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stars-are-just-ghosts · 3 years ago

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A World Full of Bullies, and the Four Kids Who Never Stop Fighting Them

This is a story about my four children and the small town they live in, a story about bullies and the people who stand up to them. Let me start by introducing the four of them. We’ll refer to them as the Sibling Mafia (this will be important later.) Each of them is as unique as the different parts of a harmony. They grew up closer than close. Best friends, siblings, confidants. They have their moments of disagreement, sibling rivalry, chaos. But there doesn’t go a day without them seeking out one another’s opinions and comfort. Theirs is a bond that can’t be replicated, or completely understood. The 17 year old, we’ll call her ‘Red,’ is the only girl in the bunch. She’s an artistic bisexual disaster (her words, not mine,) she’s riddled with equal parts anxiety and hope, and she holds her own like you wouldn’t believe (she’s surrounded by guys in her work, and out does them at every turn.) She’s five-foot-zero inches of kickass and love. And there isn’t a single person who can hold her back when she wants something. She’s had a rough several years, found herself beaten down to her most fractured level. But she fought back with every ounce of strength available to her and clawed her way back to the surface. She’s thriving. She’s scared. She’s dreaming of her future. (Her brothers have so often looked up to her, I think Red often feels like she’s surrounded by puppy dogs who would willingly battle-rush the world if it ever failed her.) The 18 year old boy, we’ll call him ‘Blue,’ has high functioning autism and social communications disorder. The world is full of lines he’s steadily trying to figure out how to cross without changing the flow he relies on. From working in the adult world, to trying to hold on to the childhood he isn’t quite ready to let go of, Blue still manages to find the space and time to be the big brother he’s always been. It’s the most important thing to him. More important than his love for just about anything else. That has always been his choice. There isn’t a single one of his siblings that he doesn’t love ferociously. And though his emotions are sometimes tumultuous, he always finds a way to make what he really feels known to those closest to him.

The 14 year old, we’ll call him ‘Purple,’ is a trans (female to male), bisexual, magnetic ray of absolute fricken sunshine. It’s impossible not to want to know more about him, to laugh with him, to share in his infectious well of joy. There isn’t a mean bone in his body, not a single inch of hatred in his DNA. From the moment he was born, he had a smile on his face. The world was his to make happy. And even though these last few years have been one hell of a confusing ride for him, he’s never stopped looking at the world around him like it’s something he wants to change for the better. The almost-11 year old, we’ll call him ‘Green,’ is a pint sized sarcastic ball of genius who doesn’t see just how important he is to the people around him. His comedy is endless, a shield to protect himself and others from the nastier things life tries to throw. He’s smarter than the average 11 year old, but refuses to jump ahead a grade or two because he ‘just wants to enjoy school.’ And though he likes to pretend that he can handle everything that comes his way, there are times when it’s easy to see how young he truly is. It’s those moments that his siblings are his anchor to an uncertain universe, the chains that keep his gravity from failing him. And they are the epitome of his best friends, his comfort, his home. Red, Blue, Purple and Green have a lot in common. From Red and Purple loving art and music, to Green and Blue loving video games, to all four loving DnD night. They love to adventure together, to share inside jokes, to create beautiful mayhem on a daily basis. They love to learn together, to forget to do their chores together, to ask the world to ‘listen, dammit’ -together. They also have trauma in common. Losses of those they loved, pains they’ve all had to feel, things a parent can’t protect them from... And there is so goddamn much I wish I could have protected them from. When Blue was in middle school, there was a boy, we’ll call him ‘Misunderstood.’ To him, Blue’s autism made him a prime target in the bullying arena. Like some other kids, Misunderstood would say mean things, call Blue names, make him momentarily feel like he would never fit into the world he so desperately wanted to be a part of. But what Misunderstood didn’t know was that Blue had a better world around him already, one that would come to save him when it counted most. One day in gym class, Blue was playing basketball with his friends. He tossed the basketball, and it didn’t quite go where Blue was expecting. It sailed at Misunderstood and hit him in the head. It didn’t matter to Misunderstood that it was an accident. All that mattered was this could be a perfect excuse for retaliation. He closed the distance on Blue and punched him in the head. He knocked him out. But in that same moment, Blue’s friends and sister ran to the rescue. They rallied around him, chased Misunderstood away. Protected their friend and brother, because they knew that was exactly what Blue would have done for them. Because Blue is the sort of person to give a stranger the shirt off his back if they really needed it. Something of which Misunderstood couldn’t see. Imagine my terror when I got a phone call from the police. It was a sobering sight to see police cars and an ambulance when I squealed into the school parking lot. There is no way to explain the feelings of helplessness and fury I was inundated with. You know, logically, that your children will break bones and get stitches and have broken hearts and nightmares and a myriad of other pains that are simply a part of life. And you also know, unfortunately, that bullies exist. You never think that anything like this can happen, until it does, however. That’s not naivete. It’s not denial. It’s the hope that the world might not just be as awful as you think it is. Knowing that world proved that hope wrong, even for a moment, makes you want to wrap your children up in your arms and never let go. But that’s not how life works. There isn’t an excuse for what Misunderstood did. But there are things to understand. I can raise my children to be good, caring, kind people. But I have no say in what happens in other children’s lives. Was Misunderstood being cared for? Did he have parents who gave a shit about him? Or was he neglected? Was he lacking the resources to explain and feel his emotions properly? Was his life hell, and he just needed someone to see? I asked myself those things, trying to understand. I even asked the other adults in charge of the situation. But because Misunderstood was a minor, I had no legal right to know. It turned out, in the end, that Misunderstood was expelled. His parents moved him to a different school district. And Blue was left with the question he always seemed to ask when another child chose him to target: ‘Why me, Mom?’

There is no why. Because, like I said, nothing excuses what happened. What I wanted him to focus on was what happened inside the event. And what happened was loyalty, love, friendship and the coming together of individuals to stand up to a bully. Now, at 18 years old and nearly six feet, Blue still has those friends. And he has the lesson they taught him, not the one that Misunderstood wanted to teach. And he doesn’t ask ‘Why me, Mom?’ anymore. He asks, ‘Why not me?’ as he now steps in when someone needs protection. Most recently, Purple, my 14 year old, has had to face bullying of his own. Purple didn’t come out till a year and a half ago, and the daily progress to being the person he wants to be has been beautiful and brilliant. But there is another boy, who we’ll call ‘Unwarranted,’ who has pulled out all the stops to make Purple feel panic, anxiety, terror. Back when covid was nearly past its first upsweep and all the schools were still closed down, Purple was desperately missing his friends. It was agreed, after a fair deal of hashing out the precautions, that he could see one of his best friends at the park. Purple hadn’t come out yet at that point, still struggling with what it would mean for all the relationships in his life. But the idea of seeing someone who he literally grew up with after being so long apart was too good for him to pass up. They met at the local park, a couple of other friends catching up with them there, and they hung out. It was supposed to be an innocent, happy time for a kid who only ever tried to make people happy. It ended in police involvement and kids being physically hurt. Unwarranted had shown up with two much older kids. But the part he played was entirely his choice as all three terrorized the younger kids, with words and with physical threats that ended with large rocks being thrown. One child was hit in the head. My child was hit in the side. Both of them ended up hurt. All while they were running to Purple’s friend’s house for safety. Unfortunately, there was so little we could do. It didn’t happen on school grounds, so the schools couldn’t be involved. The police couldn’t tell me much more other than they knew who the three bullies were, having been in trouble with the police before. And I couldn’t know anything else because they were minors. To protect my child, I couldn’t let him go to the park alone anymore. I drove him everywhere. I tried to help him forget. And over time, he did. Until the beginning of this school year. Purple started his Freshman year looking for new beginnings. He’d already firmly cemented himself in coming out, was totally authentic in who he is and who he wants to be. His friends are still his friends, completely accepting and loving him. And he tackled his first week of school with intensity and excitement. In the back of my mind, however, I had never forgotten what happened at the park. The mother in me held on to it, because I couldn’t take the risk that something worse could happen. I hadn’t been able to protect or avoid what happened to Blue. But maybe I could protect Purple. I got in contact with the new principal at the high school, explaining the situation and that I did not want Purple to be in any classes with Unwarranted. He vehemently agreed. Purple doesn’t have a single class with him. It’s worked out well. Or it did, until they passed each other in the hall. In that brief moment, when classes were changing and kids were hurrying through the halls, Unwarranted took it upon himself to pick right up where he left off. Except now, Unwarranted isn’t the same size as Purple. He’s over six feet, athletic, and knows how intimidated Purple already was by him. The result was Purple incoherent with fear. There’s a reason I have referred to all four kids together as the Sibling Mafia. Because if you hurt one of them, you hurt all of them. And there’s hell to pay. Red and Blue, who are both Seniors at the high school, heard about the incident almost immediately. (It’s a small town, so small school, and word travels fast.) They didn’t go to their next classes. They took Purple to the office instead, and demanded something be done. They wanted answers and a resolution, and they wanted it fast. I received a phone call about it all from the guidance counselor who was just gushing over the bond they all shared, and the way they’d rallied around Purple. But it wasn’t just Red and Blue who rallied. It was their friends. You see, if you’re friends with one of them, you’re friends with all of them. And in a place like this, it grows exponentially. So many people love Purple, and Red, and Blue, and Green. And it shows. The principal and counselor and school resource officer worked on a plan to keep Purple and Unwarranted from ever crossing paths. It was good. It was a start. Unfortunately, it did nothing for when the kids were walking home from school. Because Unwarranted decided to make prodding and inappropriate comments while walking behind him. Only, this time Blue and his best friend, we’ll call him ‘Orange,’ and two of Purple’s friends were there to do something about it. Because Unwarranted had a lot to say when he knew Purple was too scared to retaliate. (Red was with a friend, but was furious when she found out.) But being faced with the reality of a whole group who were more than capable of protecting Purple made him back right off. No fists were thrown. No one got hurt. And everyone made it home safely.

And Purple came to me, despite his fear and wariness, to ask... ‘What if something is wrong with Unwarranted? What if something happened at home to make him act this way? Maybe we can help...’ My response was to breathe. To stare at this kid of mine, because the compassion in those words made my heart hurt. Here was this boy who was obviously being terrorized by someone else, and all he could think about was making sure that bully was okay? I told Purple, ‘You have no idea how amazing your heart is.’ I told him, ‘I don’t know what might be going on with Unwarranted. And it’s wonderful of you to want to help. But you also have the right to be safe, whether you’re in school or walking on the streets. You have the right to have a happy learning experience without fear of being cornered in the hallways. For now, as much as I know you want to figure it all out, my priority is making sure that you are safe.’ He nodded, hugged me, and went about his day.

I read somewhere once that bullies are predators. They will go after what appears to them to be the weakest prey. Trying to stop a bully by teaching a child to stand up to them is like teaching the weakest gazelle to be stronger. The predator will not stop going after the weakest prey, it will only stop going after that target. But what if that target was never weak to begin with? Purple may not have the physical attributes of a football player or a wrestler. But he’s got something even better. He’s a wolf with a pack who would be lesser without his knowledge and love. And there’s nothing that pack wouldn’t do to protect him, just like there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to make their lives better. The Sibling Mafia extends beyond blood, it seems. Now you might be wondering, where’s the almost-11 year old Green in all this? Green came into the first three’s lives when Purple was a little under three years old. At that point, they were already bonded and closer than I could have ever imagined. But the second Green’s little wiggly self came home, the change was immediate and overwhelming. Not in a bad way, not even remotely. You see, that bond transformed. It grew, it solidified, it settled into a whole new identity. It somehow made them far more whole than any of us realized they could be. Because all three older kids had lessons to teach and love to give, and with Green they could do all that together. Without any encouragement from me, because kids don’t need to be raising other kids, Green grew up being the literal center of their world. And they all loved each other more because of it. Green is just a little guy. He’s small and skinny and scrappy, full of wit and genius that often leaves the rest of us wondering where he got it from. He looks at his siblings like he wants to give them the universe. And he goes through life like he might just give it a reason to wise up to the possibility of goodness if it tries hard enough. Nothing holds him down for long. Events, losses, physical injury. He bounces back so fast that the rest of us get whiplash.

But what happens when an event causes loss and physical injury at the same time?

Just this past week, the kids were walking home from school. Red has Senior release, which allows her to get out of school early most days. So it was just Blue, Purple and Green, walking with their friend Orange. In the past, there have been bullies. Two of which I have mentioned. But some never made it to the ‘something we really have to worry about’ stage. One of these bullies, particular to Blue, decided it was time to graduate to that stage in a very dangerous way. We’ll call him, ‘Mistake.’ Because what he chose to do was a big mistake on his part. The kids had made it to just before the opening of our neighborhood. They were on the sidewalk. They’d been carefree, joking, laughing, talking, when a vehicle suddenly sped its way toward them on the road. The vehicle had a passenger and a driver: Mistake. And as Mistake accelerated, one of them threw a full bottle of Powerade out the window as hard as he could. We’re fairly certain he was aiming for Blue.

It hit Green instead. At that speed, with that much force, something as innocuous as a bottle of liquid can do real damage. It was only sheer luck that it hit Green in the leg. If it had hit him in the head, we’d all be sitting in a hospital room right now keeping vigil. That being said, Green is small. He’s skinny. The impact to his leg was enough to damage the muscles in his thigh. You can see the impact point, a literal imprint of the bottle on his skin. The bruising is very clear. The recovery will be slow. The first thing Green did was cling to Purple. Orange and Blue yelled after the car, but it had sped quickly away. The boys managed to get Green home right away. I had been working at my computer. And the next thing I knew, Green is in my arms, incoherent and in pain, crying so hard his whole body was shaking. Calling the police was an easy decision. Trying to hide my instant and unbridled rage was so much harder. The police are treating this as assault on a minor. The bottle was collected as evidence. Green was evaluated by physicians and will thankfully make a full physical recovery. But the emotional damage seems to be much worse. Green is not himself. He’s clingy, he’s worried, he’s having nightmares. He doesn’t want to walk home anymore, even knowing his brothers and Orange are there to protect him. His birthday is barely a week away, and he is trying so hard to be enthusiastic about it. But the bruise and pain in his leg keep offering reminders. The idea of leaving school grounds without one of his siblings or me makes him panic. And the light of innocence in his eyes is that much duller.

It was a senseless, useless act. One that’s rattled us all.

Blue and Purple are blaming themselves, as though they should have been able to see it coming and protect Green. Red is angry that she didn’t just wait to walk with them, as though her being there would have stopped it altogether. Their grandparents, friends, teachers, counselors, and even random people I have never heard of are all up in arms. They want someone to pay. I think Green just wants to pretend it never happened at all.

To be honest, I want Mistake to pay, too. Because it doesn’t matter who he was aiming at, this was clearly assault. Clearly intended to do harm. And I’m tired of feeling like I can’t protect my children. When did the world become so cruel? When did parents stop teaching their children that kindness is not a weakness? When will I ever feel okay with sending my children out into such an unforgiving world? I know I’m angry. In fact, I’m enraged. But... I also still have hope. Green’s birthday is steadily approaching. The kids are doing everything they can think of to make him smile again, make him laugh, prove he’s loved and, most of all, safe. They’re using their hard earned money to get him gifts, to surprise him with a puppy they’re buying themselves, to give him his normalcy back. And I’m watching them hold on to each other through it all. Like they always have. Like, I hope, that they always will. The future is coming at them quickly. Red, Blue and Orange want to get an apartment together after high school. Purple and Green have decided they want to live together forever. And they’ve all decided that they have to make time, once a week or more, to be back under one roof. We live in a small town, but they’re going to move on outside of it. Because the world outside of it is big, and they are well aware of that fact. They want to tackle it in their own way, individually and together. They want to see where this life takes them, no matter what tries to stop them. And they want to share that journey with each other, and with anyone who wants to be a part of it. I never could have predicted how close those four amazing kids would become, or how much they’ve already changed the world just by being who they are. They’re my hope, you see. In a world where anyone can be cruel, they choose to be kind. They choose to be the example by which everyone around them learns what kindness is. Misunderstood, Unwarranted, and Mistake are learning about kindness, too. Whether they realize it or not. Because in their misunderstood existence, in their unwarranted actions, in their irreversible mistakes, the kindness of the Sibling Mafia seems to be far more powerful. This is a story about a world full of bullies and the four kids who never stop fighting them. One act of love, kindness, and hope at a time...

#bullying #hope #together #siblings #the world isn't as bad as it seems #parenting #children #kindness #this is worth the read #i promise

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paullicino · 4 years ago

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A Year like No Other

(Taken from, and funded by, my Patreon.)

