#before anyone tries to @ me i am literally trans and also tired

[incidentalblr]

for the record, i don’t want to hear that this is a trans genocide. i live in florida. i have so many trans friends. our city’s local drag queen has already been forced to leave and i am terrified for my friends. i’m not fucking leaving this place as long as it takes and i’m not letting them drive us out but god. i just don’t want to hear about it. it takes too much to keep my head above water as is.

[nekropsii]

i think theres a really big issue in the community specifically surrounding the people who headcanon dave as some sort of trans where both sides of the coin seem to hate each other? like both sides are at fault here, ive seen blogs demeaning people who like transmasc dave and then like you said other people just completely disregarding transfem dave. guys. can we stop. let people headcanon what they want without blatantly attacking them, this goes for all parties in this issue. i dont get why people act like this. the fuck happened to all trans people being equal and then we get both transmisoginy and harassment of people liking either of the trans headcanons?

jesus man. im tired of it

Respectfully, I do not think this is a “Both Sides” situation.

The concept of transmasc Dave is objectively one of the most popular headcanons in the Homestuck fandom, and it has been for years. I think I can excuse people who headcanon transfem Dave for “hating it”, because as I have been trying to fucking say this entire time, people keep correcting me on my own posts about transfem Dave on my own blog, and belittling me for thinking this way. And since I’ve asked people to maybe interrogate why they feel the need to correct me and patronize me and to stop fucking doing that, I’ve been getting inundated with people trying to mansplain and traumadump to me how me saying to not correct me and patronize me for having a transfem headcanon is oppressing them and that trans men also have it bad, as if I literally ever insinuated that they do not have it tough.

You do not get to “Both Sides” me on a discussion about my experience when I have never - and I mean NEVER - received this level of heat for headcanoning a character as literally anything else. I have NEVER gotten “corrected” for headcanoning a character as gay, or transmasculine, or black, or a lesbian - only now, when I headcanon a character as a trans woman, am I getting people correcting me, condescending me, telling me some really fucking personal traumas to explain to me I’m “in the wrong” for being upset about the correction and condescension, very obviously making assumptions about my sex, gender, and what I’ve been through in my life, making negative assumptions about my intelligence, and putting a fuck ton of words in my mouth.

I am speaking from my own experience here. I am sorry if that hurts anyone’s feelings, but that much cannot be taken from me. From my experience, this is not “Both Sides”, this is very clearly one side with far greater numbers giving another flack for not assimilating, and when that other side tries to say what’s going on, they’re treated as an aggressor, and treated like a petulant idiot child.

Before anyone puts any more words in my god damn mouth:

I literally never said no one could HC Dave as transmasculine, or that they were wrong for thinking that way. I have outright said the opposite, that it is fine and that I do not care. HOWEVER, I sure as hell am experiencing people telling me that I am wrong for HCing her as a woman.

I literally never, and I mean NEVER, said or insinuated that trans men do not suffer, especially under the patriarchy. I am not an idiot, I know how the patriarchy works, it hurts literally everyone that doesn’t conform to an incredibly, incredibly narrow white non-queer cishetero male ideal. I am also not an idiot, I know that transphobia will exist no matter what you identify as, and it will suck absolute horseshit. Neither “side” has it “easy”, every type of transphobia has an uncomfortably, terrifyingly high body count. I never fucking said trans men do not have it hard. Stop putting those words in my mouth.

Literally all I said was that it’s fucking weird that I’ve never been treated this way until I headcanoned a character as a trans woman, and maybe to interrogate that because people sure seem comfortable acting this way, and that-

This is Transmisogyny.

And if there’s anything else I’ve learned from this, it’s that-

HIT DOGS HOLLER.

[autisticlancemcclain]

fic rec friday 15

welcome the the fifteenth fic rec friday! where, on friday, i rec five of my favourite fics.  

1. there, nestled against his pulse by @hiuythn

stop why are you doing this to me stop it stop it stop--

klance soulmate au where your right wrist has the first words your soulmate says to you, and the left holds the last words they'll say to you. super sad, so much angst, and i've been informed it'll make you sob until you choke.

1. there, nestled against his pulse (the main story, from Keith's POV) 2. this is what love looks like: (tnahp from Lance's POV + 38k of sequel content) 3. roll credits (deleted/extra scenes and additional headcanons)

okay. i am so desperately obsessed with this fic, i was obsessed with it the first time i read it and im obsessed with it now. and yes i know i did all hiuythn fics last week and i promise i wont this week. BUT i have a set of comments associated with this fic bc it is Just That Good and so i shall present them to u now:

- literally the funniest characterization of shiro i’ve ever read. this shiro is gay and tired. this shiro unironically and frequently says “move. i’m gay” and gets away with it at the garrison. this shiro has been through A Lot and just wants to fucking retire - allura here is so so funny she’s such a badass. she’s giving “i love shiny things! like the shine of your spilled blood on the floor if you say that dumb shit one more fucking time!!” we stan a queen. - coran is a Mood. this man is desperately trying to reign in four teenagers and two young adults and just wants to go to bed and also he cares for them all so so much. ultimate dad - pidge is Mischief Personified. she is a brat and i adore her. she’s here to cause problems and by god she will succeed - hunk is so done it’s so fucking funny. “that’s literally impossible.” he’s a genius and he knows it, he’s glad to call you out on your bullshit. he doesn’t even TRY to pretend he can keep a secret and/or handle drama god what a mood - don’t even get me started on klance!! they’re so funny omg. the banter is EXQUISITE. lance and keith adore each other so much and they’re so badass. literally the coolest power couple fight scenes ever to be made, i do adore. gosh. and the ROMANCE they are so devoted to each other i’m emotional - honourable mention of lance’s legs and keith’a Soft Squishy Feelings that are mentioned so often that they’re characters. iconic. all in all, the best way to describe this series is Gay and Tired. i love it and i’m sad to see it end. i will be rereading it an embarrassing number of times. infinity/10

2. all the little things by @jilliancares

Or: 5 times Keith let Lance get away with things that he'd never let anyone else do, and 1 time Lance realized that he was, apparently, special

oblivious lance will always be funny to me. and the idea of keith just letting lance get away with Everything and Everyone knowing how whipped he is except for lance himself?? peak humour. never not funny

3. Full Disclosure by @dragonomatopoeia

Keith is impulsive and straightforward when it comes to most things, and emotions are no exception. It's no surprise, then, that when he realises that he might have developed a crush on Lance, he tries to tell him immediately. Unfortunately, it's very hard to account for both circumstance and who Lance is as a person.

Alternatively: Four Times Keith Tried to Confess and One Time Lance Actually Understood

more 2016 eliteness!! this fic is hilarious. and also its number one selling quality is that all of the characters are trans and nd i literally love that for them. nonbinary hunk loml

4. catch me, before i fall by @pastelrainbow

‘We are a good team.’

Even now, just recalling the way Lance had smiled as the words left his lips, made Keith’s heart race and his cheeks redden. Lance had never looked at him so fondly before. No boy ever had. The thought of it made a sigh escape his lips and Keith hunched his shoulders, a pout tugging his lips downwards.

Curse my weak gay heart.

-

a what if keith caught lance outside his cryo-pod.

the idea of keith being a suave casanova with more game than aphrodite herself but immediately going bright red and hissing when shiro teases him. peak dynamic. absolutely nailed siblings 

5. of demons and dates by spartona (faveour)

Three times Keith scares Lance shitless with his ghost shenanigans, and one time Lance tries to retaliate.

first of all. BFU KLANCE BFU KLANCE BFU KLANCE. second of all. the  “we’ve BEEN dating u dumbass ily” trope is so funny to me. i will never get over it

that’s it for today!! i’ll see y’all back next friday for the next fic rec post!!!

[liana-kerzner-is-a-narcissist]

Liana Kerzner aka redlianak aka It’s Not Therapy tried to provoke this trans woman to suicide.

I am a trans woman living in Ontario, and while I am deeply tired of literally everyone wanting my existence to end… there is one person in particular who actively tried to drive me to suicide. That person is Liana Kerzner. What Liana put me through… no person should ever have to go through.

Writing this post is the opposite of easy. But I am tired of keeping all of this inside and I am tired of seeing awful people scam others out of thousands of dollars when the rest of us have to struggle just to survive and make ends meet.

My trans siblings — Liana Kerzner is NOT our ally. She may be the enemy of our enemy, but she is not our friend, no matter how she seems to be acting on our behalf or how much she seems to care about us. (Seems is the key word there, by the way.)

Liana Kerzner is a masterful narcissistic liar and manipulator who is very good at pretending to care about others, because she likes to use other people. By suddenly being “all in” for trans rights, she is performatively jumping on being vocal about supporting trans folks at best. At worst, she is actively looking for more vulnerable people to exploit through her massive Twitter reach. I know her tricks well, because I was once one of those vulnerable people that Liana Kerzner knowingly took advantage of and caused harm to.

And with Liana Kerzner now masquerading as someone who “cares” about trans folk, and who uses her large Twitter platform to collect followers (ie funders for her next vanity project), I knew I had to say something before she exploits or harms anyone else like she did to myself and many others*.

See, I knew Liana and her husband Steven personally. I knew them before I found myself and claimed the woman I always knew I was, and at one point I was naive enough to think that we were actually friends, that they cared about me as a person. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

In fact, when we were “friends” Liana exploited me for free labor for a number of months for one of her vanity projects. But at the time, I was happy to help out a person who I thought was a friend and I didn’t think to question what she asked of me to do (or to ask to be paid for my work) especially because it started out with her asking for very small things. Liana made it seem like she really needed my help and that she thought I was brilliant; she did all of the tricks that narcissists do when they groom you.

This was also around the time that I was starting to grapple with who I really was, and I wasn’t in the best headspace overall. Liana was someone I confided in about what I was thinking and going through, and she convinced me that I “was confused” and should go on anti-depressants instead of looking more into transitioning. Any time I was having a rough day and needed to talk, we would talk about me and where I was at for maybe 5–10 minutes… but then Liana would complain to me for hours about various people who had apparently wronged her, were out to get her, all of it. People who “did her wrong”. Even knowing what I was going through, she kept saying things like “Oh you’re a man, you don’t know what it’s like for women like me.” We would be chatting on Skype and I know she could see my face fall, and yet she kept saying stuff like this to me about how “manly” I was, all of it. Liana refused to recognize that I was a scared little girl inside a body I hated and felt trapped in, or perhaps she was actively taking joy in knowing how upset her comments made me. I honestly don’t know.

I was naive enough to believe that Liana Kerzner was a good person who was being hurt, instead of recognizing that Liana was in fact the predator who was knowingly causing harm to these other people.

While we were “friends”, and while she never came out and told me to do this for her, there are a handful of people who Liana manipulated me into harassing on her behalf. More than once, Liana had me write and send some nasty emails — ones she demanded to proofread before I sent — to people who she was having disagreements with. Or, in her words, people who were “out to ruin her reputation”. I was also once asked to speak to police on Liana’s behalf and corroborate that Liana was ‘being stalked and harassed’ by a certain person, when I had never actually witnessed any of this behavior from the person she claimed was stalking her. (Police scare me, so I declined. Liana was not happy about this.) Liana also wanted me to back her up when she “had to” make a complaint about supposed sexual harassment by a male friend of hers, claiming that she suddenly feared for her safety with this man — again, meanwhile, I had never seen any of this kind of behavior from him. Not with her, not with any woman. This is what narcissists do, they get others to act on their behalf so they don’t have to get her own hands dirty.

Every month or so, it seemed like Liana had a falling out with someone new; at one point this included her own young nephew and his parents. (These are the same people she started her failed NYE Event Futurecon for, btw.) In hindsight, I’m certain that these people who “had it out for her” were simply, rightfully standing up to Liana’s bullshit and manipulations.

Over time, the unpaid labor or “favors” that Liana asked for got bigger, including some things she wanted me to “borrow” from my day job for her benefit. (Unpaid, of course.) This was also around the time that I decided to come off the anti-depressants and begin transitioning for real. I was scared of so much back then — scared nobody would love me, scared of how my friends and family would take the news, scared of how my workplace would treat me, all of it. Liana knew about my fears and insecurities, because I told her.

And she used it all against me.

The first time I said no to doing an (unpaid) favor for her, she called up my workplace and outed me to my boss. This was long before I was ready to share the news publicly about the woman I was becoming. Not only did this lead to some very awkward workplace conversations about “employee appropriateness” (whatever that even means, ugh)… Liana began to call me at my workplace regularly to scream at me for “letting her down”. Eventually, her harassment of me led to me getting fired.

