#and modifying your presenting gender to how you see fit)

[commanderfloppy]

Uhhh so like most of my characters are trans in some way, but I'll just share some of the standouts for today lol.

First of course is my Commander Vlixxa Floppy, who is a trans woman (Gender going strong for almost 40 years now). Loves her kids Dragon's Watch, and flowers, she's trying to learn how to take breaks for mental health but well.. the universe doesn't like that.

Tori, my chaotic genderfuck engineer (any pronouns/ he/she/they). Who after almost dying and getting a concussion/partial amnesia realized "Wait complete neutrality/slight discomfort isn't how your supposed to feel about your gender?"

And then of course we have Laurence, my man who realized it was his mission to dress as slutty as possible once most of his body dysphoria went away. (Which reminds me that I need to do more gw2 masculine armor redesigns this art is so old lol)

🏳️‍⚧️HAPPY TRANS DAY OF VISIBILITY🏳️‍⚧️

Please, share your trans ocs here! Let's revel in this day both in real life and in game. And if you want to celebrate yourself as a trans gamer on here too, all the better! From one trans player to all you out there, I hope you're having a great one 💖

This includes 100% any nonbinary characters. Being gnc is not a requirement either. If the character is in any capacity trans they are welcome on this post and I would be delighted to see you share them on this day 💙💗🤍

[alyss-erulisse]

Morph Madness!

Fixing Exploding Morphs

Marik's Egyptian Choker is currently in production. It is the first accessory I've made that involves assignment to more than one bone and morphs for fat, fit and thin states. So there is a learning curve, and it is during that learning curve that interesting and unexpected things can happen.

As with my other content, I'm making the choker fit sims of all ages and genders--that's 8 different bodies.

Adding fat, fit and thin morphs multiples this number to 27 different bodies.

I'm also making 3 levels of detail for each of these. The number comes to 81 different bodies, 81 different bodies for which I need to tightly fit a cylinder around the neck and avoid clipping.

That's a lot of work. I can see why most custom content creators stick with one age, gender and detail level. At least, they did in the past. Our tools are getting better day by day, and that may partly be because of creative, ambitious and somewhat obsessive people like me.

There are usually multiple ways to solve the same problem. Some ways are faster than others. This I've learned from working in Blender3D. You can navigate to a button with your mouse or hit the keyboard shortcut. You can use proportional editing to fiddle around with a mesh or you can use a combination of modifiers.

If I am going to be creating 81 chokers, I don't want to be fiddling around on each one of them for an hour. I need something automated, repeatable and non-destructive so I can make adjustments later without having to start over from the beginning. I need to work smart rather than just work hard.

This is where modifiers and geometry nodes come in. After you develop a stack to work with one body, the same process pretty much works for the others as well. That is how it became easier for me to model each of the 81 chokers from scratch rather than to use proportional editing to fit a copy from one body to the next.

But I was about to confront an explosive problem…

Anyone who has worked with morphs before probably knows where this story is headed. There is a good reason to copy the base mesh and then use proportional editing to refit it to the fat, fit and thin bodies. That reason has to do with vertex index numbers.

You see, every vertex in your mesh has a number assigned to it so that the computer can keep track of it. Normally, the order of these numbers doesn't really matter much. I had never even thought about them before I loaded my base mesh and morphs into TSRW, touched those sliders to drag between morph states, and watched my mesh disintegrate into a mess of jagged, black fangs.

A morph is made up of directions for each vertex in a mesh on where to go if the sim is fat or thin or fit. The vertex index number determines which vertex gets which set of directions. If the vertices of your base mesh are numbered differently than the vertices of your morph, the wrong directions are sent to the vertices, and they end up going everywhere but the right places.

It is morph madness!

When a base mesh is copied and then the vertices are just nudged around with proportional editing, the numbering remains the same. When you make each morph from scratch, the numbering varies widely.

How, then, could I get each one of those 81 meshes to be numbered in exactly the same way?

Their structures and UV maps were the same, but their size and proportions varied a lot from body to body. Furthermore, I'd used the Edge Split modifier to sharpen edges, which results in disconnected geometry and double vertices.

Sorting the elements with native functions did not yield uniform results because of the varying proportions.

The Blender Add-On by bartoszstyperek called Copy Verts Ids presented a possible solution, but it was bewildered by the disconnected geometry and gave unpredictable results.

Fix your SHAPE KEYS! - Blender 2.8 tutorial by Danny Mac 3D

I had an idea of how I wanted the vertices to be numbered, ascending along one edge ring at a time, but short of selecting one vertex at a time and sending it to the end of the stack with the native Sort Elements > Selected function, there was no way to do this.

Of course, selecting 27,216 vertices one-at-a-time was even more unacceptable to me than the idea of fiddling with 81 meshes in proportional editing mode.

So… I decided to learn how to script an Add-On for Blender and create the tool I needed myself.

A week and 447 polished lines of code later, I had this satisfying button to press that would fix my problem.

Here are the index numbers before and after pressing that wonderful button.

My morphs are not exploding anymore, and I am so happy I didn't give up on this project or give myself carpal tunnel syndrome with hours of fiddling.

Marik's Egyptian Choker is coming along nicely now. I haven't avoided fiddling entirely, but now it only involves resizing to fix clipping issues during animation.

Unfortunately, I'll have to push the release date to next month, but now, I have developed my first Blender Add-On and maybe, after a bit more testing, it could be as useful to other creators in the community as its been to me.

Looking for more info about morphing problems? See this post.

See more of my work: Check out my archive.

Join me on my journey: Follow me on tumblr.

Support my creative life: Buy me a coffee on KoFi.

[transmascpetewentz]

if you watch @/hbmmaster's video about sambahsa you will understand how i am currently feeling about hebrew. nouns & adjectives are fine. ver- actually, prepositions in hebrew are pretty important, most of them are prefixes you just add to the word you're modifying, and ver- possessives can be made in a few ways, the simplest being to add the correct ending for the pronoun of the person to the word you're modifying, changing the ending ה to ת, and the other way to do possessives easily is to add the particle של and then to add a pronoun ending to that if applicable or adding a noun afterwords. in contrast to this simple system, verbs... verbs have 7 main forms with many seemingly arbitrary distinctions between them. there are paal verbs, which can just be called normal verbs, and hitpael verbs, and also verbs like לבשל that i'm still not sure what category they fit in. all these verb categories have very different rules, and more often than not verbs are irregular. and in order to understand much of normal speech you also have to understand the passive form of paal verbs (different from nifal verbs in a way that is significant i promise) which used to be an ancient verb category but isn't anymore and you just have to remember it. past, present, and future tense are pretty consistent across the board but it doesn't seem like there's an even remotely consistent rule for imperatives, and all the resources are locked behind a paywall.

because the person who requested this episode of conlang critic is also the creator of this conlang, i'm going to replace the ranking section with another section called "how you can conlang better next time". so here's some advice for hashem, the creator of this conlang, to make your future conlangs even better. first off, don't have so many irregular nouns. ideally the system used for deriving gender from the spelling of a word, and then deriving the word's plural form from that, should be fairly unambiguous with few exceptions. secondly, the verb system is very, very tedious for people to learn, and is not ideal for an interlang. hashem has worked on some more recent languages like yiddish and ladino that fix many of these issues, but hebrew has a lot of potential and even though hebrew 2.0 only recently came out, i'm looking forward to see what issues get fixed in the 3.0 version.

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

I’m curious to get your take on something. As someone who studied linguistics, what’s your take on terms like Latinx, a word being used in the US to identify non-binary gender fluid people of Latin descent? It’s meant to me inclusive but also deeply unpopular within the Latin community. I was born in Latin America, live in the states, am very supportive of the gay community but HATE this term. Spanish (my native language) is gendered. Adjectives and other conjugations have to agree with the gender of the noun. I’m an ally to the gay community but it’s silly things like this that make people take a step back sometimes. Yes, tolerance is important but wanting to change the morphology and structure of a language simply to accommodate a portion of the population is kind of ridiculous. Thoughts?

You really dumped a bunch of gasoline in my inbox and asked me to light a match lmao

Okay, there are a lot of things going on here and I want to address them all. From a linguistic standpoint—meaning from the standpoint of simply studying how humans use and modify language—I think “Latinx” is interesting because people were presented with a problem: how can we express gender neutrality in a gendered language? Seeing what people’s minds come up with in these kinds of situations is objectively interesting. It’s why I said recently that something like doublespeak in 1984 is nonsense, because humans find ways around obstacles in language all the time.

I sympathize with people who want more gender neutral language, and I’d be interested to hear how non-binary people born in Latin America, for example, feel about speaking a language with grammatical gender and if/how that impacts their experience. How do they express themselves in Spanish? Or how do non-binary people express themselves in other gendered languages like Italian and French? It’s an interesting question.

With all of that said, I have absolutely seen the consensus in the United States by the people who are actually supposed to be described by the term that they hate it. Even terms like “Hispanic” and “Latino” can be controversial because people (especially those whose families haven’t been in the US for a long time) tend to more readily describe themselves by nationality, like, “I’m Mexican” or “I’m Venezuelan” as opposed to, “I’m Hispanic.” There’s already this issue with trying to condense different people and identities into a neat little category on the census that fits America racial ideas, and when you add a term that goes against how the language actually functions into the mix, I think it’s understandable that people will be resistant to it. The reason why I, personally, don’t really use “Latinx” is because most people from Latin America don’t use it, this has been confirmed by polling, and I don’t want to use a term that the actual people are uncomfortable with.

I should note that I actually had no idea how this term was even supposed to be pronounced for years, because I only ever saw it on the internet; I thought it was like “latinks” (the way we usually pronounce an “x” in English) and my brain skidded to a halt when I first heard, “Latin-ex.” I was actually talking about this very issue with my co-teacher a couple of weeks ago, who lived in Mexico for years and taught ESL to immigrant teens in Texan high schools, and she had no idea it was actually pronounced that way, either. I’m bringing this up to point out how heavily confined to the internet this term was for a long time, and how little this term is still used in real life. Again, I think this partly explains the resistance people have to this term, because it didn’t happen naturally irl, it’s an internet word that people are trying to bring into the regular world.

I do think the morphological rules and phonotactics of Spanish play a role in people disliking them term, too, because yeah, using an “x” as a kind of neutral marker might work in English, but not Spanish. Grammatical gender is baked into the language’s DNA, and I don’t see that ever changing. It would be too drastic. I think that even if people aren’t opposed to being inclusive, most Spanish speakers kind of have the immediate reaction of, “What?? But that’s not how that works.”

So, yeah, I understand why people dislike the term. I don’t see it catching on widespread outside of the internet, at least not in the near future. I certainly don’t think people outside of a community should say, “You don’t like this term to describe yourselves? Too bad! Use it!” 

The only thing I’m going to push back on is the idea that pushing a term like this would justifiably “make people take a step” back from trans rights (because that’s really what this is, it’s not about sexual orientation but gender identity), because as fucking stupid as I think “folx”** is, I don’t think there’s a reason to turn one’s back on trans people. I’m not saying that you’re doing this btw, I’m just preemptively putting it out there because plenty of people go, “Ugh, these marginalized people are being annoying and loud, therefore bigotry against them is justified.” And that’s a big no from me. There’s so much backlash against trans people in our culture now, and clunky internet terms don’t compare to the violence and animosity happening in real life. I think this whole thing reflects the very interesting cultural moment we’re in with increased visibility of trans and non-binary people, and people trying to find new ways to express their identities, and there are going to be clumsy attempts that really don’t work out long-term, but that’s inevitable.

**(“FOLKS” IS LITERALLY ALREADY GENDER NEUTRAL BECAUSE ENGLISH DOES NOT HAVE GRAMMATICAL GENDER LIKE ADDING THE “X” DOES NOTHING, NOT EVEN CHANGE THE PRONUNCIATION)

[traegorn]

I have a question, if you don't mind. I saw you're a Wiccan but you don't really talk like the Wiccans I've experienced in the past.

So, I wanted to ask: how do you go about being Wiccan and deconstructing appropriative, sexist and transphobic concepts that are so popular in Wicca, or have just been around since the founding of Wicca? What makes it Wicca when you take those concepts away?

I mean, there are over a million Wiccans in the US alone by current estimates, and so there's actually quite a bit of diversity in the faith.

But yeah, I'm probably not typical? Over the years I've met quite a few Wiccans like myself - so I'm not special or anything, but you're right -- folks like me are probably not anywhere near the majority. I mean... probably. It's hard to say, because the folks like me are also far less likely to be vocal or online about their witchcraft.

Additionally, I haven't always been like this. I'm in my forties. I've been a Wiccan for like twenty-five years. You have no idea how annoying I was in like 1998. It was bad.

But to answer your actual question...

So the first thing you have to understand is that a lot of the issues in Wicca don't necessarily come down to the actual theology of the faith, but the rituals. And Wicca's founders (Gardner and Valiente) weren't special, right? They were just other witches like the rest of us, and don't come with any authority above the rest of us. Even Gardner was pretty open that he modified rituals to suit his practice (while pretending these things were ancient). So, with that, if a ritual doesn't fit, change it.

You have permission.

And when you get to the core, the faith of Wicca comes down to a handful of things -- worship of the God and Goddess, observance of the wheel of the year, the rede, etc. Those are the bits that make it "Wicca." Everything else is tradition specific window dressing.

Like when you hear someone accuse a Wiccan of cultural appropriation, it's almost always something that isn't actually a core "Wicca" thing, but something they tacked on from somewhere else. Some practice they incorporated from elsewhere. And the easy answer is, when that happens, you can just sort of stop doing it?

I mean, a lot of them won't stop doing the thing -- but that's more of a "White Suburbanites don't react well to you pointing out problematic things they're doing" problem than a Wiccan specific problem.

And with all theology, there's a debate within members of the faith about what means what. Issues with gender essentialism and the transphobic elements you'll see with some interpretations aren't present in others. As a nonbinary person, you can probably guess that I have a lot of thoughts on this part of things, and did a whole episode of my podcast about it that would be far too much to repeat here. You can just, like, listen to it if you want though.

