#though again a lot of these rely largely on stereotype.... so . but it's what's in the popcultural zeitgeist for ocd 😕 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

qqueenofhades · 3 years

Note

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

#long post #anonymous #ask

461 notes · View notes

ex-terf-anti-terf · 3 years

Note

i want to ask some genuine questions if that’s okay bc I’ve never actually encountered an actual ex-rf who was part of the community but changed their mind

1. what is your definition of ‘gender’, if you don’t understand the radfem definition, then what do you define gender as?

2. what does being non-binary mean to you? do you not think it just traps you into another binary system of being either binary or non-binary?

3. what is your response to the “genital preference” narrative that is encouraging homosexuals to “examine their genital preference”… and how is it any difference to homophobic conversion therapy rhetoric?

again this is all completely genuine, i really do want to engage in a proper conversation about this and hear your side!

Well I do answer similar questions to these in this post, but I can elaborate on some stuff I didn't say there as well!

1. Reading the definition that you gave in the notes of this post, I agree with parts and disagree with others. For me, gender is an umbrella containing gender roles, stereotypes, norms, identity, and expression, as well as both sex-based and gender-based oppressions. All of these things look different in different cultures and in different individuals. (And I can make a different post defining each of those things at some point but I'm really tired and dissociated right now so I can't at the moment, I'm sorry.)

None of these things is inherently harmful, but many of them are used in harmful ways; by the patriarchy, by trans people, and by those who oppose trans people. The important thing to note there, though, is that each of these groups weaponizes different elements of gender.

By which I mean the patriarchy, especially the main agents of the patriarchy cis men, largely push gender roles and gender norms onto others, particularly cis women. Trans people largely rely on gender stereotypes, and gender criticals attack gender identity and gender expression.

ALL of these actions are harmful, but that doesn't make any of those individual elements inherently harmful. This is something I talk about a lot in regards to fiction. If a CC creates a work of fiction, and then a person uses that work of fiction to hurt another person, that CC is not at fault for that harm. They were creating art, which everyone in the world has a right to do. The blame for the harm that was caused lies solely on the person who manipulated that piece of art.

But I'm a little off-track, sorry. The point is, gender is a lot of things, and it is different for each person experiencing it. It can be influenced by a number of other things, like neurotype, sex, orientation and attraction, race, ethnicity, and culture. And there's not really one definition that's going to fit everyone's experiences, the same way there isn't really one definition of attraction that fits everyone's experiences.

(A sidenote, but I've noticed many trans people don't particularly care about the gender aspect in and of itself, but more about how it affects their relationship to the world, especially in regards to language.)

2. I do not! This is because nonbinary doesn't mean 'not attached to either end of the binary'. In fact, it just means 'not fully attached to one end of the binary'. (The word for the first one is 'abinary', which is a subset of nonbinary.) So I am a female nonbinary woman. (I'm also genderqueer but that has a little more to do with my sexuality than my gender.)

To answer what nonbinary identity means to me, I'm gonna draw from the post I linked at the very beginning of this response.

My lesbian identity has significantly impacted my understanding of my gender. I feel more closely tied to the idea of being a lesbian than I do to any gendered term, woman or man or otherwise.

My dysphoria related to my breasts has recently spiked in intensity, and I've found that certain things are just more comfortable for me. I find womanhood to be quite welcoming and positive, and I would not separate myself wholly from it, but I have an experience of myself as something entirely other, as well.

If I could choose any body for myself, it would be entirely devoid of sex organs or secondary sex characteristics. But I would still view myself as a woman, because the connections I've made to women have shaped my understanding of myself in a very particular way.

I've seen many women (particularly radfems/GCs) talk about womanhood as if it is inherently an oppressive, miserable thing and all women hate being women. I've never felt that. And maybe that's because I don't feel like I'm just a woman, or maybe it's something else. Who knows.

I guess the best way I can describe being nonbinary is through my wants. I want to be a masculine woman and a pretty boy and a genderless cryptid Eldritch entity of unknown intent. It's about rejecting the dichotomy of man vs woman entirely and saying 'I'm just going to be what I am, and I'll call myself whatever I want to call myself, and I don't have to deal with people who won't respect me.'

Some people on both sides like to say "gender is not a feeling!" (And depending on which side they're on, they mean this in one of two very different ways.) But I disagree. Especially for trans people, gender is at least partially about feelings. We feel dysphoria. We feel euphoria. We feel connected to certain words and less connected to others. Those are all feelings.

I would say that "man" and "woman" aren't feelings, but that's because ultimately, they're just words. They are labels that were created to ascribe social categories to differences in biology, and they don't carry any real significance.

3. I'm really, really glad you asked this, because I've been meaning to talk about this anyway. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about 'genital preferences'.

First of all, people with genital preferences are not inherently transphobic. Second of all, it is blatantly homophobic to tell a person that they cannot identify as gay if they are ever attracted to someone with different genitals from the ones that they were born with. To attempt to dictate another person's LGB identity is homophobia, full stop. I won't debate this.

I honestly think both sides fuck this up a lot, I'm gonna be honest. Trans people often take it too far, and gender crits are often homophobic about it.

I often see gender criticals (in response to, say, a cis gay man dating a trans man) say that the gay person is actually bisexual, or that they shouldn't call themself gay. And I've never been okay with that, even when I was deep in radfem circles. It was one of the big turn-offs for me, actually. This is because, in my mind, labels don't exist to dictate our experiences; it's the other way around. We take labels on because they describe our experiences. So if your label is prescriptive, rather than descriptive, and you are weaponizing that against other same-sex or same-gender attracted people, I don't trust you.

(Not you specifically, harringtn, just the general 'you'.)

I also often see trans people say "if you won't date a trans person who identifies with the gender you're attracted to, you're a transphobe" and that never sits right with me either. Recently, this has been changing a bit, but a while back when I was looking in all the wrong places, I saw this constantly, and it definitely pushed me into TERFdom.

There's a middle ground there, and I think it's this; it is entirely okay and understandable to be repulsed by a certain set of genitals, especially if one is a victim of sexual assault or abuse. I think it's important to identify the reason for that preference or repulsion, doubly so if it's a result of trauma so that one can heal from the traumatic event/s, but it doesn't necessarily have to be changed.

When trans people say 'examine your genital preference' I tend to agree with the sentiment but not the wording. The wording tends to sound like 'check your privilege' which is just... not applicable. The ability to choose who one engages with sexually is not a privilege, it's a fundamental human right. If the reasoning behind it is bigoted, then the bigotry needs to be addressed, but there is more often than not no bigotry present. I've met plenty of lesbians who were penis-repulsed and fully trans-positive.

So my tl;dr on that is I think very few people approach it from the right angle and there's a lovely gray area between trans folks' approach and TERFs' approach.

Anyway, I hope that answers your questions, this is super long now I'm sorry ;-; Feel free to send another ask if you have more!

#nessa.txt #ask #harringtn #feminism #lesbian #trans #nonbinary

26 notes · View notes

samdotdocx · 3 years

Text

A very long-winded essay about why I love Night in the Woods and The Ramayana makes me Big Mad ft. Lets Talk About Mental Illness™

So I was in this class called 'The Ecology of Language". Excellent class, 10/10 would recommend - and especially relevant in the Indian context in particular, but that's a topic for another day.

One of the things we talked about was the concept of 'relatibality' in media, which, I'm sure we can all agree is a large component of contemporary character or story-line development. Considering the context of modern readers, what that sometimes ends up looking like (in our society that is built on constantly being told we are lacking, and the subsequent need to satisfy manufactured desires), is some wonderfully nuanced characters in stories stories that are three-dimensional, well rounded, and well developed and written. It's pretty great. And sometimes, what that means is that we have excellent characters that don't conform to the standard 'protagonist' stereotype. They might not even be 'good' (this is NOT a villain-apologist post). In fact, they might be complete idiots. They might be the people in stories who make all the wrong choices.

One such relatable character is Mae, and it's because she's an unmitigated train-wreck.

Anyone who knows the game probably knows what I'm talking about when I say the illustration style and character designs are gorgeous. Anyone who's ever dissociated probably knows what I'm talking about when I say that illustration style and character design were excellently used to create the sort of subliminal, surreal state of Mae's mind. And as you play the game, you see how that state of mind plays with the other characters, and - spoiler - it isn't great.

This is the first of the relatable aspects of Mae’s character; there are people around her who love her and are worried about her, but at the same time, are angry and irritated about her behaviour. At what point does it become too much to ask of those around you to forgive all your continuous and repetitive mistakes? Even if you have a good reason for it, mental illness is not an excuse for being exploitative, even if it is unintentional. Mae is not trying to hurt the people around her, but she constantly needs emotional labour from them – it’s exhausting, and people’s patience is going to run out eventually, as is their right.

Another aspect of this behaviour is the lack of reciprocity, an example of this being when Bea’s mother died of cancer – and Mae didn’t even notice.

There are several instances of Mae’s thoughtless behaviour throughout the game; she gets completely wasted and makes a scene at the party, gets jealous of of Greg and Angus because they’re leaving the town without her, and ends up destroying the radiator Bea was supposed to fix, getting her in trouble.

The thing is though, that Mae is given the opportunity to fix her mistakes.

A large part of relatability is the want so see yourself in a character. Mae is relatable to me because there are several circumstances and events in our lives that match up, but more than that; the game is an interactive visualization of her healing process. Her nine steps, if you will. She is given a second chance – and that chance is hard won, particularly in the context of the game.

Mae talks about feeling like she’s falling behind, of knowing that she is, in a way, wasting an opportunity that was a privilege in the first place, especially considering her family’s financial situation – but at the same time, being literally unable to help herself. And the aspects of the gameplay that hint at the supernatural elements of the story possibly being a figment of Mae’s imagination – well. All us depressed losers know what it's like to not be able to trust your own judgement and point of view. She talks about why she dropped out of college, and her description of the dissociation, and the mental and emotional deadening that it causes is spot on and so well represented.

It underscores the point that the logical brain knows that mental illness is an illness like any other – but the emotional brain doesn’t care.

The game does a brilliant job of laying bare the realities of middle class life, and makes painfully clear the fact that, at that level, it doesn’t matter how difficult things are for you. The world isn’t going to wait for you to get back on your feet.

Mae’s mental state and the limitations it imposes on her cultivates a state of extreme frustration. Again, relatable. It’s an understated aspect of illness of any kind; the anger at yourself, and how that anger carries over into a lot of things in your day to day life. After a point, it becomes a habit. Mae does this too; she's belligerent, and instigative, and unrepentant of consequences, because anger blinds you.

It's not how things will always be. I have the privilege of hindsight, so I can say that with authority. But, this isn’t the kind of thing that ever fully leaves you, either. If you break a kneecap, it’s going to bother you for the rest of your life, and similarly, mental illness has a ‘no return, no refund’ policy. So you grow up, and you try to adapt those habits and impulses into a more positive context. Recycling, right? Maybe you set your sights on things that actually deserve your anger, and you go from there. You find people who, for their own reasons, perhaps or perhaps not related to your own, are angry.

And you don’t understand the people who are not.

A large part of the anger and frustration surrounding mental illness is due to the stigma surrounding it. It’s frustrating to be so powerless and dependent, but this is exacerbated by the attitude of ‘it can’t be that bad’, which makes it so difficult to reach out, to be able to say, ‘I need a break’ – and actually get one. This is an attitude that carries over to a lot of other issues as well, and the worst part is – we are surrounded by people who are okay with it, who believe in and support that mentality.

The myth of Sita, for example. She is a strong female figure in Indian mythology, who overcomes her circumstances to live a ‘good’ life, and for all intents and purposes, is a hell of a role model.

But that’s the thing; her life wasn’t good, was it? She was supposed be a goddess reincarnated, she should have been powerful, and respected, but instead she is reduced to ‘wife’ – and everyone today is fine with it.

I respect her immensely for the choices she made; marrying for love was her choice, going into exile with her husband was her choice. She was the paragon of virtue, of 'wifeliness', of kindness – she chose her husband over everyone and everything else, including herself, as was expected of her. But yet – she couldn't win his trust or respect. It should not even have needed to be won.

It’s commendable the way she takes it all in stride, but why did she? She was kidnapped and held captive for years, entirely against her will, and her husband's response to that is to force her to walk through fire to prove her ‘purity’ – and she does it. And she stays with him after, and I cannot understand the depths of her patience and forgiveness, because I would have been livid, and I want her to be so too. I’m furious for her, because Ram was not just her husband, he was also the king, and his later verdict to exile her, alone, while heavily pregnant, his readiness to condemn her based on speculation and public sentiment, was not just a verdict against her, it was against every woman in his kingdom who had ever been victimised.

Sita became a martyr to the modern feminist movement – if she could not be angry on her own behalf, we will do it for her. But at the same time, she is still relatable, because we are held to a slightly lesser degree of the same expectations. There are always going to be aspects of things that you relate to. ‘Big Mood’ culture is a strong indicator of the human ability to empathise, especially with characters that you like, or respect.

Sita’s world, I imagine, was run by the expectations her society and community had of her, and maybe she didn’t even have the liberty to be angry. Who is responsible for portraying her in passive acceptance of her fate? Is that representation reliable? Would the story have been different had it been written by a woman?

I can't remember a time when I was not angry, especially about things like this. I am always ready to fight, and I think the same goes for so many other people today, sometimes to our detriment. I cannot imagine a world where that was not at the very least an option. Not necessarily the best option, - but Sita’s world was very different to ours. Even with centuries between us, we’ve just gotten over angry and depressed women being labelled as ‘hysterical’ and subsequently being locked away. What is it like, to have to be calm and careful in response to being treated like this? This care in response may not be an overt requirement anymore – though the fact remains that society will not take you seriously if you become hysterical - but shouldn't you, at the very least, be able to rely on the support of other people in the same boat?

That is the main difference in these stories, and another main point of relatability to me; Mae, like myself, had a support system. Sita did not. Mae was selfish and demanding in so many ways, and required a lot of time and patience and healing before she was able to give back, but she got there eventually because she was able to put herself first. She fought for herself, and when she couldn’t, she had other people to fight for her. Night in the Woods represents the intersection of oppressed minorities and community with their portrayal of Mae, Greg, and Angus in particular, and the importance of community support – and, the difference between geographical community, and communities formed through camaraderie and actual unity. And so does the Ramayana - except, where was Sita’s community? Where were her sisters, or her parents, when she was abandoned in the woods, and later when she committed suicide? We are well aware, in the modern day, of the state of mind that causes people to kill themselves, and yet that is a part of the story that we never talk about. Where were her people then?

What would have happened if she had been more like Mae, and put herself first instead of bleeding herself dry for people who never respected her, and would never do the same for her?

People relate to personalities. They relate to choices, and circumstances, and habits, and it is neither a good nor a bad thing, to be relatable or not. Sita will be highly relatable to people who, like her, were governed by their circumstances, and were screwed over despite their best efforts. People who felt they couldn’t, or shouldn’t exercise their power and agency. Sita’s death was at odds with her strong personality, and so was her deference to her fate on many occasions, but there are a lot of people out there who will relate to the feeling of simply wanting things to be over. Mae on the other hand; she’s a steamroller, and she doesn’t stop. There’s a reason her character is a cat, and jokingly referred to as feral in the game. She is persistent, she is growing.

[1] In Defence of Kaikeyi and Draupadi: a Note – by Fritz Blackwellhttps://www.jstor.org/stable/23334398?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/emergency-room-wait-times-sexism/410515/

#ramayana discourse #night in the woods #sita #tw suicice #tw mental illness #mae borowski #spam-by-sam

90 notes · View notes

lunannex · 4 years

Text

Writing Latino characters

Before I get into these tips/things to avoid when portraying a character who's Latino, please keep in mind that I'm speaking for no one but myself. I'm just one voice, and there's so many other things that go into writing Latinos that I'm sure I'll forget to mention. And for anyone who might see this, please consider reblogging as these are some things that I feel like all non-Latinos should take into consideration.

