#i need to move forward again
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art-is-kayos · 26 days ago
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Everlasting A5
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#when I tried to post this tumblr signed me out of my account???#all that work and I wasn't even happy with it halfway through but now I love this thang. yay#X's clock hand has no gears on it for lore reasons and not because I didn't wanna draw it I swear#this is actually the first time I've drawn both Abram and Abel. Abram was a darling to draw and Abel had his face redrawn 14 times#I believe it's physically impossible not to make Adam look real pretty in literally anything. plus I took tattoo liberties and I like em#he's barefoot in my heart but unfortunately I cannot draw feet.#anyways. justifications:#Time Duck as an abno has its event centred around what one perceives it to be - a rabbit or a duck#this links to Fau in how it can be unclear when it is her and when it is the Gesellschaft. who she is at any one point is somewhat up to yo#and I think it links very similarly to the A5 - are they truly all one in the same#or are they different people with the same - or similar enough - starting points#especially for X - which is why he's the goopy-est - is he simply Ayin once again or has he changed to the point of being his own person#that goes for every loop's X as well. can the same shape change enough in ones eyes to become an entirely different animal#also the time theme and Fau's corrosion quote 'Thus. You cease to move. Trapped in the stopped time. For eternity'#is an obvious reference to the time loop shenanigans at L Corp HQ#they are all trapped by him in the same 50 days. never to move forward with the rest of the world. for a practical eternity#also doomsday clock on Fau's corrosion is a reference to how A and D keep paralleling eachother and probably know eachother from somewhere#the tremor on the E.G.O is like how each thing that happened brought him closer to the brink [aka the stagger threshold]#and the sinking on the gift [gestures at Abram]#plus the mechanical theme connects to how Ayin looked towards the seemingly infallible idea of the machine in his time of need#fanart#ayin lobcorp#abram lobcorp#abel lobcorp#adam lobcorp#x lobcorp#lobotomy corporation#limbus company#🌑🌘🌗🌖🌕#NEVER DRAW GEARS PLEASE JUST TRUST ME ON THIS ONE IT IS NEVER WORTH IT
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suhnshinehaos · 3 months ago
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my heart dropped when i read the statement that sm put out re: taeil, genuinely the last thing i expected to read today. i’m shocked, disappointed, but most of all- i’m angry.
angry at what he’s done, angry at seeing some fans defend him, angry at those turning this into a gotcha moment to promote or lift their faves up. please, this isn’t just some discussion on the internet- there is a very real victim, a very real woman at the heart of all this. i hope she gets the justice and healing she deserves.
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malenjoyer · 2 months ago
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Hi everyone. I will try to slowly in private my old art since it seems to be something I have to manually do…
I wrote a super long post about how I’ve been trying to process everything: feelings regarding the impersonation, feeling of violation of boundaries, this weird sensation of adjusting to different perceptions of my online self when to me, I’m just a random regular guy.
I’m still processing it but I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want something I love so dearly to be tainted to the point of feeling like I should just blow up everything. I miss posting and I miss reading tags, I miss reading comments… I miss seeing the little snippets of thoughts.
There is still good in that and I still like comics. I want to thank everyone who’s been incredibly supportive so far. I like sharing a space with passionate people who love things I love
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bixels · 5 months ago
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So I l’ve been getting into your ko crisis story lately (it all sounds rlly awesome btw) and i was curious - you’ve said in the tags in a previous ask that ash is comphet, so is that gonna play a major role in her character arc/journey in any way?
Yeah, the story basically covers her journey of redefining her identity as a queer Asian-American disabled woman in a sports-entertainment industry, which is a media landscape that specifically targets, exploits, and fetishizes people like her.
