#just really wanting them to not have gender for Obvious Trans Reasons

[rxttenfish]

Pardon the question, but how do the reimagined merfolk reproduce? In MP I recall them saying that merfolk reproduce in a similar way to seahorses (may be a throwaway joke, but in any case) but the reimagined merfolk are obviously different from how they are in MP in many ways.

ah yes, one of those things that i've had worked out fully for forever but never made a dedicated post on it over here... at least partially because im suspicious of tumblr and its ability to nuke anything even frankly talking about sexual selection and reproductive methods of various animals, oops.

which is why this is going under a cut, oops. like i said, lots of frank discussion of sexual selection and the processes of it. im a nerd when it comes to this.

-

the first thing most humans would notice when looking upon a group of merfolk (of the same species), is a notable lack of dimorphism. there's no dramatic color shifts, no difference in size beyond usual distribution among a population, no odd behaviors, nothing to really sort them out from each other. this is a consistent theme among merfolk in general — while they continually get larger as they age (at a much slower rate than they did growing up, certainly, and not as dramatic as pop media might suggest this to be), it's still fairly close along the existing curve of height distribution, and usually the only real "tells" for an adult merfolk's age is that they get pitted and worn, a little like a statue slowly wearing down, or similar to the age of crocodilians.

which might be a little odd for these hypothetical humans looking onwards, even if they were already familiar enough to be able to tell merfolk facial features apart. even moreso because as frank as merfolk cultures usually are about sex and nudity taboos seem rare, all of their applicable anatomy is internal, so even seeing one entirely in the nude isn't enough to sex them.

the truth has to do with merfolk as a secondarily aquatic tetrapod. i've mentioned before that the early ancestors of merfolk were temnospondyls that responded to environmental stressors in their freshwater environments by being able to take advantage of a wide variety of environments. they have lungs and gills, meaning they can breathe on land very well if they need to move between pools and ponds, and they have gills to optimize their time spent underwater and not have to surface if the going is good underwater. even more than that, they developed both external gills and internal gills, meaning they could reap the benefits of both fast-moving and slow-moving water.

all of this is relevant, because to be exposed to all of these different environments and to be able to move between them when the going gets tough in one, means they had to make longer and longer treks over land. some were dependent on specific vernal pools that they would travel to to raise their young, but this also limited the areas in which they could live, and if those vernal pools dried up then they could not reproduce.

so these early-line temnospondyls made the same switch that other tetrapods have made, and switched to internal fertilization. this meant that, if they were to find another one of their species during their land-travels, they could mate and continue onwards, even being ready to lay eggs right at the moment they found the vernal pool, limiting the amount of time the offspring needed in the water.

however, they did still need vernal pools and water, and were very vulnerable in these stages. and with the existing push towards shorter and shorter time spent in the vernal pools, well, what if they just didn't bother with them at all? it'd put more stress on the parents, but they were already primed to be able to survive through these periods of stress, so it wouldn't be such a huge jump.

so the line that would eventually lead to merfolk and the leviathans both made the switch to live birth fairly early on in their history.

the rest that happens from there varies. this was a more diverse group, back in the day! there were many different species with many different methods for that live birth. some would continue just carrying the fertilized eggs to be dropped off in the next suitable pool they found, some developed them into tadpoles, some went through metamorphosis in the womb and popped out into the world as mini adults, some left spermatophores for others of their species to pick up, some developed evertable genitalia and went at it that way.

but another shift also happened early on in their evolutionary history. them being able to spread out so far and wide meant that there was a very low density of them in any given area, and these low numbers made them vulnerable. if there was high disparity in the proportion of sexes in any given area, they'd feel the effects of that quicker, and when they were already in competition over the same niches as other temnospondyls, crocodylomorphs, marine reptiles, and later early cetaceans, etc who dominated these niches, they were often kept at these lower population numbers.

which was about when these early-line temnospondyls also made the switch to a trioecious mating system.

this happened because sex determination in amphibians is already weird, so it wasn't too far of a leap for a mutation to arise which created fertile dual-sexed individuals. and these dual-sexed individuals had a lot of success under the niche they had already carved out! now, whenever they did find another member of their same species, it was guaranteed that they could mate with them, which meant that their populations were self-sustaining and stable on much lower numbers. due to how their dispersal already worked, inbreeding wasn't as much of a negative factor, and they were even more capable of making it through the disasters and ecological strain that had the other non-lissamphibia temnospondyls going extinct. they could eke out a living wherever they found it, make long traversals over land if they needed to seek out greener pastures, and they were able to sustain themselves in the background without needing as high of a density of themselves in any given spot.

like i said too - this was a diverse clade back in the day! and you ended up getting different variations on this. some species didn't have any dual-sexed individuals. some species had only dual-sexed individuals. some had only males and dual-sexed individuals, and some only females and the dual-sexed individuals, and all in various different proportions and numbers.

what matters here is that merfolk were a part of the line who had evertable internal genitalia, and who ended up entirely composed of these dual-sexed members, making them an entirely unisex species in the modern day.

(this is also where i butt in, to explain from an authorial perspective, this is me kinda... being sneaky with canon and how it tends to phrase things. yes, technically it is the male who gets pregnant with merfolk! but, also, so would females. because they don't have "male" or "female" in these strict terms, and any given individual to them has the potential to do both. this is something that i do a lot with the usual facts given to me by canon, where it's technically true, just because i like to be contrary about it and not take things in the most literal way. it's just what i find fun, i know some other people do it differently, and that's fine with me!)

what this means is that merfolk don't have a conception of "gender". it checks out with their social structure too, because if a merfolk's miivt'ia have a child, then it doesn't matter who actually physically created that child, said merfolk would still consider themselves their parent all the same. the reproductive unit is larger than a singular merfolk or even two merfolk, and at that point, even if they were bisex, then each grouping still has the same reproductive potential as any other.

what this means is that, when miranda describes herself as a princess or a girl or that the king is her dad or she has sisters — these are best seen as translation errors. to a merfolk, the concepts at play aren't gendered. they would not immediately identify themselves as male, they would not immediately identify themselves as female, they'd be very confused and would only get more confused as you tried to explain it to them. miranda describes herself as a princess and uses she/her because she was told that, for landfolk, everyone had to pick one of two and she had to just choose one. she picked "princess" and "girl" because one of the first things given to her as a way to learn english were fairytales, and she really ended up latching onto the princess characters in them.

in fact, this is why merfolk seem to be a little... reductive? when it comes to gender? as in, if you do take the time to explain it to them, you will have to explain it all. which means starting with gender relating to the different genitalia, and you have just told this hypothetical merfolk that it is important to landfolk, who will now operate under that assumption. they will not innately understand why landfolk care about this or all the distinctions thereof and certainly not the nuance of it, so they end up just going "okay, when this landfolk tells me this person is a girl, that must mean she is like this", and potentially getting frustrated when you tell them that that's wrong.

it can't even really work for royals, who do simplify parentage down to two people, and care a whole lot about who is related to whom. for royals in the current merkingdom, its primarily about attempting to preserve a specific lineage. because merfolk lineage is its own can of worms, they simplify - they take the current heir (one who has been groomed and taught how to behave as though emblematic of that lineage and has been guaranteed to have the strongest claim to it), and will find a suitable non-heir of another royal house, for whom they will forbid either of them to make kids with any other merfolk. this agreement is less like a marriage in the traditional sense, and more like the heir's house is briefly sponsoring the non-heir's house, sending extended political and economic benefits to the latter through this connection, in exchange for reinforcing the lineage of the heir and making it more potent, reinforcing their political ties.

