#and all of their gender issues are actually their own fault. but I am very anti-sexist!

[genderkoolaid]

like seriously. hyperagency is such a useful term because it's the only way I can explain the way that people, not just even but especially in leftist/feminist spaces, will mock and deride men for having "fragile masculinity" or act like toxic masculinity is just a Thing Guys Do and not a system of forcing people to stay in the lines of Proper Masculinity.

a woman feels the need to wear a full face of makeup and heels, or else they feel like they aren't able to go in public? that's clearly internalized misogyny, and she deserves compassion and understanding.

a man feels the need to never wear pink or do anything that could be percieved as feminine in public? well he's just sooo sensitive and weak (but like not in a toxic masculinity way we're totally different!!) and needs to man up (but again when we say it it's TOTALLY DIFFERENT from when guys say it)

like there's clearly a social pattern of, when men suffer from gender roles, even people who are critical of gender roles will view them as weak, sensitive, and needing to be stronger or else they deserve mockery- the only difference is, "being strong" means "being comfortable crying in public and around me specifically". and these issues are treated as if it's men personally choosing to do them and not something which needs to be approached by treating a larger social problem.

[saintsenara]

Thoughts on remadora?

thank you very much for the asks, anons!

while they are by no means my otp, i really enjoy remadora as pairing - and i think they’re fully up there among the canon couples in terms of being an amazing vehicle through which to explore all sorts of questions about life and love - which i am aware is a sufficiently controversial statement that it involves an immediate engagement with some discourse…

because remadora girlies [gender neutral] get an enormous amount of shit within the fandom, particularly from fans who consider wolfstar to be a more plausible pairing for lupin than tonks. i have seen remadora shippers called homophobes for simply enjoying the couple, justified with the bizarre idea that it disrespects remus' relationship with sirius [so... the non-canon one?] to put them together. i have seen tonks turned into a pathetic shrew who is trying to keep remus from the real love of his life by trapping him with an unwanted baby. i have seen remadora shippers get a lot of the usual stuff that people who prefer the canon-endgame couples do [that to ship a canon pair is boring, that it is indicative of a lack of talent, that it indicates an uncritical support for jkr] magnified to eleven because tonks has the temerity to be a barrier to remus’ relationship with the fandom’s favourite hot and brooding man.

obviously, this is bullshit - primarily because its unreasonable and cruel to invest so much time and energy being mean to people because of their harry potter shipping preferences [fandom should never be that deep].

but it’s also a disappointment to me personally because it means that it can be very hard to find the sort of remadora i like without looking like i’m coming to contribute to the pile-on. because where many remadora fans and i don’t see eye-to-eye is that i have absolutely no interest in thinking about them as a relationship which is actually functional. and, all too often, i find myself sifting through fics which do prefer to interpret them like this - as romantic and passionate and stable - largely, i think it’s fair to say, as a defensive move against the tide of “urgh, imagine shipping that” nonsense - even though all the evidence of canon is that they are… very much not.

i am aware of the pottermore article which smoothes the edges of lupin’s canonical reaction to tonks’ feelings for him in half-blood prince - but, while i read this as something of a retcon to make the relationship more palatable, i also don’t think that assuming that both tonks and lupin’s attraction to each other was sincere precludes them being as dysfunctional as they canonically are. i don’t go in for the common anti-remadora argument that tonks “forces” him into a relationship with her - it’s clear in half-blood prince that it’s not only her who has discussed her feelings with molly and arthur weasley, lupin is definitely flirting with her when they pick harry up in order of the phoenix, lupin is an adult man [no matter other power imbalances between him and tonks - such as the fact that she is an agent of the state which oppresses him] who possesses the capacity to refuse her advances, and - since teddy’s conception is not immaculate - he has no issue with enjoying a sexual relationship with her even if he then wants to run away from the product of that.

instead, what i like with remadora is that they reveal something which goes against the grain of the rest of the series: that love is not always enough. throughout the seven-book canon, we see time and time again the idea that love - and, crucially, love-as-noble-suffering and love-as-sacrifice - is enough to overcome any problem. entire civil service collaborating with a terrorist regime? don’t trouble yourself, love has won. your mother dying in childbirth leaving you to be neglected in a state institution? your own fault you’re not interested in love.

i understand the genre reasons for this, but i also love the way in which lupin especially exists on the margins of these genre conventions [just as he exists on the margins of wizarding society!]. i’m always struck in deathly hallows that he’s the only person who’s actually realistic about the demands of war - particularly when he tells harry that it is breathtakingly naive for him to think he can get through the fighting without having to shoot to kill - and that part of him having to be shuffled out of the way when harry tells him to return to the pregnant tonks is because, were the story focused on realism, the idea of a wanted man who is considered an unhuman by the state fleeing in order to guarantee the safety of his wife and unborn child becomes eminently reasonable and harry's defense of the nuclear family embarrassingly unradical.

and so i like the idea of lupin seeing tonks - and tonks seeing lupin - initially as just a bit of fun, as the two of them being just two chill single people who think the other is hot and interesting and want to bang because of it.

[which is something fandoms in general really struggle with as a concept. we like epic love stories - and you won't find me objecting to that! - but we're less good at thinking about casual sexual attraction or transient friendships, and how these can be transformative and meaningful without having to end up going any sort of distance.]

and i then like the idea of the relationship being forced into a profundity it doesn’t really have the juice to sustain by the sheer avalanche of grief which besets the two of them - sirius, dumbledore, mad-eye, ted - and by the pressure of the war and the fact that the order is scrambling and the hangover of remus' self-destruction in half-blood prince which makes each cling to the other as a life-raft. i like remadora as something codependent and messy and strange and sad, and i don’t think this prevents it being sincere and fun and based in mutual attraction, but instead that these positive qualities can exist in conjunction with the fact that, without the war, it would have been a summer of fucking and that was probably it.

on tonks herself, i don’t think i can say it better than @evesaintyves in this meta on her character. i’ve been really uncomfortable with quite a lot of stuff i’ve seen recently which has taken against the idea that tonks can be meaningfully read as queer on the basis of what we find in the text, above all because it so often comes with the implication that one cannot imagine her in her canon endgame pairing and presume that she’s something other than straight or cisgender. eve sets out an excellent case for tonks as bolshy and liberated and in tune with herself and fun and confused and in flux and still figuring stuff out about who she is and where she’s going - and this translates, may i say, to an astonishingly beautiful way of writing her, lupin, and the dysfunction inherent between them which i highly recommend you read.

