lot of Travis's strength is that he is extremely good at understanding what the GM wants and supporting it with sufficient grace that it's only visible if you know what you're fucking doing.

[skellymom]

I WILL MAKE THIS A SHORT SERIES!

MY READERS HAVE SPOKEN...and after some though I have somewhat an idea for a larger story. Will tag you all when the next installment drops in-between my "Vagabonds" Hunter x OC series installments!

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANTED TO BE ADDED TO THE TAG LIST!!!

@marymunchkiin @talesfrommedinastation @giganonyx @thecoffeelorian

@hugmekenobi @the-bad-batch-baroness @genericficerblog @techs-goggles9902

@arctrooper69 @random-chaotic-bitch @dystopicjumpsuit @nika6q @heyclickadee @n0vqni @doublesunsets

@echo-lover @fionajames @spacemagicandlaserswords @phantom-of-the-keurig @bmarino

@momojedi @violinrox15 @ollietheshark0 @knightprincess

@blueinkblot @stelli-sketches-alt @ci-avmovies14 @melymigo

@crosshair-lover @floraseasbee @sarapaprikas-blog @idoubleswearimawriter

@ovaa-bi-bia @blairaptor @idoubleswearimawriter

@knightprincess @ladykagewaki @gun-roswell

@starrylothcat @savebytheodore @maybethatfanfictionwriter @wild-karrde

@jedipoodoo @incognito-lezbean

@purgetrooper77 @freesia-writes @mistress-of-the-empire @ex0genmultifandom

@lucifidious @lizartgurl @notavalidusername

@tink1221 @the-hexfiles @amorfista @scarelitt

@gonky-kong @arcsimper5 @cloneloverrrrr @the-rain-on-kamino

@thebadbatch2022 @cassandrasfairytale @everybirdfellsilent

@groguandthebadbatch @theosb0rnway

@woswasi3006 @greatshieldmaiden14

@heiress-prime @kanenas @vrycurious

@feral-ferrule @oporayamm @ci-avmovies14

@zahmaddog @billybatsonmylove @sleepycreativewriter

@feral-ferrule @zahmaddog @legacygirlingreen

@momojedi @emmaveale123 @nerd-ika

@clone-simper @soberatthedisco @summerfall21

@blessedarethesnakes @graciaramirez @omglisalithium

@x-galactic-star-x @lonelybeeart

@crosshairs-dumb-pimp-gf @purrfect-bun @ades106

@tbnrpotato @msskaywalker @sweet-carolinevl

@holocrondreams @techsgoggles @falling-among-the-stars

@cornfowercowboy @badbatchbeau @kitsolo06

@shadowphantomreaper @sayrvne @dangerousyetexhausted

@kaleidoscope1967eyes @thiswitchloves9904

@sleepycreativewriter @tardisgirl42 @taina-eny

@celiapoc @still-nix-d-goffic @mistress-of-the-empire

@12sddddd

[t0esniffer69]

dni capcut and canva users, people who eat cheese, people who have ever played roblox, gay people, white people, british “people”, lesbians, people over 18, trans people, australians, bisexual people, american people, lactose intolerant people, women, nonbinary people, people under 18, people who have ever played among us, people born in north carolina, men, asexuals, allosexuals, queer people, cishetallo people, 34 year olds, if you support british “people”, @t0esniffer69, people who breathe, sky: ch*ldren of the l*ght players, fnaf fans, neurodivergents, neurotypicals, cis people, people who live on “earth”, people who live in antarctica, scratch users, gaehivians, tumblr users, twitter users, instagram users, pinterest users, t*ktok users, youtube users, pokemon fans, canadians, facebook users, and cat owners

[1dcommunityficrecs]

New Category: Trans and Nonbinary Characters!

As of this post, we are currently in the midst of Trans Awareness Week, a period intended to celebrate trans and gender non-conforming individuals, educate people about their experiences (both positive and negative), and work for progress on issues affecting the trans community. This week is followed by the Transgender Day of Remembrance, commemorating those killed by transphobic violence. These events are particularly poignant right now, given the state of discourse and politics in many western countries.

