#and this person is nonbinary as well like

[wolf0witz]

i have no alterhuman friends soo I wanted to do this myself instead :3

I have a couple of types, primarily a wolf! And less frequent connections with are a cat (fictionkin wise... well I have a couple to lazy to name!)

Actually when I was pretty young, about... 12? I got curious why I kept feeling a "phantom limb" looked it up! Here I am

2 are real, couple others are fictional!

I enjoy being myself, comes to a struggle with self imagery, but yes :3

I honestly? Have no clue, like it that way labels are useless to me personally

I believe in my own version of the Omniverse/multiverse and reincarnation! It does because it also explains how spiritual (some fictionkin types) work!

It's gender is gender

I own a white wolf tail! I don't want much more than that,! (Fictionkin, I own a lot of frisk based merch)

I'm nonbinary, and pansexual!

I experience... shifts I guess? More like feeling as if I'm something else but knowing it (complex oooo..) mainly fictionkinity (Im always a silly doggo)

i end up growling or barking when scared, like when someone scared me I'll jump and go " ARO" ALSo eating habits (fictionkinith Is I can't watch certian media)

(all I feel like answering :3)

Alex's alterhuman ask game!

Reblog this post to let others ask you question(s)!

I tried to make this accesible to all alterhumans.

🌈 - how many _types do you have?

🌌 - when was your awakening?

👾 - is your _type real or fictional?

👽 - do you enjoy being a […] (therian, otherkin, ect. Just put your label here)

🧷 - what's the reason of your identity? You can say that you don't know. (Ex. "My theriantrophy is spiritual)

💚 - what are your beliefs? Does it affect your identity?

⚧️ - does your _type have a different gender/sex than you? Do you even know your _type's gender?

🧤 - do you own any gear? If yes, what is it?

🏳️‍🌈 - are you also a part of the LGBT+ community?

🌚 - do you experience shifts? If yes, what kind of shifts do you experience most often?

🌝 - how does your identity affect your everyday life?

💊 - is your _type more nocturnal or does it prefer daytime?

🤖 - for how long do you know about your identity?

🍁 - do you think that you were born with your identity or has it "started" during your life?

🧸 - does your _type affect your diet?

🛍️ - do you have alterhuman friends? If yes, in real life or in the internet?

🍂 - what is your _type's natural territory/home?

😺 - is your _type an animal?

That's all byeeee :3

[vaingod]

why do you specifically want to play as a girl with a dick? Fallout 4 has preset player avatar mods that make your character nonbinary, I think that is a much better solution for what you want out of your character

cus its cool to play a tgirl character? lol

no offense but im well aware of that mod and while the avatar preset is beautiful, a "flat chested athletic build female" avatar is not at all what i would call a proper solution for nonbinary people to play as tbh

like im trying to read this in good faith but why would a thin toned flat chested woman be something that my fat ass identifies with?? i said i want to play a fat girl with a dick and youre offering me a skinny chick w no dick how does that make sense to you??

ngl this is similar to the way people treat my transition "why do you need phalloplasty when youre very feminine and you can just be masculine and fit and be a completely different person cus itll fit *my* vision of your identity better" like i know this aint that deep but when we are talking about building characters we can identity with and play as we tend to build them close to our image of ourselves, yeah? why then would you recommend something different than what someone wants to play as? im sayin i hate that fallout has no good mods for me or my gf to play a girl with a penis and youre saying "hold on now why not play as a flat chested cis chick", you see the problem we are having here?

[certifiedsexed]

i’m positive you’ve answered this before, but what is a stone identity (if so you can just put a link if you don’t want to explain again)? and is there a more gender neutral term for it? like as in “stone butch” “stone femme” (those are just the two i immediately thought of) but for more gendernonspecific people?

i’m genderfluid, and personally don’t like the labels “enby” and “nonbinary” because of how fast my gender jumps around, like ill feel pretty lenient one day and then everything BUT this one pronoun feels gross and wrong (sometimes nothing feels right and ill seriously contemplate going by no pronouns). it feels sometimes i am within the binary (feeling very masc/manly for example) and then other times nothing can even describe my gender. the closest i can get is “creature” but that’s still far off. so its pretty hard to find terms to describe me sometimes, especially with the two more common gender neutral labels out of the running from the start 😬

thinking i may fall under the stone label because i don’t exactly like the idea of being pleasured myself (in the context of sex with another person), i moreso am interested in pleasuring the other for their reaction/expression. like i don’t even find erogenous zones very appealing but i would adore seeing/making a partner feel good like that, i dunno.

Well, I feel like some of the posts in my #Stone Education tag can explain it better but to put it simply, it's an identity that communicates sexual boundaries.

There's a lot of nuance to it, so take this definition with a grain of salt but for a lot, it means having specific boundaries around receiving/giving sexual touch/pleasure and penetration.