And, like, deconstruction is an ongoing process. Like I said, I wasn't always where I am now.

And none of us are where we're going to be tomorrow.

[vampelune]

kamukomahina gender/body headcanons

a bit of a ramble about my body, gender, and general appearance headcanons for them bcuz someone sent me a curiouscat prompting this 3k words of hyperfixation nonsense

Komaeda:

- He has a naturally lithe body, with a thin waist, broad shoulders and hips, which give him an hourglass. and a rather andrognyous body, which is "lucky" for him, because I hc him as nonbinary and gender non-conforming

- Gender-wise, as I said, I think he's nonbinary. Usually I do view Nagito as AMAB but I indulge in transmasc Nagito from time to time depending on my preference and how much I wish to uh, well, project, lol. But either way I think he would use he/they pronouns in a western sense. In japanese, however, they don't use third person pronouns that other people refer to them with, and in canon he uses the first person pronoun "boku", which is a "soft" masculine pronoun, in comparison to the "hard" masculine pronoun, “ore” (which Hajime uses btw!) which fits quite nicely, in my opinion! Also, in Japanese, you can be 'fluid' with your first person pronouns depending on the situation, so I think he could use more neutral or feminine pronouns should he desire it, too, to play on his gender non-conformity.

- Komaeda is very secure in his gender, regardless of being AMAB or AFAB. He does not care about stigma, or discrimination, he does not care about being "accepted" by broader society. Broader society is sort of meaningless to him, the average person and their ideas about gender and presentation and effeminity mean NOTHING to him. Whether or not a random person the street genders him correctly or treats him with respect is sort of, pointless? Because to him, most ordinary people are pointless nobodies. Their thoughts do not matter to him. I think he is still prone to insecurity, however, when around his "betters" but I just struggle to think he would degrade himself in regards to gender. to him, it's the least of his problems. what he cares about is hope and talent. He could dress femininely or wear makeup or straight up crossdress and not mind it, really. He thinks people would find a problem with it are the problem, because why does it even matter? It speaks to the way Komaeda is detached from societal norms & "normal" people, he did not grow up in normal circumstances, so he doesn't interact with the world normally by any means. he can mask and act normally to the best of his ability, often unintentionally?, but he simply does not fit into broader society and doesn't seek to.

- Komaeda loses weight really easily, and doesn't gain weight that well. This is mainly due to his many illnesses but also the medications he's been put on. He has a low appetite and burns weight rather easily, even though I headcanon that he eats like garbage (mainly junk food & takeout, since he obviously cannot cook). This makes him overall, health wise, not very healthy, and stick thin because of it. A stiff breeze could knock him over, tbh.

- He has a lot of faded scars, self-inflicted or not.

- Pre-despair (in HPA) he is fairly healthy but still lithe, and progressively his body deteriorates through his 2 years of hopes peak before the Tragedy begins.

- During the Tragedy itself, his body is at it's worst. he is almost nothing but bone at times, barely kept together by a need to live so he can see hope triumph. His weight fluctuates but he's very unhealthy. He's not anorexic or on death's door, but he's not well off, either.

- After being put into the neo world program, right after waking up, he's very, very thin and gaunt. he was in a pod on feeding tubs for an indiscernible but at least probably a month's worth of time? So he's just very weak, like he could collapse if he moves too quickly.

- But a while after waking, he goes into remission, and starts to gain more healthy habits due to being rehabilitated and cared for by Hinata, and gains some weight, finally at a healthy, normal weight. I still think he would struggle with putting on too much weight, but I am slightly fond of the idea that he gets a bit of healthy pudge after a while. To him, it's so foreign being healthy, that he honestly think something's wrong with him at first.

Hinata:

- Hinata has a very... average body, true to form. His hips and waist aren't too pronounced but he has a loosely "hourglass" shape, too, just not as exaggerated as Komaeda's in comparison.

- Gender-wise, I am EXTREMELY fond of transmasc Hinata. While I think I portray AMAB Hinata more than transmasc Hinata (in art and writing), I still firmly prefer transmasc Hinata. The reason I think portray otherwise more is just out of comfortability, but I've been getting better at comfortably portraying FTM Hinata. I have some reasons I prefer it and think you can extrapolate it from canon, but let's get into that

- Hinata, in my eyes, has an arc and story that fits perfectly into him just. Being trans. His desire to be someone else, someone better, someone he can proud of, and the way he overcompensates for himself and has an extreme inferiority complex would easily lend to him having similar feelings about his gender. To me, Hinata is a trans man who overperforms his masculinity out of insecurity and a need to pass. I see him as someone who would strictly use "he/him" in a western sense, which is lended to by his use of the "ore" pronoun in canon, which is almost hypermasculine.

- Even if he were AMAB, I think it still works, I think he's still someone who's insecure and tries to assert himself more strongly and therefore performs masculinity in a way to appear more confident than he is.

(side note: I actually read a bit about queerness in Japan and how it relates to gender performance and the use of pronouns, and read a bit about how queer women in japan tend to use "boku" and "ore" to perform masculinity, which I find neat. “Ore” was also sometimes used exclusively to show anger and dominance, which is why it's categorized as a "rough" pronoun. I think Japanese language, gender, and expression, and how those all relate to one another, are extremely interesting and if you get the time you should read about it lol)

- Body-wise, pre-despair, I think Hinata would. not have top surgery, obviously. I think he has a fairly average but leaning a little on the hefty side chest (pre-op) and binds it, hence the '91 cm' (but also he still has 91 cm post-op because bazongas). I also just think he leans on the "twunk" side of things at this point, not buff but not stick thin or without muscle, just kind of average with average strength and all, though I think Hinata would've tried to do sports and stuff to find his talent so he's in shape :)

- My personal, kind of amusing, but also kind of... thematical? Headcanon, is that during the Kamukura project, he also underwent gender transition. to be honest, while it may not make sense in modern Japan, I think we can suspend our disbelief for fiction, and also make the argument that Hinata's "transition" into Kamukura CAN be read, in some part, as relatable or at least familiar to the trans experience. Iit is not out of the realm of possibility, either, to assume that because many bits of society in Danganronpa are advanced (specifically science, is extremely ahead of our understanding, almost sci-fi like at times) certain attitudes about gender and sexuality can be smoothed over more in a Japanese context.

(side note: I also think that science-wise, we can suspend our disbelief, and assume that top surgery and bottom surgery are much more advanced in this universe, given the almost unbelievable levels of science in Danganronpa, such as memory wipe, mind control, completely realistic virtual simulation, um literally everything about Kamukura which is body modification and brain modification to an extreme, etc. I think it's kind of fitting within these to assume that... Hinata/Kamukura could just, gain a functioning penis, lol)

Kamukura:

- Kamukura would have a. "Perfect" body. it's stated, I'm pretty sure, that they modified not only his brain but his body, because he needs to be able to perform every talent under their belt with ease, and his strength, instincts, technique, are all superhuman. So it's clear to me he'd have a buff body. toned muscles and all. He wouldn't really feel a need to keep it up, though, but I think since they're very... artificial (basically fucking steroids?) they wouldn't fade from a lack of keep-up.

- Kamukura also rarely ever is injured, but when he does, his body heals rather fast and can care for himself adequately, because again, his body is modified to a point of almost inhumanity.

- Gender wise, Kamukura genuinely does not care. however, I am not one to think that Kamukura is "a different person" from Hinata, rather, he is separate from Hinata, but an extension of Hinata as well, proven that he experiences some of his emotions even if subconsciously and without understanding them. he isn't a different personality or person developed in Hinata's body, but a very traumatizing, repressed, and manipulated version of Hinata given a new name, with memories repressed. He's like Theseus's ship in human form---if you get rid of everything that makes someone themselves and replace it, bit by bit, is it the same person? Technically, yes, but... truly? Who knows. 

Because of this, I think Kamukura would have a leaning toward masculine gender performance (in canon, in fact, he uses the soft masculine pronoun "boku" in stead of "ore" like Hinata) BUT I think he is still very nonbinary. In a western sense, i think he would use he/they pronouns, but not really care if someone mistook him for a woman, I suppose.

- His appearance, unironically, is very nonbinary or "he/they" to me because he's wearing a suit, the archetypal form of masculinity, but has extremely long hair, which is considered feminine, and speaks softly (dully). Of course, the bishounen "pretty boy" appearance isn't uncommon or considered less masculine in japan, I think, but there is still a different between soft masculinity and rough masculinity in japan, which lends itself to being interpreted sort of gender non-conforming by western audiences :)

- Kamukura, due to his apathy, struggles with self-maintaining, but as we all probably know i am extremely attached to KamuKoma and thus headcanon that Servant helps him, sort of like a royal servant would royalty in the old days, take care of himself by bathing him, brushing his hair out, grooming him, etc. partially out of duty, partially out of appreciation for Kamukura's body, and partially out of maintaining his sort of "perfect" look since Kamukura, especially post-Junko death, is perceived widely by the public as the new leader of the ultimate despair, even if he is ambivalent to such a title.

Post-DR3 Hinata/Kamukura combined:

As I rambled on about previously, I don't think that Kamukura and Hinata are separate people or personality, I really dislike the interpretation that they are like a "split personality" or operate like DID, because they do not "form" like DID, but also in canon, are not portrayed as separate people.

In post-dr3, Hinata instead says that he is both of them, because he is. Kamukura is Hinata, always was, but had been given a new, false identity, had been stripped of his previous self, his memories, his personality, and crafted into something new. but that did not "split" his brain into two people. It simply repressed who he once was, and made him someone he now was. But when Kamukura regains his memories, his past self, through the means of the new world program by restoring his own memories after SDR2 concludes and he wakes up, as well as doing the same for everyone else, he decides to be "Hajime Hinata" who he always was, but carrying and shouldering the weight of what "Izuru Kamukura" had been, become, and done. Hinata *is* Kamukura, he answers for Kamukura's wrongdoings, his crimes, as something he had done as a different person who's mind operated differently, due to being artificially suppressed, modified, into an apathetic tool for the scientists who made him, and later and aimless, bored individual who simply sought meaning he did not have in the unknown of what despair would be at it's climax. And if hope could overcome it.

As such, I think, when Hinata's self is brought back into the mix, and he now deals with Kamukura's apathy and boredom in part, but much less consuming and much less often, I think hinata is less staunchly "masculine", does not overperform it anymore, and is trying to understand what his past means to him, what his present is, and what his future will be. I think that Hinata would still primarily use he/him (or still use "ore" in Japanese, as it's also a means of his personality, which is a bit rough around the edges and blunt), but be more ambivalent to rigid gender expression, still finding comfort and idealness in masculinity, but not be made dysphoric or feel frightened, uncomfortable, with non-comformity or anything like that. being boyish, masculine, is what he enjoys, but he's comfortable in it now, doesn't need to prove himself or overperform it. He can explore nonconformity without feeling like his gender or masculinity is at threat, even if it's not his preference outright.

Body-wise, I think it's safe to say he retains Kamukura's muscle and all, but Kamukura didn't put much effort into the everyday machinations of being a human being in general, and Hinata is much more fond of food than him now, eats more often, and I enjoy the idea that he gains a little pudge and has a kind of "dad bod" almost, post-DR3? lol.

Both for Hinata and Kamukura I don't see their bodies as “bara” or overly buff, masculine, but a kind of comfortable middle ground between twunk and hunk, lmao. I think they're also averagely hairy, not overly so, very lightly. kind of well groomed, and all. Hinata, pre-despair, put not so much effort into his appearance but still some, especially in trying to pass. (In fact I think his hair cut looks like a home job, all choppy and stuff, which fits him in my opinion, something done by his own hands even if messy and imperfect, he still prefers to be in control of it. also fits the trans headcanon tehe).

Izuru put very little if any effort into himself, only the bare minimum necessary to function, but servant helped him upkeep it to a perfect standard. Hinata, post-dr3 now, finds himself putting you know, an average amount of care into himself and his body, enough to be healthy, but not overly critical and conscious of himself.

Komaeda i have always seen as someone who takes a good deal of care about himself, merely if to alleviate the "disgust" of his appearance and body, by practically preening himself. He is someone who is good at cleaning and seems to appreciate clean and well kept spaces, so I think he would have a similar attitude toward himself. even if he is insecure, and of course, struggles with mental health and may slip at times in his routine in keeping himself well-kept, I think he still maintains an appearance for the most part, at least in his later years (teen to young adult). An argument can be made that he cared less in his adolescence because he had much more apathy about the world, but when he gave himself a purpose with hope and talent, I think he would care for himself a little better, even if his was spiralling mentally.

His hair is always washed, it is just very curly and prone to mess, so it often looks like perpetual bedhead, even when he combs and brushes it. His skin is soft even if a little worn by his tendency for accidents & injury, it's still soft and almost luckily so, and he takes pride in moisturizing and cleaning himself. His skin is a little sickly, still, and I think that despite having blemishes, scars, etc. Komaeda manages to look pretty in a strange way, not conventionally beautiful, but almost ethereal? He's just *pretty*, there's no way to explain it, he is nice to look at even with all his "flaws" and imperfections. Even when he's sickly and bony, even when his cheeks are gaunt or his hands shaky and weak, when his hair is a tangled mess or his clothes are dirty, he's nice to look at in a way that's nonconventional, and it's sort of mesmerizing.

Hinata I think is very average but also in a way that's nice to look at it. He's not ground-breaking hot or conventionally attractive, he has a good body, a nice face, and hair you could play with a little if you wanted. I think what's appealing about him is his normalcy, he's not trying too hard or "gifted" gene wise, but he's just kinda nice to look at, he's enjoyable to be around, an understanding person, or at least tries to be even when he fails, and despite having flaws, insecurities, blunt, he is someone you're drawn to because he's one of those people that's just, easy to talk to? An emotional anchor, almost. The kind of guy everyone kind of knows and has talked to at least once, even if you're not friends with him personally, not because he's cool or popular or anything, but because he's a normal dude who's easy to trust and talk to.

