#hire more transfem people!!!

[crowdusk]

i really think there should be more physically disabled PCs and main characters in popular dnd campaigns like dimension 20 etc and fantasy settings in general. not just for representation but truly bc it’s so fun and interesting from a storytelling point of view?? like there’s so much potential for creativity and inspired choices - tell me someone fighting with their crutches or having magical mobility aids wouldn’t be incredible to explore. (thoughts actually inspired by how well these things are done in witch hat atelier and also me and my friend joking i’d have lower hp bc of disabilities).

i feel like so often you get characters and it’s like “oh they have a mechanical arm” or “they were in a traumatic accident as a child” and it’s like, ok and their relationship to their body, pain etc is supposedly not shaped by that at all?! come on.

and of course it opens up a whole other dimension of - what does ableism look like in that world, if it exists? what is a “healthy” body under racial capitalism and/or conditions of oppression? has the world “solved” certain issues but overlooked a whole bunch or made things worse for some people? disability and body politics offer so much richness and complexity, especially alongside race, gender, etc.

[dreamyintersexouppy]

"it's not that deep, trans women just aren't welcome in our media no matter how progressive it wants to appear because ultimately we must obey the tastes of the majority no matter how bigoted they may be" yeah idk what she was complaining about either, it's a mystery

if Dropout actually wanted to platform trans voices & performers, then they would implement a gender diversity quota into their shows. “but then it would be forced” so? ten years ago the BBC implemented a rule for all of their panel shows to have a woman on every episode. and obviously it didn’t End Sexism On TV Forever, but there was an immediate & noticeable difference even for female comedians looking for small time untelevised standup gigs. the reason Dropout don’t do this is for trans folks because they consider the public perception of trans women to harm their bottom line too much to consistently hire any of us, and it would be immediately obvious if they only gave these positions to TME trans people (and to be honest — they already do, and it already is).

[wolfman-ann]

A quick note on the current discourse. (bc as a trans, but afab genderfluid individual with dimension 20 blog, I feel it irresponsible not to.)

I like Dropout. I like a lot of their content, heck I like Mismag (especially S2, I like that it largely stepped away from the source material, and in general I think it is just a really great season of D20). Is Dropout perfect? No.

Liking something does not make it immune from critique. In fact, you should absolutely critique the things you like.

Dropout should absolutely hire more transfems.

Mismag should have absolutely had a transfem on the cast.

People are really showing their true colours here. 'But they have Erika on the mismag cast!' yes, and I love Erika on the Mismag cast. But as JK Rowling's transphobic rhetoric is largely centered around transmisogyny, there should have been a transfem on cast. 'But Persephone Valentine is on Dropout' Yes, but she's also only one person. There are so many funny transfems. There are so many transfems in TTRPG spaces. It would be great to see them.

It's like with any other form of representation, in any other media. We can be glad for the representation we have, while also realising it could be better. Dropout isn't going to vanish into the abyss because people question 'hey, can we get some more trans women?'

Some of you are being really vitriolic about this. Maybe look inside yourselves and wonder why that is.

[velvetvexations]

Tossing my own two cents into the discourse - phrases like "We need more TMA representation in this show" seems like... an odd way to phrase it to me? Like you could just say trans women and transfems? Phrasing it as a need specifically for people who are affected by a particular type of bigotry is so strange. It's like saying "This company needs to hire more people who are targets of sexism" instead of "This company needs to hire more women".

hey here's a really great explanation of why the controversy is ridiculous AND why TMA/TME is stupid bullshit

[jenny-in-a-jar]

🖤💙 4 days until my Surgery 💙🖤

(Picture taken Dec 9th, 2023)

I'm very very excited for my surgery (it's my second gender affirming surgery but this one is more significant to me since it'll be top and bottom surgery) and I'm obviously counting the days until it and I thought some people might be interested in my trans journey 🏳️‍⚧️ So see part 7 below the cut.

Part 1 here

As the summer was ending, I got really lucky! A lesbian hairstylist (who helped organize the drag show I went in the last update) gave my name to this sales lady who sold accounting work to like companies and she needed help with researching CEO and CFO types. And she paid me out of pocket and honestly it was pretty easy internet research using Google. I felt like a little rat scurrying across the Internet 🐀 So, thank you lesbians 🙏🙏

(Picture taken Nov 6th, 2022)

Apparently I really impressed her so she got me hired full time as a sales admin for her company (I wouldn't have gotten with my lack of a college degree without her) and I've had that job since! And a lot of my transition wouldn't be possible without the pay and benefits of this job. Also this is my first job where I get gendered correctly and I'm slowly getting less anxious about going to the bathroom at work 🥰

She honestly mom'd up on me and bought me a bunch of new business casual clothes for the job. And here's an example of one of my new work outfits 😁

(Picture taken Nov 14, 2022)

Bc of the new job I was able to afford a lot more things for transitioning! Like voice training. I remember when I first cracked I tried to just teach myself using videos but I wasn't good at it 😅 Also a friend during the summer of 2022 helped me and I did make some progress with her help. But, I started making a lot more progress once I started seeing a speech therapist. But, there was a barrier since I could tell she hadn't worked too much with trans people. I went to a speech therapist bc it was covered by my insurance but she moved and then I couldn't find anyone for insurance covered speech therapy. So, I eventually just paid for lessons Your Lessons Now. And, honestly it's going a lot better! It's really nice to be able to talk about my frustrations with voice training with another transfem. The biggest thing I'm learning from here is how to break the bad habit of pitching up my voice by squeezing my vocal chords.

