#how many of those things have happened to you since you transitioned? really?

[threeicedcreams]

“Trans men experience misogyny!” & it’s a list of things that happened to them before they transitioned.

[fxrheisenn]

Andrus Laansalu talked about making Disco Elysium at EKA (Estonian Academy of Arts)

"Initially, the church wasn't a focal point. There were certain characters that needed to visit this location, and I asked, "Seriously, what do we have in our church?" The others replied, "Nothing at all. Our church is completely bare—just a wheel, really. It's quite basic."

That's when I decided to unleash my creativity in the design. For example, they chose to install a glass structure at the top of the church to create a reflective surface. It was like placing an optical clock up there. Therefore, one of the most crucial aspects of designing the church was ensuring the lighting was just right to create the desired atmosphere."

"Let me show you an example of Baroque architecture, which is rich in detail. We're also designing the interior of the church based on large cathedrals. However, the foundation you use might not yield the expected results, because the church itself doesn't require such intricate details. Sometimes, it's about simplifying the design."

"I used Articy for the initial scriptwriting of Disco Elysium. The image only represents a tiny fraction of the text and choice variables involved. This system was also the reason I eventually abandoned the project after a year of outlining the script and shifted my focus to becoming a sound designer. My mind struggled to keep up with the dynamic graphic rules, but fortunately, a more talented writer took over afterward."

"In terms of sound design, it's essential to develop different layers to bring out the charm of the church as a cohesive space. Although this represents only a small portion of the overall design, each layer actually requires a significant amount of time to compose the whole....... Whenever there's a shift or a change due to the dialogue itself, you need to adjust the background sounds. Each time you modify the details in the dialogue, I have to refine the background audio, ensuring that these elements build upon each other like an intricate layer of work."

"It's funny how many scenes involve characters getting smacked in the face. My job was to recreate those, so I locked myself in the bathroom with a recorder and hit my forehead until it turned red.

As a sound designer, I really dig those unsettling, drill-like sounds. So, I mixed in creepy lectures, metal scraping, moans, and cries of pain—because I just love that stuff! (laughs)

Players will be moving through all kinds of areas, so it's super important to make the sound transitions feel natural, trying to create a more immersive vibe in certain spaces.

With all the scenes featuring big cranes, you can hear them from far away, and I wanted to capture that eerie ringing in your ears. That's going to be a thing throughout most of the game. I've found ways to really mess with players while they're playing!"

"I've come across a lot of old objects (like phones and radios) that I needed to perfectly replicate the sounds. I started to become a bit of a hoarder, buying up different models of old phones whenever I found one to add to my collection. The sound effects I can simulate from them are really impressive."

"Some of the devices don't actually exist in real life—just a mix of architecture and tech. When I need to create sound effects, I first look for something similar that exists in our world, then I try to simulate what the sound and appearance of that thing might have been like a century ago.

Towards the end of the game, there's a character carrying a fuel canister. We needed the sound of the canister, so we dug one up from our garage—it had been sitting there since it was five! I realized this would make the sound perfect. So, it had been there for 50 years, and after 40 years, it finally found its purpose.

In some places, I needed unique sound waves, and recreating them was a real headache until one day I happened to walk by a swimming pool and stumbled upon an old wartime torpedo. You can rotate the torpedo's probe, and it slowly rises up, like a proud zombie head. The sounds it made were exactly what I needed!"

🙋How did you manage to get funding?

"Well, since we're in Estonia, you just need to know a wealthy person. You don't need five people—just two who can network, hang out together, and convince them to keep investing! (laughs) Back then, we constantly ran out of money and would tell them, 'Oops, looks like we spent it all! Can you invest a bit more?' That's how we made it through!"

🙋How did you all come together to make the game?

"Luck. It usually doesn't happen this way, and that's the key difference. It has to be. If not, you couldn't create a game of this scale - well, I mean in terms of budget. But creatively, Estonia definitely has writers and artists who can pull it off. With such a small population, there are a lot of quirky folks who are good friends. We were really lucky, though - lots of fortunate circumstances came together. It brought the right people together, allowing those talented fools to collaborate with us. They had experience but hadn't tackled projects of this magnitude before. So yeah, luck is pretty important!"

Lecture experience shared by 白兔YIYANG SUN on 小红书, reposted & translated by me with her permission.

[dianight]

Let's talk about transandrophobia. And by that I mean let me monologue about my findings browsing the tag and checking related blogs.

For context, most of my (second hand) interactions with it are from additions to the posts of transfeminists where random people antagonize them. Also from knowledge about how a certain user who helped popularize the term and gets referenced on posts about it (and other adjacent pawns) just happens to be a piledriver for callouts that just happen to target trans women. So you will excuse me for being biased and not going into this with a naive mindset.

And I will say that I've engaged with this in significantly more good faith than it deserves. My hope was that perhaps most people using the term were doing it out of ignorance and not malicious intent. I haven't really "counted" or done any actual note taking for this, it's more of a general observation that coalesced over a few days after I did all that digging so numbers are rough estimates and not accurate numbers. I checked about 50 pages on both "latest" and "top" on the tag, aswell as checking the recommended blogs.

Ignoring certain users who use the tag to highlight how absurd the mere concept of it is, since it's just mainly one woman having fun(?) cluttering (neutral) the tag and a few others mocking posts about it; we can roughly put the people who talk about transandrophobia in 3 groups. There is potential for overlap and I reiterate, my good faith is going to skew this toward a more positive vision than reality.

The first group are mostly trans men and a few trans women who would define transandrophobia as transphobia targeted at trans men, which is not at all what the term means nor what its history or actual use is. This group was around 30-40% of the posts, but one has to keep in mind that this was from going over the posts with the tag on their blogs. Posts that would talk about their experiences being the targets of transphobia and calling it transandrophobia.

Not to sound condescending, but getting treated differently to your cis peers (before coming out OR even knowing you are trans), pushback against your transition and toward the closet, bureaucratic hurdles and general hostility to being "the other" is not a transmasc exclusive thing and it's in fact "just" transphobia. Even the supposedly unique to trans men experience of having issues with reproductive health... also happens to trans women, it's the general transphobia of medical professionals. It manifests in different ways, that's it.

Most of the transmascs on this group seem to be under the impression that transandrophobia is an analogous term to transmisogyny that simply describes the targeted transphobia to transmascs and transfems respectively. I understand their posts and it was painful to read many of them, but ultimately what they describe is called transphobia. Most of the (few) transfems on this group were making additions in defense/support of trans men on those same previous posts.

That's as good as it gets though. I really hope the 30-40% estimate is real because the alternative is grim, and as a disclaimer I have (over time) blocked a massive amount of those users who go on posts about transmisogyny to start fights. Those hostile users are very likely to use the tag and be part of the second or third groups, which means that accounting for all the people I've blocked the first group percentage is likely to be <30%.

The second group are cryptoterfs. Or alternatively, people with ideas so bioessentialist that they are indistinguishable from cryptoterfs. I have found only two blogs that were openly "gc" and straight up interacting with open terfs, but many of them had their rethoric and semirelated posts all over and sometimes even the recommended blogs would give it away. Possibly 10% of the tag users belong to this group.

The main giveaway beyond the previous ones seems to be a really transphobic view that what trans men experience as transphobia is really just misogyny. So when they experience that misogyny as trans men it's called transandrophobia. Don't ask me what logic this is, but I've seen it repeated on their blogs so whatever is going on in their brains they seem to commonly agree that trans men are "just" experiencing misogyny. The obvious implication always, always being that trans men are women, a very transphobic idea.

There were some users who are part of the previously mentioned overlap. They will have some posts that tangentially allude at that trans men = women idea but never quite reblog or interact or expand those transphobic views. But they would also be part of the third group.

The third group are transmisogynists. No other way to put it. And I don't mean it in the casual way, we are all kind of transmisogynistic due to society and that's it; I mean it in the openly in opposition to transfeminists and actively spreading hateful and harmful rethoric kind of way. More than half the users of the tag are part of this group.

It's a key difference but a very telling one; where the first group talked about their experiences and how they are affected by transphobia (incorrectly labeling it) the third group engages in reactionary behaviors, always blaming/harassing/critizicing transfeminists posts. It's a genuinely weird feeling to see a post you agree with, along the lines of "men benefit from patriachy" and the "critique" from these users being "how dare these [insert misgendering term] insinuate that trans men are oppressing them".

Reading anything in bad faith, calls for "unity" while at the same reblogging from and interacting with known callout spearheads, honestly shocking hostility to trans women all over their posts and a general very open opposition to any transfeminist theory. Like I was genuinely speechless at some of the posts.

Literally calling random trans women transphobic. Screenshots without context to make it seem like the OP is saying the literal opposite of what she was saying. Congratulatory posts about getting people banned. Straight up callouts.

And I was hoping that the first group would be the majority, with a few bad apples and the expected bad actors.

My conclusion is very simple. Stop using the term transandrophobia. It has no good faith uses, what trans men experience is transphobia since misandry is not a real structural force and misogyny is. Most of its users are hostile to and a danger to trans women in this website, and somehow terf rethoric is generally accepted by them.

Transandrophobia doesn't exist.

[juney-blues]

June Egbert is, and always has been incredibly fascinating to me because of just, how many factors have conspired to make Homestuck fans show their collective transmisogynistic asses.

The main character of Homestuck transitioning is a planned future plot point for the official continuation of homestuck, that was spoiled in advance by a fan making a joke about finding some toblerones Andrew Hussie the author of homestuck hid in a cave.

The current main writers of Homestuck: Beyond Canon have went on record in an AMA confirming that this was indeed always the plan, even before they took up the project.

In spite of these facts, the general consensus among certain homestuck fans seems to be that "June Egbert" is purely a headcanon for the original comic that was "made canon" by a "Toblerone Wish" (a concept that didn't even exist at the time)

For a variety of reasons, the "canonicity" of the postcanon official continuations of homestuck is a mattter of much debate, (though a debate that most homestuck fans seem to err on a side of "it's not canon at all in the slightest," something the writers have feelings on I'm sure.)

All of these factors combined leave the concept of "June Egbert" in a very nebulous place. It's assumed by most to just be an "ascended headcanon" that was shoehorned in, it's a spoiler so it hasn't happened yet in any official media, and the official media it will eventually happen in is regarded by some to be nothing more than glorified fanfic.

If someone is talking about June Egbert, and you don't like the concept of June Egbert, you have your pick of a million different excuses for why she's fake and gay and not worth discussing and bad writing and just the authors doing a gay dumbledore*, paying lip service to representation while actually doing nothing.

And of course, lots of people *don't* like June Egbert! Rather than being introduced as transfem from the start, she's in this nebulous position of discovery where people have to truly reckon with the idea of a "Pre-transition Trans Woman."

You can try to write off *some* of the backlash as transphobia, because obviously not everyone in this fandom is gonna be cool about trans people.