#ask me#itsthequeercryptid#i don't have much more to say on this cuz as of right now it's in like. early early development process and i'm not a queer woman so#i don't have much authority to say how i want this part of the story to go. even if it's my story i don't wanna set anything in stone yknow#but like. ashley's arc is realizing that she's been performing to appease people both in and out of her life. as both a daughter and a#pro boxer. and that she shouldn't have to force herself to be someone she's not. which in the story continuously hurts her#she doesn't need to validate her existence and find worthiness as a disabled and queer woman#especially to other people#one story beat i drafted is that ashley nearly gets s/a'd by a potential agent (keep in mind the project's inspired by psychological dramas#thrillers like utena and perfect blue) and it's one of the first big moments that causes her to have a crisis of identity#growing less and less comfortable in her skin - both organic and nonorganic - as she realizes how her body is perceived/ exploited/#/objectified as a vehicle for inflicting and absorbing violence. both physical and sexual. especially by men#and near the end of the story the beat is reflected/flipped when she comes together with noora and it's gentle and intimate#but again this is all very iffy. i'm not sure how appropriate this would be as a male writer.#i'm waiting to work with other writers who are more knowledgable on this before moving forward with anything
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watcher0033 · 6 months ago
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Almost 1AM and this exchange brought me to tears.
Hear here, we’ll never stop till the world listens. It’s not forever. It’s now.
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deoidesign · 5 months ago
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Just a reminder, I have a patreon!!!
I've been working on actually making stuff to post more often for the lower tiers, and have been consistently doing so!
I post at least a few sketches and drawings every month for the $1 and up patrons
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and I've been working on episodes and sharing some updates with my $5 and up patrons
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And I have a merch club for $15 a month, but there's still some $10 slots left! I design and send usually a postcard and some stickers to my patrons every month, but sometimes I'll do some experimental stuff; last month I did foil prints, for instance, and a few months before I made magnets!
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It also gets you access to private channels in my discord server, where I ask for patron input on things like the merch or drawings, and where I sometimes stream while working :)
Buuuut also, even if you don't want any of this stuff, it's a great way to support me directly if you like my work! I'm still on hiatus so I'm not making any money from work at the moment, but I'm working hard and my patreon enables me at least to buy my groceries!
Here's the link one more time, no pressure of course but I need to promote my patreon more so people actually know it exists haha
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confused-stars · 8 months ago
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i need to actually remember for my writing that my main hc for why Childe is Like That is that he saw something real and true just once in his life and has been chasing that high ever since despite it being a massively traumatizing experience
kind of like a very weird Lovecraft protagonist
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mulders-too-large-shirt · 5 months ago
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s2 episode 8 thoughts
tears. in my eyes. shaky breathing. oh. okay.
well. no place to start but the beginning.
stares at my laptop screen for a long, long time before typing. give me a minute. allow to me collect myself.
okay. we start with scully's mom narrating. and we learn, thanks to the subtitles, that her mom's name is margaret. this is information i will also be storing in my useless scully facts book.
so we knew she had two brothers, but a sister is also mentioned, named melissa. and we get this story from her childhood, about how dana- which feels wrong for me to type, but i will- was given a bb gun by her brothers, and she joined in with them shooting a snake. but then she realized it was bleeding and she cried as it bled out in her hands and held it while it died. which is already So much to handle. and her mom is saying that she feels how her daughter felt that day watching the animal die.
the next thing we see is mulder is there, and. he's saying it's still too early to know if she's gone. but. well.
we see a gentleman bring something out. and it is a gravestone with her name carved into it.
he turns away like he was burned from even looking at it. and man. that hurt. very badly.
we see that her middle name is katherine. and we learn this because we see it on her gravestone.
he goes back to his place (where he still sleeps on the couch) but then he gets a phone call that they've found her. and he busts into the door when the nurse says he can't go in there. that's our man!
he's screaming at these poor healthcare workers, somewhat rightfully suspicious they're involved with the government who took her, but also man. they don't get paid enough. however, i understand the emotional explosiveness this had to have provoked. so he is really just screaming, at the nurse, at the doctor, demanding to know what the hell happened, where she came from, and he says "i swear i'll do anything, i'll find out what they did to her" while being escorted out
then there is a very tense conversation between the doctor and her mother and him. the doctor must have already have been in quite a state, because mere minutes ago a raving angry man accused him of stealing his friend, and now he's sitting with said angry man explaining that they genuinely have no idea how she got here, and that she has no indication of injury.
we also learn that she had no desire to remain on life support past a certain point. and mulder knows this because. he. he. he uh. well he signed her will.
now i think maybe that's just something you have to do at the fbi and i can see them making a little joke out of it- a nice little trip to get each other's will signed, make a day of it, keep it light and funny- but man. man in this context. oh i'm gonna be Sick.
so we see a woman holding a crystal over her body and we learn it is her sister melissa!!! she's really pretty. she tries to show mulder that you can feel her energy by holding his hands over her but he gets angry and leaves.
