#philosophising

[xtruss]

There Was an Underground Magazine for Transgender Women in the 1960s! Transvestia's Archives Provide a Window onto a Hidden World

— June 22, 2023 | Kirstin Butler & Casa Susanna | Article | American Experience

The cover of the August 1966 issue of Transvestia magazine.

In the first month of a new decade, a Los Angeles chemist named Virginia Prince mailed out the inaugural issue of a magazine. It was, as the title page of the January 1960 edition of Transvestia states, a privately printed journal “with three objectives: to provide EXPRESSION for those interested in the subjects of exotic and unusual dress and fashion; to provide INFORMATION to those who, through ignorance, condemn that which they do not understand,” and, finally, “to provide EDUCATION for those who see evil where none exists.” With these oblique statements, Prince launched what would become the first long-running periodical for male-to-female crossdressers and transgender women in the United States.

Over its 25-year print run, Transvestia grew from 25 initial subscribers to several hundred distributed across the U.S. Most readers received their bi-monthly issues through the mail, though after 1963 the magazine could also be found in alternative and adult bookstores and newsstands in major American cities. Prince was the magazine’s driving force and served as editor until 1979, but Transvestia’s contents were as much by its readers as for them. Subscribers submitted life histories, letters, editorials, book reviews and photographs of themselves. They had their own jargon: “TV” for transvestite, “GG” for “genetic girls,” “brother” for their male identities and the “girl-within,” to refer to their feminine selves; some readers also used “femmepersonator” or “FP” for short. Prince also reprinted medical papers on topics such as gender identity and the psychology of cross-dressing.

Each issue typically ran around 80 pages, with several dedicated to advertisements for various goods—self-published books, custom undergarments and wigs—and services such as electrolysis and makeup consultation. “Perhaps there are no good stores in your town. Perhaps you are too well known,” offered one advertisement for a personal shopper. “Perhaps you need an unusual size and would be embarrassed to ask for it. Whatever the reason, I can help.” Every issue also contained a “Person to Person” section where subscribers could connect with one another. “Lifelong TV, married, 34, scientist, welcomes all correspondence with all TV’s foreign or domestic,” reads a listing by Barbara, a reader from southern New England, in the December 1965 issue.

An optician’s ad in Transvestia’s October 1969 Issue.

Transvestia was an outlet for creative writing as well. A piece of fiction in the magazine’s first issue told the story of a married couple enjoying a night out, both husband and wife dressed in traditionally feminine attire: “The sound of my high heels matching hers, the sight of my frock swirling beside hers, made us feel as one…sensing the fragrance of the real woman so close to me, the distinction between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ vanished like smoke in a high wind.” Prince herself contributed a poem to that issue, composing on a theme that would recur in many other editions of the magazine—the relief experienced upon transforming from masculine to feminine archetypal expectations and presentation.

Poems in the January 1960 and March 1961 issues of Transvestia.

In fact, several subjects appeared with a great deal of regularity throughout Transvestia’s pages. Dr. R.S. Hill, a professor at Concordia University, authored a seminal study of the magazine as his dissertation. Reflecting on Transvestia’s most oft-recurring content, Dr. Hill wrote, “The letters and histories endlessly elaborated on the same themes and topics: theorizing the causes of their condition; crossdressing for the first time; overcoming obstacles to free expression; dealing with guilt, fear, or loneliness; disclosing to or hiding from parents, wives, and children; venturing out in public; passing successfully as women without public detection; describing articles of clothing, wardrobes, and bodily measurements; and sharing fashion and make-up advice.”

Through the magazine, Transvestia readers forged a group consciousness, united not just by mutual interests but also for their common demography: The majority of subscribers were white, middle-to-professional-class, and considered themselves heterosexual. Most were married and had children. Some spoke of cross-dressing as just a relaxing “hobby” they occasionally enjoyed. But a substantial number would come to identify as women over the course of the journal’s publication, including Prince herself as well as contributing editor Susanna Valenti. Prince wrote about that decision in her final issue as editor in 1979, saying, “I figured that since I had learned pretty much all I needed to know about being a man in this world, that I might just as well devote the rest of my life to exploring the other side of my own humanity…That was in June of 1968 and I have lived as Virginia ever since.”