—————

•Latinos aren't just from one country alone. We come from a large variety of places (ex. Puerto Rico, Cuba, Perú, Costa Rica, México, Argentina, etc.).

•Not all Latino cultures are the same!!! I cannot stress this one enough. We all have different cultures based on where we're located. This means that we all have our own traditions, national holidays, dialect, names, last names, foods, music, etc!

•To expand on the food topic more: stop associating all Latinos to tacos, burritos and nachos. And additionally, just because a character is from a certain country doesn't mean that they only eat foods that are native to that place.

•Just to clear this up real quick: Latino is NOT a race!!! Stop treating it like it is!!

•When writing a story, it's important to think beyond just the plot and story you wanna tell. You have to think about how and why you're using the characters that you are. Make sure that each character is there to serve a purpose. Representation for the sake of feeling woke and inclusive is tokenism, plain and simple.

•On that note, representation points do not count if that “representation” just means that the minorities end up dead. Or even if they're just there to be tortured or mistreated. I hope I don't have to explain why this is a shitty and racist thing to do.

•Don't rely on cultural symbols in order to sell your character. I get that you might want to emphasize the diversity and show just how inclusive you are, but you have to slow down and think, "Is this detail actually important to the character, or is it detracting their development/the plot?". Because believe it or not, while it's an important part of who we are, our personalities don't center around our cultures—shocker!

•If you feel like you're portraying something in a racist way then...you probably are. Some little details aren't obvious at first, since a lot of racism tends to be a lot more subtle than you'd think, but it's always good to double check. It's difficult to authentically tell stories with characters that exist outside of your own lived experiences. A lot of these things are easily googled and capable of being researched, but make sure that these sources are from actual Latinos because non-Latinos do not get to decide what does and doesn't count as racism to us.

•A problem that usually arises when writing characters of colour is falling into racialized stereotypes or making them one dimensional. It's an easy trick to fall into but please try your best to avoid it.

•One of the most well known Latino stereotypes is making the characters sexy, flirtatious and promiscuous. All it does is perpetuate this unrealistic perception of our already romanticized culture. This doesn't mean that your character can't flirt, but centralizing their entire personality on their sexual appeal is harmful.

•The stereotype that the majority of Latinos work as janitors, maids, and gardeners couldn’t be farther from the truth. There is nothing wrong with having these types of jobs, but they aren't the only ones that we're capable of acquiring and it drives me up a wall to see just how much it keeps getting reinforced throughout all different types of media. It's placing us in a very limited box which is extremely damaging. Latinos are capable of having all kinds of occupations, whether it’s as doctors, lawyers, actors, artists, journalists...—you name it!

•For the love of God, don't make them or their parents abusive. We've had enough of the angry Latino trope and if you're the type of person that portrays minorities as violent and aggressive for absolutely no reason whatsoever then I'll automatically assume the worst of you.

•Some other stereotypes include: the drug dealer, the immigrant, the lazy Latino, the Latin lover, the fiery Latina, etc. Just by doing a quick Google search, you'll get a large number of sources that'll inform you of all the stereotypes and tropes out there that you should do your best to avoid.

•I've noticed that a large portion of the Latinos shown in media are portrayed as though they know every single aspect about their country and that's...honestly pretty unrealistic. Many people, regardless of where they're from, mostly just have a general understanding of their country's history and that's it.

•Latinos are diverse. Afro-Latinos exist. White Latinos exist. Mixed Latinos exist. Muslim Latinos exist. Jewish Latinos exist. Plus-sized Latinos exist. Curly haired Latinos exist. LGBTQ+ Latinos exist. Disabled Latinos exist. Write about them. You shouldn't just focus on representing the types of Latinos that you and the rest of society consider "acceptable".

•Not all Latinos speak Spanish. Don't forget that Portuguese is another one of Latin America's main languages or that there are a lot of Latinos out there that don't speak either of those languages. That doesn't make them less Latino in the slightest, whatever languages they do or don't know shouldn't determine how valid their identity is.

•When writing bilingual characters, do NOT use Google Translate. We can tell when you do because it is glaringly obvious. Reach out to someone who actually speaks the language if you want dialogue to flow more naturally and accurately. And if possible, reach out to someone who shares your character's nationality since the expressions and dialect tend to be different depending on where they're from.

•Most bilingual people don't switch languages mid-sentence nor do we "forget to switch back". This is a MASSIVE pet peeve of mine. Yes, it CAN and DOES happen –mostly when we're around someone who we're very close and comfortable with– but most bilingual people tend to just speak English to non-Spanish or non-Portuguese speakers. These "language switches" tend to translate in a very awkward and stilted way when written into actual dialogue, especially when it's done by non-bilingual people.

•Language switches usually happen when someone forgets a certain word or phrase in the language they're speaking in. Ex. "No encuentro el –¿cómo se dice?– el screwdriver." (This is something that's personally done by me at least multiple times a day. And it's not the best shown example, but it gets the point across)

•Do NOT have your Latino character say something flirty/sexual to someone who doesn't understand the language they're speaking in. That counts as fetishization and it's disgusting.

•If you're writing a romantic relationship, please don't have the Latino call their significant other mami or papi. It's what we call our moms and dads respectively.

•As I mentioned before, people are far more than just their culture. So, just treat your characters with the same respect and importance as you would any other character. Minorities should be allowed to have just as many layers as white characters. Humans are complex beings, and just as you should give a white character a reasoning behind their actions and behavior, writing minorities warrants the exact same thing.

•And lastly, it's okay to mess up. All you have to do is own up, take accountability and work towards bettering yourself so you don't make the same mistake again.

#i'm not even sorry that this is as long as it is #i've been wanting to say all of this for soooo long #i'd put it under the cut but tbh i don't rlly feel like it rn lol #luna talks #writing tips #latino #i know there's some typos in there but oh well haha #hope these help at least a little :)#long post #latino representation #diversity #writing advice #important #character tips #writing resources

484 notes · View notes

the-ghost-king · 3 years

Note

Interestingly enough the fandom isn't always rational with their criticism. Take Percy and Rachel for instance. A perfectly healthy cute and functional relationship dynamic, but people really hated it because it got in the way of Percy/Annabeth.

I think it can also come down to the fact that not all situations are exactly equal if that makes sense. If you have a character dynamic in couple A, that often playfully bully of fight with eachother that's a different dynamic than relationship B, where one person has trauma resulting from bullying and the other parter behaves in roughly the same way as couple A do. In that case the behavior may be seen as inappropriate. Not that this example has anything to do with the ships at hand, but I think a long form meta examining the different paralleling issues from both relationships and their validity would be easier.

Also I haven't seen anything about about Nico/Will being called toxic. Yikes, what are people saying exactly, because I don't doubt a lot of people might be projecting unconcious bias.

Oh absolutely, I may seem young but I remember the Rachel vs Annabeth ship wars all too well... I do not want to go back 😅

The rest is under a read more though, I got a little carried away talking! Also this isn't my best post on the issue by far so please feel free to check out the tags I mention later on!

(AN: I use nblm alongside mlm in this post because some nblm individuals will consider their attraction to men as gay, or queer, while others will not and those individuals are often closely connected to mlm experiences and they also deserve to talk about their thoughts and feelings if they wish. I am aware nonbinary people are not a monolith and not all nonbinary people will categorize themselves or their attraction this way, it's up to nonbinary individuals reading this to determine where they fall on what)

As for Solangelo being toxic some of the conversations revolve around the ableist nature of the ship, this is definitely most obviously a dynamic in BoO, and it's a more than fair point about the ship I don't have anything negative to say there in the slightest!

(The above parallels with the idea that Will is introduced as a "healer character" for the "sad gay kid", which is a fair criticism as well but one that's often left rather one sided, because while that is true- if it's a way Nico likes being treated (watched closely for injuries and cared for) then it's not wrong, and in ToN Will is seen overstepping Nico's boundaries which causes a healthy argument about Will doing so and he stops, so if Nico doesn't tell Will "no" or some variation he's obviously not horribly uncomfortable with the situation, or from the way it would be interpreted alongside previous text, there's fair reason to think he likes it)

The thing with Solangelo I see often is "Nico is still processing trauma, and internalized homophobia and isn't ready for a relationship" which is a huge misunderstanding on how trauma and internalized homophobia work as a whole, because the experiences can be different for everyone. You can absolutely date someone while processing internalized homophobia, you may struggle with certain things but it is absolutely doable for some people. And trauma is such a varied thing, and it's not like he's solely relying on Will either, he is seeing Dionysus for therapy and getting the help he needs! Your life doesn't have to go on hold for therapy no matter how much trauma you are sorting through! (Not disclosing my medical history or anything but I have struggled with both things and my life didn't stop for me to deal with them, I made new friends, went on dates, etc- it is possible depending on the person so the very narrow view of "this is unhealthy" and "this is impossible" rubs me wrong when it's treated as fact over opinion, because it's an opinion).

There's also constant discussions about how fandom (in current) fetishizes both Nico and Will, which I, and other mlm and nblm have spoken our own thoughts on multiple times to be largely ignored by the biggest perpetrators of this "they're overly fetishized narrative". There's also fairly consistent discussion of how fandom treats Nico and reduces him to uwu small gay boy, which more often than not seems to mean "effeminate" rather than actually harmful stereotyping (yes queer men are allowed to be "girly" especially considering there is some canon text that could be interpreted with that meaning, if there wasn't a plausible way to determine canon that way I wouldn't care if people were going after others feminizing Nico a bit- but the issue is again, fact and feeling aren't the same and fandom seem to conflate the two rather often).

(Some of that ties into nonbinary Nico head canons which are common as of current, and that argument quickly becomes transphobic is people don't watch themselves... Even without bringing nonbinary Nico into the equation, headcanoning Nico as femme isn't bad or wrong, and to say otherwise becomes gender policing which is bad).

There's also this weird obsession with there being a "correct way" to ship mlm ships (specifically solangelo), which when considering it's not mlm or nblm saying those things, it becomes really uncomfortable. Especially because the wording of some posts is less "hey this is homophobic" and comes off more like people are more upset at seeing an mlm couple than at the fact that they're being shipped poorly.

All of this in combination with the constant, talking over of queer guys (specifically mlm and nblm) comes off really messed up, and yeah homophobic.

It's not something that can be pinned down to one specific thing but rather a series of smaller microagressions (which in sure most of are intended in good faith but are being filled with subconscious bias) that build up over time- which is why my concern is that solangelo is facing harsher criticism/different treatment that percabeth simply for being a queer ship.

I can't be 100% sure on that like I said, because that's something that is hard to gain tangible evidence for, or maybe even impossible :/

If there wasn't so many other small things going on alongside the harsher criticism of solangelo, I would honestly just ignore it... But the weird policing of "how to ship solangelo" while proclaiming it's "overly fetishized" all while speaking over a not insignificant number of mlm and nblm who have agreed with certain opinions, or taken time to write their own (+ some of the rhetoric that can be found on he blogs of people commonly expressing these opinions) is super uncomfortable and definitely homophobic... Even if they were treating the ship kind of weird, but treating the queer guys talking about it well and actually listening (because the current solangelo fandom probably has the highest proportion of queer guys in comparison to any other fandom I've been in with an mlm ship as of right now) I wouldn't be so bothered... But sadly that's not the case..

(I'd also like to note out of my posts criticizing the current conversations happening around the issue my post saying "listen to mlm voices" got a lot more notes than some of the other ones, which I can't say is specifically anything, because like solangelo perhaps being treated unfairly to percabeth, I am willing to acknowledge there might not be an issue- but it's weird how often mlm and nblm's posts on "listen to us" will be uplifted but never any actual criticism... Just a thought)

I detail things a little closer and in more detail in some of my posts tagged #fandom homophobia, #mlm fetishism, and #gender policing in fandom, it's not a full or comprehensive list (I've only really started speaking up in the last month or so), and it is largely solangelo specific. However I am always interested in listening to the voices of other queer guys about the issues and hearing out their thoughts as well (people aren't a monolith and I'm interested in trying to be as nuanced as possible!) and I acknowledge that although I am mlm and am going to be a little better at recognizing issues and calling them out (although I like every person am not perfect of course)

So yeah! That's a bit of the current ongoings, again not a full comprehensive list, and definitely not my best explanation ever but I think the point gets across well enough? Definitely check out my other tags if you're interested in more, there's also definitely more posts I need to make on some of the things I've seen (maybe not all of them so solangelo fandom specific, and maybe some of them even more solangelo fandom specific) but it's rather slow work in progress!

#asks #anon #long post

32 notes · View notes

innovativestruggles · 3 years

Text

Extra thoughts on Daisuke x Suzue (Anime and Novel)

I was prompted to write this when a friend asked me several prodding questions on Daizue’s relationship and feminism several days ago. Obviously my friend knew where to hit the right nerve LOL

So I thought about it and I’d like to share my thoughts. I don’t know whether my DaiSuzu followers are still hanging around, but if you see this, then this is for you. This post is very opinionated of course so you may not agree with what I have to say.

I took the initiative to go back and watch some of the FKBU episodes, and then top it off with the novel. As I mentioned in numerous older posts, the novel is the original and was written sometime in the 1970s. If you can read Japanese, I strongly recommend you grab a copy and read it for yourself. It goes into a lot more depth with regards to Daizue’s relationship and there is a lot more development between the two.

Novel and anime are different yet there are similarities. What I am going to write here is purely about DaiSuzu and because there are only minute differences in their interactions in both novel and anime, I will combine the two elements together. But before I do that, I want to talk a little about Suzue.

Suzue

I absolutely love Suzue’s character - in almost every single aspect. She is strong, clever, independent and defies all odds. Her personality and interests are definitely more pronounced in the anime in terms of strength and defying the odds. She does the hard yard - a mechanic, an engineer, a creator, a pilot, a spy, an intelligence operator - she is a one stop shop and she is not just a pretty face. Then we have her novel counterpart, who shares similar traits that concerns intelligence and independence. She does intelligence and spy work for Daisuke as well, and the only thing that was absent would be her ‘mechanics and gadget development role.’ Given that the book was written in the 70s by a misogynistic piece of shit, I am surprised the author gave Suzue that level of prominence.

When I saw the promotional materials and then the second episode of FKBU, I was so excited! Finally, a strong female character who has all the ‘male dominated’ traits! I was looking forward to what the anime had to offer her, considering the creators were talking about giving Suzue an ‘important’ role in the anime. And throughout the series, her character in that sense did not disappointment. She did a lot of work for Daisuke and she was the backbone of everything. She even had to rescue him at times. What an incredible woman.

In comparison, novel Suzue, although a prominent, intelligent character, still had some level of submissiveness to her that screamed ‘I need a man to save me and do things for me’ kind of way. Unsurprising of course being written by an old fashioned man in the 70s. So the anime in a sense was a breath of fresh air.

Then we see the lack of screen time. Although Suzue was just a supporting character, she was quite prominent in the novel. The anime went through all this trouble to create such an incredibly strong female character, but gave her such little screen time. Disappointment doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’m just frustrated that it is always the bloody male characters that gets a lot of screen time. I don’t give two fucks about your need for a fanservice or to appease fujos, we need more female characters who are strong, clever, independent, does not need a man to save her, is not overly sexualised and gets plenty of screen time. If it’s not one, it’s another. Can’t they just bloody do it all together? Also, have three main characters, Daisuke, Suzue and Haru ffs.

Feminism & Anime

If you trawl through my blog, there are a lot of posts about women, feminism, misogyny, toxic fandoms and a lot of het ships. Although I do absolutely love my M/M and F/F ships, there is a reason for my interest in anime het ships. I am a social worker who specialises in working with victim/survivors of family/domestic violence and sexual assault (DVSA), and complex trauma. Considering the majority of perpetrators are men, and the majority of victim/survivors are women, it is important to emphasise the need for a healthy and respectful relationship. I enjoy bringing my feminist perspective to film and fiction because they are an extension of society. Film and fiction (including anime and manga) are based on societal perceptions, and characters are still, unfortunately, heavily gendered.

