#pronouns are whatever you can refer to this thing however. never got that part defined too well and it doesnt have all that well-

[spotsupstuff]

Does faith in end have a normal gen 1 puppet?

well it was Supposed to have, i didn't have much ideas for it when it comes to physical visage since Faith is.. kinda dead. like that bitch collapsed and couldn't be saved even before Nish was built so there hasn't been much thought dedicated to it besides what it stands for, but now you've got me thinkin

prolly smth like this? but much more decorated and such. color palette mainly goldish and black, more uncanny and similar to the Ancients than basically any other later model. the monks and such looked at it, found it creepy as all hell n immediately well "oh HELL no." and the puppet plans were changed into what we know as proper Gen 1s

i have pizza n am boutta watch a movie with me partner i cant spend much time on this rn JGKSDJL but yeah, this is a big inspo for her

clockwork shit <3

[pentanguine]

1. Do you use any other terms to define or explain your gender?

So…I got a little carried away. Most of these posts will not be this long, but I had a lot I wanted to say, and a long drizzly afternoon to work on saying it, so.

Aside from genderqueer, trans, and nonbinary…

I’ve started feeling more at home with the word transmasculine this year, after several years of circling it warily and ultimately running away because it would just be ALL TOO SHOCKING. Other people interpret transmasculine in a wide variety of ways, many of which make me deeply uncomfortable (eg “Transmasc = physically transitioning in all the same ways trans men usually do;” “Transmasc = trans man but woke about it;” “Transmasc = I have aligned myself against women and forsaken feminism and I love asserting my dominant gender role”), and voluntarily using a word that’s ripe for misinterpretation made my control-obsessed brain fuck right off.

But ultimately it’s not really about using words (what does that even mean? putting them in your tumblr bio? buying the pride flag?) so much as knowing, however privately, that you are a thing. And I’m transmasculine! It’s a word that feels comfortable, and homey, and exciting. Other people who use that word sound like me! They look like me, and they look how I want to look! I get such a blooming, leaping, light-filled feeling in my chest when I see these people, because I instinctively feel that these are People Like Me. I recognize myself in their experiences of gender, and sometimes I feel like my whole body’s going to shake apart with a euphoria that’s like being on fire. Every time I read something by Daniel M. Lavery I end up rolling around on the floor in paroxysms of delight and Feeling Seen, and my brain lights up like a fireworks display when I see awkward bi men with curly brown hair and glasses. There is still a little part of my brain that’s convinced referring to myself as transmasc will make everyone deeply disappointed in me, and obligate me to go out and befriend a footballer named Chad, but I’ve been casually referring to myself that way since May in semi-public venues and the sky hasn’t fallen in yet.

Transmasc feels like a useful word for me because it makes me feel more settled. I think a lot of times nonbinary gender is simplified to gender neutrality (which it is for some people!), while for me it’s more like a stewing mess full of things that don’t make coherent sense in anyone’s mind but my own. So I can like masculine words and gender presentations, and that doesn’t mean I’m equating neutrality with masculinity, and I can also express my gender in the numerous non-masc ways that feel natural to me while still having that anchor to come back to. Ultimately, I think it just means that I have a more meaningful relationship with masculinity than I have with femininity, neutrality, or androgyny, and that I’m deliberately moving in a more masc-coded direction that the one I started out. And that’s it!

--

The other big gender-conceptualization-thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about is the complicated muddle of doubleness and inversion that I feel between gender identity, gender presentation, sexuality, and gender expression. I don’t feel bigender, because that sounds like I have two discrete gender experiences sitting side by side, and I’m not genderfluid, because it’s not like my gender actually changes, but I do feel like I’m part woman-affiliated agender person, and part genderqueer guy with the genderqueer dialed up to eleven and the guy dialed down to two. Part of me feels apart from gender, but nebulously attached to queer ideas of womanhood (lesbian! spinster! middle school girl at a sleepover who promises to love her friends more than any passing crush!), and then part of me feels apart from gender, but like I picked Guy Gender to steal for myself and imitate and relentlessly queer by virtue of not taking it seriously enough. But it’s all mixed together, you know? Like paint swirling on a palette, or light bringing out iridescence on fish scales. Sometimes it will be more like one thing, sometimes more like another, but it’s always whole and completely intertwined.

Earlier this year a Miriam Zoila Perez quote about being a faggy butch was going around, and man, that gave me a lot of gender feelings. I first encountered the term fairy butch on this old blog called The Butchelor, and while I loved it then, I didn’t use it because of a radfem-induced trepidation that it was all an elaborate joke everyone understood but me. I also have an extremely annoyed relationship to the word butch, because I’m not butch at all, and I doubt anyone else would think I am, but this seems to be the only word anyone is capable of using to describe queer masculinity. It’s like other people are determined to smash you into yet another binary (ironically, a binary that’s jealously guarded by the same people who keep enfolding you in it) because you’re afab and like wearing ties. It’s annoying!

But the phrase fairy butch just seems so delightful to me, because it’s whimsical and complex, and also so genderfucky. I’m not masculine in any of the ways that usually cohere to the word butch—I don’t have the interests, or the mannerisms, or the sexual propensities or the haircut or the total dislike for anything feminine-coded (why is masculinity always all or nothing, and all about absence?). I love my socks with the sparkly pink foxgloves, I love smiling (why must men never smile?), I like sitting with my legs crossed and talking with my hands. I’m not feminine, I’m effeminate. I’m a double invert, gay for women and gay for men, a too-boyish-“woman” who doubles right back around as a too-feminine-“man.” Maybe I’m not a butch, or even a (faggy) butch, but dammit I’m a fairy/butch. Two queers in one, two inextricable, contradicting queernesses that complicate and complement and mitigate and enhance each other.

--

The idea that I’ve been slowly winding towards is that contradiction is part of my gender. It’s not something that’s going to get smoothed out one day when I find The Perfect Word, and the questioning and revisiting isn’t going to end when I reach The Final Stage of Transition or whatever. I read an article a few weeks ago that nebulously cited Jack Halberstam as saying “refusal to resolve my gender ambiguity has become a kind of identity for me,” and that’s something that resonates with me so, so much. I don’t have to make myself neat and appropriate for consumption, because my gender doesn’t exist at the mercy of other people’s understanding. I’m not a problem that has yet to be shoved into a “woman-aligned” or “nonvir” box, I just am. Sitting amidst the dissonance of things that other people tell me are impossible to feel at the same time is my identity. I never want to cohere.

It reminds me of the way I feel about historical figures like Katharine Hepburn and Daphne DuMaurier, who were definitely genderqueer as fuck, but also closeted to the outside world for their entire lives, and unclassifiable in modern terminology. They were real, complex people who existed, and are now gone! It would be really weird to assign them a coherent identity, like “Hepburn was a nonbinary trans man” or “DuMaurier was genderfluid” or what-have-you, when all you have are decontextualized fragments of their gender feelings. (I feel comfortable calling them genderqueer because that can be used as an adjective to describe cis people who queer gender, which they definitely did)

Anyway: I feel very deeply connected to these people, and the way they saw themselves as being boys, or like-men, or men-in-certain-contexts, or men-and-women, or women-who-wanted-to-be-men. But the thing is, wherever they may have wanted to go, they never arrived. Would Hepburn have preferred to be known professionally as Jimmy, gone by he/him pronouns in all areas of life, and identified as a proud trans man? Barring some spectacular archival discovery, we’ll never know, because that was never a viable option in Hepburn’s lifetime. And that space of possibly-wanting, but not-arriving, feels like a destination to me. That gap, between wanting and actualization, or fantasizing and pursuing, or playing around and Identifying As, feels like it is part of my experience of gender. I’m not a man, I’m a woman-who-wants-to-be-a-man. There has to be that distance, and that wanting.

I’ve gone on for an absurd amount of time here, but ultimately: I’m queer! My gender is queer! Some people are men, some people are women, and I’m a queer.