A lot of people are now calling 2020 the lost year and it’s not difficult to see why. Most of us have never had a year remotely like this last one. For some of us, the calendar began to blur, weeks and even months merging into one another in a sickly, uneasy timelessness that had us double-checking what day it was. For others, there was stress after stress, as we worried about our health, our jobs, our governments, even our countries. And the two experiences certainly weren’t mutually exclusive.

This month, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on that, acknowledging both the struggles and the successes. It’s sometimes been a difficult twelve months for me, but it certainly hasn’t been without its inspirations and its wonderful moments. I wanted to share some of those, to talk about a few ideas and to spotlight the things that helped me through 2020. I hope it helps. I figure it’s as good a time as any for us to be sharing our blessings.

And I think that first involves celebrating you. I think that’s very important. This past month, a year on from the first COVID cases being widely-reported (and also the first reports of cases where I live), I’ve read a lot by people asking questions like “What difference does it all make?” or “What is the point?” when they look back. They ask these questions when they think about things like their life changes, their mask wearing, their activism or their voting. They see an ongoing pandemic, social unrest or political inaction and wonder why they should make an effort while others are lax or apathetic. It’s natural to wonder that. I think anyone can understand the fatigue, the cynicism and the disillusionment.

But I also, get this, have a Hot Take on this that says that the choices you made were vital. When you chose to wear a mask, to socially distance, to restrict when and where you went, you actively helped fight a deadly virus. You may well have saved lives, saved someone’s health, protected livelihoods by acting as you have. When you voted, shared a cause on social media, attended a protest or talked to even one person about helping others or making the world better, you contributed to improving your society.

In fact, I have capital-O Opinions about these things so strap in and hold on, 'cause here they come.

I’ve been very fortunate to share much of my work on the internet over the years, which is a very particular medium, and sometimes that work reaches a lot of people. My experience of this is that you never know who it truly reaches, or when, or even how, and most of the time you never find out. There’s certainly an immediacy to things where you can see, pretty quickly, what the instant reaction to something is, but that’s fleeting. It doesn’t last and, within moments, there’s already something newer demanding more responses.

In time, the true consequences of things shake out. People get back to you with their more considered opinions. Sometimes months, even years after you do something, you find out from someone what they thought about it, how it affected them or even how they were changed. It can take time for a person to realise how they were changed, too, and we rarely have perspective in the moment. Sometimes it takes us years to appreciate the choices and the actions of our friends, our family members, our teachers, our communities. People have contacted me about work I’ve done long, long after I first shared it, and many of those people have come from places that I never expected, have found my work in ways that I never expected. I think, now, that consequence never travels in straight lines. That cause and effect are strangers rather than siblings.

And so I hope it’s clear that the ramble you have so kindly indulged is meant to say that we don’t always notice the good things that we have done. We ask “What difference does it all make?” or “What is the point?” because we don’t get those answers immediately, or for a long time, or sometimes ever. But not knowing when we saved someone’s health, when we changed someone’s mind, even when we inspired someone’s actions doesn’t mean that we aren’t making a difference. There is a point to our life changes, our mask wearing, our activism and our voting.

I hope you can celebrate yourself and give yourself credit for the choices you made this last year. They have mattered.

I also want to thank you so, so much for supporting my Patreon. I know many of you have been with me since day one, for more than two years now, and I’m so grateful for both your capital-P Patronage and your presence, whether that’s in our Discord community or through your comments and your correspondence. That’s made a big difference to me this past year, helping me pay rent and put food on the table during a time when so much has been uncertain. 2020 was to be my first full year back in Canada after a complicated, circuitous absence and I had half-finished projects, freelance ideas and half a dozen tabs open in my browser with writing residencies to apply for, everywhere from nearby Richmond to the Yukon Territory. I hoped this would be a year that I’d both finally see more of Canada and be able to write about it, too. A lot of things didn’t quite work out, freelance budgets were slashed, work timelines lengthened and I became ill, but as I look back now I’m thankful for a great deal.

I still managed to fulfill some ambitions. At the start of 2020 I’d been finishing up some work on Zafir, which had been an absolute delight, and I was not far off starting spring work on Magical Kitties Save the Day. The close of the year saw me resuming work on a Feng Shui expansion and each of these projects has been really good for me. All of them gave me a chance to work with skillful, progressive people and to become a better designer.

As spring continued, I decided to make a one-off video about board gaming and mental health during a pandemic, partly to offer a practical and helpful introduction to playing board games online and looking after yourself, but also because I wanted people to feel that their actions during a pandemic mattered. Among the things I referenced and linked to, I’ve continued dipping into Headspace from time to time, and this helpful list of brief work-from-home tips has been further updated. I’ve also since further investigated the terrific work of Dr. Ali Mattu, a psychologist and therapist who has produced a lot of material over the last year focusing on how to handle the pandemic.

With the summer came widespread protests across the United States, which highlighted the oppressive and fatal consequences of systemic racism and the urgent need for police reform, both issues not exclusive to the that country (for me, the events echoed the protests that began on my Tottenham street in 2011 and the violent response to 2010’s student protests). I shared a list of resources that I thought were important at the time, but there also followed a wide call for white people to make more effort to both seek out, engage with and promote motion pictures made by Black Americans, or which reflected the Black experience. It wasn’t a big ask and, as well as watching films that had been recommended many times over (such as Us, Da 5 Bloods, The Last Black Man in San Francisco and the excellent BlacKkKlansman, which was the best film I saw last year), I also tried to diversify my social media feeds more. Instagram was host to a growing discussion about how the platform seems to (deliberately or accidentally) divide people by race, something which I think may still be the case, and several nature photographers I follow promoted Tsalani Lassiter and Rae Wynn-Grant. To my delight, among many of the things they speak about and share, both are experts on bears.

I thought it was important to look more closely at Canada, too, so I made more of an effort to follow Indigenous issues and have begun reading Indigenous news sources, including First Nations Drum, Windspeaker and the Nunatsiaq News. CBC runs its own Indigenous news section, much of which is written by Indigenous reporters.A lot of freelance and writing opportunities dried up as the pandemic contracted the world’s economies, but in 2020 I was able to start writing for VICE, working with my old colleague and friend Rob Zacny, and interview the world’s most famous board game designer. VICE has written a lot of relevant, helpful and informative material about current events over the last year and I was heartened by the words of a fellow VICE writer, Gita Jackson, who concluded her essay about living in The Cool Zone of historical possibility by reminding us how “In The Cool Zone, we can also rediscover hope.”

This year I was also inspired by Faith Fundal’s widely-shared CBC podcast They and Us, which was an excellent (and still rare) example of a mainstream media exploration of gender identity and trans rights, and really pleased for my friend Brendan, who launched his podcast project Hey, Lesson! in the autumn. Of course, I can’t mention podcasts without again reminding you of my love for the spooky, supernatural Death by Monsters, which I got to host last winter. It was my dear friend Paula, one of its presenters, who recommended that I start streaming regularly, something I now do here. She was absolutely right when she talked about how positive and social an experience it can be. It’s been a real joy, as well as added some important structure and schedule to my week.

And, of course, the arrival of my first full year as a Canadian resident meant that I got to celebrate my first anniversary as a Canadian resident. I paid my taxes! Let me tell you, it was a slightly confusing and esoteric experience, but it was also one of those mundane, humdrum things that confirms and validates you. Though I didn’t get to throw a party for that anniversary, I did get to enjoy my birthday celebrations before the pandemic really hit. My partner surprised me with a trip to the not-quite-remote-but-definitely-secluded Gibsons, on the quiet British Columbia coastline, which was the best birthday gift anyone’s ever given me and a chance to see more of the rocky, forested, mountainous fringes of a place I’ve fallen so in love with. Before Vancouver closed down, I was also able to collect more than a dozen people (representing five different nationalities!) together in a brewery and then a restaurant, something that now feels like an extremely alien concept. For some of us in our friend group, it’s the last memory we have of coming together and being in the same space. That gives it a pronounced poignancy, a bittersweet quality.

Finally, I’d like to share two more things with you. The first is particularly peculiar and personal: I found my wizard. After drafting this piece last summer, then sharing it in the autumn, a few suggestions led me not straight to my goal, but ultimately down the right path. The game that I was thinking of is called The Tomb of Drewan and I very much doubt that anyone, anywhere is likely to have heard of it. It’s thirty-nine years old this year and it was distributed by a publisher in Berkshire, not so far from where I grew up. It only took me three and a half decades to see what it looks like in colour.

Tracking down this game was a softly satisfying experience. It’s exactly as I remember. Everything makes sense. Reading through the manual reminds me of how difficult it was to try and understand this thing through a monochrome monitor, though I also think it was likely way too complex for the child I was. I don’t think I ever got anywhere. I don’t think I ever could have. But I at least know that my memory has served me well. That wizard was as real as could be.

The second thing is something about my own missing year, something that has also resurfaced in my memory as we’ve plodded through 2020. In the long, dark winter months, in the unstructured days and the collapsing weeks, I’ve been transported back to the early 2000s and to a time that now feels very familiar. Here's what that was like.

I’d been writing professionally for a few years, comfortably and competently, while still living in suburban Hampshire. As publishing moved from magazines to the internet, my work began to dry up, my options narrowed and, honestly, I didn’t respond to this shift by producing my best material. I also didn’t know what to do about all this change, becoming directionless and unsure. I didn’t yet have the confidence to take some of the larger steps that I eventually did and, instead, somewhere in all that I began to move backward. I struggled to find work. I slept the strangest hours. I was frustrated, but it also didn’t matter nearly enough to me because also, I was no longer motivated.

I have memories of waking up at all kinds of times of day and night. Of not knowing where to go. Of running out of things to take photographs of, after looking at the same local sights over and over. It was like living at the bottom of a well, with a tiny, distant view of the world and no handholds for climbing out. I wasted time because I had time to waste, something I deeply regret now, and I became crabby, unhealthy and inward-looking. I was far from my best.

The last time I was in England I found myself going through old things from the early 2000s. I found many of the books I read, a great deal of writing I’d done and, in particular, a lot of my old RPG notes. A lot of old RPG notes, an absolute wealth of work that far exceeded anything I’d done outside of any work except that on Paranoia. I’ve written before about my roleplaying past and how I have fond memories of it, but I had completely forgotten exactly how much material I had collected together. I had so many biographies that I’d indexed them. I was starting to form an encyclopedia of everything I’d done, just so that I could find and reference the things I needed.

I had also read so much, which both prepared me for my degree and began to make me a better writer. I’d mostly stopped reading in my mid-teens and this was a new spurt of interest that led me toward many of the tastes and preferences I have today. I began to develop my fiction and non-fiction writing styles and I developed an interest in non-fiction that had paid me back a thousandfold.

I was building a new me.

I see now that I didn’t lose a year. I was certainly caught in a swamp of sorts, struggling to make progress, but the experiences I had during that time still mattered. They didn’t matter right away and they didn’t matter in any way that seemed at all obvious to me at the time, but they helped to shape me and to guide me, to show me both what I wanted and, certainly, what I didn’t want. If I had the chance to repeat it, I’d for sure live that missing year differently. I’d live it so much better, so much wiser and so much more fruitfully, but I can at least see it now as not the waste I long thought that it was.

And so I hope it’s clear that the ramble you have so kindly indulged is meant to say that, some time in the future, you may look back on 2020 and find your successes, your satisfaction, even your strength. I don’t mean to disregard anyone’s suffering or sadness, your feelings are valid and the pain, loss and difficulties you’ve encountered are very real. I don’t much like people who dismiss the feelings of others and I apologise if I’ve been too glib. I think a past version of myself needed to read something like this, a long time ago, and I only want to give them, you or anyone who might see this, hope for the future, a few reasons to be optimistic and, very importantly, a reminder to celebrate yourself.

Happy 2021. You made a difference. You always have.

#COVID-19 #2020 #Canada #writing #hope #you made a difference #Patreon #A CHAOS SPELL

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ariainstars · 4 years ago

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Sorry, But I Don’t Support Minorities (Any More)

For a start: I will not use inclusive language in this text. (I usually don’t, only in this case I want to make sure it’s known from the start.)

Secondly, if you identify as trans or non-binary and / or are a huge Harry Potter fan, I am warning you: don’t read this.

If you do want to hear me out, be respectful in your comments or hold them back altogether. I won’t tolerate bullying merely because I am expressing my own opinion. Though the topic touches a sore spot in me, too, I will be as objective as I can.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am not and never was a fan of J.K. Rowling and her works. I found the Harry Potter hype strongly exaggerated, the books mildly unoriginal and biased, the films ok until they became so overloaded with derivation from other sources (dragons, elves, magic wands, brooms, unicorns, centaurs, phoenixes, basilisks, flying horses - stories like Star Trek or Star Wars at least have their own world-building) and later so dark that they were no fun anymore. In my opinion an average writer was lucky because she tapped into a trend and was at the right place and right time with her stories. I daresay years from now many fans will wonder why they liked these stories so much and realize that they just jumped on a train, having been too young and naïve to question it.

I don’t own any of Rowling’s books or DVDs or merchandise and I never have been part of the fandom. So, I come from a different corner when I say that I have my own attitude about the current shitstorm regarding J.K. Rowling now being coded as “transphobic”. This is due to personal reasons of my own.

1. The Discussion Can Add Confusion

Rowling stated that in her youth she had problems with her own identity due to her father having wanted her to be a boy. I can understand that because I went through a long period in my late teens and early twens where I had difficulties identifying with the sex I was born with. At times I also felt physically attracted to females. In my case, it turned out to merely be a phase: I am an average cis woman. I can understand that for some people, such doubts may turn out to be more than a phase. But I know what Rowling refers to because I have been there. And I am grateful that there was no gender discussion when I was young because it would have confused me even more than I actually was, and I already had more than enough other problems. I was and I am a “common” woman, but there was a time in my life when I did not like it very much. That time was bad enough, combined as it was with other aspects in my life I had to come to terms with, which at times almost drove me to despair to the point where I contemplated suicide. So, I am glad that in my time being gay / straight / trans / cis / non-binary or other was not such an issue, at least not where I grew up. With my confusion and disorientation, well-meaning people might have taken the opportunity to encourage me to “embrace my lesbianism / trans identity”, when in truth I am neither. I was discouraged, from many sides, to liking myself, and that self-loathing took many forms.

I am extremely cautious when it comes to gender identification because I know that finding one’s way in life under difficult circumstances can take years and years and end in a very different place from where it started, well beyond adolescence. In my case, for a long time I thought I was “not really female” because I love my independence and never wished for children: this is not due to some masculine trait inside of me but to my growing up with a disturbed mother who strongly invaded my life and mind and did everything that was in her power to trap me. I suspected that something was wrong with her since my early teens, but I found out the truth only about twenty years later. I had to accept her the way she is and put distance between us.

Then there were my peers: where and when I grew up it was trendy to be (or appear) as tomboyish and easy-going as possible because this was seen as a sign of a “strong, modern, emancipated female”: fie on you if you wore your hair a little longer, liked clothes or only had to much as a flower-pattern on your notebook. Again: I simply had to get away. For many years I had been led to believe that my too “female” or “masculine” traits were a problem, when the actual problem was not mine. And if this happened to me, I daresay there may be many others in similar situations; which is something that who supports and encourages trans people usually does not consider. People who are confused about their sexuality without actually being trans need understanding as well.

2. What About Us?

As a native Italian, I cringe when I only think e.g. of Lady and the Tramp’s silly “Bella notte” scene or films like Good Fellas or of The Godfather trilogy, cultural phenomena that did a lot to cement the general audience’s idea of how Italians are like. Not to our advantage. - No, “bella notte” is not correct Italian. No, we don’t play the mandolin, it’s an outmoded instrument that you are more likely to find in a museum. And no, spaghetti with meatballs are not Italian food!

Following the 2009 economic crises many countries in the European Community applied for financial “umbrellas”; Italy didn’t, it paid into those funds. Italy was the first Western country who went into lockdown as the Covid-19 crisis struck. The country functioned, though under huge restrictions and security measures. In both cases, other countries’ reactions in and outside Europe were like: “Typical - Italians are too lazy to work!” When it came to negotiating an economic pact to help Europe start again, the countries who had said this the loudest held their purse-strings tight - after having locked down too late and hidden the truth about the casualties in their own countries. Convenient.

Italians are generally often seen as silly and not trustworthy. And nobody talks about how demeaning and disrespectful, and on the long run damaging, it is to portray us in such a stereotyped way which at best is good for a laugh. The prejudices stick, and they have destroyed or turned into a living hell many existences.

There are huge now discussions about banning films like e.g. Gone With the Wind due to its “clichéd portrayal of Blacks”. Nobody talks about abolishing The Godfather or other films of that kind although they contribute to the stigma that Italians are either all in league with the mafia, or easy-going, silly folks who sing and drink wine all day and have no idea of what hard work means. Most Italians have too much personal pride to victimize themselves and bo-hoo “the rest of the world just won’t understand us”. They love their country but that does not make them not blind to its shortcomings. I hope they stay that way. In any case, I intend to.