The anime fandom consists of real people and if you look all over social media, people talk about the characters all the time and their thoughts on them. It comes from somewhere. So when I watch anime, and when I see a male and female character get together in a manner that is healthy and respectful, they get a standing ovation from me. In particular, is when a male character treats his female partner in a way that empowers her or if he abstains from using his male entitlement to demean her. Because in society, there is still a large proportion of men who continues to abuse women in every way possible. If fans are constantly viewing content (yes, even ‘cartoons’) where women are objectified and disrespected comparatively to men, that rigid stereotype is reinforced and ingrained.

I just want to add a note here that the LGBTQIA+ community do experience DVSA as well and this post does not disregard or invalidate them in any way. The focus of this discussion however, pertains to men, who make up the majority of perpetrators and, women, who are the majority of victim/survivors.

Daisuke and Suzue

I answered an ask sometime ago about why I ship DaiSuzu and although that has not changed, I have given a lot more thought to the reasoning behind it. The one thing I dislike about Suzue is her obsession with Daisuke, both in the novel and anime. It does take away her cool, independent like character, and submit her to the idea that she is nothing without first appeasing a man (Daisuke in this case). I don’t want to put too much dislike into her character in the anime, because we never got to see what her history was like with Daisuke. In the novel, I do see elements as to why she can be a bit obsessive, and that was most likely to do with her being ‘adopted’ and given a second chance. It was her way of showing appreciation. Yet she does have romantic feelings for Daisuke, so in essence, her character was emphasised as a typical lovestruck woman 😒

Again, she was incredibly loyal and forgiving towards Daisuke in the anime, despite his shitty attitude towards her at times. You’re probably wondering, after all that I wrote about feminism, why I would still ship DaiSuzu? In the anime, that comes down to Daisuke’s trauma. It added an extra layer of complexity. Daisuke’s standoffish, cold behaviour towards Suzue was not out of a sense of male entitlement and disrespect towards Suzue being a woman, rather, it was a manifestation of his trauma. Of course, it does not excuse his behaviour, but this is the reason why I really enjoyed watching their relationship. There was a lot of mutual trust going on (which I wrote about), covert appreciation of Suzue’s skills and abilities and Daisuke’s own way of making amends with her.

In the novel, however, Daisuke does not have a history of any traumatic experiences. His personality was a lot more animated and though he does exhibit some weird behaviour towards Suzue, he does not do it out of male privilege or misogyny. He was just dense (and an idiot).

Regardless, DaiSuzu’s relationship isn’t just as simple as black and white. There are elements of feminism that intertwines the anime and what I love a lot about Daisuke was that he never put Suzue down, felt intimidated, or tried to make her feel inadequate for being more clever and more intelligent than him. He relied on her knowledge, her skills and her expertise to guide him through his missions, because not only did he trust her with his life, he believed in her skills. He quietly allowed her to do her job without questioning her abilities or intervening.

I won’t discuss how shit the anime was and how much they shat on Suzue’s character by making her Daisuke’s relative, but like I said, I was pretty impressed with the way they turned Suzue into a strong character, and Daisuke’s perception of Suzue as a woman.

And yes, Daisuke doesn’t deserve Queen Suzue. And if you were again to ask me about Daisuke’s true feelings for Suzue? I am pretty damn certain that he loves her to death - in both novel AND anime.

#if onlyyyyyyy there was a season 2 #i doubt it though #i still want to know more about suzue #beautiful precious girl #she deserved soo much more #i'm so advocating for more good strong female characters #i still do love daisuzu #even though i don't think daisuke deserves suzue lmao #i'm just biased #and i love my suzue #she queen #daisuzu #daizue #daisuke kambe #suzue kambe #balance unlimited #fugou keiji balance: unlimited #fkbu #anime feminism

35 notes · View notes

fictionadventurer · 3 years

Text

Father Brown Reread: The Absence of Mr. Glass

The consulting-rooms of Dr Orion Hood, the eminent criminologist and specialist in certain moral disorders, lay along the sea-front at Scarborough, in a series of very large and well-lighted french windows, which showed the North Sea like one endless outer wall of blue-green marble.

I like how the first and second collections both start with a story focusing on a professional detective who’s not Father Brown.

True to form, we’ve got a color word in the first sentence. And not only that--a hypenated color word! You don’t get much more Chesterton than that.

Everything about him and his room indicated something at once rigid and restless, like that great northern sea by which (on pure principles of hygiene) he had built his home. Fate, being in a funny mood, pushed the door open and introduced into those long, strict, sea-flanked apartments one who was perhaps the most startling opposite of them and their master.

Highlighting this because “Fate, being in a funny mood” is a great phrase.

But also because I love when the stories contrast Father Brown’s clumsy, homely shabbiness with characters who look more distinguished and accomplished.

"My name is Brown. Pray excuse me. I've come about that business of the MacNabs. I have heard, you often help people out of such troubles. Pray excuse me if I am wrong."

It’s odd that Father Brown is consulting another detective on this. He doesn’t seem the sort to seek out other help. He usually just winds up on the scene of the crime by accident.

It seems like he should have the confidence to solve the mystery himself.

It seems like the more natural way to bring Hood into the story would be to have the girl approach Dr. Hood and Father Brown just to be at the house for priest reasons before figuring out the mystery.

But maybe Father Brown’s stumped from lack of evidence and doesn’t have the time for an investigation. (Actually paying attention to his priestly duties for once?)

After all, it’s only luck that the crisis that gives them an excuse to investigate the apartment happens two minutes later.

And of course, the whole point of the story is getting this Holmes detective to the same crime scene as Father Brown to contrast their methods, so it doesn’t much matter how he gets there.

And there is a lot of fun in seeing shabby little Father Brown in this professional detective’s immaculate study.

"Oh, this is of the greatest importance," broke in the little man called Brown. "Why, her mother won't let them get engaged." And he leaned back in his chair in radiant rationality.

It’s not a full-fledged Father Brown story unless the mystery is centered on a romance, is it?

A stock Chesterton exchange: foolish-looking character says simple, silly-sounding statement as if it’s the most sensible thing in the world, before being forced to elaborate by a confused listener.

This story gives us Father Brown at his most silly-seeming. Here he’s not just unassuming and sheltered; he seems like one of Chesterton’s holy fools. He hasn’t looked this simple-minded since “The Blue Cross”

"Mr Brown," he said gravely, "it is quite fourteen and a half years since I was personally asked to test a personal problem: then it was the case of an attempt to poison the French President at a Lord Mayor's Banquet. It is now, I understand, a question of whether some friend of yours called Maggie is a suitable fiancee for some friend of hers called Todhunter. Well, Mr Brown, I am a sportsman. I will take it on. I will give the MacNab family my best advice, as good as I gave the French Republic and the King of England--no, better: fourteen years better. I have nothing else to do this afternoon. Tell me your story."

Sure, he’s a condescending ass, but I can’t help liking this guy. He’s got a good heart and a good sense of humor.

I kind of wish he’d have showed up in at least one or two other stories (preferably with a better end than Valentine).

The little clergyman called Brown thanked him with unquestionable warmth, but still with a queer kind of simplicity. It was rather as if he were thanking a stranger in a smoking-room for some trouble in passing the matches, than as if he were (as he was) practically thanking the Curator of Kew Gardens for coming with him into a field to find a four-leaved clover.

I like this metaphor very much.

Brown is still very, very much the simple little curate of “The Blue Cross”. But with the bumpkin traits turned up to eleven.

I’m very curious about Dr. Hood’s past cases, and how he achieved such renown.

"I told you my name was Brown; well, that's the fact, and I'm the priest of the little Catholic Church I dare say you've seen beyond those straggly streets, where the town ends towards the north.

Yet another parish! How many is this? This seems like the most distant, rural parish that Father Brown has yet had.

And Father Brown’s actually doing some work at it!

He seems to have quite a pocketful of money, but nobody knows what his trade is. Mrs MacNab, therefore (being of a pessimistic turn), is quite sure it is something dreadful, and probably connected with dynamite. The dynamite must be of a shy and noiseless sort, for the poor fellow only shuts himself up for several hours of the day and studies something behind a locked door. He declares his privacy is temporary and justified, and promises to explain before the wedding.

Doesn’t the landlady have a key to the door of her own lodger? Can’t she just demand to look?

British people, I tell you.

Unless the daughter is preventing her from looking, out of respect for her beloved.

And, you know, he does promise to explain, so it’d be rude to just barge in.

So why bother consulting the great detective in the first place? If Todhunter’s really on the up-and-up, he’ll explain eventually, they’ll get engaged, and all will be well.

he is tirelessly kind with the younger children, and can keep them amused for a day on end

Given Todhunter’s chosen profession, this makes perfect sense.

You see, therefore, how this sealed door of Todhunter's is treated as the gate of all the fancies and monstrosities of the 'Thousand and One Nights'.

Another Father Brown mystery built upon a fairy tale atmosphere.

To the scientific eye all human history is a series of collective movements, destructions or migrations, like the massacre of flies in winter or the return of birds in spring. Now the root fact in all history is Race. Race produces religion; Race produces legal and ethical wars. There is no stronger case than that of the wild, unworldly and perishing stock which we commonly call the Celts, of whom your friends the MacNabs are specimens. Small, swarthy, and of this dreamy and drifting blood, they accept easily the superstitious explanation of any incidents, just as they still accept (you will excuse me for saying) that superstitious explanation of all incidents which you and your Church represent.

A lot of the most racist characters in Chesterton are the most educated, scientific and progressive.

Granted, Chesterton does a lot of stereotyping along national lines himself. But usually it’s not with the idea that these differences are bad things. And certainly not with the idea that race is the cause of all war.

the door opened on a young girl, decently dressed but disordered and red-hot with haste. She had sea-blown blonde hair,

Is this the first blonde female love interest in these stories?

They were quarrelling—about money, I think—for I heard James say again and again, 'That's right, Mr Glass,' or 'No, Mr Glass,' and then, 'Two or three, Mr Glass.'

Given the eventual explanation of what’s really happening here, wouldn’t she have heard some other noises (possibly crashing noises?) alongside this?

"I do not think this young lady is so Celtic as I had supposed. As I have nothing else to do, I will put on my hat and stroll down town with you."

Wow, you were really just going to disbelieve her because of her nationality, weren’t you?

Playing-cards lay littered across the table or fluttered about the floor as if a game had been interrupted. Two wine glasses stood ready for wine on a side-table, but a third lay smashed in a star of crystal upon the carpet. A few feet from it lay what looked like a long knife or short sword, straight, but with an ornamental and pictured handle, its dull blade just caught a grey glint from the dreary window behind, which showed the black trees against the leaden level of the sea. Towards the opposite corner of the room was rolled a gentleman's silk top hat, as if it had just been knocked off his head; so much so, indeed, that one almost looked to see it still rolling. And in the corner behind it, thrown like a sack of potatoes, but corded like a railway trunk, lay Mr James Todhunter, with a scarf across his mouth, and six or seven ropes knotted round his elbows and ankles. His brown eyes were alive and shifted alertly.

The clues are laid out very nicely here.

This is one of the most Romantic (in the literary sense of the term) crime scenes in all of fiction. Every clue is as picturesque as possible.

"How to explain the absence of Mr Glass and the presence of Mr Glass's hat? For Mr Glass is not a careless man with his clothes. That hat is of a stylish shape and systematically brushed and burnished, though not very new. An old dandy, I should think." "But, good heavens!" called out Miss MacNab, "aren't you going to untie the man first?"

This entire segment is so funny. I laugh every time one of his long-winded deductions is interrupted by the common-sense demand to untie the man.

Now, surely it is obvious that there are the three chief marks of the kind of man who is blackmailed. And surely it is equally obvious that the faded finery, the profligate habits, and the shrill irritation of Mr Glass are the unmistakable marks of the kind of man who blackmails him. We have the two typical figures of a tragedy of hush money:

So much of the Holmesian deduction process relies on stereotypes, doesn’t it? Sure, Holmes doesn’t label people in “types” quite this way, but it relies on using the evidence to reach the most stereotypical conclusion without factoring in the random possibilities of life. (The suspect might have ink on his hands, but it doesn’t mean he’s a clerk). It’s fun that this story calls out that conceit.

"No; I think these ropes will do very well till your friends the police bring the handcuffs."

Okay, so there’s a sensible explanation for why Hood ignores their cries to untie Todhunter. But it doesn’t make the previous exchanges any less funny to read.

"But the ropes?" inquired the priest, whose eyes had remained open with a rather vacant admiration.

It’s interesting that Father Brown’s actually buying into this. My memory had him being more skeptical of the deductions, but he’s admiring the chain of logic being built here.

It’s kind of a nice change from the usual Chesterton tack of the mouthpiece character disdaining every scientific explanation.

It was not the blank curiosity of his first innocence. It was rather that creative curiosity which comes when a man has the beginnings of an idea. "Say it again, please," he said in a simple, bothered manner; "do you mean that Todhunter can tie himself up all alone and untie himself all alone?" "That is what I mean," said the doctor. "Jerusalem!" ejaculated Brown suddenly, "I wonder if it could possibly be that!"

And we’re off! I always love the moment when Father Brown puts everything together, and it’s especially satisfying here, after he’s spent the whole story sitting back and letting another man do all the detective work.

"His eyes do look queer," cried the young woman, strongly moved. "You brutes; I believe it's hurting him!" "Not that, I think," said Dr Hood; "the eyes have certainly a singular expression. But I should interpret those transverse wrinkles as expressing rather such slight psychological abnormality—" "Oh, bosh!" cried Father Brown: "can't you see he's laughing?"

Each sentence gives a vivid picture of the three different personalities here. The tender-hearted young woman. The too-practical man of science. And the brash common sense of Father Brown.

He shuffled about the room, looking at one object after another with what seemed to be a vacant stare, and then invariably bursting into an equally vacant laugh, a highly irritating process for those who had to watch it.

Irritating to watch, I’m sure, but very amusing to imagine.

"But a hatter," protested Hood, "can get money out of his stock of new hats. What could Todhunter get out of this one old hat?" "Rabbits," replied Father Brown promptly.

I love the hat conversation and these lines in particular.

He was also practising the trick of a release from ropes, like the Davenport Brothers

According to Wikipedia, the Davenport Brothers were an American magician act that toured England in the 1860s. They built on the Spiritualism craze and claimed all their tricks were done by spirit power. There isn’t much about what their tricks wer, (besides a couple of escape tricks and spirit cabinet things). Most of the Wikipedia article is about the many times their tricks were debunked. (Naturally, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle refused to believe they were frauds).

But the mere fact of an idler in a top hat having once looked in at his back window, and been driven away by him with great indignation, was enough to set us all on a wrong track of romance, and make us imagine his whole life overshadowed by the silk-hatted spectre of Mr Glass."

This isn’t so much a debunking of the Holmesian deduction methods as a case study proving why logical deductions have to be built upon sound premises. One mistake at the beginning can send you in a completely false direction.

"You are certainly a very ingenious person," he said; "it could not have been done better in a book.

I love when the characters get meta.

This is a very snide remark in context, but of course Father Brown proves himself.

Mr Brown broke into a rather childish giggle. "Well, that," he said, "that's the silliest part of the whole silly story. When our juggling friend here threw up the three glasses in turn, he counted them aloud as he caught them, and also commented aloud when he failed to catch them. What he really said was: 'One, two and three—missed a glass one, two—missed a glass.' And so on."

I can’t explain how deeply I love that the entire mystery is built on a pun. This one section is the reason this is one of my favorite Father Brown stories.

This drives home the idea that mysteries and jokes are the same types of story. They both require laying out information that’s put together into a surprising conclusion.

There was a second of stillness in the room, and then everyone with one accord burst out laughing. As they did so the figure in the corner complacently uncoiled all the ropes and let them fall with a flourish. Then, advancing into the middle of the room with a bow, he produced from his pocket a big bill printed in blue and red, which announced that ZALADIN, the World's Greatest Conjurer, Contortionist, Ventriloquist and Human Kangaroo would be ready with an entirely new series of Tricks at the Empire Pavilion, Scarborough, on Monday next at eight o'clock precisely.