(Picture taken Sept 8th, 2023)

I had also switched to injections and I highly recommend it! A friend even made my first two vials into earrings 🔥

I also got a lot lazier with makeup 😅 I do eyeliner wings, mascara, and blush for when I go into the office. Which for a bunch of accountants means I do about as much makeup that is normal for the women in the office 🤷‍♀️

(Pictures taken October 31st and December 2nd of 2022)

These were two notable exceptions. I really love the makeup I did for the Halloween of 2022 bc I decided to go as a ghost-type trainer. And the one on the right is when I learned how to use concealer to cover my 'raccoon eyes' as my dad liked to call them 🦝

Also this would be a good time to mention something I probably should've mentioned earlier 😅 I never learned how to use foundation. I know it's easy but I have a weird mental block around it 🤷‍♀️ But, in the summer of 2021 I started doing twice daily skincare routine for my face. Which took me from a very acne heavy face to people being surprised I'm not wearing foundation. Also the routine is really nice. Would recommend to those who want to get rid of their acne (send an ask if you want to know specifics).

(Picture taken Aug 20, 2023)

Romance update since I've been doing that lol: Well, things ended with all the girlfriends I had so I am down to 1 partner. And I got caught in a romance scam for a few months 😭 However, I can't really complain because I got engaged!!! It was so sweet in cute. My partner and I had this date the night before Valentine's Day under a statue outside of a local art museum. We read sapphic poetry by candle light and then they popped the question 🥰🥰

But, I say another big part of this era was I made a lot more local trans friends. Went to a good amount of house parties which would've surprised pre-transition me! And I really love my community of queer people I've been building 🥺🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️💕

(Picture taken July 21st, 2023)

Oh yeah!! I also started laser hair removal at the beginning of 2021 as well. Which was before this era but time is a lie. But the new job definitely made it easier to afford.

The biggest step for my transition was getting my surgeries set up!! And my FFS (facial feminization surgery) marks the end of this era. Below was the last picture I took before my FFS.

(Picture taken Feb 17th, 2024)

So, in my next update, I'll be showing my post-op pictures once most of the swelling went down. See you tomorrow!! 😁✌️

Next Part Here

[dropoutconfessions]

this is for the owner of this blog. why tf did you reblog plaidos. do you even know who she is and the kind of damage she's had on the trans community? she answered an anon about someone clearly pretending to be a trans woman working for dropout (because they use the language "members" (proven that dropout cast doesn't refer to themselves as that) and mentions a "dropout show" (... dropout is not a show. it's a host of multiple shows)) who had 0 proof. she's so reactionary and her logic is easily dismantled, she contradicts herself all the time (the post you reblogged she goes on about how "trans women aren't marketable" which is why they're not in dropout. there are so many other trans people in dropout, but in the comments of another plaidos post she said "persephone was so popular when she was in d20". literally took me 2 minutes to find the contradiction. not to mention the graph she reblogs with an elusive "tme vs tma rep in dropout" with no stats and no classification of what tme and tma means, no clear answer on where the many appearances and shows specifically made for and by drag queens, and then complained that lumping every genderqueer person who likely came out after being hired equaled to more than one subset of trans people.

i'm so disappointed. so much for this being a safe, apolitical space. plaidos has done irreperable harm to me and my transmasc brothers and to see a DROPOUT GIMMICK BLOG reblogging her baseless and clearly incorrect accusations proven by literally just KNOWING about dropout. but instead, you've made your blog an unsafe place for anyone who isn't a white transfem by showing you're in agreeance with plaidos.

you want links to posts? go to her blog and search the #dropout tag. there's your links.

Okay so I just would like to say a few things in response to this. first, I reblogged like, one post, and not even directly from her. I do not do an insane amount of research into people I reblog from to check if everything is kosher, which I assume no one else does.

If y'all expect me to check that much, stop sending me asks about how I haven't posted your asks yet. I know everyone assumes its because I dislike their post personally. It's not. It's cause i have a really really busy life rn. I mean this with all the kindness in my heart, I do not give enough of a fuck to block most of your opinions from making the stage short of you using slurs or straight up lying.

Regardless, she passes the tests. She's not anti-trans mascs and I feel like this is the result of bad faith readings and people assuming trans women are the enemy. Also taking any mention of oppression that doesn't apply to you as a personal attack.

I looked her up and the first thing i saw complaining about her called her a slur, so not a great start gotta say. If any of y'all use this word as an insult, stop, it's categorically not okay.

