#being queer myself and having been born the same year and even struggled with my sexuality at the same time as said objectified character

[cardentist]

Fam how can one be trans in the direction of their assigned sex? I'm not even trying to make the idea sound ridiculous or anything. I'm genuinely curious and want to understand. I thought the whole meaning of trans was that you feel or act in the opposite direction of your assigned sex; if you're transfem but you're afab then to me that's just cisgender??? But like please explain to me how that's not the case if that's what you and others strongly feel so I may grow my compassion

Context: [Link]

well ! while I personally am not intersex, I DO want to highlight intersex people first and foremost.

gender and sex are very Very complex, and I think generally people don't consider the way that being intersex can play a big role in that!

there are intersex people who are afab who are also trans women, there are intersex people who are amab who are trans men, there are intersex people with many Many different relationships with sex and gender and anywhere in between !

an afab person can be born with masculine sex characteristics and transition the way trans women often do. that person May identify as trans, they may not ! that trans person may not even consider themselves a woman depending on who they are and what they want !

I Do think there needs to be an effort to be aware of and make space for intersex people within the trans community, and really the wider queer community as a whole. as it's often something that's given a footnote without deeper thought into the ways that intersex people Actually interact with our communities.

which I don't blame people for not already knowing ! that's the whole point of trying to educate people in the first place ^^

.

and as for Myself

labels are, ultimately, a form of gender presentation. what you call yourself is an extension of not only how you see yourself, but how Other People perceive you.

I could call myself nonbinary or I could call myself trans masc, and both would be Accurate. but people have certain traits and expectations and associations when they see those labels. there are assumptions made about the kind of life that I live, the things that I want, the things I might experience, that change depending on which labels that I use.

and that's not Inherently a bad thing ! I mean, that's part of why people Like labels. but it Can be a struggle for people whose gender is Funny.

I could Also describe myself as genderqueer or multi-gender or genderfluid or gnc or-. I've tried on lots and lots of labels, and for the most part I haven't thrown any of them out, I just keep them in a box under my bed and take them out when relevant.

I've been wrestling with the feminine aspect of my identity for a very Very long time. I've been aware that I'm some level of trans masc. that part was easy. I want a deeper voice, I want things about my body to change, I don't want people to look at me and see a cis woman.

but I Also like femininity. I've found that after accepting myself as trans masc and slowly growing an environment where I am Perceived as masculine, I've started getting euphoria at presenting femininely in the Same way that I did (and do!) get about presenting masculinely.

but that feeling doesn't carry over when I'm perceived as a cis woman. it's Quite Uncomfortable for obvious gender reasons.

and while I may not know the exact Words that I'd use to describe it (as I've said, I've been chewing on it for Many years now), I've gotten a clearer idea of how I Feel.

I want to be Visibly trans. I want to be perceived masculinely And femininely. I want to transition masculinely to present femininely (and sometimes butch, sometimes like your dad at the ace hardware store, I contain multitudes).

and of course, figuring out what I have going on has involve a lot of exploration ! it's the same way I figured out the whole trans masc thing in the first place. seeking out other trans people and other Things About trans people feeling things out.

I find ! that I have a lot of shared experiences with transfeminine people. both in how I feel about certain things, some of the presentation that I want, and in how people would React To said presentation.

my femininity Is Trans, I don't relate to cis womanhood. but I Do relate to trans femininity. which is really awkward for me, because it's difficult to describe it to other people fjksldljkasfdjklfasd

(I don't personally consider myself a trans woman mind, but I'm certain there Are people who are trans men and trans women at the same time. gender is complicated, sex is complicated. labels are malleable and sometimes situational)

Could I describe myself with a different label? probably ! I've got lots of them. but when I Don't put emphasis on this aspect of myself people assume that it's not there. insist that it Couldn't be there, and I don't know what I'm talking about. and those people who Would act nasty towards me probably aren't gonna change their mind just because I changed my bio. but it feels Nice to assert that aspect of myself when other people are trying to tear it down.

.

part of me feels like I should post the intersex portion of this by itself, because people tend to engage more with shorter posts and there's nothing Short about my gender situation ljkfdasjkls

but ! I dunno, if this makes even one person understand the gray areas of gender and presentation a little more it'll be worth it.

thank you for taking the time to ask ! and especially for doing so kindly ! I do hope you'll see this

#discourse #long post #intersex #genderqueer #nonbinary #multigender #trans unity #queer unity #moral of the story is that gender is a fuck

[intheholler]

What makes you count as Appalachian? I was born outside the Appalachians but my family has a long history there and used to live there for the early years of my life but haven’t lived there since.

I hesitate to call myself Appalachian truly but I do feel most at home there and miss it greatly. I wish I was better connected with the culture overall.

Even if I wouldn’t be considered Appalachian, this blog is a great comfort and I thank you for running it! :)

(another identity-questioning anon, another long ass answer bc i feel for you)

first, i wanna say that no one gets to define who you are but you, and especially not me. that said--i hope my opinion benefits you in some way.

when you say what 'counts' as appalachian, it sounds like ur holding urself up against a set of strictly defined traits, and that isn't fair to you. try to shed that mindset.

now. my idea of what makes a person appalachian is this:

direct ties to the region. period.

either you live here now, grew up here but moved away at some point, even just spent the bulk of your childhood visiting family here--whatever steeped you in the land and the culture for long enough for it to become an authentic, meaningful part of you.

spending the "early years" of your life here and being raised by appalachian folks outside of here definitely qualifies (in my eyes, which, again, aren't the defining lens).

and location isn't all, bc culture isn't a static place.

when i was dealing with my own appalachian identity crisis(TM), i learned about the appalachian diaspora. i don't mean to 'splain, but, just in case you aren't familiar with the term:

di·as·po·ra /dīˈasp(ə)rə/ noun the dispersion or spread of a people from their original homeland

there are any number of reasons why we as a people leave our homes even if the roots done grown thick and intertwined. economic or socioeconomic reasons, usually.

mine was economic. (not to make this about me, but i always hope my experience can provide some helpful perspective)

i was born in nc and grew up poor as hell. my dad was a contractor, so we moved around wherever the money was. usually didn't stay in one place more than two years but always either lived in the mountains of nc or in the piedmont region of SC.

i have spent over half my life in appalachia, and a little under half on the outskirts. the times where i didn't live here used to make me question everything, since i'm not a cradle-to-casket, never-left-never-will appalachian.

but i came to see that's really fucking unfair to do that to myself, because it was never my choice. it wasn't yours, either.

appalachia informs every single part of who i am, from my values to my queerness, from my education to my (leftist) politics, from my beliefs to my worldview.

my family has been here for centuries, and grew up on the same soils in scotland. i spent my formative years here. no matter what, i was raised by appalachian women, speaking the appalachian dialect, eating appalachian food, and living the appalachian way of life, for better or worse.

some time spent elsewhere don't change that. neither does it for you.

all of that said, i get it, bc i still sometimes struggle with The Crisis. moving around so much means i never had one exact place i can call my hometown the way most people do, that i never had a place to plant permanent roots.

so, being "from appalachia" as a region is deeply, deeply important to my identity and sense of self. and that's all that matters. if it's important to your identity, then that's all that matters.

and like hell does anyone get to tell me one way or the other. lord help em if they try. they don't get to tell you, either. you spent your childhood here. if feels like home, then it's home <3

#asks #appalachia

[intergalacticgoose]

Not to start a whole like….discourse or anything, but I discovered truscum/transmedicalists within the queer community lately (I know, late to the party, I’m a late bloomer) and I’ve been, well…distressingly down over it.

When I think about it, I’ve butted up against my gender assigned at birth (GAB?) my entire life. I’ve been seriously questioning my gender for the past, idk, 2-3 years or so? Buying a binder, asking for men’s cuts, following my instincts when I found myself dressing more and more masculine during the pandemic.

I’m fairly happy with my body. I like the bits I have, for the most part. I’d like to be more androgynous, but those are things I can accomplish without surgery. I looked into HRT, and realized it wasn’t for me. (Not gambling with male-pattern baldness OR excess hair, thank you very much) I started exploring genderfluidity or something beneath the nonbinary umbrella once I realized that, had I been born AMAB, I wouldn’t necessarily desire being a woman. I think I’d even be a bit happier. But I’ve spent so long learning to love my femininity, I don’t necessarily want to abandon it.

Enter truscum.

I hate that it bothers me so much. The insistence that I *need* to invest in medical intervention or experience dysphoria of a certain type in order to be “not cis” felt like getting beaten back into the box I was assigned to. Like I was foolish to imagine something grander, wilder, and bigger than what my body had written for me. It made me worry that perhaps I had imagined it all. It made me feel like I wouldn’t be recognized even within my own community, which was supposed to recognize me where cis people simply don’t see beyond my bone structure and voice despite all I do to blur my lines.

And this is the reason that thinking is so, so damaging to the trans and nonbinary community. So much of gender is uncultured, and many cultures have had spaces or language for genders beyond what they considered male or female. It’s western society, really, that’s been slow on the uptake in not allowing for those other genders, and insisting on a rigid binary. If I’m struggling, I can only imagine how others like me, who don’t feel comfortable anywhere, may be feeling.

I don’t really have a point to all this other than to vent my frustrations with transmedicalism. If you’re out there and dealing with the same types of doubts, man, don’t listen to ‘em. The world has carved out spaces for people like you in other times and places, probably, and you gotta have faith in who you know you are.

#queer #lgbtq #nonbinary #enby #genderfluid #genderqueer #gender feels #gender #gender questioning #transmedicalism #gender liberation #rants #queer community

[iamdarthbader]

My Experience with Feminism and Womanhood Growing Up

I was born in 2001. For me as a child, my relationship with womanhood was complicated right out of the gate. I was never drawn to very 'feminine' things as a child, mush to the disdain of my mother who always tried to push pretty dresses on me. As a result, I hated shopping and never really developed a sense of style or even a sense of what looked good on me. Compared to my peers, I was a bit masculine. I struggled with socializing a lot due to unaddressed neurodivergence, so I didn't particularly have a lot of female friends. I was an outcast, and I felt it. I wasn't like them. I was Not Like Other Girls.

At times I was insecure about this, but at other times I took great pride in it. What else could I do? Pretend to be someone else? I couldn't do that if I tried. And believe me, I tried to be a normal girl. It only led me to further isolation and self hatred.

Luckily, there was a light on the horizon for me. In 2012, movies like The Avengers and The Hunger Games were hitting theaters, and they were huge. Fandom spaces were growing online, and I had my first ipod touch, so the internet was mine to explore unabated. I found people like me. People who were weird and outcast. People who shared labels I was ostracized for being: tomboy, queer, atheist, mentally ill. It gave me a home where I was celebrated for who I was. And as the years went on, we only became more mainstream. More understood and respected. The first half of the 2010's felt like a rollercoaster of positive change that only went up.