All of the magazine’s readers agreed that the practice of cross-dressing allowed them to access their most vibrant selves. “I have been married, have fathered five children, and am about to become a Grandpa any day now,” said the magazine’s 1962 covergirl Eileen in an accompanying personal history. “The men I work with are all hairy chested so-and-so types, and have accepted me into their ranks without question. Yet, when I rush home from the office and enter my own world of delight, that is when I truly live.”

Transvestia subscriber Eileen graced the cover of the magazine's August 1962 Issue.

The Publisher

Having been through a great deal of pain, fear, guilt, loneliness and frustration in my life I wanted to help others to avoid or conquer these feelings. My tool for doing this has been Transvestia.” — Virginia Prince, Transvestia, Vol. 3 No. 16, August 1962

Born in 1912, Virginia Prince was the highly opinionated, often irascible godmother of Transvestia’s print pages and its extended real-life network. After launching the magazine, she also founded a national sorority for other crossdressers in 1962 called Phi Pi Epsilon—or FPE, which also stood for Full Personality Expression. This later became Tri-Ess, or the Society for the Second Self, an international crossdressing organization that still exists to this day. Prince frequently gave interviews to American and international media and liaised with medical professionals about the practice of cross-dressing.

The magazine’s “Person to Person” section was restricted to FPE sorority members to ensure correspondents’ safety.

Prince’s primary goal was to destigmatize cross-dressing; and she utilized the magazine as well as FPE to create a conservative bulwark against other, competing forms of transgender life and community in the United States in the 1960s. “Prince wanted to socialize individual ‘deviance,’” said Dr. Hill, “to place transvestism within a group context, domesticate it, and normalize it by promoting the radical idea that transvestites were not immoral, sexual deviants but rather normal, respectable citizens with only a harmless gender variation.” Even the name of Prince’s regular column in the magazine, “Virgin Views,” was part of her plan to de-eroticize a lifestyle that included cross-dressing by linking it to connotations of purity.

Already within a year of Transvestia’s genesis, Prince had assumed the role of self-appointed moral arbiter. “We must keep our own house clean and above reproach,” she asserted in the magazine’s March 1961 issue. In a repressive Cold War context where heteronormative standards reigned, that meant distancing cross-dressing from other gender and sexual subcultures: “We all know that the world confuses transvestism and homosexuality and when there is a campaign against the latter we are caught in the crossfire.” Prince asked readers to police themselves and each other, saying, “you come into the future of the magazine, not just by way of financial support and contributions of material, but by being a watchdog too.”

Prince’s column in the December 1965 issue included her portrait.

As part of her desire to domesticate transvestism, Prince also sought out and published writings by transvestites’ female partners. Some were tender—thus supporting Prince’s respectability campaign—as in an account from a wife about her husband’s transformation to “Betty Lynn, the Blonde Bombshell.” “I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want another dimension to their love,” wrote Fran. Still, the majority of Transvestia readers spoke of fraught negotiations around their cross-dressing, sometimes ending in the dissolution of marriage.

The narrative Prince espoused through Transvestia initially held that the goal of transvestism should be an exercised balance of masculine and feminine identities, with each having its own separate opportunity for expression. “[T]ry to employ perspective in seeing FemmePersonation as an adjunct to your masculine personality, not a substitute for it,” she suggested in her August 1962 “Virgin Views” column. “Transvestia does not exist for the purpose of impairing or destroying the masculine but rather to allow those who are aware of their feminine side to extract the full benefits from it. We can experience some of the feminine side of life, express part of our personality that way, and be better persons and citizens for it IF we…keep the whole matter in balance and under control.”

She advised against medical interventions such as hormone therapy and what was then known as sex reassignment surgery, saying, in 1965, “I realized that surgery would be a form of suicide not only for my masculine self but for Virginia too since it would cut the ground (as well as other things) out from under her…being a woman some of the time is wonderful, having to be one all the time would not be half as great as it seems to be from a distance.” As Dr. Hill writes, “‘transsexuality’ is everywhere in Transvestia as a category against which the ‘true transvestites’ defined themselves.”

