#this blog is run by a trans man don't worry

[eggyolkguzzler]

Do you ever feel like… no matter what, you’re not gonna fit in?

I mean like, probably for different reasons but,,, as a trans guy, seeing you and the boys just fills me with envy. Like I want to experience that too.

I hope I’m not being too vulnerable here :’) hope you can relate man, it’d give me some peace atleast

-Ethan

Oh, dude, all the time.

Fitting in sucks, 'cus sometimes it feels like a skill you have to learn. And learning new things is hard. Makes my head hurt.

But, I figured something out recently. After a lot of headaches. It's that sometimes, people who are super different from you are the coolest people to hang out with. Look at me and @sebastians-asks . We're almost complete opposites. And we're tight. No matter what he says.

Anyways. My point is; Just 'cus you or somebody else is a little different, doesn't mean we can't be bros.

Don't sweat it, Ethan. I'm sure you'll find your boys eventually. Until then, you can be one of my fellas. How's that sound?

[farmerlesbian]

hi farmer lesbian!

so ive identified as bisexual for a long time but ive discovered recently i feel very comfortable within the lesbian ideas of gender and specifically the butchfemme community. i’ve been dating someone recently who also identified as bisexual but has related to transmasc lesbians understanding of gender as well as posts about butches. we both kind of see ourselves within the butchfemme dynamic but i’ve been very tough on myself with calling myself a lesbian because i’ve dated a man before (…in middle school..)

it’s gotten to the point where i’m really worried to label myself because of what it’d imply for my partner? but also what people would say? and while i know i dont HAVE to label myself it just sucks to know theres an identity im drawn to and feel like i fit into that i cant immediately slip into

hmm i'm not really sure how to guide you here. i guess i want to challenge you on some of the things you're saying here, it feels like you're coming at this from maybe the "wrong" angle (wrong feels too harsh a word, maybe just not the most helpful angle)

you're worried you can't call yourself a lesbian because you dated a boy in middle school? i think.. a LOT of lesbians dated boys in jr. high and high school and there are lots of late in life lesbians who were married to men for years before figuring out who they are and coming out. this is all completely normal and common. like, dating one boy in middle school doesn't really mean much tbh. i wouldn't base your identity or label you use around something like that. i dated a bunch of boys in high school and early college when i was still figuring out who i was. your labels or identity or gender or sexuality don't need to account for all you life experiences and past. it's not so much about your sexual history but describing who you are *now*, what you're interested in, in the present.

you say both you and your partner really like Lesbian Genders and butch/femme stuff. that's nice, but liking and relating to lesbian culture and gender stuff doesn't make you a lesbian haha! it's who you're attracted to and who you're not, that determines your orientation. gender and orientation are different things, as i'm sure you know. obviously very connected and stuff. like, for example, just because someone identifies as a man it doesn't make him straight, even though heterosexuality is an integral part of manhood, in the dominant culture. gay trans men are certainly not rare! the same goes for you guys.

also, remember that transmasculinity is a broad umbrella and encompasses a wide variety of people and their identities and experiences. plenty of butches aren't transmasc, and probably most transmascs aren't butch.

i will tell you that in the course of running this blog and being on the internet, i've probably seen and shared thousands of photos and drawing of people. not once have i ever seen something that represents me and my wife. if you are seeking out representation or examples of the options to be, in order to figure out who/what you are, i would advise against that. seek what feels true to you, what feels honest and right. you do not need to be similar to other people in order to find belonging, acceptance, and community. (though of course this is absolutely nothing wrong or bad if you do find others just like you, if you do fit in to existing roles and dynamics! that is of course perfectly normal!)

now, i don't know you or your partner. you know yourselves best. i can't tell you what you really are or really aren't. and i certainly am not going to tell you what you can or can't be! everything i'm saying here is to prompt you to think about and questions to ponder for yourself.

so, i think you have some points to think about, why have you been identifying as bisexual? what is drawing you to the lesbian label? have you tried using 0 labels and not thinking about your identity or labels for at least a month or two (if not a several months) and then coming back and evaluating it afresh? what about the butch-femme dynamic are you drawn to? what is holding you back? you are allowed to discover that you are a lesbian! or you are allowed to continue to be bisexual! i can't tell you who you are - but you're allowed to be and do whatever you want, whatever feels true to you! even if it doesn't make sense to other people or you don't see anyone else like you out there. you gotta be a little bit brave!

hang in there, and sending much love to you and yours! 🧡

[painfullymeta]

Games and Gender

(Apparently I'm gonna occasionally be using the tumblr for the sort of thing I used to put in my political blog, back in the ancient days when I had a political blog.)

I am used to being the only presumed-woman in the game. (I wish I could remember Sunflower's acronym, something like people-socially-classed-as or something like that, but I can't. Or is that it? Maybe!)

It's actually not as true as it feels like; probably the majority of games I've been have had multiple women at the table. One of my current games (that started in the quarantimes) has one cis guy involved *at all*. (Also in that one when I proposed a trans character the GM made sure to have a Little Talk with me to be clear on whether I was doing so from an in-group or an out-group perspective.) Board game night was pretty gender equal (partly because sensible gamers marry other gamers, heh).

But my tabletop group that's been running on and off for... I'm not sure how long but it's over fifteen years because it settled *at* my house when I was pregnant? Men, and me. That high school game group where I started? Usually mostly boys, an adult man, and, again, me.

Raiding World of Warcraft? Either my housemate or I spoke up in Vent once, and a hush went over the chat, and someone said, in stunned, hushed tones, "There are _girls_ here."

Even back to childhood, there's the thing where my brother got the Nintendo, and I did not. (We did inherit an Atari from our cousins and that became my default console. Which is part of why when some crypto-gamergater tried to suggest to me that maybe there was a valid point and "girls" really don't play those sorts of games I went off on an enthusiastic ramble about Joust, which made him withdraw from the field, though he did not turn into an egg and/or fall in the lava.) My parents, I guess, didn't catch on that the thing I most wanted to do when over at certain friends' houses was 'play their computer games'. (They did give me basically the entire works of Infocom one year, though.)

I didn't particularly want games to be about gender. And I don't have any of the horror stories I hear about - the sexual harassment at the table, either of the player or of the character, for example. But it's not like the surrounding world gives a shit about what people want, in it, is there?

Because all sorts of things wind up being about it.

In my teens, I hit on the time-honored tradition of "work through some of your shit by building a tabletop roleplaying character around it", and I made a character in part around my desire to work through some feelings around my experiences of sexual violence. (As is often the case for this sort of thing, she'd been through worse than I had. As is also often the case for people in that situation, neither she nor I explained this bit of the backstory to anyone that I can recall.) And one of the other characters at the table, played by a boyfriend of the time, came on to her, and it went ... badly all around. And afterwards, he asked me, from his tone I guessed faintly offended, "Explain Hellcat."

I don't remember what I said. I do know that I was not at a point in my life where I could talk easily about having been assaulted. I do know that I was worried that if I brought up that this was part of her backstory, I would get asked uncomfortable questions like "Why would you include that in a character's story?" from someone who had had no reason to think about how that sort of thing is a part of many, many people's stories, and imaginary people are not actually an exception.

It was in her story because I was trying to work through what it meant that something similar was in mine.

(I note: this was literally years before a particular conversation with an assault survivor made me feel I had actual permission to be fucked up by my own event. I wasn't even there yet. I was just trying to process it. It was a game. I could explore ideas. In the long run, I could experiment with what it was like to figure out how to be loved after a traumatic event.)

I don't always build characters around particular experiences, though of course they all have a bit of me somewhere in them. But there are these niggling things like that conversation where I wind up just... aware. Not generally as blatantly as "Explain Hellcat." But.

And I mean, once the Warcraft guys got used to the idea of 'there are girls here' they weren't a problem. But they still had that moment of shock, of almost disbelief, that's one of the reasons I'd heard of people saying they never raided, or never spoke on the raid chat. At one point I was out on a male toon (I tended to roll up a male and female character for each species) and noticed that the conversation was about female gamers in the regional chat, and I felt like I was an infiltrator.

And of course I had a slowly increasing awareness of my own dysphoria, putting pieces together over time, and increasing irritation with the boundary-policing of gender and a whole bunch of other things that one might expect come out of having a hobby for a while (see also back in the ancient days when I had a political blog) of arguing with TERFs recreationally. Which is a whole different topic. But it comes around to a thing that's been annoying me for _years_, which is why I wrote [gestures upwards] all that right now.

There was a survey that came out after I started considering myself nonbinary. And it was asking for participants who were women in gaming hobbies. It was very, very clear on being trans-inclusive, by which I mean it said "this survey is open to anyone WHO IDENTIFIES AS A WOMAN".

Which I did not.

Did I have experiences that were likely relevant to "women in gaming hobbies"? Oh hell yeah. I've noted a few of 'em up above there.