But around 2016-2018 something shifted. Well, lots of things shifted, but one thing in particular. A new term was introduced to me: internalized misogyny. Because of my experience with women up to that point, I wasn't fond of other girls, especially very feminine ones. They were everything I was expected to be but could not be, and I hated them for it. So I gassed myself up by being proud of being Not Like Other Girls. After all, why shouldn't I ridicule feminine women when they for so long ridiculed me? So the concept of internalized misogyny made me angry at first, but I eventually came around. I used my empathy to see that not every girl who wears makeup isn't the Mean Girl Stereotype and I wasn't making myself better by acting like I was above them by not being feminine.

As I entered young adulthood, I joined in with other people laughing at how ridiculous we were in the past for thinking femininity was evil. We started embracing some of the more feminine things we had been excluded from. I started wearing pink and dresses and I grew out my hair because I wanted to. And it was nice.

But in this current decade, the same thing that happened for nerdiness in 2012. It became the Most Popular Thing. Ads are everywhere saying 'buy our beauty thing because you want to!" Tiktoks making fun of girls who are Not Like Other Girls, saying they just do it for male attention and validation. Bimboification. Girl math. Girl dinner. Hyperfeminine concepts that started ironically that gradually lost their irony and just became girls linking their womanhood with stupidity and vapidness. People acting like no feminine woman has ever put down a nonfeminine woman. People acting like Girls Who Aren't Like Other Girls are Just Pick Me's and aren't being "Girl's girls". Complete invalidation of what I experienced growing up.

Teens today were still learning fractions when I was a teen grappling with the concept of internalized misogyny. They don't have the life experience of the 2000's when it was more ok to punish Girls Who Weren't Like Other Girls. And they are being inundated with all this media saying "it's okay and totally feminist to be feminine" as if feminity was ever seriously under attack or discriminated against. As if women have not been expected to be feminine for all of history. I try not to hold it against these teens. I know they don't know any better. But that's what makes it scary.

Sorry to sound like a crochety old man, but we need early 2010's era feminism back, but without going overboard. Our young girls need it. Our girls not born yet need it. I've touched on this a little bit before. We keep going through these cycles of perscribing what it means to be a woman and to be a feminist woman but we keep pushing so hard in one direction or another that we just end up trapping a new generation into a singular idea of what it means to be a woman instead of actually letting ourselves be free to be who we are with equal respect and dignity. I'm only 22 and I'm already exhausted by this cycle, and I'm afraid of how many more we might live to see.

#ok to like reblog comment #feminism #femininity #not like other girls #womanhood #meta #essay

[olderthannetfic]

to the anon with the problem of not understanding how other queer people are happy being themselves, outside factors be damned:

as a cis straight woman I sometimes don't understand how other women like me aren't unhappy- not with being themselves from the get-go, but from the expectations society puts women through that are absurd when you look at the logic, but some of them definitely are and that's okay.

I was born to a family that, while it buys into the nuclear model, encouraged me and other kids in my generation of it (the one preceding being Jewish immigrants from Soviet Russia) to do what makes us happy and build our lives how we see fit, in a society that has been, broadly speaking, more and more tolerant of diversity in people and lifestyles by the year, despite the conformity. I was even lucky enough to have access to television to see other cultures than those of my country, and to the internet since I was in 2nd grade, so when I encountered fanfics later I found out about other sexualities and genders and ways of being and slowly, over years, learned some of the history and read a lot of self-testemonials and saw that it's not been fair to any of us (especially the to the people most in the fringes, but including cis straight people) to live under such rigid narratives of how people and family and love look like.

things that I learned: I might fall in love or want to have sex with a woman and that's normal; I might stop being attracted to men and that's okay; some people have more than one life-partner and they seem to be very happy like that; maybe I'll never marry or ever have sex and I don't feel like I'm missing out; maybe I'll adopt kids someday or foster (I don't think I'm suited for babies and toddlers on account of I've what my mother had to do and I babysat some, and I don't want to be pregnant), maybe by myself, maybe I won't; maybe I'll live out my life with a non-romantic partner; my womb doesn't make me feel like a woman and that's, honestly, freeing as fuck, because a lot of women around seemed to pin womanhood to even more absurd things that I didn't and don't want to do but queer, gnc and trans women also mostly didn't.

things that never made sense to me:

in particular, the idea that sexuality or gender or how they express beget behavior, good or bad or neutral, instead of how society and how people are raised and what ideas they think or encounter that counter that, good or bad or neutral. straight people cheat. gay people cheat. bi people cheat- sometimes with someone the same gender as their partner, sometimes not. I also think that the majority of partnered people don't cheat, and that cheating--when revealed--sticks in the mind so much because it's less common and broadly discouraged, unless one lives under the narrative that people like them always cheat- this includes cis straight people;

more broadly, that unhappiness is caused by something inherent to you and not how you're made to feel- by ideas that it's wrong or means something it doesn't, by other struggles in life and how you deal with them, and how family or society struggles to deal with you. I've seen more and more queer people on various formats of local media over the years (if I met them they weren't out to me, but I'm very introvert and live in the less liberal part, but then, queer people from even more conservative parts move and come out), and of the non-fiction kind the stories are still varied in how much sadness and happiness the life lived had been so far, regardless of how much they liked being themselves in spite, or because, of other people. in both fiction and non-fiction the stories got happier over the years, especially with legal and social milestones, with sadness having less and less to do with the queerphobic part of society unless they're surrounded by it or it came to the fore again.

the fact that queer people exist and are normal and human as anyone is already a vastly different narrative than most people lived with less than a century ago. if the cis straight narrative isn't universal and isn't guaranteed to be happy, anon, what makes you think that your narrative is the true one for anyone other than you? you even figured out you were bi despite your ideas about bi people, why not figure out how to be happy as a bi person? doesn't really sound like the "all bi people are destined to cheat" applies to you, you never thought to do it and seem very principled.

--

[sawch]

I cried so fucking much my cramps are way too painful I can barely fucking breathe. The medical field makes me not want to go to a doctor about my period pains because I know I'm going to constantly get misgendered and they aren't going to treat me with any respect at all if they know I'm trans. I fucking hate myself right now. All I want is to stop hurting, I want relief, I want to be able to talk to someone about this but I feel like nobody even gives a shit about trans guys, even within the queer community we always focus on fems and androgynous people and I understand, and I don't want to downplay their struggles either but literally the only people who talk about transmascs and our issues is other transmascs. I wish I was a cis guy sometimes because at least I wouldn't have to deal with all of this pain, physically and mentally about my body. I want to stab myself and cut out my abdomen with a knife, I feel so fucking lonely i just want someone that understands me. I want people to treat me like a person. I want doctors to listen to me. Fuck. I've been doing so good, Ive been clean from sh for over a year now, I haven't been suicidal but this past few days are genuinely killing me. I used to deal with pain by cutting, it always worked. I feel like it's the only answer, it's always screaming at me to try again because I KNOW that it works. It does make me feel better. It does. I don't see how it can be dangerous if I avoid hitting veins, I genuinely don't understand why it's bad for me. It's the only thing that actually makes the pain go away. I want to fucking kill myself again for the first time in years and it's because of my fucking period. I hate being born this way.

At least I have a pussy tho t guy swag am I right fellas? ( he says through tears while bleeding profusely)

I wish that gender wasn't a concept that was ingrained into human society and humans stopped making stereotypes about people with different bodies. I also wish that I could cut myself open and take my uterus out of my body without... Y'know. Passing out because of blood loss and pain. I don't even need it?? It's useless??? Cut it out of my body and chop it into bloody little pieces and feed it to the flies and worms outside.

This is all nonsense and I understand, I'm just putting what my brain is yelling at me about into words here. I know what I think is not the same as reality. But God I really want to die right now :( it's been an hour since I couldn't move because of the pain. I wish that there was a way to stop this pain. I want this fucking parasite out of my body.

The world is so cruel sometimes. I need to fight to change it so no one ever feels the way I do again. No one deserves this life I was given.

#vent #rant #im so tired and angry and sad #im crying again #i almost puked today #and i keep getting nauseous from the pain #self harm #sh #tw self harm #tw sh #tw cutting #cw self harm #cw sh #gore #tw gore #cw gore

[give-me-your-kidneys]

ok so first actual post that's not intended as a sort of intro type thing.

so anyways I've been kinda struggling with the idea of gender for the past year or so. for the sake of context, I'll try and start from the beginning more or less.

so I was born a man (well, boy if we're being technical, I didn't pop out of my mom a fully grown adult lmao). In middle school I found out that I was bi because I had a crush on a friend of mine and since then I've become very comfortable with my own sexuality. I've been attracted to people regardless of gender and am very confident that I'm bi or at least some other flavor of not entirely straight (maybe there's some other word that is super niche that more accurately describes my own personal feelings, but whatever, that's not important or relevant, nor something I particularly care about). this is all to say that I'm not particularly unfamiliar with being queer.

in the past year or so I've been struggling with my gender. It's not that I don't feel like a man, but it's not something I really have any sort of strong attachment to, it's just how I've been living my life up until now and so it's convenient to continue like that. I definitely don't feel like a woman, and I don't think I'd necessarily be happy if that's how I was perceived either, but it's not something that feels wrong, it feels about the same as being a man, which is to say not like much of anything. but, however, I definitely feel like I'd be happier if I'd be able to present myself more femininely, and definitely not in your typical e-boy femboy uwu kind of way that's become more common in recent years. no shade on the people who like doing that, it's just not what I want to do. it's just a desire to be able to dress femininely and cute while having that be perceived as normal.

and just to be clear, if there was some easy way that I could just get hrt through a doctor (not super comfortable with the idea of diy-ing it as I just don't really trust myself to do that properly) or just really with any sort of professional supervising me that knows their shit so I don't screw anything up, I would, but alas. I also very very very very very much do not want to be seen or look in the mirror and see myself as a man in a dress, or like any sort of male person dressing in a feminine way, as that to me at least, feels like it'd be worse than just living life in the way that I currently am.

to me, specifically in the case of myself and not when it comes to other people, getting on estrogen/all the other various hormones that are part of hrt is what I'd need to really accomplish anything of that sort. it's what I'd need for myself to make it feel real. now, I want to make it extremely clear that this is only a standard that I'd apply to myself as it's a standard I'd only really hold myself to, I'm not some sort of transmed/truscum person. everyone has their own journey and standards that they experience and what I think of myself is just that, only relevant in my case. and in my case, it feels like I'd need that as a way of being able to be more happy with myself, I think.

on an only tangentially related topic, I don't really view myself as nonbinary or trans or anything like that, because for some reason using those terms just feels wrong? not sure why, but the closest thing I could compare it to is like stolen valor or some shit, which I'm aware is a very goofy way of thinking about it lmao. but regardless, it still just doesn't feel right to call myself something along those lines, even though I have spent the last three paragraphs talking about how I view my own gender identity in a way that most people would say at least decently aligns with those terms.

