#because she doesn't know modern terminology

[nadiajustbe]

Underrated HMC moments I've never seen anyone talking about part 2

Howl choosing "H. Jenkins" for the shop's sign wich is the one and only moment in the series he actually uses his legal initials, as "H" can stand for "Howl" and "Howell" in the same time

Lettie being so angry about Prince Justin calling her "a sweet lady" that she said that she would prefer ever Howl over him. Wich is. Telling.

The King assuring that he never pushed Justin off and that everyone who knows them both wouldn't assume that.

Sophie being so RAGED with the whole weedkiller and daffodils situation she wasn't saying A SINGLE FULL WORD for about a page in the least. All of the sounds were like "argh!" and "Sophie gave the wordless glump of range"

The seven-league boots having the funniest description of use ever, as every time someone used it then the effects were simply narrated as "Zip!"

Howl raises the skull and quotes Hamlet directly to it, wich becomes a hundred times funnier when you remember that this Skull is canonically and ironically the only "person" in the room who can understand the reference.

Howl saying "Denmark" in the same sentence. And, again, they're in a fairly tale fantasy word. Sophie has absolutely no clue what to hell is Denmark. For Howl this is the basic knowledge of elementary school level.

Poor Percival being almost KILLED for transforming in the middle of a valley because people thought he's a WEREWOLF.

Poor Percival being STROKED with information of him being made of part of two other people right after experiencing heavy trauma, beheading, physical damages, not really well-planed adopting and moving a house.

Percival describing laying on the shelf and looking at the other parts of himself. What a lovely kids book.

Sophie accidentally making cayenne pepper magical. She would make a great seller-witch career because she doesn't need to know the spell in order to make. She takes random powder. She says it will do the duel fair. It makes the duel fare by making an opponent sneezing uncontrollable (wich is also just a way cayenne pepper affects people lmao)

Sophie's first thoughts after she heard that Howl is leaving the black door knob where it is being "Of course! There's miss. Angorian!'. Sophie, dear, he has a family out there.

Michael, apparently, hiding the money under the same brick Sophie will soon describe in CITA as "the brick where we're hiding money from Howl"

Miss Angorian and Howl acting like the spell in a modern Wales is the most normal thing ever. "That's a spell!!" "Oh yeah of course I suspected that"

“Didn’t know I used to fly up the wing for my university, did you, Mrs. Nose?” “If you were trying to fly, you must have forgotten how,” aka Sophie absolutely not understanding modern world sport terminology

Drunk Howell trying to get through the door MULTIPLE times, bumping on it before "discovering" the door

Calcifer "taking" that huge mention they lived (and almost never visited) in without buying it. It was literally said the owner is just Not Here.

Sophie loosing an acces to her own room. Wich must be really sad.

Witch of the Waste leaning on a swing when literally capturing Howl's family

Additionaly: Howl canonically NOT altering his clothes while rushing to save his family. He was running around in a long-sleeved medieval closes on a welsh playground

Sophie and miss Angorian having a whole fight over the guitar pulling it back and forward while it was making horrible sounds

Sophie literally pushing miss. Angorian off the house using the said guitar

Howl immediatly reacting when someone mentioned that the star Michael tried to catch looks sad.

Scarecrow literally running around with parts of Justin's body on its sticky shoulders for eighty percent of the book's finale

Howl saying he could be "the evil fairy at his own christening" which is probably a reference to the "Sleeping Beaty". Also. rises a question: did Howl HAD a christening. There's a huge chance he actually did.

Ben and Justin just. smiling at each other for enough amount of time for Sophie's narrative to say "If she had paid any attention she would see them". Am I interuppting something???

Lettie hating Howl's courting SO MUCH she asked Percival to bite him several times.

Additionally: Ben apologising to Howl for trying to bite him. That's also probably first time they're interacting

Howl ignoring all of it because sOPHIE HATTER

[prince-liest]

i'm pretty sure alastor being aroace was backpedaled by amir 😭 he said it in an interview, but recently on twitter, he mentioned that he misspoke and alastor was canonically ace, but the fandom widely views him as aroace!! of course, the aro implications are very VERY evident, but i don't think it's like. Canon.

The conversation about Alastor being aro/ace during the second live Q&A on YouTube a little while ago is the most recent one I've seen from the cast on the topic, and it was very... how do I put this. Viv did not explicitly utter the words "Alastor is aromantic," but I think that if the subject were literally anything else that people didn't have a tendency to debate into the ground, it would be unquestionable, haha. There is only so much nodding at, "mhm"ing, engaging with, agreeing that it was important to confirm, and explicitly not correcting of people calling Alastor aro/ace that she can do before it's, like, obvious that she meant him to be. As for Amir himself: He outright stated in the same Q&A that he is working on understanding what aro/ace means, so let's please give him the space to learn!

Even if that hadn't happened, though, I think it's a little silly to say he's not aromantic just because it may not have been explicitly stated by the show's creator in the straightforward terms explicitly accepted by a specific subsection of the show's online community, especially when I think the average TV show writer often isn't going to understand the distinction well enough to consistently specify the terminology or even make a distinction at all.

Like, when Rosie made the joke about Alastor being an ace in the hole, did we think she was reassuring Alastor that she knows he and Charlie aren't outright fucking? Or does it make more sense that her comment was meant more generally about the idea of him being in a relationship at all? Would it have made sense for her to make a joke about Charlie being too young for Alastor if she thought he was open to romantic relationships, or do we think she would consider Charlie too young for a romantic relationship with him even if the characters weren't having sex? What is the actual implication of how this scene plays out if we step back from our modern and informed understanding of aro/ace terminology and into the shoes of the average Joe or Sally watching this show who doesn't even know who Viv is?

I think that if we engage with this scene with a genuine attempt at media literacy then it's pretty safe to say that it's on-screen canon!

[beatrice-otter]

What's your expert opinion on the idea of Jesus and John being in a romantic relationship?

Never heard of this one before! But I'm pretty sure it's wishful thinking and projection.

I'm assuming that it's based on the whole Beloved Disciple thing? For those who aren't familiar, In the last several chapters of John, there are several references to a Disciple Whom Jesus Loved. He's cuddling with Jesus during the Last Supper, he's there at the feet of the cross (and Jesus tells him to take care of his mother Mary as if she was the disciples' own mother), he's one of the first witnesses to the Resurrection along with Peter and Mary Magdalene, couple of others. Traditionally believed to have been John, though Lazarus is also a strong contender. (Lazarus is the only person in the Gospel of John who is explicitly named as someone Jesus loves.) And then there's also the theory that "the disciple whom Jesus loved" is a code for a reader-insert, because it applies to all Christians. We are all disciples (students) of Jesus, and he loves all of us.

