#is a cis Female Character' is not a trend i'm like Super super loving. also god can we stop with the Males and Females for once

[biracy]

I actually find the binarism of a lot of the "female characters vs male characters" Thing extremely exhausting for like, all the reasons I put in the tags of the last rb lol and it's basically impossible to have people take that seriously. I dislike how a trans read is delegated to the realm of "silly nonsense headcanon that doesn't Actually Mean Anything", I hate how trans reads and/or headcanons are expected to only exist as "textually cis woman is actually trans woman, textually cis man is actually trans man" which I think really isn't fair at all to the trans experience and is another example of how trans people are expected to disavow any sort of identification with our "birth sex" and even completely refuse to acknowledge that we were once "the opposite gender", and I hate what the "pathetic meowmeow babygirl who's actually a man but isn't it funny that I compared him to a woman and/or implied he has a vagina even though he's a grown man with dick and balls" "fandom culture", so to speak, has done to the perception of trans analysis and interpretation and projection. I don't wanna say that's the Only reason people will hear about a transfem headcanon and go "well this Must be unserious, because this character is clearly A Biological Male in the source and thus can never count as A Female Character" but it's definitely not helping lol

#open mick night #gender #like i get where people are coming from but also 'the only kind of Female Character it is Appropriately Feminist to care about #is a cis Female Character' is not a trend i'm like Super super loving. also god can we stop with the Males and Females for once

[roipecheur]

Do you like omegaverse?

A secret, third option!

(Cut for length and nsfw text)

As a fandom phenomenon:

I did read the original J2 fics that kicked off this whole trend some years back

It's been interesting to see how it's evolved over the years. I was in SPN fandom back when it first became popular, and then I wasn't really in fandom and didn't read omegaverse for years

Take into account that is one person's perspective from the fandoms I was personally in, I have not done a widespread review of all things omegaverse

(I actually just checked the Journal of Transformative Works for an article on omegaverse as a trend, and didn't find one for the term omegaverse or by searching alpha AND beta AND omega, which is a little surprising to me)

In any case

Early days: cis male alpha/cis male omega pairings. The omega would have a self-lubricating asshole and smell irresistible to the alpha when they went into heat. Mentions of cis female omegas, but the focus was usually on the m/m pairing. Mentions of female alphas, but usually cis female alphas that milked the omega cis male's dick with a super pussy that like, locked down or something in a reverse of knotting. Sometimes cis male omegas could get impregnated and sometimes they were infertile and just had heats

Current trends: I've noticed way more intersex omegas. Alphas going into rut in addition to omega heats #itsequality. Mating bites. Family units as packs. Sometimes, psychic bonds come with mating bites and/or packs. Inability to physically leave someone you've just mated with. A lot more variety in how irresistible the heat/rut smell is and exactly what someone may want during their cycle, e.g., omegas going into "I want to nurse and cuddle my baby" mode instead of sex mode, alphas fighting each other to blow off steam. Alongside that, variety in how intense a heat/rut is, on a scale of mildly annoying/distracting but manageable to removing someone's higher brain functions and leaving only instinct. More omega/omega or alpha/alpha pairings. The concept of transitioning, where someone can go from alpha to omega, etc.

I think betas have remained mostly the same throughout, although I do remember something where betas had a kind of "glue the pack together" function in a newer fic rather than just being "regular humans" as in older fics

In wider culture:

The omegaverse lawsuit

Omegaverse fucking with AI datasets

This shit is hilarious and I genuinely hope we never stop

Common critiques:

1, Omegaverse is just reinventing sexism minus the women / it's so sexist that it's managed to remove women from a story about sexism

2, It's codifying top/bottom into gender

Honestly? Maybe sometimes? But it really depends on the story, and there are a lot of different versions out there, so I find this reductive

The one (1) omegaverse fic I wrote aligned both alphas and omegas more closely with the queer community than the sexism allegory while making it clear that they were also their own thing

Also, omegaverse started out as an excuse to write weird, kinky porn. A lot of it still centers around weird, kinky porn

Sometimes your hindbrain wants what it wants, "your kink is not my kink & that's ok", and you aren't trying to unpack the full implications of a world where this is real

Or, you want to put these bitches into a situation, and an omegaverse where character A benefits as an alpha and character B suffers as an omega is just an interesting situation

