#grow up if you think all trans people have their shit sorted by 24 and are living comfortably as themselves

[mycological-mariner]

First day of Pride and I just want to shine a light on all the trans people who are unable to transition, especially those who aren’t fresh faced university grads. Those who don’t live in a supportive or even just accepting home or community. Those who aren’t well off, those who aren’t good at or popular enough to crowd fund. Those who can’t afford transitioning. Those who can’t even transition socially or need to stay in the closet for your safety. Those who rely on benefits or unforgiving jobs to just pay the bills. Having to hear day in and day out you’re just GNC, that your pre-transition body is “ugly” and the ways you can express your gender are “cringe.” Every trans person who’s been told they aren’t “trying hard enough”. Those trans people who won’t even get to imagine transitioning for years.

I see you. I love you. You’re so undervalued and under appreciated in a world where being a white, well off 20 year old on HRT and getting surgery is more common to see than people who work full time and just don’t have that privilege. It sucks, so much. But you are loved and you are seen.

Happy Pride Month to trans people who aren’t where they want to be. The world is better with you in it. We all need each other.

[nico-the-overlord]

0: Height

1: Age

2: Shoe size

3: Do you smoke?

4: Do you drink?

5: Do you take drugs?

6: Age you get mistaken for

7: Have tattoos?

8: Want any tattoos?

9: Got any piercings?

10: Want any piercings?

11: Best friend?

12: Relationship status

13: Biggest turn ons

14: Biggest turn offs

15: Favorite movie

16: I’ll love you if…

17: Someone you miss

18: Most traumatic experience

19: A fact about your personality

20: What I hate most about myself

21: What I love most about myself

22: What I want to be when I get older

23: My relationship with my sibling(s)

24: My relationship with my parent(s)

25: My idea of a perfect date

26: My biggest pet peeves

27: A description of the girl/boy I like

28: A description of the person I dislike the most

29: A reason I’ve lied to a friend

30: What I hate the most about work/school

31: What my last text message says

32: What words upset me the most

33: What words make me feel the best about myself

34: What I find attractive in women

35: What I find attractive in men

36: Where I would like to live

37: One of my insecurities

38: My childhood career choice

39: My favorite ice cream flavor

40: Who I wish I could be

41: Where I want to be right now

42: The last thing I ate

43: Sexiest person that comes to my mind immediately

44: A random fact about anything

ALL OF THEM GO.

also if you want, tag a friend to answer all of them too

AAA-

0. 5 foot 7

1. Minor

2.zero clue

3. No

4. No

5. No

6. I used to get mistaken for a 15/16 y/o when I was 11/12ish. I got asked if I was 20 once.

7. No

8. Maybe (my parents would kill me)

9. Yea, one on each ear lobe

10. I might wanna get more (my parents would kill me)

11. @/the-story-system <3 (idk if I should tag)

12. Single

13. Zero clue

14. Also zero clue

15. Probably Encanto or Coco…Sixth sense was also cool from what I remember

16. Idk who you are anon, I’ll still love you as long as you aren’t an asshole to me or friends

17. Many of my old friends. Also extended family on both sides. And friends I can’t see often irl.

18. Uhh I don’t think I’ve had any traumatic experiences? Like I’ve had shit happen to me ofc but not traumatic so none

19. I will try to make cookies for you. Or a dessert/other food. I love giving people but esp friends food

20. Hate most…maybe the fact I don’t stand up for myself, weaker in that area

21. This random dot (are they called moles in english?) on my forehead. Idk I just think it’s cool.

22. Probably a teacher of sort

23. Pretty good! I love them both despite us being annoying back and forth but yk, siblings will siblings

24. Also generally good! I however have become alot more secretive around them so uh that’s kinda…not done it good

25. Idc where just meeting up irl. Get to talk and go around. I love play dates and being with people

26. Idk if I have one…I guess people being mean for zero reason to go generic

27. I have too many friends HOW CAN I DESCRIBE JUST ONE

28. Orange and blond hair. Was the president or something. Guess who (I don’t personally hate anyone so)

29. To protect myself and them

30. Slugging through the day when only one of my classes has a real good friend group

31. Sent on discord to a group of friends “I never looked into the ending tho…”

32. Anything that relates back to “you should be more feminine because you’re a girl 🥺” or “you’re growing up and becoming a woman!” not that specific emoji just emotion, but holy shit that gets on my nerves. Even back when I didn’t even identify as trans or knew what that was these annoyed me.

33. I love it when I’m called handsome, idk why just make me giddy. Also when friends say they like my art/writing (((:

34. Their swagger (could I even pinpoint one thing?)

35. Their swagger (again, could I even pinpoint one thing?)

36. With a friend in a house. I don’t really care where but would prefer not in the city

37. Majority of my body, just to generalize

38. I wanted to be a business woman at one point

39. I loveee icecream uhm. Probably french vanilla but caramel-swirl esc types are awesome also

40. Boy this is a loaded question uhm. Idk be me but doing better?

41. Not here physically or mentally or any other levels

42. Chocolate icecream

43. Josh Hutcherson…people other than my friend find him objectively hot yes? (I only have that memorized to annoy her with it lol)

44. Dolphins get high on pufferfish, intentionally ramming into them cause their poison only gets dolphins high!

[nightcoremoon]

ethnic genocide is... kind of worse than the criminalization of queerness because like. if you kill all members of an ethnicity, like tutsis or palestinians or armenians or something, that's it, their culture is gone, they're dead. people of different ethnicities can't just rachel dolezal their way into it. the yahi died with ishi and the only remnants of the yahi are through works of the le guins' chronicling his life. it's tragic and it's unfixable. if hitler succeeded in decimating the jews and the romani, they would no longer exist. there are dozens, no, hundreds of native american tribes that were exterminated by the colonists. an estimated hundred million natives lived here before columbus came. and now? there's five million. there are less natives alive today than there were jews murdered during the holocaust. the white invaders killed about 8 times as many people as hitler did. even if the forced sterilizations didn't happen, and even if every single native american alive today got someone pregnant or been impregnated, and even if every single one of them did so with a person of a different ethnicity, and even if the infant mortality rate was zero, even including twins at 3%, even rounding up, even blessing all of them with immortality, even assuming all of them were old enough to consent to and have sex, there is still only a maximum of 6 million native americans able to be born every year. it would take a constant 15 years just to replace who was lost. an estimated 24% of women were sterilized so that's 17 years. if half of all babies had both a native mother and father, that's 24 years. infant mortality for natives is 9%, so that's 25. assuming minors comprise 1/6 of the population, that's 27 years. and keep in mind this doesn't even take into account all of the natives who were born FOR THE PAST 500 YEARS. it's disgusting what was done to them, but this isn't about just the natives even though holy shit I never put it into actual mathematical perspective before and I am significantly more enraged on their behalf than I was before, and that much more understanding of their own righteous fury. giving the land back is the bare fucking minimum for reparations. but anyway.

so yeah, ethnic genocide is really bad. and so is, you know, just for example, the aids crisis. 125,000 AT LEAST people died from aids. most were gay. half as much as corona victims, and 0.5% of the american populace. several people from that time period have said that it wiped out entire swathes of gay people. the entire gay community was decimated. but here we are 25 or so years later and the united states is just... absolutely saturated with queer people. lil nas x is the most popular musician right now. this is a good thing. we've bounced back. we've rebuilt. and we've been able to do so because cishets can give birth to queer kids, who grow up to become queer adults. you cannot get rid of us, because there will always be more of us.

homophobia is horrible of course, and every single government that criminalizes being gay should be erased [not the people because that is genocide which I have previously established as BAD, but governments are not people, they are just the artificial systems developed by the people in power], I don't condone any mass murder of any sort, and civil rights are human rights. I'm not disputing that. white gays don't fuckin REEE at me, I'm literally one of you.

but our experiences are incomparable to theirs.

and when I say "our", I obviously fucking know that there are plenty of Native American, Black, Latine, Asian, Middle Eastern, Slavic, Pacific Islander, and other various people of color who are also queer. I'm not a moron. I don't think that there's only white queers. if you had any reading comprehension at all you'd know that I'm comparing the experience of the white gay directly to the experience of the person of color because a predominant majority of people of color are cishets. and if "they're not cishet if they're from a culture that views gender and sexuality differently from us" then obviously their definitions of homosexual lesbian bi and trans are also different you dumb fuck so shut up and don't drum up any bullshit semantics discourse because I'm not reading any of it. when I say "our" I mean specifically people who have ONLY experienced discrimination based on their gender or sexuality and not any based on their ethnicity (and in the specific sphere of relevance in this post I'm only discussing queer affiliation and ethnicity, and this isn't to suggest that religion and ability and misogyny don't also affect these but I'm not going to talk about that right at this moment), for the sole purpose of making a point that is specifically about gender or sexuality and ethnicity. okay? you got it?

racism is an exponentially bigger problem.

they're both problems but they're not equal in scope. white queers have privilege over cishet poc in the same way visibly abled people have privilege over invisibly abled. you can't look at a person and immediately know if they're gay or trans but you CAN look at a person and know they're brown.

and you could theoretically kill every single queer person alive right now, but in 20 years there's just gonna be more of us. we're like a zucchini farm in that respect. we've always been here and we always will be here.

but you can't say the same for people of color.

ethnic genocide is a very real and very pressing matter that is currently affecting millions.

so it's our duty as white people to at the very goddamn least pay attention to what people of color are saying, and not say dumb shit that's racist, and point out to other people when they say dumb shit that's racist. and it's really easy to just, NOT fight brown people because you're gay and therefore just as oppressed. no. it just doesn't work that way.

black lives matter

protect asian lives

[faunusrights]

The scarlatinas are a big family with aunts and cousins visiting a lot right? Have you got an idea of how their house looks? (also could you release the Scarlatina family descriptions you gave me to the public?)

well, really the scarlatina family isn’t big in the, uh, family tree sense; it’s not like Velvet has 100+ cousins and that sort of stuff, but they’re big in the sense that they all live together, hjdshkjfsd. so it’s a big household! sixteen people! it’s nothing to sniff at! so the aunts and cousins dont visit, really, because they literally live next door, lmao.

the scarlatina homestead is split into two houses that keep getting added to every once in a while. the bigger one (aka the first) has georgette, rajah, taffeta, ash, chiffon, velvet, satin and hickory live there, whilst the second (rapidly growing) house has cotton, tenné, hawthorn (+ hawthorn’s wife, saffron, and their kid, fir), ramie (+ her wife, auburn) and birch. that said, the houses pretty much act as one, and people tend to drift in and out of either of em at will.

the houses are similar in terms of their footprint, since they sorta both evolved abt the same time for the same needs (oh shit a kid oh shit a marriage oh shit ANOTHER kid), and save for two smaller second storeys for storage/spare room needs, almost the entire thing is on the ground floor (heat rises, baby). they share a big old shed/workshop which ash lingers in CONSTANTLY, as well as two little gardens where they grow their own produce. they also have some solar panels and a huge windmill out front, both of which usually power their houses since they don’t typically draw a TON of energy, though they do have a generator that runs on fuel as a backup.

okay if we’re describing the whole family im gonna shunt this under a cut this goes on for a while dsfjhgjhskfgd

GEORGETTE SCARLATINA: the matriarch of the family! well, sorta; she’s let her own daughters sort of have run of the place in her stead, because she’s “retired” now and that means she mostly sits back and enjoys not Working all the time. back in her heyday the woman was an absolutely powerhouse, 24/7 on the grind, but even now she’s very… well, she’s still a force to be reckoned with, really, and whilst she isn’t uuuuuuuh Strict, per se, she’s very disciplined, and no matter what her kids and grandkids choose to do, she expects them to really throw themselves into it. weiss is both terrified of her and desperately wants her approval, which isn’t hard to get, but weiss is, how they say, dumbass. georgette is also the reason why taffeta and cotton are… Like That. like what? stubborn loud fuzzy taking zero shit, etc,

RAJAH SCARLATINA: scarlatina women seem to always land themselves timid men and nobody is sure how, or why, but georgette wasnt the first to start this trend and shes def not the one to end it. rajah is pretty mild-mannered, but like georgette, never rested when people needed help. he and ash (and tenné) get on real well because they’re happy enough to mind their own Fuckin Business whilst their wives barrel around with all the grace of rampaging bulls. still, rajah’s also very much a product of his time as an early settler to menagerie; he’s never really… happy with everything, because they lost so much leaving for this shithole, so he’s always kinda… mildly sad about stuff, but the same can be said of any faunus his age tbh.

COTTON SCARLATINA: the older of the two Scarlatina Daughters, cotton is… manic. full of energy, always looking to burn it off. she’s an optimist at heart since she and taffeta came to menagerie when they were ten and therefore are more accustomed to the island, and her primary objective is making a good home and a good start for the family. she’s not too interested in politics or revolution, mainly because she’s the type of woman who plans by meals and mouths to feed, if u get me. she’s also pretty smug because her side of the family are rly growing up (TWO wives. a GRANDKID. its ALL COMING UP COTTON) and it means she gets to spend more time doing stuff she’s passionate abt!!!!!!! nice!!!!!!!!

TENNÉ SCARLATINA: i put an accent on his name and i regret it every day of my life. anyway. tenné isn’t entirely sure how he ended up with just The Most scarlatina, but he did and, well, there’s no backing out now. tenné‘s a deer faunus and was around cotton’s age when he and his family moved with the scarlatinas to menagerie, so he and cotton have always been close. he’s very patient and doesn’t always have a lot to say, but he and cotton are a great team when it comes to managing the entire homestead together. again, he’s not a political type, and just wants to keep his corner of things safe in uncertain times. he always pretty rarely leaves the homestead for anything, so he’s also kinda reclusive, but so is cotton! it all works out!

HAWTHORN SCARLATINA: i won’t go into the partners lest i Die but hawthorne is the eldest child of cotton and tenné. got antlers like his da, and he’s a pretty big fellow by scarlatina standards (that is to say, not thin enough to fly away in a stiff breeze). hawthorn is… well, long and short, he’s a himbo, but he’s also a pretty devoted homesteader (this is a trend! watch this space). his wife, saffron, was from desert sands and they’d been dating for a While before they got married, and they’re the first to have kids of all the first-gen* scarlatinas. he’s got cotton’s love of the family and tenné’s sort of quiet offset nature, though he was pretty rowdy as a kid (he grew out of that once velvet broke his nose tho).

RAMIE AND BIRCH SCARLATINA: twins! twins! oh my god! twins!!! fraternal twins!!!

ramie is the older of the two (my friends who were w/ me when we played the RWBY ttrpg will Remember Her) and she’s. well she’s surprisingly enough like taffeta that cotton jokes that clearly she’s gone and had the wrong kid. she’s very Firm abt things and has a way of naturally corralling people to follow after her, if only because this bitch has enough common sense for herself and, like, five people. she was also voted Best Lesbian Cousin five years in a row, and she and auburn get on like a house on fire. they’re also very into PDA, don’t mind them.

birch is the younger of the two and ramie always calls them the emo one. they’re not really so much into people as they are into their crafts and their plants (their bedroom looks like a greenhouse dont mind them) and they have tenné’s nature and georgette’s focus on working all the goddamn time. they’re good company is you strike up convo in the areas they have interest in, but sometimes it’s like talking to a brick wall. ramie is very fluent in their noncommittal grunts of disinterest, though.

FIR SCARLATINA: he’s one year old. he’s a baby. idk shit.

TAFFETA SCARLATINA: here’s the bitch we’ve all been waiting for

taffeta is like georgette if georgette was somehow more like herself. whereas the other half of the family are more core to the values of the clan, taffeta’s a tribe woman, and when she wakes up in the morning her focus is always on the wider community. taffeta’s very much just a machine of intent; she farms, she builds, she repairs, she trades, she gives, she travels, she does SO much and she’s very much the face of the family at present (which is why ppl hear the name ‘scarlatina and go ‘oh god’ w/o realising the other half wont bother u even slightly djsfggjsdfh). she’s STURDY she’s FLUFFY and she has zero qualms abt putting u in a headlock if u deserve one. dont test her. that said, taffeta’s a very reasonable woman; i’ll eventually go more into that at some nebulous point in the future hdjsgfjghksfd

ASH SCARLATINA: it’s everyone’s favourite da! i’ll TRY and keep this short. ash (MUCH LIKE THE MEN SO FAR) is just. so chilled out. can everyone PLEASE be quiet. well, he didn’t used to be – ash lived in kuo kuana before meeting taffeta and had such severe anxiety abt crowds that the boy could barely put a sentence together, let alone much else, not in the scarlatina household, he’s very calm and hard to ruffle. ash really just likes to do his thing, which is everything taffeta doesn’t do; he cooks, he watches the kids, he fixes stuff in the workshop, and he’s big into photography of the family, which is where velvet gets it from! ash is basically taffeta’s counterbalance, but being with her means he’s also become pretty well known about the town (if not for. entirely the reasons you think,)

CHIFFON SCARLATINA: the eldest of ash and taffeta’s kids! chiffon is a weird one; she takes a lot after ash in that she’s pretty reserved and doesn’t let a lot bother her, and when stuff does bother her, she expresses it pretty quietly. also, unlike her cousins who are all homebodies, chiffon was the first kid to actually leave the homestead for kuo kuana to work on the docks during a biiiig overhaul and extension of the boardwalk. she wanted to get out and see the world, but human tourists really out her off the idea, so after about a year and a bit she ended up returning home where she’s stayed ever since. after taffeta retires, she’ll probably be the next face people know and relate to the name scarlatina, tbh.