this is to ensure that absolutely no other genetics can be involved and to contain the process. because this occurs by who-was-born-where, it also means that only the heir really matters in this ordeal. if the heir dies while the non-heir of the couple lives, and they already have had children, then the non-heir is "locked in" and cannot remarry, obliged to stay within the heir's house in their current position to ensure the current holders of the lineage are brought up and cared for properly. if the heir dies while the non-heir lives, and they have no children, then the non-heir is sent back to their prior family with no benefits, and the next heir is named as though the marriage never happened. if the non-heir dies while the heir lives, then they can remarry as they please, existing children or not. this is not especially popular, as the non-heir's family can accuse the heir's family of being unfair or snubbing them, but it is still perfectly legal and accepted.

for instance: the king, miranda's father, had to marry into the royal family. it was the queen, miranda's mother, who was the crown princess before miranda, and who is seen as passing her inheritance down onto miranda and the other three sisters. when the queen died, the king could not remarry. he was secure in his position as king, but any other marriages would not carry the lineage of the royal family, and at best he would be seen as trying to "dilute" that lineage.

in this setup, it's not all that important who is the donor party and who is the carrying party. either the inheritor or their partner can be the one carrying, so long as it's certain and guaranteed who the baby comes from and that this can be assured with certainty. usually it's agreed between the two of them for whatever reason, though the carrying partner does have a benefit in being a surefire way to prove that they are one of the parents, with zero doubt. inheritors will do this mostly to make their kids look the most "100% royal line, no doubts", but this can also go the opposite way, to cement it down to it being a specific line who carried them and to reinforce the political benefits their prior family enjoys from this arrangement.

which brings me back to merfolk genetics, and why this is so important for the royals to ensure they know exactly who made what!

which is to say, merfolk never opted for traditional sexual competition, and instead erred towards sperm competition.

early on in their lineage, they didn't have a lot of sexual dimorphism to begin with. they were already fairly widespread, and while gatherings around early vernal pools were a pressure towards sexual competition, after they stopped relying on vernal pools, the differences between the sexes became more of a hinderance than a benefit. why would they bother with any colorful spots or being extra big and bulky when you're not even around enough of your species for choice to be an issue? if you can find another one to begin with, then that's really all either of you need, and challenging each other just puts another bind on that low-population issue. they were all function, minimal fuss, beyond some general traits that were seen as markers of health.

even when the ancestors of merfolk first started forming their colonies along the coasts, they didn't change this. there wasn't an initial hierarchy laid out, they were just a large group of the same species arranged in the same area for the same purpose, and also maybe some protection by numbers. they did start to form the early groups that would later lead to the modern miivt'ia, and they started to primarily associate with those groups and socialize with them, which meant that when they wanted to find someone to mate with, that hunting group was always the first and the easiest to access.

why fight over mates in that situation? why compete? the health of the group starts to become directly correlated to the health of the individual, and you've already determined they all have good genes, or else they wouldn't be this beneficial to helping you hunt and survive and evade predation.

but this isn't to say competition isn't happening. there is still the slight edge that natural selection adds in, and with multiple matings between different individuals, the thing that gets selected upon is the sperm itself. faster sperm, ways to kill competetor's sperm, ways to suppress the immune system of the mating partner to ensure that sperm will take, more output, ways to remove competetor's sperm to begin with, etc etc etc. their internal genitals start to get bizarre, both for the sake of excluding saltwater intrusion as they get more and more aquatic, but also for the sake of this sperm competition. this system also means, not only do more matings occur right after each other, but more partners involved. the "default" evolutionary position for merfolk starts to look more and more like a clump of noodles, writhing around and over each other. sexual contact becomes a way to bond and to connect with someone primarily, and a means to reproduce secondarily. it's an easy way to solve problems and to get merfolk to make up, by them simply fucking it out and everyone feeling better for it.

which is where i can get into the actual mechanics of it all!

unfortunately this is also where i run out of steam (also am sick. that will do it too), so i'll absolutely have to make a part 2 to this... and also i'll make another post sharing a few old writings of mine on this topic.

someday i'll make like. a masterpost on merfolk reproduction and what's going on there, but like i said. sexual selection is one of those things my brain goes ham for and i looooove talking about all these additional little facts. like how merfolk pregnancies last 2 years (to match with other large marine predators), and that they're based off of both tiger sharks and the alpine salamander, the latter of which has the record for the longest pregnancy on the planet at up to five years :3

also read Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke if this sounds interesting to you! and maybe listen to the episodes the Common Descent Podcast did on Live Birth and Milk!!!

[aeide-thea]

thinking abt (1) that post abt how most censorship is preemptive self-censorship¹ (2) bras²

⸻ ¹ wow, tumblr search actually worked for once??? ² i do understand and respect that for many people bras serve an actual structural function wrt support/comfort! however, for many other people (hi!) they do not, at least in everyday non-sports contexts, and that's the set of concerns i'm speaking to here.

[cripplecharacters]

what are the top 5 things you'd like to see a disabled character do in a story?

Hey! This is a very vast question and a lot of it would depend on the character's actual disability - I have completely different wishlists for what I'd like to see intellectually disabled characters do versus what I'd like to see characters with facial differences do. Different stereotypes and tropes affect different groups of disabled people differently - to work with this fact, the below list will try to account for as large amount of disabled character as I can reasonably think of, but it won't have as much detail as you might want. If you have a specific kind of character in mind, feel free to send another ask.

Not in specific order:

Disabled characters being in love. Disabled x disabled, disabled x abled, disabled x very different kind of disabled, all these variants but including more than 2 characters (since I've yet to see a polyamorous disabled character), all of this.

And I mean in actual relationships, not the pitiful and devoid of actual chemistry thing that we usually get (think "really sad disabled man only becomes happy after an abled woman takes pity on him, but they never kiss or god forbid have sex because that's gross and the disableds surely don't do that anyway").

I want to see an interabled couple going through IVF because they want to have kids, a wife with hemiplegia getting to grow old and wrinkly with her autistic husband, a lesbian with Treacher Collins syndrome moving in with her chronically ill girlfriend after a month of knowing each other, DeafBlind men getting hands on each other in the bathroom of a shitty nightclub, a trans woman with autism asking out a trans man with Down syndrome via her AAC tablet, a neurotypical guy with an obvious crush on his classmate with cerebral palsy.

I want to actually see disabled people being shown as desirable partners, good parents and grandparents, potential crushes, going through some new feelings and going on both good and bad dates, from all walks of life, of all sexualities and genders. Just like abled people.

Disabled characters participating in their community. Especially severely and/or visibly disabled characters. This is obviously a concept as vague as it could possibly be, but a big problem with a lot of disabled characters is that they don't... do anything. Not in the sense that they aren't "active enough", but that they aren't really... characters. They're often reduced to a family member who's at home and maybe the abled character takes care of them sometimes, but that's seemingly all that happens; they have no interests, hobbies, agency, preferences, or an internal thought process. All they do is wait for an abled savior to do something to them, not even with them.

I want to see more disabled characters who have jobs (whether it's a "regular" job, a supported employment workplace, a creative job that maybe they can only do a few hours a week, or self-care as a full-time job kind of thing), participating in hobbies that are accessible and/or modified to their ability level, emailing or sending pigeon letters to their friends, trying out new stuff that they're interested in, having actual complex relationships with their caregivers. Anything to actually make them feel like characters that exist in their setting, not just cardboard cutouts that the author had no ideas for.

Disabled characters who are a part of real-world disability (and adjacent) culture. Obviously also a vast topic. Most disabled characters, regardless of setting, are completely separated from concepts that were made by disabled people for disabled people; usually the connection to disability is their actual medical condition and a sterile mobility aid. This is not incorrect or bad to represent since that describes a lot of people, but I'd like to simply see more variety.

I want to see disabled characters who do parasports, who are excited about tactile art, went to blind/Deaf/SPED schools, call themselves #a babe with a mobility aid, decorate their AAC device, learn about disabled history, experience Feelings when hearing that Neanderthals cared about their disabled children, go to disability-centric events or support groups to meet people similar to them.

Do all disabled people do these? Absolutely not, but I'd like for even 1% of fictional characters to represent those who do.