Transvestia’s October 1962 cover featured photos of its first two years of cover models—“The composite cover of 12 livin’ dolls.” Prince’s is the largest photo in the center.

Over the coming years, however, Prince’s position would shift from this earlier dichotomous gender model to an identity where one’s masculine and feminine selves were merged into an integrated whole. “[V]ery little in life is tied up hard and fast with the fact that one is male or female,” she wrote in the August 1966 issue, adding “that the ideas of man and woman and masculine and feminine are cultural inventions for all their as­sumed usefulness.” Her views on gender had gradually become more flexible.

By June 1968, Prince had come to a decision to live full-time as a woman. Assembling the magazine, she said later, was what had allowed her to arrive at that turning point. “In trying to help you, my readers, I have learned and grown myself,” she wrote in the magazine’s 100th anniversary issue in 1979, which was largely dedicated to “The Life and Times of Virginia,” her personal history. “I am now a whole person, completely self accepting and at ease…[M]y best hopes and good wishes to all of you—may you, too, find the acceptance and the internal peace that we all need, and with that I say farewell.”

Susanna Says

“But Enough of Philosophising…Let's Gossip!” — “Susanna Says,” Transvestia, Vol. 7 No. 40, August 1966

Where Virginia Prince was Transvestia’s reigning West Coast intellectual, Susanna Valenti, the magazine’s contributing editor, was its East Coast bon vivant. Her regular column, “Susanna Says,” contained social news, fashion tips and advice, all served up with attitude and pointed humor. “I most certainly have particular people in mind whenever I unsheath a journalistic claw,” she wrote in February 1963, in response to what some readers deemed her “cattish remarks.” “Where would the fun be,” she protested, “if people could not see themselves mirrored in the printed page?”

For Valenti, criticism also had a noble purpose. She offered cosmetic and comportment tips—informing her readers about the right ways to walk, how to soften their voices and what pressed powders to wear—because those elements would allow them to more safely present to a world threatening arrest and violence. “Sorry, my friends, to sound so mean,” she demurred in that same column. “[S]omebody has to pour out a bucketful of cold, merciless realism, just to remind ourselves that the world is not entirely made of pretty clouds and blue skies. There’s also mud and hard pavement under our feet.” If being “read”—common community parlance for being discovered while dressed—was the greatest danger, and “passing”successfully as female would ensure their protection, then Valenti would scold Transvestia subscribers into shape.

Virginia included this image of herself and Susanna in Tranvestia’s 100th anniversary Issue.

“[P]resent as smooth an image as possible,” “Susanna Says” advised in 1965. “In some areas there's nothing we can do about—height, skeletal frame, feet, hands, muscles, etc—but in those areas where something can be done, there's just no excuse if we don't at least make an effort.” Valenti spoke at length about her own efforts: wardrobe alterations, dance classes and diets. For her, moral improvement could be achieved by means of aesthetic perfection—and why not enjoy oneself doing it? “The real fun about being a TV,” she proclaimed, “is in the CONSTANT IMPROVING.”

The April 1965 issue continued a feature that spanned several editions called “What Should I Wear?” and contained tutorials on wardrobe color, shape and style, including guides to neckline types and hem lengths.

Like Prince, Valenti had a significant community presence both on and off the page. In the very first issue of Transvestia, she announced that she and her wife Marie were opening a private retreat at their property in the Catskill Mountains catering specifically to Transvestia’s audience; the “Chevalier d’Eon Resort” was named after an 18th-century French crossdressing spy. “Change clothes as many times as you want, stay inside or go out—in short, do as you please and ‘LIVE.’ Even hairdressing help will be available,” promised the announcement. “What more can you ask? This sounds more like fiction than a lot of fiction, but it's real!” Indeed, over the next decade, Marie and Susanna would run what eventually became the eponymous “Casa Susanna,” which became the East Coast hub for crossdressers and a burgeoning transgender community.

