#anyway. cis people are allowed to try out pronouns and change their mind and use multiple pronouns and do any kind of combo they want

[mythicalcoolkid]

"Noooo what if this person is actually cis and only using they/them for clout???" CIS PEOPLE ARE ALSO ALLOWED TO USE THEY/THEM

[eurydicees]

he/she trans butch iwaizumi and transfemme oikawa thoughts

for no reason other than satisfying my own desires and also projecting my own shit onto my fictional besties <3

LONG post under the cut. i cannot express to you enough. LONG post under the cut.

first off. wrote a fic about iwaizumi being genderqueer here. read it. it's influential but ultimately not really relevant to this. but read it anyways. im really proud of it. okay now that the self promo's out of the way!

in my mind palace, iwaizumi is a trans butch lesbian and no amount of cis bullshit telling him that's not allowed is gonna stop him from identifying that way

she starts figuring things out in college: getting to california for undergrad and meeting all the different kinds of people he does--people he never would have met in the world of men's athletics that he was in while in high school--introduces him to all kinds of new ideas, some of them being identities they had never heard of before

sometime in her freshman year someone asks him about pronouns, and it's a question he's never really thought to consider before. he's never had to--pronouns were just words assigned to them that she never really had reason to doubt

and then she starts. thinking about it. and kind of freaking out a little. because oh. there are options. and there are so many of them and it's overwhelming, to have this sudden rush of i don't think i know who i am anymore.

because he's never really had to think about gender or sexuality before: there's never been the space and support and encouragement to experiment, or the terminology in general, or any reason to try experimenting

but his friends encourage him to try things out, little by little. a few friends try out using they/them in private. they like it, most of the time, and it feels like it fits, most of the time, but still it's like. it feels like they're faking it. like it doesn't quite cover the entirety of what they feel--but maybe nothing does, you know?

they try introducing themselves by he/they in classes, instead of just in the privacy of his dorm room. he likes that people mix the two together in the same sentence sometimes. they like that he's not boxing himself into one thing

he's figuring shit out! and the journey kind of sucks because people ask him and he doesn't have answers, he doesn't have solid truth, he just has more questions for himself and he just has more to discover--which is frustrating, most of the time, but it's also fun to experiment, sometimes

it's about trying new clothing--he doesn't love dresses, but skirts with shorts sewn in are okay; crop tops and a carabiner with keys are euphoric--trying new words--he, they, genderqueer, transgender, and more--and trying new names--not a fan of his friends' suggestions, which are mostly english word names that he kind of fumbles around saying

notable that he's friends with a decent number of queer people who are so encouraging and supportive of everything they're trying out that it constantly amazes him and sometimes kind of makes him want to cry a little

also notable. he kind of. doesn't tell oikawa about any of this. they just...don't know how to.

she starts trying out she/her pronouns in her junior year of college. this starts , entirely coincidentally, a few months before oikawa comes out to him

oikawa does it quietly, without fanfare, nearly without the confidence to even say the words. she's clearly worried about what iwaizumi is going to think--they didn't grow up in a world where things like being trans or a lesbian were talked about, or were considered options for the two of them

but just as iwaizumi has been experimenting in california, oikawa has discovered an entirely new queer community in argentina, and she's discovered herself in anew just as iwaizumi has

and it doesn't change anything really, oikawa promises, again and again. she's still tooru. she's still the best friend iwaizumi has always had. she's still playing men's volleyball. she presents herself differently, now, when she can, but--

but also, in presenting differently, there's a new confidence about her. there's a new sense of self. there's a new comfort in her own body, now that she has the words to love it right, and--

and iwaizumi gets that. he doesn't want to tell oikawa just then, because oikawa is clearly nervous and this is her moment, of sorts, but now iwaizumi knows that--if they ever get brave enough--it really would be okay to say it

anyways. iwaizumi starts using she/her in addition to he and they and just. she kind of loves it.

most of the time, she doesn't love looking feminine, and that kind of . she doesn't really know how to explain that, doesn't really have the words for it

he likes being perceived a girl, but he doesn't like looking feminine. he likes being seen as masculine, but he thinks if one more person calls him a young man he's going to scream out loud

(he does kind of like fucking with people though. it gives them a little bit of gender euphoria when someone stutters through a list of pronouns, not sure what to use, looking her up and down, until giving up and landing on just his name. it maybe feels mean but it's also a little funny and really validating.)

so its like. she doesn't really know what to do with any of that. they/them feels a little too malleable, in a way. it's not really anything against the word so much as it is that people use it to cop out of calling her "she", and that's just...frustrating. because "she" fits so well on days when she's dressed masc and "he" feels so good when he's in lipstick and a skirt.

(i ran out of characters allowed in one post block apparently. so i am breaking up the list here. oh my god. i can't believe i ran out of characters. jesus fucking christ.)

anyways! it's when he comes out to oikawa that things kind of. fall into his hands and she goes oh. so this is okay. i'm allowed to have this: the unknowns, the multiplicities, the undecideds, the contradictions.

he doesn't really mean to come out. it happens casually: oikawa makes some reference to iwaizumi being cis, and iwaizumi tells her that that's not quite right. he's not sure what he is, but it's...not cis man.

she doesn't really know how to explain that to oikawa, who has become so comfortable in her gender when she's around iwaizumi, but iwaizumi figures she might as well know now. he's always trusted oikawa with everything, and he's not quite sure why this should have ever been different

anyways. oikawa tells iwaizumi something sappy, first, and something kind, second, and something annoying, when iwaizumi teases her for the first two

and when iwaizumi confesses his own unsureness, oikawa says something else along the lines of it's not really about what people tell you your labels should be when you look like yourself. it's about the words you use when you tell them to fuck off.

it makes iwaizumi laugh, and that was the main goal, really, but also iwaizumi is thinking about it long after they hang up their video call

he's been so caught up in "so, uh, what pronouns do you use?" and "hajime, do you want me to set your preferences to male or female or both when i make your tinder account for you?"

his answers have always been so relative to what he wants people to think when they look at her ("they or he are fine i guess" and "fuck off, give me my phone back"), but maybe it's less about that, for her

(this may not be true of everyone, but things start to fall into place when she moves her thought process just a little to the left)

maybe it's less about what he's letting other people see in her presentation, and more about what it is he owns about her own gender

so what does she like about it? what brings her comfort and joy? and what completely shatters all the expectations and preconceptions put on him that she hates so much?

he doesn't really come to a decision about any of those things in one night

but he tells oikawa she/he are what make him feel the most confident in his body and his heart, even if it's scary to say that out loud

the word butch comes not long after that, and he's not sure if it fits perfectly, but it's the first word to come along that feels like it captures the duality of masculine and woman that lives in him, instead of just reaching one or the other, if that makes sense

he's not sure any of it does, but he's decided she doesn't care if it makes sense or if it's "allowed" in the eyes of people who see transness as a uniform look and lesbianism as an exclusive club

it's not about what people tell her she's allowed to be, looking and talking and acting like that, you know? it's about what words he uses to make them respect her, looking and talking and acting just as she damn well pleases.

[amelias-zelda-calamity-quintet]

Representation in MoaH (& GoS)

I don't like to tag my works with a lot of the rep tags they normally would/could have. Personally, from publishing the first book in Word Walkers, my experience is that those tags are more often used to blacklist works and I don't think people should get the opportunity to pretend that queer people, BIPOC people, disabled people don't exist by flagging that. Also like. As a white person, I feel a little weird being like "Look at all my BIPOC characters!" It feels a little virtue signally to me. Telling good stories should just include diverse casts because the world is diverse. You know?

Further, in my experience, particular with Wattpad at the moment, I have a platform to give people the 101 to a lot of these concepts (in particular queer and disability rep, which are my communities) and change their minds that they would have otherwise missed if they'd stayed in their bubble. It does mean you probably won't see things like neopronouns in my works, but if I can change someone's mind about they/them being singular, that's a start. I have a lot of ESL readers according to my stats on Wattpad and translating that can be difficult. But if my work can be a gateway for them learning what that means, that's more good done.

Also, my fics attract a lot of eggs so like. Y'all are finding me anyway, I don't need the tags.

Anyway, here's some of the confirmed rep in book 1 of MoaH and in GoS if y'all need a reference though for what is blatantly in the works so far.

Queer Rep

Marela is a lesbian and in a relationship with Saddiqah by the end of book 1

Link & Saddiqah are both bi-icons (confirmed in the Din's Temple arc) with femme preferences

The fortuneteller in Lake Town (Hart) uses she/they pronouns

The tour guide (unnamed) in Lake Town uses they/them pronouns

Zelda's middle sibling is transmasc, though he is not reintroduced as such until book 2 for plot reasons. His identity and the story around it is given a serious storybeat and is one of the reasons why MoaH Link is my only Link I firmly will say is a cis man, because I'm making a point of in having Link as an example of healthy masculinity (as a cis man) for a trans kid trying to find a role model on it. The series does not use his deadname again though after Link finds out in book 1

They show up later in book 1, but there's a gay couple in the Marksmen, Sorol and Kutt

That's just book 1. I've got an enby knight and an enby Goron in book 2. I've also gone over how some of the Gerudo naming conventions work in my worldbuilding posts to include enby rep like the Gerudo word for nonbinary, vyu, though Dirjaani Gerudo culture doesn't come up in the books until book 3.

Over in GoS, Endeavor is actually a huge part of my coming to terms with my own gender. Originally published with she/her pronouns, the current edits are giving Endeavor they/them pronouns to accurately reflect what I didn't have the language for in high school when I started writing GoS. Endeavor is agendered.

Endeavor has two moms

Two of the Earth Sages, Insen and Hira, are in a relationship, they are both men.

Disability Rep

Lance, Link's dad, uses mobility aids due to an injury that forced him to retire from the Marksmen.

Link has ADHD with anxiety symptoms, chiefly social. This is an intentional conversation on courage and how we define it.

Zelda is autistic. MoaH Zelda is also plus-sized.

Floan is auADHD, she has a special interest in bugs

Kaju, the son of Lake Town's steward, has a prosthetic leg

Ambrose has severe motion sickness (horseback riding is about the most he can handle, but he will not fight on horseback)

Not strictly a disability, but it's a point of worldbuilding that most Hyrulean lineage Zora don't do well in the cold, so there are accessibility enchantments made to allow for traveling extensively in colder regions.