Then, as I was trying to distance myself from her, one day I got a harassing phone call about an item I had apparently “stolen” from Liana; it was demanded that I return it or pay the replacement item cost, which was quite expensive. Not only did I never steal anything from Liana, this incident happened at a time when I was jobless so I was barely covering my rent and bills. In this phone call, I was verbally threatened that I might face criminal charges, I might go to jail, or be sued… all for something I didn’t do. And the person that I spoke with made sure to tell me that I would be “put with other men where I belong”. Yeah.

I also got harassing emails on Liana’s behalf from her husband Steven Kerzner, who threatened me with lines like “as long as you don’t speak ill of my wife, we won’t have to tell the truth about who you are and what you’ve done.” Basically… trying to threaten me into never saying anything about the hell that Liana Kerzner put me through and the lies she was spreading about me.

A friend very kindly let me know that the Kerzners were also going behind my back, calling mutual acquaintances and telling them that I was mentally unstable, that I was becoming violent, that I should no longer be invited to certain events we were both planning on attending, etc. It was all lies, but this social exclusion and the rumor mill went on for months. I watched people who I thought were friends fall off one by one because of the Kerzners manipulation, threats, and lies.

Through this all, Liana Kerzner repeatedly and actively lied about me to many other people, claiming that I was a pedophile, that I was trying to groom young kids — the same anti-trans rhetoric you see other people using now.

Liana Kerzner also tried to get me committed to a psych ward, with other lies about my mental health and that she was worried I was “a danger to others and myself” and that I was having “delusions” of being a woman because I was “sexually attracted to her and acting out”. (She tried something here in Canada that is called a form one) She tried have me placed under psychiatric evaluation with her blatant lies… ultimately, all for being trans. And for daring to finally stand up to her narcissistic abuse when I couldn’t take any more.

I also got some threatening and harassing emails from other friends of Liana’s, a couple of which called me a “man in a dress” and explicitly told me to kill myself, that the world would be better without trash like me. I won’t repeat everything that was said, but it was a lot. Especially back then.

Liana Kerzner is a liar, a narcissist, a bully, and someone who knows how to quite skillfully manipulate those around her, including lying to the legal system and lying to doctors, to get them to harass and abuse others on her behalf.

There’s more I could tell you about too, but it all boils down to the same thing… Liana Kerzner is only pro-trans rights to suit her own agenda. At her core, she is still deeply transphobic , toxic, and abusive. She’s just good at hiding it.

Her usual MO is to either get people to give her money (ie Patreon, Ko-fi, Kickstarter, etc) and/or to get people to do favors for her for free… despite the Kerzners being rather well off, apparently.

What I will say in closing is this… Liana can keep up the charade of being your “friend” for years, but ultimately she is cruel and manipulative. Liana Kerzner will say and do anything she can to get what she wants out of people — including pretending to be a trans ally so that people like you and me will confide in her, and be willing to pay her money for her “not therapy” bullshit, aka Liana Kerzner’s newest grift.

If you value your own mental and physical health, don’t let Liana Kerzner manipulate you. Take it from someone who has been there, and who has been through that particular hell.

Get as far away from Liana Kerzner’s fake-nice narcissistic manipulation as fast as you can.

*Footnotes:

*Emily Schooley is a brave woman and survivor of domestic violence whom Liana Kerzner has been jealously and maliciously smearing for well over a decade now.

While there’s tens if not hundreds of us who have received the “Special K” treatment from Liana, Emily is the only person brave enough to speak the truth publicly about Liana with her own name, because Liana likes to: make false police reports about, send harassing emails to, get her minions to harass, or threaten legal action on anyone who speaks out about the abuses she perpetuates.

I’m probably going to get more harassment from Liana Kerzner just for posting this, even though my name is not attached to this post, but Emily Schooley’s bravery and vulnerability in sharing what Liana Kerzner put her through is part of what inspired me to stand up and speak my truth too.

https://www.tumblr.com/liana-k-truth — someone else put this list together of some of the many people Liana has knowingly harmed and some of the other problems Liana has caused over the years. It’s well worth the read.

https://futurec0n.wordpress.com/ — some other people Liana Kerzner has harassed and caused harm to

[yippeecahier]

Tagged by @queerests !

I love talking about myself, so...

[art by @sugar-drift]

Here goes; much to everyone else's chagrin and my delight, this is a long post!

1. Are you named after anyone?

Yeah, my great-grandmother. Luckily it's a gender-neutral name so even though I'm trans, I kept it.

2. Last time you cried?

I was playing Dark Souls until midnight recently (last weekend iirc) fighting the Gaping Dragon and my partner was being sardonic in his jokes as usual but I was tired and started crying because I tilted and thought he was disparaging me/frustrated with me for dying to the boss so often with the constant "OK yeah, just...don't dodge!! Hahaha!!" and stuff. Luckily he apologized and helped me pull myself back together. I'm kind of a crybaby, to be honest.

3. Do you have/want kids?

I have no kids. I am really indecisive on the latter. My partner really wants kids, and would prefer to have a child with my genes; when he said he wanted a biological child I suggested surrogacy and sperm donation so that there would be humans with his genes and he was like, "no... I want them to have your genes..."

I don't dislike children at all considering I literally work with them in my career. I think they are delightful little people and it brings me joy to see how they grow and change. However, I also really like having boundaries in my life where I get undisturbed 8 hours of sleep every day and only interact with said children for 40 hours a week; I would have to give that up for 24/7 child duty if I became a parent. Also knowing myself and recommendations from my doctors, waking up every 2-3 hours to feed a baby would literally make me suicidal. In the words of my OB/GYN: "it's not a matter of if you get postpartum depression, given your mental health history, but when." Also where I currently live is extremely hostile to pregnant bodies and I would like very much not to risk death or jailtime and exorbitant fines/legal fees just to have a biological kid. 20% of all pregnancies result in miscarriage (especially early on, before the person knows they're pregnant) and I can be tried for a felony if literally anyone suspects or alleges it was an "abortion," and they get paid to do so. There is no medical difference or test to tell if pregnancy loss is one or the other. It's a whole thing.

At the same time, I work in a Title I school and I know and love many delightful foster children I would love to share my knowledge and resources with to improve their lives. The state is hostile to children, too, and those kids don't have a choice about living here the way adults do, since they're with the state department of children and family services. Our local DCFS is woefully in a perpetual crisis because they discriminate against queer and non-xtian households in fostering and adoption; the ratio of foster children to available homes is 40:1 here. I'm very passionate about this, and one way to put my money where my mouth is is to go into foster care. However, I would need my support network if I made that leap to parenthood and my family doesn't support fostering ("what if their trauma/issues are so bad it endangers you!!") and insists on biological children. Oh well.

TL;DR I'm on the fence regarding the future and if it includes children and in what form, but I know I definitely don't want any biological children right now. I've always thought about adopting or fostering an older child.

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

No, I generally mean what I say. I have a hard time identifying sarcasm in others (thanks autism) so I generally avoid it. The only time it appears is in self-aggrandizing humor in lieu of self-deprecating humor (i.e., "I am the pinnacle of grace!" when I trip) to try to fix my mental health. Currently positive effects, I highly recommend.

5. What's the first thing you notice about people?

Hair and teeth. It's always been hair. I don't make eye contact if I don't know you very well but I generally look at people's heads to make it look like I am, and stare at mouths to lip-read a bit because of auditory processing issues. If you get a haircut or dye your hair, it takes me a bit to realize who you are, especially if it's a radical change (thanks autism for the prosopagnosia.) I scared my classmate in high school when I noticed that his two front teeth were pared down to be even with the others at the dentist. Apparently, no one else noticed? He freaked out when I asked him, "Hey why are your front two teeth shorter than they used to be?" I also respond to surprise significant hair changes in my loved ones...not that well. I got mad at my partner for shaving his head down to a buzzcut because it was such a drastic and sudden change, and was distressed to tears by my dad shaving the beard he'd had for 20 years.

6. What's your eye color?

Really deep chocolate brown. Not dark enough to be almost black, but much darker than any of the hazel hues my other family members have.

7. Scary movies or happy endings?

If it's not Jordan Peele, I'm going with happy endings. I'm really sensitive to gore, and vomited when watching the Aliens films.

(CW: Alien spoilers, death)

I liked the Alien franchise, but I puked in the popcorn when watching Prometheus during the improvised C-section to remove the alien in the protagonist's uterus scene and my brother was pissed. His friend helped me out of the movie theatre and rubbed my back while I couldn't stop shaking and puking and reassured me that he felt nauseated at that part too and personally wasn't mad at me for reacting like I did. I was crying about embarrassing myself in front of my brother and his friends. It brings tears to my eyes again to remember how gentle he was even though he was a teenage boy. He stopped talking to me after he became addicted to opiates, he was too embarrassed to tell me. He disappeared in the Russia-Ukraine war, presumed dead. He was a great person. Damn, crying again. Like I said, I'm a crybaby.

8. Special talents?

I'm told I'm a good cook. I failed o-chem once and withdrew the second time because I had a massive panic attack before my final exam, but at least I took away some skills from that. I use my knowledge of organic reactions and interactions between organic molecules to maximize flavors in coffee, curry, and other edible things I create.

I'm also told I'm a skilled 2-D artist. My mom saved this shoe I drew and shaded by smudging my pencil in 1st grade. The art teacher sent it home and told her I should go to art school. I even made a college art portfolio and took commissions for a bit, but when it came to having to do art for a grade or for money, it felt like my creativity and desire to create would just shut off under the pressure. I just do art as a hobby, now.

9. Where were you born?

In a hospital via emergency C-section in the middle of a thunderstorm like a badass.

10. What are your hobbies?

Drawing, embroidery, puzzles, reading non-fiction, tabletop and video games.

11. Have any pets?

Two little papillon dogs. One is a teenage boy, the other is an elderly lady.

12. What sports do you play or have you played?

Currently, I run. I recently got 2nd place in my age group in a 5k race this past fall. In the past, I did track and field, tennis, swimming, and kickboxing. I tried my hand at yoga and HEMA, but didn't stick with it. I got kicked out of ballet and basketball as a kid for being ADHD and autistic which made me awful at following directions and being a "team player," respectively; it's also why all my sports listed above are individual. 😅

13. How tall are you?

5' 6" when I don't slouch; I'm working on it!! I'm a short king.

14. Favorite subject in school?

It's a tie between science and art. If you read my other paragraphs, this seems obvious in retrospect.

15. Dream job?

I'm in it: dyslexia and reading interventionist! I do what I love (learning about the brain and how people learn and process things!!) and teach people how to do what I love (reading!! also learning about the brain!!) and it gives me meaning to serve others but still actually make good money above the average for people in my area with my degree and education.

No pressure tags 🩶 @deerstar4 @thatsoup @waflfurs @lemon--berry @woodrider @arthallea @pandatlas @jesterpup @litho-sphere

[c0rpseductor]

i realize im preaching to the choir here but it is extremely bold of the autogynephilia guy to insist that the VAST MAJORITY of adult trans women are, like, outright lying about their own experiences based on his having sorted them into arbitrary, unscientific categories AS A STRANGER. extremely fucking deranged

also obviously speaking on a more personal level the proposed "autohomoerotic" type of trans guy is so fucking infuriating to me. it's like, obviously that's going to be the explanation for gay trans men this idiot comes up with because of the view that being gay is "feminine male" behavior, so how do you victor victoria around that if your understanding of how gender and sexuality interact is from the stone age? Well Clearly It's A Total Separate Other Thing.

it's obviously a talking point every gay trans man on earth has heard at least once, like "you're trans because you're interested in pretending to be a gay man" rather than like. the actual situation. you know. i'm very tired i feel like garbage bc it's a bad migraine brain day but like it just frustrates me bc like...i mean clearly it's cruel and uncharitable and transphobic.

my own experience is that i grew up experiencing a lot of "typical" markers of dysphoria and preferring to be seen as a boy or at least "not a girl" and wanting to hang out with other boys and puberty sucking etc etc you have certainly heard the narrative people trot out and i did fit a number of those points. but it was difficult for me to pin down how i felt and who i actually felt i was without also wrangling the fact that i was struggling with a lot of internalized homophobia. growing up even before consciously understanding myself as male i felt a lot of guilt about being interested in guys and felt it was "wrong." for a good number of years i attempted to transform "i guess girls are pretty" into "i'm DEFINITELY attracted to women, a very socially acceptable thing for a man!" while also trying to deny being trans, which resulted in this really absurd attempt to convince myself i was An Lesbian despite having genuinely no fucking interest in women whatsoever beyond liking their clothes. ("slay bitch!" is not actually attraction to women, but try telling 19 year old lestat that, he will not agree.) and, of course, i absorbed a lot of surface level feminist talking points about how Bad And Yucky men are that made me feel that it would be, like...misogynist to not be a woman.

so i did have to reconcile all those things at once, but ESPECIALLY the fact that i was attracted to men to finally, like, be ready to just call myself a trans man. it was finally realizing that despite my shame about it growing up and the feeling that it was "bad" or "wrong" or "not feminist" (????) (my internalized homophobia was weird sometimes) i did like men, but only if they'd also treat me like a man, because i didn't really want to be having relationships with men as a woman. i was like "huh...this kind of sounds like i don't want to have relationships with ANYONE as a woman." and then i kind of realized after a short stint of identifying as bi that i was also like. just not interested in women at all. i had been making that shit up for notes.

so like, i think in that regard it's like...it's hard to separate my understanding of myself as a man who likes men from my understanding of myself as a man more generally, which is why it's especially frustrating to me to hear that twisted into "it's because you have a fetish for gay men" when i had to like. fight myself tooth and nail for Literally 22 years to accept that i am a man AND that i am attracted to men. i was so uncomfortable with who i was and tried so hard to be cis (or at least Not a man) and straight (or at least Not into men) at the same time that i tried to force myself to be a lesbian. despite having no interest in women. to me that was better than being the person i actually was, which was somebody i felt a lot of shame and discomfort about. accepting that i was binary trans and gay was not like "being gay seems cool can i play" so much as having to tell myself "maybe liking men and being male does not make you some kind of disgusting aberrant monster, dude." but god forbid anybody have any compassion about that when it's way easier to get mad at a straw fujo

[mainecoon76]

Nice to see how a good night's sleep changes pespectives.

