#i think he looks cute here. not conventionally cute. but cute in a unique way. look at that smile of his. i was in awe!!!!

[mizzical]

sketches of kamimura because i felt inspired to try re-stylizing him again ft. hasegawa sketch

[lilislegacy]

an analysis: piper calling percy unimpressive

(warning: i wrote this at 1 am)

so basically

remember how we all despised piper mclean when she had the audacity to call our beloved percy “unimpressive” and we all lost our shit on the inside a little bit?

i truly don’t think she meant it in the way we think she did. i think we’re all just defensive of our boy.

piper clearly states that she is comparing percy to jason. first of all, jason is her boyfriend, so of course she’s biased. second of all, hera was manipulating piper to be obsessed with jason. so other guys and girls are automatically unimpressive to her.

and here’s the big thing: piper does not call him unattractive. she does not call him ugly. she simply says he’s not her type. piper is clearly attracted to the “good boy” look. jason is literally your all-american boy. he’s tall with light skin, a sturdy build, neat blonde hair, and blue eyes. part of why annabeth doesn’t trust him is because she is unsettled by his “perfect” appearance. jason is also obedient and well-mannered. he’s your standard good boy.

and the fact of the matter is: percy looks like a “bad boy”. and often, he acts like one too. him and jason are contrasts of each other. a symbolic representation of this: their features. percy has a darker complexion, messy black hair, unique green eyes, and a “sarcastic troublemaker smile.” he’s muscular, but in a leaner and more trim way. he’s tall, but he’s not a towering muscleman by any means. not that jason is either, but don’t forget, percy is a whole one. inch. (GASP) shorter than jason (which to me isn’t even noticeable, so her pointing it out as a flaw just proves that she’s so incredibly biased towards jason.) their other big contrasting feature: their personalities. jason is respectful and well-mannered. very obedient and under control. percy, however, makes jokes during inappropriate moments, talks back to people of power and authority, gets angry quickly, and loses control easily. i mean, literally right after she says this, percy starts insulting the roman god Bacchus and rapidly escalates a situation because of his natural instinct to be disobedient. piper is horrified by him doing this, especially because jason would never. does it make US all love percy very much? yes. but piper isn’t us.

THAT SAID, even she can’t actually call him unattractive. she even went as far to state that she can see why annabeth likes him, which means even her magically-obsessed-with-jason brain can still recognize his attractiveness and see why girls find him appealing. she calls him “cute in a scruffy way,” meaning she thinks that he’s got a disheveled attractiveness to him. she also once said that his pleading eyes are like a cute baby seal’s - even she can’t deny that his eyes are wonderful. so even though piper calls him unimpressive, i think rick put in a lot of clues here showing us that she acknowledges him as a conventionally attractive person, even if she’s not personally attracted to him.

let’s sum it up, shall we?

what does it say about percy? absolutely nothing. piper calling percy unimpressive is an inaccurate and unreliable source when it comes to analyzing percy’s physical appearance, especially if you don’t consider the context. this was rick’s way of showing piper’s clear preference towards jason, just like annabeth has a clear preference towards percy. and even though she said this, rick also made her give us several hints that percy is handsome, just not in a way she’s inclined towards. rick wanted love triangles to be completely out of the question with these 4. he wanted to make it very clear that annabeth had no interest in jason, and that piper had no interest in percy. so since piper is so drawn towards jason, percy had to be very different from him in her eyes.

jason is your a superman, percy is your batman

jason is your captain america, percy is your iron man. some even say spider man.

so put yourself in piper’s shoes: after hearing percy jackson’s name non-stop for 6 months, hearing him compared to jason, hearing of all his accomplishments and how heroic he is - i mean, the guy was literally honored on olympus and offered godhood - she was expecting a stereotypical good-boy hero. a hercules. a superman. your standard muscular blinding-white-teeth-smile hunk. the conventional, well-mannered good boy. and instead she got a wild and untamed, trouble-making bad boy. percy has an edge to him. he’s intimidating and unpredictable. he’s sarcastic and witty. he just looks like he’s up to no good. she wasn’t expecting any of that. that’s not what we’re taught a hero is supposed to be like or look like.

jason is appealing in a “he’d be a respectable and sturdy husband” way.

percy is appealing in a “he’s gonna fuck up my life but i so badly want him to” kind of way. (even though once you get to know him, you see he’s literally the world’s best boyfriend. piper even gets jealous of how loving he is towards annabeth.)

she had this exact idea of what he would be, and he wasn’t that. hence her calling him “unimpressive.” but it says nothing about his attractiveness.

i rest my case, your honor.

thank you for coming to my ted talk

disclaimer: i am not saying percy is actually a bad boy or a bad guy. he is a sweetheart. he has the biggest heart ever. he’s a cute little cinnamon roll. i am simply talking of first impressions from outsiders, and how he appears if you don’t know him.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Would you be up for doing the character bingo with the staff, and if so could you do Trein?

Any TWST character is fair game!

***Standard disclaimer: These are just my personal opinions of the character(s); regardless of what I may think of them, sharing my thoughts is NOT meant to offend or to shame anyone that thinks differently.***

Here’s my hot take: Trein gets overlooked just because he isn’t young 😅 ... Too soon? Those are my honest feelings on the matter. I’m pretty sure the most popular of the staff are probably Crowley (because of the ample screen time relative to the rest of the cast), Crewel, and Sam (because the latter two are young and conventionally attractive). (Vargas gets the short end of the stick because his muscular body type appeals to only a certain subset of fans.)

In the early days of TWST, I distinctly recall seeing people who were outright disgusted by Trein because of his age, which... never really made sense to me????? A school wouldn’t hire ALL young teachers, so of course there would be diversity among the demographics of the staff. And like???? Wouldn’t you WANT more experienced teachers at such a prestigious magic academy? Or to see more variety in the cast anyway? 😔 I remember seeing some edits of young Trein around the time of his reveal... and while those edits were fun and must have no doubt taken a lot of time and effort, some of the comments attached to those edits had a tone which implied that the young Trein edits were somehow “fixing” him, or that the original was “inferior”. That just rubs me the wrong way 💦 It’s not even like age is something gross or something to be ashamed of, we’re all going to get to be Trein’s age eventually. Thankfully, I think that a lot of that initial disgust has died down now that the game has been out for a while.

Personally, I’ve always liked Trein. It’s not in the same as me liking uh... say, J word, but I do find him endearing in the way that someone might find a grandparent endearing. (Ortho even says he’d like a grandpa like him, so I’m not the only one!) Yes, Trein certainly looks stern and like he’s a no-nonsense type of guy, but you can also tell that he is competent at his job and deserves respect. We usually see him being stern to his students, but Trein also has his moments of softness. When he fusses over Lucius? Or when he’s worrying for the safety of his students? It’s kind of cute, and it has all the warmth and the good intention behind it as any parent would for their children--and Trein IS a father, so he would know.

I actually would love to learn more about his family? Like his late wife and his two daughters (Trein says they’ve grown up and left the nest now). It sounds like he cares a lot for them and misses them... but at least Lucius is keeping him company! Speaking of Lucius???? He’s Trein’s familiar, which I think is a really fascinating concept that we don’t hear enough about. How do familiars work in TWST? It doesn’t seem to be a mandatory thing, since we never seen any of the NRC students walking around with a familiar; can ANY creature you find be a familiar, so long as you perform the proper steps to bond it to you? Does the familiar contract grant any sort of special powers to either party? Is there only one familiar allowed per person? What if that familiar dies, are you allowed to forge a new contract????? I have many questions and I demand just as many answers 💞

I also wonder if we’ll ever get the staff’s unique magic reveals? I’ve seen some people speculating that Trein or Crowley could have one related to time (a reference to Cinderella III: A Twist in Time and the TWST time loop theory, respectively), but I think time magic might be a little too... OP? Or that it would have to be considerably nerfed to “work”. Malleus was able to temporarily stop time, but I believe it was stated even he needed additional help to do it within just the gates of NRC.

[hqbbg]

butterflies.

pairing: bokuto x chubby fem!reader

summary: bokuto doesn’t understand why everyone’s giving you a hard time.

genre: fluff

word count: 1.6K

warnings: people are mean to reader >:(

You saw many flaws about yourself growing up, whether they were first pointed out to you by your parents, schoolmates, or even the cashier lady at the supermarket. The one particular flaw that seemed to follow you around throughout all the years seemed to revolve around one thing: your weight.

Looking in the mirror, you used to not see what was so wrong with how your body looked. You truly didn’t think you looked as overweight as those around you made it seem, but their words began to contaminate your thoughts and soon, you saw what they saw: someone who simply did not fit into a conventionally “beautiful” body, a standard set by models on magazine covers.

Some people had called you cute while growing up, but as you sat in your classroom during your second year of high school alone while others had gone to join their friends, you most definitely felt like all the kind words people had told you before held no meaning or sincerity to them.

“Hey, hey, hey!”

You’ve been hearing this every other day lately. It was always at the beginning of lunch time, give or take a few minutes depending on the day. The source of the brief disturbance to the white noise of the classroom was none other than Bokuto Koutarou, a third year. He always came to hang out with Akaashi, a classmate of yours that sat a few rows down from you.

You had seen Akaashi once or twice last year in the hallways, but never spoke to him, and even this year as his classmate, you barely exchanged any words. He seemed like a relatively quiet and observant person, so part of you wondered how he and Bokuto seemed so close yet were polar opposites.

You had been lost in your own thoughts, too busy staring off into space to notice a few classmates come up to sit at the desks around you.

“What, is our little piggy not hungry today?”

This was not unfamiliar territory for you. Once or twice throughout the week, a few students would get bored with themselves and decide to pick on you or taunt you. Usually, you would ignore them with your head hung low, and they would just get bored again, deciding to leave you alone until they saw another opportunity to mess with you.

Things like this used to bother you a lot more than they did now. Of course, their words would still keep you awake at night occasionally, but you’ve learned to move on.

It wasn’t like you hadn’t tried to lose weight before; nothing just seemed to work. It was as if your body had reached its current weight and stubbornly refused to change, no matter how much your heart and mind willed it. Your mother would toss in a few comments here and there about how boys wouldn’t want you because of this complex of yours and your father wouldn’t stand up for you. You supposed they were right, since the only time boys were interested in talking to you was to either make fun of you or compare notes after class.

“Did you not hear us, piggy?”

“You guys are talking in her face, so I’m sure she heard you loud and clear.”

You snap your head up towards the source of the voice and see Bokuto looking over in your direction. He has an unreadable expression on his face and your eyes flicker towards Akaashi as he also looks in your direction, his face blank with indifference to the situation.

“With all due respect, this doesn’t concern you,” replies one of the boys sitting in front of you.

“How rude,” says Bokuto. “Akaashi, you never told me how mean your classmates were!”

The third year turns to look at Akaashi, a pout on his face as he points to the group around you. Any thoughts you had of him being cool for butting in and momentarily diverting the attention away from you have all disappeared and it seems that everyone’s mental image of the suave and cool upperclassman have collectively shattered.

“Everyone is mean to Y/L/N-san,” Akaashi replies coolly.

You have to admit, as much as that statement should irk you, it doesn’t because you know it’s true.

“Why?” Bokuto turns his head back and looks directly at you. You feel yourself stiffen in your seat. He blinks his eyes a couple times, as if he can’t understand what anyone could possibly be giving you a hard time for. Part of you finds it refreshing, but another part of you is skeptical.

“This guy’s weird,” mutters one of the girls next to you. “Let’s just go.”

You feel a little dumbstruck as you watch the students around you stand and walk away before your eyes slowly return back to the pair of boys who are still staring at you. You can feel your face heat up at the realization that their eyes haven’t left you yet and you shift uncomfortably in your seat, clearing your throat.

“T-Thanks.”

Before anyone else can say anything, you quickly grab your lunch and head out of the room, muttering halfhearted apologies to the students you bump into as you walk down the hall. You make your way to the rooftop where a few other groups of students are enjoying their lunch and find yourself a decent and secluded spot. Maybe the fresh air would cool you down and prevent yourself from overthinking the situation that had just unraveled.

The next few days, you avoid eating lunch in the classroom and go back to the spot on the rooftop; you aren’t disturbed there and find it quite peaceful. You get used to not hearing Bokuto’s unique greeting and things seem to slowly go back to how they used to be.

“Hey, long time no see!”

You glance up as you walk down the hall, seeing Bokuto walking towards you, presumably heading back to his class as you head for yours. Although you’re sure he’s addressing you, you glance around to ensure that it really is you he’s talking to.

“Yeah, you! You’re in Akaashi’s class,” Bokuto laughs heartily as he walks up to you, stopping only a few paces away. “You know, no one really answered me when I asked why everyone is so mean to you.”

You can only look up at him, unsure what exactly his motives might be. There’s no way he’s this oblivious, right? You’ve heard stories about him, being a remarkable volleyball player and assumed that he would be intelligent. Was that limited to just volleyball?

“I should get back to my class,” you reply, bowing your head halfheartedly before rushing back to your classroom.

Needless to say, you’re socially awkward. No one has really given you this much attention without throwing a blatant insult at your face, so you’re unsure how to handle it. It isn’t until a week later when you miss the timing of heading to the rooftop for lunch and see Bokuto enter the classroom, making a straight beeline to sit in the empty desk in front of you, facing you. Akaashi has also moved closer, sitting in the desk to your right, looking at you with the same indifferent expression on his face.

“So, I’ve really been trying to figure it out for the past week and a half,” says Bokuto, propping his elbow on your desk as he leans his chin onto his palm, “and I still don’t get it.”

Your eyes flicker back towards Akaashi, but he doesn’t move a muscle that indicates that he’s helping you get out of this situation.

“W-Well, I…”

What’s he talking about? What are you supposed to say?

“Are you mean? Is that it? You seem like a normal girl, so I really don’t understand why everyone treats you so poorly,” says Bokuto, not letting you finish your half-developed thought. Is he teasing you? Is this some cruel way of indirectly making fun of you?

“Do you really not see it?” You ask, finding some rare confidence spurred by the thought of his antics being motivated to hurt you like everyone else.

You finally look into his eyes and see no malice in them, quickly casting your eyes back down when you can feel yourself blushing at the innocent intensity of his eyes staring back at you.

“Is there something I should be seeing?”

“I,” you pause. You’re suddenly afraid to say your next sentence because it’s a thought that was drilled into your brain since you were younger, but say it anyways. “I’m fat.”

Bokuto frowns.

“So?”

Well, that wasn’t an answer you were expecting.

“Huh?” You look at him again, brows furrowing slightly.

“What he means is, he doesn’t see why that’s a reason for you to be bullied,” Akaashi speaks up. Bokuto nods his head quickly, realizing the mistake in his word choice.

“Yeah, that’s what I meant!”

You narrow your eyes slightly in suspicion.

“No, really, Y/N! You look perfectly fine to me.”

You try not to show your surprise upon hearing Bokuto say your name, but you’re not sure how well you hide it. You want to question how he knows your first name, but something tells you that the boy sitting to your right has something to do with it.

“Thanks,” you say awkwardly, unsure of what else to say.