Also, there can be a lack of trans women, and also you can like persephone valentine. 3 trans women on a network with like a fuck ton of other queer people is also not very many, when you take into the fact that twice as many TME trans people have been on multiple episodes of dropout shows, that's not a contradiction. You can be popular and also unmarketable, that's like every remotely famous TMA, and honestly trans people in general have a harder time. That's not contradiction, that's us going "yippee a single fucking crumb of transfem rep" in 2021 and then being drip fed with game changer, um actually, and dirty laundry occasional appearances for the next 3 years.

If you want a definition for TMA and TME, like a formal one, not just what the acronyms mean, do your research on it. You wanna know how I learned about the fact that they refer to specifically institutional transmisogyny? FROM PLAIDOS'S BLOG. Do you actually, like, look at her posts? or just the ones cherrypicked to make her seem anti-transmasc because of bad faith interpretations? She's very clearly aware of the oppression trans mascs face, it's called transphobia. Transmisogyny is specifically the oppression trans women face given the fact we are seen as a subhuman third gender on an institutional level.

so much for this being a safe apolitical space

I never said it would be apolitical. In fact, safe and apolitical are contradictory. We're trans. Our very existence and identity and lives have been made political, and will be political for the entirety of our lifespans. I'm not going to lie down and pretend otherwise for the comfort of the world and I am honestly disappointed that you, as a fellow trans person, are encouraging that behavior in any way.

The entire "not an ask" tag, is for me to talk. It's mine. My space. You cannot divorce this blog from my influence because it's my goddamn blog. I am not a jukebox or a puppet for you to get your fandom stuff. I am a woman with her own damn opinions and a large enough follower count for my push for trans rights to largely get slightly less ignored than they do on main.

I have been following dropout / collegehumor since the All Nighters. The only subject I am more knowledgeable about is probably Alpharad or Paper Mario. I know dropout. I know statistics, I'm majoring in it. I've known about this issue for years now. But until this blog, until very recently, I didn't have a platform for it, so I just shut the fuck up. I'm not doing that this time. I'm going to be a very jaded women because some of the men who are supposed to be my brothers are acting like this. Like we need to shut up and not complain. No. Fuck that.

I do not think Dropout is the bad guy here. As of now, I'm holding out hope. I personally, am not boycotting them (yet). I am holding out hope that they respond, and then I'll wait a few months because I know things are recorded in advance and hiring and vetting processes take time. But I would like a change. Because outside of a spike in 2021 (when the seven was released), transfem appearances on dropout hasn't really changed for the better, at all.

but instead, you've made your blog an unsafe place for anyone who isn't a white transfem

Oh damn I guess I gotta leave, since my blog isn't safe for me. Since yk. I'm not white. I'm a stone cold desi bitch and I will live and die that way. Thanks for assuming I'm white tho, really showing that "white people are the default" world view you've got going there.

Do you want to know why, everyone assumes only white transfems have this take? Because so few of you, actually listen to transfems, ofc you don't notice, that transfems of color, have the same fucking opinion.

I want it to be clear. I love trans mascs. My partner is transmasc. Some of my best friends are transmascs. I don't hate trans mascs. I don't even hate you. I just kinda hate talking to you. And everyone, regardless of gender, like you. The type of people who heard, that transfems are oppressed in a way transmascs aren't, a way cis women aren't, and somehow turned that into a personal attack. You took a single fucking critic against Dropout, and decided to be guided by hatred.

This is my problem with the fandom. Transfems bring up one little thing: they'd like to be more represented. Nothing about Dropout being evil, nothing against Sam Reich or Brennan Lee Mulligan, just the fact that they are cis white men in positions of power being a valid part of the data. And you started attacking us. We're receiving death threats because people are whiteknighting a comedy company that is visibly entirely unaffected by our actions.

I have one question for all of you. Why aren't you in the comments and reblogs of all the confessions tagged negative dropout post? You want to defend this company, I better see an uptick in notes on those posts. Otherwise shut the fuck and let us beg for a bit more representation in peace.

If you have a problem with that. Leave. I don't want you following my blog if you so desperately need me to be silent on the matters that affect me and the people I love. And that includes you. The day the world comes for your throat, I'll be there. I have come to accept that I won't get that same treatment. But don't you fucking tell me not to stand up for myself. Cause I'm standing up for the both of us when any of us need it.

[tangibletechnomancy]

The (Personal) Is (Political)

~7 hours, Dall-E 3 via Bing Image Creator, generated under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

Or, Dear Microsoft and OpenAI: Your Filters Can't Stop Me From Saying Things: An interactive exercise in why all art is political and game of Spot The Symbols

A rare piece I consider Fully Finished simply as a jpeg, though I may do something physical with it regardless. "Director commentary" below, but I strongly encourage you to go over this and analyze it yourself before clicking through, then see how much your reading aligns with my intent.