Yesterday I was tired and hurt and ready to take a tumblr break. Today I'm looking at the whole thing and thinking, what the fuck?!

A bunch of strangers barges in and tells my friends and me not only what to think (we agree on that) but also how exactly to handle it. They don't know my friends, they don't know me, they're clearly determined to misunderstand us. Everything we say is twisted into something it's not.

I tried to explain myself but am realizing now that it was never about a mutual understanding, but to make me see why the whole drama was justified. It wasn't. But no matter what I say, it will never be taken seriously.

They're not only strangers on the internet, I've also never interacted with them before. I don't know their usernames. Why the hell should I care? Sure, I don't want to be painted as something I'm not, but... Well, sometimes people just want a target. There's no chance to convince them they're wrong. Fuck them. People who know me also know this is pure and utter wank. There may have been a misunderstanding at the beginning - I was never defending terfs, just people who got caught in the crossfire - but the whole thing should have ended the moment it became clear it was a misunderstanding, and it didn't.

I don't regret making that post because it wasn't about me, and I mean what I said. But if people want to start shit about being asked to remain civil, well. I'm not going to take them seriously.

So, I'll now block anyone who pisses me off and move on. If anyone wants a serious, constructive discussion about terfs in fandom, great, let's have it. I've handled social justice issues before, it's literally my job. If I suggest a certain method, that's because I can tell from actual fucking real life experience what's likely to work and what isn't. And shutting up trans allies because they disagree on methods is not likely to work.

(Well, it is. You can shut them up, and you'll feel great about it. But it doesn't help the cause.)

[tendercoretroglodyke]

... I’m interested in legitimately gay Reese (I assume one piece of evidence is “look at what they’re doing and tell me you’re not gay”)

okay this is like 2 days late but this is why reese malcolminthemiddle is legitimately gay:

(side note: did anyone need a queer media thesis paper or something... I am willing to share lmao)

so none of this is like... rock solid evidence or anything but I need to believe at least one main character of a show is gay and/or trans to maintain interest and reese is the most plausible gay character. also it’s early 2000′s so he just gets a lot of vaguely homophobic jokes lmao

first of all, yes, the biggest piece of evidence he’s gay is those lines from that episode I quoted the other day--thinking malcolm is gay, he tries to show his support by giving him a gay porno: “’Naught Pool Boys 3!’ I watched 10 or 12 of these, and this one seems to have the most stuff you guys like.” and when malcolm says he isn’t gay, reese responds “Malcolm. Check out what those guys are doing in that movie, and THEN tell me you’re not gay.”-- so, 1) reese sat down and watched like a dozen gay porn movies to ““find a good one for his gay brother”” and 2) he thinks malcolm would reconsider his heterosexuality if he watched what was in that movie, implying that HE reconsidered his sexuality after watching that movie, or at the very least found it hot

in the same episode, the character tricking malcolm into thinking reese is gay lists the following as evidence: he obsesses over his hair and his looks, loves his gourmet cooking, has a bunch of magazines covered in comically muscular men, and that he’s angry and acts like a jerk because he’s “dealing with something weird and confusing.” now obviously, the obsession with hair/looks can be chalked up to the fact that he’s a teenage boy, and there’s nothing inherently gay about enjoying cooking. the dozen magazines of muscle-bound men could certainly be taken as gay evidence, though, and it IS established in the show that his entire bully persona is his way of masking his inner feelings and insecurities. there’s literally a whole episode where he & malcolm realize they have no friends because they act like little shits to push people away because they’re afraid of rejection and/or abandonment from their peers. they ostracize themselves before they can be ostracized by the other students at school. I could probably write a whole other essay on reese’s psyche tbqh lmao there’s a shocking amount there!!

of the brothers who are actually old enough to be attracted to girls (reese, malcolm, and francis), he shows the least interest. now bear with me here. you might be thinking, “well, yeah, it’s malcolm’s show, we’re not gonna see things from other people’s perspective!” but that is actually surprisingly untrue, the show is very much equally shown from each family members’ perspectives. starting about s2, when malcolm is in early middle school, he starts getting crushes on girls and pursuing them. francis goes after a few women in the first couple seasons and then marries a woman we see a lot throughout the show. 

in the roughly... 130?? episodes I have watched so far, nearly all of reese’s “interest” in girls involve either: competition with malcolm, genuinely just liking her as a friend, or some completely ulterior motive. the only exception to this I can think of is in the early seasons where he has a crush on a cheerleader and tries to get on her good side by joining the cheerleading squad, which the writers clearly set up as a way to make gay jokes about reese. let me give you a few examples of his relationships with girls

the first relationship we see him in is with a “stupid girl” that malcolm tried (and failed) to date, and the main reason they get together is that they think on the same wavelength and genuinely seem to enjoy hanging out. they take breaks from their bro chats to make out every once in a while. eventually he gets her to break up with him because he doesn’t want to go to the school dance with her (he doesn’t want to go at all). years later, he’s dating some girl we meet for like 5 minutes, before he goes to confess to her that she’s the first girl he’s ever loved. she then breaks up with him. he’s sad, but taking it fairly well. he’s about to leave when he sees malcolm hiding under the bed, and learns that he stole his girlfriend. he then runs away to join the army. he was clearly MUCH more upset that his brother stole his girlfriend than he was that his girlfriend broke up with him. there are many more instances of him and malcolm competing for a girl’s affections, and he seems mostly motivated by the competition itself.

in addition to “stupid girl,” he also manufactures an “attraction” to his female army buddy in the last season. the premise of this episode is that his old army buddy (a girl he play-wrestles with and insults like he would his own brothers) comes to visit him, and malcolm convinces reese that she’s attracted to him, and that reese’s nervousness at learning that fact is proof he’s in love with her. there’s a misunderstanding where reese asks her if she has certain “feelings” and she says she does, but what she ACTUALLY means is that she has a crush on reese’s MOM. she’s a lesbian. reese later propositions her (saying he’s saved his virginity for this--he’s probably about 18 here), and when she says omg no im gay, he is HUGELY relieved they can go back to being friends. CLASSIC mlm/wlw friendship moment. 

there’s an episode where these cute girls pick up reese (& nerds) to kiss in front of their boyfriends to make them jealous. reese is all for it, and when malcolm argues that it’s not worth his dignity and the beating he’ll get from the girl’s boyfriend, reese counters that that’s WHY he wants to do this--he’s completely invisible at school, and thinks getting beaten up for kissing some guy’s girlfriend will at least make him known around school. at no point does he indicate he’s actually attracted to this girl, and when it comes time to kiss her, he finds the weakest excuse to run away at the last minute. 

im not gonna list all of these but there’s more lmao

the following is a random assortment of one-off gay jokes and out-of-context lines with gay reese implications, often homophobically bc its early 2000′s writing:

says “I’m gay” to a girl to give malcolm a better shot at her

(again in competition with malcolm) tries to flirt with a girl by spraying milk in her face as the punchline to a joke, which is. well. hm. self-sabotaging, to say the least!!

Reese: “Do you think it’s right to totally change who you are and turn your back on EVERYTHING you believe in, just to impress a hot guy??” [his dad gives a long, blank stare, before asking:] “...Burt Reynolds hot, or Sting hot?”

“YEAH I like clouds! I call them sky kittens :)” (I just think that one’s sweet!)

“Look, Christie, here’s the thing. When I first met you, I was just messing around. But we’ve gotten so close that, now... I really like you! I can’t keep this up anymore. I’m not the person you think I am. I’ve been pretending since the day I met you. It’s so hard having to constantly cover my tracks to keep my story straight... and I don’t WANT to anymore! I’m tired of living this lie! I’m done with it. I’m sorry.”

he catfishes some guy to blackmail him, but is implied to continue the flirtation even after the catfishing/blackmail is revealed

reese is, technically, married to a man. this particular plot point is played as a joke and manages to be both racist and homophobic, so I won’t go into it. but I believe he is still married to that man. technically.

reese takes care of a huge box full of caterpillars until they pupate and become beautiful butterflies. I feel like there’s some kind of gay coming out metaphor here somewhere.

I think there are a couple other times where he comments on a guy’s attractiveness but I couldn’t find specific instances.

In conclusion: Reese is a deeply repressed gay kid who was socialized SO thoroughly as an early 2000′s straight boy that, despite his attraction for men and his obvious compulsory heterosexuality, he still cannot admit to himself that he is gay even as he enters adulthood. Furthermore, his subconscious frustration about this fact is turned outward to form the “schoolyard bully” costume he uses to mask his insecurities and keep others from getting too close to him. 

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I could be convinced to come back for another talk about how Dewey is trans or about how each and every member of that family is neurodivergent in entirely different ways. Assuming anyone has read this far in the first place!!

[whentherewerebicycles]

wow okay i am skipping the lingerie party lol and am instead going to just briefly jot down some thoughts before i go to sleep and wake up at 5 for my flight tomorrow morning. jesus christ i have ONE MILLION thoughts and feelings about this weekend. i want to preface this by saying that on the whole, it was a fine social experience! it was nowhere near as awkward or painful as i was expecting. or like, parts of it were painful, but it was 100% to do with my own complicated feelings about literally every part of this tradition and the wedding industry in general lol, and not anything to do with the people themselves. the other women were friendly and very welcoming, i made an event best friend who was wonderful company, and it was really fun to get to spend time with both my sister-in-law and her older sister, who was so charming and wonderful. i’m glad i came even though thinking about the $$ i spent on this trip makes me physically gag.

but okay i want to just record some THOUGHTS that maybe i will continue unpacking with some distance. i feel likeeeee okay here are my thoughts.

the social norms around femininity are just a fucking minefield and i feel like i really just gotta keep walking back the impulse to judge other women for the choices they make as they navigate around the manifold traps and snares and half-buried landmines that constitute the landscape of being a woman. like jesus christ. it’s so fucked up, it’s so fucked up, the received and socially enforced norms of femininity are just so fucked up. I think ALL THE FUCKING TIME of this margaret atwood poem i love so much, which was REALLY on my mind this weekend:

How can I teach her some way of being human that won’t destroy her?

I would like to tell her, Love is enough, I would like to say, Find shelter in another skin.

I would like to say, Dance and be happy. Instead I will say in my crone’s voice, Be ruthless when you have to, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it.

