#and instead of being like well maybe my identity goes far beyond gender and like i don't need to find some microlabel

[cyncity2000]

I posted 1,221 times in 2022

That's 141 more posts than 2021!

165 posts created (14%)

1,056 posts reblogged (86%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@salemruinseverything

@combeauferre

@sithiegoodness

@castielsupernatural

@twelvefifteencomic

I tagged 1,193 of my posts in 2022

Only 2% of my posts had no tags

#i like (the idea of) queue - 567 posts

#bastille - 127 posts

#send my regards to super hell - 110 posts

#video - 81 posts

#spn - 58 posts

#tiktok - 53 posts

#jill gets asks - 47 posts

#writing shit - 44 posts

#charlie barnes - 36 posts

#destiel - 35 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#so when it went back to paper for a bit i’d just take entire plates of fruit and dessert with me when i left 🤷‍♀️ sometimes real food too

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

yes i’m totally normal about woody & his dad doing a lil pub gig with dan and charlie and proceeding to play teenage dirtbag together, during which dan comes up to the mic with his phone open to the lyrics and then proceeds to immediately leave his microphone and go share with charlie instead for literally no reason. i’m fine <3 just . look at this shit

53 notes - Posted April 17, 2022

#4

ok but i am CRYING at this headline

57 notes - Posted January 6, 2022

#3

this was too long for twitter but honestly i was pleasantly surprised about the publicity for heartstopper because i expected everyone on twitter to be like "wELL if every single actor doesn't immediately come out to everyone then how do we KNOW all the queer characters are actually being played by queer actors hmMM??" bc yknow. the internet is just Like That 🙃

and heartstopper's response (bc they almost certainly anticipated this) was literally just like "we have a queer cast, trust us, and not a single person in the cast owes you any more information than that. not to MENTION we go above and beyond to show you that this tv series was CREATED not only by an openly queer author who was given FULL control to write the entire screen adaptation of their own graphic novels, but also by a openly queer director who specifically made sure to hire as many queer workers as possible for every. other. department of the show. because yes, it's super important that queer actors play queer characters; but it's even MORE important that the representation extends FAR beyond the people you see on screen."

bc THAT IS HOW YOU HAVE GOOD REPRESENTATION. NOT forcing all of your actors to spend every single interview fielding questions about their own personal gender & sexual identities. good representation is making sure that―unlike the majority of films and tv shows, sadly―if you look beyond the main cast, the roles of director/producer/writer/photographer/makeup artist/crew member/etc are ACTUALLY fulfilled by a diverse group of talented people. true representation doesn't stop at the actors, or the portrayal of characters. it goes all the way up the ladder to everyone making the movie/tv show/etc happen in the first place. change can't happen long-term unless "older," well-established people in the industry (like euros lyn) use their position to create opportunities for fresh, new, young, diverse talent.

tldr heartstopper is a brilliant example of how to properly create a series both by and for the lgbtq+ community, and i was SO relieved to see all the publicity revolve around the story and the actors and the importance of representation WITHOUT requiring anybody who wasn't already out to clarify anything about themselves.

(ramble mostly inspired by this and sourced from this, if you haven't watched the video you 100% should !!! also ofc special shoutout to kit for taking absolutely no shit from twitter)

70 notes - Posted May 16, 2022

#2

me, busy screaming about bim & senab maybe going on the US tour with bas

meanwhile, bastille:

85 notes - Posted April 18, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

ok slight tour spoiler ahead but: during one segment he asked us to pick a noise and an influencer. someone said ‘boink’ and he was like ‘somehow that still sounds sexual’ and then we got to influencer and he was like ‘oh my god did someone say PHIL??’ so the sentence ended up being something about a secret society called the boink run by phil lester

and THEN he fucking says (something like) ‘joke’s on you, me and phil have been in boink together from the START!!!’ and. dan. my dude. YOU were the one who said boink sounded sexual do you not realize what that Sounds Like 💀

172 notes - Posted October 14, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[reloha]

@cruelsister-moved2: #and I kind of felt really sad when they were talking about how like they feel in some ways figuring yourself out is way harder now#bc there is this pressure to like figure out who u Really Are Inside#and instead of being like well maybe my identity goes far beyond gender and like i don't need to find some microlabel#in order to like define who is Me#it's become very fixated on like categorising ur gender rejection in a way that ends up just. making even more genders to constrain u#it's hard to summarise it was like v wordy but I thought this part was so true#for sexuality as well not to tack it on but we have really gotten into the same mindset w sexuality now as well#THANK U @VAKAVANHASAATANA for the ID it wont let me @ you in the text </33

@totallyboatless: #embracing this more and more recently#‘your soul is a man and that’s why being trans is okay’ is like…i dunno it doesn’t sit right#i don’t think souls have gender at all if they exist#but i WANT to be a man here and now#so i am one#it makes me really happy to be one#i love myself more#the idea that would make certain cishets see my identity as ‘less valid’ is frankly wild#trans stuff

@illuminatingsceadugenga: #genders the clothing of who you are#maybe its not tailored#but it should fit#and it should make you feel good

for real! (from kadji amin)

[Image description: Screenshot of text:

What I’ve realized is that I believe that the matter of gender is practical and relational. It’s not about who you are inside, it’s more about how you would feel most comfortable in the world. It’s not ‘Who are you?’ but 'How do you want to live?’

Had that been the discourse when I was coming up, I would have breathed a sigh of relief. I don’t have to figure out who I am on the inside, I just have to figure out how I want to live.

end of ID]

[duckprintspress]

Ten Things We Hate About Trad Pub

Often when I say “I’ve started a small press; we publish the works of those who have trouble breaking into traditional publishing!” what people seem to hear is “me and a bunch of sad saps couldn’t sell our books in the Real World so we’ve made our own place with lower standards.” For those with minimal understanding of traditional publishing (trad pub), this reaction is perhaps understandable? But, truly, there are many things to hate about traditional publishing (and, don’t get me wrong - there are things to love about trad pub, too, but that’s not what this list is about) and it’s entirely reasonable for even highly accomplished authors to have no interest in running the gauntlet of genre restrictions, editorial control, hazing, long waits, and more, that make trad pub at best, um, challenging, and at worst, utterly inaccessible to many authors - even excellent ones.

Written in collaboration with @jhoomwrites, with input from @ramblingandpie, here is a list of ten things that we at Duck Prints Press detest about trad pub, why we hate it, and why/how we think things should be different!

(Needless to say, part of why we created Duck Prints Press was to...not do any of these things... so if you’re a writer looking for a publishing home, and you hate these things, too, and want to write with a Press that doesn’t do them...maybe come say hi?)

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1. Work lengths dictated by genre and/or author experience.

Romance novels can’t be longer than 90,000 words or they won’t sell! New authors shouldn’t try to market a novel longer than 100,000 words!

A good story is a good story is a good story. Longer genre works give authors the chance to explore their themes and develop their plots. How often an author has been published shouldn’t put a cap on the length of their work.

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2. Editors assert control of story events...except when they don’t.

If you don’t change this plot point, the book won’t market well. Oh, you’re a ten-time bestseller? Write whatever you want, even if it doesn’t make sense we know people will buy it.

Sometimes, a beta or an editor will point out that an aspect of a story doesn’t work - because it’s nonsensical, illogical, Deus ex Machina, etc. - and in those cases it’s of course reasonable for an editor to say, “This doesn’t work and we recommend changing it, for these reasons…” However, when that list of reasons begins and ends with, “...because it won’t sell…” that’s a problem, especially because this is so often applied as a double standard. We’ve all read bestsellers with major plot issues, but those authors get a “bye” because editors don’t want to exert to heavy a hand and risk a proven seller, but with a new, less experienced, or worse-selling author, the gloves come off (even though evidence suggests time and again that publishers’ ability to predict what will sell well is at best low and at worst nonexistent.)

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3. A billion rejection letters as a required rite of passage (especially when the letters aren't helpful in pinpointing why a work has been rejected or how the author can improve).

Well, my first book was rejected by a hundred Presses before it was accepted! How many rejection letters did you get before you got a bite? What, only one or two? Oh…

How often one succeeds or fails to get published shouldn’t be treated as a form of hazing, and we all know that how often someone gets rejected or accepted has essentially no bearing on how good a writer they are. Plenty of schlock goes out into the world after being accepted on the first or second try...and so does plenty of good stuff! Likewise, plenty of schlock will get rejected 100 times but due to persistence, luck, circumstances, whatever, finally find a home, and plenty of good stuff will also get rejected 100 times before being publishing. Rejections (or lack there of) as a point of pride or as a means of judging others needs to die as a rite of passage among authors.

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4. Query letters, for so many reasons.

Summarize all your hard work in a single page! Tell us who you’re like as an author and what books your story is like, so we can gauge how well it’ll sell based on two sentences about it! Format it exactly the way we say or we won’t even consider you!

For publishers, agents, and editors who have slush piles as tall as Mount Everest...we get it. There has to be a way to differentiate. We don’t blame you. Every creative writing class, NaNoWriMo pep talk, and college lit department combine to send out hundreds of thousands of people who think all they need to do to become the next Ernest Hemingway is string a sentence together. There has to be some way to sort through that pile...but God, can’t there be a better way than query letters? Especially since even with query letters being used it often takes months or years to hear back, and...

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5. "Simultaneous submissions prohibited.”

No, we don’t know when we’ll get to your query, but we’ll throw it out instantly if you have the audacity to shop around while you wait for us.

The combination of “no simultaneous submissions” with the query letter bottleneck makes success slow and arduous. It disadvantages everyone who aims to write full-time but doesn’t have another income source (their own, or a parents’, or a spouse’s, or, or or). The result is that entire classes of people are edged out of publishing solely because the process, especially for writers early in their career, moves so glacially that people have to earn a living while they wait, and it’s so hard to, for example, work two jobs and raise a family and also somehow find the time to write. Especially considering that the standard advice for dealing with “no simultaneous submissions” is “just write something else while you wait!” ...the whole system screams privilege.

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6. Genres are boxes that must be fit into and adhered to.

Your protagonist is 18? Then obviously your book is Young Adult. It doesn’t matter how smutty your book is, erotica books must have sex within the first three chapters, ideally in the first chapter. Sorry, we’re a fantasy publisher, if you have a technological element you don’t belong here…

While some genre boxes have been becoming more like mesh cages of late, with some flow of content allowed in and out, many remain stiff prisons that constrict the kinds of stories people can tell. Even basic cross-genre works often struggle to find a place, and there’s no reason for it beyond “if we can’t pigeon-hole a story, it’s harder to sell.” This edges out many innovative, creative works. It also disadvantages people who aren’t as familiar with genre rules. And don’t get me wrong - this isn’t an argument that, for example, the romance genre would be improved by opening up to stories that don’t have “happily ever afters.” Instead, it’s pointing out - there should also be a home for, say, a space opera with a side romance, an erotica scene, and a happily-for-now ending. Occasionally, works breakthrough, but for the most part stories that don’t conform never see the light of day (or, they do, but only after Point 2 - trad pub editors insist that the elements most “outside” the box be removed or revised).

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7. The lines between romance and erotica are arbitrary, random, and hetero- and cis-normative.

This modern romance novel won’t sell if it doesn’t have an explicit sex scene, but God forbid you call a penis a penis. Oh, no, this is far too explicit, even though the book only has one mlm sex scene, this is erotica.

The difference between “romance” and “erotica” might not matter so much if not for the stigmas attached to erotica and the huge difference in marketability and audience. The difference between “romance” and “erotica” also might not matter so much if not for the fact that, so often, even incredibly raunchy stories that feature cis straight male/cis straight female sex scenes are shelved as romance, but the moment the sex is between people of the same gender, and/or a trans or genderqueer person is involved, and/or the relationship is polyamorous, and/or the characters involved are literally anything other than a cis straight male pleasuring a cis straight female in a “standard” way (cunnilingus welcome, pegging need not apply)...then the story is erotica. Two identical stories will get assigned different genres based on who the people having sex are, and also based on the “skill” of the author to use ludicrous euphemisms (instead of just...calling body parts what they’re called…), and it’s insane. Non-con can be a “romance” novel, even if it’s graphically described. “50 Shades of Gray” can sell millions of copies, even containing BDSM. But the word “vagina” gets used once...bam, erotica. (Seriously, the only standard that should matter is the Envelope Analogy).

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8. Authors are expected to do a lot of their own legwork (eg advertising) but then don't reap the benefits.

Okay, so, you’re going to get an advance of $2,500 on this, your first novel, and a royalty rate of 5% if and only if your advance sells out...so you’d better get out there and market! Wait, what do you mean you don’t have a following? Guess you’re never selling out your advance…

Trad pub can generally be relied on to do some marketing - so this item is perhaps better seen as an indictment of more mid-sized Presses - but, basically, if an author has to do the majority of the work themselves, then why aren’t they getting paid more? What’s the actual benefit to going the large press/trad pub route if it’s not going to get the book into more hands? It’s especially strange that this continues to be a major issue when self-publishing (which also requires doing one’s own marketing) garners 60%+ royalty rates. Yes, the author doesn’t get an advance, and they don’t get the cache of ~well I was published by…~, but considering some Presses require parts of advances to get paid back if the initial run doesn’t sell out, and cache doesn’t put food on the table...pay models have really, really got to change.

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9. Fanfiction writing doesn't count as writing experience

Hey there Basic White Dude, we see you’ve graduated summa cum laude from A Big Fancy Expensive School. Of course we’ll set you up to publish your first novel you haven’t actually quite finished writing yet. Oh, Fanperson, you’ve written 15 novels for your favorite fandom in the last 4 years? Get to the back of the line!

Do I really need to explain this? The only way to get better at writing is to write. Placing fanfiction on official trad pub “do not interact” lists is idiotic, especially considering many of the other items on this list. (They know how to engage readers! They have existing followings! They understand genre and tropes!) Being a fanfiction writer should absolutely be a marketable “I am a writer” skill. Nuff said. (To be clear, I’m not saying publishers should publish fanfiction, I’m saying that being a fanfiction writer is relevant and important experience that should be given weight when considering an author’s qualifications, similar to, say, publishing in a university’s quarterly.)

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10. Tagging conventions (read: lack thereof).

Oh, did I trigger you? Hahahaha. Good luck with that.

We rate movies so that people can avoid content they don’t like. Same with TV shows and video games. Increasingly, those ratings aren’t just “R - adult audiences,” either; they contain information about the nature of the story elements that have led to the rating (“blood and gore,” “alcohol reference,” “cartoon violence,” “drug reference,” “sexual violence,” “use of tobacco,” and many, many more). So why is it that I can read a book and, without warning, be surprised by incest, rape, graphic violence, explicit language, glorification of drug and alcohol use, and so so much more? That it’s left to readers to look up spoilers to ensure that they’re not exposed to content that could be upsetting or inappropriate for their children or, or, or, is insane. So often, too, authors cling to “but we don’t want to give away our story,” as if video game makes and other media makers do want to give away their stories. This shouldn’t be about author egos or ~originality~ (as if that’s even a thing)...it should be about helping readers make informed purchasing decisions. It’s way, way past time that major market books include content warnings.

Thank you for joining us, this has been our extended rant about how frustrated we are with traditional publishing. Helpful? No. Cathartic? Most definitely yes. 🤣

*

Have a question about writing? Drop us an ask!

Like what we do and want to support us? You can buy us a ko-fi - or get access to exclusive content by backing us on Patreon!

[smoocheveryclone]

dirty old town

Gregor x jedi!reader, part one of ???, ~3k words, uhhh, i don’t actually remember if i gendered the reader? i have to check, no (y/n), no smut though it does begin to get very mildly suggestive near the end. pg13 i guess? if that?

premise: reader is the one to find Gregor on Abafar instead of Colonel Meebur “i am droid racist but will treat clones with even less respect” Gascon

under a cut bc long post

You have mixed feelings about these undercover missions.

On the one hand, despite the danger, there is an element of freedom to them that you relish. You’re not bound by the strict codes of the Jedi Order; you feel greater license to act and speak on impulse… but at the same time, you aren’t strictly yourself. You’re playing a part. 

And then you go home, to the Temple or to the War, and maybe it’s just mild disorientation, but you still feel like you’re playing a part. The part of a Jedi.

But you always end up leaving those feelings behind you, and do what you must do.