Anyway, in the Last Supper the Beloved Disciple is "reclining on/at Jesus' breast/bosom/chest" and artists portray this as everything from sitting next to him to John's head in Jesus' lap. And any of these would be legitimate possible interpretations of the text.

But the thing to remember is that modern Western culture is very weird about men touching each other. We basically don't have any platonic physical contact between men, except for a quick hug with a backslap for Manliness. So there's a lot of things that we look at and go "aha! this must be Queerness!" and it's things that the culture in question would have thought was normal for men to do. Even if the guy really was lying with his head in Jesus' lap, it wouldn't necessarily be sexual ... and the Gospel author could just have meant they were sitting close together with the disciple in a favored seat. (In Luke 16, Jesus describes someone in heaven as being "in the bosom of Abraham" using a very similar phrase; I don't think he or the Gospel's author meant that being in heaven is having sexy cuddles with Abraham. Hilarious though that would be.) (You know what else is funny? Traditional Christian art about "the bosom of Abraham."

If you're looking for queer people in the New Testament, your best bet is the Roman centurion and his slave/servant. In Greco-Roman culture, being a male who was sexually penetrated was emasculating and made you lose massive status. So men who wanted male lovers would seldom have a lover of equal social status. Upper class men would take lovers from among their servants/slaves, and everyone would assume that the servant was the one being penetrated, and since the servant had less status to lose, that was fine. (The power dynamics involved are really awful.) Anyway, the centurion comes to ask Jesus to heal his slave--and makes kind of an elaborate production of it, so the slave must be really important to him. And he uses terminology that was sometimes applied to any slave ... but could also be used in reference to a rich man's low-class lover. It's circumstantial, but enough to make one wonder. (Jesus, by the way, heals the servant immediately; if there is queer subtext there, Jesus doesn't care.)

Because I can't not, here's some Bosom of Abraham art. We'll start with the ordinary:

and move on to the ridiculous:

(why do all the people look like babies in this one?)

[apocaliz]

Some thoughts about Taash and using modern language to describe queerness

I realise I'm potentially kicking a hornets nest here, because the discourse around this has become incredibly toxic, but I've also seen some decent, respectful discussion on the topic, and I hope I'm adding to that, and not the cesspool.

People have had different reactions to Taash's gender and journey of discovery being described in modern terms, with words like non-binary and dysphoria. I have seen people make a case for those terms having a place in the language, but I want to go in a slightly different direction.

I have seen people describe it as "lazy writing", and I respectfully disagree. While it did surprise me when the term non-binary showed up in-game for the first time, I really don't think this was lazy. I think this was a deliberate choice, in order to make the queerness of the character undeniable. We have seen plenty of examples of queerness in media being couched in terms that gave people an "out", if they wanted to deny queerness existing. You know this song and dance: "Well, he can't be bi unless someone actually says he's bi." "She's not trans, it doesn't say so anywhere in the game/movie/show.". And by using explicit, modern-day terms, this becomes a lot less feasible. The writers took a risk by writing it this way, judging by the vitriolic backlash from the chuds, and I respect that.

I do sympathise to some extent with those who had wished for some kind of "lore-friendly" terminology for a vaguely medieval fantasy setting, but I really don't agree with people calling this "lazy". You don't have to like it, obviously, but I think it is a net good.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 20 Thoughts: Imagine Joke Here

Another act over and another long few weeks to wait for more. Although I don't really have a lot to say on this one. It's very explicit and I didn't really love it. Also I'm writing this 10 mins before I get into bed so I don't really want to spend a lot of time on it.

Spoilers for episode 20 below the cut.

Everyone is finally being open about the whole obviously fucked up stuff going on. So that's nice to see. Alice being scared for her friends obviously means she's evil. Celia flat out stating the Magnus Institute is probably evil and up to world ending things so needs to be destroyed, and then swiftly brushing off any follow ups, was very fun too. It does all seem a little bit too obvious to me though and does clash somewhat with Lena's idea that the OIAR is about balance. So hopefully it's not a case of "the protags all work for a big evil thing".

I don't have much of anything to say about the incident though. I don't think it gave us much new to go on and I didn't really enjoy it. Most of that is because I think Ink5oul came off as pretty weird and stilted. However, unlike a lot of what I've been seeing said about the performance I don't think it was bad acting. I think it was pretty good acting but without the necessary context to sell that well. I'm fairly sure the reason why they come off that was is because Ink5oul is fronting to try and intimidate Gwen. There is a fairly noticeable change is how they annunciate and stress words as the "statement" goes on. They've very aggressive to start with and it starts to drop as they get more sincere, and then it comes back at the end. It's just that when you don't have that sincere baseline to reference when they're doing a fairly bad attempt at sounding harder than they are, it sort of just comes across as bad acting. Because, well, it is. It's just bad acting from the character not bad acting from the actor. Doesn't mean I thought it was all that great to listen but y'know.

As for that cliff hanger. I'm pretty sure nothing is going to come of it. I think it'll be another fun trauma for Gwen but not anything with lasting damage. The only other thing to really touch on is why Ink5oul spilled their guts like that. It could be a Fr3-d1 thing, or a .JMJ thing, or a combo thing. Or something else entirely. It's not like we've not seen compelled answers before. Hell, it was literally in the trailer for the show. It does seem sort of out of nowhere though and the least organic delivery thus far. So something's going on.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: 2534 seems about right. IDK, not much to say on that really.

CAT# Theory: 1 is kind of interesting but I don't know that I want to harp on that any more. I'm convinced it's not Person/Place/Object and think I've done a good job of explaining that. At least not if you take the information at face value and don't assume big portions are wrong. Things like this only further convince me but I'm not sure there is much merit is getting into those things.

R# Theory: AB isn't any crazy for this one really. Seems about on the level of the other AB.

Header talk: Transformation (tattoo) -/- Social Media (influencer). These things are such bullshit. Although there is now no denying that this is either a very modern categorisation system or one that updates. Social media has none of the wiggle room "influencer" had a few episodes back.