I grew up on cheesy sitcoms. I’m a sucker for the “everyone laughs” ending.

If Todhunter’s willing to admit the truth here, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble by just admitting the truth right away. (I don’t buy the “he keeps it secret to keep his tricks secret” explanation. You can tell people you’d a magician without giving away everything about your act).

Does Mrs. MacNab let them get married? Now she knows he has a harmless vocation, but it’s not exactly a stable one. Would she let her daughter marry a guy so flighty that he can’t even settle on a coherent focus for his own stage show?

Given that the story ends here, we’re supposed to assume that she does. I guess he must be a successful performer--part of her mistrust came from the fact that he had too much money. So he and Maggie should have a comfortable life together.

I’m glad. He seems like a nice young man.

#lb this is all your fault #father brown reread #father brown #g.k. chesterton #the wisdom of father brown #the absence of mr. glass #i remember why i stopped doing these things #they take forever #'but they wouldn't take forever if you didn't comment on every second sentence'#'be quiet logical brain'#this one feels very subpar but i'm out of practice

9 notes · View notes

i-like-your-face · 3 years

Text

How Mo from Lemonade Mouth Became Margo from The Magicians: A Mini Essay

Raised in a traditional Indian family, having to hide who she really was, not able to balance her girliness, her smarts, her creativity, and her values, she grew up feeling suppressed. In high school she 'rebelled' by secretly dating Scott. For most of their early relationship, it was much more about what he needed and wanted than her. They broke up and she found a new friend who tried to Good Guy himself into a relationship. Eventually things turned out pretty okay, with her and Scott making amends and getting back together and him joining the band (taking us to the end of the movie).

The band sees a pretty high level of success afterwards. Her father, though he said he would support her, never gets used to seeing his daughter in short skirts, lots of make up, putting college on hold for a silly music career, in this very public relationship with a white boy, and ultimately doesn't really support her. Her mother, being a dutiful Indian wife, follows his lead, and her relationship with her family becomes all but nonexistent. As the band continually gets more successful, things get shaky with the band too. Wen's temper only gets worse from what it was. Like her father, who wound up in jail for it, Olivia starts dabbling in drugs. Stella being so outspoken means there's venues that won't allow them to play and opportunities they lose out on. As their fame rockets, Scott's self-motivated attitude comes back, acting like he was always a member of the band, and eventually she finds out he cheats on her. They get into a huge fight over this, resulting in Scott leaving the band. The band, which as we've seen, largely works off of collaborative mojo is thrown off. Charlie, who always harbored feelings for her and is bitter about not being chosen, lashes out and says she never should have brought him into the band in the first place and all the bands problems are her fault. The band finally crumbles to a point where it can't be brought back any more.

So she returns home, with no band, her father upset she 'wasted' her early 20s by touring with her band and not going to college. She lost all her friends when the band fell apart and, well, Charlie isn't the only one who blames it at least slightly on her (they always have played blame game when things go wrong). She has nothing..nothing but a whole lot of pain. And it's started to make her bitter. One day, on her way home from the store....she's suddenly transported to a college campus instead.

She takes the Breakbills exam and passes with flying colors (as Fogg points out, you didn't /really/ think your whole band could just suddenly know lyrics to a song they'd never heard before and be able to sing and play it together while harmonizing on the spot without a little magic, did you?). When someone asks her name, she goes to reply but stops herself--Mohini just reminds her of the family she now has broken ties with and was always shortened to that godawful masculine Mo anyway, and she's tired of being expected to live up to Indian stereotypes because of her looks and her name--so she gives a new, more anglo name, Margo (in timeline 40, one time it was Janet, she's had a few over the timelines, depending on what she feels in the moment).

She sees this boy, clearly out of place, a bit of the country boy reminding her of Wen under the surface, with the confident arrogance of Scott, the messy hair of Charlie, the outspoken in your face type like Stella, but with a secret heart of gold like Olivia....and she clings to him immediately making friends. And thankfully he's gay so there won't be a repeat of the Scott/Charlie situation (which is why she's so upset by the three-way because ding dong she was wrong but it's totally on her this time; also why she gets so upset every time things are shaky between her and El because it's like losing her whole band again). She spends a massive chunk of the money she made in the band to get she and Eliot all new wardrobes (no, no, he cannot be wearing those Indiana farm clothes), paying off Todd to use the name Todd not Eliot, and throw leaving parties in the Physical Cottage to become year one royalty all but worshipped by their second year. She had already transformed herself once, it was all the easier the second time.

And by the end of it, Margo winds up fulfilling little Mohini's biggest dream--being High King of Filory, the books she so loved in her childhood (remember, she says she loves them too and is the only one besides Q and Jules, and really, little Mohini reading is daddy's favorite) and has learned to take no shit and rely on no one because you never know when it's going to all fall away. And she may have made little Mohini's dreams come true, but Mohini, that naive self conscious unsure girl from high school? She's So Gone.

#lemonade mouth #the magicians #mohini #margo hanson #high king margo #syfy #disney #dcom

9 notes · View notes

secondpubertyscene · 3 years

Text

8.14.21

This year has been one of major change. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, there’s this quote, “God is Change. Beware: God exists to shape and be shaped,” and I think for the first time since reading it, I get what was being said. While I subscribe to the idea that there is a higher power of some kind, I also believe that we (as in, us as individuals) have great power as well. That power lies in our ability to change, to grow, to persevere. This year has been one of major change, and we really have to talk about it.

It is easy to look at this last year and think, “Well, that fucking sucked” because frankly, it did indeed fucking suck. I could write you a list of things that brought me great pain this year, unbelievable, undeniable, unrelenting pain that still lingers now. But, see, the beauty of it all is that none of that pain happens in a vacuum. Along with the pain, I’ve come through it all with more wisdom, more compassion, more empathy, more gratitude, more peace, more love, and more confidence. I’d like to share how those things all are connected, but first I would like to acknowledge something.

While I don’t know for sure if this is just an American thing, it does seem very clear that Americans aren’t fantastic at processing grief, death, and pain collectively. We often are encouraged to suck it up, to shut up about it, to not make others uncomfortable with our tears and trauma. I believe this is in large part due to the fact that American Exceptionalism doesn’t quite allow us to acknowledge when our systems have failed us or when we are suffering in the “greatest country in the world.” I don’t intend on participating in that toxic positivity or to dismiss the seriousness of the year past. I simply intend on acknowledging the nuances of my experiences, the complexity of it all. Now, let’s begin.

Without recounting every moment in large detail (in part because that would be far too much and also because I don’t need to relieve my traumas today), the events of the last year have been as follows: 1) COVID hit, 2) I had a severe emotional breakdown that resulted in a short stay at the hospital, 3) my grandma passed away, 4) I broke up with my partner of a year, 5) I was officially diagnosed with adult ADHD (inattentive), 6) I got into a PhD program for sociology (fully-funded), and 7) I moved to Ohio (two weeks ago now). So much happened in what feels like a blink of an eye. When you’re a kid, you think a year lasts forever. Now, a year feels like a couple months!

Anyhow, all of these things had super intense negative impacts on my life and most of them had super intense positive impacts on my life. Let’s talk about how. I won’t say that COVID had any “positive” impact on my life, because it’s still currently making things difficult and it is still destroying lives (full worlds) every day. The emotional breakdown that I experienced shortly after COVID began, however, was the impetus for some of the greatest change I would ever make in my life. It began with new therapy, medication for the first time ever to treat my mental illnesses, and a new relationship with boundaries.

Out of this breakdown, I came to realize a few things. 1) I wasn’t really feeling most of my life up until that point. That isn’t to say that I didn’t feel at all or that I wasn’t aware of my feelings all the time, but to say that most of the time, I numbed everything out that was too hard to bear. I didn’t cry, I didn’t write, I didn’t even take the time to try to identify exactly what emotions I did feel. I just lived through it and waited until I felt better. Or, I would breakdown with rage and then feel better. Therapy, especially the group therapy I participated in for a couple weeks after leaving the hospital, changed that in huge ways for me.

Because I was able to sit in my pain, in my discomfort, I was able to actually work through some of my issues. I began to identify the areas in my life that made me genuinely unhappy and began to grant myself permission to feel disappointment. I granted myself the permission to expect more, to want more. I granted myself the permission to set boundaries without guilt or shame. I granted myself freedom. It is an ongoing journey of mistakes and back-peddling and trying again, but it is mine and I am proud of it. Had I not had that breakdown, I don’t know that I would be where I am now.

My grandma dying is one of the most painful things I’ve experienced and honestly, I haven’t dealt with it all the way yet. I didn’t get to say goodbye to her in person, I still am battling the feelings of guilt despite knowing that there likely was nothing I could have done, and my chest still feels heavy thinking about her. Even as I write this, I feel that pain. I know she is not truly gone and that she lives within me, but oh, I do miss her physical presence. The nagging, the phone calls, the hugs, the cooking, her soft hair and beautiful hands. I miss her. Because of her, though, I have been able to rehabilitate another relationship in my life. The relationship I share with my mother.

My mother is a lot of things, but for whatever reason I continually forgot that she too is a victim of hardship brought on by nothing but sheer luck. In this last year, she lost her mother, the man that she loved, multiple cousins, friends that went back to childhood, and who knows who else. She suffered a lot this year and she has suffered a lot over the course of her 61 years of life overall. For the first time, I have been able to really acknowledge her as a full being with a complex history and understand her as a person, rather than just as a parent. I’ve set new boundaries with her as a result, boundaries that have completely change the dynamic of our relationship and will continue to do so as we both learn more about each other. Gone are the days where she relies solely on me for emotional support or financial support. Gone are the days where she feels comfortable talking down to me and then expecting any kind of favors from me. She understands and respects that I am an adult, that I am independent, and that I can terminate our relationship should it get to a point where I feel unsafe again. While this might sound like a threat or even negative, it is in fact quite the contrary.

We now share the belief that I deserve better from her and that my continued relationship with her is founded upon our mutual growth. That’s a beautiful thing that arose from us being pulled together by the loss of someone we both loved more than we maybe even loved ourselves. Thankfully, though, I have come to love myself more than anyone else on this planet. This newfound self-love and respect resulted in the severing of my relationship with my partner.

I won’t pretend like my ex was this horrible person because she wasn’t. She was kind, loving, intelligent, hilarious, unique, complex, and so many other amazing things. I still love her with all of my heart and have thought about her every single day since we broke up. It is not for lack of love that our relationship came to a close. The issue was that I needed more than what she could give. I needed someone who could really sit in my shit with me without invalidating my feelings jokingly because they didn’t know what else to say. I needed someone who could make me feel safe and secure, not fearful and insecure. I needed someone who understood boundaries as openings for futures, not closed doors. I needed someone who could show up for me the way I showed up for them, even when they hurt me, even when they lied out of fear. She wasn’t able to do that. She wasn’t able to stick beside me during the worst days of my life. She wasn’t able to see me beyond our relationship. When my grandma passed and our relationship was on the rocks, she made it about us. She didn’t stop pestering me about our relationship for long enough to give me support on losing someone who meant the world to me. I couldn’t trust her after that and I also realized, I wasn’t required to.

Boundaries in that relationship weren’t healthy. I felt unseen, unprotected, and sometimes even unloved. While I am sure that she has grown even more since we have parted, the reality is that when I ended things, I knew that doing so was the most fair thing I could do for the both of us. This is because I deserve someone who sees my value inherently. I deserve someone who takes the time to understand me, to love me, to see me. Not just see me and them together, but me as an individual separate from them. More importantly, I needed to be able to ask for those things without feeling guilty or bad. As of now, I still don’t know that she sees me as me, as a singular person, and maybe she never will. That is okay. I still love her anyway. I just love me more now. As a part of that love I’ve grown for myself, I also now have sought out more help for myself. This seeking of resources led me to realizing that I was ADHD and helped me change my life.

Being diagnosed with ADHD at 21 felt absolutely ridiculous. How could I be ADHD when I can sit still most of the time and have a pretty decent amount of impulse control? The answers came from my psychiatrist, breaking down the stereotypical understanding of ADHD and allowing me to find myself within the diagnosis. Finding the right combination of medication has been difficult, but what hasn’t been hard at all is finding more resources that help me manage my symptoms. It’s because of some of these resources that I am able to sit here and write this.

A huge part of ADHD is this perfectionist mentality that makes it nearly impossible to start or complete some tasks. Every time I sat down to write in the past, I told myself that I absolutely had to write every single day, once a day, or I should just not do it. When it came to this blog especially, I had so much shame when I failed to post for a long time or had a lull, that I would either consider deleting the whole thing to start over, or just never posting again. I realize now that those were just cop outs for my brain, that I can write as little or as much as I want because it is for ME. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it doesn’t have to be anything but what I need it to be. Waiting for perfection would have me waiting forever because it’s simply not how my brain works. Accepting that is a large part of how I got into my PhD program.

I’m not going to lie. I am still trying to figure out all of the feelings I have regarding this PhD program. I am shocked that I got in, shocked that I got full-funding, shocked that I am now in Ohio, shocked that I am in my own apartment, and overall shocked that I’ve made it this far in general. While I do not believe that I am stupid or not capable of greatness, I am realizing that I’ve always seen myself pursuing something more straightforward. When I was younger, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do even as those things changed. I knew what was required of me, I knew what I would ultimately do, and I took refuge in that. Doctors go to medical school. Chefs go to culinary school. Forensic anthropologists get masters degrees and do field work. It felt clear cut, straightforward, safe. This is uncharted territory. What do you do post PhD? What do you do DURING PhD years? I suppose I’ll just have to find out!

Anyhow, this year has been intense. Change is always present in our lives and sometimes it brings with gifts that we can only receive when we’re healed enough to take them. I’m hoping to keep healing, keep growing, keep loving, and keep going. I’m learning so much about myself and about the world. I’m loving myself more than I have in the past. I am incredibly proud of where I am. And I’m not done yet.

#personal blog #vent blog #black ftm #black transman #black tpoc #black mental health #personal writing blog #sociology #sociology phd program #covid #grief

6 notes · View notes

seafleece · 4 years

Text

i’m trying to collect my thoughts on this, and i’m still pretty reticent to post everything i’m thinking, but overall liam’s bit on talks feels like a pretty good microcosm of why i dislike w*dojes in general:

-i think liam mentioning it first on talks (and i do think somewhat that it indicates he doesn’t intend to pursue it) has the effect that talks always has when a concept is introduced there before in an episode: it artificially changes parts of the show and artificially recontextualizes character relationships without events in the show actually supporting it. there’s a lot of jokes about the show being scripted. if liam’s intention was to introduce w*dojes as something he intends to pursue, then introducing it on the ooc talk show before it comes up in canon (and it hasn’t, by the way, but more on that later) will shape future events in canon without actually creating that change in canon. by exposing it to fans BEFORE any canon events relating to it, fans will expect laura and/or jester to respond, when jester’s interest in caleb has never been expressed, not once (again, more on that). this is why largely i think that liam doesn’t intend to pursue widojes, and largely why him introducing it this way as something he wants to happen Sucks

-liam mentioning fjord as a current viable option for jester doesn’t reflect jester’s character in the present tense. jester’s crush on fjord has already been explained as a way for jester to develop as a character, and it’s been dormant (if not dead, as i think it is) for months, if not over a year. the recontextualization of this campaign as “top table is in love with jester” and artificially creating the Race for Jester’s Heart 2k20, imo, does jester a HUGE disservice as a complicated character. laura has already talked about how jester’s crush on fjord was the idealized product of how she grew up and her view of what relationships were, and has explicitly expressed the desire for people to view jester as more than a romantic interest (which, by the way, shouldn’t have to be something she had to ask fans to do).

-attraction on one side does not a relationship make. caleb may be in love with jester, but he has never clearly expressed this in canon (unless you, as a lot of w*dojes stans want to do, count frowning as attraction). he never says jester’s name in that convo with yasha, and actually, i’m willing to bet that based on ashley’s other reactions, yasha was referring to either nott or astrid. much more importantly, jester has never expressed interest in caleb. the largest tendency of w*dojes ppl i’ve seen on here is to completely bypass that fact.