(i love this dichotomy here, that somehow the ultra skeptic has a sister who is into talking about spirits and crystals. truly i feel this is what happens to people raised catholic)
at this point i wrote "girl i'm stressed tf out" and yeah. kinda the whole mood.
melissa is saying that his anger and fear is blocking the positive emotions she needs to feel, which echoes my statements about how he has been too cranky this season. but i can't even laugh because the man is in Distress.
he goes back to his place after saying he needs "to do more than just wave his hands", and he's bouncing a basketball and putting tape on his windows. i get it. that oppressive feeling of being unable to sit still. every moment dragging like a lifetime. bounce bounce bounce. he wakes up and rips the tape off his windows.
and back to attending to her bedside. i do not think this man has been clocking into his shift at the fbi.
we see a fellow enter wearing a suit and carrying flowers and i was like oh shit is it last rites time? um. so maybe i don't know what gets worn to a last rites event. i realize my weakness in this area and will do some research when we're done here.
but it's not anyone here to do that- it's frohike, the guy from the lone gunman who was making weird comments about scully! he must have come to pay his last respects. he picks up a clipboard and i thought oh my gosh he's gonna start reciting poetry- but he notices something weird on her chart and sneaks it out
it seems the whole thing was orchestrated, because mulder goes back to the freaks at the lone gunman, who invite him to come over and watch earth 2 and point out the factual inaccuracies- which, all things considered, is very sweet- but they send her blood data to a hacker that uses a richard nixon persona and he says that yeah, her blood is weird. and mulder's like, is she gonna make it, and they say no. it got very somber.
in terms of scully view, we see her on this dock of a boat between life and death. i thought that was nice imagery, and extremely eerie. those around her bedside are on one side of the dock, and it looks like the rope could snap and drift away at any moment.
the nurse comes in to do some blood work and i have another "augh blood" moment. so i look away. and mulder is REALLY pondering her blood. i thought he was honestly gonna take it for himself, maybe bring it in for testing or keep it like an emo.
but no! a strange man in a suit STEALS the blood!
so mulder is back into track star mode and is SPRINTING after this guy. i always forget that he is a runner. and he is RUNNING around this hospital and makes it to the parking lot until...
he is stopped by deep throat 2.0, a man for whom i realize i have no other name. but you know who i'm referring to, right? so i guess that name will work for now. deep throat 2.0 says that mulder needs to stop NOW, and that HE got deep throat 1.0 AND scully killed by looking into things too hard. which is an absolutely awful thing to say btw. deep throat 2.0 has a gun to mulder's head and says to stop searching.
mulder proceeds to run after the blood thief despite these warnings. can't say i blame him. he finds the blood thief!!! and they have a bit of a fight until...
deep throat 2.0, who earlier said he wanted to remain out of this mess, rolls up? so we're getting mixed messages here. and he says i'll take care of this and SHOOTS THE BLOOD THIEF?????? in the head.
back to the hospital. mulder is not pleased about the prospect of life support being removed but melissa says he has to honor her wishes. and he's going on about the blood protein and the doctor is like "why do you think this has anything to do with blood protein" and he Does Not Explain
her mom calls him "fox" again and says this is a moment for the family, but he can come too. and he won't come in. he's the wettest and saddest a man has ever looked as they go in there. and then the rope holding her to the dock of the afterlife is severed.
man. if i had been a contemporary viewer i would have been sobbing. thank god i've seen gifsets that prove this wasn't the end for her. because if i hadn't, i would have been in shambles. i mean i Was in shambles but like i would have been bawling on the floor.