“If anyone gives you a hard time, let me know! I’ll take care of it for you,” Bokuto sits up, puffing his chest. You’re hesitant but feel your lips tug into the slightest smile.

“You don’t have to, Y/L/N-san. He’s all bark and no bite anyways,” says Akaashi. You feel your lips pull a little further into a smile. Bokuto looks like he’s about to complain or whine to Akaashi, but is stopped when he looks at your face.

“Wow, so you do know how to smile,” Bokuto grins at you. “You should do it more often. It suits you.”

That might’ve been the first time in your whole life to have ever felt butterflies in your stomach.

[theoowadabrothers]

Oooh man i’m happy you’re active, tumblr mobile doesn’t show us that anymore for some reason. ANYWAY!! Love your stuff and I wanted to request a matchmaker!reader who’s never found love themselves, and probably isnt conventionally attractive and doesn’t believe anyone would ever like them, so they get other people together instead, hence the ultimate talent lol. Maybe Gundham has a big ol’ crush on them but being awkward himself, struggles to tell them until one of his friends gives them a push!

AN: Sorry for the wait! But I hope you enjoy!

Gundham x Reader - First Love

Your Pov

You were the Ultimate Matchmaker. That being said you would think you would have a boyfriend by now, right? Wrong.

You had never once had a boyfriend. It wasn't like you didn't want one, you just didn't think anyone would want to date you. Plus, that wasn't what your Talent was all about. Your purpose was to help others find love, not yourself.

So far you had set up a few relationships at Hopes Peak and none of them have broken up yet. Sonia and Kazuichi, Hajime and Chiaki, Fuyuhiko and Peko were all happy couples.

You were in an empty classroom daydreaming about your love life. There was this one boy in your class that you had a crush on. He was tall and had the most unique way of talking. Every now and then you would think about trying to matchmake yourself with him. But then you realized he probably wouldn't want you. You never thought of yourself as pretty or gorgeous. There was no reason for him to want to be with you.

You were pulled for your thoughts when you felt something pulling your pant leg. You looked down and saw a little hamster looking up at you. He was a bit chubby, but still cute.

You reached down and picked him up. "Hey little guy. Are you looking for Gundham?" Gundham was known for carrying hamsters on him, so you had no doubt it was his.

The golden hamster squeaked at you and and rolled over. He had a bit of trouble getting back up so you had to help him. You giggled and starting petting his tiny head.

Someone's loud yelling broke you and the fat hamsters peaceful silence. "CHAM-P! CHAM-P! WHERE ARE YOU CHAM-P!"

You looked up to see Gundham on his hands and knees trying to find the little creature. His head was currently under the the teachers desk. Your attention was so focused on Cham-P you didn't even notice him walk in.

You held in a tiny laugh. It was cute how much he cared about his animals. "Gundham," you said quietly.

His head shot up at the sound of you saying his voice. His head hit the roof of the table and he groaned in pain.

"I'm sorry Gundham! I didn't mean to scare you!"

The boy careful got up onto his two feet. "It is ok Y/N. Do not fear. I am not hurt."

You sighed in relief. You were so nervous that you ruined everything. Gundham began walking towards you rubbing his head. He told you he was fine, but you knew that must have hurt.

"May I sit down next to you," the breeder asked.

"O-of course!" You scooted over and made room for Gundham. He sat down next to you and began looking around the room.

"Y/N. Have you by any chance seen Cham-P? He is the golden hamster I always have with me."

You were about to answer when Cham-P did it for you. You had forgotten he was in your hands. You looked down at the tiny golden animal and smiled.

You held out your hands towards Gundham. "He's right here. He found me and I just started playing with him. I'm sorry if I made you worry."

Gundham began blushing and quickly covered it up with his scarf. "I was concerned about the whereabouts of Cham-P, but I am happy to know he was in good hands. Thank you for watching over him."

You gave him a huge smile. "No problem." The breeder picked up his hamster and placed him on his shoulder. You stared into his heterochromia eyes. He was so handsome.

Gundham cleared his throat and quickly stood up. "I must go now Y/N. It was nice seeing you."

Before you could respond he bolted out of the room. Your smile disappeared and you felt disappointed. You were beginning to think he might like you, turns out he just wanted his hamster back.

Gundham's Pov

I quickly ran out of the classroom and left Y/N behind. I felt horrible about it, but I didn't know what else to do. I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of my crush.

My face was still pink from my interaction with Y/N. She was so gorgeous and I wanted her to be my girlfriend, but I had no idea how to approach the situation.

There was only one person who could help me right now. And that was no other than my best friend, Sonia Nevermind.

I knocked on her door and waited for her to answer. She opened the door quickly.

"Gundham, it is nice to see you."

"It is nice to see you too, Sonia. I need help with something and I fear you are the only one who can help me."

The princess gasped. "If it is my help you need, then I shall do the best I can to provide help! Please come in!"

I walked into her room and took a seat on her bed. Sonia sat next to me and patiently waited for me to explain the problem.

"It is Y/N. It seems as though I have feelings for her. I have no idea what to do with these new emotions." I buried my hands into my head.

The blonde hummed in understanding. "If you love her, then you must tell her how you feel! I'm sure she will feel the same way. There is no need to be scared!"

I lifted my head up. "Do you really think so?"

She nodded her head. "I know so."

Your Pov

Your head hung low as you kicked the rocks on the ground. You were standing outside of Hopes Peak. You just wanted to find love, was that too much to ask?

You sat down next to your favorite tree and began playing with the grass on the ground.

Out of the corner of your eye you saw a flower fall from the sky and land next to your foot. It was purple and full of life. You picked it up and twirled it around in your hand.

"Ok, let's see if Gundham loves me," you said to yourself. "He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not." You sighed and threw the petal-less flower. "Guess he doesn't love me than."

"I beg to differ." You whipped your head around to see Gundham standing over you.

You quickly stood up and your face turned red. "G-Gundham, y-you didn't hear all that did you?"

He crossed his arms. "My apologizes Y/N, but I heard everything."

He probably thought you were weird and hated you. There was no way you could ever be with him now. Your chances with him just went out the window.

"Gundham I'm so sorry! I- I," you paused. There was no point of trying to cover it up now. Accepting your defeat, you confessed your feelings.

"Gundham, I have a crush on you. I didn't want to tell you at first because I was scared you wouldn't like me. But I can't hide my feelings anymore."

He nodded his head. You waited for him to respond hoping the suspense would end soon. “I’m sorry to tell you this Y/N."

This was it. He was going to break your heart and say he didn't like you. You didn't blame him though. You knew this was coming.

"But I'm afraid that the flower has lied to you."

It took you a moment to understand what he said. Was he? No, there was no way.

"I love you Y/N. You are the most beautiful mortal I have ever seen. You are truly one of a kind, and I want to be with you. So, will you be my queen?"

You felt tears sting your eyes. You couldn't believe this was happening. "Gundham. I love you too. I love you so much."

You jumped into his arms and hugged him. He held you tight in his grasp and didn't want to let you go. Without much warning, he leaned down and kissed you. You happily kissed back.

After all your years of watching other people fall in love, you finally did too. And nothing felt better than this.

[mmamagoto]

are u guys prepared for this i put all five of the muses here on this one. so of course it’s under a cut for being long as hell

name: natoru

nicknames:

gender: female

age:

date of birth: april 30

origin of birth: listen they’re all from the human world on this blog so let me just save myself the trouble of typing that four more times

race/species: cat (scottish fold)

spoken languages:

romantic/sexual preference: middles toward aromantic

occupation: royal assistant and whatever else they can toss under the umbrella of ‘assistant duties’

hobbies: space, sports (or more specifically, competition), stereotypically Cool Boy things like dinosaurs and creepy crawlies, annoying natori

criminal record: 

disorders: none

eye color: kind of a hazel thinking emoji they’re pretty tbh

height: markedly shorter than every other cat in this dang film

scars: possibly a few very minor ones from some scrapes and clumsiness upon first coming to the cat kingdom, but they’re probably not very noticeable

birthmarks: none

overweight: i’m. not sure thinking emoji she’s definitely a solidly-built little thing but considering she’s a cat it literally could just be her body type lmao. even so, she doesn’t consider it an issue, and neither does anyone else tbh

underweight: no

favorite color: olive green, pink

favorite food: yakiimo

wants to get married / is married: n. no

gotten pregnant / had a child: no

wants a child: not really. she’s content with her cool big sister role

likes children: yes. she has kind of a natural rapport with them

can sing: i mean. she can probably carry a tune

play an instrument: probably not

can dance: ???

gotten tattoos: 

gotten piercings: nah

smoked/drank/done drugs: has probably definitely had Drinks. also like probably catnip/matatabi, which all things considered i’m not sure if it counts lmao

had a broken heart: not really

been in love: not really

a cuddler: Probably bc i’m still very amused by her and natori having to share a room during a trip to another kingdom and natori Suffering the entire time

a kisser:

scared easily: she’s skittish which is Unfortunate bc she is the ‘reacts to jump scares by punching them’ type

jealous easily: it. depends on what it is. she tends to be more the envious type, where she covets Unique and Cool objects over companionship

hot/cool tempered: generally very cool. she’s a tolerant creature, and i feel like that tends to get overlooked thinking emoji

trustworthy: mostly, particularly when compared with her two coworkers lmao

single: yes

extroverted/introverted: she’s adaptable

considered mean: this one is so funny to me bc i think, when compared with natori who is kind of in a similar position to her in the hierarchy, she’s often seen as the more approachable one which is ironic bc between the two of them she’s the uhhhh. less Understanding one. she will sell you for a corn chip

fears: sugoroku space, dogs (just slightly), stick bugs but every other kinda bug is Fine By Her, natori with a ruler in his paw

siblings: marsh (older brother)

parents: unknown

pet(s): none

name: claudius

nicknames: mostly (even now) referred to by titles by everyone except lune

gender: male

age:

date of birth: august 2

origin of birth: see above

race/species: cat (probably a persian)

spoken languages: 

romantic/sexual preference: i kinda lean toward bi or panromantic tbh

occupation: retired king so. mostly just a NEET at this point

hobbies: traveling (mostly to show off but stILL). other than that, now that he’s retired, he’s struggled with finding hobbies that aren’t just napping or following natori around. he’s not a patient or committed creature, so when he tries something new and it’s Too Hard, he tends to lose interest very quickly. that said, he definitely relies very heavily on other people, natori, natoru, and entertainers, etc. to provide him with things to pass the time

criminal record: he’s offended at this very notion

disorders: does. does strabismus count

eye color: has marked heterochromia, with one blue eye and one red eye

height: Tall for a cat jjfkdeia

scars: none

birthmarks: none

overweight: actually, no

underweight: no, tho without all the fur, he definitely has a scrawnier, less conventionally cute look to him jfjfie;a

favorite color: gold

favorite food: oden

wants to get married / is married: he maybe kinda sorta misses being married (or, more specifically, having a significant other)

gotten pregnant / had a child: yes, so long as adoption counts

wants a child: a grandkid sounds kinda nice

likes children: yes, but to absolutely no one’s surprise he’s a bad influence on them and has No Clue how to interact with them when they’re upset. he also is 100% the type to throw hands with a preschooler

can sing: OF COURSE

play an instrument: no, tho he certainly likes the idea of being able to. he’s badgered natori into trying to teach him before inevitably getting bored with the practice when he’s not instantly a genius at it (see above in the hobbies section, aha)

can dance: definitely. unless it’s not a ballroom dance. then no one wants to see that

gotten tattoos: 

gotten piercings: mm, probably not

smoked/drank/done drugs: absolutely

had a broken heart: yes

been in love: twice

a cuddler: It Depends. he was once someone’s Ultra Pampered house cat, so he’s of the five of them probably the most amenable to being pet and held, but he’s also temperamental and finicky so uh. Pet At Your Own Risk ig

a kisser:

scared easily: not really. he’s too impulsive to be scared psh

jealous easily: 100%

hot/cool tempered: HE CLIMBED HIS WAY UP A TOWER WITH NOTHING BUT HIS CLAWS AND SHEER OFFENDED WILLPOWER.............. and all with two swords strapped to him..............

trustworthy: not too much

single: it’s. Complicated

extroverted/introverted: extroverted, mostly, but he has his random introspective moments when he generally wants to be alone

considered mean: I MEAN. it really depends jfjfei;a i will go to the grave with this headcanon that he’s honestly well-liked as a ruler but has a definite reputation of being difficult-to-please and mercurial

fears: being genuinely or legitimately Disliked, pissing off lune to the point he turns his back on him, squeamish with squirmy things

siblings: none

parents: unknown. the previous queen is his mother-in-law

pet(s): none

name: lune

nicknames: an endless cavalcade of affectionate nicknames from his father and no one can convince me otherwise

gender: male

age:

date of birth: october 27

origin of birth: see above

race/species: cat (the fandom seems to have him pegged as a russian blue and i’m not gonna disagree sO)

spoken languages: 

romantic/sexual preference: probably heteroromantic

occupation: king of cat kingdom :v

hobbies: butterflies and moths, idk does urban exploration count for a cat lmao

criminal record: no

disorders: none

eye color: shares his father’s heterochromia-- one blue eye, one red eye

height: notably smaller than his father but still taller than natoru like everyone else jfkfd;a

scars: none

birthmarks: none

overweight: no

underweight: no

favorite color: aquamarine

favorite food: lots of different street foods, tbh, but his favorites are probably takoyaki and taiyaki (particularly when filled with cheese laughs)

wants to get married / is married: is married! and very happy with that marriage

gotten pregnant / had a child: no

wants a child: it’s crossed his mind, but not with any real intent

likes children: probably. he’s never really interacted with them

can sing: i mean. again, he can probably carry a tune

play an instrument: i feel like he probably can. at least one thinking emoji

can dance: yes

gotten tattoos:

gotten piercings: ........i should give him his manga earring. it’s cute

smoked/drank/done drugs: has definitely had some alcohol in his life. also the catnip thing again

had a broken heart: not yet

been in love: yES

a cuddler: i’m. not sure

a kisser:

scared easily: not in the least, but it’s mostly bc he’s a gaddang pollyanna

jealous easily: not particularly. he’s a gregarious creature

hot/cool tempered: cool-tempered, but without natori’s aloofness so he most likely comes across more reasonably or genuinely

trustworthy: Absolutely

single: no

extroverted/introverted: like natoru, he’s adaptable. and like natori, i feel that he’s become quite practiced at playing the part of an extrovert, but perhaps with more genuineness

considered mean: ABSOLUTELY NOT

fears: saying goodbye to any of the familiar cats in his life, Abrupt Change, vehicles are a little iffy nowadays

siblings: none

parents: cat king (father). the previous cat queen was his grandmother (uh, not persephone)

pet(s): none atm, but probably had numerous ones throughout his childhood, including a rabbit which ‘ran away to the mountains (aka the ninth kingdom)’ at some point. according to natori, that is

name: natori

nicknames: poppet, a long time ago

gender: male

age:

date of birth: unknown. tends to use the cat kingdom’s new year celebrations as an excuse to celebrate

origin of birth: see above

race/species: cat (oriental longhair)

spoken languages: 

romantic/sexual preference: generally idles between homoromantic and  demiromantic

occupation: royal advisor/assistant. on paper, he’s retired, but it’s never stopped him before

hobbies: keeping goldfish, music, cooking

criminal record:

disorders: none

eye color: coppery brown

height: close to the king’s height. i keep waffling back and forth on just which of them is taller

scars: none

birthmarks: it’s not necessarily a birthmark, but he does have some kind of marking on him Somewhere (x-files theme) it’s well-hidden by his clothing

overweight: no

underweight: no

favorite color: lavender

favorite food: fish

wants to get married / is married: He Doesn’t Know

gotten pregnant / had a child: no

wants a child: like natoru, he’s mostly content with his role as uncle/mentor

likes children: yes, tho he’s easily stressed by them lmao

can sing: y e s

play an instrument: i’m not really sure yet thinking emoji

can dance: yes

gotten tattoos: 

gotten piercings: he would never

smoked/drank/done drugs: like the others, has definitely had a taste of alcohol fjfjkd;a

had a broken heart: yes

been in love: he’s not sure

a cuddler: generally Not

a kisser:

scared easily: his composure drops pretty quick lbr

jealous easily: a little. a teensy bit. okay it’s much more than a teensy bit

hot/cool tempered: cool-tempered, but, as mentioned above, with a very distinct aloof edge that probably often leads to him being perceived as unapproachable

trustworthy: .............it depends

single: yyyyyyye-- no? yes. no. nobody knows

extroverted/introverted: introverted, mostly, but he plays a very convincing extrovert

considered mean: not especially, but again. probably perceived by many as being difficult to approach

fears: they are Many and Varied and most of them connect either to the collapse of the cat kingdom or the human world in its entirety

siblings: manami, sachiko (younger sisters)

parents: EXTREMELY UNKNOWN......