In honour of my trans friends and family, I want this rec list to celebrate fics that feature characters who are trans and/or nonbinary -- submit your favourites here! Any fics with a trans or nonbinary character and with at least one member of One Direction are eligible for submission. The trans/nonbinary character does not have to be a member of One Direction (e.g. it could be a friend, partner, relative, fan, etc.) and they do not have to be a focal or POV character (though ideally they are more than a momentary presence). These stories also don't necessarily have to be about the trans/nonbinary experience (although they certainly can be); they also can be stories about living and loving and finding joy, while also happening to be trans.

For anyone unfamiliar with or wanting a refresher on these terms, transgender individuals are people whose gender identity does not match the gender that was decided for them at birth, based on their chromosomes or physical features. Nonbinary individuals can fall under the trans umbrella, and do not identify as fitting into the traditional gender binary of man and woman. They may identify as a mixture of man and woman, a different gender outside man and woman, or no gender at all (among other possibilities!). Trans and nonbinary people may choose to undergo medical transitions such as hormone replacement therapy, social transitions such changing their clothing or hair, legal transitions such as changing their legal name or ID gender marker -- or they may choose not to. There are also individuals who may present in ways that do not conform to gendered expectations, but without identifying as transgender (e.g. men who enjoy wearing dresses or makeup, but still identify as men, or women wearing short hair or suits).

The trans and nonbinary rec list will post on Sunday, December 1st, and submissions will remain open until it goes live.

And as a reminder to myself and any other cis allies -- standing up for your trans loved ones is more important than ever right now. There are a hundred ways to show that support, from donating to organizations supporting trans folks to calling your government representatives to advocate for trans-supportive policies to helping a friend fundraise for their gender affirming care to voting in every election (including primaries) to speaking out when you see or hear transphobia around you. I implore you to put in the work, and to remember that we are stronger united than divided. Queer people have existed for millennia, and we will continue to exist for millennia to come. They cannot silence us, cannot erase us, cannot destroy us. We will persist.

[sapphire-weapon]

Capcom finally revealed the results of the "super election" survey they did months back.

These are people who actually buy and play the games voting in this survey. This is an example of what Capcom uses when considering which demographic to cater to and design their games around.

You wanna know why Resident Evil is specifically tailored to cater to Western straight cis men aged 18-35?

This is why.

It's because those are the people who spend money on and are specifically invested in their games.

The Resident Evil fandom is not reflective of the Resident Evil player base.

"Why doesn't Capcom cater more towards their queer audience when such an overwhelming majority of the fandom is queer?" -- Because y'all don't spend money on their games, and you know it. At least not on the same level as their cishet male fans.

"AdA iS tHe MoSt LiKeD rE wOmAn By FaR" -- Not among the people who matter.

"ThErE aRe MiLlIoNs Of AdA eDiTs On TiKtOk" -- Made by people who don't spend money on the games. No one cares.

"ThE nEw GeNeRaTiOn ChOsE aDa" -- No, they very much did not.

Not a single demographic of actual players reflects that.

So, there you go. There's actual raw data and numbers for you guys. Now you know that I'm not just talking out of my ass wrt this shit. And you can refer to this the next time you want to go full doomer about some shit you've seen out in the fandom.

[incognitofox]

My Thoughts on Representation in the Hazbinverse

!!Warning, huge rant below!!

I enjoy Hazbin Hotel, this is no secret if you've ever seen my blog before. Unfortunately despite my general enjoyment of the show, as well as its spin-off series, Helluva Boss, that does not leave either show immune to criticism in my eyes.

One thing in particular that I find irritating about the show is its approach to diversity and representation. And yes, while I admit body diversity and disabled representation are limited, that isn't the focus of my particular point at the moment. Instead, I'd like to talk about queer representation in Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss.

Now you may be thinking "how is the queer representation less than desirable if nearly every character in the show is part of the LGBTQ+ community?" That is what I believed as well, but what shocked me most upon further inspection was the upsetting lack of identities that are represented despite the sheer number of queer characters across the two shows.

From my knowledge, among major characters in the shows, the most commonly represented identities are gay men and pansexuals. Angel Dust, Blitzø, Stolas, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Fizzerolli and Verosika Mayday are all prominent fan-favourite characters who canonically align with one of these two sexualities.

Of course gay and pansexual representation is important, and part of me is glad to see so much of it, but unfortunately due to the abundance of these two identities in the show, many other identities are comparatively underrepresented in my opinion. For example, despite the prominence of pansexual characters, bisexual characters are few and far between, Charlie Morningstar, Moxxie, and Loona are the only characters who are confirmed to identify as bisexual, as far as I'm aware.