Like. I generally think it's whatever

Slash fandom has also been accused of sexism and gay fetishism in a variety of ways that are not exclusive to omegaverse, and I am keeping that can of worms firmly closed right now lmao

Weird sex and sex mechanics:

I love when people get weird with it. Omegaverse did not invent this, like I'm sure there were some 1950s sci-fi writers creating man-made alien pussy beyond our comprehension

Ovigonopods of Love: a Strange Horizons short story from 2001, featuring underwater bug sex involving three different sexes and metamorphosis, on the subject of weird sex that definitely predates omegaverse

My issue with og omegaverse, and part of the reason I didn't read it for such a long time, is that it doesn't get weird enough

Listen. Uh. Gonna talk about scat here, but listen.

If your asshole self-lubricates, you are unavoidably gonna shit yourself. Especially if you're getting your ass stretched by a knot and stuffed with an industrial amount of jizz for days on end. Some people can suspend their disbelief when reading omegaverse involving self-lubricating assholes, and godspeed, but I personally cannot

I think if you're going to imply ass babies, you may as well go all the way and give the guy a cloaca ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That being said, I do like intersex omegas for much the same reason. I can wrap my brain around it. I know where the babies are coming from, and I'm not reading through a fic and trying to blank out the horror of some poor guy pushing a baby out of his ass

I'm not even opposed to anal knotting! I've read an alpha/alpha fic like that and an alpha/omega fic. If an asshole can take a fist with proper lube and stretching, it can take a knot, and I accept that. It's the self-lubricating and days of fucking during a heat that get me

Story development:

One thing I don't like about omegaverse is when it's used as an excuse to throw the ship into intense feelings and fucking without doing any of the work to show me why this ship works

(And I don't mean PWPs, there are some good omegaverse PWPs in the same way there are some good sex pollen ones, or aliens/gods/demons/fairies/magic made them do it)

BUT. You cannot have two characters who maybe didn't even like or know each other suddenly be in love because they shared a heat and rut and now they're mated. I just won't buy it, but I won't buy this in soulmate AUs or any other kind of fic, either

What happens after the heat/rut induced fucking? Are they stuck together because of a mating bite? Is this for societal reasons or because it physically hurts to leave, or both? Or do they separate immediately after? Is it weird when they meet again? How? Did they have a relationship before this? How does it change that? How does it change their relationship with other people, especially if this is in the pack bonds version of omegaverse?

Worldbuilding:

If it goes beyond a PWP, I do have questions

From an evolutionary standpoint, why are there alphas, betas, and omegas? Can betas have babies with each other, or are omegas the only ones who can get pregnant?

If betas are infertile, their evolutionary role could be to protect and provide for alphas and omegas when they would otherwise be vulnerable in heat/rut and when they're carrying and raising children

But if betas are infertile, why are there male and female betas?

If betas can have babies, it's possible that alphas and omegas have more babies and that there is an evolutionary tradeoff between that and between your heat/rut making you more vulnerable and the time and energy costs in having more children, which could lead to the two different modes of human reproduction

Either way......why does your society have a binary man/woman gender system rather than a ternary alpha/beta/omega gender system?

Possibly because you can't tell someone's designation by looking at them and because people hide their scent, and maybe also because most people are betas with alphas and omegas being in the minority

On a similar note, how common/rare are male omegas and female alphas? Have you basically reached a point where there is no sexual dimorphism? What is the reason for this?

Where did the terms alpha, beta, and omega even come from? They honestly sound really formal to me, and the one (1) omegaverse fic I wrote differentiated between these as more modern terms and the terms people used to use, which in modern times were more widely considered slurs

In conclusion, do I like omegaverse?

#asks

[punchodile-defunct]

HELLOOO 🏳️‍🌈 how about edelgard + dorothea + a bonus blorbo of your choice :))

Hmmm I'm trying to think cause like I feel like I hc most female characters I like as transwomen because I am and like while it's not all that interesting if it's all the same I also don't wanna just make stuff up to seem more diverse? So we'll see lol

Edelgard

-Generally I just hc her as transfem but I've seen a few posts about her as an enby that I vibe with so I'll just go with transfem nonbinary I think? Idk there's something very gender about a she/her who uses Emperor instead of Empress, like she does still present as femme but like in a way divorced from typical notions of gender if that makes sense

-I feel like she has way more romantic chemistry in her supports with women than with men but I still have a few het ships I like with her, namely Edelclaude, so I'd say that she'd probably call herself a lesbian or bi but with very very specific taste in men, like not necessarily having general things she's attracted to but rather on a case by case basis lol

Dorothea

-while I'm not entirely attached to trans lady dorothea it's still a headcanon I vibe with, in general I see her as cis but like in a /pos way lol

-bi as hell, even if it wasn't canon she emits such woman-liker energy

Awwww man I have SO many blorbos but I'll stick with the Three Houses trend and go with...