Also not strictly a disability, but sign language is much more widely taught in Hyrule. It's a mandatory lesson for the Marksmen for tactics reasons, so Ambrose, Saddiqah, and Link all have at least a conversational level of fluency in it if not better.

Back in GoS, Link's granddad Lynard uses mobility aids.

Parijan, Guardian of the Spirit Sage, is blind.

Saruo, Priestess of Courage, has anxiety. Again, I like messing with the definition of courage.

BIPOC Rep

Ok, admittedly. MoaH is a little light here. But! In my defense, it's because I want the worldbuilding of MoaH to code countries and cultures with certain ethnicities and not races/species (i.e. the Gerudo aren't just automatically Middle Eastern, there are several cultures where Gerudo are prominent members with multiple influences). So in Hyrule, where the primary culture is Hyrulean coded European generic, there aren't as many opportunities for coded characters ethnically because that's not how I'm handling it. There are characters who are BIPOC, but it feels like a bit of a cop out to include them because then I just list off all the Gerudo who show up because their POC and that feels a little cheap. I am including them too, but I want to preface that other regions of this series are going to be better at this particular beat (I circle back to the enby knight, who is also BIPOC of Faronan-Dirjaani heritage, but that's book 2).

Basic ones, there are three major Gerudo characters in book 1: Saddiqah El Amin, Dragmire Al Iber, and Ayad Al I'Tidal. They are all of the more standard Hyrulean-Dirjaani lineages closest to canon expectation. Dirjaani cultures are influenced by Middle Eastern and North African cultures, so they are all women of color.

Saddiqah in particular, and this gets into spoilers so I'll be brief, is specifically coded to be a biracial woman. For reasons that come up in book 3. It's why her horse, Ajan, has a Creole name which is outside of the typical naming conventions I'm grabbing for the Hyrulean-Dirjaani names.

The Sheikah are coded as Japanese in the games, so Impa is coded as Japanese along with the Hyrulean Sheikah. Sorol is also a Hyrulean Sheikah, so this applies for him too.

The Dreeka in Hyrule are generally coded to be an indigenous group. Because of their relationship with the Sheikah, primary influence there is the Ainu. This includes all of the Dreeka characters introduced in MoaH (Constant, Temperance, Clarity, etc.) as well as the Drex in GoS (Endeavor, Justice, Zeal, etc.)

Over in GoS, Parijan and Dabir are both Middle Eastern coded, we are aiming to be more specific in the edits.

Sayyida and Daniel are both black.

This is loose canon, but I think there's a real read to GoS about making Link black because of the nameless and the felons' rights allegory that that is meant to be. I will not confirm it because Link is meant to be a stand in for the reader and how they see him, but I do like the interpretation.

And again, this is just book 1. There are nine books planned, there will be more.

[genderisareligion]

Happy New Year 🖤 Anons I got y’all soon. January is a nostalgic month for this blog cause it’s the two year anniversary of me being (formerly) shadowbanned also January 6th 2021 was what I like to call a Peak Everything moment for me. Peak Christianity, peak crackerdom, peak toxic masculinity, peak gender, peak humanity lol shit. Spent a year and some change invisible (but not termed 🙏🏽) for the crime of making too many trans racial jokes I guess and the blog I tried to make a replacement for this @genderisareligion immediately received the same fate. I suspect what actually caused it was my constant participation in my pinned post back then and the lack of answers anyone had for me but who knows. And I don’t know why because I didn’t request it but my blog’s visibility came back suddenly this April I wanna say. Here’s hoping it sticks🤞🏽

Anyway in 2023 along with finally publishing WOCTBI (Women of Color Taking Back Intersectionality, a little chapbook/magazine I wanna put together documenting nonwhite radblr’s posts and conversations, will likely be an ebook now instead of print) I do kinda wanna go in a different direction here. It’s not that I don’t think the trans conversation still needs to be happening, it does, homosexuals and women’s boundaries are still being eroded at an alarmingly rapid rate, I’ve just always been critical of all gender, “cis,” trans, up, down, no matter who’s participating. I’m not a “TERF blog” it’s in my url as a joke lol I’m just a black woman who got fed up with being polite on main being told to kill myself for reminding people humans are sexually dimorphic. Never even been a “TERF” cause I fully admit I’m a hypocrite and will in real life fully respect the pronouns/experiences of transmed normies who mind their own business, especially lesbian TIFs, but crackers like Dana Rivers and Dylan Mulvaney and all these “suck my girldick” transbians get he/him idgaf. So many of these males are so comfortable in their privilege they won’t combust if one less black women gasses them up

Wild how hypocritical and unable to admit it the “tolerant progressive left” is claiming that actually trans liberation is the key to ending black women’s oppression despite it being a recent invention and inherently having nothing to do with us and causing these crackers to run around telling me I look more like a male than other females. Like until this backwards shit ends I guess my opinions will continue to be “TERFy” cause I will never think this is okay, black women always come last and are always expected to be an expendible emotional and rhetorical resource to activist groups. This is why I’ve been politically homeless for so many years, doesn’t seem to matter where I go the message is the same: you exist to prop someone else up and you’re not allowed to complain about anything or it means all the help I’ve been giving you is bunk. BLM is something a shit ton of people just say and don’t do anything about because it’s too difficult. #SayHerName couldn’t keep the masses attention long enough and black women are still being killed with seemingly no end in sight. Will never not be crazy to me that in a decade “lesbians don’t like dick” did a complete 180 and became sacreligious to liberals.

I’ll just be here with my popcorn waiting for when inevitably sometime within the next decade or two a lot of these begendered crackers and their allies wake up and look back at the catastrophic mess they caused for some people and scramble to wipe their hands of it and act like it was all a conservative psyop they played no part in or whatever. Fact of the matter is that not everyone on HRT or going under the knife for SRS are doing so for good reasons and fact of the matter is transtrenders are making a mockery of those with actual sex dysphoria. Acting like any criticism of that at all is “transphobic and genocidal” is batshit insane. Like my intention with this blog at first was to try and help if anyone out there is saved by understanding that gender is fake at the end of the day, like I was.

So anyway I’ll be posting more on just feminism in general and gender criticism in general because imo radical feminism is just feminism or at least it used to be. This “TERF” shit gotta go can’t believe such a boogeyman nondescript term got so popular

[moonbeamoclock]

hello! i dont know how many characters im allowed to request for, but would you mind writing annie, jean, armin, and mikasa with an s/o who comes out as transgender (specifically non-binary if thats cool) <33 thank you for the pride month works!

coming out as non-binary

a/n: if i could kiss you on the lips right now i would

warnings:some internalized homophobia

Annie:

“oh”

slightly confused about the concept of being non-binary at first

just explain it to her the best you can (she still might not quite get it but is supportive anyways)

takes a hot second to get used to the pronoun change but after a week or two she gets used to it

doesn’t feel as if it changed anything about your relationship

is now hyper aware that your her ‘partner’ now and it melts her cold heart

not really a social justice warrior type of feminist/queer person but when someone blatantly misgenders you she gets angry “saying ‘they’ is not that hard” 🙄

Jean:

“i—what?”= uncomfy about the whole subject

the gender spectrum is a total mystery to him regardless of the amount of times you explain it

takes the longest out of all of them to get used to your new pronouns….like close to a year

does feel bad about misgendering you but is trying his best for someone who doesn’t really know anything about what you’re going through

loves you and knows that you+your relationship hasn’t changed but is scared that with your new found security in terms of who you are that you might then leave him to be with someone who…is more cultured i suppose? (not a cis-white man who knows very little about queer culture🤢)

he really wants to though! it just takes him a second to get used to the idea that he might also be part of that community in one way or another

(i know this sucks but he will not correct people abt your pronouns until after he’s comfortable with himself he’s too scared)

Armin:

“oh, awesome! what are your pronouns then?”

part of me thinks that he may even just be like “same lol”

those are some headcanons for a different time

this kid is openly pansexual so you coming out barely phases him

will only slip up like once or twice he’s pretty good and catching and correcting himself about that kind of stuff

is really excited to talk to you more openly about gender and the way society has made it all weird (an intellectual™️)

calmly and somewhat loudly roasts whoever misgenders you with no mercy

Mikasa:

“yeah i knew that already, thanks though”

…huh??

no yeah she just that observant that she may have known this before you actually did

she’s well versed in queer culture (she’s also bi/pan) so she has no trouble adjusting to the pronoun change

its still you and she loves you! you coming out has no effect on her she’s just there to live and support you through this journey

will also calmly roast the rude person but is much more sinister about making sure it doesn’t happen again (the Ackerman eyes 👀 y’all know what i’m talking about)

[obsessive-bear-walking]

Some of you guy's leftism starts and ends with cis white gays and you worship anyone who even says the bare minimum that gays deserve rights. People will really just erase all the horrible shit anyone ever did and defend them tooth and nail from any criticism because they "like gays", and we as a (western) society enable them. I also often get the vibe from super big white proponents of LGBTQ/Queer folks of like "I love gays, isn't that enough?"

These only a couple examples but there's many.

There was a celebrity I used to appreciate for their nonchalance about the gay community(Took their kid to pride, talked positively about the community, told people to fuck off if they disagreed, etc), but it slowly became obvious to me that it was their thing. But I very quickly(Like, super, super quickly) saw that they literally throw that up all the time but are absolutely disgusting and lazy when it comes to any other issue. Also have had actively racist moments too later on. Like derailing BLM discussions.

This was actually a wake up call for me because I usually don't accept the bare minimum, I should have kept my guard up and not been surprised by this and that's on me.

Anyway I'm seeing people lick the arsehole of another celeb who died who was vindictive old fuck in about a hundred ways just because they at some point in their lives changed their mind about whether or not queer folk are demons or something and did some good stuff for gay people or something.

This is so insidious. Why is whether or not someone likes gay people the bar for so many of y'all? We have so many horribly racist/ableist/transphobic gay icons that no one is ever allowed to speak ill of because of "what they did for the queer community". When you likely mean cis white gay men (and maybe lesbians) and how it somehow absolves them of any other harm that they done or their harm is ignored and you can't speak ill of them or whatever and it's honestly sickening.

I'm not even talking about expecting celebrities to be on top of every single issue the moment they're brought up.

White women are especially guilty of loving on gays when it makes them look good. As I said similarly in my last post about being an accessory to (mostly) white women. But you know what? I don't care if you "love gay people." Do you care about trans people? Do you care about queer poc? Do you care about women and children? I don't mean in a "Publicly react to every issue in the news" way, I mean on the most basic level.