[sobdasha]

"I definitely updated my list of books I was reading on tumblr so it's all good" -me, a lying liar, right before spending several months finishing my reread of All The Discworld Books I Own But In Chronological Order For The First Time Ever Which In Fact Makes A Difference.

(and then I did it again after the libraries closed)

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin Hm, so. I definitely read this. At some point. It was not really for me, not bad, but not really for me. This particular edition had various notes before and after the text, all of which I read, which made it an experience I got more out of. It's important for me to know that the author is aware that the protagonist is a raging misogynist who's stupid, and yes this was on purpose so you'd realize how really incredibly stupid he is and thus maybe be tricked into changing your mind yourself. It is a legit tactic, but one I tend not to enjoy, so if I hadn't been forewarned I'd have been UUUUGGGGGHHHH MAKE HIM SHUT UP ALREADY and probably rage-quit. As it was, I was able to better appreciate what Le Guin was doing here, even if this book didn't win a place in my heart and I probably won't reread. I definitely preferred Ancillary Justice's take, with the feminine pronouns. For my brain, masculine pronouns = they might as well all be men = business as usual = I didn't really get any gender queering from it. I can't really remember much else now. Oh, it was also part "survival in the wilderness" story, which they're big on making you read in school (which I find very suspicious), and which I tolerated and read a few classic ones on my own until they kept assigning these kinds of stories for us to read and now I get nothing from them and mindlessly hate them. Anyway, as I said, not bad at all but not really for me.

Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin This one's a reread--I picked it up from the library during college because we were doing Titus Andronicus in class and it didn't occur to me that there might be more than one Lavinia???? But hey it worked out because later in college we did the Aeneid and then I had Background for rereading Lavinia. This is the book that is lyrical and beautiful and pulls me in and makes me care deeply about the world and the characters. This is the book of Le Guin's that makes me feel the way everyone else feels about Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness and etc. I would like to find more of Le Guin's work that makes me feel the same way, because as I've said you can really tell from her other stuff that she's a solid writer who knows her stuff. I just…don't enjoy any of the other things. Anyway I recommend. I always forget about this book, and then when I reread I'm like "wow why don't I read this more often?????"

How Long 'Til Black Future Month?, N. K. Jemisin I liked every story in this short story collection. I should just reread it and try writing this up again tbh but also tbh I'll probably do the rereading and then just not write anything up again. Just read Jemisin's stuff I love her writing so much okay. ETA: that’s exactly what I did, I reread this during my covid rereads and said “I should do a proper write-up this time” and lo and behold where is it

Tehanu, Ursula K. Le Guin Okay, this last Earthsea book treated me much better than the others. It's probably not for everyone else, which might be why it's for me. It's much more domestic, much less "plot" happening, full of introspection, and centered on women rather than men. This novel acknowledges and confronts the rampant internalized misogyny in the previous three books, engages it in a way that the misandrist in me finds satisfying even though it never comes to a good solution for the problem. This book is more like a reflection. Earthsea has never been about "light is always good, dark is always bad; be a hero, fight evil" etc. But this one I think shifts the tone a little farther; it's less about balance, and more...I guess I'd put it as, "actions have consequences." It's not concerned with right or wrong, it's concerned with people getting hurt. It's pretty somber and serious, without any humor to balance it out, tons of bad things happen to people, lots of PTSD...but this time I really cared about the characters, and I feel like it was all handled really well? In addition to critiquing internalized misogyny, it also critiqued victim blaming. Seemed like it handled disability pretty well too--was honest about how people are jerks about it in reality, while still being optimistic and treating Therru as valuable; made occasional mentions of considering work-arounds for having only one fully-functional hand, while mostly just having Therru go about living and doing chores and being capable and assuming she did find those work-arounds without having to draw attention to it; and Therru's terrible scars didn't get magically healed at the end, the whole book makes a point all the way through that her physical scars will always be with her the same way her emotional scars will be, and she's simply learned how to go on living with them. Tehanu: a book full of trauma happening to people, where what would normally be the plot in a fantasy novel ended up not even getting started to be resolved, but Le Guin's writing and handling of the subject matter helped heal my jaded soul.

Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee A quick summary of my experience: Chapter 1 - ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh what is going on what even Chapter 2 - no, no this is just, this is what sci fi is like, right? Just give it a few chapters and then by the end of the book everything will probably make sense. I'm sure that's how it works. Remember how even in Ancillary Justice I ended up with two separate Battles of Valskay, but now everything is fine??? It's. Fine. Chapter 4 - (ohhhhhhh I still don't know what's going on) Several Chapters Later - still no clue what's going on, but hit my stride with the terminology, my foreign language instinct kicked in where words stopped sounding weird and while I could not for the life of me define any terms for you, I had a vague comprehension of how the words operated In Context. Sort of. And by then I had, without realizing it, begun page-turning and binging, so I guess I liked the book lol! Another serious-but-not-funny one, but with an extra dose of War Memoir and all the gruesomeness that entails (but probably, like any good War Memoir, probably not actually gratuitous and actually in fact the necessary amount of gruesome). Jedao was turned into a woobie at the last minute and, well, damn, guy knows the way to my heart. The novel apparently gripped me enough that I don't even mind that it only came into play at the very end of the game. And hey, there's two more novels to deal with that revelation, which I have picked up from the library to read immediately! Yay! Current personal theory: based on the heavy math references that made me want to cry at the start, but the almost entire absence of actual numbers, and a reference to "there's no way actual physics works like that, it was obviously a calendrical effect" or something…I'm going to throw out a wild guess that the calendar stuff (and all the social structuring that goes with it) is so that they can break and reinvent math. So they can effect a universe where 2+2=5 and therefore a bunch of people standing in this exact position makes a force field or bullets of rose thorns or whatever and some other dude can make himself immortal. This sounded like a pretty terrible theory already and it sounds even worse now I've typed it up but oh well.

Raven Stratagems, Yoon Ha Lee Guess who didn't write this up back when she read it!!! Also, I returned Ninefox Gambit to the library right before the libraries shut down for covid. So, I had Raven and Revenant on hand for months but I didn't have Ninefox on hand to do an immediate reread to see if that made the sci fi make more sense. (It probably wouldn't have, but I would have liked to do a rereading while the ending was still fresh.) By this time there is a lesser degree of visceral viscera. Lee is brutal, however, about continuing to be honest about what war costs and whether war is worth that cost (which depends, really, on whose lives you think matter. Very relevant for these times. Very much prepared me to shut up and not whine about the inconveniences of protests and their fallout. There is no pretty and clean way to have a revolution, since it involves destroying a particular [terrible] way of life, so we're all just gonna have to sacrifice together). Also I think by this point all the character development from the first novel paid off in the form of character dynamics being hilarious now despite, y’know, the gruesome shadow of war.

Revenant Gun, Yoon Ha Lee Continues to discuss the honest price of war and the messiness of fallout. Shuos "The risks I took were calculated, but boy am I bad at math" Jedao. Oh I think this is also the one where every so often one of the characters thinks, "Okay so this person is a tyrannical murderous dictator but he is ensuring that there will never again be food shortages and no one in the space empire ever goes hungry." And then Lee turns around and is like, "Haha but don't forget this same person invented a form of vital infrastructural technology (and also immortality) that is optionally based off ritual human torture sacrifice. Like he didn't have to do that to make it work. He just decided to anyway. And that's always bad :) " (Also useful in our current climate of "Okay but we should consider the other person's circumstances and point of view" and also "Yeah but that doesn't apply if they're literally Nazis tho.")

Hexarchate Stories, Yoon Ha Lee A collection of short stories set in the universe of those three books. There's one story at the end that does satisfy the "But I wanted another sequel!!!" urge. And there's a bit of backstory for Jedao and Cheris. But by and large what you should be in the mood to read is flash fiction snippets that simply happen to be set in the same universe but have no bearing on the plot. Which is pretty cool and interesting if you are in the proper mindset! Even better, Lee includes author's notes at the end of each story to talk about the story, or the influences, or the context of his life at the time, etc etc. That is always my absolute favorite part of a short story collection. Also these notes told me everything I needed to know about why I liked certain things about his writing. "I wanted to write my own AUs," "If I get stuck I go on TV Tropes," "My only regret is that I had to cut the scene where Jedao goes to ~Halloween~ dressed as himself and trolls people" ahhhh that's also a regret I share.

Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee This one is YA! There is a lot less gore although I guess there was still genocide! Read this when you are in the mood for something that doesn't attempt to hide the fact that the plot is completely, conveniently contrived to give you fast-paced action and fun. Min sure has a lot of coincidental meetings that should stretch my disbelief but I don't care. Also, I am enjoying reading books with girls as protagonists that do what I'm tired of being told to love about boy protagonists--just keep barreling along with complete self-assurance that you are right and, if you run into trouble, you can egotistically figure your way out.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin Gods and mortal ruling family's messy soap opera sexcapades is not exactly my favorite genre, but luckily it is handled by Jemisin so it's all good. Lots of Souma Family Values. I'm really appreciating how Jemisin considers choice of narrator very carefully and uses it to brilliant effect in this trilogy. Stories are things told by a narrator to an audience; why should we rely on the artifice of an "impartial" "reliable" "omniscient" 3rd person narrator writing into the void? This trilogy was Jemisin's first, I believe, so it's a little awkward coming back to them now, only because Jemisin is such a powerful writer that the themes she's begun working with here have only gotten stronger with each successive work.

The Broken Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin This one I rated as I read for Protagonist Is Blind based on the scale of a sighted person going "but some of my best friends are blind!" In that regard, I think the book does really well! Blindness doesn't define Oree's life and value; Oree doesn't get magical powers that make her a blind person who isn't really blind; Oree moves away from home and gets a job and lives on her own which seems very accurate to me based on my knowledge of one (1) person who is blind; instead of being ~cured~, Oree actually gets more blind at the end of the story and this is considered a Good Ending. Also personal bonus points are awarded for references to her stick being handy for hitting people with. Some stuff was stereotypical, but Jemisin's intent was not. A+, will read again, please support including way more characters who are blind in media. Anyway I enjoyed this one.

The Kingdom of Gods, N. K. Jemisin First off, Jemisin directly up front critiques the narration choices she made in the first two books and then pays it off like a boss at the end. Like holy crap. I admit by now I was getting a bit bored of the genre, but the book was still very engaging because Jemisin is a master. It may also have been affected by how much increasing pain I've been in lately.

The Awakened Kingdom, N. K. Jemisin I'm dead. This one was way more my speed and you need the other three books to understand this novella but ohhhh my god it's perfect. I read a lot of choice passages of this aloud to my roommate because how could you resist. It's still heavy but it's hilarious. Bless Shill.

[forsythiias]

hey ! i’m rachel. i’m 20 - almost 21 ! - she / her pronouns, gmt timezone ( i live in ireland and spend like a week in england every month at this rate . u guys will get used to it ). a fun fact abt me is that i spoke to hugh jackman & gave him a wolverine pin rly recently . that’s all i got . anyway. i’m playing jellybean jones, the baby of the fp jones fam ! she’s my absolute KID and i would LOVE to plot , so please feel free to shoot me a message or smash that like button and i’ll come at you in the not so distant future. 

⌜   genderfluid, she / they / he   |   out of time by the rolling stones, the local record store, the pop culture fiend   ⌟   ⏤   hey, isn’t that FORSYTHIA PARTHENIA JONES? the NINETEEN year old SOUTH SIDER has lived in town for their WHOLE LIFE, and has always denied their resemblance to DIANA SILVERS. they’ve been a STUDENT & WAITRESS for a while now, and i guess it makes sense - they’ve always seemed so TENACIOUS & INDIVIDUALISTIC, though i have heard that they can be pretty GARRULOUS & ACERBIC. did you hear about how they SOLD JACKED CARS IN TOLEDO TO PUT THEMSELVES THROUGH COLLEGE? i always knew that there was something up with them. you can check out her pinterest board HERE and her stat page HERE.

you can CHANGE the world, girl,                                     you really, truly can.

part one of three : bullet point history. trigger warnings for talk of infant health issues.

august fifth, 2000. it was a sticky autumn night when FORSYTHIA PARTHENIA JONES entered the world with a pitiful cry. the only daughter of two south siders, gladys and fp, and the younger sister of a one jughead jones, she wasn’t born to MUCH ; which made all that she did have matter all the more. a mother and a father who loved her? check. an older brother she would someday idolize and love like no other in the world? double check. a small ventricular septal defect, discovered only after her birth? triple check.

forsythia was, it seemed, destined to be a sickly child. her first few months were dotted with trips to the emergency room and visits to a local doctor, something always seeming to be wrong. infant colic was ten times worse. she caught a chill when she was two weeks old and needed to spend a WEEK in the icu because of the resulting chest infection. the doctors who treated her at birth had been confident over time that the hole in her heart - jellybean shaped, on the very first ultrasound - would close by itself, as many do. hers, however, didn’t. as she got older, the effects became more pronounced. she kept catching chest infections. she couldn’t seem to put on weight. breathing was, at times, a struggle. and she was SLEEPIER than any baby they had ever known before. the original plan had been to wait and see and hope that her tiny heart healed on it’s own. at ten months old, it became apparent that this would never happen ; and the surgery was scheduled. 

your baby is supposed to be PERFECT. she isn’t supposed to take ill every few days and ultimately be wheeled into a room for open heart surgery. it was likely a very harrowing experience, and those first few months of her life were understandably marred - but if there had ever been any doubts before, it became clearer than day when she came out of surgery that the youngest jones was a FIGHTER, through and through. they’d been prepared for a month long wait to bring her home again - it ended up being a fortnight. she didn’t cry, after. she didn’t FUSS. it was as if she had known that the first little while had been tough, and was trying her hardest to make all of their lives that little bit easier. lord knew that the jones’ needed it, especially when the stress of all that was going on with her had combined with their bills. 

now affectionately named jellybean for the defect she had survived, she grew into a remarkably NORMAL child. there were differences, of course, between her and the kids that she grew up surrounded by - she required regular checkups, she needed to dress extra warmly in winter, and she always got that little bit more wiped out than everybody else - but anyone told the story behind the scar in the middle of her chest gaped in shock. the girl who swung from the lower boughs of the trees at the edge of sunnyside trailer park and sprinted after her friends at full speed had once had a hole in her heart? impossible. that sort of health issue was reserved for those with a lot less life in them than the high spirited girl that jellybean became known as being, and never once did she allow it to define her. she was a SPITFIRE, pure and simple, and she’s proud to say that never once did she let herself sit out of an experience just because she was worried about what would happen if she partook.

life was not all sunshine and adventure, though. not every child notices the cracks in their home life appearing. jellybean didn’t. not until the rug was pulled right from under her feet. to her wide eyed and rose colored self, everything seemed to happen overnight. one day, they were happy. the next, her dad was an alcoholic and she and her mum were in transit to toledo, where they would move in with stony faced grandparents who treated her with corporate coldness. she didn’t understand the why of it all - couldn’t have even hoped to, when she was still so young. the reality of her father losing his job and their lives going to shit thanks to it didn’t sink in. all she knew was that she had lost the father she idealized and the big brother that she had always wanted to BE. 

she spoke to them both on the phone, of course. she was even lucky to see jughead a couple times, though their grandparents never wanted to hear about it afterwards, no matter how excited she was. it must have been jarring for him the first time he turned up to find that the pigtailed little girl who loved kids pop that he remembered had sheared her hair and was now listening strictly to pink floyd and other classics. but none of it was the same. not really. it wasn’t having her family together. to say that her drastic transformation might have stemmed from a place of resentment towards whatever forces were at play in ruining her family - that starting to go by JB, so similar to the FP that her nana and granddad refused to allow be mentioned around them might’ve been an act of defiance - wouldn’t have been incorrect. she wanted things to go back to normal. the fact that they didn’t killed her.

