#talking about gender stuff is weird for me but i have been openly like

[wri0thesley]

how did you realise you were non binary 🥺

i've actually explored a lot of different gender identities! for several years i really just. thought i was a boy. for me personally - everybody is different! - i am . . . just not comfortable in my body. i do not feel like a Man. i do not feel like a Woman. my shell/body/whatever feels absolutely separate from me (and certain parts of me are horribly dysphoria inducing. but not in a [i should have this] way, in a [this should not be here] way. i have said several times my ideal body is like . . . magnetic. i could take parts off at will. i could build myself)!

but yeah. for a few years i exclusively went by he/him and Masculine existence, but that didnt work for me either. it just didnt feel like me. i used 'gender fluid' as a descriptor and went by ze/zir - because i thought my feelings about switching out whether i preferred being good girl or good boy or good whatever might mean that - but all in all i just kind of. feel outside of all that.

gender is a construct. i don't believe in 'you say you are one thing and you are that forever'. people discover things about themselves all of the time! if you feel like you might not align with the gender you were assigned, try the new pronouns, think about yourself, ask your friends to think of you outside of that! you might just fit in with it better. or you might feel wrong there and go back to the gender you were assigned. it's fine to do that!

[squiddy-god]

Twisted wonderland and our world is supposed to be very different right ? What if like- the society was actually really accepting of lgbt stuff around there . And the reader/yuu being from a region where such matters were considered very much taboo . So he's scared about like- you know being into his own gender and the twst boys are like- "fym"

Genuinely I feel like this is so good. Because like I love to think that MC/yuu is like,,, really scared to be out,,, a lot of this is gonna be about trans masc/trans readers because that's what I am,,, but there's alot of thoughts so

I'll talk more about male reader but like I'd be fucking terrified as a queer trans man to be out to an entire school, much less an entire school with a reputation for having the worst most villainous personalities. And while I live in America, not perfect or even great, its better than a lot of people's situations. But unfortunately I live in a heavy red state so <3

But still, like the bullying and harassment of high school life while being not only openly queer but also trans masc was like,,, the worst,,, so suddenly being transported into this magical world, where I have no idea what the politics of it are like would be awful,

But the thought that a world so full of magic and whimsy, is just accepting of queerness is so cathartic to me. And I'm Shure there are still parts that suck and are homophobic/transphobic but to think that twst is a world where that stuff is rare and shamed is beautiful to me

Now as a trans person, my thoughts

Sebek "WHAT ARE YOUR PRONOUNS SO I CAN YELL AT YOU CORRECTLY" zigvolt

Malleus, one of the most respectful, calls you child of man until you tell him your pronouns and then boom it's like he had the list of endearments ready to be selected

Ace who totally tries to punch you in the nuts and is horrified at the power you weild

Vil who is the embodiment of "all those years in the closet, and you still dress like that???"

Vil who respects your personal style, who helps you find clothes that make you feel less Dysphoric

Like yuu/you/MC being so terrified when they decided to come out to the first year gang, and being fully prepared for the rejection and ridicule. Only to be met with confusion on why you think they would react with anything other than love and acceptance?

I like to think that Sam's shop is like THE place to be during pride Month, and that he sells like,,, magical T (and E) ykyk

Magic spells for like "tiddies be gone" fire ball style bottom surgery type shit

And besides just being trans, being gay is probably surprisingly easy

Malleus and Leona where you are soooooo worried that this is gonna be some forbidden love thing, that the backlash for being gay would mean you can't be with them

Meanwhile Leona's brother and sister in law are welcoming you with open arms as Leona's partner, Cheka is happy he's going to have a new uncle

Lilia is happy such a nice young man loves his weird lizard son. And grandma mal is overjoyed that her grandson is so in love with you! The future king and prince consort will be such a happy union for the Briar valley.

Meanwhile you are just so worried 😔

Same with vil and neige, you are terrified for the backlash of being openly queer but people send in fan art for pride and just in general because y'all cute

Love all of this. I've been very Dysphoric lately so maybe 👉👈maybe trans masc reader hcs... Hehehe

[cowboyjen68]

hi jen, just wanted to say like many others thank you for being so openly queer and sharing your time with us on here - i've been back and forth for a while now about whether i think i'm butch and/or a lesbian (weird relationships with gender and love/attraction) and tbh it's all still up in the air, but regardless - your words and stories about being butch and living queer life have been really comforting and bring a lot of joy, so thank you <3 i hope the coming year is kind to you

I off loaded Tumblr from my phone to clean my cashes so I was not getting notifications. I am sorry if this is a bit delayed. Thank you for reaching out and letting me know that my tales of love and butchness and life help you in some way,

The advice I would have given to my young self is to clear away all the things the general public (ie straight world)is telling me about how lesbians are or supposed to be. We don't have to fit the narrative of what they think a woman is, how lesbians should look or act or their assumptions about butches. Over time I have learned that often the "weird relationship" many of us talk about has very little to do with US and lot to do with the mixed signals and crappy information the culture we live in tells us about what roles and rules we are "supposed" to follow to be "the right kind" of whatever.

At the end of each day we have the absolute right to be with ourselves and love and embrace ourselves just as we see fit to exist. Let the outside stuff stay out there in the opinions of others, especially those who can't possibly understand your experiences as a butch or as a lesbian, and embrace your reality. Perceptions can affect us and form our stories but we don't have to allow them to change what makes us happy.

[whatshereforme]

Since watching the new season of heartstopper ive been playing around with labels again (which I haven’t done since a friend I trusted basically shut me down and told me I can’t just be something without having “tried all my options first” ew). I’m always scared to relabel or try identifying as something other than what I’m comfortable being because I feel like I owe everyone consistency

When I was 15 (I’m 21 rn) I came out as lesbian and honestly I was so comfortable with that and how people perceived me and I kinda loved how my male friends (which I had a lot of back then) treated me. The downside was how the black community treated me, I was mostly in the closet to them but the closet was very much transparent (they could always tell I wasn’t straight lol)

The year I turned 18 I started identifying as bisexual, largely because I thought I might like my male best friend. I proposed the idea and he asked me out almost immediately. We dated for exactly 7 days before I realized I wasn’t really into him like I thought. Downside to this era was the comments my male friends would make about “bisexual girls” to me. The only thing was that I was too scared to start identifying as lesbian again because I had come out to all my friends as bi already.

So I carried that label until now (a few people I know still think I’m probably lesbian still lol). The reason I felt comfortable in this label was because I had just turned 18. I went clubbing and did some excessive drinking for the past few years and being bi gave me an excuse to drunkenly make out with random men on nights out. I still don’t know how I feel about men to this day I guess (I’ve always known I’m romantically attracted to women but I’m always on the fence about men, it’s a bit weird)

My trouble came with the fact that I’m not keen on hooking up with people. No matter their gender I’m just not super excited about the concept of “intercourse” or any of the stuff that comes with it. When the last season of Sex Education came out I watched it with a friend and offhandedly made a joke about being ace in reference to one of the characters and she went “you can’t be ace you just haven’t had sex yet” and that literally sent me spiraling for days and I just pushed the feeling down and ignored it

Earlier this year though I was having one of my late night talks with my little sister because we had a sleepover in the living room. I made a joke about how I’m probably never gonna be in a relationship ever because I don’t really wanna have sex and she asked me if I was being serious. I said yes and she said “there will definitely be people out there that will be with you even if you don’t wants sex, you need to stop being such a dramatic bitch lol”. That was obviously really reassuring to hear someone I love tell me it’s ok to not want sex, even if that person is my straight 17 year old sister.

