#but ‘actually there is nothing wrong with being gnc in the first place and in fact many people find you hot af’

[hanktalkin]

Okay I had A Thot. Isabela finding out basically the whole barracks is butch4butch, and simply cannot wrap their head around the fact they find Aveline like the pinnacle of female beauty. But Im also kind of split because this theoretical fic could be

From Isabela’s perspective. Maybe working out some of her issues.

Partially from Aveline’s perspective? Because also a core about this is that Aveline doesn’t believe she’s desirable either, or at the very least fundamentally doubts it to the point Isabela can drive a dagger into that one weak point for years upon years. So like, I don’t want to have it be Isabela both be the one who reaffirms her and the source of her low self esteem in the first place, per their act 3 conversation. Can my girl get a little external validation please?

I think. That no one avebela fic has quite scratched the itch for me because theres plenty where aveline needs to work out her issues to be a worthwhile partner (or even just a decent fuck buddy) to isabela but i’ve yet to see anything tackling isabela’s butchphobia/general hatred of gender nonconformity. Which i feel. Has to be something she’s challenged on in order to be similarly good partner to aveline

[velvetvexations]

I did not mean to sleep all day. Here all the non-kink asks in my inbox lol.

Does a little dance. People being weird about transmascs on here has messed up my self perception so bad im not actually sure of my own gender anymore, yayyyyy

Fuck that anon, if you're man that rules. Being a man is awesome. You don't need anyone else's opinion to affect who you are, there is no bad gender.

just saw someone acknowledge trans men are often lumped into female spaces due to bioessentialism but then turn around and say that thats proof that trans men arent oppressed. lol.

People act like being let into the Woman Club is the one and only goal of being trans and it's so fucking annoying.

Ngl I still don't understand why femboys are a "transmisogynistic caricature that can't be reclaimed by transmascs" according to some people. Do you have any insights on this because I genuinely can't understand, femboy sounds like gnc boy culture and in my own experience, maybe transfems before they come out occasionally identify as femboys. Idk is it like, someone with an outwardly feminine appearance being a guy? Because that's why I like calling myself a femboy.

Some people think femboy started as a transfem thing because they're idiots who don't know shit.

hey if catboy is ubiquitous and having nothing to do with crossdressing why did Jerma crossdress when someone drew him as a catboy???

Because catboys are allowed to do that lol. Taking one example of a crossdressing catboy to mean catboys infringe on transfem copyright is wild.

Hi thanks for letting me vent to you cause I am at work and can't properly process my emtions otherwise rn. I've been otherwise generally in a slightly emotionally fragile place and then I just got an awful review for my first actual order from a stranger on Etsy. And like I know logically that it's not the end of the world and I gave them exactly what they ordered and it's not my fault that they measured wrong or didn't take my advice and size up a little for fit etc etc but no one else will know that and I just got started selling craft stuff and it's just a hobby and it sucks that this person clearly expected something that wasn't what they paid for (my prices are low cause it's a hobby sorry I don't have super professional materials that would make my stuff cost double) but it's really fucking me up and I am trying not to like cry at work because of this and it's so stupid. This was just my first purchase online that wasn't from a friend and I was so excited and they hated it and didn't even send a message or anything about the length (that was exactly what they asked for by the way) not fitting before leaving a review. It just fucking sucks and I wish my brain didn't react to the most minor disappointments/shows of dislike with the I'm going to kill everyone in this room and then myself meme as first response Thanks for listening. It really helps to be able to vent this somewhere <3

I'm really sorry anon, that sounds so frustrating and hard to deal with. I love you so much. <3 I know you do great work and I hope it goes better next time.

Having NPD sucks, lmao, sorry for the rant ahead. I have to remind myself that the 'mark' on shinigami eyes doesn't actually mean anything, but it's hard sometimes because it's still a stain on my reputation. :( some people will see that and take it at face value, forever associating me with the filth that is transphobia, and I can't do anything about it. I appreciate the people who actually know what a transphobe is going out of their way to remove that mark, but it's a losing battle against a bunch of buffoons who think catgirls are transmisogynistic. sometimes it's really hard to pretend that it doesn't bother me at all, because it's highly insulting for me to be associated with the things I literally fight against. What an insult to my legacy and efforts to even bother to care about other people, you know? I don't HAVE to take time out of my day to do activism, I could just not bother to care at all, but I still try. I deserve praise, not this bullshit😭

I'll praise you! Thank you for fighting against transphobia. <3

All this catboy talk. Wanted to say hi as a catboy. Meow :3

Nya~!

My prediction for TRF discourse in 2025: closeted, non passing trans men shouldn't wear skirts or other traditional women's clothing (even if they don't want to and literally have no other choice) because they're MEN and men wearing women's clothes is obviously always transmisogynistic

All trans men are transmisogynistic because they grew up mocking transfems by wearing women's clothes.

some of this discourse is just so fucking wild i cant believe this is something people are taking so seriously. sipping my tea from the sidelines as a chubby catboy therian lmao

You have a cooler head than I.

iirc the "catgirls are transfem" thing started happening around the time Ferris got popular as a character because, if I'm correct, Ferris actually is transfem (coded?) and following that some people just decided The Aesthetique belonged exclusively to transfems now (also you're so so so so based for loving Schrödinger I remember first seeing him in like 2007 and wishing I looked exactly like him)

Schrodinger is my secret fifth blorbo. I'm obsessed with him. I think about him constantly. High five.

als catboys are only white passing in the way that people love to say anime characters are white lmao (aka cant conceive of the fact that anime characters are actually light skinned Japanese). not to say anime doesn't have a colorism problem but They Are Not White and its racist to say otherwise

lol yes exactly

I might be really stepping in it here, but tangential to catboy/catgirl discourse, I'm starting to get really uncomfortable with how the cutesy moe-blob yuri is treated as "trans lesbian culture" these days? as though none of it was ever straight guy fantasy shit? as though it's ideal representation instead of another vector of impossible beauty standards? idk, maybe I'm just being way too touchy. 😬

It's fine if something becomes emblematic of transfem culture but you just can't pretend something was always transfem when it blatantly wasn't lol

you got marked red on shinigami eyes and i havev no idea why

My smoke too tough, my swag too different, my bitch too bad.

juggalo here. we don't want them.

Devastating.

For what it's worth, the "cats transforming into people" thing is probably based on the bakeneko, yeah. The "bake" in "bakeneko" means "transforming", often with the implication of transforming into people (like the better known bakedanuki and bakegitsune). The popularization of cat-people in anime probably came from Neko-Musume from Gegege no Kitaro (the anime behind the "youkai boom" in modern Japanese culture), who is a half-bakeneko.

Fascinating.

(Dif anon) "leading one to wonder what transphobia they think trans men do face" 99.999% sure at this point we're at "trans men experience misgendering... maybe...?"

Well that doesn't count since everyone wants to be a girl, an idea that I believe has universal appeal because I'm a self-centered moron.

You're awesome <3

Thank you anon. <3

I didn't realize I was trans from yaoi but I did largely realize it from memes about traps and accidentally stumbling across largely transfem subreddits via a anime memes despite being transmasc so. Great amount of respect for our yaoi soldiers.

Hell yeah!

[pillarsalt]

Wikipedia anon here, i feel SO embarrassed for misremembering so much about that article. the concept of the cotton cieling and the reminder of the sheer amount of institutions/resources that have been taken over by tims/tras makes me so upset i didn't want to recheck the article again, even though i should have. (it was some time ago i saw the rb of your comic and did my first check, then saw your comic again and remembered about doing so, to clarify. yes i'm an absolute mess i apologize)

i appreciate you so much for not only getting what i was trying (and failing lmao) to explain but also looking into and linking the talk page because JFC!!! so sharing differing opinions for a topic (with cited sources!!) on wikipedia is a no-no, but it's totally fine when you and your friends retroactively decide pro-topic views make you look bad and so you delete the entire article and rewrite the definition of said topic to be about generically "being left out of spaces :.-(" instead of being honest about it being homophobic, rapist rhetoric (which is the reason you're trying to hide it in the first place) hoooooooly SHIT

if genderism ever blows over (with how long it's stuck around for, and with no one being willing to talk about objective/legal concerns like the WPATH files and Maya Forestater, let alone even have a conversation with a GC person, at this point i'm not hopeful...) everyone who contributed to the widescale abuse and trauma of women (especially lesbians), girls, gay men, gnc people, and tip (medicalized or not) could spend the rest of their lives begging for forgiveness and it wouldn't be anywhere near enough. not that i'm expecting them to do that, of course. it's not even blown over yet and we can see from the cotton ceiling article that they'll absolutely try to just gaslight everyone and pretend it never happened (and if it did, it wasn't that bad, and if it was bad it was your fault for not doing your research, etc etc)

ANYWAY i'd rather end on something positive, so thank you again for sharing your wonderful art on here!! seeing there's a talented, feminist female artist who's into pokemon and mlp but hasn't bought into trans ideology is so healing for me. hope you have a lovely day!!! :) :) :)

I wouldn't be embarrassed, I mean the article's not completely empty but it's obviously been stripped down to next to nothing compared to what it used to contain, and half the cited sources aren't really relevant at all. They briefly mention the MTF porn actor who coined the term but failed to mention the scores of other popular MTFs who were vehement proponents of the rhetoric (Riley J Dennis is the first one that comes to mind). And yeah that dude in the discussion page saying he's going to be watching the page and reverting any edits he doesn't like, isn't that very wikipedia illegal? I don't edit wikipedia but I'm fairly certain that camping on an article to make sure your edits aren't edited is not allowed.

It's definitely been a trend with "progressives" to flip the script on anything they've done and can see was wrong in retrospect, claiming "no actually YOU said this, not me." It's a very good reason to keep things documented, and I have huge respect for people who keep the receipts so we can hold people accountable for the harmful bullshit they've spread around. (Speaking of which, I think now is a good time to remind everyone that Eli Erlick is a rapist, another interesting fact that has been unsuccessfully scrubbed from the internet.)

Thanks for your wonderful words as well :) Have a great day too!

[woomycritiques543]

My current thoughts on the Sallie Mae situation.

As someone who used to be mentally unwell for the past few years, I find that my past posts were written in a rush. I find that my past self wasn’t actually upset about the Sallie Mae situation, but rather how Erin Frost was being treated, the people that wronged her, and the fandom’s behavior towards the character and Ignis to be nothing short of disrespectful of the trans identity and not at all being done out of respect, but rather to have Sallie’s _____ define how they see her. Which is what concerned me and why I put that into the video in the first place. So to address the situation, I believe that it should be addresses according to the participants and what each of us should have done. So with that said:

Ignis.