-(this is more of a descriptor of fanon, but this is the fanon that liam talking about this on talks is unintentionally bolstering) w*dojes as a relationship, especially how a lot of people on here frame it, relies really heavily on some really awful ideas like the manic pixie dream girl stereotype, infantilizing caleb via his trauma and neurodivergence to somehow lessen the age gap, and placing jester on a pedestal as someone who will “fix” caleb. it also tries to reframe jester’s upbringing as somehow making her more mature, when in canon and in talks it’s been shown to have stunted jester’s view of relationships overall. caleb is closer to twice jester’s age than to her age, and the two methods i’ve seen of attempts to bypass this are “caleb is mentally younger because he’s autistic-coded and traumatized” and “jester is more mature than her age because her mother does sex work”.

-i don’t really want to get into a drawn-out discussion of how this echoes last campaign, but there’s a reason people joke about matt constantly offering liam’s characters queer love interests that he abandons in lieu of m/f relationships that border on feeling obligatory, and i’ll leave it at that.

-equating all of the top table’s relationships (or lack thereof) with jester does a huge disservice to both jester and to jester’s relationship with beau. jester has actually expressed significant attachment to beau, to spending time with her, to being roommates, to healing beau specifically even though she’s also expressed her desire to do things other than heal in combat. she and beau have actually said they love each other, and continue to do so; beau has expressed romantic interest in jester in canon first; jester has spent big chunks of the last few episodes worried about beau, checking in on beau, getting angry at the idea of beau leaving, expressing anxiety about beau avoiding her, reaching out to her specifically about joining the traveler-- “there is chaos in your heart and i love you?”-- and doing none of this when they were in rexxentrum? and specifically pushing caleb on whether he likes essek and if essek likes him? i just. if this were a m/f relationship, people wouldn’t be putting fj*res or w*dojes on equal footing. at the very least, liam acknowledges that caleb knows jester’s closer to beau, but. you can’t just ignore the very organically developing queer relationships, shadowgast And beaujes, that creating w*dojes from one conversation erases.

-i’ve mentioned elsewhere, but being a queer person watching potential queer relationships play out as written by straight people, part of the excitement is fear, and good lord did liam on talks tonight stoke that fear. if he doesn’t intend to pursue it, great, but it made me afraid and the amount of responses and conversations i’ve had in the few hours since i posted about it are a good indicator that i’m not the only one who feels afraid.

#aight i'm done #don't @ me about getting mad at cast and please think about it #please #fleece.txt #critical role #cr spoilers #anti widojest #anti w*dojes #talks machina #and please god don’t @ me about this being a ship war or whatever #please engage in critical thought

333 notes · View notes

leo-culture-technology · 3 years

Note

I don't really have anything specific in mind, I'm actually kinda lost as to what to look for jkjsksjk I know I identify with some traits, like sensory issues and difficulty communicating (I do have a diagnosis of social phobia, though I've been thinking maybe autism would better explain other aspects of my life beyond social interaction). I've been reading some articles regarding late discovering of autism and mostly looking for experiences, so I can compare to my own. I feel like I should be looking for something else but I don't really know what? lmao I don't think that was really helpful, anything you can share would be good to me

This is a really long post so I'm going to put it under a read more to not clog up other people's feeds but I think the main areas to cover are:

- verbal communication issues

was your vocabulary/reading ever under/over developed as a child? Having a really advanced vocabulary is just as much a sign of autism as having delayed development in this area. Also, having a very hard to pin down accent, or taking on others' accents Really easily is common amongst autistic people. Do you ever have trouble speaking? I experience selective mutism and when I'm overwhelmed/stressed/upset I often find it hard to speak out loud and have to communicate through messages/notes, though when I'm not mute I'm very eloquent and have always had a vocabulary that was advanced, other kids found it hard to talk to me when I was younger bc they couldn't understand me, but equally comprehension/vocabulary can be delayed/compromised and you might find it hard to understand others because you struggle with that sort of thing yourself. Do you have issues with your tone of voice ever? I find that I can't read my own tone of voice or my volume, some things will come out really bitchy-sounding or angry-sounding and I won't be able to tell, or I might be shouting and not know it because it all sounds the same in my head really.

- sensory issues

do you have issues with certain types of sound? volume? quantity? volume doesn't bother me, but too many different sources of noise will send me into a meltdown so fast. Do you struggle with certain smells, bright lights, tastes, textures of food or of clothing, certain sensations, for example I get really stressed out by having wet skin/hair, and I can't stand the sound/feeling of something rubbing over carpet. I also find some tastes to be overwhelming. Under-sensitivity or processing issues can also be a symptom. Do you ever struggle to process reading/listening to something? I have absolutely awful retention for auditory information, I can't hold more than around 4-5 words in my mind at any one time, and I can't follow auditory instructions at all if there's more than one step, it needs to be written down. I also often struggle to read things because I don't process the words and they just look like meaningless letters on a page to me. I also really struggle to process my own thoughts and order them, I'm able to talk out loud but there are times where I can't write my thoughts without speaking them first because ordering my thoughts while they're still inside my head is very difficult. I also have an under-sensitive sense of smell and taste at times. I can't even smell when meat has gone bad and everyone else I know says it really stinks, and like I can't tell the difference between chicken gravy and onion gravy, for example, because they taste almost identical to me. And senses aren't just the basic five, either. Do you have a particularly high OR low pain threshold? interoception is the perception of bodily functions. Do you have trouble identifying/noticing when you're hungry/thirsty or when you need to go to the toilet e.g. you didn't need to go pee a minute ago but now you're Suddenly absolutely bursting to go because you didn't notice it earlier at all. Proprioception is your perception of your movements, balance and of where your limbs are in relation to your surroundings. Do you bump into things or fall over seemingly nothing a lot? Have you ever been told/noticed you move "strangely"? Do you ever walk sort of on your tiptoes or toes-first rather than heels-first?

- social issues

do you have trouble reading body language? facial expressions? figurative language? tone of voice? not every autistic person will experience all of the above, I know people who can't read body language but can read tone of voice, or can't read figurative language but can read facial expressions, etc. etc. Personally I struggle with tone of voice a lot, I can't tell when people are being serious or not, or whether they're upset or not, tone of voice doesn't really tell me anything about how they're feeling of what they mean. Figurative language varies, I understand metaphors and I often understand sarcasm, although I won't get it if it's too deadpan, and I sometimes miss hyperbole and think people are being serious. I also can't tell whether people are teasing me or genuinely being mean the vast majority of the time. I tend to rely on speech patterns and word choice a lot to understand people, personally. I pick up on what sorts of words they use in what moods and use that largely to inform my interpretations of their current mood based on the words they're choosing. Do you ever struggle understanding what is/isn't socially appropriate? I overshare a lot bc I don't rlly understand what is "too much information" and what isn't, and I also don't understand really how to treat people differently based on their "social role", like I treat someone like a friend regardless of whether they're a stranger, a classmate, a friend, a family member, a colleague, a boss, a teacher, etc.

- need for routine/dislike of sudden/significant change

this isn't always as clear as like needing an entire day to be a routine, it can be little things. I'll give some examples: I have to brush my teeth in a specific way - I count the number of passes of the brush over each section of my teeth, I have to eat a sandwich in a specific order of bites, many food places I will order the same thing every/nearly every time and I will eat that order in the same way, I wash my body/hair in a certain way/order in the shower every time, sometimes I get weirdly obsessed with symmetry and I have to walk in a certain way and if I step "wrong" I have to hop around on one leg until I feel "balanced" again, I have to do my daily tasks on genshin impact in a certain order, etc. etc. I could probably think of more if I tried. I will often get distressed/overwhelmed/upset if any of these "routines" are disrupted somehow. My original method of eating a sandwich applied to when they're cut across into rectangles, so I used to hate eating triangle sandwiches because I couldn't eat them "correctly" until I figured out a similar way to eat triangle sandwiches, and now I Have to eat them in that way because it's "correct" and I'll feel uncomfortable otherwise. Note that this isn't like OCD because it's not anxiety-based, it's based on the fact that it feels like the "correct" way to do it, and that any other way is simply "wrong" and you don't like doing it "wrong". The need for routine and dislike of change might also manifest in needing to plan things ahead days in advance, you also might be like me and be very capable of impulsively doing things like going out if You decide to do it, but if someone Else suggests it, then you need the preparation time. - stimming/special interests

stimming can be honestly anything. I tap my foot, I sing, I have a whole folder names "stim games" on my phone, I type, I eat, I chew gum, I flap my arms, I scratch fabrics, I smell blankets/clothing. Stimming just means self-stimulation and is absolutely any repeated action that you find soothing/cathartic in any way. Under here I'm also going to mention samefoods: foods that you feel comfortable eating even when you don't feel comfortable eating anything else. Like if too much flavour/smell/texture feels overwhelming, most autistic people will have food/s that aren't at all stressful to eat and they can default to at those times. Mine is a specific brand of chicken nuggets, I'll often fall back on those when eating anything else feels overwhelming but I need to eat Something, and I can usually handle those when I can't handle other things.

as for special interests, they are anything that you're kind of obsessed with. You can have multiple, they can change over your life, but your interest tends to go much deeper than that of a neurotypical person's and you feel a need to know everything about it and struggle to hold conversations about other topics because it kind of just takes over your brain. when I was younger some of my special interests were final fantasy, anime, hello kitty, languages/linguistics has always been a special interest of mine, kpop is definitely one, astrology is also for sure one. I fall in and out of being obsessed enough with genshin to call it a special interest. I had a friend in highschool whose special interest was the periodic table, for a while they were obsessed with the 8 times table, and then it became dinosaurs. My little brother is autistic and his special interest has always been video games, he's really interested in retro games, he loves Minecraft and Mario too, when he was younger it was ben 10 for a while, there was also a period where all he wanted to do as a kid was rewatch the cars movies. Media likes to portray special interests as being academic but they can truly be absolutely anything. A desire to know absolutely everything about trains or flowers or kpop is just as much a special interest as neurology or maths or physics or smth like that.

Another thing I've just thought of to be noted, is hygiene:

some autistic people might appear to have borderline OCD tendencies where they can't handle dirt/mess and need everything to be tidy/clean all the time. This is definitely one of the stereotypes. But struggling with hygiene is just as much a symptom of autism. If you struggle to remember to shower/wash hands/brush teeth/do laundry/etc. that could well be an autism symptom. I found out I'm sensitive to mint and especially to toothpaste, it makes my mouth feel like it's burning and like I'll actually cry if it touches my tongue bc it hurts that much lmao. I discovered a toothpaste that's unflavoured and doesn't foam up and now I can brush my teeth without pain but for a long time I struggled with consistently brushing teeth bc of that. I also struggle with showering bc of being stressed out by wet hair/skin. Sometimes it's also a memory thing, and I forget to do these things. I also absolutely suck at keeping my room clean, idk why I just Really Can't lmaoooooo

I'm certain there are things I haven't covered, these are mostly pulling from my own experiences of autism from myself and those around me. All of this might apply to you, it might not, but I hope it makes sense and has given you a good starting point of things to examine within yourself and questions to ask yourself <3 I wish you well bub and please always feel free to ask more questions and/or talk to me more about your experiences <3

#answered #n-a-n-d-a-p-a-n-d-a #personal #autism #neurodivergence #neurodivergent #ND

3 notes · View notes

floatingcatacombs · 3 years

Text

Evaluting Gatchaman Crowds Through Rui’s Outfits

12 Days of Aniblogging 2020, Day 1

Oh, I’m fashionably late to this one. Gatchaman Crowds is a 2013 superhero anime that serves as a soft reboot of the old tokusatsu franchise, only now with 21st century shitty anime tropes. From this painfully generic setup emerges a surprisingly layered evaluation of technological disruption in the smartphone era. For this reason, Crowds is a favorite amongst anime bloggers as a superhero work that’s actually trying to do something interesting.

Unfortunately I don’t care about any of these guys

But it’s also a favorite amongst all sorts of weirdos because of the character Rui Ninomiya. A horrifying amalgamation of the technolibertarian CEO and trans femme hacker archetypes, Rui is by far the most interesting character in the show, because they’re a surprisingly prescient look at how the tech industry will function throughout the 2010s. But they’re also a ‘boy’ who never leaves their house without dressing in the most girly clothes imaginable. Predictably, this is catnip for me. But the funniest part of the whole situation is that nobody ever addresses it. Rui never provides an explanation for their outfits and the rest of the cast just uses she/her until they properly get acquainted and switch to he/him.

I could tell you that Rui’s obviously trans and wrap up the post right there, but that’s honestly not the most interesting angle of attack here. So I’m just going to use whatever pronouns I feel like in the moment for them and focus on what really matters: fashion! Rui has a surprisingly large wardrobe throughout the show, so I’ll be doing the heavy lifting of ranking each of her outfits. Oh, and also maybe a little analysis of what she represents. Spoilers for the whole show, of course.

7. The Yellow Dress

Let me lay out Rui’s ideology before I lay into their fashion disaster. You see, they’re a tech disruptor who believes that governments and bureaucracies are too slow to achieve the monumental (yet unspecified) change that society needs. So, they preside over a smartphone app called GALAX that successfully predicts Pokemon Go’s geosocial AR gimmick three years early. GALAX is a technolibertarian’s wet dream – crowdsourced emergency response, interest-based meetups, and matchmaking for people who need specific help and the people who can help them, all deeply gamified.

Their outfit here is about as messy as their politics, but at the same time, what a look. She’s got blue-and-white-striped programming thigh highs on under her combat boots, which are both such trans iconography, you know? While they may just be a reflection of early-2010s 4chan crossdressing culture, it’s also totally possible that Rui directly influenced or reinforced trans girl fashion, like the accelerationist she is. What a prescient show, in all sorts of weird ways.

6. Lace-up Dress with Bunny Ears

It wouldn’t be an anime girl cosplay without some bunny ears, now would it? Rui spends 5 minutes in an early episode just wandering around the city in this outfit, listening to people’s conversations and feelings on GALAX. There’s something very funny about how nobody even notices them, like they’re completely invisible despite their ridiculous outfit. This actually factors back into the tech stuff! Like pretty much every tech company, Rui’s app and vision are both sleek and shiny but rely on tremendous amounts of dirty labor kept as hidden as possible. From Amazon’s inhumane warehouse conditions to Facebook’s trauma-inducing moderator farms to Apple’s child labor-tainted supply chains, there’s always suffering humans behind the too-good-to-be-true magic of tech companies. Rui’s lie by omission is failing to mention that the app relies on invisible extradimensional beings called CROWDS that are manually controlled by underpaid workers to assist its users. One of the workers comes to Rui challenging their vision and arguing that they should be sharing this tech with the movers and shakers of the world, not trying to keep it invisible. He threatens a collective walkout and Rui fires him. At this point, we’re not even operating on metaphors.

5. Green Business Casual

Sure, most tech companies have cruel labor underbellies, but there’s also the separate risk of moral rot. It’s what causes Microsoft to take on ICE contracts and Google to develop censored versions of their search engine at the whims of authoritarians. Many tech companies start off with an altruistic message, but without a serious ethical core, they will start doing a whole lot of evil as they bend to financial and other pressures. Rui’s version of this is extremely literal: she made a deal with the devil to gain the ability to use the CROWDS and launch her app. Except this devil is also a butch gender-noncomforming alien (there is a Lot of other gender going on in this show that I don’t even have time for) and the two of them seem to have an extremely fucked-up relationship. Like any good Faustian bargain or any bad attempt at raising more venture capital without a viable business model, eventually the whole thing comes tumbling down and now you’re doing something terribly fucked up. Rui looks good in a dress shirt, at least!

4. Whatever your abusive partner puts on when she body-snatches you

Of course the center won’t hold, GALAX is subject to a hostile takeover, and to nobody’s surprise, an app with the flimsy promise to change the world for the better can actually be way better at ripping it all apart. I guess the prescient social media parallel here is Facebook being used to propagate Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing, or really anything related to Twitter for the last 5 years. FuckedUpAlienMimic!Rui sure does have cute fangs and a way more refined fashion sense though. I don’t feel like looking into that one.

