#guy who becomes uncomfortable when cis(?) characters get deadnamed

[coolgelding]

idk if i've talked about this before but i hate the name jack napier so much. honestly i hate all names for the joker other than joker and jack napier is just the most common one i see in fanfictions and it makes me so irrationally angry. don't call him that. even if that used to be his name in that particular continuity if he wants to be called joker please just call him joker.

[epicene-humanoid]

some trans Jeff thoughts:

he realized he was trans in elementary school and just went fuck it I'll just start introducing myself as Jeffery and see if anyone decides to stop me (as we know, jeff winger can get away with almost anything)

he got top surgery the second he could afford it (around the same time he started at his law firm), and probably bribed someone to keep it a secret

"I'm jeff winger and i would rather look at myself naked than the women I sleep with" are the words of a man proud of his transition

he's really insecure about his fashion sense, which is why he mostly dresses like the douchey guys at his firm in the start of the show, he thought you can't go wrong with the sleazy lawyer look

he will never admit it but he feels super good about the dean hitting on him, because the dean is a (cis) guy, acknowledging that Jeff is more manly than him

i think he starts out stealth and comes out to everyone one by one, probably starting with abed because he knows abed won't judge him and will probably just see it as an interesting backstory.

abed just says it's cool and maybe worth a prequel exploring Jeff's transition, and jeff asks him to predict how all of the members of the group will react to him coming out.

abed's predictions:

britta will be over-the-top supportive and do a ton of research about trans history, probably put together a slideshow just to prove how progressive she is, and jeff will be a little bit weirded out, but also touched that she did all that for him, though he would never let her know that

shirley will be confused, because she doesn't know how someone she trusts and knows so well could be part of a group she was raised to hate, but ultimately realizes that there's nothing actually against the lgbtq people in the bible, and, as a cool character development arch, starts to advocate against use of the bible to justify bigotry

troy will just think it over and decide that Jeff's physique and coolness are even awesomer knowing how much work he'd had to put in to be like that, and respects Jeff's manliness even more

annie will give him a hug, say something sweet about how she'll always love him, and worry about his health, because even she read somewhere that taking testosterone makes you more likely to have a heart attack, jeff will explain that the risk is still only as high a cis guy, and she'll be the one to always remind him to take his shots

peirce will say at best say "jeff winger used to be a chick?" and at worst call him a slur, either way there's sure to be a lot of misgendering from him, and pestering to know Jeff's deadname (needless to say, Jeff just doesn't tell peirce)

the whole group goes out of their way to keep their beach trips a secret from pierce (the girls don't want him there anyways, he's too liable to be creepy) even though jeff knows that even if pierce saw his scars, all he would have to do is make up a story about some childhood accident and pierce would never question it

sorry this ended up being super long. can I hear some of your headcanons for him?

YES ALL THIS!!! yes yes i’m fully accepting this as canon oh my god

i’m about to type a whole ass ESSAY at midnight because i have been DYING to talk about this for months ajfdksljk,,, this is going to be obscenely long and i might end up adding even more to it as i continue to rewatch the show because there is truly no shortage of trans jeff content (especially when you’re trans and see transness in every little thing ajdkslfkjs)

spoiler warning for literally everything about this show under the cut <3

i 100% agree, i feel like he realized he was trans super young, especially since in the show we see him as a little kid a couple of times. 

like look at little jeff with the oversized sweatshirt and little ponytail!! that’s childhood trans fashion. not to be dramatic but part of me thinks that jeff’s dad left before he fully came out to his family (which gives him even more angst about it, because until that one Thanksgiving episode, he’s never able to prove to his dad that he’s a better man), but part of me thinks that his dad left after he came out (which adds that spicy i-should-have-stayed-in-the-closet guilt that he has to work through). 

either way, because his dad wasn’t there, he had to base his concept of masculinity on something else, which was becoming a lawyer!! there’s some line that’s like “after the dust and divorce papers were settled the only man i looked up to was [the lawyer guy]”. like, replacing your father figure in your mind with the concept of “a job where you can talk your way in and out of anything and distort other people’s concept of reality”? that’s trans.

 and the fucking THANKSGIVING EPISODE... i struggle to watch it without crying hehe <3 yeowch! the dichotomy of willy jr. being the “wrong” kind of man because he’s “too soft” but jeff also not being enough despite adhering to all the social standards of masculinity... fuck!! this whole scene of him telling his dad “i am Not well adjusted” and talking about how he gave himself an “appendix surgery scar” when he was a kid and he still keeps the get-well-soon letters from his classmates under his bed? oh my god. the implication of people loving him not despite his scars but because of them?? trans. i can’t think about this episode for too long or i’ll start yelling.