Valenti, who had adopted Prince’s script against transitioning, also came to change her position with the changing times. She announced her own decision to live full-time as a woman in Tranvestia’s October 1969 issue. “I’ve ceased feeling that fabulous thrill of the change itself,” Valenti said of her part-time transitions back and forth from Susanna to her male identity. “It’s only fabulous in one direction: from HIM to HER. But the reverse from HER to HIM, is becoming more and more painful. It actually depresses me… To be ‘her’ is quite different. Energy seems to flow into me from all directions, and no matter what activity I engage in, I never seem to tire…I cannot speak of thrills, but of a peace and contentment that I find nowhere else.”

Susanna Valenti announced a momentous personal decision in her column for the October 1969 Issue.

Still, her final words in the magazine were more equivocal. A decade later, in 1979, Valenti reprised her column once more at Prince’s request for the centennial issue. “One hundred years! Or is it one hundred issues of TVia?” Valenti mused. “It really seems like a century ago we started groping in the confusion of our lives for a truth and a self-definition. We followed the same pattern that modern youth seems to have found, the eternal question of ‘who am I’?” Then she took stock of the gains Transvestia had won for her community, saying, “We seem to have moved forward to a certain extent. A good number of people, many more than there were one hundred issues ago, know about us. The moral ‘liberation’ of our times seems to have helped somewhat, too.

“But,” she concluded, “we ask ourselves, have we really become liberated? Have we really become understood? Accepted?”

[redseasfire]

(divine) source? trust me bro

let's be real, a lot of us feel it, but can we actually ascribe meaning to intuition in a way that communicates it accurately to those that don't believe?

i was having a conversation with a friend earlier today, and he sits in a very skeptical camp around the idea of what he put, in less friendly terms, 'basic' spirituality.

the idea to me that there is such a thing as 'basic' spirituality is arguably an affront, or at least, demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of the 'vibe' itself. i think some people either don't know, or maybe are new to exploring this dimension of themselves - and sure, maybe some people take it as a facade or inherit it in a way that is either unfair on others, the wider perspective of spirituality as a whole, or whatever. but i don't think anyone should realistically be judged for that - i know through my own profound personal experience, that there is divinity that exists, and that permeates, throughout all life. intuition spans far beyond the conscious, and even the unconscious - the trained, and the untrained. inspiration, and creativity: meaning, really. these are all drawn from the same collective wavelength, that we all tap into, in my eyes. whether we know it, or believe it, or not.

i'm a big fan of the idea that, through cultural/spiritual/intellectual osmosis - and the passage of time, with individuals and their unique endeavours - we will traverse the landscape of spiritual enrichment and fulfillment in such a way that's (hopefully) exponential for ourselves, but for the collective, be it for those that live in the here and now, or for those in the future, and beyond.

personal truth is a core belief of mine. the universe, i believe, subverts our attempts to ascribe meaning beyond the accepted norm through either science or objective reality. i know there is more out there than we are currently capable of measuring, or at least, more than we are capable of demonstrating as being measured, to the wider world. i'd argue that there is something more fundamental than objective reality, but some sort of harmony between this trinity of the spiritual, physical, and objective, which ultimately forms into subjective reality - but then there's a 'true' reality, which some manage to tap into, and at times pay ultimate costs for being exposed to, or trying to draw from.

i sort of look at it like an approved run of the news. there's an editor, and only a certain amount of creative freedom bleeds through the end product, if any. and i'd argue that the universe is so fundamentally subversive in the sense of its ability to regulate these things, that we cannot undo it, or influence/change the ultimate path that this is following. it is the core principle axiom - god, the divine, or the universe, serves the dish of life, that we can only hope to have a say in its recipe. and heck, maybe we do? and we just don't quite know it? this is just a slice of my own interpretation, a slice of pie that i've attempted to review and find a basis for. really, it is all a form of our own unique tastes after all. (shitty analogy?)

but ultimately, maybe through a concerted effort, maybe the wider vision can be changed - and maybe then we can intellectualise concepts that many view as pseudo-scientific or outright falsehoods, or fabrications.

i have a lot of thoughts about this, and i don't expect people will want to read this. but have one of my diagrams that i did which i think exemplifies my attempt to make sense of this topic!

let me know if ya want to hear or see more :)

[her-masters-voice]

How often do you hear a song you used to play over and over and you're taken back to that time?