I guess one of the reasons as to why it doesn't feel right is that as someone who has never really been visibly queer, (I just look like some regular joe white dude) despite never really hiding that I was if it ever came up, to me at least, the nonbinary and trans people that I've known in the past were very very open in how they presented themselves and made it very clear to anyone who saw them that they were not cis. it just feels wrong to call myself anything like that when I know people who are that and they are far far braver than I'll ever be for living as who they really are in a world that does not want them to do so.

this ties in to another thing that I've also been thinking about, in that I'm fucking terrified of doing transitioning/getinng/taking hrt[1] for three reasons.

one being that it's a pretty big change. I know that most of its effects are not really permanent if you stop within the first couple of months but still. that's a really big choice to make and I don't want to regret it. this fear of regret is mostly just due to who I am as a person, I know that the vast vast vast majority of people who transition are extremely happy with doing so, and hell that most people who consider it for as long as I have and end up doing so end up being happy with doing so, but still. what if I'm wrong.

the second reason is that, let me be frank, I'm not really starting from the best place when it comes to doing so. this is purely from a physical place as I'm a fairly overweight person who has some physical features that I don't think hrt would necessarily solve (mainly body/facial hair, like holy shit dude there's just too much of it, it never ends). not gonna post a picture because I don't want my face tied to this fairly intimate dump of ideas, even though I highly doubt anyone will ever read this.

the third is that I'm pretty scared of doing so, but for a different reason than in point number one. the world is not very kind to people who transition. luckily, I don't live on terf island, but I do live in the USA, and the college that I attend is in a fairly red state. not super giga red like in the bible belt, but still not great. my family does live in a rather blue state and city, but still, not great. my family would probably be supportive, so I don't think that's a big concern, as would my close friends (especially the ones who I've talked about this with), but everyone outside of that, which is most people I interact with, who the fuck knows? like that shit is scary as fuck.

anyway yeah so definitely still 100% cis lmao.

just kinda wish I was born a girl so that I'd be able to express myself in ways that feel more true to myself

100% cis though.

[1] ok doing a footnote on a tumblr post is goofy as all hell, but what I wanted to write here was too long to do parenthetically. I'm not super happy with wording it like this for two reasons, but I'm keeping it like this with the footnote as I'd rather just keep it as is for the sake of clarity in what I'm saying.

transitioning feels like I'm saying that I'm trans, which I'm not uncomfortable with identifying as that being the endpoint of my own personal journey, but is something I don't feel is truly accurate for aforementioned reasons. still keeping it like that for clarity

conflating starting/getting hrt and transitioning here is for the same reason as stated above, I'm not a truscum person.

[poetandwolf]

Which labels do you use? Trans, Ace/Aro, Pan, Fictoromantic.

Do you like to use the term queer for yourself? Or just LGBT, etc?Queer because my mouth is too small and my tongue is too big and I have a chiari malformation so some words are hard to say and rolling out the LGBT+ out makes me mumble and stumble over my words, and I have been made fun of for it by my own community so I just say “queer”.

Which pronouns do you use? he/him or ‘they/them (for system reasons)

Are you "out" to your family and friends? Yes.. my family knows for the most part. My dad doesn’t really ‘get’ the ficto thing I don’t think but my brother and mother are smart enough to piece together Aubrey = Alhazad.

Are you "out" publicly? Uh, stealth usually on the trans thing. People at work think I’m gay/in a same sex relationship- which is kind of true.

(If you're out) do you wish you came out sooner? Later? Or was it the right time? Yes. I wish I said something to my dad when I was 16, it may have made it easier for him to accept why I was the way I was. But I don’t regret growing up as a ‘woman’ from 16-26 because I learned a lot. It’s the journey, not the destination. I wish I knew I could be ficto and that it was okay and stood up for myself instead of being afraid of the backlash and people forcing me into things or ignoring me and over stepping my boundaries.

Are you the "token" Yeah..

Describe your gender without using any words traditionally related to gender: Kurt Cobain and Van Gough’s love child with Yog Sothoth.

When did you realize you weren't cishet? When did you realize you *were* cishet? I was always the way I was. I didn’t figure it out, I just knew I was different from everyone else around me.

Something that gives you gender euphoria (whether you're cis or trans): My goatee, or when ever someone calls me sir ;A; <3.

Favorite (or just one you love) piece of LGBT media? I don’t think I really have one..?

Name some queer artists/bands or songs you like most: I don’t really have any, maybe besides Garbage but I wouldn’t call them a favorite band.. Nirvana and the Foo Fighters could be because what they had was def kind Bi energy.

Do you choose to reclaim slurs, why or why not? I will use the F-word but weird kind of hyperbole.. “Gay” as an insult like in fun like *claw spin*. At work it kind of gets hilarious like someone will be popping off about someone else and call them the F word, then look at me “no disrespect” and I’m like “none taken.” I mean it’s probably problematic but dude, there’s this butchy lesbian who drops the F word on everyone.

How do you think other factors like neurodivergency or upbringing have impacted your identity? Uuuh yeah, like. I dunno.. Probably. It’s hard to explain because I have a hard time relating to transmen irl who aren’t on the spectrum.

How has your identity changed over time? Hmm.. first I thought I was bi because I loved my best friend and liked boobs but then I also loved Aubrey/Alhazad... and then it was weird because I never liked anyone like I loved Aub. I was constantly stresses about being trans as I got older and buried it due to trauma. But if that shit never happened things may have been different. I think it was like Bi>Pan>Ace/Aro>Ficto then Gender fluid>Trans-male>Transmasculine?Gender fluid...? Being on different hormones for this fiborid has made me give less and less fucks about my gender outside of work/around the kids (we don’t want to confuse them and they don’t need to know what I was ‘born as’)

Do you attend Pride in person every year? No.. I hate crowds and I am not a fan of the flare and ... loud of it all. I know it’s very important to people but I can’t take all that energy and exaggeration of personalities (like I don’t like drag, either. I mean it’s cool of people do but I can not take the loudness of personalities my autistic brain melts down and I just want somewhere quiet. Can we have a Pride fest where we hike the PCT and little talking???)

Have you ever attended Pride in a big city/ large metro area? Fuck no I would die.

How old were you when you got to attend your first Pride? Who did you go with? N/A.

Do you feel safe and accepted in your local community?Yes, for the most part no one gives a shit. The super market who watches me transition and various other places and the pizza shop that knew me when I was 19 and on wards just.. don’t even question it and it’s very much “Oh, huh. Well that makes sense.”

Do you feel like you "fit in" with the queer/Pride community overall? No... I feel like I don’t fit in at all and I’m not whatever level of fabulous that they want me to be...

What message would you give to your younger self? You’ll be happier as man, That bitch is a lying piece of shit and Aubrey LOVES YOU no matter what the fuck you are. Now beat the dog shit out of that bitch while you’re under 18.

How do you usually celebrate Pride month? I make a mental note draw my ocs with their flags then I forget to do it. But usually at work we hang up pride related things and such. I don’t really do anything but I do make a toast on the 28th for those who fought for our rights.

Do you prefer loud parties or quiet? I don’t do parties.

Do you practice any religion, if so how does it play into your LGBT identity? Do you feel welcomed by your spiritual community? I struggled a lot when I was a child because I did want to believe in ‘God’ and like my own version of it- but I thought what I felt and how I felt about girls was ‘wrong’. It’s.. weird. It sucked. But I stopped believing in all of that when I was 15-- for god. And I had happen realize that I did like my best friend, but also Alhazad the same year. Al was just so much deeper. I don’t really practice any religion anymore outside of some Buddhist things but nothing really serious. If there is a higher power it is so far above what we can comperhend and I don’t think it gives a shit about who we love as long as we’re happy because gender is a human construct.

What queer discourse frustrates you the most? I don’t care anymore. As long as I can shoot T in my ass and ruin the men’s room at a Costco when I get IBS from being around crowds I don’t care. Leave me alone and get off my lawn.

How do you feel about the term partner rather than husband/girlfriend/etc? We should normalize the term partner in all relationships. Period. cishet or other wise.

What gender-neutral terms for yourself or others do you use (i.e. joyfriend)? lmao what? Alhazad/Aubrey ID’s as a man and has huge BDE and while his Japanese pronoun isn’t really gendered he prefers male ones so I call him either my husband or my partner. He will call me his ‘wife’ or ‘his love’ or ‘my husband’ it all depends on the context and what personality is out and where we are at the time.

Do you experience both romantic and sexual attraction? No, my romantic attraction is only for one person and one person only and that falls under ficto with Alhazad. Now sexual attraction? I have to have some kind of connection with the person to sleep with them, it’s a very ace-spec thing. But before T I didn’t have any sexual attraction at all. So honestly I don’t know. I had to quit T while I’m on lupron and other hormones for my hysto and my sex drive is a dead cat fish in a bucket right now. Do you experience them the same across any gender(s) you are attracted to? I never had sex with anyone with a penis so I am kind of wondering what that feels like after I have my hysto. Am I answering this right?

Are you currently partnered, or if not are you interested in having partner(s)? Yes *points to Aub*.

Are you monogamous or polyamorous? Monogamous as far as romantic love. I.. guess rn I have one FWB when there was a time I had about 3 but it wasn’t anything deep about it. Sex for me was like.. when you have an itch and then it gets scratched and you’re good for a few weeks.

Post a pic in your pride gear (or it can just be a selfie or anything else lgbt): Alls I have is the Magic Gay sticker plastered all over my work shit.

Do you do arts and crafts? yes, I draw and make things Post a pic of a project you've done: https://www.deviantart.com/ifoundawayout find stuff there

What about your LGBT identity do you feel proud of/ want to recognize/celebrate? the fact I am a thriving trans dude and I am very happy with my ficto/spirit husband :)

What are you needing most right now (what would make your life easier or more fulfilling in regards to existing as queer)? A promise I can continue to have my HRT and use the bathrooms I need to use, because it would be so fucking awkward if I was forced to detransition with out my fucking ovaries that are being taken out in July. I don’t have the mental horsepower to change my name and do that shit all over again like please don’t make me do that I don’t want to and it’s going to be a huge headache for everyone involved...

Anything else you want to ask during Pride: .... I dunno I kind of wish I could go to a Pride event with my husband (likely high or on a tranq to find stuff we could do and maybe support local GLBT artists?? I can’t think of anything. OH I know! How come they haven’t made a huge farting unicorn that farts glitter!! HR said if I could find one they’d buy it as part of our Pride Month decor.

[clubbingclown]

Last month I dropped roughly 10 pounds while sick and I’m struggling a bit with things not fitting right for the first time in my life.