Yeah I just want more disabled characters doing sports. As in real-life sports that real-life disabled people do, apologies to all the fantasy swordfighting that's out there.

There are so many sports out there we can do, some are adapted, some have a sitting or wheelchair version, while others were made specifically for us. Team sports are such a good opportunity to have your character have a community of people like them, have interesting dynamics, yet the only anything I can think of that's about it is REAL by Takehiko Inoue (wheelchair basketball) and the art by @/gayaest / @/sproutwiki (sitting volleyball). Also some Paralympics documentaries that I can count on a single hand - there's like three of them.

I want to see characters who are starting out and really suck at their sport, ones who are decent, ones with ridiculous sports-anime-level over the top abilities. I want to see all kinds of sports done by all kinds of disabled characters; blind kids learning goalball with their blind parents, quadriplegic guys working their ass off to qualify for national murderball championships, folks using sticker-covered bright-pink ramps in their boccia games, people with POTS playing along with their abled partner on their wheelchair rugby league team, standing fencers becoming disabled and adapting to wheelchair fencing that they love just as much. More disabled people having fun, knowing other disabled people, having interests!

Also, parasports are just cool as fuck and interesting to both watch and read about.

Disabled characters getting to make bad decisions. Disability representation is often extremely black-and-white in terms of morality: the character is either an angel who always does the right thing and talks about being grateful a lot, or the character is comically evil, wanting revenge because of their disability, hating their disability, constantly in grief and anger since not a single mildly ok thing happened to them since they became disabled. Neither of these feel like real people.

Disabled characters should be able to say hurtful things, get mad, lie, and whatever else, without being demonized to hell for it the same way abled characters are. They should be allowed to consciously make a decision that they shouldn't take (also known as "dignity of risk" in context of disability). They should get the same consequences for mistakes as everyone else and need to have the opportunities to actually make them.

In a much shorter way: more complex disabled characters.

These are things that I'd enjoy seeing for disabled characters. But the main thing would probably be that I want more of them. The scope of disabled characters in media is so painfully narrow because there's so few of them + they're usually capped at one per series. More writing featuring multiple disabled people please.

Here is a list of wishes from other mods who wanted me to throw them here:

Disabled characters who act like the author did more than a 10 min google search about their disabilities. [So authors doing actual research.]

More disabled characters of color. A lot of time disabled characters are white because it's only acceptable for them to be one kind of marginalized. In real life that's not how it works. People of color are disabled too!

Characters with comorbidities, characters with physical and mental health and developmental symptoms. Disability doesn't just come with one cut and dry disorder all the time - you can even be diagnosed with some things and undiagnosed with others.

[A character can have 5 comorbidities, or 5 completely unrelated disabilities - both happen. Or, most frequently, a bit of both.]

Characters existing in all parts of their diagnostic journey. [So characters who are yet to be diagnosed, currently investigating their symptoms, ones recently diagnosed, and ones who had their diagnosis for their whole lives - and as mentioned previously, you can be on one stage with disability A, and on another with disability B.]

Characters whose whole life isn't just tragedy/struggle! See this a lot when a story with disabled character is just about how life is hard for them as disabled person. Would love disabled characters being leads in other genres and just existing as people. Not to say disability isn't a struggle, but there is more to life and person than disability.

mod Sasza

[cardentist]

Fam how can one be trans in the direction of their assigned sex? I'm not even trying to make the idea sound ridiculous or anything. I'm genuinely curious and want to understand. I thought the whole meaning of trans was that you feel or act in the opposite direction of your assigned sex; if you're transfem but you're afab then to me that's just cisgender??? But like please explain to me how that's not the case if that's what you and others strongly feel so I may grow my compassion

Context: [Link]

well ! while I personally am not intersex, I DO want to highlight intersex people first and foremost.

gender and sex are very Very complex, and I think generally people don't consider the way that being intersex can play a big role in that!

there are intersex people who are afab who are also trans women, there are intersex people who are amab who are trans men, there are intersex people with many Many different relationships with sex and gender and anywhere in between !

an afab person can be born with masculine sex characteristics and transition the way trans women often do. that person May identify as trans, they may not ! that trans person may not even consider themselves a woman depending on who they are and what they want !

I Do think there needs to be an effort to be aware of and make space for intersex people within the trans community, and really the wider queer community as a whole. as it's often something that's given a footnote without deeper thought into the ways that intersex people Actually interact with our communities.

which I don't blame people for not already knowing ! that's the whole point of trying to educate people in the first place ^^

.

and as for Myself

labels are, ultimately, a form of gender presentation. what you call yourself is an extension of not only how you see yourself, but how Other People perceive you.

I could call myself nonbinary or I could call myself trans masc, and both would be Accurate. but people have certain traits and expectations and associations when they see those labels. there are assumptions made about the kind of life that I live, the things that I want, the things I might experience, that change depending on which labels that I use.

and that's not Inherently a bad thing ! I mean, that's part of why people Like labels. but it Can be a struggle for people whose gender is Funny.

I could Also describe myself as genderqueer or multi-gender or genderfluid or gnc or-. I've tried on lots and lots of labels, and for the most part I haven't thrown any of them out, I just keep them in a box under my bed and take them out when relevant.

I've been wrestling with the feminine aspect of my identity for a very Very long time. I've been aware that I'm some level of trans masc. that part was easy. I want a deeper voice, I want things about my body to change, I don't want people to look at me and see a cis woman.

but I Also like femininity. I've found that after accepting myself as trans masc and slowly growing an environment where I am Perceived as masculine, I've started getting euphoria at presenting femininely in the Same way that I did (and do!) get about presenting masculinely.

but that feeling doesn't carry over when I'm perceived as a cis woman. it's Quite Uncomfortable for obvious gender reasons.

and while I may not know the exact Words that I'd use to describe it (as I've said, I've been chewing on it for Many years now), I've gotten a clearer idea of how I Feel.

I want to be Visibly trans. I want to be perceived masculinely And femininely. I want to transition masculinely to present femininely (and sometimes butch, sometimes like your dad at the ace hardware store, I contain multitudes).

and of course, figuring out what I have going on has involve a lot of exploration ! it's the same way I figured out the whole trans masc thing in the first place. seeking out other trans people and other Things About trans people feeling things out.

I find ! that I have a lot of shared experiences with transfeminine people. both in how I feel about certain things, some of the presentation that I want, and in how people would React To said presentation.

my femininity Is Trans, I don't relate to cis womanhood. but I Do relate to trans femininity. which is really awkward for me, because it's difficult to describe it to other people fjksldljkasfdjklfasd

(I don't personally consider myself a trans woman mind, but I'm certain there Are people who are trans men and trans women at the same time. gender is complicated, sex is complicated. labels are malleable and sometimes situational)

Could I describe myself with a different label? probably ! I've got lots of them. but when I Don't put emphasis on this aspect of myself people assume that it's not there. insist that it Couldn't be there, and I don't know what I'm talking about. and those people who Would act nasty towards me probably aren't gonna change their mind just because I changed my bio. but it feels Nice to assert that aspect of myself when other people are trying to tear it down.

.

part of me feels like I should post the intersex portion of this by itself, because people tend to engage more with shorter posts and there's nothing Short about my gender situation ljkfdasjkls

but ! I dunno, if this makes even one person understand the gray areas of gender and presentation a little more it'll be worth it.

thank you for taking the time to ask ! and especially for doing so kindly ! I do hope you'll see this

[gamesindustrynormal]

I don't know how common this is among trans people, but for many years I spent a lot of time looking for signs that I was not, in fact, trans. And frankly, they are not hard to find. I suspect even most cis people would doubt their gender identity if they had reason to look.

It's the obvious things. The biological differences, the societal pressure to conform. The various alternatives thrown at us - you just have masculine/feminine interests, that doesn't have to mean anything. You're just interested in a surface-level presentation. You're just a pervert. You're just trying to escape responsibility/gain privilege. We really should be dismantling gender roles altogether rather than moving between them. So many excuses for why what we're feeling doesn't mean what we think it means.