As for a gender neutral version of stone, there's Stone Top and Stone Bottom! What you're describing sounds like Stone Top, where you prefer/only top and don't like receiving sexual pleasure/touch.

By the way, your gender sounds very cool! I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions! <3

[pingintech]

i absolutely agree that trans women are especially harmed and targetted and fear mongered about in ways uniquely horrible to trans women i dont think this is proof that "transandrophobia" isnt "real" tho??? i say it frequently but i will say again i dislike the term transandrophobia personally as its much more accurate to say transmisogyny affects trans masc and nonbinary people as well that said two things can be true especially on a political stage people love to use trans women as cannon fodder for the fear machine and politicians are more likely to aim harmful legislation at them specifically but it is also true transmisogyny effects trans men as well and nonbinary people and intersex people while it is plainly obvious that trans women are front and center in this it is also true that intersex people are front and center in this specifically with the wording of 2 sexes and its also true that these policies will hurt all trans people regardless of gender

i think at this point any tme person who insists on proclaiming that transandrophobia is "real", that mainstream anti-trans political work isn't fundamentally based in transmisogyny first and transphobia second, that TWERFs and other extremists "hate us all equally" - there's really no excuse of ignorance left anymore. you're truly and unequivocally chosing to ignore the reality of the situation to step over trans women for your own self centeredness (at best). we need to seriously work on shaming these people as much as possible the same way we shame transphobic cisgays throwing all of us under the bus.

if you can't read through trump's executive order and not understand how its fundamentally meant to enact state violence on trans women, you are, at very best, a very stupid fucking idiot. but at this point i just assume you're all just transmisogynists at your core as well

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Battle for Fourth

Please be civil in the notes. We will block people if we feel it is necessary. A character being canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included. This is not a competition of who is better representation.

Check out the final poll here.

Eda Clawthorne-The Owl House

Qualifications:

She has a magical chronic disorder which has flare-ups, is mitigated by taking medication (potions), and has similar side effects to many real disorders such as fatigue, greying hair, and physical impairment (drains magic, a natural ability of *most witches). Unlike in other stories however, her condition is NOT ever completely cured. It does evolve and become more manageable over the course of the story, but she still experiences symptoms from it. Eda also loses one of her arms later in the story. She does get a replacement hook, but it is never shown whether she has a functional prosthetic or not. Most likely, she only has one fully functioning arm after this. As for being queer, she is in a relationship with a nonbinary person and is all but confirmed bisexual (has a secret box with the bi flag on it seriously why else would she have this). Also the owl house has a Lot of queer characters in it and I mean. just look at her. I would be surprised if she wasn't queer somehow.

Bisexual, and has a curse that affects her day to day life

Bi & lost arm and has a chronic illness metaphorically

Propaganda:

Has canonically dated both men and a non-binary person. Her curse affects her ability to use magic (and at one point outright stops it), which is very important in witch life. Said curse also causes her body parts to fall off sometimes. Many have said her curse is like a metaphor for depression but really it's more like a magic version of a physical disability (although I wouldn't be surprised if she actually also had depression).

Uuuuh she’s great and stuff idk I can’t propaganda well sorry

Harrowhark Nonagesimus-The Locked Tomb

Qualifications:

She's a lesbian and the author Tamsyn Muir has confirmed she's written as schizophrenic, based on her own experience.

Okay SO Harrow is a necromancer nun who is also a huge lesbian. She spends the books of TLT series being super gay and repressed about her emotions for 1. Butch lesbian Jesus and 2. Human Barbie the death of God. She narrates the second book (Harrow the Ninth) and is author-confirmed schizophrenic. She experiences hallucinations thru the whole book and has since childhood. She’s also WIDELY headcannoned as autistic by the fandom (me too) because. Because she IS SO FUCKING AUTISTIC (source: I am autistic too)

Schizophrenic lesbian with a traumatic brain injury

Schizophrenic and sapphic

canonically a schizophrenic lesbian. neither word is used in series, she isn't in a position to get a diagnosis and queer identities are so normalised in the universe that labels just don't get mentioned, but she is written as both by an author who is also both.