But there's no shortage of fans just dying to tell you about how much they like reading her as transmasc, or the idea of her being nonbinary or genderqueer or genderfluid, or literally anything besides a trans woman. And since they're fine with all those other interpretations, there's obviously no implicit biases driving their distaste for the concept! (if you want to try explaining the concept of "transmisogyny" to people like this you're braver than I.)

you can trust them when they say it's *just* a problem with whether or not it makes sense with the writing, or it just doesn't feel right somehow, or any of the thousands of excuses that this writing situation gives them to just Not Like It.

It's just, so interesting to me. There's not a lot of characters out there that get a trans arc in this way, that leaves room for open denialism and insistence that we have our trans cake and eat it too... Because Homestuck is a timeline spanning multiverse story, lots of people seem to want it to be an alternate timeline thing. Assuring us we can have this character share space with a non-transitioning version of herself and it won't be weird or imply gross things about trans people.

If you ask me it feels like a plotline that'd be really good for exploring some gender horror though, finding your true self and then being demoted to a footnote, an alternate version, because everyone around you likes your pre-transition self more....

Anyway I have no broader point beyond "hey look at this isn't this kinda weird. You don't get this kinda stuff often!"

*side note: it's a little ghoulish I think to compare "a future trans plot point that hasn't been given the chance to even happen yet, in an already famously queer piece of media, from a nonbinary author" to "some stupid shit done by the literal most famous transphobe of all time" but that's perhaps a discussion for later.

[illnessfaker]

tw: black+trans death

from the_yvesdropper on instagram:

our beautiful black trans brother, 35 year old Righteous Torrence "Chevy" Hill, was murdered in Atlanta, GA this weekend.

he went by his nickname 'Chevy' he was originally from Macon, GA. he owned Evollusion, which is a black/ queer owned LGBTQ+ salon in Atlanta that provided and dedicated full service to specializing in hair, nails, barbering and makeup. growing up as young black queer boys/kids, the barbershop experience can sometimes be a tricky space to occupy, this was something that Chevy understood and wanted to cultivate a space of safety where you can also get the affirming look and style you want, and he did exactly that.

Chevy was a beloved son, brother, partner, and father.

one of his last posts that had a photo of himself said :

"if you truly know me, you know i am a humble, modest, private man, that i love my community, i have the love of God in me and will give the shirt off my back to any soul in need, also i never post pictures of myself, legaey give myself credit, that stops today, i am my legacy!"

(a close friend of Chevy asked if i could share more then one photo of Chevy, since he never posted photos of himself and in recent years he got the confidence to want to share more photos and now he won't get the chance to)

Chevy, hey king, hey brother, hey angel, thank you for everything, i lové you, we lové you, i'm so sorry. there are a lot of photographers in heaven who will be able to photograph you as the glorious black trans angel that you are.

there will be a homegoing service/memorial for our brother

there aren't many details about what happened but apparently he was shot by a family member last wednesday, the 28th (at least this article was the one linked in relation to his murder.)

judging by both the IG post and the comments section he was well-loved by many people and those people have many good memories with him and nothing but good things to say. this is a comment that was left by tirajmeansgolden which was hidden by IG for some reason:

I started testosterone in February 2020. I hit this man up at the end of 2019 after numerous Google searches for an LGBT-friendly barber near me (and by near me... he was a good 35-40 minutes from the rural area I was in outside of Atlanta: but when I found out he was a trans man and that his business was the first and only LGBT hair bar, I knew it would be worth the trip). I was a dysphoric mess in his DMs one Sunday. I hated how my hair was growing out. I never had a "masculine" hairstyle before but decided one day I would buzz it all off myself, then allowed it to grow out a bit... I sent him a video and despite him being closed on Sunday, he told me to come through. I got my hair braided and he gave me my first really masculine fade. Explained the different terms. Lined me up. Was asking me about my decision to transition and provided some helpful advice + guidance. I told him how I was a therapist and he was hype and said he talked with a group of trans men and he would love for me to stop by and also give some mental health tips. So whoever said he was humble - wow, what an understatement. Such a community man! Made me feel SO comfortable because barbershops were a source of major trauma and triggers for me. They were such an integral part of my early transition (I just celebrated 4 years later week). And he was such an integral part of the Atlanta Queer community with hosting events like Queer Con. How I found so many other great resources + queer businesses/artists. May you rest in peace, Chevy. You'll be missed. You've made such a different in the lives of countless people. You definitely were living your Purpose + left a legacy behind ...

[solarbird]

“Are we willing to fight for it?” Crowd: “YES!” “And when we fight?” Crowd: “WE WIN!” — Kamala Harris to campaign staff, 22 July 2024

That’s right, the “if we fight we win” isn’t from me this time. It’s from Kamala Harris, and I am kind of in shock.

One of the things I most feared about the “replace Biden” movement was the donor class yanking the party right again and hand-picking an all old white dudes ticket and absolutely tanking every chance we had of winning this election and stopping Trumpism for good.

Politically active Black people I know personally were expecting that to happen, because that kind of shit has happened so many times. And when political Black people talk about this shit in the Democratic party, you better listen, because their history on this stuff is solid.

I mean, that’s not the only reason I feared it, I have plenty of my own experience watching this same shit go down. But it’s a big one.

That – and all the many money and organisational problems I have described which would result – was about the biggest problem I had with replacing Biden. Particularly once it was clear the money people were moving on it so hard. I was so sure they’d do again what they’ve always done, slide the top of the ticket back to the “right,” repudiating so much economic and climate good the Biden administration has done, trying to haul us back to Clintinesque neoliberalism which would fail more spectacularly than ever before.

That’s also why I was an instant loud and dare I say it strident pivot to Harris when Biden actually did drop out – it was all to stop that money move from happening. That’s why I was out Sunday as loud and long as I could be, shouting, “WHITE PEOPLE, GET HER THE NOMINATION. FUCKING DO IT” while various usual clowns and dilettantes wibbled on demanding an ‘open convention’ and nattering about a ‘flash primary’ and going off about ‘not voting for a cop’ and the wretched spectre of Joe Manchin dipped a skeletal toe into the race.

None of that was an option. It’s still not an option. It had to be her; it has to be her.

And that speech I’m quoting shows why.

I’m still stunned. I never expected to hear a presidential candidate echoing my own words back at me.

I mean, Biden understands exactly what we’re dealing with – fash propaganda aside, he really is still all there, and his words show it. But he’s not able to frame it that way, it’s just not who he is. To see a candidate frame it like this… exactly like this… that’s something new. And I did not expect it.

I am so rarely truly surprised in politics. It has been a while since I have been surprised at all.

This has surprised me.

Another political writer I follow described her as the first Generation X candidate, and maybe that’s why. Technically she’s like two months too early for GenX, she’s in that transition zone, but y’know what? If she wants to grab that label I am fine with that, because those are some words from someone who fucking gets it. From someone who has figured it the fuck out.

Go watch her speech, particularly, oh… the “I know Donald Trump’s type” section starts around 19 minutes in, but the part after that, that’s where it really starts to matter, at 21:45. Here, I timestamped for you, hopefully it’ll work where you’re reading this and if not, just skip ahead:

I’ve been saying – this is the turning point year. The peak year of a fascist movement weakened but not destroyed by self-inflicted wounds of COVID, the last year of the backstop, the year after which we can start to win.

But still I expected that this year that we’d still have to fight under the old rules, playing the old games of the Baby Boom, even if I knew that one final year of holding would shatter it all, and let us make and play by new rules in ’26 and ’28.

Hence, one more year of the bulwark, one more year of the hold.

Until two days ago, on Sunday, July 21st, 2024, that was exactly how it was playing out.

Then a political miracle happened. Biden left the race and the donor class didn’t get their push to the right, and some of them apparently didn’t even want it because they dropped money again the moment Harris announced her campaign.

I guess maybe those rich bastards finally learned a thing or two about not throwing elections.

And that means…

…maybe we don’t have to wait ’til ’26 and ’28.

Maybe it’s not one last hold after all, before the spring.

Maybe the rules can change now.

Maybe Millennials and Zoomers are going to seize the moment this year.

If they do – if you do, if you go in, if you mean it, if you don’t waver and trip yourself up in details and personality and propaganda and purity tests and and and all of it…

…then…

…this year won’t just be a hold.

This year will be the fucking landslide we have needed for eight years now to wipe Trumpism and its like off the map for a century.

Wanna make that happen?

France and England have shown us the way, and christ, I want to make that happen.

How about you? You up for it? You ready to do the work?

Let’s go, then. Everybody.

All in.

104 days remain.

[kaija-rayne-author]

The elves 'needed a win' in Dragon Age Veilguard, huh?

Obligatory 'I'm not an asshole' disclaimer. Feel free to jump to the cut if you've read it.

Something came to my attention. I need to make it crystal clear that I utterly love the diversity in DAV. It's fantastic. I'm also a heavily left leaning, non-binary, queer as fuck reviewer, editor, and author.

I was on media blackout while I played DAV. Please be safe and take care of yourselves. Arguing with incels and white supremacists is completely pointless. They sea lion worse than an actual sea lion. Your mental health is important.

Though, every single time the anti-queer brigade comes out for a new DA game, I sit there thinking 'have you bozos ever played any DA game, like, ever?' My guess is nope.

Note. None of my writing on DA, but especially DAV, is edited. This is just my off the cuff writing. I don't have the time, energy, or heart to edit them properly.

Grab a drink of preference, walk the dog, then find a comfy spot, this is gonna be a long one.

I'm referring to a quote of John Epler's. Creative Director for DAV at BioWare in this Polygon article.

"elven historian Bellara Lutare and Grey Warden Davrin, come from Dalish clans themselves and even though they’re a little shaken about confronting their gods, they’re not conflicted about doing so. In fact, among Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain’s lackeys and puppets, there’s not a single elf to be found. Epler said that it’s vindication for the Dalish — which is nice to see considering how they’ve been portrayed in past games."

Okay. Let’s think about this first part. Epler says it's vindication for the elves and how they've been treated in previous games. You know? Ever since I read that article, confusion has just run around in my head. How? How can absolutely anything that happened in DAV be considered as ‘vindication of the elves’?

Firstly, I'm not sure if vindication is the best word for the concept he's going for. Vindication means to Justify, Confirm, Substantiate, or Avenge. I can't honestly see how any of the events in DAV do even one of those things for the elves.

You know what it really is? It's not anything good, regardless of which transitive verb you use. It's just bad writing. Like absolutely awful, pretty deeply racist, terrible writing.

You’re trying to actually have me believe that within the entire race of elves, city elves, Dalish, veil-jumpers, enslaved elves (who we conveniently don’t see at all in DAV, even though we spend time in Tevinter… the capital of enslaved elves…) there aren’t some who would follow Elgar’nan and/or Ghilan’nain? At least for a little while? The enslaved elves wouldn’t follow their old gods if they promised to free them? Really?

More realistically, there would be a schism within the elves. Some would follow the returned gods, some would deny them, and some would be like fuck this, I have halla to feed or floors to scrub.

Having the gods return would be a world shaking event on every front. Not just in the Disney villain mustache twirling way, like in DAV. But also culturally, religiously, anthropologically.