Do you love us when we're not "fun" cis white men running around half naked at Pride trying to get married and adopted babies and be a "Nuclear family"? I mean when we're killing ourselves in masse because we're afraid of the world and are raised to hate ourselves, convinced that we're somehow broken and can never be fixed or accepted and in some cases that even gd doesn't want us and we're cursed to burn in hell? When our intersex sibling's genitals are mutilated at birth and being forced to conform to a fake box or we're getting murdered in the streets and thrown out by parents and landlords? Do you love my siblings who are Black and brown and/or who use pronouns/labels you don't understand? Do you like us when we're all that, and you can't bank on "helping" us?

Is your love intersectional or just for the bits that benefit you?

Do you love Black masc gay men?

Hell,

Do you love lesbians who aren't big masc butches with short hair?

He/him and they/them lesbians?

Trans women?

Trans lesbians of color who don't "look feminine"?

Jewish and Muslim queers?

Christian queers who don't fit into your "fuck religion" narrative?

Yes, aros and aces are queer.

I don't care if you "love gay people" and I wont lick your boots if you do the bare minimum. If you're a shitty person I'm gonna talk about how you're a shitty person even after you die no amount of love for white cishet gays will save you and if you have a problem with me talking about someone who "loves gays" being actively harmful to other groups of people then you need to take a long look at yourself, that's not my problem. Exclus and clowns get blocked on sight.

[thedreadvampy]

Ok please if you don’t mind saying - who is Stuart semple and what did he do? I’m so confused. Like I recognise the name and I think he might the an artist or something but I have no idea

He is indeed an artist! He’s a English multidisciplinary fine artist best known for his ongoing beef with English sculptor Anish Kapoor over the 2016 exclusive licensing on the process to make Vantablack colour coating, which meant Kapoor was the only artist allowed to use it. Then Stuart Semple made Pinkest Pink pigment and said it was available to everyone but Anish Kapoor, and there was a big blowup which there’s a lot of documentation of - it was very memed.

Since then, Semple has made a bunch more pigments, most of them with the available-to-everyone-but-Anish-Kapoor disclaimer, and the beef periodically flares up, although I will say as time goes on it seems to me to have got increasingly one-sided given that Kapoor has pretty much wandered off.

(I’ve used several of his colours, btw. Pinkest Pink is pretty good. Blackest Black, his attempt to make the blackest possible paint (as opposed to Vantablack which is a nanofibre coating) I was pretty disappointed in, I’ve honestly had better light capture from mid-range art shop paints. His other pigments vary in quality - some I really liked, some I was meh on, but I think Blackest Black is the only one I was actively unimpressed by)

Anyway. Where I come in is much less exciting. 

A few months ago I reblogged a post on Tumblr asking about Semple from a discourse tag (my reblog did not tag or @ anyone), and I made a glib comment where I said (very truthfully) that while I thought he was pretty decent at pigments, both his paintings and his online persona came across pretty adolescent to me.

so it turns out Stuart Semple is an inveterate name searcher (hi Stuart if you’re reading this!) 

(Side note: I actually should have guessed this from 2019 Twitter when he saw and commented on an untagged thread I wrote about him and Kapoor’s beef (which was because I’d seen an article in which Kapoor, a British-Asian man, said that the racist Prevent strategy was liable to drive young British-Asian men into the arms of terrorist groups by making it clear their country hates them reblogged on Semple’s account with a caption claiming Anish Kapoor was pro-terrorism, which, while tongue-in-cheek, isn’t a neutral statement for a white person to make about an Asian person and was a pretty phenomenally bad-faith reading of Kapoor’s actual words) and in my thread I pretty much said that when the story had broken, I, like everybody else, had found it very funny and been firmly on side with Semple’s bit, but I felt that a) after a couple of years it really wasn’t very relevant any more and it had started to feel less like Fighting The Power and more like bullying the amount of Semple’s web presence was devoted to talking about Anish Kapoor; b) that it was a shame that Anish Kapoor was increasingly only known as The Vantablack Guy given that I really like a lot of his work and c) that continuing to frame a Jewish person of colour as the Face of the Artistic Elite was a bit weird given how overwhelmingly white the high-end art world is. but I digress. Semple responded to that thread, I don’t really remember what he said, it wasn’t an acrimonious response but it was a bit Oh I Didn’t Do Anything To Tag You?)

so anyway he found my reblog and commented saying ehhh I don’t remember, something along the lines of not feeling like I was being very kind and that he was trying his best. also I think he said I had accused him of being racist? which again the actual Tumblr post literally just said I thought his art and persona came across as juvenile and I think in the tags? I mentioned that I thought it was time for him to step off the Kapoor beef. 

then he screencapped my post, including my profile picture and username, and posted it on all his socials with a kind of :( people are so mean on Tumblr :( caption and um

idk if you know this about Being A Public Persona With Tens Of Thousands of Followers but. if you post someone’s identity and say ‘I do not like what this person is doing’ it. can get messy fast.

uh I don’t follow Stuart Semple (see the original post I made) but he commented to make sure I knew he’d posted my post on Instagram and “all my followers like your wig :)” which. according to my partner who did go and look at the time, the Instagram comments were largely about how I was an ugly non-passing trans woman aka “man in a wig” which. throw the whole suitcase out. There were a good few days where I got a lot of angry anons, ranging from ‘stop bullying Stuart Semple!!!!!’ to ‘die in a ditch graphically’ to ‘how can you claim to have opinions on art when You Are On Tumblr’ (I have been a freelance illustrator for 7 years and I have a Masters in art and design) to ‘your art sucks and you’re fat and ugly’ and my personal favourite ‘how can u be cis and use she/her pronouns you dumb snowflake’

(within that furore was a whole branch where someone was like ‘sex worker huh bet you’re bad at it’ and I was like ‘yep! that’s why I don’t do it any more! it’s hard work and it involves a lot of self-promotion and customer skills which I don’t like and am not good at!’ and this was a Whole Thing where they kept trying to insult me (much like today’s anon) about my supposed failures as a Slut Who Is Bad At Sex and I kept going like ‘ok but here’s how that just. doesn’t make sense in reference to what sex work actually is so like, ok?’)

and Stuart Semple and I were also having a conversation which, depending on your perspective I would call his attitude either conciliatory or passive-aggressive, there was a lot of ‘me and my followers would never say rude things about you :) keep up the art kiddo :)’ and being charitable I would say he was trying to be nice while being angry, and to avoid escalating (but with the added context I got later about the wig comment, I think that interpretation of his behaviour maybe. has some cracks?) and ultimately he took down the posts, we had a brief conversation about keeping pet reptiles (apparently he has a lizard) and we left it on, if not good terms, at least peaceable ones. 

however I still periodically get messages about it from angry Semple stans. and I’m not sure the argument was resolved, in that I still very much think it’s fair to make criticism, including quite harsh criticism (which I’m not sure ‘adolescent’ is), on art which is put out for public display and enjoyment, and that it isn’t a personal attack to post a criticism of someone’s public-facing work and statements on social media unless you actively target it towards them (for example, @ ing them), and Semple still thinks there’s no difference between a random blog with under a thousand followers criticising a public figure’s work and a public figure with 100k followers on most platforms criticising that blog (out of context - he clipped out the post I was reblogging from and my explanatory tags, and looking at my blog you may notice that 90% of my nuance is in the tags) while giving his followers all the information to find said blog.

(also as multiple people have remarked. if you want to say it’s an unfair criticism to call your online presence immature, being a middle-aged artist who as far as I can tell has a net worth over a million who spends your time name searching yourself in order to get mad at untagged mild criticism from strangers on the internet and share it on all your socials for your followers to join you in Being Big Mad is uhhhhhhh. it uh. it’s not like. not super thin-skinned and immature)

(also also I just googled his net worth and unsurprisingly I can’t find a source on it I’d consider reliable, but I did find multiple articles about him getting in trouble for breach of contract and nonpayment for gallery employees, including two accusations of him writing a big defensive blog post then changing it after a few hours to a very short post saying I LOVE YOU so like idk how true that is but it does seem. consistent with the above interactions.)

[ardellian]

Every time I’m asked to specify my gender, this is what my brain spits out.

I remember staring at the boys playing soccer and thinking -- wouldn’t it be easier if I wanted to be a boy. I wish I could just wish to be a boy. 

Did anyone else have a conversation like that in preschool, and it kind of latched onto a little sticky part of you and never let go? I wish I also was a boy, someone says, with regards to some gender thing -- like how they all just seemed to be one big group, instead of pairing themselves up in best friends; like how they got to be wild and crazy without being side-eyed by anyone; like how no one ever wanted them to look pretty -- and you look at the boys and you think -- god no. Maybe I wish I wasn’t a girl.

But it’s not like there are any other options. 

Did anyone else sit alone on a bench when you were seven and decided that I’m just going to not care about them, about what they want me to be, I don’t want to be friends on their terms I will be on my own and it’s better. Being different doesn’t make me unhappy, it’s attempting to be like everyone else and failing that’s making me feel bad. 

I can’t not want to be a girl because I certainly do not wish I was a boy. 

Your friend is trans but you’ve never felt uncomfortable with your body in that way. You used to be ashamed of parts of it, sure, but then read somewhere in a book that being ugly wasn’t being bad and if you were ugly then you would just be ugly, and you stared at your ugly parts in the mirror and you said hello ugly boobs and ugly chin and ugly skin, I guess it’s gonna be us from now on. And you know what? Turns out having no boobs is kind of sweet actually; you don’t have to buy expensive bras and it doesn’t hurt when you run. And now that you’re ugly you can wear the things you want instead of things that would still fail to make you pretty, like that red hat, and that leather jacket, and one day your classmates will think you're a little bit scary and that’s a much better feeling than feeling pretty. 

So you like your body. Your legs are strong, even though one is a bit broken. You’re tall and broad shouldered and you like that. Sure, you wish your nipples wouldn’t be so “female presenting” because if they weren’t you could totally not wear a top on the beach and no one would stare. You wish you didn’t have a period because jfc is that annoying. But it’s not because those are girl things that you don’t like them. They’re just a bit in the way, sometimes. It’s not like having dangly bits between your legs wouldn’t be annoying as heck, too, not to mention the beard -- you have enough hair that people expect you to shave, except when you do it just itches and it just keeps growing and it’s such a hassle. 

Anyway you think girls are generally better looking than boys so why in the world would you want to be a boy? 