Kamukura, on the other hand, is intimidating, appearance wise and personality wise. he looks, strange, anything but normal, his eyes are red and his hair is this dark cloud that envelops him. His face may still be that plain one Hinata has but faces can be changed by the surrounding attributes as well as expression and such is true for him, with his apathetic and cold expression as well as otherwordly characteristics, he comes off as much more beautiful in a dark way, kind of? In a way that's intimidating or a little daunting, but he's still very beautiful. mesmerizing.

okay, thats my ramble. ty.

[monkey-overalls]

Whoops, kinnie moment alert ✌️😳

In honor of this very special boy, here are some of my many Souda-can headcanons:

- Sonsoudam (Sonia, Kazuichi, and Gundham) is my OT3; he’s with Gundham romantically, and Sonia platonically. - I also ship them with (but not at the same time) Fuyuhiko, Hajime, Leon, and I could also see them in a queerplantonic relationship with Ibuki. - Even the Ultimate Mechanic himself isn’t immune to injury in the workshop; those scars on his arms are from some “invention shenanigans” with a blowtorch. Whatever you do, don’t give Kazuichi fire without supervision. - Had some ongoing issues with internalized homophobia throughout their life, until their friends sat them down and were like, “Dude, give it up already, you like guys and that’s okay. We support you.” Oh, and did I mention they’re a very ugly crier? - Experiments a lot with his gender and presentation (in an environment much safer and more encouraging than he was used to at home). - Is a pansexual trans-demiboy who uses he/they pronouns (hence why I alternated between bullet points). - Modified their sneakers into roller skates once so they could get to class quicker and on time… problem is, they have literally no clue how to roller skate. Let’s just say they’ve become quite close with Mikan since the alterations. - Has created a personalized line of fidget toys for him and his classmates; Akane is his best customer. - Never truly had romantic feelings for Sonia, only an intense fascination with her confidence and kind personality, which is something they’d never had growing up. They’ve since apologized for their previous behavior towards her, and are trying to make amends. - Lives off of blue Sour Patch Kids (Gundham keeps attempting to convince him to give up his stash).

Despite his numerous character flaws (which I won’t ignore or brush aside at the expense of other people/character’s experiences) Kazuichi is by far my favorite character in Danganronpa. I can seriously relate to his struggles with self-confidence, trust issues, changing your appearance to “fit in” with other people, and not knowing when to shut up. I’ve had comfort characters in the past, but Kaz is (currently) my #1. I hope to cosplay this neon disaster in the future!

The vaporwave backdrop does not belong to me!

[jamestrmtx]

Fairytale Complex - [Undertale | Sans x Reader]

[Gender Neutral, Frisk's Parent Reader | Slow Burn]

Chapter Nine | Dating Tense! (Part 3 of 3)

[First] | [Previous] | [Next]

Your conversation with Undyne goes a similar route as with Toriel's: confronting a stranger in the name of protecting the one you held most dear, as a result ending whatever possible, friendly connections you could've likely formed with her right from the start -- without that complex context placed between you. Seeing everyone as your enemy is draining at its least, but the reward you visualize for everyone ahead makes it all seem worth it. That thought alone provides with strength to keep pushing forward, and even more so when you remind yourself over obtaining a possible happy ending of your very own, were you to resolve this situation with the monsters first.

With that thought in mind, you set the empty teacup down on the coffee table and take a deep breath in, preparing yourself to continue with the conversation. You're already halfway through the most difficult process with Undyne, so backing away now would be useless; thankfully, the tea has enough chamomile in it for you to quell your anger and turn it into sobriety, instead. Of course, that sounds way easier than it is, but -- compared to how you felt when talking with Toriel -- it's a difference as large as the distance between the sky and Earth. Keeping in mind all the kindness and patience you've been shown throughout the process helps with that, as well.

You stand up, continuing with, "I understand protecting the Underground was your priority, but…" You stop to breathe again. "Why… Why would you attack without waiting to see what Frisk had to say? If you were informed enough to know there was a human running free in the Underground, then couldn't you have known they weren't causing any harm, in the first place?"

Despite the tea, its effects and your subsequent calm don't last long. Frustration keeps you from staying in one, sole place without fidgeting, so you let energy out through a composed, back-and-forth pace across the living room. You stop for a second and face down at Undyne, who keeps herself seated, eye meeting with your gaze. "How many of those six souls were murdered, and…" Your breath hitches. "And how many of them were genuine, self-sacrifices? I… I wouldn't be so angry, if you were just honest with me and told me how many human lives were taken away without their honest approval, and exactly how many of them sacrificed their lives for you, in the end."

At the thought of Frisk, still selfless towards plenty of things based on how young they were and the education they received -- both at home and at school -- you keep your posture straight, eager to say more. "And was there really no other solution than taking those souls? If… If Frisk saved your kind without having to give up their own life for it, then why did all this happen? Why… Why did six people have to die before a different solution could come around?" A pause and a sigh help you recollect your thoughts. "Or were they threatening the lives of your kind? 'Cause that makes a lot more sense than simply taking away the soul of the first human you saw, no matter their age, background, or intentions."

Undyne still stays silent for a while even after you're done, eye now cast down at the floor as she frowns and her hands hold onto her knees. "...Well," she says, trailing off with a sigh. "I was only ordered to chase after whatever human I crossed paths with." She lifts her gaze from the floor while a hand toys around with the scales on her neck, distracting herself from you. "It wasn't every day a human would fall down there, so we were eventually ordered to, well... kill whatever human did happen to end there… Indiscriminately." Finally, she makes eye contact with you, frown quivering as she takes another quick pause. "According to what we were told, it had been years since a human last fell down, so when Frisk arrived, I... I just sought after them without thinking twice."

"But if that many years passed by, couldn't your kind look for another solution? If… If Alphys built a new body for her friend out of nothing but scraps, and with two different forms -- mind you -- then... Then couldn't another scientist on similar or equal terms of knowledge have done something about all this? Why wait so long, if… if all it took was a child to find another solution for you?" Your voice breaks and your ire finally snaps with, "Where's your sense of justice? Or does it only apply when it's convenient?"

She notices the change herself, though she doesn't flinch nor retaliate; neutrality is her only reaction as she replies with, "(L/N), in all honesty, I…" Undyne stops, facing down again as her grimace deepens, sorrow dampening her eye. "I'm... I'm not sure how to answer that." 

Seeing you've reached a dead end, you glance over towards Alphys, who tries to look away, failing when you call out her name. "What about you, Doctor Alphys? Was there really no other thought in mind other than waiting for the next prey to arrive? Was there truly no…" Your breathing grows scarce, hinting at you losing your grip on the intensity of your emotions again. "Was there truly no other option than for us to be enemies? For your kind and mine to… to simply keep up with the damage our ancestors made and left behind?"

Alphys is shaking, yet you stay unfazed, only lessening your level of intimidation by uncrossing your arms and looking away from her, giving her some space and time to reply. 

"I'm n- not sure what to say, either, but… Y- You do have a point." She wrings her hands, her shaking attempting to compose itself through that. "But… As a f- former scientist of the Underground, I wasn't told much over what the rules were. One of the few things that I took part on was in... in creating Mettaton's new body." Her hands unwind, shoulders copying them. "I... I know he was programmed to k- kill humans, but like you mentioned: he was my friend before any of that happened, and so he already had a life and consciousness before I made that new version of him. It- It just so happened that I… I modified a few things so that he could-"

Her words are interrupted as Frisk walks into the living room, still sleepy-eyed. They rub their eyes with the sleeve of their shirt, and a frown presents itself when they take a good look at the scene before them. 

"What's wrong?" they sign, expression furrowed.

They take in everything around them, letting their face lose tension when their gaze moves on over to you, encouraging them to approach you. "You're here!" Frisk grabs your hand, taking a look at the time on your watch. Then, they raise an eyebrow, letting you go to continue with, "You didn't go to work today? Or did you leave early?"

You smile, let your guard fall, and bring them into your arms, holding them up. "The streets got flooded, so I couldn't go anymore after lunchtime," you say, kissing their cheek. "How've you been, though? Did you have fun at miss Toriel's new place? I've been here since twelve, but you were sleeping, so I didn't want to wake you."

They grin, nodding as they bring their arms firm around your neck, hugging you close. "I had fun." You tense a little at the sound of their voice despite there being more people besides Toriel, Brenda, or you around; how often selective mutism kept them from saying things out loud in front of other people made their voice a rare thing to hear in public, no matter how small the crowd was. It's only when they're alone with you or people of trust that they have the courage to speak up out loud -- a rare case was Frisk being capable of talking with Bubbles regardless of them having met him only once so far, yet you dismiss that one as them having simply gotten along well with him right from the start, rather than associating it with them truly forgiving you and wanting to defend you, as a result. "A- Are you gonna stay here, then? It's raining a lot!"

"I believe they have no other choice, dear," Toriel intervenes, easing out the tension left from your earlier conversation, still unfinished. 

She arrives next to you; a set of clothes are held out in her hands, these neatly folded and accompanied by some soap, a towel, and a roll-on deodorant. "(L/N) was waiting for the skies to clear up, but the rain and the floods have made it near impossible for any of us to leave this house." You set Frisk down and take the clothes, surprised to see a set of pajamas similar to Toriel's clothing style, and even some (men/women)'s underwear tucked underneath all the other items -- and unused based on the size tag still attached to it. "I am not sure if these sizes will fit you, but those clothes are all spares I keep stored away for guests." She lowers her voice and gets closer to you. "The undergarments are new, of course." She giggles, winking at you afterwards. "The bathroom is upstairs, if you would like to shower now."

You inspect the clothes again, frustration simmering down back to calm as you let your shoulders lessen their stress with a sigh. "Thank you, ma'am."

• • •

Barely two months into knowing the monsters, and you're already staying at their place. While Alphys and Undyne are capable of leaving under the current, wild weather at will if they were to take their needed precautions, neither Frisk nor you can step a foot outside without drawing it back in. The streets are a mess of puddles, nature-made swimming pools, and car alarms going off; the scenery outside is close to that of becoming something of a meteorologist's concern and a scientific anomaly, yet the news and every other information outlet available continues to report it as something of lesser concern than what it is.

As you stare outside, Frisk now resting on your lap, you worry over two things: the lost meeting at your office, and the stranded car belonging to Sans's brother. You comb your fingers through Frisk's hair, using that as a means of entertainment from your worries. They're still sleeping soundly, tired out by both finishing their homework and playing with you at the indoor, mini playground Toriel set up for them.

"I'll pay for any damages to your car as soon as this clears up." You direct your words at Papyrus, who stops gazing outside to face you, looking dazed. His mind looks to be somewhere else, though another squint at your appearance makes him snap out of it.

"That is the least of my concerns now, (L/N)." He smiles at you, leaving the window to crouch next to you, couch occupied with Frisk, Sans, and yourself. "I can go look for it tomorrow morning. And as for whatever damages it gets, I am certain my insurance will look over this case! There have been plenty of reports discussing the damages made by the rain, so it is not my greatest worry." His gaze falls on Frisk, a warmer look reaching his face. "Do you want me to carry them back to bed? It's getting late!"

"It's fine-"

"Please, I insist!"

You smile at his persistence, far more endearing than his older brother's. The thought makes you pay attention back towards Sans, who's still showing signs of exhaustion on his body, slumped over to the corner. His eye sockets are closed, dark circles beginning to show under them. 

"Thank you." You pay attention back to Papyrus, who takes Frisk in his hold, propping them safe with both arms.

You stand up, ready to help out, yet he dismisses your actions with the words, "Stay and chat with Toriel. I assume you both still have plenty to talk about, don't you? You should take this opportunity to talk with her and the other ladies! Perhaps then, you can leave this place with a different perspective by the time the rain stops."

"I will." You nod and watch him leave, carrying your child up in his arms with seemingly no difficulty. His steps fade as so does his figure, leaving you be with Sans sleeping at the couch, the owner of the house by the kitchen, and Undyne and Alphys standing by the living room. The pair's gazes are occupied on the window, carrying a similar expression to Papyrus's from earlier before.

You don't even know how to start up another conversation with the last one having ended poorly, yet try again by using the easiest route possible: going over to Toriel and asking if she needs help with dinner. You stand up and stretch out, legs numb with how long Frisk had been sitting on your lap. It's only fortunate tomorrow's Friday, the beginning of another weekend.

"Can I help with anything?"

Those are the first words you say as you enter the kitchen, greeted by the smell of boiling vegetables and the sound of a knife against a cutting board. Toriel's next to the stove, cutting some carrots, but stopping to look at you. A smile forms on her face, and she nods once, pointing with her gaze at the potatoes resting on the counter next to hers. "Did Frisk go back to sleep?" she asks, facing back at the carrots again, continuing with her work. "I am amazed at how much energy they have, and how little they want to sleep now that they've seen how many people are in this home. It is only when I insist that they need to rest up for the sake of their health that they do so."

While you're not sure if she's being indirect or not, the goat lady's words lead you to assume one thing, and that's Frisk not wanting to waste time sleeping when at the monsters' home. With you, they went out like a light, going to sleep right when you told them to. Only when there was a full house and when family members came to visit did they break that rule, far too excited over the new faces for them to sleep. 

"Papyrus took them back to their room," you reply, reminding yourself not to let your thoughts drift again. "And that's... normal for them, actually." You decide to be truthful with her, following Papyrus's advice. "They usually don't like to sleep when they're too excited about something. Every time my family visits, they're just a big ball of energy and don't sleep until everyone's doing the same." A smile forms at that, a memory from when your ex came to visit Frisk slipping through. "When my, um… ex-husband used to visit, they would stay up late playing games with him. So I guess Frisk feels the same way about you and their other monster friends."

With the potatoes already washed and peeled, all that's left is to cut them and throw them into the pot. You ask her over what size you should cut them, turning your back to her again when you're given an answer. "Is there anything you would like to ask me about, (L/N)?" Toriel asks, speaking in between cuts. "If there is any doubt you have over me, and even over Dreemurr, Sans, and others I know well, I can inform you about it. But as for things that are personal, that is up to them."