Was I welcome to answer the survey? By the reading of the rules: nope. (Was I allistic enough to answer the survey despite it explicitly excluding me? Also nope.)

Which loops around to one of those transmasc experience things that I have also seen other people talking about: the need some people have to make the experience of gender clean-cut and clear in ways that it very much is not and cannot be.

I don't have the socially preferred "always known" narrative, and even if I had had it, there are places it wouldn't have fucking mattered. (Certainly not with an adolescence in an environment where I don't think I heard the word "lesbian", even, let alone got any information about the existence or possibility of trans people. Nobody was out at my school, about anything. And even if I'd known I'd have had no idea what to do with the knowledge.)

(And I *didn't know*. The puzzlepiece-shape of 'socially uncertain straight girl nerd' and the puzzlepiece-shape of 'autistic gay(?) transmasc/nonbinary nerd' are actually very similar puzzlepiece shapes and how the fuck am I supposed to tell the difference between "I don't understand this social thing" and "I don't understand this social thing (because it smacks of gender, specifically)" anyway? Certainly not at fourteen in the early 90s! I've been making "I was behind the door when they handed out the manual for that gendered expectation" cracks for TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. And I can date it that precisely because I started articulating any of this stuff when I was on usenet!)

Until I was, like, thirty, I was, as far as I *or anyone else* could perceive, an awkward straight girl/woman who could really have used learning words like "asexual" that didn't hit my social environment until notably later and who had a focused interest in queer-lens readings of Christian theology despite being neither queer nor Christian. That's the life experience I had. And there's eggy shit in there, sure, I noted some eggy shit *right in that sentence*. That doesn't change the nature of the internal experience and the external perception. Then it was a decade of increasing anxious exploration of gender and what I was, including an extended roleplay of a gay cis man (Kinsey 5, not 6, but) that grew out of some fanfic writing I was doing, which led to discovering that his skin was much more comfortable than mine to inhabit.

I still don't know what I am. I have anxiety about whether my transmasc nonbinary ass is male enough to be gay; whenever I'm doing an intake questionnaire or something that asks me about orientation I just sit and. Stare. For a bit. Because I don't feel entitled to claim 'gay', I haven't been there, my adolescence was not that, but I damn sure ain't straight either. (Anymore? I didn't have the internal experience of doubting it back when. The closest I got was noting an attraction to geek-as-gender masc people, as a geek-as-gender person; my wisecrack for years has been that I'm exclusively attracted to engineers and MIT students.) I appreciate it when these forms have an option for 'queer' because at least that doesn't ... require me to chop up my life until I can arrange the parts into something that has simple words and a simple, clear narrative that can elide my actual history.

And that's what people want, a lot of the time. If a trans man doesn't disavow his experience as a girl and a woman (whether or not he was aware of the disjoints there), he must not be "really" a man. If he tries to speak on his experiences with gendered nonsense or misogyny, he's speaking out of turn. He can either have credibility as himself *or* credibility as a person with a past, and because of that tension he can't _really_ have credibility as either, there's always that half-spoken "but—" that comes in.

If I speak as a woman about the gendered experiences I have had, I betray myself, and undermine any attempts to claim a space as not-a-woman.

If I speak as not-a-woman about those same experiences, then I am told I don't have standing. What I experienced wasn't _real_ whatever, because that only happens to women. (A lie, I will note, even when only said among the cis; I have met male rape victims, including at least one who was raped by a woman. I have met cis gay folks whose experiences with violence have absolutely had a context of feminization.)

The experiences still happened. I'm still here.

But no matter what I do, there's always an excuse to not hear me.

"This survey is open to anyone WHO IDENTIFIES AS A WOMAN."

(I am pretty sure they didn't mean to shut me and those like me out, but I am also pretty sure that to the extent they considered transmasc people existing at all, they assumed that we would be okay with playing at being women long enough to participate. Because the cultural assumption is that we're only playing at being men, after all, and womanhood is where we live, because there are consequences to it that are inescapable. No matter how much we want to gnaw it off like an animal stuck in a trap and carry on three-legged and free.)

Wherever my life goes from here, I don't know. Particularly not in the current moment. But I'm 100% sure that there will be people who are surprised by it, and they might even include people at my gaming tables.

But again back to that time-honored tradition of "work through some of your shit by building a tabletop roleplaying character around it"?

Both my tabletop characters at the moment are fairy-obsessed trans men; both of them have a history of asexuality that is partially linked to dysphoria (though Celyn is also just straight-up grey ace and genuinely baffled by his current feelings); both of them have a primary relationship with a man and are primarily oriented towards men. (Danny is both more gender-flexible and orientation-flexible, heh. Also species-flexible. And an exclusive monsterfucker....)

Anyone who's surprised by anything I do about this hasn't been paying attention. I kind of look forward to seeing what happens. Sometimes a guy's gotta be a gremlin.

[feline-evil]

I would love to here you info dump about your ocs if you want to?

Grinning evily, I SHALL DO SO!

So ik its been a while since i've really drawn or talked about my boys but a refresher for everyone is i have an OC universe/story loosely titled Flesh and Bone with is a The Thing inspired story featuring my Oc's Clay, Damien and Jack! All three work on a shady arctic base run by an evil corp unbeknownst to them, and after a sequence of horrible incidence and creature attacks Clay is 'killed' only to come back as! Some sort of slopbeast thing monster! He's cool and chill though, not a threat to anyone; hes a wet bag of nerves desperately trying to maintain his shape as the man he was once before, because thats who he is!! It's a story about identity (both in all my main cast being trans men but also in the more metaphorical and subtextual reading of. Clays whole deal lmao) and exploring what that means, and its also about three gay fruits experiencing THE HORRORS!

I have not written it, it's far too big a task rn, but thats the basic idea <3 everyone can always feel free to check the flesh and bone tag or any oc tags (ie oc: damien, oc: clay, oc: jack ect) on my blog to see stuuuuuuff about it!

MORE BELOW THE CUT, LIKE WAY WAY MORE SO MUCH LMAO, and as always heads up for horror themed when it comes to my lil oc's and their world <3

Lately a lot of what i've been thinking about with my oc's has been the physical changes that happen throughout the time they spend trapped in that research base, because they are there for a LONG time they do look different than they do at the start! Obviously there's the general stuff like Damien's hair growing long and the roots showing, Clay's facial hair getting scruffy and his hair getting long and unruly too, jack cutting all his long hair off (too dangerous to wield a flamethrower frequently with all that hair in the way in his learned opinion); but then there's the more physical side of going through this really tough time too, more than just aesthetic changes like hair and clothing changes. The most obvious is yes, Clay IS just a writhing mass of meat that replicates the appearance he wants to be seen as; yes including his clothes his scarf has a heartbeat don't worry about it. But then there's stuff that's not Whatever the hell Clay's deal is; Jack loses a leg, they all gain a multitude of new scars, this is a long, tough situation to survive and none of them are untouched by this- but thats part of the point! You can go through traumatic stuff and you can make it through, it might change you, it might change stuff about you, sometimes in ways you cant undo, but you can still make it through!! And you can still be loved as you rightfully deserved, and you can live a long happy peaceful life!! Thats a big part of the heart of *waves hands* what i am doing in my head with my oc's.

When i can draw for longer periods again i'd like to make reference sheets with 3 views of each character on each, a before, during, and after.

Another thing i've been thinking of lately is the day comes back after 'dying'! And its both horrific and later funny so i like it a lot.

So. Thing style monster drags him away screaming from the base, he is torn to shreds, the last person to see him alive is Damien and he watches that thing tear him *apart*. Everyones pretty certain he's very dead.

Days pass.

Then Clay wakes up in a hollowed out ice cave, one thats been melted into this larger open space by the pile of dead flesh and meat that has been dumped inside it, the pile that he has also been dumped in. It reeks, its horrific, he has to climb and clamber his way to the top in a state of abject disgust and horror; he doesn't remember how he got here. He doesn't remember anything past that thing getting a hold of him. (Unbeknownst to him he IS that thing but he'll figure that out later, he kind of does know that to an extent but not on any conscious level nor is he willing to accept it to much later, boys in denial. When it killed him and ate his flesh for some reason it fucked the beast up and fully replaced whatever it was before with his memories and consciousness so this is him now, the body he had before is gone, this is Clay now)

The only way out of this cave is a very narrow passage leading up, he starts to try and crawl in. Too tight, he doesn't fit. He keeps trying and trying in sobbing desperation until....he.....does fit. Shoulders give way, he slides in, this gap too small to rightfully fit his head through he is somehow now fitting through. He's going to pretend he isn't, he's not a stupid man but he fully cannot cope with comprehending his body moving as if boneless right now, his brain cannot cope nor begin to even parse the possibility that he is morphing like slimy slipper meatgoop to fit through here. He escapes, collapses out there on the ice for a bit miles from the base. He cries for a bit. Repeats in his head over and over that that hole was big enough for him, it was normal, he crawled normally, it was normal and fine. And then he eventually starts walking through freezing winds and blizzards in the direction he hopes the base is.