[building-made-of-paper]

I hate the phrase "men and minors DNI." It's under most lesbian posts I see and it is utterly useless. I get it. You don't want guys with a dykebreaking fetish coming into your inbox telling you they can fix you. Neither do I. But think about who you're actually telling to fuck off. You're telling lesbians who are bigender and are also men that you don't want them around. You're telling he/him butches that they have gone too far and they can't be lesbians anymore. The trans lesbian who doesn't think they pass reading your post sees that and they don't know if they are allowed to interact. On top of that, the people for whom that is directed will ignore that, because they think they're too good for it. DNIs don't do shit, but that's a topic for another post.

Many lesbians have been in straight relationships with men before figuring themselves out or before coming out or for whatever reason (and that is valid, fuck gold star lesbianism). A lot of those lesbians look back on those relationships with regret, which is understandable. Those relationships that happened before you figured things out can have long lasting impacts and often make it much harder to figure out who you are/accept yourself. This can often lead to a general distaste for men that, while it is clear where it stems from, can quickly turn into radfem ideologies (just to be clear, Those Are Bad. Radfems and TERFs can fuck right off, you are not welcome here). Men are not inherently bad, and women are not inherently good. Sure, there are sociological reasons that some men may feel more comfortable barging into spaces they don't belong in, but that doesn't mean that men as a whole are bad. Not to verge on saying #NotAllMen, but there truly are more good people out there than bad ones.

A lot of the background issues here stem back to the fact that society views masculinity and strength as synonymous to power, ability, and many other "good" ideals. Reinforcement of the patriarchy and the idea that the man of the house should be the breadwinner leads to a lot of men holding the belief that the world is in some way built for them. And in much of western culture, it somewhat is. This makes spaces where these specific people aren't wanted hard to maintain because that is exactly the community who doesn't believe that those spaces exist. Again, DNIs don't work for that exact reason. A reminder to an individual person that they aren't wanted does nothing to fix the societal problem that caused that person to think they are welcome. Additionally, trying to tackle those societal problems with a statement reacting against a large swath of the population does nothing to help fix the related societal problem of masculinity being scary and dangerous.

The other side of this western idealization of masculinity is that femininity is seen as a bad thing. To be feminine is to be weak. To be feminine is to turn away from the idea of the patriarchy and show disdain for it. That's a lot of the reason that trans women are so hated, but again, that is another rant for another time. This leads to the other version of this phrase, which I find worse, "cis men DNI." That means that transmascs and trans men are welcomed, even if these are individuals who have no connection to lesbianism, or are perhaps trying to get past previous history with that label. Trans men are put in an awkward situation where they are either feared for being masculine or they are infantalized and thought of as still feminine. It may seem like saying that specifically cis men aren't welcome helps welcome transmasc lesbians and he/she bigender butches, and while it can help in that direction, it is simultaneously actively invalidating other transmascs/trans men.

A lot of the issues with the phrase "cis men DNI" can be traced to how language tackles the gender binary and the modern attempt to overthrow said binary. As is often the case, language and terminology are behind on the times in terms of being able to refer to a specific group of people, but even looking for better terms is just trying to answer the question "who do I want to exclude from my life" which is a road that quickly leads to radical feminism and radical hatred of men.

The big issue with the radical hatred of men is that it leads to the idea that men cannot do good. It leads to the thought that everything men do comes from an evil inherent in their being male. If men are biologically inclined to do evil, that heavily reinforces the idea that they are dangerous, which does nothing to help the idea of women being seen as weak. Even trying to teach reasonable things like self defense becomes a reinforcement of the idea that women have to protect themselves from the inherent danger of men. From here it is easy to see where transphobia comes in. If men are evil and do everything for the purpose of harming women, the only possible reason a man would want to be a woman is to leverage that in some way. There is this idea that being a man makes everything easier (which is in some cases true but certainly not to any level that this ideology promotes), so why make life harder for yourself if not to do the evil that is supposedly programmed into your very being? Even if this idea isn't taken to the point of thinking there is an evil inherent in being male, it continues to reinforce the gender binary by promoting this difference between masculinity and femininity. These become the strong and the weak. The powerful and the hopeless. Even for those who believe in women's ability to be strong and fight back, this still falls into same trap of seeing men as a danger and a threat and nothing else. All of this leads to an inability to see men as human, and that goes south Fast. I've seen radfems who refuse to believe that men experience anything negative because they think that men have everything perfect. That isn't possible. There is no way for someone's life to truly be perfect like that. Hating men makes them become solely a bad thing in people's minds, and that is very dangerous.

To attempt to wrap all of this up, there is no world in which any variation of "men DNI" will include all the people you want it to, and there is no world in which any of those phrases will keep out the people you want to keep out. Radical hatred of men may sound fun, and there may be many men out there who are obnoxious, but the hatred of men does not lead anyone to a good place. It only leads to negativity and perpetuation of the vicious cycle of mutual hatred, something that will never solve any of the fundamental problems that influence the very issues being identified.

[rippleclan]

[Image ID: A pixel pride flag with the title "Clan Culture: Gender & Sexuality]

So... gay cats! I'll admit, RippleClan's Promise doesn't really focus on queer themes all that much, but there are gonna be some gay cats, and they're gonna be in realistic, well-written relationships, and I'm going to write them through the lens of a fictional culture! Yeah! I don't want the cats to see gender and sexuality just like modern humans do, so I want to give them a few quirks that you may have already seen in Moon 11.

Gender: Scent-Based Assumptions

Now I'll be honest, a lot of cats in the Clans are cis. It's just statistics, is all. However, cats don't have all the physical gender identifiers us humans do. Sure, ginger cats are more likely to be toms, and tortoiseshells are almost always born female, but there are plenty of exceptions! As such, Clan cats can't just assume they know what someone is from far away.

When meeting a new cat for the first time, when they are some distance away, a Clan cat will use they/them pronouns to define the newcomer. However, once the cat comes closer, the Clan cat then switches to he/him or she/her based on the cat's smell. This is because toms and mollies have distinct differences in their scent. The intensity of someone's hormonal scent varies throughout any given moon, but it is fairly consistent among fertile cats like those in the Clans. It's hard to translate tom-scent and molly-scent into human terminology, since a cat's sense of smell is far superior. However, based on research into actual cats, I have a few analogies.

Tom-scent is the stronger of the two and possesses a slight sour tint. Molly-scent, meanwhile, could best be described as both sweet and salty. Spayed/neutered cats possess either an extremely weak version of their birth-scent or none at all. In those situations, or when a cat's scent is confusing, Clan cats will check with the newcomer.

