#the first one is meant to be read from a trans man's perspective but can be interpreted as cis gen

[ruluxe]

So I'm really in love with Astarion....

[gaybae1021]

Well since my bachelorette designs were received so well, I decided to complete the marriage set! Here’s my bachelors!

Individual pics and thought processes under the cut:

I’m drawing these from the perspective of how they’d look on day 1, but I’d definitely like to do a post-Joja higher heart design for Shane at some point. Overall for this one I just tried to make him look unkempt and dull, I desaturated his skin tone to make him look sickly and he’s the only one without eye shines, signifying how he’s lost the spark for life.

Also sorry about the socks and Birkenstocks.

Decided to make Alex mixed, since there’s absolutely no diversity in the bachelors. Had a lot of fun translating his canon hairstyle into those short locs. Other than that the biggest change was turning his jacket into a proper varsity jacket. Short Alex gang unite!

Okay sorry Haley, Elliot takes the win for the most changed design. Like it’s so obvious he’s meant to have a Victorian jacket and fancy trousers and all that, but after I drew him all tall and slender and I gave him little braids and beach waves he just started taking on a Boho vibe? When I drew the jacket it just looked tight and restrictive. So I decided to let the beach influence carry and we ended up with this fancy yet comfy loungewear with sandals. And I love him?

Also this was heavily inspired by ginjaninjaowo’s male espeon design

Sebastian was honestly a pain, like I know his design plays off the emo teen archetype, but compared to the others npcs he’s actually got a lot of variety. Like he’s obviously got some emo influence, but there’s also some nerd thanks to his interest in coding and ttrpgs, and he’s also a bit of a tough guy with the bike and the smoking. So there were a lot of directions to lean. Still, his sprite is clearly going for a dark hoodie and dark jeans, so I didn’t think I could change it up without making it not feel like Sebby. Does he have a muscle tee underneath for working on the bike? I’ll never say.

Biggest change is probably the hair, just wanted something less stereotypical, and have some variety in bachelor hair length. Definitely leans into the biker side a bit lol. Otherwise I just tried add detail to his dark outfit and adorn it with his interests. So frog embroidery on his shoes, a patch on his jacket and some motor oil stains on his hoodie. Also as promised he and Maru have matching dimples.

Also happy pride month, enjoy trans Sebastian and also the head canon that he and Sam start dating provided the farmer doesn’t get there first lol.

And with Sam the ASS trio is complete! Now with matching chokers because I said so.

Just like with Sebby I wasn’t sure which direction to go for Sam, whether to lean more into skater boy or rockstar. Ultimately he ended up more rockstar, though he’s still always roughed up from skating (probably because he refuses to take off the platform boots). He thinks the torn clothes make him look more legit though.

I had fun making his shape language compliment Sebby; he’s very top heavy from the giant hoodie so I made Sam bottom heavy with the baggy jeans and jacket. Also I had so many thoughts about him and Kent, given that Sam and Sebby are a thing and Sam isnt exactly gender conforming.

And last but not least, Harvey. He’s sweet, he’s simple, all his heart events are charming. And yet he is always the last one I reach max hearts with because I can’t be bothered to go to the doctors office. Sorry bby, I hope I can make it up to you by designing you as an adorable cherub of a man.

I know I’m being super controversial, giving him a pushbroom mustache when the sprite is obviously a handlebar /s. But like, he’s such a square; it fits him so well. My little lawful good guy.

Ya know, I think I gave him a sweater so Elliot’s jacket would stand out, then proceeded to not give Elliot his jacket. Huh.

Anyway bonus of the boyfriends together to close us out, thanks for reading!

[berylcups]

(♥️) All of You- Trans!Ghiaccio X Reader (wip mini preview)

Notes: I got some inspo from one of my favorite bands, take a listen if you want. It’s a really lovey dovey song 💖 I want to see if people think I’m going in the right direction with this fic by giving a small preview. I hope you like it so far-I’m putting my whole heart into it so I’m a little nervous 🥲 enjoy the small snack! 💜 Beryl

CW: coming out anxiety, body insecurities, past toxic relationships mentions, very very very slight yandere tendencies from reader??? Nothing toxic just extremely dedicated

“I don’t know what to do. I’m so fucking frustrated. I want so much more than just kissing and making out but I keep basically edging myself because I’m too afraid of what they’ll think once they know who I really am.” He ranted as he paced across the room. “ and god —I know this bothers them because when I stop them they look so dejected! But they smile and say it’s okay and everything is fine when I KNOW they are fucking lying!”

“Ghiaccio calm down and take a deep breath. I know it pisses you off when I say that but I really mean it.” Melone said, trying to calm his partner down. “You know very well you are your authentic self. Always have, always been. You need to come out only when YOU are ready. If Y/N can’t be bothered to wait for you and want intimacy that bad, then they weren’t meant for you. But Y/N is the most patient person I've met and I think they will wait as long as it takes for you.”

“…Yeah I know. I’m just worried about…you know…my anatomy.” He sighed, combing his hand through his curls.

“Only someone heartless would be concerned about something like that.” Melone growled, thinking about the painful past. He could only sleep well at night knowing that they were used as surrogates for his stand.

“Y/N practically idolizes you. I don’t think they would reject a single part of you. I truly believe that.”

_____________________________________________

“Well we both officially have been together for 7 months now and…we haven’t… you know. I’m not trying to pressure him or anything so please don’t take that the wrong way! I will always wait for him! But…am I not attractive to him? Is that why?” You asked nervously.

“Oh no absolutely not. He’s VERY attracted to you amore. He…well… we grew up together so I can read him like a book but the problem he’s having is—he has some insecurities.”

“Insecurities? About what? Did I do or say something wrong? I would never meant to make him feel that way!” You panicked. “ I love him so much I’d fucking kill for him—I’d even kill myself for HIM. I would do ANYTHING for this man!”

“Woah—calm down Y/N amore. I know you do. But don’t do anything rash now. You didn’t do anything wrong at all. It has nothing to do with anything you did… But try to take yourself out of the picture here… You are the first successful relationship he’s had in his life. Anytime he fully opened up to his past partners it..ended up nasty and his heart broken. He’s afraid of the past repeating itself.” Melone gently rubbed your back as he explained.

“Ok. It’s not about me. I was being a little selfish and impatient now that you put everything in perspective… Poor Ghia. He deserves an apology. I never knew he was so insecure.” You clasped your hands together in your lap thinking hard about your past behavior.

[adrinoir]

Headcanon: Adrien Agreste is Trans? (Part 5)

Part 5 let’s gooooo!

Wow, so, as I’m going through my own trans journey, I was inspired by some to write another part of this headcanon. I was somehow able to connect Adrien’s character to parts of my own journey. It’s pretty cool!

Here are the other parts of this headcanon if you’d like to read those: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

Usual disclaimer: this is just for fun! Obviously cis boys can have these same qualities and traits. Don’t take it too seriously. These are all just things I’ve noticed. Also please keep in mind I haven't watched anything beyond Migration as I’m writing this (I’m using the material I have so far).

CW: mentions of transphobia and abuse

The struggle to envision his future

Trans people can struggle to envision their life in the future due to not having older trans people to look up to. Or they feel so depressed from gender dysphoria or judgement for being trans that it makes it hard for them to see what their future will be like.

We see in Wishmaker, Adrien doesn’t have much of an idea as to what he wants for his future. He told Luka and Marinette that his head feels empty. And, additionally, he said to Ladybug he never had any childhood dreams.

When he’s hit by Wishmaker, he turns into who he is now. I mentioned in part 2 of this headcanon that there’s trauma behind that, and Adrien is trying to be this perfect young man for his parents. However, I want to look at it from a different perspective-

Consider, he turns into himself now - not even an older version of himself with no differences whatsoever, meaning he possibly might not see anything beyond the person he is now. Or (TW here) he didn’t see (or could barely see) a future for himself as a kid because he was so depressed and dysphoric. It’s not uncommon for trans kids to feel like they won’t live to transition. Especially with Adrien, if he is trans, I can only imagine how terrifying it would be for him trying to come out to his parents.

Or, if he was at first confused by his dysphoria and trying to figure out his identity as a child, that confusion could’ve clouded his vision for his future. He couldn’t completely understand who he is and why he was feeling the way that he was.

Not fully understanding yourself and who you are - even within your gender identity - can cloud how you see yourself now and in your future.

The “I just want to be a son!” line

The line Adrien said in Risk: “I just want to be a son!” stands out to me a lot.

I know he mainly meant it in a way of saying that he wants to be treated like a regular kid by his own father, not like a model. But, - listen, I’ll take whatever crumbs I can get - there’s a strong emphasis on this line and making sure he specifies “son.”

Having this strong desire to no longer model (which is in fact one of my other signs I listed in part 4 of my headcanon) and saying he wants to be a son just gives me vibes that he’s so dehumanized by his own father. His father barely treats him like he’s his kid and uses him as marketing for his designs. And referring to another part of this headcanon (part 1), him and his father have this unexplainable disconnect, even though Adrien is such a good son. I had mentioned maybe it’s because Adrien is trans and his father barely accepts this.

So, if it is true that this disconnect is caused (or at least partially caused) by Adrien being trans, he wants to make it clear he’s at least his son, not his daughter.

The dehumanization

Speaking of that unexplainable disconnect and dehumanization I had just mentioned, I want to get into more detail about that.

Gabriel continues to care so little about his own son, and at this point in the series, we see he’s barely even treated like a human anymore. Gabriel’s behavior has worsened. Gabriel had the audacity to free Adrien of his modeling career by creating a fake AI version of him.

That is absolutely dehumanizing. Like, is it good that Adrien is no longer a model? Yes. But is it good that there’s a duplicate of him saying things and making expressions that aren’t real? Things he never said and did himself?

It’s incredibly slimy behavior to see your son as a marketing tool and way to reach your own stingy goals. And that begs the question: why does Gabriel see his son as just these things? How could a father treat his son with such little love and apathy?

This reminds me a lot of transphobic people because they don’t think of trans people as real people. They say and treat them as if they aren’t humans. They’re willing to threaten them, spit on them, possibly unalive them, insult the daylights out of them, etc as if they don’t have human emotions and lives. And, these transphobes are typically hateful, evil people, just like Mr. Gabriel Agreste.

One could argue that Gabriel has just gone absolutely insane and he showed some compassion for Adrien in earlier parts of the series. But, I don’t feel this is true. Referring to Wishmaker (again lol), it’s shown his parents have had expectations of him his whole life. Their love for him was conditional starting from his early childhood, and we’re not given reason as to why this is - it’s just been suspected to be abuse.

And, if we knock out my first section about Adrien not realizing his future, maybe he did know since childhood that he’s trans. And perhaps he defied his parents (like he did when he ran away to the school) and started taking steps to transition (as many steps as he could before needing his parents to weigh in and be somewhat accepting). That’s why Gabriel neglects Adrien and dehumanizes him, and him just going crazy showed more of his true colors - colors that have existed within him all along.

The relationship & physical affection discomfort

In Adrien’s first relationship, he was so uncomfortable with Kagami despite how long they were friends prior to. Understandably, this was his first relationship, Kagami made a lot of assumptions about him as a person, and came on really strong. But, despite liking her, he was still so uncomfortable and never really got over that.

You’d think he would’ve been okay with kissing her and more physical touch since he seemingly had a bit of a crush on her for quite some time. But he hardly was. And he showed a bit of disappointment when she made wrong assumptions about who he really is.

If Adrien has gender dysphoria, he’s not going to feel very comfortable with physical affection, especially with someone who has the wrong idea of him as a person; someone who doesn’t know he’s trans (at least not yet). Notice how he also backs away at times when Ladybug actually tries to be physically affectionate with him (particularly the Fake Ladybug in Puppeteer 2).