Every single elf in the entire elven race is ‘good’? There aren’t any who are power hungry? (Raises an eyebrow at Zathrian DAO.) No power hungry, not exactly ‘good’ elves, huh? Riiiiiight.

Would some, maybe even most, change their minds once they realized what Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain really were? Of course, there would be some. But there would be just as many who might stick with their gods.  For so many reasons. Revenge, greed, desire for power, unwavering fanatical faith... I could keep listing reasons for a while. That's just, realistically, how intellectual beings behave. There wouldn’t be any elves on that entire continent that wouldn’t throw their fists up in victory, and shout, ‘Yes! Finally! Let’s squash Tevinter first, then Orlais.’?

Really? Isn’t that kinda reducing the existence of elves to the same old fashioned child ‘not to be seen or heard’ thing? It’s infantalizing an entire race.

That’s both so naïve it’s sad and so disrespectful of the elves as intellectual beings with free will.

And how would most elves even know that the two returned gods were, y’know, returned? Much less that they’re actually mustache twirling bad guys a la Disney? (I could personally think of a few ways, but they weren’t shown or even mentioned that I saw in game.)

THEDAS is depicted as a fantasy medieval-esque world. Communication is depicted by courier and letters. The travel time alone would mean that most elves wouldn’t have a clue about even the return of the gods, much less their character. There’s nothing shown in the games that I can recall that covers this.

It’s unrealistic that even Bellara and Davrin know they’re evil until a few story quests in, leading to the second act. They just automatically know? How?

It’s already firmly established in Dragon Age Lore that the elves will willingly, some even happily, leave behind everything to serve an ancient Elvhen God. Even one with dirt, blood, mistrust, and disgust directed at him for millennia.

In the end pages of DAI, it’s clearly shown that elves leave their current circumstances to go serve Solas. Fen’harel, The Dread Wolf, The elven trickster god. The most utterly despised God of all of them has an extremely large following of elves. (Who we don’t see anything of in DAV, convenient, no?)

And we have a retcon from our dearly talented /s John Epler on that from /theplaydragonage reddit group. Paraphrased, Solas decided to work alone because he hated being a leader. He didn’t care about the elves. Somewhere between DAI and DAV the elves sworn to Solas sparkle glitter farted poof into the ether’

You know? That’s just so uneducated on how intellectual beings work that I’m not going to dignify it with a response.

And there are so many quotes from Solas about truly caring about the elves in Inquisition and supplementary materials that it's an utterly ridiculous Solas-hater thing to say.

So, why in all the worlds wouldn’t elves want to serve Elgar’nan, All-Father, the Eldest of the Sun, He Who Overthrew His Father, The Father of Retribution? He represents promise before acceptance. The power before the price. The moment of choice that precedes justice or vengeance, rise or fall.

Why wouldn’t they want to follow Ghilan’nain? Mother of the halla and Goddess of Navigation. The price and acceptance of purpose, and the becoming that allows no return. Betrayal and devotion are as equals to her.

Many, many elves throughout the history of the Dragon Age franchise have been depicted as extremely faithful to their gods, especially amongst the Dalish.

They stoned Solas and drove him away when Solas tried to tell the truth about them to at least one Dalish clan. It’s why Solas isn't particularly fond of the Dalish. If you stoned me for trying to tell you the truth of a thing, I doubt I'd like you very much either.

It really just feels like self-insertionism on Epler's part. Or poorly thought out ideas suitable to a first draft that any decent editor would've suggested get scrapped. Or maybe a bad case of CYA (cover your ass). I honestly have no idea whether Epler is faithful to any religion, agnostic, or atheist, nor do I care, it isn't anyone's business but his.

But the writing and actions surrounding both Bellara and Davrin, as well as the elves in general, feel like a modern atheist trying to self-insert their belief structure onto a fictional group of people it just would never fit for. Or that someone doesn’t actually know the Lore very well. (Yes, I’m aware how long Epler has been with BioWare. DAV, interviews, and AMAs absolutely prove he doesn’t know the Lore. And doesn’t seem to care? I’ll never understand that. Nor does he understand the people of THEDAS. Or maybe even people in general? Writing well demands at least some understanding of how people work.)

I can't for a second believe that absolutely none of the elves, a people who have been enslaved, abused, tortured, and used for thousands of years, wouldn't willingly and very even possibly happily, follow beings who are, in fact, their Legendary Gods. Beings that in elven cultures are still venerated. Beings whose bad actions have been forgotten. It just doesn't make sense to say there wouldn't be.

“Still, though, why haven’t any Dalish elves decided to join forces with their gods? As Epler put it, the gods simply don’t care about them.”

No. You know what saying there’s no elves in the entourages of either Elgar’nan or Ghilan’nain really does? It doesn’t provide vindication. Nor even surcease, which might be a better word. All it does is infantalize and remove agency from an entire race of people. From all elves.

And that somehow means the elves don’t care about the gods? That’s, uh, not how that works?

Agency, in writing, means that characters make decisions and it affects the plot (good!) or that the plot pushes your characters around, (bad).

Agency is whether the character happens to the plot, (good!). Or if the plot happens to the character (bad).

It’s honestly the essence, in some ways, of ‘choices matter’.

There is a severe dearth of good agency in DAV. Sad as that makes me.

So let’s talk about faith amongst the elves, generally, and the Dalish, in particular. Because following a god requires faith.

Saying 'there's no elves in the group of 'lackeys and puppets' following Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain is like saying that die-hard Catholics wouldn't follow a proven return of their savior, Jesus or even the father, god. Or insert any other cultures' living/dying gods return. Illogical, kinda offensive if you happen to be religious, and honestly? Foolish.

For many elves, their faith would be something they cling to. It would be hope in the darkness of abuse.

It’s kinda rude to say it’s a win for the elves to ignore their ancestral faith when it’s often, likely, the only thing they have left.

Honestly? It’s pretty offensive. THEDAS, elves, their rampaging elven gods, none of that is real. But there are plenty of abused minorities on Earth that they modelled the elves from. I didn’t grow up within the cultures, and I’m of Mohawk, Mikmaq, Irish Romani, mixed European, and (previously enslaved) African descent. Some things were passed down, regardless.

It's both my personal experience and proven in cultural anthropology that abused peoples will often cling to anything colonizers leave them that the people value. It’s the only way to maintain culture.

It’s why the residential schools took our hair first. Many native cultures don’t cut hair for numerous reasons. Then came the theft of language. My grandparents on both sides were kidnapped and taken to residential schools. The last one closed in 1996. I was a sophomore in university. This isn’t ancient history. And while, yes, Dragon Age is fake, people with similar experiences or backgrounds in the real world are hurt by crap we see in fiction every day. This is just a particularly egregious example of it.

History lives on in those still bleeding. No, if you’re of any abused minority, you’ll know what I’m talking about. We hang on to anything we can, because it’s all we have left.

So how and why would the Theodosian elves be any different? Because the gods don’t care? That’s some ridiculous authorium handwavium right there.

I could buy either Bellara or Davrin as being atheist or agnostic (more likely Bellara IMHO) but not both.

But as far as artistic depictions go? Regardless of anything anyone may say, they're shown as elves who are both pretty faithful. Here's why. They both wear Vallaslin.

It's pretty well laid out in the Lore (which we already know they ignored or retconned into insensibility in DAV and OMG in the interviews and recent AMA!) that the application of the Vallaslin (which translates to blood writing) is a sacred right of passage only offered to Dalish youths around the age of eighteen who will be staying with their people.

Regardless of the meaning of the Vallaslin in the past, they’re considered sacred by modern Theodosian elves.

They aren't just cool decorations. They're not make-up they can just wash off. They indicate which of the nine gods that particular elf has sworn themselves to in Dalish culture. (Technically eight, because Solas, The Dread Wolf, God of Rebellion and Trickery, never claimed or designed Vallaslin. Because he never owned slaves that is ever indicated anywhere.)

And only the Dalish use them. The specific design each Dalish elf wears is indicative of which elven god they both feel drawn to and wish to work to emmulate in their life. Making them even less likely to be worn casually.

The Lore is clear that application of the Vallaslin is ritual. It’s sacred. It would likely take multiple days to tattoo them into someone’s face. It would be excruciatingly painful. The face is one of the most painful places to get inked. I’ve got ink. It’s not comfortable even in ‘easy to tattoo’ places. On the face? Ouch!

Vallaslin would never have been given to Davrin. Davrin’s story shows some of his past, and in his heart, he always knew he wouldn’t be staying. His mentor Eldrin said something along the lines of ‘he knew/felt Davrin wouldn’t stay with the clan’. In the kind of social structure that’s been described for the Dalish, a youth’s mentor would absolutely be consulted on whether they were ready for Vallaslin. So why, for all the halla’s in THEDAS, would Davrin have Vallaslin? He wouldn’t. They’re marks of clan belonging, of pride, of faith in their gods and the Dalish way of life. Davrin just wouldn’t have them unless he deeply believed in serving Ghilan’nain. Which would mean being a Dalish wayfinder and halla keeper. Not a Grey Warden. 

While it’s cute given his backstory that Davrin wears the Mother of Halla’s marks. He just wouldn’t have them, no matter how sexy he looks with them.

If we handwave all that though… oh, the missed opportunity to have any Dalish wearing Vallaslin as a traitor to Rook’s cause, by wearing the blood writing of the God/Goddess they’re fighting? I was just waiting for the Vallaslin to actually mean something. For the gods to control, puppet-like, those wearing their blood writing? The missed angst, character development opportunities, and just… gah.

I don’t know if I’ll ever stop grieving what DAV could’ve been.

So if Bellara is more into science and questioning things, I could see her more as an atheist. So why does she wear Dirthaman’s Vallaslin? She’s not even technically Dalish that is ever truly shown in game. Dalish have a clan that is usually pretty important to them. Lore states there aren’t many, if any, Dalish who brave Arlathan because of slave-hunters. Where is Bellara’s clan? The veil-jumpers don’t count as a Dalish clan regardless of the window-dressing. They haven’t even been around that long according to some of Bellara’s lines. Okay, so if Bellara is actually Dalish from somewhere? I could see a scientist type having Dirthamen’s Vallaslin. But where in all the mysteries did she get them? Why would she have them? Given the why’s listed above, she just wouldn’t, no matter how beautiful she looks in them.

I mean, in a lot of ways, someone getting their Vallaslin would be sort of similar to anything sacred that is deemed ritual that dedicated a person to a faith/god-dess/religion.

So a quote from the Polygon article states, “instead of being accidentally (or purposely!) killed off by the player character, the Dalish elves in The Veilguard get to righteously rally against the mages that they once called gods and reclaim part of their history.”

Er… call me mistaken but wouldn’t that be sort of like destroying part of their history? Y’know, with destroying parts of Arlathan, banishing Anaris, and outright killing two of their venerated gods? Even if those gods weren’t as advertised? (A lot like this damned game tbh.)