I’ve been “misgendered” a few times. My dad was with me once and I think he was worried -- I was fourteen -- he was worried I was going to be upset and I was just feeling proud and smug on the inside. Gotcha. 

And when I shaved my head and stole my mum’s old jacket because she wouldn’t let me take it because she said it made me look like a boy. 

And when I got so passionate about boys being worse off because girls (I) could (did) wear pants and leather jackets and shirts that flattened out my already flat chest and it was still acceptable for girls (I still wanted to) to go to prom in a glittery dress and in girly make-up and be fabulous. 

And when I had a crush on a girl and came out for the first time as a lesbian and then i immediately fell super hard for a boy and felt fake for YEARS. I never even tried looking inwards again -- if I wasn’t actually dating anyone then it didn’t matter, right? If I got together with a girl, then I could “come out”, I guess. And if I got together with a boy it wouldn’t matter, right? Who cares about what you feel or think in the privacy of your own head if you don’t really want to share, anyway? 

Did anyone else decide to never put any kind of label on yourself because then you could never fail to live up to that label? 

My parents used to say please just sit like a person and I always said I’m not a person.  

Does it matter? Does it make sense? To come out when you want nothing to change? 

My sexuality in the abstract has never seemed important to me, just to others. When I’ve fallen in love, it hasn’t mattered if I was lesbian, or bisexual, or straight. I, this person, was in love with someone, that person. How did my “sexuality” play into that? 

I never liked talking about my crushes to even my close friends, so why should I announce my sexuality to the whole world?

Ah yes, nice weather we’re having today - Yes, that’s true and also by the way I’m bisexual! - Uhm, okay? What do you want me to do with that information? - Oh nothing I guess.

Ah yes, nice weather we’re having today - Yes, that’s true and also by the way I’m maybe not really a girl? I haven’t decided and I don’t think I ever will. - Uhm, okay? What do you want me to do with that information? - Oh nothing I guess. - Do you go by they/them now? - Oh, not really, I don’t mind what pronouns you use. And I’m not going to change my presentation, I’ve figured out what I like. You don’t need to do anything, I just want to plant this confusing bit of information in your brain which I want to have no impact on how we interact because-------eh?

I love my partner, I look the way I want, and I live the life I chose. 

I don’t owe anyone a set of labels, and trying to figure them out has caused me nothing but misery.

I call myself queer, because it’s an expression of political intent, not because it’s a label that defines me. I call myself queer because everyone should be allowed to love who they love, look how they want, and live the way they chose. I call myself queer because to understand what that really means, to understand what that says about me, requires that you loosen the grip normative heterosexuality has on you for a moment. If I tell you I’m not straight -- I leave you unaffected in your straightness. If I tell you I’m not cis -- I leave you unaffected in your cis-ness. 

I’m not “not like you”. 

By being queer, by denying the application of the categories that makes sense in the gender binary to at least one person out there, I want to make a statement not about the thoughts feelings I have in the privacy of my own head -- which I am under no obligation to ever share and categorize -- but about the world around me. 

[cfdiamonds]

[ ARON PIPER, CIS GENDERED MAN, HE/HIM ] shh ! LEOCADIO SYNDER, the TWENTY-TWO year old SECOND year ECONOMICS major from MADRID, SPAIN, is known as a DIAMOND around here. HE was invited to join because OF HIS PERSISTENCE AND HIS FATHER WAS IN THE SOCIETY, and now, they’re here to stay. HE reminds me of A LEGION OF STAFF CONSTANTLY AT YOUR SERVICE, A WARDROBE FILLED WITH THE FINEST MATERIAL, + EXPENSIVE RINGS ON EACH OF HIS FINGERS.

helloooo!!  it’s been a long time coming but i’m finally excited to be here and join in on this super cool story the admins and all of you have created! i’m lia, i’m 23 and i go by she/her and they/them pronouns, so feel free to use either of them. i was going to make a graphic and a google doc but i’ve got plans with my family to watch a movie tonight, so until i can make the time i hope his app is enough! 

a past and character reflection.

you were born into success and luxury, the only child of two glencore billionaires — a diversified natural resource company. the synders are responsible for the marketing of lead and make a little over a billion dollars each year. all they’ve ever known was their jobs and their money, leaving little room for anything more than that, especially the addition of a child. the nannies changed your diapers and the maid picked up your toys, while the butler handled the broken glass splayed across the marble flooring from one of your daily tantrums. they bit their tongues because you were raised to view yourself as extraordinary living in a world of the ordinary. despite this, these people meant more to you than the ones who brought you into the world. you had a mother that asked you how your day went and then immediately turned her attention back to her phone or laptop, checking off that mental to-do-list that made her believe the question was enough effort. you had a father that saw you as weak and continuously pushed you past your limits, focusing on every little flaw you had and giving you no choice but to be better. you became so conflicted between your drive to be the best and your need for love, that anger became your method of coping. even the lightest of offenses were met with your spite and you glorified material things as if it were the only thing that mattered in the world. even at the tender age of ten, power was the one thing that kept you driven.

growing up, you never had any real or close friendships. the people that you called your friends were just more people that you could benefit from — the children from rich and influential families that spanned the globe. regardless of your rude and cold exterior, they still found reason to look up to you like you were their leader, be it an inheritance from your father’s charisma or your mother’s sophistication — because everything you had, you had to thank them for right? you knew exactly how to draw people in and use them until you didn’t need them anymore, kicking them to the curb the second their time ran out. the kids that excelled in school got you the highest grade, the kids that excelled in sports helped you become captain of their teams, and the kids that assisted you in breaking the rules always took the fall. and yet, no matter how hard you proved yourself as this apex predator, your parents saw you as inferior. they always told you to work smarter not harder, but when you did, it still wasn’t enough. what more could you take from the world? it had nothing left to give you.

the next chapter in your life became your second chance to prove yourself, but this time with a different method to your persistence. just as your parents did, you’d build yourself from the ground up, not taking whatever you wanted but fighting to obtain it. you already had the determination to do what had to be done to reach your goals, now all you needed to do was make it yourself. you enter your first year at strathmore university and you never take what you need to succeed, you push yourself until you earn it. every time the fates fight against you and you feel hopeless in meeting these high expectations you and your parents have made for you, you grasp onto the anguish of that ten year old boy yearning for approval and press forward with your strength. you still hold onto that cunning aspect of your character but this time, it’s something you keep hidden beneath the surface — away from prying eyes. you slip up once or twice, but it’s never enough to allow others to see you for who you truly are. you join several clubs even though you barely have the time, slipping your name into the minds of those spanning the entirety of the campus. you maintain one of the highest grades in your classes through dedication and hard work, scoffing at the students that request your assistance … they don’t deserve your help. not now anyway. not while you fight to be noticed in a place filled to the brim with excellent minds. not while you await your invitation to the society, the first step at proving that you can be great just like them. just like your parents.

on the society

upon arriving at strathmore university, leo became obsessive in his studies and joined many clubs to assist in his quest of standing out amongst the other first years. unbeknownst to many though, he also did this in hopes of earning a spot in the secret society. this is because his father had been in the society when he was young and in order to prove his potential, this was an organization he knew he had to be involved in. despite not knowing what the society was like or what they were about, he knew that they existed because of his father but that’s the extent of his knowledge on it.

when he was finally given his chance thanks to the diamond opal, leo became passionate about his spot and willing to do whatever means necessary to keep his spot. he takes advice willingly ( but goes against it if he believes they’re wrong ) and pushes to lead in some situations, not letting anyone or anything stand in the way of his goals. although he mainly does everything for his parents, whether they will ever notice or not, it is also for himself and his desire to be something great ( something he outwardly believes he already is but has struggled with internally for a long time ). leo wants to be the best prodigy and opal that the society has ever seen, and visualizes himself as the diadem when he builds himself up to that point.

when it comes to poppy nighmore, leo is more intrigued than he is worried about the reason for her disappearance. if those within the society that knew poppy are upset about her disappearance, leo is willing to take initiative in trying to solve the mystery. he will take risks and push limits in order to find information, but does so for selfish gain than anything else. he believes that he may prove himself as a worthy and necessary addition to the opal society if he continues researching and physically proving he cares. it also gives him a chance to show the others that he is capable of big things.

wanted connections.

as i read about your characters i’ll be able to generate a bit more ideas when directly plotting with each of you! these are just the ideas i have coming into the group, so if you do not see your character fitting them, worry not! we can brainstorm<3

his soft spot — the person that leo can’t seem to say no to no matter how hard he tries. his entire life he has felt little to no remorse in his conquest for power, no matter who he trampled along the way but suddenly, out of nowhere, the world presented him with this person and every time they’re around, every ounce of him becomes vulnerable. when they tell him to do something or to behave a certain way, he seldom disobeys. if they happen to be in the room when he’s behaving as he normally does, he avoids their eyes in fear of backing down. in a way, this person in his anchor that protects him from himself.

his adversary  — the person that gives leo a run for his money, testing him and pushing him every step of the way. they bear too many similarities to get along and compete over even the littlest of things. when one says yes, the other says no. the steve rogers to his tony stark. the thor to his loki.

fellow rich kids — those he knew by association prior to strathmore university or the society. they all understand each other because they grew up in similar conditions, where material things were the forms of love they received as children. they understand the lifestyle and flock together, regardless of whether or not they actually like each other. they board a private jet and escape real life for a weekend, only to return like nothing had happened come monday morning.

his best friend — leo doesn’t know it yet, perhaps neither of them do, but this person is his best friend. close relationships of any kind are foreign concepts to leo because he had, in his opinion, more important things to focus on as he grew up. love doesn’t exist in his world. so by his words, he trusts this person the most and is constantly inviting them around with him. he would never call it as it is in fear of cutting them loose and never feeling an ounce of remorse, but he’s acknowledged it in his head once or twice. this person is like the sibling he’s never had.

his mistake — in leo’s first year, he befriended this person and the pair eventually started to see each other romantically. however, leo wronged them somehow and now that he’s in the society with them, he realizes how big of a mistake he made hurting them. perhaps he fell back into old habits and made their acquaintance with the intention of gaining something, maybe in a class or by their personal influence in the world / at school, and they eventually found out about it. just an angsty exes plot.

his mentor — the diamond that took him as their prodigy. leo takes the dynamic between them incredibly serious and is willing and ready to do whatever they ask of him in order to prove they made the right choice taking him under their wing. he understands that his place in the society must not be taken for granted and so he treats it as a passion, rather than just another club around campus. he rarely does something society related without first receiving the opinion of the opal, but he also would ignore their opinion if he feels they are the one that’s wrong. this is business as usual and leo is their prodigy knowing that if all goes as planned, he will have their seat in the future.

