#be enby do crime

[butcher--bird]

theyre all i wanna draw right now. sorry.

[headlamprey]

I officially am accepting applicants for a Partner in Crime. You will share a bed with me. It will be platonic. You will help me uh YAKNOW assist with certain things​. Definitely interested in your ideas as well. HMU to be my Partner In Crime

🔨⚒️⛏️🪚⛓️🗡️🚬

[threetransbiansinatrenchcoat]

So... Not to brag or anything, but I'm spending the day cuddling with the cutest enby in Seattle

[vyridianvoidelf]

It is pride month. Time for a big gay momento.

Be gay. Be trans. Make gay and trans stuff. But most importantly stay alive, please. With puppy eyes.

[noctsys]

I'm going to be so crimes and do so many gay

-Ark

[artsonist-moth]

Ooops forgot to Post this here

be gay do crimes

[beetusbritt]

[cadaveerie]

I'd like to point something out to Dragon Age fans, especially fanartists, in the nicest way possible:

Taash doesn't have a small waist. Taash doesn't have boob armor. Please guys, could you consider drawing the bodies of people you perceive as women like they actually are? Pleaseeeeee.

A lot of people doing fanart have been giving them both, and while it's not a crime or anything, can we for once let characters read as female not have those tropes? Especially when they're not like that in canon?

Obviously I do not condone harassment because of how anyone draws a fictional character, so I'd ask you don't target specific people about this... I just think that it's already rare to get these characters that don't have tiny waists and boob armor, so it'd be nice if this was more widely respected. I ask you to consider why it matters, and why it's questionable to have the one character like this be changed.

And also, not that related, but still somehow related to how Taash is perceived by fans: Taash has been referred to by 'she' and 'they' pronouns by the devs, so I'd just ask people to keep it in mind as well, and the possibility that they might not be a woman. That and the fact that both their writer and actor are non-binary and go by they/them, and that apparently Trick Weekes has expressed in the past their desire to write only trans characters (I've heard this multiple times, but I don't have the source. Let me know if you do.) I also think that the way Corinne Busche talks about their arc sounds incredibly trans-coded to me, but that's another discussion. Obviously, we don't know Taash's gender yet, they might not be enby at all, but it's still a nice thing to keep in mind since we lack the information to indicate the opposite, and there's some other to at least suggest the possibility that they might be trans, and perhaps even have a coming out arc.

I just ask that you consider these things at least. It matters to a lot of people, for good reason.

source: [1] Taash's picture, Corinne using they/them for Taash and talk about their arc.

[random-autie-fangirl]

I wrote this thing complaining about some Krusie shippers tendency to misgender Kris ages ago, after seeing something really annoying and shitty on the Krusie discord.

To be honest, as much as I love Krusie, I can only really like it anymore unless Kris is portrayed as explicity non-binary.

Like when people use they/them pronouns for Kris, give them an enby flag pin or even make a little caption on their post saying krusie's gay or something, i'm just like!!! hell yeah! But like when there isnt those little gender signifers for Kris, I kinda feel the need to through their blog to check that the poster actually accepts Kris as non-binary.

Because looking at the Krusie posts made by people who think Kris is a boy, they're often really OOC, with Kris being a stereotypical boring self insert straight guy and Susie being a stereotypical uwu blushy tsundere or it's weirdly sexualized (they're teenagers, guys) or it bashes Noelle (often in quite a lesbophobic way) or Kris is portrayed as super masculine and Susie is portrayed as hyper feminine in a way that evidently neither of them are in canon.

Of course I'm opposed on a more technical level too, Krusie just can't simply be straight, because Kris just is not and can not be a boy, but there's every other shit thing that comes with it just to add to the stupidity, and now I can't trust any Krusie fic or art unless I unambiguously know the creator portrays Krusie as queer.

Because the thing is the queer Krusie is not only near on always properly respectful and actually in character, it's funny and plausible and cute and shows that they actually have real chemistry and work well together (platonically or romantically of course) when portrayed as they really are in canon, dumb rebellious adorable teen gremlins that would probably see committing petty crimes and eating moss together as the height of romance. Not to mention that it's always hard to tell if Kris is crushing on Susie or just thinks really highly of her but like we do know Susie literally seems to be Kris's favourite person in the world right now (And honestly quite a bit of Krusie content portrays it as something that toes the line between platonic and romantic, which is especially cool) and it just pains me that the actual, queer, canonical Krusie is often really really good but it's just always overshowed by the absolute trashfire dungheap that is Straight Krusie(tm).

[ask-papa-perpetua]

Why are ghost fans obsessed with non binary identities? Something tells me yall are avoiding therapy

~ He has a combination of a cornette and mitre. The non binary theories are entirely logical if that is what you're referring to

~ As for people who write/draw alternatives versions of them being trans or born a different gender, so what? Even I don't really care for it but I dont think it's weird or anything. I think it's weird to ship the emeritus brothers (because thats incest/a sex crime) and I think it's weird to change the characters body types (because it feels kind of hateful and anchored to out of touch lust), but I don't think it's weird to make genderbent versions. It's fun. It's one of those things where if you don't like it just look away. It's not harming anybody. It's not morally wrong. So just look away.

