#note im ace and trans so im coming at it from that angle

[vriskadyke]

im gonna be real, looking at the scene where "owen"/isabel says she 'just likes tv' when maddie asks her if she likes girls or boys and viewing it as representation of an uncomplicatedly or entirely asexual experience feels like it strips it of all context surrounding that moment. so much of what she experiences throughout the film and what she talks about is clear, evident gender dysphoria. to the extent that you cannot watch this film without seeing the way that transness colors it. being closeted while trans, being unaware that you even ARE trans, while the world closes in around you, can make the concept of a romantic or sexual relationship deeply alienating and frightening. this isnt to say you CANT view her as asexual or aromantic. but you have to understand that when she's talking about 'just liking tv shows' and when she says that the concept of romance makes her feel sick and hollowed out, there's a reading there that fits way more into the thoroughline of the film's points about gender dysphoria and closeting and the huge internal damage that denying yourself for years and years can do.

[rontra]

ANONYMOUS ASKED:

i really like mwot and was wondering, do you wanna talk/loredump/etc about mwot during this blessed month of pride? (if not that's totally cool!!! i really like the au and am curious about it!)

REPLY:

YES!!!!

umineko spoilers below and LONG POST KSDJDKSKD i really went infodumping......you got me right in an infodumping mood....

also im being very casual in this post so if something is like weird or vague its probably because i got tired of thinking about it and skipped ahead. SKJDSJD

mwot is an umi au and its very gay and very trans because i, a gay trans, decided it was TIME to INDULGE

LIKE A MOUNTAIN WIND FALLING ON OAK TREES also known as MWOT, MW/OT, Mountain Wind + Oak Trees, MW+OT, or literally any combination of its parts, is an eva/natsuhi au, set in a vague modern big city setting

https://rontra.tumblr.com/tagged/mountain-wind-oak-trees

it’s a comedy, mostly? it has elements of backstory transphobia and  stuff like that but that’s not really the story i want to tell with it, so  i don’t go too deeply into it in the main fic. it’s mostly comedy and Self Care: The  Story (once these nerds get around to acknowledging that self care is  good, anyway!!!!)  

Eva is 20, nb lesbian (though she doesnt know half of it to begin with). generally a bitchard at the beginning but also deeply craving that Validation. Invested in making the fic harder to write due to pronoun shenanigans (shoutout to the lengthy section of intimate emotional scenes that uses no pronouns at all for eva but is narrated by them in 3rd person)

Natsuhi is like 21 i guess because im a sucker for her having like an annoying 1-3 years on eva bc eva would get mad about it. Also she’s trans, gray-ace, hopeless romantic, generally full of “quickly raising your eyebrows and looking away while sipping your drink and thinking Yikes” energy. weaponizes indifference but is no stranger to harder means. she’s a smart cookie

Sayo is also 20, gender clown car living her best life. Presents differently depending on mood and whim

krauss is like 22 or whatever. for housekeeping’s sake, rosa and rudolf are too young to matter (8 and 10, or something like that). dont even worry about it

honestly the weirdest part of the au is eva and sayo being the same age

also this au is the origin point of me & my friends using akikaze as nat’s maiden name. the more you know!

-

USHIROMIYA GOLD dishes up that yellow metal like you wouldn’t believe. led by kinzo whos so fuckin good at sniffing out that sweet sweet gold people are half convinced the man has psychic powers. Any piece of land he’s got his eyes on, he WILL get his hands on, no matter who owns it right now.

the land kinzo wants At The Moment is owned by the AKIKAZE FAMILY who have been notably on the decline recently. they’re in the economic shithole so this land is basically all they’ve got right now, so when kinzo wants it and it suddenly Has Value, they’re like “oh, shit,

anyway the deal basically shakes out that like, he gets the land and all the gold that may or may not be in it. he offers his eldest son in exchange for this land, to marry their daughter: in the bonds of marriage graciously ensuring a part of the winnings will spill over on them, while keeping them under his control without money coming into the picture.

Everything’s working out great and coming up kinzo. the deal is closed and everyone’s happy (i guess). until ONE DAY, just a few narrow weeks before the akikaze girl is set to move in with the ushiromiyas,

KINZOS

OLDEST

SON

DISAPPEARS

!!!!!

Krauss dislikes being told what to do, and his father’s ideals never lined up with his own. He thinks this entire thing is sort of fucked up and can’t live under his dad’s thumb anymore. That's why, immediately following Kinzo’s agreement with the Akikaze family, Krauss disappears. He’s just kinda left for greener pastures, to unfold his own life and pursue his own interests independent of the Ushiromiya name. He leaves behind a letter explaining it & basically he forfeits both name and inheritance, and Kinzo’s incredible deal is suddenly in jeopardy.....

obviously this is kinzo though, and all of his solutions are like, 20 times more complicated than they have to be? he’s DETERMINED to have this land so he’s like “i need an eldest son. shit rudolf is only like 9. fuck. well okay i have an eldest daughter with a deeply complicated need for validation and success entirely driven by her overall neglect at my hands“ and the rest. as they say. is history (???)