VELVET SCARLATINA: do i. do i have to say anything about her. you KNOW this bitch. anyway. velvet’s got taffeta’s stubborn sense and ash’s compassion, wants to travel like chiffon, has enough determination to just keep going when it gets her down. extremely stupid. herbo energy. trans jock. has fists will punch. fluffy. fuzzy. hot. dumbass. seriously, do i have to say anything else?

SATIN SCARLATINA: it’s a baby! just kidding, she’s 11. satin is pretty young but she’s at that age where she’s tryna figure out the world for herself. she’s already shaping up to be a lot like taffeta – bold and brash and determined – and much like her older siblings, politics is already playing into her interests. satin really wants to see vale and her tribelands, but after what happened to velvet at uni, taffeta’s trying to… well, not talk her out of it, but encourage her, gently, to reconsider. it’s not working. she and chiffon get on spectacularly well, and she and velvet get on ever better.

HICKORY SCARLATINA: okay, NOW baby. well………. okay, yeah, he’s 7. hickory is a little dreamer, never really in the present. he’s super into making stuff and helping out the adults around the homestead, and he’s not really noticed enough to be infuriated like satin, so he’s got that youthful, uh, innocence, let’s say, that means right now? life is GREAT! eventually he’ll find out that no, it’s not all that great, tbh, but right now he’s a champ at feeding the rabbits, pulling up veggies, and finishing his plate. good job hickory!

AND THAT’S THE FAM (save for the inlaws). theyre great and i think abt em all the time. could u tell? could u tell, sharkie,

*so i looked up the whole ‘generations’ thing to check if i was right and it turns out both first-gen and second-gen have incompatible definitions (thanks america) but for the sake of not going nuts, all of cotton’s and taffeta’s kids r first gen and fir is second-gen. u could also argue cotton and taff are first-gen on account of being pretty young when they came to menag but honestly it’s too complicated. lets just leave it at that sdfjhgksdf

[alecthemovieguy]

Being Nicole

‘Supergirl’ star Nicole Maines’ passion for transgender rights makes her super in real life, too

Transgender activist and actor Nicole Maines knew she was a girl around the age of 3 or 4. 

“My case is kind of unique because I have a twin brother (Jonas),” she told Ellen Degeneres during an appearance on “Ellen” in 2018. “So, growing up with him, he was identifying with all these male things and feeling very comfortable in his body, and I wasn’t.” 

Maines, the subject of the Mount Washington Valley’s One Book One Valley community read “Becoming Nicole,” slowing began publicly transitioning in the first grade, and officially presented herself as female in the fifth grade, when she changed her name from Wyatt to Nicole. 

Maines, who is turning 22 on Oct. 7, became the center of the precedent-setting Maine Supreme Judicial Court case Doe v. Regional School Unit 26 regarding gender identity and bathroom use in schools. Maines had been barred from using the female bathroom after a complaint, but the court ruled that denying a transgender student access to the bathroom consistent with their gender identity is unlawful. 

In 2018, Maines debuted as Nia Nal/Dreamer, television’s first transgender superhero, on “Supergirl.” She is returning as a series regular for season five which premieres Sunday, Oct. 6, at 9 p.m. on The CW. 

One Book One Valley has a series of events throughout October culminating in an evening with “Becoming Nicole” author Amy Ellis Nutt on Thursday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m. at Loynd Auditorium at Kennett High School in North Conway, N.H. In addition to Nutt, the plan is to have the Maines family be part of the discussion through a Skype connection.

I recently talked with Maines about growing up transgender, activism, privilege and the upcoming season of “Supergirl.”

“Becoming Nicole” is beautifully written, but it is very journalistic and academic in its approach. Is there anything you would’ve done differently or included in telling that story?

I don’t know. I think, of course, Amy did a phenomenal job, and I am so happy with how the book came out because I think it really does have something for everyone, whether or not you’re just starting to learn about transitioning and you’re looking for something new. But there was so much that had to be cut out in the final editing process and, unfortunately, a lot of what did get cut out was original writing from Jonas’ perspective. I don’t know if it was something I would’ve done differently, I think it is more of a shame that it couldn’t make it into the final cut. It was just so long before it was cut. So, I do hope at some point people do get to see that because it is really, really beautiful.

In “Becoming Nicole,” a therapist told your parents that you weren’t transgender because you were peeing standing up. What are some other examples you’ve encountered of misinformation about what transgender is?

Where do I even begin? So many people think that it is one of those things that you can kind of slap a label on and say, “This is what this is,” and with something as expansive as gender it is really impossible to paint it as very black and white. So many people have tried to say “Oh, all trans people look like this. This is how you spot a trans person.” And that’s 1) offensive, and 2) not true or realistic. 

I think a lot of that has to do with how historically we are represented in the media: men in dresses and this and that. It is so much more expansive than that. No one group of people looks a certain way, and it is dangerous to try to categorize people like that. So, I think besides the peeing standing up, which is ridiculous, what is equally ridiculous is the idea that some people think that they can spot a trans person, and that’s sort of the whole basis of their argument. 

You know how sometimes you read certain blogs or you read certain Twitter accounts just to make yourself mad? I stumbled across one, it was a really popular TERF account — which stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminists, which is pretty much feminists who believe trans women aren’t women, and they use recycled rhetoric from the ’70s saying that trans women are just men trying to invade women’s spaces and stupid shit like that. It was this person going on and on about, like, “Oh, none of you pass. None of you look like women. Yada yada yada.” And I was like, 1) no room to talk because her haircut was atrocious, and 2) come say it to my face. It really made me mad. It is atrocious that people think they can spot something like that. It is ridiculous. 

It is kind of like the back-handed compliment that I receive a lot, that is “Oh, you don’t look trans,” or “Oh, never really would’ve guessed.” A lot of the time, I try not to jump on people for that because I know it is coming from a place where they’re trying to give me a compliment, but what does trans look like? What did you think I was going to look like? 

And, of course, everyone thinks that we are supposed to look like men in dresses, which —  even if we did — is rude as hell to say something like that because, not only is that stupid, but it is also reinforcing negative beauty standards among women, not just trans women, but women. Because you hear about the bathroom bills and they are like, “Oh, we are going to enforce no trans people in bathrooms.” Well, how are you going to enforce that? And then you get cases of cis women getting kicked out of the bathrooms because they look more masculine than others. Even for cisgender women that is not a black and white line. People look different, and it is totally unfair and unreasonable to say just because someone has harder features than somebody else that this is what is going on in your pants. That feels like a wild, crazy assumption to me. 

So, obviously your father always loved you, but he struggled with your identity. Was there a specific moment when you finally felt truly seen by him?

I know a lot of moments where he really started having light bulb moments. I think for me, one of the first moments where I felt like I started being seen was when I started wearing girl’s clothes to school. My transition started going there slowly, but between second and third grade I had gone from wearing longer hair to wearing girl’s clothes all the time. I don’t know if it was even just my father, but by everyone, but that is when I started feeling like I was being seen. Then in fifth grade was when I had fully transitioned. I was allowed to pierce my ears and I was allowed to wear skirts and dresses. That really felt like I am seen. And then, of course, when my father finally started fighting for me. Because I knew, at that point, he still didn’t fully understand, but when he started defending me and defending my transition and my using the girl’s bathroom, I felt like I had him on my side. 

I love last season of “Supergirl.” One of my favorite moments was when Nia Nal/Dreamer publicly announced herself as both an alien and a transgender woman because it put a positive face on a group who were being demonized in the show. How important do you think it is to give a face to marginalized people?

It is incredibly important. The best way to fight against marginalization and the most effective way that we fight back against people who are trying to erase us is with visibility. When you have an administration who, for incidents in a crazy hypothetical, removed me from the 2020 census, then the best way to combat that is to be more visible than ever. By saying, OK, you’re trying to make people think that we are not valid, you’re trying to make people think we don’t exist and that we are not solid and valid in our identities and our existence. Well, then we are going to show you that we are. We are going to show you: no, you cannot ignore us because we are here and it doesn’t really matter what you believe. It doesn’t really matter if you say, “Well, I don’t really believe in transgender.” Well, it isn’t really something for you to believe in because whether you like it or not, we are here. We exist and that’s not a matter of opinion. You do not get to choose whether or not my identity is valid because I am not doing it for you and we are not going to let you erase that. So, I think visibility is the number one method of defense against erasure. 

Based on the trailer, the new season of “Supergirl” partially deals with the betrayal and anger Lena Luthor feels toward Carol Danvers hiding her identity of Supergirl from her. This seems like an apt metaphor for the similar sense of betrayal, hurt and confusion some people feel when a loved one comes out as trans or gay. Do you think that is intentional?

I don’t know if it was intentional. I think because there are so many different layers with Carol and Lena’s relationship, and especially with the Kryptonian-Luthor relationship. I think it is hard to boil it down to just that, because I get why Lena is upset and I get why those feelings are floating around, but personally, I’m kind of like nobody owes any facet of their identity to anybody but themselves. If they did not feel that they wanted to share a part of their identity with you, you don’t get to be mad about that. That is something that belongs entirely to them and if they did not choose, for whatever reason to disclose that part of themselves, that’s not because you necessarily did anything wrong, that’s because they had a choice and that’s not necessarily on them either. But, like I said, it is different between being trans and being a superhero. It is hard because, at the same time, it is like, “Oh, you were treating me like Lex, and I’m not Lex. You can trust me.” So, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff floating around, but I don’t know if it was a 100 percent intentional, but there are definitely connections. 

That’s the great thing about sci-fi is that it can always be used as a metaphor for exploring social issues. 

Absolutely. 

How will Nia Nal be challenged in the new season?

The theme of this season is communication, and so something Nia is struggling with the first chunk of the season is communicating with how she feels with Brainiac because they’ve been dating and they have been having communication issues. Neither of them are the best at relationships, and so this is kind of a new area for her and she’s trying to work out, “How do I express how I feel without hurting you?” And that’s something she struggles with a lot. It is being open and honest with how she’s feeling and trying not to bottle up what she is feeling for the sake of other people. 

What I also really love about Nia Nal is when she puts herself out there — kind of going off the whole thing of passing — she does pass as both a human and a woman, and so she doesn’t need to put herself out there, but by doing so she empowers others. Do you also try to lead by example in your own life?

Absolutely, I recognize 100 percent as Nia and as Nicole that I have an insane amount of privilege. I’m white and, like you said, I pass and I’m on TV. And I mention that I am on TV because when we look at issues like HB2 and we look at bathroom bills and stuff like that, that is not necessarily going to affect me as someone who passes and as someone who is in Vancouver. I’m working in Vancouver, HB2 will not affect me. I am not there. But I recognize that there are issues that are affecting members of my community who don’t have the same significant platform that I do. And so it is my responsibility as a member of that community, as someone with that platform, to lift them up and to start to shine a light on issues that are affecting members of my community, even if I personally will not feel the impact of that harmful legislation. 

It is important and that’s what we talk about in feminist circles. We are always talking about how can people with privilege use that privilege to lift others up, to better the situation of others who don’t have those some privileges. We ask that of men, we ask that of white people, we ask that of abled-body people, of trans women who pass. We ask that people use their privilege responsibly. And so that is what I try to do and I hope that I am succeeding. I just try to use my platform and use my voice to talk about issues that I feel matter. 

Going back to “Becoming Nicole,” the book discusses “The Little Mermaid” as a metaphor for being transgender because Ariel doesn’t feel she belongs in the ocean and everyone tells her you have to be with your own people blah, blah, blah. Ariel was one of your favorite characters growing up, do you feel even at a young age you were drawn to this character because your struggle paralleled her struggle?

I guess subconsciously, yes, but on a surface level, I liked mermaids. I don’t know why I liked it so much and that’s why I say subconsciously I was drawn to it. I remember loving that more than anything else. I loved everything about her. I remember I was like, “That is what I want for myself.” I was like, “She is so beautiful, and she is so graceful,” which is not a trait that I’ve been able to replicate in my own life. I remember being so drawn to her, and I was like “Mom, Dad, that is what we are going for. That is the look.” Between her and, I’ve said it before, Storm from the X-Men. I remember watching “X-Men: The Animated Series” as as kid and she had that hair and the cape and was like “Oh, that’s drama. I love it.” 

And now you have your own cape. 

Well, metaphorically speaking. I don’t have a superhero cape. I feel a little cheated. 

Well, maybe you can get one. 

No, I have the best supersuit. It is shiny and holographic. It is awesome. 

One part I really liked in “Becoming Nicole,” I think it was before you were going to enter fifth grade, you were asked what kind of story you’d tell and you said it would be this mystery/comedy/fantasy with a sassy character and a sidekick who was even sassier. If you were to write that story now what do you think it would look like?

Oh my God. Well, it would definitely have the sassy character and the sassier sidekick, because I remember growing up I was always the biggest fan of the sassy comic relief characters, which is why I tried to play that role in my own regular life, which took some getting used to. I remember in middle school people didn’t exactly get the whole me trying-to-be-funny and I think it just came across as annoying. If I was going to write that story now, I think it would absolutely be about murder that would be the mystery. The comedy that would manifest itself in probably macabre, offbeat humor about murder. And then the fantasy ... they are all vampires. I’m just describing “Bit.”

I haven’t been able to find anyway to watch “Bit” (which stars Maines as a transgender teen who falls in with four queer feminist vampires, who try to rid Los Angeles' streets of predatory men), but I am very interested in that film. What was it like making that?

It was so amazing and I hope you’ll be able to watch soon. Right now, it is making its festival rounds, and hoping someone will choose to distribute it, and we’re like, “Pay us, please!” It was so incredible. Everyone on set was amazing and our writer/director Brad Michael Elmore is the coolest dude on the planet. I was talking about using our privilege to tell stories that matter and to raise up minority voices, and that’s absolutely what he did in this situation. I know a lot of the festivals we have gone to have been feminist festivals and gay festivals, and we’ve had a significant amount of people kind of be like, “Oh, you were written by a straight cis white guy,” and we’re like,“Yeah, and he’s doing exactly what we want him to be doing, which is using his privilege to create this super awesome movie featuring queer and interracial talent, this intersectional group of feminists.” We had a female DP which how awesome is that? We had this super awesome kaleidoscope of different identities in this film and I feel like some folks are very quick to write it off because it was written by a straight cis white guy. 1) I don’t feel that is fair to Brad, and 2) I don’t think that is fair to the movie. The movie is so cool and the movie deals with such cool issues and it approaches them all in such a fucking awesome way. To write it off because of who our director is feels very shortsighted. 

And obviously you wouldn’t say or do anything that felt disingenuous to your own experience. 

Yes, absolutely. I was like, “Ye of little faith.” 

When you were 13 years old you went to the Maine statehouse and spoke to dozens of representatives to convince them to vote against a bill that would make it legal to discriminate against trans people. Do you have any interest in getting into politics either working for a campaign or as a candidate yourself?

I think I would be willing to support someone else’s campaign. Politics are not for me. I do not have the stomach for that. I do not have the patience for that. I know where my lane is and it is absolutely not going for an elected position. I am more the person who shows up when the politicians are not doing what they are supposed to be doing. That’s when I get involved. 

The big thing I took away from “Becoming Nicole” was that prejudice and hate is something that is taught, because the boy who started harassing you the most was told by his grandfather that you were wrong and that he should go after you. And so I guess the question is, what do you do to undo these wrongheaded lessons that are passed down by parents or grandparents?