I was thinking about this again today.

[lucabyte]

A belief in Nominative Determinsim

[zaratheystra]

the knight receiving guided masturbation from the princess who’ll hang her for treason if she doesn’t insert another finger

[sciderman]

I swear I have read your big post regarding Peter Parker's neurodivergence and why it is best to avoid labelling him, but he definitely has a weird brain

Can't find it and feel kinda sad about it cuz I deeply related to it

i know exactly which post you're talking about and i can't find it either! i've raked through my archive, and it's just - nowhere to be seen. i think tumblr eated it (it happens.)

really, tumblr's search functionality is so so useless, i don't know what to tell you. there are plenty of keywords i can search to find it that post, but the search functionality actually just does not work!

undiagnosed audhd-addled peter parker, my darling, my light, my life, my everything.

i think peter parker's such an interesting creature to write, because a lot of people will point to a certain behaviour about him and say "this is an autistic thing, right?" but a lot of those behaviours are actually, in my head, tied to certain traumas in peter's life too.

people say "oh, the food thing, peter's a picky eater because he's autistic" and yes, absolutely. but also it's tied to his trauma with his parents.

peter gets overstimulated, and yes, it's an autism thing, but also he was bitten by a radioactive spider and his senses are dialled to 11.

it's a similar case i've found for myself, too – where a lot of friends i have kind of diagnose me because i have autistic traits, but actually - i'm hesitant to claim the label or pursue diagnosis because, actually, i know where these certain behaviours come from, and they come from certain traumas. there are events i can pinpoint in my life and say "yep. that's where this behaviour comes from."

so - i think there's a lot of overlap between trauma and autistic traits. the brain is very complex! i think the reason for that overlap is maybe as simple as the fact that people with autism and people with trauma are both doing the same thing - developing behaviours to protect themselves or soothe themselves. so - i think it's nice to be able to see a character like peter parker, who may or may not be autistic, but recognise behaviours in him and see yourself in him.

people who go undiagnosed for whatever reason - people who are really good at masking - so good, in fact, that they have no idea they might be on the spectrum - everyone and anyone at all can look at peter parker and recognise themselves. because i think we discredit the thought that every single brain does the same thing! develops certain behaviours in order to survive. every brain has that same software - we've just all been faced with different hardships that we need to overcome, and that's were all the differences come in.

autism is a spectrum, i guess - everyone falls into it to some degree. and i think events in your life probably push you along on it. but i don't know, i didn't study brain science. probably what i'm saying is very stupid and uninformed. of course there's brain chemistry involved. but i know people in my life living with autism and certain events in their life have exacerbated certain behaviours or made coping with it a lot more difficult. so maybe trauma is a catalyst.

[weaksspot]

and when i talk about sam topping i don’t necessarily mean sam being dominant or domineering or controlling or rough or even in charge. just like when i talk about dean bottoming i don’t necessarily mean being submissive or feminine. because none of those things are required to go together… when i write sam topping i think of him taking care of dean in a way that balances how dean has always taken care of him. physically giving dean love and affection and pleasure and care that he maybe wouldn’t accept in another form. and dean bottoming is like… yielding to sam and being vulnerable for him in a way that is just not normally possible for him. and/or looking at it slightly differently it can be dean taking care of sam too by opening himself up in that way.

and i mean dean just has this gaping void inside of him that needs sam sam sam sam sam sam. he is not complete without sam he cannot function without sam. and i think you can see where i'm going with this void-filling metaphor without me needing to spell it out lol

okay lastly sex is not always about dominance and submission. in fact i'd go so far as to say most healthy normal sex isn't. not that i'm calling sam and dean normal or healthy either but it's not like they're actually engaged in a lifestyle bdsm relationship. and i think for them sex wouldn't be about that as much as it's about closeness and comfort and wanting to crawl inside each other's skin and wanting to know each other and be with each other in every possible way including physically.

