#and when they do choose to explicitly give a character pronouns they always make the most based choice possible

[princehendir]

Obsessed with how cult of the lamb does gender & pronouns btw

[andromedaexists]

Hell Followed With Us || Andrew Joseph White

★★★☆☆ ½

TW: BODY HORROR, TRANSPHOBIA, SACRILEGE, NO REALLY THERE'S A LOT OF BODY HORROR IT'S KINDA GROSS

Let me start off by saying that this book means a lot to someone who means a lot to me. By nature, this means that I have a soft spot for the book.

However, that does not stop me from forming an opinion on it.

Okay so first things first: I read this book in two days. It is a very captivating read. I was very easily sucked into the story and became intruiged by the character.

First one up is the main character: Benji. It is refreshing to see a trans masc main character especially in a horror book. As soon as he showed up in the text i felt protective over him. He is a newly out trans boy that is 16, I've adopted plenty of those in my run as the trans town elder (yes I'm only 23, that's what you get living where I do)

I also really liked that there were other types of gender identities shown. This book is a cesspit of diversity and representation: I love it!

However, there is one character that I have qualms with when it comes to his representation. One of the love interests: Nick. He is an autistic gay man, but as I said to my group chat last night, I just don't like the representation he's giving us.

I say this as an autistic trans gay man: I do not like the way he is portrayed. Autism is a spectrum, everyone reacts to things differently. However, he is written in a way that feels like every bad autistic trope from mass media mushed together. He very much reads the same as that one autistic doctor from the tv show that was always over logical and showed no emotion ever. The Good Doctor, that's what it's called.

Not only that, but he refers to Benji, a newly out trans man who is going through horrific body horror to the point of literally calling himself a monster, as Seraph and uses it/its pronouns for him. After Benji explicitly says he uses he/him. Now, as you all know, I have nothing against using it/its pronouns and will gladly do so, but doing it in this manner is misgendering and dehumanizing. There is a difference between wanting to use those pronouns and being called them behind your back after you explicitly state you do not want to be referred to using them.

And this whole this was Nick's redemption arc. His entire redemption arc was about calling Benji 'it' and then saying sorry. Then it's over and never mentioned again. Just like that.

And then, to make things worse, the other love interest (because, yes, this is in fact a love triangle) is Benji's abusive fiance. An abusive fiance that tries to kill him on more than one occasion. So you have to choose between that piece of garbage and someone who doesn't get redeemed.

As y'all can tell, I'm a little incensed at this book. "But Andi," I hear you say, "you gave the book 3.5 stars? It doesn't sound like you enjoyed it that much."

Well here's the thing: I actually really enjoyed it. I loved the story line, I loved the sacrilege and body horror, I loved how tense I was reading the entire story.

I think the writing was clumsy and too fast paced, but the plot line was there. I also loved how visceral the descriptions were. Like, this is Dead Dove: Do Not Eat levels of body horror and viscera.

It was great! I think it should have gone through a few more rounds of drafts and editing before it got published, and someone should have told Andrew that the love interests are both living pieces of human garbage, but all in all it was a good book. Oh, and the dust cover is beautiful.

I won't recommend it to anyone though.

I am planning on writing little things like this every time I read a book just to help me keep track of them. If I don’t write down my opinions and thoughts right away I am liable to forget them. I am hesitant to call these a review because i’m really just not comfy with that lol I will do my best to make sure I appropriately tag and warn about topics. If I miss any please let me know!

[bakedbananners]

It’s incredibly annoying and infuriating when people say things like, “Alex says to use she/her until otherwise stated” while completely ignoring the fact that she said that specifically in the context of her first meeting her hallmates and identifying as fem at the time (“she/her until I say otherwise”), and ignoring when she later explicitly tells Magnus that she changes pronouns constantly between she/her and he/him only. Alex literally says her alternations between pronouns sets is “kind of the point”.

Yes, I do understand that she also says that she usually identifies as feminine with “very male days”, but that only proves my point. When he’s masculine he is masculine, and he doesn’t always identify as feminine, so you should refer to him on occasion with he/him pronouns!! “Until otherwise stated” makes absolutely zero sense because newsflash! Alex Fierro is not a real person! I cannot go and ask her personally what pronouns she is using because she is literally a fictional character. It’s baffling how people simultaneously attempt to “humanize” her by trying to give her like legitimate free will while actually dehumanizing him by boxing him into one set of pronouns and restricting his gender presentation/expression. Like I really do not get what is hard to understand about his genderfluidity. He changes all the time, regarding his gender AND beyond it. You deny that sense of fluidity in identity by saying not to refer to him with any other pronouns than “she/her/hers”, or to use “they/them” when she tells Magnus to his face that she chooses not to do that. Alex Fierro uses multiple pronoun sets, so use them when referring to him it’s not that hard.💀

[windwheeler-aster]

Hello! Could I make a request abt what kind of hugs do genshin characters give (platonic gn reader) with Childe, Kaeya and Albedo? (You can add anyone you'd like too!) Can be modern or canon AU. Thank you in advance!

a friend’s embrace 

summary: being friends with him wasn’t always easy; but his hugs usually made up for it. 

masterlist

pairings (separate): platonic!childe, kaeya, albedo, and kazuha x reader

reader info: gender neutral pronouns (they/them), reader is in a platonic relationship with characters, and reader can be traveler 

word count: 867 words

genre: platonic, fluff, comfort

format: headcanons

warnings: “you haven’t seen your friend in a while/for forever” type of hugs mostly, kaeya’s part is bittersweet, and minor spoilers for kaeya’s character

a/n: i really want to thank the lovely soul who requested this!! i hope this is up to your standards!! AND I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG!! (and the fact that these are so short) anyway, i hope you have a good read💖

childe's regular hugs are bone crushing (seriously. he still feels bad for hugging you and almost breaking a rib)

he missed you so much!! and he shows that through his hugs, a lot

when it’s just the two of you, he’ll hold you off the ground and spin you around

it doesn’t matter what size you are, childe will spin you around as if you were lighter than air

but when you two are in public, he’ll give you a shoulder hug instead and just leave it at that

if your other friends are there, childe will stick out his tongue at them. he does this for no reason other than he got to hug you before them (wow, childe being childish how wild)

but he’ll also rope them into the hug, engulfing them into his arms too

he’s quite adorable when he hugs you, honestly. and sweet!

and also super chatty

like, childe uses this as an interrogation tactic with you. you’re still weary from your journey, but childe doesn’t care

childe needs answers!!! he was concerned about you!!

“I missed you so much! How was your journey? Did you bring me anything back? If you don’t tell me, I’ll only hug you harder!”

when kaeya is in public, he likes shoulder hugs/squeezes

and he usually does a little “pat pat” before breaking apart from you

kaeya has a reputation to keep up, after all! if he wants to befriend the fatui to gain intel, he can only act so affectionate in front them

otherwise, kaeya will pull you in for a true embrace

he’ll just take a deep breath, inhaling your oddly calming sent, and just stand with his arms wrapped around you and vise versa

being around you makes him feel so grounded

for once, kaeya can just be himself without fear of judgement or intimacy

kaeya taps your shoulder twice, a sign that he wants to break the hug. even if he wants to sink into you for hours at a time and not need to think, you both know that can’t happen right now. 

subtle, but effective

behind all the lying and charisma, kaeya does care about his friends

will he tell them that explicitly? probably not.

but the subtle words kaeya chooses are enough for you

“... Thank you for that, it’ll make my day a little less painful. I’ll... I’ll see you around, ‘kay? Don’t be a stranger, alright?”

most of the time, kazuha’s hugs are soft and gentle

some days you can barely feel his hands along your torso, as light as the incoming breeze

if there’s enough open space available, kazuha will use his vision to send you two shooting into the air and spin you slowly downwards (basically, he uses his e) 

you’ve grown a little used to it now, and even start to laugh when he does it 

kazuha will smile ever so softly and let go of you only once you’ve gotten your feet on the ground

when he returns from voyages or when you come back from your latest adventure, kazuha makes sure to hug you on sight

these hugs have a little more of a spin to them, kazuha going as far as lifting you off the ground midway

when he lets go of you, kazuha just silently lets you hold his arm as you guide him around town, explaining what he missed around town

kazuha just smiles as you whisper to him all the gossip, smiling and waving to the townspeople as you two walked around

he mostly nods or laughs at what you say, which makes you concerned that you’re talking too much

but kazuha is quick to assure you that isn’t the case at all with his usual gentle hug and smile

“You want to hear about my journey? I’m afraid that it was quite boring, nothing worth your attention, my friend. So, please, do continue. I want to know exactly what happened when I was gone.”

hugging albedo is a rare, and weird, experience

he’s cold all over, so be prepared to shiver as he quickly wraps his arms around you

he enjoys placing his head on your shoulders and closing his eyes, immediately relaxed by your presence

but albedo will wait a second, two if you’re lucky, and then break apart

he only does this whenever you two haven’t seen each other in a long time

which is surprisingly often, with you on your adventures and him in dragonspine

if you surprise him and visit him in dragonspine, albedo will quickly (but caustiously) finish up his experiement and just run over to you

albedo has accidentally sent you two crashing into a nearby snow bank because of this... one time almost over the edge but we don’t talk about that

this reaction is more emotional of course, and he’s just so happy to see you

he softly laughs as your bodies settle into the snow, hugging you a little tighter

“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to come over today. Can I get you anything? Tea? Or maybe you’d prefer something else to drink- Oh, you’re right. Here, let’s get out of the snow before you get a cold.”

thank you for reading 💖 all forms of interaction to my posts are appreciated 💖

[writingwithcolor]

B’nei mitzvah in spaceship without Jewish community | Jewish character celebrating Christmas

Hi! Thank you so much for running this blog. I appreciate how much time and effort all the mods have put into it. I finished reading through the whole Jewish tag a few days ago, and I’ve learned so much! I’m writing a Voltron fic (I *know* lol) and decided to make one of the protagonists a white nonbinary Ashkenazi Reform Jewish girl. Her astronaut brother mysteriously disappears in space and is presumed dead, so she runs away from home a couple of months before her b'nei mitzvah to find him. Now, she’s in a group of rebels in space fighting against an Empire. I have two concerns:

1. Everyone on the ship misses home, so part of the way they cope is through getting in touch with their cultures. They’re gonna celebrate (a mostly non-Americanized) Christmas because it matters a lot to some of the characters for non-religious reasons. To what extent can my Jewish character participate in the celebration without it being weird? I want her to enjoy herself more because she’s with her friends than because Jesus etc. They’ll also celebrate Chanukah, if that helps. I know Chanukah isn’t a major holiday, so I also want to have her celebrate a more significant one like Rosh Hashanah and/or Purim with them. Is it okay for gentiles to participate in those holiday celebrations, or should she do that alone?

2. Throughout most of the story, she’ll struggle with choosing whether to prioritize fighting the Empire or finding her brother and bringing him home. When she eventually does find her brother (who also turns out to be a rebel), he lets her decide whether they stay or go home. I thought it would be nice if she decided to stay and keep fighting for the greater good after she finally has her b'nei mitzvah. Her friends and other experiences are also a big part of why she decides to stay, but the b'nei mitzvah would be what gives her the final push she needs to decide. I don’t know if it would be okay for me to write the ceremony itself or if she can even have one if only two of the eight people on the ship are Jewish. I read that not everyone has a b'nei mitzvah and that it’s not required, but I feel like it’d be a big deal to her character. Should I keep the b'nei mitzvah idea, or am I heading towards appropriative territory here?

