#it's not technically referring to anything trans related

[toastedjeans]

So anyway i made a pizza tower oc/self insert/fanchild?? Technically?? If you squint.....

Their name's Ziti and they're Peppino and Gustavo's adopted "kid" (they're around 16). If you saw this post before, i aged them down a bit and changed/got rid of a few other things.

Anyway, some info about them below

I'm still too lazy to put all this into sentences and in an order that makes sense so here's a bigass list

They were adopted by Peppino and Gustavo after the tower fell

Used to work in the tower in the background, probably in a computer room. There was never much work there so they often fell asleep or doodled on the side. When there was work it was very stressful for them and they were easily overwhelmed. They never took days off cause they felt they didn't deserve to. Still, they desperately need a break (more on that in the backstory post)

Very anxious, but unlike Peppino, their anxiety does not turn into rage, just more anxiety and later on extreme tiredness. They're always tired tbh

Likes goofing around with Gustavo. He's the slightly sillier dad, while Peppino is slightly more caring and comforting (he can relate to the trans struggles. We love trans Peppino in this house). Of course, they're both caring and silly and great dads and love their kid very much

Random headcanon that Gustavo likes picking up people as a sign that he likes them a lot, and you know he often does that to Ziti (and Peppino lol)

Absolutely cannot cook, they WILL burn the kitchen down while trying to boil water. Please for the love of pizza do NOT let them near any kitchen. Peppino is honestly amazed by how bad someone's cooking skills can be (he says they're worse than Maurice's, which is saying a lot)

Not used to physical affection, at first only cuddles with Brick. Touch starved as hell.

Fakey is kinda like a mix between a best friend, a big brother, and a weird pet to them. It's weird at first, seeing how he resembles one of their dads so much, but they eventually get used to it

An awkward piece of ham™, but there's a silly goofy goober under all that anxiety

They always put other's needs in front of theirs, resulting in them neglecting their own needs because they're "not important enough" in their mind.

Always tries doing things on their own because they don't like bothering others, even if they know they can't do it alone. Will not actively ask for help but will reluctantly accept it when offered.

Giving gifts is their love language. Gives gifts randomly whenever they find something, but still feels bad when they don't have a gift on a special day (birthdays, Christmas, etc), or if they think their gift is lame

They're very forgetful, but they do remember tiny things nobody cares about. Will forget your birthday, but remembers that they once saw a frog jump directly into water and exactly how the resulting splash looked. This has no significance to anything at all, but they do remember it!

No fashion sense. At all. I mean look at them. Bland white ass. (No wonder tbh if you know where they come from)

Very pale, often got called a vampire or zombie when they were younger. Peppino and Gustavo sometimes lovingly refer to them as their little Mozzarella (despite both of them being smaller than Ziti)

Lastly, they're strangely obsessed with Noisette's cooking. Their favorite is her peanut butter spaghetti. Never gets sick from any of her food. They're not picky is all I'm saying. (Kinda explained in the backstory post)

#toasted art #pizza tower #pizzasona #pizza tower oc #toast ocs #peppino spaghetti #gustavo pizza tower #pepstavo #heavily implied i mean did you see the drawings #anyway um. I'm nervous for some reason #although i have to say. it was comforting drawing all these #look let me live out my fantasy of having parents that are proud of me okay #according to my mind they'd love me so there's that #I'm too stupid to come up with a better design so y'all have to live with that

[talenlee]

The Gliscor In A Coal Mine

Gunna talk about Smogon here. Oh, you don’t know Smogon?

Weeeeell, deep breath.

Smogon is a Pokemon fangame played with the basic components of the videogame series Pokemon, which is itself, made by Game Freak and distributed by Nintendo, which you’ll probably recognise as one of the largest privately held companies in the world. Smogon, by contrast, are a forum and some emulators and a surprisingly dense little bubble of Youtube content.

‘Smogon’ in this context refers to a bunch of related games, that form a single fandom game, a folk game. They have, in the terminology I’m fond of using, made a game out of another game, which is a super cool practice I actively encourage. It’s how we get great things like, for example, the entire Legacy subgenre of games, from its dizzying heights of Pandemic Legacy Season 1 to the shocking lows of Pandemic Legacy Any Other Seasons. I like Smogon as a thing to observe through some sort of astrolabe or other technical device. I have no particular interest in engaging with the game itself, as they play it.

I don’t want to get into a play space with these people.

Not because they’re bad or anything, though they are overwhelmingly split between the still-thinks-he’s-on-4chan shithead vs autistic trans girl social binary of internet niches and you’re never sure what side that coin is landing on when you flip it. I don’t want to partake of Smogon because the game they’re playing looks unpleasant to me to play, and because part of Being Into Smogon means looking around at the game Smogon has made and thinking: Yeah, this works. This is a good system.

The current news out of Smogon, such as it is, is that in their OU format (short for ‘overused’), just banned the Pokemon Gliscor. Gliscor is redacted information that doesn’t matter, because you don’t need to know what Gliscor is to come to understand the problem that Gliscor highlights, and the lesson you can learn about making games and control over those games.

Smogon’s banning policy reflects a truth I espouse as a game designer: Players are great at identifying problems and terrible at solving them.

Pokemon as it’s balanced and released and supported and played by GameFreak is, competitively balanced for 2v2, 4-of-6 teams, with information openly available to players through previews. This has some odd knock-on effects, like poor Zoroark kinda got pooched when they make this information public, but whatever, there are more Pokemon than that that aren’t really for playing. This is a kind of game I think of as a ‘pool game’ – the game is built ostensibly around a pool of potential pieces, and you choose which pieces you use and how. Magic: The Gathering is a pool game, Pokemon is a pool game, and even games like Dominion are pool games, because the game pieces that are in the game at the start of each contest are determined by choices outside the game.

In the official tournament context, when it comes to limiting access to Pokemon, there are ‘mythical’ pokemon where you can only have one (or two, depending on the regulation) from that category on your team. The game is broadly speaking open, where almost anything in that pool is available for use. Now, it’s hard to dig into this for hard numbers, because the pool has a lot of stuff in it that isn’t really expected to be played competitively. There are Pokemon who exist for, most likely, their place in a single-player RPG experience, like most first and second form evolutions, and some that exist as more world content. Think Unown and male Combee. Of the pool available, that means you’re looking a pool of, like, around 1,021 Pokemon, you can’t act as if all of those are going to find a place in a competitive head-to-head environment.

The stat site Pikalytics gives us numbers of about 310 Pokemon that showed up at all, and in that space, 37 Pokemon were not allowed. Some of them weren’t allowed because there’s no way to access them, but Game Freak get to make those choices and Smogon doesn’t. Now, that 310 number is a really broad net, and it’s just the stats from one tournament with over 700 players. In that space, two or three people bringing along something for a laff are going to make it show up. And if we say, limit ourselves to anything that had at least 5 people bring it (so, a representation of .71%), that gives us a list of 75 Pokemon that showed up in the tournament. And the stats aren’t telling the whole story just like that — after all, two of the most common Pokemon, Iron Hands and Flutter Mane, were played on 50% of teams.

That’s the metagame for an official tournament, broadly speaking; the full pool is somewhere around 310 Pokemon, but the core of the pool is much smaller. And importantly, when I say there are ’37 Pokemon that were not allowed,’ these are Pokemon who are very specifically set aside by the game experience and with related traits indicating that they are not for typical tournament play. You never could play with them in this format, they are not appearing and disappearing based on feedback.

Smogon doesn’t have tournament-to-tournament kind of environment like this; they instead have a tiered tournament system which cares about usage and then cultivates that usage. What his means is that the Pokemon are divided into groupings described by, well, how often they’re used. That means the main, core space, at least according to the Smogon people I spoke to about it, is ‘OU,’ for Overused. Overused is a 1v1 format. At the moment, there are 31 Pokemon legal in Overused. You can use Pokemon from a lower tier in this tier, but it generally works out badly, because those Pokemon are not strong enough for this tier. There are 19 other Pokemon that were in this tier, but have been banned out of it, sent ‘up’ a tier to the category of ‘Ubers’ for being, well, too good. Ubers, for context, has about sixty two Pokemon in it.