cig man is with skinner. i honestly didn't think we'd get up to any sort of fbi related tasks in this episode, but he hands skinner a report and leaves. and then mulder comes in and denies being involved with the shootout at the hospital
(it's worth noting that he is doing all the denying to be an ass to skinner, and yells about "how does it feel, all the denial")
and he says that it was "cancer man" who took scully. i had been calling him cigarette man, but cancer man is very comparable.
the next thing i wrote was "SKINNER IS A BITCH????" this was because he said that mulder is "just as responsible" as cancer man for scully's situation if he knew the risks of this line of work and didn't warn her.
skinner baby YOU CAN'T SAY THAT? seriously i cannot figure this guy out. every time i think i have a read on him he does something like this that shifts my interpretation. what a horrible thing to say to someone.
cut to scully cam. she's on a table in metaphysical land. and her dad is there. he calls her starbuck and refers to himself as ahab- so the first mate and the captain. and he's monologuing about how he never knew how much he loved her until he realized he could never be with her again, and he says they'll be together "soon", but not now. so i'm wondering if she can hear all of this going on. i would guess so.
mulder is in the cafeteria with melissa and she is trying to talk a bit of sense into him. she says "you could spend the rest of your life finding every person that's responsible and its still not gonna bring her back" and he replies "including myself?"
now usually i would say that mulder taking the blame upon himself is tragic and typical, but here, having it also been implied by skinner AND deep throat 2.0, i am thinking, man, he's got to really believe it, even more so than all the other times he couldn't save everyone. which is. fucked up. so immensely fucked up. i'm sorry you pissed me off last episode baby but we can go to the zoo again like i planned. let's go see some tigers and cheer you up.
a woman walks in and asks him for change for the "cigarette machine", which was the first time in my life i have ever heard the term "cigarette machine", so maybe the earth really is healing
but he finds a pack with an address in it, and then, straight from my notes:
"CIG MAN'S HOUSE. OH MULDER IS THERE AND POINTING A GUN AT HIM. AND ALSO SCREAMING. "why her" oh his finger gets very close to the trigger"
cig man says he likes her and mulder, and. wow. what a despicable human being. he says that he likes mulder more for showing up to his place with a gun. says he's playing the game. mulder seems to have a realization he is acting just like those he swore to destroy and puts the gun down. cig man says it'll be their secret. and also that he was the one that told skinner that mulder shot the guy in the hospital even though he didn't think it was true.
we next see mulder sadly tapping at his computer. he prints a one sentence resignation letter "effective immediately" NOT even a two week's notice, that's how bad they fucked this man up
skinner comes by and says it's unacceptable while mulder is packing all of his things. and mulder says:
"i hate what i've become"
man. fuck. he hates the rage he has been driven to. the loss of control. the way he sees himself as being responsible for deep throat and scully. and all of it stemming from his need for answers, to track down his sister. he hates what that feeling of insufficiency has led him to and the path he now walks upon. hates it. hates his situation and himself and the world.
skinner decides to share some personal story time: he went off to vietnam- willingly enlisting on his 18th birthday. and then while he was there he shot a kid who was covered in grenades. the camera glances back at mulder occasionally, who, despite all of his grief, seems to be consulting his oxford training to try and remember what you're supposed to say to a guy who just told you he killed a child in vietnam.
and then he says he watched all his friends die and that he almost died- he was put in a body bag, and was in a coma for two weeks- and he was too scared to learn what happens next. but mulder isn't. and that's why his resignation is unacceptable.
mulder adds things up and realizes that it was skinner that gave him cancer man's location. again. complicating the vibe i get from skinner in doing something positive now. he says that every day is a risk.
deep throat 2.0 rolls up, saying that the people who did this to scully are going to break into his apartment tonight, and he'll have to kill them. he looks displeased by this- aversion to taking any sort of lives- but resigns himself to it.
so he's in his place in the dark ready to start blasting, when he gets a knock on the door. and it's melissa.