1. Now that I am diagnosed, I believe that Ignis was actually someone both of good and bad faith, that she actually loved Sallie Mae and wanted to have good representation. But that after she said that “I did this for what the fans want.” I researched what those fans “wanted” and found nothing more than disrespectful presentations of the character that I ended up putting into my now deleted “Vivziepop Archive Extravaganza.” video. But that in itself just shows that the fandom was the one who wanted to be bad faith with Sallie Mae.

2. The reason why Ignis emphasized _____ now that I look back on it was because she wanted to make a point about transgender representation. Which now that I have space in my brain to better think things through, I think that this in itself is fine, it was just executed poorly due to the way that the other characters were drawn causing this to be emphasized in a way that was drawn differently from the other characters in a way that caused this to he executed as ___tishization. Even if the good intentions were there. So with Sallie Mae and both her and Sallie’s representation, Ignis was in good faith. I just wish that she was honest about Erin Frost’s posts, the merch that she was proud of instead of hiding behind non-__xual merchandising, and addressed the sitiation with Finn, Sallie’s brother, instead of ignoring the transgender community’s concerns and using the fact that she was a voice actress to avoid accountability for supporting Vivziepop despite what happened with Finn.

Erin Frost.

1. What I believe that Erin should have done differently is that she shouldn’t have just left her statement about Sallie Mae vague but instead should have made an explanation as to why she felt that what Vivziepop was doing with Sallie was _____tization. The issue being the difference between how Sallie was drawn compared to the other characters within the merchandising, and how that ended up causing the execution of a otherwise good faith decision to be done poorly.

Jayman.

1. Oh boy…. Jayman. What could I say about Jayman except that they purposely took Erin’s post out of context to make outlandish claims that used Erin’s vague wording to make her look “bad”, the dishonesty in how he presented his views on pretty much everything, what he ended up doing to other fans, how he treated me. Jayman was just an awful person overall, and im glad that he left the internet before he could have done what he had done to me to anyone else.

Myself.

1. For me, I feel like I should have further looked into the situation and explained myself better. But couldn’t have at the time due to my brain feeling cluttered because I didn’t have proper medical treatment. I should have kept the accountability for the fandom’s actions and Spindlehorse’s actions separate instead of grouping them together the way that I did.

I was too accusatory, I should’ve said that “Though Sallie’s brother situation isn’t your fault, that doesn’t mean that you should keep supporting someone you know wants to erase much needed representation of gnc.” but couldn’t say this at the time due to my past mental state being much less coherent.

2. I’ve realized why the past when it comes to this situation caused me so much pa^n. It was the fact that people kept taking Erin Frost’s word at face value instead of trying to dig into why she said what she said and trying to analyze the screenshots more than just face value. I was actually up^et about Erin Frost, not Sallie Mae. -and because of how I was at the time my thoughts were jumbled together so I took out my emotions about Erin out on Ignis, when I should have again, kept my thoughts about Sallie’s brother, Ignis, and Erin Frost separate.

The problem?

I couldn’t do it at the time. My brain functioned in a way that grouped things together into disorganized mush.

-and now that I know that I am mentally ill, it effects me even more that Jayman was such an able^st person and that Ignis let him get away with treating me the way that he did and let Vivziepop get away with everything else.

In all, I wish that I could do more.

I wish that I could make a proper video on Vivziepop like I had planned to, it’s just that due to personal and technical reasons such a video would be physically impossible to do.

So take this as a “My current thoughts” sort of thing since a proper video on either subject matter, or any more videos for that matter, wouldn’t be possible to do in my current state.

-and with that said, I wish you all a goodnight.

Take care. -RaySquid.

[lakesbian]

Alec for the worm bingo but you have to lie (or possibly place Alec where he would place himself)

huh whats that. i stopped reading after the first five words

somehow not winning a Single bingo i've done goddamn. 1.6 million words and we still don't know enough about him. but also we know almost the perfect amount about him. i liked watching him jump into the paper shredder. only worm character who has made me sniffle for 45 straight minutes (over a scene i thought i was going to find hilarious, which is very fitting for how he operates as a person). shoutout to blastweave for the 'surprisingly good person given the circumstances terrible by any other metrics' post bc it Got In My Brain and made me start thinking abt alec and now i'm the world's biggest alec enjoyer.

reading the terrible takes made him more interesting as well tho. i literally only started thinking interesting things about him because i got mad at posts that sucked. like i didn't even like him at first he was nothing to me but i accidentally talked myself into liking him by vehemently disagreeing with posts that disliked him for the wrong reasons.

anyway i actually really liked what wildbow did with his personal paper shredder i think everything about his arc is 4 the most part super solid, i do think he could've made the WoG re: his abysmal childhood a bit more blatant in canon. like maybe toss that in his interlude or smth. i know wildbow is not a 'sexual abuse on-screen' guy in terms of writing preference and on a watsonian level i think it checks that alec mostly avoids thinking about the things that most impacted him but as-is it's so subtle that Literally Everyone misses it and subsequently misses what his Deal is lmao. i think he could have scootched Something in there to make his Deal more obvious. but the only thing i'm rescuing him from wildbow for is that wildbow cannot handle the bisexual gnc swag he Deserves to have. never over how funny it is that wildbow doesn't even see him as bisexual just as 'hedonist' and writes him like a straight boy except for when he's having fucked up evil sex but still thinks he looks gay enough for someone to accuse him of not liking vagina. during a kaiju fight. like 30 minutes before he dies. top all time regent moment.

(okay, second top all time regent moment. no 1 top all time is still when he says being willing to make sacrifices for the people you care about is terribly unhealthy. it sure is buddy. you've heard of taylor judging alec for shit she does, get ready for alec being like 'man taylor is so gonna be fucked over by that thing she does' about something he is also going to be fucked over by doing)

edit: OH. and alec wouldn't mark anything. no not even the traumatized square. he has issues

[mithliya]

i agree that in the end there's no one we detransitioners hurt more than ourselves. and i too have to admit that it also hurted immensely to watch your favourite media personalities turn to gender shit.

i was gnc even before i realised that im a lesbian. i grew up in eastern europe, and didn't know that real love between women is even possible, that its called being a lesbian. everything around me implied that im bound to marry a man in the end, give birth to children and be a mother. and it was scary. i secretly dreamt of waking up a boy one day because then i would be able to marry a nice girl. when i got my own access to the internet, i was exposed to even more misogyny and it made me spiral even further to the point of dreading growing up, feeling disgusted and trapped in my own body etc. but on the other hand i slowly found about homosexuality and other stuff. and so i discovered other gnc women. famous gnc women. when i was a teen, i think i had a celebrity crush on Rain Dove(i still find her very attractive), and listened to JD Samson and LP. (i sorta built my own teen separatist utopia in my online space, when i only watched and listened to and read what gnc and lesbian women had to offer) it was like a breath of fresh air for me. and then women who were just like me, whom i looked up to one by one started to proclaim themselves non-binary and proceed to promote that rhetoric further. it threw me back so hard i got depressed. i was bullied by my dad for "looking too much like Jolie's tif daughter". it took me long to stabilise myself back. im still dysphoric, some times feel worse than others, but nothing i can't bear really.

now i don't think that those women caused more damage than my misogynistic environment,my school, classmates, dance class, family, social media etc., they just reopened the old wound in an unstable teen. but i can't help feeling wronged by them a little bit. i don't place the whole blame on them, at least not equal to what misogynistic society's done to me first. as well as i don't think that their fault as celebrities is anywhere near to anything that a regular detrans woman may have of feel. but i do think that people like them, who helped to spread those ideologies, even if it came from their own traumas and discomfort caused by misogyny, have to take some responsibility for their actions, once they decide to detrans or desist. at least for leading young, gnc, lesbian, mentally ill or unstable, autistic girl to the gender bs.

(thanks for reading my rumbling. i can also call my feelings very subjective, because i acknowledge that after all this time i still feel angry at the world, and at the environment those women had become a part of, that led a little anxious insecure girl i was to think there was actually something wrong with her. can also be the case. bc page's transition also hit harder than i wanted, even though i already was a radfem)

btw shiloh jolie (john) is not trans, shes just a gnc girl and i think its awesome that her mom let her explore that stuff and called her john (as shiloh requested) bc its what allowed her to grow up to be gnc unapologetically rather than self-hating.

i get where ur coming from though, i think its a pretty toxic cycle in general, like many gnc women & girls buy into that ideology because of how it targets them & then further promote it which slowly impacts more and more gnc people negatively. i just think that people have a lot of unnecessary hostility and presumptiveness towards detrans people that acts like these detrans people were personally responsible for this cycle existing, as if they also werent harmed by that same rhetoric and aren't actively fighting against it by being vocal against it. that said, of course it's important to go against your past wrongs and to try to right them, my issue is that people assume the worst of detrans people & don't realise that its detrans people fighting against those wrongs the hardest right now, alongside gnc people.

[thrilling-oneway]

whenever people want to hate on d4dj why do they jump straight on "It's queerphobic bc..." as if it doesn't have the best queer rep of any rhythm game out there.

1757 words about queer representation in D4DJ and other rhythm/gacha games below cut

Like there are actual valid reasons to not like d4dj. There's definitely an issue with sexualising the high schoolers, I've made posts talking about it before. But at the same time, if you as someone who plays other of the major gacha/rhythm games is going to say that, you should probably address that SIF, bandori (and maybe enstars? it's been a while since I played) have some dodgy cards as well. Admittedly these cards are mainly old whereas D4DJ is still producing these, but you shouldn't act like your preferred game is perfect either.

But especially saying that D4DJ is queerphobic is so weird. To say that just proves you have no idea what actually happens in the game, and you're just taking screenshots out of context.

Firstly hayakoko. Okay so in the flashback where they get together they said "but we're both girls". Yeah, it's a cliche line that screams 'written by a hetero person', but within the context of the story it's not that bad if a little cringe. Neither Hayate or Kokoa had liked a girl before they started dating, this is literally stated on screen: Hayate says that she was a little surprised to realise that she had a crush on Kokoa. They're baby gay at this point in time. I think Kokoa's an interesting one to point out as well, because she's the one who said the line in the first place, and even after she admits that she likes Kokoa as well and they start dating, the True Love Kiss side story shows her being insecure about PDA in school. It reads a lot like she's had a very heteronormative upbringing, which is very common for queer people. It's probably more common in Japan where they still don't have equal rights for queer people (they don't have marriage equality, same-sex couples can't marry, the exception being if one is trans and hasn't legally changed their gender. and after they're married they can't legally change their gender). Not to mention she goes to catholic school, and as far as I know there's some issues there. So I don't see anything wrong with Kokoa not wanting to be out publicly, and being a bit insecure when she and Hayate confess. You gotta remember they are 15 as well (and ~14 when they started dating). Their relationship isn't going to be perfect, and that's normal.