That is, Smogon centralises its design space around 31 Pokemon, and only after kicking 19 of them out.

In the announcement banning Gliscor from their format, there were people calling for bans to Sneasler, Samurott-Hisui and Gholdengo. That would bring it up to 22/29, which feels unpleasantly close to half the format being banned. Even at 19/31, that’s essentially 2/5th of the format banned. And when you dig into this situation, you wind up chasing details that can’t address the whole problem:

Gliscor was too powerful at setting hazards and being hard to kill.”

“Well, why was it hard to kill?”

“Because it could heal from lots of small hits.”

“Well why not hit it very hard with a big hit, since it has a 4x weakness?”

“Well nothing in the tier can hit it hard enough.”

“Well, why don’t you bring up something from a lower tier that could do that?”

“Well nothing in that tier is good enough.”

“Well why aren’t there good ice types in this tier?”

“Well we banned the one that hits really hard.”

“Why did you do that?”

“It was too good at hitting things very hard.

And like, this whole conversation is is continuing to diagnose problem after problem after problem, but never finding anything that solves those problems. Because Gliscor being banned resulted in people talking about how now, there were more problems that had to be fixed.

A lot of this is the peculiarities of what Smogon does and doesn’t allow. For example, hazards are so important because everything in Smogon is expected to swap out constantly, and hazards make that hard to endure over time, meaning that hazards pull the game towards an end state. This swapping out constantly makes some statuses pointless (like confuse) and a lot of setup moves pointless too. It means that multiple sequences of turns can happen where players don’t attack one another because they’re just swapping back and forth to jockey into position. There are whole move types that are banned (baton pass and evasion boosters), because if you didn’t, people would use them. They had to institute a 1,000 turn timer on games because some tournament games ran that far without anyone actually winning the game.

What if those 19 Pokemon were just left as it is? You got rid of the Evasion rules and the banned moves and just let the game settle, as it is, on what people can do, in that space, and see how it works. I’m told it becomes a pretty simple game where everyone does the same thing of trying to get an angry fish into play with baton pass and kill your opponent. This is apparently a bad thing, where by banning a bunch of strategies the format is instead facing a situation where the’re almost halfway through banning the entire tier, to try and capture a way the game ‘should’ be. It seems to me the point of a usage-based tiering system means that if one tier sucks, everyone leaves that tier and recognises that the Pokemon in that space push a style most of the people there don’t like, and instead they go on to play in other tiers, like Underused. The best stuff gets pressurised out of it, pushed up and out into that rarified atmosphere by the math and social pressure of the natural churn of the system, right?

Right?

But they don’t.

They want to play OU.

And they want OU to be the ‘main’ format.

There are two competing challenges here, for me. The first is that Smogon can’t actually add anything to the game. They see their place as having to exclude things. I get this problem, kinda because ostensibly, they want their version of the game to be a thing you can play ‘on hardware’ rather than through their emulator. This ‘on hardware’ play therefore can’t actually add anything or overlay new rules, like, for example, adjusting the stats of Pokemon, or instituting score-based team building or even elimination drafts. And you don’t get to go ‘hey, that’s really obnoxious or hard to do,’ because Smogon’s ruleset is not easily processed or parsed, and it is not welcoming.

The second thing is that Smogon’s process for changing the game is their idea of democratic. It’s voted on by experts who can identify the problems and supposedly make good choices going forward. This means these people need to be socially active and engaged in the forum place and capable of earning respect within the competitive and social environment that represents which, let me tell you, that’s a worrying place.

And the thing is, this is all being done with an assumption that they’re trying to carve away what’s ‘wrong’ with the format to find the right version of it. On the one hand, yeah, that’s cool, they’re making a game out of another game. On the other hand…

Says who?

They use terms like ‘noncompetitive’ and ‘unskilled’ to refer to when a strategy can present a player with an abrupt choice and if they choose wrong they’re at a disadvantage, as if games with sharp swings aren’t competitive games that require skill. The language has the familiar structure of designers discussing problems with games but without the fundamental idea of being able to actually change it. Much like Smash players who try to remove variance from a game built around it, Smogon is trying to take something designed to get out of hand with crits and failure chances and make it fit something else.

Famously, new ideas and new mechanics get introduced and Smogon tries to route around them, to preserve the way things were in earlier generations rather than adjust to what the new generation is doing. Back in Generation 8 of Pokemon, Smogon just straight up banned Dynamax entirely; a mechanic that meant any pokemon could have a big bulky tank mode for a short period of time and punch through protects. That meant they played the entire format without access to a mechanic the main game was balanced around. Anyone who played Smogon exclusively through all the years of Generation 8 is someone who has no idea what a core mechanic of that game does to the game based on their play experience.

When Gliscor went, in that same announcement, people were bringing up, again, that they need to ban Terastallize, for the whole duration of the generation. Because the current format and game’s defining special rule is something they want to ignore, which just further builds on the idea that they don’t want Scarlet Violet OU. They don’t want the Pokemon that would bubble to the top of those usage stats so they could select where else they’d rather play. The only tool is shrinking the game… and it just so happens that it means that each generation kind of slowly but surely winds up looking a lot like the previous ones. They don’t want this ‘Pokemon’ game interfering with their game. And they don’t want to take measures to address these problems,because whatever they’re aiming at, it has to be socially agreed upon, voted upon, enforced by bans only, and only validated by vibes.

It’s all said with the selfseriousness of people sitting on the sofa glaring at the TV that they know what the game ‘should’ be and not considering what the game is. Which is fair! They’re making up their own game out of this other game, after all, and that game could kick ass! It doesn’t look like it, it looks like a rat’s nest of rules corner cases, with a stone-faced defensiveness that suggests newcomers have to Get Good and Do The Readings, and if you’re not involved, you should not dare comment on their game. Any opinion about their game must show due deference, even if it’s just recognising that it exists. An absence of praise is a presence of violence.

It’s very funny when they complain about Gamefreak’s decisions, mind you. Gamefreak’s game is one of the most successful multimedia franchises in the world and Smogon is a forum for a few hundred very sweaty dorks. Like, yeah, I don’t think Gamefreak are thinking about you when they make their choices about how to continue ongoing engagement with their multinational game empire. Which isn’t to say their game is better, the game you play is the game you want to play, but acting as if ‘Gamefreak doesn’t know what they’re doing’ – they do. They aren’t caring about you and the way you play the game, and haven’t for like… fifteen years? Your game isn’t unbalanced because Gamefreak are stupid, your game is unbalanced because you’re playing in the space Gamefreak is explicitly not balancing.

But okay, let’s look at what I said up top: Players are great at identifying problems and terrible at solving them.

These players are able to identify the problems they’re having. They don’t want to play doubles, and the singles game is balanced around a kind of play they don’t like. And when you’re dealing with playtesting of your own game, you need to be able to listen to this kind of thing and accept it as entirely neutral and entirely correct feedback. Players might lie to you about how they feel but you should always trust it anyway. They have identified a problem.

As it stands, right now, Smogon’s only tool they consider acceptable for changing this game is to take things away from it, and for the process of doing those changes being entirely social, and ostensibly democratic, with a real ‘well, if you didn’t vote, you don’t matter’ kind of approach to that.

And this is what you get.

Gliscor was used in somewhere between five and one teams in the Pikalytics, by the way.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#pokemon #smogon #Games

[the-fort-official]

THE CITIZENS:

PRIME APPLES: great and powerful leader of the fort. He may not be fair, or mature, or kind, or just... But honestly who cares he is funny sometimes.

Robo-Prime: he is back from the grasp of the average arcade owner in whatever fucked up sub-multiverse the text doctors live in. And by average I mean only, apparently. Anyways, he is basically prime but with more offense and less defense. Yes, the robot can take less hits than the human. Ironic, I know

Robo apples: head of engineering, and avid hater of fazbear entertainment. His past with them is spotty at best. Also, he doesn't like pizza. Which is weird. Probably trauma...

Control Apples: head of science and with the ability to express himself as well as a cardboard cutout. He does feel emotions, he just cannot show them. At all. Something about one of those therapy beds that was a O.O.P. (Object Of Power). He also likes burning things. Like, more than most Versions.