this is where we get the iconic exchange "why is it so dark in here?" "because the lights aren't on" which made me laugh so thoroughly seeing it out of context before i ever decided to watch this show
and melissa is MAD. scully is weakening, and she came to get him to say his goodbyes, but he won't go because. well. shootout is about to go down. this is his ONE chance to learn who did this to scully. but she doesn't know that is why he won't leave, so she YELLS at him, about being in a place even darker than her sister, and asks "why is it so much easier for you to run around trying to get even than just expressing to her how you feel? i expect more from you. dana expects more from you"
and man. those words are heavy. he locks the door, knowing that his place is gonna be robbed, and that he'll never know who hurt her, and comes down to see her.
and he's talking to her. holding her hand. saying he's here. he doesn't know if it'll change anything, but he's here.
when he goes home, his place is entirely ransacked, and he falls to the ground crying. fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. i can't even put into words how bad this broke me. big strong mulder weeping on the ground, his career in shambles and his best friend dead.
i feel like i need to pause there just for how heavy it was. like this was his lowest low. lower than even vampire sex.
but he soon gets a call and he smiles so wide!!! and we learn her eyes are open!! it is the sweetest smile i have ever seen!!!!!!
he gets down to the hospital and she's awake and talking- but she doesn't remember anything- and he, being the insufferable man that he is, says the following:
"i brought you a present (holds up a vhs tape) superstars of the superbowls"
man. man. man. man. she deadpans so quickly. "i knew there was a reason to live"
he must have grabbed a random tape off his shelf and brought it to her with the express intent of antagonizing her back in the realm of the living. and he thought of something to say along with it on the car ride down, his hands shaking. something, anything to make her laugh. a stupid vhs tape. his constant sports references. her quick tongue. oh dear lord help me these two have ruined me.
he gives scully her necklace back, which i wrote about in all caps, while her mother and sister watch
and then we learn that the nurse who was taking special care of her was never actually there when scully wants to thank her and the other nurse is like "um no one who works here has that name" so. SCULLY PARANORMAL EXPERIENCE (POSITIVE)??!?!?!?
overall. man. i am experiencing such a volume of emotions. what the hell. she's back, though. and we saw how much she means to him. and i feel like i could type a million words on the subject but i don't even know what to say because they're still all stuck in my chest. they love each other sososo much.
will he ever tell her what he did in her absence? how he tried to quit? how he broke every rule trying to save her? how he screamed at the doctors, how he broke into cigarette man's house, how he almost pulled the trigger? how he watched a man die when deep throat 2.0 shot him? how he was blamed for her condition by himself and by others? how he left his apartment to be ransacked, giving up his one chance to catch whoever did this to her, to try and let go of his grief and be with her instead? or will he keep quiet except for the latest witticisms and frequent visits and presents and stories by her bedside while she gains strength and recovers?
and how he left, too, when he knew she was okay. how he must have wanted to be there more than anything in the world, but knew she needed to rest, so he left her with her family. how he could breathe easy again. how he had to make it seem like it was cool, and everything was contained.
man. this tv show. i just typed all of those words out and i still feel like i didn't even begin to cover the things i'm feeling. i feel like i need to shake them up and down.
but this should be good, because the x files are reopened... so are we seriously, as the kids say, so back? only time will tell!
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pattons-second-cookie-v2 · 3 months ago
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Moving On/Moving Forward Virgil going through an internalized panic attack, my beloved 💜💜
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lemongogo · 5 months ago
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do i finish dunmesh tn ..