Your current mission is over now, and you’ve just started your journey home from the Outer Rim… but of course, nothing can be simple.

You end up having to pilot your ship through a- beautiful, admittedly- field of comets. Trusting in the force, you manage to get through it mostly without damage.

Mostly being the operative word.

You take a hit, and you lose your fuel tank, forcing you down onto a force-forsaken planet not far from the one you’ve just left.

You instruct your astromech to power down until you get back, because you don’t know when you’ll be able to recharge her battery next, grab a satchel with some essentials and a full canteen, and set off toward what you sense is some kind of small town.

It’s a long walk, and by the time you see buildings, you’re dusty and dry and tired. And there are battle droids here. Which is fantastic.

First things first, though. You see a sign for a diner and make a beeline for it. Never mind that it looks dirtier and more disreputable the closer you get; there’s food and drink inside. The door opens, and you stop.

That voice.

There’s no mistaking that voice, you know it as well as you know your own. Better. You’ve heard it in countless permutations, all with particular vocal tics, intonations, cadences, turns of phrase which you’ve gotten to know, in some cases quite well. So this one is familiar… but unfamiliar at the same time. 

By the time you’ve thought all this, you’re already staring… and not just in curiosity or surprise. You’ve never seen a clone wearing civvies before. You’ve seen them in their armor, whether shiny and new or scuffed and painted; you’ve seen them in their uniforms; you’ve even seen them in the black body gloves they wear under their armor, once or twice (an image you have to swat out of your mind like an insect buzzing around your ear). But never civilian clothing. Something about it plays havoc with your composure, but you can’t look away.

His arms are bare. His hair is attractively mussed, and he’s got a full beard. 

He’s also looking back at you.

You’ve seen eyes exactly like his so many times before; you’ve never seen them look back at you quite this way. Like he’s seeing… you. Not a Jedi, not a General, just you. Of course, you realize, you’re wearing civilian clothes as well. As far as he’s concerned, you are just you. 

It takes you long enough to wonder who he is and what he’s doing here that you feel a bit silly about it. But once you do wonder, it’s quite a puzzle indeed. Is he undercover, as you were? Is that done? You’ve never heard of it. Though if a man with a million identical brothers could get away with going undercover anywhere, it’d be out here on some Outer Rim dustball. The other possibility is that he’s deserted. You’ve never heard of that, either, though you expect that it must have happened before. 

You wouldn’t blame him if that were the case. You certainly wouldn’t squeal on him.

This attitude is, at the heart of it, why you have never, and will never, lead a battalion.

At the moment, though, either of these possibilities leaves you in a delicate situation. You can’t blow his cover, if it’s the first case scenario. You don’t want to scare him off if it’s the second. Then, of course, there’s the third possibility: it’s neither of those things. What else could be going on? But whatever it is, you can’t just avoid him. You can’t go on with your business, pretending you never saw him. The force is telling you that you are meant to be here, and you were meant to find him. Why?

So many questions.

You’ve been loitering by the door, staring at him this whole time, and he’s been going about his job, sneaking glances back at you as he collects dirty dishes and clears off the booths. A Sullustan- owner and operator of the place as far as you can guess- has appeared behind the counter in the meantime, and you give him only a cursory glance as you walk up and take a seat on one of the grimy stools. You pick one where you can peek back into the kitchen and follow him with your eye as he goes back and forth.

The Sullustan is chatting up a regular, which is fine by you. You may be hungry, but you can wait: there’s something far more interesting here than food and drink.

You watch the clone more or less discreetly, every so often letting him catch you looking. You’re waiting for a chance to speak with him, however briefly. Before you can find one, he comes to you.

“I haven’t seen you around here before,” he says, giving you a smile.

“I just got into town today,” you say, smiling back at him. Seeming encouraged, he lays down the stack of dirty dishes for a moment to loiter a bit beside you. “My name’s Gregor.”

You give him your name in return, and he tells you it sounds pretty. This unexpectedly beguiling exchange disarms you, and for a moment you almost forget why you wanted to speak to him in the first place.

“I’m very glad to meet you,” you tell him emphatically. You can’t really speak with him here, not beyond this chitchat, but at least you can hint that you’d like to. Gregor, meanwhile, looks delighted.

“Likewise,” he says, and there are a few seconds of oddly intense silence.

“So…” you say, nodding up at the menu sign behind the counter. “What’s good?”

“Well,” he hesitates pointedly, scrunching up his face, and you laugh. “Number four’s all right.”

“Thank you for the recommendation.”

“No problem.”

Your little conversation is interrupted by the Sullustan bellowing for him to get back to work. You have already decided that you do not like this man- Borkus is his name, from what you have overheard- but you order your food and the coldest drink possible, and are otherwise left alone until it arrives. 

From then until you finish and pay, he is mostly in the back washing up. You don’t get another chance to speak with him. Whenever he emerges, though, he meets your eye, and before you leave, you give him a lingering look.

Outside, you stop and lean against the outer wall of the diner for a few minutes, thinking. While you’re standing there, you hear something coming from around the back of the building. A door, the scraping of a container on the ground, something being lifted and emptied. You make a guess at what you’re hearing, and duck down the little alleyway. When you peek around the corner… there he is.

“Hello again,” you call softly, hanging around at the edge of the back alley, hoping he’ll come over and talk, away from the overflowing trash bins. It smells back there.

You can’t help noticing the way his face lights up when he sees you again. Peering backwards through the kitchen, he lets the back door close softly and, to your immense relief, begins walking over. You beckon him out to the side alley where the air is less foul.

“Hey there,” he says when he gets close. 

“I was wondering… will you be free later on?”

“I get off work in a few hours,” he says, with an air of cautious encouragement.

“Would you meet with me?”

You can feel a little ripple of (pleased) surprise through the force. Obviously he’s amenable to the idea.

“I’d like that,” he replies.

So would you, now it comes to it.

“Good,” you say. “I’ll see you later, then.”

Then, there’s the sound of the diner owner shouting again.

“Gregor! Where are you! Get back in here!”

There’s the sound of the back door into the alley being thrust open, and heavy, stomping footsteps, and you frown in the general direction of the noise. Gregor looks embarrassed; you reach out tentatively, and touch his arm in what you hope is a comforting gesture.

“Sorry,” you say quietly.

He looks at the hand on his arm. You pull it back. He looks at you. You look at him.

“Worth it,” he whispers as the Sullustan rounds the corner.

“What are you doing out here? You take an extra break, it comes out of your pay! Get back in the kitchen and finish washing the dishes!”

“Sorry, Mr. Borkus,” he says, slipping around his irascible employer and scooting back the way he came. “I’m getting back to work, right now!”

You hear the door open and close, and the Sullustan turns a disapproving eye on you. Before he can speak though, you raise your hand and wave it lightly in front of his face, which goes blank.

“You should stop yelling at Gregor,” you say. “I should stop yelling at Gregor,” he repeats. “You’re not going to dock his pay.” “I’m not going to dock his pay.” “You need to get off his back and let him be.” “I need to get off his back and let him be.”

Satisfied that you’ve done what little you can to improve the mysterious clone’s day- whatever his situation actually is- you turn on your heel and walk away.

You spend the next few hours as you had intended before meeting Gregor: enquiring about the parts you need to repair your ship, discreetly poking around for information, observing the battle droids. There’s something going on here (there’s something going on everywhere, these days) but you haven’t figured out what. Frankly- although you chide yourself that you are doing your duty and not to be childish- you’re bored. You’re very much looking forward to meeting up with Gregor later.

So you can figure out what he’s doing here, of course.

After the appropriate amount of time has lapsed, you meander back to the diner, and wait across the road, watching the door.

Eventually, he and the owner emerge. He sees you right away, and veers over in your direction immediately, waving and calling for you as his employer stares (and is ignored by both of you).

“I’ve been waiting all day to see you,” he says, with a big smile on his face.

“I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been doing the same,” you admit, smiling back. “How was work?”

“Better than usual.”

You smile wider.

“Glad to hear it.” 

“So… what are you doing here?”

You shrug.

“Passing through.”

“Oh? … How long are you staying in town?”

He looks hopeful. You stop yourself from chewing your lip.

“I don’t know,” you reply honestly. “It depends.”

You realize you’re chewing your lip again when you see the way he’s looking at you.

“On what?”

You can’t help smiling at him.

“Lots of things.”

“Hmm.”

The conversation that follows is, like your first exchange earlier today in the dingy little diner, oddly compelling. Repeatedly, you must remind yourself that you are trying to figure out what he’s doing here, but much like your earlier investigation into the Separatist presence on this planet, you’re getting nowhere. You even attempt, once or twice, to steer the conversation in directions that would raise the suspicions of someone under cover… but he isn’t suspicious at all, and you end up just talking.

Talking, laughing, enjoying each other.

He’s endearing.

But before you while the whole evening away just walking around town, chatting, you come right out and ask.

“So, Gregor… what are you doing here?”

“You mean… besides washing dishes?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugs.

“I don’t know. Surviving, I guess.”

You nod slowly.

“Hmm. How long have you been here?”

“About a year now,” he replies, and you manage to disguise some of your shock at his answer. ‘Undercover’ is starting to look less and less likely. “... What?”

“Nothing. Just. Wow. You’ve been working at the diner that whole time?”

“Yeah.” 

You grimace.

“Well, frankly, that sounds awful.”

He laughs, running his hands self-consciously through his hair.

“Well, it… it could be worse.”

That pricks at your heart. 

“Yes. I suppose it could.”

You know very well how much worse it could be.

He looks at you, but neither of you speaks for a long moment. Maybe it’s time for the two of you to speak more plainly than this.

“Gregor… Is there somewhere we can go and talk to each other privately?” His eyes are wide as he looks at you, and for just a second, you sense the buzz of excited nerves.

“Oh, uh… well, it’s- it’s not much, but, there’s always my place.”

“That sounds perfect,” you say, touching his arm like you did earlier. It seems to help.

“Great,” he says. “This way!”

He takes your hand, and leads you down the dusty streets that still all look the same to you. You’re not really looking at them anyway.

On the way, you pass by a man he knows in the street. They wave to each other, and- after the strange man glances at you- exchange smiles. 

“I’ve been really enjoying talking with you,” he says suddenly.

You look at him.

It’s been so nice, spending time with him like this. Just being yourself, with no part to play.

“Me, too.”

You’re almost there, now. You see the stairwell down into a basement apartment, and he’s slowing down. Before you get there, he stops, leaning against the wall. You can feel his self-consciousness.

“Listen, um, when I said my place wasn’t much? I… Well, it really isn’t much.”

“It doesn’t matter to me where we go,” you tell him kindly.

“It’s just… I wish I had somewhere nicer to take you. I’ve never met anyone like you, before.”

That affects you in a way you can’t altogether contain. For a second, you’re breathless.

“I’ve never met anyone like you before, either.”

It’s the truth.

He’s smiling again. Having never let go of your hand, he runs his thumb over your knuckles and begins leading you down toward his door. You would be able to tell he was nervous even if you couldn’t feel it through the force.

True enough, his place is small and as dingy as the rest of the town. But it’s his, and you decide you like it here, for that fact alone. You’re looking around when you notice him staring at you.

“... What is it?”

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, completely guilelessly. It’s so plain and sincere that you can’t help believing it, and once again, you’re breathless. “I never expected to see anything so beautiful on this whole planet.”

Then, he leans in to kiss you… and you let him. You do more than let him: you kiss him back. The only concrete thought in your head is that his beard tickles. It feels wonderful. Is that noise coming out of you? 

It takes feeling his hands on your hips to realize you’ve got your own in his hair, and the way his fingers grip you makes your eyes roll back in your head. Your lips press together again, and again, and again; sometimes so softly you’re barely touching, sometimes so heavily you almost topple over, sometimes you can feel him humming against your mouth and it’s all you can do to stay standing. 

He’s guiding you gently toward- what? A chair? A crate? A cot? You don’t know, you don’t care; he sits down, and pulls you into his lap, and there’s nowhere else you’d rather be. You hold him so close, closer than you’ve ever held anyone. You love the way his hands feel on you, and you tell him so. In reply, he makes a sound you know you’ll hear in dreams for the rest of your life. 

The way he handles you- so sweetly, but so direct- makes you feel things you couldn’t repress if you tried.

But… of course… nothing can be simple.

You break the kiss, and take a breath.

“What is it?” he asks softly. “Is everything all right?”

“Before we go any further, there’s something you need to know about me.” He’s a little wary, a little worried, and you hate it, but you can’t just let this go without him knowing the truth. Maybe it was an illusion, but you already miss the way this felt so uncomplicated a moment ago. 

“You’re… you’re not married, are you?”

Your reaction to this question tells him you’re not, even before you actually answer.

“... I can never be married. I’m a Jedi.”

He’s still holding you, and he doesn’t let go.

“I don’t care what you are. We’ll work this out. I-if… if that’s what you want.”

Your eyes have never been so wide in your life. ‘We’ll work this out.’ He means it, you can feel it. You think you would believe anything this man said to you. 

But.

This is forbidden. 

If this is not an attachment, nothing is.

Can you do this? Can you work this out? The doubt is suddenly swallowed up by something you’re not sure you can identify, but feels very much like indignation. No attachment! But what is the bond between master and padawan but an attachment? What is friendship but an attachment? What are those bonds formed on the battlefield, are they not attachments? Can you name one single Jedi in the whole order who is wholly unattached? Who is attached to no one? Can anyone live in such a way?

It’s true, sometimes you must be able to let go.

But what value is there in anything without fondness? Without care? 

And enough of your philosophizing! What about him? Doesn’t he deserve to be loved? That question, at least, has a clear and definite answer. One that cannot be interrogated. The answer is yes.

You shift around so that you’re straddling his lap, and kiss him so deeply that you get lost in each other.

“I do,” you whisper. “I do want this.”

You can sense his relief. His elation. Something inside of you aches beautifully. Is this what love feels like? You kiss him. He kisses you.

“Good,” he says. “We’ll figure it out together.”

And then, he says something that shocks you so profoundly that you stop cold.

“... But what’s a Jedi?”

[lesbian-vmin]

Why do you think Vmin are "allowed" these questionable (at least for those who ship them) moments? I find it curious that some things are really pushed to the front (jikook for sure), and then sometime we get the vmin moments and left to wonder are they real or fanservice? I really despise the thought that either Jimin/V/other members are doing this on purpose, because they genuinely seem authentic (as much as a celebrity can be on camera), 1/2

Honestly, the whole moment of Jimin saying that he didn’t keep in touch with his members at all was pretty weird. Jimin, since day one, has painted himself as someone who loves his members very much. He doesn’t want to be away from them for too long, and he seems more interested with collaborating with each one of them individually before moving onto people outside of his group. This might be why we don’t have him collaborating with other artists while Jungkook, Hoseok, Namjoon, and Yoongi have all done so. And of course BTS as a whole. (I don’t think Taehyung and Jin have? But I might be forgetting something) And Jimin has a great voice. There’s no reason anyone wouldn’t want to feature him in a song. So I’m sure there are people who want to collaborate with him, and I imagine he’s gotten offers. (This is relevant to the ask, I promise.) Although language barriers may be a reason (he might not be as comfortable collaborating with people he can’t communicate with well as some of the others are, excluding Namjoon (and maybe Jungkook is getting there) who is better at English.)

So we can look at this several ways. We can take Jimin at his very minimal word and assume that he didn’t communicate with his members at all during his vacation. In which case, I would assume that he took it as a very much needed break from them, and decided to focus on the time that he was able to spend with his family. Or, we can assume that not every word is 100% true. Maybe when he says he didn’t keep in contact, he doesn’t mean that he didn’t keep in contact at all. Maybe he messaged them once in a while to see how they were doing, but didn’t contact them regularly. Maybe he did keep in contact with them, but just wasn’t talking about his vacation. They could have talked about anything under the sun, but since they weren’t sharing vacation details, he may have counted that as not keeping in contact. Because people would question, “mm, if you guys were in contact regularly, why don’t you know details about each other’s vacations?” If they happen to be talking about something, and another member seems to not know the information. He didn’t want to give anyone a reason to question things like that. We can also wonder if he did, in fact, keep in contact with them, but he doesn’t want to share certain things about the members and his personal time. So he just told us that he didn’t stay in contact with them. I don’t know whether to take Jimin at his word for that specific moment, but I also don’t think it matters whether they stayed in contact or not. Even if the members are close and consider each other friends or family, they don’t have to remain in contact at all times. I don’t think it’s weird for friends to go on vacation (say, home for the holidays) and not talk to each other. In fact, it’s the truest friends that can come back after not speaking for a week to months at a time and act like normal (instead of being awkward each other). Act like no time was lost. (At least this is how I see it because it’s how I am with my friends. I don’t typically keep in regular contact with people who aren’t physically around me [I don’t text much, so unless someone like talking on the phone or video chatting, we probably wouldn’t stay in contact while apart] because I like to enjoy the company of those I am actually with. This might have been the case for them. It doesn’t mean they aren’t close or don’t care about each other.)

