#my husband and friend know I’m nonbinary but the other people do not | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kiragecko · 1 year ago

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This is a post about why I'm currently considering myself to be nonbinary, but it's not a post about gender.

It’s about 90% of the elementary school girls wanting to sit on the grass and talk about boys, and me still not understanding why even now, in my mid 30s.

It’s about ‘girls books’ that were all about friendship drama and worrying about menstruating, and how these were framed as universal concerns. My only friends were a pair of male cousins and we mostly cared about how our Lego ninjas’ castle infiltration was going. (The options were limited in my small library in the mid-90s.)

It’s about the ‘wild’, ‘disobedient’, and 'hyper' kids in the books I grew up with being so much better behaved than me, even on my best day, that I’d puzzle over it for weeks. Maybe if my parents were stricter I would be able to follow instructions easier? Maybe I was one of the mean kids in those books? Why was nobody in books like me?

It’s about the revulsion I feel when I think about ‘romantic’ gestures. Remembering my mom getting flowers from someone at church, and my aunt getting upset when I laughed about how she wouldn’t like them. MY MOM IS ALLERGIC TO FLOWERS, but a person who had nothing to do with the situation got offended that I didn’t consider them a thoughtful and nice gift. It makes me feel nauseous thinking about how I’m ‘supposed’ to think things that I don’t want and can’t use are loving gifts, just because society decided they were.

It's about people wanting me to already know their social conventions, and feeling like they are doing SO MUCH WORK when they make allowances for my mistakes, but thinking that learning anything about how I like to communicate is asking far too much of them.

It's about trying to make friends as a teen, and all the guys getting upset or weird when it became clear that wasn't code for dating.

It's about makeup giving me rashes, and my hair being done up giving me headaches.

It’s about women in lingerie in ads, and how I wore a headscarf for a year in reaction to how that made me feel.

It's about learning biblical gender roles, and getting really excited about the idea of protection and love in return for submission. And then finding out I like the BDSM understanding of protection and submission a lot more than I like the church's. That the person I love doesn't have the skill to protect me in ways that make submission safe.

It’s about having noise and light sensitivities, but being expected to enjoy crowded weddings.

It’s about people acting disgusted when I get too loud. Or excited. Or happy. Or interested.

It's about 'body language experts' that ""explain"" what various gestures mean, and it's about that month when my husband believed them and told me I was wrong about what I felt.

It's about definitions of 'womanhood' and 'humanity' that contain things that exclude me. And learning how to be okay with being the exception this time. And eventually getting so used to being the exception that I can no longer connect to the concept at all.

It's about only reading fantasy, now, because an elf's experience isn't supposed to be relatable.

It’s about learning that ‘I actually wanted’ things I didn’t want, and I was ‘unreasonable’ when I said no, and I was being ‘too sensitive’ when things physically or emotionally hurt.

It’s about being ADHD and aroace and weird in far too many ways; in a culture that seems to consider that to be willful rebellion and disrespect.

I don’t know how to be a woman. I don’t know how to feel good about being a woman. I don't feel I can fulfill the roles and dynamics associated with femininity. I can't present myself in the expected ways, and I don't really want to. In isolation, 'woman' feels like an accurate description. But than I think of OTHER people considering me a woman, and having the right to define what that means, and I just can't.

I need a break from considering myself female, so I can figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t break me.

I want to learn how to interact with other people in a way that are less exhausting and painful. Engage on my own terms, and disengage if those terms aren’t fulfilled. Protect my own boundaries with strangers and acquaintances - people I don’t expect to make allowances for me. Not by demanding things of them, but by only offering myself on certain terms.

I don't want to ask anything about anyone else. I'm tired of it being about them. I want to ask things of myself. Ask for respect, and care. Figure out what that would actually look like. I want to process and let go of my self-hatred and feelings of being 'designed wrong'.

I've heard the terms 'acegender' and 'neurogender'. They don't excite me, but I recognize that's part of what's going on. Having ADHD gets in the way of performing womanhood to the point that it becomes hard to separate them. And some much of femaleness is defined in relation to being a part of a heterosexual romantic couple. I've got the man, but that hasn't helped me decode the mysteries of romantic and sexual attraction. The baffling concept of men having some sort of allure that women lack, of being a different category.

But, like my marriage isn't about my lack of attraction (it's about the choice I made to love him, and the decade plus of commitment we've had to each other), being nonbinary isn't about my lack of understanding of and ability to perform womanhood. It's about choosing to love myself, and recognizing that I've internalized enough harmful beliefs that I can't healthily identify as female right now.

It's not about gender.

#nonbinary #gender stuff #neurodivergence #asexuality #acegender #neurogender #when you spent years thinking your desire for they/them pronouns was about not being female #and it turns out it's actually about wanting to opt out of stereotypes that were destroying you

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kieraelieson · 4 months ago

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Differences in Support

A weird kind of informal essay I’m writing at 2 am and not editing.

This will involve details of my childhood, which may be triggering to people with similar experiences. Open the read-more with this knowledge.

I’ve been thinking more about that post where someone’s being queerphobic at Thomas Sanders. And it had me thinking of experiences I’ve had where people were queerphobic towards me.

When I was a younger teen, I was intensely affectionate. I wanted to hold hands and link arms with people I was close to, I wanted to lean on them and feel their affection towards me. Two specific situations come to mind, one with a friend and one with my sister.

My friend Mary* had been getting ‘too close’ to her female friends, according to her parents. One time I was walking with her and held out my hand.

She awkwardly moved her arm away rather than taking it, saying with great disappointment and embarrassment, “My Mom says I can’t hold your hand anymore. Cause when we do it looks too… like that… If anyone from my family sees us holding hands I’ll get in trouble.”

It wasn’t with all of her friends that she was banned from holding hands. Just me and one other. Cause we ‘looked too gay’.

The other situation I remember was with my sister, Elsa*. We were going shopping for groceries together. I enjoyed it because without any other members of our family around, we could behave more like ourselves, and the experience would be better. I linked my arm with hers, laughing and enjoying the shopping trip.

I noticed that she grew stiffer, colder as the trip continued. I chalked it up to protectiveness, and anxiety from the harsh lights and loud sounds of the store. But when we reached the car she turned on me.

“You’re really oblivious, aren’t you? Didn’t you see all those looks we were getting?”

“What looks?”

“Like they thought we were gay or something. You clearly didn’t see them, but we were getting glared at the whole time.”

I laughed. “But we’re sisters? Wouldn’t they feel silly if they knew.”

She frowned, her nose wrinkling in disgust. “It’s cause of you, hanging off me the whole time. You give off a… like an aura that you’re gay.”

At the time, I was so far in the closet I was still in denial, and tried to dismiss this.

She turned away. “You should really find a way to stop looking like it then. People notice, and it’s going to get you in trouble.”

Even just the appearance, the hint or suspicion of queerness cost me so much in those relationships. These times hurt me badly. It felt like my affection, my love, was turned into the knife to stab me with.

Now, though, things are different.

I kiss my husband, who is nonbinary. Our boyfriend looks on, and says with fondness, “Gaaaaaaay~”

“Yeah, we are,” either me or my husband will say, smiling.

Now I walk into a new location and I hold a partner’s hand tight, knowing that if anyone levels a dirty look at us my partner will glare right back, and if we’re uncomfortable we will leave.

Now I wear my keys on a rainbow colored lanyard, and have a rainbow heart on the door of my house.

Now the flags that represent us are hanging on the wall over mine and my husband’s bed.

Now my husband holds hands with me and their other partner as we walk through the park.

Life is better now. I have real, genuine support.

#*names changed for privacy #queerphobia #queer pride #polyamory #my own work

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devilsvine · 2 years ago

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hi fellas. sorry to make a post like this but i really don’t know what else to do<3

hi i’m ken. my significant other and i are in a polyamorous relationship. i am gay and trans, they are nonbinary and pan, their husband is trans and pan. currently, them, their husband, and their 3 year old are homeless due to a series of being fucked over. the baby (my niece) is currently somewhere safe, but my s/o and friend are homeless right now and my roommates will not let me have them stay here any longer. their husband works, but my s/o is disabled and cannot work. because the USA is a hellscape, they don’t get disability payments because they’re married. their only other option is to live in their car, but that’s in danger of being repo’d.

tldr, the people i love are in a really rough spot and i’m at the end of my rope. i’m helping as much as i can, but i’m a full time student with a minimum wage job.

please, if you’re able to help, please do so. i do not know what else to do.

if you’re just feeling charitable,

venmo: kenl0rd

cashapp: $himb0logy

paypal

otherwise, i can offer art commissions (my art tumblr is @dangerrdaze if you’d like to see my work), tarot readings, spellwork commissions, and reiki treatments (i am certified Reiki 2 and able to do remote treatments. i can provide proof of my certification.) i’m also open to remote sex work. if any of this sounds good to you, DM me for further details.

the current goal is $5k, to move them into a place we know for sure can take them with their bad credit. any little bit helps.

$80/5000

please share this around!🧡

#signal boost #donations #help #mutual aid #homeless #crowdfunding

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deathxproof-archive · 1 year ago

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Get To Know Susan Foreman 5!

“How much Classic Who / Extended Who lore do I need to know—-“

I’m gonna be honest, like, none. Know that she is the Doctor’s granddaughter. Know that she is a Time Lord who has regenerated from that girl. I play fast and loose with her canon / the lore I know from different novels and audios. You don’t need to be familiar with any source material if you don’t want to be. Here are my rules, which do matter more than any of that. That being said, let’s get into Susan!

Basics—

Default Regeneration: 5

Name: Susan Foreman

AKA: Arkytior, Susan Campbell, Susan Rose Foreman(ooc AKA: arkytiorforeman circa 2013-2017)

Age + DOB: ??? 450??ish? Unknown. She found out this regeneration is a Taurus, though. She’s specifically a Taurus Sun, Aquarius Moon, and Gemini Rising. She checked her TARDIS records for when she regenerated specifically. She wanted to know.

Gender: Woman-adjacent. Probably nonbinary, if not more agender.

Sexuality: Queer??? Space Queer?

Species: Gallifreyan. Time Lord? Gallifreyan.

Occupation: Museum curator. History and ghost tour guide. Botanist. Herbalist.

Faceclaim: Angel Coulby

Susan 5’s Playlist!: Only Culturally Gallifreyan

Background—

Current Residence: By and large her TARDIS. Verse-dependent. Defaults to London, England, sometime in the late 20th to earlyish 21st century.

TARDIS Appearance: Grandfather clock.

Parents: If you have some lore you’re attached to let me know, but I tend to lean towards writing a head canon that Arkytior/Susan was accidentally loomed or otherwise brought into existence by Theta, Koschei and Ushas, or maybe just happened upon. As far as she’s aware she isn’t… Quite… Sure. About her parents. Nobody ever talked about it. The Doctor is still her closest parental figure. The Master was a close parental figure. The Rani was there, sometimes. Less parental and more… Aunt-ly.

Parents Pt 2: The Doctor(Father), The Master(Father), The Rani(Mother?)(Strange Aunt?)

Significant Others: David Campbell(very deceased)

Children: Barbara Foreman(estranged/deceased), Ian Foreman(estranged/deceased), David Foreman Jr(estranged/deceased), Alex Campbell Foreman(very deceased).

Other Family Members: The Doctor(Grandfather), The Master(?)(Grandfather?), The Rani(????)(Grandmother? Strange Aunt?), Irving Braxiatel (Uncle)

Chosen Family: Barbara and Ian Chesterton(old, good friends), Johnny Chesterton(new, good friend. Ian and Barbara’s child. Susan’s pseudo-godchild.)

Quickest Biography I Can Muster—

Susan Foreman in her current form and state of being is roughly 450-475 years old, and sporting her fifth face.

Four(4) faces ago she was a little Gallifreyan girl just changing her name and fucking around with her Grandfather and her two good Earth friends. Then she was left on a hostile time in Earth’s history with her then-future-husband, David, by the Doctor. They adopted a handful of children and tried to make a life in alien-hostile, Dalek-infested 22nd Century Earth.

Three(3) faces ago she regenerated after people began to question why David looked so much older and Susan stayed, well, literally exactly the same. The same face, but older. But not too old, either. Her son Alex died by Dalek attack, and in a turn of events not long after the Master kidnapped and killed David in front of her. Susan, in defense, killed the Master and stole his TARDIS. As one does. Her psychic skills were always impressive, apparently, compared to other Time Lords. She didn’t know how so until she got a test for it. And why wouldn’t she keep a TARDIS she rightfully earned, anyways?