Epler. “I love that the Dalish in this game, by and large, are saying, No, we were lied to. We were the first victims of these gods. We’re going to fight back,” Epler said. “And they really get a sense to kind of rise up in this game and start establishing themselves in this way that in the future I can’t wait to go back to, but in this game gives them a sense of a win. They get a victory in how they respond to the threat of the gods in this game.”

Future? What future? Given the events in DAV, there isn’t even a statistically relevant breeding population (in the scientific sense) of elves left!

In the Lore, the blight is a death sentence, one way or another. Between the Venatori’s favourite blood bags being enslaved elves, the gods using them as sacrifices, and the entirety of southern THEDAS being overwhelmed with blight, just how many elves does Epler think might possibly be left?

This is what I mean about DAV having bad planning, lack of Lore adhesion, poor attention to detail, and just crappy writing. Nothing. Makes. Sense.

Completely pushing aside pretty much everything I’ve just talked about… can someone please explain how most of the elves on the entire continent of THEDAS dying from the blight… y’know, the Dalish, named after the Dales, in southern THEDAS, which were quite clearly overrun by blight and not-fucking-darkspawn in the codices… y’know, the Dalish, on the wide open Dales, in land ships/Aravel, and with herds of Halla, children, and elders to care for… how is all of them being dead or blighted a win? The only potential ‘win’ for any of them is for Bellara/Davrin, who aren’t even technically Dalish by the ways of the Dalish in the Lore. And depending on player choice, its possibly a win only for one of them?

Bellara, in speaking about the gods, sounds like the worst sort of uneducated twit. And she's supposed to be smart? The thing with smart characters? You have to actually show them being smart.

I just can’t see how one or two ‘Dalish’ being kinda creepily uncaring of their venerated gods coming back to reality and being on the team to kill them… is in any way ‘a win’.

The racism in DAV is woven all throughout. And it seems it's baked right into the core of BioWare.

[zarla-s]

Please don't take this as me being angry or trying to be rude or anything, but this ask is... baffling to me?? For a variety of reasons, haha.

Like, I don't set out to create a "fandom" around my stuff when I do things, I just do them cause I feel like it and sometimes I get lucky enough that people enjoy it and feel inspired to create or talk about it! I'm not really trying to fill a void left by one of these "fandoms" by making a new "fandom" around things I make, I'm just doing stuff.

The idea of a stockpile of interests getting too big is also bizarre to me? Like... for an example of both things, you can watch Stamp on the Ground, it's chock full of all kinds of weird obscure interests of mine I just put in there because I liked them, and I since have many many more. There isn't really a limit to how many interests you can have!

Mentioning abandoning TF2 is also very funny to me because I kind of already did that once?? When I started drawing it again in 2023 I was coming back to it, the last time I drew anything for it was 2009. Twelve years where I didn't even touch it! Starting up again was the last thing I expected and yet here I am!

Which relates to the greater point I guess which is that my interests and inspiration don't just die and disappear, they just go dormant. They're always waiting there for the right cue to wake them up, and I can never predict when it happens. TF2 is the most recent example! But Vargas is a long-running one, I take huge hiatuses from it where I don't write or draw or think about it for a long time, but it's always there in the back of my mind. I went absolutely nuts for it around 2020 and then it went back to sleep for the most part, but I still get ideas every now and then. It's not gone. It's just taking a break.

All the things I like and make stuff for are like that. There are a few I don't see myself coming back to any time soon, but then again I thought that about TF2 and now I've made the most elaborate site I've ever made for it. I can't predict these things. What'll be next? I have no idea. MGS again? StarCon2? Ace Attorney? Or maybe it'll be something new? Who knows!

And I think describing one of those "fandoms" as crumbling and dying is a bit unfair... I don't think of it like that. I mean, I started Vargas in 2003 and I last updated it in 2021 and I'm still hearing from new people that just got into it! All the stuff I've made is still "alive" in that way. I do feel guilty in that transition period between one interest and another because I feel like I'm disappointing people who followed me for that one thing though, haha. But what can you do? Gotta do my thing! Follow where my heart leads me! Not everyone's going to be along for the ride, and that's fine.

(Those of you have stuck around through all my different interests, I appreciate you deeply <3)

[genderqueerdykes]

hi um. i’d like to ask you for some advice, since it seems like a lot of people come to you when they need it. i’m a trans girl who’s been taking estrogen for 2.5 years but. i’m just so disappointed and unhappy with what hrt has done for me. i feel like i’ve been completely taken over by doomerism from me constantly comparing myself to other transfems both online and irl, and from spending too much time on trans reddit (i’m sending you this ask instead of writing another vent post on r/mtf). through this i’ve convinced myself that i will never be happy with my body, or that i’ll never have real boobs or a feminine body at all. i really really don’t want to give up hope, but it just seems so far out of reach, and i’m stuck down here in this inky abyss. what do you do in dark times when you need to regain hope, but you can’t do it yourself?

first of all, i wanted to say i'm sorry that you're feeling this way. medical transition is a very finicky thing. there is no way to predict what will happen and when, so it's okay to feel just. completely bummed the hell out when you're not seeing the changes you hoped for yet. i definitely see how it can be crushing, especially when you know your body needs to look a different way for you to be happy. it's important to consider people look a lot different irl than they do in photos and videos. camera lenses can only capture so much. pictures and videos can be edited. it's hard to compare yourself to something like that

& i did want to say that you're definitely not alone! there are a lot of girls in your exact situation. with everyone responding to HRT differently, you'll see girls who get changes right away, and girls where it takes a long time. changes with HRT generally happen very slowly, way slower than the eye can perceive, so it's okay if you feel like nothing is happening. your body just may need more time to adjust

have you ever increased your dose? if not, that is totally an option! you may also want to look into progesterone if you find that you're not happy with your breast growth after some time. it's best to look into progesterone first to make sure it's right for you, as it will affect more than just breast growth, but i wanted to throw it out there as an option! if you're not on an androgen blocker, this could also potentially help you

for both estrogen and testosterone HRT, it can take a minimum of 5 years for people to begin seeing the effects they were desiring. 5 years, minimum! that's a very long time, comparatively, you are very early on in your journey. the effects you want to see may just come along further on down the road. i know it's easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others. it's good to remind yourself that they are not you, they do not share your genetics. they look like them. you look like you. it's okay that you don't look like those people- they're not you.

it doesn't make you any less of a woman just because you haven't seen these changes yet. there are plenty of women who look just like you, cis, intersex, trans, genderqueer, and otherwise. there are many cis and intersex women who don't "pass", and it doesn't make them any less of a woman: the same applies to you, and every trans girl. dysphoria can be a real pain in the ass and make things harder than it needs to be. it's okay to not be content with where you're at now. it's okay to be frustrated that you're not seeing the changes you want to right now. many, many trans people feel just the same way you do.

you may feel awkward and uncomfortable right now because you're literally in a transitional phase. think about when teenagers go through puberty, about how awkward they look and feel. cracking voices, bodies that are "in the middle" and not fully developed. that's what you're going through at the moment, and its okay. it just takes time for things to fully settle in.

what i would suggest is trying to find ways to do some self care that affirm your gender that don't involve your appearance. validating yourself in other ways is extremely important. building yourself up takes time. if you feel insecure about how you look, it's okay. you can start building your confidence in your identity and gender in other areas of yourself, first, then move on to your appearance. try to spend time with people who respect you for who you are, no matter how you look. try to surround yourself with people and things that affirm you

i hope you start seeing those changes you want to see soon. if you need more advice, feel free to ask! if any other trans girls on E have any advice for the asker, or relate to the experience, please feel free to chip in with some feedback on this ask, or by sending an ask! due to being intersex, i was taking estrogen and progesterone despite not wanting to, so i was not cataloguing what was changing or anything like that, so i can't speak from personal experience there despite having been on E HRT in the past.

take care of yourself for now. try to go easy on yourself, you're still in your coocoon. the day where you emerge as a butterfly is on its way, it just takes a little time. please feel free to come back any time. i hope we can get some good insight for you

[olderthannetfic]

Writing about my favorite characters as transgender has opened my eyes to how many people in fandom are able to get away with actual transphobia without other people judging them for it, and after one particularly bad experience I feel like I can't participate in fandom without constantly having to check people's profiles and social media to see whether or not they might secretly hate trans people. The fandom I currently write for is relatively small compared to others, but somehow I still manage to catch a lot of casual transphobia, especially on my higher-kudos'd works. This didn't really bother me at first since most of the comments were misinformed but rather harmless otherwise, with most asking me to write a fic where the MC medically transitions to become their "real gender" as a sequel. Those comments were written politely, but the sentiment that a person's body designates their gender bothered me a lot. I specifically present the trans characters in my fics as pre-op or non-op without dysphoria in order to feel more comfortable about my own body, and I'm really tired of reiterating the reasons why I personally won’t create a fic where the MC undergoes a full medical transition. I would be thrilled if someone else wrote that, but it’s not a concept I have any interest in executing myself.

Usually the casual transmedicalism in my comments is my only real gripe about the attitudes towards transness in my fandom, but recently I joined a major fandom discord server and found out that they had a dedicated thread for bashing my work. (Well, to be more accurate they had a bunch of threads for bashing people's works, but mine had the most messages at the time.) I should have just left at that point, but I was curious to see if there was any valid criticism because honestly I don’t get a lot of constructive feedback on my newer stuff and I wanted to see if there was anywhere I could improve. Unfortunately, it was almost entirely just really hurtful comments, with many people making assumptions about my body and offline identity, calling me a fake trans person and a chaser for the things I've written. They kept going on about how I'm fetishizing transness, how I probably just wanted an excuse to write het smut with an M/M tag on it, how I'm probably not actually a trans man but an obsessed and misguided teenage girl instead. I've been on T for over two years now, but even if I wasn’t, their belief that all bodies like mine are basically "female" was really upsetting. Maybe I just happened to stumble upon a bad crowd, but at that moment I just really felt alone. I never expected to receive that kind of vitriol in such a small fandom - I have maybe like five or so people who follow my work closely, so it's not like I'm hitting super big numbers compared to others. I understand that my work might be dysphoria-inducing for other people, but I include warnings for language at the beginning of all my fics and I'm extremely thorough about tagging all the sex acts that take place. It's easy to filter out my work via additional tags if you don’t want to see it. But no matter how many measures I take to make others feel more comfortable, they still feel like I'm taking up too much space and mucking up the tags with my fanfiction.

Part of me feels like quitting after this experience, but I'm also a spiteful bastard and I think it would haunt me forever if I stopped now lol. I'm curious to know if you or any of your followers has ever dealt with a similar situation (as in, finding out there's a bunch of people who hate your work for shitty reasons), and if you have advice on how to continue interacting with others in fandom without constantly wondering if they hate me behind closed doors. I left the server already but I'm sure there's other things I can do that I'm forgetting. Thanks for reading!!

--

There will always be people who dislike you for silly reasons, and if your fic is popular, there will be a lot of them. The only way to deal with it is to just accept that this is normal and not think about them.

[nerdygaymormon]

I liked your post with all the scriptures showing that we are to love trans people. What are your thoughts about the changes made to the church handbook?