Disclaimer. This post may talk about topics that could offend easily offended people. If you are easily offended. Don’t read. You have been warned. Also I talk a lot about both Jikook and Vmin in here. Skip to the Vmin part if (for whatever reason) you don’t want to read about Jikook. But I’d rather you really read the whole post because this goes beyond shipping and focuses on them as people.

JIKOOK

The way Jikook is pushed to the front to me is actually one of the things that make me feel like they are fan service a lot of the times. (I’m not saying anything bad about Jikook because it’s pretty obvious that Jimin and Jungkook both adore each other and love being around each other, but they really are pushed quite hard and obviously.) I don’t know why that is. I don’t know the company’s reason behind pushing Jikook so hard, but I have at least one idea as to why they would do so (if they aren’t a couple). Because Jungkook is the “manliest” member of the group, and Jimin is the most “feminine.” You have Jungkook who is tall, broad, and strong. Then there’s Jimin who is small and cute, and he doesn’t try so hard to be manly these days. (I felt like he tried to present himself like a strong man in early debut because he didn’t want people to view him as the smallest and weakest member of the group, but it’s pretty clear that he became more confident in who he actually is over the years. And this is not a hint toward any gender-identity because I’m a firm believer that a man doesn’t have to fit the “masculine” spectrum to identify as a man. I feel like that’s leaning toward toxic masculinity).

Anyway, focusing on the Jikook thing, I think that’s why they get pushed forward a lot. And I hate to say that about Big Hit because it’s a bold statement to make, but it makes sense. They can easily look like a couple because it’s easy for people to imagine Jungkook as the “man” and Jimin as the “woman.” Since there are many shippers who ship for fetish reasons instead of gay right reason, these kinds of ships are likely to draw people in. It’s unfortunate, but it’s also true. Because of heteronormative culture.

The big moments between Jikook, like I said, often look like fan service to me. That being said, I’m not saying all of their moments are fan service. It just looks like interactions between them are more likely to be focused on during editing because of the reasons I’ve stated above. It might be something they aren’t aware of because it’s just editing their natural interactions to be the front and center focus of productions, but I think that’s what’s happening. And it kind of makes me feel bad for them because it’s like the company is making a show of their relationship (regardless of what kind it is). Even if they are in a real romantic relationship, I can assure that’s not why they are pushed to the center, and it’s far more likely it’s for marketing purposes. So, yes. I hate it for them, even if they are in a relationship together because it could be the company saying “look at these two. Aren’t they precious?” But it feels more like “Look at these two. Don’t they look like a “real” couple between a boy and a girl because Jungkook is oh so strong and Jimin is oh so dainty?” Even if Big Hit is LGBT friendly, it doens’t mean that they can’t do/say homophobic things (even unintentionally) or that they can’t market BTS for a heteronormative culture, and a culture that fetishizes gay people or uses being gay for entertainment. (Edit: and fantasizing.) I’m not saying it’s right for them to do so, because I don’t agree with it at all. And I’d hope that’s not the reality of it (because I really want for Big Hit to be different), but it seems like it sometimes.

Now before I get into the Vmin part, I’m going to share a disclaimer. Because I hope people don’t come at me after I’ve already admitted that it’s pretty obvious that Jikook are close and love each other. I’ve mentioned a potential romantic relationship between them, so I’m not dismissing them as the “real” couple (and I’m also, ffs, not saying there is a “real” couple between the two). I adore Jikook, and I wouldn’t even be sad if they were ever confirmed. So. Keep that in mind for this next part.

VMIN

I don’t want this to turn into a post of me comparing Jikook and Vmin, and I decided to answer this ask because I was sure that I could answer it with that intention in mind. So let’s see if I can do this right.

When it comes to Vmin, I feel like there are far less moments that can be chalked up to fan service. There are clear moments that are fan service, so I’m not saying Vmin don’t participate in that at all, but it seems like they do less than Jikook. (And I know this is a comparison right here, but I hope it doesn’t get taken the wrong way but) When Jikook does fan service, it’s so seemless and natural. When it comes to Vmin, it’s sometimes a little awkward, and they’re more shy. I don’t know what that means for the two different types of relationships, but I’m not getting into that (because then it becomes comparing the two in a way I don’t want to on this blog).

I think Big Hit chooses Vmin friendship moments to focus on because they know that people love their “platonic soulmate” dynamics. But, when it comes to “shippy” moments, these aren’t pushed forward as much. Because Taehyung isn’t broad and manly like Jungkook, so it probably seems a little too gay. And that’s not okay. It doesn’t sell as well as a couple that can be imagined as heterosexual. (And I also think this is why Jikook is the bigger ship, honestly.)

That’s it, and I know I didn’t address everything in this ask. And I’m sorry for that. But I tried to focus on what (I think) was the main point. And I wanted to make it about something very real rather than about ships.

So while I did, in fact, compare the two, I’m not comparing their “realness” or anything like that. I’m comparing their marketing value because I think that’s what it boils down to when we get to see what we see. And if anyone comes at me for my comparison on a personal shipping level, you will be ignored because that’s not what this is about. And if you can’t get that from what I’ve said thus far, then you aren’t reading my words and heart correctly.

I do want to talk really quickly about them faking it, and I’m going to focus on Vmin for this because it’s a Vmin blog. I don’t think they fake it. Because some moments are so subtle that they’re clearly trying to be hidden, and some are so natural that they clearly weren’t thinking about it too much. That aside, I don’t think they would fake their close bond. When Jimin wrote a song and was told that he would sing it with Taehyung, he didn’t have to make Friends. He could have made the song about anything he wanted, and we would have taken it with just as much enthusiasm. It was his choice to make friends, and I believe he put his heart into that song. Since it was the first song he ever had part in for an album, it’d be pretty disrespectful to claim that he’s just trying to save face or not being honest in it. And I know a song could be chalked up to how well it sells, but I think that’s for the company to worry about, but as an artist myself, I know that your heart and soul goes into anything you create. And I just don’t feel right about blatantly disregarding a personal song, so yes. It’s one of my main arguments why Vmin are obviously, honestly, close and care about each other. And I will stand by that forever.

EDIT: All right. I went through this post and personally cherry picked the things I wanted you guys to focus on when reading instead of you doing it yourself. Because you’re hung up about the fact that I mentioned that Jikook has fan severice moments (even though I said the same thing about Vmin), so you’re clearly cherry picking, not reading the whole damn post, or getting hung about the fan service instead of focusing on my main fucking point. I NEVER said they weren’t close. In fact, I took the TIME to put a DISCLAIMER stating that it’s PRETTY OBVIOUS that they’re close, and that they genuinely like spending time together. I get that I said “Vmin has less fan service moments” or whatever. Let me clarify: What I meant was that it’s the EDITING and the fact that they FOCUS SO HARD on jikook that makes a lot of their moments feel like fan service. There’s no shortage of Jikook moments, and it’s NOT because Jikook are the only ones with moments, it’s because they’re the ones that make the cut most often. And I stated the reasons why I think that is. I literally even explained the thing about the editing and said, “It might be something they aren’t aware of because it’s just editing their natural interactions to be the front and center focus of productions,” but sure. Dismiss whichever statements you want. Because clearly you get to decide what I mean instead of me. Also, “So, yes. I hate it for them, even if they are in a relationship together because it could be the company saying “look at these two. Aren’t they precious?” But it feels more like “Look at these two. Don’t they look like a “real” couple between a boy and a girl”

And, in case it’s not clear from how I talked about their relationship here, I am, in fact, a Jikook shipper, too. I stated at least TWICE in here that I wasn’t trying to dismiss the realness of them. And I talked about how shitty it is for the company to use their relationship (if real) for marketing. And unless they’re ever confirmed, that’s what they’re doing. It’s marketing. Because if the company wanted people to care about their real relationship, they would let them come out. And that is NOT me dismissing the fact that they could be in a real relationship. If you can’t tell from what I’ve just written right here, I’ll clarify by repeating what I’ve already said in the post. Because if the are in a real relationship, I can guarantee you that is not why they get pushed so hard or shown the most. It’s because their masculine/feminine vibes are marketable. There are Jikookers, LIKE ME, who ship them because they like Jikook. But you can’t deny that there are a lot of Jikookers who ship them because they’re a straight girl in love with Jungkook and imagine herself in Jimin’s place because it’s easy to see. If you are one of the real Jikookers that ship them for their actual relationship and would LOVE it if they were ever confirmed, then fine. That’s not about you. But you have to admit that there are a LOT of shippers out there (not just Jikook) that ship them with guys because they don’t want them to end up with another girl that’s not the fan doing the shipping. Yet they still would be upset if they were ever confirmed because then it means they’re actually gay.

I love Jikook, and this post wasn’t intended to dismiss their relationship or bring it down. And I’d say I’m sorry if that’s the impression you got from it, but if you’d actually read and not choose which parts to focus on, you wouldn’t have gotten that impression. I just hate it that you guys got that impression because I do genuinely like Jikook. As much as Vmin, honestly. I was focusing on how the company treats the two ships, but sure. Dismiss every time I’ve drawn the post back to that point.

[dextervexter]

(steeples fingers) tell me about your boy roy.

ok ok ok ok OK i'm doing specifically Young Justice Roy so CONGRATS!!! You picked one boy but on all technicalities thats three in one LETS GOOOO

Will-

Sexuality Headcanon: extremely bisexual. often forget how bi he is

Gender Headcanon: for Will I kind of always figure a little non-binary but still goes by he/him. he just never really vibed with gender stuff.

A ship I have with said character: BIG sucker for Malcolm Merlyn/Will Harper. no they have never met in canon the ship was born from an inside joke and I got way too into it

A BROTP I have with said character: Kaldur and Will of course. Best friends. Will encouraged Kaldur to be a little more insane. Kaldur is the only one stopping Will from going ape on everyone. Their past adventures were usually either missions or getting kicked out of Panera (will's fault)

A NOTP I have with said character: Artemis/Will. that shit was 12 different flavors of gross and I can't believe the show even attempted it. I'm also not fond of Will/Jade but that's mainly because the show did not develop Jade enough to make me want to see them together.

A random headcanon: LOVE THIS MAN HAVE MANY

1) He struggled a lot with identity after discovering he was a clone. The way he saw it, he was a copy of the original Roy and therefore had no right to call any aspect of who Roy was his. He stopped referring to his parents as his, he stopped thinking of his childhood as his. he even had trouble looking at himself in the mirror because that wasn't truly his face. It was the face of someone he replaced. Roy of all people was the one to force him to accept that the memories and experiences they shared are just that: shared. Will didn't replace Roy knowingly. For such a long time he really thought he was Roy. He does get to call his past his, even if he never truly experienced it. He still has bad days where he physically can't bring himself to say that a memory is his, but he's worked hard and created a new life for himself. Maybe soon he'll be able to think about his past without that hurt attached to it.

2) Will has never raised his voice to Lian. He's an incredibly patient parent and as a result, Lian is very well behaved and incredibly well spoken, as Will taught her how to talk through her feelings instead of melt-down.

3) (incorporates events from Snowbirds Don't Fly) His relationship with Ollie was never the same. Will knows that Ollie tried very hard to support him after he found out he was a clone, but what it boiled down to was that Ollie reached a point where he decided Will should get over it. Will left after that and being on his own kick started his problems with addiction. Ollie criticized him for that too, going so far as to cut contact completely. They went years without talking. When Will retired and focused on being a father, Ollie tried to get in contact again but his inability to acknowledge he failed Will ultimately left them unable to carry on any relationship beyond civil acquaintances. Will still let's Ollie see Lian, he'd never deny him the role of grandparent, but he doesn't trust him the way he used to.

General Opinion over said character: He is my baby boy, my son, my boyfriend, my sweet cheese, the light of my life, i am like smeego and he is that gay little ring, he is my treasure, my FAV

Jim-

Sexuality Headcanon: he is the straight clone

Gender Headcanon: Cis

A ship I have with said character: None

A BROTP I have with said character: Jim/Will/Roy. Individually people can handle the Harpers, when together however they're barely coherent sibling chaos

A NOTP I have with said character: None but I do have a running gag that he keeps accidentally dating lesbians.

A random headcanon: Jim struggles with mental and emotional issues due to the mind control he lived under for years. Given his role at Cadmus, one of his problems is an intense aversion to authority. He's not aggressive about it, he usually just tries very hard to avoid people he knows are louder and bossier than most. Being told what to do, even if it's a polite and casual request, can trigger a flight response most times, or a sharp tone at worst. More often than not he stays close to Roy and Will because they're both really good at keeping him busy or just providing him much needed company. They've become a bit of a safety net for him.

General Opinion over said character: I like Jim a lot, but out of the three Harpers I think he's probably the one I leave alone the most. The showrunners didn't do a lot with him after the second season and while I liked his appearance in season 3, they need to do more with him this season.

NOW FOR ROY

Sexuality Headcanon: Gay gay gay he is gay

Gender Headcanon: cis, but flexible

A ship I have with said character: LOVE Jason/Roy. my extremely specific love for YJ roy revolves a lot around him being the iconic Angry Small and shipping him with canonic giant brick shit house Jason is my bread and butter. Mean Bisexual dates even Meaner Gay Little Cat

A BROTP I have with said character: Tim and Roy. Often times Tim has upgrade ideas for his arm that make working with it a lot easier. Plus Tim is one of the only people who brushes off Roy's rude, snarkish attitude. Tim is pretty much the only person other than Jason allowed to touch Roy's arm

A NOTP I have with said character: Not fond of Cassie/Roy

A random headcanon: GOD i have so many have like three

1) Roy's time in the cryo-chamber left him with a lingering chill. He gets cold very easily and when he gets cold he gets cranky. The coldness is something that is pretty much always present. He layers up a lot because of it and sleeps under as many blankets as possible. He prefers Jason practically on top of him when they sleep because he can't get warm and Jason is an oven. Everyone is pretty sure its psychological, but it can be dangerous. He overheats easily and doesn't realize it's happening because he still feels cold.

2) Roy doesn't apologize for things verbally. It sucks because some people need to hear it, and most times Roy is the one in the wrong. He tries to make up for things through actions like buying food for people or turning on their favorite movie. He should just learn to apologize, but he's an angry, over-sensitive ass-hat who takes everything too personally and would rather die than be wrong. He is making an effort to get better though.

3) Roy gets phantom pains in his arm. More often than not, they're triggered by stress or anxiety. He doesn't know what to do when this happens and it can make him way crabbier than he usually is. When this happens he usually goes to his brothers because he's ok with being touched by them. Jim has a heating pad he gives him, and and talks him through it. Compression pads help too, and Jim is allowed to touch Roy's arm to put it on for him. Will is usually busy with Lian, but Roy still tries to be around. Lian is adorable enough to keep him distracted. When Will has a spare moment he'll usually come in and make sure Roy is okay and just sit with him a bit because sometimes Roy just really needs to feel someone there with him.

General Opinion over said character: HE'S MY SON. HE'S MY BABY. HE IS ME. HE IS MY SWEET CHEESE. I ALREADY USED THAT ONE TODAY BUT I AM LIKE A LITTLE MOUSE WITH THESE MEN

[eusuntgratie]

A, B, E, J, K, M, N, O, P, T, V

Well I spent far too long on this, but it was fun. 

A - Ships that you currently like a lot I mostly read Stucky. They got me into this mess and I’ll love them forever :) I like Geraskier a lot, which is definitely @witcherling‘s fault. I love Carol/Maria, although I haven’t read a ton (hint hint we need moooooore). I love good, interesting friendships with Steve & Nat and Bucky & Nat. I love stories that explore Steve’s relationship with Wanda post CACW. I love reading Sam when he’s developed beyond a caretaker or helpful friend with no actual personality of his own and Tony when he’s developed beyond an asshole literally only present to antagonize Steve. 