Hubert!

-While I wouldn't consider myself a transfem Hubie truther (as in I can only see this character this way) it is a headcanon that I love love LOVE! There's just so much there to work with: the secret dream to be a Pegasus knight, the trope of a character so devoted to something/someone that they neglect their own desires and hopes, etc. Goth girl Hubert is something that can be so personal (plus you know she'd be so extra about it, also that voice coming our of a goth transgirl's mouth? Marry me PLEASE). There's also some nice fanart I've seen of the concept.

-as for sexuality, maybe pan? Idk she has some nice chemistry with both men and women (again, some nice fanart), and while I don't wanna fall into the negative stereotype of headcanoning the character who is depicted as cold and heartless as aromantic, it could work I think, but again it's not one I'm super attached to

Thank you so much for the ask, this was a ton of fun!

@froggydyke

#fire emblem three houses #fe3h #edelgard #edelgard von hresvelg #dorothea #dorothea arnault #hubert #hubert von vestra #headcanons #lgbtq+ #lgbtq headcanons

[accidentallyadramablog]

Review: Down With Love (2010)

I felt a little nostalgic this week and decided to rewatch Down With Love, a romcom out of Taiwan featuring Ella Chen (from Hana Kimi) and Jerry Yan (Meteor Garden).

This is more of a brain dump as opposed to a real review. More below the cut.

Let me just start with the fact I love dramas with tomboys, gender benders, and gender non-conforming women and girls in general. I'm a 40 yr old gnc bi-woman, so some of these storylines really resonate with me - despite the trend of making those female characters glaringly stupid and pitiable.

Tags: Nanny, Love Square, Tomboy, Male Chases Female First, Sismance, Rich Man/Poor Woman, Pretends To Be Gay, Single Parent, Sisterhood, Boss/Employee Relationship

Our girl Ella Chen plays tomboy Yang Guo. Yang Guo works, has friends, and a shitty boyfriend of 5 years. She acts naïve, but she actually has a lot of life experience due to a *tragic backstory*. After her mother died, her father ruined the family business. Their family plunged from riches to rags and their father abandoned them. Yang Guo is 6 when this happens and it falls on her older sister Yang Duo to raise them both while homeless, starving, and navigating the homeless camps in the parks of Taipei.

Yang Duo (Kelly Huang) has raised her little sister by herself, beginning from poverty and homelessness to having a house and making a life for themselves. They bicker good-naturedly, but Yang Duo is very protective and supportive of her sister. She's managed to earn a job at a prestigious law firm as an admin assistant with strong accounting skills. She is seen as frugal, clever, and competent. Several characters make comments throughout the series about how it was a shame that she didn't go into certain careers because she's so accomplished despite not having a formal education. It's obvious that Yang Duo has put her own dreams and happiness on hold to make sure that she and Guo have financial security. Yang Duo is my favorite character btw. She is a supporting character that is multi-faceted and has her own character arc. I really like seeing her growth in this drama, and she gets some cute side couple action later in the series. Skip the last episode.

Due to growing up in poverty and scrabbling to lower-middle-class, the two girls work nonstop. After Guo is fired from her job waiting tables, Duo gets Guo a job as a nanny for her boss Xiang Yu Ping by lying and saying Guo is a lesbian.

Xiang Yu Ping (Jerry Yan) owns his own law firm and is seen as cold and overbearing. He is raising his dead brother's kids and none of the nannies he's hired have lasted either due to being chased off by the kids (a la the Sound of Music) or by trying to seduce him because he's a rich handsome lawyer. Relieved to have found a nanny who definitely wouldn't seduce him (because he thinks she's a lesbian), he just pays an unreasonably huge salary to keep her there with the kids despite their abuse.