Two(2) faces ago… Two faces ago she didn’t last long. The events surrounding David and Alex estranged her from her own surviving kids in a way she tried to swear wouldn’t happen when she was the parental figure. Her remaining kids wanted nothing to do with her. The Time Lords thought her dead, and when she could’ve received any summons to the Time War, she simply ignored them anyways. Eventually they went away— and when they came back she spent the majority of her regeneration in the chameleon arch under a fobwatch in a last ditch effort to avoid any chance of returning to her home planet, let alone one that was burning.

One(1) face ago she began to reunite with Barbara and Ian Chesterton on Earth. This involved meeting their kid, Johnny, and taking Johnny around with her for a few trips and hang outs here and there. She was fine, definitely not still in a bad place after her kids and her husband all died, definitely not angry and sad because the rest of her children estranged themselves from her after David and Alex dying, definitely didn’t react as poorly as anyone might to their home being destroyed while they willingly hid, definitely didn’t try to die by inhibiting her regeneration on purpose hahahaa why would she do that?

Face Number Five, Right here, right now she’s… Still freshly regenerated, for the most part. Definitely figuring herself out sometimes- most times. She’s often rather manic in this point in her regeneration, reckless, flighty and feels ever-so-slightly invincible after her coincidental survival. She’s bubbling over with life and energy and space where she wants to be. Earth is her home more than anything else, sometimes viewing humans as an anthropological study that she couldn’t put down to the point of entangling her life into them.

Susan hops between hobbyist time travel and attempting to build some sort of, any sort of life of her own around the Chestertons. As she settled into this face, the more Barbara and Ian tried to encourage her to get a job, a steady career to give her something to do. Johnny encouraged it if only to help their friend build some sort of identity.

She job hops. History and ghost walking tours were good fun and a way to show off, until people online started to realize she was giving tours in different countries in the same week. Real estate was completely dull. Working with plants was promising… Currently she resides as the lead art curator for a museum in London. It’s amazing, she has an incredible knack for finding mysteriously lost or otherwise stolen artworks. It’s great luck, knowing the right people at the right time. It would be silly for Ian or Barbara to even suggest time travel was involved in the slightest.

Susan 5 is here for a good time, not a long time. If you ask her, she clearly has regenerations to spare. Lives are less a dwindling resource and more a tool she can rely on when needed. She is figuring out her personhood, doesn’t exactly know who she is— but her name is Susan Foreman. And she’s new, she’s young, she’s fresh, she’s hot. Let’s see where this goes.

#character: susan foreman #about muses #I should’ve dug up her old about page from her OG blog on waybackmachine to compare….#next ones I’m doing like this are probably Rory!Master. Maybe a Doctor. Maybe Theta & Koschei. I’m pleased with the zine style so far???#doctor who rp #susan foreman #dr who rp #muse bio #happy 12:20 AM have this #edited to add her little playlist also

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lucysweatslove · 1 year ago

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11.26.2023 // “best $41.99 I’ve spent in a long time.”

Actual quote from Husband.

A couple days ago, I wanted to start playing Cozy Grove, so my husband OK’d the purchase. I really liked playing it, but I was kinda annoyed that it isn’t a “sit and binge” kind of game, as that’s my usual play style. I get kinda bored and impatient if I can’t progress quickly in games, but I also get bored and impatient when a game becomes too difficult or takes too long to do the next “step.” Cozy Grove seems to be meant to be played in shorter half hour bursts or so, and on a daily basis. I love how mellow it is, so I’m hoping I will get used to this play style.

Anyway, since I couldn’t sit down and binge play, I wanted another game that isn’t technically difficult and had cozy vibes. I remembered another game my best friend recommended to me: Disney Dreamlight Valley. So I brought up that I wanted it, and when we got home, he had surprised me with the ultimate version.

I’ve been binge-playing it (I have two more biomes to unlock, but I might focus more on realms than biomes now, idk). Apparently I have been just totally absorbed in my game- husband came into the living room and told me it was the best $41.99 he’s spent in a while because of how happy I seem, just to watch me do little happy wiggles.

In totally unrelated news, I’ve still been trying to unpack body stuff. Well, it’s related insofar that I’ve been looking at my Disney Dreamlight character a lot and feeling disconnected in some ways from her. I think having that period of time where I felt so disconnected from the concept of having a body, and having pretty significant feeling “right” while westing clothes spurred my to think about body related issues lately, like I mentioned before when I talked about feeling not 100% female but not masculine either. I do still feel comfortable with the identity/label of a demigirl, I think? And there is a weird, very positive feeling I get with she/they pronouns. All good established things.

I’ve also had the chance to talk a little more with other AFAB people who also feel less than totally connected with the concept of femininity/being female, some that also like he/him and some that are more part-female, part-agender/void, and some that may flux. Gender is truly such a range of experience and expression, which I love, and I like knowing I’m not the only person who has wrestled with “is this just normal regular cisgender bullshit, or is this a little deeper?” One person identities with demigirl and it was great to hear their experience especially since I had never talked with another person who shared the identity term

I think I am still struggling though with this idea of “is the agender part of me agender enough to be nonbinary in some aspect?” Part of this… it seems like a lot of enby people take “androgyny” which IMO is actually very much masculine coded in our society. As somebody who identifies very little with masculinity, if at all tbh, I don’t want to be perceived as masculine. The androgynous or less feminine looks that I enjoyed when I was thinner read more masculine on my body now, to the point I actually feel dysphoric even thinking about wearing them. I do generally like my dresses and appearing feminine, but some days I don’t want that perception either, or alternatively I know that I’d rather have that perception than masculine but I feel like I’m just playing the role of Lucy the Feminine to get through, you know? But it feels performative for others and not ME. Like, because I have a fat body, I have to present more feminine to be accepted by others. (Sometimes I do really like feminine coded clothing, I just wish it wasn’t socially gendered).

I think this is why I like scrubs so much btw. And band teas + jeans of some sort + a hoodie. To me they’re gender-less without being actually masculine.

#personal

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grizzcore · 7 months ago

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it’s so telling that you still think we’re going to ever apologize to you when youve literally terrorized our family and traumatized my partner so badly they can’t make friends anymore and needed to to be put into therapy for the trauma you caused -

because your intense emotional abuse over the short time we were ever pleasant to you and then prolonged stalking behavior you’ve exhibited since we cut you off over two and a half years ago, including sending letters to our home after knowing you weren’t ever even supposed to know our address, posting about us on an average of once every week for over two and a half years since we went fully no contact with you for our own safety , writing and posting a SONG ? ABOUT KNOWING WHERE WE LIVE ?? AND ADDRESSING OUR FEAR OF YOU IN SAID SONG??, attempting to shoehorn your way back into our lives countless times despite our only request be that you fully stay away from us, copying our personal styles to a degree of uncanny-ness that even YOUR PARTNER POINTED IT OUT TO HIS MOTHER, and repeatedly calling my husband SLURS ?? MAKING A POST ABOUT MY HUSBANDS RAPIST YOU NEVER KNEW AT ALL AFTER WE HAD ALREADY CUT YOU OFF? Showing up to family events you KNEW YOU WERE NOT WELCOME AT TO BREAK THE NO CONTACT??

Oh and the repeated act of calling yourself a lesbian on this app while ACTIVELY DATING MY BROTHER IN LAW which I cannot even fathom the reasoning behind other than the same wanting to wear our skinness of it all and the jealously you clearly have about lesbianism which I’m not going to sit here and speculate about because its your business, even if it is gross to see as an actual lesbian

All of this. All of this because my partner and I were VICTIMS OF A VIOLENT HATE CRIME two and a half years ago, and while he was venting about the homophobic violence we had JUST SURVIVED , my partner called you straight - and when you corrected him and told him you were bi- which he GENUINELY DIDNT KNOW- he CORRECTLY called you straight passing - which you then had ‘your partner’ (we know you wrote that text) text my husband a paragraph long attack about how you are actually bi and nonbinary and only present femme because of a homophobic home life.

Which …. STILL MADE YOU STRAIGHT PASSING??

You then continue to insist we had to know you were bi because we had followed your insta where you apparently had your pronouns in your bio and posted about queerness -

Newsflash for you . We didn’t look at your insta, because we didn’t care. We are older than you and at the time we met you were a minor and we were in our early 20s and frankly weren’t interested in a close friendship with you at that time. You did not get that and started latching onto us and getting very offended any time we pointed out that we were much older than you. Which is hilarious considering you now paint this as we were adults who started “stalking your social media” since you were a minor - which isn’t even true. We didn’t start regularly watching your social media until you were an adult. People had sent us screenshots of your abuse towards us before then, and we had followed you until the no contact WE ESTABLISHED, but other than that we very rarely saw your socials unless promoted to by someone else informing us you had posted something about us.

Newsflash two- Being straight passing isn’t an insult, it’s a privilege. One you have , undeniably. someone pointing out your privilege isn’t an insult, though I know you struggle with this as you have the biggest victim mentality of anyone I ever met, which is crazy considering you wanted to become a cop when we met- and you being offended that people who are ACTUALLY visibly queer and who face VIOLENCE in the face of that did not appreciate you trying so desperately hard to relate to the real aggression faced by visibly queer people (and I mean VISIBLY as in you can look at someone and tell they are queer, not that you announce your queerness to everyone you deem safe to do so. There is a difference between visible queerness and being uncloseted - nether of which you fully were at the time.) as in ACTUALLY FACED because a man tried to KILL US WITH A BRICK ?? We only got away by risking our lives driving into opposite traffic while actively sobbing with fear for our lives??

You then recently right after we moved back to our home state, something we were horrified of BECAUSE OF YOU- had your sibling who you’ve described as “a violent cyber stalker with homicidal tendencies” start harassing my partner because *checks notes* he liked Harry Potter when he WAS A KID????

At which point we involved two mental health professionals, a social worker- and the police. Who instructed us to watch your social media to keep track of your aggression toward us because you seemed to be escalating toward violence.

You are still obsessively angry two and half years later because my partner wouldn’t falsely let you claim to relate to the violent homophobia faced by actual butch lesbians, especially those who are in butch4butch relationships that can be perceived as gay men on sight.

You were a flowy blouse and long skirt wearer with long brown hair dating a cisgender man who- listen here! Important info! EXCLUSIVELY REFFERED TO YOU BY SHE/HER PRONOUNS AND “GIRLFRIEND” UNTIL FAR, FAR AFTER ALL OF THIS.

So no, basil. We genuinely didn’t know you were nonbinary and bi until that conversation, nor does it make you and your partner any less straight passing. No one would hate crime you for the act of being in the car with your boyfriend.

You can be mad for the rest of your life that we don’t like you. You can be angry we feel unsafe because of you and your laundry list of volatile actions.

The only thing we ever did was tell you that you were straight passing, and then tell you later to leave us alone because of how horribly you reacted and for so long. And for this we have been subjected to years, literal years, of torment from an obsessed ruminator who cannot unlatch from their cycle of emotional disregulation to take a step back and think “hey maybe me posting about these guys who asked me to leave them alone all of the time , writing a song about them, sending a letter to their house in a different state, telling them I’m glad they’re scared of me, vague posting about them constantly, (this is the first time we’ve ever posted about you!) , sent my emotionally unwell sibling with cyber stalking issues after them, and then knowingly showing up to a family event I know I’m not supposed to go to because one of them who is particularly afraid of me because of the way I I targeted him so hard with my aggression when we were still friends and I was really unwell and then blew up at him repeatedly was going to be there, maybe… maybe I really should leave them alone. Stop posting about them. Maybe I’m causing years of trauma to two people who’s biggest crime was feeling unsafe around me when I was really unwell and now they don’t want to forgive me for the way I behaved because it was so damaging to them. Maybe I should just let this go. Maybe I have been the bad person in this scenario and just don’t understand how hard of a boundary has been set here.”

Instead of that you’re angry you won’t get your way and have us crawl back to you apologizing so you can , what? what exactly? tell us to go fuck ourselves ??