~ By the way uhhhhh what do you mean "avoiding therapy?" Buddy. Pal. I'm under the non binary umbrella. Idk if you assumed I hated lgbt for some reason or if you just didnt look into who you're really talking to, but I'm getting second hand embarrassment with you expecting a snarky response about enbies FROM AN ENBY LMAOOO

~ Anyways get out of my inbox byeee

[smilesheartshugs]

Gender shenanigans ideas with the bat fam:

Tim and Cas are both enby in the sense that “yeah people put me in this box but I don’t really have another box to go to so might as well be this.”

Jason never felt comfortable in his skin, but it wasn’t until be got dunked in the magical green buff juice. After the rage has cleared up and he’s in an area where he could stop and think he realizes that he may not be a boy. But because of his physique and how necessary he is for crime ally he doesn’t think he can change it. He doesn’t even let himself try out other pronouns. *no he can’t be a girl what are you talking about? Girls can wear the pretty skirts and he can’t*

Dick is gender fluid though usually male or male adjacent. He feels comfortable in his own skin and wears what ever he wants whenever he wants.

Duke was very very young when he found out he was trans and his parents let him transition so you that he just kinda forgets that he’s not cis. No one knows he’s trans but he just genuinely forgets to tell people. He’s been doing his own testosterone for like two years before his parents got jokerized so it kinda just fell through the cracks. He doesn’t feel the need to tell people either he’s just kinda there.

Babs is mtf and confident with her self.

Steph thought she could be enby for a period of time but she’s a cis girly pop. She just doesn’t like being treated like she’s less than and has no interest in “traditional female value” (cough cough misogyny)

Damian is a guy, he has never thought to question his gender. He was told he was a guy since birth so clearly he must be a guy right? Right?? Well he’s obviously not a girl, not that he hates wearing skirts or makeup he’s just not a girl so that means he’s a guy.

[stanpinesdykewife]

hits you on the head with angst so specific it makes you uncomfortable

porch stan/reader (enby) pre/during/post-canon/unspecified hurt/comfort, 2793 words (ship if you squint, but not the focus)

Stan finds you on the back porch of the Mystery Shack hours after he told you to clock out and go home. You’re not on your phone, not nursing a soda… you’re not doing anything. You’re just sitting there on the steps, alone in the dark. He can only see the back of your head from the diamond shape in the door, but your stare extends far beyond the dim glow of the porchlight, ending only at the pitch black of the woods.

He hesitates for a moment, his hand hovering over the doorknob. Stan knows how important it is to be alone. Though he… tolerates you, maybe a little more than an employer should, he wouldn’t know the first thing about offering good company when you're like this. Mainly because he's never seen you like this.

That’s it, then, he decides, slowly lowering his hand from the knob. You wanna mope around on my porch? Go crazy. But count me out.

…

Stan doesn’t move. He watches the back of your head, the tense line of your shoulders, the way some strands of your hair twitch in the weak summer breeze. You inhale, slowly. Then take a deep breath out. Your head hangs a little lower.

Stan twists the doorknob and steps out onto the porch, and ignores the guilt when you jump about five feet in the air.

“Trespassing’s a crime, you know,” he says, once you whip around to blink at him with wide eyes. Stan crosses his arms. “Kidding. You wanna do… whatever this is, inside, or what?”

It takes another moment of stunned silence for you to register his words. The pause is long enough that Stan furrows his brows and wonders where your mind is. You jump again, shaking your head, and he realizes too late that you think he’s glaring at you.

“Oh, no, no, I was just—Sorry. I was just about to leave,” you say, planting your palms on the porch steps and starting to push yourself upwards. Stan uncrosses his arms and waves a hand in the air dismissively.

“Relax,” he says gruffly, and shuts the door behind him before crossing the distance to the porch sofa in two long strides. He lets himself fall onto it with a sigh, the old plush of the cushions sinking dramatically under his weight. You twist in your seat to look at him, surprised. Stan pats the cushion next to him. “Do an old man a favor, huh? Don't make me sit on the stairs.”

You stare at him for another second, searching his expression. Stan nearly breaks out in a sweat trying to act casual as you scan his face, his body language, the hand drawing away from the cushion to leave you room to sit down.

Then you push yourself up, and turn, and shuffle over to the couch to sit on the opposite end of the couch. You linger at the edge, like you might just change your mind. But after a moment, you sigh and scoot backwards so the backs of your knees hit the edge of the cushion.

Stan waits for a moment. Listens to the chirping and buzzing of the woods in all directions, the faint rustle of unseen creatures in the brush. A low whistle sounds from the left. He knows enough to ignore it, and it seems you do, too. The both of you are safe, here on the sofa, in the dim yellow light of the lantern hanging from the porch roof. But… your shoulders are up to your ears. Your mouth is set in a thin, straight line.

“... You okay?” Stan asks finally, the gravel in his voice painfully loud within the bubble of silence surrounding you. He tries not to stare, but he can’t stop himself from taking too many sideways glances at your profile. The downturn of your brow, the tension in your jaw. You take a short breath in. Then you nod, sighing softly.

“Just… thinking,” you say. Your “thinking” is too quiet at the beginning and end, more breath than letters. Stan waits for you to elaborate. When you don’t, he asks,

“Thinking of what?”

Another beat passes. Stan waits again, this time keeping his eyes forward. His hands fold in his lap. He’s trying to give you space.