[cowboycherry]

☆ || pain in my teeth!

summary! // tasm! peter parker x autistic! reader who has some very prominent and unfortunate sensory issues regarding a certain super suit.

inclusions/warnings! // gender of reader is not specified. reader’s sensory issues make their teeth hurt to a point where they have to use a stimulation (in the form of a rubber straw) to make it better, peter feels guilty about it which then causes reader’s empathy sensitivity to spike, reader says i love you and peter says it back, i don’t know how to end a fluffy blurb!! <3 no use of ‘y/n’ but uses of baby, sweetheart (for reader) and pete, petey (for peter) i wrote this based on my personal experiences with autism, so it may not be something that every person experiences!

not proofread! // please let me know if there are any mistakes/things that i should work on! and my inbox is open for any requests, or just a chat!

possession! // all of my work is my own. do not copy, translate, or repost any of my writing.

word count! // 700+

enjoy my lovelies! <3

。 ♡ 。　　♡。　　♡ {peter’s version}

peter honestly wasn’t sure what had happened to get to this point.

about 3 seconds ago you were fine, basking in his spider-man awesomeness and doting on him being the “coolest and best boyfriend ever!” and now you’re making a scrunchy face and uncomfortable noises.

because of his spider senses (but actually because he is the best boyfriend ever and knows what you’re feeling before you can even comprehend it), he jumps into action. as he moves closer to hold you and ask what’s wrong, what had suddenly changed to make you upset, you hold a hand up to stop him.

he frowns slightly, “are you okay? what happened, baby?” you shake your head in response.

“i’ve never felt your suit before.”

he completely stops, confused for a moment as to why that has anything to do with this and then it clicks. the texture.

you’ve always been super irritated by textures: velvet, corduroy, silks, and many many others. while you aren’t quite sure what horrendous type of spandex fabric peter’s blue and red superhero costume was made out of, you know that it hurts. badly.

“just made my teeth hurt really bad, ‘s okay, though. ‘m okay now, pete.” you try to smile widely at him to let him know that it’s fine but you cringe and purse your lips again as you watch him as he removes the suit hurriedly, ridding the thing causing you to not touch him.

“no! i, ugh! i should’ve thought about it and let you feel the suit a little bit first before i hugged you like that, sweetheart, i’m sorry.”

you shake your head fervently, mumbling assurances that it’s fine as you begin to bite onto the silicone straw in your cup to reduce the aching of your teeth. “really it’s fine! it just… threw me off. y’know how i am, pete. but it’s better now! my teeth aren’t even hurting anymore!” they definitely were, but you can’t stand to see him feel so guilty about something that isn’t his fault.

he throws a t-shirt over his head (one that he knows you never have a problem with) and he strides towards the bed. “i still feel bad, though. ‘specially ‘cause i know you well enough to know that they’re still hurting.” he grumbles as he lays next to you, covering his face with a pillow.

you reach behind you, still chewing on your straw, to rub a hand across his stomach. “really ‘s okay, peter! i’ll be fine in a minute. just please don’t feel bad.” your voice sounds a little strained with worry and that makes him feel even worse knowing that he’s affecting your empathy sensitivity as well.

“okay. okay, it’s fine. you’re okay. can i touch you, please?” his voice is dulcet as he whispers to you. you nod, humming in relief when you feel his hands settle on your hips.

your teeth finally rid of their ache after a few more minutes, and you turn to peter with a frown on your face. “no, no baby, why that face?” he pouts, rushing his hands to cover your cheeks and try to rub the frown away.

you mimic his pout, mumbling through his palms, “oou wor ‘sposed to tae me to swang frew da cidy!”

he giggles and removes his hands, “one more time?”

you crack a little smile, still frowning slightly.

“you were supposed to take me to swing through the city, petey! and now you can’t because ‘m sensitive!” you throw yourself dramatically onto the bed with a wail.

“oh.” he pauses for a minute as he turns to face you. “well, we could… go without my suit? like to somewhere where there aren’t many people or we could go at night! or! i could just wear the mask, then you don’t have to touch the whole suit!”

your heart swells at the boy in front of you. he’s so so sweet and you know that he’d do anything for you, and you would do the same for him.

“i think that sounds really nice, peter. i love you, by the way. thanks for always putting up with me.” you snuggle into his warmth, wrapping you fingers into his hair as you kiss little pecks onto his skin.

“yeah, ‘f course, baby.” you can hear his grin through your kisses. “i love you too.”

[pessimisticpigeonsworld]

it was really a bad take that rhaenyra used "sons" in her conversation with rhaenys, if viserys used "childrens" in her conversation with corlys why didn't she use it too? and this argument about SONS involving all genders is kind of dumb since like I said viserys used CHILDRENS and a common person will always understand sons-male, and it's sad because this scene will always be used as an argument about how rhaenyra only cares with her right as a woman to inherit something. I don't know if it's the fault of the script and its incoherence or if it was the screenwriter wanting to show how "hypocritical" Rhaenya is

Condal has always been very green leaning. The recent interview where he said we'd change sides (as if) after seeing season two makes me honestly think he was trying to discredit Rhaenyra.

The constant attempts by the show to undermine her claim and validity are so annoying. Making her be so inactive in KL (at least on screen), choosing to make the Velaryon boys' legitimacy a bigger deal than it is in the book, and trying to make us feel bad for how she treated Alicent after Viserys married her (again, as if) just show how little Condal actually cares about telling the true story of the Dance.

The fact that he's constantly trying to defend the greens (including Aegon the rapist) is very telling. He and Hess spend so much time trying to make them more sympathetic while demonizing the blacks for no reason. They just want to detract from the fact that misogyny (specifically against Rhaenyra) is the true issue of the Dance. They ruin and abuse the gray morality of GRRM by trying to remove the obvious antagonists of the story, the greens.

Basically, yeah I'd totally believe that Condal was trying to undermine Rhaenyra and make her out to be a hypocrite (how feminist am I right?) I hate basically all of his and Hess' decisions regarding the story. They should try writing their own original story instead of butchering Rhaenyra and her story. Because it is her story, not Alicent's, it belongs to Rhaenyra and her children.

[himehikoshrine]

might delete this later because im at two hours of sleep levels of inarticulate but now i'm thinking about The Seagull and Neji and the Constantine - Trigorin tension of it all.

But like I am also thinking about what would happen if Neji gave Chui that script from the beginning I think that script from the beginning could work as a bizarre modern dance/butoh amber performance actually, and in the summer novel and in rehearsals (though rudely, not in the performance) we get snippets of how Neji uses abstraction in dance (in Mary Jane, the "Lonely Darkness" and in Extermination in the Arata Forest the dancers play all of nature, including specifically, the wind). I wonder if that's the Amber in him, because Amber seems to be using dance in ways far beyond character dance numbers. Like it's even set on a lake! With the moon! I wanna see it.

Inarticulate and spoilery thoughts with Agendas for both Neji route and also The Seagull, I guess.

But like, compared to what we see Neji do in Amber, he's shifted pretty substantially with Quartz - he's the "Entertainer" (like Tsuki) to Chui (and Fumi)'s artist, but he's coming from (going by his own recreation of it) some serious Angura vibes, and his first two plays are very different than any of the ones we see him do for Quartz. But even the plays he writes for Quartz have varying levels experimentation to them, by vibe (shoves weekend lesson off the table and pretends its not there, messing with the patterns) even if nothing quite like his Amber days.

