#the trans subtext is just text

[frobby]

Imma be honest i wasnt really a hanae trans believer until this chapter but now im fully convinced

[spicy-phantom2]

Genuinely can't tell when I'm being flirted with. I've also been told that I flirt accidentally. Please just make it easy for me by taking hold of my wrist and bringing my hand exactly where you want me to touch you. Tell me point blank that you want me and steal a kiss.

[autism-swagger]

Why do my favorite characters keep having (likely unintentional but honestly I'm not entirely sure) trans subtext.

[badass-at-fandoming]

Me, previous to reading Kicho's route: ooo, this guy's got major trans vibes. Kicho: [has that backstory] Kicho: [stands in front of trans flag colors in Dramatic Route] Me: oh, he's TRANS trans

[onlyfangz]

why do cis people try to trap you into talking shit about trans people you dont know?

[stainapologists]

Imai kinda horrible at the start of the fic fr. Bitter, vindictive, selfish, abrasive, insensitive, obnoxious know-it-all that can't take a hint to save her life. She gets better after befriending Daisy and learning how to care for others without being suspicious of their motives. But damn, it's a rough start.

[shiawasekai]

why is bokuseki so good, send help.

[andtheyweresquirrels]

I'm rewatching psych for the first time in ten years or so and trans!Shawn is my new little conspiracy theory

im sorry but you're saying this guy? he is cis? what?

[longhandsart]

Big bold letters in my WIP that just says

MORE TRANS SUBTEXT

[syrupyy]

Vivian finally being out as trans in the new Paper Mario remake hit me like a truck and it took me a while to fully understand why (light spoilers for chapter 2)

it's like.. I don't know how to describe it. I play a lot of indie games and I've gotten used to many of them having the full array of LGBTQ+ representation, and at this point I look at it and smile and then move on

with a huge corporation who has everything to lose like Nintendo, it feels like an entirely different world. here, I step back into this game I've owned on disc since I was a kid, and everything's the same if not slightly better... and then I start noticing the changes, one by one. picking up all the little clues, when suddenly I get to this line

I had already been spoiled on her full confession by Twitter, but... when I saw even this much with my own two eyes, it felt like something that had been hiding in my mind for 12 years just leapt out. the subtext is now text. the characters of this world that I've thought about all this time, that I would doodle in my notebooks, that I used to read so much fanfiction about... are canonically going through the same real struggles as me and so many others I know

and I just felt... seen. like, as if I'm finally allowed to be a real person, like I'm not crazy for telling people to use gender neutral terms around me, like I'm truly nonbinary and not just in writing

I never really talk about my gender identity in public because I've never had that validation telling me that it's not just in my head. my friends will reassure me, my mom won't hate me for it... but at the end of it all, Nintendo raised me since I was three years old, and that was a pillar of my life whose approval I never expected to have

so when I saw this, I just... sat there, staring, for a full minute. processing these emotions I never even realized I had. it's just one little sentence in a 30 hour long video game, it shouldn't mean that much, but... it did to me. the writers actually cared. they stuck their faces out the window that is the trans experience and they came back and rewrote the script to match. they left the Fire Emblem toad the same, not even changing "GBA" to "Switch" or "3DS", but they knew to change this

thank you, Vivian. I understand how you feel now

[monstersinthecosmos]

Just stating for the record that there's a lot of confusion about what asexuality is and isn't, and whether ace people can participate in sex, and if sex has to be penetrative.

Like not that it's my job to be your sex educator lmao but

Yes asexual people can have sex; this is about a lack of attraction, not a lack of libido or sexual dysfunction.

Of course sex does not have to be penetrative.

Being celibate is not the same as being asexual.

Asexuals can be attracted to people without wanting to fuck them, they can still experience romantic attraction or desire intimacy that is not sex.

If you want to dismantle ace themes/reads in your fandom of choice, please use textual points that are, in fact, truthful about what asexuality is and isn't. A book isn't less queer if the characters don't fuck. Queer people can still experience love and romance without sex. This need to insist that a piece of media isn't ace because it's queer is saying that asexuals aren't queer, and we're not here for exclusionary radfem bullshit okay?

If we're going to preach this in the larger conversation of queer politics when it comes to, for example: trans rights, queer content in children's' libraries, existing in public--we have to be consistent. Don't tell the larger world that every facet of a queer person's life isn't about SEX but then tell ace people that they're not queer because they don't want sex, or dismiss a queer piece of media because the characters didn't fuck. Asexuality is not queer subtext, it is queer text. It is already queer.