“I’m, uh…” Stan almost looks at you when you start to speak, but the millisecond he straightens up, your bravado dies down and you trail off. So he relaxes again, best he can, and continues not to look at you. When you start again, you sound grateful. “I’m always… just… going through something.”

He gives you ample time to consider your words. You keep going, slowly, like the syllables are churning together in your mind, like your skull is one of those trucks that mixes cement. You find the syllables one-by-one and put them together with great effort, your voice low with concentration.

“Not like… something is always happening to me. Lately, it’s… nothing is happening to me. But I can’t turn it off. It’s like a radio that just drones on, and on, and on.” You rub your palms on your shorts, over your thighs. Stan can’t tell whether you’re trying to soothe yourself by wiping away your sweat, or imagining there’s a stain on your skin that won’t come out. Your hands pause at your knees and you keep talking. “Sometimes the volume is so low, I can ignore it. It’s just this… really faint humming in the background of everything else, this staticky sound sitting on the top of my head.

“Sometimes the volume is explosive, and I can’t drown it out. It’s too… But, you know, no matter how loud it gets, I can still… function. I might have to cover my ears and close my eyes and hold my breath, but I can do it. I can handle it on my own. But sometimes I’m reading a receipt and my eyes linger on a letter for too long,” your eyes are darting around several spots on the porch, finding grooves in the wood, splinters sticking out, “or my back is turned and I hear someone’s—a customer, a friend, anyone—I hear their footsteps behind me, and it falls in such a normal, nonspecific way and…”

Your knee starts to bounce, but you stop it after a few seconds. You lean forward, forearms on your knees now, your hands clasped together. You speak to the empty space between the decking boards. To the pitch blackness separating you from the cold, damp earth below, the negative space where coins and trash and confessions fall into, never to be seen or heard from again.

“I’m always younger than I am,” you say, your words sinking between the slats of wood. “It's always that night. I'm always in that house. Always in that room. And the ceiling is white. And the door is locked. But the TV is always on.”

Stan doesn’t entirely know what that means. He isn’t supposed to. Even then, there’s an aching familiarity in the gloom of your voice, the added weight to your breath, so he sits with it. He feels like he sinks further into the couch with the pressure forming in his chest, a boulder rolling up the inside of his sternum, to the base of his throat, making it difficult to breathe. He’s imagining a very different house, no doubt. A very different TV.

You sit statue-still on the other end of the couch. You watch your words drip down the edges of the decking boards, and you would almost hear them hit the dirt below if not for the everpresent hum of the forest. You’re surrounded by it. The trees and the brush are all alive, all moving, stalking you from all angles, watching you breathe, waiting for you to move so they can close in and crush you.

Really, you’re safe. Stan knows you’re safe. But he also knows the dread of feeling otherwise, the cold, skin-thin coat of fear creeping across every inch of your body and making your limbs rigid. He knows that sometimes, when the second-skin starts feeling a little too thick, it helps to have someone on the other side.

“Yeah, well. You and me both, kid.” It isn't as comforting as he hopes. He winces, but keeps his gaze forward when you turn your head to look at him. Stan takes a deep breath in and sighs it out, bringing a hand up to scratch the back of his skull. He looks at you.

You look tired. About as tired as he feels on those sleepless nights alone, staring at that dark knot in the ceiling in his room.

It’s a perfect spiral, just there, formed naturally in the wood. Just one of many weird things in this town, he supposes. The only times Stan has ever been tempted to purchase a ladder have been those nights when his brain itched with the need to measure that spiral, to calculate its length, press his finger against the center point and feel the texture of the shape on his skin.

He’s never actually done it. Part of him blames his fear of heights. The rest of him knows it’s because it’s too easy to imagine two other perfect spirals next to it, a practiced triskelion first drawn in childhood notebooks and eventually perfected in the journal he has hidden in the basement. Those nights usually end in him closing his eyes and promising not to open them again until morning, even though the spiral is etched into the backs of his eyelids anyway, glowing fluorescent in the dark recesses of his mind. He would see that spiral so clearly, even if his cataracts clouded his whole sense of vision, even if he lost his vision entirely.

Stan takes in your expression for a moment longer. The exhaustion, paired with the lamp light, adds an unhealthy shadow to your face. Your eyes look a little unfocused, sunken in, and your skin is pale and your lips are chapped. It’s too cold out here, Stan thinks. He knows you wouldn’t accept his suit jacket, so he doesn’t offer. Instead, he tries to offer the smidge of sage, elderly wisdom he’s got. It isn’t much, but it’s more than nothing.

“I can’t tell you I know how to help,” he says, and your brow furrows and your lips purse tightly. Stan keeps his eyes on you, keeps his voice gentle. “What I can tell you is… you’re not alone.”

“What do I do when I feel alone?” you ask suddenly. “What do I do when I feel like I’m the only person in the world who feels this way? And then when I feel stupid and selfish for thinking that, when I know other people have gone through so much worse? What then?”

“You get over it,” Stan says softly. You flinch back like he’d screamed the words at you, and when Stan blinks, you’re leaning far away from him. You blink back at him with wide eyes. It’s the most emotion he’s seen on you all evening, and he tries not to feel like a monster for it. He raises his hands placatingly and explains, “You get over it. As in, you stop kicking yourself when you’re down, and you pick yourself up. You’re not alone and you know it. Even if you are, so what? If no one else is gonna care…”

Stan trails off. You… obviously don’t know what to say to that. Stan rubs the back of his neck, slumping into the couch. He’s bad at this. He’s not great at… emotional stuff. He never learned how to put feelings into words, and whatnot. He was never allowed to.