Adrien only seems okay with physical affection if he initiates it. If someone else tries to initiate that first move when he’s not completely comfortable with them, he gets uncomfortable. It has to be by his terms. This could be him having to gain that bit of trust since he’s used to that dismissive attachment style from his father who neglects him - it reflects itself in romantic relationships. But it could also be bodily gender dysphoria and the fact that no one would know he’s trans (aside from his own family).

[boreal-sea]

Tbh as an afab nonbinary butch whose partner is a trans woman, the language some of the people in that post about misogyny in previous decades/modern India are using makes me uncomfortable bc it reads to me like they're implying that transfems had/have it better. The discussion of how "traditional" misogyny affected (and continues to affect) the transmasc community is an important one, but the OP implying that transfems were "allowed" to exist when transmascs weren't ("the reason our history is not seen as extensive or influential as transfem history is because [transmascs] quite literally were not allowed to exist") comes across as transmisogynistic to me. Trans women have never been "allowed" to exist any more than trans men have, and the fact that those words are also in the context of talking about a form of misogyny that's unique to AFAB people makes it seem like the OP is saying that the reason trans women were "allowed" to exist was male privilege

One commenter brought up historical trans men that HAVE existed to refute the implied idea that they didn't bc they weren't allowed to and made a valid point about how the reason it seems that way is bc of erasure, but then people responded as if the post was about erasure all along, even though that commenter was the first one to mention erasure and before that the post had only discussed barriers to trans men existing? Additionally, the reply saying that "[he] *(let's not misgender people)* couldn't actually name the trans men [he] referenced" (aside from Brandon Teena I guess) and that it's a problem that we can't find information about trans men in India with just a quick google search (which Antoniə proved we actually can) seems to further imply that trans women have it better in this respect, even though frankly Brandon Teena—a trans man—is the only historical trans person I can name off the top of my head as well, not any trans women. One response also brushed aside the commenter asking people not to say "women/AFAB persons" by saying that it meant he was implying that all nonbinary people were AFAB (?), but personally *I* am also uncomfortable with the term "women/AFAB persons" because it looks like it implies that the two are the same. (And with this post being about a type of misogyny specific to AFAB people, it also makes it read like it's implied that trans women are not included under the category of "women" in this usage)

Even when it comes to the articles about trans men in India, presenting them in this context (even outright claiming that trans women in India have an easier time building community and exploring their identities when the article ey linked was actually talking about the hypervisibility of hijras—a cultural third gender—and discussed how all binary trans people are being erased under the "third gender" label there) seems to dismiss the struggles that Indian transfems face. The articles discuss how trans men are erased in India, but that's also true of trans women in India. Hijras are hypervisible in India but they ALSO face increased rates of abuse, sexual assault, being forced to run away from home, and inability to find work like the trans men in the article described

It seems like this post just started out with the OP (I would hope unintentionally) implying that trans women in the past were "allowed" to exist more than trans men because they had male privilege, and then when one person tried to refute that idea people changed the topic to the tired argument of whether hypervisibility is better than erasure while continuing to use transmisogynistic language and even misgendering the person who spoke up about it. If I'm missing something and you've got a different interpretation of these parts of the post then feel free to explain your perspective if you're up for it, but that's how it reads to me and I'm not here for what I'm seeing in it. The discussion itself is an important one but I don't think there's a need to use transmisogynistic language or minimize the struggles that transfems face for it

I didn't write that post so I'm not really the right person to send this to.

But since you want MY opinion: calling trans men transmisogynistic for lamenting we have no historical record is transphobic, sexist and misogynistic, whether or not we said it in a way you approve of, and personally there was nothing wrong with how that original post was phrased.

It is FACT that we have more records of ancient societies where people we would now call transfemme/ftm openly existed and were acknowledged and had communities and had a name for themselves (whether they were "allowed" to do it or not) compared to records of transmasc/ftm people.

This is undeniable. It's not transmisogynistic to point this out. It's not transmisogynistic for trans men to be upset we are not acknowledged in history the way trans women are.

Whether or not transfemme people had/have it "easy" in those societies is a completely different discussion and not what the original post was discussing, because at the very least their existence was recorded, unlike transmasc people, who have almost no historical record whatsoever.

That is what the core of that post is about. It is about the lack of records, and then a discussion about why the historical record lacks transmasc representation.

A lack of records could be caused by a few things:

"There's no record because transmasc people just didn't exist back then". This is dumb, and anyone who believes this is dumb.

Transmasc people existed just as openly as transfemme people, but everyone just decided not to write about us for... some reason? Also very unlikely. Why would no one write about us? This makes no sense.

Transmasc people existed but because they were afab they were oppressed. Therefore, most of them were unable to express themselves, and the ones who did had to stay in hiding for their own safety, and thus had no access to community nor a name for who they were. Transmascs were not acknowledged in the record both because they were hiding and also because most societies are sexist and would therefore never record the existence of transmasc people or take us seriously or see us as anything other than "silly girls playing dress up".

#3 is the reason explored in the original post. This is also the reason you seem to have a problem with.

But it's just a fact: afab people start out oppressed from birth in most societies, both modern and historical. Period. We just do. And I'm sorry, but that does tend to make everything difficult.

I really, really resent that when it comes to discussing trans issues, afab people are repeatedly silenced and told we're not allowed to talk about the fact that we're fucking oppressed from birth, and that it makes our transition journeys hard.

And we get abuse from all sides for being afab! Which is just sexism and misogyny, plain and simple. It's "justified" for all kinds of bullshit reasons, but make no mistake: it's sexism and misogyny.

We get told by other trans people we have "afab privilege" which is fucking laughable and pisses me off so, so much. Thanks, I'm "privileged" to have been born as a marginalized and oppressed sex. Fuck off. We get told that bringing up our birth sex and the fact that we are oppressed for it is "transmisogyny", like you've done here. Fuck off. No it's not. Stop being a sexist asshole for two fucking seconds.

Then we get cis women assholes (like radfems and terfs) shouting at us that we're just "self-hating women" and we're "betraying the female sisterhood" and we're "misogynistic" for transitioning and "joining the enemy".

And THEN, we have to overcome sexism and misogyny before we're even taken seriously in a medical context, before we're allowed to transition! We have to fight for testosterone (which is a controlled substance), meaning we can't legally "DIY" our HRT. We have to beg for hysterectomies and top surgery, all while people try to control our bodies and tell us we're destroying our "beautiful fertile temples". Medical sexism is powerful and dangerous.

It's no fucking wonder to me there's not many records of transmascs in history. "Troublesome young girls" we were kept home under lock and key; we were married off to husbands at a young age who would control us and keep us in our place and make us pop out babies so we'd remember we were really destined to be women and mothers all along. And the trans men who managed to make it? I'm not surprised they kept as quiet as fucking possible about it, because they probably would've been dragged off and treated just as awfully.

The few historical trans men we know about were "oddities" - discovered after death, or part of small communities who accepted them for who they were, or were one-offs mentioned in a newspaper or an ancient text here or there. There was not a society-wide acknowledgement of our existence in historical cultures from around the world. We didn't have a name for ourselves, or community, or anything.

None of this erases the struggles transfemmes go through. None of this is claiming "trans men have it worse". We're literally just saying "no one talked about us and that sucks".

Trans men are just literally begging for the right to discuss our struggles without being told we're trying to oppress trans women in the fucking process. We're begging for the right to lament our lack of representation without being called fucking transmisogynistic for pointing it out.

[onnattiming]

Blog #1 - Atlanta (2016-2023)

“Atlanta” is a TV show created by multifaceted artist Donald Glover. It follows the journey of a college dropout who starts managing his cousin; an upcoming rapper who goes by “Paper Boi”. As their journey unfolds, the group navigates through social and economic obstacles relating to racism, poverty, and class in a drama storyline with hints of deadpan comedy. The show serves as a commentary on these issues, while creating humor in surreal moments and “what-if” scenarios that offer perspective. A couple episodes with these scenarios include if Justin Bieber was black, a black man who identifies as a “trans-racial white man”, and a biracial student trying to prove his “blackness” through stereotypes for a full scholarship. Virtually everything the characters go through seems like a joke on the surface, but you are being shown a deeper perspective on how societal factors of race and class serve as obstacles to some and advantages to others.��The video link below provides a comical scene where Paper Boi is being berated by illogical accusations and stereotypes because of his "background".

Atlanta’s third season introduces a completely new atmosphere by introducing four stand-alone episodes with one-off characters facing similar themes. When first reading “On The Matter of Whiteness” by Richard Dyer, I was immediately reminded about this season and how they tackled the topic of whiteness. The episode “three slaps” starts off following a white man and black man fishing on an eerie lake at night. They start talking about the creepy atmosphere and the white man explains why; the lake used to be a self-governed black town that was later flooded by the state government and that their souls are haunting the lake (this implies to the story behind Lake Lanier). He then murmurs that they were “almost white”. The black man questions him on what he meant by that, where he replies with “white isn’t a real thing, some people just become white” and that "white" is a social concept with no scientific basis. He brings up how the Chattahoochee river was dammed and the people living there refused to leave because they thought they were safe and “paid to be white”, leaving the other man speechless. He ends off by saying “White is when you are, where you are. With enough blood or money anyone can be white. The thing about being white is, it blinds you. It's easy to see the black man as cursed because you’ve separated yourself from him, but you don’t know you’re enslaved just like him”. The ideas reflect very closely to Dyer’s writings of how whiteness functions as a position of privilege and power,  how “white” has been shaped as a social construct, and the “blindness” that comes with being white. 

*clips from Season 3 that tackle the topic of whiteness

The fourth episode of the season titled “The Big Payback'' follows a scenario where many black people start suing certain white people who had ancestry linked to slave owners who enslaved their forebears. We see this happen to Marshall, a white man being a victim of this epidemic by getting sued by a black woman he doesn’t know. As a result, he loses his family and home and ends up staying at a hotel. He stumbles across another white man named “E”, the same man from the previous episode, who is in the same situation. Marshall starts venting to him about what he lost, how he “didn’t do anything” and that they “don’t deserve this”, and E challenges him by asking “what do THEY (black people) deserve?”. Before Marshall can respond, E tells him “slavery is not past, it is a cruel, unavoidable ghost that haunts them in ways we can’t see”. He brings up Marshall’s situation where his daughter will have to grow up without a father and make a name for herself from the ground up, just like they (white people) did to them (black people). As Marshall comes to terms with his future, E reassures him by saying everything will be okay because “the curse they were running from has been lifted” and that they’re free. The episode ends with Marshall working in a fancy restaurant where part of his salary goes towards the woman suing him. As he serves a table, it’s revealed that the waiting staff is dominantly white with the diners being exclusively people of color. This episode relates to concepts covered by Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” which sets out to paint the invisible privileges white people benefit from without realizing it. The plot of this episode made some of those privileges aware to Marshall, one of them being that he doesn’t have to carry the trauma black people carry related to slavery and treatment of their people. Even though he didn’t “do anything” to that woman, he doesn’t see or feel the pain that she carries. This episode brings up a hypothetical scenario with results that would change the definition of class and make white people consider the “blessing" and "curse” of whiteness.

*ending of S3E4, showing a full white staff serving primarily people of color in a fancy restaurant

[pet-shop-of-horror-fan]

Didn’t want to derail with a reblog and don’t know how to really organize my thoughts but… Ok firstly I 100% agree with your post regarding the problem of disability erasure for the sake of queer representation. I see it way more often than I’d like and it gets tiring. To say the very least. I’m asexual and even I wish people would stop looking at characters who are infertile or uninterested in/uncomfortable with having sex and immediately slap the ace label on them. It’s like the other side of the coin of people taking ace characters and insisting that ‘oh but they can still have sex or be sex positive’ for every single one, erasing those of us who aren’t. Sometimes there are explanations for the ways people act that aren’t queer, or romantic, or what have you! Not everything is about us!