3. Business....Futch?

I know I’m not done outlining Rui’s arc, but I’m going to skip ahead for a moment to say that Gatchaman Crowds also has a second season! I’m largely ignoring it here because Rui is pretty much stripped of all plot relevance and most of her outfits are less exciting, but I had to include this one. For two episodes, she puts on bright yellow stirrup leggings and an oversized polo shirt, with a cute ponytail to boot. It’s a ridiculous look, but still feels really evocative to me. Sometimes a girl just has to put together completely uncoordinated outfits and see what happens.

Unlike the disruption-focused first season, Gatchaman Crowds season two, which aired in 2015, is about how unfettered technolibertarianism can easily descend into fascism. Goddammit.

2. The Bunny Ears Outfit Again Oh God Who Hurt Her

The weight of the world comes crashing down in Rui’s hands, she’s bruised and beaten in a surprisingly sadistic manner by her alien ex-business partner/girlfriend, and she’s locked out of her own company which is very quickly causing society to fall apart. So what does she do? She puts the bunny dress back on, and wanders the streets again until she has to call upon the powers that be to fix her own mess. It’s silly that the powers that be in this world are superheroes, but I bet you forgot that this was technically a superhero show at this point. Anyways, my extended metaphor is quickly drifting off course, but I guess this is the part where Rui gets grilled by Congress and slapped with an antitrust case.

1. Every Trans Girl Stereotype Rolled Into One

I’ve been incredibly harsh on Rui throughout this writeup, because I’m harsh on the industry she represents, but I’ll make it up with this section. Look at what she’s wearing! A choker, the gothiest Hot Topic dress imaginable, arm warmers, no less than three asymmetric garters not even holding up anything, and the tallest black boots she could find. It’s incredible! If the first outfit on this list was hinting at her relationship to stereotypical trans fashion, then this outfit just screams it. It’s the perfect goth femme hacker look, a style commitment I have no choice but to respect.

Gatchaman is a weird show. After spending most of its runtime thoroughly dunking on tech disruptors for being too optimistic and uncritical, it takes a last-minute turn into Lockean state of nature arguments. It settles on “the masses are inherently good enough that empowering people through technology shouldn’t ever be a problem”, ignoring all the suffering that happened due to Rui’s unwillingness to curate their own technology. I’d give Gatchaman Crowds an average rating, but it’s one of those interesting average ratings where instead of being milquetoast, they tried something and failed and wrote themselves into a corner. But hey, at least there’s an interestingly gendered character!

#12 days of anime #gatchaman crowds #rui ninomiya #trans #technology

18 notes · View notes

demonsonthemoon · 3 years

Text

More Real (Your Brutal Truth)

Fandom: Supernatural Pairings: N/A Word Count: 7581 Summary: Dean accidentally gets hit with a "gender-affirming potion." Except that, for him, it's anything but affirming. The hunting life hasn't really equipped him to deal with the fact that he's stuck in a female body for the next few months. Note: Title from Against Me!'s "Delicate, Petite & Other Things I'll Never Be.” I've seen some discourse going around about the "inherent transphobia" of certain fanfic tropes like genderbent AUs, mpreg or sex swaps. Those posts made me realize that I hadn't read any new sex swap stories in a while, despite them being hugely popular a while back. Now, that might be in part due to the fact that they were especially popular in the Supernatural fandom and that I had moved away from it, but I also think there genuinely aren't as many of them as they were before. Anyway, the point is that I've always enjoyed them, and while they can indeed rely on transphobic and essentialistic stereotypes there's also just SO MUCH potential for gender exploration in them. And this is why I decided to rub my greedy little trans hands all over the trope, because I will always prefer subvertion over cancellation.

Read it on AO3.

“You sold me out, you bitch, you-” The second witch jumped at Elena before either Dean or Sam got the time to draw their weapons. She wasn't supposed to arrive this soon, they hadn't been ready, and if they didn't do something, one more person would get hurt. Sure, said person was a witch, and usually Dean would have said good riddance to her, but Sam had done a thorough job of convincing him that not all witches were the same, and Elena had actually been helpful so...

So Dean jumped into the fray, dragging the second witch (he couldn't help but call her The Evil Witch in his mind) away from Elena. The woman whispered a spell, and Dean was tossed across the room, hitting a set of shelves. His vision darkened, but at least he had the satisfaction of hearing a shot ring out before he lost consciousness. Sam would do what he had to do, Dean wasn't worried.

Turns out he should have been worried. But not about the Evil Witch. About the bottles that had been broken in his fall and whose content had been splashed all over him.

“And there's no way you can change him back? Give him the opposite potion so the effects counteract each other.”

“That's not how it works, the potion acts on your current shape, if we tried to turn him back that way, his body wouldn't be right. If it worked at all. The spell is designed to be unbreakable. That's what it's for. But it's only temporary, it won't do any damage. He'll just turn back to his normal body after a while.”

“How long?”

“It depends on the person, on the metabolism. I can't say...”

“Give me an estimate.”

“Between two to four months? Sometimes it lasts longer than that, but usually not less.”

“Four months. He has to stay like this for four months?”

Dean figured it was past time he woke up properly and found out what this conversation was all about. The first thing he noticed was that he was no longer on the floor, but had been moved to a couch. That meant he'd probably been out of it for a little while, which wasn't great news. Sam and Dean really couldn't keep getting knocked out as much as they did and still avoid brain damage. Statistically speaking, it would be a miracle.

He opened his eyes slowly, mindful of any potential headache.

“And he's just... He's fully...”

“Yes,” Elena replied through gritted teeth. “I told you, that's what those potions do.”

“Yeah, okay, I get it, I just...”

Dean sat up, and the movement must have caught Sam's gaze because he immediately moved towards him.

“Dean. Hey. How are you feeling?”

Dean stretched his shoulders, still coming back from the haze of unconsciousness. “I'm fine.” His voice sounded weird, so he coughed a little.

“Don't freak out, okay? But there's been... an issue.”

“This is literally the worst way you could have phrased it if you didn't want me to freak out.”

Wow. His voice really did sound weird. What was up with that?

He ran a hand over his face, trying to shake out his wooziness. His cheeks were... surprisingly soft. He'd shaved that morning, sure, but it was nearly evening know, so his five o'clock shadow should have already settled in.

“You broke some potions when you fell. Nothing dangerous, okay? But you're...”

Dean pushed his brother away, sitting up straighter. He looked down at himself.

“What the fuck?”

“They're gender-affirming potions,” Elena said, drawing Dean's attention away from what were definitely breasts on his chest. “It's not dark magic. It helps some people, when they can't access hormones or surgery.”

“Gender-affirming potions?”

“You know,” Sam replied awkwardly. “For transgender people. It's like...” He winced. “A sex change.”

Dean looked down at himself again. At his breasts and the way his t-shirt fell awkwardly over them, too large for his frame. At his jeans beyond that, and the way they were too large around his hips despite the belt that was supposed to hold them in place.

“What the actual fuck?” He couldn't help himself and put a hand to his chest, cupping one of his boobs just to make sure that it was really there, that it was real.

“Dean!” Sam exclaimed in protest.

He could take his prudishness somewhere else though, because Dean was freaking out. “You mean that I'm a woman now?”

“Your body's female, yes,” Elena explained. “Temporarily.”

“You need to change me back.”

“Like I told your brother, I can't. No one can.”

“This is bullshit. I can't just be-”

“Dean, come on, it's not her fault.”

Dean was about to protest again, because it was definitely not his fault either, this was what he got for trying to help a witch, he'd known it was a bad idea... He stopped when he noticed the expression on Elena's face. She wasn't revelling in this like someone who had just gotten their ways or played a bad joke. She looked sorry and, more importantly, she looked scared.

Dean forced himself to take a deep breath and calm down.

“Okay. Fine. So, what do we do? We just... wait? I'm just supposed to live like this for several months and pretend everything's fine?”

Elena shrugged. “Loads of people do it. For what it's worth, I really am sorry. This is the opposite of what those potions are meant for.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever. If you can't help, we'd better just go. Before another one of your spell goes off in a way it isn't meant to.”

Dean knew he was being too harsh, but he couldn't help it. The way his voice sounded kept irritating him, and now that he'd noticed it, he could feel the ways in which his body wasn't the same as before. He felt like he had a good excuse for being snappish.

He'd pulled his belt as tight as it would go and still needed to regularly pull his jeans up from where they threatened to fall off his frame. What a ridiculous situation.

He'd had to pull the bench-seat forward in the impala to reach the pedals comfortably, because turning into a woman had apparently also made him a good two inches shorter. Which was bullshit. Tall women existed.

He'd thrown a glare Sam's way, daring him to comment or complain about how he was missing his leg room. His brother hadn't said anything. He kept giving Dean short glances out of the corner of his eyes as he drove. It pissed Dean off, although the rational part of him knew that it was normal for Sam to be freaking out about this as well.

Dean got out of the car as soon as they'd pulled into the parking lot of the motel they'd booked the night before. He made a beeline for their room and didn't even wait for Sam to walk in before he locked himself into the bathroom.

With some trepidation, Dean started pulling off his clothes, starting with his shoes and jeans, then his t-shirt, until he was standing in his boxers and socks.

He raised his eyes and looked into the mirror.

For a while, he couldn't move. It as possibly the strangest thing he'd ever experienced. The reflection looking back at him was both decidedly him and not him. His face was thinner and a little softer than it had been, without any visible facial hair. But at the same time, his eyes were exactly the same as they'd been before, just like his hair.

Then there were the more obvious difference, i.e. his chest. He had boobs. Not too small either. Once again, he couldn't resist the urge to grab them, just to check that they were really there, that they were really his.

Touching them was weird. Not bad weird, but not really good weird either. Considering how much he liked touching girls' breasts, he was kind of confused that the only feeling being able to grab his own provided him with was bewilderment.

Dean stared at his boxers. He knew he needed to check. Knew he wanted to check. To be honest, he already knew that the change was as complete as Elena had promised. But he couldn't not check, right?

So he dropped his underwear and looked at himself. He looked and he felt... not much, really. That was weird, right? That was most definitely weird. He had a vagina, for fuck's sake. Of course he was supposed to feel something.

Dean had heard his brother close the door, so he knew that he was sitting in the next room, being thoughtful and giving him space. It made him feel a little guilty about what he did next, but once again... He couldn't not, right?

So he touched himself. Just a little. Just to see what it felt like. He let his fingers skim over the lips of his vagina, then trailed them upwards to gently press against his clit.

This was so weird.

This was so, so weird.

He stopped. He stopped before the sensation became more than that. A sensation, not yet really pleasure. He pulled his hand away and closed his eyes for a moment. Breathing.

His pulled up his boxers, put on his t-shirt again, and gathered his jeans in his arms. He didn't want to put them on again, not if they kept falling down. He had some sweatpants in his duffel. Those might hold better.

Four months. He was supposed to stay like this for four months.

Fuck. He was going to have to shop for clothes.

Sam didn't comment on his state of undress when he came out. “You okay?”

Dean shrugged. “I'm fine.”

“Dean-”

“Look, I don't want to talk about it right now, okay? I just got turned into a girl by a witch and am going to have to stay that way for the foreseeable future. I don't know how I fucking feel about it. Weird. I feel weird! But I'm fine, and talking about it isn't going to change things.” He dropped his jeans on his bed, then turned to his duffel and put on his sweatpants. Back turned to Sam, he added: “I'm gonna need to buy some clothes.”

“Yeah. Right. We... We can go tomorrow. I can... I'll grab some takeout for us to eat, okay?”

“Sure. Yeah. Good idea.”

“Okay.”

When Dean didn't add anything, Sam grabbed his wallet and moved to leave the room.

“Don't forget the pie!” Dean called after him, finally turning to face him.

“Of course not,” Sam said with a smile.

A kind smile.

He closed the door and Dean groaned. He knew he was about to be on the receiving end of a lot of those smiles in the coming week. Which was bullshit. His body had turned female. It wasn't as if he was sick or anything.

Dean put a hand on his stomach.

Shit. Elena had said that her potion turned your body fully into that of another sex. Did that mean he was going to have his period?

Going clothes shopping the next day was just as awkward as Dean had anticipated. He dragged Sam into a Goodwill, figuring that at least in a second-hand store no one would find him weird for picking up way too many items and trying all of them on. It took him five tries to find a pair of jeans that actually fit him. He put a skirt into his basket without trying it on and without looking at Sam. Shirts were easier, although most t-shirts were annoyingly thin and let the shape of his nipples show through.

How was he even supposed to begin figuring out his bra size?

He categorically refused to set foot in a lingerie store. The small little shops all had women wearing bright friendly smiles in them, and he knew they would ask him whether he needed help and he would have no idea how to reply and he just wouldn't. So they went into a department store, and Sam hovered over him awkwardly as he walked to the underwear department.

Finding out that sports bra came in standard shirt sizes was a relief. Dean was ready to take a pass on the chance to wear sexy underwear if it meant not having to try on 5 different bras. So he took two of the sports one in the same size as his t-shirts and didn't look at Sam until they were back in the car.

They went back to their motel room. They'd booked another night since they didn't already have a new hunt planned. (Technically, Sam had booked another night, because Dean didn't really want to know how the reception clerk would react if he saw his new face.)

“Go ahead if you want to...” Sam started, gesturing towards the bathroom.

Dean sighed, but carried the bags of new clothes inside with him.

Changing was slightly easier than it had been the day before. He wasn't used to his new body, far from it. But at least the ways it moved and the new sensations had stopped being as foreign. At least it felt like his body again. Different, but still his.

Dean pulled out one of the two pairs of jeans he'd bought. It had strass lining the pockets, which Dean didn't feel great about, but well. When in Rome.

He put those on over his boxers (He was not going to wear panties. Out of the question. Especially not with his brother there.), then put on the sports bra. The sensation was weird, but not much more than the feeling of his boobs moving when he walked had been. He put a branded white t-shirt over it. Finding a simple t-shirt that didn't have a horrifying design printed on it had been surprisingly difficult. This one had been his only decent find, but Dean had figured that he could always just wear his regular stuff. Oversized shirts were a thing with women, right?

He finished his outfit by putting the flannel he'd picked that morning back on. It was warm enough outside to go without, he supposed, but he wasn't ready to relinquish his layers. He rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves, then stared at his reflection.

He walked out of the bathroom.

“I look like a lesbian.”

Sam looked up from his laptop, where he'd probably been looking for a new case. “What do you- Oh.” He started laughing, then tried to hide the giggles behind his hand.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Come on. Don't be shy. I said it first.”

Sam tilted his head to the side, still laughing slightly. “I mean... Yeah. You kind of do. Jeans and flannel, you know?”

“I'm not going to wear one of those floral blouses, absolutely not happening.”

“But, well, it's not a bad thing, is it? I mean, you do like women, so...”

“Yeah. Straight women. 'Cause I'm a guy.”

“I know! I know, dude, I just mean... I just mean it's not too bad if people assume you're a lesbian. Might stop some straight guys from trying to flirt with you.”

Dean grimaced at the possibility. He had already considered it, had in fact spent most of the morning avoiding looking at people's faces so as to ward off any attention.

The thing was, he didn't care if it was a guy or a girl. The idea of anyone flirting with him while he was in this body just felt wrong. He wasn't about to explain that to Sam though, because the man was too smart for his own good and might pick up on the subtexts that there were times when Dean would be comfortable getting flirted on by a guy, and that was one of many conversations that Dean didn't want to have with his brother. “I guess.”

“Hey. Don't worry about it. You look fine.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

It did get easier after that. Once he got past his original discomfort, Dean set out to explore the possibilities of this new body more thoroughly. He wasn't about to wear a sexy dress or whatever, but he just let himself... be. Stopped hunching in on himself to hide away, which didn't feel natural to him in any body. He let his body be a body, and found it quite interesting to notice the differences between how people interacted with him now in comparaison to before. Especially women. Comments that would have obviously been taken as attempts to flirt in his old body were now received like honest compliments. He never got anything more than a smile and a thank you out of them, but there was often something so honest in that smile that Dean couldn't feel mad about it. Sam – who was in on the joke, obviously – found it kind of hilarious.