“You’re not alone,” he says again, struggling against the instinct to backpedal, to tell you everything’s gonna be alright and you just need some sleep. He forces the next words out of his mouth. “You’re not the only person who feels this way. That doesn’t make it a competition, it doesn’t mean you lose. People like us, we drew the short straw. Doesn’t mean we give a trophy to whoever got it worst. It just means we have a little extra work to do—some more than others—to feel a little more okay.”

Your shoulders are slowly, slowly, losing their tension. Your gaze drifts back to the floor of the porch. Stan tries one more time to get his point across.

“When it feels like the world’s out to get you… you can scream. You can break down on the bathroom floor. You can throw kicks and punches and beg for life to give you a break. You can stand in a park and shout for someone to come and rescue you until your throat’s raw and you lose your voice.” Stan’s next breath turns out a little shaky, but he clears his throat and squeezes his hands into fists. Then he flexes them out flat, brushing invisible dust off his knees.

“Eventually, though,” he continues, “you gotta realize the only person guaranteed to hang around you is you. You can feel lonely and dumb and you can cry all you want. Trust me, no one would blame you, but… you can also walk to the store and buy yourself some tissues. Steal a snack off the shelf while you’re there. And you can sit on the curb in the parking lot and tell yourself you deserve to feel better than this, whether or not anyone agrees. Whether or not you believe it.”

When Stan finally shuts up, the forest sounds a little quieter. An unknown species chirps in the distance. Branches of an evergreen tree rustle together. His eyes have adjusted to the darkness by now, and he can see the faint shapes of moths fluttering at the edge of the clearing. He knows they’re not, but a small part of his mind imagines the moths flitting around in a perfect spiral. Privately, he rubs his thumb and forefinger together, imagining the feel of wood grain at his fingertips.

You’re hunched in on yourself, and your lips are still pressed together in thought. You’re not leaning away anymore, but your body language isn’t exactly welcoming. Stan feels nervous sweat gathering in his pits and resists the urge to scratch at them. He thinks he fucked up.

Then you huff, a quiet sound, just a sharp exhale through your nose. You tilt your head to the side and look at him, and Stan’s chest seizes with anxiety and shame, and he’s already taking a breath in to defend himself because you’re laughing at him, but…

“Any tips on skipping the part where I cry?” you ask, a dry sense of humor shining through your flat tone. Stan swallows. Settles down. He chuckles a little, mostly because he’s glad you’re not scolding him for the clumsy mess that was meant to be advice.

“Not unless you wanna lose a staring contest with a high velocity fan every day,” he jokes. It’s not that funny, but you huff again, and the corner of your mouth upturns a little bit. Stan tries for another. “I got a burlap sack you can borrow. That way you can cry in private—in public!”

“What? That’s so dumb,” you laugh, for real this time, one of your hands coming up to cover your mouth. It takes Stan a second to realize he’s grinning at you, despite everything, just sitting there like an idiot and watching you chuckle at two half-jokes. Another joke bakes in his mind: two halves make a whole, or something like that. Luckily, he doesn’t get the chance to say it, because then you’re lowering your hand and leaning over to punch the side of his thigh. It’s light, he barely even feels it, but the gesture makes his whole body feel warm. You smile at him, still tired, still sad, but with a little less weight to the edges. “Hey. Thanks.”

Stan shuffles one foot out to kick yours. He ends up just nudging the side of your shoe with his own, but you don’t move it away. You’re both sitting there, your knuckles against Stan’s pants and his shoe against your shoe, and you’re both just smiling tiredly at each other. Stan wonders if you still feel alone. He hopes you don’t. He won’t ask.

“No problem,” he says instead, and you huff out a laugh that’s softer than the others. You press the back of your hand just a little harder to the outside of Stan’s leg, as if assuring yourself that he’s there, that he’s with you, at least in this moment.

The forest surrounding you is not silent, but it’s quiet.

[a-student-out-of-time]

The Post-Tragedy Horrors of Despair Time

Hello everyone, Mod Bubbles here!

This Halloween, I decided to do something a little different. Rather than a dedicated post or song parody, I've decided to share a worldbuilding analysis. A pretty fortuitous one, since we've recently completed Chapter 2 of Despair Time.

I'm sure it's no exaggeration to say that DT is a pretty dark fangan, especially within its own context. I wouldn't say it's as grimdark and nihilistic as some people are convinced it is, but there's some elements to it that I feel are worth analyzing going forward.

See, it's been established that DT is set within the Hope's Peak continuity. This would mean that the canon games sans V3 (and if you want to have fun with it, other fangans like the Another series) have all happened here.

According to a Q&A, DT is set around 70-80 years after the end of the Tragedy, so if you wanted to estimate based on in-universe dates (such as Makoto's Hope's Peak brochure saying 2010 in the earliest version of the game but 2014 in a re-release), that would put it sometime around 2080 to the mid-2090s. Veronika backs this up in Chapter 2, when she mentions the Tragedy happened "almost a century ago."