I want to make her Jewishness a big part of her character’s growth, and I really want to make sure I do it respectfully and accurately. I plan on finding a sensitivity reader when I’ve made more progress with actually writing everything out. Thank you for any insight you might offer!

It feels off to me to join a community symbolically when you’re far away FROM the community. Why not just have had her already have done the ceremony before she has all these adventures? That way it could just be a straightforward story about a Jewish teen having exciting heroic adventures in space, rather than a story about what happens when you have to miss aspects of Jewish life because you’re in space. It would also make the “….well, I guess I’m around for Christmas” bit less weighted because then that would be the only one of those instead of having two of those.

–Shira 

I’ll cover some other territory here. For those who don’t know, b'nei mitzvah is something you just automatically become at the correct age, the ceremony is simply to celebrate that with the community. Not all people have the ceremony, but if you are Jewish, and of age (for religious purposes), your status changes with or without it. Personally, I’m comfortable with showing a Jewish character finding a way to have a Jewish celebration when the circumstances are less than ideal, for me the other aspects of the story are more troubling. 

On the subject of having a Jewish character celebrate Christmas with their friends… look I don’t like this trope. There are many Jewish people, who are completely secular, who don’t celebrate Christmas, because it is explicitly a Christian holiday, and secular Jewish people are still Jewish. Some Jewish people (secular or otherwise) do choose to celebrate other holidays, and I am very comfortable with those folks telling their own stories. What I’m not happy with is the push from outside of the community for every Jewish character to slide into assimilation. 

Some Jewish people will go to Christmas parties and not eat the food, because they keep kosher, or won’t stay for a tree-lighting, because that feels like it goes too far, or will give presents but not receive them. There are a huge number of ways we might handle Christmas, and I appreciate that you plan to show holidays other than just Chanukah (and yes, it’s fine for non-Jewish characters to join her in her holidays, if she invites them), but I always question why a non-Jewish writer is so keen to show Jewish characters celebrating Christmas. The most generous version of me wants to assume that you get so much out of Christmas that you want to share it, but the part of me that knows about the pressures to assimilate, and the history of increased antisemitic violence around Christmas thinks… just leave this kid alone. She missed her celebration, she’s far from her community, and now she has to go put on a Happy Assimilated Smile for the culturally Christian folks around her. From a nonbinary Jewish perspective, it’s a little unusual for your nonbinary character to use she/her pronouns, and use b'nei mitzvah as a gender neutral alternative to the gendered bat mitzvah. In secular life, at least in the US, it’s not uncommon for people to use multiple pronouns, but I haven’t met, or even heard of, a single person using gendered pronouns secularly, and using new neutral alternatives religiously. It absolutely could happen but, because it is so unusual, to me it reads as either invalidating the character’s gender, or tokenizing her in the religious sphere. 

–Dierdra 

Shira, I think that’s a really good idea to make the character post-b'nei mitzvah. That way you just have a Jewish character having adventures rather than her culture being The Conflict. (And also, a pre-b'nei mitzvah seems a bit young for this storyline? Can she really consent to fighting alongside the rebels? Do they habitually take unaccompanied children on their ship? To me a teenager would make more sense, but hey it’s not my story!)

Dierdra, your answer regarding the Christmas aspect was awesome and really thorough. Thanks for your thoughts on the pronouns as well, it also jarred with me but I was waiting to hear your opinion as you have lived experience. My worry is if you use gender neutral terms for one but not the other, you risk falling into to the stereotype that only marginalised religious folks have to change our language etc to be inclusive to LGBTQ+ people, but everyone else is fine. 

I wanted to come back to the point about Rosh Hashana. First of all, thank you for acknowledging that we have holidays that are more important than Chanukah! Sooo many OP’s don’t know that. In terms of how she would celebrate it, I agree it’s fine to invite non-Jewish people along. However, given how community-based Jewish life is, making her keep Yom Tov on her own feels a bit like a torture story, especially when others have people to celebrate Christmas with. I wonder if you’ve thought about giving her a Jewish friend on the ship? Especially if you want her Jewishness to be part of her growth as you mentioned, an older Jewish friend and mentor could be a huge help :)

–Shoshi

As you can see, we have a wide range of possibilities for “what happens when you ask a Jewish person about celebrating Christmas.” I didn’t mind hanging around it as an outsider myself until a certain subset of Christians started being mean-spirited about it in the news plus some personal trauma that time of year, as long as everyone involved was clear that I was just participating from the outside and this didn’t somehow change me. (If I may make an analogy: compare it to going to a baby shower when you want to support your friend or family member but also really don’t want kids of your own. You’re going to have a whole different experience if your decision is respected vs. if all the other guests treat you like you being there means you’ll change your mind about not wanting kids.)

That being said, it’s still all over the map. Some people IRL are okay even going to mass with their partner’s Catholic family (without participating in communion obvs.) Some would never, ever do that and are sitting here with shocked faces that I even typed that. But what becomes important is the way it’s written. Sitting around listening to the Christmas story is probably a bad fit for your fanfic, but helping other people bake Christmas cookies or put ornaments on a tree could work. The ornament thing could remind her of decorating a sukkah, and she could point that out to the others. 

I guess I’m saying is 

keep her participation secular, and 

keep her participation from leaning into the idea that we’re unhappy with our customs and would prefer to do it their way. 

I have literally never in my life felt jealous of the kids who “got to do Santa” (for example) and while I’m sure some kids were and they’re valid too, I think it’s important to show that it’s not a universal phenomenon.

–Shira

[classpection-central]

welcome to classpection central!!

my name is joel, and i decided to make a classpecting/etc blog because, well, why the fuck not. my ask box always is open, unless explicitly stated otherwise, and i take requests for a lot of different things. i also do my own ramblings and what not, as well as analysis that you can use for reference. I WILL DO: - classpect personality analysis - classpect sburb analysis - classpect story-based analysis - classpect explanations - weapon-alchemy requests - regular alchemy based requests - session analyses (bio will say whether i’m open for session analysis asks or not) - fictional character classpecting - classpect-based roasting/pyschoanlysis RULES FOR ASKS:

- when requesting a classpect analysis, specify what type you want. if you want more than one, you’re probably going to have to be patient. - when requesting a fictional character, just tell me what they’re from. i’ll look them up on fandom wiki and do my best. - when sending in ANY alchemy request, please try to be as detailed as possible. i don’t want to “just fill in the blanks”. - when sending a session analysis ask, there are a couple rules. one, specify whether they are trolls or humans. two, give me your characters dream moons and pronouns. three, tell me who god-tiers (if you have that figured out) or if there any established relationships between them. four, specify whether you want an analysis based on the mechanics of the session, the “plot” of the session, or both. again, if you choose both, it will take longer for me to complete. now ask away! i’m waiting for ya ;;;;D

[universallongings]

Chenford Fan Ask Meme

Name or preferred nickname: Katie

Pronouns: she/her

What’s the story behind your username: It’s part of a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald: “That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” It’s how I feel about all media and its ability to connect us, so it seemed like the perfect fit for my fangirl persona. 

General location: Western New York

Favorite Chenford moment: Tim bringing Lucy her favorite food in the hospital (coupled with the absolutely soft and smitten look on his face when he asks if she’s hungry). 

Moment that made you start shipping them: Lucy stealing Tim’s money clip and the exasperated but fond smile he gives in response. 

Who you think will realize they have FEELINGS first: I think Tim is going to realize it first because he’s more aware of what it feels like—and I think to some extent he already knows that what he feels for her is different from what he’s felt for any other rookie. But I think he’s going to spend a long time being angsty about it, until Lucy realizes her own feelings and tells him—because I think Tim will figure out his feelings first but Lucy will share them first because that’s who she is.  

Favorite character who isn’t Lucy or Tim: NYLA HARPER. She is hands-down one of my favorite women on television right now, and I love everything about her. I love how great she is at her job and how hard she’s trying to be a good mother. I love how much she’s grown in the short time we’ve known her. I love that she wants to mentor Lucy. I love her snark and her surprising softness and her genuine honesty. 

Favorite Chenford headcanon: I have written two fics that detail Lucy Chen’s praise kink fairly explicitly, so I feel obligated to say that one. ;) However, I also love the headcanon that the beach becomes a special place for both of them to find peace in hard times and that’s why they choose a small beach wedding when the day finally comes. 

Do you write fics/make gifs/make vids/do something else cool? You’re awesome! Share your stuff: I have written a handful of fics you can find over at Ao3 under universallongings and I’ve written a few posts about The Rookie over on my website Nerdy Girl Notes. I haven’t written as much lately, but hopefully the hiatus will bring some more out of me! 

Fic you’re rec’ing the most right now: This fandom has blossomed in so many ways this season, and that is VERY true in terms of fic! I’m in love with everything @farfarawaygirl writes, and I will always have a soft spot for anything written by @stargazerdaisy, @firstdegreefangirl, and @fromiftowhen. 

Tag another Chenford fan to fill this out: You’re up, @fromiftowhen! 

[gayregis]

Question. Part 1. Hi. I like your blog and your analytical analysis of books, which is always very accurate and insightful, so I couldn't find anyone better to ask a question to. I am haunted by the scene where Regis announced to the male part of Hansa that Milva is pregnant. Then there is a dialogue, at the end of which Regis asks Geralt to do something... I felt connected to Jaskier as a character for the first time because I also don't understand what it is about. ->

P2. I asked my friends who had read the books, and their opinions were divided. Some believe that Regis asks Geralt to dissuade Milva from having an abortion, while others, on the contrary, believe that Geralt should persuade her to do it. Or maybe that's not the point at all? Further, my reflections, which may not be relevant to the question... Maybe I'm the only one who noticed a lot of "c*nservative" ideas in books.

P3. We cannot ignore the fact that they were written quite a long time ago and many ideological and cultural aspects of Poland (see the law banning abortion in 2020) that could influence them. It was the 'poll' at the beginning of this scene that made me think of this. Why do men decide whether to give Milva medicament or not? Secondly, Geralt insistently refuses to call it "medicament" but prefers the word "agent."

P4. Secondly, Geralt insistently refuses to call it "medicament" but prefers the word "agent." He also demands that Jaskier shut up when he supports Cahir that "only a woman decides." Pro-life vibes, or is it just me? We also can't ignore the fact that Geralt is very concerned about his infertility.

P5. In general, continuing the theme: very many sorceresses also lament the lack of ability to have children, and all of them, even if they had relationships with women, were always looking for the ONE AND ONLY man. Moreover, the same-sex relationships in the book are only female/female shown, but never male/male (a quick and disdainful mention in "Season of Storms"). But even f / f relationships are presented as some not-serious-play; remember how Ciri called it all "fun," talking with Mistle.