Canon schizophrenia Canon lesbian with canon schizophrenia

She's a schizophrenic lesbian with a traumatic brain injury

Propaganda:

The Locked Tomb is pretty popular on tumblr but I might as well submit her anyway

She’s a lesbian necromancer nun. She’s a saint and also woke up the death of God, who is a human Barbie, who she is in love with, tho she’s also kind of married to lesbian Jesus. She’s schizophrenic. She’s scrungly. She puts bread in a drawer. She’s even autistic

Harrow first started hallucinating (visual and auditory) when she was ten years old! The traumatic brain injury and seizures are much more recent. Unironically gotta love a pov protagonist who makes you struggle along with her in sorting out hallucination and false memory to figure out what's going on. Also while Harrow's disability shapes the narrative, the book isn't at all about her being disabled. It's a fantasy/scifi gothic horror novel about being trapped at a work retreat with God.

so many women want her but she’s determined to be in love with the soul of the dead earth trapped in a 10ft barbie doll instead. she’s a lesbian disaster and is trying to deal with both schizophrenia and over 200 actual ghosts haunting her.

a schizophrenic lesbian, written by a schizophrenic lesbian! she's in love with multiple dead women, but she's also a necromancer so that's not as big of an obstacle as it sounds. weird little bone-obsessed necromancer lesbian. I care about her deeply

Author Tamsyn Muir has discussed how Harrow's schizophrenia is modeled after her own experiences. It matters a lot in her eponymous novel, where her inability to trust what she sees and hears is compounded by her self-inflicted lobotomy to save her girlfriend's soul from getting absorbed into her own.

Harrow is one of the protagonists of her series & both her lesbianism & her schizophrenia play major parts in the story. The author has spoken about how she wrote Harrow based on her own experiences, and the authenticity comes through strongly. Beyond that, she's a teenage gothic nun in love with a holy corpse & she's the greatest bone magician ever born. What more needs be said.

She's a lesbian, she's psychotic, she has seizures, she faints regularly and can't rely on her own memory worth shit. And the only reason she's not going to kill god is so she and her girl can escape the cycle of violence. Basically, Harrowhark Nonagesimus is the entire package.

Anything Else?:

Listen. Listen. I’m not doing Harrow justice here. I LOVE her (Submitter 2)

The author is also schizophrenic! Which is pretty cool. (Submitter 3)

The author of the series is openly schizophrenic, and has mentioned in interviews that she's drawing on that experience when writing Harrow :) (Submitter 8)

[invinciblerodent]

I love the arcs and stories we got from Veilguard, and I know continuity-wise it wouldn't have been possible to integrate this, but recently, I had a thought that simply won't leave me be:

I think it would have been so bloody interesting if the Iron Bull had been there, to act as a thematic counterpoint to Shathann in Taash's storyline.

Like... okay, I know that in reality, it would have been entirely unfeasible due to the way Bull's story can unfold in Trespasser, but I'm not going to lie, I do have a bit of a bone to pick with the binary choice at the end of Taash's quest specifically. (I think it was likely done this way so they won't stick out from the rest of the companions, but both culturally and thematically, it feels strange to me to have them specifically come down to a choice of A or B, when developing their own, mixed heritage would have not only been more realistic, but it would have also echoed exploration of their nonbinary identity more closely), and I think having another, maybe more intimately significant personal influence in Taash's life besides Isabela (who is less a mentor, and more a friend and boss, I feel) to exemplify the other choice would have added a nice, additional layer of nuance to the arc, another bit of emotional weight to the choice.

And, to support my point: if Bull is alive for Veilguard, not only does he have no other, definite place to be post-Inquisition (I believe after Trespasser, his epilogue only says that he goes off adventuring?), and have at least the interest in dragons in common with Taash (to be a basis of an immediate emotional attachment), he's also definitely Tal-Vashoth- and most importantly, he chose that life, having left the Qun for his family's sake in a way that very nicely mirrors Shathann's choice to flee with the infant Taash.

He also had had doubts before leaving the Qun (which is why he submitted himself to the reeducators prior to the Inquisition assignment), but like Shathann, he was also raised in Qunari culture, and has a pronounced emotional attachment to it- but, instead of Shathann's adherence to tradition and apparent desire to preserve the Qun in her (and by extension, Taash's) life while adjusting to living further South the best she could, Bull seems much more enmeshed with the Southern way of life (has more of a familiarity with the southern perception of gender too)- and he seems happy that way, which can be a source of conflict between him and Shathann as well. (Could be shown through her initially still calling him "Hissrad" perhaps, and transitioning to "Bull" later?)

He could have very nicely embodied the "Rivaini" choice (which would ofc need to be called something different, needs workshopping lol), and provided another, different, but familiar angle on what being Tal-Vashoth is like long term. Especially now that that word's meaning has changed so drastically, with the entire Antaam having split off the Qun, and willingly become essentially Tal-Vashoth.

.... I also think it's quite easy to imagine him joining up with Isabela as a Lord of Fortune (and being the other faction leader perhaps, to keep them all in pairs?), but also being a valuable asset to Rook and co. in their efforts to bring Solas down: both as someone who just knows Solas (most likely better than most), and as an experienced and talented strategist and spy.