and they never really did. she and her mom returned to riverdale, a new opportunity spotted, but things never went back to how they had been before. she learned not to talk about it, though - and now she’s older, wiser, and she knows how to hide her feelings behind an easy bluff. there’s nothing to do but make the most of what she does have, right? a new brother. a new life. a new self. she has to stop dwelling on what she used to have, she supposes ; though sometimes, it hurts to think about what she’s lost. 

part two of three : headcanons.

jellybean is gonna be a lawyer someday, but she NEVER really wanted to be one. her dream from ages 3 to 11, she wanted to be a princess. she overheard some of the older serpents sarcastically referring to the jones family as royalty, and she really chose to run with it - refusing to take off a makeshift crown for the first month and getting called princess jellybean by her father for the next few years. after that phase had passed, though, she found her real passion - and for most of living memory, she’s wanted to own a record store. nothing too extravagant, really, just a first floor, one room sorta deal - she’d plaster the walls with posters of the greats and keep the merchandise in crates resting on rickety tables, and every friday night she’d hold a jams night where people could come and lounge around the floor on beanie bags, listening to some of their favorites. she had it all planned, and it’s still something of a dream - but if there’s one thing that jones’ family knows how to do, it’s sacrifice their dreams for harsh reality. with penny peabody DISGRACED, the serpents and southsiders in general need someone who knows them to represent them, when things go to trial, and feeling a sense of duty to the people she was raised around, jb bit the bullet and stepped up. she’s got a love for arguing and a knack for winning, so much so that god HELP whoever goes against her in a courtroom, someday.

she has yet to officially join the serpents ( her parents wouldn’t approve of it, for one, not now, and there’s a whole host of OTHER reasons ) - but jb went right ahead and got a tattoo on her right hand anyway, cause as a jones, she’s still serpent adjacent. the only difference between the picture linked and the one she has is that hers is done in white ink - her way of keeping things lowkey while still honoring her heritage.

miss her with a motorbike. they’re COOL and all, but jb values her life a little bit too much to trust a two wheeled death trip waiting to happen. she’s more into classic cars, anyway, and has pretty recently invested in the frame of a 1979 pontiac gto from the scrapyard that she plans on fixing up to perfection.

her style is southside meets cute. of course she loves her leather and fishnet combos - but jb is ALSO a huge fan of dungarees and sloganed t-shirts in a whole assortment of colors. anything ‘edgy’ she wears ( big boots, mesh tops, the list .. could go on ) gets coupled with something a little less so ( pink scrunchies, colorful makeup, a disney bag … again, the list could go on ), and that makes her her.

and finally, for now, cause i’m not sure i’ve done a good job of conveying it - jellybean is a good kid. she REALLY, truly is. she’s got some bite to her ( enough of a short fuse that it’s advisable not to test her limit ) & wouldn’t be her fathers daughter if she DIDN’T, but she’s also genuinely sweet. being a serpent doesn’t equal being a bitch, and so long as people out there treat her with respect, she’ll do the SAME. jb doesn’t turn unless she’s given reason to … and if they do, she won’t hold back.

part three of three : wanted connections.

fp & gladys jones ! 

kids from the south ( or north ) side that are in or around the same age, who jellybean would have grown up with / went to school with !! they might have reconnected after she returned to riverdale and now know her as who she’s become, but they also might be people who she lost contact with for a LONG TIME and who never got to see her post transformation - any and all variance on this wc would be fun!

anyone attending carson college who she might, maybe, rub shoulders with !!  i’d love the most mundane of connections - maybe they sit with each other during lunch, or they help each other study, or one time, jb dropped a book on their head in the library and they’ve been friends / enemies since! gimme anything !

regulars at pops / the speakeasy. 

so .. she’s pretty self sufficient, and she’s paying her way in terms of college by working shifts at pops and picking up extras in the speakeasy. she’d know a lot of people from that, i’d wager, and i’m sure she has her favorites!

more people southside serpent adjacent who she can play off of !! one of jb’s goals in life is to become an OFFICIAL member of the gang, which she hasn’t yet - but she is something of a southside princess, and that means she’d know most of them in some way!

p much anything else !

[wario-where]

WW Meta: character reactions to being “on the outside”

( Never would i ever have imagined myself one day typing “warioware meta”, & i know no one asked for this, but... if you find this kind of stuff as interesting as i do, i hope you enjoy :’) )

It occurred to me that each of the characters in the WarioWare series could be examined separately as a different reaction to being an “outsider”, and so I wanted to write about it and share! As the series is in itself a celebration of the strange, it prides on being different from the rest. But that doesn’t make the developers invulnerable to their own unique circumstances!  This is a long post altogether, but a few short character pieces underneath the readmore. 

This post makes a lot of references to the WarioWare MMG Developer Diaries, which can be found here!

Wario: Selfishness

With his trademark abrasive personality, Wario lives his life with seemingly little regard for his friends -- or for anyone but himself. He refers to himself with the overly grandiose “ore-sama” personal pronoun and continually neglects to pay his employees with every new game in the Ware series. 

But it’s well-established in the Mario universe that, as a child, Wario was jealous of the attention that his better-known counterpart got, thus driving him into the antagonist role of early games in the Mario series. Wario reacts to being othered with greed & a dogged pursuit of self-service, doing most things in furtherance of his own selfish goals... possibly stemming from a belief that if he does not fight for his own wants in life, then no one else will:

“While I was away crusading against the mystery alien Tatanga in Sarasa Land, an evil creep took over my castle and put the people of Mario Land under his control with a magic spell. This intruder goes by the name of Wario. He has been jealous of my popularity ever since we were boys, and has tried to steal my castle many times.”

- Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins English manual, pg 3

WarioWare takes place far after this time in his life, as he seems to have settled down in Diamond City & no longer appears to be preoccupied with antagonizing Mario like he used to. Despite this, he has remained greedy and self-serving in most respects.

Mona: Adaptability

Mona is strange. She has an odd sense of humor, an obsession with nose fortune telling, and a fascination with such unsavory characters as Wario. Despite this, she is also a part-time pop star and cheerleader, has an active & healthy social life, and is unafraid of speaking what is on her mind.

As comfortable with herself and outwardly confident as she is, Mona is a perfect example of adaptability. She knows she’s “different”, but she’s versatile enough to blend in with a wide variety of people and social situations and, for all intents and purposes, lead a (somewhat) average teenage life.

Of note about Mona is her tendency to include as many people as she can in things that she finds fun or exciting, especially those in need of friends. One of my favorite illustrations of this is from the Japanese Smooth Moves diaries, where she commiserates with Ashley over not seeing their parents often, and even invites her to hang out:

“My mama is always away from home because of her work, so I sorta understand how Ashley feels. Don’t hesitate to come and visit me when you’re lonely!”

In Gold, she continues this trend by inviting her old friend & classic boss Joe to a party she is hosting with her friends. Those who make a point to include others like Mona does in the things that they do often understand what it’s like to be excluded...

Jimmy: Nostalgia

Jimmy is entirely unique as an “outsider”, because that status is not with respect to society itself, but to the past & his own youth. 

Though Jimmy is generally placed around the same age as his childhood friend, Wario (~25-26), some of his mannerisms suggest that he still views himself as a younger man. He remains as hip on new trends as possible, embracing email and text messaging and enthusiastically encouraging his coworkers to follow suit. His most jealously guarded secret is implied to be that his large, expressive afro is actually a wig, possibly meaning that he is either losing hair or keeps his natural hair short to make way for the more obnoxious blue ‘do. 

His appearance & preferred style of dance are distinctively 70′s, and in his diaries, Jimmy uses the pronoun “boku” to refer to himself, a pronoun usually reserved for use by teenagers and younger men aged ~14 to ~21. He enjoys disco and spends entire days at Club Sugar, dancing away the day with seemingly no other cares in the world, much like a younger, less mature man would. 

Jimmy does a lot to preserve an air of youthful vitality, but while he does it, he lives in the past. In the end, though, he seems happy with this lifestyle... as does his entire family!