I feel like the first bit was very much on my mind throughout the weekend, but those last three lines have come to the forefront over the course of this last day, as i have tried to do some Thinking about what i observed/experienced/felt this weekend. whether or not this is what it means in the context of the poem, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it, expresses something of my complex feelings: I don’t know that I can tell the truth about femininity because I don’t know that I can see it. i am both too close to it/still emotionally entangled in it and too far from it to know which parts of it are ‘real’ and which parts are just performance.

i feel like one thing that struck me this weekend, in ways that i don’t know if i’ve noticed as much before, was that so much of the things women say to each other or do in these social contexts is performative, and they know on some level it’s a performance, but we are all going through the motions of doing and saying the expected things anyway. that has not always been clear to me. i have spent so much of my own life as a woman thinking that other women perfectly, seamlessly, naturally embodied the norms of femininity, and i was the only one (or part of a group of only ones) who couldn’t remember my lines, or kept fumbling my cues, or felt so painfully, self-consciously aware that i was playing a role that i could never deliver a convincing performance. but this weekend, after the initial social panic had passed, i started trying to get out of my own head a little bit and look for things that disproved the very strong theory i had brought into the weekend. and of course then i started seeing more and more of the little moments where women say one thing and do another, or profess one belief/conviction but then the whole corpus of their lived experiences and choices contradicts that stated belief, or whatever. and also just like, moments of pathos, where someone i had judged harshly at the beginning of the weekend offhandedly revealed something about her past that really changed my perception of her, or at least made me think like, ah god, i have to have empathy for and with this person, because i think she might be a complex person just like me, with an intricate inner life that her performance partially reveals and partially occludes from view, and agh, it sucks to have to think of people as complicated instead of as safely two-dimensional & easy to dismiss, and the reason it sucks is because then it forces you to realize that you share more with this person than you’d like to admit, and that some of your wounds are the same, even if you dealt with those wounds (the wounds of girlhood, or rather the emotional wounds that our culture inflicts upon girls, which then become tangled up in complex and painful ways with the lived experience of girlhood itself) in really different ways.

but also ugh. we are all performing gender norms but there is just something that does not feel playful at all about embodying conventional femininity. i can’t think of a better way to phrase that right now but it’s like.. the performance isn’t fun. it doesn’t seem to be fun. i don’t know that anyone here was having fun doing it, even if they were having fun being with each other. but it was like doing the intensely gendered social rituals was like, the price of admission? like it was the toll we had to pay to be together spending time in the company of other women? i don’t know man but it fucking exhausts me. like i can push myself to stretch my genuine empathy and sense of solidarity with other women much further than my knee-jerk judgmental reaction, but i can’t ever get to a place where i find any of those social rituals anything other than fucking exhausting. they feel so fucking joyless. they feel like things that many women have internalized as ‘things we must do in order to have relationships with other women.’ (please do not even get me started on how exhausting heteronormativity is i think i could write an entire other essay on how women use these bachelorette party-type rituals to spend time with their closest female friends, but the whole event is still implicitly organized around men, and these women’s male partners are still positioned as the priority in their lives, and the whole event is framed as like, a last burst of intense closeness between women before the bride is delivered over to her husband. like i KNOW that this is not how women think of it but all the RHETORIC of the bachelorette party, the little events and rituals and games, the little comments everyone makes all fucking weekend, good fucking lord, my jaw is so TENSE.)

anyway god i just AGHHHH. idk sorry this is definitely not coherent at ALL because i’m tired and still need a bit more distance/time to process some of this. i guess here is one last thing i want to register before i sleep. i am in my 30s now and i am living a life that is so, so far removed from the social world i grew up in. marriage is not a norm among my friend group, almost all of my female friends are queer women, many women i know are not partnered and have no interest in being partnered, and the friends who are in heterosexual relationships tend to be in very gender-balanced relationships or slightly nontraditional relationships where it feels like both partners have engaged in conscious reflection about what they want their relationship to look/feel like. also i now date women, am out as a lesbian, and spend most of my time teaching/working with queer- and trans/nonbinary-identified kids.

so like, the world i live in now is just so different from the world i grew up in. and sometimes it is easy for me to kind of downplay the intensity of my own gender distress as a teen and young adult, or to sort of - act like it was a phase in my life that had much more to do with me than with the social environment i lived in. i don’t mean ‘phase’ in a dismissive ‘those feelings weren’t real’ kind way, but more like, ‘oh that was just part of the normal growing pains of figuring out who you are and what kind of person you want to be as an adult - everybody pretty much goes through some version of that.’ it’s true that everyone DOES go through some version of that, as just like, part of the process of individuation in that age range. but also like. idk man. being back in this environment - straight white women from the midwest and south, all engaging in the rituals of heterosexual white femininity - was just so intense and so MUCH, and it brought back a flood of feelings and visceral memories that i feel like i will need to spend some time sorting through over the next few weeks. like, what i experienced back then really WAS gender distress, and it was so, so distressing. i spent the years from age 11ish to 24ish existing with this constant lowgrade baseline feeling of wanting to claw my own fucking skin off because my own gendered body felt like such a prison, and i sometimes felt like i literally wanted to destroy my own body because i could not yet conceive of an alternative to inhabiting that body or playing the role that had been handed down to me. until i started reading queer memoirs and inhaling lesbian media and (especially) reading about queer femme identities, i literally did not have an image or any kind of felt sense of what another way of inhabiting my own body might look/feel like. i literally could not imagine it!!!

and that is why the distress feels so distressing, and becomes internalized in such violent ways, i think. because it’s the blind, mindless panic of a trapped and wounded animal. except that you lack any real understanding of the larger social forces at work, or any language with which to describe or conceptualize what social norms are or how they’re enforced. so in your mind, the only thing you can see wounding you is your own gendered body, or the way that gendered body is socially 'read’ by others. and that is why you want to claw your own fucking skin off, just literally dig your nails into your own flesh and claw it the fuck off. because you can’t see a norm, but you can see your gendered body, and you can see the ways that it causes other people to react to you, or treat you, or hold you to a certain set of expectations, and so in your mind you are like: this must be destroyed. in your mind you are like, the only way out is to get out of this fucking body, but that’s impossible, surely, you can’t get out of your own body, so you have to settle for starving it and self-harming it and ruthlessly punishing it in a thousand terrible ways, because you might not be able to leave your girl’s body behind, but you can make it suffer and pay for what it’s done to you. 

i am old enough now, and have spent enough time thinking and writing about those feelings, to identify them when they arise again, and to get the necessary distance from them so that i can say, what i want to destroy are the norms themselves, and the distress they cause, and not the body that has done nothing to me but be me. so i am not quite as sucked under as i used to be. but i think that there is something about the violence and intensity of those feelings that i forget sometimes, or misremember with age and distance. it’s easy to be a little bit patronizing to my younger self (or by extension to my younger students sometimes), because i now live in a social world that is largely arranged in ways that minimize rather than intensify or amplify gender distress. but when you have no choice in how to arrange your life, and no language with which to understand what is happening to you or what you are experiencing, and no frame of reference to help you understand that this is a period in your life and not forever, and no models you can look to in order to discover alternative ways of inhabiting your body or arranging your life... my god, that’s quite different from being an adult with a wide range of experiences and with much greater autonomy over your own body and life. anyway idk i need to keep thinking but now i must go to bed and try to sleep five hours before the plane.

[tundrainafrica]

hi, maybe you're tired about this kind of convie regarding hange's gender but i really need your opinion. is it that wrong if i consider hange as a she? istg i'm not anythingphobic, i'm just still stuck with female hange in anime. i stan aot since 2013 and felt just fine to open up about my preference in hange's gender but lately, considering hange as a she is like the most sinful thing in the whole planet and even being attacked and i don't know what to feel about it. 😩

Thank you for the ask anon! 

Lmao, I am tired of this discourse but I’ve kinda accepted that it’s never gonna end really so I’m still happy to give you my opinion about this again. 

I have written about it here.

Before I go into this long ramble again I’d like to clarify some terms which tend to pepper the discourse of gender, sexuality etc etc etc. 

Biological Sex: What genitalia where you born with? Either born male, female or with both genitalia. 

Gender: What do you identify as? CIS, Trans, Nonbinary etc.

Sexuality: Who are you attracted to? Homosexual, Heterosexual, Bisexual, Asexual, Pansexual etc. 

Gender roles: Where do you fall on the gradient? Feminine, Masculine etc. 

And the point of this is, the discourse on gender is soooo complicated. Like very complicated because Hange being interpreted as NB to some people only covers the question of gender. Like these do not cover every other facet of the gender sexuality discourse. 

Because everything up there is ‘mutually exclusive’ to a degree because everyone is so complex. Like you can take a random option in each of those, fit it together in our heads and you would still come up with a realistic person. Because that is how complex human beings are. I have friends who decided to get a boyfriend, realized they were trans, transitioned to male but had both boyfriends and girlfriends. I have a butch lesbian friend who dated a few guys then decided to date girls then decided to transition. You have me who literally tried everything on the sexuality spectrum, crushed on a few girls in high school, crushed on a few more girls in college, thought I was asexual for a while, fell in love with a guy and realized I love dick. 

You can actually have a biological male who identifies as nonbinary but is bisexual  but has feminine tendencies. 

And that’s why even I find it so confusing to address the issue of non binary Hange vs female Hange. Because they are not even in the same bracket. Like we can have a non binary female feminine bisexual Hange all at the same time if you think about it. 

If you have read all my fics and all of my meta about Hange, you would see that I refer to her as a ‘she,’ but at the same time, I do not portray Hange as overly feminine. I headcanon that Hange has tried dating women and I also head canon that Hange has female genitalia (yo, I write preggo Hange fics). She actually falls somewhere in the middle. And what makes the gender part so hard to consider is because usually whether someone decides to identify as CIS, NB or Trans is up to the person. 

And there are just so many other hcs I want to tackle as a fanfiction writer and as a Hange stan beyond her gender and that’s why I don’t really headcanon the whole discovery part because even as a kid, I have never been so particular about my gender. I know I’m a biologically a woman, I have feminine and masculine tendencies. I have loved both men and women. but gender just seemed like just a decision which I just didn’t want to think too hard about.

I mean where I live, my first language doesn’t have gender pronouns so I can avoid the whole discourse altogether by just using Tagalog. I’m the type of person who will just have this person think I’m a man all the way until they meet me because I just wanna get things done and I feel no need to correct people. My first crushes were all women, despite my being a woman and the first people I have ever loved were women and I didn’t want to decide whether I was bisexual, heterosexual, homosexual etc. yet because even teenage me just found it way too complex and too final and just went around saying I liked this girl or I liked this guy and generally because I’m that type of person, I don’t spend a lot of my time thinking about gender even in a fandom space unless somebody asks.   

And does it make me homophobic/LGBT-phobic etc etc for deciding to use ‘she’ and deciding to tackle questions about Hange beyond her gender? No. Like this conclusion is inherently flawed. I was hella gay for a huge point in my life. 99% of my crushes were women. Then there was this period where I didn’t enjoy romance The only guy irl I have ever crushed on is my current boyfriend. But even when I explored my own gender, sexuality, it was always an ‘in the back of my mind’ thing. I didn’t have huge personal metas about what exactly my gender was or where exactly I fall or what pronouns I prefer.

And nobody is obliged to look so deep into this discourse. The important thing is in real life, we respect people’s pronouns, we respect the names they want to go by and we respect people’s preferences (as long as they aren’t dangerously criminal.)

And the thing is, this isn’t even real life. This is a fandom space. And in a fandom space, everyone is literally interpreting characters however they want. We have people literally pairing off Levi with both men and women and technically we’re assuming Levi’s gender, sexuality etc. Sure it might diverge from canon but does that make our headcanon any less than the others? Like Levi’s sexuality has never been confirmed and technically we’re all just assuming what kind of person Levi would have wanted to fuck right? Like every yaoi pairing, every ship is just fans assuming someones gender, assuming someone’s sexuality. 

And sure people could argue, ‘Yams’ didn’t confirm her gender. But Yam’s didn’t confirm anyone’s sexuality either but here we are pairing Mikasa off with Annie then pairing Mikasa off with Eren. Like same energy with ships, are there ships which are inherently superior to others? And technically, I could headcanon Levi as a woman if I wanted to and no one could stop me. I mean sure let’s celebrate that some of our headcanon and preferences have been acknowledged but what battle are we trying to win here really. 

To answer your question, it is not wrong. Having any opinion and having whatever headcanon you have about any fandom in this space is not wrong.

Sure, Hange is a comfort character to many people for various reasons. Hange is a comfort character for me but Hange is not any single person’s comfort character. Hange is a gift to us by Yams to interpret and play with however we want. Hell, every other character we’ve ever grown to love was a gift to all of us by the author. And we can choose to hc them however we want. That is the magic of fandoms.

If I wanted to, I could make some eruri and ereri mpreg fics for the kicks, I could interpret Levi as every single gender, sexuality on the spectrum and it would be just as valid. I mean I won’t because I don’t jive with those headcanons or those types of ships but I would respect people who have those types of preferences.

This space is free for everyone. We can choose what we want to consume and we can choose how we want to interpret characters. 

The only responsibility we have as fans is to use the right warnings when we post shit and to respect everybody else’s preferences. 

What I would consider ‘sinful’ is just dropping some unnecessary hate into a place which is supposed to be our safe space or pushing an agenda or an opinion and being hateful about it in the process. Like sure, spread your agenda, spread your opinions and your headcanons but please be nice about it.

We’re all just sad people trying to survive in this crapsack world.