As a lesbian, I feel underrepresented by the characters in Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. As far as I know, only two important characters are confirmed to be or heavily implied to be explicitly lesbian, being Sallie May and Vaggie.

Yes, homosexual representation is rather common in Vivziepop's shows, and yet most of the canonically gay characters are men (ie. Stolas, Andrealphus, Angel Dust).

As a sapphic myself I can't help but feel somewhat disappointed by the lack of not only lesbian characters, but generally sapphic interactions throughout the shows despite the large range of queer female characters. The only real sapphic relationship that is shown between the two series is Charlie and Vaggie from Hazbin Hotel, and I adore them, yes, but it feels strange that they're the only one we get to see. I can't help but wish that in this fictional setting absolutely loaded with LGBTQ+ characters, that I got to see more than that. Especially since there are plenty of male relationships in the series (Fizzerolli x Asmodeus, Stolas x Blitzø, Angel Dust x Husk, etc.)

That's not even mentioning the concerning lack of gender diversity for such a queer-positive series. Sallie May is a trans woman, and she is the only gender nonconforming character in the franchise to be anything but a background character.

At the time of this post, there is not a single character in the series who is referred to with they/them pronouns or stated to be nonbinary in any way aside from Sallie May. Which aside from being a disappointing lack of representation for such a large community, is also a bit unrealistic to me. I consider myself to be a cis woman, yes, but my friend groups are made up primarily of other queer people, many of whom identify as trans or nonbinary or genderfluid, and it's upsetting to see them be underrepresented in a piece of media that focuses so strongly on queer characters.

Of course, I appreciate the representation that we do have, and I appreciate the show's attempts to expose viewers to so many queer characters, but in the end I can't help but be a little disappointed that such an LGBTQ+ driven show (which clearly aims for inclusivity) only really explores a few of the countless sexual and gender identities that exist.

However, these are just my thoughts, though. I mean no hate to the creators or fans of either show, I'm simply sharing my own opinions about Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss and delivering some (hopefully) helpful criticism. As previously stated, I am a casual enjoyer of both shows, but despite this I still feel there's room for improvement, which is the case for all media. I'm curious to know other people's thoughts on the matter as well, though. How do you feel the show has represented your own identity and how do you feel about the overall diversity of the show? Let me know! Or don't. I dunno.

[grainjew]

On Gallifreyan Vestigial Gender

[this is the revised and expanded version of some rambling i initially did in my cowriter's discord DMs. i tried cite sources where i could, but a lot of this has been marinating in my brain since half-absorbing posts twenty pages deep into peoples' dw tags 3 years ago, and also i spend way too much time on the wiki, so please excuse anything i can't quite source, which is most of it. huge thanks to @oriigami for being my original conversation partner and contributing extremely to the concepts here, and to @bird-of-paradox and @waywren, neither of whom I am being allowed to @, for bothering me into not leaving it as unreadable discord screenshots]

-

There's this tendency among queer Doctor Who fans to look at Time Lord society, with its alienness and regeneration, and ask, frustrated, "Why do they even have gender?"

I sympathize with this extremely. I've been the one asking this question plenty in the past, and I do think it's a bit silly, and even sillier that the genders are "man" and "woman" and there are apparently two of them. But I also think that the section of canon most insistent about the Gallifreyan gender binary, the 7th Doctor novels from the 90s, also has the potential to be the most interesting about it.

Now, this is not to say that the text of those novels isn't weird about gender in a flawed, written by (as far as I know) cis people in the 90s way. But I think that you can extrapolate and queer what's there in very interesting ways, often because it's so flawed in the first place: Gallifrey, too, is an extremely flawed society. Decadent, degenerate, and rotten to the core, as the show put it.

So, VNAs Gallifrey: living Houses and their female Housekeepers, cultural and literal planet-wide sterility, Loom birth, rigid overcomplicated bureaucracy, the enduring legacy of the pre-Rassilon Pythian regime. The gender binary as presented here goes something like

women: chaos/magic/psychic powers/superstition/the house (scary)/biological childbirth/fertility men: cold rationality/order/science/bureaucracy/loom-birth/sterility

The Pythia and the Lord President. Magic and science. The House and the Web of Time.

Obviously a lot of this is classic gender binary stuff. But let's put the exasperated question of "Why must we do the gender binary like this?" aside for a moment and think about Gallifreyan society instead.