And then Aoi and her gender presentation. Aoi has always been a very masculine presenting character, and is explicitly GNC, so I can understand that some people were disappointed with her wearing long hair and a ballgown in the Aoi & Haruna Relations event. But the anger some people hold towards this. Come on, how badly can you miss the point? Aoi's gender presentation has been a part of her character since her initial card story. She says she actually used to dress more feminine and have long hair in high school, but decided to change her look because she thought she suited the shorter hair. She also mentions that when she presented fem, she would be told she looked like a cross dresser, which obviously offended her. It's not hard to see that Aoi just wants to be seen as Aoi. It's not about how she presents her gender, she's still Aoi no matter how she dresses - Tsubaki mentions this in the A&H Relations. Nothing was retconned or de-canonised when Aoi wore hair extensions and a dress, it wasn't a sudden unnecessary change. The event explores the fact she wants to try different looks outside of her usual 'princely' one, but she's a bit of a people pleaser and is unsure about it because people associate Aoi with "androgynous good looks". There was no pressure from anyone to be feminine, there was actually pressure the other way. She wore a dress and had long hair for one (1) event, and 2 illustrations. Her most recent card has her in trousers with short hair again. Like you don't have to pounce on it being erasure because Aoi wanted to dress more feminine one time. She doesn't hate being GNC now, she's not permanently feminine now - Aoi being GNC is a part of who she is. Aoi being fluid with her gender expression is a part of her queerness and I don't get how you can miss the point so badly to call it erasure.

D4DJ is genuinely one of if not the best mainstream gacha/rhythm game for queer rep. There's so much more than just this: Tsubaki and Aoi are canonically in love with each other and there was even an attempted confession (they got interrupted), KyoShino have implied romantic feelings, same with NagiHiiro and RinMuni (mainly from Muni's side). Haruna was pretty much confirmed as lesbian during the A&H relations, and has had crushes on two separate characters. Saori's sapphic as well (there's one or two implications that she's bisexual). Having Hayate and Kokoa in a relationship opens the doors to more ships becoming canon in the future. The only negative representation I can think of in this game is Noa, so if you really want to go out of your way to say D4DJ is queerphobic, there you go. Noa likes cute thing, cute girls, and flanderisation took hold quickly to the point of her being creepily obsessed with the ri4 girls and a few others, and literally stalking them. Yikes. Her writing is improving though, especially in All Mix where she just occasionally comments on how cute they are without taking it too far, and they actually let her have other personality traits expressed that had pretty much been forgotten.

My point here is that if you're going to say D4DJ is bad rep or homophobic, you're admitting that your game is worse for representation. I'm not saying that the games in the "Big 3" (proseka/bandori/enstars) are bad by any means (idk about enstars actually I didn't play for very long), but D4DJ has definitely taken some big steps in queer representation that those games are seemingly too scared to make. Having a canon sapphic couple is a game like this is a huge deal, I'm not even sure if it's been done before. And before anyone says "but anhane and minoharu went on a double date in Buddy Funny Spend Time", neither of those pairs are stated or even fucking implied to be in a relationship outside of that event. It kinda just happens in one event, and even then it's still a bit vague on whether either of the couples are actually dating in the event. It's definitely heavily implied that anhane/minoharu have mutual romantic feelings, so they are arguably canon in that sense, just not in an established relationship sense. Bandori has done this as well with PareChu, have them go on dates and be clearly romantically interested in each other, only to never actually be a couple (I know tsumutsumu and reochi have called parechu an official couple, but that's word of saint paul rather than word of god, so take this how you will). Hayakoko is HUGE for this genre, and could mean good things in the future of other rhythm games (especially other Bushiroad ones).

--Break here where I went on a tangent about non-D4DJ queercoding--

Outside of schroedingers dating, both bandori and proseka have characters who are implied/canonically queer. I'll make this short because this is getting really long now and I apologise to anyone who's still reading.

For bandori, Arisa has a crush on Kasumi, Kaoru can be considered as canonically lesbian just from how she's presented, YukiLisa has a lot of implications for romantic feelings, as do MocaRan. Himari is also an interesting case, as she could be read as bisexual or comphet lesbian, it's never really made clear (at least as far as I know, I stopped playing bandori a while ago, and am not up-to-date on story, so anyone who's still reading feel free to add to this or correct me). There's probably some stuff missing here as well.

As for proseka, it actually has quite a lot of queercoding. I already touched on anhane and minoharu earlier, but Kohane and Minori are both heavily implied to be lesbian, An as well (although there's like one or two hints that she could be bi. I can cite them if needed). Mizuki is canonically transfeminine (their gender is unconfirmed), and they have been shown to be attracted to women. ShizuAiri and AkiToya have a lot of romantic implications in their relationships, EmuNene has gradually been getting more and more actually (Amidst a Dream). Ena is implied wlw and Rui is implied mlm okay I think I got everything tangent over.

--End of break--

Regardless of my criticisms, all of the games I've mentioned definitely show how much queer rep has grown and become a lot better in the last decade or so. While not focused on the rhythm game, the first generation of Love Live (2010-16) queerbaited* a fair amount. To give one example, there's an 'interview' with Honoka from 2015 where she heavily implies that she's straight, despite having ship tease with other female characters. Compare that to what we have 8 years later, and you can definitely see improvement. However I think it still needs to be addressed that what we have isn't perfect, and it probably will take while to get to a point where we can have more openly queer characters/couples, especially considering Japan as a country (and american/else localisation teams). But I think more people need to recognise how important D4DJ is for queer representation within this genre. It's really not common to have queer romance and gender presentation be directly addressed and frequently shown, and not just for the sake of making money.

I'm bad at ending essays.

* Queerbaiting - intentionally and maliciously leading a queer audience to believe they will receive representation which is then not provided. Whether the rhythm games mentioned do this or not is... debatable? It's done for the money which ticks the intentionally malicious box, queer people aren't for capitalising on. But a good amount of the time it's done to bait straight people who like yuri/yaoi. I do think it's queerbait though like heavily ship teasing a couple and then throwing in a line to imply one of them is straight definitely queerbaiting. april edit: it took me over a month to realise that there were words missing in that last sentence sorry about that. hi anyone who's reading this in the future

[longsightmyth]

“Being shown the basics of how to use a blade and then using it on another living, breathing person are two very different things.” She pulled her hand back. “I would’ve definitely stood there and screamed. I’m not ashamed to admit that, and my screams probably would’ve brought the guards’ attention sooner.”

“You would’ve defended yourself.” I totally believed that.

Okay my doves. Somehow we have rounded the bend from 'stop saying/showing it's weak to be Stereotypically Feminine' and into 'you have to be Stereotypically Feminine AND stabby AND not know you're beautiful.' I see this a lot in tog just to use a soecific example: "we like celaena because she's Feminine (tm) While Still Being Strong." Okay. Fine. Show me a single Non Feminine (tm) lady in those books who is good. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? You cannot find one. Gender conformity still upheld.

This.

Remains.

Sexist.

(Not to mention often queerphobic: when conformity to One Kind Of Gender Norm is upheld, everybody loses, but especially people who don't conform, like gnc (literally in the name lol) folks and even my mother, cis lady who does not exactly Emote in a way most people consider Feminine (tm) or indeed ACT in a way most people consider Feminine (tm))

Misogyny has changed the message from 'feminine (tm) women aren't weak' to 'you have to be feminine stabby lest ye be Not A Woman And Also Weak' and people don't seem to realize it, or what the definition of 'not weak' (aka stabby) has become. Stoppit.

This particular thing here is also odd: there is nothing out of the ordinary about someone facing Actual Violence for the first time not knowing what to do! Tawny is right! In fact, screaming really loudly in hearing of people who are supposed to protect you is a valid defense strategy!

But Poppy (and as far as I can tell, the book) seems to place a value judgment here: no, Poppy says. You would have defended yourself. I believe this.

Because people, apparently, who 'defend themselves' (aka stab people, apparently taking steps to ensure people trained for this sort of thing get there to help you out does not count in this book) are better people. What Poppy (and, I think, the book) is really saying is, no, Tawny. You wouldn't scream, because you are worth something. You would stab somebody with the knife I have given you, because you are A Good Person. And you'll do it while you're pretty (and literally named Tawny Lion)

And I cannot hold with that. It isn't wrong to not want to be violent. It isn't wrong to know your strengths and weaknesses. It isn't wrong to need or want help from people other than your love interest.

Anyway I don't think that's what a lot of these books have set out to say. Unfortunately that is, however, what they are saying, out loud, with their whole chest: you have to be Beautiful and Feminine. And you have to be willing to stab people. Otherwise, you are not worthy.

[pitynostars]

sorry but i'm going to have to disagree. rtd's comment SOUNDS innocent and well meaning, but when sacha, an asian villain wore jodie's clothes it was fine and nothing has been said about that, but when its tennant thats unthinkable?? also, jodie specifically went to her designer and asked for an androgynous outfit because she'd seen a gnc person and wanted the doctor to be similar - why wouldn't they be? the doctor's gender is literally fluid. in the most literal sense of the word. i was hoping for some in-universe explanation for the clothes change but if its just that, i'm going to be genuinely disappointed.

i appreciate disliking the choice (i'm not actually a fan of it myself just pointing out some potential thoughts behind it + getting fed up of people spreading lies about what was actually said), but i'll repeat my pov on your points here!

"when sacha, an asian villain wore jodie's clothes it was fine and nothing has been said about that, but when its tennant thats unthinkable??"

thats exactly the point though, right? the subset that WOULD make horrible comments about it, are the type of people who also wouldn't blink twice at a “villain” “crossdressing” lets be real here. a lot of media plays that up. similar to how the reaction to whittaker!doctor and gomez!master was quite different. its different when its the actual lead. RTD would v likely know this (but bear in mind, RTD likely didn't know Dhawan!Doctor was happening in tPotD when he was planning the regeneration scene)

Dhawan almost immediately switched out for a mix of all the Doctor's outfits and eventually gets back to his Rasputin fit, it’s not his ONE look for the episode compared to it would have been 100% of DT’s screentime

with Dhawan Doctor, it was in the middle of an episode which Chibnall wrote apparently thinking the show was being CANCELLED (so like, didnt need to think abt the media reaction as much even if it had OCCURRED to him to do so)

coming out of the episode, what were all the headlines about? the regeneration. Tennant. which is what ALWAYS happens with these eps. RTD probably suspected this was going to be the main chat of the next YEAR before there’s new eps because that’s what ALWAYS gets the attention/publicity.