It's like he says to Chui - working with imperfect people means he can't just create whatever is in his head - things like what we see in puppet - and has to pull things down to a different register. It's... the same thing Neji tells Fumi, actually -- the game uses the idea of someone ripping their wings off to be able to stand on stage with others for both of them, actually.

Constantine, writing lofty "experimental" plays (what Neji is accused of and takes as a compliment in Puppet) vs Trigorin and his notebook and inability to stop writing or pulling inspiration from other people. Both of them kind of miserable, one more dramatically than the other. Both kind of assholes. Both, lets be honest, terrible to women in their own ways.

Interestingly, both of their interactions with Nina reflect far more the realization he has later in his route rather than his starting assumptions. I doubt he just misses this. But I think Neji is running from things he already knows, trying to hold up flimsy stories to himself about himself that he doesn't really believe. Neji, reading the Seagull: I see, I see if I simply do not interact with women, I can be both and neither. I've solved it. This is a joke.

At least the way I read the Seagull - Love (and the play cuts it across gendered lines in the ensemble) isn't the cause or solution, its just the justification. It certainly doesn't create or fix the issues the two writers in the play deal with, and I don't think Neji could even lie to himself that it does, even if its easier - and its certainly easier than looking at both of the characters and their actual faults and ways they reflect himself.

Mr. takes you to suicide beach on his third event and literally cannot stop thinking about the next story or let go of his notebook for a minute, so frantically that other people notice it. In the fic I will probably never finish -- Kisa is many things, but she is also a mirror, as both Neji and Chui call her -- one Neji is finally transfixed enough with to look into long enough to see himself. And look where that leads him.

[multiplicity-positivity]

hello ! i am. looking for some advice i guess.

so our system has always been very introject heavy, but recently we've slowly been getting more factives and i kind of. dont know what to do about it i guess. i mean logically, i do know what to do - help them set up pk and simply plural, get them used to what our life is and tell them what they need to know and all that. but. i dont know. the best way to describe how i feel about it is. internalized cringe. if that makes sense ? like idk whenever we get a new factive it just kind of sends me back down the 'oh god what if we're faking' spiral. and like we're very aware that introjects dont have to be exactly like their source but whenever one of our factives starts using different pronouns or starts finding like neopronouns and mogai stuff or agere or kin stuff i just kind of. i dont even know. i feel like we've been in a lot of fandoms that are very agressive about like 'dont headcanon real people dont speculate about their identity' which is a good point and i Know that factives just existing differently from their source is normal and not the same as saying that those things apply to their source but im. scared of people who dont know a lot about systems accusing us of that i guess ?

im sorry that this got really long but i guess my main question is: how do i feel more normal/less anxious about having factives ?

thank you for any help or advice you may have, we hope you're having a good day !

(Quickly Ralsei wanted to say: Cringe is dead! Cringe is cool! We need more cringe! Normalize cringe! The cringier the awesomer!! :3)

I (Margo) can offer some more serious words of advice and encouragement:

It certainly can be distressing gaining more introjects than your system knows how to handle! I’d like to reassure you that it’s not uncommon to have factives in a system. Many systems have introjects of real people as headmates - it’s something that can come with the territory of experiencing multiplicity.

Remember that, for the most part, systems don’t get to choose their headmates. You can’t help it that many factives are joining your system, and feeling bad about yourself because of your system’s factives won’t help anyone. A large amount of factives is not an indication of faking. Rather, it could point to stress, anxiety, or something overwhelming in your life, just like a large influx of any headmates may indicate.

Your factives living their own lives is NOT the same as assigning headcanons to real people. Even if some of your headmates may feel otherwise, it’s important to remember that these factives are not actually the real people they’re sourced from. It’s okay for factives to experiment with gender and sexuality, branch out into their own likes and interests, and generally develop into their own people. And if others don’t understand this fact, that’s on them - not you, not your system, and certainly not the fictives affected!

Remember it is never your fault if other people are uneducated or assume the worst. That’s their issues to work through. Even if they try and make your factives feel bad for living their lives, try to remember that you can know and understand the difference, and you don’t have to let the words of people online have a severely negative impact on you and your system.

I know this kinda got out of hand, but I hope this is helpful or reassuring for you! We wish you the very best of luck with this, thanks so much for reaching out! ^w^

🌸 Margo (and 💚 Ralsei)

[mintacle]

Saw a post about jason and OP wrote something in the tags about the transgender experience of being mourned while you’re alive. I’m not all good with my words the way you are (do you write poetry or anything btw?? you really have a way with words) but it really hit me that that’s why Jason is a character I, and a lot of other people relate to. People wishing that you could just go back to the way you were when you were younger, when its not your fault you’re different than how you used to be, it’s just so heart-wrenching!!!

Oh, I think I know exactly which post you mean!

For me, as an nb, that part of Jason's character, which lends itself to being a parallel to the experience of being transgender and coming out a transgender, is really big. But really it's like you said anon, a lot of people can relate for different reasons to the experience of being alienated from your former self. Wondering if things would have been better, if YOU would have been better or perhaps happier if you had been allowed to develop into the person that younger self could have become. If only, if only.

Jason, I think, is never ashamed to grieve himself, which is something that was difficult for me to come to terms with myself, allowing myself to grieve for a younger self and not demean these feelings by labelling them as wallowing in self-pity. You are retroactively giving your experience of pain the respect you wish another adult in your life had given it. That's an important part of healing, coming back to the younger self within you with the strength you have today and giving them utterly unashamed and complete empathy. I recommend that everyone try to throw off lingering senses of shame and internalized victim-blaming they have, you deserve acceptance of your own pain.

Regarding specifically the transgender/gender-queerness parallel of Jason, to me it's partially in the fact that his vicitmization and fridging is very female-coded and other parts of his character also play with gender, like his rage, his fighting style, his ostrasization, etc. But with the dying and coming back to life it's very relatable in the experience of people grieving you while you are right before them. Almost wishing yourself you could just turn back time and be less complicated and more accepted again. It's about seeing your siblings, cousins or peers being more accepted than you are for reasons that are out of your control, but are framed as if the issue was that you just have to be on better behaviour. It's also about the change in your body and I think to some gender-queer people with dysphoria it's also a bit of a powerfantasy like, yeah dunk me in the lazarus pit and make me become the 6foot, wall-of-muscle man that I know I am on the inside.

and finally thank you for the compliment anon! I do have a passion for language, writing an art. I write poems sometimes actually but I don't think they're of that level to be shared on tumblr. And I try to write fanfics but almost never finish. I also hope to one day publish at least one book.

[void-cloud]

So I've been ignoring my Mom all year. Which is more than usual.

See, last year I made it a point to at least call for birthdays and meet up for food every couple months or so. But this year it's been full silence from my side since what happened in January. And with the usually obligatory major holiday meetup looming in front of me, I've been trying to figure out why.

Well, turns out: I hate her.