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riyo-soka · 8 months ago
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Me last week: yeah the Omega & Crosshair dynamic is cute and all but it feels like the writers don’t quite know how to give it focus without majorly downplaying or sidelining her existing relationships with other characters
This week’s ep: I hear you man. How about we banish Echo to the shadow realm again and send Hunter and Wrecker on a wild goose chase fighting Space Gators in Space Louisiana with Fennec Shand while Crosshair and Omega meditate on a beach
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anabetel35 · 5 months ago
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Hey does anyone want to talk about the way that Harumi will most definetly have all of the identity issues you may have post-crystalized? You know. Harumi, who spent her whole life dedicated to hatred and trying to bring back an evil that everyone fought so hard to cast away? Who devoted herself to not one but two evil overlords? Who thought that the ninja deserved her hate until she died for the first time and until she was moments away from helping the person who she should've despised all along destroy the world as she knew it? Who spent her entire adolescent life when she was supposed to be a teenager and establishing human connections and figuring out who she was plotting, running a whole biker gang and manipulating most people around her?? Who DIED and is a zombie now? Probably? Who now might not even have a heartbeat to remind her that she's human? Who's worldview has just turned inside out and who will have to live with becoming the exact person that the little kid she did everything for would've hated? Who, for the first time in her life, doesn't have heroes that she can look up to and put on a pedestal, no figure to devote herself to? If not I'll just go into a corner to think about herself on my own--
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fiona-fififi · 5 months ago
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#feeling controversial today i guess#but like#i am at the point where i actively do not get the hype around tommy#like he’s just some guy#most of what people seem to like AND hate about him seems to be just based on headcanons not anything he's actually done in canon#he's had exactly zero development outside of moving buck's character forward since showing up again#like sure maybe there's potential but it hasn't actually been used at this point he's just kind of there#i do not understand having particularly strong opinions on him in eithet direction#like fanon opinions sure he's fun in fic#but like. the way people seem to be mapping their fanon versions of him onto canon to fit either a blind adoration or a blind hatred for hi#is super weird to me#like he’s just som guy y'all why is half the fandom falling out over this dude while the other half has gone underground??#he's just not that interesting#i will never understand how hard this fandom goes for side characters#who have had next to no development of their own#i didn't get it with lucy#i don't get it with tommy#like to each their own#but damn the power y'all give these random characters who frankly just aren't that interesting in their current states is#a lot#like enjoy have fun no judgment there#but can we maybe stop actively attacking each other over this guy he's just some dude come on y'all#*either *him *some#i really need to proofread my tags#*also i think i mean more controversy rather than hype in that third tag. it's not really that i don't understand why people like him#but more that i don't understand how he inspires such extreme opinions#anti tommy kinard#just in case#this isn't meant to be anti really i'm just like. very neutral about him#911 discourse
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screambirdscreaming · 5 months ago
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I used to like saying "gender is a social construct," but I stopped saying that because people didn't tend to react well - they thought that I was saying gender wasn't real, or didn't matter, or could be safely ignored without consequences. Which has always baffled me a bit as an interpretation, honestly, because many things are social constructs - like money, school, and the police - and they certainly have profound effects on your life whether or not you believe in them. And they sure don't go away if you ignore them.
Anyway. What I've taken to saying instead is, "gender is a cultural practice." This gives more of a sense of respect for the significance gender holds to many people. And it also opens the door to another couple layers of analysis.
Gender is cultural. It is not globally or historically homogeneous. It shifts over time, develops differently in different communities, and can be influenced by cross-cultural contact. Like many, many aspects of culture, the current status of gender is dramatically influenced by colonialism. Colonial gender norms are shaped by the hierarchical structure of imperialist society, and enforced onto colonized cultures as part of the project of imperial cultural hedgemony.
Gender is practiced. What constitutes a gender includes affects and behaviors, jobs or areas of work, skillsets, clothing, collective and individual practices of gender affiliation and affirmation. Any or all of these things, in any combination, depending on the gender, the culture, and the practitioner.
Gender encompasses shared cultural archetypes. These can include specific figures - gods and goddesses, mythic or fictional characters, etc - or they can be more abstract or general. The Wise Woman, Robin Hood, the Dyke, the Working Man, the Plucky Heroine, the Effete Gay Man, etc etc. The range of archetypes does not circumscribe a given gender, that is, they're not all there is to gender. But they provide frameworks and reference points by which people relate to gender. They may be guides for ways to inhabit or practice a gender. They may be stereotypes through which the gendered behavior of others is viewed.