The tank (formerly known as Fallout apples): bright green power armor, yet blends in better than some people with stealth boys. Want to try to silence a fat man? He's your guy. Also for drugs. He makes all the drugs. ex-soldier of three wars. One for Alaska. One for Vegas. One for Boston. All three for his survival. And maybe fun on that last one.

Felix (fur-merly known as Fursona apples):, Engineer, former leader of the Regrettables (both the faction and the band). He got his time in the limelight. Now he is a actual character! And with the free trauma too. Also he made a lil ring to propose with so... don't tell Will.

Looper: robotic* mercenary for hire. Hope you got the gold! Also there are hundreds of him running around because of time loop shenanigans. Some of them even canonically fuck. Do with that information what you probably won't. (*He isn't a robot, technically. It's a techno-organic virus. He still has all the bits, just robotic. Minus nose, unless it's a snapshot of him with a snout. )

Fog killer: Also known as the apple themed streamer, the apple themed mayor, and the guy with a bigger arcade than @the-arcade-doctor, he is a totally normal and sane botanist trust me bro. Ignore the vines slowly leeching all your blood that's natural. (Now available to talk to on the @evil-group-that-hates-the-fort blog :3. )

Fog survivor: He is an engineer. He solves practical problems. Also works as a medic. He used to be scared of his own shadow. Now nothing phases him. Except getting stabbed because that still hurts.

Clone 007: traumatized asshole with no sense of friendly fire. He will kill anything in his way, no matter if they are helping him or not. Also he has extreme trauma, abandoned issues, and mood swings. The last one isn't related to his past, it's related to his very DNA.

Cashew: A young creature in an old automaton. He is basically a nutcracker from lethal company with some damages. And shorter. Still taller than the average dude, but small for a nutcracker.

Zweifel: What happens when you put a teen so far in the closet he tricked himself into thinking he isnt gay, into a endless colorful hell of wacky whimsical adventures? A hatred of the circus and a fear of vr.

The Angel Of hypocrisy, Nicholai: A homophobic and transphobic douchebag who should eat shit and die. Depending on which version you meet, the name makes more or less sense. Because post time skip, he gets a trans-mask boyfriend who he loves with all his heart. Even ignoring the fact his boyfriend is a serial killer. (If I reference El Carnicero, this is who I'm referring to)

Pixel: Kleptomaniac heister with more kills from just using the environment to his advantage than with his actual weapons.

Stuffie (Formerly known as Monster Apples.): see @plushiemonstervoid I ain't repeating myself.

Satchel: living puppet made from old junk like torn towels and potato sacks. He is tall, lanky, and overall intimidating. He is also a complete pushover who literally can only attack with yarn. Normal yarn. Not exactly lethal.

Demons-Bane: a demon that kills demons. Simple as that.

Warface Apples: currently turned into an anthropomorphic raven for fuckin with... I don't remember, one of @ignisuada 's characters. Generic military dude #171. Nothing special.

Warframe apples: Sneaky, but like stealth in the Deadpool game. He has lore, I just forgot it.

Metal gear apples: god im not even going to bother trying to tie this fucker in with all the bullshit lore this game has. He is a super-soldier. He has a flamethrower. That is all thats important at this point in his non-existent lore.

More to come. Check for edits. Lore is ever-changing after all.

#Characters #important oc lore #oc lore #oc #my ocs #lore post

[bbygirl-aemond]

Reading the first Baela pov, and wow, she gives off such a transmasc vibe! I'm not telling you to make her trans, just saying that I relate a lot, especially to how I was before I found out I'm a guy. Like, her hesitating when Rhaenys said "You are a woman so these are women's clothes", quickly saying she's her father's daughter too when called her mother's daughter (reminds me of 'if i can't be a {correct gender}, at least I can say I'm like {correct gender parent}', redirecting the conversation to her sister when told she looks like her mother, choosing to be her true self instead of what everyone expects her to be even though it's technically 'better' (queen vs lady)... Just, reading that was like my teenage self looking into the mirror. Thank you for writing such good characters!

(i've been meaning to answer this for a HOT minute so sorry bout that, but the dialogue between laena and daemon in chapter 27 reminded me of it so better late than never?)

stuff like this always makes me so happy to hear! you also have excellent taste, bc my bf (trans masc) is also quite fond of stormbreak!baela.

it's been a pretty deliberate choice to write baela as disconnected from or rejecting traditional westerosi notions of femininity and womanhood. stormbreak will mostly leave any further interpretation up to the reader as to her personal sense of gender identity. of course you can identify as a woman while experiencing all of these things, or you can identify as a man, or something entirely different.

the remaining part of this ask probably counts as stormbreak spoilers, but it won't be for anything that's a major plot point within the timespan contained in the original fic- just stuff i might write in drabbles eventually. but it's stuff related to gender and baela in particular. :)

in my mind, baela never really settles down with a man. oh, she might marry one, but i don't know that she'll end up super duper in love the way most of the other women in this fic do. she'll have a ton of very fulfilling relationships, some of them involving sex, and she'll travel the world and live her life completely unhindered by her status within society as a woman. seafarer and traveler baela ftw, y'all!

she will also never have children. i wasn't super happy with her character ending up basically pregnant and left behind at home while her husband traveled the world and also cheated on her. i don't see baela, even book baela, as someone who'd have those goals. i can see how losing almost her entire family might make her lonely, and how realizing she's one of only like 4 surviving targaryens might create pressure to reproduce regardless of her own desires. but in stormbreak, where her family survives and there are gonna be so many little targ babies running around you can't tell whose is whose? yeah she is never ever going through pregnancy are you kidding me lmao.

i've also received a few requests for some spicy drabbles involving baela (once she is MUCH older i do not write porn for any characters who are under 21 aka younger than me okay). these will probably also involve a certain degree ambiguity as to baela's internal sense of gender identity. baela will never desire or ask for penetration, and will instead prefer to penetrate others or participate in other types of sexual acts. anatomical terms will be used for body parts, but when baela is wearing a strap on it'll be referred to using the same terms i refer to male characters' sex organs with (i.e. a character wouldn't be described as sucking baela's strap, they'd be described as sucking baela's cock).

anyways the ambiguity is there for a reason and readers are free to interpret it in whichever ways make them happiest. my viewpoint on these things is kind of like mark hamill's with the character of luke skywalker: whatever you want baela to be, wherever you feel the text is leading you, that's how baela identifies. :)

#ask #asks #answered #stormbreak #fic: stormbreak #fic #baela targaryen #baela #stormbreak chapter 14

[gerardpilled]

i was like 9 when hesitant alien was released so obviously i wasn’t in the fandom at that point, but now as a current fan looking back at that era where gerard was presenting more “masculinely” wearing suits and having short hair (insert tucking hair behind ears tweet) while also discussing trans rights and gender constantly and now tuck their hair behind their ears and wear dresses and clothes from the “womens” section (which i know now the gendered sections are stupid but gerard grew up in the 80s) maybe i’m being invasive but also i kinda wanna blow myself up

how gerard has chosen to dress and present throughout the years is really interesting and it does feel like what we are currently witnessing is the result of years of constructive progress, rather than any kind of regression period!

here are my long-winded and unorganized thoughts that i'll emphasize now (for brevity's sake) are all just my personal takeaways:

I feel like it's almost weird for me to see people refer to the HA era as "masculinely" because, I don't know about everyone else, but I almost viewed that era as gerard at his most feminine at the time. Yes, they wore the traditional "man" outfit of a suit and tie, but it always provoked more "ziggy stardust" and less "lounge singer" to me personally. Maybe it was the pre-existing decades of people calling Bowie effeminate and androgynous, but the whole alien aesthetic and short vibrant orange hair always kinda felt like an ultimate non-binary look. Not saying gerard falls under the label of non-binary, just meant the stage persona at the time felt like it transcended gender labels. I should also point out that although i was a fan and keeping somewhat up-to-date with news, I wasn't really aware of what he was saying on stage. When I was, well... I feel like I took it for granted at the time. I was younger (15) and never really followed celebrities in this way before, so when he was showing support for trans kids I basically had no idea it was so, dare I say, revolutionary (and still is today). This was also around the time they did the now famous Reddit AMA talking about gender-based therapy, so it really has always felt like an element of who gerard is.