But it's also subtle, well-meaning things that get twisted by self-loathing. A trans person telling anecdotes of gendered experiences in their childhood and sure you found a lot of similarities to your own life, but also things that you could not relate to. Their description of dysphoria involves panic attacks and anxiety, but what you are feeling is more akin to a constant sense of hopelessness. They talk about benevolent friends seeing them for who they are and helping them come to terms with it, and no-one has ever seen that in you. At least not exactly like that.

Surely if your experience is so different you can't be trans. It's one of the other things.

And the more trans people I talk to, the more I understand that where we are coming from, what is important to us and where we are going is wildly different. Even for people who want nothing more than to pass as cis the ways in which they realized this and the journey they are taking there has a lot of variance. There's a reason good therapy focuses on what, specifically, would make you happier rather than how many trans boxes you check.

So I think it is fair to want to shy away from responding to gender-nonconformity as a joke but rather take it as a serious expression of identity and be curious about that. I think for someone who is just doing it as an act they will be quick to point that out. But responding with insincerity to a trans person taking their first trembling steps into finding their true selves just adds to the mountain of small excuses keeping them from happiness.

[askgravityfallsed]

THE YEAR IS 2019… WELCOME TO GRAVITY FALLS: ETERNAL DEVOTION AU Return To The Falls RP Edition

Related accounts set in 2012: @formerquestionmarkmp, @dippers-guide-to-the-strange, @pocketsfullofglitter, @queenplatinumpaz2012.

CHARACTER INFORMATION:

Mason “Dipper” Marth Pines:

Age: 19 years old

Pronouns: He/They

Identity: Bisexual, Non-Binary

Fiancé: Paz Southeast

Online College Student

Stoner

Well known ghost hunter in the area

Mabel David Pines:

Age: 19 years old

Pronouns: She/It/Pink/Meow/Oink

Identity: Cis, Aroace

Shroom addict (Don’t tell mom!)

Sells knitted sweaters and scarves, as well as Kandy bracelets, on Etsy

Pastel Goth/Scene mixture… I don't know either man.

Stanley Caryn McGucket-Pines:

Age: 67 years old

Pronouns: He/Him

Identity: Cis Bisexual

Husband: Fiddleford McGucket-Pines

Usually out sailing with Ford and Fidds

Kept his mullet in honor of his nieces old nickname

Owns five “#1 Dad” Mugs. Four from Soos, one from his niece.

Stanford Filbrick Pines:

Age: 67 years old

Pronouns: He/It (Only uses it due to Bills effect on him)

Identity: Cis Gay

Space Divorced TM both Fidds and Bill on separate occasions

Formerly brainwashed by Bill- barely resisting getting back together with him

Can not handle The Lust TM

Paz Elliot Southeast:

Age: 19 years old

Pronouns: He/Him

Identity: Bisexual Transgender

Fiancé: Mason Pines

Only recently found out he was trans- binds and cut his hair, but that’s about it

Steals Dippers clothes a lot. They’re his now actually.

Will never, ever admit to being the bottom of the relationship even if they’ve been together six years and it’s obvious as fuck.

Working for Greasys Diner

Jesus “Soos” Ramírez:

Age: 29 years old

Pronouns: He/Him

Identity: Cishet

Wife: Melody Ramírez

Stan is his dad figure, duh

Melody and him have a son named Diego

Cried like a baby the first time the twins referred to him as their uncle

Wendy Blerble Corduroy:

Age: 22 years old

Pronouns: She/He

Identity: Cis Bisexual Lesbian

Dippers weed dealer. Why are you shocked

Barely looks any different than she looked at age fifteen… except she ties her shirt into a crop top to show off her stomach tattoo of an axe.

Hottest lesbo on the block, according to nobody but her friend group

Robert “Robbie” Stacy Valentino:

Age: 23 years old

Age During Death: 15 years old

Pronouns: He/Him

Identity: Cis, Bi-curious (will not admit this)

Somehow befriended Paz. Neither know how nor want to admit it, but they have movie nights where they do each others nails and makeup and cry to metal music.

Zombie. Walking corpse even. Yep, we’re leaning into THAT old theory.

Still beefing with Dipper for literally no reason. Even Dipper doesn’t hate him at this point he just likes annoying him. They’re like brothers honestly.

Gideon Charles Gleeful:

Age: 17 years old

Pronouns: She/Her

Identity: Trans lesbian

Ex-Ciphertology child cultist

Despite this she still cries over the fact that Bill finds her annoying

She can’t really find anything to do with herself anymore since weirdmaggedon and highschool so she’s really fucking bitter.

Fiddleford Hadron McGucket-Pines:

Age: 69 years old (haha funny number)

Pronouns: He/Him

Identity: Cis Gay

Husband: Stanley McGucket Pines

Him and Emma May were actually beards- still occasionally in contact.

Was forced into a polyamorous marriage with Bill and Ford- eventually divorced them for MANY reasons

Seriously this guys got some BAD C-PTSD to be honest

Martha Winona Pines:

Age: 38 years old

Pronouns: She/Her

Identity: Cis Aromantic Bisexual

Ex-Husband: David Patterson

Has even WORSE C-PTSD from being Bills former puppet for like seven ish years

Literally so fucking grumpy about his return but NOBODY will let her murder him so she’s decided on verbal assault

Loves her kids soooooo so much

Calls Stan “Uncle Mullet”

William “Bill” Lu Cipher:

Age: ??????????????????? centuries old.

Pronouns: He/They/It- anything masculine or gender neutral

Identity: What a boring concept

Former triangle, now human for redemption- can only reincarnate if fully reformed, though he will never fully be forgiven for what he’s done, so he’s stuck this way til this body dies.

Can’t use his powers anymore- not even floating, which he hates a LOT

Misses Ford soooooo much…. Fucking loser.

BOUNDARIES:

13+ interactions only

Currently Gideon is still a minor, and I’m only a teenager, so please keep the NSFW to a minimum. Suggestive is fine, though.

DNI inc3st/p3do proshippers, p3do/m4p, transph0bic, hom0phobic, or r4cist people. You are not welcome here.

Please be respectful to me, the mod. You can be mean to characters, not to me. I do not appreciate hostility

Here and Here are the Casting Call links for the Eternal Devotion podcasts, please consider helping out with voice acting or even writing!

[pansy-picnics]

A vat7k related question.

What do you think is Hugo's gender identity? Cus I want to hear what you think Hugo's gender is and the story behind it.

EHEHEHE personally i think she’s genderfluid and uses he/she/they pronouns…….I think he was kind of an uncracked egg up until the trials though. like, he’s been in survival mode for so long that he’s never had the time or luxury to really think about himself or his identity….i think he’s had a lot of different disguises over his career though, and those personas are either male or female depending on what the situation calls for so he’s not a stranger to dressing femininely either.

but yeah…i think for a long time hugo just identified as male by default cuz like…what else would he be LOL. if he had any doubts at all they weren’t significantly hindering him or anything so he just buried them with all the other of the emotions he doesn’t want to feel. but like the closet is made of GLASS and this becomes especially obvious when she teams up with 3 other teenagers who are also transgender so sometimes she’ll just Say Shit and they all turn around and look at her like “…….🤨”

i have this very vivid scene in my head where varian comes out to the gang as trans and hes clearly really uneasy abt it. and hugo doesn’t know what to say so he just tries to relate by saying the first thing that comes to mind and goes “oh yeah i get it i mean. sometimes i wish i was a girl but like not all the time yk” and nuru and varian both just stop and stare at him

hugo, getting nervous: …Sorry that’s probably not the same thing forget i said anything

nuru: No i think we should talk about this?