I’ve been very afraid of being openly asexual because I’m scared no one will love me if I can’t give them sex but also I know I’m capable of loving people without them giving me sex but that’s only because I don’t want sex in the first place. I just feel I will personally be unlovable.

Anyway back to heartstopper. Imogen’s journey with comp het was very much relatable for obvious reasons as I had gone through all that by that age (and am still deliberating to this day if I just crave male attention, which is sad I wish I was still as confident as I was at 16 to know but life took over lol) and of course Issac’s journey with dealing with the affects of being aroace in a world that revolves around romantic relationships and conditions us to believe we need to want sex and romance. I had already read solitaire, Loveless and Radio Silence when I was in secondary school. Radio silence was the first time I felt so utterly seen in a character. That being Aled Last (mostly relating in our similar relationships with our mums). And then I read loveless and it literally put me off kilter of months. To see Georgia’s journey had me reflecting on everything I was taught about relationships and sex and friendships (but then I had exams and graduation and had to put that self revelation on hold lol)

All this to say, I’m deciding from today that I want to identify as Asexual. I know labels can be limiting to some people and they have been to me for that past few years as well but I think being ace is something I have to go to be true to myself. I’m definitely not coming out of the closet anymore I’m too tired of thinking I owe that to people but I’m going to try be honest with myself.

[fordtato]

Gffan has done the following:

-Letting people comment transphobic stuff on his Server

-associating with a reddit mod whos known to be transphobic

-openly showing weird distaste for the Dipper being Trans headcanon (didn't he also say: "I hate the Dipper Trans Theory" to us once?)

He also believes there’s only 2 genders

Hello. So. I do not normally respond to anonymous discourse like this in my inbox as a rule (especially given this site's proclivity for seeing anon callouts weaponized against trans people and women and people of color), but I felt it was important to do this in this case, since I am publicly working on a project with ThatGFFan.

I have known GFFan for over a year now now (in an exclusively online capacity), and in that time, he has not only never misgendered me (a nonbinary trans person, someone outside the "2 genders" framework) but has also actively corrected people who have misgendered me. I have witnessed him speak against transphobia in the fandom and against transphobic content creators. The idea that he "believes there are only 2 genders" is inaccurate by every account I have of him.

As for other accusations in this ask, such as him "associating with a reddit mod who is known to be transphobic" I don't have any evidence for this presented to me, and even if I did, association in a public online space is not the same thing as sharing transphobic sentiment. There is room in any online space for a conversation about the optics of this kind of engagement, but if I had to apologize for every person I've ever engaged with civilly who I later learned was problematic in some way, I'd be here all day, and that would be an unproductive use of my time, and would not undo any harm done by that person.

Lastly, I hope ThatGFFan will not mind me saying this, but he is a young person (younger than you think, I assure you). If he has engaged with unsavory people in the past, or has indicated any kind of transphobic sentiment (neither of which I have any evidence of) it is my belief that we need to allow people to grow, especially when I have actively witnessed that growth firsthand. And in that case, I do think (and maybe I'm putting my faith in the wrong person here, so I hope this doesn't bite me one day), that he has made an active effort to learn how to do better, even if he makes mistakes in that process.

What you have done, anon, is entered my inbox with accusations against a person of color, half of which have no evidence behind them, and the other half that I personally know to be demonstrably false. Nobody who is a victim of this transphobia has come forward, at least that I saw, and if they did, that would be up to ThatGFFan to respond to - not me, a trans person unrelated and far-removed from whatever incident you are talking about (an incident that likely occurred when ThatGFFan was a minor, in any case).

I don't have a big platform. I am a small creator (much smaller than ThatGFFan), and a trans Palestinian person. Why am I being called upon to answer for a cis person's (alleged) missteps as they grow into an adult? Why am I being called upon to publicly shame and renounce a person who has shown me kindness and allyship? Is it so I can prove my dedication to the fight against transphobia? My entire blog, my entire body of work, my entire existence, has been an active fight against transphobia.

I mean, by God, all I can do is hope I'm doing the right thing here, but I vouch for him. Or I at least vouch that he is trying.

(p.s. I hope this goes without saying, but someone disliking a specific queer headcannon does not indicate one's political beliefs, and this is not going to be an accusation that I really engage with, because it sets a bad precedent. This is not a moral wrongdoing. This is an opinion you are suspicious of.)

[my-castles-crumbling]

Hi Cas!! (I hope it's okay that I'm calling you Cas? Pls tell me if its not🙏)

This is another advice ask, sorry, I haven't got anyone irl that I want to and feel comfortable talking to about this stuff.

I kinda have two things going on, so feel free to just respond to one (or neither, I do not mind, I pinky promise)

The first thing is about my gender. Like I said I'm an openly trans man, and that's felt right, as far as I'm aware, I don't feel a lot of things strongly at all. But recently I've found myself really enjoying, like, dressing up? Like my sister has a bunch of old clothes she never touches, (dresses and such) and I like trying them on and putting on makeup and making myself look like a girl, if that makes sense. It's really confusing, because someday I also genuinely feel so horribly dysphoric about my chest and body I can't even look down. I don't know, maybe it's just cause I don't really feel very handsome or like I actually look good when I look more masculine and I do feel a lot prettier when I look fem... it's weird.

The second thing is actually about that friend that my first ask was abt. They still have that boyfriend, and I'm okay with that. I don't really know how they feel about him, but he likes them a lot, so I'll be happy for them. But it doesn't feel right to sit there and be jealous and be shorter with them, which I have been, and have them have no idea. I want to tell them that I like them, but make it clear I'm not looking to break them and their boyfriend up, and that I'd only be telling them because it didn't feel fair to keep it secret especially when it's something that's affecting our friendship. They definitely don't deserve to not know, especially when we still have that jokingly flirty relationship, it feels like taking advantage of them, and they deserve the choice of dropping me as a friend or continuing to be friends because I like them. What do you think?

ANYWHO, that was a lot, I just needed to get that out, I've been feeling very weird and conflicted about it all, don't feel any pressure to respond if you don't want. Have a good night/day and thanks for letting me rant 😋😋

-fat crush anon (I definitely should've put this at the beginning, my bad)

Hi!

Okay as far as your friend, I think your intentions matter, Are you just SAYING you're telling them to be honest, or are you secretly hoping they'll choose you? Because that makes a difference.

As far as gender...gender identity and gender expression are two different things. You're allowed to identify as a (trans) man and dress more fem some days! If that makes you feel happy, then do it! Also remember that gender doesn't have to be binary. So it could be that your gender is more fluid, and that's awesome, too! You also don't have to know. Do whatever feels comfortable to you, because that's most important <3

[elysianstars]

Part of being a fan of the Fell Xenologue, is frantically trying to come up with explanations for weird stuff the plot does.

