Having a very queer time still, had to write more queer stuffs. Kev, Gwen, Morningstar, and brief things on gender that I'll probably write better some other time.
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There’s a niggling in his chest, when he’s about nine, that he’s not a boy, but it’s overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is damn sure not a girl. What had been a mild annoyance over the years building with exposure, like an allergy, into a burning in his throat that drives him to chop off his hair and throw out his dresses and skirts. To pull back his lips in a snarl the first time someone comments about him ‘looking like a boy’.
Years of being called ‘ugly’ for the angles of his face, his grandma’s big hands, but as soon as he embraced those ‘boyish’ traits-
He learns about transness a year later, taking shelter in a library in the big city. About girls who were boys and boys who were girls and it’s not right but it’s close enough. He hides out there one night, ignoring the hunger in his bones as he holes up in a bathroom reading an old census book aloud- even ‘Eddie’ chaffing against his skin anymore.
‘Kevin’ tastes like all his favorites, is the only thing anyone calls him from then on, and it’s enough to keep him going until the galaxy can teach him how to be comfortable.
~~~
She loses control over her hair in the seventh grade, after a week of hating it ends in Ben helping her shave the lot of it off, and loathes how long it is for the next four years. Feels nauseous as time passes and more and more sports at school seem to split into boys and girls, can only breathe when her karate lessons stay unisex. Hates her face as often as she loves it.
It’s not until she starts poking at her powers as an Anodite, finds herself looking in the mirror at a body that feels so so right, as if it was there the whole time just waiting for her to look, that she begins to figure out why.
Only sometimes (half the time), only at school (mom would flip), but… Her name is Gwendolyn, stronger, more stable, than just ‘Gwen’ who was girl girl girl. Red hair gets shorter and shorter every time the scissors are picked up. One day is curves and skirts, the next straight lines and pants. For the first time, it doesn’t feel like Gwendolyn is faking.
The first morning Kevin asks if he has a girlfriend or boyfriend that day, he can’t help but kiss him.
~~~
As soon as he’s old enough to know ‘handsome’ is for boys he hates it. There’s no explanation, not then, but it’s true. The same way he hates telling the lady at the store that yes, that makeup is for his mom, hates that his hair has to be short, that whenever they get split up in school something he doesn’t understand twists in his gut.
He’s in middle school when he learns what ‘transexual’ is. Something pings there, thinking about the untouched skirt in the closet he’d said was for Elena, about hating being handsome, all the suffocating truths of being a boy.
The skirt feels like ants on his skin when he tries to try it on. His tongue can’t decide whether it wants to curl and die under ‘ms’ or ‘mr’. Making a girl character in one of his games doesn’t feel any better or worse than the boy ones. Every girl name he tries tastes like blood and ash.
So, he must actually be a boy.
It’s almost a decade later, with a skirt swishing at his calves, Levin calling him ‘the prettiest guy in Cali’, Gwendolyn groaning over if he’s changed his pronouns again that day, that things finally feel right.
Funniest thing I’ve seen on tiktok are those sigma male boys getting mad that American psycho was written by a gay man and going “well I like fight club better” buddy I’ve got some world ending devastating news for you
Part of the reason that Republicans are so desperately acting like they will never lose again is because they are deeply terrified that this is their last real chance to win. The big orange dipshit came in and gutted the party of everyone who wasn't a loyalist, which left it full of nasty little gremlins who have gaping voids where charisma and human decency is supposed to go.
They still hold a lot of power, but if we stop them this year the next presidential election may not be the Most Important One Of Your Life™, that's not a guarantee or anything, but if they don't win here and now their future looks grim, this dipshit is the only guy they have left and he's extremely diminished and has his brains leaking out of his ears at this point. We can beat him into the ground.
So that's what we're gonna fucking do. We're gonna break these fucking fash. They will crash upon us and we're gonna break their fucking necks. When they come for us they will lose because they're fucking losers and we have each other's backs which is something they fundamentally are incapable of comprehending.
Oh mah gawd. He doesn't let anyone touch him unless they're his friends.
If they aren't his friends, he'll either lean away or wipe off his hand. He hates being touched if he's not the one initiating it, to the point of wiping his sleeve off when Lucifer's hat just BARELY grazed against it.
He didn't wipe his shoulder off when Charlie stopped touching him either.
AND!!!
And!!!
Before You Say 'He did lean away', or 'She wasnt actually touching him, her hand was just near him', Take A Look At This!!
Look closely at how he moves when she splits them up. He doesn't lean away, she SHOVED him. She actively MOVED him. That wasn't an 'oh she's making contact with me, guess I should lean away', it was a 'well she's shoving me now, I'll shut up for a minute'.
Which also proves she WAS touching him. She couldn't have shoved him if she wasn't making contact.
He didn't lean away from it, he didn't retaliate. The ONLY people he lets touch him are people he cares for. And not only did she put her hand on his shoulder, she actively pushed him back, and he showed no sign of discomfort towards it. So why am I screaming about this?
Because he DOES care! It proves he cares for her. Don't get me wrong, I still think saying he's her 'dad' is a bit of a strech, but he does care enough to let her touch him. He doesn't dislike or even have a neutral opinion on her. She's his friend, even if just a little bit.
Just an edit to clarify; I know 'friends' is probably also not the best word to use, but it's just the easiest way for me to describe it.
I think a lot about how common it is for Raph to be the one to have direct focus put on him when Leo gets into all his near death experiences.
Like, when Leo is thrown off a building, it’s Raph who’s right there jumping after him, not even thinking about the consequences to himself when he does. When Leo almost gets skewered by the Krang, Raph’s right there to take the blow and send Leo to safety without a second thought. When Leo’s being strangled to near death, it’s a Krangified Raph doing the job, doing exactly what Raph would never, ever want to do. When Leo is telling Casey Jr to close the portal, it’s Raph who tries desperately to convince Leo otherwise.
