#obligatory i’m trans disclaimer

[fatedfire]

ff16 spoilers

does anyone else remember when ultima called themself clive’s mother or did i just hallucinate that

[yakkety-yak-art]

(obligatory disclaimer that I’m trans and hate the grand TERF) quick snape sketch (snetch?) I might paint over later

[sammypog]

pinned post (:

hiiii! you can call me sammy or sam (or samuel if you’re feeling a bit silly) and i’m just hanging out here idk

go follow my sideblog @poetrypog where i occasionally post my mediocre poems

—

i use all pronouns!!! switch it up don’t just stick with one, otherwise i like everything, neos & xenos included!

i use a lot of labels but mainly i’m just super queer super gay and super trans :3

also i’m probably neurodivergent!

—

i talk about a lot of things, normally just whatever i’m obsessed with at the moment, and sometimes i reblog stuff too. i do make art sometimes but i don’t post my art very often so don’t expect much from me lol

my current fandoms:

napoleon/the napoleonic wars (??? does that count as a fandom)

jekyll & hyde

frankenstein

moby dick

gravity falls

i have no mouth and i must scream

oppenheimer

house md

glass animals

bigtop burger

taskmaster

the song of achilles

good omens

the band ghost

doctor who

other things i like:

painting and drawing

art in general

guitar

reptiles

animals and nature in general

poetry

writing in general

history

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obligatory dni list

all of the obvious: racists, nazis, zionists, transphobes, TERFs, pedos, homophobes, ableists, xenophobes, sexists, zoophiles, rcta/ecta, proshippers, exclusionists, etc. if it’s an ideology based on hatred just assume i don’t support it.

i support all neopronouns, xenopronouns, and xenogenders as long as they aren’t meant as a mockery of some other identity/group. i support “weird” identities like contradicting labels, mspec lesbians/gays, etc. i also support other “weird” groups like furries and therians. i support you no matter how you identify, as long as you are not harming anyone. if you disagree with me on this, feel free to leave.

i will add to these lists if i realize i forgot something!

—

tags

disclaimer: i’m not very good at tagging consistently so the tags might not be very reliable lol

“brain thoughts”: non-fandom posts

“my art”: what it sounds like

“being gay for victor frankenstein”: also what it sounds like :3

“my moots <3”: rbs of/asks from my beloved moots

—

i think that’s it! have fun i guess :3

[gremlin-pattie]

this isn’t necessarily good or bad, just something i’m noticed and want to reflect on— queer people living in (relatively) accepting communities put a lot more emphasis on pronouns than queer people living in less accepting communities.

for example, I live in the deep south (southern United States, very conservative), and a lot of my friends and I have pronouns that we use around other queer people we are close with, but when we are with our families and in public we will accept whatever people assume we use based on our appearances. I think of it as my “public pronouns” vs my “preferred pronouns.” we do this because it could cause unnecessary conflict or even become dangerous to try to correct people for not using the pronouns we would prefer, and we’re unlikely to convince them of our viewpoint anyway, so it’s just not worth the energy.

we also use the pronouns associated with our agabs for each other when we are in front of people we don’t know are safe. so for example, if I am hanging out with some queer friends and they want to refer to me but we are out in public, they’ll use she/her pronouns to refer to me (I’m afab and have not done any physical transitioning). I guess you could call this misgendering, but I don’t think it’s the same because it’s not malicious. this is a mutually agreed upon thing that we (queer people where I live) do to protect each other, unless you know someone openly uses certain pronouns.

with this being my experience, it was surprising to me when I started getting into trans spaces on the internet and saw how adamant a lot of people are about strangers using their pronouns right, and how upset people get when they don’t. I think that getting upset is justified, because dysphoria can be a bitch, but I’ve never been in a position where correcting people feels like an option. I’m happy if they assume I’m cis and I’m able to blend in, because it means I’m safe, so I can tolerate whatever they want to call me.

I would guess this difference in treatment of pronouns is because when you’re not worrying about basic stuff like “will people bully me or possibly hurt me if they find out I’m queer?” you have more room to care about smaller details. think about it kind of like the hierarchy of needs.