NOT FUNNY YET I KNOW, BARE WITH ME. ITS THE NEXT BIT OK

Clay reaches the base eventually and climbs through a window, enters the currently empty dining hall. He's back! He is. So so mentally checked out and traumatised and FUCKED from his experience that all he can think to do is just....go back to normal, pretend it never happened. He sits down. Pours himself a coffee in his favourite mug.

Footsteps echo closer, people are coming.....

jack and Damien walk in and freeze. They stare at Clay.

Clay stares at them.

'H-hey!' He says, waving over, 'you uh! You guys are up early!'

DAMIEN GRABS JACKS ARM, GET THE FLAMETHROWER HE SAYS

CLAY GOES OOP!!!!!

(Art of this moment memorialised forever by my beloved boyfriend @subsequentibis btw!!)

AND CLAY THEN SCHWOOPS LIKE LIQUIDY MEAT UP INTO A CEILING VENT AND REASSURES HIMSELF THAT THE GRATE WAS DEFINITELY OFF THE VENT AND HE DIDNT JUST FIT THROUGH TINY TINY HOLES ITS FINE ITS NORMAL ITS FINE ITS FINE, AND HIDES IN THE VENTS FOR A BIT. LMAO, LOVE MY SILLY COMEDY BIT

[star-the-honeybun]

heh uh hello! i hope it's okay i'm dropping into your askbox, idk how you feel abt interacting with doubles so.

anyway to clarify the situation:

i've been kinsidering straybow/streibough (idk which spelling i prefer tbh) for a bit now and i tend to make it a habit to ask multiple people for pendulums to see if there's a correlation....

and it seems there's a correlation leaning towards the Yes answer so far, which leads me to believe i might be him. for many reasons this is not going to be a fun time for me but. i just thought it prudent to clarify. have a good one!

STRAYBOW [WIFE FUCKER] DUSKIN HAS JOINED THE CHAT

sorry that it won't be a fun time but. do not worry the fictive double of you is here! Oersted and Alicia are also here (which might not be a good thing if you have exotrauma (I don't)), and Oersted's blog that we should use more and maybe I should hijack for this convo is @lordofdrkness (man, we should change the icon on that to something more odio-y!)

doubles are always fine! >wI <- comfyskie face

(pssst, our fandom blog is @skyhighchibi, which is mainly run by Ghostbur (the host), but you can ask us questions if you want.)

- Straybow [she/they/he] (I'm trans)

[mean-gills]

I posted 633 times in 2022

That's 633 more posts than 2021!

110 posts created (17%)

523 posts reblogged (83%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@felicityphoenix5

@nervousbreadpuppy

@jinxneedssleep

@ghxstingimgaytoo

@jacklynbraveheart

I tagged 223 of my posts in 2022

#alsmp - 70 posts

#alsmpblr - 59 posts

#alsmp scott - 51 posts

#incorrect quotes - 41 posts

#alsmp sausage - 36 posts

#scott smajor - 20 posts

#alsmp shubble - 20 posts

#alsmp jimmy - 17 posts

#afterlife smp - 14 posts

#esmp - 14 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#my mom seriously helped me get over gender dysphoria for wearing a bra by taking advantage of my gender dysphoria for having large breasts

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Incorrect Quotes

Scott evilly laughs: Sausage you must make the choice, allow this innocent by standard die or stop being a hero

Lizzie: Don't worry I can-

Sausage: Oh no whatever shall I do? What an innocent person? How can I stop you without stopping being a hero???

Scott: You can't! Haha!

Scott gets close to sausage: Being a hero never suited you

Lizzie unties the ropes: Don't worry I untied the ropes

Sausage dramatically sighs and backs away from Scott: Oh whatever can I do??

Lizzie: I'm free

Sausage: Must I give up the fight of justice????

Lizzie facepalms: No, I'm free

Sausage: Such an innocent helpless person?!?!

Scott: Truly evil I know, making you choose such a difficult choice

Lizzie: You know what, I'm going leave

Scott finally looks over to Lizzie: Wait, you distracted me so you could free this innocent person!!!

Sausage: I, uh, yes!! That was the plan the entire time!!!

Scott: Curse you Sausage!!!!!!

Lizzie: I was free the entire time basically

Sausage: Another win for Gravity Man!

Lizzie walks away:

Scott: I will get you next time!!!

Scott runs away:

Bonus:

Jimmy walks in: Sorry I was late, anyway I have to untie Lizzie for the "Epic Sidekick Reveal" right?

Sausage stops looking into the distance dramatically: You completely missed the fight!!! You're lucky Scott and I have such great improve skills!!!

134 notes - Posted April 19, 2022

#4

Incorrect quotes

Jimmy: *Uses “Yeet” in a sentence*

Scott: Jimmy, people don’t say yeet anymore.

Jimmy: Yeet is cringe?

Scott: JIMMY, NOBODY SAYS CRINGE ANYMORE.

Jimmy: Cringe has been yeeted?

141 notes - Posted April 24, 2022

#3

Incorrect Quote

Jimmy: Remember when you didn't try to solve all your problems with attempted murder?

Scott: Stop romanticizing the past.

146 notes - Posted April 4, 2022

#2

Incorrect quotes

Scott: Are we fighting or flirting?

Sausage: I'm pinning you against a wall with my hand around your neck-

Scott, smiling: Your point?

171 notes - Posted April 22, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Trans Hunter Headcannon

I love the idea that Hunter is trans, and in light of the most resent episode of the owl house, at the time of posting this "Hollow Mind" I thought I would bend this into a personal view of the headcannon.

So basically Grimwalkers are genderless beings, Belos forces all the grimwalkers to be boys, whether that feels right to them or not. Some might have liked the idea of being a girl rather then a boy, I imagine they'd wear dresses when belos wasn't around secretly ask all the coven heads to call them by there prefered pronouns, some wouldn't feel boy or girl fit them and just ask to only change their pronouns for they/them, some liked being a boy, some would change inbetween, but when belos found out about this he'd always guilt them into stopping because his brother/whatever was a boy and they should be, he probably made up some lie to keep them. Hunter though never really cared for pronouns and was fine with being a boy,and when he found out of what a grimwalker was apart of him wanted to change just to go against belos, but he wasn't happy doing that, so he changed his name to something he liked, Caleb

176 notes - Posted April 28, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[tboyhousehusband]

Welcome!

You can call me transsexula- yes, don't worry, this is just a sideblog to my main.

I'm a trans man, bisexual, in my mid 20's, and happily taken. My icon is an image of moominmamma I've shittily edited myself.

My ask box is open!

Feel free to send me asks on just about any topic. I'll add topics I don't wish to discuss here as they come up.

DNI: Trads, Conservatives, Terfs, pro-lifers, zionists- you get the picture.

This blog is run by a trans man in a gay relationship. If you are weird about queer men, this isn't the space for you. This IS a safe space for queer people of all types, and I plan on discussing disability, and keeping house- if you plan on being weird about that, I ask you to reconsider, or leave.

[gourde]

Okay I need to talk about this cause it made me insane

I love Transformers everyone knows this I have a Transformers side-blog. One of my favourite IDW1 characters is Misfire. He has ADHD and it's canon. Here's his bio:

I love this character already. I show this to my previous friend because I love Transformers and this is so fucking funny. Literally me. And their response (As someone who DOESN'T have ADHD) is that this is horrible and super ableist cause he killed people. This person knows NOTHING about Transformers for context and as I'm trying to explain that his character is rather complex and that literally everyone is a war criminal in TransformersIDW they look up the comic and immediately see the WORST stain on TranformersIDW which is Arcee's horribly transmisogynistic backstory. Which of course they then say that this comic must be horrible even though it was literally retconned later down the run because the writer who wrote that was kicked off. This is not me dismissing it Arcee's original backstory is AWFUL and horrid but this is important to know because then we start talking about Hazbin Hotel.

This is where it gets super scary. So I'm blue wording this. It just gets super long so click if you want to extend your dash by several metres

Knowing all the shit that TransformersIDW had at the beginning does ruin some enjoyment for me but better writers who were actually normal about women and trans people and lesbians came later and fixed the issues as best as they could. The comic also ran from 2005 to 2022. Comics are known for having the comic disease, where people who hate minorities write a lot of it. Okay some backstory out the way because this whole thing was insane. So as we all know Harkin Hostel is a genuinely awful show with incredibly harmful writing and stereotypes. It is RIFE with anti-blackness, racist caricatures, infantilisation of lesbians and fetishization of gay men. It has been running for like a month maybe but has been known for years. When I bring up the issues of the show my friend says it's cause it's been running for a while. But it's never been fixed. All the while ignoring me saying that IDW Transformers has awful shit at the beginning but clears up due to how long running it was and how many cultural shifts there were in that time. Hopping Hooter never changed. Which bothered me but okay we've been friends for a whopping 5 years at this point so I guess I can let that slide. Maybe. But then the defense of "All the characters suck cause they're in hell!" defense is brought up when I say how harmful the show is. When they were dismissive about all the Transformers characters being war criminals and that the comic must suck cause all the characters suck and are harmful. YOU LIKE HAZBIN HOTEL. WHAT ARE YOU SAYING.