3. The Actual Problem: Bullying

I can sympathize with anyone who comes out as trans because I know what it’s like to be bullied. I was bullied myself for many years due to my Italian origin as well as my upbringing while I had to live among persons who were on a lower social level than I. I was e.g. accused of being stuck-up and “inhibited”. I know now that the female bullies were envious of my self-esteem and insinuating that I was missing “fun”; while the males were counting on another girl being at any guy’s disposal for free and were angry when I didn’t let them have their way with me.

The actual problem with any kind of intolerance and discrimination is bullying. Whatever form it takes, bullying is or ought to be unacceptable. Bullies will be bullies, they do not care who they harass and why: if they e.g. can be convinced to leave trans people alone, they will vent their frustrations and build up their self-image by bullying people who are fat or black or whatever. Except trans people won’t be there to witness that (unless by coincidence they are both trans and fat / black etc.)

We live in a world that gives a great deal of importance on competitiveness; as a result, even in families, schools and other institutions that ought to educate children and youngsters to be respectful towards themselves and others, bullying is often not seen as such, or simply downplayed as “assertiveness”. Bullies do not want to hear reasonable argumentation and learn to be sympathetic: they want to show off their power, provoke an emotional reaction from their victims to see how far they can go, and gloat when they can hurt them. They will not change their minds and they will never be trustworthy, no matter how many discussions about your particular situation you have with them.

To bullies, the world is a jungle where only the strongest have the right to survive; any attempt to make them rethink their attitude will only make them laugh at their victims’ alleged stupidity (because that’s what a humane, respectful attitude is to them) even more. The only language they understand is violence. If you are bullied, protect and, if you can, defend yourself; never try to discuss. Minorities were silent and subdued for such a long time with good reason: because they knew that the more they held their heads up and did not hide what made them different, the more targets they offered for bullies. No one ought to go in hiding because he is queer or black or Jewish etc., but sometimes it’s unavoidable simply for self-protection. I am almost fifty years old and I have never witnessed a nasty person changing for the better. If anything, they became worse, because every time they got away, they felt more superior than before.

Particularly sly bullies will make their victims believe that they have changed, maybe even pulling off the role “I’m a victim myself”. Please, please, whether you belong to a group of minorities or not: don’t listen to them. Ever. Maybe they once were victims, but it turned them into arseholes, and now they are sunk too far in their own filth to care. Compassion is a good thing, but it should never go as far as to delude yourself, endure abuse and sympathize until you become an object for compassion yourself.

For instance, I like wearing dresses, cooking and sewing and looking after my household. Fifty years ago, that would have made me a pattern housewife; nowadays, feminists would either want to strangle me or at least have a good laugh at my expense. This just goes to show how short-sighted any kind of prejudice and bullying is. Any human being ought to follow its own nature with a healthy self-esteem, and esteem others as well. But with our today’s view of the world we are supposed to be not altruistic and respectful but “strong” so that “we will make our way in life” (i.e. feed capitalism in any way we can); and nothing can make you feel “strong” more easily than finding someone who is allegedly weaker and pick on him. We are expected to be “winners”, and the first thing winners need are “losers” to serve them as a foil. The pool from which to choose is large.

4. Who Is Subject to Intolerance Can’t Be Intolerant… Really?

For many years of my life, I always found myself a supporter of someone who was ostracized for one reason or another.

A woman who had left her husband. (It was the early Eighties.) A gay man. A girl who had been harassed by being called ugly. A woman who had been abused sexually by a family member. A woman from East Germany (I live in the West and there are lots of prejudices.)

For the record: these persons were of different age, origin, upbringing, social status, intellectual level and character, and they did not know one another.

I knew and supported them for years, listening, loyal, supportive, interested in their problems and personal development. I never attacked or criticized them. And each and every one of them sooner or later accused me of “not understanding them” and “being prejudiced towards them”. In the case of the abused woman this was particularly unfair because I have been abused myself in my family, though psychically and not sexually. The divorced woman, my own mother, viciously accused me of lying and being in league with her ex-husband after I had been loyal only to her for entire decades.

It appears these people only were my “friends” as long as I told them what they wanted to hear. When I suffered, I was put off with “pull yourself together”. Like I had no problems, because the only people in the world having problems were them. Thank you very much. So, I was supposed to accept their growing insolence due to their being such poor victims, while from their point of view I deserved neither understanding nor respect.

Only recently, in the aftermath of the riots caused by the killing of George Floyd, I posted a comment on a video on youtube… guess what. I was immediately attacked by a black woman saying that my “stupid remark” just went to prove how a white person would never understand “things like these”. She had not even read my post carefully enough to understand what I actually wanted to say, she simply felt entitled to offend me.

I do not say that I dislike trans people or that they are bad, I’m sure there are as many good or bad people among them as anywhere. If someone says e.g. that though born with male organs they identify as female that is their very own affair. I must not like it or understand it. Tolerance means leaving other people alone to do as they please. Any person is “bad” only the moment they behave badly towards others; being different from the mainstream does not count.

But when I have to watch and read people nowadays defending trans or gays or blacks or some other minority, believing to be being open-minded or particularly noble and heroic by supporting them, all I can say is that I have been there and it did me no good. I won’t get caught up in another wave of “minority tolerance”: in my experience, it’s a waste of time. Many of those who now proudly burn their Harry Potter books and proclaim that they will no longer support the author, respectively that they “love Harry Potter but love trans people more” will make the experiences I made. Except they most probably won’t talk about that, because these experiences are so humiliating.

Minorities of any kind do not want to be supported, understood and defended by people who are not in their shoes: it hurts their personal pride. Which I can understand, although it’s a lame excuse for being mean to the very persons whom they expect help and support from. They will tend to envy the ones who do not have their problems due to being white / straight / cis etc., and consequently turn a blind eye to the fact that these can have huge problems of their own. Many of them expect their supporters not only to understand them but to support them enthusiastically at every turn, and if these don’t, (or if there is the slightest reason for them to assume that they don’t) these “victims” will feel entitled to be offended and become vicious aggressors, with a whole fan club behind them protecting their backs and convinced of promoting a honorable cause.

I am fed up with being tolerant. It seems you can hardly do anything anymore without offending someone: watching Disney movies or old classics, wearing a pink dress, calling a woman a woman instead of woman / trans / cis / non-binary etc. There is always someone who will point to these things saying why they’re not right.

I’m sorry but clichés, prejudices and stereotypes can’t be totally avoided: the human brain is not wired to know all facts about everything and everyone. What you can do is teach children and adolescents to be respectful towards everybody, even if they don’t like a particular person or group. Nobody has the right to force you to like everybody and to agree with every life style. But it seems the world has become full of people who seem to have nothing better to do but feel personally offended at the drop of a hat and make a fuss about how hurt their feelings are. Helping someone out who is in a difficult situation is not the same as catering to the keyed-up hysterics of some entitled brat. Seeing the difference between these two can be quite difficult because the latter often show their true face only after years and years, when they realize that for some reason or other, they can no longer squeeze you out for their personal benefit giving nothing back.

Who follows my account is aware that I did not like The Rise of Skywalker. Heaven knows I wrote enough about it. But I did not and will not harass the studios twittering, mailing, making youtube videos etc. ranting and raving about what rubbish it supposedly is for years, like the haters of The Last Jedi. Listening to them, one would think their whole reason for living had been destroyed on purpose. We most probably largely have to thank them for the Episode IX disaster, the flattest and most uninteresting Star Wars film ever made; not to mention the harassment the actress Kelly Marie Tran was subject to. Anyone has the right to dislike the development the authors chose for the saga, but for heaven’s sake: after all, it’s just a movie. If such a relatively insignificant thing can be hyped up like this, I don’t want to know what’s in store coming from people who feel offended for much more personal reasons, like race or gender.

Tolerance cannot be one-sided; it cannot mean that whatever one side wants does not have to be reasonable or useful, but they are entitled to scream and yell until the other side gives in. (If for no other reason than to satisfy them so they will finally shut it.)

Conclusions (I did warn you…)

I. Hogwarts is not my world

Hogwarts is supposed to sound like a dream come true, but I never liked the idea of a “school” where pupils, who are still children and adolescents, are taught spells and engaged in games and tournaments where they have to risk life and limb. These facts are commonly overlooked, I guess, because “the heroes” usually don’t get hurt. The heroes overcome their traumata but do not get wiser from them, on the contrary: their suffering is supposed to make them seem nobler so that we will root for them more. Harry loses his parents before he could get to know them; his adoptive family mistreats him, but he doesn’t care about them; Cedric dies in his stead, but they were not close friends; Dumbledore dies when Harry was getting too old for a father figure; Snape dies, but Harry never liked him either. The list could go on. Harry always remains an innocent; he never gets to look into a metaphorical mirror where he has to see all of the bad that is inside of him, his darker sides are always projected and personified by someone else. (When he does look into a metaphorical mirror in the first book and movie, he finds out that the Philosopher’s stone is, magically, in his pocket. How convenient.)

I can’t invest emotionally in a fictional character who stands out before having earned or deserved it. Harry is like a Chosen One who skips the hero’s journey: from an abusive household, he is catapulted into a whole new world made of mystery and wonder, where he immediately is singled out, admired before he lifts a finger, unexplainably lucky, awed due to his heritage, envied by who is not as special as he. Harry remains untainted by own sins because other people do the dirty work for him; which seems ok because they are, for one reason or another, uncool - Dumbledore = old, Ron = weak / foolish, Hermione / Snape = unpleasant, his parents = dead, and so on. Yes, Harry sometimes makes mischief, but people usually cut him slack because of his past as an abused child, his parent’s tragic death, and his undefinable power that makes him resist the Evil One. The Dursleys, Snape and Draco don’t tolerate him, which is why they are coded as villains or at least very disagreeable characters. How do you recognize a villain in these stories? Simple, he’s being mean to Harry. Everybody else gives him special treatment because you don’t want to upset the person whom you expect to defeat the ultimate villain. I always found his character bland and uninteresting. We e.g. learned why Snape was so lonely and bitter, but not why Harry was so “good” although he had grown up unloved, in an abusive household, until he was eleven.

For decades now Harry Potter fandoms and clubs gather all over the world proudly proclaiming that they are something really special and not like “them Muggles”. No wonder these stories are so popular with who feels misunderstood and downtrodden. Wouldn’t it be nice to be born with capacities ordinary people can’t even dream of? When maybe you’re just a common person, shocking thought. Nowadays, if you want to be someone outstanding, make it up in your mind and it automatically becomes true. And if you identify with the protagonist, you get to be a hero before you did anything special into the bargain. Harry is a victim of other person’s sins and / or blunders and his story is about unfolding the details of his victimhood and correcting them so he gets his happy ending. We are supposed to sympathize with this: well, I can’t. Victimhood and alleged inborn virtue are insufficient to make a protagonist “overcome his trials” and emerge triumphantly over his sidekicks or enemies, without any real loss on his side, while they get killed or, at best, ridiculed. And I will not pick up the part of that sidekick any more.

II. Feminism Is Not My World

While I am an advocate for women’s independence, I do not identify as a feminist. I have an independent nature: that does not mean I am or should be ashamed of being a lady. This where we live is the era of the tomboys, of the feisty, cool, tough females. And often they don’t just go their own way but feel entitled to scorn women who do have their own job and live with a man who respects them, but also like the color pink, pretty clothes, flowers, romantic stories and everything else the new wave feminism likes to dismiss as “brainwashing”. Today you can hardly let your daughter watch a Disney movie without being accused of undermining her identity with false ideas about womanhood because, oh wonder, it seems a “real woman” must think and act like a badass guy.

Louder for the feminists in the back: you can actually look and behave in a way that is coded as “female” and be intelligent, independent and self-respecting. Women who went their own way have existed in every age and culture, often making great achievements and changing the world around them; they were intelligent, compassionate and took matters into their own hands. They did not proclaim that they unfairly were victims of men: they knew how to make men respect them. Being a woman is not a stereotype thrust upon you, it’s natural. If someone rejects qualities that are identified as “female”, it’s their very own affair. If I wanted to return the offense, I might as easily say that “feminists” and “empowered females” are just too smug to do the dishes.

III. Trans, cis, binary etc. is not my world

For millennia, people had to accept the sex they were born with. Now you can have surgery and take hormones to get rid of a problem which you can’t solve on your own. Sorry, but I can’t get my head around it: to me the gender diversity discussion is unnatural. Good and right things are always the same, they cannot change with time and “scientifical / medical progress”. Tomboyish females and same-sex lovers are as old as the world, but it’s only a few decades since you can surgically have your sex changed if you feel uncomfortable with it, and even less time since you can claim the right to be both male and female or not to choose any sex at all. Excuse me, what’s behind it? Fear of missing out? I know, nowadays we are supposed to “change the stars”, but excuse me, it’s not possible. Rowling did not change the stars: as I wrote above, she got lucky.

I can say from own experience that for healthy growth a person needs limits. It is not “tolerant”, in my opinion, to say that one can be male or female or binary or none of that, all by choice. If I raise a child calling it a boy because he was born with male organs, or by Catholic standards because I am a Catholic myself, I believe no one has the right to say that I am intruding into its personality. I would be intolerant if said child would later come out to me e.g. as trans or atheist and I would dismiss its identification and opinion as a matter of principle, or disown it altogether. Rejecting rules and values is like pretending that it is wrong to be e.g. female, or straight, or that Catholic values are rubbish. None of that is true. It is true that a trans or gay or atheist or Buddhist etc. is not automatically an immoral or inferior person.

I can accept other people’s choices about their gender identification; that doesn’t mean I must like or support their mindset. It doesn’t automatically make me “transphobic”. If it is intrusive or intolerant to say that someone is male because he was born with male organs, what will come next? Will “normal” females no longer be entitled to protect their most intimate privacy because any guy can share our private space, like a public toilet or dress room, claiming he’s a woman (and he might well not be trans, but a lying voyeur?) Will we no longer give our children male or female names? Not teach them any values? No longer send them to kindergarten, to school, maybe not even feed or clothe them or furnish their nurseries according to our own judgement, because the poor babies can’t choose by themselves yet?

We all did not choose to be born in the first place.

If you want to protect your children from suffering, don’t have them: suffering is a part of life. Trans is not my world. I don’t want to destroy it or to behave rudely towards it; I simply do not want to have part in it. I want people to care for me, and to do so because I am me, not because I come out with this or another sexual orientation or make myself an advocate for people who belong to this or another minority.

All of the above is why I will not jump on the current “I defend minorities” respectively “I defend downtrodden victims” train. The good part is that I don’t have any Harry Potter book or merchandise I could burn anyway. 😊

Anyone who is uncomfortable with my point of view can unfollow me. Bullies will be blocked and reported without further ado. Greetings from a notorious Muggle.

#minorities #jk rowling #trans #harry potter #disney #gone with the wind #the godfather #goodfellas #feminism #prejudices #bullying #read more

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queertazsecretsanta · 5 years ago

Text

A gift for @gravitaz, created by @dork-empress!

“GREETINGS NEWTON FAMILY!” Minerva announced, flinging the door open.

“Honey!” Duck said, clutching his hat to catch up from where he was running up the driveway, “I told you to KNOCK!”

“I did!” Minerva said, “and the door did not open, and so I decided to help it along!” She smiled at him, outshining the sun. Or so it seemed to Duck anyway.

“You are welcome to rob us.” A girl said from the stairs, “Start with Duck’s old dolls--oh, sorry ‘’’action figures.’’’’”

Duck rolled his eyes, and pulled the girl, his sister Jane, into a half-hug, which quickly turned into more of a half-nelson. “Missed you too, Gremlin.”

“Augh!!!” she yelled, flailing like they were kids again, “Abuse! Abuse! Child abuse!”

“Oh please,” Duck said, “You’re not a kid anymore, you can’t use that excuse.”

Jane grumbled. “That’s right!” she said in challenge, “I can fight back!” Jane darted her hands out to tickle Duck’s stomach instead, getting him to let go. “Ha! Jane Newton, Still the Undefeated champion!!”

“Most impressive!” Minerva said, still standing in the doorway and somehow not looking awkward, “Wayne Newton is a most formidable warrior.”

Jane raised her eyebrows. “Wayne, huh?”

Duck scowled at his sister, “Let it go Janey.”

“I also wish to inform you, Jane Newton,” Minerva continued, “That I have no intention of robbing your house, even Wayne Newton’s action figures.”

Jane smiled, “Oh, I like this one, Ducky.”

“Nope,” Duck said, shaking his head, “we’re not doing that.”

Jane ignored him and held out her hand to Minerva, “Pleased to meet you in person, Minerva.”