I say that because I think another thing fandom often does is use queer headcanons OR disability headcanons to erase other important aspects of a character, and that can be just as bad. An example I’ve seen a lot is people looking at Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ as a metaphor for disability. While I can definitely see how that view makes sense, saying that was the intended interpretation feels… wrong. Looking at who Kafka was and the historical events surrounding the story’s creation gives a very different perspective on what it was about: Kafka was a Jewish man in a time and place where antisemitism was on the rise. He woke up to a world that saw him as vile and detestable for existing, a world that made it incredibly hard to survive without relying on others to do things he was no longer allowed to. The underlying idea of feeling like— or being treated as— a burden on others for existing is, understandably, very relatable. However, something being deeply relatable to one group doesn’t mean you can automatically “claim it”, so to speak, for that group.

Human experience overlaps a lot, but that overlap shouldn’t be treated as substitution; groups having shared experiences means respecting the shared part, not saying a given experience means it represents one group in particular over another. Two people can feel the exact same way about themselves for very different reasons, and that’s something that needs to be embraced more often in fandom, rather than looking at the experience and immediately chalking it up to being only a queer experience or only a disabled experience or something else entirely. Sometimes it’s both, sometimes it’s one or the other, folks need to learn to accept the latter, or even the possibility that it’s none of the above. Along those lines, nobody is immune to bigotry, and the first step to becoming a bigot is believing that you are. This is another lesson fandom needs to learn.

Sorry for this I just needed to ramble my thoughts off and I thought you’d have the best odds of understanding where I’m coming from.

[Post for context.]

Woof, I got to this late. Sorry, Anon.

Anyway, I am not sure if I understood 100% of what you were trying to say but I think we are mostly in agreement.

Though is should be clearly stated that there is a difference between explicit representation and metaphoric ones.

For example, in my original post, I was talking about disabled characters having their disabilities erased to read them as metaphorically trans. This is different from reading Metamorphosis as a disabled vs Jewish story, as Metamorphosis is not explicitly Jewish.

And like many metaphors that may not have been intended to be about disability, it maps on to easly. Let me ask, if someone slowly transphormed as shown in the story, wouldn't that person be disabled? And does the main character's experience not mirror what many disabled people go through?

Even if it was meant to be a Jewish story, due to both the metaphor and vagueness of its internet, it is a disability story.

As for the context you gave, I could not find any smoking gun as to whether or not it was indeed intended as a Jewish story. But taking your word for it, what I said still stands.

And I also have not seen a notable amount of people erase non-disabled stories to make them about disability. But I could just be missing it. IDK.

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Love Flops

It can be very easy to treat anime, as a presence in the media landscape, as a single unifying perspective that connects to and expresses a singular mindset that is itself directly derived from the cultural perspective of the country in which it is commonly produced, and through doing so, be seen as a voice that reduces a region of billions of people into a compressed cultural parody that we simplify in its description through the title of being orientalism. Which is to say as much as it would be fun to treat, say, the data points of Love Flops and Sword Art Online as if they say something about Japan as a culture and Japan’s relationship to the current and prevailing technological nonproducts of Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence, that’s at best a shorthand about trends prevailing in a few scattered examples and in no way indicative of a necessarily extrapolatable truism. It is not through any kind of greater cultural trend that these two anime know dick nothing about the things they claim to be about.

Love Flops is an anime that inspired a manga, and it’s the manga I read because that’s a lot faster than watching a lot of extremely mid anime. The specific reason I investigated it was the implied presence of a potentially interesting trans narrative, and a surprising twist to the narrative, two things that it turns out this anime doesn’t actually have, but also what it has is instead really dumb. Still, to talk about what is going on in this manga, I need to tell you what happens in it and the ending of it is important to that, so here’s the Spoiler Warning. You’re getting the full tengu mask here, I’m not going to elide any details for your enjoyment. Oh and I’m also going to mention something in Revolutionary Girl Utena, which feels almost like an embarrasment. You should watch that first.

And also, if you’re going to investigate this series, just to be clear, here’s a content warning: this story is borderline pornography. I don’t normally talk about ecchi media, but this one seems to have followed a really interesting arc where it started out as an anime that wanted to flirt with the racy material, then got its hand, as it were, under the covers, in the manga, at which point that material stopped being racy and just straight up features extensive sex scenes.

But they’re all imagined, I guess, if that changes how you feel about them.

Behold a protagonist: Asahi. His surrname isn’t important and neither is any actual trait about him. In the harem genre, a landscape of generic nobodies, he is a remarkably bland example of an entity, a unit of story protagonist and an iconographic example of story service. In the great machinery of narrative, he is a grey square lego brick, completely unable to disrupt any of the situations that are meant to lock into his existing slots and tabs. On one completely unremarkable morning, he sees a fortune teller on TV — a historical device for watching ‘broad casts’ from a primitive earlier version of the internet — who gives a list of words that are his lucky terms for the day.

On the way to school, a process that seems to take several hours, he then has a sequence of random run-ins with women that key into the specific keywords. Ooo, fortune tellers are real! That’s an interesting twist! Except in the process these random run-ins include a girl running with toast in her mouth crashing into him lips-first and exposing her underwear (or lack thereof!), a lady with giant boobs crashing them into his hands (or lack thereof!) on the train, a stranger falling down stairs and landing on his face with her crotch (or lack thereof!), interrupting a cleaning robot stealing someone’s underwear (or lack thereof!), and uh, rescuing a young man from being comically sexually assaulted by a dog roughly the size of his thigh (or lack thereof).

And like, this is all done with exactly enough attempt at comedy that you might go: Oh this is an aware story, this knows the tropes it’s doing while it’s delivering this fanservice, so maybe this is going somewhere and making a funny joke about it. You can see the plane coming in for landing here, you know what it’s going to do, you know what’s going to happen now and you just need the story to deliver anything in the process that makes it make sense, to kind of capitalise on the setup.

Anyway, then all these people he had random incidents with are all sitting next to him in his new class, which I understand by the rules of Japanese school involves them being engaged, except the one with the huge boobs that hid his hands on the train and she’s his schoolteacher. Wa wa waaa! It’s four or five harem openings where he had a bunch of meetings with The One True Girl (or boy, there was one boy in that list, don’t forget that) on the way to his first day of school and maybe the narrative wants to pick through that. Though one of them is a teacher and this doesn’t seem to be the kind of story that’s going to do anything difficult there.

And then they’re all at his house.

Because all of them have been part of a negotiated deal with his dad that he needs to marry one of them and they’re just… there. To the point of having built an entire expansion to the house for them to live in. Attached to the house he otherwise lives in alone. In one school day.

Now here’s my question for you, as I had to ask myself, as a reader: How stupid is this being on purpose?

See, the idea of building an entire expansion to the house in less than eight hours is stupid. But is it meant to be stupid, or is it the stupid you’re not meant to examine? In Love Hina, there’s a sequence where a turtle turns into a kaiju and another sequence where a character arrives to pick someone up to school in an immense drilling machine. There are things that any given story shows you that you often filter through the framework of that story’s conventional tropes and expressions of how that story creates and represents its reality. Being able to parse the context of media is part of literacy, and sometimes a story can play with that expectation. Even in really good and cool ways — like in Revolutionary Girl Utena, there comes a revelation in the end of the series that in fact a lot of things you might have imagined were just funny jokes and bit gags in the graphics were in fact real, literal things happening because one of the characters is an actual witch and getting to shape reality according to her story.

And thus the question: How much of your credulity is this series trying to strain?

The rest of the story spills out after this point with a bunch of nonsense that looks like you’d see in a story that was trying to be silly and funny. There’s a bunch of deliberate confusions and exacerbations of the problems he’d already set up, which includes things like the teacher being stalked by international spies, another character endlessly losing her underwear, some more dog-related teasing, and then a character who needs help with her Japanese homework, because she only knows Japanese from watching hentai.

This is where the story settles in, with a series of episodes that escalate, episodic narratives about how Main Character-San (not even familiar enough to be protagonist-kun), gets into some situation with one of these characters, in which a relatively normal doing or going-on is overheard by someone else in the harem, who then imagines a blatantly pornographic interaction between the parties involved. This is where the smut of this series shows up, and it’s almost an interesting idea I haven’t encountered before, where a harem anime gets to include sex scenes of the harems being fulfilled without ever making any of them actually happen and in the process ‘collapse’ the harem polyhedra and end the story.

It does escalate of course. Some of the early plights are about homework. Some of the later ones are about rescuing the teacher from her previous life as a deadly assassin. Some are instead about going to a bathhouse and the strange feelings that come from two dudes negotiating who does and doesn’t want to bone in that kind of social context where they’re just two bros naked and noticing each other’s dicks. There’s an uneven tone here, you see.

Then aliens invade earth and put exploding chastity belts on every male in the world. But don’t worry, one of the girls in the harem is a magical girl who can protect the earth as long as she’s powered up by boning.

I’m almost okay with this, too, because this is an idea I’ve seen in other work, stretched out to its capacity. What Love Flops brings instead is that its story treats all these concepts that are normally full-sized series hooks into instead single-chapter books that are about jamming a bit of a plot around a sex scene that also, probably, doesn’t actually happen. It is however, kind of pushing the boundaries of the world, you don’t get to do alien invasions as an episode of the week in most genres without it having some pretty distinct impact on the world.

Ready?

That’s when our hero wakes up and finds out that he has, in fact, been in a the Matrix where the whole point is teaching an AI program how to be a horny girl who wants to fuck him. Like the whole series is contrived and ridiculous because, surprise! It’s contrived and ridiculous! And those girls he was falling in love with? Don’t worry about them, they’re just AI constructs, they don’t exist!

In the commentary track for Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg describes the way in which he thinks it’d be funny to end a movie abruptly, cut to black, and start playing Little Spanish Flea as the credits roll on the black. It’s a fun idea, and it leads to Fox and I watching movies together and sometimes interjecting on a cut-to-black with a hummed rendition of Little Spanish Flea.

If this was the Little Spanish Flea moment for Love Flops it would be kind of an amazing conclusion to the story. A whole narrative about how unrealistic relationships and imagined thirst and wants and all that stuff is literally a construct and that any character in the centre of it would need the whole universe literally built to consider their needs, and then what it means to step out of that kind of life and how it can be traumatising, I mean, that’s incredible, right? And all the genre conventions about how stupid the things involved with this story make a lot of sense. The world is literally contrived, there’s no hiding from it!

It’s not, though.

No, instead the finale of this story is about how actually, no, our protagonist doesn’t have to confront the question of what it means to be told a story, doesn’t need to consider those characters that were left behind and grow past them. The story even shows the inner life of those characters in terms of all the pornography they imagine, which I kinda find fun, imagining the idea that when an AI is given freedom to try to understand humans the thing it gets obsessed with is sex, a thing a lot of our cultures are also obsessed with?

Anyway, then the researchers make robot bodies for all these girl characters to plant their identities in and they mail these characters to our hero’s real life house, because the idea of them being objects does not seem to occur to the story. He gets them all! Hoorah! Harem ending! And y’know what, as someone who’s more okay with polyamry then I was when I was a kid, I don’t have a problem with the polyamrous part of it as much as I have a problem with the way that most of these characters are literal objects.

Anyway.

Alright, but there, I’ve avoided talking about it for a while now, what about that trans narrative? What about the bit where I talked about two dudes not being sure about how much they wanted to suck one another’s dicks? How can I be speaking with such disappointment about a polyamrous bisexual harem ending if only for the novelty of it?