If anything, maybe the period from 2016-2019ish made people forget this? He was showing up to comic related things with a beard and khakis and to a lot of people it was a big change. Nowadays it feels like people have a way more nuanced and respectable opinion of this 'hobbit/wizard' era, but for a lot of young, less educated people it was jarring.

For the whole 'women's section' thing: I get it! it's nice to see him wear whatever they want, but also they have always shopped in the 'women's section'. I get why people feel like a blouse means more than 'women's' skinny jeans, but also, it's just a shirt. The dresses and skirts, well. Truly, I never in a million years thought we would be here. Not from a 'gerard has come so far 🥺' standpoint (b/c again, I don't know him) but more I can't believe this is the current state of My Chemical Romance and they all are allowing me to see it.

Not at all arguing with you or disagreeing! Just wanted to share my standpoint as someone who was technically there for all this :)

#long post

[blandacheadcanons]

We could have a DLC based on Claudia's life as an assassin and madame, or Lydia Frye. The WW II is an interesting setting for a game and I loved her character

I'm still not over the fact that Aya was supposed to be the protagonist from Origins but they changed to not make the poor "macho men clients" to cry

*Before we get further into feminism, I want to make very, very clear: we love and support trans people here, ABOVE ALL ELSE. Terfs are templars.*

DLC would be cool, but I think it would still be the same thing that they're doing: treating female characters (and thus women as a whole) as second fiddle.

Their whole pattern so far has been "men are in the main games - the ones that we advertise, and reference, and build off of - and women are in that... Other Stuff. The side parts that don't get acknowledged."

I mean, raise your hand if you've listened to Assassin's Creed Gold (which still doesn't have a female assassin protag but does have a modern day woman).

Summarize the plot of ac liberation for me off the top of your head.

Who killed Mongke Khan in the series?

Do you know anything about Shao Jun that's not related to Ezio? I'm not even sure Ubisoft does.

And even when female characters do get to take the main stage, they have to share it! Usually extremely unevenly!

Aya, as you said, was meant to be the protagonist of origins but was sidelined for Bayek. Most of the time that you're playing as her, you're actually playing as a boat.

Evie and Jacob were supposed to share the spotlight evenly, but he ended up with 3 times as many missions as her. And there were diegetic, lyrical songs about the targets in the game, but all of them were for Jacob's targets! None for Evie's, unless you count the one for Roth, who they both fought.

Odyssey and Valhalla technically have canon fe.ale protagonists, but with a gender choice, and all or much of the advertising was for the male character.

Gender choices that don't even work in context. The explanations they gave us were. Just ... Bad...

The "the girl is the canon character" thing feels a bit like Rowling's tweets about Dumbledore and Hermione. Diet Allyship: all the fanfare of diversity in art with none of the commitment!

And the gender choice would be really cool with a Little rework. Like for the protagonist of that modern day game that people have been clamoring for. Or a genderfluid\genderqueer character.

The latter could even bring the disguise system from liberation in.

Or they could break off the multiplayer functions they had and make a fortnite-esc game with customizable or a variety of characters. In fact, weren't there whispers of them doing just that?

But nope. Cis men only, or weird, contrived reasons for why the machine that reads your DNA like a book has decided to make it a choose-your-own-adventure story.

#and in case you missed it: TRANS FUCKING RIGHTS! 🏳️‍⚧️ #anon #rant #harry potter mention

[feech-phylicia]

Hey bro do you have any book recs?

*Sci fi or realistic fiction, minimal romance? I guess? Ex of books I like: project hail mary, on earth as it is on television, a quiet kind of thunder, lycanthropy and other chronic illnesses, stuff like that yknow?

Admittedly I have not read any of the books you listed but 2 of them are on my tbr

But here goes:

First I've got 2 realistic fiction stories about trans characters

The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson

This one has two trans characters trying to navigate both their trans identities and also high school. There's a minute where it seems like they might date but iirc they work out better as friends or something (its been a while since I read this one because I leant it to a trans friend and while it was relatable for me it was punch-in-the-gut relatable to her from page one so I've decided it's her book now lol)

Beautiful Music For Ugly Children by Kristin Cronn-Mills

I need to read this again I barely remember anything about it just that it's 100% worth the read. Also it won the Stonewall book award

Next up I got some straight up High fantasy which is not what you asked for but I can't not recommend it because it might be my all time favorite book

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

The world building here is so incredible!!!! The story actually follows 4/5 separate people in different parts of the world and slowly weave each individual tale into one cohesive narrative that I personally believe is a work of brilliance. One main character is a young lesbian, another is an old guy, and another is aroace. Romance specifically isn't really a main plot point at all but there are a few romantic relationships that exist/develop and the book does a fantastic job exploring the depths and nuances of relationships and how they can affect people (romantic or plantonic). Also dragons and magic and some cool legends/myths/religions to be untangled and interpretted!!!

I absolutely love Samantha Shannon so I have also read her other books from The Bone Season series which are much more sci-fi but also a lot darker and have a much more prevalent romance between the main character and an alien. The series is also not yet finished so for all those reasons I'm not sure if it would be up your alley or not

Okay lastly some sci-fi fantasy

The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir

(Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, Nona the Ninth, and soon Alecto the Ninth)

Okay so this one has a Tumblr Fandom and you've probably seen me posting about it sometimes technically the main two characters are both lesvians and the Fandom ships them but they never get anywhere close to a romantic anything because they hate each other and do their darnedest to piss each other off at every opportunity. There's necromancy but it's approached as science rather than magic which is really cool. There a tense mystery happening the whole time (but there's also an unreliable narrator so it takes her a while to even pick up on it). There are A LOT of catholic undertones and references in the world building and religion but in a very subversive and interesting way. I have to take notes reading these though because I occasionally confuse a few side characters and there's so much foreshadowing and parallels and minute details that can alter you perception of the story (also necromancy being scientific means I occasionally lose track of things there but I think that's just a me issue). All in all though phenomenal series lots of death though....kind of necessary for the whole necromancy aspect

Woooooo okay sorry for the essay that's all I've got for today but if you want more at some point let me know and I'll do my best!!!

Happy reading!!

#feech rambles #asks #arocrows #charlie! #books #book reccs #again sorry for the essay #please let me know if you read any of these and if you like them!!!

[roguemonsterfucker]

Vikram isn’t technically trans. But he was born long before our modern concept of gender existed.

He has no issue being identified as a man by people. Given his appearance, it’s simply easier to go along with being identified as a man. But he doesn’t identify with the word or the concept. He plays the part of a man in our society because it’s easier than anything else.

He would be just as comfortable if he was identified as a woman or nonbinary person. And he would play the part so he could fit in. But he’s not a man, a woman, or a nonbinary person. Those words hold no value to him in relation to his identity.

That’s not to say he sees no value in others using the labels. They just don’t fit him.

And he’s okay with that. He doesn’t feel the need to label himself.

Where other people may find validation and community in a label like gay, bisexual, trans, nonbinary or anything else, he is neutral when they are used in reference to him.

@roguemonsterfucker

[lvcifvr]

Like, I'm technically bisexual

but

I'm so fucking gay.

Boys <3 (Feel free to read below, I just didn't want to clog up dashboards with a long ass post with my bullshit rambling lmao)

This is why I don't refer to myself as pan bc, yeah, I can be attracted to anyone, regardless of gender or presentation or anything,

but I've always been more attracted to guys.

Before I figured out I was trans, I knew I was queer somehow but the way I felt about guys didn't feel "straight".

I didn't feel like a girl who liked guys.

And that was hella confusing for a long time until I came across trans stuff online and started reading up and whatnot.

And then, I came out as a gay trans guy, which was perfect for a long while honestly,

but then I realized that I can be attracted to / have feelings for more than just guys so I thought maybe I was pansexual.

Ngl, I wanted to be pansexual because I felt that being bisexual was... looked down on? I guess.

For being "non-inclusive".