so ya i don't think sam tops because he's some meathead fuck machine because he's tall lol. and i don't think dean bottoms because he's a whiny subby bratty omega bitch because he’s pretty. because i don't actually view people like that in the first place. it's sooo much fun thinking about what they would be like with each other sexually because they're so fucked up and not normal and realistically would not have penetrative sex in the first place but if they did... it's less fun reducing either of them to stereotypes lifted out of heterosexual bdsm porn. for me personally

[signiorbenedickofpadua]

Super disorganised meta thoughts, but if one goes with the idea that Destruction also represents change, is there perhaps something to be said about the fact that he abandoned his function and whether that might relate to how the thing that ultimately leads to Morpheus's destruction is his inability to change (or accept that he can)...?

[kageyamareijiraydark]

Why Kageyama Reiji (Ray Dark) is one of the best characters & villains 

Just a quick summary of his life, traumas and faults.

While some people might agree with the title of this post, I think there still are many ie fans who consider Kageyama Reiji to be a naturally evil man without scruples and morals who acts evil just for the sake of it. This is a very simplistic view which completely flattens the complexities of this character. It is true that IE is an anime with a young target audience, but there are also many dark details and sensitive issues that are worth focusing and reflecting on even and especially as teenagers or adults.

As regards Kageyama Reiji's childhood, I think we all know that Reiji has only negative memories of it. Reiji was of kindergarten age when he saw his beloved father, the great soccer player Kageyama Tougo, go from being a celebrity acclaimed by everyone to being the disappointment of an entire nation, which lead him to break down and abandon his family. Reiji saw his family shattered within a very short period of time, as his mother died around this time, thus leaving her son completely alone. All of Reiji’s memories are inextricably linked to the moment when he witnessed his father being not only humiliated on the football pitch, but also insulted and basically “verbally abused” by hundreds of “fans”, who were immediately ready to trade their “soccer idol” for another more talented one. (The scene where Reiji is among those “soccer fans” who were throwing stuff at Tougo is kinda heartbreaking)

From this moment on, a rapid decline of Kageyama family’s life into death and loneliness began (or simply continued). As i wrote earlier, Reiji gets abandoned by his parents, and it’s precisely this aspect that I’d like to focus on...  When Reiji gets arrested for the last, final time, Onigawara Gengorou (Gregory Smith), the man who spends the whole series investigating on Kageyama’s past, says that it’s impossible that Reiji was the man behind all the potentially criminal actions that have been taking place in the last 40 years (since the day the Inazuma Eleven’s bus got hijacked). If we take into account other explanations given by Onigawara himself, we understand that his doubts are well-founded, because at the time of the incident I just mentioned, Reiji was around ten or twelve years old. 

We all already know the identity of the man behind all of Reiji’s actions: Garshield (Zoolan). He was the one that approached Reiji when this latter was a merely traumatized, wounded, lonely child, instilling in him the desire for revenge, fuelling it by promising him all sort of stuff.

Of course, nothing and no one can justify the crimes to which Reiji actually contributed (thus getting his own hands dirty since he was a child while his puppet master - Garshield - was watching everything from afar and enjoying the money he got from his shady deeds). 

Now, I don’t know whether Reiji saw Garshield as a sort of “father figure” who would help him heal from all the pain through revenge, maybe he did see him that way at first, but regardless of this he indeed spent the most crucial years of his life with Garshield as his only adult figure of reference. Could he ever have become a functional adult?

When Reiji realizes he can no longer submit to Garshield’s orders, this latter calls him a mere pawns in his hands and, while referring to the incident that will took Reiji’s life away, he states that death is what you have to expect when you bite the had that fed you. I don’t know about other dubs, but in the Italian one Reiji often emphasises to Kidou the importance of knowing how to move the pawns as effectively as possible. Mistakes couldn’t be allowed. Spending an entire life to the dependencies of the only adult figure who raised you - a tyrannical figure with no morals - unfortunately led Reiji to repeat the same dysfunctional patterns, attitudes, behaviours he learnt from Garshield. All of this took effort, so much effort, because after all, as he said to Fidio (Paolo), he used to long for the light, but he ended up hating it because he no longer had the chance to lay his eyes on it, so he had no choice but to rely on the darkness in order to survive.