We don’t owe you an apology. We owe you nothing. No one owes you anything, not even validation. We don’t even want an apology from you- which we told you when we cut you off, the last time we ever contacted you in any way, directly or indirectly. We just want you to stay away from us and stop posting about us, because the trauma you caused by the constant trauma dumping, constant over attached behavior, lack of understanding of boundaries, the aggression you showed my husband, the lies you told me, the stalking behavior, the song, the letter

You need serious , serious help. All we want is for you to stop. We have had to feel unsafe for years because you were offended once.

We know you looked up to us. We get it’s hard to be cut off from people you had insisted were roll models to you. But your own behavior is what landed you there. You could not listen to basic boundaries and you were causing lasting harm even before you escalated to … all of this

I intended to never contact you in any way, and I will stick to that. I will continue to watch your blog as that is what , again, two mental health professionals, a social worker, and the police told us was necessary to protect ourselves because you behave in a way that indicates serious harm could come from you in the future and we need to document your threats and harassment to defend yourselves from you.

I asked them not to confront you because I felt guilt to even involve the police in this. I genuinely don’t want you hurt. I just want you to stop. Stop posting. Stop watching us. Stop talking about us.

My husband called you straight passing after someone tried to murder him - and for that? For that? we live in constant fear, not of the man who laughed while trying to kill us, but of YOU for making it an event we can never move past because you cannot stop bringing it up with no context and using it to justify your blind, unending, misdirected rage you will continue to take out on us until the second you are happy with who you are without the need for our validation

Let me make this very clear : you are not forgiven. We are not sorry. You are NOT welcome in our lives. You NEED to leave us alone. You are NOT welcome to our family homes. You are NOT going to hear from us directly , ever again. This is the last message I’ll ever write to you until it turns into a court date if your postings don’t stop.

You will never meet our children and if your partner is still with you when they are born; he will not be meeting them either. His disrespect of bringing you to an event he knew his brother would be at solidified to us both that he cannot be trusted to handle delicate family matters respectfully.

My husband has developed seriously debilitating mental health issues because of the stress this has caused. That is YOUR legacy. That two people cutting you off because of how badly you handled your emotions made you so angry you decided it was worth dedicating years of your life to mentally destroying them.

When I knew you you complained often that people abandon you with no reason. That people “intentionally misunderstood” you.

No, basil. People see you. People know that you have serious issues they don’t have the capacity to handle and they grow tired of the lashing out and excuses.

You try so hard , so so hard to ruin our lives and I’m done sitting down and taking it silently.

You’re a monster. You are the single most unwell person I’ve ever met. You made the trauma of two gay people almost getting murdered - about you, somehow - and yet cannot stop this insistence that we make everything about ourselves.

Basil you don’t know us. You barely let us speak in the time we knew you. You took up all the space over sharing, trauma dumping, and lying. We tried hard, and even after my husband realized what you were and distanced himself, I tried really hard to be there for you. I let you tell me anything, I really really tried to support you. But the second I told you that dating during the first year of sobriety was really dangerous and typically lead to abusive behavior and that no real reputable rehab program would encourage you to stay in a relationship you were in while actively using? you split on me so hard it was like a movie. And then you lied and tried so , so hard to convince everyone I made the whole thing up even when you WENT TO THE REHAB I RECOMMENDED. Which is the weirdest gaslighting I’ve ever experienced , to be honest.

I know this post is all over the place. I don’t care to lay it out by timeline- you know what you did. Or maybe you really don’t. Maybe your continued insistence that you don’t understand why people leave you is true. Maybe this stuff is so natural to you it rolls right off your back and doesn’t even register as damaging. Who knows.

What I do know ? Is that you’re never welcome back in our lives. And you’re certainly not getting an “apology”.

#this is a not so vague post #since you are so delusional you think an apology is coming ever #take this absolute further thing from an apology #if this is the only way to get you to actually stop then so be it #you sincerely disgust me to my core #the fact you can keep behaving this way knowing the way it’s affecting my husbands mental health is astounding #you have no empathy for people you don’t agree with even the ones who gave you so much empathy it burnt them out #for two and a half years we stayed silent to you and you cannot stop

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deathxproof · 1 year ago

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Get To Know Susan Foreman 5!

“I don’t really know Classic/EU Lore—“

I’m gonna be honest, like, you have to know none of it. Know that she is the Doctor’s granddaughter. Know that she is a Time Lord who has regenerated from that girl. I play fast and loose with her canon / the lore I know from different novels and audios. You don’t need to be familiar with any source material if you don’t want to be. Here are my rules, which do matter more than any of that. That being said, let’s get into Susan!

Basics—

Default Regeneration: 5

Name: Susan Foreman

AKA: Arkytior, Susan Campbell, Susan Rose Foreman(ooc AKA: arkytiorforeman circa 2013-2017)

Age + DOB: ??? 550??ish? Unknown. She found out this regeneration is a Taurus, though. She’s specifically a Taurus Sun, Aquarius Moon, and Gemini Rising. She checked her TARDIS records for when she regenerated specifically. She wanted to know.

Gender: Woman-adjacent. Probably nonbinary, if not more agender.

Sexuality: Queer??? Space Queer?

Species: Gallifreyan. Time Lord? Gallifreyan.

Occupation: Museum curator. History and ghost tour guide. Botanist. Herbalist.

Faceclaim: Angel Coulby

Susan 5’s Playlist!: Only Culturally Gallifreyan

Background—

Current Residence: By and large her TARDIS. Verse-dependent. Defaults to London, England, sometime in the late 20th to earlyish 21st century.

TARDIS Appearance: Grandfather clock.

Parents Pt 2: The Doctor(Father), The Master(Father), The Rani(Mother?)(Strange Aunt?)Significant Others: David Campbell(very deceased)

Children: Barbara Foreman(estranged/deceased), Ian Foreman(estranged/deceased), David Foreman Jr(estranged/deceased), Alex Campbell Foreman(very deceased).

Significant Others: David Campbell(very deceased)

Other Family Members: The Doctor(Grandfather), The Master(?)(Grandfather?), The Rani(????)(Grandmother? Strange Aunt?), Irving Braxiatel (Uncle)

Chosen Family: Barbara and Ian Chesterton(old, good friends), Johnny Chesterton(new, good friend. Ian and Barbara’s child. Susan’s pseudo-godchild.)

The Quickest Bio I Can Muster For Her—

Susan Foreman in her current form and state of being is roughly 450-475 years old, and sporting her fifth face.

#character; susan foreman #about; susan foreman #muse page

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elamimax · 2 years ago

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Writeblr Introduction

Hey hi hello, I’m Ela, Ela Maxima or Ela Bambust (my real name isn’t a secret). I’m a refugee from twitter, though I was technically on twitter ten years ago. The passwords to those accounts have been lost, like tears in rain.

I’m a writer of queer and trans fiction, often with a very heavy emphasis on affirmation, leaving “queer suffering” narratives for others to tell. I’m here for the trans superheroes, the lesbian witches and nonbinary monsterfuckers. I try to keep the genres in which I write broad, because I like to pretend that it keeps me sharp or something, so I’ve written stuff from children’s picture books and YA novels to explicit erotica and hardcore body horror.

Other than that: I’m a European national, spent some time in the US, I use she/they if you know me and she/her if I don’t, I currently live with two clingy cats, my biggest literary influences are <modem dialup noise>* and I’m a sucker for Food, both in practice and in concept. Oh, and I’ve written 18 novels and novellas, which I’m all gradually getting published to amazon.

I’d like to try to get to know writing tumblr a bit, see what’s up, and then we can go from there!

Current WIPs

On Verdant Wings: Part two of the commissioned Verdant trilogy and sequel to Through Verdant Mirrors, Wings is the story of an orphaned “boy” become princess become queen. In the five years since she’s ascended the throne, Vera has become nigh obsessed with magic and the idea of finding others, those trapped in the wrong bodies, like her. The fact that there is a nymph living in her head who can do actual magic makes this a lot more manageable. But when she and her lovely husband Clarus go on a political visit to the neighbouring nation of Raasland, things start going spectacularly wrong. This one has a dragon in it.

Penumbra Redshift: Also a sequel (and also about someone with a creature in their head. It’s a running theme), Redshift is the sequel to Penumbra. In the first one, the Symbiote Penumbra (Penny to their friends) bonded with the incredibly depressed Maxine Powers, gradually teaching her that asking for help is allowed. It was an examination of depression and self-worth that just happened to star a transgender superhero. Redshift, then, is a spin-off featuring a new protagonist (Eric McCarthy) and a new Symbiote, Amaranth (Amy, of course). Together they will discover the meaning of antifascist action through the power of friendship and rioting.

Flipping Out: 6 kids all grow up together in Fuckoff Nowhere, Who Cares, all trapped in their own way. When one day they find a coin that lets them turn into anyone they can think of, the possibilities for hijinks and nonsense are endless. When fifteen years later they meet again at a swanky wedding, the six take a long hard look back at the road behind them, and the various adventures and betrayals that led them down that path.

Parasite: What if Penumbra (or Venom, if you like) was unrepentantly evil and cruel. An exploration of body horror and extreme discomfort. This one is not for publication nor is it really for a specific audience. This is the literary equivalent of picking at a mental scar and seeing what’s under there.

So yeah! Feel free to say hi, I’m basically always writing.

*I don’t cite my literary influences and heroes because people get extremely weird about those.

#writblr #writebrl #writeblr intro #writeblr introduction #wip intro #wip #my writing #writing #queer lit #trans literature

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wyrdify · 2 years ago

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7 Things to Know About Kai

This post has been in my head on and off for the past few days, so I’m going to type it up to get it out. It’s sort of a “get to know the mun” thing, I guess, and it’s catered specifically to who I am as an RPer.

1. My physical and mental health comes first. I go to bed somewhere around 10-11PM Eastern Time every night for the sake of my health, and I try not to push that. I have epilepsy, and lack of sleep is one of those things that lowers the seizure threshold. I’m not staying up late to write replies. As for my mental health, I need breaks from the internet, and I am not going to be available 24/7. Expecting that of anyone is absurd.

2. I write my replies at my own pace. I refuse to be rushed. If I’m feeling a particular reply, then I’m going to write it. If I’m not, then I’m not going to push it. I want to have fun while I’m RPing, and I want to give my RP partners my best writing. This is a hobby of mine, not something I am paid to do. I give the same grace to my partners. I will never rush you. Ever.

3. I am neurodivergent. Professionally, I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar 2, OCD (with trich and derm), and generalized anxiety. I hypothesize I also have autism, but it has not been diagnosed. This means that I can hit highs with hypomania, making me super productive, super talkative, or super unable to focus. It means I can hit awful lows with depression, which causes me to disappear and stop talking to people for days at a time. It means I feel compelled to do things in particular ways to stop my brain from screaming. It means I have a tendency to take things you say to me very literally. It’s a mix.

4. I am queer. Specifically, I am asexual, gray aromantic, and nonbinary. All of my muses are queer in some way, shape, or form. I don’t have any interest in RPing with RPers who are queerphobic. I already have to hide my identity in parts of my personal life, so I’d rather not do it here. This is a queer-friendly space.

5. My English isn’t perfect. I make typos. I forget words. I use the wrong words. I make grammatical errors. Hell, I make up words from time to time, according to Google, and I will intentionally write fragments as a stylistic choice. I don’t like elitism when it comes to writing in English, especially when there are so many dialects, styles, et cetera. I give my partners my best writing, but I will make errors. English is hard enough for us native speakers, never mind those of you who learn it as another language. Let’s give each other some grace, all right?

6. I have squicks/triggers. There are topics I can write, but I need to mentally prepare for them, or I need a warning in advance that they’re coming. There are other topics that I will not write due to my comfort levels. Period. This tends to be why I plot things out with my partners. I want to avoid setting myself off, and I want to make sure my partners are comfortable as well. It definitely makes for the best RPing experience.

7. I have a life outside of RPing. I have hobbies I like to partake in. I have a husband, cats, and friends who I like to hang out with from time to time. This pings back to the first point I wrote. I need breaks from the internet to do other things I enjoy. I can’t write 24/7, and I can’t be available to everyone 24/7, especially as an introvert. Forcing me into conversation all of the time is one excellent way to get me to shut down on you.

These are my basic boundaries. I may add to this later, but yeah. I know this is basically what’s in my rules, but I like putting it here too in more of a paragraph form. Plus, this is one of those OCD “I’m compelled to do this thing, so I gotta” things. It’s annoying.