I think it would have been really cool if instead of going either Rivaini or Qunari, the final choice for Taash's personal quest had come down more to them following either their mother's footsteps, or an almost father-like mentor's, instead of choosing one culture over another. (Potential downside that even fewer people would have then chosen the Qunari side of it, but that can be mitigated via wording choices.)

(The argument could ofc be made that if it's about Taash being torn between two people, rather than two abstracts, maybe the choice wouldn't center them in it quite so clearly, but I do think that it would have made for a touch stronger story overall.)

(ALSO, the inevitable shipping of Taash's mom and mentor, and the three-way dynamic of them? Would have been really cute. I'd have been on board with that. Lots of dialogue that sounds like they're both 20 years married and very divorced, some "do you see me as a father figure, Taash?" "I see you as a BOTHER figure" type of lines, plus it could have been actually really easy to write him consistent with who Bull is while keeping his lines ambiguous enough to allow for him already having a partner in some worlds.)

[sunshine-of-my-shoulder]

no way did someone try to correct me when I used she/her pronouns for a character like god forbid someone have gender hcs

[odysseys-blood]

for context on my answers i'm nonbinary (and consider myself trans)

1) Black trans, intersex, nonbinary, etc people are stuck living trying to navigate at least two different sets of expectations around gender and gender expression at all times. Not only are we stuck being scrutinized for how well we fit into eurocentric beauty standards and gender roles despite not being our primary culture, we then STILL have to worry about how well we fit into and how we want to subvert gender and expression in Black communities. I think for the most part we try to work around gender expression in our own culture instead of what broader white society dictates so we're not gonna have the same feelings about smthn like. a celebrity or character that you think is "transition goals" and oftentimes those examples given are a direct opposite to how we already look. like my androgyny is nowhere near the same as a Black person as yours are.

2) kinda piggy backing off the previous one: i don't ever really fit what a general "nonbinary" character looks or feels like in media and in fact its an odd thing to navigate while Black. Most the examples I do see on nonbinary culture is very white and even being in Black LGBT spaces sometimes it feels like there arent many of us (In the whole like 100+ people GSA on my campus i believe i was the only person who was nonbinary but that school was also in the boonies lmao). I think in general all nonbinary people tend to express ourselves differently with a general aim towards androgyny, but at least theres more examples with white or nonblack characters because i can only think of...1. And that one was retroactively revoked by the creators so not even a 1 😭

3) I don't even hold out much hope anymore for one brsides other people's ocs but i'd love to see ANY kind of Black nonbinary character in a main role. idc what they're doing. just any one. because like i said the one I had known of was changed and im still bitter about it.

I am reaching out to Black trans, intersex, and people with a societally-deemed "unconventional" relationship to gender!

I am currently working on a future lesson involving gender and sexuality. But for certain things, I am not comfortable speaking for a community when I think it would be better to let them speak for themselves. I too am still learning (so I ask for grace).

What I want to do is either have a post to link to the lesson with your opinions in the tags/notes, and a summarized section of bullet points to show the range of perspectives on what I'm about to ask you. You don't have to answer all of them (or any if you don't want, it's volunteering). You can even send asks that if you don't want to be published, I will not publish. Succinctness will help me read everyone's responses, I will admit 😅

My questions:

1. What's ONE thing you wish nonblack people would understand the most about your experience?

2. How do you think you see or experience the world and media in comparison to white or nonblack people with a shared gender identity?

3. What's a story you'd like to see of yourself in media? Are there current examples?

[uncanny-tranny]

Quick tip: If a trans passing guide is focused on thinness, whiteness, or getting rid of anything about yourself that is "too clockable" (regardless of if that thing about yourself makes you happy), maybe it isn't worth fretting about, since it is clearly coming from a homogenized idea of what passing looks like

[thurio-edau]

me when i find two perfect labels for myself but theyre microlabels that NO ONE FUCKING KNOWS

[lildrownedrat]

Not to start an argument, I completely understand and agree with your points in your posts! I just felt I could explain my point better. I don't/didn't want to take away from your point, just add my own two cents.

I have autism and ADHD, I just saw/felt that Taash related to my autism specific traits a lot more than my ADHD traits, personally. But I wouldn't argue if someone wanted to make the statement more general and say Taash is neurodivergent/ a good example of neurodivergent representation.

Yes, it's never explicitly stated that Taash is autistic but I saw a lot of my own story reflected in theirs that just isn't there in other characters. From the way they spoke and interacted with others, to things they mention in conversations with Rook and the other companions- like their trouble regulating their emotions, not remembering to do basic everyday tasks because their mind is occupied, feeling like they're just all together "wrong", having to sort through what's masking, what's you, and what everyone around you wants you to be. Often, good "representations" of neurodivergency aren't labeled as such. I think of examples like Katniss Everdeen and the Belcher Family. Many autistic people find that these characters just do a really great job at describing and portraying our perspective on things, unlike other characters. If a significant number of neurodivergent people are saying they see their story being told through Taash, I think there's some value in that.