Okay, one of these characters, Ilya. He’s the boy who was introduced being humped into submission by a dog – he was fully dressed, mind you, and the dog in question is very small. But you see, now you know the twist of the story you can work out that that’s probably a thing you can blame on the conceit that hey, the computer making the scene didn’t know how unrealistic it is to have a full sized human, even a wimpy one, being pinned and bullied by a dog the size of your thigh.

Anyway, the baththouse episode works the way bathhouse episdoes go. The Central Dork of this story is a guy, so he goes to the guy side of the bathhouse, and the girls go in the girl side of the bathhouse, with obligatory talk about curses and peeping and whatever. But then Ilya, well Ilya’s in the harem and he’s a boy! That means he has to be on the same side as our protagonist and there–

There!

Its’ revealed that actually, he’s been a girl all along demanded to present as a boy by her father, with just the most preposterous industrial-strength binder, because this is not a series being drawn by someone interested in boobs from the middle or bottom of the bra store. Do they store bras by height? That seems silly but damnit, we’re this far into this epistle, hell with it. Point is that Ilya is actually Irina, and then, the rest of the episode is her doing various shenanigans to keep trying to impress on The Hero I Guess that she is Actually A Dude, and she attempts to convey this by wearing a tengu mask underneath her towel.

Yeah.

Tengu masks have big prominent noses, which, for those of you who don’t have dicks, you might not realise, that isn’t incorrect for a thing you could use to feign being a dong, but they also are wood and stay in one position, which is not how dongs work, certainly not over time, in a bath. Now, there are some funny things done here! Particularly, Ilya’s performative behaviour of like ‘ah yes, this is how men behave with other men, what do you mean my dong is poking your back?’ is pretty funny as a way to represent the challenges of navigating gender in ways you’re uncertain. It’s not a chapter without charm.

When it’s over though, then you’re left looking at a story that’s about taking one of the few interesting ideas — a harem with a boy in it! — and briefly steps into an interesting space with it — a mis-assigned gender by a parent and changing from that — and somehow uses these two ideas to collapse together in the most boring way that culminates in sudddenly Irina — formerly Ilya — is just another girl in the toybox.

Yeah. There’s Love Flops.

A manga impressive in how aggressively it avoids doing anything interesting with all its interesting parts.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[juniperkinglet]

📕Who is your all-time favorite author, and what makes their writing so special to you? 

🔖What quote from a book resonated with you deeply?

ty for asking!! (this got long oop)

Who is your all-time favorite author, and what makes their writing so special to you?

Oooooh it's hard to say... For many of my favorite books, I haven't gotten around to reading more from their authors, or those authors haven't published anything else. I do have a few current contenders though!

First is Lee Mandelo, author of Summer Sons. I entirely credit that book for getting me back into reading after many long years. I genuinely didn't know books like this could be published; books that delve into grief and depression in such a relatable way, into themes like toxic masculinity and classism from a queer & trans perspective, into protagonists who are far from heroes but are still treated as humans worthy of love and second chances. All featuring a lyrical gothic prose in line with the way I process my surroundings. Absolutely blew my mind, and made me feel like I wasn't alone during a very lonely period. And I wouldn't have heard of aftg or made this tumblr without it!

Second is horror writer Poppy Z. Brite (now Billy Martin). I just started reading his work, most of which was written in the 80s and 90s. I got a collection of his short stories that tore my entire heart out of my chest and spat on it (affectionate[??]), and then immediately bought two more of his books lmao. Currently working through Lost Souls. His writing and its themes are deeply disturbing in a visceral way that I wouldn't recommend to most people, and only with the disclaimer of... basically every content warning you can imagine. Not a gentle intro to horror!

I like the way his stories challenge me, even if it's a kind of challenging I can't take very often. I love his prose (more of that lyrical goth shit I adore). And I admire how, in many of those short stories in that first book, I would hope deeply for a happy ending for characters I'd just met, and was never any less shocked and devastated when I didn't get it. That takes skill.

Third is Pia Foxhall, aka not-poignant on tumblr. I had no idea how much their writing would affect me when I first stumbled across it, like... woah. And most of it uploaded completely for free on ao3!! (I did buy one of his romance novels, but since I'm not much of a romance enjoyer, it didn't grip me as much as his other work.)

The first story I read of theirs, and my all-time favorite, was Falling Falling Stars. I read half a million words of it in three days (not recommended) (canceled all weekend plans) (barely ate or slept) (don't regret but would not repeat). It was my first time reading a POV character who also had OCD and debilitating intrusive thoughts, and I can't explain how much that meant to me. Spending all those words with him ended up making me a much kinder person, to others and to myself. I had major shifts in my view of the world and humanity, all for the better, thanks to that story.

is my author type "transmasc dark fiction writer of deeply flawed queer protags that make me rethink my entire outlook on life"?? maybe so!

What quote from a book resonated with you deeply?

this is sooooooo hard there are so many!!! i'll limit myself to two.

"...Steve's even breathing, the breathing of a man at peace with himself and at truce with the world." -- from Angels by Poppy Z. Brite

It may not seem like a super hard-hitting quote, but it was for me. I gasped out loud and just stared at it for a long while before continuing on. That has become my goal in life. The world is a scary place, for everyone and especially minorities, and I struggle with so much bad brain stuff every day. Loving myself and the world is just too lofty of a goal that's always felt impossible for me. But being at peace with myself, and at truce with the world? That's attainable. I could get there, and it would be enough.

and then an aftg banger:

“Your parents are dead, you are not fine, and nothing is going to be okay. This is not news to you. But from now until May you are still Neil Josten and I am still the man who said he would keep you alive.”

So many lines to go crazy over in this series, but this is the one that always gets me. There's something oddly beautiful and comforting about hearing a character straight up say "Everything is awful and you won't get a happy ending, we both know that. But I'm going to protect you for as long as I can anyway."

It just gets me!! Even though Neil did get a happy ending, it certainly never looked like he would. And I love that Andrew stuck with Neil throughout all that, and didn't give him false platitudes or pretend his situation wasn't awful. It was all kinds of awful, and Andrew was someone with whom Neil could be honest about that, when he couldn't be honest about anything else.

[northern-passage]

i was thinking about making a rec list of IF games recently but i don’t think i quite have the time to really sit down and write a full list right now.. really though i do want to talk about two games i played recently by the same author, and i thought. why not :-)  i’ve been thinking about both of these games non-stop since i played them and i really need to dump all my thoughts about them somewhere.

under a cut because i can’t shut up

first is Venus Meets Venus

this is actually the one i liked the least between the two, but i still found it to be a very interesting read. it’s from 2014, and in my opinion you can definitely tell; it’s aged, but i don’t think that necessarily diminished the story.

it follows the relationship between Lynn, a cis lesbian woman (and the pov character) and Macy, a trans bi woman. Lynn is messy, and selfish, and i find the choice to make her the main pov to be the most interesting part of this story.

i’ll get my complaints out of the way first, which honestly isn’t anything too serious, especially considering the context of the story, but i want to be transparent. i have a particular dislike for the narrative of “gay person is angry at their partner for being in the closet” which this game entertains briefly in the beginning, before Lynn really gets to know Macy. however, i am more forgiving here because it’s apparent Lynn is meant to be... well, messy and selfish, and it feels true to her character that she would actually say this and mean it. 

this scene also leads straight into my next complaint, which is this implication that is made that “queer” is a more inclusive label than “lesbian.” this is a moment where i feel it’s apparent this game is from 2014, but even now this is an issue where people claim lesbian isn’t “inclusive enough” and it’s something that personally really bothers me, as a lesbian. again, in the context of the game, i can be more forgiving - i understand what was trying to be communicated at this moment, and i sympathize with Macy and i understand her fear - but it never really gets brought up again, and it’s just a comment that made me pause a bit.

now for what i liked about the game: i really liked Macy. even though we never get to play as her or hear her thoughts, it’s always refreshing to see trans women portrayed as desirable, and as... actual people. a low bar, i know, but still.

i liked the story choosing to be told from the cis person’s perspective, which surprised me, honestly. it may be a bit heavy handed, reading it now in 2022, but it did such a good job communicating the way cis people - even ones in relationships with trans people - can potentially view trans people. as a monolith, interchangeable, a “movement” rather than an individual person with their own thoughts and ideas and experiences. the way cis people think they are being supportive, but actually are not, especially in regards to the actual trans people in their lives.

i also really liked the writing - it’s well written, and i’m a fan of the prose the author uses to get across certain emotions and ideas, especially when it comes to explaining why Lynn does the things she does. i like that it’s linear - you don’t really get a choice. Lynn is always going to make the worst decisions, and i like that.

now the first one that i played, and my favorite of the two: Draw Everything You See That’s Mine and Yours

i always really love narratives that follow characters over many years, and it’s something that can be harrowing - remeeting someone years later, when things are different, when you’re different... especially as a trans person.

this story follows Dan, a gay trans man who begins the process of transitioning while at college, and Nolan, a gay cis man, and their relationship through the years. i think this author does a really good job writing authentic characters, both in Venus Meets Venus and here, and i really liked this time reading from the trans perspective.

Dan meets Nolan in one of his classes early in college, when they are paired together for a debate presentation. it’s a brief moment in time, and they don’t meet again for a few more years, with Nolan not recognizing Dan after his physical changes from taking T.

there’s a particular scene that, while upsetting, i really liked - Dan’s friends and housemates both trying to lecture him on how to handle being trans. when they find out he’s seeing someone, their first question is “does he know?” and the whole scene plays out in a way that is clear the housemates consider themselves to be concerned and helpful, as opposed to transphobic. they clearly accept Dan as a man, they never misgender him or do anything even close to that - but this conversation just stuck with me as a trans person myself, as something that i’m sure has happened to all of us at one point or another.

being around people that aren’t really hostile, but also aren’t as understanding as they think that are, either.

again, i like the authenticity of these characters, and the way the author chooses to represent a lot of Dan’s thinking, particularly when thinking back to the early days of his transition, his sexuality, and his self-destructive behaviors.

i like how Nolan and Dan live separate lives for a while but simultaneously remain orbiting around each other, even without meaning to, and not in a way that hinders them, either.

Final Thoughts

honestly i recommend both games. again i think reading Venus Meets Venus now, in 2022, some of what it communicates may feel obvious - especially as a trans reader. but that’s also why i liked it. and seeing a story so thoroughly explore a messy relationship between two women - flawed, normal women - is always a nice break from the norm.

i personally enjoyed Draw Everything You See That’s Mine and Yours a little more, and if you’re looking for more.... sweet in your bittersweet than i would read this one. though some of Dan’s reflections may be hard to read, where he talks about past relationships and his family, and the transphobia he’s experienced.

these games are both linear, with links throughout the narrative that allow you to break away from certain scenes and explore the thinking of both Lynn and Dan, which i really liked. a lot of twine games do this, but i felt like this author really nailed it with the pacing and the branching in both stories.

both were relatively quick reads, too, i read them both in one afternoon back to back.

anyways. that’s all :-) if you read this far, thank you 💗

[dykedonalds]

I'm Molly, I'm 22, and I am a reidentified butch lesbian. This is my experience with transitioning and sexuality, and how and why I got here.

At 13 I started experiencing dysphoria and was told by online communities and friends that that meant I was trans. I came out to my parents at 15, started testosterone at 16, started "living as a man" ("passing" and getting referred to as and treated as a man by strangers) at 17, and had a double mastectomy at 19.

Transition is by far not any sort of cure for dysphoria, and is certainly not the best, most effective, or safest way to help dysphoria...but as much as I remind myself of that, as much as I thoroughly understand that, I can't argue that it didn't alleviate my dysphoria greatly. This isn't me saying that I or anybody with dysphoria should medically transition, or that it isn't a money making industry, or that it isn't taking advantage of dysphoric homosexual youth, this is just me saying that there is a reason so many of us have chased it. It felt good, and it still feels good in a way I don't like to admit.