When pansexual first started becoming big, it was posed as being attracted to others regardless of gender and bisexual was attraction to guys and to girls. So I called myself pansexual for a while before I realized it wasn't right for me at all because I was so rarely attracted to people who weren't guys. So I went back to gay for a long long time until I forced myself to recognize my rare attraction to women and my attraction to butch / masc identified people who weren't guys.

I started confidently identifying as bisexual when I was around 27 years old, which was three years ago. And now I can very very confidently say that, although I AM bisexual, my attraction leans extremely heavily toward guys and that it is incredibly rare for me to be actually interested in anyone else. I can think a woman is hot but I'm not interested in dating a woman. At least, not right now. If I meet a woman who does click with me and draws me in, I'd for sure be open to being together, of course. I also find myself not really interested in sex? I've been thinking I'm on the asexual spectrum for a long time, honestly. My love languages are physical affection and spending time together and, though I do enjoy reading queer romance that involves sexual themes and sex (very much honestly!), if I think about myself being in those situations, it doesn't really do anything for me? It might be because I'm a virgin at the age of 30 or it might just be because I haven't met the right person OR I AM on the ace spectrum. I do find myself very sensual though. I ache to be held and to hold someone, to kiss them and cup their face in my hands, to lay on each other and to hear each other's breathing and heartbeats. Long, languid make outs and hand holding, being intimate. I adore all of it and I ache so so much for it that I cry sometimes lmao. But, sex? I don't know. It might also have to do with my dysphoria and body dysmorphic disorder, seeing as how I see myself as disgusting and I wouldn't want a partner to interact with my chest or anything lmao. So, maybe some day. I want top surgery for sure, but I'm still on the line between wanting to start T and not wanting to due to how the cis men in my family look. I'm already pretty androgynous and my body is husky. I don't want to lose my hair like the other men in my family and I don't want to get even more "masc" looking. I want to be a pretty, slightly masculine looking guy. And I also do not like being called a "man" because that's not me. I also have trauma related to men so there's that as well. I honestly don't know why I'm typing this all out, but it feels... Nice, to do so, I guess. I think I'm just lonely. 30 years old, no non-long distance relationships because I live in a still very-Conservative state. I'm a disabled bisexual trans guy who prefers guys. I don't have the energy to really go out and meet other queers because of my disability and my job sucking up all of my energy. I definitely don't hide the fact that I'm queer, it's pretty obvious lmao. I wear a pin at work with one half being the bi flag and the other being the demiguy flag with my name and "he/him" pronouns on it. I talk openly about being queer. I don't hide it, I just don't really make it a "thing", if that makes sense? But I'm just so achingly lonely. And I'm afraid that I'm going to die alone. I just... I have so, so much love to give. And I think I deserve to get some myself, y'know?

#bisexuality #bi awareness week #trans guy #demiguy #ace spectrum #asexual spectrum #disability #invisible disability #fibromyalgia #fibro #queer #queer writer #wtf else do I tag this as #idek lmao #mine

[genderparve]

Genderparve

I guess I can start by explaining my blog and url title.

What is genderparve? It's not anything, really. It's a term I saw someone use in jest on a Facebook post several years ago, which I thought was funny and resonant, and I've kept it in my back pocket since. (As a side note, someone else in that thread used the phrase "my gender is Kosher for Passover," which is also very good.) I don't actually know anyone (else) that really identifies as genderparve in earnest.

"Parve" is a word in Yiddish which means "neutral". It's "pareve" if you use Hebrew, which I normally do, but in this case I think genderparve just sounds better than genderpareve. Pareve is a term usually used in reference to food. Kosher dietary laws demand that some foods be eaten separately, such as meat and milk. Other foods, like eggs and fish, are considered pareve, neutral, and can be eaten with others.

The idea of being neutral like that really speaks to me. I guess I find it relatable, to mesh with all things because I am in fact equally none of them.

Terms like agender or gender neutral never really resonated with me, for whatever reason. I do identify, most strongly, as simply Me, Goat. But sometimes a medical professional wants more justification than that before referring you to medical transition, so here I am. :')

So, not agender, not gender neutral, but a secret third thing.

Genderparve! Simultaneously not any of the things, but in a way that goes with all of the things.

I also think it's a nice way to tie in my Jewish identity, which is something I am trying to get better about Being More and Being More Visibly. There are historical Jewish genders, but the ones I feel describe me most accurately are ones I've seen some Jewish people suggest are really meant to describe intersex people, and that it's not very polite for non-intersex people to use them. Besides, those gender labels were never meant to be nice and inclusive, unlike genderparve, which is a fake label that doesn't exist and I can make it mean whatever I want.

In my day-to-day life, I never actually tell people I identify as genderparve. I don't know that I really... do...? identify as such, as much as I just think it's a fun term? But either way, in real life I usually just tell people I'm trans, no further labels. Even nonbinary has always felt... technically accurate, but not as resonant, for whatever reason. I like the idea that I can be transcending, transforming. It feels very ephemeral. Gender is a journey, not a destination, etc.

This is something I would like to explore more, but is probably outside of the scope of this post. At a different time, then.

#trans #gender #genderparve #rambles

[unluckytum]

I feel like there are enough eyes on this blog to make this😳

So this is my kink blog. THAT MEANS 18+ GROSS CONTENT THAT MINORS HAVE NO BUSINESS WITH.

Anyway, I'm a switch, and usually very give-and-take with what I like. Outside of preg stuff I tend to be pretty vanilla and soft, no real hard kinks. I’m 20, mixed asian, autistic, and for anonymity I'll be going by just "Unlucky" here with any pronouns. I will refer to myself having any kind of genitalia bc :3

Also if you are into bondage n CNC I have a mutual: @clicksandchains

Main Tags:

kink text reblogs

kink art reblogs

kink story reblogs

kink irl reblogs

dreaming of my blorbo - self ship tag!

nsft - technically everything on this blog is nsft but I use this to tag nudity

kinkposting - memes relating to kink

unluckyart - my kink art :3

unluckythoughts - my silly posts

unluckytalk - my silly posts /nsx

I am into:

Pregnancy of any gender or sex, I have my preferences but generally I love all of it

Rapid pregnancy

Alien/monster pregnancy (prefer human carrier)

Oviposition/Egg stuff

Stuffing (I am not a feeder/feedee but may reblog from them)

Copious amounts of c*m

Booba expansion 👀

Body worship

Muscles

Tentacles

Transformation (were-creatures usually)

Generally just nice tummies even if they’re not filled with anything (although I do love a filled belly 🥴)

Squicks:

Vore of any kind (soft, hard, medium rare idc)

Birth denial :(

“Whump” romanticizing extreme harm (gore, abuse, etc.)

Degrading :/

Extreme/rapid weight gain

Alt pregnancy especially in extremes

Hyper stuff, just not a fan of extremes

Dubious/non consent in fictional contexts

Somnophilia

“Daddy”/“Kitten” dynamic and other pet names like that

Detransitioning (ONLY TRANS ppl with this kink are allowed to interact and I still don’t like it myself)

Uh, excrement kinks (yes this includes piss and farts)

DNI/Block on sight🚫:

Minors (this is an 18+ blog)

Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion

People who do not value consent (NOT CNC that’s fine)

P*dophiles/MAPs

DDLG/CGLRE in a sexual context (see p*do)

Bigot (Racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, etc.)

Raceplay/Race Kink (see bigot)

TERF/transmed (see bigot)

Cis person with detransition kink (see bigot)

SWERF (what are you doing on nsft tumblr)

Z**philes

Linking the post I had pinned before because I think it’s very important

#not kink #pinned post #I will edit this if needed #also turning asks on now :) #anon should be on

[transpanda-1]

Happy Birthday Tsumugi Shirogane here’s an essay on how she made a trans woman realize she was plural

Hi. We’re plural and diagnosed with OSDD 1B.

We probably would have figured it out eventually either way, but Tsumugi Shirogane is the one that jumpstarted our understanding of our identity.

Why is this?

It’s complicated. (Spoilers, obviously)

Ever since we saw through DRV3, we had attached heavily to Tsumugi. Nearly for a full year, something about the girl kept her bonking around in our head.