The LDS Church used to ban gay students from attending BYU. The church used to put a permanent notation on gay member's records and forbid them from having callings that work with children or youth. The church used to promote conversion therapy even when every major medical and mental health organization denounced such practices. The church forbade the children of gay couples from getting baptized.

Eventually the church reversed all these positions.

I used to speak up behind closed doors for queer youth to get to participate, it's been many years since my local leaders tried to do something like forbid a lesbian from attending girls camp or want her to be isolated at night in a cabin separated from the rest of the young women.

It is sad to me to see these same mistakes being implemented against trans/nb/genderfluid/gender nonconforming/intersex members.

Gay people were not predators, we were not the danger they imagined us to be. The same is true for those whose gender doesn't conform to the imagined binary.

How does preventing an 8-year-old child from getting baptized fit with Jesus' admonition to "suffer the little children and forbid them not to come unto me"?

How does limiting someone from gender-specific classes and callings fit with the apostle Paul's teaching that in Christ we are one, that "there is neither male nor female"?

Why is forbidding a trans youth from spending the night at FSY acceptable? It will be so stigmatizing.

We're really going to police the restrooms? Even me, an openly gay man, I am allowed to use the facilities with men even though I might be attracted to some of them.

This ban on "social transitioning" (meaning name/pronouns/grooming/clothing) continues the false notion that appearance equals worthiness and is in direct contradiction to God telling the prophet Samuel that "the Lord looketh on the heart." Social norms are not eternal norms and shouldn't determine whether an individual can receive gospel ordinances.

The top LDS leaders prefer the term "same sex attraction" instead of gay, lesbian and bisexual, and I think a similar thing is now happening as the Handbook language has shifted from "transgender individuals" to "individuals who identify as transgender" and "individuals who transition away from their biological sex."

None of these policies are required by doctrine, evidence for this is these restrictions didn't exist 5 years ago or even last week.

It's depressing the church doesn't remember the lessons from its treatment of gay people as it replicates similar policies.

It was already hard to be a gender diverse member of the LDS Church, and it just got more difficult. Everyone should have access to a spiritual home and church community if they want it.

While I can't control what the LDS Church does, I want you to know I embrace and support you. I wish I could sit on the pew with all of you and I wish I had a table large enough to break bread with all of you.

[drdemonprince]

Your post about "transitioning to escape gender but then there's more gender" has been rotating furiously in my mind since I saw it. When I first realized I was trans at age 15, I identified as agender, but I knew I wanted to go on T and get top surgery so I decided it would be simpler to tell everyone I was a trans man and that just kind of became the truth. Now 10 years later I'm sorta starting to feel like I wanna actually be agender again, but the idea of an identity shift like that at my current age is terrifying and idek who I'd tell, or how I'd do it, and I don't think I wanna stop using he/him exclusively, and I have no idea why I'm telling *you* this other than that I'm scared to talk to anyone I know about it because it feels like somehow admitting that I was wrong about the gender I fought like hell to become, even though i don't really think that's the case I think my sense of self might just be continuously evolving... but I just wanna say you talking about having a gender shift like once every several years is helping me process this rn and feel like I'm not faking anything now AND wasn't faking anything before.

Dog i am right there with you. As a kid I always thought gender was bullshit, the coercive nature of it disgusted and scared me and I rebelled against it the best that I could. I loathed being assigned to any gender category, I never identified as a "girl", but I didn't really identify with any other category either. Puberty terrified me (and of course, it does most young people, but it felt like it would only more deeply entrench the category that I was assigned to in other people's minds, it made it more difficult to escape). I had trans friends as a teen but it did not occur to me to transition because there was really no end goal that I wanted to head toward, I just knew what I wanted to avoid and not experience. I coped mostly by degendering my body with a fairly androgynous style and way of presenting myself to the word and mannerisms, but also by starving myself which was not so great, and not sustainable. I considered transness for myself, even trying on a friend's binder and presenting masculinely at certain queer events, but it seemed to me at the time like just another way in which to obsess over gender, a foolish coercive socially constructed thing that i was trying to avoid.

In my 20s, I learned more about nonbinary people and figured that explained things pretty well. I was enamored with the transition journeys of some other trans people, largely trans women more than trans masculine ones (with some trans-effeminate faggot boy exceptions), but I still didn't want to take on all the expense and uncertainty and hassle of navigating the medical system for myself. I didn't think that the pursuit of being happy merited taking on so many risks or fiddling with myself so much. I saw it as an extravagance I didn't deserve, I guess, and I also couldn't locate a target outcome that seemed desirable enough for me. I was still dealing with an eating disorder and recovering from some trauma and didn't really think about my life in the long term. I guess I still don't, haha, whoops.

Eventually I came out as nonbinary, and nobody really gave a shit. There is a lot of useless, solidarity-breaking discourse that happens online about essentially who is "more" oppressed, binary trans people or nonbinary people, and a lot of that fight amounts to the two groups shouting about the ways in which they annoy one another without there being any cogent analysis of power and where oppression comes from (let alone how much those two categories overlap).

But I will say that being a they/them was far more difficult than being a trans guy socially and institutionally, because your identity is completely illegible to every system around you. "binary" trans people struggle under this too, but i have found there are some immense benefits to having a socially and institutionally legible target gender. nobody would fucking actually they/them me. not anyone. not even other trans people and queer people. there were no public gendered spaces for me. there were no spaces for me. there was no way to move through the medical system, professional life, and other public institutions as a nonbinary person. i was still just a cis woman in everyone's eyes. including the people who claimed to support me. and it was massively frustrating.

and so i think ultimately, i took my frustrations with not being at all able to escape coerced gendering as a nonbinary person and combined that with the affinity i do feel for queer men and the general sense of misery i was still experiencing in my life and decided what the hell, i'll round myself up to being a trans guy. i upped my T dose, i dressed more masculinely, i eventually got a super masculine hair cut that really squared off my jawline and got me gendered correctly, and i started more consciously inhabiting queer men's spaces.

and it was pretty dope. for a while. i felt the rush of having gotten away with something. when people effortlessly gendered as male i felt freed at last from the pressure to be a woman. i was no longer being coerced into being something that i was not. i had escaped the enforced category so much that people couldn't even see the history of that category being pushed onto me. there was relief.

but then. as always happens. people made little comments about my handshake being too weak for a man. the hypermasc dudes at the leather bar rolled their eyes at me and all the other effeminate dudes swanning around the bar. the people who picked me up off the apps or at the sauna would always let it slip, eventually, that they had a lot of experience with trans guys, or had most recently been dating all trans guys, and it would make me feel like a stock character to them, yet another category into which all kinds of assumptions had been projected. a type not a person. a few people said my haircut made me look like i was in the military or described me as actually masculine, which was equally jarring because it was so incorrect. people tried to affirm me by saying i was such a dude, i was such a man, i was such a fag, i was such a gay bro, pawing all over me leaving the mark of all their assumptions and oversimplifications behind. i had tried to run away from gender and there i was just BASTING all the time in everybody's goddamn assumptions about gender. trans people didn't talk about it any less than cis people did, they were just as fucking confining to be around.

it honestly feels really dirty. when people try to affirm your gender constantly and can't stop talking about it, when people look past you and see only your body, your history, or the role they have typecast you in, when people use your body as an outlet for their own gender or sexuality explorations, when they keep trying to measure every single facet of existence up into being masculine or being feminine or being toppy or bottomy or any other gendered type, it's claustrophobic.

as a trans man i tried playing this whole gender game and the second i started winning i began to feel even more disgusted with myself. it wasn't a victory or an escape, it was a capitulation. exploring with my identity and presentation has brought positive things into my life and my health has gotten better as a result, and i've made wonderful friends who, like me, are disaffected by this coercive gendering system. so i don't regret any of that. but trying to make myself legible under the existing gendered system was a fool's fucking errand. i wish i hadnt done it to myself and i wish i hadnt had it pushed onto me. to be clear, it was cissexist, binarist society that forced it onto me; even when other queer people coated me in their gendered assumptions that is obviously a byproduct of societal conditioning, and it's conditioning that ive reinforced in my own behavior and outlook toward others plenty of times too. we all do it, and we are all wronged by the existing coercive gender system.

i dont even care how i fucking identify anymore and i have no intention of changing pronouns again or anything, i'm so bored of it, i just actually want off this fucking thing. im not interested in trying to make others understand what i am anymore or in who i am even being simply categorizable, i dont want to obsess anymore over how i am perceived or to attempt engineer my appearance and mannerisms to broadcast an identity to anyone. i dont even want to fuck anybody right now at all because im so sick of how much that's a gender pantomime for people. i want off this fuckin ride man im so done.

it's kind of freeing, to hit this point of complete gender apathy, and i think it is a pretty common stage of identity development for a lot of queer people who have explored multiple identities and roles over time. there is no category that i actually am, or that anyone is, there are just the frameworks that society has given us to work with to understand ourselves, and the ways in which we flatten who we are to be able to make sense of the world using those frameworks. but who i actually am is so much more contextual and mutable than all that. i am a different person in the classroom than i am on the train platform than i am in the bedroom than i am cuddling on the couch than i am when i'm working out than i am when curled up on the floor crying than i am at a big furry convention. who i am continues to change as new people come in and out of my life and age and change and my body alters and as the weather turns. who fuckin knows man it's nothing and everything. i want to let it just be

[mariacallous]

so every time I post about building of more housing through HUD or whatever, people will always pop into the tags or the notes and say something like "we don't need to build any more housing!" "there's more than enough houses for people!" etc from the left

and I have an idea what the issue is, ie there's enough housing collectively across all of America, but not enough where people actually live/want to live, what good does an empty house in Montana do someone paying too much in rent in NYC?

but you're a lot smarter than me, what are they talking about? are they right? is my guess correct?

Finding an affordable place to live in the U.S. can feel pretty impossible whether you're a renter or a buyer.

To begin with, there's a massive shortage of homes — somewhere between 4 and 7 million. And those who are able to find homes are spending a much bigger chunk of their paycheck than in recent years.

...

All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly spoke with Alex Horowitz, the director of Pew's Housing Policy Initiative, to help understand why affordable housing feels like a pipe dream, and what can be done about it.

She began by asking about the shortage of 4 to 7 million homes in the U.S., and whether that was a shortage of all homes or affordable ones.

...

Alex Horowitz: We're short on all homes. Full stop. There just aren't enough of them. And that means that existing homes are getting bid up because we see high income households competing with low income households for the same residences since just not enough are getting built.

Mary Louise Kelly: And what's driving this? Why?

Horowitz: So restrictive zoning is the primary culprit. It's made it hard to build homes in the areas where there are jobs. And so that has created an immense housing shortage. And each home is getting bid up, whether it's a rental or whether it's a home to buy.

Kelly: I want to ask if there are any cities getting this right. Can you give me an example of one that has looked at it's zoning laws and said we could actually make this more affordable if we change things?