Thunder crashes at the nearby window just as you're slicing, finger almost ending up in the same condition as the potatoes, but prevented by your reflexes. The lights go out on par with another loud blast of lightning, plenty more violent than the first one. 

"Goodness!" you hear Toriel say. 

You follow the sound of her voice to see a sphere of flames held up in her hand; it reveals her face, now furrowed with worry. "Are you alright?"

"I'm alright." You set the knife aside and join her side, following her orders when she informs you there are candles on the bottom drawer beside her. You act quickly, taking them out and lighting them up with the help of her fire magic. "Are you?"

She nods, a gentle look crossing her. "We should go check on the others." Her gaze points back at the drawer, left open. "Could you bring more of those?"

"Of course, ma'am."

You take the emptiest box of the three and follow her out of the kitchen.

Your surroundings are now left pitch dark except for a bright and glowing, blue spear held out by Undyne, Alphys standing next to her. A tall figure holding up a smaller one can be seen near the couch, people who you assume are Papyrus and Frisk based on who's the only one left to find. "Has anyone seen Sans?" Papyrus asks, fret tracing his voice. "He's not on the couch anymore!"

Looking to where he points at, you see he's right. The couch is empty with the exception of your and Frisk's belongings. Not even a trace of him can be seen left around, making it appear as if he's outright vanished from existence, and not even the dim lighting produced by the candles can aid with tracking him down amongst all the people, objects, and darkness laid around.

While others assemble and call out for Sans as they search through all the rooms they could possibly imagine finding him in, you try to come up with a different solution besides that. Him disappearing was more than unlikely considering he didn't have any magic or energy left in him for teleportation, so you rule that out as a possibility and take a moment to observe your surroundings a bit closer. You look at the couch again, as if still expecting to catch a glimpse of him there despite what you're doing right now. But as fate would have it, your keys pop into your mind when you come across the sight of your suit jacket, umbrella, and all other belongings left behind on a corner of the couch, most of these stored away in a bag or left nearby it. 

Reminded over what your car keys have attached to them, you go look for them, bumping into someone right as you're about to make it there. 

You wobble and -- at the feeling of losing balance -- you act fast. You break your own fall and later grab onto the person to prevent them from falling, though you don't need to do much when you notice their height doesn't reach that much higher than your chest. Add to that your sturdier body helping with breaking the fall, and you've managed to stop the both of you from fully crashing into each other or stumbling to the floor.

You sit down on the couch when you feel you're losing your balance and hold the person upright. You then let go to look through your bag, retrieving the keys and -- along with them -- a small, solar flashlight hanging from it. The light's directed right at the person's face, revealing Sans's, who looks as if caught in a bad deed. 

"Are you okay?" You don't bother over bringing up the fact he face-planted right into your chest, nor that his hands gripped tight onto your waist for support; the sheer sincerity of his surprise at bumping into you makes you assume he hadn't done it on purpose.

"I'm, uh… I'm fine." His words are just as spacey as his gaze, and his irises point at the floor for a second, spacing off yet again. "Sorry about that." He sits right beside you on the couch, facing up to meet with your eyes. "I was gonna check up on the ceiling since it's rainin' so hard. Kinda looks like it'll start leakin' soon."

Thunder strikes again, sending the monster back into your hold. His hands grip onto your shirt next as he freezes up in place, just before he can get to reveal the true meaning over his disappearance.

"Are you… Are you scared over this?" You try to push down your amusement, yet are unable to when you see his grip is tight enough to remind you of a cat being frightened. 

When another one strikes, louder than the rest, you bring up another question while biting back a smile. "Is it… Is it the noise?" He tenses up even more, encouraging you to bring him closer, his current proximity far different from his attempts at flirting with you. "Sans." You call out his name, attempting to snap him out of it. "What's wrong? You're as cold as ice!"

He doesn't react, though you can feel him shake and shiver under your hold. You look down at him to see his eye sockets are tightly shut. How much he's scooted closer makes him sit on your lap, though his smaller figure helps you with keeping him safe and balanced in your hold. 

As you keep him that way, you can only ask yourself one thing:

Would you come off as an insensitive jerk if you decided to tease him over this in the future?

At the sound of a louder crash, the skeleton's unresponsive, caught up in his fear.

...Or would it work best not to take that risk?

For the time being, you hold him closer. 

The feeling of everyone's eyes on you surges when you move your eyes away from the skeleton to look around you. In contrast, you see Papyrus and Frisk too busy playing with a candle to notice what's happening, along with Toriel having all her attention on lighting more candles. It's only Alphys and Undyne who take notice, both their faces equally enlightened by what's unfolding on the couch. They look ready to yap their mouths off over the situation between you and the one clinging onto you, yet one sharp look of caution at the two keeps them from saying anything risky about it.

Whether they knew about Sans's fear you didn't know about, and whether he wanted it to be known you weren't aware of, either. For now, you hold him close, trying your best to ignore the women's stares and waiting until Sans snaps out of it. His hold on you's firm and close, needful and impartial as the thunderstorm continues to gain strength.

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[goldenkamuyhunting]

I was reading your latest post. Does Ienaga not use gendered pronouns to refer to herself? Or are they ambiguous and you decided to use male pronouns?

Actually...

I stared at this ask blinking like an idiot for a while because, as far as I’m involved, I gender Ienaga as female and it was a while I didn’t write about her so I couldn’t understand what where you talking about and I feared I messed up pronouns again (in my mother tongue we tend to skip them... as a result my use of them in English is... messy to say the least and I have to go through the text twice to make sure I have put them in and put them correctly) until it clicked in.

The convicts list post.

Sorry, I didn’t think at it because the old part is copypasted by the first list I made.

That one... is  a bit of a special case.

Anyway sorry for the digression and let’s deal with your ask.

One of the most terrible problems of dealing with Japanese text is that Japanese is gendered in ways that are different from English (or my own mother tongue)... and manga/anime not necessarily use the most common speech (you can find in manga/anime a large amount of character using ‘ore’, which is actually not so common if you go in Japan).

Back to the problem at hand...

PREMISE

If someone has further information I welcome them wholeheartedly. What follows is what I’ve been able to find and what I’ve asked other people with better Japanese knowledge to check for me (but I couldn’t really demand an in deep analysis of the story from them so something could have gone missing) but this was also some time ago so more material could have come up. Or something could have gone missing or understood wrong. Whatever. If you’ve new INFO just please share.

So now, let’s start.

From what I could find Ienaga uses ‘Watashi’ (わたし/私 “I”).

‘Watashi’ can be used by females (Asirpa, the first client Ienaga had, Umeko, Inkarmat, Sofia (when her Russian dialogues are translated in Japanese)), but also by males (Hijikata, Makanakkuru, Nagakura, Tsurumi [who alternates it with ‘ore’], Sugimoto’s dad).

Long story short... it tells us nothing as it can be used by both sexes as it’s a first person pronoun that merely remarks a certain formality and politeness, which is kind of mandatory in female speech but can also be used in male speech (hence the many males who use it).

I don’t really like to say Noda had Ienaga use ‘watashi’ to make Ienaga’s gender ambiguous.

Ienaga, from the little I could notice and from what I’ve been told, uses usually formal speech (Ienaga also tends to use ‘anata’ to say “you”, or name + ‘-san’ which again, is formal), which just fits with Ienaga, who’s a doctor (and who, to become one should have come from a family well off that could pay all the studies required to get a degree), therefore likely formal speech was the norm to Ienaga.

Are there other things we can use to know if Ienaga defines as male or female?

Well, when working as the ‘Sapporo Murder Hotel’ Ienaga says to her customers ‘Okami no Ienaga... tomōshimasu’ (女将の家永... と申します “My name is... Ienaga, the proprietress”).

‘Okami’ is gendered, it’s a female noun but in that setting Ienaga is disguising as a the hotel’s owners’ son’s widow, so it doesn’t tell us much.

I couldn’t find Ienaga using another gendered noun that we could use to gather if Ienaga identifies as female or as male.

Again this isn’t necessarily a deliberate attempt at keeping things ambiguous, the same would apply for many other characters, we just don’t realize it because we’re confident we know which is their gender because they all present themselves in a way that conforms with the expectations we’ve for them completely or, at least, enough we’re confident they are what’s written on the tin.

On an interesting note multiple characters, when not saying just ‘Ienaga’/‘Ienaga-san’, have referred to her as ‘Jijī’ (ジジイ “Old man”) which is a gendered male noun also in situations where they didn’t need to be rude, with no one correcting them, which seems to imply they weren’t told to address to Ienaga using female nouns.

This might mean Ienaga didn’t ask to be addressed as female.

There’s to say that although Ienaga is always listed as “Ienaga Kano” or, at best “Ienaga Kano (Chikanobu)”, Noda, in a Q&A, said that ‘Kano’ is Ienaga’s ‘gimei’ (偽名 “alias/false name”) and that her ‘honmyō’ (本名 “true name”) is ‘Chikanobu’.

Long story short it’s entirely possible Ienaga continued to present herself as Chikanobu, a male, wearing a female disguise, ‘Kano’, while among the Hijikata group.

This seems to be confirmed by the fanbook which says:

‘Ikken suru to zetsuyo no bijo daga, Hijikata ya Nagakura ni yowai chikai dansei de aru.’

一見すると絶世の美女だが、土方や永倉に齢近い男性である。

‘At first glance, (Ienaga) is a beautiful woman, but (in truth) is a man who is close in age to Hijikata and Nagakura.’

I might have of course missed something, there’s plenty of Japanese text in the fanbook but that’s what I could find.

Men who dressed as females but didn’t identify as such had existed and still exist, so it’s possible this is what Noda was aiming to get when he created Ienaga.

When talking with Ushiyama Ienaga says ‘Ushiyama... you’ve spent your life honing your body, so I’m sure you can understand... when I was young I was so strong and so beautiful. I was even willing to steal from others just to cling to that old, perfect me. What about you, Ushiyama? How long has it been since you were perfect?’

This seems to imply Ienaga’s goals were to have back youth, beauty and strength so as to be perfect again.

The body parts she eat come from both males and females so it doesn’t seem there’s a special tie to a specific gender, but they’re chosen for their purposes, like eating Ogata’s eyes because they can see well, or Asirpa’s eyes because they’re beautiful.

So, if anything, Noda defined Ienaga as a male.

Of course an argument could be made that Noda is talking only of the sex and not of the gender, which might lead people to decide ‘he’ isn’t the right pronoun to use and to go for ‘she’ or ‘they’ when talking about Ienaga.

It’s really up to everyone.

As far as my current interpretation goes I say that I believe Ienaga lived as Chikanobu, a male, and identified as such, up until there was the big convict escape. Then ‘Kano’ was created, at first as a disguise... but ultimately ‘Kano’ slowly became Ienaga’s true identity.

Ienaga’s goals are told twice, once in the Ienaga’s arc and those are just going back to being ‘strong and beautiful and perfect’ but the other time is during the ‘Inkarmat’s escape’ arc. Ienaga actually strived after her mother, she wanted to become her, perfection for her was ‘getting pregnant and able to give birth’, not just getting ‘strong and young’.

Inkarmat will become perfect because she’ll give birth, not because she’s young.

There’s no mention Ienaga used to dress as a woman before becoming a convict (we’re told Heita occasionally behaved like a woman while in prison but nothing about Ienaga acting as such), yet the ‘Kano’ disguise isn’t discharged when she’s captured by Tsurumi.

I think that’s because by then Kano wasn’t anymore a disguise, it was her and Chikanobu was no more. Maybe, if Ienaga had managed to help Inkarmat to give birth to her baby, this could have helped her further. Part of her denial of identifying as a female was probably due to society expectations but part was also self imposed.

The image of a woman as someone who gives birth was something that was even stronger back then than it is now. Ienaga knew she could never give birth and in her mind this took shape as her never being able to become a woman.

Of course though, this is just my interpretation of how things went for Ienaga, of how for her the story of GK was just a travel toward accepting who she really was and the fact she realized she was Kano happened late in her life didn’t make it less true.

The fanbook doesn’t cover the whole of GK, it more or less stop at chap 224, with Boutarou’s apparition. Characters like Tomoharu or Tanigaki’s daughter aren’t included, so Noda’s description of Ienaga could have been very well not updated to chap 229.

On the other side I can very well be wrong and Ienaga be meant to be just a man who likes to dress as a female... and others might even see Ienaga as someone who’s agender or just be more confortable with genderless pronouns.

Currently there’s enough ground for each of those possibilities... unless someone found info I’m missing.

I’ve no idea where the Japanese fandom stands in this situation and how they view Ienaga... but for them the problem might be simple because they don’t have to use gendered pronouns, so they can comfortably and respectfully discuss of Ienaga without having to discuss about which pronoun they should use.

Still, if someone has info on how they view Ienaga I would be glad if they were to share it. As they deal solely with the original text they surely have a better grasp on it than what I can ever hope to get.

Back to the convict post... that one was poorly worded, yes. Back in the far past that was meant to be a note just for myself saying something along the line of ‘Ienaga Chikanobu’s crime was...’ and so on for all the others and since even back then I believed as long as she had been Chikanobu Ienaga gendered herself as male the sentence was gendered as such. Then the notes were modified and rearranged so as to fit it in the convict post but my not English speaking brain didn’t realize with the changes I made that sentence would become confusing due to the pronoun which now seemed to refer to Ienaga Kano.

Sorry about that and thank you for the head up.

[addicted-sunshine-blog]

Brahms x Reader

NSFW- NFF. Reader is wearing a skirt and lip balm, but other then that is mostly gender neutral.

I should really be doing my math homework.

anyone know how to do calculus?

It had started out simple enough, really. You had moved to the UK- freshly graduated with a Masters’ in Biology (one of the degrees that would let you get a jobs in almost anything- your mom had promised) And were ready to take on the world with all the new and exciting career opportunities that awaited you. But days soon turned into months and when the employment opportunities remained stagnant, you sought employment in other forms. 