pet(s): three goldfish

name: yuki

nicknames: lune calls her sweetie in the manga and it kills me every time i remember it

gender: female

age:

date of birth: march

origin of birth: see above

race/species: cat (...not sure what breed she might be thinking emoji)

spoken languages:

romantic/sexual preference: biromantic

occupation: queen of cat kingdom

hobbies: she hasn’t really spent the time trying out hobbies just yet. has gotten a little into butterflies and moths bc lune likes them. has her eye on a number of more artistic pastimes 

criminal record:

disorders: none

eye color: a very pretty blue jfjf;a

height: pretty much the same exact height as lune tbh

scars: none

birthmarks: none

overweight: no

underweight: no

favorite color: plum/wine

favorite food: nikuman, pastries

wants to get married / is married: is married! and like lune, is also very happy with the setup laughs

gotten pregnant / had a child: no

wants a child: atm, not particularly

likes children: also like lune, she has very little experience interacting with them. at least, recently. but i can not see her Disliking children so. u know

can sing: probably

play an instrument: no

can dance: some dances, yes. i like the idea that lune is casually teaching her behind the scenes lmao

gotten tattoos:

gotten piercings: no

smoked/drank/done drugs: a. again, like all of these cats have probably had some alcohol lmao

had a broken heart: s. sort of

been in love: yes

a cuddler: next to the king, she’s probably second most amenable to being pet and held, but she’s not really the type to actively seek it out

a kisser:

scared easily: not particularly, but she’s definitely more wary than lune is

jealous easily: not too much

hot/cool tempered: definitely cool

trustworthy: generally

single: no

extroverted/introverted: definitely introverted, but she’s not awkward in most social interactions. she’s more awkward now than she used to be simply bc she’s still not entirely certain what to expect with her new position and clout

considered mean: definitely not, to the point that i headcanon those who don’t know her terribly well are sometimes surprised by how remote she can come across laughs

fears: somewhat insecure in her new position, a lot of her current fears come back to being ridiculed or making a fool of herself, damaging her reputation right off the bat so that no one will ever take her seriously, or that it will bleed into lune’s reputation, too rip

siblings: none

parents: unknown, however for this blog’s canon, she did spend some time as haru’s pet in the human world

pet(s): none. she’s still kinda baffled by the idea of cats having pets in the first place lmao

natori very hesitantly but cheerily introduces her to his goldfish and she isn’t sure what to say fjfjk;ea

yuki, to lune: i didn’t know cats could have pets lune: sure! i had a pet rabbit once yuki: yuki: what

[kendrixtermina]

The "waifu bait" criticism of Edelgard is so dumb given that most of the cast is technically waifu/husbando bait in one way or another, they're all meant to appeal to players as romance options, and she's the only one getting flack for it. (Well, not the only one, there were some people giving Dimitri shit too for being "wish fullfillment for stupid teenage girls who think they can fix a man," but I see the complaint most often with Edelgard.)

Yeah. I mean, you can boink Rhea and Jeritza!

It’s not like satelite love interests aren’t a plague onto anime and fiction in general, but I only ever hear this “you only like them because they’re waifu/bishie” thing directed at characters who very much DO have personality, unique compelling features and plot relevance. 

I’ve also seen this thrown at, say, Evangelion’s Miss Ayanami, as if all the fascinating sci-fi concept stuff and compelling narrative about finding your own worth and making a connection in a cruel lonely world wasn’t there - and at least we do see her through a “main character’s love interest” sorta lens. (I was thinking about how Byleth is actually quite similar, except more proactive with more of a dorky side, and less philosophical/reflective, but because Byleth is the MC we come off with a fairly different impression. )

Meanwhile with Edelgard they really didn’t pull any punches, the whole story is set in motion and dominated by her active choices, most the unique designs/outfits she gets are geared to look elegant/powerful.  (Apart from the usual ‘individually wrapped boob armor would break your sternum’ thing but you’d really have to know physics for that/ could be fixed easily by making the fit more sweater-like), she has a specific discernable philosophy and makes impactful choices, that can genuinely be agreed or disagreed with.

You can’t swag her into your way of thinking - you can only ally with her under the presupposition that you already actively agree. (See all the people complaining that you cant “criticise her more”, expecting her to be like Dimitri basically even though they are exact opposites. You can only get on her route by making two deliberate choices. I mean they wrote this with your first playthrough in mind, in-universe you’re not there because you wanna complete all aroutes but because you actively chose to join her after she spent a year unsubtly trying to recruit you to her cause)

You don’t talk Claude out of his tactics either. (and forcing it all into this comparision often leads ppl to overlook that he has ambiguities or character development at all, maybe he isn’t vilified but he gets simplified and therefore wronged just as much in the end. They’re not all Dimitri. The whole point of having three or four different potential deuteragonists to choose from is that they’re different)… heck, even if you look at Dimitri, you only get him back to what he really wanted to do back in part I before his black-and-white thinking and exaggerated sense of duty got the better of him. 

With all three, joining them eventually just enables them to get closer to their actual vision. Back when you meet her in Remire, Edelgard outright tells you that “with your power on my side, we could courttail the slitherer’s atrocities much more efficiently”. You don’t change her mind at all; You enable her to use “Plan A”. Same with Claude, who otherwise plains much more defensively both because he has less support and because he’s more jaded. And Dimitri essentially pulls a Sayaka, ie being unable to live up to his own unrealistic standards drive him to lose all hope and become the very opposite of the hero he wanted to be, but you do help him get back to that, or to a more balanced mature understanding of that. 

The best proof of that is that the popularity poll numbers actually went down after the release, ie a lot of ppl who liked her just bc they liked her design were turned off that there’s a specific personality there that isn’t necessarily their type/ a MO they don’t necessarily agree with. Or all those peeps complaining that the S-support was too understated for them. Claude got that too - They’re just not the most open/expressive people in the world, one would think that after playing through their routes you would know and understand that. Whereas Dimitri has been super emotional from day one (which is both his greatest strength and greatest weakness), so it figures that he’d be more conventionally romantic. 

- Hardly things that would happen if she were written to be “blandly pleasant”.  I mean generally speaking she’s not the best as showing her feelings and when she does she’s often pretty blunt at it even with her closest friends (El: ”Hubert! I order you to tell me what it is you’re not telling me!” Hubert: [elegantly weasels out of answering] El: [after he’s left the room] I’m worried about him tho. )

Seems senseless to claim that she’s blandly pleasant when she’s absolutely gotten a love-it-or-hate-it-marmite-reaction all across the board. It also seems to go along with the implicit idea that everyone who likes her is heterosexual boys. I’m neither, and it’s not like heterosexual boys aren’t ever interested in “plot” or “writing” I mean geez. Though I would resist the temptation to fully ascribe it to things like that. 

To an extent it’s simply confusion. “How can they like this thing that obviously sucks? Must be an ulterior motive”, whereas in reality ppl who like her have probably parsed what happened here differently to begin with (It depends greatly on how powerful you concluded Rhea was, ie, wether what Edelgard is doing is a conquest or a revolt. She certainly sees it as a revolt. Even today in the modern day most of us see revolts as legitimate, or at least, if they get overly destructive, as a fault of the bad government. Heck, there are many on this very site who would label all revolts legit by default (”eat the rich”, the more ‘original sin-like’ variants of privilege theory) which is further than I would go )

There certainly are a bunch of ‘cute’ scenes post holy-tomb scene and under the assumption that Edelgard is this my-way-or-the-highway type of person that many have her pegged as I can see how they might think that it “makes no sense” but that’s really down to wanting her not tp step outside of that idea they have of her. I mean even supervillains have silly everyday situations. Bin Laden loved Disney Movies, Hitler loved his dogs. By itself that has nothing to do with morality or likeability. It’s just being human. Supervillains blush, not because they’re not villains, but because they have blood vessels in their faces. It’s only logical that once you get close to someone and get them to trust you, you get to see more of their silly or vulnerable sides. It’s the same with Rhea. (except that the same people argue that having personable vulnerable sides at all makes Rhea good s of course it causes some cognitive dissonance when Edelgard also has them. I’ve yet to see ppl calling “waifuism” on Rhea (whom I would consider a full-fledged villain), and they shouldn’t - it’s characterization.) Same with ppl calling Edelgard a “manchild” for liking stuffed animals and sweets. She’s actually very mature and adult for her age, having some interests that aren’t super high-minded is just realistic and if you looked at her as a full 3D person who can have more than one trait you’d see that. 

This also goes with that tendency of holding up AM as the gold standard complaining about the lack of AM-like plot that they completely miss the different but equally compelling character arcs in VW and CF. That’s not a lack of arc, that IS the arc, it’s just a different arc: We get to see this tough, in-control high-minded character who’d completely given up on the normal life she wanted so much and resigned herself to never being understood finding out that she is very much still capable of normalcy and humanity and finding friendship and love and I think that’s beautiful. It’s my jam. 

And it’s meaningful precisely because it’s a change from only seeing the tough leader guise otherwise. Complaining about that is like complaining about getting to see Claude’s more wistful, dreamy, benevolent, not-entirely self-interest side in VW or claiming that the writing would be better if he were just a straight-up selfish trickster. Actually, if you removed their heroic traits you’d end up with a lot more generic characters. You’d simply get every wild card trickster ever, and every “Nietzschean” villain ever.  It’s the fact that they’re unconventional heroes that makes Claude and Edelgard so unique, compelling and interesting. If you like conventional heroes, Dimitri is right here. Your basic heroic fantasy ‘rightful king returns/ soft peace loving hero’, plus your basic jrpg guilt-ridden angsty protagonist. I mean there’s good reason that these character archetypes are popular. Plus he’s especially well-executed and recontextualized by the contrast to the others, but there he is, enjoy him! We’re not stopping you. 

It’s really Seteth who came up short arc wise. You could have given him an arc, the potential was there, he essentially transistions from protecting himself and his family to taking on his family’s heroic quest and rising up to that, but he doesn’t get like, a scene reflecting on that. Or you could’ve sent them on some mission to actually curb some corrupt cardinals etc, shown them actually reforming the church and realizing that it wasn’t all perfect, after all he very much knows that Rhea herself wasn’t all perfect. 

For all that much of media is obsessed with making characters “hot”, the truth is that if people like them for any reason, they will find them hot anyways, regardless of whether that was the intention. (unless the people in question are aroace, or the character is a literal, realistic prepubescent child)

You don’t have to “make”  a character hot for ppl to find them so.

[battlestar-royco]

let’s talk about tropes

here’s a little (little?!) post on tropes, as promised!

some tropes i hate and why i hate them

love triangles: this one’s pretty simple and obvious. love triangles are unrealistic and toxic. they romanticize emotional cheating, and they cause nasty ship wars in fandoms, especially when two of the points in the triangle are women. often, the “losing” point of the triangle is a one-dimensional throwaway character who either gets killed off or accepts their fate and steps back for the “winner” to take over. this dynamic can get especially problematic when the “loser” is a woc and the “winner” is white, when the “loser” is an lgbtq+ character, and/or when the “loser” has no purpose other than to create drama for two other fleshed out characters. the character often ends up being hated for bad writing and “getting in the way” of the endgame ship. yikes. the only valid resolution to love triangles, imo, is a polyamorous relationship!!!

girl hate: it’s rare to see nice friendships and romances between women, and often this trope is used to drive an unnecessary wedge between two female characters who would have otherwise been great friends. i don’t mind when two women/girls are in conflict with one another for an interesting reason, but i absolutely hate when the conflict is based on something stereotypical and boring. the “girl hate” conflict is always based on something misogynistic, unrealistic, and/or stupid--like a man, looks, sexual practices, or a contrived competition. this is especially gross when the men in the story act as the voices of reason in the conflict, patronizing the women and teaching them how to be nice and use logic.