Why do I bring all this up? Because if you looked at DT, you'd probably never guess it was that deep in the future. I know I didn't at first. And this is all by design, but it goes beyond simple cosmetic details. Allow me to explain to you why this is probably the darkest timeline that could've happened after Class 78's victory over Ultimate Despair.

___________________________________________________

Modern Stagnancy

So if we look at the obvious, the world of DT looks pretty much identical to our own, which should be a good thing. When you consider that this is set after The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History- an event that saw societal collapse, wars happen for the sake of destruction, massive pollution, rampant murder, and countless killing games- then it almost seems utopian.

Cities have long since been rebuilt, the skies are clear, there are functional trains, movies, celebrities, schools, music, art, Ted-Talks, the internet, all the trappings of normality. And that's really the problem.

Once the recovery efforts were underway, the goal of those in power was to rebuild things exactly as they used to be. Bear in mind, the world looks like our modern day, yet this is set deep into the late 21st century. In that context, the world almost seems stunted in its growth or even that it's regressed, given that CDs and DVDs are used rather than USBs or digital downloads.

Not only that, but this extends to societal attitudes as well. Nico was the victim of bullying over their status as an enby by everyone who knew, including their own father. It's almost the 22nd century and anti-LGBTQ bigotry like this still exists.

In that context, it feels less like the world is recovering and more that it's been stuck in its pre-Tragedy status quo, right down to continuing the Ultimates program that contributed to The Tragedy in the first place. And who would be motivated to do that?

2. Hope's Peak And Their Kin Are Stronger Than Ever

Probably one of the most contentious aspects of DR3's ending is that, after everything the people in charge of it were responsible for- exploiting their students, covering up crimes, human experimentation- Hope's Peak Academy was rebuilt by the survivors, now with Makoto as headmaster.

Now, one could make the argument that Makoto is a better example of hope and thus better suited to lead the school to follow its stated ideals than the Steering Committee ever was. That very well may be true, but as they also proved, nobody stays in charge forever. And now, because of his decision, Hope's Peak isn't contained to Japan.

There now exist Hope's Peak branches in every major country on Earth, with two in the United States. Teruko and co. are students of the East Coast Division's 27th class, meaning that one opened almost thirty years ago. This would also mean that Japan's Hope's Peak would have seen over 150 classes since its inception.

I bring all this up because, as has been made very clear by canon, Hope's Peak is a terrible place even in concept. When you remove the idyllic aspect of fostering talent and guaranteeing its students are set for life, the truth is that ultimates are stunted in their development. They're only encouraged to excel in their particular field, whether they really want to or not.

In addition, Hope's Peak has always quietly held this belief that only people with talent hold any worth; those without talent are just "ticks" who leech off the success of their betters. Characters like Byakuya and Nagito echo those very same sentiments, this extreme elitism that encourages people to view the "99%" as inherently inferior.

Even if you wanted to say Makoto managed to undo that idea, can we really say this divide would never come up again? No matter how many years pass or how many divisions of Hope's Peak are set up across the world? That seems really far-fetched to me.

Consider Min's bonus video. As she explains, she was never scouted by the school. Instead, America's Hope's Peak announced something called the Ultimate Contest for Eminent Students, where eligible high school students would be allowed to take a test, the best of whom would be admitted to the school when they graduated. The catch is that they had 12 years to prepare. Min, who was only 5 at the time, wasn't initially going to participate, but then the founder of a company called XF-Ture Tech approached her family- who was quite poor- and wanted to sponsor her in exchange for her participation.

She spent her entire life preparing for that test. And when she passed, she realized it was all really just an experiment to create their ideal version of the Ultimate Student. She even doubted that she was the best in terms of raw score, just that she met their desired expectations by cutting out everything else in her life for that test.

It also extends beyond just Hope's Peak itself. Those with power and influence now hold a strangle hold over the most vulnerable people out there, as we can see with the Lacroix family.

Rose wanted to help her family out of their financial limitations using her painting skills and her photographic memory, which lead to her becoming an art forger. However, at 15, she was found out and her family faced tens of millions in fines. This would've been the end, but then they were bailed out by a billionaire named Richard Spurling, founder of the Spurling Foundation. In exchange for clearing her charges, Rose had to sign a contract that meant she doesn't own the rights to anything she paints.

She hates what her life has become, where she can only ever really paint things at the whims of the Foundation because it was the only way her family could survive that mountain of debt. The exploitation there is undeniable.

No matter where you look, there's still exploitation and experiment abound with the school, corporations and the wealthy. And if you think the Spurling Foundation sounds bad here, they're implied to be responsible for something much worse.

Which is also brings us to Xander. See, there's a curious detail when we first meet him in the prologue:

And I agree. Xander being the Ultimate Rebel really doesn't fit him, as he's better described as the "Ultimate Revolutionary." Except there's no chance Hope's Peak would call him that, instead paying lip service to the idea in a digestible format to still support the status quo.

Xander is an activist who works to oppose corruption, but the ones who benefit from corruption wouldn't want him to flaunt that. It's a subtle but very clever detail that shows those in power still maintain a hold even over their beloved Ultimates.

They probably had no issue throwing the obviously corrupt under the bus to save their own hides, and raised Xander up with a quasi-supportive title. It gives them a chance to look like they're supporting what he's doing while still tying an element of a "rebellious child" to his image with the name.

Had Xander survived, he had a good reason to want to bring them down, especially the Spurlings.