"also, jodie specifically went to her designer and asked for an androgynous outfit because she'd seen a gnc person and wanted the doctor to be similar - why wouldn't they be? the doctor's gender is literally fluid. in the most literal sense of the word."

Sure and the whole REASON Whittaker herself had to emphasise "these are not women’s clothes they’re the doctor’s clothes" "anyone can wear them" etc. etc. back when she first started is because SHE knew the public/media reaction too and was trying to get ahead of it in the same way as RTD is with this.

RTD hasn't said the Doctor is cis, or can't be played by a woman again, or that cosplayers can't dress as 13 (or whatever people are making up now) it's purely about the REAL WORLD reaction of having Tennant be the last shot of the ep, the ONLY official shot of his Doctor we would have had for a whole YEAR for the vultures to potentially latch on to. The Doctor doesn't exist in a vacuum.

"i was hoping for some in-universe explanation for the clothes change but if its just that, i'm going to be genuinely disappointed."

this still might happen!! the article (that i know of) doesn't say anything about whether it'll play into the plot. i'm hoping it will too, especially as the end of tPotD plays it up as feeling so Wrong/out of place (which... again is probably why RTD didn't want Tennant in Whittaker's outfit here if that was the vibe he was going for!!! the optics there would have been very 😬)

[h4zardousch3micals]

Y'know, I have a sneaking suspicion that there actually is 4 of them afterall

Aka I made an oc and now I will literally never stop annoying you guys about her

I dub thee Blue Kitty

More info about her under the cut if anybody's curious

Female but GNC af, absolutely hates doing any stereotypically girly things like wearing makeup or dresses

Her personality is basically sugar high 24/7: always bouncing around, misplacing objects around the house and saying/doing things without thinking about it first. (Blue Kitty and Yellow Guy ADHD-HI ADHD-I solidarity)

Has no common sense whatsoever, would put a fork in a wall socket if someone told her it would give her superpowers

Her favourite colour is yellow

Stims by running up and down the house at high speeds, especially late at night, there's a version of Duck's Shake him by the hand song where you can hear her stomping around in the background

Gets along best with Yellow because they're both cheerful and upbeat. They do all the dorky best friend things together like make friendship bracelets and try to stay up all night watching Grolton and Hovris (and then both not even get to midnight) She's currently trying to help him learn how to tie his shoes.

She looks up to Red a lot, both literally and metaphorically. He's the rational decision maker of the group so she usually goes to him for advice or to prevent the other two from doing something stupid Though that doesn't mean she isn't willing to put him in his place if he starts getting a big head about something like being in upper management. Overall funny sassy sibling energy

One minute Blue Kitty and Duck are discussing the crossword in the newspaper, the next they're viciously insulting eachother and throwing things across the room. They might be like this most of the time, but in a stick situation like a lesson going wrong they've eachother's backs. Yellow swears up and down that he's heard them talk about needing to finish signing the divorce papers but neither will admit to it.

She keeps talking about "that one time she felt really lucid and then everything was on fire and I saw a strange lady", but nobody is quite sure what that means. Ah well, it's probably nothing, right?

[geshertzarmeod]

In Other Lands Character Arcs

(Spoilers Abound)

I’m thinking about how the character arcs of all three main characters from In Other Lands center largely on moving away from what their families expected of them, even as each of them doesn’t necessarily think moving away from that is possible. And how it’s their relationships with each other that help them move in the directions they actually want to move in, and believe in their abilities to forge their own paths and lead fulfilling lives. Even if it’s not what their parents or home communities think a fulfilling life entails. This culminates in their refusal (along with Golden) at the end of the book, to let anyone else influence them when it comes to deciding where to be stationed. They’re ready to choose their own paths, together.

There’s something deeply appealing to me about this as a queer person, even as queerness (as defined by orientation or gender) is not actually a central factor in the shifting of each character’s relationship with their families. Actually, the character who comes closest to that is Serene, who is presumedly straight, but whose pushback against the rigid gendered expectations of her society so challenge her community that she and Golden are essentially banished at least for a time. This is only tangentially queer, I’d say, because she does this not for herself, as she seems to proudly fit & identify with elven womanhood, but recognizes the false limiting of manhood within her society and fights fiercely for Luke, Elliot, and eventually Golden, who I’d say is GNC for sure. For Luke, it’s not his being gay but his being monogamous and waiting longer than they expected (though he’s like, still 17!!! that’s still young!!!) to become sexually or romantically active that is off-putting to his family. For Elliot, his father is shocked not to see him with a man, but to see him happy (cue my tears). 

I was just thinking this after reading Girl, Serpent, Thorn especially, but I really love when queer books parallel queer narratives of shame and struggle and difference and growing pains, with queer characters, but about issues unrelated to their being queer (especially when they’re about magical/fantasy elements). Then we get to relate to queer characters and see them process a lot of the feelings we have experienced, but also get to see them be loved and value and supported unconditionally in their queerness. Anyway, for an individual analysis:

Luke Sunborn

First, because I know a lot of people might not have read it, I’m going to quote Luke’s perspective from Wings In The Morning:

There were reasons Luke hadn’t kissed anybody. The Sunborns, as a family, loved life and loved love, and treated it as a game. It was fine for them: it worked for them.

Luke had always known that a riot of brightness and different loves and leaving someone laughing was beyond him. He wanted kindness and steadiness: he did not want someone who would leave. He wanted love that would last. (location 2527 in my kindle book, I can’t tell what page)

Luke, the Sunborn champion, expected to excel in battle, and love (read: have sex) freely and easily and non-monogamously, becoming an avid reader because of Elliot - something his father is shocked by and a little ashamed of. Learning Elvish because of both of them. Breaking border camp rules, threatening superior officers, to protect Elliot, and to support Serene, even as he continually complains about it and, on paper, would always argue that those choices are Not Okay and Very Bad. Luke, whose bashful shyness around his crushes, whose concern over his first kiss, whose choice of Elliot as a partner, is incomprehensible to his family, snapping, “I don’t want anyone else,” at the elves. He’s chosen Elliot, even as Elliot still doesn’t at all believe it at that point, and he’s happy with that decision. Elliot’s his choice, and only Elliot. Notorious Sunborn sexual voracity be damned.

Luke’s journey is also largely about him working through his external, and later internalized, biases against magical creatures. It’s pretty clearly an analog to xenophobia, and Luke expresses more disgust, disdain, or fear, the more different a culture is from the one he grew up in. This obviously becomes internalized against himself, when he realizes he is half-harpy. He literally represses his wings from coming out, he sees harpies as monsters and includes himself within this. It’s awful, and it’s sad, and it’s a mixture of Elliot’s meticulous research and adamant arguments that harpies are people, and that Luke isn’t a monster at all (and neither are harpies and other non-human creatures), and Serene’s calm acceptance of him, that helps him move through this. 

This xenophobia, although clearly ingrained since childhood, don’t seem to be coming primarily from his family (certainly not from his mother) but from the culture of the borderguard in general. To me, it is implied that his father might at least casually buy into a lot of this, although he would never extend it to his son. It also is an interesting dynamic as related to the other two’s relationships with family, because Luke coming to love and accept himself, and to open his mind about non-human creatures, is actually him coming closer to his mother, rather than moving away. In my view, a part of why he bought in so clearly to this prejudice coming from the general bordercamp culture is because he was pushing away from his parents in the first place - he saw his parents being so wild and free in a way he knew he could never be that he pushed himself into the opposite side, into “reason” and restraint and conservatism. What he needed to learn was how to hold his more “traditional” wants and needs (although like, he’s kind of wrong about that. Elliott Schafer is not the traditional kind quiet love he’s imagining, and he didn’t want that anyway) while still celebrating all of the different approaches and cultures and loves out there, and that’s what he’s learning alongside Elliot and Serene. And he does this partially because Elliot’s love for him as a half-harpy is, according to his previous beliefs, just as wild and out there as his mother’s affair with his biological father, or all of Elliot’s flirting with various magical creatures. And as he accepts Elliot’s love, he accepts that too.

Serene-Heart-In-The-Chaos-of-Battle

From the first moment we meet Serene we know she ran away from home to join the border camp. She’s chosen to join the humans, to fight alongside men, to learn about the borderlands from a human perspective and use that to create an alliance and to create peace. She enters a world where she is looked down on, where she is sexualized and punished for trying to swim shirtless, and has to fight hard to take the classes she wants and have the opportunity to prove herself as she wishes. Instead of deciding her parents and community were right and going back to the elves, she digs her heels in and with Elliot and Luke’s help, fights back, fights to excel at the border camp and make things different and better, and prove her detractors wrong. 

Not only that, but she learns to respect men in a way she was not raised to do, learns to treat men as equals and partners, always defending both Elliot and Luke when her community disrespects them. This prepares her for her relationship with Golden (although Elliot still helps her along a lot, especially with their written correspondence) and ends in her and Golden essentially eloping after Golden ran away to fight alongside her. It’s also important that she accepts Golden fighting alongside her. That was not at all a given, especially as even towards the middle of the book, she seems to be thinking of human men as capable of fighting and strength and other “womanly” qualities, but not necessarily believing the same of elven men. She’s chosen a nontraditional path and a GNC partner in Golden, and for the time being, her closest family is not her blood but her beautiful boyfriend, her swordsister, and her loved and loving best friend Elliot.

Elliot Schafer

Last but the opposite of least is Elliot. What Elliot learned from his family is that he will come to nothing, that he will be forgotten, and that he will not be loved. I am so angry on this child’s behalf, for the ways he was neglected not only by his parents but by everyone before Serene. The ways his father had no interest in him because all he wanted was Elliot’s mother back (and I love Elliot’s observation that even if his mother did come back, his father wouldn’t know what to do, and would not be happy). The way his teacher literally accepted a small bribe to just...... leave him at the entrance to the borderlands, and none of the students cared. The way his mother not only left when he was a child but knew who he was the second she saw or even heard about him at the bordercamp, and never bothered to tell him, or show any interest in him whatsoever.Elliot has been taught, over and over again, that he is unwanted and uncared for. That he has to go it alone, and fill his own needs.

Elliot learns to respect Commander Woodsinger and to know that while she doesn’t necessarily love him, she knows him, and appreciates who and what he is, and sees value and strength in it. She, unlike his previous teachers and school professionals, understands him, and likes him, and values him. She’s not warm, but she’s a positive presence in his life, and part of him learning to believe he has value just as he is, and not just because he spitefully decided it to go against what everyone else has told him, but because it’s actually true.