Now this is where it's REALLY scary. I'm trying to parse what my friend believes at this point because we never got super deep into convos considering we only talked a couple times a month. So I'm worried about underlying beliefs. What about the anti-semetic caricature? The only character with a hooked nose who CONVENIENTLY loves money and keeps getting into debt trouble? Well OBVIOUSLY it's just a stretch to think that even though literally everyone I talked to say it's very much quite there INCLUDING MY JEWISH FRIENDS and THEY SAID this is where I started to check out they said "So we can't make characters with a hooked nose and love for money anymore?" YES. WE SHOULDN'T. WHY DO YOU NEED TO. Then I brought up the animators, who are mostly new to the industry, are severely underpaid and overworked and misgendered. Well it's all she said he said obviously... so we can't believe it. And if it was they knew what they were getting into. Like so??? I don't give a shit don't underpay your fucking animators man. Or anyone. WHY would we allow that shit. I don't get it. And obviously me not liking Vivzie as a person despite how. Awful she is is CLEARLY the same as fandom bullying and harassing showrunners off of shows for petty reasons. Yeah cause racism is TOTALLY on the same page as fucking shipping wars. Also they said something so transmisogynistic and I had to dip. Why would you say that to me. Anyways I already ranted about this in a Discord server I was just reminded of it and think my Tumblr people should see it too because it literally is insane as hell.

[shinenanome]

Cal/Dorian · he/him · 22 (10.29.01)

Hi my name is Cal, this is my pjsk side blog so I don't clog up my main :3 mostly runs on a queue!

Fave characters: Ena, Mizuki, Tsukasa, Saki, Rui, Mafuyu, An

Fave ships: Mizuena, Kanamafu, Ruikasa, Anhane

Other ships: Polysho, Polycord, Ruinene, Emukasa, Emunene, Mafuena, Ichisaki, Akitoya

I reblog most ships regardless of if I ship them or not! Who knows, sometimes it makes me ship them more, perhaps...

Currently catching up on key stories for Niigo and WxS!

Dni proship please, thank you

Main blog: @youkah

Art blog: @psychedex

Headcanons under cut :3

Ena: transfem lesbian, NPD

Mizuki: transfem (well that's canon but w/e) lesbian

Mafuyu: trans man (he/him) but he doesn't have time to worry about that he has school

Kanade: bisexual agender, albino

Tsukasa: bisexual, autistic

Rui: agender gay or bi I can't decide, autistic

Nene: agender, I like both lesbian and bisexual headcanons for her, autistic

Emu: bisexual, adhdtism

An: femme lesbian

Kohane: butch lesbian

Saki: lesbian, uses mobility aids some days

Akito: transmasc bisexual

Toya: bisexual and I would say autism is a head canon but that boy is pretty much canonically autistic just look at him

Honami: lesbian, AvPD

I acknowledge that none of these are canon it's just for fun ^w^ I also enjoy other people's hcs as well!

[hankwizard]

Pieces Of Media I Consumed Recently

because i have accepted i cannot, for the life of me, do this in an organized fashion lol

CHAINSAW MAN('s anime)

I read the manga obsessively the moment I heard the premise. I grew up in the era of self-referential, masturbatory, whedon-istic media where no show or comic could just be unapologetically itself without getting weird and "haha isnt it DUMB we're making this?" the whole time. A manga about a guy turning into a chainsaw that is absolutely about a dude who turns into a chainsaw fucking appeals, okay?

Anyways. This is about the anime. The anime almost feels like a film at times- the characters move very.. Realistically. Very on model, which worked in some ways but made it a bit less expressive in others. It didn't have the punk charm of the manga, but otherwise? Steller presentation. I like how the anime further emphasizes that Denji is a kid- giving him more childish mannerisms (such as the infamous scene with himeno) that really hammers home the point of his character- that he's just a manipulated kid who wants some kind of normalcy and, most of all, love.

CHAINSAW MAN('s manga. part 2)

It makes me feel like the absolute joker watching how well thought out Asa is as a protagonist. Traumatic experiences can strip us of our identities- make us feel like all we've done is survive, and therefore, that's all we can do, so watching Asa fret over being a bore and be unable to connect to others without worrying about how things will crumble down is just a delight. I love her. Denji is also great so far! He's just so tired. This part's art has so much subtle improvement and once again Fujimoto is delivering bangers. Yoshida is never beating the yaoi allegations.

FEAR AND HUNGER: TERMINA

The fun thing about autism is that it forces you to enjoy things in the most "yeah this is my life now" of ways, which is fine when your interests are something normal you can explain to people like "dungeons and dragons" or "sailor moon" and not Termina, a game that makes you genuinely debate not if you should sever your enemy's leg, but which one.

Termina is crazy. A survival horror rpg where death is punishing, limbs can be lost AND trans women can do necromancy? It's great and it's terrifying. There's literally an entire area that I avoid because it freaks me out so bad so I GENUINELY take the long way everywhere to avoid it every time.

It's one of those games where any enemy can not only kill you, but maim you in ways that fundamentally change how you play the game. Dealing with enemies is a puzzle: how do you approach them? Do you deal with them now so you never have to deal with them again? Do you run around so you can wait until you're stronger? Do you shoot them from afar or save the precious ammo for something even worse?

It's a special kind of satisfying, but definitely not a game for everyone. I'd recommend reading the content warnings, as it's a dark fantasy with dark fantasy themes. It's also a game for adults only, no exceptions. Feel free to message me if you want to know about any content in the game that isn't listed out in the warnings on the store page. I might make a larger blog post about it later.

SHAMELESS

Ok, at first I really liked it! It's very funny, the characters are very well written, and it's very captivating... But I'm going to be real, the amount of Leering Shots Of Teenage Girls in what I watched of this show is enough to drive me bananas. I don't want to look up the sixteen year old girl's skirt, netflix, I'm ambiguously in my mid twenties. The show's insistence on making me look at karen naked ruined it for me. It didn't even feel like it was saying anything? It just kept happening!!! Anyways, tl;dr, shameless is not for me.

VELMA

So, listen. I need to admit something: I've been deep in the Western Cartoons Discourse Trenches since I googled "My Little Poney Forums" as a young teenager. I never really participated, but I'm aware of the cycle of Discourse that happens whenever a show Like This comes out- a show with marginalized characters that isn't very good, or at least is perceived as such.

I watched Sacrificial Trash and you should too

What generally happens is an outpour of outrage and criticism that's 10% warranted, 30% nitpicky and 60% literal actual bigotry. You end up with a lot of video essays of Yelling Men With Glasses that makes me, a contrarian hipster, really interested in proving the internet wrong and actually Enjoying The Thing.

After watching all of Velma, my verdict is:

I Enjoyed Watching It But Would Not Recommend It To Most

The show is funny! It's visually incredible! It has a fun plotline! It has a lot of nods to older Scooby Doo cartoons that I, as a Child Born After 1960, Enjoy! And I like basically every main character and most of the side characters...

Except... It has two massive, glaring issues in its writing. Two major themes that not only make the show nearly unrecommendable to most people, but also revolve around the worst character in the show, Velma herself.

To start, this show has a massive, gaping problem with self-hating anti-indian racism.

Every time Velma's ethnicity is brought up, it's made out to be a gag!! It's to make fun of her!! She's called an ugly gorilla constantly!!! She's made fun of for being hairy!!! And it's never addressed!!! It's just a running gag that Velma hates being Indian and so does everyone else. It's very uncomfortable. I was hoping it'd tone down but it doesn't. The show doesn't even seem all that aware that her self hatred about her own culture and her ethnic features is... a bad thing? It's very strange. I know a lot of south asian people who refuse to watch the show or didn't continue past episode one because of this and MAN. I get it.

The show also has a bit of a misogny problem, which is weird because it tries to be feminist at times? With Fred learning to appreciate women for more than their appearances, which was nice, but the amount of times femininity and appearance gets conflated with being dumb and vapid is... a lot. And the show seems half aware that this is bad while also just. keeping on doing it. And Velma is usually the one being misogynistic throughout the show, and while they kinda try to develop her past it, it doesn't feel like the show takes it seriously as a theme.

Anyways. If you watched and went "man, this show was very well produced and beautifully executed in its visuals!" like a huge nerd, please know that Amy Winfrey, creator of Making Fiends and a director for both Tuca And Bertie AND Bojack Horseman was the supervising producer and I highly advise checking her out.