Supporting characters: Amanda Chu as the best friend Yan Ling with the messy dating life is also delightful, but I've enjoyed all her roles. I may rewatch Lion Pride for her, now that I'm walking down memory lane. The office of 'just some lawyer dudes being dudes' are funny. I love when they gather around to watch drama and place bets on what's happening. They're also slackers. I would love/hate to work with them.

So that's the setup.

Honestly, I hate the 'pretends to be gay' plots. It's typically really offensive and this was no exception in a lot of places. (It's not at the same level as Personal Taste, but it's bad.) One of the cases Yu Ping takes on is unlawful termination and blackmail of a gay teacher and he asks for Yang Guo's advice to help the man. Taiwan was trying in 2010, but it wasn't exactly good representation to have a fake lesbian help an actual gay man faced with employment discrimination and blackmail over his orientation. When I compare this with Love is Science (2021 twdrama) that has two out lgbt characters employed in their office with significant roles, I'm just so happy that lgbtq media representation is still progressing.

I don't care about Yu Ping's best friend Qi Ke Zhong or Yu Ping's ex-girlfriend Ding Hui Fan because they're both terrible people that don't deserve forgiveness and their only purpose was to drag out our leads getting together. Since this was a rewatch, I knew how much I hated their scenes and skipped them as much as I could. You're not missing anything. Someone on YT needs to just make a Yang Duo/Xiang Yu Ping cut, tbh. Also? Go ahead and skip the deadbeat father.

The nanny bit only lasts three episodes (the kids are adorable), but it's long enough for Yu Ping to catch feelings and think his lesbian nanny is cute. He actually is not cold and overbearing as episode 1 makes him out to be. Yu Ping is supportive and tries to be a good friend to Guo. When he thinks her 'girlfriend' is cheating on her, he absolutely flips out because he feels she deserves to be respected and loved in her relationship. He learns about her family. He learns about her friends. He knows where to look for her when she's upset. He knows how to cheer her up and later, he knows how to make the perfect date. When he finds out she lied about being a lesbian, he's not even mad. He admits it was his fault for making certain demands in the employment contract. He's just upset that he's lost chances to flirt and court her.

Listen. It's a dumb premise in this drama and the misunderstandings suck. But it's so refreshing to see male leads be decent to women that are romantically and sexually unavailable to them. The bar is so low, in RL and in dramas, that Yu Ping belongs in the top tier of male drama leads. This dude was just going to continue in a supportive friendship for an undetermined time, both when he thought she was a lesbian and later when his shitty weasel of a best friend dated her under false pretenses. He didn't burden her with a confession until her relationship was over. And whenever she asked for space, he gave it to her. And when she confronted him on instances of jealously, he apologized and gave her space.

Yu Ping never tries to change Guo. He doesn't give her a makeover. She has a makeover scene that is instigated by another character and all he does is try to make her comfortable when she's so obviously uncomfortable. Then he cheers inwardly when he sees her overcome her awkwardness and have confidence. But by the end of the drama, she is still dressing and acting the same as in act 1. It honestly reminded me a little of Coffee Prince in that the fancy male lead is still just as enamored with his gnc woman by the end and the way she presents herself doesn't have an effect on their romantic relationship. Again, this is content catered to me as a bi & gnc woman in a relationship with a cis-het man. I often am mistaken for a man when I go out with my spouse and he's still super into me so let's normalize gnc people with gc people already it's 2021.

Anyway, if you watch romances for kisses, there's really only a couple of pecks and one nice passionate kiss and they're all in basically the last 3 eps of the series.

The last episode sucks. Stop at episode 15. Seriously. Don't watch episode 16. Why oh why do you let terrible people back in your life? Qi Ke Zhong and Ding Hui Fan are toxic and should but cut out of their lives. The end of ep 15 had a happy ending with a family-style breakfast for our two sisters with their boyfriends. Ep 16 threw in some more misunderstanding, jealousy, and separations followed by a time skip for no reason and brought back my two least favorite characters.

Anyway, I will live in my little world with Yang Duo and her sweet lawyer boyfriend Liang Zhi Hao (Ian Yim/Cyran Yan/Yan Yi En yeah, this actor has three stage names) that supports her interests and self-determination while they save money on mass transit by using his motorbike. And they build her dream home that she designs. Perhaps they put aside funds for her to pursue a degree in what she's passionate about.