3. Illness and Poverty

Xander's bonus video clued us in on what I believe is one of the most important parts of DT's continuity: the fate of the town of Chariton, implied to be where he lived. It seemed to be a small town, home to a couple hundred or a couple thousand people, where the only hospital for miles was "dinky, understaffed" and barely able to handle a minor flu outbreak. They were completely unprepared for what became known as the Chariton Incident.

When he was around 14, the town was hit by a disease that caused those infected to decay from the outside in; their limbs would stop working before their organs did, meaning they would just lay there and feel themselves slowly dying. So many died that nobody was left to move the bodies, so they were left where they fell, rotting in the summer heat.

The cause of this outbreak? A contaminated river that served as the town's water source. Chariton was an impoverished community, where people had no money to treat their water, get medicine from a nearby city or to even move out. It's also implied, based on Xander's anger, that Duke Spurling was partially responsible and that he got off the hook, which may be what drove Xander to become the Ultimate Rebel. Especially when you consider he's the only surviving member of his family.

Duke Spurling is, as the named implies and Dev has confirmed, the younger brother of Richard Spurling. The money and influence needed to get his brother off the hook is the very same that has the Lacroix family under his thumb.

So as we can see, Chariton was a major event in DT's canon. Not only does it showcase corruption, it also showcases understated but still prominent problems in the post-Tragedy U.S. If you pay attention, you'll also notice Teruko, Min, and Rose mention poverty playing a role in their lives.

As we can see, poverty plays a major role in their lives, and that extends beyond a personal level. Chariton's poverty is why the incident happened at all, and a big reason is because it's also an example of a medical desert.

"Medical desert" is a term used to describe regions whose population has inadequate access to healthcare. This can be all healthcare in general or in specialties such as dental care or pharmaceuticals. This is an especially prominent problem in rural areas, but it can affect urban ones too.

If that sounds implausible to you, today it's believed that around 30 million Americans- over 1% of the population- live over an hour from a hospital. Can you imagine how bad the problem is in a world after The Tragedy? All the damage to infrastructure, established institutions, the economy, and the population? I doubt Chariton was the first to see something this bad.

Ace's execution gives us more clues. In the Death By Illness section, there are several newspaper clippings on the wall, most of which are readable. One flashes on screen saying "Unexplained Illness Kills Thousands," which I believe is another reference to Chariton (why else would it flash on screen?), but there's more as well:

"More people are dying of cancer than ever before"

"Flu season claims thousands of lives"

"Falling rates of survival for hospitalized patients"

"Antibiotic-resistant infections a growing threat in this hospital"

One is harder to read, but I believe it mentions Chronic Kidney Disease being tied to an early death

Now, the interesting thing is that most of these are modern headlines, and they can be pretty misleading. The cancer one is actually based on the fact that more people are living longer lives, thus are reaching ages where they develop cancer due to their cell infrastructure breaking down naturally. It doesn't mean there's more cancer cases overall across all ages.

The only one that's not true is the falling rates one. Which suggests that not only was it Chariton, but healthcare infrastructure in general after the Tragedy seems to be a mess.

See, I was assuming that these articles are identical to what we see today. But it's also possible that the cancer one is now literally true, and it could be because The Tragedy was rife with this kind of horror. We know that terrorism, coups and wars happened for no reason other than to spread despair across the world.

Could you imagine how many nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological weapons were used? How many diseases and hazardous materials were seeded into the environment? If it's unsafe to drink tap water after a serious hurricane or earthquake, how bad is the problem when contamination is the goal?

And this doesn't even touch on how disturbingly easy it would be to spread long-term illnesses such as HIV or CJD in contaminated food and medical supplies. Some diseases have latency periods that last decades, meaning they could still be killing people even by the time DRDT is set.

Antibiotic resistance is also a very real and serious problem. Even today, some strains have become immune to even the strongest antibiotics available. This has given rise to Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci or VREs, which are immune to basically every medication we can throw at them.

Now, it's still possible to deal with them, such as with naturally antimicrobial metals or experimental treatments such as CRISPR and Phage Therapy, but in a world that saw such a massive hit to everything? I'm certain antibiotic-resistance bacteria have become much more serious, potentially resulting in epidemics over the years.

And when these things happen, it's always the poor who suffer the most.

4. Lethal Repetition

Now we come to the most obvious example, something highlighted by the same reveal that DT is set nearly a century into the future:

Veronika, who provided us with information on the effects the Tragedy still has, apparently has never heard about The Killing School Life.

Now, it's important to keep in mind that most of the Killing Games in DR were pretty secluded and motivated. SDR2 was only broadcast to Future Foundation with the goal to allow Junko to escape into the real world, for example. However, DR1's Killing School Life was broadcast globally as a means to break humanity's hope by showing the Ultimates slaughtering each other. Instead, Makoto and co. managed to reinvigorate the world's hope and played a pivotal role in ending the Tragedy.

...And yet Veronika apparently hasn't heard any of it.

Now, there's two possibilities here, neither of which are good:

One is that the Mastermind has removed their knowledge of previous killing games, specifically. Now, I actually consider this an unlikely explanation because, not only does Teruko seem to vaguely remember the Killing School Life happened, but what's the goal in doing so for the participants?

The canon games all had solid reasons why the other masterminds erased the participants' memories: the revelation that they'd been killing their friends, the fact that their past identities were supposed to be undone to save them, even the fact that they weren't even who they were supposed to be in V3.