P6. Here again, I see a toxic-masculine culture that sexualizes lesbians and completely denies gays. (This also reminds me of Poland's situation, where the majority of the population is very religious and homophobic.) I was too disappointed by the stereotypical representation of women: hatred because of the same outfits/jewelry, thin waists and small portions (remember how Yen and Fringilla eat), eternal gossip, and so on. I mean, women aren't like that, man.

P7. The toxicity of the presented heterosexual relationships has been said a thousand times before me. In general, I am always a little upset when I see that someone calls Sapkowski such a tolerant writer. According to my observations, toxic masculinity, "conservative" ideas, and strengthening stereotypes about LGBT people, women, etc., often slip into his books. I may be wrong, so I apologize in advance. I would like to hear your opinion. Thanks.

Finally. The scene I was talking about, maybe you need it. ‘What’s this all about then? Unanimity? Total agreement? Is that what you’re expecting?’‘You know very well what it’s about. But since you ask, I shall tell you. Yes, Geralt, that’s precisely what it’s about. And no, it’s no me that's expecting it.’ ‘Could you be clearer?’ ‘No, Dandelion,’ the vampire snapped. ‘I can’t be any clearer. Particularly since there is no need. Right, Geralt?’ ‘Right,’ the Witcher said...

p. s. From the same Anon with a 7-part question. English is not my first language, so I apologize for any mistakes. I tried to ask questions as respectfully as possible, but I often confuse English pronouns/times/etc. Please note that it was completely unintentional if I made an offensive mistake, and I deeply apologize. I will correct myself if you point this out to me in your answer. Thanks again.

omg i love this and i’m gonna divide it into different segments to be easier to read. also don’t worry your english is great thank you!!

1) “I asked my friends who had read the books, and their opinions were divided. Some believe that Regis asks Geralt to dissuade Milva from having an abortion, while others, on the contrary, believe that Geralt should persuade her to do it.”

yes, this is a confusing scene. when i first read it i was TOTALLY relating to dandelion, completely confused on what the message was and what the in-universe conversation was about. i had just felt proud of myself for understanding everything regis said in the previous scenes, and now here he was saying something and i didn’t know how the fuck to decipher it. 

but after re-reading and also reading others’ analysis on r/wiedzmin, i found what i think to be the answer. in my opinion, the scene is not about actually either dissuading or persuading milva to have an abortion. rather, it’s about supporting her emotionally so that she can make the right choice for herself. 

regis, as a doctor, wants his patient to make choices with a level head and for her own self, not under pressure to make the strategic choice that would benefit the company the most. this is my interpretation but since regis mentions milva has been a little feisty in consultation (she wouldn’t give him the date of her last period... lol), i feel like he could sense that she was really stressed out about this and although she initially made the choice to have an abortion, she may not have been thinking for her own self, rather letting the priorities of the company come first before her own wants.

in this moment, geralt realizes exactly why she has come on the journey, he mentions how she was willing to sacrifice her own child for his, etc. so, geralt needs to talk to her in that moment to tell her that he doesn’t expect her to do anything just so she can be more of an “asset” to the company, to tell her that she is his friend first and comrade-in-arms second, because milva is very loyal and also headstrong and would have done anything for geralt and the company. milva in general also wants to be “useful” because she has internalized misogyny from how she was raised, she doesn’t want to be “useless” like she was taught women are ‘supposed’ to be, as is shown in their conversation.

so geralt talks to her and she makes the choice not to have an abortion after all, because after talking to geralt, she doesn’t feel like she has to prioritize geralt’s needs and the company’s needs over what she wants. 

2) “Maybe I'm the only one who noticed a lot of "c*nservative" ideas in books. We cannot ignore the fact that they were written quite a long time ago and many ideological and cultural aspects of Poland (see the law banning abortion in 2020) that could influence them. 

It was the 'poll' at the beginning of this scene that made me think of this. Why do men decide whether to give Milva medicament or not? 

Secondly, Geralt insistently refuses to call it "medicament" but prefers the word "agent."”

He also demands that Jaskier shut up when he supports Cahir that "only a woman decides." Pro-life vibes, or is it just me? 

We also can't ignore the fact that Geralt is very concerned about his infertility.

in my opinion i think the author-intention was to set up a conversation in which a rhetorical question is asked, which will 100% be answered with a resounding positive, a “yes” all around. regis asks the company, because he’s a character so he can be poised as the author wants to propose a question like, “what are your thoughts on abortion,” which allows the rest of the characters to respond “it’s a woman’s right to choose for herself!” in this way, i think that it is very pro-choice... i will agree later on about what you say in other parts of your message, about the conservatism and also centrism in the books, but when it comes to abortion sapkowski imo in the witcher series espoused some pretty pro-choice views. this scene, compounded with the fact that yennefer, the leading female character, performs abortions as part of her job, and also the scene in season of storms with coral and the king of kerack in which he makes a fool of himself in front of her because she assists women with abortions... it’s a topic that’s come up a few times, and all of the times it has been a pro-choice perspective. (again, this is not to say everything in the witcher series is progressive, haha)

in-universe, i suppose you could think of it as that regis was just being coy and asking a rhetorical question also in-universe... such that he was going to give milva the decoction no matter what the men of the company chose, but he just wanted to “ask their opinions” (i.e., tell them what is happening with milva, because it’s a serious subject that needs to be addressed by the company) before, so he could introduce the subject to them (sparing milva of the difficulty of telling them all) and gain their assistance in supporting milva during this time. (random sidenote, but i like how regis acts as a middleground between milva and the rest of the company in this. there are three genders: woman, man, and medical professional. lol). 

so yes, i don’t think that the men of the company actually “get to decide” if milva would have an abortion or not - their opinion’s don’t matter. out-of-universem sapkowski probably just wanted to set up a conversation between his characters where they could espouse explicitly pro-choice opinions (dandelion and cahir practically start arguing over if the northern kingdoms or nilfgaardian empire are more pro-choice). in-universe, this was probably more of a way to bring the subject up rather than actually asking for opinions. 

i think it may look like there are some pro-life opinions shown by geralt in this conversation at first glance, but there might be something deeper. when he tells dandelion to be quiet when he begins to hound him that “only a woman decides,” i think it’s not because he disagrees with that - rather, that he agrees, but that that isn’t the issue here that he needs to deal with. it IS milva’s decision, everyone is in agreement about that - and that’s precisely the problem, because milva is in a vulnerable emotional state and also a precarious physical environment, and these factors could influence her to go through with the abortion, while in “regular circumstance,” if everything were fine and everyone was safe and they weren’t on a quest to save ciri, she might go through with the pregnancy. so, geralt gets annoyed that dandelion tells him this, because he agrees, he already knows! it’s useless to tell him that, because he already agrees with him, what he really needs to do now is move forward with having an emotional talk with milva, which is difficult for him.

i think the “medicament” / “agent” thing is still a little confusing to me, because i don’t know which one has a negative connotation. to me, it’s a medicament, or a medicine, whic is something that cures an ailment, that has a negative connotation, because it kind of refers to the state of being pregnant as a sickness or illness that needs to be cured? an agent is more like a substance that causes a reaction, i think of that of enzymes that speed up chemical reactions in cells, it causes a certain result to happen - which seems more appropriate in my opinion. but yeah i’m not sure which is the “worse word” to use, or if either are “bad words” to use when it comes to this

3) In general, continuing the theme:

Very many sorceresses also lament the lack of ability to have children, and all of them, even if they had relationships with women, were always looking for the ONE AND ONLY man. 

I was too disappointed by the stereotypical representation of women: hatred because of the same outfits/jewelry, thin waists and small portions (remember how Yen and Fringilla eat), eternal gossip, and so on. I mean, women aren't like that, man. 

The toxicity of the presented heterosexual relationships has been said a thousand times before me. 

Moreover, the same-sex relationships in the book are only female/female shown, but never male/male (a quick and disdainful mention in "Season of Storms"). But even f / f relationships are presented as some not-serious-play; remember how Ciri called it all "fun," talking with Mistle. I see a toxic-masculine culture that sexualizes lesbians and completely denies gays. (This also reminds me of Poland's situation, where the majority of the population is very religious and homophobic.)

In general, I am always a little upset when I see that someone calls Sapkowski such a tolerant writer. According to my observations, toxic masculinity, "conservative" ideas, and strengthening stereotypes about LGBT people, women, etc., often slip into his books. I may be wrong, so I apologize in advance. I would like to hear your opinion. Thanks. 

very much agree with all of this. in some circumstances, i think the author-intention was to break stereotypes and tropes - such as fringilla and yennefer speaking about oysters in relation to their ‘diets’ ... but then, they are actually talking about oysters in the context of having to teleport from the castle, they are actually speaking about high-intrigue political alliances, not something as silly as diets... but the effect, to me, is lost, because they led into it acting vapid and speaking about diets anyways, and if they used sarcasm in their voices, it wasn’t strong enough coming through the text in my opinion.

similarly, i think he tried to do some of this trope-breaking with the sorceresses overall, how they are all vapid and obsessed with appearance, but actually are the political masterminds behind everything. although he achieved the latter, he did not manage to have the latter negate the former... the intelligent political talks did nothing to “cancel out” the previously-demonstrated vapidness and obsession with femininity, and the way he describes women overall is something to roll the eyes (and the stomach) at. (“triss’ waist measured ‘22′,” oh give me a break lmfao...)

i also agree that although there are technically gay and lesbian characters in the books, none of them are “good representation” - the only ones i can think of are philippa, mistle, and degerlund (season of storms, which you are right in describing as “disdainful”) - all of these characters are violent, none of them ever are shown having a healthy relationship, and their “love” either ‘corrupts others’ (i use that term semi-lightly) or is part of some political manuever. ciri’s time with mistle is that of a ‘youthful violence,’ it is part of her time with the rats, her time reaching into her worst most hateful depths as a person, and it’s presented as something to “heal from.” and we haven’t even mentioned how mistle assaults her in the beginning of it all. this is largely a post for another time, but it’s not a good situation by any means.

i also get super annoyed for this reason when i see people applauding sapkowski for being a “progressive writer.” in my mind, he is not progressive at all, although he has his character espouse some pro-choice views here and there, that is not nearly enough to make up for the fantasy racism/antisemitism, use of antisemitic caricatures to do trope-reversal on, misogyny to do trope-reversal on, and blatantly just Not Good gay and lesbian characters. 

in my mind, it’s inappropriate to label him as “progressive,” because he was not writing with diversity and representation in mind. i think a lot of people get confused, because they assume, “oh he included women, so he must have been wanting more representation for women!” ... when he was pretty much just writing for writing’s sake... of his own worldview and biases, nothing special when it comes to representation. and i agree that a lot of conservative ideas slip their way into the books, from my perspective he tries to make some centrist milquetoast statements at times (”don’t be neutral in the face of evil” for example) but wraps it up in literally a fantasy pogrom - which is not something imo for a goyische author to put into their stories. his inspirations at times are clear, and he uses them in manners which can come off as blunt and disrespectful.

[hopeshoodie]

Because we don't have a male MC on Love Island. The only things that would change in this game with male MC would be some challenges that would have another point of view and the beginning, where in fact, women would choose you, but you would choose, to make your choice you just react positively or negatively when one of them looks at you.