Horowitz: There are definitely cities that are getting this right. And we've seen a lot of changes in recent years to allow more homes, especially the kinds of homes that are in short supply, namely apartments, townhouses, duplexes and homes that don't cost as much as a detached single family house. Minneapolis is a great example. Minneapolis updated their zoning to make it much easier to build apartments near commerce and near transit, in part by eliminating parking minimums and also by making permitting easy. And it worked. They're producing housing at triple the rate of the U.S. and the rest of Minnesota, and that has meant that they've kept their rents flat for about seven years.

...

Kelly: Okay, so let's drill down first on the renters side of this. We heard from Natalie French, the renter who had to move out of her apartment when her rent went way up. How typical is that? Is that happening to people all over the country?

Horowitz: That is happening. And rents have been rising rapidly, up about 30% in the U.S. since 2017, with median rents now hitting about 1400 dollars a month. And we've never been at a time before where half of renters were spending 30% or more of income on rent. But that's happening for the first time.

Kelly: And then on the homebuying side, we hear a lot about mortgage rates. They keep climbing. They don't look like they're coming down anytime soon. Are there other factors that make this a tough time to buy?

Horowitz: A lack of starter homes is really keeping it difficult for first time homebuyers to crack the market. And that is because traditionally starter homes are small homes. That means a home on a small lot, maybe a townhouse. And we're seeing far fewer of those come onto the market. Many jurisdictions require large minimum lot sizes, and that means that land costs end up being a big part of the equation. Houston is the place that has had the most success in bringing starter homes into the market. And it was by reducing their minimum lot size. And then 80,000 townhouses followed.

Kelly: So does it boil down to the double whammy of: there aren't enough homes full stop, and even if there were a home, it's really hard to afford a mortgage in an era where mortgage rates are sky high.

Horowitz: Mortgage rates are a piece of the puzzle, but at a fundamental level, even when mortgage rates were low, it was hard to buy a home for the first time because there simply aren't enough of them. And a lot of the ones that we have are bigger than what people need. U.S. household size is at an all time low of 2.50 people per household. And so we see homes that are bigger than what a lot of residents are looking for.

Kelly: What about financing and lending? Setting aside what mortgage rates are, is it more difficult than in generations past just to get a loan to buy a house?

Horowitz: Oh, it's gotten much more difficult to get a mortgage. The availability of mortgage credit tightened dramatically during the Great Recession, and it never bounced back. So for someone who gets a mortgage today, they're likely to have a higher credit score than someone who's gotten a mortgage in the past. And that means simply fewer people are eligible for homes. And the cost to originate a mortgage has roughly tripled since 2009. And that has meant that lenders don't offer many small mortgages because they tend not to make money on them unless the mortgage is for over about $150,000.

[saintjosie]

hey, do you have any advice for girls worried about transitioning when they aren't like 19? anything really cool HRT did for you?

It sucks that sometimes trans people feel like it's "too late" when they're only 25! And obviously, you're gorgeous not to mention really kind and smart, so I'd love to hear your perspective :)

it is never too late to transition.

i’m 32 now and transitioned when i was 29 in the middle of lockdown in 2020. it’s been over three years now and i’m the happiest i’ve ever been.

and the thing is, i wasn’t ready to transition until i was 29. i knew i was trans ever since i was a young kid even if i didn’t have the words to describe it until i was 21. but i knew and i just wasn’t ready.

and in the time that it took me to be ready, i learned a lot of really important things that make me the woman i am today.

i went to therapy and learned how not to be ashamed of my gender identity and who i am. and that in turn helped me be as outspoken as i am about how important it is to have radical self love in a world that tells us that we aren’t worth loving. and that’s something that i really needed and something that i share because i know so many people like me need to hear.

i think a lot of people who haven’t transitioned yet are focused on what happens in early transition. things like your body changing and learning how to present the way you want. and yeah, thinking about and worrying about those things is such an important part of early transition.

but the whole reason that it’s important is because it’s during those moments, when you face your doubts, that growth happens. you learn how to be more comfortable in your skin as you affirm your gender. and the more you affirm that part of yourself, you realize that even though things aren’t perfect, that maybe you don’t look exactly how you wanted to, you still feel good about yourself.

and that is why we transition.

it’s almost impossible to conceive actually being happy when you’re so worried about the process of getting there. but take it from people like me, who’ve been through that process later in life (and people who have transitioned even later) the wait is absolutely worth it 🙂

[ryanguzmansource]

Full Audio Transcript (6.17.24)

The following episode contains potentially disturbing content and we want to alert trauma survivors. It contains material that for some may be difficult to discuss or listen to.

This is He Said, Ella Dijo with Eric Winter (EW) and Rosalind Sanchez (RS).

RS: Como estas, Eric?

EW: Oh, bien bien, and you?

RS: Hoy tenemos una persona muy especial, mi gente. Guys, we are, I know you don't, but you're learning. We are excited about our guest today. He's an actor currently on ABC's 911, which is a huge show.

EW: In the ABC family.

RS: Yes, you may know him from Step Up dance films or from playing the sexy boy next door opposite Jennifer Lopez.

EW: That's right, we have Ryan Guzman. He's here with us today to talk about his new film, The Present, out tomorrow. We're excited not only to dive into his career, but so many other personal things he's opened up about—mental health, his career, so many other things he's been talking about. So let's bring him in.

RS: Yeah, looking forward to Ryan Guzman.

Ryan Guzman (RG): How you guys doing? You guys sweating in that room?

EW: Yeah, man, it's been hot in here. We don't want that air running because you're gonna hear it in the background. So we're just like, this is all for you, Ryan. We're just gonna be sweating the whole podcast.

RS: My armpits almost stink, I hate it!

EW: Yeah, that's great. Great way to open up the podcast.

RS: It’s terrible. Anyways, we're so happy that you are joining us. Thank you so much for doing this.

EW: Yeah, fellow ABC star now. I know you guys jumped over from Fox. You're now on the network where I'm at.

RG: Yeah.

EW: How's that transition been? Has it been weird? I've never been a part of a show that jumped networks. Did it feel totally seamless to you?

RG: Honestly, I've never been a part of something like this either. I mean, I've been on four other TV shows and this one—it felt like a revamp for our show. So it's just like, as soon as we went from Fox to ABC, all of this promotional that we've never even seen in six seasons happened.

EW: Yeah, like a relaunch almost.

RG: Yeah, it was a relaunch. So it was, you know, a blessing. We're all grateful for it.

EW: Which is great. You guys came out with a bang. The ratings were great. You guys were sitting pretty in a good position.

RS: How many seasons now?

RG: Now we're gonna be going on our eighth.

RS: And you've been part of it since the very beginning?

RG: Since the second season.

RS: Since the second, wow, long gig. That's awesome. Good for you!

RG: It happened perfect timing right before I was about to have my first born.

EW: Really?

RS: Oh my God, perfect.

EW: Congrats. So your first born is how old then right now?

RG: Five.

EW: Five. And you have just one right now? You have a second?

RG: No, two. Yeah, I have two. I have a three year old. Little boy, Mateo and my baby girl, Genevieve.

RS: Oh, that's beautiful.

EW: Changes your perspective on everything, right?

RG: Amplified everything. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm also losing hair quicker than I'd like, but.

RS: Yeah. We just did a podcast and we were talking about parenthood, you know, and generational trauma and how I understand my mom now that I'm fifty-one more than ever. You know? My whole life, it was all about, I don't get her. I don't get it. I don't get her. Why, why, why? And now as a mom of a twelve-year-old girl, I just go, okay, now I get my mom.

EW: Yeah, you're not there yet. You're getting some challenges, I'm sure. You know that they say with the terrible twos, the terrible threes, the fucking fours, the fucking fives. That's it! It'll beep those curse words out. But I mean, there's challenges at every level, but there's also so many blessings and so much fun.

RG: Yeah, I'm sure right now as a twelve-year-old girl in this day and age—I'm sure it's insane.

RS: It is work. It's a little work. It's beautiful, listen, it's delicious, it's amazing. She's awesome. We have a little star. She's a tennis player. She's a good girl. But she is so fierce. She's fiercely independent, and she's at the age that I know everything and you don't know anything and just leave me alone because I am finding who I am. And sometimes you want to slap her and be like, you don't know, you don't know shit. So it's interesting.

EW: Let me ask you this, Ryan, because we were just having a conversation about our son is very, very passive. And I mean, he's coming out of his shell more and more, but we have some good friends that started their kids at a very young age in jujitsu and all these things that are just great training grounds to learn for self-esteem, for self-defense, for all these things, right? You grew up doing taekwondo, correct? Got your black belt in taekwondo. Started where you were like around eight, am I right? In that range?

RG: Yeah, it was my seventh year old birthday I started, yeah.

EW: What was the reason that, was that just, why not, I'm gonna try something new? Or was there something that prompted you to go, ah, taekwondo, I wanna jump in?

RG: Way too many Bruce Lee films.

EW: Yeah, I was gonna say, because I used to love watching movies like that too and get excited. So that—it just became a cool thing. You're like, I wanna do it.

RG: It was, honestly, it was everything. Bruce Lee was my idol, he still is my idol. From the philosophical to the physical, it was just a key component in my own evolution. So as I got to read more books, I mean, I was a young kid reading Bruce Lee books and Richard Marchenko books, which are Navy Seal books. I don't know why my interest led me there, but I feel like I needed that kind of structure. And that structure has been such an incredible foundation for, I mean, all of the success that I've been able to be grateful to get. So I highly advise every parent to put their kids into Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling at least, if not some Taekwondo or karate or some kind of martial arts, especially if you're a boy.

RS: I told you.

EW: I'm open to it. I have no problem with it.

RS: We just talked about this.

EW: I have no problem with that. I just know my kid's not gonna do it yet. He's six. I just know like his personality. He did a version of like a Taekwondo for a bit. He lasted, it was like, you know, little kids running around.”

RS: No he never—he did karate.

EW: Well karate. I think it was Taekwondo.

RS: No, it was karate.

EW: It was for sure a blend.

RS: Really?

EW: For sure a blend, it wasn't just straight cut. But he did it for a few years and then kind of got bored, right? And like with any discipline, it takes a lot of work, a lot of patience. I think the age you started feels like a pretty solid age to dive into something that takes that much focus and patience as well to learn.

RS: Did they get hurt though? At six and at seven, when you see them fighting and doing Jiu Jitsu, that is such a physical and a contact sport, do they get hurt?

RG: Yeah, I mean, they can get hurt, but they can also heal really quick. They're young. So I mean, when I was doing Taekwondo, I ended up sparring guys that were like actually twenty-years old to even my master and actually got taken out of—what was it?—a tournament because I broke my hand trying to break, I'm trying to block one of his kicks.

EW: Oh wow.

RS: Oh no.

RG: Yeah. I would say there's different, you know, personality types. I think from one to six, it's less about the structure and less about the discipline. It's more about play.

EW: Yeah.

RG: How can you allow them to feel comfortable in their own bodies and know their movement and then play with this now new martial art? And then after that, then yeah, you start to develop more structure and discipline and say, this is, you know, we got to tame the mind before we tame the body. And you start to understand a little bit more of why it's called an art, martial art.