He didn’t want his parents and his peers and the adults who have let him down to be right about this, so he does dream of being loved back. But he shows himself fully prepared to be the one who loves more in relationships, especially with Serene. He’s ready, at first, to take all she’ll give him, and revel in each part of it, even if it doesn’t match up to his love for her. It’s not until the moment he turns down Serene’s final advance (when she’s clearly settling for him) that he realizes how much he wants to be chosen first. And he believes that’s possible, and worth waiting for (and that in the meantime, he will help Serene up and help her find what she truly wants too).

Elliot knows Serene loves him. She shows him he deserves love, and in his devotion to her, Elliot begins to excel and challenge himself and learn to see his brand of obnoxiousness as something that might not be everyone’s taste but isn’t inherently bad. He trusts Serene to love him, at least as a friend, but he doesn’t trust that Luke will, because Luke reminds him of all of the kids who hurt him in the past.

And that’s why the slowest arc of this whole book is probably Elliot realizing that Luke.... actually likes him. Actually wants to be around him, and enjoys his presence, and even like-likes him - loves him even. It just can’t compute for him. And so we get basically an unreliable narration for most of the book regarding Luke. Elliot’s “aha” moment about Luke rewrites years of his life, shifting his understanding of so much of their lives together. And it solidifies Elliot’s discovery that he can be loved exactly as he is, obnoxious and annoying and all. He’s found people who love him for it, and they’ve chosen him, and they’re going to stick around.

[silverandarsenic-hcs]

Could you please please please! Do Papas/cardiac and ghouls reacting to S/O being nervous to do anything because their trans, or coming out to them? (FTM and MTF)

First post in a long time and it’s not even my work! This is something @solofreakk answered for us FOREVER ago that I never even go around to pressing the 8 buttons to post it. How absolutely lazy can I be. But please enjoy (-kat) 

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*cracks my knuckles* alright Oingos and Boingos and Those Who Are Neither i’m gonna do my best at this as a trans/nonbinary guy but i definitely don’t speak for everyone’s experiences, so… if you don’t like this i apologize. I want everyone to be supportive of you so if they sound repetitive I’m sorry! And I apologize in advance for not including MTF :( I just feel like trans women and men can have some similar experiences but in the end I don’t think it’s my place to write for them. If there are any trans women out there writing stuff for Ghost i would say Please Shamelessly Shout Yourselves Out In The Replies Ladies.

Papa I: He’s a bit too old for most activities that would reveal you being trans imo. A pride parade is too crazy for him, he doesn’t have the energy to go to the pool or something. If you did he’d just lay there in the sun with a ghoul waiting to open an umbrella when he’s about to start getting too crisp. So if you didn’t go swimming, or take your shirt off, it literally would not raise any questions. He’s not in the water. He might make an offhand comment about how you should enjoy yourself but you could very easily tell him you’d prefer to be sitting with him, and you melting his old man heart like that kills any other question he might’ve even had. If you do end up explaining it to him later, he kindly reminds you there’s nothing wrong with knowing who you are. Encourages you to feel comfortable around him, you shouldn’t feel like you have to hide who you are because of your past. No further questions asked. You can say what you’d like about yourself but he won’t press or get in your business.

Papa II: This man is totally comfortable with nudity. You being opposite is… weird. He’ll ask. Are you insecure? You can say it’s something like that. He’ll be able to tell that you’re kind of dodging the question and he’ll leave it alone. But you’ve piqued his curiosity now. He’s gonna watch you just a little bit closer than he did before. He’ll suggest you guys take a swim, or go to the beach, and when you shoot that down too, he’ll ask. “Is there a reason why?” You can try to make excuses, or be vague, or say a half-truth, but those mismatched eyes see right through you. He probably already knows. When you ask him if he does, he’ll just wrap you in a nice strong Papa II Rare Tender Hug™. “It’s nothing to be ashamed about, you know. It’s okay to decide you’re not what everyone said you were. It’s part of becoming your own person.” Would probably be more bold in asking what your future plans are for yourself. Later on quietly reminds you not to bind for too long, or helps you with shots, or is making sure you’re laid up in luxury if you get top surgery. Supports you even if you’re gnc and don’t bind or don’t plan to transition and would impart his death glare upon anyone who dared to misgender you or treat you poorly.

Papa III: Hope no one shoots me down for saying “Papa III trans man” but *eyes emoji*. He’s gonna recognize your behavior immediately. You sweat at the idea of going to the pool or the beach, you don’t wanna change in front of him, you get nervous if someone calls you pretty instead of handsome. He’ll see you very very discreetly tugging at your binder, or taking deep breaths. And he just knows. And he’s elated. He’s like “OH I AM GONNA MAKE YOU FEEL SO HANDSOME.” Immediately deploys plan “Compliment Anon ‘Til He Dies”. He’s telling you that your hair looks great today, your laugh is so masculine, I love the way your arms look, That shirt is so handsome on you, I’m lucky to have such a wonderful man in my life. Anything it takes to have you know how great you are. If you’re busy melting over the compliments, you might not immediately realize he’s caught on. You’ll probably think he’s just doing his regular Papa III schmoozing. Eventually, it clicks in your head. He’s lauding on you ‘cause he knows. So because he seems so cool with it, you finally work up the nerve to tell him. And he smiles at you and he’s taking his shirt off and whoa whoa WHOA HEY IT’S WORK HOURS MAN- oh. Oh. I see. That’s why. He buttons his shirt back up and pats you on the head and asks if you wanna get top surgery too, and if you say yes he’s literally writing you a check on the spot. He wants you to feel as comfortable in your body as he does in his and if you have any dysphoria woes he is all ears. He’s seriously like ride or die for you bro.

Cardinal Copia/Papa IV: He thinks your nervous behavior is totally normal, only because he is also nervous all the time. So he doesn’t even read into it. He’s totally clueless. You don’t wanna go swimming? Okay, yeah, actually he doesn’t really want to do it either. He’s pale, he’d just get burnt. Let’s stay inside all day in our pajamas. You don’t wanna put your pajamas on in front of him? That is also ok, hell let’s change in different rooms. You don’t even have to explain yourself, he just Gets It™. Eventually if you start wondering why he hasn’t asked about your odd behavior, you’ll just ask him. “Did you notice that I’m kinda… weird, about some stuff?” He’ll say he’s weird about stuff too, why should he pry into your personal business? So you press on and tell him you’re trans. You don’t want anyone else to know, for a myriad of reasons. You might start rambling about it, complaining about stuff, talking about what you want. And he’ll just… listen. Nod sometimes to let you know he’s hearing you, and you can keep going if you want. Finally you’ll end it with an exasperated and maybe slightly embarrassed sigh, but before you can apologize he’s pulling you into a hug. You are free to talk about it as much as you want, especially if you don’t tell anyone else. You’ve got all this stuff weighing on your mind and no one to vent it to, and he’s flattered you finally felt comfortable enough to let him know something so personal. 

Dewdrop: Dare I say it… I headcanon Dewdrop as trans too… He’s much more like me though, feisty and kinda gnc. Like III, he’s gonna catch onto your behavior immediately. He’s not gonna make any moves to let you know that he knows, though. Just quietly be in your corner. Well, as quiet as Dew gets. He’s gonna… violently be in your corner. If he finds out someone misgendered you or committed some related act he considers a heinous crime, they’re losing some teeth. He’ll take a chunk out of them if someone isn’t there to rein him in. Eventually when you confide in him that you’re trans, he’s telling you that’s cool. You ask him why he’s so chill about it and he’s just smirking at you. “What…?” You ask. “Seriously, what? Why- ooohhh…” You’re free to not bind around him because most of the time, he doesn’t. He’s not gonna judge you for anything. Whether you wanna be traditionally masculine or be lax about gender norms, he’s gonna tell you you’re cool as Hell no matter what. Admires your courage in coming out to him and will take your secret to the grave.

Aether: First may I start this off by saying I may or may not have asked Aether, like irl, if he said “trans rights”. To which Aether kindly and genuinely said, “Does [Aether] say “trans rights”? Of course trans rights!” So there you have it Fosters and Peoples. Mr. Quintessential Ghoul himself did indeed say trans rights and I’ve never been happier to have asked someone that. I digress… He’s not gonna focus too much on odd behavior or nerves. It’s not because he’s got his head in the clouds, it’s just because this is a Judgement Free Zone™. If and/or when you come out to him, expect him to say, “Hell yeah, you do what’s right for you!” He’s got your back. If you want help with something, say an outfit or you need a new binder, he’s gonna help you figure it out. If you ask him not to tell anyone else, his lips are sealed. 

Mountain: He is so used to being taller than everyone else so if you’re a short king (like me 5’3 man gang rise up [but not too high]) that does not make him ask any questions. He’s also out of your business when it comes to how you dress, or messing with your shirt, or not wanting to do certain activities, etc. He just… it’s not that he doesn’t care, it’s that he’s chill about everything. So chill in fact that eventually one day you just casually mention it. And he’s like, “Neat, you have lore.” Which is hilarious. He’s probably likely to ask if you’re making sure not to wear your binder for too long. He wants you to take good care of yourself, y’know, you’re really cool and you should treat your body kindly. He’ll ask if anyone else knows and if you tell him you’d rather they not find out immediately, he’s already giving you a thumbs up and making sure any question directed at your gender is immediately shot down.

Swiss: Swiss is too focused on having a good time and being good to everyone who deserves kindness to worry about why or why not you don’t want to go to the pool with them. You’ve got your reasons and that’s enough, although he’ll sorely miss you because he could use the extra help in fending Dew off in the water gun fight that most definitely will end in bloodshed if Aether doesn’t step in. Eventually he’ll convince you to maybe go, but not before you cave and tell him you can’t be seen with your shirt off. He’s smart enough to know what that means. No worries! And you know what? In solidarity he just won’t take his off, either. Will support you regardless of how you choose to present yourself and will sometimes casually gift you a new shirt or something, “because I think you’d look really handsome in it.”

Rain: Tender boy. He literally would not pry or push you to tell him anything you didn’t seem like you wanted to say. If you come out to him, that’s completely on your terms. I think he might eventually have a feeling, but he’s not going to make assumptions about you and will let you tell him when you’re ready, and even if you never do, that’s ok too. When you do tell him, he’s completely supportive and won’t make you feel any less of a man about yourself. Is a bit sad to know that you may struggle with dysphoria and he wants you to know that you’re a wonderful person, inside and out, even if you don’t always see it.