Elements I told the model to add and a brief (...or at least inexhaustive) overview of why:

Anime style and character figures - Frequently associated with commercial "low" art and consumer culture, in East Asia and the English-speaking world alike, albeit in different ways - justly or otherwise. There is frequently an element of racism to the denigration of anime styles in the west; nearly any American artist who has taken formal illustration classes can tell you a story of being told that anime style will only hinder them, that no one will hire them if they see anime, or even being graded more harshly and scrutinized for potential anime-esque elements if they like anime or imply that they may like anime - including just by being Asian and young. On the other hand, it is true that there is a commercial strategy of "slap an anime girl on it and it will sell". The passion fans feel for these characters is genuine - and it is very, very exploitable. In fact, this commercialization puts anime styles in particular in a very contentious position when it comes to AI discussions!

Dark-skinned boy with platinum and pink [and blue] hair - Racism and colorism! They're a thing, no matter how much the worst people in the world want you to think they're long over and "critical race theory" is the work of evil anti-American terrorists! I chose his appearance because I knew that unless I was incredibly lucky, I would have to fight with this model for multiple hours to get satisfactory results on this point in particular - and indeed I did. It was an interesting experience - what didn't surprise me was how much work it took me to get a skin color darker than medium-dark tan; what did surprise me was that the hair color was very difficult to get right. In anime art, for dark skin to be matched with light hair and eyes is common enough to be...pretty problematic. Bing Image Creator/Dall-E, on the other hand, swings completely in the opposite direction and struggles with the concept of giving dark-skinned characters any hair color OTHER than black, demanding pretty specific phrasing to get it right even 70% of the time. (I might cynically call this yet another illustration against the pervasive copy-paste myth...) There is also much to say about the hair texture and facial features - while I was pleased to see that more results than I expected gave me textured hair and/or box braids without me asking for it, those were still very much in the minority, and I never saw any deviation from the typical anime facial structures meant to illustrate Asian and white characters. Not even once!

Pink and blue color palette - Our subject is transgender. Bias self-check time: did you make that association as quickly as you would with a light-skinned character, or even Sylveon?

Long hair, cute clothes, lots of accessories - Styling while transmasc is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation, doubly so if you're not white. In many locations, the medical establishment and mainstream attitude demands total conformity to the dominant culture's standard conventional masculinity, or else "revoking your man card" isn't just a joke meant to uphold the idea that men are "better" than women, but a very real threat. In many queer communities, especially online, transmascs are expected to always be cute femboys who love pink (while transfems are frequently degraded and seen as threats for being butch), and being Just Some Guy is viewed as inherently a sign of assimilationism at best and abusiveness at worst. It is an eternal tug-of-war where "cuteness" and ornamentation are both demanded and banned at the same time. Black and brown people are often hypermasculinized and denied the opportunity to even be "cute" in the first place, regardless of gender. Long hair and how gender is read into it is extremely culture-dependent; no matter what it means to you, if anything, the dominant culture wherever you are will read it as it likes.

Trophies and medals - For one, the trans sports Disk Horse has set feminism back by nearly 50 years; I'm barely a Real History-Remembering Adult and yet I clearly remember a time when the feminist claim about gender in sports was predominantly "hey, it's pretty fucked up that sports are segregated by sex rather than weight class or similar measures, especially when women's sports are usually paid much less and given weirdly oversexualized uniforms," but then a few loud living embodiments of turds in the punch bowl realized that might mean treating trans people fairly and now it's super common for self-proclaimed feminists - mostly white ones - to claim that the strongest woman will still never measure up to the weakest man and this is totally a feminist statement because they totally want to PROTECT women (with invasive medical screenings on girls as young as 12 to prove they're Really Women if they perform too well, of course). For two, Black and brown people are stereotyped as being innately more sporty, physically strong, and, again, Masculine(TM) than others, which frequently intersects with item 1...and if you think it only affects trans women, I am sorry my friend but it is so much worse and more extensive than you think.

Hearts - They mean many things. Love. Happiness. Cuteness. Social media engagement?

TikTok - A platform widely known and hated around these parts for its arcane and deeply regressive algorithm; I felt it deserved to be name/layout/logodropped for reasons that, if they're not clear already, should become so in the final paragraph.

Computers, cameras and cell phones - My initial specification was that one of the phones should be on Instagram and another on TikTok, which the model instead chose to interpret as putting a TikTok sticker on the laptop, but sure, okay. They're ubiquitous in the modern day, for better and for worse. For all the debate over whether phones and social media are Good For Us or Bad For Us, the fact of the matter is, they seem to be a net positive-to-neutral, whose impacts depend on the person - but they do still have major drawbacks. The internet is a platform for conspiracy theories and pseudoscience and dangerous hoaxes to spread farther than ever before. Social media culture leaves many people feeling like we're always being watched and every waking moment of our lives must be Perfect - and in some senses, we are always being watched these days. Digital privacy is eroding by the day, already being used to enforce all the most unjust laws on the books, which leads to-

Pigs - I wrote the prompt with the intention that it would just be a sticker on the laptop, but instead it chose to put them everywhere, and given that I wanted to make a somewhat stealthy statement about surveillance, especially of the marginalized...thanks for that, Dall-E! ;)

Alligators - A counter to the pigs; a short-lived antifascist symbol after...this.