Minerva beamed again. “You as well, Jane Newton. I wonder, are you what people call, ‘a hugger?’”

Duck could see three whole jokes pass through Jane’s head that she swallowed down. “Yes, I most certainly am--”

Minerva swooped Jane up into one of her classic bone-crushing hugs. Jane groaned as the air left her lungs, while Duck snickered at her pain. He’s been there, though he didn’t regret it. “Alright, honey, let her breathe.”

Minerva let Jane down, who staggered back. “Well. Damn,” Jane said, blinking at the hug.

Minerva paused, “I hope I was not too forceful, Jane Newton. I’ve learned to ask permission first, but I have been told I have trouble holding in my incredible strength.”

Jane whistled. “Oh, I’m fine. Just fine,” she said, biting her lip.

“Hey,” Duck shooed her into the house, “My girlfriend, you can’t have her. Stop it.”

Jane chuckled, walking into the hallway, and letting Duck and Minerva properly enter. Duck took off his shoes, Minerva mimicking him. “Forgive me for stalling out here. I was just trying to save you, Mom’s on the warpath, and--”

“Wayne?” they heard a call from the kitchen, “Is that you Wayne?”

Duck sighed, “Hi Mom,” he said, “Minerva’s here too.”

“Excellent, come in here and set the table!” His mother called.

Duck sighed, taking Minerva’s hand and leading her to the kitchen.

His mother was bouncing about from counter to counter, preparing at least 3 dishes at once. On sight of her son, she thrust a stack of napkins into his hands. “Good to see you too, Mom.”

She doubled back to kiss him on the cheek before dropping her phone onto the pile of napkins. “I’ve pulled up a video on how to fold them, follow it as closely as you can. Jane, check on the vegetables while I mind the turkey, and--oh goodness.” She had finally taken in Minerva. “Oh my deary, you’re much taller than you looked on Skype.”

Minerva took it in stride. “Yes, I am very tall in comparison to most hu--women.” she stopped herself from saying humans, and Duck could only hope his mother and sister overlooked it. “Some people have become intimidated, I’ve noticed, but do not fear. I am here only for peace.”

Mrs. Newton’s face lit up. “Fear? Oh goodness no, deary. You’re perfect. Can you get the platters I’ve put on the top shelf there? I don’t fully trust my step stool, it’s rather old.”

“Certainly!” Minerva said, easily reaching up to grab it.

Duck smiled, taking the napkins into the dining room. He didn’t know why he worried. He should have known his family would take to Minerva just the same as he did.

He was still folding the first napkin by the time Minerva came in with a beautifully plated asparagus, complete with drizzles of sauce. “Are you having trouble, Wayne Newton?” Minerva asked.

Duck sighed, “Sorry ‘bout my mom,” he said, “She tends to go all out, and goes a bit overboard in my opinion. I mean, this is a bit much for a simple Candlenights.”

“There is no need to apologize,” Minerva said, “I don’t really know much about your human traditions. What is Candlenights, anyway?”

“A trademark of Big Head Productions LLC,” Duck answered easily. Minerva blinked, as she did when she was trying to figure out if something was a joke or not. “Look, back when she left my dad, Mom had this huge falling out with her church, and felt...weird celebrating Christmas. So we celebrate this like, secular version that’s on this podcast she likes and connects a bunch of different holidays together. Hence the menorah,” he said, nodding at the candle that served as a centerpiece, “And the Thanksgiving turkey and New Years Eve poppers….its just a whole grab bag of winter holidays.”

Minerva nodded, “A brave thing to do, to leave a culture behind that had wronged her, and to start something fresh and new.”

Duck smiled, “‘Brave’ is a...nice way of describing mom,” he said, “She’s a character, for sure. Always liked to do things her own way. It’s funny, when I came out---” he stopped himself, reminding himself he hadn’t actually super had this conversation with his girlfriend yet. Most people already knew once they’d known him long enough, but Minerva didn’t know a lot of human culture or societal norms or...anything.

“Came out of what?” Minerva asked, the only indication of how long he had stopped talking.

Duck took a breath, and summoned her over to his mother’s picture wall. There were two that were further back than a few years ago, the first of him when he was a baby….and the second of him with Jane when she was a baby. Except he had little pigtails and a yellow dress he’d hated wearing even that far back. “So, this is me,” he pointed at the young child holding up baby Jane. “Or...was me.” She frowned at him, not understanding the significance. “Ho boy, where to start. Um, so, when I was born….people thought I was a girl,” he winced, unsure how to explain western gender standards to an alien. Minerva always referred to herself as she, but he was unsure if that was a translation thing, or if her planet had the same gender norms or what.

“Why did they think that?” Minerva asked, innocently.

“I just…” Duck said, “Sometimes...that happens. People use the markers they have available before kids are old enough to really know themselves, and then...if they got it wrong, then those people---me---are called Trans. Like, transitioning. I’m a trans man.” She nodded. “But uh. Anyway. The point is, when they do the telling, it’s called ‘coming out.’ And...some parents don’t react well to it.” He smirked, “Not Mom though. She was ready to go toe-to-toe to anyone who gave me trouble about it. Gave me the name ‘Wayne’ too….that was quite the ordeal.”

He frowned, but wasn’t seriously annoyed at the memories of Mrs. Newton being fine with helping to change the gender marker on his ID, but refusing to let him legally change his name to ‘Duck.’ in fairness, he was happy with just having Duck be a nickname now. Wayne Newton was something he and his mother bonded over, so it worked out well, a symbol for just the family.

“Then she is an honorable woman,” Minerva said, getting Duck to smile wider, “and a worthy commander, I must go and help with preparing more dishes to be served. Are you sure you don’t need help with the napkins?”

Duck sighed, mood souring as he turned back to the cloth that refused to fold like in the video. “Give me one more chance before I call it forfeit,” he said. She frowned again, trying to figure out if it was a joke. “I’ll be fine,” he told her, quickly jumping to his toes to kiss her on the cheek, “Go help, before she declares you AWOL.”

Minerva smiled, recognizing that one for a joke. She gave a salute, “Yes, sir!” she said, before marching back into the kitchen.

Duck smiled, watching after her. He gave one last look to the photo on the wall, the only one of him pre-social transition his mom kept up. Even that had come with a long discussion, but Duck wasn’t ashamed of being trans, and besides, the first pictures of Baby Jane were important.

As he heard footsteps, though, he turned his attention back to the napkins. How in the hell was he supposed to just make it look like a swan?!

#dork-empress #gravitaz #queercandlenights #taz #the adventure zone #duck #minerva #minewton #duck x minerva #fic

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starswallowingsea · 5 years ago

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Catholic Guilt

1400 words and very, very personal. This is mostly based on my personal experience but I don’t doubt that some of it will ring true for other lgbtq+ ex Catholics. Content warnings for homophobia, transphobia (internal and external for both), and anti-choice sentiments.

Today, you were born. Congratulations! You have been brought into this world by your very loving parents. They give you a name and swaddle you in blankets to take you home in a few days. You will be baptized in a few weeks, dipped into the holy water to cleanse you of your sins before you can do anything besides eat, sleep, and poop.

You spend the first few months attending Mass with your parents. They give you some teething toys or your bottle to keep you from disturbing the rest of the Congregation. Having a baby disrupt the Mass will make your family look bad, after all.

You are now three years old, old enough to walk and talk. You pull out the Misselletes and flip through them, tearing out the flimsy pages and laughing. Your parents pull you away and give you a cardboard book with pictures to look at. They look away and you run off again.

You are five years old now! Such a big child, I remember when you were a little baby crying from the baby carrier in the back of the Church! It’s time for Sunday School! There are only five children there for your age group. You spend an hour after Mass every Sunday eating snacks and doing Catholic Crafts.

Happy First Communion! You are eight years old now, still not quite old enough to think for yourself, but you have to go to Confession for the first time now. You aren’t sure what to say and make something up about hating your siblings if you have any. Maybe you stole some chocolate from your family, but you don’t really know what needs to be confessed. The teachers told you to tell Father everything, but some things feel too personal to tell. Your parents dress you up in the fanciest clothes you remember wearing so you can go up and eat some bread and drink some wine in front of everyone. There are pictures afterwards.

Welcome to Middle School! You are 12 years old now, starting to think for yourself. You say you still like the Church and you still mostly blindly follow their teachings, but sometimes you think other thoughts. Sometimes you see ads that are pro-Choice and you think “that’s stupid,” but then you think about what you would do if you got pregnant. You banish the thought, because having sex at age 12 is not something you should be thinking about anyway (even though you sometimes think about your classmates like that). You’ve already been questioning your sexuality at this point, but you try not to think about it, because being gay is a sin.

14 years old and still following the Church. You’ve shaped some vague opinions on hot topic issues, still following the guide of the Church. You hear the Priest talk about how abortion is murder and how gay and trans people are ruining the sanctity of life. You quietly fume about one of these issues, but quickly move on, as the Priest has gone off on another tangent about veganism now. You continue going to confession only when Sunday School tells you to. You now have a better idea of what to confess but you can’t bring yourself to do it. Maybe if you keep it bottled up God will never see it. But speaking makes it real and you can’t even think about confessing to some of the things you’ve done even though you know you should. So you make something up and you know the Priest doesn’t believe you but you do your Hail Marys and Our Fathers as penance. Afterwards there is a pit in your stomach because you know God can still see what you didn’t confess.

You are 15 now, just starting high school and everyone seems so different now. You’ve known these kids since you were five, but you’ve always been the odd one out. You try and follow the Church’s teachings about living a holy life in example for others but it just makes you tired. So you stop caring during the week. You attend some youth groups to “keep the faith strong” but by now you know that you aren’t straight or cis and it just hurts. Every little comment just chips away at you until you feel complete apathy towards both Catholicism and Christianity in general. You still go to summer camp and winter retreats because you have lots of fun outside of the religious activities but prayer is tiring and the microaggressions leave you feeling empty and alone.

Sweet 16! You can drive now, and you’re still on the fence about the Church. You don’t miss Sunday Masses ever and it gives you structure to life. It is also the year you get confirmed. Your Church does Confirmation later than most. You are surrounded by 8th graders and your little group of High School Juniors. Even though you don’t have any bad feelings about having to go to Church on Sundays until now, the Bishop standing in front of you says that you should die for who you are. You are trans and queer and so deep in the closet you feel like you have to hide your phone screen from your parents all the time even if you aren’t looking at pride related posts. You heard your parents say once that gay marriage was ruining the country and decided never to come out, and now a Bishop, someone with a lot of local authority, says that trans people are freaks and gay people are irredeemable. You make a silent promise to yourself to dissociate with the Church. But for now, you sit, stoney faced, knowing that this man has to bless you into the Church. You feel that pit in your stomach again.

Welcome to adulthood, age 18! How exciting! You’ll be going to college soon and you need to decide if you want to keep going to Church. You know your parents and grandparents want you to go but after a few weeks you know they won’t know if you stop. They don’t ask about the Priest or his homilies or activities happening in the Church. You get away with it too, because the Church services on Campus overlap with the ones at home. You continue to go through the end of the semester, needing the time to think and walk before going back to class the next day. You hear the Priest here, too, tell you that abortion is murder but you know that people don’t go getting abortions willy-nilly and silently fume. You don’t socialize with anyone in the congregation so when you stop going in the Spring, you don’t think they notice you left.

You come home for break, now sure that you don’t want to be Catholic, but your parents still drag you to Church every Sunday. You’ve taken this time to think about other religions that have appeals to you, including paganism and Greek, Roman, and Egyptian deities. You’ve tried worshipping them all, but when things get rough, your mind drifts back to Mary, the Saints, Jesus, God. You still keep that little gold pin in your car to keep you safe while driving and you still call to Saint Anthony when you lose something, and sometimes you still think you feel a response as Saint Anthony draws your eyes to the one spot you missed and shows you what you were looking for.

Even in the dark of night, when you let your guard down and cry, you cry out to Mary for help. You feel a comforting presence there, and then you feel a pit in your stomach again because you want out of this religion but you can’t seem to let go no matter how hard you try. So you let Mary wrap her arms around you as you confess everything to her and then wake up and try again to forget everything you’ve grown up with. Your life until now has been so entrenched in the Church and it's hard to separate the good from the bad. You still want to go back but you know you will never be accepted for who you are.

So you just stop trying to get out quickly and start trying to undo the years of trauma and guilt instead, that you know will never go away entirely.

#ex catholic #excatholic #catholic guilt #religious trauma #shay speaks #shay writes #religion //#sorry for all the ex catholic posts I discovered the tag recently and haven't been able to stop thinking #anyway. this is what I felt growing up through the lense of religion #*lens #although these have been very cathartic to write I will say

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nctinfo · 6 years ago

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[TRANS] Yuta’s solo interview with Men’s Nono!

“K-pop” which keeps on surpassing Asia, winning fans all over the world. Men’s nonno invited NCT 127 which consists of multinational members including a Japanese, whose songs, fashion, and overwhelming performance stands out. Following last summer’s article, YUTA’s first single interview has finally happened! Immediately after his performance in his hometown, Osaka, he talked with us thoroughly.

My childhood in Osaka and my encounter with K-POP

What made you want to travel to South Korea and take part in the KPOP world? I always wanted to play soccer in my hometown Osaka. I was the active type when I was a child, always running around with my friends from morning till night. I was playing soccer for my dear life, but during middle school, I started to wonder about my future. During that time, I saw TVXQ on TV, “they’re so cool” I was amazed. Anyhow, their performance was so amazing. I thought I also wanted to become someone like them. I was 14 years old. My mum was a fan so she had their DVD, rather than being advised to do this it was something that flowed naturally.

Were you more interested in KPOP rather than soccer? Since my older and younger sisters were taking dance classes, music was something really familiar to me. It was something I listened to every day so I feel like I may have already had a base.

What kind of things did you do before jumping into the KPOP world? When I got to Korea I was 16 years old. I passed the audition for SM entertainment, where I belong now, held in Japan and got to go to South Korea as a trainee. I was in a situation where I didn’t understand Korean at all so before I moved there I studied hard, even sticking Korean words in our bathroom walls.

At what time did you discuss it with your family? Ah, I, auditioned in secret. I told my parents when I passed though, “I want to go to Korea”. My mom was really surprised... then, I saw my dad cry for the first time. I may have been a little lonely because I was going to live away. But I was so focused that I don’t remember much about it. I also didn’t tell my sisters. I was a teenager so I was kind of embarrassed. (laugh) I used to check for auditions in magazines alone.

So that ability to take action by yourself has finally shown results. Yes. I think is important to take action by ourselves if there’s something I want to do. But it wasn’t like I was that confident, for the time being, I was trying to challenge myself. Since there was an audition from the company of the group I liked I decided to take it. I was really nervous, actually, I get nervous even now when thinking about it (laugh). It was the start of everything after all.

The frantic days when I aimed for debut

It is a tough world where not all trainees can debut, right? Thinking back, I thought “I really want to debut” so singing, dancing, I did my best every day. I was, in many aspects, thinking only about myself. But, after I debuted and experienced this first tour, I realized that we are here thanks to our fans, so I want to show our best performance. Now compared to my trainee days, my way of thinking is completely different.

Did you take your lessons and learn Korean at the same time? I feel like I learned it naturally during the lessons. At first, I used to talk using a translator app on my phone. Sometimes it was a really weird or screwed up translation, hahahaha.

It seems that even though you were struggling you maintained a positive attitude. I’m doing something I like so, of course, there are some bad things but I have fun. Also, I didn’t get homesick at all. I didn’t think about thing like wanting to go home. For, that I’m really grateful.

Things Yuta has Faced as He's Debuted

What did you especially work hard on? What I really thought about is was how to express my own thoughts and feelings to others. There are of course many modes of communication but how can I communicate my own feelings while also making sure to respect the opinions of others so that we can work together. It's not about the difference in languages necessarily but how you express or communicate your thoughts and feelings. I think, whether your thoughts come across clearly isn't an issue of whether you can speak a language or not. For music and concerts, I speak with a lot of different and various people while working on the process. You have to make sure that what you want to do is clearly communicated and comes across, but at the same time you have to make sure that you are taking in others' opinions as well. It's a collaborative process, so it's essential that the channels of communication are clear. Did you have to put in a lot of effort outside dance and vocal lessons? Improving my dancing and singing is of course important, but beyond that, learning how to interact with people is very important. Did you also experiment on how to show and express yourself more? I think the most important thing when expressing yourself is that you can't unless you know yourself really well. I think it's the same with fashion as well. When I have the opportunity to work with really impressive creators and artists, I notice that when I talk to them that they know who they are. If you can't analyze yourself, then you can't show who you are, so it's important initially to think about "how you want to be seen by others and how you are seen by others." I've only just started thinking that way though. After I debuted I would sometimes look at myself objectively and thought "something's a little off, I really want to be seen more in this way but why isn't it coming across like that." I think those experiences are important as well. What do you think is your strength that you've found through this experience? My singing and dancing still have much farther to go, but I want to challenge myself more, and in that sense I think I have "confidence" in those abilities now. I think you gain confidence while building up experience, and if I have confidence, then all that's left is to work hard so that I can show everyone what I can do. Please wait for me with anticipation, is the current feeling I have. What do you find the most rewarding about debuting? I'm still thinking…but I think it's probably getting to perform at concerts. This January we had our first solo concert in Seoul and there was something I really felt. By doing the concert it felt like returning to my roots, and I was able to remember when I first debuted. I think it's been the biggest turning point for us.