Another thing that was seriously throwing off Dean's flirting game was the fact that he and Sam kept being mistaken as a couple. And sure, considering that this had happened before when they both looked like guys should have prepared him for it, but it was still infuriating. A girl and a guy could hang out together without being a couple. And, yes, Dean and Sam had different hair colors and body types, but they were still brothers. Couldn't people see that?

Dean's exploration of his female body also took a more... hands on turn. Becoming female didn't mean that he'd lost his libido. Besides, weren't all guys curious about what sex felt like for girls? So Dean touched himself. In the shower, like he usually did, because Sam was always in the next room. (It was frustrating sometimes, but Dean would never trade privacy for the sense of loneliness that had settled in his bones when Sam had left for Stanford.)

He quickly figured out that sitting down would be a lot easier that staying up. So he did just that, settling himself on the tile of the shower floor, back to the wall, and spreading his legs.

He watched his fingers trail the length of his vagina to settle on his clit. He rubbed against it sotfly, experimentally. The sensation was strange, diffuse and too much all at once, like he was already overstimulated despite barely feeling anything.

He kept going. Soon the sensations changed, growing more familiar along with his arousal. He trailed his fingers lower once again, between the lips of his cunt and... yeah. He was wet. The sensation was a complete mindfuck, and Dean had to close his eyes as he slipped a finger inside of himself. Once again, the feeling wasn't what he'd expected. Not that he'd consciously imagined something but... yeah. He moved his finger around a little, trying to keep on rubbing his clit with his other hand at the same time. The angle wasn't great, which was really frustrating. He pushed another finger inside himself, still not looking, curled them upwards a little and... okay. He felt... something. Something good. He kept pushing in and out, a little more insistantly and maybe... he used his thumb on the same hand to rub against his clit as he moved and that was... really nice.

He felt his muscles clench as his orgasm approached, speeding up his rhythm even as his wrist started to hurt, frustration growing as he teetered on the edge.

And then the spasms started, and Dean struggled to keep any kind of rhythm at all as the sensation washed through him in several waves.

He stayed sitting for a few seconds, pulling out his fingers and washing the white fluids coating them in the flow of the running shower. He was careful as he stood up, legs still a little shaky. Washing himself down felt weird, as he was overly conscious of his vagina and the way the sensation of being stretched open still lingered.

He didn't spend much more time in the shower much after that, and walked out and into the bedroom as usual. After all, this was the usual. He jerked off in the shower all the time.

The next step was to actually wear the skirt he had impulsively bought in the charity shop. He told both himself and Sam that it was only a way to look the part when they went to talk to some witnesses for a case. They were supposed to be insurance investigators, so his usual butch look wouldn't work as well.

Sam didn't seem convinced, but he didn't say anything. That was pretty much his entire policy on this whole sex-change thing. He did what he had to do to sell their covers when they were out in public and acted as if nothing had changed in private. Dean had to goad him into making any kind of comment or joke. It was... nice, Dean guessed. Thoughtful, definitely, even though it didn't really make Dean any more comfortable. Joking was his go-to coping mechanism. Sam's silent respect only made him feel like this was a bigger deal that it really was.

Just like wearing a skirt wasn't a big deal. He just... wanted to try how it felt. (He did go back to a department store to buy himself some tights, because shaving his whole legs wasn't something he wanted to do. And rocking a skirt with unshaved legs kind of went against the idea that he was wearing it to blend in in the first place.)

And it actually felt... nice. Lighter than wearing jeans, allowing him a freer range of movements. (To an extent. Sam had to nudge him as they were seated on one of the witnesses' couch so that he would close his legs.) It felt even better without the tights on, which Dean figured out when they went back to their motel room to wait for nightfall before they broke into the cemetary to salt and burn the local vengeful spirit.

Sam avoided his gaze a lot during that evening, but he also didn't say anything. Dean knew the skirt thing was weird. Most of the time he shed his feminine clothes as soon as they were alone, reverting to sweatpants and old t-shirts. He would have to put on jeans again went they went out at night. But for now... it felt nice. Fun. It looked good and it was comfortable and... well. There weren't a lot of things about this situation that were comfortable, so couldn't he enjoy this one without overthinking it?

Three weeks into the spell, Dean's stomach started hurting. At first he thought he might have eaten something bad, but it wasn't the same kind of pain. Then he found blood in his boxers.

Fuck fuck fuck.

He'd known the day would come, because Elena's potion was very thorough, but knowing it in theory hadn't meant that it had actually felt real.

This was very real. At least they were back in their motel room and not in a witness's house. Having to excuse himself to change his underwear would have been a lot more awkward in that situation. It also explained why Dean had felt so horny the past three days.

“I need to go to the store,” Dean grumbled.

Sam hummed, barely looking up from his laptop. The thing they were hunting was apparently only talked about in some African legends, so finding a way to kill it had been slightly more difficult than expected. “Beer run?”

“Yeah,” Dean easily agreed, happy for the excuse.

Finding the personal hygiene section of the local supermarket hadn't been an issue. The problem was that Dean was then faced with a lot more options than he knew what to do with.

He didn't know how he felt about the idea of tampons, because sticking a wad of cotton in his vagina and carrying it around all day was just... uncomfortable.

So, pads. Was he supposed to get the normal ones? Bigger ones? Was the fact that there were special packs for the night something he should be worried about?

He took a pack of the bigger size, figuring it was better to be safe than story, then was struck by the thought that the pads wouldn't fit inside of his boxers and that he would have to by some panties after all.

Fuck his life and fuck Elena's potions.

In the end, he bought the menstrual pads, a pack of three pairs of black panties, some painkillers, and turned around last minute to grab a six-pack of beer as well.

Had to keep up his cover right?

He didn't look the cashier in the eye when he paid for his items, even though the middle-aged woman didn't seem particularly interested in his selection. Dean knew he had nothing to be ashamed off. This was all natural and blah blah blah. Except it wasn't natural, not for him. It was fucking witchcraft and it fucking hurt.

As soon as he was back in the motel room, Dean settled at the table, opened a beer and used it to wash down one of the painkillers.

“Are you okay?” Sam asked, looking at him over the screen of his laptop.

“Just peachy. You find how to kill this thing yet?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

“Maybe? I'm not sure if that's good enough, Sammy.”

Dean had thought that it would become more bearable as time went by. He'd thought that he would get used to his new body, that it would get easier not to frown when Sam called him Dee in public or when guys in the street looked him up and down.

Instead, it just grated on his nerves more and more. At first it had been weird, confusing. Then there had been a short while where it had been... almost fun. He'd been able to see it as a sort of experiment, and he'd played with it, hyping up his female persona as some sort of game. But now it just felt heavy. He was tired of not recognizing himself in the mirror, tired of the offended looks he got when he dared act like normal in this new body, like no one had ever seen a woman chew with her mouth open or stare at a waitress' ass. He was tired of pretending, tired of being judged, and tired of this fucking body that didn't belong to him.

Still a month and a half. At least.

Even hunting was weird now, because he was used to being taller, larger. It was also very frustrating that every monster they fought always immediately went for him, like being female per definition made him the easy target. So he'd taught some monsters a lesson or two about sexism. At least there was that.

Sam obviously noticed that something was wrong. His puppy eyes had basically been trained on Dean ever since the potion had hit, and they only intensified as soon as Dean's mood turned sour.

“Quit it, Sam. I'm fine. Just... tired of this fucking spell. But there's nothing we can do, right? So leave it alone.”

“Maybe we can't reverse it, but you could still talk about it, you know?”

“It's not because I'm a chick now that you get more chick flick moments. Don't even try.”

“Yeah, but that's the thing, Dean. You're not a chick, like you say. You just have the body of a woman and are forced to interact with the world like you're one, and don't try to bullshit me because I know it's not easy for you, I have eyes.”

“Yeah, well. Still doesn't change the fact that there's nothing to be done about it.”

Sam frowned, looking thoughtful. It was the kind of expression that indicated he'd just had an idea that would probably take some time to work through.

Dean left him to it, instead starting the series of pull-ups and push-ups he'd begun doing every evening to compensate for this new body's lower upper-body strength.

Dean hadn't been so dilligent about keeping in shape since his dad had been around to tell him off for not doing it, so the activity brought back some weird memories. At the same time, it allowed him to genuinely feel in his body, in control of it, despite whatever form it took.

So yeah, Dean had a woman's body now. But as long as nobody tried to talk to him, and as long as he had the fire in his muscles to focus on, he could ignore that. It was fine.

“What's this?” Dean asked, looking at the item Sam had just handed him. It vaguely looked like the sports bra that Dean always wore when they went outside, and he wondered if this was a jab at him for not washing his underwear enough.

“It's... uh.” Sam looked... embarrassed? Awkward, at least. “A binder.”

“A binder?”

“For your...” He gestured vaguely towards Dean. “Chest.”

Dean frowned. “And you had to buy me one because...?”

“Look, it's not like a bra or something. It's to... to flatten it.”

“What the fuck?”

Sam looked towards the ceiling, probably trying to find his words as much as not to snap at Dean for his lack of helpfulness.

Sue him. He was the confused one in this conversation.

“A binder is a garment that transgender men use to make their chest look flatter. More masculine.”

Dean stared at the piece of fabric in his hand, which basically looked like some sort of black tank top.

“Okay. So why did you buy me one?”

Sam threw his hands in the air. “Oh, I don't know, because I like throwing around money we don't have! Think for two seconds, Dean. I bought you one because Elena's potion is making you miserable. Because you've started flinching every time someone calls you Miss on the street. Because it feels really uncomfortable to have to call you Dee when we're out and I keep messing it up.”

“This isn't going to make me a dude again.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “You're already a dude. That's the whole point. But it can make you... Look like more of one. At least a little. I don't know. You don't have to wear it, I just... I just thought it would help.”

Sam's voice nearly broke over the end of his sentence. Dean suddently realized how helpless Sam was feeling in this situation. Taking care of each other was what they did. What they lived for. When there was nothing that they could do... It felt wrong. Painful.

So Sam was trying to help.

Dean still felt like there was something not quite right about his brother's reactions, though. Sure, this spell was a pain in the ass, and Dean could admit that he'd been acting in a pretty foul manner because of it, but it wasn't like they hadn't ever been in annoying magic-related situations before. It almost felt like there was... some personal stake for Sam in all of this.

But Sam hadn't said anything, and Dean wasn't going to ask. His brother wouldn't expect him to.

Instead, he wordlessly stood up, binder in hand, and went into the bathroom.

He'd been avoiding looking at himself in a mirror for a few days. Couldn't muster up any awe or curiosity anymore for this too-familiar and still foreign face that stared back at him. He looked now. Tried to see himself behind every little difference that amounted up to too much, to something that had become close to unbearable.

He undressed. As usual, he had ditched his sports bra when arriving at the motel, still not used to the feeling of it over his chest. The fact that the binder looked even more constricting did not make it sound like an inviting alternative. Still. He ought to try. For Sam's sake, but mostly for his own. He didn't know if hiding his chest would be enough for people to treat him as a guy again, but he did know that the novelty of grabbing his own boobs had worn out a long time ago.

Pulling the thing on was not exactly a pleasant experience, but Dean figured it out. It was indeed constrictive, though it still allowed him to breathe. Once properly in place, he was glad to noticed that he didn't actively feel the fact that his breasts were basically being squished against his torso.

He looked up towards the mirror.

It looked... It looked like Dean was wearing a weird tank top, instead of underwear. But his chest did look... flat. Almost normal, if not for the fact that Dean's usual body had broader shoulders. He turned to the side, looking for the telling bulge that insisted on changing his silouhette and making it so recognizable as female, but could barely see any curve at all.

Dean grabbed his t-shirt, one of his old ones, from the male section of a department store somewhere. He puts it on, then looked at himself again.

It's not perfect. Dean's face is still slightly too thin, slightly too soft, so it's not perfect. But Dean can sort of see himself again in his reflection, in the eyes that never changed and the way his gaze can slide down past his collarbones without catching on anything.

So maybe Sam's idea had some merit. He braced himself, then went back into the motel room. Stopping a few feet away from his brother, he ironically spun around, showing himself off.

“How does it feel?” Sam asked, ever the worried type.

Dean shrugged. “It's a little weird. I can feel it when I breathe too deep.” He did exactly that, feeling the fabric stretch to accommodate the rise and fall of his chest. “But it's okay.”

“Okay. Do you...” He trailed off, unconsciously biting his lower lip.

“Do I want to wear it? I don't know. Don't know if it's gonna be enough to... pass. Or whatever. But I guess I'll try?”

A shy smile. “Okay. Yeah. That sounds good.”

Dean could let it go. Should let it go. This isn't something he feels comfortable talking about, and if Sam had wanted to talk about it he would have.

But he couldn't just ignore ir either, could he? Because protecting each other was all they had.

“Hey, Sam?”

“Mmh?”

“How did you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“How did you know to get me this? That it'd help.”

Sam shrugged. “I didn't. Not really. I just... guessed.”

“I didn't even know those things existed.” Dean could already feel he was treading unsteady ground, and told himself this was as far as he'd push.

“Like I said. A lot of trans people use them.”

There was a pause. Dean looked at Sam without saying anything, giving him the choice of where this conversation was going to go next.

But the fact that the silence lasted for more than a second was enough to indicated that something needed to be said. Both of them knew it.

“I was doing some research,” Sam explained, not looking him in the eye. Of course there had been research, this was Sam. “Before this.” He gestured towards Dean. “Before Elena.”

That, Dean hadn't expected. Because “before Elena” could mean a whole range of thing from three months ago to three years. He wanted to ask, but held his tongue. He was already overstepping by having initiated this conversation, he needed to rein himself in and let Sam go at his own pace.

“Research on the transgender community. I mean. Yeah, obviously. But that's why I knew what a binder is. And I figured... Remember how Elena said something about your situation being the opposite of what her potions were for?”

It did ring a bell, vaguely, so Dean nodded.

“They're meant to allow people to have the body they feel is aligned with their true gender, right? They're meant to ease the discomfort created by the fact that the way you feel and how people see you don't match.”

Dean nodded again. He kept noticing the care with which Sam chose his words, and thought of how much blunter he would have been if he'd had to talk about the same topic, of how many of the terms he knew would probably sound offensive to some, because Dean had never thought he would need to learn new ones.

“With you, it went the other way. Instead of fixing it, it created that discomfort. That mismatch between who you are and how people see you.”

Thinking of the past month, Dean could agree that that description felt right. He hadn't realized, before his body had changed, how much of his confidence and of his sense of self was based on how others percieved him and interacted with him.

“I figured... I figured you're kind of stuck in the same situation as someone who's trans? In a weird way? And obviously it's not the same, because you know what your real body's like, and you know it's temporary but I still figured... I figured that you're a guy, and so you want to look like a guy, and that this might help.”

Sam stopped. He looked down at his feet, then at the ceiling. “This is gonna be a really awkward conversation, isn't it?” he asked drily.

“Sam, you don't have to-”

“I know.” He smiled. “I know I don't have to, but I got this far so...”

Dean sat down on the second bed, facing his brother. In the narrow space between the two pieces of furniture, their knees could almost touch.

Dean didn't like emotional moments. They made him uncomfortable, because he didn't know how to react during them. Allowing himself to be vulnerable was equivalent in his mind to letting himself get killed.

But he knew he needed to be there for Sam. He knew that this might be more important than he'd expected, and that Sam needed him. There wasn't anything Dean wouldn't do for his brother.

“I don't think I'm... like you,” Sam started, looking at their knees instead of towards Dean. “When it comes to gender. I mean... You're so... confident. In your own identity. You overplay masculinity all the time, but it doesn't feel jarring. It feels like it comes naturally. Like you know who you are.”