If your scent does not match up with your gender/pronouns, then you'll need to introduce yourself. This is common in Clan culture, so no one feels weird about it. It's weirder for someone whose scent matches their gender to specify pronouns, as in a Clan cat's eyes, its just restating something they already know.

Gender: Scent Affirmation

Since scent is the biggest identifier of toms and mollies, trans cats in the Clans focus less on changing stuff about their bodies and more on shifting their scents. Clerics have some treatments for this! Lemonweed is a common treatment to reduce tom-scent or molly-scent if the trans warrior eats some of it. When it comes to producing a certain scent, different cats need different herbs. Trans toms can use pine pollen, stinging nettle root, or sasparilla root. Trans mollies can add fennel to their diets instead.

If a cat is nonbinary or otherwise doesn't want their tom-scent/molly-scent, they'll focus on lemonweed. In theory, if humans kidnapped them and didn't kill them outright, they might be able to return with all that scent stripped away, but that's not really feasible.

Sexuality: We Care About One Thing and One Thing Only

Clan cats don't really care about sexual nuances. You can really date anyone (okay not really but not based on gender). They mostly look at individual relationships and ask a single questions: can they make kits?

I know, that's an icky question to us, but that's because we don't live in a society where our survival is contingent on a small population reproducing. All relationships are classified as either able or unable to have kits. Most straight relationships are in the former category. However, relationships between, say, a trans tom and cis tom might still fall into that category too (but I'm not writing that for... multiple reasons). These relationships have a cultural pressure to have at least one litter of kits that survive to adulthood. It can be hard to be in a relationship where kits are possible, but you just don't want any.

Meanwhile, if the relationship is physically unable to produce kits, there is some cultural disappointment that can linger over a relationship. However, this is resolved if the couple manage to adopt some kits (which considering how often Clangen cats just find random kits, isn't a long shot), as adoption is seen as the same as birthing kits right into the nursery.

(Up next, artisan lore!)

[the-monkey-ruler]

I wanted to ask about the gender of demons (Yaoguai). How, a while ago I found out about a version that said that the green snake (from the legend of the white snake) was a male but changed to be a female to be the sister of the white snake. so I wanted to ask how gender works for the Yaoguai (I also found out that Longnu changed gender to that of a boy). Do they care? Or is it more free for them to change or choose a gender? because I understand that some I also wanted to ask if the Yaoguai who cultivate can choose whether to be a man or a woman when taking human form? Does that mean that when they are animals still farming, they still do not have a defined gender? Could we say that they are hermaphrodites or not? Is there something like hermaphrodites in Chinese culture? or some character like that?

Great question! The funny thing about Yaoguai is that on some level they really aren't tied down to the idea of gender or sex considering that their humanoid body is a production of their cultivation. In most cases from I have seen it does follow that animals usually transform into their given sex like Bull = Man (where Cow would be Lady) being an obvious example but there are cases where that is not always the case. I do not think that Yaoguai were intersex when they were in their animal form (any animal can be a Yaoguai it doesn't depend on their sex), but they are able to change than they have their cultivation (I can't tell you what animals think about gender, I don't think animals think about that stuff honestly). Also, I'm not sure if there are any intersex mythos figures but I have been told Lan Caihe one of the 8 Immortals is someone who is "genderless" and could be regarded as such?

A prime example that I didn't even know people were talking about is in Xiyouji when the Jade Rabbit was transformed into a woman. I was under the impression that most Jade Rabbit content was that they were a girl as that was how I was instructed to the character but it was only a few years ago that I saw that people referenced to the Jade Hare as a boy. In this case it wasn't just that the Jade Rabbit transformed into a girl but that the cultivated humanoid body that they created on earth was always a girl regardless their animal body.

But there have been other cases of Chinese mythos having character change their physical forms. Such as Guanyin's original myth being from an Indian Prince and slowly transforming into a more feminine form. And Longnu went from a young girl into a young man instead when they were cultivating through Buddhist scriptures.

But yes White Snake is considered in modern media a kind of trans-experience as it does have similar struggles of having to "pass" in a society in order to live peacefully. White Snake not only does this physically but in the story as well as she tries to come off as completely human for the sake of her husband and herself so they can continue their marriage. It is a beautiful allegorical representation that I think can be interpreted as such because of how dangerous or scary it is to be vulnerable in a society that is built on principles that reject who you are. There is a great summary of these kinds of portrayals done by AntidotefortheAwkward here!

But technically speaking considering that a lot of terminology I see when it comes to cultivation (at least in literature) do show how the body is simply an illusion and how to become enlightened (or cultivated at least) is about how to overcome the body and focus on one's mind. In those terms, for Yaoguai the humanoid body they create for themselves is simply just another illusion that they have created in order to reach a more human-like experience. Their humanoid body isn't what they were born with but something that they have crafted through thousands of years of study and training. So it would be well within their reach for them to choose any and every aspect of their body as long as they continue to cultivate. The longer they train, the more control they have over how they are perceived. That is why you could see in modern media, that the more powerful a Yaoguai is, the more they look like a human, while weaker Yaoguai look more like their animal forms. And that is because the more you cultivate the more in control of the illusion of the body you have.

I can’t say for certain how common it is for Yaoguai to change their gender as we rarely even get to see their original animal forms but I will say that the few examples we do have do show that Yaoguai are able to change their humanoid bodies to what they want the world to perceive by how powerful they are to do so. All their bodies are constructions of their own cultivation and as such they are open to their personal preferences. We do see that most Yaoguai do enjoy the body type of being larger and more menacing for the sake of presenting their power, but there is also cases of Yaoguai coming off as more petite and feminine in order to better trick humans to their will. While not all cases Yaoguai create human forms for malicious purposes (such as White Snake and Green Snake) we do see that in most if not all examples, Yaoguai do have control of their human bodies to a great extent. I hope that kinda explains some things!

[amphibious-thing]

Do you have any advice for historical fiction authors who want to try harder to use historical queer language without confusing the average reader? It's something that has been a challenge for me and I've been finding your posts helpful, but I was wondering if you had specific tips on how an author could write better queer histfic for the modern reader.

It can be difficult because it is a balance. You probably don't want to just dump a whole heap of molly slang on your reader all at once. But you also don't want your characters to feel disconnected from the real history of the period.