Dribble & Spitz: Observation

Both Dribble & Spitz’s stages & developer diaries revolve almost completely around one facet of their lives: their taxi-driving. The people they meet while on their shift, the places they end up, the strange things that happen on the road… on a typical day, the rest of the world passes by their taxi window.

I think the most interesting things come into play when considering the two individually, though. Of the duo, Spitz seems most content with this lifestyle. Symbolically he has a fascination with outer space, where the only action available to do is to observe, to people-watch. And in one of his more illustrative entries, Spitz views the Earth from space for the first time and is so struck by the planet’s beauty -- and the constant movement of the people inhabiting it -- he begins to cry:

From outer space, the Earth looks perfectly round, beautiful… Thinkin’ about how on the Earth, there was always somethin’ somewhere hastily at work, I couldn’t do anything but cry a few tears… What could I say?

A little more restless than his companion, Dribble talks frequently about wanting to take vacations from work to engage with the people around him in social events. Despite this, he finds entertainment in being an observer, particularly from passengers with strange stories, foremost of those being the frequent misadventures of Dr. Crygor.

Dr. Crygor: Independence

Speaking of! The eccentric doctor lives on an island in the middle of the ocean. From there, he does as he wishes, caring little about the opinions of others and pursuing his unconventional scientific endeavors in peace. 

Dr. Crygor is aware that he is a uniquely scientific thinker and has experience with people disbelieving in his out-of-the-box theories and observations,  apparently even from childhood. Nonetheless, he cares very little about what other people think of his lifestyle, choosing instead to trust in his own intellect and find answers by scientific means:

Long ago, yes, when I was a 10-year-old child, I discovered this fact, and I reported it to my friends with excitement, but no one could believe it. However, I studied with various gums, and I remember reporting the research results to my friends, and them finally believing me. From that moment on, I aimed to become a researcher…

On his island, Dr. Crygor is free to be as he is and perform as many scientific experiments as he pleases, free from the constraints of societal norm -- whatever that may be in the WarioWare universe. Though he is aware he is an outsider, he could care less. He takes advantage of his freedom to take his eccentricity to extremes -- because he can, and because it is suitable for his work.

Kat & Ana: Obliviousness

Like most young children, Kat & Ana are much too young to have any conception of the world’s social norms. The vast majority of their diary entries revolve around their interactions with those in their immediate friend circle and with each other, with very little attention to the world beyond that.  They are certainly different from other kids their age, but they are also entirely unaware of it. So, how can one respond to being an outsider if one has no idea that they are one? :’)

Ashley: Self-Sabotage

Of all the characters listed here, it’s Ashley who is the most destructive in her approach to her outsider status -- because she creates it herself. In fact, many of her most common behaviors seem tailor-made to keep people at arm’s-length.

Ashley stands intentionally on the outside of groups, rarely smiles, and struggles to express emotion besides anger and apathy. Her compliments are halfhearted and passive (“I guess”, “maybe”, “not bad”), while her insults towards the player after losing her games are direct and personal (“pathetic! abysmal! lame!”)! She is vain (“Everyone knows that I’m the greatest!”), has a short temper, and is occasionally very cruel towards even her closest friend, Red. She prides herself on others’ fear of her (“You should be afraid of the great Ashley!”) and defines herself by what she is in relation to her own superiority, and by what she is not in relation to other people (“She never plays with dolls and she never combs her hair / Who has time for girly things like that?”).

And yet in her unguarded moments, Ashley is aware of a side of her that desires friends and companionship. She appears to think about, if not miss, her absent parents. She blushes on the implication that she is enjoying her time at the potluck in Gold. And in yet another revealing moment in her Japanese diaries, in which Ashley tasks Red with writing her diary entry...:

“I'm Ashley's close friend, Red. I haven't told this to anyone, but Ashley is actually pretty lonely. While we were experimenting with magic by the riverbed, we saw a friendly family of apes. Then, Ashley seemed to be looking far away. I acted as though I hadn't noticed, but I know very well. She was probably thinking about her parents from her hometown. Ashley has more cuter characteristics than you may think!”

(https://www.mariowiki.com/Talk:Ashley_and_Red)

We see her trending away from this loneliness slowly, but surely!

Orbulon: Insecurity

Ironically, Orbulon sets himself up as an almost-perfect counterpoint to Ashley. While Ashley consciously builds up walls around herself to keep people out, Orbulon is continuously having to take down the walls others build around him.

In his diaries, Orbulon struggles greatly to communicate in earthen language, his writing riddled with syntactical errors. At a company barbecue, he claims to enjoy himself, not because he is having a good time, but because everyone else is. And notably, he mentions enjoying being around Mona, because ��she does not treat me like an alien.” 

In other entries, Orbulon is secretly insecure, caring a lot about what others think of him, especially with regards to his intelligence. When he is invited by 9 Volt to a friendly gaming tournament, he spends the entire night practicing playing video games, worried that it will reflect badly on him if he doesn’t win. In another (somewhat depressing) entry, Orbulon, in a bout of loneliness, makes multiple failed attempts to visit each of his coworkers, even at one point seeking out Dribble & Spitz’s taxi. Eventually, he is able to find Kat & Ana... but leaves shortly after, as he quickly becomes self-conscious when he senses that they are “acting strangely” because he is around. In the end, Orbulon ultimately goes back home to sleep instead.

Orbulon of the diaries is constantly thinking about himself in relation to the earth-folk around him, hoping to eventually belong... but it seems he eventually achieves it. :’)

9-Volt: Rebelliousness

9 Volt is known at his school as a troublesome kid.  His name appears on the blackboard for time-out in Twisted, and his teacher even singles him out during 18 Volt’s classroom introduction! He is uninterested in his schoolwork and has to be bribed to complete it. And despite being very close to his mother, he does defy her by staying up late to play video games and hiding from her when she comes to check up on him in the night. 

But outside of school, 9 Volt is not at all a bad kid. In fact, he is actually compassionate, intelligent, and -- like Mona -- also seems to have a tendency to want to include people who he sees on the outside. He is the only one to approach 18 Volt on his first day in class after their teacher scolds him; when he sees Orbulon walking home alone, he invited him over to his house; he frequently invites Kat & Ana over to play video games... and, perhaps sweetest of all, his “pet”, Fronk, is a rescue:

“A year ago, [Fronk] had been abandoned and I picked him up. I made a personal decision to make him my pet. What would I do without him?”

Clearly not a bad kid! 

Baby Wario Screenshot Source: https://www.mariowiki.com/File:YIDS-Wario_Baby_Bowser_Argument.png

[forsythiias-blog]

heyy there !! im rachel ( so new to being twenty i keep accidentally saying im nineteen / she & her pronouns / gmt ), and im gonna be bringing this lil serpent bb to life !! i hope y’all like her as much as i do, and if u wanna plot or anything, pls just hit that like !! 