Dean probably could have argued about the overplay part, but he wasn't sure it was the kind of hill he wanted to die on. He knew he sometimes... compensated. Played up his love of women to avoid thinking about other things, and built himself a persona in the process. It was strange, in a way, that Sam could see right through that and still call Dean confident. Dean was the person he'd needed to be. In order to survive a lonely childhood, in order to thrive in the hunter's life and its constant danger. Sam had always been the one who dared break the unspoken rules, who tried to find another way. Wasn't that confidence?

“It's not like that for me. It doesn't feel natural. It feels like it's always shifting. I look at you now and it looks like you feel so uncomfortable in this new body, and all I can think about is that I'm barely comfortable in the one I have right now.”

Dean had pushed. Dean had wanted to know, he'd wanted an answer, but he didn't know what to do with what Sam was telling him.

“What does that mean?”

“Honestly?” Sam's smile was self-depricating and Dean hated it. This was an expression he knew well. He'd seen it throughout all of their childhood every time Sam came home from school after a day of being bullied and called a weirdo, everytime he asked their dad for something simple and normal and got the answer that those things weren't for people like them, every time he'd been called a freak or called himself one, because of hunting, because of his visions, because of who he was. “Not much. I don't think it can mean much, not with the lives we've got.”

“Sam-”

“No, listen. I've thought about this, okay? I've thought about this for months. My relationship to gender is... complicated. Weird. And I think that... maybe that puts me on the trans spectrum. Somewhere. But I'm not a woman. I don't want to transition. And if I don't... it's just easier to let people think what they're gonna think, you know? And maybe what they think isn't the truth, isn't my truth, but it's my choice to tell them or not, and I've decided not to.”

“Okay.” Dean looked at himself, at his too-loose shirt and the new sweatpants he'd bought because Sam had insisted he couldn't keep wearing his old ones all the time without washing them. He looked at his chest and the way it felt new to see is so flat, the weird kind of relief that that sight brought. He thought of everything Sam had done for him in the past weeks, how careful he'd been, stopping himself from making any kind of jokes because even if Dean had been gauding him into them he knew that they might still hurt, maybe not right then, but later on, on days like today when Dean's new body felt like it was seeping with open wounds. And here Sam was, looking at him with eyes that begged him not to fall into pity, that begged him to actually listen and understand, and Dean couldn't do anything else. He couldn't help. Even though that was his job, because he was the big brother and Sammy was everything. Despite all that, he still couldn't help. “Okay.”

“Hey, Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry I didn't tell you earlier. It wasn't... It wasn't that I didn't-”

“Don't even go there, Sam. This isn't... It's about you. It's personal. I get that. I'm not gonna get mad that you kept it a secret or whatever. You had every right to. But... I'm glad you told me. You gotta know that.”

Sam smiled then, small and shy, but a smile all the same. Dean had wanted to do more. To be more. But this was something. Maybe it was even enough, at least for now. “Okay.”

“Okay. Chick flick moment over!” Dean proclaimed before letting himself fall backward on the bed. Sam tried to push his feet out of the way when Dean put them up beside him, and Dean kicked him in retaliation, leading them to play-wrestle like they hadn't since being both teenagers.

Dean got out of breath too quickly and had to surrender, wincing at the way his chest was constricted under the binder. That meant he wouldn't be able to wear it when they were out hunting. Actually... that wasn't too bad. He didn't need it when it was just him and Sam and whatever monster they were chasing. Those moments were when he was closest to feeling like himself, present in his body, adrenaline rushing through his veins, and Sammy by his side.

In the end, the effects of Elena's potion lasted for three months and 22 days. They dissipated just as quickly and as thoroughly as they had set in. Dean had felt tired all morning, and had settled for a nap right after lunch. He woke up to the uncomfortable sensation of being squeezed across the stomach, and it took him a minute to figure out that that was because his pants had become much too tight.

He changed immediately, taking the time to stare at his own face in the mirror, to rub his hands over the familiar stubble across his cheeks. He laughed aloud, an expression of pure joy that amplified when he recognized the lower tones of his old voice.

As soon as Sam came back from his trip to the local library (the thing they were after was mostly likely a ghost, so he'd been digging into the city records for potential gruesome deaths), Dean was gesturing at himself.

“I am back in the game!”

Sam smiled, with genuine happiness and relief. “That's great. So, how are we celebrating? Burgers after the hunt's done? Hitting up a bar or three?”

“I am going to get laid! It has been way too long.”

Sam chuckled, rolling his eyes at his antics. “Right.” They both knew that Sam had been celibate for a lot longer than three months and wasn't any worse for it, but they also both knew that Dean wasn't Sam.

Dean was pretty sure he didn't have to explain how much he'd missed being able to flirt with women, even more than the physical act of sex. Sam was too smart for his own good, he probably understood.

“It's good to have you back, man,” the younger brother said, clapping Dean onto his shoulder.

And it was good. It was really really good. So good that Dean couldn't help but think about what Sam had revealed, the day he'd bought Dean's binder, about how he didn't seem to experience the sense of rightness that Dean now felt at being back inside himself. But there wasn't any bitterness in Sam's eyes, not any jealousy. Only light. He was living his life, as well as he could, just like Dean was. That was their truth, and it didn't matter if it was a little imperfect.

It was good all the same.

#Meeni writes fics #Supernatural #Trans Sam Winchester #Dean Winchester #Sam Winchester #yes I tagged trans!Sam first because I want to provide that sweet content to those who know the truth #Non-binary Sam Winchester

8 notes · View notes

makeste · 5 years

Text

what we could have been

this is a post about the similarities between these old farts

and these lil bubbas

but more importantly, it’s a post about the differences.

so! the manga has recently entered the Internships 2 arc, also known as the Child Soldiers/Todoroki Drama 2.5 arc! so far it is very exciting, and I can’t wait to see how Deku and co. will somehow level up by a factor of 11 just in time to defeat Tomura and his new new upgrade. I assume that this will happen though, since the alternative is... [checks] everyone dies a horrible death. well shit.

anyway, we’ve already had like 12 arcs of All Might being a mentor, but this arc features the first time Endeavor has tried his hand at it! this is of course a universally beloved decision by Horikoshi which everyone in the fandom is very happy about! but I actually do like it, because the Endeavor redemption arc is complicated as fuck and endlessly fascinating to me, and because, truth be told, there is something that even a Certified Son Of A Bitch can still teach these young whippersnappers. even if Endeavor is 99.9% a dick, that 0.01% can still impart something of value. but anyways that’s not what I came here to talk about so let’s move on.

what I want to discuss is the fact that Izuku and Katsuki share very obvious similarities with All Might and Endeavor, and there are very obvious parallels between their respective arcs. Izuku is basically All Might 2.0, whereas Endeavor is presented as a version of what Katsuki could have been. but they are not the same people, either of them, and their paths have started to diverge in ways that are very much for the better. and the reasons for that can all be traced to one simple action, which in turn stemmed from one simple, honest impulse. and I have approximately 10,000 thoughts about it, so here goes.

first let’s briefly touch on those similarities. as far as Izuku and All Might go, their backstories very closely resemble one another. they both started out as quirkless kids who nonetheless held a stubborn idealism and were driven to help others. they’re both incredibly determined and remarkably self-sacrificing. both of them spent the first part of their lives overlooked, undervalued, and underestimated, and they both understand the combination of validation and gut-churning pressure that comes with being chosen as the successor to a great power and a heavy burden. the similarities between them are a large part of why All Might chose Izuku as his successor, despite there being other options on the table. All Might sees himself in Izuku, and that’s part of the reason why they share such a strong bond.

now let’s talk about Endeavor and Katsuki, who share absolutely no bond at all (for now, anyway), but nonetheless hold just as much common ground as their counterparts. they are both fiercely determined and have made it their goal to reach the top. they’re also both foul-tempered with notoriously unfriendly attitudes. and last but not least, they’re both loners who have a tendency to push others away.

one thing that’s interesting is that both Katsuki and Endeavor formerly held strong beliefs about quirks being inextricably tied to strength. Katsuki shunned and scorned Izuku for years because he lacked a quirk. meanwhile Endeavor wrote off 3/4 of his own children because their quirks didn’t develop the way he wanted them to. and it’s only recently that each of them has come to see the error of their ways, which in Endeavor’s case is quite unfortunate, because he’s already well into his forties and has only just now started to con on to the fact that he’s an asshole. whereas Katsuki started this process a whole lot earlier, and as a result is a lot better poised to bounce back from his mistakes and make redemption his bitch.

so segueing now into the “differences” part of this comparative essay, that is Key Difference # 1 for you: Katsuki managed to not waste the next 30 years of his life focusing only on Achieving Strength at the cost of destroying every other positive thing in his life. and while I think there is one reason in particular for this, which I’ll get to shortly, I’ll also go ahead and give Katsuki some of the credit here, because what he did is hard. it’s hard to realize that you have had the wrong way of thinking for your entire life, and to take the steps to get it straightened out. many people are not that open to change. rather than admitting their mistakes, they double down on them and stubbornly defend them. but Katsuki was willing to question everything he’d ever known, and look at it with an open mind, and realize that he was heading down a wrong path. and then he was able to course-correct.

and that takes strength. not the kind of strength he’s so preoccupied with, but an inner strength that he might not have even realized that he has. in this respect he is much stronger than Endeavor, who’s had much more difficulty doing his own course-correcting, although he too is finally starting to figure his shit out (too late to salvage some things, but “better late than never” is a term that still applies here regardless). in my opinion, Katsuki’s willingness to accept his own faults, and to try to change them, is one of the most unexpected and remarkable things about his character, because you wouldn’t necessarily see that coming based on his attitude at the start of the series. anyways, I really like it.

but I did say some of the credit, as opposed to all of it. and the reason for that is because in my opinion, it’s actually Izuku who deserves most of it. but before I explain, let me first backtrack and talk about another aspect of All Might’s character, one he does not share with Izuku.

All Might, like Katsuki and Endeavor, is actually a loner as well. we tend to not notice as much, because he doesn’t really seem to fit the stereotypical profile of a loner-type character; he has a very close bond with Izuku, and he speaks with an earnest and straightforward candor about emotions and subjects that most people wouldn’t be able to discuss with the same sincerity. but it’s true nonetheless. even putting aside this moment in chapter 166 where he outright admits it, there are numerous other little details in the series that show this. he has no family that we know of. only one close friend (and a non-hero at that). at the start of the manga, he was estranged from both his mentor (referring here to Gran, not Nana) and his sidekick. he’s close-lipped about a lot of things, including things he honestly should have been upfront with Izuku about much sooner. and he hides his true self from the world in an effort to preserve that unwaveringly steady image that people have put their trust in.

in the very first chapter of BnHA, All Might makes a speech to Izuku about the reason why he smiles: “to stave off the overwhelming pressure and fear I feel.” All Might was the Symbol of Peace, the pillar that society relied on -- but he was a lone pillar. he kept to himself, and made the choice to bear that weight alone. and this had consequences. I’m speaking not only of the chaos after his fall, but of other, subtler impacts as well.

so now, let’s talk about Izuku.

let’s start with Key Difference # 2: Izuku is not a loner. yes, at one point he was alone -- not by choice -- but that isn’t a defining trait of his character. Izuku reaches out. he reaches out to everyone. he makes friends easily. he’s open with his feelings in a way that All Might is not (and which All Might in fact often scolds him for).

boy just puts it out there. he’s not ashamed. but anyways, it’s actually the part about him reaching out to others that I want to talk about. I’ve said in past essays that Izuku has an instinct to save others which surpasses even All Might’s. when he sees someone in pain, his instinct is to reach out. he will do this every time. regardless of whether it’s asked for, and regardless of how often his attempts may be shunned.

and this, right here, is the most important difference between Izuku (and Katsuki), and All Might (and Endeavor). because you see, All Might, for all his strength and sacrifice, always stood alone.

he kept his burden to himself, and never looked back.

but Izuku did.

“I got my quirk from someone else.”

this was in spite of All Might, his hero, telling him in no uncertain terms to not share his secret with anyone else. and in spite of the fact that Katsuki hadn’t been anything close to a friend to him for many years. like, it’s actually wild to think about all of the reasons that Izuku had not to do this. but the fact of the matter is this: that where All Might never turned, never wavered, and never attempted to help anyone else cross that gap, when Izuku saw Katsuki in pain, he acted on the same instinct that has guided him his entire life: he reached.

and that...

...has made all the difference.

Izuku pulled Katsuki across the gap with him. he let him in. he did this with no expectation of reward, or even gratitude. quite the opposite; Katsuki had always rebuffed his attempts to help before, and even in this case, it initially appeared that he had misjudged again, and that he was just lucky that Katsuki didn’t press the matter. it was a move that defied not just common sense, but all of Izuku’s past experience; nothing about their past relationship ever hinted at a hope for common ground in the future. nothing, that is, except a shared dream.

but he reached out anyway. and because of that, Katsuki was eventually able to put two and two together. and when he did, he did something very unexpected: he reached back.

he asked Izuku for help. he did something that Endeavor never managed to do until after All Might had retired and he found himself, at long last, in the number one position, but adrift and without a driver’s manual.

it took a lifetime of failure and the loss of everything he’d been working toward for Endeavor to finally realize he was doing something wrong, and to ask for help. but this isn’t the case with Katsuki. partly because he was able to put his ego aside in this one crucial moment, but even more than that, it was simply because Izuku had never left a gap between them. Katsuki never had to work to build a bridge. Izuku was laying planks behind him every single step of the way. never expecting that Katsuki would actually follow them, but leaving them there for him regardless. leaving this path back open for them to reconcile, should Katsuki ever choose to finally meet him halfway.

and because of that faith, because of his open and giving nature, the end result is that he now has something that All Might never had: a partner. someone to help shoulder that weight. someone else who understands that burden. and someone who is now working together with Izuku with unexpected earnestness.

and so this is Key Difference # 3: whereas All Might and Endeavor were only ever at odds, two opposites on a polarized scale, Izuku and Katsuki are learning to work together. to learn from one another. to share what the other lacks, and to make each other stronger.

incidentally, just in case any part of this essay has come off as me being overly critical of All Might, or pinning the blame on him for the failures of the previous generation, let me assure you that I don’t fault him at all. All Might did what he thought was right, and managed to turn an impossible dream into a shining reality against all odds. the Symbol he became brought about peace for many years and inspired the next generation of heroes. he was not wrong in what he was trying to do; his only flaw was in being so determined to shield others that he ended up taking on too much by himself.

and I’ll say this for All Might too: in the end, he himself realized where he had gone wrong. there’s a reason why, particularly since his retirement, he’s started mentoring Katsuki in addition to Izuku. All Might knows better than anyone else the burden that sits on Izuku’s shoulders, and he knows just how hard it is to go that course alone. I already gave credit to the boys, but let’s go ahead and give All Might some credit as well, because he, too, is now course-correcting. he’s learning from his mistakes, and helping build a new generation that can succeed in building an even brighter future than the one he once sought.

as a certain melty-face scenery-chewing villain once said, “when people know that there will be an end, they entrust.” this series began with the passing of a legacy from one generation to the next. and now in this latest arc, we’re again seeing that theme of entrusting, of the old guard passing down the torch to the young guns. and shockingly, not just with All Might, but Endeavor as well. reluctant though he was at first, he, too, is now doing his best to help guide these kids down the right path. placing his faith in their strength.

I started off this essay by saying that All Might and Endeavor are who Izuku and Katsuki could have been. but now, to conclude things, I think it’s only fitting that I turn that on its head. All Might and Endeavor are not who Katsuki and Izuku could have been. Izuku and Katsuki are who All Might and Endeavor could have been. they are the ideal vision that never came to pass. the brand reimagined. the song remastered. Izuku and Katsuki will be able to reach heights that All Might and Endeavor never achieved, because they were able to shed loneliness and pride in favor of trust and a sincere willingness to learn.

so yeah.

all hail the new kids.

#boku no hero academia #bnha meta #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #bakudeku #endeavor #all might #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #bakugou meta #endeavor meta

430 notes · View notes