[moth-song-archives]

The Insatiable Flow of Time (1/8)

I remembered that I can make posts here too huh! Anyways, I wrote a post-MAG200 fic <3

I’ll reblog it again with the link to ao3 if you’d prefer reading it there :D

Rating: Teens and Up Archive Warnings: Choose Not To Use Categories: F/F Relationships: Georgie/Melanie, Georgie & Jon, Jonmartin (mentioned) Characters: Georgie Barker, Melanie King, Jonathan Sims, the Admiral, Basira Hussain (mentioned), Rosie Zampano (mentioned), Martin Blackwood (mentioned)

Additional tags: Diary/Journal × post mag200 × Post-Canon × Canon Compliant × Rated for swearing and me doing my best to write a fitting epilogue for my most fave story of all time × Bittersweet × Hurt/Comfort × Grief/Mourning × Gentle-Sad-Soft × Fluff × Non-Sexual Intimacy × Tenderness × Generally Hopeful Ending × Ambiguous/Open Ending × Catharsis × You know how TMA is a tragedy? ... yeah × Hope Punk × dealing with the fallout of surviving a literal apocalypse × Moving on and letting go × Trans Georgie Barker × Nonbinary Melanie King × Melanie uses any pronouns but needs to (re)discover this first × and is then mainly referred to with they/them pronouns for diary-simplicity × Melanie is ace in my heart ♡ × Jon is also enby but it only gets referred to in passing × Georgie has a Type™ × Character Study × i love them all so much × Nonbinary aspec author × it's very hope punk and somft BUT ALSO VERY SAD × in like a cathartic way × because i like causing pain :') × pre-written and updates every 2-3 days

I think I might use it to… rediscover myself. That’s what I liked about journaling in the first place, I think. Getting to think about things outside of my own head, putting it out there so I could move on? Maybe it’s time to return to old coping mechanisms and try again. Even if I haven’t really changed. Even if I should’ve changed. Right?

As the world tries to piece itself back together, Georgie grapples with her past, her present, and her future by keeping a diary. She also keeps having this strange, recurring dream that involves Jon. Post MAG200.

Finished at ~12k, will upload over the next couple of days <3

Day 3 - Evening

Melanie is sleeping. Basira is also sleeping, on the sofa in the living-room. She doesn’t really know what to do with herself, these days, so for now she’s staying with us.

I am not sleeping. I’m so far beyond tired that I can’t sleep anymore. It’s been... how long? More than a day, certainly. I’m at the kitchen table and the night outside is darker than any I’ve ever seen. There are no street lights and a million more stars than I could’ve ever imagined. I wish Melanie could see them too :(

Back before everything in my life went wrong, I used to be really good at this. I think I got my first diary when I was... seven, maybe eight? I used to be obsessed with it. I guess I stopped writing in college, after the incident, because it felt... wrong? Like I was lying to myself, trying to fabricate emotions that just weren’t there, keeping up with things that no longer seemed important or note-worthy. Mainly, I couldn’t make myself care about anyone or anything anymore.

I think I want to find that person again, now that it’s over. Try and… move on? And Melanie encouraged me :) I guess that’s the main reason. I found this notebook in one of the domains when we were rescuing people. I don’t know what I originally wanted to do with it, but I did end up forgetting about it until I went through my bag again today. It smells like fire and is a bit singed in places, but I kind of like that? I think I might use it to… rediscover myself. ...that sounds very pretentious, but this is just for me, so...

And I like that it’s just cheap paper scribbled on with a shitty biro. Maybe I’ll just burn it when all the thoughts are on the paper instead of in my head. When I can sleep again. And the prize for the most dramatic way of closure goes to Georgie Barker! But yeah. That’s what I liked about journaling in the first place, I think. Getting to think about things outside of my own head, putting it out there so I could move on? Maybe it’s time to return to old coping mechanisms and try again. Even if I haven’t really changed. Even if I should’ve changed. Right?

But I don’t feel any different. Shouldn’t I feel different, now that they’re gone? The entities, I mean, though Jon and Martin seem to be gone, too.

I keep remembering Martin’s expression when he told us to go early, how upset he was.

Honestly, I can’t say I’m surprised. As long as I’ve known Jon, he’s always done what he thought best. It used to drive me up the walls, but I also admired it, I think? I never would’ve told him that, but… Well. He’s gone now.

It’s over, all of it.

And I still can’t sleep.

And Melanie is still blind, and I still feel empty, and my fear still hasn’t come back. Everyone who died is still dead, and the trauma is still there. There were angry mobs in the streets, and people got killed.

I can’t quite believe that Jon and Martin went with them. I can’t believe they left us behind to explain the entire mess.

 We’re back in our old flat. It’s so weird to be back home. Everything looks the same, as though no time passed at all. Nobody knows what date it is. How long were we caught in there?

Outside, it feels like spring. There are birds everywhere, singing their hearts out. Sounds like more birds than there used to be, too. The trees are leafless and dead-looking, but Basira pointed out that they’re getting there... and it feels like spring.

I haven’t slept properly in 3 days because the questions keep me awake. It’s not that I’m worrying, really, just… thinking? I think I could sleep better if the worry had come back, but it hasn’t.

As far as we can tell, all modern devices are broken, too. Computers and phones and such, digital cameras, generators... we don’t even know what the rest of the world looks like. I hadn’t realised how much gets controlled by computers these days, we don’t even have central heating or water access in our flat. Rumours and news are spreading person-to-person, like in the Olden Days. We only have emergency systems that were installed in case of nation-wide blackout. I guess I’m glad we don’t actually have a blackout, we just need to get the computers back to work. (If I understood it correctly.)

Melanie thinks it’ll all come back to life in a few more days. I certainly hope so. I also hope I’ll stop feeling like this. Or rather, not feeling like anything. It’s so strange. Like in the first days after the incident, when I just felt numb?

They’re gone! I want to feel like a person again! What if I never get myself back?

 They’re actually gone.

 What will we do with our lives now? Basira isn’t the only one who feels uprooted. I think the whole world feels like that right now.

I hope my computer comes back soon. I miss music, and making things. My photos, all those memories.

I don’t want to lose all of that. I want to start fresh, but not without records of the past.

…I’ve had a lot of time to think about that, specifically. Records, and futures.

What the Ghost is done, right? There’s no fun in creepy ghost stories if you’ve been through an actual, living nightmare.

I think I want to start new with that, too. When everything works again, that is.

New world, new future, new podcast. I like that. I think. Make a record of what happened through eyewitness accounts? Or is that too similar to the Statements… then again, it’ll be more like interviews. And I think we shouldn’t forget.

We owe them that much.

I’ll have to talk it over with Melanie tomorrow. Maybe.

We’ll see.

God, I think maybe… maybe I can actually try and sleep tonight. Writing does seem to help.

 Note to self: thank Laverne for suggesting it. (Also for being there for Melanie. And listening to us. And stopping with that culty nonsense. She’s the only one we found so far, but she actually listened to us. Strange to think that in this world, I have to be grateful for someone not worshipping me for some dumb reason?!)

   Day 4 - Morning

So. Three things.

1) I did manage to fall asleep after all! I’ve always been a bit of an insomniac, especially after the incident, so actually getting some proper rest felt really good.

2) I somehow woke up right as the sun went up! I think I’ve never seen a dawn this beautiful? I watched it from the bedroom window and I’ll definitely describe it to her in detail when she wakes up! The Admiral was sleeping on our pillow, right next to her head, snuggled up against the back of her neck and shoulder... it was so cute. I can’t believe my phone and camera still don’t work! Melanie has that old polaroid camera somewhere but we haven’t found it yet, and I wish my art skills were any better. I did draw a sketch of the two of them though. I’ll cherish it forever, no matter how shitty it is :’)

After everything that happened, the Admiral is still a bit weird around us. He started out really aggressive, calmed down a bit, and now… now he’s weirdly skittish? Meows a lot. Keeps walking around the flat. The only thing that even remotely returns him to how he used to be is tuna. It’s weird.

But seeing him like that, with Melanie? I love him so much.

I think he’ll be okay.

But before I forget, and why I actually got out the diary at this ungodly hour instead of trying to go back to sleep now that the sun is up…

3) I had a really nice dream. And... I don’t even know. I think I want to try and hold onto the feeling? I don’t think I’ve felt that… deeply… in a long while. Maybe the last time was before all this, when we decided to move in together. Before all of this happened.

For a moment, I felt like I was whole again :’)

It didn’t even have Melanie in it, which is very rude tbh. I think Jon was there? The Admiral, too. We were just chilling on the sofa, watching netflix I think... It felt so... mundane??? Casual, somehow??? Like it was normal to feel like that and I just... I want THAT. I want to feel like that again, instead of this weird… blank nothingness? I want that all the time, not just when I’m riding a high or feeling so terrible that it pierces through.

I don’t know if that makes sense but this is just for me anyway so I suppose it doesn’t have to.

 I think I should feel bad about Jon being gone, but I still don’t even feel relief at it being over. Just this vague numbness.

I hate it so much, except I don’t, actually, I just know that I should?

Melanie keeps saying that I need a therapist but if we’re being honest here, I guess I need one the least? The whole goddamn world needs therapy right now. Including the therapists. And I’ve been dealing with this for a long time now.

I guess I keep hoping it’ll just go away somehow.

 Anyways. Enough introspection, I’m going back to bed. I hope I don’t wake them! :)

  Day 4 - Evening

 It’s night now, the sun went down hours ago. We have a bunch of candles, but I’m trying to use them sparingly, so I just have one lit. I put a glass of water next to the candle so now the light gets magnified a bit more. It’s a weird atmosphere, but I kinda like it? Feels… cozy! :)

I’m still not over how everything looks the same, but nothing works like it did before, and there’s this… burden? This collective trauma everyone went through. It feels so surreal. So many things are still broken… it’s like we woke from a collective nightmare, but pieces of it still remain, floating around.

And we just sent it away with the tapes. I really hope those other worlds are doing better than us, but what else could we have done? I… try not to think about it. I know I should, but I still can’t really bring myself to care, or even feel overly guilty for that? …

 Melanie fell asleep with her head in my lap half an hour ago. I was reading to her. She says she loves the sound of my voice, so I’ve started doing that in the evenings. (I still love that we had separate crushes from a distance on each other for ages because of youtube and WTG. We’ve been talking about that a lot, too.)

She still has nightmares, but apparently she’s also been having good dreams, and she looks so peaceful right now. The last few days have been a lot, but in comparison to before, and even before then…

It’s over. We made it out. We get to have a future together. I still can’t quite believe it. :)

 I guess I’m writing again (despite already having done so in the morning) because it somehow helped yesterday and I’m hoping to replicate that. And I have a lot to think about. It’s been a long day.

Basira is still out there, helping out where she can. I think she feels guilty. Melanie says she doesn’t because there was no other choice, but I know her, and I know that she’s lying.

There’s always another choice. We just say that to make it easier to bear.

I hope she knows she can come talk to me when she feels ready to tackle it.

I hope I ever feel able to tackle it myself. No. I will talk to her when I’m ready.

We did talk a bit about things, of course. Melanie doesn’t really remember her dreams, most of the time, but apparently she’s been alternating between horrifying nightmares and a really nice, recurring one that sometimes happens after the nightmares. She doesn’t really remember much of it, but she mentioned it after I told her about the Jon dream. Not what it was about, just… in general.

From the way she talked about it, I think her dad might have been in it? I’m actually not sure, but the way she smiled…

She has that little smile on her lips again, even now, dreaming. The soft one she gets when she talks about good things. About him.

About me.

(I still can’t believe she chose me. How impossibly lucky? How did I ever deserve her? But then, it’s not about that, is it? She is mine, and I am hers, and… life will be good. I know it will be.)

 She’s been smiling a lot more, these past few days.

[voxofthevoid]

Taking It Up The Ass Isn’t Character Growth - A Rant

So, in response to an ask a while back, I said I had a rant brewing on fandom and sex positions, and well, a lot of you wanted to see it, so here you go. You literally asked for it.

Disclaimer: This is going to talk a lot about top/bottom roles in slash fic and fandom attitude towards them and is heavily filtered through the lens of my own tastes and experiences with fandom. I’d also like to be upfront that I am 100% in favor of people writing whatever fictional content they want, and it’s not what fandom does with characters that bothers me but rather how that translates into attitudes towards real, live people. Also, this is the essay version of a slow burn AU because I regurgitate my entire fandom history before getting to the point. Beware.

I discovered fan-fiction around a decade ago, had no clue what the hell it was, got hooked and dived deeper. I started participating in fandom circa 2013, and I was fairly young and also completely inexperienced both sexually and romantically. The fandom in question was Hannibal and my ship of choice was Hannibal/Will. It was/is a very chill fandom in general, but we had our drama. And chief among the contentious topics was—you guessed it—the top/bottom debate. I can’t actually remember any other topic that was discussed and argued for so ardently in that fandom, at least in those days. Even after I drifted away, I came across a few posts on the matter.