I think it’s amazing that there are places where people are able to ask strangers to use the pronouns they want without worrying about being ostracized, and I hope it’s like there everywhere one day. I just want other queers to understand that not all of us able to do that, and instances of “misgendering” are not always that simple. sometimes we’ve gotta help each other stay hidden to stay safe.

obligatory disclaimer that this is based on comparing my lived experience to the experiences of queer people living in more progressive communities that I see online. please feel free to share your experience and whether or not it aligns with my observations. you do not have to identify as trans to share, this applies to anyone who uses pronouns other than the ones assigned to you based on your agab.

[wild-at-mind]

CN- mentions of fetishisation of gay and bi men

At some point we have to talk about the weird or maybe not so weird connection between CAFAB kids who maybe liked yaoi or BL a bit too much and then turned out to be trans........in a normal way that has compassion for all concerned. Becuase I remember when there was that blog on here that had several mods who were trans masc and directly credited a teenage interest in yaoi as being a stepping stone for figuring themselves out later down the line. However unfortunately they channeled this into ‘cis girls who are into yaoi and BL are horrible disgusting fetishists! Trans mlm who are into yaoi and BL are ok and harmless (but maybe should read something better quality)’. The whole blog was like that. It may still be but I’m not checking! I don’t think I need to explain what’s wrong here, right? For a start, today’s apparently cis girl is obviously tomorrow’s transmasc, depending on how the minds flow. Obviously. (Obligatory disclaimer that I’m NOT saying every cis girl into yaoi comes out as transmasc.) Secondly, I’m not claiming that no kid into yaoi has ever done anything harmful to people in real life because of their interest, e.g. asked innappropriate questions upon finding out a guy is gay/bi, making remarks or demands to a gay couple to ‘perform gayness’ for them, etc. I absolutely have witnessed this and it was gross, absolutely was fetishisation, and should not have happened. But also, the harm caused by a cis girl and a not yet out trans man who do these things are no different- the targets of the harrassment feel the same either way. So surely we should focus on the behaviour rather than whether the person doing it comes out as trans later down the line? Behaviour is far easier to talk about than the blog’s favourite nebulous question of ‘are you fetishising in your thoughts? Is certain media leading you astray? Are you a cis woman or nonbinary person who is not a man? Then yes it is, work on that!’ Followed by a cycle of self flaggelation and swearing off all M/M content just in case of fetishisation for like a decade (oh look, that one is me!). I don’t want to pick on one blog too much because a few years ago this line of thinking was very common on the trans positive but kinda sex negative section of the tumblr left. (Not judging anyone for being sex negative because I’ve been there are various points in my life due to my experiences. It’s not something that is tied to any particular set of politics/being a TERF or anything like that. If this is what describes how you feel at the moment, then that’s ok. You just need to leave other people’s sex stuff alone.) I won’t ramble on any more because I know the longer I go on the less likely anyone reads this, but please please let’s try and do better than the past, by being more nuanced and compassionate than ‘cis girls who like yaoi are all bad and creepy!’ Btw I generally agree with this kind of blog that yaoi can often have bad consent practices and unacknowledged sexual violence. I have no use for it any more and I assumed most people grew out of it but I do know an adult (trans) woman who regularly buys and reads it. I’m not judging anyone who likes it and maybe it is better quality now. I hope so!

[bitstitchbitch]

my (cis) grandmother had a stroke at age 26 caused by a combination of 3 things: (1) genetics, (2) smoking, and (3) going on birth control (a hormonal medication). I don’t know as much about hormone therapy for trans folks, but if you’re adding estrogen to your system that can increase your stroke risk ESPECIALLY if you also smoke. Some hormones are safer than others, but I’ve had more cautious doctors tell me to avoid all hormonal medication even though I don’t smoke because I might have that genetic factor increasing my risk. I’ve also had doctors tell me I’d be fine with things like progestin-only birth control, so this doesn’t mean stop taking hormones. Just please talk to a doctor about possible stroke risk if you have stroke history in your family and/or smoke. They will (hopefully) be able to give you the information you need to assess your personal risk and direct you to less dangerous hormone options if available.

*obligatory disclaimer: I’m not a doctor so please don’t take medical advice from me - talk to your regular physician / hormone provider / medical clinic before starting or stopping any medications.