PS: Glenn Howerton should do more voice work

[batboyblog]

Things I like about Tumblr, 2022

first off, Tumblr isn't perfect, it's full of people, and people in general and on-line can be pretty crap, but in a rare move for me I'm looking at the good.

you are not expected to post under your own name/face. In fact people would think you were pretty freaking weird if you did. To the Best of my knowledge only one person posts under their own name with their face as a profile pic, Hi Neil Gaiman! If we keep this up Tumblr will not become a semi-work space like twitter

No one knows your follower count (and honestly you shouldn't know it either) The level of brain rot I see on twitter around having a big follower count is so embarrassing, "help me get to X million!" is so very cringe, much like blue checks its a meaningless thing and we're all better off not knowing who's "popular" there are popular posts not people.

I have a very popular post about the long term nature of Tumblr so I won't go too much into it other than to say that it's nice that we can have long term jokes and memes on here, because we're able to reblog things from the past without any shame and judgement and so a culture and in jokes and yearly (or weekly) events happen here in a way I don't see on more "now! now! now!" social media.

You can do whatever, linking to #1 because we're not a semi-professional webpage where people are selling their "brand" etc there's little to no pressure (outside of yourself) to stay on topic or theme, you can and should reblog that gif set of a funny show from 10 years ago, that moody art shot of a field before a storm, and that short video of puppies falling over, wild out.

You decide if people see your likes. How many times did people get busted for having porn in their Twitter likes, where here no one can judge you, again we're not a work space so if you like that picture of a man in jock strap, go for it reblog that shit, but if you're shy don't worry you can enjoy what you enjoy without having to share with the class.

We hate crypto, we hate NFT, we always have we always will and thats very sexy of us

you can (still) say what you like. The need to make platforms safe for advisors and influencers has lead to "unalive" and other ways to try to get around using bad words. On Tumblr I can say that Elon Musk sucks a whole bucket of monkey shit and I hope he's pushed down the stairs at Twitter HQ.

Tags my beloved, tags are funny, lovely cool little notes, a way to add a joke, say something heart felt etc without worrying "is this needed?" and guess what if the answer was "yes it was" someone will screen shot them and add them to the post for you, win win.

Long form thought, I know this is a semi-jokey list but like no joking I think having all our politicians, journalists and "thought leaders" spending all day on and mainly communicating through a webpage with a very small character limit was/is very bad for our society. Tumblr (as you can see) you can write an essay (I don't think those people should come here, but I never run out of characters)

there's nowhere better for formatting gifs or picture sets, I honestly can't imagine trying to post a series of gifs or pictures on Insta or Twitter and having them all folded up rather than laid out in order all visible at once (and not cropped down, well most of the time)

There's no algorithm, everyone says it but it needs to be on the list, there's no real hand holding pushing you to this or that, there's nothing boosting or hiding your post, you pick what you like and follow it, and then those blogs do something weird and different and thats chill and you keep on.

we're the gay trans sex website, pretty much no where else on-line can you find this much dumb, non sequitur queer humor or as supportive of the trans experience, yes there are TERFs but they are more fringe here than basically any where else.

we just don't matter, back to #1 we are not a place where you can market yourself or your brand or whatever, as such things are just not that serious, this is a social media website made for fun, to enjoy TV, books, and movies mainly but really whatever you do enjoy.

negative I'd like to address before I go, the on-going porn ban, I'm not in favor of porn itself on here, I don't think we need gif sets of studio porn or whatever. But once Tumblr was a safe space for a lot of queer performers to spread their self made work. It also was a safe space for Queer art, both photographic and drawn, to express sensuality and sexuality. And a safe space for Queer artists to draw art of characters totally fucking the shit out of each other. It was a place where enjoyment of the human form and sexuality could be mixed with all the other parts of life as normal. There were for sure problems, however in an ever more censored and sex negative world I think a freed Tumblr is more needed than ever, so I hope we figure that out soon.

[icaruskey]

All the things you listed as issues specifically for trans men/transmascs are literally issues for trans women. Im absolutely serious in telling you to reconsider who is feeding you info, because you are parroting terf ideology. 100% serious, your blog seriously reads like that of a bigot.

The way the issues fall out for trans men and women are different though, wouldn't you agree?

It's one thing to be told that testosterone is poison by a TERF who doesn't even see you as a woman and entirely something else to be told that testosterone is a poison in a space where you'd be affected.

And the majority of trans feminine people don't have to worry about corrective rape leading to pregnancy where, in many areas around the world where abortion rights are nonexistent or threatened or otherwise incredibly hard to access, you'd be forced off your HRT to carry the child. Or a complete lack of reproductive healthcare if you've gotten the M on your medical documents without going through an extensive process of outing yourself instead of just getting the damned pap smear.

I'm 100% serious. The issues themselves may not be unique -- I'd say a fair few of the things we label transmisogyny trans masculine people face as well. But the way it affects trans men is different because it's based out of a fear and hatred of someone being perceived as a trans man.

And that's all transandrophobia is saying really.

If you think I'm bigoted for targeting lateral as well as oppressive aggression, then I don't know what to tell you. But my self-hatred of my status as a nonbinary trans man stopped in October and I'm not putting that particular coat back on thanks. I've always run hot but I run hotter since I started T.

[thetroublesofbeingtrans]

Hi, I was wondering if I could ask for some advice. I don't understand my feelings. sorry if this is tmi. When I was about 4 I remember feeling awful when I was called a girl. When I was very young, I started to develop breasts very early (as the first person of my class/year) and I was bullied for that. I still hate my breasts when I'm wearing clothes, but I don't know if that's from the bullying. I don't hate them just looking at them separately when wearing a normal bra though. I don't really feel like my head fits on my body then? If that makes sense. Like my body isn't part of me when I'm naked (most of the time)? Sometimes I do feel like a whole person and I'm happy with how I look. When I dress very feminine, I almost always don't feel like myself. I feel like I'm dressed up as someone else. I really enjoy looking more masculine and having a flatter chest from wearing a sports bra that is too small (but I can't wear that for more than like 15 minutes and I don't have a binder, so I don't have a flatter chest ever). From when I was young, I fantasised about having a masculine name that could be read as non binary (stereotypical names for men, but woman can be called that as well). I don't feel like a woman, but I don't know if I feel like a man. I think I can see my future as a woman and I don't mind my genitals (although sometimes I've fantasised about having a penis). But how do you feel like a woman? I don't mind seeing myself as a mother and I don't have the strong hate about the word woman as I did when I was a kid. Now it's just an uncomfortable feeling. I don't have that with man, but I haven't been called that by others. I also read that being attracted to woman can influence how someone sees their gender. So idk if I'm just a more masculine bi girl? Although that doesn't feel right. Could I be feeling non binary? But that doesn't feel right either. I just currently don't know. It doesn't help that I fit in the stereotypical box of woman when you look at my hobbies. I'd be the perfect housewife and I wouldn't mind that role. When I have talked about this with my friends, they have either said that gender isn't real and just a social construct, everyone is just a person or they haven't gone into a deep conversation with me. How could I figure my gender out more? Thank you for reading this and running this blog 💛

Well first off, thank you for opening up to me about this- It takes a lot to be vulnerable and I appreciate it. Honestly, my advice here is that you don't have to think about being trans or not being trans as another box to put yourself in. I think the best thing I learned throughout my transition was to stop thinking of things in terms of "do I want to be a man? do I want to be a woman?" because our ideas of what man and woman are are sometimes heavily influenced by our surroundings. "How do I feel like a woman?" is a very good question, and the truth is, a lot of different people are going to have a lot of different answers. The best part is, you don't have to erase a part of yourself- your history, your experiences, etc- to still be one gender or another. I had a lot of similar experiences growing up, and for me, the best way to think of these things goes more like:

Would I feel more like myself if I got top surgery? Would I feel more like myself if I took testosterone? Are these choices I make for myself going to make me feel comfortable with myself?

And you don't even have to think about it that far yet. You can take smaller steps. Cut your hair, experiment with clothes. Hair and clothes are not permanent, you know? Get a feel for what's going to make you feel the most confident in yourself and don't pressure yourself to fit into one box or another box that people label as acceptable- not even in terms of gender, but also in terms of being "really" a man or "really" a woman. I understand why a lot of people like to assure their friends with "gender isn't real" or "gender is socially constructed" but I also understand how this isn't helpful when you're looking for a groundwork to use in finding where you stand. I know as I've continued in my transition, I've gone from pretty solidly identifying as a trans man to shifting more into a non-binary identity as I became more comfortable with my body after top surgery and testosterone- and I've been transitioning for like, 8 years. I feel like expecting yourself to understand it right away is unrealistic. Try to worry less about if you're taking up space in a community and more about how that community's resources will benefit you, talk to other trans people, and see where you feel like you fit.