EW: And when you first started competing, what age were you when you jumped in and then you started fighting, taking shots?

RG: I think it was right away. I was like, I'm around maybe eight, nine. Yeah, around that time.

EW: You learn life lessons quick, right? Like Mike Tyson says, everybody's got a plan till you get punched in the face. Then you have to figure it out.

RG: Yeah, yeah, I wanted to be quick. I wanted to be powerful. And I think another reason why I liked Bruce Lee so much is he was a tiny man. He wasn't a massive, like Michael Jai White kind of guy. So he was able to demand respect just off of his own technique. And I thought, you know, okay, I need to copy that. Technique can beat power and strength or technique can beat strength. So I ended up doing that and proving to myself like, oh, even at eight years old, I can be a force. And as soon as I started doing actual sparring, I just kind of fell in love with it, with the competition of it.”

RS: So Taekwondo and then MMA, right? Because you did a little bit of MMA. So all this is just fighting. When did acting came to the table? Like, and how?

RG: The acting was something I never even thought of coming from Sacramento, I mean, that's not even something that we talk about out there. And it's either martial arts or working for the state or an automotive job. But none of that called me. I was doing modeling in San Francisco. I got offered to do a photo shoot in LA, and I just asked my modeling agency from San Fran to hook me up with an agency in LA, not knowing the racket that modeling is. And I stayed in a one bedroom with five guys creating a massive amount of debt before I learned there was commercials and there was acting available. And I think the competitive streak just kind of clicked. And I was like, well, I want to get out of this situation. That seems to be making a lot more money. And this is the time and day where commercials—the nationals were actually bringing in some money. I don't know if the landscape's the same anymore.”

EW: It's very different for sure.

RG: Yeah, so I was very fortunate at the time to catch the tail end of that. And then I remember being a new twenty-three year old in LA. I'm going to clubs, I'm enjoying, I'm having a great time. And I'm seeing some of the guys that are being successful as actors. And they're kind of like, they were idiots, to be honest. So I was like, how are these guys, you know, so successful? Like I got to try this acting thing out. And I remember I didn't have enough money to download scripts. So I would just take the same page or pages that I had in my place and I'd write my own scripts off of the internet. And I would invite two or three, maybe even five guys over to the house, and I'd just start doing those scenes in front of them. And that was kind of my acting class. And then I went and auditioned for a manager, didn't get that manager, got another one who is my manager today. Three months after that, I booked the lead in Step Up and my life forever changed.

RS: Oh my God. So it was fast.

RG: Within nine months. So yeah.

RS: That's incredible. Good for you. That's incredible.”

EW: I can relate to your journey in a lot of ways. I had a similar—I went from sports to modeling to the same thing, curiosity with acting, reading different books about acting, seeing people do commercials. And like you said, back in the day, you could do one national commercial and if it was a good one, you could actually make your living for the year off of just one commercial. And little by little, just very, very similar path. I didn't get one big movie out the gate that changed my career. It took a lot of grinding. That's an amazing blessing to have something like that happen. And then you have to balance the ebbs and flows of this business at that point, right?

RS: The dancing was just organic to you? Or you were a dancer? A lot of people have that question. Does he really dance?

RG: It was something, I think it's—culturally, I don't know, just being Mexican-American, I was literally raised with my family going to do, like Quinces' [Quinceañeras], or like just parties in general, we'd always dance. And it was less about the one, two, three, ba, one, two, like doing any kind of structured kind of stuff, more of the feel. And I've always loved dancing, but never on that level.

RS: How was it having to follow choreography?

RG: It was kind of like fighting. I put it next to it because the amount of hours we did—we did eight hours every single day for about two, three months. I remember seeing the guy that, and I feel bad because I gave him such a hard time. He was supposed to be my dance double, but my competitive streak was just like, no, no, no. I gotta be that guy. So I would do the eight hours with everybody and then I'd videotape our session and I'd go home and I'd do another two, three hours by myself. And just go over and over, and then I ended up being in every scene.

RS: That's awesome.

EW: Good for you.

RS: Have you done a movie playing a fighter, like an MMA, a boxer or something like that? Have you done that already?

RG: I've not. I've wanted to for the longest time. And I don't know if—I think it'll come. Everything's happening for a reason. I believe in... to, actually what you were saying earlier, getting that job right out the gate, it was overwhelming. It was too much for me at the time. I wasn't ready to be catapulted in the way I was. And I wasn't an actor really. I wasn't really a dancer. I had kind of just been fooling everybody.

RS: How old were you?

RG: I was twenty-three.

RS: Oh baby, okay.

RG: Yeah, so I'm brand new with all this.

EW: Months in, like you said, months in.

RG: Yeah, and everybody's thinking that I'm this thing and I'm kind of taking it. My ego was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe I am. And then reality kind of checked me and the next movie I did and two movies after that were bombs and I realized I don't know anything about this business. So I would say up until maybe three years ago, I didn't really call myself an actor and I was just lucky to count my stars that I was amongst other actors that were like a Jennifer Lopez or working with the Richard Linklater and now Glenn Powell being who he is now. So just super grateful that I got the time and maybe the hustle that I had, those combined allowed me to stay and have some longevity in this career.

RS: Did you get caught up in the whole business—the ugly dark side of Hollywood because you were so young and it came so fast?

RG: I didn't get caught up, but I definitely got put onto it, and it quickly showed me I want no part of it. That's why I kind of say to myself, I stay with my kids. I rarely do any press, but that was just like, the fame game was never something... I don't want to be seen too much and then have to speak in front of thousands of people as if I'm speaking for them. I can only speak for myself and my experience and hopefully people connect to it. But I saw a lot of people that were not necessarily skilled in any asset becoming really famous and rich. And it kind of just wasn't feeding anything other than a hole in the soul. So it kind of made me go a different direction.

RS: That's amazing.

EW: Do you remember on your climb at any point—maybe an older actor you came across that maybe, maybe not a full mentor—but somebody who guided you or gave you some words of wisdom early on that might have helped you navigate this business or any of that even failed you and just set you back going, oh, that was a horrible example of somebody on set? You don't have to name names if you don't want, but I'm just curious if you had people that hit those marks.

RG: I've definitely been blessed to be, I mean, I've worked with some of the greats, Edward James Olmos, Jennifer Lopez, I mean, Juliette Lewis. I've worked [with] some amazing actors and actresses. I could, yeah, I would never name names, but I have gotten some really good advice and some really like [makes a noise] advice. And... so grateful for the good advice. Eddie Olmos has given me some incredible advice. He's just a sound individual.

EW: He's a great human.

RG: Yeah, and his son, Michael Olmos, another sound individual. But I think it was just on all aspects—just stay true to you. I think that's the general narrative that I've gotten from plenty of other individuals. It's just, no one can do you. And your uniqueness is meant to kind of shine in its own unique way. So if you're trying to be—I can't be Antonio Banderas I can't be, even though I'm a Latin actor, I can't be somebody else that's already had that role. I need to just kind of explore myself and allow that to shine, and that's what I feel like I'm just starting to tap into these past couple of years. So I'm really excited to see where it goes.”

RS: Before we talk about your movie coming out tomorrow—and listen, we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, because we want to be very respectful—but we read that and you came out openly saying that you had to deal with some mental situations, and you battle a little bit of depression at some point in your life. Only if you want to talk about it, otherwise we don't have to. I was just very curious, where did depression come from? If you even know.

RG: Yeah, I've spent many, many years dissecting where the depression has come from, and it's essentially from people pleasing. It's a trauma coping mechanism that I started a long time ago when I was a child, and I didn't even realize it. And it's kind of these things that I'm aware of now raising my own children to give them less to work on later on in life and give them a better foundation. But yeah, as I got older, I started to realize that I was people pleasing so much to a detriment that I had nothing left for myself. And I've even watched old interviews and where I'm smiling the whole time and trying to say the right thing and do the right thing and be the perfect individual, be the all-American boy, and that's not who I really am. I'm flawed and I have my own issues, and I think being raised a Mexican-American man who's not supposed to tap into his feelings or understand them, let alone, that set me back a lot. So I came to a point about seven years ago where I reached my limit, and I had just seen my parents' divorce. I had just gone through a horrible relationship, and I was looking around for some kind of aid, somebody to be there, and no one was there.

And I realized that I had been leaning on the wrong people. So feeling that lonely, feeling like you wake up and you just know what's gonna happen every single day is just kind of a time suck and it's quicksand, and that's how the depression kind of starts. And luckily, I got a second chance, and from that moment forward, it kind of just awoken—I awoke into something new, something better and a path towards a purpose. So. Yeah.

RS: The second chance came from within, from a person, from a book?

RG: The second chance came from my attempt at not working. So I'm a very extremist person type, and right after my attempt did not work, I just started crying like crazy. And I was in a horrible environment. Somebody was yelling at the other side of the door. You know, just horrible things were happening at the time. And then after I stopped crying, I remember sitting on my bed and just having this moment of like this epiphany. You can't ever be the same. You got to be something different because you've already reached the absolute limit with this type of person you are. You got to deconstruct, break everything down because the foundation you've been building on is so fractured and cracked. And for the last six, seven years now, I've broken myself down and try to stay as humble as I possibly can and look at all the horrible things about me and then kind of start from there and rebuild and heal and allow myself to be a different individual and actually show and implore people to change via changing myself.

RS: That's amazing.

EW: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think a lot of our listeners will gain a lot just hearing. Maybe they don't go through something to the extent you went through, but everybody deals with some sort of down moment, whether it gets as far as a deep depression or not, and a lot of people don't know how to even pull out of the simplest thing. And you, like you said, hit a level of rock bottom and had that epiphany. Thank God. Now, I mean, you're a dad and you have so much to offer your children and let alone your own— yourself and your life. You have so much more to do—so thank you for sharing that. That's powerful.

RS: I'm assuming spirituality is very important in your life at the moment.

RG: Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's part of my purpose as well. I was raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy at one point in time. I went into the seminary for a little bit. And then I kind of disassociated with the church and religion in general. I saw the underbelly of it. But yeah, my spirituality is—I started to reread the Bible and tap back into my spirituality and just be open to Eastern and Western, allowing all forms to kind of really like be permeable. So I think there's so much to this life that to say that you know it all is kind of cutting yourself off of so much opportunity and abundance. Yeah, so that's kind of where I'm at right now. Just—I'm exploring that with like-minded individuals, and propelling love rather than fear, so.

EW: It's great that you're putting all this into perspective in your life now because especially—I know every business has challenges, but I think in a business like ours, where so many people—their happiness hinges on the ups and the false belief that people around you have all the time—and the moment you don't deliver, the moment people's attitudes or perceptions of you change, or the moments—it's such a roller coaster emotionally, the business that we're in, that a lot of people, I think, aspire or want—they want it so bad because they see fame, they see that meaning, the all-encompassing success. You must be happy because people know who you are. It's like nobody has to know who you are to be happy.