Details I did not intend but love anyway:

The blue in the hair - I only prompted for platinum and pink in the hair, but the overall color palette description "bled" over here anyway, completing the trans flag, making it even more blatant, and thus even more effective as a bias self-check.

The Macbook - I only specified a laptop. Hilariously ironic, to me, that a service provided through Bing interpreted "laptop" as "Macbook" nearly every time. In my recent history, 22 out of 24 attempts show, specifically, a Macbook. Microsoft v. OpenAI divorce arc when? ;) But also, let us not forget Apple's role in the ever-worsening sanitization of the internet. A Macbook with a TikTok sticker (or, well, a Tiikok sticker - recognizable enough) - I can think of little more emblematic of one of the main things I was complaining about, and it was a happy accident. Or perhaps an unhappy one, considering what it may imply about Apple's grip on culture and communications.

Which brings me to my process:

Generated over ~7 hours with Dall-E 3 through Bing Image Creator - The most powerful free tool out there for txt2img these days, as well as a nightmare of filters and what may be the most disgustingly, cloyingly impersonal toxic positivity I've ever witnessed from a tool. It wants to be Art(TM), yet it wants to ban Politics(TM); two things which are very much incompatible - and so, I wanted to make A Controversial Statement using only the most unflaggable, innocuous elements imaginable, no matter how long it took.

All art is political. All life is political. All our "defaults" are cultural, and therefore political. Anything whatsoever can be a symbol.

If you want all art to be a substance-free "look at the pretty picture :)" - it doesn't matter how much you filter, buddy, you've got a big storm coming.

[agendercryptidlev]

just to be crystal clear your use of Persephone as "the trans woman dropout already has love her she's enough" imagines a world were me, a transfem who thinks dropout should do better about transfem representation, does not love her and does not already support her and follow and consume her other projects. Which is just a blatant tokenization. Thank you.

to be more specific, so Persephone being the only non-drag queen transfem in all the shows meets the quota right?

My point is that you should hype up the trans women already there and there is no quota. In fact, as a trans person, nothing would be more humiliating and dehumanizing to me than getting hired just to fulfill some representation quota. I wouldn't wish that on another trans person.

I don't know you, random anon. I don't know what you post. I'm just sad because I haven't seen a single post asking for more transfems at dropout that doesn't hype up the one who's already there which makes me sad. I'm sad people are turning trans rep into a numbers game instead of supporting and uplifting trans folks in the industry.

I'm glad you're (reportedly) hyping her up but I haven't seen posts doing so get traction and that makes me really, really sad. Because I think Persephone is great and wish she was in more stuff! I don't post about specific members of the cast that much cause I try not to be parasocial and pedestalize them but she's one of my all time favorites. All I can think of is being in her position seeing people reduce her and her coworkers into numbers to fulfill a representation quota and acting like she doesn't matter. If I were in that position I'd feel really shitty!

And I'll I'm trying to point out is that if you want more trans women in the cast show some love to the trans woman who's already there instead of implying there are other trans people eating all the rep when most of them were hired as cis women anyway. I want more trans people in the cast always but if they went out of their way to diversity hire more trans people to have a "complete set" that'd feel super icky and unnatural.

There's this performative allyship I see in trans spaces that really grinds my gears where people will claim to love and support trans women and then do nothing to actually support and uplift them, not hype them up not donate to their gofundmes not protest for their writes, just post to get ally points and do nothing else. Why are people going to bat for hypothetical other transfem cast members who must be getting cheated out of being hired while it's fucking crickets on hyping up the actual trans WOC who works there? Why are the theoretical trans woman more deserving of your allyship than the trans woman in front of you?

Also who the fuck cares that a transfem not be a drag-queen? What do you have against transfems doing drag?

[thefantastickatinator]

Hi I'm a transfem that has watched almost all of dropout's content it does have a problem and you can't see that because you are a transmisogynist!

Yeah i never said dropout didn’t have issues with hiring/casting i’m just pointing out that people declaring dropout to be equally bad as major media companies or categorically trash are taking things too far.

Also that manipulating data to make a point actually weakens your argument and makes it easier for people to attack you.

Apparently nuance is lost on many people.

Again: Dropout should hire more trans women.

[nephilimbrute]

whatre your splatoon AU squad's genders/pronouns/sexualities i must know :3

my agents? Hmmm......welllll

val (agent 3) is a Cis lesbian. she uses she/her. someone asked if she got kicked out of the NSS for being cis. she holds the title of agent 3 to prevent confusion even though she was FIRED. she's also blonde and white but thankfully not blue-eyed

spingly (agent 4) is a bi transman and uses he/him. he's the only normal one out of everyone else (he later on decides to get his joints replaced with metal). he HATES salmonids and doing salmon run shifts. marie is like his mom

riley (cap'n 3 and Only called cap'n 3) is a sapphic demigirl that uses she/they. i can't tell if her or 8 are more troubled but she's Really anxious. was hired in place of val because val was "too reckless" (that's just how she works), which resulted in riley getting her ass beat BAD by agent 8 not once but TWICE