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind. I loved Geralt and Jaskier’s dynamic in the show and that mountain scene made me cry, but I don’t think I’d have sought out fanfiction or really shipped them without @witcherling​ ‘s intervention. When I love a writer, I’ll read damn near anything they write, and now I’m fully immersed and reblogging witcher shit and I’m not really sure what happened but here we are. 

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what? Just a few thirst tweets:  https://archiveofourown.org/works/24597331 

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. I haven’t watched The Magicians, but tumblr posts make me want to ship Queliot a little. Not sure if I should watch the show or just look at two lovely boys kissing and/or pining when they show up on my dash. Honestly most MCU pairings didn’t cross my mind until I saw them here. Stucky jumped out of the movies and slapped me in the face with WE ARE CLEARLY IN LOVE so lots of other ships are just...odd...to me. But ship and let ship, y’all. If it makes you happy, write it!

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc? Bucky? His actual arc gets pretty fucked by the MCU, but I do really love the idea that love transcends violence and pain and time and ultimately helps him find his way back to himself. I love fic that explores that, but lets him do the heavy lifting of his own recovery (vs. Steve fixing him with his super soldier dick). 

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend. SHURI PLEASE BE MY FRIEND! I will awkwardly stand in the corner of your lab and be amazed and try not to ask obnoxious questions every two seconds. She is the coolest and I want to hang out with her. She could be jaded or spoiled or pampered but instead she OWNS that she is always the smartest in the room and uses that to help people and help her country. She doesn’t take shit and she owns her intelligence and I love her. 

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice). Realistic depictions of mental health issues and recovery and therapy, bi and pan representation that goes beyond off-handedly mentioning a random person is attractive, non-binary and trans representation period (but especially stories where gender identity isn’t THE THING, but merely one part of who the character is). 

Shout out to @chicklette for their gorgeous fic Songbird which is almost complete and features a lovely bi Bucky who deals with bi erasure and wrangles with how people perceive his sexuality, him, and his partners. I LOVE THIS FIC! https://archiveofourown.org/works/23990152

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of? I’m recently obsessed with Hozier which is also @witcherling’s fault (really throwing you under the proverbial bus today, I suppose) and NFWMB definitely gives me stucky vibes. 

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas). uhhhh... something with Steve having a big brother-ish relationship with Wanda and maybe him and Bucky bond over that… Bucky feels similarly protective of his sister and they meet because maybe Wanda and Rebecca are friends and these two giant beefcakes bond over their extreme softness and incredible love for these two young women? I love fics with Geralt and Ciri and Jaskier… maybe Jaskier teaches guitar lessons (lute lessons? I don’t know there’s a reason I don’t really write) and he has a major crush on his fave student’s super hot dad but doesn’t want to make it weird? I’m tired I did my best *shrug*

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? I have lots of headcanons but none are really so rigid that I can’t consider other viewpoints or read fic where things are different. I think Bucky knew he loved Steve before Steve understood what his love for Bucky meant. After watching CATFA far too many times, I’m not sure that Steve knew what all his BIG BUCKY FEELINGS meant until he lost him. But I still love love love reading pre-war stucky where they’re all sweet and and in love and having glorious sex in their shared apartment. 

V - Which character do you relate to most?

hmmm this one is tough. Bucky is my favorite character in the history of everything, but it’s not like I have lots in common with him. Bucky is wildly competent; the things he is/wants/need to be good at, he steadfastly devotes himself to and his loyalty and love for the few things he really, truly cares about is unshakable. I’m passionate but that passion gets strewn about across too many things; I really admire Bucky’s quiet devotion to what he loves and his ability to become fucking great at what he needs to be good at. Steve being ready to fight the entire world to protect Bucky is hella relatable.

N was my favorite to answer. Thanks @witcherling 💕

[lostinthewinterwood]

AU Exchange 2020

Hey friend!

Looks like this letter’ll be going out on time, for once in my life.  This one’s very long; there’ll be a list of fandoms after the general info so you can hop around and not get bogged down in the details that don’t matter for what you’re going to be writing.

Treats in any medium are welcome, my other exchange letters are here, and at the bottom there’ll be tags for each fandom I’ve requested, if you want to see whether I’ve requested them before and what I’ve said about them.  Good luck, have fun, and thanks for writing for me!

 General DNW non/dub-con; non-canonical major character death; heavy angst; hurt no comfort; graphic depictions of deliberate and methodical self-harm*; graphic depictions of suicide; smut; gore; grimdark; complete downer endings; character bashing; incest; cringe comedy; a/b/o; mpreg; graphic eye trauma; graphic and/or permanent hand trauma; issuefic; unrequested identity headcanons; a focus on unrequested romantic relationships**. *I don’t include things like, say, punching a wall in a fit of emotion under this. however, something like cutting would not be appreciated. **canonical levels of canonical ships are perfectly fine; background non-canon ships that I haven’t dnw’d are okay too (unless otherwise specified—see below for fandom-specific notes).

  General Likes

– I really like plotty fics

– Secret identity and disguise shenanigans, the more layers to them and more absurdity the better.

– Crossdressing for whatever reason and gender disguises, also for whatever reason.

– A focus on family and/or friendship, especially characters realizing they’re not nearly as alone as they think they are, and just generally characters who like each other and enjoy spending time together

– Found family; families of choice

– Character studies

– Worldbuilding

- explorations of how whatever AU you pick to write affects the characters and/or plot, and the ways in which it doesn’t

  Other General Notes:

If there’s an AU I’d especially like to see on its own, without any other AU in combination with it, I’ll mention it��outside of that, feel free to combine the AUs as you see fit.

All the times that the Dragon Rider au is one I asked for, I’ve framed it in my prompts as a sports story thing—while that would definitely be great, don’t feel pressured to make it be like that; it’s just where my prompting muse is at right now, so if you want to take it in another direction go right ahead.

  Fandoms in Order of Appearance:

Hanging Out with a Gamer Girl

Harry Potter

Mother of Learning (x2)

Day Break Illusion (x2)

  Hanging Out with a Gamer Girl (Manga)  

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Terazaki Kaoru (HOwaGG)

·        Ousaka Nanami (HOwaGG)

·        Group: Terazaki Kaoru & Ousaka Shouko (HOwaGG)

·        Group: Terazaki Kaoru & Ousaka Nanami (HOwaGG)

 Fandom-specific dnw: sexualization of Kaoru’s crossdressing, romance between Kaoru and Nanami beyond light shiptease à la canon (unless the AU chosen is a romantic fairytale, in which case go right ahead), full justification of Kaoru’s fears re: Nanami’s dad, heavy gender dysphoria.

 Overall I love these kids and their friendship, and I also love how much Shouko feels like a mom to Kaoru even though he isn’t hers, even though he’s keeping secrets from her—he doesn’t seem to have that much parental support overall.

Whatever AU you pick, I’d appreciate that being preserved.

  ·        ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

·        All: East of the Sun and West of the Moon Fusion

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        ALL: Magic is a part of everyday life

·        ALL: Magical Girl Fusion

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

 For this set of tags, I’d love to see something that fuses the AU elements to canon, or replaces canon elements with them—maybe instead of gamers, the kids are magical girls!  Or maybe there’s just magical elements wound seamlessly into their lives, or they instead live in a fairytale world, or…

Basically, this is my more generic magic!au set.

  ·        ALL: Characters met as children

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

·        ALL: Mute Canon Characters

·        HOwaGG: trans girl Terazaki Kaoru

 These are the generally mundane AUs—if one or both of the kids is disabled in some way, how does that affect them?  If they’ve known each other longer than they have in canon, or used to know each other—how does that affect them?  If Kaoru is a trans girl, is that something that she knows before their canon meeting, and maybe that’s a point at which she’s already begun transitioning?  Or does the crossdressing give her a revelation?

  ·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

 I like daemon!aus a lot, though I’m not very good at writing them myself—if this world has daemons, what are the kids’?  Are they fully settled yet, or not quite?  Most people have daemons opposite to their sex—is it obvious that Kaoru’s daemon is female, and if so, does that pique Shouko’s interest?  Does his daemon get him recognized by people who know Kaoru-the-boy even when he’s out looking like a girl?

  ·        ALL: Dragon Rider AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

 Sports aus!  One mundane, one distinctly less so… what’s it like, if they’re dragon riders? Is it a whole other world, or just our world +dragons?  If it’s figure skating, what kind of skating do they do?  Singles?  Pairs? Ice dance?  Are they just casual about it or competitive?

  ·        ALL: Platonic Soulmate AU

·        ALL: Soulmates - Soulmate Mark Appears At First Touch

·        ALL: Soulmates Share Scars

 These are probably my three favorite kinds of soulmate AUs—run with them!  Tell me about the kids and their dynamic and the world they inhabit, with soulmates thrown into the mix!

     Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Percy Weasley (HP - JKR)

 Fandom-specific dnw: non-canon ships.

 I’ve phrased this so broadly because it’s generally better safe than sorry on these things—essentially what I especially don’t want is non-canon ships between people on opposite sides of the war, e.g. drarry, harry/Voldemort, etc. If you want to toss in background, idk, Pansy/Daphne or something, or relationships between various Ministry people, that I don’t mind.

 ·        ALL: Underground Resistance

·        HP: Percy Weasley is a spy for the Order of the Phoenix during the war

·        ALL: Character Is a Secretly a Spy for the Other Side

 There’s really one thing I want here—spy!Percy!  He spends so much of the war in the Ministry, surrounded by Death Eaters and their accomplices and enablers, to all appearances the black sheep of the Weasley family and not much of a threat.  Now, this could be genuine… but it could also be him playing them; I want to see a world where he, at some point—maybe after he chooses to stay with the ministry instead of his family, maybe before—decides to be a spy for the Order et al.

What are the risks?  What can he accomplish?  Can he help people beyond simply passing out information, perhaps with seemingly-inconsequential little acts?

     Mother of Learning - nobody103   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Kirielle Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

 request-specific dnw: physical parental abuse within the Kazinski family, significant exaggeration of canonical emotional neglect/abuse/general family dysfunction, romantic and/or sexual Zach/Zorian.

 ·        All: Character has a secret identity

·        All: Identity Porn

·        ALL: Possessed by time travelling future self

·        MoL: Kirielle as a Branded One

 I’m fascinated by the idea of Kirielle somehow getting wrapped up in the time loop—what’s it like to live years and years of your life while your body stays nine?  What does she do, what does she learn?  Are Zach and Zorian still Branded Ones, or is she taking one or both of their places?

If you go with this, I’d rather not have her gate!soul erased—either let her escape, or don’t go far enough to need to address it, please.

The identity bits here are mostly leaning on the idea that, with her only being nine, Kiri would need some kind of identity obfuscation to do half of what Zach and Zorian do in canon, so…

  ·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

 Nothing particularly profound here—but! Daemons! How does this affect things? Is Kiri happier with someone to talk to who isn’t her siblings or parents or village children that her parents mightn’t approve of?  I’d imagine her daemon hasn’t settled yet—what forms does it like?

  ·        All: Changeling AU

·        ALL: Fairy Tale AU

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        All: Historical Fantasy AU

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Nature Magic

 The setting and/or mood change AUs—give me Kirielle-the-faerie child, or Kiri in a fairytale, or shift the setting more historical and into our world, or change the nature of the magic—the canonical magic system is fairly hard as magic systems go, which works well for the story as it is, but I also really like softer magics.  What about a world where there’s simply small everyday magics present, or where Kiri has an affinity for green growing things quite beyond the natural?

  ·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

 How does Kiri’s life change, if she’s born deaf or becomes deaf?  How does her role as Cikan Kazinski’s only daughter change?  Does Eldemar have a Deaf community?

This could play into her desire to go to Cyoria, too—I wouldn’t expect Cirin to have much in the way of resources or community, but maybe Cyoria does; maybe that’s why she wants so badly to go.

  ·        ALL: Finding Peace/An End to the War

·        ALL: Legal Drama

·        ALL: Magical environment/species conservation scientist au

·        ALL: Magical horticulturists

 This set is more likely future!fic than anything else—Kirielle’s growing up into a country on the brink of war; what’s she going to do when she gets older?  Maybe she’ll be involved in that, or with the law—or maybe she goes to school and learns to be a mage, and then goes on to a career as a conservationist or horticulturist.

    Mother of Learning - nobody103   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Zorian Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

·        Zach Noveda (Mother of Learning)

 request-specific dnw: physical parental abuse within the Kazinski family, significant exaggeration of canonical emotional neglect/abuse/general family dysfunction, romantic and/or sexual Zach/Zorian (unless in a romantic fairytale au).

 ·        All: Changeling AU

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        ALL: High Fantasy AU

·        All: Historical Fantasy AU

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Nature Magic

 Again, setting and/or mood changes—turn one or both of these two into a changeling child, or push them into a different setting, or change their world to feel a little more magical than it does in canon.

  ·        All: Character has a secret identity

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Legal Drama

·        ALL: Magical environment/species conservation scientist au

·        ALL: Magical horticulturists

·        ALL: Role Swap AU

 This set is a combination of probably-post-canon things and things that could slide into the canon timeline—what if one or both of them went to more effort to construct a second identity, either in the loop or out of it, for anyone’s benefit?  What if one or both of them was deaf—if you go here, it’d be interesting if you combined it with deaf!Kirielle too.  A role swap—what if Zorian got there earlier and the angels didn’t think him unworthy, and Zach wound up his tagalong instead?

And the other three are basically what-ifs for the post-canon world—there’s Zach’s court case to be dealt with, and these two are both skilled enough to do basically whatever they want to, if it’s to do with magic.  Why not become a conservationist or horticulturist?

  ·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

·        ALL: Regency AU

·        All: Robin Hood Fusion

·        ALL: Spies & Secret Agents

·        ALL: University AU

 This is a whole grab bag of different AUs—they’re all fairly self-explanatory I think, though I will say that you shouldn’t feel pressured to keep the overtly mundane-seeming AUs mundane, if you don’t want too—I’d like the mundane versions of course!  But there’s plenty of interesting things you could explore with, e.g., magic!figure skating, so.  Go wild.

  ·        All: Tam Lin Fusion

 In a weird way, MoL already has its characters in the roles they need to be in for a Tam Lin fusion, though the structure is of course very different–what is Zach if not a sacrifice against Panaxeth’s release? What is Zorian if not the one who fights nigh-impossible odds to save him from that fate?  I’d love to see a fic that goes into this.

    幻影ヲ駆ケル太陽 il sole penetra le illusioni | Day Break Illusion   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Tsukuyomi Luna (Day Break Illusion)

·        Taiyou Akari (Day Break Illusion)

·        Shirokane Ginka (Day Break Illusion)

·        Hoshikawa Seira (Day Break Illusion)

·        Group: Tsukuyomi Luna & Tsukuyomi Serena (Day Break Illusion)

·        Group: Hoshikawa Seira & Shirokane Ginka & Taiyou Akari & Tsukuyomi Luna

 fandom-specific dnw: heavy gender dysphoria.

 ·        All: a character is transgender (binary)

·        ALL: Alternate First Meetings

·        All: Character has a secret identity

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

·        ALL: Street Rats

 This is basically the AUs of mundane level things; the broad strokes of canon are perfectly compliant with any of these, or at least they could be. What changes, if you go for any of the AUs listed above? What stays the same?

  ·        All: Changeling AU

·        ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

·        All: with the right postage you can send letters anywhere anywhen

 Different flavors of fantasy—for the changelings, is the character we know from canon the stolen child, or their faerie replacement?  Are their daemons affected by them fighting the daemonia; what happens to a daemon when the human is consumed by a daemonia?  How do their powers and battles work in a world that’s more overtly magical? For the last—who/where/when would they send letters to?  Would Akari send one back in time to Fuyuna, Luna to her sister, Seira to her friend? Forward to their future selves? How does this affect the timeline; do you have to be careful, lest you irrevocably change things, or are future-letters already set and immutable?  Is this common or rare—what’s the price to send a letter through time?