Why do some people confuse both Alears, despite the gender swap? Why does Rafal not seem invested in Ivy's attempt to revive Sombron? What was Sombron actually trying to achieve with his heir/legacy nonsense, and how did Rafal expect to do that properly without understanding it? Why was Nil, the weaker and less useful twin, getting sent off to battlefields without Nel? Why could Alear only sense something strange about Nel's dragonstone, and Zelestia identify that as Sombron's magic, after it was shattered? How did Sombron, the world's worst parent, manage to spot the difference between Nil and Rafal? Why are Nel and Rafal not doing anything during Chapter 21 of the main story, if you have them recruited at that point? When did Gradlon sink during the Xenologue timeline, and if it was after Sombron's first defeat then where were all his surviving offspring hanging out for the next thousand years?

I've got elaborate headcanon answers for the majority of those, which let me sleep at night, but literally every time I replay, more questions manifest to torment me. Here's the latest set.

1. After the battle in Firene, why does nobody ask how the Bracelet of the Brash General came to be awakened with Fell power? Obviously 'Nil' knows, because he did it. Nel suspected the royals were Corrupted, and it would make sense that whatever Fell sibling was responsible for that would have woken the Bracelet at the same time. So she's got a working theory that she'd rather not discuss yet. But neither Alear nor Zelestia suspects that, so why do they never question who's going around messing with these Emblems, without actually stealing them?

2. I always had the strong impression that Nel and 'Nil' ditched their family a long time ago, and were living in Lythos for most of the thousand year peace. But in one of Zelestia's supports with Madeline, she claims the twins didn't appear until Sombron 'showed signs of returning'. Which makes far less sense, since where does that place them for the last several centuries? In a Gradlon which may or may not have been underwater? Surrounded by hostile siblings, who only learned not to openly talk about murdering 'Nil' because Nel slaughtered the last group who did that? Choosing to deal with an atmosphere like that for centuries? Or were they just wandering the world minding their own business, in which case why is that period never referenced, and why bother ever showing up at Lythos? It doesn't give Nel much time to fall in love with Xeno Alear either, when it's said she felt that way for years.

The other possibility – and I've never considered it before, but the Xenologue is SO agonisingly vague with timelines that I suppose it can't be fully discounted – is that Nel and Rafal aren't actually thousand-year-old dragons born during the first war, they're only teenagers born during the second war. But that also doesn't make sense, since it would have necessitated Sombron being around for at least a couple of decades after his return, plus where did the mothers of these brand new children come from? Were they just floating around in possibly-underwater Gradlon, waiting a thousand years to be impregnated while having no ambitions of their own? Or did they get resurrected alongside him in a package deal?

...I really don't think any explanation works, aside from Nel and Rafal being long-term residents of Lythos.

Nel says she cut ties with Sombron during the last war, but you could interpret that as either running away, or openly fighting against him. Sombron, in the flashback that seems to be placed shortly before Xeno Alear kills him, says it had been 'some time' since the twins betrayed him, and that Nil died 'long ago' (yet isn't it the Bracelet of the Three Houses he's shown with, and wasn't that in Divine Dragon hands, so it could be sealed in the Somniel?). Rafal refers to his residence in Lythos as an 'age of lies'. Everything is 'for a time' and 'not long after' without giving numbers, and those phrases become increasingly vague when they're being spoken by individuals who measure their lifespans in thousands of years. We don't even know how long the Divine Dragon has been dead for – months? Years?

'Showed signs of' is another unspecific phrase. You can show signs of something that doesn't actually happen in full until many years later. You can show signs of something you've already been doing for many years in secret. I don't have the energy to compare the JP text and see if there's any differences. Sorry Zelestia, I'm going to have to ignore your single obscure comment as either a mistake by the writing team, or just you being forgetful because you're so old.

Otherwise I'd have to rewrite around 100,000 words of fanfic as not being canon compliant enough, can you imagine the pain of that.

3. In one of Rafal's bond conversations with Emblem Celica, he asks if her warp magic could be used to travel between countries. But isn't that exactly what he does, after showing his true colours in the Xenologue? How else does he transport an unconscious Alear from Elusia to Solm, seal them in the desert ruins, then race all the way back to Elusia in time for Nel to be none the wiser? His later warping has a stronger basis in the game's mechanics (abducting Nel in a way that's similar to an Entrap staff, then blinking over to the Somniel because the previous Divine Dragon must have given him the blessing). But that particular cross-country event? If he can do it regularly, it would also explain how he can rampage around Corrupting the entire world's royals without Nel realising, but hello, where does this power come from? And where does it go, once he's recruited and just has to walk places normally like a loser.

Additionally, I do enjoy when characters say things which are painfully ironic in hindsight. Zelestia saying in an early chapter how it's so fortunate Nel and 'Nil' never lost their other half, and 'Nil' is just like yeah, haha, that sure is great isn't it...

Sadly I will continue to try and deal with Fell Xenologue's problems forever, because it gave us the gift of not one but two hot murderous bisexual dragons acting completely unhinged, and to me that's worth digging through any number of plot holes for.

[broodwolf221]

venty/negative and kinda fandom critical. not exclusively about the da fandom but just fandom in gen re: queer characters

re: the krem post i rbed earlier... i don't even know what ppl wanted from that scene 😭i still think it holds up well in 2024, but even ppl who seem to appreciate his inclusion will always add caveats about how it could've been better, how there were uncomfortable parts, etc etc

and i'm just confused. like what did they want? fr? bc what we got was something that, to me, felt earnest and sincere. it did not feel like a tumblr post explaining gender, but a person's real experiences and the inherent complexity of them

idk. yelling into the void. but i just always think about how critical fans can be of any queer rep and it feels weird sometimes. like everything that ppl point to as This Was Bad Writing doesn't feel that way to me and i don't think i'm a super weird outlier or anything and i'm honestly tired of conversation around krem's inclusion always coming with these caveats

this isn't @ the person who wrote that post or @ any individual person who has said these things. they're fine on their own. they're always valid points! and obviously i do rb them. what bothers me is the frequency of seeing these takes. it feels like the only krem posts i don't see them on are silly short ones, but if it gets remotely serious the caveats come in, the "it could've been better but-" comes in, the "it was good for the time," comes in

or put another way:

krem's inclusion, or the inclusion of any openly trans character in a videogame, is a political statement. but liking krem, talking about him online, talking about his character, should not have to couched in politicized language. like after a certain number of times seeing it, it just starts to feel weird, yknow? i'm a trans man and krem was really important to me. but now it feels a little... off-putting, because it feels like he's being used - by fans - to make a political statement whenever he's talked about

and i'm sure there are blogs out there who don't do this stuff who i just don't follow bc idk them. like my pov on tumblr is limited, naturally, and that's a factor that needs to be considered. but esp knowing that trick weekes wrote krem, and that weekes is nonbinary, it's like... i've just been thinking all day long about the extremes fandom holds queer characters to, especially if they're written by someone who isn't explicitly queer (at the time!) and how horribly and regularly that backfires on the creators. how so many creators have been forced out of the closet because people thought they were being offensive by writing someone or something queer, when in fact they were writing from their own experience (not even getting into how cishet people can write queer characters and should be allowed to, that's a whole post to itself)

i just think there's an underlying issue, and not one exclusive to the dragon age fandom, about treating queer characters like they need to be perfect and infallible and somehow represent every kind of queerness in one person and how, failing that, they need to be dissected and examined and the work they come from dissected and examined. but yeah, all i can say is that it's gotten to a point where i'm kinda uncomfortable posting about krem despite the huge impact he had on me as a fresh out of the closet trans man bc it feels like there's an implicit need to write a political essay about gender when u talk about him and i'm tired i just wanna yell about my blorbos sometimes