I know this is mental health tumblr, so this isn't really a very unique statement, but I'm happy to be part of this club now x)

I knew I didn't like her. And my entire family is united in knowing that she isn't easy to deal with. But for all this time I have maintained that I don't hate her for what happened during my childhood. Yeah sure the fallout is *vaguely motions to my entire psych rep sheet* but it's not like she is the only one who had a hand in giving me abandonement issues. Both my sisters and Dad equally fucked off and left me behind in one way or another.

And yet, I don't hold the same animosity with them the way I do with her. I can have zero contact with Sis 2 for a year and we'll get together and talk and vibe with zero problems. Sis 1 apologizing to me for leaving at that time is a memory I hold dear and while I have way more conflicting feelings about my Dad, his unwavering support in the last couple years has made up for a lot of what happened earlier.

While nothing is truly resolved (and likely won't ever be at this point cause tbh I have other priorities), they all made changes and evolved and we found ways to support each other to whatever capacity possible.

Meanwhile, the person who actually raised me has just gotten worse over the years. Getting more and more wrapped up in her own bitterness and jealousy and how she has to have it the worst and everyones problems are somehow her fault and *sighs*

She yearns for connection and yet everytime something is not about her or something that interests her then it will get dismissed and the topic changed. When I got a (second) tattoo years ago, her first reaction was to say: "No stop doing that." Whenever I tried to share my interests with her growing up, she would dismiss it cause she didn't care about the thing. And then be hurt by us not having anything to talk about. I have told her multiple times that her throwing out my cool nightlamp sucked and I still think about that sometimes and so far she has apologized twice for hiding a book that had pictures she didn't approve of. Oh no, H.R.Giger is gonna...idk, I honestly never noticed that book being gone cause it was an impulse buy.

Like, there are actually many things that I can rationalize away if it was just that. Her being weird about me being queer sucked, but she also never stopped me from dating same gender or otherwise express myself. Dropping me with "family" while they fought out the divorce is a good chunk of why I am as fucked as I am but also....I 100% understand that it wasn't done with any malice. From her point of view it was the best thing she could do and welp, nobody connected the dots and did some damage control afterwards. Which is also on the rest of the family tbh

The thing is that she just never stopped being that way. Unwilling to hear that her decisions weren't good and blaming people who bring these things up for attacking her and "Well ok all is just my fault! Are you happy now??! ;_;"

A lot of things broke in me in January.

My patience for her shit was one of those.

While writing this New Years passed and I did not talk to her. Instead I spent a couple days with the rest of the family on vacation.

She has tried calling me a couple times but I just stare at the phone and move on with the day.

Idk, part of me would be elated to just go fully no contact for longer, but another wants to give her...something? A notion of why this is happening I guess. Just can't find it fully in me to formulate it yet

I'm ready to say I hate her, but I'm not ready to fully abandon her

[ina-nis]

The issue at r/AVPD reminds me a lot of all the infighting I see in trans spaces regarding invalidation and comparisons.

On one hand, there’s people who want to feel included and have a space to vent and share their life experiences with each other and they all have the common denominator “AvPD” even when each individual experience is unique.

On the other, there’s people who feel justified in their pain to complain about how a lot of the shared experiences are not only not relatable to them, but feel actually harmful - but that’s a “you” problem where people should filter and let go.

In the end of the day, you have a bunch of people shoved under one big umbrella going at each other’s throats like animals because they want to be seen and heard and which “better” way to be seen and heard if not by Suffering The Most And More Than Others?

I personally think it would be great to break things into smaller communities, for example the “with relationships” and “without relationships” is a really big one in AvPD spaces, from what I’ve seen. People on the latter feel alienated and the ones in the former feel invalidated by the others.

To say that avoidants in relationships and avoidants without relationships share the same pain, or even something similar, is but a bold assumption because each person is different. Being able to form a relationship at all would be what “success” or remission looks like for someone. Being able to maintain these relationships might be the main issue for another person, and maybe reaching to a point where they’re asymptomatic or almost, would be their “success”.

One is not better than the other and it always depends on individual capacity and support level (especially social support).

For many avoidants the issue is maintaining their relationships, for many others the issue is obtaining any relationships at all. There will be conflicting needs, there will be triggering things that people will do just by existing and it’s nobody’s fault.

I, for one, feel alienated when seeing stories of partnered avoidants.

That’s okay. It’s not meant for me or to be relatable to me, and my issues and triggers with that are my own problem. I should keep to myself, and I really do that. I complain about it on my own personal journal, and it’s not a jab at any or other people.

When I think of those as “success stories” I do not mean to invalidate other people’s pain and struggles dealing with AvPD - if anything, I know what I’ll be getting into when/if I do get a partner myself: the disorder won’t go away and I’ll suffer differently, but suffer any way - although I can see how me saying that would come off as invalidating, despite my best intentions. But I am not belittling their issues or making mine look worse. They’re both plenty bad.

I feel alienated in trans spaces, too, even though I’m trans myself. Because I’m genderless, I feel like there’s no room for me or my experiences when there’s “bigger” issues with other identities, when the way other people see gender versus the way I walked away from it makes it hard to have a conversation, because that, too, is a conflicting need. I think it would be good to have room for others like me but what ends up happening is that... there’s just so much pain and suffering that many will end up being thrown under the bus as collateral damage.

This was also an issue I have dealt with here on Tumblr when talking about my desire to be aromantic while an avoidant, and my feelings about it. Yes, I know I would still have AvPD regardless, I just think my romantic attraction adds another layer of pain onto an already very painful condition, and if I could get rid of it, maybe things would be different.

Well, I guess my whole point here is that conflicting needs are real, having different spaces to talk about different experiences is never a bad thing and doesn’t take away from the bigger umbrella. If anything, it just fortifies each individual, because if they’re heard and seen, they feel empowered and they’ll make the whole space stronger and more unified.

[ivanaskye]

from "What happens when a grain of this gets lost?" to "I wonder if I shouldn't have touched it" (chapter 3 of Lives)

OH GOOD I THINK I ACTUALLY HAVE A LOT ABOUT THIS ONE

“What happens when a grain of this gets lost? Blown by the wind, trapped on the sole of someone’s shoe?”

“You’re assuming it can. There’s ways to keep things together, if that’s how they should be. If that’s what the soul of the one making it is.”

a classic example of kjorel's ProblemsTM, of course.

“And yet I find that I know nothing about their soul. It’s all around me, and yet… it could mean anything. This must be the most meaningful thing in the world to whoever made it, yet even as I sit right next to it—

I definitely made sure to include good/interesting observations alongside shark fins of 'there is something wrong with this man' in the early kjorel chapters. but of course his distance and his reaction to his distance and his not-exhibiting his reaction to his distance...

it could mean obstruction itself. Or stars, the way it glitters. Or a desire for peace—calming this harbor. Or something of the desert. Or perhaps it is the very multitude of the grains that matters most?” “Perhaps its maker just wants you to take it as it is.”

one of lucifer's platitudes that might be useless or might be very useful, depending on who you are. one fun fact about lucifer is that most of the things they do well are specifically the things i most rarely saw done well at the time i was first writing them in the first edition of stars (so, 2016.) but from other angles, they have rare and exciting issues... or all too common issues? they'd probably like that difference-depending-on-angle.