[therapy101]

(1/2) With a rise in young children expressing gender nonconformity being sent to gender clinics, being taught about gender dysphoria and being ‘born in the wrong body’ in schools, being guided towards pubertal blockers and medical transition, I was wondering if I could ask for your more knowledgeable input please. When treating such children and adolescents, why is the underlying assumption that the dysphoric feelings are valid and the body is what needs fixing? Why is APA/psychologists

(”2/2) allowing medical decisions to be made based on outdated mind-body dualism? We don’t affirm anorexia and offer liposuction, or the delusions of schizophrenia for instance, so why is this the only mind-body incongruence that’s treated this way? Does GD in a developing child really warrant medicalizing them for the rest of their lives? Since we’ve scientifically concluded gender is a spectrum, shouldn’t we instead be promoting gender diversity no matter what sexed body we’re born in?”

There are a lot of things to unpack and understand here. 

1. The underlying assumption is not that “the body needs fixing.” Medical transition is not the first step for children, adolescents, or adults with gender dysphoria. From 2004-2016, only 92 total children and adolescents out of six million total patients younger than 19 seen in the sample received a hormone blocker for a transgender-related diagnosis. Even among adults, current estimates for the United States are that between 25-35% of trans and non-binary adults complete any kind of gender affirming surgery (this means, even enough those who have surgery, it may only be one type of surgery and may not impact all relevant body parts). Getting access to trans-affirming medical care is very difficult, and structural inequalities like racism impact access to care, leading some trans people, especially Black trans women, to have to buy hormones from non-medical sources. That’s one of the reasons why the APA has come out to support trans folks and gender affirming care: because otherwise, these folks don’t get any care, or they get mistreated. The point here is to ensure that everyone gets equitable access to high quality medical and mental health care. That includes hormones, hormone blockers, and/or surgery for some people, but not everyone. 

2. All feelings are valid- dysphoric or otherwise. Sometimes feelings don’t fit the facts, or acting upon them doesn’t make sense, but that doesn’t take away from their validity. The question is not whether the feelings are valid for kids with gender dysphoria, the question is how to understand that dysphoria better and how to identify what to do about it, both in terms of gender identity and in terms of coping, support and improving overall mental health. This is a great place for a therapist with expertise to step in and help the child and their family figure it out. 

Sometimes the child or adolescent has known literally or essentially their whole life, and that may mean no dysphoria (which is great!). From Katz-Wise et al., 2017: 

For some youth, primarily but not exclusively those ages 7–12 years, indication of transgender identification occurred early and was described as “immediate.” One father of an 18-year-old trans boy from the Northeast noted, “It was so immediate that it was just, you know, it wasn’t like he was seven and he said, ‘Oh my god he thinks of himself as a boy.’ It was just kinda always like that with him.”

For other youth, it is a more gradual process, and may take some time to sort out. Some youth also don’t have dysphoria while they are doing that so there may not be a reason to seek out therapy unless there is some other mental health issue they are facing. But if they do have dysphoria, or are otherwise experiencing mental health symptoms related to their gender identity, then seeing a therapist can help. 

3. Supporting a child to identify as trans or nonbinary or some other non-cis gender is not “medicalizing them for the rest of their lives.” Hormone blockers can be removed, and hormones can be stopped- but I disagree that these are “medicalizing” in any case. A person cannot be reduced down to the medications they take or the treatments they receive. Is a woman with cancer “medicalized” because she undergoes a hysterectomy? Are the children on puberty blockers for medical reasons “medicalized” (>2000 of them in the study I cited above, but no one seems concerned about them)? What about those people with delusions who are put on antipsychotics, which are known to have severe side effects including higher risk of diabetes and heart disease, seizures, tardive dyskinesia, overwhelming sleepiness impacting ability to work or drive, weight gain (I’ve seen clients gain >70 lbs in 3 months), and more? 

I would encourage you to read either of these great studies by Katz-Wise et al: 1 or 2 to understand this better. When you ask trans youth about themselves, the medical aspect is such a small part- they are talking about their whole selves, their hopes for the future, their families and friends, and their wishes to be able to be loved and accepted for who they really are. Some of it is about their bodies, sure, and that can mean that some decide to use hormones and/or hormone blockers or undergo surgery (although we’ve seen that those rates aren’t super higher ). But they’re also just talking about being called the right name and pronoun, getting to wear the clothes that make them feel authentic, getting to date and marry and have sex, and: getting to live. Not being ostracized and assaulted and killed. Like this 8 year old who identifies as a girlish boy worrying he’ll never be able to get married AND be his true self (from the second Katz-Wise et al):

An 8-year-old youth participant who identified as a “girlish boy” similarly worried about other people's reactions related to gender norms in the long-term future, as told by his mother,

He said [to me], ‘But I'm not going to get married, because if I married a boy I'd want to be the bride...I would want to wear a dress and people would laugh at me because I'm marrying a boy and I'd be wearing a dress.

He is 8 years old and these are his worries. As a mental health professional, my immediate thought is that he deserves any and all support that makes sense to him and his family so that he doesn’t have to worry like this. So that he can be 8. 

4. Finally, and probably most importantly: gender dysphoria is different because treating it with hormone blockers, hormones, and surgery is literally life saving. 

As high as 42% of trans people have attempted suicide at least once. For comparison, the lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts in the general population is 3%.  

Study after study has shown that there are three primary factors that reduce suicide risk: 1. Timely medical and legal transition for those who want it; 2. Family acceptance and general support from friends and loved ones; 3. Reduced transphobia and internalized transphobia. (1 2 3 4 5). 

Psychologists want to help people live, and live well. Living well means having a life you enjoy and find meaningful. If medical transition means someone’s suicide risk decreases and their mental health improves, then they can pursue the life they want. Being affirmed in their gender means they can have that part of the life they want. It might also help them get to other things they want (like having the marriage and wedding they envision, like that example). These are things we as psychologists prioritize. Period. 

It’s not the same as anorexia because providing a liposuction for two reasons. One: It would not resolve the dysphoria. People with anorexia who lose weight do not feel better about themselves and their bodies. That’s the dysphoria: people with anorexia (and other eating disorders, sometimes) often cannot see their bodies as they really are. Changing the body won’t help. Unlike in gender dysphoria, where changing the body- either in presentation or actually medically -actually does help. Two: Liposuction for an underweight person with anorexia could kill them. As we’ve discussed, gender affirming surgeries for trans people can save their lives. These are not comparable. 

The comparison to delusions doesn’t work very well because there isn’t really a “medical” intervention you would do to affirm someone’s delusion. But, since you may not know this: we sometimes do affirm people’s delusions, and it’s not necessarily psychologically helpful to try to change someone’s mind about a delusion. Delusions are not bad all on their own, and: sometimes things we think are delusional, actually aren’t, so it’s super important not to assume we know someone’s life and experiences better than they do. (Just recently a nurse assumed a patient was delusional, but actually they were quite rich and owned several expensive cars. People can be rich and have a significant mental illness.) So anyway- I don’t know how that applies. 

Overall: we as a field are still understanding the full spectrum of gender identities and how to do good treatment and good science in relationship with that. But what’s clear is that medical transition is sometimes a part of a good treatment plan for both youth and adults, and that it can save people’s lives. It can make their lives better. I am 100% about saving people’s lives, so I am 100% about a medical transition when appropriate and gender affirming care in general. 

References: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

(email me at academic.consultant101 gmail.com if you need full texts)

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[arockefellers]

⌠ 𝙣𝙞𝙘𝙠 𝙧𝙤𝙗𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙤𝙣, twenty-two, cis gendered man, he/him/his ⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, 𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐑𝐎𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐅𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐑 ! according to their records, they’re a SECOND year, specializing in THREAT ELIMINATION; and they DID NOT go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of ( battered skin, a half burnt cigarette dangling between chapped lips, the lingering taste of cherry flavored lip gloss, + waking up in a drunken stupor with your face in a snowbank  ). when it’s the (virgo)’s birthday on 9/15/1998, they always request their PASTRAMI SANDWICH from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation. @gallagherintro

PINTEREST  ,  STATS  ,  CONNECTIONS.

hello there ! i’m lia, i’m 23 and i have recently begun using she and they pronouns ! i reside in the est which is so basic of me i know. i’m currently out of school trying to figure out my life but will be going to school in the fall, and that’s all that’s exciting about me at this moment in time. my life lacks excitement right now but at least i have wine. all i have to offer right now for an about is his stats & pinterest & this brief TL;DR because i’m in desperate need of a nap since i am hashtag hungover luv x

warnings for criminal activity, violence, abuse, guns, death.

family background.

okay so basically this is a revamp on a character i wrote like seven years ago and i miss dearly but also rp seven years ago was a lot different so we are fixing a lot of things. but anyway, the manfredini’s are a family similar to the cody’s from animal kingdom ??? sort of ?? each member plays their part and they’re all assholes. 

they run a chain of hotels across the eastern united states that they operated out of, laundering their money through their various business transactions and using these hotels as a place to make trades and deals, etc etc etc. ace is the brains of the entire operation once he’s old enough to have critical thought, and it would later be his role in the family that got him into gallagher — only after the entire family came crashing down though.

tl;dr they all suck and they want your money. just a coupla burdens on society. 

about ace.

on september 15, 1998 when the sun was at it’s highest in the sky, the manfredini family welcomed their last born son — wallace pietro manfredini. there were three before him and with a large gap between he and the rest, but they were still all as close as a family of their nature could be.  

ace demonstrated a high mental aptitude from a young age and because of this, he would go on to play a massive role in the family business once he was the right age. despite this though, he was conditioned to be just like the others in his family — cold, violent, deceiving, and crafty. ace always knew how to keep his family one step ahead of the competition and the authorities, preserving their public image and pristine reputation. ace was a bit of a jack of all trades and could perform the tasks that his siblings struggled with. they were all tougher on him than they were on each other, using extreme discipline to keep him motivated and arduous physical training to prepare him for the future. it was all way too much for him to handle at his young age. it also meant that he took on more and more of the responsibility and with the weight of this world on his shoulders, it was only a matter of time before it all came crumbling down.