Ok so unpopular opinion but I kind of get where Fusebox is coming from with the 'only having female MC options'- a lot of their story is gender-based, so the branching with your suggestion of 'sticking with the boys' or 'going with the girls' would get out of control quickly. And a male MC option doubles the amount of character art needed to be made for the MC. They probably are looking at the cost/reward model and thinking 'our demographic is women anyways, so what's the point'.

So while it's shitty, it's understandable. Some compromises that Fusebox could do would be:

Allowing players to go by they/them pronouns (although they already good up the Lis pronouns constantly with glitches so I don't have a whole lot of hope)

Giving players 3+ body types to choose from when customizing MC. I’m picturing a slim/flat chest, their current MC design, and then a plus sized design, but obviously more body types is always better. That way we can have a fat MC or a more masculine coded MC. I get that they still have to adjust the swimsuits for all the body types, but this would be less onerous that creating a whole other wardrobe for a male MC.

Making all LIs bi. No more of the ‘CAUTION: Nicky and Seb are not endgame but we’re going to leave you guessing about Viv, Elladine, and Iona’ or the ‘you only unlock female LIs by romancing one specific character’. They should just give you an option to view all the endgame routes in the first episode and explicitly state all the characters, male or otherwise, that aren’t endgame (and also an option not to so if you don’t want to spoil it you have that choice). And then female LIs should be unlocked at different times like the male ones are, dependent on if you say in the beginning you’re interested in them (instead of dependent on romancing Talia or Marisol).

You run into the same problems with things like 'girls day out' and casa amor, and I'm not really sure what a good solution is. Maybe trying to make an inclusive, diverse game out of a deeply sexist and shallow tv show has some challenges LMAO

[skullvins]

random fuckin gender ramble scroll if ur not interested in my gender bs

aaarrrggg i hate that radfem bs has caused me to still associate butch and femme with being lesbian only terms (even though i KNOW they’re not) and thus making me associate both of them with being women, even though i KNOW theyre historically not. its so hard to unlearn???

like, the overlapping lesbian/butch/transmasc history is so hard to navigate as a funky lil enby/genderqueer because a lot of terms are either too masc or too fem for me to be comfortable with, and now that im TRYING to explore exactly how my masculinity and femininity work its so weird!!!

I’m in solidarity with queer men and queer women, both trans and cis or gnc or whatever and figuring out my personal relationships with those communities is hard!!! I relate to my cis female peers as someone who’s only started socially transitioning in recent years, I relate to their issues as someone who doesn’t pass well, I relate to transmascs in terms of wanting to be seen as more masculine, in wanting to physically transition, i relate to trans mlm in terms of sexuality, i relate to lesbians/wlw in terms of sexuality too! some of the best comfort and solidarity ive found is in amab enbies and even some transfems when it comes to comfort and gender expression. the two amab demiguys i know make me feel comfortable exploring masculinity because i feel safe around them BECAUSE they’re not cis, and like, i can be ‘one of the guys’ with them without having to be A GUY, and i relate so so so hard to gnc guys or amab enbies when it comes to presentation. i almost want to transition JUST so i can reembrace femininity in a masculine way.

i dunno, i feel this insane pressure outside of the queer community to either be as masc as possible to pass and be taken seriously, and that’s gotta be at least partially due to the way radfem bs has spread, especially here in the uk.

i wanna be read as masc, i wanna be read as fem, i wanna be incomprehensible! I wanna wear men’s shirts and t shirts and polo shirts with a skirt because i can!! because skirts are fun and cute and i enjoy wearing them. i really do wish i was amab because it would be so much easier to present the way i want to, I think, but then again, i don’t have bottom dysphoria, not really.

all this changes though, really i might just be genderfluid, but i hate the binary connotations of that too. so many enby words are stolen or defined in terms of binary gender: being bigender to most means being male or female, being genderfluid means being fluid between them, being nonbinary is being not male or female, when people equate being nonbinary to being genderless it kills me because I am not binary! but i am not genderless! my gender is here and present and part of me and part of my relation with the world around me and with other people and part of my sexuality and orientation

i dunno, this is turning into a big queer rant. this isn’t me trying to shove labels onto myself, I’m fine with rejecting them if that’s what’s needed - i don’t define my sexuality any further than queer even though hypothetically i could probably id as bi or pan or any mspec label, but I choose not to because being QUEER is my orientation. perhaps my gender as well (i do id as genderqueer as well as enby) but i want to really truly understand my gender AS queer, rather than just brush it off as queer because I cannot define it to myself or understand it. i want to understand my relation to the world around me and to other queer people.

so am I butch? am I femme? maybe it changes? is that allowed to change from day to day? my gender doesn’t FEEL like it changes but that presentation does, maybe! maybe I need to try new pronouns, but using she/her like i want to is hard when i associate it with misgendering and failing to prove myself as trans enough to cis people.

i wanna be masc with women and fem with men, but the latter is hard due to fears that come from experiences with misogyny. a lot of cis men ARE scary to me - I’m an 18 year old afab for fucks sake. i wish i could have that re-embraced femininity, but I’m not flat when i bind or build masc or tall or fuckin. anything! and hormones aren’t an option yet because a lot of my mental health is too unstable, the nhs is in shambles, and I don’t have money. i can’t embrace that yet unless im in the right circles, with the right people, and i can’t be that in society, I don’t trust it. I don’t know if I wanna dress fem and have people see me as masc or fem, i don’t know what pronouns i want them to use, i dunno man!!!

i wanna reach out to older queer people but again its hard, we’re in lockdown, i don’t live somewhere with a big queer community, i’m not a fan of bars and such and there’s not any in my town so i’d have to travel a bit, i wish i could just feel at home!!! i wanna be feminine without being female but also without being male, at least not fully male! I’m not male, i have this connection to femininity and it doesn’t feel male to me, I don’t want to be included in explicitly male or explicitly female spaces, I wanna be with everyone or no one, i dunno

again, i wish butch and femme didnt feel so gendered to me personally, and that’s not just this site but also what ive grown up with, my mum used to always say i was a wannabe ‘butch lezza’ whenever i was trying to get her to take my NONBINARY identity seriously and I’m not that! not because it’s bad to be, but because that’s just not me. I’m not a wlw, I’m not even sure on my attraction to women, or to men, or to anyone, I’m just attracted to queerness, and i dunno it’s hard. being ‘butch’ to me, somewhat, still means wlw, even though it’s not true, and i hate how radfem bs has ruined the word for me. i wish i could understand my identity in terms of being butch or femme, or whatever i am, and i wish those words weren’t tainted for me in the first place. i guess all of us are just ‘failed women’ in the eyes of society, huh.

characters who are feminine, but still explicitly male, or have some relation with masculinity, or are fluid between it, or who return to masculinity as a default give me so much euphoria just to witness. I’m in desperate need of a haircut and i don’t know whether to grow it out properly again or cut it short

either way, I’m gonna dye it purple

[suzyundertale]

Non-binary characters in Undertale and Deltarune

A lot of people don’t notice this, but there are several major characters in Undertale that are referred to exclusively with they/them pronouns. In this post, I’ll go over them, and I’ll explain why so many non-binary people identify with them.

Napstablook and Monster Kid

Both Napstablook and Monster Kid are referred to only with they/them pronouns. This suggests that they are non-binary.

Of course, even with characters being exclusively referred to with they/them, there will be people who say it’s intentionally “ambiguous”, or an oversight, or what have you.

Fortunately, we have definitive evidence this isn’t the case.

In the first printing of the official Undertale art book, featuring commentary from Toby Fox himself, these two characters were mistakenly referred to with he/him pronouns.

However, when this was pointed out to Toby, he told me that it was a typo and it would be fixed in the next run - which it promptly was.

This serves as confirmation that referring to these two with he/him pronouns is incorrect, and they/them are the correct pronouns.

Frisk

Frisk is the protagonist and player character of Undertale. It’s worth noting that, for the majority of Undertale, you’re definitely supposed to think that Frisk is a player self-insert character, a blank slate for you to project yourself onto. You’re tricked into thinking you name them, and they have an ambiguous skin color and gender.

However, in the True Pacifist ending, it’s revealed that they have their own name: Frisk.

This reveal also serves as a reveal that Frisk isn’t you, or an in-game representation of you. They’re their own person. They’re a character that exists within this universe. It’s always been just them. Not you or anyone else.

I mean, why would a character who’s meant to be “you” have their own name? Toby never calls Frisk “Frisk” in merchandise or interviews, simply calling them “The Human”, because their name is a major spoiler for the True Pacifist ending. It’s quite easy to only call them “The Human”, he has no trouble doing it now, so if they’re meant to be “you”, there’s no reason to give them a name at all.

In the True Pacifist ending, after Asriel returns everyone’s SOULs, everyone magically learns Frisk’s name (except Napstablook, who closed their blinds upon seeing the flash of light.) Suddenly, everyone knows who Frisk is.

And… all of their friends still use they/them pronouns for them.

If they’re clearly meant to be not you, then surely it would be easier for Toby to hammer in that point by suddenly having everyone refer to Frisk with different pronouns. But he doesn’t, because Frisk isn’t a girl or a boy. Because the monsters were never wrong to use they/them for Frisk. Those were always their pronouns, and they still are.

Chara

Chara is the character we name at the beginning of Undertale. However, this doesn’t mean that they literally are you.

Chara has their own backstory - they had a family, they had likes and dislikes. They’re not meant to be an in-game representation of the player. If they were, there’s about a million better ways Toby could have done that. Like, you know, not giving them a clearly defined backstory and personality. Why would someone who’s supposed to be “the player” be so… different from so many people? A lot of people don’t like chocolate or flowers or knives. Actually, I’d guess that most people don’t like all of those things at once. But Chara does.

In any case, Chara is referred to exclusively with they/them or, occasionally, it/its pronouns. Their own brother, Asriel - their best friend and undoubtedly the person they were closest to -  uses only they/them pronouns when speaking of them.

Kris

From the very beginning of Deltarune, it’s made very clear that Kris is NOT a self-insert of any kind, even more clear than Frisk and Chara. Whether you believe the red SOUL is literally the player or not, Kris is clearly their own person fighting against someone for control of their body. They have their own clearly defined personality, likes and dislikes, etc. I really don’t think there’s any way to reasonably argue that Kris is meant to be a representation of the player. You don’t get to choose anything about them. Their personality, their likes and dislikes, their hobbies, their past, all of that is set in stone.

So why, then, would their gender be up to player interpretation? Why would that be the one single thing we get to decide about Kris? It, quite simply, does not make any sense.

Seam

Seam is a lot less obvious than the other ones - but if you play through Deltarune, you might notice something about all the dialogue where people refer to Seam.

Seam is never referred to with any pronouns. The way it’s written seems very deliberate, in my opinion, so I don’t think that this is a coincidence. 

In the real world, some non-binary people elect to use no pronouns, as well, and ask to be only referred to by name. Seam may be representation for this. Honestly, I think it’s really great of Toby to include a character that doesn’t use pronouns. All the other non-binary characters in Undertale and Deltarune use they/them, but that’s not always the case for real non-binary people. In real life, non-binary people can use all sorts of pronouns, or no pronouns at all.

At first it may seem confusing or difficult to not use any pronouns to refer to someone. But if you reread this section, you’ll notice I’ve never used any third-person pronouns. It took a bit of thinking, but it’s actually quite easy once you get used to it!