anyways yeah….other than her traveling party giving her some weird looks nothing actually really came of these conversations bc hugo would refuse to think about herself even if you put a gun to her head

fast forward to post-trials though, and hugo’s been living in the castle with varian for about six months…it was REALLY messy for both of them while she was adjusting, but at this point shes finally started to let her guard down a little, and all of a sudden she has SO much free time and she has no idea what to do with any of it. she’s stealing collecting things, tinkering with all kinds of useless little gadgets, rapunzel is teaching her tons of little arts and crafts projects. overall shes pretty content despite everything. So anyways then the gender crisis hits them like a fucking freight train

honestly i’m like half joking when i say i think it started bc they just kept forgetting to cut their hair. like one day they looked in the mirror and they’re like “wow my hairs getting so long i kinda look like a girl lol. Wait”

AND AS FUNNY AS IT IS ITS SO. WILDLY UNFAMILIAR TO THEM. like all of a sudden theyre SO insecure for as far as they can tell, NO reason and it drives them CRAZY. i dont even think that hugo dislikes their masculine features after coming out, i think they embrace them if anything but its just like…going from 0 to 100 so fast and suddenly being so hyper aware of themselves in a way that they NEVER were before…having to realize that they’re definitely Not cis. it’s fucking TERRIFYING!!!

not to mention it hits him all at once during a time when he’s still frankly really paranoid about him and varian’s relationship, and he’s kinda walking on eggshells bc deep down he’s convinced that var’s just gonna get tired of him eventually and kick him out. its like he’s just waiting for the final nail in the coffin despite the fact that there is literally no coffin.

All that being said i think it takes him a while to work up the courage to talk to varian about it. and he knows he won’t like. hate him for being trans or anything (I sure hope he wouldn’t, at least, seeing as he is literally also trans) but varian’s already done SO much for him and helped him through literally everything already….he doesn’t want to burden him any more than he already has. he also cant comprehend that someone can just Like him, like, as a person, so he’s convinced himself that varian must see something specific in him right now and he’s afraid that if he changes himself drastically in any way then whatever varian saw in him just. won’t be there anymore. If that makes sense

as for who he actually goes to first- honestly i think it’d have to be lance. at least in my head lance was the first person hugo really started to bond with aside from varian….he didn’t start letting his guard down with rapunzel until quite a while after that. also i think he’s worried that if he tells rapunzel she’d end up accidentally spilling something to varian (which is like. Valid bc she’s a horrible liar) he’d definitely write a letter to nuru, too, but nuru is also in another kingdom, and that message takes a while to get to her, so it’s more something they talk about after the fact

when he finally does get a letter back after dumping this revelation on her it’s just like

“dearest hugo. upon reading your letter i desperately wanted to tell you that i told you so, but i realize that would be in poor taste, seeing as you are clearly struggling right now. Moreover,-“ /j

regardless of who she tells first, they obviously all support her and encourage her to talk to varian as well…And ofc varian hypes her up to no end when she finally does. i wanna say it’s a sweet emotional scene but i feel like varian was also under the assumption that she figured out the gender thing like a year ago /j

hugo: ,,,,so like. i don’t think i’m a guy

varian: . yeah?

hugo:

hugo: TFYM “YEAH”?????!!!!???

varian: D. DID WE NOT ALREADY KNOW THIS?

hugo: ,???? NO???!!???!

jokes aside though as soon as hugo does decide he wants to explore his presentation more varian immediately consults rapunzel who gets WAY too excited about it and it kind of scares hugo a little bit. /j like Do you want to cut your hair? Dye it? Do you want new piercings? TATTOOS????

they eventually just settle on getting her a few new pieces to add to her wardrobe and that works out fine. varian sees his girlfriend in a dress and loses his mind etc etc. All is right in the world

[genderkoolaid]

something ive noticed as a very effeminate trans masc that dresses pretty androgynous & has been on hrt for many years is that the status of being a "dangerous man" can and will be placed on you (ime most often by cis white women) whenever expressing any kind of negative feelings. if i told friends of mine - even queer ones - that something they did hurt my feelings or made me upset, i was suddenly a dangerous man or a (man)ipulator or whatever - even if i didn't raise my voice. the very fact that i am unhappy combined with my proximity to manhood makes me a supposed threat in their eyes.

a couple years ago i had a group of cis girl friends. they would constantly pull me into women's bathrooms n such so i wouldn't be left behind saying its fine its fine bc im one of the girls (gender neutral) but then as soon as i was upset about something i was suddenly a dangerous man who needed to stay out of women's spaces,,,, despite the fact that of the 4 of us, the girl who joined after me was the one spreading this shit around my friend group so... how was i encroaching on womens spaces if i was there before her and i was invited in? luckily one of my friends told me that the other two were plotting to kick me out of my friend group on the sole basis of my proximity to manhood so i at least knew why they were suddenly treating me like shit

its just.. i cant understand why people dont think trans mascs and trans men are discriminated against when they literally said it was my "toxic man energy" that made them want me out WHILE ALSO being the ones convincing me to go into womens spaces bc they wanted to go somewhere and didnt wanna have to leave me behind & like i said im extremely effeminate and faggy and also NONBINARY so i dont understand what "man energy" they were talking about other than the fact that im on testosterone and thinking testosterone = man is just transphobic no matter how you try to twist it

but my taking testosterone was never a problem or made me evil or scary when they wanted me to go with them into women-only (&nonbinary too i guess unless youre amab (and they can tell) or been on testosterone for too long) spaces, it was only a problem when they wanted 1. a reason to criticise me relentlessly, borderline bullying or 2. a reason to dismiss any of my concerns or criticisms of their treatment of me

all of that, to me, is transandrophobia point blank. i dont know what else you could call it other than transphobia, but transphobia doesn't address any of the very blatant and obvious connection of how my transness affects their perception of my proximity to manhood and how that affected the situation

God that sucks. I'm sorry you went through that.

You make a very good point. This is why I don't want to define transandrophobia/ATM as just transphobia and misogyny directed at transmascs. I still think transunity theory is a really valuable way of looking at transphobia & its important to me that we are vocal about how masculine tropes are weaponized against trans people by cis people on the regular because of how we are positioned in relation to gender. Too many people think the that the only thing wrong with saying trans people have "dangerous male energy" is that its misgendering. So trans people who choose to associate themselves with manhood are left in the trash by the people who should know best how much being made out to be a Dangerous Male Invader hurts!

[lilvoidcreature13]

I just have to rant for a bit. Please note that I'm using relationship in it's most broadest of terms, this isn't about romance.

The "Three Brothers" story is so fucking stupid. Voldy, Snape, and Harry have vaguely simular upbringings, with them all being neglected and having to struggle until they get to Hogwarts (minis Sev), but the whole brothers parallel just doesn't work all that well for these three because if we were to example their relationships with each other, it would not be a brotherly one.

Voldy & Snape

Snape was a neglected child who got groomed into becoming a death eater by his peers in Hogwarts, Voldy could have easily become a mentor figure, maybe even a father figure since his was so crappy, to Severus, giving them a paternal connection.

Snape & Harry

We all know their relationship is toxic, Snape almost only sees James when he's interacting with Harry, and Harry always assumes that Snape is evil and is trying to kill him. They both think poorly of each other up until Snapes death. Then Harry gets Snape's memories, and gains an understanding that Snape has always been on his side, dispite their animosity he wanted Harry to live.

Their relationship reminds me of the the stereotypical mom and child relationship during a divorce where the child thinks the mom is evil, bitter, and jealous of the father (James) and hates the mom for any perceived slights. And the mom is at her wits end and her hatred for the dad is spilling over into her relationship with the child. They fight constantly and then the child gains some perspective on their mom and realize that their dad wasnt perfect and that the mothers behavior isnt as malicious as they first thought. I know, I'm getting really specific, but it fits so well!! My point is Snape can be read as a parental figure for Harry, but I specifically interpret him as a maternal figure because he has a strong connection to Lily, and because Snape has a lot of connections to femininity (((stronge connections to woman [Eileen & Lily], wore his mom's clothes, wanted to be like his mom [Slytherin]. I'm not the only one who sees Snape's more feminine side; there's a reason why there are so many fanfics where Severus is either a girl, a trans boy, gender fluid, or is just a man who can get pregnant.)))