  ·        ALL: Character Journeys To The Underworld to Rescue Their Dead Friend

·        All: Journey to the Underworld to Resurrect Loved One

 Who are they rescuing?  How are they going about the rescue?  Are they bringing back Fuyuna?  Seira’s friend?  Luna’s sister, if it turns out she’s dead not just vanished some other way?  Ginka herself, if we suppose that she died in the annihilation rather than going to battle elsewhere?

If a Daemonia’s victim is resurrected, does everyone remember them again? Either way, what are the consequences of bringing back a person who’d been erased?

  ·        ALL: Dragon Rider AU

·        ALL: Fencing AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

 Sports aus!  Two mundane, one not.  I’d love to see the kids in some kind of competitive something—are they teammates? Competitors? Is Sefiro Fiore a sports organization in this world, or are they both athletes and tarot users?

  ·        DBI: Daemonia hosts aren't erased from the timeline when killed

 So, one of the generally convenient things in this world—even if it’s not a particularly nice thing—is that none of the characters ever have to deal with the fallout of the deaths they cause; the daemonia’s victims are erased.  Ret-gone, if you will.  But what if they weren’t?  What would the effect of that be; how would that change things?

    幻影ヲ駆ケル太陽 il sole penetra le illusioni | Day Break Illusion   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Group: Hanayume & Lymro & Mama Nagataki & Taiyou Akari (Day Break Illusion)

·        Group: Hanayume & Lymro & Mama Nagataki (Day Break Illusion)

 fandom-specific dnw: heavy gender dysphoria.

 ·        All: a character is transgender (binary)

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

·        ALL: Found Family

 So, again, this is the more mundane aus—add these in!! tell me how they affect things, or how they don’t affect them!

Found family is… kinda canon? But there isn’t really much focus on that aspect in canon so I’d love some more here.

  ·        All: Changeling AU

·        ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        All: Historical Fantasy AU

·        ALL: Magic is a part of everyday life

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Regency AU (no homophobia)

·        ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

·        All: with the right postage you can send letters anywhere anywhen

 And these are the magic and/or setting AUs!  How do these elements change their lives; what stays the same regardless?

See my previous set of Day Break Illusion requests for my thoughts on the letters tag.

  ·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

 Just—daemons!  What are theirs?  For Hanayume—what gender is her daemon?  I’m sorry I’m running out of things to say at this point…

  ·        ALL: Dragon Rider AU

·        ALL: Fencing AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

 So, in canon, Hanayume, Lymro, and Mama Nagataki are kind of Akari’s fortune-teller aunts/mentors; if we change it so that Akari’s thing is fencing or figure skating or dragon-riding, why not bring her aunts along for the ride as her mentors in that sport, or, if we’re not including Akari—competitors themselves, perhaps, or maybe generally teachers?

   If you made it all the way down here—first of all, wow, this letter was way too long so good on you for making it—second of all—thank you again for writing for me!! Good luck!!

[bardofv0id]

Meat vs. Candy: Meat

Here’s the thing.

I’m hearing two main arguments online... a lot of people saying the epilogues are Terrible, for various reasons, and a few people saying they're Good, with a smaller but vocal subset of those people arguing that if you don’t like them then you’re obviously just expecting to be spoon-fed a fluff ending in which the Character You Like gets a wish-fulfillment storybook epilogue.

There are probably some people who are mad about not getting that. However, I think misrepresenting the range of anger various parts of the fandom are experiencing as being purely some kind of childish knee-jerk tantrum at not getting the toy they wanted is disingenuous, at best, and parallels some of the mistakes of the epilogues themselves.  Note that this in no way excuses or justifies people sending the writers or anyone else death-threats or whatever the hell else has been going on.

Honestly... the Meat ending was pretty good writing, in my opinion.  It wasn’t comfortable or happy or flattering in any way to a number of characters who I recognize people care deeply about, but it was nothing really worse than I expected from Earth C, based on the fundamental narrative of Lord English’s giant closed-loop system.  The loop had to close, in order for Homestuck proper to occur at all.  That means that Earth C is where Calliope and Caliborn hatch and grow up, far, far in the future. And that means that universe, like the others, will be destroyed by a SBURB session one day. Sorry, folks.  It was never meant to be a 'happy ending'.

Meat was deeply metatextual. It was gristly and greasy and discomfiting.  It raised questions about what it means to have a narrator, and whose biases are implicitly included--and I think those are very interesting questions to raise, whether or not they are particularly satisfying to someone who is also reading for the characters.

Spoilers beyond the read-more, for obvious reasons.

That said, there were elements that did surprise me.  The removal of the other kids from different points in different doomed timelines, to fight with John against LE, rather than being his teammates from Earth C--but from John’s perspective, it doesn’t seem like there’s much difference.  Either way, they’re not fully ‘real’ to him (and barely feel real to us, as quickly as they appear and then die). He’s from the Game Over timeline, he’s battling depression, and nobody in the retcon timeline is really quite authentic to him, either--just as to many fans, they didn’t feel quite authentic, when the retcon happened and we had to suddenly let go of the characters we'd watched grow and change, replaced by funhouse mirror reflections and could-have-beens.

I’ve also seen some reasonably interesting arguments that a lot of Dirk’s narration, in the Meat route, either sounds eerily like Vriska talking or flips back and forth between Vriska-mode and Dirk-mode, well before alt!Calliope ever gets involved.  I’m prepared to believe some Serket element (whether that is potentially Vriska, or the Aranea who was abruptly displaced from her attempt at wresting control of the narrative by John) was involved there, and Dirk was not acting entirely of his own accord.  I’m also prepared to shrug and say “okay, maybe it was just a narrative parallel--Homestuck does that a lot”.  Some narration, especially when Terezi is involved, doesn't sound at all how I would expect a Serket-influenced narrator to sound with regards to her, in particular.  It doesn’t particularly grind my gears to think some version of Dirk, in the right environment, might make a series of choices that leads him to behaving like this, entirely on his own.  I recognize that it’s upsetting to DirkJake fans in particular to see their favorite pairing written like this, but it doesn’t feel wholly out of character to me for either of them to develop in these directions, given the right (or wrong) pressures and external situations. This Dirk is the culmination of a very wide multiplicity of Dirks, including at least one if not more who ended up directly subsumed in Lord English and/or under his explicit influence.

I’ve heard that some people were attacking the Meat route on the grounds of transphobia, which... I think is a rather weak argument, given that it’s recognized in the text itself, as pronoun changes are handled respectfully by one narrator-character and inconsistently by a second, who is being set up as the villain of the story. That seems like a pretty solid metatextual rejection of the action, no?  Like, if a villain does a bad thing, in a story, while the hero is fighting them, do you argue that the story itself advocates for that thing? There has to be some kind of distinction between ‘character does X’ and ‘author of story advocates X is Morally Correct’, or we would never have any villains at all. Dirk's dismissiveness toward Roxy's agency grows, the further toward 'villain' he slides.

Were there some things I liked, in Meat?  I guess.  From a sociopolitical and cultural standpoint, the shitty repercussions of the way the retcon gang set up a planet, dumped a bunch of chess people and clone grubs, then left them to do all the work of creating its society and waiting for their eventual 'godly' return... were pretty logical. I'm actually happy that it was acknowledged, instead of just brushed off as inconsequential.  It was interesting, too, to see some of the kids playing with notions of gender identity as they grew, and how their companions adjusted. It was telling (in terms of Dirk's character development) how he thought of Roxy and Calliope's gender explorations as something he could choose to 'allow' or not. Also, with how truncated most of the gang's personal development (and plot development) was in Homestuck proper ('thanks', retcon!Vriska), I think it kinda made sense how stunted and incapable of like... dealing with regular life in a functional way a lot of them seemed. Jumping straight to teenage 'godhood' didn't make them experienced or smart. It's sad that all of them just kind of... stagnate there, but Earth C has always felt incredibly stagnant to me.

Retcon!Vriska getting swallowed by the black hole was at least thematically fitting, though I'm wondering why she is using such Seer-themed language, suddenly. I also like that the wallet is finally back in play. Rose and Dirk's philosophical debate about individuation and free will is delightfully creepy, given the themes of the story. There are moments, within the story, that the turns of phrase and the humor just hit me full in the teeth and remind me this is Homestuck, and I do love those moments.  And of course, my xenobiological worldbuilding interests enjoyed that apparently, earth onions are quite toxic to trolls.

Were there things I didn’t like in Meat?  Yeah, of course. I don't particularly like that John, an Heir of Breath--one who is innately positioned to awaken Breath, freedom and motivation in the people around him--callously shoves an unresisting teenager he's barely met into a refrigerator and just leaves him there, apparently convinced he deserves it.

Did some of the things I disliked relate to the storytelling itself, rather than just how characters were characterized, or what actions they took?  Yeah. Why are we still out here queer-baiting with Dave and Karkat?  Years have passed.  They have spent literal years sitting 1.5 feet apart so it's 'not gay'? I sincerely don't think this pairing is actually healthy or beneficial to either of them, the way it developed in canon, but come on. Then, they still balk and drag their feet unless it's being narratively pushed on them by someone else. It's just painful to watch.

I also take a certain level of personal offense as a Tavros fan when the narrative goes out of its way to repeatedly harp on Tavros being useless and no one giving a shit what he's doing.  Ghost Tavros was awesome, okay, and was personally responsible for gathering the ghost army, so fuck you, Vriska-coded narrator. You have bad judgment. But that is not a crime of writing, if it is an intentionally biased perspective and not just writers taking cheap shots at a character they don't happen to like. I'm just incredibly tired of it being done habitually and collectively, as a fandom, to that character in particular. Furthermore, I'm really discomfited by the way Tavros's development (am I the only one who remembers him dancing and telling Vriska to suck it?) is completely ignored and de-legitimized by having him immediately fawning on her, trailing around after her, hiding against her shoulder, etc.  Tavros was a victim of emotional and physical abuse, at Vriska's hands.  Can we just agree to stop narratively forcing victims back into contact with their abusers, period? It's not a good look.

Moreover, there's the whole misogyny angle.  When does a story about misogynistic characters (and narrators) doing misogynistic things while misogynistic shit narratively happens start being a critique of misogynistic tropes rather than a tired old rehash?  Every step Jane (allegedly a strong, independent woman, though also stepping into her dictatorial role as 'Heiress') takes is either dictated by Dirk, sent into a complete tailspin that upends her confidence by Jake, or verbally decried as factually wrong and/or stupid by Dave and/or Karkat.  Rose and Kanaya both have their agency overwritten and end up separated from each other through the actions of Dirk, and Rose becomes an extension of Dirk, losing her very selfhood.  Jade is treated as an accessory to the DaveKat trainwreck, simultaneously discounted as actually emotionally relevant and blamed for its ludicrous problems.  She, of course, also ends up having her agency overwritten as she's plunged into a coma and possessed, prevented from actually having reactions to the things that are going on, or taking action for herself. Borrowed!Rose and Jade are KO'd almost instantly in the fight against Lord English, and become either literally erased, or dead weight for a male character to drag around until it's no longer convenient. Terezi admits to wasting a huge amount of time trailing around after Vriska--who was an emotionally abusive gaslighter to her, on the retcon!meteor. (And we're back to victims being constantly evaluated according to their proximity to their abusers again.) Then, she's on to redirecting herself into some quest on John's behalf, instead. She's still not living for herself. Finally, you show me an Aradia who would ever, ever be concerned about 'saying more embarrassing stuff' around Dave, or thinking of him as an ‘outrageously cool dude’, and I'll show you a bridge I'd like to sell you.  That ain't any Aradia I've ever seen. So who’s narrating there, Dirk again? A third party?

Other weird things: apparently Jane's kidnapping in the snapchats just... never gets explained or referenced again? I went back to reread those, and they connected to Meat even more than I realized at first.   I guess Jane grew up to be... exactly what she was raised/groomed to be, which is *uncomfortable* but not particularly shocking.  I feel bad for people who were hoping for happier endings for the human kids, but I don't think I ever really expected Homestuck to serve up happy endings.  I don't buy that things in the snapchat were just thrown in at random, though.  Those elements were there for a reason, and arguing that everything in the snapchats were connected to the epilogues EXCEPT that one major extended plotline doesn't make sense.  Especially when it visually and narratively seems to be a direct link to the events of the Meat storyline. 

Also, where the fuck are the sprites?  We never see or hear from Jasprosesprite, Gcatavrosprite, or the Nannasprite(s?) again. I’m not sure anyone cares, but. Uh. Yeah.

I have other thoughts regarding the classpect-coded language that crops up pretty frequently in the epilogues, but I think I will devote a separate post to that, if I get around to it, given that this *is* at heart a classpecting blog.

So anyway, Meat ends, it's depressing and futile and grim, I get it. I don't like every element, but it hangs together as a story with a narrative, overall.

Then we get to Candy.

Hoo boy.

I’ll tackle that one next, but as it was considerably more upsetting for me to read, rereading it for fact-checks and commentary is going to be a lot harder for me.  I’ll get through it here sooner or later, though.

[bethkerring]

Book Review: The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

I’ll be completely honest: a good part of the reason I decided to read Mackenzi Lee's The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue is because I wanted to read the sequel. In the end, I adored Gentleman’s Guide and ranted on as such in my review, but still, the first thing I did when I finished it was to put in a hold at my library for The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy.

Warning: this review will inevitably contain spoilers for Gentleman’s Guide, but I’ll try to keep them to a minimum.

Lady’s Guide isn’t a sequel in the most traditional sense, as instead of following the continued escapades of Monty and Percy, the two main characters from the original, it branches off into the adventures of Felicity Montague, Monty’s younger sister, a year after the end of the first book. Lady’s Guide follows Felicity as she pursues her dream of becoming a doctor, struggling to push past the raging sexism of her time period and hunting down her idol, Dr. Alexander Platt, in the hopes of working at his side. But of course, nothing is ever simple for the Montague siblings, and Felicity finds herself in a greater mess than she had ever anticipated, complete with pirates, legends come to life, and an estranged childhood friend.

The first thing that drew me to Lady’s Guide—and, in fact, to Gentleman’s Guide—was the fact that Felicity is canonically both aromantic and asexual, a rare character trait in contemporary fiction and even rarer in historical novels. Though the topic was only briefly touched upon in Gentleman’s Guide, I was impressed by the respectful and accurate portrayal and eager to see how Felicity’s orientation would be expanded upon in her own story.

And as expected, the representation of asexuality was even better than the taste I got in the original book. Though Felicity’s asexuality is far from the main topic of the story, it plays an important role, and is both questioned and explained in ways that seem both historically realistic and accurate to modern experience. Even people who support Felicity’s dream of becoming a doctor find it confusing that she has no interest in romance or sex. This is further compounded by the challenges women faced making a life on their own in the 1700s: an English woman had limited career prospects, and marriage was, for many, if not most, the only way to have a comfortable life. So Felicity faces not just the sort of judgment that many asexuals face today—the confusion, and even concern, over not having “someone by your side” in a romantic and/or sexual sense—but a fear that, if she rejects romance entirely, she will have no way to support herself.

Lady’s Guide also continues to explore Felicity’s confusion regarding attraction in general, a topic initially touched upon in Gentleman’s Guide. Though Felicity understands the basic concept of romance and sex, it’s foreign to her, and that makes it even more difficult for her to understand and accept her brother’s romantic relationship with Percy. Views toward homosexuality in eighteenth century England were, of course, far from favorable, but despite Felicity’s open mind and understanding toward various marginalized groups, it takes her longer to accept this, since she doesn’t have the framework of her own attraction to start with.

However, as exceptional as asexuality was represented in this story, sexism and the wide range of women’s struggles absolutely take center stage. It is, after all, the primary obstacle to Felicity attaining her dream. But again, Lady’s Guide goes above and beyond the standard. Of course, Felicity experiences a great deal of sexism, and is told over and over again, by a wide range of men, that she can never be a doctor simply because of her gender: that she is inferior, overemotional, and unintelligent, among other common insults. But no matter how often these prejudices come up, what strikes me most is how the story presents sexism as it affects women themselves: their identities, their views of the world, and their relationships with other women.

Though Felicity is without a doubt determined and able to withstand many of the insults and discouraging remarks thrown her way, she isn’t immune to doubting herself. The environment she’s grown up in has had a strong effect on her, and there are quite a few moments where she thinks that maybe what everyone says is right: she can’t reach her goals simply because she’s a woman. I rarely see this combination of strength and weakness, as well as the acknowledgement that even those marginalized people who stand strong for their rights sometimes doubt themselves, and that being told, over and over again, that you are inferior can easily lead you to believe you really are.