If you're thinking about dunking on ace people in your fandom, like, listen! We know that tumblr has a radfem & conservative problem lol so like if you're just a radfem/terf/conservative/whatever I can't stop you, but if you don't associate with those folks and still want to be exlusionary, please check some resources to see if your understanding of asexuality is up to date before you make a bunch of points that don't matter. I really recommend AVEN - The Asexuality Visibility & Education Network and The Trevor Project's page about Asexuality as a starting point!

Just ask, before you post:

Does the asexual read hurt anybody?

Am I invalidating someone's experience by telling them that they're wrong?

Does my point balance strictly on concepts of sex, and not concepts of attraction?

Am I sure I understand what asexuality is before I start dunking on it and being exclusionary to the ace people in my fandom?

Am I regurgitating points about what sex is and isn't without remembering that asexuality is about sexual attraction, and not about whether or not someone participates in sex acts? (ie: "They do have sex, someone got a handjob" isn't really building your case the way you think it is.)

What exactly is the purpose of my post if it's not to be exclusionary and fucking rude? Do I need to examine my own biases towards ace people?

[zeetbl33p]

Ok for those of you voting pick up the vn and read, do ya mean from the beginning or is there a specific way to start at EP 6 since I've been watching the streams? Also i am doing another watch through from the beginning with my dad, so if I were to start a full read-through from the beginning it'll be like the 3rd one I've experienced it, and I don't think I want to do that until I've seen everything at least once.

Any ideas or suggestion? Please do reply, dm me, send asks, etc. (also I could use info about using Umineko Project since id like to read using it but I don't have the money to get the PS3 version)

Hlep, been watching NezumiVA's Umineko read-through and then when looking for Beato fanart I believe I saw spoilers. Saw a specific name so I filtered it, but now that means I just see it every time I go to look for fanart still bkdbkd. I need help figuring out what I should do now, since my brain is just like craving to fully open the box, but also wanting to keep following along for my first watch/read through without killing the mystery.

Currently up to date (ep5 finished) and I'm itching to get more but also not sure if it's even possible to start on a later episode if I want to start the vn myself or something else or more aaaaaaaa.

Advice?

[slightly-sigilant]

[crossposting a comment I made on the Warframe subreddit because I think Tumblr would like it]

Part of why the Warframe 1999 update works, I think, is that nostalgia acts tend to lean on that cheap "hey remember those days when everything was great?" appeal, when the truth is that the world was still fucked up back then, you just didn't know better because you were a kid. (Specific flavors of shitty childhood aside.) But 1999... doesn't do that.

There's still nostalgia, there's the aesthetic and there's cheeky nods to 90s culture, but shit is fucked up. Even outside of the whole zombie-apocalypse-religious-fanatic-takeover hellscape that's overtaken Hollvania, a lot of Hex members are just… so dismayed to find out that the future is just as shitty as their present, if not more. Like, "what do you mean we haven't cured Alzheimer's and there was a caste of horrifically immoral god-kings whose reign was only ended by the child soldiers they mistreated, and centuries afterwards we still have capitalist cults and clone armies killing and enslaving people? We really hoped y'all would have figured this shit out by then?"

It's a very interesting deconstruction of the kind of optimism that you found during the IRL turn of the millenium. And despite how fantastical Warframe is, it hits home. Imagine time traveling back to IRL 1999 and telling them about all the shit that's gone down since.

[and some additional thoughts I sure had but didn't think reddit was ready for, lmao:

I feel like it's definitely intended that the Hex's dismay over the Shitty Space Future echoes the kind of dismay (to put it lightly) that a lot of people in the real, present-day world feel, and that the kind of dystopia happening in Hollvania is a reflection of the kind of dystopia happening in multiple places around the world right now. It was already pretty heavily implied that the Scaldra are Fantasy Fascists with their whole religious zeal and a *lot* of Viktor's dialogue towards the Hex, but this update turned the subtext up so much that it's basically text.

Like, just do the new Stage Defense mission. As a trans person in the US, I *instantly* recognized the kind of rhetoric that Viktor was slinging at Flare (a canonically nonbinary character, even!) Just swap the references to being a Protoframe with being any flavor of trans, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming.

So, while the update is 90s in aesthetic, tonally, I'd say it's much more present-day.]