I like what you said—just staying out of press unless you want to do something or maybe you have a social media presence when you want. But it's not because you feel the need to feed the ego to be seen by everybody else. It's something that speaks to you, so I'll do it. But it's not to please people. And that's what this business has become for so many others. I need to constantly please. And when I'm not pleasing, I failed. And when you fail, you feel like, what have you accomplished? You could have accomplished—you could be an Oscar winner and it still wouldn't be enough. Because you're gonna fail at some point again. Like it's very rare that someone just rides high all the way through in this business. And so I think our business is such a tough one to navigate the waters you've been through. But thankfully you're putting those pieces in perspective now, which I think is perfect timing because your career is just gonna continue to go and go and go and go and go like that, because that's just what the business does. But you've got the tools now.

RS: It's brutal, to be honest. So it's good when we find spirituality and when we have all the things going for us that are so much more important, like parenthood. Because for me, I decided to be a mom late in life because it was all about career, career, I need to make it. And I wasn't searching fame. My problem with the business—and the lows were low. Not because, oh, I'm not where I wanna be because I wanna be famous. It was more about why do I have to constantly prove myself? I've done big movies, I've done huge TV shows and then why is there, what I call in the meantime, this moment of nothing that all the stuff that you have accomplished basically becomes nothing and you have to do it all over again. And it's the constant, I'm swimming against the current. It's not about being famous. It's about why, like it's been almost 30 years. Why do I still have to prove to you that I can do this when just look at my body of work? I've done it many times before. And it is very frustrating.

RG: Both of you guys have great points. I mean, and both of you guys' careers speak for themselves. I would say that I've been blessed now again with this new chance at life that I've come to understand it's more about connectivity. Connectivity to like minded individuals and loved ones and connectivity to a purpose, which for me is creativity. So to your point, I always felt that same way where I was like trying to outdo my last thing and that was so fleeting—or get some type of money, some type of recognition, and it was all fleeting because at the end of the day, after you pass away, that's all gone.

But if you create something, you connect with somebody, that remains even after you pass. So that's what truly matters. So I find myself having deep conversations with individuals. I find myself getting lost in my art or my poetry or writing screenplays and just kind of just creating, allowing my own storytelling to come in and flourish. But it can be very defeating in the time and age that we're in right now. So many people are trying to be social media stars and do the next TikTok dance and say the next absurd thing to get all the views.

And I think they're gonna find what I ended up finding a long time ago, which—one example sticks out in my mind. I'd always wanted to throw a first pitch in a baseball game or at least be a part of a baseball game, and I luckily got invited to the LA Dodgers game. And I remember getting that experience and the people that I wanted there weren't there. So it felt meaningless. And it felt like I had no true connection. I'm like, my mom, my dad, my brother, somebody should be here. Why are they not here? I've lost all contact because I've been so busy working. I've been so focused on creating this brand of Guzman. And now I understand. It's like, none of this means anything without the people that you care about right next to you.

EW: 100%. Talk to us about your movie. This is exciting. The Present.

RG: Yeah, The Present is an awesome film. It's a good wholesome family film. Nice little comedy in there. Cause you know, Isla Fisher, Greg Kinnear, they're incredible individuals. The kids kill it in this. I mean, they're the star pupils in this film. And then it was new for me. It was a little fun role to play. You know, comedic timing, trying to master that still. But I had fun with it playing opposite of Isla. And essentially the movie is about a family who's on their way to separation going on divorce and their kids get gifted this grandfather clock and this grandfather clock can turn back time. So the kids try and use this to try and save their family's relationship. And everything that ensues is really nice.

EW: You know, when I saw the premise, I was thinking to myself, cause I come from divorced parents and I remember as a kid always going like, how can I just change this? How can I take that back? And so to put that into a movie, I think is a fun concept that anybody coming from a divorced family could probably relate to in that sense. Cause you always want to turn back time and go, is there something I could have done? And even though, you know, kids take that blame, but it's a great premise. That sounds like a lot of fun.

And comedic timing, like doing comedy and stretching, even though you've done it before and you continue to do it, it's like, it's always its own art form. It is so tricky. People don't understand how difficult great comedy is. Like, I always think some of the best actors in our business, period, are comedians, because to make someone genuinely laugh, like crying laughter, to me is way harder than making someone feel like cry with tears of sadness. I think people can tap into that as a viewer much easier than like someone genuinely making you die laughing. So just doing comedy as an actor is such a fun art form to continue to explore, I'm sure.

RG: 100%. I mean, Robin Williams is the, I would say my go for that. He shows—”

EW: Do it all.

RG: The comedy that he does is so based in truth.

EW: Yeah.

RG: It's so grounded. That's why it works. And obviously it helps that he can play like 12 million personalities, but—

EW: Totally, but then he'll crush the drama at the same time. Like he'll do drama, no problem. Then to do comedy, you don't see a lot of dramatic actors come over and knock out comedy like you see comedians go over and knock out drama.

RG: Yeah.

EW: So I think like it's awesome that you got to explore that as well.

RS: Is there one thing that you see yourself in five years doing? You have a successful show, and now you're a dad, you know, you're pretty accomplished. But if you can look at your future and be like, there's this thing that is my north is the next, is what is gonna make everything make sense and be full circle.

RG: Yeah, being my own director. Right now I'm working on a film that I've written. I'm working with an incredible director, Mo McCray, mentoring under him and taking ownership of my own career and allowing myself to kind of open the space and open the door for not even just more Latinos, but just in general for newer voices and more creative voices and human experiences. But I mean, there's always that one big thing to be like a Marvel superhero at some point in time.

RS: You will.

EW: You can have more than one North for sure, but that's a great one. That's a great one.

RS: You know, it's interesting. I'm going through the process. I'm leaving to go to Puerto Rico to do this thing that I wrote that I'm gonna direct. It's my first feature that I'm directing, and it's like, I want it to be like the second stage of my career. And it's so hard, Ryan, to—it's an independent film and to be able to raise finance, you know, it's years, you know, like we had Ricky Martin a couple of podcasts back and he was saying that he learned that in this business, everything takes five years from beginning to end is five years. And now that I think about it, I'm like, you know what? Absolutely right. It's gonna be five years, you know, once I'm done, I edit, you know, locked picture, boom, it's gonna be five years.

And it's been brutal. The process, it's been brutal because it's a lot of letdowns and people offering you all kinds of things and at the end of the day, it's all BS, you know, it's all smoke and mirrors. And the only thing that keeps me going is the love of the art and the love of what we do because I wrote it and it's so special to me. It's like my third baby. And even though I'm going through logistical nightmares and finance, is it gonna fall apart? Is it here? Is it not? When I sit down to do my shot list and when I'm actually doing the creative work of it all, I can do that all day long. All day long, because it's amazing if you love it.

RG: Yeah. Yeah, the business part of it is just—it's defeating. The creativity part of it is incredible. And I'm sure this is just gonna be, you know, an abundance of opportunity and knowledge, you know, for the next thing. And like anything you do in life, as soon as you begin something new, you probably suck at it, unless you're one of those rare few individuals that can do everything. But there is a learning process, a learning curve. And this was gonna probably be one film that spurs on so many other films now.”

RS: Amen.

RG: Watch and enjoy.

RS: Yeah, amen. Anyways, thank you.

EW: Well, Ryan, thanks for hanging with us today. This was awesome, man. Thanks for sharing everything. Wish you the very best. Obviously you're crushing it and you have a lot of great aspirations still to come. So we truly wish you the best.

RS: Thank you.

RG: Alright, guys, you guys have a great day.

RS: You too, bye bye.

EW: That was great.

RS: Oh my God, he's so wonderful.

EW: Yeah, such an awesome guy. And truly wish him the best with the trajectory and everything he has planned for his career beyond 911. I love that he's writing and wants to direct. Check out The Present movie coming out tomorrow.

RS: Tomorrow. On demand.

EW: On demand. Till next time.

RS: Bye, love you.

[deoidesign]

if i may ask, is it difficult at all to re-edit/organize the comic pages from the webtoon format to fit the graphic novel format?

on another note, I'm so happy that your kickstarter was funded!!! I love time and time again, im so excited to see this all happen <3

I'll just turn this ask into something of a guide for the process! Because yes, it is difficult, but there are also many ways I have been preparing from the beginning for this very situation to make things easier for me!

I've worked in both print and scroll in the past, and have done this transition once before for a short story, so I already had familiarity both with my goals for print, and struggles with the transition!

How I prepared from the beginning for this transition:

1: My panels are 2500 pixels wide, so they can span my page (which is 8.3x5.8 inches) at 350 DPI (which is print quality)

2: My layers are organized: Text, FX, Foreground, Characters, Background

3: I draw one very large (twice as big as any panel would be, minimum) background for my major locations, as well as drawing furniture assets in isolation. This not only saves me time when making my actual episodes, but it also offers me INCREDIBLE flexibility when making this transition to print.

These 3 things let me pull the character art to the page by itself, scale it up or down to fit my panel, and then fill in the background behind the character.

So, I read the scroll version, decide how many and which panels I want on the page for the pacing (I also keep page spreads and page turns in mind while I am doing this), and then I pull those panels over from the scroll version to the page.

Then, I make the panel borders/page layout that I want, fit the character art into it, paste in the backgrounds, do any art editing that I need, add FX, and then re-do the text!

Sometimes I do need to draw parts that are missing (shoulders or elbows getting cut off is an extremely common one) and sometimes I need to adjust facial expressions, cut panels, or rearrange panels to make things read more clearly. Since it's my comic already, I know how to do these things while maintaining the original intent, but if I were working with someone else's comic I would need to work closely with them to know what can and can't be cut.

(original panel vs an expanded version)

Another common issue is that VERY tall panels will inevitably lose a lot of information when they’re turned to pages. Identify the purpose of the panel (pacing, showing a lot of detail, etc) and then replicate that with your page layout.

examples (in order) are: scene transition, being overwhelmed, suspense, and establishing shot. All of these were a single panel in the scroll version!

Another issue when converting pages is that panel order is a lot less straightforward than when starting from print format. Conversational back and forth that's fine in scroll often messes up the flow of reading in a page (characters facing out, not looking at eachother from panel to panel, etc) and so some creative solutions are necessary to keeping the reading order.

For the first page I had to delete and rearrange some panels, and in the second the dialogue bubbles guide us to read this page in a circle. (dialogue guides through a lot of my pages lol)

And the last really common issue that pops up is that height differences can be really difficult. Usually in print this is solved with clever angles, but I’ve already drawn everything. So, I’ll either resort to vertical shaped panels, panel pop-outs, or editing a character up or down to fit into the panel.

(examples in order)

So, yes, it is difficult! But I have a lot of experience with both formats, and having prepared for this from the beginning I've been able to make the transition a LOT more smoothly than I otherwise could have.

I hope this helps!

And, thank you about the kickstarter! I'm extremely excited I'll be able to print these, the proofs I've received so far look just absolutely stunning and I'm so so so excited to get to send them to people!!!

Obligatory self promo, if you want to see the kickstarter page and get these four books for yourself, then you can check it out here ^^ It's been funded, so at this point we're just reaching stretch goals and placing orders!