--

Kris, Frisk, and Chara are never explicitly stated to be non-binary. That’s true. Some people make the argument that because it’s never explicitly stated, it can’t be canon. That is not true at all. To demonstrate this, I will use an example from Undertale.

Take Alphys. From the Mettaton Quiz Show segment of Undertale, we can learn that Alphys has a crush on both Undyne, a woman, and Asgore, a man. Therefore, Alphys is canonically bisexual. Alphys herself never states that she is bisexual. No one else ever says that Alphys is bisexual. In fact, the word “bisexual” is never used once in Undertale at all. But Alphys being bisexual is still canon.

Therefore, it’s possible for Kris, Frisk, and Chara to be canonically non-binary without it ever being outright stated.

But why? Wouldn’t it be easier for Toby to explicitly state it? Sure, maybe it would be easier to write - but that doesn’t mean it’s better writing. Finding a way to somehow mention a character’s gender would most likely come across as forced and unnatural. After all, most people don’t openly discuss their gender or sexuality in everyday situations.

So, Kris doesn’t need to explicitly say “I’m non-binary and use they/them pronouns” to be a character who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. They just… are. The same goes, of course, for Frisk and Chara.

They’re only ever referred to with they/them pronouns by close friends and family, and we’re given no reason to believe they’re anything other than non-binary. There’s absolutely no reason to use any pronouns other than they/them for these characters.

If you meet someone in real life, and notice that everyone around you is only using they/them pronouns for that person… well, it’s pretty safe to assume that person is non-binary. Even if you never hear anyone say “This Person Is Non-binary”, you don’t have an excuse to start calling them a he or a she. It’s the same with the kids.

The fact is that Frisk and Kris are no different than other video game protagonists. No one tries to argue that Ninten or Ness or Lucas are girls. No one tries to argue that Samus is a boy. It’s only when the protagonist is non-binary that people try to argue otherwise.

Why?

Some people may ask, well, why is this important? Why can’t I just headcanon them as whatever I want? They’re not even real!

Well, you see, non-binary characters are really rare in fiction. Especially as a protagonist, and especially a human protagonist. When you see a non-binary or genderless character in fiction, it’s usually going to be something non-human, like an alien, or otherwise non-sentient, like a robot. This happens a lot, and it dehumanizes actual non-binary people. Even worse, transgender characters in fiction in general are often treated like jokes, or something to make fun of. Like they’re not even a person.

So, to a non-binary person, to see a non-binary protagonist who’s a human being, like them, is.. very important. It’s something you might not understand if you’ve grown up seeing people like yourself on TV or in games or books all the time. It brings comfort to non-binary people to see someone like themself in such a popular video game. It gives them reassurance that “yes, we do exist”, as many people in the real world deny the existence of non-binary people. In both Undertale and Deltarune, no one makes a big deal of Frisk or Chara or Kris being non-binary. No one ever challenges it. No one ever misgenders them. And that’s incredibly comforting for so many non-binary people. For once, for once, they can be immersed in a world where people like them are unanimously accepted, and treated with respect.

That’s why so many non-binary people feel hurt when they see people in fandom misgendering the kids, as well. It’s a denial of their identities, it’s a denial that non-binary people exist in the Undertale and Deltarune universes. Even though it’s just a fictional character, it can still impact your view of actual non-binary people - if you can’t even respect a fictional character’s pronouns, what does that say about how you treat real people?

In addition, a lot of trans and non-binary people in the Undertale fandom are harassed over this. When they try to defend Kris, Frisk, and Chara’s pronouns, people will inevitably throw hate at them. People who identify with these characters are met with mockery and hostility. Unfortunately, there are transphobic people in the Undertale fandom. Misgendering the kids validates those people. It tells those people, “even if someone uses only they/them pronouns, it’s okay to call them a he or a she.” It tells them, “you’re right to think these people are unreasonable. you’re right to think these people don’t exist.” And that’s wrong. That’s not true at all.

[runicmagitek]

Your choice for the 001/002/003 prompt. 001: Pyre; 002: RedBlue; 003: Edea. Pick which one you feel like writing about!

Why not all of the above? ;D many thanks for this!

Pyre

Favorite character: Ti’zo. I love him so much. Even have the plushie of him, too!

Least Favorite character: I was always meh about Hedwyn. I am not as enthusiastic about him as the rest of the fandom

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): The Reader/Sandra, Celeste/Tariq, Pamitha/Bertrude, Volfred/Oralech, and Jodoriel/Ignarius

Character I find most attractive: Sandra! That sass alone makes me swoon.

Character I would marry: Obviously my orb wife, Sandra. Even if she’s blind and/or trapped in an orb forever, we’d make it work.

Character I would be best friends with: Definitely Ti’zo, because have you seen him??? But also the moon-touched girl, because she deserves a hug and she’s such a kind individual. I also feel like I’d get along well with Pamitha.

a random thought: I’m so happy you could choose they/them as your Reader’s pronouns

An unpopular opinion: of all the Supergiant Games OSTs, Pyre’s is my least favorite (though I still love it and listen to it a lot, I just LOVE Bastion’s and Transistor’s WAAAAY more)

My Canon OTP: Uh… Jodi and Iggy, I guess? They’re at least more explicit about what they are in comparison to the rest, which are more vague

My Non-canon OTP: Celeste/Tariq. I mean, they’re heavily implied imo, but there’s nothing explicitly stating their relationship?

Most Badass Character: All the ladies? Jodi and Sandra and Pamitha and Bertrude and Celeste and even the moon-touched girl in her own way. I love them all.

Most Epic Villain: Brighton was A+, especially when the truth about him is revealed.

Pairing I am not a fan of: Jodariel/Pamitha, Volfred/Tariq, Hedwyn/anyone :\

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): I don’t feel like anyone was screwed up, but I wish there was more with Erisa.

Favourite Friendship: Jodariel and the moon-touched girl forever warms my heart.

Character I most identify with: Ti’zo, somehow? I just resonated a lot with his extreme emotions.

Character I wish I could be: I really love Volfred’s resolve and wisdom.

Red/Blue

When I started shipping them: The second Blue did his whole, “You know I love you, right?” bit before Red went off to fight Royce

My thoughts: They are so tragic and warm and I just love them and want nothing but the best for them, despite their devastating ending :( I really love how the game doesn’t explicitly state at the beginning that they’re an item, yet when you replay, you notice all these little things that make so much sense. Like I was really prepared for Blue to be a villain somehow towards the end, so it was great to know it was actually someone incredibly close to Red.

What makes me happy about them: EVERYTHING???

What makes me sad about them: That canon ending :( they deserve so much better, yet it is a fitting ending for the game and their story

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: When Red is shown as someone soft and quiet in comparison to Blue. She’s the one who decided to stay in Cloudbank and fight the Process. She’s the one who made the “I’m going to find what did this to you and BREAK ITS HEART” comment. Girl is full of grit and vibrance and I get all :\ when people gloss over that.

Things I look for in fanfic: I love pre-canon goodness where they can be comfortable with one another. A little slice of happiness before their lives go to shit :(

My wishlist: I just want them to break free from recursion and live happily ever after in the Country.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Sybil/Red for sure, but something healthy and reciprocated instead of the stalkerish stuff that’s in the game. I’m not sure who I’d picture Blue with. Maybe Preston or Farrah? He seems fond and respectful of both of them.

My happily ever after for them: The events at the Empty Set never happened, they never had to fight the Process, and then they live happily together, eating flatbread after concerts and stuff *cries forever*

Edea

How I feel about this character: I feel like she gets forgotten a lot by the fandom and the game. Like once it’s revealed Ultimecia was controlling her the whole time, she’s kind of thrown out the window, which is unfortunate, because she’s a central character for the main cast or at least the orphanage crew. I really enjoy her and wish there was more insight in regards to when Ultimecia controlled her or how she adapted to her life post-loss of powers or how she coped upon becoming a sorceress and learning Squall’s fate.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: I don’t really ship her with anyone. Hell, I’m not even big on her with her husband :\ that never felt like the best relationship. 

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Her and Rinoa! I’d love to see more with Edea mentoring Rinoa and turning into a mother-like figure for her.

My unpopular opinion about this character: I’m not sure I really have one? I just think she’s awesome and doesn’t get enough attention :\

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I MEAN, ANYTHING. She gets dropped so fast, so I’d be happy with any content. What does she do when she no longer has her powers? Does she mend the connections she fucked up? Does she still support Garden? Or her husband? I WANNA KNOW.

Favorite friendship for this character: Outside of Rinoa, I love her interactions with Squall.

My crossover ship: Hmm…. haven’t really put much thought into this. I could see her and Yunalesca from FFX getting along. Maybe even her and Morrigan from Dragon Age - give her a better mom role model, too.

[riftmeanewverse]

GETTING  TO  KNOW  THE  MUN:

NAME : Ana NICKNAME :   annachibi FACECLAIM :  none PRONOUNS :  she/they HEIGHT :  5′6″ BIRTHDAY :  april 22nd AESTHETIC : bluey-purple & rainbow. overalls. baggy t-shirts. smiles. sitting in strange positions. sunsets. chillwave & synthpop. LAST  SONG  YOU  LISTENED  TO :  Moonrunner by Droid Bishop FAVOURITE  MUSE (S)  YOU’VE  WRITTEN : Sorren, Hopper, & Russel

GETTING  TO  KNOW  THE  ACCOUNT :

WHAT  INSPIRED  YOU  TO  TAKE  ON  THIS  MUSE : Since I talked about Hopper last time, I’ll talk about Sorren and Russel this time. So they originally came from message board RPs years ago. I was on a board run by a couple of friends and of course as I got to know them I started blabbing on about Rufus Sewell (who was the fc for the OC I had made there - Rhys, a grumpy half-selkie chain-smoker, kinda a proto-Sorren in a way). I became known for it, as I tend to do lol. So when they started up a new board with a medieval-ish original fantasy setting and I let them know that I would come along, they made a “canon” for me with Rufus as the fc and had him be “morally ambiguous” as per my request when I found out they were doing it. Basically, he had a few connections to other characters, a couple lines about his basic personality, and a last name. The rest was all up to me. In fact, I can actually grab the blurb yeah here it is:

“though technically more like an older brother than a father to his adopted sons, baron radvhet is a confusing man. one may think his intentions are good, but the next they believe him to be evil. he's raised the boys well to follow in his footsteps. the rest of his history and personality are UP TO THE PLAYER.” 

So yeah, that was it. I was honestly just inspired by Rufus’s acting and the depth he brings to even small roles. I think at the time I was mostly thinking about his Agamemnon and Tom Builder. I tried to make him... not really evil, but “ruthless” was a word that came up a lot. He had opinions and prejudices that were honestly xenophobic, but he sorta had to be that way in order to justify the role he played in his country’s court. I never got to play it out, but he tortured spies to extract information and dealt with poisons. At the same time, he had this side to him that really wanted to be a good father to his sons, despite the fact that he had a difficult time connecting with them emotionally. It was a real challenge to balance those two sides of him. At the heart of both of them was a fierce loyalty to country and family. And then, of course, that loyalty became challenged when he found out that the king was not the good man he thought he was...