I also see people criticize Taash using the same arguments they use against neurodivergent people in real life. "Taash is rude because they speak bluntly without a filter," but if you pay even a little bit of attention to them, you see they are actually really caring and sweet. "Taash is immature because they rely on their mother too much," but it's a lot of neurodivergent people's experience to need extra support from someone close to us. "Taash's dialogue is awkward," because they say things at the wrong time and don't always word it right. I just wanted to call this out because neurodivergent people are seeing how Taash is being discussed and for a character that shares a lot of our struggles, it's tiring.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I also didn't think Taash was an example of poor representation and I hate that that's a large majority of the opinions I see of them. I think they represented my story as an autistic, nonbinary, person of color very well. Their storyline wasn't about "fixing" how they talk to people, or telling them to get new interests- because these aren't character flaws, they're just traits and I LOVE that!

We just need to keep in mind the intersectionality of the stories being told through these characters. A neurotypical nonbinary person may not understand Taash's story, just like a white nonbinary person probably wouldn't relate to them as much. That doesn't mean they're a bad nonbinary representation.

I also think it's extremely important to point out that autistic people are resonating with them so that neurotypical people can learn more about what it means to be autistic.

(sorry for so many edits and revisions! Also sorry if there's any spelling of grammar mistakes. 😅 I'll try to fix them if I catch them)

I’ve kinda said this before and i’ll certainly say it again, taash is written incredibly well and accurately to the specific experience of being a 2nd-gen queer 22 yo. The way they talk, the awkwardness, the struggle to find words for queerness when you were never taught them in your first language and thus only know them in your second. They are the most accurate and well-written depiction i’ve ever seen of those experiences. However, most of you appear to a) not be queer, b) not be diasporic, and c) are not in your 20s, and thus have no concept of what those experiences are like and thus are criticizing writing around experiences you have no context for and no idea of how that should be written.

Like idk, i wouldn’t roll out the gate criticizing the writing of queer characters that grew up in fundamentalist christain households bc idk what that shit’s like. My parents are asian, they celebrate me getting an interview at los alamos, not getting a boyfriend. I’m fundamentally cannot tell you if that’s a well-written depiction bc i have little context for that.

[spitblaze]

This is going to sound mean but I mean this in the most sincere and compassionate way I possibly can:

If you see a comment on the internet that is transphobic towards your group and your first assumption is that the person who wrote it is a different kind of transgender and not cis, especially if that comment is completely removed from all context or anonymous, no avatar or username or anything, take that as a sign to log off for a few days or pick up a new hobby.

[capesandshapes]

Some of the most disgusting and vile things I've ever heard said about women cis or trans has come from men in the gaming and nerd culture communities who feel an entitlement to female affection and sexuality due to grandiose fairytale bullshit that they're too stupid to realize was crafted by America's tech millionaires who were trying to foster a sense of a community and pacify underpaid workers with a promise of a greater tomorrow in which money and pussy would rain from the heavens as a reward for their suffering. Look to the great leader (whose parents are definitely only a little rich) as an example of what you the everyman whose overtime is paid in bottled waters can accomplish.

Like "I'm a nerd, not like other guys. Girls were really into the jocky ones growing up but little did they know I'm going to be rich and famous because I like computers and magic the gathering-- my computer science degree and superior intellect means I am entitled pussy from these feeble minded women. Watch me degrade the stupid sluts who don't want me."

Homie ur a weirdo. You can open Microsoft command prompt and build a rollercoaster in Minecraft. Maybe once or twice you've entered the BIOS menu via spamming the f key of your choosing. You're not breaking new pussy guaranteed 'how dare she not' ground here.

[neonaurore]

is this anything

explanations under the cut

so for this sorta graph it's about rep that is intended as queer so queercoding doesn't count

word of god counts for the purposes of this graph, even retroactively. however retroactively calling your character gay when it has no impact, and then doing nothing in the future to act on it is Bad. so that's why dumbledore here is my first thought when it comes to confirmed, but bad, representation. not like homophobic rep but as in like despite being declared canonically gay it literally doesn't matter because it is not at all relevant to the narrative or good or impactful. plus rowling is a transphobic shitbag anyways but even beyond this it's just not good

the other bad example is FAR worse but not even called queer explicitly--in fact the source media REFUSES to call this character queer, and that's jame gumb ("buffalo bill") from silence of the lambs. despite the insistence that he's not a "real" transgender person, you can still TELL what they're going for. like. come on. we are not fucking stupid. the Implication is there and it's Bad