Now to my main point, none of these relationships are brotherly in any way shape or form. There's no shared experiences outside of neglected (all different versions of neglect I might add) but there is a generational connection where the actions of Voldy effected the environment of Snapes childhood (the DE recruiters in Slytherin) and Snapes actions effected Harry's childhood as well (Giving Voldy the prophecy, and then being a double agent.)

My main point is, Voldy, Snape, and Harry represent an intergenerational family then they do an immediate family (siblings). I recognize that the Mother, Maiden, Crone archetypes weren't as prevalent in the mainstream during the time JKR was writing the books, but those archetypes have been around for ages and ages and you'd think a woman who claimed to be an advocate for feminism would have tried to allude to those powerful feminine figures in her books instead of making some random story about death and three brothers. I honestly might have given her some credit if she had made the brothers a Patron, Father, and Son as a gender bent version of the Mother Maiden Crone.

Also incase it wasn't obvious:

Crone - Voldy

Mother - Snape

Maiden - Harry

[lycandrophile]

i just got back from my first ever gynecological exam and somehow, despite the doctor being really nice and way more knowledgeable about trans bodies than i was expecting, it still ended up being incredibly upsetting and honestly probably mildly traumatizing. i’m sure it’s no secret to anyone following me that going to the gynecologist is a uniquely shitty experience for a lot of trans guys and i knew that but i really was not prepared for that.

first of all, everything you read says that the pelvic exam and pap smear shouldn’t hurt even if they’re super uncomfortable, but let me tell you, that shit fucking hurt. like, i have a pretty high pain tolerance and usually even when something does hurt i don’t show it very much, but that was maybe the most painful thing i’ve ever had a doctor do to me and it showed. to be fair, i’ve never had good luck with things like that — i couldn’t even use tampons back when i had a period because the one time i did, taking it out was really painful — and i’m on t now so i’m sure that makes things even harder and i was prepared for it to hurt, but i really wasn’t ready for just bad it was. it’s been an hour since the exam finished and there’s still some pain so, yeah, so much for “it’s just uncomfortable, not painful”.

(and a side note: when it did hurt, the doctor told me to relax my muscles because the tension makes it hurt more. what they didn’t seem to realize is that if your brain and body are collectively rejecting the presence of something inside you, making those muscles relax is a fucking herculean task and i for one was not in any way capable of it so it just…kept getting more painful.)

i also was never informed ahead of time of what a pelvic exam actually entails; i had assumed it was a more general external checkup, and that the pap smear was the only really invasive part. as it turns out, i was very wrong, and “pelvic exam” actually means the doctor sticks their finger up you to feel around. she asked me if i was comfortable getting the exam because it was so obvious that the pap smear didn’t go well, but i had no clue what i was saying yes to and it was a total surprise for me when there was something inside me again. and she knew it was my first time, so she had no reason to assume i knew that the exam would be like. by the time i realized i absolutely should not have said yes to it, i was too late and it was already happening. it really feels like common sense that if you’re going to be giving someone what basically amounts to a professional fingering, you should probably make it clear that that’s what’s about to happen, but i guess that doctor would disagree.

and of course, the whole time i was also being misgendered. the doctor used the right name for me, but the other staff didn’t and everything about it was so excessively gendered (i’m pretty sure the appointment i had was literally called a “women’s wellness visit” on the same sheet that had trans man and nonbinary as gender options). not to mention, when i told them i’m getting top surgery and have the exact date set, the nurse made a comment to like“well aren’t you one of the lucky ones,” which really felt like it had “i think trans guys have a super easy time getting surgeries that cis women have to fight for” energy.

and the irony of all this definitely isn’t lost on me — i just did a project this past semester about how trans guys are fucked over by reproductive healthcare practices so a lot of us just never go, and now i got some firsthand experience in exactly why so many of us just say “no fucking way”.

i just want to put this out there for anyone who hasn’t done it before because i think this would have been a lot less awful for me if someone had just told me “yeah, it might hurt way more than you think, and also that thing they call a pelvic exam is actually an internal exam.” i thought i was prepared and i totally wasn’t, so hopefully this will reach someone else who will be better off knowing all of this.

[alexaloraetheris]

Lookie what I got in the Tumblr classifieds today:

I was sceptical, but it's a real article. You can find the full thing here. It's by Igor Goldkind, Neil's publicist at one point (for Violent Causes), so even if the bias wasn't immediately obvious, it's also clearly stated.

And it literally starts off like this:

Off to a great start, we are.

This bit made me question the legitimacy immediately:

I'll summarize the rest: he talks about knowing Gaiman since the 80s, how charismatic he is, how he introduced him to a lot of big names, how he was 'ahead of the curve when it came to gender sexuality' (the article is also full of typos and general grammatical errors) in making Sandman. He goes on and on about how much of a positive impact Gaiman has made across many demographics, emphasizing trans people.

Once he's done singing Gaiman's praises (80% of the article), you get this:

Ah. Calling the women attention seeking whores and saying rape isn't real if you're in a relationship, couched in very nice terms. Classic.

Then he does something I should have seen coming:

'It was all a misunderstanding, folks, can we just apologize to each other and move on?'

He acknowledges he made mistakes, and that he tries to fix them and move past them, and yet refuses to entertain the idea that Gaiman might have done anything out of malice, and anything he did do, couldn't warrant being dragged through the public like this (I agree with him on that for different reasons).

He ends with this:

(I have admittedly cherry picked the parts that stood out to me, read the full article for context)

Thoughts:

So, start to finish, this has the air of damage control. I did get the feeling Goldkind was sincere, though maybe he's just a better writer than I give him credit for. Maybe this is his honest to god oppinion. If he's really that close to Gaiman, I can believe he simply doesn't WANT to believe his friend capable of something like that. To be scrupulously fair, when I first heard the accusations (and about the Tortoise Media that published it) I at first assumed it was an antisemitic attack against an openly Jewish author, because come on, accusing THE Neil Gaiman of SA?

Nobody wanted to believe it.

The denial stage didn't last past the second publication. This guy is still there, I think, and is hoping it will blow over if everyone apologises and shakes hands on stage.

Too late for that buddy.

[chnhrobin]

I’m kind of in the camp that if you CANNOT UNDER ANY REASONABLE CIRCUMSTANCE find out someone’s gender and what they prefer to be called then sure it’s ok to use they/them… but like. especially online… it only takes a little research (clicking on bio) not to misgender someone. Like there’s no reason that someone who doesn’t use it should get they/themmed at that point other than transphobia or willful neglect.

IRL, i use they them as well as she her, but i know that it feels so bad as a trans girl to get asked what my pronouns are, and to get automatically they/themmed bc of someone’s preconceived notion that that’s the default pronoun when they’re unsure.

“Shouldn’t it be obvious?” I’d tell myself. I’d be wearing a full face of makeup and girly clothes, and trying to speak in a feminine way, and this and that and the other, and it just gets exhausting when all you want is for people to see you and it to instantly click that you’re a girl. Even among queer people, it’s so hard to be a trans woman and not get misgendered.

this may be controversial, but if you’re meeting someone IRL, I think the best policy is to try to WAIT until they tell you or clue you in to what they wanna be called, rather than outright asking for pronouns. Telling someone yourself feels better than having that interrogation moment, where someone has to reveal that you’re third gender enough to get hit with the they/them beam automatically. Let’s be honest… do people who say they use they/them as a default really use they/them with cis women who present feminine?…I’m sorry but it’s usually the fact they’ve clocked you. They/themming IS misgendering folks who don’t use it. Period. We may need to re-interrogate whether we should have a “default pronoun” in the first place.