“strong female characters”: many writers mistake “strong” characters for characters who employ violence, sassiness, and masculine attributes to get what they want. I’m so over it. all I want is nuanced representation of women that doesn’t reduce them to a love interest or a sex object who looks down on other women. strength comes in many forms, and everyone defines it and identifies with it differently.

miscommunication: this has to be one of the laziest forms of prolonging drama, when two characters are fighting because of something that could easily be solved if they were locked in a room together for five minutes.

incest/incest-adjacent romances: this should go without saying, but we’re for some god-awful reason going through a period where incestuous relationships/fake-outs (ie, you’re in love with him? too bad he’s your brother. oh wait, it’s revealed that he’s not!/you two are blood related but you either never met or you went through a period of separation, so that means you can fall in love) are heavily romanticized or used to create extra drama, and it’s just unnecessary and not cute. i think authors use this to add some sort of edge or uniqueness to their writing, but it’s just so toxic and a complete turn-off for me.

aesthetic oppression: (term inspired by and similar to “aesthetic conflict,” thanks kat) when an author throws in some sort of oppression that is experienced by people in real life, but they either don’t address the oppression thoroughly or they only use it to add some sort of edge to their story and further a character’s romance, death, redemption arc, etc. for example, the homophobia in GOT season 6, which reduced loras to a walking stereotype of a gay man before he was subjugated by the church sept and blown up, and the patriarchy in ACOTAR that only exists to show how feminist rhysand is.

boys/men fighting, having tantrums, or expressing themselves through violence: it’s fine for male characters to fight every once in a while, but i just hate that this seems to be exclusively employed with male characters and it is used as a solution or reaction to problems when realistically, men are much more nuanced. men cry. they might be alone or in front of others. they might cry into their pillow or on a friend’s shoulder. fictional men add violence and anger to their sadness because the authors don’t want to emasculate them, but that’s a stupid goal and crying doesn’t affect someone’s gender. smashing your belongings when you are upset is unhealthy and potentially dangerous, and so is physically fighting others over trivial or patriarchal issues (ie a woman) when conversation could be/is probably much more compelling and effective. it’s important to show men that anger isn’t always the first emotion to feel under duress and that they don’t have to express their feelings by punching walls or throwing their belongings across the room. (also?! practically? YOU’RE RUINING YOUR OWN FUCKING STUFF AND/OR YOUR ROOMMATE/FRIEND/PARTNER’S STUFF, YOU ASSHOLE.)

sexy immortals: immortality can be used in clever and entertaining ways, but i feel like a lot of the immortals i’ve been seeing lately run in the same vein as the twilight vampires, which is to say: unearthly beautiful (aka conventionally attractive), overly sexy (aka stalking a love interest for the sake of “attraction”), apparently 16-25 years old (aka accessible to grown women who read/write ya).

uninvolved parents or non-existent guardian figures: sometimes young characters don’t have parents and that’s fine; some of my favorite books are about characters with one parent or no parents. but i still feel like we’re coming out of a period where it was very popular to kill off the parents (especially moms) at the beginning or before the story starts. i really want to see more exploration of characters with parents, or at least see the characters without parents make significant relationships with adults or react appropriately to the loss of their parents.

one-off character deaths: when a character enters one chapter or episode of a book/show just to immediately die for cheap emotional manipulation. this character is also sooooo often a marginalized person, and it’s super predictable and tired. try harder, author/screenwriter!

some tropes i love and why i love them

special snowflake/chosen one: I can’t explain it. I know it’s so cliche and one of the most hated ones out there, but I love when this trope is done right. I’m not a big fan of the chosen ones who have a special destiny, especially if the mc is a white boy, because that’s been done a million times before. but I’m a sucker for that one character who comes upon an unexpected special ability/object/creature or connection to a force of good/evil/nature and has to contend with that. They’ve been Chosen and they’re completely unprepared, and it’s gonna change their life trajectory and relationships and maybe even political climate.

woobies!!!: I feel like this trope is so underrated and it’s one of my favorites of all time. I absolutely love rooting for that one character who’s too good for any of the shit they’ve been through and Deserves Better^TM, but they manage to survive and grow against all odds.

found family: i love that authors are expanding the concept of family and unconventional narratives about love. the found family trope is so charming and relatable to many readers, and it’s great to see seemingly contrary characters come together to find a loving home together that isn’t necessarily romantic.

soft characters: it’s rare (though increasingly less rare, fortunately) to find soft boys, aka male characters who are compassionate, funny, kind, pensive, and/or quiet instead of brash, loud, violent, and angry. i know so many boys and men who fall all along the spectrum of masculinity, and it would be great to see more characters who represent that, especially because male characters are typically forced to express their masculinity in one way. i also absolutely love seeing women being equally as soft and kind--with the exception of ASOIAF!sansa, i feel like this kind of character has been cast aside for the sassy, rebellious, empowered^TM female character who isn’t like other girls and wields a bunch of weapons. i’d really like to see more female characters whose strengths come from empathy, intelligence, and emotion.

unique relationships within a friend group/ensemble: this one is marginally related to my love of found families. not only do i really like tight, strong friend groups, but i also like when each of the friends within that group has a different and compelling dynamic (hostile, romantic, friendly, tragic, whatever may have you) that can carry a scene or an arc. unique relationships between all the characters in an ensemble adds so much dimensionality to a story.

complex guardian figures: this mostly applies to ya, but i think it can also be said for many adult books and tv shows. adult characters often get flattened or sidelined for romance or action plots when in reality almost everyone has parent/guardian relationships, and these relationships are the source of so much complexity. that complexity may mean love, found family, anger, patronization, manipulation, and more, and all these things will be expressed differently based on the characters in question. for example, look at the difference between eleven and hopper from stranger things and harry and dumbledore from harry potter. hopper and dumbledore are so different and each of them carry darkness and baggage that comes out on the kids for better and worse. bonus points if the guardian is a woman, because these types of relationships between girls and women are relatively rare to the ones between boys and men.

anti-heroes/anti-villains: i think this is another one that goes without explaining. we’re all the hero of our own story, after all. if an author can successfully convince me to root for a character who i know is wrong but believes they’re in the right, or for a character who does the wrong things for the right reasons, there’s a good chance that i think very highly of that author.

stoic, bitter, angry characters: if there’s one character in the ensemble who has any of these traits, there’s a good chance they’ll be my favorite, especially if that character is a woman. usually this character’s journey is about what makes them vulnerable and how they become close with the most unlikely companions or form a special relationship with a foil character. it makes the audience feel like we’re being let in on a secret, specifically about that character.

and that’s about it! my inbox is always open to talk more in depth about any of these and more, so let me know. thanks so much for 700, you all are great :D

[cherrymoonvol6]

i binge watched all of skam españa s1 yesterday for the first time (cause i didn't really care about any of the remakes until the skam in my first language went for a wlw season, which FUCK YEAH) so here are a couple (or more) thoughts about it:

inés was... uf. a straight up savage. like i really saw how much she hated eva.

i love that the stairs became a regular, particular location for eva and jorge. it really felt unique for them and made their relationship stand out for me in the remakes.

i thought this too while watching s2 but the boy squad interactions feel SO genuine. i really felt like watching my own classmates talking, like they got everything about teenager boys' interactions down. and yay the whole group doesn't look like a bunch of instagram models together! probably my fave thing about skames

i LOVE all the changes they did. the only remake i saw beside this was skam france, which felt like the original in almost every way except that the original was superior in literally everything. watching it was almost like a recap of og s1 but ten times worst. but skam españa had a lot of interesting and good changes that had me legitimately wondering what could happen next

i was really sold on noreva for this season. like nora really proves to be a great friend!!! i dislike that every noreva interaction after the cristian scandal was like... eva self-pitying and saying no one likes her and nora being like :/ and comforting her in every way possible, like i don't remember that og eva was so annoying when the shit hit the fan??? but besides of that nora and evas friendship felt really nice and genuine

viri really got on my nerves this season despite not being overly hateful towards amira. i don't think she earned her place in the girl squad but i hope they prove me wrong lmao

i like that the girls really feel like the losers of the school. because they don't look like supermodels. and i saw eva's no makeup face with acne at times which made me so happy??? bc it's not often we get teenagers without super clear skin, which is bullshit. so that was cute!

but speaking about that... idk how i feel about cris being casted with this girl who resembles no physical characteristics to the og chris aside being white. og chris was pretty much a one dimensional character whose only purpose was to react exactly like the other ones and throw a shallow phrase there and there, and in that sense this cris felt much more fleshed out, which i like. but especially knowing cris is the host of s2, it makes me feel like they didn't want to flesh out a fat, non-conventionally attractive character in a wlw season and instead went for an actress who's easily the prettiest one in the bunch. thinking we could've gotten a much more physically relatable character for such an important season for me makes me feel sad and frustrated. not to give irene shit cause she has the acting range! but yeah. not really a fan of that.

my fav change was perhaps how they handled the penetrators sweater thing. cause every remake feels like they make a similar version of the sweater without never really explaining what are the penetrators about, but skames handled it really well? like the herpes thing is gross af but it also felt funny lmao. and the vaginal herpes thing means they skipped the "i think im pregnant" drama which i LOVE cause i hated that part lmao.

i don't really connect with amira at all cause... me and religion are not the best partners yikes. but like... everyone gave amira so much shit for her religion all the time. like i physically cringed at some moments bc the girls were too hard on her. having watched s2 i think it's a nice buildup to her season, tho. like amira was way more sweeter than what she should've been imo!

connecting with any eva besides og eva is... so hard to me? i can't help but see her like a secondary character everywhere. eva in this season had a bit to it and i especially felt it bc they were trying to develop the others' relationship as well (viri and alejandro, nora and alejandro, cris and hugo, etc). the actress (idk her name rip) is really good as well, she really conveyed that eva feeling super great and her emotions felt really raw and real

my impressions of alejandro ranked from thinking he's a kinda decent fuckboy, to being genuinely surprised at him apologizing at viri by himself, to absolutely hating him when he said he won't take a no for answer. and fuck eva for laughing at that, too. that shit ain't cute and that's my main problem with noorhelm. but anyways, with alejandro moving on with inés on s2 i felt like that bit was changed so. so maybe i won't hate that bitch as much in the nora season, who knows. (also i read a couple people saying this alejandro is the most handsome william and i agree, like i really could fall for this bitch for a couple of minutes)

it's sad that lucas and viri were the weakest actors in the season, particularly bc i liked what they did with lucas, having him realize he's gay before meeting spanish!even and come out to his friends on his own. like lucas' actor has two facial expressions on this season and viri is just.... ugh. also lucas coming out now probably means he'll find his even as a background character in other season, which is cool bc i don't think lucas' actor will have the acting range to host an entire season by himself

and??? those are it??? i liked it way more than i thought i would. i have my complaints but i think they handled a couple things better than the og and from start to finish it felt very different to what the og did while keeping the important bits. so... 7/10! good.

[paladinquen]

Thoughts on APH fic writing, common characterisations and pair dynamics

This is a long personal ramble about exploring societal biases and pushing back against them by experimenting with fanfic. Some of the fics I’m talking about here were never posted haha. I dunno, maybe they were personal. You may read or ignore (or read halfway and ignore). Not sure why I’m thinking about this today.

I was looking through my Google drive today and reading some stuff that I started and abandoned - Hetalia stuff from WAY before I got into NedCan as the SHIP ABOVE ALL SHIPS for me. Omg some of the stuff I wrote, but I did notice some interesting things...

I experimented a lot, but mostly did AUs because I also wanted to explore the dynamics within my favorite pairings if I changed certain major assumptions. Now when I pair characters, I believe that I pair them in any shape, universe or form - canon, AU, M/M, F/M, F/F, genderfluid etc (I’m not really into alpha/beta/omega AUs so I can’t really make a call on that), supernatural, space AUs, etc. But as a bit of a personal social experiment, I wanted to see how society has entrenched certain assumptions in me about relationships. I did this by...writing about space (Star Trek AU, the characters as different alien races), by looking at which character the fandom tended to ‘feminize’ and switching that up (so for PruAus for example, where if anyone is suddenly a Nyo counterpart, it’s usually Austria who is feminized) and seeing if I could keep the dynamic and all the things I loved about that pairing the same. 

It’s easier with aliens than it is with societal assumptions about gender. This surprised me but shouldn’t have, though it was interesting to explore what I personally had to fight against in my own head (how characters interacted with each other if one of them was a woman instead, and with Hetalia it’s usually M/M...sometimes it didn’t make a difference...sometimes it was a world of a difference...and that bothered me...so how could I recognize it to do something about it?). 

By far the most unpopular Hetalia fic I’ve ever written was a Fem Prussia / Austria thing about them meeting on a train. I’m not surprised that it’s not popular because there’s no real resolution and all they do is talk. They met in an in-between phase of their lives, so there was no place for them to go at that time. In the scheme of fandom, it didn’t have ‘popular/cute’ written all over it, but it was selfish writing, something I had to write for myself at the time due to circumstances. I decided to write Prussia as a woman because other than the fact that Nyo Prussia is one of the more conventionally ‘sexy’ anime women in Hetalia, Prussia is often interpreted as the hyper masculine one, especially in PruAus pairings. On the flip side, Austria is interpreted as a caricature of femininity (really can’t blame the fans for this as Hetalia itself is a huge joke about caricatures). Julchen was in the Army, or at least on her way to joining the Army, while Roderich was a composer. But rereading the fic now, it’s clear that I have failed in many ways to write these two exactly the same as I would have if I were writing about two men or two women. 

It was also Fem Spain / Austria. I wanted to explore this idea of Austria being unabashedly him, petty, elegant and obsessed with music...but still strong in character (I mean, he’s based off a nation that was an Empire after all), and still having some quality that made him fairly irresistible. Admittedly I chose to write Fem Spain because Spain is also one of those characters that is more often interpreted as highly masculine. I had planned on exploring N. Italy/ Fem Germany in that universe too, but never continued in that universe.

I kind of tried this again later on when i was into NedCan, mostly because I was wondering why half the NedCan fanfics on AO3 featured Ned/Fem Can. I mean, I love NedCan in all its forms but I didn’t see why my boy Canada’s qualities had to be assumed to be more easily interpreted as feminine (I mean I know why, but I didn’t necessarily agree with it). So I tried writing Fem/Genderfluid Ned with Can but in a Dutch golden age/pirate AU and...well the AU itself was fun but the story was very time consuming. (I also don’t know how clear it is that Ned is Genderfluid?)

For as much as I love APH Canada, I seem to have an extraordinarily difficult time writing him, which was mostly why that particular fic went on hiatus. I’m not so sure why it’s so hard to write him. I knew what drove Anneke, but Matthew? He was so torn between family and self and Anneke, without anyone asking him to be that even I froze up, unable to decide what to do next. I suppose I had to stop at that point because I was in a similar place (still in a similar place) personally, feeling torn between many things, and trying to choose self, but not really being able to fully be consumed by that decision. It’s hard to choose yourself, it’s so crazy how hard it is to do that. 

So I’m not trying to make all my couples heterosexual or gay, but I’m kind of using them as a means of exploring ways of fighting back against my personal biases. Hetalia characters lend themselves to interpretation because there’s so much unsaid for all the caricature and stereotype. When I wrote Unity, people thanked me for not writing Finland as a weak character (he’s like...the scariest character, arguably, in that whole fic). Romano in my football AU is just a child but shows so much inner strength even if his outer strength is not as demonstrative. But frankly, I don’t quite see how *any* of the nations could be perceived as weak I mean...nations are nations for a reason. Personified, every nation/character is a complex marriage of good and evil fighting for a unique identity amongst the others and isn’t that just what being human is? 

[magicaltrapslover-blog]

Compiled Web Forums On Magical Traps (Mahou Shounen)

Greetings!

I've Googled and Binged this search term and constantly end up with scattered partial and often mislabeled references. I'm seeking any listings of boys/men who transform into Magical-Girls/Traps in Anime or Manga to compile a complete one. If anyone can direct me to such listings I'd be most grateful.

Thanks for any tips!

Location: Two Steps from Hell.

Kampfer - I'm a bit skeptical to calling this a true magical girl show but it has elements of that. It's largely a comedy.

Gonna be the Twin-Tail! - I actually haven't watched this show so I can't provide any thoughts.

There's also a show this season that is what you're looking for but I can't recall its name. . .

Ohg, there's also KoreZom (known affectionately as Korean Zombie Desk Car to fans) which is more a parody of the magical girl genre. It's not exactly a Magical-Girl/Trap thing but crossdressing (purposefully!) as one.

Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)

The one this season is Magical Girl Raising Project.