Kinda struggling with body in general, I’m working on engaging with LGBTQ+ groups since I didn’t realize how dismissive of my identity I was being. Like I’m very confident in identifying as non-binary but, it’s hard to word, I’ve never been assertive about it (and like something happened around the same time when I came out that just completely fucked my identity where I didn’t really get to feel ownership of it) But yhea, I honestly I feel like I lean more on the masc side of things and hell I’m having the constant “ I should’ve been born a boy” thoughts again and find myself getting I guess, jealous of other people on T. And like I don’t even know why I didn’t engage with the LGBTQ+ community in general, like I had some awkward interactions in spaces while I was young so maybe that made me avoidant, who knows. I know in the groups I’ve been in with other LGBTQ+ people I’ve felt like an outsider despite being openly queer since ~2013; which has always been puzzling. So yhea the community aspect is something I do crave and now that I’m an adult it’ll be easier to actually engage properly. So I’m signed up for some groups and considering signing up for the drag show since god I miss the stage, I’m an artist but christ I’ve been a performer for just as long and I’ve deprived myself of it for too many years now. I’ll probably do some community theater stuff over the summer or make next semester’s schedule fit in with the theater clubs rehearsal schedule. I need to go home.

#my art #digital art #sketch #🛰 #vent? kinda #sketchbook #art #lgbtq #non binary #diary

[strangertheories]

What (gay) Will Byers means to me

Several years ago, I decided to give Stranger Things a try. Season 3 had just came out and I heard about Robin (and how she was gay). At that point in time, I was trying to watch pretty much every show with a lesbian character in it so this made me pretty excited. But whilst Robin was meaningful to me, the one character I felt truly represented by was Will Byers.

Now a quick disclaimer: I'm a lesbian born in the 2000s and have not been to an alternate dimension at any point so obviously I'm not going to relate to everything Will goes through.

Okay now onto my post. This is going to be more of a personal/vent post so it feels only natural to start it off with an unnecessarily long storytime. When I was in my early teens, I realized that I really liked girls at pretty much the exact same time my female friends realized that they really liked guys. Worst of all, I had a crush on my most boy-obsessed friend. Suddenly all my friend group would talk about is their boyfriends or their crushes or whichever celebrity they thought was cute. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, but I was surrounded by this overwhelming hype for guys and I felt none of it. I came to the dawning realization that I wasn't ever going to like boys like they did and it was rough; I felt incredibly isolated but I couldn't talk to anyone about it to them because I was afraid to tell people that I was gay. In the end, I left my close friend group over this because every time I hung out with them I felt either bored or miserable. I went through all of this around the time I watched Stranger Things and I think you can see where this is going.

When I watched Will in Season 3 I didn't see a kid who was just immature, I saw myself for one of the first times. Everything felt so real and relatable, from the jealousy over your friend's partner to the thought that maybe that jealousy came from a non-platonic place. To me, Will was clearly gay (for Mike) and going through the same things I'd struggled with. I felt very seen and ever since then, Will Byers has been one of my 'emotional support' characters and watching him really helped me feel a bit less isolated and alone, even if he wasn't real. This is why I care that Will is gay; to say that he felt all of these weird, confusing and authentic feelings because he just needed to grow up and become straight would just be such a slap in the face and to have the character I grew such an attachment to just be going through a childish phase would be heartbreaking to me and to (I believe) many other queer fans of Stranger Things.

Before I finish this post, I'd like to tell another quick story. A couple of months ago, I rewatched Stranger Things with my parents and when we got to the 'it's not my fault you don't like girls' scene, my mother turned to me and said 'that's just like you, but with guys'. At the time I thought to myself that this comment was very funny as I am still not out to my parents but later on it kept on coming back to me. Both me and my mother were able to understand why having boy-crazy best friends was difficult for me and whilst she didn't magically realize I was gay at that exact moment, I do think it made her understand what I've been going through a bit more.

This made me realize that characters like Will are more than being just representation; they help others empathise with an experience that they'll never have to go through. But most importantly, they make people who have realized they don't like the opposite gender or people who have feelings for their friend that they are not alone.

Realising you don't like the opposite gender at the same time everyone around you discovers they do is tough. Having a queer crush can be scary. But characters like Will Byers can help people going through this kind of thing feel a lot less isolated. It certainly had that affect on me. And whilst I still have these issues, I know that Will Byers is always there to remind me that I'll get through this. ❤️

Also, Byler rights!

#stranger things #stranger things four #lesbian #lgbtq #stranger theories #byler #will byers is gay #will byers #gay #will x mike #byeler

[yurimother]

Growing up Yurijin: My Childhood Experience with Lesbian Anime and Manga Part I

This article is the first in a two-part personal essay about my childhood experiences growing up around Yuri in an environment where LGBTQ+ identity and culture were normalized. The article was original released exclusively on Patreon in February 2019. You can read Part II on the YuriMother Patreon.

I was recently reading an article by one of the people I admire most in the world, LGBTQ+ manga tastemaker and lesbian icon, Erica Friedman, a person who, in my hubris, I sometimes compare myself to, qualitatively, of course, their achievements far exceed my own. In the essay I was reading, Friedman describes their struggle to find literature that reflected their queen identity in the 1980s. At this moment, it also occurred to me the Friedman had previously spoken about how they discovered anime and manga, which included lesbian elements, more commonly known as Yuri, in adult life, and found an affinity with the genre. Friedman went on to become one of, if not the pioneering individuals in the world of Yuri. As I reminisce on these facts about a person who I so deeply admire and am lucky enough to consider a friend, it occurred to me that, while they adopted the Yuri, I was born into it. Although, funnily enough, my existence as a Yurijin (lit. Yuri Person, an inclusive term for Yuri fans) likely would not have been possible if not for Friedman’s support and love of Yuri, more on that later.

I am rather young. Depending on who you ask, I am either one of the last Millennials or one of the first members of Generation Z, although, like most labels, I find using either one of these titles arbitrary. However, I am always aware of how immense of a blessing my youth is. Yes, being young is fun and dandy, but I am referring to my upbringing's social implications. From a very early age, since before I could even talk, I was exposed to homosexuality as normalcy. I did not think anything of it until I started to grasp the more significant history and circumstance around terms such as “gay” when I was about nine years old. My godmothers are gay women, as are my brother’s. I remember attending their second wedding in 2004, shortly after same-sex marriage was officially legalized where we lived, and I thought nothing of it.

As previously implied, around late elementary school, I discovered that being gay was a distinct identity and had a more serious and complex history around it, one which I learned about but never experienced. I think more than anything, my blessed lack of conflict around sexuality has been my greatest asset. Growing up in a progressive era and the late ’90s and early 2000s, I was never harassed, bullied, or attacked for being queer or talking about LGBTQ politics and media. To this day, I still never “came out” because there was no need to, although I admittedly have never been much of one to put labels on my sexuality. I was always just, queer, and there was never an assumption otherwise. On a side note, there is no possible way for me to express the breadth of my gratitude to the generations who fought for LGBT rights.

The reader needs to understand that, just as I was fortunate to grow up in a bubble that treated where homosexuality normally, so too was I luckily able to experience Yuri at such a young age. By 2010 we were well into Yuri’s third major movement, a period I often refer to as the “Current Era” of Yuri, although “S Revival” may be a more apt description. Sailor Moon had already dominated both Western and Eastern culture (a craze I was ever too slightly young for), brought Yuri into the independent comics market, and exposed audiences to one of the first positive portrayals of a lesbian couple in Yuri.

Additionally, Revolutionary Girl Utena had smashed its way into the anime world, cementing itself as one of the most acclaimed and influential anime works of the 1990s and legitimizing lesbian storytelling in the medium. Most importantly for me, Oyuki Konno’s Maria Watches Over Us light novel series revived the Yuri genre's earliest tropes, known as Class S. Elements of S fiction, such as all-girls catholic schools, piano duets, and temporary lesbian-ish love would permeate the genre for the coming decades. These themes were eventually adopted and intensely exaggerated in the work that set me on the path of Yuri and transformed me into the “Holy Mother of Yuri.”

Furthermore, when I was in the early stages of life, Yuri was beginning to make its way Westward slowly. This expansion was thanks to the publishing arm of Erica Friedman’s organization Yuricon, ALC Publishing. ALC was founded in 2003 and started to publish the first Yuri manga in America, including the Yuri Monogatari series and Takashima Rica’s Rica’ tte Kanji!? A few years later, Seven Seas Entertainment started to published Yuri manga, such as The Last Uniform and Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl. Around this team, thanks to the internet and anime’s growing popularity, anime and manga were more accessible than ever. Although Western Yuri publishing did not take off until the late 2010s, there was just enough of it readily available to create the perfect storm for my Yuri infection.

Shortly after I started to gain awareness of LGBTQ+ rights, identity, and… existence, I was exposed to my first Yuri, although I did not recognize it as such. My middle school library had an extensive collection of manga, including the Tokyopop adaptations of Strawberry Marshmallow. I never read them, but a friend did and talked with me about them. Curious, I went home and searched the title online and found that there were anime videos uploaded to YouTube, with each episode separated into three parts (this event was before I was aware of what piracy was and how harmful it is to creators). I watched all of them with my brother, and we had an absolute blast. To this day, Strawberry Marshmallow is one of our favorite series to watch together and have a huge laugh at.

Although Strawberry Marshmallow had subtle Yuri elements (this was before the 2009 OVA, which contained an actual kiss), I did not recognize them. However, this series led to my brother and I showing each other different anime series, in one of which I was very clearly able to see lesbian representation. I do not remember the exact year, but it must have been about 2010 when, sitting in our mother’s office waiting for her to finish with meetings, my brother pulled up an episode of Studio Madhouse’s Strawberry Panic anime and changed my life forever.

Part II of "Growing up Yurijin" is available to read as part of The Secret Garden series. The Secret Garden is YuriMother's exclusive series of monthly articles, available only for Patrons. If you want to access it and help support Yuri and LGBTQ+ content, subscribe to the YuriMother Patreon.

#Yuri #article #patreon #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtq+ #queer #gay #lesbian #personal #wlw #education #essay #yurijin #the secret garden #anime #manga

[mischievouswritingblog]

Meta Essay: Medivh The Bisexual Icon

As of the time of this post, there’s going to be an update coming to World of Warcraft where the once all female ghosts in Karazhan will be changed to include male varieties as well.

Full details on the update can be found here: https://www.wowhead.com/news/female-only-ghosts-in-karazhan-updated-to-include-male-versions-324371

This has caused a lot of fun posts and people to take this as an ‘accidental confirmation’ by Blizzard that the character Medivh is bisexual. Pair this along with how some of his portrayal in Hearthstone was made into Warcraft canon, and in my opinion, it’s an excellent update to his character.

It’s no secret that Blizzard’s had a massive lack in LBGTQ+ representation for the longest time. Often when such subject matter did show up it was treated more as a punchline in some quests or was kept conveniently to the sidelines, with nonconsequential, blink and you miss it text, side characters, moments. It’s insulting, to say the least, and is the source of a growing frustration from the LBGTQ+ members of the audience. What’s more, whenever this frustration gets voiced it’s always talked down to. We are told that to ‘keep politics out of gaming’ and that we are too sensitive, when these are the same people that get bent out of shape when even a single thing changes or is called out in their game. It’s bullshit. LBGTQ+ people exist and the act of existing isn’t a political issue.