agent 8 (agent 8) is NONBINARY and uses THEY/THEM (really sticking this into your brain so you'll remember it). they don't have a name but if they did it would probably be "nana ida" which sounds cute, but they don't even respond to the name nana since it's not their birth name. they're also really mean, but they don't show it and keep it to themself. like they don't say mean things (because they rarely ever speak) but they'll probably upset you with no remorse

maggie (neo 3) is a uhhhh.huhhhhhhh.. bigender unlabeled inktoling. i think. i forgot. she uses she/him (no pref) and is super annoying. really stupid and likes to annoy people with his dumb arguments. knows a lot about technology but that's the only field he's smart in

and then vega is a transfem lesbian that uses she/her. she's dating marie and she has a Cool Metal arm. i don't know. she's awesome and she mains splatana and splatling

val is dating one of my friends' ocs (iris) and we hit them with hammers over and over again and burn them alive. this is their daily treatment

8, riley, and spingly are all dating each other. riley is Very dependent on spingly but she tries to manage on her own. both riley and 8 are very awkward with touch, but they know each other's boundaries. spingly is very nice and riley and 8 love him. though, 8 'likes' to make riley uncomfortable by asking her really personal questions or by staring at her too much (because all they do is stare), and sometimes they make her break down into tears (they don't really have much empathy).

maggie is 21 years old but dating nobody because he's just. uninterested. if you flirt with her she'll make fun of you for it

this is canon to me. whenever i see cap3 or 8 i go "OMG that's riley" or "stupid bug looking 8". same with agent 4 but preferrably if it's a green 4

ummmmm that's all. if you wanna know more about any of them you're free to ask any questions

[corvidaedream]

100% from a tourist end of things. we have an incredibly gender-affirming creative dept including trans costumers and the father of two trans kids as one of my supervisors who is a little bit "hes a little confused but hes got the spirit". i think everyone would be very supportive if i decided to switch roles.

most of the trans actors here are nb and portraying someone of their agab, but there are two transmasc people portraying teenage boys and both of them have said they get misgendered regularly.

the one i interact with in front of guests more often "passes better" (subjectively obvs) but i still witness him getting misgendered fairly often by tourists. usually it's with some smugness, and he handles it well but it seems pretty exhausting.

the one i talked to this morning whose schedule overlaps less w mine was just like. "yeah, i dont remember the last time a guest used he/him to refer to me, no matter how many times the other interpreters do."

it does make me hesitant to try, bc i dont know if i would last long w that level of scrutiny. on the other hand, i'm the only one of the three of us who's on t so maybe that would make a difference? idk

asking one of the few nb people on site how their experience has been portraying a character who isnt their agab bc im thinking about changing characters and their response was "oh, its bad." :///

[plaidos]

the latest dropout tme take i saw: "asking for more trans women is the same as demanding the forcible outing of any closet trans women in the current cast and is dangerous for them somehow"

why am i not surprised with this fandom? only Dropout’s fandom could say “stop asking for trans women to be utilised more in Dropout, you might be making Brennan Lee Mulligan uncomfortable because what if he’s secretly an egg”. typical fandom focused on keeping everything the status quo & portraying anything else as evil tbh!

anyway, if there ARE a bunch of transfems who are too afraid to come out the closet at Dropout, then isn’t it even more damning that a bunch of nonbinary and transmasc people feel comfortable to come out but transfems don’t? almost like they curated an environment hostile to transfeminine people by never hiring…

[genderkoolaid]

The fact of the matter is it serves transfems more to just claim “your agab doesn’t matter at all!! you as a woman suffer under patriarchy and transmascs as men are your oppressors under patriarchy!” than it does to acknowledge the messy reality of life. aren’t we supposed to be beyond this black and white thinking of cis people? a trans woman and cis woman would both deal with hiring discrimination, but a trans man and a cis woman would both suffer from an abortion ban. we all need to reckon with our role in the patriarchy. but for some reason transfems insist on pretending it’s completely black and white and they never perpetuated misogyny ever pre-transition. The world doesn’t work that way! The world is messy! Gender is messy! Oppressive systems are messy!

I agree that this is unhelpful black-and-white thinking, but I disagree that it serves transfems more or making a blanket statement that "transfems" at large are insisting on this. I think this kind of thinking is generally a survival strategy to get cisfeminists to care at all about trans women's suffering by presenting trans issues solely through cissexist frameworks, at the expense of other trans people who cannot fit into those frameworks. but that includes transfems with more complicated experiences/identities than "i am exclusively a girl and have always been (treated as) a girl." Those kinds of transfems, as well as other MTX people who may be grouped into transfem, are often the ones who speak out against this kind of thinking. It's not helpful to anyone to present the harm of black-and-white thinking as, ironically, a black-and-white issues where transfems as a homogeneous group are supportive of it and served by it.