I think the first step comes from within. You cannot make anybody do anything. You cannot make somebody unlearn hate and prejudice. That journey has to start with themselves. With my father — and, of course, he was never outwardly hateful or anything, I always knew he loved me — but his journey to acceptance started with him deciding to pick up Jennifer Finney Boylan’s book (about being a transgender woman) and read it. He had to ask himself what he was so afraid of if his son was his daughter. He had to ask himself what about that terrified him so much. And that’s what every person has to do. 

Every person has to be aware of their own prejudices and their own biases. We all have them. We have to be aware of them. We have to actively work to undo them because it is something we are taught, not even just by our parents or caretakers, but through television and society. We are pumped full of biases and prejudices that we are not even aware of, and so we have to pay extra care and extra caution to do undo those. And when we catch ourselves, we have to recognize, “No, that’s not right” and go from there.

It has to be a conscious choice, and so that is hard. It is a hard thing to do. It is a really gross feeling to try to unlearn stuff like that, and so a lot of people won’t do that because a lot of people are more comfortable being like, “No, I don’t get it, that’s gross, I don’t like it and I’m going to hate it.” That is much easier and much more comfortable then asking yourself what you are afraid of. As socially responsible participants in the community, we have a responsibility to ask that question anyway. All of us have to ask that question and not just about trans issues, because if we don’t do that, if we are looking for what is easy and what is comfortable at the expense of other people, then stay inside. 

And I feel like the biggest thing is if you’re afraid of a gay person or trans person or black, Hispanic, whatever social issue, if you actually talk to these people that you are afraid of, that you’d see that they are just human beings.

That is the number one thing. It is so much easier to marginalize a group of people when you are not putting names to faces, when we are not putting faces to groups, when you are dehumanizing them. It is so much easier to sweep their plights under the rug and be like, “Oh, they don’t matter,” because you are not talking to them, you’re not seeing them as people. That’s why I always say, “Come say it to my face.” It is so much harder to be an asshole to someone’s face because you have to look them in the eye and tell them their rights don’t matter.

[hiiggsmonaghan]

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Are you fuckin’ kidding me--?

Alright, I’ll answer them ALL. 

1. Name: Higgs Monaghan Silver/Silvio

2. Nationality: Canadian/Acadian

3. Age: 22

4. Birthday: July 19th 

5. Zodiac sign (or your primal zodiac sign): Cancer

6. Gender: cis male

7. Sexuality: Gay

8. Your looks (add a picture or describe yourself):  This will have to wait until a special reveal. (Future cosplay things.)

9. What do you/did you study?: ... Does Egyptian history count?

10. What's your current job like?/What job would you like to have?: [Nervous laughter] I have no idea what I’d like to do for a job. 

-

11. Your birth order: First child

12. How many siblings do you have?: 1 “real” sibling, but so many siblings by bond.

13. Do you have good relations with your family?: Biological family? Absolutely not. Except for two of my cousins. They are cool.

14. How many friends do you have?: Too many that it’s obnoxious. [Just kidding, I appreciate you all.]

15. Your relationship status: Taken/Engaged

16. What do you look for in a SO?: Someone who can kick my ass. [Who can handle my anger outbursts]

17. Do you have a crush?: No. 

18. When did you have your first kiss?: When I was 14. It was forced and was a terrible experience. 

19. Do you prefer serious and meaningful relationships or casual dating/one night stands?: Meaningful ones, funny enough.

20. What are your deal breakers?: Overly clingy, too loud, not respectful of my music choices

-

21. How was your day?: Cold. Snowstorm happened today.

22. Favourite food & drink: Pizzas/cheeseburgers || Strawberry slushie with tapioca pearls/orange juice

23. What position do you sleep in?: Fetal position. [Hahahah... ha.]

24. What was your last dream about?: Cannot remember.

25. Your fears: The ocean [drowning], deep forests.. uhh... There are others but I cannot think of it at the moment

26. Your dreams: To be on my goddamn motorcycle, livin’ a good life without my mental illness in the way.

27. Your goals: See above.

28. Any pets?: Not yet! Planin’ to get a black cat soon!

29. What are your hobbies?: Music and readin’

30. Any cool places in your area?: Pfft, no. It’s so fuckin’ boring here.

31. What was your last awkward situation?: I was at Tim Horton’s and there was a baby cryin’ behind me so I looked over at it and played... peek-a-boo with them. It was...weird. But at least the baby shut up. The mother didn’t do shit to make the baby stop cryin’ so.. Great Parenting.

32. What is your last regret?: Well too many to really talk about but I’ll go with the funny route and my last regret was not goin’ to Burger King yesterday and eatin’ salad instead of a burger. 

33. Language/s you can speak: English

34. Do you believe in astrological stuff? (Zodiac, tarot, etc.): Not really. It’s all just whatever for me.

35. Have any quirks?: I bite my nails often... I pretend to conduct music while it is playing... uh...???

36. Your pet peeves: Everything.

37. Ideal vacation: Anywhere away from North America.

38. Any scars?: Many. 

39. What does your last text message say?: “Nah”

40. Last 5 things from your search history: Twitter, Vargskelethor’s twitch, Cloud Strife, YouTube, FF7 remake release date

41. What's your [device] background?: RK900 from Detroit Become Human

42. What do you daydream about?: Usually having super strength and throwing people whom bother me across the world or just... punchin’ them. 

43. Describe your dream home: A  simple house, really. Nothin’ too fancy. Just the idea of havin’ my own house? Even if it isn’t that big or anythin’... That is a dream for me. Oh, and I want it painted black. Hah.

44. What's your religion/Your thought about religion: I’d say I’m atheist but... I do believe in God. I AM God. :)

45. Your personality type:  ISTP-T

46. The most dangerous thing you've done: [Looks at the list of dangerous things I have done] ... There are too many

47. Are you happy with your current life?: At the moment? Yeah. There are things I am still angry about but it’s... fine.

48. Some things you've tried in your life: Smoking. Drawing. Singing. Writing. Playing the guitar. ???

-

49. What does your wardrobe consist of?: Black and reds. 

50. Favourite colour to wear?: Black.

51. How would you describe your style?: Goth/punk

52. Are you happy with your current looks?: Eh.. Not really but it’s all I got.

53. If you could change/add something to your appearance - impossible or not - what would it be?: Grow. Damn. Facial. Hair. Holy FUCK.

54. Any tattoos or piercings?: Snake bites. But I took one out so only one lip piercing now. And tattoos? Soon. Very soon. [Gonna be Higgs’ themed, baby.]

55. Do you get complimented often?: No and when I do I make it Stop. I hate it. Never compliment me. 

56. Favourite aesthetic?: Black/gold aesthetics as of late.

57. A popular trend that you dislike: Everything. I hate them all.

- [FINALLY THE ONES I WANTED, JESUS CHRIST]

58. Songs you're currently obsessed with?:  Allesfresser by LINDEMANN 

It’s a great song to listen to for me because I just punch my punching bag to this song. Makes my anger just... go away. It’s fuckin’ nice.

59. Song you normally wouldn't admit you like: .... Let’s Dance by David Bowie

I am a new fan of David Bowie. It just literally started in July or late June. I’m the typical metal head but for some reason Bowie just caught my ear? I dunno, man.

60. Favourite genre?: METAL. Well, Power Metal. I love all sorts of metal except for like.. most death metal/black metal. It is too much for me sometimes. But yeah, if yall are into metal... I’m all ears. I love talkin’ about metal.

61. Favourite artist/band/genre?: Well I already spoke about my favorite genre. For favorite bands? God... Uh.. I have a list here of favorite bands/musicians. Check it out if you’re interested. 

62. Hated popular songs/artists?: Honestly? I’m gonna be one of those guys and say pretty much everything on the radio these days. I don’t like pop/rap and all the most popular stuff. Turning the radio on is ear torture these days. Except for the rock channel, that one is okay most of the time.

63. Put your music on shuffle and list first 5:

1 - System of a Down’s Chop Suey in the Style of Ghost by Ten Second Songs

This guy is simply AMAZING. If yall haven’t already, you NEED to check out his channel. He is wicked talented and he has different styles for different songs. Like for example, Metallica’s Enter Sandman in the style of David Bowie. It’s amazing. 

Check him out. His YouTube is Ten Second Songs.

2 - City by Hollywood Undead

This one just gives me my inner Higgs’ vibes. That is really all I can say.

3 - Mein Teil by Rammstein

4 - Cars by Fear Factory

5 -  龍が如く極 - Turning Point [From Yakuza Kiwami]

Yeah, hi. Yakuza fan here. Do I have to say any more? 

64. Can you sing or play any instruments?: I can kind of sing, [very badly, mind you] and sort of play the guitar. I’m tryin’ to learn Come as You Are by Nirvana at the moment... but that’s about it

65. Do you like karaoke?: 

.... Yes. My inner Nishiki in me just cannot lie about this.

66. Own any albums?: Absolutely. I am a firm believer in albums rather than just buying them digitally. I love having an actual copy in my hands rather just on the computer. 

67. Do you listen to radio? What stations?: Not really. I only listen to the rock station.

-

68. Favourite movie/series?: Star Wars.

69. Favourite genre of movies/books/etc: Uhhh... I don’t know

70. Your fictional crush/es: Sam Fuckin’ Porter Bridges, General Hux, RK900...

71. Which fictional character is you?: [Chuckles nervously] 

Higgs Monaghan-- 

Too many to write down. I’ll just pass myself the trouble.

72. Are you a shipper? List your otps, if so: Eh not really. Only like.. Gavin/RK900 [Reed900] and General Hux/Kylo Ren [Kylux/Huxlo]

73. Favourite greek god?: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh? I don’t know?

74. A legend from where you live that you like: None.

75. Do you like art? What's your favourite work or artist?: I’m gonna be cheesy and say all of my friends because it’s true. I love my friends art.

76. Can you share your other social media?: Yeah sure. My twitter is @hiiggsmonaghan

77. Favourite youtubers?: Markiplier, Jacksepticeye... Streamers: Vargskelethor and Vinesauce

78. Favourite platform?: Tumblr and Twitter

79. How much time do you spend on the internet?: .. Too long

80. What video games have you played? Which one's your favourite?: Ones I have PLAYED that are my favorite: Pokemon, Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy XV, Yakuza 0/Kiwami. 

I also have a lot a games I love that I just watched. Like a lot of Legend of Zelda games and of course Death Stranding!

81. Your favourite books (manga also counts): Anything really by William Blake. I guess that really isn’t a “book” but.. all I really read are poems, Shakespearean plays and Egyptian history books.

82. Do you play board/card games?: No

83. Have you ever been to a night marathon in cinema?: No

84. Favourite holiday: Halloween

85. Are you into dramas?: Not really.

-

86. Would you use death note, if you had one?: ABSOLUTELY. And I do have one. Well... a replica. Not the real one of course.

87. What changes would you make in the world, no matter how impossible, if you had the power to?: Get rid of the racists, rapists, pedos and homo/trans phobes. The world would just be more pleasant to live in, yeah?

88. Could you survive a zombie apocalypse?: Probably. Because I stay inside a lot anyway.

89. If you had to be turned into a paranormal being, what would it be?: A demon because I am that fuckin’ edgy.

90. What would you want to happen to you after your death?: VOID OUT, BITCH. Uh, I don’t know. 

91. If you had to change your name, what would be your pick?: I did change my name so I am happy with it. 

92. Who would you switch your life with for a week?: Uh.. No one. Can that be an option?

93. Pick an emoji to be your tattoo: The devil smiling one I guess?

94. Write 3 things about yourself - only one of them must be true

1. I am in a poly relationship while I am also engaged.

2. I have a knife collection

3.I still used an mp3 instead of using my phone for music

-

95. Cold or hot?: ... Cold because you can get warm with blankets and sweaters while if you are hot, it’s damn impossible to not be hot.

96. Be a hero or be a villain?: Hero in my eyes, but to all of you I’m the villain for some DAMN reason.

97. Sing everything you want to say or rhyme?: Sing I guess. Imagine singing in metal. Holy SHIT

98. Shapeshifting or controlling time?: CONTROLLING TIME.

99. Be immortal or be immune to everything aside from natural death?: Immune to everything. I’m sick of being sick.

====

And there you have it. I’m... fuckin’ DONE. This took literal HOURS, ANON. I hope yall read through this.

[thepatricktreestump]

pride month asks!

some questions and answers about my experience with LGBTQ+

1.       What do you identify as and what are your pronouns? 

I identify as bisexual and genderfluid, so my pronouns regularly change from she/her to he/him.

2.      How did you discover your sexuality, tell your story?

I have always been a huge ally to the LGBTQ+ community, but one day I was stepping out of the shower, and kind of thinking to myself what the difference between having sex with a guy and having sex with a girl was. After contemplation, I thought to myself that they really weren’t all that different to me, and I’d probably enjoy having sex with a girl just as much as having sex with a guy. I researched online a little bit, and I figured out that yeah, I’m probably bi. Especially after I fell in love with both Brendon Urie and his wife Sarah, I was pretty damn sure I was bi.

3.      Have you experienced being misgendered? What happened and how did you overcome it?

Sometimes I do, but it honestly doesn’t bother me too much because I come from a very conservative, religious, small town background. I grew up in a private Catholic school where everyone is Republican and nobody even knows what being gay is, much less a different gender. So I’m kind of used to putting up a façade for others. As I graduated and moved away from my hometown, things have been much better, and by politely correcting others, I’m able to be confident in who I am as well as educate the people around me.

4.      Who was the first person you told, how did they react?

Oh god, haha. I distinctly remember that night when I knew I was going to tell my best friend I was genderfluid. I was so nervous and scared, I just sort of blurted it out over text, in all caps, like “I’M GENDERFLUID” and then I kind of panicked, so I proceeded to send her about a hundred Hamilton gifs to cover up what I had typed out and sent. Although it was awkward in the moment, we both laugh about it to this day, and she’s been so accepting and kind to me ever since that moment.

5.      Describe what it was like coming out, what did you feel?

For my friends, it was a lot of anxiety and doubt. For my parents, fear and chaos. My friends didn’t understand, they thought it was a disease of some sort, and actually a lot of them stopped talking to me. Again, conservative religious background, but still, no excuse. I grew up in a very abusive household, and it wasn’t my choice to come out. My therapist had forced me to tell my parents in a session and it was an absolute mess. Coming out wasn’t the best experience, especially as a freshman in high school.

6.      If you’re out, how did your parents/guardians/friends react?

I kind of explained above, but basically not so well. My dad went absolutely off on me, and said some of the most horrible things I have ever been told in my life. He said that I was dragging everyone I knew towards hell, that what I was is unmoral, unnatural, and unnormal, acted like I was some sort of monster, said it was extremely difficult to even be related to me, and that I was corrupting his family and disrespecting his household. It was a miserable time for me, but through music, I was able to write a song about it that helped me cope.

7.��     What is one question you hate people asking about your sexuality?

A lot of people assume that because I’m bisexual, I’m some sort of fetish they can use to fulfill their dirty fantasies. I’m always asked to be a part of a couple’s threesome. I am told that the only reason I’m bi is because I want double the opportunities to have sex. It’s ridiculous and disgusting. I’m bi because I like people. Not because I like sex.

8.     Describe the style of clothing that you most often wear.

I really fucking love beanies! Most of the time I read that’s the essential clothing item for all genderfluid people, which makes me laugh, because it’s true. Combat boots or converse, black jeans, a band t-shirt, a sports bra or binder, a jean jacket, and a beanie is always my go-to outfit. So much so, to the point my sister told me that every time I go out in public I’m always wearing the same thing, which kind of makes me laugh.

9.      Who are your favourite lgbt+ ships?

I don’t know if you’ve ever read the magna, Tamen de Gushi, but I absolutely love it! That lesbian couple is everything! I also really love Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams, of course. Captain Holt from Brooklyn Nine Nine and his husband is amazing. Elijah Daniels and Sam also make me super fucking happy.

10.  What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any?

Growing up as a theater kid, I’ve always seen makeup as accentuated and over the top. I only ever wore makeup on stage, and even then, it was special effects type stuff, zombies and clowns and shit. Once I hit puberty though, my mom would force me to wear makeup because she said it would make me beautiful. I hated it. She would force me to put on makeup before I left the door and it made me have horrible self image issues. As I grew older, I found a love for makeup through beauty gurus and drag queens, and I sometimes dabble in it either for fun or for special events like prom or fancy dinners. I always prefer no makeup though, I feel like to me, wearing it is just hiding behind a mask.

11.   Do you experience dysphoria? If so, how does that affect you?

ALL THE GODDAMN FUCKING TIME. Since I’ve gotten my haircut, a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Wearing a binder also helps so much! However, I still really want to start T and I think that will help a lot. Dysphoria affects me in so many ways, whether my self confidence or my body image, my anxiety and my mood, etc., a lot of it depends on how comfortable I am in my own skin.