In regards to molly slang you do have to remember that it was somewhat unique to the subculture. Only people involved in the subculture would be familiar with a lot of the slang. So if you wanted to include a character that uses molly slang you could aways have a character who is not part of the subculture, or new to it, who would serve as and stand in for the audience. This way the explanation of slang words can be weaved into the story in a more organic way.

Of course 18th century queer language is much more than just molly slang. It's good to know what the words mean but also what kind of people would be using them and in what context. For example legal writings will talk about sodomy and sodomites while a casual conversation might be more likely to talk about mollies.

While you don't want to overwhelm the reader you also don't want to underestimate them. If you pepper in historical terminology most readers will be able to pick up on the meaning form context. I think the Montague Sibling series actually does a pretty good job of this and it's a YA historical fantasy adventure novel. If Mackenzi Lee can trust her teenage target demo to pick up what a molly is from context then you can certainly trust an adult audience to.

It's also important to remember that it doesn't have to be perfect. Historical fiction is first and foremost fiction. The most important thing in my opinion is to create the feeling of a full fleshed out world. And for queer historical fiction that should be a world that includes queer people and thus have at least some queer language. You don't have to fill a novel with molly slang to do this, just give a bit here and there where it makes sense in context. The best advice I can give is to do the research and understand the history. If you understand it you will be better equipped to figure out when it makes sense to use historical language and when it makes sense not to. If you understand the rules you will better understand when to break them.

I think this is one of the reasons I like the Montague Sibling series so much. Mackenzi Lee has studied history and while her books are historical fantasy that strong base of historical knowledge really helps bring the world of the books to life. Also I just like that she actually used the word mollies in her YA book!

[Spoilers for the Montague Sibling series ahead]

Though it's not perfectly historically accurate the following scene form The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue feels very grounded in the period. The conversation is between the protagonist Monty and his little sister Felicity. Felicity largely represents the perspective of the popular rhetoric of the day.

"Honestly, Monty, I've never quite understood who's really got a hold on you." "Do you want to know if I'm a bugger?" She winces at the crass word, but then says, "It seems a fair question, considering I've seen your hands all over Richard Peele and Theodosia Fitzroy." "Oh, dear Theodosia, my girl." I collapse backward into the sofa cushions. "I remain inconsolable over losing her." I do not want to talk about this. Especially with my little sister. I came down here for the sole purpose of getting drunk enough to sleep and avoid venturing anywhere near this subject, but Felicity goes on staring at me like she's waiting for an answer. I take an uncivilized swipe at my mouth with my sleeve, which would have earned me a cuff from Father had we been at home. "Why does it matter who I run around with?" "Well, one is illegal. And a sin. And the other is also a sin, if you aren't married to her." "Are you going to give me the fornication without the intention of procreation is of the devil and a crime lecture? I believe could recite it from memory by now." "Monty—" "Perhaps I am trying to procreate with all these lads and I'm just very misinformed about the whole process. If only Eton hadn't thrown me out." "You're avoiding the question." "What was the question?" "Are you—" "Oh yes, am I a sodomite. Well, I've been with lads, so ... yes." She purses her lips, and I wish I hadn't been so forthright. "If you'd stop, Father might not be so rough on you, you know." "Oh my, thank you for that earth-shattering wisdom. Can't believe I didn't think of that myself." "I'm simply suggesting—" "Don't bother." "—he might ease up." "Well, I haven't much choice." "Really?" She crosses her arms. "You haven't a choice in who you bed?" "No, I mean I haven't much choice in who it is I want to bed." "Of course you do. Sodomy's a vice—same as drinking or gambling." "Not really. I mean, yes, I enjoy it. And I have certainly abstained form abstinence. But I'm also rather attracted to all the men I kiss. And the ladies as well." She laughs, like I've made a joke. I don't. "Sodomy has nothing to do with attraction. It's an act. A sin." "Not for me." "But humans are made to be attracted to the opposite sex. Not the same one. That's now nature operates." "Does that make me unnatural?" When she doesn't reply, I say, "Have you ever fancied anyone?" "No. But I believe I understand the basic principles of it." "I don't think you really can until it's happened to you."

The conversation then goes into Monty feelings for Percy which leads to this exchange:

"What are your expectations, exactly? If Percy did feel the same way about you, what would happen? You can't be together. Not like that—you could be killed for it if you were found out. They've been sentencing mollies by the score since the Clap Raid." "Doesn't matter, does it? Percy's good and natural and probably only fancies women and I am ... not."

While its perhaps a bit of an exaggeration to say that they've "been sentencing mollies by the score since the Clap Raid". It works the word mollies, a word most readers probably aren't familiar with, into the story in such a way that the context makes the meaning pretty clear. While Clap Raid might go over some readers heads they will still get the gist of the meaning behind the conversation and perhaps even inspired some readers to look it up and learn some real history.

This scene also takes advantage of words a modern reader would know like sin, vice and natural. They're talking about queerness in a more-or-less historically accurate way without using too many unfamiliar terms.

The Gentleman's Guide to Getting Lucy then gives us this fantastic scene that uses an 18th century euphemism:

He licks his lips, then nods. I reach for the buttons on his trousers, but he cries, "Wait! And I freeze, panicked I've done something else to muck this up, but then he says, "Just ... slowly, yes? Maybe not ... a full game of backgammon just yet." And then every inch of him goes red. "Percy Newton." I sit up over top of him and cross my arms. When he looks back at me with his eyes wide and innocent, I parrot, "A full game of backgammon? What erotic leaflet did you pick up that filthy vocabulary from?" "None!" he protests, but his mouth twitches. "Some." "Some?" Impossibly, he goes redder. "Some erotic leaflets." "May I have their titles? For purely academic purposes, I assure you."

Again the context allows for the readers to gather what is being talked about even if they've never heard the euphemism before.

And in The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy they even go to a molly house!

It is our only topic of conversation as the three of us walk to the pub in Shadwell called the Minced Nancy, which from the name alone brands itself a place where mollies like my brother and his beau can be together openly.

Tho I have to point out that while minced is 18th century language the earliest use of Nancy in this sense isn't until the 19th century.

[urlocalqueer]

okay unpopular opinion but i don't like how in the new company productions they are framing it like bobby is in some alcohol induced hallucination. i just think it's stupid.