[ten-chocolate-sundaes]

Can I ask if you have any headcanons for the Maitlands? If so i'd love to hear them!!

ohhhhhh yes :)

so sorry for the info dump

they both went to college, but neither of them use their degrees. adam majored in engineering and babs majored in art history.

i like to think they own the hardware store in every universe (hence why I don’t think they use their degrees). it was adam’s father’s store, and adam decided to take over when he realized they liked actually building stuff more than engineering.

they met through a habitat for humanity program in high school and became quick friends after that. they didn’t start dating until late in college, though.

barbara is obsessed with making lego flowers and likes to decorate beej’s room with them because she knows they’ll never water real ones.

babs lost her mom when she was a teenager, just like lydia, and they often trade stories about their mothers. lydia loves hearing about the kind of person her “grandma” was.

adam is terrible about picking out lumber without knots, so babs always has to accompany them when buying materials for a new project.

the deetzes restore maitland hardware and build a raised pathway from the house to the store so adam and barbara can go there and have it still be “part of the house.” they do the behind the scenes while charles hires people to be workers, and a cleaned-up bj is the face of the company.

they’re both biromantic asexual because I said so.

lydia gets them a black cat as a pet (it can see them for some netherworldly reason, according to beej) and they absolutely spoil her. I’m talking babs bakes her little kitty treats from scratch and adam refuses to leave the room without her in tow. they build the most epic cat tree of all time.

adam secretly likes weezer. lydia uses this as blackmail against them.

adam’s middle name is david and barbara’s is anne.

shortly post-musical, adam finds out there are more than two genders when beej casually drops that he’s genderfluid and takes the maitlands to pride. gender crisis ensues, and adam figures out they’re transfem and starts using they/he. barbara desperately tries to help him through the process since she had all her gender problems figured out twenty years ago (she’s trans. to me.)

babs loves 70s fashion. she starts wearing bell bottoms and overdone blue cateye eyeshadow after she dies because she finally feels comfortable enough to express herself.

barbara sings to her plants.

adam owns every martha stewart book. barbara never really understood the appeal, but she’ll help them do one of the projects whenever inspiration strikes.

adam has spina bifida and has to take breaks from working often because of leg weakness,

barbara makes the world’s greatest strawberry rhubarb pie. she makes it every year for adam’s birthday.

babs secretly collects gemstones, although she’d never tell delia. her favorite is the amethyst.

both of them develop an odd trait post-death: their clothes change color like beej’s hair to match their moods.

they’re both tall (like 6 feet)

adam is a mariokart champion. lydia and bj constantly try to beat them. they fail.

skye’s troop told her to go sell to the maitland’s house since they’d always buy way too many cookies because they didn’t want the girls to have a bad sale day.

I have more but this list is getting long so <3

[velvetvexations]

All the Dropout transmisogyny discourse anons I got, because there are a ton. I don't have much to add here that I haven't already said and aren't going to repeat a million times in the near future, and I have a million more asks still in my inbox, so these don't have answers, but each of them has values of their own and I'm happy to platform them. Yall are very insightful and articulate.

cw for suicide mention

"dropout doesn't have enough transfems"

my best friend tried to kill herself a couple of months ago just because being alive as a poor trans fem in a red state is that fucking painful and difficult. that's the state of the world for 90% of trans people. and that other 10%? thats you (not you velvet, the people that are whining about dropout).

shut the FUCK up about dropout. you don't fucking care about trans women, you care about being mad about stupid bullshit so you can get off to feeling oppressed by the only company on fucking earth who is making ANY effort to fucking platform and take care of queer artists. it is so disgustingly priveleged to be upset about a fucking streaming platform as small as dropout not having "enough" of the Right Kind of Tranny on it.

i am so sick of these fucking people. trans people are getting fucking murdered and killing themselves, we are losing our fucking siblings, and instead of trying to take action to stop & prevent violence against us, they're bitching online because Show They Don't Watch doesn't have enough trans women on it.

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Ngl this discord is coming off very white and representative politics had already been disproven by black folks in America. Representation is nice but does nothing to fix the root issues, why expect a private company to be able to fix it? This anger could be place in more productive and necessary trans issues

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the talk about dropout not including transfems annoys me on a couple of levels of like, yeah, they could have more transfems. factual statement. but there very well may be transfems working in or around dropout that either are in the closet or don't feel like making themselves known, and demanding that you know the agab (tma or tme) of every person involved in dropout just so you can fufill some kind of tme vs tma trans quota is. a tad fucked up.