[starwikia]

suicide cw

look i have been in this area before mentally. it sucks and i wouldn’t wish this on anyone. but, and this is going to sound callous, but i don’t feel any sympathy for james somerton. even if i hope he’s like. not dead. But thats all the amount of goodwill im willing to give him. The more i think about this really, the more angry i am. 

ngl this entire situation is another example of how white people weaponize their mental illness to avoid consequences. Im seeing it in real time.

this man has a continuous habit of using self-harm as a get-out-of-jail-for-free card. in both of his apologies, he has worded his supposed attempts in ways that were clearly meant to guilt people who displayed his plagiarism and overall horrendous history of racism and misogyny. i say supposed because, while i’m not saying those are lies and this would he such a fucked up thing to lie about that i don’t want to think he has, unfortunately, it’s been proven again and again that his word can’t be trusted, as he’s known to lie to try get out of consequences. Hes a proven liar. him lying about this is actually the best case scenario, because no one should go through this entire situation, wouldnt wish this on anyone, but you can only do this so often before people stop sympathizing with you. is this callous? Yeah, but like. I’m actually fucking angry he cant straight up take no as an answer. that this is how he reacts realizing he cant be one of the Cool Kidz™️ on youtube anymore. he acts like he DESERVES a career, like its not a privilege hes lost due to his own actions.

He lied about apologizing and forgiving people, he lied about giving the money to hbomberguy to give to ppl he ripped off (yknow, instead of doing it himself), he lied about the jessie gender situation and rewrote the narrative to make it so he isnt the bad guy, and hes the victim all along actually!

you can’t tell me that supposed last message of his isn’t meant to be a 13 reasons why esq attempt to deflect the blame “look i’m going to kill myself and it’s all YOUR PEOPLES FAULT for not letting me achieve my DREAM of being filmmaker IN PEACE!!! I just wanted Nick’s (the guy who I have thrown under the bus again and again) portfolio up!! Im just being a good friend dont you all FEEL BAD” he refuses to take ANY ACCOUNTABILITY of any of his actions and he IS STILL trying to shove the blame over to other people again.

it’s also pretty ironic people are like “uhhh well hbomber’s fans harassed him!!!” like hbomber outright told people NOT to HARASS JAMES!!! ALSO acting as if james doesn’t have a very real documented history of STRAIGHT UP sending his fans to harass and threaten smaller creators, more notably women, trans, and bipoc creators. especially after he’s stolen typically very personal anecdotes so he could profit from them. so why can he do it but the second people are like “hey this guys an actual piece of shit.” and he can’t handle it suddenly people are trying to white knight his shit? like no he doesn’t get that. he doesn’t get that at all just because he couldn’t handle the consequences of his actions. 

what? were supposed to stay quiet about a man profiting off of other minorities because he wanted to be the spokesman for all gay people? people tried to solve this on a smaller, more private scales for YEARS and he kept doing it. it was clear that the giant public video was the ONLY way to get people to notice. HE WOULDVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH STEALING 87 FUCKING THOUSANDS WORTH OF DOLLARS. HE CANT HANDLE THE FACT HE CANT GET AWAY WITH IT. 

am i supposed to feel bad for the guy who basically threatened a trans woman with the police? i don’t care what anyone says, it’s so fucking obvious that he threatened jessie by implying he was getting the police involved in their conflict. what am i supposed to act like that didn’t happen? are we supposed to pretend like he didn’t glorify nazi’s and outright said that gay people made up a good chunk of the nazis? That he didnt say america joined ww2 bc they were jealous of the NAZIS. WHAT WOULD POSSESS YOU TO FUCKING SAY THAT. but then? He gives women (not even women most of the time, he misgenders nonbinary ppl constantly) shit for writing mlm. are we supposed to act like he doesn’t straight-up sees himself superior and better than people of color and steals their works to put himself on a pedestal? Are we supposed to act like he didnt spit on our elders by saying “only the boring gays survived aids” like man! Fuck you! He BLANTANTLY MAKES UP HISTORY TO PUT HIMSELF ON A PEDESTAL!! HE ACTIVELY TRIED TO REWRITE LGBT HISTORY TO SUIT HIS FUCKED UP NARRATIVES!

yes this sucks ! no one deserves this but no one should be making him a martyr. Thats what he fucking WANTS! He wants to be immortalized as a victim!! (again, supposedly, it was reported hes alive but its not confirmed).

The shit he got isnt near the amount of fucking callous behavior hes done again and again. Again, to drill this point, EVEN IF HE DIDNT CALL THE POLICE HE THREATENED A TRANS WOMAN INTO THINKING HE DID!!! The fact he tried to use a head injury to justify years of the outright ghoulish shit fucking astounds me. Why the fuck did anyone in his life thought it was a good idea to let him TRY to come back. in the end, he had options. he didn’t need to try to make a comeback. HE DIDNT NEED TO FUCKING LIE OR IGNORE THE SHIT HE WAS CALLED OUT ON the reality is, he wanted to come back thinking he could shove it under the rug, was told that no dude, you’re not allowed to be a youtuber anymore. you’re done. you need to move on and went full nuclear. it’s not on anyone’s hands but his own. HES BEEN DOING THIS TO HIMSELF!! But nah man we cant call his shit out bc hell may or may not kill himself. Fuck the other minorities who have the same issues but worse and sometimes BECAUSE of him. This is going to SUCKKKK so bad when other ppl, specifically white gays, are going to weaponize this shit to get away with their stuff.

[morlock-holmes]

Part of my confusion about "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria" is that it's really just... not a good term? It doesn't really reflect what it's supposed to, which is the idea that some teenagers essentially take on a trans identity as a sort of social role spurred on by friend groups.

I think that this is likely to be actually true in at least some sense, so I was amazed at how unconvincing the Littman paper which coined the term actually is. The parental narratives advanced in that paper are just unbelievable on their face.

Ever since the gay rights movement I've felt that our vocabulary for talking about this stuff is deliberately incredibly stupid, for reasons I haven't quite been able to suss out.

In the gay rights battles, everybody got together and agreed that there were exactly two possibilities:

Gay people are born that way

Gay people made a choice to be gay

I think this is really dumb because those are really obviously not the only two options, and also because there's lots of biological "born this way" things we still treat or try to eliminate, and lots of choices that are still incredibly important to protect.

But also, like, okay, think about sexual fetishes. Say you have a guy with a cheerleader fetish. Cheerleaders are a contingent social phenomenon; no 12th century Breton had a cheerleader fetish. The possibility of such a fetish arose with the invention of the cheerleader.

But it's just as obvious that people do not choose their fetishes the way that they choose, say, a new car. Nobody says, "After listing out the pros and cons, I felt that having a cheerleader fetish was the best choice, because it combines a little bit of exotic spice while still being mainstream enough that it can't be used as blackmail if people find out about it."

No, one day you just realize that you think cheerleaders are really hot.

I do tend to think that gender identity is, for most people, a lot less immediately set in stone than sexual orientation is. My personal impression is that the vast majority of people start to understand very quickly whether they are attracted to men, women, or both, and that they only tell themselves differently because they fear social censure.

I'm not really convinced that the same is true of gender identity; I think that for an extremely large number of people it does function a bit more like a fetish, in that there are people who encounter the idea for the first time, go, "Huh, yeah that's cool or whatever" and after repeated encounters come to think, "Actually I am really into this."

I'm very, very suspicious of the tendency to then assert that this must inherently, then, be a discovery of something that always existed within the person since birth.

There's also the fact that gender roles exist, and people want to be legible to people around them.

For a lot of people, dressing up as a vampire on Halloween is fun, but dressing up as a vampire to go grocery shopping in June would be deeply embarrassing. Because on Halloween all the people around you understand why you're dressed that way and your dress makes you part of a larger social whole; in June you're going against the grain, marking yourself out from the people around you, probably drawing stares and hidden smiles.