[gutsfics]

can you give specific examples of what happened to help people understand what happened

this is non-extensive, just the ones i think are the most egregious of what shes done and said

i'm not sure how much of this is stuff she's deleted, as these are all from screenshots i already had on hand, but i would like to say that deleting a post doesn't necessarily mean you no longer agree with what was said in it, especially if you double down on what was said when you're called out for it. which she has done Plenty of times

and for the record, this is not something i enjoy doing. part of the reason this took me a few days to post is because this is stressing me the fuck out and ive been trying to spend as little brainpower on this as possible

First point: queerphobia in the form of homophobic jokes, sharing panphobic rhetoric, and talking for transgender people on a topic she (as far as i am aware) has no

the pelicansexual "joke" was told at the expense of Ethan and Tobias during the "Ethan Bisexuality Canonity" argument she & i got into in June (which btw i would like to apologize for starting that up, i was frustrated w pb's coddling of the cishet part of the fandom & i was having difficulty phrasing it bc of how upset i was w it. i did not mean to attack the fandom specifically but intent doesn't cover for outcome)

the pelicansexual joke was a since-deleted tag on one of her posts which went something along the lines of "my Ethan and Tobias are now pelicansexuals, which means they have to break up with [her characters] as they are not pelicans". i dont have a screenshot of this unfortunately, but i do have a screenshot of her response to an anon calling her out on it.

in case you don't understand why her "joke" was homophobic, before gay marriage was legalized in the US in 2015, a common anti-homosexuality talking point was "homosexuality being legalized is a slippery slope to bestiality being legalized". while it is good she deleted her "joke", its frankly worrying to me that when called out on it she doubled down on how she was joking when she said it, instead of listening and learning. her bisexuality and queer activism do not mean that she is incapable of saying and doing homophobic things.

the panphobic rhetoric & her talking for transgender people are, if i remember correctly, both part of the same incident wherein she reblogged something panphobic and then, when called out for it, said something that something that most trans people consider transphobic isn't actually transphobic at all

screenshot 1: bisexuality and pansexuality are two very similar sexualities, with the main difference between the two coming down to personal preference for what term you feel like best. while bisexuality does mean "sexual attraction to two or more genders", some people prefer a term that focuses on the "or more" part. neither sexuality excludes transgender people. pitting queer people against each other because theyre not the "right" kind of queer does nothing but damage the queer community as a whole

screenshot 2: agreeing to delete the post, but doubling down on what she said and refusing to listen to anon simply because they're anonymous

screenshot 3: the highlighted part is what we're focusing on here. "We don't consider cis gay men who only date the same to be anti-trans". hi, I'm a trans gay man. Yes We Fucking Do. i don't understand why she thinks she has the authority to speak on this. what "we" is she referring to here?

Second point: lack of respect or understanding of boundaries in fandom spaces, including both blocks and simply not wanting to interact with someone

i'll be honest, i'm a bit unsure if the above paragraph is the right way of describing what i mean, but she has a bit of a history of being.... openly weird about people who have blocked her for "no reason", and not only that has stated she thinks that not wanting to take place in an event run by someone you are uncomfortable with is childish

i believe the first one is about my friend Jay, who has her blocked for similar reasons that i do. while it is perfectly fine for her to assume whatever she wants about the reasoning for a block, her phrasing of "all i ever did was be supportive" in a public post about it allows her to victimize herself over a boundary being placed. speaking of Jay, Elsa has, knowing full well that she's been blocked by xim on the "peonyblossom" blog- which, again, is a boundary that has been placed- decided to message xim on the choicespride blog xe runs

the second one is specifically about a tumblr user who i do not know personally and do not wish to drag them into this as they have left the open heart fandom. she was sent an anon about this user blocking her which, yeah, is really weird and suspicious. but this isn't about that, this is about her response to learning she's been blocked. she refers to herself as this users "biggest fan" and says that it "isn't normal" to block your biggest fan. once again she is victimizing herself over a boundary someone else has placed, only this time she has done it in a post talking about a person with their username in it. when you have a blog as big as hers, people are bound to go after someone in the name of defending the person they feel was slighted

& here's her essentially calling people childish bc they might not want to interact with someone who causes them harm. iirc this was either about certain event blogs in the fandom not disclosing who's running them bc they know full well that some people might not be comfortable interacting with them (hiding ur identity will not help with that) or about people choosing not to participate because they know that the person running the event is someone they don't want to interact with. this ones just bizarre to me. no one has to interact with anyone ever, and calling them childish for it is, frankly, childish

Third point: her callout post for Jeremy and her non-apology

to get it out of the way: i'm friends with Jeremy. i'll try to keep this as unbiased as possible, but i am deeply deeply upset and frustrated with everything thats happened to rain. also, just so yall know, Jeremy gave me permission to talk about this. i'm not just dredging up old drama for drama's sake here.

first- the callout post

the thing that started this was a post to the playchoicesconfessions blog where an anonymous user said- and i'm copy/pasting it here- "Ethan said he and Tobias were like brothers. Weird how many people in the fandom want to get with their brothers.’" essentially, this anonymous user accused people who ship Ethias as being into irl incest which..... we will not be getting into all the ways thats problematic here.

(as an aside, Elsa did at some point reblog and then delete this post, but her commentary was focused squarely on "ship and let ship" which is a sentiment i agree with but she completely ignored the blatant homophobia in this post. here's a version someone reblogged from her in case you're curious as to what she said)

Jeremy reblogged this confession post and added "i genuinely hope this person and others who think like this eat a fucking bullet holy shit" specifically in reference to the anon insinuating incest. in turn, anons on rain's blog assumed rai was referring to people who don't ship Ethais and sent rain nasty messages, which rai would respond to and get more anons who saw the latest response and again assume rai was talking about not shipping a ship they ship and not the actual genuine fucking homophobia from the original confession post.

one of these anons sent screenshots of rain's posts to Elsa, without the context, and told her rai was talking about her. rai was not. not until the post where rai (rightfully, ihmo) called both Elsa and another blogger (this one who also got a similar ask about being blocked by the user i mentioned earlier but who decided to put it in the open heart tags instead of keep it on their blog the way Elsa did. that's the only props i'll give to her in regards of that- yes it was shitty she posted it in the first place but at least she didn't tag it) for complaining about and villainizing someone who blocked them.

tldr version is- Jeremy was venting about anons that were being homophobic to rain, another anon sent screenshots of those posts to Elsa without the context who who rai was talking about and said they were about her, and Elsa, without bothering to verify in any way, decided the best course of action would be to publicly call rai out, painting rain as a bully who has been targeting her specifically and once again victimizing herself. on her blog with a bunch of followers. many of whom also chose not to verify, and instead just heaped more hatred onto Jeremy's blog.

this went on until September, when they talked to each other at first with a third party go-between, and eventually person-to-person. Jeremy explained the context of the vent posts, Elsa explained that she was getting the screenshots with no context from an anon and admitted she should have verified them herself instead of going full nuclear, and they both agreed to apologize publicly

all good, end of story, right?

no.

while in Jeremy's post, rai took accountability for their side of what happened in this awful game of telephone and apologized for rains part in the whole thing. if you want to read it, here is a version of it.