word of god isn't all bad which is why I put lilith clawthorne in the graph because despite the owl house never outright calling her aromantic asexual she's still good aroace rep (speaking as an aromantic greysexual person). the show was clearly written with it in mind, it fits her character, and even if it wasn't intended at first (which I believe it was) she's confirmed aroace and that's ok confirming it outside the show for me, because it's a lot more natural to SHOW a character being possibly queer and you don't always have to have a character stop and look at the camera and go "I am this". raine whispers is also a good example because they're clearly nonbinary even if not outright said, but I wanted to include lilith as a good example of when word of god can be used right, to just confirm what was apparent but couldn't be naturally stated within the source media

ford pines is interesting and what got me thinking about this. like normally I would not include him because even though he's queercoded as hell in the OG show he was not intended to be. but after the book of bill he most definitely is. and just to be clear no this is not my billford propaganda this is not me calling it the best ship ever before anyone gets their suspenders twist-tied, but ford clearly does have a deliberate implied narrative of being a possibly queer man who reaches acceptance by letting his family in and be accepted for his oddities not just as a person but also within his life choices and mistakes and growing from abuse in an atypical relationship he worried would cast him out if he was honest about it. it's a very new implication, but it's DEFINITELY deliberate and leaned into now. I love it a lot actually. and alex hirsch isn't gonna outright state ford's sexuality and leave it up to the viewer but I kinda like it that way. like confirmed rep is good, but I feel like it's also good to have rep that is also apparent without being outright stated. hence this spectrum. it's just overall well done and I like it. and I made this graph cause I found it funny that he's a better example of queer rep while implied meanwhile there is far worse confirmed rep.

thank you for coming to my ted talk

thinking about like making characters queer after their primary source media has ended. axis that's like "good representation/bad representation" and "outright canonically confirmed outside the main source media" whether that's word of god or just extra supplementary stuff and "not actually stated as canon but heavily implied"

what I'm saying is dumbledor is in the outright confirmed/bad quadrant and ford pines is in the heavily implied/good quadrant

if anyone wants to give other examples to fill the bad/implied and good/confirmed quadrants give me some. I was thinking of lilith clawthorne for good/confirmed cause she's confirmed aroace outside of the show and pretty good rep but I can't think of bad/implied so help me out y'all

[hellofastudysession]

am i rlly going to write a death note literary analysis when i could be doing other things

about the discourse going on in the tag abt "death note is acab and thats why the characters couldnt better the world with the note (/written in somewhat jokey matter)" vs "death note is trying to say we all have potential for evil, especially if you get a chance to insta-hurt ppl without repercussions, and it doesnt matter if youre a cop or not", i personally feel like it ignores the things that i like abt death note, which is "both of these things are true", and simultaneously "both of these things do not matter". the first part of this is dedicated to the first point, the latter to the last.

first point. i think its an important part of the message and themes (unintentional or not, and i lean on the former because... come on, can you really say the author intended you to not think of the cops as good people, at least compared to light and l) that light is a cops son, and that almost everyone who gets the death note is cop adjacent/thinks like a cop and is already corrupt/powerful when they get it (mello raised to think hed be just like l, yotsuba group is self explanatory; you cannot look me in the eyes and tell me teru "churchill" mikami, who was hand selected by light out of a bunch of rabid kira supporters, is a normal citizen). i appreciated the cop post bc its rlly important to not gloss over that aspect.

all of this would be an argument for "only someone like them would do something like this, and i am not like them, so im above them and immune to thinking about what id do with it", but... misa is the MOST important outlier in all of this bc her murders are solely selfish in nature and shes not doing any of this for "the greater good"!!! her nature of being an exception and still a very very bad person is really really important...

or it would be if death note gave a shit about her character at all!!! im not talking about her tragic side, im talking about exploring the ramifications of her killing people the way lights murders are (somewhat) explored. that would strengthen the message greatly! but shes dismissed and that weakens it overall. firstly, she's dismissed by the characters when l only sees her as a way to get to kira and basically shelves her the rest of the time. secondly, shes dismissed by the narrative when her character is gradually ground down to a stump and (not to sound perilously close to the bad takes ppl meme about) she never faces repercussions for her actions. every other character using the death note is treated relatively seriously, but misa just dies bc her love is dead. im not saying this isnt a... fitting punishment or that it isnt in character, but it doesnt fit snugly into the theme other people are talking about of "you reap what you sow" at all.

we do have something of an equivalent to misa's grayscale motives. surprise surprise, its light yagami. first is light's characterization in the musical (i will also note that misa never kills anyone in the musical). light's thinking is coplike, yes — he literally starts his first song by talking about "throw[ing] away the key" — but also, oddly enough, could be read as progressive and therefore sympathetic to tumblr ("let the corporations make the regulations / and hold no one accountable when everything gets wrong / let the rich and famous get away with murder / every time a high-priced mouthpiece starts to talk, his client gets to walk"). compare to the anime and manga, where his bigotry and pride and disgust come from a place of lukewarm dissatisfaction and boredom. the musical has much less time to play around with lights character, so it gives the audience something to immediately hook on. more on how that actually plays out later.