*　benedetta gargari, cisfemale, she/her, canon　━━　riverdale’s very own FORSYTHIA PARTHENIA JONES is now nineteen years old. she has lived in town for all of her life, bar a few years break, and pop never forgot her regular ━ fried chicken, chilli fries and a cold nehi on the side. you’ll likely find the student and part time waitress hanging around pops / the speakeasy, probably playing whats new pussycat twelve consecutive times on the jukebox or trying to survive her coursework. her friends on the southside will tell you all about how she’s individualistic, tenacious and morally sound, but others might describe her as loquacious or acerbic. oh well, no matter how you feel about jb / jellybean, you can’t deny that with her debate skills, she’s gonna be one hell of a lawyer someday. you can check out her pinterest board HERE !

   it's the heat that drives the light, it's the fire that ignites,     it's not the waking, it’s the RISING.

part one of three : bullet point history. trigger warnings for talk of infant health issues. 

im gonna have to uh. ask for forgiveness in advance cause riverdale has nOT given ya girl a lot to work with in regards to jellybean, and the comics are another mess altogether. this is a history steeped in headcanon to flesh out what’s non-existent in canon, which i hope is all ok !!!!!!!!!! 

august fifth, nineteen years ago. it was a sticky autumn night when forsythia parthenia jones entered the world with a pitiful cry - the only daughter of two southsiders, gladys and fp and the younger sister of jughead, she wasn't born to MUCH... which made all that she did have matter all the more. a mother and a father that loved her? check. an older brother she would someday idolize like no other? double check. a small ventricular septal defect, discovered only after her birth? triple check.

forsythia was, it seemed, destined to be a sickly child. her first few months of life were dotted with trips to the emergency room and visits to the family doctor, something always seeming to be wrong. infant colic was ten times worse. she caught a chill when she was two weeks old, and needed to spend a week in icu because of the resulting chest infection. the doctors who treated her at birth had been confident that over time, the hole in her heart - jellybean shaped, on the first ultrasound - would close by itself, as many do. however, it DIDN'T... and as she got older, the effects of this became more and more pronounced. she kept suffering chest infections. she wasn't putting on weight. breathing was, at times, a struggle - and she was sleepier than any baby they had ever known before. the original plan had been to wait and see and hope that forsythia's heart healed. at ten months old, when it became apparent that this wouldn't happen, she had to have a surgery.

your baby is supposed to be perfect. she's not supposed to take ill every few days, and ultimately require open heart surgery. it was likely a very HARROWING experience, and those first few months of forsythia's life were understandably marred... but if there had been any doubts before, it became clearer than day when she came out of surgery that the youngest jones was a FIGHTER, through and through. they'd been prepared for a month long wait to bring her home - it ended up only being a fortnight. she didn't cry, after. she didn't FUSS. it was like she knew the first while had been tough, and was hellbent on making everyone's lives a little bit easier, afterwards. lord knew the jones' needed it, considering the stress of her early months was just ON TOP of the stress of money. 

now affectionately named jellybean after the defect she had survived, she grew to be a remarkably NORMAL child. there were some differences, of course, between her and the kids she grew up with - she required regular checkups, she needed to dress extra warmly in winter, and she always got a bit more wiped out than everyone else - but anyone told the story behind the scar in the middle of her chest gaped in SHOCK. the girl who swung from the lower boughs of the trees at the edge of sunnyside trailer park and sprinted after her friends full speed had once had a hole in her heart? impossible! that sort of health issue was associated only with those that had a lot less LIFE to them than the high-spirited girl that jellybean was known as, and never once did she allow it to define her. she was a SPITFIRE, pure and simple, and she's proud to say that never once did she sit out of an experience.

life wasn't all sunshine and adventure, though. not every child notices cracks in their home life as they're appearing. jellybean didn't - not until the rug was pulled right out from under her feet. to her wide eyed and rose colored self, everything seemed to happen over night. one day, she and her family were happy. the next, her dad had become an alcoholic, and she and her mum were in transit to toledo. she didn't UNDERSTAND the why of it all - couldn't have even hoped to, when she was still so young. the reality of her father losing his job and their lives going to shit thanks to it didn't sink in. all she knew was that she had lost the father she idealized and the big brother she wanted to BE.

she spoke to them both on the phone, of course. she was even lucky enough to see jughead a couple times - it must have been jarring for him, the first time he turned up to see that the pigtailed little girl who loved kids pop that he remembered had sheared her hair overnight and now listening strictly to pink floyd and the other classics - but it wasn't the SAME. it wasn't having their family together. to say her drastic transformation might have stemmed from a place of resentment towards whatever forces were at play in the ruining of her family wouldn't have been incorrect. jb wanted things to go back to NORMAL. it taking so long to do so killed her.

and what killed her more was that they never really did. she and her mom returned to riverdale, finally, but things never went back to how they were BEFORE. she learned not to talk about it, though, and now... well. NOW she's older, and wiser, and she knows how to hide her real feelings behind an easy bluff. there's nothing to do but make the most of what she does have and stop dwelling on what she used to, she supposes, so that's really all she's doing. 

part two of three : headcanons.

first things first - law. jb hasn’t always wanted to be a lawyer. scratch that: she never wanted to be one, right up until she announced it was her chosen major. when she was still in single digits, she wanted to be a real life PRINCESS. no reason, per say, other than overhearing some of the older serpents sarcastically referring to the jones’ as southside royalty, and really running with it. when she hit doubles, though, and started growing up, jb decided ( right around the time she chose to shorten her jellybean nickname ) that what she wanted more than ANYTHING was to own a record shop. nothing too extravagant, really, just a first floor, one room sorta deal - she’d plaster the walls with posters of the greats and keep the merchandise in crates resting on rickety tables, and every friday night she’d hold a jams night where people could come and lounge around the floor on beanie bags, listening to some of their favorites. she had it all planned, and it’s still something of a dream - but if there’s one thing that jones’ family knows how to do, it’s sacrifice dreams for reality. with penny peabody DISGRACED, the serpents and southsiders in general need someone who knows them to represent them, when things go to trial, and feeling a sense of duty to the people she was raised around, jb bit the bullet and stepped up. she’s got a love for arguing and a knack for winning, so much so that god HELP whoever goes against her in a courtroom, someday - but it’s more a duty thing than it is her passion. 

she has yet to officially join the serpents ( reasons tbd, though it’s not for lack of WANT ) - but jb went right ahead and got a tattoo on her right hand anyway, cause as a jones, she’s still serpent adjacent. the only difference between the picture linked and the one she has is that hers is done in white ink - her way of keeping things lowkey while still honoring her heritage.

miss her with a motorbike. they’re COOL and all, but jb values her life a little bit too much to trust a two wheeled death trip waiting to happen. she’s more into classic cars, anyway, and has pretty recently invested in the frame of a 1979 pontiac gto from the scrapyard, that she plans on fixing up to perfection.

her style is southside meets cute. of course she loves her leather and fishnet combos - but jb is ALSO a huge fan of dungarees and sloganed t-shirts in a whole assortment of colors. anything ‘edgy’ she wears ( big boots, mesh tops, the list .. could go on ) gets coupled with something a little less so ( pink scrunchies, colorful makeup, a disney bag ... again, the list could go on ), and that makes her her. 

and finally, for now, cause i’m not sure i’ve done a good job of conveying it - jellybean is a good kid. she REALLY, truly is. she’s got some bite to her ( enough of a short fuse that it’s advisable not to test her limit ) & wouldn’t be her fathers daughter if she DIDN’T, but she’s also genuinely sweet. being a serpent doesn’t equal being a bitch, and so long as people out there treat her with respect, she’ll do the SAME. jb doesn’t turn unless she’s given reason to ... and if they do, she won’t hold back. 

part three of three : wanted connections. 

kids from the south ( or north ) side that are in or around the same age, who jellybean would have grown up with / went to school with !! they might have reconnected after she returned to riverdale and now know her as who she’s become, but they also might be people who she lost contact with for a LONG TIME and who never got to see her post transformation - any and all variance on this wc would be fun! 

anyone attending riverdale college who she might, maybe, rub shoulders with !! i don’t know if there are any other law students here, but i’d still love the most mundane of connections - maybe they sit with each other during lunch, or they help each other study, or one time, jb dropped a book on their head in the library and they’ve been friends / enemies since! gimme anything !

regulars at pops / the speakeasy. so .. jb is pretty self sufficient, and she’s paying her way in terms of college by working shifts at pops and picking up extras in the speakeasy. she’d know a lot of people from that, i’d wager, and i’m sure she has her favorites! 

more people southside serpent adjacent who she can play off of !! one of jb’s goals in life is to become an OFFICIAL member of the gang, which she hasn’t yet - but she is something of a southside princess, and that means she’d know most of them in some way! 

p much anything else

i love her so much and just wanna throw her at everyone 

[pointsofpride]

I’m blurring this person’s name and icon, because I am not inviting a “””debate””” with them. I’ve encountered this person’s exclusionism before, and pointed out how fucked up it is, but I’m going to go off on it again, because here it’s cropped up again, and it’s still just... so fucked up. First off, fuck you for thinking that dressing up exclusionism in “civility” actually makes it any amount of civil, because a dagger in the back isn’t any more okay, just because you didn’t stab with aggression. I’m really tired of seeing people who absolutely should know better than this saying these kinds of things. So get ready for another post explaining how exclusionism flies in the face of our community’s history, basic compassion for others, and general sense.