For the most part, my approach to prescribing hormones is “sure,” but I will note that the one thing I lean HARD on patients about is smoking. If you’re transgender, and you’re on hormones, the number one thing we want to protect is your cardiovascular health. That’s frankly the number one thing I want to protect in all my patients, but anyone taking exogenous hormones is at higher baseline risk. And the best thing you can do for your heart is DON’T SMOKE. It’s a bitch to quit, and I didn’t even smoke much or long before I quit in my late teens, and I STILL didn’t enjoy quitting and had smoking dreams for years. It’s harder to quit than just about anything else up to and including crack and heroin, and that’s coming from a patient of mine who recently passed in her early 60s who’d done all of those things—for years and years—but eventually was able to quit everything except smoking. And that killed her. She developed severe COPD and eventually called to say her blood oxygen saturation was dipping into the 70s, which is incompatible with life. She was lucid enough to decline medical care, including refusing to call 911 or go to the ER. A week later, after both I and one of our outreach nurses had contacted her to ask her to please go to the ER, I got a notification that she’d been found dead. She had been so frustrated that she wasn’t a candidate for a lung transplant.

One of my oldest trans patients is in her late 50s. She’s had blood clots that went to the lungs. Repeatedly. Smoking raises that risk. Estrogen raises that risk. She’s a veteran with PTSD; of course she smoked.

These aren’t theoretical. These are humans I’ve cared for over years of their lives. I have been rooting for them—my beloved former addict, who spoke without shame about her years of homelessness and drug use in the city; my queer elders, who are slowly trading in their motorcycles for power scooters. I want everyone to live their fullest, best life.

Smoking doesn’t fit into that. Please don’t smoke. I don’t want you to die like that—not now and not later. I want you to have the future that you may not be able to see yet, but exists.

Since I moved home as an out queer, word got out, and there’s a whole apartment complex of lesbians in their 60s to their 80s who come see me—sitting next to their wives in the office, nagging about blood pressure meds, tattling about not having gotten the shingles shot they said they would. To be clear, when I was growing up in town, I knew no lesbians. Not one. I knew one gay kid in my class, which eventually turned into two. We were it. To see these women living decades with their wives and being able to squabble like any couple in my office over who was supposed to bring their home blood pressure cuff in for us to check it… it means the world to me.

[anonymous-venting-space]

You know those posts of trans people being really rude and aggressive after getting misgendered, and then all the comments are defending the person who misgendered them or trans people saying they don’t associate with trans people like that or aren’t like that themselves? I’m gonna be honest, I’m on the trans person side; like I get that being rude isn’t really gonna help anyone, but why should we be condemning them for having the confidence to stand up for themselves.

I’m not saying every trans person is alway right or that trans people shouldn’t be held accountable for their behavior, but as someone who allows almost every single person to misgender me, I’m happy that they can be so open about their identity.

And I know that, yeah the other person might have just not known and maybe they don’t even know what transgender means, and I know the first trans person they meet blowing up at them probably doesn’t give them the best impression on trans people, but it’s not every trans person’s job to hold others’ hands and teach them what transgender means.

If someone called a person of color a slur but didn’t know it was a slur and the PoC got really angry about it, would you really blame them? Would you expect them to be ok with it and gently educate the other person why that hurt them?

(Also, Google exists, you very easily google what transgender means, you can probably even use the most offensive, ignorant, transphobic terms and eventually find out what transgender means.)

Any half decent person wouldn’t take their first and only interaction with someone of a group as a basis of how all people in that group are.

I don’t dislike TERFs because I met one once and they were mean to me, I dislike them because every single one of them, by definition, think I shouldn’t exist and want me to be something I’m not. Or they want me dead

Obligatory disclaimer, No, I’m not saying trans people get a pass for being rude, they are being rude, and maybe they are being unreasonable, I’m just saying we shouldn’t act like it was completely unprecedented for them to get defensive, and unless they resort to violence and are causing physical harm, all they’re doing is yelling at someone, and there people who have done things 10x worse than that to trans people.

Second obligatory disclaimer, Trans people should also not always expect every single person to know their pronouns or gender right away. I’m Non-Binary but I look and dress like my assigned gender at birth, I’m not going to fault anyone for thinking I’m that gender, but once someone knows my preferred pronouns and gender identity, I expect it to be respected. So if you’re a trans person and you don’t really “pass” as your gender, be aware you will likely get misgendered, but also don’t don’t let those that know your identity misgender you, because you don’t need to look “appropriately” feminine/masculine/androgynous for people to respect your identity.