[chaifootsteps]

Idk who cinema therapist is but the quote about “you can’t just make stuff up and later say it’s subtext—that’s a headcanon” (really abbreviating that soz) hit me HARD because to be frank, that is the CORE of the Hazbin/Helluva standom crying “MEDIA ILLITERACY!” anytime someone points out the shows’ massive inconsistencies and poor writing quality.

The subtext is still supposed to be IN THE TEXT. There is a way to write things subtly and to include subtext in your stories. Sometimes it’s unintentional (like the way many people see Jenny from “Teenage Robot” as being a trans allegory) and sometimes it Is Intentional (lord of the flies actually being a critique of British upper class society and not just a story about boys killing each other an an island)

But your message still. Needs. To be. In the TEXT

This is why the whole “media illiteracy” thing Stan’s like to whinge about bugs me. Media literacy GOES BOTH WAYS. If you do not have a basic understanding of story structure, how to depict themes and symbolism, and how to use literary conventions, you story will become confused and unintelligible. Viv does not know how to plan a story and STICK with it. She doesn’t know how to commit to the themes she claims to have chosen for her shows (that being classism and rehabilitation) which is why helluva is now “The Stolas Show”!

This is why people who ARE media literate generally either get annoyed with hb and hhs’s shitty writing OR can admit that they like it even if it’s not that well written, and that’s fine!!

It’s just so wild to watch a show, SEE the characters acting a certain way, and then be told “no you didn’t see that that didn’t happen and if you disagree with me you don’t understand how to think critically about media”

Like no, bro, I watched the same show you did. Coercive sex is not consensual I’m not media illiterate for seeing that and recognizing it for what it is. Sorry your rose-tinted glasses have you running into traffic.

-peanut anon 🥜 (this might be meaner than usual but seeing Ragatha let herself get mad unleashed my frustration too)

Preach. Couldn't have said it better.

[plaidos]

The point is your acceptance of trans masc roxy uses the same backhanded language you'd call transmisogynist if used for people hesitant about june. That the hesitance to accept trans masc roxy is acceptance because people were so attached to a previous headcanon. That his transition was like a spit in the face. That it was only done because one writer really like it.

it's not "the same language" -- we know for a fact that the guy who pushed for Roxy to be transmasc pedojacketed a trans woman. i think that's a pretty big context that you're just ignoring because you don't care that real life trans women are being mistreated in relationship to this guy.

also, again -- not a headcanon. transfem Roxy was in the TEXT & SUBTEXT of Homestuck 1. it wasn't a headcanon!!! there's plenty of direct evidence for it in the text.

if you downplay the pedojacketing of a trans woman again, i'm just gonna block you straight up.

[pacing-er]

Confirmed queer X-Men characters! I tried to keep it to characters who have been explicitly shown to be queer in the comics. Technically I shouldn't have added Storm 😅 it is based on her relationship with Yukio and Callisto which many see as homoerotic, but she has not actually been stated to be bisexual. Whoops! Maybe Cyclops shouldn't be on there either. I was thinking of the trouple during Krakoa but that might be too subtext-y? Also Mystique is genderqueer in addition to being bisexual. Peep the secret labels on Cherik... Just confirm it already Marvel come ON.

I couldn't find a lineup with all of them but I'll list some of the missing ones:

Christin Frost (gay), Karma (lesbian), Wiccan (gay), Black Tom Cassidy (gay), Northstar (gay), Kyle Jinadu (gay), Prodigy (bisexual), Speed (unspecified, likes men), Anole (gay), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (lesbian), Simon Lasker/2nd Pyro (gay), Morph (nonbinary, likes men), Bling! (lesbian), Jumbo Carnation (gay), Tempo (lesbian), Mercury (bisexual), Shinobi Shaw (bisexual), Loa (bisexual), Valentine Vuong (nonbinary, likes men), and more queer minor-characters.

Note: Some sources vary on the characters' identities, but they are all confirmed to be queer. For some like Juggernaut, Black Tom Cassidy and Laura Kinney their sexualities had been confirmed by authors on social media but as of yet not explored in text. Laura Kinney was said to be a lesbian on her creator's Twitter but is shown to have a romantic relationship with Synch during the Krakoa era. I'm not familiar with her character so I chose not to include her. As for Juggernaut and Black Tom, Chris Claremont says that they were always intended to be a gay couple and Juggernaut's recent inclusion in a pride cover leads me to believe that this may be explored in modern comic iterations. Sorry this stuff gets complicated lol, I tried. There are very few genderqueer characters and no major trans characters (some minor ones though), and as far as I know there are no officially confirmed asexual characters. I might be wrong.