OH and this scene? where he talks about how his mom got him a girl costume for halloween?? and everyone said “what a cute little girl” and after a few houses he stopped correcting them?? and “once the shame and the fear wore off, i was just glad they thought i was pretty”?? THAT’S TRANS... the man needs validation oh my god... and then in all the halloween episodes we see he has these ultra-masculine costumes (a cowboy, David Beckham, one of the fast and furious guys even though he never watched the movies, a boxer with his DAD’S boxing gloves... god) costumes are about becoming something else and he always chooses to be hypermasculine and that is trans.

THE PHYSICAL EDUCATION EPISODE!!!!!!! being uncomfortable during P.E. is a queer experience. period. but him being specifically uncomfortable in the clothes someone else is assigning to him? trans. “are we gonna talk about clothes like a girl? or use tapered sticks to hit balls around a cushioned mat like a man?” TRANS. and him eventually stripping in public? celebration of transness. and the fact that he eventually becomes comfortable in both the uniform and his own style!! trans!! god i love this episode. 

AND AND AND!!! the gay dean coming out episode!!! where it’s the three of them discussing the best way for the dean to come out as gay despite not entirely identifying with that label!! so we have both frankie and the dean who are sort of ambiguously queer, and jeff who’s a stealth trans man who’s probably only out to only the study group at this point. this scene where the dean and jeff have this like eyebrow communication while frankie is talking is just so cute. queer-to-queer communication. “I am so curious” “oh?” “intellectually.” “oh...” ajfdksljfk this scene just screams high school GSA to me and i love it so much.

and SPEAKING of the dean!! i totally see you on that. i feel like jeff has some internalized homophobia/biphobia (like he’d throw punches over someone else, but when it comes to himself he has a lot of shame). and also seeing the dean so confident in all his different outfits/costumes has a weird affect on him bc it’s like “okay, the dean, a cis guy, can do that, but i as a trans guy could Not because that’s Breaking the Rules”. which, like, throwback to the halloween thing. of course there’s no right way to be masculine, but mr. winger does not know that.

another thing!! the episode where their emails get leaked? that includes his emails with his therapist. fuck!! he was outed to the whole world in that episode!! no wonder he was so fucking angry!! this whole episode (and really any time he mentions his therapist) is so interesting when you think about them as a person he talks to about his transition. OH which adds to the thing with the dean!! “and you told your therapist you wanted to be alone this weekend” and “not you jeff, i know you’ll be visiting your dad” ”I told you to stop reading my emails”. luckily his study group has his back and just makes fun of him for emailing astronauts lmao

and WHO can forget “they’re giving out an award for most handsome young man!!!!” what else is there to say about this line besides: he’s trans. you know he didn’t get awarded enough for being a handsome young man when he was a kid, and no amount of compliments when he’s fully-grown can really make up for that. some people crash a kid’s bar mitzvah to cope with the fact that they struggled to be seen as themselves when they were a teenager <3

also his weird relationship with pierce? where he kind of hates him (understandably lmao) but at times has this almost-friends-almost-father-son relationship with him? especially in this episode where he’s forced to bond with him and ends up having a good time by accident (at a barber shop no less, the perfect place to Be A Man with your Man Friend). idk what to say about him besides the fact that pierce says his mom wanted a girl when he was born and made him dress like a girl (and his middle name is anastasia!) so if they’re gonna do any bonding over transness it’s gonna be that. 

okay one last thing and then i’ll shut up for the night. this episode kills me (and almost kills jeff hahahahelpi’mcrying). it’s a very Trans thing to not be able to visualize your future self, it just is. growing up trans at the time he did? i don’t know what kind of future he saw for himself, but i’m so happy that he ended up with a group of friends who became his family and love him the way they all do. i’m so emotional over this asshole it’s ridiculous. 

in conclusion:

they’re trans, your honor <3

[izzyliker]

i think like.... some of this ‘fanfic isnt above criticism’ discourse fundamentally is built on some weird ideas and understandings of criticism, creative freedom, and variance in ppl reading the exact same thing. 

like: just because you dont like a specific thing about someones writing doesnt mean its objectively, concretely wrong, bad, or inappropriate. nobodys going to kill you or jail you or whatever for leaving a mean or unnecessarily blunt comment on someones fic, but it is kind of sad/funny to see people talk shit about writers for ‘not taking criticism’ as if their opinion is objective truth and not just.....their opinion.