Lady’s Guide also shows how this internalized sexism affects Felicity’s views of other women in her life. Felicity has come to view conventional expressions of femininity—especially cosmetics and fancy outfits—as a weakness, since she believes that men will not take a woman seriously unless she adopts a more conventionally masculine appearance. This leads her to judge women who express themselves this way and to distance herself from them, defining herself as “different” and “separate” from other women because of her own expression. She has come to believe that she is one of the only women like herself, and tends to prejudge women she meets without considering that they might have dreams just as strong as her own, even if they express themselves differently than she does.

But this book shines in how it both acknowledges and subverts these views, showing that all ways a woman might express her identity are valid, whether she doesn’t wear cosmetics at all and doesn’t care about her outfits or whether she takes pride in frilly dresses and carefully-applied makeup. Just because a woman expresses herself in a way that fits with traditional gender roles does not mean that expression is wrong.

This, to me, is one of Lady’s Guide’s strongest points: how it allows both women and men to both fit into gender roles and completely subvert them. Men can rescue women, but women can also rescue men. Women can be emotional and compassionate, but men can be as well. Neither feminine nor masculine traits are “wrong,” regardless of the person who is expressing them, and a single person can embody both.

Finally, this book exemplifies one of my favorite concepts in fiction: the value and strength of platonic relationships. Felicity, being aromantic and asexual, doesn’t have a love interest, but even several characters who do feel attraction have stronger platonic bonds than romantic. Though Felicity relies so heavily on herself when the story begins, feeling that she has to be as independent as possible to reach her dream, it is the relationships she shares with her friends and family that turn out to be one of her greatest strengths. This exemplifies the fact that she is no worse off because of her lack of romantic attraction, and she won’t be condemned to a life alone because she doesn’t have a partner. She has people she loves who love her in return, and to me, it is those relationships that make Lady’s Guide a truly moving story.

If you enjoyed The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, I feel confident you’ll enjoy Lady’s Guide. Even if you just read the first book for the adorable gay love story—a perfectly valid reason—I still highly recommend the second. Lady’s Guide might follow in the footsteps of its predecessor, but it still holds its own, and is just as worth a read.

Original post on my website.

[deadmandairyland]

Chihiro Fujisaki for the ask~

Thanks for the ask! I probably put way too many words in this. I hope you like reading!

002 | Give me a character & I will tell you

How I feel about this character:

Chihiro is probably my favorite character in Danganronpa. I think there was a time where I would have said he definitely was my favorite, but I have to give credit where credit is due because most of the characters in this series are amazing and uniquely and creatively designed. But Chihiro will always be near the top of my favorites if he somehow isn’t in first place. He is an unsung hero of the series. Without him the survivors of DR1 would have never escaped the school. He is at least in part responsible for the creation of the Neo World Program, which is a key part of the Hope’s Peak Academy arc’s lore. Supplementary materials often show Chihiro being at least somewhat involved in the backstory of the series. As I mentioned back when Absolute Despair Girls came out, Chihiro was basically the Adventure Time snail of the series for a time, showing up in or being mentioned in about as many installments and spin-offs of the series as Junko Enoshima. I’m pretty sure Chihiro has made more appearances in one way, shape, or form than friggin’ Komaeda, and everyone loves Komaeda. (Though screentime, on the other hand, is another story. I think it’s safe to say Junko and Komaeda won out on that end)

All in all, I feel that this is a character who deserves better–not just because he died such a tragic death, but in a meta sense as well. I feel like the series, after building up Chihiro in flavor text for so many installments, decided to backpedal a bit and make him more of a footnote than anyone important. This is especially disappointing considering that when most people talk about Chihiro, most of the time it’s in reference to the gender controversy, rather than his accomplishments in the series. Granted, this is a very important aspect of Chihiro’s character as well, and I’m not going to go out of my way to be a dick to people who say they saw something different in Chihiro than what I saw, but whenever I go through the tags it does seem like Chihiro seems to be one-note to a lot of people, and I feel it is a shame because there is a lot going on there. Themes of inner strength and resurrection and how destructive enforced gender roles and bullying in Japanese high schools can get when taken to the logical extreme. A lot of this seems to be ignored. I mean we all joke about how Chihiro’s birthday is Pi Day, but how many people also realize it’s White Day, the day when boys are expected to give gifts back to girls in response to being given chocolates on Valentine’s Day? Thinking about it that way, it makes you wonder what Chihiro’s birthdays were actually like. With all the talk surrounding Chihiro’s gender, I’m surprised that I’ve never seen anyone speculate on this. Might make for an interesting fanfiction prompt too, regardless of how you view Chihiro’s gender identity.

This got awfully wordy and more political than I expected it to get and I apologize. Though, to be fair, Danganronpa is a very political series… usually. Still, this is just a fun little meme, and I don’t intend to dive head first off a cliff into the sea and jagged rocks of fandom discourse, so let me end this segment by briefly saying another thing I like about Chihiro that will hopefully lift all of our spirits before we move on:

Chihiro is a sweet and adorable cinnamon roll that we do not deserve.

Just look at his smiling face!

No matter how sad I am, that smile will always make me feel a little better, if not outright happy.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Well, I could look over the charts I’ve made and find probably a million Chihiro ships (okay that’s a bit of an exaggeration; it’s probably more like twenty, which is still about fifteen too many), so I’m just going to stick with the big ones.

Naegi, Asahina, Sakura, and Ishimaru.

…Maybe Mondo. Maybe Leon. Maybe Mukuro. Maybe real world Chiaki. Maybe Kuzuryu. Maybe that Yukimaru guy who we sadly never get to see. Maybe Miaya… who we sadly never get to see. Maybe a crap ton of others…

But mostly the first four I listed.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

All of the “maybes” in the previous section.

Am I cheating at this? Yes.

…

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Don’t worry. I won’t be going for the obvious joke. (I mean I better not, especially after that first segment. It would defeat the purpose of that giant wall of text I made you sit through)

Instead I’m just going to remind anyone who thinks Chihiro is overrated and wasn’t an important character that Chihiro vicariously saved Naegi’s life and therefore the other survivors’ lives as well and y’all can suck it.

Also there’s that thing I made a thing in my DR3 fic that I still haven’t finished yet or even updated since November (oh my god it’s May already) where Chihiro is a fan of professional wrestling and that’s now a headcanon of mine that I’m sure very few people have or would agree with.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

This might seem like a cop-out, since this is Danganronpa and all, but I wish Chihiro survived.

To be fair it wouldn’t make sense from a narrative standpoint. Alter Ego is essentially a replacement/doppelganger for Chihiro, so having them co-exist in the story would be jarring. Also Chihiro plays the part of sacrificial lamb perfectly, and the foreshadowing leading to Chihiro’s death is written remarkably well. (Even as far back as the very beginning of chapter two, which occurs immediately after Leon’s execution, Chihiro is distraught over having sent Leon to his death, and Chihiro even says that he would rather die than do that again)

But that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it, damn it.

#LetChihiroLive2018

my OTP:

Naegi x Chihiro. Two adorable cinnamon rolls with heartwarming and occasionally sad Free Time Events that actually tie into the plot in such a way that they actually feel 100% canon. There is also that punch to the gut that happens at the end of Chihiro’s FTEs if you manage to get them all. Naegi’s reactions to Chihiro being gone are also heartbreaking, especially in the anime adaptation which includes this response to Alter Ego being crushed into a ball that I admit there is a possibility I could be taking out of context here but it’s worth mentioning.

“We lost him again.”

And of course, as I mentioned before, Alter Ego saves Naegi’s life later, which means Chihiro saves Naegi’s life, which means Chihiro effectively saves all of the DR1 survivors. Important character is important.

Oh, and also Naegi can give Chihiro a thong for a present, which is still hilarious to me. I mean I know Chihiro isn’t the only character who likes the thong, but even Togami liking the gift isn’t as funny to me as Chihiro liking it. And Togami alone liking it is straight-up absurd. It’s a thong. That you can give as a gift to other people. During a game where people are forced to kill each other in order to escape what is essentially a prison. A thong. The only thing that would make it funnier is if it changed the outcome of School Mode. “Hey, remember this thong you gifted me? I’d like to return it, because it just occurred to me that this is a really weird gift. Why, Naegi? Why did you give me a thong for a gift? You could have given me perfume, or a Kirlian camera, or a portable video game console, or a punk rock T-shirt, but no. You gave me a thong. Why?”

But for the most part, it’s their interactions. FTEs included, I love all of the interactions between these two, both one-and-one and with the group. It always seems like they have each other’s backs and care about each other’s well-being. Chihiro even foreshadows the memory wipe very early on in the game in a way that makes me wonder how close they might have been before the memory wipe.

Also, they’re just sweet to each other and it’s adorable and heartwarming and, y’know, goals. But if you prefer your ships to be more interesting, these two do have that potential what with their baggage and all–Chihiro for obvious reasons and Naegi being just some guy in a relationship with someone who is far smarter, nicer, and more talented than him. So if conflict (though it’d likely be more along the lines of inner conflict, or conflict dealing with others outside the relationship) is what you’re looking for, there is potential for that too, even if we don’t see it very often.

(Honestly I think that’s why there isn’t a whole lot of content of this ship, at least nowadays. It seems like a lot of people ship it, but no one really writes for it much or draws much of it beyond fluff. The ship itself, I think, is seen as too fluffy for engaging storytelling… if you’re not thinking outside the box, anyway)

my cross over ship:

Pick a programmer, a hacker, or an intentionally gender-ambiguous or “otokonoko” type character who is roughly within Chihiro’s not-fully-established age range from any work that I’ve personally seen or played and I’ve probably considered shipping Chihiro with them at least once. Honorable mention goes to Pidge and Saika Totsuka, whom I’m pretty sure I’ve at least talked about and compared Chihiro to on this blog.

a headcanon fact

Remember when I said that the series seems to be backpedaling a bit after making Chihiro have an ungodly amount of behind-the-scenes importance? Well screw that. I mentioned it here a couple years back (and I have since mellowed out on the whole “If Chihiro isn’t important in DR3 we riot” thing so don’t worry about that), but I’ll mention it again. IF said that Chihiro recognized Monokoma’s programming as something he worked on. His FTEs say that he was working on an AI project for some company. And Usami looks way too much like Monokuma to be a coincidence.

So screw any potential retcons that may come out of Monaca Towa being the mass producer of Monokuma units, because I believe that the company Chihiro was making the AI for was Towa, and Monaca modified the AI to fit Junko’s needs, which would tie everything together into a neat little bow.

But sadly, this is still only a headcanon. But it’s one that I feel has a lot of weight to it, and that the series has yet to make impossible. So I’m clinging onto it like a friggin’ koala.

Holy crap, this was long! And yet I feel like I haven’t said much of anything. It’s tough to bring my thoughts into words sometimes. But I think it’s plain to see (damn it, Tsumugi, get out of here, we’re not paying your VA double for this post) that I love Chihiro, and he’s definitely one of my favorite DR characters if not my top favorite.

Thanks again for the ask!

[guyawks]

Poachers Might Be Hunting You for Your Man Bun

That trendy man bun craze that’s been sweeping the world probably seems like harmless fun.

I mean, there is something really rugged and manly about a dude with a tied-up mop of hair. As a bloke, maybe it’s the first time you’ve ever grown your hair out. Maybe it’s an intrinsic part of your culture—or hipster subculture. Or maybe you just couldn’t find the time to get to a barber for a year. There’s definitely awesome things to be said about breaking down long-held gender roles and opening up the floor to different forms of self-expression. Whatever your reason, congratulations on your fierce flow.

But there’s also a darker side to the man bun trend, one that you’re likely not aware of. If you insist on keeping yours, please be informed that you may find yourself a target of very dangerous people. Growing your hair out, as far as appearance experimentation goes, is usually fairly low-risk. If you don’t like the longer hairdo, you can just cut it off, right?

Not if you’re dead, you can’t.

Far from the quaintness of what you see on Animal Planet, I’m here to tell you that there’s honest-to-goodness poachers out there who hunt human beings—in the same way regular poachers hunt animals. And, unfortunately, being a long-haired dude may land you as one of their most sought-after targets.

The hair trade as you probably understand it is an industry where people grow and sell their hair for profit in third world countries. There’s a bit more but that’s the gist. But, the cold reality exists that the hunting and hair trades are actually one and the same. Yeah. Human hair is in even higher demand than albino snow leopard pelts or endangered elephant ivory. If only you knew the horrors that I know about hair poaching, you’d chop off those magnificent locks right this very second.

You might be wondering why these poachers lie in wait for the odd man to grow his hair out, when there’s millions of women worldwide who already have full heads of hair. Well, the answer to this is that most hair poachers specifically want male hair.

I know it’s crazy. Women take excellent care of their locks and all hair is, well, hair. But that’s just the way that these scrupulous poachers operate. There might be an element of mysticism to it, something about the value of a lion’s mane over the lionesses. I don’t know. For whatever reason, they’re convinced men’s hair is stronger than women’s. From time to time, there have been stray cases of women here or there having hair poached alongside men. Usually, this is only in cases of mistaken identity, or really, really good hair.

Still, if you’re a long-haired lady reading this, thank your lucky stars it’s not you they’re after.

Note that extraction of victims’ hair isn’t like Locks of Love assembling a wig. Human hair poachers are looking to collect pelts, and seldom bother with such niceties as leaving your skin untouched. They want to scalp you, dead or alive.

In fact, they may already be tracking you, without you even realising it.

Subtle signs do exist that can clue you into whether you’re being shadowed. Indications of their presence include strange footprints in the mud, grass or snow around your house, or the faint sound of whistling outside at night. This is a signalling tactic poachers use to let other poachers know they’ve tagged a mark. Every now and again, you also might too catch sight of a red sniper dot trained on you while you’re out and about. It’s best not to respond to this.

While you’re now a target, you’re not a dead man walking. Chances are that you, like most other people, live in a city, town or other populated locale. In the event that a poacher has pinned you as their next mark, this is probably how you’ve survived for this long. There’s a reason why man buns are pegged as a “metropolitan” look.

Human poachers are mercifully deterred by urban environments, since they don’t offer natural cover and are too densely-packed with witnesses. But, should you venture out into the natural wilderness, be it for camping, hiking or fishing, that’s when it’ll very quickly become open season—on you. Manbun poachers will bide their time until you’re in one of these secluded, rural locations, and then set about claiming your hair at any cost. That’s why it’s imperative for you to stay in the city once you’re being tracked, if you’re insistent on hanging onto your mane.

The second you’re beyond city limits, the hunt is on.

Now, if you’re foolhardy enough to tempt these hunters by flaunting your perfect mane in their home turf, I can’t protect you. But there are a few tips to keep them at bay until you find your way back to civilization again. Never sleep without a lookout posted, as nighttime is the perfect time for poachers to strike your tent. Check your clothes routinely for tracking darts, since one planted on you will make it impossible to evade capture.

Obviously, the most effective way you can rid yourself of the poachers for good is by parting with your locks. If you decide to chop off your man bun to get a target off your back, remember to cut as close to the root as you can. This will provide the poacher the most valuable take, and they might spare you if they can salvage a garment from your scraps. Leave the lopped-off ponytail somewhere in plain sight, away from wild animals, where the poachers will be able to discover it.

Be advised that cutting off your hair may not always work. I’ve heard stories of hunters who, upon finding their mark has given himself a haircut, have opted instead to kidnap him and wait for the lost locks to regrow. After all, they already know you have the genetic potential to grow a full head of lustrous hair. If you don’t want to risk being caged like a trafficked safari animal, it’s best to avoid getting caught full stop.

Hair poachers usually hunt alone. However, if a target manages to outlast their efforts for long enough, they may team up with another poacher to get the job done. Learning camouflage and getting the lay of the land is key. Poachers can’t scalp you if they can’t find you. That’s what they set traps for. These traps will either be to capture or kill—ranging from bear traps to spike pits. But, if you have the misfortune of stumbling into one in the remote wilderness, you’d better pray it kills you.

My boyfriend was stubborn.