There's also Is This A Zombie? which may be the most infamous case since he still looks like a guy but is dressed like a magical girl.

Location: Frisco, TX

EmbraceMe wrote:

I don't know if the moderators will want us to post information/thoughts on the shows but I know of two (maybe a bit more). In the case they do want us to avoid listing, I'll edit this post later.

It's fine. It's not like we see very many requests for "recommendations, so opinionate away! Back to top  

DuskyPredator It...it's not like I post for you or anything!

Location: Brisbane, Australia

No mention yet of Cute High Earth Defense Club Love!, a parody anime which has a group of boys transform into girly magical girl like forms?

As mentioned above there was Kampfer and Gonna be the Twin Tail which had gender swapping with a transformation. Plus the big gimmick mentioned of with the main character of Kore wa Zombieturning into a magical girl with the costume to get power, but still looking like a dude.

I might count some jokes in Baka Test of a male character an magical girl transformation (plus guy who looks like a girl). I can't remember if it specifically had some, but I know that there is some crossdressing cute boy character and parodies including magical girls in Ebiten, but someone else would have to confirm it. Not sure if you would count it, but Gatchaman Crowds has some similarities to magical girls, although a bit more shounen, and Rui is a male character who almost always dresses as a girl. Chuunibyou's second season had a male character dress up as a magical girl, being noted as pretty I think. The short form Himegoto has a lot crossdressing, a male character does get dressed as a magical girl. The title male character from Hayate the Combat Butler has been made into a magical girl before.

There are a few others I am aware of that have crossdressing but not necesarilly anything that looks like a magical girl, or another that has a magical girl like transformation sequence but does not end up looking particularly feminine. Back to top  

maxlance

Thanks to you all! Your recommendations are just the leads I'm looking for to create a complete summarized list of this niche genre so don't doubt how accurate your suggestions were! You're hitting in the ballpark! Thanks all! 

Back to top

Dessa

 loathe to admit it, since it was such a horrible change from the manga, and Sensei herself hated it as well, but Sailormoon Stars.

The male pop idols the Starlights transform into female Senshi (note that their original form is female, the male human forms are the false forms). Back to top  

Newbie9

I vaguely recall one where there's a guy who's being chased by enemies of a warrior princess who he's the reincarnation of but not sure if she was magical. Back to top

Chiibi

Dessa wrote:

I'm loathe to admit it, since it was such a horrible change from the manga, and Sensei herself hated it as well, but Sailormoon Stars.

The male pop idols the Starlights transform into female Senshi (note that their original form is female, the male human forms are the false forms).

Personally, I think the Stars anime arc was WAY better than the one in the manga. Everybody had more personality and the last battle was just amazing.

What's horrible about that change? Unless you're a yuri fan. Which I'm not.

Three women tricking EVERYONE into thinking they are a boy band simply by crossdressing makes zero sense....besides, that's the opposite of what girls like. lol  

Location: China (Searching for Jusenkyo)

@OP: Since magical girl transformations are usually magical, are you interested in anime about boys that become female while they are magical girls? There are a couple manga titles (or perhaps more) fitting this description but in one of them the author never specifically reveals whether he actually becomes female or not. Back to top  

maxlance

Past wrote: @OP: Since magical girl transformations are usually magical, are you interested in anime about boys that become female while they are magical girls? There are a couple manga titles (or perhaps more) fitting this description but in one of them the author never specifically reveals whether he actually becomes female or not.

I'm avoiding from limiting the field and taking in the total concept that if the male appears to the public as a magic girl, whether via real transformation (finding surprisingly beautiful guy into magic girl henshin sequences like Twintails) or trapping it, it goes. Granted, there're more difficult plot reasons just why a guy would super-trap it though I do dimly recall reading from far back - and I'm sure the anime concerned was "Princess Knight" -- that one of its original concepts was a martial artist/swordsman boy who does Zorro trap style to evade any suspicion. (It harkens to my Eng Lit days when I learned the original Victorian-age manuscript of the "Blue Lagoon" novel had sibling main characters, not more conventionally palatable cousins...)

If there were a m-f counterpart to "1/2 Prince", that'd make one nice TG "henshin" show with more serious plots and deep characters; with VRMMO anime so hot I'm surprised this character device hasn't played out more by now like in Log Horizon. There're quite a few transgender henshin one scene gags in a few older anime that's very difficult to catch -- it'd mean literally viewing every anime made because such scenes were never "indexed" for the web. But whether via magic or VR, it'd like to see a TG henshin story played straight that would involve all kinds of personal and social complications than shy them.

Anyway thanks for the input!! Back to top

Past

Location: China (Searching for Jusenkyo) 

maxlance wrote: Anyway thanks for the input!! When you said TG it made me think of Jun from Happiness! While I don't want to say that any fanservicey or silly show about magical girls with traps represents the transgender experience in any way, Jun is without a doubt a boy who'd rather be a girl. In one episode where Jun is magically transformed into a girl it basically answers the question "What would happen if the prettiest girl in school, who is actually a boy actually became a girl?" Besides how could we not mention Jun Watarase in this thread? One of the epic traps in anime before traps became a thing. Back to top  

maxlance

Past wrote: maxlance wrote: Anyway thanks for the input!! When you said TG it made me think of Jun from Happiness! While I don't want to say that any fanservicey or silly show about magical girls with traps represents the transgender experience in any way, Jun is without a doubt a boy who'd rather be a girl. In one episode where Jun is magically transformed into a girl it basically answers the question "What would happen if the prettiest girl in school, who is actually a boy actually became a girl?" Besides how could we not mention Jun Watarase in this thread? One of the epic traps in anime before traps became a thing.

Good tip! Your lead that Jun did a magical girl gig (if only briefly in a OVA) made the list! Personally, I really believe that was really meant as a trial balloon to such a spin-off... By real-life experience I can see a trap being so insufferably cute that he becomes as popular to boys as girls. I recall a mention in Brazil where the teen trap was a mall lizard who got treated to movies and free video parlor games by schoolboys and it was (supposedly) a totally platonic date thrill thing. I think we're going to see similar here as social tolerances keep rising. Also your mention also prompts me to wish a show with a kind of "magical-girl guy" secret/clueless alter-life romance angle to stir the pot with, or even a club of magical-girl traps (secretly of ages up and down the scale) who uniquely have other things to do besides bumping another off. Back to top

Newbie9

At least one in The Magical Girl Raising Project. New. Back to top

Location: China (Searching for Jusenkyo)

Newbie9 wrote: maxlance wrote: or even a club of magical-girl traps (secretly of ages up and down the scale).

Works 4 me!! I think this is kind of what Mayo elle Otokonoko was supposed to be. A proposed anime series that never saw the light of day other than a PV that came with the opening song release. As far as I can tell it is either about a school comprised entirely of traps or has a trap club and permits male students to wear the girl's uniform but doesn't seem to have any sort of magical element.

Btw the song is totally cute and sung by the same person who sung the ending songs for other shows featuring traps such as Happiness! Otoboku and Steins;Gate.

Chuckbait wrote: At least one in The Magical Girl Raising Project. New.

Great catch! Thanks! La Pucelle about personified the ideal magical girl-guy philosophy. It's a shame La Pucelle skipped a Henshin sequence. (I'm seeking well done and tasteful guy into magic chick Henshin scenes on the side too.) I like Magical Girl Raising for bringing up the point that if the worlds inside anime/manga truly reflected their populations' sentiments and fantasies that there ought be a heck of lot more magical girl-guys than they portray. (Or maybe Kyubey doesn't know the sex switch trick like Favv does!  ) Back to top

maxlance

Past wrote: I think this is kind of what Mayo elle Otokonoko was supposed to be. A proposed anime series that never saw the light of day other than a PV that came with the opening song release. As far as I can tell it is either about a school comprised entirely of traps or has a trap club and permits male students to wear the girl's uniform but doesn't seem to have any sort of magical element.

Btw the song is totally cute and sung by the same person who sung the ending songs for other shows featuring traps such as Happiness! Otoboku and Steins;Gate.

Thanks for the really useful heads' up tip even though Mayo doesn't appear magical. It just seems peculiar to me that when yuri and yaoi and even sibsex are so pervasive in manga and anime that there's relatively so little dedicated work or even fan forums in the traps cuter than girls genre in general. Seems to me there's just as much meat for creative comedy and drama and offbeat variations there, especially when you include the VRMMO realm which kind of straddles reality and magical. (I have a gut feeling that SAO [and Log Horizon] willfully nipped any VR-trap storylines in the bud in the very first ep which I think was a mistake, as Magical Girl Raising shows can work well). An aside; I wish VR people educated people more that just attaching goggles to something optical doesn't make it "VR". There are pre-Xmas sales here in NYC of View-Masters and even binoculars being sold as VR devices.) Well, here's wishing for a anime trap convention OVA! Back to top

DuskyPredator It...it's not like I post for you or anything!

Location: Brisbane, Australia

maxlance wrote: Seems to me there's just as much meat for creative comedy and drama and offbeat variations there, especially when you include the VRMMO realm which kind of straddles reality and magical. (I have a gut feeling that SAO [and Log Horizon] willfully nipped any VR-trap storylines in the bud in the very first ep which I think was a mistake, as Magical Girl Raising shows can work well).

The second season of Log Horizon actually had something interesting with the character spoiler[Tetra]who could come as a surprise, but some like myself picked up the clues, that the characterspoiler[most like a magical girl, was originally a man]. Although the series kind of was always on the cusp of saying something. Back to top  

Newbie9 DuskyPredator wrote:

The second season of Log Horizon actually had something interesting with the character spoiler[Tetra] who could come as a surprise, but some like myself picked up the clues, that the character spoiler[most like a magical girl, was originally a man]. Although the series kind of was always on the cusp of saying something.

Yea, missed that! Luv s/he! Are VR traps like that way too flirty to really be straight? Back to top

maxlance

Greetings; I checked out DuskyPredator's Log Horizon tip and must say she-he is an interesting character, which brings up the fascinating psychology of how long and what a soul sealed up a different avatar over time will begin evolving into beyond their original personalities, maybe even becoming a new "backstory" to that character. To more directly answer Newbie, I'd guess the Log Horizon character in question was likely originally gay because I can't imagine someone else teasing and wildly flirting guys like that, though as I mentioned over time maybe that avatar and its social standing there will shape a new persona. Not really a magical girl-guy issue -- unless we have one trapped in Log Horizon to start with. VRMMO is the one "reality" way to have true magical girls and magical girl-guys. So the list goes on. Back to top

Errinundra Moderator

Joined: 14 Jun 2008 Posts: 4231 Location: Melbourne, Oz Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2016 4:49 pm

I've just watched this show. Birdy the Mighty has a school boy who shares his body with an alien female law enforcer. Normally he has the boy's appearance but, when necessary, transforms into the girl in order to deal with sundry villains. The show combines action and comedy. The transformations cause confusion for his family and his prospective girlfriend. They two personalities also hold internal conversations.

I haven't seen it yet, but I assume the remake - Birdy the Mighty Decode - has the same premise. Back to top    

ChibiKangaroo Birdy the Mighty is quite good. I'm not sure if it falls in this category just because i think boy + girl merging into one being or sharing a body is kind of its own thing, but it is similar.

Thanks for this head's up! Though not magic related the gender swapping aspect makes a list. Errinundra wrote: I've just watched this show. Birdy the Mighty has a school boy who shares his body with an alien female law enforcer. Normally he has the boy's appearance but, when necessary, transforms into the girl in order to deal with sundry villains. The show combines action and comedy. The transformations cause confusion for his family and his prospective girlfriend. They two personalities also hold internal conversations.

I haven't seen it yet, but I assume the remake - Birdy the Mighty Decode - has the same premise.

Thanks, a good mention, though not exactly a magical-girl theme, more like the "science girl" trap that's Twintails, but gender duality theme makes the honorable mention list. I'm kind of getting inspired to try doing a magical trap short myself, only I'm a lousy artist! Back to top

GoddessOtome I was gonna say La Pucelle from Magical Girl Raising Project.

Newbie9 GoddessOtome wrote: I was gonna say La Pucelle from Magical Girl Raising Project.

You mean Magical Girl RAZING Project!  

Happy New Year All!

I need help in an accurate translation for the titles of my listings for magical girl-guys and virtual girls/women. I'd appreciate any sage knowledge of whether the Japanese term "Mahou Shounen" actually literally translates out as either "male magical girls" or "males who transform into magical girls," and if there's a more accurate one please tip me. I found quite a few "male magical girls" are actually traps in magical girl guise which to me isn't quite the real deal though legit enough in topic.

Also for a parallel listing this topic has inspired, I'm seeking Japanese terms for "VR women who are men" and "VR trap" or "VR TG". I'm trying to discriminate in that you probably wouldn't qualify a male trapped as a female avatar in Log Horizon as actually being a trap which to me is more of a "lark adventure" situation (as originally happened in the 1st SAO ep) than a involuntary trapped "TG" situation as occurs in LH.

Thanks for any assist! Back to top

DuskyPredator It...it's not like I post for you or anything!

Joined: 10 Mar 2009 Posts: 11138 Location: Brisbane, Australia

Well "mahou shoujo" is literally "magic" and "girl", so "mahou shounen" should just be "magical boy". I think that I have seen it used to refer to a character like Chrono from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, who is really a male version of what the titular character is. I think that if a male character turned into a girl they would be a full magical girl. But I still feel tempted to call Ayumu a magical girl despite his gender not changing.

@DuskyPredator

Some things in regards to KoreZom, I don't think they referred to themselves as Magical Girls (mahou shoujo). Instead the term was "masou shoujo" and the English equivalent translation of it, from the fansubs I've seen, was Magiclad Girl. So, yes, he's not a magical girl in many senses since he just, err, wears their garments.

@maxlance

I don't know of any Japanese equivalence for the terms you're looking for but the term I've seen used in papers and such is "gender swapping*" so hopefully that will aid you in finding a Japanese equivalence of the term.

*This terms refers to playing as the opposite gender in games.

EmbraceMe wrote: @DuskyPredator

Some things in regards to KoreZom, I don't think they referred to themselves as Magical Girls (mahou shoujo). Instead the term was "masou shoujo" and the English equivalent translation of it, from the fansubs I've seen, was Magiclad Girl. So, yes, he's not a magical girl in many senses since he just, err, wears their garments.

Oh, you're just splitting hairs here.  

Ayumu *is* a magical girl in every sense of the term. He's got a bloody HENSHIN SEQUENCE. Back to top

maxlance Greetings all and thanks for the feedback!

Can those in the lingo know straighten me out on phase usage? Google Translate is almost useless in providing me what "trap" (as in crossdresser) is In Japanese, never mind the full term "Magical Trap", or "Virtual Woman Man" like a guy's fem-VR avatar in LH, unless they have to be made up which ought be fun. Maybe some another language might be plastic enough to possess such terms! My listing does distinguish between true biologically changed guys into real magical girls (like Twintails) and those becoming "magical traps." I am also coming around to accepting fully mind swapped magical girl dudes as the real deal (say a brother mind-swaps his sis's to kindle her magical bod) if the situation calls it, along with multiple personality magical girl traps as being legit as well. Another category I might consider splitting off are "techno-magical magical traps" as in Twintails, as opposed pure magic magical traps as La Purcell in Magical Girl Raising. Supposedly there's a Sailor Moon magical girl guy in the works but have to dig that out.