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"#and people have been pointing out how its fucked that theres p good transmasc representation on drop out" wow! I hate this! like i guess i should be grateful that they're saying the quiet part out loud or whatever but how have we gotten to a point where having good trans representation is "fucked"??? just because it's not the Specific Type of Trans you want to see represented. Especially when the most prominent one came out and transitioned after being hired???? so they weren't even hired to fill some "quota" of representation ALSO i think i sent asks to you about this before but i'm tired as fuck of people just immediately pointing at nonbinary people and calling them transmasc!!!! y'all are so fucking exorsexist and binarist that you genuinely view the world as "men and men-adjacent" and "woman and woman-adjacent" we're never escaping the hell that is binary gender norms are we. also like. immediately calling all nonbinary people transmasc is actively participating in the erasure of transfem nonbinary people. you don't know someone's ASAB by looking at them. you don't know how or if someone has transitioned already. all you know is that they're not cis and use they/them pronouns. as a smaller note, i've seen people saying something like the drag queens don't count as transfem rep on dropout and it makes me so angry! why are we buying into the Rupaul Drag Race-ification of drag that tries to deny the foundational role trans people of all types have in drag? did they bother to look into the queens to see which are transfem or not?? i cannot name a drag queen in my city that is a cis man. i live in a major city. i'm sure they're out there, but the scene is rightfully filled with trans women artistically expressing exploring and celebrating their gender. this dropout drama is so manufactured and for what. what's the goal here? dropout reads to me like a group of comedians who are friends and are still sticking together after college humor died. it's not like they have constant main cast recruitment drives, from what i can tell, it's more of a "hey I (dropout cast member) know this other comedian that'd be a great fit. we should hire them". i'm just so tired of this faux moral outrage when nothing of substance has occurred and every trans person in my life is struggling to afford to survive and being crushed under the weight of the ongoing supreme court case on gender affirming care

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I don’t have the energy to unblock plaidos long enough to rewrite the anon I forgot I wouldn’t be able to send, but I don’t think she understands that Bezos (owner of Amazon Prime, a much larger streaming service with presumably dozens of original shows, but I don’t actually know and don’t really care) could buy Sam Reich for exactly his net worth literally a million times over and eat him for breakfast as easily as he could anyone else in this country. Why are we supposed to be mad at him for not being above and beyond what every other company’s standards are?? Show me PROOF trans women are getting snubbed for roles on Dropout shows or shut the fuck up. A show having any ONE trans person should be seen as a win, now we have to have multiple kinds? (And don’t think us nonbinary people can’t see the blatant fucking binary they’re boiling trans rep down to. At least make the categories “transmisogyny affected” “transandromisia affected” (that’s the term Ive seen the least hate for so in my head it’s what the tmas are most okay with) and “exorsexism affected” and pretend to care about unaligned enbans not IDing as teansfem or transmasc?????

okay im done i should really go to bed i don’t even know why i care ive never watched a dropout show i guess im just fucking sick of people inventing problems where there are none so they can feel properly downtrodden. Im in constant physical pain and going on year 5 of disability benefit denials, my anxiety is off the charts, im falling back into suicidal ideation since the election, and I’m homeless and once again living with my queerphobic just left of fundie family. Some of us have REAL FUCKING PROBLEMS and there’s plenty of other stuff being created that claims to care about queer people and has yet to have any trans rep. Go yell at goddamn disney some more, fuck!!!!)

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So how do you think all the people mad about dropout right now would react to me pointing out the lack of transmasc creators on nebula?

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i wouldn't be surprised if one of the reasons trfs are deciding to get mad at dropout is because you like it

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I was reading the dropout discourse with a furrowed brow. Real stink face situation. Just due to the ridiculousness of it all. And my boyfriend comes up and goes "hey :D! Wait, what's wrong?" N I'm like "nothing, just ppl being dumb." And he was like "oh. Well, it's snowing outside! :D" and we went outside with the dog and played in the snow and it was a real eye opening experience. Real ppl online vs people in real life kind of situation.

People online: the streaming platform Dropout is not TMA enough

People in real life: hey, it's snowing outside!

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yknow how right wing pundits will pick the culture war du jour to make a huge deal out of? remember how they were SO upset about mr potato head being potato they or whatever, which was quickly dropped because santa claus is black sometimes and we need to be worried about that, which was then dropped because the green m&m wasnt sexy enough...

and how it's this neverending cycle of picking non-issues to fight about? because it's more about riling up general-your base, making them think everyone is out to get them all the time in all these insidious ways, to make the entire world seem darker and more dangerous than it is? and when people outside this circle say these are non-issues, their lack of understanding about how bad the world actually is serves to further rile up that same base, who now think they're the only truth-seers?

anyway, dropout has marginally more tmascs than tfems and we're all really very mad about this real issue

______________________________________________________________

People are really showing their ~tme discourse~ asses with this dropout thing because like: by their own stupid framework definition isn’t TME supposed to be all non-transfems? So like… cis people? But their graphs are instead just singling out Beardsley as the Evil Appropriating Interloper Stealing Opportunities From Real Trans People. Like… y’all aren’t even PRETENDING that your entire position isn’t just “fuck transmascs in particular”

______________________________________________________________

re: the dropout discourse like yeah it did take a while for Brennan to make a transfem NPC but does nobody remember The Seven??? a whole season where a transfem PC was played by a transfem person? i haven’t finished the season yet but cmon people. it came up in like the first or second episode.

[aurora-whisper]

i do truly hope dropout takes the initiative towards hiring more transfems. i love the platform as is but i just feel wholly unrepresented and it bothers me a lot how often people deny any accusations of unrepresentation as "they just hire people based on being funny and having chemistry". as if trans women aren't the funniest, kindest people you'll ever meet