He held out on abandoning our camp site for days, convinced that he could somehow outwit these nefarious poachers and keep his masculine locks intact. In the end, though, I watched them tear the skin off his scalp—helpless and unable to save him. That’s why I’m educating people about these ruthless fiends. Even as a woman, I shaved my own head in solidarity long ago, way before I started researching the habits of hair poachers. After hearing all this, you may consider male pattern baldness a blessing.

I know you’re probably resistant to shedding precious hair over some random person on the Internet, not when you’ve already stood up to so much unsolicited critique. With some luck, you’ll never encounter a hair poacher and the issue will be irrelevant anyway. But, should you ever get any indication that you’re next in line to be turned into a weave or coat, please be sensible and put your life over your appearance. Poachers are not to be underestimated.

They don’t want to harm a single hair on your head. They want to flay all of them.

[starlightbarbie]

(don’t reblog this post if you’re not one of my friends talking to me)

okay, you know, i changed my mind? i’m cleaning house today, airing out laundry, so why not do the same emotionally?

it’s been weighing on me too long and making me feel like a bad person but i’ve been so terrified of burning bridges that i never want to admit when i have a different opinion social-justice/spiritual-wise than my friends on here.

bc a lot of people seem to have the attitude that having a different political opinion than someone means you literally can’t interact with them again or continue being friends.

which i understand, it’s an online safe space and you want to surround yourself with like-minded people so you can enjoy your time away from the real-life people whose opinions you’re stuck around. tumblr is kind of the only place you CAN talk to ppl about lgbt, race, gender, etc issues and avoid other types of ppl.

but it just seems so, in a way, divisive and un-productive to alienate people who you enjoy talking to and being friends with, who share all of your political, social justice beliefs except ONE or TWO....just because their ideology doesn’t match perfectly with yours.

especially when they’ve been respecting your opinions the entire friendship and there’s no reason you wouldn’t be able to continue talking just without discussing those topics you’ve never discussed in the first place because they’ve been silent about them...

so maybe i’m afraid of all my friends finally learning my two differing opinions and immediately going “wow youre a bigot we cant be friends” and maybe thats presumptive and wrong but i can’t help my instinctual worries, you know? am i putting up too much self-defense here??

i hope i dont sound attack-y which i’m worried i might because whenever i get ranty....but whatever, this is all just MY opinion and if you read it i hope you can understand where im coming from and then, take from it what you will.

.hhmm. enough stalling...

ive never been “anti” otherkin--as i understand it’s a spiritual belief for some and a coping mechanism for others, and there’s no reason for me to bash that or find any fault with people who just feel a connection to a certain animal or whatever. that’s been happening for all of human existence, there are religions which believe in reincarnation, and i’m agnostic anyways.

i wasn’t raised religious, tho my mom was raised catholic--she wanted my sister and i to come to god on our own terms in our own time instead of being brainwashed by a church since babyhood. so far it just made us very secular. but i’ve had jewish, christian, muslim friends, and never disrespect anyone’s spiritual beliefs. i do preach separation of church and state and hold the political views that come with that, but i believe in freedom to express religion as long as it doesn’t infringe on another human’s rights.

but when it goes past otherkin...people identifying as animals, plants, and galaxies, that doesn’t harm anything--but when it comes to fictionkin and factkin it makes me very uncomfortable.

it feels extremely like theft of intellectual property and theft of identity. factkin, i have never actually seen a person identifying as, just people having “discourse” over, so i dont know if its even real but if it is...i dont even know if i have to argue against it, it’s literally pretending to be another person who is alive?? and is themselves. it’s way beyond wrong to pretend to actually be a famous person, and it is NOT a healthy coping mechanism. it could actually really scare or harm that person they’re pretending to be.

fictionkin is something i have seen a LOT and have friends who id that way, so that’s i guess the big topic here. no problem with otherkin, no one i know is factkin, but fictionkin....

i understand where it would come in as a coping mechanism, i really do. i can relate. i have characters that i’m very attached to, that i relate to very much, that i look up to and want to emulate. some of them i even feel unreasonably possessive over, like “well that’s my favorite character, they can’t be your favorite character if they’re already mine” which probably comes in to play with fictionkin feeling like they ARE the character so nobody else can be the character.

but the thing is, i can’t help but to feel like it’s intellectual property being stolen. it’s one thing to roleplay, to say “hey i know i dont own this character but i’m gonna pretend to be them and explore different scenarios.” the same for cosplaying or writing fanfiction and making fan art. using characters somebody else created to INSPIRE your own art is all fun and games as long as you dont claim to own any of the copyrighted materials.

claiming to BE the fictional character is totally claiming to own it. not legally obviously, i don’t think any fictionkin think they legally have rights to their kin, but definitely a huge mark of ownership to say “This is Me.”

they didn’t create that character. they didn’t spend hours, days, months, pouring their heart soul sweat blood and tears into bringing that character to life. the writer/artist did. when you write, you put literally all of yourself into your characters. every bit of it comes from your thoughts, your unique worldview, the things you’ve seen and learned all mixed together and spat out in a new form. it all comes from the mind of the character’s creator. in a way, their characters are each, them, or have their blood running through their metaphorical veins.

i am PASSIONATE about writing.

claiming to BE that character, that a writer put so much of themselves into, is almost like claiming to be that writer too. at least like carving out a piece of their mind and saying “this is mine, it came from my life in another universe. it doesn’t belong to you. it’s not a unique pattern of emotions and ideas and creativity that you spent years developing. it’s just me from another universe, what a coincidence, right?”

it’s so offensive to steal another person’s hard work like that. and tumblr--tumblr--is supposed to be this place where people care about art theft and crediting the owners matters? and that makes me very, very uncomfortable as an aspiring writer who has my own original characters developing in my head.

important side note: i dont think you can say that fictionkin doesnt actually hurt anyone the way factkin obviously would. i have seen personal accounts from people on tumblr that said people were tagging their ocs/self portraits as kin, or telling them that they were kin with their ocs and they were writing the story wrong in some way, and they were very distressed by it.

so. i have never said anything because i dont want to hurt anyones feelings and i dont want to lose friends, but i also have to be honest and say what i believe if i want to respect myself as a person. so that’s what i believe.

and i don’t think it’s a necessary course of action to cut off ties with someone because they dont believe in fictionkin. its like stopping being friends with someone because they have a different religion than you. i’ve had christian, jewish and muslim friends and as i said, i’m non-religious.

i understand that maybe identifying as a character is more tied with your personal identity than your religious identity, so it’s natural you would feel like people should accept that that character is part of your personality--but please understand that i can accept that there are aspects of all those characters in you and that you relate to them, without expecting me to believe that infinite universes AND reincarnation across those universes exist, which is more than any of my religious friends have asked of me. (ie no one has tried to convert me to their personal spiritual beliefs)

so that said, idk if anyone read all of this, but if you want to stop being my friend over it i wont try to make you change your mind. if youre uncomfortable talking to me after this, its fine and i wont push it. i gave my reasoning for why im willing to stay friends and put our different beliefs aside so know that youre always welcome in my life if you want to be, but i wont force you if you dont.

the next one is worse. stay tuned.

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 41: Horror Club

"Take it down a notch.”

I don’t dislike Horror Club because it focuses on Lars and Ronaldo, two of my least favorite characters on this show at this point. Lars and Ronaldo are two of my least favorite characters on this show at this point because of episodes like Horror Club.

I would’ve loved to love this episode. Expanding the backstories of the show’s two most grating characters could’ve given us actual insight beyond “they were lousy kids and now they’re lousy teenagers whose lousiness made them drift apart.” We could’ve gotten concrete character development instead of waiting around for these two to start growing for a couple more seasons (a wait that will only pay off for Lars). And in terms of the episode’s specific subject: the end of a childhood friendship is heavy stuff, but something I thought this show would handle better than this.

Instead, crammed into Season 1′s otherwise incredible final stretch is an episode about a cruel bully and a victim that honestly isn’t much better. We’re asked to empathize with them, and I vaguely do, but only when each has to deal with the other. Their consistent awfulness in the present and the past is so at odds with the rest of the lovable-but-flawed denizens of Beach City that I always skip this one on rewatch.

After following Sadie to Ronaldo’s horror movie marathon, Lars spends the whole night mercilessly mocking Ronaldo at every opportunity. What a jerk! Then we then learn that as children, Lars was ashamed of his friendship with Ronaldo and abandoned him. What a jerk! Considering this, and Lars’s general behavior towards Steven, the show seems to want us to sympathize with Ronaldo. But when Ronaldo thinks a poltergeist that swallowed Sadie is haunting Lars, he tries to murder Lars and would have succeeded if Steven wasn’t around. 

And when they were kids, and Lars got smacked in the face by a plank, Ronaldo didn’t pay any attention to Lars’s physical well-being; ignoring the obvious humiliation of publishing the photo is bad, but ignoring an injured friend’s pain is way worse.

Who in their right mind wouldn’t try to get away from this guy? Even looking beyond his obnoxious personality, his impulse to put his desires over the needs of others seems to be a lifelong issue.

Lars and Ronaldo are both awful here, but Ronaldo gets no comeuppance for his often dangerous selfishness. We may empathize with a bullied character, but bullied kids really shouldn’t be taught that the solution is attacking their tormentors with potentially lethal force. Like the profoundly misguided Island Adventure, the lesson here is that if somebody hurts you, it’s okay to hurt them more. It’s the total opposite of what this show stands for.

Calling Ronaldo out on his actions in the same manner as Lars would’ve gone a long way towards improving this episode, as it would not only provide a better lesson, but could lead to positive character growth; instead, Ronaldo remains stuck in an immature and frankly violent rut (but it’s okay, he’s kooky!). At the very least we could’ve made one or the other more sympathetic by the episode’s end, but their mutual awfulness ruins even that. Ronaldo’s fun reversal of the header quote on Lars in the final scene, playing off the fact that both teens are a bit much, deserves a better episode than this.

Sadie and Steven get the shaft here, which is a real shame considering this is the first Lars and Sadie episode since the aforementioned Island Adventure and it’d be nice to have some redemption. Sadie’s only real role is to move the plot: Lars only goes to the lighthouse to hang out with her, then he and Ronaldo compete over her attention, then she gets damsel-in-distressed to make the boys fight more. Is this the right show? I thought this was Steven Universe, the one where sexist gender roles are thrown out the window.

But at least we get some new peeks into Sadie’s personality, showcasing her enthusiasm for horror and exploring her headlong approach to danger. Steven’s only real role is to be our window, because we need him to see what’s happening; otherwise, Horror Club presents a foggy view of our lead. He stands up to Lars’s bullying, but this doesn’t faze his naive assumption that everyone is friends with Lars. He’s too scared to watch a grisly horror movies despite maintaining his nerves during actual monster fights on a regular basis, including the likes of Frybo. Despite having experienced Keep Beach City Weird, an entire episode about how all the magical stuff in Beach City is Gem-related, he freaks out and thinks that a magical event isn’t Gem-related.

And when he’s not inconsistent, he’s just dull. Maybe the crew didn’t want to take the focus from Lars and Ronaldo, but despite its flaws, compare this to how well Island Adventure splits the focus between side character Steven and the non-Steven leads. Lars and Sadie were still front and center there, but Steven got tons to do in the background. Here he’s just going through the motions.

The most damning problem of Horror Club is that Lars and Ronaldo both manage to leave it worse characters than when they entered. Lars gets to morph from standard jerk to relentless bully, and on top of the aforementioned Ronaldo issues, our conspiracy buff is shown to be a complete idiot: why does he not immediately suspect Steven as a part of the Diamond Authority (y’know, that conspiracy that he himself thought of) after witnessing him magically whisk away a Gem firsthand? Ronaldo’s whole identity is clinging to every shred of evidence that agrees with his preexisting worldview, and Keep Beach City Weird established that his preexisting worldview is that polymorphic sentient rocks are pulling the strings. And we can’t even get that right?

This episode is overwhelmingly unpleasant, from Ronaldo’s cringey freakout about the original Evil Bear II to Lars’s repugnant stream of toxicity. Even the horror itself is lame compared to the likes of Frybo and Rose’s Room and anything with Cluster Gems. Still, there’s one good thing about it: nothing comes of the hinted Ronaldo/Sadie/Lars love triangle, so unlike plot-important misses like House Guest and Fusion Cuisine, Horror Club can be skipped without any consequences. I’m thrilled that this review is done so I can go back to never watching this one again. 

Future Vision!

While it’s not necessary to watch Horror Club, I should note that it introduces Sadie’s love of horror, which serves as a pillar of her transformation into Sadie Killer. But we get that elsewhere, so all is well if this episode is ignored.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

While I obviously didn’t like this one, at least its lead characters didn’t suddenly lose their core values to advance a single episode’s plot, which puts it ahead of Fusion Cuisine and House Guest. And while its message’s tainted execution is similar to Island Adventure’s, trivializing abuse is far worse than poorly portraying a failed friendship.

Still, it’s never good when I spend this section considering just how low I want an episode to go. For now, it’s the “best” of my least favorites.

Top Ten

Steven and the Stevens

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

On the Run

Warp Tour

The Test

Ocean Gem

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Future Vision

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

No Thanks!

     4. Horror Club      3. Fusion Cuisine      2. House Guest      1. Island Adventure

[nomorecaffeineforyou]

Dear Wintersend Letter

Dear Wintersend Creator,

Hello! I hope you’ve been having a good new year thus far. I’m Fille and I’m honored that you’ve been chosen to have me as your exchange partner. No doubt you’ve got a fantastic already existing body of work; I’m really looking forward to whatever you’ll create! I’ve laid out here a few guidelines for my prompts and the kind of things I like to see just in case you wanted a little more of a reference.

My AO3 is linked in my sidebar if you want to get a better idea of what I write and I’m generally very flexible. If you’re really stuck, you can always send me any questions you have at all on anon and I will dramatically cover my eyes and go OH NO WHO IS THAT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS COULD BE ABOUT while I answer it.

Good Shit

Character studies exploring every available aspect. Found families. People overcoming their differences to come together and people recognizing their similarities through their differences as they come together. Letting things get weird and sticky but finding comfort in that and coming toa  resolution. Domesticity, nonsexual and sexual intimacy, supporting but being willing to call the other out on their bullshit or push them towards something greater. Mutual comfort while unpacking and dealing with trauma; also, coming together to weather a traumatic experience. Well done angst that might seem overwrought, but is worth the light at the end of the tunnel. Character driven fluff and smut. Enthusiastic consent play, light bondage, service tops/service bottoms, spanking, shibari, oral sex, praise kink, dirty talk, orgasm denial, switching, femdom, pegging, hair-pulling, rough sex that comes after sparring, hair-pulling. Meaningful but realistic sex where you’re allowed to laugh and no one takes it too seriously. My biggest kink is mutual respect and affection (no, really). I also have a weakness for epistolary and faux anthropological/sociological study styles, even if the formatting can be difficult.

BONUS! I am eternally weak for the Chargers as NPCs, so any appearance of them means I will adore your work until the end of time. There is no easier in to my heart.

Background pairings I would love to see if you want to squeeze them include but are not limited to: Dalish/Skinner, Dagna/Sera, Cassandra/Vivienne, Josephine/Leliana, Iron Bull/Dorian, Female Inquisitor Who Is Not Human/Any of the women at Skyhold (and I do mean any), Isabela/Merrill, Aveline/Isabela, Female Hawke/any of the Kirkwall gals (and I do mean any), Female Hawke/Merrill/Isabela, Male Inquisitor Who Is Not Human/Iron Bull, Male Inquisitor Who Is Not Human/Dorian Pavus, Male Inquisitor Who Is Not Human/Cullen Rutherford, Male Inquisitor Who Is Not Human/Krem, Male Inquisitor Who Is Not Human/Blackwall, Male Hawke/Fenris, Male Hawke/Varric, Leliana/Cassandra, Morrigan/Leliana, Josephine/Vivienne, Sera/Cassandra, Josephine/Sera, Any Male Charger But Bull/Any Male Charger But Bull,   Leliana/Sera, Cassandra/Krem, and Lace Harding/Dagna.

I haven’t actually played Origins yet, but if you wanted to include Leliana/FWarden Who Is Not Human, Morrigan/FWarden Who Is Not Human, or Zevran/Male Warden Who Is Not Human, that would be fine, too.