12.  What is the stupidest thing you’ve heard said about the lgbt+ community?

Homophobic people are probably the stupidest people I’ve ever met in my life, to be honest. I’ve heard thousands of dumb things come from their mouths. I think the most outrageous myth I’ve heard is probably that being gay is a disease, and that simply being around another gay person will make you gay. Like who the fuck comes up with this shit? Smh.

13.  What’s your favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?

How creative we are. We’re resilient and outspoken and passionate, but most of all, so talented. The queer community is full of inventors, politicians, emperors, artists, directors, actors, musicians, and more. It’s gorgeous just how much we are capable of.

14.  What’s your least favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?

The discrimination breaks my heart. The fact that we are terrified to so much as hold hands with the one we love in public. To be beaten, tortured, and killed simply for who we are. That is what hurts me the most.

15.  Have you ever been to your cities pride event? Why or why not?

No, I find it sort of ironic every time there is a pride event I happen to have a concert on that day. Once, a Panic! concert, which honestly is sort of the equivalent of Pride. We went and there were so many LGTBQ+ flags and people and it was so gorgeous. I have attended pride prom once though, and it was probably the most fun I had ever had in a really long time.

16.  Who is your favourite lgbt+ Icon/Advocate/Celebrity?

I absolutely adore Miles McKenna. He has helped me so much in finding myself and accepting who I am. He’s such a huge spokesperson for the community and I am so grateful to have him in my life.

17.   Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet?

I’ve been in several relationships, surprisingly, through parties and discussions and friends. My s.o. right now I met through high school, which was crazy in itself, but we’ve been dating for almost two years now and I love them to death.

18.  What is your favourite lgbt+ book?

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is one of my favorite books ever and it’s about being FTM trans and I love it so much wow.

19.  Have you ever faced discrimination? What happened?

So very much. After coming out to one of my best friends, she stared at me, disgusted and went “well don’t try to have sex with me or anything” and then proceeded to never talk to me again. I’ve received dirty looks and glares, been misgendered on purpose, and even received death threats. It’s horrible.

20. Your Favorite lgbt+ movie or show?

I love American Horror Story so much because of just how much representation it gives our community and how natural they make it seem! And of course, “Love, Simon” was an amazing movie that made me cry like a baby.

21.  Who are some of your favourite lgbt+ bloggers?

I don’t really know about bloggers, but definitely Youtubers! Shane Dawson, Miles Chronicles, Thomas Sanders, Ally Hills, Anthony Amorim, Elijah Daniels, Elle Mills, Garrett Watts, Sam Collins, Todrick Hall, and Trevor Moran are a couple of my favorites.

22. Which lgbt+ slur do you want to reclaim?

I don’t think queer should be a slur. I think queer is a form of self expression and an umbrella term for the community, and I believe many other LGBTQ+ members agree. It’s a word that we take great pride in rather than shame or discrimination.

23. Have you ever gone to a gay bar, or a drag show, how was it?

No, but god I would love to.

24. How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that mean to you?

For me, it’s simply just a part of who I am. Just like the weather, my gender simply changes and I adapt to it. It makes me comfortable in my own skin and proud of who I am. I wouldn’t change being genderfluid for the world.

25. Are you interested in having children? Why or why not?

I fucking hate the idea of pushing a human being out of my vagina, and I would probably want anything else in the entire world other than giving birth. Being pregnant for nine months sounds absolutely miserable and dysphoric, and I cannot even imagine going through labor. However, I would like to have kids, just simply through foster care or adoption, never like my own biological children. There are more than enough kids who need good homes who already exist and I’m more than happy to give it to them.

26. What identity advice would you give your younger self?

You aren’t alone and there are so many people just like you. Your parents do not own you and cannot tell you who you are supposed to be. You are you.

27.  What do you think of gender roles in relationships?

Gender roles are complete bullshit. Let a guy be a stay at home dad. Let a woman be the working one. Everyone should have responsibilities regardless of their gender. If there’s dirty dishes, do the fucking dishes, don’t wait for your spouse to get home to do them. It’s absolutely ridiculous, really. Just do your part in the relationship.

28. Anything else you want to share about your experience with gender?

It breaks my heart how much pain and suffering one has to go through just to be themselves, especially for women and trans people. It’s horrible.

29. What is something you wish people know about being lgbt+?

It’s natural! It’s comfortable! And it’s normal! Being oneself is just part of life, there’s no need to have shame or guilt about it. Respect someone the way you wish you would be accepted and loved.

30. Why are proud to be lgbt+?

We have worked so fucking hard to be recognized for who we are. There’s still so much we need to do though, and we aren’t ever going to stop until every single one of our siblings gain the love and respect they deserve.

[the-queer-look]

Bi Visibility is important

Bisexuality is frequently overlooked in our culture, and all too often perceived negatively, either as someone who’s faking, or someone who isn’t really queer. However, bisexuality is just as valid as being gay, or trans, or ace. Bisexuals deserve to be more visible in our society, and more accepted by our community, regardless of the gender of their partners.

- K

Name: Jessie

Age: 24

Sexuality: Bisexual

Location: Newtown

Occupation/area of study: Studying Primary Education at the University of Sydney and president of the Queer Society at University of Sydney (Shades)

I identify as either bi, or pansexual,depending on who I’m talking to, and how they see bi and pan. I know that some people see pan as problematic because it originates in bisexuality as a way to be more inclusive of trans and non binary people, but also that bisexuality explicitly includes trans and non binary people anyway. I understand both points of view on the bi/pan debate, but arguing about the semantics doesn’t really interest me. Safe to say that I can find myself attracted to people at any point on the gender spectrum.

This is my second year as the president of shades(University of Sydney Queer Society), I’m graduating at the end of this years so I won’t be doing that anymore… Unless I do another degree, or PHD! *laughs* no, I’m definitely going to be teaching for a year or two before I come back to do any other study.

Being president of Shades just sort of fell into my hands when my friend finished uni. I had no idea what I was doing but just persisted because I really didn’t want Shades to die. It’s a very important society, especially for first year queers just coming out and having their first experience both at uni, and expressing their sexuality for the first time. Shades can be just a great experience for people to just come and be social, and be themselves.

When I was nineteenI was diagnosed with an eating disorder and went into hospital for a period of time. That whole part of my life was very long and awful, but my fashion also went through a really drastic change through every part of it.In the initial stages of it, when I’d lostan incredible amount of weight, I started buying all of these really tiny, tight clothes. But when my disorder became more about bingeing, I became very ashamed of my body, and would try to buy clothes that would hide it. But because I’m low key obsessed with looking cute, I had this mindset of “no! I must still look cute! Whilst also trying to hide my body!” So I went through this phase of long, flowing hippy skirts, with patterned throw overs. It was very personally necessary at the time, but I’ve definitely moved out of that phase. I kept the really cute ones though. One thing that has always stayed with me is just a little touch of punk creeping through to all of my aesthetics. Even now, going into teaching and needing to dress in a professional, “teacher” way, I’m very adamant about still being very me. For example, I refuse to get rid of, or hide my septum piercing because it’s such an integral part of my identity.

If my ex boyfriend ever reads this, I don’t think he’ll care, because he was very much around for it and knew what was going on. But he and I had what was very much an up and down, very toxic relationship. He cheated on me a bunch of times, and I didn’t cheat on him physically, but I definitely cheated on him emotionally with a girl in my high school. I think having feelings for her made me realise that I wasn’t straight. I went to an all girls high school and there were like two gays in our cohort, and I was wondering to myself “Do I just have a crush on them because I know that they’re gay? Okay.. but not everyone else in my cohort has a crush on them, and they’re offended by the fact that she has crushes on other people, but not only am I not offended by it, but I’m kinda into it?” which made me realise that yeah… girls… We never did anything physically though, my boyfriend and I were together until I was eighteen, and I don’t think I actually experimented with my sexuality until I was about nineteen.

I don’t think that my sexuality has had an impact on my way of presenting myself, but it’s hard because that was all close to the time that I was dealing with my eating disorder as well. I think a big part of my recovery was tied in with the fact that queer people generally don’t give to much of a shit about how other people perceive the way that they dress. It was a huge shift for me, queer people care about the way that they dress, but not what the general population thinks, and so much of my eating disorder was tied up in worry about what other people would think of me, and how I looked, so when I came to terms with my sexuality it also made dressing so much easier. I let go of other peoples perceptions of my body, and how I moved through the world because queerness is so liberating in that way so… It did… I made a mistake, coming to terms with my sexuality very much did shift the way that I dress.

Ithink that stereotypes within the lgbt community are still relevant, but that they’re much less relevant now that there’s so much more of an umbrella, and in think that people these days are far less likely to put themselves into a little box. I feel that they are necessary, especially in the beginnings of finding out about queerness and sexuality, because everyone wants to belong to something, and I think that stereotypesabout how to dress and present yourself help people to identify themselves, and be a part of something greater. Like a lot of people on your blog have said, it’s like a sign, or signifier to other people that are a part of that to let them know that we’re all queer together. I’m a bit biased, because I live in the inner west, but I feel that these days I go around Newtown and I have no idea if someone’s queer or not, because that very liberated, queer way of dressing has just spread everywhere, and has also let straight people feel that sense of liberation. Deviation from the norm (conservative, mainstream cishet presentation) is very important in queer history, because it has always been a bit of “going against the man” and rejecting the system.

There is a narrower understanding of queerness in media, which is why I feel it is so important, if you know anyone who is coming to terms with their gender or sexuality, to point them towards youtubers or people who are not very “in a box” about what sexuality and queerness is, because I think that it’s pretty normal when coming to terms with your sexuality to put it into the more known boxes before you kind of unravel what your own sexuality really is. It’s a good start, but I think it would be even better if we had more representations in the media of trans and non-binary people. Bisexuals even, you still don’t see many bi people in media, or if you do, it’s very sexualised and male gaze-y. Which isn’t helpful for young people coming to terms with their sexuality because it can kind of lead them to put themselves in a more narrow box, which can hurt them later on as they aren’t aware of these different ways to be. Going into teaching, I plan to be pushing as much as I can for a lot more stories where characters are not gender conforming, because the more opportunities that young people have when they’re younger to come to terms with their own gender and sexuality, the more they can avoid problems with mental health later on down the line.

For our generation, I feel that the internet has been extremely influential. Queerness in general feels so normalised in areas of the internet which is so crucial to me, and others for coming to terms with their sexuality. Things like Youtube are huge now, and I feel that queer representation on Youtube is growing and growing now, which can be a great resource.

I think that bisexuals in heterosexual relationships are so important, but from my own experience, I feel that their heterosexual partners can feel an urge to squash that part of their identity, which makes me so sad. On the other hand, I know many bisexual people who then take the tack of compensating for their heterosexual relationship by becoming activists to make their identity as a queer person still feel relevant. For myself, I’m in a heterosexual relationship, but it doesn’t do anything to change the fact that I’m still bisexual. I did have a small crisis about my queerness early on, being the president of a queer society in a straight relationship, but now I see myself as a fairly important bisexual person, on a pretty big platform, promoting bi visibility and reminding people that bisexuals in heterosexual relationships are still a part of the lgbt community, especially now that my partner is passing more and more frequently, I’m just seen as a straight person. Two of my bosses at work are dating, both female, and since being with Jess, I cant find a way to drop into conversation with them that I’m also queer with it also feeling like a casual thing, rather than jumping up and down shouting “me too!”

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[tumblunni]

Randomly, i do like the misdirect involved in Kaine's backstory. Like you think that the people of the Aerie hate her and treat her as a monster because of her Shade-arm, but no that all happened AFTER they treated her like shit. They were just bigoted against a small child for being born intersex. She only got her Shade powers as a consequence of this shit village pushing her and her grandma to the edge of the forest and doing nothing to help when they were attacked by shades. Kaine was treated like a monster, so she became one in order to live. And she used that power to help people, even as she was treated as EVEN MORE of a monster because of it! kaine is so damn strong. She has every right to be a goddamn tsundere when her life was so shitty, god...

Tho i still kinda dont understand what exactly happened with Tyrann, tho? Like at first i thought the shade that possessed her was the same one that killed her grandma, but no that was apparantly the lizard boss you defeat shortly after meeting her. So where did Tyrann come from and why did he decide to save this kid and possess her body? I hope its not something like 'oh she was indeed born cursed and he was always trapped in her soul until that moment awakened him'. Like i mean that could have a bit of problematic connotations since i mean this is a male character possessing a female one and itd be messed up if they said she was only intersex because of the possession or something. Instead of just the fact that many women across the world are born this way and it doesnt make them any less of a woman.

Anyway its still not exactly a good representation of intersex people because of the whole fetishization of her and the DAMN STUPID excuse that she likes wearing lingerie 24/7 because it makes her feel 'more like a real woman'. :P But still man its literally the only case i've ever seen of an intersex character who's just intersex, yknow? Like not a 'magic alien whose species is always like this' or 'a magic fusion of a cis man and cis woman' or some other fantasy excuse to portray a real person in a way that validates that they dont exist in real life. Nonbinary people often get the same treatment, since conflating gender and biological sex is a big bigoted cliche, sigh. Like man intersex people have the exact same rates of being queer as anyone else, there is literally no correlation between genetalia and being more likely to be trans. Execpt that intersex people end up with very similar types of predjudice and hell, because of the way society treats them. The absolutely disgusting medically accepted practise of amputating functional genetalia and tertiary sexual characteristics from LITERAL ONE DAY OLD BABIES because they're intersex is just so fuckin messed up! And most of the time these kids are never even told by their parents that this was done to them, so they just grow up with all these health problems and dysphoria while being gaslit about the cause of them. Like seriously when you're rolling a damn dice on which gender to turn your kid into with goddamn invasive plastic surgery, of course its gonna be wrong half the time! You're just picking what they fuckin 'look like', before theyre even old enough to know! Its so relateable to the trans expperience yet EVEN WORSE because you know your parents knew ALL ALONG and they consented to mutilating you to try and "fix" it! There's so much real life predjudice against intersex people and honestky i would say there's even less awareness or acceptance than for trans and gay people.

So yeah its REALLY IMPORTANT to have positive and realistic representation of intersex people. And not just lame corner-cutting where the character is technically intersex yet the story treats it like an impossible fantasy thing and refuses to address any of the real life issues these people face. So yeah man at least Nier does indeed have an intersex character who is indeed intersex and is canonically stated to have been born this way and also canonically stated to be a real woman and only villains treat her as anything less. But it still sucks that the positivity about her also escalates into gross 'lol f/uta sex object' stuff. *sigh* Again, another way the predjudiced depiction of nonbinary trans people gets mashed into the same thing by bigots. And hell there's also the conflation of cis gay men with trans women, because seriously bigots have no damn concept of any sort of reality, apparantly...

Gah the whole thing pisses me off! It also sucks how its hard to represent intersex people in anything except an M-rated game like Nier. (Tho kinda ironic that they can show all this gore and sex but still dance around in metaphors when explaining this..) Like I mean its absolutely possible to talk about being intersex without talking about how people have sex, like seriously saying otherwise would be just as bigoted as saying trans people or gay people are inherantly sexual. But to an audience of cis people who dont know much about LGBTQ community terms it would be kinda hard to make it clear when a character is intersex rather than trans or nonbinary. Like before i read the artbook details i thought Kaine was just a DMAB trans woman based on how its described ingame. And saying 'someone who is both a man and a woman' would be implying intersex and nonbinary people are the same thing, when most intersex people still identify as male or female rather than nonbinary.

Like the only time i've seen intersex representation handled more clearly and more canonically confirmed than Kaine was Angel in DDS2. It was a really good way of explaining it respectfully to a cis audience, just "Angel is a woman but she's both Sera's mother and father". (Due to some complicated in-universe sci fi science where she could extract both her sperm and egg cells and use them to make a clone of herself that could telepathically communicate with the sun. This story is kinda weird lol.) But on the other hand i dont really count that as much of good representation as Kaine, since this one singular sentence about her being intersex is very hidden in an optional area. Aside from that all you get is characters mentioning how she has an 'androgenous beauty' and her boss battle transformation is designed to look 'half male half female'. (Tho at least its 100% tasteful and just a nonsexualized monster vaguely shaped like a dress and a trenchcoat split down the middle, with half lipstick.) Oh and yeah also she's a friggin villain and a manipulative abusive parent, so yeah. She is a synpathetic villain and she's apparantly reincarnated into a happy life with her dead boyfriend at the end, but still she's the primary evil force for 75% of the whole series and never atones for what she did to her daughter.