Likewise, Leo is consistently very single minded when Raph gets forcibly separated from them. Both when in the sewers and by the Krang, Leo is dead set on finding Raph first and foremost.
I also think it’s interesting that during each of Leo’s near death experiences, the lightheartedness of his words during them goes directly hand in hand with both how close Raph is to him physically and how much danger Raph is also in in that moment. From a literal “I told you so” as Leo’s falling away from Raph to a soft joke about how “hero moves” are Raph’s style - both of these are on the more morbidly carefree side and both of these notably take Leo farther away from Raph and, in turn, have Raph not in immediate danger.
On the other side of things is the apology from Leo, heedless of the danger he himself is in as he seriously and genuinely speaks to a Krangified Raph face to face. Then there’s Leo’s freezing and desperation as Raph takes a hit meant for him and sends just Leo to safety, leaving Raph himself behind. Both of these involve much closer proximity and Raph being directly harmed - these together make Leo much more vulnerable in his words and actions, something not even the threat of death can make him.
These two care about each other so much, and they’re way too much alike for their own good.
okay, so in a rare moment for me, there's a discourse thing i want to bring up, and that thing is. okay. so on iskall's stream there's this thing that can happen where someone brings up a criticism of his content or vault hunters. frequently it's self-evidently wrong, but sometimes it's not. and then iskall spends the next thirty minutes shadowboxing this guy, explaining himself, and completely derailed. and this is an iskall trait we all know and sigh bemusedly about, because he cares about the community and wants people to understand his intentions! he wants the community to understand his decisions!
however, it's not the community as a whole he's fighting; he is in fact, arguing with One Guy, who often doesn't represent the wider community, and who normally won't have their mind changed. hell, sometimes it's believable that they're satisfied having just managed to upset iskall, and they'll leave, no change to their mind, perfectly pleased that iskall's responding at all (that's what i firmly believe the people who poke at the 'you don't upload enough and that means you're falling off and a bad person' wound are trying to do, at least).
in the vault hunters community, we refer to this as iskall getting One Guyed, and it's typically viewed as bad, because it ends up focusing an entire moment on a single guy's negative opinion as opposed to on the larger picture. and it's an understandable thing to have happen! but it's frustrating to watch from the outside.
and so now i am looking at that cat poll. and the way everyone is still shadowboxing someone who has since apologized. and the way i would have never ever known about any of the negative comments about jellie if it weren't for fellow mcyt fans constantly putting them on my dash to dunk on them. and it's like. if you look through the notes most of them are just... normal? it's only a tiny few of people (and the pollrunner, who has since apologized) who were being dicks. it's a very, very ignorable demographic.
but. well. there was One Guy. and we had to correct them.
and folks, i don't know how to say that i almost never see "lol mcyt is cringe" type comments unless one of you puts it on my dash. both because i don't go looking through the notes of things that are likely to have them or go looking for reasons to be upset and because it's just... not that common! very frequently these days it is, in fact, One Guy!
i have almost never seen that poll on my dash without at least one instance of the One Guy. instead of being for fun, it's mostly become about explaining ourselves to someone who will not listen and will not change their minds, and treating this as a the whole of the Other Side of that poll, when most people are being... fine. they're fine! the majority of the people voting for the other side are doing it for perfectly normal reasons that don't require fighting about.
and man. let me tell you. after spending as long as i have watching vault hunters development? it can be just as frustrating to watch a fandom get One Guyed as it is to watch iskall.
having thoughts about the marinette and nathalie hug because like.
my god.
marinette's just had her world turned inside out
she's just a kid and how's she supposed to carry all this alone and what is she supposed to do and what does she tell adrien?
and then, suddenly, there's someone there to share the burden. an adult. someone who has a reputation for getting things done
so maybe, just this once, everything doesn't have to balance on marinette's shoulders alone
but it's nathalie--who, sure, adrien obviously cares about. but not someone marinette's at all close to. certainly not someone she probably thinks of as warm or parental or even very trustworthy. maybe marinette's even started to put the pieces together--if gabriel was monarch, then mayura must have been...??
those doubts seem insignificant when she actually sees nathalie
the last time marinette saw her, she was dying. and now marinette knows what gabriel wished for--at least some of it. she knows he did one good thing in the end. that he finally, to some degree, put adrien first
then another horrible truth dawns on marinette: nathalie doesn't know--of course she was aware gabriel was dying, but she still doesn't know he's dead
marinette's probably already thought up a hundred different ways she might break the news to adrien--even if she discarded them all just as quickly. she hasn't thought at all about breaking the news to nathalie
what's she supposed to say? however complicated things were in the end, gabriel was obviously someone nathalie cared about
marinette struggles to find the words, but nathalie just knows. she already suspected, because how would she be here if gabriel was as well? and now the truth's written all over marinette's face
it's not just marinette who needs that hug--though nathalie would probably never admit it, which is why it's marinette who's running to her
how many weeks has adrien been gushing to nathalie about marinette? about how she's so creative and strong and compassionate and full of love
So I haven't had the opportunity to watch Deadpool 3 and won't have it for quite a bit however going by what I hear about the movie from the people of Tumblr
I can't help but think of this one time me and my mom were watching the hedgehogs that like to come to our yard to steal cat food
And my mom said "hey, come look two of them are fighting... Hmmm. they're fighting kind of oddly". to which I just looked at her and said "mum, I don't think they're fighting... I think they're fucking" they were not in fact fighting
Anyway that's the vibe I'm getting from the way you're describing the new Deadpool and Wolverine movie did I get it right??