“i believe we shouldn’t allow cishet aces within the LGBT community”

First point of order, there is no “allow” involved in this. Aces, right now, are a part of the community. You can’t say “I think I’ll let you sake a seat at this table” to somebody who’s already been sitting in a chair the whole time. Secondly, “cishet ace” is a self-contradicting phrase. You can not be a heterosexual asexual. You can be a cis ace. You can be a heteroromantic ace. But asexuality is not a kind of heterosexuality. It is a separate sexual identity.

And the term “cishet” was itself coined specifically to define those whith unconditional and unquestioned access to privilege and social acceptance for their identities. That does not apply to aces and never has.

“BUT i would encourage more recognition to the ace/aro community as well as proper sourcing on issues ace/aro people face that isn’t literally stealing from other people’s struggles”

You don’t encourage recognition of the a-spec community. You very directly don’t do that in any amount or way. If you think they’re “stealing from other people’s struggles”. Fucking christ, do you hear yourself? If somebody gets punched in the face and then somebody else says they got punched in the gut, would you tell them to stop “stealing from other people’s struggles”? I should hope the fuck you wouldn’t because that would be total nonsense with absolute lack of awareness. Aces aren’t stealing anything from anybody by just fucking Telling You what they deal with. And you’re probably referring to the fact that exclusionists reuse biphobic and transphobic rhetoric. Which is just. Mind boggling that you can recognize that’s what’s happening and then pin it on a-specs, as if them pointing out how fucked up it is is somehow the problem. Look... I'm not cis, and I'm not het. My whole identity is, at minimum, 3 kinds of queer, and I could expound on my identity. But right off the bat, I’m going to tell you I am ace. And you do not care about any part of me. When I hear people say "cishet aces don't belong at pride" the only thing I hear is "I don't care about your identity; I'm just going to pick and choose what parts of you I say are worthwhile; I don't accept your aceness, and I I don't actually care about you". Because you don’t care about anything I have to say. You don’t care, because I’m ace. You don’t get to dissect me and tell me what I experience or what part of me is queer. When I tell you that I’m ace, you immediately, in your mind, discredit me. But, like I said, I’m not either half of “cishet” (not only because my aceness makes me not heterosexual). You had better not think for a fucking second that you are doing me any favours by keeping out the """cishets""". Don't you fucking dare pretend you're speaking on my behalf or that you care about me. I'm pan, I'm agender, and hell, I prefer femine pronouns, even though I’m agender. I'm queer as FUCK, and I'm also ace. And that is IMPORTANT to me. It IS a part of what makes me queer. If you don't accept all aces, you DO NOT accept me, because my aceness is a part of the whole package of queer that I am. You are not allowed to dissect my identity and throw away what you don't like. All aces belong. It is so immensely disrespectful to try to use my identity against other aces by ignoring MY aceness because the rest of me is "queer enough". Just. Fuck you. If you think “cishet” aces should be removed from the community, then FUCK you. Also, it is incredible that somebody has to point out how fucked up it is that you won’t count first-hand accounts as a “proper source”. Do you fucking REALIZE how little information there is on asexuality? It’s not grass, you can’t just go outside and pick up a fistful. But the studies on LGBT+ issues that take aces into account also get dismissed. Everything aces have given, no matter how direct or nuanced or straightforward or detailed or academic or anecdotal has ever been sufficient for you. It doesn’t matter to you what anybody has to say about oppression that aces face, because you will always actively try to rationalize a reason why it isn’t a “proper source” of evidence.

“i don’t believe ace/aros are oppressed because by definition, they just dont experience it.”

The definitions of “asexual” and “aromantic” are not “a person who is not oppressed”, what the hellfuck is wrong with you? Aces keep TELLING YOU they face forms of oppression, and you just tell them it isn’t true, to their faces. How do you rationalize that?

“however there is some actual stigma they deal with, and denying it is unnacceptable.”

GOLLY, REALLY? IS THAT SO, OH ARBITER OF SOCIAL STIGMA? THANK YOU FOR APPROVING ACES CLAIMS OF AT LEAST THAT MUCH.

You can not pretend like you care about aces and prove you don’t with everything else you say and expect to get a gold star sticker for seeming like you give a fuck.

“the issue is that the LGBT community is treated like a club and not a place of solidarity for people who experienced oppression for their sexuality and gender identity and that needs to be addressed.”

JESUS FUCKING LOUISUS, NO ACES ARE TREATING IT LIKE A “CLUB”. The fuck kind of infantilizing accusation is that? WHAT the FUCK.

You think aces don’t need suicide prevention resources? You think the historical and current pathologization of asexuality doesn’t happen? You think no ace person has ever been hurt for their sexuality? You think aces don’t get kicked out by conservative, bigoted parents for being “deviant”? You think no people ever will think ill enough of aces to harm them? You think aces never are victims of corrective rape, because they “won’t put out”? You think aces don’t deal with any forms of oppression or abuse? Nothing at all? ‘Cause you have absolutely no sense of what society does. Bigots really don’t tend to differentiate their bigotry. If a heavily conservative christian person knows you aren’t straight and cis, that’s all they need to know to loathe you and want you hurt. You just. Don’t get it.

I’m super fucking queer, and I have been on the receiving end of a whole lot of hate in my life for being agender, and for being pan. I know what oppression is, you fuck. Don’t think I defend aces without any knowledge of what the whole community deals with. Don’t think I defend aces without knowing what oppression is. I’ve been the victim of it, sometimes with dangerous and violent severity. But do you know what the MOST aggressive hate I have EVER received for any part of my identity has been for? Take a wild fucking stab in the dark. It’s the reason why I'm defensive of other aces. You have no fucking clue how hated aces are. None. At all. You refuse to think maybe they’re actually oppressed. Even when they tell you. Aces, whether or not they are heteromantic, are very much not a part of the social class in a privileged position that is Straight™. Aces face oppression, and you are not capable of denying that fact except to your own mind, which is all you do.

And I’m CERTAIN you’d find an excuse to deny what I tell you. Also, if you think that social stigma isn’t a part of why the community exists, you don’t know why it exists. It isn’t solely about equal marriage. Because a lot of the time, people will go “you’ve got gay marriage, how are you oppressed?”. The community exists to affect social change and bring awareness. Aces are a part of that.

“cishet ace/aros will never understand the oppression that gay, bi, lesbian and trans people deal with”

Cishet a-specs do not exist. A-specs, by definition, are not cishet.

And heteroromantic aces and heterosexual aros very much UNDERSTAND the oppression that the other members of the community deal with. You act like aces are all children with no sense of comprehension.

“and that needs to be told to them without the aggressive “you guys are fucking idiots for thinking you’re one of us”.”

It’s no different. It’s insensitive and defies the reality of the situation either way.

“something i think a lot of exclusionists forget was that aces/aros were encouraged to be apart of this community for a decade.”

They ARE a part of this community, and if you fucking god damn KNEW your queer history, you’d know that the only thing recent about a-specs in the community is awareness of them. They’ve been here the entire time. They’ve always been in the community. It’s only widespread awareness that’s new.

“its less that they forced themselves in and that LGBT”

Because, guess what, they didn’t. Because they already were in it.

“people legitimately believed they were one of us”

They did. There was a reason. And still do, because that reason is that they are. The overwhelming majority of the community knows this. Right now. Currently. Your opinion on this is so extremely in the minority of the community.

“due to being misinformed and not well educated about it.”