Yuta on NCT 127’s Charms

NCT 127 has been steadily growing their area of activities and their fan base. Our strength is that we constantly challenge are ourselves. On music and fashion, we are opened minded. Our members being multinational is also big. We do talk about wanting to try all the genres and wanting to become a team that can bring about trends. It’s why every time we release a new song, we change our concept completely each time. We never have an instance where we say no to a concept because it doesn’t suit us. Your music continually takes in the latest sounds and it seems almost like you have an antenna to pick things up. That’s also because we are multinational. As we are based in Korea, we pay attention to their music trends and for what’s popular in western music, we ask our American and Canadian members. Various members have different expertise like R&B and hip-hop is Mark while general pop music is Johnny. I can ask about any genre! (😂) I sometimes tell my members about what’s trendy in Japan. It’s such a rewarding environment to be in, that in addition to our great teamwork, it’s so open. The Japanese debut “Chain” is a song that symbolizes that, with the message of “transcending borders to connect”? in the lyrics. That’s true, I performed with the feelings of connecting from Seoul to Tokyo, and to continue that connection beyond to the world. I would love for MEN'S NON-NO readers to listen and also to look at the choreography. While we’re on the topic, what music do you listen to? I listen to a lot of different genres. Rather than considering it work, I just love music. Kanye West, Sam Smith, Bruno Mars....I also listen to Japanese music, I love back number For Japanese rappers, BAD HOP is my favorite and I recently recommended them to Taeyong, who is in charge of rap. As a group, what is important in terms of finalizing your performances? Teamwork. For instance, if a member is singing at the center and someone on the edge does a flashy move, it can be distracting. We try to be cognizant of not just our own performances, but also the other members’ highlights. We know each other’s high points well and it’s fun because we all have different specialties. What do the other members compliment about you? This is embarrassing haha. I’m told I have a bright personality. They tell me my performance skills are good but they are all kind so......I do get criticized at times though. Our leader Taeyong has great stage presence and will tell me “Yuta, this move should be more like this” or “Maybe try this expression” and I find that helpful. These interactions continue even after finishing a performance and we are constantly fixing things. In my case, I always change the small gestures I do. They are different each and every time.

Worldwide activities of NCT 127

NCT 127 has made a lot of buzz with your North American debut, being on the Jimmy Kimmel live show, and an exclusive invitation to the Mickey Mouse's 90th-anniversary celebration concert in Asia. You were the first Asian artist to be featured on Apple Music Up Next, and at the American Music Awards, various celebrities posted pictures with you on social media. It's been a really exciting experience. To think that I would go from Japan to Korea, only to perform in America….I would have never imagined. It was great to see that our music has been accepted in various places, and I also got to study the differences in culture. But, the fans' feelings are the same no matter what country we are in. Even if the way they bop to music can be slightly different. Oh, and English is difficult. Even if I learn the phrases, pronunciation is a struggle. Before recording, I go to the members who speak English to learn from them. I'll tell them "say it super slowly!" and record them as a voice memo on my phone so I can listen to it multiple times (haha). Japanese is the easiest to put my feelings into singing, but I'm enjoying the experience of singing in different languages. In the future, I would love to have activities in even more different countries. For your first Japan tour, what is something you want people to pay attention to? I'd love for people to pay attention to everything (haha), but the slightly acrobatic performances. We practiced really hard for those! Oh and our music generally has a strong dance performance image, but this time we have songs from medium tempo to straight ballads. We changed our style for the different songs so please enjoy that.

Expressing Yourself through Fashion

Since it is a MENS NON-NO interview, let’s move on to fashion. Here it comes~ (haha). I often wear a bucket hat in my casual attire. I wear them when I’m dancing as well and they’ve become a bit of a trademark for me. On my style, either I’ll be dancing or in front of the mirror and striking a pose, before deciding if an outfit works on me. No matter how cool or stylish an outfit is, if I’m moving and I feel like “this isn’t me” then it doesn’t feel right. I’m sure you have opportunities to wear luxury brand items, but have you found favorites? Lately, it has been neon colors! My sneakers today are neon, but I want to challenge myself more. They stand out onstage, and I think I look good in them (haha). What do you want to wear heading towards the spring season? An over-size coat. I'd like to wear one that's a bit large. I turn 24 this year so I'm thinking of going with a more relaxed mature style with a wet hairstyle. Oh, I'll read Mens Nonno for this (haha) What are the differences between performances and fashion jobs like today's shoot? I think they're pretty connected. When I look at people who are really stylish or fashionable and I think "wow~ that's an artist." Building a performance and coordinating a style is quite similar in my opinion. Both express your sense of style and emotions, which makes them personal. In a fashion shoot, that moment when you pull off a perfect pose or facial expression is really similar to dancing. Is there anything that you would like to ask the MEN'S NON-NO audience? I'd like to ask what everyone does for the when they coordinate their outfits. For me, I had a moment of inspiration today where I thought "ah I should wear a ring with this." I started wondering how people come to such conclusions, and I found the idea very interesting, since it depends on each and every person I'm sure.

Your future goals and dreams

Now that you’re making your dreams come true, what are your future goals? I want to do concerts in bigger venues, even tour all 47 prefectures! I want to give back more to the people who’ve been waiting for us. I sometimes struggle with not being able to articulate what I want to say at the moment. I’ll think later “ah why couldn’t I just say this?” I want to lessen those instances while traveling from Hokkaido to Okinawa. Lastly, what would you say to your 16 yr old self who’d made the decision to go to Korea from Japan? Worry your heart out, it’ll help you grow.

Translation: Eri, Leda @ FY! NCT (NCTINFO) | Source: Men’s Nonno — Do not repost or take out without our permission!

#NCT #NCT 127 #yuta #t:interview #t:trans #men's nonno #men's nonno: march 2019

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sophygurl · 6 years ago

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Okay, time for me to try and remember all the stuff I wanted to make sure and say about my lovely time at WisCon 43 this past weekend.

Generally, I was just so pleased to once again get to extrovert all over the place in a space filled with amazing people. I got to hang out in my adjoining room full of my pals where we got to touch base with one another between running off to do other things and download our days to one another each evening. I got to enjoy several nice meals with friends I rarely get to see and acquaintances that I admire and respect. I got to have fascinating conversations with combinations of friends, acquaintances, and strangers in the lobby and at parties and in the hot tub. I got to sit on panels with intelligent and creative people with all different perspectives. I got to show off fun outfits and feast my eyes on everyone else’s cool shit and do the smile-and-wave at people I only see once a year even if we never got the chance to actually sit down and talk. I got to meet lots of new people and have adding frenzies on twitter and just generally delight to my heart’s content in awesome smart nerdy people who are also feminists with intersectional leanings - many of whom were also disabled and/or queer in a variety of ways. This is all what I just adore about WisCon so much. And it did not disappoint.

Being my 10th WisCon, I have stopped being utterly shocked that people might know/remember me. But I’m still a little bit amazed and delighted by it - especially when it comes from folks who I admire a lot and also have not spoken to more than once or twice. I know some people are just better at remembering and recognizing people than I am? But it still never fails to impress me!

I was a little less schedule-y with myself this year than usual. Which is not to say that I didn’t have full written schedules of all the things I wanted to do (planning is my favorite of my OCD symptoms so...). But I was a lot more flexible about doing things like walking in late to a panel because I got excited to sit outside and talk to someone I ran into in the halls beforehand or leaving a panel early if I felt like I wanted to take my time getting to the next thing. I may have still written down all of the things I wanted to be doing in any given time slot and prioritized them in order - BUT I played it by ear at each time and often did a totally different thing. lol

I still did lots of panels! In fact, I find I get to so many panels that I don’t spend as much time just doing hang-out activities as much as I’d like because there is only so much time in a day. I once again never made it to the trans/genderqueer/non-binary space and only went to the disability space the one time for the organized dinner. Ah, maybe next year!

I also still took notes during the panels I went to, but not as copiously as usual, and my handwriting is getting worse all the time so we’ll see how/if my panel write-ups go this year.

Getting my new walker the day before the con made a huge difference! It’s been two years since my previous walker broke down and I for sure noticed the difference in how much easier it was for me to get around to have one again.

On the other end of things, I have really gotten used to my hospital bed and having to sort out how to sleep in a regular bed again was an adventure in positioning various cushions and pillows and blankets around and requiring more lidocaine for nerves that got bungled up. But it worked(ish).

I also broke the toilet in our room. As in, neither plunging nor snaking did the trick and the maintenance guy had to take our toilet apart and cart it off and put a different one in it’s place. The replacement toilet was not currently in use for reasons that soon became obvious - lots of gurgling noises and self-flushing going on. But at least it flushed!

A few more specific things:

I found a pair of hot pink denim capri’s at the clothing swap that I’m excited to try out!

I discovered that my habit of suggesting lots of panel descriptions is more of a thing than I realized. Like, I knew I wrote a lot - I just didn’t realize how much more than the other average con-goer that was. I can’t decide if I should be more embarrassed or pleased/proud of this? But either way, it’s not going to stop me and I already have a huge list of ideas to write up for next year, so.

Only made it to one party, but glad I got to that one. I find I don’t have the physical energy for dance parties anymore and have never been a huge fan of the sit around and make small talk parties, but the Secret Superhero party that Alexandra Erin and co. throw every year is a good one because 1) they give people Stuff To Do which helps cover for all manner of social awkwardness and 2) there’s already built-in a few people I know and can reliably socialize with a little bit so I have less of that tendency to walk in - peek around - see no one I know (or only see ppl I know already talking to other people) - get intimidated - and leave.

Had planned to go to a lunch meeting for people to yell about The Magicians (of which I have a feeling my opinions would have largely been contradictory), but accidentally wandered off to lunch with other people without realizing I’d done so! Hopefully the 3 people I wandered off with did not feel as though I’d tagged along uninvited, but I certainly enjoyed the chance to get to know them all a little better.

Once again did not make it to the Vid Party, but DID make it to the Vid Deep Dive panel, which was great. And have watched a bunch of the vids on the list now and am super excited about vids in general again and am hopeful that this will lead me to actually using my YouTube and AO3 accounts to specifically watch and fangirl over vids more. Vids are like magic to me and vidders like wizards - I am so in awe of their talent I cannot.

Had some really interesting conversations about religion and fandom throughout the con - starting with my panel on the use of religion in SFF TV shows, dovetailing into a fascinating conversation down at the pool, and ending with some thinky thoughts coming out of the Antisemitism at WisCon panel. Possibly more on that later. Also possibly some more panels on the subject for next year?

Lots of panel topics and conversations this year ended up being about the combination of two subjects very close to my heart: 1) hope and/or redemption, and 2) community. Again, possibly more later and certainly some intriguing panel ideas for the coming year.

I did buy two books this year! Budget does not always allow for book buying, but I did good on the food budget, so I allowed myself two during the sign-out. They were both from people I like to presume to call friends, which is always a nice plus - to buy directly from someone you want to support financially as well as personally. I got First Dates, Last Calls by Alexandra Erin which I’m excited to read and The Apocalypse coloring and activity book by Theo Nicole Lorenz which I’m excited to color!

I had wanted to get Laurie Mark’s final book in the Elemental Logic series Air Logic, along with the 3rd book (since a friend is planning to gift me the first 2 in the series), because Air Logic has just come out and the author and/or publisher were going to be at-con but by the time I got the Dealer’s room they were not there and by the time I left the sign-out they had not gotten there so it was not meant to be. But I still plan to get those books because I ADORE the series so far and am excited about the 4th. (I actually asked my library to purchase the book and am on the first on the holds list to get it once it’s in, so at least I’ll be able to read it soon if not actually own a copy)

As evidenced by my post the other day, I was thinking a lot about conversations being held about making sure more diverse voices are being heard during panels. I don’t have a lot of advice re: making sure more folks from more marginalized groups show up. But I find I did have a lot to say about making sure the panels folks are on end up being inclusive of many voices whether or not those ppl show up to be on the programming itself. And - I suspect - doing the latter well enough will help to foster more of the former as people will feel safer to come and share their perspectives as well as not feel like they have to always BE The Diversity Voice on every panel they choose to attend/be on. But I am a cis white chick, and I feel like it was mostly trans and poc folks these conversations were about, so I am eager to hear what other people have to say about all of this as and if they’re willing to share.

I tend not to make it to GoH speeches or the Tiptree Auction because I have trouble with sitting still in a large room crowded with people type events. But as expected, even reading the text of Charlie Jane Anders’ speech made me weep with hope and joy and I hope G. Willow Wilson shares hers at some point so that I might also weep at hers. Those GoH speeches are always so inspiring and thrilling. I love this community. I am so grateful I became a part of it. I hope we can just always always keep growing and doing better to and for one another.

Panels that I may or may not end up writing up a little about in the days to come:

(the tail end of) Capitalism is Fueled by Anxiety

Favorite Queer Depictions in Fiction

Polyamory and Alternative Relationships

(the first half-ish of) New Pop Culture for Old Farts

Learning to Hear the Dog Whistle

Mental Illness in SFF

Vid Discussion Deep Dive

Antisemitism at WisCon

(parts of) The 116th Congress

Plus the five panels I was on, which will be less notes and more impressions: Killing Eve, Use of Religion in SFF TV, How to Write a Panel, Found Family, and Speculative Fiction on TV [also the spontaneous The Umbrella Academy panel which was small and informal but still really cool!]

#wiscon #wiscon 43 #wc43 #i don't have a tag for this #extroversion #life with chronic illness

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tren-fraszka · 5 years ago

Text

Hate Exchange Letter

Dear creator,

Thank you for taking your time to check my requests. I know my requests can sound a bit tricky, but please don’t be discouraged. I wish you will have good time writing first and foremost!

My AO3 is Tren, if you wish to check it out.

Likes: comedy, casefics, canon compliants, AUs, time loops, bodyswaps, roleswaps, “being hoisted by your own petard” plotlines, snark, pettiness, rivals, enemies to friends to lovers, violence, friendships and character bonding,

DNW: explicit sex, A/B/O, mpreg, rape depicted as positive (so no “it’s okay, because the other person enjoyed it/it was what they truly wanted”), trans headcanons, soulmates, stories ending with surrender to fate/destiny, fourth wall breaking in canons where that doesn’t occur.

Also, I included what ships I’m okay with in each fandom. Please do not include any ships that aren’t canon and I have not allowed in those sections (if you feel really strongly about a ship, you can ask through mods just in case, if I didn’t include my opinion on it).

Additionally, while I almost never request fanart as possible medium, because I prefer my main gift to be fic, I would be very okay with receiving fanart treats.

REQUESTS

PERSONA 5

Hate that ends

Hate that exists and continues

Hate that starts

Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira

I’m a big sucker for party traitors, so it isn’t really a surprise that I walked out of my Persona 5 playthrough with a new shiny ship. I love how messed up it is with both of them planning to outplay each other in a deadly game and yet still forming an emotional attachment. I also really love how they are mirror images of each other. They are extremely similar, and yet they are also each others opposites. There’s just something fascinating in watching them interact.

I’m okay with all takes on hate for this ship. Akechi has canonically very love-hate relationship with the protagonist, so you can spin this however you want. You are also free to make Akira as bitter about the whole thing as you want. I’m always a game for Akira having all the regrets about Akechi’s death and hating Akechi for leaving him with all the emotional turmoil.

For the story, I’m very okay with some in-between the canon flirting with the obligatory dash of scheming and mind games. I’m also all about different ways their confrontation could go down. Maybe it’s Akira who dies and Akechi lives through with his hateful feelings not coming any closer to being resolved? Or Akechi can’t keep his feelings in and slips at some point?

AUs

I don’t mind AUs, just be aware that the messed up relationship between the two of them is a huge draw for me, so I would definitely opt to preserve that part in some form. You don’t have to do the exact same scenario, but at least make them childhood friends, who ended up on the opposite sides of some conflict. Or undercover spies who got in relationship without knowing each other true identities and they really should kill each other since they work for different clients. The exact setting is of secondary importance to me, so choose whatever you feel would work best. AU Divergences are also welcome. I’m always a game for Akechi surviving. Especially, if he gets to shoot the final boss in the face.