If you’ve read all this, thanks! It means a lot.

#thewriter; post #thewriter; psa

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davekatzdefensesquad · 3 years ago

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TW: CHILD ABUSE, CHEATING.

SPOILER ALERT FOR SEX EDUCATION S3

So, the new season of sex education is odd.

Viv has an older bf, most likely in college. Maeve also has a relationship with a guy who's a few years older. They're in high school... just bc girls think they want a guy not in high school doesn't mean they should actually glorify that in things. Also, how old was the guy that Eric hooked up with? He had to know Eric was a teenager.

Don't even get me started on the "idk why I cheated but I had fun anyway" storyline for a gay character. I'm sure no one who's homophobic will feel reassured in their belief that gay people can't be monogamous.

We were supposed to believe that Eric had to fear being hurt by Adam, and yet here we are, once again, in a show that's "inclusive," showing us that writers are still very out of touch.

Also, no one arrested Hope for locking a child up in a room or any forms of child abuse? She just gets to go on trying to have a baby that she could also abuse? There's no way I could have held my tongue if I saw her in the hospital filling out ivf forms.

"I thought you hated kids. You really should think this through..." a baby is hardly going to save her marriage.

Eric blaming Adam for the path he's on in discovering and being comfortable with himself was icky. We don't all feel safe in our environments. He should have understood that after going to Nigeria and feeling like he was about to be harmed in an uber for making one gay joke.

Things I loved:

• Maureen not taking back her husband just bc she's lonely and accepting her son

• maureen and aimee getting goat out of the house they sort of broke into but actually had permission to be at

• aimee finally breaking up with Steve even though they loved each other bc she knows he deserves to be treated better. I hope they stay friends.

• labia acceptance bc I have a hard time with this one and I'm 31.

• aliens possibly flying by and lily's wave to them.

• my love/hate for rahim and adam getting closer. I know they're going to make that happen and I don't feel bad for Eric whatsoever.

• Eric being an amazing friend to Otis, and vice versa for hyping up his buddy for possibly getting some even though he didn't like Adam yet.

• all the fighting, while harsh, was realistic of how kids with underdeveloped brains treat each other.

• people talking about their feelings!!!

• nonbinary representation. Cal deserves the best.

• Adam's mom and teacher being supportive besties of a child trying really hard to unlearn years of abuse by doing something he enjoys

• the judges still giving adam a shout out bc he's a kid and they're not monsters.

• Jean not dying and letting Ola name the baby

• redemption arc for a much older character also trying to unlearn abuse and getting rid of toxic family in order to better himself

#sex education #netflix #spoilers #sex education spoilers #rant #mine #am i a reviewer now? idk

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mellometal · 3 years ago

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Is it time to tear ANOTHER Dhar Mann video to shreds? YOU BET.

I've been sitting on this one for a bit because I wanted to make sure I talk about this tactfully. The subject of parents abandoning their disabled children is a very touchy one.

Parents abandoning their disabled children simply for being disabled is way too common. Like, I understand that not everyone has the resources to care for a disabled child (which is why you reach out for help, and why people like me, who work with disabled people, exist), but it doesn't mean you just walk out of their life. There are exceptions, like if you truly didn't want children or something like that, but just flat-out walking out of your kid's life BECAUSE they're disabled is fucked up.

I know someone personally whose biological mother abandoned her when she was born. Why? Because she's disabled. Physically, and mentally, to a point. I work with this woman on a daily basis. I don't really know WHY exactly her biological mother abandoned her, but I do know that her being disabled was part of it. It's sad. It doesn't affect her, thankfully. I'm happy that she's got her biological dad, her brother, and another maternal figure in her life, at least.

ANYWAYS. Before we get to the topic at hand, I need to put an obligatory trigger warning, like I do with EVERY Dhar Mann post:

This post will be talking about parents abandoning their disabled children simply for being disabled, treating disabilities like they're tragedies (in this case, we're talking about autism...again), divorce, and some SPICY ableist bullshit from an allistic (nonautistic) PIECE OF SHIT.

If any of this triggers you or makes you uncomfortable in any way, you don't have to read this post. This isn't worth putting yourself in a bad state mentally. I would never ask for any of you to put yourselves in that position all for a post. Put your mental health and well-being first. Consume media that sparks joy for you.

As far as my response goes, it's definitely more calm than normal. Funny....since this video is about autism spectrum disorder again. (Third time's the charm, huh, Dhar Mann? NOT.)

LET'S FUCKING GET IT.

The video starts off with these two parents (Gwen and Allen) in a psychologist's office. The psychologist tells the parents that their son (Chance) is autistic, and she tries to explain what autism is to the parents, but Allen cuts her off. Why? Because he teaches at a prestigious university, so he AUTOMATICALLY knows what autism is from that fact alone.

Um, excuse me? Just because you're a teacher at a prestigious university, it doesn't mean you're an expert in everything. It doesn't make you an expert in ASD or anything like that. Unless you SPECIALIZE in that area. Even then, shut the fuck up. The people who know about being autistic are AUTISTIC PEOPLE THEMSELVES! SHOCKER.

Hey, Dhar Mann! QUIT WITH THE VIDEOS ABOUT AUTISTIC LITTLE WHITE BOYS AND YOUNG WHITE AUTISTIC CISHET MEN! I'M SICK AND TIRED OF IT. It's annoying, ignorant, and it feels like you're doing this on purpose at this point to piss people off. If you're so uninformed about autism in women and girls, FUCKING ASK AUTISTIC WOMEN AND GIRLS! DO BETTER RESEARCH THAT DOESN'T INVOLVE AUTISM SPEAKS. The Autism Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) and the Autistic Women and Nonbinary People Network (AWN) are great organizations to go to for any kind of research on ASD in women and girls. STOP GOING OFF OF THE BRAINS OF AUTISTIC WHITE BOYS AND AUTISTIC WHITE MEN.

I don't feel I need to go too deep into the fact that autistic women, autistic girls, autistic nonbinary people, autistic BIPOC, autistic AAPI, autistic LGBT people, autistic teenagers, and autistic adults exist. Y'all already know.

Gwen asks the psychologist if that means Chance isn't healthy. (I understand not knowing about autism, but don't treat it like it's a terminal illness. Please.) The psychologist tells her that Chance is fine, but he just learns differently and might need more support compared to his peers.

Yeah, autism can affect how you learn about certain things (limited and repetitive patterns), but there are other disabilities that can affect learning as well. Like how dyslexia can affect your ability to read, dyspraxia can affect your ability to do math, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can affect your ability to focus or on impulse control. Autism affects how your brain is developed, it affects you socially, behaviorally, and how you communicate.

Allen is upset, says that he can't have a son "with a learning disability" (ASD is a neurological disability, not necessarily a learning disability), and treats Chance like he's stupid for being autistic. Gwen tells her husband that autism doesn't make you any less intelligent, WHICH IS SO FUCKING TRUE. ABSOLUTE FACTS. I was totally with her until she began that little monologue with "Just because a person HAS autism". SAY "JUST BECAUSE A PERSON'S AUTISTIC" INSTEAD! IT'S NOT HARD. PERSON FIRST LANGUAGE ISN'T WHAT EVERY DISABLED PERSON PREFERS. Allen says that "they could have another kid" and "put Chance up for adoption". Gwen obviously wasn't down with that. Allen gives his wife an ultimatum that it's either HIM or their son Chance. Gwen says that she can't choose between the two, but she will stand by her autistic son. Allen gets up and leaves the office, saying he wants a divorce.

Years pass by, Gwen is single and taking care of her autistic son Chance, and Allen has a new life with a ✨perfect son✨ (Samuel). He never mentions the son HE abandoned (Chance). He's completely forgotten about Gwen and Chance. (YOU OWE SO MUCH CHILD SUPPORT, ALLEN.)

Hey, Allen, how much do you wanna bet that your ✨perfect son✨ Samuel is autistic too?

There's the SATs, they're announcing a winner, and guess who it is? IT'S OBVIOUSLY CHANCE, OF COURSE. He's got the highest score in the country, with Samuel in second place. Allen is PISSED.

Chance gives a speech about how his mom really helped him, he struggled with autism, how Allen LITERALLY ABANDONED HIM, and THE CROWD GOES FUCKING WILD. Samuel, instead of being a sore loser, APPLAUDS FOR CHANCE. Stay humble, Sam.

My thoughts on the video? If you cannot tell by my tone throughout this post, IT WAS DOG SHIT. This video was insensitive to the true reality of parents abandoning their disabled children just because they're disabled. What do I expect from Dhar Mann at this point?

Here's my response to his video below. Don't worry, I will fully type out my response soon for anyone who cannot read the screenshots easily. It's a lot easier for me to do that on the desktop site than it is for me to do it on my phone.

For anyone who can’t read my response, I’m typing it out for you. Like I said, it’s easier for me to type it out on the desktop site than it is for me to type it out on my phone. It’s a real royal pain in the ass. But because I’m trying to make my posts easier to read for people, I’m doing this anyway. /lighthearted

First, second, and third screenshots (broken up into paragraphs):

Hey, listen, I appreciate the message you’re trying to go for, but can you please stop putting autistic people into a box? Can you stop treating being autistic like it’s a tragedy? Not every single autistic person is a little white boy in elementary school who’s considered “wild and unruly” or “super quiet and makes no friends”, nor are they a young white cishet man who’s a super genius or is how Chris Chan was before she came out as trans. (For anyone who doesn’t know about Chris Chan, there are many documentaries people have made on YouTube, and I highly recommend Geno Samuel’s docuseries, if you’re really interested in learning about Chris Chan.)

Autistic women, girls, nonbinary people, BIPOC, APPI, LGBT people, teenagers, and adults all exist too.

It’s very apparent now that you get your resources from Autism $peaks, a hate group that spends the vast majority of their money on funding eugenics instead of helping autistic people like they claim, claims that only little white boys and young white cishet men are autistic and ignores all other autistic people who don’t fit that description, have no autistic people on their leader board or on any board for that matter, have members who have actually fantasized about k1lling their autistic children, treat autism like it’s a tragedy or a disease someone can catch (completely false), act like autism should be cured (there is no cure, and ABA therapy is a total shit show in itself), and treats autistic people like they’re broken and need to be fixed. Also, not every autistic person is a Super Genius(tm). That’s so demeaning to autistic people who aren’t seen as intelligent in any way. I’m autistic and seen as smart; however, there are subjects I’m stronger in than others.

If you can’t handle the possibility of having autistic children, or just disabled children in general, DON’T HAVE CHILDREN. If you can’t handle working with or alongside disabled people, including autistic people, maybe find a different profession. Even if you do that, you’ll never get away from disabled people. Disabled people aren’t a disease. We’re human beings just like neurotypical and able-bodied people.

Fourth and fifth screenshots (broken up into paragraphs):

I would highly suggest getting resources from reputable organizations for ASD, such as the Autism Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) and the Autistic Women and Nonbinary People Network (AWN). Talk to any autistic person who isn’t a little white boy or a young white cishet man.

Instead of using the puzzle piece, which is a symbol that many autistic people, myself included, are offended by (because of Autism $peaks and other organizations before them using it, plus it symbolizes that only autistic children exist and that we’re “missing a piece” like we’re broken), use the rainbow infinity sign (for all neurodivergent people) or the red and gold infinity sign (just for autistic people). Instead of “lighting it up blue”, light it up red or gold. Do both if you want.

I’m actually really sick and tired of seeing just autistic little white boys and young autistic white cishet men being represented in the media, and y’all manage to fuck that up too.

Before anyone mentions Sia’s movie “Music”, that’s also very poor representation of autistic girls. Besides, the actress who played the autistic girl isn’t even autistic. She MOCKED autistic people. I know she’s a kid, but that’s still super fucked up. I hope she’s able to turn that around.

If anyone would like to discuss this topic with me or ask any questions, feel free to. I’ll answer as best as I can. Thank you and have a good night.

Before I get attacked for mentioning Chris Chan in my response, I bring up Chris Chan because allistic people think that every autistic person is like her (especially before she came out as trans). That person is part of why I wasn't open about being autistic or talking about my diagnosis until this year. I didn't want to be grouped up with Chris Chan because I do have very similar interests to her, I've been seen as cringey for having said interests, and just the way Chris treated autistic people who were formerly diagnosed with A$p3rg3r$ $yndr0m3 (like I was) really made me feel even more alienated.