Pythia-ruled and Time Lord-ruled Gallifrey have a lot of the same problems in the end, just wearing different faces: they're both very much totalitarian states that believe themselves to be above everyone else. But while the Time Lords observe and micromanage the Web of Time from their Panopticon, maintaining its integrity to their standards, the Pythians didn't have time travel, so this preoccupation with control manifested--as far as I know; this is the bit in the meta where I admit I haven't actually read Time's Crucible yet--as keeping the entirety of society in one psychic hivemind, leaving nobody any privacy, plus a lot of future-reading and prophecy and whatnot.

The main relics of that societal layout into post-Rassilon Gallifreyan society are the Matrix, which has every single dead Time Lord's brain in it and does their prophecies for them, just couched in a little bit more science than Pythian magic, the Houses, which are alive all around you and in which you're constantly being watched by the Housekeeper through her mirrors, and, of course, the gender binary.

The Pythia was always a woman. Women were the ones with vast psychic powers, with magic; women were the ones in charge. Pythian Gallifrey was a heavily gendered society. This is because Gallifreyans are a kind of bug /shot with the "irrelevant to the point at hand" gun.

And so, when Rassilon rebelled, he was very much playing the part of "opposite gender with opposite worldview." The Pythia had female magic and superstition; he had male science and technology. His most trusted Founders were either all or mostly men, depending on the version of events you prefer. (Personally I have my doubts about the Other.) Rassilon built his new society as a man, among men, in opposition to the matriarchs before him.

Gallifrey, despite the invention (or theft, depending on the story) of regeneration allowing people to trans their gender randomly and sometimes unintentionally, never left the gender binary behind.

The whole point of modern Gallifreyan society is that they're still stuck in that exact same moment Rassilon took over (and the Pythia cursed them to sterility, if thats the version you're going with). You could easily make an argument for this being some cycle of abuse type situation; Rassilon and co overthrew the Pythia and immediately did exactly what she was doing to them to the wider universe. I tend to read it as a regeneration: it's the same society, really. It just died and was reborn, and now it looks and sounds different.

-

The downside of trying to translate a discord conversation into a proper meta post is that sometimes making a coherent transition between thoughts is impossible. So to introduce the next bit of this post, I'm going to hand you off for a moment to this post about the 8th Doctor's "I'm not sure I've ever even been a man" quote from Interference. As op of that post says, the Doctor is genderqueer even by Gallifreyan standards- he's being questioned in that scene by another Gallifreyan, who doesn't understand his experience of gender.

The EDAs are full of "Eight is nonbinary" quotes, of course. Every queer fan who's ever engaged with them has a collection (and if anyone knows where that one google doc compilation that was going around awhile back went I'd be in your debt, because I'd love to know if my collection is missing any), but almost all those quotes refer to his genderqueerness in human terms, as observed by human companions, or in response to human assumptions. Except that one. Not only is Gallifrey's gender binary alive and well in a society where people can literally change their gender when they die, but the Doctor doesn't fit inside it.

All this to say that being a renegade Time Lord is a nonbinary thing to do. Especially the Doctor, with all sorts of weird Other Timeless nonsense in their biodata. Women stay on Gallifrey (or Karn!) and do magic and watch you. Men stay on Gallifrey and do science and watch other people. Renegades go out and do whatever they please. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

-

So. Gallifrey has a gender binary. It's vestigial, a remnant of an earlier iteration of society with a much sharper male-female divide, and it doesn't make logical sense for it to exist. So: How does it manifest? And what function does its continued existence serve in the interests of the status quo and ruling class?

Let's take a look at 7th Doctor novel Lungbarrow.

Lungbarrow introduces us to (among many other things) the living Houses of the Time Lord Families, and to the family structures within: the patriarchal figure of the Kithriarch, the always-female Housekeeper, bound in her ritual marriage to the House itself, and hordes of petty squabbling Cousins.

Kithriarch is already an interesting title. It's obviously a gender neutral version of matriarch or patriarch, but the role itself seems to be almost entirely a male sort of thing in opposition to the feminine Housekeeper.

The Housekeeper, meanwhile, seems to be in a direct conceptual and societal line of descent from the Pythian priestesses: she can see anything within her domain, she has a psychic connection to the House, from whom she cannot hide anything, she can command the wooden Drudge servants and other House subsystems, she prioritizes the House above all where the Kithriarch is supposed to prioritize the Family. Women are frightening and powerful psychics. They know everything you want to keep secret, and prioritize the collective.