So yeah sorry this just turned into a rant about how the Two Only Intersex Characters In All Of Fiction So Far are kinda not perfect, and also both from pretty old games too. I really hope i can find some more representation someday, sigh...

[anyway-heres-enderal]

i couldnt shut up about enderal right now if i wanted to so here’s that prophet ask meme with my prophetess fleur

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1. The basics – name, age, etc…

her name is fleur! i don’t know her last name but that’s okay because she’s kind of abandoned it. both of my vyn protags have line-of-sight, musically-inspired names so after that fuckin nightmare intro scene i had to name her as an homage to the song that was playing in my head the entire time it was happening (warning: disturbing imagery, abuse of some sort that is not shown but is strongly implied)

she’s 26 years old, half-kilean and bisexual.

2. Describe their appearance.

there’s a picture up there but a few other specifics: her hair is actually white, not just very light blonde, and she has blue eyes

3. How do they like to dress?

she jumps at the chance to wear nice clothes. she never got to back in ostian.

4. Do they have any markings (scars, tattoos, birthmarks)?

she has a few scars from a couple scuffles she got into back in nehrim. one of then is pretty gnarly-looking but it’s a diagonal from her lower chest to her left hip so once the events of enderal started rolling nobody who had seen it was still alive. word to the wise: don’t try to 1v1 a thunder lizard when you’re 14.

5. What are they like? Describe their personality (use whatever tools you like- MBTI, D&D alignment, astrological signs, Hogwarts house, words/phrases):

first of all, the only one of those tools that i have even a remotely decent grasp on is d&d alignment. she’s neutral-bordering-on-chaotic good. i don’t make characters with messages behind them (esp if they’re not for anyone’s consumption but mine) but hers would be “optimism with a dose of realism is probably the healthiest way to see the world”--she has the good sense to know when a situation or a person is beyond help but until that point she will try everything to help them. she desperately wanted to be wrong about adila and even as he was preparing his kamikaze attack she tried so hard to talk yuslan down.

to temper this, though, she takes things too seriously and she’s a bit of a crybaby (ok, not just a bit. alessia, my shadowgod, cried three times over the course of the entire main quest. fleur cried three times over the course of the very first quest that didn’t take place inside a trauma nightmare), although you could argue that she just has like. a normal human reaction to trauma, and everything that happens to her in enderal is EXTREMELY FUCKING TRAUMATIC.

since i have an easier time using tools like the ones described in the question to describe personalities, if she was a disney character she’d be rapunzel from tangled but less naive and with meaningful agency and if she was a social link/confidant in a persona game her card would be the star.

6. How would they describe themselves?

she has really low self-esteem but she doesn’t like. outright hate herself so she’s dismissive of any notion that she’s special or pretty. this probably sounds extremely sue-ish but a) i don’t give a fuck and b) every diy protagonist is at least kind of a mary sue simply because they’re the big special chosen one who all the romanceable companions have feelings for.

7. Education level?

uh. Not Any, Formally Speaking. School Of Hard Knocks. Worked For A Historian In Her Late Teens-Early Twenties And Learned Most Of What She Knows That Isn’t On The School Of Hard Knocks Curriculum That Way.

8. What are they proud of in themselves? What are they embarrassed about?

like the one notable talent that she’ll accept having is that she’s really smart and even before the Everything That Happened On The Ship Headed To Enderal she was a really quick learner.

she has ZERO prior experience with romance (she’s not in any way aromantic, she’s just never been in a romantic relationship) and she doesn’t like to tell people that, especially people she likes. she feels like they’ll think there’s something seriously wrong with her and that’s why she’s never been in a romantic relationship at age 26. 9. Do they know any languages other than Inal?

she knows like. kindergarten-level kilean.

10. What, if any, aspects of their mother’s culture influenced them growing up?

she didn’t really “grow up” with her parents, they died when she was six, but she has a strong belief in the importance of diplomacy and that’s pure Mom right there.

11. Name a song (or a few) that remind you of them.

i hope you like obscure musicals and vocaloid because that’s what you’re getting

In All My Dreams I Drown - The Devil’s Carnival Cast

Starchild - Ghost Quartet

Tears To Shed - Corpse Bride

Ever Lasting Night - Hitoshizuku-P (specifically the Miku character)

Lemonade - Sophie (sorry 4 mood whiplash)

12. Speaking of songs, can they sing? What is their voice like? How about instruments?

she’s hopeless with instruments but she’s not a bad singer by any means. sorry 4 relentless youtube links but she kind of sounds like Gelsey Bell

13. What was their life like before coming to Enderal?

it wasn’t good, i’m not going to lie. she and sirius spent a pretty decent amount of time roughing it because towns and cities kind of got progressively more dangerous as time went on, and Because Of Reasons I Won’t Go Into Here they both had pretty good reasons to avoid anyone affiliated with the temple of the creator

14. How did they decide to leave Nehrim?

it was too fuckin dangerous to try to make a life there anymore

15. Describe their relationship with Sirius.

they were siblings in all senses but blood. he got her out of a pretty bad situation when they were kids and she just stuck with him until they had been through so much together there was no other way for them to describe their relationship than “family”

16. Who do they blame for what happened to their family?

herself. survivor’s guilt is a hell of a drug and it doesn’t help that things only got worse afterward. she like. knows the temple did it, but since she doesn’t know why she’ll always wonder if there was something she could have done to stop it.

17. Apart from stowing away, have they ever broken the law?

she would be considered an accomplice to murder because she helped hide a body once (don’t worry, the victim without question deserved it)

18. How honest are they? Under what circumstances would they lie?

basically the only person she directly lies to is herself; if she’s dishonest, it’s usually by omission. the rare occasions she does outright lie it’s usually to protect someone or because there’s no way anyone would believe the truth.

19. Worst memory(s)? Best memory(s)?

Too Heavy For This Post and uhhhh. getting to spend time with her two BFFs/crushes on the Gertrude before everything started really going to shit was an extremely good memory for her.

20. Fight, or flight?

fight unless they’re like. demonstrably stronger. running away from an enemy she had a chance of defeating has always just come back to bite her. she wanted to fight the steel bird in the star city.

21. Describe their combat style.

Best Defense Is A Good Offense, Also Axes = Good. (original playthrough was greataxes and heavy armor but i’ll probably switch to war axes and light armor [or unarmored if i can swing it] when the steam release drops because apparently half-kileans are equivalent to bretons in normal skyrim terms and i can’t abide having played a heavy armor + two-handed breton twice)

22. Have they ever killed before? What is their reaction to combat?

she’s hunted animals but she’d never done more to a human than injure them enough to scare them off prior to enderal. she tries to only harm people in self-defense and may have cried a little bit (ok, quite a bit) after she had to kill firespark.

23. How do they react to having magical abilities? Do they use them?

magic makes her head feel “gross” somehow (read: she’s uniquely sensitive to arcane fever) so she doesn’t use it

24. What do they think of Enderal?

the scenery’s beautiful but the fact that it’s a theocracy and the notion of being stuck on a certain “path” depending on the circumstances of your birth freaks her out for reasons of “hey remember the oppressive religious regime that was responsible for all of your childhood trauma and continued to make your life hell before a mysterious trans power couple plus their direct superior group of outsiders instigated a rebellion that brought the whole thing down? now it controls the whole continent and everyone thinks it’s Good, Actually”

25. Did they do the Biggest Egg Hunt Ever quest?

she would have if my dumb ass hadn’t completely fuckin spaced it out and forgotten about it until it was too late. next playthrough, i swear.

26. How do they feel about joining the Order? What do they think of Arantheal?

she was not in favor of it (see: opinion of theocracies) and basically clung to the green shirts until she was inducted as a keeper. arantheal makes her uneasy but the threat of looming armageddon does a lot to help her shove that uneasiness to the side.

27. What is their opinion of the gods (or lack thereof)?

she’s not inherently against the gods but she doesn’t like organized religion

28. Wine, or pipe?

wine!

29. Do they spare or arrest Hallys, the farmer-turned-bandit in the quest, Deus Ex Machina? Why?

she arrested him after she found out where the money really came from. if it hadn’t been Stolen From A Fucking Food Bank she probably would have let him go.

30. What are their feelings and opinions about the Undercity?

uh...she hates that ark has a “slum district out of sight of the Good And Honorable Rich People” because having been poor and homeless basically until she came to enderal she can’t help but empathize with the residents of the undercity.

31. How do they react to the beggars of Ark?

if tumblr doesn’t stop refreshing the page and deleting my answers every time i switch tabs to look at the wiki or change the song i’m listening to i’m going to throw my laptop off the porch.

she usually reacts by sparing some change because she can relate

32. Where and how do they spend their time when in Ark?

she really likes the museum in the south quarter. she likes learning stuff and looking at relics of the past.

33. What would they do with three wishes?

just...stop the fuckin cycle

make the black stones inert so nobody else gets hurt because of them

this is basically deliberate repression so it’s 100% unhealthy but she would gladly wish to forget everything that happened before she was seven if it would put an end to the nightmares

34. How do they feel about death? Do they fear it?

uh. yes. she very bigly fears death. she kind of had a complete breakdown after the keeper exam until calia reassured her that just because she heard something during her harrowing doesn’t mean it’s true.

35. What (else) do they fear?

deep water (predates game events). also i dont know if it’s necessarily a fear but she hates being surprised.

36. Do they have any secrets?

uh. Yeah. her dad really was as bad as the dreams show. a few other things.

37. How is their behavior around people they like? People they dislike?

she’s about as friendly and affectionate as her shyness will allow with people she likes. it takes a LOT for her to be actively hostile but she’ll only attempt like. the barest superficial politeness to people she dislikes. 38. What is their relationship with the companions? Who, if anyone, did your prophet romance?

they’re her very good friends who she is also crushing on hard. yeah, both of em. she ended up with jespar kind of by default because i wasn’t making an effort to specifically target either of them but i kind of like the contrast between them so i’m gonna leave that in the Canon Playthrough Bin.

39. Was there any non-companion character that they were close to? That they particularly disliked?

does ryneus count? she would have taken him back to the sun temple and had the few green shirts left alive help her build some method of locomotion for him if she could have. also she had a crush on lishari. she didn’t have anyone she strongly disliked other than obvious shitbirds like taranor.

40. How do they feel about myrads?

she thinks they’re Big Cute Dog Monster Boys

41. What dreams or ambitions did they have before coming to Enderal? What about afterwards?

she wanted to be an archaeologist! she kind of got to do archaeologist stuff during her time in enderal but she wishes that she’d been able to do it without an apocalyptic sword of damocles hanging over her

42. Do they like cities? Or do they prefer the country? Is there a region of Enderal that they like or dislike more than the others?

she doesn’t necessarily dislike city life because she often gets lonely so living somewhere with a big population is always a tempting thought, but if she could take everyone she loves and go live somewhere peaceful where there’s no oppressive government or looming apocalypse she would.

her ideal Cottage Away From All The Bad Things would be in the goldenforst but she loves the crystal forest even though if she gets too close to the crystals it makes her feel like her brain is trying to vibrate out of her skull.

43. What do they do to lower their considerable stress?

go on walks in one of the numerous beautiful locations in enderal. take apart inactive mechanical constructs and try to understand their inner workings from their guts. press flowers.

44. Describe their perfect day off.

wake up from a nightmare-free sleep (you said “perfect”), go on a nice walk around the city (paying a visit to the museum of course!), meet up with her friends and find something fun to do that won’t put them in mortal danger, get drunk at the dancing nomad when it gets too dark for wandering around outside the city to be a good idea, and then watch the stars.

45. List three of their favorite things. Three things they hate?

likes:

sugar bread

the color gold

nice scenery

dislikes:

cooked cabbage

mead

bugs

46. What’s in their pockets?

emergency healing potion

herbs for making another emergency healing potion

at least one apple

random flowers that look cool

a ton of those vendor trash crystal coins you find in pyrean ruins. she just thinks they’re neat!

47. Pets? Mounts? Treasured possessions?

she’s never really had a lot she could hold on to and the thought of prizing a short-lived animal or an item that’s easy to lose is frightening.

48. How are their cooking skills?

NOT FUCKIN GOOD

(she can cook meat alright but anything more complex than that? no)

49. Do you consider any particular quest or side quest to be definitive for your prophet? Which one(s) and why?

i bulldozed through the main quest on my first playthrough; i’ll probably be able to answer this question better once the steam release drops and i can replay the game.

50. How forgiving are they? For example, if they were yelled at in a brothel after searching high and low for this little sh*t, how would they react?

first of all, everyone has a different reaction to traumatic experiences and sometimes that reaction isn’t “palatably sad and helpless” so jot that down. that being said, fleur was extremely upset about that because a) she’s also not an “uwu soft helpless cinnamon roll” kind of trauma survivor, b) some of what he said was generally hurtful, and c) that entire mission had already been one big long anxiety attack

but she’s too hyperempathetic to hold a grudge, especially when a) she knows where the person who hurt her was coming from, b) she gets a sincere apology, and c) she is more than a little in love with the person doing the apologizing.

51. What do they think of the Veiled Woman?

uh. mixed feelings. for what it’s worth, her feelings are mixed because they started out negative and then once she actually got to talk to the veiled woman her opinion strongly improved but like...sirius still died right in front of her because of this woman’s actions so they’ll never be fully positive.

52. If they had been a victim of one of the black stones, how would it have affected them? What would they have used its power to accomplish?

[slams huge portfolio of ideas i’ve had about this exact scenario on your desk] well y’see fleur as she is in canon is a brand of yandere that only technically qualifies as such: she won’t kidnap or murder people who reject her advances, but...uh...don’t harm her loved ones and expect mercy.

fleur under the influence of the black stones...well. it’d be very much like this except not Literally Directed Toward A Fucking Relative. esp the “well you found out now all i can hope for from you is to see your face one last time as you kill me” ending. not quite full yuno gasai love-me-or-i’ll-slaughter-you giggling while hacking someone up but. you know. Something Adjacent.

53. What was their reaction to the Black Guardian’s revelations? Do they accept or reject his offer?

she just kind of emotionally shut down. it was a lot to take in, esp for her. she took him up on his offer because by that point she was desperate for everything she’d gone through to mean something.

54. How does their story end?

credits rolled on her sitting on the edge of the star city with jespar. while the credits rolled i was staring into the void thinking about my life. not sure if that’s canon, next playthrough i’m gonna do a hard save before the final decision point and see if catharsis leaves me feeling less empty inside.

55. Do they change over the course of the story? In what ways?

she becomes a lot more confident and sure of herself and even though she never stops being an optimist she learns to stop setting herself on fire to keep others warm.

56. Anything else you’d like to share about them?

she’s so cautiously positive because she was written as a foil to my shadowgod alessia, a textbook nihilist who only got worse after the events of nehrim.

57. Bonus: For you- what are you most excited for in Forgotten Stories?

VEILED WOMAN BACKSTORY

[the-voice-of-hell]

Rent is Theft, part 24

Read from the beginning here, read the previous chapter here.  Note:  My MC is a Filipina trans woman and I am not.  If you have notes on that or anything else, hit me up.

                                                      ***

      The air was thick with heat.  Was it my imagination, or was the ceiling softly glowing orange?  I felt like there was a wind coming from somewhere, like what you’d imagine the wind felt like in Mount Doom that was blowing Elijah Wood’s shag around.  I felt it in my ears and it made it hard to hear myself or Leimomi.

      But I persevered, running through any faerie tales I could remember, and making them as baroque with silly details as I could manage.  The little mermaid had a waterlogged beanie baby collection with individual names, Bluebeard’s bride stuck her sisters back together with novelty Hello Kitty duct tape stolen from his sex dungeon.  I couldn’t hear a word of it outside of my thoughts.  Was I making a sound?  Was I even breathing?

      A building ache finally forced me to face biological reality again.  I had to pee.  My skin was on fire, the world was on fire, but it was still an invisible flame - nothing smoking, nothing scorching, no yellow inferno roiling out of my ruined flesh.  It was just a feeling of dangerous, alarming heat, dancing over everything.  Were there actual heat waves coming off my skin?  I couldn’t tell.  Sweat rained over my eyes and I blinked it away, but I forced myself to stand up.

      I felt like a wooden skeleton.  No muscle, just clacking fake bones.  How was I moving?  I reached the bathroom, stumbled through the door and almost fell down.  Instinctively I reached for something to hold onto.  I grabbed a dangling hand towel.