But of course, with people even making lighthearted jokes or posts of Medivh being a ‘Bisexual Icon’, there’s folks crawling out of the woodwork with reasons from “But the loooooooore!” (as if the lore isn’t constantly changing and being retconned from one expansion to the next) to “Well A-C-T-U-A-L-L-Y, those male guests were just for the female nobles that visited and attended his parties, Medivh was very straight”. To that, I’m going to say: “Nah, Medivh is a bisexual icon, deal with it”.

In my personal opinion, Medivh is an excellent character to explore queerness  with. He’s a character that’s been around since Warcraft 1 and the effects and ties from his story are still felt throughout World of Warcraft in various ways. Medivh is also a character that’s gone through a large amount of evolution and various portrayals. My personal favorite being the One Night in Karazhan take on him because it’s so different from the usual ‘brooding, grand powerful hermit-mage’ that his type of character usually is. Medivh in One Night in Karazhan is instead, vibrant and is a thriving social butterfly that loves to have and treat people to a good time. His reasonings for being this way make a lot more sense when you really think about what Medivh’s situation was.

Now, I have to mention that I do a much deeper dive and deconstruction of Medivh’s circumstances and just how messed up they were in this self indulgent essay/headcanon dump: ‘My Completely Self-indulgent Medivh Essay’. Feel free to give it a read but here is the basic gist for this essay:

Yes, Medivh was the Guardian, one of the most powerful mages to exist at the time. He was also possessed by Sargeras and was the one that created and opened the Dark Portal that brought the Orcs to Azaroth and changed Azeroth forever. But here’s the thing, Medivh had no choice in any of it.

To be the Guardian means you have to put your life on the line for Azeroth’s sake. This is a role that had to be kept to secrecy, people had to make a lot of sacrifices to be the Guardian. You gain phenomenal powers and it is a great honor but none of this was anything that Medivh ever asked for. He was literally born to become the Guardian, there was no other choice for his own future. 

Then you have Sargeras, he had his plans in play long before Medivh was even a thought. A sliver of Sargeras had entered Aegwynn (Med’s mother and the Guardian before him) from a battle between Aegwynn and his avatar. This influence hid within her and made its move when she decided that she wasn’t going to allow the Council of Tirisfal to choose her heir for her title and powers for her. Ignoring Chronicle’s softening of her, she used Medivh’s father, Neilas Aran, the court magician of Stormwind to sire a child. In TLG she let him know she flat out used him and felt nothing for him then came back later and tossed baby Medivh to him for free childcare. What neither of them knew at the time was that Medivh was possessed by Sargeras while he was in the womb. Sargeras would then screw him over even further by causing his powers to lash out when he was fourteen, causing him to accidentally kill his father and fall into a near 10 year coma, and wake up mentally and emotionally fourteen in a twenty-three-year-old’s body. So from the very beginning Medivh was always set up for failure.

So with this summary out of the way, the point of the matter is that Medivh is a character that had little autonomy for most of his life. His career and his fate were chosen for him from the start. Sargeras was in his head messing with him throughout his life, in TLG Medivh even tells Khadgar that he tried to fight it as much as he could. His story is a tragic one but with his reappearance in Legion there’s potentially a ray of hope.

I think there’s a lot of aspects in Medivh’s story that can tie well with the feelings and experiences of queerness. Not so much the being possessed by discount space Satan, but more so the struggle of trying to have autonomy and hanging onto who you are as a person. Being queer myself and looking at it through that lens, I see Medivh being vibrant and throwing parties as an attempt for him to seize what autonomy he could for himself. To exist, to be seen, and to have an identity of his own that had nothing to do with being the Guardian of Tirisfal. I think that it’s also something that separates Medivh from Sargeras. There were likely times where Sargeras may have forced the lines between them to blur as he gradually poisoned Medivh’s thoughts and twisted his soul throughout the years. Medivh likely had to struggle a lot with separating who he truly was from Sargeras. This being inside him, who wasn’t him but would at times take over his body suppressing Medivh’s true self. It’s a horror story where some elements can really hit close to home.

Medivh I believe surrounded himself with like minded, free spirited people like Barnes and the theater troupe (while there’s the joke Medivh’s only seen three plays, I choose to headcanon he’s a theater kid, given how he has a theater to begin with and his own love for theatrics). Whether you picture Medivh as aro, ace, gay, bi, pan, or trans, with the upcoming changes he clearly accepts many kinds of people into his home.

This also has the interesting effect of changing some of the tones for some events in his lore. One example being the titans sending down the Maiden of Virtue to punish Medivh and make him live a more ‘pure’ life. The Titans are Azeroth’s closest thing to a pantheon of gods. They are beings of order, having taken Azeroth in her rawest form and molding her into something they saw fit. Apparently, Medivh’s parties and behavior was seen as something that required ‘correcting’.

On one hand, it’s really easy to read it simply as Medivh being a selfish, spoiled brat. But with looking at it through a queer lens one can put a more positive spin on the situation. The Maiden of Virtue was sent to shame and punish him into conforming into something the Titans believe someone like Medivh should behave. It clearly didn’t work. Looking at this situation, one can read it as Medivh refusing to relinquish his identity because a ‘higher power’ wanted him to. In the real world there are so many that have to hide their orientation and gender thanks to people using religion and belief as a cudgel. So having a character like Medivh as queer, with the power and willfulness to flat out refuse and shut it down is a refreshing power move.

Medivh’s story and the way he is in general has elements that I believe many people of the LBGTQ+ can relate with. He’s a complicated character that has dealt with abuse and being forced into roles without his consent, he made identity for himself and it was stripped away by an oppressor (Sargeras), and, depending on if Blizzard decides he’s actually resurrected/alive instead of being a ghost, is a survivor.

So to me, I love the idea of Medivh being a queer icon in Warcraft. It hasn’t been officially stated by Blizzard at the time this essay was posted but it has started a fun conversation. There are and will be the haters who will scream and tantrum about the LBGTQ+ touching their precious (when convenient) lore with their filthy paws and tarnishing ‘their game’. But in the meantime, I’m going to continue having a blast with the idea and enjoy working the story potential it gives into fanfics, speculations, and essays.

If you enjoyed this essay, I did a few other bits of meta, headcanons, and speculation for fun: My Completely Self-indulgent Medivh Essay

A Bit About Wizards and Sorcerers

Headcanons: Medivh is Alive and Currently Uses ‘The Guardian’s Study’ as his Home

#World of Warcraft #Medivh #warcraft headcanons

[themollyjay]

The Myths of Forced Diversity and Virtue Signaling.

In my novel Mail Order Bride, the three main characters are a lesbian and two agendered aliens.  In my novel Scatter, the main character is a lesbian, the love interest is a pansexual alien, and the major side characters include a half Cuban, half black Dominican lesbian, a Chinese Dragon, a New York born Jewish Dragon, and a Transgender Welsh Dragon.  In my novel The Master of Puppets, the Main Characters are a lesbian shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborg and a half black, half Japanese lesbian.  The major side characters include three gender fluid shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborgs, and a pansexual human.  In my novel Transistor, the main character is a Trans Lesbian, the love interest is a Half human/Half Angel non-observant Ethiopian Jew, and the major side characters include a Transgender Welsh Dragon (the same one from Scatter), a Transgender woman, a Latino Lesbian, an autistic man, three Middle Eastern Arch Angels, and a hive mind AI with literally hundreds of genders.  In my novel The Inevitable singularity, one of the main characters is a lesbian, another has a less clearly defined sexuality but she is definitely in love with the lesbian, and the third is functionally asexual due to a vow of chastity she takes very seriously.  The major side characters include a straight guy from a social class similar to the Dalit (commonly known as untouchables) in India, a bisexual woman, a man who is from a race of genetically modified human/frog hybrids, and a woman from a race of genetically modified humans who are bred and sold as indentured sex workers.

Why am I bringing all of this up?  Well, first, because it’s kind of cool to look at the list of different characters I’ve created, but mostly because it connects to what I want to talk about today, which should be obvious from the title of the essay.  The concepts of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’.

For those who aren’t familiar with these terms, they’re very closely related concepts.  ‘Forced Diversity’ is the idea that characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are only ever included in a story because of outside pressure from some group (usually called Social Justice Warriors, or The Woke Brigade or something similar) to meet some nebulous political agenda.  The caveat to this is, of course, that you can have a women/women present as long as they are hot, don’t make any major contributions to the resolution of the plot, and the hero/heroes get to fuck them before the end of the story. ‘Virtue Signaling’, according to Wikipedia, is a pejorative neologism for the expression of a disingenuous moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character.

The basic argument is that Forced Diversity is a form of virtue signaling.  That no one would ever write characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males because they want to.  They only do it to please the evil SJW’s who are somehow both so powerful that they force everybody to conform to their desires, yet so irrelevant that catering to them dooms any creative project to financial failure via the infamous ‘go woke, go broke’ rule.

What the people who push this idea of Forced Diversity tend to forget is that we exist at a point in time when creators actually have more creative freedom than are any other people in history.  Comic writers can throw up a website and publish their work as a webcomic without having to go through Marvel, DC or one of the other big names, or get a place in the dying realm of the news paper comics page.  Novelists can self-publish with fairly little upfront costs, musicians can use places like YouTube and Soundcloud to get their work out without having to worry about music publishers.  Artists can hock their work on twitter and tumblr and a dozen other places. Podcasts are relatively cheap to make, which has opened up a resurgence in audio dramas.  Even the barrier to entry for live action drama is ridiculously low.

So, in a world where creators have more freedom than ever before, why would they choose to people their stories with characters they don’t want there?  The answer, of course, is that they wouldn’t.  Authors, comic creators, indie film creators and so on aren’t putting diverse characters into their stories because they are being forced to. They’re putting diverse characters into their stories because they want to.  Creators want to tell stories about someone other than the generically handsome hypermasculine cisgendered heterosexual white males that have been the protagonists of so many stories over the years that we’ve choking on it. A lot of times, creators want to tell stories about people like themselves.  Black creators want to tell stories about the black experience. Queer creators want to tell stories about the queer experience.

I’m an autistic, mentally ill trans feminine abuse survivor.  Every day, I get up and I struggle with PTSD, with an eating disorder, with severe body dysmorphia, with anxiety and depression and just the reality of being autistic and transgender.  I deal with the fact that the religious community I grew up in views me as an abomination, and genuinely believes I’m going to spend eternity burning in hell.  I deal with the fact that people I’ve known for decades, even members of my own family, regularly vote for politician who publicly state that they want to strip me of my civil rights because I’m queer.  I’m part of a community that experiences a disproportionately high murder and suicide rate.  I’ve spent multiple years of my life deep in suicidal depression, and to this day, I still don’t trust myself around guns.