Shit, I’m supposed to just be talking about inspirations, not going on a whole meta. XD Anyway, yeah, the other players loved him and sorta looked at him like a dad at first because I started off with a thread with one of his sons, so then I tried to switch it up and change their minds by having him get really angry with someone who accused his son of something (which he totally did, but Sorren didn’t know that) and getting into a sword fight over it at a peace conference which then basically turned into the beginning of a war. Sorren wasn’t bothered because he figured it had only been a matter of time before war broke out anyway so why not get it over with, but yeah... I don’t think I ever quite succeeded in getting them to think he was Not Good, but they did then consider him a badass lmao

So at that point, everybody on the board basically had this idea of Rufus tied to his usual kind of badass gruff characters, and when the creators of the board started up yet a new one (this time a boarding school with teachers) I wanted to turn the tables on their perception of Rufus completely. So I came up with Russel, based somewhat on Rufus’s character in Uncorked, the dorky, excitable, sweet cinnamon roll of an English teacher. I actually put a lot of myself in him, from his backstory to his interests. A lot of the other characters on the site had crazy names like Andromeda or yknow those kinds of names that sound cool but you don’t ever meet anyone named that in real life? So I tried to give Russel a really normal-sounding name along with the rest of him. I dunno, I just wanted to prove that 1. Rufus Sewell could be used as a fc for a total dork too, and 2. “regular people” characters without super tragic backstories are also interesting and likable!

So yeah, that’s how those two came about. I ended up changing Russel’s fc when I saw Hugh Dancy in Hannibal.

WHAT  ARE  YOUR  FAVOURITE  ASPECTS  OF  YOUR  CURRENT  MUSE :  Sorren has sometimes taken on less of a morally ambiguous role since I made him, partly because it requires a good bit of plotting out beforehand and partly because I realized that no matter how “evil” I made him, there would always be someone who would see his motivations or his other "good” actions and overlook it in favor of thinking of him as a good guy, unfortunately. So if I want him to be confronted or punished or called out by other characters, I pretty much have to explicitly tell people that’s what I want, which kinda takes some of the fun out of it. WOW OKAY this was about my favorite aspects I am so off track omg! But that I guess used to be my favorite aspect of him, and now it’s... I dunno, it’s hard to choose, and it changes depending on my mood and what I want to emphasize. I guess I love that he’s just so multifaceted. I’ve had him such a long time and gotten to play with him so much that I know him like the back of my hand.

For Russel, it used to be that he was so “normal” in a sea full of OCs with heterochromatic eyes, tragic backstories, legendary weaponry, etc etc. I still do like that about him, because it really lets his quirks and his personality shine when he doesn’t have any of that fancy stuff to hide behind. He’s such a dork, and he has this depressive streak that can make him mopey and annoying, but I kinda love that about him too. He’s just so real, I guess. He’s a good person but he has his flaws, too. They’re nothing huge like being a torturer, but they’re there and he is always learning and trying to be a better person, even if nobody says he needs to work at that.

WHAT’S  YOUR  BIGGEST  INSPIRATION  WHEN  IT  COMES  TO  WRITING : Music, usually. Heck, I went off on a complete tangent and Russel came out full force because I found a song that made me think of his ex lol! When I write sad stuff, I usually try to find a song that will epitomize the mood I’m going for and listen to it on repeat while I’m writing. But my fcs can also inspire me, as I detailed above with Rufus. Okay, I say fcs but it’s usually Rufus. Rufus Sewell is my gatdang inspiration. There, I said it. The man is an amazing actor and plays such a wide variety of roles that I find myself thinking of gestures or expressions or ways of speaking that he’s done on camera and going “okay now how do I put that in words?” I do that with the others too, particularly David Harbour, but yeah.

FAVOURITE  TYPES  OF  THREADS : I love it when characters get to really connect with each other and emotions come out in their actions or words. I play characters who may not always say what they’re feeling, but if they’re feeling something, it’ll come out in other ways. Russel gets excited and happy about things. Sorren gets sad or defensive or evasive. Making him uncomfortable is hella fun. Hopper is also like that but I love how touchy-feely he is by nature, so I enjoy putting him in situations where he can express that. And I’ll mention my angry girl Phoenix on my sideblog because she is a bundle of emotion and I heckin love it. But yeah, make them feel something! Angst, fluff, humor, it can all lead to that.

BIGGEST  STRUGGLE  IN  REGARDS  TO  YOUR  CURRENT  MUSE :  HONESTLY I don’t know if it’s that I’m really active and reach out to people a lot or if Stranger Things and Hopper are just really popular or what, but I have a lot of threads. Don’t get me wrong, I love having something to reply to all the time, but it’s kind of a double-edged sword? Which kinda sucks because I actually want to RP with a ton more people than I already am?? THE STRUGGLE

TAGGED  BY : @aspecialprovidence

tagging: @tenacitybred @ambersrpblog @goxinsane @lovclyiism @playboytm @ridingwheeler @astra11 @mindslayed I’ve already done this once before so I don’t wanna re-tag people but also if you’re reading this and you wanna, do it!!

[queenieofaces]

Some reflections on writing ace and aro LARP characters

This post has been cross-posted to The Asexual Agenda.

As some of you may remember, I played New World Magischola (a Live Action Role Playing game set at a wizard college) last year.  Since then, I’ve played a couple of other LARPs (including the second semester of NWM).  At some point in the past year my friend @algebraicbubbles and I started tossing around the idea of writing our own LARP.*  Our concept was simple: we’re both queer kids who love superhero fiction and often read superpower narratives as metaphors for queerness, so we wanted to write a superhero high school game (think Sky High in terms of aesthetic) that had queerness front and center.  We jokingly called the game Superqueeroes because we both love terrible puns, and then we couldn’t think of a better name so it stuck.

Anyway, one thing led to another, we recruited another friend to our team, and then we wrote and ran the game this past summer.  (If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, well, I was writing 11 character sheets, a world doc, and a whole lot of plot.)

This is less of a post about LARP and more a reflection on the process of writing ace and aro LARP characters, and how that’s different from (or similar to) writing ace characters in fiction.  My hope is that this post will still be interesting to you even if you know nothing about LARP, and will be interesting to LARPers who aren’t that well-versed in asexuality or aromanticism.

Note: I’ve avoided plot spoilers in this post, but I necessarily have to talk about some character backstories.  If you’re planning on playing Superqueeroes and would prefer to go in without any knowledge, it’s probably best to skip over this post.

In order to understand what the heck I’m going on about in this post, it’s probably necessary to give some background on the game.  The premise is that the characters (there are 17 of them) are all seniors at a high school for kids with superpowers.  The game takes place during graduation, when all the characters get to find out which superhero team they’ll be placed on after graduation, announce their new superhero name, and take their first steps into adulthood.  (Needless to say, graduation doesn’t go entirely as planned, but what exactly happens is a spoiler, so you’ll have to play if you want to find out.)  Some questions the players get to explore include: What does it mean to be a hero?  How far would you go to achieve your goals?  Who are you and who do you want to be?  What kinds of relationships do you want to have and with whom?  Who matters in your life, and how far would you go to keep them safe?  Needless to say, it’s a game that’s really heavily about identity and relationships (of all kinds) in addition to being about having sweet superpowers and saving the day.  It’s also worth noting that nobody has alignments, per se--anyway can become a supervillain if they so desire, or could become the greatest hero ever known.  The path of the character is decided not only by their backstory and the game plot but also by their player and the relationships they choose to focus on.  (For example, there’s a character who we expected to be played as a sweet, friendly social butterfly, who wound up being played as an incredibly socially savvy, kind of manipulative mastermind...which was 100% in line with what was written on the character sheet, even though we weren’t expecting that outcome.)

We decided early on that we wanted to have characters with a variety of genders and sexualities written explicitly into their character sheets.  Some characters have their gender/sexuality explicitly defined (e.g. “you are bisexual” or “you are non-binary”), some have a list of other characters they’re crushing on (and the player can interpret how they identify in whatever way they like), and some were left undefined so the player could decide what felt best to them (although the understanding is, other than The Token Straight TM, every character is some flavor of queer).  Some characters are dating other characters, some are hoping to date other characters, some are trying to figure out how to resolve the love quandrangle they’re stuck in,** and some are really tired of all the high school romantic drama.  Non-normative genders, sexualities, and relationship structures are not that big of a deal in the Superqueeroes universe--nobody is going to face violence or backlash by coming out,*** although of course people can still be nervous about coming out or unsure if coming out is a good idea.  Even without the possibility of negative consequences, disclosing part of yourself can be really scary and cause complications in your personal life.  Again, some characters are explicitly out, some are explicitly closeted, and some are left up to the player to decide what feels best.

There is one explicitly ace character and one explicitly aro character in the game (although there are a couple of additional characters who could easily be played as ace or aro spectrum if their players so desired).  I wrote both of them--in fact, I wrote a total of 11 of the 17 characters (and looked over/edited the other 6, while the other writer did the same for me).  For the sake of this post, I’m going to refer to the ace character as G and the aro character as M.  Most of the characters are written to be gender-neutral, and then we assign them genders and pronouns based on player preference--in run 1 of the game, for example, G was female and M was genderfluid.  For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to both characters with “they/them” pronouns in this post. 

One of the first challenges was that we wanted to keep our character sheets fairly short--I think almost all of them are in the 2-3 page range.  We kept them concise to prevent people from having to memorize a boatload of information (it’s only a 4-hour game after all), and also to give people leeway to interpret characters as they saw fit. Our character sheets generally include information on the character’s family, power, gender and/or sexuality (although there were some we left up to the players as already mentioned), any past experiences that might be relevant (history of being bullied, for example, or a mysterious encounter with a superhero in their youth), their hopes for the future/general life philosophy, other characters they have relationships with (friends, rivals, siblings, study buddies, etc.), and a list of two or three possible goals for the character.  As you can probably guess, that’s a whole lot of information to pack into a very small space, which meant that we could usually devote no more than a paragraph or two to a character’s gender and sexuality.

This, needless to say, made writing character sheets for the aro and ace characters hard.  While in a work of fiction you might be able to really delve into a character’s backstory and motivations and flesh them out as a whole person, in a 2-3 page character sheet all you can do is gesture at a rough sketch and hope that the player can fill everything else in themselves.  And while there are a lot of short-hand gestures that I can make to aro and ace experiences that I would expect aro and ace players to pick up on, I had no guarantee that the player we cast would be aro/ace or, in fact, have any knowledge of asexuality or aromanticism.  So I had to come up with a really compact way to gesture to ace and aro experiences without creating a character that would be easily reducible to stereotypes.

First, I didn’t want either character to be defined solely by absence.  There has been a lot of discussion about positive vs. negative definitions of asexuality over the years, and while I don’t object to negative definitions of asexuality in general, it was important (especially since I didn’t know who would be playing the characters) to define the characters not only by what they didn’t want but also by what they did want.  M, for example, grew up with a huge extended family, and has always wanted that for themself, but knows that they don’t want a romantic partner, which makes the standard path to a big family tricky.  G is an empath (which is how they figured out that they’re asexual), and sometimes has trouble understanding their peers’ romantic drama, not because they lack empathy (ha, puns) but because they don’t understand why people can’t just talk to each other and stop pining from afar.  They have a classmate who they know is attracted to them, and they get to decide how they want to deal with that--do they want to take their own advice and hash it out with them or just keep avoiding them?  M and G are both in situations that are directly linked to their orientations, but require more complex solutions than just saying, “Do not want.”