[falsebooles123]

Finding the First Gay Kiss - Diary of a Big Ole Gay 11.17.22

A Florida Enchantment (1914) dir. Sidney Drew

I've Already given this a more detailed discussion on my Letterboxd so I won't get into the more pernicious aspects of this film. (as I saw this you can notice one of the characters in blackface in the background like a racist It Follows).

You may be looking at this film and being like but Ryeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen look it theres two women kissing thats gay. But theirin lies the rub. In A Florida Enchantment, Lillian Tavers finds some magic african seeds that let you pull a gender bend and she just takes one for shits and giggles I guess, (I mean I think it was to get back at her fiance but thats kinda weak.

(we totally believe that you just wanted to gender bend to get back at a man that you don't even talk to for half of the movie. totally not because your actually super hecking trans and wanted an excuse to captilize on this anime plot. )

So yeah in my reading of this film thats some straights sorry if you can't handle Lawrence Talbot serving fish while hes girl modding then um thats on you.

(when you fake your own death just so that you can present as the opposite gender and go by your new masculine name and pronouns #justgirlythings #stillcisthrough)

So this kinda runs a rankle through it because while these women are totally fucking sapphos. They were trying to get that P and go. Its Kinda Misgendering to present this as the first gay kiss when this shit is objectively about a straight trans man.

At the end of the day I am happy to hear your interpretations but this doesn't solve the question for me.

Zapatas Gang (1914) dir. Urban Gad

oh what your not famalier with the beautiful and radiant Asta Nielsen the worlds first international superstar, whose films were considered to demi-monde by American Censors to be allowed over here????

Well sorry but that sounds like a you problem. Trust me this butch queen is coming back to visit in this blog series.

In Zapatas Gang a german film crew go to the beautiful countryside of norditalien. *cough* Northern Italy to play a bunch of robber barons. Unbeknownst to them the actually crew of Bandits, The eponymous Gang Alla Zapata, have come over and stolen there work clothes.... for some reason. Don't worry about it just enjoy Asta Nielson looking like a bisexual pirate for 45 minutes

(said bisexual pirate outfit, somebody please dress like this for halloween)

In this film during a scene the "bandits" attack a stagecouch which they believe to be paid extras. they were not in fact paid extras but unpaid civilians and also like rich people or something. At this interchange Asta stops one of her ruffians from attacking the young coquette that was driving with her mother on an evening constantional before stealing a cheeky little kiss like the Rapscallion she is and OMG ITS LIKE SO FUCKING GAY.

(mommy? sorry Mommy? sorry. but like for real women with swords who like just defeat you in physical combat. 😳😳🥵🥵🥵)

also just saying these emojis are absolutely not slutty enough on tumblr. do better.

But um yeah like this is it these are lesbians kissing???

ok. ok. so the Coquette refers to asta as "Her Handsome Theif" and you could argue that Asta is dressed as a man in this film so its possible that the Coquette thinks that Asta is a man in this sense but I mean c'mon!

(we totally believe you that you thought this person was a man because of pants. You totally didn't feel a titty when you were feeling her up earlier. Totally not your latent bisexual and danger kink rearing its head)

I love this, I'm gay for it, I'm adding Asta Nielsen to my pantheon of strong powerful bisexual women that I want to STEP ON ME.

(I was trying to find the animation were they say Big lady a bunch but this will do)

But Don't worry I'm not gonna stop exploring this subject until we get to Sunday Bloody Sunday because like I'm having fun I wake up and the world gets a little more gayer and I feel a little more scene and isn't that kinda beautiful???

[ardenttheories]

Homestuck's always been antagonistic and insensitive, but I don't recall seeing any of you try to dox Hussie? But please, continue to rationalise how cyberbullying lgbt people for not being nice enough and having opinions about a fictional character you disagree with puts you in the right. A story doesn't go the way you'd like and this is how you respond? You COULD have just not bothered reading it instead of CHOOSING to make your online life about something you hate like a toxic weirdo.

Hi, Kate. I’m so glad you could find my blog. (Edit: that was a joke. Apparently, some anons find it impossible to tell that I don’t actually think you’re Kate). It’s clear to me that you didn’t take the time to read through any of the content that’s actually on here, since you’re throwing around rather wild accusations, so let me take this down step by step.

Homestuck has only rarely been antagonistic and insensitive. Things like the Alpha Trolls - which were clear criticisms of fandom culture - were relatively few and far between, and when we complained about them, they actually stopped. Remind me, for instance, how relevant the Alpha Trolls were to the plot? How long they stayed as mockeries towards the fandom? Yeah, not long. I actually have talked about this before on the blog - alongside other things I thought were negative towards the fandom from the original comic - but the difference here is that... in the entirety of Homestuck, these things were outliers and inconsistencies. They stuck out because they were in stark contrast to the otherwise wonderfully handled content Homestuck went over.

For instance, Homesuck is critical of abuse - especially in terms of relationships. We see through a critical lense the shit normalisation of parental abuse can do to a child - with actual talk of triggers and of the mental and emotional scarring left behind, and the complexities of the child’s feelings towards the parent’s death through Dave - and we see how self destructive relationships can be, how harmful they are, and how hard it can be to leave them - such as Terezi’s very toxic blackrom with Gamzee, which was always portrayed as something negative and harmful especially with how worried Karkat was for her and how withdrawn she became during its run, and Dirk’s relationship with Jake, which goes very much over how communication can cause a deterioration in romantic relationships especially when the two participants have conflicting mental illnesses. 

It also goes over how men, though they can be mired in toxic masculinity, can choose to be good. How sometimes we’re not born as good people, but we can become good people through the love we have for the people around us, through frequent attempts to check what we’re doing, through the sheer willpower to be good. Dirk’s entire arc, knowing that he could very easily become Bro but deciding he doesn’t want to be, that it’s something he wants to work on, is so important and incredibly powerful. Mental illness in men is often just given as an excuse to make them violent with no attempts at betterment - so Dirk actually existed as proof that you don’t have to be that stereotype. 

In contrast, Homestuck^2 completely uncritically gave Jade, who was cis, a dog dick, made her, a bisexual woman, a sex maniac and the yaoi “woman who gets in the way of the gays” trope, made her a cheater and someone who forced her partner into the relationship to begin with, and made her a neglectful mother after having cheated with her best lesbian friend in something that has incredible recall to just about every futanari video ever - and they tried to claim that this was good representation of trans women, actually, and that the only reason we didn’t like it is that Jade is “a woman” who “has sex”.

Likewise completely uncritically, they made Gamzee, an anti-black stereotype, enter a relationship with Jane, a fascist, and then made the entire thing into a cuck joke wherein Jake being frequently drunk and sexually assaulted was funny because he wasn’t “man enough”. They then forced him to go back to his abuser after he left her in a scene that read very much like, “ridiculous man thinks woman is abusing him, go back and do your manly job”. 

This, of course, doesn’t even go into the travesty that is any form of trans representation in the comic. Roxy, a trans man, is barely even focused on as trans; they make no attempt to enforce in the fandom that he’s a trans man the way they do that June is a trans woman, and even then, they seem to think that just saying someone is a trans woman is actually good representation. Not, like, bringing it into the comic - just saying that it’s a thing. And of course, that’s not even going into the completely uncritical lense they have of Vriska, wherein her being a trans woman completely frees her of any and all blame for the past abuses she has comitted, and once again she becomes an amazing character to save the day without a single flaw - which in turn inherently associates trans women with abuse apologism, abusers, and the ideology that just because we’re trans we can get away with anything scott free. 

I honestly cannot think of one instance of good and genuine representation in Homesuck^2, nor can I think of any scene where negative content was actually treated as the negative thing it actually is. There’s no critical lense at all, not like we have in Homestuck; there’s just no fucking comparison. And this isn’t a one-off situation, either. Whereas Homestuck does do fuck ups - isn’t perfect - in between the otherwise brilliant content, Homestuck^2 is just founded upon these horrific takes. There’s almost no good content in between, and what is left is a slog to get through when surrounded by the thick slurry of shit that compromises futa Jade, abuse apologism Vriska, and victim blaming Jake. 

Of course, we didn’t “doxx” Hussie. Hussie actually listened to our complaints, for the most part, and worked with us to create something that worked well. The way Homestuck^2 was touted to work. You know, since it was meant to be written with the fandom in mind, influenced by the things we suggest and react to. We went into Homestuck^2 with the explicit idea that we were going to be listened to and taken into consideration when it was being written - the way we were with old Homestuck. I’m very sorry to say that, when you make these expectations, people are going to be a titchy bit upset when you then commandeer the entire thing and exclude the fandom from any of the process that you said they were going to be part of.

Additionally, it’s rather funny, isn’t it, that what you call doxxing is actually just people upset with how triggering content is being handled, and going to the people who actually wrote the content in order to voice their complaints? It’s almost as if social media exists to allow this communication between reader and author, which is a fundamental thing you’ll learn in any creative writing course, such as the one I’m on currently, wherein you’re actually taught how to respond to social media and to build up your image with your fans. 