in the animanga, none of this is justified from the start. animanga light could say he was just killing people to make humanity way, way worse, and that wouldnt matter, because at the root of it, it was always his boredom that made him pick up the note. of course he actually believes in justice and believes hes doing the right thing (no, he believes he's doing the wrong thing, for the sake of the world... the right thing, because he is god...), but it was boredom at the start. all animanga light says about justice and righteousness and the law is a front in the end, bc he is exactly like l and misa — amoral. selfish. searching for entertainment. hedonistic. we know this. he kills naomi misora*. he kills lind l. turner. everything hes saying deserves to be dismissed from the beginning.

"but doesnt that mean you agree with the discourse post you wrote this post to argue against?" like i said, i agree with both of them! but i... still think its not right to reduce death note to the message of "the power to kill people is bad". because that is not exactly what the story is saying, even though that's literally its whole plot and therefore reaching that conclusion is self explanatory (lmao). let's look at the concept of mu. nothingness. "there's no heaven or hell". The Real Slay The Princess (Death Note Essay) Starts Here.

in light's final moments in the death note manga, while screaming about not wanting to die, he remembers that the first day they met, ryuk told light that "there's no heaven or hell. no matter what they do in life, all people go to the same place. all humans are equal in death". it is retroactively revealed that light knew this the whole time, operated under this knowledge for all the years we watched him — the knowledge that nothing he does is actually bad, that nothing any human does is actually bad, that shinigami are not "evil", that the universe does not care. that no one cares except humans. this oblivion absolutely terrifies him more than anything anyone could ever do to him. its what he thinks of before anything else as he flails there, screaming, dying. one could say everything he does after that day is him trying to escape that fact, or wrest control over it. but it doesnt work.

here are the lyrics of requiem, the musical's final song, sung over the bodies of l and musical light, a light who was at least somewhat good-intentioned at first: "sleep now, here among your choices / then fade away / hear how the world rejoices / shades of gray / gone who was right or wrong / who was weak or strong / nothing left to learn". this is the final message the death note musical and the manga chose to leave us with. there is no judgement. even after all that acknowledged hurt, after all the damage done, there is no judgement.

in the manga and anime alike, the world is just as fucked when light picks up the death note as when he dies. sure, we as readers can guess otherwise logically (and be optimistic, believing the world was never fucked regardless), but that's not what death note wants you to think. it ends with matsuda and another member of the task force noting how the world is worse again even though they killed kira (matsuda is clearly much worse for wear, but still determined), we see the shitty motorcycle band again, it ends with misa and a whole kira cult on a mountain even though kira died a long time ago...

its extremely important that light is never killed by any human or any aspect of the law. he is always killed by ryuk: a chaotic force completely detached from human sensibilities, one that does not care about good and evil. same with l; in the anime, manga, and musical, he is always killed by rems senseless, morally gray love (and you could argue in the kdrama that hes killed by love there too lol). justice is just a set dressing.

this is not just because death note is a tragedy, because good and evil can still matter in a tragedy. the theme of "nothingness" and "good and evil doesnt matter here" is also shown in a situation relatively unrelated to light winning or losing, or being good or bad. and its in fucking lawlight of all things. we all know ls not a good person. we know lights not a good person. this is tip of the iceberg death note knowledge. but the moment they start to interact, none of that starts to matter. textually, their relationship becomes more important than the people theyve killed and hurt. and the thing is? the thing is? THAT WORKS STORY-WISE. THAT'S ENTERTAINING. AND IT'S NEVER TEXTUALLY CALLED OUT IN A LASTING WAY. l and lights relationship, no matter how much i meme it, is genuinely important to the themes and "mu" because it makes it clear that despite all the pretensions, despite everything, this was never about good and evil. and it still works in the story. this is why death note is simultaneously a comedy — isn't the battle of good and evil supposed to matter more? well, fine, i'll keep watching this anyway. that suspension of disbelief comes crashing down the moment l dies, though, and a relationship built on nothingness (the "mu" sort, meaninglessness, not "character development" nothingness, theres plenty of character development) gives way to just nothingness (again, "mu", not light's post-l depression nothingness), forever.