Because sex roles in our society are so set in stone, there is a certain extreme dissatisfaction with not following them, even when allowed to do so.

I can wear chokers and frills and pretty hair ribbons if I want, but the women around me can do that anywhere in the country and have people think of it as normal, as obvious, rather than *a statement*.

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, from reading the Littman paper, seems to refer to a parental conviction that their child essentially got the idea to be trans from a peer group who convinced them they were trans despite a lack of gender dysphoria in childhood.

Like I said, the general narrative is really, really hard to believe at face value, for example:

A total of 63.8% of the parents have been called “transphobic” or “bigoted” by their children for one or more reasons, the most common being for: disagreeing with the child about the child’s self-assessment of being transgender (51.2%); recommending that the child take more time to figure out if their feelings of gender dysphoria persist or go away (44.6%); expressing concerns for the child’s future if they take hormones and/or have surgery (40.4%); calling their child by the pronouns they used to use (37.9%); telling the child they thought that hormones or surgery would not help them (37.5%); recommending that their child work on other mental health issues first to determine if they are the cause of the dysphoria (33.3%); calling the child by their birth name (33.3%); or recommending a comprehensive mental health evaluation before starting hormones and/or surgery (20.8%)

So, like, the whole tenor of the paper is that these are basically very liberal parents who are sort of being cut off by their kids for no reason, but like...

This is typical of the general weasel wording used by Littman. Are the third of parents who called their kids by pronouns they used to use going, "She - Oops, he, I'm sorry" one time and getting blasted? Do they claim to be trying but just get it wrong literally every single time? Or do they just flat out refuse to call their child by their preferred pronouns?

When my brother was first entering high school, he joined the Sea Scouts, a division of the Boy Scouts dedicated to learning about sailing. He later entered a maritime college and has had a succession of maritime jobs, which will likely be his career for the rest of his life.

Is that the result of social contagion or was he born that way?

I think the question is obviously both absurd and irrelevant.

[velvetvexations]

This is a protective ask. It encourages you to check whether you really want to answer the asks beneath yet. Be good to yourself, you do good work for all of us <3

Thank you, anon. <3

sick of feeling like queer spaces seem to expect masculine people to be protectors and supporters without ever expecting to have to give us protection and support too. it's always how trans mascs can be allies to trans femmes and never the other way around. it's what about the scary trans man in the women's bathroom and little discussion of the threat we are under in these scenarios. it's always use your masculinity to protect me, but nobody can give without receiving. support and protection are features of community and community needs to be at least somewhat mutual. I refuse to constantly put myself in danger to protect someone who sees my suffering simply as an inherent duty of my presentation. let me be butch and slow and gentle for a change. let me be scared and held please.

I'll hold you. It's okay. You don't have to put yourself in danger to be a man, I promise.

people love love love to be blatantly misogynistic towards trans men/mascs and be like "well actually its subversive because he's a man! teehee!" was it subversive when i got told to shut up because i was the only women present (post coming-out) was it subversive when i got told i had to wear a dress to show off my feminine figure (post coming-out) was it subversive when i got called shrill mid-argument (post-coming out) was it subversive when nobody except me would clean the communal areas in the flat because i "did it so well" (post coming-out) was it subversive when i had my music taste made fun of when i was a 13 year old girl? is it subversive now that im a 20 year old trans guy? am i not the same person? is it subversive when people talk about trans men the same way people talk about teenage girls. is talking about teenage girls like that subversive if they come out as trans men later. or is it maybe a little different?

I'm sorry anon, you deserve so much better.

This discourse is always so fucking bizarre because IRL I'll be hanging out with trans women, getting fun updates from my friend on how her E dosage is going and her first foray into wired bras, spending time with the only other transmasc I know IRL at a 'women + nonbinary people' event because that's literally the only queer space near us intended for transmascs, and it's just incredibly obvious people perpetuating this discourse don't go outside

touching grass is vital

The shortest line joke reminds me of the fact that when I was more femme presenting & the women's toilets were blocked off, I went into the men's bathroom and a man went 'Ah! You scared me' and I was like at last, I am the threat <3 I haven't tested to see what will happen if I go to the men's bathroom now that I've started getting weird looks from women from being in theirs. Probably more of the same. It's hard out here being a bathroom liberation free the nipple communist

so true

i spent an hour arguing with a TRF and i'm exhausted. there's a reason i have a boundary with myself about getting into discourse. i don't know how you do it, but thank you for doing it from those that can't <3

I do what I must because I can <3

oh and then the same person said she think its funny to call trans men ‘birthday boys’… i neeeeed to mock and infantilise all trans men because a couple of them disagreed with me!

context

if someone treats you that way call them a slur back until they stop

(do not do that)

Yo it hit me over the head just now- i think there's a large portion of transfems who never did any gender work beyond their own. Like the running joke of 'of course every guy secretly wants to be a girl'; I'm not sure they can conceptualize us wanting to be masculine for any reason so there has to be some sort of 'ulterior motive'

Correct, though stupid selfish assholes with the same lack of comprehension or desire to comprehend the experiences of others come in all kinds.

[gabessquishytum]

t4t that is also idiot4idiot.

Hob and Dream are both trans men, and they both OBVIOUSLY like each other, but they also both have anxiety about coming out to the other. And that anxiety translates into both of them completely missing obvious hints about the other.

Like, one of them finds pads or tampons at their house and is like "well he has lots of female friends, obviously he's just considerate". One of them sees the other has a "protect trans kids" patch and just "well he's an ally, obviously he's just a good person (that doesn't mean he'll want to date a trans person though)".

The kicker is that when they met, they BOTH had the same "haha, interesting name you got there" reaction and ALSO both were like "oh yeah I chose it myself haha" and STILL NEVER CONNECTED THE DOTS.

Anyway I have no idea who finally figures it out/ comes out first or how it happens, I just know they have a solid minute of doing the spiderman pointing meme. And then they fuck.

Oh I LOVE these idiots. I really really do.

So like. Hob is a very masculine looking person, you know? He's got the beard, the chest hair, he's had some gender affirming surgeries. Yeah, he's a got a little trans flag pin on his messenger bag and yes, Dream has heard him talking about "T" before... but Hob loves tea! That could mean anything! It doesn't mean he's trans, and Dream certainly isn't going to ask. His worst nightmares involve Hob rejecting him or being offended by him, so Dream keeps quiet. He doesn't want to rock the boat.

And... Dream is, pun fully intended, a transmasc dream. He's tall, graceful and muscular in a sort of understated way. Hob is absolutely entirely secure and in love with his own body but there's still a tiny bit of him that looks at Dream and screams GENDER ENVY. He's the most gorgeous man in the world, probably. And listen, just because he pulled his hoodie off and accidentally pulled his t-shirt up too, and Hob thought he maybe saw top surgery scars, doesn't mean anything. There are plenty of reasons for him to have scars there, right?

They're both idiots in love.

It all comes to a head when Hob gets injured in a stupid accident. He ends up somewhat bedbound, and Dream volunteers to help out (he'd do anything for love). The absolute horror of having his crush take him to the bathroom makes Hob wants to cry a bit, and he ends up just blurting out "I don't have a penis" when Dream tries to help him use the toilet. Dream just kind of stares at him for a second and then calmly says... "me neither."

They don't talk about it for a bit.

Dream helps Hob pee and get back into bed, and he's about to head out when Hob kind of whimpers and reaches out for him. So of course Dream crawls into bed beside him and cuddles him in silence for a bit.

And then they both start giggling.

They exchange transition stories. And then they exchange kisses. And eventually they exchange very gentle orgasms. And in between they cant stop laughing about how stupid they both are, and how in love they feel.

(Hob is so mad that he has to wait until he's better before he can get his favourite strap out and use it on Dream. The good news is, Dream has one he can (tenderly) use on Hob in the meantime 😇)