As a creator, I want to talk about those issues.  I want to deal with my life experiences.  I want to create characters that embody and express aspects of my lived experience and my day-to-day reality.  No one is forcing me to put diversity into my books.  I try to include Jewish characters as often as I can because there have been a number of important Jewish people in my life.  I include queer people because I’m queer and the vast majority of friends I interact with on a regular basis are queer.  I include people with mental illnesses and trauma because I am mentally ill and have trauma, and I know a lot of people with mental illnesses and trauma.  My work may be full of fantastical elements, aliens and dragons and angels and superheroes and magic and ultra-high technology and AI’s and talking cats and robot dogs and shape shifters and telepaths and all sorts of other things, but at the core of the stories is my own lived experience, and neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are vanishingly rare in that experience.

Now, I can hear the comments already.  The ‘okay, maybe that’s true for individual creators, but what about corporate artwork?’.   Maybe not in those exact words, but you get the idea.

The thought here is that corporations are bowing to social pressure to include characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males, and that is somehow bad. But here’s the thing. Corporations are going to chase the dollars.  They aren’t bowing to social pressure.  There’s no one holding a gun to some executive’s head saying, “You must have this many diversity tokens in every script.”  What is happening is that corporations are starting to clue into the fact that people who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males have money.  They are putting black characters in their shows and movies because black people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting queer people in shows and movies because queer people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting women in shows and movies because women watch shows and spend money on movies.

No one is forcing these companies to do this.  They are choosing to do it, the same way individual creators are choosing to do it.  In the companies’ cases the choices are made for different reasons.  It’s not because they are necessarily passionate about telling stories about a particular experience, but because they want to create art to be consumed by the largest audience possible, which means that they have to expand their audience beyond the neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white male by including characters from outside of that demographic.

And the reality is, the cries of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ almost always come from within that demographic.  Note the almost.  There are a scattering of individuals from outside that demographic which do subscribe to the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ myths, but that is a whole other essay.  However, within that demographic, lot of the people who cry about ‘forced diversity’ see media and content as a Zero-Sum game.  The more that’s created for other people, the less that is created for them.

In a way, they’re right. There are only so many slots for TV shows each week, there are only so many theaters, only so much space on comic bookshelves and so on.  But at the end of the day, its literally impossible for them to consume all the content that’s being produced anyway.  So, while there is, theoretically less content for them to consume, as a practical matter it’s a bit like someone who is a meat eater going to a buffet with two hundred items, and then throwing a tantrum because five of the items happen to be vegan.

The worst part is, if they could let go of how wound up they are about the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ they could probably enjoy the content that’s produced for people other than them.  I mean, I’m a pasty ass white girl, and I loved Black Panther.

So, to wrap out, creators, make what you want to make, and ignore anyone who cries about forced diversity or virtue signaling.  And to people who are complaining about forced diversity and virtue signaling, I want to go back to the buffet metaphor.  You need to relax.  Even if there are a few vegan options on the buffet, you can still get your medium rare steak, or your chicken teriyaki or whatever it is you want.  Or, maybe, just maybe, you could give the falafel a try. That shit is delicious.

#writing #original fiction #media #representation #diversity #the war of souls #the hearts of heroes #The Master of Puppets #scatter #transistor #the inevitable singularity #mail order bride

[lee-scribbles-and-doodles]

My Top Ten Overlooked Movies With Female Leads In No Particular Order

Note: When you see this emoji (⚠️) I will be talking about things people may find triggering, which are spoilery more often then not. I mention things that I think may count as triggers so that people with them will be aware before going in to watch any of these.

Edited: 3/16/21

Hanna (2011)

So, before I get into why you should watch this movie, I just want to take a moment to say why it's near and dear to my heart. Growing up as a queer kid in the early 2000s, seeing portrayals of people like or similar to myself on anything was rare at best. It was mostly in more "adult" movies or shows that my parents would occasionally let me watch with them that I'd see any lgbtq+ rep at all. Often times they were either walking stereotypes, designed to be buried, evil, or all three.

Then here comes this PG-13 action thriller with a wonderfully written main female lead who, at the time, was close to my age, and who got to kiss another girl (her very first friend, Sophie) on screen in an extremely tender and heartwarming scene. To say the least, it was a life changing moment for me personally.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, Hanna is a suspenseful movie about a child super-soldier named, you guessed it, Hanna (played by Saoirse Ronan) and her adoptive (?) father Erik Heller (played by Eric Bana) exiting the snowy and isolated wilderness of their home and taking on the shadowy CIA operative, Marissa Wiegler (played by Cate Blanchette) who wants Erik dead and Hanna for herself for mysterious reasons.

It also has an amazing soundtrack by the Chemical Brothers, great action scenes, and it has an over arching fairytale motif, which I'm always a sucker for.

⚠️ Mild blood effects, some painful looking strikes, various character deaths, and child endangerment all feature in this film. However, given its PG-13 rating, a majority of viewers are presumably able to handle this one. Still, be aware of these going in.

Sidenote: It's recently gotten a TV adaptation on Amazon TV, although I have not watched it, and do not know if Hanna and Sophie's romantic/semi-romantic relationship has transferred over.

A Simple Favor

A Simple Favor is a "black-comedy mystery thriller" centered entirely around the relationship between two mothers, the reclusive, rich, mysterious, and regal Emily (played by Blake Lively), and the local recently widowed but plucky mommy blogger, Stephanie (played by Anna Kendrick). When Emily suddenly goes missing, Stephanie takes it upon herself to find out what happened to her new best friend.

It's a fantastic and entertaining movie throughout, with fun, flawed and interesting characters. The relationship between the two female leads is also implied to be at least somewhat romantic in nature, and they even share a kiss.

⚠️ The only major warnings I can think of is that the movie contains an instance of incest and one of the main plotlines revolves around child abuse, although both of these potentially triggering topics are not connected to each other, so there is thankfully no csa going on.

Edit: I legitimately forgot there was drug use in this movie until now. So, yeah, if that's a trigger, be careful of that.

I Am Mother

I became mildly obsessed with this movie when it came out. I Am Mother is a sci-fi film that centers entirely around a cast of two woman, and a female-adjacent robot who is brought to life on screen with absolutely amazing practical effects.

The plot is such, after an extinction-level event, a lone robot known only as Mother tasks herself with replenishing the human race via artifical means. She begins with the film's main protagonist, Daughter. Years go by as Mother raises her human child and the two prepare for Daughter's first sibling (a brother) to be born. However, on Daughter's 16th birthday, the arrival of an outsider known only as Woman shakes Daughter's entire world view. She begins to question Mother's very nature, as well as what's really going on outside the bunker she and her caretaker call home.

⚠️ This movie features child endangerment and reference to child death.

Lilo and Stitch

When I decided to add a single Disney film to this list I initially thought it was going to be hard but almost immediately my brain went to Lilo and Stitch, and specifically about the relationship between Lilo and Nani.

On the surface, this film is about a lonely little girl accidentally adopting a fugitive alien creature as a "dog," but underneath that the story is also about two orphaned sisters and the older sister's attempts to not let social services tear them apart by stepping up as the younger sister's primary guardian. Despite its seemingly goofy premise, Lilo and Stitch has a very emotional and thoughtful center. It's little wonder how this movie managed to spawn an entire franchise.

Despite the franchise it spawned (or possibly because of it), I often find that Lilo and Stitch is overlooked and many people only remember it for the "little girl adopts an alien as a pet" portion of its plot, and I very rarely see it on people's top 10 Disney lists.

⚠️ This movie could be potentially triggering to people who were separated from their siblings or other family members due to social service intervention. There's also a bit of child endangerment, including a scene where Lilo and Stitch both almost drown.

Nausicaä and the Valley of the Wind

Unlike the above entry, I did struggle a little bit with picking a single Studio Ghibli film. Most media of the Ghibli catalogue have strong, well-written, unique, and interesting female leads so selecting just one seemed like quite the task.

However, I eventually settled on this particular film. In recent months, Princess Nausicaä has become my absolute favorite Ghibli protagonist and I'm absolutely enchanted by the world she lives in.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world overun by giant insects and under threat of a toxic forest and its poisoness spores, Nausicaä must try to protect the Valley of the Wind from invaders as she also tries to understand the science behind the toxic forest and attempts to bridge the gap between the insects and the humans.

For those who have never seen the film, I think Nausicaä's personality can best be described as being similar to OT Luke Skywalker. Both are caring, compassionate, and gentle souls who are able to see the best in nearly anyone or anything. She's an absolutely enthralling protagonist and after rewatching the film again for the first time in well over a decade she has easily become one of my all time favorite protagonists.

Whenever I see people talk about Ghibli films, they rarely mention this one, and when they do mention it, it's often in passing. In my opinion it's a must watch.

⚠️ This movie contains some blood, and the folks who either don't like insects or who have entomophobia may not appreciate the giant bugs running about throughout the movie. (Although most insects do not directly relate to real life bugs, and are fantasy creatures).

A Silent Voice

A Silent Voice is an animated movie adaptation of a manga of the same name. While I've never had the pleasure to read the manga, the movie is phenomenal. It covers topics such a bullying, living in the world with a disability, the desire for atonement, social anxiety, and depression in a well thought out manner that ties itself together through the progression of the relationship between its two leads, Shoya and Shouko. It's also beautifully animated. Although very popular among anime viewers, I've noticed that it's often overlooked by people who watch little to no anime. So I suppose this is me urging non-anime viewers to give this film a chance.

⚠️ As mentioned above, the movie deals with bullying, anxiety, and depression (with this last one including suicidal thoughts and behaviour). If discussion of those topics are triggering to you, than you may want to proceed with caution or skip this movie all together.

In This Corner of The World

Another manga adaptation, this one taking place during WWII-era Japan. In This Corner of The World follows the life of a civilian Japanese woman, Suzu Urano, as she navigates simply living and her new marriage as the wartime invades nearly all aspects of everyday life. I think this movie is a good representation of what it must be like to be living as civilian in a country at war where the fight is sometimes fought on one's own soil. It was also an interesting look into pre-50s Japanese culture in my opinion. It's also beautifully animated featuring an art style I don't see often.

Despite it being well known among anime fans, I never really see it be brought up, even among said anime fans themselves.

Side note: I've seen many WWII dramas centering around civilians but they've almost always been about American or UK civilians. This was the first movie I'd seen that features the perspective of a Japanese civilain.

⚠️ Features the death of a child and limb loss. There's also a disturbing scene featuring a victim of one of the atomic bombs near the end.

Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki

This film follows Hana, a Japan-native woman who fell in love with a magical shape-shifting wolf-man, and her trials with raising their children, who can also magically shape-shift into wolves, on her own. It's a very heartfelt movie about a mother's love and the struggles of doing right by your children when you have limited resources to actively guide and care for them. All the characters feel unique and alive in my opinion. Also, the animation is so good that my sister and I initially mistook it for a Ghibli film.

Again, like the previous two anime entries, I don't see it ever brought up outside of anime circles.

⚠️ There's some child endangerment present in the film, although none of it is the fault of Hana as far as I can remember.

Roman Holiday

Roman Holiday is about the fictional Princess Ann (played by Audrey Hepburn), who while on a whirlwind tour of Europe, finally reaches her breaking point over having her entire life be one big schedule and all her words and actions being rehearsed. In the spur of the moment, she runs away in hopes of experiencing what life is like for other women. Unfortunately, she was previously given a sedative, meaning she doesn't get too far before it takes effect. Fortunately, she is found by the kind reporter Joe Bradley (played by Gregory Peck). Believing her to be drunk and unable to get an address from her (because she has none) he ends up taking her home for safety's sake and allows her to sleep off her suppose drunken stupor. The next day, he realizes who she is, and decides to take her on a fun sight seeing trip across Rome in hopes of getting the big scoop. Along the way, they begin to fall for each other.

This is my favorite black and white, old romance film. I think the relationship between the main characters is absolutely beautiful and I have a lot of fun watching it.

⚠️ I'm not entirely sure what kind of warning this film would need. However, it was released in 1953, so values dissonance will probably be at play for many viewers to at least some extent. For example, early in the film Ann is given sedation drugs by her doctor for her behavior, something that is very unlikely to happen today. Also, Mr Bradley deciding to take Ann home to keep her safe rather than call the police or an ambulance is a very pre-90s decision in my opinion.

#hanna 2011 #a simple favor #i am mother #lilo and stitch #nausicaä of the valley of the wind #a silent voice #in this corner of the world #wolf chilren ame and yuki #wolf children #roman holiday #black and white film #anime #disney #studio ghibli #movie recs #top 10

[gunterfan1992]

Interview with Half Shy (the songwriter of “Monster”)

For the last few months, I’ve been collecting information for a second edition of Exploring the Land of Ooo that will also cover the production of Distant Lands. This means that I’ve started to look into the new songs that we have been graced with this year, and this of course includes “Monster,” the beautiful track from the masterpiece that is “Obsidian”. And so I reached out to the song’s writer, Half Shy, who was kind enough to chat with me via email about the songwriting process!

(Photo courtesy of Half Shy)

In many ways, Half Shy is living the creative Adventure Time fan’s dream: She got asked by Adam Muto himself to write a song for “Obsidian” after he heard her music through Bandcamp! (I’ve dabbled in fan music before, and the fact that someone from the show might listen to it just blows my mind.) What an opportunity; I am so excited for her!

Since a second edition of my book won’t be coming out until after all the Distant Lands episodes air, I thought it would be best to share my Half Shy interview now. Read on for the fascinating behind the scenes story of how Half Shy and “Monster” came to be..

GunterFan: What is your origin story? How did you get involved in music, and how did the Half Shy project come to be?

Half Shy: I’ve been making music pretty quietly since I was in high school with a keyboard and guitar. I played one or two shows a year after college when I could find a friend or my brother to get up on stage with me, but I don’t really have that performer gene in me naturally. I get too much in my head and forget what the lyrics are to the song I wrote, or what the next chord is. Total brain freeze. So that whole experience is a bit of a mental drain. It’s something I think I’d like to dig into and figure out, but right now I’m really enjoying the time writing.

Even playing a song for my friends I still get pretty nervous. That’s where the name Half Shy comes from. I’ve always been interested in making things that by their nature draw a bit of a spotlight, but at the same time, I am just really quite nervous about the attention.

I recorded my first songs under my old name Hey V Kay in my bedroom and started putting them up online one at a time. When I got enough I thought about packaging it up into an album, but then got really distracted by learning how to fix up motorcycles and going to automotive tech school. When I eventually got back around to it I named the album Gut Wrenching.

After a few years I realized that I didn’t want the day-in-day-out life of a mechanic, I just wanted to know how to fix cars for myself and to have that knowledge in my back pocket. I got back into making music but grew frustrated at the process of writing and recording songs. I felt like I wasn’t able to capture the ideas I had in my head. Like trying to draw on your computer with a mouse. Doable, but it’s not going to come out like you’d hoped.

So these last couple of years I’ve focused more on learning the technical aspect of it, from the initial ideas and lyrics, to the recording and mixing. During that process I put out Bedroom Visionaries, and while writing I happened upon the name Half Shy in an old Thesaurus which felt instantly right. Learning all of that has been fun, I even went as far as to create my own book to solidify a daily writing routine (lyricworkbook.com). All that has been a bit of a tangent from actually making much music though. I should be getting my books in December from the press so I’m really looking forward to getting back into making more music instead of dealing with printing presses, setting up websites, and sourcing ribbon suppliers.

GF: What is the story behind "Monster"? How did the show get in contact with you?

HS: I keep a log of “Song Starters” with neat things I’ve heard in the world, and I would look through it every now and then and notice just how many came from Adventure Time. Eventually I thought well, I have to make a song about this show that just keeps breaking my heart. It was around the time I was nearly done with the first [Adventure Time-inspired] song “In My Element” that I got an email from Bandcamp saying “someone bought your album (Bedroom Visionaries).”

I get maybe one or two of these a month at most so I love to go in and say hi to the person and say thanks, be curious about who they are, [and] what they’re all about. Turns out it was Adam Muto, the executive producer of the show. (I asked and he has no idea how he happened upon my stuff. He guessed that I must have tagged something #adventuretime and he just happened to see it.) So I sent him an email saying, “Hey wow thanks for checking out my tunes. Also... holy crap you’ve made the best show I have ever seen in my life.” [I] played it real cool like. After finishing up writing my second [Adventure Time-inspired] song “Betty” I couldn’t help but fangirl real hard [and I sent him another message saying], “I’m sorry this is probably awkward, but I really love your show and I wrote these songs about it.” He was incredibly kind and shared them with his Twitter Universe, and a while after that I got a random email from him saying basically, “Hey, I’m working on this thing I can’t talk about, would you be interested?” I was like… well you know I’m pretty busy working at a sign shop so I’m gonna have to pass on this once in a lifetime opportunity (J/K. Obviously I fan-girl squealed and said yes immediately).

We chatted a bit about what the project was going to be and the direction. He mentioned there [would be] two Marceline songs in the special, [and he asked if I] would I be interested in giving the love song a try? Trying real hard to suppress my instant imposter syndrome I was like, “Yea, totally I’d be into giving that a shot!” So I read through the story and loved the idea of the dragon mirrored in Marceline, thinking through how they’ve both built up a protective shell, how she grew tough for a reason, but now she can open up and be vulnerable with PB.

From there I wrote the initial demo with the first two verses mostly intact and we went back and forth a few times editing it down into the final version. I recorded the final parts for the show in my little home studio in Seattle.

GS: When you were writing the song, what emotions, thoughts, or ideas were you channeling? Was there any sort of memory of event that you were trying to artistically "catch" or "recreate" with the lyrics or music?

HS: As far as channeling an emotion, generally I’d say just the experience of existing as a human. It can be so hard to open up and be vulnerable. I can remember that feeling even as a young kid—getting really excited about something and having someone completely trash it or look at you like, “Why are you so interested in that? It’s dumb.” [It causes us to grow] a little more weary to share ourselves because we know that hurt and embarrassment. The pain of being misunderstood is something I think a lot of us can relate to. Then having to decide whether to keep sharing those vulnerable parts of yourself or think, “They’re just not going to get it, I’m going to get hurt, so why bother?” and then stop putting yourself out there. You lose a lot with that thick armor though. You might feel protected, but you’re not feeling a whole lot of anything else other than the weight and chafing of it (I had a whole lot of armor-related metaphors that I didn't end up using.).

I struggle with this in songwriting too. I’m not the bolt-of-lightning type. There are pages and pages of cliches, total garbage, bad jokes, and cheesy lines that I have to get through in order to get to something that I am excited to put out there into the world: “Here I did this thing, I know it’s a little (this or that), but I made it... What do you think?” It’s hard to open yourself up to hearing the other end of that question.

I filled about 5 little pocket notebooks just thinking through the story, ideas, and trying to get this song right. I wanted it to feel familiar and honor the past songs of the show ([e.g.,] using the ukulele and referencing a few of the familiar chords from “I’m Just Your Problem”) but also be pretty open and vulnerable and different for [Marceline]. [I wanted to] show that she’s going through some tough emotions but also figuring herself out and growing.

GF: I feel like “Monster” is, at its core, an ode to the “Bubbline” ship. How do you feel about your song being intimately connected to one of the most famous LGBTQ+ relationships in animation? Do you have any general thoughts on Marcy and PB, Bubbline, etc.?

HS: Oh, I’m a total fan girl of Bubbline. The whole story of how Rebecca Sugar and Muto slowly morphed it into this deeper relationship is just great. As a part of the LGBTQ community myself it really means so much to see the representation of characters like yourself portrayed in an intelligent way. Growing up I was too young to fully understand what was going on but I saw Ellen getting cancelled, and [I] heard people around me saying they’d never watch her show again after she came out. That stuff sinks in as a kid and so to have these characters who are not only intelligent, but funny, complex, and unapologetically strong who also happen to be queer is really great. I love that the story here isn’t about their orientation, but that they’re people struggling with how to be open and vulnerable in a relationship.

It feels like something sci-fi and animated shows do so well—to show that ridiculousness of limiting who a person should and shouldn’t love. Marceline is a 1000+ year old half-demon/vampire and PB was born from the Mothergum of an apocalyptic radioactive world, but you’re going to get hung up on them loving each other? It sort of brings it into perspective in a really interesting way.

GF: Do you have any other thoughts about the experience that you'd like to share?

HS: Just how lucky, thankful, and honored I feel to be a part of my favorite show, writing a song for one of my favorite characters. It’s also incredibly cool how the people on the show are so willing to connect and collaborate with their fandom. Everyone [on the production crew] was very open and a real joy to work with.

I’d like to give a huge “Thank you!” to Half Shy for agreeing to participate in this interview; she really was quite amiable! If you’d like to hear more of her music, check out her website and her Bandcamp. You can also follow her on Instragram here and on Twitter here. And of course, here is Half Shy’s awesome video of “Monster”.