Also, S1a supports A$ (Autism $p3aks). She's not a very good person to support. Some of her music is good, but her as a person....no. Her movie "Music" was gross, from what I've read about it and seen pictures of.

If you've read this far, thank you so much!

#mello speaks #dhar mann #dhar mann talk #dhar mann will live to regret his decision to make these fucked up cringe videos #dhar mann will live to regret his decision uwu #dhar mann is a piece of human garbage #please stop supporting dhar mann #autism isn't a tragedy #we need better representation for autistic people who aren't little white boys or young white cishet men #dhar mann is a cringe ass nae nae baby #tw abandonment #tw ableism #cw sia mention #cw chris chan mention #tw dhar mann

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angelicamerlinbarnes · 4 years ago

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Seven times someone spoke to a Marauder alone in a portrait and one person who spoke to them all together

In a world where all the Marauders died in the first war, their souls are preserved in portraits in Hogwarts. Their stories are legend if a bit tweaked, and their names are famous if a bit forgettable. But they were painted individually, and housed all over the castle, separated for all eternity from each other.

(Also, there are seven Marauders because Lily, Severus, and Regulus. Fight me.)

(FOR CONTEXT: Regulus married a Muggle named Amir and had a daughter with him named Hailee. Regulus and Sirius never fell out and Regulus calls Remus “Mum” because reasons. Sirius and Remus married and died without children and James and Lily had Harry with their partner, Severus. Peter had a nonbinary partner named Max, but they died in the war.)

ONE: Regulus Black (Room of Requirement) & Draco Malfoy [Second Year - Youth (Daughter)]

Draco is coming back from Quidditch practice after calling Hermione a Mudblood. He’s walking alone down a hallway empty of doors when one suddenly materializes in front of him. He walks inside, too curious not to, and finds a room with two chairs in front of a crackling fire.

Over the fire hangs a portrait of a young man with pale skin, ebony hair, and striking grey eyes. Draco sits down in one of the chairs and picks up the cup of hot cocoa from the coffee table, looking up at the portrait, which has now started moving.

“Who are you?” He asks, and the portrait shoots him a grim look.

“My name is Regulus Black. Do you know who I am?”

Draco shakes his head. Regulus hums, tugging at something around his wrist.

“I’m a Death Eater who defied Voldemort,” he says, pulling his sleeves up to reveal a blank wrist. “They didn’t paint me with that wretched Mark, thank Merlin.”

Draco puts his cocoa down, nervous, and finds his eyes darting around the room for a door.

“How do I get out of here?” He asks with all the politeness he can muster, and Regulus offers him a wry smile.

“Right through that door,” he says gently, pointing to the door now etching itself out of the wall. “But please remember, Draco - you make your own choices in life. You decide who you are. Not a House, not a name, not a Mark. You. Do not forget that like I did.”

Draco nods, backing towards the door.

“But you defected,” he says, feeling small. Regulus smiles sadly, his eyes cutting.

“Yes, I did. And I paid for it with my life. And the life of my partner, and my daughter, and my brother and my mum and my best friends. I paid, Draco. I’m still paying.”

Draco has his hand on the door knob. “Huh,” he says, and opens the door when Regulus adds, “Oh, and Draco, dear? Don’t call people Mudbloods. There’s no such thing. And it’s rude.”

Draco nods frantically and closes the door so hard he lands flat on his ass in the hallway, watching the door seal itself and fade back into stone.

TWO: James Potter (Gryffindor Quidditch “Hall” of Fame, Gryffindor Common Room) & Seamus Finnigan [Fourth Year - Never Not (Lauv)]

Seamus finds himself alone in the Gryffindor common room one Wednesday morning, pretending to be sick with a cold. He’s wrapped in a blanket and staring into the empty fireplace when he hears, “YO! KID!”

Startled, he falls off the couch, and stumbles up and over to the Quidditch trophy case in the corner. There, in a small frame, is the smiling face of a boy who looks just like Harry, except without the mark, with dark eyes, and happier. Seamus reads the plaque, James Potter, and smiles sadly, wondering if Harry has ever talked to this portrait before.

James, meanwhile, barrels forward, “You’re the one in love with that lanky black kid, right?” Seamus’ eyes snap up as he sputters, but James just grins. “Cool. I thought so. Can I give you some advice…?”

“Seamus.”

“Can I give you some advice, Seamus?”

Seamus, now bright red, says, “Um, sure?”

James’ eyes twinkle and he says, “Tell him.”

Seamus starts coughing, beating his chest as James laughs and he protests, “No! No, I can’t just tell my best friend I’m in love with him!”

James shrugs. “You can,” he says. “You wanna know a secret?” He leans in just a bit. “My best friends fell in love.”

Seamus startles. “What?” He breathes, and James grins.

“Yeah. Sirius Potter and Remus Lupin. Wasted six bloody years apart before finally giving in and admitting it. They’re the most in love people I’ve ever met.” His brow wrinkles. “Well, except Sev and Lily and me.” It wrinkles further. “Nah, I gotta give ‘em this one.”

Seamus gapes in shock for a moment before blurting, “That werewolf and the Black runaway were in love?! And you - fuck, you were with Severus Snape???” James stares at him for a moment before blinking and then bursting into laughter.

When he finally calms down, he looks back up at Seamus’ flushed face and says, “Sirius is a Potter and a Lupin, not a Black. And he and Remy loved each other more than anything. And yeah, Sev and Lily and I had some real fun times.” He tilts his head in consideration and says, “Actually, now that I think about it, some of those happened right on that couch over there. It’s weird they haven’t gotten a new one, huh?”

Seamus sputters for a third and final time and skitters away with a tomato-red face as James shouts after him, “TELL HIM, KID! SHOVE HIM AGAINST A WALL AND SNOG HIM SENSELESS!”

(Seamus, later, to Harry: “Your dad is fucking wack, bro.”)

THREE: Lily Evans (Library, Restricted Section) & Cedric Diggory [Fourth Year - Someone To You (BANNERS), Good Old Days (Kesha, Macklemore)]

Cedric sneaks into the Restricted Section to hide from all the pressure of the tournament. One night he’s thumbing through the books in his boredom when he finds an unframed portrait of a smiling redhead. As soon as he lifts her out of the book, titled The Marauders: A Complete History of Unfiltered Pranks (by Minerva Mcgonogall for Minerva Mcgonogall, signed by Regulus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Severus Snape, James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Lupin (Love you Minnie!), and Lily Evans), the portrait pipes up, “Hi! I’m Lily!”

Cedric nearly drops the book in shock, but manages to catch it at the last second, mustering up a smile for the grinning portrait and introducing himself. She beams and glances at the book in his hand, her smile turning mischievous. “That’s a good one. We did get up to a lot, didn’t we?”

Speechless, he nods, not really processing that she’s just admitted to being Lily Evans, and her eyes dull with sadness at the sight of one of the injuries on his collarbone from the most recent challenge.

“Where’d you get that?” She asks, and he explains the tournament. She hums, and finally murmurs, “I heard them say my son is in that. Is that true?”

Mouth dry, Cedric nods, and Lily looks up at him again with glassy eyes and rasps, “Can you tell him I love him? That I’m proud of him and so are his fathers? Can you tell him that for me?”

Cedric nods again, hearing a creak and turning his head towards the noise when Lily whispers, “Go. Go, Cedric, before you get caught. Be brave, honey.” Cedric shoves the portrait back into the book and the book back onto the shelf with a muttered goodbye before sprinting away, Lily’s words echoing in his ears like a dying child’s scream.

FOUR: Sirius Black (Mcgonogall’s Office) & Ginny Weasley [Fifth Year - Alone (Bazzi)]

Ginny is sitting in Mcgonogall’s office, waiting for her professor to come and scold her for punching Zabini (he touched Luna’s ass, what was she supposed to do? Ask him to kindly stick his nose up where the sun don’t shine? She’d still be here, and he’d still be snickering like the slimy motherfucker he is in that dungeon cell he calls his bedroom). She hears a cough from somewhere on Mcgonogall’s desk and straightens up, ducking her head to peek around when she hears, “Pssst. Over here.”

She looks over and sees a framed picture of Sirius Black, grinning as if he’d never died. She swallows down her tears and nods her head in a polite hello. Sirius’ smile saddens as he says, “I hear you’re dating my godson.”

Ginny blushes, but nods, and for a moment, Sirius looks like he’s about to cry. “Why are you here, Ginny?” He asks softly, and she shrugs.

“Punched a Slytherin who touched my friend’s ass.”

Sirius grins at that, nodding his head in respect. “Good girl. You ever think about why that is?”

Ginny’s brow furrows and she opens her mouth to ask what he means when she sees his eyes wandering to a sketch of a wolf howling at the moon on Mcgonogall’s far wall, with the note For you, Minnie. Moony didn’t want it. Love, Sirius.

“I fell in love with a boy once,” Sirius murmurs. “My best friend. Remus Lupin. And he loved me back.”

I know, Ginny wants to say. You two were married and gave baby Harry joint Christmas presents and danced in the kitchen when you thought no one else was still awake. I’ve heard the stories, I’ve seen the pictures. I know. But instead she stays quiet, listening as Sirius tells his story.

“But instead of admitting that, I dated Marlene McKinnon for three years. Sold my gay ass out to a lesbian whore because I was too afraid to tell him how I felt about him.” Ginny has a lot of questions about the “lesbian whore” part - “I mean, she was a friend of mine, but I never wanted to kiss her, or sleep with her, but I did anyway. And he looked so fucking sad all the time. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t wanna ruin my happiness. I didn’t know how to tell him that he was my happiness. By the time I figured it out, it was too late.”

Ginny swallows, finally speaking up, “Why are you telling me this?” Sirius finally tears his eyes away from the picture of the wolf and the moon and gives her a bitter smile.

“Because I’m dead and my husband and I spent a mere three years together in all of the ten we knew each other. What kind of bullshit is that?”

Ginny shrugs. “Some bullshit,” she answers, and laughs uncomfortably.

Sirius laughs too, then sighs. He looks deep into her eyes and says, “I love my godson. You make sure he knows that. But I also love my husband. And I spent too damn long running from that. So let me save you a bit of trouble, Ginny - the greatest love is often the scariest.”

Ginny purses her lips. “What are you saying?” She says slowly, and Sirius smiles sadly as Mcgonogall’s heels come clicking down the hall.

“I’m saying maybe you shouldn’t waste your time on Harry when both your and his hearts lie elsewhere.”

Ginny blushes, looking down at the homemade bracelet Luna made her three summers ago, and at the sound of the door opening, she looks back up at a frozen Sirius, whose eyes are caught on Mcgonogall, somehow still twinkling.

FIVE: Peter Pettigrew (Outside Gryffindor Dorms) & Ron Weasley [Fifth Year - lovely (Billie Eilish, Khalid)]

Ron is sulking on the stairs outside the Gryffindor common room after a particularly bad Quidditch loss. He wishes he were with Hermione and Harry, but they were already tangled together when he came upstairs and he didn’t want to intrude, even though they invited him to.

He knows they’re all best friends, he just feels so much like the third wheel sometimes. So he’s sulking when he hears a soft, “Hey.”

He looks up in surprise and sees a portrait of Peter Pettigrew, and he immediately steels his eyes, backing away. Seeing this, Peter shouts, “Wait, no! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I know! I just - I didn’t actually betray them, you know? Okay, well, I did, but - but I fixed it! They forgave me! I promise I’m not evil, I’m not, Ron -”

“How do you know my name?” Ron blurts, and Peter jumps back in his frame, startled, then smiles softly.

“They say it,” he answers. “Harry, and that girl you’re always with. They say your name all the time.”

Ron blushes. “Oh,” he says, ducking his head with a smile. When he looks back up into Peter’s sad eyes, he says, “We lost today. Quidditch.”

Peter cocks his head. “To who?”

Ron shrugs, looking down at his lap and fidgeting with his fingers over his knees. “Slytherin. Never lost against Slytherin before.”

Peter shrugs. “James and Sirius did. All the time.”

Ron looks up. “Really?” Peter smiles softly.

“Yeah. Mostly because they wanted Severus and Regulus to feel good, but. Yeah, they lost to Slytherin all the damn time.”