“But how would you define as-is? One could say it’s just a dune, but in order to have been made, it is by definition also a person.” He laughs to himself. “And here I am, thinking how much more I might be able to understand if I touched it—this person I don’t know.” He really does wonder how different each grain would look, up close. “May I?”

obviously, he wants to touch it. obviously, it matters to him that it is a person.

“Why are you asking me? As I said, I didn’t make it. Unless you accuse me of lying, but I can assure you that’s not one of my faults.”

this teasing-poking-at-their-own-flaws (while not doing anything about them) is another lucifer trademark.

No, Kjorel thinks, but many would have given their name by now, and he’s suspicious that asking wouldn’t be welcome either. For all this person’s obvious shapeshifting, some part of them seems oriented strongly to the private. Perhaps merely that they did not give their own name, did not offer any details about themself at all?

kjorel is legitimately observant! he actually is! what he does with his observations, however,

He isn’t sure of their gender, either, but Evian isn’t among the small subset of languages that genders second-person pronouns, so he also needs not know that.

short language asides are fun,

“And what are your faults?” he finds himself asking.

ah, kjorel.

“Here I thought you were about to touch that sand.”

“Evasiveness, I see,” Kjorel notes, but reaches to touch the sand anyway—finding immediately that it feels, indeed, like nothing other than sand. Less smoothy weathered than some, he might say if pressed to find a tactile difference. But looking at it on his finger, sticking to it, the grains are indeed different—and not all shine in the light. This one silvery, this one bronze, but some are darker. Unless that is in fact sand of the more classic type, mixed in with this manifestation…? “And nothing is known about this?”

ah, both of them.

“If you’re asking for a press release, there isn’t one,” the old Theurgist says. “Last I heard, they haven’t even told their lawyers, although that itself…”

yenatru really chose an exciting case to intern on :p but also, of course he would choose this one.

“Might tell me something,” Kjorel finishes. “The kind of purpose that refuses to explain itself.”

“Exactly,” they say almost softly, eyes distant. As if wistful.

And suddenly Kjorel thinks he knows: “You wish you could refuse to explain yourself.”

we see more of this line of analysis of lucifer later, of course.

“So you’re still trying to get at my faults!”

Kjorel would wince, if the tone was just one bit less playful. Well-modulated, that tone: perhaps they’ve had a lot of experience in the matter. While explaining themself, wishing not to.

they sure have had a lot of experience :))) just walking that tightrope forever, or something.

A sharp intake of breath. “Oh, you’re good. Yes, I am… one of them.”

That pause, coming from one who’s offered no name. He knows exactly who he’s talking to, he realizes. But somehow knowing that name, which he will not say without invitation—he is quite sure that’s how the first to fall would prefer it—makes the very fault they’re talking around seem less namable.

there's keeping private, and then there's keeping private while lucifer. and of course the very existence of that difference is their problem. (...or, one of them.)

“Not at all,” Kjorel lies.

I think this might be the only "x lies" tag in the entire series. and it's in kjorel's very first scene.

He rubs the sand between his fingers until it rubs off, falling back into what little ocean remains at this pier. Hopefully it’ll find its way back to where it needs to be, if that matters to the person it is. No, it can’t matter so much—if it did, he wouldn’t be able at all to take a little piece of them. At least he hopes this is true, that the Theurgist is not hurt, that he has not crossed a boundary, sticking his finger inside someone like so—

patented kjorel insanity

he sighs. But he doesn’t want the first Fallen to think it’s anything they did, so he says, “I wonder if I shouldn’t have touched it.”

and patented kjorel downplaying and dodging away and being #smooth instead!

[doberbutts]

hey, so a lot of the stuff you said about insurance hoops to jump through resonated with me as a UK trans man - the NHS system for medical transition is utter bullshit. off the top of my head - wait 4+ years to see a therapist to diagnose you with gender dysphoria, wait again to see an endocrinologist, be on hormones for minimum 2 years before you can wait AGAIN to get top surgery - im 21, and i will probably be about 30 when i get to where i want to be transitionwise if i start now. lord help you if you’re mentally ill as well, because gender clinics wont accept you if you have active mental health issues and trying to get those treated by the NHS is another load of bollocks on its own. all this to say that i can definitely see where youre coming from with your views on transmedicalism, and how it isnt such a cut and dry issue that many people make it out to be.

Ah yes, I've heard the UK system is very bad which doesn't surprise me considering its current nickname as "TERF island" when it comes to trans healthcare. Good luck to you, as you see I've been in that situation before and it was not great.

It's not to say that I "support" transmeds, I don't like a lot of the deliberate meanness and cruelty I see within transmed circles when they pop up. But I do understand the world they used to live in, the world that produced their ideology, because I lived in that world and I see the frustration for what it is. I just think that bitterness and anger and despair has turned onto the wrong target, instead of making it cis people's fault for gatekeeping us from our own medical decisions and autonomy they've decided it's other trans people's fault, which is not fair to anyone, and the means of which they go about advocating for themselves is. Well. Frankly bad.

We see more transmeds in places that experienced this medical nightmare. I think we're looking at cause and effect.

Only sort of related but there's this lesbian I know whose wife sat on the Supreme Court decision for same sex marriage, she is in her late 40s, and I very starkly remember her texting me one day basically going "what the FUCK is with all these kids calling themselves queer?!?!? don't they KNOW!?!?!" And I think... it's a bit like that. That word isn't nice for her. It's not something she can reclaim. She has only hurt associated with that word, from the world she lived in, a very visibly obvious lesbian living in the rural south of the US. On a surface level, it sounds like the completely batshit "queer is a slur" discourse that happens on this site.

But digging deeper, the difference is that when she had her kneejerk reaction, she reached out to someone closer to that generation and tried to understand. It's difficult for her to accept. I honestly don't think she will ever be comfortable being called queer or attending some even that calls itself queer. At the end of our discussion, she thanked me for explaining, said she understood a little better, but would probably still have no better reaction than punching someone in the mouth if they tried to call her that word. Based on her experiences, yeah, fair. I have a similar reaction to the word "nigger" even though my nephew a generation younger has no problem being called that by his friends.

Maybe I am just naive and I want to see good in everybody. But I think a lot of this at heart is just evidence of people who are hurting and traumatized, taking it out unfairly on the closest targets rather than the actual problem. That's all.

[meeda]

long ramble about idk.. politics?

re: that last post, it got me thinking about the evolution of my own beliefs overtime, starting from maybe 2012 ish when I was a teenager and a pretty stereotypical left liberal sjw type. I mean most of it is still the same shit I believe today, if not a little more naive and annoying about it. I was also a raging “feminazi”, as it was called back in the day, and as many a teenage boy on the internet would label me as because I had the radical notion that women are people

I think the turning point in 2014 (if you know you know) happened as a result of overcorrecting my sjw-ness. Thinking that I was somehow “cringe” for believing in the things I did, in the manner of which I did. Thinking hey, maybe social justice and feminism has gone too far actually. Thinking hmm, maybe men have it rough too actually, and it’s all feminism’s fault. then discovering other people that thought the way I did.