Second, I didn’t want either character to have no powers or a “late-bloomer” narrative.  There are a couple of characters who have no powers at all, including one who is the child of two of the most famous heroes and who everyone is expecting to develop powers any day now.  While having no powers seems like a really obvious metaphor for ace and aro experience, I didn’t want powerless ace and aro characters, especially if there was any chance that they were “late-bloomers,” since that would cast asexuality/aromanticism in a really negative light (it’s not just an absence--it’s an absence of what makes everyone else in the game special, yikes).****  Instead, both G and M have consistently undervalued powers, and a good chunk of their plot is trying to get people to take them seriously (also, arguably, an ace/aro experience, but one that’s a lot less value-laden than making them powerless).

Third, I didn’t want either character to be isolated or be a lone wolf.  Especially in a game that’s so heavy on romance plotlines, the most stereotypical writing choice would have been to have G and M be the two characters uninvolved in romance plotlines.  (There's a lot of commentary to be made here about the ways that aromanticism and asexuality are often equated, but that's a whole separate post in and of itself.)  The second easiest choice would be to substitute very strong friendships for G and M’s romance plots.  What I wound up doing instead was making very strong friendships normal for pretty much all the characters--most characters have at least one positive relationship (like a friend or a mentor) and one antagonistic relationship (although some characters have more of one or the other).  M has no romance plotlines and G has a potential romance plotline they can pursue if their player wants to play them as romantically-inclined, but there are other non-ace non-aro characters who don’t have romance plotlines--there’s a bisexual character who thinks dating is way too much trouble, for example.  Both G and M have figuring out what kinds of relationships they want in their life listed as one of their goals...but they’re not the only ones with that goal.  They also both have very strong relationships with their families--M, as already mentioned, has a huge extended family and is in close contact with their siblings, while G has two university professor dads who would really prefer that they go to college rather than becoming a superhero straight out of high school.  Basically, in a game about relationships and queerness, I didn’t want to paint M and G’s relationship desires as uniquely weird, and didn’t want to make romance a foregone conclusion for every other character.

Fourth, I wanted to avoid stereotypes about aromantic and asexual people--especially stereotypes about them being heartless, emotionless, robotic, alien, innocent/naive, etc.*****  G directly counters a lot of ace stereotypes--they’re really emotionally fluent and not naive by any means.  M is aromantic but cares about people really deeply and is far from emotionless (some might say that they have too many emotions).  There is a cyborg character in the game, but it’s not either of them.  I also wanted to avoid a lot of the “insufficient aro/ace” tropes that can appear in fiction--in a game where queerness is accepted and celebrated, I didn’t want either of the characters to be saddled with a plot where their orientation was “hurting” (or perceived to be hurting) someone else (as I have unfortunately seen happen in other games with ace characters).

I think I managed okay at all my goals--our first run, at least, suggests that I did.  G and M were both fully fleshed out characters rather than collections of stereotypes.  In the end, they became a superpowered duo (called “Emotional Assault” and “Battery”; yes, I have been crying about that truly awful pun for months) and also decided that once they got older, they were going to adopt kids together.  They also schemed with some other students, brainwashed their principal, and helped a supervillain escape justice, but, you know, nobody’s perfect.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens when we run the game again--we were very careful about who we picked for our first run and how we cast, but if we run the game at a convention, for example, we’re going to have a lot less control over our player base.  Even with our carefully curated group of players, we had a lot of trouble casting M in particular, in large part because not many people said they were comfortable playing an aromantic character.  (Talking to players afterward, it seems like that was mainly because A. people wanted romance plots or B. they weren’t sure that they could accurately and sensitively portray an aromantic character.  We had similar difficulty casting one of the trans characters.)

I think the big takeaway here is that writing ace and aro characters for LARP (especially if you’re going for compact character sheets) is pretty different than writing them in fiction.  The space constraints are very different, and you ultimately don’t have control over the character--all you can really do is point the player in the right direction and hope that they follow your signposting.  But the upside is that since character creation is collaborative, the players can take your characters in completely unexpected but delightful directions.

If you want to learn more about Superqueeroes, I have a whole tag for it on my other blog, which, granted, is mostly all caps text posts about how bad I am at naming things as well as some beautiful mood boards made by one of our run 1 players.  There will almost certainly be future runs of the game, so keep an eye out for announcements about that if you’re hanging around New England LARP communities.

*For those of you wondering what a LARP is, there are a whole bunch of different styles, but in our case we were running a four-hour low-mechanics theatre game, so imagine doing improv theatre for four hours.  Alternatively, imagine the games you might have played with your friends on the playground where you pretended to be ninjas or pirates or wizards.  Basically, we got everyone together in a room and pretended to be superpowered teenagers for four hours.  The three writers played NPCs, so I got to be the slightly douche-y, America-themed principal.  It was good.

**I was very proud of the run 1 players for resolving the love quadrangle by all dating each other.  Good job, kids.

***Although there are definitely LARPs that deal with heavy themes around gender and sexuality really well, we more or less wanted escapist fiction.  We let people decide how dramatic they wanted to make being queer for their character--for some people it was really not a big deal at all, whereas for others it was a really central part of their identity.  (Multiple characters wound up picking superhero names that were puns about their orientations, for example.)  But removing the possibility of violence or negative backlash from the picture meant that people could pursue their love quadrangles or figure out how to tell their friends that they were non-binary without having to worry about whether they’d be fired or disowned or ostracized.

****There’s some good commentary from the author of The Wicked + The Divine about similar choices they made with regards to asexuality in their cast.  (Major spoilers for WicDiv at the link, of course.)

*****Hey, have you read the Ace Tropes series yet?  If not, you should do that!  It’s really good!

[saidbyes-blog]

( & * THE LIBERTINE !

( nina nesbitt. demigirl. she/her. ) // did you see who walked past just then ? couldn’t really tell from the distance but i think it’s ( ebony harrison ) actually ! the ( twenty-four ) year old is a little ( unreliable ) if you ask me but they’re also ( kind-hearted ). i heard that when they opened the capsule, they took out the ( watch ) that they’d left seventeen years ago. i wonder what that even means to them especially now that they’re a ( bartender ) ?

in the wise words of trixie mattel: aaaahhhh ! i’m so excited ijshjhnshns, but anyway -- hi ! i’m pace ( she / her ) and this little pain in my entire ass is ebony. i’ll try and keep this on the shorter side ( as i always make these things WAY too long ) both for your sake in terms of reading, and because eb’s story is a little on the sadder side at times, and tbh i don’t wanna dwell on it bc she’s not like ?? a gloomy character or anything ?? but ya i’ll try and keep it brief !

trigger warnings for death !

----- ❀ fun fact: i intended for ebony to be an adjusted version of a character i already had, and planned to mould her around the skeleton and the setting and whatnot, but....... that just didn’t happen ??? ebony came to me very quickly & i wasn’t even expecting her lmao ? so a couple of details are based on That Other Character, but the rest just kind of happened ?? me, playing a brand new character in a rp ???? sounds fake ??? what can i say my dudes the skeleton got me good 

----- ❀ her label is the libertine, meaning her item she put n the time capsule was the watch ! long story short, it was her dad’s, who died unexpectedly very close to the time of the carnival. he claimed the watch to be a family heirloom, but they found out after he died that that was bullshit, and it was worth nothing, and since he lied about it, the sentimental value was gone, too. not to be emo but the watch broke as he fell, so the hands are stuck at the time he died ( well, he didn’t die instantly, but it sure as hell wasn’t long after ) so that’s.............fun. fixing it would cost more than the watch was worth, so they didn’t bother. ebony’s parents had fought just before he died, and he’d been kicked out their home, so his parents blamed ebony’s mum, and ebony’s mum blamed herself, too, but she was so angry about the watch that ebony didn’t let it out of her sight ?? just in case her mum smashed it or threw it away. so when they went to the carnival, eb just kind of ???? had in on her ??? and she didn’t intend to put it in the time capsule it just sort of.................happened ?? but even though she was only seven at the time, she hasn’t regretted it ? like looking back on it now as a messy as fuck adult, it was the right thing to do ? he never took it off, so having it in the house would just be a constant reminder of ‘hey, your dad’s dead ! and he was a liar, too !’ so allowing her seventeen years to mourn his death and come to terms with it, and then getting her hands back on the watch, was smart ? obviously she didn’t think that far ahead at the time, but. 

----- ❀ she’s actually back in town because of the time capsule. ebony is always full of surprises, and anybody who knew about the watch, whether they put something in the time capsule too, or she just told them about it on her travels, might be surprised she’d go back to lorfield for a broken watch ? she,,,, cannot commit to anything ?? let along a tatty old watch ?? and when things get too real, or too tough, she just.........ditches. she just can’t deal with stuff, it makes her feel trapped and claustrophobic, and she just cannot deal with it ?? sometimes she just ditches hangouts and friend circles, and sometimes she’ll skip town entirely, it really depends. but anyway, the watch had lost some of it’s detail in her memory in seventeen years, and that alone is enough to give her a reality check, like how long it’s actually been, how important things can be, how she’s actually quite glad to  have the watch back ? she always thought it’d be bigger, too. like it’s a little bulkier than what she’d choose if she was just.............buying a watch, because she’s got thin wrists, but because she was only seven, she just ??? always thought the watch was bigger ???

----- ❀ anyway, her label. the libertine is defined as ‘a person who behaves without moral principles or a sense of responsibility, especially in sexual matters.’ on the main, and ‘a person, especially a man, who freely indulges in sensual pleasures without regard to moral principles.’ on the ol’ google. for ebony, it expands from just sexual immorality, into immoral everything, but including sex. she drops everything at any given moment, and does so with ease; she has no responsibilities and will own up to none of them even when they do become present. and morally she’s just.......... wrong ? she knows what is morally right and what isn’t, she just can’t allow that to influence how she does things ? she doesn’t  think before she does anything, which means that half the shit she does is on impulse, and is then regretted. she doesn’t think ‘the libertine’ is a very flattering label, tbh ? not because of the sexual attachments to it, or because of the flakiness, but mostly just because it’s true. 

----- ❀ personality wise,,,,,,,, she a mess. like i said, morals ? she doesn’t know her !!! she’s hard to be understood, doesn’t like anybody trying to understand her, but wants somebody in her life who does understand her. the problem is, she doesn’t even understand herself.  she really doesn’t mean to be selfish, she genuinely doesn’t, but she is ? but on the other hand, she’s kind ? pretty gentle ? very forgiving ? expels all kinds of confidence that she just does. not. have ? but she’s selfish and flaky and craves things she doesn’t let people get close enough to have ?

----- ❀ she changes her appearance quite a lot tbh. might take a hot minute for some people to recognise her at times, depending on what she looked like when she knew them ? 