Akechi Goro & Self

He has so many issues you are practically spoiled for choice. Bastard by birth, believes himself to be a reason why his mother died, spent years in foster home system which just enforced his belief that he isn’t worth of love, became a supernatural assassin despite having strong sence of justice. And did I mention having to kill the only person he had formed a legitimate connection with? Yeah, just one of those things would be a great self-hatred fodder, but all those things together mix to create a true picture of self-hatred. You can’t go wrong with it.

There are so many prompts you could potentially use for this in Akechi/Kurusu segment above (just take out the potential shippiness if the pairing is not your thing), I don’t think there’s much point in repeating myself. You are free to AU as much as you want and have fun.

Hate that ends

Sakura Futaba & Self

I loved the chilling exploration of Futaba’s problems in her palace and further revelations we get through Sojiro’s social link. I would love insight into her deteriorating self-worth post her mother’s death and then followed by slow improvements once Sojiro takes her in.

I would love insight into Futaba trying to figure out the truth about her mother’s death, her initial refusal to believe that it is her fault, followed by slow acceptance over the time, as she fails to find any evidence to the contrary.

I asked for Hate that ends, because I would prefer a take that is compliant with the canon story. I know this is pretty constraining, but at the same time it means that you don’t need to concentrate on the improvement factor. As long as the story ends heavily implaying that Phantom Thieves are about to help her with her issues I will be satisfied.

However, if you do dig the hope aspect I will love some quality Sojiro & Futaba family interactions and her slowly acknowledging that maybe she deserves more than a slow death in seclusion and decides to seek help form Phantom Thieves.

Ships

I ship Akira and Goro, and don’t want them shipped with anyone else. I’m okay with including pretty much any other ships, except for the ones between the characters who are still students and adults.

GOLDEN KAMUY

I’m reading manga chapters as they come out, so you are free to incorporate any new developments into the story. I will definitely be caught up.

Hate that exists and continues

Ogata Hyakunosuke/Sugimoto Saichi

If you know this canon I probably don’t even need to explain to you what I want. They hated each other from the very beginning of the story and the world may end, but their hatred would still live on. You don’t have to be too shippy with this, if you don’t want to, I mostly want to just get more off their passionate hatred we get in the canon.

For the prompts, I would love if they had to work together (just the two of them, or maybe with Shiraishi as a suffering third wheel), because someone kidnapped Asiripa and they had to get her back. Or chasing someone who stole the skins from them.

Alternatively, I would love petty matches over Asiripa’s attention when they act perfectly nice to each other, because she is there, but keep competing for her attention to annoy each other.

Also, this canon is ripe for tropes like huddling for warmth, or sharing one blanket, and would definitely encourage the hate-filled take on those. Also time loops with those two nd how much of a disaster it would be.

AUs and ships

I’m all for canon divergences or changed settings. You want Sugimoto and Ogata as coworkers in modern setting? Go for it. I would love any messing up with the story, because there are so many things that could have gone differently here.

I have no strong ship preferences here as long as Asiripa is not shipped with anybody. Also I prefer Sugimoto to have no romantic experience, aside from his canonical one-sided crush, before he started to have feelings about Ogata.

THE RISING OF SHIELD HERO (ANIME & MANGA)

I watched anime and read manga, but have not checked light novels. So please, no spoilers for anything beyond manga.

Hate that starts

L’Arc Berg/Iwatani Naofumi

Naofumi spends a lion share of the plot having terrible trust issues after Myne’s betrayal and you can’t convince me that he isn’t extra salty about L’Arc.

L’Arc is literally the first person Naofumi willinglu opens up to after spending majority of the plot avoiding trusting anyone, so the fact that this person turns out to be his enemy must sting. While L’Arc isn’t a type to keep grudge, Naofumi certainly is. Which is why I just want Naofumi being all bitter about his feelings for L’Arc after the betrayal.

I would love some more adventures of those two before the Wave happens and everything goes to shit. Or maybe they meet after the Wave with Naofumi having been separated from the party and struggling with something, and L’Arc runs into him and helps him out (because he’s not the type of guy to stab someone in the back). Which just prompts Naofumi to be even more bitter, because he wants to really hate L’Arc, but unlike Myne he can’t just label him as completely evil.

Or Naofumi going through all the memories he has of L’arc wanting to find good reasons to hate him more, but just coming with more reasons why he loved him in the first place.

AUs and ships

Setting changes and canon divergences are all fine, as long as you keep the element of betrayal.

I’m okay with Naofumi also having some feelings for Raphtalia for an awkward romantic triangle, as long as his complicated feelings for L’Arc are the focus of the story. Other than that I don’t want either of them shipped with anyone else.

GINTAMA

I have watched anime up to Gintama': Enchousen, so please no spoilers beyond that season.

Hate that starts

Hate that exists and continues

Hijikata Toshirou/Okita Sougo

I loved their vitrolic relationship from the very start and the more we got of their backstory, the more I loved it. I would be okay with the story not being very shippy, as long as I get plenty of their amusing interactions.

I love how well they understand each other, including the reasons why they don’t get along, but somehow it is easier for them to maintain that animosity than to try and repair their twisted relationship.

I always enjoy small tidbits of how terrible they are at working together when it comes to solving anything that isn’t Shinsengumi-threatening emergency. I loved that episode which was just showing Hijikata and Okita attempting to do normal police stuff and utterly failing to have any sort of law-abiding integrity while they were at it.

If you want to go to the backstory and how they already didn’t get along in the dojo I’m also all for it. Any involvement of Mitsuba to add oil to the already bright flames of mutual dislike is welcome. I love how her presence mellows both of them when she’s there, but in the long run it just made their relationship even more of a mess, because they both wanted the best for her in their own way.

For shippier request I would love a date attempt by those two homicidal idiots. There are just so many ways this could go wrong. Or Gintama staple of handcuffed together with Hijikata constantly having to stop the dismemberment attempts.

AUs and ships

I’m open to any sort of setting or canon divergence. Then again, I dare you find a cooler setting than samurai police in alien infested Edo.

I don’t want the two of them shipped for anyone else, except for maybe acknowledging Hijikata’s canonical feelings for Mitsuba (because that just makes Hijikata and Okita’s relationship even more of a trainwreck). For other ships I enjoy Gintoki shipped with either Otae or Tsukuyo, and Kagura and Shinpachi as two characters who are not yet ready for relationship, but would make a nice match once they grow up more.

BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA

I read the manga chapters as they come out, you can assume I’m caught up on all new developments.

Hate that ends

Bakugou Katsuki/Uraraka Ochako

I love how different the two of them are, but at the same time how well they compliment and understand each other. Also, while I love them as a pairing I won’t mind if you write them as friends, as long as you don’t pair them with other characters.

For this exchange I would love a more conflict driven beginning of their friendship. Bakugo says a few words too much about Midoriya? Uraraka tries to talk to Bakugo about how he treats Deku or just about how he acts in general and accidentally pokes his terrible inferiority complex? Or they run into each other before the UA entrance exam and somehow end up having a more bitter relation? All of that is good.

I would love if then they were forced to then acknowledge each others strengths as heroes, but possibly still feeling somehow bitter. Maybe they end up working together when UA is attacked? Or incorporating their duel during the sports festival (which I love, it’s what started this ship for me). Or maybe Uraraka gets kidnapped together with Bakugo during the camp and she ends up revising her opinion of him while they are in captivity together.

For more prompts I would love having them complete some sort of exercise or exam together. I would love to see them pretend to be villains for the sake of exercise and butting heads, because they dislike each other. Or they work together on something for school festival. Like making a perferomance together. Alternatively you can go for a future fic where the two of them take part in an action to stop villains as full-fledged heroes, but they can’t let go of all the hang-ups they have about each other from when they went to school together.

AUs and ships

I would very much encourage any future fics for this pairing. I love seeing characters as fully-fledged heroes. I’m okay with other setting changes, though I would prefer for the competence aspect to still come in play somehow in them (with Bakugo being stupidly talented and hard working, while acknowledging Ochako’s potential). I’m also very okay with canon divergences.

I don’t mind past Midoriya/Ochako if you want to incorporate it into the story, but I’d rather not get any love triangles for this pairing. Either have Ochako’s feelings sizzle out or have them date and break up at some point in the past. When it comes to other pairings I like Midoriya/Todoroki and Eraserhead/Mic, but have no strong feelings on other characters pairings, so you are free to do whatever I guess.

FATE/ZERO

I’m well versed in Fate franchise so if you wish to expand beyond Fate/Zero to include either some parts of Fate/Stay Night or El-Melloi II Case Files I will be very fine with that.

Hate that exists and continues

Kotomine Kirei & Self

Kotomine Kirei and his self-loathing is unironically one of my favourite ships in Fate. I loved Kirei’s internal monologues in the novel, as he slowly inched toward the self-discovery that he is in fact the very thing that he was taught to hate the most.

Give me all the religious guilt. All the nagging thoughts that follow Kirei’s enjoyment of ruining other people’s lives. Kirei already thought of himself as lacking before the events of Fate/Zero and watching his doomed pursuit of finding something meaningful in his life was great.

Kirei was basically doomed to suffering, either by continuing his empty life or by embracing his true self and plunging himself into depth of self-hatred. And I’m all about that freefall, sponsored by the ancient king Babylon. So give me Kirei struggling within the confines of Holy Grail War, trying to find himself, yet suspecting that nothing good will ever come out of it.

AUs and ships

I’m okay with canon divergences, less about setting changes due to how deeply Kirei’s issues steam from his specific situation, but if you can make it work I will be for it. I would be very excited for canon divergences. Maybe Kirei making slightly different choices during the Holy Grail War? Maybe alternate timeline when he decides not to betray Tokiomi, but somehow still ends up on path of evil despite his efforts. Maybe he summoned a different servant, who influences Kirei differently? I’m always surprised by how interesting alternate scenarios people come with for Holy Grail Wars, just give me your take.

For alternate timeline takes, you can make my day by including wreacking Matou’s mansion and/or killing Zouken. Even if it’s just a footnote.

I very much ship Kirei both with his dead wife and Gilgamesh. You are free to incorporate both of those ships.

Hate that exists and continues

Waver Velvet & Self

Another contender for the biggest self-loathing in the franchise. El-Melloi II anime reminded me just how much I enjoyed that aspect of Waver.

I would love an alternate take when Waver and Keyneth actually had a more proper face-off other than their first meeting on the battlefield. I would love if Waver saw Kayneth wheelchair-bound and blamed himself for that.

Or something more canon-compliant exploring Waver’s feeling of uselessness and guilt he has. Either is good. For extra self-loathing you could get the family Waver is staying at caught in the crossfire of one of the fights. Or Waver gets used by some other master to attack another and only belatedly realizes that he was nothing more than a tool used for murder.

Just give me some quality Waver suffering and self-blame whether dislpaced or not.

AUs and ships

Similarly as above, I’m stocked for any canon divergences. Maybe Waver summoning a different servant? Waver making different choices as to how proceed with the war. Maybe making an allience that doesn’t work out for him in a longer run?

For alternate timeline takes, you can make my day by including wreacking Matou’s mansion and/or killing Zouken. Even if it’s just a footnote.

I don’t ship Waver with anyone, so I would prefer no romantic plotlines for him. I find his relationship with Rider interesting and definitely important, but can’t see it as romantic.

#exchange letters

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momestuck · 6 years ago

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Let’s read Hiveswap Friendsim - volume 5

Eight friends carefully placed in glass jars, and our protagonist is on to their next conquest. So who do we have today?

This time, we have Polypa with olive blood - compare with Nepeta - and Zebruh with indigo blood, the first time we have a repeated blood colour in the game so far, same as Equius.

Going off their looks, I think Polypa is gonna be a Fighting type, and Zebruh is probably some kinda chef...

Polypa

Polypa’s another creation of Ayshah U. Farah. Come to think of it, Ayshah Ufarah would work as a troll name...

We’re walking through the city, and we find a bunch of people fleeing a night market. And then we meet... this person!

I’ve definitely heard this BGM somewhere else in the Homestuck soundtrack... think this is a slightly different mix though. I can’t remember which track off the top of my head ><

Anyway, yellow eyes... two circles... not sure of significance. The major cult/secret organisation we know about in Homestuck canon is that of the Signless/Sufferer (see: ancestors), so that’s something.

She asks us to pretend to be on a date with her.

So her typing quirk is... a markdown list?

We get the choice of playing along or ‘letting the purrbeast out of the bag’, and well... I’m definitely down for troll black bloc shenanigans here.

We ask a few questions, and we learn the commotion is because a highblood troll was killed... and our new friend was the assassin! She’s not got a problem with defying the ‘natural order’. I like her already.

Polypa changes out of her disguise - which includes a filled in notch on her horn, as well as the fake blood colour - and her chatbox changes colour accordingly.

She asks us to pick a hideout. Well, we have a number of friends with hives... but no, it’s either to hide in an apartment or get ‘soft serve grubcream’ and a movie.

The movie sounds amusing, let’s do that one first.

We find a troll mall. Unlike an Earth mall, it’s fully automated.

...’grubcream’ was our idea, though!

Sadly there doesn’t seem to be any background drawn for the mall. There is one for the movie theatre though...

Not having to watch trailers? Wow, that makes up for all the dystopian elements of this world. When do we move?

Polypa, it turns out, has opinions on movies (and she’s read the book). The movie features a Jadeblood in the standard ‘female love interest’ role, in a love triangle with a blue- and bronzeblood, and consequently a bunch of hemospectrum class stuff. Sadly we don’t get a massively long troll movie title joke.

Polypa drops that she used to run a relationship advice blog. But a bunch of trolls broke into her hive, killed her lusus, and left her for dead... she was saved by ‘some teal’ who...

Will we meet this katana-wielding nerd?

Someone tells us off for talking in the theatre and that we should get a room if we want to be all pale. (For those not familiar with Homestuck, ‘pale’ relationships between moirails are non-reproductive relationships, involving emotional support and checking the other’s violent impulses.) We get to see a papping...

So, trolls will go on moirail dates, I guess.

Outside the theatre, Polypa starts freaking out over her partner in crime who was caught by the authorities.

So what do we do when a troll starts freaking out? We play moirail...

And she’s into it and accepts us as her future assassin partner! ...as bait, but still.

So that’s the good end. Now the other routes.

If we don’t play along at first...

...she bugs out.

If we hide in an apartment building (do some trolls not have hives?)... ah, that’s answered. Apparently lowblood trolls get a rental market from ‘hivestems’.

Accordingly, she’s happy to break into one of the apartments. We kick in a door...

This time, unfortunately, we get the news that her contact has been culled sooner. Polypa explains a little about assassin work on Alternia...

Apparently the troll she killed was a seadweller - so a properly high highblood. To kill him, she had to go to some lengths...

The protagonist, needy asshole that they are, takes the opportunity to make an overture as partner. She’s like... lolno

Unfortunately, we can’t finish this discussion, because the occupants of the apartment return. There’s a cute meta joke...

Why is it so bad? Because the guy who lives here is friends with...

...a subjugglator. (If you haven’t read Homestuck, that’s a purple-blooded troll, highest among all land trolls, follower of the Insane Clown Posse-themed religion, and generally very powerful and violent.)

We get away, and it’s mentioned that the subjugglator is the burgundyblood troll’s matesprit, but Polypa’s had about enough of our bullshit plans.

And that’s that. “At least your ass didn’t kill her”, indeed!

I think there may be some kind of John Wick joke here with Polypa? I don’t know, but I wish we could have gotten more time with her.

Zebruh

Now, Zebruh. Zebruh is written by Cee L. Kyle.

We go to the ‘larger, more McMansion-style hives’ part of the city.

The music involves... a xylophone I think? This guy’s quirk seems to be emojis representing the different quadrants associated with what he’s saying. First hearts for a kind comment, then diamonds for an offer to help us.

Auspisticism - a three-way relationship in which a troll third troll mediates conflicts between two other trolls. Though why it’s relevant here I’m not sure.

Then he insults us, and it’s spades. I feel like an Oblivion NPC.

He goes back to hearts to ask us what colour our blood is. Is he gonna keep cycling quadrants constantly? We get our first choice: lie and say it’s a high blood colour, or tell the truth.

Let’s see what happens if we tell the truth...

We get hearts again, and he starts leaning into hitting on us.

Again, I don’t really understand how this is spades. And this...

Wouldn’t this be hearts? I thought I understood quadrants but I guess not!

He invites us back to his hive (diamonds), and we learn that apparently the day is ‘flushed affirmation day’, during which a lot of trolls go about with their matesprits.