Ron’s smile fades. “Severus? Like, Snape? The Death Eater?”

Peter winces, then shrugs. “The Order spy. But, yeah.”

Ron blinks in shock. “They were friends? Even after Lily?”

Peter’s brow furrows in confusion, but he answers anyway, “Yes? They were dating. Them and Lily. Sent the whole school up in flames.”

Ron’s jaw drops open. “You can do that?”

Peter shrugs. “Yeah, ‘course you can. You can date Harry and that girl if you want. No one’s stopping you.”

Ron flushes, looking down in shame.

“They don’t want me,” he mumbles. “Not the way they want each other.”

Peter hums. “Severus said that too. So did James. They were both idiots.” Looking up at Ron’s glistening eyes and pouting lips, he smiles.

“Just because you’re not the smartest or the strongest or the funniest or the best at anything in particular doesn’t mean you’re not important, or that people don’t care about you.”

Ron nods, slowly. He stands and heads back inside without another word, pretending he doesn’t hear Peter sigh and say, “You’re welcome,” bitterly as he mumbles the password to the Fat Lady and slips back through the crack in the door.

SIX: Severus Snape (Headmaster’s Office) & Hermione Granger [Sixth Year - Ophelia (The Lumineers), O Children (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)]

Hermione is visiting Dumbledore’s office for her Prefect badge and an overview of the position while Ron and Harry are brooding in their room. The three of them have become far closer than normal lately, and she’s almost glad to be away for a moment, as they’ve always been more honest with each other when she isn’t around. She can’t decide if that bothers her or not.

She’s waiting for Dumbledore to get there when she hears, “Miss Granger, correct?” in a slow, molasses drawl.

She looks up at the portrait labelled Severus Snape and answers the boy in the Slytherin tie, “Yes. Hello, Mr. Snape.”

Severus grins slowly, a cat-like expression of amusement and carefully calculated arrogance. “Smart one, aren’t you?” He asks, and she nods. He clicks his tongue. “Should’ve been in Ravenclaw.”

She flushes and opens her mouth to retort when the Sorting Hat starts shouting about insecure fuckwads who don’t know their place and Severus starts screaming back about it not doing its fucking job right until finally Hermione screams, “STOP!”

The hat grumbles off to sleep again while she stares a shocked Severus down, her shaking hands curled in fists as she says, “Please don’t shout at it. It’s tired.”

Severus raises an eyebrow, but huffs and turns away. She sees his blank arm as he turns his back to her and feels her heart break open with pity.

“You’re Harry’s father, right?” She asks softly, and his head whips towards her in shock. She offers a sad smile and explains, “Lily and James. There are no records, of course, but…”

“You’re Mcgonogall’s favorite,” Severus finishes, smiling wryly. “Yes. I am one of Harry’s fathers.”

Hermione nods, looking down at her books, and swallows before looking back up again to say, “He really loves you.”

Severus rears back in shock, his eyes searching her for lies as she tears up. “He really does. You may not know it, and he doesn’t speak of it, but - but I can tell. He misses you.”

Severus’ eyes turn dull and glassy and he turns away, hiding his face with his long shaggy hair. Hermione swallows down her tears, smiling again. “Yes, well -”

“I love him too,” Severus interrupts, voice soft. “I miss him too. We all do. Tell… tell him that, would you?”

Hermione blinks, then nods.

“Of course,” she says, ducking her head as the staircase starts to rumble. “I’ll take good care of him, sir.”

Severus smiles that sad wry smile again and stills just as Dumbledore steps through the door, but Hermione hears his silence echo in her ears.

Thank you.

SEVEN: Remus Lupin (Defense Against the Dark Arts Classroom) & Luna Lovegood [Seventh Year - Dynasty (MIIA), Towards The Sun (Rihanna)]

As the war comes closer and closer to Hogwarts, the students there grow more and more anxious. Luna herself takes refuge in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, where only Harry and Ginny know to find her. But with Harry on the run with Ron and Hermione and Ginny trying to hold down the fort with Seamus and Dean, Luna often finds herself alone.

One day she decides to make her way up onto the balcony over the classroom that leads to the office, and she reaches for the knob on the office door when she hears, “Don’t go in there, Miss Lovegood.”

She looks over at the portrait who’s spoken, dubbed Remus Lupin, and smiles. He smiles kindly back and asks, “What are you even looking for?”

Luna shrugs. “Some way to help, I guess.”

Remus smiles wryly and nods, glancing down at the wedding ring adorning his finger. His smile softens for a moment before he says, “Sometimes, Miss Lovegood, the best way to win a war is by treating others with kindness.”

Luna tilts her head to the side. “Like, with hugs and smiles?” She asks, and Remus smiles, biting his lip and nodding. His eyes are glassy, but she pretends not to notice.

“Yes, my dear, with hugs and smiles. Support each other. Take no conversation for granted. Merlin knows the only thing that comforted me in the first war was the constant reminders that I still had my family. That they were fighting with me, and that I was fighting for them.”

Luna nods sagely and looks down at the bracelets littering her wrists, each one made for a different person in her life: Ginny, her girlfriend; Harry, her partner; Neville, her best friend; Draco and Ron and Hermione, her friends. She asks, “What comforted you when you died? I know… I know it wasn’t fast. Or painless.”

Remus smiles, his eyes shining with kindness and hope despite the exhausted bruises beneath them and the scars across his face.

“I wasn’t alone,” he answers, his voice soft. “I died by Sirius’ side. I was holding his hand when I saw the light. And in the light there were silhouettes - James, Peter, Lily, Severus, Regulus. They were waiting for us. And I knew we would be okay.”

Luna nods. She twists a ring on her finger and says, “Thank you, Mr. Lupin. I’d best be going now.”

Remus nods as she begins to descend the steps, his voice ringing out one last time, “Good luck, Luna. I hope to Merlin your victory will be more permanent than ours.”

Luna twirls around, cocking her head as she asks, “You think we’ll win?” Remus smiles.

He nods, his eyes twinkling, and says, “Someone has to. Why not you?”

ONE: All Together Again (Grimmauld Place, Harry & Ron & Hermione’s Bedroom) & Harry Potter [After Graduation of Eighth Year - Daylight (Taylor Swift)]

Following the end of the war, Harry moves into Grimmauld Place, left to him by the godfather he never knew. He takes Hermione and Ron with him, the three of them having been in a committed relationship since sometime when they were on the run and following an unspoken agreement that they will follow each other anywhere.

Luna lives nearby with Ginny, in an apartment by Draco’s little cottage and Neville’s tiny hovel. The three of them live quietly, though their friends visit often. Harry feels better, happier, though the hole left by his missing family is still there.

One day, as he’s putting up pictures of him and his partners around their shared bedroom, he hears, “Harry?”

He looks up, and there, on the opposite wall, is a picture of the seven Marauders, all young and staring at him in shock. Harry tears up and rushes over, taking the picture delicately in his hands and smiling as he rakes his eyes over his lost family. They all grin back, and Harry reads the inscription on the frame: My dear Marauders, You have been my pride and joy for seven long short years. I know you will all do great things; I cannot wait to see what you accomplish. You are, and have always been, my favorite students. All my love, Minnie.

Harry covers his mouth, emotional, until finally James asks, “Are you happy?”

Harry looks at Remus and Sirius, their fingers intertwined and their eyes sparkling. He looks at Regulus and Peter, their arms around each other’s shoulders as they grin. He looks at Severus and Lily and James, his three wonderful parents. And he looks down at the two wedding rings on the chain around his own neck, bearing the initials R.W. and H.G.. And he nods.

“Yeah,” he answers, grinning. “Yeah, I’m really fucking happy.”

66 notes · View notes

nyctolovian · 4 years ago

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Summary: Where Jon and Martin get to grow old together and live out the rest of their lives in a village. Told from the POV of a 7-year-old girl, Trish, who just moved in next door.

Written in preparation for the emotional trainwreck that would be the finale of TMA :”)

Trish peeked out from behind the bushes to look at the cottage. She was new in the neighbourhood, but she had already heard all sorts of stories about it from the other kids she played with. There was a ghost in there, or a wizard, and anyone who stepped foot into its boundaries would be cursed and get kidnapped by a giant clown with claws for hands.

If you asked Trish, she’d tell you she didn’t believe in stupid fairytales and ghost stories like this. While the other kids still believed in Santa Claus, she already knew that it was just her parents sneaking treats into her Christmas socks. There was no way there was some sort of cursed monster living at the bottom of the hill.

Still, as she stood outside it’s fences, wiping her sweaty palms against her skirt, she gulped nervously. The way the other kids acted as they told her to get the ball because “you were the one who kicked it there!” still scared her. What if there was a bad guy in the house? She was only seven! What could she do?

She ran through several possible scenarios. She’d run. If she couldn’t, she’d kick the bad guy as hard as she could; her aunt had always said she had a good kick. If not, she’ll bite as hard as she can. Or she could–

“Excuse me. What are you doing in front of my house?” came a low voice.

Trish leapt backwards in fright with a squeak.

Standing behind her was an old man with a stubble in a long yellow dress (woman?), carrying several bags of groceries on her left arm. With her other hand, she wielded a cane. There were pale scars all over her dark skin and Trish wondered if this old lady might have been a pirate. Her dark eyes seemed to stare into Trish's soul as her lips were set in a downwards curl. Her eyebrows were thick and tightly knitted in a permanent-looking scowl. She reminded Trish of Mdm Taylor from school, except older and grumpier.

"I… Uh, I…" Trish shifted from foot to foot, her palms growing even sweatier. "I… My ball…" She pointed towards the ball in the lawn.

The woman with the beard followed her gaze to the bright pink ball beside the front door. "Ah," she said, sighing loudly. She walked to the front gate.

With her hands full, she had to fumble with the latch for a good minute before pushing the gate open. "There we are," she said. "Get your ball."

Trish blinked. It was that easy?

She ran past the lady with the beard and picked up her ball. She hugged it close to her chest and looked back up at the old lady, half-expecting her to declare that there was a price for taking the ball back, or that she was trapped here forever.

However, instead the old lady just hobbled through the gate. Some of her grocery bags got caught between the gate and she let out a groan. Trish's eyes darted between the old lady and the bags before she placed her ball back down, stepped forward and took some of the groceries from the lady with the beard.

"Oh, um," she said. "Thank you."

"It's okay," Trish replied, lifting the bags and walking towards the front door of the cottage. "I help my Ma take the groceries all the time."

The lady with the beard followed after and reached into the pockets of her dress (which were very deep pockets, Trish enviously noticed). As soon as she unlocked the door, Trish lugged the grocery bags into the house.

It was a clean house, and it smelled a lot like her Gramma's house. Old people smell, she reckoned.

"Where's your kitchen?"

"Over here."

Trish followed after her into the kitchen and she placed the groceries down where she was told.

"What's your name?" the old lady asked.

Trish froze. Her mother told her not to trust strangers and not to tell strangers her name. But perhaps she had already broken some of the rules since she just walked into a stranger's house. But she wasn't kidnapped yet so it was probably safe.

"I'm Trish."

"Ah, thank you so much, Trish. You have been of tremendous help." The lady with the beard began to pack her groceries away. "Usually, my husband would help me with all this."

"What happened to your husband?"

"He's in the hospital."

Trish gasped.

"He's going to be fine. Don't worry. It's just his knee. He'll be back in a week."

"Phew!" Trish dragged her hand across her forehead. "That's good. What's your name by the way?"

"Oh. My name's Jon."

"Jon?!" Trish shouted. "But that's a boy's name!"

The old lady looked confused. "I… yes? It is a masculine name, I suppose?"

"Are you a boy?"

Jon's eyes widened. "I see. Well… I'm neither a boy or a girl. But I am a he. As in, um, for example, 'his name is Jon and he likes eating peaches.'"

"How are you both not a boy or a girl though?"

Jon frowned in thought. "I just am. It just happens sometimes for people. Some people aren't a boy or a girl."

"Then, what are you?"

Jon frowned. "I'm nonbinary."

"Non…"

"Non-bi-na-ry," Jon repeated, slower, and Trish followed after. He smiled. "It can be a difficult word to pronounce."

"It's not that hard. I can do it," Trish said, rolling her eyes. Adults always made it seem like everything was too hard for her to do. "Nonbinary! See!"

Jon smiled. It was a small one, but Trish spotted it anyway.