Gender as a framework can be changed. Because it is created collectively, by shared acknowledgement and enforcement by members of society. Various movements have made significant shifts in how gender is structured at various times and places. The impact of these shifts has been widely variable - for example, depending on what city I'm in, even within my (fairly culturally homogeneous) home country, the way I am gendered and reacted to changes dramatically. Looping back to point one, we often speak of gender in very broad terms that obscure significant variability which exists on many scales.
Gender is structured recursively. This can be seen in the archetypes mentioned above, which range from extremely general (say, the Mother) to highly specific (the PTA Soccer Mom). Even people who claim to acknowledge only two genders will have many concepts of gendered-ways-of-being within each of them, which they may view and react to VERY differently.
Gender is experienced as an external cultural force. It cannot be opted out of, any more than living in a society can be opted out of. Regardless of the internal experience of gender, the external experience is also present. Operating within the shared cultural understanding of gender, one can aim to express a certain practice of gender - to make legible to other people how it is you interface with gender. This is always somewhat of a two-way process of communication. Other people may or may not perceive what you're going for - and they may or may not respect it. They may try to bring your expressed gender into alignment with a gender they know, or they might parcel you off into your own little box.
Gender is normative. Within the structure of the "cultural mainstream," there are allowable ways to practice gender. Any gendered behavior is considered relative to these standards. What behavior is allowed, rewarded, punished, or shunned is determined relative to what is gender normative for your perceived gender. Failure to have a clearly perceivable gender is also, generally, punished. So is having a perceivable gender which is in itself not normative.
Gender is taught by a combination of narratives, punishments, and encouragements. This teaching process is directed most strongly towards children but continues throughout adulthood. Practice of normatively-gendered behaviors and alignment with 'appropriate' archetypes is affirmed, encouraged, and rewarded. Likewise 'other'- gendered behavior and affinity to archetypes is scolded, punished, or shunned. This teaching process is inherently coercive, as social acceptance/rejection is a powerful force. However it can't be likened to programming, everyone experiences and reacts to it differently. Also, this process teaches the cultural roles and practices of both (normative) genders, even as it attempts to force conformity to only one.
Gender regulates access to certain levers of social power. This one is complicated by the fact that access to levers of social power is also affected by *many* other things, most notably race, class, and citizenship. I am not going to attempt to describe this in any general terms, I'm not equipped for that. I'll give a few examples to explain what I'm talking about though. (1) In a social situation, a man is able to imply authority, which is implicitly backed by his ability to intimidate by yelling, looming, or threatening physical violence. How much authority he is perceived to have in response to this display is a function of his race and class. It is also modified by how strongly he appears to conform to a masculine ideal. Whether or not he will receive social backlash for this behavior (as a separate consideration to how effective it will be) is again a function of race/class/other forms of social standing. (2) In a social situation, a woman is able to invoke moral judgment, and attempt to modify the behavior of others by shame. The strength of her perceived moral authority depends not just on her conformity to ideal womanhood, but especially on if she can invoke certain archetypes - such as an Innocent, a Mother, or better yet a Grandmother. Whether her moral authority is considered a relevant consideration to influence the behavior of others (vs whether she will be belittled or ignored) strongly depends on her relative social standing to those she is addressing, on basis of gender/race/class/other.
[Again, these examples are *not* meant to be exhaustive, nor to pass judgment on employing any social power in any situation. Only to illustrate what "gendered access to social power" might mean. And to illustrate that types of power are not uniform and may play out according to complex factors.]
Gender is not based in physical traits, but physical traits are ascribed gendered value. Earlier, I described gender as practiced, citing almost entirely things a person can do or change. And I firmly believe this is the core of gender as it exists culturally - and not just aspirationally. After the moment when a gender is "assigned" based on infant physical characteristics, they are raised into that gender regardless of the physical traits they go on to develop (in most circumstances, and unless/until they denounce that gender.) The range of physical traits like height, facial shape, body hair, ability to put on muscle mass - is distributed so that there is complete overlap between the range of possible traits for people assigned male and people assigned female. Much is made of slight trends in things that are "more common" for one binary sex or the other, but it's statistically quite minor once you get over selection bias. However, these traits are ascribed gendered connotations, often extremely strongly so. As such, the experience of presented and perceived gender is strongly effected by physical traits. The practice of gender therefore naturally expands to include modification of physical traits. Meanwhile, the social movements to change how gender is constructed can include pushing to decrease or change the gendered association of physical traits - although this does not seem to consistently be a priority.