I am aware that deeply ingrained misogyny, homophobia, and rejection based self loathing are what caused my dysphoria, my discomfort with my breasts, my hips, my high voice, etc...but I am not going to try and lie and say that it doesn't feel good to have a flat chest, to have slimmer hips, to have a male passing voice, and to be able to pass as a man if I want to. If I could go back in time and stop myself I would and I would encourage myself to seek therapeutic methods of acceptance instead, but it still feels good.

From 13 to 18 I identified as a "gay trans man". Looking back, this was likely the result of envying the biological sex and gender roles of men, being afraid to socialize with gender conforming girls or women, and being too uncomfortable with my body and sexuality to actually have or even think about having any sort of sexual experience.

At 19, when I actually started having sexual and romantic experiences, I was strictly "T4T"...meaning I only was interested in and attracted to other trans men, more often those who hadn't yet or didn't want to transition. Meaning that when I started having sex, I only wanted to do so with other women. I also started identifying as non binary because it "felt more right". I think this was because I was subconsciously inching my way "closer" to understanding myself as a lesbian.

At 20 I was still calling myself non binary, but bi instead of gay, no longer just T4T and extended my pool of sexual interest to women as well. My "genital preference" was nagging me in the back of my head. Still delusioned by trans rights activism and the rules of gender and sexuality that come along with it, I felt I could either be bi and be quiet about my genital preference, or I could be a non binary lesbian (and claim my butch identity) and be quiet about my genital preference and also never express my attraction to any trans identifying female.

And I decided to take the route of identifying as a butch lesbian. A lot of TRA circles, or at least the ones I am in, are surprisingly and ironically ready to except me as a lesbian who is transitioned. Of course they are doing this on merit of me saying "I am a lesbian" rather than because I am a female who is exclusively attracted to other females.

This acceptance of self was what ignited my changing perspective because it created an obviously true and easy to follow line of logic that was very very hard to ignore, and that I was only able to ignore for about half a year. This line was:

I am a female. I am attracted exclusively to females. I have certain experiences with sexuality, gender non conformity, and gender dysphoria that are only shared by other females who are attracted exclusively to females. There should really be a word for this. There is, it's "lesbian".

This realization led to many many more realizations and I started viewing transess, what it stands for, how it operates, and who it affects more broadly, and when I took in the whole picture, trans rights activism within the context of the world, I understood how real biological sex is. I understood that while the concept of gender identity is something that can make being homosexual and being gender non conforming seem less scary, it is not eliminating or fixing or lessening what makes those things difficult in the first place. I understood that it makes room for heterosexual people, especially heterosexual men, in homosexual and women only spaces. I understood that female is a class. By 21 I was understanding that all the things I had been warned not to listen to "terfs" about are true.

I sympathize with trans identified people, mostly the female ones, and acknowledge that many of them face the same oppression and marginalization that homosexuals and/or women face, though I also acknowledge that when they face these issues they are facing them as a result of homophobia and/or misogyny. Not as a result of "transphobia".

I also sympathize with transitioned trans people, not only because I have been in their position, but also because the industry of medical transition was made to easily take advantage of homosexual and gender non conforming youth, and I do not want to blame said youth for being coerced and fear mongered into it.

My social life is still mostly TRA circles because most of my friends are trans identified females, and (selfishly) because I'd rather be quiet about this and have a plethora of gender nonconforming homosexual female friends than be exiled from the communities I've planted myself in. And that's just the way it is for now.

If you read all this, thank you. And if you didn't, I understand.

[independence1776]

Star Wars Brotherhood

The book was billed pre-release as being about Anakin and Obi-Wan’s relationship, but they spend most of the book apart, even when they’re on the same planet. I found the book both entertaining and frustrating; I’m cutting for length.

The bad:

The second chapter contained two things guaranteed to make me back-button if I see them in fic (Mace bashing* and Anakin thinking the Jedi prize being emotionless**). I’d been forewarned about them by @gffa​’s reviews, which meant I didn’t put down the book but tried to give it a fair shot. 

* It’s very much a “Mace dislikes Anakin and always has” thing… except that’s canonically not true. They get along well in TCW; Mace takes his word when he says Palpatine is a Sith in ROTS. Moreover, in this book, Palpatine manipulates Anakin to think Mace doesn’t care about anything (and by extension that the Jedi don’t). There’s this over-the-top line where Mace walks by when Anakin is talking to Younglings and glares at Anakin for no reason whatsoever! Pretty much all of the scenes with Mace are from Anakin’s POV and Mace’s character reads as bad-faith interpretation based on the racist Angry Black Man reading that many in SW fandom are so fond of.

** Anakin had been with the Order for a decade at this point; he would absolutely know better. This is fanon and misunderstanding sneaking in where it shouldn’t. Moreover, his fall works best when he knows full well what he’s supposed to do as a Jedi— as he states he does in the movies— so this doesn’t work with his characterization as it should.

A lot of my problems stem from Anakin’s POV, but there’s also some things that basically state the Jedi care too much about rules rather than helping people. And there’s just no basis for that in the movies or the shows. It sort-of felt like Anakin was somewhat unreliable in one scene because of Palpatine but also that Anakin was otherwise reliable about the Order and also that while Obi-Wan has a different perspective, that he’s an exception to how the Jedi behave instead of the norm.

 I don’t know if it’s because it’s a YA book or not, and maybe I’m being too hard on it, but sometimes characters made completely illogical decisions in order to further the plot rather than illogical stemming from characterizations.

I definitely didn’t like Mill’s extreme Force-powered empathy/pain sensitivity being something the Jedi weren’t equipped to handle and it being with Anakin she learned to control it because Anakin wasn’t like the rest of the Jedi. The Jedi can all feel others’ pain and suffering; why would they be unable to help her? 

Nor did I like how the Gathering was made to be all about gaining a weapon rather than a sacred ritual to bond with a kyber crystal that goes into the lightsaber, which not solely a weapon. (The Gathering arc well and truly made it clear that this is a major religious/spiritual ritual.) 

Ventress‘ role could have been filled by pretty much any generic Separatist saboteur.

And there are no consequences for Anakin going AWOL from his disaster relief mission, not even an off-hand mention of a lecture or anything; it was a dropped plot point despite it being something of importance earlier in the book.

Good things: 

There are multiple POV characters and it’s easy to tell whose POV it is at any given time, even without the chapter-names-are-character-POV indicator.

There’s a Cal Kestis and Jaro Tapal one-sentence cameo! I think it’s the first time we’ve seen them mentioned in something not related to JFO.

The Anakin/Padmé scenes work because they’re very much in the first flush of their relationship.

Palpatine is Palpatine and I both love and hate his machinations; most of them in the book is him forcing the Jedi to integrate the Padawans and Younglings into the war effort. His specific motivation is outright stated to be so they get to know and trust the clones.

Canon trans clone named Sister.

It makes so much sense that Anakin would abandon his disaster relief mission to help Obi-Wan but way to repeat the mistakes of AOTC and show that Anakin hadn’t learned from it. (I’m guessing there are supposed to be parallels to AOTC and the Wrong Jedi arc, but they’re superficial.)

These few paragraphs were the best Anakin characterization in the book:

That the book was, at its heart, a mission set close enough to AOTC that the Jedi were still struggling to be peacekeepers and diplomats while being dragged further into the war with every passing moment.

The book ends with that: the Senate and Palpatine drafting the Order to become generals and commanders with the Jedi Military Integration Act. I am glad it was made explicit in another Disney canon book that’s more accessible than Star Wars Propaganda.

Overall:

It’s a mix of a book. Each character is written very much from their own perspective. It’s difficult to tell if the writer was going for unreliable narrators (especially with Anakin’s chapters) or not. I’m leaning toward not intentionally but it can also be read that way. There were parts that were fun to read and parts that were frustrating. But it’s not a book I can recommend.

[daisyachain]

hi!! i've been reading through your ao no flag liveblogs lately and they're really interesting! i enjoy seeing someone so passionate about this manga and it makes me want to reread it .... i'm really interested in hearing what you have to say about masumi's ending though!! part of me thinks it makes sense but i'm mostly conflicted on it and would love to see it from your perspective ^^

haha well thank you! ah yes, the arc that created as much controversy as you can get in an active readership of like 10 people...

Blue Flag is an imperfect story, but it also gets a lot of flack for things that a) didn't...actually...happen, b) didn't happen in the way people think they did.

Part 1: Is it actually straightwashing?

The most common criticism I see of Masumi's ending is that she was written as a lesbian character and straightwashed at the end. Marrying off a female character as a way to 'fix' her issues is a common and harmful trope, and saying that lesbian women just need to get a man is a widespread homophobic trope and talking point. So, it's not a good look. To have a character angst over interest in a woman and end up happily married to a guy reads like a '50s pulp novel that just uses f/f attraction for marketing.

But, if the intention of the ending was to show that Masumi should give up on women and force herself to date men, then it doesn't. Mitsuyuki's description of her is 'look at my bisexual wife who has dated both women and men and could also have married a woman', which is an odd choice if the intention was straightwashing. It feels more like a clumsy way to make sure that, in a series full of ambiguity, there could be no argument that Masumi was queer. That isn't to say that cisstraight people don't view bisexuality as less/better than/straighter than her being lesbian and that making a previously gay character bisexual isn't still straightwashing (increasing the appearance of straightness).

Part 2: Was it actually a retcon?

So: Masumi's ending reaffirms that she's a WLW. One question is, was she always meant to be bisexual, or was she originally written as lesbian?

Blue Flag doesn't have a lot of straight (no pun intended) answers. Taichi never expresses any explicit attraction to guys, but there is enough subtext to suggest he's attracted to Touma well before the finale. Futaba believes she is attracted to Touma at first and is shown to be attracted to him using the visual shorthand of manga (blushing, etc.), but she later says that it was just misinterpreted admiration. Mami doesn't want to date Touma or any man, but she implies that she is attracted to Touma when she says around him she was 'glad to be a woman.' Within the main romance, Futaba says that it was specifically because Taichi was a friend to her that she grew to like-like him. The lines between friendship and romance are blurred in Blue Flag, and sometimes romance can only grow out of friendship.

Masumi has a tense conversation with Taichi in the first half after she breaks up with her boyfriend that most people (me included) read as her saying that she tried guys and she just isn't and can't be attracted to them. However, it's Blue Flag, so the conversation is unfocused and doesn't paint a complete picture.

"Even if I get a boyfriend, I can never make it work"/"I don't know why [I don't like him anymore]" seem to imply that Masumi realized that she was feeling compulsory heterosexuality and that she will never like men. "[I don't know] why he like someone like me"/"You can be friends with potential sexual partners? With both guys and girls?"/"I just wanted to hear how you men feel about [a girl liking other girls]" seem to imply that Masumi is bisexual and is afraid to date because someone might find out. Maybe she's written as questioning--she knows she likes Futaba, but she's feeling out other possibilities. It's Blue Flag, so it's unclear.

Part 3: How does it work with Masumi's arc?

Diving further into Masumi's story, she acts as a foil to Touma (and Futaba, see later). Touma feels free to show his affection for Taichi as a friend as well as a love interest and almost confesses to him of his own free will, well before he's forced to. Touma tells her that he intends to try and set Taichi up with Futaba (because they would be good for each other), and also that he intends to pursue Taichi in some way. He tells her he's "not like [her]."