when ace was seventeen, his family had grown obsessive with the idea of robbing an old friend — one who had recently wronged them. vengeance was the only thing guiding their plans, and despite ace’s protests and lectures about why it was a horrible idea, they moved forward with it anyway. all had been going smoothly and they had nearly cracked the safe when the man returned home despite ace’s reassurances that he’d be gone for nearly three hours. the situation grew dire and so his eldest brother made the sacrifice and charged the man, but was shot before he could reach him. and even though he desperately wished to stay and help his brother, ace was dragged away by the others to avoid having their identities revealed as well.

for months the family passed under the radar as they dealt with the shocking news that a member from their family had been shot during a breaking and entering. people were suspicious though — there were others in the home at the time it occurred and the numbers of the other surviving siblings added up. this is where the story takes it’s turn. ace couldn’t get the image out of his mind. he couldn’t understand why his family handled this loss like it had meant nothing. so, ace did the only thing he knew how to do — he planned.

ace presents this plan to his family once it’s done but they all refuse — it’s time to move on, kid. but he couldn’t let it go, he was lost on sleep for months and the hours and hours spent in front of a punching bag simply wasn’t enough. but what ace hadn’t planned for, was the people who had been watching him and his family since it had happened. the private investigators that wanted to take the manfredini family down — they just needed that one slip up. they found it in ace.

ace leaves his home with his well thought out plan, one that he executed perfectly on his path back to where it all happened. he avoided cameras and had set up several alibis along the way but anger was guiding him still, otherwise he would’ve caught his tail before he left the home that evening. and just like it had happened all those months ago, the man stood outside his home exactly where he wasn’t meant to be — ace does not remember what came next but he rests easier now knowing that he never took a life that night, because his actions were intercepted before it was taken too far.

he’s recruited to attend gallagher following high school because of the events of that night, and the promise he showed throughout his life until that moment. however, this offer was only allowed under the condition he turn in his family and, quite frankly, ace was tired enough to oblige. he adopts his grandmother’s maiden name and legally changes his first name to ace.

for the summer leading up to and for the duration of his first year, ace is heavily monitored and forced to take anger management courses. he is also required to perform so many hours of volunteer work to keep him occupied during his studies and training.

other information.

his positive traits are charismatic, perceptive, and gallant. he has a very energetic and playful air to him, and many of his comments and actions are confident and brave. he also notices things and pays close attention to detail, having a ready understanding into most things.

his negative traits are obstinate, arrogant, and truculent. when his mind is made up on something, it is very difficult to change his opinion. he’s very cocky and rude. used to have anger management issues and those still linger beneath the surface, so he’s a bit of a ticking time bomb really. quick to argue and quick to turn to violence if he can’t manage to back himself out of those tense situations.

[unbreckable]

༄ kiana ledé, cis woman, she/her + you are the embodiment of lust and desire – passion mistaken often as jealousy and hatred. the need to dangle yourself in front of men for validation slowly fading. shame’s chokehold slowly replaced by rage, calm, acceptance. finally, you find the courage to pluck a peach from her blossoming tree and allow its juices to drip down your chin with a smile. – is that romilda vane ? their ministry records say that they are twenty-one , a half blood , and went to hogwarts . currently they are a duelist . whenever i see them man’s world by marina starts playing in my head. i think this may be because they’re bold & gregarious , but also domineering & conceited . [ kimmy , she/her , 24 , gmt +8 ]

basics .

name & origin : romilda jolee vane. romilda – famous battle. jolee – cheerful & pretty. vane – flag/banner or a play on "vain," meaning excessively prideful. nicknames : romi preferred name : romi, romilda age & birthdate : twenty-one & august 6th gender & pronouns : cis woman & she/her orientation : biromantic / bisexual ( leans more towards females ) ethnicity & nationality : african-american, swedish, norwegian, mexican, native american hometown : røros, norway ( until she was 8 ); london, england ( 8+ ) current residence : a two-bedroom apartment in london occupation : professional duelist hogwarts house / school graduated from : gryffindor

miscellaneous .

phobias : being lonely, needles, clowns, dentists quirks : always runs warm, is never seen without lipstick, never orders the same thing at restaurants unless she’s gone through the whole menu, can cry on command, great at doing accents and impressions,  hobbies : baking, cake calligraphy, traveling, taking pictures ( not necessarily photography ), watching films never series, partying likes : long hot baths, neon lights, loud clubs, dancing, bread, seafood, going out, sweets, sex, hand holding, drinking dislikes : children, small places, waking up early, being alone, airplanes wand : 10 1/2″, aspen wood, veela hair core, stiff patronus : abraxan winged horse boggart : a dentist with a syringe reverse amortentia : firewhiskey, vanilla, powdered sugar, melted chocolate, cigarette smoke

history .

what was their family life like ? romilda was loved and cared for by a muggle mother and a halfblood cursebreaker. her parents were in love, though unable to have any more children due to a curse that befell her father as he tried to unearth treasures from an ancient civilization hidden behind what appears to muggles as a treacherous glacier. they lived in a small norwegian town until she was eight years old, when her father’s dig site eventually came to a close and he moved on to a desk job at gringott’s to provide a more stable environment for his family. 

what was their childhood like ? while not wealthy, her parents were able to provide romilda with all of her needs and most of her wants. she was doted on by her parents, but she was lonely – often begging for siblings or at least someone to play with. as they lived in a small muggle town, children talked and noticed that strange things / magical outbursts always happened around romilda and they all started to avoid her. 

what were they like in school / as a student ? as a student, romilda was one of those kids who skated by on natural ability. never actually trying, but doing better than most anyway. she often acted boy crazy ( a result of compulsary heterosexuality ) and represented all the negative and positive stereotypes of gryffindor. what were their views of the war ? romilda may have been loud and boisterous but she had never been one to speak about things that truly matter. she had always thought that prejudice based on blood was baseless but she never spoke about her views, preferring to glaze over the inherent problems of the wizarding world over with talk of love, boys, and things most found to be frivolous. she did not tell her friends when she joined dumbledore’s army, but she was determined to defeat the side that dare think of herself and her muggle mother as vermin for not being pure.

where were they during the battle of hogwarts and why ? people say that she fought bravely during the battle of hogwarts– the thought of hiding out or seeking safety never having crossed her mind. however, to this day she’s not sure if she fought because it was the right thing to do or because she sought the exhilaration of going toe to toe in battle.

what are some challenges they’ve had to face as a consequence of the war ? she can’t sleep through the night unless she can hear someone else’s breathing beside her or feels the warmth of another body nearby– going as far as to seek the company of strangers. she’s also become somewhat of an adrenaline junkie, seeking out dangerous situations and finding a career in dueling – where one wrong move may be the end of her life. 

what are they doing now ? she’s always had a talent for dueling, but she’s become a celebrated player as of late. she’s quick on her feet and she faces every hex and curse with a smile. 

how have their views changed ? she’s never really dug deep into what she thought of the war and she hasn’t thought to dissect her thoughts and feelings since. never thought to think about how it has affected her daily life. to the untrained eye, romilda may seem unaffected, but she’s become far more reckless than what she used to be.

[queerlyhalloween]

Not to sound like the joker™️ but i hate western society. I know that hair and clothes aren't gendered, so do most of my mates, ive been working hard at unlearning the internalized transphobia that's just a part of being trans in the UK and actually ALLOWING myself to think about going on hormones and dressing in ways other than "ambigious as possible" despite the fact im non-binary

i grew myself a little mullet because ive not been working in the pub and wanted solid snake hair, ive allowed myself to look at my face and the long hair around it and not despair because i know that longer hair doesn't make me a woman, but the moment you go into a shop, or get takeaway or pass by people in the street its all "move out the way of this lady!" and "thank you, ma'am"

i dont want the gender option of 'other' on my ID i want to know 1 good reason why gender should be listed on an ID in the 1st place

ive just come back from the range and i had my hair up like some e-thot fuckboy, i had to go BACK to the range because they got my click and collect order wrong so ive got two members of staff looking over my order, im dressed in black jeans and a black masc-looking ripped shirt, mask covering half my face and as the manager's showing the kid who served me the receipt they go "oh I served that guy earlier" and the manager corrects them "its a lady". I say "im niether" and they both just stare at me like im a toddler. Im already panicking because the air feels the same way it did when some cunt came after me in the pub toliets. "dont worry about it :)" i say, they both turn back to the tills and completely ignore me.

Anyway, micro-aggressions, ive experienced a lot of them for many reasons over the course of my life and today ive decided to snap.

Not at the people in the range like, just in general.

I will never pass. That's just an element of trans euphoria i will never get to experience. Not right off the bat, anyway. Not where i live, and most likely not in my lifetime. Maybe for kids in LA or Brighton, and hey power to you guys man im happy for you, but people assume or guess m/f when they look at me and they will never get it right.

So when i see people on this site try and twitter etc rank "who's the most oppressed"™️ like a godamn smash bros tier list it blows my mind because of all the things you could spend your days doing thats what youre expending energy on?!

You could be the exact same age, race, sex, gender, sexuality, you could have the exact same disabilities, mental health conditions and money in your bank as another person on this site and you'd still never understand what they've been through. Our experiences, our families, our morals and lives are always gonna be different and the moment you try to write definitive rules on whose got it worse you've already lost and you're already wrong. Oppressed classes are not a fucking hivemind and pretending they are is only going to cause you more problems. I get the strong sense that some of you looked at the word intersectionality, went "ah yeah, i know what that means" having never read up on the matter, then proceeded to play the pain olympics.

And its creating a culture where kids feel the need to spills their souls online to justify living their lives!

You've not listed your disabilites in your bio so you're able-bodied. You're Irish but haven't listed your race so you're white. You're cis man so you've never played with gender and suffered as a result. You're asexual so clearly you're a cringeworthy baby who's never experienced a wrong-doing in their life.

The reverse is true too, if you list every aspect of yourself then you're automatically honest. The more opressed you are the less likely you are of causing harm to others. Psht, don't have a carrd in this day and age? What are you, a fraud? cishet white man playing make believe? Post a selfie or face the wrath of ozymandaus. What's privacy? It takes me 3 minutes to read the bio on this discourse side-blog so clearly they're an angel.

my mam abused me for years, she did the same to my brother when i left home at 18 and my dad drank himself to death. My nan, his mother, never believed me because my mam's a disabled woman with a lot of trauma, and at 14 how do you explain to the woman who takes you to the beach that it's WORSE because as she's beckoning you to the side of her bed so she can scream point blank in your face, or hit you, you're never truely sure, you're thinking about running away because of course she physically can't chase you but she can throw. And then where would you go if you did buggar off?