(There's also something here about how Lungbarrow presents duelling dualities--the Doctor and the Master, the CIA head and the Lord President, the Kithriarch and the Housekeeper, the masculine and the feminine--but I haven't quite tied it into the rest of this yet.) (Although while we're mentioning the Master. He's girlcoded by Gallifreyan standards and the Rani is boycoded by the same. I will not be expanding on this at this time just trust me.)

I think Housekeepers and women who want to be Housekeepers try to keep their self-image as women strong enough that they never regenerate into a male body (whatever a '"male body" means, of course, but I'm not sure Time Lords have gotten that far in their queer theory yet). I also think that there are more female Kithriarchs than male Housekeepers, because Housekeeper is much more heavily ritualized role in keeping with the Pythia's more ritualized general vibe, but I do think female Kithriarchs are still few and far between.

I also think that these are probably the most explicitly gendered occupations on Gallifrey, although of course you'll see some drift. Most women are out there getting the same scientific, military, and bureaucratic positions as men. But there's this lingering specter of gender roles, a Pythia-shaped hole that exists around the concept of womanhood. As my cowriter put it when we were talking about this, an "ideal of womanhood. not ‘ideal’ as in desirable, [but] ‘ideal’ as in the quintessential image of the thing."

This is further amplified by the continued existence of the Pythians in the form of the Sisterhood of Karn, living in their perfectly functional all-women magic society just out of sight. Their presence at the edge of the Gallifreyan consciousness must haunt the Time Lords, as any imperialist power is haunted by its own past and its own ultimate impotence.

Because that's the other thing. Gender roles are, to quote my cowriter again, "stupid and antiquated and historically potent tools of authoritarianism." Of course the Time Lords have them. Have you seen them?

They're tools of control, of conformity, of idealizing the past. Of conservatism. Consider, to once more quote my cowriter, "the weird traditionalist psychosis of having gender roles in a society that can’t bear children."

The ideal woman on Gallifrey is still the Pythia, millenia or even billenia on. And the ideal man is still the Lord President Rassilon.

-

[thank you for your time! if you liked this please consider checking out my fic Something Old, which is about lungbarrow, the adventuress of henrietta street, and the gallifreyan concept of marriage, and in the writing of which i initially articulated most of the thoughts in this post. i've previously characterized it as a fic that's actually a meta post. and please don't be too mean to me for anything i got wrong in here! i'm just a little guy]

[sinimake]

Big agree with what you said about Johnshi. I've been in fandoms for a fuckton long time and this isn't new but damn does it bother me that in the year 2023 we still have to go through this.

It isn't only how the story goes for both Kenshi and Johnny (they meet at their lowest, go through hell together and come out of it as better people). It's also the banter in the intros (not only between them but also the fact that Kenshi and Johnny talk about each other to the others). And don't get me started with how their designs work : the blindfold is now forever tied to Johnny and the whole red/blue design going on.

But no. We can't have what would be the most organic relationship in the whole MK1 story. Instead we have Syzoth and Ashrah (which, don't take me wrong I LOVE them both) who happen to breath in the same room and possibly bond outside of the mainstory?

Agh sorry for the rant but sometimes I get bitter bc we couuuld have it aaaaaall >:(

EXACTLY 😤😤 I AM SO MAD!!!

Let me rant some more about this.

NRS was the first to introduce the first ever gay character in the fighter style video games. Love them for it, love that Taleena is canon. However, they're still pussayh for not making johnshi canon.

So i have been fangirl for more than a decade and IT IS ALWAYS THE SAME DAMN PROBLEM WITH BIG PRODUCTION COMPANIES they're so afraid of public backlash.

Let me tell you why not making Johnshi canon situation is different from Taleena and Kung Jin by opening big ass can of worms.

1. MK is dominated by cis hetero males. Yes, many people from various bg play the game, but it is undeniably true that the majority of fan base is men.

2. There's a phenomenon called the fetishization of lesbian and bisexual women. I am aware that I'm being controversial by saying this, but this fetishization makes the general public be more "accepting" of lesbain couple than the rest of the queer community, and it resonates mostly in straight men where they see queer women as objects that are simply putting on a show for the enjoyment of those watching.