Despite being knee deep in anti sjw, anti feminism, mra nonsense, I still retained most of my core beliefs. I never actually called myself anti feminist because I knew that in my heart I still supported “real feminism” (which ironically enough included men’s issues). I didn’t fall for the alt right pipeline because i have always supported lgbtq rights and racial equality. I’ve always been religiously agnostic, and I never cared for religious extremism.

Turning point #2 happened shortly after the blm movement started gaining traction. It kinda snapped me out of everything and brought me back to reality, and it also showed me the true colors of many of the anti sjw bloggers i followed. because now the mask was off, and they started becoming full on racist. It was embarrassing and I started to become ashamed that I ever associated myself with people like that.

enter the trump era. by this point i was already out of the anti sjw echo chamber and boy oh boy was i glad because this mask off moment just became a whole face transplant. no emotion could compare to what i felt seeing the beliefs I once entertained suddenly morph into the alt right movement and qanon. It felt like i dodged a bullet.

my relationship with feminism was and is complicated. I was born, raised, and socialized as female. i think it’s only natural that i feel very strongly about female centered issues. Like I mentioned before i was a naive but staunch feminist as a teenager. I remember the teacher asking a show of hands who here identifies as a feminist. I was only one of three people, in a class of majority females, that raised their hand. I remember telling my friend at the time (who, in retrospect, was probably a closeted transwoman) that they’re a fool for wishing they were born female because why on earth would you ever want to be a woman in a violently patriarchal society.

to me, the allure of anti feminism was the chance to redeem myself for harboring misandrist beliefs and not seeing things from a male perspective. but it was also the opportunity to question my own beliefs instead of blindly believing what i, as an afab, am “supposed” to believe. This overcorrection, years later, swung to the other end of the horseshoe when i rediscovered radical feminism in 2021. Prior to that moment I’ve always looked at rad feminism with disdain, even when i was still a so called “feminazi”. They were too extreme for me. It didn’t help when things like gender critical and trans exclusionary feminism were on the rise as well, which contradict not only my core beliefs but my existence. but there was something about it, something that reminded me of the same feeling i had when i discovered anti feminism. Like i was discovering forbidden knowledge. It was time to dip my toes in.

I orbited radfem circles for awhile to try to enlighten myself but it didn’t take long for me to realize that something felt wrong. It felt less like I was trying to “see other perspectives” and more like I was doomscrolling. Bad news after bad news after bad news. It almost felt like they were having a competition for who could share the worst injustices towards women. I did learn some actually useful things, like the detriments of the adult entertainment and sex industry. How “choice feminism” only benefits the patriarchy. The evolution of contraceptives. But the bitterness, the lack of empathy, the tone deafness. The last straw for me was when i saw a terf gleefully express their joy about the murder of brianna ghey, and said they wished it happened more often. It was time to get out of there.

This decade has been a roller coaster for my personal beliefs, but I think for the most part, my core beliefs have stayed the same. I still care about humanity deeply. As juvenile as it feels to say, I do just want things to be better for everyone. None of us asked to be born. Not one of us. Literally we’re all here against our will and we had 0 say on the circumstances of our birth. But we’re here, and we’re here together. The least we can do is help one another.

[annikuh]

good morning I need to rant into the void bc I don’t see my therapist again til Friday and I had a hard night :3

I love to put off papers til Sunday bc my partner goes to work all day and I get to have my room to myself. However I had some sort of unplanned breakdown last night so now I have to write about the cultural impact of the stupid fucking Texas chainsaw massacre while wrangling with the fact that I very well may be highly depressed & nothing really makes me happy anymore & the things that do make me happy are cancelled out by some internalized shame about it & that I am incapable of being anything more than surface-level vulnerable to someone & that I may hate myself more than previously thought & contemplating the complicated toxicity of my relationship with my mother & fearing I’m going to end up like one of my parents & wondering if any of my psychiatric care is working bc I know I’m kind of lying to my psychiatrist about if my meds are working and about using weed and I’m too embarrassed that my therapist is going to think I’m cringe (or way worse) if I tell her some of the things eating me alive & wondering if my mood stabilizers and anti psychotics are even helping and if I should just go off them to see if they really are (bad idea) & managing a gender crisis & managing an identity crisis & contemplating every evil I’ve ever done and all the evil im readily capable of doing & psychoanalyzing everything about how I’m feeling to point out that I have no real coping mechanisms aside from (1) jerking off for four hours at a time and still not feeling fulfilled at the end of it bc I’m ashamed of my jerkoff material and (2) trying to love myself by identifying with awful fictional characters that I like and trying to transfer those positive feelings about them over to me which is fucking embarrassing & feeling anxious that I’m becoming complacent and apathetic about everything around me & feeling ashamed of everything I do & feeling extremely lonely & slamming my head against the wall because I feel so closed off from everyone emotionally because I’m just incapable of doing anything that I even slightly perceive will get me judged based only on my own projection & that all of these issues are my fault & that I may have suppressed trauma that I can’t remember which made me such a fucking freak (hoping almost, bc the reality that I may just be naturally terrible is overwhelming) & wondering yeah maybe I should just go off my meds and ruin my life and lose all my friends and ruin my relationship and either kill myself or end up in some facility bc I’m too scared to actually start my life so why not just destroy it or totally end it & probably some other stuff too yeah maybe.

but the paper is only 1-2 pages double-spaced which is super easy for me to get thru. I usually blow past that limit anyway bc I’m long-winded with many ideas and observations about this topic bc I am a genius /s (and I’m a fuckin overachiever and if I don’t graduate with a 4.0 I gotta kill myself anyway. add this concern to the aforementioned list).

I need a sugar daddy to fund my therapy bills I think bc this is too much for just one session a week lol I may be in a worse place now than I was after being assaulted and dropping out of school lmao. at least I was still doing theater then. scary stuff‼️

hope everyone has a good Sunday :)

[harocat]

I recall that the dream arc of tteotm didn’t work that well for you. Was it not being into Mingye and Sangjiu as characters or did you feel it was a deeper structural problem

Ming Ye and Sang Jiu on their own were... mostly fine. Their romance was even pretty cute at first. The arc also had incredible aesthetics, so it had that going for it.

First and foremost, the arc was too long. Battle scenes too lengthy, endless convoluted misunderstandings etc. This is time that could have been dedicated to many other things, including the immortal arc later on.

Secondly, the dubious consent scene with Ming Ye and Sang Jiu. Not only did the show not seem to play it as dubcon, but it was just completely out of character for Sang Jiu. I tried to put this behind me, but it was extremely hard, and tangentially related but I'll always be bugged by the fact that Tantai Jin and Li Susu's' 'first time' together in a sense was when they were in those bodies, being forced to act it out. OFC none of this is Ming Ye or Sang Jiu's fault, but it just made the whole thing more screwed up to me. I wanted it to be brought up, but I knew it never would be. One of the reasons I WANTED them to get a scene where they explicitly consummated their relationship is because I wanted them to have something better than... that. So I am glad the show at least gave me Li Susu and Tantai Jin getting to do that in episode thirty-nine.