Elsa, on the other hand.... well she apologized, but to be honest I'm not quite sure what for.

she says there's been misunderstandings on both parts led on by one or more anonymous sources (no arguments here), says she understands that the posts that were sent to her were not actually about her (okay good) and says that its a tough world and that she's deleted her posts.

okay.... but that doesn't specify what she did at all to need the apology. which was publicly call out Jeremy on her blog with.... well, i'm not sure how many followers she has, but i do know that she's got the most well known blog in the choices fandom. by publicly calling out Jeremy in the way that she did, she (whether intentional or not) set her followers out to attack rains blog. she did not apologize for this. asking people to stop sending hate to rains blog is not the same as taking accountability for sending those people to rains blog in the first place

so. yeah.

again, non-extensive list, but i dont wanna mention things she's done without having screenshots or links to show proof that she did it, and i dont feel like finding more of her bullshit bc this just. really fucking stressed me out.

also this isn't me saying "shes a terrible person forever and i hate her and nobody should like her ever" this is me saying "hey, shes done/said some hurtful things in the past and it sure would be cool if she acknowledged any of it" but i think coolsville sucks or whatever.

also also most importantly: its possible for queer people to say and do things that are queerphobic. being queer yourself does not give you a shield from people calling you out for that. neither does real life activism. its great that she's done real life activism! but pointing back to things you've done in the past, or for a different group of people than the one youre in does not exempt you from the harm youre causing today, to the people you're interacting with.

i dont have a proper ending to this

thanks for reading i guess

[fipindustries]

my experiences with transphobia.

this will probably make me look a bit unlikeable because its going to ammount to "not that many tbh i was insanely priviledged", i am very well aware of the struggle that my community goes through every day all over the world, specially in the last few years where republicans and terfs and conservatives in general have seemed to drive themselves into mouth foaming frenzy out of disgust, and where intra community fighting seems to get more bitter every day.

but i do want to share my experience all the same and hopefully this will help give some hope in the current bleak state of affairs that not everything about being trans is constant suffering all the time.

winding back the clock all the way to me being a kid, i was very much bullied, from kindergarden to high school. my experience in the education system was twelve solid years of being called names, being pushed around, being ostracised, being made fun of and being excluded. i had people trick me into accepting food the offered and then telling me they had spit on it before (my response to that was to keep eating it all the same and made sure to enjoy it in front of them). ive had people beat the shit out of me, and i had people point at me on the hallways and laugh every time i would walk across them.

none of this was over any gender stuff, mind you, but because i was just "the weird kid" i was very openly nerdy and neurodivergent, i had been raised by cartoon shows and i would insist on behaving as a cartoon character irl. also because i was not very social, i was awkward and because i tended to keep to myself.

besides that i lived in a small town with no nerdy scene at all, my family (especially on my dad's side) just plain didnt get me. noone seemed to share or understand my hobbies and my dad would constantly critcize me for the way i behaved, the way i dressed, the way i talked, etc.

out of all this my response was to say "no, its the children who are wrong". i resolved from a very young age to just be myself and if that made me an outsider and a weirdo and an outcast then whatever. if some came to make fun of me or criticise me for just being me then they were in the wrong and their opinion was automatically discarded. i was not going to compromise myself for the sake of others. i never really developed a sense of shame over being who i was.

this of course was in part a bit of a trauma response which ended up with me having the maladaptive trait of being too self centered and too inconsiderate of other people's needs, i had a really bad tendency to see any criticism, no matter how valid, as an attack to be ignored, to this day i still have trouble measuring myself and noticing when im hurting others, i still have a hard time prioritizing other people's needs over my own.

but, tragicomically enough, this attitude proved to be actually rather useful for when i transitioned. i am more or less impervious to weird comments or outsiders eyes. as soon as i came out of the closet i was going out in full drag like, literally three days after. i was walking outside, going to the corner store, doing groceries, running errands and stuff ouside in the street with fake boobs and my face caked in make up i still didnt fully know how to properly apply. i had a bunch of kids yell faggot at me and my only thought was that those little shits should get taught some manners.

it also helped me brush off really unpleasant comments from a close friend with regards to my transition, like her saying she was sure i was going to end up detransitioning or that everyone thought i looked like a fake caricature of a woman. my first reaction to those comments was "she is just saying that to hurt me, opinion automatically discarded". it helped me stand uo to my dad who outright refused to call me by my pronouns or treat me like a girl so i just immediatly stopped talking to him or visisting him until he changed his mind. it took a year but he eventually did and now things are great between us.

but that is only half of the story. im telling you all this because it sounds cool and because im genuenly proud of it but the truth is also that, i just didnt have to put up with a lot of hardship in my life in general, i grew up in a nice house with a loving caring mo and step dad, i went to college, i lived a lower middle class lifestyle generally. once i got out of high school i managed to get some actual friends. and i live in a more or less stable country.

all of my friends and immediate family were instantly cool about my transition. my uncles, my grandma, my cousins, my mom, my sister, my step dad. i was immediatly accepted with an "ok, cool, you are mandy now". all of my friends immediatly accepted me with open arms as well. if there were ever any weird social games about "being excluded from girl spaces" or people treating me different or whatever im probably too socially oblivious to notice them.

on top of that i live in a genuenly very trans friendly country, in a seemingly trans friendly city. so generally goberment institutions, health care institutions, private bussineses, the companies i worked for, they all went out of their way to use my prefered pronouns and name, even before i changed my documentation to reflect this.

i dont think i ever was scared to come out of my house or walk down the streets of my city, even at night. and let me tell you, there are times where the sun hits the wrong way or i forgot to shave or all my clothes were dirty and i had to essentially boy mode, and none of that deterred me from going outside and doing my bussines without even sparing a second thought to what strangers on the street might think. other people on the street are just non-entities for me, they might as well be painted on the walls, i just cannot bring my self to care about what they might think.

i keep thinking back to that scc article about people living in different circles that seem to either automatically insulate them from or automatically draw them to abuse from others.

people are generally nice and normal and reasonable around me and i dont know if this is because i have an "anti-transphobia" field or i am just incredibly innatentive, where its happening all the time and i just dont notice it, but it has certainly made my life easier.

[olderthannetfic]

Instead of death of the author, how about death of the fan(on)? This is tongue in cheek btw. Take it with a grain of humour. I read a lot of LGBT stories in recent times, especially canon same-gender couples. We already covered the topic, but stuff like top/bottom vs switch, or masc/femme/gnc-categories and people being against what they claim is heteronormative, or just don't like in terms of queer rep.