Ushiromiya Eva always saw Krauss as unworthy of the inheritance, and to her, his disappearance confirms this. She grew up always being made to feel inferior to her older brother, usually being ignored in favor of him, and it's bred a complex need for validation in her. Her values and strengths are more like Kinzo’s than her brother’s, and Kinzo recognizes this in the wake of Krauss’ disappearance.

basically he concocts this really wild scheme where eva has to pretend to be his oldest son and marry this girl or whatever so he can seal this stupid gold deal and she’s like “well lol if i get to be family heir” and hes like “yes that’s what im saying” and shes like “awesome let’s do it”

all of the servants are in on it too of course. specifically kinzo enlists SAYO who works there as normal staff and isn’t otherwise tangled into this family’s mess in any way whatsoever. she’s just here to serve tea and looks. anyway he’s like “you work on this with eva--i mean evan, my son, you must have misheard--and eva you have to listen to whatever yasuda says” and eva is like “that last part will not be frustrating for me at all”.

Yasuda as reigning Household Gender Presentation Expert is like “i think i just got orders from the master to bully eva?” and eva is like “i wish i could fire you but my dad just banned me from doing that” and then gradually...over the course of the project......they become....friends.........

(the au is tagged eva & sayo for a reason. they become FRIENDS!!)

mostly its just various combinations of shkanon dunking on eva and its all VERY good.

during all these shenanigans we make some startling realizations like “gender euphoria is a hell of a drug” and stuff, which is extremely harrowing for everyone (note: not for everyone. just for eva, who makes 10,000 realizations every day, and should not have been counted.)

(ok sidenote did anyone else put on their first binder & go like “hmmm. i live here now” because. mood. im projecting entirely into this fic)

Gender Clown Car yasuda (currently as lion) is like “you know there’s like more than 2 genders” and eva’s like “you fucking wehat”.

i also make a REALLY INVOLVED JOKE ABOUT CASTIGLIONI GOLD, THE RIVAL COMPANY, and how BEATRICE’S KID LOOKS A LOT LIKE LION, and EVERYONE thinks this is all VERY funny

(i would like to see it. also kinzo owes beatrice castiglioni $20 and she’s never let him forget it.)

now wrapped up in this stupid impostor scheme AND full of big wild nonbinary energy AND!! WITH AN INFURIATING NEW FRIEND!! IN THE STAFF!!! this one funky ushiromiya is all ready to get in on an arranged marriage or whatever. provided NO ONE EVER FINDS OUT that they’re faking it and replacing the Actual Heir, which would no doubt ruin the scheme AND bring kinzo’s wrath on everybody involved, of course.

-

AKIKAZE NATSUHI IS READY TO PUNCH HER FIANCE IN THE THROAT IF HE EVEN LOOKS AT HER but she understands what’s happening here. she knows she didn’t have a say in this from the very beginning. that the deal was sealed for her as soon as the name “ushiromiya” was said. she knows her family married her off quick in a bid to get rid of her. if she’s humiliated by this ordeal, she is far too proud to show it. she packs her bags and walks into the mansion with her head held high........and immediately has this exchange with her fiance

and this one

so that’s kind of the energy we’re going for with these two.

(natsuhi’s line in the second cap was going to be removed for being Way Too Intense, but everyone i talked to said it was too hot to cut, so i decided to indulge us all. blame the lesbians)

they IMMEDIATELY don’t get along but they kinda agree to like, mind their business, since neither of them are interested in playing house here. if they can get the wedding to go off without a hitch they can basically go back to never talking to each other again.

natsuhi’s entire angle here is essentially: her family was not that good, and this family likely won’t be better, BUT here she has a chance to build something new for herself. she’ll be out of her parents’ house. She needs this deal to stay for her own sake, but she has to get out ahead of her husband and set up a dynamic that favors her. when she meets evan she essentially gauges the kind of person she’s dealing with and picks her approach accordingly: this is not a soft man, and she has to be hard in turn to avoid being steamrolled.

and its VERY hot

anyway some stuff happens and it eventually they both sorta get each other’s secrets. eva is not the firstborn son and natsuhi is not the card kinzo thought he was pulling from her family’s hand and theyre both toast if word hits the public. directly after the wedding they establish a tense alliance of keeping each others’ secrets....

and then they.....fall...in l

there’s some fun tensions and realizations. eva is like “so im quickly catching on that no praise i ever received from dad was on my own merit and he’s kind of a dirtbag all around and his validation is kind of not worth it” and nat is like “word our parents are chains” & they run kinzo over with the down w cis bus. it’s fine. they get postcards from krauss sometimes. he has a motorbike now.