Cirrus: She notices your odd behavior, but she’s polite and chooses not to say anything about it. She doesn’t want to make you feel like she’s judging you or scare you or make you uncomfortable. She probably doesn’t flat out make assumptions about you, but she does think about it occasionally. Eventually when you come out to her, she completely understands. Sings her praises about how nice it is that you trust her enough to tell her something so personal about yourself, and says she’s thankful to have such a great person in her life. Also she’s always been your protective mom friend, but if you need anyone to get punched for saying anything transphobic, just let her know. Mama bear has got you. Mama bear has got claws. Hell, Cumulus will even help beat someone up. She doesn’t even need to know the reason. If Cirrus is verbally or physically abusing someone that’s good enough reason for her. You now have two powerful and protective mom friends, use this power for good.

Cumulus: She’s not gonna notice if you’re acting nervous or weird about anything. She’s focused on hanging out with you and having a good time and making sure you’re having a good time and that fun things are happening. If you go to the beach and don’t take your shirt off, not weird. Neither of you are even in the water, you’re probably making an impressive sand castle on top of a sleeping Mountain. If you’re at the pool, she’s okay with sitting on the side talking your ear off about anything under the sun (which currently includes all the other ghouls as it was a family trip to the pool). She wouldn’t notice if you tugged at your binder or had a higher voice or anything someone might think would be conspicuous. If and/or when you eventually come out to her, she’s like “Ooohhh, okay!” And honestly? She might forget. And then remember. And then forget again, and remember again. It’s just another thing about you, like your hair colour or what music you like. Doesn’t make you any less wonderful to her, and wouldn’t change anything about your relationship.

- @solofreakk

[confused-android]

Day 4: Farah - GNC Fashion with art by Pixiliis, here: https://pixeliis.tumblr.com/post/631151195714650112/confused-android

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"I don't do long skirts," Farah says immediately. "I can't fight in them, I can't walk in them, and it's just not happening."

Dirk grimaces awkwardly. "Everyone will be in period dress. If you're not, you'll stand out."

"I'm already going to stand out," she argues. "I'm a Black woman, going to a Jane Austen ball. I don't think I'm going to blend in very well."

"True," Dirk admits. "But you'll look like you don't belong, if you won't wear a Regency outfit."

Farah growls in frustration, then takes a deep, stabilizing breath and holds up her hands. "Okay. Dirk. We are hunting for werewolves. There is no way that I'm going to go to a ball that is potentially hosted by actual werewolves in an outfit I can't fight in. That's that."

"I don't even know if they'll let you in without a costume," Dirk blurts, then covers his face.

"Dirk," Farah says dangerously. "Did you already tell them that we're coming in costume?"

Dirk squeaks.

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"I can't believe him," Farah storms, pacing back and forth between the front desk and the kitchenette. She taps her fingers together: forefinger to thumb, middle finger to thumb, forefinger to thumb, middle finger to thumb. "He didn't even ask me if I would dress up for the ball. That's a – that's a very personal decision to make for someone! Ball outfits, and… and such. There are whole – " she stops, trying to pick a word out of her brain "– whole… movies, whole movies about that sort of thing. And he just made the decision for me!"

"I don't think Dirk realized that you'd have a problem wearing a dress," Todd says. He's sitting on the floor, icing a lump on the top of his head with one hand, and scrolling through his phone with the other. "He's not the most observant of guys, y'know?"

"Oh I know."

Dirk, who flits through life, supremely unconcerned with anything so paltry as what other people think of him. Dirk, who wouldn't think twice about wearing an absurd or impractical outfit to investigate a case. Dirk, who looks self-assured in any circumstance (except when he's spiraling). Dirk, who's comfortable in his own skin.

Farah knows she's being unfair and uncharitable, but she's also solidly pissed off.

"It's just –" she sighs and stops pacing, but continues tapping her fingers together, keeps time with the thrum under her skin. "I have to get an outfit, and the invitation recommends a few local costume makers, and if I go in and order one of those dresses they are going to look at me and make assumptions about me, and then I need to pretend that I don't hate it, and it's just more than I think I can handle right now."

"Plus the werewolves," Todd reminds her.

"Plus the werewolves." She vibrates in place for a moment, then shrieks and throws her hands up, and goes back to pacing.

Todd catches up in Instagram and moves on to Bubble Shooter, and the icepack shifts in his grip and drips cold condensation down the back of his neck. He makes his way through three rounds of the game before Farah manages to stop pacing again and stands in front of him.

"Am I – am I being unreasonable, Todd? Is this actually fine, and I'm freaking out over nothing? I need you to tell me how much to freak out over here."

"Okay, wow, well – first of all, I am the wrong person to know how much anyone should be freaking out. Let's just get that clear." Farah glares at him and he drops his phone, holds one hand up defensively. "Okay, okay. I mean, you're not being unreasonable – Dirk was definitely pretty thoughtless. Just not like, more thoughtless than he usually is? He's just on a completely different wavelength, right?"

Farah presses her lips together and closes her eyes, and takes a long, stabilizing breath. She opens her eyes again, and finds Todd looking thoughtfully up at her. "What?" she asks flatly.

"I don't think you're being unreasonable, but you might be um… Like, overreacting? I think there's something we can do about this."

"Todd, if you're not going to tell me that I can wear my regular clothes, then I don't want to hear it." She shakes her head and takes the ice pack from his hand, then turns to the kitchenette and pours out the half-melted slush, digs in the freezer for some fresh ice.

"I'm not going to tell you that," Todd starts, and grimaces when she shoots a glare at him. "No, no, wait, hear me out. Dirk is right – the whole point of us accepting this invitation is to look like we're there for the Jane Austen festival. I refuse to have read Pride and Prejudice for nothing." She cracks a reluctant smile and hands him a fresh ice pack. "But it's still 2019 right now. We don't have to actually meet Regency decency requirements."

She frowns consideringly. "Tell me more."

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Farah wipes her sweaty palm on her thighs for the third time in as many minutes, and Todd shoots her a sympathetic glance, then tugs his jacket down for the umpteenth time that afternoon. Farah had managed to find a tailor to make three period-accurate costumes in one week – truth be told, she is pretty excited to write costuming off as a business expense – and while Todd likes the way his outfit looks in the mirror, he's still getting used to the way the clothes fit.

"Stop messing with it," Dirk hisses, and fussily adjusts Todd's cravat for him. Todd rolls his eyes, but looks fond anyway.

"There is a master of ceremonies, Dirk," Farah says tightly. "They are going to announce us."

"I know!" he thrills. "Isn't it exciting!"

"Yeah. Exciting. That is definitely what I was going to say." She still thinks it's  risky move, coming in the front door and mingling with all of the other festival attendees and guests of the ball, but it really does seem to be the only way to meet everyone without pretending to be reporters (which had been Farah's rejected suggestion) or catering staff (which had been Todd's).

The line edges closer to the double doors at the head of the ballroom, and they can hear the faint sounds of a string ensemble, the booming voice of the master of ceremonies announcing guests, the murmur of a crowd settling in. The sets have already begun, and the vibration of dozens of feet treading the same beat comes through the floor boards.

"Thank gosh we took those dance workshops earlier," Dirk gushes. He seems to have enjoyed his day at the festival more than Farah and Todd combined, and starts chattering excitedly about the social implications of pre-Victorian transportation methods and the economy of luxury goods as they creeps up towards the doors. He doesn't mention anything about the case, though, and after several minutes going on about status symbols, Todd elbows Dirk in the side and raises his eyebrows questioningly.

Dirk obliges his questioning eyebrows by expounding on his point about pineapples.

Todd and Farah sigh in unison. "What are you thinking about the case?" Todd reminds him.

"Oh! Of course! Well, given Regency mores, especially those I've learned about this afternoon, it seems perfectly plausible that various high class families could have been, if not werewolves, other mythological beings that are able to adopt human or humanoid forms for limited periods of times or specific dates, and still collect enough wealth and social connections to function in society! Jane Austen hinted at such families in any number of her books, and I'm surprised that it took until Mr. Andrews' thesis project to collect as much evidence as he did!"

"How does a grad student afford our rates?" Farah muses under her breath, for the fifth time since the case began, and Dirk shoots her an impatient glare.

"That is extremely not the point," he snarks, though Farah isn't quite sure that's true.

But then they're at the head of the line, and they hand their tickets to the man at the door, who looks them over and inclines his head graciously. "I'm always glad to see such well-dressed gentlemen at an event like this," he says warmly, guiding them just inside the door. "We don't get enough fellas who haven't been dragged by their girlfriends, you know. Really helps to even out the sets."

"Oh, I'm not –" Farah begins, stammering, but the man waves his hand kindly, dismissing her concerns.

"Oh, sure no," he says. "But you'll balance out the sets anyway, if you lead half as well as you dress."

"I –" Farah blinks, then smiles unexpectedly. "Thank you, sir," she says, and he winks and faces the room.

"Presenting: Misters Gently and Brotzman; Miss Black!"

And then they step into the room: all three in their waistcoats, their tailcoats, pantaloons and cravats. All three feeling good and correct and present.

(and Farah learns that hiding silver in a Hessian boot makes kicking a werewolf startlingly effective, and that she is a damn good set leader)

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Link to: day one, Farah - Youth day two, Farah - Dance  day three, Farah - Gore prompt list

[werevulvi]

Perhaps it's not so special to just be a woman. Half the population is. So what? But to me it is a huge thing. To even be able to say those words "I am a woman." They feel magnetic somehow, clinging to my tongue. It's like the word "woman" has a texture in my mouth like no other word does, vibrating at a different frequency. As if it's poisonous to taste. Yet I taste it, yet I say it. And I will keep saying it until I've cleansed it, no matter how long it takes. No matter how annoyingly repetitive and unnecessary it may sound to you.

It is a big deal to me, because up until age 29, I never spoke of myself using that word. Not even once. To then pick it up, for the first time, at age 29... was huge. And it's been 2 years since then now, but I'm still struggling with it, and it's still huge. I still don't understand why it's so hard for me to hold and hold onto that word, yet I am fiercely protective of it. I toss it away, then pick it up again, remorseful and protective of it. And I do that again and again. For each time I pick it up again, it's as if I understand its value a little bit more. All the significance, trauma, love, pain and curiosity it carries. It is mine, and no matter how hard it is to hold... I refuse to ever truly let go of it.

I may not look like a woman, I may not even want to! But why does it matter? Why should it matter what a woman looks like? Am I taking it too far, with the masculinity, the beard and bald head? Am I pushing my idea of freedom for women's expression too far? "Yes, women can be masc and gnc, BUT..." is what I keep hearing. But what? "...but you're taking it too far by looking like a whole ass man" is what I feel like the rest of the sentence, which they do not speak, is. Perhaps I'm wrong, I can't read minds. But sometimes I feel like people's minds are so loud that I can't not hear their thoughts.