----- ❀ tbh i can see a lot of the people she knows / used to know being all kinds of annoyed with her ? like it’s very much a case of, you think everything is fine, you’re getting on great, but then the real shit happens and oh look ebony’s gone. she just can’t ???? deal with anything ???? so she doesn’t ??? it’s infuriating, especially as a person who she may have ditched at some point ? and it’s so clear WHY she disappears. she thinks her problems will be left behind, but they just catch up to her eventually and she just won’t admit that maybe that means she’s the problem, and that she can’t just abandon everything all the time and expect that to fix things. there are so many things in life she can’t control, and it’s just so overwhelming to her, so when she can control things, like where she stays and who she’s with and who she wakes up to in the morning, she does ? and when she is called out on her bullshit, she’s so casual about it that it’s believable ?? and she knows she can’t be like this forever but owning up to it and putting a stop to it means having to admit it, and some things are buried so deep that it’ll take work to put them right or to deal with them, and it’s just so much easier for her to ignore it. 

----- ❀ i’m working on a full bio for her, but it may take a while since the last bio i wrote was about six thousand words ( yikes ! ) but for now, she has stats !

----- ❀ gender is messy and ebony’s just accepted that tbh. her pronouns are she / her, but she does appreciate it when people use they / them if she hasn’t, like, explicitly said what her pronouns are ? idk, she just doesn’t want people to forget that she’s not A Girl™ ? bc like just bc she presents femininely and mostly identifies as the gender she was assigned at birth, doesn’t make her any less nb ??? u know ??? like even pals she’s said this too, and they could even be nb themselves, she’s still convinced they’ll ? not see her as nb and just ?? forget she’s not a woman ? on that note, though, she doesn’t mind being referred to as a girl on ????? her own terms ??? like her mobile header literally says ‘sad girls club’ but ? on her own terms, y’know ?? anyway, if we could refrain from referring to her as like ‘the girl’ or ‘the woman’ in replies, that’d be great ! 

----- ❀ tldr: ebony is everybody’s least favourite messy, woke, flaky, but soft, angel forward slash demon, who has mastered the ‘art’ of a) never dealing with anything ever b) crying then acting like she’s never cried in her life and she’s fine five minutes later and c) subtly leaning over the bar at work, claiming it to be because she can’t hear her customer, but it’s actually so her shirt gets caught and gets pulled down a little. bc tips. plus fun. plus it makes her feel smug. i hate her. 

okay so..........keeping it short went well then. but i’m honestly so tired rn so this may not even make sense, and i may have to go to sleep and get stuck into replies and starters and whatnot in the morning, but i’m v excited to be here and plot with your kiddos !! i kind of lowkey suck at plotting, and messaging makes me anxious, but i shall try my damn hardest, and  H O N E S T L Y everybody’s characters look so fecking good i’m cryin

edit: i threw together a connections page, that i will update and do properly when i’m more awake !

[lashesofsakula]

Rebecca Sugar’s Queer Universe

Here are the notes from my presentation on Rebecca Sugar and queer theory in Steven Universe.

Today I’m going to talk about Rebecca Sugar, an american animator born in Maryland in 1987 who graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She worked for several years on Adventure Time, where she  wrote some of the best loved songs of the series including: “Making Bacon Pancakes”, “Daddy why did you eat my fries” and “Everything Stays”. At the same time she started work on Steven Universe, which premiered on Cartoon Network in 2013. She is the first and only woman to have her own show on the network.

Steven Universe is about a kid called Steven, who lives with three aliens: Amethyst, Garnet and Pearl - the four of them together are the Crystal Gems.

They live in a temple, next to Beach City. (The backgrounds to this show are incredible.) where they spend most of their time saving the earth from being invaded and colonised by hostile gems from their home planet.

They also spend a fair amount of time eating doughnuts, going on road trips, practicing fighting and learning about friendship, love, community and all that good stuff.

Each crystal gem, is a distinct character, in the superhero tradition each have their own weapon and way of fighting. In order to make themselves more powerful they can join together to make a fusion who embodies the powers of the gems that make her up. All the gems are referred to by female pronouns, but as projections of light they can’t really be said to have a gender. Fun fact: the animators worked out what the fusions would look like by playing the game exquisite corpse, where you fold up a piece of paper and different person draws each part of the body, until you unfold it to see what the thing looks like as a whole.

Rebecca Sugar uses her cartoon to explicitly talk about different kinds of genders and relationships. When asked about this in an interview with The Verge, she says:

So much of the preexisting language for cartoons is heavily gendered. For example, how many cartoon couples are two identical characters, except one has eyelashes and a bow? This is the time and this is the tool to expand people's visual language when it comes to what a couple looks like, and to create gender nonconforming characters that are so compelling that you can't deny their humanity. *

If you look at Mickey and Minnie mouse or Mr and Mrs Potato Head there is nothing essential in the characters that genders them, they are merely accessorized in such a way to signal that they are male of female. What happens when we remove those accessories? Does the system of binary gender disintegrate?

In her book, Undoing Gender, Judith Butler describes the performance of gender as follows:

If gender is a kind of doing, an incessant activity performed, in part, without one’s knowing and without one’s willing, it is not for that reason automatic or mechanical. On the contrary, it is a practice of improvisation within a scene of constraint. Moreover, one does not “do” one’s gender alone. One is always doing with or for another, even if the other is only imaginary.**

Here, Butler separates the idea of gender from that of biological sex. Gender is not to do with what our bodies look like; but rather it is the place where what we project out into the world, and what the world recognises in us, comes together. We enact our gender everyday in the way we move around and interact with the world and because everyone’s performance is different, then it follows there must be as many genders as there are people to enact them.

In Steven Universe, Rebecca Sugar shows us the expansiveness of gender and its myriad presentations. In Sadie’s Song Steven dresses up in drag to perform a show stopping hit at the Beach City talent show. Unlike many other cartoons, this is not played for laughs. Steven totally smashes the set and the fact that he is wearing a dress is not even commented on.

In Alone Together, Steven and his best friend Connie fuse to form the genderqueer character Stevonnie. We witness the exhilaration that Stevonnie feels in their body that is neither male nor female, but also the confusion of the humans who encounter them. Where the gems are excited, and celebrate Steven and Connie’s fusion, the human characters are uncomfortable with Stevonnie and they don’t seem to know why.

This is highlighted because while she celebrates the diversity of gender, Sugar doesn’t brush over the fact that it is far from easy to slip outside of the gender binary.

In Undoing Gender, Judith Butler describes how “social norms” are used to police our performance of gender and that we have to choose whether to resist or submit to these in order to live what she calls a “livable life”. How much will it cost us in violence, abuse and/or invisibility to transgress these norms? How much will we be dehumanised, isolated or unfulfilled by remaining within them?

If I am a certain gender, will I still be regarded as part of the human? Will the “human” expand to include me in its reach? If I desire in certain ways, will I be able to live? Will there be a place for my life and will it be recognizable to the others upon whom I depend for social existence? ***

We rely upon others to recognise us, and thus recognition becomes a site of power for those who seek to give or withhold it.

Steven Universe shows this struggle in the episode Fusion Cuisine. Steven’s best friend Connie tells her parents that Steven is part of a normal nuclear family, so that they will let her hang out with him. But they become suspicious at never meeting his parents and ask them to come to dinner with them. Steven wants to bring all three of the crystal gems who play the role of mother to him - but Connie tells him he has to choose just one. Steven lines up the gems and asks them: "Which of you would make the best and most nuclear mum?" (see clip: Fusion Cuisine 2:40) We see Steven trying to force his queer multi-gendered family into a nuclear mold that they can not possibly fit.

In the end they decide all three gems will fuse, to be one mother. This totally fails to convince Connie’s parents that they are “normal”. The fusion, does not know how to behave at a human dinner party - they are too big, too loud, too “uncivilised”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_3zuh6QjfM

And this is where I think the show goes beyond the mere representation of gender non normative characters and enters the realm of queerness. To explain what I mean by this, I want to start with a couple of short definitions of queer theory - while acknowledging that it is a huge and varied field of which I will only brush the surface:

“For scholars influenced by queer theory, “queer” names or describes identities and practices that foreground the instability inherent in the supposedly stable relationship between anatomical sex, gender, and sexual desire” ****

“Queer is by definition, whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant” *****

Queer theory uses the non-normative as an entry point for discussion, it flips the script on “social norms” and “societal expectations” by questioning their legitimacy. Through queer theory we are able to observe the world from a whole other angle, where the the “normal” or “natural” ceases to be so and it’s weirdness is fully exposed.

As a quick example lets look through a queer lens at the way gender is constructed in our society: babies genitals are glanced at at birth and whatever the doctor believes they have identified determines the shape of that child’s life: from the clothes they will wear, to our expectations of their intelligence and athleticism, to their paycheck when they enter the workplace. This is patently ridiculous, and causes huge amounts of pain and suffering to humans of all genders who are forced into the system, and yet it is widely accepted as both “normal” and “natural” in societies across the globe.

Judith Butler argues that “the capacity to develop a critical relation to these norms presupposes a distance from them, an ability to suspend or defer for them'. In Steven Universe, Sugar achieves this distance is by having the main characters LITERALLY come from another planet. The earth is alien to them and so they see it without the normalising filter that we do: everything that humans do is strange to them and the gems continuously question things that to the humans in the show and the audience seem completely obvious. In an interview on Hot Topic, Rebecca Sugar explains that this idea underlies the entire series:

It’s always been our theory of the show, this sort of reverse escapism theory, which is that a fantasy world and fantasy characters became interested in real life and wanted to participate in that and Steven is the son of a human being and a crystal gem and he’s the product of fantasy having this love affair with reality. And all the imperfections of real life could be beautiful and fascinating to someone and those are things that are exotic and foreign and interesting to these characters who are used to the impossible perfection of their fantasy world. ******

So the gems alienness coupled with their non-normative genders and relationships give them a queer perspective on the earth. This scene between Peridot, Steven and Amythyst - shows the potential comedy of such a scenario:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKBCW8Hcl4k

When we compare these moments with the scene with Connie’s parents we see the multiple ways in which characters are “alienated” from their surroundings. But this alienation is not always painful, sometimes it creates comedy and sometimes it enables the gems to see the beauty in things that humans have long taken for granted.

In conclusion, much has been made of representation in this show, which is part of what has garnered it it’s HUGE internet following. Representation is important: being able to see yourself reflected in these worlds can be life changing for children and adults alike. But I think Steven Universe goes even further: it doesn’t just SHOW us admirable non-normative characters, but the show embodies a queer perspective on the world we live in, in all its humour, terribleness and beauty.

Footnotes:

* Rebecca Sugar, quoted by Kwame Opam, (2017), Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar on animation and the power of empathy, https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/1/15657682/steven-universe-rebecca-sugar-cartoon-network-animation-interview

** Judith Butler, (2004), Undoing Gender, New York and London: Routledge, p.1

*** Judith Butler, (2004), Undoing Gender, New York and London: Routledge, p.3

**** Robert J.Corber and Stephen Valocchi (2003) Queer Studies, An interdisciplinary Reader, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, p.1

***** Nikki Sullivan (2003) A critical introduction to Queer Theory, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, p.3

******  Rebecca Sugar in Hot Topic interview, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9rQlh0KxYo (2.10)