It had been a simple job posting that caught your attention- a nanny job in the UK; Live-in, full salary, taking care of a young boy of about 8 years old, named Brahms. You had always considered yourself good with children, they brought smiles to your face and joy in your heart, and while you hadn’t had much experience as a nanny, (previously only working in day care, only being with them for about 6 hours a day.) You saw that there weren’t any other people who applied and figured that it didn’t hurt to apply. Quickly forgetting about it, you had applied to several other childcare options before calling it a day and going to bed.

When you woke up the next day to 3 missed calls and 2 emails from the Heelshires, you were surprised to say the least. They had eagerly accepted your application and had asked you to start as soon as possible. Taken off guard but ecstatic at the prospect of finally being able to make some money, you pushed aside a notion of this being too good to be true and responded with enthusiasm.  A week later you were packing your bags and waving goodbye to the little inn you had been staying at and taking a 3 hour drive into the great British countryside to your new life.

______________________

When you pulled up to the estate, you were in awe at the beauty before you. Well manicured lawn, iron fences in elegant curves, stone work that was right out of a fairy tale book for someone who had grown up in the suburbs. Shaking yourself out of your stupor you had unloaded your car and steeled yourself to meet the parents.

 The story had broken your heart- You had pieced together that something awful had probably happened to the real Brahms, and this was how the parents coped. It was simple courtesy that lead you to stick to the routine the parents had set, knowing that they had entrusted you to a very important task in their minds. Under their watchful eye, you took care of the doll for about a week. You had considered this a sort of ‘trial run’ in their minds (after hearing how the last nanny, also from the US, had called them crazy and refused to care for the doll, you didn’t blame them) and you suffered through every prod from Mrs. Heelshire on how to do things ‘properly’, assuring yourself she was just a concerned, traumatized mother who just needed peace of mind. Soon enough, the week was over and the Heelshires left to go on holiday; and it wasn’t until they had pulled out of the drive that you realized they hadn’t mentioned when they’d be back.

 ______

It had been a month of living with Brahms before you had assured yourself that everything was normal. ‘The houses creaked at night’, was an excuse the grocery boy had told you when you had confided in him- flippantly waving his had before changing the subject. (“It’s unprofessional” you threw back at him, miffed at being dismissed so easily, in response to his flirting.) A month of convincing yourself that this was all in your head- that this really was you just adjusting to life on your own. you found the routine the Heelshires had put in place helped, actually. It kept the day structured and short, and let you pass the time. (It wasn’t a burden, actually. You got to re-read old classics, and during music you’d practice sketching and drawing whatever crossed your mind. Even if you misplaced a few loose leaf sketches now and then- it was peaceful) A month passed in the blink of an eye- and before you knew it, you were celebrating a month anniversary with Brahms with a small cake you had asked Malcom to pick up.

It took a month and a day for you to see the real Brahms.

______________

The day had started like any other- you got up and followed the schedule to a T- and after a particularly nice reading session, you had found yourself kissing the doll’s cheek in fondness. Thankful for the peaceful life you were now living, and struck with a sudden rush of happiness- you gave the doll a hug. Noticing the smear your lip balm had left on his porcelain cheek, however, had made you realize how foolish you were being- so you quickly got up to get a napkin to wipe off the stain.

You had left a doll, and walked back to a man.

walking back from the kitchen, you clamped  down the jolt of shock telling you to run run run- you had frozen in place and engaged in a staring contest with the man- neither of you moving until he slowly lifted his had to point at his cheek- the same place you had kissed the doll- and said in a childs voice:

“I want another kiss, please.”

~~~~~~

After Brahms had officially met you a month ago- you had modified the schedule a little to fit the- well, man that Brahms had become. (the doll had mysteriously vanished, only to appear again when he wanted to disappear into the walls again)  Brahms was shocking in his own right- but you had felt more then a little relived that you weren’t actually going crazy, and that had helped you take things more in stride. Brahms still behaved like a child, so you kept a watchful eye over him most of the time. Brahms also loved touching you- it seemed like living in the walls had deprived him of some much needed human touch- touch you were happy to provide in exchange for Bathing and all around hygiene approval.

You had tried your best to bring Brahms to the present day- spending some of your weekly allowance on a much needed internet connection- and a tablet for Brahms to surf the web on. While he still had a mostly limited vocabulary, he could still read and write, and you gave him a few hours a day to surf the web to his heart’s content, answering any questions he might have had.

And then he had found porn.

It had been a major oversight on your part- forgetting to put a parent filter on the tablet- but it simply had slipped your mind between setting up an internet router on your own and reading up on how best to deal with a man who behaved like a child.  It hadn’t been until a few days ago that you were made aware of his knew knowledge.

You had been sitting at the table for lunch when he had spoken up

“I want to…. Fuck.” He had said, rolling the word around his mouth, getting used to it. You had immediately choked on your juice, coughing for a minute before asking what he meant

“Brahms! First of all you shouldn’t use that kind of language, and secondly how do you know about-“ you had cut yourself off, blushing, not wanting to say the word.

“Fucking.” He replied, almost cheekily. His eyes never leaving you, making you flush to the tips of your ears. Avoiding his eyes, You tried to explain that sex- (Not ‘Fucking’ you insisted) was for something between people who both wanted to- that there was a time and place, and that you absolutely should Not talk about it in public, with people you lived with. All the while, he stared at you, head cocking slightly at your explanation, but remained quiet.

“….Okay” he had said quietly, finishing his breakfast before going to the study for music time while you finished dishes.

That conversation had led to you being on edge, knowing that Brahms wouldn’t fully drop it- not until he got what he wanted. But after a few days of quiet, you assumed he had grown bored and moved on. 

______________________

Brahms had entered the kitchen while you had been making lunch- nothing out of the ordinary, Brahms liked to watch you cook. You had been cutting lettuce for a salad when Brahms had approached, slightly starling you before you settled back into the chopping rhythm. (him initiating the contact was good, from every article you had read, and you didn’t want to dissuade him) It wasn’t until he had settled close behind you, leering over your shoulder, that you had decided to speak up.

“Brahms, Honey, are you okay?” you asked, trying to calm yourself. When he didn’t reply, you steeled yourself and kept chopping, trying to hurry up and finish lunch so you could have a table between you and Brahms again.

You jumped when you felt hands on your hips, followed by the press of cool ceramic against your neck.

“Brahms!- What” you exclaimed, gripping the knife and edge of the counter, trying to control your racing heart.

“I want to- Fuck.” He said, enunciating by squeezing your hips in hands.

“Brahms!- I told you that-“ before being cut off by his hands running up your sides and squeezing your chest

“You. Want to fuck you.” Brahms said, now pressing his hips into yours, trapping you against the counter. You were in shock, unaware of what to say to dissuade this situation, and a little turned on by being treated so roughly.

“Brahms, we can’t, I’m in charge of you and your parents-“ you tried to reason, trying to shift away from him, Before being cut off by him pressing you into the counter, forcing you to move the bowl of lettuce before you or have your head shoved into it. With a clatter, the knife falls into the sink next to you, along with the bowl. His chest rumbled over you, one hand slipping up from your chest to press down on the back of your neck, pinning you to the counter.

“No.” he said, before laying his chest on top of you before slipping his hand up your skirt. Cursing yourself for wearing a skirt today of all days, you tried to sound firm when you say “Brahms, No. This isn’t okay and-“ but were cut off by a rather harsh roll of his hips.

“No. I’m in charge. I want to play.” He said, before flipping up your skirt and rolling his hips into yours, rutting into your ass with desperate little sounds escaping him.

Trying not to let yourself be carried away- (it had been 2 months with little to no contact with the outside world, and even then, it had been months before that since you got laid. And in all truth, the situation was straight out of one of your fantasies.) you reached out and tried to push his hands off of you, tried to flip your skirt down and take control of the situation- but were swiftly cut off by a bruising force on your wrists, pinning them to the counter while Brahms showed his displeasure with you by biting your shoulder- causing you to gasp out, letting out a high wine at the pain and effectively stopping all protest you might have. You could forget at times how inhumanly strong Brahms was- but in this situation it only amplified the desire that had been coiling in your gut since he had put his hands on your hips.

Brahms seemed satisfied with your submission, and licked your throat and shoulder in a way that seemed sloppy and primal- and made you shiver and the raw need that came off of him. When you didn’t protest he moved to biting- and you could feel him biting bruises and sucking them into dark marks all along your shoulders, yanking your shirt collar to the side to go even further.

He quickly rutted into you, not even bothering to remove any clothes in his way. You were lost in a sensation of hands- roaming up your body, squeezing your hips, roughly grabbing your chest- and were only brought back to the present when Brahms hips started to stutter against yours, until finally he crushed your hips in his hands and stilled.

Oh my.

[sephiwhore]

Ok but literally all the cyberpunk oc questions? LETS GO CHOOM!!! -thosetwistedtales

Bet you didn’t think I’d actually do it >:3 Okay well I technically didn’t, I did skip some of them cause I couldn’t think of anything, I’d already answered it, or the answer was just “no”.

Without further ado I present, All The Questions about Tess, answered under the cut!

— BASICS

full name: Tess Valere

birthday: She has no idea, and for most of her life she didn’t even know birthdays were a thing

gender and pronouns: Female, she/her

nicknames or aliases: V (obviously), her surrogate brother called her Tessa

sexuality: a big ol bisexual

ethnicity: a big ol white girl

affiliations [corporation/gang/themselves/etc]: she grew up on the streets of Heywood, so certain Valentinos would help her out now and again. She’s nowhere near loyal to them, but she’ll try to avoid killing them during jobs

what languages do they speak?: English, conversational Spanish, and she knows a handful of Japanese words

— PERSONALITY

alignment: Chaotic Good, but she dabbles in Chaotic Neutral

color(s) you associate with them: cyan and black and after Johnny comes into her life, red

theme song: Unbreakable by Fireflight

what heavenly virtue would you assign them? Humility

what deadly sin would you assign them? Wrath

what is their biggest strength? Sheer fucking perseverence, mostly fueled by spite

what is their biggest fear? Losing the people she loves, because throughout her life those have been few and far between and she’s lost a good number of them

what is their biggest weakness? Again, the people she loves

are they confident in their abilities? Oh you bet your ass she is, so confident that she stormed Arasaka Tower with nothing but her revolver and her cyberdeck

what is their opinion on cybernetics? They’re a necessary evil. Her brother dealt with cyberpsychosis so in a way she resents cybernetics, but she also knows that you won’t get far as a merc in Night City without a few implants

do they have a good sense of humor? Yes, very dry and sarcastic

how do they cry? When she cries it’s either from rage or panic, very little in between

how do they laugh? Quite subdued, usually the most you’ll get out of her is a hearty chuckle. Very rarely does she go into a full laughing fit

do they smoke? She started smoking after Johnny popped up in her head cause she felt bad for his situation (after she stopped hating him anyway) and figured she could give him this one thing. And now she smokes like a chimney.

do they drink? She’s been dealing with alcohol dependence and borderline alcoholism for half of her life

what kind of drunk are they? As she drinks more it progresses from pretty chill, then VERY affectionate, and then Fightey

do they take any drugs? She knows how she is with alcohol so she avoids drugs like the plague

— COMBAT

preferred weapon: For close/mid-range, a nice beefy revolver (Overture) or Johnny’s Malorian. Long range, a sniper rifle.

combat style [stealth/melee/brute force/etc] Depending on the environment, it’s either stealth with a silenced pistol and lots of quickhacks, a John Wick style headshots-galore shootout, or sniping from a distance

primary stats [ex: intellect] Intelligence and Reflexes

biggest weakness in combat: She sometimes forgets to watch her back, and tends to ignore injuries and see the fight through when retreating would probably be the best course of action

threaten or charm? Depends on the target, she’s great at both

lethal or non-lethal? For corpos, the more malicious gangs (Tygers, Animals, 6th Street), or anyone who has hurt innocents, full lethal. If she’s just infiltrating a warehouse full of workers, non-lethal

leave quietly or send a message? She sends a message WHILE leaving quietly

strategy or improvise? Improvise

— APPEARANCE

hair style and color [is it natural? do they change it a lot?] She has synthhair so she can change the style and color at will (I have no idea if that’s how it actually works but I say it is) but she usually sticks to come kind of short sideshave/undercut in some shade of blue.

eye color: Natural eye color is green, but she usually has black scleras with a red circle

height: I had her at 5’8 until yesterday when I realized ya know what, I want a tall girl. So she’s 6 feet.

describe their body type: Skinny, small tiddies, but still fairly curvy

describe their style: Dark colors, leather jackets, lots of boots (also Johnny’s tank top and aviators)

do they wear makeup? Very smudgey eyeliner. Her upper lip is tattooed black and she usually leaves the bottom one bare

tattoos? any significant ones? Lots of tattoos that I haven’t figured out yet, except fir a modified version of the Valentinos neck tattoo, the V being to honor her brother Ven (she took on the name V to honor him too)

scars? Random ones here and there from random gunshots, stabbings, and other work-related injuries

piercings? A bunch that I can’t remember off the top of my head

cybernetics? Gorilla arms, the charge jump ankle ones, eventually she gets synth lungs as a preventative measure cause of the whole smoking thing

— FAVORITES

favorite place in night city: The streets of Heywood because they’re home to her, despite all the awful memories growing up. After Johnny comes along, she starts to like high places, and she loves to hang out on the patio outside Kerry’s house

favorite tv show and/or movie: She loves horror movies, except ghost one cause she doesn’t believe in ghosts so she just finds them dumb

favorite vehicle. do they prefer cars or motorcycles? Vastly prefers motorcycles, she hasn’t really driven a car much since she was a teenager. Her favorite is Jackie’s Arch.

favorite food: She sees food solely as a source of fuel, she will eat whatever is easiest

favorite drink: Tequila

favorite song: Black Dog :3

favorite type of weather: She LOVES the rain (but the water kind, not the acid kind)

favorite radio station: Vexelstrom, and then Morro Rock cause Samurai :3

favorite pastime: Working out, shooting ranges, Jackie and Vik got her into occasional boxing

— RELATIONSHIPS

what are their parents like? what kind of relationship do they have with your character? She had no memory of her parents and assumes they’re both dead

do they have any other family members? what kind of relationship do they have? She has a “brother”, who she knew only as Vendetta (or V). He found her on the streets and took her in when she was 10, and raised her from then on until he “died” 12 years later. Their relationship was great, despite the fact that he was not a very nice person to everyone else but her. 

who is their closest friend? Of course Jackie, and then Kerry (and Johnny ofc)

who are their other friends if they have them? Nope! :D

what are their exes like? any significant ones? She’s never really had a serious relationship, mostly just flings and acquaintances-with-benefits

are they in a relationship? with who and how is it going? Johnny! And it’s uh. Well, ya know.

who are their enemies? She has a passionate hatred for whichever corpo makes cyberpsychosis medication, and for Max Tac cause she sees them as responsible for the loss of her brother. And of course Arasaka.

have they ever lost anyone important to them? Her brother, Jackie, Johnny

would they betray their own morals for their loved ones? Abso-fucking-lutely

have they ever sacrificed something for someone they care about? if so, what? In one of my two canons for her, she gives Johnny her body

— BACKGROUND

where did they grow up in night city? if not from night city, where are they from? The streets of Heywood, then in a shitty apartment in Heywood

how would you describe their childhood? Miserable

were they well-off, poor or somewhere in between when growing up? After Ven took her in, they did have an apartment but because he needed monthly baloperidol (cyberpsycho meds) injections, they were quite poor

what kind of education did they receive? The only real education she ever got was “how to shoot a gun”

what is the biggest lesson they learned growing up? Everything and everyone in the world is going to try its best to destroy you. Destroy it first.

what is their happiest memory? A few weeks after Ven took her in and and it finally hit her, this was real, she had a home, someone that cared for her, and she never had to go hungry again,

what is their most painful memory? Watching her brother, in the middle of a psychotic break, being gunned down. After that it would be saying goodbye to Johnny (in the canon where that happens)

have they kept any meaningful mementos from their past? One of the revolvers she owns was given to her by her brother, and all of her piercings and a couple of her tattoos were done by him so they’re mementos, in a way

is there anything they would change about their past? She would do anything to save her brother.

[lostinthewinterwood]

Past Imperfect

Right, so, uh.  About that letter…

Well, it’s a bit late, but here you go.  I haven’t done much in the way of prompts—the tags themselves are pretty good prompts, I feel, and I… sure did think I had more prompts in my head than are currently present—but I’ve at least consolidated it all in one place!  Sorry it took me so long.

I’ve also requested all these fandoms before, so if you want to see more I’ve written about them check out the fandom-specific request tags for previous letters.

General DNW

non-con/dub-con;

explicit sexual content;

incest (incl. adoptive/chosen family);

a/b/o;

mpreg;

non-canonical permanent major character death;

complete downer endings;

hurt no comfort;

heavy angst;

on-page deliberate self-harm*;

on-page suicide;

gore;

graphic physical trauma;

character bashing;

cringe comedy;

fic-as-writer-soapbox;

fic that’s all about real-world bigotries or real-world politics;

canon-typical 2020;

unrequested full-setting AUs;

unrequested identity headcanons;

unrequested romance as the main plot.

*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.

  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, though not as a fetish thing—that I enjoy less.

– Time travel and time loops are always fun (as i say for every exchange, but it’s a little obvious here innit)

– 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

– Canon-divergence AUs and missing scenes; things set pre- or post-canon; wriggling into canon and poking at it to see what it spits back at you, if that description makes any sense at all.

   Mother of Learning - nobody103 

Fanfiction – Relationship

·       Group: Zorian Kazinski & Zach Noveda (Mother of Learning)

·       Group: Raynie & Kiana (Mother of Learning)

·       Group: Kirielle Kazinski & Zorian Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

·       Kirielle Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

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

 ·       Canon Characters Meet Too Many Meddlers from the Future

·       Character Gets Stranded With A Past or Future Version of Themselves

·       Character Travels Back to When They Were Still a Massive Jackass

·       different type of time travel than in canon

·       different time traveler(s) than in canon

·       Fixing the Timeline Requires Saving An Enemy

·       Future Character Can't Tell Past Character Their Fate

·       Peggy Sue

·       Physical Time Travel to Past

·       Secret Identity of Loved One Discovered While Stuck in Time Loop

·       Spell goes wrong and results in time travel

·       Stuck In A Time Loop With The Worst Person

·       Time Loop/Groundhog Day - Groundhog Peggy Sue

·       Time Travel Doesn't Work How Characters Think It Does; This Becomes A Problem

·       Time Travel due to a Magical Artefact

·       Time Travel due to a Magical Curse

·       Time travel due to magical artifact breaking

·       Time Travel Fix-it - Time Travelers Disagree On How To Fix The Problem

·       Time Travel For Fun And Profit

·       Time Travel into Body of Past Self Results in Cohabitation

·       Time Travel to Close Causation Circle and Preserve the Present

·       Time travel via magical locale

·       Time Traveller Cannot Reveal Their True Identity

·       Time Travelling Character is Wildly Overpowered

   Star Wars: Rebels 

Fanfiction – Relationship

·       Group: Ahsoka Tano & Darth Vader (SW:R)

·       Group: Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios/Alexsandr Kallus (SW:R)

 Fandom-specific dnw: apologetics for space fascists

 ·       Accidental Time Travel

·       Character from future needs help from past version of beloved

·       Character From Future Tries To Convince Current Enemy To Work Together

·       Character Travels Back to When They Were Still a Massive Jackass

·       Enemies Travel Back In Time Together

·       Enemies-to-Lovers - Time Traveller Must Convince Enemy That They're Lovers in the Future

·       Future Character Can't Tell Past Character Their Fate

·       Peggy Sue

·       Redeemed Villain Travels to Before Their Redemption

·       Time Loop

·       Time Loop - Fixing Character Death

·       Time Loop - Mother of Learning rules and mechanics

·       Time Loop/Groundhog Day - Both Characters Stuck in Loop

·       Time Loop/Groundhog Day - Groundhog Peggy Sue

·       Time Travel Fix-It - Derailing The Bad Guy's Descent Into Evil

·       Time Travel into Body of Past Self Results in Cohabitation

·       Time Travel into Body of Past Self Replacing Past Self

·       Time Travel Through the Force

·       Time Travel to Save Someone

·       Time Travel Via A Spaceship Flying Through A Wormhole

·       Time Traveler Trying to Change the Past is Hampered by Lack of Full Knowledge of the Past

·       Time Traveller Cannot Reveal Their True Identity

    Secret Society of Second-Born Royals (2020) 

Fanfiction – Relationship

·       Any Character

o   Group: Catherine & Eleanor & Sam (SSoSBR)

o   Group: January & Matteo & Roxana & Sam & Tuma (SSoSBR)

o   Group: Sam & Eleanor (SSoSBR)

o   Group: Sam & January (SSoSBR)

o   Group: Sam & Mike Kleinberg (SSoSBR)

o   Group: Sam/January (SSoSBR)

o   Eleanor (Secret Society of Second-Born Royals)

o   January (Secret Society of Second-Born Royals)

o   Sam (Secret Society of Second-Born Royals)

 Fandom-specific dnw: January as purely, irredeemably evil; absolute monarchy as unambiguously purely good.