In the fandom corners I've been some people are really weird about eg M/M dynamics that are top/bottom for example. It's the easiest one to talk about without needing to be into fandom, and there's already been a cover of this topic here so I think people already come decently prepared.

So parts of the louder fandom is very set on trying to make them switches, even though canon is pretty clear about the fact that they are just top/bottom. No problem, we have our preferences. Where a problem happens, is when these people take canon and only pick like random quips, references or other small sections to build the entire argument of "THEY ARE SWITCHES", and then treat it as canon, at the same time disavow actual canon. Basically they're cherry picking canon to create their fanon, then call it canon above the actual canon. So at the same time they ignore the very same canon that does very clearly and openly show them as top/bottom, and much more in your face and even claim people are variations of homophobic/heteronormative for preferring the (canon) dynamic of top/bottom.

Add on weak logic for fanon and ignoring canon, since it's often a difference between "them being switches is canon because the MC asked to switch their dinner plates" vs straight up "MC said he only likes being bummed up the bum."

Now death of the fan(on) could be when you see a fanon being treated as the canon, but the actual source story supports basically none of it. When you basically just ignore the cherry picked fanon, because neither the story, nor the intent within the story supports any of it. You're saying this fanon is actually canon or asking if I've even read the book?* Sorry death of the fanon, but I did not catch any hint of that when actually reading the book. If I gotta know fanon to catch it, then your intent to claim it as canon just really didn't translate into it. Your fan-intent when creating that fanon is just too weak for me to find any strong proof of it when reading, especially when the canon is constantly rubbing in my face over your claimed fanon. Oh your intent with the fanon was to fight heteronormativity? Sorry but your fanon actually reads as you being conditioned towards cishet-normativity because you try to ascribe a heteronormativity to canon queer characters in a very much gay relationship. Sorry but your intent with this fanon is just so weak I gotta call death of the fanon on that one. *actual question I got after talking about a canon part of the book because it went against fanon.

lol anyway, this is just a bit of tongue in cheek, and just to vent a bit of my frustration with certain fanons trying to erase canon, but still use that very same canon to prop up their fanon above the canon.

--

[prettyoddfever]

do you think brendon was pretending to be straight in presplit yaers or is he pretending to be pan now?

Uhh ok. so I'm going to breeze past a whole lot of problems with this question and just skip right to explaining a few things...

I think most of us were well aware that Brendon wasn’t straight by 2008, but we weren’t really searching for a label… some fans thought he was gay & still figuring everything out, while others guessed that he was probably bisexual. It really wasn’t a big deal. We just knew that Brendon was definitely into both girls & guys nbd.

First of all, people didn’t talk about their sexuality as openly in 2007 as they do now. It usually wasn’t part of an identity that you put in your bio or whatever. (Things are totally different now, but I just want to add that not having a public label still doesn't make you any less valid. I completely relate to Brendon now on the “sure, you can call me pan if you need to” concept). The important point is that your sexuality wasn’t really a common or easy-to-discuss topic in the mid-2000s. So even IF Brendon never said a single thing about it or just focused on talking about liking girls in interviews, that still would've been a pretty normal approach.

But Brendon was unusually open about liking guys if you were paying attention. I’m not talking about how a lot of people online called him gay during the Fever era because he “carried himself like a girl,” did the stage gay stuff with Ryan just to make fans lose their shit, wore mostly girl’s clothes, or spontaneously broke into dances like this onstage. That is not "evidence." I’m talking about actual info that Brendon intentionally chose to convey to fans (btw this is super weird for me to look back as an adult and try to talk about how people were sexualizing an 18-year-old, so please keep in mind that I’m just like trying to outline the fandom and events here ok).

So the band’s first UK tour in late January 2006 was when I started to notice that a large amount of gay teens seemed to be in the fandom purely for Brendon (more specifically, for Brendon’s butt). There were absolutely stories of guys hitting on Brendon that season, but it mostly sounded like Brendon was just embarrassed & shy like usual with that kind of attention. Yes, he claimed he was straight in interviews in spring 2006 and we’d get gems like this Kerrang cover (the actual quote from Brendon was “I support it, but I’m not gay”):

I got the sense that many of those types of answers later that year were out of frustration with the assumption that the guys must be gay if they were defying gender stereotypes. For example, this October 2006 interview in Munich asked if the guys were gay because they wore makeup and Brendon answered “that’s probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” He seemed to have had enough of that kind of assumption at that point. However, Brendon was still comfortable giving answers like this one in August 2006 (he didn’t shut up about his love for Freddie Mercury from the start). 

Anyways, by summer 2006 there were some rumors about guys who’d approached Brendon and hadn’t been visibly turned down (I’m trying to stick with facts here and not get into rumors… but I think it’s worth noting that those types of rumors existed by that summer and that the rumors over the years didn’t reflect negatively on him in any way). And then on July 19th Brendon intentionally chose to wear this bandana out to greet a crowd of fans after the show. This picture became really popular along with a screenshot of the gay hanky code (which you can google on your own):

When the Pretty. Odd. era started in early 2008 Brendon was actually telling the occasional crowd that he was into guys. He struggled throughout that year to gain autonomy and regain some control onstage, so I was proud to see how he was able to defiantly make it clear that he liked guys at the final show of the Pretty. Odd. era. Here's a contrast I made a while ago of the same part of the show during the first and last tours of the Pretty. Odd. era just because I think the growth is neat:

He was also a lot more comfortable in interviews when the topic came up... like on this interview around July 10, 2008 he just laughed and basically said he’d seduce guys with the same song he picked to seduce girls:

I also thought it was interesting how in 2008 Spencer went out of his way to make a point in multiple print interviews that Brendon could be gay. He left space for that valid possibility and showed that Brendon would have his total support... but he also made it clear that he wasn’t going to say anything certain until Brendon did. This could've easily been because Spencer was just trying to voice his support for LGBTQ+ rights. Maybe I read too much into some comments at the time simply because Spencer seemed to be quietly watching out for Brendon in other ways that year and was often visibly tuned into how he was doing. I don't really want to project any motivation onto Spencer now so I'll just leave his determined silence here instead lol.

Anyways, this is by no means a comprehensive list. It’s just a few points that came to mind right now and I’m mainly focusing on stuff that Brendon chose to share with fans as he was figuring out life. He wasn’t hiding with those actions or statements. They were absolutely noteworthy for that time period, and the part of the fandom that paid attention to the irl band understood that Brendon was also into guys nbd.

[strangedisciple]

“that's how it's meant to be, and how it's always been...”

icon by @leftforthestars!!

hip-albatross -> runway-houses-city-clouds -> introductionpresence -> strangedisciple

have i reached post limit? no :D

hi i'm julian/hyperdrama/crydamoure/qyurryus/electricityscape! i'm a transmasc voidzgender genderhoarder and like. a robot-cross-spaceshipthing. i'm also gay, autosexual & autoromantic! i also have adhd & autism.

my main pronoun sets are: he/him/his, void/void/voidz and it/its. i also use any technology or computer themed emoji or neopronouns but go check out my pronouns page for more because i'm pronounfluid. don't use they/them for me.

also, go check out @artsyaech , xaer so cool!