This leads to my next point that it is a high probability that Taleena is allowed to be canon because the backlash from the cis hetero male fan base will be less than having gay relationship in the game. And let me tell you, Taleena interaction is bare minimum in the story mode!! I mean, yeah, they're trying to hide their relationship from others and the story is not exactly focused on them but they can be so much more! I can gloss over the lack of taleena content but was hoping for more in the future installment. But guess fucking what? Alternate universe Tanya and Mileena are rumored to be married to men in the upcoming mk1 side story.

Like imagine the vast possibility of having alternate universes where you can notch up the teased Forbidden Lovers trope but instead of having Taleena being happily united, NRS makes their only queer relationship straight???? *maniacal laugh* Honestly i will fight NRS on SIGHT. In my eyes, this only proves that they don't really care about queer representation, they're just filling the diversity qouta.

3. With what i said, NRS is a fucking coward for not making their popular male characters gay. You might bring up my boy Kung Jin but listen to me, debuting new queer character and making existing fan favorite character queer are completely different things. Kung Jin is first introduced in MK X and his sexual orientation is subtly suggested in the game. While Johnny Cage has been rated among the top Mortal Kombat characters by various gaming media publications.

If NRS made Johnny gay and in a relationship with Kenshi, imagine how fucking big the media coverage of them would have been. Literally, the second coming of that beer company queer backlash would have happened. Every gaming news outlet would be making articles on it. Johnshi would be trending on twitter.

I understand that it would be quite a risk to that to your business but guess what? They gave the most organic, the most heartfelt, the most tender story arc (ok i could be lil baised but you cant deny the chemistry) then slapped good ol' guys being pals and best friends forever crap on them 🙃

If Johnny and Kenshi were opposite gender, no cap, NO FUCKING CAP THAT THEY WOULD HAVE A FUCKING COUPLE.

4. I think Johnshi arc takes almost half of the story mode because we go through Johnny, Raiden, Kenshi, Baraka, Ashrah, Syzoth POVs till they come back from Outworld mission and in every chapter, Johnny and Kenshi get significant moments. And those moments are exclusive to only two of them, specifically tailored to them.

People say they're just friends, but i think the difference really shines if you consider that Kung Lao and Raiden are equally friends with them too. During outworld mission, Kung Lao has minimal dailogues and screen time when Johnny and Kenshi have interaction. If Kenshi and Johnny were just friends, they should have shown Kung Lao's reaction to Kenshi's blinding, Kung Lao's worry for Kenshi in the Shang Tsung's real laboratory, Kung Lao's line for Kenshi's regained sight RIGHT ALONG SIDE WITH JOHNNY.

What Kenshi and Johnny have exclusively belongs to them. That sets the difference between platonic friendship and the connection of those two.

Straight couples have less fucking interaction than one fucking scene and they are magically together. So tell me why the fuck Johnshi is not real

They SHOULD BE REAL and I'm so DONE with NRS

[bg3fansurvey]

BG3 Fan Survey - Update #1

Hello folks!

It's been almost 24 hours since the survey went live and already I've gotten 772 responses as of checking it at the time I'm making this post.

So far, I've gotten the most responses for it from the Tumblr post, my Reddit and Twitter posts have not gotten much responses. I would highly appreciate helping to give my twitter over at @bg3fansurvey a lil signal boost so I can get more responses. I would also appreciate sharing on any other social media I've not mentioned, especially since I don't have a public tiktok and I'm not in every bg3 discord server that's out there.

compared to the analytics that larian themselves have publicized, where a total of 1.3 million players have completed the game,

the data I've gathered so far is by no means completely representative of the player base as a whole.

With that said, thought I'll share the data I've managed to gather so far.

From the 772 responses received, 6 responded no to having completed BG3 beyond Act 1

which means only 766 of the responses received are viable.

moving on, the demographics so far is overwhelmingly cis women

this pretty much reflects tumblr's demographics more so

as for sexuality, majority are bisexual / pansexual

now we get to what most people are interested in, companion romance preferences

in terms of total companion engagement, astarion is currently in the lead, followed by gale in 2nd and karlach in 3rd

as for favourite companion to romance, astarion is also currently in the lead, followed by gale in 2nd, and shadowheart and karlach tied for 3rd

my hopes is that as I receive more responses and data to work with, i can do more specific analysis such as which companions are popular among which demographic

thank you for entertaining this nerd and I would appreciate any help in signal boosting the survey in my attempt in getting the most representative data possible.