#and i dont have confidence to write if i dont read vignettes

[silk-stocking-soil]

scared of the dark on ao3 please update you dont leave me after scratching all the right places in my brain and all the guilty pleasure dramatics i need IVE BEEN STARRVEDDD

istg i feel like ive consumed all the platonic twst first year content broski im struggling

[cozymochi]

Hello hello! Do your ocs have any partner preferences perhaps? Asking for a friend :3

Keep up the awesome work Cozy, your art always amazes me when I pass by. Also love reading your rambles, they're all so well written~

Who is this “”friend”” and what is their INTENT? - I was gonna make a “haha lab partner preference” joke, but I’ll bite…. for the lawlz.

“We're students. We should be studying, not wasting our time with such unacademic pursuits!” - Sebek Zigvolt - SSR Ace Suitor Suit Vignette: “My Beloved”

SHORT ANSWER: Nope because everyone in that series is partner-preference-phobic. LONG ANSWER: I entertain hypotheticals so follow along if you want to. Take it with a grain of salt though. Or don’t! None of this matters 💃

Emilio is too self important and doesn’t really think about potential partners at all. He’s too busy trying to assert how reliable he is and prove how incompetent everyone else around him must be as a result. BUT! If someone were to ask, he’d give them a once over and decide then and there whether or not they’d be worth his time. Weirdly enough he seems more enticed by the idea of somebody matching is self-important and ambitious energy rather than someone who can gas him up. No, no, gassing up is for peers and family. Partner must engage in a constant battle of wits and pettiness and outdoing each other. …Not much of a partnership, really, but nobody said this guy had a healthy and not-skewed idea of relationships.

Cecil does not have the self-esteem to consider serious partnerships, nor entertains the idea of pursuing either. He needs to work out his own issues first, and chances are that alone (and studying) will keep him away from that sorta stuff. THAT SAID, unlike everyone else he is not immune to pretty people who very clearly have their lives together. Outwardly, he’s into those clearly out of his league. Someone confident in their own skin (unlike him), and having that confidence practically radiating off of them is his preference… but, in that response to seeing like, a model on tv or in a magazine kind of way. Otherwise, he probably has no idea what he would actually want. It’s not happening anytime soon to begin with.

Nyoka, surprise, also does not think about partnerships. Not that it matters because in his clan all partnerships between Cobra Beastmen at his status are arranged anyway. When he’s done with school it’s only a matter of time afterwards before that has to be dealt with. So there’s no real reason to entertain preference at all. Maybe having good manners is his bare minimum expectation, but it’s hard to say. He doesn’t really care by any measure and will remain stringent in what’s expected of him. Unless somebody awakens something in him, but what’s the likeliness of that happening? There is no freak here.

🪷 Tia under cut. 🪷

Tia does not entertain hypotheticals.

🪷Romantic pursuits are not on the table for her nor a focus, she just writes it off entirely. She’s got other things going on, like figuring out why she’s even there and finding a way back home. And when she gets back home it’ll be back to business. That’s her plan, and she has tunnel vision when it comes to her future career ventures and making her dreams a reality. Don’t ask, she’ll swerve and never answer. Besides, she probably doesn’t even know what she’d look for anyway. She just dismisses it all and doesn’t allow herself to consider it.

🪷 … BUT…

🪷 …she will notice if somebody is… sturdy. So to speak.

🪷 Despite everything, she sometimes wishes she was the type to entertain frivolous thoughts like that. Given her current situation though, that might not be ideal to toy with.

OKAY BYE i dont know what knowing any of this will do for anybody

[mikkaeus]

detransition, baby - a review

apparently the “first book written by an openly trans woman to be published by a big 5 publishing house” but that was from a goodreads review so dont quote me on that

disclaimer im am? mostly cis at this point in time

i really enjoyed this book. i loved how unapologetically queer it was. i loved the writing style and overall tone (more on this later*). i cant imagine what the experience must be for the average cis person that has never thought about Gender in their life. 

the one-line summary of the plot is that Ames (detransitioned trans woman) accidentally gets Katrina (his gf) pregnant and proposes that his ex gf Reese (trans woman) to be a coparent because he can’t stand the idea of being shoehorned into the role of a dad and all the gender fuckery that entails by virtue of Katrina’s cishetness. 

the book follows the reese and amy in vignettes from various periods of their lives, as well as the ongoing story in the present with katrina’s pregnancy. the timeline is meandering as it frequently recounts memories from the present, but i didn’t find it hard to follow.

our lovely cast:

- Reese: cynical & confident as a self-described trans elder. she desperately wants a child of her own. she’s emotional and impulsive and has several toxic relationships with men prior to and after her long-term relationship with Amy. her view on womanhood is fucked up, but understandably so. A lot of people on Goodreads, at least half of them TERFs, took issue with this particular section (which is funny, because the author knew exactly what would happen). 

After all, Every woman adores a Fascist. Reese spent a lifetime observing cis women confirm their genders through male violence. 

....

Liberal feminists — especially the trans-hating variety — would have a field day with her. ... But you know what? ... Why should the burden be on her to uphold impeccable feminist politics that barely served her? ... So yeah, Stanley, bring it on. Hit Reese. Show her what it means to be a lady. 

- Amy/Ames: a baby trans when she initially got together with reese, who was as much of a mother to her as she was a partner. she has never been able to break the habit of using maleness as an emotional shield, and one resulting casualty is her sex life — the inability to make herself vulnerable makes sex unsatisfying for both her and Reese. ultimately, their relationship breaks down and in the aftermath, Amy detransitions to Ames. 

- Katrina - late thirties, chinese/jewish, cishet, divorcee. this is her first venturing into queerness. she’s also Ames’ boss, but this dynamic is not explored at all tbh she might as well be his coworker. 

*THE PROSE! As I said earlier, I loved the writing style. It’s easy to read but embellished and ‘literary’ enough to be fun. Not sure of the right word to describe the tone but something like blasé/snappy/honest/blunt? it is also very funny. 

Ames pondered whether he ought to cancel his subscription to HBO in order to afford this sperm bank. He couldn’t fully comprehend the enormous weight of fatherhood and generational lineage, but he could easily comprehend how much he did not want to cancel HBO. 

...she welcomes Reese with a hug that, in its unexpected affection, Reese would put somewhere between suddenly discovered long-lost relative and cult leader thanking you for your impending sacrifice.

is this a Queer Misery book? i don’t think so. all the Bad Things (transphobia, homophobia, dysphoria, and so on) feature insofar that it is a book about the messy lives of these trans women. i didn’t find it depressing. 

are the characters likeable? storygraph says “it’s complicated”. personally, i was emotionally invested in them at around the 50% mark. as someone who has never wanted children or been interested in motherhood at all, and also never been particularly moved by those who were, i was really hoping that things would work out for reese.

the question of race. amy and reese are very white and this is underlined in the book in a sufficiently self-aware (on the part of the author) way. i dont think this detracted from the book. more thoughts on this here. 

sEx? some people have said there was a lot of sex in this book but i personally didn’t really think so (by the standard of fanfic at least). i guess there’s a decent number of talk about sex but not that many sex scenes? 

is co-sleeping with your baby bad? the science says yes! sleeping in the same room is not the same as sleeping in the same bed!! this is the most problematic part of the book 

unfortunately, (MINOR SPOILERS)

I didn’t get the happy ending that I had desperately hoped for (though i probably should’ve clocked something when it ended at 12 weeks post conception). Instead, we got an ambiguous ending that I guess could be seen as hopeful. I’m the type of guy that wants closure in all my stories but alas.