like: i have had people tell me my writing is too abstract, or it doesnt make any sense, or that i use too many metaphors or whatever. thats their opinion! i have also had people say that me writing the way i do is dreamy/mesmerizing/whatever nice, sweet things they had to say about it. as a hobbyist writer and someone who ENJOYS writing that way i am not going to change it because someone didnt like it, and people being mad about that is... kind of funny to me? just dont read my fic then! i write six line long sentences and use five em dashes in a single paragraph because i like doing it. if you dont like reading that you dont have to read it!

there’s... of course room for gently calling people out for writing in -phobic and -ist stuff while obviously having no idea that it was -ist or -phobic (eg. having characters misgender a trans character and not warning in the tags, or referring to a trans character as their deadname and using the wrong pronouns until they transition [’x was a girl blah blah she liked blah blah then she suddenly realized shes a boy wow anyway now im getting to the actual story after misgendering my character for no reason. them being trans never comes up again’], or writing deeply bigoted stuff or otherwise inserting unfortunate tropes in writing) and im not going to say that it’s ~bullying~ someone to let someone know that it seems like their writing reflects their own, genuine bigoted beliefs or misconceptions, and a lot of time people will be mortified and thankful to hear that (and when they aren’t theyre usually either openly bigoted, or theyve had other people tell them otherwise and chosen to believe those people instead, which you can feel however you want about).

like: ive left a strongly worded comment on a fic before because it turned out to be completely untagged for the rape depicted in it (as in: no archive warnings apply - not even chose not to warn), and featured a twoc ‘’’’’’having sex with’’’’’’’ a trans guy, where the author was a white cis person who did not see anything wrong with the lack of tagging OR the damaging tropes used with zero self awareness. i dont think you can NEVER say ‘im trans/gay/bi/ace/a person of color/a person of this ethnicity and you don’t seem to be - did anyone beta read this, because you have depicted the character with my marginalized trait in a very stereotypical way, and idk if thats on purpose or not’ or anything similar. sometimes people who are racist or homophobic or biphobic or transphobic also write fic. sometimes a fic makes your spider senses tingle because of the way something bad is depicted in it. 

but like and especially re darkfic - 

when people say ‘you need to take criticism when people say your fic glorifies bad relationships’ i think... what people fail to take into account is that although sometimes people do in fact write narratives where they do not even realize theyre writing a shitty relationship (this is often made obvious by a complete lack of tagging or a flippant attitude about the actions of the characters rather than anything that happens in the work itself) sometimes when you read a fic and think ‘this obviously says that this relationship is good! and that you should read this and think the relationship is good!’ it’s not actually an objective, true criticism that the author needs to... idk...rectify? reflection is always good for yknow becoming a better writer and looking at possible issues re: how you see relationships or certain people or whatever (this isnt just writers or artists btw, this is also you as the reader or the consumer or the person, existing in the world), but sometimes it’s just a fic that either was triggering for you, or that didn’t fill the specific narrative need you had.

again: i have written unhealthy relationships. i like writing codependence, and relationships with bad boundaries, and relationships where people are in denial about how their relationship makes them feel. i have, ON THE SAME FICS, had people say they thought it was validating; or cathartic; or respectful; or realistic and kind and compassionate portrayal of those relationship AND other people say they were uncomfortable; that they thought the narrative not using the word abuse meant it wasnt meant to be abuse (despite the ‘unhealthy relationships’ tag); that they thought it was disrespectful to write two characters they liked in an unhealthy relationship. and theyre all allowed to have those opinions! sometimes someone’s writing just doesn’t spark joy. but just because you didn’t like a fic doesn’t mean the writer has failed. when a fic writer has multiple people say ‘i liked this; this felt real; it felt compassionate and respectful and i will come back and read it again’ and one person say ‘i think this is bad’ i don’t think its... evil of the writer to say ‘yknow, im sorry you didn’t like this fic, you might want to read x fic where the story has a happier ending instead,’ and not change or delete or otherwise do anything to that fic.

i dont know guys like... again, just because you didn't like something doesnt mean theres something intrinsically wrong with it. and a loooooot of posts here conflate ‘this person wrote a fic that uncritically used a bunch of tropes the author did not tag for and thus was not even aware of having used and i have left a comment saying that the implications of that are kinda fucked’ with ‘this person wrote a fic about an abusive relationship/sexual assault/whatever and it wasn’t written the way i want those topics to be written about, and i have left them a comment saying that they need to kill themselves for it.’