Generally, you had two camps—people who supported strict roles and those who were in favor of switching*. And because we’re a society plagued by illogical assumptions, the strict role camp mostly had people who thought Mr. Big Bad Cannibal in the Fancy Suits wouldn’t take it up the ass because he’s older, more experienced, more mentally stable, and of course, more ‘dominant’ in personality. Yes, that sentence is chock full of problematic shit. I am aware. Lots of people were aware and argued strongly against attributing top/bottom roles to personality. I don’t remember anyone arguing as enthusiastically for Top Will, but those voices were also there. But the general idea was that assigning strict top/bottom roles to a male/male couple was casting them in a heterosexual mold and thus, the progressive option was to make them switch. Strict roles also garnered comparisons to “yaoi” and uke/seme stereotypes, which was of course bad and fetishizing and we, the Western media fans, of course had to do better. Stealth racism is fun to untangle.

Anyway, I lapped up the woke juice. Partly because I was a baby queer from Buttfuck Nowhere, Asia, who had zero exposure to LGBT+ communities and what queer folks did with each other. Partly because it was the stance taken by most of my favorite writers so it seemed like a good position to emulate.

Emulate it I did. Most discussions I had about this happened in private with the handful of close friends I had in fandom. Where it really showed was in my writing. I made sure to write switching—maybe not in every fic, but then I alternated between fics. Thing is though, I did have a preference. I liked Top Will. I created and consumed a ton of Top Hannibal, and sometimes it was okay, sometimes it was not, but I couldn’t pinpoint why it made me uncomfortable. Back then, I thought I was a cis questioning/bi girl and once again, the impression I got was that not being MLM, having a preference was automatic fetishization. So I tried my best to justify my preferences, to my friends at least. I think what I said was that fandom was skewed towards Top Hannibal, and I liked the opposite because I’m a contrary fuck. Which I am, to be fair, but this was just me desperately trying to figure shit out without being offensive.

That’s the line I touted all the way until 2018, which was when I fucked off to grad school in A City, finally freed of Buttfuck Nowhere and able to actually date. At this point, I was settled in my sexuality (girls only) and questioning my gender (non-binary or trans guy). I had also tentatively figured out during undergrad that I’m an exclusive top and a Dom. Actual attempts at dating cemented that, yes, those are my preferences, about as flexible as a steel rod. Cue motherfucking epiphany over my fanfic tastes.

And see, over these years, I was engaging intermittently with fandom. I dutifully wrote switch couples. I also continued to have rigid tastes and continued to explain it away as being a contrary fuck—to be fair, until Steve/Bucky, my preference did seem to be the opposite of the larger fandom preference. But correlation, as we know, isn’t causation. Until Steve/Bucky, I continued to write versatile couples because I honestly didn’t have the guts to just say I liked it just one way. I do now but even then, I feel compelled to add that it’s because I want to see my own taste reflected in fic, so I write/read the character I relate to as a top, it's not that deep etc. Would I be as forthright if I didn’t have that reason? Would I have such strict preferences in fic if I didn’t have strict preferences IRL? The latter’s a mystery, but the former isn’t—I wouldn’t be because fandom is still entrenched in the same ideas that got me to this point to begin with.

In every fandom I’ve been in, I’ve seen some version of this debate go around. Sometimes, it’s one party saying “why would you write Character X as a bottom, he’s so Reason A” and a reblog chain that insults the OP and/or extols the virtues of switching. Sometimes, it’s a general-ish message that says they don’t understand why people have strict preferences when we all know real gay couples switch. Sometimes, it’s blanket statements that accuse anyone with preferences of fetishizing. Sometimes, it’s the same reasoning that gets you “Character Y is a top because of Reason B” transposed on versatile couples except this takes the form of “they switch because they’re equals.”

Ya’ll, I’m fucking tired.

I have long since lost count of the number of stories I’ve seen where an exclusive top learning bottom and liking it is character growth. Where a character who prefers to bottom taking a turn on top is empowering.

Isolated, these are fine. But I’ve seen enough of such stories that it’s distinctly discomfiting and a major squick. Sometimes a trigger, if I'm too immersed in the story. I’m not going to try and burn an author at the stake because they pissed me off. I am just going to close that window and quietly handle my shit. People can write whatever they want. But this one theme hits too close to home, as you can see from this 1.6k rant.

My friend (also my ex-girlfriend) and I had an all-out bitching session about this the other day. Both of us are kinky fuckers who have rigid, complementary roles we prefer and we have both had our grueling days of struggling to reconcile our sexual tastes with our ideologies precisely because of how these things are frowned upon in conservative and progressive circles. Seeing that in fandom, of all places, is both insulting and exhausting. Topping and bottoming aren’t personality traits. Neither is D/s. It’s sexual preference and power play. It really does not have to be that deep. I am not exorcising childhood trauma using the bodies of women. My partners, former and current, have not been brainwashed by the patriarchy. We will not become better, more complete individuals once I magically stop being a stone top and my partners embrace the joys of a strap-on.

I have, with my own two eyes, seen someone say that in a really committed relationship, of course the couple will switch.

Bullshit.

It’s transparent bullshit. This does not get attributed to cisgender M/F couples. Even when the automatic assumptions of woman = bottom and man = top get addressed, switching isn't presented as the default. No one’s saying “oh, if you really love your husband, you’ll peg him”. I do know butch/femme sapphic couples get their own share of shit. Because it’s all heteronormativity, right? Can’t have any other reason for top/bottom roles.

You have two extremes with “so who’s the woman” on one end and “it’s woke only if they switch” on the other, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re equally damaging. There shouldn’t be a pressure, however subtle, to conform your taste in fiction to some arbitrary idea of progressiveness. People are going to like whatever they want anyway; all this does is create an atmosphere where those likes can’t always be freely expressed without a lot of mental gymnastics. We’re seeing so many versions of this in the pushback against so-called problematic content, but smaller, subtler versions exist too.

Fictional characters aren’t real. They can be whatever you want them to be. And yes, other people will often want them to be the exact opposite of your ideas, but that’s just how things work. Meanwhile, the people behind these usernames? They’re real. No one should be throwing real people under the bus to ‘protect’ characters that don’t exist. Hannibal Lecter doesn’t care whether he gets fucked or dismembered in Author B’s fanfiction, but the discourse that surrounds the dick up his ass? That does affect flesh and blood people.

I am not claiming that this is the only attitude in fandom. Middlegrounds do exist. Plenty of people abide by fic and let fic and there are folks who pipe up to say not every RL queer couple switches. But it’s often the extremes that reach most people. That was certainly my experience, and I’m not the only one.

I don’t really know how to end this post. It is 100% a rant and one that’s been building up for a while. Bottom line is that people’s sexual behavior varies wildly and whenever you attack sexual tastes in fanfic by saying it’s unrealistic - or worse because let’s be real, that’s a very tame word choice - please remember that there’s likely someone out there who practices it.

* I’m using switch and versatile synonymously in this post. It’s mostly concerned with top/bottom debates. A lot of what I’m saying is also echoed in portrayals of and discussions surrounding D/s dynamics, but I’m not addressing that as much for now.  

[fake-wizard]

How did you become a trans terf? This is really interesting!

Thank you for this question because I can now delay watching my lectures for like 30 min. 

I got tumblr my freshman year, started my deep dive into the realm of tumblr’s lgbtqianpd+++ stuff. I did a bunch of ace discourse as an “inclusionist” then as an “exclusionist”, started iding as nonbinary demiboy, ace/aro, he/they, got a binder i think during the winter of my sophomore year and came out to a couple friends as nb. Went more towards ftm. Started dating my current boyfriend winter of my junior year, told him I was id’ing as ftm (he’s bisexual, didn’t matter) and the rest of my friends, changed my name and pronouns socially. Start of my senior year I told my family and had them change pronouns and name as well. My bday is in October, so turned 18 and was going to start testosterone. 

By the winter of that year however, I had been hate-reading a lot of “terf” blogs. And what I found was that I could not argue against what they were saying. I was experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance about it all, repeating the same mantras but knowing they didn’t quite add up. 

Specifically about: If sexuality is based on an internal sense of gender, how can you be attracted to anyone until they tell you what gender they are? If a lesbian sees a woman and she says “i’m ftm” does that mean the lesbian is now a bisexual because they were “attracted to a man” or is a switch supposed to flip and they stop being attracted? If sexism is based on “being perceived as a woman/passing as a woman” then why do butches who pass as men still experience sexism? If being gay is about “being perceived as gay in society” then wouldn’t that make all the homosexual couples historically who passed as hetero for safety suddenly become actual literal heteros? If transmen have male privilege, why are they not represented in politics, are targetted for sexual abuse by straight men, and need access to abortion just like women do? If transwomen don’t have male privilege, why are they the main voices of the movement? They can reap all the benefits of a male life for 50 years, and then suddenly none of that mattered? If me and my boyfriend’s relationship is “gay” now that i id’d as ftm, how come we could legally get married and adopt in any country in the world? I was raised being told I Should like and date men, I never once believed my attraction to men was a sin, and gay men experience the Exact Opposite, so how could we both possibly be gay men? Why do transwomen have male patterns of violence? Why have I only ever heard of stories of transwomen abusing transmen, and not the other way around? Is it possible to only be attracted to the same sex? To say no is to say that it’s possible for all women to like dick, which is obviously fucked up. What is so different about a man and a transwoman that means a lesbian is supposed ot like the latter? Why can’t anybody define women? first woman, then female, then afab, the goalpost kept moving. What is there to being a woman besides being female, isn’t all that extra stuff just stereotypes? When my sister is distressed with her body and denied herself food, or I cut myself, that’s a bad thing because it hurts your body, but hrt and a mastectomy hurt your body, they even risk killing you, but that’s okay? I took a sociology class and it’s clear socialization effects behavior - but somehow magically trans people grow up uneffected by it? If socialization can influence women to wear makeup, dress, and act in specific ways that arent’ innate, and cause higher rates of eating disorders, couldn’t it effect dysphoria as well?

And so much more!!!

And that’s only on the trans side - I also had my eyes opened to the horrors of pornography and prostitution, the rates of domestic violence, and all the other terrible sex-based oppression that women are subjected to globally. There is so much more to being a radfem than the trans issues too. 

So for two years (winter of my senior year to winter of my college’s high school year) I decided not to transition. I engaged with radfem tumblr and talked about all these things with my female friends in person as well, it was like getting a huge weight off my shoulders too. And it really did help lessen my dysphoria to an extent. I came up with a long list of coping mechanisms to employ for dysphoria as well. 

But by this february, I was just so tired of that. I still supported everything I say about radical feminism, about sex based oppression, protecting homosexuals, and the dangers of medical transition. But dysphoria is just this constant painful presence day in and day out, and I pursued medical transition in february. I applaud every woman who chooses not to transition, and ultimately view transitioning as giving in, because I can no longer be a role model to young dysphoric women, who shows them that you don’t need to transition. 

At this point, I love my body more than ever and I can’t imagine regretting these changes really. I will miss connecting with women the way I used to, especially as a woman in science, but the women in my life from before transition will always see me as one of them still, and I appreciate that. 

The way I see it, words don’t hurt me at all, they are immaterial, and as a scientist I value coherent definitions, and I understand the realities of sex. So my goal with transition is to pass as male in society and to alter the parts of my body that bring me distress - I know i’m not literally male. And I think all trans people need to get to the point where they understand that, it really helps mentally. 

And I’ll always think, maybe if i had different friends (half of my friends understand, half think i am or would think i am an evil terf) or was dating a woman instead of a man (i’m bisexual, thought i was hetero in highschool (but called myself a gay man lmao), and dating someone with the same body seems like a big deal in handling dysphoria), if i tried harder with my coping mechanisms, if I saw a therapist who understood all this and didn’t just encourage me to do whatever I wanted, maybe i wouldn’t be transitioning. But I’m happy now, so that’s what I focus on as mattering to me, and that’s what I want to pursue. 

I do caution others from doing the same though. 

Also tangent at the end here, I call myself “trans” because I’m medically transitioned. To me, “cis v trans” makes no sense and is sexist. But “dysphoric vs not dysphoric” or “medically transitioned vs not medically transitioned” make more sense to me. 

[diegolabhont]

I didn't mean to fall in love with you

Chapter One

Book: Queen B - Choices (Universe)

Pairing:  Poppy Min-Sinclair x Trans!Male MC  (Beck Hughes)

Genre: None (in this post, al least)

Rating: Anyone can read it, really.

This is me trying to write by and for the Trans community, specially FTM community, meaning, trans guys, but I actually took the liberty to use They/them pronouns for everyone out there who´s interested (Also, the name Beck was the most neutral one I could find, trying to use the cannon Bea Hughes)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can someone explain to her how a person who claims to be so disinterested in the ranking was magically climbing to the top twenty?

Poppy didn’t buy it for a second, she always knew Beck were going to be a pain in her ass ever since the first time she saw them looking at her as if they weren’t impressed, but she wasn’t fully aware of how much.

“You don’t have to worry about them, Poppy” Chloe said while the strawberry blonde retouch her make up in the mirror inside her own room. “Beck is just a dude”

“Transphobia much, Chloe?” Veronica murmured playfully, wanting to start drama among her streaming fans.