ALSO many of the lyric and story changes are terrible. so much of the new version is soooo bad and it sucks that it's so bad because bobby being a woman could add so many layers but the new version said "what if we did this amazing idea and then buried it with 1000 terrible ideas." and no one stopped them

(i was writing this and it got long so my complaints (me being a whiny bitch) + a few compliments are below the cut)

all were written while doing a company rewatch.

"cleanest of crimes" to "simplest of crimes" makes no sense. like what's the point to that.

"first you make a person hazy" to "you make a person feel all hazy" ENOUGH. and what i think is most fucking heinous is the famous line from you could drive a person crazy. changing "like a lump" to "on her butt" and "off your rump" to "out of a rut" is insane. like what do we accomplish there. who the fuck changed this and where can i find them. and then the ENTIRE SECOND TO LAST VERSE IN YOU COULD DRIVE A PERSON CRAZY. there was no need to change this shit. like kill me now

like how can you change the old lyrics but still use terminology like "square" to describe people. like if your gonna update shit then do everything. do pick and choose because it just makes me angrier.

i also dislike the change in joanne's character. like yeah, she's supposed to be in a switched role so she's a female friend to bobby who is envious of bobby, but joanne is and has always been a unique character in company. she was envious of bobby when bobby was a male character, so it doesn't make sense why her and larry's characters have been so switched. it's almost like they were writing the new changes and they realized that joanne was so unique that it was extremely difficult to change her character. in my opinion, joanne and larry were two character's whose personalities shouldn't have been changed. in have i got a girl for you, i think larry still should've been in that song, not joanne. it makes far more sense. ALSO in someone is waiting, i think joanne still should have been a name said. i know that was never going to happen, but bobby idolizes and loves joanne in a way. idk. larry's name being in place of joanne's doesn't make sense to me.

i also don't like how they set the new versions in modern times. i know it makes most sense with what they are trying to do but like "look i'll message you tomorrow or i'll call to explain" replacing "look i'll call you in the morning or my service will explain" is just. ew.

even simple shit like "pinnacle of life" changed to "pinnacle of joy" is like. what was the point of that. "tragedy of life" to "prophecy of joy" makes me so mad. however, i should point out how amazing matt doyle is in this. the crazed rant after this song is really great and i do think it's fucking hilarious how the ONLY line they didn't change was "having this enormous wedding after we've been living together all these years! it's embarrassing paul! people will think i'm pregnant!" and "IM THE NEXT BRIDE !!!!" i KNOW someone fought to keep those lines in.

"but why watch me die like Eliza on the ice?" being changed to "but why watch me die when i'm only being nice" is actually shattering.

KATRINA LENK'S MARRY ME A LITTLE !!!! this is a highlight of the production imo.

god back to the joanne thing. in the og lyrics it's "he's just crazy about me" and now it's "she's feel exactly the way i do. about everything" like can we get real. can we get sooooo real. joanne as a character was so unique, she wasn't like the rest of the married friends. come on guys.

imo, side by side and what would we do without you are some more highlights but the lyrics changes continue to fuck me up because they are wholly inconsistent. they say analyst here instead of shrink like they do in not getting married. so it's just sooooo confusing. MAKE UP YOUR MIND. i also hate how they get rid of an entire verse?? hello? it feels like they did it to try and make it feel more trippy because of how the production is set up (bobby's in some weird alcohol induced vision?), but it just is so eh.

also i hate every lyric change in poor baby. i just do.

sigh. rip the peter homosexual experience line. you brought so much subtext to the musical and now you're gone :(

can i say something without a red dot appearing on my forehead. i think barbara walsh's joanne is far better than patti lupone's. this performance is so different from when she did it with NPH, and idk what it is but i far prefer barbara walsh.

"clutching a copy of TIME" kill me. who changed that line. what was wrong with "clutching a copy of LIFE"

what hurts the the most is that this musical almost 100% dampens the effect of ladies who lunch. joanne in this musical isn't just a lady who watches. in my opinion patti lupone plays up joanne a bit too much. i can't really explain how but it's the vibe i'm getting. like i know she's playing her more desperate and alcoholic like, but in the tone of the rest of the musical it just doesn't fit. this entire musical has spent time making everything comedy comedy comedy and here comes joanne with a very emotional number but she also has to make it funny but it's not funny. this production does not work.

god the final conversation between joanne and bobby in this one is just so fucking awkward. let me at the goddamn script editor. haha sorry "i think you and larry should make it" ENOUGH. STOP THIS. IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. ENOUGH ENOUGH ENOUGH. this completely changes joannes character and her relationship with larry and bobby. i hate this fucking production im sorry. the problem is with this final part is the tone of the entire musical shifts in the drop of a hat and it doesn't shift in the way cabaret does, this shifts because it's been poorly edited.

these characters aren't being sold to me. the story isn't being sold to me. they knew they needed to make changes and they made all the wrong ones. this could've been an incredible production about the misogynistic marital pressures of being a woman in 70s manhatten but nooo they went down the route of crazy alcohol induced hallucination. they fucked joanne's character, changed lyrics the didn't need to and leaned to far into the comedy. katrina lenk truly is incredible here! but the actual script is shit. i feel like they didn't realize how this musical would need to be changed now that bobby was a woman. the pressures of marriage are different for women than they are men and it's like they didn't take that into account at all. the things things they changed were the wrong things. let me at the goddamn director.

and what's even worse is that this is an amazing cast. katrina lenk (minus the buildup to the final belt) is great in this. everyone is pretty strong. so it sucks that the script is pure shit.

[prince-liest]

Alastor: so... trans, like... transistor?

I refuse to believe that the man who doesn't know what his BFF means when she calls him ace directly to his face in the context of a very ace joke fundamentally knows anything about trans terminology, but also, he's been living in hell for like 100-minus-seven years so I also firmly believe he is so fucking far beyond giving a shit or being phased by anything that's outside of what would have been the social norm when he was alive. He's just like, oh, cool, not sure how this is different from what you had going on before, but whatever. Gonna stick my hand into your guts now.

I'm pretty invested in, like, the idea of Alastor discovering this shit in a way that aligns more with his more old school perspective rather than the ABCs talk, because - like, I can imagine him really taking it all at face-value and being able to respect it, easily! Again, he's been in hell for nearly 100 years and he doesn't exactly blink twice at Angel's anything (aside from the direct come-on)! It's just funny to me that none of that has anything to do with him actually knowing the modern vernacular or the polite way to talk about it.