This guy's really horny huh. We misunderstand, and remark that we’d be happy to share, and he’s like... yeah I’m totally poly.

I find it interesting how blood caste in this world is taking on a similar role to gender in ours - ‘one dick poly’ and all that.

And this guy’s basically a troll Nice Guy(TM)/chaser fuck.

Like did a trans woman write this? wow lol

This is pretty on the nose lol.

We meet Zebruh’s lusus, which is... a zebra.

As we explore his hive, we see most of the ‘guests’ have been made to work to keep the mansion clean. But oh, this is just how ethical he is...

We get the choice of staying in Zebruh’s little slave colony, ahem, “sanctuary from the harsh injustices of the outside world”... or going out on a date with him. Frankly, neither option seems hugely appealing! But let’s stay in for now.

Noticing that spades come out pretty much whenever he negs us. And maybe clubs come out when he says something reassuring after the neg? No quadrant marker for straight up boasting:

They’ve done a very good job of making this guy skincrawlingly awful.

Anyway our decision hardly mattered, and we’re going out anyway.

We ask him what he’s about and we get some stuttering about ‘social justice and oppression and stuff’ follow by a ‘get on my level’ neg. Yeah... this is razor sharp lol.

Then he hits on us and we have to get him to explain quadrants.

We tell him we just want to be friends. Of course, he’s still very pushy.

Even the narrator comments on how hypocritical he’s being.

We get word of a culling, and Zebruh gets ready to leave. The protagonist has enough of a backbone to object to him not telling anyone...

And then, omfg...

And after we escape...

So yeah, “actually one of the most incisive critiques of scene-leftism comes from the homestuck tie in visual novel...” guess it’s a matter of Know Your Audience, huh.

And then he hits on us again.

The narrator manages to keep saying no, extolling the benefits of friendship...

So I guess that’s how we gain a matesprit matesprit “friend”. We also promise to be an ally for lowblood rights, which is to say, ourselves.

Eeesh. I wonder how much Polypa charges to take out a hit on this guy?

And in the background, the drones are busy culling the lowblood concert. Yeah.

On the nose, sure, but I think this was pretty fucking on point.

Unfortunately, we still have more branches to explore.

First, if we pretend to be a highblood around Zebruh.

“I only want to fuck people I have social power over.” (And yes, that is how heterosexuality works...)

What if we actually ask to go out?

If we ask to go out, he decides he’d rather stay in. I see how it is.

So I’m not sure they’re going to just put us in a rape scene, but they’re definitely making it look like it at this point.

That is, of course, the point he wanted to make.

Ha. That’s a pretty good metaphor, considering the trident is the symbol of the ruling class...

The danger of being quite this on the nose is that those targeted by the critique can shrug and say ‘well I’m not that bad...’

Anyway, we get concerned about one of the ‘guests’, who is clearly sick.

And before long...

A__ and E___ saw some of this text and both of them went ‘eurrgggh’ and shuddered, so this is pretty apt lol.

Honestly I’m only screenshotting about half of this. Honestly they should have led with this guy... this is pointed in a way most of the others aren’t.

Then he starts blaming us for denying the agency of the malnourished troll we saw earlier, and ranting about how he’s oppressed for not getting his quadrants filled. Maybe we can add incel to the list.

So if you’ve read far enough into Homestuck, you’d have met Kankri, who represents a similar critique... but rather misses the mark, and tends to read in a ‘punching down’ rather than ‘punching up’ way, I think. This, however, is spot on.

Oof.

The zebra kicks us out in the end.

So yeah. Huh. Frankly I’m happier with this outcome than the one where we have to be “friends” with Zebruh. Pretty sure this ending’s coming either way!

I would have liked a bit more time with Polypa, but Zebruh is extremely on point, so respect for this episode for that. (And tbh I’m getting some anxiety about whether, and to what degree, I might be a person like Zebruh. But that’s not for this blog.)

#momestuck #lets read hiveswap friendsim

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dork-empress · 6 years ago

Text

Trans Callum

Part of my ‘another 100 dragon prince aus’ oneshot collection

Read on Ao3

As if starting High School wasn't bad enough, Callum is coming out publicly for the first time and isn't sure how his peers will take it.

TW for some minor transphobia, and internalized transphobia, its fairly vague but is there. Also, I am not trans, but do know many trans people and would like to think I portrayed some of their experiences to the best of my ability. I will accept criticism from trans people, especially trans men, and can change things, dont be afraid to come talk to me.

“So, why ‘Callum?’” Claudia asked, turning in the front seat to look back at him. Callum pulled his attention from Ezran, who was running up the steps of his elementary school, while Soren pulled out of the parking lot to take them over to the high school.

“What do you mean, ‘why?’ Callum asked, frowning slightly, already on the defensive. He hadn’t been out as trans for that long, and this was his first day he would be publicly out, so he was ready for anything in any direction, even if it was from his childhood friends, Soren and Claudia.

“I just mean,” Claudia said, “It’s kind of an unusual name, right?” she said, taking another bite from her breakfast bar and talking through it, “So what made you decide on it?”

“Oh,” Callum said, taking a breath. While Ezran had taken the news like a champ, and his step-father had been supportive no matter what, he had been less sure about how Soren and Claudia would take the change. So far it was going ok. He wondered if is Dad had had a talk with Viren. “Well, ‘cause of my last name ‘Prince’ I kinda wanted a royalty-name, so I came up with a list of those. Callum means Dove-King in Gaelic. And Ezran and Harrow are both unusual names too, so I wanted something that was a bit out of the ordinary.”

Claudia ‘hm’ed, satisfied. Callum tried to stealthily adjust his binder in the backseat. It was already uncomfortable, and the day hadn’t even started. He still wasn’t totally flat, but he was hoping the baggier uniform and scarf would help a little.

“Excited to start high school Cllllllll-------” Soren started, pausing on the l for far to long, leaving no doubt of the name he was about to say, despite JUST talking about his new name, “lllllllasses, Callum?” Soren recovered. Claudia hit him, making him jerk the car a bit. “I’m so sorry Callum, I’m just still getting used to it is all.”

“It’s fine,” Callum muttered.

“It’s just when you know someone by one name their whole life and then you suddenly switch, its natural to get all mixed up, but you know I’m trying and--”

“It’s fine!” Callum cut him off, the words having more bite than he originally meant. “Yes, I’m excited for high school classes, it should be fun.”

He was not excited about high school classes. Sure, he was good at them, but that hardly mattered. Harrow had talked with the principal and all Callum’s teachers, so they should in theory know how to properly address him and ‘handle’ him, but it still didn’t make him feel any better.

Once they reached school, Soren and Claudia went to go hang out with their older high school friends, leaving Callum by himself. It wasn’t that Callum didn’t have any friends, he knew several people and got along with them fine. None of them were really close friends though, and he certainly wasn’t in any cliques or groups or what not to hang out with them before school.

And even if he did, none of them knew he wasn’t going to be….the same as who he was leaving middle school last year. By virtue of the general gender divide, most of the people he knew were girls, and knew him as a quiet artsy girl. He didn’t know how they’d react to the new, quieter, artsier boy he decided he’d---no, he talked about this. The boy he WAS.

The reactions were….mixed. As he walked through the halls, some people recognized him, and called him the wrong name, and he corrected them quickly before moving on. As his peers were mostly 14 year old girls, their opinions varied everywhere from overly pro-active social justice warrior, to bratty stuck up snob, saying he should ‘stop pretending.’

Obviously of the two, he had his preference, but they both made him kind of uncomfortable. He just wanted to go to school and be a normal kid.

So he found his homeroom and just sat there until the bell rang, sketching in his notebook, hidden away from the masses. There was only one other student there that morning, a girl with long white hair. Even the teacher wasn’t in the class.

“Are you new too?” The girl asked suddenly, pulling Callum from his self-pity party.

“Uh…” He said, “Not exactly.” Not at all. He’d been in this school system since he was 4.

“Oh,” she said, deflating a little, “I was just hoping, you know. Everyone seems to know each other already so.” She shrugged, “Don’t quite feel like intermixing yet, though.”

“Right,” Callum said, nodding, and listening to her accent, “Is that...an English accent?”

The girl scoffed a laugh, “Closer to Scottish. But actually, I’m from Xadia. Small European country.”

“Oh,” Callum said, “I...can’t say I’ve heard it. Are you a foreign exchange student?”

“Sort of,” She said, “Moved in with my uncle this summer. My parents sent me here because of the better private schools. Though these girl uniforms are stuffy. Are the boys ones just as bad?”

Callum blinked. He almost forgot he was wearing the boys version of the outfit. And she had just gone with it, not asking questions....did she see him as a boy? “Yeah, kinda.” He said “I’m--” he cut himself off. This was the first person he’d be introducing himself as HIMself to. This girl didn’t know his deadname and hadn’t seen him with long hair. “I’m Callum.”

The girl nodded, “Rayla,” she said.

#the dragon prince #tdp #tdp fic #tdp fanfic #tdp callum #tdp rayla #tdp soren #tdp claudia #laura writes #another 100 dragon prince aus

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donnerpartyofone · 7 years ago

Text

my pal x

for somewhere around a year now (i have trouble with chronology but that’s probably fair), i’ve had this buddy, who recently disappeared. my acquaintance with him began when i started to visit this convenient bar between the end of my work day, and the beginning of the thursday night radio show i co-host with one of my oldest friends. if i don’t get some time all by myself between these two social events, then i’m libel to lose my mind, so i appreciated the presence of this watering hole in the crumbling industrial campus where the radio station is located. i was worried, at first, when one of the bartenders started to make friends with me, just out of regular exposure, since socializing was the opposite of my reason for being there. once i got to know him, though, i was pretty glad for the company.

X was a terrific bartender who, even though he seemed to have been sober for years, could confidently walk me through the bar’s extensive beer program. besides that, he was a smart, funny guy with a lot of deep cultural cuts to share. i discovered that he had a lot in common with many of my most esteemed friends–he knew both high- and low-brow film, had an extensive awareness of rare independent and experimental music, and brandished an intimate knowledge of the scummier side of many major american cities as they existed in the 70s and 80s. we traded legitimate oddities, like recordings of punk and hardcore classics made by groups of little kids under different weird, hilarious circumstances. i still keep plenty of crusty, beer-drenched handwritten notes from him listing obscure bands i needed to check out, even though some are barely legible. i did my best to keep up with him, to give something back; i don’t have a genuinely deep knowledge of much of anything, but i keep a few cool secrets here and there.

as one might guess from some of the above, X was an old junkie. by “old” i really mean something more like “experienced” or “careworn” or something. he was in his 40s, which is not far off from my age, but he’d been through a lot more than i can imagine. we became closer when he asked me if i would read a passage from a book he was trying to write. he didn’t expect that i’d give him extremely detailed copyediting notes, and unwieldy chunks of my personal reactions to his grimy autobiography. although he was initially nervous about exposing the worst parts of his history to his new friend, he seemed pretty thrilled to get so much work and attention out of me, and i was happy to do it. i didn’t really know how to say that i didn’t think this hubert selby jr style of reportage was in style anymore–contemporary readers who are interested in this kind of underground prose are not necessarily interested in straight white male racial commentary and opinions on sex workers and trans people and such. it isn’t that his writing was so aggressively bigoted, but it was heavily colloquial and of its moment and first-person, and i don’t know if many people are interested in that specific perspective anymore. however, his writing was also engagingly florid, grim, funny, and marked by a very interesting ability to shift suddenly between differing timelines and even hallucinations. i was totally pleased to participate. i only worried that it was too stylized, that it was more focused on attention-getting than on, i don’t know, telling the truth. a lot of my direction was aimed at bringing him back to exactly how something felt or looked or smelled at the time–what literally happened–as opposed to how he thought he should sell it to the public. but, the truth, as he told me frankly was, “i’m sick of being broke.” he had a friend who had had a modicum of success selling his own self-published junkie memoir, and was hoping to supplement his rent-paying ability in the same way. personally, i just thought he should keep writing, because he could.

when i met X he was doing basically-ok, but i had a sense that i had encountered him at the midpoint of a downward spiral. shortly before we met, he had broken up with the love of his life. you got that sense from the way he spoke, in spite of whatever conversational restraint, that he knew what he was talking about, that he had really peaked with her. she was a musician in the latest arrangement fronted by a certain famous and influential lady punk, and he still seemed to admire his ex very much. while he was trying to recover from his loss, he was also constantly on the hunt for decent living quarters. he moved from a punk squat in brooklyn to a sublet situation, under some couple. one day i came in to hear that the couple had blown town. X was sitting at home relaxing, when the u.s. marshals burst in to seize the place; the couple had been just taking X’s rent for themselves, for months, and then vanished, leaving my friend basically holding the bag. suddenly he was homeless, penniless, and without a single form of ID. he was couch surfing in new jersey for a few weeks when he managed to bribe his old landlord with his last $50 to be allowed in for just a minute to get his things. he came out with two large garbage bags that he believed contained his belongings, only to discover that the bags ALSO contained a lot of straight up garbage, meaning he had to find a way to do laundry right away. he had also lost all his personal documentation. getting an ID is so incredibly difficult and anxious-making even if you already have all the qualifying papers, i had an impossible time finding an appropriate reaction to what he was telling me. in america, if you are an adult with no ID, you might as well kill yourself. but of course, you don’t say that kind of thing.

X is a survivor, though, clearly, so i had hopes. as i said, he’d been through a lot by the time i met him. one night i was trying to sell him on the astounding experimental prison drama GHOSTS…OF THE CIVIL DEAD, when he asked me if i liked prison movies. Sure, i said, Not categorically, but I like a good one. after a beat, he replied, “man, i HATE JAIL! jail fucking SUCKS! i been to rikers, i been to sing sing, i been to attica…it all SUCKS, MAN!” on the ellipse, he listed a variety of other famous prisons in other states where he’d lived. it would be putting it too strongly to say i was surprised, given his rough and tumble early years, but i was sort of impressed in some way. unfortunately it was only recently, now, that i started watching a lot of documentary material on penal facilities. at the time i ignorantly laughed to myself, “well of course prison sucks, what a hilarious thing to say…” but the reality is that jail, prison, wherever they stick you, sucks a lot more than is obvious from pure theory. besides the basic and well known problems with the very institution, there’s also the smell, the unrelenting noise, the uncompensated labor, the unique pressures of prison society, all sorts of things that a non-con can barely guess at. i wish i still had the opportunity to ask X if he wanted to talk about it some more.

all that said, it was probably too much for me to hope that X would land on his feet. i mean i still hope that, but i feel a little foolish. one night, one of the last times i saw him, i left him an envelope with a hundred bucks in it. he was naturally delighted, but also extremely embarrassed. the next time i saw him, i told him that i was sure he would have said “no” if i asked if he would accept help, and he confirmed that yeah, it was a good thing that i just forced it on him without asking. over the next few months i had my own shit going on–sickness, family death, mandatory travel, whatever–and didn’t get to see him as often as our usual weekly meet up. when i saw him again, something even worse had happened to him that, typically, wasn’t even his fault: he was out of work for a month due to the sudden emergence of a cyst in his leg that got so bad, so quickly, that he had to buy new pants to accommodate it. apparently, it was the result of a car accident he’d suffered in his 20s. at the time, they told him that he could get a plate in his leg, but he would walk with a permanent limp, and he would certainly never run again. as a young, very broke dude, he refused that extra step, and healed just fine on his own. all the while, the potentiality of this cyst was lurking, and suddenly he found himself unable to stand on his own or even wear normal clothes. it was so close to a major artery that they were unable to lance it. luckily, i thought, he reported that it was healing pretty quickly on its own; he had a good relationship with his boss, and he expected to be back to work in a month.

the last time i ever saw him was about a month after he was supposed to have returned to work. he looked sick, flu-ish, and seemed to have a hard time finding something to say. we’d been talking about The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule’s classic true crime novel-cum-memoir about knowing Ted Bundy before and during his career as a serial murderer. as an erstwhile criminal, X had a personal interest in other criminals, especially those who were famous for their personalities. for naive, sheltered people like myself, it’s easy to think about guys like jesse james or whoever, people who represent an archetypal struggle between law and chaos, and whose main battle has to do with money, something anyone can relate to. it isn’t as automatic for general people to relate to the charles mansons and varg vikerneses and henry lee lucases and ed geins of the world. what we law-abiding citizens miss is not really connected to the validity of the philosophies of these criminals, or even the right to life of their victims; the potential appeal of such outlaws is in their loneliness, their permanent and foregone misunderstoodness, and their petulant abuse of a society that barely even supports the people who abide by its rules. joe coleman, the “outsider artist” whose portraits of infamous crooks and perverts have made him famous, has equated his subjects with frankenstein’s monster, and while i have no interest in forgiving misogynistic narcissists like ted bundy, it is still possible for me to understand what coleman must mean. some people, by virtue of their very chemistry, are irrevocably exiled from “normal” society, and then what are they supposed to do? what are WE supposed to do? anyway, the last time i saw X, we met at the bar, and i gave him my copy of The Stranger Beside Me the moment i finished the last page.

at the time, i knew that X had been unable to pay his phone bill, so i didn’t attempt to call or text him. now, it seems that he no longer has access to email, either.

the last time we spoke, X sheepishly admitted that a minister he knew was allowing him to borrow the guy’s private quarters–a bed, a stovetop, a shower–on a temporary basis. i still had hopes. i also had a lot of guilt. i imagined that i should be able to save him. the apartment i keep with my fiance is hilariously small; the door to our bedroom, a room that just barely fits our bed and really doesn’t fit our collective clothing, doesn’t close all the way and makes a loud noise when you open it, and the bathroom door barely closes, and our couch might not even accommodate someone of X’s height. we don’t even have much of a floor to speak of. still, i thought about letting him stay in our hallway, or on our roof, and wondered how long it might be before someone called the cops or our landlord used it as an excuse to kick us out. i also wondered how long it would take for the three of us to be at each other’s throats in this tiny space, if i managed to work this out. i still wonder what i should have done, if i already missed a legitimate opportunity to save this guy’s life.

i never know what to do with people who are in dire need. i see a homeless guy on the subway, and i start thinking, WHAT IS KEEPING ME FROM TAKING THIS GUY HOME TO HAVE SOMEWHERE TO STAY? like what, am i gonna lose my dvd player? couldn’t i live with that? what the fuck is my problem? i finally set up a reoccurring donation to nyc’s coalition for the homeless, but even then i’m constantly asking myself what’s stopping me from doing more. and i mean, i know what’s stopping me from doing more; needing insurance for preexisting conditions, maintaining the private domesticity i’ve committed to with my husband-to-be, fear of being raped, fear of losing my apartment, etc. almost nothing really seems like a good reason, to the fullest extent of my angry imagination. i can’t help imagining that my friend is dead, and there might have been something i could have done about it. it might be a little bit of an overreaction at the moment, but it’s not completely irrational. i don’t know what to think.