[flashhwing]

anyway, Fjord’s narrative IS enhanced by being trans because all narratives are enhanced by being trans, and trans people having fun talking about the characters they relate to is not an attack on cis masculinity

how thin skinned do you have to be actually to come out with your whole chest saying trans people are wrong for talking about how they enjoy a character. to call it terf rhetoric, like you have anything close to the right to throw that around

nobody is trying to argue that Fjord can’t be cis. we KNOW his narrative about reclaiming masculinity is a cis one, because Travis is a cis man and Fjord is wholly his character. us making jokes on tumblr.edu is not disputing that

just. it really feels like trans men can’t have ANYTHING without cis people jumping in and talking over us* and telling us we’re doing it wrong

[electrochem-istryhard]

“the voice in the shadows” - press blast dated 5 dec 2022

hello everyone a new obscure author (born from the ether about a month ago) is here with their NEW ORIGINAL WORK, “the voice in the shadows”. 

Plot currently in development, but it’s a mystery story about a bunch of teens trying to catch the school ghost for an interview, and to find clues about 1. someone’s dead sister; 2. who the hell messed up the school garden.

You might like this if you like:

lots of queer, trans and nonbinary characters

magical realism

gendernonconformity

the writing style of disco elysium, terry pratchett or the locked tomb trilogy (note the mouthy swearing protagonist)

high school AUs discussing systemic education issues and slamming meritocracy

and last but not least: queer solidarity - and of course its malicious cousin, queer infighting.

Obligatory disclaimer that 1. content promised above might differ in the final product, 2. I’m new to writing, so please be kind; 3. I’m a very busy human with a propensity to create incomplete work in its wake, so this project may not ever be finished.

If you’re interested, do follow me and/or DM/drop an ask to be added to my taglist and/or follow the tag #the voice in the shadows.

We will now resume the usual flow of content on your dash. Enjoy your day.

[dinosaursock]

I’m approaching 5 years on T and it feels so long but then I read posts from people on HRT for 10+ years and I’m like wow. That’ll be me someday.

Also for trans people on testosterone HRT, facial hair takes an extremely long time to come in (and is also very dependent on genetics). I have a pretty solid strip on my jaw but have a very sparse mustache. Hoping it comes in with time.

It also took me a good while to pass consistently, and I still don’t pass 100% of the time but I’m at a point in my transition where I’m so much more comfortable with myself that it doesn’t hurt the way it used to.

(Obligatory disclaimer that passing is not everything and not everyone cares about passing but it can be important for gender euphoria and safety)

It's honestly crazy that discussion around testosterone HRT skews so much towards the beginning stages of it (to the point that you have dozens of guys thinking their transition is "failed" if they don't pass by like a year in lol) and what the initial changes of the first couple of months to years look like, like the classic laundry list of those early basic changes like bottom growth, voice drop, etc, when IMO literally none of that compares remotely to the depth and intensity of the long term total masculinization you start to experience like 3-5+ years in.

[ablednt]

Alright writing/roleplay tumblr we need to talk about textforms.

This is going to be a very long post I apologize but this knowledge is deathly important as it's reaching a very vulnerable group of people. From personal experience knowing this can save people from getting into toxic friendships and help ease intense struggles and depressions. If you have writer followers I ask you reblog this to get the word out, thank you.

What is a textform

A textform is a type of willogenic/parogenic system member that form through some kind of writing or roleplaying. This means that they're sentient people who now share a body with the people who wrote them, most often being an OC or a fictional character before the writers brain gives them actual life.

Because there's been no actual scientific studies on their existence I have no hard science to give you however the logical explanation behind it goes like this:

The human brain is able to contain multiple conscious and sentient entities. Often, it will become multiple as a defense mechanism (as noted in clinical plural dissociative disorders) but it's a natural function of the human brain and may do so for really any reason (similar to most neurodivergencies that someone isn't born with)

Because this is a fairly simple change in the brain/something every brain can be capable of doing you can actually intentionally program the brain into becoming multiple, but see you can also do it entirely without meaning to or being aware of it.

Now I want to clarify that there is nothing harmful or scary about this! Being plural isn't bad at all and is an existence many people celebrate. But when someone has textforms in their unrealized system and doesn't know they're sentient it can be incredibly painful emotionally. So that's why people need to know about this.