Fandom-specific note: since I’d be super down for politics if they’re the politics of Illyria or the other countries the kids are from, it would be a bit silly to fully dnw real-world politics in this real-world-adjacent setting. Don’t worry about referencing real politics if that’s where you go with your fic; however, I would rather any focused-on politics be filtered through the context of the fictional countries the film uses, and please don’t reference real-world American politics post-2015.  “unrequested full setting aus” dnw has been modified to “unrequested mundane aus” so if you want to, idk, put them in a fairytale au or a sports-but-still-have-powers au or something—go right ahead.

 ·       Character From Future Tries To Convince Current Enemy To Work Together

·       Enemies Travel Back In Time Together

·       Enemies-to-Lovers - Time Traveller Must Convince Enemy That They're Lovers in the Future

·       Redeemed Villain Travels to Before Their Redemption

·       Secret Identity of Loved One Discovered While Stuck in Time Loop

·       Stuck In A Time Loop With The Worst Person

·       Time Loop

·       Time Loop - Character and Enemy Are the Only People Aware of Looping

·       Time Loop - Enemies Have To Work Together To Solve The Loop

·       Time Loop - Intentionally Created for Problem Solving

·       Time Loop - Looping character trying to save another character's life

·       Time Loop - Mother of Learning rules and mechanics

·       Time Travel Fix-It - Altering Canon or Backstory

·       Time Travel Fix-It - Derailing The Bad Guy's Descent Into Evil

·       Time Travel Fix-It - Seducing the Villain to Save the World/Timeline

·       Time Travel Fix-it - Team Trying To Fix The Problem Together

·       Time Travel Fix-it - Time Travelers Disagree On How To Fix The Problem

·       Time travel to secretly visit deceased loved one

·       Time Traveller Cannot Reveal Their True Identity

·       Time Travelling Character is Wildly Overpowered

    Original Work 

Fanfiction – Relationship

·       Group: Child Superhero & Their Concerned Supervillain Nemesis (OW)

·       Group: Male Student Mage Disguised as a Girl/Female Fellow Student Mage (OW)

·       Group: Male Student Mage Disguised as a Girl & Female Fellow Student Mage (OW)

·       Group: Male Student Mage Disguised as a Girl/Female Student Warrior Disguised as a Boy (OW)

·       Group: Male Student Mage Disguised as a Girl & Female Student Warrior Disguised as a Boy (OW)

·       Group: Male Student Mage Disguised as a Girl & Male Student Warrior (OW)

·       Group: Male Student Mage Disguised as a Girl & His Older Female Mentor (OW)

·       Group: Spellsword Mercenary & Mathemagician (OW)

·       Junior Priestess with Unusually Strong Magic (OW)

 fandom-specific dnw: age gaps in ships of more than 3 or so years when one character is underage; predatory manipulation between characters in the relationship in service of the relationship–if characters are manipulating each other for non-relationship things and such that’s okay, but i’d rather both parties in any of the ships be interested in the romance of their own accord. Additionally, please don’t have characters react to any gender-disguised characters (or characters in general, but it’s most relevant to them) in transphobic or transphobic-adjacent ways (i.e. none of the characters are requested as trans, but I still wouldn’t want to see the kinds of comments people make about trans people aimed at them). I’d also rather not see any kind of serious relationship with at least one character disguising their gender pre-reveal of that disguise–flirting, starting to date a little is okay but if it’s going further please have them reveal it. Please don’t play into the idea of gender-disguised character as “trap”.  If actual trans characters are present, then some transphobia isn’t a hard dnw—my gift in Heart Attack didn’t bother me at all.

also dnw characters requested as gender-disguised to be written as trans or to be written as absolutely loathing their disguise. other characters are fair game. if writing trans characters, dnw them to be explicitly nondysphoric (but not addressing it is fine).

…in my signup I alleged that there was some expansion to be had here, but I honestly have absolutely no idea what I was planning to write.  Sorry about that.

fandom-specific note: the “setting au” dnw obviously does not apply here; my typical “identity headcanon” au dnw has been replaced by a dnw for “marginalized identities as the main focus of a fic” since there isn’t exactly a canon here lol.

 ·       Accidentally Becoming a Famous Historical Figure Through Time Travel

·       Adjusting to a Different Era

·       Backwards Time Traveler Realizes They've Become a True Seer

·       Character Gets Stranded With A Past or Future Version of Themselves

·       Character Has Control of Mental Time Travel and Uses It to Save Scum

·       Character Meets Their Child Self

·       Character Travels Back to When They Were Still a Massive Jackass

·       Making friends with a past version of an enemy

·       One character likes other character's past self way more than they expected

·       Peggy Sue

·       Redeemed Villain Travels to Before Their Redemption

·       Secret Identity of Loved One Discovered While Stuck in Time Loop

·       Spell goes wrong and results in time travel

·       Stuck In A Time Loop With The Worst Person

·       Time Loop - Character and Enemy Are the Only People Aware of Looping

·       Time Loop - Enemies Have To Work Together To Solve The Loop

·       Time Loop - Mother of Learning rules and mechanics

·       Time Loop/Groundhog Day - Both Characters Stuck in Loop

·       Time Loop/Groundhog Day - Groundhog Peggy Sue

·       Time Travel - Cannot get back to own time period

·       Time Travel due to a Magical Artefact

·       Time Travel due to a Magical Curse

·       Time travel due to magical artifact breaking

·       Time Travel Fix-It - Derailing The Bad Guy's Descent Into Evil

·       Time Travel for Historical Research

·       Time Travel to Close Causation Circle and Preserve the Present

·       Time travel via magical locale

·       Time Traveler Must Pretend To Be Identical Looking Family Member

·       Time traveler stranded in past has to take the long way back to their correct time

·       Time Traveler Trying to Change the Past is Hampered by Lack of Full Knowledge of the Past

·       Time Traveller Cannot Reveal Their True Identity

·       Time Travelling Character is Wildly Overpowered

·       Year Inside Hour Outside

[trxxrpg]

Welcome, Lucent “Lucky” Lachlan to Tabula Rasa, He kind of looks a lot like Domhnall Gleeson please submit your character account within 24hrs

OUT OF CHARACTER NAME/NICKNAME/ALIAS: Slowner

AGE: 24

TIMEZONE: PST.

EXPERIENCE: Too damn long. 11-12 years. Started roughly when I was 11, writing my own stories and miniature novels. That progressed into literature based roleplays by the time I was 13.

IN CHARACTER CHARACTER NAME: Lucent “Lucky” Lachlan - His name directly translates into “Glowing”, “Radiant” and “Dauntless” in three separate languages, Spanish, Italian(Luciento) and Latin (Lucentine).

CHARACTER AGE: Roughly 26, doesn’t actually know his exact age due to being orphaned before any legal paperwork had been filed on him.

FACECLAIM: Domhnall Gleeson

GENDER: He’s a male.

SPECIES: They are a hybrid between a supernatural male being and a human female.

SUBSPECIES: Leprechaun

TRAITS: +++ Lucky, + Economically Inclined, + Efficient — Cocky, -Cheeky, -Coy (yes; those are all synonyms, no; you can’t complain.)

SKILL SETS: Lucent’s Luck is supernaturally modified by his Leprechaun heritage. Despite being a hybrid, most of Lucent’s biology and genetics were gained from his father - Resulting in a fairly potent and consistent stream of “Jackpot” style luck being present in Lucky’s life. These occurences are what ultimately earned him his monicre. Much like Domino from Marvel, Lucky’s luck is much more versatile than one would be lead to believe at surface level. In a practical sense, Lucent’s luck can provide a tangible and realistic field of awareness around him. Like a sphere of aura or energy, Lucky supernaturally and subconsciously affects reality to tilt the outcomes of events in his favor. From things as simple as rolling the right dice to something as elaborate as allowing one of his guards to be positioned in the perfect spot to cover his own blindspots. To be clear - A leprechaun’s luck affects observable reality to skew the chances of something happening or not happening. It affects people, places, things and thoughts on a nearly impossible to perceive level. Only someone who spends a lengthy and recurring amount of time in close vicinity to Lucky would begin to slowly begin to grow suspicious of how the man always seems to come out on top of any situation. Its uncanny and unsettling to some, but the ultimate ace up your sleeve to others.

Examples of “Luck” affecting outcomes: -Lucky is accosted by an aggressor, who mis-identifies him almost immediately as someone else, or said aggressor simply would trip over a crack in the pavement and fall flat on their face unconscious. -Lucky walks into a car lot and is told he is the 10,000 customer and is granted a free car. -In a fight, Luck is enough to see that Lucent dodges an attack completely or is able to misplace a normally fatal attack to a non-fatal area. A punch from Lucky, while being a punch from a biological human - Is packed with the physical manifestation of his ‘Jackpot’ - meaning if he hasn’t used his luck it becomes stronger. Since Lucent is not aware of himself being a Leprechaun, he wouldn’t be able to actively use or NOT USE his powers; Resulting in his luck averaging out to be noteably higher than other supernatural beings, but not high enough to garner Lucky any interest in most people’s eyes.

*His luck isn’t a slight tilt of the pinball machine, It turns the damn thing upside down.*

QUOTE/LYRICS: Personal: “Feelin’ lucky?” Philosophical: “Live for the moment lest you lose it forever.”

WRITING SAMPLE CHARACTER BACKGROUND: (I add bits of his background into the actual IC writing sample at the end of this app. I will mainly focus on the ideas and themes prevalent in his background in this section as we have discussed a lot about Lucky in person already.)

*Lucky was orphaned as a child. This results in him having severe trust issues, to constantly suspect people of betraying or abandoning him and generally results in his intolerant nature. If you can think of a young, impulsive irishman that is willing to headbut his way through things, that’s lucky in a nutshell. Hailing from Ireland, this is only further exasperating his short temper and spitfirey nature. He is mildly alcoholic and drinks as a coping mechanism for his depression and anxiety. He started drinking at 14. His mother left him on the steps of a wealthy businessman and politician’s estate. This decision ends up playing out amazingly in Lucent’s favor. At the age of 20 his adoptive parents pass away peacefully of old age and leave everything in their estate and portfolios to their son. Within 6 years Lucent would establish himself in the eyes of the public as a successful businessman and philanthropist. His casinos are widely considered the best around the globe and his name is often touted about in circles of celebrities and other high profile types. It stands reason that anyone with a gambling background would know of Lucky when he arrives. His opening ceremonies generate a rather large buzz, including celebrity style red carpet treatment and a “quality higher than anywhere else” guarantee. All of his employees seem happy and well paid. At least half of his success can be directly attributed to his supernatural luck, though it is worth noting that the man himself is also incredibly adept at getting what he wants from others.

CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY: Lucky is a half-leprechaun half-human hybrid. This means that he naturally retains the tenacity and adaptability of humanity as well as the deeply invested cultural beliefs and respects of an irish leprechaun. Honesty, loyalty and respect are what dictate his relationships and interactions with others. If people prove civil and abide by Lucent’s prestigious establishment’s rules then he generally is a kind and agreeable man.

However, Lucky is also a man with little to no patience for upsets to his perceived norm. People that stand out or rebel against his jurisdictions often get to meet the unpleasant side of him, a side that is fully aware of how deep the influence of his economical and societal status has. One might assume him a 'control freak’ on a surface level, but in reality Lucent simply has a plan in mind for how he wants things to go and gets frustrated when that plan is willfully ignored by others. As long as they do what is expected of their station or position, Lucent often lets his employees operate at a casual and comfortable pace - believing it instills a healthy work ethic and loyalty among his employees which shows to be effective as there have never been any scandals or secrets revealed about him or his organization.

Lucky runs a chain of Casinos with locations in popular tourist sites - His most recent endeavor has chosen Tabula Rasa as it’s destination. Lucky aims to bring the full experience of one of his casinos to the sanctioned city of Tabula Rasa. Why did he choose a city with unique political ties and perhaps abstinations due to it’s sovereignty? That much is simple - Lucky sees it as a ripe opportunity to perform two tasks simultaneously.

ONE: Open a casino in a predominantly supernatural economy, see how much money he can squeeze out of the 400-500 year old vampires with long lasting economic ties ;D or the werewolves that probably have drug money and fight ring money up the wazzooo. It’s a smart business decision.

Two: Lucky will have privatized cameras monitoring the internals of his casino. Potentially even some of the rentable rooms/suites. That’s right, Lucky may be planning to blackmail people if spicy shenanigans go down in his place of business. In addition to this, he has received contracts from several television companies wishing to get “an inside view” of the functionings of the supernatural city.

PARAGRAPH SAMPLE: Raindrops spattering against the blacktop, falling like tears from the very sky itself as a cradle lay at the foot of a door; mewling and balling - crying out into the cold, dark, unloving world. A child was orphaned that night, left alone without a mother or father by a woman weeping as she fled her shame. The shackles of guilt too much for her to bear she only hoped she could replace with the comfort of knowing she had picked a good home for her son. She didn’t look back, didn’t turn to have one last look at her child; for she knew that if she had, she would’ve ran back to him sobbing and begging for his forgiveness.

Or at least that’s how he liked to think it went. Cubes of ice stacked in fours clattered as they were swirled about in the glass clasped gingerly between his thumb, index and middle fingers. The next moment he banished the thought beneath a torrent of whiskey - hoping it was possible to drink oneself into amnesia, this was the typical Friday for the hotheaded irishman. His two-piece suit clung to his body, fitted perfectly to a pristine and refined crisp. Every crease was pressed that morning, both shoes polished independently. This man was dressed far too well to be muckraking at a bar, yet there he sat clanking his glass for another round.

“Again?” Called the bearded man from behind the bar, “That’s your twelfth in under 20. Trying to drown, buddy?”

“No ser, Just tryin’ not te’ think.” He raised his glass with as little effort as humanly possible before setting it back down. It would be then that the man did what every bartender did when serving him, They tried to cut him off. A large hand closed ontop of his glass and slid it from his hand.

“Well you’ll have to go not think somewhere else, you’re disturbing my business.”

“Disturbi- Oh… right.” The red headed male looked to his sides at the barstools full of his entourage; roughly six armed men dressed in deep black suits with verdant green ties and .45’s in their holsters. “Apologies, We’ll just make our leave then.”

And so they did, the seven irishmen stepped out from that establishment and would set out to their true destination - an establishment of their own. A right irish diamond here in the land of the affluent and esteemed. Gone would be the days of hoity toity bars with expectations and back would be the glorious days of pub crawls, brawls and throwing up in every bathroom stall from here to the piers! Though one thought kept rearing it damnable face in the recesses of his mind. And the words that haunted him were spoken in the voice he imagined for her.

“Nothing you do will ever be good enough. No matter how much you achieve, how far you go. You’ll always be undeserving of a mother’s love. Yer a right bastard ye know? Not even I wanted you.” The glass of a mirror in his suite would shatter later that night in response and within the fragments of glass he finally felt like he could see his true self; And he was a broken, bloody, mess of a man.“

[letsrevieweverything]

My Favorite Pokemon (That Aren’t In Sword and Shield) #1

   Pokemon is, at its essence, a franchise based around it’s large number of playable monsters. It’s basically just a simple RPG, but the ability to pick out your favorite  creatures from hundreds of options is what makes it so unique and endearing. While certain Pokemon are pushed as “the main ones” by marketing, it’s still a game where you can choose to surround yourself with only barnacles then have said barnacles save the world. 

   At least, it used to be. As of the release of Sword and Shield, over half of all the Pokemon have been removed from the game. There’s a lot of debate about this and why it was done, and while I will say that I think the game’s designers made the wrong move, I don’t really want to get into that right now. Instead I want to talk about some of my personal favorite Pokemon, monsters that in my opinion (and perhaps only MY opinion) have exceptionally good character designs. Monsters that will not be appearing in the mainline franchise for the foreseeable future, who are at risk of being forgotten entirely if there’s never any demand for them to be put back into the games. Here are my favorite Pokemon (that aren’t in sword and shield), presented in no particular order.

Kricketot and Kricketune

   It love that “Bug” is one of the 18 “elemental” types in Pokemon. It both implies that being a bug is a superpower on par with being able to breath fire or do karate, and also insures that every new generation will give us a handful of bug-based monsters. So let's talk about Kricketot and Kricketune, bugs that exemplify some of the traits common to the type and also some of my absolute favorites.

Kricketot

   Look at this little man. It’s got kirby-like stubby limbs, a big “nose” instead of any visible mouth, a completely blank expression, and best of all it’s stylized to look like it’s wearing a little fancy suit with a big collar. It’s extremely adorable and also looks absolutely nothing like a bug, it’s only bug-like trait being the pleasantly swirly antennae on its head. A small but still substantial number of bug-type Pokemon just look like little humans with bug traits, but Kricketot is such a cute and iconic man-bug that I’m not even upset that it doesn’t look anything like a cricket. In the Pokemon world the closest thing they have to a cricket is just a little buggy humanoid dressed like a musical conductor and that’s wonderful. Still, there’s something else about Kricketot that communicates it’s a bug specifically in the context of Pokemon. It’s bulbous “nose” and beady eyes bear a close resemblance to the face of gen 1’s  bug-type Weedle.

 Weedle was a bee larva with an inexplicable pink “nose” and no mouth (and also sadly another Pokemon we won’t be seeing in Sword and Shield). Right in the first generation Weedle taught us that a mouthless big-nosed face was a valid face for a bug. So by the time we met Kricketot, we were already predisposed to read this cute weird face as a “bug face”. What I’m saying is that Kricketot looks more like a bug if you’re already familiar with Pokemon. It’s design fits right in with the gen 1 aesthetic, just with more details. 

A few last thoughts about Kricketot before we move on;

-My least favorite thing about it’s design is the bit between its antennae, it looks too much like it’s nose and I think the antennae would look more natural if they were just coming straight out of it’s head

-As a kid looking at the pixel art in Pokemon Diamond I perceived it’s collar as being round and fluffy, like a fur scarf. Seeing it as a flat disk for the first time with 3D models was a bit jarring, but ultimately that fits it’s conductor look more.

-Speaking of it’s collar, the females have bigger collars than the males which is probably one of my favorite gender differences in the series because there doesn’t seem to be any biological OR stereotypical reason for it to be that way.

Kricketune