      It immediately slipped out of its perch, causing a weird floppy piece of shiny garbage to double over and splatter to the ground.  It was my improvised *redacted*  How had I not noticed it sitting where I left it, at any point in the last few days?  Where it hit the floor, a spray of green trash slime splurted out of the midsection, onto the tiles and my feet.  It smelled like a dumpster.

      I was just glad I didn’t fall on the floor, either from the incident or from despair, because I knew I would have pissed myself where I lay.  I turned to the toilet and laboriously went through the necessary motions.  In my imagination, the flushing toilet would have blown miraculously cooled pisswater back in my face, granted a moment’s surcease from the invisible flames, but no.  This air wouldn’t take moisture, and that water was probably warm enough to slow boil eggs.

      I walked again, the burning wooden skeleton, clacking away.  In the bathroom door I was arrested by the scene before me.  There were our little beds, like funeral biers - mine empty and Leimomi’s occupied by a limpid melting Ophelia.  The upholstery glistened like the sweat on her body, drenched.  The lighting fixtures held a dull light as if the heat in the air was pure electricity half waking them from the slumber we’d induced.  Was that blackening along the walls, in the areas nearest the ceiling?  The ceiling itself was definitely glowing orange now.

      Leimomi lifted her head - clearly an agonizing thing to do - and tugged a pillow under it so she could more easily look at me.  Drops ran down her face, but were they sweat or tears?  She was too weary to make a facial expression that would tell.  “Courtney,” her voice was minute, distant, rippled the way light is rippled by heat waves.  “Tell another.”

      As I walked back to my bed, black curls of slow-burned posters crumbled in my wake and fell like dry leaves.  I surrendered to gravity carefully, one hand, one more, my hips, rolled over, feeling like dead weight.  “I love you,” I said, not hearing a word of it.  I took up my water bottle again, dribbling what I could past the lips, then told another story.

      Were these thoughts without sounds?  Could she hear them?  Could she hear them with her mind, our bodies burned away from our souls, free to listen without ears?  I didn’t know.

      Once upon a time there was a young gal with a bad family.  Maybe dad died, leaving her in the care of wicked stepmom, or maybe that was her real mom but she liked to pretend it wasn’t, due to the pain that somebody biologically obligated to care for you just doesn’t, a way to not feel like that was her fault - that she was inherently and uniquely horrible.  People called her Cinderella because she was covered in the ashes of rock star posters.

      Stepmom and three stepsisters made her do all the chores and such, but you know, that sort of thing isn’t usually like they say it is in stories.  It’s not like, do these chores or we cut you, you ugly slag.  It’s more like, “Oh I just can’t right now, could you please?  You’re so much better at that,” or malicious compliance where they do the chores so bad it makes the more responsible person stop asking.

      They’d make Cinderella do emotional labor too.  The girls would gab about their drama all day, say “You’re such a good listener,” but never afford a moment of reciprocation.  Stepmom would get home from work and need to take a shit, but had constipation so she’d be in there a long time.  At some point back when Cinderella was eleven, she invited her into the bathroom, so she could pass that time venting about coworkers she hated.  Cinderella was too young to realize this was a flavor of child abuse, putting worries onto someone who doesn’t deserve them, isn’t equipped to understand them - and also making it pretty likely she’d grow up into that “amirite ladies” culture of woe and bitchery, unable to have a conversation of her own about the nice things in life, only ever able to talk about who was a bitch to whom, or who’s getting fat, or whatever.

      And there she was, a young lady, still not out from under the shadow of that porcelain throne.  But somehow she hadn’t absorbed that particular type of damage - she still had the ability to dream, to think of things beautiful and interesting.  It was worn down every time her stepmom spoke, but it still remained.  She had a spark of life.

      One day prom was coming - man I’m like the five hundredth person to turn this into a modern high school thing aren’t I? - and Cinderella really wanted to go.  She just wanted a chance to feel beautiful, to maybe dance with somebody.  There was no dream she would be loved, but just that she could feel something glittering and sweet.  It went without saying then, that she was not going.  Nobody had specifically forbidden it, nobody made any mention of it, but all preparations and discussion revolved around stepsisters and their needs.

      The night of the prom came and those kids were out the door.  Cinderella knew it was coming, but somehow spaced out on it until the last minute, until there was no denying it.  As the door clicked shut, stepmom put up the legs on her recliner and turned up the volume on a commercial for the Kia Summer Sales Event.  Cinderella walked upstairs like a ghost, and fell down crying in the hall.

      The door to the linen closet opened, and a beautiful little figure in taffeta, purple,and rhinestones appeared, hair a beautifully piled coiff of glossy black ringlets, a pencil thin moustache on their lips.  She looked up in amazement, not able to see clearly through the tears, no idea if she could trust what she was seeing.

      “Prince?,” she asked.

      It was indeed Prince, and he was funky.  Perhaps in becoming a ghost he had lost a foot of height.  But why was he appearing to her, and not to Morris Day?  He said, “Yes, Cinderella. This is no dream.  I was sent to make your life beautiful - but only for one shining moment.”

      “Wow.  But aren’t you a total *redacted* hound?  How can you be a fairy godmother?”

      “I might be the crown champion of boy vs. girl ball, but do I look like someone afraid to be called a fairy?”

      “And you did that homophobic song about how a lesbian girl needs to learn to be straight.”

      “Like I told Lisa and Wendy, we don’t talk about the back catalogue, girl.”

      “Is this your punishment for something?”

      “Being a Jehovah’s Witness.  Turns out telling babies not to get crucial healthcare is a bad thing.  But let’s focus on your problems.  What is keeping you from the prom tonight?”

      “My stepmom and stepsisters don’t care about me, just want me to slave away for them forever, never have a time for myself.”

      “I will make them care about you, make them slaves to you, and make this time be only for yourself.”  He pulled out a magic guitar, spraying sparkles across the beige carpet.

      “No!  I don’t want any of that.”

      “But you want to go to prom, right girl?”

      “Yeah.  Yes, please, my lord.”

      “I love the respect, but I am not allowed to be addressed as such, at this stage in my career.  And so again, pray tell, what keeps you from this promenade?  If you would not have me remove your problems, perhaps there are boons that can be offered.”

      “Well, I don’t have a dress, or makeup, or nice hair, or a way to go to the school.”

      “Crucial.  I can work with this.  Come.”  He clapped twice above his head and led her into her bedroom.  While he was unusually small, his magic guitar was full size and dragged on the carpet behind him.

      In Cinderella’s room, under a silver shaft of moonlight, he did a little dance and grabbed his crotch.  It was part of the magic, completely justified.  Her room was basically a walk-in closet, and some of her cleaning stuff was jammed in there as well.  He pointed his finger at a mop with a spray of sparkles.  It transformed into a beautiful silver-white wig.  He spun his finger in the air and it flew onto her head.

      “Wow,” said Cinderella.

      He picked up the guitar, did a spin, then played a cool riff.  Her ratty sweats changed into a fuchsia ball gown with neon purple lace and a bodice covered in purple rhinestones.  “It’s so beautiful,” she cried.

      “You know it,” he said.  “Now let’s sort out this situation.”  He pointed the guitar’s head at her face like a gun and played a wild guitar solo.  She could feel the ashes sliding around her skin, changing shape.  Looking at a dingy mirror, she saw the carbon condense into eyeliner, eyeshadow, and glittering lipstick, leaving her skin clean and clear.

      “I’m gonna cry again, I’m sorry,” she said, hand on her heart.

      “Don’t ruin that makeup, girl.  There is one item left to attend to.  Thy conveyance.  Approach me.”  He turned his back to her and with a wave of his hand the window opened.

      She came near to the little man, not knowing what to expect.  As she drew near, he seemed to increase in size - no, the whole world was increasing in size, or she was shrinking!  He scooched forward on his guitar, leaving room for her to straddle it in the back, and then it started to fly.  She grabbed his little waist and they flew off into the night sky.

      Smoke then, curling around my body like tendrils from incense, rising to pool and eddy at the ceiling.  It intensified, white and opaque at the corners of my vision, but inverted to darkness as it reached the glowing orange expanse - a negative print of the ocean, the opposite of water.

      Prince flew her to school and daintily alit to the gymnasium roof.  “I’ll wait for you under the north bleachers of the baseball field.  If you aren’t there at midnight, I cannot help you get home.”

      “Thank you so much, Prince!  I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

      “All I really need is to know that U believe.”  He pointed at the sky and took a tiny bow.

      Cinderella found a hatch to get down from the roof.  There was a ladder to a catwalk high above the gym floor, and she could see the prom below.  A few people bustled to do the last minute preparations, but there was only one dim light on.

      She wandered around looking for a way down and found nothing.  What good was it to be at prom if you could only watch it from afar?  But at last she found a rope to climb down on - one of the ropes they’d use in PR class, with knots at regular intervals.  She tossed it down and started climbing.

      When she got to the bottom, she realized she was in the middle of the dance floor.  As party lights came on and the rest of the students came in, she was the center of attention.  “Who is she?”  “How did she get in here?”  They were impressed.

      She humbly demurred and headed to the punch bowls.  A chaperone was glaring at her and not noticing somebody else spiking the punch.  It was going to be one of those nights.  The DJ led off with “Fight for Your Right to Party,” which was ironic because fighting for your right to party is expressly against policy at school events.

      Phew, I thought.  Are we alive or dead?  Will this ever end?  I can’t stand it.  Christ.

      A kinda short dapper gentleman approached Cinderella and said, “Hey babe, I haven’t seen you around the school before.  Wanna cut a rug?”

      “There’s no rug, but I’ll dance.”

      “Let’s buff this basketball court wax to a high shine.”

      They danced and chatted softly between songs, and enjoyed each other’s company.  Occasionally people would congratulate the dapper gentleman on his fortune in monopolizing the attention of a radiant queen.  People would smile at them and ask questions, take pics of her dress on their cellphones.

      Her own stepsisters didn’t recognize her.  It was a magical and glittering moment.  But best of all, she was really starting to feel like a woman, like a person who could be sought after by a dashing suitor.  It was the dapper gentleman that was making her feel like that, with his smooth ways.  Maybe he felt the need to stay with her because he was insecure about his height, or maybe she was just that appealing to him, but he was gently affectionate and suave and cool, and he knew how to dance.

      I could see myself limned in blue and yellow flames like a gas stove burner.  The world above the orange glow of a furnace, the walls around cracking and blistering, the world below a whorl of charcoal and soot.  In between the flesh cooked with no end.

      Proms crown people, right?  That’s why people make Cinderella into a prom story on Nickelodeon or whatever, so they can get the prince in there.  So ceremony begins and they crown dapper gentleman and mystery girl!  They say come to the stage, so we can crown thee at the stroke of midnight.

      That reminds her that she’s about to lose her magic, miss her ride.  But will it be worth it?  No, if she was left in dingy sweats and a mop wig on stage, she’d never live it down.  This was supposed to be a glittering and magical moment, but now it would end in tragedy.

      She couldn’t resist, she kissed him one time, then said, “I’m sorry,” and bolted for the door.  People were too surprised to react fast, and she lost any pursuers on her way to the baseball field.  Would Prince be there?  Midnight was so close.

      At the stroke of midnight she was halfway to the field, when she saw him rise into the night sky, momentarily silhouetted by the moon - Prince, straddling a magic guitar.  And just like that, the mop head fell into her hands, the ashes spread over her skin, the dress became dirty sweats.

      A whirlwind of ashen scraps blew past my face and I choked on the burning trash.

      There’s more, there’s more.  I swear.  I can do it for you, Leimomi.  I can do it for what’s left of you.  She, um, she went home on foot, right?  Fuck, glass slippers.  There’s supposed to be slippers.  I forgot them.

      I know, facial recognition technology.  Yeah.  So dapper Deandre is going through the school after that, using the facial recognition software on his phone, comparing all the girls with the mystery lady on his phone.  The stepsisters are all like, me, me, but...  No, that doesn’t even make sense.

      She’s going to get found, like, maybe she’s the equivalent of a TA but for the janitor instead.  A JA, that’s our Cinderella, and he takes a pic of her face almost by accident and it matches and he’s like, baby it’s me.

      She can’t see that, doesn’t want to be known the way she is now, which the janitor thinks is lame because you shouldn’t be ashamed of your class, you know?  Patrick’s a janitor.  Ugh, where was I?  She like, um...

      Bursts of sparks and chunks of molten rock fell in random splashes around us.  If any of that touched our boiling meat, it would bore a hole straight through like industrial acid.  No escape was possible, only luck of the draw.  Who would survive and what would be left of them?, like the movie said.

      Cinderella!  Dapper Deandre prom king finds her and says, “It’s OK, sometimes your clothes and your hair and stuff are gonna suck, but you’re beautiful and cute and I will never forget our night together.  If you don’t wanna be with me, that’s cool, but I just hope, I dunno...”  And she kisses him   It’s romantic because she looks gross but he’s like.  Fuck.

      The world was coming apart into orbs of light raining into an abyss.  Nothing remained between what had once been the floor and ceiling, and no one.  There was only a heat too intense to even bother with becoming fire.  It had become another state of matter, or nothing at all.

      At last the light was consumed with black.

                                                        ***

  Read next chapter here.

[system-architect]

i can’t rememb if i already sent an ask but if not could u mayhaps do peej

u did send an ask which i will get to in a second but i am gonna happily do pj anyway!!

Personal

1)      Age? he’s 24 and a big shit who’s weirdly conscious about being 24 despite the fact that thats sTILL YOUNG so he lies and tells people he’s 21

2)      Gender? trans gay trans gay trans gay. he’s a very GnC trans guy who hasn’t transitioned too much bc he likes how he is

3)      Romantic/Sexual Orientation? gay... he’s a big gay. loves men

4)      Height? he’s 2′10″ aka min height haha pj small

5)      Race? asura and like metaphorically a fckn demon

6)      What do they look like? (i.e, hair color, eye color, etc). like a bush baby.......... uhhh he’s a very small lithe asura with wild ass fckn scene tier spiked up hair and his eyes are Indeed freakishly huge and he’s got sort of piebald esque markings and he’s also got spots of black pigment on his tongue and gums like some dogs do! i’m just gonna link art again

7)      Any disabilities? tbh he might have occasional breathing issues from his eye size and the constant vaping. also.. Some Stuff Happens During PoF but its not anything conventional that you might be expecting...

8)      Is there a meaning to their name? nope OOPS that one asura name generator spat it out at me actually! it stuck and i thought it was a weirdly funny name for an asura while also sounding p decent

9)      What makes them, them? he’s this image:

10)   What do they want to be when they grow up/what do they want to do with their lives? tbh his life is very stagnated atm and he’s not sure what he wants. to keep surviving, he guesses

Family

11)   Do they have parents? What are they like and how do they act with their child(ren)? he’s an orphan! his parents are unknown... he was raised in an orphanage by this very prim and proper asuran lady who was very secretly kind of a party gal on the side

12)   Do they have siblings? How do they interact with them? again, orphan, so family questions are hard to answer cus he doesn’t know anything about em

13)   Extended family? Do they see them often?

14)   Do they like where they live? (Is it a safe place?) he has A Flat up inbetween arkentia valley and magus valley in rata sum (i pretend there’s more out there than there actually is jhkfgd) which is also near where the glitch is located! it is fairly safe and he is quite fond of it, although he’s at the club most of the time

15)   Where do they live? Are they wealthy? Poor? Middle-Class? i just kinda answered this but he has Money honestly....... running a luxury nightclub that’s a front for your shady information trading business will do that for ya huh

16)   Do they have a lot of expectations/pressure on them from family to do great? the orphanage owner wanted all her little adoptee children to be Starlets and tried to teach them proper etiquette and get them into refined fields........... pj is successful but in the most opposite way from this possible

17)   Do they have pets? nope and thats probably for the better

18)   Who do they look up to the most/are the closest to in their family?

19)   This there anything special about their family?

20)   Do they wish they lived in a different family/household? he’s constantly torn about like... the concept of having blood relatives out there [hopefully]........ he’s not sure if he wants to know about them or not, if he would’ve rather been raised by them or not. it’s alluring but scary

Friends

21)   Best Friend(s)? his best friend is Kinda his ‘secretary’, kessa, who is a whispers agent plant in his club that helps him run the place in exchange for siphoning information from it. PJ is aware she’s whispers and kessa is aware he’s aware she’s whispers and they have a tentative and tense but friendly??? bond. it’s like, thin ice all the time but they’re also quite close. both her and pj are savvy and sort of take turns greasing the wheels of their various dealings; i think kessa is a bit bolder and craftier than pj and more organized oops. as far as kessa as a person, she’s a tall butch with cherry red dyed hair and she goes by the nickname ‘lucky’ due to the shamrock shaped marking over her right eye. she prefers masc looking clothing and she has a suave flirty personality with a quick wit and a snarky teasing sense of humor

22)   Who was their first friend? hgjkfdgh he’s never had many friends unfortunately. he tends to drive people away...