Thanks for your input! Back to top

[becoming-bianca-blog]

Module 3: Identity is so confusing

Writing this blog post 3 weeks left in this semester, I am honestly SO proud of myself. I think I managed to do the impossible. Impossible, that’s how I would describe Module 3 :D (that’s a sarcastic smiley face, clearly I’m still recovering from that long test)

Often mentioning the theories of identity formation in Module 2, this module offered a more relational perspective on identity. Describing identity as also a product of socio-cultural factors including ones peer and parental relationships the and deepening this with 

This module was very relevant, especially in its discussion and dissection of gender stereotypes and the importance of consent and proper use of the internet, so even if I think I did not do well in my test I know that I learned something. 

The first topic was on identity development in family relationships. With this in mind, I will be constructing my own individuation timeline as well as posting a picture of me as a child and now not just to highlight how transient or alive identity is. 

Me as a child: 

Me now: 

From my choice of photos alone, you’ll see how much has changed. When I was a child, it was easy to think of my self as just an extension of my parents who needed to eat, walk, talk, go to school, and look cute. Now, it’s hard to think of myself without thinking of my family, my friends, my interests and more as I truly adapt different identities when I am with each of these. 

Next is my individuation timeline as seen below. 

In infancy, my parents saw me as their biggest responsibility and  they could not part from me especially as they had all the resources and means needed to keep me safe and alive. With that, I saw my parents as my sources of life and survival while I, on the other hand, had no coherent sense of self yet— just someone attached to my parents especially my mother. In toddlerhood, I experienced my first individuation. Here, I began to let go of my infantile attachments. I still saw my my parents as great sources of love, support, knowledge, and protection but I knew I did not need them to survive as I could feed myself, use the toilet by myself, and more. With that, I saw myself as the little angel of my parents who always made them happy and I think my parents saw me in that way too. Childhood was no different as I deeply idealised my parents, I saw them as my superheroes, my greatest sources of information, and wanted to be just like my dad. They saw me as their carbon copy often saying things like “just like mommy/daddy.” Thus, I saw myself as an extension of my parents who I needed to obey so I could be rewarded and be perfect just like them. Come adolescence, my second individuation began to unfold. At around 11 years old, I de-idealised my parents and no longer saw them as perfect. With that, I saw myself as unique not just from my parents but also from my siblings. I had different talents, different interests, and values from them so I think my parents were beginning to see me as an individual and not just their puppet. Lastly, as this individuation still continues I am now beginning to see my parents, specifically my mom, as my friend and myself as a work in progress. In terms of how my parents see me, I think my mom sees me as a friend too as she is not afraid to confide in me and I am able to see her vulnerabilities. Together, we talk about boys, school, the past, woes, failures, doubts— stuff I cannot talk to about with my dad, which my mom also says she cannot do sometimes. As my dad is less expressive, I think he still sees me as his baby but I still respect him even if I cannot see him as an equal yet. Thus from this exercise, I saw clearly that I am not my parents. In fact, a healthy parent-child relationship is one where the parent nurtures and supports the child into becoming his or her own person while still humbling them and reminding them to be good. With this in mind, I am willingly going to continue to reconnect and renew my relationship with my parents, talk to them more, and work towards equality so we can have even more meaningful and deep interactions. 

The next topic was on identity construction in peer relationships and digital spaces. With this being said, the best way for me to express all I have learned is through memes :> 

First, my friends. My friends are so important to me and I am so thankful to have them in my life as they never cease to put a smile on my face. Moving to a co-ed school in senior high, my group of friends expanded but I still kept my friends from Woodrose close to me. In these two settings, the common denominator about myself is that I’m the funny one in my friend group as well as the butt of the joke. My girl squad in Woodrose was full of intelligent and supportive girls, we often traded books, had deep conversations, and confided in each other about our doubts, pressures, and failures. They formed the part of my identity that is hardworking, introspective, and empathetic. In Beacon, I met new people who loosened me up a bit and introduced me to different kinds of fun like parties, spontaneous dinners, and odd conversations at Denny’s until 3 AM. There, I could goof around in class especially because of the boys who were always rowdy. With the girls, they introduced me to fashion, boy talk, makeup, and fun self care luxuries like getting a facial while still reminding me that I could be real with them and show sadness, fear, and guilt. They made me the online shopping addict today as well a go-to person for advice, ranting and a hug. They made me see that doing things that were conventionally girly did not mean you were conceited or an airhead and I have become an open-minded and less judgemental person because of them. Now, in college, I brought a lot of my high school friends with me. So these two crowds, the brains and the international school kids (we have all bonded over this) are who I still affiliate with. I have yet to find a new crowd here but I don’t think I would stray from each type of crowd as I do not really wanna step out of my comfort zone. To put this into words, here is a meme: 

With the first meme out of the way, I can proudly post these three low-budget but very accurate memes about my online and offline identity. 

Here, you practically hear me proclaim that I am somewhat of a comedian myself on Facebook where I share the FUNNIEST memes.

Here, I expose what a mess I am on another social media site. On twitter, I am either really really sad or really really ready to preach, be inspirational, and make a change. Nonetheless, my followers are my closest friends and they are endlessly supportive, ready to either cheer me on or cheer me up. Here, I’m more comfortable to reveal my vulnerabilities because my parents and relatives are not on it and I would hate for them to get worried about me. 

To sum this all up, here is a meme on my online vs offline identity:  

Online, I am more unrestrained, showing more of my cheeky and makulit personality, and vocal about a lot of things. Offline, I’m like a sponge that likes to observe, more refined and mahinhin. This describes the shy side of myself when in social situations so I’m thankful for social media as it gives me an avenue to share the side of myself that is loud and crazy but funny to watch. 

The last topic was on gender and sexuality. First, I was able to discover the different facets and faces of my gender through filling out the Genderbread Person. My worksheet is attached below: 

Easily, I can conclude that I am not either/or just like gender. Filling this out, I struggled in the element of gender expression. I suddenly remembered that when I was in Woodrose, my teachers always told me that I slouch like a man and sit like a man. Out of their eyesight, I would respond by assuming an even more male-like stance and I could not help it because I was comfortable that way. When I dress up, my expression depends on my mood. Sometimes I wanna be a girly girl and feel the swing of my dress when I walk and sometimes, I do not care at all and find it more comfortable to dress like a man- I even use my brothers clothes a lot, especially to sleep. These examples alone point to a very important understanding on gender and even sexual orientation  which is that there are truly infinite possibilities. Moreover, being one does not relate to being another so we cannot judge a person on simplistic norms such as how they express themselves. 

I recognize in myself that I am not just one or the other so with this, I know that I have the right to respect all even if society tells me different or I have a hard time understanding. In fact, gender shouldn’t even be something one dissects so much because it is so flexible and has many facets that are independent of eachother. I can even relate this understanding to sex and sexuality.  In gender,  we are conditioned to think that it is always either/or and this extends even to sexuality where as a woman you are either a virgin who is uptight or a slut who is cheap. In both situations, you cannot win and it is hard for me to believe that there are still some people that cannot accept that humans are so complicated and unfit to be reduced to 2 extremes. However, I cannot say that my views are perfect either. I have always adapted a broader view on sexuality, recognizing the plight of the LGBTQ+ community but even then I was scared to question if I was more male than female. In my mind, it was hard to imagine myself or allow myself to be more male-like because of my socialization. When it came to sex, this was even more skewed.  A touchy subject, I came from an Opus Dei exclusive for girls school so sex equaled taboo. Before this class, I never even had an in-depth discussion on sex that attacked all sides, especially one that dared to say that a womqns sexuality is not to be hidden, but instead explored. Before this class, I always succumbed to the women who have sex are sluts belief while still agreeing with the “men are trash” statement. How could I blame the male while clearly perpetrating the culture of victim blaming? Clearly, I had some internalized misogyny and cognitive dissonance that I was able to tap into with the discussion. I now see another side of it, which is that I have been conditioned and socialized to punish women and glorify men for sexual behaviour and expression. In its own nature, there is nothing wrong about and nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to sex. In fact, most of the bad things associated with sex come from a lack of awareness so I know now that it is important to ask the right questions. Such include: what birth control method is best, how to respond to the spread of private nude pics online, what is consent, how do I give consent and more. In terms of self-expression then, I can do whatever I want within the limits of my own comfort. If I think wearing shorts to school is but if I refuse to wear a lace bralette to a bar, that is fine too. It doesn’t mean that if other women do not express themselves, such as in the way they dress, the same way as I do that they are “sluts” or not worthy of the same respect. Simply, this just means we have different modes on self-expression and levels of comfort. 

With all of this being said, I was clearly able to explore the inner nuances of my identity given this module. Nearing the end of the semester, I am so exhausted but am going to try my best to power through it. I think this is the second to the last if not last blog post I have to write before passing the final project. I look forward to reading my past blog posts and see how far I’ve come (including the likely grammatical errors I’ve made as I never proofread these. again, I’m sorry) and if I’ve made any meaningful connections and observations about myself. 

[johnclapperne]

{#TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism?

A man recently found out that I, the completely normal-looking and friendly young woman he had been chatting with, was a feminist.

This must have really shaken him up (I assume he’d never met one of us IRL before), because his next question was:

So you think women should be superior to men?

Naturally my first response was to assume he was kidding and laugh. Because… wut?

But no. This man was deadass serious. I have no idea what kind of people he had been exposed to, but he was completely under the impression that, since gender inequality no longer exists, feminists are trying to oppress men so that we can run the world.

The interesting thing was that this man really believes that since women are paid the same as men (false lol) and we can vote and own land now, so basically… any woman who feels oppressed at this point is just playing the victim card and want everything to be handed to them.

He also seemed to feel very strongly that identifying our movement according to gender is just “divisive” and that we should be focusing on “walking together” rather than “pitting ourselves against the good men trying to help us.”

Sigh.

Anyway, after this conversation turned sour, I got to thinking. Not about him, because he had nothing to offer but privileged nonsense, but about some of the beliefs we was spouting. I hear echoes of his views all the time, from good people who are genuinely struggling to understand why is feminism still a thing again…?

It’s very easy for people (aka people who aren’t actually reading feminist texts or following feminist leaders) to completely misunderstand the goal of feminism. They hear bits and pieces from snarky and inaccurate third-party sources like FOX news or whatever, and come away with the belief that feminism seems stupid, dangerous, or unnecessary.

If you frame it like “women whining about injustice instead of doing something about it” or “women wanting to oppress men,” then yeah, the whole thing is pretty unlikeable. Duh– that’s why so many anti-progressive (right-wing) sources spin it that way!

But those views are based on nothing more than malevolent gossip; a smear campaign designed to invalidate a movement that causes trouble for people who want to maintain the status quo.

That’s why I decided to set a few facts straight, and tackle some basic shit about what I’m fighting for when I say I’m a feminist. Obviously this is a much bigger topic than one essay’s worth, but I’ll do my best.

Q: Why do we still need feminism?

A: Because there is still gender inequality. There is still sexism, and discrimination based on gender, sexuality, and gender presentation. There is still exploitation and oppression based on gender.

Q: What is the goal of feminism?

A: There are many serious legislative and structural issues at the core of the feminist movement, like fighting for access to full reproductive health care and rights, access to affordable and high quality child-care options and paid family leave, an end to sexual exploitation and human trafficking, and fighting for better representation in media/entertainment as well as a more equal percentage of women in elected office, CEO positions, leadership positions.

Not to mention of course the right to not be sexually harassed/assaulted/raped, the right to not experience domestic violence, and equal pay for equal work. Oh, and the right to be LGBTQ or transgender without the barrage of violent and marginalizing fuckery that currently comes with that.

Note: It’s also important to acknowledge the intersections of oppression that cross categories such as race, ability, class, age, weight, etc. Intersectional feminism is about recognizing and fighting the various intersecting systems of power that marginalize and oppress people, because a black woman’s experience is completely different than a white woman’s experience, and a fat woman’s experience is completely different than a thin woman’s experience.

I wish I had more time to tackle the complicated intersectional landscape, but for the purpose of this essay, feminism’s goal is simply to end sexism, gender inequality, and gender bias.

Q: Who is the enemy of feminism?

A: Spoiler alert: it’s not men! Feminism is not anti man. Again, we’re just anti-sexism, anti-discrimination, anti-oppression, and anti-exploitation. The “enemy” is sexism, discrimination based on gender and sexuality, and gender inequality.

Q: What do you mean by sexism and gender inequality?

A: If you’ve never personally experienced gender or sexism inequality, they can be completely invisible.

Wikipedia says:

“Gender inequality refers to unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals wholly or partly due to their gender. It arises from differences in gender roles.”

So here’s the deal: Our culture is obsessed with gender differentiation. Before a baby is even born, we are consumed by the desire to categorize them based on their genitals (which is super creepy if you think about it), and we wrongly identify both sex and gender on a binary. You get to be just one of the two options, and anyone who doesn’t fit into one of those has to just pick whichever is “closest.”

Interestingly, intersex people are born all the time with a variety of unique reproductive organs and genitals that make it hard for them to check the box of either “boy” or “girl.” These people are often surgically altered at birth to make them fit whichever box is most convenient.

Isn’t that pretty fucked up? Like… we have a binary system and these babies don’t fit in with it, so we cut their bodies until they do. Oh, and in case you think this is a super rare occurrence, it’s not: intesex people are born at about the same rate as redheads.

Ok, so I take issue with the way our culture fetishes sex and gender right out the gate, and forces everyone to choose a binary option, but from there it only gets worse! Due to our obsession with gender, we shove gendered clothing, toys, and treatment on our children.

Our implicit gender biases (aka: biases that are below the level of consciousness) get passed on when we praise little girls for being cute, nice, pretty, and well-behaved, and we praise little boys for being smart, strong, fast, and clever. They get passed on when we buy our girls dolls and our boys trucks. They get passed on when we permit our boys to be aggressive and wild, but shame our girls for the same. They get passed on when we permit our girls to be sensitive and emotional, but shame our boys for the same. They get passed on when we put our little girls in dresses that limit movement and have no pockets, teaching her that her body is for looking at, not for doing stuff.

In short, we socialize our children to see their gender as the most fundamental part of their identity, and we teach them how to appropriately perform their gender so that they fit in with our sexist ideas of what gender should be.

It doesn’t get better from there though.

The perceptions we hold of each gender get stronger throughout a person’s life, and we chalk it all up to biology rather than the way we socialize children since before they’re born.

We perceive men as better at math and driving. We perceive women as better at nurturing and childcare. We see men as smart, and women as social. We assume men are better leaders, and women are better at domestic skills. We take for granted that men love sports and women, while women love shopping and makeup. We unconsciously believe men need to feel like useful providers, while women need to feel beautiful and desirable.