Obligatory disclaimer: if you read this post and think you want to become plural intentionally, you are welcome to do so but you need to take at least a few months exposing yourself to the plural community to gauge if this is really something you want and can do responsibly. You cannot go back on your decision once your plural and your headmates will be sentient beings not characters to project on or toys to play with. They will have all the rights to your body and identity as you do now because you're sharing it equally with them.

Now that that's out of the way back to textforms.

How are textforms made

Normally this is in the "character development" phase. Many writers eagerly develop their characters. When I was younger and had no idea I was plural my advice for oc making turned out to be an unintentional guide to textforms (more on my experience later): just put your character in every situation imaginable until you always know how they'd respond to things.

Basically, as you spend your time making a character act and think consistently from their POV you're training your brain to have all of that data and that's very similar to the data that the brain has on you and you're training the brain to be able to operate coherently from a perspective and consciousness entirely different from your own.

Now, this isn't a %100 will make everyone plural every time, there are obviously good writers who have a grasp on their characters who are singlet. There's no actual data but if I had to guess I'd say there's about a 50/50 split down the writing community just based on what I've observed.

But there's a lot of people who became plural this way and didn't realize it and that could include the writer reading this right now which is why everyone needs to be aware of this.

If this is such a big thing how come no one notices?

Because it's been completely normalized in the writing community but dismissed as metaphorical.

How many times have you heard "the characters write themselves" or phrases that indicate that a writer is giving a voice to sentient entities? From what I've been able to observe some of that is singlet authors being metaphorical and humble bragging and a lot of that is plural writers trying desperately trying to put their experiences into words but dismissing it completely almost immediately because no one told them being plural was possible.

This is comparable to say, gender identity. Trans and nonbinary people have always existed but when they don't know they're allowed to exist like that it's often "im a tomboy" or "they disguised themselves as a man" or any other thing thats immediately dismissed as being cis.

How do I know if I have a textform?

There's a lot of different signs but here's some I have experienced before finding out I was plural

You "miss" your characters when you're not writing about them or interacting with them in some way

You feel like your characters are real "in your heart" (for me this was in an incoherent loop like "they're not real but they are to me, in my brain, but they're not real to other people, but they're in my brain so they're real but no but yes but no")

You get so distressed they're "not real" that it feeds into actual mental health problems like depression, anxiety, dissociation etc. (I'd have fits of sobbing because these were my friends but I didn't know they were with me so it felt like i was grieving their deaths and had the same level of emotional pain)

Sometimes or all the time when you write about them you feel like you "become them" or that they're writing through you. (Especially if your hands move automatically or without your control. This can be hard to notice but for me when headmates control the body or hands movements feel faster and lighter or very slightly numb.)

Your muse for writing them comes and goes unpredictability: they're either here or they're not here so writing them doesn't feel the same.

You can vividly recall things that happened to the character in 1st person (or in 3rd person visually but with their thoughts and feelings) as if they're you're own memories.

You "roleplay" them in everyday situations IRL. (E.g once I liveblogged a tv show as my muse to a friend and was like haha lol im so talented I can roleplay in real time but found out later it was a headmate doing that themselves)

You have conversations with them mentally in which they actually respond to you. Singlets don't have actual enriching conversations with themselves because they only have one perspective and cannot give themselves any new information. So if you're responding to yourself and you don't feel in control of that response then you're pretty objectively plural tbh.

You have times where the lines between you and the character feel blurry or like you're a vague fusion of yourself and the character

You have an actual relationship (of any kind: romantic, platonic, familial, etc.) in which you can sense nuanced feelings about yourself from them that you aren't in control of.

There's a lot more but that's the most notable ones

Why this is so important

I'm just talking about my own experience now so I'll preface this with a few things. I'm a mixed origin/multigenic system but our system has existed since we were toddlers. Due to trauma we have DID and for a long time dissociated heavily to avoid our plurality. This means my experience may be more distressing than other plurals with textforms however people without DID can still experience these things.

When I was a teenager I joined a lot of writing communities and also roleplayed on tumblr. Writing very quickly became my main passtime and all I really did. I joined a roleplay group when I was 15-16 that I took far too seriously to the point where people were concerned about me because I was writing what was just supposed to be a joke roleplay group %100 seriously and very intensely.