DID I MENTION THE PRACTICE KISSING

BC THEY HAVE TO PRACTICE! FOR THE!! PUBLIC WEDDING!!!!

and thats mwot i guess. it’s my au where natsuhi’s accent color is red and some other stuff happens too. happy pride month

[radiqueer]

1/3 You're still wrong on this. 1. The problem with "lesbians shouldn't feel bad for not liking men, so stop pointing out transmisogyny" is the equation of trans women w/ men, not the assertion that lesbians don't have to be w/ men. It's important to make that distinction. Casting suspicion on lesbians' asserting their orientation in the name of trans women doesn't help trans women (it concedes that trans women=men) + demonizes (cis&trans) lesbians' boundaries/sexuality. 2. "Sexuality is fluid"

2/3 as a universal statement is biphobic AND homophobic, & in general can be used to push ppl's boundaries: it's all those things at once. Everybody, at times, criticizes something from one angle without systematically exploring all issues; OP has the right to talk about the homophobic implications. 3. A post about "lesbians" doesn't specifically exclude trans ppl. I don't see anything in that post that can't be true for trans/nb lesbians. (OP is an nb lesbian, not cis.) It's not wrong for a

3/3 lesbian to not want to date nbs who don't also have some affliation w/ womanhood or lesbianism, or to decline to date someone they learn isn't a woman. 4. You're wrong about the development of these discourses. You're considering this primarily from the view of intra-LGBTQ dynamics (and a certain angle of those dynamics) & therefore are missing a lot of the picture/history. TL;DR: "some lesbians use this as an excuse too..." isn't an excuse to invalidate lesbian sexuality.

with reference to this post and this post

i think you should learn reading and critical thinking, in that order. but lets take this apart

The problem with "lesbians shouldn't feel bad for not liking men, so stop pointing out transmisogyny" is the equation of trans women w/ men, not the assertion that lesbians don't have to be w/ men.

yeah this is true and ive never said it wasnt

Casting suspicion on lesbians' asserting their orientation in the name of trans women doesn't help trans women (it concedes that trans women=men) + demonizes (cis&trans) lesbians' boundaries/sexuality.

i am not “casting suspicion” on lesbian sexuality. i don’t want lesbians to date/fuck men if they don’t want to. i am looking at these assertions of lesbian sexuality in the context of this site and the lesbian spaces on it rife with terfs&terf rhetoric. i am suspicious because i know already that there’s a staggering amount of radfem talk that goes unchecked and i have every right to be suspicious, because that screenshot was taken from a terf’s blog. that’s not a neutral observation lmao

criticizes something from one angle without systematically exploring all issues;

i am going to be suspicious lmao when bi&ace people analyse the world from a specifically bi/ace perspective we’re lambasted for not accounting for lg people/monosexuals......but when LG people analyse from their perspective they have often used to to completely dismiss and denigrate our sexualities. things exist in context and you cannot remove LG people refusing to even acknowledge the existence of bi, ace, trans, and nb people from the context of our continued erasure and demonization in queer/lgbtq spaces, by those same LG people. 

A post about "lesbians" doesn't specifically exclude trans ppl. I don't see anything in that post that can't be true for trans/nb lesbians.

really?? because i can see SO many things that need to be acknowledged because the experiences of trans lesbians differ noticeably from the experiences of cis and nb lesbians. arguably op is trying to speak from their own perspective but the fact that they failed completely to mention trans lesbians at all while making a post containing word-for-word talking points that terfs use to exclude trans women is SO fucking suspicious and again, im sure op does include trans women, but at best it’s eyeroll worthy at best that they didn’t see fit to include trans women in the body of the post the first time they made it......a grossly transparent oversight.

It's not wrong for a lesbian to not want to date nbs who don't also have some affliation w/ womanhood or lesbianism, or to decline to date someone they learn isn't a woman

never argued this at all lol

You're wrong about the development of these discourses. You're considering this primarily from the view of intra-LGBTQ dynamics

posting a take on a website full of lgbtq people inherently means that it’s going to be read in that context. however, i do understand what ur saying: that this is something straight people also use. but op was so eager to post the take they failed to contextualise it like that, which means that terfs were able to reblog it with no dissonance. the fact that terfs were easily able to co-opt that post and everything it said to be anti-queer, anti-trans, and anti-bisexual is not a neutral fact at all

"some lesbians use this as an excuse too..." isn't an excuse to invalidate lesbian sexuality.

if you’re making a statement which has been used by violent groups to target vulnerable members of your community then you have a basic responsibility to acknowledge said vulnerable members, and explicitly exclude the violent groups. i should not have to say this because it’s very basic and you only need one brain cell to understand that. 

TL;DR: “lesbian sexuality does not include men” is a neutral position on its own but must be contextualised properly to not come across as bigoted because it has been co-opted by violent groups to enact violence. if you go an entire post about lesbian sexuality not being fluid without so much as noting in passing that trans and nb lesbians exist, that it is a biphobic talking point, and that there is more to statements like “sexuality is fluid” than the homophobic and biphobic aspect of it.............that’s not a good look and not fucking neutral