[avoidslug]

MY THOUGHTS ON THE NONBINARY REP IN VEILGUARD

game review: 7.5/10, considerably better than inquisition (but i hated that game so ymmv), roughly the equivalent experience of reading a fun adventure novel that entertains you but hasn't like, redefined the genre or anything. recommended for people who like that kind of thing (which i do).

the nonbinary rep is indeed cringe which is unfortunate. there is like, a seed of something not shit in there, but it is buried under large piles of shit that are difficult to get past.

minor spoilers >

i hate coming out stories, so i was predisposed to dislike this, i'll admit it. other people are allowed to like them but i am a grown ass man and i don't need another story where a character is paraded around like a prize hog to tell each person what specific labels they have decided on for themselves are so everyone around them can have a Learning Moment (tm). one of the worst examples of this in recent memory were the legend of korra comics. like, she's the fucking AVATAR and you've got her on a world tour to explain to people she's bisexual?? be so fr rn.

taash was heavily teenager coded, so i can buy that they don't know who they are yet, but you cannot tell me that the dragon age universe, especially a fruity isabela led faction, doesn't have queer people that taash wouldn't have already interacted with. and the constant use of the term nonbinary is just so jarring. every time taash came up to the next person and explained that they were non binary using that specific term i wanted to peel off my skin. 2/3 of their character was "i'm nonbinary." i dreaded every personal quest.

i think there is this fear that if people make gay stuff subtext that it lessens it somehow. subtext isn't bad. the only thing that made subtext bad was that gay stuff used to only be able to exist in subtext. it doesn't any more, but that doesn't mean we can't employ subtext when the situation calls for it. you don't have to explicitly explain your nb character using modern terminology. and it's not like they were incapable of doing this. krem never used the word "transgender," but we all know he's transgender.

taash doesn't feel like they belong anywhere. they're not rivani but they're not qunari, they're not a woman, but they're not a man either, they love their mom, but question if they even want to live up to her expectations. there is a lot there to work with there, it's good!

but it almost felt like every other aspect of their character got put on hold so we could have our learning moment. maybe i'm too new english for this but my relationship with my gender (or lack of gender) isn't anyone else's business. it's such a small part of me. what i want is for taash to figure out that they're not a woman while tackling the bigger, more important parts of their character--their relationship with their mother and by extension, the qun. even in the game, their mother didn't give a shit that they were nb, she was like "oh yeah they got that in the qun too, remember the fucking qun taash?"

the way the story would alllllmost start to focus on the "torn between worlds" aspect, but then immediately have taash be only focused on how their mom was going to react to the nonbinary news. it almost felt like taash's anxiety and defensiveness related to gender was more a writer's pov, rather than an actual character pov, because no one in-game ever gave taash anything but support, even when they were being extremely standoffish. it gave very "rebelling teenager" energy, but there was nothing to rebel against. there would have been something to rebel against if they were focused on the qun/rivain conflict, OR if taash's mother was like, really obsessed with gender roles for some reason, but it's not and she isn't.

and the post-personal-quest cutscene where rook, taash, bellara, and isabela go to a bar.....................................god help me. i'm choosing to pretend it didn't happen.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Ok, having sat with it and thought about it, I want to talk about Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story for a sec.

There are things the show does astoundingly well. Everything about young Lady Danbury and young Charlotte, for one. The handling of women's relationships, sex, women's pleasure and desire, and sex after a marriage has ended were all done extraordinarily well. I particularly liked the interactions between Regency Lady Danbury and Regency Lady Bridgerton where they really talked openly about sharing their stories and talked as openly as possible about wanting sex and experiencing desire. All of this was done well and spoke to the whole of women's experience, it didn't suddenly kneecap sex and sexuality just because you're not 18 with a mint condition uterus anymore.

I think there were also things the show did really poorly. For one, I think not explaining where Reynolds disappeared to between the past and present is generously a massive plot hole and at worst a stealth version of the bury your gays trope. We objectively spent too much time with Reynolds and Brimsely and their relationship to not have some explanation of what happened there.

I also think that the handling of George's "madness" (and I use the term intentionally here, not with its sanist modern connotations but because that would have been the historical term and we don't have a more specific term to apply to it. I believe some scholars also use mad and madness in a reclaimed sense, so I also choose to give the show the benefit of that doubt and use both the historical and reclaimed sense. Terminology can get tricky, so I wanted to explain myself here.) Doubled down on ableist assumptions and tropes in subtle but nonetheless present ways. I won't get too deep into analysis here because I'm typing on my phone and that's a pain, but examples include the following:

- George's mother tends to infantilize him, insist that he is dangerous, and facilitates both the actual torture of her son and the removal of his bodily autonomy where his mental health and madness is concerned. Then the show frames it as a concerned parent looking after her child--who is a grown ass man at this point--and does not really go out of its way to say that she or the social assumptions and expectations are in the wrong for their treatment of George. The doctor gets blamed for being a torturer by Charlotre, which he absolutely is, but there lacks an indictment of the systems and social mores that prompt their treatment of George. It's not enough to point a finger at an individual and say "we removed the bad man, it's all better now." There are norms and systems involved in the harm that were not addressed, and we cannot allow parental mistreatment of disabled kids to go without condemnation.

- the show goes out of its way to tell us over and over and over that George is somehow dangerous, that he might hurt himself or others. His knives are dull. His windows are sealed shut. There are locks everywhere. You know what the show doesn't do? It doesn't support the gazillion number of times that someone says the George might hurt someone with evidence. Statistically speaking, disabled people are far more likely to experience violence than to perpetrate it, and while the show muddies this a bit with Charlotte's actions and attitudes toward George, there is a tacit reiteration of the myth that mad people are dangerous. It is the year of our lord 2023. We cannot keep spreading this myth.

- So this might be subjective, but I think the fact that every time George frames how.own experience of madness as lesser, a deficit, or a burden really highlights internalized ableism and the more general ableist and medical model framing of disability as a deficit that is located in an individual body and must be "fixed." I don't love that messaging, and as a chronically ill woman, I do not love it when characters in my media bemoan how much of a burden they are to everyone around them. That's ableist, pure and simple, and again, we cannot keep reiterating and reaffirming that this kind of framing is acceptable. It's not.

- There was also a bit of a narrative inclination to lean on the "the live of the right person can fix/mitigate a mental illness" which like...don't imply that meds and humane treatments aren't important. They are. Drink your water, take your meds.