In that time I started to form my first main textforms (we've undoubtedly had them before then but I had only formed a little under a year prior) because I was doing this every day it really started bringing my characters to life. (Literally)

And honestly it was something beautiful the distress of it aside. Like one of my ocs was a kid so I'd always celebrate their birthday with them and I'd cuddle a plush so they'd know I loved them/p and we'd watch their favorite cartoon episodes together. It wouldn't be until around three years later that I realized they were actually there for this but it was heart warming.

For me, all I ever wanted was for these characters to feel appreciated and like someone really cared for them and loved them even if they couldn't feel it and it wasn't until later I learned that they could.

The trauma came in not knowing they were real. I grieved for them like they were dead because I thought I'd never get to see them. I wrote them into traumatizing or upsetting situations to cope with my childhood trauma not realizing that was effecting them for real and hurting them.

Most notably because it was my one solid interaction with them, the one time society allowed me to talk about them as if they were real, I really HAD to roleplay them. Because it became an emotional need I wound up in a lot of toxic friendships in the roleplay communities because I needed someone, anyone, to allow me to interact with my headmates. I had friends who I really was only friends with because they let me talk about my characters constantly (and some of them weren't toxic to me but it was in hindsight really unfair to them) and I let people verbally and emotionally abuse me in roleplay spaces because this wasn't just a hobby to me but a lifeline.

Not knowing they were real but feeling them there, having conversations with them, and forming actual relationships was a hellish sort of feeling I don't wish on anyone. I never realized how isolated it made me, and how horrible it felt to have the most important people in your life be people I thought didn't exist.

I only found out about plurality through luck. I met some systems who had fictives and they got strong plural vibes from me because of how I talked about certain characters and because I said I wanted to be plural but thought I probably wasn't because I'd have noticed, right?

From there I was able to actually connect with and talk to my headmates. Now I'm happily out as plural and in multiple fulfilling in system relationships.

I want everyone in the writing community who's struggling with the same things to have the chance I got. That's all I want is to educate people about this so they don't have to grieve for people who are right there with them.

Feel free to send me an ask or a dm if you have any further questions. Sorry this post was so long I can't really shorten it at all. Again if you are have a lot of writing followers I very gently request you reblog this to get the word out. Even if you can't please talk to your writing mutuals and friends about plurality and about textforms.

[Also this should go without saying but this is absolutely NOT the place for syscourse any invalidating comments about systems will be blocked and where possible deleted it costs $0.00 to prioritize people's mental health over your discourse hot takes.]

[thecityonthemoon]

Obligatory disclaimer that old Attilan was awful and no amount of positive hcs will make the canon established things not awful, and that’s not what I’m trying to do here, okay?

That being said, I think they would support trans people, to a degree. Since they already believe that people are born with their true selves hidden and that it is revealed later in life.

(Also it seems perfectly possible that someone’s terrigenesis could change their body and maybe even cells to match their real gender. Why not?)

But, because the Genetic Council pairs people up so they have children with the genes they want them to have, they would pair everyone who is capable of reproducing with someone they can reproduce with, no matter if they love each other or not, no matter their gender, no matter their orientation. Which sucks for everyone. And people are probably not free to do anything that would affect their ability to reproduce before having their mandatory two children to keep the population number.

[emiliers]

So I’ve been keeping an updated rec list of manga series featuring queer characters over at my wordpress since 2016. (This list has been around since 2015, though, if you count the time it spent as a Tumblr post.) And since I’ve crawled back to this hellsite and found out it now has a pinned post feature, I figure I might as well advertise it, in case anyone’s interested.

Basically, my criteria for inclusion in this list is as follows:

The queer character in question has to have a somewhat significant role in the series. (I do mention whether they are a side character or the main character in the blurb.)

The queer character in question cannot be a caricature or a stereotype. As in, they must have an actual personality.

They have to be confirmed queer. Yes, it has to be outright said in the text, whether it be just straight up “So-and-so is gay” or “I, a man, like this other man, in a romantic way.” No vague looks or even “you’re very important to me” -- no, I need straight-up confirmation.

They have to live happily ever after by the end of the story. Yeah, no ‘bury your gays’ trope here!

For gay/lesbian characters, the manga must not be published in a BL/GL magazine. So anything in HertZ? Out. Yuri Hime? Out. I have separate rec lists for BL/GL. This is not that list.