It is now necessary to talk about Reiji’s “greatest Creature”, for it was the encounter with Kidou that first shakes the walls around his heart; it was Kidou’s rebellion that instilled in him doubts, insecurities, fear… and that awakened the trauma of failure, humiliation, loss, abandonment. Reiji’s relationship with Kidou becomes obviously dysfunctional at some point, Reiji literally freaks out when Kidou decides to move away from him (thus breaking some sort of generational trauma cycle). Being abandoned again by someone he cared about was not part of his plans and it is something that tears him apart so deeply that he is willing to do anything (even to attempt to create a perfect copy of him through Demonio Strada / Giulio Acuto) to make Kidou come back to him. 

Another crucial moment in Kageyama’s “redemption arc” is the match between Orpheus and Inazuma Japan, which makes the above mentioned walls falter once and for all. And here some of the credit goes to Fidio. Why him? Why not Kidou? It actually makes sense that someone with a “similar” past as Reiji but who isn’t emotionally attached to him was able to grasp the reasons of his actions better than someone (Kidou) who, whether you like it or not, will forever be affectively attached to him.

And well, the rest is history. Reiji is forced to face with his darkest trauma while watching Fidio play soccer the way his father, Kageyama Tougo, used to play. He immediately loses his temper, yells at Fidio to stop playing like the man who destroyed his whole existence and made him hate soccer… and then breaks down. “What do you know about it?” he angrily asks Fidio “What do you know about the darkness I had to carry inside of me? You know nothing about it!” And it was true. No one could have ever imagined what he went through… Still, there was one last chance of salvation. The veil was torn, the mask fell, and tears started streaming down his face. He was finally ready to forgive his father, to look at the blue sky again for the first time in a long time, to embrace the light, to be reborn… in death. “The darkness is finally over” and so is his own life.

I’m almost done, I promise, I just wanted to highlight a parallelism which I find quite beautiful: the one between Reiji raising his eyes to the sky and being able to feel emotions again after being freed from the darkness and Rushe being able to see again thanks to Reiji himself, who paid the medical expenses of her eye surgery. “ Rushe, I want you to watch closely with your eyes… and feel with all of your senses the magnificence of soccer, the sport I have spent my whole life hating… but also loving. “ Reiji writes in the letter that Rushe will read only after his death. 

The final scene of episode 106 in which:

the news announces the death of Kageyama

Rushe reads the letter and expresses her wish to see Reiji asap to talk with him about soccer

and Jude, hearing the little girl’s words, bitterly sighs and clutches Reiji’s glasses in his hands  

is heartbreaking, almost gut-wrenching to say the least, especially if we take into consideration the fact that Kageyama had decided to take care of Rushe a long time before… he could no longer stand the idea that someone could get hurt because of the sport he most hated and loved at the same time (this makes us understand that he had long ago decided to turn his back on Garshield: his process of repentance had already begun), that’s why he paid for her eye surgery, visited her several times at the hospital, sent her letters… and eventually learnt to love her as if she was his daughter. All of this made him feel a bit relieved: “After all, by doing so you felt that your heart was little by little escaping from the darkness into which it had sunk, didn’t you?“ Nakata once said to him. But the guilt was still too much. The sins on his conscience were terribly heavy. He knew he did not deserve the gratitude, the light, the smiles of that little girl who so cheerfully talked to him about wanting to learn to play soccer from him and who so lovingly called him… uncle (おじさん).

[y-rhywbeth2]

Do you have any idea if the light that provides a day/night cycle in Sigil counts as sunlight for the purposes of vampires? Because you mentioned in one post that the Dark Urge's only hope is fleeing to Sigil, and I was wondering if Astarion might also like to move there.

I mean it's not Durge's only hope, it's just probably the safest option... or they could deliberately piss off the Lady and get totally obliterated from existence, that sure solves the Bhaal problem.