Homestuck^2 is an ongoing piece of media. We’re well aware that we have a potential to change these uncritical takes and the horrific way they’re being handled if the writers will just listen to genuine criticism. This is, frankly, no different to the people who go to J. K. Rowling’s Twitter to tell her how harmful her transphobic comments are; because if she believes these things, they will work their way into her texts and will perpetuate harmful ideologies. 

The literal same thing is happening in Homestuck^2 - again, such as futa Jade, which normalises the point of view that bisexuals are cheaters and completely trivialises what it means to be trans, or Gamzee, which perpetuates just about every anti-black stereotype possible. Media does have a very powerful impact on what people see in the real world. This is why, for instance, positive black characters are so important in media; if they’re always portrayed as villains, then people will see real world black people as villains as the ideology is perpetuated to the point of fact. This is especially true if the people already believe in the ideology.

Fiction is one of the best ways that we can counteract this cycle. If you make a character that they like, and they happen to be positive representation, and then they watch more media that is likewise positive representation, it’s more likely to stick that these positive representations are the actual experiences of minority groups. Also? It’s important TO those minority groups. A black person, especially right now, doesn’t want to see an anti-black stereotype fuck a fascist, engage in sexual assult, and then enact pedophilia - only to die at the hands of a hero and be laughed at for the death. Surprisingly, shit like this is why we need to tell the writers that what they’re doing is harmful, that they’re perpetuating phobic ideologies, and that we need better representation - especially in a comic that is this widely read, and also has a very large minor fanbase. 

I shouldn’t need to explain why exposing minors to anti-black stereotypes, transphobic, homophobic, biphobic, abuse apologism, victim blaming, and the trivialisation of rape and sexual assault (especially towards men), might be a federal fucking issue. 

So, no, we’re not actually cyberbullying LGBT+ people. We’re trying to hold shitty writers accountable for the incredibly toxic and harmful ideologies they’re forcing into a text that has always been written with critical thought in mind. 

I should also point out how funny it is that you’re focusing on how some of the writers are LGBT+ - as if we’re not? I’m trans, I’m gay, and I’m ace. Yes, I can actually be these things and absolutely furious that a trans women is writing some of the most transphobic shit I’ve seen in a while into characters she then claims to be completely free of blame. We can be furious that people within our own community are enforcing negative stereotypes.

Being LGBT+ does not make them free from blame. We cannot give them a free pass to be racist, to be transphobic, to be homophobic, biphobic, to be abuse apologists, just because they’re LGBT+. Not only because that’s just a terrible fucking idea to begin with, but because it also reflects so, so badly on the community as a whole. As if being part of the community instantly means that you can do no wrong? As if there can be no toxicity within our own community, despite the fact that there very much is and it is still an issue to this day?

That is such an issue, one of the biggest issues even shown just in Vriska and the way Kate handles her as a whole - and, once again, is WHY we need to get them looking at this shit more critically. This view that LGBT+ people can do no wrong and cannot be criticised is shoved into Homestuck^2 and, once again, perpetuates the ideology. This isn’t something to be proud of. This isn’t something that’s actually okay.

Also, your point that the writers aren’t nice enough and that we disagree on fictional characters - well, I’ve already been over the second part. But for the first part, I would like to remind you that they aren’t just random LGBT+ people on the internet that we’re going to because we think their takes are a little shitty. They’re actual writers working on a piece of media. They are official content creators. 

Again, one of the first things you learn on any creative writing course is that when you become a writer, you gain a significant amount of responsibility for your interactions with the fandom. This is something that you genuinely have to expect, and if you don’t, then, unfortunately you just don’t know what it means to write something that thousands of people have a potential to read. As a writer, it is your responsibility to portray your image online; it is your responsibility to engage with the fans in a meaningful way; it is your responsibility to not cause drama and to listen when criticism is brought up, to have genuine discussion and not to perpetuate hatred - especially towards your own fanbase.

Consider, for instance, the way I’m talking to you right now. This is the sort of tone that someone should take when talking to a fan about genuine criticism. When things are brought up, you go over them step by step, you listen, you write back - you don’t go on a flurry of “fuck yous” to a minor who asked you why your team didn’t post anything about the BLM movement on the official Twitter, and you definitely don’t respond to every comment with genuine criticism with the word “pigshit”. You almost definitely don’t tell your trans masculine and masculine-aligned nonbinary fans that their opinions don’t matter.

As a writer, Kate and the rest of the team have a responsibility with their interactions with their fans. They aren’t just normal fandom voices anymore; they’re official fandom voices, voices that have more weight behind them than anyone else. They’re who people are going to turn to when it comes to anything regarding Homestuck^2. Their words now reflect literally everything about Homestuck^2, the future of Homestuck as an expanded universe, and the opinions of the group as a whole. They have to be careful with what they say. They have to be held to the same standards as industry voices because that’s essentially what they are - especially now that Homestuck is something you pay for. 

Also, this isn’t a point of the story not going the way I want. This is a point of many of people in the fandom being upset with how content is being handled, upset that their voices are being shut down, upset that triggering content is being laughed at or used flippantly and without care or respect. This is people being upset that trigger warnings were removed specifically to make the comic unsafe for them as a punishment for daring to say that something was wrong. This is people being upset that a piece of media that used to be so fucking good at portraying sensitive content in a critical light, that used to be so good at normalising LGBT+ identities and healthy representations of those identities, has suddenly turned to this. 

The story can go whatever way it wants - and frankly, that’s fine be my. What isn’t fine is that content is being used specifically to hurt and to incite.

And, of course, that final piece; nothing will improve if we don’t say that it’s wrong to begin with. Someone needs to voice the complaints of the fanbase, othrewise these toxic ideologies are going to go unchecked. One of the biggest things I’ve come to understand while making these posts is that a significant portion of the fandom feels isolated in their hurt; they don’t think other people feel the same way they do, and several people have mentioned feeling like they were going crazy because they were upset with things that the text and writers are normalising. It’s so important to make sure that these people know they’re not alone. It’s so important to make sure that our voices are heard. It’s so important to try and create critical discussion and debate over something that so many people still fucking love. 

The thing is, I don’t hate Homestuck^2. I actually really, desperately wish I could enjoy it. I wish I could read through it and theorise, could go in depth about how amazing the characters are, could write long and extensive posts on how creative and engaging it is - could even just go on about how interesting the Meat-Candy divide is, and all the points they’re trying to make about canonicity. But I genuinely fucking can’t. There is just so, so much wrong in the text that is completely unrelated to plot and to the overarching Point that makes it impossible for me to read, to want to read, to try to encourage other people to read. They’re things that literally don’t need to be in there, either; stereotypes and toxic ideologies and uncritical or badly handled sensitive topics that could be rectified so, so easily. 

Homestuck^2 could be amazing for a lot of the fandom. It could be something that we all rally around the same way we did for the original comic. For for a lot of people, it has ruined their fandom experience, has ruined their desire to want to read anything more to do with Homestuck, and has caused a significant portion of the fandom to just drop out entirely. That in and of itself should be a sign that this isn’t just a little fandom drama. That this is something much bigger and much more serious that, just maybe, needs to be looked into, talked about, understood - and, potentially, changed. 

[londonfog-chan]

The Trans!Reader x Jonathan Joestar That No One Asked For But is Getting Anyway Because Fuck Convention: Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy

This one goes out to all my people who requested a Trans!Reader insert on my other blogs, I’m trying to test the waters with this one to make sure I’m doing it justice. No one should ever have to feel bad about themselves and I want this to be my love letter to all of my trans folks out there.

...

[[MORE]]

At first, she didn’t recognize the young man standing alone on the hill. Maybe you’d been chased off by him, and she worried when she saw your box in his hand. Heartbroken, thinking that your treasure had been commandeered by a brute. But the wind betrayed the boy, billowing locks of hair and instantly she broke out into a run, the turquoise fabric of her dress flaring out behind her as she hitched up her skirts, her blonde hair trailing behind her like a cape.

“I am here!” she called your name, and when the young man turned she saw the friend she’d known since infancy.

“Oh my!” the lightest dusting of pink tinges her cheeks as she skids to a halt directly in front of you. “You look… Dashing! Such fanciful clothes.”

“I had to make an impression darling.” You reply, smiling shyly and holding a hat box closely to your chest. “My brother won’t miss the trousers nor the blouse, but the shoes… They’re far too big for me. And… And I’m unsure how to tie the cravat...”

“Don’t fret, I can fix it for you! Look, I’ve even brought some things for you to pin up your hair. We’ll have you all primped in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

Like a mother, Erina Pendleton takes you between her knees on the grassy knoll. Armed with a brush and a coil of ribbon, she pulled and twisted your snarled tangles up and away from your face. You obediently pulled a man’s cap out of the hatbox and over your head as Erina finished with your hair and took your shoes off, pulling stockings from her basket and stuffing your shoes until they fit snugly when she tied the laces.