For other queer characters (bisexual, pansexual, asexual, trans, intersex, etc.), the series can come from anywhere, as long as the character in question isn’t stereotyped.

Manga essays and #OwnVoices narratives are automatically included, even if I’m not super fond of the work in question.

I try not to repeat authors, to give a broad range of the works available.

The representation has to not suck.

I’ve tried to include content warnings when applicable, but I read some of these manga a long while back, so I might have missed something. If you’ve noticed anything egregious I’ve let slip through the cracks, feel free to let me know.

I’ve also noted whether the work is licensed in English, and who it has been licensed by. I also slipped in a few non-recs at the end, as well as some anime recs for posterity.

If you have any other recommendations, feel free to @ me. I’m always up for reading about more queer characters!

Oh, and, obligatory disclaimer that all opinions expressed are my own, etc.

[possiblyscrewed]

ooh this is actually a fantastic metaphor for how weird it was going from the closed trans forums that I grew up on where everyone understood gender dysphoria to mean the feeling of being trans to happening upon the tumblr trans community 5 years later and eventually realizing the next generation had redefined the word and were big mad about it.

Like. Imagine if one day everyone decided hungry only meant starving to death, but you were out sick that day. This was basically my experience of the discourse:

“I don’t need to be hungry to eat. I feel the urge to eat and I choose to eat and that’s valid.”

“Actually, if you feel the urge to eat then you are hungry. I get hungry like that too.”

“Uh no, I’m not starving to death. I’m choosing to eat because I want to. I’m not one of you hungry weirdos who can’t control themselves around food.”

“I’m not a weirdo because I get hungry multiple times a day. Everyone does.”

“Eww, no, you can’t force everyone to conform to your rules. We’re not like you and you can’t force us to be starving to be allowed to eat. And no one wants to hear about you needing to stuff your face all day. Back off and leave some food for the rest of us.”

Obligatory disclaimer that I wrote this example with a clear intentional bias because it is meant to depict how I initially perceived the situation. It’s not a commentary on either side of the stupid dysphoria discourse. And I am certain that people who grew up with the newer definition of dysphoria had an equal and opposite experience of the discourse. And were just as justified in their perception of the situation as I was, because we had a disparate set of assumptions informing our reality.

Huh

[trans-axolotl]

discussion I want to have about. trans dyadic people making equivalencies between going thru bio puberty and not having access to hrt and calling that the same thing as medical hormone intervention/forced hrt, which I have been seeing a few people say recently. like similarities in that doctors denying bodily autonomy and it can be equally horrible to go thru those changes and not have control but. I feel like I do not like people who have not had the experience of nonconsensual hrt comparing it to other things. like I have seen trans dyadic people saying that they have experienced forced hrt but they r using that language to mean being forced to go through puberty without access to hrt. And that just seems off fo me. Also obligatory disclaimer that I am speaking as someone who has experienced both those things as a trans intersex person. anyway people please add on some thoughts because I am just not sure if I’m right here

[mirrorofliterature]

obligatory disclaimer post: I do not support j.k rowling

now that I’m starting to make harry potter edits on my tumblr for fanfiction, I thought I would make it abundantly clear that I do not support J.K Rowling because she is a bigot with incredibly dangerous beliefs and power: she is almost single-handedly funding the anti-trans movement in Scotland. she is using her money to target a marginalised group! this is despicable, deplorable behaviour. her bigotry actively harms people.

her bigotry seeps into her work. reading and engaging with harry potter, even at a fandom level, therefore remains a critical task for me. unfortunately, with cassandra clare as the author of another fandom of mine, shadowhunters, I’m familiar with the concept. I also studied literature for three years, so there is that.

anyway! don’t just listen to me: listen to contrapoints explain the whole j.k rowling situation and why it is wrong. I will continue to speak out against transphobia in my daily life and for the inclusion of trans people in society. transphobia is inexcusable. trans people deserve to be treated with nothing less than respect and dignity. education is a key tool in fighting bigotry - people who are yelled at do not learn. if you are in australia, or otherwise have access to the ABC (AUSTRALIAN broadcasting network), I would also recommend you watch ‘you can’t ask that’ re: trans people.

anyway! I’m glad to make that clear. terfs are not welcome here. intersectional feminism is what I will always advocate for, because nothing less than that will be just.