Gender roles are related to the hypothetical ability to bear children, but more obliquely than is often claimed. It is popular to say that the types of work considered feminine derive from things it is possible to do while pregnant or tending small children. However, research on the broader span of human history does not hold this up. It may be true of the cultures that gave immediate rise to the colonial gender roles we are familiar with - secondary to the fact that childcare was designated as women's work. (Which it does not have to be, even a nursing infant doesn't need to be with the person who feeds it 24 hours a day.) More directly, gender roles have been influenced by structures of social control aiming for reproductive control. In the direct precursors of colonial society, attempts to track paternal lineage led to extreme degrees of social control over women, which we still see reflected in normative gender today. Many struggles for women's liberation have attempted to push back these forms of social control. It is my firm opinion that any attempt to re-emphasize childbearing as a touchstone of womanhood is frankly sick. We are at a time where solidarity in struggle for gender liberation, and for reproductive rights, is crucial. We need to cast off shackles of control in both fights. Trying to tie childbearing back to womanhood hobbles both fights and demeans us all.
Gender is baked deeply enough into our culture that it is unlikely to ever go away. Many people feel strongly about the practice of gender, in one way or another, and would not want it to. However we have the power to change how gender is structured and enforced. We can push open the doors of what is allowable, and reduce the pain of social punishment and isolation. We can dismantle another of the tools of colonial hedgemony and social control. We can change the culture!
#Gender theory#I have gotten so sick of seeing posts about gender dynamics that have no robust framework of what gender IS#so here's a fucking. manifesto. apparently.#I've spent so long chewing on these thoughts that some of this feels like. it must be obvious and not worth saying.#but apparently these are not perspectives that are really out in the conversation?#Most of this derives from a lot of conversations I've had in person. With people of varying gender experiences.#A particular shoutout to the young woman I met doing collaborative fish research with an indigenous nation#(which feels rude to name without asking so I won't)#who was really excited to talk gender with me because she'd read about nonbinary identity but I was the first nb person she'd met#And her perspective on the cultural construction of gender helped put so many things together for me.#I remember she described her tribe's construction of gender as having been put through a cookie cutter of colonial sexism#And how she knew it had been a whole nuanced construction but what remained was really. Sexist. In ways that frustrated her.#And yet she understood why people held on to it because how could you stand to loose what was left?#And how she wanted to see her tribe be able to move forward and overcome sexism while maintaining their traditional practices in new ways#As a living culture is able to.#Also many other trans people of many different experiences over the years.#And a handful of people who were involved in the various feminist movements of the past century when they had teeth#Which we need to have again.#I hate how toothless gender discourse has become.#We're all just gnawing at our infighting while the overall society goes wildly to shit#I was really trying to lay out descriptive theory here without getting into My Opinions but they got in there the last few bullet points#I might make some follow up posts with some of my slightly more sideways takes#But I did want to keep this one to. Things I feel really solidly on.
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batw1nggg · 2 months ago
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ughhhh my biggesttt pet peeve is when a postgame komahina fic uses izuru as like. a convenient excuse for angst instead of putting genuine thought into his existence and what it means. the amount of “i want hajime to be an unrealistically massive dick to komaeda unprompted… oh i know ill just make him go izuru mode”s and “komaedas only with izuru because he misses hajime and thats the only purpose izuru functions”s ive seen otherwise really good kmkmhn authors pull is genuinely devastating
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sentientcave · 2 months ago
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It has been over a month since I have updated anything and I'm very sorry because I have a whole bunch of things like 95% finished and just haven't been able to get over the finish line. Next chapter of HWTC? Just have to type it. Next Chapter of Retirement Party? Probably 1000 words away. Rugby? I'm so close to the end. Almost done the first draft of Sparrow. Like c'mon man what are you doing get your shit together.
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