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sammierogers · 7 years ago

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How It All Got Started

With 2018 just around the corner, I find myself looking back on three years of Detroit Invasion events. It has been a truly interesting and totally unexpected ride. A lot of people have asked how it got started and why. I guess it is time to put that down in writing both as a chronicle of sorts, but also as an explanation, since a few people, I fear, have misconceptions about these remarkable events.

To be quite honest, Detroit Invasion began by accident, and quite unintentionally. No one knew what was starting at that time, and the success and growth has been amazing.

At the beginning of 2014, after a lifetime of hiding from myself and every other human on Earth, I finally emerged into the light of day as myself, full of trepidation and some panic, and totally unsure of much at all, beyond the fact that I could no longer live my life in fear. I did not step out shyly and cautiously. I was more like a race car waiting for the light to change. I fairly exploded out of the gate, so strong was the pent up need formed over many decades.

In that first year I became a regular member of the local Detroit transgender community, and found I loved socializing with other girls. I discovered I loved to dance. And, I was blessed by many wonderful new friends who all helped me more than I can say. I just assumed the Detroit community, with it's friendly, warm, all embracing sense of family, was much like any other TG communities anywhere else. I have since learned this is not entirely true. From what I have seen, many cities have larger but far more balkanized communities rife with back biting and cliques. Detroit is not like that.

During the same period, I attended several large TG events around the country, exploring, watching...listening and learning. At most events, I found similar experiences.... a lot of workshops, classes and speeches, followed by some night time social events. But, honestly, the experiences left me disappointed. I am not young, but I am computer literate, and I know how to do research. And, beyond that, a career as a well trained professional actor has given me a good understanding of psychology and the ability to critically analyze complicated questions. For me, the classes and seminars, covering everything a transgender person might need, from medical advice to legal advice to such things as “ladylike behavior and comportment” were unnecessary... I confess, the last had me positively rolling with laughter....but then, I do know there are girls who need such things. For me, nothing in these classes offered me anything I did not already understand either from research or personal intuition. Rather, for me, the large events were about meeting and getting to know other people like myself...about discovering the breadth of experience in our community.... about making new friends, listening to other experiences, and, most of all, just having a good time in the company of other people who “get it”. For a degree I was disappointed by events that took themselves so seriously that the “fun” was given little attention. I'm a rock and roll girl. And I'm in no hurry to start acting or living like an aging grandmother. I have too many years of missed experiences to make up for still. At home, much of our time together as a group was spent in social activities of a different sort, with a lot of time in nightclubs dancing. Detroit girls like to party and have fun. I went to events expecting a bigger and better version of this and quickly discovered an average Saturday night in Detroit was a better party than I could find at most national events. In fact, at several events that first year, as part of a group of Detroit girls in attendance, I found that other girls started asking around to find out what the “Detroit Girls” would be doing that night. It was eye opening. Apparently, we were not the only girls looking to kick up our heels a little.

In late 2014 I attended the Erie Gala in Pennsylvania with my friend Donna. There I met a couple of girls from Ohio who seemed of a similar mindset to those of us in Detroit, at least in regard to having a good time. We got to talking about our home communities, and they were intrigued. We invited them to come for a visit and see for themselves. A weekend in January of 2015 was agreed upon and the die was cast. I got online on a chat board used by many of the local girls and let them all know a couple of guests would be in town.

Let me pause and say this...on any given Saturday night in Detroit, the two main bars/nightclubs where TG go to hang out will host from 20 to 40 girls. On any given Saturday night.

That first weekend in January of 2015 we planned for both Friday and Saturday night. Friday was small and intimate. About 10 of us were there, altogether. You all know who you were, I am sure. Many claim to have been there. I can name names of the few who actually were. Regardless, it was a tiny affair. But the following night, when I walked into the bar, there were well over 100 people there. It was jam packed. I had never seen so many girls in that bar before. And it was an amazing night. So amazing that we all vowed we would have to do it again. And so we did, the following April. Only now, it seemed like our little event needed a name.

In the run up to the first weekend, one of our local girls had gotten on the chat board and asked “What's all this I hear about some t-girl invasion of Detroit?”

The name stuck. That April we held the second Detroit Invasion (Mk II). And that is how it all began.

But there is more.

A lot of people misconstrue the intent and actuality of Invasion events. Operating without any real knowledge or understanding (a common way to form opinions in America, unfortunately) many people think the Invasion events are nothing but “wild, over-sexed crossdressers”. Nothing could be further from the truth, although, in this Trumpian age of fake news, it seems no one need let actual facts get in the way of their own beliefs. And, sadly, within this vast community that we call “transgender” there remains a lot of backbiting and gossip and much of what we term a “trannier than thou” attitude. For the uninitiated, “trannier than thou” (Sometime shortened to “Triple T”) refers to a sad but all too common form of self aggrandizement that targets those considered further back on the road to self acceptance as somehow unacceptable and “lesser than”, and as such the target for scorn and derision. It is an ugly and unfortunate phenomenon that serves to divide us instead of finding commonality. It defines people by labels instead of facilitating understanding.

Here is the thing. Critical thinking in this country seems to be in sad supply. It has been replaced, it seems, by the habit of “feeling” an answer to a complicated problem, and then attempting to rationalize those feelings through thought. It leads to a lot of faulty logic and poor conclusions. Actually, all too often, even the attempt to rationalize feelings is absent, as more and more people go through life forming totally emotionally driven and, often, totally illogical ideas.

So... here is the truth about Detroit Invasion events.

Yes, they are social only. We make no attempt to laden them with classes or speeches.

Yes, they are a lot of fun, at least for anyone who knows how to have fun. But they are not “a bunch of oversexed crossdressers”

Far from it.

Detroit Invasions are totally egalitarian when it comes to the transgender umbrella. There is no litmus test to determine if someone is “trans enough”. Our Detroit family accepts everyone. Everyone is welcome. As such, we have all kinds of girls, from fully transitioned post op through pre op, through non op.... we have full time, part time and first time. In fact at every single Invasion we have welcomed at least some girls “out” for the very first time. No girl left behind. It is a big tent and we welcome everyone with love, support and warmth.

But, on another level, Invasion events are political. Visibility is a political act in our world. And, at Invasion, girls are very visible. There is political empowerment working on two levels. On one level, those of us too shy or inexperienced to venture into totally public spaces are able to safely do so, visiting, as themselves, everything from nightclubs and bars, to river boat cruises, casinos, theme parks and auto shows and more. Further, Invasion events are political because they force mainstream people in these spaces to interact with transgender people (often for the first time). Many mainstream people have never knowingly met one of us. And even when they do find themselves in the same space as one of us, such as at a restaurant, interaction rarely takes place. This is not the case with an Invasion event. It is hard, if not impossible, to not interact when the space you are in is suddenly “invaded” by 50 to 100 happy, gregarious, transgender women. And in that unavoidable interaction, people discover we are not strange and exotic, not cartoons, not sexual predators, but rather some pretty nice, happy, warm, and fun human beings. Much like anyone else. We become familiar. That word....”familiar” ...the root of that word is family. In a sense, we become family. If you fail to grasp that fact about Invasion then you miss the point entirely. Invasion events are political action events on a very basic, non threatening level. But, of course, they are also a lot of fun.

Our team has now grown beyond just me and includes half a dozen or more over worked volunteers. Together, we plan, coordinate, and host four three day events each year. Each event is similar but each is different with aspects tailored to take advantage of seasonal opportunities. We bring in girls from all over the country. By memory, our “little” event has drawn girls from the following states and provinces... Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Tennessee, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, California, Missouri, Kansas, Minnesota, West Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey and Ontario …. and I have probably missed a few. Each event draws between 100 and 150 girls. Because each event brings out different girls, in total each year we affect the lives of more than 350 transgender individuals. By that count, we are larger than several of the “major” national transgender events. And we are growing. In 2018, if all goes well, TGDetroit, the sponsoring organization for the Detroit Invasions, will attain full non profit status. And plans are already in place not only for Invasion events and activities running through the next two years, but also for TGDetroit itself to grow into a full transgender support agency where the Invasion events will only be a small part of our expanding goals. With your support and a lot of work we will be able to help a lot of girls.

Because, ultimately, as much fun as it is to “have fun”, this is about way more than that. Far too many TG live lives of quiet desperation...attacked physically and verbally, abandoned by friends and family, fired from jobs...and all simply because the average American remains uneducated and ignorant about us and harbors misconceptions that lead to hatred and abuse. It is a war zone out there for a lot of girls, and a lonely life in those personal trenches. Detroit Invasion is about giving girls a three day pass every now and then to get out of those trenches, and breathe freely for a while. To let their hair down in a safe space among family who really treat them as family. They are more than parties. Every girl that comes to Invasion becomes part of an ever expanding family and Invasion events are truly a lot like family reunions. And even beyond that, what we do is all part of a plan and vision to move the ball down the field... to try, in some small way, to make a difference and make life for girls down the road a little better. It's our way of saying thank you to the girls who helped us. And, be sure to understand this.... TGDetroit is not about making it easy for a few “passable” girls to fit within some archaic and mythological gender binary. TGDetroit is about tearing down that binary....destroying it and every shred of pain it has caused... and replacing it with a world where all of us, from across the entire gender spectrum.... ALL of us....have a place that is safe, secure and respected. That is our goal.

Those of you who know me personally will have heard me say “I just throw parties” Yes, it's true. That's what we do. But, it's also lot more than that. Instead of just having an opinion....come see for yourself. We will make sure you feel like part of the family.

#transgender genderidentity

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housebearshouseparty420 · 7 years ago

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I never wanted to be a revolutionary, I just want to eat candy and watch cartoons all day.

Around noon I got a phone call from the clinic. A lot of times I get a call, sometimes automated, sometimes a secretary and the exchange lasts about 30 seconds. "Hi, can you come in tomorrow?” “Okay” “Great!" And it's cool.

I was dead a-fuckin'-sleep and answered to 'Kenny?' “Speaking!" I said, not wanting to do the whole awkward 'That's me! This is he?' runaround when you're caught off guard, which I very much was. I have social anxiety, I have to rehearse my menu options before I get to the restaurant, it’s bad. I didn't even have time to fake lower my voice to sound gruffer. I was hoping it would be an easy 'Yes? Okay! I'll be there. Bye.' It wasn't. It was a real talk. Who even talks on the phone anymore right?

It was the national director of the clinic or something, I didn’t really catch the title. Someone very high up, she is the person who runs things. She got an email from the social worker saying things hadn't been perfect, and I thought this might be the case. I had straight-up said I wasn't mad, I didn't think anyone was doing it on purpose. I told the social worker before I left, “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”

So, she asks about my experience at the clinic and I’m like, 'Uhhh less than ideal? Well... I DO like to be called by my name? I don't care what forms say, a requisition with my old name actually makes a lot of sense, but in casual conversation, this matters a lot. If a William wanted to be called Bill I'd hope they wouldn't have to do a big dance... I'm not MAD I just I've really tried?'

Apparently, they are were already planning on changing computer systems, right now it is very binary: Female/Male but they’re hoping the new system will have more options.

And I didn't say, 'I am male, that's the point!' I said, "That's great. There should be an 'other' or little trans box, because a non-binary person might like to be called 'they' or whatever and it should be there as a courtesy."

I was pretty much on the verge of a panic attack the whole time, I mentioned that we had specifically chosen this place based on their little blurb on the website about working with trans people before.

She said that they had, and that's why this was so unacceptable, since inclusivity was like one of their pillars or mission statement or whatever she said, so it's really important to them that everyone feels safe/respected.

So they've talked to the staff, some of it was as easy as explaining that the computer deadnaming me, some techs with English as their second language needing it spelled out for them and society changing, so I mean I get it. They're all taking it very seriously and I do appreciate it, I told her so.

My wife works 9-5 so she hasn't been able to go to every appointment with me, but she's always really good about gently reinforcing my preferences so, right before the sono the worst of the tests, she says she told the tech: 'Actually, he likes to be called Kenny' and by the time I got back from the washroom they were like 'Okay deadname if you could lie down' And I was like, 'Soooo... I am in hell.'

I told the director that it’s really just that any hospital environment is stressful (A nurse and I had a cool talk about white coat syndrome making people extra nervous) at the best of times without being called 'Ma'am.' I'm already uncomfortable enough just being there without making it worse, or using the emotional energy that I need to get me through the more invasive procedures to start correcting and educating people. Trans people should be taken more seriously. It's just not my job when it's a place that says they've already been through this multiple times with other patients.

Like, it's not just transmasculine people carrying a child, it could be a transmasculine person donating their eggs to a cis female partner, a trans woman going off of estrogen long enough that she can fertilize an egg. (I kinda hate that word, I spent a lot of time on a farm and my mind goes straight to poop.) I’d hate for her to be misgendered in that situation too. And just non-binary people existing. She agreed that in this day and age it shouldn't have to be a big thing.

As a society, we've had over a decade to get used to the idea of fathers carrying. Thomas Beatie started laying the foundation for this in 2007 and I'm sure he was hardly the first, just the first most people had heard of. It made me internalize things really weirdly because my mom was like ‘OH MY GOD LOOK AT THIS CRAZY THING ON THE TV!’ He was so so brave to do this, but I had to hear opinions I wasn’t ready to hear and it scared me. I always felt weird about the movie 'Junior' as a kid. Where Arnold Schwarzenegger's character, a cis man is part of a fertility experiment. In health class, the teacher had joked about in the year 2200 there would probably be womb transplants on men, except that no man would want to. Pregnant men were a punchline and it just rubbed me wrong.

I never knew how to make the distinction that I wanted kids but didn't want to be a mother. I wasn't really even out as queer yet. I faced homophobic backlash even when I did deny it, but I knew that much. I'd get so mad when people would talk about my future children, not because I didn't want them, but sometimes I just wondered if I could find anyone and that I literally could not think of a world where I would feel safe enough where I could get married let alone have kids.

I've seen such a difference in the last 15 years, so much has changed for the better, with both laws and people’s attitudes in Canada, but it's still a scary world. I feel sick when I think about trans people in the bible belt. But at 17 I never dreamed that I would be on the phone with a big wig having a real, genuine conversation about how to make things better for gender non-conforming people. (I guess I better actually transition after this if I'm starting shit!)

The only reason I'm containing my anxiety so well is because I knew even half asleep that this was one of the rare times when someone was genuinely trying to help me and actually had the power to make a difference, that if I did speak up I would be making it that much easier for the next (pre-T) guy to come in trying to have a baby so he can just live his life and after the first day could go home like, 'It was fine! They called me he! They got it! Maybe this isn't going to be as bad as I thought!'

#just kenny vents #long post

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