(To be clear even if this scene wasn't dubious consent on the part of Sang Jiu, I still would have been kind of upset for TTJ and LSS, but it makes it a lot worse.)

I guess the biggest issue is really that the characters were so stupid. Tian Huan was a pointless character. She had NOTHING to her except her crush on Ming Ye, which led her to do all this fucked up and evil shit. Say what you will about Bingchang (who also drove me nuts lol), but she had more meat to her; motivations and issues deeper than just 'stereotypical jealous bitch.' Every moment with TH on screen was insufferable. In no way was she ever fun to watch or even fun to be angry at. While it's true that villains are sometimes created to be hated, there should be some aspect of strong feeling associated with that that enhances your experience, as opposed to just 'I'm so annoyed I want to stop watching.'

Ming Ye and Sang Jiu constantly made the dumbest decisions, especially Ming Ye. I know xianxia loves the miscommunication plotlines, and obviously there was plenty of that between Li Susu and Tantai Jin, but as frustrating as theirs was, it was at least understandable why it would happen. These two just had a multiple choice selection and chose the worst one every time. Ming Ye was the worst about this, and I understand that this was new to him (and 'this was my first time being a husband' was a lovely line btw), but it was still so maddening to watch. Instead of being sad for them, often I was just mad.

There were some great moments. Evil Sang Jiu was hot. The scenes in the forest when Ming Ye was recovering were beautiful and legitimately touching. Sang You is my boyfriend, and he is also gender. I LOVE that she actually got to take out TH, and I love when she stepped forward and said 'this is not a transaction.' That was SO good. That being said, even close to the end, after TH was dead, I felt like their ill fate was entirely preventable. That this all took place with the background being a potentially apocalyptic war going on did not help, because it did make it all feel very banal.

But as maybe a three or even four episode arc, I think it could have worked much better.

I also didn't think it played well into the final arc in a satisfying way. TTJ repeating Ming Ye's fate was awful to see. He's even stuck in the scale! Sang Jiu had no play in the last arc at all, even though she easily could have with the world overturning jade. It felt really unfair to her, but it does track with how LSS was treated. My honest opinion is that if the dream arc was utilized well in the final episodes, it would have given multiple routes to a very logical, well foreshadowed ending storyline (with yes, an HEA). I would have forgiven a lot from it if it ended up being a set up for some really excellent story beats in the final five episodes. But it just wasn't.

[xiaq]

Hi, I have a question re:sex and Christianity. Small background: I still go to church, and I still live with my parents even though I'm not much younger than you, because housing is very very expensive where I live (pretty common here, I would say about 2/3 of my friends live with their parents and we are decently privileged kids)

Anyway. How does one get over purity culture? To be clear, I've never been told in church not to have sex, I've never gotten the gendered lessons that you got. But I am terrified of having sex. My first real, multi-year relationship just ended and while there was hand stuff etc, there was never any p in v sex (lol I feel 12). But I still had insane anxiety about being pregnant despite being on bc. And I think its because I know my parents would be so disappointed if I had sex. And if I was pregnant I could imagine all the gossip. And honestly I think im from a pretty open church, b/c one of our previous ministers kids recently got married at 8 months pregnant and lots of church people were at the wedding and supportive and her parents were there and everything.

I dont even think I particularly like sex, i might be on the ace spectrum, but how do I remove it from all the anxiety that's tied to it so I can even give myself the chance to find out???

(Asking because it seems like you've been pretty open about purity culture/removing yourself from it)

CW for sex talk (again)

How does one get over purity culture?

Oh man. That really is the million-dollar question, huh? Obviously, I can only answer re my personal experiences, and this is something you should talk to a therapist about, but I can tell you how I’ve tackled it with my therapist at least.

Purity culture is, at its core, an ideology that is perpetuated by shame. If you’re indoctrinated into purity culture when you’re a kid, the concepts become baked into the way you construct your identity, your perception of self, and your perception of your sexuality. It’s practically intrinsic, by the time you’re an adult, to feel shame any time you’re reminded you have a body, much less a sexuality.

According to the chapels I sat through every week as a kid, a girl's body could be 3 things: an intentional stumbling block for men, an accidental stumbling block for men, or unnoticeable. Women were to strive for the third option so as to keep their (and their male friends/authority figures) purity intact. After all, if a boy, or even your male teacher, had impure thoughts about you, it was your fault for tempting them (which, holy shit. I still can’t believe that was a thing I bought into for so long. If my 45 yr old grown-ass teacher had impure thoughts because he could see my 12 yr old collarbone, that sure as hell wasn’t my fault. But I digress.) The Only time a woman’s body can be something else, is when she gives it to her husband, at which point she must suddenly flip the switch in her brain that she is now allowed to be a Sexual Being and she must perform Sexual Duties despite living in outright fear of her own body and sexuality for years (decades?) up until this point. Jesus take the wheel.

Purity culture isn’t a thing you can just decide to walk away from if you’ve grown up in it. Because its ideology is insidious and internalized. So first you need to submit to the fact that you’re going to be fucked up about sex. It sounds like you’re there. Second, you need to interrogate what you believe. If you’re leaving religion behind entirely, you’ll approach removing yourself from purity culture differently than if you still identify as a Christian. It sounds like you might be the latter, which meant, for me, separating what’s actually biblical and what’s shitty, contrived, doctrine that I was told is biblical but is actually more political than spiritual. This helps you address the shame issue.

You need to throw away I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Lady in Waiting and all those ridiculous books you read and reread in the hopes of somehow obtaining impossible marriage perfection and look into actual scripture interpreted within its historical context. I could write a book on this, but the TL;DR is that the text of the Bible was written, translated, curated, and changed multiple times over thousands of years by human beings with human biases and, often, personal and/or political agendas. It contradicts itself! Reading it as it is—a flawed historical document—rather than some sort of God-breathed perfect document—is incredibly freeing. When you do, you’ll probably realize that purity culture is bullshit on a spiritual level. Which is a good start, if that matters to you. Because any time you start to feel shame or guilt you can ask yourself: does God actually care if I wear a bikini or touch a dick I’m not married to? Probably not. Wear the bikini. Touch the dick.

The most important therapy session for me was when my therapist asked what I would do if I got to heaven and God was actually the God I’d been raised to fear. What would I do if he condemned me for being bisexual and having premarital sex and becoming educated, for arguing with men, and failing to isolate while menstruating, and wearing mixed fabrics? If Montero had come out at the point, I probably would have said I’d pole dance down to hell. Instead, I said I would spit on heaven’s gates. If a god that cruel and that pointlessly demeaning really exists—a god who would create in me condemned desire—I won't worship him. The good news is, I’m 99% sure he doesn’t exist. At the very least, he isn’t supported by scripture.