But what's the purpose of suppressing the memories of the Killing School Life in the participants themselves? Especially since this game is also apparently being broadcast to the outside world, although we only have MonoTV's word on that. Is it to undermine everything the survivors achieved or to get the participants not to consider the same strategies?

The other, more plausible explanation to me is that the mastermind isn't the one who erased their memories. The outside world did.

It's possible that, in the decades since the Tragedy and the drive to return things to the status quo, knowledge of the Killing School Life has been suppressed. It would be so easy to blame Makoto's decision to rebuild the school, but it's just as plausible that his attempts to genuinely reform the school were undone over the years.

Corporations and those that came after had a vested reason to improve their own reputations, and why would they allow their connection to the Tragedy to remain public knowledge? The entire thing began as a revolution of lower classes against the rich before it became a whirlwind of mindless violence.

So what does this mean for DT? This is more hypothesizing on my part, but I'd say this could tell us a lot about the potential motivations for this very killing game. Could it be someone trying to remind the world about this event and how we got here? Is it more retribution against the wealthy? Is it someone who was inspired by Junko to slaughter her friends? Or is it something else entirely? And what role does Teruko have if someone involved is so hellbent on trying to kill her?

For now, we can only speculate. But I can tell you that, based on what we've seen here, DT is probably the darkest future we could've gotten out of the canon series.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

[magical-grrrl-mavis]

Games you can play instead of D&D

Pathfinder/Pathfinder 2e: Same concept as D&D but by a better company. You are an adventurer in a high fantasy setting. Character creation combines a race and class.

Mutants and Masterminds 3e: Action-focused superhero RPG, uses starting points to buy equipment and skills and build powers by combining effects. Character creation can take a bit to get used to but there are many sourcebooks with helpful examples to use, there are countless pre-built characters online, and a slew of official books containing just about every DC Comics character you can think of to play and interact with.

Vampire: the Masquerade: You are a vampire in the shadowy gothic underbelly of modern society, struggling against any number of threats, kindred or otherwise, while trying to keep the existence of vampires a secret and struggle against your own bestial nature. Will you retain your humanity? Or give in to the beast. High focus on roleplay and social intrigue.

Monster of the Week: A rules-light game based on the Powered By the Apocalypse system that recreates the experience of shows like Buffy, Supernatural, X-Files and Warehouse 13. You play as a Hunter investigationg supernatural mysteries and fighting monsters. Player characters are based on archetypes from this genre (Professional, Monstrous, Spell-Slinger etc) (this one's my favorite! :D)

Masks: A New Generation: Play as a young superhero finding their place in the world. The game creates a coming-of-age story as you grow and change in response to your actions and the people and events around you. Character creation reflects this by focusing on your characters personality, struggles and strengths while being more loose about your actual powers.

Girl by Moonlight: Magical Girls (boys, enbies etc) through a queer lense. You play a magical guardian grappling with destiny, love and the heartbreaking duality between who you are and who the world says you are. Split between four genres you can choose from-classic magical girls, dark magical girls, psychological conspiracy and... mecha. I guess. (I'm gonna be honest I haven't looked super deep into those last two yet). Characters are based on archetypes from magical girl stories, some with very obvious inspirations.

Scum and Villainy: Play as a roguish outlaw in a galactic society run by an oppressive force. You are the Han Solo of this story, smuggling and doing crimes and mercenary work aboard your own starship.

Killer Ratings: You and the other players are the insufferable cast of a cheap ghost-hunting show and have found yourselves in over your heads as you've wandered into an actual haunted location. Play as you explore the site and are most likely taken out one-by-one, returning as vengeful spirits to further terrorize your former cast-mates.

[lemniscate-graphics]

Help a disabled bi enby pay for car repairs!

Hi guys!! Life has been kicking me in the shins the last few months, but today I went to get groceries and this is what greeted me!

That's my engine *and* transmission oil! Mechanic has quoted me 1400 total to replace the oil pan gasket, transmission gasket, and valve cover gaskets, which all decided to go at the same time! Granted, my Cherry Bomb is an '07 so we were expecting to have to shell out for something soon, but this hit us between paychecks, and the next check also needs to pay rent and a psychiatrist visit I cannot resechedule because it's related to my disability claim for work!

I'm opening unlimited simple sticker commissions between today (Aug 20, 2024) and September 5th 2024, $10 per sticker, up to 8in/10cm length and/or width, max two colors (I know the Ghostbusters sticker has three, but I am limiting this run to two colors to keep it simple.) Here are some examples:

I prefer to either use existing IP logos like the ones here, common slogans or phrases (like 'Fuck The Police', 'Eat The Rich', or 'Be Gay, Do Crimes'), or work with you to create a unique design, unless I can directly ask an artist if I can use their work for a one-off sticker. For example if you show me a fandom sticker designed by another artist from like Etsy or something and want me to duplicate it, I MUST be able to OK that with them.

I am not taking shirt commissions at this time.

Not only can I not afford to buy the shirts, but I don't have a way to guarantee good-quality prints at this time. My aim here is to churn out something I know I can make quickly and at a good quality, and I cannot do that with shirts right now.