I get a lot of backlash for every time I state myself as a woman, with my obnoxious reluctance to pass as my true identity. It's difficult to properly word that, what I actually mean. Perhaps I mean to say that I refuse to look like the traditional ideal of what people expect a woman to roughly wanna look like, whether that be masculine or feminine, as long as it's clearly recognisably female in some way or another. And my "true identity" has nothing to do with my personality, or my preferred expression, but only my deep down true love for being bio female. Thus, my "reluctance to pass" is indeed my desire to keep and maintain my transition traits, and my "true identity" is my womanhood, but I don't mean it in the same way TRA's do.

That true love for being female, isn't an ideal, but rather something much closer to my survival instinct.

It's that feeling of wanting to protect yourself when in danger. It's that instant self defense you act on without thinking when you feel like you're being threatened. It's that instant reaction of removing yourself from danger the split second it touches you, your body. It doesn't matter which part of you that danger touches, whether it be your hand, knee, your love handles, scarred chest, hairy face or your genitals. No matter what part of you is touched by that danger, you will instinctively protect it. It's in that instinct that I found love for my female nature, in my instinct to protect it from harm. I found it beyond my survival instinct, because no matter what part of me is ever touched by danger, my subconscious mind recognises it as not just lovable and worthy of protection and care, but also as part of the whole. This means, that deep down I'm not just loving myself... I also know that I am whole. No matter how many parts of me are cut off or distorted... I will always be whole.

I don't always feel aware of that like in my frontal lobe, but damn, my reptile brain knows it and won't ever question it.

With that, I found that my dysphoria is a shallow creation of my frontal lobe, and that it's in contradiction of my survival instinct. Being suicidal and/or self-harming is similar to this. Even wanting to die, always came second to my survival instinct. That is probably why I never succeeded to kill myself, and also why I never succeeded to truly hate my body. This does NOT mean that such horrible suffering as dysphoria or whatever feelings lead to self harm, is somehow not real. That is not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying it's a kind of cognitive dissonance, which messes with the very core of your core instincts, and that... I think, makes such psychological issues especially harmful.

And I also mean that my self love may not always have been accessible to me on surface level, but that despite that, it has always been innate.

And with that said... having found my innate self-love, and invited it to my frontal lobe... that is sorta why I can't really regret my medical transition. Even though I still have days when I struggle. Because I can't think of my body as broken anymore. Not since I found that deep, deep, VERY deep down I view myself as whole, lovable, valuable, and worthy of respect, love and safety... no matter what ever happens to me. Because my body is me, and there is no true disconnect between my sense of self and my flesh. Only on surface level there can sometimes be disconnect.

Kinda like the branches on a tree may be disconnected at the crown, but deeper down they all share the same trunk. I see myself in a similar manner. That at the top of the tree is most of my conscious thoughts, feelings, memories, etc, as well as all the various parts of my body. Or that is what my frontal lobe is aware of. That is how I perceive myself on surface level, as a scattered mess of branches, twigs, leaves and what not, each representing aspect of me, seemingly chaotic and all disconnected. But I'm also partially aware of what's going on deeper within my mind. I'm aware of the trunk that connects all branches, twigs, leaves, etc, and I'm also aware of the roots. Not directly aware, but I sense it like an inkling. I can sense that not only is there a trunk and roots deep down that connects to all twigs, and all twigs to each other, but also there in lies my knowledge that no matter how many of my twigs are left intact... the tree will always be a whole tree.

And it doesn't matter what I look like, or what troubles my body has gone through. Survival will always be the first priority. And my self-love IS equal to my instinct to survive. Because the reason I will always come to my own rescue whenever faced with danger or threat, or perceived danger/threat, is because I love myself. Self-love is the first move before I'm even saving myself from the danger, before that split second reaction takes place. That is how fast, instant and innate my self-love is. It was too obvious to even be aware of, for most of my life.

I think that's why is was so hard for me to find my self love. Because well... it was more deeply buried than my survival instinct itself, which I thought must be the innermost core aspect of my existence. But I was wrong about that. Self-love goes even deeper than survival. THAT is the innermost core aspect. Or so I believe. Can't think of anything that would possibly go even deeper than that.

But also, although I am the most aware on my self-love in moments my survival instinct takes over, I am also aware of it in other moments.

This is also why I can't get rid of my transition traits such as my facial hair. Because finding that true self-love from deep within my core, basically made me fuse all my aspects and physical traits together into a complete wholeness. All needs to be protected and loved. Every twig, every leaf. Sacrificing bits and pieces of me that are not damaging to my health, is self harm and goes against my survival instinct/self-love. It does not matter if the parts of me are in their natural state or medically/cosmetically altered. Even if those parts of me are inconvenient for my social life.

You know how a people who get organ transplants, their bodies try to reject the new organ because their immune system regards it as foreign? Well, this is kinda like that, but the exact opposite. My body/immune system/whatever-the-fuck regards my transition traits as heakthy parts of my original body, and thus to be protected at all costs. Loss of them will result in pain and grief. Just like losing any other part of my body would. And why? Because we mourn the loss of what we love, and what we regard as "ours" and as important, whole, healthy, lovable.

Deep down I do not care as much about such things as having a functional social life. Deep down, I care much more about things like keeping myself whole, safe, healthy and loved. Getting rid of my beard goes against that. Even just shaving it goes against that. My subconscious mind regards such an act as self harm.

Does this make sense to you? That it has nothing to do with "gender," be it manhood, womanhood, dysphoria, femininity or masculinity. It has to do with self-love, self-respect and survival. And that is a hell of a lot more important than being read or respected as a woman by others. No matter how much it hurts, because respecting and reclaiming myself as a woman is also highly important to me. Thus, I have to find a way to be open and honest with myself as a woman, without further harming myself.

I know this is deep and complicated spiritual shit, but I'm just trying to explain something which I think is probably very important. This discovery I had changed my life dramatically. So am I trying to teach self-love? No, I dunno. I don't think I can do that. I don't think anyone can. Perhaps I'm just trying to show a possibility.

I also need to clarify that despite knowing I love myself deep down now, I still struggle to stay connected to that aspect of my brain. And when I'm disconnected from it, I override my survival instinct and it misinterprets itself. Basically I fall out of order and act in a self destructive way, thinking it's self protection when it's actually the opposite. With that I understand that my self-love and my survival instinct are dependent on each other and need to be in harmony with each other to really keep me alive, safe and healthy. And although I'm now sometimes aware of this bond deep with myself, I'm still in imbalance. Because I still confuse self destruction for survival sometimes. When I skip meals, when I stay up too late, when I ruminate, when I smoke cigarettes, when I skip exercising, when I let my dirty dishes mould, etc. So simply being aware isn't quite enough, but it got me very far ahead of myself.

Also, trivial matters and superficial woes still get to me. I'm still human. I'm still fallible. Which is okay, but also frustrating. And that is basically why I love being a woman, while at the same time I also still struggle to accept myself as a woman, because it does include accepting being too norm-breaking for the society that I live in to accept me. And that hurts. It's a challenge that I'm not gonna overcome over night, just because I found the most important key to my healing. It's still just a key, a framework or an attitude - not a cure or some kinda magical spell. It's highly valuable and extremely important, but I still need to properly work through my emotions and learn how to navigate my social issues.

But what I feel my self-love is doing to help me, is carrying me through all this, and soothing me when I most need it. It makes my struggle worth it, and it makes me see a hell of a lot more of my potential than I was ever aware of before. The only backside of it is... well, it seems it does get to my head sometimes, and causing me some mild narcissistic tendencies. It sometimes makes me impatient hearing people with low self-esteem go on and on about how worthless they feel. That isn't great, I know. I'm working on fixing that error too.

By Werevulvi, dated November 29th, 2020.

[sapphos-darlings]

Tips for the women out there who wish they were more GNC but are afraid to live the dream:

Giving up the feminine routines that exhaust you and which you don’t want to carry on with essentially only stings once. Let’s talk about shaving: few of us enjoy shaving. The feel of smooth skin can be enjoyable, but I’ve rarely met a woman who thinks it’s worth the effort it takes to stay smooth and hairless every day of your lives. Face it: this is not the natural state of your body, and the expectation that you meet this unnatural and frankly pedophilic standard is ridiculous. But you can’t just drop it, can you? People will stare at your hairy legs. You can’t go out with your legs exposed anymore if you stop shaving them. And even if you cover your legs, people will notice your arm hair. You might be WOC, and your hair is not only judged for being there in the first place, but being there so obviously, and you’re not only going against the current as a woman but as someone whose worth is already questioned in our society even when you do everything they ask of you. You’re already told that you’re never quite good enough, and more than just your own reputation hangs on you. Doesn’t it? The truth is, the vast majority of the people you pass by in this life will not care about you, hairy or otherwise. And the people who do are either not worth your time to begin with, for example the men who demand that you bow to their desires, or they need to mind their own business and cannot dictate how you exist in your own body, such as your friends, coworkers or other women in your family. Maybe you can’t shut them out, but you can resist, you can and you should question them. How are you bad for being how you were meant to be as a human being? What material, spiritual benefit does a beauty routine and the constant outside eye on yourself to judge whether you’re performing properly bring you, as opposed to all the other things you could be focusing on instead? They might call you ugly or say that you’re letting yourself go. This is social conditioning talking, and is not the truth of it. Your body was made to be a certain way - letting yourself exist as you naturally are is neither ugly nor lazy. It’s not a crime. In fact, demanding that someone alters herself for aesthetics every single day of her life is a horrible thing to ask of somebody: you are essentially told that you’re not good enough as a person, only as an object. Your worth is not tied to how desirable you are to the male gaze. Especially as a wlw, the best thing you can do for yourself is reject the male desire and the male standards such as hairlessness and the expensive, often painful, beauty routines. Re-evaluate everything you do for your looks, figure out which things you’re really doing for yourself, why you’re doing them, and how they help you - if they do - in your everyday life. Choose convenience and comfort and real confidence over the safety of conforming. Your womanhood and your personhood are not dependent on how well you perform the role of a sex object, a decoration. You are human.