#down with love #twdrama #drama critical #ella chen #jerry yan #kelly huang #yang guo #xiang yu ping #yang duo

[tetranocturne]

I've noticed you make a lot of male characters that wear female clothing or are really effeminate without there being a trans edge. I'm not accusing you of anything, I really love it, but I'm curious why that is?

YOU KNOW I THINK ABOUT THIS A LOT ACTUALLY. you don’t know what can of worms you just opened up LMAO

i often look at my characters and go ‘huh this is kinda a trend, isn’t it?’ even when i was a wee youngin, i was just so thrilled with the idea of men being effeminate, even though it was usually played for jokes wherever i saw it. the short version is that something about effeminate men just make me really happy, and the long version... 

well. it’s gonna be LONG. so please bear with me

and as a disclaimer, i don’t love gendered words like effeminate and masculine, or referring to clothes as specifically female and male, and i know ftm is an outdated term, but its just way easier to explain everything this way, so i apologize

anyways- long explanation under the cut!

looking back, i can see that a lot of that was because back in the day, male characters being super effeminate was kind of the big marker of that character being gay or trans (albeit not actual representation), and so it was 100% me exploring what sexuality and gender means to me, and i think a simple answer would be.. i’ve just clung onto it all the way into adulthood because it means something really special to me

i eventually grew older and realized that a lot of those characters i loved so much were harmful stereotypes made by cishet people so they can point and laugh, but no matter how harmful they were, characters like this still meant a lot to me because they were my first real lgbt experiences. my parents never told me anything, so these stereotypes were kind of.. all i had? so it was really hard not to latch on. like, i’ve always had male characters that dress feminine, for as long as i realized i could do that, and the idea of stopping just.. didn’t seem right, especially after i realized that i wasnt cis or straight. after that, it really clicked with me. it was self-exploration, self-expression

i didnt really get TOO many weird reactions from my friends, which i’m very thankful for, but a lot of people in my life either didnt get why i kept drawing characters like this and told me it was weird, or they very actively disliked it. it made me feel.. embarrassed i guess? ashamed? it made me only explore these things in my art, and never with myself

i’m a firm believer that your clothes don’t have gender, and that people can dress however they’d like, regardless of their gender and how they present, but as a trans man who’s been around people (including my parents) who scoff at the idea of a man in a dress... it’s just hard to give myself permission. it’s not hard to give my characters permission, though. my family still doesn’t get it, and that’s one of the reasons i don’t show them characters like.. mel, magpie, carrie, haru, estee, yoichi, or whoever else. but its safe to put them here. i can just say “heres my character” and people say “great! i love him!” without even MENTIONING that he’s wearing a dress or a crop top and it’s just such a validating experience

now, as for why the characters don’t really have a trans ‘edge’? that’s kind of tricky, because they do! along with some being nb and a few even being ftm, they’re pretty much ALL meant to be read as trans, regardless of if they’re actually trans or not

let me explain-- these characters are a piece of me, and thus, they reflect my experiences and desires. they’re meant to be seen through a trans lens without being trans. as in, despite my own desire to be physically indistinguishable from a cis man, i wouldn’t want to give up my experiences as a trans man mentally. and these characters sort of reflect that. i have a few characters who, in the contexts of their stories, are actually trans, as in being legitimately nonbinary or ftm, because those also have to do with my own experience and my pride, but for the most part? effectively ‘cis’ men with trans mentalities and experiences is just what feels the best for me to write and draw. that’s all there really is to it. it feels good to me

in my characters, i get to live out my dreams of looking cis, while maintaining trans narratives and including an important aspect of my childhood as a queer person who deeply loved characters like..... envy from fma, haku from naruto, hana from tokyo godfathers, him from ppg, jareth from labyrinth, frank-n-further from rocky horror, james from pokemon, grell from kuroshitsuji (im honest to god so fucking sorry for making you remember kuroshit), and so on so forth. no matter how harmful a lot of these characters may be as horrible gay/trans/queer stereotypes, as someone who didn’t really grow up with proper representation, they just meant a lot to me

this is all just a long-winded way of saying... it feels homey. this is what’s comfortable for me and makes me happy

#this is okay to rb if it resonates with you ^ ^