Until the fateful day where we were walking down the street, stopped, paused, and went “Do I act... like Tsumugi?”

This was in reference to us switching alters, which we struggled to comprehend at the time. But this realization led us down to therapy/looking inwards/identity figuring out, etc.

And it’s all because of one single blue haired girl with pronouns.

Tsumugi is a mishmash of numerous traits that all felt relatable to us specifically at the time, and maybe people can come to understand how these qualities all came together for us:

1st. Her cosplay ability.

Tsumugi’s cosplaying prowess, being able to perfectly mimic any character from DR’s past (via reuse of past sprites in game) is clearly the evolution from Junko’s rapid “personality switching” from the first game.

Junko Enoshima’s personality switching is, well, really another instance of DR’s dramatized and demonized approach to writing systems. But what’s interesting is that while Junko’s is technically more realistic, Tsumugi somehow feels closer to how it “feels” to have different alters in the body.

Junko only had enough budget to have one sprite per “personality type”, meaning what she swapped to was often fairly one note.

Tsumugi, on the other hand, had every sprite from every character from the past games. This makes whatever she swaps to have a more dynamic presence, like it could be a living, breathing person on some level.

Also, most times, alters imagine themselves as visually different from how the host body is. So each character being visually distinct kind of... feels cathartic, almost? (Especially when you consider fictives, alters that form through imagery/personality/story of a fictional character!)

2nd. Her plainness emphasis.

So, something about DID/OSDD is many systems have a sort of “day to day” alter. Some people call them a core alter but we’re unsure about that rn.

To us, our simple alter is Jackeline, a go-with-the-flow girl who doesn’t feel too strongly emotionally about things. In other words... a little plain.

Tsumugi hiding her identity as the mastermind, mixing with her emphasis on “plainness” felt relatable to our situation.

At the time we were still struggling to be fully out on our trans gay identity. This generic front facing image of us hiding so much underneath while we were surrounded by people felt like a similar situation.

It’s a mask, but a mask that can’t be removed. Cause maybe it wasn’t fully a mask at all.

3. She’s the soulless villain.

Weird thing to say, huh? Normally you wouldn’t want an antagonist as plural rep.

But at the time... we felt like we were lying to everyone. We would ‘put on these characters’ but supposedly not really feel emotions, because we would always revert back to a less emotional self.

Heck, we didn’t even think we had real emotions!

And Tsumugi is a character utterly defined by a soul crushing emptiness. She apparently hardly feels anything in the moment to moment, and uses frequent escapism through fiction to feel anything. All this at the expense of others around her.

It’s odd to say, but Tsumugi being such a bad person made it weirdly easier to connect to for someone like us. We had no understanding of our mind at the time, so we just assumed our emotional shifting was somehow purposeful, manipulative in nature.

We obviously wouldn’t want everyone to go through this, but her role weirdly spoke to us. (Maybe it’s because of how often DID/OSDD is portrayed)

4. The game unnecessarily demonizes her.

Tsumugi’s a bad person. There’s no denying that.

But... she isn’t the actual antagonist of drv3, and the game doesn’t seem to realize this?

The end of drv3 reveals this whole fucked up murder game was a live action reality show. With god knows how many people watching.

Now if you’re someone like us, you’ll be aware that the reality tv show situation is heavily controlled by higherups, capitalistic interests, edited and manipulated in post, etc. etc. etc.

This type of genre is inherently designed to keep people watching.

And then the game blames... the audience. Whom Tsumugi is representing as a figurehead, essentially. As in the fans are the reason why this is evil.

This is... somewhat baffling. The game acknowledges that a company is behind designing, funding, broadcasting, hosting, hiring, etc. these things, and making it so that the actors actually die? Yet they’re just glossed over? They... MAKE the content here?

Tsumugi feels like a cog in a greater, blood churning machine. And she’s the standin villain here?

It feels like the game is pushing Tsumugi into the way of the bullet labeled “Maybe the people making this is the reason this sucks” by pretending that the fans somehow are the ones creating the content? (When drv3 actively does false advertise to pretend it has a female protag this is kinda laughable)

THE POINT IS she’s the villain, but she’s so clearly handled incorrectly, or possibly even just a manipulated fangirl getting scapegoated, that it’s easy to start seeing her in a slightly, if not “fuck canon”, sympathetic light.

And... many systems in media also fall under this category. Demonized for uncontrollable aspects before real thought is put in.

If she was hands down no redeeming qualities whatsoever obviously in the wrong in every way it would be harder to relate to her.

But the demonization somehow adds to her interest as a person.

And what kind of people tend to get unnecessarily demonized.

5. Tsumugi’s not straight. Like really not straight. And possibly not cis too.

Man we don’t even know what’s going on with Tsumugi and Kaede in the first chapter. Like what was up with that.

Kaede’s checking Tsumugi out every 10 seconds and Tsumugi’s literally from “Lily Academy”. What is going on in that first chapter??? Did she WANT that? Kaede outright called her hot numerous times and she never objected!

She told Kaede this whole situation is the kind people would fall in love under, and her voiceclip that plays is “Do you wanna try!” That’s so. Much.

And they NEVER elaborate on this? Despite how much Tsumugi plays a role in Kaede’s story it’s like, poof! never happened! What are you talking about audience?

The game seems to afraid to own up to the identity they coded her with?

Not only that but, her voice mannerisms in the english dub make it sound like she’s putting on a high pitched, airy falsetto.

It’s meant to convey she’s putting on a persona, but you know what that sounds like to a trans person? Someone with a lack of proper voice training!

With her cosplaying Tsumugi seems also perfectly comfortable portraying herself as multiple men! However we interpret this she’s gender nonconforming in SOME way?

Speaking of.

6. She shares her VA with Chihiro.

So. Awkward moment. Chihiro Fujisaki is the character that made us realize we’re a trans woman.

We didn’t realize it at the time but that... kind of flipped another switch in us.

Our first real identifiable alter is Cherish, a very effeminate, polite, meek alter. She... used to go by Chihiro. It was natural for Cherish to be sweet and soft spoken, that’s what she felt like. She feels she was wrong for using the name at all now, but that is what happened.

For a time being it felt like it was just Jackeline, our more plain alter, and Cherish, our sweetheart alter.

So kind of like plain Tsumugi... and the other character voiced by Tsumugi’s VA.

And... the thing that cracked our egg... was being pointed out that at one point we wanted to cosplay Chihiro.

So Tsumugi having the exact same VA as Chihiro made us really fascinated with her. Her cosplaing Chihiro so much more. And even moreso headcanon material for any trans headcanon for her.

Tsumugi seeming to have this instinctual desire to want to change into different fictional characters was an experience we had shared. And honestly for a system who has quite a number of fictives... it’s pretty relatable, oddly enough.

7. She’s a huge geek.

Perhaps this is our bias speaking, but experience from trans women and plural communities shows that a lot of them... are kind of huge nerds.

That’s not a bad thing, of course. But tending to care more for animation, being geeky, hyperfixating on things, etc. etc. are kind of qualities that tend to resonate with these groups.

Tsumugi desiring escapism is... yeah, it’s relatable. And for someone in a group that often faces struggles irl, even moreso.

Combining with her connection to multiple aspects of queer identity, she kind of fits in a lot. We can’t say she’s doing any of this healthily, but we at least understood it.

8.

This is actually the most important one.

Tsumugi is canonically defined by her lack of memory loss. She’s the only character where this is explicit.

Followers of us would probably assume that Uendo Toneido was our breaking point on plurality, based on the near 80,000 words we’ve written for them.

They got very, very close, but not close enough. And it’s specifically because of their memory loss.

We almost realized we were like Uendo, but we hesitated. “No, that would be insulting to people with actual DID”.

We didn’t know what OSDD was at the time. No media really talks or discusses this condition genuinely.

Tsumugi was the moment it was impossible to deny anymore.

Her being fully aware and coherent as she swaps between characters and even her own personal personas was the breaking point for us.

In a bizarre sense, she’s like the person who opens the pickle jar after getting loosened up by another beforehand.

But… she’s still the one that broke the dam.