My paypal is rlmckin@gmail.com. You can also just donate if you don't want a sticker! If you want a sticker, DM me or send me an email at lemniscatevinyls@gmail.com so we can get things sorted! If I do not get a DM or Email, I will assume you just want to donate and will NOT make you a sticker!

Thanks in advance, every cent will help!

[haveyouseenthisskeleton]

I’m non-binary.

I’m trans.

I didn’t decide to yell it loud and clear before a long time. You know what this is, right? The never-ending questions turning in your head, not knowing if it’s just me influenced by the people around me, or if I’ve been around the LGBT+ community for so long, it just started to rub off on me.

But no, I’m trans.

It took a lot less time to feel non-binary than it took to feel trans. I didn’t even know that being enby was a spectrum hiding under the great umbrella of divergent gender identities. But now, it makes sense. Men, women, enbies, we’re simply not born in the right body. That prison-body, that sees us grow up, but not the way we intended to.

In short, I’m trans.

I learned a lot of things since I’m trans. I learned that not transitioning doesn’t make you an impostor, which was a relief as it really wasn’t in my plans. I learned that, when you’re doubting, concerned by some irrational fear, you can ask for help online and find help from perfect strangers in a flash, just because they know what you’re going through. I learned there were way more genders than I thought, and that it’s fine to not know where exactly you identify. It’s human to not know. Humans are made of indecisions, right? That’s human.

I learned that being trans is being human. And yet?

Since I’m trans, I learned that my body doesn’t belong to me. No, it belongs to the far-right wing elite who decides if yes or no I have the right to exist. In France, my right to exist is fragile, but there. I wished I wasn’t there to see my American friends lose theirs.

Since I’m trans, I learned that existing is a crime in the eyes of some people. “We don’t care that you’re trans. What we want is for you to stop telling it constantly.” They say. Oh yeah? What about all the people grimacing when they see me in the street? Did I tell them I was trans? What about my family refusing to invite me because, you know, she’s provoking everyone, your daughter, she should see a therapist, your daughter. That’s not normal to act like that. Like what?

Well, I believe it’s not normal to behave the way you do, even more so since transphobia often comes in a cocktail with its two big friends, racism and queerphobia. What’s bothering you is not telling you we are transgender, no. The problem is that we exist at all.

Ah, yes, sorry! Obviously, that’s something you don’t tell out loud! No, no! Around the table, if you dare to mention the word “transphobia”, everyone suddenly feels like they have to defend their honor like some kind of medieval knights! “Me? Transphobic? Oh, that’s bullshit! I don’t have anything against people like you. They do what they want to do, the people like you. But, you know, you need to accept not everyone thinks like your people. Why don’t we agree to disagree?”

Oh yes, that’s rich! I have to agree that you have the right to not see me as a person. At least not a person like you. That you have the right to not recognize me as the same type of human you are, that you have the right to vote for people who want me dead. That you have the right to publish on social media posts that criticize me breathing when you know I can see them. That you have the right to be delighted by trans people losing their rights in the United States. That you have the right to say straight to my face that I’m mentally ill on Facebook. That you have the right to support authors giving millions against trans people just because they hurt their huge ego as yours is right now when I said you are transphobic.

And me? Ah, yes. I have the right to shut the fuck up, that’s right!

Since I’m trans, I learned that what’s bothering them is not that I’m trans. Nope, what’s bothering them is that I exist as a trans person in the public space and stand for myself. That you can’t crush me as easily as all the poor people you had the misfortune to cross roads with.

Since I’m trans, and every time I’m saying I’m trans online, I always receive death threats, insults, and 3 miles-long books to explain to me why I should shut up and stop breathing in the little space they claimed like alpha wolves in heat. Since I’m trans, I can’t read articles talking about inclusion, diversity, trans people, the LGBT+ community because their reviews spaces are full of little fascists that only feel existing by stepping on small minorities that are not many enough to defend themselves against them. And each day, they grew more abundant. It’s scary.

Since I’m trans, my mental health is deteriorating, and it’s not because I’m trans. It’s because I’m constantly exposed to hate online. It’s because it’s ok if I exist, but not too much or it starts bothering people. It’s because I was told that men, because, yes, they’re men in the majority, want me dead and that I should deal with it. It’s because I was told to accept people not agreeing I have the right to exist. It’s because I was told it’s no use to protest for my rights, since the day Big Trump will overpower the government, I won’t have any rights at all. It’s because I was told to separate J.K. Rowling and what she writes because I don’t have a say in what she does with her money, even though she’s using it to kill me. It’s because I was told I should thank Elon Musk for saving children from a transition they would regret later, even though it means condemning a lot of these children to a premature suicide because no one will listen to them.

And yet, I’m still trans, in a world that hates me, and will keep hating me if nothing changes.

I didn’t choose it, it just happened.

It’s not fashionable. It’s not provocation.

It’s who I am.

Being trans is an everyday fight. It’s waking up each morning and learning yet another one of your friends, somewhere around the world, took their own life overnight because they couldn’t bear people telling them to stop existing anymore. It happened this morning, once again.

It’s pretending to not see hatred burning around us.

I live on a patch of land circled by an inferno, and that inferno slowly closes on us. Sometimes, we manage to push it back a little with a garden hose, but then it comes closer on the other side of the house.

How much time do we have before it consumes us all?

Hopefully, we still have some time, and yet…

I don’t know if I’ll still exist tomorrow.