I think I remember this kind of topic starting arguments. I've never seen an official answer for this and don't know how the issue has been handled with vampire characters in previous supplements, but I do know that, according to official rules from on high, exact wording of the RAW is important when it comes to vampiric weaknesses. For example, taking from a conversation with Jeremy Crawford about the viability of killing a vampire using a water elemental:

Harmed by Running Water. The vampire takes 20 acid damage when it ends its turn in running water. - Monster Manual (5e)

'What if a Water Elemental uses its move to repeatedly go through the Vampires space?' 'A water elemental is a creature, not a body of running water (a stream, a river, a waterfall, or the like).' 'But an elemental that is made of water, and runs, would that not be a running body of water? ' 'It would, indeed. Running body of water =/= body of running water.'

So following the spirit of the logic from that baffling conversation; according to the RAW, the daylight in the City of Doors shouldn't bother vampires because the vampiric weakness, in exact words, says 'in sunlight.'

Sunlight Hypersensitivity. The vampire takes 20 radiant damage when it starts its turn in sunlight. While in sunlight, it has a disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. - Monster Manual (5e)

And Sigil and the Outlands specifically says that the light, in exact words, 'isn't sunlight.'

Day and Night. Sigil observes a 24-hour day-night cycle. The sky gradually fills with luminescence during the day and fades into deep darkness as night. This light isn't sunlight. - Sigil and the Outlands

And even if they are bothered by the light, Sigil is a pretty good place to unlive and, boasting markets and stores that brings in goods, gossip and residents from all over existence, isn't a bad place to go looking for things that can cure you or let you walk in sunlight or whatever. Considering one of the factions and the undertaker industry is undead, there are probably businesses that cater to them and their needs. It's the most cosmopolitan place in existence, and the undead are legal citizens (although, if the lore from the Libris Mortis holds, you might need a license for feeding and agree to follow restrictions about not murdering people). For a guy whose idea of a good time involves the city life full of shenanigans, intrigue, danger, violence and etc, Sigil's a pretty good place to be if you don't get killed pissing off somebody powerful or fall into a puddle that's actually a portal to the paraelemental plane of ooze or something.

[laveylavender]

I am controlled and I love it!

[drumlincountry]

Oh to wear a cute dress and dangly earrings and have a 4 hour conversation about art and politics with a group of lovely people while eating delicious food and drinking a little more red wine than you really planned

[stardustkrishnaverse]

kanha as brahman:

*indescribable, undefeatable, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, splendorous, all-encompassing...*

kanha as a kid:

HAA HAA HEE HEE

[teatitty]

Geralt infodumps about monster anatomy while dissecting a ghoul or something and showing off all its weird innards during the first week of them traveling as a pair after gulet and Dandelion sat there the whole time biting his lip going "ouughhhh I can't not fall in love with the bastard. I'm doomed"

[dancingwiththefae]

De Profundis is an enlightening letter-essay on repentance and art and a reflection on life and freedom and religion but also it’s 50k words of Oscar Wilde basically saying ‘behind sorrow is sorrow but really behind that lies one’s soul also you’re just like your dad you cunt’

[alteredsilicone]

Artemis is ruled by anger, vengeance and even grief. Her story is about realizing that anger is good, it is important to get justice, but also do not let it consume you and if you share your troubles with others, it becomes easier to bear them. She has lost family and friends and she lets this loss fuel her anger, however, she can find that which was once lost and she can gain new things to mend what was once broken.

Virgo is primarily grief, sorrow but also a facade of happiness. Her story is about always moving forward, putting the bad days behind, but there is a catch - if you don't give yourself time to cry, you will break. You cannot always be the shoulder someone else leans on, you too need support from the people around you. Do not let selflessness turn into self destruction.

Eir is fear, insecurity, introversion. He avoid problems and puts on a brave front, he is seemingly good at controlling his emotions and just like Virgo he lets the bad feelings wash over him. However, you cannot always run away from your problems and only take on that which is within your own comfort. True bravery lies in standing up even when your legs are trembling. It is to sing even if your voice shakes. Your people will hear your call and come to your aid.