#adventure time #atimers #adventure time distant lands #atdl #half shy #monster #bubbline #marceline #marceline the vampire queen #bubblegum #princess bubblegum #pb #adam muto #interview

[whitetrashjj]

most people that don’t like kie don’t like her because she

1. gets mad at JJ when he calls her out for being rich

2. prioritizes john b constantly because whatever feelings she has towards him gave her tunnel vision

3. tried to guilt-trip pope into missing his scholarship interview despite the fact that, like he said, she wasn’t there for any of them when big john went missing

4. talks about the gold, pope’s scholarship, and things that happen to the boys because of them living in the cut as if it’s okay to just toss them aside when it’s only okay to do that for her- seeing as she doesn’t need the money, and she doesn’t need a scholarship. the only thing that makes her a pogue is that she decided to hang out with them, which is fine but she can’t act like she goes through what people on the cut do seeing as she doesn’t actually live there or go to their school. these things are only expendable for her.

5. she tried to fight pope on the boat because he rightfully called her out on her “moral high ground bullshit”

6. she gives off performative activist. she’ll talk about saving the turtles but when jj is clearly hysterical or something with his buying a hot tub using his share, she says he could have “literally given it to any charity” as if he isn’t quite literally the charity… even without seeing the bruises it’s clear that jj is in an unstable environment with someone who doesn’t care about him and can’t support him financially.

7.she doesn’t sympathize with jj until after the jj/pope/kie hot tub group hug when she sees his bruises. she just ignores whatever he says when he mentions her financial privilege and insults him in a non-friendly way. (he insults her too obviously, but since the show never goes in depth to discuss kie’s struggles as a biracial girl or pope’s struggles as a black boy, it’s not something that jj can randomly sympathize with, seeing as it’s never brought to light. if it was brought up and jj were to react like she’s being annoying for pointing it out or pointing it out to spite him, i would have major problems with jj because acknowledging whatever privilege you have is important, especially when you’re with people that don’t have that privilege/when you’re someone whose character is supposed to be the activist type. and i’m not equating racial privilege to financial privilege, i’m just mentioning it because classism is pretty much the basis of the entire show and its plot.)

anyway… this is the reason i’ve seen most jjpopes dislike kie. mentioning the “kiara sucks” anon as if that is a blanket statement of all jjpopes is strange. we aren’t some raging misogynists out to get her, but you saying that pope is a very flawed character with no examples to back it up but also getting irritated when someone says kiara sucks with no examples to back it up is ridiculous. these are examples. since this is in response to your response to that ask, i’ll also add that while your experiences as a queer person are valid, they aren’t universal (“Any queer person knows that you can’t be as forthcoming and open about our affections as straight people are.”)

i get where you’re coming from with saying a regular character might not be outward about his feelings, but jj is not a regular character. jj is a nothing-to-lose kind of character, so your reasoning for why those many displays of affection throughout the show weren’t intended to be romantic just doesn’t really add up? of course he values pope’s friendship and wouldn’t want to risk it, but it’s also evident that he’s a very good liar and could easily say he was joking or wasn’t trying to seem like any of his actions were romantic, something you can also probably understand/have experienced as a queer person. your very statement that jj is someone who flirts with anyone is counterproductive to the statement that that means he doesn’t have feelings for pope. he flirts with every girl, but he can only form a lasting bond while also doing things you’d normally do with a crush, with pope. a lot of jjpopes including myself think he’s gay, and comphet/trying to prove to yourself that you’re straight by engaging in meaningless hookups (like jj) is reason for that headcanon. i get what you’re saying for other characters, but there’s no indication of jj not having that same nothing-to-lose attitude when it comes to people he has romantic feelings for, so there would be no reason for the pull-back or hesitation that you mentioned. and since he knows pope and his connection (whether it be platonic or romantic to both of them) is so strong, he probably assumes nothing could break that bond/dynamic either way.

also no one called you anti-black or implied that you were for saying pope is a flawed character, but it would be surprising to see one that isn’t rooted in that because all of them in the past have been- this fandom is wildly colorist and homophobic (another reason representation like jjpope is so important) and it’s extremely hard to find someone that doesn’t like pope without an explanation for their dislike that isn’t rooted in racism. that’s just common sense, though.

You know, I've been looking at this ask for a long time just wondering if it's worth my time to address all of this - like I didn't realise one could send asks this big. But I'm bored and got a beer in me so fuck it let's go.

So first let's talk about the reasons you hate Kie. I'm gonna admit that I to think she is flawed, like every other obx character, she is also a victim to bad writing and under developed. But also I just do not understand how people can hate her or insists that she is a bad person, don't get me wrong sometimes you just don't vibe with a character and there is nothing wrong with that but hating them and tearing them down is a very different thing.

Now I've said this before but let me reiterate. Not liking a character or ship or preferring one over the other does not automatically make you racist, misogynistic or homophobic. But I do think it is important to take a step back and assess our motivation and perhaps internalised biases. Sometimes you will find that you reasoning is without much substance and realise that you have some things to work on, sometimes even though mentally you don't have the conscious block there is something internalised about that - I know I have been subject to that. This doesn't make you a bad person, and you don't have to force yourself to like it or anything, but just be aware and sometimes it's okay to just remove yourself for the conversation because the people who do like it aren't supporting something that is morally corrupt and it doesn't have to be the subject of discourse. People can like different stuff.

So:

1. Did you mean pulls faces when JJ calls her rich? Cause that's what she does, gets a little annoyed, pulls a face but doesn't say anything because she know he's got a point. I'm very confused about you definition of angry and perhaps be careful about perpetuating the 'angry black woman' stereotype.

Also, I think it's important to note that clearly the kooks vs pogues divide has pretty much abolished the middle class, and you are either lower class or 'rich'. The Carrera's very clearly still struggle with money and are not on the same level of kooks as the Cameron's. So yeah, I think she's justified to roll her eyes at JJ saying she's rich as fuck and doesn't need money.

2. Prioritizes John B because his dad's gone missing, he's been abandoned by his guardian, is being threatened with being taken away from his home and everything he knows and is in general spiralling? Yeah. What a fucking monster. Also, I find it hard to find a justification for Kie having canon romantic feelings from John B that isn't just born from heteronormativity - her caring about him and then getting kissed by him does not equal a love match.

3. It wasn't about missing the interview - which wasn't until the next fucking day - it was about not giving up looking for their friend who was in a really bad way. Like - you cannot say that getting a scholarship when you are 16 is more important that John B's actual life being at stake ?

The fact that she wasn't there when John B went missing wasn't relevant? Like I've talked about why I hate Pope in this scene. But like, Pope is saying 'um you can't call me out on being a bad friend now cause you were a bad friend then'. That's the point, Kie caring so much about John B is rooted in guilt cause she wasn't there, and now she's trying to be there and support him, to prove that she's a better friend now. That's she's different, because she is.

4. I would love some specific examples of her brushing this stuff off like it means nothing. Other than the boat scene which once again, justified. And once again, Kie isn't destitute at all and no she doesn't fully understand the struggles of the boys or the cut but her family is not rolling in it and spending weekends on Yachts. Like this point is such a bloody reach.

5. I don't love that she got physical with him either. But she didn't do that because she got called out. She got upset because Pope was the one person she confided in about that happened during her kook year, about how bad it was, about the fact that she was suicidal and Sarah saved her and that's why she was so drawn to that, not because she wanted to be a kook, and Pope just throws that back in her face because he's jealous that Kie cares more about John B's problems than his.

6. Well this is just a misrepresentation of what happened. She said give it to any charity because in that moment it seemed like without a reason JJ just blew that money on stupid shit. Pope thought the same thing that's why he yells at him for not using it for restitution. In that moment he just seems like he is being drunk and irresponsible, because they didn't think he would go back to Luke, Pope literally says that he wouldn't. And then note how when they see the bruises they know what happened and the tone instantly changes cause they realise what happened. And that he did try to do the right thing and got flogged because of it. And she is right in there to comfort him and reassure him. So like... yeah.

7. Please give me example for this. I don't see Kie insulting him that isn't a justified call out or playful banter that is returned and part of their push and shove dynamic. You know... just being friends.

The only times we see Kie react to JJ's home life she is concerned and sympathetic. She's the only one who's worried about JJ going home when he storms off and is instantly there to comfort him when she knows he's had interaction with Luke. I really don't know where you are getting this from.

I don't use it as a blanket statement, I know not to group shippers in as one, I know there are jiara shippers that I do not see eye to eye with for a second. The reason I bring up the 'kiara sucks' thing is because of the context it was used. We weren't talking about Kie, it wasn't relevant, it had no reason to be there or anything to back it up. It was random bitching and as you say fandom is a very racist place so yeah, it seemed like racism to me. Like you realise you are calling me ridiculous for being annoyed that someone just came to me and said Kie sucks without reason, and then this ask goes onto be annoyed that I have some issues with Pope and that more than likely racist for thinking it because you've elected to ignore my massive post outlining my stance on this.

My experiences as a queer person are not universal, no. But I do know they are very common. I'm so thankful that there are people out there who don't experience this and I hope that in the future it will be the norm. But realistically, with what we know about JJ, I think it is more than likely that would be his experience.

Look if you headcanon him as gay say the things with girls is comphet, then that's your view and I won't fight you on it. But remember that that is a headcanon. And what I have been talking about is were they intentionally setting up jjpope and are those actions indicative of romantic attraction, which if they we're they would have made a point to frame it as comp het, which they didn't, they might in the future but for now - they aren't. In terms of being a good liar, I just- like gay panic is a very strong thing. There young girls who tell everyone they don't like hugs because they actually really liked the hugs and feel like people will know that they are gay if they hug their friend, a hug. I can't see 'I'm a good liar' being enough to overcome those sorts of feelings.

The thing is while JJ has a nothing to lose attitude when it comes to his life and future the same doesn't apply to his relationships, because the Pogues are his thing to lose, his only family, the one good thing. I can't see him just saying fuck it I could risk losing Pope. So I can't agree with you there.

First of all, I was called anti-black for not liking Pope, despite the fact that I don't hate him, and just had valid reasons for thinking he is flawed, not the devil incarnate. Two, I am well aware that this fandom is racist, like all fucking fandoms, and have talked about it. And I think that fact that I don't hate Pope and laid out very clearly the reasons I don't think he's some perfect angel that does no wrong kinda shows that I'm not just random bitching because he's black. Also - I'm a fucking Kie stan. I have to deal with people hating on Kie for the same reasons they love Sarah - it's very obvious to see people motivations there.

And you are right. An interracial mlm ship would be great representation. So would an interracial ship between the hot guy that everyone loves with the black girl - because doesn't he always end up with the white self insert? But reminder that ships don't automatically have superiority because they have 'better' representation and certainly does not represent a shipper 'wokeness'. Personally I think a platonic relationship between two men that are as close and physically affectionate as JJ and Pope - especially when one is so traditionally masculine as JJ, especially if one or both of them could be queer - would be great representation for young boys struggling with toxic masculinity.

So yeah, I think your reasons for hating Kie don't have much basis in canon. I do not give if you like her or not but.. hating her and trying to prove that people shouldn't like her, that she's not good enough for JJ and coming into my ask and putting her down for no reason, still does not sit right with me.

#obx #obx bs #kiara carrera #JJ and pope #lara answers