I think that overall, Queen Charlotte did some amazing work with women's empowerment and Charlotte herself did some work to disrupt some ableist assumptions (I admit, I appreciated her line "let him be mad, if madness is what he needs." Thank you for meeting him where he was and for yeeting Dr. Evil's ass to the curb. Also, they didn't magically cure Goerge! Or kill him! Low bar, and probably only because of show continuity, but credit where credit is due with not leaning into the kill or cure trope.). That said, there were some insidious things that reiterated and reaffirmed ableist tropes and assumptions, and I would wish for those to be handled better on future.

[derwent]

talking about transfem artyom again because I was thinking about her relationship with bourbon. i think it's probably not controversial to say that bourbon realistically would not be chill or at least knowledgeable about trans people and in my timeline artyoms realisation of transness happens properly about halfway through the first game (after bourbon died)

so i think thinking about bourbon would be a sore topic for artyom. yknow like someone who was a (sketchy) friend and short lived mentor who undoubtedly wouldn't have accepted artyom, and the sort of simultaneous guilt and discomfort from knowing someone only treated you well because they saw you as one of the men would weigh on her.

and obviously without like ... a full understanding of modern terminology for stuff the best realistic acceptance she could have hoped for from him would have been getting called a crossdresser or something, yknow like really just not something he'd think wasn't a joke or a fetish.

probably leading into someone supportive telling her that it's ok and she doesn't have to feel guilty about bourbon or whether he would have hated her for being trans. i like to think anna would help artyom :)

also i think artyoms relationship with Pavel would be super interesting, especially with the two of them being so close for as long as they were. I'm imagining an incredibly emotional moment in the red square with whether or not she'd forgive pavel and whether or not him supporting her (if he did) was part of being a spy.

I'm having a blast like developing these ideas in my brain i need to replay the metro series lol.

[thewigglingrng]

i have come to a mild disagreement with the genius annotations for Birds of Prey from the TV show Batman Brave and the Bold. my strife with this interpretation with these lyrics is that i believe them to be misogynistic. Additionally. they stray away from the true meaning of these lyrics which is these women wanna peg batman and he is the perfect bottom. if this was a more accepted interpretation the rigidness of Batman's masculine identity could be expanded upon and fans of Batman could also expand their concept of masculinity

The first instance of this can be seen in verse 1

from this the common interpretation is pretty straightforward Green Latern is packing a chode and uses a "cock" ring to compensate, Blue Beetle usually depicted as a teen is addressed in the song as a virgin, and Flash is quick to bust. the genius annotation interprets as much with only a sly potentially misogynistic remark which could imply that the Birds have a size standard.

the next example is in the second verse

now the interpretation of these lyrics may be little vague specifically the first line. one interpretation could be that Green Arrow he ain't swanging it well in bed, he ain't hitting the right spots. Given, this series originally aired 5 years after the introduction of pink kryptonite a common understanding of this lyric is that it's insinuating that Green Arrow is queer. Though i don't generally disagree with this view this jab at sexuality doesn't flow with the entirety of this song whose theme so far has been about the sexual incompetence of superheros. so for the sake of this argument i will continue with the first interpretation. the rest of the lines are pretty simple Aquaman got a small dick and Plastic Man can't keep it up. Again the genius annotations have a similar interpretation and nothing outrageously misogynistic just a mild defense for why Aquaman dick is small lol

finally, the crux for my disagreement is in verse 3

now through out the annotations of the lyrics this is the one time they don't explain the sexual innuendos of the lyrics. instead they imply this is an expression of Batman sexual prowess and how everyone wants to fuck him. Furthermore, they illustrate this point by creating an abridged "bitch" list of women that want him. they finish this point by listing every other unnamed character that wants batman as "hoes, gold diggers and one night stands". i don't think i have to explain a sizable amount why this is misogynistic the use of derogatory terminology is blatantly visible. because of this perspective this interpretation neglects the sexual autonomy of the women singing and ignores the themes of this song. Now that the Birds have voiced the sexual incompetence of superheros. this section of the song explores a superhero who is sexually competent and the reasons why. Line 1-2pretty simple his packin and he knows how to use it. Line 3-4 here me out this requires some modern thinking. now we all remember that trend on tiktok a few years ago where people were showing screenshots of tiktok search suggestion a lot of them were of sexually suggestive description of men. Now hear me out where does his utility belt rest on his waist. So Black Canary was just ahead of her time and what she was saying is that batman has a slutty waist. Line 5-6 should seem obvious where I'm going with this interpretation. Batman has an ass that must be explored. so the only thing the genius annotation got right about this section is yes they do want to "fuck Batman" by that i mean they want to peg him. While maintaining this interpretation of the song Batman is still shown as an ideal of masculinity regardless of the nature of the sexual innuendos he is addressed with. So with that said these new interpretations could be used as stepping stones to expand our understanding of masculinity in a more broad, vast and sexual sense. also its just more fun thinking that these women are singing about how shit some men are at sex and how much they'd prefer to start pegging. also, also this song was made in like 2008 so this was most likely not there intended interpretation but i would say its the most funniest

also the song aight

[whimpers-and-whumpers]

18. Do you prefer to give your ocs specific labels, or keep it unspecified? Why? If applicable, do you change their labels depending on circumstance?

For me, it really depends! A lot of the time, I don't know at first, unless their sexual/romantic/gender identity is one of the most fundemental parts of thier self identity or the plot. Sometimes, it's a changing thing.

One of my whumpees, Aiyan, is a great example! At first, I assumed only they/them pronouns, but eventually I realized they were a they/she type of person. I also had no idea about their agab until it became relevant (thry were naked in a scene). I still don't know their exact gender identity, just thrir pronouns and the fact that they're cisn't.

I also originally thought that she was asexual and aromantic because they seemed completely uninterested. But then, they developed a romantic relationship with another character and I realized they were demiromantic and grey ace.

When I figure out thier identities, I typically use modern terms to keep everything clear for myself, but will often change terminology in the actual story to mesh with their experiences.

For example, another character of mine is attracted to multiple genders and is a woman, but doesn't use the labels bi or pan because she's in a Victorian inspired setting. Similarly, Aiyan was raised in a very isolated and fundementalist community, so they didn't have the language to describe themself until they left.

So really, it depends on whether they have the language to describe themselves, whether that language would be different than today based on setting and culture, and whether I'm writing the story or a meta post like this!

Thanks for asking!