“No! What I'm saying is… Beck's brain works as a regular dude, right? How much smart can they be?”

“Ha! That´s rich coming from you” Veronica laughed.

Both girls started a discussion about related shit, Beck’s brain, hormones and else while Poppy put on the mascara. Completely silent, thinking.

She treated Beck as a common enemy, she attacked them just like she would to any other lost lamb trying to be the wolf but it was not enough. Even one of those plans exploded in her own face: ruining and breaking Beck's guitar caused that they not only get a flashy and beautiful new one, but sang side by side with the one and only Jaylen Riaz, making a huge performance. Even better than hers, which was something painful and humiliating at the same time, especially after Veronica told her Beck’s YouTube channel had a followers increase, making them even more popular.

Chloe was right on something: Beck’s brain worked like a dude, and if she had learned something was that men in general were manipulable. Take a look at Michael, he was dumb as hell. Liam was a douchebag. Luis, Ford… well, they… they´re there. The only golden boy among them was Carter, and yet, he wasn´t that hard, she just gave him what he wanted in that party and after that, everything ran smoothly.

And that´s what she needed.

Poppy´s look changed, her eyes sparkled in a very malicious way and a smile crossed her face for a split second. She now had a plan, and unexpectedly, it was a Chloe attribution.

“Maybe if we accused them of cheating…?” Chloe suggested, but Poppy knew better.

“That won´t be necessary, Chlo” Poppy intervened for the first time in a while, making both girls look at her intrigued. They knew Poppy, and the little smile she had on her lips as she applied lipstick was a proof. The blonde was onto something juicy. Veronica ended the live and awaited. “Beck will be mine.”

~~X~~

It was kinda lame to her, but finding Beck completely alone under the football stands playing guitar was at least convenient. They were an eye candy from the start, that was a fact. The way that white t-shirt embraced their body was something else to see, her mind went back to the second time she saw them. The sassy rock star kind of look Beck had, even the haircut was perfect, Poppy knew that was a Zoey Wade signature and she kinda thanked her for it. Beck was damn fine, that fact made easier her plan to be honest.

“You know… You do pass pretty well as a man”

Beck stopped playing, literally frozen in place as a statue.

“What did you just say?” Their tone of voice was cold, almost insulted. Did she just get it wrong? No, she´s never wrong. A Queen can´t be wrong, especially a Min-Sinclair queen.

“It was a compliment, Farmsville” she said, rolling her eyes.

“That´s not a compliment” Beck chuckled, putting the guitar aside. “I mean, I don´t mind, but if you are going to use that to the trans community… It~ may not end well” Poppy frowned, a little pissed off. She was doing an effort, no-one had ever heard a compliment from her and this little sh… “But thanks.” Beck offered her a sweet smile a second before turn it into a mocking one. “You do pass pretty well as a woman, too”

“Go fuck yourself!”

“And now she gets it!” They started laughing, making her really angry. Poppy walked away fuming, her head up high and a killer look murdering anyone who dare crossing ways with her.

That stupid ASSHOLE. Did they THINK they could disrespect her?! To HER! She was the number ONE, the fucking RULER of the entire school. Beck was lucky enough to be in her radar and they just throw stupid shit like that!

“To be fair… I did say it first”

“I thought it was a COMPLIMENT” She fight against herself. “What am I? Some trans expert?!”

“No… But I can be. I mean, to destroy my enemy…”

“I have to know them...”

Even thought she was still mad about it, Poppy tapped wildly though her phone. She needed to do something, and she knew just the thing.

“It´s ON, jackass”

~~X~~

POV: Beck

Top fifteen. Everyone was losing their shit because they were now top twenty and Beck... Well... They just didn´t want it.

And yeah, sure, that was kinda good. The students in Belvoire had begun to pay attention to their music as well, Beck even caught a few of them listen to songs Beck wrote and some other cover as well. Their art was taking off and that was awesome, don't get it wrong, that was something Beck wanted for so long, but...

They were afraid.

What if it was because of the stupid ranking?

What if Beck just wasn´t that good, and the only thing people would want was that Beck who studded up against Poppy Min-Sinclaire and lived to tell? Even Zoey, she was talking about popularity, Belvoire elite, and some “Person to watch-out” or shit Award which yes, was huge! But… Beck really was afraid that it was Beck who puts the music high and not backwards.

What if…

What if Poppy really messes all up?

“You know… You do pass pretty well as a man”

Poppy´s words in their mind caught Beck off guard. What was her deal anyway? She came and said some weird shit, and...

Actually, everything in that interaction was weird as fuck. And not just that, Beck meet Taylor by accident later that day in the ice cream shop, they both talked a little and they found out she had a big crush onto some random guy Beck didn´t knew before.

Of course Beck was the matchmaker! They even helped her by carrying those stupid anti-diarrheic pills to the lion´s den. Ok, yes, maybe~ Beck should´ve had given them to someone and not just let them in the front door… But it wasn´t their fault that The T found out!! Poppy was losing it, and of course it was them to blame.

Why can´t they just have a normal life… with normal problems… and not… this?

“I´m dead… I´m actually dead…” Beck thought while burying their head on their hands, tired.

“Beck? Hello? I assume you heard the details of the assignment.”

“What?”

“Ehm… Yeah! Totally” Beck said with a “confident” smile that nobody believed in, Professor Roberta even frowned before going back to the lecture, while Beck tried uselessly to catch something about the assignment from their classmates´ laptops. She hated Beck anyway, but it wasn´t good news to be always in her bad side.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! … What did she say?”

“Mass comm is all about reaching people far and wide, so this project is meant to give the voiceless in our own community a voice by…”

A penetrant gaze nailed their nape, giving them chills. Beck immediately looked for that one hawk over them and not to their surprise the person found on the other side was that deadly beauty called Poppy Min-Sinclair, watching Beck as they´re a prey. Feeling really drove up the wall, Beck winked playfully at her, expecting her to look away or some rude expression towards them.

But no.

Scaring the shit out of them, Poppy actually smiled back at Beck. A sweet, flirty smile that left them feeling their heart racing as crazy and their cheeks burning red, her dark eyes so into theirs that all their system collapsed... What was happening?

“Earth to Beck!”

Professor Roberta yelled, making Beck jump a little in their sit, breaking all eye contact between them both. When did Beck turn their body completely to watch Poppy? Of course the professor was mad, Beck was practically giving her their back! As faster as they could, Beck took the right seat, being even more embarrassed now while Poppy let go a chuckle, they could hear her from any other laughter just as clearly as if she were so close.

“Oh, sorry. I… Sorry”

“Find your community service project partner please” Professor said. Beck gathered their things and head into the aisle, looking around, praying to find someone whiling to work with them and, mainly, explain to them what was that project about. The thing was everyone had already a partner. Everyone except for…

The strawberry blonde was gazing Beck as sure as someone who´s waiting for this chance can be. Smiling that same smile that caused them to feel butterflies in their stomach… Beck wasn´t sure if they were aroused… or scared.

“Professor Roberta… I need a new partner” Beck practically begged. “I´m sorry. I just can´t work with Poppy.”

The pretty but odd teacher was about to say something. Something bad based on the expression on her face, but a perfect made-up laughter cut her words, as Beck was feeling how a soft and warm hand hooked to their arm.

“Nonsense, professor! I am pretty sure we´ll be working just fine.” Poppy said, a relaxed expression drawn on her porcelain face. “Let´s go, Hughes.”

Ok, Beck was now scared. As both of them walked out the classroom, Beck´s brain was running wild, thinking about every and each form Poppy could use to disappear them from the face of the earth. Ironic, Beck survived Farmsville but they´ll be totally done in New York. Ha! Life hates them.

“Listen, I know what you are thinking…”

Really?

“... but the last thing I need right now is having my GPA taken away. So I´ve already figured it all out. We´re doing an animal shelter commercial for our project. I can ask daddy to borrow the equipment and crew”

“Didn´t think of you as a daddy person” Beck laughed, a little more repose.

“Shut the fuck up, Farmsville. This will be easy, so all I need you to do is… Oh my god.”

Poppy stared at her phone completely in shock, color draining from her face as it was sucked by a dementor.

“I have to go. We can figure out the deets later, I´ll text you where to meet me”

Then, she just left. Beck took a deep breath and let out a hiss.

“Gosh, this school is going to kill me!”

They said, who would have thought a class could be so much?

-----

Next

[miraculoussage]

Breaking Out part 2

Rating: General

Characters: Adrien Agreste/Chat Noir main character; lots of other characters making an appearance, lots of Plagg, Marinette/Ladybug, and Gabriel

Relationships: (Minor) Lovesquare

Other tags: Trans boy Adrien, mostly closeted trans Adrien, transphobia (no transphobic violence), mentions of a dead name but no actual use of the dead name, misgendering, mentions of Dysphoria; supportive friends, Gabriel Agreste is a soggy tissue, minor redesigns of LB and CN costumes, major redesigns of civilian Adrien bc closet trans. Use of the word queer as an identifier and not a slur. TW for police but just barely.

Part 1

♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

He ended up on Marinette’s balcony. It wasn’t uncommon for him to stop in on nights where he couldn’t come over as Adrien, but he tried to avoid visiting every single time Adrien couldn’t visit. Even with the glamour of the Miraculous, it was a suspicious situation. He made himself comfortable on a lounge chair, laying with his arms behind his head, waiting for Marinette to come up to the roof. Somehow she always knew when he was there, even if he’d been silent or he knew she wasn’t in her room when he got there. She was quick today, no snacks or drinks, no deck of cards, no sketchbook. She had her phone clutched in her hand, the screen open to a copy of Adrien’s post, and she was obviously stressed out about it.

“What’s up, princess?” He kept his tone light, but he felt guilty about making her worry like this, even if it wasn’t entirely his fault.

“My friend, uh, well.” In lieu of explaining Adrien’s gender situation, she handed her phone to Chat Noir, and he made a show of looking surprised. “He’s coming to live here. He ran away from home today after his father tried to basically imprison him for coming out. I know he didn’t want to come straight here because his father would check here first, and didn’t want to get us involved in this part. So I know he’s out of the mansion, and he says he’s safe and they won’t find him, but I’m still worried.”

“I understand that feeling. Even when there’s no Akuma and Ladybug isn’t transformed, I worry still. No one knows who she is, even me, but it’s a constant anxiety I think we both deal with. Her and I. The life of a secret superhero, right?” He grinned at Marinette. She smiled back briefly, but she sighed deeply. “Do you want me to go look for him, or do you want me to stick around with you for a bit?”

Marinette took the charm Adrien made for her out of her pocket and fiddled with the beads while she thought. “I think... I want you to stay here, for a while at least. Adrien said he was safe and I have to trust him on that, but I could use a distraction.”

“Is that all I am to you? A distraction?” he teased, happy to see her roll her eyes at his antics.

“Oh, yes, absolutely kitty. Nothing but a distraction. Wait here, I’ll go grab some actual distractions. And food?”

“Absolutely food. Bakery left overs and some fruit or veggies?” he suggested.

“Sure thing. Be right back, don’t break anything.”

He moved from the lounge chair to the small table, letting himself take some deep breaths and appreciate the warm late-spring air. Marinette was right, he didn’t want to get them pulled into the immediate situation, especially if his father decided to contact the police. He was sixteen and left of his own volition, but his father was... persuasive when he threw his name and money around. Adrien was safe, of course. Technically, Adrien didn’t exist at the moment, so no one would be able to find him anyways. Talking to Marinette was nice, but he would also love to have Plagg around right now.

Just as Marinette was coming back up through the trap door, tires screeched on the street below and a car door slammed. Great.

“Where is she??” Nathalie’s voice rang out from below, usual calm replaced with anger. Marinette rushed to the railing to look down to the street with Chat Noir at her side.

“Ugh, he didn’t even have the guts to show up himself.” It was clear that Marinette was not impressed with Gabriel; since meeting Adrien, her admiration for his work was completely overshadowed by his treatment of Adrien and literally every other human being. If you knew where to look, you could find testimonies from Gabriel’s employees, though a lot of them were buried by lawsuits and bribes. “I’ll go help my parents deal with this. Sorry, Chat...”

“I’ll meet you down there,” he said with a smile and a wink. “Superheroes protect people against villains, after all.” The small laugh he got out of her lit his heart up. As long as he could help it, Marinette would never face trouble alone.

Vaulting over the railing, Chat landed between Nathalie and the front door of the bakery. “I’m pretty sure the bakery is closed by now, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow to get a dacquoise!” He kept up a signature Chat Noir grin and casual pose leaning against the bakery door.

Nathalie, to her credit, was thrown off by one of Paris’s superheroes, anger morphing into shock for a moment before she was back on her mission. “These people are hiding a runaway minor!”