Final word:

Tsumugi Shirogane is... odd. She’s an odd character that possibly singlehandedly exploded the budget of DRV3 by making them rehire all the past VA’s.

She’s a character that’s ultimately an enigma, and probably will never be fully explained. Honestly because we don’t think the creators fully got her either.

But this demented, supposedly evil girl made one trans woman understand her plural identity.

In one way she made one person’s life, or lives, a lot better in the long run.

Sometimes we still look at Tsumugi and see a lot of ourselves. In some way, it can kind of show the power of fictional characters. There will always be one person on Earth that relates to a character more than anyone else.

Thank you for existing Tsumugi, despite everything.

#tsumugi shirogane #did/osdd #drv3 #plurality #there's probably more we missed #like how we got a Kaede fictive and how much emphasis was put on Tsumugi pretending to try to be her #And how her cospox kind of is like how it's hard for alters to imitate one another because the brain gets confused #ALSO our fiction obsession and how that overlaps with fictives #how fiction is so powerful that it can almost create people into reality #like anyone who gets a fictive of Tsumugi is doing exactly what she wants to happen #and that's so weird to think about #...And yes we did get a Smoothie fictive eventually. But it took awhile after #the girl is so. messed up. Studies her under a microscope and becomes plural as a result.

[jbycrs]

Refer here to the post about Jonathan's transition for more details- point being I'm writing a transmasc, gay man when I write Jonathan here so there's a lot to keep in mind when considering any relations he has(sexual or romantic) but I don't feel like he'd be completely isolated from those things... Tldr; he is queer is two ways that were extremely difficult to explore in the 80s especially, but he does have some history.  That being one fling he thought was romantic that...wasn't that for the other guy, a few sketchy hookups with older men between ages 15-17(which may be altered or ignored for specific shipping threads depending on the timeline), and he has been the victim of hate-crimes after revealing to potential hookups that he was in fact trans. The overall takeaway being that he is internally desperate for comfort, for affection, for affirmation of his identity, and he is - or at least has been - willing to take very poor treatment in order to feel those things.  Please read all of the tags on the post for your own comfort before continuing...

He can't do anything in Hawkins, obviously.  Gossip could travel(regardless of most people in a town like that, in that time, being closeted, he worked hard to make sure none of his peers knew/remembered he was trans to begin with so he couldn't risk it for even more reasons than the average queer man) and not only could that put him in danger even more so than he already was on a daily basis as just an outcast in this time period but it would likely come back onto his mom and brother so really- Jonathan can't risk anything. He drives out of town for it, either after work or while claiming to have picked up an extra shift so that Joyce wouldn't think anything of it.  He drives out a ways to find a gay bar where he wouldn't be carded - at least not at the door - and for the majority of the time...  He usually just enjoys any attention he gets via drinks bought for him or dances with the other men.  Simple things. His first sexual experience was... Risky? Bad? Both, in retrospect... He's 15 or 16, the other guy is... Older.  At least mid-twenties but probably older than that.  He didn't ask though; the guy bought him a few drinks, danced with him a little, talked to him for a bit, and when he was asked if he wanted to go somewhere else, he agreed...  As soon as they were outside of the bar, walking to the car, Jonathan explained that he was trans.  His heart was racing, wondering if he was about to be attacked for "lying" but he wasn’t.  The guy didn't necessarily understand what that was but he wasn't put off by the different genitalia.  He was engaged to a woman so he was “familiar with the equipment" and Jonathan took that as good enough.  They went to a motel and he considers himself lucky that the worst part of it was how rough it was.  His reasoning is that he didn't protest, he didn't even complain, he just... Took it.  So he wasn't... Hurt... Technically.  Jonathan clings to that fact as a comfort and/or justification. The next time he actually sleeps with someone the other guy look to be around his age but buys them both drinks and so he assumes he's either got a fake ID or is really 21 or over, but he's closer to Jonathan's age group so he feels safer.  And it starts the same; he lets what happens in the bar stay in the bar and when they're leaving is when he discloses his trans-status.  Once again he's relieved that nothing bad happens as a response.  In fact the whole experience is so much nicer he asks afterwards if the other guy - Simon - would ever want to talk again with the disclaimer that he isn't even expecting a yes... But he gets a yes.  He gets Simon’s number as well as the rules/ideal times to call so that neither of them get in any trouble. This becomes a fling where they’d meet at the same bar, usually hookup not too long after in the backseat of one of their cars or sometimes in a motel again, and then they’d wait to arrange something else. Jonathan is pretty smitten; he’s hung up on the guy, on his appearance, his body-language, the nice things he says and does and he thinks that maybe this could be something... They even meet quickly after the events of season 1 when on one hand Jonathan is incredibly relieved to have Will back but is also still incredibly vulnerable and reeling from the emotional toll the whole ordeal took on him.  He even feels guilty for going out after all of that... And that’s their second-to-last meeting.  The next time is when he asks Simon if he was interested in more.  It’s the first time he asks about his home-life, if he had a girlfriend or other relationship or even just a beard- and Simon shuts him down.  Hard.  It’s been a few months of one-off encounters at this point that included enough small-talk that he thought he was really getting to know this guy, he was really trusting this guy, and then it turns out that it’s still nothing but sex to Simon.  Jonathan’s crushed, understandably, and it’s in that conversation they agree it’s best to never speak again.  Jonathan throws away the note with his number on it when he gets home.

The next two times he tries to leave with someone, he is in fact attacked for the so-called lie he’s told by simply being trans.  He’s 16 going on 17, both incidents are a month or two apart, the first one being primarily a verbal assault where he fled before things escalated further, the second being not only verbal but physical as well where he was beaten in the parking lot. He calls it quits for a while after the second time...

Around 17 going on 18, around season 3 events I suppose(before or after is vague/undecided), Jonathan goes back out to the bar.  During this time he manages one or two more hookups with strange, older men, that he knows mean nothing and expects nothing out of other than brief gratification in the simple fact he can get attention from queer men at all without any sugeries in sight.  It’s nice to him to be seen as male in any form... And especially when he’s been through so much he just wants some kind of relief or comfort- which is also what the sex is for.  Being some older man’s pretty boy is soothing in a few ways I hope are obvious at this point...  None of it are good for his psyche, not really, but at the time feel at the very least acceptable, if nothing else.

All of this, of course, is mostly backstory but the final note could be disregarded if there is a ship ongoing at that point in the timeline in those individual threads(as this is a mutli-ship blog).

#tw: s/a #tw: hate-crime #[about; i wanna have control]

[alivehouse]

just wondering why you dislike Neil gaiman so much?? not trying to criticize or defend him, just curious

gghhhhh

(this is all just going to be based on good omens related stuff bc i havent really willingly interacted with any other work of his since i was like 12 he is not a great writer imo)

ok before i get into why specifically the way he uses his socials annoys me so much i just want to mention that good omens (tv show) has a serious problem with treating its characters of color poorly/as disposable (which this post goes into) and as far as i know neil has never so much as acknowledged this let alone apologize for it so theres that

but as for why i hate his social media presence specifically so much i just think the way he interacts with his fanbase is annoying & i dont want to use the term 'gaslighting' for something this stupid but i dont even know how else to describe his habit of like. pretending he wrote aziraphale and crowley in a relationship for the sake of clout?