For Masumi's part, she tells Touma that she wants to express more affection for Futaba--not necessarily in a romantic way, just to participate more fully in that relationship--but she's afraid to, she doesn't feel confident enough to try, and that she's "the worst" because of it. We see this theme repeated, that Masumi is pessimistic, is afraid to trust people and hates herself for being afraid. Her conversations with Aki and Mami explore this; Aki tells her that it's not bad to be insecure or unready and that it's fine to keep a secret/stay closeted until she's ready, Mami tells her that she does have people she can trust, who care about her and who will do their best to understand her and help out. Why am I typing all this out? Because Masumi is a bitter, insecure wlw and that is an Established Trope, but her twist on it is that her negativity or bitterness isn't over her attraction to women/to Futaba or even over the reaction she might get from others (as Touma's is), it's over her own insecurity. Like Futaba, she's hesitant to act on her feelings, and like Futaba, she gets frustrated and hates herself for her own inaction.

All that is to say--Masumi is never shown to have a problem with her attraction to women. Her angst isn't gayngst, she's not ashamed of her feelings for Futaba bur rather her inability to express them. Her problems are with social attitudes and more with her own personal feelings--she and Touma face similar problems, but Touma is simply aware of the consequences (being roughed up and ostracised by a certain group of people) while Masumi feels a more generalized and ambiguous fear.

If Masumi were shown to have mixed feelings about her queerness/were shown to be in denial/were shown to be trying to move on from Futaba, then her ending would read more as straightwashing. As it is, there's nothing in her character and arc to say that she'd ever want to erase that part of herself or get rid of it, rather, she wishes she could embrace it but she just doesn't feel confident in doing it. Her ending shows her as an openly bisexual woman who is out to her friends and husband at the very least, which is a completion of her arc in the manga (of learning to trust other people and express her feelings honestly).

Part 4: What context clues does the rest of the series give us?

This is branching off a little from the strict text of Parts 1-3. As I've said, as we know, Blue Flag is 50% subtext and interpretation. Characters speak, but they don't say what they mean, characters think, but they're not always honest with themselves or in tune with reality. Mami is an ominous and antagonistic figure in the first half, but then it just turns out that Taichi was jumping to conclusions. Taichi is the main character and narrator, but we get radio silence from him for like 7 chapters after the climax. Taichi is bisexual, but the reader has to guess that from the way the art style shifts between PoVs, the similar panelling between Futaba and Touma's confessions, the things he does and does not think about Touma and how he feels about them. It's safe to say that there is room for speculation.

First, there is no explicit evidence that Taichi could be bisexual before ch 54. It's easy to tell that he is, but again, there's nothing specific. Some people reading Blue Flag have said that him marrying Touma was out of character, unforeshadowed, bizarre, inexplicable, etc. because their experienced is coloured by their own heterosexuality. Masumi is shown to have dated a guy and in saying she didn't like him "anymore," implied that she did like him. Her conflicted feelings over her bf could well have been foreshadowing her liking men as well, and my reading that as comphet could have just been my own experience colouring the text. Who knows! Taichi's bisexuality was intentional from the start but could be read as a last-minute twist, so why not Masumi's?

Second, Mitsuyuki is Futaba 2.0. Same colouring, same personality. This could feel like a way of saying "Masumi just needs to like guys instead," but to me it reads deeper with some of the trans subtext around Futaba. One of my issues with Blue Flag is that it doesn't go further into Futaba's admiration/envy for masculinity and her uncomfortable relationship with femininity. As a cis woman who wants to be buff and mildly masculine, I can understand why she's a cis girl throughout and I don't necessarily think that she was supposed to be a trans guy. However, her relationship with masculinity draws a parallel to Mitsuyuki. Reading Mitsuyuki as a cis man, he is the combination of Futaba's personality and looks with her 'ideal form.' So, Masumi marrying Mitsuyuki can read as Masumi marring Ascended FutabaTM.

Third, Futaba having a faceless prop husband is interesting in the context of Mitsuyuki getting a name and personality. Mitsuyuki = Futaba and Mr. Kuze is a blank space, so the reader is prompted to reduce the scenario and slot Masumi into that blank space. Given Masumi and Touma's history as foils, I'm inclined to think that Mitsuyuki exists to show the road not taken. Back at the fireworks, Touma tells Masumi that he hasn't given up on Taichi, and Masumi says she doesn't intend to pursue Futaba even though the pining is making her miserable. Given that Futaba reacts a lot better to the idea of Masumi liking her than Taichi reacts to the idea of Touma liking him, given that we see Masumi has successfully wooed male!Futaba, I think that Masumi's ending shows that she could have ended up with Futaba if she chose to pursue her. She didn't and she still got a happy ending where she is confident in her sexuality and unafraid to trust, but she could have also had a happy ending where she married Futaba. Mitsuyuki is a man because desire-for-masculinity is a key aspect of Futaba's character, and Mitsuyuki is a named character with a personality because KAITO wanted the reader to know that Masumi could have ended up with Futaba (as Touma ended up with Taichi).

Fourth, KAITO's notes on volume give us a few hints. He comments that there was remarkably little interference with his story and that he was able to tell it as he wanted, and that the ending was meant to be a "question" to the reader. The way I see it, Masumi's ending wasn't meant to say "maybe you'll be fixed if you get a man" but rather was meant to complement Taichi's ending and say "things happen in ways you might not expect, but that doesn't mean they're bad."

Fifth, Touma/Taichi ending up together shows us that the series is willing and able to show queerness as a good thing and a happy ending, so it's unlikely that Masumi was meant to come off as "actually she just needed a man" and more as "life can be unpredictable but you can always find happiness"

Summary

It's unclear whether Masumi was written as a bisexual woman or a lesbian woman or a questioning wlw

I personally read her as a lesbian and I wish that part of her character had gotten more exploration

Masumi's ending wraps up her arc (struggling to trust other people with her feelings in general and her queerness in particular) in a satisfying and logical way

Masumi being bisexual does not in any way negate or lessen her identity and experienes as a wlw, bisexual people still face external and internalized homophobia and all the associated issues

Masumi's bisexuality may well have been foreshadowed, but the execution makes it easier to read her as a lesbian, which makes her ending seem like a homophobic cop-out in the style of the Hays Code

Masumi's ending doesn't straightwash her and goes to unusual lengths to affirm her attraction to women

Masumi's ending seems to be written to contrast Touma's ending, showing that getting or not getting the love interest depends entirely on whether you choose to pursue them

It's unlikely that authorial intent was to straightwash Masumi

[ajaxwrites]

Genshin Impact Fanfic Rec List

(because this is my most current obsession~~)

The Narwhal of Dihua Marsh by GreyLiliy

Childe hears of a strong Adeptus living at the Wangshu Inn. Despite warnings from Zhongli that fighting Xiao would be a deathly mistake, Childe seeks out the Adeptus living in the Dihua Marsh eager for a proper fight.

However, Childe severely underestimates his opponent, and the consequences of his actions may keep him from returning home to Snezhnaya.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: This fic is interesting primarily because it's not necessarily what you would call an easy story to read. The content can surprisingly get quite heavy as the relationship between Childe and Zhongli isn't healthy and it becomes increasingly obvious as the story progresses. You swing between wanting to separate the two and also desperately wishing that they'll work out because there is something there. The story snowballs from what seems like an innocuous, if stupid and rash, decision on Childe's part to a complicated mess that you can’t help but be enthralled in. I went in expecting your typical romance and ended up in something that was more complex than I expected but also beautifully thought provoking.

Entirely Out of Spite by Bgtea

"Welcome to a new user experience! You have triggered this interface with the keywords, ‘Stupid game! Stupid devs! I want my f*****g money back!’ You are now bound to the character Tartaglia, the Eleventh Harbinger of the Fatui, codename: Childe! We hope you have an enjoyable user experience and we welcome you once again to Genshin Impact 2.0!”

Those are some of the first words Ajax, starving college student extraordinaire, has the misfortune of hearing upon waking up in a brave new world from what he's fairly sure is a very, very fatal accident involving water and a shit ton of electricity.

Okay, so he's not dead. That's good. But what's this about him being stuck playing the character Tartaglia? Tartaglia, as in the shitty, one-dimensional, cartoonish villain who met his untimely, gruesome death in the first act of the original game?

Fuck that noise. Like hell Ajax is going to share that fate.

And so begins one man's journey to unfuck himself.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Whenever this updates, I squeal. If you’re a fan of The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System or just transmigration/reincarnation plots in general, you’re going to love it. Bgtea does a beautiful job in balancing humor with the trauma that comes with the whole reincarnation plotline. The whole of it is beautiful written and watching Childe/Ajax interact with the other characters (and the perspective of those characters) is a delight! 

the sister by glassdrachma

The tragic and unexpected death of Zhongli-xiansheng of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor occurred to the sorrow of many and the deep skepticism of a few.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: glassdrachma has a gift for humor and romance. In short, Zhongli fakes his death for plot reasons and comes back as Jianlao, the bereaved twin sister. Shenanigans ensue, featuring overprotective Liyue-ians (?), chaotic gremlin Venti, and Kexing. Very light hearted, good for the soul.

The White Cicada Society by clementinesgulag

After his little brother is bundled back to Snezhnaya, Childe makes good on his promise to the traveller and takes the first boat out of Liyue Harbor. Any sense of homecoming lasts about as long as an uncooked steak in front of Xiangling, however, when his boat sinks, grounding him back in the mainland.

It's just as well, because the next morning, a body is found in the Northland Bank. A visit from a fellow Harbinger reveals a far more insidious plot than anything Childe could concoct with a god of the vortex and twenty minutes without supervision. The murders aren’t limited to the one Bank. They’ve been trailing down the Liyue border, getting closer and closer to the city. The Tsaritsa has a new mission for him: to figure out who, or what is targeting Fatui forces.

Against his best wishes, Childe is forced to see Zhongli again at the morgue. It becomes clear that he’s going to need a guide, and Childe resolves to quash his pride, and their differences to request his help to navigate Liyue and solve the case.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: A diamond in the rough that I slept on and then stumbled back to by accident. I had it marked for later on AO3 and forgot about it for like a good week to my utter self-disgust. It. Is. So. Damn. Good! The mystery is intriguing but I live for the realistic portrayal of the aftermath of the whole gnosis plotline. The betrayal, the bitterness, but ah, the sexual tension. The harbinger interactions in this fic make it gold though.

Lungs full of Roses by SecretlyACatLady

Childe had always assumed that he would die young. He had accepted that a long time ago, ever since he accepted the mantle of a Fatui Harbinger. However, he always thought that he would die in a glorious fight, his body broken but spirit relishing the strong opponent that had bested him. He was okay with that type of death.

Unfortunately, it seemed like Fate had decided to add one last insult to injury, because, here Childe was, dying because he had fallen in love with the ex-Geo Archon. The same Archon who seemed to have discarded him like an old toy ever since the Osial Incident. --- In which divine beings are cruel and a cursed Childe starts preparing for his inevitable death because no Archon could ever love a mortal.

…Right?

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: The fic that started it all for me, the one that sucked me into the fandom. This fic is heartbreaking. We always do love a hanahaki plotline but something about the way it frames the disease and the shame that comes with it...I highly recommend giving it a read. The angst is real I tell you.

The Bride of The Golden Dragon by Erika_Bee

“You’re to be sent on a special mission, Tartaglia.”

The young man’s eyes gleamed in interest. “How special?” He asked as he wiped the blood off his daggers.

His superior grinned. “Special enough to put your name in Snezhnaya’s history books.”

—

In which the Archon War ravaged the land of Liyue and to ensure the people’s survival, the God of Geo established the Harvester Contract: One bride per village, every year, in exchange for protection and a good harvest.

Or: Childe is sent on an undercover mission to kill the Geo Archon, but things don’t go as planned.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Don’t let the title scare you off--this isn’t one of those fics where they feminize one of the male characters and reduce their personality to a mindless submissive bobblehead to the point that I want to throw my laptop out of the window. Not that there’s anything wrong if you like that kind of thing, just not my cup of tea. This fic though---READ IT! There’s just something refreshing about the writing and the plot, the way that Childe’s character reads off the page. I live for the interactions between the characters and how the author has mapped the relationships. Warning that recent chapters have swerved decided into NSFW territory though.

the brothers grim by izabellwit

Left in an unfamiliar land with a mission he never wanted, a young Kaeya lies, survives, and somehow finds a family in the process.