In short, most of us internalize the performance of gender that we got stuck with based on our genitals at birth, and apply it both to ourselves and to everyone else. We know that people who break the rules are severely punished and marginalized. Think: a feminine gay man who spends his entire life being shamed for not being “manly” enough, or the way a woman is slut-shamed and victim-blamed if she tempted a helpless man into assaulting her.

We all have implicit gender biases, and women and non-conforming gender individuals get the short end of the stick. Both men and women view men (especially tall, white, conventionally masculine men) as more trustworthy and competent, for example, so it starts to feel completely natural that they hold more positions of leadership, and make more money, and otherwise rule the world.

When we talk about living in a patriarchy, it simply means that this culture was historically built by men, for men, and most of us still view this as the natural order of things due to implicit gender biases that we keep passing on to our children. The patriarchy determines who is suitable for which job positions, who is believable in a trial, who gets access to bodily autonomy, and whose problems matter most.

Q: But… what about biology?

A: Many people really, really want to believe that men and women are each naturally drawn to all the gender roles and gender performance we shove on them, and they use “biology!” to defend their gender-obsessed actions.

First of all, I certainly recognize that there are some inherent differences between men and women beyond genitals, but it’s very difficult to tell the difference between which is nature and which is nurture when it comes to gender. Socialization is powerful shit, and we don’t have a gender-blind control group to see what would happen. (Trust me, I dream of this world often.)

That said, I feel like… if it’s really biology, then nobody should have a problem with us fighting the gender-based socialization. Because that would mean that even without teaching girls to be sexual objects and people-pleasers, they would become that way anyway! And even without teaching boys to feel entitled to women’s attention and bodies, or to repress all of their feelings except anger, that they would become violent, stoic, and emotionally stunted anyway!

I mean really, if biology is so strong, nothing would change if we stopped shoving gender performances down everyone’s throat. So maybe just let us try?

Most importantly though, using the “biology!” response is very rude, because if biology explained all of our gender biases and performances, then we wouldn’t have a feminism movement because nobody would be bothered by anything. But people are, well… bothered.

It’s kinda like how we used to think women weren’t capable of voting, owning land, having jobs, running a mile, being fulfilled without children, or anything else. They used to cry “biology!” to that shit too, and we’ve slowly proved it allllll wrong. When I hear the biology argument, what I hear is that you simply don’t want things to change because the status quo is working for you.

Q: Why do we need to talk so divisively about gender, why can’t we just focus on coming together as humans?

A: It has to be about gender because it’s already about gender. This question, though usually well-intentioned, would be like asking your doctor: why does my treatment have to be all about cancer? Well… because you have cancer, my friend. It would be silly to treat you as if you didn’t have cancer, just because cancer makes you uncomfortable, right? Yeah. That.

When gender is no longer a divisive issue, we’ll stop treating it like one.

But gender determines how people are treated and perceived, what life chances and opportunities they’ll get, what standards they’ll be held to, and how they’ll be encouraged to view their role and identity.

This isn’t healthy for anyone of any gender, but women and non-gender-conforming individuals are disproportionately negatively impacted by both implicit and explicit biases, discrimination, exploitation, and marginalization.

This is why we fight, my friends.

Whew.

Happy Tuesday.

<3 Jessi

The post {#TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism? appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2zMzN36

[ruthellisneda]

{#TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism?

A man recently found out that I, the completely normal-looking and friendly young woman he had been chatting with, was a feminist.

This must have really shaken him up (I assume he’d never met one of us IRL before), because his next question was:

So you think women should be superior to men?

Naturally my first response was to assume he was kidding and laugh. Because… wut?

But no. This man was deadass serious. I have no idea what kind of people he had been exposed to, but he was completely under the impression that, since gender inequality no longer exists, feminists are trying to oppress men so that we can run the world.

The interesting thing was that this man really believes that since women are paid the same as men (false lol) and we can vote and own land now, so basically… any woman who feels oppressed at this point is just playing the victim card and want everything to be handed to them.

He also seemed to feel very strongly that identifying our movement according to gender is just “divisive” and that we should be focusing on “walking together” rather than “pitting ourselves against the good men trying to help us.”

Sigh.

Anyway, after this conversation turned sour, I got to thinking. Not about him, because he had nothing to offer but privileged nonsense, but about some of the beliefs we was spouting. I hear echoes of his views all the time, from good people who are genuinely struggling to understand why is feminism still a thing again…?

It’s very easy for people (aka people who aren’t actually reading feminist texts or following feminist leaders) to completely misunderstand the goal of feminism. They hear bits and pieces from snarky and inaccurate third-party sources like FOX news or whatever, and come away with the belief that feminism seems stupid, dangerous, or unnecessary.

If you frame it like “women whining about injustice instead of doing something about it” or “women wanting to oppress men,” then yeah, the whole thing is pretty unlikeable. Duh– that’s why so many anti-progressive (right-wing) sources spin it that way!

But those views are based on nothing more than malevolent gossip; a smear campaign designed to invalidate a movement that causes trouble for people who want to maintain the status quo.

That’s why I decided to set a few facts straight, and tackle some basic shit about what I’m fighting for when I say I’m a feminist. Obviously this is a much bigger topic than one essay’s worth, but I’ll do my best.

Q: Why do we still need feminism?

A: Because there is still gender inequality. There is still sexism, and discrimination based on gender, sexuality, and gender presentation. There is still exploitation and oppression based on gender.

Q: What is the goal of feminism?

A: There are many serious legislative and structural issues at the core of the feminist movement, like fighting for access to full reproductive health care and rights, access to affordable and high quality child-care options and paid family leave, an end to sexual exploitation and human trafficking, and fighting for better representation in media/entertainment as well as a more equal percentage of women in elected office, CEO positions, leadership positions.

Not to mention of course the right to not be sexually harassed/assaulted/raped, the right to not experience domestic violence, and equal pay for equal work. Oh, and the right to be LGBTQ or transgender without the barrage of violent and marginalizing fuckery that currently comes with that.

Note: It’s also important to acknowledge the intersections of oppression that cross categories such as race, ability, class, age, weight, etc. Intersectional feminism is about recognizing and fighting the various intersecting systems of power that marginalize and oppress people, because a black woman’s experience is completely different than a white woman’s experience, and a fat woman’s experience is completely different than a thin woman’s experience.

I wish I had more time to tackle the complicated intersectional landscape, but for the purpose of this essay, feminism’s goal is simply to end sexism, gender inequality, and gender bias.

Q: Who is the enemy of feminism?

A: Spoiler alert: it’s not men! Feminism is not anti man. Again, we’re just anti-sexism, anti-discrimination, anti-oppression, and anti-exploitation. The “enemy” is sexism, discrimination based on gender and sexuality, and gender inequality.

Q: What do you mean by sexism and gender inequality?

A: If you’ve never personally experienced gender or sexism inequality, they can be completely invisible.

Wikipedia says:

“Gender inequality refers to unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals wholly or partly due to their gender. It arises from differences in gender roles.”

So here’s the deal: Our culture is obsessed with gender differentiation. Before a baby is even born, we are consumed by the desire to categorize them based on their genitals (which is super creepy if you think about it), and we wrongly identify both sex and gender on a binary. You get to be just one of the two options, and anyone who doesn’t fit into one of those has to just pick whichever is “closest.”

Interestingly, intersex people are born all the time with a variety of unique reproductive organs and genitals that make it hard for them to check the box of either “boy” or “girl.” These people are often surgically altered at birth to make them fit whichever box is most convenient.

Isn’t that pretty fucked up? Like… we have a binary system and these babies don’t fit in with it, so we cut their bodies until they do. Oh, and in case you think this is a super rare occurrence, it’s not: intesex people are born at about the same rate as redheads.

Ok, so I take issue with the way our culture fetishes sex and gender right out the gate, and forces everyone to choose a binary option, but from there it only gets worse! Due to our obsession with gender, we shove gendered clothing, toys, and treatment on our children.

Our implicit gender biases (aka: biases that are below the level of consciousness) get passed on when we praise little girls for being cute, nice, pretty, and well-behaved, and we praise little boys for being smart, strong, fast, and clever. They get passed on when we buy our girls dolls and our boys trucks. They get passed on when we permit our boys to be aggressive and wild, but shame our girls for the same. They get passed on when we permit our girls to be sensitive and emotional, but shame our boys for the same. They get passed on when we put our little girls in dresses that limit movement and have no pockets, teaching her that her body is for looking at, not for doing stuff.

In short, we socialize our children to see their gender as the most fundamental part of their identity, and we teach them how to appropriately perform their gender so that they fit in with our sexist ideas of what gender should be.

It doesn’t get better from there though.

The perceptions we hold of each gender get stronger throughout a person’s life, and we chalk it all up to biology rather than the way we socialize children since before they’re born.

We perceive men as better at math and driving. We perceive women as better at nurturing and childcare. We see men as smart, and women as social. We assume men are better leaders, and women are better at domestic skills. We take for granted that men love sports and women, while women love shopping and makeup. We unconsciously believe men need to feel like useful providers, while women need to feel beautiful and desirable.

In short, most of us internalize the performance of gender that we got stuck with based on our genitals at birth, and apply it both to ourselves and to everyone else. We know that people who break the rules are severely punished and marginalized. Think: a feminine gay man who spends his entire life being shamed for not being “manly” enough, or the way a woman is slut-shamed and victim-blamed if she tempted a helpless man into assaulting her.

We all have implicit gender biases, and women and non-conforming gender individuals get the short end of the stick. Both men and women view men (especially tall, white, conventionally masculine men) as more trustworthy and competent, for example, so it starts to feel completely natural that they hold more positions of leadership, and make more money, and otherwise rule the world.

When we talk about living in a patriarchy, it simply means that this culture was historically built by men, for men, and most of us still view this as the natural order of things due to implicit gender biases that we keep passing on to our children. The patriarchy determines who is suitable for which job positions, who is believable in a trial, who gets access to bodily autonomy, and whose problems matter most.

Q: But… what about biology?

A: Many people really, really want to believe that men and women are each naturally drawn to all the gender roles and gender performance we shove on them, and they use “biology!” to defend their gender-obsessed actions.

First of all, I certainly recognize that there are some inherent differences between men and women beyond genitals, but it’s very difficult to tell the difference between which is nature and which is nurture when it comes to gender. Socialization is powerful shit, and we don’t have a gender-blind control group to see what would happen. (Trust me, I dream of this world often.)

That said, I feel like… if it’s really biology, then nobody should have a problem with us fighting the gender-based socialization. Because that would mean that even without teaching girls to be sexual objects and people-pleasers, they would become that way anyway! And even without teaching boys to feel entitled to women’s attention and bodies, or to repress all of their feelings except anger, that they would become violent, stoic, and emotionally stunted anyway!

I mean really, if biology is so strong, nothing would change if we stopped shoving gender performances down everyone’s throat. So maybe just let us try?

Most importantly though, using the “biology!” response is very rude, because if biology explained all of our gender biases and performances, then we wouldn’t have a feminism movement because nobody would be bothered by anything. But people are, well… bothered.

It’s kinda like how we used to think women weren’t capable of voting, owning land, having jobs, running a mile, being fulfilled without children, or anything else. They used to cry “biology!” to that shit too, and we’ve slowly proved it allllll wrong. When I hear the biology argument, what I hear is that you simply don’t want things to change because the status quo is working for you.

Q: Why do we need to talk so divisively about gender, why can’t we just focus on coming together as humans?

A: It has to be about gender because it’s already about gender. This question, though usually well-intentioned, would be like asking your doctor: why does my treatment have to be all about cancer? Well… because you have cancer, my friend. It would be silly to treat you as if you didn’t have cancer, just because cancer makes you uncomfortable, right? Yeah. That.

When gender is no longer a divisive issue, we’ll stop treating it like one.

But gender determines how people are treated and perceived, what life chances and opportunities they’ll get, what standards they’ll be held to, and how they’ll be encouraged to view their role and identity.

This isn’t healthy for anyone of any gender, but women and non-gender-conforming individuals are disproportionately negatively impacted by both implicit and explicit biases, discrimination, exploitation, and marginalization.

This is why we fight, my friends.

Whew.

Happy Tuesday.

<3 Jessi

The post {#TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism? appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2zMzN36

[joshuabradleyn]

{#TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism?

A man recently found out that I, the completely normal-looking and friendly young woman he had been chatting with, was a feminist.

This must have really shaken him up (I assume he’d never met one of us IRL before), because his next question was:

So you think women should be superior to men?

Naturally my first response was to assume he was kidding and laugh. Because… wut?

But no. This man was deadass serious. I have no idea what kind of people he had been exposed to, but he was completely under the impression that, since gender inequality no longer exists, feminists are trying to oppress men so that we can run the world.

The interesting thing was that this man really believes that since women are paid the same as men (false lol) and we can vote and own land now, so basically… any woman who feels oppressed at this point is just playing the victim card and want everything to be handed to them.

He also seemed to feel very strongly that identifying our movement according to gender is just “divisive” and that we should be focusing on “walking together” rather than “pitting ourselves against the good men trying to help us.”

Sigh.

Anyway, after this conversation turned sour, I got to thinking. Not about him, because he had nothing to offer but privileged nonsense, but about some of the beliefs we was spouting. I hear echoes of his views all the time, from good people who are genuinely struggling to understand why is feminism still a thing again…?

It’s very easy for people (aka people who aren’t actually reading feminist texts or following feminist leaders) to completely misunderstand the goal of feminism. They hear bits and pieces from snarky and inaccurate third-party sources like FOX news or whatever, and come away with the belief that feminism seems stupid, dangerous, or unnecessary.

If you frame it like “women whining about injustice instead of doing something about it” or “women wanting to oppress men,” then yeah, the whole thing is pretty unlikeable. Duh– that’s why so many anti-progressive (right-wing) sources spin it that way!

But those views are based on nothing more than malevolent gossip; a smear campaign designed to invalidate a movement that causes trouble for people who want to maintain the status quo.

That’s why I decided to set a few facts straight, and tackle some basic shit about what I’m fighting for when I say I’m a feminist. Obviously this is a much bigger topic than one essay’s worth, but I’ll do my best.

Q: Why do we still need feminism?

A: Because there is still gender inequality. There is still sexism, and discrimination based on gender, sexuality, and gender presentation. There is still exploitation and oppression based on gender.

Q: What is the goal of feminism?

A: There are many serious legislative and structural issues at the core of the feminist movement, like fighting for access to full reproductive health care and rights, access to affordable and high quality child-care options and paid family leave, an end to sexual exploitation and human trafficking, and fighting for better representation in media/entertainment as well as a more equal percentage of women in elected office, CEO positions, leadership positions.

Not to mention of course the right to not be sexually harassed/assaulted/raped, the right to not experience domestic violence, and equal pay for equal work. Oh, and the right to be LGBTQ or transgender without the barrage of violent and marginalizing fuckery that currently comes with that.

Note: It’s also important to acknowledge the intersections of oppression that cross categories such as race, ability, class, age, weight, etc. Intersectional feminism is about recognizing and fighting the various intersecting systems of power that marginalize and oppress people, because a black woman’s experience is completely different than a white woman’s experience, and a fat woman’s experience is completely different than a thin woman’s experience.