Oh my GOD the irony of you. Here. Have some stuff to stop you from forming a kugelblitz of ironic density: x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x If any of those links die in the future, whatever. As of now, that’s a whole lot of evidence you’re being bigoted. In exactly the same way that there are transphobic and biphobic and panphobic members of the community, when they obviously should know better... In exactly the same way those people try to kick me out of the community, because I’m agender, and because I’m pan, you’ve got the same problem of bigotry they have toward me, and it’s toward me again. You really should know better. MOST of the community knows better than this. By far, the community, as a whole, knows that aces are a part of it. There are exclusionists, but they represent extremely few. You don’t get to say people are “misinformed and not well educated” in the same breath you state you want to take aces our of the community, because you think they’re “not oppressed”. You can’t call people uneducated when you demonstrate a direct lack of education on what you’re talking about. But nothing anybody gives you will get you to consider “hey, maybe there’s a reason that most of the community accepts aces” and “maybe there’s an underlying reason why the correlation to terf and biphobic ideology keeps getting pointed out” or “ I am TELLING YOU this AS A PAN AND AGENDER PERSON, you are recycling rhetoric used against me. And what’s worse, you’re using it against me AGAIN, because I also happen to be ace.

Aces are not “co-opting” bi or trans struggles. You’re Just an asshole doing exactly the same thing other assholes are doing to other members of the community. All aces belong. I am SO. Sick of exclusionists thinking they’re being courtious or civil, no matter how they dress up their willing ignorance and unawareness of our own community’s actual history, and the oppression they deny the existence of. You’re also the kind of person who thinks the community suddenly sprang up out of nowhere after Stonewall, which, I mean... is a benighted notion on its own that ignores the entirety of our much more involved and extensive history, but even still, you are not, to any degree, supporting the spirit that Stormé DeLarverie and Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and Miss Major stood for. Not even a little bit. And again, Stonewall was what started the Pride event; not what started the community. They are Different Things. Stop saying things that imply aces are automatically outsiders trying to wedge themselves into the community, when you are the ones trying to remove people who are members of the community. Signed, a member of the community who’s “””queer enough””” to tell you how fucked up your opinion is. Hopefully you’ll listen to an agender, pan person, because you sure as fuck won’t listen to anything any other cis and heteroromantic ace, or heterosexual aro person says about the issue.

[caladblog]

2017 The Year in Review

jesus h. fuck, we’re still doing this whole... “the passage of time” thing? really? ugh. okay. give me a moment.

*drags hands down face*

*sighs*

okay! it’s been another year! goddamn look at us go! welcome to my Second Annual Recap of New Fiction Stuff!!

(hark! a disclaimer: this features things that i experienced for the first time in 2017, not necessarily things that were released in 2017, because i live literally underneath a rock and it’s a bit out of step with the zeitgeist down here)

Books

Nominations: Neuromancer by William Gibson, The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Winner: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Neuromancer was good but this fic did it better. The Fifth Season was excellent and beautiful-- if you’ve read Jemisin’s previous trilogy about gods, there were aspects and elements from those stories that were really brought into perfect focus here; it’s a testament to her growth as a writer and I can’t wait to get my hands on the next two books in the series.

But The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet takes home the title because it is pretty much everything I want in a space opera. Everything. A galactic civilization that isn’t just an echo of European colonization. Interspecies conflict that isn’t a thinly-veiled allegory for racism. Aliens that are truly alien, different from humans and different from each other, with societies and cultures and values that logically follow from these differences. Lush worldbuilding (universebuilding?) that never sacrifices the plot or the characters. An artificial intelligence who sidesteps or directly refutes every frustrating AI trope in the book. Three-dimensional characters! Found family! ‘Xe’ being used as the linguistically-normal gender-neutral pronoun! A lesbian relationship between a human and a reptilian!

it’s good is what i’m sayin

Movies

Nominations: Rogue One, Thor: Ragnarok, And Then There Were None

Winner: Thor: Ragnarok. Stop the fucking presses, I saw a movie less than a month after it was released. This has only happened, like... twice in the last decade. Literally.

Anyway. Rogue One was good, but I’m not a huge fan of the war stars universe. I’m even less a fan of the marvel cinematic universe, especially what it’s become since cap2, but Thor: Ragnarok just fucken blows everything out of the water. No contest. It’s hilarious, it’s epic, it’s the first movie to get Thor’s characterization right. It loses points for including B******t C*********h, but it gains more points for everything described in this post, especially the way it specifically called out the way that societies built on imperialism try to cover up or whitewash the shameful bloody parts of their history. (“Proud to HAVE it. Ashamed of how he GOT it!!”)

Video Games

Nominations: Space Pilgrim Saga, VA-11 Hall-A, Fallen London

Winner: Fallen London. Confession time: I played a lot of video james this year, kind of went wild at the steam summer sale, and it was really hard to narrow it down to three nominations. Ultimately, though, Space Pilgrim Saga was nominated for humor and space and an endgame relationship between a gray-ace woman and a bisexual woman. VA-11 Hall-A was nominated for design and good music and queer representation and me being super gay for Dana.

But Fallen London wins because I’ve never played something that so naturally and regularly validates my gender identity and queerness. Not only do you get to choose a nonbinary option when creating your character, you also get to choose how the game addresses you and change it whenever you want, however many times you want. It’s always there (being referred to as a ‘gentleperson’ or any one of several non-gendered titles) but it’s never the defining aspect of your character or the subject of scrutiny/ridicule/whatever by any NPCs. Similarly, every point at which a romance is ‘required’* provides you with a male and a female option (and, as far as I’ve seen, the option to romance them both at once, too) and your choice of these is never determined or impacted by your character’s gender. Despite the ‘historical’ setting.

*in scare quotes because it’s needed to advance some stories and unlock others, but you do have the option of just. not doing them. or seducing the character for money or social status or some other personal gain, and not love. i'd like it if there was a non-romance option to advance these storylines, but eh.

It’s also just really well-written and interesting and funny and free to play-- there are storylines that cost money, and I’ve got my eye on several, but you never have to spend anything to advance. Even just keeping to the free storylines, there’s a ridiculous variety of things to do for whatever sort of person you want to play as. Go sign up now! Beware of wells! Don’t go North!!

Comics

Nominations: Harrow County vol. 3 “Snake Doctor”, Bitch Planet vol. 2 “President Bitch”, Ms. Marvel arc “Mecca”

Winner: “Mecca”

Okay.

I don’t remember if I ever posted it anywhere, but when this arc was being released earlier this year I had a Debate(TM) with myself about escapist storytelling vs. storytelling that holds up a mirror during rough times--how can you write escapism when hiding from problems does nothing? how can you write realism when the world already does so much to grind us down?--and I eventually settled that we need both, to read and to be written. Realism to show us how to fight. Escapism to help us rest so we can get back up.

This arc is so real it hurts, especially when you can only read it in monthly installments, but it’s the same hurt as pressing on a sore muscle. It’s necessary. There’s not a single aspect of this story that isn’t directly related to what’s happened this year, and what will go on happening next year, and the difficulty of resisting it, and the importance of continuing to do so anyway.

Also G. Willow Wilson appears to be the only Marvel writer who remembers that hydra is literally a splinter group of fuckng nazis so like

Podcasts

Nominations: Archive 81, Wolf 359, The Magnus Archives

Winner: Archive 81. What can I say? It’s precisely my shit. In fact, it’s so much my shit that it’s kind of hard to believe I’ve only known about it for a few months. Time is fake? I’ve already written in depth about how much I like this podcast over here, so I’m not gonna repeat myself.

Has to be said though that The Magnus Archives was a very close second. Like, when I started writing this post a few weeks ago, I had most of the winners already chosen, but this one was a last-minute decision. Especially when episode 81 (*EXTREMELY LOUD TWILIGHT ZONE THEME SONG*) was released and marked the first time in my life I’ve ever related to a male main character. Maybe a main character, period? At some point I’ll post a list of sampler episodes you can listen to without being too spoiled for the main plot to see if you wanna invest in a thing that’s got 86 installments so far.

so there we go! that’s been a sample of my year’s experience in fiction. see you all on the other side of this arbitrary dividing line that’s only marginally related to physical reality!