Now, you’ve done something that seems radical: maybe you stopped shaving, or you shaved your entire head. Maybe you wore something you wanted to instead of something that makes you look beautiful. You expect repercussions. They might come, and they might sting hard the first few times, but you’ll learn quickly that you do not die. There are no cosmic consequences for unshaved legs or a makeupless face, or for cropped hair, or for wearing a pair of comfortable shoes that don’t make your feet ache and sting. God herself will not descend from the skies and smite you for your disobedience. The world is, in fact, quite silent - and you may feel more comfortable in your own skin already, even if you face consequences. After all, words are just words, but what you feel and how you carry yourself are your material reality, your whole perspective to this world. This is your point of view. You’ve made it more comfortable for you. You’ve made the vessel for all that you experience here better for yourself. Who else matters? Or maybe you’re actually just itchy, because regrowing your hair might irritate your skin for a while, much like breaking it open with microcuts with the razor would. The ends of your body hair are sharp, and the stubble doesn’t bend with your body. It’s like a thousand needles digging into your skin. Use lotion or oil on it - body safe, of course, especially if we’re talking about the genital area - or take a bath every now and then to soften the hairs, but remember not to dry your skin needlessly. The itchiness will go away with time. You may notice you smell less, too. Battling against your body odours gets easier with more fluff here and there to regulate your skin’s bacteria. The rewards aren’t instant, but they’re there... other than for the relief you’ll feel for not having to wake up early or spend time you’d rather be watching Netflix by performing a routine that demands your obedience every single day, or else. That one comes for free and it comes the second you decide to desist. Else what, you’ve asked it. And nothing happened. You’ll get less comments about your changes over time. People are very resistant to change and nonconformity scares them; stepping out of line will always make others nervous around you. But they’ll learn, as you do, that what you’ve done is in fact quite harmless. Your body will feel more comfortable. Your confidence will grow once you realise that you are good the way you are, and that the world will not collapse around you if you stop adhering to rules written for somebody else’s pleasure.

But surely, no one will love a woman who’s not beautiful - and you can’t be beautiful without makeup, without long and well-maintained hair, without manicured nails, heels and a thin body. Right? Look around you. Look at real women, women who haven’t been rendered mere Barbie lookalikes by the powers of Photoshop and extensive cosmetic surgery. She’s fat, and she still has a boyfriend. She’s got bags under her eyes, she’s got wrinkles, and she’s engaged to marry her wife-to-be this coming June. It’s like those around her don’t care she’s “let herself go”. And she’s muscular, mannish, everything you were taught was wrong or unattainable for women - and she’s adored by women all over the internet. People share her pictures with that emoji with the heart eyes, all over. “I want to be like her.” “I wish I was that brave.” Maybe you said the same thing when you saw her before, before you did what you’ve done now, before you decided to become like her. Who’s in the wrong here? These women who have committed the cardinal sins of breaking against the laws of objectification, or maybe the laws themselves, this expectation that you change yourself to be desired? Desired by who? Who is this invisible spectator in your life you so desperately wish to please? Do you love him? Does he love you? Do you want him? Question him; change him to her. What does she want from you? When I ask the trapped girl within me what she wants, she answers “freedom”. To be herself, to do what she wants, to wear what she wants, to be comfortable and safe. She wants to be seen for the human person she is, to be respected for what she can do, not for a plastic body detached from our mammalian reality of stretchmarks, curves, wrinkles, layers of fat and the little fur that keeps her clean and dry and regulates her temperature. So your mother or your sister or the man you work with told you that you look sick today, or that people will feel ashamed by you because you’ve let your leg hair get out of control. Ask them why does it matter - who is the audience for your performance? Maybe they reply: “it’s basic hygiene.” If it’s basic hygiene, why is it only expected from women?

You can prioritize your comfort and your needs over this commercialized idea of “beauty”. There is no wrong way to be a woman. Love your body. Wear what you want. Perform for yourself only. If someone won’t love you for what you don’t provide, find someone whose love is worth your time and not dependent on your performance in a full-time reality show. Someone will love you for who you are, because you are a human being in a human body, and anyone who demands you to be something else is out of their mind. The cardinal sins of womanhood and attractiveness are a lie imposed onto you to sell you products and beat you down every day so that you won’t question whether the pain and shame you endure is justified or realistic. Fat women, thin women, women of colour, hairy women, petite women, “masculine” women, “feminine” women, non-conforming women are all women, we’re all proper women, we’re all good enough, and we were all made to be jiggly, we were made to be fuzzy, we were made to be rough around the edges, to have smells, to have desires, to mature and show the signs of our maturity. There is nothing wrong with the way nature created you.

[cruising-on-pirate-dreams]

Flower

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Small headcanon based on Sanji’s WCI island backstory. Pairing: GNC!Sanji x Zoro

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It was a strange day, a hard day. Things had gone rough for the Straw Hats and tensions were high. Luckily the Sunny was big enough for each member to have their space. Though, it was more difficult for those that shared a single place. Still, Sanji had seen his lover training on the deck so he was sure that he was safe for the time being.

He took a breath as he closed the door to their bedroom but didn’t lock it. He didn’t want Franky to be angry if Zoro ended up slicing the door open out of frustration. So, he simply trusted in Zoro’s immediate need to nap after training.

The cook took a breath as he slowly undid his tie and slipped off his suit coat. He folded his coat and laid it on the bed before moving to his dresser. There was a mirror on the wall that was perfect for what he needed. He just… He just needed a bit of time to escape.

He kicked off his shoes and rested them securely under the dresser. He then slipped out of his slacks, leaving himself in only his silk dress shirt that was a lovely soft teal and a pair of boxers. He took a breath to compose himself before grabbing a key out of the music box fastened to the top of the dresser. He unlocked the top left-hand drawer and hesitantly opened it. Lord knows he hadn’t opened this drawer in so long. The last time he could remember was a week after Fishman Island. It felt so long ago.

He reached inside and pulled out a small black bag. He swallowed thickly and pulled the drawstring loose before dumping the contents of the bag into the open mouth of the music box. Anxiety, unease, and a sudden lack of self-assurance raked through his body as he stared down at the barely used makeup waiting to be applied. Could he really do this? The others were on board. They might see. Enemies could attack at any second!

But he needed this.

He shook his head and clutched at the dresser to steady himself. His shoulders drooped and he desperately forced himself to relax. He took a breath, counted to three, and then released it before grabbing the eyeshadow first. He was not great at doing this himself. He was good with colors, always had been, but the application was usually awful. Still, he pushed that to the back of his mind as he listened to the music box play. Robin had given it to him for his birthday, it soothed him.

As the stiff beautiful music of the rosewood music box played, Sanji felt himself relax and he actually started to smile. The application of the eyeshadow went better than expected. He ended up choosing a lovely blue that brought out the color of his eyes with a tiny splash of purple to contrast. After about ten minutes and several cleanups of smeared makeup, Sanji finally had a look he was proud of. He used a small hair clip to keep his bangs to the side so he could see how the makeup looked on both sides. It didn’t matter that he wouldn’t see the other eye once his bangs were back in place, it felt nice to have both sides even.

He wasn’t all that fond of blush, it was garish on his pale skin. But found he had an affinity for glossy lipstick. He just wished that it was easier to apply. His normally steady hands always shook when he started to put it on. Perhaps it was the rush of emotions that made it so difficult.

He could remember the first time he ever wore any. He was a child, tiny and so pathetically delicate, sitting on his mother’s hospital bed. He sat atop his mother’s lap as she told him to put his lips together as she gently cupped his cheek. She kissed his forehead before looking sadly at his mouth, his busted lip had healed but the bruising was still obvious. So, she gave him one of her beautiful smiles and pulled out her lipstick. She hummed a sweet tune as she applied the makeup perfectly. He could remember her telling him that he could wear it while he visited but had to take it off before leaving. 

But that small childhood comfort ended the day she died.

He hid from the comfort makeup brought him. Stuffed it down like so many other things that he felt. He hid behind the masculinity of his naturally male body so that no one could take the memory of her love away from him.

During his two years of training, that familiar feeling he had thought dead suddenly resurfaced. He told himself it was wrong and that he hated it but he could only fight it so long. He sank into the old memories and used it to fight the loneliness he felt being away from the Straw Hats.

Once he was home again he felt the need to stuff it down once more. He had a new romance with his favorite idiot swordsman. His marimo was the most masculine person he’d ever met and very gay. Sanji was sure that showing a more feminine side would lose him the love of his life. So, he hid once more.

But today was too hard, they had almost lost Luffy in combat.

Sanji’s hands trembled horribly now as he tried his hardest to slide the lipstick across his bottom lip. He had barely finished just that lip when he startled suddenly at the sound of the bedroom door slamming open. The sudden sound made him jerk towards that direction as his lipstick fell from his fingers. He couldn’t even attempt to catch it as he stared in horror at what he saw. He was staring eye to eye with his lover. His eyes wide as a strange and slightly concerning look entered Zoro’s eyes.

“Always knew there was something weird about you,” Zoro commented bluntly. His tone, as well as his word choice, made Sanji’s heart sink immediately.

“I thought you were t-training.” Sanji whispered a bit brokenly. He tried to stand tall, not wanting to cry or panic.

“Luffy’s hungry.” The swordsman grunted. He stepped into the room fully and closed the door, making Sanji take a cautious step back. He swallowed thickly, Zoro looked unhappy that Sanji had moved away. Zoro didn’t like cowards.

“Oh.” Sanji’s voice came out weaker than he wanted. God, he wished he had a cigarette.

“So, you’re…” Zoro raised an eyebrow to get his point across.

“What?! No!” Sanji denounced immediately, defenses of denial starting to rebuild. Though, they crumbled quickly at the unimpressed look from his lover. “Well, I-I mean… Maybe. I-I don’t know!”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Zoro grunted, his face as cold and unexpressive as usual. The sight was starting to make Sanji panic. He couldn’t read Zoro when he got like this. “Shouldn’t you know what you are?”

“I don’t k-know!” Sanji’s voice cracked as he clenched his fists. His eyes started to mist up as a lump grew in his throat. “I-I feel like both. Or neither. I d-don’t know! It’s so confusing. I can't tell which o-one it is!” The building tears dripped down his cheeks as he clenched his eyes shut. He flinched hard as he heard Zoro’s heavy boots walk towards him.

“Does it matter?” Zoro asked with a soft grunt. There was a little sound, like something small snapping. “Normal isn’t a requirement in this crew.”

Sanji gasped softly as he suddenly felt Zoro’s lips press against his exposed forehead. He felt something slipped into his hair before Zoro pulled away.

“Now get cooking,” Zoro growled, walking back out the door and shutting it.

Sanji’s wet eyes slowly slipped open, He raised his hand to his head, touching the thing in his hair as he turned to look in the mirror. A pale blush dusted his cheeks as he smiled shakily when he saw the flower nestled in his hair, knowing it came from the vase on the dresser.

His heart fluttered anew with love as he touched the silken petals.

~*~End~*~