23)   What is their friend group like? a lot of people hang around him for general exterior motives like money and status.. not many people genuinely like him

24)   Do they have a love/hate relationship with any of them? like everyone................... ‘i need you but i dont like you’ etc

25)   Do they consider any of their friends to be like siblings?

26)   Have they ever hurt a friend or lost one? definitely a lot. he’s a very abrasive person who can get fussy and picky and two-faced

27)   Do they have a crush on any of their friends? alas yeah half of pjs ‘friends’ are people he wants to smooch but its in a very vapid fashion.... even w/ deeper crushes pj isnt gonna be gettin any genuine love

28)   Do they share classes with good friends?

29)   Whom do they go to the most when they need a shoulder to cry on? he might drunk cry to viel or kessa and i dont think either would know what to do about it

30)   What would this person do without their friends in their lives? despite having shallow ‘friendships’ a lot of his self esteem revolves around popularity and being well-liked so he’d be... super crushed

School

31)   What grade are they in? If they aren’t in school, how come? he got like 30% of the way thru statics courses for political science and dropped out because he hated school... he was naturally savvy and talented with debate and an excellent candidate for a worthless weasel-y politician who can screw anyone over within a sentence but he just hated the whole school system and didn’t fit with it and getting into arcane politics wasn’t something he really enjoyed, it was all super backstabby but simultaneously Goody Two Shoes and he haaated it

32)   Do/Did they like their teachers? Was there a good one? Bad one? he probably butted heads with all of them and hated being told what to do

33)   Do/Did they listen to their teachers or are/where they goofing off a lot? definitely goofed off and didn’t care. he was good at stuff when he was asked to actually do stuff so why bother paying attention to boring stuff he already knows?

34)   Are/Where they a good student grade wise? stellar marks on very specific fields and tests and debates where the school system actually lined up with his talents but terrible marks otherwise

35)   Do/Did they need extra help? he was probably arbitrarily assigned a tutor due to his low marks but was uninterested in actually being helped and was a catty piece of shit the whole time

36)   What is/was their school like?

37)   Do/Did they have bullies in school? he’s a terrible worthless rat trash man and there was probably gossip that flew around about him but he loved hunting it down and intimidating the daylights out of the people who started it. even as a child he was a notorious drama monger and tattletale so it’s kinda in his nature. pj is a literally terrible person i’m so sorry to anyone who likes him for w/e reason

38)   Have they ever gotten into a fight at school? probably not many physical ones altho he’s def been punched a few times. most of his fights were probably weird high strung drama that contained a lot of passive aggression and counter-gossip and maybe some good ol fashioned blackmail

39)   Have they ever done something stupid/embarrassing at school? hard to categorize bc he’s a walking embarrassment

40)   How far do they plan to go with school? If they dropped out, do they want to go back? he dropped out and has literally 0% intentions of going back ever. and not as a char development thing either-- he’s never going to want to go back even if he improves as a person. it’s not his thing

Other

41)   Are they dating anyone? Do they want to date? Are the married? Divorced? pj pretends he’s shallow and only wants A Good Time but a bit more under the surface he’s absolutely desperate for more genuine bonds and wants Love And Affection and pretends ppl love him when they’re makin out idk. he’s a sad sad man

42)   What is their favorite hobby? Do they keep it a secret? he’s a boring egg who should probably pick up a hobby

43)   If they could have one thing in life, what would it be? what he’ll say he wants is like, more money/successful business but what he Needs is a kick in the ass to work on improving himself and to earn some friends who genuinely like him and to find a Meaning for himself

44)   Do they work? If so, what is it? If not, are they looking for one or even want one? shady information traderrrr he deals in secrets and identities of the asuran underworld

45)   Do they use social media? probably uses asuran instagram and snapchat

46)   Have they ever been in the hospital? probably for some very dumb injuries tbh

47)   Do they believe in the supernatural, that there is more than the eye can see? again weird Q in context of gw2 but superstitions... he’ll claim he’s logical but he’s prone to suggestion wrt this stuff and a huge chicken

48)   What do they do when they get angry, stressed, or upset? cry on bathroom floor with bottle of wine

49)   Would they consider themselves as a good person, bad person, or morally grey? i think he avoids thinking about this too in depth bc he knows he’s a bad person haha..... he’s a bit messed up atm because this doesn’t motivate him to improve despite knowing it. he’s just kinda... yeah im awful so what if you cant take the heat then get out of the kitchen

50)   Does this OC have any part of you in them? (I.e, personality traits, similar background, etc) yeah he’s a bit representative of the time period of my life where i was overfocused on Being Hurt and wallowed a lot in my trauma and i felt i was justified in being a pretty nasty person for whatever plethora of reasons, but i was stagnating and it was all hurting me really badly even if i wasn’t ready to accept that it was hurting me. i felt a huge sense of impending doom and not knowing what to do with my life or if i’d ever get better...

[spoonie-living]

Photo: Oscar Alexander

[Image: A thin, olive-skinned person sitting sidesaddle in a manual wheelchair and looking down with a smile. The text reads, “Interview with spoonie model Pansy St. Battie / ❤️️, Spoonie Living” in black and green gothic font. The model has one arm rested against their knee and the other bracing themself against the side of the chair. Their hair is a huge pompadour of two shades of green with yellow roots. They have thick brows and matching purple eyeshadow and lipstick. They are wearing all black, with a bleach-stained leather jacket, layered necklaces, a crop top, a high-waisted skater skirt, and huge lace-up platform shoes with cherry blossoms suspended in the clear plastic of the platforms. Their wheelchair is decorated with matching flowers.]

Interview with spoonie model Pansy St. Battie

Folks, we’re delighted to bring you an interview with Pansy St. Battie (@qcrip), a spoonie model who’s been making waves with their glamorous wheelchair shoots.

You may recognize this particular one we posted recently, L E G E N D A R Y.

Pansy is a desi, queer, trans, chronically ill, and mentally ill disabled model with quite a portfolio. If you want to know more about their story, especially if you’re interested in modeling yourself, just click the Read More!

[CN: brief mentions of drug use, homophobia, ableism]

Q: To get started, I'm sure all our readers would love to know: what's your spoonie cred?

A: Well, I'm officially undiagnosed for most of my systems. Unofficially, my doctors suspect I have EDS. Besides that I got chronic fatigue, joint inflammation, hypermobility, scoliosis, seizures, you know, all that fun stuff. I'm a well rounded medical mystery.

Q: How has disability impacted your life, identity, relationships, and work?

A: Disability has impacted me in two major ways that directly correlate, negative and positive. The first is obviously direct ableism. Having to deal with ableism led to a lot of lost friendships, lost aspirations, and lost opportunities, and of course the inevitable confidence issues none of us love to talk about but most of us have.

On the flip side, it gave me a lot of time to myself, and put me in a lot of situations that called for me to introspect on who I am, what I value in society, and what's truly important to myself. I credit my interest in modeling and fashion quite a bit to my disability. Fashion and makeup became something I could do without leaving the house, and modeling became a way to reclaim my otherwise medicalized body.

On the work side of it, it attracts a lot of fetishy weirdos who want me to pose for their self congratulatory shoot of the day (unsurprisingly, they get blocked), but it also attracts a lot of brands and artists who genuinely see the value in me as a model. Those are often brands run by people who are bold, take no shit people (dare I name drop Laura Byrnes, of Pinup Girl Clothing), and people who stand for causes and make art that I believe in.

Q: What does an average day look like for you?

A: It changes so much, but I sleep super late. Like the only way you can convince me to wake up at a semi-reasonable hour is if I have a shoot. Usually besides that I wake up sorta late, and then either go to the doctor or take my dog out depending on how lucky I am that day. Then I get home and I give myself some time to chill out.

Quite honestly, the best self care for me is dressing up and taking photos, but I'm also into Pinterest and watching cartoons on more average days. Then usually studying and then staying up super late doing stuff like answering these questions and sending emails. Which is why I sleep in late probably, to be honest.

Q: You have a lot of marginalized identities. Do you have any thoughts on the ways they intersect with disability and the interplay between them all?

A: Well obviously, they all intersect in the medical landscape. I can't get painkillers and they all think I do heroin! Like, if I did do heroin that'd be a horrible excuse to mistreat me but my drug tests have come out clean since the beginning of time. They also always think I'm pregnant which my current relationship doesn't exactly lend itself to. Oh, and some doctor told me I have seizures because I'm too gay, which is ridiculous, but a hilarious story I have now.

Then there's the social aspect which is just, complicated. I think I'm lucky in the sense that working freelance and being financially secure allows me to chose who I spend time with and avoid people and places that are scummy to me. It obviously affects a lot of things though, especially when it comes to discrimination. I'm like, wait, why are you discriminating against me, there's too many options! Also when people say they're praying for me like wait, why, it could be so many things!

Q: How did you get into modeling initially? How has your relationship with it changed over time?

A: I initially started modeling by accident when I had the pleasure of doing a lovely shoot with Shameless Photography for my birthday. It really boosted my confidence, and from there I got to shooting with friends and started posting photos and let it grow.

I think the biggest change is my skill level and confidence. I obviously didn't know what I was doing super well at first and I think that makes it way more nerve wracking. I think once I started studying and practicing I became way more confident. I became able to take risks, and to know who I am as a model.

All through, though, it's been a very empowering and healing process for me. I know for a lot of people the way the industry is, it's not. I [make] strong choices to frame myself and work with people that frame me in the way I want to be seen, but it's also tough because I know plenty of people need to make the choice between self-advocacy and enough success to get food on the table. I'm very lucky to not have to, and because of that this really has become my passion.

Q: How does your modeling intersect with your disabilities? What challenges have you faced, from an industry perspective or just logistically?

A: There's obviously the major challenge of people that don't want to hire me because I'm in a wheelchair. It's weird to me that people think it won't sell clothes because like, everyone sits down in clothes. It's not like no one wants to see what clothes look like while seated. Abled people don't stand 24/7. Then there's travel because I can't exactly get on a plane on the regular. That's tough for agencies, and it limits the scope of people I can work with for obvious reasons.

Q: What sort of advice do you have for fellow spoonies who are interested in modeling? Any resources, sites, or communities to recommend?

A: My biggest advice is just to find people, friends, family, college photography students, professional photographers if you can afford it, who you enjoy working with, and take photos.

The downside is the modeling industry is super exclusive. It's hard to make a living off of it, and hard to get famous. If that's what you aim for from the start, you're going to be disappointed.

The upside is models are needed for so many things. If you're modeling because you enjoy it, there's always going to be brands, artists, and your own instagram to model for. If you're good at it and you hustle you can make a bit of cash. If you get lucky, you can make more, but that's just luck.

Q: Finally, what's your favorite spoonie product or life hack?

A: Wheelchair cupholders! They changed my life. Also Biofreeze.

Want more Pansy in your life?

Pansy St. Battie on Tumblr Pansy St. Battie on Instagram Pansy St. Battie on the web

...and if you like their work, why not buy them something nice?

[riotriot5x5]

Blast from the past...

I hadn’t logged onto tumblr on my laptop in ages, so I had to reset my password. In doing so, I entered my more recent Gmail thinking it was the correct one for this account, which lead me to the delightful and strange rediscovery of my secret in the closet trans blog I made six years ago:

https://teenboysquad-blog.tumblr.com/ 

I had COMPLETELY forgotten about it. I just scrolled through all of it and was strangely taken back to then. I had an Americorps job that I SUCKED at (granted, it also sort of sucked and had it’s own issues) that I ended up technically getting fired from, I had GREAT hair that has now since gone which was painful to see again, but most of all, I saw that I managed to actually look happy in the pictures I posted and looking back now, that was perhaps the only time I truly felt happy back them. It feels like much longer than six years since I transitioned. If I could go back to baby 24-year-old me, I’d love to tell him that it was going to be okay and that he was going to end up in grad school like he always wanted. I would have also told him to not go on a second date with that girl he met on OkCupid, but that might have veered him off the path of making it to grad school, so maybe that was for the best - I would have just told him to buckle the fuck up for the ride ahead.  

I’ve come a long, long way in six years. I’ve still got a lot of shit to figure out, but despite the fact that it’s come with some significant sacrifices, I don’t regret transitioning. I’ve been having some complicated feelings about it lately, mostly because I’m doing research about trans stuff for my MA and it’s been stirring up some... feelings about it. Looking back at myself, the only thing I miss is my hair, which seems so vain, but losing your hair before 30 when you didn’t expect to is pretty awful. But that aside, when I look back at 24-year-old me, I can feel it in my bones how much I knew I didn’t want to grow into an old woman. I don’t regret or hide my female past. In fact, I wish I was able to better integrate it into my current life and future, without making everything about my identity about being trans. Maybe in the future that will be easier, as people of trans experience are even more visible and the fact that we exist becomes even more “normal,” as much as I hate that word. 

Anyway. Please enjoy the secret musings of my closeted past, while politely ignoring my previous worship of Chris Hardwick! At the time, he genuinely was a role model of what I thought was a nicer, more “progressive” nerd masculinity I was aspiring too. I suppose you should always be weary of your idols, especially when they’re men - OOF. I’m super happy I found it because I genuinely had forgotten about it. This was a fun little bonus to my short tumblr hiatus. Also, to anyone around my age actually seeing this, you gotta give it up to that URL, haha!

[itsjustkp007]

Letter to My Child Self

(Note: Stef is a girl on YouTube who posts about trans issues, but she also does beauty and lifestyle videos. She “challenged” her audience to write a letter to our younger selves. I use “challenged” loosely because while this may be challenging for me, it may not be for someone else. Anyway, here are some things that I would want to tell/advise my younger self.)

1) 12-year-old Kristin, you’re going to get bullied for reasons that don’t matter. People are going to say that you’re a lesbian because you haven’t had a boyfriend. People are going to say that you’re a bitch because you’re honest and don’t give a fuck. People are going to be nasty to you. Accept that. Getting defensive doesn’t hurt them; it hurts you. Of course, you should stand up for yourself, and of course, you shouldn’t believe them, but accept the fact that their bullying has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.

2) 12-year-old Kristin, the reason that you get so offended by someone calling you a lesbian is because you’re panromantic. It’s not a bad thing that you could see yourself falling in love with someone regardless of gender. You’re offended because they’re misidentifying who you really are. You’re offended because how dare they know something within you that you haven’t acknowledged yet. Take your time. Let yourself come to terms with this, and don’t let anyone sway your opinion about yourself. (Plus, as we both know, being a lesbian isn’t a bad thing. It’s just not a term that describes you.)

3) 12-year-old Kristin, calm down. You get so angry so easily. Don’t let people get to you. You are better than that, and you are stronger than that. Try not to be so defensive. It’s okay to let some things go.

4) 12-year-old Kristin, you’re going to fall in love with a boy. This boy is going to be both one of the best things that ever happened to you and your worst heartbreak. You will never regret him, though, because he set the foundation of what you want in a partner and what you don’t want. He will show you what you deserve as well as what you don’t deserve. However, you’re both going to grow up, and you’re not going to grow together. You’re gonna be angry with him for a little while, and that’s okay, but he’s not the enemy. Give yourself the courage to let him go when you know it’s not going to work. Give yourself the time you need to move on.

5) 12-year-old Kristin, you don’t know everything. The sooner that you come to this conclusion, the better. And don’t assume that you’re not an asshole because you don’t bully people. You’re going to be an asshole at some points in your life. You’re also going to have asshole moments. Learn from them.

6) 12-year-old Kristin, there’s a reason why you love to read so much and there’s a reason why you consider the library a safe place. It’s where you belong. Don’t rule out being a librarian because it’s hard. Pursue it. Don’t be so stubborn about it. (Trust me when I say that you’re going to be learning throughout your life, at least to this point, to be less stubborn about things, but good Lord do we have a way to go. xD No worries. You’ll get there eventually.)

7) 12-year-old Kristin, I wish I could tell you that your self-esteem is through the roof and that you’re actually confident about yourself. You haven’t gotten there yet, but you will get to a point where you are confident with your body. Not confident in the sense that you think you’re hot shit, but to the point where you can look at your body in the mirror and own it. You will wear what you want. You will wear what’s comfortable for you to wear, and you will strut like you’re walking a fucking runway. Own your body. If you want to exercise, exercise. If you want to eat that bowl of ice cream, eat that ice cream. Don’t let society or stereotypes tell you otherwise. Own. Yourself.