“Oh…” she smiles when she’s done, and for some reason it makes your heart tingle the slightest bit.

“What do you think?” you ask.

“I think… I think you’re positively handsome, and you seem to be less tightly wound. Especially around the eyes.”

You’re unsure of how you look, so you can’t say for certain that you feel the clothes have done anything to make you less of a wreck emotionally. Raising your arms over your head, you look at your shoes, the cravat Erina showed you how to tie around your neck, the tweed trousers. Everything is in muted colors, not a stitch of brightness to be seen save for the handkerchief peeping from your breast pocket. When you stole the clothes from the discarded trunk your brother left behind before he went to India, you felt exhilarated, frightened at the prospect of getting caught and possibly taking a switch for your boldness. Yet when your mother caught you taking them, she merely laughed and told you they wouldn't fit your brother even if you decided to fix them up, but if you wanted some play clothes they were more than adequate to serve that purpose. You decidedly felt deflated, a bit hurt she didn't really do anything and dismissed you as though you were an eccentric child playing at a game instead of a young man trying to come into his own. But you do feel something now that Erina has fixed you up… almost airy. And she is right, you don’t feel the strain around your eyes anymore. After a while however, you begin to squirm, indeed feeling something but not the freedom nor the personal acceptance you've been trying to achieve.

“My trousers chafe me so!” you complained. “Have they not managed to figure out a finer weave of fabric for the warmer months?!”

“Stop scratching! You’re being so vulgar!" Erina whines, but it does nothing to deter you from reaching into the band of your pants and scratching violently everywhere.

"Damn and blast!"

"Sophisticated gentlemen don't reach into their drawers and scratch in front of a lady!" she scolds, "You said you want to unleash the gentleman inside you, what would he say to this display?”

“Well right now the gentleman inside me wants me to tend to the war raging on my buttocks!”

Erina cries your name, begging you to stop scratching your rear end with a ferocity that nearly makes you roar in frustration. It does take quite a long time for you to relent, damning the conventions of polite society all the way and using rough language that the poor girl has unfortunately become accustomed to. For a while you complain some more about the clothes, the societal expectation to be covered at all times, the fact that neither gender is truly free of their own volition, and the revolution you wish to start for a society that is nothing short of anarchy.

"Everyone will be allowed to run stark naked if they wish to, or to be draped in silks and I'll make all these pompous aristocrats provide every necessity. I grow weary of hearing the necessities of decorum every five minutes when I simply wish to fulfill a human need!"

“Now, now…” Erina coos gently, brushing blades of grass from your trousers. “Look here, you’ve unsightly grass stains.

"If I must return to my flouncing hell I'll take care of it later." you told her. "Grass stains speak to a boy that craves adventure. An Odysseus!"

"I'm sure it does." she giggles. "But all this talk of treasure, we still haven’t taken care of the most important part.”

“… I’d nearly forgotten about that. Let me get her for you…”

You finally relinquish the tight hold you’ve been keeping on your hat box, slowly opening the lid and reaching in with both hands. Cradling your treasure as though it’s a child, you rock your precious doll back and forth, smoothing the cascading brown curls down and fixing her skirts. It takes a while for you to let go. You don’t want to let the poor thing go. She is far beyond a play thing, she was your bearer of the most heartfelt confessions and tears, the first to know of your beginning metamorphosis back when you feared Erina would call you horrific names if you told her your most guarded secret.

Now, when you look up at Erina, you know you’ve made the right decision to trust her. She scoots closer to you as you tremble, wrapping her arms around your shoulders and not once making a move to steal the doll from your grasp. In fact, she doesn’t presume to take it until you offer it to her, and then she treats it as though she is receiving a holy relic.

“Please…” you beseech your best friend, “Give her a good home, with plenty of love and affection. She likes to sleep beside your pillow in her box, and her favorite holiday is Easter, her favorite food is spice cake…”

“You can trust me, my dearest friend. I promise to take very good care of Aphrodite for you.”

Slender fingers reached forward to stroke your cheek, clearing away the tears that have fallen for the poor doll you relinquished. As she cleans your face, she tells you the doll will never leave her sight, fully prepared to cater to her every whim as though she's a princess and not made of wax. Yet Erina is right. You mustn’t cry. It’s only for a little while that Erina will have her, until you’re grown up and have a house of your own to keep your possessions. Unsure of your parent's reaction when you finally decide that they need to know they've lost a daughter and obtained a son, you told Erina it's better to keep Aphrodite away lest she is destroyed. You promised your dolly she'd be safer with Erina those nights you cuddled her, seeking reassurance from the persecution you knew you’d face from the rest of the world.

“When I’m a grown man, I’ll be a renowned physician.” You asserted aloud. “I’ll have a big house, millions of books, my piano, and I’ll play Aphrodite’s favorite songs for her every single day. If I am not accepted, then that will be fine. No family will be permitted to enter my abode except for you, my dearest Erina. We will have twenty dogs apiece, and I shall give them only the strongest names from Greco Roman literature.”

“Twenty apiece?!” Erina exclaimed. “Don’t you think that’s a mite excessive?”

“Not at all, in fact I think that’s hardly a proper minimum requirement for a house.”

All this talk of dogs and estates with room for a man and his doll makes you excited, and you cannot help but take your borrowed handkerchief from your pocket to wipe your face. The wind evidently shared your sentiments, as the minute you loosened your grip the scrap of fabric floated away on a gust that made you clutch your hat for fear of losing it.

“Oh no!” Erina whimpered. “I hand embroidered that handkerchief!”

“A thousand pardons darling! I’ll fetch it back!” you cried, and you’re up and running before she can stop you.

As you chased the scrap of fabric, you couldn’t help but feel elated. There was no tug at your waist that made your insides hurt and your breathing shallow, no skirts to trip you and confine you to a chair where you practiced the same stitch over and over until your fingers felt they would break. None of the insecurity and strangeness at inhabiting a body that did not feel like it belonged to you. You only felt the wind at your face, the hard earth below your brother’s shoes as you ran… No longer did you feel trapped, like a lion pacing a tiny cage in the circus.

You felt elated at last. As though finally, after all this time, you were living your truth.

It was Erina’s screams that finally snapped you from your euphoria. Pocketing the runaway handkerchief, you began your course back to the grassy knoll where you left her, fearing the worst when you heard her crying out “please! Please put her down!” Your heart sank. Not only was your dearest friend being assaulted, but her tormentor evidently had commandeered Aphrodite because there was only one other “her” that Erina could be referring to. She never referred to you in the old way anymore, not since your confession.

You made it just in time to see a young man being beaten to the ground, two other snot nosed brats, had commandeered Aphrodite and you heard talk of them going to lift up her skirts to see if she'd been made with all the right parts…

And the last thing you remembered was seeing red, absolutely seething with rage as you put a shoe up the ass of one of the boys and nearly launched Aphrodite into Erina’s arms. All the frustration, all the anger you felt your entire life of living a life that wasn’t yours, it came out in the form of an unchecked feral response that made the boys cry out for mercy as they left you, Erina, and the downtrodden young man alone. By the time you'd let them go, they could only hobble off pathetically. In your rage you vaguely recalled screaming to them that perhaps you'd check if they'd been given all the right parts, one of the boys had taken your brother's shoe to the groin and was being dragged along by his companion. Your face was dripping with sweat and tears, and your hands were sore and bloody. The blonde didn’t know who to comfort first, but when your eyes befell on the strapping young lad she too went to his aid.

“Don’t touch me!” he whined. “I didn’t do it for you, you know! A gentleman should always stand for a damsel in distress!”

“… then I suppose a thank you is in order for me?”

The words are out of your mouth before you can stop yourself. Even you're shocked at the personality you've assumed in your new clothes. With little effort your voice has become commanding, a general's voice that is full of conviction. Your stance is confident, centered, alone in your room you often perused illustrations in books of the matadores from Spain and admired the way they carried themselves in the charcoal drawings. Compared to the uptight men of this era, you swore to yourself you'd reject the stiffness of aristocracy and instead would carry yourself as unyielding as a man facing a bull. The young man looks up at you, crimson with rage, shaking and nose streaming carmine down his face. He and Erina have the same bewildered and intimidated expression, and he flinches but does not lash out when you heave him to his feet. He finally bolts from the clearing, insulting you as though you’re the one that beat him to a pulp, and for quite some time you and Erina stare after his retreating form.

"You brute!" he whimpers as he runs away.

“Who in the blue hell…” you begin, and you see Erina approaching with an unfamiliar handkerchief in hand to wrap your bloody knuckles.

Through the blood, the two of you manage to read the words “Jonathan Joestar”, looking back at the expanse of land where the boy had run off to even more confused and left with far more questions than answers.

But one thing is certain and you loathe it to be the first thought you have in your emergence into boyhood: this Jonathan Joestar fellow is the most handsome man you've ever seen in your life.