^ he used to regularly regularly say condescending no homo shit like this but then when he realized he could get attention for pretending he wrote queer characters he pulled a 180 and started going 'ohhhh i DID write them in a relationship actually and also trans and also nonbinary i cant believe you didnt GET it just because its SUBTLE im sorry half assed vaguely subtextual scene #5 was not enough for you stupid fa- i mean people'

and he does this shit constantlyyyy and gets no flack for it. in fact a lot of his fanbase encourages it even bc were still stuck on begging for word of god scraps from rich straight men instead of engaging with work made by actual queer people i guess. (ALSO THIS TWEET SPECIFICALLY IS REALLY FUNNY bc like a month later he lied about there being a secret handholding scene in the show to send people on a wild goose chase zooming in on shit trying to find anything just to give him more streams i guess i dont know i think it was a stupid thing to even fall for honestly but it still strikes me as kind of cruel)

i mentioned this in tags before & idk if he still does this but he used to go look up his own name on here to find people talking negatively about him so he could reblog it and get them dogpiled which is why you see people talking negatively about him calling him 'neilman' so much instead of his actual searchable name. literal full grown man picking fights with random people on here bc he knows hell win since hes a famous author and will get backed up no matter what

and ok this is edging into fandom circlejerking (i think hes only said this one a few times but his fanbase brings it up constantly to shield him from any criticisms) so i wont go into this as much as i could but theres this Thing hell do where he says they cant be gay bc they technically arent men bc they arent humans (based on a bit in the book where they feel the need to specify that aziraphale is NOT ACTUALLY GAY after continuously subjecting him to homophobic language/aggression) and people will bend over backwards trying to interpret this as meaning they are canon nonbinary and Epic Trans Rep and hell vaguely encourage this instead of like acknowledging the extended man-in-a-dress evil nanny bit in the show and pointing out that it was fucked up? & honestly the whole undertone of that is like 'this character might go out of their way to look like and dress like and act like and refer to himself as a man but he cant REALLY be a man because he wasnt Created That Way' like how the fuck am i supposed to be treating this as a trans positive read of the situation lmao. not to mention the 'inhuman = nonbinary,' 'nonbinary = CANT be gay!!! there are no gay nonbinary people i guess' legwork going on here going on here i dont know its a whole mess

PLUS i just think its funny that hes said making characters gay would be disrespectful to his deceased cowriter but pulling an entire second out of his ass for that sweet amazon money apparently isnt lmao

and to finish this off just for fun heres him at the start of the pandemic when there was a crazy high rising death toll making it about his fucking book, + him answering another ask in response to that AFTER he had deleted the original post, to make the person asking him look like they were attacking him for no reason:

[gatesofember]

hi! you can totally ignore this if you don't want to address questions like these or if it'll come into light in the fic or something - but how would Nico take to being referred to with they/them pronouns? because it's technically misgendering him I suppose?

I don't know if that's dumb haha, I'm just trying out "he/they" myself and it's a lot - but really, even if it is dumb I'd like you to thank you for writing trans characters like this!! It feels fucking great

Okay thank you BYEEEE (seriously, you can totally ignore this)!!

It’s ok you can ask! I expected this question to come up.

Nico considered they/them pronouns and tried that out for a while several years ago. He didn’t mind it and he really wouldn’t mind if people used they/them pronouns for him (or any other pronouns for that matter) so I don’t think he’d see it as misgendering him. He’d probably just go “hm, that’s interesting.” Really the reason he exclusively uses he/him pronouns is because other pronouns don’t feel any better, and if he’s going to go through the effort of changing pronouns and telling everyone and getting used to the change, then those pronouns had better feel really good. (I used to have a similar thought process about my pronouns. “I really like when people call me ‘they’ but I don’t like it enough to go through the effort of doing anything about it.” Then uh…turned out I was lying to myself. But Nico’s not!)

Part of my decision to make Nico keep using he/him pronouns was because autistic people tend to find a lot of comfort in routine and dislike change, so if Nico didn’t like one set of pronouns more than another, he wouldn’t see a reason to put himself through an uncomfortable process. Whether or not this is actually autism-related I don’t know, but it is a connection I thought about. Ofc lots of autistic people change pronouns (me!!!) or don’t have much difficulty getting used to new pronouns (probably Will) and I’m sure allistic people can have a tough time with the change too.

Also! I think Nico’s use of sign language might be kind of formative in his perception of pronouns because pronouns aren’t gendered in sign language. To Nico, “he” is just a verbal accompaniment to the same sign that he’d use for everyone else. He knows that it implies masculinity to other people (for instance, to Will, and it’s very important to Will) but to Nico, it’s just a word. He and Will have had conversations about this before and they understand that each other’s definitions of he/him/his are very different, but they respect each other’s definitions and use them when they refer to each other. When Will calls Nico “he,” he means it without implications of gender. When Nico calls Will “he,” he means it with the implication of masculinity.

#anon #asks #clichecore au

[cartoon-buffoon]

Decided to write a bio thing because I'm bored + I wanna establish some boundaries here so uhh- here's some stuff about me Cartoon Buffoon aswell as other things if you wanna know!

Who am I?

Hello! I'm Cartoon Buffoon and I write stuff and like cartoons, there's a chance you've could of read my stuff if you read one shots on AO3 that feature Oswald The Lucky Rabbit since I have a tendency to write fluffy content relating to him, and angst on occasion (some of my stories are 18+ tho yet more on that later). I'm simply a buffoon for cartoons is all. I love old animation from the 1920s-60s yet I also do indulge in more modern stuff as well.

Identity

I'm bisexual🩷💜💙(leaning towards men) and aromantic 💚🤍🖤.

My gender is uhh... Complicated? I don't know what I am although I currently identify as gender fluid although I do refer to myself as trans as well🏳️‍⚧️.

Pronouns are He/She/They/anything else really! Toon is usually the nickname I'm most comfortable with online.

One last thing I should note about myself is my horrid mental health and terrible anxiety, I do struggle with emotions and such so I have a tendency to be vulgar and "edgy" although I always try to be polite to anyone I meet. I suffer from a cataclysm of other issues mentally as well although I still try to be nice and funny to make up for this.

Things I'm into/fandoms I'm in.

My interests lie in old cartoons however I do dabble in other stuff, my interest and hyperfixations go in the following order:

—In The Dark comics/Skitzo the 1920s killer bear

—Oswald the lucky rabbit

—Felix the cat

—Rubberhose animation in general

—the furry fandom

—Trevor Henderson's creations

—FNAF

—FNF/Newgrounds and it's culture in general

—Sonic The Hedgehog

and some other stuff although I can't really think of more currently yet those are my TOP interests

Hobbies

Although I'm horrible at all these things I do enjoy the following activities

—Writing fanfiction

—Drawing

—collecting plushies

—over analyzing media

DNI LIST

Gonna make a DNI list because I don't wanna interact with weirdos. Pretty basic list as well, if you're any of the following please kindly leave me alone.

—pr*shippers

—Z**philes, p*dophiles, anything of the sorts

—people who promote hate speech like N*zis, homophobic people, transphobic people, anybody who in general hates anybody for their sexuality gender orientation, race, etc (I'm apart of the LGBTQ+ community and I'm not white at all, this shouldn't have to be said that I don't wanna interact with someone who hates me)

Final Things

I suffer from a lot of stuff as such I use fiction to cope, quite a few of my writings are a bit self indulgent in the angst sad to say. One such thing I suffer from is hypersexuality and I do write 18+ fanfiction involving my favorite characters to cope (I write smut, to put it bluntly) although I do try to be a genuine writer and a few of my works demonstrate some sort of semblance of competency. For obvious reasons I'm not gonna talk about my non-respectable NSFW works on here although they do exist on my AO3 and I feel like I should at least acknowledge them. In my writings I also like to capture the magic of old cartoons in their humor so if you read my stuff you'll notice a trend of me trying to write or mimic rubberhose gags through words and detail.

I'm also a multishipper and a giant simp for fictional cartoon characters and technical self-shipper. I'm making note of this as some people are uncomfortable with this for some reason? The characters I simp for also align with my interest in rubberhose characters like: Skitzo the 1920s Killer Bear, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, Felix the Cat, The Cartoon Cat, The Cartoon Dog. Anything that's black and white and has that asthetic is something I'm interested in, and each of my interest holds a character I'm attracted to like FNF/newgrounds having the Tankmen, or Super Sonic from Fleetway's run of Sonic comics.

The ships I like are usually gay in nature but I do like straight ships too, I'm also a big fan of crack ships aka characters that wouldn't logically be together although I look at canon and say "nuh-uh, I can make this cute". I ship Oswald with any and nearly every toon (expect for Mickey for obvious reasons) and I'm the proud captain of the SkitWald ship aka Skitzo the killer bear and Oswald.

To sum myself up: I'm mainly a lover of the obscure or forgotten while trying to create works or content to bring attention to my favorite things while also just trying to keep myself together physically and mentally.