(an aside: there is no one to root for in death note, and the only things to root for are either interesting character relationships, convoluted plots, or complete and total destruction: for everything to end so no more damage is done.)

not to say that death note does not encourage its readers to consider what damage they might do with the death note (obviously.), or that its characters never do. look at matsuda, a much easier heroic figure to latch on to than soichiro because of his unique place in the cast dynamic and because he's willing to consider both sides of the situation and kill light instantly for all he's done. its just that the story's own stance on the subject is... complicated by the existence of shinigami worldviews and by its own insistence that the world cannot change for the better.

also, this is not to say that this is executed well by the death note manga at all. it is a very strong tool, artistically, to establish and then violently remove any emotional connections between characters and make your story only about the exceedingly convoluted lengths characters go to to survive and catch each other so the reader can realize how ultimately pointless all of this is, but like... is that a good story choice if that's all you do? i would say not really. add in a good dollop of misogyny that destroys the second-to-last character who might actually be an interesting contrast to the rest of the cast's dull one-track focus on winning and justice, and youve got yourself a shitty story that... honestly still achieves what it went out to do, just not in a way id ever want to replicate.

anyway, back to the parts death note's actually trying to say. no matter what any human does in their life, no matter how they try to hurt or help the world, they all die in the end. hey, light, they all die in the end. once dead, they can never come back to life. and the seasons turn. and the world rejoices. and you say "goodbye"...

that's all.

no analysis of death notes overarching theme would be complete without nears final monologue, the definitive roast of light, the "you're just a murderer" speech: "what is right from wrong? what is good from evil? nobody can truly distinguish between them. even if there is a god." if we take this as talking about the actual god in the room (ryuk) as well as light, then near admits that humans will never be able to withstand these overwhelming forces and that, using justice and happiness and selfishness, they are just scrabbling to find meaning in things they ultimately have no control over.

but of course, near does not stop there. "[...] even then i'd stop and think for myself. i'd decide for myself whether his teachings are right and wrong." nears alright with not having control over everything, because near can still control nears own actions. these forces can and do exist, but they have no sway over nears own humanity — unlike light, who caved.

one of the creators of death note said they believe its message is "life is short, so everyone should do their best". the first time i learned this, i was like, thats... nice and optimistic, but an awful reading of the story! "life is short, so everyone should be desperate and striving like light yagami", who literally cut off other ppls lives for his own life? what character in death note are we supposed to strive towards when we "do our best"? they all do awful things with their lives! honestly, maybe they shouldnt have tried their best, if this is what their best is!

but with the view of "mu"... it makes a bit more sense. just a little. maybe.

there is no good and evil. there is only what humans think, and no matter what we do, we all die in the end. it is easy to be crushed and terrified by this in the same way light is, but what is more important than justice and righteousness and finding meaning is... doing your best. not being a person that hurts others too much. not letting yourself get swallowed up by an ideal. not going too far. and simultaneously, trusting yourself.

it leaves a few questions, though... was the currently dead l even a little bit right about his blatantly amoral approach, then? was there a point to this pain, and me slogging through this dumbass manga, and all the people that have lost their lives to a selfish teenage cop's son and the whims of everyone chasing after him? was there a point to any of this...?

the manga** never answers this. it stays clinically impartial until the very end. the musical is anything but clinically impartial (and i love it so much for that), and its ryuk that has the last word.

"there's no point at all."

of course theres no point. none of this was ever supposed to happen. that is what matters more than all the hurt and the crimes and the pain.

and that's... actually okay, because it's over now.

yes, death note has many really important themes present in its story, but its viewpoint is nihilism first and foremost. thats why its so fun and easy to play around with all the other messages, because no matter what fun or torment or awful things or righteous justice or absolute nothingness or sentimentality happens in between, there is always an end.

there is always the end.

[carlyraejepsans]

for real WHERE does the idea that [utdr humans] are nongendered so that "you can project on them" come from. their literal character arcs are about NOT being a blank slate to be filled in by the audience

i think i understand the assumption on some level for undertale, because there is a very intentional effort to make you identify with the "player character" in order to make your choices feel like your own (the beating heart of undertale's metanarrative lies in giving you an alternative path to violence against its enemies after all, and whether you're still willing to persue it for your own selfish reasons. YOUR agency is crucial).

of course, the cardinal plot twist of the main ending sweeps the rug from under your feet on that in every way, and frisk's individuality becomes, in turn, a tool to further UT's OTHER main theme: completionism as a form of diegetic violence within the story. replaying the game would steal frisk's life and happy ending from them for our own perverse sentimentality, emotionally forcing our hand away from the reset button.

i think their neutrality absolutely aids in that immersion. but also, there's this weird attitude by (mostly) cis fans where it being functional within the story makes it... somehow "editable" and "up to the player" as well? which is gross and shows their ass on how they approach gender neutrality in general lol.

but also like. there's plenty of neutral, non PCharacters in undertale and deltarune. even when undertale was just an earthbound fangame and the player immersion metanarrative was completely absent, toby still described frisk as a "young, androgynous person". sometimes characters are just neutral by design. it's not that hard to understand lol.

anyone who makes this argument for kris deltarune is braindead. nothing else to say about it.