"You have to sleep sometimes" she used to say to me when I'd piss her off. Other days she told me horror stories about kids in care, and disabled people having their kids taken away, made me promise that I'd always love her and always be her baby, and I'd do that for her because she's my mam, she'd be satisfied then ignore me for a while. I grew up thinking that was entirely normal until i'd tell funny family stories at school and nobody would laugh. The closest I got to truely running away was when I changed my name and pronouns and her rejection, turned to vitriol one night and I so, so, nearly held a knife to my throat and simply fell forwards in the uni showers. Obviously I didn't do that.

But she's had a shitter life than me thus far so she's in the right, as the online black/white dichotomy states. I keep her at arm's length but I'm unable to cut her away without losing the rest of my family because I dared defy the role of eldest child and care for her as I've done my whole life, as is expected.

we need to take things on a case by case basis, and learn when stuff is none of our business.

"Hey! :) I see you've reclaimed (X) slur, without submitting the proper paperwork. Real quick tell me every trauma you've ever experienced or I'll write a callout post :) delete this anonymous message (as is your right) and i'll assume you as sus ❤"

you can only call yourself a dyke if on your 13th birthday, the moon's tender rays struck you through your bedroom window and gave you your first wet dream about girls.

Great, cool. I have no interest in calling myself a dyke, i cant call myself a lesbian because it makes me dysphoric, thats why im queer, but i can assure you that when 3 kids from catholic school pinned me under the bridge and threatened to cut me open for being a "dirty dyke tramp" they didn't play 20Qs with me first to check that i was actually a lesbian.

if your first thought is "well thats just misdirected homophobia, so youre not ACTUALLY a victim" log the fuck off and consider what's wrong with you. Because all our oppressors care about is sniffing out the wrong on you and beating it out, they dont care what breed of wrong it is.

so you're going to spend your day, the enlightened adult that you are, frothing at the mouth because some 15yr old dared call themselves butch despite them being OnLY a BiSexUAl? You're gonna say that trans woman deserves to be suicidal because yes she may be trans BUT she's from the UK, so clearly she loves her horrid country and government. You're gonna say that black lad deserves racial abuse because he's trying to focus on his studies rather than go to protests. That 19yr old who's living in poverty deserves it because they work for Amazon. Texans deserve to freeze to death because there are republicans in Texas.

You're going to harass a complete stranger coming to terms with the parts of themselves society has taught them are worthless at best because they're not doing it the way YOU think is right.

This post has not ended where I started it but I really dont care:

Some of you are so fucking desperate to be the bullies you never got to be in secondary school and it shows. But you're cowards. You can't just admit you want to divide and concur so you do it in a new woke way and when your time on this earth is done, you'll have commited the same pain that's been dealt to you and wonder why you died miserable in a world thats more or less the same.

okay to reblog but dont @ me for a debate because i have, like, real problems and will just block you

[blitz-and-hearth]

Some empty cups family trans headcanons because I’m feeling dysphoric after being called she all Thanksgiving and need that good shit right now (tw for talking about periods, dysphoria, and transphobia) And when I say empty cups, I mean all the empty cups so long post beware 

Blitzen figured it out at a very young age, his father Bili had some nonbinary leanings (but didn’t know it was a thing when he was young) so he encouraged little Blitz to experiment with gender expression to his heart’s content  

He was probably about 7 or 8 when he decided to start going by male pronouns 

Blitzen is his birth name, dwarven names are usually pretty gender-neutral. He didn’t feel like he needed to change it 

Thanks to both male and female dwarves growing beards he’s pretty comfortable in his own skin even after puberty. He does end up getting top surgery the very minute he can though. Has no plans for bottom surgery 

BUTTON UP SHIRTS AND LAYERS ALL THE TIME 

It's just a transmasc thing

And you know he’s always wearing suits and ties not just because they’re fashionable but make him very euphoric

Dwarven culture isn’t much better than humans when it comes to accepting trans folk, however, they do consider cosmetic surgery a craft, so their own rules mean they have to respect any and all transitioning surgeries  

Mostly Blitzen just doesn’t talk about it much unless someone else brings it up. His father never made a big deal out of it so neither does he

Mostly situational dysphoria, when he’s around his mother or other people who knew him before he transition, other dwarves who can better tell the different subtleties of cis dwarf gender, and of course on the dreaded shark week 

Humans and Midgard are both awesome because they see the beard and can’t tell the difference between “male” vs “female” facial hair like other dwarves do. Very easy to pass there 

Hearthstone obviously was not in a safe place to explore his gender growing up

On top of all the other shit he had going on during his childhood he was constantly feeling wrong and uncomfortable in his own body 

Lots of dissociation and frustration

Alderman wouldn’t let him cut his hair, forced him to wear dresses, and constantly said shit like “bE mOrE lAdYlIkE”  

Hearthstone finally figures it out after accidentally stumbling across some websites while trying to research magic. It's just a post on a blog about some spell for good luck to help with transitioning but it’s how he learns being trans is like a real thing 

It was both great to know there were other people like him but also like the worst possible news because he knows he could never ever come out and transition while living under his parent’s roof 

He was only about 13 and lots of tears were had that night

The very next day he has his first period and just can not anymore 

Full snap, cuts his hair short for the very first time, binds his chest grabs what little he owns and gets the hell out of there that day 

Meets Blitzen like right after so needless to say he didn’t get much time to explore. He wasn’t about to come out to someone he just met, that shits scary what would he do if Blitzen didn’t accept him? He wouldn’t be strong enough to try world jumping for weeks and wouldn’t survive in Nidavellir without the sunbed 

Blitzen had his suspicions but obviously understood why he’d be nervous about coming out, so he just kept his mouth shut about it until Hearthstone felt like talking about it 

I’ve made a post about this before, but it happens on accident while Hearth is changing because a) he wasn’t allowed to lock doors growing up b) wouldn’t notice if you knocked to see if he’s in there anyway 

What’s not reflected in the comic is Blitzen silently screaming because Hearth has been using ace bandages to bind does he know how dangerous that is???? But he didn’t say anything about it right then because this was a sensitive situation and he wanted to make sure Hearthstone knew he was in the same boat and nothing would change before starting to scold him  

Hearthstone cried a lot

It's a big moment that builds their friendship and later romantic relationship and after that Hearthstone starts being a lot more honest about his past with Blitzen

Hearthstone isn’t his birth name, his dead name is probably something to do with flowers, super feminine and he hated it. He doesn’t have a real reason for choosing Hearthstone since it was a bit spur of the moment when Blitzen asked his name. Blitz later asked if he’s sure that's what he wants to go with and Hearthstone decides to stick with it 

Part of the deal with Mimir was his parents forgetting that he was born female. It really was no question at all which choice he’d take 

(Inge remembers but respects his pronouns because she’s a fucking decent person) 

It’s the only reason Alderman didn’t constantly misgender and deadname him. Being in his old home and seeing his father still reminds him of how it used to be though 

Hearth has more bad dysphoria days than good. Blitzen is always right there to tell him he looks handsome and very masculine today. Blitz doesn’t have as many bad dysphoria days but you bet your ass when he does Hearthstone will absolutely provide a constant flow of compliments until he starts to feel better   

Hearthstone used runes to transition because if you’re trans you’ve totally daydreamed about how awesome and less scary it would be if magic was real. He offered Blitzen to do the same but Blitz had already had top surgery and doesn't really want bottom surgery so he turns it down 

Magnus was also encouraged to try exploring his gender from a young age by his mother 

I mean.... Just take a moment look at Magnus’ mom for a sec 

Yeah that woman ain’t straight Magnus had a good childhood while she was around 

I still think it took him a while though

Just because he didn’t really think about it much until puberty happened 

He was just starting to think about his gender when his mother died 

Later looking back it makes him really sad that he never got to tell her

Then he was homeless and a bit busy 

He learned Blitzen and Hearth are both trans pretty quick though 

I think this is even mentioned in canon that there's not a lot of privacy living on the street 

Probably got an idea when he ran out of pads 

Magnus: Fuck I’m out of pads and still got like three days left :/ Blitzen: *handing him some spare pads* Here I got you covered kid Magnus: ?????? Why? do you have these???? 

He’s a little slow on the uptake bless him 

Eventually, he sees Blitz and Hearth’s chest scars and is like OH 

He starts asking them both a lot of questions, still thinking its just innocent curiosity but Blitz and Hearth are sharing knowing looks the whole time

Sure enough like only a few days later he’s like “I think I wanna go by Magnus now” 

His mother had mentioned to him that’s the name she’d have gone with if he’d been born male and he liked it enough to keep her wish 

I wanna say his dead name starts with a B? I dunno why    

Birthdays don’t mean much to Magnus while homeless but Blitzen and Hearthstone get him a binder for his 15th birthday, refuse to explain where they got it 

(Blitz made it but Hearth was the one to steal the materials he needed) 

Magnus obviously never had the option for medical transitioning while alive and homeless, but if given the choice he’d probably get on T but not have any surgeries

Jack is a sword who canonically picked his own name and it’s talked about there being female swords despite having no genital or way to tell, all living weapons choose their own gender he’s trans 

Samirah can’t remember not knowing she was a girl 

Like Alex she probably just knew from very early 

Her grandparents are mentioned being a bit more forward-thinking so while they’re probably not happy per se they allow her to experiment anyway, thinking it a phase 

It’s not a phase 

Her grandparents mess up her pronouns often and don’t get it all, but its happened less and less the longer she’s been going by female pronouns

They eventually arrange her a properly planned marriage once they realize she’s not changing her mind about being a girl, much to her pleasure  

Wearing her hijab and following other classic Muslim gender rules, like having a betrothed and not being alone with a boy, make her very euphoric and happy 

She knew right away Magnus was trans too since she like... literally handled his soul when taking him to Valhalla

Seems like something a Valkyrie would be able to tell 

Sam is very excited because this is the first time she’s met another trans person but doesn’t know how to bring it up 

I’m picturing it happening after they meet Thor when she and Magnus are talking by the campfire 

She just awkwardly blurts out “So uh gender huh?”

Magnus has no idea what she’s trying to say at first but once he does he’s very excited to talk trans with her 

ftm and mtf solidarity bitch!!!!