“Runaway? Hey, you’re Adrien Agreste’s babysitter, right?” He squinted as if trying to place her face.

“Babysi- Adrien?? That is not her name!” Nathalie’s fists were clenching. If Adrien didn’t know better, he would think she was about to punch him. If he had any less self control and moral obligations, he would probably punch her. “She is to come home at once and these people are enabling this tantrum!”

“The only tantrum I see is yours, madam. I think it would be best if you leave.” His smile fell, and he watched as a police car pulled up to the curb, and Roger stepped out.

“What seems to be the problem, madam?”

Nathalie rehashed everything to the officer. During her shouting, all three of the Dupain-Chengs came around the side of the building, only somewhat confused. Mostly, they looked frustrated. “Adrien isn’t here,” Marinette interrupted Nathalie’s ranting.

Before Nathalie could attack a teenager, Roger held up his hands to placate each group. “Okay, okay. Listen. I can search the building if you consent, Sabine, but otherwise there’s nothing I can do unless there’s a warrant.”

“Of course, we aren’t hiding anyone or anything. But Madmoiselle Sancouer is not invited inside, I’m sure you understand. Chat Noir, would you be a dear?” Sabine smiled at him, and he bowed dramatically in turn.

“My pleasure, Madame Cheng.” He would do anything for Sabine, even if she asked him to climb the Louvre and dance the Cotton-Eyed Joe on the top. This was no problem.

Nathalie paced on the sidewalk, scowl everpresent. The car was empty, he guessed his bodyguard was out looking elsewhere. It didn’t take long for Roger to sweep the building; Adrien obviously wasn’t there. He said as much to Nathalie. Before she could argue, Chat gestured towards her car. “Adrien isn’t here, like they said. Au revoir madmoiselle.”

When Nathalie gave in and drove away, Roger excused himself as well. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that.” Even as Chat, he had a friendly relationship with them. It wasn’t exactly odd that he’d helped them out with a personal situation. “What was that all about anyways, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Well, Adrien Agreste, you must have seen his post,” Tom started, and Chat smiled at Marinette, “his father is not a good man. Adrien is coming to live with us. He isn’t here right now because he has some things to do before it’s official.” Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re all worried about him, though. He lost access to his phone so we have no way to contact him, we just want to know that he’s alright.”

“I could try to find him,” he glanced at Marinette again, and she gave him a slight nod. “I’ll let him know what happened.”

“Can you bring this to him?” Sabine held out her phone. “We’d be more comfortable knowing we can reach him.”

“Sure thing. I’ll stop by some day soon to grab some snacks! Until then, stay safe, everyone.”

♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

By the time the sun was far beyond the horizon, Adrien had gotten a room at Le Grand Paris as Chat Noir, texted Tom to reassure and thank them, and laughed with Plagg about how funny it was that he was asked to check on himself.

“Adrien. I want. Cheese.”

“And I want to be at home watching a movie and eating pastries, but we can’t always get what we want, can we?” Despite his words, he was smiling and already dialing room service. “Two wheels of Camembert, extra runny, the dinner special, and a pair of scissors, please! You can leave it outside the door. Yes, thank you.”

“Only two?! You’ve been running around Paris as Chat Noir for hours, I’m hungry!” Plagg draped himself dramatically over the top of the giant TV. “How will I ever survive on such little food??”

Adrien laughed despite himself. When Plagg grinned over at him, he realized he’d fallen prey to Plagg’s plot to distract him. “You’ll get more for breakfast, you bottomless pit. Be grateful I even ordered you two, I almost decided you could just have what’s left in my bag!”

“Okay, okay, two is fine! Don’t take away my precious Camembert, I beg you! We can’t celebrate without food!” Well, Plagg’s plot was working, because Adrien hadn’t felt better in weeks.

“Celebrate? Already? Nothing is confirmed yet.”

“Maybe not, but come on, kid! Three years ago this could only be a dream, and you’re making it happen!” Plagg spun around in the air, happier than Adrien had ever seen him without Camembert. “You figured out a plan to get yourself safe and happy and you had the courage and strength to go through with it! Even in the face of all the things that could go wrong. You still took a chance! Remember your first birthday as Chat Noir?”

“Yeah, duh, the Bubbler! How could I forget?” Adrien smiled. He loved when Plagg got like this, the rare times he shared his emotions.

“It was mostly rhetorical,” Plagg joked. “I wanted you to have a chance to have fun and freedom even if it meant letting an Akuma run around for a bit. He was barely dangerous, really, I knew you and the ‘bug could take him down easy-cheesy! And all the times I complained about you going to school? You had a chance to do whatever you wanted! You picked school every time and yeah, yeah, I get it now; your friends are pretty cool for humans! When I did all that I was trying to lead you to doing something like this, something wild and freeing! Maybe not ‘run away and come out on social media’ wild, but you got the freeing part right.”

“I think you also wanted me to stay home from school because you’re lazy.”

“Touché.”

There was a knock at the door, and two minutes later, Adrien rolled the tray in. Plagg didn’t even wait for him to take the cover off the cheese platter before diving in; Adrien actually took his time with his food. It was difficult, though. He kept glancing towards the scissors, excited and nervous. “Plagg, save some for later.” Lifting the cover of the platter, he saw Plagg had already gone through the whole first wheel. “I need your help with something.”

“Yeah, yeah, c’mon,” Plagg grabbed the scissors before Adrien even told him what he wanted to do, and flew off towards the bathroom. “I can’t promise it’ll be the cleanest cut with my guidance but I can at least help you get it sort of even!”

Adrien grinned and jumped over the bed, rushing in after Plagg. He stared at himself in the mirror, took the scissors from his kwamii, and let out a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

Adrien slept soundly, free of his metaphorical and almost literal shackles. Or he would have, if not for the midnight Akuma. Plagg complained the whole three seconds between the alert and Adrien transforming, and all of the time Adrien was awake after defeating the Akuma, until he got his next two wheels of Camembert in the morning.

The Akuma wasn’t particularly difficult to beat, but it took a while. The Tracker was slippery, just like her prey. It was emotionally draining too, hearing his deadname and getting misgendered for hours by Nathalie. He couldn’t say he was surprised about her being akumatized, and Ladybug didn’t seem surprised either.

“Of course she’s looking for Adrien.” Her sigh was heavy. Midnight akumas really were the worst.

“How do you know about that?” he asked. If she asked how he knew he could always tell her he heard it from Marinette. It wasn’t a lie, after all, and Ladybug knew he liked to visit the Dupain-Chengs- it wasn’t much of a secret.

“Oh, uh, I saw his post, and I know how, er, overprotective his father is of him.”

The Tracker had already gotten away twice, following a trail that led nowhere. Chat Noir had to pretend he was worried that she would find Adrien, and keeping up that act on top of everything was really draining. He couldn’t help the heavy sighs that kept working their way out of his lungs.

“Chaton, are you doing okay?” Ladybug stopped him on a roof with a gentle hand on his wrist. It caught him off guard, and she steadied him when he stumbled.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Just... well, this whole situation.” She looked around conspiratorially, but no one was around on a rooftop at midnight. “If I understand right, Adrien ran away because his father is transphobic...”

“.... Oh! Yeah, I’m fine! I’m relieved, actually. Proud! I’m glad he’s going to be out of that situation soon. My friend Marinette and her parents are helping him. It’s a situation I wouldn’t mind being in myself! Aside from the ‘being tracked down by an Akuma’ thing. Speaking of which, let’s go! We’ll have to search for the Tracker, we let her get pretty far ahead.”

He smiled when she turned her back. Her concern for him warmed his heart. He knew it wasn’t possible- their identities had to remain secret and they had to stay professional as superheroes- but he still loved her to bits.

It was only three hours later when he finally got back to the comfort of the hotel bed that he let himself relax and think. The day had been harrowing, but he had a lot of support, people who loved him. People that he loved back. Plagg, Ladybug, Tom and Sabine. Marinette. With no one around to witness it, Adrien covered his face with his hands and let out a frankly embarrassing squeal. He was going to be living WITH MARINETTE! As housemates, but still. All the additional time he could spend with her, shared breakfasts, doing chores together, arguing over which live-action Spider-man was best. (Marinette insisted it was Tom Holland, but Adrien knew the real answer was Andrew Garfield.) Maybe, just maybe, if Marinette got to be around him more often, she could... feel the same way about him as he felt about her.

♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

Stick around for part 3! That’s right I’m not done yet

[echooo78]

Here’s my Week 2 submission for @fander-pride-meetup. I didn’t do Week 1 so I hope it’s ok, that I still did week 2.

This is my coming out story told through Patton.

In the last section, it switches off between they/them pronouns and he/him pronouns kinda randomly to show that he uses both.

TW: Transphobia (specifically towards enbies), homophobia, acephobia, panphobia, biphobia, unsupportive parents, outing someone.

"I like boys!" Patton blurted out. His brother Hayden and him had been talking and venting about their parents, and it just slipped out.

"Ok."

*********

"What's Asexual?" Someone in Patton's class asked.

"Me," Patton joked before freezing. He wasn't out yet, crap.

"Really? That's cool," Virgil replied nonchalantly. Patton breathed out a sigh of relief.

********

"I'm panromantic asexual, it means I like people regardless of gender, but I don't want to have sex with anyone," Patton told his siblings as they were hanging out one day.

"I am also pan," Patton's brother, Logan replied. His other siblings said their support for the two and Patton smiled. It felt nice to be out to more people.

That feeling didn't last long.

"What is Patton?" His mom asked. Patton listened, not turning around or showing any sign that he could hear.

"Panromantic asexual," Hayden replied.

"What even is that?" She asked, disdain in her voice.

"It means, I like people regardless of gender, but I don't feel sexual attraction for anyone." Patton said, joining the conversation.

"Okay." She rolled her eyes, "You know you're too young to know that?"

Patton just walked away.

******

"What even is the difference between pan and bi?" Patton's mom asked as they were driving through the city.

"Pan is liking people regardless of gender, and bi is liking two or more gender's but having a preference," Patton explained, trying to be happy that his mom was attempting to understand, even if she asked with a disgusted, condescending tone.

"Whatever, I don't get it." She rolled her eyes.

*****

"I hope none of my kids are trans," his mom commented off handedly. Patton tried to ignore the hurt that statement caused. He's pretty sure he is cis, but he had been thinking a lot about non binary and demo-boy and how they felt right.

*****

"There's this person at the elementary school I work at who had a they/them pin on." His mom's friend sounded absolutely disgusted. "Like do whatever you want, I guess, but there are children there. No need to shove it down their faces!" His mom nodded at her friend's words.

"It's not shoving it down their faces, they just want to be referred to by their proper pronouns, and the pin is easier than correcting everyone." Patton defended.

"Yeah, but it's an elementary school," his mom replied.

"So?" Patton tried not to get angry. "Would you like it if you were constantly referred to by the wrong gender, and everytime you tried to correct them, or have a way to show you're correct pronouns, people belittle you and/or act disgusted and mad?"

"Well the only "non-binary" person I ever knew, later came out as fully mtf trans."

"Yeah, and he's valid for that.  Figuring out your gender is so hard! But that doesn't mean that applies for all non-binary people!"

"Whatever," his mom replied. Patton stormed off.

*****

"I just want you to be open to everything," his mom said.

"I am! I literally said, I like everyone!" Patton said, his patience wearing thin.

"I don't mean, about the pan stuff," Patton tried to ignore her tone. "I'm talking about you thinking you're ace."

Of course. Patton rolled his eyes. His mom continued. "You never know, you might have just not met the right person yet! My friend didn't want sex until she met her husband, but it changed when she met him."

"Ok," Patton replied, trying not to snap at her. He was so tired of her using single people as an end all example. Everyone has different experiences

*****

Patton: I'm a panromantic asexual demiboy

They texted one of their non Lgbtq friends who had moved around a year ago. He waited nervously for her response.

Cristina: Patton, thank you so much for sharing this with me, I am so happy that you can trust me enough to tell me! I will always accept you, no matter what!

I'm sorry to say that I really don't know much about any of that, so would it be ok if I asked you a few questions? Sorry if I'm being insensitive, and you can totally say no if you don't want to. I haven't really dealt with this kind of thing before but I'm really glad that you told me and I'm super happy to be your friend, and just know that I will always accept you and I'm sorry for anyone who hasn't.

Also sorry this message is so long.

Patton smiled, this was more than they had hoped for.

Patton: You can totally ask questions and I'd be  happy to explain! Thank you so much, and I'm glad the message is long it made me happy 😂

Cristina went on to ask a bunch of questions, being extremely respectful the entire time. And Patton happily answered and explained. By the time the conversation ended he couldn't stop smiling.

Patton laid back on his bed. It felt nice to be out and proud of who he was. His mom's comments still hurt, but he had other people who were comforting them every step of the way.