--------------------

links & sideblogs:

my don't look tag (please look at this if we're mutuals)

my pronouns.page

my last.fm

my ao3

my spotify

my pinterest (this is mainly me being completely normal about musicians i like so uh. yeag

im not gonna openly give it out, but if we're mutuals feel free to ask for my discord! also. if we're not mutuals please don't dm me it makes me nervous so i probably won't reply 👍

@hd-writes - my writing sideblog

@ramblings-of-an-autosexual - my autosexuality focused sideblog

@julians-gender-hoard - the rest of my genders

@sugar-and-vice-mogai - my coining sideblog

@record-kisser - objectum blog

@r0b0t-after-all - my kin sideblog

@is-this-a-strokes-reference & @is-this-a-justice-reference - exactly what it sounds like 👍

--------------------

things i like

currently hyperfixated on: the strokes, and all of their side projects (but especially machinegum) and solo work, justice (the band) & nation of language (please talk to me about them please i am begging)

i like music! my favourite artists at the moment are: The Voidz, The Strokes, Tame Impala, Justice, SebastiAn, Daft Punk, TWRP, machinegum, Blur (8/7/23), CRX, The Cure (6/12/22), Albert Hammond Jr., Gorillaz, Simian, Elbow (12/5/24), Nation of Language, The Chemical Brothers, Little Joy, Shed Seven and The Prodigy!

other things i like are:

interstella 5555, daft punk's electroma, star trek, disco elysium, the matrix films (not in a weird way i just like watching keanu reeves doing cool stuff lmao), neon genesis evangelion & the end of evangelion, the hitchhikers guide book series, terry pratchett's discworld, good omens (the book and the series), and old tech and computery stuff!

(this user misses daft punk userbox & this user likes justice by @/songuserbox, robot userbox by @/colibrichorus, machinegum one by @/burntoutuserboxes)

DNI:

terfs, racists,transphobes/homophobes, anti neopronouns/xenogenders, anti-otherkin/therians/alterhumans, radqueers, transid/transx, maps/nomaps, zionist/anti-palestine

[lastoneout]

Talking critically about about One Piece below pls feel free to ignore me completely I just have to get this Out Of My Head or I'ma go insane

So I've reached the "Sanji is transphobic" part of the comic, and while I can't deny that is a very accurate description of his behavior, I must say I'm a little miffed that up to this point I have seen this framed as if it is entirely a problem with Sanji as a character and nothing more when like...THIS is how Oda is choosing to depict trans women:

I have been told that things get better and that there is a trans character in one of the latest arcs, and tbh this is very frustrating bcs I actually quite enjoyed the way the drag queen/gender liberated characters were portrayed in the previous chapters, it wasn't perfect but it was far more nuanced and sympathetic and progressive than what we typically see in anime, so yeah seeing this INTENSE backside directly into what looks borderline indistinguishable from a transphobic political comic is just.....it's not great.

Like I am really desperately trying not to be a Sanji apologist here, bcs his behavior sucks and I will fully acknowledge that, but I think framing this as a "Sanji" problem and not a problem with the comic overall is maybe minimizing the issue.

I will say I think given that the previous depictions of genderfluid and trans characters has been good that Oda isn't trying to be transphobic outright, I doubt he would write cool trans characters if he genuinely hated trans people, and I understand that he's added another trans character, plus the manga has 1088 chapters and this stuff is around chapter 600 so they came out a long while ago and I don't like holding old stuff against people, but yeah it's just weird to me that so much blame is placed on One Single Character as if the manga otherwise is very progressive when again, the narrative and thus the author seem to be validating Sanji's opinion or at least are completely comfortable making a painfully long and very transphobic "creepy predatory man in a dress who others find revolting" joke.

And that's not even getting into the sexism and racism and fatphobia(which ones weird to me also that none of the other characters are labeled as problematic for saying or doing bigoted stuff, it's only Sanji who gets that treatment?? I get he's easy to hate but this inconsistency is bugging me) and like...guys at some point we have to acknowledge that Sanji and all the other characters are behaving a certain way not because they are real people with agency, but bcs they are written by a human who has flaws and biases and yes, uninformed, bigoted opinions.

Plus like...idk imo framing it as a Sanji problem also rings hollow to me bcs again he's not real. It feels like letting the people ACTUALLY responsible off the hook when they're the only ones who have the power to change anything. Sanji didn't decide to be that way on his own, he's incapable of such an action, and he can't change his behavior or the writing of the comic, he isn't real. Oda wrote him and the others like that, and he can change things too.

So maybe just put the blame on the correct shoulders pls. That's all I'm suggesting.

Edit: Also maybe just me but imo there's nothing about Sanji's characterization that signals to me that he would obviously find trans women disgusting?? I know there are plenty of slutty men who love trans women!! And while he is a creep, them writing that the character who most openly loves basically every woman he meets could obviously never find a trans woman beautiful or arousing is like....IT'S A CHOICE.

[woodsfae]

I genuinely feel like Housemate is doing strange, fucked-up things to Partner and I on purpose, but the extent to which I second-guess myself and go back-and-forth on it also sorta makes me feel like they are? It's just. So much.

From the beginning, sigh.

I met Partner in 2016, met Partner's best friend (hereafter "Tas," fake name, obvs) shortly thereafter. Tas is nonbinary, and I have always felt like they and their friend group put me in the "straight girl" mental box. They have always been standoffish and cold to me. I am also nonbinary, but I'm not superduper open about it? Like if we're friends, we've talked about my relationship to gender. And whenever I'm in a meet-n-greet circle that people are sharing their pronouns, I do say "they/she/he are all ok for me," (including Tas, because we've been in community organizing initiatives several times together) but hardly anyone ever uses anything other than "she" for me. I'm short and extremely busty and frequently wear dresses so I often think people -especially queer ppl, sadly- consider me to be a trendchasing "theyfab," and Tas's coldness to me has always indicated that to me, too.

Tas repeatedly hit on my sister and for literally two years straight the only time they initiated conversation with me was to ask if my sister got their texts. My sister told me she always responded to their texts and usually TAS was the one who didn't text HER back. My sister also never flirted back, because she doesn't like how Tas treats me.

Partner and I were openly polyamorous until the pandemic when we closed for health purposes. We were both dating other people when we met. Partner had a very brief relationship shortly after we started dating that went really badly. That person suddenly indicated they felt unsafe in their living situation and Partner drove more than 24 hours to pick them up and give them a safe landing spot. That person immediately freaked out whenever Partner even texted me. And did a lot of really weird passive-aggressive stuff to me whenever we saw each other. And was really controlling to Partner. Partner had just barely gotten them out of his apartment when Tas FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. And was like "I dated them so you should have known to check with me," and Partner was like...."you did? Oh...I dimly recollect like...years ago? Briefly?" and Tas was like "yeah, it was a few months and went badly and now you've broken my trust and will have to rebuild it. :| :|"

I thought this was bs but whatever, their friendship. They rebuilt it or whatever. but after that I cared a fuckload less about what Tas thought about me. But it was still stressful and upsetting that they were SO cold to me.