   Look at this thing, really take it all in. It’s a bug but it also resembles a string instrument like a violin or cello, but it also resembles a fancy orchestra man, like the kind of person who would play the cello that it also is. Magnificent. It’s a beautifully balanced medley of bug, object, and concept. It's “mustache”  appears to be made out of modified antennae of it’s pre-evolution, but it also resembles the curly holes on the sides of a violin (sidenote: I just found out those are called f-holes and I don’t know how to feel about that). The antennae on its head look like conductor batons. And best of all, it’s got stabby forelimbs like a praying mantis (or I guess like a Scyther?)  that also act as violin bows so that it can play itself like a violin and also probably skewer it’s prey. Kricketune is objectively very silly, but with those sharp forelimbs, which the pokedex actually describes as “knifelike”, and it’s blank buggy stare it actually looks a bit intimidating under all the stilly stuff. It’s like an ostrich or a hippo; it looks silly from a human viewpoint but it’s actually just a dangerous wild animal that can’t help the fact that it looks like it has a mustache. 

   I suppose now is the time I should mention that it’s not actually based that much on a cricket, but rather a violin beetle (sometimes called the banjo beetle instead, which gives me a great idea for a regional Kricketune variant). It shares its long neck and antennae with the real thing, but there’s so much more to Kricketune’s design that it doesn’t just feel like they plopped a real bug into the game and gave it anime eyes, unlike some other Pokemon. Also given that it’s a musical Pokemon based on a beetle, I think the translators missed the chance to make a rather obvious pun involving the name of a certain famous band. God now I’m really sad we can’t have Kricketune in Galar. Do you think Galar has a sport involving hitting a ball with a bat called “Kricketune”? 

A few last thoughts on Kricketune:

-It’s cry is hilarious and the main thing everyone remembers about this Pokemon, which is too bad because the rest of it is equally hilarious.

-My least favorite part of it’s design is those extra lines on its face. It already has a nose, we don’t need those!

-I just love the color scheme of both of the Kricket-mons. The red, cream and black looks so eye-catching.

And that ends my review of two hilarious and charming bugs we will not be encountering again for the foreseeable future. Goodnight sweet crickets.

[murmeringox]

Making it Divine

Gender dysphoria. Body dysmorphia. These are terms thrown around in the trans community, on the internet, by friends. But what is it? Gender dysphoria is defined by Wikipedia, bastion of common knowledge, as “the distress a person feels due to a mismatch between their gender identity and their sex assigned at birth.” But what does this look like? What does it feel like? Who is gender dysphoria, and how do I know if we’ve met?

Conceivably, gender is the interaction between the human soul, the essence of a person, and their physical body, the body with which they can move about and interact with the world. You may not believe that the soul exists apart from the body, though I do. Perhaps then, this definition will not fit you, your experience. I think that’s fine. I can only speak from what I know, how I walk through the world. The soul, then, would in some sense be genderless. How can the essence of a person have a gender? Every society creates their own gender roles, their own performance of humanity to which people can subscribe or not, and every society is so wondrously different. If we all come from the same source, then who we are must grow from that interaction between the essence of our humanity, that spark of commonality, and the body and space in which we grow up.

That body, then, though it can be betrayal, is still intimately important. Even if we ultimately must modify it for it to be the home to house our personhood, that gap between who we are and what is ascribed to us, perhaps that is gender dysphoria.

I remember, before my body changed and left my personhood behind, or perhaps a better way of thinking about it is, in the time before my body got out ahead of me, when I was a child, no one could tell my gender. Most, upon seeing me, thought I was a boy. I knew this was wrong, and was vehement in my rejection of it, to the point that at 7 my parents got me a shirt that said, “yes I’m a girl, and yes I could kick your butt.” I loved that shirt. It spoke of my strength, and it used a bad word. Although I also remember some secret part of me falling at “girl.” I remember fighting boys in pre-K to prove that I could, that I wasn’t weak. I remember when I suddenly…had breasts. I don’t remember when they grew, although I do remember being taught to hate my body. A teacher calling me smelly, annoying, bad. A body that was changing, becoming abysmal, at the same time I was beginning to doubt myself on a fundamental level, to doubt my knowledge of who I was because my body was disagreeing with me so loudly.

And the only coping mechanism I knew of was eating. Eat my way to happiness, coasting high on the serotonin of processed sugar stuffed into my mouth when no one was looking. Climbing a chair to secretly eat years-old candy canes no one remembered, because it was the only thing in the house. I needed it. To feel good. To feel anything but hate. And as my chest grew, I grew too, hiding a womanhood I never wanted, never should have had, seeking control over my body the only way I knew how. And then later, many years later, when I was fearful and in a different place, far from home, doing the opposite. Starving myself, seeking control in the only way I ever could over this body: through food.

But I still wasn’t aware of the gap. Couldn’t see it. Didn’t realize it was there. Not in my first year of high school, when I changed my name to SJ. To be cooler. (to have a less gendered name.) Not in my last year of high school, when I got a breast reduction. Because of my back pain. (to have smaller breasts, to hide them.) Not when I came out to myself as nonbinary my second year of college, but didn’t really tell anyone and didn’t change my pronouns. (it’s easier this way - no one really has to know.) Not when I came out to my family. (well, nothing really has to change.) Not when I wanted to start using they/them pronouns. (well, a little change). Not when I held my chest in everyday to see what I would look like without breasts at all. (but I don’t need a binder – that’s too far.) Until one day, it wasn’t. And I knew I needed surgery, I needed to regain control of this body that had grown and held me lovingly, but ultimately was not enough to hold my humanity, my essence. Or rather to be the right reflection of who I am, to be the person I see walking through the world, though it was already perfect.

I didn’t know. I didn’t have the words for the hatred I felt, for why I hid my chest. Fpr the gap between who I am and the form I have now. Why I feel uncomfortable giving hugs, feeling my breasts pressed against me. Or wearing swimsuits. Or feeling my chest move when I run. Or jump. Or do anything goofy. Why I don’t want to participate in sports, though I love them, because my body feels weak, with a moving chest that I am always absurdly aware of, that holds me back without my even knowing why or how. For the way I sit hunched over, hiding them. For the clothes I pick, and what I feel confident in. For my favorite part of my chest being the flat place between my breasts, where I can feel my ribs, where I can pretend it is flat all the way across. For the way I hate my lovers touching my breasts, and the way I pretend I don’t because I think I should.

I didn’t know that this IS the gap, made manifest in my bones and in my flesh. Not in my mind or in my soul, those pieces of me that know who I am without words, knowing beyond understanding, past my own mind, into my deepest part. No, this gap between who I am and the body that holds me is in that body itself. That beautiful body, which does so much. So much more than it means to, I think. A programming that no mind strength can overcome, a natural process, that perhaps, if gender is a society writing on a body, would not bother me in another place and time. That perhaps didn’t bother me in another place and time. But which does bother me. Every time I move, see myself, silence myself when I want to be loud, still myself when I want to run and bounce the gap is made manifest. That gap between my self and my body, which sits boldly on my chest.

I am not a man. And frankly, I have no interest in it, though men are wonderful creatures. But neither am I a woman, despite what a stranger looking at me might think. Even as a child, I knew that word was not the right fit for me. My father, who saw my self-hatred and mistook its roots, would always try to gender me, push me lovingly into the safe boxes society had built for him, worried that I was flailing because I was weird, but perhaps could be fixed with his understandings. “You’re turning into a beautiful, young woman.” “You’re almost a young woman.” “What a brilliant, young woman you are.” I remember resisting, saying I am not a young woman. I don’t want to be a young woman. He would smile, or frown, or get angry. He thought he understood. He did not. “But you are.” Beyond my control, a body assigned to me and a gender that came with it, and who I was didn’t matter beyond the form I had.

He was wrong. He didn’t mean to be cruel, confirming something about myself by which I was trapped, that I hated and because I didn’t know why I hated, turned that hatred inward. He would never try to hurt me, I know that. My body remembers though, that he did.

My mother, for her part, viewed this choice, to reject my breasts, as to reject motherhood. “So, you won’t be a mother,” she said when I told her. She doesn’t remember this now, claims that I “heard her say that” because that’s “what I thought she meant.”Because though she said it, it’s not what she meant. But she said it. I remember. My bones do too. I do not reject parenthood, motherhood, fatherhood. I want to raise children. Or perhaps not, if the world ends, but either way these ruined breasts of mine would not give up milk. And they are mine, not my children’s. She would never try to hurt me, I know that.

My sister views it as…perplexing. Confusing. Beyond comprehension. She cannot fathom a life without breasts. But she is, of course, a woman.

As for my brother, I do not know what he thinks.

For me, this is crossing that gap, building a bridge across my personhood, is a movement towards myself, a hand extended to me. If my body is a house it is haunted by the ghost of a young girl and the ghost of a young boy. And the girl is loud, and must constantly come out to greet the guests, and be beat by the world for being so obnoxious. She doesn’t want to be the first one out the door. The young man, he is quiet. He wants to step forward, but no one ever sees him. He is golden, and silent. This is my way of opening the door to him as well, inviting him out into the light, to dance, and be merry with those who visit the house.

To be comfortable, and see my essence reflected in my body, reflected by my world. So that when I am called she, my body does not against my will confirm a title I did not earn and did not want. So that my bones will know, as my heart and mind do, of who I am and who I always was. So that together this skin and flesh of mine can rewrite stories and memories, bring that boyish light out of my childhood and into my present, for that little tomboy, a type of neither boy nor girl, can come back out and play. And play in boy’s clothes and girl’s clothes, my clothes, without confirming anything about me but that I occupy space between. A sacred space. For what is beyond humanity, what is the sacred, but beings beyond gender, a creature that being neither man nor woman, and understanding neither of what one is, is able to be themselves completely and wonderfully? And those beings too, upon seeing the tools which they were given, recognizing that this gift was given in error, and in occupying their place as men and women, refine that space, redesign it, make it more and greater, make it sacred. Those who intimately understand gender, in a way I cannot and never have, and become their highest selves, in beauty. What are trans people, but a taking of this construct called gender and making it divine?

[drink-n-watch]

  Genre : Action, comedy, crime, science-fiction

Episodes: 13 + 3

Studio:

One thing that we can pretty much count on is that as long as humans have working brains, they will try to find ways to mess with them. The latest and most potent way is the designer drug Anthem, which goes way beyond just altering your perceptions, it alters your actual DNA. In fact, if you’re not careful, you could end up as something which is no longer quite human…or just dead. That’s why it’s outlawed! But how do you deal with criminals that are literally superhuman? You send in your “best”! The detectives of the Seven 0 unit risk their lives every day to keep the citizens safe and Anthem off the streets. Don’t call them heroes, they are just doing their jobs. And starting now, Kirill is one of them!

First Anthem is a great name for a drug. It’s poetic, symbolic, easy to say and remember, positive in connotation. I am putting way too much thought into the marketing applications of illegal drugs. Second, that synopsis I just wrote is very accurate and super boring. Don’t go by it. Double Decker is a fun, often very silly show. I kept thinking of Brooklyn 99 if that can give you an idea. But then also of Breaking Bad a little… It’s not as funny as Brooklyn 99 or as well written as Breaking Bad but it makes up for it in weirdness and colour! Double Decker is just a queer little show in the best way. Pun intended!

why did this image seem to fit?

I have to say, the first thing that hit me as soon as I started this series was: whoa the colours! I haven’t been taken by such a sumptuous and prominent colour palette since No Game No Life. I figure this will probably divide viewers somewhat. The colours are rich and bright but they could also be called loud and potentially headache inducing. For me, that pop art palette is a selling point though and I must say my screencaps do not do it justice.

With such an in your face element, it’s sort of difficult to get passed the colours to the rest of the production. If you do though, the second thing you are likely to notice is the CG. The CG is… well, it’s ok. Some episodes are pretty CG heavy and it’s not incorporated as smoothly as it could be. But when used more sparingly it actually creates some very interesting dynamic effects that work well with the high action scenes. It’s actually heavier in the first few episodes and I was worried that it would end up being distracting but the 3D team seems to have found the proper balance as the series wore on and later episodes, which use it more sparingly, actually have some very good CG integration.

I never get tired of the gorgeous skyline

Wow, I really didn’t think I would talk this much about production. Fact is, Double Decker has a very distinctive look to it. Not only for what I’ve mentioned above but in actual design as well. Thankfully, I think the screencaps do a better job of showing those. Like anything that’s unusual, that can be a plus or a minus. I liked it, so it worked for me, if you don’t you may actually find it enough of a turn off to drop the show. This said, the sound is in fact quite good and the voice acting has a lot of chemistry even if individual performances don’t stand out as much.

Alright, so it’s a cool looking show. What else… I’ve come to realize that I am not the best person to review these types of series. What I mean is that I have a real soft spot for goofy action comedies with a criminal element. For instance, I rated much higher than average last year’s Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens. I’m also a big Archer fangirl. It’s a very specific niche that happens to speak to me, so I’m by no means objective in this review.

My review doesn’t make it clear but Travis sort of rules

I enjoyed this show a lot more than the average viewer, so my review is going to show that. But let me tell you why. The underlying organized crime story is in fact pretty solidly thought out. The organizations are described in enough detail to give you a real sense of everything that’s going on and the tension and danger are present despite the generally humorous tone of the series. If you like crime procedurals, there is enough groundwork in the storyline to keep you interested.

 This said I started the series firmly believing this was a mecha show, and for the longest time, I had no idea why. There is a pretty drastic tonal and genre switch that happens in the last few episodes that I did not see coming. It’s not exactly seamless, there is a reason I called this show messy in my title. There are some plot holes and a few contrivances. The story could have used a bit more background to really evolve naturally. But it still works.

 An effort has been put in to tie all the disparate genre elements together and give decent explanations for all the events of the series. Some are a little contrived but the whole thing holds together rather well and when you consider just how nutty things get, that’s pretty impressive, to say the least.

self-awareness is important

Although this isn’t an important element, I feel I should drop a line for all the nontraditional gender and sexual orientation representation in this series. A lot of characters and relationships do not follow social norms but both gender and sexuality are presented as incidental character traits rather than defining ones which I really appreciated. Double Decker is a very accepting show and I found it refreshing. I particularly enjoyed the fact that Kirill, the main character gets mistaken for a woman very regularly and although he is occasionally annoyed and corrects the misconception, in general, he never gets mad about it or considers it an insult or even a joke. It’s more of a catalyst for later events than a running gag. As for the clearly more traditionally masculine female character, it’s never even brought up and her femininity is never questioned despite her imposing physical strength.

 That’s a long paragraph for something I thought was barely worth mentioning. I watched Double Decker in June when questions of sexuality and identity were all around me and I just thought the series presented it particularly well while keeping its sense of humour about it. Kudos.

it’s a long story

The three extra episodes are side stories and slice of life events that happen in the course of the main storyline that for some reason weren’t included in the official season. I actually enjoyed them more and wish there had been more of those asides in the show as they fleshed out the characters beautiful and were just generally fun to watch. This is probably the first time I enjoyed the extras this much.

Overall, Double Decker is a well-made show with more than a few good moments. It’s not perfect and overreaches now and then but it succeeds more often than it fails. In my opinion, it’s worth a look. As the season stays fairly consistent throughout (the two background episodes on Doug and Max are particularly touching though), you should be able to get a good feel for the show from the first few episodes and decide if you want to see the rest. I would watch a second season in a heartbeat.

Side note : the frequent exposed brickwork and apartment interiors in this show were really beautiful. The hipster in me wanted to move there so bad!

so cool!

Favorite character: the narrator

What this anime taught me: modifying a bacterial shell with a virus’ DNA rewriting potential could yield a very powerful drug

Whenever the brain and the heart fight, it’s always the liver that suffers

Suggested drink: Double Decker Daiquiri

Every time Kirill talks to the narrator – take a sip

Every time there are comic book panels – take a sip

Every time anything is censored – gasp!

Every time anyone says Athem – take a deep breath

Every time someone gets called an idiot – get some water

Every time anyone mentions Derick – pour some out

Every time we see a cat – take a sip

Every time we see the King’s Kane – raise your glass

Every time someone gets drunk – join them

Every time anyone calls Kirill feminine – stretch

Every time Doug taps his temple – pay attention

Every time we see a chocolate bar – get a snack

Every time Doug talks about/does laundry – take a sip

Like I said, Double Decker is a very striking show. As usual, I have some more screencaps on imgur or Pinterest. I’m adding just a few here to get your interest!

Double Decker is a Little Messy and a Lot of Fun Genre : Action, comedy, crime, science-fiction Episodes: 13 + 3 Studio: One thing that we can pretty much count on is that as long as humans have working brains, they will try to find ways to mess with them.