Then Alex gets thrown into the mix 

She doesn’t know about any of this  

Eventually, Sam finds the time to talk to her about her gender, and naturally Alex is ecstatic. It's part of why he takes such joy in being Sam’s chaperone

This happens pretty soon after Alex arrives in Vallhalla 

But Alex doesn’t find out the rest are trans too till much later 

It just sort of slips out from Blitz, a mention of feeling a bit dysphoric that day and Alex is like “!?!!!!” 

After hearing a bit more about Alex’s past Blitzen goes to Hearth and suggests he talk to her 

They have a very good venting session about growing up trans with shitty shitty parents 

Alex learns about Magnus last 

It’s when he comes to Magnus’ room after celebrating and Magnus got covered in chocolate 

Magnus has his shirt off and Alex sees his binder and is just like “!!!!!!” 

Magnus is a bit flustered but doesn’t really mind being seen shirtless since its Alex and he already knows he’s trans too so he’s not about to get attacked or called a slur 

Just like... Alex realizing his whole new little family is trans 

Just the whole empty cups fam being trans and all having very different ways of experiencing and expressing it but supporting each other through it all. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk

[luciferpens]

( TOM ELLIS, MALE, HE/HIM ) ⌇ have you seen WESTON BENNETT around icaria? they are the 37 year old child of NYX they remind me of DARK CORNERS, WHISKEY ON A PIANO, and MOONLESS NIGHTS. They’ve been on the island for 2 months.

BASICS

FULL NAME: Weston Bennett

NICKNAMES: Wes

FACE CLAIM: Tom Ellis

AGE: Thirty-seven

SEXUALITY: pansexual & panromantic

DATE OF BIRTH: February 20

GENDER/PRONOUNS: cis male he/him

EDUCATION: ???? 

OCCUPATION: Panist at Supernova. Mafia son.

GODLY PARENT: Nyx

GODLY POWERS: Ability to melt into shadows and be totally unseen, teleportation within shadow/darkness, can manipulate the shadows to look like other things (think peter pan’s shadow), if you’re already asleep he can push you deeper into sleep or bring you out of it. Honestly, his darkness is so heavy that most people when they view it think they’ve fallen asleep.

BIO + BULLET POINTS

Born to Anthony Bennett and his wife  Lilian Bennett. (Though his actual mother is Nyx)

Has an adopted half brother. Deacon Lock. 

His family has worshiped Nyx for generations and they were granted blessings and protections by Nyx as long as they used what was given to them to protect others

This lead to them starting a crime organization to vindicate those wronged by family members, lovers, police, or any other number of things. 

Weston Bennett was the first and only biological child Anthony Bennett. He and his wife could not have been any prouder to be blessed by Nyx with a child of hers. One would have thought Lilian would have been pissed her husband effectively cheated on her with the goddess -- but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. The family, and the family before them and those before them, all worshiped Nyx. Anthony came from a line of Nyx worshipers that could be traced all the way back to ancient Greece. Nyx continuously blessed the line with protections and blessings with the promise that they would use what blessing they earned to protect those less fortunate. 

Of course, the family honored Nyx in whatever ways they could, and three generations ago had started a crime organization that specifically went after those wronged, hurt, or murdered by family, lovers, police, or the government. They were vigilantes, and never charged for their services but if someone paid them they wouldn’t refuse the payments either. And boy -- did people end up paying. Because of their blessing from Nyx it allowed them to slip in and out of places unnoticed and safe as long as it was dark. 

And then -- Weston was born. They knew he would be the one to take over the family one day, for they knew he would be blessed with actual powers from Nyx herself. Her blood ran through his veins and they did everything they could to train him up to be the best leader they could. Now Weston will say he is nowhere near as good as his father and doesn’t believe he ever will be. His father is kind, loving, and amazing at what he does. His mother, a lawyer (and their protection) skilled and the best around. Weston -- doesn’t feel the same towards himself, he feels rather inferior when it comes to his parents. But he loves them dearly. 

He was a decently normal kid growing up, or as normal as one could be being trained by a mafia family. He was trained in stealth by Nyx herself and trained in defense by his adoptive one. His father and uncle taught him how to kill and trained in poison by his aunt. Outside of that though? Weston really did try to be normal, he took piano lessons because both of his mothers loved the sound, he participated in drama, wasn’t great in school, but made friends anyways. He dated, fell in and out of love as he grew older. 

It was when he turned into a young adult, that things started to change. He was pulled into more missions, put on the spot, and actually had to use all the training he had gained since a teen. He was scared out of his mind his first couple of missions, terrified of getting caught of hurting or killing someone -- but when he learned and actually digested what it was they were doing he came to understand, to enjoy what he did and to be good at what he did. Weston enjoyed getting vengeance for those hurt, enjoyed seeing light appear in their eyes when they realized that for the first time in a long time they were truly safe.  

Weston, or at least his kills, became a well-known assassin within crime families. No one knew who it was exactly who killed these people but each was so clean and left no trace. They seemed either completely natural or accidental but to those with trained eyes, other assassins or crime families usually, could tell this was the work of a single assassin. He was 21 years old when Nyx returned to their life with a big surprise -- this time it was another child of hers. Taken from his family because of the abuse he was enduring and given to the Bennett’s for protection. 

He was an adult, sure, but Weston loved his little brother more than most 21-year-olds would like having a 9-year-old suddenly in their family. He loved having a brother, another child of Nyx. One he could help come to terms with their powers and be there for in case the boy needed him. He was there for whatever Deacon needed happy to be of any help. 

It was around the age of 26 that he met Vivian, saving her from a mugger. The two became the best of friends. And he watched as she fell in love with Charlie. It wasn’t until a couple of years later when he found out that Charlie was involved in human trafficking........ specifically demi-god trafficking. The rage that boiled in him when he realized that his next target was Viv was unmatched. He planned with his coworkers and they had a whole setup ready, to take out the buyer and Charlie in one go. But things when horribly ary when Viv ended up in the car with Charlie. Charlie let his emotions get ahold of him and the car spun out of control -- all Wes could do was throw his powers around Viv to protect her from sure death. And he did.... but she knew, knew it was him and knew he killed her boyfriend. Their friendship ended soon after. 

Weston then threw himself deeper into the family business, focused his every fiber on building them up and making them more powerful. His goal was to take out the human trafficking ring and to help finally get what Nyx desired... even if it killed him to do so. A more peaceful world -- even if the result of that was him having to kill more people.

HEADCANONS/WANTED CONNECTIONS

Anyone from his childhood. Especially anyone would might have thought something was weird about him

An ex-boyfriend or girlfriend who knows of what his family does.

Someone he’s helped over the years!

Friends of the family who know what he does. 

[blooddrinkingbartender]

So...

I’ve mentioned being tempted to add a new character on the blog. But I figure before I do anything like add him ‘officially’, I should give him a test run first.

So I’m going to put a basic profile below, and this is essentially a starter call for this guy. If you’d like to see him in action and give him a go (before I potentially add him), then check out his profile (basic and quickly cobbled together; more details will be put in if I add him as a character) and feel free to give this post a like.

If you’re multi-muse, feel free to specify the muse.

Name: Edward Robinson

Age: 264 (Physically 54) 

Birthday: January 18th 1756 (Capricorn)

Gender: Cis Male (he/him/his pronouns)

Eyes: Blue. 

Hair: Light brown (beard is lighter and greyer in comparison)

Species: Vampire.

Nationality: English

Mother: Edith Robinson (deceased)

Father: Isaac Robinson (deceased)

Siblings: None (as far as he’s aware anyway)

Powers and Abilities: Mesmerism, (able to force people to obey his commands, entrance them, or forget that they encountered him), heightened senses, regeneration, forming very long claws, super strength, becoming invisible for a short time, brief telekineses, temporary control over animals (e.g. rats or bugs), and the ability to become incorporeal for a short time. 

Weaknesses: Can’t enter a place without being invited (however, that doesn’t stop him using his mesmerism to force people to invite him in), some people can naturally see through the glamour and/or resist his mesmerism, fire, orichalcum, silver, sunlight, cannot consume normal food or drinks without vomiting them up again soon after, fresh plants burn him, cause an intensely painful rash and/or force his glamour off, and holy symbols repel him (as long as the wearer/user knows this and/or has faith that it will.) 

Sexual Orientation: Asexual

Personality: He’s friendly and a bit cheerful but can be very careless. Becoming an vampire has made him feel quite invincible for the most part.

Even though he can seem distant to people he cares about (e.g. any progeny), he does care and he shows it in his own ways. His love languages are gifts and acts of service. 

He’s hard to anger, but if you do manage to piss him off, run away. He likes jokes and puns. He also has a penchant for pranks. While introverted, he’s far from shy, and he enjoys a good chat. 

He has trouble figuring out his own emotions and the emotions that someone else may be feeling at a given time. 

Basic Background: Born 1756, in Yorkshire, to a rather poor family. He was the first and only born to his parents. However, his parents were unable to keep him. They lacked money and resources. They loved him dearly and felt terrible for it, but they eventually sold him to a group of travelling performers for a large sum when he was only four years old. 

Luckily, he was allowed to keep his name and the other performers were honest to him about where he was from and the circumstances of him being with them. One was kind enough to also teach him how to read and write. 

The group was very successful, and he grew up with them. He got various nicknames like the Glimmering Peacock and the Racing Rabbit. Although as he grew older, he started to wonder if this was what he wanted. In his thirties, he decided to eventually leave and go solo, wanting to find what he thought would be a better venture.

Even though he had some women attracted to him, he found himself completely uninterested. He didn’t question why though, even though he knew it wasn’t ‘normal’ (or considered so for the time he lived in). Wanting the adventure, and yet wanting something a bit more stable (as well as a chance of pace to circus performances), he became a fisherman on a ship. It suited him well in his mind. He did this for just over two decades.

However, in June 1810, there was a massive storm. His ship was wrecked, the rest of his crew drowned or killed by debris, and he washed up on a beach, injured and close to death. A vampire took pity on him, and they gave him their blood to try and turn him before moving on. 

His maker left him alone, most likely not wanting to deal with the responsibility of a new progeny. But they did leave a note stating that they were a fan of his performance work and it would be a shame to see such a showman leave this world too soon.

He likes to think he learned to handle the change from mortal to vampire very well. He did go back to Yorkshire to see if his parents were still around (he had only been writing to them before, but never knowing if his letters made it seeing as he never got replies), only to find that they were dead by that point. Although saddened, he decided that it was probably better that way.

He has continued to travel since then, continuing his performances and looking for more adventures along the way. He feels that at least his ability to entertain has stuck with him, and it gives him something new every time.