Non, Merci

Scat, watersports, bloodplay, vomit play, vore, rape roleplay, love triangles, character bashing, OTT angst, ageplay, infidelity, pregnancy, whump, kid fic, women being dominated by men, soulmate fic, AU fic, A/B/O dynamics and tropes, descriptions of gore that go beyond the typical canon. Referencing or hinting at abuse, rape, or assault is fine, but I’d rather not see it played out. I’m also not a huge fan of tons of angst or sadness without a happy ending; I like things bittersweet, not full on sour. Also, no human Wardens or Inquisitors, please. I have nothing against them; I just find the other origins more interesting. I have no preference regarding classes. If you’re drawing me porn and you’re an artist, I really don’t like the style where both people look super shiny; I tend to read it as oily or sweaty and it takes me out of the scene.

First person and second person POV also don’t generally work for me as styles and I would prefer you stick to canon. Pairings I would really not like to see at all are here but not limited to: Iron Bull/Any Of The Chargers (the power dynamics really squick me out), Cole/Anyone, Anders/Anyone, Blackwall/Any Female Characters, Solas/Any Female Characters, Cullen/Any Female Characters, any pairings that don’t acknowledge Sera and Dorian as gay or disrespect Krem’s gender identity, Dalish/Any Male Characters, Skinner/Any Male Characters, Male Hawke/Any Female Characters, Female Hawke/Any Male Characters, Fenris/Anders, Fenris/Isabela, Fenris/Dorian, Krem/Dorian, Female Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford, Female Inquisitor/Blackwall, and Female Inquisitor/Solas.

I know this is a lot to take in, but you’re doing great. Onto the prompts!

Dagna/Shaper Valta

Talk about rare pairs, am I right? You don’t have to dig much deeper than the Deep Roads for these two. Still, I think there’s something to these two. I found their similarities rather striking; they’re both intelligent, relentless in their pursuit of their work, they see Orzammar for what it is, both of their fathers disagreed with what they chose to do, they don’t have any regrets regarding their decisions, etc. Valta also talked about the Titan in a very similar way to how Dagna talked about the Fade if you let her study the samples from Adamant. I think they’d really hit it off. I would love to see them talking shop or reminiscing about their lives in Orzammar.

Colette/Lace Harding

And the rare pairs get even rarer. Colette is Professor Bram Kenric’s sword wielding city elf assistant you meet in the Jaws of Hakkon DLC who’s attending the University of Orlais. (Here are a couple clips of her; skip to 1:47 for this one.) She’s researching the early Tevinter temple ruins in the Frostback Basin and how they relate to Inquisitor Ameridan. If you chat with her, she’ll tell you about the discrimination she faces as an elf attending an Orlesian university and comments on how elven assistants are common, but get no credit for their research. Professor Kenric is the exception. She’s very driven and determined to succeed in her work and it shows; that’s something she and Lace have in common. Kenric also mentions that Lace has brought artifacts back to camp for them, so I’m sure that she and Colette have at least met before.

I don’t have anything specific in mind, but something that you could have a lot of fun with is a Road to El Dorado style piece with Lace helping Colette search for an artifact in a particular ruin and possibly fighting off some Hakkonites together heroically. Bonus points if they end up having to rescue Professor Kenric and the Chargers show up as the cavalry along with Lace being an adopted Charger.

Dalish/Skinner

Okay, so just hear me out because this prompt's a little convoluted, but it could be hilarious.

So, we know that merchant families in Antiva have their feuds like anyone else. Let's say that for reasons, one of them in particular decides to retaliate by the Montilyets' rise to power by planning to kidnap Yvette. Rather than allow her sister to stay in Val Royeaux or potentially draw the mercenaries to Skyhold, Josephine chooses to take out a contract and have The Bull's Chargers kidnap her instead and take her somewhere safe to watch over her while she investigates the plot and brings the would-be kidnappers to justice.

Contrary to expectations, Yvette is a delight. She takes to the Chargers' lifestyle surprisingly well and it's just the inspiration she needed as an artist to really flourish, except she develops a huge crush on Dalish. At first, it's completely harmless and just a lot of starry eyed wistful gazing and overwrought elvhen motifs in her sketches. Skinner's not happy, but is pacified by The Iron Bull's litany of "you could literally eat her alive, she's practically a baby, we just have to get through this one job and you'll never have to see her again". Then, despite efforts to discourage it, Yvette's crush on Dalish starts getting too big to ignore and on top of all that, her girlfriend shows up.

Who is Yvette's girlfriend? I don't know. Maybe she's a Tal Vashoth pirate who automatically sets Bull on edge, maybe she's a shady apostate with a penchant for blood magic and betrayal, maybe she's a noblewoman from a disgraced house who supposedly goes through young women like tissues. It's up to you! All I ask is all's well that ends well. I want a lighthearted romp, not heavy drama. I've tagged the pairings with Josephine that I prefer most for this piece, but if you'd like to pair her with Vivienne, Sera, or Lace Harding, I wouldn't be opposed. Pentilyet doesn't really do it for me.

Female Inquisitor/Cassandra Pentaghast

Something I feel that the Cassandra romance genuinely missed out on was the possibility of an interfaith relationship between her and the Inquisitor (besides the obvious lack of not being able to romance her with a female character). I would really like to see that explored in fic.

How does she handle a partner with a belief system radically different from hers (Dalish, the Qun, the Stone, Avaar, Chasind, whatever the Vashoth or Tal Vashoth might believe in) or a nonbeliever? How much does the degree of faith affect their relationships? How do the Chantry's views on them get in the way? If her partner's actually considered to be clergy (or was before the Inquisition, such as a Keeper, an augur, a tamassran, etc.), how does she come to terms with that? Does anyone in the Inquisition help her through this trial? Do any couples who deal with these cultural differences aid her?

I don’t want to see any unhappy endings with this one, but feel free to explore it as much as you possibly can and don’t be afraid to get bitter or dark. Smut is not necessary for this prompt, but if you feel the urge, I always appreciate it, especially if it’s pseudoreligious sex full of allegories. That’s my shit.

Shokrakar

My giant women, how I love them.

I just really want some Shokrakar smut, especially if you can expand on the Valo Kas and how they fit in. I'm always down for plot with my porn. I would prefer to see her paired with any of the female characters in Inquisition, but especially Josephine, Cassandra, or Vivienne.

And that’s everything! Thanks for reading! I can’t wait to see what you do. Good luck!

Best,

        Fille

[nandinisniche]

What Sarees Can Teach Cis Feminists About Trans* Solidarity

(This article was originally published on Medium on June 11, 2015.)

Stop Saying Caitlyn Jenner Is Doing Femininity Wrong

In the midst of America’s earnest “trans moment”, a strong call for opposition is making itself heard even in progressive — and feminist — media.

It’s coming from inside the house

Trans* acceptance was never going to be a slam dunk, not even with the stupendous combined charm of Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner, nor with the help of that old reliable — airbrushed sex appeal — thrust at us from magazine covers to proclaim their inauguration into True American Womanhood™. Nothing about upending gender expectations is ever that easy.

So this is where we are. The more we publicly the celebrate transgender acceptance, the more anti-trans worms continue to crawl out of the patriarchal woodwork. This is no surprise. To do my bit as a cis ally to trans people, I was ready to write to, reason with, and educate the haters. What is surprising is that so many of the haters are fellow feminists.

Meet the TERFs

Like many Tumblr-toting Roxane-Gay-quoting internet feminists, I had been under the impression that the old guard Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists — TERFs — were a dying breed. The internet circles I lurk in are trans-friendly spaces, at least in name. My Twitter feed was full of trans-positive articles even before Laverne Cox hit the front pages of American media. My favorite reddit communities ban on sight anyone who suggests that trans men aren’t really men, or that it would be dangerous to allow trans women into ladies’ toilets.

But about a week ago, I began to see some startlingly transphobic articles being shared on my carefully culled Facebook feed. Several feminists that I admired were openly disparaging the manner and style and details of Caitlyn Jenner’s public transition.

Some of them went the unabashedly bigoted route, linking to articles like Matt Walsh’s screed, “Calling Bruce Jenner A Woman Is An insult To Women”. Such hatefulness and incoherence is easy to refute (though not defeat). It’s difficult for progressives to take a christian conservative cis white man seriously when he says Caitlyn Jenner is “Disgusting, frankly.” Chalk it up to yet another thing Matt Walsh is wrong about today, and move on.

Other feminists have taken the more subtly transphobic path, criticizing Ms Jenner for playing up stereotypes about femininity. Today an NYT op-ed by Elinor Burkett, for example, is outraged at Chelsea Manning for saying she feels more emotionally sensitive since transitioning, and takes Ms Jenner to task for looking forward to wearing nail polish openly in public after her transition. These attacks are so much harder to deal with because they grow from a germ of truth. Most women alive today grew up battling these stereotypical, insulting assumptions about femininity by the world at large: that women are “too emotional”, that women are obsessed with superficialities like make-up and nail polish, that women are biologically hardwired this way and therefore calling women silly or superficial is not sexism!When we see these insults being given new life by the statements of transgender women in the public eye, we wince.

Yes, I admit it. I winced too.

But then I remembered the sarees.

The story of the sarees

This is where I tell you a little about my roots. I am from India. I grew up in Bengaluru in the ‘80s and ‘90s, back when it was still Bangalore and quite a lot more socially conservative than it is today, though much more liberal than many other parts of India. 

One of the fiercest battles I waged then was against the dress code imposed on me: traditionalism first, modesty a close second, to hell with my personal choice, and don’t even dare breathe the word ‘fashion’ for fear of being branded whorish[1]. Even after my family moved overseas, this dress code persisted, made me choke, made me seethe. My parents and I had screaming fights over my tight jeans. My underwear was scrutinized for possible covert sluttiness[2]. I wasn’t allowed to wear spaghetti strap tops even in my 20s.

I became quite the expert in the art of secret outfit changes when away at school and college. I also grew to hate the traditional Indian clothes that were constantly held up to me as markers of good virtue. Enforced modesty taught me to see every saree as a symbol of oppression[3].

Can you imagine my state of mind when I saw my peers both in real life and in the media embrace sarees as liberating fashion statements? I saw many South Asian women ‘reclaiming’ the saree as sensual, religious, feminine, traditional, and kickass all at once (and I doubt they had ever collectively lost their claim to begin with). Many desi girls and women overseas embraced sarees as defiant, joyous expressions of their minority cultural identity. I saw my school friends wear their sarees happily and stylishly, and I got thoroughly pissed off at them.

I thought they were stupid for welcoming their own oppression. I thought they were betraying me, betraying all the battles that I and every other Indian feminist had fought to escape our compulsory-desi-outfit shackles. I raged at them for giving ammunition to all the people who pressured me to dress traditionally: now they were able to point to all these other girls and say, See? See how happy they are in traditional clothes? Why can’t you be like that?

But most diasporan desi girls and women never fought the battles I fought, and don’t have the same associations with sarees that I do. Their life experiences allowed them to take a pleasure in sarees that will probably always be alien to me. For some of them, donning a saree was even something of a defiance. 

I had a dance instructor in junior college who was called to the Bar in London, and at one of the formal ceremonies that followed, instead of wearing the expected black robes, she wore a lace-edged black saree. She said she was telling the British to stuff it. I was stunned. I believe that was the first time I allowed that maybe, just maybe, sarees are not oppression for everyone all the time.

Not just sarees

No doubt other ethnic and religious groups have experienced a similar dissnoance. I have an Iranian friend who chafes under the laws that impose headscarves on her whenever she goes back home, and her journey has been toward understanding why American hijabis exist: to understand that for some American muslimahs, wearing the hijab is as radical an act as it is for my Iranian friend to take hers off.[4]

The moral of the story

What the saree can teach cis feminists is this: context matters. Our life experiences matter. The symbols and methods we choose for self-expression have particular meanings for ourselves, and we should not insist that our meaning is THE universal meaning.

For some women, nail polish is a symbol of all the dreary, expensive, time-consuming hoops women are expected to jump through to adequately perform our femininity. For other women, especially those who have spent their entire lives longing for and being forcibly denied any expression of femininity, nail polish may be a powerful and triumphant symbol of self expression.

How can the former among us take offence at the latter? It is well within our rights to interrogate the patriarchal rules surrounding nail polish from a critical perspective, but how can we justify interrogating trans women like that?

Can we even imagine how it must feel to be ‘officially’ allowed to wear nail polish after 65 years of being denied it? I want to throw Caitlyn Jenner the glitteriest mani-pedi party when I think about it, and I’m the kind of person that’s owned exactly four bottles of nail polish ever in all my life. (So… I guess we will be hiring professional manicurists for the party because I would paint her knuckles as likely as nails.)

Beyond the cis perspective

So far I’ve only considered trans women’s choices from a resolutely cis lens. But what if we tried looking at the performance of femininity from the perspective of trans women themselves? Would we see merely choice and triumph? Or would we see something more nuanced, and decidedly darker?

Consider: violence against transgender women is an epidemic. Even though trans women are only 10% of all LGBTQ people who report incidents of hate directed at them, they are 45% of murder victims in the same group. Passing as female can be a matter of life or death for trans women. In light of this, is there any way to see cis feminists’ criticism of trans women for “trying to hard” to be feminine as anything other than terrifying, hateful, or at least deeply misguided? I don’t think so.

Consider: trans people are more deeply and thoroughly scrutinized for their performance of gender than cis people like myself can ever fathom. The pressure on trans people to surgically feminize their appearance in order to “pass”, or in order to be more acceptable as romantic partners, is extremely strong even when they personally would rather not get surgery. (Yes, that’s right, not all trans people want surgery.) This pressure and scrutiny has extremely damaging effects on trans people — for example, over 40% of transgender people attempt suicide, compared to 4.6% in the general population and around 15% among LGB people. Should cis feminists really be piling on trans people for supposedly “over”performing gender, thus adding to the toxic culture of overscrutinizing trans people? I definitely don’t think so.

A better way to fight

Here’s what I think cis feminists should be doing instead:

#1 (for the Meets Minimum Standards of Human Decency badge) Unequivocally support and encourage trans people’s chosen manner of gender expression. It’s a battle they have fought long and hard for, and feminists of all people should not be in the business of yelling them for somehow “doing it wrong”. They are doing it right, because they get to decide what’s right for them. Period.

#2 (for the Feminist 101 badge) Support the efforts of trans activists who want to build a safer and more equal world for transgender people. This means reading trans feminist writing (good places to start include Laverne Cox, Zinnia Jones, Model View Culture, and if you’re feeling academic, Radical TransFeminist). This means educating ourselves on the specific obstacles to equality faced by the trans community: safety, access to healthcare, equal opportunity in employment, equal access to public toilets, etc.

#3 (for the Intersectional Feminist badge) Recognize that if there is a reason why media portrayals of famous trans people is problematic, it is because of the way this affects THE TRANS COMMUNITY, not cis women! The inimitable Laverne Cox says:

A year ago when my Time magazine cover came out I saw posts from many trans folks saying that I am “drop dead gorgeous” and that that doesn’t represent most trans people. (It was news to be that I am drop dead gorgeous but I’ll certainly take it). But what I think they meant is that in certain lighting, at certain angles I am able to embody certain cisnormative beauty standards. Now, there are many trans folks because of genetics and/or lack of material access who will never be able to embody these standards. More importantly many trans folks don’t want to embody them and we shouldn’t have to to be seen as ourselves and respected as ourselves . It is important to note that these standards are also infomed by race, class and ability among other intersections.

In the spirit of #3, I highly recommend browsing the amazing Twitter hashtag, #MyVanityFairCover, where ordinary non-celebrity transgender people are creating their own “Call Me Caitlyn” style cover shots.

And finally, every time we feel anger or outrage stirring in response to something a trans woman says or does about her femininity, we need to remember the story of the sarees.

[1] & [2]: These were the terms used at me, and yes, they are extremely disparaging to sex workers.

[3]: Make no mistake: for hundreds of thousands of Indian girls and women, these clothes are indeed an oppression. Traditional dress codes are commonly imposed on Indian women to this day. I personally know far too many married women living in urban, upper class, highly educated joint families who do not have ‘permission’ from their in-laws to wear jeans.

[4]: Note that I am not suggesting that any choice whatsoever is feminist/radical just because it is a choice. Choice feminism is deeply flawed. What I am saying is, any symbol or act can be radical or oppressive depending upon personal and social context.