8) 12-year-old Kristin, sexuality is still a thing that we’re not sure about, but let me tell you a secret: it’s because we don’t have a label for it. You’re not pansexual. (By the way, you know the difference between romantic and sexual attraction now, so that helps.) You’re more like heteroflexible than anything, which is why we feel like we don’t belong in the LGBTQIA+ community. Not because it wouldn’t be accepted, but because we’re not “gay enough.” (Note: I hear you, Ash Hardell and similar people of the world, a little bit gay is gay enough, but that’s just how I feel.) Don’t let anyone rush you into finding a label for yourself. You’ll figure it out eventually, and you don’t really need a label.

9) 12-year-old Kristin, you feel more comfortable in small men’s shirts because they’re soft and hide your stomach fat. You’re not weird for wearing those shirts. You’re weird for other reasons. xD Oh, and while we’re on that topic, weird is not an insult. You’ll soon realize that weird, to you, is synonymous with different, outside of the norm, or unique. These are all good things. Don’t shy away from it.

10) 12-year-old Kristin, when you’re in 7th grade, you’re going to date a guy in sixth grade. But prepare yourself: he’s gay. It won’t work out. But good grief, you’re going to be over the moon happy when he finds a lovely man to live the rest of his life with and you’re going to be so thankful that you dated him. He may not have been into you, but he showed you how you should be treated, and that will absolutely help you in the future.

11) 12-year-old Kristin, never be afraid to try new things.

12) 12-year-old Kristin, for the love of all that is holy, do NOT wear makeup because you feel it is expected of you. Only wear makeup when you want to; it’s not anyone else’s decision but yours.

13) 12-year-old Kristin, you’ll learn to love your hometown more in the future, but that does not necessarily mean that it’s where you belong. Sure, it will always have a special place in your heart, but what makes it home to you is the people, not the location. Although, we can both agree that the mountains are a nice touch and it’s absolutely gorgeous in the fall.

14) 12-year-old Kristin, enjoy your life now. Don’t rush to become an adult. You spend more time wishing you could be older than you focus on the present. Take a breather. Live for the moment.

15) 12-year-old Kristin, I’m going to stop you from wondering this right now. That reoccurring nightmare you have happens less over time, but it’s something that will never completely go away. Just accept it for what it is: a nightmare based on the scariest moment to ever happen in your life.

16) 12-year-old Kristin, take care of your little sister. She does mean a lot to you already and it’s obvious that you love her, but she’ll need you more in the future than you will ever be able to fathom. Accept her. Love her. Be her rock. You may not feel like you’ve helped her enough, but trust me: you’ve helped her more than you ever thought you could.

17) 12-year-old Kristin, stay the person that you are. Make changes when necessary, be mature when you need to be mature, and don’t stay the same exact person. But when you grow, keep the qualities that you like about yourself: your laughter, your humor, your selflessness, your optimism, and your belief that you can accomplish anything.

18) 12-year-old Kristin, you watch The Apprentice now, but dude, wait until you turn 24. You’re not going to believe the shitstorm that happens, and...wow. Expect the unexpected. Not just with this, but with every aspect of life. (Oh, and yes, you never stop calling people “dude.” You still see it as a gender-neutral term, and you’ll use it with anyone and everyone unless they tell you otherwise.)

19) 12-year-old Kristin, yes, you love video games. However, don’t go into college majoring in computer science. You were meant to play them, not make them. Although, who knows? Maybe you’ll write a script for one one day. (This hasn’t happened yet, but we can dream.)

20) 12-year-old Kristin, you can curse. You’re allowed, but make sure you’re aware of the people around you. Some people are okay with it; some people are not. Know the difference, but you’re allowed to curse when you’re angry. It’s not the worst thing in the world.

21) 12-year-old Kristin, you don’t care about alcohol right now, and you’re never going to care about it. Try what you want to try, and reject what you want to reject. The right people aren’t going to care whether you drink or not.

22) 12-year-old Kristin, you stay a Christian, but you also become a lot more open-minded. Don’t just reject things because the adults at church tell you to. Make your own decisions. God will forgive you; you just have to forgive yourself.

23) 12-year-old Kristin, there’s a reason why you get angry at extremists. You’re a moderate. xD But seriously, the reason you get so agitated with political debates is due to the fact that their disagreements turn into shouting matches. You’re annoyed because they are grown adults arguing in such a childish manner that it turns you off. This isn’t going to change, but that’s why you hate politics. It’s not because you don’t care; it’s because you want people to discuss their disagreements rather than try to convince the other side they’re right.

24) 12-year-old Kristin, your first vote was for an African American President. Right now, you’re curious about why the President has always been a white man, and you’re sort of irritated that a woman or someone of another race hasn’t won, but that will change. And boy oh boy, do you get excited! xD (Btw, thanks, Obama. :) Lord, I miss him as POTUS.)

25) 12-year-old Kristin, there’s a thing called YouTube that you’re going to fall in love with and it’s going to change your life for the better. But it does get addicting. Be careful. Focus on what needs to be done first before you watch it, and then watch videos to your heart’s content. xD <3

26) 12-year-old Kristin, I have one last piece of advice for you. Don’t give up. Don’t give up on school. Don’t give up on your loved ones. Most importantly, don’t give up on yourself.

[anactualhyena]

Answer literally all the OC questions pls

HOO BOY THANK YOU ANON

1. Your first OC ever?

That would be Seren! She started out as my Warriors OC in sixth grade - Dragonclaw, a neon green, red, and orange cat with spike collars and bat wings. I called her the leader of Blood Clan and made her Scourge’s mate and oh lord it was a nightmare. She’s gone through a lot of redesigning through the years and now she has a feral cat form and a human form? As a cat she’s like a partially albino Norwegian forest cat with moss growing on her back and bits of fur matted with blood and an old torn dog collar she probably found on the streets and thought looked cool. As a human, she’s a muscular tribal woman bearing a large spear of sorts and clothing made from torn fabric and a tiger pelt. I like her human rendition a lot better tbh.


2. Do you have a personal favourite among your OCs?

Answered!


3. Have you ever adopted a character or gotten a character from someone else?

I have! One of my old cat characters, Mandy, was a black cat with rainbow accents that I adopted years ago on DeviantART for like 5 points. Then my friend gave me her old Hetalia OC…I believe it was D.C.? As in Washington D.C.? But I don’t use my Hetalia characters anymore now that I left the fandom.


4. A character you rarely talk about?

That would definitely be Flint. Flint is a steampunk pirate character made for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign I had with a couple buddies last year. I’ve hardly talked about him at all but I love him too.


5. If you could make only one of your OCs popular/known, who would it be?

Iagan!!! Iagan is my little ball of fluff and happiness that would love to brighten anyone’s day. Plus I’m pretty sure he’s the most likely of all my OCs to become popular if any of them did.


6. Two OCs of yours that look alike despite not being related?

YES. Flint and Feuhorbe (as a human) look a lot alike because Flint’s design was based off of Feuhorbe’s. The difference between them is that Flint is thicker than Feuhorbe and their hair, eye, and skin colors are different. That and Flint has scars and is more Spanish-based whereas Feuhorbe has vitiligo and is Brazilian.


7. Are your OCs part of any story or stories?

Well…Iagan is (and I cringe when I say this) an Undertale OC, and Rev is a part of a story/universe that Griffin created. Carlisle and Vincent used to follow this sort of post-apocalyptic storyline I had going for an RPG my buddy Roman was making, but the idea got scrapped and I kept the characters, so now they aren’t exactly a part of anything. And then…there’s my old Hetalia OCs…Riccione (originally Sparta), Toronto, and D.C.


8. Do you RP as any of your OCs? If you do, introduce one of your RP OCs here!

I don’t actually RP as my characters anymore, but I used to RP with Riccione all the time in middle school. She’s a chubby professional dancer who runs a night club in Italy and maybe plays the violin? I can hardly remember.


9. Would you ever be willing to give any of your OCs to someone else?

I mean, their old designs? Absolutely. I’m slowly selling those on my DeviantART - mostly ones I don’t use anymore, like Warriors cats and my old fursona and a few others.


10. Introduce an OC with a complicated design?

FEUHORBE MY LORD. He’s actually not that complicated, but his vitiligo can be difficult to draw and as a furry, he’s a horse piñata whose colors follow a specific pattern based on an actual piñata I stole from one of my friends in the dorm room across from mine after their birthday. But there’s also Zane, a genderless dog dragon demon thing that someone gifted me as an avatar on the website Whirled, who I turned into my own character. I’m not sure if they were originally someone else’s OC that was given away or what, but I can’t find any other pictures of them or their species anywhere, so I’m keeping them as my own until further notice. Their design features horns and blue to black gradients and wings with holes in them and various scars.


11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a “sunshine”?

IAGAN!!! I can’t explain it enough, he’s literally a ray of sunshine.


12. Name an OC that isn’t yours but who you like a lot.

Oh man…there are these animators on youtube who I watch all the time and I’m in love with their characters/fursonas. There’s Mystery, who belongs to Sleepykinq, Puppers(?), who belongs to kittydog, and Yagi, who belongs to Scotch.


13. Do you have any troublemaker OCs?

Sonni is my little troublemaker. He’s a jokester and also a Dungeons and Dragons character, and his only purpose is to mess with my buddy’s characters and mess up their quests.


14. Introduce an OC with a tragic backstory

Carlisle had his arm blown off in an explosion, which also claimed his vision, but Vincent was able to build him a robotic prosthetic arm and these special goggles with LEDs that allow him to see again. That’s as tragic as it gets, really.


15. Do you like to talk about your OCs with other people?

I do! But I rather people ask me about my characters because if people don’t show initial interest, I just think I’m annoying them. A lot of times, that’s how I further develop or redesign my characters.


16. Which one of your OCs would be the best at biology (school subject)?

That would have to be…Seren and Roc, honestly. Because they are “”“warriors,”“” they know things like how the body reacts to certain toxins and which vital organ, if impaled, causes the most suffering before death. But that’s more like anatomy.


17. Any OC OTPs?

Answered!


18. Any OC crackships?

I high key ship Iagan with Scotch’s character Yagi? I have no real reasoning behind it. But that’s about it.


19. Introduce an OC that means a lot to you (and explain why)

Geez…that’s kinda hard to pick. I’d probably have to say Donovan, because I’ve projected a lot of my own traits and issues onto him (being a trans guy, having depression, letting him to do all kinds of things I wanted to do but couldn’t, etc.) and he helped me cope with a lot of shit until I just relied on my persona and let Donny have his own life.


20. Do any of your OCs sing? If they sing, care to share more details (headcanon voice, what kind of songs they like etc)?

Axwell actually was a choir kid growing up and can sing pretty dang well. My headcanon for his voice would be some sort of mix between Brendon Urie and David Bowie’s voices? His taste in music actually heavily varies and he doesn’t have a set favorite genre or anything - just anything with vocals. Feuhorbe love to hear him sing.

Iagan can kinda sing as well? He’s partially based off of a Samoyed, which are known as singing dogs, but it’s not one of his prominent talents. Although he can freely manipulate the sound of his voice as he pleases, his standard voice is that of JonTron’s. He’ll sing and listen to everything upbeat and cheerful.


21. Your most artistic OC

That would be Piper. Piper is a male Lolita, a ferret, sounds like cr1tikal, and is about four feet and ten inches tall. He does a lot of art, mostly of Lolita fashion and mainly uses watercolor paint.


22. Is there any OC of yours people tend to mischaracterize? If yes, how?

No one mischaracterizes my OCs because they aren’t popular enough for other people to even notice.


23. Introduce OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what the character would be like?

Since I already talked about Seren, I’ll talk about Carlisle. He started out as my original fursona, which was a generic twinky fox with long ears and black circles around his eyes and a MLP jacket. Then he was a feral fox that became my mascot? Now he’s my bara babe (other than Vincent) and had his metal arm and LED goggles And a way better color scheme.


24. If you could meet one OC of yours, who would it be and why?

I would absolutely love to meet either Iagan or Feuhorbe because I know I would have a really great time with either of them???? Hanging out with either of them would literally make me 10 times happier.


25. The OC that resembles you the most (same hobby, height, shared like/dislike for something etc?)

That would have to be Donovan. He’s only two inches shorter than me (not counting his ears), about 10 pounds heavier than me, huge into music, and a trans guy.


26. Have you ever had to change your OC’s design or something else about them against your will?

Nope. I made all changes to my characters freely.


27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song?

No, but I do like to think of what my characters’ theme songs would be. I’m still making that list.


28. Your most dangerous OC?

Answered!


29. Which one of your OCs would go investigate an abandoned house at night without telling anyone they’re going?

That would probably be Feuhorbe and Sonni. In it for the adventure but will not tell anyone specifically to potentially cause trouble.


30. Which one of your OCs would most likely have a secret stuffed animal collection?

I would say Iagan, but it wouldn’t be a secret. So I’d have to say either Skyler (a dragon character of mine) or Carlisle.


31. Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like (what they reblog, layout, anything really)

Piper would try to run a pastel aesthetic blog but it’d be riddled with too many memes and shitposts and videos of him just saying and doing stupid shit.


32. Which one of your OCs would be the most suitable horror game protagonist and why?

Alcatraz. He’s a lawyer but has a huge secret passion for ghosts and ghost hunting and all things paranormal, so he’d fit right into a game revolving around those things.


33. Your shyest OC?

Lukas! Lukas is a small quetzal that’s big into Harajuku fashion and he is the shyest little guy alive. But he’d probably get along well with Piper.


34. Do you have any twin characters?

Nope.


35. Any sibling characters?

Yes!!! Donovan, Carlisle, and Alcatraz are my three fox brothers. Donny is the youngest and Alcatraz is the oldest.


36. Do you have OC pairs where the other part belongs to someone else (siblings, lovers, friends etc)?

Yes! But they’re only with my boyfriend because I haven’t found anyone else who wants to ship their characters with mine.


37. Introduce an OC who is not quite human

I mean,,,the only set human characters I have are Flint and Axwell and my Hetalia characters, unless you count the human designs for my furry and feral characters. None of them are really a mix and could be considered not quite human except for Sonni, who is the most humanlike out of my non human OCs. He’s very lanky and appears malnourished and has three eyes and is covered in short, dark hair/fur. He has a short stubby tail and tall “ears” and has six arachnid-like appendages protruding from his back that he can crawl on.


38. Which one of your OCs would be the best dancer?

That would be Riccione and Donovan, who are actually dancers! Riccione is a professional dancer, whereas Donovan shuffles and such as a hobby.


39. Introduce any character you want

Bow Echo is a griffin that’s a mix between a bobcat and a peregrine falcon. She can fly super fast and I need to develop her more.


40. Any fond memories linked to your characters? Feel free to share!
41. Has anyone drawn fanart of your OCs? If yes, maybe show a picture or two here (remember sources & permissions!)

A few people have! They’re on my ArtFight profile under Defenses!

http://artfight.net/~CyberFoxFire


42. Which one of your OCs would be the most interested in Greek gods?

That would be Rev. The universe he’s from revolves around many entities similar to those found in Greek and Roman mythology, with him being basically the embodiment of the Ragnarök.


43. Do you have any certain type when you create your OCs? Do you tend to favour some certain traits or looks? It’s time to confess

Ok…I love making them around six feet tall or taller and giving them facial hair and choppy short hair that can be pulled back in low ponytails. But I’m trying to stop that and make them more diverse.


44. Something you like about your OCs in general

They all represent different aspects of my personality and I make really deep connections with them because of that.


45. A character you no longer use?

Jacobi. He’s just some Scottish guy that wears flannels. I’m selling him on DeviantART eventually.


46. Has anyone ever told you that you treat your OCs badly?

Nah. It’s mostly anons that tell me things about my OCs, like how they look like internet cancer. Not that I mind, I mean, come on. They all look like hell lmao


47. Has anyone ever (friendly) claimed any of your OCs as their child?

I think? When I first joined the Osomatsu-San Network, one of the first things I did was talk about my OCs with some other the other members. One might’ve claimed Iagan or someone else, I can’t really remember.


48. OC who is a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure

IAGAN!!!! And also Lukas!!


49. Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memes

That would be Piper, Sonni, Donovan, Feuhorbe, and Iagan.


50. Give me the good ol’ OC talk here. Talk about anything you want

Uh…I think I’ve talked about literally everything I can think of off the top of my head. Feel free to message me though if you want to talk about OCs!