I wish I had more time to tackle the complicated intersectional landscape, but for the purpose of this essay, feminism’s goal is simply to end sexism, gender inequality, and gender bias.

Q: Who is the enemy of feminism?

A: Spoiler alert: it’s not men! Feminism is not anti man. Again, we’re just anti-sexism, anti-discrimination, anti-oppression, and anti-exploitation. The “enemy” is sexism, discrimination based on gender and sexuality, and gender inequality.

Q: What do you mean by sexism and gender inequality?

A: If you’ve never personally experienced gender or sexism inequality, they can be completely invisible.

Wikipedia says:

“Gender inequality refers to unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals wholly or partly due to their gender. It arises from differences in gender roles.”

So here’s the deal: Our culture is obsessed with gender differentiation. Before a baby is even born, we are consumed by the desire to categorize them based on their genitals (which is super creepy if you think about it), and we wrongly identify both sex and gender on a binary. You get to be just one of the two options, and anyone who doesn’t fit into one of those has to just pick whichever is “closest.”

Interestingly, intersex people are born all the time with a variety of unique reproductive organs and genitals that make it hard for them to check the box of either “boy” or “girl.” These people are often surgically altered at birth to make them fit whichever box is most convenient.

Isn’t that pretty fucked up? Like… we have a binary system and these babies don’t fit in with it, so we cut their bodies until they do. Oh, and in case you think this is a super rare occurrence, it’s not: intesex people are born at about the same rate as redheads.

Ok, so I take issue with the way our culture fetishes sex and gender right out the gate, and forces everyone to choose a binary option, but from there it only gets worse! Due to our obsession with gender, we shove gendered clothing, toys, and treatment on our children.

Our implicit gender biases (aka: biases that are below the level of consciousness) get passed on when we praise little girls for being cute, nice, pretty, and well-behaved, and we praise little boys for being smart, strong, fast, and clever. They get passed on when we buy our girls dolls and our boys trucks. They get passed on when we permit our boys to be aggressive and wild, but shame our girls for the same. They get passed on when we permit our girls to be sensitive and emotional, but shame our boys for the same. They get passed on when we put our little girls in dresses that limit movement and have no pockets, teaching her that her body is for looking at, not for doing stuff.

In short, we socialize our children to see their gender as the most fundamental part of their identity, and we teach them how to appropriately perform their gender so that they fit in with our sexist ideas of what gender should be.

It doesn’t get better from there though.

The perceptions we hold of each gender get stronger throughout a person’s life, and we chalk it all up to biology rather than the way we socialize children since before they’re born.

We perceive men as better at math and driving. We perceive women as better at nurturing and childcare. We see men as smart, and women as social. We assume men are better leaders, and women are better at domestic skills. We take for granted that men love sports and women, while women love shopping and makeup. We unconsciously believe men need to feel like useful providers, while women need to feel beautiful and desirable.

In short, most of us internalize the performance of gender that we got stuck with based on our genitals at birth, and apply it both to ourselves and to everyone else. We know that people who break the rules are severely punished and marginalized. Think: a feminine gay man who spends his entire life being shamed for not being “manly” enough, or the way a woman is slut-shamed and victim-blamed if she tempted a helpless man into assaulting her.

We all have implicit gender biases, and women and non-conforming gender individuals get the short end of the stick. Both men and women view men (especially tall, white, conventionally masculine men) as more trustworthy and competent, for example, so it starts to feel completely natural that they hold more positions of leadership, and make more money, and otherwise rule the world.

When we talk about living in a patriarchy, it simply means that this culture was historically built by men, for men, and most of us still view this as the natural order of things due to implicit gender biases that we keep passing on to our children. The patriarchy determines who is suitable for which job positions, who is believable in a trial, who gets access to bodily autonomy, and whose problems matter most.

Q: But… what about biology?

A: Many people really, really want to believe that men and women are each naturally drawn to all the gender roles and gender performance we shove on them, and they use “biology!” to defend their gender-obsessed actions.

First of all, I certainly recognize that there are some inherent differences between men and women beyond genitals, but it’s very difficult to tell the difference between which is nature and which is nurture when it comes to gender. Socialization is powerful shit, and we don’t have a gender-blind control group to see what would happen. (Trust me, I dream of this world often.)

That said, I feel like… if it’s really biology, then nobody should have a problem with us fighting the gender-based socialization. Because that would mean that even without teaching girls to be sexual objects and people-pleasers, they would become that way anyway! And even without teaching boys to feel entitled to women’s attention and bodies, or to repress all of their feelings except anger, that they would become violent, stoic, and emotionally stunted anyway!

I mean really, if biology is so strong, nothing would change if we stopped shoving gender performances down everyone’s throat. So maybe just let us try?

Most importantly though, using the “biology!” response is very rude, because if biology explained all of our gender biases and performances, then we wouldn’t have a feminism movement because nobody would be bothered by anything. But people are, well… bothered.

It’s kinda like how we used to think women weren’t capable of voting, owning land, having jobs, running a mile, being fulfilled without children, or anything else. They used to cry “biology!” to that shit too, and we’ve slowly proved it allllll wrong. When I hear the biology argument, what I hear is that you simply don’t want things to change because the status quo is working for you.

Q: Why do we need to talk so divisively about gender, why can’t we just focus on coming together as humans?

A: It has to be about gender because it’s already about gender. This question, though usually well-intentioned, would be like asking your doctor: why does my treatment have to be all about cancer? Well… because you have cancer, my friend. It would be silly to treat you as if you didn’t have cancer, just because cancer makes you uncomfortable, right? Yeah. That.

When gender is no longer a divisive issue, we’ll stop treating it like one.

But gender determines how people are treated and perceived, what life chances and opportunities they’ll get, what standards they’ll be held to, and how they’ll be encouraged to view their role and identity.

This isn’t healthy for anyone of any gender, but women and non-gender-conforming individuals are disproportionately negatively impacted by both implicit and explicit biases, discrimination, exploitation, and marginalization.

This is why we fight, my friends.

Whew.

Happy Tuesday.

<3 Jessi

The post {#TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism? appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2zMzN36

[neilmillerne]

{#TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism?

A man recently found out that I, the completely normal-looking and friendly young woman he had been chatting with, was a feminist.

This must have really shaken him up (I assume he’d never met one of us IRL before), because his next question was:

So you think women should be superior to men?

Naturally my first response was to assume he was kidding and laugh. Because… wut?

But no. This man was deadass serious. I have no idea what kind of people he had been exposed to, but he was completely under the impression that, since gender inequality no longer exists, feminists are trying to oppress men so that we can run the world.

The interesting thing was that this man really believes that since women are paid the same as men (false lol) and we can vote and own land now, so basically… any woman who feels oppressed at this point is just playing the victim card and want everything to be handed to them.

He also seemed to feel very strongly that identifying our movement according to gender is just “divisive” and that we should be focusing on “walking together” rather than “pitting ourselves against the good men trying to help us.”

Sigh.

Anyway, after this conversation turned sour, I got to thinking. Not about him, because he had nothing to offer but privileged nonsense, but about some of the beliefs we was spouting. I hear echoes of his views all the time, from good people who are genuinely struggling to understand why is feminism still a thing again…?

It’s very easy for people (aka people who aren’t actually reading feminist texts or following feminist leaders) to completely misunderstand the goal of feminism. They hear bits and pieces from snarky and inaccurate third-party sources like FOX news or whatever, and come away with the belief that feminism seems stupid, dangerous, or unnecessary.

If you frame it like “women whining about injustice instead of doing something about it” or “women wanting to oppress men,” then yeah, the whole thing is pretty unlikeable. Duh– that’s why so many anti-progressive (right-wing) sources spin it that way!

But those views are based on nothing more than malevolent gossip; a smear campaign designed to invalidate a movement that causes trouble for people who want to maintain the status quo.

That’s why I decided to set a few facts straight, and tackle some basic shit about what I’m fighting for when I say I’m a feminist. Obviously this is a much bigger topic than one essay’s worth, but I’ll do my best.

Q: Why do we still need feminism?

A: Because there is still gender inequality. There is still sexism, and discrimination based on gender, sexuality, and gender presentation. There is still exploitation and oppression based on gender.

Q: What is the goal of feminism?

A: There are many serious legislative and structural issues at the core of the feminist movement, like fighting for access to full reproductive health care and rights, access to affordable and high quality child-care options and paid family leave, an end to sexual exploitation and human trafficking, and fighting for better representation in media/entertainment as well as a more equal percentage of women in elected office, CEO positions, leadership positions.

Not to mention of course the right to not be sexually harassed/assaulted/raped, the right to not experience domestic violence, and equal pay for equal work. Oh, and the right to be LGBTQ or transgender without the barrage of violent and marginalizing fuckery that currently comes with that.

Note: It’s also important to acknowledge the intersections of oppression that cross categories such as race, ability, class, age, weight, etc. Intersectional feminism is about recognizing and fighting the various intersecting systems of power that marginalize and oppress people, because a black woman’s experience is completely different than a white woman’s experience, and a fat woman’s experience is completely different than a thin woman’s experience.

I wish I had more time to tackle the complicated intersectional landscape, but for the purpose of this essay, feminism’s goal is simply to end sexism, gender inequality, and gender bias.

Q: Who is the enemy of feminism?

A: Spoiler alert: it’s not men! Feminism is not anti man. Again, we’re just anti-sexism, anti-discrimination, anti-oppression, and anti-exploitation. The “enemy” is sexism, discrimination based on gender and sexuality, and gender inequality.

Q: What do you mean by sexism and gender inequality?

A: If you’ve never personally experienced gender or sexism inequality, they can be completely invisible.

Wikipedia says:

“Gender inequality refers to unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals wholly or partly due to their gender. It arises from differences in gender roles.”

So here’s the deal: Our culture is obsessed with gender differentiation. Before a baby is even born, we are consumed by the desire to categorize them based on their genitals (which is super creepy if you think about it), and we wrongly identify both sex and gender on a binary. You get to be just one of the two options, and anyone who doesn’t fit into one of those has to just pick whichever is “closest.”

Interestingly, intersex people are born all the time with a variety of unique reproductive organs and genitals that make it hard for them to check the box of either “boy” or “girl.” These people are often surgically altered at birth to make them fit whichever box is most convenient.

Isn’t that pretty fucked up? Like… we have a binary system and these babies don’t fit in with it, so we cut their bodies until they do. Oh, and in case you think this is a super rare occurrence, it’s not: intesex people are born at about the same rate as redheads.

Ok, so I take issue with the way our culture fetishes sex and gender right out the gate, and forces everyone to choose a binary option, but from there it only gets worse! Due to our obsession with gender, we shove gendered clothing, toys, and treatment on our children.

Our implicit gender biases (aka: biases that are below the level of consciousness) get passed on when we praise little girls for being cute, nice, pretty, and well-behaved, and we praise little boys for being smart, strong, fast, and clever. They get passed on when we buy our girls dolls and our boys trucks. They get passed on when we permit our boys to be aggressive and wild, but shame our girls for the same. They get passed on when we permit our girls to be sensitive and emotional, but shame our boys for the same. They get passed on when we put our little girls in dresses that limit movement and have no pockets, teaching her that her body is for looking at, not for doing stuff.

In short, we socialize our children to see their gender as the most fundamental part of their identity, and we teach them how to appropriately perform their gender so that they fit in with our sexist ideas of what gender should be.

It doesn’t get better from there though.

The perceptions we hold of each gender get stronger throughout a person’s life, and we chalk it all up to biology rather than the way we socialize children since before they’re born.

We perceive men as better at math and driving. We perceive women as better at nurturing and childcare. We see men as smart, and women as social. We assume men are better leaders, and women are better at domestic skills. We take for granted that men love sports and women, while women love shopping and makeup. We unconsciously believe men need to feel like useful providers, while women need to feel beautiful and desirable.

In short, most of us internalize the performance of gender that we got stuck with based on our genitals at birth, and apply it both to ourselves and to everyone else. We know that people who break the rules are severely punished and marginalized. Think: a feminine gay man who spends his entire life being shamed for not being “manly” enough, or the way a woman is slut-shamed and victim-blamed if she tempted a helpless man into assaulting her.

We all have implicit gender biases, and women and non-conforming gender individuals get the short end of the stick. Both men and women view men (especially tall, white, conventionally masculine men) as more trustworthy and competent, for example, so it starts to feel completely natural that they hold more positions of leadership, and make more money, and otherwise rule the world.

When we talk about living in a patriarchy, it simply means that this culture was historically built by men, for men, and most of us still view this as the natural order of things due to implicit gender biases that we keep passing on to our children. The patriarchy determines who is suitable for which job positions, who is believable in a trial, who gets access to bodily autonomy, and whose problems matter most.

Q: But… what about biology?

A: Many people really, really want to believe that men and women are each naturally drawn to all the gender roles and gender performance we shove on them, and they use “biology!” to defend their gender-obsessed actions.

First of all, I certainly recognize that there are some inherent differences between men and women beyond genitals, but it’s very difficult to tell the difference between which is nature and which is nurture when it comes to gender. Socialization is powerful shit, and we don’t have a gender-blind control group to see what would happen. (Trust me, I dream of this world often.)

That said, I feel like… if it’s really biology, then nobody should have a problem with us fighting the gender-based socialization. Because that would mean that even without teaching girls to be sexual objects and people-pleasers, they would become that way anyway! And even without teaching boys to feel entitled to women’s attention and bodies, or to repress all of their feelings except anger, that they would become violent, stoic, and emotionally stunted anyway!

I mean really, if biology is so strong, nothing would change if we stopped shoving gender performances down everyone’s throat. So maybe just let us try?

Most importantly though, using the “biology!” response is very rude, because if biology explained all of our gender biases and performances, then we wouldn’t have a feminism movement because nobody would be bothered by anything. But people are, well… bothered.

It’s kinda like how we used to think women weren’t capable of voting, owning land, having jobs, running a mile, being fulfilled without children, or anything else. They used to cry “biology!” to that shit too, and we’ve slowly proved it allllll wrong. When I hear the biology argument, what I hear is that you simply don’t want things to change because the status quo is working for you.

Q: Why do we need to talk so divisively about gender, why can’t we just focus on coming together as humans?

A: It has to be about gender because it’s already about gender. This question, though usually well-intentioned, would be like asking your doctor: why does my treatment have to be all about cancer? Well… because you have cancer, my friend. It would be silly to treat you as if you didn’t have cancer, just because cancer makes you uncomfortable, right? Yeah. That.

When gender is no longer a divisive issue, we’ll stop treating it like one.

But gender determines how people are treated and perceived, what life chances and opportunities they’ll get, what standards they’ll be held to, and how they’ll be encouraged to view their role and identity.

This isn’t healthy for anyone of any gender, but women and non-gender-conforming individuals are disproportionately negatively impacted by both implicit and explicit biases, discrimination, exploitation, and marginalization.

This is why we fight, my friends.

Whew.

Happy Tuesday.

<3 Jessi

The post {#TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism? appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2zMzN36