In 2020 I moved in with Partner and we locked down together. Until his apartment building was sold and the new owners DOUBLED HIS RENT with thirty days' notice. And then we were SOL because our city's cost of living was literally the highest in the country, adjusted for population, and vacancy was 0.2%. At the same time, Tas' house was sold and they were in basically the same boat. However. Tas and Partner both made enough and had just enough savings and parental help that they realized they could probably afford to buy a house together. And I was invited to live in the house, too, only I pay a little less because I'm not building equity as I'm not an owner. It was all very optimistic. Tas wanted to have a close, warm housemate relationship. We all planned game nights, shared dinners, shared grocery staples etc etc. We had multiple meetings about it and I was very optimistic about it all. Tas was more friendly and open to me during those few months than ever before or since.

We moved in and Tas immediately was standoffish and cold again, but not only to me, but also to Partner, their supposed best friend of over a decade. This hurt Partner tremendously. They would go to another room whenever either of us entered it, then text us random house things from the other room. They went back on all the dinners/game nights/etc we had agreed on. Partner and I extended invitations for MONTHS. It wore on Partner considerably, and me too. But Partner was losing his best friend with NO explanation.

Tas started texting Partner requests for "house meetings," except I wasn't invited. And then Tas would postpone the meetings with only a few hours' notice, or sometimes wouldn't show up, and then would postpone belatedly. And when the meetings did happen it would be like "I feel like the vibe is off in the house and it hurts me."

like wtf.

Partner would be like "Tas had a bad childhood and their parents basically waged psychological warfare on them and it's hard for them," and I'd be like….. "BABE YOU AND ME HAD THAT HAPPEN TOO." And Partner would be like "they had [medical thing] that caused a traumatic brain injury and their memory is really bad because of it…" and I'd be like "me and my five concussions and literal Post-Concussion Syndrome would like a word." He's just trying to find his peace, because it has been seriously hard on him. He's cried on me so many times about Tas since we moved in together. And there's really no justification for being a relentless asshole, imho.

Tas and I had a shared goal of transforming our lawn into a garden/natural plants pollinator space. Tas and I spent hours and hours working on this. Their back is objectively more fucked up than mine so I did more of the super-hard labor, but we both worked really hard on it. We talked about sharing the garden beds and what the division would look like….and then I came home and Tas had planted all the garden beds with the things they wanted and left me no room for anything.

Last year I decided to take a little corner of the yard that was only weeds and plant some sweetgrass. I checked with Tas multiple times they didn't want that corner for anything. I mentioned it multiple times. then I planted my sweetgrass with a little berm I built. And I mean it's LITTLE. If I made a circle with my arms, it would fit in that circle with my fingers touching.

A few weeks ago I went out and Tas had been clearing out the dead leaves/stems from the yard and garden and piled all the compost waste right on top of my sweetgrass patch. my tiny little patch that is only about 2 feet by 2 feet at most.

That hurt my feelings more than I thought possible. I was so so hurt. My only little patch of garden. I cleared it off, pulled some of the weeds I had left in to help enrich the soil, so it would look more tidy and visually distinct, and went and told Tas their compost pile had ended up on my sweetgrass so I had moved the compost over a little. Then I painted a bunch of rocks and ringed my sweetgrass space with the colorful rocks so it would be even more visually distinct and obvious.

I feel so defeated and sad. I don't know why Tas is being like this. I hate living here, and Partner and I both wish we had moved into a van or something instead.

We are nice to Tas. We still offer up game nights and dinners. We watch their special needs dog ALL THE TIME. Tas pays their friends to watch the dog when we can't, but never offers us a cent. Tas refuses to speak to us about almost anything. They insisted on a mask-inside and checking with housemates about guests rule in lockdown, then broke it immediately and never checked with us about any guests. The mutual friends we do have mostly started being even weirder and colder to me after we moved in together, and I genuinely think they're trashtalking me to our mutual acquaintaince group. I go out of my way to be friendly and ask about their plans and things, but they actively hide their plans from both of us. They will just suddenly be gone for 2-3 days, or have dinner parties, or out of town people over.

A few years ago they had a dinner party on Partner's birthday, with many of Partner's friends invited, and didn't tell Partner they were having people over or anything. It wasn't for Partner's bday, it was just a totally unrelated dinner party ON his bday, in his house, with his friends, that he wasn't invited to. It was so cruel I honestly have trouble believing my own memory that it happened.

They went on a long vacation and brought me a "present" for watching their dog. The worst and least-functional butter dish with no lid that I've ever seen and doesn't even sit flat. Oh, and it matches the utensil-rest they got themself??

They are always civil to my face, but I always always feel like they dislike me. It's exhausting. I wish we could move, but housing prices are still incredibly high, loan rates are terrible, and Partner feels trapped into this house ownership. We both wish we had done literally anything else in 2020 than moving in with Tas.

right this minute Partner is being yanked around by Tas with another house meeting. can't wait to find out what bad vibes are our fault, now.

[illgiveyouahint]

Do you reckon some people who are bi (and by (no pun intended) I mean those who are boomers), just go through life being like yeah I probably am but not really going to explore it or anything. Like maybe it's not biphobia or anything but more just like that's something that's been there but you have other trauma or other stuff that's probably more up front than sexuality so you just deal with it? Or accept it like okay whatever?

Hello anon,

thank you for this question. 'cause yeah most definitely. I think that's kind of true for all queer people but I think bi people have the option of "appearing cishet", right? Like as a bi person you can technically choose to live with someone of the opposite gender, get married, have kids and people would not know any different. It's very common. So I'm sure that many people growing up in a homophobic world just decided to not explore that queer part of them and just fitted themselves into the "straight" box though maybe somewhere deep inside they knew they felt something. Or they simply fell in love very young and it just never came up. Like I'm reminded of people being surprised to learn that Hank Green is bi every couple of months. He's married, he has a wife and a kid. He mostly focuses on like science facts and weirdness. Like his bi-ness just very rarely comes up and even he mentions that it's not something he thinks about often. So I'm sure there are many people who have a very chill idea and just don't really need to bother with their identity, you know?

And actually I recently talked about this with a friend of mine and I think that you can still see this to this day with many bi men. I think there's more bi men than we think but most of them stay in closet/don't realise it because of the pressures of the cishet society. I also think many "gay men" might also be more bi than they admit but that it is so much easier for them to just identify as gay. Because the truth is biphobia is very real and damaging. Openly bi men get shunned from both hetero and gay communities. I know gay men who'd not get into a relationship with a bi man because they're afraid the bi man will run away back to a woman. And women who even though they claim to be "allies" but who'd never sleep with a bi man because they cannot handle their man's love of cock.

I do think that with more education and public awareness you see more and more people coming out as bi - not because previously there were none but because more and more people are realising that that is an OPTION. Like I didn't realise until I was like 23 'cause I didn't know it was an option. I also thought I'm completely unlovable for the first 23 years of my life so i thought it didn't even matter. And while I still think I'm unlovable I also think that it does matter. Because being bi to me it isn't just about finding a partner. It's about allowing yourself to be free. To explore. To feel whatever you need to feel. Free from judgement. Free from the bounds of the cisheterormativity.

Anyway this got once again too long. Sorry ;D