Okay. The final thing you need to do is figure out what you actually want, sexually speaking. This bit is probably the hardest. I’m still in the early stages of this myself. You say: “I dont even think I particularly like sex, i might be on the ace spectrum, but how do I remove it from all the anxiety that's tied to it so I can even give myself the chance to find out???” Bro, I wish I had an easy answer for you. For me, whenever I’m feeling anxious about Sex Things, I tell myself: 1. My God does not equate my worth to my sexual habits. 2. My partner does not equate my worth to my sexual habits. 3. I do not equate my worth to my sexual habits. It seems silly, but reminding myself of those three things is massively helpful. If, after I’ve sorted through those, I’m still anxious or uncomfortable, I stop doing the thing. I evaluate. Am I overwhelmed and I need to try again some other time? Do I just not like the thing? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Sometimes you change your mind. Sometimes you just don’t know. That’s why having a partner who you trust and who’s willing to patiently explore your interests (and respect your disinterests) is so important. Half the battle, for me, was having a partner who told me they’d be ok with no sex at all. Because that took the pressure off me. If the bare minimum they need is nothing, then anything more than that is a bonus! Hooray! This is maybe TMI, but let me tell you. I thought I was asexual* right up until I was able to have moderately non-anxious sex. Never in my life did I think I would initiate a sexual situation but… I do now. It’s a fun thing to do with a person I love and, holy shit. I am furious that I nearly missed out on it.

Finally, re birth control: I don’t know how you can approach that fear in a way that works for you. If you don’t want to ever have penetrative sex, that’s fine! If that’s a point of anxiety you can’t get rid of, then don't push yourself to do it. If you find out you like other sex things, do the other sex things! If you don't like doing any sex things, don't do any sex things! Also, have you considered sleeping with people who can’t get you pregnant? Always an option if it’s an option you want to consider. ;)

Okay. I hope this was even a little bit helpful. Sorry if it’s a little convoluted, I typed it up in bursts during my work breaks.

*This is not at all to say that asexuality can be “fixed." Rather, it’s to say that things like purity culture can drastically confuse your sexuality in general. If you’re asexual, then this process is still important to discover what you like/dislike. Then you can be explicit about those necesities and find a partner who’s a good fit (if you want a partner at all, that is).

[mettywiththenotes]

I know this is something of a "controversial" topic in MHA fandom, but I do like the female characters in MHA. I know they don't get as much time as the male characters, but we do have to remember that this is a Shounan Genre and it's a Manga written by a man. Even in Shounans written by women (Fullmetal Alchemist), men still get the spotlight and I feel like Horikoshi has done his best to break typical gender stereotypes for his female characters.

Yes, Momo is sexy and her costume is appalling. But she's intelligent and humble and she has a really cool arc where a male character has be subordinate to her. How often in Shounans do we see one of the main male protagonists taking orders from a lady?

Yes, Ochako is sometimes reduced to just her feelings for Izuku. But she's a bruiser, a fighter and her relationship with Himiko Toga is treated as being just as important as Shouto and Dabi's relationship and Izuku and Tomura's relationship.

Yes, Mei is kinda used for boob jokes sometimes. But she's an intelligent, dirty, resourceful mechanic who's allowed to be all those things and initially she was gonna be a man, so Horikoshi is trying to include more ladies in his work. Tsuyu and Toru also started as males.

MHA's female characters aren't perfect, but they're definitely better than most of the rest of the shit we see in the Shounan Genre like in shows such as Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dragon Ball. We have feral fighters like Miruko, cranky old ladies like Recovery Girl, heroic damsels like Eri. I for one think that we got lucky to have the ladies we do.

I agree with you!

I know a lot of people harp on about the female characters, sometimes I can see why, but personally I think the women are great! I'm sure there are better ways to treat them, but I don't think they're treated very badly

I've heard before that Shonen Jump has a thing about "being a manga for teenage boys so it has to feature stuff the 'typical teenage boy' would want to see". You know, like fanservice, or boys their age, love interest stuff where the guy gets the girl and so on and so forth

(I've also heard that Shonen Jump doesn't have a single female writer on their team precisely because of the "for teenage boys" thing, which is stupid imo)

But for what's there? For what we actually have?

For women who are shown to have their own minds, their own goals, their own successes and failures and learning experiences? I would say we have quite a bit going for us there

This fandom really likes to focus on the most negative things, for example, Ochako's crush on Izuku being seen as "love interest" stuff and that's the only purpose she serves

When, canonically, we have *looks at notes* Ochako wanting to see people happy, fighting for that happiness, she even has her own narrative ("Who protects the Heroes when they need protecting?"), she wants to save people NOT just because of Izuku's influence but also because she witnessed a man dying in her arms, felt the weight of that life and wanted to prevent that from ever happening again. You also have the whole thing about her being independent to a fault, financial trauma, wanting to give her parents a better life, and then the stuff with Toga, the Villain to her Hero, and she wants to understand her

Like. I'm not denying that she's a very likely love interest, but there's more to her than that stuff, you know? And it's shown very well that she is more than just a love interest, believe it or not

About the Momo thing, I'm sure there are like. quite a lot of instances of Shounen boys listening to girls, even if just once, (tho admittedly I am drawing a blank on naming anime/manga with those instances in), but I do think people forget about that arc quite a lot! It was a big battle in terms of character development for Momo and it's like people just forget about it. Actually, I feel like people forget about her confidence issues in general when they say stuff like "she's just a face and tits for the manga"

I agree about Mei too! She's allowed to be quirky and get dirty and be all over the place, and she's so intelligent too. And reckless! And that moment with her telling Izuku that Support students can be Heroes too was such a great moment for her, I'm really glad that role was given to her first out of anyone else. I'm pretty sure that's the FIRST instance of someone saying Support student/anybody else outside of the actual Heroes can be heroes too! And the fact that it started with her? *chefs kiss* love it

About the whole switching genders thing! Yeah! I like that Hori balanced it out more so it wasn't one-sided. People go on about the story feeling one-sided with girls vs boys and I guess I can see why in terms of class 1a, but it could have been much worse

And, may I mention, you even have complicated female characters, mothers, by the way, who are not all painted as innocent or nurturing or without fault, who are just as complex as the boys can be

Honestly I could go on and on about the female characters. I'm considering doing a bnha ask game of people sending me female characters to analyse just because I feel like people think there's nothing to them at all when... there is something there to talk about, actually 👀 which would just be something for fun btw. I would like to do it and see how much I can dig up!

Are there things that could be improved? Sure.

Do we wish there were female characters who had more focus than they get? Yes.

But is there nothing but fanservice, crushes and female character background decoration, like people seem to imply? No.

Just wanted to mention before I'm done: You also have a case of breaking gender stereotypes for the boys too. Satou, anyone? You know, the boy who bakes for fun? Who's a muscly strong guy and uses desserts to get strong, but also bakes because he can, for his classmates and for FUN?

Anyway yeah. Long answer short, I agree with you haha