She puffed up her chest and announced, “I need to go now. Bye bye!"

"Bye," Jon replied, waving his hand.

On the way out, Trish picked up her ball and made sure to close the doors behind her.

***

When Trish next spotted Jon, she was at the market with her father. As soon as she sees him, she tugs her dad's shirt and whispers loudly, "That's Jon at the fruit place. He lives in the cottage at the bottom of the hill."

Her father hummed absently as he picked out the vegetables. "Why don't you go say hi, sweetheart?"

With a nod, Trish headed over to the fruit stand where Jon was. He spotted her before she reached him and gave her a little wave. Today, he is in a button-up shirt and black pants.

"Hello, Trish," he greeted. "Helping your mother out?"

"Nope. My Da's shopping this time." She points to her father, who was still engrossed in examining the vegetables. She peered into Jon's basket and saw that in it, there were apples, mangoes and peaches. "Is your husband back yet?"

"Hm? Yes, he is. But he's resting at home. The surgery did a number on him."

"Surgery?!" Trish screeched. Jon winced at the shout and she muttered an apology.

Forgivingly, Jon shook his head. "Sometimes, when you get old, your joints will get a bit painful so the doctors have to replace it with an implant. He's on the road to recovery now so no worries."

“Implant…?”

Jon took time to explain what that meant. Trish had a million questions swirling around her head and she continued to press him for answers. Unlike a lot of adults, Jon took time to answer her questions to the best of his abilities.

Trish was about to ask how on earth someone can survive being cut open by another person when someone interrupted them. "Retired to teach primary school children, eh, Jon?" the fruit seller said, folding her arms. "Didn't know you were taking in new students."

Jon scowled. "You know full well—"

"Enough of you," the fruit seller brushed him aside in favour of leaning over her counter to look at Trish. "Heya, pipsqueak. Haven't seen you before."

"I’m not his student… My Ma and Da and me moved in last last week. My Da's there," she said, pointing.

It was also then that her father seemed to have settled the payment for vegetables and came over. “Trish, there you are. Where’s your friend? I thought you went to talk to him.”

Trish tugged Jon’s shirt. “Here.”

Da's eyes widened. “Oh! You’re Jon?” He quickly schooled his expression into a friendly smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that. The way she talked about you… I just thought she was talking about her classmate so I was…”

“Expecting a seven-year-old and not a seventy-year-old,” Jon replied, raising an eyebrow. “That’s understandable. I’m Jonathan Blackwood-Sims. Nice to meet you.”

“Nathan Fujisaki. I’m Trish’s dad. Nice to meet you too.”

Jon’s phone began to ring and his brow furrowed. “Apologies,” he muttered as he placed his grocery bag on the stand before fumbling out his phone. He frowned as soon as he saw the caller-ID and picked it up immediately. “Martin, what’s wrong?” His eyes darted from side to side before he cupped a hand over the receiver and turned away from the rest of them to whisper into the phone.

“His husband,” the fruit seller said. “The two of them fuss over each other a lot.”

"Is that so?"

The fruit seller's eyes lit up with glee at the opportunity to gossip a little. "Yeah. When they first moved in, I was, like, 15? It's a lot better now but back then, the two of them were hardly ever apart. He taught me for a year, you know? And I don't know what arrangement they had with the school but they were practically glued to the hip anytime outside of class."

"So he is a teacher!" Trish exclaimed. "He reminded me of Mdm Taylor so I thought he might be a teacher."

"Yeah, he does have that vibe about him, doesn't he?" the fruit seller said. "Cross about everything and anything. He had that even when he was my teacher. And he was pretty scary back in the day too. Nothing seemed to get past him."

"If you truly believed that, you would know better than to gossip about me," Jon countered as he returned to pick up his grocery bag.

"How is he?" Trish asked.

Jon winced. "It's… better now. But I should head back as soon as I can." He began to make his move and said, "Take care."

"Would you like a lift?" Da offered. "It's on the way."

"I…" Jon glanced down at his cane before he let out a sigh. "Yes, please. I would appreciate that."

It didn't take very long to fetch Jon to his house. Da gave Jon his contact number in case he and his husband needed any help. Jon stared openly, expression unreadable for a moment, before he gave a brief nod and rushed into the house.

On the way home, Da was frowning. "He seems familiar…" he muttered when Trish asked. "Like I've seen him somewhere before."

***

Stupid Da. Stupid Ma.

They weren't listening to her. In a fit of anger, she ran out of the house and to the first place she could think of. It wasn't fair, she thought. Trish's lower lip wobbled as she curled harder into herself.

Suddenly, the door to the cottage at the bottom of the hill opened. A large old man with a thick beard wearing a pair of boxers and a singlet emerged and his eyes fell upon the small girl who had squished herself into a corner of the porch. "Oh my god!" squeaked the old man. "Wh-What are you doing out here? Where are your parents?"

Trish glared up through the tears in her eyes. "You're not Jon," she said, her voice rough from crying.

"Oh, he's… he's out right now," the man said, smiling apologetically. "Would you like to come in and wait for him? Or, uh, or not. We can wait for him outside."

Trish nodded.

"Feel free to sit in the chair there.”

Trish shook her head.

“Okay. Would you like something to drink then? We have tea, and milk."

"Milk."

With a gentle smile, the man went back into the house and came out, dressed in a knee-length skirt and a loose shirt. He had also brought out a cup of milk, which he placed in Trish's hand. He went back inside for a moment, before returning with a piping hot cup of tea for himself.

The man limped over to a rocking chair and sat down heavily with a sigh. As he placed his own cup down on the table beside himself, Trish noticed the massive scar on his left leg that ran from his mid-calf up to his knee. "Are you Jon's husband?" she asked. "Martin?"

The man's eyes practically lit up. "Oh yes!" He drummed his fingers against his belly delightfully. "I'm guessing that you're Trish then?"

She nodded.

"Jon's told me a bit about you," he said.

"Are you also non… nonbinary," she said the word slowly to make sure she got it right.

From the look of it, she had because Martin smiled again. "Nope. I'm a man. Just one who finds skirts incredibly comfortable."

"I don't like skirts," Trish said frankly. "They're too wooshy and swishy."

"Perfectly understandable." Martin nodded.

"Where's Jon?"

"He's doing groceries."

Trish stuck her lower lip out. "He's always doing groceries."

Something between a laugh and a sigh escaped Martin's chest. "He is, isn't he? My poor husband just can't sit still. He has to go to the market once a day or he'll get cranky. Or crankier than usual."

Trish nodded as she took a sip from her cup.

"So, what are you doing here?"

Trish lowered her cup. "I don't know."

"Did something happen to make you cry?" Martin asked.

Curling in harder into herself, she muttered, "I'm not telling."

"Oh, um… Sure."

"Does it hurt?"

"Hm?" Martin followed her gaze to his knee. "Oh, you mean my knee? It was hurting really badly before I went to the hospital. I mean, it's still hurting a bit now because I'm recovering so I take a bit of painkiller to deal with that. It'll get better soon."

"Does it hurt when they do it on you?"

"Mm… not really? They give you an injection that makes you sleep through the entire surgery. It's kind of when you wake up that you start feeling the pain."

Trish frowned. It sounded a bit unrealistic. How could you sleep through being cut open? She didn’t get the opportunity to ask Martin anything though because, in the distance, a small figure could be seen hobbling towards the house. Martin immediately straightened up. "There he is," he said, before waving.

Trish followed suit with a big wave of her own, putting her entire arm into it.

“You have a little visitor,” Martin said as soon as Jon stepped past the gate.

“I can see that very well,” Jon said, rolling his eyes. He made a small detour to their side of the porch to give Martin’s forehead a kiss. Then, he looked at Trish and probably noticed her red-rimmed eyes. "Did something happen?"

Trish frowned. "Ma and Da won't let me have a birthday party. They said it's a waste of time and I'll forget it anyway."

"Oh…" Jon pursed his lips. "Do they know you're here now?"

"No. And I don't want them to."

"They must be worried sick," Martin remarked with a small frown.

Shrinking into herself, Trish muttered sourly, "Let them."

“I know you’re angry at them and you don’t want to see them right now but it is quite unkind to cause them needless worry,” Jon reasoned gently. “I shall give them a call, okay? Just to let them know you’re here. I promise I’ll let you stay here until you’re ready to talk to them again. But you wouldn't want them to think you're in danger, right?”

Trish pouted hard, but eventually nodded.

“Right,” Jon said with a nod before heading into the house. He came back out after about 5 minutes with some cut fruits. “We have permission for you to stay until dinner,” he said as he sat down in the other chair with a low grunt. “Now, I hope you didn’t have to suffer Martin’s nagging for too long while I was away.”

“Nagging?!” Martin shot back with an offended voice. “And don’t you think I suffer when you insist on leaving a trail of cups all over the house? Do you think you’re Gretel or something?”

“Actually,” Jon said, knowing full well what he was doing, “Hansel was the one who left the trails.”

Martin groaned comically and Trish giggled a little.

***

“You know what?” Trish yelled as she threw the door open. From the kitchen, Martin made a weird squeaky noise.

“It would be polite to knock. Martin’s already got a weak enough heart already,” Jon chided as he stood up from his sofa and went to the entrance.

“Oh… Um...” She gently closed the door again before knocking. Then, she patiently waited as the sound of Jon’s shuffling slippers got closer.

“Trish,” Jon said exasperatedly as he opened the door. “You don’t have to close the door again if you’re already inside. We know you’re here.”

“Oh, okay,” Trish said, walking in.

Martin came into view and he was laughing a little. “God, you sound like such a curmudgeon.”

Frowning, Trish asked, “Cur…?”

“A grumpy old person,” Martin explained. “You know, like Jon.”

Teasingly, Jon poked Martin’s rib. “Oh yeah? Is that resentment in your voice, Mr Blackwood-Sims?”

Martin grabbed the offending hand. “Oh, absolutely not. You’re my curmudgeon. I’m not resenting you anytime soon.”

“Sap,” Jon muttered, covering his mouth with his hand, but that did nothing to hide the smile in his voice.

Trish rolled her eyes. “Aaaaanyway,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, “I’m here to announce something.”

“Yes, yes, announce away,” Jon said.

But he was making goo-goo eyes at Martin so Trish decided she’d leave the very important announcement of her birthday party for another day.

***

Having chicken pox and being forced to stay in her room for an entire week was already bad enough. But then, it just had to be on the week of her birthday. What’s worse was that Trish had gone and scratched at her skin, and even though it was healed, she had some scars on her arms and face. And she really did not appreciate scars as a birthday present.

Ma chided her for not listening and handed her a bottle of cream to apply over the scars. “If you properly apply it, then maybe it’ll get rid of those scars,” she said.

Not wanting any of the scars to remain, Trish religiously applied the cream every night. But they didn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

“It isn’t the end of the world if it does leave scars anyway. Look at the both of us! We have scars and we’re doing fine,” Jon comforted her, which wasn’t very comforting.

“It’s okay if you two have scars. You’re old people anyway,” Trish said, popping one of Martin’s freshly baked cookies into her mouth.

“Ouch!” Martin said, sitting down beside Jon at the dining table. “That’s a bit mean, Trish.”

Wincing, she muttered, “Sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Jon said. He peered over at her arm. "I think it's fading. It's just a bit slow so be patient with it."

Trish nodded. However, even as she sat there talking with them, her index finger kept returning to rub over the most prominent scar on her forearm. The tiny bump of the scar annoyed her and she wished she could tear it out, but she knew that would likely only make the scar worse.

"You know, Trish," Martin said, "it's normal for kids to get scars. We all get scars from at your age too."

"Jon too?"

"I…" Jon frowned. "I don't recall much of when I was young unfortunately."

"How come?"

"Complicated stuff," Jon said, making a vague gesture. "It'd be too long a story to explain."

"Well," Martin interjected, "he doesn't remember his. But I do." He lifted his arm to show the pale jagged patch on his elbow. "This one I got from when I fell off a tree outside my house. I got a kite snagged onto the branches so I had to get it down. It's a bit faded now actually."

"Yeah, but that's a cool scar. Mine is just from stupid chicken pox," Trish grumbled. Then, she lifted her head. "What about those though? The dot-dot ones both you and Jon have? They're not from chicken pox too, right? They're really big."

"Oh, these?" Martin said, running his hand over the pockmark scars on his face and arms.