Or: How Kaeya came to Dawn Winery, and why he left it. Includes lore, sibling bickering, found family struggles, and a more in-depth look at the years between Kaeya’s arrival and Crepus’s death.

Ships: N/A

Notes: Ahh, little Kaeya. Cheeky ass little shit that’s too angsty and adorable for his own good. I don’t have words for this fic. It makes my heart warm but also makes me want to weep because god, this fic covers exactly how traumatic Kaeya’s situation is and why child soldiers/spies just shouldn’t be. And the dynamic he has with Diluc and Crepus--do me a favor and read it. Screams found family.

the wind through the mountain tops by glassdrachma

Boredom brings Barbatos of Mondstadt to bother a certain ex-Archon of the Earth.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: A light-hearted, humorous and fluffy as hell piece. Short word is that Venti comes to Liyue for some fun, causes chaos, accidentally plays matchmaker, and steals some vegetables. A get-together fic for Childe and Zhongli that includes a surprisingly self-aware (if blunt and snarky) Zhongli and jealous Childe that gets increasingly flustered.

melt (speak or forever hold your peace) by anatakana

Falling into bed with Diluc was an unbelievably bad idea given their tumultuous shared history, but Kaeya’s impulsive urge to amuse himself knew no bounds.

It’s all fun and games until emotions got involved.

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: THIS IS NSFW. With plot though? This is THE FIC that got me shipping the two (though the game did a good job on its own). The angst is real here and we love the sheer gal of both of these two stupid men.

Cascading (In a good way) by Hubbleablubble

Kaeya is a fascinating annoyance.

(Or: A series of events in which Albedo gets to know Kaeya, and they slowly go from strangers to acquaintances to something more.)

Ships: Albedo/Kaeya

Notes: Sweet fic. Not my typical ship pairing. Loved the Khaenri’ah mentions. Kaeya is Trans FTM here though it’s only briefly mentioned. There is also an incomplete sequel (as of May 2021) featuring an Overprotective Big Brother Diluc on a warpath giving shovel talks to everyone except apparently Albedo that’s also worth reading.

The Language of Flowers by Jules (Penwyn)

Kaeya Alberich has made a habit of lying—after all, the only truths he’s ever spoken cost him everything—but there are only so many lies a man can tell before the truth comes spilling out.

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: Hanahaki! Except not! Basically, Kaeya pukes up flowers that say the truth whenever he lies. Cue, angst! Lovely and quick read--love Kaeya’s voice here.

i know i'm where i'm meant to go by paperclips (pastel_paperclips)

"Childe," Zhongli says suddenly. "I am enjoying myself greatly."

Childe’s face breaks into a grin. "Then-"

Zhongli gasps, grabbing his wrist and tugging him over to an unsuspecting peddler with a cart full of rocks. "Is that an intrusive igneous pegmatite formed in the Inazuma regions?"

Childe’s grin smooths into a small, adoring smile. He has all the time in the world to figure the other man out.

OR: Finding the Geo Archon is on Childe's to-do list but hanging out with Zhongli is significantly more fun.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Childe, you idiot. Humorous and funny, very light hearted. Makes you wonder if Childe has an IQ. He’s too busy pining/lovesick to realize that he told his target that he’s going to kill him for his gnosis. Zhongli and Liyue remain confused on how Childe still DOES NOT get it but half-ass hiding his Archon status anyway.

the bird without wings by Anonymous

"Kaeya!" someone yells. Small arms wrap around his waist tightly, red hair spilling out of the ponytail, and Kaeya's heart almost stops.

He's talked his way out of all types of situations. From placating international disputes to buttering up his informants, he's always had a quick response to everything.

But for once, Kaeya is speechless. He stares down at the boy with puffy cheeks, slightly crooked teeth and sparkling bright eyes.

Eight year old Diluc beams back.

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: Diluc gets de-aged and Kaeya gets angsty. The interactions between the two are heartwarming and will induce tears. Childe makes a brief appearence that *chef’s kiss*

call me "lover boy" by Anonymous

Zhongli turns back, eyes bright with amusement, a stray lilypad still stuck in his hair, and Childe thinks, wow. I want to kiss him stupid.

Childe's not into the whole "swooning maiden patiently waiting for his beloved to swoop down and smooch the daylights out of him" thing. Nah, that's not his style. He's Tartaglia, eleventh of the Fatui harbingers, and he's going to kiss Zhongli right now.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: FUNNY AS HELL. Childe is straight up just trying to plant one on Zhongli but fate and people just keep interfering. It’s a weird trope aversion where the character is actively trying to confess rather than avoiding it but life gets in the way. 

springtime in snezh-nya-ya by miaomaomei

Tartaglia’s body moves before he can even think about it. He arches his back and flattens his ears against his head, baring his teeth in a hiss. Considering he barely even reaches Scaramouche's knees — Scaramouche, of all people! The guy is practically the size of a fourteen-year-old — he doubts that he is cutting as imposing a figure as he hopes.

It isn't a surprise, though. No one could become a Fatui Harbinger if they were scared of a little cat.

OR

Tartaglia is turned into a cat and he goes to Zhongli for help. It goes about as well as expected.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: TOO ADORABLE FOR WORDS. This is just pure fluff I swear. Love how Childe is written and the interactions between the two are just ahhhh. A balm on the soul.

Melt by tanktrilby

“My name is Diluc,” he says. A scowl naturally furrows his brow, and Kaeya looks like he wants to laugh.

He’s looking at him through his lashes again, blue eyes teasing and warm. “Diluc,” he says. “A knight in overalls isn’t quite where I thought my preferences would lie, but here we are.”

(or: Kaeya loses his memories and makes some assumptions. Diluc can't honestly tell him that he's wrong.)

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: As the summary says, Kaeya loses his memories. Diluc plays babysitter for plot reasons. Meanwhile, Kaeya freaks out and has an essential crisis because his instincts freak him out which = angst. Simultaneously, sort of love confessions? 

you are cordially invited by ktenologious

When the Traveler receives a mysterious invitation from a Snezhnayan businessman, they seek out help from the only Snezhnayan they are on good terms with. They decide it is a wonderful idea to go to this business party in the middle of the ocean because, well, what could be better entertainment than watching a Fatui Harbinger at work? It is too bad Childe couldn't come with them...

Meanwhile, the Tsaritsa needs someone to track down the source of a brand new drug at a party on a cruise; it just so happens that she has two Harbingers who specialize in causing chaos and sinking ships. Scaramouche is a sadist and loves this, and Tartaglia... Well, Tartaglia just wants to know why is he the one in the dress again.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe, sort of Diluc/Kaeya & Scaramouche/Childe

Notes: Features a crossdressing Childe and Kaeya for plot reasons. Funny as hell. Love Fatui dynamics/interactions. Highly recommend. Go read it. I’m serious. It’s so beautiful, I can’t. Also Zhongli is so love-sick and jealous, it’s hilarious.

The Road to Snezhnaya by paranoid_fridge

Everything's done and over. Now, Zhongli only needs to adjust to living like an ordinary mortal. Or that is what he thinks until a familiar face shows up in Liyue. Teucer comes looking for his brother who failed to return to Snezhnaya on the Fatui ships. And as Childe's declared "friend", Zhongli must help Teucer find him.

Or: Teucer drags Zhongli on a cross-country goose chase looking for Childe. Zhongli just happens to find a bit more along the way.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: I have no words for this fic outside of the fact that it is clear that Teucer has the only functioning brain and should be Best Man because he obviously did all the work here. Features an oblivious Childe and overprotective Zhongli, plus bystander Kaeya that is getting allll of the gossip. And also the most destructive group of children ever.

basket of knives by oronine

“I just want to be loved,” Childe says to himself, to whoever is listening. “Is that too much to ask?”

They are on the roof once more, this time Childe’s foot touches the edge of the building as he daydreams of something that cannot be. The sky is blank and cloudy and perhaps Lumine fears it’ll all end when he takes a step.

“Not at all,” she says. It’s still the truth.

Contrary to popular belief, Childe hates his family but loves them all the same.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: TW for suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, self-harm, depression, etc. Not a light read by any definition. Set in a modern AU, not in the genshin impact universe. Features a Childe that is Not Okay, good friend but also probably traumatized friend Lumine (and her brother Aether), and Zhongli. Family dynamic is messed up as hell and explores mental health quite well in my opinion. I’m not sure how healthy necessarily Childe’s relationships are but I think that’s a given considering the context and how derailed his mental health is in this fic. Definitely angst as heavy, made me tear up quite a bit. Read, but pay attention to the content/trigger warnings as it does get quite explicit.

Bane of All Evil by tzitzimeme

When Chongyun unintentionally offends Liyue's second most powerful adepti, he vows to mend the thorny relationship between Adeptus Xiao and human exorcists-- even though no one has succeeded in currying Xiao's favor for over a thousand years.

His best friend Xingqiu offers to come alone, mainly because he's worried about what kind of trouble Chongyun will run into. Along the way, they receive help from others: Xiangling packs them meals for their journeys, while Zhongli gives them advice on what demons to track.

Childe is just there because he thinks the whole thing is hilarious.

Ships: Chongyun/Xinqiu

Notes: JFKLFJS I LOVE THIS. I love Chongyun’s characterization and the interaction between all the characters. The dynamic between Chongyun, Xingqiu, and Xiangling are to die for. Also, this line: “Stuck-up Persnickety Bastard.” Random note but Xiao throws Chongyun off a balcony yet is also 100% a softie.

Talks about Nothing by tzitzimeme

In which Zhongli unlocks the Memory of Dust, only to find out:

1. Guizhong is 100% alive (just disembodied) within it, 2. Guizhong has been watching over him this whole time, and 3. Guizhong is very excited by the prospect of Zhongli getting a cute Snezhnayan boyfriend.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe, Venti/Xiao

Notes: The pure judgment that Guizhong unleashes on Zhongli (as well as her sass in general) is pure comedic gold. The dynamic between Xiao and Venti are also adorable. Meanwhile, Childe misunderstands and also just wants to know what the fuck is going on.

xi wangmu by tzitzimeme

Xiangling scales entire mountains to satisfy the palettes of her two pickiest customers.

(Or, two men who are emotionally stunted by their own immortality inadvertantly turn an overly enthusiastic chef into their messenger pigeon.)

Ships: Zhongli/Xiao (?)

Notes: Not sure if it reads romantic exactly, can definitely be read as platonic. The fic boils down to Xiangling trying to expose Xiao to variety because just eating plain almond tofu is a no no. Zhongli gives advice/uses Xiangling as a messenger pigeon. Backstory is explored!

Falling (Fallen) by asinglecrow

It’s only when Childe finds himself in front of Zhongli, a spear protruding from his stomach, that he thinks oh I might have fucked up.

Or: The worst (best) day of Childe's life.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Funny and lighthearted! Gets sort of NSFW with passing mention of mpreg but otherwise, it’s just pure humor/fluff. Get-together fic featuring deadpan dragon Zhongli and Childe that is just done with everything. 

the louvre by morisuke

Here in Liyue, the air is filled with the ocean, and the sun shines through the mountains like it’s flowing through a crack in the sky. Here in Liyue, there is a man with no wallet at a vending machine that is going to waste the rest of his day showing a stranger around their school campus for a pocket sized can of iced coffee.

It’s interesting here in Liyue, Childe thinks.

or

Where Childe flirts with a stranger at a campus vending machine.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Set in a modern/college AU. This is a relatively quiet, soft kind of story. Childe comes to Liyue because reasons and falls in love quietly. It’s more of a snippet of life type of fic that’s sweet and peaceful. Love the change that comes over Childe as he finds a home.

[deerydear]

I'm sorry if this is triggering to discuss, but I suffered from an autoandrophilic condition when I was younger.

I wonder whether this was caused by my own choices: my choice to be afraid of the outside world and other people, rather than attempt to pursue them as myself. Thus I saw myself more readily behind a mask (a woman behind the mask of a man pretending to be a woman). It even can feel triggering to admit I was a girl, a woman, and not something transmuted...

I did this sort of play, before "trans identity" came into my awareness. I even played it with other girls at my school. Funny, it isn't unnatural to refer to us, collectively, as "girls", but alone I am a "man".

I used to be discomfited by harshly-masculine descriptors.

After I took testosterone HRT for two years, I developed a taste for them.

Yet, my sexuality also had changed. I believe that this was due to the effects of the hormones, but there was an element of conscious choice. I felt like I had to accept that I was becoming male, or else "I would lose the game" that I had set myself upon. ...but I don't think I really wanted to be gay-gay. It was one thing to imagine it.

I felt a lot of distance between myself and "normal guys". Throughout my life, I felt that this was because of the mythologized and differentiated ways that boys and girls are instructed in our society. I thought that if a boy was raised as a girl, then I should be much like him... or vice versa.

Now, having undergone a partial male-puberty, I disagree with this. "Male" means something completely different than I had imagined it, as a girl. I had *thought* I was so much more informed, smarter than other girls in what it meant... but I wasn't.

I was limited by my own perspective as a biological female.

I thought that I could have changed this with cross-sex HRT, but then... I found that I became someone who wasn't "myself", as I defined myself as "myself".

"but isn't that term of thinking folly, then? If 'yourself' can be taken away from you by biological processes?"

Are we ever truly alive, if we can die?

Is there not something beautiful in being mortal and animal?

I haven't tried to put some sorts of thinking into a thesis, because they feel very squishy and soft -- malleable.

There is a part of the psyche that is instructed. That is: it learns from the outside world and it may seek to recreate what it finds within itself, such as a child mimicking a parent's actions, in learning how to live in the world.

Although I feel that this process can continue within someone's whole life, and it never need be finished. After all, [it feels like] an end to it would be an end to all learning. There's so much more to be learned in life. We aren't dead, as adults.

We find people in stories.

I've actually been considering one of my heroes from childhood: Light Yagami.

I feel, in my personality, that I am much like the man, Teru Mikami... who followed Kira until his death.

Yet, it's only a story... and each person who reads it has developed their own personal feeling about the events that unfold.

My reading isn't the only reading.

The story focuses on Light's perspective: his thoughts, his justifications, his life... I easily find myself understanding his reasoning.

I first read the story when I was twelve years old. I had little real-life experience in the criminal-justice system. but I knew that for a crime to be prosecuted, it had to be reported... and even if it went to trial, it wasn't guaranteed a punishment for the offender.

What I wasn't thinking about, at the time: There are so many people who have had their lives ruined by a false conviction. They are punished for a crime they had not committed. This happens.

Kira relied on news reports to know who he was going to punish. He was not omniscient. He had likely killed hundreds of innocent people, without differentiating them from the truly guilty. Meanwhile, there could be crimes committed underground, which he would have no way of knowing about: who was truly innocent...

It could rely on so much "he-said, she-said" misdirection. People can lie about eachother, for revenge. They can accuse someone of a crime, to ruin their reputations...

That's why we have trials of law, nowadays.

They don't always reach a fair verdict. They haven't always been executed fairly. Means have been used to keep guilty people out of prison, or to throw the innocent into jail.

That's the pain of living in this world.

We just have to figure it out.

So my point in bringing this up:

This writing comes from the inside of the mind of someone else: A fallible person. Just like anyone walking this earth, in that capacity for self-deceit.

We may want to deceive ourselves in believing we know what's best for ourselves or the world, but we don't always.

We aren't omniscient... (At least, I'm not...)

Our own emotions have a way of deceiving us.

The emotion might squabble out: "I truly need this to happen, or else I won't be happy!"

Meanwhile the rest of the mind, gathered into an assembly, watches with patience and longsuffering... as this whiny pop-star has its moment of eminence under the spotlight.

Knowing...

Sometimee people are unreliable in dictating themselves, narrativistically.

I had started writing my response, because after reading this man's writing... it reinforced the self-narrative.

I started to think to myself: "What if auto(gyne/andro)philia is a real disorder based on neurology? What if I was born with a predisposition to it?

What if I only returned to my natural female identity because of the sexuality-reversal that happened, whereby I became attracted to females? What if I became an (FtMtF) autogynephile?"

but this was a misremembering of how events had transpired.

It made me 'feel good', in some way...

This emotion would leave me with a restless agitation, "to prove myself", afterwards... if I let it burn its way through me.

I felt it, often, when I was a teenager trying to take on a trans "mask".

Suddenly, I wanted to "prove it" to other people, to be witnessed. It wasn't satisfied with itself.

I feel a sense of cool relief, after truthfully trying to lay it all out, instead of chasing this fire-dragon.

The reason that I define my autoandrophilia as a mental-disorder is because I lost that attraction to male traits, as I developed them myself.

I was only attracted to them "because they were something I didn't possess, in my own body"...

As anyone of normal heterosexuality may feel.

My difference came in how I filtered these feelings. It was my own mind playing tricks on me.

"I'll be happier", It's lying.

I used to hear deep male voices, and I would feel amorous.

Then, I have my own deep voice rumbling in my own bodily throat...

I try to emphasize "my own body", because my sexual train-of-thought says: "Don't lovers become 'of one flesh'? Wouldn't his throat become yours?"

Yes, in a secret way beyond words.

He becomes part of me, I become part of him. That seems like the natural course for sexuality.

So then, how is this a disorder?

Because I'm trying to be two people, without them ever being two people. Two don't become one, one became one. One half of a whole... always one.

I hear my own deep voice, and the other voices of men, then I feel territorial. I feel the same cool detachment that I felt towards other people of the same sex (females), before I transitioned.

After coming off cross-sex HRT for two years, I feel "more normal". but I still can feel the traces and the outlines of the changes wrought on my body.

Just like I may always have a thickened larynx, and my voice will always have a different pitch than it started with.

It really is. I've been "training" my voice by my own standards, as someone who used to be female... I think I oughta know how to do it, but the muscles are just completely different. I don't want to be a barbie doll. I want to be me. I don't want to be "some other woman", I want to be me.

I wasn't satisfied, as an autoandrophile pretending to be a man, because I wasn't a man on my own terms. I would never develop real male genitalia. The most I had was clitoromegaly.

Some people (who I used to associate myself with) would have accused me of harboring "internalized transphobia", but aren't transgender individuals supposed to be satisfied with the outcome of their sex-changes?

What if you aren't satisfied? Are you supposed to try to brainwash yourself into liking it?

"Not enough to change your body, now change your mind"? --- The same mind that got me into this whole mess?

Carl Jung wrote:

Unfortunately, the good person who has bound his strength will all-too-easily find slaves for his service, since there are more than plenty who yearn for nothing more strongly than to be alienated from themselves under good pretense.

I was acting in this manner. I wanted a storybook to live inside of; forgetting mundanity.

I did try brainwashing myself, and all it did was confuse me even more. It never brought relief. Only by telling the truth, did I find relief.

the other day i started reading an anthology of transsexual/transgender memoirs and was really shocked by the first one in there. it’s from the 1880/1890s and is taken from the psychopathia sexualis by richard freiherr von krafft-ebing (freud’s mentor) which was one of the first texts on sexual pathology.

it’s an autobiography by someone i guess i would categorize today as an autogynephile and who would probably (maybe?) identify themself as a trans lesbian (in this political climate). it was kind of crazy how similar all of the things they were saying line up with stuff today but also provided a strange amount of clarity on how sexist (etc.) heterosexual/bisexual transwomen’s thought processes are.

it’s shocking to me how the pattern is the same. it’s an honest account of fetishization. the most shocking thing to me was when on the last page, now an old man, wishes they were a young woman so they could pursue their young friend who is a “masculine woman”, who they are very attracted to and envious of. nothing has changed.

i’ve clipped the excerpt and uploaded it to dropbox. it’s 12 pages. content warning for most of the things you’d expect in a tell all from an autogynephile (graphic descriptions of sexualized dysphoria and fetishization) and also mentions of suicide.

read here

[prompt-master]

The Chihiro analysis maybe? That sounds excellent.

So this analysis will be going into two things. Why the male Fujisaki interpretation also has a good moral for trans/genderqueer folk and why Fujisaki's story ultimately is not about gender so equating it to gender discourse is a massive disservice to the chapter.

As I'll be talking about a male interpretation, I will be using he/him pronouns for Fujisaki. If this is something upsetting to you, then this is your warning to not read it. But I do reccomend it, as this is a moral I have not really seen the fandom ever talk about.

Let's start with a quick recap of the story from a male Fujisaki perspective.

Fujisaki was a boy who was bullied and harassed from a very young age for his appearance. Fujisaki is small, meek, and feminine. This led to a lot of bullying because of how he doesn't look like a real boy, and how he's just a weak pansy. As a result, Fujisaki thought it would be easier to present as a girl, since people thought he was one anyway and couldn't respect him as a boy. This way life became a lot easier if he just fit into how society deemed him. Not only did he lose the bullying but he got the added benefits of people being especially kind to him for being a cute girl.

Then cut to the KG. Around chapter 2 when faced with having his secret exposed, Fujisaki feels inspired to take matters into his own hands and be himself again. He wants to be strong and to feel strong, so that he can face the others and tell them who he really is.

Fujisaki however gets a bit misguided about his idealism of what being strong is here. He was told his entire life that he is not a real boy because he is WEAK. So Fujisaki interpreted this as PHYSICAL. It especially grew when he met Owada, the manliest guy in the cast who is absolutely physically strong.

Idolizing Owada, he meets with him to ask for training in order to feel like enough of a man that he can confidently tell the truth. This in turn triggers Owada, who kills him.

You may be wondering how this story could still be good for trans folk and genderqueer folks if Fujisaki is a cis male that was crossdressing. Simply put it. Its because of Fujisakis strength to go against what society has told him to present as. This is the whole reason that Owada gets angry enough to suddenly kill him, because mentally he is far weaker than Fujisaki.

Fujisaki decided to do something HARD. He decided he would present AS HE WANTS. It doesn't MATTER if Fujisaki is feminine. It doesn't matter if the world says he's too weak to be a real guy. What matters is that Fujisaki wants to respected as a guy, and he is willing to fight to get there.

That ABSOLUTELY is a good moral for trans folk, genderqueer folk, and even cis folk for the idealism of not conforming to gender roles if it doesn't make you happy.

Amd this is also why I think that watering down Fujisaki's story to gender discouse is a massive disservice. It isn't about if hes a boy or if shes a girl. Its about how he was willing to BE HIMSELF even if the world told him not to be. Its about how Fujisaki is MENTALLY STRONG and how he never even NEEDED to be physically strong. He just needed to be himself!

Thats why Owada is such an important part of this story. Because we are meant to perceive Fujisaki at first glace as weak, and Owada at first glance as strong (danganronpa at the end of the day is character tropes that go beyond their trope).

You DO NOT know what lies behind people. You don't. The ones you believe are weak may be strong and the ones you believe are strong may be weak.

THAT is what ch 2 is about. Its about two people and their mental strengths clashing with their outward appearance.

Of course, all interpretations of Fujisaki are valid. I am not saying you can't see her as a trans girl! But I see no point in attacking others when both are perfectly fine interpretations on a moral stand point. This goes for both sides.