"Yeah. How did the both of you get it? It looks really bad…" Trish frowned. "What kind is it?"

"Um… yeah," Jon said. "It... It was a… bad disease."

Martin sighed. "It was an office-wide infection. From when Jon and I worked in the same place." He then switched the subject by showing a long scar he had on his finger. "Oh, Trish, look at this one. Guess how I got this one? It was kind of dumb. I got it when I was, I think, 5 years old? I stuck my finger into the fan."

Trish scrunched her face. "Why did you do that?!" she shouted. "What if it got chopped off?"

"I don't know to be honest. I was five, Trish. I wasn't a very smart five-year-old."

"Five-year-olds generally aren't very smart," she assured Martin, who threw his head back and laughed.

They continued to talk about scars and dumb injuries for the rest of the afternoon. And by the time Trish went home, she realised that even if the scars remained in the end, she wouldn't be that upset.

***

As Martin’s knee got better, he began to join Jon’s grocery trips more often. The marketplace got a little bit more noisy on the days Martin went with Jon.

Firstly, Martin and the fruit seller seemed to have this bit that involved making fun of Jon, even though Trish didn’t necessarily understand most of the jokes. (For some reason, Martin likes to make fun of Jon for liking peaches.)

Then, Martin had what Jon called “itchy fingers'', which meant that Martin liked touching things he wasn’t supposed to. There was this one time when Martin had decided to poke something pink on the side of a carton, which turned out to be used gum. “You’d think you’d grow out of touching things unnecessarily, Martin,” Jon reprimanded as he dragged his husband to the toilet to wash his hands.

Trish just thought they were quite funny.

Sometimes, she would be with Da for groceries when she bumped into them. On those days, Da would talk to them about grown-up stuff that Trish had no hope of understanding. But it was fine since, with Martin at the front seat most of the time, this meant that Trish can lean to her side and whisper to Jon.

Sometimes, Trish would see Jon and Martin walking around together in the neighbourhood. More often than not, Martin joined Jon on his daily trips to the market, and they would slowly walk hand-in-hand. It was during those times that Jon most often had a smile on his face, and at times bursting into uproarious laughter.

Sometimes, Trish would dash over to greet them. People often told Trish that she was a bit too chatty for her own good. But around those two, she felt that maybe it was alright to talk a bit more because Martin would always smile warmly at Trish as she talked about the frog she found on the side of the road or about her stupid homework assignment. Jon, on the other hand, often had something to add to whatever Trish was saying, be it with questions or a weird trivia of his own.

Of course, there were days where Trish was far too busy to call out to them. It was highly impractical to rush out to them during a game of Hide-and-Seek.

Sometimes though, the two of them would walk especially close to each other, and they’d be whispering, or at least, one of them would be. There were times when Martin looked greyer than usual, and his gaze would be distant even as he ran his fingers along railings, fences, or any surface available. Other times, Jon would look rattled, his eyes darting about and breaths shallow. The non-cane-wielding hand would not be holding Martin’s on those days, instead, it would be tracing the scar over his neck, or twisting his hair in a quiet frenzy.

And then, sometimes, they would sit together on the park bench, holding hands and whispering and chuckling to themselves.

Those were the days when Trish knew better than to disturb them.

#tma #the magnus archives #magpod #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #nb jon #fanfic #my writing #canon divergent #cos ofc theyll grow old tgt after the apocalypse #im not in denial ;-;

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whentherewerebicycles · 3 years ago

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wow okay i am skipping the lingerie party lol and am instead going to just briefly jot down some thoughts before i go to sleep and wake up at 5 for my flight tomorrow morning. jesus christ i have ONE MILLION thoughts and feelings about this weekend. i want to preface this by saying that on the whole, it was a fine social experience! it was nowhere near as awkward or painful as i was expecting. or like, parts of it were painful, but it was 100% to do with my own complicated feelings about literally every part of this tradition and the wedding industry in general lol, and not anything to do with the people themselves. the other women were friendly and very welcoming, i made an event best friend who was wonderful company, and it was really fun to get to spend time with both my sister-in-law and her older sister, who was so charming and wonderful. i’m glad i came even though thinking about the $$ i spent on this trip makes me physically gag.

but okay i want to just record some THOUGHTS that maybe i will continue unpacking with some distance. i feel likeeeee okay here are my thoughts.

the social norms around femininity are just a fucking minefield and i feel like i really just gotta keep walking back the impulse to judge other women for the choices they make as they navigate around the manifold traps and snares and half-buried landmines that constitute the landscape of being a woman. like jesus christ. it’s so fucked up, it’s so fucked up, the received and socially enforced norms of femininity are just so fucked up. I think ALL THE FUCKING TIME of this margaret atwood poem i love so much, which was REALLY on my mind this weekend:

How can I teach her some way of being human that won’t destroy her?

I would like to tell her, Love is enough, I would like to say, Find shelter in another skin.

I would like to say, Dance and be happy. Instead I will say in my crone’s voice, Be ruthless when you have to, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it.

I feel like the first bit was very much on my mind throughout the weekend, but those last three lines have come to the forefront over the course of this last day, as i have tried to do some Thinking about what i observed/experienced/felt this weekend. whether or not this is what it means in the context of the poem, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it, expresses something of my complex feelings: I don’t know that I can tell the truth about femininity because I don’t know that I can see it. i am both too close to it/still emotionally entangled in it and too far from it to know which parts of it are ‘real’ and which parts are just performance.

i feel like one thing that struck me this weekend, in ways that i don’t know if i’ve noticed as much before, was that so much of the things women say to each other or do in these social contexts is performative, and they know on some level it’s a performance, but we are all going through the motions of doing and saying the expected things anyway. that has not always been clear to me. i have spent so much of my own life as a woman thinking that other women perfectly, seamlessly, naturally embodied the norms of femininity, and i was the only one (or part of a group of only ones) who couldn’t remember my lines, or kept fumbling my cues, or felt so painfully, self-consciously aware that i was playing a role that i could never deliver a convincing performance. but this weekend, after the initial social panic had passed, i started trying to get out of my own head a little bit and look for things that disproved the very strong theory i had brought into the weekend. and of course then i started seeing more and more of the little moments where women say one thing and do another, or profess one belief/conviction but then the whole corpus of their lived experiences and choices contradicts that stated belief, or whatever. and also just like, moments of pathos, where someone i had judged harshly at the beginning of the weekend offhandedly revealed something about her past that really changed my perception of her, or at least made me think like, ah god, i have to have empathy for and with this person, because i think she might be a complex person just like me, with an intricate inner life that her performance partially reveals and partially occludes from view, and agh, it sucks to have to think of people as complicated instead of as safely two-dimensional & easy to dismiss, and the reason it sucks is because then it forces you to realize that you share more with this person than you’d like to admit, and that some of your wounds are the same, even if you dealt with those wounds (the wounds of girlhood, or rather the emotional wounds that our culture inflicts upon girls, which then become tangled up in complex and painful ways with the lived experience of girlhood itself) in really different ways.

but also ugh. we are all performing gender norms but there is just something that does not feel playful at all about embodying conventional femininity. i can’t think of a better way to phrase that right now but it’s like.. the performance isn’t fun. it doesn’t seem to be fun. i don’t know that anyone here was having fun doing it, even if they were having fun being with each other. but it was like doing the intensely gendered social rituals was like, the price of admission? like it was the toll we had to pay to be together spending time in the company of other women? i don’t know man but it fucking exhausts me. like i can push myself to stretch my genuine empathy and sense of solidarity with other women much further than my knee-jerk judgmental reaction, but i can’t ever get to a place where i find any of those social rituals anything other than fucking exhausting. they feel so fucking joyless. they feel like things that many women have internalized as ‘things we must do in order to have relationships with other women.’ (please do not even get me started on how exhausting heteronormativity is i think i could write an entire other essay on how women use these bachelorette party-type rituals to spend time with their closest female friends, but the whole event is still implicitly organized around men, and these women’s male partners are still positioned as the priority in their lives, and the whole event is framed as like, a last burst of intense closeness between women before the bride is delivered over to her husband. like i KNOW that this is not how women think of it but all the RHETORIC of the bachelorette party, the little events and rituals and games, the little comments everyone makes all fucking weekend, good fucking lord, my jaw is so TENSE.)

anyway god i just AGHHHH. idk sorry this is definitely not coherent at ALL because i’m tired and still need a bit more distance/time to process some of this. i guess here is one last thing i want to register before i sleep. i am in my 30s now and i am living a life that is so, so far removed from the social world i grew up in. marriage is not a norm among my friend group, almost all of my female friends are queer women, many women i know are not partnered and have no interest in being partnered, and the friends who are in heterosexual relationships tend to be in very gender-balanced relationships or slightly nontraditional relationships where it feels like both partners have engaged in conscious reflection about what they want their relationship to look/feel like. also i now date women, am out as a lesbian, and spend most of my time teaching/working with queer- and trans/nonbinary-identified kids.

so like, the world i live in now is just so different from the world i grew up in. and sometimes it is easy for me to kind of downplay the intensity of my own gender distress as a teen and young adult, or to sort of - act like it was a phase in my life that had much more to do with me than with the social environment i lived in. i don’t mean ‘phase’ in a dismissive ‘those feelings weren’t real’ kind way, but more like, ‘oh that was just part of the normal growing pains of figuring out who you are and what kind of person you want to be as an adult - everybody pretty much goes through some version of that.’ it’s true that everyone DOES go through some version of that, as just like, part of the process of individuation in that age range. but also like. idk man. being back in this environment - straight white women from the midwest and south, all engaging in the rituals of heterosexual white femininity - was just so intense and so MUCH, and it brought back a flood of feelings and visceral memories that i feel like i will need to spend some time sorting through over the next few weeks. like, what i experienced back then really WAS gender distress, and it was so, so distressing. i spent the years from age 11ish to 24ish existing with this constant lowgrade baseline feeling of wanting to claw my own fucking skin off because my own gendered body felt like such a prison, and i sometimes felt like i literally wanted to destroy my own body because i could not yet conceive of an alternative to inhabiting that body or playing the role that had been handed down to me. until i started reading queer memoirs and inhaling lesbian media and (especially) reading about queer femme identities, i literally did not have an image or any kind of felt sense of what another way of inhabiting my own body might look/feel like. i literally could not imagine it!!!

and that is why the distress feels so distressing, and becomes internalized in such violent ways, i think. because it’s the blind, mindless panic of a trapped and wounded animal. except that you lack any real understanding of the larger social forces at work, or any language with which to describe or conceptualize what social norms are or how they’re enforced. so in your mind, the only thing you can see wounding you is your own gendered body, or the way that gendered body is socially 'read’ by others. and that is why you want to claw your own fucking skin off, just literally dig your nails into your own flesh and claw it the fuck off. because you can’t see a norm, but you can see your gendered body, and you can see the ways that it causes other people to react to you, or treat you, or hold you to a certain set of expectations, and so in your mind you are like: this must be destroyed. in your mind you are like, the only way out is to get out of this fucking body, but that’s impossible, surely, you can’t get out of your own body, so you have to settle for starving it and self-harming it and ruthlessly punishing it in a thousand terrible ways, because you might not be able to leave your girl’s body behind, but you can make it suffer and pay for what it’s done to you.

i am old enough now, and have spent enough time thinking and writing about those feelings, to identify them when they arise again, and to get the necessary distance from them so that i can say, what i want to destroy are the norms themselves, and the distress they cause, and not the body that has done nothing to me but be me. so i am not quite as sucked under as i used to be. but i think that there is something about the violence and intensity of those feelings that i forget sometimes, or misremember with age and distance. it’s easy to be a little bit patronizing to my younger self (or by extension to my younger students sometimes), because i now live in a social world that is largely arranged in ways that minimize rather than intensify or amplify gender distress. but when you have no choice in how to arrange your life, and no language with which to understand what is happening to you or what you are experiencing, and no frame of reference to help you understand that this is a period in your life and not forever, and no models you can look to in order to discover alternative ways of inhabiting your body or arranging your life... my god, that’s quite different from being an adult with a wide range of experiences and with much greater autonomy over your own body and life. anyway idk i need to keep thinking but now i must go to bed and try to sleep five hours before the plane.

#how can i teach her some way of being human #that won't destroy her!!!#gender #mw #to think further #girls I have been

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